The path forked and became two and there was another signpost, with two pointing arrows this time, one pointing to the castle, the other to the inn. But just a few yards down the path leading to the castle a massive iron gate barred any further progress, and stretching out on either side of it was a high fence of heavy steel mesh, with barbed wire on top of it. A gaily striped kiosk stood to one side of the gate and a man-at-arms leaned against it with a halberd held very sloppily. I walked up to the gate and had to kick it to attract his attention.
"Ye be late," he growled. "The gate is closed at sunset and the dragons are let loose. It would be-worth your life to go a furlong down that road."
He came to the gate and peered closer at us.
"You have a damsel with you. Is she hi distress?"
"Her ankle's hurt," I said. "She cannot walk."
He sniggered. "If such be the case," he said, "it might be arranged to provide escort for the damsel."
"For both of us," said Kathy, sharply.
He wagged his head in mock sadness. "I stretch the point to let one past. I cannot stretch for both."
"Someday," I said, "it will not be a point but your neck that will be stretched."
"Begone!" he shouted, angrily. "Begone and take your slut along. At the km, the witch will mutter spells to mend the ankle."
"Let's get out of here," said Kathy, frightened.
"My friend," I said to the man-at-arms, "I shall make a point, when I am less encumbered, of coming back and raising lumps on you."
"Please," said Kathy. "Please, let's get out of here!"
I turned around and left Behind us, the man-at-arms roared threats and banged the gate bars with his halberd. I turned down the path that led to the inn and once out of sight of the castle gate stopped and let Kathy to the ground, crouching down beside her.
She was crying, more with anger, it seemed to me, than with fear.
"No one," she said, "has ever called me a slut."
I did not point out to her that manners and language of that sort sometimes went with castles.
She raised her arm and pulled my head down close beside her face. "If it hadn't been for me," she said, "you could have clobbered him."
"That was all talk," I told her. "There was a gate between us and he had that fancy stabber."
"He said there was a witch down at the inn," she said.
I turned my head and kissed her gently on the cheek.
"Are you trying to take my mind off witches?"
"I thought it might help," I said.
"And there was that fence," she said. "A wire fence. Who ever heard of a fence around a castle? Back hi those days they hadn't even invented wire."
"It's getting dark," I said. "We'd better head for the inn."
"But the witch!"
I laughed, not that I really felt like laughing. "Mostly," I told her, "witches are just old eccentric women no one understands."
"Maybe you are right," she said.
I lifted her and got on my feet.
She held up her face and I kissed her upon the mouth. Her arms tightened about me and I held her body close, feeling the warmth and the sweetness of her. For a long moment there was nothing in the empty universe but the two of us and it was only slowly that I came back to a realization of the darkening woods and of the furtive stirrings in it.
A short way down the path I saw a faint rectangle of light that I knew must be the inn.
"We're almost there," I told her.
"I won't be any bother, Horton," she promised. "I'll not do any screaming. No matter what there is, I'll never scream."
"I'm sure you won't," I said. "And we'll get out of here. I don't know exactly how, but somehow we'll make it out of here, the two of us together5"
Seen dimly in the deepening dark, the inn was an old ramshackle building, huddled beneath a grove of towering, twisted oaks. Smoke plumed from the chimney in the center of the roofline and the feeble window-light shone through diamond panes of glass. The inn yard was deserted and there seemed no one about. Which was just as well, I told myself.
I'd almost gotten to the doorway when a bent, misshapen figure moved into it, a black, featureless body outlined by the dim light from inside.
"Come on in, laddie," shrilled the bent-over creature.
"Don't stand gawping there. There is naught to harm you. Nor milady, either."
"Milady has sprained her ankle," I said. "We had hoped…"
"Of course," the creature cried. "You've come to the most likely place to have a job of healing. Old Meg will stir up a posset for it."
I could see her somewhat more clearly now and there could be no doubt that she was the witch of which the man-at-arms had told us. Her hair hung in wispy, ragged strands about her face and her nose was long and hooked, reaching for an up curved chin and almost reaching it She leaned heavily upon a wooden staff.
She stepped back and I moved through the door. A fire that blazed smokily upon the hearth did little to relieve the darkness of the room. The smell of wood smoke mingled with and sharpened the other undefinable odors that lay like a fog upon the place.
"Over there," said Meg, the witch, pointing with her staff. "The chair over by the fire. It is of good construction, made of honest oak and shaped to fit the body, with a wood sack for "a seat. Milady will be comfortable."
I carried Kathy over to the chair and lowered her into it.
"All right?" I asked.
She looked up at me and her eyes were shining softly in the firelight.
"All right," she said, and her words were happy. "We're halfway home," I told her.
The witch went hobbling past us, thumping her staff upon the floor and muttering to herself. She crouched beside the fire and began stirring a pan of steaming liquid set upon the coals. The firelight, flaring up, showed the ugliness of her, the incredible nose and chin, the enormous wart upon one cheek, sprouting hairs that looked like spider legs.
Now that my eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness, I began to make out some of the details of the room. Three rough plank tables stood along the front wall and unlighted candles, set in candlesticks upon the tables, leaned askew like pale and drunken ghosts. A large hutch cabinet at one end of the room held mugs and bottles that glinted faintly in the stuttering firelight nickering in the room.
"Now," said the witch, "just a bit of powdered toad and a pinch of graveyard dust and the posset will be finished. And once we fix the damsel's ankle, then there will be food. Aye, yes, there will be food."
She cackled shrilly at a joke I could only guess at— something about the food, perhaps.
From some distance off came the sound of voices. Other travelers, I wondered, heading for the inn? A company of them, perhaps.
The voices grew louder and I stepped to the door to look in the direction from which they came. Coming up the track, climbing the hill, were a number of people and some of them were carrying flaring torches.
Behind the crowd came two men riding horses, but as I watched the procession, I saw after a little time that the one who rode behind the other rode a donkey, not a horse, with his feet almost dragging on the ground. But it was the man who rode in front who attracted my attention and very well he might. He loomed tall and gaunt and was dressed in armor, with a shield upon one arm and a long «. lance carried on one shoulder. The horse was as gaunt as he was and it walked with a stumbling gait and with its head held low. As the procession approached closer I saw, in the light cast by the torches, that the horse was little better than a bag of bones.