The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [126]
Fortunately, the same millennia and the same men that had produced the treeless landscape had also created well-worn tracks to tell them where it was safe to walk—and where it wasn’t.
“You still reckon the woorm is following us?” Ehan said.
Stephen nodded. “It’s not following us exactly,” he said. “It didn’t follow us across the Brogh y Stradh uplands; it swam up the Then River to meet us.”
“Makes sense that it would prefer traveling in rivers, a thing that size.”
“That’s not the point, though,” Stephen said. “While we followed the Ef down to the Gray Warlock, it was actually getting ahead of us, as we discovered in Ever.”
“Yah,” Ehan said, his brow furrowing at the memory. Ever had been a village of the dead. The few survivors had told them of the woorm’s passage just a few days before.
“From there we could have gone anywhere. And even if it was determined to dog us using the rivers, it might have gone up the Warlock, down to the confluence at Wherthen. It might have gone to Eslen. But it didn’t. It went upstream on the Then to cut off our overland flight, and it very nearly got us.”
He shuddered at the memory of the monster’s head breaking the iced surface of the stream like a boat made of iron. The impression was enhanced by the pair of passengers, bundled in furs, who rode on its back. He’d been wondering what those two would do if the woorm ever dove below the surface when its gaze—its terrible gaze—had found him, and he’d known in his heart that it was the end.
But they’d turned away and nearly killed their horses riding that night. And they hadn’t seen it since.
“But we know it came through Ever on its way to the monastery,” Ehan said. “Maybe it was just going back the way it came, and we were unlucky enough to have chosen the same path.”
“I wish I could believe that, but I can’t,” Stephen said. “The coincidence would be far too great.”
“Then maybe it’s not coincidence,” Ehan pressed. “Maybe it’s all part of some larger design.”
“I wouldn’t put too much weight on that leg,” Henne interjected, peering intently at them both. “It’s got two fellows riding it, don’t it? If either of ’em knew the lay of the land and a thing about tracking, they could’ve reckoned which way we were headed. Saints, they could have stopped to question them poor folk near Whitraff, the ones we talked to. They’d remember us, since we were near deaf at the time, and I don’t think they’d hold out on a woormrider.
“Once they knew what road we were on, they could figure out where we’d have to cross the Then; there’re only a couple of fords and no bridges.”
“That’s possible,” Stephen acknowledged. “It didn’t meet us at the ferry on the White Warlock. If it’s following us now, it’s coming overland again.”
“Unless you’re right,” Henne said, “and it canns where we’re going. In that case, it would have gone on up the Welph, and it’ll be waiting for us two valleys over.”
“What a wonderful thought,” Ehan muttered.
Midafternoon they reached the snow line, and soon the wet, muddy trail froze as hard as stone.
At Henne’s suggestion, they’d found a tailor in Crothaem and bought four paiden, a sort of local quilted felt coat lined with sheepskin. The paiden cost them more than half of what remained of the funds the fratrex had sent with them, and to Stephen the price seemed exorbitant.
His mind was firmly changed now as they walked up into low-lying clouds and found them to be a freezing mist. The horses slipped too often for them to ride, and walking became more difficult both because the path steepened and because the air seemed somehow less substantial.
Stephen had read about the bad air at the tops of mountains. In the Mountains of the Hare, the highest peaks—those known as Sa’ Ceth agSa’Nem—the atmosphere was said to be completely unbreathable. Up to now, he had doubted the veracity of those accounts, but this part of the Bairghs wasn’t very high as mountains went, yet he already was becoming a believer.
It was growing dark when they chanced