The Oak and the Ram - 04 by Michael Moorcock Read Free Book Online Page A

properties might protect them from the Fhoi Myore, but they could not protect them from the marrow-chilling cold. Neither were there materials here from which they could build a fire. Night came down. The noise of the wind increased, but it could not drown the persistent and terrible howling of the Hounds of Kerenos.
     
     
     
    BOOK TWO
     
     
    In which Prince Corum makes use of one Treasure only to discover his lack of two others . . .
     
     
    THE FIRST CHAPTER
    A SAD CITY IN THE MIST
     
     
    They stood between two of the great stone pillars of Craig Don and faced the prowling devil dogs of the Fhoi Myore. The Hounds of Kerenos were both fierce and wary; they snapped, they snarled, but they gave the stone circle wide clearance. Others of the dogs sat some distance off, barely visible against the wind-swirled snow which ruffled their shaggy coats. From somewhere Gaynor had added five more hounds.
    Corum narrowed his eyes and fixed them on the nearest dog, then he drew back the arm which held the long and heavy lance, shifted his feet a little to get the best balance, and hurled the weapon with all the force of his fear, anger and desperation.
    The lance flew true, driving deep into the canine body, knocking the hound from its feet.
    ‘ ‘ Now!'' called Corum to Jhary-a-Conel, who held the end of the rope and began to tug. Corum pulled too. The line had been securely attached to the lance and the lance was buried deep in the hound's body so that this, too, was dragged back into the sanctuary of the stone circle. The hound still lived, and when it realized what was happening to it, it began to make feeble efforts to get free. It whined, it tried to snap at the shaft of the lance, but then it had been pulled under the arch and it became suddenly supine as if it accepted its doom. It died.
    Corum and Jhary-a-Conel were jubilant. Putting his booted foot on the carcass, Corum jerked his lance free and immediately ran back to the arch, selecting a fresh target, hurling his weapon out with the line flickering behind it, striking a second hound in the throat and instantly dragging the lance back. This time the lance came free from the corpse and bounced back through the snow to them. Now there were six hounds left. But they had become more wary. Not for the first time, Corum wished that he had brought his bone bow and his arrows upon this quest.
    A hound came forward and sniffed at the corpse of its fellow. It nuzzled the throat from where the fresh blood poured. It began to lap the blood with its long, red tongue.
    And a third hound paid dearly for its meal as the lance sprang out again from between the tall columns and plunged into its left flank. The hound yelled, whirled, tried to get free, fell writhing into the blood-flecked snow, rose again and wrenched itself away, leaving a large part of its flank on the head of the spear. It ran in circles for a while as its life-blood gushed from it and then, about a hundred yards from the corpse it had only recently been feeding from, it flopped down.
    Feeling that they were at a safe distance from the deadly lance, its brother hounds moved in and began to feast off its still living flesh.
    "It is our one great advantage," said Corum as he and Jhary-a-Conel mounted their horses, "that the Hounds of Kerenos possess no moral sense concerning the eating of their fellows! It is their weakness, I think."
    Then, while the hounds slavered around their feast, Corum and Jhary-a-Conel rode back through the seven circles, past the carved stone altar at the center of the first circle, out again through the circles until they were on the far side from the hounds.
    The hounds had not yet guessed Corum's plan. There were a few minutes in hand.
    Digging their heels deep into the flanks of their horses, they galloped as fast as they could away from Craig Don, heading not for Caer Mahlod (as Gaynor would think they did) but for their original destination of Caer Llud. With any luck the wind would