“There is that.” Mama pressed his arm close, smiling.
Then they heard the hound.
It was a strange cry, more howl than bay, and it sent chills down their spines.
“Hurry!” Papa clasped her arm more tightly and started ahead.
But Mama pulled back. “No! We must bide instead!”
Papa reined in impatience and exasperation and tried to speak reasonably—but before he could, he heard the sound of hooves approaching with the baying. “You’re right—we can’t outrun horses. We hide!”
Mama found a small thicket and pushed her way through the underbrush. Papa came after her, walking backward and doing what he could to erase the signs of their passage. Then he lifted his staff to guard position, with the sick feeling that comes with knowing the battle is lost before it has begun— but behind him, Mama drew her wand from beneath her robes.
The howl-baying passed the junction with the main road, though, and kept on going. The hooves thundered up, mixed with the shouting of men’s voices, then faded away.
Papa let out a long shaky breath as he dropped the butt of his staff. “They’re chasing someone else, poor soul!”
“No,” Mama snapped, “they are chasing us—don’t ask me how I know! It was only this turnoff that deceived them, but their hound will realize he has lost the scent all too soon! Quickly, husband! There is safety at the end of this road, if we can only come there soon enough!” She pushed her way out of the thicket and hurried down the lane.
Papa caught up with her. “What sort of safety?”
“I do not know, but I have never had presentiments so strong as this before! Walk as quickly as you can, and we may come safely through it!”
But twenty minutes later they heard the howling behind them again.
“Quickly, walk backward as much in our own footprints as you can!” Papa turned and retraced his steps.
“Are you mad?” But Mama caught up with him anyway. “You are going toward danger!”
“Only ten minutes or so! I have seen another hiding place! Come!”
A few minutes back on the trail, they came to a low-hanging branch. Papa made a stirrup with his hands. “Up with you!”
Mama knew better than to protest. She stepped in Papa’s hands and caught the branch, then scrambled up as he lifted her foot higher. Lying full-length on the limb, she reached down for his hand. He leaped up with her help and caught the wood; she scrambled back to make room for him to lie full-length, surrounded by leaves.
They were barely in time. The howling swelled immensely, and the hound came charging by below, following their scent. It was a huge misshapen thing, with a face like a mastiff’s behind the upper muzzle of a bloodhound, and legs as bandy as a bulldog’s but as long as a Great Dane’s. Its massive body was easily the size of a small pony, and its eyes burned with blood lust. It went past below, belling and baying and howling as though it were three beasts in one. Behind it came half a dozen soldiers, their eyes afire with the excitement of the hunt, their faces lit with gleeful anticipation. Mama looked at them and shuddered.
But the last was several lengths behind his fellows, for he was much fatter, and wheezed as he urged his horse onward. As he passed under the limb, Papa dropped to land behind him and struck with the hilt of his knife. The man slumped, eyes rolling up, and Papa shoved him aside. He fell, rolling to the side of the trail, and Papa caught the reins. The horse whinnied in fright, but Papa spoke to it in soothing tones, turned it around and brought it back, then off the side of the trail.
Ahead, the hound’s belling turned into burbles of confusion. The horsemen cursed, and there was a sound of beating. The hound howled in anger, then yelped in pain, finally coming back toward them, bay-howling again.
Papa turned the horse into the brush beside the road, behind a screen of leaves, then leaped down and ran around to hold the horse’s head and stroke its nose, murmuring soothing nonsense to keep it from whinnying.
The hound came charging by, following their back trail, baying as though it were new. The horsemen rode by, cursing, and Papa and Mama caught a single sentence: “Cursed magicians laid us a false trail!” Then they were gone again, not even noticing their fallen comrade under the roadside leaves, and too quickly for the horse to even think of calling to its fellows.
Papa remounted, rode out onto the trail and back to the low-hanging limb. “Quickly, Jimena! Before they realize their error!”
Mama leaped from her perch and ran to him, grasped his arm and swung up to ride in front of him. Papa turned the horse and kicked its sides gently. It sprang into motion again, galloping away down the lane.
Far behind them the belling grew fainter—for a few minutes. Then it turned into confusion again, mixed with angry shouting for several minutes, before the hound yelped as the men drove it back into the lane, and its voice began to grow louder again.
“What kind of hound is this, who can follow our scent even on horseback?” Papa asked.
“One who senses magic and those who work it,” Mama told him, “and I hate to think where it came from!”
“I used magic as we were laying the false trail!” Papa exclaimed in surprise.
“So did I! Ride as quickly as we can, husband, and pray they go more slowly!”
Then suddenly the trail opened out into fields. In the distance the amber and green of crops surrounded the low beige walls of a convent or monastery, golden in the late afternoon sun.
“There is the safety I sensed!” Jimena cried. “Ride, husband, for our lives!”
But the poor horse was carrying double, and no matter how Papa urged it on, it couldn’t go as fast as the steeds chasing them. Behind them the howling and hoofbeats grew louder.
“Hist!” Sir Orizhan stopped, holding up a hand, and frowned, looking back over the road they had traveled.
They were all silent, listening. Then Dolan’s eyes widened, and he nodded vigorously, beginning to tremble.
“He hears it, too, whatever it is,” Matt said.
“So do I.” Buckeye grinned. “It is a kind of hound that sorcerers breed, half spirit and half dog.”
Matt shuddered. “What’s it for?”
“Tracking magicians!” Buckeye crowed.
“I think we’d better start walking faster.” Matt turned eyes front and made long strides.
Sir Orizhan matched him. “We might even consider running.”
“Run for a minute, walk for a minute,” Matt agreed. “Can you keep up, Buckeye?”
“Keep up, forsooth!” the bauchan snorted. “I can surpass you in this as in all things! Hold tightly, Dolan!” He sprang ahead of the companions.
Matt loped after him, not hurrying.
“Dare we let him escape our sight?” Sir Orizhan asked beside him.
“We dare,” Matt answered. “The question is, does Dolan? And I think the answer to that is, he’ll get to safety first.”
“What safety?” Sergeant Brock panted.
“The convent,” Matt explained. “We’re assuming it has a guest house—and if these hunters are anything like the usual run of evil spirits, they won’t be able to enter consecrated ground.”
“True enough,” Sir Orizhan said, with some relief.
But Sergeant Brock panted, “What if… the hunters … are men?”
“Then only the hound will be stuck outside the wall,” Matt said grimly, “and we may have to do a bit of fighting ourselves.”
Sergeant Brock grinned and loosened his short sword in its sheath.
” ‘May,’ I said,” Matt cautioned. “I didn’t make any promises.”
“You deal with … evil magic,” Brock panted. “We shall deal… with evil… men. Sir Knight?”