He gaped at the Pole Star.
She caught her breath and laid her hands on his shoulders. “Now we’ll gabble no more o’ that,” she said firmly. “But if ever I catch ye pawing at some wench again, Holger, ’twill go ill with ye.” She paused. “Some wench beside me, ’tis.”
He jerked his horse to a stop. “Carahue!” he called. “Wake up!”
“Ah?” The Saracen reached for his saber.
“Our animals,” Holger said, not altogether speciously. “If we don’t give them a rest, they’ll keel over. We’ll make better speed in the long run if we take an hour’s break now.”
The other man’s face was an oval blur, his armor a dull sheen, but he could be seen to ponder. “I know not. Once Morgan rouses the pursuit against us, such horses go like a gale. And yet—” He shrugged. “As you wish.”
They slid to the grass. Alianora tugged eagerly at Holger’s hand. He nodded to Carahue, hoping his gesture wasn’t too smug. The Saracen looked startled for a moment, until he laughed. “Good fortune to you, my friend,” he said. He stretched himself full length on the ground and whistled a tune at the sky.
Holger followed Alianora a ways off. He had forgotten his own weariness and pain. The heart beat in him, not violently, a strong glad tone through his whole body. When they stopped, they clasped hands and stood looking at each other. Moonlight flowed over the wold, gray, shadow-barred, glinting on rime. Such clouds as remained were luminous-edged; the stars shone between them. The wind was still loud, but Holger paid no heed. He saw Alianora as a shape of quicksilver, of sliding shadow and cool white light. Dewdrops sparkled in her hair and there was moonlight in her eyes.
“We may no ha’ a chance to talk again,” she said quietly.
“Maybe not,” he answered. “So let me say now I love ye.”
“And I love you.”
“Oh, my dearest—” She came to him and he held her close.
“I’ve been a fool,” he said presently, wishing he could find better words. “I didn’t know what I wanted. I thought when this was over I could go off and leave you. I was wrong.”
She forgave him with her hands and lips and eyes.
“If we do come through, somehow,” he said, “we’ll never be apart again. This is where I belong. Here, with you.” Her tears caught the moonlight but her laugh was low and happy. “’Tis enough, she said.
He kissed her again.
Carahue’s shout pulled them away. The noise flew torn in the wind, ringing and dying away across that lake of moonlight. “Quickly, come quickly, the huntsmen!”
24
FAR AND FAINT, at the very edge of hearing, the horns blew. They had the noise of wind and sea and great beating wings, a hawk voice, a raven voice. And Holger knew that the Wild Hunt was out and after him.
He vaulted up on Papillon. As the stallion burst into movement, he raised Alianora to her place behind. Carahue was already off. The white mare and the tattered white clothes of her rider flew ghostly in the low moonlight. Hoofs rang and thundered. They bent down to the long fleeing.
The moon was an argent glare in Holger’s left eye. The wold slid past, darkness underfoot, flung stones and hissing brush, a rattle of branches like laughter. He felt the horse’s muscles throb and swing between his thighs; he felt the girl’s hands on his waist, guiding him in the direction she had spied out. His iron clashed on him, leather creaked, the wind shouted. Loudest came the labor of the horse’s breathing.
Everywhere around were stars, but unthinkably remote in a black heaven. The Swan flashed overhead, the Milky Way spilled suns off its dim arch, Carl’s Wain wheeled under the Pole; all the stars were cold. Northward he began to see the peaks of this range, sword sharp, sheathed in ice that gleamed under the moon. Behind him waxed lightlessness.
Gallop and gallop and gallop! Now Holger heard the wild horns closer, shrilling and wailing. Never had he heard such anguish as was blown on the horns of the damned. Through the cloven air he heard hoofs in the sky and the baying of immortal hounds. He leaned forward. His body swayed with Papillon’s haste, his rein hand loose on the arched neck, his other hand gripped about Alianora’s.
Swiftly, swiftly, over the rime-gray wold, under the last stormclouds and the sinking moon, gallop, gallop, gallop. The sorrow of the huntsmen shrieked in his head. He shook himself and strained to see his goal. There was only the plain and the glacial mountains beyond.
Carahue began to lag. His mare tripped. He jerked her head up and roweled her. Holger thought he could hear the feet of the nightmare dogs. A lunatic yelling broke about him.
He looked behind, but Alianora’s tossing hair hid those who followed. He thought he saw metal ablaze. And was that the clatter of dead men’s bones?
“Hasten, hasten, best of horses! Oh, run, my comrade, run as no horses ever did erenow, for surely all men are pursued with us. Haste thee, my darling, for we ride against striding Time, we ride against marching Chaos. Ah, God be with thee, God strengthen thee to run!”
The horn blasts filled his skull. The hoofs and hounds and empty bones were at his back. Holger felt Papillon stumble. Alianora was almost thrown. He clung to her wrist and dragged her against him. Once more they rode.
Up ahead there, what was that, stark athwart the sky? The church of St. Grimmin—but the Wild Hunt howled and swept downward. He heard the clamor of huge winds, and saw murk before his eyes. Jesu Kriste, I am not worthy, but help thou me.
A wall stood in his way. Papillon gathered himself and sprang. As the huntsmen closed in on him, Holger felt such a cold as he had not dreamed could be, strike through his heart. He thought he heard the wind whistle between his ribs.
The black stallion hit earth with a crash that nearly slammed him from the saddle. Carahue followed. The white mare did not clear the wall. She fell back, but her rider leaped free. He caught the top of the wall and pulled himself over to land in the churchyard. Holger heard the mare cry out once, briefly and horribly, as the roaring overwhelmed her.
And then it was gone. The wind was gone too. Silence shot up like a scream.
Holger bent over. His hand shook, but he caught Carahue’s as he already held Alianora’s. They looked about them.
The yard was overgrown with grass and whins, through which crumbling headstones could be seen to ring the ruinous outline of the church. Fog drifted in tendrils, glowing white where the hunchback moon touched, with a dank smell of corruption. Holger felt how Alianora shivered in the chill.
He heard the sound as it came from the shadows behind the church. It was the sound of a horse moving among the graves, a horse old and lame and weary unto death, stumbling among the graves as it sought him, and he whimpered in his throat. For he knew that this was the Hell Horse, and whoso looks upon it shall die.
Papillon could not make haste, here where the headstones reached out of weeds like fingers to pull him down. Carahue took the reins and led the stallion. They walked between the slabs, which leaned about in a drunkenness of neglect, the names long worn from their faces. The sound of the old lame horse grew louder, slipping and staggering through shadow to meet them.
Mists glimmered about the church of St. Grimmin’s, thicker and thicker, as if they would hide it. Holger could just see that the steeple was fallen, the roof gone, the windows blindly agape. Slowly, feeling his way through the vapors and the tombstones, Carahue neared it.
The hoofs of the Hell Horse scrunched in ancient gravel. But this was the door of the church. Holger sprang down. Alianora huddled on Papillon’s back. He lifted his arms and she fell into them. He carried her up the time-gnawed steps.