With his thumb he splintered a bite from the dry edge of the cheese and ate it. "Nay, hard and sour as e’er." He turned, stretching out a leg, his back against the tree. "This is poor witchcraft, wench." He laid his head against her hip. "I’ve seen better at the market fair."
"Dost thou know why I love thee?" she asked.
"In faith, I cannought believe that you do, far the less why."
She curled her forefinger in his hair and tugged. "By hap one day I shall tell thee."
He was silent. She felt him turn his head, and looked down. He was gazing toward the edge of the clearing.
"I hear a hound," he said.
He rolled to his knees and held still, listening. Melanthe heard it then, too, a far-off bell.
"That lymer." He threw himself to his feet. "Christus."
* * *
They did not stop for dusk or night, only a short rest and feeding for the horse, with oaten bread and the tough cheese for themselves, and water from a stream where they rode down the middle until it was too dark to be safe. At first Melanthe had not believed that experienced hunting hounds could be coaxed to track them—they were not deer, or even coney, but she remembered the lymer and the gallant’s game with a lady’s scarf—that chestnut-haired carpet knight it had been, the one she’d cut, and Melanthe could well believe he would be glad to turn his sport with the hound to account against her.
Sir Ruck’s mantle, dropped in the yard, must have the scent of herself and him and the horse all thick upon it. The whole pack would follow the lymer’s lead. And even had she not believed it, the persistent music of the hounds, distant, sometimes lost, but coming always from the trail behind, would have convinced her.
Ruck had hours since turned Hawk west to the sunset, away from the course to her castle, away from Torbec and the hounds. The coast would lie before them, she knew not how far, but she did not question him. Indeed, by nightfall she was too weary of holding to him and supporting Gryngolet and listening for the hounds to think beyond fear and aching muscle. It was a thing of peculiar horror, to be hunted so. She clutched tight when they came to a stretch of road and galloped, and then strained her ears to hear over the heavy breath of the horse when he let Hawk drop to a walk and turn into the woods again. She feared coming to the sea, being trapped between water and hounds. She feared that the destrier was slowed, that its strength could not hold against its double burden. Ruck halted for another rest and without a word untied the baggage behind her pillion.
They abandoned it, food and all. They mounted again with only Gryngolet and what they wore—his armor and her gown and cloak, and the hawking bag strapped over Melanthe’s shoulder. The big horse went on into the darkening night with its flanks moist and smelling of sweat.
She lost all track of time, jerking awake and dozing, so that it all became a ghastly dream, in which the voices of the hounds got confused with the wind, and she thought she heard them howling so close that she gave a start and a low cry—and felt herself in a black roaring confusion, until her mazed mind recognized that they had come out of the trees onto a shore swept by a dry tempest, the waves like a great slow heartbeat, showing long pale lines in the blackness.
She held Gryngolet in her lap, hiding her face behind his shoulders to escape the stinging wind. She could no longer hear the hounds; she could hear nothing but the gale and the sea. The horse rocked beneath her, a steady surge, and she fell asleep again—drifting, sleeping, riding into an endless baying nightmare.
* * *
Ruck thanked God who had led him in the right direction. When they had reached the strand, he’d not known how far north or south they might have come. But he had not taken time to wonder and guess; he just prayed—and Hawk had plodded on a loose rein through deep sandhills, veering away from the worst of the wind to the right instead of left, and so they had gone north looking for what Ruck meant to find.
He had found it. The steady creak and groan of a shuttered window made Hawk prick his ears. The night was moonless, but the sand and clouds reflected back on one another, showing the vague outlines of pale things and black massive shadows,
He dismounted, and the princess wrenched upright, mumbling, "I hear them."
"Nay, we’ve left the hounds behind," he said, though he knew that he might be wrong. He believed that the sand and wind would scour their scent, but he wasn’t certain. "Hold here." He pushed the reins into her free hand.
She took them. Ruck hoped that at least she would not fall off if she went to sleep again. Hawk stood with his head down, his tail sweeping up against his haunches, as if he did not care to take another step. Ruck left them there and slogged through the sand toward the salterns, taking care to squint ahead and avoid the pools and trenches of the saltworks as he made his way to the single hut.
FIFTEEN
Things seemed to Melanthe to happen in disconnected scenes, the hounds and the wind and the shore in the freezing darkness, and then a strange figure, shagged and silent, barely seen, a woodwose, a wildman of the desert, mad rocking and water and a sturdy boat—and colder, colder, wet spray that made her huddle into her cloak—she did not have Gryngolet, but somehow she remembered that all was right; Ruck said so, when she asked—then the first light of dawn, the world a sickening sway of wind and wave.
Sea loathing and lassitude and cold kept her immobile, hunched in the tiny cover for the endless voyage, while the woodwose shouted incomprehensible orders at Ruck and they worked together against the wind and spray, sailing and hauling upon the ropes, manning oars to point the vessel over waves that seemed too tall for it, carrying her she knew not where, nor hardly cared. Hawk stood with his head encased in armor, his legs braced and his nose lowered to the deck.
Near sunset the awful rocking abated. She found the strength to open her eyes and crawl from the small shelter into the open, looking blearily upon an unfamiliar shoreline, crystalline with black trees that somehow glittered, mountains behind them, rising to ponderous heights dusted a spectral white.
She came a little more into her wits as they landed, the boat sweeping and bobbing on the swells that rolled into a protected inlet of a small bay. They had to disembark onto a sandbar. It thrust out into the inlet from overhanging trees, their lower limbs drooping down near the water, every twig and branch encased in clear ice to form strange white cascades against the dark wood.
Sir Ruck hurried her, lifting her bodily onto the sand and glancing often toward the opposite shore of the bay. The horse came calmly off the grounded boat, as if it splashed from vessel into shallow water half the days of its life. Without a word the woodwose, as coarse and savage-looking in the day as in the dark, handed over Gryngolet, her body encased in a falconer’s sock, and pushed off his craft with an oar.
Ruck slapped the destrier’s rump, sending it into a heavy trot ahead of them. The horse thudded toward the trees, a pale form in the failing light, and vanished in the space of a blink.
Melanthe looked over her shoulder, squinting her gritty eyes at the other shore. A mile off or more across the sands, she thought she could see low buildings and signs of active cultivation. But he did not allow her to linger and study.
"It is the abbey land," he said, with a soft contempt in his voice. "The house of Saint Mary. N’would I nought haf us apperceived."
"Where go we?"
He held her arm and looked into her face as if he would speak—then gave her a light push, turning her ahead of him. "Into the forest," he said. "Make haste, my lady."
* * *
Though they had left the hounds of Torbec far behind across open water, he mounted them upon the horse again and did not stop to rest. They rode all night—or if they didn’t, Melanthe knew nothing of it. Poor long-suffering Gryngolet lay secured behind the pillion, girded in her linen sock with her hooded head emerging from one end and her feet and tail from the other. Melanthe held onto the high back of the saddle. She kept falling asleep and starting awake as she lost her balance, until he said, "Lay yo
ur arms about me."
She slipped her arms around his waist and leaned her head on his back. He held both her hands clasped securely under his. It was cold and uncomfortable, with only his surcoat to pad the hard backplate of his cuirass, but Melanthe must have slept long and deep there, for when next she roused, the slant of the ground had steepened, and dawn light filtered black into gray around them.
The forest itself was so dark and thick that it seemed the horse was plowing through massive brambles and hollies without a path or sign of passage. And yet, none of the thorns pricked them, or even caught her cloak. The destrier stepped steadily ahead, turning often, making into dark caverns of winter foliage like tunnels, finding easy degrees up a cliff where icicles hung down from rocks directly over their heads. The horse labored, blowing puffs of steam, its iron shoes ringing sometimes on hard stone and other times thudding on moss. The sound of the wind in the branches overhead grew stronger as they gained height. Melanthe could look down and see dusts of gritty snow on every tree and evergreen, but no sign of where they had come.
Ahead, the woods seemed brighter, the trees smaller, driven into hunted shapes by the wind. Sharp rocks made huge flat-sided teeth, as if a dragon of the earth bared its fangs. The destrier heaved up over a shelf and passed between two huge masses of slate, the gray slabs angling down to the ground like a great V-shaped gate.
The sound of the wind suddenly dimmed. Hawk’s iron shoes echoed in the defile. They emerged into a little dark snow-spattered wood hidden in the cleft. Beside a mountain tarn, purplish black and still beneath a clear sheen of ice, Sir Ruck halted the blowing horse at last.
"We will letten the horse rest and drink," he said, helping her down. "Are ye thirsty?"
She shook her head, wrapping her cloak tight about her, and sat down on a rock. He produced a havercake from some unknown pocket and offered it to her. As Melanthe crunched on it glumly, he led the horse to the tarn and broke the surface with his heel. The sound cracked against the cliffs and reverberated back as jags of white splintered across the pond. There appeared to be no exit from the coombe, and no entrance, either, though she stared at the place she thought they had come in.
"Where are we?" she asked, brushing crumbs from her cheek.
He looked up, weariness written in all the lines of his face. With a faint smile he said, "In the fells beyond the frith, my lady. None can follow here."
The horse plunged its nose into the water and sucked. Melanthe thought of the pathless forest they had passed through so easily. She gazed at the bare branches around the tarn—and suddenly saw the pattern in them, the felled trunks and interwoven framework, one twig pulled down and anchored beneath another, a third twisted about its neighbor, a pair spread open, braided and pruned and pinned to the ground to start a new shoot, all growing together into a wall of thorn and wood.
"Avoi," she breathed. "It is a plessis barrier."
"Yea. And ancient, my lady. Since before the northmen came to this coast, before anyone remembers, hatz been kept so."
She looked at him. "What does it protect?"
He came to her and held out his hand. Melanthe took it, rising. He led her to a place that seemed impenetrable: only when he stepped into it did she see that she could follow. They walked through a dark hollow, skirting the downed trunks of trees. He climbed ahead of her into another cleft in the rocks, and offered his hand.
Melanthe gathered her skirts and let him hike her up. The space was barely large enough for both of them, with wind whining through the fissure of slate. He flattened himself to the towering sheet of rock and let her sidle in front of him, pulling her back against his chest so that she could see through the rent in the cliffs to the open country beyond.
"There," he said, and pointed.
The mountainside fell down so steeply from where they stood that she could not see the tops of trees except far below, where the forest swept to the valley floor. Ragged mists moved across, forming and fleeing, rising in wisps to flow up the cliffsides, blurring her view. At first she thought the valley empty, only more forest, and more, with the hint of a river running along the bottom and frozen waterfalls on the far side. She scowled against the wind-tears in her eyes, trying to follow where he pointed.
She blinked. What she had thought to be a waterfall seemed to be a tower; she blinked and it was a waterfall again, its lower cascade hidden by the spur of a ridge—but it had a strange slate formation at its source. Triangular; and another, a little lower, dark cones of stone, each with a bleeding white tail at its base...the mists drifted and broke apart, and suddenly, for one instant, she saw a castle, bleached white, turrets with battlements and slate-blue conical roofs, the glint of golden banner staves—and then it was only a misted cliff marked by icefalls once more.
"Do you see it?" he asked, bending close to her ear.
Melanthe realized that she had drawn a sharp breath. "I cannot say—is there a hold? The mist befools me."
"There is a hold." He put his hands on her shoulders. "Wolfscar."
"Depardeu," she said as the mist cleared again. "I see it!"
"This is mine, from six miles behind us to that second peak, to the coast on the west and the lakes east. Held of the king himself—and a license and command to fortify it with a castel." His voice held a note of defiant pride, almost as if he expected she might disagree with him.
Melanthe turned away from the icy wind. "Thou art a baron, then!"
"Yeah, we haf a baron’s writ, to my father’s grandsire and before. Did ye think me a freeman, my lady?" he demanded.
She slipped back from the crevice, down into a wider and quieter space between the rock walls. He came behind, the familiar chink of his mail compounded by the ring of steel as his scabbard hit the stone with each step.
She stopped and turned, smiling. "Nay. Bast son of a poor knight. ’Twas Lancaster thought thee a freeman."
He bristled, his eyes narrowing. But before he could speak, Melanthe said, "Why should we imagine more of thee, Green Sire? When thou wouldst not name thyself."
"I cannought," he said. He gazed at her grimly, his eyes dark in the shadow of the walls. He shrugged. "The letters patent be lost. My parents died in the Great Pestilence. The abbey—" His mouth curled. "They were to holden my ward in my non-age. And they forgot me! I went there when had I five and ten years, for I ne’er heard word nor direction, nor had aid of them. And the monks said I was an open liar and in fraud of them, that this land escheated to the abbey in the last reign, and ne’er watz revoked by the king. Ne did they e’en know of the donjon—" He set his fist on the stone. "My father’s castel, that was seven years abuilding! To them is naught but impassable forest, and all else unremembered!"
His indignation at that seemed greater than at being disavowed himself. But Melanthe saw instantly the heart of the blow. "Thou canst not prove thy family?"
He leaned against the rock face, his heel braced on it. "They all died."
"All of them?"
He contemplated his knee, his head down. He nodded, as if he were ashamed of it.
Melanthe frowned at him. They were of an age—if his kin had perished in the first Great Death, he would have been no more than seven or eight when he was orphaned. "But—from then, till thou went to the monks at ten and five—who cared for thee?"
He looked up, with his trace of a wry smile. "My lady—come thee now and greet them, if thou wilt deign."
* * *
Plunging into the valley of Wolfscar, carrying Gryngolet on her wrist once again and clinging to Ruck with the other arm, Melanthe felt a stir of superstitious wonder. She had traveled with him in wilderness and desert, so she had thought—but this place seemed farther from church and humanity with each step.
The way down was a slide and slip into murky trees that groaned with the wind in their tops. She stiffened as she heard the distant howl of a wolf—or was it a woman’s scream? The shriek went on and on, changing pitch from low to high, growing louder as they descended,
but Ruck gave it no notice. They made a sharp turn and abruptly the wail was a roar; the wind through a pile of slate teeth, transforming again to a living screech as they passed it.
"God save us," she said below her breath.
He squeezed her wrist. She was glad that he had tightened his hold on her, because in the next twisting in their progress, she looked up over his shoulder and near leapt from the pillion in her recoil.
It was a huge face; thrice taller than the destrier, staring at her with baleful black eyes out of the depth of the tree-shadow. She made a choked sound in her throat, but neither horse nor master made a sign of fear; they moved steadfastly downward, and at a different angle the face became stone and bush and branch, an illusion of reality.
She remembered the strange fusion of dream and waking of the night before, the silent woodwose they had sailed with, the boat that seemed too small to bear them and the horse safely...she began to doubt what sort of guardians watched over him.
The ground became gentler. A cold mist enfolded them, a sudden pale blankness, with only the next bush, the next tree trunk looming out of it and vanishing. The horse put its head down as if it smelled its path the way a hound would. Melanthe shuddered, hiding Gryngolet under her cloak as the mist sent the chill to her bones.
As she sat huddled as close within her mantle as she could, her fantasy began to imagine that she heard music. She told herself that it was the wind, another illusion like the scream she could still hear from above them. And yet it had form and melody; it was a song that she knew, or thought she knew, sweet and sad and beguiling. The horse’s hooves beat in time to it. Ruck said nothing; his head seemed to nod in the same rhythm, his hand loosened on hers—she thought that he was falling asleep, the direst lapse of all with such enthralling spirits.
She grabbed his shoulder and shook him hard. "Wake!" she hissed. "In God’s name, wake up!"