“Aha! Another one! For a moment there I thought we’d lost him completely.”

The noon sun cut its way through the foliage of Crickwood with the vigour of dawn still coursing it’s rays, lighting upon a pair of sundry interlopers wading in a sea of bush and detritus.

Harlow stood at one side, an impatient simmer of uselessness beleaguering his mind. It had been building steadily since the day before, and Harlow felt at this point that he had quite probably reached the limits of his normally bountiful fortitude. His own mistrust of the enigmatic Mr. Gates and the latter’s assertions of innocence in regards to the abduction of Miss Watson combined in a manner quite readily combustible with the eccentricity and caginess with which Gates had led Harlow since their chance alliance the day before. The man had a most deplorable way of charging about his business without ever quite giving a proper account of what he was about, leaving Harlow only to speculate on the omitted details while doing his best to keep pace.

A few yards away, a stooped hump was all that was visible of Mr. Gates as he rooted about the ground, muttering to himself. Harlow was not quite of a mind to provoke the fellow excessively, as he might indeed have knowledge that could save Miss Watson. And likewise, should the man prove after all to have been an extravagant liar with regards to the current situation, it was far better that he should believe that Harlow was still parcel to his ruse. But there was only so much obscurity a Barnstabrake disposition could cope with before either querulously demanding a proper explanation immediately or else quitting the matter entirely in favor of a shady hammock and a brandy somewhere or other.

“Look here, Gates. I should like a word.”

“Marmalade. Will that do? It’s a good word.”

“No, sir, it will not.”

“I rather didn’t think so, but I’m far too preoccupied to come up with a better one at present. Aha! Another!”

“Another?”

“Footprint, of course. Haven’t you been paying attention all day?”

“Yes in point of fact I have, and I should like to know why.”

“So that you know what’s going on and don’t have to interrupt me with spurious questions, that’s why.”

“No, I mean why waste all day following wolf tracks when you said yourself you don’t think it was they who carried her off?”

“Ssshh! Quiet. Hullo hullo, now what have we here? Well now, Barnstabrake, what shall we name this one?”

“What ever are you talking about?”

“There’s a new set of tracks here, which has joined the one we’ve already been following. Our wolf has found a friend, by look of it. We’re very lucky that it has rained so much, the ground is quite wet and the tracks are pretty clear. Yes, definitely a second set of tracks here, coming from the west a bit to join up with the first. Let’s see, the last one we named George, so this next one we could call……”

“Never mind what you’re going to call it! Why bother with it at all?”

“Because, it is important to keep close track of each wolf.”

“But why!”

“You sound all of seven years old, always with the ‘why’. Why this, why that..”

“If I were seven years old I might be content with an answer like “papa knows best” or something in a similar vein, which to date is about the only sort of response you’ve given me. I for one would really prefer a more solid explanation as to why I’m rooting about crickwood in the wake of a pirate.”

“I am not a pirate, as I told you before.”

“Yet you have offered precious little else in the way of elucidating your occupation. I wonder that you are not playing me for a fool.”

“According to you the entire village is at this moment combing the district with an eye for stretching my neck from the nearest suitable tree; I am hardly in a vein for play. Besides, if I were the desperate villain you suspect me of being, I would hardly be taking such a risk in trusting you, would I?”

“What trust are you referring to? You still haven’t given me back my gun, you know. Nor my sword.”

“Quite right, and I’m not going to either, not yet. The trust I was referring to was letting you follow me and not having left you tied up somewhere to starve, or killed you outright the moment I found you.”

“Oh.”

“Quite. You may chew on that.”

“Don’t mention chewing, I’m very nearly starved as it is.”

“Fine. We’ll eat then.”

“Eat? Eat what! A thornbush?”

“I was thinking of salt pork and hardtack myself, but to each his own….”

“Salt pork! Where did you get all that?”

“From my bag.”

“What, do you always carry food with you?”

“More or less. I always make sure I am prepared for unexpected journeys. I usually have two bags and a skein each prepared, and wherever I stop off for a time I’ll keep one wherever I’m staying and I’ll hide one somewhere else where I can lay my hands on it if society goes abruptly sour.”

“A peculiar habit for a gentleman, to be sure.”

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“But highly useful for one of my occupation.”

“Which is?”

“Not piracy.”

“So you have said. Smuggling then, perhaps?”

“No.”

“Highwayman?”

“Is this a parlor game?”

“Spy?”

“No…..well….yes, actually. I suppose some would say I am a spy.”

“Aha!”

“I can assure you it’s not at all what you think.”

“Enlighten me.”

“Well, shall we say that it is not the politics of Gandburgh or Ursiland which interest me. It is the politics of the Hinterlands which carries me from place to place, and I venture into Ursiland only on the occasion that the politics of my own sphere have wandered hither to do mischief.”

“Mischief?”

“Oh yes indeed.”

“Hmph. Well, I’ll have you know we Ursilanders want none of your mischief here. We have no interest in the machinations of Hinterlanders.”

“That is both a blessing and a dangerous weakness. It is far safer indeed for you to have no involvement at all in our little domestic difficulties, but in the long run you are equally endangered by your neglect of the powers about you. To remain insular is not to seek out and know the threat unknown, but to wait instead for it to surround you. It is folly to presume that by simply being a trifle to no one then no one will trifle with you. Far to the contrary, in my opinion, for it is my experience that most villains do not so often meddle with one who appears courageous, but one who appears timid.”

“I can assure you that we Ursilanders are not at all timid.”

“That may be true, but the truth as such may not matter. I have traveled extensively in your lands, I am acquainted with the peoples of Gandburgh, Brecia, Savaria and so forth. You are not at all timid, you are every bit as querulous with one another as others are throughout the world. And you possess powerful and sophisticated weapons and armies with which to back up up your mettle. But, confident in the strength of your forces and the advancement of your military sciences, you are particularly blindsighted by the illusion of your own security against ‘barbarians’ like us, and that itself is perhaps your greatest weakness. I can assure you that there are forces not very far away who look to Ursiland with calculating ararvice. But for the moment they may not possess the power to take what they covet outright, nor do they find that they always need to. They would divide and confound you from within, until your kingdoms were reduced to chaotic embers, and then at last they would come and take possession of all that remained and build it all anew for themselves.”

“You seek to frighten me.”

“I most certainly do. The truth as such should frighten you. Have a biscuit?”

A hard and salty lunch made palatable only by considerable fresh water was still a marked improvement on the condition of both gentlemen, and shortly thereafter Gates dove back to his tracking with fresh gusto, and even Harlow found his frustration alleviated a bit and would have whistled as he strolled in Gates’s wake if the latter had not earlier bluntly informed him not to do so again if Harlow wanted to keep his nose in the same shape his mother’s side had it.

Nightfall found the pair on a wooded knoll near the forest edge, overlooking the downs of Barrow Heath. Harlow at this point had nearly wholly resigned himself to having no idea whatsoever what was going on about him, peevishly content to live in the hope Gates knew what he was about and wasn’t secretly planning to kill him as soon as it was convenient and that Harlow might one day return to a world where there were things a bit better to eat than stoney bread and briney meat.

Gates was up a small tree at the moment, his own limbs tangled about the limbs of living wood as he gazed out across the downs.

“What’s going on in the heath? It looks like half the stars just fell out of the sky and are now milling about on the ground trying to find something on tap to calm their nerves. Search parties?”

“I wouldn’t know, I’m not the one climbing trees.”

“Yes, lots of little lanterns out there I think. Tell me, Barnstabrake, what could be in the heath that might be of interest to so many people?”

“Nothing at all. Barrow Heath is consummately boring.”

“Barrow Heath? Yes, I remember the name now. So called because it’s full of Barrows, isn’t it? Looks as though nearly the entire neighborhood is out there searching, I wonder if they were tipped off about something or other. A Barrow would be a decent hiding place for one of his sort….”

“Beg pardon?”

“...but if he were living on the heath, why is it then that everything seems to happen in the wood?”

“So far as I can tell, nothing at all happens in this wood except for fools rooting about all day in the underbrush following tracks.”

“What if there were a Barrow somewhere in the wood, I wonder?”

“There aren’t barrows in the wood. I mean, why would anyone build one there?”

“Drat it, Barnstabrake, but do you expect Crickwood to stay in one place? A forest moves, inch by inch, year by year, ever extending its reach. It’s fully twice the size it was a thousand years ago, so I’m told. I’m sure there must be not a few Barrows that were swallowed up by the trees. Yes, it would add up, to be sure, assuming the little theory I’m building up isn’t a complete bootless errand at the bottom line anyway.”

“You’re not making sense, you know, but I’ve come to expect that from you.”

“Beg pardon, Barnstabrake? Were you talking to me just now?”

“Oh no, just having a little chat with myself about the weather.”

“Good, it’ll keep you from getting bored.”

“Oh Lord!”

“Shhh!!! I’m thinking.”

“Do tell.”

“No I won’t, not until I’ve worked it all out. Now be quiet!”

“Right-ho, Gates! What do I live for but to be useless and bewildered. But it’s quite alright, I am happy to serve by being aimless and to provide counsel by knowing nothing.”

“You’re not being quiet, Barnstabrake.”

“A Barnstabrake seldom is. Are we going to spend all night here?”

“Quite possibly, I have a lot of thinking to do. Have a nip of the hardtack and then go find yourself a bed of clover or something.”