Mythago Wood - 1 Read Online Free PDF Page A

before repeating what he had said,
this time with a distinct edge of anger in his voice. And he started to walk
towards me, tugging at the hound to prevent it straining at the leash. The light
was draining from the sky, and he seemed to grow in stature in the greyness as
he approached. The beast watched me, hungrily.
    'What do you want?' I called, and tried to sound firm when I would rather
have run inside the house. The man was ten paces away from me. He stopped, spoke
again, and this time made eating motions with the hand that held his staff. Now I understood.
    I nodded vigorously. 'Wait here,' I said, and went back to the house to fetch
the cold joint of pork that was to last me four more days. It was not large, but
it seemed an hospitable thing to do. I took the meat, half a granary loaf, and a
jug of bottled beer out into the yard. The stranger was crouched now, the hound
lying down beside him, rather reluctantly, it seemed to me. As I tried to
approach them, the dog growled, then barked in a way that set my heart racing
and nearly made me drop my gifts. The man shouted at the beast, and said
something to me. I placed the food where I stood and backed away. The gruesome
pair approached and again squatted down to eat.
    As he picked up the joint I saw the scars on his arm, running down and across
the bunched muscles. I also smelled him, a raw, rancid odour, sweat and urine
mixed with the fetid aroma of rotting meat. I felt sick, but held my ground
watching as the stranger tore at the pork with his teeth, swallowing hard and
fast. The hound watched me.
    After a few minutes the man stopped eating, looked at me, and with his gaze
fixed on mine, almost challenging me to react, passed the rest of the meat to
the dog, which growled loudly and snapped at the joint. The hound chewed,
cracked and gulped the entire piece of pork in less than four minutes, while the
stranger cautiously - and without much apparent pleasure - drank beer, and
chewed on a large mouthful of bread.
    Finally this bizarre feast was over. The man rose to his feet and jerked the
hound away from where it was licking the ground noisily. He said a word I
intuitively recognized as 'thank you'. He was about to turn when the hound
scented something; it uttered first a high-pitched keen, and then a raucous
bark, and snatched itself away from its master's restraining grip, racing across
the yard to a spot between the ramshackle chicken houses. Here it sniffed and
scratched until the man reached it, grabbed the leather leash, and shouted
angrily and lengthily at his charge. The hound moved with him, padding silently
and monstrously into the gloom beyond the yard. They ran at full speed around
the edge of the woodland, towards the farmlands around the village of Grimley,
and that was the last I saw of them.
    In the morning the place where the man and beast had rested still smelled
rank. I skirted the area quickly as I walked to the woods and found the place
where my strange visitors had emerged from the trees; it was trampled and
broken, and I followed the line of their passage for some yards into the shade
before stopping and turning back.
    Where on earth had they come from? Had the war had such an effect on men in
England that some had returned to the wild, using bow and arrow and hunting dog
for survival?
    Not until midday did I think to look between the chicken huts, at the ground
so deeply scored by that brief moment's digging. What had the beast scented, I
wondered, and a sudden chill clawed at my heart. I left the place at a run,
unwilling, for the moment, to confirm my worst fears.
    How I knew I cannot say: intuition, or perhaps something that my subconscious
had detected in Christian's words and mannerisms the week or so before, during
our brief encounter. In any event, late in the afternoon that same day I took a
spade to the chicken huts, and within a few minutes of digging had proved my
instinct right.
    It took me half an hour of sitting on the back doorstep