“You all right?” said Meena, for once not trying to hide her concern. “I daresay this animal’s up to the two of us. Time she earned her keep.”
“I’ll do if it gets no worse,” he answered. “We must move now, or we won’t come up with them.”
So they started along the path, Tahl and Alnor in front and Tilja leading Calico by the bridle. It felt strange, after the companionable shuffle and chat of the convoy, to be moving through this silent, closed world, the only sounds their own footfalls and the drip of the fog from the branches. Before long Tilja saw that Alnor was limping more heavily, and leaning his weight on Tahl’s shoulder at each step, but he still strode fiercely on. His halt was so sudden that she almost allowed Calico to blunder into his back.
There was a man in the path ahead of them, standing straddle legged, blocking the way. He had a cudgel over his shoulder and a long knife stuck into his belt. Then movements either side of the path and five more men, also with cudgels and knives, came out of the trees.
Tilja’s heart slammed once, then hammered. Her stomach and limbs filled with the chill of the fog. She half heard Meena muttering fiercely above her. The men closed silently in.
“My grandfather’s blind,” said Tahl, urgently. “He’s hurt his—”
He was cut short. Tilja turned, but before she could see what had happened she was seized from behind, a bag was thrust over her head, a hard hand was clamped against her mouth and held there while someone else grabbed her arms and lashed her wrists behind her back. The hand left her mouth and gripped her elbow while other hands were thrust in under the bag and her scarf was forced between her lips and teeth and the ends tied behind her head.
“Lay off, you goat-get!” snapped Meena, above her. “There! How d’you fancy that!”
Tilja heard the swish and thwack of Meena’s cane, a curse from the man she’d hit, a yell of pain from Meena and a slithering thud. A moment’s silence, and then more heavings and rustlings, and mutters of command.
“They’re the fourteeners all right,” said a voice. “Get the old bag back up on the horse, and we’ll go.”
Now one hand let go of Tilja’s elbow while the other turned her and forced her into a blind shuffle back along the way they’d come, jerking her upright when she stumbled. To her immense relief, she heard Meena’s muffled groan from behind her. It was not much help, but it was something to cling to as she stumbled on, gagging again and again on the cloth in her mouth.
The man who held her stopped, heaved her onto his shoulders and carried her up a steep slope. She could hear curses and blows as Calico was forced to climb. Then the ground seemed to level out and she was set down and forced to stumble up a much rougher and narrower path than the one below. The sounds around her changed, and she guessed that they were now out above the trees, with the slope rising to her left and falling away to her right. Sometimes they climbed, but not so steeply that she needed to be carried again. At last she was told to stand still, her arms were retied, and she was pushed down and dragged into some kind of enclosed space and made to sit on a rough earthen floor with what felt like natural rock against her back. Her ankles were lashed together before they pulled the hood from her head and untied the disgusting gag. She retched but couldn’t vomit. Her mouth was too dry. Before she recovered a hand grabbed her hair and forced her head back. Something was thrust against her mouth.
“Drink,” snapped a voice.
She gulped. Water sluiced down her chin and blouse. The flask was snatched away without warning and instantly the scarf was stuffed back into her mouth. In the few seconds while it was being tied, unable to move her head, she rolled her eyes from side to side, desperate to know where she was and what had happened to the others. There was rock opposite her and rock above, darkness to her right and daylight to her left—a small, low-roofed cave. She could see part of Tahl’s legs further in on her right, and Meena and Alnor propped against the opposite wall. Then the hood was shoved back over her head, and she heard the other three being given their turns at the flask.
Footsteps left the cave. Ages passed, in aches and cramps and soreness. She managed to slump herself sideways and by nudging her head against a rock projecting from the cave floor loosen her gag a little. She could hear Tahl wriggling for comfort, and Meena’s soft groans. Poor Meena. She must be in agony—Tilja’s own intense discomfort would be nothing beside it.
It was almost dark in the cave before the hood was again removed and two men fed the captives turn by turn on some sort of porridge, hooded and gagged them and took them stumbling out, one at a time, to relieve themselves on the open hillside.
Then again they were dumped in the cave, but it wasn’t long before Tilja heard footsteps and brusque commands, telling her that another captive had been brought in. This time before the men left, one of them mercifully took the hood from her head.
Not that there was much to see. It was night, with stars showing at the narrow entrance to the cave. Almost at once these vanished as a boulder was rolled into place to seal the captives in, and then, to judge by the sounds, wedged into place with smaller rocks. Footsteps faded into silence.
Still sick with the same unchanging misery and fear, she lay down and wriggled for some kind of comfort. Beside her she could hear Tahl also shifting around, but it turned out he had other ideas. Something shoved against the back of her head, and she gave a protesting grunt. Tahl’s grunt answered somewhere in the darkness close by. Clumsy fingers probed among her hair, found the knot of her scarf, started to tug and tease. There were strands of hair in the knot. She winced at the pain. Tahl in his turn grunted as he pricked a finger on her hairpin. She felt the knot loosen, and now he had it free, and she could spit the cloth out and suck and swallow to work the saliva into her mouth and round.
“Thanks,” she whispered. “I’ll try and do yours.”
She worked her back against the wall and managed to wriggle herself up, and then he let himself topple sideways so that she could turn, feel down the back of his head and find the knot of his gag. With endless pickings and pokings she managed to undo it.
“Thanks. That’s better,” he whispered. “I’ll see if I can untie you.”
“We’ll never get away.”
“We’ve got to try.”
They found a position where he could get at the cord that lashed her elbows together, but the moment he started to work at the knot a soft, grating voice spoke in the darkness.
“Wait. Not time.”
At the first syllable Tilja had frozen rigid. She stared into the darkness beside the entrance.
“Who are you?” whispered Tahl. Tilja could hear the tremor in his voice.
“Traveler. Like yourselves,” came the quiet answer. “Let those fools sleep. Then we go.”
Tilja heard a grunt from Meena.
“That’s my grandmother,” she whispered. “Can I take her gag off?”
“No noise.”
Carefully Tilja worked herself across the cave floor toward where the sound had come from. She found a leg by touch, turned herself round and by slithering herself up against the wall managed to reach the gag and untie it. Meena muttered savagely under her breath for a little, then whispered aloud, almost sobbing with pain.
“Get my legs undone if you can, girl, whatever the fellow says. This hip of mine’s a nightmare.”
“Is that all right?” Tilja asked into the darkness.
“Wait,” answered the darkness. “Yes. Now.”
Tilja felt her way to the knot, and found it already surprisingly loose. Meena groaned softly as she eased her leg around. Tilja could hear Tahl working at Alnor’s gag.
“Wait still,” murmured the stranger.
That was hard, with their bodies half free and their minds filled with half hope. At last he spoke again.
“We begin. Stay where you are. Do not be afraid. Make no sound.”
For a little while nothing seemed to happen. Then the cord around Tilja’s ankles loosened and fell away. She felt a movement at her back, though she was leaning against the cave wall with no room for anyone to reach behind her. She realized that the cord around her elbows had also come untied, and then, with a spasm of shock, that it was now wriggling around, as if it had been a living creature trapped between her body and the rock. She jerked herself away from it and it fell loose. She heard it slithering off into the dark.
The cave was full of those slithering sounds moving toward the entrance. There were moonlit chinks around the boulder blocking it. They changed shape as the cords wriggled out into the night. Something odd was happening to Tilja’s clothing. It too felt alive. Yes, parts of it, the cords of her cloak and skirt, the lacings of her blouse, were twitching as if they wanted to follow. Only the lashings round her wrists stayed firm.
“All free?” murmured the stranger.
“My wrists are still tied,” Tilja whispered.
She heard his grunt of puzzlement. An odd numbness began to seep up her arms, unconnected with the dull pain of the lashed cord. There was another grunt from the stranger and the numbness vanished.
“Think about it later,” he muttered. “Boy can untie you.”
Tilja rose and turned to let Tahl get at the knot. He too gave a snort of surprise as the rope came free.
“Don’t move,” he whispered.
The numbness returned for a moment as something touched the back of her hand.
“No, drop it,” said the stranger.
Tahl let the cord fall and it slithered away like the others.
“Don’t ask,” he whispered. “Explain later.”
Yet again they waited in the darkness. Tilja’s mouth was dry as her body readied itself for flight. She heard the scrape of rock against rock. Something was dragging the wedges clear.
“Shall we help roll it out?” whispered Tahl.
“No need,” said the stranger, not bothering to whisper, but speaking still in his odd, jerky style, with long pauses, as if his mind were somewhere else. “The ropes do it . . . they must tie themselves together . . . find an anchor . . . take strain . . . they are ready . . . ha! Pull, my children!”
At his call the prisoning boulder seemed to leap from the entrance and go crashing down the hillside.
“It is done,” said the stranger, with a sudden, startling laugh that went braying out into the still night. “Cave along that way. Rob the robbers, hey?”
A shape moved into the cave entrance, and Tilja almost cried aloud. It was an enormous head, so large that it almost blocked the opening. It was turned sideways, so that she could see the jut of nose and chin near the bottom, and the outline of a shoulder below, but above them swelled a great ballooning growth of skull. The thing crawled out into the open and vanished.
“You go first,” whispered Meena. “It’ll take Alnor and me a while.”
With sick dread Tilja crouched her way to the entrance, hesitated, crawled out and stood. A white mass of fog filled the valley below them, but the moon was high overhead, paling the stars. The stranger was there, a tall, thin shape in the moonlight. At the top of the neck was a normal human face, eyebrows, eyes, a long nose, smiling mouth, pointed chin and wisp of a beard, and above that the monstrous bulge she’d seen from the cave.
She had backed away and was swallowing a scream before she realized that she had misunderstood what she was seeing. The huge mass above the face wasn’t part of the head, it was a sort of headdress, fold on fold of cloth wound into a cunning shape, like an enormous patterned knot. The man was smiling at her, a normal human smile. But he was still a strange figure in the bright moonlight, seven feet tall or more with his headdress, but thin, and gawky as some long-legged insect.
“Hurry now,” he said. “Out of forest by sunrise.”
“I’m not going anywhere much, not without a horse,” said Meena from the cave entrance. “My hip’s that sore. And Alnor’s ankle’s not so good, either. Calico ought to be somewhere.”
“Horses under the trees,” said the stranger. “Cave first.”
“I’d better come that far,” said Meena. “The so-and-sos found my leather bag, and I’ve got to have my spoons back. And our money and stuff, too. Give us a hand, girl. Alnor? . . . Then you wait here, but I’ll need the boy.”
Leaning heavily on Tahl and Tilja and grunting at every step, she hobbled along the hillside. The stranger was already well ahead of them. For a moment they saw his awkward figure lit by something other than moonlight, before he seemed to disappear into the cliff.
“Meena,” whispered Tahl urgently. “When he was doing that stuff with the ropes in the cave, did you feel anything? Magic, I mean?”
“Can’t say I did, now you mention it,” muttered Meena. “But then I wasn’t minding much beyond this darned hip. What—”
“
Shhh.
Later,” whispered Tahl as a light flared into the darkness from where they had seen the stranger vanish. Reaching the place, they found it was a much larger cave, with the embers of a fire just inside the entrance, and beyond that the stranger holding in his hand a short piece of rope whose frayed end blazed steadily, but with almost no smoke, like a good wick in a lamp. Around him lay the bodies of the robbers, all on their sides, with gags in their mouths, their arms and ankles lashed and their legs drawn hard back behind them and tied to the wrists. Some struggled and wriggled, some lay still. A mound of baggage and other stuff was piled at the back of the cave. From where she stood Tilja could see the saddlebags. She followed Tahl in, stepping over the bodies of the robbers, and picked up the bag they had brought from Woodbourne.
“I can’t see your green bag, Meena,” she called after a quick search along the pile.
“Hold it. Tell you in a moment,” Meena answered.
By the light from the stranger’s rope Tilja saw her close her eyes and concentrate. In the same instant she saw the stranger stiffen and look sharply round toward the entrance.
“He’s got it,” Meena called. “That fellow there. Opposite you and two to your left . . . yes, him.”
The robbers had been bound where they slept. Each of them had his own small pile of loot stacked beside him. The man grunted angrily as Tilja sorted through his belongings. She found the green bag, looked inside and saw that the bundle of spoons was there, and the wooden Valley coins, but the metal ones were gone.