by David Keck
“You threatened His Grace, didn’t you?” said Heremund.
Berchard grunted. “And so there I was with nothing but my few bits and pieces. A blade. Friendless. And I took up with these Fellwood boys and found a place at the table of one of these forest lords in the West Marches: one of old Baron Hardred’s liegemen—thank Heaven he didn’t know how blind I was. But the poor man died and left his widow with the lands and hall. Avina. And she needed someone around the place with some sense, who’d listen. I tell you, though, she was a fine girl. Could have been my daughter, I suppose, but a fine-looking girl with a smiling, open way about her.”
“I thought you were the one going blind,” said Heremund.
Berchard only smiled. “I’ve never known another girl like her. We were wed when the snows melted a year ago.”
He paused, then added, “There was fever last winter,” like a man confessing.
In that mad place of bluebells and gray forest giants, Durand thought of Deorwen riding north, and the girl, Almora. Heremund was saying something about it being a shame.
“It was my doom to lose her before a year was out. She would read to me. I never minded what. But I buried her under the Sowing Moon.” He swallowed. “And under the Sowing Moon, Avina’s damnable cousin came crashing into her hall. I could go hang. It would be his land. And I was out again with just my few bits and pieces and just my shield-bearer to keep me from losing my way to God knows where.” Blind and alone. “But Baron Hardred’s holding his Springtide Court at Leerspoole—in two days’ time, now—it’s his land to grant or not. Hardred holds most of his land from Abravanal. And so I groped my way back to that devil Abravanal, hoping someone there would speak up for me with Hardred. That is meant to be my chance. If he hears me, there might yet be justice.”
He hesitated, overcoming rage and shame. “Avina’s cousin? His people? They came for me with swords. It was midnight. Past midnight. I can see well enough for that, at least. My man had to fumble for my things in the road.”
There was mud on some of his gear, even then.
“Leerspoole,” Durand vowed.
“Yes,” said Berchard.
“My word on it,” said Durand.
But, in the next instant, they rode into a riot of fresh tracks through the bluebells. Brand tossed his big head, shying. Someone else had come this way.
Ailric was off his dun rouncy and down in the track like a scent-hound. “Horses. Not sure how many. Last night, maybe. Fresh anyway. Heading south.”
“South?” said Berchard, shaking the anger and shame of the moment before. “There’s nothing south of here, boy. I’d be surprised to hear of a charcoal burner’s hut south of here. The land’s not settled. It’s half mad to ride this far.”
Durand squinted back through the trees, remembering what he could of the lay of the land. “They will have come from the Lindenhall or nearly. Maybe on the Leerspoole Road.”
Heremund scrubbed his chin. “Quickly west, and then sharply south. What else can you tell of them, son?”
Ailric shook his head. “It’s Leovere, I think.”
Berchard laughed. “Well, you are a wonder or a liar, boy. That’s certain.”
“The ground here is very good. Clay more than anything. The smith at the Lindenhall makes his shoes on his own pattern. Narrow. Heavy bar stock. Leovere was on that fine-boned gray of his. Toe-in, a little. The animal threw a shoe in the excitement yesterday. I saw his man having it reshod. Just the right forefoot. This is the same animal. Or one very like it.”
“Damn me, but you would make a fine huntsman,” marveled Berchard.
But this news puzzled Durand. “He should be riding north. He’ll want to make the pass before Coensar, if he can. Could he be hunting us?”
“Well, he’s missed us, if that was in his mind. And there’s nothing south of here but trees and dead men,” said Heremund. “The Glade of Crowned Bones is down that way. The Solantines say it is the place where Aidmar of Aubairn fell in his flight from the Enemy after Uluric blew his horn.”
“Uluric’s Horn again,” said Durand.
“That’s where he and his men turned on their pursuers, thinking to hold them while his people ran for Pennons Gate. As the Solantines tell it, they found a neat heap of their skulls with Aidmar’s crown glinting on the top. I’m told they left it, centuries now. Nobody got through.”
“They closed the gates,” said Durand, remembering the words of Maedor Greyshield. “There’s no settlement at Crowned Bones?”
“Are you mad?” said Berchard. “Who but the meanest half-wit would hang about in such a place?”
“I would say that the whole of Leovere’s party has gone to Crowned Bones. They left last night. They rode swiftly. Recklessly so,” said Ailric. “He brings the Horn of Uluric to the Crowned Bones once more. He is enraged.”
“Host of Heaven,” Durand mumbled. “We would be better off if he’s sent his men for me.”
“You’re no favorite of those Yrlac boys,” Berchard allowed.
“Whatever Leovere is up to, we cannot afford to stop here scratching our heads. Leerspoole grows no closer.”
* * *
THEY GROPED THROUGH Fellwood, clambering over muscle-bound roots. From the empty acres at their backs, branches snapped and stones clattered without explanation. Once, Durand wheeled Brand around and charged into the silence, only to flush a boar from its nest in the thorns.
The forest was an uncanny place no matter what Leovere had chosen to do.
They saw impossible beasts. An elk larger than a warhorse watched them pass, his coat rain-beaded and dark as the earth. Wolves and ragged bulls prowled the distant shadows. More and more, they felt that the sounds of stealthy pursuit dogged their steps.
“Perhaps we are in luck,” said Berchard. “I’m sure there is someone behind us. Killers likely. Leovere’s vengeance flashing on a dozen blades. Luck of a troublesome breed, but luck nonetheless.”
Durand grunted a laugh.
Soon, the Eye of Heaven hung low before them, pricking the walls of beech and oak with blazing needles. Ailric was sure he heard running water somewhere ahead.
“We shall soon lose the light,” Ailric said.
Heremund nodded. “We will have to set up camp.”
“Leovere’s men will see a fire,” said Ailric, “if it is them.”
“Or smell it, aye,” said Durand. He did not say what he thought of lying out among the Lost without even a few embers to see by. He had done it before.
“Heaven save me from a cold camp in these bedeviled woods. There must be a few hours left to us,” said Berchard. “Maybe there is a kindly crofter somewhere out here who’s a bed for a few stalwart strangers.”
“I shouldn’t think so, Sir Berchard,” Ailric said.
“‘I shouldn’t think so.’ A man’s allowed some hope, ain’t he?
“I would be happier if we raised Leerspoole tomorrow,” he continued, “but here we are. This wood is riddled with bogs and streams and ravines. While the meanest roads might miss or bridge them, we’ll be sure to blunder into every last one.” A branch pawed at the man’s face. “These trees! We’ll miss Leerspoole altogether, like as not.”
“You’re better off than you were yesterday, aren’t you?” said Durand.
Berchard snorted. “At least you lot are as blind as I am. There is that. But I suppose I’m the guide, ain’t I? Heremund doesn’t know these woods as well, Heaven help us!”
Durand couldn’t help a grin, even in that damp and haunted wasteland.
“Now don’t you laugh at me,” Berchard said. “I can hear. Let’s have a think.”
The man clapped the palm of a hand over his eyes. “Here now, what was it the boy said, that he heard running water? Well, boy, was there water? And don’t just nod.”
“Aye, Sir Berchard.”
“‘Aye, Sir Berchard’ it is, then. Let us bring hope to bear on the problem. It may be that Ailric has heard the River Keen. It runs through th
ese woods. And Leerspoole stands on the River Keen, so it will make a road for us. When we strike the river, we will be on its doorstep, or near enough.”
The forest was very dark. Only a few coppery rays reached them.
Durand heard Rooks caw above the canopy, laughing.
Durand said, “This Hardred is meant to be Abravanal’s man. I think I’d have been happier if he’d come to the Lindenhall and saved us all the journey.”
“Old Hardred? No. Hardred will not be moved. He has seen eighty winters. Ninety, though he’s as fearsome a creature as draws breath. He’s held a Springtide Court at Leerspoole at the turning of the Farrow Moon for sixty years. Neither daft king nor mad old duke will pry him away. These Marcher barons are little kings down here.”
“I have seen him only once,” said Heremund. “Cold and wild as a hawk he was. Crabbed hands locked on his throne. He came to Fellwood early, did Hardred. When the trees belonged to no man.”
Just then, something cracked in the trees, louder by far than any man’s imagination.
The Rooks called out, “Haw! Haw!”
“Right, that’s enough,” said Durand. A legion of bone-gray trunks stood behind him, washed in red where the light struck them. “Whoever follows, there cannot be many of them. And if we don’t deal with them, it won’t matter where we go. Leovere will have us long before we reach Leerspoole.”
“We might lose him in the dark. We could find some stony ground. Make it difficult,” said Heremund.
Ailric was looking back into the coppery trees. “This one is too close.”
And, of course, Ailric was right. Their pursuer would not need to see tracks to follow five iron-shod beasts on stony ground in this echoing place. Durand stroked his bearded jaw.
“Ailric, we will lie in wait as the others press on. Berchard and Heremund, keep moving. Lead the rest of the horses, and we will catch you up.”
After a few curt nods, and a disapproving shake of Heremund’s head, the horses clattered on while Durand and his shield-bearer doubled back and hid themselves where their party had plowed through a patch of bracken and holly.
They waited as the echoes of their party muttered into the distance, and within a few minutes Durand and his man might have been alone in Creation. The spy could not be allowed to escape. Leovere’s men were sure to be nearby, and a word could bring them. Durand resolved that he would be quick. There was little point putting the man to the question. With the spy gone, they would change course and vanish onto stony ground for a time. Disappear. Durand worked his fingers on his flail’s handle. Amber needles of light probed Durand’s hiding place.
And something screamed. A wet, wild, butchering gibber of a thing, very near.
Without a thought, Durand was on his feet, bulling through the sopping brush. Ailric was running too. There was a dip and twist in the terrain. And they blinked into the sudden gloom of the place, for a moment, seeing nothing.
Then there was a splash. Something spattered Durand’s face, his hands.
Streaming, steaming. Bowels lay in a great gleaming slop over the roots of a beech tree. Overhead, Durand saw someone hanging. It was the red-headed spy from the Lindenhall. Leovere had sent one man at least. He’d been split, gutted. Ankles knotted around a branch three fathoms over Durand’s head.
Durand spotted the silhouettes of the Rooks leering down, a pair of inky glyphs among the branches.
“What could do such a thing?” began Ailric.
But Durand thought he saw something split from a tree: a towering shape. They should not have left the light.
“Run!” Durand said.
The two men tore back uphill into the warm blush of the Eye of Heaven, all the while conscious of a figure—like a man made of ship’s masts—scissoring between the shadows of the trees, striding in the gloom of that low place, seemingly trapped by the blades of sunlight. High among the branches, the thing’s head swung like the root ball of some storm-slain tree: an incomprehensible tangle of hair and horns, a mask of mad dispassion.
Ailric had a blade in his fist, his eyes flashing wide.
“There’s no fighting it,” said Durand. “We must get to the others, to the horses. Before we lose the Eye of Heaven. Run!”
In a wild rush of stumbles and flashing branches, they overtook the rest of their party. “A thing in the trees! A giant,” said Durand.
“Ride for water! A river!” said Heremund. “Our only hope!”
And, more by instinct than reason, Durand spurred into the Eye of Heaven, slashing headlong to the high ground, urging Brand through hollows and valleys. Everywhere where the night pooled. It clung to the trees, to their very backs. Durand felt the vast being behind them. Beeches cracked and fell. The thing lunged from shadow to shadow, long-legged. The darkness stretched; the thing drew nearer.
But Ailric had heard water.
The Eye of Heaven was already caught in the reaching branches ahead. Timber crashed under the monster’s hands. “There!” said Ailric.
Durand shouted, “Go!” and spurred Brand between the gray trunks.
And then they saw it: Not the stream, but a wall—a pale rectangle against the darkness of the forest. Durand cut toward it, abandoning the river, if river there was. He drove for the white shape, baring his broken teeth as a bondman’s longhouse swelled from the gloom. He saw stout timbers and a mountain of gray thatch.
Durand leapt from Brand’s saddle at the last instant to wrench the low door wide and throw his comrades through. He slammed the door in the horned face of the forest devil. Durand had seen a bar, and this he rammed home in the same instant that the great specter beat a deafening thunder from the door. The blows loosened Durand’s bones, but they soon stopped. Then, the thing was at the roof, and the old beams shook, raining debris into the cottage. Then again. And then nothing.
The cottage creaked, settling in the inexplicable stillness.
For a hundred heartbeats, they waited in the gloom of the longhouse, breathing damp air thick with the crumbling stink of pigeons or swallows by the thousand.
“What is this place?” said Berchard.
“Must be someone’s hunting lodge. Empty. A bit much for some hermit, and I saw no sign of a farm. Hard to be sure in the dark,” said Heremund. “I would be happier on the other side of a river. I’m sure there was something ahead. You could smell the reeds.”
Durand found a shuttered window near the low door and peered out. Outside, the giant moved indistinctly against the branches, dark as beetles. Had there been a wind, it might have been another tree swaying.
“That thing could have the door off in a moment,” said Durand. “The roof!”
Heremund answered. “The Banished won’t cross a threshold, some of them. The Strangers neither, depending. Some houses are armed with all manner of toys. Iron at the windows. Burials at the cornerstone. Shoes in the smoke hole. Pots of pins and piss under the doorstep. Curses and charms and all that.”
“I’d do that and more if I were building a house in this place,” said Berchard.
“Well,” said Durand, “something’s kept the devil off.”
“It’s cold in this old place and it stinks,” said Berchard. “Someone see if there’s anything to start a fire.” And Ailric began to scuffle in the dark.
“What did you see of this thing, Durand?” said Heremund.
“It is tall. Very tall,” said Durand. “As long-limbed as a spider. Its head is a mess of tusks or horns or God-knows. Narrow and stooped like a long corpse in a short grave.”
“What about on its head. Did you see anything?”
“I don’t know.” There hadn’t been time.
“It might be the one they call the Hornbearer.”
“Impossible,” said Durand. The Hornbearer was something from Maedor’s day. From Pennons Gate and the Lost Princes. It was a monster from children’s stories. “People would say if they’d seen that. There’d be no one in Fellwood at all, if it were here.”
“Fel
lwood is deep. These forest barons have only dabbled at its margins. The Host of Errest may have broken the Enemy’s hold on the north, but the Hornbearer was not slain. It sneered at the men of Atthia with a battle horn, in mockery of Uluric’s Horn, and a crown to match the crown of Aidmar of Aubairn.”
“You asked about what was on its head,” said Durand.
“If you see a crown on its head and a great curved horn round its neck, you will have seen the Hornbearer. It was called, in mockery, the Crowned Hog. And, if the Hornbearer is here, he is not alone.”
Durand turned his eye back on the window, peering out. He could not be sure of crown or horn, but the monster was there. Still, now, and a few dozen paces into the forest. “What is it waiting for? What do we know of these maragrim?” It would not take such a giant long to snap the roof beams. They must have a plan.
Berchard chimed in. “Things from nightmares, thrown up to destroy living men. Drinkers of souls. We should have taken the road.”
“They are souls lost in battle, swept up by the Enemy in blood and guilt before they could rise to Heaven—maybe. Or the fallen turned against their own. Enthralled by the Enemy, anyway. There was talk of hags—the Beldame Weavers, our side called them—sweeping the air over the battlefields with nets or bags. I was never clear. The Enemy had many creatures. These, the Sons of Heshtar used by the battalion. There is a great deal that a man might know of such things, Durand.”
“They must hide from the Eye of Heaven,” said Ailric. He was working low, striking sparks at what Durand guessed to be a hearthstone in the middle of the floor. “You said they don’t like rivers.”
“No,” said Heremund. “Nor fire, I think. There is something about the curse that binds them. A bit of bone or tooth or hair somewhere. But I may be inventing what I do not know.”
Berchard grunted. “The Fellwood is one of their haunts, that’s sure, but not so far north. In the south. In the west, maybe. Not many survive in the settled Marches.”
“Well,” said Durand, “this one’s right outside.” He hardly dared to breathe the words. It was only a few paces from the door, soot on the coal-sack of the trees.