Someone caught him under the arms and jerked him half erect. He saw, with some surprise, that the sword had not been knocked out of his hand; he still had a grip on it.
"Out of here!" a voice gasped at him. "They'll all be down on us."
Still bent over from the belly kick, he made his legs move under him, wobbling toward the door. He stumbled over a prostrate form, regained his feet and ran again. He felt rain lash into his face and knew he was outdoors. Silhouetted against the lighted windows of the inn, he saw men running toward him, and off a little to his right, the kneeling figure of a bowman who, almost unconcernedly, released arrow after arrow. Screams and curses sounded in the darkness and some of the running men were stumbling, fighting to wrench loose the arrows that bristled in their bodies.
"Come on," said Gib's voice. "We all are here. Hal will hold them off."
Gib grabbed his arm, turning him and giving him a push, and he was running again, straightening up, breathing easier, with just a dull pain in his midriff where the horse had kicked him.
"This is far enough," said Gib. "Let's pull together now. We can't get separated. You here, Mary?"
"Yes, I'm here," said Mary in a frightened voice.
"Oliver?"
"Here," said Oliver.
"Coon? Coon, where the hell are you?"
Another voice said, "Don't worry about Old Coon. He'll hunt us up."
"That you, Hal?"
"It's me. They won't try to follow. They've had enough for one night.
Cornwall suddenly sat down. He felt the wetness of ground soak into his breeches. He struggled to slip the sword back into the scabbard.
"You guys were all right in that barn," said Hal. "Mark got one of them with a pitchfork and another with the sword. The third Gib took care of with his ax. I never had a chance until we got outside."
"You were doing well enough when I saw you," Gib told him.
"And don't forget Coon," said Cornwall. "He led the attack and took his man out of the fighting."
"Will you tell me," Gib asked plaintively, "exactly how it happened. I'm not a fighting man…»
"None of us is a fighting man," said Cornwall. "I never was in a fight before in all my life. A few tavern brawls at the university, but never in a fight. Never where it counted."
"Let's get out of here," said Hal. "We have to build some distance, and once we get started, we might as well stay walking. We won't find a place to stop. Everyone grab hold of hands and don't let loose. I'll lead the way, but we have to take it easy. We can't move too fast. We can't go falling down a cliff or bumping into trees. If one of you loses hold of hands or falls, yell out and everyone will stop."
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.