The Harp and the Blade by John Myers Myers Read Free Book Online

attempt would be futile, but I made one more effort to arbitrate. “I’m not his or anybody’s man.” I touched my harp and deepened my Irish accent as I went on. “I’m just an itinerant bard, and your lousy, local quarrels don’t mean a damned thing to me.”
    Paying no heed to my statement, he edged his mount toward me, and I pointedly backed away. “That’s Chilbert’s horse,” he said harshly.
    I had been wondering what had sicked him on me. “It was,” I acknowledged.
    “He might lend it to a friend scouting for him,” the fellow jerked his head and his followers deployed on either side of him, “but he’d never give that horse to anybody.”
    I swung the animal in question around. “We traded. Moreover,” I pointed out, seeing that he had made up his mind to credit nothing I said, “I made an excellent bargain. I doubt if you can catch me.”
    But he was for trying. They all surged toward me at his word, and the bay swept away from them through the forest. We made fine speed, for the great trees were wide apart and the brush trifling. Dodging occasional low branches was the only real excitement in the business as they never had a chance of catching us. Nevertheless, they were hard to convince and didn’t give up until, without especially pushing himself, the bay ran completely out of their sight at the end of a couple of miles.
    Soon afterwards I breathed him, listening to make sure they weren’t catching up. At the end of some minutes there was still no sign of them. “Nice work!” I told the horse appreciatively.
    It was only then that I realized my new predicament. With a sunless sky and in a country where landmarks meant nothing to me the only possible way of retrieving the road was the laborious one of retracing my own tracks. And did I really want the road under the circumstances? Suppose that man who was so opposed to presumptive friends of Chilbert also reasoned that I would have to retrail myself and arranged to cut me off north and south. The more I considered, the more answerless my problem seemed as far as immediate action was concerned.
    The best of all the undesirable courses that offered called for waiting over in the woods in the hope that the next day would bring a sun to guide me. But my mount and I would need water, and I had passed neither stream nor spring on the way in. Resignedly I started to wander in search of one or the other. If the road was still directly back of me, which it probably wasn’t, north would be off to my right. I had to set some course, so, facing that way, I rode.
    I fared slowly, for when going nowhere a man feels foolish to hurry. I was feeling sulky now. It was bad enough to be forced from my original route for being Chilbert’s enemy. To be hounded from my alternate itinerary for being his friend was an irony too annoying to amuse me. And just how I was going to win free was more than I could guess.
    My gloom was not so deep, however, that I didn’t pause often to make sure that I wasn’t coming near the road again. I didn’t though, and so had one negative direction. Wherever I was heading, it wasn’t east.
    In about_an hour I found a spring but didn’t abide by my original and sensible plan of staying beside it. It was then only early afternoon, and I was far too restless to face waiting out the day in philosophic inaction. After letting the horse forage, I therefore went on. There was always the long chance of running across somebody or something which might be of help.
    It wasn’t for several hours that I encountered the first real break in the trees, but when I did it was a big one. A long while ago it had been a huge farm, and though stretches of it were badly overgrown with brush other sections had patches of tall grass scattered through the weeds. The horse could do well there.
    I rode toward a likely looking portion, but stopped as I heard dogs bay in the woods downhill to my right. They were heading my way, the next few yelps told