“You have to let them go some time,” the warrior said.
Cheydar glanced over, seeing Suen looking up at the tree from where she lay with her cropped golden hair on the leaves, blending with them. He felt something twist in his stomach; concentrated on the conversation.
“I don’t need your comfort,” she told Dagon.
“But you do, and I think it would comfort you to know that David carries with him enough money for them both to live in comfort in Elmarch for a year or even more.” He looked at her with mild eyes. She sat upright."You?”
“I gave him the money.”
“You knew then,” she said, angry now.
“Yes.”
“You could have said something.”
“I could have, but I did not see their choice as foolish.” Suen just glared at him. He continued, “I think Sheda hoped you would follow, that you would abandon this meaningless quest.” Smoke wafted into Cheydar’s face as his fire caught; made his eyes water.
“It is not meaningless,” said Suen.
“What meaning then does it have?”
Cheydar left the fire to its own devices and joined them, squatting down on his heels. Suen reached into her pack and removed her husband’s book. She shook it at them as she spoke.
“My husband recorded here that there is a breach in the fence two miles in from the coast. Only a few miles North East of this there is a building in the forest. In that building are the Proctors.” Dagon looked thoughtful for a moment. “What makes you think the breach is still there?”
“Why should it not be?”
Dagon grimaced. “What would you intend should you reach this building?”
“I will wake the Proctors and lead them back through the breach.”
“Why should they go with you? Why should they even wake for you?”
“They will. I’m not interested in argument, Dagon. I did not ask you to join us. You said when you first joined us that you believed the Owner to be returning for an accounting and that his Proctors would once again walk the world, yet you show no signs of this belief. I am going there. Cheydar will follow me because I know he would not obey me if I ordered him not to. Eric should perhaps return…” She looked at Cheydar, then returned her attention to Dagon. “You do not have to come, yet you are, that’s your choice. Kindly stop trying to dissuade me from the choices I have made.” Dagon bowed his head, “I apologise. You are correct. I do not have the right to make other people’s choices for them, even should those choices kill.”
Suen turned her face from him. “Here is Eric.” Eric came back to the fire with four squirrels, skinned and gutted, hanging on a stick. He was grinning like a maniac. He had been enjoying himself. Cheydar thought it unlikely he would be able to send this son away. He took a pan out of his pack and tipped in a little water. They dined on squirrels broiled with mushrooms and sweet chestnuts. They ate walnuts while they waited for the squirrels to cook, as there were plenty on the ground, then they sat around the fire talking of anything but Proctors and the Owner. It was pointless moving on, as darkness was gathering the forest close about them. Dagon took first watch.
Waking to take his watch, Eric saw that Dagon had apparently not moved all night. So that is it, he thought, remembering footprints in frost. He wondered how any man could be possessed of such a stillness.
“You have not moved all your watch,” Eric said to him.
“That is true,” said Dagon. “The leaves create too much noise.”
“How can you be so still?”
“It comes from inside.”
Eric did not understand, but was not prepared to admit this. He saw that Dagon had his arm out of its sling.
“You can move your arm?”
“It is healing quickly. This is a good body.”
Eric watched him walking back to the embers of the camp-fire. He is deliberately mysterious, he thought, to make us think he is more than we reckon… or is he deliberately mysterious to cover that there is something strange about him? Eric blinked in the darkness. It was all too complicated. Morning brought a thick fog into the trees that coated everything with well-defined ice crystals and brought leaves tumbling down ungently. The fire was roaring up well with the extra wood Cheydar had thrown on it and he kept it within sight as he patrolled, his air gun charged and ready to come up against his shoulder. It would be too easy to get lost in this, and he definitely did not want to be lost now. The chuckling bark came again, to his left this time. Whatever it was it could be circling around to get at the others. He hurried back to the fire. When he got there he saw the other three were awake.
“What is it?” Eric asked.
“Hyeanadon,” Dagon supplied. He tossed his air gun to Eric then drew his sword. Eric looked at him with surprise. “Our darts will not stop it if it decides it is hungry enough to attack us.” He glanced at Suen who was staring at him white faced. “You take Eric’s gun.” He turned to Cheydar. “I know, I’m sorry, but I know about these creatures and I doubt you’ve encountered one.”
“Your other sword,” said Cheydar, holding out his hand. His own blade was a short stabbing blade used in combat with an armoured opponent. He would use that as well as the sword Dagon handed over. It was light. Just holding it gave Cheydar a surge of confidence. It was so very very sharp.
“Let’s move,” he said, taking up his pack. “We cannot stay here all day.” He led the way back onto the path, sliced a leaf in half as it fell in front of him. Confidence died as the two halves reached the ground and Eric fired one shot. The huge creature made a yipping growling sound, its teeth clashing over where the dart had struck it, then it disappeared into the fog. That sound was answered by chuckling barks from two different directions.
“They hunt in packs,” said Dagon.
“Really,” said Cheydar, studying the sword he held and wishing he was somewhere else. Eric loaded another dart. He looked no less scared than the rest of them. Of course Cheydar had heard of such creatures. It made him cringe to think of how he let his son go hunting squirrels.
“Remember, they are only animals,” said Dagon.
“That’s a comfort,” said Cheydar. How long had those teeth been? Two inches, three inches? And how high at the shoulder had the creature been? Higher than his own head at least.
“Shoot for the eyes, cut for the legs,” said Dagon.
“Yes, of course.”
The fog seemed to grow thicker as the morning progressed, and frost formed on loose clothing. Cheydar was thankful for Autumn leaves as the hyaenadons could not attack in silence. Any other time of the year and they would have been dead long since. One hyaenodon would make a noisy growling feint while another tried to sneak up on them. Every time it was the noise of the leaves that gave it away. The leaves also told them that the creatures were still with them all the time between attacks. Two attacks were driven off, steel darts smacking against rock-hard skulls. On the third attack the hyaenodon kept coming. Cheydar dropped his air gun and braced himself with the sword held two-handed before him. The hyaenodon came in a snarling charge, its shoulders and head thick with the blood of its dart wounds. Eric pumped darts into it and it was half blinded by the time it reached them. Dagon strode to meet it, stepped neatly to one side and cut across with full force, his whole body in the cut. A ton of hyaenodon went past him nose down in the leaves, its left forelimb clinging by a sliver of flesh and skin. Cheydar struck down with his blade and it carved meat from the creature’s face but did not penetrate bone. Its huge jaws clashed at him as it struggled to right itself. Dagon’s sword went in through its side, twisted, came out on a fountain of blood. Cheydar stepped around, hacked down on its neck. Three hacks it look to reach a spine he could not sever. The stink of the creature’s vomit and excrement thickened the air. Cheydar drew his short sword to drive between vertebrae, then turned as Dagon bounded past him. Another of the creatures was coming from the other side and only Eric faced it. Cheydar felt his stomach clench. Eric had perhaps one shot to fire. He was dead.