David Zindell - The Lightstone

Our next day's journey took us farther into the forest to the west We covered only a few miles, though, because we spent most of me day attempting to elude our pursuers. We walked ourhorses or hours in shallow streams to leave no hoofprints; we walked them in circles around the tops of hills to confound anyone trying to read our tracks. We rode through blackberry thickets with sharp thorns. More than once, we doubled back across our track. But if the sharp pain piercing my head was any sign, ail such tactics failed.

'Whoever is following us,' Master Juwain said, 'is very likely reading more than the tracks that we leave in the mud.'

'Who are these Stonefaces, then?' Maram asked.

'Who knows?' Atara said. 'But if we can't escape them, then we should find a place to face them and kill them with arrows.'

'As you faced them by the stream?' Maram said to her. 'As you killed their leader with your arrow that you couldn't shoot?'

It was his revenge for her mocking his archery skills during the battle with the hill-men. Atara, whose freezing-up at the sight of the gray men still shamed her, looked off at the gray-green shapes of the sumac bushes hiding deeper in the woods.

Then she said, 'I don't understand these Stonefaces. If they are many and we are few, why don't they just attack us and be done with it?'

'Have you never seen a bear-baiting?' Maram asked her. 'The hounds harry the bear and wear it down before it is killed.'

All that day, in the moist woods full of amanita and destroying angels and other poisonous mushrooms, I felt a mailed fist pounding at my head and trying to wear me down. I slept fitfully that night by a stream that gurgled like an opened throat There the others – Atara and Maram – joined me in nightmare. Only Master Juwain seemed shielded against the terrible images that Morjin sent to rob us of sanity and sleep. But even he awoke the next morning with a fever and a fierce headache. As did Maram and Atara. Maram wondered if we had managed to drink some tainted water, perhaps from a stream poisoned by a dead animal who had eaten some of the overly abundant mushrooms. But Master Juwain doubted this possibility. He stood by his horse rubbing his bald head as he told him, 'This is no taint of rotten flesh or the poisoning of plants. No, Brother Maram, I'm afraid your hounds are getting bolder.'

To inspirit Maram, who groaned from fright as much as the fever in him, I said, 'If they are growing bolder, then so must we.'

'What do you intend to do?'

'Ride,' I told him. 'As fast and hard as we can. If the Stonefaces are wearing down our spirits, then at least we can try to wear down their bodies.'

'But, Val,' he said. They're wearing down our spirits and our bodies. Why should we help them?'

'Because,' I said, 'there's nothing else to do. Now let's get the horses ready.'

We rode all that morning across the gently rolling ground of the forest. to places, where the trees grew less densely and the spaces between them were free of undergrowth, we pressed the horses to a fast canter, and twice, to a gallop. They wheezed and sweated at the effort of it, and so did we. It pained me to see the froth building up along Altaru's jaw. However, he made little complaint; he just charged on through the moss-hung trees hour after hour, driving at the earth with his great hooves. Maram's and Master luwain's horses had a harder time of it And Atara's horse was no mount at all. By the end of the afternoon, Tanar was near exhaustion, and it was only Atara's determination and skill that kept him moving.

'I'll have to whip him if you want any more work out of him today,' she said as we paused by a small river to water the horses. She stood by Tanar with a braided leather quirt in her hand. I had heard that the Sarni sometimes whipped their horses bloody, but Atara was obviously reluctant to follow this cruel custom.

'No, please don't,' I said. The horses' flanks were already scratched and bleeding from the blackberry brambles. I looked at Master Juwain, who stood leaning against his horse as if his shaking legs might buckle at any moment. Maram had already buckled. He lay by the riverbank holding a wet cloth against his head and moaning softly. I told him, 'We're all exhausted. We'll make camp and rest here.'

'Bless you, my friend. But, rest? I think I'm too tired to rest My head feels as if your big, fat horse has been stepping on it all day. Please kill me now and save the Stonefaces the trouble.' 'We came far today,' I said. 'It may be that we lost them.'

But my dreams that night told me otherwise. And more than once, Atara's sharp cries startled me out of my sleep. I lay next to her by the little fire for hours listening to Maram's pitiful groaning and to the insects of the night: the katydids and the crickets in the bushes and the whining mosquitoes that came to suck our blood. I couldn't decide whether sleep on sleeplessness drained me more. If this was rest, I thought, we would do better to stumble about the forest and ride all night.

The next morning – I guessed it was the 28th of Ashte – dawned cloudy and cool.

We all had trouble getting on our horses, even Master Juwain who had slept soundly enough when it hadn't been his watch. I remembered my father telling me that on long campaigns, even the doughtiest of warriors will weaken without good food and rest. We had had neither. The day before, we had eaten in the saddle: some moldy battle biscuits and walnuts that had gone rancid. I had been too exhausted to take dinner. Even Maram, when offered a bit ot beer, complained that he had no head for it; he turned down as well the leathery dried antelope that Atara offered him. He had no strength to chew it, he had said, and just wanted to sleep.

None of us had any strength that morning. We had been on the road for most of a month. The journey had worn the flesh off our bodies, and by his own ample standards even Maram was looking gaunt. We were dirty, our clothes torn by thorns and stained with mud. The hard riding of the previous day had reopened the wound in my side; beneath my armor, I felt the dampness of blood. Even so, I wanted to press Altaru to a canter. But the other horses had no heart for anything more than a quick walk. As the day dragged on, they gradually slowed their pace. Sometime after noon – it was hard to measure the hour when we couldn't see the sun – I fell asleep in my saddle. A sudden splashing as Altaru stepped through a stream startled me awake. But after that I found myself frequently drifting off. Once, I swooned altogether and nearly fell to the ground. It was hard to keep Altaru to our course, which was now mostly to the northwest. At each of my lapses in consciousness, I found him turning toward the south as if he might find better browse or water in that direction.

'We're lost, aren't' we?' Maram asked as he looked around at the walls of trees on all sides. 'We're moving in circles.' 'No, not circles,' I reassured him. 'We're still on course.' 'Are you sure? Perhaps Master Juwain should take the lead for a while. He's the only one who can stay awake.'

But Master Juwain had little sense of direction, and even Atara seemed lost. With the sky hidden by the thick canopies of the trees and the even thicker gray clouds, we couldn't see the sun to read east or west And no one except myself had enough woodcraft to read the moss on the elms or the lie of the flowers in the shadows of the birches. I knew well enough how to find our way; all I had to do was to keep from falling asleep.

As we moved off again, I resolved to let the pain in my side spur me to wakefulness.

But very soon my eyes dosed, for how long I couldn't say. When I finally opened them, I saw that Altaru had drifted again toward the south. I sensed in him a fierce desire to move in that direction; it was as if he could smell a mare deeper in the woods, and every muscle in his body trembled to find her. It was only by his instincts, I remembered, that we had escaped from the Black Bog. Perhaps his instincts might now help us escape the Stonefaces; certainly all my stratagems had failed in this. And so, without telling the others what was happening, I let Altaru go where he wished.