Gabriel King by The Wild Road

Author:The Wild Road
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-12-03T18:56:31+00:00

The bracken was hard work. But after a mile or so it gave way to beechwoods, a little beaten path, and rather easier going.

By then, though his pads were numb and he was already tired, Tag had begun to enjoy himself. The moon was low. The path ran here and there across little empty ditches and exposed root systems. There was no shelter. In the tunnel between the tall trees, the snow had been too powdery to cover; instead, a light salting picked out the line of a gnarled stone here, a broken branch there. Tag trotted and loped; stopped to listen, one paw raised; told himself, “Better be off!” and fled across the view, quick, silent, barely visible, until the edge of the wood brought him up short, and he was looking straight down into the valley.

Everything was laid out so clearly for him!

A mesh of steep-sided little lanes each with its handful of houses. Gardens, asymmetric and overgrown. Spinneys thick with dog rose and rhododendron. A tall gray building with an ivy-covered tower at one end. If Ragnar was down there, he could be found. Everything was so close that Tag could hear the ducks, grumbling sleepily from the pond. He stood—haunches down, front legs straight, every nerve alert—on a fallen tree and watched. A minute. Two minutes. Nothing was moving. There was no danger. Thirty seconds more, and he would go down there.

But he never did.

As he launched himself off the damp black trunk of the dead beech, he heard his name called.

“Tag.”

“Ragnar! Are you here?”

Nothing.

“Where are you?”

“Tag,” said the voice again.

There was a laugh.

Just out of sight, something moved quietly between two trees. Tag looked around puzzledly. “Majicou? Who’s there?”

“Tag.”

It was a kind of whisper.

This time he heard it move—whatever it was. It made the noises you would expect of a large animal trying to shift its position silently in thick cover: a rustle, a furtive scrape. Tag shivered. The moon was down. Even so it was easy to see that the woods were empty. Beeches are cold, elegant trees, and nothing grows beneath them. The ground rose away, open and scoured, limned here and mere with dusty snow. There were only roots and stones to see. There was no cover in the woods. There never had been.

“Who are you?” he said.

Scrape.

“I’m you.”

There was a hot, fetid smell.

“I’m—”

Something huge, stalking something small: a terrible incongruity. Something stalking from an undergrowth that wasn’t there—

Scrape.

Behind me! thought Tag. He whirled around.

Nothing.

“Tag.” Scrape. Did he see it? Did it allow him to see it?

He was never sure. A twist of light—of less than light—fell on something as it poured itself around the tangled roots toward him. A smell of ammonia and rotten meat. It was almost as if he were watching it stalk someone else. He wanted to warn them, but he couldn’t speak. Panic raced up through him, and he went off like a rabbit in the night—“Tag”—a flickering white blur making desperate—“Tag”—figure eights around the bases of

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