‘I wouldn’t follow that if it were in season,’ complained the unicorn. ‘I’m appalled at the idea. Great Mythos, why did this happen to me? Why not one of the colts who are always complaining about the status quo anyway?’
‘I didn’t do it on purpose. I didn’t choose it. I didn’t choose to get staked out here in this damp clearing. It was Medlo, and the people of yon village.’
‘I wish the people of yon village would leave me alone. They twiddle on pipes and pound on drums and drag their stupid daughters out here in flocks expecting me to cuddle up to the coldest, vinegary smelling ones. I do it, to keep peace, but I don’t like it. What am I supposed to do about you?’
‘They have sent me to avert a famine. If a unicorn is led through the village, there will be no famine.’
‘A famine! I never heatd of anything so ridiculous.’
‘Well, they haven’t been able to catch you for several years, and there’s been famine for several years.’
‘They’ve been lolling about the tavern for several years,’ said the unicorn. ‘They haven’t put a plow to the fields.’
‘Famine was inevitable without a unicorn,’ said Medlo, who had joined her in the clearing. ‘So they didn’t bother.’
‘I won’t do it.’ He snorted. ‘I won’t, that’s all. I’m too old and fragile. Besides, the gryphon at the edge of the clearing won’t allow it. Gryphons frighten me….’
The gryphon was there, enormous and very terrible, its beak wide as the tongue vibrated a brazen cry. ‘Jaer, Jaer get away. They are coming for you. They have come suddenly and they will find you here. Get away.’
In the dream, Jaer thought that she should be frightened of the gryphon. Its wings were sharpened knives of steel and its feathers swords of brass. Its beak was a hooked eater of souls, and its awesome talons were renders of the lost. But Jaer was not afraid of the gryphon, only horribly, horribly afraid of the other thing which was coming. The unicorn screamed, and fled to the sound of its own screaming….
Jaer woke to the sound of screaming from the yard outside the door. Leona had seized the dogs. ‘They say danger, terror, pain. There is no window here. We are trapped.’
Thewson spoke from the corner. ‘No. I will not stay in a place which is a trap. There is loose thatch here where the beam is. Above this is a roof. We can go up.’
‘Quickly then.’ Leona thrust her pack together and went up Thewson’s crouched body as though he were a stair. She shoved the thatch aside and pushed through, calling the dogs after her. Thewson grimaced as their claws raked his shoulders. Medlo had shaken Jasmine awake, thrust a pack at Jaer, rolled his own things together. The noise in the courtyard grew louder, more agonized. The scream which had been few voices became many.
Thewson came up last, lifting himself with bulging arms. They crouched while he rearranged the thatch to cover the hole, then slithered along the ridge to the neighbouring roof, higher and flat, speared through with stove-pipes and fogged with smoke and the smell of sausages. Medlo lay below the parapet, mumbling, ‘Did we leave that door locked from the inside? If they search rooms, they’ll know no one went out the door….’
Thewson rumbled, ‘I unlocked it, flower picker. We who sell-spear learn to leave false trails.’
‘They have dogs.’
Leona shushed him. ‘No dog can smell its way through air. Our stairway came through the roof with us. What makes them scream so?’
Medlo whispered from his position at the parapet. ‘There are robed ones there, torturing some others. They have knives…. ‘He gagged and put his head down on his arms. They lay like lumps on the roof, even the dogs stretched flat, hidden behind the parapet and the lowering smoke. They could hear voices from the echoing courtyard below.
‘We want a girl, young, yellow-haired. She may be with a pale man. Possibly they are oddly dressed. If you have seen such, you will tell us.’ They could not hear answers, only panting, moaning, someone mumbling,’… women in there …’
Beneath them the door to the room they had left was flung wide, striking the wall with a splintering crash. An oily, obsequious voice said, ‘Empty, Lord Lithos. No one here…’
And another voice, cold as winter midnight and as dark. ‘This is the room women were said to occupy? Bring the dogs.’
Then came scuffling, low growling, more scuffling and yelps of pain or fear and the sound of a whip being applied with more yelping woven into it.
‘What ails them?’
‘They are frightened, Lord Protector. Something they smell frightens them.’
‘Well it might. Do they scent those who were here?’
‘I think so, Lord Protector.’
‘Then make a circuit of the walls. Find the way they have gone, then follow them.’
Leona rolled over to fumble beneath her robes for a moment, drawing out some article of clothing which she fastened to the dog, Mimo’s collar. She whispered urgently to Thewson who lifted the dog over the edge of the roof, lowering him to the ground in one, fluid motion before recoiling back onto the roof. Instantly the dog ran off into the darkness, the fabric tied to his collar dragging upon the ground. They lay silent, listening to the men and dogs who came to the place Mimo had touched, then moved off into the darkness the way Mimo had gone.
‘Will they catch him?’ Jasmine whispered. ‘Hurt him?’
Leona patted her briefly. ‘He is not likely to be caught. After a time he will tear the cloth away and return to find our trail, a trail we must make swiftly, before the men return.’ She took a small vial from her pack, stretched to anoint Thewson’s feet with the contents, then her own, then the others. They squirmed over the wall, dropping soundlessly at its foot to flee into the night. They went upward and eastward, pausing at the crest of a hill
