Duncan grunted. “Let’s be on our way,” he said.
A faint path, seemingly one that was not often traveled, angled down the gentle slope toward the woods. From a short distance off the edge of the woods seemed quite ordinary. It seemed in no way different from any other patch of woodland. The trees were ancient, with a hoary look about them, thick through at the butt, quickly branching to form a heavy tangle of interlocking branches. The faint pathway they had been following continued on into the thickness of the woods, providing enough clearance through the tangle for a man to follow it with ease.
“You’re quite certain,” Duncan asked Scratch, “that this woods was not here when you last saw this place? Can you be absolutely sure this is the place you saw?”
Scratch lifted his clubfoot and scratched the other leg with the misshapen hoof.
“I am fairly certain sure,” he said. “I doubt I could be mistaken.”
“In any case,” Conrad pointed out, “we shall have to cross it if we are to reach the fen.”
“That is true,” said Duncan. “Conrad, I think you and Tiny should take the point, as you always do. The narrowness of the path means that we must go in single file. Diane and I will guard the rear. Don’t let Tiny get too far ahead of you.”
Meg, who had been riding Daniel, slipped off his back.
“You’d better get back on,” said Conrad. “We’ll be moving out.”
“All the more reason why I should not be in the way of a fighting horse,” said Meg. “I can hobble by myself through this small patch of woods.”
“I’ll walk beside her,” said Andrew, “to help her on her way.”
“Why, thank you, kind sir,” said Meg. “It is not often that an old bag such as I has offer of an escort.”
“Meg,” asked Duncan, “is there something wrong? You would not encumber Daniel, you tell us. Is it that…”
The witch shook her head. “Nothing wrong at all, my lord. But these woods are close quarters.”
Duncan made a sign to Conrad, who moved out, walking down the path, with Tiny stalking close ahead of him. The others fell into line. Diane and Duncan brought up the rear, with the crippled demon limping painfully ahead of them, using the reversed trident as a staff to help himself along.
The woods held a somber sense, such as one would expect of a woods in autumn, the sense of the dying, drifting leaf, of the frost-shriveling of the little plants that grew on the forest floor. But otherwise there seemed to be nothing and that, thought Duncan, in itself was not wrong, for that was the way that it should be. Most of the trees were oaks, although there were other scattered kinds. The path, he told himself, was the sort of trail that deer, over the years, might beat out for themselves, going in single file, stepping in one another’s tracks. A hush hung over everything. Not even a leaf was rustling and that, Duncan thought, was strange, for there seldom was a time when leaves did not do some rustling. Even on the calmest day, with no wind at all, in an utter quietness, somewhere in a woods a leaf would rustle for no apparent reason. Fallen leaves, lying on the path, muffled their footfalls and no one spoke a word. The hush of the woods had imposed a hush on the people who entered it.
As is the case with most woodland trails, the path was a crooked one. It dodged between trees, it wound around a fallen, moldering forest giant, it avoided lichen-covered boulders, it clung to the slightly higher ground, skirting the small wet areas that lay on the forest floor–and in doing all of this it wound a twisted way.
Duncan, bringing up the rear, with Diane just ahead of him and ahead of her the limping, lurching demon, stopped and turned halfway around to view the path behind him. For, unaccountably, he felt an itching between his shoulder blades, the sort of feeling a receptive man might have from something watching him. But there was nothing. The path, the little that he could see of it, was empty, and there was no sign that any other might be near.
The feeling, he told himself, came about from the almost certain knowledge that in a very little time the entire area held by the Little Folk would be swarming with the hairless ones and other members of the Horde, closing in to make their kill. The Little Folk, more than likely, by now had cleared the area. They had started sifting out before the night was over and by the time he and his band had left, there had been none about–none but Snoopy, who now was marching up there in front with Conrad, and Nan, who presumably was flying about to spy out whatever might be happening. The magic traps the Little Folk had set out might impede the Horde for a time, but perhaps for only a few hours at the best. The traps, wicked and mean as some of them might be, could not stand for long against the more powerful and subtle magic of the Horde. In the final reckoning, all the traps would be little more than minor nuisances.
He put his hand to his belt pouch, felt the small, round hardness of Wulfert’s talisman, the yielding softness of the manuscript, listening to its crackling rustle as he pressed his fingers to it.
If only Scratch should be right, he told himself–if they could cross the fen, if the main body of the Horde kept moving northward up the west margin of the fen–then they still would have a chance. With the south open for the run to Oxenford, there still would be a chance to carry out the mission. It was the only chance they had, he reminded himself. There were no alternatives. There were no choices, no decisions to be made.
With one last look down the empty path behind him, he turned about and hurried to catch up with Diane. As he hurried along the path, he caught the first faint sound of wailing he had heard since they’d entered the woods. It seemed farther off than ever, a mere whisper of a sound, muted and broken up by the denseness of the trees.
Suddenly, ahead of him, the heavy growth lessened, and he stepped out into a small clearing, an almost circular clearing, as if in some time long past a woodsman had chopped down the trees and hauled off the logs to make a cleared circle in the forest.
The rest of the band had stopped and were clustered in the center of the clearing. As Duncan stepped smartly forward to join them, he glanced around and it seemed that the circle was hemmed in by larger and thicker trees than they had passed through heretofore. The trunks of the trees were huge and they grew almost cheek by jowl; their massive interlocking branches, springing from the trunks only a few feet above the ground, formed an impenetrable hedge that held them locked inside the circle.
He hurried up to Conrad. “What are we stopping for?” he asked. “Why don’t you continue on? We have to reach the fen.”
“There is no path,” said Conrad. “A path comes into the clearing, but there is none leading out.”
“And now,” said Andrew, thumping his staff upon the ground with an exasperation summoned up to mask his fear, “there’s none coming in, as well.”
Duncan spun around and looked back the way he’d come and saw that Andrew was right. The trees, somehow, had moved in and closed together to block out the path they had been following.
“With a great deal of work,” said Conrad, “we could wriggle our way through. But it would be difficult for Daniel. He can’t get down on his hands and knees and crawl as can the rest of us. We’ll have to do some chopping to make a way for him. Even without the work of chopping, progress will be slow.”
Meg came hobbling up. “It’s witchery,” she said, “and a most convincing witchery. Had it been otherwise than cunning, I would have smelled it out.”
Snoopy jumped up and down in rage, flapping his arms. “It’s them double-dipped-in-damnation gnomes,” he howled. “I told them and told them no traps need be laid against the fen, for none of the Horde was there. Concentrate, I told them, on that stretch of ground north of the river meadow. But they did not listen. Gnomes are arrogant and they never listen. They laid this intricate trap to snare the Horde and now we’re caught instead. Now the gnomes are gone, scattered like all the rest of them, and they cannot be gotten to spring and free the trap.”
“You are sure of that?” asked Duncan.