A King in Cobwebs

by David Keck

  And, before Durand could open his mouth, there was a call from the vanguard. There was something in the road. Durand and Coensar set their spurs.

  * * *

  THERE WAS A rise just ahead of the breathless Host of Gireth. Coensar and Durand charged up. And there, spread below them, was a broad meadow where acres of open ground steamed in the morning light. In the midst of the place, Durand saw a slender bridge. This was the place where Coensar had dueled Cassonel of Algarden, where Durand had knelt and Coensar had knighted him.

  Below the bridge must be the River Glass, still curling in its bed of mist and reeds. But, more importantly, they were not alone: an army stood between them and the crossing. Their grim commander, Duke Eorcan with the Peregrine Crown of Hesperand upon his brow, sat astride a black charger on the high bridgehead.

  This was the wellspring of the chant that echoed through all the wastes of Hesperand. This was the Host of Hesperand, at prayer.

  The men of Gireth and Yrlac were silent.

  “We saw the Green Lady,” said Durand.

  “She has relented,” said Coensar. “We’ve reached the river.”

  The prayer of the Lost host brimmed the meadow, deep and as alive in the air as bees in a hive. A thousand men or more knelt. Hundreds more stood at the bridles of motionless horses. Compared to the Host of Gireth, they gleamed like new-struck pennies. Blazons were bright with fresh paint. Burnished helmets gleamed. Durand could not help but glance back at his own men, blood-stained, exhausted and half or more lost to madness.

  “Well,” said Garelyn. “There is the bridge, anyway. I’d love to see our route to this place on a map. That I would truly love. We will have to pick through the lot of these old men to reach the bridge, I suppose.”

  Durand nodded. The Host of Hesperand neatly blocked their path. They might be moved. They might listen, if he should ride down.

  Before Durand could move, Coensar spurred his charger down into the meadow.

  “All right. That’s settled then.” Garelyn was turning to the men. “Steady,” he said. “We might need to move hastily. Pass the word down the line. Be ready.” Durand heard this grappling clatter of men pulling their shields from their baggage.

  Coensar jounced downhill at a canter, stirring the remaining tatters of mist.

  “Someone should go with him,” Almora said.

  Garelyn gave her a wry smile. “One is enough to lose, Ladyship. And there’d be little that two men—or two hundred—could do against those fellows.”

  There wasn’t a twitch among the ranks of Eorcan’s Host as Coensar cantered nearer and nearer. Even when the steward drew up no more than a stone’s throw from the multitude, Eorcan sat like some painted statue in a city square. The wings of the Peregrine Crown might almost have been stone, except for the silver glint of the upswept wings.

  Only then did Heremund join the vanguard. “What have we stumbled upon this time?”

  Coensar picked along the ranks of the eerie host, his charge skittish. The men bore the long shields and tall helms of a previous age. Their coats of mail hung long. Some wore coats of burnished scales—each scale as long and narrow as the leaves of a willow.

  “They’re not moving. He won’t be talking them around,” Garelyn said. “We’ll have to shoulder our way through.”

  There had been another bridge, upstream: a pitched wooden span. But he had put it to the torch with the help of Berchard and big Ouen. There, he had slain a bondman in a blue coat. But, even as the thought entered his mind, the torch-smoke smell of pitch and timber drifted past him and he knew that his bridge was still smoking. Just as the Lost blue-coated bondman was still in his train.

  “They are gathered. This is the Host of Hesperand, and they are at prayer,” Heremund was saying. “This is the day they departed. The day the Hidden Masters of old made ready to snatch their army from Hesperand to join the fight in the distant southlands. Bound by their oaths and the king and the patriarchs, they were to be plucked like one woven web and flung the leagues across Creation, to strike the Enemy and to save their kinsman beyond Fellwood.”

  “And here they are still,” said Durand. “Lost with their duke.”

  “It was a fight, wasn’t it?” said Garelyn. “Eorcan and some man. Something about his wife behind his back. Did Eorcan die?”

  “Have a care, Your Grace,” said Heremund. “They are right before us.”

  “Aye, well, I’d guess they aren’t listening.”

  “They’ve been coming back to this place since before Uluric blew that damned horn. Before there were Iron Knights on the Pennons Gate, before Hornbearers and Lost Princes. Marching back to this day, never to ride.”

  Coensar was now a few steps from the nearest man. Durand could scarcely breathe.

  “Thank you, skald,” said Garelyn.

  Coensar was picking along the lines, but he would find no way through—no way that a mounted column could pass through. Durand saw Coensar’s horse, its eyes flashing, its tail tucked, and he turned to the rest.

  “Right,” said Durand. “We must cross the bridge. There is nothing for it, but we’ll be leading the horses, I think.” And he dropped from the saddle.

  “Sir Durand,” said Almora, her tone careful, her voice loud. “If you agree, I would walk with you at the head of the column.” She smiled. “I’ve seen little but the rump of the horse in front of me since we set out this morning.”

  Durand thought a moment as she beamed for the army. If they brought the Lost Host down on them, what could it matter whether she was first or last? Deorwen said nothing. She hardly met Durand’s glance.

  “Fine,” said Durand. He offered the girl his hand, and she climbed down.

  Together they stepped down onto the field, leading the host forward, steadily approaching the Lost battalions, hand in hand. Only Durand was near enough to know that she trembled and that her hands were slab-cold.

  The girl did not hesitate, chatted amiably all the while. “I suppose they cannot hear us, Sir Durand. They are lost in their rituals.” But Durand could see that it was all she could do to put her feet one ahead of the other. Durand did not know what he would have done when he was her age—a boy shield-bearer for Kieren the Fox in Acconel. Now, he had seen so much, and his heart still thundered.

  They passed Coensar. He was looking grimly up at what survived of their host, an arming cap like a silver bowl in his fist.

  “They are following,” said Almora. She wondered, but she did not look. Instead, she smiled up at Durand while he gave the army a steady glance: spread across the slope, the ragged Host of Gireth looked more like a drove of beggars than an army; they were so few and so haggard. He watched knights stumble. So many were lost. So many were stricken. How could so very few men face the Hornbearer, even if they could reach Eldinor in time? And, as Garelyn had said, they did not even know the day.

  “They are brave men,” Almora said. She pitched her voice to be overheard, at least by a few. And she tugged Durand’s hand.

  They led their horses between a knight’s long gilded shield and the pommel of a kneeling man’s sword. It was like tiptoeing among sleeping adders.

  And the knights were not still—not entirely—for slowly, slowly their lips intoned the words of the old chant. Durand could smell the balsam and cedar and orris of their vigils. And he knew that he would not touch these men for kingdoms.

  With Deorwen, Coensar, and the rest not far behind, they worked their way through the Host of Hesperand. “I think that it might be easy to lead men,” said Almora. “Which knight-at-arms will concede that a maiden girl might go where he could not?”

  “Soon enough we might find out, with the way you’re going,” said Durand.

  And she nodded a courtly bow.

  Between two squadrons of knights, they found an open aisle, and, for a moment, led their mounts easily. They could see Duke Eorcan quite plainly. Almora opened her mouth to speak; one of the man’s slow hands was reaching now toward the bridge, toward
Bower Mead. It was clear they meant to cross—but then the Lost came to life.

  Creation broke around them, full of screaming.

  The Heavens were black.

  A thousand men turned, their crooked hands reaching for Almora. The dead men howled for the two thousand winters they’d lost between Heaven and the Hells.

  Then it ended, and they were tottering between the silent ranks. Hesperand was as it had been: a meadow of mist and daylight. And it seemed that Durand and Almora had hardly moved. The arms of the long-lost knights were already falling, their eyes turning back to the commander on the bridge. Already, they were falling back into their dream.

  “My hand,” said Almora. Her fingers hovered a hair’s breadth from a dead man’s knuckle. For the briefest instant, she had touched bare skin to bare skin. That, it seemed, was something they must not do. “I must have touched him,” she said. “But only for the briefest instant.”

  The Host of Gireth stood like so many startled deer. The girl blinked up into Durand’s eyes, shivering. She might have been struck by lightning, but she hardly faltered now.

  “Well, what a thing that was!”

  “Are you well, Ladyship?” Durand said, good and loud.

  “I am. Only tell them to be careful,” she said. “It is better not to touch these men.” She pulled a self-mocking face. “I would not do it twice.”

  Garelyn was weaving his way between the stiff and reaching arms.

  “I thought one of the young devils had jabbed a needle into one of their backsides.”

  Durand swallowed. He could find nothing to say to Garelyn.

  The lanky nobleman gestured to Eorcan at the bridge. “This will be our proud and mettlesome duke.”

  “They are about to ride for Bower Mead,” said Durand.

  Eorcan was a tall man. Steel and silver gleamed from his crown, his mail, and his blade. Durand remembered how the duke and the Lady of the Bower lived and relived the final days. Tournament after tournament for two thousand winters. Hesperand had turned around those few nights, always the same. “But it is changed. The whole place,” Durand said. “I think the fault is mine.”

  “There is no point stopping here,” said Garelyn, and they walked on.

  “We fought in their tournament, and, by dumb luck, I was the champion. The Bower Lady gave me a token,” said Durand, mostly to the girl. “A bit of green silk and promises. But I think the champion was always meant to die. It was part of the dance. Each tournament was like the first, I think. First, the tourney and a champion, then the Lady…” He remembered a delirious night with the Lady. “The Lady betrayed old Eorcan, and jealous Eorcan slew the champion, riding him down like a stag in the forest. Seven years, seven years, seven years. A champion. A favor. A death. Seven years. But I did not die.” Only Deorwen could have saved him. She drew him back from the old dream of Hesperand. Her touch pulled him back to the world.

  She did not meet his eye.

  Meanwhile, Garelyn was peering into the face of one mustachioed knight: he might have been peering in a looking glass. “And these fellows are stuck in their dream, only waking from time to time to blink at the ages behind them before they step back into their places.”

  Garelyn smiled and left his doppelgänger behind. “It is too bad. They meant to hunt the maragrim far away. Now, the Lord of Dooms has brought maragrim aplenty to Errest the Old. They needn’t risk the Otherworld.” Garelyn shook his head. “Old Eorcan here, he’s just ready to make some little speech and take them across to Bower Mead, thinking all the while that it’s new.”

  Up onto the bridge they went, and led their horses past the Duke of Hesperand as easily as if the deathless man and his horse were something hanging in a butcher’s window. To Durand, the strangest thing was to step once more onto the elegant bridge where Coensar had challenged Cassonel of Algarden. They had fought right on the spot while Durand had watched from a track by the river below. Coensar had been the hero then.

  They crossed, army through army, until the living host assembled upon the northern bank, climbing into saddles. Garelyn gathered Almora in. There were three tracks in the offing.

  “Now,” said Garelyn. “We must choose our road. I, for one, have no wish to see more of this lot. Where is Sir Coensar?”

  Durand had lost track of the Steward; he heard a gasp from Almora: “Oh no.”

  There was the man: he had been under the bridge. He was clambering up the steep bank. He had never crossed over.

  Durand remembered the track there. It was the way he’d gone to burn the upstream bridge.

  Coensar had the silver-bright bowl of an arming cap in his hand, brimming with water—water from the Glass, water from Hesperand. Here, Coensar had been a hero, once. Now, what would he do?

  Durand sprang down from his saddle.

  Someone caught his shoulders. It was Ailric first, then Berchard, and even Garelyn.

  Coensar would leave the world.

  “It’s the water isn’t it?” said Berchard. Coensar would drink the water of Hesperand. “Host of Heaven. He means to stay behind. It will be the bridge he’s thinking of. Things are breaking here. He denies Eorcan the bridge: a challenge. He might prise a boon from the old ghost. It’s just the thing for this place.”

  Sir Coensar faced them all from the bridgehead, right at the nose of Eorcan’s horse. He had his old sword, Keening, trailing in his fist. Durand saw the man’s eyes meet his. Then he put the metal bowl of the arming cap to his lips and drank the water of that Lost land.

  “No,” said Durand. But Coensar could not have heard him.

  Slowly, like a man freezing, Coensar moved. He raised ancient Keening, a High Kingdom blade as old as the old duke. Already Coensar’s pale eyes could not see the men he had left.

  “We must leave him,” Heremund said. “It may be hours. It may be years before Eorcan spies Coensar and his challenge there. He may win; he may lose.”

  * * *

  WITH SCARCELY A further word, they left the bridge. The fog closed in once more, and after a dreary hour it was as though they had never seen the Glass. The column drifted among the unending clouds of Hesperand like a rudderless ship on the open sea. Again, men fell victim to madness. They never saw the Eye of Heaven.

  They came to a place where a tumbledown heap of stones made two tracks of the way, and for a moment, Heremund hesitated, trying to determine which road to take. A pair of Rooks perched upon the pile, and as the sprawling company rode up, the two ill-omened birds lurched into the air, each choosing its own path.

  “Haw! Haw!” they cried.

  Durand was unamused.

  “It is time we spoke once more,” said Garelyn, appearing at Durand’s side.

  Durand squinted at the man. “What would you say?” Vadir, Moryn, and Leovere had gathered by then.

  “First, Coensar took a gamble there at that bridge. I think he was mad to do it, but he made up his own mind and that’s that.”

  “What of it, Garelyn?” said Mornaway.

  “Only that it was at the River Glass.”

  “Aye, agreed.…” said Mornaway.

  “On a bridge that, by rights, we should have crossed yesterday.” Garelyn grimaced into the fog. “I say yesterday, but Heaven knows how such things are numbered here.”

  “What are you saying?” asked Durand.

  “The Glass leads out of Hesperand, west.”

  “To Mornaway, aye. But we’ve spoken of this. We’d be out of Hesperand, but, maybe, behind the Hornbearer. Maybe losing the race to Eldinor.”

  “It’s time to give it more thought. When a road forks there are more ways than two, you know. A man can always turn back.”

  “North is the only way to outrun the Hornbearer,” said Durand.

  “How did we come so late to the Glass, eh? Think on it.”

  The whole company looked to Durand. They should leave Hesperand by the shortest road. The place had become a maze of smoke and they were losing men every moment. But, if they retreat
ed to the Glass, they must lose a day or more, and the thralls would reach an undefended Eldinor. If they retreated, they must fail. Only in Hesperand was there even the smallest, threadbare hope. Only in Hesperand, and only if he could solve the forest.

  They were all still looking at him: the skald, the dukes, the barons. Perhaps they all knew what must be said.

  “It must be north,” said Durand. “North through Hesperand is our only chance. That much has not changed.”

  * * *

  THEY RODE.

  They mounted a ridge. The fog clung. They lost sight of any part of Creation. They might have ridden upon a mountaintop. They might have walked upon the moon itself.

  If there was any hope at all, they would find it to the north; that was what Durand had argued. But was there any cause for hope? If it took days to travel a few leagues, there was none. If they continued to drift through the fogs of a Lost land as they had done for uncounted hours already, they would never reach Eldinor. Or they would drag their paltry few madmen to Eldinor only to find the Hornbearer brooding on the Hazelwood Throne and the kingdom ruled by monsters.

  Durand scowled into the fog. What made him so certain that there was a world out there? He could see his own phalanx of dead men stealing through the trees, blithe and insane. Living men groaned. The prayers ebbed and swelled in the unseen gulfs of the Lost dukedom. They might easily march until the end of time.

  Lost Hesperand was not a place of leagues and hours. When Durand fought at Bower Mead, it had been possible to believe that such rules applied even though they might be broken from time to time. Now, however, the place had come unmoored. Rivers and bridges appeared and disappeared in the fog every bit as easily as the Lady of Hesperand. There was no hope for Heremund’s fieldcraft when the whole land was Lost.

  Durand looked through the ranks of dead men: black-brittle villagers of Broklambe, knights and lords and even a king. Lost men in a Lost land. And he wondered. Had he been blind to the plain facts of the place? Hesperand was no living realm. Would he summon a tailor to bring his tapes and take the measure of some Lost wisp that scarcely remembered its name? Was this what they’d been doing with Hesperand? Measuring the hem of the specter’s shroud?