by Paul Kearney
'They know no mercy, Michael. It's best to steer clear of them,' Cat said, though her eyes were fixed and glaring at the scene below.
'They're killing them,' Michael Protested, horrified as he watched lance butts hailing down on the prostrate fox men. 'What kind of priest is it who can watch them murdering people?'
'The Brothers are from all peoples,' Cat said. 'Both good and bad. They have been here a long time— centuries, perhaps. Some of them were of the tribes themselves once. In the main, though, they see such folk as savages. Hiethyn is the word they use. They do not like the villagers to have dealings with them.'
'Wisht! See now,' Mirkady said in sudden excitement. 'Here's a turn-up. There'll be sparks a-flying in a trice I shouldn't wonder.'
Something had alarmed the villagers and the horsemen. The priest was gesticulating more wildly than ever. 'The tribes come!' Michael was able to understand. Then something dark appeared in the priest's throat and he toppled backward.
The villagers froze in shock for a second, then abruptly scattered. The Knights had to fight their horses through the milling throng, shouting and belabouring with their lances. Michael saw a flicker of movement in the treeline and then a line of fox men had burst out of cover and were sprinting across the stumpfilled clearing, shrieking as they came. A burning torch was flung over the palisade on to a hut and at once the roof took light, grass and bark blackening and smoke staining the air. The fox men halted at the rude stockade and fired arrows through gaps in the stakes. The villagers cowered behind buildings or ran away, though two of the braver were struggling to drag the body of the priest from the bank of the stream.
The horsemen galloped upstream, nearer to Michael's tree.
They were making for the gate, meaning to outflank the tribes-men by going round the outside of the palisade. Michael could see the drawn sword of the leader flashing as bright as lightning. An iron sword, not the yellow of bronze.
He dropped down from the tree, making the Knights pause, but then they galloped on. He heard Cat shouting behind him but ignored her. Blood was singing through him. He felt as light and fiery as a wind-borne ember, and could understand the flung shout of the lead horseman: 'Stay together. Let none through!' It was as clear as if Cat had spoken to him. Something in him had leapt into place and found its home. He loaded the shotgun automatically as he ran for the gate.
He met them as they powered out of the gateway, watched the glaring eyes of the leader behind the helmet guards, and then saw the man's chest erupt as the first shot hit him fair and square in the breastbone. He remembered no noise or recoil, but was vividly aware of recocking the weapon, the click impossibly loud as another Knight spurred past his falling leader with lance thrust forward.
High, this time. The shot took the top of his head off, the helmet splitting and flying away along with fragments of skull and brain and a dark gout of blood. The horse cantered past Michael with its dead rider sliding down one shoulder.
The four remaining riders were crying out, their mounts backing and bucking away from the roar of the shotgun. Methodically Michael broke the weapon open, ejected the two smoking shells and reloaded. It was like a dream.
More shouting, from the village this time. There was a pall of smoke in the air, the crackling of flames, women screaming. Michael stepped forward and fired again—too low. The shot exploded the side of a horse's face and it went down at once, throwing its rider forward. Something like warm rain kissed Michael's face as the animal struggled a few moments, its awful ruined head swaying about like a flower on a stalk, the bone glinting and blood rising and popping in great bubbles. The air was suddenly rank and sickening with the stink of slaughter. Michael hesitated, the euphoria leaching out of him. His next shot went completely wide, and he dropped the weapon from nerveless hands as the dismounted Knight lunged at him with bared teeth and glittering eyes.
—And halted with his dagger in midair. The air thickened and dark shapes blurred past Michael, childhood nightmares running under the sun. The fox men were all about him.
The riderless Knight snarled and was buried under a fusillade of down-swinging arms. There was a barrage of sodden thuds and the fox men ran on, screaming, leaving a corpse behind them.
The remaining horsemen turned tail and fled into the burning chaos of the village. Michael bent and was sick on to the bloody ground. It was happening too quickly. Too fast.
He reloaded and shot the maimed horse with tears burning in his eyes, smoke smarting his throat. The dead leader's sword lay glinting on the ground nearby and he picked it up, avoiding the gaze of lifeless eyes, the glint of bone. There was a breast split open like a Sunday joint. He stood in the gateway and stared into the village.
More houses were burning. The fox men had fired the church and flames were creeping up the tower. Apig ran squealing and knocked down a hysterical toddler. Shapes struggled in the gathering smoke, horses nickered and spun, metal clashed, men and women shouted and yelled. A body bobbed in the stream. Ashes and cinders blew through the air like gliding crows.
'My God!'
'Your God,' Cat said, and he spun round, sword in one hand and shotgun in the other.
'You stink of blood and iron,' Cat said with distaste.
He turned back to the terrible show, shaking his head. 'Why, Cat? Why do they fight like this?'
'It is the way the world works. This world. You do not like what you see, Michael?'
'I loved it. For a minute there, Cat, I loved it. I really did.'
The fighting seemed to be dying down. The rush and crackle of the burning buildings was the loudest sound. The church tower collapsed in on itself with a crashing roar and an explosion of outflung gledes. Smoke veiled the village as thickly as fog, acrid on Michael's lips. It grimed his skin along with the horse blood that was stiffening there.
Out of the smoke a shape trotted, wide-eyed and breathing hard. Cat caught it, uttering a laugh that Michael had not heard her use before. She soothed the terrified grey gelding and stabbed Michael with her dancing, green-blazing eyes.
'We got what we came for, at any rate.'
Other shapes loomed out of the smoke: a line of men. Michael backed away.
'Cat—'
Fox men. They carried four of their comrades on their shoulders and seemed tall beyond belief with the bestial masks on their heads and the sharp ears pricking. They were black with smoke and their eyes were white and glaring in the paint and filth of their faces. Severed heads swung bleeding from their waists and they dragged weeping girls behind them by the hair. When they saw Michael they gave a shout and broke into a run.
They had come for him. He had known they would since that first evening he had glimpsed them down by the river. He was theirs.
'Cat!' Despairingly. He could not move.
They were around him then, teeth flashing-and their miasma rising to join the smoke. Up close they were smaller—shorter than he was. Bone ornaments clicked and swung; blood and hair clotted their flint axes. Michael's stomach heaved but he swallowed it down. The shotgun was a dead, slick weight in one hand, the sword a bar of lead in the other.
'Help me, Cat.'
'You need no help, Michael. I believe they mean to thank you.'
And she rattled off a speech in the weird tongue that Michael half understood. A soldier, she said he was; a warrior of standing from a far-off land. A friend of the Wyrim.
One fox man taller than the rest pushed forward, his fellows making room for him. The only sounds were the muffled sobbing of the women and the crackle of burning.
The fox man said something, something Michael did not catch. Cat translated for him.
'The sword. He says it is a good one; an iron sword of the type made by Ulfberht.' She grinned. 'He says to take care of it. It will be good for killing Wyrim if the magic of your fire-stick ever fails.' The fox man put a fist to his chest and said something else. 'He says his name is Oskyrl, a warleader of his people. In your tongue that name would be Ringbone.'
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THEY LEFT THE village to burn, and slid off through the forest while the surviving inhabitants fought to save what was left of their homes. It was frightening to watch the fox men move through the trees. They seemed to be built out of sinew-covered bone, unrelenting and untiring as wolves, and their feet made no sound. They loped through the forest in half a dozen parallel files, the captured women struggling along in the middle of each. The women were quiet now, their eyes red-rimmed and their faces blackened. They followed their captors as if too shocked or tired to be anything but resigned. When one stumbled her captor usually helped her to her feet with a swift flash of an arm. Sometimes, however, she was tugged on by her ragged clothing until she could scramble upright. No one spoke. They moved through the wood like a swift wind.
'Michael. Michael Fay.'
A whisper like the hum of a bee in his ear. He turned to catch the iridescent flash of a dragonfly that was perched on his shoulder. He flinched and was about to bat it away when the thin voice came again.
'It's me, you fool. Mirkady.'
'Mirkady! Bloody hell!'
'Not so loud. These tribesmen have hearing like gnats. And they distrust the Wyrim almost as much as the villagers.'
'What is it? What do you want?'
'To give you some advice. I'm going. You seem to have found yourself some new friends, and they will be more useful to you than one of the Forest-Folk could ever be. Listen to me now. Cat has gone.'
'I know. Where?'
'To fetch your prancing mare. She will meet you in the woods ahead in a little while. But I must tell you this: you are hunted. My people have sensed things shadowing you in the woods. And the Horseman is near. You are being watched, young Michael, and Cat also. And as long as she is in your company she is just another human—in most things. You must be careful. Learn all you can from the Fox-People. They are loyal to the death, and the hardiest of folk in the Wildwood. It comes of what they once were.'
He paused.
'There is magic in this place, Michael. The Wildwood thrums with it. Only in the cross-guarded sanctuaries of the Brothers are you safe. That village you left behind: if its priest is dead, then half its survivors will be carrion by morning.'
'Why?'
If a dragonfly could be said to shrug, this one did. Its eyes glittered like sun-caught prisms.
'Revenge, perhaps. Even the folk of my own Howe will be happy to see one more part of the forest reclaimed, the cross-magic overthrown. The beasts will close in on them tonight.'
'And you?'
'I am sickeningly soft-hearted at times. It comes of loving a halfling like our Catherine.'
'Mirkady, there are things I have to know. There's a reason for me being here, I'm sure.'
'Oh, yes. Nothing happens without a reason.'
'The Horseman. He follows me?'
'Undoubtedly'
'But—'
'I am going now, young Michael. I am not a seer to be consulted on the secrets of the Wildwood. Even the Wyrim do not know everything. Some things you will have to find out yourself. Some of our people 1 will set to watch over you when 1 can and 1 will look in on the pair of you myself. But that sword you carry—you had best learn to use it. Iron is the surest killer in this country, more sure even than that thunderous fire-stick you carry. And remember that holly and wolfsbane are your friends. Kingcup, also. It keeps witches at bay. And yarrow for healing ironmade wounds. Remember these things, Michael.'
The dragonfly buzzed, wings a-blur.
'Mirkady—wait a minute ... '
The insect took off, wagged its wings impishly and then wheeled away into the heights of the towering trees.
AFTER PERHAPS THREE miles they met up with Cat. She was standing between Fancy and the stolen gelding. A shaft of thick, honeyed sunlight was falling on the trio, making her face into a white blaze. The three were a golden triptych from some other time. But the sunlight faded, and he could see the dirt that smudged her cheeks and grimed her tunic. She smiled. 'Now we'll travel in style.'
THIRTEEN
TRAVELLING.
A long way, they had gone, until all his life it seemed he had been under trees, staring into fires in the night, feeling the hard ground under his back and tasting smoke-tainted meat. A long time—enough time to put far behind them the smell of burning and the vengeance of the Knights. Enough time to strip the adolescent roundness from his face, to pump out the' birthing muscles of his gawky frame and proportion it anew. Rein, knife and sword hilt rubbed callouses on his palms and his shoulders were pushed farther apart.
Ringbone taught him things: tracking through the dense woods, recognizing game trails; stalking. Killing. And as more and more of the forest language surfaced in Michael's mind, so he slipped more and more easily into the tapestry of the Wildwood. He picked up the ways of the wood, and found that for the most part they were there already, locked inside him the same way the language was. A hidden bud blossoming. These things he saw and learned; and as he did, he aged.
It was the fast-growing down of hair on his chin that drew his attention to it. Ringbone's people went clean-shaven and crop-headed following some ancient tradition, so there was no shortage of flint razor and goose grease to take it off. But it thickened and bristled, grew harsh and rasping. He let it grow in the end, though Cat disapproved, and became a bearded man before his fourteenth birthday. That frightened him, but Cat refused to talk of it. It was then she told him that parable of time being like a lake. He wondered if it were truly so inexhaustible, if this place were drinking his years away.
They followed Ringbone's tribe as it moved with the hunting and the seasons, He saw the morning frosts give way to snow that made the deep woods into a pristine, monochrome wonderland where white owls hunted in the night, and rime-furred wolves padded the drifts. He killed a bear—a day to be remembered—and the skin made robes for Cat and himself. He dug squirrels out of their dreys, rabbits from their warrens, and scavenged his way through the lean part of the year. Ringbone's people settled for the winter by the banks of a half-frozen river far from any village or chapel or troop of Knights Militant. Here they reared up shelters of brush, hide, turf and anything else which came to hand. The kidnapped women of the burnt village settled into their new way of life with surprisingly little trouble, learning from the women of the tribe—some of whom were captives from past raids themselves. They smoked meat and cured skins and gathered firewood and water uncomplainingly, though the cold grew more intense as the months darkened. The wolves prowled between the huts at night, and once one darted in an open door flap to snatch a sleeping child. The forest things were hungry, too.
Other beasts stalked the snow-filled woods. The men gathered in the biggest hut around the fire pit to talk over strategies for spring, and ultimately to reminisce about past winters, the terrible, dark times. Four winters ago a manwolf had stalked the village and killed a woman. They had hunted it into the next spring, and in the hunt Fuinos had been taken, though they had killed the beast with wolfbane-poisoned spears. But Fuinos had lived, and so they had had to kill him as he changed, the werewolf blood blackening his veins; and then they had eaten and burnt the beast he had become, out of respect for the man he had been.
Other things also. There was the time the Knights had come in a great troop to push the tribes southward into the haunted woods, and they had been trapped with their back to the river and to cross had had to bargain with the troll who controlled the ford. Thus they had laboured to decipher riddles whilst the enemy had closed in. The troll had been a hearty sort. He had enjoyed telling the answers as much as he had enjoyed posing the questions. He had let them pass—the Wyrim had a greater tolerance for the tribes than for any other humans— and he had then baited the Knights as they galloped up, drowning three who had tried to cross without considering his riddles.
The winter settlement which the tribe would occupy until the turning of the year was small, and Michael came to know that the group of men who had attacked the villa
ge had not all been of the FoxPeople. Some had been Badger-Folk, others stag men. They were all one people in the end, splintered back in some ancient time. They did not hate the villagers. Occasionally they even helped them, when the Brother who lived with them was willing and the Knights were far away. But more often there was an uneasy truce between the two peoples. The pair of fox men caught in the village had been there to trade, but they had been cheated by the villagers and had lashed out, injuring one. The villagers had been about to bum them as there was a troop of Knights in the place. At any other time, and with a less zealous priest on hand, things might yet have been settled more peaceably. But the Fox-Folk had gathered up men from the neighbouring tribes with swift runners, and a huge force of at least forty warriors had been in on the attack. The Fox-People numbered only some three score individuals, of whom fewer than twenty were fighting men. They were dwindling, they said, as were all the tribes. Slowly the beasts and the Knights and the seasons were wearing them down, and soon they would be gone.
They were an odd people, convinced of their own doom and yet refusing to yield to any outside force. They could have settled down decades in the past and become villagers like the rest, but they had refused because of some obscure tradition now lost. They were soldiers, they said. They did not work the land. But when asked where this knowledge had come from, they could not say.
Ringbone, Michael found, was the perfect teacher and mentor.
He was sombre, sober, but endlessly patient. Only rarely would a grin light up his filthy face, making him seem almost young. It was impossible to guess his age, as it was impossible to guess the age of any but the oldest and youngest of the people. They were all lean and dark, but broad in the shoulder and incredibly quick, as sure and swift of movement as wild animals. The women were slight and dark also; beautiful when young, but growing old quickly. Swollen joints and rheumatism plagued the old people, and they would wander off into the trees when they felt their time had come. Sometimes their body would be recovered and burned, sometimes it would be lost, a feast for the animals. The Fox-Folk were not a sentimental people, though they valued their children above everything.