Feeling like an idiot, she went back the way she had come. When she reached the woods east of the cot, sunlight glowed above the mountains. A crow fluttered from nowhere and landed in an ash tree, startling her. She stopped with a hand on her breast. The bird opened its beak and leaned forward, its gray and black plumage ruffling in the breeze.
Then it released a loud cry and swooped down at her like an arrow.
Melisande screamed and hit the ground to avoid being clipped. She rolled over and then spotted an arrow sticking in a beech tree. She scrambled up, tearing her skirt, ripping it away as she fled for shelter. Something raked her shoulder as she ducked behind the tree. Another arrow struck the ground, missing her, but not entirely. She slapped a hand over her shoulder as pain flared out. She peered around.
A man strode over a rise, bow in hand. His face was pale, almost ghastly in the morning light. He wore layers of brown and black leather dulled by grime. Melisande jerked back. Her palm was covered with blood. She drew her knife. No breath came from the archer’s lips; even his steps were silent. His unsheathing sword was not. She recalled the things Damjan and Anselm had taught her about fighting at a disadvantage. None of it made sense now.
He came around like a whirlwind, his blade singing in an arc. Melisande ducked. Then she yelled and charged, plowed into his abdomen and tumbled him to the ground. The impact jolted her with a shuddering crack. She slashed out and thrust her knife into his side. It turned on mail. Something sharp struck her in the face, spinning her mind into a whirl. She stabbed him again, this time hitting low, beneath his belt. She took the blade with two hands and twisted it deep. He released a growl that froze her heart. She pushed herself away from him, clambered up and bolted through the trees.
She stopped behind a boulder and peered around. Her hands tingled and her arms ached from the airy feel of him, stronger than steel.
The warrior was gone.
Melisande blinked into the silence. Her shoulder and cheekbone shrieked with pain. She looked at her knife. No blood. She stepped out and whirled around, looking everywhere, seeing nothing but the forest. She held up the blade again. She had sunk it into his gut—no mistaking that. She had dressed enough animals to know what innards felt like under a knife. She should have been covered in crimson.
Spooked beyond reason, Melisande hurried back. Avoiding her cot, she ran half way to the North River Bridge before someone barked at her to halt. A soldier in a gray cloak rode out of the woods. Melisande heaved to a stop. As she leaned over to catch her breath, a dizzy spell drove her to her hands and knees.
The soldier had dismounted and caught her under one arm. She recognized him as the blond guardsman who had brought the wool into her cot. “By Thor,” he breathed, lifting his hand to her cheek where the fiend had punched her with the pommel of his blade. It had begun to swell, narrowing her vision in one eye. “What happened to you?”
“Someone—thing attacked me. In the woods by the cot.” He didn’t bleed.
“Come with me.” He drew her up gently and lifted her onto his horse. “Hold on.” He mounted, swung the beast around and thundered toward the bridge as if the Niflsekt were after him.
He stopped before House Jarnstrom. Two guardsmen stood by the door; one of them opened it. To Melisande’s discomfort, the soldier helped her from the horse and then carried her inside. He strode down a hall and into a long room walled with books and weapons. Damjan stood by a window. To her further discomfort, Lieutenant Haldor, commander of the Dyrregin Guard’s North Companies stationed in Ason Tae, sat in a chair by a desk.
“Millie!” Damjan said as he turned. He reached her in three steps as the soldier put her down. “What is this?”
She flinched as the swordsmith began to inspect her wounds with seasoned intent, his gaze dark.
“I found her out past the bridge,” the soldier said. “Said she was attacked.”
“Lys!” Damjan called over his shoulder, toward the door. He guided Melisande into a chair and draped a cloak over her. After a moment, a housemaid came to the door. “Prepare a room,” he told her. “Find Mistress Olja.”
Lieutenant Haldor rose from his seat and approached. He had graying black hair and a penetrating mien. According to Damjan, he was a man to be respected. “Who attacked you?” he said calmly.
Damjan handed her a glass. She sipped wine, her throat as dry as dust. “I don’t know. He was—not from here.”
They exchanged glances. Haldor said, “Where were you?”
“East of the cot, on the old path to my father’s cottage.”
Haldor looked at Damjan. “You didn’t mention another path.”
“No one uses it,” the smith informed him. He crossed his arms over his chest and studied Melisande like a hawk. “What were you doing up there?”
She steeled herself. Damjan had shown his dark side when she insisted on moving into the cot, and now she was about to give him reasons. She took a deep breath. “Men came around last night. This morning there were tracks around the cot and in the woods. They went out past the tower. I took the old path to find out where.”
“You did what?” Damjan exploded.
Haldor lifted a hand to calm him. “How many men?”
“A few,” she said quickly, avoiding Damjan’s forge-like stare. She gulped another sip of wine. “A warlock was with them.”
Silence fell like a hammer. Still calm, Haldor said, “How do you know that?”
“He used magic.” She risked a glance at Damjan. Just like Yarrow.
“Describe it.”
“He circled the cot. Then he stood by the door and summoned things from the ground. Others. They rushed at the house.” When the captain raised his brows, she added, “Nothing happened. They left.”
“What did he look like?” Haldor pressed.
“I don’t know. It was dark.”
“It has to be him,” the blond soldier said sidelong.
“I’m not aware that he’s done anything like this,” the captain returned, studying Melisande with uncomfortable interest.
Damjan cleared his throat. “What did you do?”
“Nothing!” she snapped, not liking his implication. To change the subject she said, “I saw two men behind the tower. Right next to it. Another was on watch above, where the old path meets the one I used to take to my cottage. He was a guardsman. I figured he was supposed to be there. So I left and came back.”
Haldor looked pointedly at the soldier, who shook his head. The captain returned his attention to Melisande. “I need you to tell me exactly what you saw. Every detail.”
She did as he asked amid a raft of questions involving clothes, voices, weapons and other oddities. When she described her fight with the archer by the cottage, she hesitated. “There was something wrong. I cut him deep. No blood came out. He ran off, but it was more like he just—disappeared.”
Her heart racing, she fully expected them to dismiss her as mad. Instead, Haldor’s expression seized up with alarm. “Ghouls,” he said. His face pale, he snatched up a sheathed sword and a roll of papers from the desk and ran out of the room with the soldier close on his heels. Melisande heard him shouting orders as the front door boomed closed.
Melisande set aside her wine with a shaking hand. “I have to get back.”
Damjan made a sound in his throat. “You’ll do nothing of the kind. You’ll stay here, let Olja care for your wounds, and rest. Out of trouble.” He started to pace, something he only did when upset.
“Pisskin is in there. All of my knitting.”
“I’ll send someone to get your things. I told you living out there was a bad idea, Millie. You could’ve been killed—and how by Hel you survived an attack by a warlock and one of his ghouls is a mystery Haldor will not leave unchallenged, trust me. What are you hiding?”
“I’m not—”
“A warlock wouldn’t cast a spell like that and then just leave. What really happened?”
“I don’t know why he left,” she sai
d, her heart sinking like a stone. “Damjan, I can’t stay here.” You have a wife. Olja is as mean as a badger. The villagers hate me. I’ll die here. Now desperate, she blurted, “Something protected me. He surrounded the cot and drove the warlock away.”
Damjan stopped pacing. “He?”
“He looks like a crow. He closed the Otherworld that night at Yarrow’s.”
“You told her the Niflsekt did that.”
She shook her head. “I was bluffing. It wasn’t him.”
Damjan looked away in exasperation. “Hel’s Gate, Millie! Fey as the wind you are. I suppose he chased off the ghoul, too?”
Melisande shook her head. The crow had saved her from the ghoul’s first arrow, perhaps, but she couldn’t be sure of anything else.
“The Otherworld doesn’t help mortals for nothing,” Damjan said. “They require payment. A sacrifice. What did you give him?”
“It’s not like that.” Heat filled her cheeks as an image of the crow warrior filled her mind, his eldritch strength and power flowing through his body as he moved on her like a rushing wave.
“Millie?” Damjan pressed.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
His eyes narrowed. “If that warlock is who we think he is, he commands the Otherworld—as Yarrow did—and more besides. He created that ghoul that attacked you. Something with enough power to thwart him wouldn’t protect you for the asking.”
“The Fylking protect wardens without offerings,” she pointed out.
Damjan cleared his throat in preparation for another lecture. “Wardens give up their entire lives for that protection, Millie. Home, family, companionship. They sacrifice what most of us take for granted as the basic needs of existence.”
“He’s not Fylking,” she said. “Or Niflsekt.”
“Well, that leaves the gods, then, doesn’t it?”
The quiet in his voice told her what he didn’t need to say. Your art serves you better than you think, the crow had told her under the great ash tree, just before releasing her from the clutches of the Otherworld. Refusing your art will serve you less well. She had tried to bury her pattern sense in the earth like an onion plug, but war and longing knew that the crow warrior was having none of that.
Pattern a beast as the crow sees.
“I know what he wants,” she said quietly.
In truth, she had no idea.
The Faersc Conservatory
The Faersc Road rambled into the trees three leagues north of the Bear’s End, on the North Mountain Road. The only viable supply route to and from the Faersc Conservatory, the road wound up through the mountains like a snake along the easiest paths. It was an ideal landscape for ambushes.
Othin and Arcmael left the road that afternoon to continue on foot. Captain Edon, the commander of the North Companies whom Lord Coldevin sent north to take over the Bear’s End, had ridden on with a company of guardsmen to provide a distraction at the gates of the conservatory. Arcmael’s instructions, colored by his knowledge of the draugr’s origins, were clear: Forget honor. While inhumanly strong, the draugr are only as skilled in arms and familiar with the land as the men they once were. Distract and disable. If overrun, flee.
Othin had fully intended to leave the Bear’s End that morning, travel north through the Wolftooth Pass and into Ason Tae—Niflsekt, warlocks and draugr notwithstanding. He had awakened at dawn from a fitful sleep riddled with dreams of red rivers, broken swords and fire, in the midst of which stood Millie, swathed in smoke, holding a hooded crow on one arm. For my Trickster, she said, smiling.
Being of somewhat sounder mind, Leofwine had suggested that Othin accompany Arcmael to Faersc. If Vargn or the Niflsekt did know about Millie and decided to interfere with her, the sorcerer reasoned, nothing Othin could do now would save her; whereas the last warden, burdened by remorse and probably half mad after his sojourn in the Otherworld, would need someone adept and trustworthy to watch his back. In the light of day, Leofwine’s suggestion made sense. Though still tormented by fear for his love, Othin could not abandon Arcmael to draugr only to press north and find that Millie was either safe or already lost to him. The trip to Faersc was not far out of the way. Better to go into Ason Tae armed with a company of guardsmen and knowledge of Vargn’s intentions.
Arcmael trudged through the snow, alert and seeing gods knew what in the forest around them. Bathed, shaved and clad in the fresh clothes and gear Leofwine had procured for him, he looked more like a mercenary than a warden. The pommel of a sword glinted on his back. It struck a weird contrast to the ash branch he had cut and fastened to his belt shortly after they left the road.
Late the previous night, as they drowsed before a fire with a bottle of wine that tasted as if it had been made in a city gaol, Arcmael admitted he had lost his status as a warden. He wouldn’t reveal how or why, only that he had incurred the wrath of the Otherworld. He then told a frightening tale of his experiences in Wyrvith Forest that finally explained his being left on the road not knowing what moon or sun shone upon the world.
Othin had never heard Leofwine laugh as hard as he did listening to Arcmael. Early that morning, however, the erstwhile seneschal was all business as he prepared to set out for the coast. Othin didn’t ask, but had to assume sorcery would see him to Fjorgin with news of Vargn’s trickery just as it had seen him out of Merhafr and into the Bear’s End free of Halstaeg’ hunters and retaining enough authority to get them a room, battle gear and a company of men to escort Othin and Arcmael to Faersc. It was a side of Leofwine Othin never saw in Halstaeg’s shadow. He had clasped the Fjorginan’s arm with genuine respect and wished him the gods’ favor on his journey.
Unfortunately, while Leofwine’s news might keep the war from dragging on for suns, he would be too late to prevent it. Word had reached the Bear’s End that thousands of Fjorginans made landfall and were moving inland, leaving destruction in their wake. King Angvald had grown overconfident after two centuries of peace, and instead of deploying the Guard before the red banners of war stained the gates of Merhafr, he sent a diplomat to Earticael to negotiate. The diplomat’s head returned with the Fjorginan army. Mounted on the prow of a ship, most likely.
Othin asked Leofwine what made him think the Lords of Earticael would listen to a word he said about Vargn. He had no proof. The seneschal’s dark, cagey response caused Othin to revisit his past suspicions that Leofwine was a spy—and that perhaps Halstaeg had kept his lover close for that reason. Ironically, Othin felt glad to have the sorcerer on his side.
As the afternoon wore on, a shroud of mist dimmed the sun. The air was damp and chill with a nervous breeze. Wrapped in his torments like a moth in a web, Arcmael had said little since they left the road. Othin moved up beside him.
“What do you hope to find?” he asked. The seer had not revealed to anyone why he was so bent on going to his fallen conservatory. As he was the only warden anyone had seen or heard of in a moon’s cycle, no one questioned his intentions. Othin had assumed they would look for survivors. Now, he was no longer sure.
“I don’t know.” After a heavy pause, he added, “I need to see if the Fylking are still here.”
“How would you know that? You told me you’re invisible to them now.”
“There’s one way.”
Othin let out his breath to release the tension in his gut. For some reason, the idea that the Fylking were gone made him more uncomfortable than the idea of being attacked. “Would the Fylking leave? Go through the Gate?”
“No, they would protect the towers. Like any warriors, they can’t leave without orders, and it’s my understanding their High Command want them here at all costs. They wouldn’t have bothered to build the Gate otherwise; nor would the Niflsekt have destroyed it.” He stomped along, his gaze fixed on the ground. “Wardens are expendable. The old knowledge is hidden, and there are those who know where it is, should we fall. In the meantime, the Fylking are more than capable of maintaining their portal without us. We’re a tradi
tion. A convenience.”
The bitterness in the seer’s voice increased Othin’s discomfort. “I’ve not known many wardens, but my mother has. She once told me the Guardian Fylking look after their wardens for love of them, not for ‘convenience.’”
To that, Arcmael said nothing. Othin started to press his concern—then froze.
Something snapped.
“Get down!” he hissed. An arrow struck the ground just to Arcmael’s side. Another vanished into the brush.
Arcmael fell to the ground on his hands and knees. “I’m hit!” He sank into the snow.
Othin’s heart leapt into his throat. Staying low, he drew his sword and crept in the seer’s direction. A man in a dark cloak and the dirty habit of a Fjorginan soldier emerged from the trees and stomped over the ground. Arcmael lay between the draugr and Othin. The ranger’s nerves coiled as he moved.
With the swiftness of a weasel, Arcmael rolled over, drew his blade and brought around a two-handed blow that swept the draugr’s legs from its body. It dropped and slammed to the ground, clutching the snow. The seer’s next blow took off its head. Almost casually, the warden snatched it up by the hair and lobbed it into the woods.
Othin came forward, blade in hand. No blood, no arrow, nothing but the faint reek of death. A smile fled over his lips. “Well,” he said, sheathing his sword. “Diderik was right. You didn’t learn that from Halstaeg.”
“No,” the seer answered quietly. He slammed his sword in its sheath. Then he pulled down his hood and resumed his way. To elude archers, they stayed in the trees, avoided open areas and wove through the trunks. After a time, they climbed a rise. Arcmael slowed, moved past an unmarked standing stone, and knelt. “Here we are.”
A low, drab wall draped in withered vines stood in the trees. Beyond the edge, tucked amid the crags of a high mountain hollow, rose the Faersc Conservatory. It was built in tiers, intricately designed with windows, steps, doors and roofs knit as if by hand with roots and ivy. Some of the windows had been smashed and doors torn from their frames. On steps and thresholds lay unmoving bodies covered in snow. Felled trees lay across the stones, and smoke hung in the air like a curse. The dark shapes of ravens and vultures circled in the skies above. Hel knew they were not feeding on draugr.
The Fylking: Outpost and The Wolf Lords Page 29