A Different Kingdom(99)

In the night something walked in the trees surrounding the glade, and the horses were restless. Michael hobbled from the fire with drawn sword, listening to the bending vegetation, the muffled footfalls. Something big circled the outermost reaches of the firelight; he could sense the breathing, the wary eyes, and a hint of the rank smell. But" perhaps there was some of Nennian's faith clinging about the sanctuary, for the thing left them in the early hours, and swished off into the forest.

'What is it?' he had asked Cat.

'Troll, maybe. Who knows? There are reputed to be beasts in the Wolfweald no one has ever seen. Like the tree wolves we encountered. I think our time of being ignored is over, Michael. It starts again now.'

They left Nennian's home with regret, their saddles weighed down with all the supplies they could claw together. Braces of chickens were dangling trussed and indignant from their saddles, and a pair of freshly slaughtered goats.

As they departed from the glade Michael looked back once and saw that Nennian's cross had sprouted green shoots which blurred its outline. It had become a tree, alive and growing.

THE JOURNEY CONTINUED without ceasing, like a fortyyear stint in the wilderness with no Canaan at its end. Michael's thigh wound slowly healed, and he cast aside his crutch. The horses gathered strength from Nennian's barley grain and began to fill out. They made better time, which was just as well for there were shapes in the trees at the corner of sight, darker shadows lurking in the dim light of the wood. They took to keeping watches in the blackest hours of the night, and all the time were aware of the movement at the limit of firelight, the odd noises. But the Weald was being left behind steadily.

Twice they were attacked by goblins, the squat shapes boiling out of the night to be met with Michael's blade and Cat's arrows. Both times they threw back their attackers with grim slaughter, piling their corpses around their campsite. The assaults were disorganized, febrile, the grymyrch launching themselves in knots rather than in waves. Michael and Cat received hardly a scratch in return.

At last the wood opened out and the land dipped. The trees grew smaller and there was light enough for undergrowth between them. There were birds and game and clean water. Cat laughed aloud, throwing back her black mane of hair. It was like a paradise after the gloomy fastness of the Wolfweald. They felt as though they had been freed from prison and given a glimpse of the real, brilliant, vibrant world once more.

They dawdled, taking time to hunt and gorging themselves on fresh meat. The horses cropped good grass and drank from the streams. When they were unsaddled in the evenings they rolled in the wetness of the grass, rubbing the fresh scent into their coats and wiping off the mud and mould of the weald.

They, all of them, almost died.

A wolf pack came upon them unawares as they were warming meat at a morning fire: eight rangy beasts with eyes as yellow as pus and black muzzles. Whilst Michael struggled with the horses Cat shot two down with the last of her arrows and disembowelled a third using a knife they had salvaged from Nennian's hut. Another fastened itself on the grey gelding's near hind leg but was kicked away. Michael gutted one that tried to attack Fancy, but as it collapsed it took the Ulfberht with it, ripping the hilt from his fingers. Another sprang at him, but Cat pounced on it in mid-air and bore it to the ground. They rolled, snarling in unison, and when the thrashing tumble had stopped she got to her feet with one arm blood to the elbow. The rest of the pack fled.

They were more wary after that, remembering belatedly that the Wildwood proper had its share of horrors too. But they were hungry for the sight of human faces, the sound of voices other than their own.

They had not long to wait. Three days after returning to what Michael thought of as the normal wood, they came upon a wide track going south to north. Following it (a relief to ride without ducking under branches and leaping fallen trees), they saw lopped stumps in the wood, abandoned brush huts and finally they came across a village set back from the road in a tiny clearing. They snuffed woodsmoke and heard children squealing.

'Civilization,' Cat said.

The children burst into view from the trees—a trio of tiny ragamuffins. They stopped as one and stood stock-still on seeing the pair of mounted strangers, then they gave a collective wail and ran off, crying out in the forest language, 'Fiesyran, fiesyran!'

The word could mean either strangers or enemies. In the Wildwood the two were seen as virtually interchangeable.

'Do we seem so fearsome?'

'Have you seen your face lately, love? You look like a grey-bearded killer.'

He thought Cat was making fun, but her own face when he looked at it was sober. Grey, he thought. I'm a grey man now.

He supposed they did look fearsome—mounted, for one thing. Few but the Knights went mounted in the wood. And armed as well. And they were scarred, their eyes wild, their faces filthy. Their clothes were bloodstained and ragged, black with mud, resewn a hundred times. They had taken to wearing short capes of deerhide with the hair turned outwards to ward off the rain, and dangling from their pommels were lumps of smoked venison, inadequately wrapped in one of Nennian's spare habits. Cat's beauty was hidden behind a mask of dirt and a tangle of matted hair. It was hard to tell if she were a woman at all, for she was as slim as a tall boy and the long blade of Nennian's bronze knife hung wicked and glinting from her waist.