A King in Cobwebs

by David Keck

  Durand heard the others breathing around him, stumbling. In his mind’s eye, he saw Almora; he saw Deorwen.

  Finally, the company staggered into the keep in the pass below.

  The knights on the north gate had already sent runners to learn what had happened. They had heard the horn, and suffered as tons of wreckage thundered down in the lift yard and upon the rooftops of their stronghold.

  Sigeric came away from these men, scowling. “You will go now. None died on the ground, but there were two above. My men. One with us, the other from the third landing stage.” It was a terrible price for haste, and Durand did not know whether to lay the blame on Leovere or to shoulder it himself. Sigeric took Durand by the arm, leading him through the fortress to the great barrel-vaulted passage that led between the lifts and the gates. Behind them, Durand saw Solantines at work upon the wreckage. But they approached the outer gates, reaching a range of familiar-smelling halls that could only be stables. “You will have horses. Your own were not fit to travel further without much rest.” He shook his head. “These are sound enough, and the groom will tell you what you must know.” The man looked from Durand to the wreckage with his dull, dark eyes. “The mark of the Powers are upon this, good or ill. The horn, the fall.… It may be that Brother Maedor sees better than I what price we’ll pay for your passing this way, but there is danger in holding a man against the will of the Powers—and you did not lead the Hornbearer.”

  Durand nodded as the Solantines produced four horses, and he climbed aboard a strong, pig-eyed gray with the battered cadre of traitor-Solantines looking on. He bowed his thanks, his dread growing.

  “Durand Col,” continued Sigeric. “Be warned. These things, they will tear out the wards. Every hour they are free in Errest the Old will lend them strength. They will break up the realm like roots break a road. Every day they will be harder to shift, till there is nothing any man may do. Maybe we will be guarding our pass from both sides now.”

  “Thank you for what you have done,” said Durand, and the old knight bowed low.

  They crossed the stark valley and mounted the wandering track, climbing into the higher passes with the old fortress at their backs, lost from one turning to the next. While the Farrow Moon gleamed, they could see. When the black rags of cloud caught the moon, Creation vanished into darkness. More than once, Durand was forced to rein in, not knowing whether he was leading them over a cliff or into some hopeless canyon. He heard mysterious noises under the tattered sky. Stones clattered, once skittering out in the track before him. And, deep in the night, a storm dropped upon them, raging over the high places with a terrible power that finally drove even Durand under cover.

  The duke’s party could not be far. Coensar could not have gone much further before nightfall, and they would surely be sharing the same wind and rain. Durand tallied the leagues and hours between them, knowing that the cavalcade had left at dawn, that it would have ridden ten or twelve hours, and that it could not travel with the speed of a driven man on a fresh horse.

  They did not stay long in shelter. Before the storm had tired of the mountaintops, Durand forced his companions back onto the trail, groping his way downward, leading the horses and his comrades, fearing that they must already be too late, that Leovere was out there too, and closer.

  As they rode, the storm vanished into the night once more and they pushed on until the Eye of Heaven cast light upon the peaks. They had reached a valley that Durand had only passed in the dark. The road was good, though a shallow stream joined them along the way, running like a thin coat of glass over the paving stones. They splashed in the water as the track slipped between two stone idols: the Warders in their Nail Coats, tall as spires. No sign had they seen of Abravanal the duke, or Leovere his enemy, though Durand spurred his borrowed gray to the top of every rise and cursed at each empty valley.

  “Where are they?” he said to Ailric, riding alongside.

  “Coensar must have pushed on past sunset.”

  Berchard called forward. “They’ll have heard that damned horn, same as we did. They’ll have been settling down—wondering how to kindle their cooking fires with only stones as tinder—when that great braying thing interrupted. What would you have done? I’d be riding till I hit the Sea of Ice.”

  A shadow passed.

  “Look there: an eagle flies before us,” said Heremund. Everyone looked.

  “White tail?” asked Berchard. And, when they confirmed his guess, he continued. “The Erne.” The huge bird flew onward down the valley, looping low between the idols on the trail. Then it flinched and staggered under the assaults of a hail of smaller birds—starlings—that shot by the company on every side. “Emblem of kings, harried,” finished a wincing Berchard. He could see a starling if it flew close enough to strike him.

  “It is bound for Gireth,” said Heremund.

  “Or Eldinor beyond, if it holds its northward bearing,” amended Berchard.

  “Let be! We’ve had omens enough for ten lifetimes!” said Durand.

  Just then, the stone head of one grim idol—disturbed by the violent passage of the birds—toppled into the stream, and the splash soaked Durand to the thigh.

  16

  Dark Homecomings

  “That will be the valley of the Tresses,” said Ailric. Before them were the three blade-like Sisters that towered over the northern mouth of Pennons Gate. The young man extended his hand toward the Eye of Heaven, marking distance between the Eye and the likely horizon as another man might measure a colt. “It must be the ninth hour. We have made good time.”

  In the empty sweep of plain below them, Durand saw the stream and ruins and stand of pines they had passed only a few days before; Deorwen and the others were nowhere to be seen. Durand rubbed his chin.

  “Coensar has driven them hard. But it is just as well, for we have yet to overtake Leovere and his men.” Neither had they found the scattering of corpses Durand had feared.

  And so they followed the track through valley of the Tresses and down the switchbacks of barren mountain road that stretched from Pennons Gate. At Broklambe, they found some sign that the villagers had begun rebuilding—sawdust on the air, a heap of cut timber twenty paces away—but there wasn’t a soul visible from the road.

  “No animals,” said Ailric.

  “Nothing,” Durand agreed.

  “It could be that they’ve thought better of rebuilding,” said Berchard. “It is high stony ground. The growing season will be short. With their stores burnt, they may have fled to Wrothsilver.” The old man scratched his beard with both hands. “Who is their liege lord, do you think?”

  No one knew; Baron Vadir in Wrothsilver might be the man.

  “If we had an hour to spare, we would turn the town over.” As it was, Durand urged his borrowed gray downhill.

  An hour later, they passed a forest hamlet under a column of crows. Durand eyed the circling birds as their hoarse calls rang between the trees. Down the gloomy village lane, he saw the humped corpses of cattle and the black rectangles of open doors. Here and there, bodies lay, marked by lost-laundry shocks of color against the grass. Nothing moved but ravens and crows.

  “Another empty village. Men and beasts lie where they fell,” said Heremund. “Broklambe will have been the same. What has Leovere done?”

  “It is not worth thinking of,” said Durand. Deorwen and Almora were out there, with only Coensar’s few swords between them and whatever Leovere had managed to slip through the wards. He wanted to ravel up the distance. He felt a fury of desperation building.

  In half a league, they found another ruin. Durand cursed. There were blackened timbers. Here, there had been fire. Bodies hung from the trees, men and beasts both. What could hang an ox? Durand clenched his cracked teeth.

  “Let us think,” he said. “Of Coensar, we’ve seen no sign.” Neither had they seen a massacre on the Wrothsilver Road. “They must be ahead of us still.” Just out of reach. His fists clenched and opened like a heart’s b
eating. “But this will be Leovere, or Leovere and the Hornbearer’s minions. And they have wasted time with this devilry, for if they mean to overtake our people, Coensar will not have dawdled on his way to safety.” Durand stood in his stirrup irons, shooting a futile look down the empty Wrothsilver Road, thinking they would find village after village like this with only Leovere and his maragrim at the end. To reach Abravanal’s column, they must sidestep the rebel lord. And night was coming on.

  “To the Hells with the Wrothsilver Road,” he said. “Let Leovere squat in the track; we are not in the mountains now. There are a hundred farmsteads and hamlets in these hills. We will find our own way by back roads!” They had a skald in their party, and such men had traveled every village track. “Yes. By the plowmen’s paths we will slip Leovere, and still know where Abravanal has gone. Quick!” He gave the gray the spurs and they leapt from the river road to the crooked tracks of the forests. A thousand tracks bound farmstead to farmstead in that high, rough country.

  They passed clotted circles of carrion birds and myriad dark and silent ways. Durand’s eye was always on the next crossroads, grilling Ailric or Heremund to get some word when the way was unclear. He had to overtake Coensar.

  By this means, they blundered into a long village that sprawled either side of their forest track with dark fields opening like a rib cage round a naked spine of hovels. Here too, there were crows, though here there were survivors moving. In the long shadows of evening, Durand saw the deep mounds of new graves. He saw broken buildings cleared. He saw exhausted villagers still at work. The Solantine horses pricked their ears at this place, their heads high.

  In the midst of the village stood a very tall, very narrow, crooked tower. He had never seen the like.

  “Benewith,” said Heremund.

  “What was that?” said Berchard.

  “They call that the Benewith Tower,” said Heremund. “It is the dwelling place of the Lady of the Tower.”

  “It is in Gireth? I have not heard of this woman.”

  “Benewith ain’t near the usual ways. Only our crow’s-flight run down from the pass has brought us here. Most men? They’d never travel thus.”

  Berchard was squinting up. “It is a tower, you say? It looks like a twist of smoke.” The tower must have topped twenty-five fathoms, and, though it was as tall any keep in Errest, it looked too narrow to stand; indeed, from base to battlements, it looked more like a rope than a tower.

  “Her Ladyship’s no great stonemason, whatever else she may be,” said Heremund.

  “Who is this woman?” asked Durand. “We might have fresh horses from her. Or word of the duke.”

  “I would not wager on it. They say the Lady of the Tower has this land since Willan Blind,” said Heremund. “Never stepping from her tower.” The pile looked like it was held up by moss and creepers. Some of the stones seemed to belong elsewhere.

  “A hundred years!” said Berchard.

  “More than that, Berchard. More than two hundred! Willan was younger brother to Heraric and Calamund, the Lost Princes, dead over the Sea of Darkness when Einred led the armies south. That is no hundred years.”

  They all peered up at the twisted tower, brown as burnt sugar against the gloomy Heaven. “As you say, skald,” said Berchard. “I’m not fool enough to argue a lady’s age where she might hear, but it has been a long time since Willan’s day.”

  “It has,” said Heremund. “But she will not come down, so we shall know nothing more.”

  Durand thought he perceived a narrow window very high in the tower, not broad enough for a man’s shoulders. He edged his gray into the village, and soon enough a barrel-chested plowman left the crowd of exhausted laborers. Here was their first witness to Leovere’s raids.

  “You needn’t ask to see his lady,” said Heremund. “No man living has.”

  The bearish peasant nodded a quick bow, brushing his hands. He wore nothing but grime, clogs, and breeches, but said, “Lordship,” clearly enough.

  From his saddle, Durand said, “I am Durand Col, a liegeman of Duke Abravanal. Can you tell me what’s happened in this place?”

  The man narrowed an eye. “You were the Duke’s Champion.”

  “It may still be so.”

  “I am Aed, bailiff here. This is Benewith village.” He waved a heavy arm quickly over the ruins of his town. “Devils in the night. We met them in the road here and, thanks to the Powers of Heaven, fought them off.”

  “Fought them off!” said Berchard.

  The plowman-bailiff turned and nodded to Berchard. “Lordship.”

  “How?” said Berchard.

  “We had what mauls and axes and tools came to hand. The things came from the night. The trees. I don’t know, Lordship. Her Ladyship gave us word. Sent us warning. Nigh too late, but a man hears little from Her Ladyship.”

  There was that narrow window near the top of the tower.

  “You did well if you’re still here,” declared Berchard. “We’ve seen this elsewhere. You are the first who could speak sense about what he saw.”

  The man winced at the compliment. “Lordship. My sons here stood with me.” He indicated two similarly broad bondmen nodding sternly nearby.

  “Bailiff Aed, I will have to tell the duke what I can. What did you see? As exactly as you can remember it.”

  The man rubbed a forehead as broad as an ox’s brow. “All manner of things. Hard to put in words. The devils ran out of our Burnt Oak Wood there away north, the way you’ve come. And they were already at our Bera’s longhouse before anyone raised the alarm. Bera had three boys,” the man added solemnly. “Then there were nightjars and owls in every house, storming round our ears as we slept. That’ll have been Her Ladyship, we think. Half the village stumbled out and heard the howling up at Bera’s place. His oxen, most like, but there’s no way of knowing, for all of them were caught inside: Bera, his boys, the beasts. We burnt the place ourselves come morning.”

  “Were there men among these things?”

  “Not what I would call men, Lordship, no.”

  “And a tall thing. A giant. Dark. With a face full of horns?”

  The bailiff shook his head slowly. “No, Lordship. Not that. But others.”

  “And you defeated them?” This was the real mystery. This could be something important. “Had you a priest?”

  “No, Her Ladyship does not hold with priests. Never has. And the nearest shrine’s half a league off. We fought the devils in the road there.” The man pointed. “We buried ten of our people, along with everyone at Bera’s, but they could not stand the Eye. When dawn came, they folded into the earth, like. Cowering down. Into the Hells, we reckoned. ’Twas dawn that saved us.”

  The whole of Durand’s party had been listening intently, but now Heremund looked up.

  “Into the ground, you say? When dawn came?”

  Ailric’s head had already swiveled round, searching the western Heavens. And Durand saw it too: It was evening, and, sure enough, the Eye of Heaven had nearly gone. Durand prayed that the bondmen’s courage had bought them more than a single day of pointless labor.

  “Get them out of the fields. Get everyone together. Is there a door in that tower?”

  The man was shaking his head, eyes wide. “No. No door.”

  “And no water. No running water.”

  “In the tower?”

  “Anywhere!”

  The man shook his head. “A well, only.” He pointed out among the longhouses of the village.

  Durand cast his eye over the thatched half-timbered houses, all low and nothing of stone. A man could kick through such walls. But, then he spotted a dark track. An alley between two overgrown hedges. The gnarled walls of thorn were two fathoms high.

  Durand swung down from the saddle. “The maragrim are still among us, like wolves in the high grass. They will rise where they fell when the dawn struck them. I reckon we’ll make our stand between the hedgerows. You have no time.”

  The bailiff blinked for
a moment, but then turned to his people and roared.

  Everyone ran. They called to their families.

  Durand stalked into the damp warren between the hawthorns. There were flowers. Two dozen survivors—men and women—hunkered down in the narrow track. A gaggle of little children huddled, white with terror. They had all reached the tunnel of thorns, crowding close into the gloom with the Solantine horses.

  “What was this path for?” said Berchard, eyeing the devilish thorns crowding close on both sides.

  “It’s the Marlepit Field track. It goes up to Marlepit Field, yonder. Plowlands. Hedging the crofts and that.”

  “That’s everything explained, then,” said Berchard. He had his patterned blade in his lap.

  The last needle of daylight winked out between the thorns and horses and children. Every soul in Benewith had gone to ground.

  Ailric pointed down into the village from the mouth of their dark lane. Already, misshapen things were moving, rising from the ruts, blinking where the fight had taken place twelve long spring hours before. Durand was conscious of the children huddled in the shadows behind him. A handful were very, very young. He tried to make sense of the uncanny shapes of the maragrim. There were little brutes, skittering sidelong. Something like a hooded man stooped under the weight of a massive swinging head. There was another thing that carried the wrong number of limbs. The man, Aed, was murmuring reassurances to the children. Durand thought of Almora and Deorwen and Coensar. How flimsy a thing the future was and how easily and often it was snatched away. There was Heremund the skald with a stout walking stick. There was blind Berchard, dandling his blade. And here now was Aed and these few children behind him. He must fight here and learn what steel could do against the maragrim. A man’s schemes counted for little in the face of doom.

  They huddled, whispering in the mouth of the alleyway as the maragrim moved, seemingly heedless. “They are the same,” said Aed. Only the fighting men could hear him. “All the bloodshed last night and they are just the same. Not one gone.”