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A Different Kingdom(84)

By:Paul Kearney


Mirkady had been wrong, he thought. He had said that Michael's love would make Cat into a human, a mortal like himself, but here in the Wolfweald she was reverting to the other half of her nature. She was starting to leave her humanity behind.

They began to notice signs of life in the trees. Michael found the tracks of what seemed to be large deer in the dirt of the forest floor and Cat kept her bow to hand in case they should chance across any. Sometimes there were scufflings and scrabblings beyond the firelight at night, and once the wink of glowing eyes.

They were riding along silently the morning after seeing the eyes when Michael became aware of something up ahead: movement among the trees, distant cries, the first sounds they had heard from voices other than their own in weeks. He and Cat halted at once, dismounting cautiously.

'Grymyrch,' Cat hissed.

'Are you sure?' Michael could make out nothing.

'I smell them.'

They crept forward. A dark knot of the creatures was struggling and snarling over something. There were four, perhaps five of them. Michael drew his sword and out of the corner of his eye saw Cat's arm drawing back her bowstring.

A sound of air being sliced, and one of the goblins squawked and tumbled away with an arrow through the back of its neck. The others straightened, and Michael lunged forward with the Ulfberht. He stabbed one fanged, midnight face that already had blood plastering it and it disintegrated. Another he slashed down the spine as it turned to run, and a third he kicked aside as it leapt for his throat, impaling it as it struggled back to its feet. Another arrow took the last one in the eye. Cat swept the surrounding trees with her gaze, another arrow notched and ready, but the wood was silent again. Michael bent and examined what the goblins had been fighting over.

A goat, or what was left of one. The goblins had just about torn it limb from limb. A glint of metal caught Michael's eyes, and he reached into the hairy, sticky mess to pull away a metallic object that rang and clinked in his hand.

A bronze bell, and what remained of a rawhide collar. The goat had been wearing it.

Someone keeping goats in the Wolfweald? He shook his head. 'There are tracks here,' Cat said, staring at the ground around the goblins' bodies. 'They lead off to the west. That is where these came from.' She looked at Michael questioningly, and he nodded.

An hour's careful travelling brought them into an area of woodland they had almost forgotten could exist. The trees were farther apart and in between them the ground was covered with ferns and briars, yarrow and kingcup, the haze of bluebells close to the ground, primroses in bloom—reminding them that it was spring—and the purple of wood anemones. But most of all there was the light. The canopy overhead had thinned, and the blessed sun poured down on them in a thick stream so that Michael laughed aloud and raised his face to the sky as though drinking it in. Sunshine after these weeks of gloom. It was like a draught of wine.

Cat noticed it first. A faint hint in the air.

'Woodsmoke.'

'Where?'

'Up ahead.'

They dismounted, tethered the horses, who were cropping the good grass greedily, and made their way forward with weapons drawn.

A rude fence, the smell of goats. The trees opened farther. A neat stack of firewood and a bronzebladed axe. There were small structures dotted about a tiny clearing, some tacked on to the trunks of the immense trees and with bark and turf roofs, like those of the villages farther north, and thick. tree limbs for supports. No walls. They were little more than lean-toe, open to the air. One of them could only be a forge, with a squared boulder for an anvil and leather bellows propped beside a stonebuilt hearth.

They startled a strutting chicken and it clucked crossly at them.

Michael and Cat stared at it hungrily for a second. 'Michael?'

'What?'

'I smell the Brothers' work in this place. It is one of their sanctuaries.'

He raised his eyebrows at her. This deep in the Wolfweald? They halted as one. From the trunk of one of the trees a deep hollow had been carved, and in the hollow was a wooden cross, the bark still clinging to it. Before the tree a man in a woollen robe stood, his back to them and his arms uplifted to the air. Cat raised her bow but lowered it, frowning, at Michael's glare.

They waited, and after what seemed an age the man blessed himself and turned round.

'Pax vobiscum.'

They stood, staring. A wild sight, Michael knew they must be, weeks of hard travel and fighting written over them, their clothes thick with mud and in tatters, their hair filthy, the smell of horse and sweat as thick as mist about them—and the sword drawn, the bow strung. He was obscurely embarrassed, as if his grandmother had caught him with a dirty face on a Sunday morning.

The man smiled. He had a round face, as full and rosy as an apple, and his shoulders under the rough habit were as broad as a labourer's. He was short, stocky, and his hands were thick-fingered. He would have looked at home in Antrim digging peat with a flat cap on his head, were it not for the lively intelligence in the eyes, the shrewd lines at their corners. He spread his arms wide.