The Hollow Hills - Mary Stewart [193]
A bush checked me, tore at me, let me through. A bough whipped me across the throat. A net of brambles ripped what was left of my clothing to ribbons. Then my hurtling body hit a boulder, checked, lay breathless and half-stunned against it for the two long moments it took to let me hear the second murderer coming after me. Then with no warning but a sudden gentle shift of earth the boulder went from under me and I fell down the last sheer drop straight to the slab of rock over which the icy water slid, racing, towards the edge of a deep pool.
If I had fallen into the pool itself I might not have been hurt. If I had struck one of the great boulders where the water dashed and wrangled, I would probably have been killed. But I fell into a shallow, a long flat stretch of rock across which the water slid no more than a span deep, before plunging on and down into the next of the forest pools. I landed on my side, half-stunned and winded. The icy rush filled my mouth, nose, eyes, weighing down my heavy clothes, dragging at my bruised limbs. I was sliding with it along the greasy rock. My hands clawed for a hold, slipped, missed, scraped with bending nails.
Beside me with a thud and splash that shook the very rock, the second murderer landed, slipped, regained his foothold in the rushing water, and for the second time swung the sword high. It caught the moonlight. There were stars behind it. A sword lying clear across the night sky, in a blaze of stars. I took my hands from the rock, and the stream rolled me over to face the sword. The water blinded me. The noise of the cascade shook my bones apart. There was a flash like a shooting star, and the sword came down.
***
It was like a dream that repeated itself. Once before I had sat near a fire in the forest, with the small dark hill men waiting round me in a half circle, their eyes gleaming at the edge of the firelight like the eyes of forest creatures.
But this fire they had lit themselves. In front of it my torn clothes steamed, drying. Myself they had wrapped in their own cloaks; sheepskins, smelling too reminiscently of their first owners, but warm and dry. My bruises ached, and here and there a sharper pain told me where some stroke, unfelt in the scrimmage, had gone home. But my bones were whole.
I had not been unconscious long. Beyond the circle of firelight lay the two dead men, and near them a sharpened stake and a heavy club from which the blood had not yet been wiped. One of the men was still cleaning his long knife in the ground.
Mab brought me a bowl of hot wine, with something pungent overlying the taste of the grapes. I drank, sneezed, and pushed myself up straight.
"Did you find their horses?"
He nodded. "Over yonder. Your own is lame."
"Yes. Tend him for me, will you? When I get up to the shrine I'll send the servant down this way. He can lead the lame one home. Bring me one of the others now, and get me my clothes."
"They're still wet. It's barely ten minutes since we got you out of the pool."
"No matter," I said, "I must go. Mab, above here on the track there's a fallen tree, and a pit beside it. Will you ask your people to clear the path before morning?"
"They are there already. Listen."
I heard it then, beyond the rush of the stream and the crackling of the fire. Axe and mattock thudding, above us in the forest. Mab met my eyes. "Will the new King ride this way, then?"
"He may." I smiled. "How soon did you hear?"
"One of our people came from the town to tell us." He showed a gap of broken teeth. "Not by the gates you locked, master...But we knew before that. Did you not see the shooting star? It went across the heavens from end to end, crested like a dragon and riding a trail of smoke. So we knew you would come. But we were up beyond the Wolves' Road when the firedrake ran, and we were almost too late. I am sorry."
"You came in time,"