He jerked his horse to a stop. “Carahue!” he called. “Wake up!”
“Ah?” The Saracen reached for his saber.
“Our animals,” Holger said, not altogether speciously. “If we don’t give them a rest, they’ll keel over. We’ll make better speed in the long run if we take an hour’s break now.”
The other man’s face was an oval blur, his armor a dull sheen, but he could be seen to ponder. “I know not. Once Morgan rouses the pursuit against us, such horses go like a gale. And yet—” He shrugged. “As you wish.”
They slid to the grass. Alianora tugged eagerly at Holger’s hand. He nodded to Carahue, hoping his gesture wasn’t too smug. The Saracen looked startled for a moment, until he laughed. “Good fortune to you, my friend,” he said. He stretched himself full length on the ground and whistled a tune at the sky.
Holger followed Alianora a ways off. He had forgotten his own weariness and pain. The heart beat in him, not violently, a strong glad tone through his whole body. When they stopped, they clasped hands and stood looking at each other. Moonlight flowed over the wold, gray, shadow-barred, glinting on rime. Such clouds as remained were luminous-edged; the stars shone between them. The wind was still loud, but Holger paid no heed. He saw Alianora as a shape of quicksilver, of sliding shadow and cool white light. Dewdrops sparkled in her hair and there was moonlight in her eyes.
“We may no ha’ a chance to talk again,” she said quietly.
“Maybe not,” he answered. “So let me say now I love ye.”
“And I love you.”
“Oh, my dearest—” She came to him and he held her close.
“I’ve been a fool,” he said presently, wishing he could find better words. “I didn’t know what I wanted. I thought when this was over I could go off and leave you. I was wrong.”
She forgave him with her hands and lips and eyes.
“If we do come through, somehow,” he said, “we’ll never be apart again. This is where I belong. Here, with you.” Her tears caught the moonlight but her laugh was low and happy. “’Tis enough, she said.
He kissed her again.
Carahue’s shout pulled them away. The noise flew torn in the wind, ringing and dying away across that lake of moonlight. “Quickly, come quickly, the huntsmen!”
24
FAR AND FAINT, at the very edge of hearing, the horns blew. They had the noise of wind and sea and great beating wings, a hawk voice, a raven voice. And Holger knew that the Wild Hunt was out and after him.
He vaulted up on Papillon. As the stallion burst into movement, he raised Alianora to her place behind. Carahue was already off. The white mare and the tattered white clothes of her rider flew ghostly in the low moonlight. Hoofs rang and thundered. They bent down to the long fleeing.
The moon was an argent glare in Holger’s left eye. The wold slid past, darkness underfoot, flung stones and hissing brush, a rattle of branches like laughter. He felt the horse’s muscles throb and swing between his thighs; he felt the girl’s hands on his waist, guiding him in the direction she had spied out. His iron clashed on him, leather creaked, the wind shouted. Loudest came the labor of the horse’s breathing.
Everywhere around were stars, but unthinkably remote in a black heaven. The Swan flashed overhead, the Milky Way spilled suns off its dim arch, Carl’s Wain wheeled under the Pole; all the stars were cold. Northward he began to see the peaks of this range, sword sharp, sheathed in ice that gleamed under the moon. Behind him waxed lightlessness.
Gallop and gallop and gallop! Now Holger heard the wild horns closer, shrilling and wailing. Never had he heard such anguish as was blown on the horns of the damned. Through the cloven air he heard hoofs in the sky and the baying of immortal hounds. He leaned forward. His body swayed with Papillon’s haste, his rein hand loose on the arched neck, his other hand gripped about Alianora’s.
Swiftly, swiftly, over the rime-gray wold, under the last stormclouds and the sinking moon, gallop, gallop, gallop. The sorrow of the huntsmen shrieked in his head. He shook himself and strained to see his goal. There was only the plain and the glacial mountains beyond.