The wind had indeed backed to the southeast, bringing with it cooling breezes and the promise of clear and gentle nights. Which, he thought, while welcome to travellers on the road Jarn, would be something of a disadvantage to a hunter sneaking through the woodlands trying to catch up with a dark thing unseen and then to destroy it.
For a fleeting moment, looking down at the stick poking up from the dirt and the gravel around it, he saw himself back in the Keep, before the sword, plunging it into the home-stone, Elayeen’s hand in his and in Allazar’s, and then that deep and massive sound from far below them…
For a fleeting moment, he remembered the look she had given him at the end, as the great wave rushed back from its journey to the Teeth, that deep and massive sound from far below them once again. He remembered the surge of love and fear in her eyes, flooding through her hand and through their throth. Love for him. Fear for him. And then it had all been taken away. It had been the last time she had seen him, through her own beautiful eyes.
Morloch’s rasping voice echoed unbidden in his mind:
Know this, king of nothing, know this! All the horror and dread I shall unleash upon your festering world is the wages of your sins against me!
But Gawain knew Morloch’s weapons, the fear and the terror, the lies and deceit and the doubt. He had used them himself upon the Ramoth to great effect. Dwarfspit, Gawain thought, and remembered another voice, one he knew much better, one he knew he could trust:
I have always been proud of you. I know you will do well. Remember who you are, and be true to yourself, and to Raheen.
Yes, Father, Gawain smiled sadly. Then his features became grim once more. His angry pronouncement of his name and heritage to Allazar had reminded himself that it was not he, Gawain, who had caused all this. It was not he who had sent the Eldengaze to possess his beloved, nor was it he who had etched hidden knowledge and power within the wizard’s outwardly ordinary frame. It was not Gawain who had made the circles upon the floor of the Great Keep nor was it he who had made the longsword with its unseen runes swimming deep within a steel forged by unknown smiths in a time beyond the mists of myth.
No. He knew Morloch’s weapons well, knew them when he saw them and when he heard them. The circle and the sword, and the powers of Eldenelves and Elder Wizards had been set aside by those ancient magi against the day they would be needed against Morloch. It was Morloch who had triggered the need for their creation, and Morloch who had triggered the need for the three of Raheen to unleash those ancient powers. All the guilt and all the responsibility lay heaped at Morloch’s door, and it was Gawain who would come a-knocking to see the rightful owner collect what was long overdue.
Another glance at the stick, and then an eye on the wind. “Time to go hunting.” Gawain whispered, smiling grimly. He checked his weapons, jumped up and down several times to ensure nothing rattled and all was secure, and then set off, due south, following the road for two hundred yards before loping off into the woods, arcing towards the southwest.
The going was surprisingly good, the rains had softened the undergrowth so that those leaves which had fallen early simply flexed underfoot rather than crackling like a handful of twisted hay. Gawain surprised himself by enjoying his quiet progress through the forest which, as Tyrane had remarked earlier in the day, was thickening the further away from the road he moved. It had been a long time since he’d had to use his old skills, skills which had almost atrophied during their long traverse of the plains from Ferdan and in the hills of Threlland before. Hunting rabbits for Allazar near the charcoal-burner’s cabin had been good exercise, and had helped sharpen his senses as well as his aim.
It had been a long time since he had hunted alone. And it felt good to be alone. Here, in the woods, moving cautiously and quietly deeper into the forest, he felt somehow liberated. For one thing, here there were no Callodon or Gorian eyes watching his every move and gesture. No crunching of boots and wheels and horses hooves on the crumbling track to Jarn. No icy and grating voice of Eldengaze jarring at his nerves like the raw touch of cold on sensitive teeth. Gawain wanted Elayeen back. Perhaps his absence might give her the strength to return from wherever she went when the Eldengaze was upon her. Perhaps the hidden knowledge the wizard possessed would ‘come to the fore’ and help Elayeen control the ‘gift’ the circles had bestowed upon her, and bring Elayeen back to him. Perhaps.
But the best part of moving quietly through the forest, the part which brought a grim smile to Gawain’s face and lit up his eyes, was that he was free to be Gawain once more. As he had been, hunting in the woodlands around the shores of Lough Rea at home, or hunting the Ramoth throughout the lowlands. Here he was no King of Ashes, no husband, no famed Longsword warrior, no Traveller, no DarkSlayer. Here, there was simply Gawain, the forest, and his quarry. After the chaos of Ferdan and the peaceful but urgent haste across the plains, after the tumult of the circle and the chaotic emotional upheaval of its aftermath, and then the sudden rise of the ‘gifts’ which had stricken Elayeen and Allazar and seemed to set them far apart from him, it felt good to be alone.
He felt as he imagined a wolf must feel, if wolves indeed thought and felt about themselves at all. He simply let go of everything and allowed all his old training, senses and experiences free rein, almost felt them rising up from beneath blankets of idleness on a bed of enforced indolence where they’d languished for months.
His eyes darted, wide and alert, noting the way underfoot and its hazards, noting the boughs and branches overhead, head jerking this way and that, ears straining, all senses alert for sounds which should be there but weren’t, and sounds which shouldn’t be there but were. It was exhilarating, and as he moved deeper into the forest and began swinging slowly further to the north, everything else faded from his mind, leaving only the forest, and the quarry.
There was no real need for haste. It was barely mid-morning, and where the sun had flashed and flickered through the trees and branches when the column had jogged along the road, now Gawain picked his quiet way through a world of steady light and colour, the sunlight filtering through the canopy overhead and glittering like the shards of a shattered mirror whenever he glanced up and over his right shoulder.
Damp earth, mosses, fungi and decaying leaves, ferns and bracken, all the scents mingling. Insects buzzing, songbirds calling, the occasional chattering of alarm from blackbirds and the sudden clapping of wings as doves and pigeons took flight, though none of the alarums came from Gawain’s quiet passing below their roosts. Here and there, at a distance, an occasional scurrying, voles and mice, shrews and squirrels. Around the edges of muddier puddles and wallows, spoor of fox and wild boar, and once, even of wolf. The forest was thriving, and with Raheen gone, soon it would reclaim the road to Jarn, and even the outpost at the foot of the Downland Pass, and Raheen’s isolation from the world would be complete.
Gawain swung farther north, heading northwest now, a direction he would maintain until he cut across whatever spoor the darkness had left in its wake. Eldengaze had stated that the thing was on foot, and not tracking them from the air. Gawain paused, looking and listening, and then flicked a glance to the east; nothing but trees. It was getting darker, too, the splinters of light reaching the forest floor diminishing, plants unable to survive in the gloom giving way to leaf litter and the mosses and fungi that thrive on them, the scent of decay rising. Whatever was passing through the forest here should leave an easy path to follow in that leaf litter and humus beneath it.