He raised his head, scanning the horizon.
"I don't see a thing," he said.
"I saw it only for a moment," she said. "Maybe not really seeing it. Maybe just the movement of it. That might have been all. Not really seeing anything, but seeing it move."
"We'll be watched," said Sniveley, who along with Oliver had forced their horse toward the head of the column. "We can count on that. There'll never be a moment we'll be out of their sight. They'll know everything we do."
"They?" asked Cornwall.
Sniveley shrugged. "How is one to know? There are so many different kinds of us. Goblins, gnomes, banshees. Maybe even brownies and fairies, for respectable as such folk may be considered by you humans, they still are a part of all this. And other things as well. Many other things, far less respectable and well intentioned."
"We'll give them no offense," said Cornwall. "We'll not lift a hand against them."
"Be that as it may," said Sniveley, "we are still intruders."
"Even you?" asked Mary.
"Even we," said Sniveley. "Even Oliver and I. We are outlanders, too. Traitors, perhaps deserters. For we or our forefathers deserted the homeland and went to live in the Borderland with their enemies."
"We shall see," said Cornwall.
The horses plodded up the path and finally reached the ridge. Before them spread, not a plateau, as might have been suspected, but a succession of other ridges, each one higher as they spread out horizonward, like regularly spaced and frozen waves.
The path angled down a barren slope covered with browning grass. At the lower edge of the slope, a dense forest covered the span that lay between the hills. There was not a living thing in sight, not even birds. An eerie feeling of loneliness closed in about them, and yet in all that loneliness Cornwall had an uncomfortable feeling between his shoulder blades.
Moving slowly, as if unwilling to go farther, the horse went down the trail, which twisted to one side to bypass a giant white oak tree that stood alone in the sweep of grass. It was a tall, yet squatty tree, with a huge bole and widely spreading branches, the first of which thrust out from the trunk not more than twelve feet above the ground.
Cornwall saw that something apparently had been driven deeply into the hard wood of the trunk. He reined in his horse and stared at it. About two feet of it extended out beyond the wood. It was a couple of inches in diameter, an ivory white and twisted.
Behind him Sniveley involuntarily sucked in his breath.
"What is it?" Mary asked.
"The horn of a unicorn," said Sniveley. "There are not many of the creatures left, and I have never heard of one that left his horn impaled in a tree."
"It is a sign," Oliver said solemnly.
Cornwall nudged his horse closer and reached down to grasp the horn. He pulled and it did not budge. He pulled again and he might as well have tried to pull a branch from the tree.
"We'll have to chop it out," he said.
"Let me try," said Mary.
She reached down and grasped the horn. It came free with a single tug. It measured three feet or so in length, tapering down to a needle point. It was undamaged and unbroken.
They all gazed at it in awe.
"I never saw a thing like this before," said Mary. "Old tales, of course, told in the Borderland, but…" "It is an excellent omen," said Sniveley. "It is a good beginning."
18
They camped just before dark in a glade at the head of one of the ravines that ran between the hills. A spring gushed out from the hillside, giving rise to a tiny stream that went gurgling down its bed. Gib chopped firewood from a down pine that lay above the campsite. The day had remained a perfect one and in the west a lemon sky, painted by the setting sun, slowly turned to green. There was grass for the horses, and they were sheltered from the wind by a dense forest growth that closed in on the glade from every side.
Hal said, "They're all around us. We're knee-deep in them. They are out there watching."
"How can you tell?" asked Mar} .
"I can tell," said Hal. "Coon can tell. See him over there, huddled by the fire. He doesn't seem to be listening, but he is. Quiet as they may be, he still can hear them. Smell them, likely, too."
"We pay no attention to them," Sniveley said. "We act as if they aren't there. We must get used to it; we can't get our wind up. This is the way that it will be. They'll dog our footsteps every minute, watching, always watching. There's nothing to be afraid of yet. There are nothing but the little ones out there now—the elves, the trolls, the brownies. Nothing dangerous. Nothing really mean. Nothing really big."
Cornwall raked coals out of the fire, pushed them together, set a skillet of combread dough on them. "And what happens," he asked, "when something really mean and big shows up?"
Sniveley shrugged. He squatted across the coals from Cornwall. "I don't know," he said. "We play it by ear—what is it you say, by hunch? It's all that we can do. We have a few things going for us. The unicorn horn, for one. That's powerful medicine. The story of it will spread. In another day or two, all the Wasteland will know about the horn. And there's the magic sword you wear."
Tin glad you brought that up," said Cornwall. "I had meant to ask you. I've been wondering why you gave it to Gib. Surely, he told you for whom it was intended. You made a slip there, Master Gnome. You should have checked my credentials. If you had, you would have known that, search the world over, you could have found no swordsman more inept than I. I wore a sword, of course, but, then, a lot of men wear swords. Mine was an old blade and dull, a family heirloom, not too valuable, even in a sentimental sense. From one year's end to another, I never drew it forth."
"Yet," said Sniveley, grinning, "I am told you acquitted yourself quite nobly in the stable affair."
Cornwall snorted in disgust. "I fell against the hind end of a horse and the horse promptly kicked me in the gut, and that was the end of it for me. Gib, with his trusty ax, and Hal, with his bow, were the heroes of that fight."
"Still, I am told that you killed your man."
"An accident, I can assure you, no more than an accident. The stupid lout ran on the blade."
"Well," said Sniveley, "I don't suppose it matters too much how it came about. The point is that you managed it."
"Clumsily," said Cornwall, "and with no glory in it."
"It sometimes seems to me," said Sniveley, "that much of the glory attributed to great deeds may derive overmuch from hindsight. A simple job of butchery in aftertimes somehow becomes translated into a chivalrous encounter."
Coon came around the fire, reared up, and put his forefeet on Cornwall's knee. He pointed his nose at the skillet of cornbread and his whiskers twitched.
"In just a little while," Cornwall told him. "It'll take a little longer. I promise there'll be a piece for you."
"I often wonder," Sniveley said, "how much he understands. An intelligent animal. Hal talks to him all the time. Claims he answers back."
"I would have no doubt he does," said Cornwall.
"There is a strong bond between the two of them," said Sniveley. "As if they might be brothers. Coon was chased by dogs one night. He was scarcely more than a pup. Hal rescued him and took him home. They've been together ever since. Now, with the size of him and the smartness of him, no dog in its right mind would want to tangle with him."
Mary said, "The dogs must know him well. Hal says there is a moonshiner out hunting coons almost every night, come fall. The dogs never follow on Coon's track. Even when he's out, the dogs don't bother him. In the excitement of the hunt, they may come upon his track and trail him for a time, but then they break it off."