Read Online Something Red by Douglas Nicholas - Free Book Online Page B

withes, done beforetime in the long evenings wherever they rested for the night.
    Hob halted the ox and Molly set the brake as they came up to the little group of pilgrims pooled in the way. Hob looked up at Molly and she nodded. He went and knelt by the shrine and said three Ave s and three Paternoster s. He prayed that they would finish the journey unmolested.After a moment Aylwin knelt beside him and bowed his head into his hands, silent for once. Molly remained up on the wagon seat. The other pilgrims were already beginning to stream away into the forest, and Hob got back to his post. They waited for Aylwin, and when he crossed himself at last and rose, leaving a coin at the shrine, Hob clucked to the ox and they moved off with a squealing of axles.
    Hob looked back as he walked. Nemain did not even slow at the shrine, and Jack merely crossed himself as he drew abreast.
    Hob set himself into the rhythm of march. The chatterings of the band of pilgrims ahead, and the scarce-heeded drone of Aylwin’s expositions, became a pleasant background as he swung along through the trees. Now that the fear had gone he was able to enjoy the chill freshness of the air, the play of sunlight through the branches.
    Tomorrow, late in the day, they should come to the inn that was their next destination; it was to be the last protracted stop before they drove south through extensive forestland. There was a faint unease in his heart only because this night they were to camp among the trees. Still, Molly had said there was nothing.
    The day was clear; the threat of snow had abated, though the wind was now picking up and causing the bare branches to rub against one another, a doleful sound.
    Aylwin passed him, flourishing his staff jauntily as he hurried on ahead to find a suitable campsite. The wagons toiled noisily on; every so often they would have to slow to squeeze between twisting ancient tree roots or moss-grown boulders that had narrowed the path. Hob could just see the last few pilgrims ahead, and just hear their chatter, trailing to a murmur.
    T HAT NIGHT THEY CAMPED in a clearing. Five fires, arranged in a loose ring, spat and crackled. Hob lay fully dressed even to his shoes,a wool throw over his sheepskin coat, between one of the fires and the wagons drawn up outside the ring of flame. The women were all within the wagons, at Molly’s invitation, and Jack Brown and some of the younger men were taking turns on watch, walking around at the edge of darkness, where the trees and the black aisles between them began.
    The woodland to the immediate north was royal forest; six knights served it as king’s regarders, and the measuring of the regard or preserve, undertaken each three years, had been done this autumn past. The movement of the knights and their retainers through the woodland had driven the two or three resident outlaw bands to the south, and this stretch between Monastery Mount and Osbert’s Inn was, according to all current reckoning, fairly safe. Nonetheless, Jack’s instinct and experience had led him to organize sentry duty, showing the pilgrims what he wanted, mostly by gesture and example, but occasionally with a translation by Hob or Nemain of his thick rusty speech.
    Now Hob watched Jack move about the rim of the camp, occasionally stepping out of sight behind a tree that his eyes might adjust to the shadows, the better to see any who approached. Hob’s belly was full and he was tired from the day’s march. He listened idly to the pilgrims’ chatter, but much of it was gossip from the tanners’ community at Carlisle, difficult to follow if one did not know those involved: the conversation ranged over advancements and declines of fortune, squabbles and maneuvering for position within the guild, modifications of technique planned or accomplished.
    Suddenly he was aware that the fires were lower, and that Jack sat nearby—how had that happened? Jack Brown’s ungloved hands were folded on the butt of the war