Fifteen minutes later, they approached the fire shoulder to shoulder, laden with squirrels, rabbits, and partridge.
The couple around the fire were chatting with each other, scarcely pausing for breath. They looked up, surprised; then the girl recoiled, face twisting in disugust. "Faugh! The poor beasts!"
"Aye." The young man frowned. "Wherefore didst thou slay them!"
They spoke so rapidly that the Gallowglasses could scarcely understand them.
"Why… why…" Geoffrey, his gift spurned, was at a loss.
"We have brought thee food," Magnus explained. "All thy folk do seem a-hungered."
The lad and lass stared at them in amazement. Then, abruptly, they burst into laughter—too loud, too hard.
"Why… wherefore…" Gregory looked around, perplexed.
"How ill-bred art thou!" Cordelia stormed at the couple. She threw her bundle of game down by the fire and set her hands on her hips. "To so laugh at those who seek to aid thee!"
But other young folk were gathering around now, and joining in the laughter.
"Be not offended, I prithee." A young man, perhaps a little less hard-faced than the others, choked back his laughter and smiled at them. "And your gift is welcome, for we must eat now and again, whether we wish to or no."
"Not wish to?" Geoffrey asked. "How is this? Wherefore wouldst thou not wish to eat?"
"Why, for that we have these." A girl who had once had a shapely figure held out a double handful of white pebbles. "Eat of one, and thou'It be no more a-hungered."
Geoffrey shied away, and Cordelia eyed the pebbles askance. "How now! Is not mistletoe a poison?"
"They are not mistletoe," another lad assured her, "but magic stones. What Greta offers thee are near to being the apples of Idun!"
"What, they that conferred eternal youth?" Magnus took up a pebble and inspected it narrowly. It had an unhealthy look somehow, a translucence that hinted at corruption just under the surface.
"Well, mayhap Tannin doth overspeak his case," the first youth allowed, "though when thou hast swallowed these stones, they fill thee with so great a sense of well-being that thou dost indeed feel as though thou wouldst ever be young."
"And end thine hunger," Greta asserted. "Thou wilt not wish to eat, and will be bursting with vigor."
"Here! Try!" Tarmin's hand shot out toward Magnus's mouth, a white pebble pinched between thumb and forefinger.
He almost punched Magnus in the nose, but Magnus recoiled just in time. "How now! I've no wish to eat of it!"
"Nor I," Geoffrey said, scowling about, "if it will waste me as much as it hath thy selves."
"Waste!" the first young man cried, offended. "Why, I am the picture of health!"
"He is!" another girl asserted. "Alonzo is the very portrait of robust young manhood!"
"Busted, mayhap," Geoffrey allowed. "I thank thee, but I'll not eat."
"Nay, thou wilt," Alonzo insisted. "What! Wilt thou thrust our gifts back in our faces?"
"We do not wish to offend," Magnus soothed, "but we will not eat."
"Why, how rude art thou!" Greta said, offended. "When we do but wish to share with thee. We would not be alone."
"Dost thou say that we do wrong to eat of them?" Tarmin demanded, glowering.
"Now that thou hast said it," Geoffrey replied, "aye."
"Then thou must needs partake of them," Alonzo stated. "We will not be wrong! Everybody must get stoned! Kindred! Catch and hold!"
And the circle closed in with a shout.
But a spirit screamed behind them, a huge black form towering out of the night above them, steel teeth flashing in the firelight, steel hooves flailing down.
The young folk screamed, terrified, and cowered before the night-demon—and the Gallowglasses ran through the gap toward Fess.
"Around me, and run!" the horse told them, and they shot past him, off into the night.
Alonzo shouted, seeing his prey escape, and leaped after them. Fess slammed his hooves down—he didn't have enough cause to really attack, but he could bar the way. Alonzo jarred into his steel side and reeled back, arms flailing, into Greta's embrace. The other young people raised a huge shout and, seeing that the demon was only a horse, leaped past it after the fleeing Gallowglasses.
"Where… to?" Gregory panted. Night had fallen, and he could not see.
"Over here, brother!" Geoffrey called. "There is a path!" He pounded away, taking the lead, his night-sight better than the others'.
"Fly," Cordelia called to her little brother, "or thou'lt be caught for weariness!"
"They will not." Magnus looked back over his shoulder. "Whence gained they such a store of strength, with so little meat upon them?"
"Do not ask, brother! Run!"
The leaders had yanked sticks out of the fire, pursuing them by torchlight. Magnus glanced back at the bobbing lights. "They come… closer," he panted. "Nay, find some way… to lose them! Or they'll… outrun us yet!"
"Into the wood!" Geoffrey called, and swerved in among the trees.
Behind them, a joyful shout split the air.
"They cheer with reason," Magnus cried. "We must go slowly here!"
"So must they," Geoffrey called back, "for I've spied a bog!"
The trees became more widely spaced, and between them some sort of sticky, mudlike substance roiled. Here and there, it puffed up into a bubble, sometimes of amazing dimensions, which finally popped and subsided into a sticky mess that closed off its own crater.
"The trees are all of one kind." Cordelia looked up about her. "What sort are they?"
"Gum, by the look of them," Magnus answered, "though 'tis too dark to see clearly."
Cordelia turned back to the business at hand. "How shall we cross?"
"There are stepping stones!" Geoffrey called. "Step where I step!"
They hopped across the bog, the boys levitating, ready to dash to catch their sister on the instant. But she sprang from rock to rock, more sure-footed than any of them.
Behind them, the mob came up against the sticky substance and jarred to a halt, one step from the mire.
"They stop," Cordelia cried. "They'll have none of this bog!"
"Small wonder." Magnus wrinkled his nose at the sickly sweet smell that rose from the bursting bubbles. "What manner of mud is this, that is pink?"
"Mayhap 'tis not its true color," Geoffrey called back. "We see by starlight, look you."
"I look," Magnus answered, "and I hear, and wish I did not."
The air about them was filled with soft rock music, perhaps softer than ever. Certainly the melodic line was simpler, varying only by a few notes, repeating over and over.
"I find it pleasant," Gregory said, smiling.
"Aye," Cordelia puffed, "but I'll warrant thou dost find the scent of this bog to thy liking, also."
"Why, so I do. How couldst thou know?"
"Because thou alone among us art still young enough to be truly a child, brother, and children do ever like sweetness."
"What, will I one day dislike it?" Gregory asked in surprise.
"Belike," Magnus admitted. "I find I have come to have a liking for sharper flavors."
"Then why dost thou not like the music we have heard?"
"I do find some of it suiting my taste," Magnus admitted.
"Safe ground!" Geoffrey cried, with one last bound. He climbed up the bank several paces and sank down to rest. "That was trying. Rest, my sibs, but not o'erlong."
"Aye." Cordelia joined him. "Those lean ones may yet find their way around this bog."
"But what of Fess?"
Geoffrey looked up at a slight sound. "He comes—or trouble doth."
"I am not trouble, Geoffrey." The great black horse shouldered out of the night. "As you guessed, however, your pursuers are coming around the bog; there is a trail, and they know their way."
" Tis their country." Magnus pushed himself to his feet with a groan. "Come, my sibs! The chase is on!"