“Give ’em time,” said Magnus. “This is new to everyone.” He had come back from the settlement just before supper. None of the villagers had been prepared to accompany him up the hill, but Tomas and the others had expressed a keen interest in the results of our council.They wanted Magnus to return in the morning with news.Tomas had suggested sending a message to Brion, chieftain of Whiteshore, to keep him abreast of things. Someone else had remembered a cache of old weaponry hidden somewhere down near the river. The thought that there might be a real possibility of mounting a defense against the Normans had sparked something new in the frightened inhabitants of the settlement. Magnus had counseled caution; they must wait for Anluan’s decision, he’d told them. They had sent him back up the hill with three loaves of freshly baked bread and a crock of honey, but none of us had been able to eat. That bounty, along with my pie, still lay untouched on the kitchen table.
It grew colder. The moon edged higher. Owls cried; creatures rustled in the bushes.
“There is no point in this,” said Muirne.
“We will wait until they are ready.” Anluan sounded quietly confident. It seemed he had conquered his earlier doubts. “All night, if need be.”
Muirne said no more. In the hush that followed, I could hear Eichri whistling between his teeth.
A little cough from Rioghan. Muirne tensed beside me.
“Here we go,” muttered Magnus.
Cathair had been told to specify the number: no more than ten representatives from the host, exclusive of those who lived within the house. They manifested one by one beneath the trees, then moved up to take their places around the circle. Gearrog would not come; he had remained on guard outside my chamber, content to let Cathair speak for him. But there were other warriors here: a tall man with a pike; an old, bearded one bearing a bow and quiver; a man with one leg, hobbling on a crutch, with a fearsome array of knives at his belt. His battered leather helm and breastplate and the great slashing scar across his face marked him as a combat veteran.With Cathair, that made four; with the monk, five.
“Welcome,” Anluan said quietly. None of them spoke, but they acknowledged the greeting with a nod, a jerk of the head, a fist raised in soldierly respect.
A woman came next, her garb a hooded robe, her gray hair in long plaits. On her brow was tattooed a crescent moon.A wise woman, I guessed, perhaps a priestess of an older faith. She hesitated just beyond the circle of torches. Behind her was a younger woman with glittering ornaments around her neck and her hair artfully dressed, the kind of woman to whom men’s eyes must go instantly, though this one looked somehow faded, as if the brightness that had been hers in life had slowly leached away over the long years on the Tor, leaving a pale copy of her former self. A third stood by them, a personage of middle years clad in the practical homespun garments of a hardworking village wife. None seemed prepared to step into the circle.
“They are afraid, lady.” It was Cathair who spoke.
Anluan turned to me. “Caitrin, will you bid them welcome?” As if I were the lady of the house. As if I were his wife.
I did not look at Muirne, but her voice was in my mind:
They moved forward in silence to stand together, a little apart from the warriors.That made eight.
For a while, nothing stirred save the flames of the torches, turned to fiery war banners by the night breeze.
“Are there more?” asked Rioghan eventually, looking at Cathair.
As if in answer another figure came forth from the trees, one who dwarfed even Magnus. His arms were muscular, his chest formidable. His skin was marked by many scars, not combat injuries, I judged, but burns. He was the kind of man whose features are handsome only to his mother. His physical presence, however, would be sure to prevent anyone from telling him this.
“Donn the smith, my lord.”The giant gave the very slightest of bows, and Anluan returned the courtesy gravely.“Representing the working men of the Tor.”
“I welcome you, Donn.We may have need of your expertise.”
“Likely you will, my lord.” The smith moved into position alongside Eichri and the other monk, and now there were nine.
“Our number is complete, my lord,” said Cathair.
Rioghan frowned at him. “Only nine?”
As one, the representatives of the host turned their eyes towards a particular place in the circle, a place that seemed deliberately left vacant, the warriors to one side of it, the women, the smith and the clerics to the other.
“We are ten, my lord,” said the gray-haired woman. “We leave this place for one whom we love and respect; one who, like us, died with unease in his heart.We cannot see or hear him, but we sense his presence. He is not of the host. He watches over the Tor.”
My skin prickled. I heard Muirne hiss softly beside me, as if this frightened her where none of the rest of it had the power to do so. Magnus muttered something under his breath.
“Very well.” Anluan allowed his gaze to move around the circle, taking in everyone present.“All are welcome here, the seen and the unseen. Each is part of our community of Whistling Tor. You know why I have summoned you. A peril confronts us. I need your help.”
He set the situation out once more. As I listened I watched his audience, and very soon it became apparent to me that the host had not limited its representation to ten after all.Ten stood within the circle of lights, nine of them visible, one mysteriously not so, but in the moonlight beyond that circle were gathered many more. Anluan was surrounded by troubled souls.
He did not spend long on my theory about the host, and that was wise—this was not the time to remind these folk of the ill deeds in their past. He told them that he planned to visit the settlement at full moon. He outlined what he would say to Lord Stephen’s emissaries. He asked the spectral folk for an undertaking that they would stay within the boundaries of the hill while he was gone, obey the commands of those he left in charge, do no harm until
