“We seem to be making reasonable ground.” Gawain remarked, deftly changing the subject.
“The pace has quickened since yesterday, my lord. And the Gorians are certainly fit enough, particularly with them taking it in turns to rest on the wagons. We might make forty miles a day if we can keep it up and eat on the move…”
The captain’s voice trailed off as he looked forward past the vanguard. About five hundred yards ahead on the undulating road, the single advanced scout was cantering back towards them waving a warning flag above his head. The warning was relayed down the line from the van and the column slowed.
Gawain and Tyrane advanced through the head of the column to meet the rider.
“Trouble up ahead, Serres,” the scout reported, saluting briefly. “Flood in the road where it dips. Last night’s rain’s turned it into a right muddy mess.”
“And to the sides?”
“Aye, Captain. Ditches and run-offs collapsed. Horses will manage it, and them with stout boots. But the wagons’ll be near axle deep in it, far as I can tell.”
“Dwarfspit.” Gawain grumbled.
“Sorry, Serres,” the scout apologised.
“Not your fault lad,” Tyrane assured the scout, “Back up the road with you, cross the mire and advance another 500 yards, keep a good watch along the road.”
“Aye Serre.”
Mire was right. It looked as though a turnout from a ditch running alongside the road had collapsed, and this in turn had caused the ditch to back up and flood the road in the bottom of the dip, and that had caused the opposite ditch to collapse too. Quagmire was good word to describe the muddy mess left in the storm’s wake when it had abated in the early hours of the morning.
While the horses could avoid the mire simply by walking into the woods and around the worst of it, the wagons couldn’t. The men of Callodon eyed the mud and then the wagons, and grimaced, knowing what was to come. The Gorians, though, under Jaxon’s supervision, merely shrugged, took off their trousers, and began working with a humour and enthusiasm the others found baffling at first, and then infectious. Half of them waded straight into the mud, squelching into it above the knee, and gleefully trod into the mire the branches, brambles, and woodland debris tossed to them by their compatriots.
Soon, Callodon steel joined the effort, guards not on watch hacking away at shrubs and branches, men gathering great armfuls and bundles of twigs and leaves, hurling them into the morass to be trodden down by stout Gorian boots and the willing feet within them.
It took hours. First the wagons were unloaded and the supplies carried across to the other side of the mire, and then the wagons were dragged and shoved across by filthy horses and even filthier men. And then the heavy crates and barrels had to be loaded on to the wagons once more. By the time a brief and practically futile bath in ditchwater had removed the worst of the mud from men and animals, night had fallen once more on the Jarn road. Another scout was sent ahead to look for the nearest passing-place or at least a rest area firmer under foot than the dip they’d laboured out of. When he returned with news of a such a place about three quarters of a mile north, the column made its cautious way in the dark before finally and gratefully making camp.
All were caked in mud, except for Allazar and Elayeen. No-one had expected the blind elfin queen to work in mud she could not see, and no-one expected the wizard standing guard watchfully by her side to leave her alone and vulnerable on the road. It perhaps wasn’t surprising then, when Gawain had done the best he could attending to Gwyn in the dark and settled onto his blanket and saddle on the hard and stony ground, that Elayeen chose to sleep a short distance from him, wrapped in her own clean and dry cloak. The last thing Gawain thought he saw before falling into a deep sleep was his lady, laying three feet away, fixing him with her frosty eldengaze in the murky grey of a blustery night.
The first thing he saw when he awoke just before dawn on the third morning was his lady’s boots, three feet way, while she stood stock still and fixed her eldengaze somewhere off to the southwest. Then he saw Allazar’s boots, standing to her right, and then Captain Tyrane’s.
Gawain at once leapt to his feet, snatching up the longsword, blinking furiously and trying to follow their gaze out into the woods. Behind him, the Gorians were still sleeping, only the duty watch were alert.
“Good morning, Longsword.” Allazar muttered softly.
“What is it? What’s out there?” Gawain whispered, the hilt of the sword gripped in his right hand, the scabbard in his left, ready to draw.
“Something tracks us.” Elayeen announced, and in spite of himself, Gawain shivered. The voice of eldengaze seemed somehow even harsher and so much more jarring to his nerves in the still of the pre-dawn light before even the birds had begun their morning chorus. Or perhaps it had simply grown much more sinister during the night.
“Something?”
“Something dark.”
“Why didn’t you wake me sooner?”
No-one answered, and Gawain felt his anger rising. “Captain?”
“Sorry, my lord. I was only just alerted myself by one of the men.”
“Allazar?”
“Your lady only woke me a minute or two ago, Longsword.”
“Elayeen?”
“My sight is fixed upon the darkness. If you were closer I could have kicked you as I did the wizard. You were not. And my sight is fixed upon the darkness.”
“And does the sight fixed upon the darkness tell us how far away it is, and its size?”
“Perhaps a mile. Perhaps a little more. It is too far for me to gauge its size.”
“A mile?” Gawain gasped, “Through the trees? Are you serious?”
“Yes.” Elayeen’s head swivelled towards him, and Gawain had to fight hard against a strong urge to look away. Instead, he held her awful gaze until, after a few long moments of almost complete silence, she turned her face back to the southwest.
Gawain did his best not to sigh aloud. “Is it moving?”
“No.”
“Then we should. Quickly and quietly. Captain, have everyone woken as quietly as possible. The wind is still from the east and sound carries even in woodland. We eat on the move.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Tyrane signalled the duty watch and at once the sergeant was roused from sleep. Whispered instructions were given, and slowly, quietly, the camp rose with the sun. Gawain turned his face to the east for the briefest of remembrances, before turning back to Elayeen, who stood rooted to the spot, as though she really were a statue.
Another glance at Allazar revealed the wizard smiling down in wonder at the elfin queen and then peering through the steely dawn light into the trees. It was futile, of course, the eyes of ordinary men would see nothing but the shrubs, brambles and trees of the roadside woodland. Birds began singing out their cheery and raucous greeting to the day, and Gawain slung the sword over his back before moving to stand behind Elayeen.
At the movement, Allazar cast him a surprised look, and seemed about to say something, to protest perhaps, but Gawain ignored him and placed his hands on his lady’s shoulders, gripping them firmly.
She stiffened, and then turned around to face him, and her voice was her own when she spoke.
“Egrith miheth, G’wain.”
“As do I.” But before he could lean down to kiss her she turned her back on him, facing towards the southwest again. Again she spoke from the depths of the eldengaze.
“It has not moved, whatever it is.” Then she drew away from him and turned slightly sideways on. “It seems to remain there, but it has a…pulse, slight, like a faint glow.”
“And you can see it, through the trees, a mile away?”
“Though the distance may be wrong. Certainly no closer than that, perhaps a little farther.”