Not having much to talk about, and neither seeming to mind the silence of the other, they traversed the scrub for three days before Gawain turned slightly west, into the trees, and deeper into the forest of southern Callodon. It was there, in the lingering heat of a sultry autumn evening, they made camp to the rumbling of thunder rolling in from the east.
“I hope Elayeen remembered my cloak,” Gawain muttered, propping his saddle at the base of a large pine and wrapping Gwyn’s blanket tightly around himself against the rain he knew was following close behind the thunder.
“She has left Jarn?” Allazar asked, surprised at Gawain’s seeming sensitivity to his lady’s whereabouts.
“I think so. For a while I didn’t know, I think we were too far from each other. But now I think she’s headed in our direction.”
“And still you feel no alarm?”
“No. And I suppose now you’re thinking ‘I told you so’, and that I was foolish to imagine spies and assassins and all manner of peril along the way.”
Allazar sniffed dramatically. “I would never dream of making such a childish remark, Longsword, I am slighted you should think so poorly of me.”
Another peal of thunder drowned out Gawain’s response, but the wizard could see the glint of humour in the younger man’s eyes, and that filled him with a comforting warmth in spite of the approaching storm.
The rain, when it arrived, was torrential, and cold. The two sat on their saddles, wrapped in their horse-blankets, hoping to keep their bedrolls and other meagre possessions as well as themselves dry while the thunderstorm raged around them. It was a futile hope, of course, and when dawn broke hours after the storm had abated the pallid sunshine found them both shivering and sopping wet.
The ground underfoot squelched as they trudged miserably and uncomfortably onwards, picking their way through the debris and undergrowth on the forest floor until, around noon, the trees began noticeably to thin, and they came upon an abandoned charcoal-burner’s workings and cabin. There, grudgingly, Gawain decided to pause awhile.
The log cabin had been abandoned for years, and had suffered accordingly, but it still possessed a functional stone hearth and chimney, and in a corner, in an oaken bin bound with rusting iron straps, a goodly amount of charcoal. Gawain made no objection when Allazar filled an iron scoop and dumped the load into the hearth, and with more than a few muttered words and a great deal of prodding and poking, the wizard finally coaxed the fire into life.
They changed into damp and uninviting clothes from their packs while their sopping ones dried before the almost smokeless hearth, and while the ‘laundry’ dried, they sat in the sunshine outside the cabin.
“Oh look,” Allazar said softly, gazing across the clearing past the disused piles of turf and abandoned logs, “A rabbit. And we with a fire.”
“You just don’t stop, do you, wizard? You seem obsessed with rabbits. From Threlland to Ferdan, oh look, rabbits, and from Ferdan to here, oh look, rabbits.”
“I believe your lady put it quite well, Longsword. Something to do with not being a dwarf?”
“Hmmmf. It just so happens I like frak. But you’re both right, I’ll admit it, if Morloch’s minions were waiting for us it’d be in Jarn, and we know they’re not there, or they’ll be at the Downland Pass, and we’re not there yet.”
With that, Gawain went into the cabin and returned with his quiver of arrows, then sat back on the log, an arrow strung in hand, and waited for another rabbit to put in an appearance.
“Typical,” Allazar muttered, “The one time you’re unarmed, the rabbit appears. Then you scare it away by fetching your arrows. And now there are none. We are doomed to end our days with nothing more than soggy frak to mark our passing.”
“Call yourself a wizard,” Gawain countered. “Took you ages to light a simple fire and now you can’t even pull a rabbit from a forest, never mind a hat.”
“Shhh!” Allazar hissed quietly, “To the right, beyond the woodpile, at the base of the tree.”
“I see it.” Gawain replied, slowly shifting his weight and just as slowly drawing his arm back.
“You were saying about forests and hats?”
“Shut up.”
“Good, aren’t I?” Allazar smiled, haughtily.
Gawain’s arm was a blur, the string snapped and the arrow sped across the clearing, only to slam into the tree trunk four inches to the left and high of the rabbit’s startled ears. In a bound, it was gone into the undergrowth.
“Dwarfspit!” Gawain gasped, stunned by his own inaccuracy.
“Oh dear.” Allazar agreed.
“Dwarfspit!” Gawain exclaimed again, “Thirty paces, no more, twenty-five maybe! I was six years old when I last missed a shot like that!”
“Well,” Allazar sighed, standing up and stretching his legs. “Eight weeks without throwing so much as a party must take its toll on one so highly trained as yourself, Longsword. Pity really, for we had so many opportunities for you to keep your arm and eye in shape on our journey across the plains.”
“Dwarfspit,” Gawain repeated, staring in disbelief at the still-quivering fact of the shaft buried in the tree.
“Soggy frak for two it is then. I shall check on our clothes, Longsword, knowing our luck of late I wouldn’t be at all surprised should they suddenly burst into flames at the unexpected sight of a charcoal fire.”
“Keep that fire glowing, wizard,” Gawain asserted sternly, flipping his wrist to bring his bowstring back into its customary place. He slung the quiver over his shoulder, plucked another arrow from it, strung it, and said “There’ll be rabbit for lunch if I have to hurl my sword at the furry little bastards.”
Allazar chuckled quietly as he watched the young man lope off into the trees. Perhaps Gawain had been right, after all, and a short time apart from Elayeen had been necessary to realign some internal compass shared between them. Certainly the young king’s sense of humour had returned. And he would need it soon. When they emerged from the forest, less than three days from now, the table-topped mountain of Raheen would be in clear sight before them.
5. Raheen
Gorged on rabbit, nuts and berries, it was a much happier Allazar who followed Gawain out of the forest and on to a rutted track two days after their brief sojourn at the charcoal-burner’s hut. Dry of clothes and better fed they certainly were, and in much better humour too. Gawain had come close to irritating the wizard intensely with his near constant archery practice on the move, but the wizard understood that while Gawain was bringing his skills back to their peak, he wasn’t dwelling on the horror which lay ahead, or on the absence of Elayeen.
The horror which lay ahead was Raheen, and there, in the south, reaching up into the clear blue sky, was the mighty plateau, the majesty of the mountain belying the utter devastation Morloch’s Breath had wrought upon its once verdant and fertile summit.
“Fresh tracks,” Gawain declared, gazing down at the rutted track from the saddle. Even the Raheen charger seemed reluctant to go further, as though some equine memory whispered even now of the bleak and complete devastation ahead, the ashen remains of which the horse had witnessed a year before.
“Was there not a market at the Downland Pass?”
“There were inns, and a smithy, a few resting places where merchants and travellers would pause before ascending to the top, or after coming down. And an outpost of Callodon guards, who used to patrol the forest road between here and Jarn to the north. Though not very effectively.” Gawain added as an afterthought.
“Perhaps those who once lived there have now returned?”
“For what reason, Allazar? There’s no Raheen. There’s no-one to trade with, nowhere to journey to except the cliffs at the Sea of Hope.”