Medieval 03 - Enchanted

most
of her kind were good only for running game that had been driven
into the open by beaters,Leaper had a fine
nose and a keen desire to use it. Most often it was Leaper who
discovered game, rather than the slow-footed peasants wielding
sticks.
    Leaper sniffed the harp, sniffed again, sniffed a
third time, and then looked at Dominic. A movement of his hand sent
the hound to work.
    Palm on Stagkiller’s head, Erik watched the
slender grey bitch quarter the wellhead room, searching for fresh
scent. When she reached the stone stairway that spiraled through
the corner of the keep, she whined softly.
    Instantly Dominic was at her side.
    “Up or down?” he asked.
    “Down,” Simon said. “’Tis
less used by Ariane.”
    Another signal sent Leaper down the stairs. The men
followed in a rush of booted feet on stone. Before they reached the
herbal, Meg was standing in the doorway looking alarmed. Her hand
was wrapped around Leaper’s leather collar.
    “What is Leap—” Meg began, only
to be interrupted.
    “Release her,” Simon said urgently.
    Meg let go of the collar without a word.
    Leaper slipped by Meg’s long green skirts and
vanished into the herbal with Meg and the men hard on her heels.
Simon grabbed the lamp Meg had been using and waited to see what
the hound would do next.
    The varied and pungent smells of the herbal
confused Leaper, but only for a short time. Another sniff of the
harp and the bitch was casting about once more. Soon she had the
scent and was off again, threading deeper and deeper into the
herbal’s dark recesses.
    At the same moment Meg and Dominic realized where
Leaper must be going. Dominic looked quickly at Erik, shrugged, and
decided that the Learned sorcerer had kept more important secrets
than the location of Blackthorne Keep’s bolt-hole.
    Leaper’s long muzzle held to a line on the
floor as though she were on a tight leash. She trotted up to thestacks of twine and sacks waiting to be used,
scrambled over them, and whined at the bolt-hole’s door.
    “Open it,” Dominic said tersely.
    Simon did so and held the lamp aloft. Nothing but a
dark, cramped tunnel looked back at him.
    The air that rolled into the room from the
tunnel’s small mouth was frigid. A dim, distant circle of
light and the moaning of the wind were the only signs that the
tunnel ended.
    Leaper shivered with cold and whined with eagerness
to follow the scent trail. Dominic shook out a leash, secured it to
Leaper’s collar, and started toward the tunnel.
    “Stay here,” Simon said, grabbing
Dominic’s arm. “You are needed at the keep, not
I.”
    After a moment of hesitation, Dominic turned the
leather over to Simon and stepped back from the tunnel. Simon
handed the harp to Dominic, bent, and followed Leaper into the
opening. The darkness of Simon’s mantle merged instantly with
that of the tunnel.
    Hound and man emerged in a leaf-stripped willow
thicket. Though it was still afternoon, there was a twilight pall
to the day. Beyond the thicket, snow skidded along parallel to the
ground, blown by a merciless wind.
    Following Ariane’s scent would be extremely
difficult. Nor did Simon see any sign of tracks. He stepped into
the storm anyway, for Ariane was somewhere out there in the icy
wind.
    Leaper lost the scent no more than a few yards from
the thicket. She whined and quartered and whined some more, until
Simon dragged the lean, shivering hound back into the tunnel.
    “She lost the scent just beyond the
thicket,” Simon said curtly as he emerged into the
herbal’s aromatic calm. “No tracks.”
    His eyes said much more, blacker and more wild than
the storm. Like Leaper, he was shivering from the icy talons of the
wind.
    “Stagkiller,” Simon said, turning to
Erik. “I doubt that he can scent what Leaper cannot, but
’tis our best hope.”
    No one said it was their only hope until the storm
ended and the Learned peregrine could be flown.
    Stagkiller sniffed deeply of the harp and bounded
into the tunnel. So large was the hound that his head brushed the
ceiling.
    Tensely Meg and the men waited.
    Soon, too soon, Stagkiller’s unhappy howl
lifted above the wind.
    “Lost the scent,” Erik said
succinctly.
    “Was there another scent in the
tunnel?” Dominic asked.
    Erik whistled a command that was both shrill and
oddly musical. Stagkiller’s howling ceased. Very shortly the
thick-furred hound emerged from the tunnel. Erik took
Stagkiller’s huge, savage head between his hands and spoke to
him