Merlin's Mirror Read Online Free PDF Page B

of the squatting shadows rose to his feet, went to stand beside the newcomer.
    “We have him, lord.”
    The answer to that was a grunt but the mounted man added: “Ride, then. This is no time to sit idle on your haunches. After all he is of Nyren’s blood in part, and clan pride will bring out trackers. Get you going. There will be fresh mounts waiting at the Giant’s Tooth.”
    Having given his orders, the newcomer vanished back into the blackness of the night. Around him Myrddin heard the grumbling of men who were not pleased, but who seemed bound by obedience to a strong commander.
    Once more the boy was hoisted up on a horse. Only this time he was fastened in the saddle, a rope beneath the mount’s belly linking ankle to ankle, then the cloak was thrown over him. His head ached savagely and he fought against swaying, lest he crash to the ground and be dragged to his death before his captors could rein in his horse.
    They rode throughout the night, halting once at a tall finger of rock which might indeed have been the fang pried out of some huge and fearsome mouth, to change to other mounts picketed out to wait for them. Myrddin had long since lapsed into a daze of fear, pain and bewilderment. None of them ever addressed him, or seemed to care about his welfare, except when they had to change him from one horse to a fresh one. His whole body became one sore bruise, so that every step the horse under him took jarred him into a new torment. He set his teeth firmly, determined even in that far-off place into which his consciousness seemed to retreat that he would not give voice to any cry of pain.
    They came down out of the hills. Dawn found them trotting along the smoother surface of one of those roads which the Romans had built. Myrddin could see more of the company now. They were men very like those he had always known, only their faces were those of strangers. Ofthe party of ten, all but two were spearmen such as might serve any clan chief as a levy, and those strung behind.
    But the reins of Myrddin’s mount were held by one who wore a crimson cloak cunningly worked, if now sadly soiled and frayed, with wide bands of needlework. His hair, the color of polished bronze, swept well below his shoulders in the old way of the tribes. His thick-lipped mouth was bracketed by a heavy moustache and the first stubble of days without touching a razor bristled on his full cheeks.
    He was a young man, beefy of shoulder, with bands of worked bronze on his thick arms. A sword of the Roman pattern slapped against his thigh and a small wooden shield with boss and rim of metal was slung between his shoulder blades. His eyes were puffy, as if he had been too long without sleep, and he yawned with jaw-cracking openness from time to time.
    Myrddin’s companion to his left was in contrast to the other. He was a lean lath of a man, his chest covered by a dented, poorly mended cuirass. A helmet that had lost its crest was jammed well down on his narrow head, for it had been originally fashioned for a much larger man. His weapons were also a sword and a spear with a wickedly barbed point. And he did not ride lumpily, half asleep as did the tribesman, but rather sat stiffly upright in the saddle and kept glancing from side to side, as if he expected some force to burst upon them out of ambush at any moment.
    Myrddin was so weary that he weaved back and forth in the saddle, but neither of his captors appeared to take notice of him. Nothing he had learned in his cave retreat told him what to expect now, except that the future these men intended for him held nothing good. And he no longer tried to imagine what that future might be. Nor did he attempt to take any interest for the moment either in his escort or his surroundings. This land, to one born and bred in the mountains, with no personal knowledge of the countryside below, was strange enough.
    By noon they no longer traveled a deserted road. Parties of armed clansmen and three bands of