The Pagan Night

by Tim Akers

  They were perched on limestone bluffs that sat ragged above the valley floor. Ian gave the man a nod, then shifted his spear forward and waited for the sound to repeat. Creaking wood. The fog below them stirred and cleared, revealing a trail that wound through the valley, and a caravan that traveled it. Three wagons crept among the trees, surrounded by nervous guards and fog.

  Cahl had found them two days ago, just far enough from the rest of the Suhdrin supply train to fall victim to his tricks. He and the witching wives had teased this group away from the main roads north, baiting them west with nightmares and mist, drawing them into deeper forest. The guards whispered to one another about the bedeviled north. Their prayers at evensong focused on protection from the gheists and the pagan night.

  It was not the night that would end them.

  A call went up and down the line, barely heard but deeply felt in the blood. A cloud of spears fell from the tree line opposite Ian and his hidden companions, and mortal screams cut through the fog. The horses of the front wagon bolted, their driver impaled by a Tenerran spear. They clattered off out of sight, crashing through the woods and leaving the trail behind. The guards who remained closed tight to the remaining wagons, turning shields and spears to the forest, placing their backs to the bluffs—and their enemies.

  Another wave of spears crashed down, finding flesh and wood. The master of guard raised a banner and rallied his men, sounding a weak horn. The drivers of the rear wagon left their charge and sought shelter under the one in front.

  At another signal, Ian and his companions fell from the ragged stones behind their prey. Their descent was wrapped in fog, thick tendrils holding them close, giving a soft landing and silent approach. He didn’t yet understand how this magic worked, other than to know that Fianna stood somewhere behind them, wrapping the mists around her like a cloak, drawing and guiding them, blinding the enemy and cloaking the attack.

  They were a dozen strong, not even a third of the guardsmen’s number, but they rushed forward without a sound, without warning. Ian’s cloak fluttered behind him as he ran from the base of the cliff, rock as gray as rain and just as ragged. The semicircle of Suhdrin guards knelt beside the wagon, their spears bristling from a wall of shields scarred by spear fall. They looked ragged from lack of sleep and creeping fear. Their master paced behind them, leaning in to his men to steady their nerve and polish their formation.

  He was an older man, bent and scarred, a brace of daggers on his belt, gripping a sword that was more bitten than straight. He was decades bald, his beard neatly trimmed and washed, even after weeks on the trail. The men around him were young, the stubble on their cheeks too soft and wispy to hide their skin. They wore new armor that didn’t fit, clutched new spears that had never been thrown for blood. Recruits, and a grizzled master of guard meant to keep the children safe. Now they were here, in this trap, at the tip of Ian’s spear.

  The master of guard heard something, or sensed it, turning just as Ian reached him. His eyes changed, grim determination fading to relief, weeks of fear settling into a moment of regret and then violent hatred. The man swung his blade. Ian blocked it with the haft of his spear, brushed the old man’s arm aside, then buried the petal-shaped tip into the master’s chest. Ribs cracked and parted. The man’s eyes went soft and he toppled back into the shield wall.

  This was the first warning the soldiers had, and the last, and then it was reaving and the letting of blood.

  Ian dropped his spear, letting the master of guard twist to the ground, and drew his sword. There was a clatter of metal as the Suhdrin guards tried to turn, and ended up banging shields into spears, tripping over one another to meet the new threat. Ian sliced into the two closest, putting his sword through collarbones and necks before the men could get to their feet, while the rest of the pagans kept to their spears. They had a strange way of fighting, sweeping feet and hooking blades with the complicated barbs of their weapons, treating the spears more as staves. The Suhdrin had no counter, and within seconds the silence of the forest was restored. The horses fled into the fog.

  “We should follow them,” Ian gasped. He was out of breath from the fall and the fight, and the half-dozen heartbeats when he had held his breath as they ran forward. Cahl shook his head.

  “The gods will take them,” he said. This was followed by a distant baying of hounds. The fog began to clear.

  “And the wagon that bolted?” Ian asked.

  “Already done,” Fianna said. She stepped out of the stones of the bluff as if they were shadows. Her face was flushed and her eyes tired, but her voice was strong. “The horses took a wrong turn.”

  “Gods be good,” Cahl said.

  “They usually are. Ian, take five and gather supplies from the wagons. Burn whatever you can’t carry. Cahl, we need to get back to the train.”

  “How long are we going to do this?” Ian asked.

  “As long as it takes to bleed them dry.”

  “There are a hundred wagons for each of these,” Ian said, gesturing around them. The others were freeing the horses, soothing them and cutting their bridles before releasing them into the woods. “And a hundred spears for each wagon in Halverdt’s army.”

  “Then we’ll be at this for a while,” Cahl said. “Best you get to your task.”

  “By the time we bleed them all, the north will have fallen.”

  “Your north,” Cahl answered. “Mine fell generations ago, but we’re still here. Perhaps you will learn to live among us.”

  “Do you really care so little for the houses? Does it mean nothing to you that the Blakleys, MaeHerrons, Rudaines… do you hold no love for the old names?”

  “The old names call themselves duke, and baron, and lord.” Cahl wiped his spear on one of the dead, then slid it home in the quiver at his side. “They wear Suhdrin clothes and Suhdrin titles. Why should they have my love?”

  “Then why are we fighting at all? Let the high inquisitor wage his war and topple his enemies,” Ian snapped. “If you don’t care any more for Tenerran blood, why bring your spears to this war?”

  Cahl snorted, then turned and walked away. A half-dozen or so of his men followed, leaving Ian alone with the witching wives. Fianna shrugged.

  “He fights because I tell him to fight,” she said, “and I fight because I hope for something more of you, and your family.”

  “So what are we doing here? You know this is useless. Halverdt has more spears than we’ll ever be able to starve. Whatever we take from the supply train, he just steals from the countryside.”

  “Yes, but we are doing more than killing Suhdrin.”

  “Really? What, then? What are we doing?”

  She folded her hands and stepped over the dead to stand at Ian’s side. The effort of drawing the fog and muffling the ambush had taken much from her, but what remained seemed to burn brighter. Fianna was like a seething ember buried at the heart of the forge, her fire concentrated. Not a flame or wisp of smoke was wasted. Ian could almost feel the heat washing off of her. There was a strange beauty in this silence and fury—so unlike the wild, unkempt girls of the Tenerran court. Ian felt himself flushing as she drew close, and told himself it was the aftereffects of battle.

  “What have you seen of me?” she asked quietly.

  “I don’t… I’m not sure what you mean, my lady.”

  “My lady, your honor, your grace,” she said dismissively. “We don’t carry those titles into these woods, Ian of Houndhallow.” She came closer still. There was fatigue in her eyes, an exhaustion that couldn’t be satisfied by sleep. “You know what I mean.”

  Ian hesitated. The business of disassembling the ambush went on all around them—dragging the men off the road and hacking through their supplies, the bloody labor of patching wounds and dispatching foes who had not gone gently to their graves. Ian felt suspended between those activities and something else. Something only he and Fianna shared. He shook his head.

  “Fog. Beasts in the forest.” He smiled. “A
n unnatural affinity for the river.”

  “Do you doubt the power of those things?”

  “No, I never have. The inquisition doesn’t chase ghost stories, after all. They have reason to fear what you can do. There is power in the forest. In your history.”

  “In our history,” Fianna said. “And what of you? Do you fear the powers in the forest?”

  Ian cleared his throat, and fidgeted.

  “When I was eight years old and the equinox approached, my father took my sisters and me, and he hid us in our rooms. Right in the middle of dinner. A man was at the gates, that’s all he would say, a man who couldn’t be trusted.” Ian looked around the ambush site, his eye catching on Cahl, who was waiting on the periphery of the forest. The shaman was watching them. “A man of some power. I tried to get a view from my window, but I couldn’t quite see. So I climbed out on the ledge…”

  “You’re going to tell me that this man was a pagan. Perhaps a shaman, perhaps just a vessel for one of the old gods,” Fianna interrupted. “Your father barred the gate, summoned a priest, and killed him. Yes?”

  “A vessel. An interesting way to put it. Yes, a vessel. A man from the village, the blacksmith, in fact. Frae Dunham, his name was. While traveling to a nearby town to make a delivery, Frae Dunham was attacked, killed, and his body possessed by a gheist. It was nearly the equinox, and not even the godsroad can protect against the old spirits all the time.”

  “A pity, but if our shamans were able to perform the rites…”

  “A pity?” Ian said sharply. “A pity for his wife, for his sons, for Frae himself. Taken from the road and corrupted, and then sent by someone, something, to attack my house. So, yes, my father summoned a priest and his knights, and they killed Frae Dunham. In front of the whole village, and most of the castle, they filled him with arrows and prayers, and then they burned his body. I tried to get a view, but couldn’t. I wanted to see the excitement.

  “The next day I learned what had happened, that his wife had watched while he burned alive because bloodwrought steel couldn’t bring her husband to his knees, so they dumped pitch from the ramparts and put flame to his body. I couldn’t see, but gods, I could hear the screams.”

  Fianna stood silently, reading Ian’s face, her eyes as bright as candles.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “There are those among us who favor such tactics, and there are certain gods who are drawn to riding the flesh of their victims. In times past, a willing vessel would take the god and live through him until the time of sacrifice came, or until the god’s festival had passed. They seek our worship, and follow the old ways. In their madness, the gods don’t know what they do to us.”

  “That is little comfort for Frae Dunham’s family… or for me.”

  Fianna nodded and stepped away. “Then that is why we are here, doing this, rather than riding to fight your duke of Greenhall.” She sighed and walked carefully among the bodies. “You don’t believe us yet. Nor will you.”

  She went and spoke to Cahl, who made a dismissive gesture before the pair of them disappeared into the forest. Ian felt as if he had failed something, disappointed them in some way. If they were expecting him to convert to their religion of twigs and mad gods, they were in for disappointment—but he couldn’t stand waiting at the edge of the fight. The duke of Greenhall, with the high inquisitor at his side, was marching through Adair’s territory in great force. Somewhere out there Ian’s father was preparing, perhaps wondering where his son was. Wondering if Ian was still alive.

  One of the pagans splashed oil on the wagons. When he was done, Cahl struck tinder and put the wagon and its remaining supplies to the flame. The sudden bonfire bathed the forest in heat and light, burning away the remaining tendrils of fog that Fianna had summoned.

  Yet despite the heat, Ian shivered. The pagans looked wild in the sharp light of the fire, their clothes and inked faces picked out in flat contrast, bright and dark, fire and shadow, sun and moon. Despite the fact that Fianna had saved his life, Ian would never be comfortable around them. His place was by his father’s side, fighting his father’s war. Ian had to find a way to get to him.

  His eyes cleared, and he saw that Cahl was staring at him. He looked like a wolf at the edge of a campfire, counting his meals, and then he was gone, whirling into the shadows, leaving the fire and the blood behind, disappearing into the forest.

  In the distance the hounds bayed.

  36

  SCOUTS REPORTED THAT Halverdt had rested on the banks of the Tallow for five days, celebrating their victor and gathering their strength, before he struck camp and marched north, marching in greater strength than any expected. Those same scouts reported that he was approaching under the banners of all of the southern houses.

  When he heard of this, Malcolm and Sorcha brought together the other lords who had joined them at the Fen Gate and rode out with them, along with a sizable guard. They received the blessings of the priests. Malcolm wanted to see this army for himself, to weigh its strength and prepare his mind for what lay ahead.

  “They say that Halverdt marches with three columns of men-at-arms,” Ewan Thaen said. He had arrived the previous evening with a force of pikemen and archers, to join the knights of his banner who had been at Greenhall for the Allfire and had fled with Malcolm when things turned sour. “Plus twice that many mounted spears—to say nothing of his legions of foot and arrow.”

  “I have trouble believing those reports,” Colm Adair answered.

  “As do I,” Sorcha Blakley agreed. “There were many banners at the Tallow, from many houses. If all of those lords brought their full strength to the field, they might reach those numbers, but that is unlikely.”

  “Thank you again, Thaen, for joining us at the Fen Gate,” Malcolm said, turning to the duke of the Frostwell. “Your men have fought bravely. I can only imagine that their strength will redouble with their lord at the fore.”

  “What news from the north?” Castian Jaerdin asked. The Suhdrin duke was the only one of their host wearing heavy furs. The first touch of autumn had left a chill in his southern bones, more than his pride was willing to stand. “Can we expect more support from the other Tenerran lords?”

  “That depends on the days to come,” Ewan answered. “Many of the houses are waiting to see what comes of this battle. None like to defy the church.”

  “It is not the church they are defying,” Colm said. “It’s the duke of Greenhall.”

  “And yet the church rides against us,” Ewan persisted. “With the high inquisitor at the fore, and while Tomas Sacombre has few friends north of the Tallow, there are many who fear him. Justly.”

  “MaeFell has sworn to us,” Sorcha said. “He offered me his promise on the field of battle, after we had turned away the Suhdrin assault.”

  “That was immediately before you were routed from the field,” Ewan reminded her. “I’m sure MaeFell means well, and his promise is good, but when I passed the Docent Tower on my way south, the farmers were in the fields and the harvest was heavy on the stalk. The duke may reach his walls in a few weeks, but once there he will need to call his banners and shift his people from their hearths on the eve of winter. This battle will be fought without his spears.”

  “Lord Daeven has continued on as well,” Sorcha said. “I fear that whatever tale he tells in the northern marches, it is unlikely to draw more banners to our cause.”

  “That’s as may be,” Malcolm said. “We have the spears that the gods have given us. We must not pray for more.”

  “Hope is never worth much on the field of battle, anyway,” Ewan muttered. “So easily lost, and so falsely given.”

  “I look forward to fighting at your side,” Castian said grimly. “It will be an uplifting experience, I’m sure.”

  “Enough,” Sorcha hissed before an argument could take wing. “There are riders ahead.”

  A crown of banners crested the next hill. There were few riders for the number of pennants that flew—no more than thre
e dozen knights, with nearly a dozen colors aloft. When the riders sighted the Tenerran party, two of them trotted to the lead together and unfurled another flag. White, the banner of truce and parley.

  “Perhaps your scouts only counted their banners, and not their spears,” Grant MaeHerron rumbled. They were the first words he’d spoken since they had ridden out of the Fen Gate that morning. Ewan Thaen didn’t answer.

  “DuFallion, Marcy, even Bealth,” Castian said, counting off the banners that flew over the small contingent. “I hoped they might join our cause.”

  “They seem to have decided otherwise,” Ewan said.

  “We hoped that Roard would treat peacefully with us as well,” Sorcha said. “All know how that turned out. And their banner is before us as well.”

  “Yes,” Malcolm craned his neck to see the riders beneath the yellow of Roard. “It is the father, but not the son.”

  “Whatever that portends,” Sorcha said.

  “I see Marchand, LeGaere… gods, the colors of all Suhdra fly in that contingent!”

  “Not all,” Castian pointed out, but the others ignored him, for the sky was crowded with the banners of most of the great houses of Suhdra—the golden barque of Bassion, the peaks of Fabron, alongside Galleux, Thoussert, Maison… and the tri-acorn and cross of Halverdt rode above them all.

  Malcolm let out a long and withering sigh.

  “I don’t like this,” he said.

  “You advised us to stand together,” MaeHerron said. “Did you think the lords of Suhdra would do any differently?”

  They rode in silence until the lead riders of the Suhdrin contingent were close enough to hail them. The pair drew to a halt, signaling back to the Suhdrin knights, who also stopped.

  “Stay here,” Malcolm said, then he turned to his wife. “If they draw steel, return to the Fen and prepare the walls. Do not wait for me.”