But he clenched the thought to himself as he returned Foamfollower’s final salute. There was nothing he could say. And a moment later, the Giant and his two companions had disappeared northward between the houses.
Their footmarks filled with snow and faded from sight until Mithil Stonedown seemed to retain no record of their passing.
Gruffly Triock said to Yeurquin and Quirrel, “We also must depart. We must leave this valley while the snow holds.”
His two friends nodded without question. Their faces were empty of expression; they looked like people from whom combat had drained all other considerations—carried their short javelins as if the killing of enemies were their sole interest. From them, Triock drew a kind of serenity. He was no High Wood wielder to them, no bearer of burdens which would have bent the back of a Lord. He was only a man, fighting as best he could for the Land, without pretensions to wisdom or prophecy. This was a proper role for a Cattleherd in times of war, and he welcomed it.
Girded by the readiness of his companions, he went to the other elders and spent a short time discussing with them Mithil Stonedown’s precautions against future attacks. Then he left his home to them and went out into the snow again as if it were the duty of his life.
Flanked by Quirrel and Yeurquin, he left the village by the northward road, and crossed without stealth the stone bridge to the western side of the valley. He wanted to make good time while the snow cover lasted, so he stayed on the easiest route until he neared the end of the horn of mountains which formed the Mithil valley’s western wall. At that point, he moved off the road and started up into the foothills that clung around the tip of the horn.
He intended to skirt the peaks west and south almost as far as Doom’s Retreat, then swing northwest toward the isolated wedge of mountains which defended the South Plains from Garroting Deep. He could not take the straight march westward. In the open Plains, he would certainly encounter marauders, and when he did, he would have to flee wherever they chased him. So he chose the rugged terrain of the foothills. The higher ground would give him both a vantage from which to watch for enemies and a cover in which to hide from them.
Yet, as he plodded upward through the snow, he feared the choice he had made. In the foothills, he would need twenty days to reach those mountains beyond Doom’s Retreat; twenty days would be lost before he could begin to search for the Unfettered One. In that time, Covenant and his companions might travel all the way to Landsdrop or beyond. Then any message which the High Lord might receive would be too late; Covenant would be beyond any hand but the Gray Slayer’s.
With that dread in his heart, he began the arduous work of rounding the promontory.
He and his comrades had reached the first lee beyond the horn when the snowfall ended, late that afternoon. There he ordered a halt. Instead of running the risk of being seen—brown against the gray slush of the snow—he made camp and let the long weariness which had been his constant companion since he first began fighting lull him to sleep.
Sometime after nightfall, Yeurquin awakened him. They moved on again, chewing strips of dried meat to keep some warmth in their bones, and washing the salt from their throats with mouthfuls of the unsavory snow. In the cloud-locked darkness, they made slow progress. And every league took them farther from the hills they knew most intimately. After a tortuous and unsuccessful effort to scale one bluff slope, Triock cursed the dreary clasp of the sky and turned to descend toward easier ground nearer the Plains.
For most of the night, they traveled the lower hillsides, but when they felt dawn crouching near, they climbed again to regain their vantage. They pushed upward until they gained a high ridge from which they could see a long stretch of the way they had come. There they stopped. During the gray seepage of day into the air, they opened their smokeless graveling pots and cooked one hot meal. When they were done, they waited until the wind had obliterated all their tracks. Then they set watches, slept.
They followed this pattern for two more days—down out of the foothills at dusk, long, dark night-trek, back toward higher ground at dawn for one hot meal and sleep—and during these three days, they saw no sign of any life, human or animal, friend or foe, anywhere; they were alone in the cold gray world and the forlorn wind. Trudging as if they were half crippled by the snow, they pressed themselves through the chapped solitude toward Doom’s Retreat. Aside from the unpredictably crisp or muffled noises of their own movement, they heard nothing but the over-stressed cracklings of the ice and the scrapings of the wind, fractured in their ears by the rumpled hills.
But in the dawn of the fourth day, while they watched the wind slowly filling the footmarks of their train, they saw a dull, ugly, yellow movement cross one rib of the hills below them and come hunting upward in their direction. Triock counted ten in the pack.
“Kresh!” Yeurquin spat under his breath.
Quirrel nodded. “And hunting us. It must be that they passed downwind of us during the night.”
Triock shivered. The fearsome yellow wolves were not familiar to the people of the South Plains; until the last few years, the kresh had lived primarily in the regions north of Ra, foraging into the North Plains when they could not get Ranyhyn-flesh. And many thousands of them had been slain in the great battle of Doom’s Retreat. Yet they soon replenished their numbers, and now scavenged in every part of the Land where the hand of the Lords no longer held sway. Triock had never had to fight kresh, but he had seen what they could do. A year ago, one huge pack had annihilated the whole population of Gleam Stonedown, in the crystal hills near the joining of the Black and Mithil rivers; and when Triock had walked through the deserted village, he had found nothing but rent clothes and splinters of bone.
“Melenkurion!” he breathed as he gauged the speed of the yellow wolves. “We must climb swiftly.”
As his companions slung their packs, he searched the terrain ahead for an escape or refuge. But despite their roughness, the hills and slopes showed nothing which the wolves might find impassable; and Triock knew of no defensible caves or valleys this far from Mithil Stonedown.
He turned upward. With Quirrel and Yeurquin behind him, he started along a ridge of foothills toward the mountains.
In the lee of the ridge, the snow was not thick. They made good speed as they climbed and scrambled toward the nearest mountain flank. But it rose sheerly out of the hillslope ahead, preventing escape in that direction. When the western valley beside the ridge rose up toward the mountain, Triock swung to the right and ran downward, traversed the valley, lunged through the piled snow toward the higher ground on the far side.
Before he and his companions reached the top, the leading kresh crested the ridge behind them and gave out a ferocious howl. The sound hit Triock between his shoulder blades like the flick of a flail. He stopped, whirled to see the wolves rushing like yellow death along the ridge hardly five hundred yards from him.
The sight made the skin of his scalp crawl, and his cold-stiff cheeks twitched as if he were trying to bare his teeth in fear. Without a word, he turned and attacked the climb again, threw himself through the snow until his pulse pounded and he seemed to be surrounded by his own gasping.
When he gained the ridge top, he paused long enough to steady his gaze, then scanned the terrain ahead. Beyond this rib of the foothills, all the ground in a wide half-circle reaching to the very edge of the mountains fell steeply away into a deep valley. The valley was roughly conical in shape, open to the plains only through a sheer ravine on its north side. It offered no hope to Triock’s searching eyes. But clinging to the mountain edge beyond a narrow ledge along the lip of the valley was a broken pile of boulders, the remains of an old rockfall. Triock’s attention leaped to see if the boulders could be reached along the ledge.
“Go!” Quirrel muttered urgently. “I will hold them here.”
“Two javelins and one sword,” Triock panted in response. “Then they will outweigh us seven to two. I prefer you alive.” Pointing, he said, “We must cr
oss that ledge to the rocks. There we can strike at the kresh from above. Come.”
He started forward again, driving his tired legs as fast as he could, and Quirrel and Yeurquin followed on his heels. When they reached the rough ground where the ridge blended into the cliff, they clambered through it toward the ledge.
At the ledge, Triock hesitated. The lip of the valley was packed in snow, and he could not tell how much solid rock was hidden under it. But the kresh were howling up the hill behind him; he had no time to scrape the snow clear. Gritting his teeth, he pressed himself against the cliff and started outward.
His feet felt the slickness of the ledge. Ice covered the rock under the snow. But he had become accustomed to ice in the course of this preternatural winter. He moved with small, unabrupt steps, did not let himself slip. In moments, Quirrel and Yeurquin were on the ledge as well, and he was halfway to his destination.
Suddenly a muffled boom like the snapping of old bones echoed off the cliff. The ledge jerked. Triock scrambled for handholds in the rock, and found none. He and his comrades were too far from safety at either end of the ledge.
An instant later, it fell under their weight. Plunging like stones in an avalanche, they tumbled helplessly down the steep side of the valley.
Triock tucked his head and knees together and rolled as best he could. The snow protected him from the impacts of the fall, but it also gave way under him, prevented him from stopping or slowing himself. He could do nothing but hug himself and fall. Dislodged by the collapse of the ledge, more snow slid into the valley with him, adding its weight to his momentum as if it were hurling him at the bottom. In wild vertigo, he lost all sense of how far he had fallen or how far he was from the bottom. When he hit level ground, the force of the jolt slammed his breath away, left him stunned while snow piled over him.
For a time, he lay smothered under the snow, but as the dizziness relaxed in his head, he began to recover. He thrust himself to his hands and knees. Gasping he fought the darkness which swarmed his sight like clouds of bats rushing at his face. “Quirrel!” he croaked. “Yeurquin!”
With an effort, he made out Quirrel’s legs protruding from the snow a short distance away. Beyond her, Yeurquin lay on his back. A bloody gash on his temple marred the blank pallor of his face. Neither of them moved.
Abruptly Triock heard the scrabbling of claws. A savage howl like an anthem of victory snatched his gaze away from Quirrel and Yeurquin, made him look up toward the slope of the valley.
The kresh were charging furiously down toward him. They had chosen a shallower and less snowbound part of the ridge side, and were racing with rapacious abandon toward their fallen prey. Their leader was hardly a dozen yards from Triock.
He moved instantly. His fighting experience took over, and he reacted without thought or hesitation. Snatching at his sword, he heaved erect, presented himself as a standing target to the first wolf. Fangs bared, red eyes blazing, it leaped for his throat. He ducked under it, twisted, and wrenched his sword into its belly.
It sailed past him and crashed into the snow, lay still as if it were impaled on the red trail of its blood. But its momentum had torn his sword from his cold hand.
He had no chance to retrieve his weapon. Already the next wolf was gathering to spring at him.
He dove out from under its leap, rolled heels over head, snapped to his feet holding his lomillialor rod in his hands.
The rod was not made to be a weapon; its shapers in the Loresraat had wrought that piece of High Wood for other purposes. But its power could be made to burn, and Triock had no other defense. Crying the invocation in a curious tongue understood only by the lillianrill, he swung the High Wood over his head and chopped it down on the skull of the nearest wolf.
At the impact, the rod burst into flame like a pitch-soaked brand, and all the wolf’s fur caught fire as swiftly as tinder.
The flame of the rod lapsed immediately, but Triock shouted to it and hacked at a kresh bounding at his chest. Again the power flared. The wolf fell dead in screaming flames.
Another and another Triock slew. But each blast, each unwonted exertion of the High Wood’s might, drained his strength. With four kresh sizzling in the snow around him, his breath came in ragged heaves, gaps of exhaustion veered across his sight, and fatigue clogged his limbs like iron fetters.
The five remaining wolves circled him viciously.
He could not face them all at once. Their yellow fur bristled in violent smears across his sight; their red and horrid eyes flashed at him above their wet chops and imminent fangs. For an instant, his fighting instincts faltered.
Then a weight of compact fury struck him from behind, slammed him face down in the trampled snow. The force of the blow stunned him, and the weight on his back pinned him. He could do nothing but hunch his shoulders against the rending poised over the back of his neck. But the weight did not move. It lay as inert as death across his shoulder blades.
His fingers still clutched the lomillialor.
With a convulsive heave, he rolled to one side, tipped the heavy fur off him. It smeared him with blood—blood that ran, still pulsing, from the javelin which pierced it just behind its foreleg.
Another javelined kresh lay a few paces away.
The last three wolves dodged and feinted around Quirrel. She stood over Yeurquin, whirling her sword and cursing.
Triock lurched to his feet.
At the same time, Yeurquin moved, struggled to get his legs under him. Despite the wound on his temple, his hands pulled instinctively at his sword.
The sight of him made the wolves hesitate.
In that instant, Triock snatched a javelin from the nearest corpse and hurled it with the strength of triumph into the ribs of another kresh.
Yeurquin was unsteady on his feet; but with one lumbering hack of his sword, he managed to disable a wolf. It lurched away from him on three legs, but he caught up with it and cleft its skull.
The last kresh was already in full flight. It did not run yipping, with its tail between its legs, like a thrashed cur; it shot straight toward the narrow outlet of the valley as if it knew where allies were and intended to summon them.
“Quirrel!” Triock gasped.
She moved instantly. Ripping her javelin free of the nearest wolf, she balanced the short shaft across her palm, took three quick steps, and lofted it after the running kresh. The javelin arched so high that Triock feared it would fall short, then plunged sharply downward and caught the wolf in the back. The beast collapsed in a rolling heap, flopped several times across the snow, throwing blood in all directions, quivered, and lay still.
Triock realized dimly that he was breathing in rough sobs. He was so spent that he could hardly retain his grip on the lomillialor. When Quirrel came over to him, he put his arms around her, as much to gain strength from her as to express his gratitude and comradeship. She returned the clasp briefly, as if his gesture embarrassed her. Then they moved toward Yeurquin.
Mutely they inspected and tended Yeurquin’s wound. Under other circumstances, Triock would not have considered the hurt dangerous; it was clean and shallow, and the bone was unharmed. But Yeurquin still needed time to rest and heal—and Triock had no time. The plight of his message was now more urgent than ever.
He said nothing about this. While Quirrel cooked a meal, he retrieved their weapons, then buried all the kresh and the blood of battle under mounds of gray snow. This would not disguise what had happened from any close inspection, but Triock hoped that a chance enemy passing along the rim of the valley would not be attracted to look closer.
When he was done, he ate slowly, gathering his strength, and his eyes jumped around the valley as if he expected ur-viles or worse to rise up suddenly from the ground against him. But then his mouth locked into its habitual dour lines. He made no concessions to Yeurquin’s injury; he told his companions flatly that he had decided to leave the foothills and risk cutting straight west toward the mountains where he hoped to find the Unf
ettered One. For such a risk, the only possibility of success lay in speed.
With their supplies repacked and their weapons cleaned, they left the valley through its narrow northward outlet at a lope.
They traveled during the day now for the sake of speed. Half dragging Yeurquin behind them, Triock and Quirrel trotted doggedly due west, across the cold-blasted flatland toward the eastmost outcropping of the mountains. As they moved, Triock prayed for snow to cover their trail.
By the end of the next day, they caught their first glimpses of the great storm which brooded for more than a score of leagues in every direction over the approaches to Doom’s Retreat.
North of that defile through the mountains, the parched ancient heat of the Southron Wastes met the Gray Slayer’s winter, and the result was an immense storm, rotating against the mountain walls which blocked it on the south and west. Its outer edges concealed the forces which raged within, but even from the distance of a day’s hard traveling, Triock caught hints of hurricane conditions: cycling winds that ripped along the ground as if they meant to lay bare the bones of the earth; snow as thick as night; gelid air cold enough to freeze blood in the warmest places of the heart.
It lay directly across his path.
Yet he led Quirrel and Yeurquin toward it for another day, hurried in the direction of the storm’s core until its outer winds were tugging at his garments, and its first snows were packing wetly against his windward side. Yeurquin was in grim condition—blood oozed like exhaustion through the overstrained scabs of his wound, and the tough fiber of his stamina was frayed and loosened like a breaking rope. But Triock did not turn aside. He could not attempt to skirt the storm, could not swing north toward the middle of the South Plains to go around. During the first night after the battle with the kresh, he had seen watch fires northeast of him. They were following him. He had studied them the next night, and had perceived that they were moving straight toward him, gaining ground at an alarming rate.