“I have taken great care,” said the woman, “to be sure that no one knew I was about. This is a place where one does not make one’s presence known.”
“My lady, you are making it known now.”
“Only to protect the little food I have. I could afford to allow your friend an occasional carrot or a cabbage now and then. But I do object to the stripping of the garden.”
The griffin cocked its large eagle head at Duncan, appraising him with a glittering golden eye. Its forelegs ended in eagle claws; the rest was lion, except that instead of a lion’s tail it had a somewhat longer appendage with a wicked sting at its end. Its huge wings were folded far back and high, leaving room for its rider. It clicked its beak at Duncan and its long tail switched nervously.
“You need have no fear of him,” the woman said. “He is something of a pussycat, the gentleness of him brought on by extreme age. He puts up a splendid and ferocious front, of course, but he’ll do no one harm unless I bid him to.”
“Madam,” said Duncan, “I find this somewhat embarrassing. My name is Duncan Standish. I and my companion, the big one over there, are on a trip to the south of Britain. Only last night we fell in with the hermit, Andrew.”
“Duncan Standish, of Standish House?”
“That is right, but I had not thought…”
“The fame of your house and family is known in every part of Britain. I must say, however, that you have chosen a strange time to embark upon a journey through these lands.”
“No stranger,” said Duncan, “than to find a lady of quality in those same lands.”
“My name,” she said, “is Diane, and I am no lady of quality. I am quite something else again.”
Andrew stumped forward. “If you would excuse me, m’lord, I have grave doubts that the Lady Diane can lay legal, or even ethical, claim upon this garden patch. It was an early planted plot, put in by one of the villagers before the Harriers came with fire and sword, and she owns it no more than I do. If you think back, I never did lay claim to it.”
“It would be unseemly,” said Duncan, “for us to stand here squabbling over it.”
“The truth is,” said the Lady Diane, “that he is quite right. It is not my garden, nor is it his. We both used out of it and that I did not mind. But it roused my ire to see interlopers laying claim to it as well.”
“I would be willing,” said Andrew, “to share it with her. Half the cabbages to me, half to her.”
“That seems fair to me,” said Duncan, “but somewhat unchivalrous.”
“I am no man of chivalry,” said Andrew snappishly.
“If yon hermit can provide me with certain information,” said Diane, “it may be he can have all the cabbages since then I’d have no need of them.”
She dismounted from the griffin and walked forward to join them. “The information that you seek,” said Andrew.
“What makes you believe that I might have it?”
“You are a native of the village?”
“Aye, myself and all my folk before me.”
“Then maybe you would know. There was a man named Wulfert. He is supposed to have lived here at one time.
When I arrived here, after the Harriers had left, I took up residence in the church. It was the only roof left standing. I searched the church for records. I found few. Not anything of value. The parish priests you people had, Sir Hermit, were careless in their record keeping.”
“Wulfert, you say?” asked the hermit. “You say a man named Wulfert. How long ago?”
“A hundred years or more. Have you ever heard of him, anyone speak of him?”
“A sage? A saintly man?”
“He might have posed as such. He was a wizard.”
The hermit gasped and put his hands up to his head, his fingers gripping his skull.
“A wizard!” he whimpered. “Are you sure of that?”
“Quite sure. A most accomplished wizard.”
“And not of Holy Church?”
“Assuredly not of Holy Church.”
“What is wrong with you?” Duncan asked Andrew. “What is going on?”
“In holy ground,” Andrew whispered, gasping. “Oh, the shame of it. In holy ground they put him. And him a heathen wizard, for to be a wizard one must be a heathen, must he not? They even built a tomb for him.”
“These are strange goings-on,” said Conrad. “I find no head nor tail of it.”
“No wonder,” Andrew cried wildly. “No wonder that the oak should fall upon it.”
“Wait a minute, now,” said Duncan. “You mean an oak fell upon the tomb? There was a cemetery just the other day.”
“Please tell me,” said Diane, “about this oak and tomb.”
“We passed through a cemetery,” Duncan said. “Just a mile or so from here. There was a tomb and a tree had fallen on it. Quite some time ago, it seemed. It still is there, lying across the tomb. The slab covering the tomb had been shoved aside and broken. I wondered at the time why no one had repaired it.”
“It’s an old burial ground,” Andrew explained. “Not used for years. No one bothered. And there may not have been many people who would know who was buried there.”
“You think this might be the tomb of Wulfert?” Diane asked.
“The shame of it!” wailed the hermit. “That such be placed in holy ground. But the people did not know, the people of the village had no way to know. Of this Wulfert I have heard. A holy man, it was said of him, who sought refuge from the world in this lonely place.”
Duncan asked Diane, “Is this the information that you…”
And then he stopped, for there was something wrong. A sudden silence — and that was strange, for there had been no sound before, nothing but the background sound of insects and birds, an ever-present sound one grew so accustomed to hearing that it went unnoticed. And that was it, thought Duncan — the sudden silence was the absence of that background sound. The sudden silence and the strange feeling of expectancy, as if one were tensed for something that was about to happen, not knowing what it was, but rocking forward on the toes to be ready for it.
The others had noticed the silence and perhaps the expectancy as well, for they were frozen in their places, tensed and listening and watchful.
Duncan’s hand lifted slowly and his fingers wrapped about the hilt of his sword, but he did not draw it, for there was as yet no solid evidence of danger. But the sense of danger still hung heavy in the air. Diane, he saw, had half lifted the battle axe she held. The griffin had shifted its position and its eagle head was pivoting slowly from one side to the other.
Bushes stirred on the far perimeter of the garden plot and a figure half emerged: a round head, superficially human, thrust forward on a short, almost non-existent neck set between massive shoulders. Bald — the head bald, the shoulders bald, no trace of hair, not like something that had shaved its hair, but rather something that had never grown hair.
The hairless one, Duncan told himself, the hairless ones the Reaver had told him of that night they stopped at the manor house. Great, white, hairless human slugs that fell short of being human.
The sword rasped as he cleared it. He slashed it in the air and the sun glistened off it as he made the symbolic slash.
“Now we’ll see,” he said, speaking half to himself, half to the Reaver, who had told him of these creatures.
The hairless one rose to full height, emerging from the bushes. It stood a little taller than an ordinary man, but not as tall as the Reaver had led him to believe. It stood on bowed legs, bent forward at the knees, and shambled as it walked. It wore not a stitch of clothing, and the fish white of its bulging torso shone in the sunlight. In one hand it carried a huge knotted club. The club was held nonchalantly, its head pointing toward the ground, as if the club were an extension of its arm.
Behind it were others, stepping out from the trees and bushes to array themselves beside the first. They stood in a ragged line, their round heads thrust forward, tiny eyes beneath bald and jutting brows looking with an
