Douglas Niles - Prophet of Moonshae

Gwyeth had to agree that the priest spoke the truth, though his men chopped their way into the forest with agonizing sluggishness.

Two hours passed before a drenched Backar trudged back to the knight, who had dismounted and paced beneath a few stunted cedars that grew beside the trail.

"Sir Gwyeth, we can see light through the trees now. It would appear that we near the end," reported the obviously fatigued guardsman.

"Redouble your efforts, then!" snapped the knight. "We've wasted more than enough time here already!"

"Aye, my lord." The man headed back to the work party as Gwyeth and the cleric mounted, urging their horses forward. They waited with growing irritation as yet another half an hour passed before the men finally broke through.

The knight saw gray daylight at the end of a tunnel of verdant darkness, and though he had to duck his head beneath the trailing vines overhead, he spurred his steed forward in his eagerness to press on. The column of men fell in behind him, and in another minute, he had passed through the barrier, which proved to be no more than a hundred feet thick, though in width it was sufficient to seal off the valley.

"Press on! We'll make up the time lost. Double march!" He turned to command his men to follow and practically fell off his horse in astonishment. The men of the column gasped and shouted in consternation at the same time.

The forest had disappeared! Even as the footmen worked their way through the narrow tunnel, the tangled shrubbery blinked away. Making no sound, leaving no sign of its previous presence, everything from the greatest trees to the smallest thornbushes simply vanished, as if it had never been there at all.

"By the gods, man! What deviltry is this?" demanded the knight, pointing for the cleric's benefit.

Wentfeld looked momentarily nonplussed as he studied the transformation, but then the priest turned and squinted around the valley ahead of them. He saw no one-only a small ground squirrel that scampered out of the path of the approaching humans.

"It's not only sorcery, as I told you," Pryat Wentfeld explained, "but someone controls it-someone within our sight, for the dispelling was cast as it occurred."

"Find the varlet!" shouted Gwyeth, drawing and waving his sword over his head. "Form a skirmish line. Take him alive!" he shouted at his men.

The footmen drew their swords, except for the two dozen with crossbows, who held back from the others and covered their advance. Next the footmen moved into a well-spaced line across the narrow valley and partway up the steep and rocky sides. The formation slowed their progress considerably, but no person could have remained concealed in the path of the diligent search. Gradually they probed and prodded, combing the valley without success.

"He may well be gone already," said the cleric. "Or lurking on the heights, above our reach."

Gwyeth looked at the craggy slopes looming above them to either side and realized that Wentfeld spoke the truth. Still, having ordered his men into the search, he would not embarrass himself by revoking the order. Instead, he urged them forward with curses and abuse, trying to hurry them over the rough terrain.

A shout came from the far right of the line, and he urged his charger there at a gallop, hoping to find some sorcerous wretch in the grip of his men. Instead, he saw that the cry had come from a clumsy oaf who had scrambled too far up the steep wall in his search. He had fallen into a clump of rocks and now lay there moaning, with his leg jutting to the side at an unnatural angle.

"Fool!" roared Gwyeth, incensed at the further delay. "I am surrounded by idiots!"

Pryat Wentfeld went to the man and cast a healing spell, which straightened the broken leg enough that it could repair itself properly.

"It will be too weak for him to walk," the priest explained when he returned to Gwyeth. "And it would be premature to expend my healing magic for this accident."

Reluctantly Gwyeth agreed and ordered two men, both of whom accepted the assignment with obvious relief, to carry the injured man back to the cantrev. Already, he knew, it was well into the afternoon, and yet they had progressed only a quarter of the way up to the Moonwell.

"Now, move!" he bellowed, spurring his horse into a trot that would easily outdistance the trudging footmen. "Pick up your feet and march!" Wentfeld, the only other horseman, followed his brisk pace.

Several of the veterans among the men-at-arms added their own curses to the nobleman's orders, and slowly the column picked up speed, worming along the trail, the footmen marching with collars raised against the chill and wet. Many of the Ffolkmen cast headlong glances back at the place where the forest had stood. Those who had chopped their way through the tangle looked at the blisters on their hands where they had grasped axes and remembered their keen steel blades hacking into firm and unyielding wood, and they muttered under their breath about unnatural dangers.

For an hour, Gwyeth maintained the brutal pace, reining in when he got too far ahead and exhorting his troops with insults and invective. Finally the cleric drew up beside him and spoke, in a voice that carried to the knight's ears alone.

"My lord, they will be no good to you if they all collapse from exhaustion before we reach the well! We must allow them to rest and then resume at a more humane pace."

It took a supreme effort of Gwyeth's will to suppress his sudden anger toward the priest. After a moment of enforced, cool reflection, however, he realized that the man spoke the truth. In frustration, he looked before him.

The rocky valley curved to the right, and the gray clouds scudded past the granite tors that loomed to either side of the trail. The path here was smooth, albeit narrow. In several places, herdsmen in years past had cleared the brush on either side, and one of these clearings lay a hundred paces ahead, beside the valley's clear, shallow stream.

"We pause for water and a few moments rest!" Gwyeth announced, leading his men to the spot. "Check your weapons, here. Our next march will conclude at the Moonwell!"

Most of the troops flopped to the ground, while some of them knelt beside the brook that ran through the center of the valley. A number of men sat beside a great pile of sticks that had been piled at the edge of the clearing by whatever shepherd had cleared it in the past.

Gwyeth himself dismounted, removing his helmet and gauntlets to stretch and pace. The men-at-arms avoided him as much as possible, which suited the knight well.

A shout of alarm whipped his head around. He heard multiple screams of terror and saw a full score of his men leap to their feet and flee in panic, leaving their weapons on the ground. They were the men who had sat beside the pile of dried sticks.

But now that brush moved! Gwyeth gaped in shock as he saw a stick bend down with liquid suppleness and crawl onto the ground where the men had been sitting. Other sticks, too, slithered across the ground in a distinctive motion.

One man, who had lain flat on the ground with the chance to rest, now screamed and stumbled backward, a whiplike form lashing at his throat. He pulled it free and cast the hissing thing aside, then pitched forward onto the ground, gasping and gagging.

"Adders!" cried one of the men, stumbling as he fled and madly crawling away from the venomous serpents.

"Snakes-from sticks!" shrieked another.

"Cowards! Don't flee them! Fight!" cried Gwyeth, drawing his own sword and stepping to the nearest snake. The viper whipped itself into a menacing coil, hissing, its forked tongue flickering toward the knight, but the great broadsword chopped downward across the center of the coil, instantly slicing the snake into several pieces. The segments twitched and flailed for a moment, then grew still.