The Curse of the Mistwraith

by Janny Wurts

  There were none, nor any foundations of ruined cottages.

  These acres had possibly stayed untouched by man’s industry through the ages since Ath’s first creation. Why such obviously prime pastureland should go wasted puzzled Lysaer, until his thought was broken off by the hoofbeats of an outrider returning at a gallop.

  The scout wheeled his mud-splashed mount and reined into step beside Gnudsog. ‘Lord,’ he saluted to Diegan, and then his commanding field officer, ‘Captain.’ But he looked at Lysaer as he delivered his report, which was startling enough to call a halt to the advance.

  Six barbarian children had been spotted, practising javelin casts in a glen just upriver of the ford across the Tal Quorin.

  ‘A stroke of luck, your Grace,’ Diegan said. To avoid embarrassment, he allowed Lysaer the titular courtesy due his birthright. Since no honorific at all implied a labourer’s stature and thus demeaned both parties in conversation only socially acceptable between equals, other Etarran officials had followed suit. ‘To find barbarians so easily, and they, overtaken unaware.’

  Stolid on his horse as a figurehead, Gnudsog scowled his annoyance. ‘Clan scouts are never so careless!’

  ‘Elders, surely,’ Lysaer agreed. His clear gaze swung toward the scout. ‘But children? What would you guess were their ages?’

  The answer held no hesitation: the largest had looked no more than twelve.

  ‘Rat’s get all, and bad cess to them.’ Gnudsog slapped a fly that landed, but had no chance to bite his horse. ‘They’ll know every inch of this country, Deshir’s scouts. Likely as not, they’re part of a camp that’s laid in an ambush farther on.’

  ‘Against an army?’ Diegan grinned, the gilt scrollwork on his helmet and the plumes on his bridle and harness the fashion of the daredevil gallant. ‘The odds would hardly be sporting.’

  ‘Barbarians don’t play at odds,’ came a querulous interruption from the sidelines. ‘In these parts, they prefer pits lined with sharpened stakes and spring-traps that rip out a man’s guts, or tear the axles off wagons.’

  Smart in a black and white surcoat over chain-mail dulled with grease and years of polishing, Pesquil rode up to determine the cause of the delay. At the head of the column, he jerked short his brush-scarred gelding that he liked best for its toughness. ‘So you chase those children thinking to find an encampment of scouts you can surprise, eh? Well, try that. Then find yourselves bloody.’

  Lysaer regarded the dip of the hills that unfolded in curves toward the ford. Chilly in courtesy he said, ‘Would you send your ten-year-old son out as gambit before the weapons of a war host?’

  ‘Perhaps. If the stakes were arranged in my favour.’ Sallow, pockscarred and quick with nervous energy, Pesquil shrugged. ‘For sure, I’ve known clanborn chits who’d dangle out their newborns if they thought any gain could be wrung from it. The slow plan we follow is safest.’

  But Diegan was ill-pleased to spend a summer swatting insects and enduring rough camp in the open when a bolder victory might be possible. ‘Send in a small troop of light riders,’ he ordered Gnudsog. ‘See where the children flee and let the army follow if it’s safe.’

  Pesquil reined around so hard his mount grunted in pain from the bit. ‘Fools,’ he muttered. ‘Idiots.’ And he spurred to a canter back through the lines to his headhunters.

  Gnudsog watched him go, his huge hands crossed at his saddle pommel. Then his eyes, black as rivets, swung to Lysaer. ‘What do you think, prince?’ From his lips, the title implied insult.

  Lysaer raised his head in genteel challenge. ‘Send in your riders,’ he suggested. ‘If a trap exists, then spring it with fewest losses.’

  ‘You don’t think it’s a trap.’ Deigan soothed his restive destrier. Then, his regard in speculation upon Lysaer, he raised a gauntlet chased in glittering gold to signal the columns to rest at ease. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I saw Arithon in a back alley with a band of knacker’s conscripts once when he didn’t think he was being watched.’ Fair-skinned as an ice figure in the early sunlight, the prince stroked the black-handled sword newly forged for his use in the field. Rumour held that the blade had been engraved with Arithon’s name in reverse runes, which may have been at the armourer’s insistence, for shaping a blade to kill a sorcerer. Lysaer did not look superstitious or afraid, but only pragmatic as he said, ‘The Shadow Master has few scruples. But I know him well enough to hedge that he’d sanction no ambush that involved any use of small children.’

  At this, even Gnudsog reconsidered. ‘You could be right.’ Supporting evidence lay with the arrangements for the escape of the knacker’s brats. Arithon’s bribes had been lavish enough that hard measures had been needed to pry loose the names of which parties had treated with him. Etarra’s field captain scraped an itch underneath his right bracer. ‘Let’s prove Pesquil a sissy.’

  Forty riders were dispatched to track the children. From the rear of the column, Pesquil watched them go, his narrow lips clamped in disdain. ‘Those lordly fops Gnudsog has to nursemaid didn’t listen. We’ll keep our distance, then.’

  The mounted lieutenant at his elbow stopped fingering the scalplocks that fringed his saddle, and widened seamed eyes at his commander. ‘They’re going in with the army, you think? And you’d send our league riding after?’

  ‘Any trap laid by Deshans is bound to be placed deep in Strakewood.’ Head cocked in consideration, Pesquil picked his teeth with a fingernail. ‘We’ll go in, yes.’ He clipped out a breathy laugh. ‘With two whole divisions of garrison troops ahead, and another pair blundering on each flank, whatever surprise the barbarians fixed’ll be sprung before we try the trail. Even Steiven’s dirty tactics can’t murder ten thousand troops without exposure. We’ll win our bounties in the mop up.’

  ‘I hope your score’s well squared with Daelion Fatemaster.’ The lieutenant adjusted studded reins in laconic resignation. ‘They say we fight a sorcerer who weaves darkness. For myself, Sithaer, I’d always planned I’d die rich.’

  As Etarra’s two score light riders crested the rise above the ford, six young boys snatched up javelins and bolted like hares for the forest. Whether they had defied their parents to play in the open, or whether they had been posted in plain view for bait became moot as the riders spurred their mounts and charged after them. They were quarry, and fear for their lives drove their flight. Flat out across dew-tracked greensward, enemies with drawn blades swept down at their heels. The boys made straight course for shelter, vaulting the switched back curves of marshy streamlets on the butts of their toy wooden weapons.

  They were small and light, and shod in deerhide that made little mark on the hummocks, while the steel-rimmed hooves of the horses bit deep through the soft turf and sank. The riders were forced to take a zigzagging course over firm ground, or tear their mounts’ tendons in the bog. They shouted and whipped on their horses and brandished sabres in a show of blood-thirsty frustration, their orders plain. The clan boys were to be routed, not killed. Pursuit must hound them into Strakewood until they tired, then slacken off and appear to give up. Trackers would take over from there. The youngsters would be followed in stealth back to their parents’ encampment; a sensible plan, which pleased the garrison’s light horsemen, carefully chosen as fathers who might condone the slayings of headhunters, but who had little inclination themselves for the horror of skewering youngsters.

  Hardbitten to bitterness by the atrocities of his profession, Gnudsog was not given to foolish chances.

  His forty light riders crashed into the hazels and saplings that edged the forest just seconds behind the last straggler. Thickly tangled summer scrub swiftly isolated children from hunters. Crows startled up from feeding on blackberries flapped away with raucous calls of warning. Squirrels scattered chattering in alarm. Raked by briars and low branches, the horsemen determinedly pressed onward. Their mud-flecked mounts gouged through dead sticks and moss, the odd hoof-fall a dissonant chink of steel against buried scarps of gra
nite.

  Ahead, all but invisible in their deer hides, the barbarian children raced in fierce silence, the one towhead among them picked out in the gloom by the chance-caught flicker of filtered sunlight.

  Intent on keeping him in sight, the lead rider never saw the wooden javelin left braced at an angle in the path. His mount gathered stride and cleared a rotten log, then crashed, shoulder down, impaled. Its scream of mortal agony harrowed the dawn-damp wood, while the rider, thrown headlong, struck a bough at an angle and broke his neck.

  First casualty of the Deshir barbarians, he died with his eyes still open and the taste of blood on his tongue.

  Attracted to the site by the thrashing convulsions of dying horseflesh, the survivors gathered and pulled up. With spur and rein they stayed their mounts’ panic, while the first man in called the verdict.

  ‘He’s stopped breathing.’

  A still, stunned moment progressed to passionate contention over whether to stop now and call the army, or to ride down verminous whelps whose parents had trained them for murder.

  ‘Dharkaron’s Spear!’ raged one rider. ‘I’d say there’s no clever trap waiting! Or the Sithaer-begotten brats would just draw us on, and not bother stopping to kill!’

  That outcry was silenced, and grimly, by an officer given his authority through Etarra’s pedigreed elite. ‘We stick with orders and track. One man will go back as spokesman. Lord Diegan’s no coin-grubbing headhunter. He may roust up the garrison. Else risk finding himself a laughingstock, as craven.’

  Which recast the affair as rank insult, for a boy’s prank with a wooden spear to have killed a man before the armed might of Etarra.

  Shouts of agreement endorsed this plan, while the dismounted volunteer asked for help. Willing hands lifted the slain man and tied him over the saddle for transport back to the main troop.

  Fled in swift silence up the marshy course of Tal Quorin, the children were long since lost to sight. But in the beds of green moss, under the sills of the sedge clumps, water pooled in a flurried progression of footprints. These the iron-clad hooves of the destriers milled under, as the main strength of Etarra’s garrison ploughed past. The ground was left harrowed to brown mud that sucked and spattered, causing the horses to stumble, and the riders to curse as their tassels and trappings became begrimed. Lances hooked in the greenbriar, and the foot troops slogged silent to the rear.

  The supply wagons perforce had stayed behind. If Gnudsog had opposed the decision to turn the main army up the riverbed, he knew better than to belabour the mistake. His mouth a grim slash in his hardened leather face, he brought his lancers forward with professional determination.

  Noon passed. No ambush seemed in evidence. The fall of the floodplain sloped more steeply and the ground firmed, though the soil beneath its canopy of deep wood still reeked strongly of bog. Swarming gnats remained in force. The heavier shade at least curbed the growth of brambles, and as the footing improved so did spirits and eagerness. Aware for some time that the hemming effect of the hillsides was crowding his troops along the bank, Gnudsog consulted with Lord Diegan and received permission to regroup.

  ‘I mislike the feel of this entirely,’ he grumbled, his eyes on his men as their ranks wheeled and reformed to order despite the unsuitable terrain. The garrison split and regrouped, two companies to divide and cross the ridges on either side. These would advance up adjacent valleys and flank the main force along the river. Gnudsog kept ruminating in monologue. ‘Too easy.’

  At his side, stripped of his helm to adjust a crest plume disarranged by low branches, Diegan raised his eyebrows. ‘Does everything have to be difficult?’

  ‘Here? Against Steiven’s clans?’ Gnudsog curled his lip and spat. ‘Yes.’

  ‘But the clan chief might not be in command,’ Lysaer pointed out, his regard, chilly blue, on the veteran captain, and his hands, lightly crossed, on his sword.

  ‘Well.’ Gnudsog cleared his throat. ‘Yon thieving little stoat of a sorcerer’s clever enough, if your cant to our council held truth.’ Unfazed before lordly affront, he grinned through his yellow, broken teeth. ‘You and my Lord Commander will ride behind with the second division. And if we go back proving you hazed the city ministers like the ninnies they are, so much the better. I like my killing quick, with the advantage of superior numbers. Should things fail to get grim, you can always strip me of rank. It’s my pension I’m risking, not your necks.’

  His helm half raised, his reins looped over one forearm, Lord Diegan stiffened in the costly glitter of his accoutrements.

  Aware the Lord Commander would protest, and quick to see Gnudsog was earnest in a concern he lacked any polish to express, Lysaer diplomatically intervened. ‘No one loses pensions for good sense.’ He stroked his horse’s neck, smiled and said to Diegan, ‘Since I spoke truth to your council, we’ll ride behind. Whether or not this clan encampment is taken by surprise, should Arithon s’Ffalenn be with them, we must expect counterthrust by sorcery. Our presence may well be needed to bolster the middle ranks.’

  ‘My sister will call you fainthearted,’ Diegan warned.

  ‘She may.’ Lysaer’s smile never faltered. ‘Better that than have her weep for me, dead.’ He nudged his horse around and made his way to the river’s verge to find a place when the second column passed. Diegan jammed on his helm, disgruntled, and hastily rearranged his streamered reins. When the Lord Commander of Etarra’s guard had trotted his horse beyond earshot, Gnudsog spat again, this time in rare admiration.

  ‘Dresses like a daisy, like they all do who sport pedigree,’ he confided to the sergeant who awaited the order to march. ‘But yon royal puppy is canny at handling men. He might be a priss at his swordplay, still I don’t think I’d want him for my enemy.’

  Unable to find an appropriate reply to criticism involving his betters, the sergeant complained instead about the gnats.

  ‘Well,’ cracked Gnudsog, out of patience. ‘Sound the horn for the advance! Clansmen are waiting, I know it, so we might as well call them to the bloodbath.’

  In moving waves of pennons and lances that juddered and cracked through the greenwood, the army surged on upriver. Half-lost in the creak of armour, and the jingle of stirrup and bit, a jay squalled in raucous complaint.

  Up the valley, a second jay answered. Striped in shadow behind a paling of saplings, charcoal smeared in patterns across his face, Caolle hustled six breathless children past him and on upslope, toward safety. To the runner crouched at his elbow, he whispered a hasty, ‘All clear.’

  Soundless in his boots of beaten deerhide, the messenger departed. Branches slithered back into place across the thicket, and through slits between trembling leaves, Caolle measured the advance of Etarra’s thousands as they crashed up the riverbed below his vantage. The last cohort passed, and carefully counted, the last rank.

  Two divisions; in line with every hope and plan. The other pair had parted ways from the main troop, to quarter the valleys to either side. Caolle smiled.

  A third jay called from the marshes.

  ‘Now,’ Caolle mouthed. The hand he held raised for the signal dipped and raised and then fell.

  The command was seen and relayed upriver by a dozen scouts in concealment, until it reached the head of a dried streambed that sliced like a scar across the hill.

  ‘Hie!’ yipped a barbarian teamster. His whip fell with a crack like the snap of a quick-broken twig and four horses slammed weight against their collars. Ropes whipped taut through oiled blocks. As the strain transferred, mechanically redoubled, the huge logs which braced a timber dam sucked and shifted in mud settings. Again the clansman urged his draught team. Veins bulged in the necks of the horses and their hooves bit deep as they strained.

  A brace gave; others canted and the dam bowed, its log joints streaked black with the first jetting trickles of leaked water. While the structure creaked and gave outward, the clansman slashed his team free and drove them to a canter up the bank.

  The dam bu
rst apart on their heels. Timbers flew like splinters, driven by the loosed force of waters held in check through the last weeks of northland spring rains. The torrent reclaimed its balked course with a roar, fanged in its froth by a burden of sharpened stakes. The clansman soothed his draught team to a halt just barely out of reach. While the torrent swept by like a demon, tearing up mats of elder and birch, his pulse leaped in excitement. The thunder of racing waters was answered from five other sites throughout the valley, where other holding ponds in Tal Quorin’s watershed were simultaneously released to rampage through rock-stepped courses by the weight of held gallons and gravity. The plain alongside the riverbank in moments became a gouged maelstrom of boulders and white flood.

  On the banks of the river Tal Quorin, the birds in the marshes fled. A herd of deer took bounding flight over mallow and cattails, then veered in fresh panic as they caught wind of the oncoming army. About then, the lead horses began to snort and sidle and shy, while men cursed and spurs dug and Gnudsog raised his chin listening.

  Too late, he heard what animals sensed ahead of him: the booming growl of thunder, with no cloud visible overhead. The sound was deep and oncoming and weighty in voice to shake the earth. His fist on his destrier’s reins like iron, even as the forward scout outriders crashed shouting and gesticulating through the brush, Gnudsog spun his horse on its haunches and slammed sideways into the lighter mount of his message-bearer.

  ‘Ride!’ he screamed. ‘Find Lord Diegan and the prince, and tell them to seek cover on high ground.’ Next, he barked orders for the troops to wheel, though ranks were disordered and broken, and half the war horses were mindless with fear, jammed one on another in herd instinct to bolt.

  Locked against motion by the weight of their own vast numbers, the lead ranks saw the flood coming.