Spindle's End (45 page)

Rosie could see, now that she had guessed what to look for, the occasional wicked face, rough and square or delicate and oval, tall or short, human or half human or goblin or imp, peering at her through the ranks of her friends, reaching out hands or claws or thick twisting or biting magics, to grasp her as she ran by; but none of them could reach her.

Stay on the human road,
Narl had said. They were running through desert places, like the land round the castle; and then they ran through trees, sometimes widely scattered, sometimes in groves; but always there was a clear way for Fast to go, clear and nearly straight, and his hoofs seemed barely to graze the ground before he hurtled forward in his next tremendous stride. Stay on the human road. She could not tell if they were on a road or not, only that the animals had chosen the way.

The fog cleared slowly and the light grew brighter, and the landscape grew slowly less flat. There was a piece of hill line she could see through Fast’s streaming mane that looked familiar, and then they shot past a curious little basin of valley that teased at her memory till she remembered, and, remembering, understood: They had passed the northern boundary of the Gig from the wasteland where no one went. They were now running over the ground where King Harald had fought the fire-wyrms; the valley they had just passed was called the Dragon’s Bowl, caused by the fire-wyrms melting the landscape in rage when they could not defeat the king. She had not been here since she was small; Aunt used to collect bdeth near here, although in recent years she had stopped using it. “The Dragon’s Bowl is too far to walk on these old bones,” she said, when Rosie had once asked her; it had been a sennight’s journey for the three of them, during the autumn expedition to collect all the wild things Aunt and Katriona would spend the winter making up into charms or storing away for the next year.

Fast was still running as swiftly as the footing would allow him, but she could feel his lungs beginning to labour, and his neck and shoulders were wet with sweat. She did not know how long they had been running, but she was tired from hanging on, smooth as a good horse’s flat-out gallop was to sit over, and neither of them had had anything to eat in much too long. The way they were going was narrowing, too, and she could see more and more of those malign faces looking at her. Her friends were no longer running with them, but holding their line, struggling to hold their line, to hold Pernicia’s creatures back.

The first deviling that broke through Fast dodged round, scarcely breaking stride; but the second one was bigger, and the third was not alone, but stood against her with six friends. Fast gathered himself together and leaped over them; Rosie shot up his neck when they landed, but she stayed on. Where are we? she thought. Fast—even Fast—cannot run the whole length of the Gig. But then where are we going? Has Pernicia’s host overrun the Gig? What is happening in Foggy Bottom, at Woodwold?

But Fast was running the length of the Gig. They were on a road she knew, the road from Mistweir to Waybreak.

The blood vessels stood out now on Fast’s wet hide, and she could see the huge red hollows of his nostrils, and hear the saw of his breathing. She tried to call to him,
Fast, Fast, slow down, slow down, do not kill yourself;
but he did not answer her, not even with a flick of his laid-back ears. She thought, he is right, if they catch me it is all up for all of us; but what does he think I can do even if I get back to Woodwold—if Woodwold is where we are going. She took Peony because she knew if I lived I had to follow; but now . . .

What is it I’m supposed to do?

Ahead of them the line broke, and a scatter of deer, red and roe and fallow, scrambled dazedly across their path and a mob spread out before them. Fast was now running past Moonshadow; Rosie could see fields and rooftops, but she saw no human beings, and no animals but the ones that lined her way.

Fast faltered and then deliberately slowed, pulling himself together as if showing off for a mare, prancing, tail and crest high, toward the glowering creatures that blocked their way. Rosie half thought, half made herself believe that these creatures trod uneasily on the human road, that the roughness of their quick steps was not only due to their eagerness to seize her and pull Fast down.

One of the enemy made a feint toward her and Fast, and a little group of deer and sheep blocked it; Rosie saw a bear rise up behind them, and another of the invaders was snatched and thrown over the heads of his companions. Fast swerved to one side, and back, leaped over some heaving tangle on the ground, and Rosie, struggling to maintain her seat, did not notice in time—someone, or something, had her leg, and was about to drag her to the ground.

Fast sat back on his haunches and swung round, but the goblin swung, too; Rosie beat ineffectually at its face, but it only sank its fingers more firmly into her flesh. If only she had some weapon—where the cloth of her trouser leg was strained by the goblin’s grasp, the gargoyle spindle end drove painfully into her thigh. She worked her hand into her pocket and pulled it out, cracked it sharply across her attacker’s face, and felt the goblin’s hold loosen. Fast gave it an awkward punch with a hind foot, bending round and aiming as if he were planning to scratch his own shoulder, and it fell to the ground. Fast straightened out with a jerk that almost finished unseating Rosie and shot off again, through the remains of the throng, and pressed on. Rosie didn’t quite have the chance to stuff the spindle end back into her pocket, and tucked it into her waistcoat instead; old friend that it was, she spared a thought for the sound of that
crack,
and hoped it had been only the goblin’s skull.

Fast’s hoofs no longer grazed the earth with every stride, but struck it hard and jarringly; but he was still running, and they appeared to have outrun Pernicia’s army—as well as their own friends. The little respite they had had outside Moonshadow had seemed to give him a second wind, and while he no longer ran lightly, he ran resolutely. Between her own and Fast’s breathing and the wind in her ears Rosie could hear nothing else; it was a very silent and empty landscape they were running through, thundering through the square at Treelight and later across Smoke River’s big common. Still she saw no people nor any animals; they saw no one, not even a butterfly.

And there was the briar hedge, climbing up over Woodwold’s outer wall and spilling down the outside. They were thundering down upon it, on the main road from Smoke River, a wide and clear way: clear enough that Rosie could see the hedge from far away, see it grow ever closer and closer. . . .

They had not outrun all of Pernicia’s army. Some of it was waiting for them.

Those that stood against them stood quietly, watchfully: expectantly. They had known that what they waited for had to come to them at last. They had had no need to cry warning—not of one horse near foundering, and one weaponless rider—they had no need to do anything. What they waited for raced toward them, and would fall at their feet without their having to lift knife or stick or bare claw or fang. They stood with their backs against the briar hedge, many of them so knotted and twisted themselves that they were not immediately evident, especially not to eyes as weary as Rosie’s and Fast’s. But as Rosie’s eyes adjusted she saw how many of them there were: several ranks of them standing out from the wall. Silently. Patiently. Waiting.

She could feel Fast’s uncertainty and alarm but she had no suggestions for him. He slowed nearly to a canter, looking right and left, as she was looking; but while those that waited for them were most thickly grouped just in front of Woodwold’s gates, half invisible among the rose stems but marked by the road, where the road turned toward Foggy Bottom the way was blocked by tall armoured creatures, clanking as they moved, as they turned their heads to look at her. Rosie could not see if they wore their armour like humans, or if it grew from their flesh.

And then something hurtled past them, growling, and jumped at the faces of those standing in front of Woodwold’s gates. Hroc. And behind him Milo and Tash and Froo, all of them red-eyed and streaked with foam from the speed and distance they had run, following Fast. Pernicia’s creatures gave way, a little, in surprise, and their stolid, irresistible, waiting strength was against them because the hounds were quick and agile; gaps appeared in the enemy line in front of the briar hedge. And Fast, who had come to a halt when the hounds shot by, leaped forward again, and Rosie found herself shouting at the top of her lungs, shouting, too, with her inner voice, half aware of the armoured creatures blocking the road to Foggy Bottom rolling forward to close in behind her, “Woodwold!”
Woodwold! Let us in!
And, as a token, she pulled the gargoyle spindle end from her waistcoat, and threw it into the heart of the hedge.

And the hedge pulled itself back, like two ladies drawing back their skirts, the stems wrinkling themselves away and then hoicking themselves upward, their tips rising higher yet above the walls and then diving down again to wind their way among the thick bony mat of branches already there. But the gates remained shut: all fifteen by twenty foot of them.

Fast was running again, the last few strides he had left in him to run, surging into his speed again with his neck-cracking starting bounds: Rosie saw, out of the corner of her eye, a chain with some horrible spiked sphere on the end of it whistle harmlessly past his hindquarters as the end of the armoured line drew close to them.

But if Narl’s gates did not open she and Fast would merely shatter themselves against the bars. The gates were too high to jump, and the bars were much too close together to squeeze between, even for a child. But Fast ran forward, ears pricked, committed to his decision, and much too near the end of his strength to have any left for a final tendon-snapping swerve to one side: and Rosie closed her eyes.
Narl,
she said, despairingly; but beast-speech could not carry as far as Narl was, wherever he was, nor was there anything he could do to cold wrought iron, even if he, who had no beast-speech, had heard her plea.

With her eyes closed, she saw the animals that made up the bars of the gate turn their heads to look at her, at her and Fast. She saw them leap to their feet—the lion shaking his flower mane, and the bear his flower ruff, the hare bounding upright and the snake writhing aside like another rose stem; and the ones first on their feet turned and pressed against the slower ones, the hedgehogs and the tortoises, the toads and the badgers, and cats picked up confused kittens and dogs sleepy fox cubs, and a centaur and a unicorn herded foals and fawns; and birds seized wiry vines and tender shoots in their beaks, and moles scrabbled and beavers paddled, as if cold iron were mere earth or water; and the central bars bowed aside.

Even so, Rosie felt iron bars scrape by her on either side, bruising her shoulders, painfully wiping her legs off Fast’s sides and tossing her feet over his rump; and then Fast staggered forward as if released by a rope breaking, falling to his knees and then lurching to his feet again, and Rosie, looking down, saw chafe marks on his shoulders, and, looking behind, on the points of his hips. But they were through; and here the hounds were as well, Tash only a bit rumpled, Froo limping, Milo with a bleeding slash in his side—and Hroc with the gargoyle spindle end in his mouth, carrying it as gently as he might have carried a straying puppy.

There was a brief, terrible noise, like the noise someone might make if iron bars closed on them suddenly; and Rosie had to nerve herself to look round. Behind them the briar hedge rose, unbroken, the iron gates invisible among the rose stems.

Rosie, shaking in every limb, slid off Fast and stood beside him. He stood unsteadily himself, taking deep, deep breaths, heaving in far more air than one horse could possibly hold, the steam rising off him in clouds like a cauldron boiling.
Fast,
said Rosie.
Fast! Listen to me. You must walk. You’ve run too far, and all your muscles are going to seize up on you. Fast, can you hear me?

He said nothing, and he was by now shivering so hard she could not see if he made any gesture of agreement. But he raised one forefoot and dropped it like a stone, and then one hind foot; and then the other two, one after the other. Rosie grabbed a handful of mane and pulled; but Fast had stopped again, and his nose dropped till it nearly touched the ground, and there was a whine in his breathing she dreaded to hear.

A tiny voice, so faint she almost didn’t hear it:
Can’t.

Yes you bloody
can! She thumped his shoulder with her fist, which was like thumping a block of meat on a slab, and then pinched the tender skin behind the elbow, and Fast twitched a little, and she saw his head begin to swing round and then back as he countermanded his instinct to bite the little stinging thing that was hurting him. He staggered forward again, stiff as an old cart horse, but he was walking.

She turned away from him to see to the hounds; all but Hroc were lying full-length on the ground, panting so heavily she thought they must be bruising themselves against the hard earth. Hroc was sprawled mostly upright, with the spindle end between his front paws; he flattened his ears when he saw Rosie turn toward him.
Short way,
said Hroc.
We did not go by the human road. No one was after us.

Yes,
said Hroc.
Milo’s is just a scratch. You see to Fast. I thought we would get here first.

Rosie would have laughed if she hadn’t been so worried. She took up the spindle end again, rubbing the dirt from its grin before she put it back in her pocket; and then she went after Fast, who was still walking, feeling for the ground with each foot as if he had gone blind.

It was only then that she registered that the drive was clear of rose stems. The courtyard outside the stables had had no way out when she and Narl had stood there after the princess’ disastrous ball—except the way Eskwa made. She looked at the sky: it was no longer grey-purple, but cloud-grey, drizzly Gig grey, ordinary grey. She couldn’t feel very hopeful with poor Fast gasping and stumbling beside her, but when she put her hand on his shoulder for comfort she felt at least she had a little to give him. The dogs heaved themselves to their feet and followed.