I rose, drew my blade, and felled a sapling-about two inches in diameter-with one cut. Then I stripped it and hacked it to the proper length.
I did it again, and with the belts and cloaks of dead men I rigged a stretcher. He watched until I was finished, then commented:
“You swing a deadly blade. Sir Corey -and a silver one, it would seem...”
“Are you up to some traveling?” I asked him. Five leagues is roughly fifteen miles.
“What of the dead?” he inquired.
“You want to maybe give them a decent Christian burial?” I said. “Screw them! Nature takes care of its own. Let's get out of here. They stink already.”
“I'd like at least to see them covered over. They fought well.”
I sighed.
“All right, if it will help yon to sleep nights. I haven't a spade, so I'll build them a cairn. It's going to be a common burial, though.”
“Good enough,” he said.
I laid the six bodies out, side by side. I heard him mumbling something, which I guessed to be a prayer for the dead.
I ringed them around with stones. There were plenty of stones in the vicinity, so I worked quickly, choosing the largest so that things would go faster.
That is where I made a mistake. One of them must have weighed around four hundred pounds, and I did not roll it. I hefted it and set it in place.
I heard a sharp intake of breath from his direction, and I realized that he had noted this. I cursed then:
“Damn near ruptured myself on that one!” I said, and I selected smaller stones after that.
When I had finished, I said, “All right. Are you ready to move?”
“Yes.”
I raised him in my arms and set him on the stretcher. He clenched his teeth as I did so.
“Where do we go?” I asked.
He gestured.
“Head back to the trail. Follow it to the left until it forks. Then go right at that place. How do you propose to... ?”
I scooped the stretcher up in my arms, holding him as you would a baby, cradle and all. Then I turned and walked back to the trail, carrying him.
“Corey?” he said.
“Yes?”
“You are one of the strongest men I have ever met-and it seems I should know you.”
I did not answer him immediately. Then I said, “I try to keep in good condition. Clean living and all.”
“...And your voice sounds rather familiar.”
He was staring upward, still trying to see my face. I decided to get off the subject fast.
“Who are these friends of yours I am taking you to?”
“We are headed for the Keep of Ganelon.”
“That ratfink!” I said, almost dropping him.
“While I do not understand the word you have used, I take it to be a term of opprobrium,” he said, “from the tone of your voice. If such is the case, I must be his defender in—”
“Hold on,” I said. “I've a feeling we're talking about two different guys with the same name. Sorry.” Through the stretcher, I felt a certain tension go out of him.
“That is doubtless the case,” he said.
So I carried him until we reached the trail, and there I turned to the left.
He dropped off to sleep again, and I made better time after that, taking the fork he had told me about and sprinting while he snored. I began wondering about the six fellows who had tried to do him in and almost succeeded. I hoped that they did not have any friends beating about the bushes.
I slowed my pace back to a walk when his breathing changed.
“I was asleep,” he said.
“...And snoring,” I added.
“How far have you borne me?”
“Around two leagues, I'd say.”
“And you are not tired?”
“Some,” I said, “but not enough to need rest just yet.”
“Mon Dieu!” he said. “I am pleased never to have had you for an enemy. Are you certain you are not the Devil?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Don't you smell the brimstone? And my right hoof is killing me.”
He actually sniffed a couple times before he chuckled, which hurt my feelings a bit.
Actually, we had traveled over four leagues, as I reckoned it. I was hoping he would sleep again and not be too concerned about distances. My arms were beginning to ache.
“Who were those six men you slew?” I asked him.
“Wardens of the Circle,” he replied, “and they were no longer men, but men possessed. Now pray to God, Sir Corey, that their souls be at peace.”
“Wardens of the Circle?” I asked. “What Circle?”
“The dark Circle-the place of iniquity and loathsome beasts...” He took a deep breath. “The source of the illness that lies upon the land.”
“This land doesn't look especially ill to me,” I said.
“We are far from that place, and the realm of Ganelon is still too strong for the invaders. But the Circle widens. I feel that the last battle will be fought here.”
“You have aroused my curiosity as to this thing.”
“Sir Corey, if you know not of it 'twere better you forgot it, skirted the Circle, and went your way. Though I should dearly love to fight by your side, this is not your fight-and who can tell the outcome?”
The trail began winding upward. Then, through a break in the trees, I saw a distant thing that made me pause and caused me to recall another, similar place.
“What... ?” asked my charge, turning. Then, “Why, you moved much more quickly than I had guessed. That is our destination, the Keep of Ganelon.”
I thought then about a Ganelon. I did not want to, but I did. He had been a traitorous assassin and I had exiled him from Avalon centuries before. I had actually cast him through Shadow into another time and place, as my brother Eric had later done to me. I hoped it was not to this place that I had sent him. While not very likely, it was possible. Though he was a mortal man with his allotted span, and I had exiled him from that place perhaps six hundred years ago, it was possible that it was only a few years past in terms of this world. Time, too, is a function of Shadow, and even Dworkin did not know all of its ins and outs. Or perhaps he did. Maybe that is what drove him mad. The most difficult thing about Time, I have learned, is doing it. In any case, I felt that this could not be my old enemy and former trusted aide, for he would certainly not be resisting any wave of iniquity that was sweeping across the land. He would be right in there pitching for the loathsome beasts, I felt sure.
A thing that caused me difficulty was the man that I carried. His counterpart had been alive in Avalon at the time of the exiling, meaning that the time lag could be just about right.
I did not care to encounter the Ganelon I had known and be recognized by him. He knew nothing of Shadow. He would only know that I had worked some dark magic on him, as an alternative to killing him, and while he had survived that alternative it might have been the rougher of the two.
But the man in my arms needed a place of rest and shelter, so I trudged forward.
I wondered, though...
There did seem to be something about me that lent itself to recognition by this man. If there were some memories of a shadow of myself in this place that was like yet not like Avalon, what form did they take? How would they condition a reception of the actual me should I be discovered?
The sun was beginning to sink. A cool breeze began, hinting of a chilly night to come. My ward was snoring once more, so I decided to sprint most of the remaining distance. I did not like the feeling that this forest after dark might become a place crawling with unclean denizens of some damned Circle that I knew nothing about, but who seemed to be on the make when it came to this particular piece of real estate.
So I ran through lengthening shadows, dismissing rising notions of pursuit, ambush, surveillance, until I could do so no longer. They had achieved the strength of a premonition, and then I heard the noises at my back: a soft pat-pat-pat, as of footfalls.