The Pilgrims

52

Their first real trouble came at a place where the road split through wilder-looking woodlands to either side. Two women dressed as Nightmare cultists were tied up and sitting by a roadblock, while four soldiers in unfamiliar colours inspected their packs. Not knowing if he’d been seen, Eric ducked off road into the flanking woods, Case just behind him and still invisible.

‘From now on, we stick to the old arrangement,’ said Case. ‘That was close.’ Earlier, Case had walked twenty metres or so ahead, invisible, scouting for trouble, and they had cut a wide line through the trees around the soldiers. As they would now.

But it became clear this scrub was harsher than the woodlands they’d slept in a short way back. Swarms of insects sometimes flew in angry bursts about their feet. The trees had an unhealthy, skeletal look, many without leaves or greenery, just long hard branches like jutting bones. Every so often the branches scraped at them hard enough to break skin, leaving stinging red slits for their sweat to trickle into. Blocks of such trees and clumps of impassable stone outcrops soon forced them a fair way wider from the road than they’d intended. ‘Don’t lose track of where it was,’ said Case. ‘We should head back, right back the way we came and chance the roadblock. Worse comes to worst, we can spare four bullets for those guards. Maybe rescue the damsels into the bargain.’

Eric looked behind them, not entirely sure he’d be able to find their exact way back even if he’d wanted to. ‘Roadblocks are not our friend, Case. There’s a reason Anfen and the others went to great trouble to avoid soldiers. We’ll do the same.’

Not long after, the feeling of becoming lost gradually bloomed to suppressed panic, as steadily as their very footsteps led them deeper into nowhere. The sky was completely cloudless, offering no hint which way they travelled. Threads of magic like creeping green mist shimmered and coiled shapelessly through the piebald white and grey tree trunks. When the terrain allowed them to cut back towards the road, it wasn’t there; it had presumably curved further west, away from them. Case had been the one keeping track of which way the compass pointed, but without the road he’d lost track. ‘A little further,’ Eric said hopefully, not even believing himself any more.

The sound of running water ahead soon told the story: the road, if it was in this direction at all, was beyond a river they weren’t going to get across without drenching their supplies, assuming they didn’t also drown. Nor, by now, was the way they’d come any more discernible than the way ahead. ‘This is just fantastic,’ Eric muttered. ‘Blair Witch here we come.’

Case removed the charm. Eric thought: If he whines, I swear, I’ll break his nose … All Case said was, ‘Good place to stop for lunch, I reckon.’

They did just that, finding a place among the dry dead leaves to sit where those angry insects wouldn’t hover about them. The roadside store’s bread was still fresh enough, its middle soft and flavoured with something sweet. They munched the last of it in appreciative silence. The water’s sloshing and burbling was the only sound, inviting a moment’s peace.

‘If Kiown wants to follow us through this scrub, he’s welcome to,’ said Case, looking around at the tall bare trees, which seemed to stare right back. ‘We’d best follow the river along until we find a bridge, but the scrub looks pretty thick both ways. We’re in a mess, my friend.’

Suddenly, Eric seemed to see the ground they were sitting on for the first time. ‘Oh shit. Case. Look.’ A little beyond their feet were just a few of those distinctive spiked tracks. Had they sat down to eat a bit to the left, they’d have seen straight away the ground there was covered, absolutely covered in them.

Case stood up quickly, knocking the backpack off his lap and spilling out some of their supplies. The woods’ quiet seemed to close in like huge suffocating hands. Not a bird call, not a wind to shake the bone-dry leaves. Yet the quiet spoke: You are alone.

‘They’re all over the place,’ Case said, examining the compacted dirt shouldering the river. ‘Even right down the banks there. They must be good climbers. Christ! Look, Eric, some of these tracks are big. Your leg’d sink down into em!’

‘Case, I hate to say it, but I think we’re in very deep shit all of a sudden.’

‘Maybe, maybe not, just stay calm. No telling when these things passed through here. Could’ve been weeks ago.’

‘Could have been an hour ago. I have a feeling we’d better get the hell out of these woods before night falls.’

They went as far back the way they’d come as memory allowed, but it didn’t allow much; the sameness of the woods meant the river was their only reference point. Beneath their feet, often partly hidden by the brittle grass, the ground was still covered in those tracks, sometimes thick clusters of them intertwining, sometimes just a few small holes widely scattered.

Each loud footstep crunching on the dry forest floor ticked off the time till nightfall and their deaths. Long stretches of ground showed no signs of the spiked tracks, which looked for all the world like someone had hammered stakes of varying thickness deep into the surface then removed them. Often as not, the smaller tracks led to groundman holes, which were suddenly everywhere in the forest floor. These were larger than they’d seen, almost as though they’d been built to allow large creatures easy passage …

The last of the daylight had almost faded completely when Case’s feet tripped up on a square grid of sticks stuck together and sent it skidding across the forest floor. It had been covering a groundman hole like a manhole cover. ‘No tracks,’ Eric said, crouching low and examining the surrounding turf. ‘I think we’ve found lodgings. How these sticks keep the monsters away I’d like to know.’

‘Don’t know, maybe it messes with their ability to see it? But this is smaller than the other holes too. We’ll be lucky to fit.’ Case crawled in first, pushing his backpack ahead of him down a J-curved bend flattening out a few metres down. Eric went backwards, carefully dragging the grid-stick cover back across. Tiny lightstones gleamed like eyes in the walls behind them, where the tunnel widened a little, curving around left and out of sight. It was the safest either of them had felt since stopping for lunch by the river.

‘Why do these little people make their tunnels big enough for us to get through, anyway?’ Case whispered.

‘I think they used to be friends with humans when they built a lot of them. Don’t know when it all changed, but they hate us now.’

‘Who gets first watch?’ said Case, yawning.

‘I’ll take it. Too nervous to sleep.’

‘Fine by me. I’ll be out in five minutes; not the worst place I ever slept, either.’ Case tossed him the charm, then nestled into the curves of the tunnel’s floor as though into a comfortable bed, hat down over his eyes, backpack as a pillow.

With the very last of the daylight, Eric peered closely at the charm necklace. There was a little swarm of activity in the air around it, much of it moving patterns like bubbles of clear glass. Around one of its silver beads the magic swirled in a slow, small orbit. He’d been going to put the charm on, but it suddenly felt like he was clutching something very much alive. He put it in his pocket and waited.

The hole’s opening made a disc of night sky faint as starlight, cutting across the rough lattice of its makeshift lid. He jumped at every little sound he heard or imagined out among the trees. His imagination was all too willing to recreate the hunters’ hall from which Lalie had been rescued. The woods were quieter than it seemed they should be — the occasional breeze made the brittle tree branches creak, but if there was any wildlife, small or large, it moved with complete stealth.

Until, that was, he’d nearly fallen asleep. He heard something like wood being bent until it begins to break — creak, creak, creak — and there was no mistaking it for the work of the wind. He crawled so close to the stick-grid its poking fibres tickled his nose, trying to judge the sound’s direction. There was so little to see: trees hunched up in belligerent skeletal shapes.

Except — there! One of them moved, stalking across the patch of sky behind it. It was nearly double a man’s height, with lean limbs covered in spikes, some curved, some straight. Its outline was all he could see. A head, if that’s what it was, sported a large jagged mane, spiked in the many-pointed shape of a roughly drawn star, each point needle thin.

The thing out there stood still for a time, only the curling points along its body in motion like fast restless fingers. Then it moved with an awkward stiff gait and blended, hidden amongst the silhouettes of trees. For a time silence fell, then came more creaking noises, closer to the hole’s entrance. There was the impact of something heavy pressing down its feet, very close, just overhead, but he couldn’t see it.

Had it come lured by their human scent, their footprints? Eric crawled backwards through the tunnel, his whole body shaking. The tiniest sound of his knees and hands sliding across the stone floor seemed hugely magnified. He shook Case’s shoulder. Case murmured, annoyed to be woken. ‘What is it?’

‘Shhh! Don’t make a fucking sound. Let’s move. They’re up there above us, right now. Go.’

Case cocked his head, listening, and heard it close by: creak, creak … He looked uneasily at the tunnel’s curve behind them. ‘You sure?’

‘Yes I’m sure for fuck’s sake: go!’ Case hustled down the tunnel on hands and knees, around its curve to where it ran deeper and wider, so that they no longer needed to stoop their heads. Case turned to speak, and in fact he was about to say this: Hold on a minute, if this tunnel is supposed to keep those monsters out, maybe there’s a chance of those traps the gang kept talking about, when, with a crumbling sound, the ground seemed to drop out beneath them. They both fell for just a heartbeat, till they were lodged in the floor waist deep and painfully winded.

When Eric could speak again, he muttered: ‘Groundmen traps. Beautiful.’

‘I’m thinking we should have chanced those roadblocks,’ said Case.

Eric shut his eyes and breathed deeply. ‘I am going to agree with you on that, for the first and final time. OK? Now please. Drop it. Please.’

‘Just saying, is all.’

I am probably going to kill him, sooner or later, Eric thought. There wasn’t much to do but wait out the slow hours.