"Dark happenings to whom?" asked Cornwall.
"I do not know," said Sniveley. "No one ever knows."
"There was something about the piping," said Oliver, "that sounded familiar to me. I thought it at the time, but I couldn't put a finger on it. It was so terrifying that I suppose I was scared out of my wits. But riding along today, I did remember. Just a part of it. A phrase or two of it. It's part of an ancient song. I found the music of it in an ancient scroll at Wyalusing. There was that phrase or two. Passed down, the scroll said, from at least a hundred centuries ago. Perhaps the oldest song on Earth. I don't know how the man who wrote that ancient scroll could know…"
Cornwall grunted and urged his horse ahead. Hal fell in behind him. The trail dipped abruptly down, seeming to sink into the very earth, with great walls of jagged rocks rearing up on either side. Little streams of moisture ran down the face of the rocks, where scraggly ferns and mosses clung with precarious rootholds. Out of the rocky crevasses sprang sprawling cedar trees that seemed to have lost their balance and were about to fall at any moment. Cut off from the sun, the gorge grew increasingly darker as they descended it.
A gust of wind came puffing up between the rocky walls, powered by some atmospheric vagary, and with it came a stench, not an overpowering stench, but a whiff of stench, sweet, greenish and sickening — a smell, a presence that settled in the throat and would not go away, that rankled at the guts and turned one slightly sick.
"I was right," said Hal. "There is death down there."
Ahead of them loomed a sharp turn and as they came around it, the gorge came to an end and out in front of them was a rocky amphitheater, a circle closed in by towering cliffs. Ahead of them was the frightening whir of laboring wings as a flock of great black birds launched themselves off the things on which they had been feeding. A few of the ugly birds, too sluggish with their feasting to take off, hopped angrily about in an awkward fashion.
The stench rose up and struck them like a blow across the face.
"Good God!" said Cornwall, gagging at the sight of what lay on the pebbled shore of the little stream that wandered down across the amphitheater.
Out beyond the sodden mass of ragged flesh and protruding bone that bore slight resemblance to a man lay other shapeless lumps-some of them horses, bloated, with their legs extending stiffly; others of the lumps were human or had once been human. There were skulls grinning in the grass; rib cages starkly revealed, with the soft belly ripped away for easy eating; grotesque buttocks thrusting up. Scraps of clothing blew about, fluttering where they had been caught in the thorny branches of low-growing shrubs. A spear, its point buried in the ground, stood stark, a drunken exclamation point. Weak sunlight glittered on fallen shields and swords.
In among the scattered human dead and the bloated horses, other dead things lay—black-furred, grinning with great fangs frozen forever in the grin, short bushy tails, great, heavy shoulders, slender waists, huge hands (hands, not paws) armed with curving claws.
"Over there," said Gib. "There is the way that Beckett came."
At the far end of the amphitheater, a road (not a path such as they had been following, but a rutted road) came snaking out of the wall of rock surrounding the cuplike bowl in which they found themselves. The road continued across the far end of the bowl to plunge into another gorge that rose into the hills.
Cornwall rose in his stirrups and looked back. The others in the band set their horses stiffly, their faces blank with horror.
"There's nothing we can do," said Gib. "We had better ride on through."
"A Christian word," said Cornwall. "Something to speed them on their way, to give them peace and…"
"There are no words," Gib said, harshly, "that can do that for them now. There is no peace. Not here, there isn't any peace."
Cornwall nodded, kicked his horse into a trot, heading for the road, with the others following. On every side, wings beat as the carrion birds, interrupted at their meat, fought to become airborne. A fox ran frantically across the trail, its tail dragging. Little animals went darting.
When they pulled up on the road, they had left the carnage behind them. There were no bodies by the road. A flock of small gray birds hopped from branch to branch in a tiny thicket, chirping as they hopped. Out on the battlefield the larger, blacker birds were settling down again.
20
The man was waiting for them when they reached the top of the ridge that rose above the cuplike amphitheater, where they had found the aftermath of battle. It was quite apparent that he had been waiting for them. He was sitting comfortably at the foot of a great oak tree, leaning back against the trunk, and watching them with interest as they came clopping up the wagon road. Just beyond the tree stood a curious contraption. It was colored red and white, and it stood on two wheels, as if balancing itself without any particular difficulty. The wheels were very strange, for the rims of them were made of neither wood nor iron, but of some black substance, and they were not flat, as any proper rim should be, but somehow rounded. There were far too many spokes in the wheels and the spokes were not made of wood, but of many rounded, tiny strips of what seemed to be gleaming metal, and anyone in his right mind would have known that spokes so slender and so fragile would have no strength at all.
As they neared him, the man stood up and dusted off his seat, brushing away the leaves and dirt his breeches had picked up from sitting on the ground. The breeches were white and tight-fitting, and he wore a shirt of some red material and over that a vest that was also white. His boots were neatly made.
"So you made it," he said. "I wasn't sure you would."
Cornwall made a motion backward with his head. "You mean down there?"
"Exactly," said the man. "The country's all stirred up. It was just two days ago. You must enjoy running your head into a noose."
"We knew nothing of it," said Cornwall. "We came up from the tower. The men down there took a different route."
"Well," said the man, "you got through safely, and this is the thing that counts. I had been pulling for you."
"You knew that we were coming?"
"I had word of you yesterday. A motley band they told me. And I see that they were right."
"They?"
"Oh, assorted little friends I have. Skippers-through-the-thickets. Runners-in-the-grass. All eyes and ears. There is not much they miss. I know about the horn and about the head that came rolling to the campfire, and I have been waiting most impatiently to greet you."
"You know, then, who we are?"
"Only your names. And I beg your pardon. I am Alexander Jones. I have a place prepared for you."
Mary said, "Master Jones, I do not like the sound of that. We are entirely capable—"
"I am sorry, Mistress Mary, if I have offended you. All I meant to offer was hospitality. Shelter from the coming night, a good fire, hot food, a place to sleep."
"All of which," said Oliver, "so far as I am concerned, would be most welcome. Perhaps a measure of wine or a mug of beer as well. The stench back there is still clogging up my throat. Something is needed to wash it all away."
"Beer, or course," said Jones. "A full barrel of it is laid in against your coming. Do you agree, Sir Mark?"
"Yes," said Cornwall, "I do agree. I see no harm in it and perhaps some good. But do not call me sir; I am no more than a scholar."
"Then," said Jones, "pray, hold your horses well. For this mount of mine is a noisy beast."
He strode toward the contraption standing on two wheels. He threw one leg over it and settled on what became apparent was the contraption's seat. He reached out and grasped the two handlelike projections extending above and backward of the forward wheel.