longer.
'Are we nearly there?' she asked.
Mallory closed the map book with a bang. 'It should be around here somewhere. Which is good. Because they're getting closer.'
A tiny B-road branched off past the deserted house. A little further on, they saw their destination, the symbolism so striking it brought an instant frisson. A ruined church stood at the centre of a large field, while encircling it, enclosing it, forever linked to it, was a Neolithic henge monument consisting of a raised bank and an internal ditch with a ceremonial entrance. The scene was heavy with the resonance of ancient mysteries in conflict yet at the same time inextricably joined.
The wind whistled across the countryside, buffeting them as they ran for the church. On the edge of the world the light was now only a pencil- width. Across the fields on all sides, grey shapes scurried and jumped and ran, neither animals nor beasts but something of both, all converging rapidly on Knowlton.
Mallory and Sophie slipped past the iron gate and sprinted through the gap in the ringbank. Instantly the wind fell, but the grass continued to ripple.
The church was no shelter. The roof and the outer wall on the far side were completely missing. The bell tower standing erect at the heart of the feminine circle offered a feeble defensive position, but it was still open to the sky and the doorway was wide enough to ensure Mallory wouldn't have to make a stand for long.
Mallory spun around on the crunching gravel, sword in hand, then said, 'This is it, then.' He tried to make it sound positive, but the fatalism wouldn't stay out of his voice. He looked to Sophie as if to say, Now's the time — do your stuff.
She leaned in the doorway and looked out across the henge, mesmerised by the shapes sweeping towards them. She guessed there must be hundreds of them.
Mallory's sword was growing bluer with each passing second. She turned to him and said, 'Drive it into the ground.'
He didn't question her. Once it was embedded in the gravel, Sophie squatted down and muttered. A second later, she threw her head back and gasped. 'So powerful here.' The words sounded like steam escaping from a pipe.
Mallory knew better than to interrupt. He was disturbed by the sound of a horn, a distinct blast that sounded somehow ancient and eerily threatening. The light was almost gone and everything had taken on a ghostly greyness. Across the sky, clouds swept in that looked strangely like men on horseback. He fixed on them until Sophie exclaimed and pointed through the doorway.
Two red lights approached the perimeter of the henge. They floated unsettlingly in the dark, and it was a second before Mallory realised they were eyes. Old Shuck had found them.
Urgently, he turned back to Sophie — threats were converging on them from every side and their time was almost gone. In the split second his attention had been away from her, she had changed. Her eyes blazed with blue light, her muscles holding her as rigid as wood while sapphire sparks flashed around her limbs. From the sword, lines of the earth energy radiated up into the stone structure of the church and, even as he watched, rushed out into the henge.
Blue lightning flashed all around. Mallory heard a voice that wasn't Sophie's, or his, or anyone he knew, saying, 'There are worlds beyond worlds. Which one is real?'
And then the night snapped shut.
Darkness lay heavily over everything. Only the glow of Mallory's sword provided any illumination. They stood in a dense forest, the trees so tightly packed that they couldn't see a beginning or end of it. The thick canopy of branches and leaves made it impossible to tell if it was night or day, but they guessed from the cool, strong aroma of vegetation that it was dark.
'Where are we?' Mallory said.
'I don't know.' Sophie sounded dazed; the effects of whatever she had done had taken their toll.
As Mallory shucked off his disorientation, the words of the strange beings at Old Sarum came back to him. 'The Forest of the Night,' he muttered. The place where they would become the prey of the Wild Hunt.
As if in echo of his thoughts, the dim sound of a hunting horn rang out through the forest. The density of the trees made it impossible to tell if it was distant or close at hand. He slipped a hand under Sophie's arm to help her to her feet.
'Come on,' he said insistently. 'We have to move.'
'Where to?' she said, confused.
And that was it: he had no idea where they were supposed to be going. 'Just move,' he replied.
The forest was unchanging, never-ending. There was a faint ambient light, enough to guide them, but Mallory couldn't comprehend its source. They ran as fast as they could amongst the trees, occasionally tripping on creepers or ploughing through bushes, jumping gently trickling streams or clambering through boulder-strewn hollows. Most of the time Mallory had to help Sophie along; she was drained of energy, at first a little delirious even, but gradually coming to her senses.
The sounds of pursuit drew closer. He heard the yelp of hounds above the crackle of his footsteps on the dry forest floor, felt the rumble of horses' hooves in the soft leaf-mould, and always the intermittent threatening dissonance of the hunting horn.
'We have to find him,' Sophie gasped, during one of her occasional moments of confusion. 'The… the Devil.'
'The Devil,' Mallory repeated bitterly. He wondered what hell would look like, recalled the last days of Stefan's rule in the cathedral and thought perhaps that he had seen the start of it.
The first inkling he had that the end was near was the appearance of shapes moving fast amongst the trees on both sides. They bounded low, like ghosts in the gloom. He found it hard to look and run in the obstacle- littered environment, but eventually he realised they were hounds, long, thin and whippetlike, but with an unnatural colouring of red and white.
Running, he thought with a sick desperation. He was always running. A metaphor for his life.
The dogs began to close in with a pincer movement. It was hopeless; it had been hopeless from the moment he had set off from the cathedral, but he had tried his best. He wondered if that was enough.
A storm of hoofbeats filled the air. And still they ran. A laugh escaped his lips. It was crazy. They should just lie down and be trampled or torn apart.
They leaped another stream where white water cascaded over glistening rocks and almost became bogged down in the mud on the other side. A rider jumped it easily. In the thin light, Mallory had an impression of furs and leather, and of a long pole with a sickle attached to the end. The horse, as he glimpsed it, looked like a horse in every way, yet he strangely felt that it was some unrecognisable alien beast. It danced amongst the trees in a way no horse could ever achieve. Mallory sensed more riders at his back, just the slice of a sickle away.
The rider to his left began to close in, raising the weapon to his underarm in a jousting position. Not long now, Mallory thought. At his side, Sophie was lost to her running and her thoughts.
The rider drew closer. The sickle glowed silver, cruelly sharp.
Suddenly, Mallory grabbed Sophie's hand and yanked her to a halt. 'What are you doing?' she asked, dazed. He pulled her to him and wrapped his arms around her, a feeble protection and a final act of communion with the woman he loved. He smelled her hair, kissed her gently on the forehead.
The closest rider reined in his horse and came back. The others circled in a wide, lazy arc, the hounds baying and whimpering in the gloom beyond. Mallory held up his head, waiting for the killing stroke, but the huntsman lowered his weapon and waved it curtly to prompt them to move forwards.
They continued that way in silence for ten minutes, Mallory's arm tight around Sophie's shoulders, until they came to a clearing. In a circle of well-worn grass at the centre was a standing stone slouching to one side. Overhead, Mallory could see the stars for the first time, but no constellations that he recognised. The full moon, though, looked down brightiy. There was a cathedral-like stillness and gravity.
The riders brought their horses to a halt around the edge of the clearing and a deep silence descended; even the hounds were quiet.
Not long after, the black dog padded out into the moonlight on the other side of the clearing. When it reached the standing stone, it dropped down to its haunches and stared at Mallory and Sophie in such a human way it made Mallory's flesh prickle.
