'Someone who had to be somewhere.'
'Or,' the knight said, 'or there's no cart at all. Think about it. There doesn't have to be one, does there? You can't see the road from here. The message, along with the damsel in distress, serves the exact same purpose as an actual overturned cart. It gets them out of the mile house. But to what purpose? What would anyone stand to gain from having this place empty for a day?'
'It would give them time to rob it.'
'That it would, but there's nothing here worth stealing,' the knight said, shaking his head. Something didn't sit right about this whole thing, but he wasn't sure what. Not yet, but he would work it out. For now he would trust his gut instinct. Doing so had kept him alive thus far. 'And, think about it, they haven't robbed the place, have they? Whatever they wanted it for has to have happened by now. But there's no sign anyone has been in there since Markem left.'
'True. Could their intention have been to pose as wardens for real travellers heading this way?'
'That would make more sense,' the knight reasoned, 'but that is assuming it was the mile house they wanted and not the wardens themselves. One thing's for certain, we're not going to find out standing around here freezing our backsides off. If we're right, the answer is out there on the road waiting for us.'
'And if we're wrong?'
'I don't want to think about that,' Sir Lowick said, trudging through the snow toward his horse.
Seven
Alymere rode blindly into the blizzard.
The road took them into the fringe of the forest, the trees providing some small respite from the harsh weather, if not the extreme cold. He found himself thinking how easy it would be to become disorientated and lost, and from that, how easy it would be to stumble, turn an ankle, and fall, and end up freezing in the snow. How long would you last? In a matter of minutes the shivering would become uncontrollable, in an hour the cold would creep into your bones; in two, or three, you'd slip into a drowsy torpor, and you'd never wake up. It would be an almost pleasant way to go, he thought, then shook off the thought. It was an all too seductive idea and once it had a foothold in the back of the mind it would keep whispering away all the while as the world grew colder.
Sir Lowick was a man with a mission. He pushed his huge warhorse on, urging the animal to gallop faster and faster, headlong into the snow. Alymere, more cautious and on a less sure-footed animal, had long since lost sight of the knight in front of him, but he could hear his destrier's heavy hooves in amongst the other sounds: the whistle of the wind through the leaves, the rustle of the snow-laden branches as they stirred, the chafing of the leather saddle against his hose, the crunch of the snow beneath his horse's hooves, and the muffled sound of his own breathing dampened by his fur-lined hood.
It was darker here, beneath the canopy of trees. Sunlight cast silver coins across the road in front of him like an offering over the snow that Sir Lowick's warhorse had churned up. He caught a glimpse of movement off to his right, but even as he turned to get a better look it had gone, disappearing back into the deeper woods.
Alymere rode on, alert, his eyes darting everywhere at once. Given the discovery of the abandoned mile house and the suspicion that the wardens had been lured away, a deep sense of unease began to take root deep in his craw.
He saw it again as the road bore to the right two hundred paces on, but no more distinctly than the first time. It moved quickly, whatever it was, with an animal grace. He was left in no doubt that the thing was shadowing them. It seemed to be running parallel to the road — which had become more of a track the deeper they travelled into the forest — keeping itself always just out of sight.
He saw it again twice more before he realised what it was: a red hart.
It was a big majestic creature with ten points on its antlers, making it almost certainly king of the forest. That such a noble beast followed them rather than fled at their approach was curious in and of itself. Even as the thought crossed his mind, the hart bolted, disappearing into the forest.
Alymere drew his travelling cloak tighter about his shoulders and hunched down in the saddle, keeping low.
A red hart.
They were deep into his father's lands, his father who had been known as the Knight of the Leaping Hart, and it had been ten years since his father's death. Ten points, ten years, a leaping hart running alongside them on the road. Could it be an omen? If it was, could he afford to ignore it? Alymere made the sign of the cross over his chest.
As he came around the next corner, the track opening up before him, Alymere was surprised to see the hart standing there, head high, staring him down as though in challenge. The huge beast's ribcage heaved, expanding and contracting with the rhythm of heavy breaths. Wraiths of white coiled out of its flared nostrils, conjuring ghosts between them. But this was no ghost or vision, Alymere realised, staring at the hart as it stared back at him. It was very much alive.
He slowed his horse from a canter to a stop, no more than twenty paces between them. The last thing he wanted was for the hart to bolt again, but for some reason he was absolutely sure it wouldn't.
Alymere felt the change in the weather around him; the lessening of the snowflakes, and the easing of the pressure of the cold in his lungs. The change was subtle but noticeable.
He dismounted, walking slowly toward the hart.
The proud creature didn't turn tail and run; at least not immediately. It watched him curiously. As he neared it pawed at the snow with one of its front hooves, and dipped its head to aim at Alymere's chest. For one heart- stopping moment he thought the hart was about to charge him down and he imagined the agony of those points driving through his father's mail shirt and into him. But it didn't. The hart tossed its head to the left, seemingly gesturing for him to follow as it rocked back on its powerful haunches, turned, shifting its immense weight, and sprung into a flurry of motion. The hart's hooves kicked up snow as it bounded away into the trees.
For a moment Alymere stood in the middle of the road, his horse behind him, the hart disappearing in front of him, trapped in indecision, and then he ran after it, pushing his way through the hanging branches. They cut at his face and pulled at his cloak as he forced his way through them. He didn't care, even as a briar thorn tore open his cheek and drew blood. If he slowed down he would lose the hart, and he wasn't about to let that happen. If pressed, he couldn't have said why, but he knew that it was imperative he follow the animal. It was as though he had no conscious choice in the matter, some unseen force impelling him, and all he could do was stumble and flounder deeper and deeper into the forest, always trying to run faster, pushing at the dragging branches and tripping over snagging roots.
The hart was always there, just in front of him, darting and weaving gracefully through the tangled wood.
It was playing with him. He never gained so much as a pace on it, and it never drew away more than a dozen before it looked back to be sure he still followed.
Alymere blinked back the sting of cold tears from the bitterly cold air and plunged on. The sounds of the forest changed, dampened by the press of snow on the canopy of leaves above. Less and less light filtered through, but the little that did speared down in shafts of golden sunlight. The ground was dusted with snow but nothing like the two-foot deep drifts that lay on the fields. Alymere pushed back his hood, sacrificing the warmth it afforded for some semblance of peripheral vision. The forest was alive with movement.
He caught sight of a flurry of black off to his right: wings. After the initial shock at the explosion of movement and sound, Alymere realised it was nothing more sinister than a bird startled into flight and trapped beneath the canopy, unable to rise into the sky. The bird darted between branches and trunks, finally settling on a thick limb in front of Alymere, halfway between him and the hart. It was a crow, he realised, although it was larger than any crow he had ever seen.
The crow ruffled its feathers as he approached, its beady yellow eyes watching him intently. Alymere felt distinctly uncomfortable under its scrutiny. For the second time since leaving the mile house he made the sign of the cross over his chest. The crow threw back its head and burst into a raucous caw that rang out through the trees. The echo folded back on itself over and over again, making the caw seem to last forever.
