The scrape of its footfall rang out like a scream in the silence. He spun, throwing up the spear to protect himself, but her body bore him to the ground and the spear shattered under the force of her swiping claw. She was immense. He jabbed his knee up into her belly. That beaked head slewed around to get a better look at him. He clawed desperately at her throat, but each time he closed his hand, each time he scrabbled for purchase at her neck as he tried to squirm away out from under her, her feathers cut him. Blood streamed from his hands from a score of fine incisions. She reared back her head and struck.

He jerked sideways, but not far enough. Pain ripped through his chest and his vision hazed. His bleeding hands flexed impotently as they sought any kind of weapon to grip, but their feeble grasp closed on nothing, only air, and even that weak movement sent waves of pain flooding through his body until he could neither think nor move. He could not even see. Agony blinded him. He could only wait for the deathblow. He could only wait.

A flash of heat and fire exploded around him. Had the griffin struck again? Was this the pain of dying? Or was he already dead, ascending through the spheres toward the cold bright eternity of the Chamber of Light?

J don't want to die. I'm not ready.

Pain, and this billowing heat that washed over him in unending waves, tore away his thoughts.

The shadow of the griffin moved off him. The sun's blazing light scalded his face and made him blink.

Liath stood over him, golden-brown hair fallen all untidy over her shoulders. It needed combing. He loved to comb her hair. That steady stroke in the lush thickness of her hair was one of the few things that could soothe the restlessness that ate at him.

'Pray God I am not too late," the vision of Liath said, although she could not possibly be kneeling beside him. She had abandoned him four years ago, left him and the child without a word. He had a lot of things to say to her, hoarded up over the months, some of them festering and rancid and others painful and sweet.

An actual physical body blocked the stabbing of light that tormented him. A touch brushed his brow.

'Sanglant, I pray you, answer me if you can."

Her lips touched his parted mouth. It was like water to a parched man, giving him strength for the fight ahead.

Never let it be said that he did not fight until his last breath.

'You will never kill me," he said to Bloodheart. Some days, those were the only words he remembered how to say.

'He lives." A fire burned behind her, or perhaps it was the setting sun streaming golden light across grass troubled by the wind. A knife flashed, but he could not struggle against the killing blow. He was paralyzed, staring at the knife in her hand. She cut away his tunic from his torso and bared his flesh to the air. So much color leached from her face that she looked gray when she saw what lay beneath the cloth.

'I was too slow," she said. "Too late."

A few solitary raindrops splashed on his cheek, although he saw no clouds in the darkening expanse above. Nearby, a griffin shrieked its chilling call.

'Beware," he whispered, trying to warn his benefactor, who had taken Liath's shape. Pain made him hallucinate. "The griffin stalks. Her feathers..."

'Hush," she said. "Rest."

'Griffin feathers cut the threads of magic."

She sat back, surprised, her expression an odd combination of fear and startled, joyous revelation.

'Griffin feathers cut the threads of magic!" she repeated. Blue fire sparked in her eyes, the wink of fire caught and contained in her deepest heart. That spark blinded him, sent him falling and spinning although he lay supine on the ground.

He has wings, or must have, because he rises above the earth and above his body, above the grass like a dragon launching itself into flight, a little slowly, somewhat ponderous, but determined and powerful. He sees a man lying on the ground, his torso horribly slashed. His dragon's vision is so keen that he can actually see the heart beating in that torn cavity, pulsing and darkly red. Blood spills over shoulder and arm, staining the cloth of his tunic, staining the grass and the soil. A beautiful woman kneels beside the body. Although she looks exactly as Liath looked three years before, she must be a witch able to conceal herself in the form of another. Yet she speaks with Liath's voice and moves with Liath's nervous grace and stares up defiantly as an owl glides into view and comes to rest a body's length from the two humans.

Behind, griffins prowl like sentries, circling at a distance just beyond a scorching ring of fire now burning down to ash. The griffins are such magnificent creatures that his attention wanders away from the woman and man and the peculiar circle of dying flame. The larger griffin is darker in color, and its wing feathers boast the gleam of good iron. The other has a more silver cast and a smaller stature, but its feathers look just as wickedly sharp. The feathers glint where the light of the setting sun catches in them. As the silver one turns to pace back toward the sunning stone, it flexes its wings and several loose feathers shake free as a bird might molt. They do not precisely drift on the wind toward the ground as would a common bird feather, but neither are they as heavy as iron, and so fall straight down as would a sword or knife. A living griffin would provide an endless although not plentiful supply of its feathers while a dead one provides one set of feathers only. One could husband griffins as a farmer husbands geese, he supposes as he, too, drifts on the wind, thoughts shredding into insubstantial bits.

"I need help," says the woman to the owl, although it is strange to think of a person talking to an owl, who is after all only a dumb animal. "I have no power against such a wound. I am helpless. I pray you, aid me now, if you can."

A hand jostled him. The pain jolted him into awareness, and for a moment he was sorry that he was looking out of his own eyes up at the woman he loved most in the whole world.

'Liath?" he whispered.

Tears streaked her face. "My love," she said.

Pain swallowed him, and the world went away.

XVI TH H THREA:.

Al the end of the second day's journey their party took shelter with a minor lordling on a minor estate that barely had room for their entire company to sleep in the hall and stables. Lord Arno greeted them by name; the clerics had stopped this way traveling north toward Herford. Although the road north and a rutted track leading west remained clear, a barricade made up of handcarts, a wagon, and felled logs had been thrown up across the road where it continued southward. The barrier was manned by a dozen field hands armed with staffs sharpened to a point, a single metal-tipped spear, shovels, and scythes.

Over a meager supper of tart cider, roasted chicken, and spring greens, the lady of the house took it upon herself to warn them.

'Go not down the southern road, Your Excellencies." She looked exhausted, face pale, eyes dark with strain, and she rested trembling hands on her pregnant belly as she glanced at her husband, who was, it transpired, lame from a wound taken in the battle of the guivre, fought near Kassel.

'The western road will serve you better," the lame man added. "You will not ride more than ten days out of your way. It is safer."

As he spoke, he gripped the arms of his chair so hard that his knuckles turned white.

'I must turn west, as I have already suffered unreasonable delay," said Brother Severus, "but their road lies south to Darre."

'I pray you, do not go that way, Your Excellency. All the farms are blighted with the murrain. We've heard that not one farm in ten has sheep, cattle, or pigs left to them. We turned back two families yesterday. They were trying to escape north with their flocks. We pray morning, noon, and night that our own herd has not caught the contagion."

'Yet you let us pass these six days past. I saw no barricade then."

'The blight had not come so far north, Your Excellency." The lord called for more cider and apologized for the fourth time that there was no more wine to be had. The long hall in which they feasted was only scarcely longer and wider than Aunt Bel's house in Osna village. Although the floor was swept clean, the tapestries on the wall had a shabby look about them and all the children, huddled under the eaves on straw mattresses, had runny noses. "We only blocked the road three days past. We've heard rumors that bandits have come into the countryside as well. We've heard dreadful stories-"

'Speak no more of it," said Severus, turning back to his food. He examined the gamy chicken with a prim frown. "My companions will continue south. God protect the righteous."

Husband and wife glanced at each other, but there was nothing they could do. Simple country lords could no more change the chosen path of the skopos' own clerics than they could prevent the tide from coming in.

Brother Ildoin was the youngest of Severus' clerics, a slight young man with a blemished face, an amiable if often inattentive expression, and two fingers on his left hand permanently twisted from a childhood accident. He had not yet had every last drop of compassion wrung out of his soul, although it certainly seemed to Alain that Severus had burned any such wasteful and inconvenient sentiments out of his own heart.

'We have no livestock with us," Ildoin said to the lady, "only horses. Horses do not take up the contagion, so you are safe from us as will be those we seek shelter with in the days to come."

With that their hosts had to be content.

In the morning Severus took a dozen men as attendants and rode west, leaving his factor, by name of Arcod, Brother Ildoin, and ten rough-looking clerics who seemed as much at ease with a spear as with a holy book to escort Alain on the southerly route.

'Where is Brother Severus going?" Alain asked Ildoin as they left the besieged manor house behind. "I thought he meant to return to Darre, too."

Ildoin had a way of lifting his chin, like a man recoiling from a sharp blow, when he was surprised by any comment or unexpected sight. "Brother Severus is a great and holy man, one of the intimate counselors of the skopos herself, may she remain hale and hearty and live many long years under God's protection. We do not question him! However, he is a powerful man in more ways than that of intrigue and wise counsel- 'Brother Ildoin!" Arcod drew up beside them. "Idle chatter is a breeding ground for the Enemy's maggots. We will ride in silence, or sing Godly hymns, if you please."

Alain was content to ride in silence. They made a peaceable caravan with the pack mules ambling along in the middle of their group and the hounds padding alertly to either side of him. It was a lovely spring day, the sky strewn with broken clouds. At first, birdsong accompanied them and a skeane of geese honked past above. But as the morning passed, Alain noticed that the joyous noise gave way to an uneasy hush. Midmorning they passed an abandoned hamlet, where a scatter of huts lay empty beside the road. A thread of smoke drifted heavenward a short distance off the road; otherwise there was no sign of life.

'Should we investigate?" Alain asked.

'No," said Arcod. "It's none of our business. Our business is to take you to the skopos."

They hadn't gone much farther through open woodland before a second clearing opened before them. Judging by the well-thatched longhouse, fenced-in garden plot, rubbish pit, and three pit houses, a prosperous farming family had once lived here. Stakes lined the roadside, four posts staggered on either side of the track, set there as a warning. On each stake a sheep's skull was affixed, glaringly white against the lush green eruption of spring growth all around. Some of the skulls had a bit of flesh left, but most had been picked clean by carrion crows still flocking among the buildings. Here, too, they saw no movement, heard no welcoming hails, but the porch of the long-house was swept clean as though its occupants had only recently departed.

The clouds drew in darkly. A chill wind blew up from the south as a mist began to fall, trailing off at intervals only to spatter down once again, inconstant and irritating.

'Another one!" shouted the cleric riding at the front of their party He'd been chosen for this duty because he could speak Wendish. "Ho! Well met! Are there any folk living here?"

As they rode into a new clearing, they saw a scattering of huts, an empty chicken coop, a small roofed paddock, a trough half full of water, and an abandoned plow sledge. Four stakes pounded into the ground at the four corners of the paddock bore animal skulls, one sheep, two horned cattle, and something that looked remarkably like a dog with a patch of skin and pale fur hanging from the muzzle. Dried plants had been woven into the eye sockets, and a tangle of tiny carved wooden figures dangled down from the gaping jaw on a leather strip.

Rage barked once. Sorrow whined.

'Some witch has sullied her hands with magic workings and amulets," said Arcod. "No wonder they were struck down by God's anger."

'Do you think so?" asked Alain. "Perhaps they were only trying to protect themselves."

'Then they should have called for a deacon or a frater, not this unholy weaving and binding."

Their party did not tarry but rode past nervously. There was not even a carrion crow in sight. Alain heard no birds at all. Once the clearing lay behind them, Ildoin looked back at Arcod, who was riding at the back of the group, before judging it safe to speak to Alain.

'I'm glad your hounds are with us. It fair gives me the creeps, it's so dead and quiet here. I wonder where all the farming folk have gone."

'Fled, most like," said Alain. "Gone to find kinfolk who will take them in. If anyone will take them in. Didn't you pass this way just a fortnight ago?"

'In rain and wind," agreed Ildoin, scratching his stubbly chin. Like the other clerics, he was letting his beard grow rather than struggle to keep it shaven on the march. "We were housed and fed hospitably enough. By Vespers we should come to a little river where there's a village. They put us up for one night. When we came north, the murrain hadn't reached them, although we brought them rumor of it from what we'd seen on our journey south of the river."

'I wonder where the birds have flown," said Alain, "and what they're so afraid of that they've stopped singing."

The village had a tiny wood church, a mill, and six houses in addition to the dock where a ferryboat was tied up, but it had no people and not even dogs or chickens. Every door had a wreath of plants and carved amulets hanging above the threshold, but these protective measures had not spared the inhabitants. There was no sign of any living thing.

They hurried through the commons and down to the riverside. The hounds were skittish, sniffing the air as though they sensed danger but could not place its locus. The sturdy ferry rope should have ridden taut between the deeply driven posts on either side of the narrow river, but it had been cut. The near end flapped in the current, dancing in water running high with spring rain and distant snow melt. Alain dismounted and drew the cut line up to shore. The end had frayed with the beating it had taken in the river, leaving a sodden mass of splitting rope in his hands. To cross the river they would have to row, or swim. He examined the silent village while Arcod sent two pairs of men to reconnoiter. The hounds would not sit. Rage growled low in her throat. Sorrow whined nervously.

'There's a trench dug out there." Ildoin pointed to a patchwork of fields beyond the outermost house. "It looks fresh."

'Mayhap there's a shovel to be found-" said Alain.

'No need to probe so closely," said Arcod. "You and I and the lad will go. The rest can stay here to watch over the horses."

Leaving the other clerics in the road, Alain, Ildoin, and Arcod walked out across four unplowed fields laid down in long strips, to the fifth field, which was still stubbled with the remains of last autumn's wheat. The smell hit before they got close enough to see what the long mound of fresh dirt concealed. The stench of burned flesh was made worse by the stink of putrefaction. Ildoin gagged as all color washed out of his face. Arcod covered his nose with the tip of his sleeve.

'Rage! Come!" Alain commanded, but she sat down at the edge of the field and whined, head cocked in the direction of the men waiting by the horses.

'It is the murrain," said Arcod as Sorrow got the top layer of dirt dug away. The smell of burned flesh billowed up from the trench. Sorrow nosed among the tangled, scorched legs of sheep with strips of skin still hanging from bone. The poor sick creatures had been burned in haste and buried before the job was properly finished. But the hound scratched, seeking another scent that teased and eluded him. As the dirt spilled down on either side, maggots swarmed out of the earth, a writhing mass of them that scattered to safety and vanished back into the disturbed earth. At the sight of them, Ildoin staggered back, fell to his knees, and vomited onto the ground.

Sorrow uncovered a boot. It still had a foot in it. Sorrow nosed at it, then gripped the leather toe in his teeth and threw it sideways. It tumbled over to reveal a gaping putrid wound where the foot had been hacked off at the ankle. Bile churned in Alain's stomach, but he forced himself to probe for the rest of the body. No person deserved to be thrown out like rubbish.

'God help us," said Arcod, looking stricken and white. He hung back, unwilling to get any closer.

'I can dig better if you would give me your staff," said Alain. "I don't really want to dig for the rest of the corpse with my bare hands."

Arcod seemed not to have heard him. "What manner of brute chops up a man as if he were a cow?" He was shaking so hard that his death grip on the staff was the only thing keeping him upright.

Ildoin was still retching, hands gripped over his stomach as he moaned. He stared at the mutilated foot. "Oh, God."

Rage barked and with a nasty growl padded back toward the village before stopping short, hackles raised.

Alain rose, suddenly alert. "I pray you, Brother Arcod. Such brutes might still be lurking nearby. We should leave this place. Now."

'Now!"

The strange voice came from a distance, muffled but imperative.

'Who calls?" Arcod started around to stare back toward the village, raising his staff.

Too late.

An arrow buried its point in the neck of one of the clerics waiting on the road. He fell backward in a graceful curve that bent, and bent, time drawn out so that one breath seemed to hold for an hour or a year, and then his body collapsed all at once to hit the ground limp and dead. The other men shouted and grabbed for staves and short swords, but the bandits had the advantage of surprise and cover.

The whistle of arrows made a horrifying accompaniment to one who stood so far away as a helpless witness to the massacre. It happened so fast. A second man went down as he turned to see what the shouting was about. A third tried to mount but had five arrows in his back before he settled into the saddle. Two clerics ducked behind horses and tugged on the reins, running toward the river, but a swarm of men, a score at least, tumbled out of the mill and the church to pursue them. Others took aim from the tower and the upper story of the mill.

A pair of bandits standing on the road gestured toward the three men stranded out by the incriminating trench.

'Where are the rest of our brothers?" gasped Ildoin. "We heard no cry of alarm."

'They're dead or captured." Alain ripped the staff out of Arcod's hands, who stood like a fish out of water, mouth agape, stunned. "Take Brother Ildoin and run for the trees. Get back to the manor. Alert the lord, let him send out men at arms-"

Arcod did not move. Six men brandishing weapons headed at a trot toward Alain and his companions.

'Go! Someone must live to tell the tale! Go!"

'What of you, Brother Alain?"

'I'll try to give you time to escape."

Still, Arcod hesitated.

Alain shoved him toward the trees. "Go!"

One staggering step led to another, and a third. Arcod caught Ildoin's sleeve and yanked him up.

'Run, Brother!" he wept. "Run!"

They tripped and stumbled over the trench and sprinted across the fields toward the woods. Alain hadn't the luxury to watch them go, to make sure they reached the woodland and weren't killed by some other lurking bandits. He had to face the enemy.

One of the clerics made it out onto the dock before being cut down. Miraculously, only one of the horses was injured. Now, having won the valuable mounts and pack animals, the company of bandits seemed to lose their sense of purpose. One man, swathed in a cloak, kept bending down over the fresh corpses with a flask in his hand. The others milled about stripping the bodies and emptying the saddlebags-except for the six men who loped across the fields toward Alain.

He steadied the staff in both hands and whistled the hounds up next to him. Against archery, the hounds would perish. But he knew they would never abandon him, and after all this time he doubted they would outlive him. It was strange to feel so calm.

He had to give the others enough of a head start.

'Down." Whining, Rage and Sorrow lay down on either side of him. "I pray you, Lord of Mercy, Lady of Justice, let my comrades escape."

He lifted the staff and held it horizontally above his head, gripping the haft with both hands, to show he meant no threat to them. The bandits slowed, and two put arrows to the strings of their bows, but he could see that besides these two bows the men carried the crudest of weapons-staffs sharpened to a point at one end, spears tipped with stone blades.