Free Enchanted Pilgrimage by Clifford D. Simak Page A

events,” he said, “and not finished yet. You know, of course, that I go into the Wasteland with you.”
    Cornwall grunted. “I had expected as much. You will be welcome, little one.”
    â€œThe terror slowly leaves me,” said Oliver, the goblin. “The sky no longer frightens me as much as it did when I started out. I am afraid now I might even grow to like the open. That would be a horrible thing to happen to a rafter goblin.”
    â€œYes, wouldn’t it?” said Cornwall.
    They plodded along, and there was no sign of Hal. Darkness began to sift down into the forest. Would they keep walking all the night, Cornwall wondered. Was there any end to it? There was no letup in the storm. The slanting rain, coming from the northwest, slashed at his face. The wind seemed to be growing colder and sharper.
    Hal materialized in the darkness ahead, moving like a dark ghost out of the darkness of the tree trunks. They stopped, standing in a knot, waiting for him to come up to them.
    â€œI smelled smoke,” he said, “and tracked it down. It could have been Beckett and his men, camping for the night; it could have been a charcoal pit or a farmer’s homestead. When you smell smoke, you find out what it is.”
    â€œNow,” said Gib, “that you have sufficiently impressed us, tell us what it was.”
    â€œIt is an inn,” said Hal.
    â€œThat does us no good,” said Gib. “They’d never let us in, not a marsh-man and a hill-man, a goblin, and a coon.”
    â€œThey would let Mark in,” said Hal. “If he gets too wet and cold, his arm will stiffen up and he’ll have no end of trouble.”
    Cornwall shook his head. “They wouldn’t let me in, either. They’d ask to see the color of my coin and I have no coin. In any case, we stick together. I wouldn’t enter where they’d not welcome all of you.”
    â€œThere is a stable,” said Hal. “Once it is dark, we can shelter there, be out before the dawn. No one would ever know.”
    â€œYou found no other shelter?” asked Cornwall. “No cave?”
    â€œNothing,” said Hal. “I think it has to be the stable.”

12
    There was one horse in the stable. It nickered softly at them when they came through the door.
    â€œThe innkeeper’s horse,” said Hal. “A sorry bag of bones.”
    â€œThen there are no guests,” said Cornwall.
    â€œNone,” said Hal. “I peered through the window. Mine host is roaring drunk. He is throwing stools and crockery about. He is in a vicious temper. There is no one there, and he must take it out on the furniture and pottery.”
    â€œPerhaps, after all,” said Gib, “we are better in the stable.”
    â€œI think so,” said Cornwall. “The loft, perhaps. There appears to be hay up there. We can burrow into it against the cold.”
    He reached out a hand and shook the pole ladder that ran up into the loft.
    â€œIt seems solid enough,” he said.
    Coon already was clambering up it.
    â€œHe knows where to go,” said Hal, delighted.
    â€œAnd I follow him,” said Cornwall.
    He climbed the ladder until his head came above the opening into the loft. The storage space, he saw, was small, with clumps of hay here and there upon the floor.
    Ahead of him Coon was clambering over the piles of hay and, suddenly, just ahead of him, a mound of hay erupted and a shrill scream split the air.
    With a surge Cornwall cleared the ladder, felt the rough boards of the hay mow bending and shifting treacherously beneath his feet. Ahead of him the hay-covered figure beat the air with flailing arms and kept on screaming.
    He leaped forward swiftly, reaching for the screamer. He sweated, imagining mine host bursting from the inn and racing toward the stable, adding to the hullabaloo that would arouse the countryside, if there were anyone in this howling wilderness of a countryside