Enchanted Pilgrimage

13

Hal crouched in the clump of birches and stared at what the first morning light revealed. The stable and the inn were gone. Where they once had stood lay heaps of embers, smoke tainting the sharp air with an acrid bitterness, rising in thin tendrils.

The rain had stopped and the sky was clear, but water still dripped from the branches of the birches. It would be another splendid autumn day, Hal told himself, but it still was cold. He crossed his arms and put his hands beneath his armpits to warm them.

Not moving, he examined the scene before him, ears tuned for the slightest sound that might spell danger. But the danger now, it seemed, was gone. The men who had done this work had left.

Far off a bluejay screamed and up the hill a squirrel made a skittering sound as it scampered through the fallen leaves. Nothing else made a sound; nothing else was stirring.

His eyes went over the ground inch by inch, looking for the unusual, for something that might be out of place. There seemed to be nothing. The only thing unusual were the ashes where the stable and the inn had stood.

Moving cautiously, he left the birches and scouted up the hill. He stopped behind a huge oak and, shielded by it, peered around its bole. His higher position on the hill now revealed a slope of ground on the opposite side of the inn that had been masked before. On the slope of ground something most unusual was taking place. A huge gray wolf was digging furiously while two others sat leisurely on their haunches, watching as he dug. The wolf was digging in what appeared to be a patch of raw earth and beyond the patch in which he dug were others, slightly mounded.

Hal instinctively lifted his bow and reached over his shoulder for an arrow, then drew back his hand and settled down to watch. There was no point, he mused, in further killing; there had already been killing. And the wolves were engaged in a practice that was quite normal for them. There was meat beneath those mounds and they were digging for it.

He counted the mounds. There were five at least, possibly six; he could not be sure. Three in the stable, he thought, or had there been four? Depending on whether it had been three or four, then his arrows had accounted for one at least, possibly as many as three. He grimaced, thinking of it. The fight had not been that one-sided, he reminded himself; rather, it had been a matter of surprise and simple luck. He wondered, if he and the others had not attacked, would there have been a fight at all? But that was all past and done; no single act could be recalled. The die had been cast when Coon had made his spread-eagled leap at the head of the man who climbed the ladder. Considering the circumstances, they had come out of it far better than could have been expected, with Mark the only one who bore the scars of battle, a sore shoulder, where the flat of a sword had struck him, and a sore belly, where a horse had kicked him.

He squatted beside the tree and watched the wolves. The fact that they were there, he knew, meant that no one else was around.

He rose and stepped around the tree, scuffling in the leaves. The wolves swiveled their heads toward him and leaped to their feet. He scuffled leaves again, and the wolves moved like three gray shadows, disappearing in the woods.

He strode down the hill and circled the two piles of embers. The heat that still radiated from them was welcome in the chilly morning, and he stood for a moment to soak up some of it.

In the muddy earth he found the tracks of men and horses and wondered about the innkeeper and his wife. The serving wench, he recalled, said that the goodwife had been hiding in the cellar from her drunken lord. Could it be that she'd still been there when the inn was fired? If that were so, her charred body must be down among the embers, for the place would have blazed like tinder, and there'd have been no chance to get out.

He followed the trace left by the men and horses down the hill to where it joined the trail and saw that the company had gone on north and west. He went back up the hill, had a look at the raw wetness of the graves, again circled the piles of embers for some clue, wondering what manner of men could have done such a thing, afraid that he might know.

He stood for a moment, nagged by uneasiness. Then he went back down the hill and followed the trail that the company had taken north and west, keeping well up the hillside from it, his ears cocked for the slightest sound, examining each stretch of trail below him before he moved ahead.

A couple of miles away he found the innkeeper, the man he had glimpsed through the window of the inn the night before, smashing crockery and breaking up the furniture. He swung at the end of a short rope tied to the limb of a massive oak tree that leaned out from the hillside to overhang the trail. His hands were tied behind him and his head was twisted strangely by the pressure of the rope. He twirled back and forth at the faint stirring of the breeze. And he dangled; he dangled horribly. A chickadee was perched on one shoulder, a tiny, innocent mite of a gray-white bird, picking at the blood and froth that had run from the corner of the mouth.

Later on, Hal knew, there would be other birds.

He stood in the mud of the trail and looked up at the dangling, twirling man and felt, gathering in his mind, a vague sense of horror and of melancholy.

Leaving the man and the oak, he scouted up the trail and from the tracks he saw that now the mounted company was in something of a hurry. The hoofmarks of the shod horses dug deep into the mud, leaving sharp, incisive tracks. They had been moving at a gallop.

He left the trail and angled back up the hill, studying the conformation of the land, picking up the foggy landmarks he had impressed upon his mind.

So he finally came, slipping through the trees and brush, to the small rock shelter he and his companions had found the night before, after long stumbling through the wet and dark, a few hours before the first hint of dawn.

Oliver, the rafter goblin, and Coon slept far back from the overhang, in the deeper recesses of the shelter, huddled close together for the sake of shared warmth. The other three sat close together toward the front, wrapped in blankets against the chill. He was almost upon them before they saw him.

"So you're back," said Gib. "We wondered what had happened. Can we light a fire?"

Hal shook his head. "We travel fast," he said. "We travel fast and far. We must be out of here."

"But I went out," objected Gib, "and got dry fuel, dug from the heart of a fallen tree. It will give little smoke. We are cold and hungry…»

"No," said Hal. "The country will be up. The inn and stable burned. No sign of the goodwife who was hiding in the cellar, but mine host is hanging from a tree. Someone will find soon what happened, and before they do we must be miles from here."

"I'll shake the goblin and Coon awake," said Gib, "and we'll be on our way."