The Moon of Gomrath (8 page)

The farm-house hid the yard in shadow. Colin listened, but there was now no sound. He peered – and could not choke the cry that leapt in his throat. The
roof's shadow was a straight line along the bottom of the shippon wall across the yard, and above this line was the shadow of a pair of antlers, the curved, proud antlers of a stag.

At the noise the shadow moved and was lost. Pad, pad, pad. The night was silent once the footsteps had died away.

T
he next morning Susan appeared to be in no way the worse for all that had happened to her. She looked well and felt well. But Bess insisted on her staying in bed, and the doctor was called. She was quite put out when the doctor said he could find nothing wrong with Susan.

Days passed. The children spent most of the time discussing what each of them had seen and done. Susan found that she was rapidly forgetting what had happened to her between the fall into the quarry and her swallowing of the Mothan. It
was
like a dream; clear and more real than anything else at first, but soon lost under the more tangible flood of waking impressions. She could add little to the brief tale she had told within minutes of her return.

She was more concerned over Colin's experiences with the Brollachan, and though he gave her only an outline of what had happened, his story broke her sleep for several nights.

Colin went into more detail when trying to describe what he had seen in the sky after he had pulled Susan from the window, but he found it beyond him. The clearest picture he could give was to liken the riders and their hounds to the figures in the star-maps in an old encyclopaedia at home, where the stars of the constellations formed part of the outline drawn by an artist to show that the kite of Orion was really three-quarters of a giant, and the W of Cassiopeia was a woman sitting in a chair. But none of this matched Susan's knowledge of the riders. To her, Celemon had been a normal person, as solid in her state of existence then as Colin was to her now. She could not grasp the rest.

And neither of them could make anything of the footsteps Colin had heard, nor did Gowther help when they asked him if there were any deer on the Edge.

“Why, no,” he said. “Theer used to be some at Alderley Park in Lord Stanley's time, but they went years ago.”

Yet what excited Susan more than anything else was Colin's finding of the old, straight track, and his journey along it to the Mothan. And when they climbed up from the Holywell late one day, and saw the Beacon mound dark in starlight above them, Susan could not pass it by.

They had been to Fundindelve at the request of Albanac to find out what Atlendor had been able to do
with Susan's bracelet. It was a short answer: he had done nothing: the power was not his. Their visit had dragged into a prolonged argument about whether Susan should go north with Atlendor, and always the talk had kept swinging round from the elves to the Brollachan, both being at the front of Albanac's worries.

“For,” he had said, “I do not like to leave, and the Brollachan still loose. It is well away, but we must find it, and just now there is no finger of a road to its hiding-place. Yet soon the lios-alfar must ride, and I am pledged to ride with them. That is not a choice I am wanting to make.”

It had been a tiring and inconclusive discussion. But now there was the Beacon.

“Let's go up,” said Susan.

“All right,” said Colin. “There's not much to look at, though.”

“I know. But I'd like to watch the moon rise – I suppose there's no chance of seeing the track, but I want to be there, so that I'll know how you felt; if that doesn't sound silly.”

“Wait a minute,” said Colin. “What about Bess and Gowther? It's late already, and it'll be another half-hour, I'd say, before the moon rises.”

“They know where we are,” said Susan over her
shoulder. “And I don't think Gowther'll be bothered. Come on!”

Colin followed Susan up the bare slope of the Beacon, and they sat on the stone blocks at the top. He pointed out the line of the track as accurately as he could remember it. Then it was a matter of waiting for the moon, and before long the children were both bored and cold.

“Have you got a match with you?” said Susan.

“No, I don't think so.”

“Well, have a look.”

Colin turned out his pockets, and at the bottom of the fluff, crumbs, and balls of silver paper he found one grubby matchstick.

“Do you think it's safe to light a fire?” said Colin.

“It should be. There aren't any trees here, and this sand will stop it from spreading.”

The children gathered kindling of rowan twigs, and among the trees at the bottom of the hill they found a naked, long-fallen pine, as smooth as bone.

“Don't build it too dense,” said Susan, “or it won't start.”

From match to twig to branch the light grew, until the pine wood spurted fire. The flames leapt high, and within seconds the whole pile roared. Colin and Susan threw
the wood they had gathered on to the flames, but the more they threw, the faster the wood burnt.

“Steady,” said Colin. “It'll get out of control if we don't watch it. There's too much resin in the wood.”

But Susan was carried away by the urgency of the fire. She ran down to the pine tree, and began to pull on a heavier branch.

“Here, come and give me a hand, Colin! This'll make it really go!”

“No!” Colin's voice was suddenly tense. “Don't put any more on. There's something wrong. I'm cold.”

“It's only the wind,” said Susan. “Oh, do hurry! There'll be nothing left!”

She swung all her weight on the branch, and stumbled as it broke from the trunk. Then she started to drag the branch backwards up the hill. Colin ran to her, and caught hold of her arm.

“Sue! Can't you feel it? It's not giving out any heat!”

“Who now brings fire to the mound at the Eve of Gomrath?” said a cold, thin voice behind them.

Colin and Susan turned.

The flames were a scarlet curtain between hill and sky, and within them, and part of them, were three men. At first their tall shapes and haggard faces danced and merged with the blazing pine branches, and were as
unstable as any picture that the mind sees in the shadows of a fire: but even while the children looked, they became more solid, rounded, and independent of the flames through which they stared. Then they were real, and terrible.

They were dressed all in red: red were their tunics, and red their cloaks: red their eyes, and red their long manes of hair bound back with circlets of red gold; three red shields on their backs, and three red spears in their hands; three red horses under them, and red was the harness. Red were they all, weapons and clothing and hair, both horses and men.

“Who— who are you?” whispered Colin. “What do you want?”

The middle horseman stood in his saddle, and raising a glowing spear above his head.

“Lo, my son, great the news! Wakeful are the steeds we ride, the steeds from the ancient mound. Wakeful are we, the Horsemen of Donn, Einheriar of the Herlathing. Lo, my son!”

And he threw his spear high in the air. It flashed four times, and he caught it and brandished it in front of him. Then the three horsemen rose slowly out of the fire, and the flames splashed from them to the ground like red mercury. They loomed black against the glare of the
hilltop, but ragged beards of light still played along the heads of their spears.

“Run,” said Colin to Susan.

But they were not half-way to the trees before there was a drumming of hoofs, a flutter of cloaks, and Colin and Susan were hooked off their feet by steel-sinewed arms and thrown across the necks of horses that hurled themselves through the night as though world's ruin were at their heels.

When the silver bracelet had been given to Susan by Angharad Goldenhand, she had been told that, even though she did not know the secret of its power, it would not fail her in great need. So now, when through the hammering of blood in her head and the thunder of hoofs close by her ears she gradually pulled her wits together and saw the glint of the metal in the rising moon, Susan began to flog both horse and rider with the arm that held the bracelet. But it had no effect. The rider grasped her wrist, and looked at the bracelet dispassionately: then he lifted her with one hand and set her in front of him astride the horse. He did not fear to lose her, for such was their speed that Susan clung to the mane with both hands, and gave thought neither to escape nor to further blows.

Southward from the Beacon they went, by Windmill
wood and Bent's wood, past Higher House and Jenkins Hey, two miles through the night down the long back of the Edge. Then they came out upon wide parkland, and before them stood a mound, and on its top was a close group of pines.

The horsemen drew rein, and the two holding Colin and Susan came abreast of the leader. The night was suddenly still. Sheets and pennons of mist lay in the air, and the mound rose darkly through them.

The leader moved forward to the foot of the mound, raised his spear, and cast it up into the trees. As it sped it kindled from the flames that ran along the edges of the blade, and it glanced off the trunk of the nearest pine and swooped back into the red hand that had sent it.

The flames on the shaft died. But the trees were now ablaze. The fire roared and towered as it had done at the Beacon, and again there was no heat, nor did it appear to consume the trees. The voice of the rider was a sword through the deep cadence of the flames.

“Wakeful are the sons of Argatron! Wakeful Ulmrig, Ulmor, Ulmbeg! Ride, Einheriar of the Herlathing!”

A breeze stirred the mist into dancing ribbons, and the flames trembled and it seemed that there was movement within them, and voices. “We ride! We ride!” And out of the fire came three men.

Their cloaks were white, fastened with clasps of gold, and a whip was in the hand of each. Their hair was yellow, tight curled as a ram's head, and their horses white as the first snow of winter on the black mountain of the lean north wind.

As soon as they appeared, the red riders turned about and away again into the night. Colin, pinned across the neck of the last horse, glimpsed white cloaks falling into line behind.

It was a short ride, not half a mile through park and wood to Fernhill, five stark pines on its crest. Again the spear flew, again the trees blazed, and the voice called.

“Wakeful the son of Dunarth, north-king, mound-king! Wakeful is Fiorn in his hill! Ride, Einheriar of the Herlathing!”

“I ride! I ride!”

A long figure came from the trees. His face was stern, heavy-browed, his beard plaited, two-forked, his mane black, awful, majestic. He wore a tunic of coarse hair without any cloak, and a round shield with five gold circles on it, and rivets of white bronze, hung from his neck. In his hand was an iron flail, having seven chains, triple-twisted, three-edged, with seven spiked knobs at the end of every chain. His horse was black, and golden-maned.

Now down they rode, the red and the white and the wild king, over Monks' Heath, a mile to the loneliness of Sodger's Hump – the Soldier's Hump – with its ring of pines, where strange, pale lights are said to move among the trees on certain nights of winter. But now the light was one and red.

“Wakeful is Fallowman son of Melimbor! Wakeful is Bagda son of Toll! Ride, Einheriar of the Herlathing!”

“We ride! We ride!”

Round heads of black hair they had, the same length at neck and brow, and their eyes gleamed darkness. They wore long-hooded, black cowls, and carried black, wide-grooved swords, well balanced for the stroke. The horses were black, even to the tongues.

Wood and valley and stream swept by, field and hedge and lane, by Capesthorne and Whisterfield, three miles and more, Windyharbour, Withington, Welltrough, and there stood Broad Hill, the Tunsted of old, and its pines flared red under the spear.

“Wakeful are the sons of Ormar! Wakeful Maedoc, Midhir, Mathramil! Ride, Einheriar of the Herlathing!”

“We ride! We ride!”

Their cloaks were blue as rain-washed sky, their yellow manes spread wide upon their shoulders: five-barbed javelins in their hands, and their silver shields
with fifty knobs of burnt gold on each, and the bosses of precious stones. They shone in the night as if they were the sun's rays. The horses' hoofs were polished brass and their hides like cloth of gold.

Now the Einheriar were complete. They turned towards Alderley and the Beacon hill, and for a long time after the tracks of the horses endured in the turf and on the rocks with the fury of the riding, and the air behind them was all aglow with little sparks.

C
olin thought he was going to die. Cool waves rolled over him, shutting him off from the singing pain in his head and the one bruise of body. He could no longer cry out against the pain, for his nerves and muscles seemed to have been shaken out of all co-ordination, and he gasped as silently as a fish.

For Susan this ride to the Beacon was less hard, but her mind was dazed by the pace and shock, until the finger of the burning shone through the trees.

The riders approached the Beacon without any slackening of speed, and when they reached it they swung in a circle about the mound, and pulled their horses to a skidding halt. The leader rose slowly to the top of the mound and into the fire. He stretched his spear downwards and touched the ground with its point, and Susan had her wish. The old, straight track flowed from the spear like a band of molten steel from a furnace. But now it was not moon-silvered, as Colin had seen it,
but a tumbling river of red flame-curls which darted through the wood and beyond sight.