by David Keck
Durand shook his head. It was done. He called out the order to march.
* * *
THEY CROSSED THE Dukes’ Bridge with many a muttered prayer. Durand saw Garelyn and a hundred others drop a coin or stone into the current where the river boiled under the bridge. As the story went, if a man left something behind, the river might call him back.
The statues of three ancient dukes stood at a crossroads just beyond the bridge. The riders passed between the old dukes: the founders of Yrlac, Gireth, and Lost Hesperand loomed, each by the road to his domain. Durand saw the likeness of Gunderic’s sword carved in alabaster and taller than the door of the sanctuary. Once, the three dukedoms had been close allies. Now, two were at war and one was Lost.
The Host rode west where the Banderol forced them under the granite hills of the Warrens.
* * *
THE ROAD SWUNG south, stepping clear of the tangled Warrens. Scattered hamlets stood in the green and rolling fields. This was Yrlac, the land that Durand must take from Leovere and his thralls. Even in the midst of the army, Durand rode warily, watching the horizon from the knot of household guards that surrounded Deorwen, Almora, and some of the commanders.
At a crossroads not far from the border, the vanguard had halted. The main battalion moved toward them.
“We will need to talk strategy,” said bluff Garelyn, half-turning in his saddle, “before we stumble over Lord Leovere and his friends, eh, Your Grace?”
Durand nodded. Garelyn was still having a grand time with all this.
“I would like to understand,” said Almora.
Garelyn grunted his approval. “Well, Ladyship, Lord Leovere is very likely to run for Ferangore. It is the seat of the dukes of Yrlac, and we’ve almost no one there. He’ll storm it and we’ll be caught outside. That is, unless we overtake him and force him into battle. He’s got a nice start on us, if he’s used it, which we’d best assume he has. But he’ll be gathering forces.”
“You are so certain,” Almora said.
“These things must be as Heaven commands, but he could do nothing with the thirty men he had at Acconel. I would have taken him then, if the king’s peace allowed it.”
“When do you think we will see them?” asked Deorwen.
For this, Deorwen’s brother had an answer. “He left last night, twilight,” said Moryn Mornaway. “That likely gave him only a few hours lead. If I were Leovere, I would have scattered my men to every ally’s door in hopes of bringing together a force at Ferangore. I cannot guess what time that requires.”
“And so we hope to catch him on the road.”
Garelyn winked. “It would be best.”
Almora tilted her head. “And there is no chance that our men will hold Ferangore?”
Garelyn shrugged, slightly abashed. “Kieren had to use what was to hand. Knights, sergeants. Some with old Yrlac ties. Some new men. My guess? The keys will be on a peg by the front gate when Leovere walks up.”
“We should hurry, then,” said Almora. “Already, we are too slow.”
No one wanted siege, but only those who had seen the maragrim knew the danger. As Durand saw it, Leovere was their only chance. They must run him down in daylight and pray that killing the fool would scatter the maragrim he’d summoned. There was death in every other solution.
When Durand could make out Coensar and Ailric and other faces at the crossroads, he led the commanders from the column to meet Coensar. A gibbet hung there: an iron cage that held a man long dead, like a twist of brown roots. No one paid the least attention. Ailric was pointing into the road.
“Your Grace, they’ve gone west.”
From where they stood, the Ferangore road ran south toward the River Rushes, passing near Penseval. “Not the Ferangore road?” said Durand.
Garelyn did not believe it. “It will be some drover leading his herd, what’s that way. Some market town, no doubt.”
Mornaway hopped down into the road. “There is nothing that way, Duke Garelyn,” he said. “No market town. Nothing. And these are shod hooves. Scores. Over tracking. Not old. No drover, unless he drives herds of warhorses.” He nodded to Ailric.
“Very well,” griped Garelyn. “Not Ferangore then. We will take him wherever he chooses to stand.”
But Durand, looking west over the rolling country, remembered riding in that direction long ago. The Warrens like stone clouds at their shoulder, blue with distance. Then the eerie wilds of Hesperand. Coensar met his glance. “We went this way with Lamoric trying to reach the High Ashes Tournament,” said Durand.
Coensar nodded. The man made the fist and fingers, a rare thing for him.
“We wound up in Hesperand,” Durand confessed. “What is Leovere doing?”
Somewhere, Rooks called out above the road. “Haw! Haw!” They were as bad as the Traveler.
Durand straightened. Down the column, he could see Deorwen and Almora. Heremund would be somewhere under his blankets. “Sir Coensar, call in the outriders on the Ferangore road.”
“I’ll get some men riding west.”
“Quick and quiet,” said Durand. He liked nothing about this. “If this is some trap, we’ll want to know. Whatever Leovere is up to, let’s not give him time.”
They followed the crooked path west. Coensar put Ailric among the outriders and, again and again, they would find the young man at a crossroads. Again and again, they trended west, until the Eye of Heaven burned high above them.
From time to time, Coensar and Durand would share a look. This was the very path they’d followed as Lamoric’s Red Knight squadron. It must have been ten winters, but they knew the place. Over their right shoulders, the gnarled hills of the Warrens gave way to the bone-pale trees of Lost Hesperand, crowding to the horizon like a towering wall.
The wind grieved over those trees with a sound like the Winter Sea full of ice in the distance.
“What could he be doing?” Garelyn said. “He’s not running for the duke’s throne at Ferangore. And Penseval is in the south, what’s left of it. Morcar’s people are in the west, but it’s a backwater.” And the long arm of forest would soon bar their passage west.
* * *
AT NOONTIDE, BERCHARD left Heremund in the ranks and found his way into Almora’s company. The column came upon a hamlet where the windows and doors were buttoned tight, and not a single eye could be seen peeping at the shutters. Durand saw Coensar give the sanctuary a long look as the vanguard passed.
“You came this way with my brother?” asked Almora.
“We were rushing for High Ashes,” said Berchard. “It’s a town in Mornaway on the River Glass, right over the border from Hesperand. Your brother was eager to prove himself. These were the days when he was fighting without his name.”
“The Red Knight,” she said.
“Aye, but we could not reach High Ashes in time. There is a long sweep of Hesperand’s forest just south into Yrlac, and so straight into Hesperand we went, thinking we’d be lucky so long as we ate or drank nothing. The idea was that we’d dart across. We found a tourney instead.”
“With the Lady of Hesperand!” said Almora.
“You wouldn’t smile if you’d been there. Dead men. The Lost. There was a sort of hunt with the Lost Duke himself on our heels. Damn me.” Berchard’s story faltered for a moment. “Our Durand was in the lists with some poor boy who’d been Lost a hundred winters. It is no fit place, I’ll tell you.”
Durand had killed that boy, and killed a peasant in a blue tunic. That one had saved Coensar’s honor.
In the midst of the village was a squat stone sanctuary no larger than a wealthy yeoman’s dwelling. There was a low tower, and idols poked from under the eaves all round. An odd metal sound shimmered from the tower—a strange echo from the bell, as though it had rung once and the sound never died.
And Durand saw the men in the ranks ahead muttering prayers and raising the Eye of Heaven.
“Here, what’s that?” Berchard said, turning his lined face.
<
br /> “Priestcraft,” said Deorwen.
The townspeople had not abandoned their village. In the sanctuary yard, sixty or more men, women, and children lay prostrate, murmuring into the meadow grass. Durand could hear the village priest, likely stopped at the altar, intoning the prayers they had all heard around Prince Reilan. And, nearer still, the sculpted heads all about the eaves of the place—monsters, beasts, maidens, and holy man—they, too, prayed, their stone mouths gaping in a slow echo of the prayers. The air was thick with balsam and orris root and juniper.
Somewhere, the Crane would be carrying the prince north to Red Winding and Eldinor and the sacred dark of its sanctuary crypt.
24
The Vale of Ydran
When the Eye of Heaven blazed before them and finally sank below the western hills, Durand knew that they would not catch Leovere that day.
The vanguard stopped at the brink of a deep valley. At the bottom, a village stood clustered round the mound of a ring castle. There was no smell of smoke, nor light, nor sign of life of any sort. But Durand remembered the place. Ten years before, Lamoric’s men had bullied Durand down into the valley to learn what was going on in the village, and its lone occupant had told him that every soul in the town had vanished into Hesperand. Now, the doors hung askew and many of the buildings had fallen under the weight of their own rotten thatch.
The road into the town—all ruts and mud ten years before—was scarcely visible as a faint depression in the grass. Ydran, they’d called it.
Ailric bore a message from the vanguard. “Leovere skirted it, Your Grace, still marching west.”
Durand nodded. “Hells,” he said.
Garelyn stretched his long arms. “Well,” he said, “it’ll be tomorrow then. In an hour we’ll be blind or nearly.”
Durand could not be so even tempered. Already, the maragrim would have left their hollows. He stared south over the rolling leagues of shadowed hills. Somewhere in that ocean of gloom, the maragrim were running, fighting the rills and streams of Yrlac, but on the move. Durand wanted Leovere. He wanted to save the thousand courageous fools in the ranks behind him; so much meat for the carrion birds if they do not get Leovere in time. Here were Deorwen and Almora. He wanted his hands around the man’s neck. But now, they were blind, and so it must be tomorrow.
Durand did not howl.
He looked. They had the high ground: good sight lines.
“We will camp here,” Durand said. “We could blunder into anything in the darkness. Set a heavy guard. Sentries deep on all sides. Ailric, make sure Ydran down there is as dead as it looks. And don’t ride alone.”
They encamped there upon the ridge above the Vale of Ydran. And, for an hour, Durand watched his sentries on the tops of the nearby hills vanish one after another like coins sinking into the murky depths of a pond. Men slept in stiff gambeson and coats of mail. Most kept their eyes open.
At the center of the camp, Durand sat with the commanders, and kept watch over Deorwen, Almora, and the skald.
Garelyn had found a barrel to perch upon, and the rangy duke leaned back. “The trick will be to get them turning. Old Radomor knew it on the marches, and Ragnal knew it as well. You haven’t got to kill every man, just to hit one flank or another hard enough to start a man running, then it’s a matter of sweeping up the rest. You’ll expect a handful around the commander to play stubborn, and it’s no shame. But most men? A fight with sharp blades licking and no one knowing what’s what? They’ll run if they feel the rest going. I don’t care if it’s Heithans from the Hallow Downs or belted knights from Errest the Old. There are few men who can stand when their fellows run.
“If he wants a fight, we’ll try to turn his flank or cut his throat and have an end to it. But if he runs—or keeps running—we’ll need to free our swiftest horsemen and get after him. He’ll turn and fight if we hit hard enough. His men will make him. And the rest of us too old and slow will rush out and save who we can.”
The broad Farrow Moon sailed among the ragged clouds. Durand saw traces of their host in its quicksilver touches. He thought of the maragrim swimming up the great rivers of darkness.
“We never speak of the thralls,” Deorwen said, and the tall duke turned to her.
“The wards have held since the Cradle was floating at the quay in Eldinor,” said Garelyn. “Twice, the Sons of Heshtar raged and conquered. A thousand winters, the southlands lay in thrall, but the walls and wards barred the maragrim from Errest the Old.” Durand thought he saw the man spread his hands. “It may be they aren’t as many as you think, or that some old ward will yet trip them up.”
Durand spoke. “Heaven help us if you are wrong.”
“So then, I’m wrong. What then? Where is the skald?” He twisted around, raising an eyebrow at Heremund, who was still under his pile of blankets.
“What then, skald, eh?” said Garelyn.
“Why do men ask of such things in the dark?” said Heremund, his voice a dry rasp.
“We had better know.”
“The maragrim are the dead of the battlefield, each caught up by some little secret shame. In countless battles, the Sons of Atthi died while the Beldame Weavers—ogres, they were, of a sort—swept the air, snatching men from the Gates of far Heaven. Knotting nightmares from their souls.”
Garelyn thrust his chin high. “And how are they slain, then? Eh, skald?”
“They are slain already. Long ago, all of them.”
“It is priestcraft,” said Deorwen. “It’s priestcraft that’s called for.”
“Of which we’ve none,” said Garelyn.
“There is running water,” added Heremund.
Garelyn laughed. “Which may be in short supply.”
“And fire.”
“Now that’s good. Do they burst into flames then?”
“No more than you or I. But the sword can slow them.”
“Slow them, you say?”
“The stroke of a blade can lame and cripple such a thing. You will find no heart in its breast or brain in its skull, but there is nothing stopping a swordsmen from hobbling the devils.”
Even Garelyn could not maintain his bluff demeanor. “Well, that’s something.”
“And on the morrow, they rise once more, lest you turn a river over their graves or burn what’s left before daylight.” Heremund looked past them into the great blackness to the south. “The Sons of Atthi would walk over empty fields under the Eye of Heaven only to find legions rising up when the Eye of Heaven failed.”
A night wind stirred above the hilltop, catching at cloaks and surcoats. Somewhere in the empty village, a door or shutter slammed. Heremund only turned his head.
Garelyn cleared his throat. “Well. What men have done, we can do. We’ll break their legs and leave them hobbling. We’ll take their heads and leave them blind. And we’ll find our Leovere and see how the chicken runs without its head!”
All the while, the darkness above the hills drew every man’s eye. Durand remembered the ghastly rush of the maragrim—how did a man cut the legs from under a wild leopard as it sprang from the dark? It was easily said. Durand cursed himself; he should have driven Almora back. Her father was dead. Someone should sit vigil with him. Now, she was here in the mad black with him and the devil-swarming hills.
It was easy to brave in daylight. They should have had walls between them and this nightmare. High walls and heroes all around.
“Sir Durand.” It was Almora’s voice. She had got to his elbow before he heard her and Deorwen was right behind.
“Ladyship, Deorwen,” Durand said with a nodding bow.
He resolved to make things right. The army would march without her. A party of good knights could ride her back.
There was something in the girl’s hands, clutched to her chest.
“Your Ladyship?” said Durand.
“We were thinking of you,” she began, hesitating. “Lord Moryn has his blue and gold diamonds. Garelyn, the Red Wheel.” Garelyn looked across,
curious.
“And you are Duke of Yrlac now and Radomor’s Leopard.… You couldn’t wear that. But Lady Deorwen remembered.” Durand thought he saw Deorwen make a sour face. “This,” said the girl. And she held his oldest surcoat open in her hands. It had been in the bottom of the trunk in his chamber. There were three stags—the antlered heads of one over two below: Durand, his father, his brother.
Some black cloud hid the Farrow Moon and Durand could hardly see the small oval of the girl’s face. Here was the anxious girl. There was Deorwen behind. Together, they had found this thing he had not worn in so many years. He reached out and took the surcoat in his hands, feeling very strange in the high black night with these two women looking on. He was to be married. It was mad. He would be the duke of two lands. If the maragrim felt like children’s stories to Garelyn, these things were the same to him.
He could see no way to escape.
He could find no words to speak to these two women, and he was glad they could not see his face.
It was Deorwen who spoke next. “Durand, what is that?” she said, but she was not looking at Durand or the coat. Her eyes were on the hills.
Durand turned, the surcoat in his hands; a voice called from the western hills. With a shiver, Durand understood—it was a sentry. One of the men posted a bowshot over the hills. Someone was dead. “Arm yourselves,” Durand said.
There was no time.
“To your banners!” Durand roared, hauling Ouen’s sword into the night. Leovere had waited for the cloud to take the moonlight from them.
It seemed to Durand’s eyes that the hill twitched before him like a horse’s flank as a thousand men sprang up, scrambling for swords and shields. The men had camped near their banner knights and now they stood tight, shoulder to shoulder.
In the blind moment before the assault, Garelyn was searching the horizon. “Doubling back from the west … On foot, lest I’m mad. You’ll have lost a few sentries, I’d guess, Duke Durand.”
Moryn and Ailric had Almora and Deorwen close. “Ailric, with your life,” Durand said.
“Don’t get too near,” Berchard was saying as he unlimbered the High Kingdom sword he carried. “I won’t even know myself in the dark.” Maybe he meant them to leave him to die.