Peter's stomach seemed to contract and he almost vomited. He wanted to look away but that single fish-like eye seemed to hold him with a baleful stare. Look at me, see what's happened to me because I trespassed up here in their domain. You know who I am, don't you?
Peter knew; recognition filtered slowly into his numbed brain. Less than a week ago this very man had been warning him of the perils which surrounded Hodre and its druids' circlenow that same evil had claimed Don Peters' life.
It was the poacher all right, clad in some kind of homemade garment, an old white bedsheet fashioned into a cloak and cowlthe figure in the snow last night.
A limp arm slipped and brought a shower of snow down with it, as though to hide the bloodstains below the head, then straightened out, finger extended, pointing, accusing. You did this to me. You shot mel
Peter thought he was going to faint. A red and black haze before his eyes. He tasted bile at the back of his throat and knew he was going to throw up.
You killed me! Murdererl
'No!' Peter managed a denial, a hoarse shout before he was doubled up, vomiting. Then logic came from somewhere and steadied his reeling brain, pulling him back from the brink of the abyss into which he was slipping. That's no shotgun wound. Birdshot couldn't inflict an injury like that except at point-blank range. You've been bludgeoned to death. Not by me. I'm innocent! D'you hear me, I'm innocent!
The solitary eye maintained its malevolent stare of accusation; the forefinger rigid with rigor mortis was still trained on Peter.
He tried to find an explanation as he backed slowly away. The druids? If they could kill animals then they were capable of murder. That was ridiculous. The deer, then; Peters had been caught in the path of a frenzied stampede? No, that didn't seem feasible either. What then?
He didn't know; that was the most frightening pan of all. Just that they had done thisthose who lurked in the darkness, the gloom of the deep woods. Even now he sensed them watching him, and turned to flee. He cast one last glance at the bloodied, mutilated, barely recognisable face. / didn't do it, so help me God, I swear I didn't!
Then Peter was running, floundering, not daring to look back, hearing muffled pursuing footsteps, whispered voices; ready to scream the moment they pulled him down.
But they didn't. There was nobody there when he burst out of the drifts and fell on the smooth powdered slopes of the hillside, lying there breathless. No footsteps, just the thumping of his temples and the racing of his pulses.
The sun was dipping behind the highest peaks of the distant beacons, a deep fiery ball that threatened the return of a hard frost once its luke-warm rays had been replaced by the shadows of dusk,
He knew he had to get back to the cottage because there was nowhere else to go. His last outpost, a besieged blockhouse, the enemy forces already massing in the hills above, waiting for darkness.
The descent was far more treacherous than the ascent had been; he could see where he might end up if he slipped, a human snowball rolling and bouncing, growing in size, smashing asunder when it hit the sharp rocks below to reveal a battered bloody corpse, human carrion for the predators of the dark hours to feed upon. Like Peters.
Oh God, I didn't kill him, I swear it\
No, but I wounded him!
Peter glanced back just once to satisfy himself that they weren't on his heels already. There wasn't a living thing in sight. Even the sun was gone now and the evening shadows cast elongated tentacles down the hillside as though reaching out for him, trying to pull him back.
He wished he could have skirted the stone circle but it was the only way down. The deformed trees stood out starkly against a white background, the sun having melted the snow which had earlier hidden their scarred boughs. They, too, were pointing accusingly at him with crooked hag-like fingers. Murdererl
He was bleeding from a cut on his hand where he had scraped it against a sliver of jagged rock, leaving a trail, a scent that anybody or anything could follow! Tonight they would come for him for sure. They wouldn't wait any longer!
He grunted with relief when he made it to the back gate. There was still nothing behind him but a barren landscape that might have been in the depths of Antarctica, the dusk coming fast now that the sun had gone.
He was aware of the clinging coldness of his saturated clothes and shivered for a number of reasons. He broke into a staggering run towards the door.
Something seemed to hit him. It was almost a physical blow that stopped him in his tracks: a flash of crimson that dazzled in the surrounding whiteness like the blinding beam of an oncoming headlight in the blackness of the night. He recoiled as he thought of Peters again and the brightness of the blood on the snow. , .
This was crazythere was blood running down the door, scarlet and wet, so thick that some of it was already congealing!
Peter couldn't hold back his scream this time, a loud cry of fear and mental agony, knowing that he hovered on the brink of that dark chasm once again. Maybe it would be easier to slide into its cooling blackness, an oblivion that would destroy the mounting terrors of this awful place.
It wasn't blood, it couldn't be ... too bright . . .
No, it wasn't blood, even though a tiny hysterical voice somewhere inside him was screaming out that it was.
It was red paint, still wet, daubed on the woodwork within the last hour or so. He could see brushmarks in the form of a large cross, although in places the paint had run.
Peter almost screamed again. He clutched at some rotten trellis work and brought a shower of wet snow down on himself. A crudely painted cross that was not yet dry . . . They had been here whilst he was away, knowing that he couldn't escape, that he would be forced to return here.
But for God's sake why?
There could only be one answer to that: they had warned him and their warnings had gone unheeded. Their patience had run out and tonight they would come for him.
The lurkers had daubed the mark of death on the door of Hodre.
14
Peter checked every room, shotgun at the ready, hammers at full cock. Only when he had ascertained that there was nobody inside the cottage did he breathe a sigh of relief. For one awful moment he had feared that they might already be here. But they weren't; they were waiting for night to fall.
He peeled off his saturated freezing clothing and changed into rough working denims, wishing that Janie had had time to renew all the curtains in the cottage. . . He couldn't shake off the unnerving feeling of being watched all the time; that was how they wore you down, just watching you until you couldn't stand it any longer.
For God's sake, I don't want to stay here. I'll go. You don't have to do this to me. I'll leave Hodre and I'll never come back \ He would have left there and then, only there was no way out. The choice wasn't his; he had to staybut he wasn't giving in. He had the gun, he wouldn't make it easy for them. He'd take a few of them with him!
The change of clothing and the warmth from the Rayburn had brought back his resolution to fight. Anger, too, because they had no right to do this to him. And they were preventing him from getting on with his book; that in itself was a cardinal sin.