Chapter 172 There's a Monster

Lora knew this forest country along the Yarrow only by hearsay, from her mother and her second brother.

Second brother's word for it was that the place was easy to find: the year Prince Jasper hosted the young princes' hunt here, Lornmere County had turned out its workmen and set boundary stones at every mouth of a road into the hills.

But that was many years gone now, and the old road-mouths had long since stopped being roads.

The time they came before, waiting on men to cut the way open had eaten half the day. Going home, they had engaged a few families from below the hills: the wicker ware those families wove and the osiers they cut through the year, the pelts off the few traps they kept set in the mountains — the Odenheims sent a man round on the clock to buy it all up, and supplied the lodging by the alder groves, and bread and grain beside.

All the Odenheims asked of them was to keep the southern road up into the hills in good repair — for the convenience of the next hunt.

Gareth, before he left, had still had the arrangement at the front of his mind, and left Lora one of the guards who had been up the mountain.

That guard, Jinks, pointed at a thin-grassed reach of bank: "There's no landing along this stretch. When the Odenheim boat comes up with the rice and grain, she ties off right here."

Coming out they had been stemming the current, and Corin, Shawn, and the rest on horseback had made better time than the boat.

By now the lads were all grins. Lorne Chase, come down off the boat to look, could only shake his head: "Reckless — reckless! Fifteen leagues at a stretch, and you'll run the horses off their legs!"

"No harm done, sir — we rested twice on the way. Shod with iron, the hoof doesn't take hurt, and the grip holds besides; the horses run easier now than ever."

Corin had not had a long run under him in an age, and far from being spent, he looked lit up from the inside.

Shawn said his say in praise too: "The shoe is a fine thing, no argument. But today we're carrying sabers and nothing else. Come a real campaign — armor, bow, a second saber and a third — it won't run so light as this."

"They got four extra pieces of iron apiece, and now you want them to fly?" said Corin, with a sniff.

Norton went off with Lorne Chase to study how the shoes were wearing. After those fifteen leagues, the wear was next to nothing. When Leon had first had the Little Penn smithy turning out shoes, every soul had thought it a thing past believing.

They had practiced on old horses and dead horses a good many times before they dared try a shoe on the farm's own stock; but secrecy was wanted, so the horses had never been given a long run, and all anyone could say yet was that the hooves seemed not to take hurt.

While the whole crew was still talking shoes with relish, Jinks came up leading the Odenheims' tenant.

The old fellow made his bow to Lora in a hurry:

"My lady, hear an old man out — these hills can't be entered!"

Can't be entered?

Every eye turned on the tenant, waiting for his reason.

"Of late, cries come out of those hills, loud enough to wake the deaf — not like wolves, nor yet like tiger or leopard. More like... the hosts of heaven come down to earth..."

He hadn't finished, and the guards were already laughing: "No tax on your bragging, is there! The hosts of heaven? If there are any such, we'd dearly love to make their acquaintance."

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Leon and Lora traded one look, and each read the other clear as day:

Well, well. They'd sent Armand over to cook up a few ghost stories, and here he'd gone and made the earth shake with it — heavenly hosts and all.

"Ah — ah! You captains, pray don't laugh. Half a month back, the strange sounds began in the hills. We took it for a tiger out of the deep woods. Then the word came round: someone had gone poaching and given offense to the mountain god the old prince enshrined there — and from that day to this, not one of us has dared go up."

The old man waved his hands and sighed as he talked:

"We can't deliver the pelts, and we won't take the Odenheim grain for nothing. The Odenheims gave us a roof to live under — that already sits in our hearts as a debt. There's a few dozen pounds of dried shoots laid by in the house; just the thing, my lady, to carry back for the Countess to taste."

The meaning underneath: there truly was a something in those hills, he couldn't lead them in, and they had best turn their boat around and go home.

Lora laughed. "If it's the mountain god my own house enshrined, it will do me no hurt. Lead on, old father — no pelts, and the grain comes all the same."

"The lady is kind. But I've a blind old wife at home, and I daren't die in front of her. Three miles on there's Lower Moulton, a few dozen families. Two days past, a lad of theirs named Doggie Moulton took it into his head to go in and see for himself — and went in for a day and never came out."

"The village reported it to the authorities, and the constables went in to search — and found Doggie Moulton dead beside a boulder. The dreadful part: no mark of any beast's teeth or claws on the body. It looked less like anything killed him than like something had dropped him out of the sky."

"The magistrate's office has posted its notice: this is private land, and whoever else goes missing in those hills, the authorities will wash their hands of it. That's being afraid, that is — even the law is afraid."

Armand, who had been standing at the back listening all this while, asked:

"When the constables went into the hills — beyond the body, did they find anything out of the common?"

"They say the mountain god's wrath was up, and he turned the shrine over bottom to top. We'd been meaning to report it when the boat came at the month's turn — and here the young lady is before the news."

The old man done, Leon and Lora both felt something sit wrong.

That question of Armand's — plainly this was news to him too. And besides: a man out to frighten villagers doesn't overturn a shrine the Odenheims themselves built. That would be asking for the beating, wouldn't it?

If it wasn't Armand — then who, in those hills, was doing the killing?

"Linn — make camp. The light's going; one rough night is all we can do about it. Come what may, tomorrow we go in, set that shrine right, pay our respects to the mountain god, and then travel."

The old man, seeing the young lady hadn't asked him to guide, pressed the matter no further, and went off with Jinks to pack up dried shoots.

Only when the old fellow was well away did Armand come forward, looking hard done by:

"My lady — the killing, and the overturning of the shrine: neither one of those was this Armand's doing. Doggie Moulton and some of the other boys meant to push into the hills; we raised a racket, and off they went, wetting themselves with fright. Then we went back to Little Penn Village. Who knew the lad had the gall to go in alone?"

"Before all this — did you ever come on any beast in those hills?"

Leon, little mustache pasted on and dressed in a plain blue brocade robe, stood at Lora's side.

"No one lives in there year-round, so the game runs thick. We heard wolves cry. There's the clouded leopard too, no bigger than a great cat. Jinks here says the tenants have brought in fox pelts, and the musk cat besides — all common enough beasts."

Clouded leopards? Musk cats?

Since the climate had turned cold, those beasts had all drawn back south of the great southern river.

Else it was a tiger come into the range — and a tiger's one swipe of the paw can beat a man dead. As for why it didn't eat him: perhaps it had fed already.

A tiger in the hills — the whole party pricked up.

Lora and Ruth still slept aboard; the tents of the rest went up on the grass not far from the bank. They had come for gold, and a tiger — by itself — was not going to chase them off it.

Armand's heart kept working at a splinter: who was setting him up? Without seeing the truth with his own eyes, he could not rest it.

Supper done, he put it to the lord: let him walk the mountain's edge a while — a matter of guarding the perimeter into the bargain. Leon sent Lyle out with him and a few men.

Night fell, and the forest settled into quiet.

Lora and Leon sat by the boat, watching Lyle's party carry their torches slowly toward the tree line.

"If there truly is a tiger, it will be a young male that left its mother's side this very year. Left standing, it will make trouble in time."

Lora nodded. "Right. When the heavy snows shut the hills, the tiger finds nothing to eat — and then it's the villagers below who pay for it."

All at once the torches that had been moving in good order scattered in the dark — as if the men had met some dreadful thing, and all of them were squeezing backward, pressing back the way they had come.

"My lord — there's a monster!"