10
As soon as I left the hall I sent a servant running with a message that a swift horse was to be made ready for me. Another fetched my sword and cloak, and very soon, without attracting much notice, I was able to slip quietly through the thronged corridors and out to the courtyard.
The horse was there, ready. I thought I recognized it, then saw from its housings that it was Ralf's big chestnut. Ralf himself waited at its head, his face strained and anxious. Beyond the high walls of the courtyard the town hummed like a tumbled skep of bees, and lights were everywhere.
“What's this?” I asked him. “Didn't they get my message right? I go alone.”
“So they said. The horse is for you. He's faster than your own, and sure on his feet, and he knows the forest tracks. And if you do meet trouble — ” He left the sentence unfinished, but I understood him. The horse was trained to battle, and would fight for me like an extra arm.
“Thank you,” I took the reins from him, and mounted. “They're expecting me at the gate?”
“Yes. Merlin” — he still kept a hand on the reins — “let me come with you. You shouldn't ride alone. You've a bad enemy there who'll stop at nothing.”
“I know that. You'll serve me better by staying here and seeing that no one rides after me. Are the gates shut?”
“Yes, I saw to it. No rider but you leaves this place now until Arthur and the others ride out. But they tell me that there were two men slipped out before the company left the hall.”
I frowned. “Lot's?”
“No one seems clear on that. They said they were messengers taking the news of the King's death south.”
“No messenger was sent,” I said curtly. I had ordered this myself. The news of the High King's death, with the fear and uncertainty it would engender, must not be carried beyond the walls until there could go with it news of a new King and a new crowning.
Ralf nodded. “I know. These two got through just before the order came. It could just be someone hoping for a purse — one of the chamberlains, perhaps, sending word south as soon as it happened. But it could just as soon be Lot's men, you know it could. What could he be planning? To break Macsen's sword, as he broke Uther's?”
“You think he could?”
“N-no. But if he can do nothing, then why are you riding up there now? Why not wait and ride up with the prince?”
“Because it's true that Lot will stop at nothing now to destroy Arthur's claim. He's worse than ambitious now, he's frightened. He'll do anything to discredit me, and shake men's faith in the sword as God's gift. So I must go. God does not defend himself. Why are we here, if not to fight for him?”
“You mean — ? I see. They could desecrate the shrine, or destroy the altar...If they could even prevent your being there to receive the King...And they may kill the servant you left to tend the shrine. Is that it?”
“Yes.”
He took the chestnut by the bit, so roughly that it jibbed, snorting. “Then do you think that Lot would hesitate to murder you?”
“No. But I don't think he'll succeed. Now let me go, Ralf. I shall be safe enough.”
“Ah.” There was relief in his voice. “You mean there are no more deaths in the stars tonight?”
“There is death for someone. It's not for me, but I'll take no one with me, to put more at risk. Which is why you are not coming, Ralf.”
“Oh, God, if that's all — ”
I laid the reins on the chestnut's neck and it gathered itself, sidling. “We had this fight once before, Ralf, and I gave way. But not tonight. I can't force you to obey me; you are not mine now. But you are Arthur's, and your duty is to stay with him and bring him safely to the chapel. Now let me go. Which gate?”
There was a stretched pause, then he stepped back. “The south. God go with you, my dear lord.”
He turned his head and called an order to the guard. The courtyard gate swung open, and crashed shut again behind my galloping horse.
There was half a moon, shadow-edged, thin silver. It lit the familiar track along the valley. The willows along the river's edge stood humped above blue shadows. The river ran fast, full with rain. The sky sparkled with stars, and brighter than any of them burned the Bear. Then moon, stars and river were blotted from sight as the chestnut, feeling my heels, stretched his great stride and carried me at his sure gallop into the blackness of the Wild Forest.
For the first part of the way the track went straight and smooth, and here and there through breaks in the leafage the pale moon sifted down, throwing a faint grey light to the forest floor. Roots, ribbing the pathway, rapped under the horse's hoofs. I lay low on his neck to avoid the sweeping branches. Presently the track began to climb, gently at first, then steep and twisting as the forest ran up into the foothills. Here and there the way bent sharply to avoid crags which thrust up among the crowded trees. Somewhere deep down on the left was the noise of a mountain stream, fed like the river with the autumn rains. Save for the horse's thudding gallop there was no sound. The trees hung still. No breeze could penetrate so far into the thick darkness. Nothing else stirred. If deer, or wolf, or fox were abroad that night, I never saw them.
The way grew steeper. The chestnut, sure-footed, breasted the rough track with heaving ribs and stride at last slackening to a heavy canter. Not far now. A gap in the boughs above let starlight through, and I could see ahead where a twist of the path took it round like a tunnel into yet thicker blackness. An owl cried, away to the left. From the right, another answered. The sounds burst in my brain like a war cry as the chestnut took the bend, and I hauled at his mouth, throwing my whole weight back on the rein. A better horseman could have stopped him in time. But not I, and I had left it just too late.
He pulled to a plunging, trampling stop, but travelling as he was his hoofs ploughed up the muddy track, and he hurtled half-sideways towards the tree which lay fallen full across the way. A pine, dry and long-dead, with its branches thrusting out pointed and rigid as the spikes of a cavalry trap. Too high and too dense to jump, even had it lain in the open moonlight and not just at the darkest bend in the track. The place was well chosen. To one side of the track there was a steep and rocky drop forty feet to the rush of the stream; to the other a thicket of thorn and holly, too dense for a horseman to thrust through. There was no space even to swerve. Had we gone round the corner at a gallop, the horse would have been speared on the boughs, and I myself flung headlong against their crippling spikes.
If the enemy lay hidden, expecting me to gallop hard onto the spikes, there might be a few seconds in which we could get back from the ambush and off the track into deep forest. I turned the chestnut sharply and lashed the reins down. He came round fast, rearing, scoring his side along the wall of thorns and driving the sharp end of some branch deep into my thigh. Then suddenly, as if spurred, he snorted and hurled himself forward. Under us the path broke open with a crashing of boughs. A black pit gaped. The horse lurched, pitched half down, then went over in a thrashing of hoofs. I was flung clear over his shoulder into the space between the pit and the fallen tree. I lay for a moment half-stunned, while the horse, with a heave and a scramble, floundered out of the shallow pit and stood trembling, while two men, daggers in hand, broke out of the forest and came running.
I had been flung into the deepest of the dark shadow, and I suppose I was lying so still that for the moment I was invisible. The noise the stream made drowned most other sounds, and they may have thought I had been flung straight down into the gully. One of them ran to the edge, peering downwards, while the other pushed past the horse and came warily forward to the edge of the pit.