“Looking for you,” hissed the boy. He’d meant it to be a whisper, but it had come out as an angry shrillness instead. He forced his voice quieter. “And the others,” he added with a touch more caution, and a touch less indigence.
Fear was underlying his sudden anger, he realised. It had been frightening to wake alone like that. As soon as he’d woken up beside the ashy fire, as soon as he’d gone creeping after strange voices in the dark, the boy had been afraid that perhaps–just perhaps–he had been abandoned after all. Or perhaps his companions had been killed by enemies. Or any number of other things might have happened. His whole life had been lived under the temper of a drunk and violent father, never quite knowing when the next blow would fall. Alone. Throughout it all. Now, he had found in Caewen and her talking horse something more like a family than he had ever known.
It had been awful to think he might lose that.
But if Fleat was here, patrolling, then the others must not be far off. The relief built and pounded against his head, like hot water breaking through an internal barrier of ice.
“Well, I do not gather how you found us,” said Fleat, doing a better job of whispering, “but you needs to keep down and be as still as a tasty-some doormouse. Your sword-lass, Caewen, and your other big-toothy creature are around on the far side of the glen, watching. They cannots be going and fighting it up with a whole flock of armed men. Cans they? Now, be still with you. Be quiet.”
The boy nodded rather than answering out loud. He returned his attention to the soldiers, and said, in as low a voice as he could manage. “I think that one to the right, Crue, I think he’s going to challenge his soldier-master or something? Is that how men in the Sorthelands do things? Kill the man ahead of them?”
“You could hear all that from way over here?”
“Yes.” The boy was puzzled. “Why?”
“I thought you were deaf in one ear, and that aside, no child of mortal-kind should be able to hear so well at such a distance.” Fleat tilted his head and considered the boy with a long, curious stare. “Your sword-lass worked a spell that saved you from the dart-poison, but I wonder if the poison has done odd things to you besides? No one and nothing is meant to survive hobbe-shot. Don’t rightly know what it might do to you, if you live through it. Odd things indeed.”
But before Fleat could conjecture any more, one of the sour, narrow-faced soldiers stood with a start and said, “There’s someone coming. Look sharp.”
The boy realised a moment later that he could hear the same noises, though it was coming from a distance, and across the far side of the fire. It was a soft clipping of the ground, like hooves on moss or leaves, and other noises too–he would have said they were marching feet except that they seemed too heavy, and carried an odd cadence, almost a loping or half-stumbling sort of pad. Then as he wondered what could possibly be coming up the hill on the other side of the bonfire, a big, looming shape appeared all-at-once from the darkness. It strutted into the firelight, followed by a dozen or more other figures that were more hulking than looming. The first shape resolved into a man in grey-and-gilt armour riding a large deer. The boy had heard that the nobility of the Sorthelands preferred riding-deer to horses, an affectation of their class, everyone said. This man looked every inch the cruel, haughty nobleman. His face was very drawn and very grey. Even the stubble on his cheeks and chin–which was inexpertly shaved and growing back patchily–did nothing to soften the harsh lines that ran from either side of his nose to mark out a rather puckered mouth. His eyes were watery, close to colourless, and his brows were barely in existence, giving the curve above his eyes a fleshy, eyebrowless, skull-like look. He had an elaborate helm tucked under an arm rather than on his head, and his hunched shoulders and cold, dead glare gave the strong feeling of a man who did not want to be riding about from place-to-place in the chill air and the drizzly night.
His trailing retinue were another thing entirely. Or rather, they were other things. The boy now caught a whiff: something like wet dog, though perhaps a note more unpleasant. The trailing line of creatures looked as if they would be home nowhere but in darkness: their eyes were cat-eyes, their noses were broad snouts for snuffling. They were not mankind-folk at all, but boggarts and not the small bogle-creatures that sometimes harassed travellers in the woods near Wurmgloath, with their rude copper-headed spears and small flint knives. No. These were proper, savage fighting-boggarts: taller than any of the men, thickly furred with pelts as smooth as an otter’s, broad across the shoulders and armoured in strange mantles that seemed to be woven from leather strips and studded with carved bone. Every one of them was hairy, cat-eyed and sharp-toothed, with long, wolfish muzzles. None of this was the strangest thing about them though. Like all boggart-kind–be it a creature a big as a bughulk or as small as a bogle–their legs were like animal legs: formed backwards to the way a person’s legs worked. They looked like dogs or even perhaps bears, but walking upright on hind feet that ended in clawed paw-things.
The boy felt an involuntary shiver go through him.
“Scarle and boggarty-things,” whispered the owl-child, blinking. “A whole troop of them.”