Hollow Hills (54 page)

"What's this?" I asked him. "Didn't they get my message right? I go alone."

"So they said. The horse is for you. He's faster than your own, and sure on his feet, and he knows the forest tracks. And if you do meet trouble — " He left the sentence unfinished, but I understood him. The horse was trained to battle, and would fight for me like an extra arm.

"Thank you," I took the reins from him, and mounted. "They're expecting me at the gate?"

"Yes. Merlin" — he still kept a hand on the reins — "let me come with you. You shouldn't ride alone.

You've a bad enemy there who'll stop at nothing."

"I know that. You'll serve me better by staying here and seeing that no one rides after me. Are the gates shut?"

"Yes, I saw to it. No rider but you leaves this place now until Arthur and the others ride out. But they tell me that there were two men slipped out before the company left the hall."

I frowned. "Lot's?"

"No one seems clear on that. They said they were messengers taking the news of the King's death south."

"No messenger was sent," I said curtly. I had ordered this myself. The news of the High King's death, with the fear and uncertainty it would engender, must not be carried beyond the walls until there could go with it news of a new King and a new crowning.

Ralf nodded. "I know. These two got through just before the order came. It could just be someone hoping for a purse — one of the chamberlains, perhaps, sending word south as soon as it happened. But it could just as soon beLot 's men, you know it could. What could he be planning? To break Macsen's sword, as he broke Uther's?"

"You think he could?"

"N-no. But if he can do nothing, then why are you riding up there now? Why not wait and ride up with the prince?"

"Because it's true thatLot will stop at nothing now to destroy Arthur's claim. He's worse than ambitious now, he's frightened. He'll do anything to discredit me, and shake men's faith in the sword as God's gift.

So I must go. God does not defend himself. Why are we here, if not to fight for him?"

"You mean — ? I see. They could desecrate the shrine, or destroy the altar...If they could even prevent your being there to receive the King...And they may kill the servant you left to tend the shrine. Is that it?"

"Yes."

He took the chestnut by the bit, so roughly that it jibbed, snorting. "Then do you think thatLot would hesitate to murder you?"

"No. But I don't think he'll succeed. Now let me go, Ralf. I shall be safe enough."

"Ah." There was relief in his voice. "You mean there are no more deaths in the stars tonight?"

"There is death for someone. It's not for me, but I'll take no one with me, to put more at risk. Which is why you are not coming, Ralf."

"Oh, God, if that's all —"

I laid the reins on the chestnut's neck and it gathered itself, sidling. "We had this fight once before, Ralf, and I gave way. But not tonight. I can't force you to obey me; you are not mine now. But you are Arthur's, and your duty is to stay with him and bring him safely to the chapel. Now let me go. Which gate?"

There was a stretched pause, then he stepped back. "The south. God go with you, my dear lord."

He turned his head and called an order to the guard. The courtyard gate swung open, and crashed shut again behind my galloping horse.

There was half a moon, shadow-edged, thin silver. It lit the familiar track along the valley. The willows along the river's edge stood humped above blue shadows. The river ran fast, full with rain. The sky sparkled with stars, and brighter than any of them burned the Bear. Then moon, stars and river were blotted from sight as the chestnut, feeling my heels, stretched his great stride and carried me at his sure gallop into the blackness of the WildForest .

For the first part of the way the track went straight and smooth, and here and there through breaks in the leafage the pale moon sifted down, throwing a faint grey light to the forest floor. Roots, ribbing the pathway, rapped under the horse's hoofs. I lay low on his neck to avoid the sweeping branches.

Presently the track began to climb, gently at first, then steep and twisting as the forest ran up into the foothills. Here and there the way bent sharply to avoid crags which thrust up among the crowded trees.

Somewhere deep down on the left was the noise of a mountain stream, fed like the river with the autumn rains. Save for the horse's thudding gallop there was no sound. The trees hung still. No breeze could penetrate so far into the thick darkness. Nothing else stirred. If deer, or wolf, or fox were abroad that night, I never saw them.

The way grew steeper. The chestnut, sure-footed, breasted the rough track with heaving ribs and stride at last slackening to a heavy canter. Not far now. A gap in the boughs above let starlight through, and I could see ahead where a twist of the path took it round like a tunnel into yet thicker blackness. An owl cried, away to the left. From the right, another answered. The sounds burst in my brain like a war cry as the chestnut took the bend, and I hauled at his mouth, throwing my whole weight back on the rein. A better horseman could have stopped him in time. But not I, and I had left it just too late.

He pulled to a plunging, trampling stop, but travelling as he was his hoofs ploughed up the muddy track, and he hurtled half-sideways towards the tree which lay fallen full across the way. A pine, dry and long-dead, with its branches thrusting out pointed and rigid as the spikes of a cavalry trap. Too high and too dense to jump, even had it lain in the open moonlight and not just at the darkest bend in the track.

The place was well chosen. To one side of the track there was a steep and rocky drop forty feet to the rush of the stream; to the other a thicket of thorn and holly, too dense for a horseman to thrust through.

There was no space even to swerve. Had we gone round the corner at a gallop, the horse would have been speared on the boughs, and I myself flung headlong against their crippling spikes.

If the enemy lay hidden, expecting me to gallop hard onto the spikes, there might be a few seconds in which we could get back from the ambush and off the track into deep forest. I turned the chestnut sharply and lashed the reins down. He came round fast, rearing, scoring his side along the wall of thorns and driving the sharp end of some branch deep into my thigh. Then suddenly, as if spurred, he snorted and hurled himself forward. Under us the path broke open with a crashing of boughs. A black pit gaped.

The horse lurched, pitched half down, then went over in a thrashing of hoofs. I was flung clear over his shoulder into the space between the pit and the fallen tree. I lay for a moment half-stunned, while the horse, with a heave and a scramble, floundered out of the shallow pit and stood trembling, while two men, daggers in hand, broke out of the forest and came running.

I had been flung into the deepest of the dark shadow, and I suppose I was lying so still that for the moment I was invisible. The noise the stream made drowned most other sounds, and they may have thought I had been flung straight down into the gully. One of them ran to the edge, peering downwards, while the other pushed past the horse and came warily forward to the edge of the pit.

They had not had time to dig this deep enough, only deep enough to lame the horse and to throw me.

Now in the black darkness it acted as a kind of protection, preventing them both from jumping me at once. The one near me called out to his fellow, but the rush of water below us drowned the words. Then he took a cautious step forward past the pit towards me. I saw the faint glimmer of the weapon in his hand.

I rolled, got him by the ankle, and heaved. He yelled, pitching forward half into the hole, then twisted free, slashed sideways with his dagger, and rolled away quickly to his feet. The other threw a knife. It struck the tree behind me and fell somewhere. One weapon the less. But now they knew where I was.

They drew back beyond the pit, one to each side of the track. In the hand of one man I saw the glint of a sword, but could see nothing of the other. There was no sound but the rush of water.

At least the narrowness of the path, while it made for a good ambush, had effectively stopped them bringing up their own horses. Mine was dead lame. Their beasts must be tethered somewhere behind them in the trees. It was impossible to scramble through the fallen pine behind me; they would have caught and speared me there in seconds. Nor could I get through the wall of thorn. All that was left was the gully; if I could get down there unseen, somehow get past them and back into the open forest, perhaps even find their horses...

I moved cautiously sideways, towards the rim of the gully. I had my free hand out, feeling my way. There were bushes, and here and there saplings or young trees, rooted in the rocks. My hand met smooth bark, gripped it, tested it. I moved warily crabwise, over the edge. My eyes were still on that glimmer of metal, the sword beyond the pit. The man was still there. My groping foot slid down a sharp and muddy step, the rim of the gully. A bramble snatched at it.

So did a man's hand. He had used my own trick. He had slid quietly down the bank, flattened himself there, and waited. Now he flung his whole weight, sharply, on my foot and, caught off balance, I fell. His knife just missed me, biting deep into the bank bare inches from my face as I pitched down past him.

He had meant to send me crashing down the rocky bank, to be broken and stunned on the rocks below, where they could follow and finish me together. If he had been content with this, he might have succeeded. But his lunge with the knife shook his own balance, and besides, as he grabbed at me, instead of resisting I went with him, stamping hard downwards at the grabbing hand. My boot went into some-thing soft; he grunted with pain, then yelled something as my weight broke his grip, and, loosing whatever hold he had, he went hurtling with me down the steep side of the gully.

I had been falling the faster of the two, and I landed first, halfway down, hard up against the stem of a young pine. My attacker rolled after me in a crash of broken bushes and a shower of stones. As he hurtled against me in a flying tangle of limbs I braced myself to meet him. I flung myself over him, clamping my body hard over his, clasping his arms with both of mine and pinning him with my weight. I heard him cry out with pain. One leg was doubled under him. He lashed out with the other, and I felt a spur rake my leg through the soft leather of my boot. He fought furiously, thrashing and twisting under me like a landed fish. At any moment he would dislodge me from my purchase against the pine, and we would fall together to the gully. I struggled to hold him, and to get my dagger hand free.

The other murderer had heard us fall. He shouted something from the brink above, then I could hear him letting himself down the slope towards us. He came cautiously, but fast. Too fast. I shifted my grip on the man beneath me, forcing my full weight down to hold his arms pinned. I heard something crack; it sounded like a dead twig, but the fellow screamed. I managed to drag my right hand from under him. My fist was clamped round the dagger and the hilt had bitten into the flesh. I lifted it. Some stray glimmer of moonlight touched his eyes, a foot from mine; I could smell the fear and pain and hatred. He gave a wild heave that nearly unseated me, wrenching his head sideways from the coming blow. I reversed the dagger and struck with all the strength of the shortened blow at the exposed neck, just behind the ear.

The blow did not reach him. Something — a rock, a heavy billet of wood, hurled down from above —struck me hard on the point of the shoulder. My arm jerked out, useless, paralyzed. The dagger spun away into the blackness. The other murderer crashed down the last few feet through the bushes and rocks above me. I heard his drawn sword scrape on stone. The moon marked it as it whipped upwards to strike. I tried to wrench myself clear of my opponent, but he clung close, teeth and all, grappling like a hound, holding me there for that hacking sword to finish me.

It finished him. His companion jumped, and slashed downwards at the place where, a second before, my exposed back had been, plain in the moonlight. But I was already half free, and falling, my clothes tearing from my opponent's grasp, and my fist bloody from his teeth. It was his back that met the sword.

It drove in. I heard the metal grate on bone, then the screams covered the sound, and I was free of him and half-sliding, half-falling, towards the noise of the water.

A bush checked me, tore at me, let me through. A bough whipped me across the throat. A net of brambles ripped what was left of my clothing to ribbons. Then my hurtling body hit a boulder, checked, lay breathless and half-stunned against it for the two long moments it took to let me hear the second murderer coming after me. Then with no warning but a sudden gentle shift of earth the boulder went from under me and I fell down the last sheer drop straight to the slab of rock over which the icy water slid, racing, towards the edge of a deep pool.

If I had fallen into the pool itself I might not have been hurt. If I had struck one of the great boulders where the water dashed and wrangled, I would probably have been killed. But I fell into a shallow, a long flat stretch of rock across which the water slid no more than a span deep, before plunging on and down into the next of the forest pools. I landed on my side, half-stunned and winded. The icy rush filled my mouth, nose, eyes, weighing down my heavy clothes, dragging at my bruised limbs. I was sliding with it along the greasy rock. My hands clawed for a hold, slipped, missed, scraped with bending nails.

Beside me with a thud and splash that shook the very rock, the second murderer landed, slipped, regained his foothold in the rushing water, and for the second time swung the sword high. It caught the moonlight. There were stars behind it. A sword lying clear across the night sky, in a blaze of stars. I took my hands from the rock, and the stream rolled me over to face the sword. The water blinded me. The noise of the cascade shook my bones apart. There was a flash like a shooting star, and the sword came down.

It was like a dream that repeated itself. Once before I had sat near a fire in the forest, with the small dark hill men waiting round me in a half circle, their eyes gleaming at the edge of the firelight like the eyes of forest creatures.