Chapter 2

The trail wound about more tediously than ever, appearing and
disappearing within a dozen feet, but it was well for Cororuc that it
did, for thus he heard the voices of the men coming up the path before
they saw him. He took to a tall tree that branched over the trail,
lying close to the great bole, along a wide-flung branch.

Three men were coming down the forest path.

One was a big, burly fellow, vastly over six feet in height, with a
long red beard and a great mop of red hair. In contrast, his eyes were
a beady black. He was dressed in deer-skins, and armed with a great
sword.

Of the two others, one was a lanky, villainous-looking scoundrel, with
only one eye, and the other was a small, wizened man, who squinted
hideously with both beady eyes.

Cororuc knew them, by descriptions the Cornishmen had made between
curses, and it was in his excitement to get a better view of the most
villainous murderer in Britain that he slipped from the tree branch and
plunged to the ground directly between them.

He was up on the instant, his sword out. He could expect no mercy; for
he knew that the red-haired man was Buruc the Cruel, the scourge of
Cornwall.

The bandit chief bellowed a foul curse and whipped out his great
sword. He avoided the Briton’s furious thrust by a swift backward leap
and then the battle was on. Buruc rushed the warrior from the front,
striving to beat him down by sheer weight; while the lanky, one-eyed
villain slipped around, trying to get behind him. The smaller man had
retreated to the edge of the forest. The fine art of the fence was
unknown to those early swordsmen. It was hack, slash, stab, the full
weight of the arm behind each blow. The terrific blows crashing on his
shield beat Cororuc to the ground, and the lanky, one-eyed villain
rushed in to finish him. Cororuc spun about without rising, cut the
bandit’s legs from under him and stabbed him as he fell, then threw
himself to one side and to his feet, in time to avoid Buruc’s sword.
Again, driving his shield up to catch the bandit’s sword in midair, he
deflected it and whirled his own with all his power. Buruc’s head flew
from his shoulders.

Then Cororuc, turning, saw the wizened bandit scurry into the forest.
He raced after him, but the fellow had disappeared among the trees.
Knowing the uselessness of attempting to pursue him, Cororuc turned
and raced down the trail. He did not know if there were more bandits
in that direction, but he did know that if he expected to get out of
the forest at all, he would have to do it swiftly. Without doubt the
villain who had escaped would have all the other bandits out, and soon
they would be beating the woodlands for him.

After running for some distance down the path and seeing no sign of any
enemy, he stopped and climbed into the topmost branches of a tall tree,
that towered above its fellows.

On all sides he seemed surrounded by a leafy ocean. To the west he
could see the hills he had avoided. To the north, far in the distance
other hills rose; to the south the forest ran, an unbroken sea. But
to the east, far away, he could barely see the line that marked the
thinning out of the forest into the fertile plains. Miles and miles
away, he knew not how many, but it meant more pleasant travel, villages
of men, people of his own race. He was surprized that he was able to
see that far, but the tree in which he stood was a giant of its kind.

Before he started to descend, he glanced about nearer at hand. He could
trace the faintly marked line of the trail he had been following,
running away into the east; and could make out other trails leading
into it, or away from it. Then a glint caught his eye. He fixed his
gaze on a glade some distance down the trail and saw, presently, a
party of men enter and vanish. Here and there, on every trail, he
caught glances of the glint of accouterments, the waving of foliage.
So the squinting villain had already roused the bandits. They were all
around him; he was virtually surrounded.

A faintly heard burst of savage yells, from back up the trail, startled
him. So, they had already thrown a cordon about the place of the fight
and had found him gone. Had he not fled swiftly, he would have been
caught. He was outside the cordon, but the bandits were all about him.
Swiftly he slipped from the tree and glided into the forest.

Then began the most exciting hunt Cororuc had ever engaged in; for he
was the hunted and men were the hunters. Gliding, slipping from bush
to bush and from tree to tree, now running swiftly, now crouching in a
covert, Cororuc fled, ever eastward; not daring to turn back lest he be
driven farther back into the forest. At times he was forced to turn his
course; in fact, he very seldom fled in a straight course, yet always
he managed to work farther eastward.

Sometimes he crouched in bushes or lay along some leafy branch, and
saw bandits pass so close to him that he could have touched them. Once
or twice they sighted him and he fled, bounding over logs and bushes,
darting in and out among the trees; and always he eluded them.

It was in one of those headlong flights that he noticed he had entered
a defile of small hills, of which he had been unaware, and looking back
over his shoulder, saw that his pursuers had halted, within full sight.
Without pausing to ruminate on so strange a thing, he darted around a
great boulder, felt a vine or something catch his foot, and was thrown
headlong. Simultaneously something struck the youth’s head, knocking
him senseless.

* * * * *

When Cororuc recovered his senses, he found that he was bound, hand and
foot. He was being borne along, over rough ground. He looked about him.
Men carried him on their shoulders, but such men as he had never seen
before. Scarce above four feet stood the tallest, and they were small
of build and very dark of complexion. Their eyes were black; and most
of them went stooped forward, as if from a lifetime spent in crouching
and hiding; peering furtively on all sides. They were armed with
small bows, arrows, spears and daggers, all pointed, not with crudely
worked bronze but with flint and obsidian, of the finest workmanship.
They were dressed in finely dressed hides of rabbits and other small
animals, and a kind of coarse cloth; and many were tattooed from head
to foot in ocher and woad. There were perhaps twenty in all. What sort
of men were they? Cororuc had never seen the like.

They were going down a ravine, on both sides of which steep cliffs
rose. Presently they seemed to come to a blank wall, where the ravine
appeared to come to an abrupt stop. Here, at a word from one who seemed
to be in command, they set the Briton down, and seizing hold of a large
boulder, drew it to one side. A small cavern was exposed, seeming to
vanish away into the earth; then the strange men picked up the Briton
and moved forward.