by David Keck
“You see, Durand? The river cannot be far, and then we need to know upstream or down. Is there a great green cliff? Old Baron Hardred built Leerspoole atop that cliff and dammed the river to keep the forest devils off the island. And for good measure, he’s stuck his keep on the top of the island in back of a sixty-foot wall of hundred-year pines.”
They all looked to Durand then.
Berchard said, “If we push our way north and take the first tracks toward Pennons Gate, even Heaven could not tell how far we’ll get in these trees. We’ll be caught on the road. We need to get under cover.” And Durand could see the grim certainty of the thing.
“Then we’ll find the river. We’ll head up and make for Leerspoole.” There was no choice.
“The Powers look on,” declared Heremund.
“A town in a river with a strong lord, a stone island, a keep, and bridges,” said Durand.
“And a sanctuary,” said Berchard. “And a priest. There’s even an idol in the market square. But we must reach it by nightfall.”
Heremund took Durand’s sleeve a moment. “From Leerspoole, Hardred has made a good road to the Pennons Gate. The baron might send riders. A warning might still reach Coensar.”
The Rooks, right over their heads now, laughed and laughed. But Ailric snapped the stone up into the branches, and one Rook fell, landing between Durand’s boots. A ring fell from the thing’s mouth. A fat red gemstone winked.
“Hells,” said Heremund.
Durand plucked the thing from the leaves.
* * *
AILRIC DID HIS best to blaze a trail through tangled acres of branches. They led the horses, laboring over ravines and through clots and knots of thorn. Every sweating league took hours, and there was no way to know how far they had come—or where the town lay. At one point, Ailric stumbled over a stone head, crowned and bearded in an ancient style. After this, the party blundered among building stones and low walls for a time.
“A city,” said Heremund. “They built it up. They paved its streets. They stood tall, never guessing that it might end. I could not even tell you its name.” They struggled on, knowing only that Leerspoole must appear before dusk.
At noon, they found the River Keen running down a deep cut in the mossy forest floor. The four men stood panting among their animals. They had all been catching sleep in the saddle.
Heremund was working his tongue in the slot where his front teeth should have been. He wiped his face and peered into the half-grotto where the river ran. “Now. Upstream or down? We go the wrong way and we’ll have a long walk.”
“Till the maragrim catch us. Then it’ll be running,” jibed Berchard.
“And not much thereafter,” said Heremund.
Durand put a hand on Ailric’s shoulder. “What say you?”
“Sir Berchard spoke of a cliff below Leerspoole,” said Ailric. “It is possible that we’ve missed it.”
“It’s thirty fathoms top to bottom!” said Berchard.
“I don’t think we can have climbed such a height of land.”
“Upstream then, it must be,” said Durand. “Are we agreed?”
“Aye, it’s the better bet. We might even see Leerspoole before we lose the Eye.”
Berchard grimaced. “We’ll know when we hear the falls. We might yet have five leagues before us. More, if we are unlucky. Our midnight ramble took us leagues through the trees.”
Five leagues might be too far; more would be worse. But Durand only nodded. “We’ve spent half the day getting here. Dusk will be upon us before we like. We’ll water the horses the first time these high banks give way.”
* * *
THEY PRESSED ON, dogging the River Keen’s writhing course through waterlogged leagues of reeds, willow, and alder. Soon, however, the shadows pooled in the low places and seemed to drown the forest in a clammy chill. Durand saw the Eye of Heaven now only when a low beam slipped between the trees, and he cursed every false turn and hesitation, for dusk was coming—and in his mind’s eye, Durand saw observers in the green depths beyond the river.
Darkness was settling over the forest.
Ailric was scouting on foot when he stopped still. And, without a word, he bounded onto the inclined trunk of an alder that leaned out over the river.
“What is it?” demanded Berchard. “What’s going on?” But Durand only shook his head, watching as the youth peered up the river. Finally, Durand spurred Shriker to the riverbank. It was only as he reached the open air over the stream that he heard the low thunder of the falls.
He called out to the boy. “Can you see it?” They had so little time. It had to be close or there was no use.
“I can!”
Berchard grumped, “It’s been the trees, or we must have heard it ages ago.”
Durand swung himself down. Even a splendid view of the falls wouldn’t help if they were more than half a league distant. But as he bounded out onto the shaking trunk beside the boy, the falls came into view, hanging like a white veil down the face of a green cliff that loomed over their heads some thirty fathoms high. It was nearly close enough. Already, the mist from the thundering water reached them on the breeze.
“I think I see a trail,” said Ailric. And Durand saw it too: a switchbacking track stitched its way up the mossy wall.
An eerie call reached Durand from the forest acres behind them. The maragrim had awakened, and now clung to the black trunks of every tree where the failing light could not touch them.
“Still, we might do it,” said Durand. “Come!”
Durand and Ailric scrambled from the alder and leapt onto horseback. The company careered through the trees, ducking low boughs and leaping bushes, Berchard clamped behind Ailric on Brand’s back.
The maragrim strained like hounds at the sight of their quarry breaking cover; they bayed and howled from their hiding places as Heaven’s Eye burned low. Soon the green bulk of the cliff was directly overhead. A track swept away to the left, as rough as a streambed full of tumbled stones, but it carried them up, swinging through misty gulps of flying spray and back into the Eye of Heaven. They pushed the poor horses like devils, for the trees below the river were now full of wild sounds. Screams, sobs, laughter, and bestial brays and howls rang through the gloom. Countless times, Shriker came within inches of tumbling off, his broad hooves flinging stones to clatter among the trees below.
Finally, Durand tore round a last corner and up into the open air—and a clean view of Leerspoole. They’d crested a dike at the cliff top. And the town stood in a churning black lake like a giant-flung stone. Near at hand, the Keen roiled and heaved against the dam.
Above it all, the Blackroots filled the northern horizon, their peaks glowing golden. But, nearer the cauldron lake and stone isle, the Eye of Heaven was nearly gone, needling through the cool shadows between tree roots and reeds.
And Durand saw the bridge.
They rode, Durand urging Shriker to leap the last paces, where half the bridge was under the flood. And so they barreled into the streets of Leerspoole well before Durand understood that the town was a ruin.
What he had taken for buildings in the red, slanting light were scorched beams.
He reined in amid the blackened timbers.
“What is it now, then? Why’s no one talking, eh? Where is everyone?” said Berchard. “What is that smell? Wood smoke?”
Durand surveyed the place. Once, Leerspoole had stood on its tall stone island like bristles on a hog’s back. Now the town’s houses, shops, and sheds were all in ruins. Gone were the thousand citizens and every soul who’d come for Baron Hardred’s Springtide Court.
“Gone,” said Durand. “Leerspoole is gone.” There were bodies in the wreckage. All teeth and rigid, twists of limbs.
In horror, the four men circled the island, Berchard harrying them with questions. He could not fathom it.
“Hardred’s keep will still be standing,” said Berchard. “It would take an army two years to pry him out.” He gestured to
the hilltop, where Durand could see the charred remains of a fearsome palisade and ring fort. It had all burned. The island must have blazed like a bonfire. Now only ash and cinders remained.
“The sanctuary then,” said Berchard. “At the market. All the way round the east side. It’s stone.”
They had to be wary of cellars and wells.
Durand rode into the market before the stark shell of the sanctuary. Stone walls had not saved the place, just as a palisade and moat had not saved the town. In this pyre of a thousand souls, Durand and his comrades would find no refuge. He stopped by the outsized statue of a bare-faced knight: the Champion belted to his standing lance tall as a ship’s mast. A breeze stirred the ashes.
And something moved, very near.
Durand had his chained flail whistling in the air before he found a desperate visage atop the idol’s shoulder. A long-limbed man clung to the neck of the marble Champion like a rat at a man’s throat. “Wait! Wait!” He was all over soot and bloody scratches. His clothes were charred tatters.
“What in Heaven? Who is that now?” demanded Berchard.
The climber cast an anxious glance over the market ground, his eyes bulging white in a face of black streaks. “They’re all around!”
Durand gave the place a hard look, but saw nothing. Ailric shrugged.
“They are still here! In the shadows,” the stranger said. “There!” The madman’s finger snaked out with a force that nearly unhooked him from the Champion’s neck.
This time, however, Durand saw movement too. A long shape scissored in the shadow of a wall, like the dark forelimbs of a water scorpion.
“The place is full,” said the stranger. “They clutch. They cling to the shadows.”
“Who is that?” said Berchard. “I know that voice.”
“Are you real?” The hollow-eyed survivor reached for Durand, poised like an ape. “Through the wall they came. We were at the Bells.” The man glanced to the ruined foundation of an inn or tavern. “Old Hardred had no room on the hill. And this thing … It crashed through the wall. They’d already made the island crossing, the maragrim—a host. And there was smoke by then. Someone said Hardred had fired the storehouses where the devils came ashore. They don’t like fire, they say. But Hardred was too late and there the maragrim were, in the streets.”
“Come down,” said Durand; to his comrades, he added: “Maybe the road?”
The stranger leaned into Durand, swinging precariously. “I fetched up in the market square, you understand. I saw men pulled down. I heard screams, howls everywhere. I felt clawed hands upon me—but the Champion was there! And they would not touch him.” A spark flashed in the man’s eye. “Oh, but the fire! There was no one to stop it, and the devils only ran and stormed like bats in their hordes as the blaze leapt the housetops. I thought that all of Leerspoole had been dropped into a hell of fire and fiends and screaming, with me clinging here as it all raged around me.” He twitched back to Durand. “But they dared not touch the idol.”
With every word the mad survivor spoke, the shadows spread. Beings crabbed over the cinders. They swarmed. They were losing the Eye of Heaven.
“We’ll run for it,” said Durand. “Now.”
“I know that damned voice!” said Berchard.
The maragrim rose up, unfolding, tumbling, and stretching their crooked limbs in every alley and ruin. They leered and grimaced and chattered and stared, trembling like greyhounds at their ropes’ end.
“Ride!” commanded Durand.
And the stillness snapped. Brand bolted. The madman sprang. And the leering wall of devils slammed shut like a tangled sea.
Durand drove big Shriker, hooking around the shadowed isle for the West Bridge. But in a hundred strides, they met a wall of maragrim. Durand kicked and cursed until he tore loose from the fiends, then threw every ounce of the towering warhorse into a slashing charge for the river, drawing old Brand and Heremund’s stalwart mule behind. The maragrim shot through the ruins, tumbling over themselves, airborne in the fury of their pursuit.
Suddenly, the riverbank was under Shriker’s hooves and there was no stopping. Men and beasts together crashed into the water, spinning in the searing shock of the Keen’s mountain chill.
Heremund tumbled past, and Durand roared, “Catch hold of the saddle,” clapping the skald’s hand on the saddlebow as Shriker thrashed.
With the waves at his chin, Durand strained to see. A thousand horrors crowded the Leerspoole bank, but they were behind him now. He was caught in the huge black current churning around Leerspoole, far stronger than he’d feared. The maragrim would have filled the eastern channel to reach the island, and so the West Bridge was half awash and the whole torrent roared round the western flank.
And then, of course, there was the falls.
“Make for the dam!” Durand called. “We’ll be carried over!” He churned ahead, snatching Shriker’s bridle from the lashing chaos of the animal’s hooves as the water bowled them along like a whole team of horses. They could only strike out across the current and try to catch hold of the dam before they were pulled into the spillway and over the top.
He could see water high against the dam, exploding as it struggled through the spillway. Durand heaved Shriker’s bridle, half-leading and half-hauling the big horse. He clenched his teeth against the roar of the falls. For every yard he struggled, they flew a hundred downstream, rushing for the spillway and the kicking gulf below. In a heartbeat, the spray fountained in Durand’s face. The black water of the spillway surge caught his legs—but he struck the dam and hauled for all he was worth, finally wrenching himself free. Shriker was already lurching up from the water, tearing deep furrows in anything that got under his hooves—mud or men. And the rest were behind him in the thundering water, beating against pilings or scrabbling at the earthen dam. Durand caught Brand’s bridle, giving the old hunter a tug to help him get purchase on the bank. Ailric wrangled Heremund ashore; Berchard came up on his own; Heremund’s mule was lost.
For a moment, Durand could not find the man from Leerspoole.
Finally, Durand saw the gawky figure thrashing against the water, his long-fingered hands clawing the mossy pilings that guarded the spillway against the river. No one could long endure against that rolling weight of water. Durand ran for the stranger’s hand. But, as he took his first stride, the dam lurched under his feet—tons of turf and timber flexing like a living thing. Durand sprawled, pitching to the very brink before his fingers hooked the sod. Then the pilings were giving way before the flood, uprooting the foundation of the whole broad embankment. And the dam was still heaving. Durand felt the thing shift, rolling like some vast beast. There was no point clinging with Creation turning on its head. He scrambled, first climbing, then hurling himself clear as the whole bank gave way, plunging over the precipice in a mighty torrent of earth and water.
From the ragged brink of the ruined dam, Durand dared a backward glance: there was the survivor, still fighting to hold the sole upright timber. Durand met the man’s imploring eyes just as the force of the flood ripped the piling loose. He saw the poor devil fall, his arms extended even as he plunged into the spray and stones. But that was not the end for the Leerspoole man, for a dark hand shot from the trees and he was snatched like a doll from the falling water.
Durand saw the tusk-maned head of the Crowned Hog of Fellwood. The thing leaned out like a dark mantis from the branches. After regarding its writhing prize, the giant turned its blank face up. Water beaded on flat surfaces and hidden eyes. Maybe it was a wry look. Maybe there was rage or disappointment. Durand could not know. The giant simply paused a moment, staring up.
And then tore its victim in two.
* * *
THIS TIME IT was Durand who felt friendly hands upon him, hauling him from the crumbling brink, muscling him into the saddle. The last he’d seen of the Hornbearer, the thing had been climbing the Leerspoole cliff in long fluid strides.
The four men tore across the muc
k, vaulting willow hurdles and balks of turf until the trees swallowed them up and the wreck of Leerspoole was behind them.
* * *
DURAND WOKE TO the tap of water on his forehead. He snorted a lungful of cold air and twisted into a crouch—in a stand of dripping pines. Thrushes and blackbirds sang. He took a deep breath of mountain air and felt the needles crunch under his hands. Dew twinkled in spiderwebs.
They’d stopped after a wild black hour of crashing down benighted trails. Durand had meant only to rest the horses. He had intended to keep watch; now it was morning.
Ailric crouched close, offering a wineskin as Durand sat up and peered at the clearing.
“They did not kill us,” Durand said.
“I heard nothing all night. A fox yapped nearby and an owl was hunting.”
“Foxes and owls may have their fill of hunting so long as the maragrim keep their distance.”
Berchard and the skald were grumbling hummocks in the pine needles, and Durand put off waking them. The horses needed a look. The two surviving animals stood under dewy rugs and Durand felt a sharp pang of guilt. They had not been well treated.
“We’re killing the horses,” he said.
“I’ve hung their saddles and had a good look for thorns and cuts.”
Durand ran his hand down the arch of Brand’s neck. “There will have been one or two.”
“The thorns are out. The wounds are as clean of earth and sand as they can be made. I found blankets and linens enough in our packs to bandage the forelegs to the knees and Shriker’s right hind leg. Brand especially is troubled with saddle-galls, but there’s not much to be done.”
“Did you sleep?”
“No.”
He wanted to tell Ailric to rest. He wanted to find a village and get the horses cleaned up. “Coensar will have them in the pass by now,” was what he said.
“He might.”
He wanted to warn Coensar, to get himself between Deorwen and harm. He shook his head. “This madness with the maragrim, I can make no sense of it. What use are the maragrim to Leovere? His men alone might have taken Almora on the road, and these fiends will do him no good in Yrlac. The Solantines watch the pass and the Wards of the Ancient Patriarchs bar the thralls of the Enemy from Errest the Old. For this, the Powers will shut the Bright Gates of Heaven against him. What sort of fool is he?”