by David Keck
A shadow would have left more trace.
His lungs puffed fog into the still air.
THE NEXT DAY, Durand watched and waited.
While the others prayed Dawn's Thanksgiving and ate dinner over the Noontide Lauds, Durand composed himself as best he could, knowing that he had not left the omens behind when he left the forest. Atthians understood doom.
After noontide, a shape ran past his seat at the shuttered window, streaking off for the baron's chamber.
"Was that the gatekeeper's lad?" said someone close by.
As Durand glanced at the curious faces around him, it struck him that all the knights of his father's court looked as similar as cousins. He had never noticed before.
In a moment, the runner reappeared, this time chased down the hall by a pair of houseboys.
Durand opened the shutters; four horses stood around the well. He recognized Sir Kieren's roan and the jade that carried the knight's baggage. The other two animals were new to him—both saddled for riding. One was a fierce brute. The other looked every day of twenty years old.
Without warning, the skald slid onto the stone bench beside him, peering out. "Has the Fox come? Ah wait. What's this now?"
Doors flew open at both ends of the hall.
Durand's father loomed at the chamber door, while the courtyard stair brimmed with echoes. Finally, a gray head appeared above the stair, wearing a giddy smile: Osseric of Gravenholm. Durand could hardly believe it was the man he knew. Twenty winters of gloom had left his face, leaving a lunatic grin. Two shocks of white hair stood out over his ears.
Durand's mother broke the silence. "Good morning, Sir Osseric!" she called.
"Indeed," agreed the old man. "Yes. Yes, indeed it is! For ... for look whom I have here." The old man hopped aside.
For a moment, there was only Sir Kieren climbing into view.
But Kieren turned. "Come on up. Your father has them all tied in knots," he said.
A stranger stepped into the hall: blond, tall, and as weathered as a plowman. The blade at his hip hung in a scabbard more worn than Durand's boots. There was something of the old knight's look in this stranger's face.
Durand felt the omen swinging down around him. "He did not drown."
At his elbow, the skald muttered something about ruining a perfectly good ballad.
"My son's come home!" said Osseric, tottering forward, smiling through his tears.
And, while Durand gaped at the sudden ruin of his dreams, the people of the Col shouted for joy.
Soon every sanctuary bell in the little barony was ringing.
DURAND SAT THROUGH dinner and prayers, scarcely able to think. He'd had his future a long time. For fourteen years he'd served in other men's halls, as page and shield-bearer. He had known beatings. He'd even broken a bone or two—always knowing that at the end of the road, he would climb back up the mountains to take his place.
At the head of the hall, baron and firstborn sat under the Col coat of arms: two golden stags over a third. Durand caught sight of his brother, face white as lard. The baron met Durand's glance for an instant, then looked away.
When a man is knocked from his saddle he lies still before trying to jump up. When the shock ebbs away, he can spit the dirt from his mouth and take a level-headed account of the spot he's in. Durand understood this. Now was the time to learn if this was a stumble or a killing blow. He must think.
At first, his thoughts skittered over impossibilities. He was trained for nothing but Gravenholm, and there was no place in his father's narrow domain without it. Fourteen years were wasted. He took a breath and looked back to the high table.
Osseric and his son sat between the baron and his wife. The old man was beyond happy, and there were endless questions for the blond stranger. Durand noted that scars stitched the man's hands. There was a crease or two in his nut-brown face as well. The man who'd risen from the dead was a soldier.
Durand eyed the squat bearish figure that was his father and tried to think. He must begin to sort things out. He must learn where he stood. He needed a word with his father, but with the press of well-wishers around the high table, he could not get close. He began to feel as though someone had rammed a gag in his teeth.
Stifling this surge of unease, Durand resolved to act. While he couldn't get to the baron, he could reach his brother. In a few moments, he caught Hathcyn by the shoulder. And soon, they stood in the cellar stair, away from the crush.
"King of Heaven, Durand," Hathcyn said, dismayed by the whole thing.
Durand felt a witless surge of anger. "Father tried, I think," Hathcyn said. "Did you see his face when he realized that it was Hearnan who had returned?" "Who's—?”
"That's the name. I'd forgotten as well. He's been in Mankyria. Aubairn. Soldiering for clipped pennies, playing knight-errant all around the Inner Seas. It's taken him all this time to scrape up enough to travel north. He must have fought a thousand battles." Hathcyn sounded a little too excited by the whole thing.
Durand waited.
"And ... I offered," Hathcyn added.
Durand pinned his brother with a narrowed eye. "'Offered'?" There was nothing for Hathcyn to offer.
"I thought we might divide the Col between us when Father—"
Durand put his hand flat on his brother's chest. "You knew he'd never let you do a thing like that."
"I suppose I did, though I meant it when I asked. I thought it might be made to work."
"And what did he say?"
"He said that our kin's held the Col since old Saerdan the Voyager's day, father to son three score times without any man in all that line breaking it while it was in his hands, as old as the oldest family in the kingdom. That if we set to carving up our lands, our sons' sons wouldn't have enough to plant both feet on. That soon we'd vanish among our own peasants like a drop of wine in a rain barrel."
Durand opened and closed his hands.
Hathcyn's eyes were on his boots. "I think Osseric must have heard us," he confessed. "Father spoke loudly."
Now Durand shoved his brother, who shoved back hard. There was a moment of sudden violence in the narrow stairway, suddenly over. A stupid thing.
Durand rammed his fist into the wall.
"I didn't ask," Durand said. 'The old man shouldn't have that to worry about."
"Queen of Heaven, Durand, I'm sorry," Hathcyn said. "I thought we had everything set."
"We did have," Durand said. It was too soon to panic. He had to remember that. This was still the time to pull himself together and find out how badly he was hurt. He needed to know where he stood. "I'll have a word with our lord father."
There was pity in his brother's face. Durand stalked back into the hall.
His father's throne was empty.
Durand caught hold of a startled houseboy.
"The baron. Where?"
"His chamber, Lordship." Durand freed the boy and mounted the stair to the baron's chamber. The door was shut, its dark oak shining under a cloud of wax.
As Durand raised his hand to the latch, there were voices.
"They're reavers. Mercenaries," said the baron.
And Kieren: "It's all that's left to him, Your Lordship. He's a knight-errant whether you wish him to be or not. He's a knight without land."
"He's no knight yet!"
Durand should have pushed the door then.
"Knights-errant," said the baron. "Fancy word for pigs on their hind trotters out for a trough. If they aren't butchering each other in some brothel sewer, they're marching for the man who dangles the most silver under their snouts."
"There's many a fine lord who hires extra swords. What else is the boy to do? He can't tag along with me forever."
Durand stared at the dark wood.
"Host of Heaven, but he'd be better dead after this," his father said. "What becomes of a man who fights for pennies and not for his house and lord and lands? There are rumblings against the king. Folk who still won't believe old King Carlomund
just fell. Who knows what the year will bring? And these tournament games of theirs. The Patriarchs still hold that killing a man on a point of honor is plain murder." There was a murmur of dissent "Deny it! And ransom: killing for pennies. It's greed and pride at best I'd be throwing his soul to the Host Below."
"Baron, you must be sensible. It is a chance. There's many a lad who gets none. Half the men on your land: priest's sons, cotters. He might manage to cut his way out."
Silence stretched. Durand heard the shallow rasp of his own breathing.
"It must be said," Kieren declared. "He's entitled to nothing. He'll need to take what he can."
Durand stared at the door's skin of black wax.
"So many years, only to plant him with the paupers on some battlefield," his father was saying. "It would have been better if he hadn't been born. He was meant to be an honest knight-at-arms. A lord."
The weight of the words was still settling on Durand when, without warning, the door swung wide in his face.
Sir Kieren looked up at him, the idiot fox tails jumping.
After a long silence, he said, "I'm sorry, lad."
Durand felt an idiotic impulse to take hold of the little man; his hands barely twitched. Silent, he stepped into his father's chamber.
The room was dark, its windows shuttered. As Durand stood on the threshold, he could make out nothing. Finally, the shadows spoke with his father's voice. "Durand. Come."
As Durand's eyes adjusted to the gloom, all he could see of his father was a brooding shape cut from the hearth's glow. Thin light from the shuttered windows glittered in his eyes, on the rings at his knuckles, and on the pommel of the blade at his waist.
"My son, what've you done to your hand?"
Glancing down, Durand realized he'd been kneading the knuckles of the fist he'd used to smack the wall. There was blood.
"Nothing, Father," he said.
"Talking to Hathcyn ..." his father said.
Durand looked into the shadows at his feet.
"What've you heard?" prompted his father.
"Enough."
"There will be no inheritance."
Durand swallowed, and the shadow detached itself from his father's chair. The constellation of sparks—rings, eyes, and buckles—settled into their places as the baron stopped by the mantel. He said nothing.
'There must be something" Durand said. "Another post somewhere—"
"And who would you have me take it from?" snapped the baron. "I am liege lord to four lordlings and a dozen knights. Each one has my oath, relic-sworn to the King of Heaven. If I'd known there'd be nothing for you, I'd have had you train for a priest." "I'm no priest."
"No. You're no priest, I'll grant you that." His father would have heard stories of his boy, scattering black eyes and fat lips among the lowland lordlings at court. From the first day, he'd picked on the bullies.
Durand found the twin sparks of the baron's eyes.
"If I must try my blade—"
"And damn yourself? Is that what you wish? Your temper alone will put your soul in peril! If my petitions reach the Halls of Heaven, the Powers will hint at what's to become of you before the dawn. Until then, you are still my man. You will not allow anyone, no matter how they goad you, to drive you into another performance of the sort that grazed your knuckles or I'll turn you out. Do you understand?"
"Aye, Father," Durand managed.
There was a sigh in the gloom as Durand left.
In the feasting hall, Osseric's soldier son sat nodding to the others' stories, though Durand reckoned any story of this stranger's life could curdle the blood of any local knight. He felt the brass pommel of his sword in the palm of his left hand, wanting to take a swing at the man who'd taken his place. He was not proud of the impulse.
It was getting dark. Most of his gear had been thrown into a storeroom heaped with groundskeeper's tools. This was where Durand fetched up after leaving the hall. As he threw the door open, the light fell on his shield, with his father's gold stags— the Col's stags. There Was a shovel. In an instant, he had smacked the shield across the room.
What old Osseric's son had found at long last, Durand had lost. It was as simple as that. Getting back to his feet was more important than picking scabs.
He gathered his bedroll—still damp—bundles of extra clothing, and the weighty roll of his armor.
Kieren's voice stopped him: "I see. You're not sulking after all. You're running off."
There was no privacy in a castle.
"I'm running from nothing," Durand said.
"Ah." Sir Kieren slid his knuckles along the blade of his jaw, his blue eyes glittering. "No, you're right. You're simply leaving in a great hurry. It's a different thing."
"Hear me, you—" he came within a heartbeat of saying something he could not take back. "No. Sir Kieren, I can't do this. Not now."
"Mmm. I'll have to remember to watch where I step." He pointed to Durand's battered shield. "If I find a priest, perhaps he will read the omens here; they are too subtle for the layman. I count one good split in the shield cover, right through your family's arms." His mustache twitched. "I've heard that, after an evening of gnawing bones by the Fiery Gulf, the Writhen Man will read his future in the cracks of scorched shoulder blades. I'm sure there's something to read here."
"Sir Kieren—" He had venomous words in his mind, but the Powers of Heaven saved him. "I must go."
"They will say that you have run away," Kieren said, quietly. "You might at least wait till the baron finishes his deliberations. You might be the richest freeholder in all the Atthias after your lord father is done with you."
"I'm a fighting man. I know nothing of pigs, or corn, or sheep."
"Durand, the land's unsettled. There are those who see our king's troubles as sign he stole the throne. Tax and famine. And there are those who worry—a weak king is a danger. There are spirits on the road."
"I must take my chances, Sir Kieren," said Durand. With his old friend looking on, he lifted his possessions and marched them into the courtyard, heading for the stable. While he had been packing, the Eye of Heaven had vanished from the ring of sky above the castle's central courtyard. As he stepped out, it was full dark between the mountains.
His father's crest hung over the door to the tack room. Durand walked through, and into the stone stable. A pair of stable boys started. He must have looked like some ogre down from the mountains.
"It's all right," he said. Their expressions did not change. "I'll need my horse. Brag. He's a bay."
"Aye, Lordship. We'll have him out right away." The boys were wide-eyed as rabbits.
"Don't bother about the saddle. I'll find it." Durand stepped back into tack room, peering up among the hanging saddles, and trying for a deep breath.
In that still moment, he heard a noise from the chill courtyard.
Tock
He spun. The door was wide open, and a man in a dun cloak stood by the well. In the man's hand was a staff with an out-sized head. The thing seemed to have been fashioned from the gnarled fork of a tree, cut close like a hand at the wrist. Its two wooden fingers jutted down, one cut short, the other stretching lithely for the floor. The tall man looked to have been walking, but now set the metal heel of his staff against the stone.
Tock.
Setting his teeth, Durand stalked from the darkness, hauling his blade from its scabbard.
The figure made no move. The shadows of a pilgrim's hat swallowed the features.
Durand stared, breathing clouds into the air. Then, instead of speaking or turning, the stranger sprang to life—leaping like a suicide down the well. For an instant, Durand was alone.
As he gaped, astonished, a childhood memory rushed back. There was a stair down this well: a forbidden place of greasy slabs, coiling into smothering water.
With a flash of teeth, he charged out and chased the stranger down a hole so black it might have been full of water. The stranger's hat bobbed two turnings below. Durand followed as
gloom closed over both their heads. He found his way by the echoes of footfalls and slipping hands that rebounded from water and stone. He felt stair edges roll under boot-leather. The stranger was a vanishing flutter.
That stopped.
In a jumbled instant, Durand's foot shot out. Water exploded. His elbow smacked stone, and he slipped into cold blackness. But something hooked his collar.
"Not that crossing! Not at my hand," a voice rasped.
Durand coughed and spluttered. His collar tightened against his throat. Then he landed.
"Hells." He twisted on the stone. "What's happening?" "You've fallen."
After another fit, he tried to right himself, damp fingers adhering to the frigid stone. "Host Below!" "Take care whom you call."
Durand squinted, pawing his forelock from his eyes. There was nothing to see. "I've had my fill of you and your stick, stranger," he managed. But as he gave his stinging fists a twist, he realized that the stranger stood feet taller than any man he had ever seen. He filled the well like a tree.
Now Durand saw the stranger smile: a thing of black pegs. The stranger swung his forked staff against the water. There was no splash. And the pool itself glowed—deep, aurora-fingers reaching for the roots of the world.
"Queen of Heaven." An icy plume rose as Durand spoke.
The light climbed the folds of the stranger's cloak and his staff's convolutions. Durand saw fingers like hog bones wrapped in twine. Under the pilgrim's hat, he caught the edges of a face: a thorn bush of knotted twine spilling from cheekbones where hairy cord knotted like a weapon's grip. Two cold pennies winked in the sockets of the man's eyes: one a nicked black, the other bright silver. There were teeth. They looked like shoeing nails.
"Better." The voice rustled.
It took a lot to square off with the creature.