As Jack Flint and Kerry Malone were racing through the forest, Corriwen and the crippled boy were captured. Not without a fight, though that made very little difference except for the fact that their captors had to use considerable force to subdue them. Corriwen swam up out of unconsciousness, bloodied and sore and seriously motion-sick.
She felt as if she'd been thrown from a horse and trampled in a stampede. It took quite a while to check that no bones were broken.
They had been put in some sort of cage on wheels, which was now trundling fairly quickly along a rutted road. It was night and no stars shone through heavy cloud. A cold wind moaned through the cage bars, almost perfectly matching the sound that Connor was making, slumped in a huddle in the corner, arms bound behind him.
She used her sleeve to wipe the blood from his face and get him on his side to clear his throat until he began to breathe a little easier.
The men had come out of nowhere, so it seemed. Corriwen and Connor had skirted a small town, keeping tight to the hedgerows. In the distance they could see armed horsemen scouring the fields in a line and it would have been easy to sneak past them, but then a pair of mistle-thrushes set up a squawking ruckus as they crept under the thorns and gave them away.
Two riders peeled away to investigate and Connor was just not fast enough in wriggling through the hedge. In an instant the whole troop had surrounded them, including one man with a lance and a tightly bandaged and splinted arm and it was fair to say he was mightily pleased to have found them.
They dragged Connor out by the ankles and began to lay into him with fists and a horsewhip. His yells of pain made Corriwen turn back, knives at the ready, and she scored a couple of cuts in the thrust and parry until a fist came out from the side and knocked her flat.
When she came round, both of them were bound and bloodied, but, she assured herself, there was nothing broken, and while they were on the move, there was a chance of escape.
After a few miles, the horsemen called a halt and drew the wagon close to a tree where they lit a fire and set reed torches around, which gave Corriwen and Connor some light but little heat. The smell of cooking food was mouth-watering at first, and later it became simply maddening.
"We're in for it now," Connor whispered. "Dermott will hunt us."
"I'd say he's caught us," Corriwen said.
"No. What he does with poachers and the like, he sets them loose and puts the hounds up after them. He likes the hunt. And the kill."
"Sounds like a sweet man."
"None worse," he agreed. "The whole of Eirinn's turned inside out all because of him. Everybody knows."
"Everybody knows what?"
"He and his warlock, Black Fainn, they've worked evil spells to turn the seasons upside down, and that's why there's little food. We have to poach to live."
"How can he change the seasons? They're fixed for sure."
"Ah, but they say he stole the Dagda Harp from Tara Hill. That's the cause of it all."
"I don't know anything about that."
"Where have you been? The whole land is abuzz with it."
"I'm from…" Corriwen paused. She didn't want to get into any long explanation. "I'm from up north. I'm waiting for my friends."
"Up north is just bogs and badlands. Fell runners and the like. Bogrim from the tarns."
"I never met any of them."
"And not likely to neither," Connor said. "Not unless we can get out of here."
Corriwen slowly crawled across to him.
"I'm working on that," she said. The little Swiss army knife Jack had given her had easily cut through her bonds, and in moments she had freed Connor. He stretched his stiff arms and groaned softly.
"That's a good trick," he told her. She crossed to the bars of the door, solid wood staves bound together with rawhide and tied shut with a knot of thick rope. Their captors had taken her knives, but they hadn't noticed the tiny red penknife. Very carefully Corriwen sawed through the rope, pushed the gate open and they both crept out into the shadows beyond the tree.
The hobbled horses snickered as they approached. Corriwen made Connor pause. They were only a few yards from the circle of men, talking amongst themselves around the sheaths.
"We'll get a big reward for her," one man said.
"You think she's the one?"
"Red hair and a pair of knives. Fights like a wildcat. Who else?"
"We were looking for a woman, not a slip of a girl."
A man laughed. "Unhorsed you, she did. And broke your arm. Can't get a better fighter than that. She's the one Dermott wants, for sure."
Corriwen listened intently, hardly daring to breathe, and what she heard shocked her. They had been hunting for her, even though she had met no-one in this place until yesterday. Did they know who she was, or where she was from? Did they have Jack and Kerry as well?
Out by the fire, another man spoke up.
"What does he want with her?"
"I just follow orders, so how should I know? Maybe he wants to challenge her."
"He'll take her for a wife and fight side by side, I think," another said. "They say Black Fainn has something to do with it, but it's none of our business."
Corriwen was completely mystified by it all. How she could have been sought in this strange place was beyond her, unless perhaps Jack and Kerry had arrived here and sent out word. But that didn't seem likely.
She and Connor crawled quiet as mice, behind the tree and very cautiously she reached round the bole and managed to find her knife-belt. She felt much better with her own weapons. Then they moved like wraiths beyond the shadow of the tree to where the horses were hobbled.
"We'll take two and scatter the rest," she said.
"I can't do that," Connor said.
"Why not? Stay and they'll hunt you down again. You don't owe them anything."
"It's not that. It's just…well, I never sat a horse before in my life. We only had pigs and a cow."
He said it with such sincerity that Corriwen almost burst out laughing, but she held it in as she led the way to the horses. They were all loose-saddled, but still had their reins. She quickly cinched the girths, then using both hands, she punted Connor on to the furthest horse, then quickly untied the rest, climbed on a big black stallion and slapped its rump hard, yelling like a banshee.
The horse bucked, reared high and then all of them stampeded through the brush in a tight bunch.
Behind them total consternation and confusion erupted.
At first the band of men thought they were being attacked. They jumped to their feet, drawing swords and spinning around to face the enemy in the dark. Then they heard the horses crashing through bush and bracken.
Men bawled and cursed. An arrow whined past Corriwen's ear, but she held tight to the reins and the tether on Connor's mount. He gripped its mane like a drowning man, eyes wide with either excitement or terror, but he managed to keep astride it and they were gone in a thunder of hooves.
* * *
In Wolfen Castle, Black Fainn shuddered.
Something had happened out in the beyond, something out of his control. He felt it like a twist in his cold heart and pains shot up and down his arm.
"What's the matter?" Dermott the Wolf leant over the table. Fainn's expression was a twisted grimace, showing long, yellowing teeth. They ground together like gravel underfoot.
Fainn held his arm out and pulled back the sleeve.
"Something….something touched me." The words came in a gritty rasp. Even Dermott could hear the surprise and absolute fury.
On Fainn's long arm, the snake tattoo writhed like something alive and then went suddenly still.
"I saw something," he said. "Deep in the forest. Just a glimpse."
"What did you see?"
Fainn shook his head.
"Men. Boys perhaps. But strange. Like ghosts."
"You've been drinking your potions again," Dermott said, losing interest. "I want to know about this woman whose supposed to be coming to get me."
"Not of this world," Fainn insisted. "From elsewhere. Beyond. I have to consider this."
On his arm, where the snake's ferocious head lay on its own coils, a drop of blood appeared, swelled quickly, then trickled down Fainn's arm in a thick, dark stream, more purple than red.
"You cut yourself," Dermott said.
Fainn shook his head.
"Something else did this."
He sucked at the cut, a slice right across the serpent tattoo, drawing his own blood back, until the flow had stopped.
Without a pause, he bared his other arm, where a spiral of sleek weasels traced a helter-skelter from elbow to wrist.
With the tip of his knife, as he had done with the snake, he pierced the skin just where the first weasel touched his wrist. A ripple ran through his stringy muscles and then the little animal pictures began to move, of their own volition, waking to squirming motion. Fainn set the knife down, drew out a handful of dry, brittle leaves from a pouch, held them tight in the bloodied hand until they were crushed to dust and then let them fall in a russet puff to the surface of the carved table, chanting under his breath the whole time.
"We shall see what is to be seen," he finally said. "We shall flush out who comes. Who dares touch Fainn."
And the trail of weasels scuttled from his skin and disappeared into the cloud of crushed leaves as they landed on the surface, wriggled into the carved forest and were gone.