“Elayeen’s gift has grown stronger, Longsword, perhaps in the same way that my own has with the passage of time. The white fire which destroyed the Graken and its rider was an order of magnitude stronger than that which destroyed the Grimmand of Sethi.” Allazar smiled at Elayeen like a parent proud of a beloved child’s achievement.
“Yes thank you wizard, but for now I’d appreciate it if you’d help gather my lady’s belongings and your own and prepare to move out.”
“Hmm? Oh!” Allazar seemed suddenly to emerge from his reverie. “Of course, yes, at once.”
Elayeen, though, was content merely to stand facing the southwest, while all about her everyone including Gawain busied themselves with the quiet but determined bustle of breaking their hasty camp.
After saddling a slightly fretful Gwyn, the great horse sensing his rising frustration, Gawain surveyed the scene around him. It might have been funny if it’d been some simple training exercise. Men and women, covered practically head to toe in dark brown mud, hair matted with the stuff, were saddling horses, hitching wagons, handing out rations of bread and meat, checking weapons… and in the midst of it all, standing aloof from them all, Elayeen, her hair stirring in the soft morning breeze, shimmering silver in the shafts of sunshine lancing through the trees. Her bow and quiver of stone-tipped arrows lay behind her on the muddy ground at her feet, as if forgotten, her eldengaze fixed on the distant threat, and that annoyed him more than anything had since his rude awakening this morning.
When everything was in order, and Gawain had checked Allazar’s work in saddling Elayeen’s horse and strapping her belongings in place, Gawain picked up the bow and quiver and stood in front of her, between her and whatever dark-made thing it was in the distance that held her attention. He pressed her weapons gently against her stomach, and held them there until finally she reached up and took them.
“I can see your eyes now, and your mouth,” the eldengaze voice grated. “They are like holes torn in the light that is you.”
“Hurrah.” Gawain replied coldly. “Can you see well enough to get up on your bloody horse?”
That shook her, like a slap in the face might, and she actually recoiled half a pace.
“No,” she managed, looking down, fumbling to sling the quiver of arrows over her head while holding the bow loosely in her broken hand, all trace of the eldengaze gone.
“Two things, my lady,” Gawain said quietly, but making no attempt to disguise his anger. “Thing the first: if you see, hear or even smell a dark enemy you tell me. Not the wizard. Not the captain. Me. And if I’m sleeping you wake me. Not the wizard. Not the captain. Me.
“Thing the second: if you see, hear or even smell a dark enemy I expect to see your bow or your sword at the ready in your hand, not lying useless and forgotten in the dirt behind you.”
Allazar eased Elayeen’s horse forward, clearly overhearing them.
“I’m sorry, G’wain,” Elayeen said softly, “The sight of the Eldenelves is powerful …”
“Clearly. But while you and the wizard are behaving like children with new toys you might remember that there are eighteen Gorians and twenty four men of Callodon looking on. There were of course twenty seven when we left the foot of the Pass but two of them died during our first day on the road. If you can see something dark, then perhaps you can help destroy it. But not if you’ve left your weapons abandoned in the mud somewhere and the rest of us are all too busy to help find them for you.”
Gawain strode angrily away, leaving Allazar to help her into the saddle while he mounted Gwyn and moved down the track to check the rearguard. The column moved off, people eating their breakfast on foot or in the saddle, snatching wary glances over their left shoulders in the direction of the darkness which lurked unseen in the distance.
When Gawain was satisfied that the rearguard was in order and the sergeant knew as much or as little as he did about the ‘something’, he returned to his customary place. As he passed between Tyrane and the right-flanking guardsman, Elayeen twisted in her saddle and cast her eldengaze to the southwest.
“It tracks us. It is keeping pace.”
To Gawain, it seemed as though all trace of his beloved had simply vanished again, leaving behind a shell filled with a dreadful echoing emptiness, out from the unfathomable depths of which that jarring voice floated up. Allazar had of course been perfectly correct. The eldengaze had grown much stronger, and to Gawain at least, so had Elayeen’s desire to use it, just as Allazar’s had when faced with the Graken on the road.
20. Running
They’d gone barely a mile, with Elayeen turning in the saddle every few yards to gaze out through the woods. Whatever manner of dark wizard-made danger was tracking them seemed content merely to keep pace with them, watching them by some unknown means just as Elayeen was watching it. Finally, the sight of the elfin so frequently casting her haunting gaze over her shoulder was too much for the Gorians, and Jaxon trotted forward to walk alongside the captain’s horse.
“Serres,” he exclaimed, “If it will help, we are all able to move much faster than this. In Armunland we would often run alongside the wagons, to flee an oncoming storm or because the overseers were in a hurry. We can quicken our pace and hold it for many miles if we must.”
Tyrane shot a glance at Gawain.
“More speed would be good, Captain. But take care, Jaxon, the road and the ruts are still soft from the storm.”
“No need to fret, Serres, we’ve all done this hundreds of times, and the tracks in the Simayen were never as good as this.”
With that, Jaxon trotted back to the wagons. Gawain and Tyrane saw him pass word to his people, saw them smile and nod, and then the ladies were bundled up into the rear wagon. Two men placed themselves on the outside flanks at the head of the horses, took hold of the bridles, and began urging them on, until the whole column was rumbling along the track at a steady jogging pace.
Gawain and Tyrane exchange a look which spoke volumes of their shared opinion of the Gorian refugees, and then Tyrane signalled the advance scout to double his speed too.
After only half a mile at their doubled pace, the voice of eldengaze drifted back through the head of the column. “It is keeping pace. It tracks us still.”
“Dwarfspit!” Gawain growled. “Allazar, how is it possible? The wind’s from the east and backing towards the south if anything, our scent can’t be carrying through the woods so quickly that it can match our speed. The trees will break the sound of our passage too, it can’t be using that.”
“There are many means at Morloch’s disposal, Longsword, any one of which he could make available to his servants. If you recall, when first he appeared to you on the plains of Juria on your journey out of Elvendere, he knew exactly where you were and was able to appear before you.”
“He knew exactly where I was because that Dwarfspit black hearted elfwizard I later cleaved in two told him when I left the forest, using that eye-amulet he carried.”
“I hope you’re not suggesting one of those is among us, Longsword?”
“I would see it if it were,” Elayeen asserted.
“Thank you, Eldengaze,” Gawain mumbled, not realising the name he had used, and then added in a slightly louder voice, “However it’s managing to track us, I would prefer that it wasn’t. Any ideas you might have, wizard, for throwing it off our trail would be gratefully received.”
“I shall bend my mind to the task, Longsword.” Allazar announced, adding a little petulantly: “Though not knowing what exactly it is shall make the task a challenging one.”
“What’s the lie of the land over that way, Tyrane?”
“The forest thickens, my lord, and remains dense as far as the river Ostern, and that runs southwest and into the marshes to the west of Raheen. The Old Kingdom plains are still well away to the northwest, on the opposite bank of the Ostern, and the Westguard have that under close watch.”