"It is true," said Andrew, "that I know the trail, for I've followed it many times when I was younger than I am now. But it presents no problems. Any fool could follow it."
"Nevertheless I insist you get your rest."
Andrew said no more, but sitting close beside the campfire, he did some mumbling.
Andrew was the last of them to go to sleep. Conrad stretched out and pulled the blanket over him and almost immediately began to snore. Meg, curled up in a ball beside the saddle and the packs, slept like a baby, at times making little crying noises. Off to one side, Daniel lay down to sleep; Beauty slept standing on her feet, her head drooped, her nose almost touching the ground. Tiny dozed beside the fire, occasionally getting up to march stiff-legged about the camp's perimeter, growling softly in his throat, but giving no indication that there was anything requiring his immediate attention.
Duncan, sitting beside the fire, close beside Tiny, found no trouble in staying awake. He was tensed and on edge, and when he tried to smooth out the tenseness, it refused to go away. No wonder, he told himself, with all of Meg's talk about the Evil being close. But if there was Evil about he could not detect it. If it were there, it rustled in no bushes, it made no noise of any kind. He listened intently for the footstep-or the paw-step or the hoof-step-and there was nothing there at all.
The land drowsed in the liquid moonlight. There was no breeze, and the leaves were silent, unstirring. The only sound was the soft gurgle of the water flowing over a short stretch of shingle between two pools. Once or twice he heard the hooting of owls far in the distance.
He pressed his fingers against the pouch hanging at his belt and heard the faint crinkling of the parchment. For this, he thought, for so frail a thing as these few sheets of parchment, he and the others (the others, with the exception of Conrad, not knowing) were marching deep into the Desolated Land, where only God might know what would be waiting for them. A frail thing and a magic thing as well? Magic in that if it should prove to be genuine, then the Church would be strengthened, and more would find belief, and the world, in time to come, would be a better place. The Evil Horde had its evil magic, the Little People their small magics, but these leaves of parchment, in the last accounting, might be the greatest magic of them all. Without actually forming words, he bowed his head and prayed it might be so.
And, finally, as he prayed, he heard a sound and for a long moment could not be sure what it was. It was so distant, so muffled, that at first he was not sure he heard it, but as he listened intently, it became more distinct, and he could make it out. The sound of distant hoofbeats, the undeniable hoofbeats of a horse, and now another sound, the far-off baying of dogs.
Although never loud, the sounds were distinct and clear. There could be no doubt of it: the wild hoofbeats of a running horse and the baying of hounds, and occasionally (although he could not be sure of this) the shouting of a man or men.
The strange thing about it was that the sound seemed to be coming from the sky. He looked up at the starwashed, moon-drenched sky, and there was nothing there. And yet the sound seemed to come from there.
It lasted only for a few minutes, and then it went away, and the silence of the night closed in.
Duncan, who had risen to make his survey of the sky, sat down again. Beside him, Tiny was growling softly, his muzzle pointed upward. Duncan patted him on the head. "You heard it, too," he said. Tiny ceased his growling and settled down.
Later on, Duncan rose to his feet and walked down to the stream, carrying a cup to get a drink of water. As he knelt beside the stream, a fish jumped in the pool above him, shattering the stillness. A trout, he wondered. The stream might carry trout. If they had time in the morning, they might try to catch a few of them for breakfast. If they had time; that was, if it didn't take too long. For there was no time to waste. The more quickly they were on their way, the faster they got through the Desolated Land, the better it would be.
When the moon had dropped appreciably toward the west, he awakened Conrad, who came to his feet, alert, with no sign of sleep left in him.
"Is everything all right, m'lord?"
"Everything is fine," said Duncan. "There has been nothing stirring."
He said nothing about the hoofbeats and the baying in the sky. As he formed the words in his mind to tell Conrad, they sounded too silly for the telling, and he did not say them.
"Call me a little early," he said. "I'll try to catch some trout for breakfast."
Duncan rolled up his cloak and used it as a pillow. Stretching out on the hard ground, he pulled the blanket over him. Lying on his back, he stared up at the sky. He pressed his fingers against the soft deerskin pouch and heard the soft crinkling of the manuscript. He pressed his eyes tight shut, trying in this manner to put himself to sleep, but behind the closed eyes he conjured up in his mind, without intending to, quite unwillingly in fact, a scene that he could not understand. But then the realization of what his mind's eye, in all the activity of his imagination, was showing him came clear. Impatiently he tried to shake it off, but it would not go away. No matter how hard he tried to shake it off, that figment of imagination hung on stubbornly. He turned over on his side and opened his eyes, seeing the campfire, Tiny lying beside it, Conrad looming over him.
Duncan closed his eyes, determined that this time he would go to sleep. But his mind's vision fastened on a furtive little man who scurried busily about to see and hear all that might be heard or seen among a small band of men who were associated with a tall and saintly figure. These men, all of them, the saintly man as well as his followers, were young, although too somber for their years, too dedicated, with a strange light in their eyes. They were of the people, certainly, for they were clothed in tattered garments, and while some of them wore sandals, others had nothing on their feet. At times the band was alone, at other times there were crowds of people who had gathered to gaze upon the saintly man, straining their ears to hear what he might say.
And always, hovering on the edge of these crowds of people, or dogging the footsteps of the little band when it was alone, was this furtive figure who darted all about, never of the band, but with it, listening so hard that his ears seemed to swivel forward to catch the slightest words, his bright, sharp, almost weasel eyes squinted against the desert sunlight, but watching closely, missing no move that might be made.
And later, crouching against a sheltering boulder or hunkering by a small campfire in the dead of night, writing all he'd seen or heard. Writing small so that his parchment would not run out, using every scrap of whiteness to inscribe his labored words, twisting his face and pursing his tiny mouth in the effort to get down the words exactly as they should be, telling in those words all that he had witnessed.
Duncan tried without success to gain a full view of this furtive man, to look him in the face, so that he might judge what sort of man he was. But he was never able to. The face was always in a shadow or was turned away at that very moment when, finally, he thought he'd see the face. He was a short man, almost a dumpy figure. His feet were bare and there were bruises on them from the desert rocks and pebbles; he was dressed in dusty rags, so tattered that he was continually pulling at them in an effort to cover his scrawny nakedness. His hair was long and unkempt, his straggly beard untrimmed. He was not the sort of man upon whom a casual observer would have wasted a second glance. He was a nonentity. He faded into the crowd. He was an unrecognizable and unimportant human among many other humans, a man so undistinguished that he drew no attention. There was nothing about him that made him stand out among all the others; he was engulfed and absorbed by them.
Duncan followed him, trudging steadily and doggedly to keep pace with his furtiveness, attempting to circle him so that he might come head-on at him and so get to see his face. Always he failed to do so. It was almost as if this furtive man was aware of him and was studiously careful either to keep well away from him or, on his approach, to turn away from him. Yet watching for some sign that this other furtive one was aware of him, he could catch no sign he was.