by David Keck
Durand, one eyebrow raised, had walked up behind the little man. He had to look up a good foot before he saw Durand's face.
"Of course," he said, "they're a practical lot, some of them."
"Where's the next tourney?"
The little man held up his thick-necked mandora, searching in vain for a spot on Brag's back. "I think I'll have to carry this. We should find you a packhorse."
Shaking his head, Durand swung up into the saddle, and extended a hand to the skald.
At the last moment, Heremund made a face. He snuffed at the air. "All right, what is that?" A night on the hills had packed Durand's head past noticing a stray scent.
"Awful, whatever it is," said Heremund. "We'll try for Ram's Hill. They have a good tourney there most years, come the Blood Moon. It's a bit of a trek, but we've got time. We should try to find an inn tonight, I reckon."
"Right." Imagining a dry room with a big fire, Durand urged Brag down the track.
He caught the reek nearly as soon as Brag moved. Heremund, right in his ear, said, "Gods."
NOT MORE THAN a dozen paces from the hut, a matted form sprawled in the bushes. As Durand drove Brag a few steps further, a bald-faced rook jerked its head from a wound and lurched into the air. There were white-tined antlers.
It was a red deer: a full-grown stag.
"Host of Heaven," Heremund muttered. "It was a wild night I suppose the rut's just ending. He must have been driven out and died on the hills. Panicked in the storm."
Durand saw the great head in profile, neck ruffed like an eagle. Ten points. A match for the Col stags painted on his own shield.
"I—I'm plagued with omens," Durand murmured. "Now this, on setting out. What is a man to read here? A wild stag killed in the storm. Torn and lying. What doom am I meant to read here?"
Heremund was silent at Durand's shoulder, shaking his head: tiny convulsive gestures. "You see something, don't you?" Durand said. "I read no dooms," Heremund breathed. 'Tell me what you see."
"No." Heremund was whispering. "Once, in warmer days, I served at a court. A great man. And his wife was with child. They summoned the wise woman. But it went wrong, and, though the child lived, its mother could not."
Durand glanced to the stag, its gray tongue curled. "What has this to—"
"There—there was a prophecy. While the wise woman, she's rubbing linseed and balsam into dead mother and live son under the Paling Moon, there is a hard, cold glimpse of the babe's doom.
"Everything the lad did would come to nothing," Heremund said, quiet as thought.
"Hells." Durand remembered cringing in the well with that thing that might have been a Power. What would he have done with that news?
"Was it true, Heremund?"
"I have heard things lately. I have heard things that make me wonder."
4. The Hungry Leagues
It should be any time," said Heremund, peering down the trail. They hoped for a town. Always, they were too late.
For two weeks, they had chased the skald's hunches round the south and east of great Silvermere. At Ram's Hill, they missed a tournament by three days. At Mereness, a pockmarked gatekeeper barked that there would be no tourney that year, someone had died. After a week, the few hard pennies in Durand's purse were gone with the last heel of bread. Now, Heremund was only certain of one final open tournament before the winter snows: Red Winding. Worse, a safe way around Silvermere might take them more than a hundred leagues through wild country, and they had only a week to reach it.
They rode hard. The king's messengers covered fifteen leagues in a day. But the king's men rode fresh horses. And they did not ride double.
Still, Durand knew that he must reach Red Winding. Already, they were waking hungry and riding tired. Durand feared that traveling in his company might kill the little skald, but there was no way a man could wait out the long empty winter.
Now, though, they were hunting the chill twilight for a town. Heremund had promised.
A dog barked somewhere ahead.
"What do you think?" Durand said.
"Aye," Heremund agreed, and, sure enough, between a pair of mud-dark hills, emerged the thatched hovels of a village.
Heremund leaned from his perch behind Durand's saddle. "Now, I'll see if I can't sing for our supper, eh? We'll—"
"You there, stop!" ordered a woman's voice.
Lean men filled the track ahead, billhooks and mattocks in their fists.
Heremund crumpled his hat in his hands, and called out: "We mean no harm."
"Fancy that. They mean no harm. Let them in," said the woman, and, when a few of the plowmen in the track glanced around, unsure, "Hold your ground, you daft whoresons!"
"Listen strangers," she advised. "It's after curfew, and we've had some trouble with lads on the road. Thieving. Filching livestock. We lost three wethers meant for salting just yesterday. There's no work here till the Sowing Moon, and we don't need no trouble from strange men now, do we?"
"Madam," Heremund called, "we ain't common laborers come scrounging for—"
"You'd say that, now, wouldn't you?"
"On a fine steed?"
"Riding double. And I've half a mind to ask where you came by the brute. He don't look too well looked after to me."
"My friend here has been at the court of—"
"Right! You've had polite, now it's time you were off. Lads?"
A couple of the long-faced peasants wound up with slings.
"Ride, Durand!" Heremund hissed. Stones whistled and zipped past them.
They rode safely up into the nearby hills and out of range.
"That was lucky," Durand said, having felt the stones pass close.
"Speak for yourself." The skald was rubbing the side of his head. "I think I'm going to have a thick ear out of this." "You all right?"
"Aye. Or I will be. Always bad at Blood Moon, with winter coming on. And this year, with Mad Borogyn's uprising in the Heithan Marches, and the king's new taxes... Still, by the Bitter Moon, the mobs will be gone."
"Aye." He had no trouble imagining that the destitute laborers who staggered into the snows of the Bitter Moon weren't much trouble to anyone much longer.
Again, poor Brag was trudging through wet woodlands. Durand didn't know how long the hunter could stand the abuse. A well-fed horse didn't much mind the cold, but, lean and sopping, Durand worried about the animal.
The track mounted the flank of a wooded ridge.
"I don't suppose you know a hut round here somewhere?"
"Why should I need a hut when the people are so friendly?" He gasped at a lurching stride from Brag. "I swear, jostling around back here is going to split me in two. When you're trudging in the muck, it looks like luxury, but there's nothing left of me but a—"
The big horse had put a foot wrong. Poised on the slope, his legs shot out from under him. Without a lifetime's practice, Durand would have had his leg snapped as Brag slammed hard, then slid. Heremund yelped.
In a rushing instant, all three were crashing downhill, catching at saplings and tumbling. Bracken, gorse, and blackthorn lashed at them as they bounded through.
Finally, Durand was free and on his feet. A stand of dogwood had finally caught Brag in a black tangle of wreckage. Heremund was gathering himself up. They had torn twenty yards of bush. Brag thrashed his limbs.
"Oh God," Durand said and scrambled down the slope. .
The horse was screaming. Heremund slid in close.
"Gods," he said.
Durand scrambled through the tangled stand of saplings and tried to reach the animal's legs. Durand had to feel for breaks. The hunter's stiff lashings threatened to brain him, but he slipped close and saw what he had feared. No horse was made for such a fall. There was a sick bend in the animal's right hind leg. The cannon bone had been snapped right below the hock.
"Ah God," said Durand.
The animal lashed harder for a moment, feeling trapped, no doubt, or scared by the pain.
Heremun
d's wide eyes were on Durand, fearful or hopeful from beyond the animal's flank. But Durand shook his head quick, half-denying what was in front of him. He had pushed too hard.
"Queen of Heaven," he said through clenched teeth. He remembered a thousand forest leagues chasing red deer and roe, driving the boar from his den, pounding through the sunlight with the hunters and liegemen of old Duke Abravanal’s court by Silvermere.
The animal was screaming. Durand swallowed, seeing that Heremund would be no help with what he must do. While Durand had no sword, he still had his knife. He laid his hand on Brag's cheek, then, pushing to hold the animal, he made the butcher's cut where the blood pulsed in the big animal's throat. There was nothing to do then but hold on as the animal bled out
When it was finally over, Durand stood, shaking. He gathered their belongings: bedrolls, mandora, and an iron roll of mail. Heremund watched, saying nothing, but then joined him.
Durand fought a fierce compulsion to return to the village and teach a few villagers the cost of turning travelers away.
EXHAUSTED, COLD, AND starving, the two men trudged west. The ungainly roll of iron on Durand's shoulder weighed on him like some Power's curse, but he would not abandon it. Tens of thousands of iron rings, tens of thousands of rivets, all hammered and woven and hardened in the forge. Like Brag, it was a gift from Kieren. A man could buy every ox in a village for the price, and without one a man was no knight. Still, he staggered under the iron weight when the track was uneven. It drove thought from his skull.
On and on they walked, under a dull Heaven. Red Winding dangled just beyond reach, but Heremund could not persuade him to relent. They tramped past stooped swineherds beating the branches for the last acorns, fattening pigs now that the Blood Moon was upon them. A field of women with their hips in the air bent to jerk blunt sickles through fistfuls of stubble. Where the land tended toward marshes, poor men waded barefoot in the muck to cut reeds. Leagues staggered past. The Eye of Heaven fled them west.
It was in a marshy ditch between hills that a pair of reed-cutters nodded Durand's way, dragging wrists across foreheads. The mud in the hollows of collarbone and throat made them seem like dead men. Still, they smiled. One man tugged his forelock, somehow recognizing Durand's blood. Durand nodded.
He turned back on a worried Heremund. "No matter what I do, my lot is not the worst." Heremund laughed.
"You could always wear that thing, you know," he said, jerking his chin toward the mail. "That's what they're for."
Durand laughed. "Walking all day in a hauberk and leggings. Then, perhaps, I would have the worst lot" There would be no skin on his shoulders.
They were low in a valley, and it was getting on toward evening. The first day's traveling was at an end.
Durand turned to the reed-cutters.
"Lads," he called. "What's this place called?"
The two men conferred a moment, then called back: "Balian's the village, sir." It was not a famous name.
Durand looked back to Heremund—this would tell him how far they'd traveled—but the skald's darting eyes told him more than he wanted to know.
"How far does that make it?" he asked.
'Three leagues, Durand. Maybe."
Durand nodded.
They must cover ninety.
Durand waved numb thanks to the cutters and tramped up the hill. If he did not find something soon, he would starve before he got his chance.
They reached the top of the rise, where a valley fell away below them, opening half a league around the silver course of the River Banderol. The low Eye of Heaven lanced across the valley, free for the first moment in days. It shimmered over black fields blushing green with the first shoots of the winter wheat
Heremund stalked up after him. "You know, I wager those lads'll lend us a spot by their fire if we gave them a hand with the—"
Just then, light sparked on metal. Beyond the river, rounds of steel winked from the far ridgeline. Durand saw it: spurs, the pommels of swords, the high brows of helms all flashing under Heaven's Eye. A cavalcade of horsemen rode like something from a dream.
"Knights," Durand breathed. As though his voice dispelled the dream, the column vanished, swallowed by some dip in the terrain.
"Durand, what is it?"
He waited for the glint of metal to bob back above the ridge, feeling the curl of his cloak in his fist Here, at least, was a chance at something.
But the flash did not return.
He wouldn't wait. "Follow me, skald!" he said, and plunged down from the headland across the patchwork mire of fields. This chance would not slip from his hands.
Heremund chased him. "What in the Hells are you going on about? I'm not meant for vaulting bloody hedges."
Durand jolted down the slope past toiling peasants who gaped or shouted curses. Finally, the gray swell of the river loomed up in his path. There must have been twenty paces of deep water, and, left or right, Durand saw no sign of bridge or ford.
Heremund reeled up behind. "If you intend to escape me," he gasped, "you can't just stop here. I'm too quick for that." "We've got to get across!"
"All right," the skald panted. "But I insist. Don't tell me anything. Not a word. Nothing that might Drive off the thought. Some fiend of the forest. Has taken hold of your troubled mind."
The little man braced his weight on his knees, eyebrows up around his hairline, then gave up hope of getting an explanation.
"Right," he said. "I reckon I know where we are."
They squandered half an hour searching for the bridge, half the time walking backward. Durand kept his neck craned for a glimpse, but saw no more sign.
Finally, the skald gestured to a broad expanse of turbulent water where a thousand small stones had forced the river out of its deep channel.
"Here. The Ford of Coystril, I think," the skald said. "A battle was fought here long ago. Fetch Hollow's somewhere near." The little man peered up in turn at both flanks of the valley. The ruins of low walls mazed the slopes.
Durand needed to hear nothing more. Weaving under the weight of his armor, he splashed into the river. By the time he had jogged up the far valley wall, blood and blackness crowded his vision. At the top, he found nothing but an empty road. The riders were gone.
"There is some sign that men have passed here," said Heremund, sweating, and it did look as though something had churned up the road. "Not many," said the skald, "maybe a score. Some were on good horses, I think. Not peasants and oxen anyway. Shod hooves."
Durand nodded. "This is where I saw them."
"We weren't looking for oxen, then?" The little man paused. "Knights perhaps?"
"Aye."
"Glad you've seen fit to confide in me at last."
The road forked near where they stood, one branch heading overland away from the river. Heremund waded into the morass, fingering the gouges and sockets cut in the mud by the passing horses.
"We've got to overtake them," Durand said.
"They've taken the Tormentil road. A fair-sized town hunkered on the edge of the forest a couple of leagues west of here."
Durand checked Heaven's Eye, gauging that they had an hour or two before dusk.
"Of course," said Heremund, "they could be stopping before then or turning up another road to go somewhere else altogether."
'Tormentil," said Durand, feeling the sound of it. If it had a reputation, word of it had never reached him.
"Big enough there's likely to be a tavern of sorts most nights. Decent place. Nothing else close."
Durand allowed himself a crooked smile.
"They're heading for Tormentil, then," said Durand, "or we won't catch them."
"Three leagues!" exclaimed the exhausted skald.
"Aye, Heremund, but maybe when the Eye goes down, there'll be beer."
DARK AND DOUBT came on.
They slithered along the grassy verge of a track in full flood. Bald-faced rooks tumbled in bare branches, ill-omened things.
Durand wondere
d what he was chasing. A band of knights might be some lord and his men traveling to Red Winding, but it could as easily be nearly anything else. Still, he had not seen anything like a chance before this, and there were times when a man must take a stand.
The rooks could have been laughing at him.
"Durand."
It felt like he had swung poor Brag over his shoulder, instead of just his packs, and a fist of hunger worked its fingers in his guts. His eyes felt hot as candle flames. With every step his shield slapped him on the—
"—Durand. Hold up," said Heremund.
The little man hopped into the track and crouched low, careful not to sink his knees in the muck. There was no way to tell what he was after.
"Aye?" said Durand.
"I think we've got lucky."
Durand nearly laughed at the idea. "What do you see?"
"We'll have supper after all. I may even give you a share, seeing as you've been such good company."
Durand was about to interrupt when Heremund stuck a finger into the air. He made a show of snorting air up his nose.
"You smell it?"
Durand smelled nothing and scowled. "Cow dung," prompted Heremund. "How hungry are you?"
"It'll be a village close by, and I'll bet my eyes it's Tormentil." Heremund looked around himself and spotted something in the hedge a few strides off. "Here! That's clinched it for certain."
The little man had tramped up to what looked like a low roadside shrine. A squat stone construction slumped around a dark niche. As he reached the thing, though, Heremund stumbled back.
"Gods!”
Durand let his bundles down into the grass and waded nearer, swallowing an odd wave of panic. At first he could see little. There was a squat trunk of masonry, and a black gap at about the height of a man's belt. As Durand moved closer, the shadows kept their secret—for a moment. A scent touched Durand's nostrils. Sharp.
It was not uncommon for people to set flowers or loops of trail-woven grass rope at a roadside icon. Sometimes the thing might be given honey or bread. But what Durand smelled was the reek of excrement.