by Dan Abnett
“Well, then, Malus, what ransom will your father pay for you?”
The highborn laughed. “About half as much as you’d pay if he had Nuall as his prisoner.”
The Autarii laughed, and even Beg managed a sour smile. “Then that bodes ill for you, my friend. I have no use for a guest who cannot enrich me in some way.”
“Ah,” Malus raised a cautionary finger, “that is a very different matter entirely, great Urhan. I believe my stay here can profit you very well indeed.” He folded his arms. “I believe you mentioned that you’d lost a certain precious heirloom, is that not so? A medallion?”
The Urhan straightened in his chair. “I did. What of it?”
Malus shrugged. “I came into the hills looking for a guide who could show me a path to the frontier. You are keen to reclaim your family’s honour. It seems that we both have something to offer one another.”
Beg snarled impatiently. “Cut to the heart of it, city-dweller. What do you propose?”
“I will retrieve this medallion for you, great Urhan, if you will free me and my men and guide us through the hill passes to the frontier.”
The Urhan laughed coldly. “Suppose I just start cutting pieces off you until you’ll fetch the moons from the sky if I wish it?”
Malus smiled. “In the first place, I’ve sworn the guest-oath before the crone in your very tent. Raise a hand to me now and you tempt the Dark Mother’s wrath. In the second place, I’ve seen how you practise your art, great Urhan, and it isn’t the sort of thing one fully recovers from. I expect I’ll need to be at my best if I am to reclaim your family’s honour. Or—” the highborn indicated the assembled Shades—“perhaps you should ask your clanmates for help instead.”
Beg shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
That’s what I thought, the highborn mused. You don’t want anyone else getting their hands on your lost medallion, lest they crown themselves Urhan in your stead.
Malus spread his hands, acting the conciliator. “All I ask is a simple service, something you and your clan are justly famous for. In return, you regain your family’s precious honour. It is an arrangement clearly to your benefit.”
The Urhan rubbed his chin thoughtfully, but Malus could see in his eyes that the Autarii chieftain had already made up his mind. “So be it,” Beg declared. “But on one condition.”
“Very well. But I will name a condition in return.”
“You have until dawn tomorrow to recover the medallion and bring it to me. If you have not returned by then I’ll hunt you through the hills like a stag.”
Malus nodded. “Done. In return I want my warband out of your slave pens. Since we’re allies now they are your guests just as much as I, and bound by the same oaths.”
Beg grinned. “Clever. Very well, they go free. But no weapons.”
Malus affected an elaborate shrug. “I can hardly blame the great Urhan if he fears for his safety with ten armed highborn in his camp.”
The great longhouse fell silent. The Urhan’s eyes narrowed in irritation. Then Beg threw back his head and laughed. “By the Dark Mother, you’re a reckless one!” he cried. “I can see why your father wants no part of you.”
Malus smiled mirthlessly. “My father’s loss is your gain, great Urhan. Now tell me of this medallion, and where I might find it.”
Yet it was not so simple as that. The Urhan insisted on breaking bread and sharing wine with his new “ally”, and made a show of having the highborn’s war-band brought into the hall and given places of honour. More of the Autarii made their way to the hall in the meantime, and it was clear that word of Malus’ deal with the Urhan was racing like wildfire through the camp. It wasn’t long before Malus caught sight of Nuall, surrounded by a half-dozen men, muttering darkly to one another at the far side of the great hall. The old wolf is laying out an unspoken challenge to Nuall, Malus reckoned, struggling to conceal his irritation.
The meal stretched for more than an hour. Finally, Nuall seemed to reach a decision of sorts, and he and his men slipped out of the hall. Not long afterward, the Urhan clapped his hands, and an Autarii stepped from behind the dais and presented Malus with his weapons and sword belt. As the highborn quickly buckled his sword belt in place, the Urhan leaned back in his chair and spoke.
“Understand, friend Malus, that this is no simple trinket that I ask you to retrieve. It is the Ancri Dam, a potent talisman that my ancestors claim was given to them by the Dark Mother when they migrated to these hills. It is a symbol of our divine right to rule this clan, and has been passed down from father to son for generations. As the eldest son reaches manhood the medallion becomes his, to show that he is to be the next Urhan. So did the medallion pass from me to my eldest son Ruhir.”
The Urhan’s face darkened. “Then, a week past, Ruhir went hunting as was his wont, and went missing in a storm. We went searching for him, and eventually we found one of his boots by the shore of a nearby river. This river is home to many black willows, and one in particular has an evil reputation. We call it the Willow Hag, and it has claimed many lives.”
“Including Ruhir’s,” Malus said.
“Even so.”
Malus’ mind raced. Your thick-witted second son can’t fetch a medallion from the roots of a willow tree? What else aren’t you telling me, Beg? Malus waited for the Urhan to continue, but after a few moments it became clear that his tale was done.
“Well, since the sun is now well on its course to mid-morning, perhaps I should be about my appointed task. And since forty pounds of silver steel isn’t the wisest thing to wear by the banks of a treacherous river—” he rapped a knuckle on his enamelled plate armour. “I’ll leave my harness in the care of my warband. Now, how shall I find this Willow Hag?”
Beg studied him carefully, his expression inscrutable. “Walk out of my hall and turn west. Cross the hills until you come to a swift-flowing river, then walk upstream until you find a great riverbend. The Willow Hag waits there.”
Malus nodded. “That seems simple enough. I shall return with the Ancri Dam before sunrise, Urhan Beg. Then we will discuss my journey north.”
With that the highborn stepped from the dais and crossed quickly to his warriors. Lhunara, Dalvar and even Vanhir rose at his approach. “Get this armour off,” he said quietly, unbuckling his recently secured sword belt.
Lhunara’s nimble hands worked at the buckles of his armour, while Dalvar leaned in close. “He means to betray you, dread lord.”
“I can see that, Dalvar,” Malus hissed. “He’s using me as a goad to push Nuall into more forceful action. I expect his stupid son will wait until I’ve recovered the amulet and then try to kill me for it.”
“What do we do?” Lhunara asked, as she pulled his breastplate free.
“For now, nothing. We still need the Autarii to get us to the frontier. But—” As the armour was pulled away and Malus still had his back to the dais, he ran his thumb along the outside of one of his sword scabbards. A thin blade of dark iron popped out of a hidden sheath. With a deft movement, he slipped the tiny weapon into Dalvar’s hand. “If I don’t return by dawn, make your escape any way that you can. Get to the nauglir and try to make it back to the road. Though, if possible, leave that piece of iron in the Urhan’s skull before you go.”
Dalvar pocketed the blade. “You have my oath on it,” he said darkly.
Lhunara watched the exchange with hooded eyes. She glanced meaningfully at Malus. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
The highborn gave her a wolfish grin. “Right or wrong, Lhunara, I always know what I’m doing.”
The retainer watched her lord and master stride confidently from the hall, throwing a hard stare at any man with the temerity to meet his gaze. “Somehow that doesn’t reassure me one bit,” she muttered.
Chapter Eleven
RIDDLES OF BONE
Malus leaned against the rough bark of a thorn oak and once again gauged the light seeping through the overcast sky. It was late afte
rnoon. By his estimation he’d covered barely three miles from the Autarii camp and he hadn’t even seen the river yet, much less the Willow Hag.
Birds called shrilly across the hilltops, and back the way Malus had come he saw a black-furred stag creep stealthily among the trees. Without a large pack of nauglir and a rattling column of knights frightening the wildlife out of their path, the highborn found that the undergrowth teemed with creatures large and small. Hunting cats yowled in the shadows, hoping to frighten their prey into the open, and hawks swooped low over the brush. Winged serpents sunned themselves in high branches, their leathery wings spread like fans to soak up the feeble warmth.
Malus had learned early on to stay close to the trees, moving in short hops from bole to bole. Almost two hours after he’d left camp he’d begun to hear the sounds of something heavy pushing its way stealthily through the brush to his right. When he stopped, it would stop. The highborn found himself wishing for his crossbow as he pressed on, listening as the sounds of his pursuer grew slowly but steadily closer to his own path.
Finally, Malus reached the bottom of one of the hills and discovered a small clearing just ahead. His first urge was to dash across the welcome patch of light brush, but his pursuer was close behind him now, and instinct prompted him to choose a different tack. Drawing his sword, the highborn leapt nimbly into the low branches of a hackthorn. Quietly as he could, he scrambled more than a dozen feet up, setting carefully on a large branch that was still covered in a mantle of reddish leaves.
He sat there, controlling his breathing, for several long minutes. Then, without warning, the brush beneath him parted. A huge, humpbacked shape crept into view. It was a boar, a huge, black-skinned animal with a scarred, bristly hide and two cruel, dagger-like tusks. It stood beneath the tree for several heartbeats, sniffing the air and seeming to listen for Malus. Then, looking left and right, the great beast moved cautiously into the clearing.
Malus leaned his head back against the trunk of the hackthorn, cursing his skittish nerves. A boar, he thought, fighting the urge to laugh. Treed by a pig!
Suddenly there was a rushing sound in the air and the entire tree swayed like a sapling. Malus fell from his branch and only just stopped his plunge with a desperate grab for a nearby limb as a dark shadow swept before the sun. There was a heavy thud in the clearing and then the air was filled with shrill squeals and grunts. Eyes wide, Malus climbed back onto his branch and watched the scene below.
The boar was squirming in the talons of a huge wyvern, its long, reptilian head clamped around the animal’s thick neck. Blood scattered across the grass, then there was a crunch of bone as the boar’s neck snapped. Its limbs drummed a brief tattoo, then went still.
As Malus watched, the wyvern raised its head and surveyed the clearing, its gaze lighting briefly on the highborn in the tree. It was in the branches above me the entire time, he thought, waiting for its next meal to stumble through the clearing. He smiled weakly at the huge predator. “I’m too lean and full of gristle,” he said to the beast. “Be content with the great ham in your talons and don’t waste your time on a morsel like me.”
The wyvern studied Malus for a moment longer, its expression flat and devoid of mercy. Then it bunched its shoulders and leapt into the air, carrying the boar effortlessly beneath it. The highborn listened to the flapping wings receding in the distance, but it was some time before his hands were steady enough to hazard the climb down and resume his hunt for the river.
Once again, he’d underestimated the difficulty of traversing the steep slopes and rough terrain of the foothills, even without the heavy weight of his armour. Malus was starting to think the Shades didn’t bother walking along the ground — they just climbed the trees and swung from limb to limb like Lustrian gibbons. The notion was beginning to sound pretty appealing.
At this rate it will take me most of the night just to get back to camp, Malus thought angrily. Providing of course I don’t get lost in the darkness. Or killed by Nuall and his men.
Malus pushed away from the tree trunk and resumed his climb up the steep hillside. One way or another, Nuall is going to die, he vowed to himself. If this fool’s errand gets the better of me, I’ll be damned if that idiot is going to profit from it!
The climb to the top seemed to take an eternity as he struggled for footing on the slick, icy soil and worked around tangles of brambles and thick underbrush. When Malus finally reached the top, however, he was rewarded with the sight of a fairly wide valley, curving away slightly to the north-east, and a rushing black ribbon of water running along its base. The river bend that Beg described was nowhere in sight. About a mile to the river, Malus calculated. Another couple of hours at least, and the light is fading fast. The prospect of digging around the roots of a willow tree in freezing water and at night didn’t appeal to him in the least. The sun, however, wasn’t going to linger at my convenience.
Gritting his teeth, he began his descent.
As it happened, Malus made better time than he expected, reaching the river in less than an hour by virtue of losing his balance and tumbling head over heels, down the bramble-choked hill. His face and hands were raw and bleeding, and the stumps of broken thorns still jutted from his cheeks and chin. What light remained needed to be used for covering ground, not tending trivial hurts.
Unfortunately, the undergrowth only thickened as he drew closer to the river, weaving into tangles so dense that for a time Malus feared he wouldn’t get to the riverbank at all. When he did at last find a break, he soon saw that there was no stretch of bare shoreline he could walk along between river and brush. The highborn stood for a moment, watching the river go by, and reached an abrupt decision. Slipping one of his scabbarded swords from his belt, he tested the depth of the water at its edge. Satisfied it wasn’t too deep, Malus stepped into the swift-flowing water up to his knees and started to work his way carefully upstream.
Malus’ boots were nauglir hide, expensive and well made, and for a short time the freezing cold water didn’t have a significant effect. The strong current was something different entirely, but he was certain that he was still making better time than he would fighting through the thick scrub on land.
An hour passed. Then another. The sky began to grow dark. He was getting very tired from fighting the current, and his calves and feet were numb. Malus rounded another bend in the river, and there, about a half-mile ahead, the river took another sharp turn around a narrow bend. Rising up from that narrow talon of land was a broad, black stain against the iron-grey sky. It was a huge, old black willow, rising high above its stunted cousins along the riverbank. Even from this distance, Malus could see the twisted mass of cable-like roots that spread like a tangled net down into the icy water. Battened on the flesh of the dead, the highborn thought grimly. Someone should have taken an axe to the thing years ago.
With his objective in sight, Malus forced himself to pause and consider the terrain — though, after a moment’s study it was clear that there was very little to see. The thick brush along the riverbank obscured the land beyond; Malus could see the tops of trees, but nothing of what lay beneath. The good news, however, was that unless Nuall had a lookout high in one of those very trees he couldn’t see Malus, either. It would almost be worthwhile to leave the same way I got here, he thought, but for the fact I’m half frozen to death as it is. Nevertheless, the highborn sank a little lower in the current, suppressing a sharp hiss as the freezing water stung his thighs. Moving slowly, so as not to generate any more noise than the river itself, Malus worked his way towards the great tree.
Night came on swiftly as he approached. The Willow Hag seemed to stand out against the blackness of night, swathed in its own inky aura of malevolence. There was a smell on the wind — the stink of fleshy rot, wafting from the tree. Then the wind picked up, and Malus realised that the tree’s branches weren’t stirring in the breeze. It seemed to crouch motionlessly over the riverbend, waiting like a predator for its next meal.
The sound of rushing water increased the closer Malus came to the tree, and in the wan moonlight he could see thin traces of foam marking whorls and eddies of churned water on the downstream side of the tree.
The swift water was being forced through the tangled roots in such a way as to create strange crosscurrents. Malus reckoned there would also be a sharp undertow on the upstream side. No wonder this Hag eats men, he thought. After a moment’s consideration, he decided that he would first try to penetrate the tangle of roots on the downstream side. Better to fight something pushing him away from the tree than let himself get dragged inside.
Malus soon discovered that the water grew deeper the closer he got to the tree, until he was forcing himself to wade in water that rose above his waist. The current lashed at him from first one direction, then another, trying to spin him around. He forced himself ever closer to the great tree until finally he could throw himself forward and grab one of the thick willow roots. His hands closed around a root as thick as a ship’s cable, its springy core sheathed in a slick, almost viscous skin. The highborn fought a shudder of revulsion. It felt just like rotting flesh, he thought. Icy rotten flesh, at that.
Using the slimy roots for leverage, Malus began to probe his way deeper into the mass of roots. Almost at once, his sword scabbards became entangled in the convoluted mass. This is an invitation to disaster, Malus thought. Reluctantly, he undid his sword belt and tied it securely around a thick root near the edge of the mass, then pressed ahead.
Soon he was up to his neck in freezing water, crouching low under overhanging roots that pressed him closer and closer to the water’s surface. He’d penetrated perhaps an eighth of the way into the root complex and he was entirely swallowed up in the malignant labyrinth. As he proceeded deeper, he was surprised to find a pale green luminescence emanating from the larger roots, glowing like grave-mould and providing a faint illumination. So far there were no signs of bones, but Malus figured he still had a way to go.