Alfric stopped and dismounted.
‘Don’t go anywhere,’ he said to his horse.
Then looped the reins around a branch so the animal couldn’t go anywhere. Then stamped his feet, shuddered at the cold, fumbled open the breadsack and took out the loaf, which was wrapped up in a bag of salmon skin where it was safe from rain and mist, and from the sweat of his horse.
The bread had been hot when purchased but now it was cold. Alfric tore the crust apart with merciless talons and wolfed into the soft and yielding flesh, his teeth savaging its substance as if seeking to tear bones from their anchoring tendons. Eating, feeding, tearing, gullet-ing, he looked like a wild thing; and, in the rage of his appetite, felt like one.
He chewed too little and swallowed too greedily; and bread lumped into a hard and painful bolus as his muscles worked it slowly down his throat. Then he ravaged the loaf anew, and, without warning, a quicksilver pain agonized through one of his rear teeth. He stopped chewing abruptly. Strange, this pain. He never got it when eating hard things, no, only when masticating sticky stuff like bread. He eased the mulch-mush of bread to the other side of his mouth, stuck a finger into his mouth, and cautiously felt the offending tooth.
No pain.
At least: his touch elicited no pain.
With great care, Alfric began to chew again. Then stopped. For he heard something. What? Unless he was mistaken, what he heard was a horse’s hoof as it went crunch-crack through a crust of frozen mud. Then he heard a scattering of breaking twigs. What would break branches like that? Not a man, surely, for a man would be careful of his face. Unless he was armoured for battle, his helm protecting him from the fingering wood.
Alfric abruptly lost his appetite.
He spat out the bread in his mouth.
Then, as the moon caught them, he saw them, two of them, mounted men in the forest, and they saw him, for the larger challenged him:
‘Danbrog!’
Alfric knew the man by voice. Wu Norn. Muscleman Wu. Swordsman, axeman, fistman, killer.
Alfric tried to respond. But found himself without voice. It was the shock of the sudden which had done it. He was unmanned as if by ambush. Had thought himself safe, home, successful, victorious, the slaughter-dare in the vampires’ lair nothing more than a bad dream. Was not prepared for this, was not prepared at all, and already the smaller man had swung down from his horse and was coming at the charge, running over the buckle-buck of the ground, weapon out and rage in his throat, and Alfric drew Kinskom.
And the wisdom of the weapon taught him necessity, taught him in time, and the blade balanced perfectly as it met shadow with shadow, iron with iron. Sparks screamed, ice cracked, a branch broke, and something Something was thrashing on the end of Alfric’s sword, and Alfric drove his weight against the something, drove the sword deep, drove the sword home. And then, panting, sweating, cursing, tried to pull the sword out again. But the blade was stuck, or so it seemed to his sweating hands. But the man was dead, he was dead, was killed, Alfric had killed him, or Kinskorn had.
‘Dansbrog!’
Thus roared Muscleman Wu. Then spurred his horse, crashing the beast through the nightgrowth, heedless of any damage which might be done to the brute which bore him or to himself.
Alfric waited to hear no more, but flung himself on to his own horse and spurred the beast. Off they went. Then the animal lurched violently as the reins restrained it.
‘Stroth!’said Alfric, tugging at the reins.
But they would not come free and the branch would not break. So down from the horse he leapt, meaning to unknot the leather, remount and respur. But there was no time. Wu Norn was almost upon him, his sword already out for a slaughter-spree. Then Alfric screamed in frustrated rage, then punched his horse, then swore in blubbering panic and fled.
Bent low he ran, bent low, stooping at speed into the thickest of the forest, running, panting, running through the lowgrowth undergrowth, the snaggle-hook trees too thick for pursuit, too thick for Wu to follow unless Wu dismounted.
Wu did dismount.
When Alfric stopped, he heard Muscleman Wu. The killer of men was not far behind. Alfric was weaponless, had no way to fight. But could not run, could run no more, for he was unfit, out of condition, that was the truth of it. He sobbed for fear of his death, then — Mud.
So thought Alfric, and grappled with a handful of the stuff, hissing with the pain as ice-splintered muck packed into his palm. But the pain was good for the pain steadied him, sobered him, and he began to think, it might be a little late but he was thinking at last, and he eased his breathing as best he could, and sank low, and sheltered himself in the shadows, and heard Wu Norn swear, and remembered.
Moon was the night, but still the shadows were many, yes, many many, here in the forest, the forest all stilts and crutches, all masts and fishing rods, and he was crouched in the thickest of those shadows, and the bafflement of the dark was sufficient to hide him, at least for the moment, yes, surely this man had lost him. Yes. But.
— But keep back!
Yes, he must keep back in the deepest of the shadows, for it was all too easy for the moon to catch the lenses of his spectacles and betray him by a splinter-flash of a light brighter than starlight. If he kept to the shadows, he would be safe, safe, at least for the moment.
— But.
But Muscleman Wu was not going to give up that easily. Wu began to quarter the ground, stabbing at logs lest they have livers inside them, kicking at softbogs in case lungs be laired within. Often he stopped. To listen.
So.
— What now?
— Retreat?
But this was no night for shadow-sneaking, no night for silent withdrawals. It was a night of frost-sharpened sounds, of sticks awaiting their rupture, of ice crusted that weight might break it. Alfric heard a night-hunter clitter through a litter of undergrowth rubbish a good two hundred paces distant. Wu Norn’s head swung round, and moon spiked briefly from the warrior’s eyes as he considered the sound and the distance.
Then Wu resumed his quartering-hunting.
‘Danbrog!’ roared Wu.
Then:
‘Grendelson!’
Then:
‘Come out, you whore! Iz-boliks, you banker-slut! Come out!’
But Alfric answered not to Iz-boliks, or to whore, or to Danbrog, or to Grendelson. However named, he would not answer. Instead, he lay still and thought.
Wu was formidable.
The warrior was wood-wise, could tell man from animal, and had hearing good enough to alert him to the need to tell. And Alfric, despite his thinking, had no bright ideas at all, and so was still lying there, still waiting, the cold of the mud hurting his hand, and he had no ideas, no ideas at all, for the mud was but a whim, for what could it do for him?
— Blind him.
But Muscleman Wu would kill him even if blinded by a faceful of mud. With sword in hand, Wu would kill him. Blade describing whirlwinds as it chopped through the night, slaughtering, fractioning, seeking, finding. At close quarters, a blinded man is still a killer if he knows what he’s doing. And maybe Wu would blink at the right moment, or the mud would go wild, or the mud would find its mark but would blind the enemy for no more than an instant.
— No hope.
— No hope without weapons.
— A stick, then.
Alfric reached for the nearest branch which looked weapon-weighty. But the thing was stuck to a tree, was
