To Carry the Horn

Chapter 7-1

CHAPTER 7

The knock wakened him. He blinked at Rhys who opened the door and stuck his head in. “Breakfast in fifteen minutes.”

The room was dark and George turned his lamp up before leaving the warm bed. He put on the hunting clothes he had laid out the night before, and added his usual pocket contents, including the gun at the small of his back. After liberating Myfanwy, who was waiting patiently at the door, he headed quietly down the dark hall.

Lights were hung and lit in the back hall, so he returned his lamp to the night table there and sought out the voices he could hear in the hunting room.

A crackling fire gave a warm glow to the handful of people clustered around the small tables. He joined Idris and Rhys at one table, and saw others dressed and ready to go about their business in other small groups.

Servants brought in trays of cold food: bread and sweet rolls, ham slices, hard-boiled eggs, cheeses, and fruit. Besides water, there were steaming pots of tea. George asked Rhys, “Any hope of coffee?”

“I’ve never had it. What’s it like?”

“Dark, bitter, and eye-opening.”

Idris smiled. “I’ve had your coffee before. This tea’s harsh enough for me.” They fell to in silence.

Rhian joined them, in breeches and a long-sleeved jerkin, and then a dark, weatherbeaten man came in through the outside door. Idris introduced him to George as Thomas Kethin. He remembered him speaking in Gwyn’s chamber last night, and then realized where he’d heard the name before. This was the fellow Eurig named as the son of Thomas, Lord Fairfax. He looked competent and hard. Wasn’t he the fellow who took charge of Iolo’s body on the ground, George thought.

As each finished their hasty meal, they took a cloth from the tray and wrapped some food into a packet to take with them. George followed their example, making something small enough to put in his sandwich case. They rose as a group and walked out to the nearby stable.

Grooms stood there with their horses, tacked and ready. George looked Mosby over, checked the fit of the bridle and the set of the saddle, and tightened the girth. All of the small gear from his chest in the tack room had been reattached, in the right places.

Rhys rode over to the kennels while the rest of them assembled at the gate in the southern curtain wall. In a few minutes Rhys rejoined them, accompanied by a two-wheeled pony cart driven by a middle-aged and taciturn lutin. Two white hounds looked out from their crates in the cart. “This is Orry. He’ll help handle the hounds,” he told George.

The sky was beginning to lighten as they headed out the gates of the curtain wall and down alongside the great front lawn. There was a pause at the palisade while the main gates were opened, and then they were on the road just as the sun rose.

Idris led the party at a brisk trot down to the bridge and across. George spotted a few lights in the village as most people were just rising, but they found no one outside yet as they passed though. Once they reached the eastern fields, Idris slowed to a walk to give the horses a breather. They went slowly up the slope, keeping to smooth ground for the sake of the pony cart.

Once up on the plateau, it didn’t take long to reach the scene of yesterday’s chaos. Rhian rode over to the blood-stained spot, her eyes searching the ground. She dismounted and picked up two bits of dirty cloth. Holding them out to George, she said, “See, I thought we might find these. The cuts that took the hands also clipped the ends of the sleeves.” She tucked them into a pocket of her jerkin and remounted.

They couldn’t see anything else of interest at the spot where so many feet had already walked. Idris turned to Thomas Kethin, “Where was it you heard the sound and saw the whirlwind first?”

Thomas led them to the woods on the right, about a hundred yards away. As they left the trampled part of the field where the riders had milled around the day before and came to smooth tall grass, they found a clear trail, leading from the woods, made of broken grass stems and small crushed plants. The slant of the early morning light picked it out plainly. The party rode to one side so as not to damage it.

Thomas halted them at the edge of the woods. He dismounted, handing his reins to Idris, and entered the woods on foot, careful not to disturb the traces that remained. He didn’t go far. Just a few yards in he stopped and bent over.

George called out, “Don’t touch whatever it is. We want the hounds to get a clean scent.”

Thomas returned. “There’s a broken spell-stick in plain sight, and footprints behind it, though none in front.”

“What’s a spell-stick?” George asked Idris.

“It holds a spell, which is released when it breaks. The user doesn’t need any powers of his own.” Idris turned to Thomas. “Did you recognize the style?”

“I need to pick it up,” he said.

George had seen bloodhounds at work before and had some idea about how to proceed. “The hounds also need to smell it. We can do both. Orry,” he called, “do you have some sort of clean cloth we can use to hold something?”

Orry climbed down from the seat of the pony cart and reached behind it into a leather bag. He brought a clean rag over to the riders. “We use these for bandages. It should be clean.” He went back to the cart and began to prepare the hounds for work.

George shook the rag in the air with his gloved hand to dislodge as much as possible of whatever scent clung to it, then gave it to Thomas, with instructions to pick up the spell-stick carefully.

When Thomas returned, they all bent over the pieces as he turned them around, held by the rag. It was a natural stick cut cleanly at each end and about a foot long in its intact form. The bark had been removed, and it was now broken into two pieces. Red characters had been painted on it, but not in any alphabet George was familiar with. “Can anyone read this?”

Rhian said, “I’ve seen this before but I can’t read it. Ceridwen should look at it.”

Idris asked Thomas, “How’s the trail?”

“Clear prints and traces. I can work it backward while the hounds try to work it forward.”

“We’ll do that then. Wait until we’re sure the hounds can find a scent trail, then track it back as far as possible.”

Orry brought the two hounds forward, on leashes. They were white all over with pendulous ears and wrinkled faces, heavily built, a bit longer than tall. Except for the color they looked like bloodhounds to George. Why, these are Talbot hounds. His delighted grin brought an inquisitive look from Idris.

George leaned forward and pointed out the emblem on his hunt coat buttons. “We call these Talbot hounds, the old English Southern hound, said to descend from the hounds of St. Hubert. No one knows what relationship the name has to the name of my family, but the name’s very old. I never thought to see one.”

They planned the course of action. The hounds needed to be handled from the ground, on leashes. Idris and George remained mounted. Thomas declared he would lead his horse behind him as he tracked through the woods. “Not the first time we’ve done this,” he said.

Rhian joined Orry on the ground and took one of the hounds. Rhys tied his own horse and Rhian’s to the back of the cart, and mounted the seat to drive along behind them.

Both the hounds sat quietly by Rhian. She introduced them to George. “This is Arthur, and that one Roland. Give me the spell-stick.”

Thomas handed it to her, holding it in its rag. She held the rag in her open hands and bent over the hounds, urging them to smell the broken stick it held. They obediently buried their muzzles and inhaled deeply. She stood, wrapped the rag around the pieces, and thrust them into a deep pocket on her jerkin.

Orry and Rhian walked the hounds to the visible trail in the grass and gave them a long line. Heads down, they immediately struck out at a trot, away from the covert. Thomas turned in the opposite direction, leading his horse, and re-entered the woods.

The hounds pulled strongly toward the trampled grass with its stains and paused at the spot. George watched how they concentrated several yards to the east and commented to Idris, “Watching bloodhounds, you can see how scent moves, flowing with the ground or moving in a breeze. Looks like there was just a little air movement from the west since the attack. We’re lucky we had calm weather last night.”

At Rhian’s quiet urging, the hounds moved on, to the east and south. Idris confirmed this was the direction the whirlwind had taken after the kill. Together, the party followed the hounds over the fold in the ground that had hidden the whirlwind’s escape. The grass was both shorter and sparser here, as the soil changed character, and the physical trail was harder to see, though still visible in the slanted morning light. The hounds followed a scent trail that was parallel to the visible one, but off to its left by a few yards. As they approached another covert, the visible trail and the hounds tracking scent converged.

Rhys and the pony cart couldn’t enter the woods here, and went around to the far side to wait for them. Orry took a few steps, then called out, “Footprints, here.”

Idris looked down. “Man-sized, with a heel like a boot. There might be a cut on the inner right heel, though it’s hard to be sure.”

George took a look. There hadn’t been much left of the scuff mark on Iolo’s boot, but at least this was consistent with it. He ventured, “So, however the whirlwind was created, this was a man before and after, yes?”

“Looks that way,” Idris said.

The hounds took them through the woods, following a strong trail that had been sheltered from the wind. They met Rhys on the other side waiting with the cart. From here, they could see across and north to the manor, though most of the village was tucked into the river fold between and largely hidden.

Eagerly pulling at their long leashes, the hounds brought them by a footpath down to the river, striking it south of the village at a ford. Orry and Rhian let them drink, then led them through where they struck the line again, crossing the road and the western fields toward a wood.

Idris called a temporary halt. “This trail has been turning in a curve, and now it’s headed back to the manor. Rhys, take the cart up the road and look for us at the main gate. If that turns out not to be right, we’ll send someone to tell you.”

Rhys turned back to the road and the tracking party followed the hounds into the woods on a clear path that began climbing the slope toward the manor. It didn’t take long to follow that back and come out, as Idris had predicted, at the back of the palisade.

George got his first clear look at the structure. Trees of several types and all ages stood packed so tightly together that even a hound couldn’t get through. For as far as he could see, there was bare grass in front of it, but no foliage ventured into the open space, down to the height of a man. Above that, there was something… wrong about the branches. He wouldn’t have wanted to climb into these trees.

“They feel dangerous,” he said to Idris.

“They’re part of our defenses. Enemies don’t pass through them.”

“How thick are they?”

“Ten yards in most places.”

The hounds had led them upslope along the bare space and stopped. The densely packed trees of the palisade were disrupted here. Two trees had decayed, and the undergrowth around them had been penetrated by a low tunnel. It contrasted sharply with the vigorous growth on either side.

“This isn’t natural,” Idris said, “nor has it been here long. We patrol this regularly.”

“It’s not easy to see if you’re not looking for it. It could’ve been here a while,” George said.