“By death” the masked man snarled. “As well might the weather be howling storm as this bright summer that is a lie, for all the game we’ve roused! I ought to have you flogged, Vafres!”
Vafres’s craggy face lost colour. When his master spoke of flogging he was seldom merely giving vent to idle talk. Nor was it any small punishment for a man to receive.
“I ha’ aroused yourself game when no other man could, sir,” he protested, with respect. “And will again, if ’m spared. This today ’uz the luck o’ the chase. ’Tis God’s will, belike.”
“God’s will!” Sigebert One-ear said contemptuously. “Be silent!”
They had fared far afield in their quest for game. Sigebert decided they were out of the Roman kingdom altogether, and into the forests of Lesser Britain. He knew not for certain, and cared not. He was who he was. He hunted where he would. Armorican peasants and villagers could be no different from other such vermin. Let them beware and be wary.
Behind the leathern mask, hazel eyes narrowed. An arm sleeved in beautiful russet leather soft as cotton lifted, and he pointed to westward.
“Your sight is sharp. There! A village among fields, is it not?”
“Aye sir.”
“We will gather the dogs and make for it. Who knows? There may be some amusement to be had.”
Sigebert’s hand had tightened unconsciously as he turned toward Vafres, and his horse made slight objection to the pressure at its mouth. Sigebert jerked viciously, with both hands. The animal grunted and backed in its attempt to escape the hurtful pull. Vafres shivered, and this time not on his own account. The long ride and lack of game had put his foul-mooded master in a still fouler disposition. Seeking amusement in a little peasantish village, and him in such a mood, could mean that not only the horse would feel his ire. Yet Vafres ventured no comment, but made efficient shift to collect the deerhounds.
They set out through the winding forest ways toward the village, with Sigebert cursing low branches as though they reached out for him apurpose.
Normally he was more urbane than at present, not that he was then more reassuring to be with. He merely inflicted terror in a soft voice. Now, however, his raw facial scars were sending him mad. Pain sent the arrogant young man’s reason aflying. The mask protected his cheek and ear from wind, as it would for some time yet ere they became insensitive enough to tolerate weather. Was his sweat that caused the agony now; it soaked into the mask’s padded lining and irritated the scars so that they itched fiercely. Naturally they could not be scratched and a perverse pride forbade the Frank’s taking the thing off to wipe his face.
The pain of his missing ear was worse. Hot skewers seemed to jab into his head through the hole and burn his brain.
“May those pirate scum be accursed and accursed,” Vafres heard his master mutter, as he savagely broke away a leafy branch.
Sunlight slanted down through dense leaves to scatter coins of brightness on the forest floor. They shifted liquidly across Sigebert’s cloak and the watered-silk hide of his magnificent horse as he rode. After him came Vafres on his grey nag, and the trotting hounds with their tongues out. All trod silently on the soft game trail flanked by haw and willow-herbs.
The grey-skirted woman gathering firewood was taken by surprise. Tall she was, big boned and gaunt, aged beyond her years. Hers were the eyes and lined face and gnarled hands of a work animal. She had added more sticks to her sizable bundle and was lifting it to her shoulders when Sigebert came upon her.
She looked around, up, and stared. Her dull eyes widened at sight of the tall black horse bestridden by the finely-clad man in the macabre mask. Black-masked, black-cloaked, black-vested man on a black horse. Black gloves holding the reins. She stared.
Sigebert looked at her contemplatively. She had no beauty and thus did not interest him. His first impulse was to ride her down. Then another thought struck him and, throwing back his head, he laughed wildly.
At that laugh without mirth the woman dropped her bundle and fled.
“Vafres!” Through the neatly-pared holes in his mask, Sigebert’s eyes now showed sparkling and merry. “I’ve raised quarry at last! The master teaches his servant how to ply his trade! Now I shall have sport!”
He laughed again and tugged off one glove to thrust two fingers into his mouth. Whistling up the hounds who came happily and hopefully, he bayed them on the peasant woman’s track.
Already she had run far down the winding forest path, racing desperately with her skirt about her hips. Blue-veined legs churned, greybrown with dirt. Doubtless she thought she’d set eyes on that monster Satan, spoke of by the priests.
By the time Sigebert’s pack was well started, she had emerged from the wood and fled across the cleared ground bordering her village. No need had she of a backward glance; her ears told her what pursued. The hounds of Hell!
Without hesitation she legged it across the fields, a pathetically ludicrous figure that took a wide ditch in a leap to land running on harshly knotted calves. Yonder lay the houses and the small stone church. All were stoutly built, as they had to be for fear of beasts and robbers. Her own house stood nearest. Her heart pounded and her feet pattered and she thought that surely she could reach it. She’d no time to cosset such weaknessess as the pounding of her heart, the rawness of her throat and the beginning burn in her calves. She shrieked her man’s name as she ran.
Behind her streamed dogs and riders, black mask on tall black horse. The man shouted and laughed maniacally; the dogs bayed and slavered, loping.
Outside the quarry’s hut, in the shade of its projecting thatch weighted at the corners of cord-wrapped stones, her man sat fitting a new handle to a reaping hook. He heard her scream, call his name. At first the dull fellow had not recognized the mortal fear in her voice, but took it for shrewishness. When she screamed to him again, and then again, and he heard those other sounds, he lifted his head, much irked. Then he simply gaped.
His wife, whom he oft berated for her slow movements, was running like the wind toward him. Behind her flowed a river of black and brindle hounds, amid a hellish clamour. And behind them galloped a horseman on a tall jet steed, riding as if he owned the world. His rich black cloak flapped about him and streamed like a hellish banner. This man the peasant had never seen afore. He did not have to know him or of him. He knew the kind.
His wife drew close enough for her man to see her bulging eyes, the gape of her mouth and straining cords of her throat as she sucked for air. He stood frozen, staring. She staggered and her arms windmilled and she recovered and came on. The hounds were thirty paces behind her and loping, running faster than she and closing the distance.
They came like the wind itself, and the wind came from Hell. Now the peasant could hear the ragged whistle of his wife’s breath. He calculated distance…
He moved at last.
Handle and reaping hook dropped, apart. He darted into the hut and slammed the door with all his strength, literally in her face. Her nails clawed splinters from the rough wood she’d helped him hew from a great tree. She was hurled back by the impact and her nose and mouth were bloody. Even her shriek emerged as a bubbling moaning cry.
Sigebert’s baying hounds loped and leaped and covered her from sight and the noise was hideous.
Cathula had been working in the fields when terror came riding across them. Like her father, the girl of not-quite fifteen stood frozen and appalled for a long time, staring at her fleeing mother and the chasers. When Cathula acted, it was in a very different fashion from her father. He had seen the choice: aid his wife and die with her; hold open the door for her and slam it-and be dragged out to die with her, or try to save himself. He had opted for pragmatism. The peasant was beyond emotion.
Scrambling out of the ditch whose sides she had been trimming with a hoe, Cathula ran fleetly toward the awful scene by the hut. The hoe came with her, clamped in a grimy hand become a vise.