The Land of Night

by Kirby Crow

  The courtyard was a hubbub of noise as hounds and grooms darted between the horses. A few of the nobles were already mounted. Eleferi and his brother Vladei were in red and gold hunting colors near the head of the line, as were Alexyin and Tesk and also two of the courtiers that Scarlet had spoken to in the library. There were some forty or more horses saddled and ready, splendidly groomed and decked, and twice that many spectators and court ladies and little lads running underfoot everywhere and laughing. The horses were well-trained and did not shy even when one of the children ducked under a horse’s belly and shrieked laughter, playing a game of tag with his friend.

  A groom marched up to Liall carrying a white-painted wooden pole that was twice his height. One end was blunt and had a wide grip and guard fashioned for the hand, and the other end was sharpened into a point and covered with a thin, beaten layer of silver hardened with nickel and lead. At least twenty other riders were holding similar implements, and Liall accepted his and settled it easily into a grooved slip fashioned into the leather of his saddle.

  “What is that?” Scarlet asked in awe, still unmounted. “That’s never a spear.”

  “It is. The rider must hold it during the chase, like so.” Liall showed him, one hand on the reins and the other steadying the stake.

  “You’ve got some cheek, calling that a spear,” Scarlet said. “It’s a sail mast, at least.”

  Scarlet did not have to ask what the spears were for, for several of the tips were still stained with old blood the color of rust. This was how the bear would be hunted: ran down with dogs and horses, corralled into some narrow ravine or the base of some hill, and then impaled by many of those great stakes.

  “Doesn’t seem like much sport to me,” Scarlet commented.

  “Then you can rutting well stay behind!” Liall growled in gutter Falx, which bought him a laugh from Scarlet. Not exactly Liall’s intended reaction. A groom led another saddled horse up to Scarlet. Liall spoke to the groom in Sinha, wanting the man to double-check the saddle, but Scarlet stepped up and checked it and the bit as well, and then put his foot in the stirrup. He swung up, no easy task for a small rider drowning in fur, and settled himself easily in the saddle. He caught Liall gaping at him.

  “What?” Scarlet laughed. “Close your mouth lest something fly in, want-wit.”

  “I did not know you rode.”

  “Of course I ride. Well... at least enough to stay in a saddle. My dad fixed wagons for a living. What do you think pulled them, mice?”

  Liall scowled, still wishing there was some way he could forbid Scarlet to go, but it was too late. “You and Jochi will stay in the rear of the hunt, with the watch-riders and youths,” Liall said, bringing his mount alongside Scarlet’s and reaching down to check the stirrups of Scarlet’s horse one last time. “Neither of you will be hunting today.”

  “We will still be able to see any excitement,” Jochi reassured Scarlet, and Liall turned to see Jochi mounted on a fine dappled horse.

  Liall sighed and glanced at Scarlet a last time. “You look splendid,” he said, suddenly regretful that he had been in such a foul mood. He was also nearly ill with anxiety. All that morning, he had had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, a hole that was slowly being filled with a nameless dread. He felt the shamed urge to pray to gods he didn’t believe in, just on the thin chance that it might do some good. Liall mentioned none of this to Scarlet.

  “I must join the others,” Liall said unsmilingly. “Jochi, I leave him in your hands.”

  Jochi inclined his head. “Depend upon me, my prince.”

  Scarlet gave Jochi a saucy wink. Liall guided his horse through the melee to the edge of the courtyard. He turned and Cestimir was beside him, mounted on a gray horse similar to his own.

  “Well, brother,” Cestimir smiled “Are you ready to hunt?”

  ***

  Red and white, white and red.

  The rules of the hunt were that the watch-riders in the rear would not come near the actual kill, but would stay far back from any slaughter or blood, yet Liall kept looking at Scarlet so anxiously that Jochi was moved to gently reassure the prince that he would watch out for the boy, and Liall’s heart was eased.

  And so, Liall was easy and relaxed when the worst happened, and did not see the yawning edge of death, red-fanged and razor-clawed, until it was too late.

  Three bears had been spotted in the hunting preserve during the spring season, and during the night the beaters went out and drove them into the lower preserve closest to the palace, a wide, open expanse of snowy lowland field bordered by a dense forest. It was near the bear’s hibernating time, and they would be fattened and irritable and in no mood to tolerate intruders. The dogs, great, thick-furred beasts with sly, slanted eyes blue as a summer sky, would run tandem with the lead horses until they reached the hunting grounds, then given their head to run on and scent out the bear.

  The dogs began to bay and growl even before they were really clear of the palace grounds. The huntsmaster sounded a note on a silver pipe and the dogs leaped forward, melting into the looming edge of the forest so fast it tricked the eye into thinking they had vanished. The riders went in after them at a fast trot, cautious and not having that heightened sense the dogs possessed, to let them know by smell how close the bear was. Forty men on horses, twenty of them with stakes, the rest either serving as flanks on the line to keep watch for the bear or bringing up the rear as youths training to the hunt or just observers.

  In the twilight gloom, the horses kept pace with the dogs for several minutes, seeing their shadows up ahead, wending in and out of the trees and baying at full throat. Then the dogs surged forward and hunting party lost sight of them, pursuing the animals by sound alone. The huntsmaster blew another note on his pipe, and several of the dogs bayed loudly, signaling their location. The hunters spurred the horses and turned west back towards the open field.

  The line of riders broke from the forest in a blur. Baron Ressanda was on Liall’s right, a veteran of many hunts, so limber and confident in the saddle he seemed not to move at all. Vladei was behind Liall, which set his nerves to humming, for Vladei had been in the lead when they started out. Liall glanced over at Ressanda and the Baron jerked his chin over his shoulder. Ressanda was no fool. He was keeping a tight watch on Vladei himself.

  Up from behind him, a rider rushed past –Tesk or Baron Tebet, Liall could not tell– and somewhere ahead the dogs began to howl and bay in a crescendo of blood lust. That was when they first heard the bear.

  The snow bear is an unfriendly beast. It is a loner for much of the year, staking out and marking its hunting grounds by scent and claws. It only tolerates its own kind to mate or to fight and –for the female– to raise her young to two winters before abandoning them. It can tower four to six feet above a horse’s head, and its girth measures a mature oak of thirty years or more.

  The bear the dogs had pinned down near the wreck of an ancient pine was an old one, a male, his jowls and muzzle marked by long whiskers that gave him a grizzled appearance. Twenty baying, bristling dogs snarling and snapping at the bear’s flanks, and the great white mound of the bear himself trapped between the bole of the dead tree and a finger of bare rock protruding from the low hill at his back. They rode up on it in two lines, one to either side of the hill, and those hunters with spears moved forward to surround the beast with a circle of sharpened death.

  “Pail’aa sest Nauhin!” the huntsmaster cried over the din of dogs and bear and horses stamping in fear. It was a ritual cry –For the Shining Ones!– but the Shining Ones had lived long, long ago and no one remembered why the bear was always sacrificed to them.

  Three spear teams, six to a team and the huntsmaster and the houndsmaster hanging back to let them work. The baiting team goes in and prods the bear to turn, and then the other teams move to turn it back with sharp prods from the spears. The maddened beast almost always charges the third time, right into the spears. Liall had seen it happen so often that i
t was almost rote to him. The baiting team, blue and silver for the queen, moved in, and Liall was not happy to have Vladei at his back, but it was Vladei’s skin, too, if they failed, and Liall was counting on Vladei loving that too much to risk it.

  As the baiting team moved forward, Vladei kneed his horse close to Liall’s, his red silks fluttering. Liall slid a black glance to Vladei, one gloved hand on his reins, and then quickly spurred his horse, piercing the bear’s hide enough to madden it and turn it to the other two teams. The second and third teams took their turns, shouting and stabbing the bear shallowly or deep, and the bear’s pure, snowy hide blossomed with red flowers of blood.

  When the bear turned again and it was up to Liall’s team, the queen’s colors, to take the killing shot, Vladei appeared to hang back as he must, not being on the queen’s team. And then, at the last moment when Liall’s stake was furthest out and his horse a full head closer to the bear than all others, Vladei spurred his well-trained mount to surge forward, getting in the way of the other horses until Liall whipped his head around –“Vladei!”– and saw that he was alone. The bear had his opening.

  Four weak spears and one lowered one, and one horse within paw’s reach. The bear roared and reared up on his hind legs, a towering wall of thick hide and teeth, and Liall’s horse shied and screamed, feeling death even before Liall. One blur, an arc of sharp spikes slicing the air, and his mount’s innards splattered on the snow. The gelding went down screaming and took Liall with it, rolling –thank the Shining Ones– away from the bear, but pinning his left leg under the saddle. Liall dropped the stake, his right leg already out of the stirrup and pushing, trying to shove the gelding off or himself out from under the animal’s bulk, the thick stench of steaming guts and blood making him want to vomit.

  Fear. He had hunted snow bear before but never this close. From the ground the bear looked even bigger, a tide of death coming toward him. Liall saw a rider on Vladei’s team –Tesk it was– viciously spur his horse forward and spear the bear in the shoulder to get it to turn, but the beast had scented blood other than its own and would have it. Tesk flung his spear at the bear, shouting wildly. It might have been a toothpick, so little did the bear heed it. Liall heard the huntsmaster sound his pipe and the dogs came forward in a furious, boiling mass, finally allowed to rend and tear. They hung dripping on the bear’s hide, fangs buried in his flesh, until the bear dragged two into his embrace and crushed them. Red and white, blood and snow, and the bear opened wide his mouth, which yawned open like a dinner platter ringed with small knives, and let out a roar that made Liall’s eardrums ring. Someone was shouting in Bizye –or was it Sinha?– and any second now the bear would charge over the hump of the dead horse and bury those teeth into Liall, bite through his neck until the corded flesh parted and his head rolled on the ground, white and red. Liall could only stare into the bear’s eyes and wait for it, his ears deadened to sound, feeling a cold sense of awe that the bear’s eyes were the most beautiful shade of clear gold, like candlelight, burning up everything in his field of vision. He prepared to die, swallowed by the fire in the bear’s brain, unaided and trapped under the horse.

  And then, it all changed.

  Scarlet, little Scarlet, whom Liall had made ride in the rear guard because he knew nothing of hunting, proved it by doing what no real hunter would ever do: he whipped his horse straight into the bear, thus cutting his mount out from under him and leaving him on equal terms with his prey. Scarlet drove his heels into the horse’s flank and shouted wildly, and the mount –trained to a flawless performance– leapt forward obediently, its eyes rolling white in terror, but still charging the bear. It crashed into the mountain of white fur and teeth, bowling it over and throwing Scarlet up and over the saddle to impact with the side of the icy hill. Scarlet lay stunned for a moment as the bear turned its killing gaze from him to Scarlet’s horse and ripped open its throat. The valiant horse fell dead just as Scarlet was rolling over and getting to his feet and –oh gods– he was behind the bear. The bear was between Scarlet and the hunters, and the hill was to his back. He was trapped.

  Scarlet knew this, too. Liall could see it in Scarlet’s eyes in the instant before the bear came between them. Red and white, Scarlet and the White Wolf, Scarlet and the snow bear, blood and snow, and the bear roared a note of pure pain and fury and charged Scarlet.

  Scarlet’s mouth opened and he inhaled once, eyes so black and round they looked like pits, and then he dropped to one knee. Liall thought Scarlet had fallen, and then he saw Scarlet’s pale hand grope for something on the ground: Tesk’s thrown spear, half-hidden in the snow. Scarlet’s fingers curled around it and he brought the point up swiftly, bracing the butt against the rocky side of the hill, as the bear raced forward, blind to everything but prey, and it struck.

  Blood splashed the snow, a great arc of it, red and steaming and smelling of iron and brass. There was constant roar in Liall’s head, and whether it was him screaming at the hunters to get Scarlet out of there or him keening for his lover’s death, he could not tell. Suddenly, there were men surrounding Liall, sliding friendly hands under his arms and lifting him, levering the horse away from his leg. The snow bear was conquered at last, slumped in an impossibly large heap near the foot of the hill, presumably dead.

  Where was Scarlet? Liall could only believe he was under the bear, and in the same condition. Liall tried to go to Scarlet, but his leg gave out and he was on his hands and knees, buried up to the wrists in crimson slush where the hot blood had melted the ice.

  Ressanda was at his side, and Jochi, trying to help him.

  “My prince,” Jochi babbled, his face drawn by grief into lines of ugliness. “My prince, he went... I could not stop him...” He was pale and sobbing openly.

  Liall shoved them away and lurched towards the bear. “Scarlet!” He turned to Ressanda, who was staring at him in shock and pity. “Help me move this beast!”

  It took more than Ressanda. Four men, using spears as a fulcrum, were at last able to lever the bear off the small, still body pinned between the hill and the beast. The stake had been aimed true: Scarlet had impaled the bear through the heart.

  It must have been the heart, Liall thought. The bear’s blood was everywhere. The beast had poured himself out on the ground. It covered Scarlet from neck to foot, drenching his furs, and his eyes were closed as though dead. Liall gave a wild and anguished cry and knelt to gather Scarlet in his arms.

  Red and white. The blood-painted hill and the ivory of his skin, now stained red. One moment of distraction, long enough for Vladei to play him for a fool, and his nightmare had entered the waking world.

  The dream was true, Liall thought in misery. A portent of things to come, and I knew it long before I left Volkovoi. Had I not been warned not to bring him to Rshan? I knew I risked his life, but I was selfish. I wanted him with me.

  Liall lifted Scarlet and moved to clean ground, where he knelt again and brushed Scarlet’s hair away from his forehead. A little blood stained Scarlet’s temple, and Liall saw that a dark bruise was forming at the line of his hair.

  “Your hair is always so unruly,” Liall whispered in fading despair. “Scarlet...please,” he moaned, wanting to deny this death, find some way to banish it, but there was none. Had the gods not warned him? “Scarlet, no.”

  Scarlet’s cheek was still warm against Liall’s hand as he cupped it and kissed Scarlet’s mouth. Still warm there, too. It made Liall weep at last, something he had not done since the last time he feared Scarlet would die, and before that it was the day Nadei died.

  A shower of snowflakes came on a sudden wind as Liall huddled on the ground, his arms locked around Scarlet. They rained down and settled in Scarlet’s hair, turning black to frost and silver.

  And then, like the magic in the stories, he opened his eyes.

  “Liall?” Scarlet croaked, and then he coughed. Behind them, Jochi gave a cry of joy and began shouting orders to bring a sleigh. There were other shouts, cries of
wonder and disbelief, as the hunters saw with great relief that it would not be a day to mourn after all. They had lost no hunters. The bear was dead. They were alive.

  Liall held Scarlet, drenched in bear’s blood as he was, and gazed in profound relief at what he had been given back.

  “You... you are not,” Liall stammered, more than a little afraid that this was the true dream and he would wake to find himself in the palace surrounded by sorrowful faces. “Oh, Scarlet, are you really alive?”

  Scarlet reached up to touch Liall’s face, and Liall realized with awe that this was the second time Scarlet had awakened from “death” to find Liall weeping over him.

  “Kiss me and find out.”

  7.

  The Gift

  They rode back in a sleigh. Liall pushed Scarlet into the carriage, sticky as he was with blood. Scarlet was dazed, not only from the shock of seeing Liall trapped on the ground, but from his own recklessness in taking the damned beast on. His fur coat and his hat were mucky and growing stiff with blood, but Jochi wouldn’t allow him to take anything off. Liall rode next to Scarlet, silent and pale, his hands clenched into fists, as Jochi apologized repeatedly and wept.