The three warriors had rallied and whirled around. As they rushed him, Lorth growled an elemental summoning command that blasted them with a gust of wind that would have taken the thatch from a farmhouse. Freya leapt over the tangle of horses and limbs, slammed into the rocky ground and kept running.
Once out of sight, Lorth sheathed his blades and guided her off the road, to the east.
Do see to your homeland, the war god had said. Lorth cleared a laugh from his throat. Some fine suggestion, that! While he had been a tree, Ostarin had fallen to occupation, Northmen had died, the land burned, the river defiled, and the mages of Eusiron lost to silence. Now Lorth had stirred the beast of war from its confident grip, and nothing stood between him and it besides a sack of potions, some magic tricks, his blades, grief, love for a woman and the mare beneath him, now wounded.
“Ride for your life, girl,” he breathed as the forest around him came alive with the clamor of the hunt.
Chapter 18
Shade of Low: The earth keeps secrets.
The sun rose to heavy snow shrouding the forests northeast of Eusiron, sticking on bare branches, melting in the running waters and muffling the air. Lorth moved through the silent wilds, murmuring comforts to his wounded horse. Fortunately, the arrow had gone wide, taking a patch from her hide, but not going in. Even so, she still needed more care than he had been able to give her without his own saddlebags.
Tired enough to drop and not rise again, his deeper mind hanging like a spider on his watch-webs, Lorth patiently guided Freya through the rugged terrain. He didn’t have time to be doing this, but it did offer one advantage: the few stout Faerins who had tried to follow him had been easy to take, as they were not comfortable with the dangers of the season and no match for a Northman who was.
He stopped by a towering ridge laden with icefalls. He ate a little and fed Freya the last of the provisions he had gotten for her in Mrin. As he stood there, leaning against her warmth, his hackles stiffened.
An eerie presence drew near, cold as a draft. It smelled of leaves and dirt. Blackthorn, thistle, it whispered. He had felt it twice since his escape from the Wolfjaw, but couldn’t discern its shape from the bleak surroundings. He mounted and moved on.
Late that afternoon, he spotted the tall stone spiral that marked the boundaries of the Maelgwn realm. Wolves sang in the distance. It had grown very cold, and the snow had deepened. Lorth had dismounted Freya and now guided her on foot. She slipped and hesitated often. Both their wits had begun to dull.
A reckless move, coming here. But even with magic, he wouldn’t have made it into Eusiron with an army after him. They would know Freya now, for one thing, especially wounded. He needed quarter and, if possible, information. He needed a safe place for his friend. And he needed warmth.
He hoped the Maelgwn had seen him enter their lands. But he walked without shadows until evening descended like a heavy weight. He dropped his cloaks and webs and shuffled along. How to call the Maelgwn? He didn’t know the language. He had never heard of anyone calling them—they came and went as they pleased, knowing everything that passed through or near their realm.
Blackthorn, thistle. The whisper had gone faint, but he still heard it now and then.
Warmth. His energy fading with every step, Lorth found shelter in a hollow beneath two enormous boulders leaning together. Later, he slumped over a meager fire, conjured with the last of his strength. Freya stood at the opening, her breath steaming in the air.
The howling of wolves had drawn closer.
Lorth’s heart trembled as a fear trickled through it. What if the Faerins had slaughtered the Maelgwn to a man? That didn’t seem likely, but he had once believed Eusiron couldn’t be taken, either. Why had he not considered this before? He might have come out here for nothing.
Firelight flickered on the snow, illuminating eyes in the trees. An image of Leda in the nimbus of a candle flame, arching her back with a cry as he sheathed himself into her body broke across his mind as exhaustion clawed him down.
~ * ~
Lorth opened his eyes from a fading dream of floating through the forest. He relaxed into warmth and the smell of woodsmoke, food and horses. He felt for his weapons, and then relaxed as he discovered them rolled up in a blanket by his side.
A young man sat on the other side of a fire. A pot hung there, with an amazing smell steaming out of it. As the man leaned over and stirred it, his coarse black hair slid over his face. He wore woolen clothes of brown and black, trimmed with dark leather and brightly colored embroidery.
Lorth’s throat closed up on thirst, causing him to cough. He rolled over and sat up, then put his fingers to his forehead to calm the spinning.
The man reached for a skin and handed it to him. “Water,” he said, heavily accented. He had eyes of deep brownish green, like a woodland pool.
Lorth drank deeply, spilling it on his chest. He lowered the skin and wiped his mouth. “Thank you.” He looked around at the narrow cave surrounding him. At one end stood a low wooden door framed in roots and ice. The other end glimmered with light from a chamber beyond. The walls contained rows of shelves and alcoves filled with jars, bottles, cookery, woolens and weapons.
A man and a woman emerged from the far corridor. They glanced down at Lorth as they moved to the door. The man opened it, revealing the sunlit forest beyond. As they went out, the woman said something in Maelgwn to Lorth’s companion. He answered her, and then gazed at Lorth as if he didn’t know what to do with him.
Lorth held out his hand, made a fist and turned it, opening his fingers to the light. “Silin en Maern tali.”
The man lowered his head into a brief nod, and then touched his chest. “Ithsion.”
“Lorth.” In the back of his mind, the hunter wondered how long it had been since he had told anyone his name.
Ithsion stirred. “You are hunter. Destroyer.”
Lorth didn’t know how to respond to that. Gazing at the steaming pot, he asked, “Where is my horse?”
Ithsion gestured over his shoulder, towards the far end of the cave. Lorth rose on weak knees, and stumbled towards the shadows.
“She safe,” the Maelgwn called out.
Lorth felt his way along the walls until he entered a large chamber with light streaming in from a patterned network of roots and stones. Thick posts stood between the floor and the ceiling, and between them stood stalls, scores of them, filled with horses. The other side of the room contained sacks of grain, baled hay and a pool fed by water cascading from the wall.
“Freya!” Lorth said. In a far stall, the mare tossed her head and nickered. He went to her, removed the rope over the opening and drew her into the light. “Here you are.” She had been unsaddled. He moved his hands over her withers and down to her rump. Something dark and slimy had been smeared on the arrow wound. Lorth touched it and brought it to his nose. Rosemary...comfrey...something else. He moved forward, put his arm up under her neck and pressed his face against her.
“You love,” said Ithsion behind him. Lorth hadn’t heard him come up behind. The Maelgwn gestured to the brand, not far from the wound. “You steal?”
“She came to me.”
Ithsion nodded, as if this didn’t need explanation. He said, “Food,” and then left the chamber. Lorth put Freya back into her stall and followed him.
When he had settled by the fire, Ithsion handed him a hunk of hard bread and a wooden spoon, then a clay bowl of stew with lumps of meat and vegetables in it. Lorth took it gratefully. He lifted a spoonful and blew on it. He closed his eyes as it spread out into his senses: rabbit, sage, honey, potatoes. He fell to the meal with a ravenous hunger that left him breathless. Ithsion grunted, took his bowl and refilled it. Lorth ate a second bowl and then mopped up the last of the stew with another piece of bread.
Lorth set the bowl aside and relaxed. “You honor me.”
“Wolves sing for you.” The Maelgwn’s gaze moved over him. “You know war. Why you come here?”
&n
bsp; Lorth cleared his throat at the understatement. “Eusiron is my home.” The words sounded strange, said aloud. “I returned from—a journey, and found it fallen. I came here for sanctuary, before I return.”
“Wolf killers,” Ithsion growled. He gazed into the fire. “Wolves not protect you in home.”
“I must protect the people of Eusiron.” And my love, he added to himself, imagining Leda’s girlish smile.
“You have woman there?” Ithsion intuited.
Lorth looked towards the stable. “I ask that you care for my horse. I cannot bring her.”
“You not return from home. Elm lord rules.”
“Who?”
A dark stare.
Lorth leaned forward. “What happened here? A wizard once protected Eusiron. He had armies in the east”—he pointed—“and south. Where are they?”
“In east, men serve Dark Warrior. Near wizard’s realm. He not there.” He moved his arm to indicate the surroundings. “Men fight in forest, silent, like foxes. But not draw near.” He paused. “Not know south.”
Lorth surmised that Sigmund’s men must have taken Icaros’s realm and now roamed the woodlands east of the river, killing Faerins with stealth and knowledge of the mountain terrain. They must be in the north, also, given the Faerin presence around the Northpass. Spread so thin, they wouldn’t likely have enough men to retake the palace—but it also meant the Faerins must not have a complete foothold, or they would’ve sent forces out here to deal with it.
“Are the Maelgwn still keeping the road?” Lorth asked.
Ithsion nodded. “Wolf killers, they fear.” He made a strange sign near his temple with his fingers.
“Would the Maelgwn allow me passage?”
Ithsion rose and strode towards the rear of the cave. “I come.”
Afternoon sunlight bathed the forest in sparkling light as the companions moved through the melting snow. Ithsion had graciously provided Lorth with fresh clothes and provisions, and now guided him westward, safe from Faerins and Eusirons alike.
Lorth cast his watch-webs just the same, whether by habit or instinct, he didn’t pause to question. But as he perceived the first snap gathering across his solar plexus, or so he thought, the impression faded like a dream he couldn’t recall. Twice more, this happened, leaving him with a sense of isolation that made him wish for his shapeshifting potion again.
Occasionally, Ithsion would let loose the flawless call of an owl, or a mourning dove, causing the hunter to wonder how many eyes watched them pass. The Maelgwn moved with the grace of an animal and found paths that Lorth would’ve needed magic to discern. Hours they traveled, before Ithsion spoke.
“I ask a thing,” he said. “You go home, you destroy. How you return here?”
Good question, Lorth thought. “My heart will guide me,” he said finally.
“I care for your horse, you love. You return, you teach me ride?”
“The Maelgwn do not ride. Is it so?”
Ithsion cast him a glance. “Some try. Not easy. You teach me?”
“I will,” Lorth promised. He paused. “Perhaps you can teach me to speak Maelgwn.”
Ithsion grinned broadly and clapped the hunter on the shoulder. “Honored.”
They continued into the evening, comfortable in each other’s company, until Lorth sensed something shift. Danger. Opportunity. He halted near a hemlock stand whispering with gray-green shadows. “Our paths must part here.”
Ithsion looked up at the gibbous moon rising through the trees. Then he touched Lorth on the arm and said, “Men in east, they tell of a witch. She betray.”
Lorth tore his gaze from the woods as the words fluttered into his gut and stuck there. “Setriana? Princess of Tarth?”
The Maelgwn blinked, not comprehending. “No Tarth. North witch.” He took a lock of his hair in his fingers, appeared to search unsuccessfully for a certain word, and then drew out a cloth from beneath his tunic, pale red as blood on snow. He held it near his hair.
Lorth stared at the cloth, feeling sick. “Red hair?”
A nod. “She belong to a raven, they say. She brought elm lord here, leader of wolf killers.” He held two fingers beneath his eyes and closed the lids. “Mother not see.”
Astarae.
Lorth turned towards Eusiron, his every vein, muscle and bone trembling with the Dark Warrior’s wrath.
~ * ~
After leaving his Maelgwn friend, Lorth touched Leda’s potion between his eyes, spoke a word and vanished into the landscape. He had discovered the potion to be superior to his sketchy magical skills, which required him to synchronize his movements with events using indiscriminate watch-webs. Leda’s magic also hid him from the eyes of animals. On his own, all it took was a flushed hind or a chittering squirrel to give him away. So he moved beneath the deadly attentions of Maelgwn, Faerins and Northmen, to whom he didn’t have time to explain—or worse, defend—his long absence.
The moon wheeled above the mountains as the hunter settled onto a high watch point that gave him a view of the Wolf River Road, the entrance to the High Pass and the dark walls of the Hall of Thorns. The previous sentry assigned to this outlook, fresh from a change in watch, Lorth had dispatched without sound or blood, and hidden well, so the next guard would find only an empty post with no evidence of trouble.
The hunter released his mind into the land using fiorloc, as Icaros had taught him. As with his other skills of late, it didn’t come together well—the fabric of nature’s mind wore thin in places and lay too thick in others. But he saw enough. Warriors spread out on the roads, paths and woods around the palace like mud shoved into the cracks of a leaky wall. The energies of hounds and horses moved upon the living web. Many minds turned to the south and west, as if expecting a threat. To the level of the Great Hall, archers lined the battlements; above that, the towers stood dark and silent. Men lurked everywhere beneath, many of them gazing upwards, as if to watch the openings above.
One anxious occupation, this. It appeared that Eusirons still held the higher levels of the palace. As Ithsion promised, the woodlands east of the road had a thin Faerin presence, as the Maelgwn and Sigmund’s ghostly warriors made it a bad place to be. After Lorth’s grisly work in Mrin, the western shore of the river lacked direction as well.
The hunter gazed sullenly at the palace walls. The elm lord, Ithsion had said. That could only mean Forloc himself, who had obviously fled Os and come up here to take the heart of Ostarin for his own. Lorth understood the motive for taking Os, as it offered Faerin access to the Bay of Maerth. But why would a Faerin warlord aspire to Eusiron? It had to be more than paranoia, to march the number of men it must have taken to accomplish this.
His only answer lay in the shadows of espionage. Forloc must have learned that the Lords of Eusiron planned to retake Os with or without magic. Perhaps he even knew that Eaglin had learned about Setriana’s treachery and now had jurisdiction. But to besiege Eusiron would require more than just force of arms. While Faerins were notorious for defiling common ethics, they weren’t stupid.
Astarae. It all came together, with her. A spy within—and not just any spy. Lorth recalled the Faerin he had caught on the ridge by the Maelgwn dead. In his lust for vengeance, Lorth had jumped to the conclusion that Setriana was the witch to whom the warrior referred. Now, in painful retrospect, he heard the man’s mocking laughter as he had confirmed a lie cloaking a devastating deception. Not Setriana, but Astarae. And Lorth had taken the bait.
Eaglin had been genuinely startled that someone had taken down his obfuscation spell over Icaros’s realm. In the heat of the council meeting, grieved and wroth over the violation of the ones he loved, Lorth hadn’t stopped to consider how unlikely that was. But he wouldn’t have assumed Astarae capable of it, even if she had enlisted the Faerins to capture and kill him.
Be careful, Cael had warned. That woman is plenty dangerous on her own. There’s even talk that Eaglin only beds her to keep her under control. Lorth had taken the guards
man’s advice and left it alone. Now he wondered if Eaglin had ever controlled Astarae—as if Barenus had control over Setriana—or indeed, Lorth over Leda. A woman defied control unless a man violated her, struck her into submission, a shameful option and that on which the Lords of Eusiron had sworn vengeance only a moon’s turn past.
The hunter slipped from his post and headed south. Later, he emerged from a stony gap that overlooked the road. A scouting party rode by, their torchlight raking the edges of the trees. On the far side, the whispering forest of Eusiron’s Haunt glistened in the moonlight.
As an owl, Lorth rustled from his spot and flew over the road a short distance from the guard and hound standing watch over the ancient stair. As he floated on silent wings through the tangle of the Haunt, he began to tremble, and his strength to falter. He dropped closer to the ground, and then tumbled, head over heel, through the snowy brush. He lay there, stunned.
Evidently, Leda’s potion didn’t work here.
He got up and began to walk in the direction of the palace. After stumbling around in the dark for a time, he found the twisting, broken stairs. The woods didn’t appear as he remembered them. No Faerins roamed this place, and understandably so: at night, in winter, these woods offered all the comfort of a very bad dream, breathing soft voices and shifting underfoot like a tide, watery and vague.
The whispering presence he had picked up the day before continued to haunt him; only here, it appeared as a dark cloaked figure standing by the path. Blackthorn, thistle, it hissed, smelling of earth. Earlier in the day, Lorth had tried to reveal its nature using the words he knew. Nothing happened. He had begun to suspect that his experience as a tree had muddled his perceptions of reality and compromised his powers.
At last, he found the entrance to the palace, unlit and unguarded. The cold, dark cressets stank of damp soot. Lorth studied the gate. No latch, handle, lock or chain held it closed, but he couldn’t budge it. When Eaglin had brought him here, the wizard hadn’t said a word; the gate simply opened for him, unbidden. Since Eaglin’s spells no longer held the tunnel or the bridge, Lorth guessed the spell on this gate was not a thing of wizards.
The Hunter's Rede Page 24