by Tad Williams
The prince laid his hand upon Deornoth’s shoulder. “I am glad to have you back. I feared for your safety, and cursed myself for having to send you on such a dangerous errand.” He turned to the others. “So. You have heard Deornoth’s report. Elias has at last gone into the field. He is bound for Naglimund with…Deornoth? You said…?”
“Some thousand knights and more, and near ten thousand foot,” the soldier said unhappily. “That averages the different reports in a way that seems most reliable.”
“I’m sure,” Josua waved his hand. “And we have perhaps a fortnight at most until he is at our walls.”
“I should think so, sire,” Deornoth nodded.
“And what of my master?” Devasalles asked.
“Well, Baron,” the soldier began, then clenched his teeth until a fit of shivering had passed, “Nad Mullach was in a mad uproar—understandably, of course, with what is happening to the west…” he broke off to look over to Prince Gwythinn, who sat a short way off from the rest, staring miserably at the ceiling.
“Go on,” said Josua calmly, “we will hear it all.”
Deornoth turned his gaze away from the Hernystirman. “So, as I said, good information was hard to come by. However, according to several of the rivermen up from Abaingeat on the coast, your Duke Leobardis has set sail from Nabban, and is even now on the high seas, probably to make landfall near Crannhyr.”
“With how many men?” Isgrimnur rumbled.
Deornoth shrugged. “Different people say different things. Three hundred horse, perhaps, two thousand or so foot.”
“That sounds correct. Prince Josua,” Devasalles said, lips pursed contemplatively. “Many of the liege-lords doubtless would not go along, frightened as they are of crossing the High King, and the Perdruinese will stay neutral, as they usually do. Count Streáwe knows he will do better helping both sides, and saving his ships to haul goods.”
“So we may still hope for Leobardis’ strong help, although I might have wished it stronger still.” Josua looked around the circle of men.
“Even if these Nabbanai should beat Elias to the gate,” Baron Ordmaer said, fear poorly hidden on his plump features, “still Elias will have three times our numbers.”
“But we have the walls, sir,” Josua replied, his narrow face stern. “We are in a strong, strong place.” He turned back to Deornoth, and his expression softened. “Give us the last of your news, my faithful friend, and then you must sleep. I fear for your health, and I will need you strong in the days ahead.”
Deornoth mustered a faint smile. “Yes, sire. The tidings that are left are not happy ones either, I fear. The Hernystiri have been driven from the field at Inniscrich.” He started to glance at the place where Gwythinn sat, but instead dropped his eyes. “They say King Lluth has been wounded, and his armies have fallen back into the Grianspog Mountains, the better to harry Skali and his men,”
Josua looked gravely over to the Hernystiri prince. “So. It is at least better than you feared, Gwythinn. Your father yet lives, and continues the fight.”
The young man turned. His eyes were red. “Yes! They continue the fight, while I sit here inside stone walls, drinking ale and eating bread and cheese like a fat townsman. My father may be dying! How can I stay here?”
“And do you think you can beat Skali with your half-hundred men, lad?” Isgrimnur asked, not unkindly. “Or would you seek a quick, glorious death, rather than wait to see what is the best policy?”
“I am not so foolish as that,” Gwythinn replied coldly. “And, Bagba’s Herd, Isgrimnur, who are you to be saying such to me? What of that ‘foot of steel’ you are saving for Skali’s guts?’”
“Different,” Isgrimnur muttered, embarrassed. “I did not speak of storming Elvritshalla with my dozen knights.”
“And all I mean to do is steal around the flank of Skali’s ravens, and go to my people in the mountains.”
Unable to meet Prince Gwythinn’s bright, demanding stare, Isgrimnur let his eyes slide back up to the roof corner, where the brown spider was industriously wrapping something in clinging silk.
“Gwythinn,” Josua said soothingly, “I ask only that you wait until we can speak more. One or two days will make little difference.”
The young Hernystirman stood up, his chair scraping against the stone flags. “Wait! That is all that you do is wait, Josua! Wait for the local muster, wait for Leobardis and his army, wait for…wait for Elias to climb the walls and put Naglimund to the torch! I am tired of waiting!” He raised an unsteady hand to forestall Josua’s protests. “Do not forget, Josua, I am a prince, too! I came to you out of the friendship of our fathers. And now my father is wounded, and harried by northern devils. If he dies unsuccored, and I am become king, will you order me then? Will you still think to hold me back? Brynioch! I cannot understand such craven reluctance!”
Before he reached the door he turned. “I will tell my men to prepare for our departure tomorrow at sunset. If you think of some reason why I should not go, one that has escaped me, you know where I may be found!”
As the prince flung the door shut behind him, Josua rose to his feet.
“I think there are many here who…” he paused and shook his head wearily, “who feel the need of some food and drink—you not least, Deornoth. But I ask you to remain a short moment while these others go ahead, so I may ask you of some private matters.” He waved
Devasalles and the rest off to the dining hall, and watched them snuffle out, talking quietly among themselves. “Isgrimnur,” he called, and the duke stopped in the doorway to look back inquiringly. “You stay also, please.”
When Isgrimnur had settled himself in a chair again, Josua looked expectantly to Deornoth.
“And have you other news for me?” the prince asked. The soldier frowned.
“If I had aught else of good tiding, my prince, I would have told you first, before the others arrived. I could find no trace of your niece or the monk who accompanies her, but for one peasant farmer near the Greenwade fork who saw a pair of their description fording the river there some days ago, heading south.”
“Which is no more than what we knew they would do, as the Lady Vorzheva told us. But by now they are well into the Inniscrich, and the Blessed Usires alone knows what may happen, or where they will go next. Our only luck is that I am sure my brother Elias will march his army up the skirt of the hills, since in this wet season the Wealdhelm Road
is the only safe place for the heavy wagons.” He stared at the wavering flames of the fire. “Well, then,” he said at last, “my thanks, Deornoth. If all my liegemen were such as you then I could laugh at the High King’s threat.”
“The men are a good lot, sire,” the young knight said loyally. “Go on, now.” The prince extended his hand to pat Deornoth’s knee. “Get some food, and then some sleep. You will not be needed for duty until tomorrow.”
“Yes, sire.” The young Erkynlander threw off his blanket and stood, his back straight as a gatepost as he walked from the room. After he was gone, Josua and Isgrimnur sat in silence.
“Miriamele gone God knows where, and Leobardis racing Elias to our gates.” The prince shook his head and kneaded his temples with his hand. “Lluth wounded, the Hernystiri in retreat, and Elias’ tool Skali master from the Vestivegg to the Grianspog. And atop all else, demons out of legend walking the mortal earth.” He showed the duke a grim smile. “The net grows tighter. Uncle.”
Isgrimnur tangled his fingers in his beard. “The web is swaying in the wind, Josua. A strong wind.”
He left the remark unexplained, and silence crept back into the high hall.
The man in the hound mask cursed weakly and spat another gobbet of blood onto the snow. Any lesser man, he knew, would now be dead, lying in the snow with his legs crushed and his ribs collapsed, but the thought was only faintly gratifying. All the years of ritual training and hardening toil that had saved his life when the dying horse rolled over him would be for naught unless he could reach s
omewhere sheltered and dry. Another hour or two of exposure would finish the work his dying steed had begun.
The damnable Sithi—and their unexpected involvement was nothing short of astonishing—had led their human captives within a few feet of where he had lain hidden, buried under a half-foot of snow. He had summoned all his reserves of strength and courage to stay pretematurally still while the Fair Folk had scanned the area. They must have concluded he had crawled away somewhere to die—which, of course, he had hoped they would—and a few moments later they had continued on their way. Now he huddled shivering where he had dug out from beneath the obscuring white blanket, summoning his strength for the next move. His only hope was to somehow get back to Haethstad, where a pair of his own men should now be waiting. He damned himself a hundred times for ever trusting those louts of Skali’s—drunken pillagers and woman-beaters that they were, unfit to polish his boots. If only he had not been forced to send his own off on another mission.
He shook his head in an attempt to clear it of the swirling, jiggling specks of light that floated against the gradually darkening sky, then pursed his cracked lips. The hoot of a snow owl issued incongruously from the snarling hound muzzle. While he waited he tried once more, impossibly, to stand—even to crawl. It was no use: something was gravely wrong with both legs. Ignoring the scalding pain from his cracked ribs, he used his hands to drag himself a little farther toward the trees, then had to stop, laid flat out and panting.
A moment later he felt hot wind, and lifted his head. The black muzzle of his helmet was doubled, as though in some queer mirror, by a grinning white snout only inches away.
“Niku’a,” he gasped, in a language quite unlike his native Black Rimmerspakk. “Come here, Udun damn you! Come!”
The great hound took another step closer, until he loomed over his injured master.
“Now…hold,” the man said, reaching up strong hands to clasp the white leather collar. “And pull!”
A moment later he groaned in agony as the dog did pull, but he hung on, teeth clenched and eyes bulging behind the unchanging canine features of the helmet. The hammering, tearing pain almost pushed him over into insensibility as the hound drew him bumping across the snow, but he did not relax his grip until he had reached the cover of the trees. Only then did he at last let go, let everything go. He slid down into darkness, and brief surcease to pain.
When he awoke the gray of the sky had gone several shades darker, and the wind had swept a powdery layer of snow across him like a blanket. The great hound Niku’a still waited, unconcerned and unshivering despite his short fur, as though lounging before a blazing hearth. The man on the ground was not surprised: he well knew the icy black kennels of Sturmrspeik, and knew how these beasts were raised. Looking at Niku’a’s red mouth and curving teeth, and the tiny white eyes like drops of some milky poison, he was again grateful that it was he who followed the hounds, and not the other way around.
He pulled off the helmet—not without effort, since the fall had changed its shape—and pitched it into the snow at his side. With his knife he cut his black cloak into long strips; soon after he began laboriously sawing down some of the slenderest young trees. It was horrible work on his agonized ribs, but he did his best to ignore the flashing pain and go on. He had two excellent reasons to survive: his duty to tell his masters of the unexpected attack by the Sithi, and his own heightened desire for revenge on this ragtag lot who had thwarted him too many times.
The moon’s blue-white eye was peering curiously through the treetops when he at last finished cutting. He used the strips of his cloak to bind a number of the shorter staves tightly to each leg as splints; then, sitting with his legs stiffly before him like a child playing noughts and crosses in the dirt, he bound short crosspieces to the tops of the two long staves remaining. Clutching them carefully he grabbed again at Niku’a’s collar, letting the long, corpse-white dog drag him up onto his feet where he swayed precariously until he could get the new-made crutches under his arms.
He took a few steps, swiveling awkwardly on his unbending legs. It would do well enough, he decided, wincing at the sickening pain—not that he had any choice.
He looked at the snarling-mouthed helmet lying in the snow, thinking of the effort it would take to reach it, and the now-useless weight of the thing. Then he leaned down, gasping, and picked it up anyway. It had been given him in the sacred caverns of Sturmrspeik, by Herself, when She named him Her sacred hunter—he, a mortal!
He could no more leave it lying in the snow than he could leave his own beating heart. He remembered that impossible, heady moment, the blue lights flickering in the Chamber of the Breathing Harp, when he had knelt before the throne, before the serene shimmer of Her silver mask.
His excruciating pain lulled for a moment by the wine of memory, Niku’a silently padding at his heels, Ingen Jegger moved haltingly down the long, tree-covered hill, and began to think carefully about revenge.
Simon and his companions, now lessened by one, did not have much stomach for talk, nor did their captors encourage any. They trudged silently and slowly through the snow-carpeted foothills as gray afternoon edged into evening.
Somehow the Sithi seemed to know exactly where they wanted to go, although to Simon the pine-spotted slopes were featureless, one spot indistinguishable from another. The leader’s amber eyes were always moving in his masklike face, but he never seemed to be searching for anything; rather he gave the impression that he read the subtle language of the terrain as knowledgeably as Father Strangyeard surveyed his bookshelves.
The only time the Sitha leader displayed any reaction was early in their march, when Qantaqa came trotting down an incline and fell in at Binabik’s side, nose twitching as she sniffed his hand, tail nervously tucked. The Sitha raised a half-curious eyebrow, then looked around to catch the glances of his fellows, whose narrow eyes had narrowed further. He made no sign that Simon could distinguish, but the wolf was allowed to pace along unhindered.
Daylight was fading when the strange walking-party turned north at last, and within a short time they were slowly circling the base of a steep slope whose snowy flanks were studded with jutting, naked stone. Simon, shock and numbness worn off enough to make him all too aware of his achingly cold feet, gave silent thanks as the chief of their captors waved them to a halt.
“Here,” he said, gesturing to a large outcropping that thrust up high above their heads. “At the bottom.” He pointed again, this time to a wide, waist-high fissure in the face of the stone. Before any of them could say a word, two of the Sithi guards slipped nimbly past them and slid themselves headfirst into the opening. In a moment they had vanished.
“You,” he said to Simon. “Go after.”
There were angry mutters from Haestan and the other two soldiers, but Simon, despite his unusual situation, felt strangely confident. Kneeling, he poked his head through the opening.
It was a slender, shining tunnel, an ice-lined tube that twisted steeply up and away from him, seemingly hollowed from the very stone of the mountain. He decided that the Sitha who had gone before him must have climbed up beyond the next bend. There was no sign of them, and no one could hide in this glass-smooth, narrow passage, barely wide enough to allow him to raise his arms.
He ducked back out into the chill open air.
“How can I go through it? It’s almost straight up, and it’s covered in ice. I’ll just slide back down.”
“Look above your head,” the chief Sitha replied. “You will understand.”
Simon reentered the tunnel, pushing in a little farther so that his shoulders and upper body were inside too, and he could turn on his back to look up. The ice of the tunnel ceiling, if one could call something half an arm’s length away a ceiling, was scored with a regular series of horizontal cuts that extended the visible length of the passage. Each was a few inches deep, and wide enough to hold both hands comfortably side by side. He realized after some thought that he was intended to pull himself u
p with his hands and feet, bracing his back against the floor of the tunnel.
Viewing the prospect with some dismay, since he had no idea how long the tunnel might be, or what else might conceivably be sharing it with him, he considered backing out of the narrow passageway once more. After a moment he changed his mind. The Sithi had shinnied up before him as quickly as squirrels, and for some reason he felt the urge to show them that, if not as nimble as they, he was still bold enough to follow without coaxing.
The climb was difficult, but not impossibly so. The tunnel turned often enough that he could make frequent stops to rest, bracing his feet against the bends in the passage. As he slowly grabbed, pulled and braced, time after muscle-cramping time, the advantage of such an entrance tunnel—if this was, as it seemed, an entrance—became obvious; it was difficult going to clamber up, and would be nearimpossible for any animal but a two-legged one; anyone who needed to get out could slide down it as swiftly as a snake.
He was just considering stopping for another rest when he heard voices speaking the liquid Sithi language just beyond his head. A moment later strong hands reached down, grasping him by the harness-straps of his chain mail and pulling him upward. He popped out of the tunnel with a gasp of surprise and tumbled onto a warm stone floor puddled with snowmelt. The two Sithi who had dragged him out crouched by the passage mouth, faces obscure in the neardarkness. The only light in the room—which was not really a room so much as a rock cavern carefully swept clean of debris—came from a door-sized crevice in the opposite wall. Through this gap spilled a yellow gleam, painting a bright swath on the cavern floor. As Simon pulled himself to his knees he felt a slender, restraining hand laid on his shoulder. The dark-haired Sitha beside him pointed up at the low ceiling, then made a waving motion and gestured at the tunnel mouth.
“Wait,” he said calmly, his speech not as fluent as his leader’s. “We must wait.”