I gripped Kit by the shoulders. «You must go back! You must go back! Go back to Kranichfels. Go and give yourself up. That is the Count hunting me. You'll be safe if you're not with me!»
I was fierce in my insistence, but she would not be persuaded.
«No! I won't leave you. I can show you where to hide. They won't do anything to me even if I'm with you. I know the sound of those dogs. They're not the savage ones. They're just the ones they use for tracking. They won't loose them. We can shake them off. Come on! Oh, come on!»
There seemed a chance that what she said was true. In any case, our best hope of safety seemed to lie in reaching those thickets that she knew. We fled then, running steadily along a path through the thin oak woods.
I soon had proof that my past was not hallucination, for it betrayed me in this unbelievable present. I should have been able to keep up a controlled cross-country pace without distress, but I found again, as on my walk from Oflag XXIX Z, that two years of captivity, underfeeding and lack of exercise had robbed me of my strength and endurance. I began to stream with sweat in the first mile; I laboured for breath and my legs were like splints of wood. I tried no more to persuade Kit to part from me, not only because I could not spare the breath, but the hard fact was that I should never have made the speed I did without her. And yet it was bitter to think that even in fleeing from him we were doing von Hackelnberg's will. He had had Kit trained for just such work as this; I had a mental image of him admiring her long stride and easy breathing and grinning with malicious pride in his handiwork.
It was some time before we heard the horn again, and then it was fainter. We had gained on the hounds. But we had come into rougher country now and were scrambling down paths that were more like the beds of little torrents–places where one might easily fall and sprain or break an ankle. But my deer-hide mocassins and Kit's supple shoes gave us sure footing on the smooth stones, and with that fear behind us we took bold leaps downwards. I had a notion that the scent would not lie so well on the cold stones, so where we could we slithered down the wide slabs of rock that strewed the valley side. Our surest ally was water, and that, I saw, was Kit's intention. We plunged into tall grass and thin growth of birches and poplars at the bottom of the slope, and then I felt the ground yield and squelch beneath me. Soon we were in a weedy morass, wading deeper and deeper until the water rose to my breast. There we found a moderately firm bottom and, oaring with our arms, we went the length of a narrow pond that filled the middle of the marsh. We continued until we found the inlet stream, then followed that, stumbling and splashing among its stones and holes, climbing gradually up its course between the valley sides. It brought us out upon an upland bog and there we rested, sitting on the quaking turf.
«They'll lose time in the marsh,» Kit gasped. «They'll have to circle it all to pick up the scent again. Come on!»
But she had lost her direction now, and we ourselves lost time floundering across that boggy plain, stopping, trying to recognise the shape of the low wooded hills about us in the moonlight. As we reached the firm ground again and Kit declared she recognised the place, we heard the hounds give tongue again.
We toiled on, running a little where we could, but most of the time going at a shambling, stumbling walk. Kit was spent now. We had no energy for speech, but went dumbly on, close together but each isolated by our own body's distress, by the imperious need to concern ourselves with our own thumping heart and labouring lungs and aching limbs. I still held on to my spade, hampering though it was, but Kit had dropped the billhook. I was too exhausted to say anything about it.
There was no path now. We were struggling blindly through tangled undergrowth so thick that in places it forced us to go on our hands and knees. I do not know how long we spent fighting our way through that scrub; I do not know what distance we had covered in our flight; the stages of it were confused and jumbled in my mind; our present toil seemed to have continued for an age, and our wading through the long pond was something we had done long ago when we were strong and fresh.
I blundered into Kit. She was lying still upon the earth and she groaned at my touch. «I can't go on,» she whispered. I lay down beside her, too spent myself to urge her on, and listened. Beyond our own panting I could hear nothing. We lay until we began to get our breath a little more easily, and still the silence was unbroken.
We lay there, exactly as that mad hunter would have us: turned by the terror of his horn and hounds into frightened animals cowering, pitifully hopeful of escape, in the heart of the thicket. We could do no more than hope that the hounds would fail; we could run no more. I felt the edge of my spade again and gripped the shaft. I would at least settle the business of a hound or two before they tore my throat out. But this was no place to stand at bay; I must have room to swing. Here the interlaced boughs of the scrub held me fast; a hound could come worming on its belly to seize me like a ferret fastening to a rat in a hole. I tried to move Kit to crawl on to some more open place.
«This is the thickest part,» she said wearily. «The fence can't be far away. Our best chance is to lie still here. It's only more sport for them if they get you in the open.»
I lay till I had recovered my strength somewhat, but then the inaction, the waiting in that silence, was too much for me. Dragging my spade along I began to creep forward to find how far our thicket extended.
I called softly back once or twice as I went and heard Kit answer. I did not intend to go out of range of her voice lest we lose one another. The scrub grew a little thinner after some distance and I found I could go erect, pushing through with my shoulders, though I could still see nothing about me, only glimpses of the moon above. I did not think I had gone very far from Kit when I pushed right out of the bushes into open heath. I dropped down at once into the low cover, for there was a watch-tower three or four hundred yards away from me on my flank. In front, only fifty or sixty yards across the heath, I could see the fence: a wall of faint radiance as I had seen it that other moonlight night, though I thought now that I could distinguish the paler lines of the wires running through it. I crawled along the edge of the scrub to my left away from the watch-tower, keeping, as I thought, at about the same radius from the place where I had left Kit.
I found the scrub inclining gradually away from the fence as I went and suddenly I had a clear view down a long open space, a kind of broad, though much neglected, ride that cut straight through this tract of wild forest. It might have been an old fire lane, and it led straight up to the fence. Realising that had we been a hundred yards or so to our left we could have reached our present hiding-place without all that long toil through the scrub, and realising also, with a sinking heart, that on two sides we were very near the edge of our cover, I sat down to think out what was best to do. I had scarcely settled myself in the tall herbage when I heard the baying of the hounds somewhere behind me.
They were terribly near now, and I knew that full, sure note of their voices well. I strained my ears and caught another sound–the cracking of dry twigs under human feet. A long, cheerful «Halloo!» sounded clearly from the scrub and was taken up by someone more distant down the ride. I dare not risk a call to Kit, but began to crawl into the bushes again to try to rejoin her. Then I stopped, reflected and went back into the ride and crouched in the withered weeds again. The hounds were laid on my line–of that I was certain, for they did not hunt game-girls by night. Kit also knew that. Surely, then, I reasoned, she would think of crawling away from our line; the bloodhounds would not change quarry when my scent was so hot: they would pass her in the scrub, follow my scent out and circle round to find me in the open. I took a good grip on my spade and waited.