The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [192]
The hounds wouldn’t be situated, though; the hair bristled on the backs of their necks, and they growled constantly at the congealing darkness. Stephen’s own hackles were up. His hearing had improved over the last few days, and he heard at least some of what the beasts heard.
And he didn’t like it.
There were things coming on two feet, certain in the darkness.
And some were singing.
DEATH TOLD Aspar where to go. Dead trees in the forest, dead grass and gorse and heather on the heath, dead fish in the rivers and streams it preferred.
Following death, he followed the woorm, and with each day its trail grew plainer, as if its poisonous nature was waxing as it went.
The Welph River was clogged with carcasses, its backwaters become abattoirs. Spring buds drooled noisome pus, and the only things growing with a semblance of health were the fresh heads of all-too-familiar black thorns.
Strangely, Aspar felt stronger every day. If the poison of the woorm was multiplying in power, so was the efficacy of the witch’s cure. Ogre, too, seemed more filled with energy than he had been in years, as if he were a colt again. And each setting sun brought them closer to the beast—and Fend.
Beyond the Welph, Aspar no longer knew the names of places, and the mountains rose about him. The woorm preferred valleys, but on occasion it crossed low passes. Once it followed a stream beneath a mountain, and Aspar spent a day in the dark tracking it by torchlight. The second time it did that, he didn’t follow it far, because the tunnel filled with water. Instead, cursing, he reentered the light and worked his way up the mountainside until he found a ridge that gave him a good view of the next valley. He promised the Raver a sacrifice if the thing didn’t escape.
Straining his eyes in the dusk, he finally saw its head cutting waves in a river two leagues away and began finding his way down.
After that it was simple, and he was riding so close on its trail that he found animals and birds that were still dying.
Of course, another big mountain loomed at the end of the dale, and that could present problems if the monster found a way under it, too. He planned to catch it before the mountain, though.
He hadn’t by the next morning, but he knew he was close. He knew it by the smell. He checked the arrow then as he did every morning, doused the remaining embers of his fire, and returned to the chase.
The valley gained altitude, filling with spruce, hemlock, and burr-wood. He rode on the southern side of it, at the base of a cliff of tired yellow rock that rose some twenty yards, above which he could make out what looked to be a trail winding through rocky, shrubby ground. He was watching the long line of the rock face, considering that if he could find a way up there, he might gain a higher vantage. He didn’t see much hope of that, though. He had a feel for the way land lay, and it didn’t look as if the cliff was going to offer a slope any time soon.
Above the cliff more mountains rose, sometimes visible, sometimes hidden by the angle.
He thought he heard something and stopped to listen. It came again, clearer: a human voice shouting.
A moment later he located its source. There was a line of perhaps sixty horsemen on the upper path; maybe they had just joined it from a trail he couldn’t see. The cliff was about thirty kingsyards high here, and they were a bit upslope from the precipice. The shouting man was pointing down toward him.
“Good eyes,” Aspar murmured sourly.
The sun was behind them, so he couldn’t make out their faces, but the leader looked to be in some sort of Churchish garb, which put Aspar on guard immediately. He noted that three of them had bows drawn and ready.
“Hail, down there,” the leader shouted. Aspar was startled at how familiar his voice was, though he couldn’t place it right away.
“Hail, up on the ridge,” he responded loudly.
“I’d heard you were dead, Aspar White,” the man returned.