A Different Kingdom(98)

Tiredness bound down their limbs like some mindthickening drug, and yet they could not sleep. There was no going on, Michael knew. He had had enough. They had not the strength to continue. He was not sure if they had the strength to go back, either.

He would leave Rose here; abandon her. He could do nothing else. That knowledge was a bitter taste in his mouth, the tang of failure. Cat knew it also, but he did not think she knew that he was going home. Somehow he was going home, and if he had to leave her behind then so be it. At present all he wanted was to be a boy again, unscarred and unafraid of the dark. He wondered if it were possible.

Cat shifted painfully beside him and even in the uncertain light and the shadow of the fire he saw the dressing at her collarbone darken further as the blood seeped through it. He could have wept to see her like this, bone thin and ravaged with hurt, but all that came was a hot stinging in his eyes. He would betray them both, leave her and Rose behind. His quest had failed utterly.

IN THE MORNING they lurched upright like stiff marionettes, unspeaking. There was light in the forest. Somehow the canopy seemed to have thinned and the weak sun was filtering through overhead. Cat broke Michael a rude crutch from one of the trees and they set off northwards at a snail's pace, leaving Nennian's face howling in the tree behind them.



Luck of some sort was with them, though. They found a trampled trail in the leaf litter that only the horses could have made, and pieces of equipment and scraps of harness were scattered here and there. And in the afternoon they came upon their three recalcitrant mounts standing trembling with their saddles askew and their manes matted with mud and twigs. They rode them for part of every day after that, striving to husband both the animals' strength and their own, and made better time. After a week the more shallow of their wounds were healing well and they were becoming healthy enough to sicken of the forest spawn they consumed to keep the life in them alive.

Ten days from the site of the battle they came to a decision and butchered the priest's donkey, ladening down the two other animals with its bleeding flesh and eating their fill of the stringy meat in the evening. Fancy and the grey were too exhausted to balk at the stench of blood and from then on they picked their way through the wood with the dismembered limbs of their comrade swaying from their flanks.

The meat put new strength into Michael and Cat. Tough though it was, it represented the most filling meal they had eaten since the days of Nennian's goat stew and honey. They stuffed themselves morning and evening and soon Cat was able to walk at the side of the grey all day, though Michael's mangled thigh kept him on a horse's back for most of their travelling.

Time passed. The forest left them alone, and the huge trees of the Wolfweald paraded endlessly by. Two weeks from the scene of Nennian's death they came upon his clearing in the trees, cutting almost in half their outbound journey—as though the wood were eager to be quit of them.

It was a chill afternoon when they stumbled across it, the light growing steadily stronger as the trees thinned until they startled a goat grazing at the edge of the glade and made out the humped shapes of the priest's outbuildings. Chickens pecked the ground contentedly there, but the forest had made inroads in the Brother's absence.

The bare central yard around which the buildings clustered was already thick with grass and green briar. Tufts of vegetation were sprouting over the sleeping hut, and young ferns were springing in the very doorway. The rough enclosure that had held the goats was fallen and overgrown, and saplings of hazel and lime, birch and beech, had broken out of the ground with amazing speed. They were almost waist high, trembling in a slight breeze. There was a thick, growing smell in the air, like freshly turned loam. The place looked as though it had been deserted for a year.

They unsaddled the horses, fed them from Nennian's store and let them loose in what was left of his goat enclosure. Then they both drank their fill of the clear water that still ran in his stream. It was delicious, paining their teeth with its coldness. Michael met Cat's eyes across the stream and knew she was human now, or as human as she could ever be. He wondered if there was a chance for the pair of them, a place for them both in his own world. He felt as guilty as a murderer with his secret resolution to go home. Could he make her come with him?

They ransacked the place for what food remained: smoked meat, mainly: the vegetables in the garden that the weeds had not yet buried, and a pot of honey. It was not enough for Cat's sweet tooth, and she attacked the bee skep determinedly, scooping out handfuls of honey and wax with the outraged and cold-sleepy bees blackening the air about her head. When she and Michael settled down for the night her hair was matted with honey and her face had swollen with stings. But her sticky face grinned at him across the fire. He felt a kind of disgust.