He was sweating heavily by the time he reached the hedge at the foot of the big steep field leading up to the forest. Suddenly the snow was much deeper where it had drifted against the obstruction. Peter sank in up to his thighs and pulled himself out by hauling on a branch. It didn't look so bad the other side, just deep drifts in odd places.
The snow had soaked his jeans so that they clung wetly to his legs. He was tiring, too, his calves aching, but there was a long way to go yet. This incline was steeper; he found himself looking for patches of snow that gave him a foothold, struggling to keep his balance.
He looked up. The horizon didn't seem any nearer and the forest appeared to glare balefully down at him as though warning him. A movement made him catch his breath and think that maybe the glare of the winter sun on the snow was playing tricks with his eyes. Trees didn't move; there wasn't even any wind. They couldn't, it was impossible. But they did, coming forward, dark shadows moving out of the white background . . .
Deer! Relief flooded over Peter, his pulses speeding up then slowing down, alerting him that his nerves were in a bad way.
The herd was in full strength, huddling together as though something had frightened them and driven them out of the forest. They didn't see him because the sun was in their eyes. They turned, looking back the way they had come as if some fearful beast was in pursuit, snuffling on their scent through the deep snow amidst the trees, relentlessly hunting them down.
There was no sign of the big buck. Peter scanned the animals but he knew he wouldn't find the once-majestic male of the species because if it had been there it would have been at their head, marshalling the others into some semblance of order. It would have known that Peter was there watching them. Instead they were reduced to a rabble, fear portrayed in their every movement, jerky like an artist's animated cartoon drawings.
Peter started off again. The going was easier, or perhaps it was the brief rest that had recharged him. He found himself searching for the deer again but they had gone. He stared in disbelief. They couldn't all have retreated back into the forest in those few seconds whilst he had been looking away. But they must have because they were nowhere to be seen and they couldn't have gone anywhere else. They were damned edgy. More than that: scared to hell! >-
Almost at the brow of the hill now. He reckoned it must have taken him a good half-hour. Every muscle in his body was complaining and the whiteness of the snow had brought that damned headache back again. But he'd got to keep going.
He had to stop and get his breath. God, he wasn't as fit as he thought he was. That was why he was shaking: exertion, not fear. This place was getting on his nerves, making him look about him as though he expected to find somebody creeping up on him. He should have gone with Janie and Gavin; it would have been better for everybody.
A steady dripping sound. The snow was melting off the trees, A slow thaw, but how slow? He couldn't see the boundary fence that separated Hodre from the forest, there was just a long white wall incorporating designs that would have taxed the skill of any architect or sculptor; nature's beauty alongside her cruelty. Hoofprints had compressed the snow where the deer had gone in single file between two high drifts; that was why they had been invisible from the lower ground. Peter began to follow their tracks. Perhaps the herd's trail would lead him to safety.
He stopped and drew back. No way was he going in there. The tracks turned in a sharp right angle and disappeared between the low branches of firs weighed down by snow, leading away into the gloomy interior of the forest, which even the whiteness of the buzzard had failed to penetrate.
The deer had turned off because it was the only way. Behind lay the steep fields and the treacherous descent to Hodre; ahead impenetrable ten-foot high drifts that spilled across into the fringe of the forest.
I'm not bloody well going in therel His mute cry of despair almost had him panicking. Then I'll have to go back! No! Or stay here until the snow melts.
Peter had begun to back away without realising it, a subconscious decision to retreat. Maybe if he had known the forest he would have risked it and followed rides and firebreaks that had been sheltered from the snow out on to Ruskin's land the other side. But he didn't; he'd never set foot in the big wood before. In all probability he would gel lost and still be wandering around in circles when darkness fell. Afraid to shout because—because they might hear him! Dead by morning, from exposure or ...
He had to go back, there was no other way. He experienced a sudden urge to burst into tears, to fling himself down into the snow, to give up. Surrender. His legs were on the verge of buckling, screaming at him ro lie down in the soft feathery snow. He'd read somewhere that if you buried yourself it was all snug and warm, that you drifted off into a gentle sleep and . . .
That was when he saw the man! At least he thought it was a man; a white shape that vaguely resembled a human body lying half-buried in the big drift which had caused the deer to turn off into the fir wood. He might have been asleep, except that his posture was so unnatural that nobody could possibly have slept in that position even out here, finally pulled down by fatigue: spread-eagled, the legs higher than the body. He'd been like that before the buzzard came because he couldn't possibly have got into the drift afterwards. That was one reason why he wasn't just asleep. Looking at his upside-down face, Peter found another reason: the side of the head had been staved in by a heavy blow, splintering the skull, burying the left eye deep in a gouged-out socket that was thick with congealed blood. His mouth was wide open as though the man had managed one last scream before he had died.
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' circle—now 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 cowl—the 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 this—those 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!