Three of them did dare, though. Looking back, Dave saw Levon and Tore knife through the gap his rush had carved and follow him in a flat-out race west, with the wolves at their heels and arrows falling about them in the growing dark.
Three only, no more, though not for lack of courage. The rest were dead. Nor had there been a scanting of gallant bravery in any one of the Dalrei who died that day, seventeen of them, by Adein where it runs into Llewenmere by Pendaran Wood.
They were devoured by the svart alfar as the sun went down. The dead always were. It was not the same as if it were the lios they had killed, of course, but blood was blood, and the red joy of killing was thick within them all that night. After, the two groups them, so happily come together, made a pile of bones, clean-picked and otherwise, and started in, letting the wolves join them now, on their own dead. Blood was blood.
There was a lake on their left, dark waters glimpsed through a lattice of trees as they whipped by. Dave had a fleeting image of hurtful beauty, but the wolves were close behind and they could not linger. At full tilt they hurtled into the outreaches of the forest, leaping a fallen branch, dodging sudden trees, not slacking pace at all, until at last Dave became aware that the wolves were no longer chasing them.
The twisting half-trail they followed became rougher, forcing them to slow, and then it was merely an illusion, not really a path. The three of them stopped, breathing with harsh effort amid the lengthening shadows of trees.
No one spoke. Levon’s face, Dave saw, was like stone again, but not as before. This he recognized: not the steadfastness of resolution, but a rigid control locking the muscles, the heart, against the pain inside. You held it in, Dave thought, had always thought. It didn’t belong to anyone else. He couldn’t look at Levon’s face very long, though; it twisted him somehow, on top of everything else.
Turning to Tore, he saw something different. “You’re bleeding,” he said, looking at the blood welling from the dark man’s thigh. “Get down, let’s have a look.”
He, of course, hadn’t a clue what to do. It was Levon, glad of the need for action, who tore his sleeping roll into strips and made a tourniquet for the wound, which was messy but, after cleaning, could be seen to be shallow.
By the time Levon finished, it was dark, and they had all been deeply conscious for some moments of something pulsing in the woods around them. Nor was there anything remotely vague about it: what they sensed was anger, and it could be heard in the sound of the leaves, felt in the vibrations of the earth beneath their feet. They were in Pendaran, and men, and the Wood did not forgive.
“We can’t stay here!” Tore said abruptly. It sounded loud in the dark; for the first time, Dave heard strain in his voice.
“Can you walk?” Levon asked.
“I will,” said Tore grimly. “I would rather be on my feet and moving when we meet whatever is sent for us.” The leaves were louder now, and there seemed—or was that imagination?—to be a rhythm to their sound.
“We will leave the horses, then,” Levon said. “They will be all right. I agree with you—I don’t think we can lie down tonight. We will walk south, until we meet what—”
“Until we’re out!” Dave said strongly. “Come on, both of you. Levon, you said before, this place isn’t evil.”
“It doesn’t have to be, to kill us,” said Tore. “Listen.” It was not imagination; there was a pattern to the sound of the leaves.
“Would you prefer,” Dave snapped, “to go back and try to make nice to the wolves?”
“He’s right, Tore,” Levon said. In the dark, only his long yellow hair could be seen. Tore, in black, was almost invisible. “And Davor,” Levon went on, in a different voice, “you wove something very bright back there. I don’t think any man in the tribe could have forced that opening. Whatever happens after, you saved our lives then.”