"I hear a hound," he said.

He rolled to his knees and held still, listening. Melanthe heard it then, too, a far-off bell.

"That lymer." He threw himself to his feet. "Christus."

* * *

They did not stop for dusk or night, only a short rest and feeding for the horse, with oaten bread and the tough cheese for themselves, and water from a stream where they rode down the middle until it was too dark to be safe. At first Melanthe had not believed that experienced hunting hounds could be coaxed to track them—they were not deer, or even coney, but she remembered the lymer and the gallant's game with a lady's scarf—that chestnut-haired carpet knight it had been, the one she'd cut, and Melanthe could well believe he would be glad to turn his sport with the hound to account against her.

Sir Ruck's mantle, dropped in the yard, must have the scent of herself and him and the horse all thick upon it. The whole pack would follow the lymer's lead. And even had she not believed it, the persistent music of the hounds, distant, sometimes lost, but coming always from the trail behind, would have convinced her.

Ruck had hours since turned Hawk west to the sunset, away from the course to her castle, away from Torbec and the hounds. The coast would lie before them, she knew not how far, but she did not question him. Indeed, by nightfall she was too weary of holding to him and supporting Gryngolet and listening for the hounds to think beyond fear and aching muscle. It was a thing of peculiar horror, to be hunted so. She clutched tight when they came to a stretch of road and galloped, and then strained her ears to hear over the heavy breath of the horse when he let Hawk drop to a walk and turn into the woods again. She feared coming to the sea, being trapped between water and hounds. She feared that the destrier was slowed, that its strength could not hold against its double burden. Ruck halted for another rest and without a word untied the baggage behind her pillion.

They abandoned it, food and all. They mounted again with only Gryngolet and what they wore—his armor and her gown and cloak, and the hawking bag strapped over Melanthe's shoulder. The big horse went on into the darkening night with its flanks moist and smelling of sweat.

She lost all track of time, jerking awake and dozing, so that it all became a ghastly dream, in which the voices of the hounds got confused with the wind, and she thought she heard them howling so close that she gave a start and a low cry—and felt herself in a black roaring confusion, until her mazed mind recognized that they had come out of the trees onto a shore swept by a dry tempest, the waves like a great slow heartbeat, showing long pale lines in the blackness.

She held Gryngolet in her lap, hiding her face behind his shoulders to escape the stinging wind. She could no longer hear the hounds; she could hear nothing but the gale and the sea. The horse rocked beneath her, a steady surge, and she fell asleep again—drifting, sleeping, riding into an endless baying nightmare.

* * *

Ruck thanked God who had led him in the right direction. When they had reached the strand, he'd not known how far north or south they might have come. But he had not taken time to wonder and guess; he just prayed—and Hawk had plodded on a loose rein through deep sandhills, veering away from the worst of the wind to the right instead of left, and so they had gone north looking for what Ruck meant to find.

He had found it. The steady creak and groan of a shuttered window made Hawk prick his ears. The night was moonless, but the sand and clouds reflected back on one another, showing the vague outlines of pale things and black massive shadows,

He dismounted, and the princess wrenched upright, mumbling, "I hear them."

"Nay, we've left the hounds behind," he said, though he knew that he might be wrong. He believed that the sand and wind would scour their scent, but he wasn't certain. "Hold here." He pushed the reins into her free hand.

She took them. Ruck hoped that at least she would not fall off if she went to sleep again. Hawk stood with his head down, his tail sweeping up against his haunches, as if he did not care to take another step. Ruck left them there and slogged through the sand toward the salterns, taking care to squint ahead and avoid the pools and trenches of the saltworks as he made his way to the single hut.

FIFTEEN

Things seemed to Melanthe to happen in disconnected scenes, the hounds and the wind and the shore in the freezing darkness, and then a strange figure, shagged and silent, barely seen, a woodwose, a wildman of the desert, mad rocking and water and a sturdy boat—and colder, colder, wet spray that made her huddle into her cloak—she did not have Gryngolet, but somehow she remembered that all was right; Ruck said so, when she asked—then the first light of dawn, the world a sickening sway of wind and wave.

Sea loathing and lassitude and cold kept her immobile, hunched in the tiny cover for the endless voyage, while the woodwose shouted incomprehensible orders at Ruck and they worked together against the wind and spray, sailing and hauling upon the ropes, manning oars to point the vessel over waves that seemed too tall for it, carrying her she knew not where, nor hardly cared. Hawk stood with his head encased in armor, his legs braced and his nose lowered to the deck.

Near sunset the awful rocking abated. She found the strength to open her eyes and crawl from the small shelter into the open, looking blearily upon an unfamiliar shoreline, crystalline with black trees that somehow glittered, mountains behind them, rising to ponderous heights dusted a spectral white.

She came a little more into her wits as they landed, the boat sweeping and bobbing on the swells that rolled into a protected inlet of a small bay. They had to disembark onto a sandbar. It thrust out into the inlet from overhanging trees, their lower limbs drooping down near the water, every twig and branch encased in clear ice to form strange white cascades against the dark wood.

Sir Ruck hurried her, lifting her bodily onto the sand and glancing often toward the opposite shore of the bay. The horse came calmly off the grounded boat, as if it splashed from vessel into shallow water half the days of its life. Without a word the woodwose, as coarse and savage-looking in the day as in the dark, handed over Gryngolet, her body encased in a falconer's sock, and pushed off his craft with an oar.

Ruck slapped the destrier's rump, sending it into a heavy trot ahead of them. The horse thudded toward the trees, a pale form in the failing light, and vanished in the space of a blink.

Melanthe looked over her shoulder, squinting her gritty eyes at the other shore. A mile off or more across the sands, she thought she could see low buildings and signs of active cultivation. But he did not allow her to linger and study.

"It is the abbey land," he said, with a soft contempt in his voice. "The house of Saint Mary. N'would I nought haf us apperceived."

"Where go we?"

He held her arm and looked into her face as if he would speak—then gave her a light push, turning her ahead of him. "Into the forest," he said. "Make haste, my lady."

* * *

Though they had left the hounds of Torbec far behind across open water, he mounted them upon the horse again and did not stop to rest. They rode all night—or if they didn't, Melanthe knew nothing of it. Poor long-suffering Gryngolet lay secured behind the pillion, girded in her linen sock with her hooded head emerging from one end and her feet and tail from the other. Melanthe held onto the high back of the saddle. She kept falling asleep and starting awake as she lost her balance, until he said, "Lay your arms about me."

She slipped her arms around his waist and leaned her head on his back. He held both her hands clasped securely under his. It was cold and uncomfortable, with only his surcoat to pad the hard backplate of his cuirass, but Melanthe must have slept long and deep there, for when next she roused, the slant of the ground had steepened, and dawn light filtered black into gray around them.

The forest itself was so dark and thick that it seemed the horse was plowing through massive brambles and hollies without a path or sign of passage. And yet, none of the thorns pricked them, or even caught her cloak. The destrier stepped steadily ahead, turning often, making into dark caverns of winter foliage like tunnels, finding easy degrees up a cliff where icicles hung down from rocks directly over their heads. The horse labored, blowing puffs of steam, its iron shoes ringing sometimes on hard stone and other times thudding on moss. The sound of the wind in the branches overhead grew stronger as they gained height. Melanthe could look down and see dusts of gritty snow on every tree and evergreen, but no sign of where they had come.

Ahead, the woods seemed brighter, the trees smaller, driven into hunted shapes by the wind. Sharp rocks made huge flat-sided teeth, as if a dragon of the earth bared its fangs. The destrier heaved up over a shelf and passed between two huge masses of slate, the gray slabs angling down to the ground like a great V-shaped gate.

The sound of the wind suddenly dimmed. Hawk's iron shoes echoed in the defile. They emerged into a little dark snow-spattered wood hidden in the cleft. Beside a mountain tarn, purplish black and still beneath a clear sheen of ice, Sir Ruck halted the blowing horse at last.

"We will letten the horse rest and drink," he said, helping her down. "Are ye thirsty?"