Gruu arose, threw up his head, and gave such a roar as made my head ring. I thought at first it was an echo of his cry I heard, until it was repeated from afar. Then I could not mistake the ring of it as it sounded a second time. I had heard such before but never as full toned and holding the notes so strongly. So did any lord’s marshal sound his warn horn at the edge of a neighbor’s land!
Out in that blackest of the night there was another now—and he sent forth his challenge.
8
For the third time that horn rang. I believed I could hear, under the edge of its echoing, another sound which was between a bay and a squawl—certainly made by animal. Gruu answered fiercely. He patted first one clawed paw against the earth and then the other, as if he were leashed and wished for release—to be freed to attack in the dark. Gathea took a step forward to rest her hand on the beast’s head. He looked up at her, showing his tongue between his openly displayed teeth in a dire grin.
Though the horn did not sound again, I saw a flash of light through the night, and heard a crackle as if someone had harnessed the power of lightning itself, had fashioned it into a weapon. The dark was so thick that flash came and went before I could catch any sight of what lay about. The flash hit again, and again, as the clamor of what might be a hunting pack drew closer.
I could not see, but I could sense. Whatever had besieged us was now at the back of the circle, cowering with us between it and what coursed through the night, using a weapon of flame, urging forward some hunting “hounds.” So it continued to cower until Gathea took a hand. She faced about. Her wand arose once again as with its tip she wrote upon the air.
Symbols appeared, curved up and down—green those were—and yet blue—as water mingles such shades along the shore of the sea. Out spun the signs, not fading, rather flying as might small birds released to be free. They gathered outside our defense lines to hang in the air.
There was no audible snarl of rage but a sense of burning anger strove to strike us. Then that was gone, as suddenly as if a door had opened and closed. That which had striven to reach us was now shut away from our world.
We heard a rushing in the night which sounded as if a company had divided, one part going to the north, one the south of our defense. Then that, too, was swallowed by silence. I felt an emptiness, through which one could hear the clear, clean rustle of wind across the stand of grass but nothing else. Gruu settled down—this time dropping his head to rest upon one curve of leg. Gathea, her wand still in hand, curled beside him, leaving to me the other side of the fire. The girl pillowed her head on the cat’s shoulder, her eyes closed as if she—and we— had nothing more to fear. Still I sat, reliving all that had happened this night. It seemed to me that when I had staggered out of Garn’s dale—no, even before that, when I had first looked upon the Moon Shrine—my life had be gun to change; I was no longer the same Elron who had ridden through the Gate, liegeman to a clan lord, knowing nothing much beyond the duties of my place and the security of my standing with my fellows.
I should have been stricken more deeply by Lord Garn’s blow, which had not only marked my body but had cut me off from all the clan. Now that act appeared of little consequence. I had come not only into a country that those of my blood had no knowledge of, but there was a part of me which said: See, I am kinless, yet I am not a nothing; I have walked with danger and faced squarely that beyond reckoning.
Yet no skill of mine had saved us. That, too, I must face. Gathea’s talent had come again and again to stand between both of us and disaster. Such an admission was not a pleasant thing—or an easy one—for me to face honestly.
Perhaps my discomfort arose because I was used only to the women of the keeps—the clan maidens whose skills were in the ways of common living which I knew instinctively that Gathea scorned. She was unlike any maid I had ever known, as I had realized since our first meeting by the sea. One could not say to her: This is not your battle, let me stand forth to defend you as is the rightful custom. I knew a kind of shame because I knew I did not want to grant all due her or admit that in our journey so far she had borne the brunt of action.
Gathea’s desire to reach the west, the hint that she had given me that Iynne had somehow intervened between her and what was rightfully hers, power connected with the Moon Shrine, that I now accepted. Much in this land one must accept blindly, even though it was beyond all man’s experience, perhaps even a Bard’s tale.
I wondered what hunter had moved in the dark out there to bring us aid. Had he answered Gathea’s summons? Or was he already a field seeking that evil which had crawled about our camp? Man, I felt, he was not. Why did I even think “he,” save that my training said that the chase as well as battle were for my sex alone? He or it—
Such things I thought—or tried to arrange in some pattern—as I fed the fire, though I had to let it die a little for lack of fuel. I kept watch because those thoughts so troubled me, and I played ever with the hilt of my sword, for the solid feel of that gave me a sense of linkage to that other me who had been so sure and certain, before this land of many mysteries had engulfed our people. How much time passed I do not know. The sky remained heavily clouded, though no rain fell nor storm arose. There was not even one of those strange stars to be sighted. We had our small fire and the circle. Beyond that lay a thick darkness without a break—curtaining us securely in.
I heard a soft sound and glanced at the girl and the cat. Grm’s eyes were open, regarding me in his searching, weighing manner. Then he blinked, turned to look once more into the dark. Thus it came to me that the beast was signaling in his own manner that he would now take sentry duty, leaving me to rest.
So I stretched out, though I kept my sword bared, the hilt under my hand, using twists of grass which we had brought for kindling for a pillow. The bandages I had worn over my wound seemed tight and the skin beneath them itched. Sleep came in spite of that minor discomfort. I awoke as if I had been called. Yet I did not know who did the summoning, for Gathea still lay with her head pillowed against Gruu, and the beast’s eyes were open, watching. Our fire had burned away, but its light was no longer needed. The lighter gray of predawn let me see, as I sat up, what lay immediately about.
There was movement out there in the grass, grazing animals. The deer made lighter patches against the growth on which they fed. Farther yet from them larger beasts also fed, none approaching us. I got to my feet, sheathing my sword. Curiosity now stirred in me. I wanted to see what tracks whatever had besieged us might have left, so I might guess at its nature. Also—I wanted to know if the hunter in turn had left any readable sign of his passing.
I went to that star point where my belt knife still stood and pulled it free, wiping the blade on a wisp of grass before returning it to the sheath at my side. Then I stepped out boldly beyond the protection Gathea had woven, to look around.
There was a dark mass some strides distant, toward which I first turned—lumps of earth, moist enough so they clung together after a fashion, but not enough to give the heap any true shape. I stirred the mass cautiously with the toe of my boot and the lumps shifted, breaking apart. This must be what was left of that earthen image which Gathea had called up to fool the attacking evil. Nothing but earth; I could not understand how it had been given not only shape, but semblance of life. What had she said? That Blood was life. There was our familiar ceremony of the first fall hunt when a certain portion of the kill was hung in the open to drip and dry and remained untouched save by the birds—an ancient rite of offering we of the here and now no longer understood.