But there was a wash of malt left in the bottle, he noted.
Something to deaden his mind. He swallowed it in three gulps, feeling the fiery stuff bum his throat and set his insides aglow. That was better. That hit the spot.
He lay down again, frowning. Had he actually managed it that evening, or had he merely slumped there—hence her precipitate departure? Damned if he could remember.
To hell with it. Another nameless face and another sleepless night. Police sirens careering beyond the window, whining off into the farther streets. A bottle smashing, laughter and the rush of feet. It's all happening, he thought muzzily. It's all here,
He remembered cold water, and the mare shaking herself like a dog. He remembered Cat's shining face, and the sight of that first dawn light over the forests and hills of another world.
'WE'RE THERE,' SHE said. 'Back again.'
He hauled himself to his feet, chill water filling his boots and running down his back. There was a shiver starting, for they were in the shadow of a stand of trees and the sun was only a sliver of brightness somewhere in their crowns. Night coolness filled the water hollow along with the splashing river. Beside him Fancy shook herself, spraying droplets over them. She seemed bemused.
They had come out of a cave, it seemed. The river was quieter here than in the place they had left behind, sliding out unbroken around stones and tree roots, plopping and gurgling smugly to itself. The cave was dark, deep as the maw of the bridge on the other side. It looked somehow ominous.
'Come on,' Cat said. 'We'll freeze here.'
She started off with Michael's shotgun, sack and other paraphernalia swinging from her thin shoulders, her hair dripping water. Without a word, Michael took the mare's bridle and followed, icy liquid squelching in his boots.
They struggled up a steep slope covered in Scots pine, needles soft and dry under their feet. The sunrise was huge and silent in the sky, light beginning to flood the trunks of the trees. It was clear as. glass, picking out everything in brilliance and shadow, and there was no sound in the wood save for their laboured progress. The silence was like a great buzzing in Michael's ears. Perhaps there was a faint rushing of air in the very heights of the tallest pines, but that was an.
They reached the top of the slope, Fancy blowing out through her nose and sniffing the luminous air. And here they paused on what seemed to be the edge of infinite space.
The trees opened out and became sparse, dotted clumps scattered over a great rolling expanse of broken hills and valleys that stretched for perhaps thirty miles away at right angles to the sunrise. There the trees regrouped, and became at once a dense darkness of thick forest that covered the slopes of the land to the south for as far as the eye could see. Mist had gathered in miles-wide banners where the land hollowed, and the dawn set it alight, made it into a golden shimmer so that the forest seemed almost to be steaming in the sun, the mist and haze making each hill into a silhouette and the air so clear that Michael thought he could make out clearings, glades, even individual trees. It was like looking at an impossibly detailed painting through a magnifying glass.
'Weoldwyd,' said Cat.
'What?'
'The Wildwood, Michael. It runs almost unbroken from here to the great mountains in the south. In the foothills it becomes the Wolfweald, a bad place where there are manwolves and other things that lurk in the trees. I told you of the people who live in the wood—the tribes and the villagers, the wanderers. And the Folk of the Forest, of course: the Wyrim.'
A wind came searching through the pines and Michael shivered again.
'What about the Horseman? What's to stop him coming through the same way we did and chasing after us?'
Cat shook her head. 'I don't believe his purpose is to catch us, either of us. He shadows but he never closes. He is only watching, for the present. It is his minions, the wolves and suchlike, who do his work for him.'
'Great,' Michael muttered. But he was feeling oddly cheerful.
It had happened before on coming here, though it seemed now more tangible. It was the crystal air, perhaps, the light in the early dew; or the smell of pine resin on the wind and the vast panorama at his feet, everything coming to life under the dawning sun as though this were its first morning and he and Cat the only ones to see. He felt like singing, but settled for kissing Cat's cold lips and was rewarded with her famous grin.
'We'll turn to ice standing here. I've a mind for a fire and a breakfast of sorts. What say you?'
He nodded readily, and they started down the slope to where the trees gave some shelter and they would find wood in plenty.
Not piglet on a spit this time, but close enough: bacon spitting in a pan and bread to mop up the fat. Michael had been wise enough to keep the matches in a waterproof tin, and the dead branches lying around were as dry as tinder. Their fire was almost smokeless, built high and hot. Around it they had clothes steaming on ground-stuck branches and they sat nude, soaking in the warmth while the mare grazed contentedly nearby. The land around them seemed entirely deserted. There were-birds— Michael recognized the song of both blackbird and thrush—and a hare had sat upon its hind legs to stare at them for a moment, but no sign of people. No roads, no smoke, no noise.