The Widow and the King (10 page)

At the door of the house a torch flared in the hand of a servant whom he had not seen before. The light showed him Uncle Adam, sitting on a great horse like a statue, in his metal shirt and helmet with a long lance in his hand. He was watching the gate. At the feet of his horse another shape moved – low, black and hairy. Ambrose realized that it must be Raven, and he shivered. He hoped the servant with the torch was holding Raven's leash, but it was too dark to see.

Once, he had asked Mother why Uncle Adam kept a dog like Raven. He was so much larger than the dogs that guarded the hill people in their village across the valley from home.

‘To help him fight if need be, my darling. He has no one else who can.’

He twisted in his perch, trying to look back at Aunt Evalia.

‘Are you going to fight for me?’ he whispered.

‘Yes, my dear. Be quiet, now. You must be quiet.’

She would not let him talk. That made it worse. Ambrose was frightened, and he wanted to talk. He wanted to ask what the boy had seen, and whether it had been the Heron Man or some of his Things. And he had begun to worry whether he should get off the horse again and put the stones out around him. But he could tell Aunt Evalia didn't want him to do that just now. Why not?

How did she know what they were doing was the right thing?

This waiting was horrible. It was as bad as any of the nights he had spent alone in the mountains. It was worse, because it was happening at Chatterfall, where he should have been safe. He thought he could hear sounds beyond the stockade around the house – branches stirring and clicking in the wind, or scrapes and noises that were not made by the wood, and yet were being made all the same. But it was hard to pick out anything against the endless roaring of the falls.

We're going to ride out, he thought. Uncle Adam, and Aunt Evalia and me; because the Heron Man is coming. That's what the shepherd boy was telling them. He had seen the enemy coming.

Why don't we go
now
?

But they did not. Perhaps they thought the enemy was already outside. They stayed still, waiting.

After what seemed a very long time, a new noise began – a low, shaking, growl quite unlike the falling of the waters.

It was Raven.

Ambrose tensed, and felt Aunt Evalia's arms around him tense, too.

A whistle sounded from somewhere in the wood. At once Raven launched into a volley of barks, flinging himself against the end of the chain-leash held by the man with the torch. Ambrose clenched his teeth against the sound, and waited for it to stop. But it went on and on. He wondered if the Heron Man would be frightened away by Raven alone.

From beyond the gate came a voice.

‘DiManey! DiManey!’

Ambrose had not expected his enemy to speak. And the voice did not sound frightened.

‘DiManey!’ It was a big, roaring voice. Ambrose could not imagine the Heron Man shouting like that.

‘Who's there?’ bellowed Uncle Adam suddenly, from his saddle. At the sound of his voice Raven's barking fell to a low growl.

‘Open your gate, diManey, if you want to keep your roof whole!’

‘What do you want? And who are you?’

‘You've one with you who is not yours. I want him, and everything he carries.’

He knows I'm here, thought Ambrose desperately. When Uncle Adam did not answer, the voice called again.

‘Open the gate! Open it, or we'll burn the house. We'll kill you. And your wife, your servants, your pigs, and everything you've got to the last chicken!’

Behind Ambrose, Aunt Evalia leaned in her saddle and whispered to the groom who held their horse's head. He dropped his hold on the bridle and felt his way towards the gate in the darkness.

Ambrose felt Aunt Evalia's grip around him tighten. Her arm was trembling. The horse beneath him shifted.

With a loud grunting of timbers the gate opened, swinging backwards and inwards until it struck against the wall of the stable. Shapes were moving on the road outside, drifting lightly in through the gateway. Steel clinked. Feet scraped on dry earth a few yards from where Ambrose sat precariously in his saddle. Faint moonlight showed him a row of man-sized figures, entering the yard cautiously. There were three or four of them. The nearest was barely ten feet from where he and Aunt Evalia sat on their horse in the shadow of the stable. If it was dressed at all it wore a dark cloak or armour from head to toe. Ambrose could make out no details, except for a single pale spot near the figure's shoulder that might have been a badge or cloakbuckle.

Aunt Evalia's breath was coming lightly, shallowly in his ear. Her grip on him was so fierce that his upper arm was numb.

‘Hah, Raven!’
cried Uncle Adam.

The big hound leaped forward at the invaders, baying to shake the woods. With another cry Uncle Adam kicked his great horse forward to follow, lumbering at them across the short space of the courtyard with his sword in hand. A volley of shouts answered him – men's voices bellowing in anger and alarm. The figure nearest Ambrose lifted an arm or weapon as great Raven leaped at it, rearing almost to the height of its head.

Now the horse beneath Ambrose started forward, heading for the gateway. He could feel Aunt Evalia urging it on, shouldering past the fight, trying to follow Uncle
Adam's great charger as it broke through to the gate. Cries of rage and hate exploded around him. There were other figures – man-like, horse-like – crowding the night in the roadway. There was a horse in front of him, and a man-shape, caught with one foot in a stirrup. The horse beneath him took him so close that he could have kicked the other animal with his left toe. Blows rang and beasts turned in the night. Somewhere, someone fell. For a moment Ambrose saw a horse, riderless, heading away into the night before him. He thought it might have been Uncle Adam's. But they were through their attackers. The road between the trees showed like a pale stream ahead of them. Still the horse carried them forward, picking up speed. Ambrose swayed with the beat of its hooves. He had never ridden on anything so big before. He crouched low, trying to cling to the horse's neck as Aunt Evalia clung to him. He was afraid of the fight at the gate, but most of all he feared falling at height and at speed in this darkness. Now the shouts behind were fading and the sound of the hooves rose beneath him. And above both he heard a sudden, long hiss that broke off with a snap. Aunt Evalia cried out. He felt her lurch forward, shoving him up towards the horse's neck. He had a moment to wonder why she was riding so badly. Then they were both falling.

He was flying through the air in darkness. Bush-branches crashed around him. He yelled in pain and terror. Then his body struck something big, and hard, and he had no voice to cry with.

He rolled in the thicket. His head hummed with pain – he must have hit it on the ground, but he could not
remember that. His arms were sore. His legs … He could crawl. Trembling, he clambered to his hands and knees.

Feet were running heavily towards him on the road. Two or three of the attackers were coming, jingling with metal as they approached. The horse had vanished into the distance. Aunt Evalia could only be yards away, but he could not see her. He did not know if she was hurt, or how badly. He could not hear Raven, or Uncle Adam.

The enemy! The enemy!

He crouched for a moment where he was, thinking that they might miss him. Then his nerve broke and he blundered away from the road through the thickets.

He was sure they were close after him. He thought they were crashing through the dark wood behind him. But he couldn't look, and he could barely hear against the noise of the falls. He scrambled uphill, to left and right, feeling ahead of him for the tree trunks that loomed suddenly at him out of the darkness from the distance of less than a yard. Again and again he tripped or ran into some obstacle – hard, bruising wood or tearing branches. His bandaged feet limped and stung as he forced them to carry him. His way was upwards, steeply upwards, and he was heavy on the slope and could not make himself go faster. Well before he felt it safe to stop, his legs gave up, and he leaned against a trunk on the edge of a small clearing, sobbing for breath.

As his lungs calmed, he could listen. Beyond the long pouring of the falls and the wind in the trees he could hear faint cries lower down the woods. If there were words in them, he was too far uphill to understand them, but
they did not sound as if there was fighting. Calls were being answered by other calls. The words might have been
Look over there
and
He must have gone that way.

The clouds moved in the sky, and the moonlight grew. He glanced around, fearfully. What he had thought was a clearing was in fact the road again. It had bent back to meet him above the point where he had left it. He could see the pale blur of its surface running among the darkness beneath the trees, curling uphill (perhaps) to his right, as it snaked on up the slope.

He did not know what to do. Run on along the road? Or hide in the woods, putting his stones around him as the only defence he had left? He was being hunted. There were shapes and shadows among the trees. Any of them might hold a watcher. Any of the shadows might be an old man, standing only a few yards from him, in a long robe and hood; watching him with eyes in deep darkness.

Nearby, something heavy moved. His eye caught a curved shadow, shifting against a background of trees to his right. His mind leaped at once to his nightmare, and he just managed to stop himself shrieking aloud. He started to move again, sliding as quietly as he could away from it among the trees, knowing that he was making too much noise and that he would be heard – if it had ears to hear with.

Suddenly, a shape erupted from the bushes by the roadside ahead of him, plunging downhill to cut off his escape. He yelped, springing away from it, and collided with a tree trunk in the dark. As he staggered the thing leaped at him and flung him to the ground. Something
heavy and soft was feeling at his face. It found his mouth and pressed against it.

‘Quiet!’ grunted a voice.

Ambrose struggled and kicked. But the weight of the thing bore down on him and he could not free himself. Metal clinked. The thing was wearing a mail shirt, like Uncle Adam's.

‘
Quiet
, damn you!’

Ambrose lay still, telling himself that he was only gathering his strength for another try. The grip on him eased a little.

‘What's happened down there?’

It was a man's voice. Not a nightmare, but a man. Ambrose twisted to look up at the shape of his captor's head.

‘Come on,’ hissed the man. ‘What's happened down at the house?’

‘We – we've been attacked.’

‘By whom? How many?’

‘I don't know. Uncle Adam is fighting …’

‘Who? Your uncle?’

‘He's not really my uncle. But he needs help!’

‘Up.’

He pulled Ambrose to his feet, and brought him out onto the road, turning him so that he faced along it to where the three-quarter moon was beginning to rise over the tree-tops along the slope. The man, who was no taller than Ambrose, peered at his face. He was wearing an iron helmet and a pale surplice over his mail. He was a knight, like Uncle Adam.

Behind him, under the trees, the big shadow moved
again. It was lighter than the darkness around it. There was a heavy, snorting noise.

‘Sss, sss, Stefan,’ said the knight, softly over his shoulder.

It was a horse – the biggest horse Ambrose had ever seen.

‘What's your name?’ said the knight.

Ambrose did not answer.

The knight shook him.

‘What's … ? No, all right then. But what's the matter with your feet?’

Ambrose looked down at his bandages, pale in the moonlight.

‘I walked from the mountains,’ he said.

‘That'll do. You're who I've come for. Let's go.’

Go?

‘What about the house? They need help!’

The knight looked downhill. There was a cry from below, too far off to make out any words. A smell of smoke was gathering among the trees.

‘That's not a fight,’ said the knight. ‘That's sack. They've fired it. I saw that as I came down the road – even before I heard you. Up, now.’

Without letting go of Ambrose for a moment, he had steered him to the side of the great horse. It towered over the boy in the darkness, far taller than the animal he had ridden with Aunt Evalia. (Aunt Evalia! Where was she? What did
that's sack
mean?) The horse breathed heavily, and shifted like a mountainside that was about to fall.

‘Up.’

Once again he was being lifted up the side of a huge animal. He snatched at the pommel of the saddle and
hung where he was until the knight caught his foot with one hand (
Ow!
) and heaved him on upwards.

‘Sit up,’ the knight said. ‘Hold on to the saddle.’ Ambrose levered himself into some sort of a position. The saddle had a high back, as well as the pommel that he was gripping with both hands. It felt as though he had climbed into a living tree.

‘Steady, Stefan.’

The knight took the reins and stood at the horse's head. For a moment he stood and did nothing. Perhaps he was listening, trying to hear through the trees and the noise of the water for other sounds in the night.

‘Come, Stefan, come!’ hissed the knight at the horse. The great beast moved forward, stepping at first and then breaking into a heavy trot. The man was running at the beast's head, grunting and jingling as he went. Ambrose clutched desperately at the saddle. He did not know who this man was. He did not know where they were going. Most of all, he was afraid of another fall.

A bend in the path followed. They were making their way on up the slope beside the falls. Down to his right he could see flickers of firelight, showing through the trees where he knew the house should be. They moved backwards as the road curved and climbed on. After a little he could glimpse the fire again, to his left now, as the road wound back across the slope. It was further away, harder to see through the thickets of trees. He wondered what had happened to Aunt Evalia, and to Uncle Adam, and Raven, and whether any of them would be able to look for him in the morning.