Haral’s group made good progress. It helped, of course, that several of the men had travelled this way before, and that the trail was well marked. He kept Nilsson’s injunction at the forefront of his mind however. He didn’t like the smell of this so-called Lord Rannick with his claims to have the power like their old lord. That he’d doubt until he’d seen it for himself, but he had no doubts that the man was treacherous and self-seeking and was up to no good, and that he would undoubtedly have something in mind for the group as it moved further into the forest.
Inherit our master’s mantle, he sneered inwardly. You’ll need more than fancy words if you’re looking to inherit anything other than a shroud, meddling with us. Half a chance and I, for one, will gladly cut your throat for the trouble you’ve already caused.
And, yet, it couldn’t be denied that there was some-thing familiar about his manner, his attitude…
And Nilsson was no man’s fool. He wouldn’t be taken in lightly by some market trickster. And he’d been closer than many to the Lord. And to Rannick.
Suppose this Rannick could use the power? He was obviously a healer of some skill, judging by what he’d done for Meirach, and the Lord had been a healer when it suited him. It was an intriguing thought, and, like Nilsson, Haral found it fanning a glow into embers that he had thought long dead. With someone like that in charge you could do well for yourself. He savoured again the near-forgotten feeling of riding forth, tall in the saddle and looking down at a population that knew that your every word was law and that your arm could punish faults summarily and without appeal.
Good days. It would be truly splendid to have them back again. Provided you didn’t get involved with internal army politics and did as you were told, almost anything you wanted was available for the taking. Life had been good indeed.
With a snort he dismissed his daydream. They were days that were gone for ever. Rannick no more had the power than he did. That kind of thing wasn’t given to ordinary folk. It was given to those who already had power and wealth. That was the way of things. All that lay ahead of him and the others now was more of what they had been doing for the past years: wandering, stealing, acting as bodyguards for some petty warlord here, fighting as mercenaries for some inconsequential lord there, never knowing where the next night’s bed might be, or when they might next eat. And always looking over their shoulders for those who were pursuing them. It was a bitter prospect and one that he did not choose to dwell on whenever it came to mind.
To hell with Rannick and the disturbance he’d caused. He looked around. The rain was falling relentlessly, and cold water which had been seeping around the collar of his leather cape for some time was now beginning to seep through the seams.
It helped him turn his attention back to matters of the moment. Whatever, if anything, was amiss in this forest, it would be foolish to spend too much time in idle musing about either the past or the future.
Though they had made good progress they were still some way from the place where they had camped previously, and there was little point in forcing the pace in an attempt to reach it. He called a halt in a small clearing and within minutes tents had been pitched and fires coaxed into smoky life.
Despite Nilsson’s orders, there was some resistance to the performance of sentry duty. Haral quelled it scornfully with, ‘You want this Rannick to cut your throat while you’re snoring and then go back and take charge of all that loot, claiming to be the Lord returned, and the only possible protection against the curse of the ancient forest?’
The sentries took up their positions as the camp gradually fell silent.
Haral performed a brief circuit of them before he too retreated to his tent.
‘I don’t know what this Rannick’s up to,’ he told them. ‘But it’s for his good, not ours. He’s playing for some big prize of his own and I don’t think he’ll scruple to kill a few of us if it’ll help him, especially as we’ve defied him. He’s not stupid and this is his country, so keep out of sight, keep your backs covered and keep your eyes and ears open.’
Now!
It was released again. A wordless command had given it his unfettered will. Find, kill…
The thought released old savours into its mouth.
Good…
It followed the trail through the damp, lush, rain-perfumed darkness. A trail, faint at first and then glaringly vivid, marked by that old, familiar scent.
There was no taint of the old watchful enemy in it but reflexes, ancient in its breed even before it had been fashioned thus, made its every movement silent. Each footstep tested before being taken. Each slight noise a cause for deep stillness and waiting.
It felt lesser creatures sensing its passage and falling fearfully silent, though a few scurried away frantically, luring part of its deeper nature after them. But it could not be deflected. A special prey was to be sought tonight. The old prey. The best prey.
And it was there. Ahead. Mingling with the scent of fire and bruised foliage and trampled earth.
Good…
Caution, though. True enemies they might not be, but dangerous and subtle they were. Watch. Listen. Scent the air.
Were there, after all, tangling nets and sharp points silent all about? Was there that hint, acrid in the rich dampness, of fearful, expectant watching… waiting?
No. All was as it had been told. All was stillness and forest, save for the silent, sleeping lairs that did not belong. And the fire…
And…
There, alone. Crouching in the shelter of a tree, head nodding, lulled by the steady drip of rainwater falling from the branches above.
Down, low. Soft and silent through the damp grasses.
Nearer.
Nearer.
Drip, drip.
Then an ancient malevolence wilfully bred into it. The need for prey to be alive.
And screaming.
Drip, drip.
It growled. Soft, but low and frightful.
The prey jerked awake at the ominous rumble, eyes bewildered. They looked around. And then forward. Slowly they focused. And widened. The mouth opened, a black void in the firelit night.
And the scream began. Drawing it forward faster and faster as its intensity grew…
Claws extended…
Jaws foam-flecked…
Farnor jerked bolt upright in his bed, eyes wide and mouth gaping in imitation of the face that had just rushed towards him, growing larger and larger until it had filled his entire vision. His mouth ran with saliva and his skin bristled with unholy desires. He spat out the imagined contents of his mouth with desperate and disgusting urgency, then he plunged forward and buried his face in the blankets, wiping his still sodden mouth to and fro frantically until it was dry and his lips were raw and matted with hairs.
Slowly he swung upright, then crashed back down on to his pillow, his breath coming in laboured gasps. His hand shook violently as he reached out to strike the small lantern by his bed.
After two clattering attempts he succeeded, and it bloomed gently into life.
Its welcome and familiar light filled his bedroom and began to melt away the vivid horror of the last few seconds. Began to melt it away until it had only the intensity of a nightmare.
A nightmare. His breathing began to ease. He hadn’t had a nightmare in years.
This was a nightmare, wasn’t it?
But it was only a flimsy token of resistance against the grim certainty that stood stark in his mind.
It had not been a nightmare. It had been the crea-ture. He had been with it. He had been it. Been it as it stalked the damp forest in search of the prey it had been sent to kill. He had felt its every subtle, muscular movement, its formidable power, its every desire. He shuddered and wrapped his arms about himself at the memory.
He felt sick. He wanted to call out to his parents as he had when he had been a child. Wanted the solidity of their gentle reassurance and smiling understanding to dismiss into nothingness the tortured vapours that had risen to assail him in his defenceless sleep. Wanted them to turn his room and his bed back again into the haven that it really was.
But he could not. Despite the childish clamour ris-ing from within him, he knew it was not possible. Whatever he was now he was no longer that child. Those old reassurances had been a part of his journey to here and they belonged to another time. Now his cry would not be that of their child, it would be that of a man. And alarm and concern would tinge any reassurance.
And questions. Questions which he would not be able to answer, or be able to answer only with more lies.
There must be no more lies. That he knew now. So there must be silence.
He gazed at the beamed ceiling with its well-mapped cracks and stains and shadows. His breathing had eased and, somewhat to his surprise, he found his quaking spirit bolstered by a resolve. An unclear resolve, admittedly, but a resolve nonetheless. One framed through the years, had he known it, by the love that had given him those parental reassurances and made his cracked and twisted ceiling – and, indeed, everything about him – into an impregnable fortress capable of withstanding all ills. Until such time as he should learn that only he could be his own fortress.
He felt suddenly alone. He had his parents and Gryss and, unexpectedly, Marna, who would be a truly staunch ally, he knew. But still he was alone. Yet even as he realized this, so his fear lessened. Somehow, this last… contact?… vision?… by its very intensity had made him understand, and to some extent perhaps even accept, that he was not some inadvertent spectator of a strange and unfolding happening, but a player in it, whether he willed it or no.
It was like going to Gryss with the toothache, he supposed. Thinking about it was worse than being there… usually. The ‘usually’ made him frown mockingly to himself; toothache was perhaps a bad analogy.
He sat up, needlessly wiped his mouth again and then took a drink from the beaker of water that stood next to the lantern. The pool of saliva glistening on his blanket caught his eye. He grimaced. It was disgusting. He shuddered as he remembered the sensation almost of drowning as he had woken to find his mouth so gorged.
Then more prosaic considerations intervened and, without thinking what he was doing, he threw some water on the viscous mass. It was like a purifying blessing. Then he folded the blanket around it and rubbed it vigorously until it became just a damp patch. It would soon dry. He felt cleaner.
He doused the lantern and lay back. Plans formed in his mind. He would seek out Gryss tomorrow and tell him what had happened. He would suggest that Gryss and he visit the castle on some pretext – perhaps to look at the sick, perhaps to see if they needed supplies – and there they would look and listen.
And Marna? Should she be told?
Yes, he decided. Marna must know. Marna had somehow become a part of this.
As he drifted into sleep, he reviewed the events of his contact with the creature so he could order his telling for Gryss in the morning. He went over it several times, though each time it became more fragmented as intervals of sleep intervened.
Then, at the end, a faint voice inside him whispered softly to him that one day he would have to face this creature. And that he would have to kill it, or be killed by it.
It was a fearful thought, but it was faint and distant and had no power to disturb the ponderous, rolling momentum of his need for rest.
Farnor slept.
There was uproar in the camp.
‘What the devil’s going on?’ Haral thundered as he emerged from his tent, a torch in one hand and a sword in the other. He kicked a nearby figure. ‘Get that fire built up, and fast.’ There was no protest at the blow.
Other figures were tumbling from the circled tents.
‘Guard the perimeter!’ Haral bellowed.
A sentry ran over to him. He was wide-eyed and trembling, and his voice was almost hysterical. ‘It grabbed him. Just appeared and grabbed him. I’ve never seen anything like it…’
Haral threw his torch to someone and, seizing the front of the sentry’s coat, pulled the man up on to his toes. ‘Get a hold of yourself, Bryn. What grabbed who?’ he demanded angrily.
‘Over there,’ the man gasped. ‘Mirek. It grabbed Mirek. Dragged him off. Into the trees there. He was screaming.’
Haral’s face darkened and he pushed the man ur-gently in the direction he was pointing. They ran across the small clearing.
‘He was here,’ Bryn said. ‘Leaning against this tree. Then this… thing… appeared.’ His hands reached up as if to cover his ears. ‘He started screaming. And this thing picked him up like he was some kid’s toy and dragged him off… over there.
There were several men with them now, some with torches, some with swords and axes. They were all talking at once.
‘Shut up!’ Haral shouted as he moved in the direc-tion that Bryn had indicated. The sentry caught his arm. ‘No, Haral,’ he said. ‘It’s no use. He’s finished.’ He began to stammer. ‘He didn’t scream long after it’d taken him into the trees.’
Haral looked at him, his face a mixture of anger and alarm.
‘And it was big. Very big,’ Bryn went on, still grip-ping his arm. ‘You can’t go after it. Not at night.’
Haral stared into the darkness and then back at Bryn. The man was frightened, but he was no coward and he would not have stood idly by while a friend was killed. He glanced around at the growing crowd around him. ‘I told you to secure the perimeter,’ he said menacingly.
‘Against what?’ someone said.
Haral sent him staggering backwards with a single blow. The bulk of the crowd scattered to do Haral’s bidding.
Some of his anger thus released, Haral’s thoughts began to quieten. ‘What the devil was it, Bryn?’ he asked, tugging his arm free. ‘And what happened?’
The man gesticulated vaguely. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘We’d set up so we could see one another. But I didn’t see… it… coming. It must have come low through that undergrowth there, stalking on its belly… until…’ His voice faded.
‘Until?’ Haral prompted.
‘Until Mirek saw it,’ Bryn went on, licking his lips. ‘Then he screamed and…’ His arms shot forward. ‘It seemed to rise up for ever out of the ground.’ He made a grabbing movement with his clawed hands. ‘It was so fast.’ His hands twitched towards his ears again as if to cover them. ‘And he was screaming. Screaming when it grabbed him. Screaming when it dragged him off into the trees. Then it went quiet.’ He looked at Haral, his face drawn, and asked him his own question. ‘What in hell’s name was it?’ he said hoarsely.
Haral put a steadying hand on his shoulder. ‘You saw it,’ he said, bleakly. ‘How big was it? What did it look like? A dog? A bear? A boar, maybe? What?’
Bryn shook his head and held out his hand at waist height. ‘Like a big dog… probably,’ he said after a moment. He hesitated, frowning. ‘But like a cat, too, the way it moved. And it was strong. Very strong. It didn’t even falter when it picked Mirek up. Just like he was no weight at all. And he wasn’t little, was he?’
‘Is that all you saw?’
‘It was over too quickly, Haral. I only got a fleeting glimpse. A movement, then the screaming, then…’ Bryn grimaced. ‘I saw its teeth, though. Jaws like a mantrap.’
Haral peered into the darkness again as if still con-templating pursuing the creature. Bryn shook his head.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Believe me. Even if you manage to find it, it’ll be long too late for Mirek and it’ll kill you before you can raise your sword arm.’
‘What the devil kind of a creature could have done that?’ Haral muttered, half to himself.
‘The same as killed that horse,’ Bryn replied. ‘If anyone still wants to sleep, I think the rest of us had best double our guard and close in so we’re all visible.’
But no one wanted anything but vengeance and the recovery of Mirek when the initial turmoil and alarm had died down.
Haral struggled to beat down the anger that was rapidly gathering momentum. ‘No,’ he shouted. ‘Not in the dark. Whatever this thing is, it’s big, it’s strong, it hunts at night, it’s on its own territory and it’s not frightened of people. You want to go against it, you go on your own.’
There was some argument but, in the end, by a combination of reason and force of personality, Haral had his way.
‘As soon as the light breaks we’ll go, but not before,’ he said.
The rest of the night was eerie and fretful with the sound of restless sleepers and muttered debates as a double guard prowled the clearing.
Haral sat by the camp fire, his mood growing darker and more ominous as if in opposition to the approach-ing light of the dawn. One of the men snatched like a sparrow by a hawk. Battle chance was bad enough: a stray arrow, an unlucky sword stroke, a missed footing; but this was peculiarly unsupportable. His men as prey for some animal!
Something would die for it. Unafraid of people this creature might well be. But that was now. Tomorrow it would be a wiser animal by far before they killed it. And kill it they would, no matter how strong and fast it was.