"Move, girl! Move!"

It was no time to be gentle. The spurs she wore more for decoration than for actual use dug into the heaving flanks, the sting of the whip accentuating their message of urgency. Beneath her she felt the animal bound, fresh life sent to tiring muscles, the stride lengthening a little now they had reached flatter ground. Behind them the bulk of the mountains began to shrink as the ground streamed past around and below. The speed of their passage created a wind which thrummed against her face and caught her hair, tearing it free from the golden clasps which held it, fanning the thick, black tresses and sending them to stream like a silken pennant from the rounded contour of her head.

"On!" she urged. "On, girl! On!"

The sound of her voice acted as had the whip and spurs. Foam flew from the muzzle and the lungs strained in the barrel of the chest. A machine, bred and trained for strength, speed and obedience, the animal raced through the thickening darkness towards the haven which alone could save it. On its back the woman, sensing its fear and terror, conscious of her own, bit at her lower lip until blood stained her chin, the gleaming white perfection of her teeth.

Ellman's Rest, a gnarled and oddly shaped mass of wood and stone, the great tree surrounded by the rock which it had shattered by the relentless fury of its growth, appeared on her right. Wisps of night-mist wreathed it, tattered veils which blurred detail so that for a moment she thought it was a creature of the unknown standing with outstretched arms to snatch her from the back of her mount, to crush her, to rend the limbs from her body and to tear free her internal organs. A moment of illusion, then the thing was behind and now only a few miles lay between her and the castle.