The Shadow Chapter 8.

Chapter Eight.

 

The Wraithlands.

 

The next morning, Aidan put on his suit, then his ordinary clothes. The carter who had brought them to Rougham Manor was waiting outside. On the wagon was another man.

"This is Boydel. He will take you as far into the mountains as he can," said Charles.

It did not take long to reach the edge of the mountains, to a place where the wagon could no longer fit.

"I will return here every day for a week," said the carter. "Good luck!"

Aidan and Boydel walked up into the mountains until they reached a small oak tree.

"This is as far as I go," said Boydel. "You see that valley between those two peaks?"

Aidan nodded.

"We think that is the beginning of the Wraithlands. We used to call that the Forbidden Valley. If anywhere in the mountains may be said to be deep and dark, it is there."

He sighed.

"It is nearly twenty years since I came out of the mountains and joined the Army. I loved it in those mountains."

"What happened?" asked Aidan.

"The Wraiths attacked us. It is hard enough to defend yourself against an ordinary attacker, but one which you cannot see makes it impossible. At first they came in the night, then they started attacking in the day. They wore armour like the one in Rougham Manor. We had no choice ,  we had to pack up and flee. No-one has ever been brave enough to go back," he finished.

"It is about a two-day walk from here. I will return here every day for a week. After that…"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"After that, you don’t think I will come back at all," said Aidan.

"Probably not," replied Boydel. "However, there is a stream that comes out of the Valley. It is good clean water you can drink. I made up a pack of army rations for you. Not particularly nice tasting, but filling."

He handed Aidan a pack.

"I will tell you a trick we used to do when I lived up here," went on Boydel. "Split the pack into six. Each day, bury or hide one portion on the trail. That way, as you get more tired, your pack will get lighter. It will give you three days of searching. Then if, er, when, you come back, you will have food on the trail ready to pick up without having to carry it. It is very useful if you are running for your life."

"Thank you," said Aidan, smiling.

He took off his ordinary clothes and put the head covering on. Boydel whistled.

"You might just get away with this ,  you are very hard to see. Good luck."

Aidan was not used to walking in rough country like this, so he made slow progress. At the end of the first day, he found a clearing in the scrub where there was the small stream that Boydel had mentioned. He ate one of the army rations. It was not that nice, but it was filling.

He buried one of the rations and marked the spot with a cairn of stones. He did not sleep very well, so very early the next morning, he set off again.

He had not been walking for long when he realised that he was being followed.

He stopped and waited in the shadows.

To his horror, a lone wolf trotted along the path towards him.

Back in Barford, Aidan had always had problems with the local dogs. Unlike their owners, they could see him ,  or certainly smell him.

Friendly ones would come running up wanting to be patted. Fierce guard dogs would bark or growl when they sensed his presence. Either way, the dogs warned their owners that there was someone about.

There was one particular dog that, for some reason, had taken a strong dislike to Aidan. Its owner let the dog run loose in his yard.

"No one is going to steal from my garden," boasted the man. "Simba there will tear them to shreds."

That would not have been a problem for Aidan. He did not need to go onto the man's property, and he certainly did not steal anything. However, Simba did not stop in the garden. He found a hole in the fence and went wandering around the town.

The first time Aidan met Simba, the dog growled fiercely and attacked. Aidan had to climb over a wall to escape. After that, every time Aidan met Simba, the dog attacked. Like Aidan, the dog prowled the streets of Barford in silence. It tracked Aidan wherever he went. Once it caught sight of Aidan, it attacked. Aidan was terrified.

He tried to make friends with it. He offered it some of the meat that the butcher had put on one side 'for the Shadow'.

Simba had sniffed the meat, growled, and tried to bite Aidan.

This went on for quite a few nights. At dawn, when Aidan usually went home to sleep, so did Simba. Its owner never knew that his dog spent the night roaming the town.

Aidan took the risk of going out in the daytime. He quickly discovered where Simba lived and how the dog escaped. After watching for a few days, Aidan worked out that there was a short space of time between the sun going down and the town going dark and when Simba was let out for the night.

Aidan found some pieces of wood and some old nails. Working as quickly as he could, he mended the hole in the fence. Fortunately, no-one seemed to notice the noise of him hammering in the nails with a large stone.

That night he was free to roam the town. Simba was securely penned.

Now though, Aidan was out in the country and being followed by something that looked exactly like Simba. There were no walls here to climb over.

The wolf kept lifting its head and sniffing the air. Aidan knew that even if it could not see him, it would find him by his scent. He began to walk quickly through the scrubby bushes. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw that the wolf had begun to speed up too.

Aidan realised that the faster he moved the more noise he made and the easier it was for the wolf to track him. He stopped and sat down under one of the taller bushes.

The wolf appeared and sniffed the air. Aidan sat very still. The wolf slowly came over to where Aidan was sitting. It sniffed at Aidan's feet. Aidan forced himself to keep absolutely still. The wolf circled the shrub, sniffing the air all the time and growling quietly.

The circling, sniffing, and growling went on for what seemed like hours to Aidan, but could only have been a few minutes. Then the wolf lifted its head, looked around, and trotted off away from Aidan.

Aidan set off again. It took him two more days to reach the valley that Boydel had pointed out to him. No other animals came near him. There were no other humans on the trail either.

That evening, he found the entrance to the valley. It was very narrow.

To Aidan’s horror, the path was blocked by a skeleton. From the remains of the clothes, he decided that it was a woman.