The trail pursued its way down the slope of the ridge beneath trees of ever-increasing size and age. The upper branches grew higher from the ground, lifting the roof of foliage and dimming the sunlight with a heavy canopy of glowing green leaves. On and on they went, and when the knight stopped again, the wood had become dark and silent as an empty church. The only sound to be heard was the rustling and chirping of small birds, unseen in the upper branches high above.
Thorny shrubs-blackberry and bilberry-grew man high on each hand; a few hundred paces farther along, the trail pinched down to a constricted corridor before disappearing into a tangled and impenetrable bank of brambles. As they neared the wall of thorns, they saw that the narrow trail turned sharply to the left. The oxen had passed between two overlapping hedges; the animals had been led single file in order to squeeze through, and there were tufts of tawny hair caught on some of the lower thorns. The silence of the forest had given way to the noisy chafe and chatter of crows emanating from the other side of the bramble bank. Easing cautiously through the thorny hedge, the searchers entered a clearing. The racket of the birds had risen to a piercing cacophony.
Gripping their lances, the soldiers crept out from the thorn hedge and into a small, sunlit meadow ringed about with birch and rowan trees. In the centre of the clearing was a roiling, boiling black mound of birds: hundreds of them. Crows, ravens, choughs, jays, and others were fighting over something on the ground, and still more were circling and diving in the air above this squirming, living heap of feathers, wings, and beaks.
The air was loud with their shrieks and heavy with a sweet, turgid stink.
'Drive them off,' Guiscard ordered, and four of the men-at-arms rushed the mound of birds, swinging their lances before them and yelling as they ran.
The birds took flight at the sudden appearance of the men and fled squawking and screeching into the sky; most settled again in the branches of the surrounding trees, where they continued to shriek their outrage at being driven from their repast.
The birds gone for the moment, the knight and the rest of the men approached the mound where their four comrades were now standing still as stones, enthralled by the heap before them.
'Out of the way,' ordered Guiscard, striding up. The footman stepped aside, and the knight took one look at the mound before him and almost vomited.
Before him were what appeared to be the entrails and viscera of the missing oxen-artfully heaped into a single, glistening purple mound of rotting slime. Rising from the centre of this putrefying mass was a long wooden stake, and on the stake was the severed head of an ox. The skin and most of the flesh had been ripped from the skull to reveal the bloody bone beneath. Two of the hapless animal's hooves were stuffed in its hanging mouth, and its tail protruded absurdly from one of its ears, and jutting from the naked eyeballs of the freshly flensed skull were four long, black raven feathers.
The weird sight caused these battle-hardened men to blanch and brought the gorge rising to their throats. One of the soldiers cursed, and two others crossed themselves, glancing around the clearing nervously. 'Sacre bleu!' grunted a soldier, prodding a lopped-off hoof with the blade of his lance. 'This is the work of witches.'
'What?' said the knight, recovering some of his nerve. 'Have you never seen a slaughtered beast?'
'Slaughtered,' muttered one of the men scornfully. 'If they were slaughtered, where are the carcasses?' Another said, 'Aye, and where's the blood and hide and bones?'
'Carried away by them that slaughtered the beasts,' replied another of the soldiers, growing angry. 'It's just a pile of guts.' With that, he shoved his spear into the curdling bulk, striking an unseen bladder, which erupted with a long, low hiss and released a noxious stench into the already fetid air.
'Stop that!' shouted the man beside him, shoving the offender, who pushed back.
'Enough!' shouted the knight. Quickly scanning the surrounding trees for any sign that they were being watched, he said, 'The thieves may still be close by. Make a circuit of the clearing, and give a shout when you find their trail.'
Only too glad to turn away from the grisly mound in the centre of the glade, the soldiers walked to different parts of the perimeter and, bending low, began to look for the footprints of the thieves. One complete circuit failed to turn up anything resembling a human footprint, so the knight ordered them to do it again, more slowly this time and with better care and attention.
They were all working their way around the circle when a strange sound halted them in midstep. It started as an agonised cry-as if someone, or something, was in mortal anguish-and then rose steadily in pitch and volume to a wild ululation that raised the short hairs on the napes of the warriors' necks.
The crows in the treetops stopped their chatter, and a dread hush descended over the clearing. The unnatural calm seemed to spread into the surrounding forest like tendrils of a stealthy vine, like a fog when it searches along the ground, coiling, moving, flowing amongst the hidden pathways until all is shrouded with its vapours.
The searchers waited, hardly daring to breathe. After a moment, the eerie sound rose again, closer this time, growing in force, rising and rising-and then suddenly trailing away as if stifled by its own strength.
The carrion birds in the high branches took flight all at once.
The soldiers, holding tight to their weapons, gazed fearfully at the sky and at the wood around them. The trees seemed to have moved closer, squeezing the ring tighter, forming a sinister circle around them.
'Christ have mercy!' cried a footman. He flung out a hand and pointed across the clearing.
The soldiers turned as one to see an indistinct shape moving in the shadows beneath the trees at the edge of the glade. Straining into the darkness, they saw a form emerge from the forest gloom-as if the shadow itself was thickening, gathering darkness and congealing into the shape of a monstrous creature: big as a man, but with the head and wings of a bird, and a round skull-like face that ended in an extravagantly long, pointed black beak.
Like a fallen angel risen from the pit, this baleful presence stood watching them from across the clearing.
'Steady, men,' said the knight, holding his sword before him. 'Close ranks.'
No one moved.
'Close ranks!' shouted Guiscard. 'Now!'
The soldiers, shaken to action, moved to obey. They drew together, shoulder to shoulder, weapons ready. Even as they formed the battle line, the phantom melted away, disappearing before their eyes as the shadows reclaimed it.
The soldiers waited, bloodless hands gripping their weapons, staring fearfully at the place where they had last seen the creature. When a cloud passed over the sun, leeching warmth from the air, the terrified men bolted and ran.
'Stand!' cried the knight, to no avail. He watched his men deserting him, thrashing through the brush in their blind haste to escape the horror encircling them. With a last glance around the tainted meadow, brave Guiscard joined his men in flight.
Back at the builders' camp, the breathless searchers told what they had found in the forest and how they had been attacked by the forest phantom-a creature so hideous as to defy description-and only narrowly escaped with their lives. As for the missing oxen, they had been completely devoured by the creature.
'Except for the vitals,' one of the men-at-arms explained to his astonished audience. 'The devil thing devoured everything but the guts,' he said. The soldier next to him took up the tale. 'The bowels it vomited in the meadow. We must have startled it at its feeding,' he surmised. Another soldier nodded, adding, 'Cest vrai. No doubt that was why it attacked us.'
But the soldiers were wrong. It was not the phantom that fed on the stolen oxen. That very evening, in British huts and holdings all along the valley, a score of hungry families dined on unexpected gifts of good fresh meat that had been discovered lying on the stone threshold of the house. Each gift had been delivered the same way: wrapped in green oak leaves, one of which was pinned to the parcel by a long, black wing feather of a raven.
CHAPTER
34
)Brother Aethelfrith paused on the road to drag a damp sleeve across his sweating face. The Norman merchants with whom he had been travelling had long since outpaced him; his short legs were no match for their mules and high-wheeled carts, and none of the four traders or their retainers had consented to allow him to ride
