Dog and Dragon-ARC (22 page)

“Try not to hurt their noses too much,” said Meb.

“It’s their ears we hurt. The little ’uns can let out a squeal that no man can hear, but it surely upsets the dogs.”

They sat and waited in the darkness. Faintly they could hear the mournful baying of the dogs. And a yelping.

A little later the knockers came back, cheerful. “They’re thinking you went into the water. And they’re fair afraid because the dogs won’t go more than under the first overhang.”

“Still,” said Meb, finding a very small knocker tugging at her skirts and looking hopefully up at her, and picking it up and putting it on her lap, “I think we’d better leave when we can.”

The chief Jack shook his head, looking at the littlest knocker babe happily sitting on her lap. “Now they’ll all be wanting to do it.”

“One at a time they shall,” said Meb, doing a single-handed toss for the small one. They had hours to darkness, and longer still to the low tide.

The chief Jack looked at her with what could only be respect. “You’ve the gift, to turn what is yours to command into a pleasure for us to give. We’re long-lived and we don’t have that many young ones.”

“When I was very little, a gleeman sat me on his knee and did a few tricks. I never forgot it. How could I not do the same?” she paused. “And it was another gleeman who saved my life, who taught me to juggle. That gleeman was your black dragon.”

“Aha. Well, he did a fine job,” said the chief Jack. “Although, like most of the things he did, we’ll be cursing for months as these young cloth-heads all make the tunnels and shafts echo with dropped pebbles and rocks that they’ll be trying to juggle with.”

By the time darkness and the low tide came, Meb was very tired of small knockers. She noticed Neve had gone from terror of them to cuddling and rocking the smaller ones to sleep. The coracle, never the largest of vessels, now had sufficient food for a few days: oatcakes, a small crock of honey, some dried meat, some dried apples, a metal flask of apple wine, a blanket sewed of mink strips and a knocker lantern, with a magical flame that came when you tapped three times on the metal, a couple of small bags—to knockers they would have been very big bags—and a very good supply of good will. They paddled out cautiously, edging between the rocks.

“Can you swim?” asked Meb.

“No, m’lady.”

“Well, that’s two of us then. We’d better not tip this up or our drowned bodies will wash up with the Fomoire after all.”

“No, m’lady. The current will bring the bodies into Degin bay. Always does with those that drown around here,” said Neve.

“That’s so cheerful. Let’s just paddle carefully.”

“Yes, m’lady,” said Neve, dutiful as ever. “The knockers are quite different from the stories, aren’t they?”

“Some things are,” said Meb, paddling. “But at least we know we can get food and shelter if I can find an audience who don’t just decide to kill us first. And the knockers will help us and hide us if they can.”

“So where are we going to go and what are we going to do, m’lady?” asked Neve.

“Well, I’d thought getting away from where they were trying to kill me, where they all hated me, spied on me and were willing to make you murder me, was a good start,” said Meb, yawning. “We’ll need some place to rest later tonight, hide for the day, and then get a bit further away. Then we need to find some breeches, because it’ll be hard enough for men traveling in these times. Then I thought we might go north, just because Prince Medraut’s demesnes are east, and the South is where that earl who tried to kill me came from, the sea is to the west, and I know nothing about the north. Vivien said there are other Duns. We can find ourselves a better place than Dun Tagoll, even if it isn’t as magically protected and fed.”

“The north parts…it’s wild, m’lady. Forest and mountain and forgotten people up there,” said Neve warily. “I’ve never been there, of course.”

“Wild and forgotten sound good to me, right now. Mind that rock.”

Despite their inept paddling of the loaded little vessel, they got across to the shingle on the far side of the narrow inlet without any mishap. They pulled it up, and at Meb’s insistence, carried it to under the cliff, tripping over rocks in the darkness. They left it between two boulders and covered it in dried seaweed. It took time, but there was no point in telling some sharp-eyed guard, first thing in the morning, just where the prince’s men should start looking with the dogs. It took more time to move around the cliff edge in the darkness, lit by a bare sliver of moonlight. They found a gully that took them up to the top. Then they made their way away from the coast where the salt wind kept down the trees, to look for forest and shelter. At first they walked through the dew-wet grass, and then, with wet shoes, and wet clinging skirts and cold legs, through heather and gorse. Finally they came to a little V-shaped valley with a thick stand of trees and the gurgle of a stream.
 

“Enough,” said Meb. “We’re probably not more than a mile from Dun Tagoll, but I am so tired that I don’t care if they catch us. Let’s light the light, make a fire and try and dry our shoes a bit and eat something.”

So they did. Meb had had her experience of living rough with Fionn to turn to…and poor Neve fell asleep, wet feet and all. The axe was better, Meb thought, for carving up anyone that tried to molest them, than cutting firewood. It didn’t have much bevel on it. But there was some dry deadwood, and using the knocker lantern, and splinter to take flame from it, she managed a respectable fire. She ate some of the dried meat the knockers had provided—she had no idea whether it was dried miner or rabbit, and couldn’t care right then—put their shoes to toast a safe distance from the fire and snuggled in next to Neve, blessing the knockers for the fur. Their skirts, however, were too cold and damp. She managed to remove Neve’s and hers, and hung them on a branch near the fire. And tried lying down again, wrapping the fur around numb, cold legs and toes that she’d tried warming at the fire. The axe she kept in her hand.

And then sleep came.

She awoke to the sound of a rather nasty snigger.

There was something up the tree…with their skirts. A tiny blue-green-skinned man with a little tuft beard and narrow eyes all dancing with mischief. He was wearing nothing more than a hat of new leaves pinned with a hawthorn spike and a ragged cloak, so perhaps he didn’t consider skirts as necessary.

Meb leapt up, axe in hand. “You drop those! Or I’ll…I’ll chop your tree down!”

“Ach. Mean and spiteful. Then I’ll toss them in the stream. You’ll be lucky to find them at all, and they’ll be even wetter!” said the little green fellow, sticking his tongue out at them.

Bribery might work better. “You just woke me up suddenly. Come down and have some breakfast. We’ve got oatcakes and some honey.”

“Oh, changing our tune are we, fine ladies. Fine ladies without skirts,” he said, wrinkling his pointy little nose at them, but coming down.

“It’s a piskie…just like in Gamma stories,” said Neve warily.

“Aye, and she had her skirts up or right off often enough, too,” said the piskie. “Now you promised oatcakes and honey. We’re fond of honey. Doesn’t come our way too often, because bees are not fond of us.”

“It’s only a very little jar of honey,” said Meb.

And in the distance—but not too great a distance—a horn sounded.

“What’s that?” said Meb, relieving the piskie of her damp skirts. He wasn’t worried by his nakedness, so she didn’t see why she should be, although Neve stuck under the fur and struggled with hers.

“Just the soldiers from the Dun. They probably saw the smoke of your fire,” said the piskie disinterestedly.

“We must find somewhere to hide,” said Meb, looking around.

“But you offered me oatcakes and honey,” said the piskie, sticking out his lower jaw, plainly angry, his little tuft of a beard wobbling, his cheeks flushing green.

“No time to find them now.” said Meb, grabbing the little knocker bag. “If they don’t catch us, you can have the whole jar as far as I am concerned.”

“Now that’s a bargain. Just you wait right here!” said the piskie, and let out a shrill whistle. Other whistles answered, and he bounded off, up into the tree.

“What do we do?” asked Neve nervously.

“Move. I haven’t been through all of this to get caught without at least trying to get away,” said Meb, pulling her to her feet.

“Ouch. Blisters,” said Neve, hobbling.

Meb’s own feet were not in a much better state. They’d been cold and numb the night before. Now the sun was up and it was looking to be a glorious spring day. “As far as those rocks. Let me see if I can manage some sort of glamor to hide us there.” If she could look like Hallgerd, and make the axe look like a stick, surely she could make herself look like a rock.

And it seemed she could. There was a little niche and, with Neve inside it, Meb sat against her legs and thought rock thoughts. The axe she made into a flying holly sapling. So they sat, Meb wondering if this could possibly work, and thinking “don’t see me” thoughts.

No riders came. She heard them in the distance, several times. What did come was a little naked blue-green man, in a green hat and a ragged cloak—with half a dozen of his kind, some male, some female, and all wearing little more than leaves or acorn-cap outfits.

“Ach, tricksie humans. Cheated me,” said the piskie crossly. “She promised me a whole jar of honey.”

“I don’t cheat,” said Meb.

Piskies vanished in the twinkling of an eye.

And then the little leaf hat reappeared, followed by the piskie wearing it. “You gave us a fright,” he said crossly. “We trick humans. Not you trick us. Not unless you want us to curse you.”

“I can hide better than you. Maybe I can curse better than you too,” said Meb.

That took a moment to sink in. “Ah. Well now, no offense, but if you can hide better than we can, why did the horsemen worry you?”

Meb did not say “because I didn’t know I could, and I am not sure it would work on Neve.” She had a feeling telling the piskies that would only lead to more trouble, and a fair amount of mischief directed at her companion. “Because I knew you could lead them astray better than I can. And last time the castle people came hunting…let’s put it this way: I should have hidden from them the first time, because ever since Earl Alois tried to kill me, they’ve tried.”

“Aye,” said tufty beard proudly. “That we can. We’re the best. They’re so mazed they’ll never be home before nightfall. Earl Alois, eh? He went through our woods a while back. We didn’t know or we’d have made him so lost he never got home.”

“A pity you didn’t,” said Meb as she dug through the bag and came up with the little crock of honey. “Here you are. As promised. We’ll have our oatcakes without it.”

“Ach,” said the piskie generously. “I daresay we’ll spare you a little.”

So they broke their fast on little knocker oatcakes with a circle of largely naked—bar leaf and wood scraps—piskies. Meb reflected their food would last far less time than she’d thought, at this rate. On the other hand, not only had any form of pursuit failed to find them, the men of the troop would probably be blaming her, and far less keen to try again. For once, being blamed for something she hadn’t done was going to work in her favor. That made a change.

After they’d eaten, lighter by some oatcakes and their honey, Meb and Neve took their leave and hobbled on. After a little while, Meb stopped and took her shoes off. “I’ll try barefoot for a bit, Neve. My heels and toes are raw.”

“We’ll look like poor peasants then, m’lady.”

“Well, that’ll be a good thing,” said Meb.

And it was easier walking. Yes, it still hurt when the grass touched raw flesh, but they came on a path quickly enough. All of these lands must have been farmed—and probably still would be, if Lyonesse stayed free of invaders for any time. The path must have been a cart track once, between fields and hedges and forest patches, all overgrown and beginning to show spring signs. It was too early in the season for most food plants, but they gathered asparagus shoots from the banks as they walked, and ate some of them raw. It was a long day, and warm. “Oatcakes and asparagus are not as fine as castle food, but they taste fresher,” said Neve.

“That’s because the castle food was mostly stale bread, bespelled and stretched,” said Meb. “And this might be simple but it’s real. But by the look of the sky, food and shelter are going to be real issues, and soon too, not to mention piskies.”

“You should never mention them,” said the ugly pile of misshapen rock fallen from the lichen-cloaked drystone wall on the corner. It stood up and Neve tried to pull Meb into joining her in running away.

“It’s a spriggan! Run!” shrieked Neve.

The spriggan was growing before their eyes and was now considerably bigger than they were. It still looked like it had been badly carved out of granite. “You run. I’ll hold it back,” Meb said, swinging the axe.

“I can run faster than you,” said the spriggan showing square teeth. “And your axe is not cold iron, but some faerie metal. ’Tis sharp. Magic sharp, I’d grant.”

“If you want to try it out, I’ll help you,” said Meb, looking it in the eye. She couldn’t think of what else to do, really.

“I thought I was going to help you,” said the spriggan, shrinking and changing before their eyes. Meb knew where she’d seen that sort of triangular alvish grey face before—when she’d been riding with the hunting party. They’d been watching her then.

“What are you planning to help us with?” asked Meb.

“Food and shelter were what you sought, I thought,” said the spriggan. “Shelter is easy enough. Food is a bit more difficult. Not food for the likes of you, anyway. Simple fare is easy enough. But the noble ladies of Lyonesse wouldn’t want to eat that.”

“Given a choice, I would,” said Meb. “I’ve had enough of fancy food that tasted of stale bread for my lifetime. Give me stale bread that tastes like stale bread and I’ll be happy.”

“Ah. Stale bread is a challenge. We’ve got fresh, but it’d take a few days to make it stale. But if that’s what you want…”

“No, fresh is even better.”

“Well, it’ll make you sick, I shouldn’t wonder,” said the spriggan.