“But the Lord does not give us food on demand—that is too easy.”
Campbell chuckled.
“I suspect that the woodsman’s magic has little to do with our Lord. They have been in this land since before Christ, probably even before Moses. But have you forgotten your prayers? ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ Is that not what we ask? The only difference is that the woodsman’s gods seem to answer.”
Martin was about to protest when he realised he was being teased.
“I still don’t like it,” Martin said. Just then Lennan brought the birds to the fire, so the conversation was concluded. Campbell seemed eager to get to the food and had his back to Martin, so Martin’s companions didn’t see him turn his ankle in a rut on the ground. Nor did they see him hit his wounded arm against the largest stone as he tried to regain balance.
None of the three companions saw the smear of bright red blood which was left there as Martin went to join them, limping slightly as he walked.
Once more they were gathered around a fire, once more waiting for food, but Martin was thankful that there was no repeat of the morning’s performance. Lennan sat in silence, only occasionally moving to turn the birds.
“Where are we?” Martin asked.
“I have told,” Lennan said. “A place of our gods.”
“Yes,” said Martin. “But how much further to Milecastle? And how long will it take us to get there?”
“The stone town is ten leagues to the south west,” Lennan said. “And it will take as long as the gods wish. Now fill your belly and empty your soul.”
The last was spoken harshly, an admonishment to Martin’s unbelief. They ate the birds in silence. Martin found them tough and gamey, but the others ate them heartily enough, and at least there would be no problems in removing pellets of shot. Soon all that remained was a small pile of bones.
“Our bellies are full and our souls are empty,” Campbell said, and Lennan smiled broadly.
“And our feet will travel lightly on the path,” he said. “Come, we must travel fast once more.”
Lennan scattered the bones away from the stones, and doused the fire before they headed out of the amphitheatre. Although it was autumn, the sun beat down hard on Martin’s head, and his stomach felt full and swollen. He was a long way from the contentment he had been feeling that morning, and this time, when Lennan began his song, it was only that, a song, and Martin felt no compulsion to join in.
Campbell and Lennan were both singing now, and they were striding away over the moorland. To Martin it seemed that their feet were not touching the ground, so lightly did they travel. He was having to walk ever faster just to keep up with them, and it was only when they topped the hill and began to descend that he was able to come alongside Campbell.
Martin was sweating heavily from his exertions, and his legs felt like blocks of stone each time he took a step. His arm was throbbing again, but he was concentrating so hard on putting one foot in front of the other that he failed to notice the steady drip of blood which ran from his wound.
Campbell was beyond noticing anything. He had a blissful smile on his face, and he was singing, his deep bass in counterpoint to Lennan’s higher tones. His eyes stared straight ahead, never looking at his feet, but he still managed to avoid all the boulders, holes and roots that Martin’s feet seemed determined to find.
Martin noticed that they were once more descending into thick forest. He looked over the treetops but could see no path, no sign of their direction, only more trees stretching as far as he could see. The forest closed over them, and this time Martin did not feel welcome.
His ankle had begun to pain him, and once more he found he was lagging behind his companions. He wasn’t too worried, not yet—they seemed to be following a path of sorts, a trodden-down run, either made by the woodsmen themselves or deer. He tried to keep up the pace, to keep them in sight, but soon the trees closed in and the light got dimmer, then dimmer still, until he was following only the sound of the twin voices, still singing.
He had to rest. His ankle now hurt every time he put weight on it, and the wound on his arm throbbed and ached with every step. He was hot, and the humid air here deep under the trees seemed too heavy to draw into his lungs. He found an old rotted tree stump and sat down.
“Just for a minute. Just to catch breath,” he promised himself. But by now even the sound of singing had faded in the distance, and Martin suddenly felt alone in the too quiet forest.
With the weight off it his ankle didn’t seem too bad, but it was with dismay that he finally noticed that blood had been pouring freely from his wound. The sodden bandage was almost hanging off, and the left hand side of his tunic was matted and stiff where the flow had soaked in.
He stood, and found his head spinning—so much so that he sat down again, hard, to avoid falling. He sat for a long minute, waiting for the pounding at his temple to dull from an ache to a throb.
Slowly he bandaged his arm up again, using the last available piece of his shirt, and was just about to try standing again when there was the faintest of rustles from the undergrowth to his right. He turned his head that way and, for the second time that day, found himself looking into a pair of green eyes.
These ones were not human. They belonged to a wolf, a huge grey male that was beginning to get its winter coat—shaggy and pale around the shoulders, darker grey along the flanks. Its lips pulled away from its teeth, showing milky-white canines and a blood-red tongue.
The eyes continued to hold Martin in their stare as he stood, slowly, and began to back away, trying to release his sword from its scabbard.
As he backed off, the wolf moved towards him, pacing his movements, his eyes never leaving his. Martin’s brain was working frantically, trying to remember all the lore he knew about the creatures.
He had never seen one before. He had heard them enough—all the men of the watch had, but south of the wall they had been eradicated more than a century ago. All he really knew was that they were bigger and stronger than the dogs the huntsmen of Milecastle kept, and that they were still used as objects of fear and terror in children’s tales. He backed off further, careful to make no sudden movements.
He realised he was still holding the sodden bandage he had taken from his arm and tossed it in the wolf’s direction, all the while backing away ever faster up the path.
To try and run would be futile. He knew that the creature would be able to outpace him, even if he was fit. His only hope was to keep his eye on it and hope it had a fear of an armed man. The thought struck him that here, north of the wall, it might never have encountered a man, armed or otherwise. Martin began to tremble.
The wolf lowered its head to the sodden bandage and sniffed it, then, almost derisively, pushed it aside with its nose and stared at Martin once more. It began to walk forward, slowly, still pacing him as he walked backwards up the path.
He was close enough to smell it, a heavy musky odour, nothing like that of his father’s fox terriers. Its flanks moved with each breath, showing rippling bands of muscle, and thick drools of saliva hung from its jaws.
Martin prayed that his companions had already noticed his absence, would already be on their way back down the trail, but he didn’t hold out too much hope—he well remembered the blankness of Campbell’s stare.
He finally managed to get his sword out of its sheath, and waved it in front of the beast, hoping that it might retreat at the sight of cold steel, but it kept coming, following him remorselessly.
Summoning up what little bravery he felt, he took a step forward. The wolf stood its ground, the green eyes daring him to come closer.
Martin’s legs were trembling, threatening to collapse beneath him. He had never killed, or attempted to kill, anything larger than a coney—that was more Sean’s line. His friend would probably have dispatched the creature by now and be wearing its hide as a coat. That thought gave him a spurt of courage and he took another step forward, raising the sword before hi
m.
The wolf crouched down on its haunches, preparing to spring, and, that moment, from far off to his left—but not far enough—came the long piercing howl of another beast, followed by an answering cry to his right. The wolf drew its lips back again to show its teeth.
Martin realised he had very little time—he had no chance against a pack. He stepped forward, swinging his sword down towards the wolf’s head. The beast sprang at the same moment, and the sword caught it a glancing blow on the shoulder, not even slowing its attack.
Instinctively he threw out his left arm across his throat, just as the wolf’s jaws clamped shut. Long teeth raked his arm, opening further the already bleeding wound, and the wolf went mad in a frenzy at the taste of blood.
Martin’s sword was useless at this close range. He was unable to get enough room to swing it, and could not find sufficient angle to bring the point to bear. He hit the beast in the head, again and again with the hilt, but that only enraged it further as it chewed deeper into the flesh of his arm.
The weight of the creature dragged at him, threatening at any moment to pull him off his feet as they staggered together in a grotesque parody of a dance. They lurched left and right, and the pain in his arm flared and burned, threatening to overwhelm him.
He only had one option open, and it would leave him vulnerable to attack, but he had to try, his mind full of the thought of the rest of the pack.
He swung his left arm around, pivoting with his body, lifting the wolf off the ground, screaming aloud at the sudden, white-hot pain that flared in the wound. At the same time he lifted the wolf’s head as high as he could, thrusting it away from him while bringing his sword around in an arc. He hit the beast in the side, biting deep, but his sword met bone and jarred, knocking it out of his hand.
The creature made a whimpering noise in its throat but hung on tightly to his arm and, as his swing turned him fully around, their combined weight finally sent them to the ground where Martin rolled and kicked and gouged—as wild as the animal that was attacking him.
The wolf was in a frenzy. It drew up its rear legs and began to gouge at Martin’s jerkin with its claws. The leather was holding, but Martin knew it was only a matter of time before his belly was opened.
His strength was going fast. His arm was most probably by now a bloody ruin, and he could feel the fangs grating against his bones. It could only be a matter of seconds before the other pack members arrived. He doubled his efforts, one last push to try to get the animal away from him. And then he felt something move under his shirt. He managed to free his right arm just long enough to remove a long forgotten clove of garlic and, crushing it in the same motion, thrust it into the muzzle of the wolf.
The reaction was even more extreme than he could have hoped for. The creature sprang away from him and cowered on the ground, rubbing violently at its eyes and nostrils with its paws and whimpering pathetically.
Martin was barely able to stand, but he could see his sword, just out of reach. He bent, picked it up and swung all in one motion. The follow-through made him stagger and almost fall, but the stroke cleaved the wolf’s head in two.
And then he did fall, in a dead faint, over the wolf’s still twitching body. The last thing he heard was the howls of the pack as they approached.
Chapter 5
28th OCTOBER, 1745 SOUTH EAST OF CARLISLE
Sean woke with a start.
“Martin?” he said beneath his breath, but there was no reply, although he was convinced his friend had called out to him.
He stood, stiff from a night spent lying on the ground, and began to stretch. The bones in his back creaked and snapped, and a chill seemed to have settled there that he knew from experience would take half a day to go away. The girl was still lying on the ground below him, eyes still staring vacantly. Sean had to look away—once he stared back into those eyes he could find himself lost there, lost for a long time.
He looked away, and that was when he saw the movement in the grass in front of him. He reached for his dagger, aware that he had left his musket strapped to a saddlebag which was itself strapped to the pony.
He wasn’t given time to get the dagger out of the sheath—a figure stood up in the grass and Sean was looking down the muzzle of a musket, just as there was a flash of red and he was hit high on the chest near his collar bone, knocking him over and down on top of the girl.
The blow hit him hard, as if someone had taken a hammer to his whole left-hand side, but he was still conscious. The pain, although severe, was not enough to stop him moving. As he heard more brigands arriving, heavy footsteps tramping through the grass, he slipped his dagger from its sheath and held it fast in his right hand, hidden beneath his body.
“I got him. I got him. Shot him right in the head. Did you see, Father? Did you see?”
It sounded like a child, but Sean did not want to lift his head to find out—he wanted them to think he was down for good. He tried to still his breathing and relax his body, but the pain from his wound was making him tremble and shake all over.
“Aye, you got him all right, but I don’t think it was in the head,” a deeper voice said. “Just don’t get too close just yet—I’m not sure that gun of yours could bring down a dog, never mind a full grown man.”
And in truth, Sean had been wondering the same thing. Oh, it hurt all right—it hurt like hell— but there was no grating of smashed bone, and seemingly no huge exit wound. If he had been hit at that range by a normal musket he would not now be breathing, never mind thinking of a counter attack. He hoped that the brigands would be too keen for plunder to notice how little damage the shot had done.
“Father,” came another voice from slightly further off. “Can I have the woman first this time? Can I?”
So, this wasn’t a one off. His attackers were seasoned brigands. That was going to make his job harder—opportune thieves were more likely to be frightened off by a spirited opponent, but seasoned campaigners, like these seemed to be, would be ready for anything. Beneath his body his hand started to tremble as he heard the footsteps in the grass getting ever closer.
“Come, Father,” the voice said, and there was a thin whining quality to it that Sean recognised with embarrassment from his own youth. “You had the last two, and they died before we could get to them. You said. You did. You—”
There was a sound as of flesh on flesh, and Sean realised that the father had hit one of the boys, and hard by the sound of it. He might not get a better chance.
He rolled off the girl beneath him and got to his feet as quickly as he was able. The world swam about him, and a white-hot pain lanced through his whole upper body, but he found he was staring at the exposed back of the adult attacker. He stabbed, hard, aiming for the kidneys. The knife went in its full length before Sean pulled it out again. If Martin had been there to see the look of triumph, he would have recognised little of his friend. The man stood up straight, hands clutching at his wound, back arched, head up, and Sean caught him in a neck lock with his left arm, a move that caused the world to go black around Sean but left him enough consciousness to pull the knife across the man’s throat, hard, bringing a hot gush of blood over both of them. The man’s body went limp in his arms and he let it fall to the ground at his feet. There was a wet, gurgling sound, but it only lasted a few seconds, then there was only a corpse left behind.
He had just dropped the man when something jumped on his back, legs wrapped around his waist, arms pummeling around his head, a screaming devil that he was unable to dislodge. He tried to get his dagger around, making short stabbing motions over his head that finally brought a sharp squeal of pain, but this was rewarded by two small thumbs finally finding his eyes and beginning to press, hard. Sean threw himself backwards, his whole body weight coming down on his attacker. He heard bones snap, but didn’t have time to wonder if they were his own, for the third attacker was on him, a thin knife darting and flickering. Sean rolled off the still body of the second assailant and faced the new
threat.
“You’ve killed my father!” the figure in front of him said, and Sean realised with a jolt that it was only a boy, a youth no more than twelve years old who barely came up to Sean’s chest. His clothes were ragged and torn, and he looked like he had not eaten for a week—no, make that several weeks. His hair hung forward across his face in lank ropy strands, and it was caked with such mud that it was impossible to tell its colour. Open sores ran across the boy’s cheeks, red and weeping, and there was a wheezing throatiness in his voice that spoke of the wasted lungs inside.
“Put down your weapon,” Sean said. “I wish you no harm.”
The boy laughed.
“That’s fuckin’ rich. Look what you’ve done to my father, you’ve slit his bloody throat— where’s the harm in that?” he said, gesticulating with the knife at the bloody figure on the ground. And then the boy noticed the other figure, lying still beside his father.
“Tom?” he said, and now there was a sob in his voice. “Wake up Tom—we’ve got to kill us this bastard.”
He never took his eyes off Sean as he moved round to check on the smaller figure. As soon as Sean saw him raise the head and saw the way it flopped back down, he knew that Tom would not be waking up anytime soon—the boy’s neck was broken. He felt a sudden burst of sorrow, and rage at a father who could lead his sons to death, but he fought off all emotion—he had an armed opponent to face, and his training told him that calm was required here, not hot blood.
The remaining brigand howled, a noise unique in Sean’s experience, the pain and sorrow in it almost too much to bear.
“Look. Take your dead and leave. There has been enough blood shed here.” Sean said, dismayed to hear the tremor that pain and fatigue had brought to his voice, “I bear you no more malice.”
“Oh, you bear me no malice? Is that it? You kill my father, and my ten-year-old brother. Aye, that’s right, ten years old. And I get to walk away?”
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