by David Keck
Their horses slipped and stuttered down the muddy bank into the gorge, wallowing into a great stream of chill air that slithered down the river's course.
"Host of Heaven," said Ouen.
Ahead, something slapped the water. The sound leapt through the dripping ravine.
Heremund stopped, and then they could only hear the Glass.
Durand swallowed, and Heremund had just begun to turn— something cheerful forming on lips—when another wet slap sounded. And another. Each smack loud and unnerving in the mist, but Ouen had not drawn his sword, and Durand didn't want to be the first. He did, however, finger the handle of the hatchet. The thing would work as well on men as bridges.
Heremund nudged his horse into a cautious walk. Ouen glanced back, his face incredulous. The sound wasn't particularly threatening, but neither did it respond to any obvious explanation.
They approached a section of stream where the water turned around the shoulder of a hill. Beyond it, something twinkled for an instant in the mist. With the next slap, droplets glittered above the rise. Heremund hesitated, just perceptibly, then urged his horse around the corner.
"Gods," he whispered, for the moment alone.
"What do you see?" asked Durand. Heremund was frozen there. Ouen hopped down from his mount, his big sword flickering from its scabbard. Then he, too, stopped as he turned the corner.
"What is it?" Durand pressed.
When he got no answer—no reaction of any kind from either of the men—he too dropped into the trail and approached the big earth prow. And saw it
A heap of rags perched on a molarlike stone that erupted from the green gums of the bank. After a moment the heap twitched into motion, and naked arms slapped a stained tunic across the stone. Durand made out the curve of a round face. It was a washerwoman. Or a girl. Under the glow of the smothered Heavens, he could make out a cheek like a blob of raw dough. She squatted amid a ring of soiled clothes. Her knees were against her chest under a simple green shift. He could not see her feet. The blue-gray tunic in her hands was stained with something dark. Cloudy tendrils streamed past in the water along the bank.
Abruptly, her squat face turned, and Durand was caught by black glistening eyes set in bruised circles. She had no more expression than a millpond trout.
Suddenly, Durand's sword seemed ridiculous. The mooncalf girl seemed about to run. He set the blade on the grass and turned empty palms to her. But she started up, round-shouldered and dwarfish. Her first, half-intentional start seemed about to tumble her into the water. "No!" Durand said. He heard Heremund gulp something, but was between the woman and the water—his impulse was to save her.
She shuffled backward. He was very close. Her forehead shone like a hard dome of wax above the doughy shapelessness of her cheeks. But all he could see were her eyes. They were darker than any he had ever seen. It was as though each pupil had dilated to swallow the whole bulging orb. The darkness seemed to stain the whites in viscid rings of brown— inhuman. Her slack lips parted to reveal a pike's white needle teeth.
"Durand!" Heremund hissed. "Back," the girl-creature croaked. "What?" "Ba-a-ck."
"Durand, you must not bar her way!" Heremund whispered.
"Please." The creature wrung the blue-gray tunic between her hands. "Kings. Kings I see. I will tell everything. Ask what you will. I will tell all. Only let me back. Let me back."
"Everything?"
"Durand, no!" Heremund's fingers caught Durand's arm and pulled him hard, nearly throwing him into the water. The instant Durand was no longer between the washerwoman and the water, she snatched up the clothes around her boulder and leapt into the stony shallows at the bank. Somehow, she did not touch bottom, but tumbled in as if the edge film were a thousand fathoms deep.
"What in the name of every Power?" Durand whispered. Heremund made the fist and splayed fingers sign of the Eye. "A Washerwoman." "What?"
"A Washerwoman. We've been lucky." He eyed the high banks of the gorge.
"King of far Heaven! What are you talking about?"
"It is one of the Banished. Or they are."
"Why would something break its way into Creation just to wash its clothes?"
"Not its clothes. Look to your feet."
He stood on the woman's pale rock. The light was stronger now. Everything was red. He could see the marks of his soles smeared in fresh blood. The boulder was spattered. Its iron stink was up his nose.
"She washes the rags of those soon to die. Some say she's grieving, or playing at it."
Durand glanced around the group, searching for the blue-gray of the creature's tunic but found none.
"She might have told you." Heremund shook his head, still rattled. "She might have told you a lot more as well."
"What do you mean?"
'They say she knows whose clothes she's washing and how death will come. And they say she can tell you the day she'll beat the blood from your torn surcoat." He shook his head. "Who could live and know such things?"
Ouen stared out over the water, his sword of war in his hands. "Host of Heaven."
"Durand, they say to learn your doom, you need only bar her way to water."
Ouen was moving. "If we are to try this mad plan of the boy's, then we must get to the bridge. No matter what I say, we'll have to try. I, for one, am not wearing the tunic she was beating, and we'd look bloody stupid riding back without having clapped eyes on the bridge at all."
"Aye right," Heremund said. "If you get back in your saddle, I'll see if I can't get us to the bridge."
AROUND THE BEND, all three men stared up at a bridge as high and strong as a king's barn. "It's huge," Durand said.
Five fathoms over the water, the flat bed was buttressed with massive posts and trusses. Durand took a look at the kindling-splitter hatchets they had to work with.
"You know," said Ouen, "we could chop the stone bridge down and leave this one stand."
"I should have kept my mouth shut," Heremund muttered.
Ouen looked to Durand. "Your skald friend makes a good point."
Durand clambered up the bank. There must be something: a weak point. But the beams were thick as a warship's keel, and ten centuries of hooves and iron-shod cart wheels had pounded the deck solid.
Ouen strode out onto the bridge, pacing. Durand could not hear his grumbles, but crouched with the useless hatchet dangling from his hand. Coensar was done for.
Crouched as he was, he pawed hair from his eyes and caught a whiff of something sharp as his hand passed close: pitch where he had touched the braces. And suddenly he realized— they'd soaked the bridge with the stuff to keep it from rotting.
"No wonder..."
Ouen was pacing. "No wonder what?"
Durand didn't answer, but looked up craftily. "There's an easy way to get rid of a wooden bridge..."
"After the storm? The trails were full of mud. The trees are dripping. We'd be faster chopping."
Heremund climbed out of his saddle, and walked to the bridge beams, bending close, then scratching with a thumbnail.
"They've slathered the oak with pitch."
Ouen blinked at Heremund and Durand, and then the big gold smile dawned. "Coensar might have his chance after all!"
Heremund grimaced. "I guess they can build another when we're gone. They've got forever."
Durand turned to Heremund. 'Try and get a spark. We'll get tinder."
Durand and Ouen split up, raking the trees along the bank for dry wood. Durand crouched—knees in the needles— under a big spruce, ripping rough handfuls of brittle, resinous branches from under the spreading boughs. The spruce twigs would burn, even if everything else in Hesperand was dripping. He carried the prickly mass back to the bridge.
Coensar would have his chance.
Heremund was crouched at the bridge, blowing at a bit of fluff in his hands. There was already smoke. "You'd best hurry."
"We'll set the kindling in place on Bower Mead's side of the Glass. We'll get the horses over the br
idge, then we'll fire the tinder and bid the bridge farewell."
Durand shoved the dry branches under the bed of the bridge, and left Heremund to work out the details. Back and forth he went. He could hear Ouen working with his hatchet, gathering larger branches, but he kept at the spruce trees, wagering that the brief hot fire would be enough to get the old pitch to burn.
Soon they had packed the gap between the bed and bank with loose branches. Needle rays picked their way between the branches as the Eye of Heaven burnt away the veils of pink cloud that swathed the horizon. Ouen and Durand led the horses across the high span while Heremund labored under the bridge.
"I hope Cassonel and his boys're not riding too hard," Ouen said. "I'd hate to meet a squad of knights right now."
'They don't know there's any reason to hurry."
They tied the horses securely within the woods on the opposite bank. Though they would ride the animals back to Coensar the moment the bridge caught fire, if the horses weren't tied, the blaze would surely spook them before anyone could mount.
Heremund shouted from beyond the trees. "Whoa! I think that's got it!" Resinous smoke stung Durand's nostrils.
Forgetting Hesperand for a moment and smiling like boys, he and Ouen trotted out to the bridge. Yellow blades of fire stuttered over the edges of the bed.
Then someone was shouting. "Lord of Dooms, what do you think you're doing?" The stranger's face was leathery, and, though he was tall and straight for a plowman, there wasn't much to him. He stood just at the bridgehead, and he looked from the fire to the two strangers as though they were both mad.
"Bastards!" he swore, and, in a wavering instant, his expression changed from anger to fear. He started to run for help. There would be people enough in the village to stop them and douse the fire before it was properly started. Ouen stumbled through the ragged smoke to catch the man.
Durand jumped. The man had hardly made a step, but now he was bracketed between Durand and the fire.
The peasant's eyes snapped over the whole scene. He saw one chance: to dodge past the big lad on the village side of the bridge. He moved.
Durand lunged. His elbow hit the man high. It should have knocked the peasant flat; instead, the man struck the low railing of the bridge.
In an instant, he had cartwheeled over.
"God!" Durand said. His fingers batted an ankle, but he could not catch hold. A great hollow knock shook the bridge from a beam far below. There was a deep, sucking splash. Durand doubled over the rail, looking down. A red smear gleamed on the corner of a beam a fathom below, and the body tumbled bonelessly downstream.
The man's tunic was blue-gray.
Smoke burned Durand's eyes. Someone was pulling his sleeve, but he watched as the blue tunic tumbled and rolled to where the river rounded a bend—under a bank that rose like the prow of an upturned ship.
"Hells, lad," Ouen said. "Come on. Bad luck to stay behind when you're burning bridges."
Durand's finger touched the green veil's knot.
WHEN THEY RETURNED, it had already begun.
Coensar stood alone in the high center of the span, blue and silver against the shining mist. A spectral company had gathered on the Bower Mead side, their way barred. Horses huffed and thrashed their heads. The river spun.
For the moment, Durand and his comrades were trapped down below on the Bower side.
Coensar's voice echoed in the ravine. "No one crosses this bridge unless they come after His Lordship, Baron Cassonel of Damaryn. I've no quarrel with any man here but he, though you must all wait on the courage of Baron Damaryn."
Already, the acid bite of smoke had stained the air. Not a man of all those gathered rode for the upper bridge. Where Durand might have felt pride, now he curled his fists.
The Glass gurgled round the piers of the bridge, nearer to Durand than anyone. He thought of the dead man and wondered if he had already passed or if he had fetched up among the piers of the bridge and waited there even now. He had to force himself to look into the dark curls of the water.
There was no blue shirt.
Heremund and Ouen waited silently in the cool gloom beside him.
Cassonel did not make them wait long. Men moved aside, slipping out of view beyond the bank. Then, Cassonel's sable and silver standard appeared above the mist, a perfect rectangle. The baron had sent a standard bearer.
Coensar waited.
Finally, Cassonel himself rode out. His horse and surcoat were sable, but his limbs were sheathed in mail that might have been woven from the mist itself. Cassonel had taken the time to arm himself.
He stopped a few paces from the bridge, just in sight. "Sir Coensar," he began. "You mean to deny this bridge to me?"
"I wish the chance to return the favor you did me at Tern Gyre some years ago."
Cassonel nodded once: So be it.
Coensar spoke formally. "You, Cassonel, Baron of Damaryn, liegeman of Duke Ludegar of Beoran, will not pass this bridge without first besting me."
Cassonel sat erect. The top of his helm, clutched under his arm, flashed like a silver penny. "Sir Coensar, as you once fought to pass a door, I now fight to cross a bridge. So the rash acts of youth are never forgotten."
The man dropped from his horse in a rattle of armor audible over the Glass's rush. He set his battle helm on his head and raised his black shield, its two white diagonals like crossed swords. As he stepped onto the span, he drew his sword. The blade's weird hissing ring reminded Durand he was looking at the named weapon, Termagant.
Durand saw Coensar's hand dart up to turn his helm a notch, or seat it tighter, then the captain calmly settled into a fighting crouch. The terns and blue sky of his shield bobbed into view.
And for a moment the two swordsmen balanced there.
Water rushed below; horses coughed; Termagant and Keening whispered and moaned to one another, the Eye of Heaven gilded both mist and mail.
Durand could hardly see.
It was the baron who moved first.
Cassonel leapt into a deep lunge. The scuff of his soles on the bridge deck was like a startled gasp. Termagant glanced from the blue shield, and the baron narrowly evaded Coensar's fierce counter. Durand saw enough to guess: an undercut for the baron's shins. For a few heartbeats, the fight was on. Termagant shrieked like a high string. Shields blinded. Blades flashed at faces and shins. Few men could have kept pace.
Then the two combatants stepped apart, circling while the Glass poured into the sudden silence.
Coensar leapt this time, and Keening caught among the painted bars of Cassonel's salrire cross. The two men wrestled, grunting and straining, fighting to bring their blades to bear. For a time, Cassonel fought with Lamoric's men at his back. It didn't matter.
The two reeled apart, their blades tearing shrieks and whistles from the mist. One moment, Coensar was crouched under his shield. The next, Cassonel was staggering.
A rising cut flashed. It caught Cassonel's black helm, and chopped it into the sky.
And a heartbeat later, the tumbling thing struck the Glass only a pace from Durand, its gulping splash throwing water over the three under the bridge, and it sounded for all the world like a bucket down a well.
Overhead, Cassonel was reeling. Durand caught a glimpse of his face suddenly bare and crossed with dark threads of blood. The crowd hissed. Boots thudded on the deck as Coensar's stalking strides kept him a sword's length from his victim. Then the stricken man sank to his knees—twin thumps.
Durand imagined Keening's edge at Cassonel's throat. "I—I—I yield, Sir Coensar," a ragged voice said. He must have spent a moment catching his breath, fighting for air.
Through the wooden deck, Durand could see a dark blot of shadow. And maybe a hand spread for support.
"My arms, my mount, and my person I surrender to you. Do with me as you will."
The captain might have done anything then. Nothing moved but the river.
There was a swish, then a snap as Keening shot home in its scabbard
.
"Get up, Sir Cassonel," Coensar said, stepping back. "I want nothing more from you. It's not for arms or ransom I've fought, and I'll take neither. What I wanted, I have." He offered Cassonel his hand.
The Baron of Damaryn wavered to his feet. Over the bridge rail, the baron's bloody face was grim. 'Though you will take nothing from me, there is something you must have."
"You've no need to—"
"Our king has put his crown at hazard."
Coensar narrowed an eye.
"This last loan he's had of the Great Council: shiploads of silver for the fighting in Heith when the Borogyn and his Marchers wouldn't come to heel."
"He has borrowed before," said Coensar.
"But not a penny has ever been returned, and this time the Council has demanded a surety. And he has pledged it all. Ragnal has pledged his crown."
Durand felt a shiver through his marrow, picturing a thing like the crown of Errest the Old pledged against a debt.
"Lord of Dooms," Coensar breathed.
"And there will be no coin."
"When must he repay it?" said the captain, not arguing.
"It does not matter. The marches have spent his silver for him. They say he could not have foreseen how long the fighting lasted."
"What are you telling me?" Coensar said, his tone flat.
"The Great Council will sit. It may be that the barons will be lenient. The king will come to Tern Gyre and meet them. I am not the only rider on the roads this moon."
The baron wavered a fraction then. Durand saw hands rise all round, as though to save the battered lord. But he caught himself and spoke.
"You say you lost that long-ago day at Tern Gyre, and you have lived with that. I won that day at Tern Gyre, but I have lived with what I've won. The Silent King knows all dooms."
The crowd joined Coensar, saying, "All praise to the King of Heaven."
LAMORIC's MEN RALLIED at the bridgehead, including those who had waited under the bridge the whole while. As the retainers of other lords trooped across the bridge, some few were cheerful enough to jeer or shout congratulations. Everyone took his chance to slap their captain's shoulders. Though Cassonel's ominous tidings had unnerved them all, they had won a real victory.