Mythago Wood - 1 (29 page)

Before I could reflect upon the wisdom of the act, I had bellowed Christian's
name across the gulf, and the whole column stopped and stared at me as the sound
echoed and reverberated away to nothing. Keeton sucked in his breath, in a
gesture of frustration.

'Now
you've done it,' he whispered.

'I want him to know I'm following,' I retorted, but felt embarrassed at
having lost the element of surprise. 'There's
got
to be a path down,' I
said, and began to move through the undergrowth parallel with the cliff top.

Keeton restrained me for a moment, then pointed across the ravine. Four or
five shapes were slipping back along the steep ledge, dropping swiftly through
the trees.

'Hawks,' Keeton said. 'I made six. Six, I think. Yes, there! Look.'

The small band were heading down the slope, weapons held loosely as they
grabbed for support and steadied themselves for the treacherous slide back to
the river.

This time Keeton followed me, and we raced through the wood at the cliff
edge, wary for loose rock or hidden roots that might have tripped us.

My frustration grew as the minutes passed and the Hawks dropped lower, and
out of sight. They would be at the river within the hour, and could be there
waiting for us. We
had
to be there first.

I was so absorbed with searching for signs of the path which my brother had
used that for a few seconds I failed to notice the quivering black shape ahead
of me.

It rose abruptly and dramatically to its feet, exhaling breath in a powerful
and vibrant gust, a deep hissing sound that deafened as well as assailed with
its stink. Keeton ran into me, then cried out and staggered back.

Keeton vanished into the underbrush and I stepped quietly after him. For a
moment it seemed that the great boar-beast hadn't really seen us, but now it
grew aware of us by sound, and began to chase. It wove between the trees, moving
in that same startling fashion as before, fast and determined. Keeton raced in
one direction and I fled in another. The Urscumug stopped, cocked its head and
listened. Its chest rose and fell, the sharp hair on its body bristling, the
crown-of-thorn branches that it wore rustling as it turned this way and that. In
the subdued light its tusks were high, bright points. It reached out and snapped
the branch from a tree, which it used to smash at the undergrowth, still
listening.

Then it turned and walked in its stooped, swaying manner, back to the ravine.
There it stood, staring across the gorge at Christian's train of horse and
warrior. It flung the branch into the chasm, then again looked back towards me,
and cocked its head.

I swear it seemed to follow my movements as I stealthily crept back to the
place it had been guarding. Perhaps it was ill, or wounded. I almost cried out
with shock when Keeton's hand touched my shoulder. Indicating total silence he
pointed to the top of the narrow pathway that began to lead down the cliff.

Ever watchful, we began to walk down that track. The last I saw of my
father's mythago was its towering black form, swaying slightly as it stared into
the distance, its nostrils quivering, its breathing a quiet, calm, contemplative
sound.

Horse manure, wheel-tracks, and the sign of rope supports on the trunks of
the wind-twisted trees told of Christian's equally perilous passage, hours or
perhaps a day or so before.

We could no longer see the Hawks who were coming to confront us. When we
stopped and listened to the heavy silence we could hear only the chatter of
birds, though once or twice we heard voices from very far away, Christian and
the main band, now nearly on to the plateau of the inner realm.

For over an hour we descended. At last the ledge widened, becoming more of a
natural path, leading down towards the great green swathe of woodland, a carpet
of foliage through which we could see the occasional gleam of the great river,
and above which the grey walls of the gorge were sinister and concealing.

On level ground at last there was a sinister hush, a sense of watching and
being watched. The undergrowth was sparse. The river surged past, a hundred
yards or so away, invisible through the heavy shade of the silent wood.

'They're here already,' Keeton whispered. He was holding his Smith and
Wesson. He crouched behind a heavy stand of gorse and peered towards the river.

I ran to the nearest tree and Keeton followed, overtaking me and approaching
the river. A bird fluttered noisily above us. To our right an animal, perhaps a
small deer, shifted restlessly in a thicket. I could see the long line of its
back and hear the slight snorting of its breathing.

Perhaps the Hawks had not arrived yet after all. Or were they watching us
from the gloom of the far side?

We had to get across the river. Keeton was nervous about attempting that
crossing now. We should wait until dawn, he said. For the long night ahead, one
of us would watch and one would sleep. The Hawks
had
to be here
somewhere, and were simply waiting for the best moment to attack.

I agreed with him. For the first time I was glad that he had brought the
pistol. The gun should at least give us a tactical advantage, a chance to send
them scattering while we completed our crossing.

I had entertained these idle thoughts for no more than ten minutes when they
came at us. I was crouched by the river, half in the lee of an elmwood trunk,
searching the shadows across the water for a sign of movement. Keeton rose to
his feet and cautiously stepped to the water's edge. I heard his gasping cry and
then the
whoosh
of an arrow, which splashed distantly in the river.
Keeton began to run.

They were
already
on our side of the sticklebrook, and they came at us
suddenly and swiftly, running and leaping in a zig-zagging, wild fashion. Two
carried bows, and a second arrow clattered off the tree next to me, its shaft
broken. Following Keeton, I ran as fast as I could. I was thrown forward by a
heavy thump in my back, and knew without looking that my haversack had saved my
life.

Then there was a single shot and a terrible scream. I glanced back and one of
the Hawks was motionless, hands to face, blood gouting from between his fingers.

His compatriots scattered sideways, and this unfortunate warrior collapsed to
knee and belly, quite dead.

Keeton had found a deeper depression in the ground, with a screen of tight
gorse, and a fence of tree root between us and the Hawks. Arrows skimmed above
our heads, one snagging my ankle as it rebounded from a branch. It was a shallow
but incredibly painful cut.

Then Harry Keeton did something very foolish. He stood up and aimed very
deliberately at the most active of the attackers. Simultaneous with the
discharge of the pistol, a sling-stone knocked the weapon from his hand, sending
it skidding yards away across the dry ground. Keeton ducked back into cover,
holding his hand, nursing the bruised and cut finger.

Christian's guardians came at us then, like five hounds from hell, whooping
and howling: lithe, near-nude shapes, protected by the most basic of leather
armour. Only the gleaming hawk masks were of metal - and the short, glinting
blades they held.

Keeton and I ran from these warriors like deer from a fire. We were fleet,
despite our packs and heavy protective clothing. The imagined pain of a knife
drawn across our throats gave us great incentive to find the energy for retreat.

What appalled me most, as I veered from cover to cover, was how unprepared we
had been. For all our talk, for all my feeling of strength, when it came down to
it we were totally vulnerable, not even a .38 calibre pistol serving us well
against the simple skills of trained soldiers. We were children in the woods,
naive kids playing at survival.

If I
had
been called upon to confront Christian, he would have made
mincemeat of me. To go against him with a stone-bladed spear, a Celtic blade,
and a lot of anger would have been scarcely more effective than shouting at him.

The ground dropped away beneath me, and Keeton dragged me down into yet
another 'shell-hole'. I turned and raised my spear, and watched as one of the
Hawks came jumping towards us.

What happened next was quite odd.

The warrior stopped, and in every sinuous, tense movement of his body I could
see that he was suddenly frightened, even though the yellow bird-mask gave
nothing away. He backed away from us, and I became aware of the sudden, chill
wind that blew around us.

The air became dark, all light draining from the riverside as if a sudden
thunderous black cloud had come across the sun. The trees about me began to whip
and strain, branches creaked, leafy twigs trembled and rustled in a shiver of
disturbance. Something misty and wraithlike curled around the leading Hawk. He
screamed and ran back towards his companions.

Dust rose from the ground in great columns. The waters of the river spouted
as if great marine beasts fought there. The trees around us became almost
frantically shaken, shedding branches noisily. The air was freezing cold, and
the ghastly, grinning shapes of elementals darted and flowed through an eerie
mist which hovered, refusing to be dispersed by the wind.

Keeton was terrified. Crystals of ice formed on his eyebrows and the tip of
his nose. He shivered violently, huddling deeper into his motorcycle leathers. I
shivered too, my breath frosting, and eyes smarting with ice. The trees became
white, laced with a fine fall of snow. Strange laughter, and the banshee
shrieking of violent mind-forms, cut this part of the woodland off from all that
was natural.

Through chattering teeth Harry Keeton stammered, 'What the devil is it?'

'A friend,' I said, and reached out reassuringly.

The freya
had come to me after all.

Keeton glanced at me through frosted lids, wiping a hand across his face.
Around us the whole landscape was white with ice and snow. Tall, flowing shapes
ran silently through the air, some coming towards us, peering at us with sharp
faces and narrow eyes full of mischief. Others were simply swirls of size and
sombre shape that caused the air to
thud
and
bang
as they passed,
like some weird implosion.

The Hawks ran screaming. I saw one lifted from his feet and crushed double,
then twisted and crushed further until a sticky exudate dripped from his
suspended corpse . . . a corpse that hovered in the air, held by invisible
hands. The ragged, splintered remains were tossed into the river and vanished
below the crystal surface. Another Hawk was sent squirming and struggling to his
doom on the far side of the water, impaled on a jagged stump of branch. What
happened to the others I
couldn't tell, but the screaming went on for
some minutes, and the poltergeist activity remained as intense as ever.

Eventually there was silence. The air warmed, the sheen of white vanished,
and Keeton and I rubbed our frozen hands vigorously. Several tall, wraithlike
forms approached us, tenuous mist-shapes, vaguely human. They hovered above us,
peering down, hair flowing in eerie slow motion. Their hands trembled, long
tapered fingers pointing, grasping. The glow of their eyes was focused upon us,
gleaming wells of awareness above wide, grinning mouths. Keeton watched these
ghosts, aghast and terrified. One of them reached down and pinched his nose, and
he whimpered with fear, causing the elementals to laugh in a cackling way. It
sounded wrong, a sound of malice, a woodland echo that did not issue from their
lips, but seemed to bray from all around us.

Keeton gasped as he saw the boat. I watched, feeling greatly relieved. For
the first time since the beginning of this journey I thought of the silver oak
leaf amulet, and reached into my saturated shirt to draw the medallion out, and
hold it towards the man who watched us from the vessel.

The boat seemed far more at home on this wide stretch of water than on the
impossibly narrow sticklebrook near to the Lodge. Its sail was slack. It drifted
out of the gloom and the tall, cloaked man leapt ashore, tying a mooring rope to
a stump of root. The light came from a glowing torch on the boat's prow. It had
been an illusion that he himself shone. He no longer wore the elaborately
crested helmet, and as Keeton and I watched he flung off his cloak, reached for
the bright Firebrand and drove the shaft into the river bank, stepping past it
so that its aura radiated around his massive frame.

He came over to us and leaned down to lift us to our feet.

'Sorthalan!' he said loudly, and repeated the word, this time striking his
chest with his fist. 'Sorthalan!'

He reached to the amulet around my neck, touched it and smiled through his
thick beard. What he said then, in a flowing tongue reminiscent of Kushar's
language, meant nothing to me. And yet I felt again that what was being said
was:
I have been waiting for you.