Legacy: Arthurian Saga (23 page)

With a hand from him I got cautiously
to my feet. When I tried to put weight on the left foot, it still
hurt me quite a lot, but I knew from the feel of it that it was
nothing but a wrench and would soon be better. Cadal threw me up on
the mare's back, unhooked the reins from the bough, and gave them
into my hand. Then he clicked his tongue to Aster, and led him
slowly ahead.

"What are you doing?" I asked. "Surely
she can carry us both?"

"There's no point. You can see how
lame he is. He'll have to be led. If I take him in front he can
make the pace. The mare'll stay behind him. -- You all right up
there?"

"Perfectly, thanks."

The grey pony was indeed dead lame. He
walked slowly beside Cadal with drooping head, moving in front of
me like a smoke-beacon in the dusk. The mare followed quietly. It
would take, I reckoned, a couple of hours to get home, even without
what lay ahead.

Here again was a kind of solitude, no
sounds but the soft plodding of the horses' hoofs, the creak of
leather, the occasional small noises of the forest round us. Cadal
was invisible, nothing but a shadow beside the moving wraith of
mist that was Aster. Perched on the big mare at a comfortable walk,
I was alone with the darkness and the trees.

We had gone perhaps half a mile when,
burning through the boughs of a huge oak to my right, I saw a white
star, steady.

"Cadal, isn't there a shorter way
back? I remember a track off to the south just near that oak tree.
The mist's cleared right away, and the stars are out. Look, there's
the Bear."

His voice came back from the darkness.
"We'd best head for the road." But in a pace or two he stopped the
pony at the mouth of the south-going track, and waited for the mare
to come up.

"It looks good enough, doesn't it?" I
asked. "It's straight, and a lot drier than this track we're on.
All we have to do is keep the Bear at our backs, and in a mile or
two we should be able to smell the sea. Don't you know your way
about the forest?"

"Well enough. It's true this would be
shorter, if we can see our way. Well..." I heard him loosen his
short stabbing sword in its sheath. "Not that there's likely to be
trouble, but best be prepared, so keep your voice down, will you,
and have your knife ready. And let me tell you one thing, young
Merlin, if anything should happen, then you'll ride for home and
leave me to it. Got that?"

"Ambrosius' orders again?"

"You could say so."

"All right, if it makes you feel
better, I promise I'll desert you at full speed. But there'll be no
trouble."

He grunted. "Anyone would think you
knew."

I laughed. "Oh, I do."

The starlight caught, momentarily, the
whites of his eyes, and the quick gesture of his hand. Then he
turned without speaking and led Aster into the track going
south.

8

Though the path was wide enough to
take two riders abreast, we went in single file, the brown mare
adapting her long, comfortable stride to the pony's shorter and
very lame step.

It was colder now; I pulled the folds
of my cloak round me for warmth. The mist had vanished completely
with the drop in temperature, the sky was clear, with some stars,
and it was easier to see the way. Here the trees were huge; oaks
mainly, the big ones massive and widely spaced, while between them
saplings grew thickly and unchecked, and ivy twined with the bare
strings of honeysuckle and thickets of thorn. Here and there pines
showed fiercely black against the sky. I could hear the occasional
patter as damp gathered and dripped from the leaves, and once the
scream of some small creature dying under the claws of an owl. The
air was full of the smell of damp and fungus and dead leaves and
rich, rotting things.

Cadal trudged on in silence, his eyes
on the path, which in places was tricky with fallen or rotting
branches. Behind him, balancing on the big mare's saddle, I was
still possessed by the same light, excited power. There was
something ahead of us, to which I was being led, I knew, as surely
as the merlin had led me to the cavern at King's Fort.

Rufa's ears pricked, and I heard her
soft nostrils flicker. Her head went up. Cadal had not heard, and
the grey pony, preoccupied with his lameness, gave no sign that he
could smell the other horses. But even before Rufa, I had known
they were there.

The path twisted and began to go
gently downhill. To either side of us the trees had retreated a
little, so that their branches no longer met overhead, and it was
lighter. Now to each side of the path were banks, with outcrops of
rock and broken ground where in summer there would be foxgloves and
bracken, but where now only the dead and wiry brambles ran riot.
Our horses' hoofs scraped and rang as they picked their way down
the slope.

Suddenly Rufa, without checking her
stride, threw up her head and let out a long whinny. Cadal, with an
exclamation, stopped dead, and the mare pushed up beside him, head
high, ears pricked towards the forest on our right. Cadal snatched
at her bridle, pulled her head down, and shrouded her nostrils in
the crook of his arm. Aster had lifted his head, too, but he made
no sound.

"Horses," I said softly. "Can't you
smell them?"

I heard Cadal mutter something that
sounded like, "Smell anything, it seems you can, you must have a
nose like a bitch fox," then, hurriedly starting to drag the mare
off the track: "It's too late to go back, they'll have heard this
bloody mare. We'd best pull off into the forest."

I stopped him. "There's no need.
There's no trouble there, I'm certain of it. Let's go
on."

"You talk fine and sure, but how can
you know -- ?"

"I do know. In any case, if they meant
us harm, we'd have known of it by now. They've heard us coming long
since, and they must know it's only two horses and one of them
lame."

But he still hesitated, fingering his
short sword. The prickles of excitement fretted my skin like burrs.
I had seen where the mare's ears were pointing -- at a big grove of
pines, fifty paces ahead, and set back above the right of the path.
They were black even against the blackness of the forest. Suddenly
I could wait no longer. I said impatiently: "I'm going, anyway. You
can follow or not, as you choose." I jerked Rufa's head up and away
from him, and kicked her with my good foot, so that she plunged
forward past the grey pony. I headed her straight up the bank and
into the grove.

The horses were there. Through a gap
in the thick roof of pines a cluster of stars burned, showing them
clearly. There were only two, standing motionless, with their heads
held low and their nostrils muffled against the breast of a slight
figure heavily cloaked and hooded against the cold. The hood fell
back as he turned to stare; the oval of his face showed pale in the
gloom. There was no one else there.

For one startled moment I thought that
the black horse nearest me was Ambrosius' big stallion, then as it
pulled its head free of the cloak I saw the white blaze on its
forehead, and knew in a flash like a falling star why I had been
led here.

Behind me, with a scramble and a
startled curse, Cadal pulled Aster into the grove. I saw the grey
gleam of his sword as he lifted it. "Who's that?"

I said quietly, without turning: "Put
it up. It's Belasius. At least that's his horse. Another with it,
and the boy. That's all."

He advanced. His sword was already
sliding back into its housing. "By the dog, you're right, I'd know
that white flash anywhere. Hey, Ulfin, well met. Where's your
master?"

Even at six paces I heard the boy gasp
with relief. "Oh, it's you, Cadal...My lord Merlin...I heard your
horse whinny -- I wondered -- Nobody comes this way."

I moved the mare forward, and looked
down. His face was a pale blur upturned, the eyes enormous. He was
still afraid.

"It seems Belasius does," I said.
"Why?"

"He -- he tells me nothing, my
lord."

Cadal said roundly: "Don't give us
that. There's not much you don't know about him, you're never more
than arm's length from him, day or night, everybody knows that.
Come on, out with it. Where's your master?"

"I -- he won't be long."

"We can't wait for him," said Cadal.
"We want a horse. Go and tell him we're here, and my lord Merlin's
hurt, and the pony's lame, and we've got to get home
quickly...Well? Why don't you go? For pity's sake, what's the
matter with you?"

"I can't. He said I must not. He
forbade me to move from here."

"As he forbade us to leave the road,
in case we came this way?" I said. "Yes. Now, your name's Ulfin, is
it? Well, Ulfin, never mind the horse. I want to know where
Belasius is."

"I -- I don't know."

"You must at least have seen which way
he went?"

"N-no, my lord."

"By the dog," exclaimed Cadal, "who
cares where he is, as long as we get the horse? Look, boy, have
some sense, we can't wait half the night for your master, we've got
to get home. If you tell him the horse was for my lord Merlin, he
won't eat you alive this time, will he?" Then, as the boy stammered
something: "Well, all right, do you want us to go and find him
ourselves, and get his leave?"

The boy moved then, jamming a fist to
his mouth, like an idiot.

"No...You must not...You must
not...!"

"By Mithras," I said -- it was an oath
I cultivated at the time, having heard Ambrosius use it -- "what's
he doing? Murder?"

On the word, the shriek
came.

Not a shriek of pain, but worse, the
sound of a man in mortal fear. I thought the cry contained a word,
as if the terror was shaped, but it was no word that I knew. The
scream rose unbearably, as if it would burst him, then was chopped
off sharply as if by a blow on the throat. In the dreadful silence
that followed a faint echo came, in a breath from the boy
Ulfin.

Cadal stood frozen as he had turned,
one hand holding his sword, the other grasping Aster's bridle. I
wrenched the mare's head round and lashed the reins down on her
neck. She bounded forward, almost unseating me. She plunged under
the pines towards the track. I lay flat on her neck as the boughs
swept past us, hooked a hand in her neck-strap, and hung on like a
tick. Neither Cadal nor the boy had moved or made a
sound.

The mare went down the bank with a
scramble and a slither, and as we reached the path I saw, so
inevitably that I felt no surprise -- nor indeed any thought at all
-- another path, narrow and overgrown, leading out of the track to
the other side, just opposite the grove of pines.

I hauled on the mare's mouth, and when
she jibbed, trying to head down the broader track for home, I
lashed her again. She laid her ears flat and went into the path at
a gallop.

The path twisted and turned, so that
almost straight away our pace slackened, slowed, became a heavy
canter. This was the direction from which that dreadful sound had
come. It was apparent even in the starlight that someone had
recently been this way. The path was so little used that winter
grass and heather had almost choked it, but someone -- something --
had been thrusting a way through. The going was so soft that even a
cantering horse made very little noise.

I strained my ears for the sound of
Cadal coming after me, but could not hear him. It occurred to me
only then that both he and the boy must have thought that,
terrified by the shriek, I had run, as Cadal had bidden me, for
home.

I pulled Rufa to a walk. She slowed
willingly, her head up, her ears pricked forward. She was
quivering; she, too, had heard the shriek. A gap in the forest
showed three hundred paces ahead, so light that I thought it must
mark the end of the trees. I watched carefully as we approached it,
but nothing moved against the sky beyond.

Then, so softly that I had to strain
my ears to make sure it was neither wind nor sea, I heard
chanting.

My skin prickled. I knew now where
Belasius was, and why Ulfin had been so afraid. And I knew why
Belasius had said: "Keep to the road, and be home before
dark."

I sat up straight. The heat ran over
my skin in little waves, like cat paws of wind over water. My
breathing came shallow and fast. For a moment I wondered if this
was fear, then I knew it was still excitement. I halted the mare
and slid silently from the saddle. I led her three paces into the
forest, knotted the rein over a bough and left her there. My foot
hurt when I put it to the ground, but the twinges were bearable,
and I soon forgot them as I limped quickly towards the singing and
the lighter sky.

9

I had been right in thinking that the
sea was near. The forest ended in it, a stretch of sea so enclosed
that at first I thought it was a big lake, until I smelled the salt
and saw, on the narrow shingle, the dark slime of seaweeds. The
forest finished abruptly, with a high bank where exposed roots
showed through the clay which the tides had gnawed away year after
year at the land's edge. The narrow strand was mainly of pebbles,
but here and there bars of pale sand showed, and greyish,
glimmering fans spreading fernlike between them, where shallow
water ran seawards. The bay was very quiet, almost as if the frost
of the past weeks had held it icebound, then, a pale line under the
darkness, you could see the gap between the far headlands where the
wide sea whitened. To the right -- the south -- the black forest
climbed to a ridge, while to the north, where the land was gentler,
the big trees gave shelter. A perfect harbor, you would have
thought, till you saw how shallow it was, how at low tide the
shapes of rock and boulder stuck black out of the water, shiny in
the starlight with weed.