girl safely to her cousins in Oban, yes?'
Silence. Toby had tipped the bag out on the clay floor, but now he looked up. The men were waiting on the tanner, and even in the shadows, he seemed to have been shocked sober.
'You'd take good care of her, lad?' he said uncertainly.
The night grew madder and madder. Yes, it would be a good idea for Meg to disappear until the affair blew over and that no-good half-brother of hers would be worse than useless anyway. But to trust her to a murderer and a hunted outlaw… Of course, if they were asking whether he would take advantage of the child, then the answer was easy. 'I'd guard her like a sister, but…'
The tanner nodded and looked away.
'That's arranged, then?' the miller said.
'Aye.' Tanner nodded. Then he added, apparently more to himself than anyone else, 'I'm thinking I got the wrong one.'
The smith grinned at the butcher and the miller smiled knowingly. If that was a joke, Toby had missed the point completely: wrong what?
He found the pin and rose to adjust his plaid. Again he pushed by the visitors — the cottage was cramped when there was only him in it. He knelt to unpack the bundle Granny Nan had made up for him, wrapped in a square of tartan. He found his razor in there, his tinderbox, a metal pan, a knife, a new bonnet that she'd promised to make for him, a pair of gloves he had not seen before, a bag of meal, a lump of salt — and her little leather purse. It was fatter than he remembered, surprisingly heavy. He pulled the drawstring and took a look. He had given her what he'd been earning in the castle all summer, but he'd had to buy a new belt, and the rest could not amount to this much. Here was Bossie, and the poultry, and a lifetime's savings. Some of it was his, though, and probably all of it, because she wanted him to have it, because she had no use for money and he was going to. He slipped the two shiniest coppers into his sporran, then rolled the bag up in the cloth with the other treasures.
'Come on!' he said, and ducked out the door ahead of the village elders.
CHAPTER SEVEN
He was stiff and his feet still hurt from his walk to Bridge of Orchy. He limped slowly along the path, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness, letting the other men keep up. The moon was low in the west, still encircled by her misty wreath. His breath smoked in the cold.
He had never visited the hob by night. He could have brought a torch, of course, but fire would get the hob excited. The hob was excited easily, especially by thunderstorms. Any storm that visited Strath Fillan inevitably spent most of its time there directly over Lightning Rock, blasting trees and the rock itself in a continuous orgy of fire and sound, rolling echoes off the hills. For days afterward, milk would sour all over the glen, calves be stillborn, children fall sick, until the witchwife could get the hob calmed down again. A few weeks later, it would become annoyed at the blackened trunks disfiguring its grove; then it would let Granny Nan have them for firewood and she would send Toby to chop them down.
One of the men coughed nervously. Toby realized that they were at the copse itself.
'Why don't you wait here?' That was what he was supposed to say.
'Well… If you don't need us?' Miller said, feigning reluctance.
'Just one of us might be best. Don't want to make it snarly.'
They all agreed it would not do to make the hob snarly.
Toby went on alone, climbing the narrow path. He wondered if the hob would be more or less visible by night than it was by day. The most he had ever seen of it was a faint silver shimmer, a sort of glow in the trees, as if all the leaves were twinkling and the air was sweeter. Usually it stayed in its grotto, but sometimes it would come and watch him chop wood. Very rarely, he had detected it elsewhere in the glen. It never spoke to him, only to the witchwife. He was not at all sure that it could speak to anyone else, or that anyone would understand it if it did. He suspected that it had very little intelligence in any human sense. Granny Nan rarely talked about the hob, even to him. She sang to it, and gave it pretty things, and kept it happy.
The path ended abruptly. Granny Nan was quite obviously not there. Directly ahead, a shaft of moonlight illuminated the side of Lightning Rock and the little open crack that was the hob's grotto.
Toby knelt down on the moss. He bent his head, glancing around surreptitiously. He saw nothing, except bright things twinkling inside the hole — offerings of pretty stones, mostly. People with troubles would bring little offerings to Granny Nan and she would take them to the hob and pass on the requests: Gerda Murray's cow is drying up… the pain in Lachlan Field's back keeps him from earning his bread…
He decided to begin by introducing himself, just in case it did not remember him. 'I am Toby Strangerson, the boy from the cottage, the witchwife's boy.' He felt oddly stupid, as if he were talking to himself. 'I am very grateful to you for saving me from the demon tonight, and bringing me home safely.' Almost safely — no bones broken, anyway.
He fumbled for the two coins, and found something small and sharp also. He remembered that Granny Nan had given him a pretty stone. He left the pebble in his sporran and brought out the money.
'I brought these for you. I hope you like them.' He tossed them into the grotto. They clinked on the gravel.
Silence. No sound, no wind. Nothing.
He was suddenly quite certain that the hob was not there. He was talking to himself.
Somewhere a twig cracked.
His heart jumped madly. He peered around, waited, heard nothing.
'We can't find Granny Nan.' He spoke faster. 'We are worried about her, because she is frail and the night is cold. Will you lead me to her, please? Or send her home?'
Behind him, somebody chuckled.
He was on his feet in an instant, staring into the darkness, aware that he must be visible against the patch of moonlight. His heart thumped in his chest…
Crazy Colin!
Crazy Colin Campbell was here in the grove, and he would still have the knife.
The trunks of the trees gleamed with a frosty light, every leaf and twig clearly visible. The mad drum beat steady time. Off to the left, Granny Nan's body was a tiny crumpled heap in the shrubbery. A man was creeping up the path, knife glittering, teeth bared in an ecstasy of blood lust. He could not hear the drummer, could not see the eerie blue glow.
The husky boy stepped into shade, out of the moonlight. While he watched the killer come, he gripped the rusty bangle on his left wrist, pulled at it until the lock snapped. He tossed it away.
The man jumped and peered around to see where the sound had come from.
The boy worked on the right cuff. That was harder. Blood oozed from his wrist before the foul thing yielded. This time the madman heard the breaking and located the noise. He started forward again, panting with excitement and making little circles in the air with the point of his knife.
When he was within reach, the waiting boy shot out a hand to grip the knife arm; he took the man by the throat with the other. He squeezed until the arm bones crumbled and the blade fell to the ground. Then he crushed the lunatic's throat as a man might crack a flea, watching him die — eyes bulging, mouth open, making no sound audible through the relentless, all-pervading rhythm:
CHAPTER EIGHT
