Black wizards - Douglas Niles [80]
"I don't understand," said Tristan. "Where's Doncastle?"
"Right there," grinned the bandit, pointing to the center of the valley. Tristan saw an expanse of green treetops, covering the entire valley floor except for the course of a bright and winding riverway that meandered through the forest.
O'Roarke had claimed that his town was large – and that it lay in the heart of this deep, forested valley. Yet there was no sign of anything but energetic nature.
"In fact, many of our houses are in the treetops," boasted the bandit chief.
"I've never heard of dwellings in the trees before. Isn't it a little inconvenient?" asked the prince.
"Perhaps inconvenient when staggering home from a night at the tavern, yes, but we find it very convenient when the troops of the king come to attack."
"You have stood against the army of the High King?" asked Pontswain, surprised.
"Certainly! His legions swarmed from the woods, but we were ready. The battle was a slaughter – for the king's troops! He has never bothered us again!"
Something about the bandit's bravado sounded empty, and the prince doubted he was telling the whole truth – at least, the unexaggerated truth. He wondered if the bandits had fought more than a small detachment.
"Legions, eh?" said Pontswain, echoing Tristan's doubts.
Hugh scowled, but then shrugged. He didn't say anything else, and Tristan didn't want to risk antagonizing their host any further. Instead, he surveyed the countryside as they neared the outskirts of Doncastle.
They rode along an open path that wound through a green-domed forest of towering oaks. All of the undergrowth between the trees had been cleared, creating a woods of quiet beauty and easy travel. Only when he looked closely did the prince see that a hundred yards off the path on either side the underbrush not only had not been removed, but it had been encouraged to grow into a high tangle of impenetrable branches. Anyone approaching the city would be nearly compelled to do so through the wide corridor.
"The Swanmay River," said the bandit, pointing to the placid waterway as they rode along its bank for a short distance. Expanding circles of ripples marked the surface where trout rose to strike at careless flies. The path twisted away from the river, back into the forest. "And this is Druid's Gate."
Tristan suddenly noticed that there were dwellings among the trees here. He saw a plank wall and several vine-covered roofs. Smoke emerged from several stumps, and he realized that these were cleverly disguised chimneys. Now he saw numerous round houses, roofed over with grassy sod. He also saw buildings of wood, built against the trunks of the oaks. So cleverly were they shaped that, at a distance, they looked like part of the tree itself.
Before he knew it they were in the town, yet the place still felt like a wilderness. Tristan saw people moving about on the ground, dressed in leather or simple woolen garments. Some of them looked at the travelers, nodding to Hugh without speaking. He saw few women and children, though somewhere he heard a baby crying. It felt as though he had entered any normal, if slightly impoverished, community of the Ffolk.
When he looked up he saw large shapes in the trees and long limbs extending throughout the canopy. He realized that these were bridges and that they connected many of the trees to each other.
Hugh led them to a clump of white aspens. The silvery leaves shimmered in a light breeze, and the trunks grew so close together that a small man would have had difficulty moving through the wood.
"The stables," announced Hugh, turning to the prince.
Several of the aspen trunks suddenly moved to the side, startling them. They saw that the trunks were actually lashed together to form a gate, though they looked like living, rooted trees. Beyond, the companions could see into the cleverly disguised corral. A man, dressed as the other bandits in brown and green leather, held the gate while Hugh's horse and the six steeds of the companions were herded inside.
"We must remain ever alert,"