* * * * *
‘This is nonsense,’ Oswald said again. They had been arguing for hours. ‘Elves? Ridiculous!’
‘How can you not believe?’ Edwin demanded, indicating the cold corpse of the woodwose that lay on the ledge before them. ‘When you’ve seen the evidence of your own eyes?’
Oswald was on the defensive by now.
‘This is just an animal,’ he said. ‘Man-like, ape-like - but nothing uncanny or supernatural. And as for the other things, which you call elves - how can we know what they are? Yes, they use stone arrowheads, but perhaps they’re just very poor… Or…’
‘Whoever heard of anyone using stone arrowheads?’ demanded Edwin, ‘Except elves? Maybe they don’t use magic, maybe that’s just past of the legends. But they clearly do exist - we’ve seen them.’
Oswald was about to reply when Bork called to them from the top of the cliff. He had slipped away while they were arguing. In fact, Oswald realised he had been gone for quite a while.
‘Are we going to stay here another night?’ he demanded.
‘What do you mean?’ Edwin snapped.
The Dane scrambled and slithered down to join them.
‘These woodwoses were after us?’ he asked.
‘Looks like it,’ Edwin replied.
‘And we don’t know whether they’ll be back or not. But do we want to chance it?’
‘What are you suggesting?’ Oswald asked curiously.
‘If they decide to come back, and no elves turn up this time,’ Bork said, ignoring Oswald’s sigh, ‘we’ll be hard pressed to defend ourselves. There were hundreds of them last night.’
‘An exaggeration,’ Edwin said. ‘But apart from that, you’re right. Are you suggesting we head for another hideout?’
Bork shrugged. ‘Why not?’
‘But those woodwoses must have tracked us here,’ Oswald said with a sudden chill. ‘They’ll follow us anywhere we go.’
‘Unless we leave the forest,’ Edwin said. ‘I’ve never heard of woses outside the woods.’
Oswald frowned. ‘Won’t that be dangerous?’ he asked. The king’s men might be no match for the wild men of the woods, but he didn’t rate their own chances so highly.
‘We’re in danger wherever we go,’ replied Edwin. ‘If we stay in the Forest of Arden, we risk our necks at the hands of the woses - if we leave, there’s a high chance we’ll soon be dancing our final jig. It’s the lesser of two evils.’
‘What about three evils?’ Bork asked. Oswald looked at him sharply.
‘Three evils?’ he asked.
‘He means joining the elves; don’t you, Bork?’ Edwin said. The Dane nodded.
‘I don’t trust elves,’ he said, ‘leastways, I’d trust them only to curse my cattle or steal my children - but since I don’t have either, there’s no problem there…’
‘Now wait a minute,’ Oswald said sternly. ‘We haven’t even decided if they are elves - we can’t make any decisions about joining them yet. How do we know they’ll be friendly? How do we even know where they are?’
‘I’ve been scouting around,’ said Bork blandly. ‘While you two were bickering, I think I found an elf-trail. Follow me.’
He swarmed back up the cliff, and they followed him. From the top they could see the entire forest, but it wasn’t this that Bork drew their attention to.
‘I heard a lot of them climbing the side of the cliff last night,’ he explained. ‘You know, when they left? Seems like they didn’t have time to cover their tracks.’
A trail was clearly visible through the brambles and briars beneath the trees that crested the cliff, leading down into the depths of the wild wood. Oswald glanced at his two companions.
Edwin smiled thinly.
‘What have we got to lose?’ he said. ‘Come on. Back to the cave, and we’ll grab our weapons and get some food. When we’re ready, it’s back here and off on the road to Elfland.’