They made love there in the damp smokiness of the firelight, and this time Cat's fingers were as tight as ivy on his shoulders and she screamed into the rain and the rushing trees, so that he paused, afraid he had hurt her. But she urged him to go on, not to stop, and his climax was like a burst of brightly lit blood in his head, a sea wave washing over them. Her tautness relaxed under him and she kissed his eyes, murmuring words in some language he could not understand. In his nostrils was the smell of mint and mud, woodsmoke and sex. Ever after he would associate the act with those smells, and the sound of branches tossing in wind and rain.
There had been, or would be, another time,however, when those smells would be part of his life, and the deep trees would be the only world he knew.
IN THE MORNING of that other time there was snow on the hills and the hide of their shared bag was stiff with frost. It seemed that even with the dawn the life of the forest was in abeyance, sleepy and torpid with cold.
They were close to the edge here, nearing the end of the trees and the open land beyond where there was a hole in the mesh, a way back through a cave mouth they had emerged from—so long ago, it seemed. Despite his heavy weariness, Michael's senses kicked into a higher gear. They were close. It would not do to get caught so near to the finish.
In the late afternoon a dark shape rose out of the side of a tree and Ringbone was before them as he had promised he would be, his rank smell making the mounts sniff and blow down their noses. The long ears of Cat's mule twitched.
'Ca spel, ycempa?' Michael asked him. Spel was the word for news, an Anglo-Saxon word, but Michael had long ago given up any attempt to classify the languages that the forest peoples spoke. Old Gaelic mixed with Saxon and Norse, and a smattering of bastardized Latin. It pulled at the mind, flickering just out of comprehension. Old words, buried like gems in the subconscious. It was a huge effort to drag them out of his mind, though once they had been the very tongue of his dreams. It was because he was so close to the finish, so far from the heart of the wood. Mirkady had warned him of that: that the wood sent roots and feelers into the mind as surely as the trees put out their branches. They were receding, pulling back, but he thought some of them would always be there, no matter what road he might walk in the years to come.
Ringbone told them that the land was deserted, the weather change sending the—forest creatures to their burrows. Even the trolls were lying low until the cold snap passed. But scent would persist for a long time in weather such as this. Good weather for hunters.
The snow crunched and Cat had kicked the mule forward.
She threw back her hood.
'Best to make hay while we can. We should keep going, Michael, find the wood's edge before setting camp for the night. This is the last chance they will have to come at us out of the trees.'
He nodded sombrely. She spoke to Ringbone in his own language, Michael glowering and frowning at his own inability, and the fox man seemed to agree. He jogged off through the trees, beckoning. Ringbone was alone. The rest of his kin—those who had survived—had departed, for this part of the world was outside their ken.
The trees thinned after a while, the open spaces between them thick with snow. It was a relief to ride without having to be wary of snatching branches, to look up and see the first of the icy stars a deepening gulf of night away.
And then the trees ended—Michael and Cat dismounted and stood gazing out from the last vestiges of the forest towards what seemed to be an expanse of infinite space, a rising land of low, snow-covered hills that glistened in the starlight and rolled endlessly to the edge of sight. Open country, at long last.
'Utwyda,' Ringbone said in a plume of breath. The Place Beyond the Wood.
The cold ate into them after a few minutes and they began to busy themselves with the well-worn routine of setting up camp. Fire, sentry, horses—each had their set task. It was a brief half hour before they were sitting around the hissing fire and the yellow light was carving shadows out of their faces. They ate—a hare Ringbone had snared the day before— and then reclined like emperors with the trees a brooding blackness around them, the slightly lighter patch to one side where they had ended and the hills began. They would put forty miles behind them tomorrow but for now they unrolled their bedding amongst the leaf mould one last time. This was Cat's place they were leaving behind, the land she knew best and loved most. It was Ringbone's also. In the morning the fox man would go his own way. Michael wondered if Cat would rather be going back with him, back into the forests and the hazy fairy-tale existence she had known before.
She pushed into Michael's arms and lay there like a child whilst he nuzzled her glorious hair, tangled and greasy now, and her buttocks nestled against his groin.