On another day I might have stayed forty yards ahead and plinked at them with my bow. But I wasn't in the mood. I just wanted to be left alone and to get back together with the others.
I galloped off. Up and down and around a few hills and I lost them easily. But in the process I lost myself. During all the fun the sky clouded over. It started to drizzle. Just to make me that much more enchanted with my chosen way of life. I set out to find the road, hoping I would find traces of my companions there.
I topped a hill and spied that damned crow-surrounded figure that had been haunting me since the Temple of Travellers' Respose. It was striding along in the distance, directly away from me. I forgot about the others. I kicked my mount into a gallop. The figure paused and looked back. I felt the weight of its stare but did not slow. I would unravel this mystery now.
I charged down a shallow hill, leapt a wash in which muddy water gurgled. The figure was out of sight for a moment. Up the other side. When I reached the crest there was nothing to be seen but a few random crows circling no particular point. I used language that would have distressed my mother immensely.
I did not slow but continued my career till I reached the approximate point where I had seen the thing last. I reined in, swung down, began stomping around looking for sign. A mighty tracker, me. But, moist as the ground was already, there had to be traces. Unless I was crazy and seeing things.
I found traces, sure enough. And I felt the continued pressure of that stare. But I did not see the thing I sought. I was baffled. Even considering the probability that there was sorcery involved, how could it have vanished so completely? There was no cover anywhere around.
I spotted some crows starting to circle about a quarter mile away. "All right, you son of a bitch. We'll see how fast you can run."
There was nothing there when I got there.
The cycle repeated itself three times. I got no closer. The last time I halted I did so atop a low crest that, from a quarter mile, overlooked a hundred-acre wood. I dismounted and stood beside my horse. We stared. "You, too?" I asked. His breathing was as uneven as mine. And those monster beasts never got winded.
That was a sight, down there. Never have I seen so many crows except maybe on a recent battlefield.
In a lifetime of travel and study I have come upon half a hundred tales about haunted forests. The woods are always described as dark and dense and old or the trees are mostly dead, skeleton hands reaching for the sky. This wood fit none of the particulars except for density. Yet it sure felt haunted.
I tossed my reins across the horse's neck, strapped on a buckler, drew my sword from its saddle scabbard, and started forward. The horse came along behind me, maybe eight feet back, head down so his nostrils were almost to the ground, like a hound on the track.
The crows were most numerous over the center of the wood. I did not trust my eyes but thought I detected some squat dark structure among the trees there. The closer I got the slower I moved, meaning maybe a part of me was still infected with common sense. The part that kept telling me that I was not cut out for this sort of thing. I wasn't some lone brawling swordsman who stalked evil into its lair.
I am a dope cursed with an unhealthy portion of curiosity. Curiosity had me by the chin whiskers and kept right on dragging me along.
There was one lone tree that approximated the stereotype, a bony old thing about half dead, as big around as me, standing like a sentinel thirty feet from the rest of the wood. Scrub and saplings clustered around its feet, rising waist high. I paused to lean against it while I talked myself into or out of something. The horse came up till his nose bumped my shoulder. I turned my head to look at him.
Snake hiss. Thump!
I gawked at the arrow quivering in the tree three inches from my fingers and only started to get myself down when it struck me that the shaft had not been meant to stick me in the brisket.
Head, shaft, and fletching, that bolt was as black as a priest's heart. The shaft itself had an enameled look. An inch behind the head was a wrap of white. I levered the arrow out of the tree and held the message close enough to read.
It is not yet time, Croaker .
The language and alphabet were those of the Jewel Cities.
Interesting. "Right. Not yet time." I peeled the paper off, crumpled it into a ball, tossed it at the wood. I looked for some sign of the archer. There was none. Of course.
I shoved the arrow into my quiver, swung onto my saddle, turned the horse and rode about a step. A shadow ran past, of a crow flying up to have a look at the seven little brown men waiting for me atop the hill. "You guys never give up, do you?"
I got back down, behind the horse, took out my bow, strung it, drew an arrow—the arrow just collected—and started angling across the hillside, staying behind my mount. The little brown guys turned their toy horses and moved with me.
When I had a nice range I jumped out and let fly at the nearest. He saw it coming and tried to dodge, only he did himself more harm than good. I meant to put the shaft into his pony's neck. It slammed in through his knee, getting him and the animal both. The pony threw him and took off, dragging him from a stirrup.
I mounted up fast, took off through the gap. Those little horses did not move fast enough to close it.
So we were off, them pounding after me at a pace to kill their animals in an hour, my beast barely cantering and, I think, having a good time. I can't recall any other horse I've ridden looking back to check the pursuit and adjusting its pace to remain tantalizingly close.
I had no idea who the brown guys were but there had to be a bunch of them the way they kept turning up. I considered working on this bunch, taking them out one by one, decided discretion was the better part. If need be I could bring the Company down and forage for them.
I wondered what became of Lady and Goblin and the others. I doubted they had come to any harm, what with our advantage in mounts, but...
We were separated and there was no point spending the remaining daylight looking for them. I would get back to the road, turn north, find a town and someplace dry.
The drizzle irritated me more than the fact that I was being hunted.
But that stretch of forest bothered me more than the rain. That was a mystery that scared the crap out of me.
The crows and walking stump were real. No doubt of that anymore. And the stump knew me by name.
Maybe I ought to bring the Company down and go after whatever hid there.
The road was one of those wonders that turns to mud hip deep if somebody spits on it. There were no fences in this part of the world, so I just rode beside it. I came to a village almost immediately.
Call it a stroke of fate, or timing. Timing. My life runs on weird timing. There were riders coming into town from the north. They looked even more bedraggled than I felt. They were not little brown men but I gave them the suspicious eye anyway and looked for places to duck. They were carrying more lethal hardware than I was, and I had enough to outfit a platoon.
"Yo! Croaker!"
Hell. That was Murgen. I got a little closer and saw that the other three were Willow Swan, Cordy Mather, and Blade.
What the hell were they doing down here?
Chapter Twenty-six: OVERLOOK
The one who had withdrawn everything but moral support did not give up his right to complain and criticize.
The gathering of the Shadowmasters took place in the heights of a soaring tower in that one's new capitol fortress, Overlook, which lay two miles south of Shadowcatch. It was a strange, dark fortress, more vast than some cities. It had thick walls a hundred feet high. Every vertical surface was sheathed in plates of burnished brass or iron. Ugly silver lettering in an alphabet known only to a few damascened those plates, proclaiming fearful banes.