John Connolly - The Book Of Lost Things

So the Crooked Man watched as David and Roland passed by, Scylla pausing for a second before the fallen tree, just as the scout had guessed that she would, and then jumping it with a single leap before taking the rider and the boy toward the road beyond. Then the Crooked Man descended into the briars and thorns, and was gone.

DAVID AND ROLAND encountered no one on the road that morning. It still surprised David that so few should walk upon it. After all, the road was well-kept, and it seemed to him that others must use it to get from here to there.

“Why is it so quiet?” he asked. “Why are there no people?”

“Men and women fear to travel, for this world has grown passing strange,” said Roland. “You saw what was left of those men yesterday, and I have told you of the sleeping woman and the enchantress who binds her. There have always been dangers in these lands, and life has never been easy, but now there are new threats and no one can tell where they have come from. Even the king is uncertain, if the stories from his court are true. They say his time is almost done.”

Roland raised his right hand and pointed to the northeast. “There is a settlement beyond those hills, and there we will spend our last night before we reach the castle. Perhaps we will learn more from those who live there of the woman and of what fate befell my companion.”

After another hour had passed, they came upon a party of men emerging from the woods. The men carried dead rabbits and voles tied to sticks. They were armed with sharpened staffs and short, crude swords. When they saw the horse approaching, they raised their weapons in warning.

“Who are you?” called one. “Come no closer until you have identified yourselves.”

Roland reined Scylla in while they were still out of reach of the men’s staffs.

“I am Roland. This is my squire, David. We are heading for the village, in the hope that we may find food and rest there.”

The man who had spoken lowered his sword. “Rest you may find,” he said, “but little food.”

He raised one of the sticks of dead animals. “The fields and forests are almost bare of life. This is all we have for two days of hunting, and we lost a man for it.”

“Lost him how?” asked Roland.

“He was bringing up the rear. We heard him cry out, but when we went back his body was gone.”

“You saw no trace of what took him?” asked Roland.

“None. The earth was disturbed where he had stood, as though some creature had burst through from below, but above there was only blood and some filthy stuff that did not come from any animal we know. He was not the first to die in such a way, for we have lost others, but we have yet to see the thing responsible. Now we venture out only in numbers, and we wait, for most believe that it will soon attack us in our beds.”

Roland looked back down the road, in the direction from which he and David had come.

“We saw the remains of soldiers, about half a day’s ride from here,” said Roland. “From their insignia, it appears that they were the king’s men. They had no luck against this Beast, and they were well-trained and well-armed. Unless your fortifications are high and strong, you might be advised to leave your homes until the threat has passed.”

The man shook his head. “We have farms, livestock. We live where our fathers lived, and their fathers too. We will not abandon all that we have worked so hard to build.”

Roland said nothing more, but David could almost hear what he was thinking: Then you will die.

David and Roland rode alongside the men, talking with them and sharing what was left of the alcohol in Roland’s flask. The men were grateful for the kindness, and in return they confirmed the changes in the land and the presence of new creatures in the forests and fields, all of them hostile and hungry. They spoke too of the wolves, who had become ever more daring of late. The hunters had trapped and killed one during their time in the woods: a Loup, an interloper from far away. Its fur was a perfect white, and it wore breeches made from the skin of a seal. Before it died it told them that it had traveled from the distant north, and others were coming who would avenge its death at their hands. It was as the Woodsman had told David: the wolves wanted the kingdom for themselves, and they were assembling an army with which to take it over.

As they rounded a bend in the road, the settlement was revealed to them. It was surrounded by clear space upon which cattle and sheep grazed. A wall of tree trunks had been built around it, the tops sharpened to white points, and elevated platforms behind allowed men to watch all the approaches. Thin streams of smoke were rising from the houses within, and the spire of another church was visible above the top of the wall. Roland did not look pleased to see it.

“Here, perhaps, they still practice the new religion,” he said to David softly. “For the sake of peace, I will not trouble them with my views.”

A cry went up from within the walls as they drew closer to the village, and the gates were opened to admit them. Children gathered to greet their fathers, and women arrived to kiss sons and husbands. They stared curiously at Roland and David, but before anyone had a chance to question them, a woman began wailing and crying, unable to find the one whom she sought among the hunters. She was young and very pretty, and in between her sobs she called a name over and over again: “Ethan! Ethan!”

The leader of the hunters, whose name was Fletcher, approached David and Roland. His wife hovered nearby, grateful that her husband had returned safely.

“Ethan was the man that we lost along the way,” he said. “They were to have been married. Now, she does not even have a grave at which to mourn him.”

The other women gathered around the weeping girl, trying to console her. They brought her to one of the little houses nearby, and the door closed behind them.

“Come,” said Fletcher. “I have a stable behind my house. You may sleep there, if you wish, and I will feed you from my table for tonight. After that, I will have little enough to feed my own family, and you must ride on.”

Roland and David thanked him and followed him through the narrow streets until they came to a wooden cottage, its walls painted white. Fletcher showed them to the stable and pointed out where they could find water, and fresh straw and a few stale oats for Scylla. Roland removed Scylla’s saddle and made sure that she was comfortable before he and David washed themselves in a trough. Their clothes smelled, and although Roland had other garments that he could wear, David had none. When she heard this, Fletcher’s wife brought David some of her son’s old clothes, for he was now seventeen and had a wife and son of his own. Feeling much better than he had in a long time, David went with Roland to Fletcher’s house, where the table was laid and Fletcher and his family were waiting for them. Fletcher’s son looked a lot like his father, for he also had long red hair, although his beard was not as thick and lacked the gray that marked the older man’s. His wife was small and dark, and said little, all of her attention fixed on the baby in her arms. Fletcher had two more children, both girls. They were younger than David, although not by much, and they cast sly glances at him and giggled softly.

Once Roland and David were seated, Fletcher shut his eyes, bent his head, and gave thanks for the food—David noticed that Roland neither closed his eyes nor prayed—before inviting all at the table to eat.

The conversation drifted from village matters to the hunting trip and the disappearance of Ethan, before finally reaching Roland and David, and the purpose of their journey.