At two hundred yards they stopped, and Gawain stole a quick glance over his shoulder. Elayeen sat saddle, her horse turned to her right, the better to draw and shoot along the track if needs be. Another quick glance at Allazar, who simply shook his head. All around them, the woodland seemed no different than it had when they’d passed through it a week before and rested at the charcoal-burner’s cabin. A sudden nod of the head from Allazar drew Gawain’s attention and he tensed, until he followed the direction of the wizard’s gaze and saw a plump rabbit to the side of a large blister of brambles.
They moved on, slowly, waiting for the whizz of Elayeen’s arrow or the sudden rustle of undergrowth which would presage an enemy charge towards them. But nothing came. Finally, at three hundred paces or thereabouts, Gawain stopped, and he and Allazar gazed about them. Nothing sinister at all.
“Could she be wrong?” Gawain whispered, moving cautiously to the middle of the road to stand back-to-back with the wizard.
He felt Allazar shrug slightly. “Her new sight is yet young, Longsword, but still it is remarkable.”
“Yet there’s nothing here.”
“Not that we can see.” Allazar asserted.
“The brambles aren’t tall enough to hide a goat, and the birds and woodland creatures don’t seem in the slightest disturbed.”
“True.”
“And Gwyn hasn’t so much as sniffed a concern, much less given a warning.”
“Also true.”
“Dwarfspit.” Gawain sighed, adding, “Watch my back.”
With that, he turned to face down the track, took a step or away from the wizard so that Elayeen would hopefully see his gingerbread figure clearer, and then made a hugely exaggerated gesture, holding his arms out wide and shrugging his shoulders.
Almost at once he saw Elayeen lift her bow, and again in spite of her broken fingers draw it, and loose an arrow.
“Dwarfspit!” Gawain gasped, and Allazar whirled in time to see the longshaft arcing silently towards them.
It fizzed into a tangle of brambles to the left of the track a few yards further on from them, and before they had a chance to say anything, another zipped into the brambles to the right. No attack came.
Gawain sighed again. “If anything nasty comes rushing out of there, hit it with your stick, wizard.”
Allazar nodded, and Gawain simply strode forward, swinging the longsword in a great flat arc, dropping to one knee as he did. The blade crashed into the brambles, and to their surprise, lifted them clean off the ground to send them tumbling further into the woods, exposing a cracked guardstone, a twin of those they’d seen at the Farin Bridge.
“By the Teeth,” Allazar mumbled, and hurried across the road to sweep the brambles aside with his staff. “The brambles have been cut from deeper in the woods and placed over the guardstones to conceal them.”
“And the stones are starting to crumble. Destroyed by the wave from the circle, do you think?”
“No, Longsword, I think these were laid more recently.”
Gawain studied the cut ends of the brambles, and the ground around the crumbling stones. “Agreed. You’re getting better at this than I give you credit for, Allazar. Yet these stones are spent?”
“Yes, they are. The only question is, when? And where is the spider at the end of this web?”
16. Morloch’s Wrath
Gawain signalled to the column with two great waves of his arm, and then watched as Elayeen came thundering down the road, a startled vanguard scurrying to catch up twenty yards behind her. She slowed as she neared, looking from the left to the right, and brought her horse to a stop a few yards short of Gawain and the wizard.
“Your arrows will need new points, miheth,” Gawain announced, “But the shafts are intact. I’ll attend to them.”
“Thank you. Did I hit the… things?”
“Guardstones. No, though I’m not surprised given the distance.”
“Those are guardstones?” she asked, twisting in her saddle for a better look at each of the ruined stones.
“What’s left of them. They’re crumbling, like stale cake. They’re similar in size and shape to those at the Farin Bridge.”
“I did not see those.” Elayeen reminded him as Tyrane and the vanguard arrived.
“Ah. Well, they’re round and flat, like great white stone coins, though rough-hewn. About a yard across, the diameter almost the same length as one of your arrows.”
“Thank you, miheth. To me they look simply like deep dark holes, but glowing… as though they would draw the light from the world. It is hard to describe.”
“May we look, my lord? I and my men are not familiar with these guardstones. I’d like to bring Jaxon up too, for his opinion?”
“Of course Tyrane, a good idea.”
“The one on the right is better preserved,” Allazar announced sternly, leading the Callodon officers across the road. “You can still see some of the runes carved into the surface of the stone…”
While Allazar described the stones and their function to Tyrane and his men, and the rest of the column slowly drew nearer, Gawain unpicked the twine binding the broken stone points to the shafts of Elayeen’s spent arrows.
“You’re very quiet, G’wain.” Elayeen spoke suddenly, still gazing down at him.
“You saw my gesture from so far, so clearly? Before you shot your arrows?”
“Yes. Did I do something wrong, miheth? I could think of no other way of showing you where the danger was, and you and Allazar seemed to be just standing there, between the two… things, as I thought they were. I was worried for you.”
“No,” Gawain said softly, “No, you did the right thing. I’m just glad it was you doing the shooting, what with the wind and all.”
And it was windy indeed, blustery in fact.
“I could see you both clearly, G’wain, and also my own left hand on the bow, poor broken fingers and all. I may not see as I once did, it’s true, but if for a single moment I thought loosing the arrows would have endangered you or Allazar, I would not have done so. Are you angry with me, miheth? Without the throth between us now, I cannot tell…”
“No,” Gawain insisted quickly, “No, I’m just surprised. Continually,” and he turned his attention to repairing her arrows.
Elayeen smiled sadly, knowing from the sound of his voice there was something else troubling him, but unless he spoke of it, she could not guess the reason, just as he could not guess how much the loss of the throth between them made her feel so diminished and, at times like these, alone.
When the wagons arrived, Jaxon confirmed that yes indeed, these were guardstones the like of which had penned his people and all others across Goria far to the west, and the presence of them here in the free lands of Callodon sent a tremor of alarm through the refugees which Allazar did his best to allay.
Gawain tied off the first new point, using his teeth to bite off the small ball of twine, and standing close to Elayeen’s left side, handed the arrow up to her, brushing her arm with it. “Here, miheth, the first is done.”
“Thank you.” She slung her bow, and then felt along the shaft of the arrow, from tip to fletching. Satisfied, she deftly slid it into the quiver at her right hip. “Do you have enough points?”
“Plenty, I annoyed Allazar by making them at the charcoal-burner’s cabin when we sheltered there. He really doesn’t like the sound of stones being banged together. This one’s nearly done too.”
“Thank you.”
“There’ll be rain tonight I think. Another storm on the way. Summer’s fading fast this year.”
“Yes.”
There was a long silence between them, Gawain working on fixing a new point to Elayeen’s arrow, she simply sitting quietly in the saddle while small groups of Callodon guardsmen took it in turns to study the guardstone while Allazar described its function.