Prophet of Moonshae - Douglas Niles [131]
Suddenly Hanrald paused and held up his hand. As if sensing his purpose, the moorhounds stopped panting so that they, too, could listen.
"Chopping-that's the sound of someone chopping wood!" declared the knight, delighted with the discovery. "That means there's people up there-people with food and drink and perhaps a horse that could get me back to Blackstone!" He started forward at a lumbering trot.
But as he came to the high bluff that overlooked the activity, he realized that he was wrong. He recognized the place immediately as the Blackstone Moonwell, and for the first time in days, he knew where he was. He remembered all the details of the miracle Alicia had described and knew that Gwyeth had done his work well.
Hanrald saw a man tied to a great stake driven into the earth. The brush and tree limbs stacked about his feet left no doubt as to his sentence.
Beside him, Warlock growled, his hackles raised, and suddenly Hanrald's task gleamed in front of the knight like a holy beacon: The hounds had brought him here so that he could stop this desecration.
Ignoring caution, Hanrald started to pick his way down the steep slope leading toward the pond. He saw a great stack of cedar trunks and the stumps where they had grown only hours before.
Alicia! In his mind, he pictured her, and he knew that she had performed a miracle here. Hanrald vowed his life to the preservation of that miracle, and he would fight in the name of his princess.
The knight saw the pilgrims who had been driven from the well. They squatted here, high on the rocky slope, and studied Hanrald with mute suspicion. Soon the clanking noise of his passage-he still wore his plate mail, though he had discarded his helmet-attracted the attention of the men in the valley. Some of them gathered in a semicircle to greet him as he reached the bottom of the bluff, though they regarded him suspiciously, with upraised axes. A circle of hounds gathered around the knight, growling and holding the men-at-arms away.
A helmeted warrior, clad in armor similar to Hanrald's, approached. Hanrald recognized his brother Gwyeth.
"What are you doing here?" demanded the latter as his men opened their ring to their leader. Gwyeth stopped twenty feet from Hanrald and scowled through his opened visor, planting his hands firmly on his hips.
"I come to send you away," Hanrald retorted, "and to let nature take the course that she will."
Gwyeth laughed sharply. "You would disobey our father?"
"Only because he-and you-show treason to our king!"
The older man glowered even more darkly. The men-at-arms looked among themselves-treason to the High Crown was not something lightly contemplated or loosely charged.
"It's fit that we find you in the company of curs. You're a lying dog and a disgrace to the family!" snarled Gwyeth, his hands on the hilt of his broadsword.
"A family I would as soon be rid of," retorted Hanrald, his voice calm but his own hands ready to loose his weapon. "For it has lost all sense of honor in its undying quest for gold!"
Warlock growled and stepped before the knight, but Hanrald called him back. "This battle is mine, friend."
Gwyeth, however, stared at the dog. "That's Warlock!" he exclaimed. "The dog who fled the manor on the night of Currag's death! And these others-all the hounds of Blackstone!"
"Aye, Brother, and they are here because of the offense you give to the earth!"
"Enough!" Gwyeth's rage took hold of him, and his sword burst from its scabbard to gleam in his hands. "Steel can silence your treasonous tongue."
Hanrald barely had time to draw his own weapon and meet his brother's assault with a clash of sharp steel. The two knights bashed at each other