They stood together at the mouth of the ivy-tunnels. The ceiling was looped by vines like thick old grey muscle. A few stabs of light shot into the space, but it was otherwise dark.
“Shall we light torches, leastways?” asked Fleat.
“No. That would draw boggarts and scarle to us. And the light of a torch is not enough to chase off even the smallest bogle. We’ll rely on stealth, and fight only if cornered.” Caewen rolled her shoulders, loosening the muscles of her fighting arm. “There’s no point standing about. It’ll be much the worse if night descends while we are in the tangles.”
Dapplegrim looked as if he still wanted to argue but was biting his words. Caewen went first into the green-grey shadows, and Dapplegrim walked steadily after her. Aneself and Fleat followed behind walking side-by-side and looking around. Fleat took out the small bow he carried with him and notched an arrow. The stones of great arches, pillars and broken walls passed them by, all of them nearly hidden by ivy so old and so thick that the vines were more like the twisted, stretched trunks of small trees. The air was musty, and the ground slippery with wet leaf-mould and puddles. Soon leaden mud was stuck to all their feet, half-holding them to the earth as they walked.
“If you see a boggart or bogle, don’t look it in the eyes,” whispered Fleat out of the side of his mouth.
“Why?” said the boy. He actually wasn’t very sure about the difference between boggart and bogle. The people of his village had always used the terms one-for-the-other… though he felt a bit embarrassed about admitting that. He’d wanted to say something though, so he asked about the eyes instead.
“Why?” replied Fleat. “Why? Don’t look in their eyes, else they’ll put the bogle-gloor on you. Bogles are the worst for it, but even a big fighting boggart can put on a good gloor if he’s of a mind to. The gaze will transfix a person, and you can’t do nothing but stare into their big gloory red eyes, and all the while their stab-i’-the-back friends will be creeping up behind you. So, thing is, just don’t go looking in their eyes.”
“I’ll remember that,” said the boy. And after a pause. “I certainly shan’t forget it. That’s for sure.” Suddenly every shape and shadow looked like a boggart-face, leering and readying itself to stare with transfixing red eyes or snap its sharp teeth.
The ivy-tunnels grew darker and closer until they wouldn’t have known it was daylight if they hadn’t just walked out of the sun’s warmth. A hundred scrawny holes and paths led off in all directions, but Caewen led them on by a mostly straight path. Her sword shed a faint shimmer of its own pallid light, just a touch brighter than the light through the leaves. After about a half hour of walking they came to a place that had probably once been a sort of square. There were smooth stone flags on the ground here and breaks in the otherwise endless crawl of ivy above. A big slant of grey light flooded the space.
“Now we’ve a problem,” said Caewen, eyeing the far side of the square. At least half a dozen tunnels burrowed away through the twisted masses of glossy leaves. “Any one of those could go through the green-growth, or none of them? Maybe we took a wrong turn some way back?”
As she spoke, a noise rose on the air. It made the leaves all seem to quiver: a distant, lingering howl–too bestial to be a person, too full of vocal nuances to be any wolf or other hunting creature.
“Boggarts,” said Dapplegrim, not entirely necessarily. “They’ve scented us. That’s a hunter’s call.”
Caewen’s voice was steeled. “No time then. Forward.”
They started to run. It was still too tangled and the stone overhangs and ivy-tangles were too treacherous to risk getting on Dapplegrim’s back. Instead, Caewen ran first and then Fleat and the boy followed. Dapplegrim dropped to the rear and kept glancing over his shoulder, snorting. The howls grew louder and more frequent as they ran, and they grew nearer and nearer too.
Without warning, the group broke into another wide space, though the roof of leaves was thicker here. A movement out on the edge of vision rustled itself out from a wall of ivy and became a Boggart. And another followed it. And another. All of them were snarling and growling. Their predatory faces were full of blind hunger and though their eyes flashed red, they did not seem to have any of Fleat’s bogle-gloor to use. These were not sneak-murderers. They were armed with spears and iron axes and wore armour made of braided leather, hung with trinkets and trophies of past battles. They were after blood, quick and swift and violent.
The boggarts rushed, and Caewen met them with her sword flashing and arcing. With three sweeps she put an end to two of the boggarts. The third one fell back, startled by the prey. It lingered a moment, fingering the haft of its spear. But then it made up its mind, and jumped forward. Caewen put her sword through its throat. The creature was bubbling blood through the wound, dying, before it even hit the earth.
“There are others!” yelled Caewen. “I can hear them in the ivy. This way! Quickly.”
Soon there was as sound of footsteps behind them: big, heavy padding feet, making a light thump, thump, as they slapped the ground. It sounded as if they were being chased by a hundred gigantic wolves loping upright.
They turned a corner and for a moment it seemed they were safe. Ahead of them, distant but visible, was an archway of open sunlight. Boggarts were too much creatures of Queen Night. Most of them could not and would not follow into broad daylight. But before the archway could be reached, a mass of boggarts burst out of the foliage ahead and blocked the path. Immediately, out of the mass stepped a huge chieftain of a boggart, nearly twice as tall as the others, with roan-hued fur and red streaks of warpaint up and down his face and chest. He was armed with a great two-handed mattock of war, big enough to put a clean hole through the skull of a bull. Here was some awful boggart-lord out of the mountains, or the ice-hills of the north. When he roared the air shook and his teeth gleamed white against a blood-red tongue. He gave a howl and charged.