The Eagle of the Ninth [book I] (27 page)

‘If we can keep the lead till dark,’ Esca shouted above the drumming hooves and the wind of their going, ‘we’ve a chance among the glens yonder.’

Marcus did not answer, but settled down to ride as he had never ridden before. The dark heather streaked backward under his pony’s thudding hooves, the long harsh hairs of its mane sprayed back over his wrists, and the wind sung past his ears. For one flashing instant there rose in him the exultancy of speed, the surge and splendour that he had once thought never to know again. The instant passed, swift as the darting flight of a kingfisher. He was riding for his life with the dark hunt in full cry behind him, putting out all his skill to keep clear of hidden pitfalls, the hummocks and snags and snarls among the heather that might bring disaster, grimly aware that he could not grip strongly with his right knee, and if the pony stumbled at this flying gallop, he would go clean over its head. On and on they hurtled, now skirting a reed-fringed upland pool, now swerving from a patch of bog luminously green in the fading light; uphill and down, through bronze tides of dying heather, startling here a flock of plover, there a stray curlew from the bents, and always, behind them, the hunt drawing nearer. Marcus could hear the hounds giving tongue above the soft thunder of the ponies’ hooves, nearer, steadily nearer; but there was no time for looking back.

On and on. Now the ponies were tiring. Marcus could feel the panting of his little mount’s flanks, and foam flew back from its muzzle, spattering against him. He leaned far forward over its neck to ease it; he talked to it, sang and shouted, fondled its sweating neck and dug in his heels, urging it on by every means in his power, though indeed the poor brute was already winged by terror to its utmost speed, knowing as well as its rider the meaning of those sounds behind.

The land was rising under them, and the light fading moment by moment; the little glens and the hazel woods were very near; but so was the hunt. Snatching one glance over his shoulder, Marcus glimpsed a flying blur of horsemen and low-running hounds, smudged out of all clear shape by the twilight, streaking across the open turf, the leading hound scarce a bowshot away.

Near to their last gasp, and with the clamour of the hunt swelling in their ears, they struggled desperately over the crest of another ridge, and saw below them through the dusk the pale streak of running water. Very faintly, an unexpected scent drifted up to them, a sweet, heavy scent like musk, and Esca let out a sound that was half-way between a laugh and a sob. ‘Down to the stream before they top the ridge, and we’ve a chance yet.’

Only half understanding, but content to trust to the other’s better knowledge of the wild, Marcus drove his heel again and again into his pony’s sobbing flank, urging it to one last effort. Shivering and sweating, the foam that flew from its muzzle blood-flecked now, it plunged forward in one last frantic burst of speed. Neck and neck they hurtled down through the tall bracken, the scent of musk growing every instant stronger; down and down towards the trampled hollow beside the stream, from which two battling, antlered shapes broke at their approach and went crashing away down the glen. Esca was already half off his pony, and in the musk-reeking hollow where only the instant before two great stags had been fighting for lordship of the herd, Marcus half fell, half flung himself from his own mount. His friend’s arm was round him almost before he touched the ground. ‘Into the water, quick!’ Esca gasped, as, snorting with terror, the two ponies plunged on riderless into the dusk.

They dived through the alder scrub and scrambled headlong down the bank, Esca still with his arm round Marcus to help him, and slipped into the ice-cold, swift-running water, just as the first wave of the hunt topped the rise behind them. Crouching under the steep overhang, they heard the ponies crashing away downstream in terrified stampede, heard the hunt sweep down towards them, the check, the baying and the trampling and the sudden splurge of voices; and crouched lower yet, the water flowing almost to their nostrils.

It seemed an eternity that they crouched so, listening to the turmoil just above their heads, and praying that the dusk would hide the traces of their swift descent through the alder scrub, and that the hounds, having been set on to follow horses, would not concern themselves to pick up and follow the scent of men. But in reality it could have been only a few moments before a triumphant yell told them that the movement of the stampeding ponies had been picked up. The hounds were already away yelling on the hot scent of stags or ponies, or both. There was a fresh burst of shouts and trampling, the shrill, angry squeal of a horse, and with the confused speed of a dissolving nightmare, men, hounds, and horses were off in full cry after the flying shadows.

A little farther down, the glen curved, bringing them for an instant into full view of the two who crouched under the bank and stared after them with straining eyes, a shadow chase, sweeping down the dusk-sodden glen, the wild clamour of their passing growing fainter with every beat of flying hooves; swiftly come, and passed, and gone, as though they had been the Wild Hunt, the hunters of souls.

The dusk swallowed them; the last, long-drawn cry of a hound drifted back on the night wind, and that was all. No sound now, but a curlew crying somewhere, and the racing of their own hearts.

Esca rose quickly to his feet. ‘They will go like the wind for a while,’ he said. ‘Lightened of our weight, and terrified as they are; but they will be run down before long, and then the hunt will be back looking for us, so the sooner we are away from here, the better.’

Marcus was making sure he still had the Eagle safe in its sling. ‘I feel sick about those ponies,’ he said.

‘There will be no harm come to them, unless their wind is broken. Those were hunting-dogs, trained to run down and bring to bay, and not to kill until the word is given. With us, I think the word would have been given, but the wanton waste of a horse is not in these hunters unless their tribe be different from all the other tribes of Britain.’ Esca had been feeling about under the bank as he spoke, and now brought up his spear with a satisfied grunt. ‘Better keep to the stream for a while, and break the trail,’ he said, and put out a steadying hand to Marcus.

For what seemed an interminable time they struggled upstream, now wading knee deep through the shifting shallows, now plunged to the waist in the deep, swift flow where the stream narrowed. It was a fight every yard of the way, against the thrust of the water and the shifting footholds, against time, with every nerve on the stretch for the long-drawn cry of a hound that might rise at any moment above the soft rush of the stream.

It was quite dark now, for the moon was hidden by low cloud; and the hills closed round them, rising blackly on every hand. The stream began to lead them too far eastward, and anyway, they dared not stick to it too long; and at last, where a narrow side glen opened to the south, they scrambled out, chilled to the bone, and thankful to be done with icy water. They shook themselves like dogs, wrung as much water as they could from their clothes, and set off again.

Presently, coming over a steep rise, they dropped down into another glen, wooded with hazel and rowan, through which another burn fell in steep slides and cascades of white water. Indeed, one never seemed out of the sound of running water in these hills. And stumbling at last on a jagged hollow left by a landslip that the rain had torn away, they more or less fell into it, and sat there, huddled close together for warmth, to get their breath and take stock of the situation.

The little food that they had left had gone with the ponies, and from now on they would have to march empty, since they certainly could not stop to trap for food as they went. They were still at least two full marches from the nearest station on the Wall, and must cover the distance on foot, through unfamiliar country with the wild hunt on their trail. All in all, their prospects did not look very bright.

Marcus sat rubbing his leg, which was aching intolerably, and staring at the white water through the dark blur of the hazels. The sense of being hunted was heavy on him, and he knew that it was on Esca, too. The very countryside seemed to have grown hostile and menacing, as though not only men were on their trail, but the whole land up and hunting, the dark hills themselves closing in to the kill. And yet the Wild had stood their friend once tonight, he told himself, setting a pair of battling stags in their way, just in the moment of their direst need.

They sat silent a short while longer, snatching a breathing space before pushing on again; but they dared not rest long, for they must be much farther from the place where they had taken to the water, and in a much surer hiding, before dawn. Marcus sighed, and was actually drawing his legs under him to rise, when he became aware of Esca grown suddenly tense beside him, and then, above the soft wet rush of the stream, of someone, or something, moving far down the glen. Marcus crouched where he was, frozen, his head turned to listen, and gradually the sounds drew nearer: a queer confusion of sounds that might be one man or several, a great brushing and rustling through the hazel scrub. It came slowly up the glen towards them, while they crouched motionless in their hiding-place, nearer and louder until it seemed almost on top of them; and Marcus, peering up through the overhanging screen of rowan and hazel, made out a pale blur and a dark one. Of all homely and unexpected things, a man leading a cow.

Furthermore, the man was whistling softly between his teeth as he came up the burnside; so softly that it was not until he was within a few feet, that the tune broke through. A catchy tune.

‘Oh when I joined the Eagles,

(As it might be yesterday)

I kissed a girl at Clusium

Before I marched away.’

Marcus reached up and parted the drooping rowan branches. ‘Well met, Guern the Hunter,’ he said in his own tongue.

T
HERE
was a sudden pause; the white cow, startled by the unexpected voice, fidgeting and blowing, with lowered horns; the man, who had checked with a grunt, peering down through the rowan branches. Then the soft growling of the old dog, which Marcus had not at first noticed, rose suddenly to a sing-song snarl, and was checked by a backward thrust of the hunter’s heel.

‘Well met, Demetrius of Alexandria.’

There was no time to waste in surprise and explanation. Marcus said quickly, ‘Guern, we need your help.’

‘Aye, I know that well enough. You have brought away the Eagle, and the Epidaii are up after you,’ Guern said. ‘The word went by at sunset, and the Dumnonii and my own tribe at least will join spears with them.’ He came a step nearer. ‘What would you have me do?’

‘We want food—and a false trail, if you can provide one.’

‘Food is easily managed, but it is more than a false trail that you will need to get you in one piece to the Wall. Every pass to the south will be guarded by now, and there is but one way known to me that is likely to be left open.’

‘Tell us how to find it.’

‘Telling is not enough. It is a way that is death without a guide. That is why the tribesmen will not trouble to guard it.’

‘And you know this way?’ Esca spoke for the first time.

‘Yes, I know the way. I—will take you by it.’

‘How if you are caught with us?’ Marcus said. ‘How if you are missed from your own place, and any think to wonder where you are?’

‘I shall not be missed from my own place, for there will be many out hunting these next few days. If any come upon us together I can always knife one of you, and claim the honour of being First Spear among the hunters.’

‘It is a pleasant thought,’ said Marcus. ‘Do we come with you now?’

‘Yes. It is best that you come the first part of the way now,’ Guern decided. ‘We shall have to take the cow; ill luck to her. She is for ever straying.’

Marcus laughed, and got up, catching his breath as his overtaxed leg twinged under him. ‘At least her straying has stood us in good stead tonight. Give me your shoulder, Esca, this place is—somewhat—steep.’

Many steep glens and moorland ridges lay between them and the place of the fighting stags, and it was near dawn when Guern at last led them down into an old sandstone quarry that had not been worked since the Eagles flew from Valentia. He thrust them into the crumbling cave or gallery of some sort that seemed to have been the occasional lair of wild pig, and bidding them be quiet until he came again, departed with the cow, who seemed very weary. ‘It may be that this will teach you not to wander again, O daughter of Ahriman!’ they heard him say as he hauled her by the horns up the rough slope.

Left to themselves, Marcus and Esca drew the hanging curtain of bramble and dog-rose across the mouth of their hole, and lay down as comfortably as they could. ‘If the roof doesn’t cave in and the pigs do not come back to challenge our presence, we look like having a quiet day,’ Marcus said, pillowing his head on his arms.

Neither of these things happened, and the day dragged slowly by, while Marcus and Esca slept fitfully, trying to forget the emptiness of their stomachs. Beyond the bushes at the entrance the light grew golden and then faded. It was after dusk when Guern the Hunter returned, bringing with him, beside the inevitable strips of leathery smoked meat, a lump of fresh broiled venison. ‘Eat the fresh meat now,’ he said, ‘and quickly.’

They did as he bade them, while he stood leaning on a spear in the cave mouth, with the great dog lying at his feet, and before it was full dark outside they were on their way again. They made slow marching at first, for Marcus’s leg was stiff after the day’s rest, but the way was easier than it had been last night, running mostly downhill, and little by little the stiffness wore off, and he was able to make better going. Silent as shadows, they followed Guern, by ways that only the hunter and the deer knew, with never a spoken word between them. But Marcus was puzzled as the hours went by, for so far there had been no real difference between this and any other march that they had made among the hills; no sign of this unguarded way which it was death to travel without a guide.