by David Keck
Flashes burst in Durand's eyes.
Crushed and fighting for air, he prayed Lamoric was free. Then the hag was in motion.
A weight like a boulder tramped Durand's shoulder. He scrambled, gulping for air. He managed to yank his half-crushed feet from under the monster's shins, and twisted.
A full fathom over his head, the hag's face snarled under a thatch like a root ball. He read outrage there, but Durand could not get free. She smiled.
The monster shadowed the world until nothing remained but the glinting points of her teeth and a chill like deep clay. He could hear the hag haul in air like a rotten bellows. She smelled of the bottom.
Durand understood that he must die.
As the monster began its fatal leer, a jolt shook her frame. The hag froze, her mouth jutting like a clay funnel. Durand looked for an explanation and found a strange glint in the dark near his knees.
The glint was a blade. He recognized the long shaft of the pole. The thing had plunged through the monster's back to split a shield by Durand's knee. He heard a high wheezing sound.
"Durand? Get out," Lamoric commanded. "For God's sake."
Durand blinked. The creature was braced on trembling arms, her face stiff as retching. Then her eyelids twitched.
In an eruption like the hundred warhorses at Red Winding, Durand and the monster both burst into motion. Durand sprang, twisting and scrambling for freedom, while a scream ripped from the hag's body. He lunged out of reach. She was nailed to the island. And thrashing now. Every blow stamped debris into the air. Lamoric perched high on her shoulders. The fiend groped at its back, but the slim lance held the brute, like one needle holding a forest boar. No barbs or spines armed the blade, but the earth or the island held her.
Lamoric rode the hag until one sudden buck threw him wide, and he crashed down in the water beyond the fiend's talons. The river swallowed him whole..
Durand tried to crawl, but then saw motion all around him: boats. Boats of all kinds hit the water, the whole crowd jumping into the cut. As peasants and peers hauled him to his knees, he looked at the flailing hag. Rotten shields splattered as she lashed and twisted. The lance couldn't hold long. In his mind's eye, the hag was already loose and ravening through the crowds, then he remembered the duke's speech: Mircol had turned the river.
The strangers were hustling him from the island, desperate and wide-eyed.
'The dam!" Durand shouted. A few of the harrowed men stole glances at him, but not one of them stopped. He jerked in their hands.
"They've got to close the dam! Send in the river!" Bearded elders and young boys looked down. Someone said, "Right!" and the call went up.
IN THE LEATHER bottom of some peasant's boat, Durand got his breath back and soon found himself, on his elbows in the grass. Lamoric sprawled beside him, alive. The red iron mask was gone, but another mask of muck and blood served just as well.
"Durand? Are you all right?"
Durand pawed at his own face with the shaking heel of his hand.
"I am," he answered.
"I thought it had you," said Lamoric—Lamoric, his lord, who had saved him. "Ah," Lamoric added, "here are the lads."
With curt glances, first Guthred, then Agryn, and then the rest crouched around their lord, swords in their fists. The fiend was still howling out in the water. Berchard shoved dry blankets into Lamoric's hands and Durand's.
Only Coensar did not stoop. Like a ship's master, he stood above them all, first looking across to the island, then, in a glance, taking stock of Lamoric's condition. Without a word, he strode up the bank for the duke's box.
"Host of Heaven," said Lamoric. "I thought I was dead. She held me tighter than iron, and I could do nothing but hang there waiting for her. My head. It could have been a grape in her fist."
The wary knights shifted, giving Durand a glimpse of the hag down a narrow alley of knees and shinbones. Already, a clear tide poured into the channel, clean water rising on the flanks of the island. A swing of the hag's fist clipped a spray into the air. She flailed as the water rolled over her prison once more. And soon, a last reaching talon was all that could break the surface. The Glass swallowed the Isle and its prisoner as if they had never been.
Lamoric was looking him straight in the eye.
"Durand, you could have stayed in that boat," he said.
"No, Lordship," Durand said. He could not.
Lamoric looked into the Heavens and saw the marred clouds. "God. What does it mean?"
Durand had no answer.
Sir Agryn spoke. "The Blood of Kings, Lordship." He seemed uneasy. "It is the image of the day that King Car-lomund left this world, five years past. You had to be near Windhover to see it so plainly." A vague memory of the day rose in Durand's mind: Acconel, a hundred-fifty leagues away, rocking as if it were a ship under a dark sky. When its king died of violence, the kingdom shuddered.
"I don't understand," Lamoric said. "Has someone died?"
Coensar reappeared, stepping through the circle to kneel at Lamoric's side. "I think we shall see that for ourselves soon enough, Lordship."
"What are you saying?"
"The Herald. He's put the Red Knight on the Tern Gyre roll." He grinned for a moment, with a glint of hard humor. "You'll be there to ask the king yourself."
21. The Seal of the Patriarchs
They made three leagues before Durand's boots had a chance to dry, riding the Hesperand borders for Tern Gyre. The Knight in Red did not tarry to eat the hero's portion, instead ordering his stunned retainers to strike their tents and take to the road.
They traveled in a silence that suited Durand to the ground, and they left Deorwen and her mistress-servant behind.
Suddenly, a gang of riders jounced past on the narrow forest track. Though not one would look Durand's way, they were not strangers: big Ouen, Badan the Wolf, one-eyed Berchard, and more. The whole retinue balled up around their lord where he rode at the head of their cavalcade.
When Lamoric noticed, Badan bellowed "Right!" and the whole conroi caught hold of their startled lord, heaving him up and out of his saddle.
"And this one!" shouted a voice at Durand's shoulder, and Durand found himself grabbed as well.
Then the branches over the track were swinging. Knights huffed and waddled between him and the sky, lugging him somewhere. He heard the river: the Glass.
Ahead, the first gang was already shouting. "One, two—" then, "Wait! He's still in his bloody mail coat," and "Shuck him! Peel him!" Lamoric had never taken the time to strip off his Red Knight gear. Durand, however, had got free of his own hauberk as soon as he could get the thing off. There were whoops and shouts of laughter.
One of the bearded thugs carrying Durand shouted helpfully, "Wait now, this one's ready!" Feet slithered in the riverbank clay, and then the bastards were swinging him: "One, two—"
"—-Gods!" Berchard gasped, his voice shot through with real horror.
Durand's assailants checked their swing, tumbling Durand into the shallows before he could see what had happened.
When he spluttered to the surface, there wasn't a noise in Creation but for the river. In the midst of the mob, Lamoric sprawled shirtless in the track, looking for all the world like someone just cut from the gallows. Red wounds and bruises spread over his chest and shoulders, stark against his pale skin.
For a single heartbeat, Lamoric did not move.
Then he winced a wry smile, looking on the livid evidence of his beating for the first time, smeared, mashed, split, and grinning feebly at Coensar and the others.
"Worth every one."
Some nodded. It was plain to see there had been nothing holding their lord in his saddle but will. "Aye, Lordship, maybe," murmured Berchard. "All right," Coensar said, quietly. "We stop here." "Captain," Lamoric began, firmly.
"No, Lordship. Guthred? Agryn? Let's see what we can do about this. He'll be no good to anyone as he is."
An empty glade above the road would make a decent camp. "
Durand," said Agryn, "lend us a hand." And Lamoric hissed as they took his weight,
"We've got leagues to cover before the Eye leaves us," Lamoric protested. Despite years in a castle yard, Durand had never seen a living man more badly beaten. Puckered grins of ragged flesh crowned the worst bruises.
"We'll need bear gall," breathed Berchard.
Guthred hissed, "You've got bear gall?"
Berchard shrugged. "You have it, you don't need it. You need it, you don't have it."
"Where's Coen?" Lamoric looked from face to face among his bearers. His eyes met Durand's. "Tell him—" he stopped, gasping as they shifted. "Tell him we'll stop here an hour. An hour, then we go on."
"Comfrey," said Guthred. "Yarrow. Bloodstone. Self-heal, maybe."
"Marsh mallow," offered Berchard. "You've got it?" said Guthred. "I think I've got some in my gear." "Fresh?"
"We must press on," Lamoric said.
"I've bear grease in a salve," said Berchard. "And coral, blessed by the_ patriarch at Wave's Ending."
Lamoric twisted. "We haven't time to stop. We should—we should try for Hellebore by nightfall."
Agryn marshaled others to gather blankets, and they sought out a level spot. "What do you say, Guthred?" he asked.
"Plasters anyway. Poultice. Warm. Something to dull the pain. Something to draw the evil from the wounds. I've got all we need in my gear. We'll have to get the wounds clean first."
"This spot will serve as well as any," said Agryn, "though it
might have been better to get further from the Glass and Hes-perand. I will light a fire. Someone bring Guthred's things."
Gingerly, they lowered Lamoric onto a space of flat turf. By the look on .his face, though, they might have been tossing him across a harrow. Durand found himself wincing.
He went pale, his head lolling, then reared up. "What day is it?"
"By my count, there are seven days until the tournament at Tern Gyre," Agryn said evenly. "Agh. It's a hundred leagues."
"Nearer fifty, Lordship," Agryn said. "Most on the king's roads."
One of the boys handed Durand Guthred's bag. He remembered an earthenware flask the man used on the more battered knights, and found it quickly enough. The shield-bearer took it with a nod.
"A few things in wine," he told Lamoric, feeding the man a long swig.
Lamoric grimaced. "God, I hope it wasn't good wine." It was all he could do to keep his head up.
THE SHOCK OF Lamoric's wounds receded a little from their minds as the men worked. Within the hour, the company had pitched tents and built a bonfire—at first to boil the various concoctions the muttering barber-surgeons devised, then to roast venison it seemed old Mornaway had sent along with them. Berchard and the old man's steward had also managed to smuggle a keg of decent claret into the baggage.
The whole company crouched round Lamoric, not willing to let him from their sight.
"Well, I for one thought our friend here was gone," said Berchard. 'Then up he pops." The man thrust his bearded chin Durand's way. 'Thrashing like a crocodile and straight after her. And she doesn't know what's hit her. Wakes up after God knows how long in the muck, and suddenly iron-shirted goats are crashing about on their hind legs."
"What else could I do?" Durand said. They were trying to make a hero out of him. It was just as well they hadn't seen what was in his mind.
"Berchard," said Agryn, "the lad cannot be goat and crocodile both."
"And then—" Berchard continued, too loud with Lamoric asleep at his elbow. Catching himself, he continued in rough whisper, examining a poultice plastering Lamoric's shoulder. "And then His Lordship with that pole! It's no wonder our Herald wrote him in. Host of Heaven! If we'd known it was so easy, we could have skipped Mornaway's boy altogether and gone fishing for river monsters."
Big Ouen leaned back, knotting his fingers in back of his blond mane, gold teeth winking. "It all seemed so far away before now, this Red Knight scheme."
"And harebrained," added Badan.
"Badan. God's sake," snapped Berchard. He was just peeling the vile-looking poultice from Lamoric's shoulder as Badan spoke. If Lamoric's eyes were open, he would have heard.
"With a gross of good silver pennies for the season," Badan added.
Ouen held a big hand up flat, his straw-bearded face still thoughtful.
"Maybe that," he said. "But somehow I don't know if I ever reckoned we'd see Tern Gyre. Now, I can see us there in my mind's eye. All of us, with the pennons flying. The Herald and the prince looking on. All the best men of the kingdom wondering who our Red Knight is, with their tongues wagging over everything we do. There's not one of us has had a chance like that."
"And if we win, eh?" Berchard said.
"Aye," Ouen said, and the whole company was nodding, firelight in their eyes. "No more roads. No more rain. Happy days for sure."
Cool as an eel, a breeze chose that moment to coil through the little campsite. The Eye of Heaven guttered in the damp boughs of Mornaway.
Despite the fire and blankets, Lamoric shuddered. Every man twitched a look his way, noting the drowned pallor and cadaver features—a specter looking very little like a hero who might lead them to a victory.
"We'll get him under cover," Agryn said, ordering Durand, Badan, and Ouen into action. The three shuffled their lord into his pavilion. The man's skin was hot as candle wax as Durand closed his hands round the lordling's ankles. Badan and Ouen then played nursemaid, hauling out rough blankets. Durand stood back against the canvas walls. Lamoric groaned. The group's physicians muttered over dressings and hissed orders.
Heremund popped through the tent flap, in a breath of smoke and without a word, kindling a lamp.
None of the others had noticed quite how dark it had become, but now the flame glowed over every stark bruise. And Durand remembered standing on the Barrow Isle with his heart divided, needing to save this man and wanting him crushed from Creation. Here, the living man lay like a vision of the dead one Durand had wished for.
He forced himself not to turn from what he had wanted.
Lamoric had caused him no harm—had saved his life, in truth. But Deorwen filled his mind's eye. He could hardly breathe for it.
Heremund was watching.
Turning from the others, Durand shoved through the tent flap and outside.
Three cloaked riders looming in the High Ashes track. The first had an axe at his hip. Frozen, Durand made out Lady Bertana's shape beyond the axeman, and Deorwen beyond them both.
Coensar and the others at the fire stood to meet the new arrivals, and Durand took his chance to slip into the cool gloom of the riverbank.
Deorwen swung down into the firelight, her face blooming in its glow. Durand retreated further into the shadows. It seemed to him that she might be searching from face to face.
Coensar put one knee in the mud.
"Lady Deorwen," he said.
"Sir Coensar."
"Your husband rests in his pavilion."
Her lips parted for a long moment before she spoke.
"I would see him," she said.
"Yes, Ladyship," Coensar said and conducted her from the light—or almost. At the very edge of the firelight, Durand imagined another searching glance.
He stood then, his heart kicking in his throat. In a tent hardly ten paces away, Lord Lamoric lay shattered in his blankets—the same man who had pinned the hag to the earth when he could have fled—real and sick and alive. What was Durand doing?
A shovel bit into the ground.
Confused, Durand took a moment to spot Berchard in the brush. He must have bustled out of the tent right on Durand's heels. The old campaigner tossed his shovel aside and gingerly held a clotted mass of barley-meal over a hole.
"Go," he said. "By the Powers of Heaven, go! Go and take the evil you carry from our lord. By the Champion, by the Warders, go!" With that, he let the foul poultice fall from his hands and into the earth.
Durand blinked. He must have taken anot
her step backward. His heel sank into silt and pebbles, and, just as he felt the water grip his ankle, he heard a wet slap behind him, then another: slap-hiss, slap-hiss.
He turned and looked out over the Glass.
There, among the shadowed hulks of trees, pale figures swayed, like banners of worn linen. Sounds murmured above the gurgle of the river. The gray shapes moved along the far bank, half-invisible, though he could hear their voices— women's voices speaking and the slap of laundry on the stones. He had forgotten how near Hesperand was. The sharp tang of lye burned in his nostrils. He stumbled—just a half step to catch himself—and every pale shape froze.
Dark rents opened: mouths and hollow eyes all staring.
Somewhere beyond the fringe of trees, gray hounds bayed. He thought he heard someone murmur "Saewin."
"Durand."
Durand felt a hand on his arm. An ugly little man looked up at him, beady eyes blinking on either side of a mashed .nose. Concern worked a crease between those eyes, and Durand knew the skald.
"Come away from the water," he said, and gave his arm a tug.
"Heremund," Durand said, stupidly. It seemed a long time since he had spoken with the little man.
The skald cast a shrewd look across the river.
"I would have seen us push through to Hellebore before we stopped. We are too near. Especially now," said Heremund. 'The blow that shook that old hag free. That was no little thing. There's been nothing like it since the old king."
Beyond Heremund, Deorwen would be alone with her husband, crouching by him where he lay. But this was not the whole world. One man's heart was not the end of Creation.
He remembered the Heavens.
"Carlomund," said Durand.
Heremund made the fist and fingers at the dead king's name. "And before that God knows."
Durand nodded. 'The Blood of Kings." It had been five winters since the old king died a-hunting. "In Windhover, old Carlomund went riding ..." the ballad went. All his sons were there. They said Prince Biedin warned him to be careful, and that Prince Eodan and Ragnal rode with him. "Too many princes" was the general conclusion, but even a king can die in a fall.