alace. The causeway
was straight as an arrow, as these old Roman roads will be, but the
track men used on its crest was not so. Here and there a great tree
had grown from acorn or beech nut, and had set wayfarers aside
since it was a sapling, to root up which was no man's business. So
we could not see who came, there being a tree and bushes at a
swerve of the way. The horses heard, and pricked up their ears, and
told us in their way that more steeds were nearing us.

"Ho!" said Erling suddenly. "Mayhap it is just as well that these
good folk should see us in flight eastward. Spur past them, and
look not back, master."

I laughed, and let my horse have his head, and glad enough he was.
Round that bend of the track we went at a swinging gallop, and saw
a dozen foresters ahead of us, bearing home some deer, left in the
woodlands wounded, no doubt, after the great hunt, on ponies. They
reined aside in haste as they saw us coming, while their beasts
reared and plunged as the thundering hoofs of our horses minded
them of liberty; and through the party we went, leaving them
shouting abuse of us so long as they could see us. And so long as
that was possible we galloped as in dire haste, nor did we draw
rein for a good mile.

Then we leaped from the causeway, and went northward through the
woodlands, sure that the chase for us would hear from the foresters
whither we were heading, and would pass on for many a mile before
they found that no other party had seen us. Whereon they would
suppose that we had struck southward to pass Worcester by the other
road, even as we had said in the hearing of the thrall in the
house.

Then I thought that the chase for us was not likely to be kept up
long, for it would grow difficult; but Erling shook his head. He
had a deadly fear of Quendritha.

Now we rode for all the forenoon in a wide curve, northward and
then westward, across the land which the long border wars had
ravaged so that we saw no man save once or twice a swineherd. More
than once we passed burned farmsteads, over whose piled ruin the
creepers were thriving; and all the old tracks were overgrown, and
had never a wheel mark on them, save ancient ruts in which the
water stood, thick with the growth of duckweed, which told of long
disuse.

And at last we came to the valley of the little Lugg river which we
sought, and then were perhaps ten miles north of Sutton and its
palace stronghold. The day had grown dull, and now and