Rannick smiled slightly. It gave his gaunt face an even more menacing appearance.
‘Tell me about you and your companions,’ he said.
Meirach grimaced. His impulsive attack, a hitherto infallible stand-by, had failed. His companions were too far away to be of any immediate help, and this… creature… had some frightening tricks in his reper-toire. It was contrary to his nature, but he must try a more subtle approach. He had learned one or two things from Nilsson in his time.
‘A minute,’ he said, twisting himself round to sit on the ground. He beat his fist gently against his chest. ‘How did you do that?’ he asked.
Rannick smiled again, but did not answer.
‘Bad joke of mine, that, last night,’ Meirach said, still breathing heavily but attempting to return the smile. ‘Saying throw you on the fire. We’re not used to your ways. We’ve got a harsh humour. It was only a joke, you know.’
‘No, it wasn’t,’ Rannick said. ‘You’d have done it if Yeorson hadn’t stopped you. I’m interested to know why he did. In fact, I’m interested in everything about you.’
A commotion interrupted him. Some of the horses were becoming restless again. Meirach looked at them. Though tethered, they seemed to be struggling desper-ately against other, unseen, restraints. Fear and curiosity vied within him.
‘What’s happened to them?’ he asked, getting un-steadily to his feet.
But Rannick was not listening. He was peering past him into the trees at the edge of the clearing and shaking his head as if in denial. Meirach followed his gaze. For an instant he thought he caught a glimpse of something moving there, a large shadow. But it was gone even as he saw it, vanishing into the deeper shadows of the forest beyond.
The horses became quiet again.
Rannick turned back to Meirach. ‘Now you’ve re-covered your breath, stop wasting my time and tell me about yourself and your companions. These so-called gatherers.’
Mindful of Nilsson’s instructions, and despite his own terrors, Meirach equivocated. ‘We are gatherers,’ he said indignantly. ‘We’re King’s…’
He felt the air being drawn out of his lungs. Rannick stared at him with an expression of weary resignation. Unable to speak, Meirach desperately waved his hands. Rannick released him.
Meirach gaped at his tormentor, fear now dominat-ing all other emotions. He spoke in his own language, his voice low and full of awe. Rannick frowned. Meirach waved his hands again in frantic apology to forestall any further retribution for this mistake. His voice was thick with his foreign accent when he spoke. ‘Is it you, Lord? Come again?’
Rannick put his head on one side, his brow fur-rowed in puzzlement. ‘What do you…?’ he began, then he stopped and straightened and his face hardened. He spoke slowly and very deliberately, his forefinger emphasizing his words. There was a finality in his voice that was unmistakable.
‘Tell me about yourself and your companions, Mei-rach,’ he said. ‘Now!’
He opened his mouth wide with this last word and it seemed to Meirach that Rannick was not a man, but the heart of a terrible storm. A blast of air struck him, scouring his burned face. He covered it with his hands, but to no avail. The wind seemed to seep around his fingers, tearing at his burns with relish.
He sank to his knees.
‘For pity’s sake, no more,’ he said hoarsely. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘I told you before,’ Rannick replied, almost gently. ‘Everything.’
Moving carefully along the rock face above the tree line, Yeorson and his men gradually made their way around the headland until, at last, they found themselves able to look along the valley for some distance.
The valley wound and twisted away from them, and throughout the length that could be seen, the majestic peaks and ridges rose out of a dense, continuous forest. A strong breeze was blowing around the vantage that the climbers had reached, cooling damp foreheads and tacking chilly shirts and tunics to damp backs, but the forest below seemed unaffected by it, lying serene in the spring sunshine.
Its serenity, however, did not encompass the watch-ers. Yeorson swore and wiped his arm across his brow. He looked up at the cliff looming over him, and thence at the neighbouring peaks. It was beyond him or any of his men to scale it, and, as far as he could judge the ridges, he doubted that they could be traversed easily by anyone capable of reaching them.
One of his men spoke. ‘That Rannick said the valley led to the Great Forest. Just getting through this lot is going to be a major expedition, and if there’s only more forest at the end of it…’
He left the observation unfinished.
Yeorson offered him no rebuke; the words chimed too closely with his own thoughts and the speaker was Haral, as bloody-handed a follower of Nilsson as any and by no definition either a grumbler or a faint heart.
He nodded but entered no debate. ‘We’ve seen what we came to see,’ he said. ‘Let’s get back down, then we’ll decide what’s to be…’
‘Hush!’ someone said, holding up his hand urgently for silence.
The group froze into alert immobility and the speaker craned forward in concentration.
A faint high-pitched sound drifted up to them. It continued for a few seconds then it was gone, sub-merged under the wind soughing around them.
There was a brief silence. Though scarcely percepti-ble, there had been an unsettling, even frightening, edge to the sound. ‘Never heard an animal make a noise like that,’ Haral said, voicing everyone’s thoughts. He frowned, uncharacteristically uncertain. ‘What if that Rannick was right about this place being bad, danger-ous?’ he said.
Yeorson looked at the forest stretching ahead, then at the treacherously easy-looking journey sloping away from them back towards the camp. He saw both for what they were and his face became contemptuous. ‘We’re dangerous, Haral,’ he said. ‘And certainly more dangerous than anything that lives down there.’ The sneer curled into a dark smile. ‘Anyway, when we get back to camp we might be able to encourage friend Rannick to explain himself in more detail.’
It was an encouraging prospect.
When they arrived back at the camp, however, it was to the news that Rannick had not been found, and that Meirach was gone.
‘What do you mean, gone?’ Yeorson demanded.
‘What I said,’ Storran protested. ‘He’s taken a horse and left.’
‘Didn’t he leave a message?’
‘No.’
There was some debate about why Meirach had left but Yeorson was in no mood for reason. Something about this place was unnerving him. He lashed out.
‘And where’s Rannick, for crying out loud?’ he shouted angrily. ‘How could you not find him? He was only on foot.’
Storran’s round face coloured and his mouth tight-ened warningly. ‘And what did you find, after your climb?’ he asked with menacing softness.
Yeorson told him.
‘Marvellous,’ Storran exclaimed witheringly. ‘Noth-ing but forest ahead of us. Meirach wandering off when he’s supposed to be guarding the horses. And that bumpkin, Rannick, running us round in circles.’ He swore violently and, suddenly drawing his sword, aimed a savage blow at the trunk of a nearby tree. It was an uncharacteristic outburst and the men moved away from him warily. Nevertheless, it served to bring the two leaders back to their senses.
‘What happened?’ Yeorson asked as Storran sheathed his sword.
Storran clenched and unclenched his fists as the residual irritation expended itself. ‘He left tracks a blind man could follow,’ he said. ‘Here, there, everywhere. Wandering aimlessly, by the look of it.’ He waved his hands vaguely. ‘We couldn’t see any traps he might have been visiting. Then we came to a rocky outcrop and the tracks just disappeared.’
‘Disappeared?’ Yeorson queried.
Storran nodded. ‘We looked all around it and couldn’t find any sign of a camp or of him leaving,’ he replied. ‘My nose tells me he knew we’d follow him and that he was leading us on. It was a mistake to let him go last night.’