“How close were they when you looked?” Hwyn whispered.
“Just barely in sight,” I said. “But how much lead that gives us, it's hard to judge. What took us hours to cross on foot may be an easy canter on horseback.”
“And me with my little legs,” Hwyn grimaced, “slower than most afoot.” In truth, she scrambled quickly over roots and rocks, but her speed was hard won. I had to agree with her unspoken fear that our pursuers would overtake us before long.
“We'll have to find a way to make them lose our trail,” I said. “If only it would rain!” But the sun glared down on the dusty ground, where our footprints were all too plain.
“We could part ways—you, alone, might have a chance with the Eye of Night—”
“No,” I said. “What use would that be? There are four of them, enough to pursue all of us separately, even if the Eye of Night could run off on its own legs.”
“Oh. Of course. Good,” said Hwyn, negotiating a great tree fallen across our path. “I didn't want to, anyway.”
I hoisted her over, then gave a hand to Trenara, who stood delicately waiting her turn. “Maybe we could turn our smallness to advantage,” I said, “find a pass too narrow for their horses—or for the men, even.” Though tolerably tall, I was narrow-shouldered, and months on the road had left me looking like a cassock hanging on a few sticks. I had little doubt of being smaller than Lady Goldifer's soldiers, and I was the largest of our little band.
“That would have to be in rockier ground,” Hwyn said. “We'd best head for the hills.”
I nodded wearily. I had not slept, and as the day advanced, it grew harder to keep hastening on, even in the soft valley, in the shade of the aspen trees. I had no stomach for the hills that loomed to our north. Nonetheless, I noted where the moss grew on the trees and angled our path due north.
The land rose and grew rockier; the trees thinned. We walked on rocks when we could to leave as little trace as we might. Slender birch and pine gave little cover, and I hurried on, feeling naked. At the crest of a rise, I motioned the others to lie low as I scouted the area. I looked back to see a rider emerge from the woods, armed with both sword and bow.
“Holy Saints!” I said. “They're closing on us.”
“Gods on the Wheel,” Hwyn murmured, “the quest is lost.”
“Not quite,” I said, though my heart echoed her despair. I pointed ahead, to the north. “That ravine—the horses could never go there.”
“Can we?” gasped Hwyn.
“We'll have to—so we will,” I said.
The hill dropped off steeply into a gully cut by a little stream. Clinging to earth and the roots of gnarled saplings half unearthed in the stream bank, I dropped myself into the gully, then reached up to help Hwyn down after me. Trenara slipped over the edge with a dancer's grace, landing easily as a cat. We stood in a shallow rill that scarcely wet our feet, but that a heavy rain must swell as high as our shoulders, to judge by the water-weeds on the banks. From the walls of earth on each side, roots trailed toward the water like reaching fingers.
“Upstream, we may find an easier pass to the north bank,” I said, hoping I was right. “Meanwhile, if we stay in the stream, it may confuse our tracks.” For all that matters, I thought silently; soon enough they might be able to see us in the flesh. We slogged along the muddy streambed, not daring to look behind us or at anything but our feet. There were fish passing below us, and a joint-legged creature like a dwarfed lobster; a pity I could not stop to catch some, I thought, for if we weren't caught, we'd need food before long.
The stream snaked through the hills so that I could not see the road behind us, but sometimes I thought I heard echoes of voices, and I feared we had not shaken our pursuers.
At last we came to the falls from which the brook issued: a nearly vertical cliff looming high above us, with a thin stream of water spilling over the rocks, dead ahead of us. To our right, the bank we had come from bowed gently toward the water.
“We could climb that easily, but—” Hwyn said.
“We can't go back the way we came,” I finished for her. “Maybe we can get a handhold on the other side.” The far bank looked daunting, but was still our best hope of escape. I tested it for handholds, but the mud slipped between my fingers, leaving me nothing. Grasping for the vines that cascaded down the precipice of the falls, I was startled to see my hand sink deep behind them into a crevice I had not noticed. “It's a cave!”
“What?” Hwyn said.
I drew aside the vines. “Just what we were looking for: a crevice big enough to hide us, but not much wider. Come on!”
Hwyn, needing no second urging, plunged through the falling water to slide under the falls and into the crevice. Trenara followed like a shadow, and I came after them, ducking through the entrance. “How far back does it go?” I said, my soft voice echoing strangely on the stone.
“I'm not sure,” Hwyn whispered. “It seems to widen a bit as I go in. Let's rest and adjust to the darkness, then feel our way forward. If there's a second outlet on the far bank, that would be perfect.”
We settled ourselves on the damp cavern floor where the passage widened, out of view of the opening but within earshot of any who might follow us to the falls. Sitting with my back to the stone wall, I closed my eyes and was nearly asleep when Hwyn passed me the water-skin she had been carrying. I had been too tired to think of thirst, but I drank gratefully enough. Trenara, prompted by Hwyn's gesture, produced some candied fruits she must have carried from Kreyn Hall and shared them with us. We ate in silence, listening for sounds of pursuit.
Hwyn leaned close to me to whisper, “You might as well sleep now. If the guards pass by, I will hear them and mark which way their footsteps go so we can take the opposite path.”
“And if they find us?” I whispered back.
She sighed. “If they find us, there's little we can do, unarmed and weary and small. You've done all you can to preserve us, Jereth; for the rest, we can only pray the gods favor fools. They sometimes do. Sleep, Jereth.”
So I slept.
I awoke to a commotion of voices that mixed strangely with my dream. “What?” I groaned through the thickness of long-denied sleep.
Some way down the passage, a loud, deep voice was blustering about spies and informers. Then Hwyn's voice hissed, “Let go of her! Can't you see she's simple?” At that moment I struggled to my feet to confront the intruders at the entrance—only to realize, slowly and groggily, that the voices came from deeper within the cave, not outside. I shifted my weight suddenly to change directions and found myself skidding toward them on the slimy floor of the cave, catching myself on my hands. I peered up through the gloom, and could barely make out a burly man trying to shake an answer out of poor unresisting Trenara: “Who told you we were here? Who sent you to spy on us?”
Hwyn was jumping up and down beside him, waving her knife, which might as well have been a wisp of straw for all he noticed her. “Let her go, I tell you! Don't be ridiculous. No one sent us. Who would send us?”
No sooner did I open my mouth to add my voice to her pleas, another man's voice came from beyond them: “What's this? Enough now, Wilgar! We fight men, not girls.”
Wilgar, hearing my first groggy utterings and his comrade's admonitions, turned instead on me: “What are you doing in our cave?”
“Sleeping, until just now,” I said.
“We didn't know it was yours,” said Hwyn, “or anyone's. We meant no harm.”
“They were spying out our stronghold,” Wilgar said stubbornly to the second stranger.
“We were resting,” I said. “It was the only shelter we could find.”
“I found this woman creeping down the passage toward us,” said Wilgar.
“Trenara is simple,” Hwyn said. “She tends to wander off. Sir,” she said to the second stranger, “you seem a reasonable man. You can see well that no one would send us to spy out anything: Trenara is moontouched, I am nearly blind.”
&n
bsp; “What of him?” said Wilgar, pointing in my direction with his sword.
“Jereth is a scholar from the Tarvon Monastery in Annelon,” said Hwyn. “He is no one's spy.”
“Priests,” spat the second stranger. “I've had my fill of Goldifer's holy hypocrites—”
I could not let that sit. “I am none of Goldifer's carping sycophants—”
“Never mind whose you are,” the man interrupted. “I need no war with tattered vagrants. Wilgar, you can see how harmless they are by how easily you've shaken them. But this place is mine and my men's, and not a way-house for travelers. Leave the way you came, and no harm will—”
“Listen!” Hwyn hissed. In the hush that followed, we all heard it: men's voices echoing in the ravine, not quite close but growing closer.
“Who have you brought here?” said the second man.
“Hush! That's Lady Goldifer's men,” Hwyn said.
“You brought them against us?”
“No, no! They're hunting us,” she said.
Wilgar's voice, too, dropped to a whisper. “Hunting you? Why, what did you make off with?”
But Hwyn ignored him, speaking only to the other: “If we leave now, they will see where we have been and know your hiding place. And if you slay us, they will hear us cry out. We have a common enemy; why should we fight each other?”
As the man hesitated, I peered desperately through the gloom to read his face, but in the darkness of the cavern, I was blind as Hwyn. After some moments I heard, “Very well. An enemy of Goldifer's is a friend of mine. Wilgar, fetch Lok and my bow, quickly.” Wilgar followed his orders swiftly, as if accustomed to obeying him. The captain—for so I could not help but think of the second man—turned again to me with the same air of practiced command. “How many guards did you say were chasing you? With what arms?”
“Four riders,” I said. “I saw spears at their sides, and one, at least, had a bow.”
“We'll avoid making a target for him,” the outlaw said. “Were they in mail?”
“I saw breastplates and helmets.”
“We outnumber them, then, by strict count,” said the outlaw, “but if you three were fighters, Wilgar would not have had all three of you at his mercy so painlessly.” Wilgar returned with a third man, and the leader accepted his bow with thanks before issuing his orders for the battle: “Lok, come with me to the fore, just short of the mouth—if they have not marked us, we will let them pass, but if they try to enter, we will shoot. You vagabonds, if you have arms, draw them and stand by Wilgar. If not, stay out of our way.”
I drew my knife, for all the good that might do; it would scarcely cut hair anymore. Hwyn shepherded Trenara backward into the cave with our parcels and returned to stand beside me, knife in hand. And thus, in silence, we waited as the guards' footsteps drew closer.
“Where can they have gone?” one said, “the bank's too steep.”
“Look: a cave behind the vines,” said another, and the passage lightened for an instant as he parted them. His cry of surprise was cut short by an arrow from the leader's bow. Moments later, I knew by Lok's cry of triumph that his shot also hit its mark. As they nocked second arrows, another guard entered. I heard our protector gasp, “Kelman?” and the intruder, “Warfast?” equally shocked. “Deserter, you were not the quarry we sought, but by the gods—”
They grappled till Wilgar rushed forward to join the fray. Their struggle blocked the passageway so that all I could see was a dark beast with more heads and feet than a man, thrashing about the stone corridor. At last, when the one dark shape split, half falling to earth, I heard Wilgar murmur, “Ah, Kelman, you should have joined us years ago.”
“Our own company!” Lok exclaimed, staring down at the body.
“Hush, friend,” Warfast said. “Vagabond, you said four guards.”
“And four they were,” I said. “One must have stayed to guard the horses on the far bank.”
“Ill luck,” said Warfast. “He can ride back home and give us all away—unless we stop him. Lok and Wilgar, take the upper passage and scout out the land from above. You, priest, take arms from the dead and come with me through the falls. The women can stay here; you, little one, keep the fool out of trouble.”
Afraid of disgracing myself if I so much as hesitated, I took the sword of the man Wilgar had killed—for all the good I might do with it, having as much notion what to do with one as with the oracle-bones of St. Argode—and rushed out the mouth of the cavern. No sooner had I passed through the curtain of vines and water than I felt something sting the skin above my left brow. I dropped to the streambed, rolled, and came right-side-up again to see the fourth guard training a second arrow down at me from the southern bank.
Warfast, crouched low under the bank, used a crevice as an archer's slot and took aim at the guard in turn. “Shoot again and, gods help me, I'll shoot you.”
The guard called down to him. “What are these three vagabonds to you, Warfast? They are not even people of Kreyn. What have they to do with you and your precious ancient rights and Laws of Antir?”
“What are they to you, Heregar?” the outlaw said.
“They are enemies of the Guardian of Day,” said Heregar.
“Ah, yes. They are that to me, too,” said Warfast without moving his bow. “What threat can these pitiful scarecrows have posed to Her Resplendence?”
“They have defaced the holy chapel in Kreyn Hall,” said Heregar.
“When did you begin caring for such things?” said Warfast. “When did you fall so far as to be hunting threadbare beggars up and down the hills—and for Lady Goldifer's sake? You should have joined us from the first. You don't like the new ways any more than I do, do you?”
“When did you start concerning yourself with what I like or loathe? You never asked my counsel when you deserted, and now that you've killed three of my comrades—your comrades that once were—it is late to begin,” said Heregar. He did not shoot, nor did Warfast, but neither one lowered his bow or the deadly arrow nocked to the string. My head spun with pain and I felt hot blood running down the left side of my face, but I strained every nerve to stay awake and aware. Not quite trusting the success of Warfast's parley, I began quietly groping in the mud of the streambed for a stone to throw.
“I'm sorry for your men, Heregar, but they left us no choice. They'd have killed us all; you know they would. I don't want to kill you. But I will defend myself and my comrades.”
“I know, and I honor that,” said Heregar, “but this man and the two women are none of yours. Let us call a truce. Though we are foes now, Warfast, I did not come hunting you. Give up the three wanderers and I may choose to forget I have seen you.”
“I dislike giving up helpless creatures to slaughter,” Warfast said. “I never thought it was your way, either, old comrade. Let me propose a better settlement: a contest of strength, unarmed, you against me. You always fancied yourself a great wrestler. Best of three throws has his way. If you win, I'll go back with you as your prize. If I win, you'll join us, as you should have done from the first—or at least sit with us in peace long enough to let me argue with you why you should be one of us.”
“Very well,” said Heregar. “It's a fool's bargain on your part; you know you could never best me. But lower your weapon and I'll lower mine.”
Slowly, slowly, the bows lowered. Standing aslant of them, I watched incredulous through the haze of pain in my head. Could it all, indeed, end peacefully?
A quick move from Heregar caught my eye, then. I cast my stone at the first quick darting move, before the flash of the knife caught the sun, but dizzy with my wound, I threw far wide of the mark. Still, the stone caught his eye; the guardsman turned to me and wavered an instant where to throw the knife. That instant was enough; his knife planted itself harmlessly in the streambed as Lok's arrow flew from the heights straight into Heregar's side. As the guard fell bleeding from the bank, Warfast caught him, murmuring, “I'm sorry, Heregar, truly I am. You should have been
one of us.”
Lok leapt down to help Warfast heave the guard's body into the cave, then disappeared somewhere. It all began to blur before my eyes; I crouched with my head in my hands, blood welling up between my fingers.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Are you still living? Come inside with us,” said Warfast, and half pulled me through the crevice in the rock. “We'll find a rag to bind your head. Priest or no, you're a brave enough fool—leaping straight out into the face of your foe, without even looking for cover! But I'd advise you to stay out of trouble till you learn to guard your head.”
“I'll try,” I said through gritted teeth.
“That was a well-timed throw,” he said.
“But an ill-aimed one,” I said ruefully.
“That I won't deny,” said the outlaw. “But without it, Heregar would not have missed, and I would be dead.”
“You knew that man,” I said—obvious enough, I suppose, but it seemed to need acknowledging.
“Yes,” he said heavily. “All of us knew all of them.”
We followed the upward slope of the stone floor to the broadest part of the cavern, a chamber lit by a single torch, its uneven floor now mostly taken up by the bodies of the dead laid side by side, hands clasped on their chests. At their heads, Wilgar sat in silent gloom like a chief mourner, with Lok a little distance away. Behind them, the torch barely illuminated a heap of coffers and sacks. This, then, was a storeroom for the outlaws, a hiding place for booty and weapons. Perhaps we had interrupted them in stowing their latest take. Strange luck, caught between enemies, to be alive at all. Unutterably weary, I sank down at the dead men's feet.
Hwyn, who had crouched in a corner with Trenara, hastened toward me. “You're hurt!” she cried, and insisted on washing my wound with water from the water-skins and bandaging my head with the rag Warfast found for me. Before I quite knew how it had happened, whether it was my doing or hers, I found I had laid my head in her lap; as she made no objection, I stayed thus, dizzy and weak and glad for the comfort in the dark. Against the dank air of the cave, now almost a grave, the homespun wool under my cheek smelled of meadow grass and life.
The Eye of Night Page 13
