My head was cleared by the cold night air, which gave my consciousness a second wind, so to speak, though my body felt mildly anesthetized about me.
“Couldn’t Lance lead them?” I asked.
“I’d say so. He’s a good man. But there is another reason. I think that goat-thing, whatever it was, on the altar, is a bit afraid of me. I had gone in there and it had told me I’d never make it back out again, but I did. I lived through the sickness that followed after. It knows it’s me that has been fighting it all along. We won that great bloody engagement on the night Uther died, and I met the thing again in a different form and it knew me. Maybe this is a part of what is holding it back now.”
“What form?”
“A thing with a manlike shape, but with goat horns and red eyes. It was mounted on a piebald stallion. We fought for a time, but the tide of the battle swept us apart. Which was a good thing, too, for it was winning. It spoke again, as we swaggered swords, and I knew that head-filling voice. It called me a fool and told me I could never hope to win. But when morning came, the field was ours and we drove them back to the Circle, slaying them as they fled. The rider of the piebald escaped. There have been other sallyings forth since then, but none such as that night’s. If I were to leave this land, another such army—one that is readying even now—would come forth. That thing would somehow know of my departure—just as it knew that Lance was bringing me another report on the disposition of troops within the Circle, sending those Wardens to destroy him as he returned. It knows of you by now, and surely it must wonder over this development. It must wonder who you are, for all your strength. I will stay here and fight it till I fall. I must. Do not ask me why. I only hope that before that day comes, I at least learn how this thing came to pass—why that Circle is out there.”
Then there came a fluttering near to my head. I ducked quickly to avoid whatever it was. It was not necessary, though. It was only a bird. A white bird. It landed on my left shoulder and stood there, making small noises. I held up my wrist and it hopped over onto it There was a note tied to its leg. I unfastened it, read it, crumpled it in my hand. Then I studied invisible things distant.
“What is the matter, Sir Corey?” cried Ganelon.
The note, which I had sent on ahead to my destination, written in my own hand, transmitted by a bird of my desire, could only reach the place that had to be my next stop. This was not precisely the place that I had in mind. However, I could read my own omens.
“What is it?” he asked. “What is it that you hold? A message?”
I nodded. I handed it to him. I could not very well throw it away, since he had seen me take it. It read, “I am coming,” and it bore my signature. Ganelon puffed his pipe and read it in the glow.
“He lives? And he would come here?” he said.
“So it would seem.”
“This is very strange,” he said. “I do not understand it at all . . .”
“It sounds like a promise of assistance,” I said, dismissing the bird, which cooed twice, then circled my head and departed.
Ganelon shook his head.
“I do not understand.”
“Why number the teeth of a horse you may receive for nothing?” I said. “You have only succeeded in containing that thing.”
“True,” he said. “Perhaps he could destroy it.”
“And perhaps it’s just a joke,” I told him. “A cruel one.”
He shook his head again.
“No. That is not his style. I wonder what he is after?”
“Sleep on it,” I suggested.
“There is little else that I can do, just now,” he said, stifling a yawn.
We rose then and walked the wall. We said our good nights, and I staggered off toward the pit of sleep and fell headlong into it.