The Wanderer's Tale (29 page)

In pursuit of the vague figure they went, the going becoming increasingly difficult with each passing step. Darkness had descended in full by now, and they walked in a dream-like limbo world of mist, all now sharing Gapp’s earlier apprehensions. The constant sucking of mud that hindered each and every step was gradually getting to them, draining their will as if sucking their very life essence from them.

Every now and then one or other would cry out, ‘There it is!’, and they would all head off in a new direction, their pace temporarily quickened by renewed hope. Yet their elusive quarry seemed always a step further ahead, and would not stop or turn at their urgent calling. Ever alert lest they were being led into a trap, they anxiously persevered on their progress through the mist. Suddenly a wall of darkness loomed up ahead. At first they could not tell what it was, but as they cautiously approached, they discovered it to be a thicket of trees.

‘There,’ came the sudden whisper from Wodeman through the stillness. ‘Off to the left, just before the trees – see it? Our slippery friend.’

They followed the direction of his finger, but had to concentrate hard for a few moments before they saw it. Something was moving about twenty or thirty yards away. It was that same figure again, just about to enter the thicket. But before any of them could call out, it disappeared into the darkness of the woods.

Hurriedly they rode on, closing the gap, and within seconds were following their quarry into the thicket.

If it had seemed strange and fearful terrain out in the swamp, then it was doubly so here in these woods. With the mist now as thick as soup, and even the vestigial light of late evening lost to them, visibility was reduced to almost nothing. There was no clear path to be found, so they had to force their way through a dense undergrowth of thorns and roots that clawed at their cloaks and snagged their feet. Their pace slowed almost to a standstill as they hacked their way through the entangling foliage, while every so often branches dripping with moisture suddenly reached out and raked their faces.

Though exhaustion dulled their instincts, all they could think about was finding the stranger and somehow putting an end to this day’s futile journeying. But into their over-tired and over-stretched minds stole thoughts of great unease; foremost among these was that anyone else passing through these woods must have had as much difficulty in finding their way as they did, for they had entered at the same point, and yet had found no path. Yet there was no sight or sound of anyone or anything. Was it waiting for them, hidden in the dark? Was it alone? Was it human? It was above all a mystery why anyone should be out in the marshes on a night like this, so far from human habitation.

They now realized that they had completely lost all sense of direction – even Wodeman, to whom this had never happened before. They had also lost their quarry, and were just wandering around in this tangled thicket with no idea of where to go next. A decision as to whether they press on or go back was no longer relevant, for they did not have any clue where they were.

And now they began to hear, some way off yet all around them, a low bubbling sound that carried within it the rumour of drowning. One thing was for certain: none of them was prepared to stop and make camp for the night. Not in this place.

Then all at once they felt themselves descending a slope, and before long the trees began to thin out a little. They perceived that they had descended into a hollow, and, filling this entire depression ahead and illuminated by a dim, unknown source of light, was a bog of thick black quicksand. It was a morass of such blackness, such life-swallowing awfulness that they felt as if their souls were draining out of their bodies and into its bottomless embrace. It was as if countless millions of things had died here, decaying into a stinking miasma. Here and there, sticking up out of the putrescent slime, the travellers shuddered to see the pale and fleshless bones of those that must have fallen prey to this dreadful place. Above the constantly sucking ooze floated a grey-green haze that lit up the entire hollow, looking noxious to the touch and repulsive to behold.

The travellers did not utter a word, but simply stared. Huge strands of pale cobweb hung from tree to tree, bough to bough, hemming the hollow in like a tent, while above them even larger sheets of gossamer hung like a canopy, crawling with great black spiders and poisonous-looking red-and-green insects that scuttled about silently. Ravens resembling reanimated gibbet-hangings stalked about stiffly amid the branches even higher up.

Gazing out across this awful glade, their hearts sank and fear flowed into them.

No one human had come this way tonight. No
living
person, at least.

Not this or any other night, for this was not a place for the living, and death permeated the very air. It was not a natural place. It had the air of dreams about it. Even Wodeman wrinkled his nose in distaste, sensing the darker side of fey here. It felt like a place where lost souls wandered, drifting off into a walking sleep through a somnambulant world of creeping numbness and disturbing, dream-like pseudo-realities.

This marsh was where it all came from: the fear, the dread, the swampy stench of death and decay, drifting out towards them in wreaths of whispering vapour. All sound was deadened: the susurration of hushed voices, the muffled clump of hooves, the eerie squeal of dead twigs scraping over armour plate. And from the rotting world before them only the sounds of dripping, sucking, whispering and scurrying.

They could feel a sense of suffocation that squeezed the life out of everything just as they could feel numberless eyes upon them, watching malevolently from the shadowed trees and undergrowth.

‘Where to now, boss?’ asked Finwald, his fear prompting him to say something, anything.

Nibulus thought for a minute. ‘He didn’t come this way,’ he said at last, ‘so we’d better turn back . . . Come, follow me.’

Without a moment’s hesitation, the company wheeled about to depart this hateful spot. As he too made to turn about, Gapp’s gaze was held by a sudden movement in the pool of slime. Curious little amphibians were popping their heads up through its clammy surface to regard him with unknowable intent. He did not wish to tarry a moment longer, but still he looked on, transfixed.

It seemed to him that, as he watched, other small, pale shapes materialized out of the murk. What it was he was looking at he could not at first tell, feeling confused. Little shapes now hung from the trees, hanging limp or swaying slightly. Paper? Old clothes, like laundry that had been hung up to get damp and filthy? But as he stared, it became apparent that they were too tenuous and ragged to be human clothing.

A darker level of fear now leaked into his soul. These were not clothes; they were skins, hairless skins hanging upon every twig.

Human skins. The flayed hides of infants. Baby-skins all around.

Then, with a great, belching suck of mud, the elusive figure for whom they had earlier been searching rose out of the swampy depths and loomed before them all, its all-encompassing robe dripping with slime from surely the rankest corpse-filled drainage ditch in hell’s lowermost level. Its blackness seemed to fill the entire hollow, and any doubts they had had before about this place were now replaced by an absolute certainty. For one second they all froze, then they turned and bolted out of the clearing.

Behind them a shrill howling rose from the gaping mouth of the swamp-thing, sending shudders through the earth that seemed to bring the whole hollow alive. The trees shook violently as an unearthly wind raged through them, their limbs thrashing about like claws intent on cutting off the petrified men from any retreat. Beneath them the ground began to crawl and seethe, while the undergrowth whipped towards them, curling tendrils around their horses’ legs. Into this chaos rose the human and animal cries of bewilderment, fear, frustration and sheer panic, as all twelve victims flailed about helplessly to escape such manifestations.

Then, below them, the pool began to swell.

It all happened so suddenly. The firm ground beneath was transformed into a sucking morass that began to swallow them up, while behind them the baying horror in the swamp rose up and up till it hovered over them.

As they felt their mounts sinking fast despite the beasts’ terrified attempts to lunge free of the clutching mire, it soon became clear that they were going nowhere but down. For the riders too, as the trees and bushes continued to lash their unprotected faces, escape seemed increasingly impossible.

While the fey creature of darkness continued to wail like a satanic choir, Gapp leapt from Bogey’s back to try to drag him by the curb rein out of the death-pool. But the boy landed in the mud and immediately sank up to his knees, while before him Bogey reared up this way and that, screaming horribly and eyes rolling in fear. Gapp still tugged desperately at the rein, but as his eyes met those of his pony, now up to its chest in mud, he saw defeat there. Bogey knew he was about to be swallowed up completely, and his screaming reached a new pitch of terror. It was much the worst sound Gapp had ever heard in his life and he knew, one way or another, he would take the memory of it with him to the grave.

Close by the fully barded Hammerhoof had sunk in up to its withers, and continued to sink further. Nibulus had already lost his balance and tumbled out of the saddle, landing with a great squelch in the quicksand, his armour also dragging him down.

‘Radnar!’ he cried. ‘Come! Loosen my armour – I’m sinking!’

But amidst all the howling, thrashing pandemonium, Gapp was no longer thinking of his master. As Bogey disappeared up to his neck, the boy tried one last time to haul the doomed animal out of the pit. Then, sobbing like a child and blinded by tears of remorse, he drew his shortsword and, as Bogey craned his neck up in one last attempt to breathe, Gapp leant over and cut short the poor beast’s agony.

The shadow that hung over them swelled in size and malignancy, and seconds later, amid further curses and promises of a vengeance from his master, Hammerhoof the faithful Knostus disappeared beneath the bubbling surface, hauled under by the weight of his Tengriite barding.

More swelling from the huldre, as if it fed upon the life-forces of the dying.

Desperately casting about for any last chance for himself, the rapidly vanishing Nibulus cried out to the three holy men.

‘Finwald, Wodeman, Appa –
do
something!’

It was the undeniable voice of command and it sliced through the chaos instantly. A dazzling pulse of blue-white lightning crackled forth from Finwald’s outstretched palm and smote the marsh phantom straight in the spot where its heart should have been. A second later, a deep throbbing dirge from Wodeman rose above the wailing cry of their enemy – which, undulating sickeningly and still smoking from the power Finwald had sent against it, began to diminish slowly. So too did the flailing plant-life, recoiling from this shamanistic invocation.

In spite of his predicament, Nibulus’s eyes smiled broadly.
Not so bad after all.

Then Gapp at last remembered his duty to his master. He leapt towards the sinking warrior and grasped his gauntleted hand in a futile attempt to hold him back from the all-consuming swamp. For a brief moment their eyes met, and Gapp recognized what he saw there. Unlike Bogey’s eyes, filled with terror and despair, in Nibulus’s there shone only
life
– courageous life full of vitality and scornful of death. In his uniquely stubborn way, Nibulus was almost smiling, and Gapp felt sure then that it would take a whole lot more than this disaster to put an end to the son of Artibulus. In that brief moment both were joined as one, a new understanding of each other breaking down all barriers of age, status and innate character.

Both of them held on for grim life, and waited.

And through the screeching, the throbbing, the screaming, cutting through the entire cacophony that raged about the hollow, a gentle voice now sounded. Though dulcet and placid in tone, it echoed throughout the woodland with a quiet power harmonious and irrefusable. Both Gapp and his master swivelled their heads about in wonder, unable to locate the source.

It came from Appa. Up to his midriff in the fetid, undulating quagmire, the mage-priest yet maintained a countenance of deepest tranquillity. A golden-white halo radiated from him as he spoke his prayer, and peace was in his eyes.

With a gibbering wail of vexation and despair, the thing from the pool shrank away from the priest, recoiling from the elemental power of his god. In rasping ululations it sank back into its pool, still smoking from Finwald’s thunderbolt, and was gone.

The limits of the death-pool receded, the baby-skins slowly vanished, the trees calmed their fury – and they were in darkness once more.

Stunned by the sudden quiet, the men just sat there, shaking violently. Then a hoarse cry from Nibulus snapped them back to their immediate reality, and they jumped up and rushed over to haul him out of the quicksand.

They were all so grateful to be alive they could think of nothing else for several more minutes. Not the fey terror of that unholy apparition nor its abysmal lair, nor the deaths of their beloved horses, nor the ruination they felt in their bodies, nor the starvation that yet faced them, nor the loss of their baggage to the sucking slime. They had
survived
, and every minute from now on would be a gift.

Then they heard something moving towards them through the woods.

No one moved, no one breathed. But also no one felt fear, for there simply was none left in them after their ordeal.

The sound of footstepts drew nearer, and a light, bobbing uncertainly.

Then, just at the opposite side of the clearing, a head poked through the tangled curtain of foliage and cobwebs.

It belonged to a plump, red-faced, middle-aged woman, holding a staff in one hand and a lantern in the other.

‘’Scuse me,’ she said (in
Aescalandian
, they noted; and never before had their own tongue sounded so welcome), ‘but ’ave you young men got any idea what time it is? I can ’ardly getta wink o’ sleep wi’ all this racket goin’ on!’