A Different Kingdom(101)

Celebrations. Feasting. A glad day that seemed free of shadow. Ringbone greeted them both with a grin splitting his usual reserve, and he and Michael embraced like brothers. Cat and Michael were feted as heroes, and Michael felt that this, at least, was a homecoming of sorts, a return to familiar things.

They were greater in number, the Fox-People. They had taken in refugees from the Bear-People whose camp the Knights had gutted. There were almost four score of them, a healthy number, and a far change from the defeated, fearful people that Michael had last seen on the borders of the Wolfweald. They had fought their way back north, losing people in ones and twos all the way, but now they were in their traditional hunting grounds again and neither the beasts nor the Knights with their iron swords would shift them.

The battle at the village had been made into a song, a savage plainchant, and Michael realized that he and Cat had been elevated into something of a legend with these people. They were greeted with awe by the newer members of the tribe. Utwychtan, the man who slew Knights with fire and thunder and who dared the Wolfweald. Teowynn, the Treemaiden who knew the forest better than any of the hunters. They had become the beginning of a myth.

But they had to move on. The beasts were closing, and Michael did not want to bring the Horseman down on these people's heads.

Ringbone and some of his men escorted them through the wood—an aboriginal honour guard— and as the summer wound down into autumn they found themselves far to the north, the cold weather creeping up on them again and the nights becoming longer. But they became separated as the pursuit quickened and drew close. Wolves attacked Cat and Michael, taking the grey gelding that had carried Cat so far. They finally met up with Ringbone's folk once more with Michael feverish and wounded yet again.

And something else had happened. Little by little the forest language that had leaked into Michael's head and made a place for itself there was disappearing. Words at first, then the construction of sentences. It was easier to understand it spoken than to speak it, but as the autumn drew on into an early winter he had to use Cat as an interpreter between himself and the fox men. As though this land were washing its hands of him, shutting him out now that he had decided to leave it. The thought made him bitter and sad.

They had to seek sanctuary in a Brothers' retreat which the fox men refused to enter. Strangely enough, Michael could understand the Brothers' speech as he always had. It was something to do, perhaps, with their shared Christianity.

There most of the tribesmen left, only Ringbone staying with them to the end, to the Utwyda. It was cold by then, and the woods had seen the first snows. With the fox man at their side, Cat mounted on a borrowed mule, they had stared out at the land beyond the forest, weirdly open and empty after the months and years spent under trees. And there they had said goodbye to the savage who had started off as a child's nightmare and who had become a friend, one of the precious few Michael had known. Ringbone seemed not to recognize the finality of this parting. He had never thought to see them again after they had disappeared into the southern woods, but they had survived and no doubt they would one day come back from this new journey.

'Ai neweht yewenian,' he said, and that much Michael understood. Until the time you return.

And then Ringbone melted away into the thick dimness of the trees, the wood that was his world. Cat refused to watch him go, and her face was white and closed, admitting nothing. The pair struck out across the bare hills for the last stage, to where a river issued from a cave mouth and formed Michael's road home.

Looking back once, they saw the Horseman seated silently, watching them from the shadowy eaves of the Wildwood whilst the dawn broke open the sky above his head.

THEY MADE GOOD time, for Cat's mule was a willing brute. By the evening of that day they were up in the hills, and the sylvan world they had sojourned m for so long was a vast dark carpet on the land below, its higher contours dusted with snow. It was eerie and exhilarating to be able to see in all directions, to have no dark hollows or overhanging branches to worry about. If the wolves continued their pursuit they would be obvious for miles away. Of the Horseman they could no longer see any sign.



The cave and its river had not changed. For some reason Michael had expected it to be different, perhaps because the boy who had come through it that morning was gone. Now there was only a hulking, grey-bearded man with scarred limbs and the eyes of a killer.

They made camp, lighting their fire by the riverbank and heating the meat of a two-day-old kill. Then they drank barley spirit that Ringbone had given them on parting, toasting him and his people.

Still Cat said no word about Michael's impending departure. They sat on opposite sides of the firelight, leaning on their saddles whilst Fancy and the mule grazed peaceably nearby and the night swooped in overhead in a spatter of glinting stars. It was cold these nights. This far up in the hills there were banks of snow everywhere in the lee of stones and knolls, and the welkin was clear and sharp with oncoming frost. If it snowed again it would become warmer.