Corriwen pushed the boy ahead of her, following a trail she already knew through the trees, dodging and swerving as they went, putting as much distance as they could between themselves and the felled men.
They ran along the narrow track, the boy in rags and hobbling badly, an awkward hop-skip.
Even as she ran, Corriwen wondered what trouble she had got herself into.
"Probably a runaway servant," she thought. And now she had brought herself to the wrong kind of attention.
Yet it had been impossible to sit and hide as that whip went lashing into the boy's back. And the spearman, he had definitely been set to kill, she thought, and people don't kill a runaway. They might beat him and stock him, but not kill.
They had been out to murder a crippled boy. What kind of man would do that?
She railed at herself for getting mixed up in anything at all, but even then she knew there was nothing else a Redthorn could have done.
Good old Mayo would be proud of her. Jack and Kerry however, might think she was crazy for taking on two armed men with nothing but an ash staff. But she thought even they might have approved in the end.
The boy hobbled on, a lurching shambles of a run, that for all its ungainliness, made pretty good speed. She could tell he had run before, away from people maybe. Through trees certainly. He had fair hair that had been cut with a knife, rough and patchy, and two braids that hung down at the back.
She pulled beside him and tugged at his arm.
"This way."
He looked at her, hazel eyes bright, chest hitching.
"No," he said. "This way. I know a place."
He stopped and favoured his twisted leg, leaning hip-shot on the straight one. The raggedy cape was slit twice across the back where the whip had caught him sore. Blood seeped through the gashes.
Corriwen paused. The way she knew would take them along by the narrow river to where they could cross on the big boulders at the falls.
He tugged back at her arm.
"I do know a place. They won't follow."
She shrugged agreement. This was not her forest, not her world. Whoever the boy was, he should know his own. And after what she had seen in the gorse field, he surely wouldn't want to get caught again.
"All right," she agreed. "But make it fast.".
"I'm doing my best, on these legs." He grinned, despite the exertion and the obvious pain across his back, and his face lit up. "But I'm no deerhound, for sure."
As he led the way Corriwen could see that one leg was bent and twisted so that his foot curved in towards the other. It looked to be much shorter than his left leg, giving him a tip-thud, tip-thud sound effect as he ran, clutching a tattered deerhide bag under his arm.
He followed the banks downstream until the river forked round an island and then pulled to the right, up a little gully carved by a small by a rivulet through the rock. Further up was a narrow cleft where water poured out in a gurgle. He climbed up through the water, and into a space that was hidden by the overgrowth of clinging ivy and tall reeds beside the water's edge. Further in, where it turned, the gully levelled out into a flat spot where deer had nibbled the grass short. In the centre was a ring of river-stones, worn smooth, which corralled the black ash of an open fire. Beside it, two large flat boulders had been rolled up. The boy slung his bag down on the grass and lowered himself to sit on a stone.
He gestured with an open hand and Corriwen sat down, grateful for the rest.
"You shouldn't have helped me," the boy said. His face was grubby and burrs were caught in his hair. A bruise discoloured one cheek. His tattered cape was held together by a small brass pin-brooch. "Now they'll come hunting you."
Corriwen cocked her head to the side. "Well, I appreciate your gratitude."
He grinned again, quite a mischievous grin and his eyes crinkled up.
"I'd have got into the trees."
"You'd never have made it," she said flatly. "He had you caught with the whip. They'd have stuck you like a boar in a thicket."
"Fine, if you say so. Allow me to picture a happier result for myself. But now you're in trouble. You can't fight Dermott's men and get away with it. He'll want his revenge."
"I've heard that kind of talk before." Corriwen snorted. "And I'm still walking. Anyway, why were they trying to kill you?"
He looked at her as if she was stupid.
"Because we were hungry," he said. "Because the crops failed again. Because I went into the forest and got something to eat."
"And they kill you for that?"
"You can't steal Dermott's deer, or his salmon, or his rabbits. He's a jealous lord, as you must know."
"I don't know," she said. "I don't know who this Dermott is. I don't even know who you are, poacher boy."
He laughed again, as if none of the chase and the whiplashing had happened.
"Sure, I'm Connor. They call me Connor Twist. Sometimes Connor Hobble."
"Because of your leg?"
"What else would it be?" He chuckled. "I can see I'm going to have to watch out for that sharp mind of yours."
She took no offence. His gibe was given in good humour.
"You'd do very well to do just that. Anyway, what happened to your leg?"
"Don't know." He slapped his crooked calf. "Faerie touched, some of the old wives say. Spell-bound at birth. Sure, I was only little at the time, so I can't remember."
He opened the ragged bag and pulled out a small wild pig with some kind of cord wrapped round its back legs. Three round stones clacked together.
"What's that?" She asked.
"A throw snare," he said, untying the cords. He held it up and showed the smooth stones joined together by short lengths of string. "An old Cluricaun showed me how to use it. It tangles round their feet."
"What's a Cluricaun?"
"Don't you know anything? He's one of the little people. They can be kindly to the unfortunate."
She watched as he lit a small fire then skinned the animal and expertly jointed the hams.
"Didn't your mother tell you what happened?"
"Probably would have, if I ever met her. I was found half drowned in the sea and taken in by Lugan the Woodman and Mereg his wife. They never had babies of their own, but it was a big hearted thing to take in a cripple. But I pay my way. You don't need fast legs to herd the cows. All you need is a good dog and a big stick."
He spoke very matter-of-factly, as if his affliction was a minor inconvenience, and he gave no sign of self pity.
"And when the harvest fails and the cows fall, then you don't even need a dog." The piglet dripped crackling fat into the hot coals and the delicious aroma made Corriwen ravenous.
Rowan turned over the roasting meat. "So then we ate the dog. Pig's much better, I can tell you."
Corriwen agreed. "I've eaten some ugly things."
"Aye, when you're hungry, they look a whole lot better."
The pig hams smelt only half as good as they tasted.
* * *
Grey dawn found Corriwen awakening from the best sleep since she'd fallen into this unfamiliar world and found herself alone.
At least she now knew the name of the place. Connor could talk, most of it round a bone he gnawed until it was shiny white, licking his fingers loudly in between sentences.
"And Dermott, ever since he became king in the west and the seasons went awry, he's been overlording everybody else. Some say his warlock, Fainn, put a curse on the sky so now it doesn't know summer from winter. They say the sun still shines along the norther shore, but here we haven't seen the Corona for a long time. People are hungry, and they're afeart the Sky Queen has turned away."
"I haven't seen stars since I came here," Corriwen agreed. "Nor the moon."
"There's a shadow over Eirinn, for sure, but it's been to Dermott's good. Somehow there's food in CorNamara, and he's been buying fealty from Munster to Leinster and even down to MacGillicuddy's Reeks in the far south. He'll have the whole of Eirinn under his mace."
The names were unfamiliar to Corriwen, but she understood the pattern. Mandrake had used his wealth to buy treachery in Temair, and he had used his own sorcery for much worse.
The pig had been delicious and Connor had been the only company she'd had in what seemed like a long time. After he ate, he yawned, curled himself up on the grass by the fire and went to sleep. The night was quiet in the shelter and Corriwen had time to think.
It had been fifteen days since she tumbled between the stones, flicked like a fly by the enormous power of the Morrigan and her rage while Jack and Kerry fought her. The blow had sent her flying to land with a jolt that jarred her from hip to teeth, skidding between the pillars. The world she had been in ripped away and she had found herself in a cold puddle with hailstones beating down like pebbles.
She had drawn her knives and rushed back to help them but when she ran between the stones, there was nothing there but more hailstones.
The ring had vanished and she knew instantly she had come through another gate to another world.
The wind lashed the hail in horizontal fusillades and she huddled behind the big stone, cowled in her cloak until the storm began to abate, not sure of what had happened.
All she knew was that the Morrigan had been screeching like a hurricane, lunging for Jack when her changing shape had reached out and hit her such a blow she had gone flying.
How they could have survived that onslaught, she couldn't imagine, but she hoped and prayed that they had managed to get away. She also fervently hoped and prayed that they would realise what had happened, and come looking for her.
She waited there for two days until hunger and cold drove out beyond the hill to find something to eat and light a fire before she froze to her marrow, her hope whittled down to virtually nothing.
The sense of dread, that the Morrigan had caught them and destroyed them stayed with her until, on a cold morning she woke to the realisation that if the demon woman had won, the gate would surely have opened, and she would have come looking for Corriwen Redthorn herself.
The fact that the gate stayed resolutely shut told her one thing for sure. That she had been thrown through alone, and nobody was coming for her.
She had forced herself off the hill and into the shelter of the trees. The pickings had been sparse, but her months on the run in Temair had taught her to appreciate what she could find.
Every day for almost two weeks she returned to the twin carved pillars on the hill, hoping all the time that her friends would come to rescue her. Eventually that flicker of hope guttered and died and she finally walked away.
Somewhere, on this world, there was a homeward gate. And somebody must know of it.
In the morning, she roused the sleeping boy Connor and they made their way out of the forest.
And only a few miles down the road, a troop of horsemen came galloping from behind a thicket and ran them down.