For Ulf had made no ground since his first stop, when those doubters around him had fled, yet he but smiled and held up to the angels the gift he was taking to the Great Church, a little statue of the Holy Virgin. ‘Look! Our Lady in wood.’
Then was he buffeted, and spun about with blasts of foul wind, and hounded until his legs would no longer carry him, and fetched up at last on the roadside. But it was the wrong side, and now Searle saw him there and yelled.
Wait! I’m coming, good brother!’ Searle sought to cross, yet straightway came a long, shrill squeal and a demon slithered to a stop, and smoke curled at its feet, and it growled, and began slowly to advance, bellowing. Searle rushed at it, and sank his pick into its head, which had no flesh but was a skull of iron.
Then it jumped forward and bowled Searle head over heels, and when he looked up Connor’s restraining hand was upon him.
And Searle argued, and raged, but at last he could only shout a promise to his brother who stood bereft upon the far bank, that, they would return.
And Searle wept, for in his heart he knew the promise to be vain, and so too did all the diminished band that walked away and left Ulf.
nd now as they journeyed ever deeper into this forbidding land, Searle’s distrust of the boy Griffin grew more intense. ‘God’s city – my arse!’ he hissed. For by now they were stealing past row on row
of giant houses, and on the summit of each was a witch’s spike, a finial. ‘We trusted you, eh? And you give us no warning, do you?
‘Where’s your Great Church, Griffin? Where!’
