'It's there. I know.'
'How?'
He smiled. 'Because in fairy tales there's always a haunted castle.'
'You fool.' But her grip on his arm remained. She laid her lovely head on his shoulder.
SO THEY MOVED south, through the melting drifts and the sound of running water. Sixty souls labouring through the birthing forest with their belongings, their very homes, lashed to their backs or perching on the backs of the two horses—thin, their coats long and tangled and the bones long ridges under their hides, a relief map of hunger.
The men ranged far ahead and behind, and off on the flanks to ware against any sudden enemy. They looked like strangely upright apes when glimpsed through the trees, wrapped in furs and hide, the fox headdresses barbaric on their heads. When they hunkered down to spy they disappeared against the black tree trunks, and when they warbled softly through the wood the whole straggling column of women and children and old people would freeze where they stood and wait patiently. And Cat would talk in a low whisper to Fancy and the grey so that they would be still, the white breath pluming from their nostrils.
Days passed in this manner, and slowly but perceptibly the wood changed. It grew thicker, darker, with more yew and spruce, holly and Scots pine, birch on the higher hills. But they were able to take off their verminous furs as the weather slowly warmed and Cat scrubbed herself in a pool they found, though it made her pant with cold. The tribe camped for the night on its bank and chewed smoked venison around the fires whilst a patrol of the young men circled the area, wary of the beasts.
But the forest seemed deserted. Even birds were few and far between. And there were mutterings about the wisdom of moving to a part of the wood that was so scarce in game.
It was in the depths of night that Michael awoke to find himself staring up at stars and the black limbs of the over-hanging trees. Cat was curled against him and the nearby fire was a low, red glimmer. Other shapes lay crumpled around other glows. It was piercingly cold, and his mind was as clear and sharp as a flake of flint.
What had woken him?
He eased himself out from under the bearskin, Cat murmuring to herself at the loss of warmth. He kissed her ear and stood up carefully, feeling for his dagger in the darkness.
Something there? But the sentries would have noticed. He picked his way out of the camp's perimeter, nodding at one of the warriors who was squatting at the base of a tree, a dark, amorphous lump.
'Taim mat, Utwychtan. Aelmid na sytan.' And the sentry's spear waved him on.
He placed his feet carefully in the frost-cracking needles of the wood floor and drew his dagger, wishing he had brought the Ulfberht. Iron might be better than bronze here.
Nothing. He was two hundred yards from the fires and the wood was as black as pitch, the stars glittering silently overhead and his breath a barely visible wraith of paleness around his face.
A fool's errand. Why had he left Cat's warmth? The cold leeched into his bladder and he pissed against the trunk of a nearby tree, the steam rising and the liquid pattering loud in the stillness.
Then he saw it: an outline against a lighter patch of branches. The ears were high and sharp as horns in the dark and the two lights that were its eyes blinked once.
It stepped forward silently, and in the faint starlight he could see the long muzzle, the maw slick with teeth, the heavy bone over the eyes and the close fur that covered the enormous head. A dewlap of loose hide hung from its throat, down to the deep chest. He had an impression of lean massiveness, a towering blackness in the trees. And then those baleful eyes fixed on him, narrowed and brightened to two brilliant pinpoints.
Involuntarily he stepped backwards, mind numb with terror. There was such malice in the eyes, such focused hatred and hunger, that he felt their glare almost as a physical jab.
As the beast leapt forward, he screamed with all the breath in his lungs and then turned and ran.
The starlit wood careered past him. Briars snatched at his legs and low branches tore his face. He felt as though he were afloat, adrift from the ground and being propelled by. some weird gale. The air burst out of his mouth and then was sucked and dragged back in again, chill as meltwater. He heard an awful snarling howl at his shoulder at the same time as he saw the red fires of the camp ahead. The sentry was standing in his path, shouting.
'Wyrwulf!' Michael shrieked, and then a shattering blow raked down his back, something catching in the tunic Mirkady had given him and ripping it like wet paper, pulling him off his feet.
The air whooshed out of his lungs as he hit the ground, and as he lay there he was aware only of the stink around him, as sickening and sweet as a blown corpse—that and the vast shadow rearing above him.
More shouting, too far away to matter. The thing was bending over him, one arm reaching down. Michael felt a cold-clawed paw brush his face with horrible gentleness, and the reeking foetidness of its breath dammed the working of his lungs so that his heart was yammering and struggling and he was gaping like a landed fish, his stomach heaving and the white panic pumping adrenaline through him. He met the eyes from eight inches and saw that the cornea was luminous, yellow broken by tiny scarlet lines as fine as the veins on a blossom. And in the centre were black pupils, slitted like a cat's. They seemed enormous, big as tennis balls, and all their malicious power was bent on Michael's face like the rays of some diseased sun. The jaws opened.