About an hour later, they slowed and allowed themselves a bit of rest. Soon enough, it was obvious the pursuing riders were redoubling their pace. They would be boxed in if they stayed where they were. With a weary stretch and a yawn, Caewen got back up on Dapplegrim’s back and helped the boy up after her. She dug around inside her armoured sark and held out the small box, made of yellowed bone. The object inside clunked with a dull heaviness. “Just in case,” she said.
He took it and hid it away carefully inside his woollen jerkin.
They rode all that night and most of the next day. Throughout, they climbed the lower foothills of the same mountains they had passed through not more than a week earlier. In the night-gloom, they could see the red burning fires of boggart watch-camps in the mountains above them. They seemed almost as numerous as the stars shining down through rents in the clouds.
“Tsssch,” hissed the voice of Fetch. “I can feel her eyes on us.”
“Who?” said Caewen, her pitch more hopeful than it had been in a long while.
“The she-boggart. She’s up there. Watching.”
“Oh. I thought maybe you meant–” Some of the resignation returned to her words. “It doesn’t matter I suppose.”
“No,” hissed the shadow. “No. It does not.”
Behind them, lines and lines of faint torches showed the march of the riders had not ceased. Finally, the boy couldn’t contain himself. He felt cheated. “How can they still be following? We’ve been riding for days with hardly a rest. Dapplegrim can run and run, but any normal horse should be dead of exhaustion by now. It’s not fair.”
Caewen shook her head. “No, it’s not fair. They’ll be using magics to give themselves fire and to drive themselves on. No doubt, the horses are being force-fed potions of vigour too: but that sort of charmwork eats away at life. There will be a reckoning. More than one knight and horse will be dead before the week is out. Of the others, sickness and weariness will come on them. They’re selling away their life, just to chase us a little faster.
“Really, its quite the price,” said Dapplegrim. “I suppose we ought to feel honoured. Hur.”
Morning began to gleam in the clouds, and add fingers of grey-amber-gold to faraway eastward clouds.