A King in Cobwebs

by David Keck

  Ailric set his hand on Brand’s shoulder. “Maybe he needs men. Coensar could ask every forest liegeman who came to the Lindenhall to ride round the old man all the way to the pass. What is left for Leovere? If he throws his few rebels against the duke’s swords, he gains nothing and loses more men than he can afford. If he calls the Hornbearer and hurls these maragrim upon his enemy…”

  “Without warning. A host of maragrim out of the dark,” said Durand.

  Ailric shrugged. “As you say.”

  “But we had the Hornbearer with us in bloody Leerspoole last night. Coensar will have made Pennons Gate, or nearly. There was never time for both. It must be leagues,” said Durand.

  “I am not sure what part of Creation that Hornbearer could cover between dusk and dawn.”

  “But he has been with his Host. Half of them are lurching, halting things. It is all dark to me. But there is rage in Leovere of Penseval. He would hazard much. I think we must get to Abravanal.” And Deorwen, and the girl. “There is something wrong in all this.”

  Ailric nodded with a blink of his dark eyes.

  Durand shook his head heavily. “Our people will soon be in Pennons Gate. Coensar will have them in the pass in an hour or two.”

  Just then, a voice croaked from the forest floor. “Do not speak in certainties,” said Heremund. “The Powers must not be tempted. They are near, I think. Watching.”

  With that, Berchard popped up, his beard bristling with needles, his good eye blinking wide. “I’ve got it! The voice! That Leerspoole man. It was my Avina’s bloody cousin! The last man in Leerspoole was Avina’s damnable cousin come to see Hardred about stealing a blind man’s hall. If he hadn’t died, I’d have throttled him! The old Hornbearer’s done me a good turn.”

  Durand turned to Ailric. “There’s nothing for it. We must get to Pennons Gate and see for ourselves. We’re some leagues west along the Blackroots. I wonder whether we’re any further from the Gate than Lindenhall? What say you?”

  Ailric opened his hands.

  There was no way of knowing whether they could reach Pennons Gate before nightfall.

  “It is in the hands of the Powers,” Durand said.

  * * *

  WITH MUTTERS AND groans, they climbed out of the pine grove and rode onto the rubble-strewn high ground under the Blackroots, doing their best to save the horses as they covered the uncertain leagues to Pennons Gate. It was a barren place and cold. The hard clack and rattle of every falling stone clattered from horizon to horizon.

  The Fellwood stood below them: a sea full of monsters.

  A league or less from their camp, Durand led the company across a knife-cold stream with banks of white sand. The far side was full of ruts. Durand, Ailric, and Heremund crouched at the water’s edge to read the signs. The maragrim had been in that place.

  Heremund spread his hand over the track of a naked foot with bent toes. Each toe was as long as a woman’s arm. He shuddered. Durand found the deep splayed socket of a boar’s split hoof and dew claws, but the hole was as broad as a butter churn. There were drag marks. He could not guess what they were. “Last night,” said Heremund. “Moving so fast, even on these uplands.”

  “Only two or three,” said Ailric. “It is hard to be sure. And not bound for Pennons Gate.”

  “Not the host at Leerspoole, then,” declared Berchard. “Is that what you’re saying? Where are these fellows headed?”

  Durand looked at the soot-streaked massif above them. “North,” he said. “The Blackroots. They might be following this stream.” There was a glint of falling water and a narrow defile in the mountain wall half a league uphill, though the way might be hopelessly steep and lead the devils nowhere. Still, it was clear: the fiends were trying to pass the mountains.

  * * *

  THEY SCRAMBLED EAST over fields and valleys of rubble under a lowering sky.

  Again and again, Ailric saw signs of maragrim thralls. The things traveled in small bands, never more than twenty. And always, the tracks tended north. Durand watched the vault of Heaven, counting the hours until finally the clouds swallowed the Eye.

  In the hours after Noontide, a pitiless rain fell. A hiss rose from the naked acres of stone.

  “There is something horrible about their tracks,” muttered Berchard under his hood. He had touched one at their last stopping place, and now sat on big Shriker’s back while Durand walked. “I remember the first of the things that I saw. Years ago. A woodcock’s long bill peering from a monk’s cowl. A heron’s legs naked under its robe. In its hand, it had a hook for fishing meat, I remember, like a cook in a big kitchen. We spotted it in the trees along a trail, shuddering fit to shake itself apart and staring without a peep. A thing like that should not be something you can touch. But here they have flesh and bones.

  “Always, they were alone. Like finding an adder in your barn. A man could deal with it. Sometimes, there would be a nest of them. You would hear of a man clearing forest, finding a knot of the devils. Like that longhouse we ran across.” A shudder. “A dozen. A score.”

  “We must have seen traces of a thousand,” Heremund breathed. Durand had never seen the man cowed, but now Heremund looked like his own ghost.

  “Where is the Eye?” asked Berchard, twisting and giving the sky a pointless squint. The vault of Heaven was a welter of gray rain.

  “Lost,” said Heremund. “The clouds have got it.”

  “Have we seen Pennons Gate yet?”

  On their left hand, the peaks stood under the clouds like teeth in a shark’s jaw.

  “Maybe,” said Heremund. “We cannot know. One mountain looks much like another with this sky.”

  Berchard pulled his cloak tighter and asked no more. They needed to find the pass. And so, yet again, they raced the shadows.

  Durand, walking and slipping on the stones at Shriker’s bridle, stared up as though he might glare a hole through the mountains. There had been no town, no refuge—nothing but Pennons Gate.

  And the rain swung over Creation in measureless veils.

  * * *

  TRAMPING OVER STONES is no good for a man’s boots.

  Durand still led Berchard on old Shriker. The others were behind, traveling a ridge above of a wall of midnight pines, like thieves skirting a watchful city.

  “Host of Heaven, we’re losing the light again, aren’t we?” said Berchard.

  “The Gate can’t be far.”

  The light ebbed from the clouded Heavens as they clung to the high ground. They could see when they stayed on the high bright stones. But, time and again, the rugged land shouldered them down to the very eaves of the forest. They struggled to avoid the branches, as anxious as children. And Durand was not the least craven of the company.

  As they drifted down for the hundredth time, Durand shot a glance into the trees—and saw that the forest was not empty, but crowded.

  “What is it, Durand?” said Berchard.

  Still forms watched from among the trunks. After the shock of fear—he was certain the maragrim had returned—he saw that the figures standing among the trees were too regular. He knew these faces. He saw bloated Euric; the thorn-crowned king with the bloody wreck of his head; there was the moon-faced giant; there, Baradan and his boar’s bristles; there, the charred villagers. All of these were still, or nearly. Some lolled against trunks, some stood like stocks of marble, but only one was moving: she wore a long gown, trailing dark with the weight of the river that had drowned her. She carried an infant in her blue-pale hands.

  “When a blind man says a thing like that, you have to answer. You really do,” said Berchard.

  “Nothing,” said Durand.

  “My arse,” Berchard growled.

  Durand pulled Shriker scrambling uphill, climbing up the broken stone and freeing himself from the Lost for a moment. But, with the next rise, a great arm of pine forest spread before the party and Durand found himself tramping back among the trees and the Lost. They stirred at his ankles as dark and slick as mi
nnows. Their pale faces hung against the gloom like silver masks.

  And, abruptly, they were gone.

  Now, Durand froze.

  A glance showed big Shriker’s eyes wide. “We’ve stopped,” said Berchard. “It’s cold. Hells, Durand, you need to say something.”

  The pines stood empty now. And the light was gone.

  Something came free of the forest. It swarmed behind Brand—a hulk of copper and clicking swarming limbs. For an instant, Durand could not move. Here was the round dome of an upturned cauldron—no crone’s hut was larger. And under the cauldron, all the limbs of a black-legged wolf spider were crammed tight. Writhing.

  Durand rang the spiked head of his flail off the copper dome. The thing balked, rearing long enough for Brand take flight.

  A score of maragrim erupted from behind the copper hulk: a headless ogre in a thresherman’s breeches; a priest with a fox’s mad eyes; a hybrid thing that was both a naked man and the stunted devil which had swallowed him to the hips.

  They had lost the Eye of Heaven.

  Durand sprang behind Berchard as Brand tore past them. He saw Ailric hunkered at Heremund’s back. But behind them, the band of maragrim galloped on a tide of inhuman groans. The track rose, treacherous with stone, but they could not stumble. They could not slow. They crested the rise ahead of the devils and found an open gulf before them. The trail plunged from this undulating high country of rubble and ditches into a gaping valley of stone. A mountain soared against the high clouds, a single blade of stone, splitting only a thousand fathoms above the valley. There were the switchbacked battlements of the Solantines. There were the countless gates. This was Pennons Gate and its Gorge of Pennons. They had nearly reached safety.

  They bolted into the long curve of a ravine that swung down into the gulf, the maragrim bounding and lurching after them. Durand kicked a running horror off balance, but there were hands and claws and worse snatching at his tunic and trying to catch Shriker’s surging legs. They were like a stag caught by a pack of dogs. The fastest would drag them down. The rest would tear them to pieces.

  The track swung into the belly of the gorge, where they met a sudden boiling fog. Clouds flashed past, and then Creation was snatched away. Durand clung to Berchard’s back in the mounting cloud. This was the Gorge of Pennons. Durand could hear the slobbering groans of the maragrim. The Gate was ahead. Something lolloped out of the fog in front of him, eager and stupid as a hound, but looking more like a legless ogre swinging on two long arms. It grinned wide.

  Durand felt a sudden hand upon his arm.

  And there was a blond man turning to him, his eyelashes white in the red light. “It is the Gorge of Pennons! Heaven be praised!”

  Durand had never seen the man before that moment.

  But Durand was no longer in the same Creation.

  He found himself lurching in a vast drove of humanity, every soul hurrying through the trees. His memory was failing. He could feel the fear of the people all around.

  A woman near him had a half-grown child wrapped around her. An old man rumbled in a wheelbarrow. Eyes were hollow, faces blank. In a glance, Durand could see a thousand people. Someone dropped a rucksack. He saw others slip out of pack straps. One sack clattered like a bag of silver plates. Above, Durand saw the face of Pennons Gate. The long shadows of sunset sharpened every battlement. The trees gave way and a naked plain of silt and stones lay before them. The road led straight to a great gate of oak, iron, and stone.

  Another figure, a stout woman this time, smiled at Durand. One of her front teeth was missing. She gasped, “Our Aidmar’s shown them now, Heaven help him. He’s left Uluric, but he’s got us free.”

  Durand faltered a smile, looking back over the multitude. How far had they come from Aubairn? How many leagues had they left behind them? The king was in the forest, holding the Host behind them. How many died in the forest march?

  Just then, the maragrim thralls broke from the forest—bestial shapes, deformed figures: impossibilities, impossibly close. He glanced to Pennons Gate. It was nearly within their reach. Like a single animal, the refugees surged forward, every possession abandoned now. Durand hurdled the old man; his wheelbarrow crashed sideways. There were shrieks from the forest edge. The woman could not run with her child clinging; Durand snatched the boy from her arms. The maragrim were in the crowd now. Durand saw a man carried down, the maragrim grappling for his face, his mouth. Every attack sent shocks through the fleeing mob.

  Over the child’s head, Durand saw the stalwart Forest Gate loom above them. If they reached the fortress, if the Solantines took them in, they would still survive, even now. He saw Solantines in the huge gatehouse. They were scrambling. He could not imagine the trees that made up the huge square teeth of the portcullis that hung in the shadows above them.

  On the battlements of the Forest Gate, Durand made out a tall figure in Solantine gray. His beard was white as ice. He wore an open helm and leaned over the onrushing crowd like the master of a ship, staring into the teeth of a great storm.

  The dark hollow of the enormous entry gaped above them.

  And the portcullis thundered down.

  The onrushing crowd flagged. One man dashed himself against the portcullis, howling outrage. “Women and children! Babes here! You cannot!” Almost, some could squeeze between the square timbers, but the gaunt-eyed men in the Forest Gate were already moving, and a pair of iron doors was swinging now, shutting out all hope. Durand watched as the last thread of freedom vanished between those doors. He heard a bar rumble home.

  There were sobs, but Durand only turned, quiet now. Men had already lined up to face the multitudes. Durand saw Ettin thralls stalking in the ranks of the enemy, twisted and maddened and chained. Soon they would test the Forest Gate. He saw also coy ogres, tittering one to the other. They would be the Beldame Weavers, and they measured reams of gossamer web, chattering like washerwomen. How many days had it been since life had ended?

  The maragrim seethed in thickening ranks, drawing up before the small crowd of refugees. This was a chase no longer. Durand heard the piping cry of an infant; he set the boy down with a nod to its mother. Durand had only bare hands to face the maragrim, but he was walking to find a place in the line when the Host of the Enemy came down.

  * * *

  ABRUPTLY, DURAND FELT a heavy hand across his jaw.

  He was again in the Gorge of Pennons, though now there was fog. The air was damp and shockingly cold. His boots had frozen to the sod. Frost stood in needles. His heart hammered a useless din against his ribs. And a Solantine knight had him by the jaw. The man stared with eyes like brown nail-heads. He knew the man’s face.

  “I told you,” the knight growled.

  15

  The Mercy of Iron

  The Solantine guard had a troop of friends. The whole lot scowled down from gray horses.

  “No place to be after dark,” said the Solantine. “We’ll get inside now.”

  Durand’s comrades had their eyes on him; he could do little but wonder what they’d seen.

  They walked into a space of clear air below the Forest Gate. Durand peered up, noting the outsized portcullis. And, high above, he saw Maedor the Greyshield on the parapet as though he had not abandoned his vigil since the fall of Aubairn.

  The jailor knight led them up the face of the wall through fearsome ranks of Solantines. They tottered sideways as men rolled heavy barrels down the stone track. Ailric and Durand exchanged glances: the knights were making ready for more company from Fellwood.

  “They know the maragrim are on the move,” said Ailric. “They would not have been so ready to ride for us.”

  “We are fortunate that they did not close the gate,” said Durand.

  This got a glance from a few of the hard-faced Solantines.

  Durand exhaled. “Ailric, what did you see?”

  “The maragrim were on us, and we were surrounded. Then they stepped from the fog. Shadows.”

  “Not maragrim?�
��

  “No. Shadows. Beyond counting.”

  He had seen more than shadows.

  “The maragrim did not like it and backed away.”

  “Even that spidery brute?”

  “Even the worst of them. The frost knit in the air. And, as the maragrim left us, one of the shadows reached out. Quick as a flame.”

  “A shadow?”

  “You were not breathing,” Ailric said. “The Solantines came then, I think to break up the maragrim. But when they found the Lost, it sobered them. But the Lost gave way. I don’t know what would have happened otherwise.”

  The party climbed the battlements and found Maedor the Greyshield watching still, armed and in the pale mantle of the Constable of Pennons Gate. He watched from the battlements below a substantial gatehouse that glowed like a carved lantern. The tall man turned and led them inside.

  “My brothers are barracked here to relieve the garrison on the Forest Gate, should the maragrim try it,” he said. “There are braziers for the men to work by. You will warm yourselves. And something must be done for these horses.” Then he rounded on Durand. “What did you see, Durand Col?”

  “They were before the gates. The people of Aubairn. Hundreds.”

  The man’s white brow hopped. “Thousands, though they are uncounted—uncounted and unburied. The Forest Gate fell thereafter. And my brethren retreated twice more before the host.” The old man closed his eyes briefly, then regarded Durand again. “You have been fortunate. Many have died who came to the Gorge by night. The dead are jealous. They do not know when or where they are, and they are stronger than they know.” He touched Durand’s shoulder. “But you know much of the Lost, and these of Pennons Gate are mine, not yours.”

  Durand inclined his head, and the ancient knight continued. “You have come unlooked-for from the east with the maragrim close behind.…”

  “I was not traveling with His Grace.”