Hinterland

by James Clemens

  “Perhaps there’s hope for her yet,” Krevan breathed.

  Marron seemed to sense his mistress’s weakness and sought to hide it from the strangers here. “Let me, mistress. As always, your servant.”

  His words broke her hesitation, but not her resolve. She waved to the satchel. “Show me.”

  Marron shuffled gratefully forward on his knees. He fingered loose the strings and reached inside.

  “Be ready,” Tylar said to Brant.

  Dart tensed. They needed the skull exposed, free of its bile cocoon. She urged Marron not to falter.

  He pulled it free as if reading Dart’s thoughts.

  Pupp had angled closer, ever curious, perhaps sensing Dart’s attention and focus. None saw him—not even Dart. Not until it was too late.

  Marron lowered the wrapped skull to the planks and peeled back the wrap. Brant groaned, falling to his knees, guarded over by Krevan.

  “Sing, boy,” Rogger urged. “Speak anything.”

  Dart heard Brant whisper through pain-thinned lips, haltingly and agonized. She knew if she touched him now that he would be feverish again.

  He sang as he burnt. “‘Come, sweet night…steal the last light…so your moons may glow.’”

  The Huntress still knelt before the revealed skull. She slowly lifted her head, like a flower following the sun. “What…?” A hand rose to touch her brow. Her gaze flickered to Brant. “What are you…don’t…”

  Lost to his own agony, he continued mumbling his song, gasping out notes as if they pained him. “‘Come, sweet night…hide all our worries…so our dreams will flow.’”

  The god’s face squeezed against what she heard. The fingers at her brow turned their nails on her own flesh, dragging gouges. Teeth gritted, a whine escaped, blood flowed, rich in Grace.

  “No…stop…”

  “Keep going,” Tylar urged.

  Marron heard Tylar, then glanced between Brant and the Huntress. Both god and boy were now locked on one another.

  The Huntress clenched her face between her two palms, but she did not break her gaze on Brant. Fingers pulled at hair, scratched deeper. “Should not come back…I resisted once…sent you away.”

  “What are you doing?” Marron asked, shoving to his feet. “Huntress?”

  She ignored him.

  Marron stumbled back, unsure, lacking his own will, without guidance. But as the seersong was ripped from his god, the loss also weakened her control over the others. Bows dropped. Hunters stumbled back. Others panicked and swung upon the strangers, arrows nocked and shaking in their direction.

  “She’s breaking,” Rogger whispered.

  One hunter fell down beside Dart, staring at his hands in disbelief. A wail escaped him, full of heartbreak and horror.

  The Huntress echoed his cry, blood flowing like tears down her cheek. “No! I don’t want…it hurts too much…!”

  Her eyes glanced to Brant’s clutched fist. She then thrashed back, covering her face, falling on her side.

  “What have I done?”

  With the skull abandoned by both Marron and the Huntress, another came closer to investigate. With the planks cleared to either side, Dart spotted the fiery glow of his approach, slunk low, glowing with curiosity.

  Dart’s heart clenched in her chest. “Pupp…no! Stay back!”

  Too late.

  He reached forward and nosed the skull. As with all items potent in Grace, the contact pulled Pupp into substance. He bloomed with solidity on the planks of the balcony. His form glowed ruddy and bright, melting and churning, a bronze statue upon a forge.

  Marron noted Pupp’s fiery appearance. Though dazed, the hunter finally found something upon which to focus, to vent his confusion. He scrambled to free his bow, arm pointed.

  “Daemon!” he screamed. “They bring daemons!”

  Pupp lifted his head, drawn by the cry. With the contact broken, his form wisped away, a candle gutted, visible only to Dart now.

  Marron searched vainly, stumbling in a wary circle—until returning to what still rested upon the planks.

  “The skull!” he screamed. “It is cursed! Births daemons!”

  Brant’s efforts to pull the roots of seersong from the Huntress had an unwanted ripple. It also freed Marron to act, to shed his indecisiveness.

  The hunter sprang forward. His booted leg held high. He brought his heel crashing down on the crown of the skull, smashing the ancient bones to skittering fragments. One piece struck Dart’s knee.

  Next to her, Brant gasped and arched back as if lashed. His feeble song died on his lips.

  “Bring oil!” Marron yelled, grinding bone under his heel. “Burn the foul thing to ash!”

  The other hunters responded to their leader, needing some guidance to fill the void left by the Huntress’s absence. Krevan attempted to lunge forward, but an arrow sped past his ear, warning him back. They were surrounded again. Lamps and torches appeared, rushed forward by others.

  The fragments were doused and set to flame.

  Rogger managed to collect the piece near Dart’s knee, scooping it away into a rag, then into a pocket. The rest burnt in pools of oil.

  Brant wobbled back to his feet. “The stone—it’s gone cold again.”

  The Huntress also pushed from her sprawl. Her face was still bloody, but her wounds were already healing, sealing up with the fire of her own Grace. Her eyes continued to roll as she fought to focus.

  “I’ve lost her,” Brant said, stumbling back. “The song still holds firm, rooted deep. I could feel it.”

  A malignancy spread again among the hunters. More bowmen and spears poured up from below, drawn by the commotion, silently summoned by the command of the god.

  The Huntress sank back into her madness, almost gratefully, with no fight. She gained her feet, too, though not without wobbling. She stared across at the surrounded party. Eyes shone with Grace and malice. Her voice remained whispery and weak.

  “Kill…” She pointed at Brant. “Kill the boy.”

  Only one heard her, the closest to her side.

  Marron had his bow already in hand. He drew a long pull.

  “Wait!” Tylar called, billowing out his cloak protectively. But his hobbled knee stumbled him.

  The arrow pierced his shadowcloth and sailed past.

  Brant suddenly sat down hard upon the planks next to Dart. He stared down at his chest. A feathered bolt protruded from his ribs. Dart saw the poisoned point poking out the back of his shoulder.

  The Huntress tottered, but her voice grew firmer.

  “He has a stone…the stone. Bring it to me.”

  Dart kept her gaze on Brant. She saw the color drain, his face go slack. She reached a hand—but he fell away from her touch, his face lifted toward the ravens in the trees.

  Just as dead.

  Lorr had known when the seersong weakened its hold on both the Huntress and her hunters. He read it in the sudden bewilderment of their guards: the sway of limb, the lowering of weapons, the squint of confusion.

  One of the hunters swung away and suddenly emptied his stomach into a bush. Another ran off, dropping his bow, stepping on his own arrow, and stabbing himself. He ran four steps, then dropped like a felled deer.

  Lorr collected the dead hunter’s weapon, even the offending arrow.

  The loam-giant smashed a fist into the face of the man who tried to stop him, crushing bone and knocking him flat. Shaking his fist, Malthumalbaen turned back to Lorr.

  “Grab our weapons,” Lorr said and pointed. “Especially the regent’s swords.”

  The giant obeyed, gathering an armful. “What now?”

  “We get lost in the wood.”

  Lorr didn’t know how long this respite would last. Even if the others succeeded, it would be easy to get grazed by a panicked arrow in the meantime. Better to be lost. So he led the way. In the chaos, it was not hard to vanish out of the clearing and into the denser forest.

  Or usually it wouldn’t be.

  T
he tracker winced at the crashing progress of the giant behind him. For a creature born of loam, the fellow seemed to be pounding at the very soil that had given birth to him. Twigs snapped, branches broke, and tangles of vines ripped with every other step. They were leaving a trail behind that a blind man could track.

  He hissed at the giant behind him. “Can you tread a little lighter?”

  “As soon as you suck that big nose back into your head,” he countered. “Where are we going, anyway? I won’t leave Master Brant behind.”

  Lorr rolled his eyes. “We can’t mount a rescue unless we’re free. I need to scout the immediate area, secure more weapons, but first I have to find some hollow tree to plant your wide arse. You’re not exactly built for sneaking.”

  But apparently others were.

  Lorr pushed past a heavy branch and found himself facing a circle of hunters. Spears bristled, arrows waited. An ambush. Lorr immediately judged the others, weighing the threat. They were dressed in woodland greens and blacks, but their clothes were ripped and ill-fitted. They appeared no more than boys, wild-eyed but grim. The two parties eyed each other for a wary breath.

  Neither sure of the other.

  Friend or foe.

  But Lorr noted one hopeful sign.

  These hunters’ lips were unstained.

  “Who are you?” Lorr asked. “Whom do you follow?”

  One of the hunters merely pointed up.

  Up toward the castillion.

  Where the Huntress ruled.

  As the hunters circled tighter around them, Tylar backed the others behind him, hobbling on his bad knee. He fed shadows into his cloak, along with his anger and certainty. If the Huntress wanted a war, so be it.

  “Brant!” Dart sobbed behind him.

  Krevan closed on their other side, protecting the dead boy and the girl. Calla closed on his left flank, Rogger on the other. But they had no weapons.

  Or rather only one.

  Tylar grabbed his barely healed finger. He would bring god against god, his naethryn against the Huntress. If necessary, they would burn bone from flesh and forge a path out of this tree.

  Determined, Tylar snapped his finger straight back, refracturing the new bone with a starry flash of pain. He braced for the agony to spread, to break more bones, to release the naethryn from its bony cage. But nothing happened. A rib snapped in his chest like a weak echo of his cracked finger—but nothing more.

  He gasped between clenched teeth, staring down at his throbbing hand. He leaned away from the side with the broken rib.

  Something was wrong.

  He felt the naethryn stir behind his breastbone, still trapped.

  Like all of them.

  Rogger glanced over to him. “Maybe that finger hadn’t set completely. You have nine others. I suggest you pick one right quick.”

  Tylar lifted his head.

  The Huntress had paused after Marron’s arrow killed Brant, perhaps gloating, perhaps even juggling a bit of regret. How firmly had the seersong re-rooted? Was there any residual grief that still panged? Impossible to say. Her face remained impassive.

  Either way, Tylar was past trying to talk her back from the ravening edge. All it had done was get the boy killed. He grabbed his next finger, stirring afresh the pain in his hand.

  Then the silence was shattered.

  Eyaaahhhhhh!

  But the scream was not his own. It rang out across the canopy, drawing gazes toward the misty heights. Arrows sliced out of nowhere and whistled through the treetop gathering.

  Hunters stumbled all around, pierced through arm, thigh, chest, and belly. Bows dropped, and bodies fell with pained exhalations. Krevan and Calla grabbed weapons. Tylar tried to do the same, but his left hand was too crippled. His side flamed with agony.

  He had not been arrow-struck. It was only the protest of his shattered rib. He glanced around. None of them had been hit.

  “Stay low,” Rogger whispered and pulled him down.

  On one knee, Krevan drew upon his bow and let an arrow fly. It sliced through one of the hunters’ throats with a great spray of crimson. The man fell over a railing and tumbled without a sound.

  In his place, a shape swung out of the mists upon a vine and vaulted over the same railing. He landed in a crouch, a dagger in one hand. A boy. Tylar heard others landing elsewhere. Cries arose on all sides.

  A sharp scream, higher than all the others, keened across the misty balcony. The Huntress. She was being herded back toward the open doorway to her castillion by Marron and the others, protecting their god.

  “No! The boy! I must have the stone!”

  But the confusion after Brant’s assault had left her still dazed, allowed her to be led, unable to fully drain the panic from the unsettled hunters, to control them. They reacted with instinct, to protect their god.

  She vanished into the shelter of the castillion. “I must have it!” she cried out of the darkness. “It is not of this world. It is not of Myrillia.”

  A small band of young hunters settled around them. Their faces were painted, but their lips were unburned by Dark Grace.

  “We must go,” said the closest, perhaps the leader. He pointed to the railing, where vines were tethered, waiting to swing them away from the balcony. “We must be gone before they rally.”

  Tylar waved the others to follow. Still, he hung back, listening to the fading ravings of the Huntress.

  “The stone…It is not a rock of Myrillia!”

  An arm tugged at his elbow.

  Tylar strained to hear. The words were faint.

  “It is of our old kingdom! A piece of our Sundered land!”

  Tylar took a stumbled step forward, wanting to hear more, but Krevan grabbed his other elbow. He had Brant’s body over his shoulder.

  “Leave now,” said the leader of the young hunters. He was gangly and loose-limbed, eyes too large for his face. “If there is to be any hope for Brant, we must fly now!”

  Tylar finally turned. “Hope?” he asked. The word almost didn’t make sense to him. “How did you know who—?”

  “Hurry.”

  Scowling, the boy headed toward the railing.

  With one last glance back, Tylar followed. All that rose from the castillion now was the distant screams of fury. The Huntress’s earlier words still echoed in Tylar’s head.

  A piece of our Sundered land.

  Tylar pictured the stone. He studied Brant’s limp form.

  What did it mean?

  Tylar hurried after the leader, limping to catch up. He noted the boy also bore a distinct hobbled trip to his gait, which did not slow him down. Tylar finally caught up with him at the railing. He grabbed the boy by the shoulder.

  “Who are you?”

  “An old friend of Brant’s.” He shoved a loop of vine into Tylar’s good hand. “My name is Harp.”

  17

  A PARLEY AT THE BLACKHORSE

  KATHRYN SHOULDERED THE SHUTTER CLOSED AGAINST THE gust of wind. She prayed no one on the daywatch stumbled past and noted that the shutter was unbarred on the inside. She had chosen the window because it was well hidden in a dark corner, near the cookery’s privy. None had noted as she slipped the bar and climbed out. She planned on returning to Tashijan as surreptitiously as she had left it.

  If she was allowed to return…

  She pictured the ilked wraith, hunched and brittle-winged.

  And the offer.

  Come alllone. To parlllley. In town. Blllackhorse tavernhouse.

  Kathryn set out across the wintry yard. She was dressed in heavy woolens, feet pushed into furred boots. Over it all she wore her knight’s cloak. She had chosen this place in the yard to cross because it lay in the shadow of Stormwatch Tower, but the low cloud and gray day offered only meager shadows. She gathered what power she could into her cloak, fading her form. She did not want any of the guards from Stormwatch to note her departure.

  Gerrod knew where she was headed. That was enough. She did not want all of Tashijan to
know her folly. But with no word from Tylar, the safety of Tashijan remained her responsibility. While Argent might be content to burrow inside and shore up their defenses, Kathryn intended to discover what brewed beyond the curtain of this storm. If that meant meeting with Ulf of Ice Eyrie on his own terms, so be it. He had sworn her safety.

  But was the word of this god to be trusted?

  She gazed to the left, to the shield wall of Tashijan, a cliff of piled brick and stone. Beyond the top, the world swirled with ice fog and snow.

  The storm waited.

  And it would wait a little longer.

  She trudged into the wind toward the stables. She noted the steam rising from the crossed thatching. The stableboys and horsemen must have stoked the hearths against the cold, not just for themselves but for their charges. She knew they had been offered shelter in the towers, but the stablemen would have had to abandon their horses.

  Not a one had accepted the offer.

  This warmed her more than her heavy woolens.

  Kathryn also knew the men would remain silent about her trespass into the stables. They bore little love for the Fiery Cross, since a couple of the warden’s knights had switched a horse near to crippling it. She had already sent a raven down with a terse message, to ready a horse.

  An eye keener than any guard noted her approach. The stable door creaked open. The stableboy, Mychall, bundled almost to obscurity under horse blankets, waved to her.

  She hurried forward and pushed into the steamy warmth. The smell of patty and hay welcomed her. Only a single lamp was lit here, over by one stall. A shadowy form huffed and dug a hoof, recognizing her scent.

  Mychall threw back his blankets. “Did you hear?” he asked breathlessly as he led her forward.

  “Hear what?”

  “Eventail threw her foal this morning. We was worried. She came close to colicking, back…” He waved an arm to indicate the past. “But she dropped a handsome little mare. Color of bitternut, with bright white stockings up to her fetlocks.”

  “How wonderful,” she said, suddenly smiling. The warmth and the boy’s enthusiasm helped dispel the darkness around her heart. And the fact that life was born in the middle of the siege somehow gave her hope.