The Forge in the Forest (18 page)

Kasse, face contorted, scrambled up clutching a jagged rock, only to have Borhi snatch it from him, so that he fell down again.

"Enough!" barked Kermorvan, pushing Gise back. "You, Kasse, you brought that upon yourself."

"Aye," said Borhi, ignoring Kasse's glare, and making no move to help him up, "save your bile for them things as did the killing, eh? Murdering brutes, to attack for no cause!"

Elof shook his head unhappily. "Not so, Borhi. That was their dam we shattered, their fishtrap I guess by the net. It must have cost them much labor, for since they cannot come on land, they must have worked only with driftwood. They may have thought we were attacking them. And as to slaying, Ils maimed one, and I wounded or slew another. We could not talk with them, that was the pity."

Silence fell, and many looked out at the lake once again. From oil to steel it turned as warmer light spread up the sky behind the wooded hills, and from steel to gold as the sun itself rose. Soft wisps of mist drifted over the waters, as if to flirt with its mirrored clouds. Small birds began to chirrup and twitter in the bushes around them, and the horrors of the night hung less heavy about them. But Kasse sat apart on a stone and spat blood through puffy lips. "Well," demanded Ils, who had no great love of sunrise, "what now?"

Kermorvan held up an urgent hand for quiet, and gestured to the Forest. Elof heard it then, a distant echo along the lake, the trample of many hooves, harsh snorting breaths, the crackle of large bodies moving through the brush. "A herd of some kind," he said, with the ring reborn in his voice. "Nothing alarms them, so we have evaded the watchers for now. But if we wish to stay free, we cannot linger here, and we must hunt to stay alive. So…"He shrugged. "You ask what now, my lady? We press on. What else can we do?"

So it is told that as the rising sun shot the mists with pale gold the company passed at last beneath the eaves of the Great Forest, Tapiau'la-an-Aithen itself. And since the river had borne them nigh on a hundred and fifty leagues from its western margins, they stepped at once into the very heartlands of that domain. To Elof, weary and grieving, it was a stranger experience than he had expected; he felt as if he entered some immense hall of worship, some mighty tomb or mausoleum such as he had seen in Kerbryhaine the City, but infinitely vaster, infinitely more imbued with ancient presence. The towering trees upheld it as pillars, sustaining an immense vault-work of interwoven boughs, a roof whose greens and yellows shone far richer than coppered domes or tiles of gold. Even the sun must defer before them, bowing down in narrow beams to pick small patches of the Forest floor out of its reverential gloom, or scattering into glimmering green shades upon the many-textured trunks. Rainbow iridescence it awoke, like the shadows of stained glass, from the water droplets that glistened on every leaf and moss patch, in every crevice of the trunks, that hung heavy in the unstirring air. For this was a place of water, a forest of rains, ever remembering the last shower or looking forward to the next.

Now Elof was on land he could see how much the lesser trees had changed, as well as the greater; among the more familiar dogwoods, junipers, tall hollies and black cherries he found slender quaking aspens, sumacs, spreading mulberries already heavy with their unripe fruit, and a hundred others he hardly knew. Willows and alders arched over the little streams they passed, but between them lifted madder and red osier, shrubs in his homeland grown here to trees. Indeed, tree and shrub, evergreen and seasonal alike, even the creepers that draped them like rigging on high masts, all were grown more tall, more rich than any he had ever seen, so that it felt to him as if it was he and his fellows who had dwindled, and were become like little beasts that dodged and scuttled through their brief lives among the roots. And it was not only the imposing trees that diminished humanity, but something greater that dwelt in this place, that ancient presence he had felt from the first.

"I keep thinking there's somebody else around," muttered Roc, who was walking by Elof's side. "Not spying on us, more like… It's hard to say. Like there was someone in the next room, or round the corner, and you always knowing it. Someone… important."

Elof nodded. "I feel the same. But more acutely. As if I walk steathily past that someone's door, or behind his back. A little excited, a little afraid, as when I was a child, and sought to avoid my master or mistress…" He shook his head, puzzled and daunted. In Vayde's Tower, on that first dark night, he had sensed something of the kind, but more remote, a vast emptiness of anguish remembered. This was different; the thrill of it, the nervous tickling tingle, was so strong it recalled the touch of the Ice, to him agony, to Kermorvan only chill and unease. Here Roc and the others felt no more, and unease was natural enough. "Well," Elof sighed. "We have worse problems for now. But if you ever begin to feel we are about to turn that corner…"

"Or that someone's about to turn round," agreed Roc. "Aye, I'll tip you the word. And you me. If the river was that bad, I reckon we've got to be ready for 'most anything here."

But that first day, as the travelers cast about for the track of the herd, they saw nothing save the small life of any ordinary forest, though even those creatures were larger and sleeker than they had seen before. The very jays that swooped chittering and scolding were larger, blazing arrows of color among the heavy foliage.

"How can they fly so fast in this air?" panted Tenvar, pushing back his streaming hair. His clothes, like everyone else's, had obstinately refused to dry out entirely. "It's like soup!"

Kermorvan smiled, though his own hair hung lank and grayed with dew. "Would it were as sustaining! But it is rich in other ways; scents linger even for feeble human noses. I am sure we draw near the track of some large beasts, large enough to yield us food for many a long league more. So do not grudge the effort, Tenvar! And may a full belly be the least of your rewards."

But though the other hunters felt as Kermorvan did, they still had not picked up the trail by the time the light began to fail. There was nothing to be done save camp and await the dawn. Kasse, most skillful with snares, caught them two rabbits, and this, with roots and herbs gathered by Elof, who knew most about them from his sojourn in the Marshlands, was all they had to sustain them that day. They found a dell, little more than a patch of earth among great tree roots, that was drier than the rest, and there Kermorvan made an earth-oven, covering it with leaves to damp down the smoke. But though it worked well, and the rabbits were unusually large, they made a small meal for ten weary travelers.

"Made sure it was three I saw you take up, huntsman!" Borhi remarked cheerfully as he gnawed the last fragments off a bone. "Not hiding one all for yourself, are you?"

Kasse curled his lip. "Two's what I caught, two's what we've had! If you want any more, get out and take 'em yourself. I give you leave!"

"Quiet, the pair of you!" grunted Arvhes, normally the most patient of men. "Do you save your energy for the hunt; then you'll be able to feed your faces all the better! Me, my back pains me, my legs are leaden, my heart sore, and I'd swear I'm catching an ague from the wet clothes. I care only for sleep."

"So say we all!" said Kermorvan wryly. "This is as dry a place as we shall find, and I think as safe. Rest you, while you may! The first watch is mine."

Elof rolled himself in his cloak, clammy as it was, and pillowed wet hair on damp arm; he was so weary that despite the chill he slept almost at once. But it was an unquiet sleep, full of strange dreams, of the solitary redwood in its lawn of flowers, of the great gusty voice that called from afar. And eyes moved through his dreams, eyes with a snakelike glitter, eyes pallid and staring, narrow, slanted, yellow… He awoke, shivering violently in the dark, looked around for reassurance as a dreamer may who opens his eyes from inner turmoil. At least they had a sentinel… but where was he? Nobody sat up. Kermorvan was curled up not far away, his lean features just recognizable in the faint glimmer of starlight that penetrated the canopy. Angrily Elof reached out and shook him. "Fine watcher you are!" he hissed, and jumped as Kermorvan uncoiled like a snake. In the blink of an eye he was squatting by Elof's shoulder, peering about.

"But I am not the watcher!" he murmured. "It is past the middle hour, and I bade Kasse take my place. Where might he be, I wonder?"

A branch rustled, feet scuffed in the mold; they both sprang up. A stocky shadow moved out from behind a tree. Kermorvan sighed, and slid his half-drawn blade back into the scabbard. "Where have you been?" he demanded in an angry whisper.

"Where d'you think?" grunted Kasse ungraciously, and settled down to his watch once more. The others looked at one another, and shrugged.

Elof was just settling down under his cloak when he saw Kermorvan stop, whirl about and jerk Kasse to his feet by the front of his heavy jacket. "You! Where were you, indeed, watcher?" hissed Kermorvan. The fury in his
voice
startled Elof. "And what has become of Borhi while you were gone?"

Elof looked across the circle of sleepers and with a sudden thrill of alarm he
too noticed
the empty place. "How'd I know?" gurgled Kasse, feet almost leaving the ground in the force of Kermorvan's grasp. He threw back his arms in protest. "Not my fault if he wanders—" Elof saw the faint glimmer, flung himself forward on all fours and wrenched at the hand as it swept inward toward Kermorvan's side. Even a hunter's wiry strength could not match the grasp of a smith. Elof caught what fell, and held the knife up for Kermorvan to see.

The warrior nodded; his face took on a look Elof knew, remote and hard as a stone carving. "You will take me to Borhi," he said, very softly, and Kasse began to struggle wildly in their grip.

"I don't know…"he gasped, and stopped, for Elof seized him by the hair and twisted his head round.

"Then why the blade? I counsel you, huntsman, answer! Lord Kermorvan is noble and just, he would not carve strips off you with your own traitor's weapon, but me, I am of no birth, and I am not so damned sure!" He held the knife before Kasse's eyes. "Speak! Where's Borhi? Alive or dead?"

"Alive!" choked Kasse, half-strangled. "But danger…"

Kermorvan hurled him back hard against the tree trunk. "Then all the more reason you take us to him, now!" He swept out his sword. "Obey!"

The struggle, though in whispers, had aroused the remainder of the company by now. But Elof bade them stay where they were and keep watch, and as an afterthought to kindle fire in the oven, and prepare torches. "A good thought!" whispered Kermorvan as they marched Kasse out before them into the darkness of the wood. "Though I would risk it only if peril is already upon us. How far, Kasse?"

It was less than five hundred strides he led them, though many times he claimed to be lost. But the point at his back was a powerful lodestone, and at last, coming around the trunk of a great storm-blasted laurel oak, they found Borhi. In the finding, though, they stood for a moment stunned.

He stood against the trunk, or rather hung, for his arms were lashed loosely round the bole, and his chin propped up on two crossed quarrels dug into it. A flood of dark liquid glistened on his head, and no better light than the stargleam was needed to know it for blood; the smell was enough. Elof feared him already dead, but suddenly he jerked upright in his ropes, and began to struggle and whimper. It was not his blood; behind him on the broad-ridged bark hung the mangled corpse of a rabbit, pinned there like… Elof bit his lip. Like some kind of offering, and what did that make Borhi?

He drew Gorthawer, then hesitated, startled, as Kasse began to shout. "No! Leave him! You must, it's dangerous, deadly, you don't understand! Deadly danger! Leave him, let him bide, I can't stop it…" Elof turned away contemptuously. The black blade flicked out, once, twice and Borhi slumped forward, moaning with relief.

Then shock clawed at Elof's heart. "
Kerys
!" choked Kermorvan, his clear voice gone hoarse and hollow. The howl that cascaded down the air shivered their thoughts as a stone a sheet of glass. So powerful was it that it awoke a single sight in both their minds, a sudden glimpse of long reeking jaws agape against the moon. Ravening hunger, fiendish menace echoed in that wailing cry, the voice of no man or beast they knew, and it was not far off. Kasse was shrieking now, fit to wake the whole wood. "Don't you understand, don't you understand? There had to be one! They had to have one!
I can't call it back
!" Kermorvan hooked a powerful arm round the huntsman's neck and struggled to silence him, while Elof heaved Borhi to his feet.

"Can he walk?" barked Kermorvan, clamping Kasse's jaws shut. "Then back to the camp! Be still, fool!" he hissed, as Kasse whimpered and renewed his struggle. "If there is any safety for you now, it must be with us!"

They turned and ran for the dell, Kasse a limp foot-dragging bundle in Kermorvan's grasp. Borhi, an arm round Elof s shoulder, plucked off the leather rag that had gagged him, unleashing a flood of terrified babbling. "He… bastard… tol' me he'd show me what he'd done with other rabbit… good use… show hunters' lore worked… belted me… strung me up… Ah, Saithana come to us,
what's that
?"

The howl shimmered among the trees again, this time nearer still, and again from off to the side. "The Hunt!" screamed Kasse, and abruptly became a frenzied flurry of limbs. Kermorvan stumbled, his grip loosened and Kasse was off, bounding like a fright-maddened deer over root and through brush.