"We travel to Oxenford on the Lord's business," said Conrad.

"Your lord's business?"

"No, the Great Lord's business. Holy business."

"Conrad!" Duncan said, sharply.

Andrew appealed to Duncan. "Is what he says correct? Is this the Lord's business you are on? Holy business?"

"I suppose one could say so. We do not talk about it."

"It must be important," Andrew said. "The way is long and hard and cruel. Yet you have about you something that says the journey must be made."

"It will be harder now," said Duncan. "We had hoped, with only a small party of us, we could slip through unnoticed. But now the Harriers know. We fell afoul of what must have been their picket line and now they'll be watching us. There'll be no step of the way we won't be in their sight. The hairless ones probably will not be the only ones. The whole thing makes me nervous. If they have pickets out, there is something the Horde is trying to protect. Something that they want no one to stumble on."

"How will we go about it?" asked Conrad.

"Straight ahead," said Duncan. "It's the only way to do it. We might try to travel farther east, but I fear we'd find the Harriers there as well. We'd be going a long way out of our way and perhaps not be any safer. We'll go straight ahead, travel as swiftly as we can, and keep close watch."

Ghost had been suspended in one corner of the cave while they bad been talking, and now he floated forward.

"I could scout for you," he said. "I could go ahead and scout. The fear of it will shrivel up my soul, if indeed I still have a soul, but for the love of you who have agreed to let me go with you, for a holy purpose, I can do it."

"I didn't ask you to accompany us," said Duncan. "I said I saw no way we could stop you going."

"You do not accept me," Ghost wailed. "You see me not as a thing that once had been a man. You do not…"

"We see you as a ghost, whatever a ghost may be. Can you tell me, sir, what a ghost may be?"

"I do not know," said Ghost. "Even being one I cannot tell you. You ask me for one definition and now I'll ask you for another. Can you tell me what a man may be?"

"No, I can't."

"I can tell you," said Ghost, "that it is a bitter thing to be a ghost. A ghost does not know what he is nor how he should act. This especially is true of a ghost that has no place to haunt."

"You could haunt the church," suggested Andrew. "In life you were closely connected with the church."

"But never in it," said Ghost. "Outside of it. Sitting on the steps, begging alms. And I tell you, Hermit, that it was not, all in all, as good a life as I had thought it might be. The people in the village were a stingy lot."

"They were poor," said Andrew.

"Miserly as well. Few of them so poor they could not spare a copper. There were days on end when there were no coppers, not a single one."

"So your lot is hard," Andrew said unfeelingly. "All of our lots are hard."

"There is one recompense," said Ghost. "Being a ghost is not as bad as being dead, especially if, being dead, one should go to Hell. There are many poor souls alive this very moment who know that once they die they will go straight to Hell."

"And you?"

"Again I do not know. I was not a vicious man, only a lazy one."

"But things are looking up for you. You are going with these people to Oxenford. You may like Oxenford."

"They say there is no way in which they can stop me going, an attitude I take to be ungracious of them. But, anyhow, I'm going."

"So am I," said Andrew. "If they will have me, that is. I have longed all my life to be a soldier of the Lord. That was what I thought I was doing when I took up hermiting. A holy zeal burned, perhaps not too brightly, in my breast, but at least it burned. I tried many things to prove my devotion. For years I sat staring at a candle flame, taking time only to find and consume food and take care of my bodily needs. I slept only when I could no longer stay awake. At times I nodded and singed my eyebrows on the candle's flame. And it was expensive. I was at times hard put to keep in candles. And I got nowhere. The candle-watching never accomplished a thing for me. I didn't even feel good about it. I stared at the candle flame, I told myself, so that I might become one of those who were one with the fall of the leaf, the song of bird, the subtle color of the sunset, the intricate web spun by a spider, in this wise becoming one with the universe—and none of this happened. A fall of a leaf meant nothing to me; I could not care less for birds or the songs they sang. I lacked something or the idea went all wrong or those who had claimed success before were only bald-faced liars. After a time I came to know that I was a fraud.

"Now, however, I have a chance to be a real soldier of the Lord. Craven I may be, and with no more strength than a reed, but with my staff I trust that I can strike a lusty blow or two if need be. I'll do my best not to run away, as I did today when danger threatened."

"You were not the only one today to run away," Duncan said sourly. "The Lady Diane, battle axe and all, also ran away."

"But not until it all was over," Conrad said.

"I thought you told me…"

"You misunderstood my words," said Conrad. "When the battle started, she was dismounted, but she mounted again and she and the griffin fought. She with her axe, the griffin with his claws and beak. Only when the hairless ones broke and ran did she fly away."

"That makes me feel better," Duncan said. "She had not seemed to be one who would run away. I was the only shirker, then."

"You caught an unlucky throw of a club," said Conrad. "I stood over you to fight off those who came at you. Most of the damage done to the hairless ones was by my lady and the dragon."

"Griffin," Duncan said.

"That is right, m" lord. A griffin. I confuse the two."

Duncan stood up.

"We should go to the church," he said, "and see if we can find the lady. There still is daylight left."

"How is your head?" asked Conrad.

"It has an outsize goose egg on it, and it hurts. But I am all right."

8

The church was not large, but it was a more impressive structure than would have been expected in such a village. Over the centuries pious villagers had labored to erect it, quarrying and dressing the stone, hoisting it into place, laying the heavy slabs that made up the floor, carving the pews and altar and all the other furniture out of native oak, weaving the tapestries to decorate its walls. There was about it, Duncan told himself, a rude simplicity that made for a charm too seldom found in other much larger and more elaborate buildings.

The tapestries had been pulled down from the walls and lay on the flagstones, crumpled and trampled. Some of them had been set afire, but had failed to burn. The pews and other furniture had been smashed, the altar demolished.

Diane and the griffin were not there, although there were signs that once they had been. Griffin dung spotted the stones of the floor; they found the chapel that the woman had used as a sleeping room—sheepskins upon the floor to make a bed, a small, rudely built cooking pit fashioned of stone, and half a dozen cooking utensils.

In the second chapel stood a long table, miraculously still intact. Upon it were spread piles of parchment sheets. An inkpot and a quill pen, fixed to its stand, stood among the litter.

Duncan picked up one of the parchments. It crinkled at his touch. The writing was crabbed, the words misspelled, bordering on the illiterate. Someone had been born, someone had died, a couple had been married, a mysterious murrain had killed a dozen sheep, the wolves had been bad that year, an early frost had shriveled the gardens, but snow had held off almost until Christmas.