by Tad Williams
Someone moaned nearby, but Deornoth did not look up. Many in their party were suffering, and some—the little handmaiden with the terrible throat wound, and Helmfest, one of the Lord Constable’s men, gut-bitten by those unholy creatures—he doubted would live through the night.
Their troubles had not ended when they had escaped the destruction of Josua’s castle at Naglimund. Even as the prince’s party had staggered down the last broken steps of the Stile, they had been set on. Mere yards from the outer stand of Aldheorte, the ground had erupted around them and the false, storm-carried night had rung with chirping cries.
There had been diggers everywhere—Bukken, as young Isorn called them, shouting the name hysterically as he lay about him with his sword. Even in his fear the duke’s son had killed many, but Isorn had also taken a dozen shallow wounds from the diggers’ sharp teeth and crude, jagged knives. That was something else to worry about: in the forest, even small wounds were likely to fester.
Deornoth shifted uneasily. Those small shapes had clung to his own arm like rats. In his choking fear, he had almost cut his hand loose from his body to get the chittering things off. Even now, the thought made him squirm. He rubbed at his fingers, remembering.
Josua’s beleaguered company had finally escaped, hacking free long enough to make a dash for the forest. Strangely, the forbidding trees seemed to provide a sort of sanctuary. The swarming diggers, far too numerous to have been defeated, did not follow.
Is there some power in the forest that prevented them? Deornoth wondered. Or more likely, does something live here more fearsome even than they are?
Fleeing, they had left behind five torn things that had once been human beings. The prince’s troop of survivors now numbered perhaps a dozen—and judging by the tortuous, gasping breaths of the soldier Helmfest, who lay wrapped in his cloak near the fire, they would be fewer than that soon.
Lady Vorzheva was dabbing the blood away from Helmfest’s ghost-pale cheek. She had the distant, distracted look of a madman Deornoth had once seen, who had sat in the Naglimund-town square pouring water from one bowl to another for hours at a time, back and forth, never spilling a drop. Tending this living dead man was just as useless a thing to do, Deornoth felt sure, and it showed in Vorzheva’s dark eyes.
Prince Josua had been paying no greater heed to Vorzheva than to anyone else in the battered company. Despite the terror and weariness she shared with the rest of the survivors, it was obvious that she was also furiously angry about his inattention. Deornoth had long been a witness to Josua and Vorzheva’s stormy relationship, but was never quite sure how he felt about it. Sometimes he resented the Thrithings-woman as a distraction, a hindrance to his prince’s duties; at other moments he found himself pitying Vorzheva, whose sincere passions often outstripped her patience. Josua could be maddeningly careful and deliberate, and even at the best of times tended toward melancholy. Deornoth guessed that the prince would be a very difficult man for a woman to love and live with.
The old jester Towser and Sangfugol the harper were talking dispiritedly nearby. The jester’s wine sack lay empty and flattened on the ground beside them; it was the only wine any of the survivors would see for awhile. Towser had drained it dry himself in just a few gulps, occasioning more than a few sharp words from his fellows. His rheumy eye had blinked angrily as he drank, like an old rooster warning away a henyard interloper.
The only ones engaged in useful activity at this moment were the Duchess Gutrun, Isgrimnur’s wife, and Father Strangyeard, the archivist of Naglimund. Gutrun had slit the front and back of her heavy brocade skirt and was now sewing the open pieces together, making something like a pair of breeches for herself, the better to travel through Aldheorte’s clinging brush. Strangyeard, recognizing the good sense of this idea, was sawing away at the front of his own gray robe with Deornoth’s dulled knife.
The brooding Rimmersman Einskaldir sat near Father Strangyeard; between them lay a quiet shape, a dark bump below the wash of firelight. That was the little handmaiden whose name Deornoth could not remember. She had fled with them from the residence, and had cried quietly all the long way up and down the Stile.
Cried, that is, until the diggers had reached her. They had clung to her throat like terriers to a boar, even after their bodies had been sheared loose by the blades of her would-be rescuers. Now she cried no longer. She was very, very still, holding precariously to life.
Deornoth felt a shudder of trapped horror surge up within him. Merciful Usires, what had they done to deserve such dreadful retribution? Of what abominable sin were they guilty, to be punished by the harrowing of Naglimund?
He fought down the panic that he knew showed plainly on his face, then looked around. No one was watching him, thank Usires: no one had seen his shameful fear. Such conduct was not fitting, after all. Deornoth was a knight. He was proud that he had felt his prince’s gauntlet upon his head, had heard the pronouncement of service. He only wished for the clean terror of battle with human enemies—not tiny, squealing diggers, or the stone-faced, fish-white Norns who had destroyed Josua’s castle. How could you battle creatures out of childhood bogey-tales?
It must be the Day of Weighing-Out come at last. That was the only explanation. These might be living things they fought—they bled and died, and could demons be said to do so?—but they were forces of Darkness, nevertheless. The final days had come in truth.
Oddly, the idea made Deornoth feel a little stronger. Was this not, after all, a knight’s true calling, to defend his lord and land against enemies spiritual as well as corporeal? Hadn’t the priest said so before Deornoth’s vigil of investiture? He forced his fearful thoughts back into their proper track. He had long prided himself on his calm face, his slow and measured anger; for just that reason, he had always felt very comfortable with there served manners of his prince. How could Josua lead, except by the mastery of his own person?
Thinking of Josua, Deornoth stole another look at him and felt worry come surging back. It seemed that the prince’s armor of patience was at last breaking apart, wracked by forces no man should bear. As his liegeman watched, Josua stared out into the windy darkness, lips working as he spoke soundlessly to himself, brow wrinkled in pained concentration.
The watching became too difficult. “Prince Josua,” Deornoth called softly. The prince finished his silent speech, but did not turn his eyes to the young knight. Deornoth tried again. “Josua?”
“Yes, Deornoth?” he replied at last.
“My lord,” the knight began, then realized he had nothing to say. “My lord, my good lord…”
As Deornoth bit at his lower lip, hoping inspiration might strike his weary thoughts, Josua suddenly sat forward, eyes fixed where moments before they had aimlessly roved, staring at the dark beyond the fire-reddened breakfront of the forest.
“What is it?” Deornoth asked, alarmed. Isorn, who had been slumbering behind him, roused with an incoherent cry at the sound of his friend’s voice. Deornoth fumbled for his sword, pulling it free from the scabbard, half-standing as he did so.
“Be silent.” Josua raised his arm.
A thrill of dread swept through the camp. For stretching seconds there was nothing, then the rest heard it, too: something breaking clumsily through the undergrowth just beyond the ring of light.
“Those creatures!” Vorzheva’s voice rose up out of a whisper into a wavering cry. Josua turned and grasped her arm tightly. He gave her a single harsh shake.
“Quiet, for the love of God!”
The sound of branches breaking came nearer. Now Isorn and the soldiers were on their feet, too, hands clutching fearfully at sword-hilts. Some of the rest of the company were quietly weeping and praying.
Josua hissed: “No forest dweller would go so noisily…” His anxiousness was poorly hidden. He pulled Naidel out of the sheath. “It walks two-legged…”
“Help me…” called a voice out of the dark. The night seemed to grow deeper still, as though the blackness might
roll over them and obliterate their feeble campfire.
A moment later something pushed through into the ring of trees. It flung its arms up before its eyes as the firelight beat upon it. “God save us, God save us!” Towser cried hoarsely. “Look, it is a man,” Isorn gasped. “Aedon, he is covered in blood!” The wounded man lurched another two steps toward the fire, then slid jerkily to his knees, pushing forward a face nearly black with dried blood, but for the eyes that stared unseeingly toward the circle of startled people. “Help me,” he moaned again. His voice was slow and thick, almost unrecognizable as a man speaking the Westerling tongue.
“What is this madness, Lady?” Towser groaned. The old jester was tugging at Duchess Gutrun’s sleeve as might a child. “Tell me, what is this curse that has been put on us?”
“I think I know this man!” Deornoth gasped, and a moment later felt the freezing fear drop away; he sprang forward to grab the trembling man’s elbow and ease him closer to the fire. The newcomer was draped in tattered rags. A fringe of twisted rings, all that remained of a mail shirt, hung about his neck on a collar of blackened leather. “It is the pikeman who came with us as a guard,” Deornoth told Josua. “When you met your brother in the tent before the walls.”
The prince nodded slowly. His gaze was intent, his expression momentarily unfathomable. “Ostrael…” Josua murmured. “Was that not his name?” The prince stared at the blood-spattered young pikeman for a long instant, then his eyes brimmed with tears and he turned away.
“Here, you poor, wretched fellow, here…” Father Strangyeard reached forward with a skin of water. They had scarcely more of that than they had of wine, but no one said a word. The water filled Ostrael’s open mouth and overflowed, streaming down his chin. He could not seem to swallow.
“The…diggers had him,” Deornoth said. “I am sure I saw him caught by them, back at Naglimund.” He felt the pikeman’s shoulder quiver beneath his touch, heard the man’s breath whistling in and out. “Aedon, how he must have suffered.”
Ostrael’s eyes turned up to his, yellow and glazed even in the dim light. The mouth opened again in the dark-crusted face. “Help…” The voice was painfully slow, as though each heavy word were being hoisted up his throat to his mouth before tumbling out into the air- “It…hurts me,” he wheezed. “Hollow.”
“God’s Tree, what can possibly be done for him?” Isorn groaned. “We are all hurting.”
Ostrael’s mouth gaped. He stared up with blind eyes. “We can bandage his wounds.” Isorn’s mother Gutrun was recovering her considerable poise. “We can get him a cloak. If he lives until the morning, we can do more then.”
Josua had turned back to look at the young pikeman again. “The duchess is right, as usual. Father Strangyeard, see if you can find a cloak. Perhaps one of the less injured can spare theirs…”
“No!” Einskaldir growled. “I do not like this!” A confused silence fell on the gathering.
“Surely you do not begrudge…” Deornoth began, then gasped as Einskaldir leaped past him and seized the panting Ostrael by the shoulders, throwing him roughly to the ground. Einskaldir squatted on the young pikeman’s chest. The bearded Rimmersman’s long knife appeared from nowhere to lie against Ostrael’s blood-smeared neck like a glinting smile.
“Einskaldir!” Josua’s face was pale. “What is this madness?”
The Rimmersman looked over his shoulder, a strange grin slashing his bearded face. “This is no true man! I do not care where you think you have seen him before!”
Deornoth reached a hand toward Einskaldir, but drew it back quickly when the Rimmersman’s knife whickered past his outstretched fingers.
“Fools! Look!” Einskaldir pointed with his hilt toward the fire. Ostrael’s bare foot lay among the embers at the edge of the firepit. The flesh was being consumed, blackening and smoking, yet the pikeman himself lay almost placidly beneath Einskaldir, his lungs fluting as he forced breath in and out. There was a moment of silence. A smothering, bone-chilling fog seemed to settle over the clearing. The moment had become as horribly strange yet inalterable as a nightmare. Fleeing the ruin of Naglimund, they might have wandered into the trackless lands of madness.
“Perhaps his wounds…” Isorn began.
“Idiot! He feels no fire,” Einskaldir snarled. “And he has a slash in his throat that would kill any man. Look! See!” He forced back Ostrael’s head until those gathered around could see the ragged, fluttering edges of the wound, which stretched from one angle of his jaw to the other. Father Strangyeard, who had been leaning close, made a choking noise and turned away.
“Tell me he is not some ghost…” the Rimmersman continued, then was almost thrown to the ground as the body of the pikeman began to thrash beneath him. “Hold him down!” Einskaldir shouted, trying to keep his face away from Ostrael’s head, which whipped from side to side, the teeth snapping shut on empty air.
Deornoth dove forward and clutched at one of the slender arms; it was cold and hard as stone, but still horribly flexible. Isorn, Strangyeard, and Josua were also struggling to find handholds on the wriggling, lunging form. The half-darkness was rich with panicky curses. When Sangfugol came forward and wrapped himself around the last unprisoned foot, hanging on with both arms, the body became quiescent for a moment. Deornoth could still feel the muscles moving beneath the skin, tightening and relaxing, mustering strength for another try. Air hissed in and out of the pikeman’s distended, idiot-mouth.
Ostrael’s head craned out on his uplifted neck, his blackened face swinging to look at each of them in turn. Then, with terrifying suddenness, the staring eyes seemed to blacken and fall inward. A moment later, wavering crimson fire blossomed in the empty pits and the labored breathing stopped. Somebody shrieked, a thin cry that quickly fell away into choking silence.
Like the clammy, crushing grip of a titan hand, loathing and raw dread reached out and enfolded the entire camp as the prisoner spoke.
“So,” it said. Nothing human was left in its tones, only the dreadful, icy inflection of empty spaces; the voice droned and blew like a black, un-fenced wind. “This would have been much the easier way…but a swift death that comes in sleep is denied to you, now.”
Deornoth felt his own heart speeding like a snared rabbit’s, speeding until he thought it might leap from his breast. He felt the strength flowing out of his fingers, even as they clutched at the body that had once been Ostrael Firsfram’s son. Through the tattered shirt he could feel flesh chill as a headstone but nevertheless trembling with awful vitality.
“What are you!?” Josua said, struggling to keep his voice even. “And what have you done to this poor man?”
The thing chuckled, almost pleasantly, but for the awful emptiness of its voice. “I did nothing so this creature. It was already dead, of course, or nearly so—it was not hard to find dead mortals in the ruins of your freehold, prince of rubble.”
Somebody’s fingernails were cutting into the skin of Deornoth’s arm, but the ruined face gripped his gaze like a candle gleaming at the end of a long, black tunnel.
“Who are you?” Josua demanded.
“I am one of the masters of your castle…and of your ultimate death,” the thing replied with poisonous gravity. “I owe no mortal answers. If not for the bearded one’s keen eye, your throats would have all been quietly slit tonight, saving us much time and trouble. When your fleeing spirits go squealing at last into the endless Between from which we ourselves escaped, it will be by our doing. We are the Red Hand, knights of the Storm King—and He is the master of all!”
With a hiss from the ruptured throat, the body abruptly doubled over like a hinge, struggling with the horrifying strength of a scorched snake. Deornoth felt his hold slipping away. As the fire was kicked up into fluttering sparks, he heard Vorzheva sobbing somewhere nearby. Others were filling the night with frightened cries. He was sliding off; Isorn’s weight was being pushed down on top of him. Deornoth heard the terrified shouts of his fellows intertwine with
his own hysterical prayer for strength…
Suddenly the thrashing became weaker. The body beneath him continued to flail from side to side for long moments, like a dying eel, then finally stopped.
“What…?” he was able to force out at last.
Einskaldir, gasping for breath, pointed to the ground with his elbow, still maintaining a tight grip on the unmoving body. Severed by Einskaldir’s sharp knife, Ostrael’s head had rolled an arm’s length away, almost out of the firelight. Even as the company stared, the dead lips pulled back in a snarl. The crimson light was extinguished; the sockets were only empty wells. A thin whisper of sound passed the broken mouth, forced out on a last puff of breath.
“…No escape…Norns will find…No…” It fell silent.
“By the Archangel…” Hoarse with terror, Towser the jester broke the stillness.
Josua rook a shaky breath. “We must give the demon’s victim an Aedonite burial.” The prince’s voice was firm, but it clearly took a heroic effort of will to make it so. He turned to look at Vorzheva, who was wide-eyed and slack-mouthed with shock. “And then we must flee. They are indeed pursuing us.” Josua turned and caught Deornoth’s eye, staring. “An Aedonite burial,” he repeated.
“First,” Einskaldir panted, blood welling in a long scratch on his face, “I cut the arms and legs off, too.” He bent to the task, lifting his hand axe.
The others turned away.
The forest night crept in closer still.
Old Gealsgiath walked slowly along the wet, pitching deck of his ship toward the two hooded and cloaked figures huddling at the starboard rail. They turned as he approached, but did not remove their hands from the railing.
“Be-damned-to-Hell stinking weather!” the captain shouted above the moaning of the wind. The hooded figures said nothing. “Men are going down to sleep in kilpa-beds on the Great Green tonight,” Old Gealsgiath added in a conversational roar. His thick Hernystiri burr carried even above the flapping and creaking of the sails. “This be drowning weather, sure enough.” The heavier of the two figures pushed back his hood, eyes squinting in his pink face as the rain lashed at him.