The Enchanter's Forest (29 page)

Time passed. Dawn was not far off but for now it was fully dark and he had known there would be but a sliver of moon tonight; he had been watching the steady waning for these past few nights. Scarcely a moon and no light save the bright starlight; conditions were perfect.

     He drew his long knife. Its blade was honed to razor sharpness; it was not his intention to cause his victims unnecessary suffering and when he struck it would be with a sure, strong hand. They would die quickly; perhaps even before they woke.

     For a killer, he was a merciful man.

     Stealthily he crept out from under the hazel bush where he had hidden himself. One step, two, three, his feet falling so softly on the springy forest floor that even the most acute ears would not have heard a sound. Onward and upward, beginning now to climb the base of the hill where his prey had made their camp.

     A sound from his left. He froze, as still as the tree trunks on either side of him. He listened, ears straining.

     Nothing.

     He crept on. The slope was steeper now and he went more slowly. Fit as he was, even he might pant for breath if he attacked the hill too fast. In any case, the snail’s pace was better because he was less likely to put a foot where it ought not to go. Such as on to a twig, which might snap under his weight. A small sound in the daytime, when the forest was alive with noise, but now, in the silence of the night, it would be like a man shouting in an empty church.

     On, on, up the slope. He could see them now. The man and the woman lay close, her head resting on his shoulder. It was a position that spoke eloquently of trust and tenderness but the tall man was unmoved. He had trained himself long ago to remain aloof from human emotions. The child lay curled up beside her mother, tightly wrapped in a blanket. That was good, he thought dispassionately, for it would be a simple matter to tie her up in the bedding, cover her face and take her with him when he fled the scene.

     He moved closer. Earlier they had made a fire – he had seen its flames – and now he could feel the heat from its still-glowing embers. By its light he saw that they lay on the far side of the makeshift hearth.

     He studied them. The man had settled half on his back, face up to the stars, neck exposed. The woman was on her right side. The tall man stood lost in careful thought; soon his mind was made up. He would step around the fire and strike swiftly, first at the throat of the man, then through the ribs on the woman’s left side and straight into her heart. It would be just as he had hoped: they would not even wake up.

     Then he would swiftly pick up the child and set off out of the forest, running as fast as he could until, coming to the first hamlet or outlying cottage, he would check for the signs that the place was inhabited and then leave his small burden on the doorstep.

     Then he would go home.

     He drew his knife. The metal made a tiny, harsh little hiss as it emerged from its scabbard. He pulled it clear and weighed it in his hand, letting it settle until it felt like an extension of himself.

     Then he struck.

In the same instant Joanna shot up screaming like a vixen and Josse, already on his knees and rapidly pushing himself on to his feet, grasped his sword and his dagger from where he had hidden them beneath the blankets.

     Even as Josse’s fighter’s brain coolly sent instructions to his limbs, he found the time for a swift prayer:
Thank God for Joanna’s acute sensitivity, so that she knew danger was approaching and gave us the time to be prepared
. Without that forewarning, he would now be lying there with his throat cut.

     He was trying to get an idea of their assailant, peering, eyes straining, in the dim light of the fire’s last embers. A man, tall, strong, lean and smelling of the outdoors. Knife in his right hand; left hand empty. Dark, deep eyes, no expression.

     And so very dangerous; in those first few seconds, Josse realised he was facing an opponent who was at least his equal.

     He tried to thrust with his sword; his great advantage was that his main weapon was longer by far than his enemy’s knife. But the tall man had realised this too and he leapt nimbly out of Josse’s reach, coming down from his jump and in the same movement switching his knife to the other hand and bringing it down on Josse’s sword arm. Josse felt the sudden sharp pain as the blade dug into his flesh, then adrenalin took over and, howling, he straightened his left arm like a spear and aimed the knife at the man’s throat.

     The man jerked to one side and Josse’s blade caught his shoulder; the difficulty that he had in withdrawing it told him that the wound was deep. Joanna, seeing that their attacker was hurt, leapt on his back and tried to cut into his neck with her own knife, slicing off half of his right ear; with a cry of pain he flung her off. She fell heavily, her head thumping loudly against the ground, and lay still.

     There was no time to go to her. Instead Josse lunged again at the tall man, who took his hand away from his ear – pouring blood – and struck out at Josse; neither Josse’s nor Joanna’s onslaught had managed to dislodge the deadly knife from his hand. Josse kicked out with his right foot, feeling his boot make contact with something soft in the man’s crotch. Again, the assailant cried out in pain, abruptly crouching over and in on himself, cradling his genitals in his free hand.

     Josse bent to retrieve his sword, taking it in his left hand. A right-hander, still he was efficient with his left; strong enough, he prayed, to deal with a man wounded in shoulder and crotch and bleeding profusely from his ear. He launched himself on the tall man but at the last moment the man ducked down under the swinging sword and, half-crouching, ran off down the hill.

     Josse hesitated. What should he do? Pursue the attacker or follow his heart and his every instinct and go to Joanna?

     But if she is still alive, he reasoned – she is, she
is
! cried his heart – then my duty is to slay our assailant, for if he is allowed to get away he may strike again. Making himself turn his back on both Joanna and Meggie, who was now awake and rubbing her sleepy eyes, little face creased with fear and sobbing her distress, Josse plunged away down into the forest.

     He thought he could hear the tall man ahead of him. He could hear
something
  . . .

     He made himself stop.

     But what he could hear was not the right sort of noise. It just did not sound like a badly wounded man fleeing for his life.

     It sounded . . . Josse’s eyes widened in alarm. It sounded like a very large animal quietly moving through the undergrowth.

     Had whatever creature it was been attracted by the smell of blood? It was quite possible, for the deep wound that Joanna had inflicted must be pumping it out. What creature could it be? A carnivore, surely, for otherwise it would not follow the trail that promised fresh meat.

     A very large carnivore.

     A wolf? Bigger than that. A bear?
Were
there bears here? He knew the creatures were to be found down in the Pyrenees, that desolate mountain wilderness far to the south. But here in Brittany? Josse did not know.

     He moved on along the faintly marked track, trying to calm his alarmed heartbeat, seeking to keep himself concealed as best he could. The animal, if there is an animal, will go for the easier prey, he told himself. I am quite safe.

     He did his best to believe it.

     He crept forward.

     He clutched his sword in his left hand, the lighter dagger in his right; that arm, now that the white-hot heat of the fight had passed, was beginning to hurt so badly that it was all he could do not to moan with the pain. You keep quiet, he ordered himself.

     Movement ahead, sudden, unexpected: a dark shape coming in fast from the right, in the darkness nothing more than an impression of great speed and huge bulk.

     Dear God, Josse prayed, what in heaven’s name
is
that?

     He stood quite still, eyes hurting as he strained to see. In the faint starlight he could make out little but an impression of a darker shadow against the gloom; a black shape with the terrible power to strike paralysing fear into all who saw it.

     Then why, Josse thought wonderingly, am I not afraid?

     The whirlwind of emotions and the pain of his wound were making him dizzy. It was with quickly fading vision that he saw the final act.

     In his confusion he must have been unaware that he had gone on moving steadily onwards. But suddenly the tall man was only a few paces ahead, standing quite still with his back to Josse and his eyes on something that slowly rose up on the faint and twisting track before him.

     Something made of the darkness that grew and grew, upwards and outwards like a great cloud of black smoke that expands as it rises.

     Josse stepped back, but his fascinated, horrified eyes were incapable of looking away.

     The tall man had both hands up to shield his face; he stood as if nailed to the spot, perhaps transfixed by some power emanating from the
thing
that rose up high over his head. Then there was a glimmer as the light from the heavens briefly shone on something that flashed down through the air and struck at the tall man, once, twice, a third time.

     There was a heart-stopping shriek that quickly degenerated into a gurgling sob.

     Then there was nothing.

     The tall man slumped to the ground and lay crumpled like a pile of rags. Tearing his eyes away, Josse looked fearfully up at the black shape.

     It had gone.

     Somehow, in the brief moment that Josse had looked down at the tall man lying on the deep leaf litter of the forest floor, the thing had slipped away.

     It must have . . . Josse tried to think. But something, some strange force that hummed in the air all around him, arrested the thought so that he couldn’t remember what had been in his mind.

     Another thought smoothly slid into its place.

   
Joanna!

     With a cry, Josse spun round and, making himself ignore his pain, raced back the way he had come, along the narrow animal track and up the hill. Then, gasping, blood pouring down his arm and dripping off his hand, he burst into the dell beneath the birch grove.

Chapter 14

In the small room at the end of the cloister at Hawkenlye Abbey, Helewise’s mind was distracted from her duties by one persistent and overriding thought: who killed Florian of Southfrith?

     Sorely missing Josse’s stimulating presence, she tried to think how the two of them would approach this question were they together and working side by side on the problem, as they had so often done in similar cases in the past. After some thought, she decided that the first thing to attack was why he had been killed. Drawing an old scrap of vellum towards her across her table and picking up her stylus, she dipped it in the ink horn and wrote
Why was Florian killed?

     Florian had discovered bones that he claimed were Merlin’s. The tomb, which might or might not be genuine, had already made Florian a very rich man and therefore the first reason for his death must surely be robbery. She wrote down the word, putting in brackets
horse
and
bags of money
. Both horse and money were, according to Florian’s mother-in-law Melusine, missing. It was perfectly reasonable to assume that both were now in the possession of whoever had slain Florian.

     What other possibilities were there? Helewise gnawed at the end of her stylus. If robbery were not the motive, who else might want to see the back of Florian?

     A thought occurred to her. She was reluctant to accept it but then, in the absence of both Josse and Gervase, it was for the moment up to her to work on this problem on her own. Filling her stylus with ink, she wrote
The Forest Folk
, underlining it and then adding
They are disturbed by the Tomb of Merlin
.