‘Acted very decent, considering. Wished me a good night and said he’d look out for us on the road tomorrow.’
Vallon straightened with a shuddering breath. ‘We’ve been set up.’
‘Captain, you haven’t even spoken to the man. You don’t know the first thing about him.’
Vallon leaned over, hands braced on the table. ‘Why would a penniless charcoal burner offer to put up five strangers?’
‘I told him we’d pay.’
‘You boasted that I had a purse stuffed with silver.’
‘What’s wrong with you, Captain? All I said was that he wouldn’t go out of pocket.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Vallon, ‘he was going to make us pay.’ He lurched round. The landlord’s smile seemed to have been pasted on to his face. It reminded Vallon of the grinning grotesque on the tavern sign. The boy was still on the counter, still swinging his legs.
‘Ask him to give us lodgings for the night.’
‘Captain, I thought-’
‘Do as I say.’
The innkeeper greeted Raul’s request with an apologetic refusal.
‘There’s no room. He says there’s an inn at the next village.’
‘Tell him the night’s dark and we’re weary. We’ll pay to sleep in his stable.’
The request seemed to exhaust the landlord’s good humour. Raul pulled a face. ‘He says that if we’re so desperate for a bed, why did we turn down Leofric’s offer?’
The boy on the counter had stopped swinging his legs. It was probably the fever, but Vallon had the impression that the boy’s beetle-black eyes were bright with malice.
The landlord began clearing up, making an ostentatious clatter. The remaining drinkers had left. Vallon shook Hero and Richard. ‘Wake up. It’s time we were going.’ He looked around. ‘Where’s Way — land?
‘He doesn’t like being cooped up,’ said Raul. ‘He must have gone outside for some fresh air.’
A crescent moon cast enough light for Wayland to keep the charcoal burner in sight. The man walked briskly down the middle of the track, singing under his breath. Wayland and the dog kept to the grassy verge. He’d been outside when the charcoal burner left the tavern, followed by the boy. The two had stood close, talking more like conspirators than friends taking their leave, and they’d parted without goodnights. There’d been no time for Wayland to take his suspicions to Vallon. By the time the boy went back inside, the charcoal burner was nearly out of sight, heading down one of the rides that radiated out from the village.
It was beginning to look like Wayland’s instincts had played him false. The charcoal burner gave every impression of a man intent on getting home. If he looks back, Wayland decided, I’ll know I’m right. Any man walking through a dark wood with dirty work on his mind would glance over his shoulder from time to time.
But the charcoal burner had eyes only for the road ahead. Wayland reckoned off one mile passed, then another. He’d been on the move since dawn and he contemplated with sinking heart the slog back to the village. Not a thing stirred in the trees. The only sounds were his own faint footfalls and the occasional click of his bow against his belt. The deeper he walked into the forest, the more conscious he became of his own presence. It was strange. He was stalking a man, yet Wayland felt it was he who was the centre of attention. Watching the bobbing figure in the moonlight, he had the unpleasant notion that the charcoal burner knew he was there, that he was luring him on. Another nasty fancy insinuated itself. He had the feeling that if he caught up with him and turned him round, it wouldn’t be the charcoal burner’s face he saw beneath the cap.
The man stopped. Wayland froze. At this distance he was just a shadow among shadows, a shape that no night-time traveller would turn back to investigate.
The charcoal burner walked backwards in a circle, as if he’d missed his turning and was trying to establish his whereabouts. He looked all about. He walked to one side of the ride, then began to cross to the other.
Cloud veiled the moon. When the crescent reappeared, the charcoal burner was gone. Wayland had last seen him near a stag-headed oak of enormous girth.
Wayland waited to make sure the charcoal burner didn’t return. The dog watched him, trembling. He nodded and it crossed the road like a wraith.
His gaze roamed about as he tried to work out the significance of the place. He couldn’t see any track leading off the ride. The only thing out of the ordinary was the old oak. His eyes kept returning to it, and the more he looked at it, the more it seemed to be looking back at
The dog’s soundless return made him start. It led him across the ride and began to skirt round the oak, looking at it sidelong, like a fox eyeing a scarecrow.
When Wayland saw the oak up close, he smiled at the tricks moonlight could play. Age and decay had hollowed out a cave at its base, and the two eyes were only the scars left by long-fallen branches. He saw something dangling from the top of the hollow. Thinking it might have been left there by the charcoal burner, he reached out and then snatched back his hand. It was a dead cat on a cord, its mouth frozen in a mummified snarl. He glanced over his shoulder before looking back at the hollow. The darkness inside was deep enough to hide a man. Wayland went cold all over at the thought that someone — some
He backed away and almost tripped over the dog. It took his sleeve in its mouth and tugged him away.
They went into the trees. The massive boles encircled them. There was little undergrowth — just a few hazel coppices and the occasional gleam of holly. Wayland struck a trail of sorts that descended a gentle slope. The dog’s relaxed gait told him that the charcoal burner was a long way ahead. He broke into a lope.
They must have covered more than a mile when the dog clamped itself to the ground. Wayland squatted beside it. He smelled wood — smoke and pig shit. As he crept forward, it occurred to him that the charcoal burner would have a dog. Too late to worry about that. The trees thinned and he made out the shape of a hut in a clearing. Pale smoke drifted from its roof and a splinter of light showed at a shuttered window. Pigs grunted on the other side of the clearing. He heard low voices, then the sound of a door closing.
He ran light-footed towards the house and sidled up to the window. What he expected to see — what he hoped to see — was the charcoal burner at home with his family, yawning by the hearth, pulling his boots off. Wayland put his eye to the chink and his throat dried. Swaying tallow lamps lit a room full of men with long matted hair and beards, dressed in crudely stitched hides and the greenish jerkins that Wayland took to be the uniform of a company bound to some malign purpose. He knew what they were; Ulf had warned him about them. Men of the woods. Former resistance fighters turned bandits and cutthroats.
A man scabbed with dirt moved aside and Wayland saw the charcoal burner standing before a dark-haired man sitting with his back to the window. He was clean-shaven and looked almost civilised in that wild company. Around his collar hung a necklace of dried fungi — some rustic charm or remedy.
‘Travelling entertainers, Ash. That’s what the German said. And maybe they are. Anyway, they’re foreigners — all but one, a dumb English youth. Wolfboy, the German called him. He’s got a dog, a monster, looks like it’s bred more for the bear pit than the theatre. You wouldn’t want to run into that hound on a dark night.’
Ash made a curt gesture.
‘Shame to kill it,’ the charcoal burner said. ‘I wouldn’t mind having that dog myself.’
Ash wasn’t interested in the dog. ‘Who else is in the party?’
‘A couple of young boobies and a Frenchie — a Frank, not a Norman. Tough, mean-looking fellow, knows how to handle himself. The German said he fought in Spain. He challenges people to cross swords with him.’
‘I don’t like the sound of this crew,’ said a bystander. ‘A night ambush is always chancy. It only takes one of them to get away and-’
‘Shut up,’ Ash said. He turned back to the charcoal burner. ‘Why didn’t you bring them here?’
The charcoal burner showed graveyard teeth. ‘I was going to. It was all set up. I’d got the German well- bladdered, your boy was about to bring you the news, then Frenchie turned up and told the German they’d be going on down the road.’
Ash leaned back on his stool. ‘You must have given yourself away.’
