Bound for the Forest

by Kay Berrisford

  If just for fear of his life, Scarlet wanted to argue otherwise. But how could he? It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been warned. But he muttered desperately, “No,” even as the ghostly bay of Herne’s hounds echoed around the dell. The Hunter rose to his full height and glowered across the waters.

  “Niogaerst needs sacrifice,” he said. “I just hope, little Scarlet, it is not to be you.” Then there came the blare of a horn, a rush of breeze—and Herne the Hunter was gone.

  * * *

  Scarlet didn’t know how long he stumbled on, or quite where he wanted to go. His feet were bruised and bleeding, the skin on his legs and ankles torn to shreds, and his wet clothes clung to him. He kept going until he hit a broad track on which the wheels of carts had carved ridges and grooves into the mud.

  Scarlet collapsed to his knees in the middle of the road, gasping for air as desperately as when he’d first been fished from the pool. It was the worst possible place. Blinking weakly up ahead, he became aware of the five men on horseback approaching at a pace.

  It was Hastings and his sons. It had to be. And Scarlet was too exhausted to even get up, let alone run again.

  He watched them draw nearer and stop. The sons looked harrowed and ashen, and the old man appeared almost deathly, his skin variously clinging and sagging like a white shroud over the contours of his skull. Scarlet swallowed back a weary groan. They’d kill him now. Or they’d try to take him from the forest, and the result would be the same.

  Only slowly did it occur to him that the men weren’t interested in doing any of this. Indeed they stared well beyond him and hardly seemed to have noticed he was there. The creaking of a branch behind him stirred the queasiness in Scarlet’s stomach once more. He began to understand the newcomers’ stricken awe.

  “See the arrow in his side?” gasped William Hastings, pointing dead ahead. “It’s Rufus, the Norman Tyrant’s son. The forest spirits killed him for his cruelty, and now they’ve hung him from the trees!” The man’s voice rose shrilly, like he was on the verge of hysteria. “It’s another sign.”

  “Dear Lord!” cried one of the brothers. “See…swinging behind him… That’s…that’s Connor!”

  “It can’t be. This is an unholy trick. The undertaker took him back to Little Lyndton.”

  Voices swirled above him, livid with fear, and Scarlet found the energy to crawl to the edge of the track. The men’s horses whinnied and reared, and then the youngest son began waving his arms about wildly. “It’s us! There, swinging from the blasted oak. It’s us!”

  “It can’t be.”

  Each man fell silent. The wind, which had been swirling briskly down the track, went dead. Nobody breathed, silence pressing in like a heavy fog.

  “Let’s get out of this circle of hell!”

  Mud splashed in Scarlet’s face as the terrified men and beasts galloped on. He was left alone, the stillness broken only by the rhythmic creaking of the branches overhead. He still hadn’t looked up. He hardly needed to.

  Scarlet knew what he would see. The traitors of the forest: the corpses of those who had wronged the Greenwood from their very hearts, dangling from the trees in eternal indignity and torment. And Hastings and his sons had seen visions of their own corpses dangling beside them? Scarlet’s body rattled with a dry, mirthless laugh. Arya and Brien might have succeeded to a point in getting rid of the intruders, but they should have known to trust in the wily tricks of the spirits to finish the job…

  …or were the spirits speaking to him?

  Scarlet’s nerves clenched tight as his mind raked back over everything that had just happened to him. He had nearly drowned and been taken by the Wild Men, and now the hangings—and he hadn’t needed Herne’s reminder about his own fate of sacrifice. Shakily Scarlet raised his acorn charm to his lips and kissed it. It was Melmoth Brien’s fault! Until he came, Scarlet had hardly put a foot wrong.

  And was Melmoth Brien’s corpse hanging above him, beside the other traitors in the trees?

  He had to know. His blood thundering in his ears, Scarlet rolled onto his back. A bulky body swung from a tree not a yard off. A rope pulled tight around its broken neck; its limbs jerked and twitched in a dance macabre. The swollen tongue lolled from its mouth, the bulging eyes smudged yellow and red, pupils still darting with the tremors of fading life. An arrow pierced its side. This was not Brien. It was William the Conqueror’s son, Rufus, the most famous of the victims of the spirits, dead for over seven hundred years.

  He scanned the rest of the bloated, discoloured faces. No. Brien was not there. His energy rekindled by confusion, horror, and a sense of utter relief, Scarlet hauled himself up and stumbled from the roadside.

  Having travelled only a very small distance, he dropped amid the spreading roots of a chestnut tree and curled into a tiny ball. Sleep claimed him instantly. And from there, Scarlet wandered through a land that he knew all too well, that place with no sun, lit only by a hollow, green glow. The trees here were few, and when it started to rain, the water burned him. It melted little grooves along his skin, streaming down his face and clouding his vision. He decided to run for shelter, for the denser woodland at the heart of the forest. But the rain, he realized, was poisonous. It had seeped deep inside him, and he could no longer move. So the trees came to him.

  He was not shocked by any of this—not here, in the realm of Niogaerst. He’d seen it all before in dreams like this, although it still made him nervous. The shower of white arrows was all that was new.

  They poured down from invisible archers beyond the branches, snow-white quivers driving razor-sharp points into his chest, his arms, and his thighs. Scarlet cried out, watched his body tumble backward, and then he saw himself bleed. Thick crimson liquid trickled down his arms, legs, and chest, pooling on the thick, bubbling soil, although he felt no pain.

  “Don’t let it start yet,” whispered Scarlet. “Please let me go back, if just one more time. I want to know the truth.”

  * * *

  Scarlet willed his eyes to open, welcomed the dour, gray light of day, and muttered a bitter prayer of thanks. He was back in the Greenwood—for now, at least. He breathed out slowly and wrapped his arms tighter about himself. His cloak clung to him, still sticky with damp, but the liquid was warm.

  He dragged his palm over his chest and held it up in front of his eyes. He could see the dark stain, stark against the paleness of his hand. The warm liquid was blood, but not his blood. There was still no pain and, somehow, it smelled wrong—sour, moldering and metallic all at once. It was animal blood, probably a coney.

  Scarlet bit hard into his bottom lip; it was all too obvious what the spirits were trying to tell him. He’d learned what Niogaerst wanted at Old Brigit’s knee, and at that moment, it made more sense than ever:

  “A single death is not enough for the unfortunate chosen victim. Unwanted soul, changelings, gaast—just like you, Scarlet! The traitors may hang—but the sacrificed soul? Oh, he will know the torment three times over: death by poison and death by suffocation, before the blood is finally drained. Oh yes, my darling one. That way the Lord of the Hazel ensures that there’s no way back from his realm of Niogaerst…”

  Mud clotted against his cheek, but his wide, staring eyes refused tears. Dead ahead, he saw a rabbit, its carcass pinned to the trunk of a tree with a white arrow. Scarlet’s knuckles clenched white about his cloak.

  “If you want me,” he murmured, “then you’re going to have to come after me and drag me down. And I’ll kick and yell and bite you all the bloody way!”

  Chapter Eleven

  Brien wandered through the forest for an interminable period of time. Mud caked on his feet, making walking heavy and difficult, while shadows shifted erratically. Was it deer or foxes, maybe even a badger? Winged creatures rushed by, the ghostly quiver of air in their wake making him grimace with pure misery. He was damp, and he was bloody cold, still wearing little but that negligible cloak. This thankless hell had to be the least magical place in th
e whole world.

  He called Scarlet’s name until his voice grew hoarse, but he carried on regardless. When Brien finally discerned the distant sound of voices, he was so sick of trudging aimlessly that he nearly wept with relief. Even if it was Hastings, he was well nigh past caring.

  But it was not Hastings. Either by luck or misfortune, Brien had stumbled back to Arden. Clambering up onto the embankment, he considered whether he should make himself known or simply lie down near a fire and sleep, but the choice was not left to him for long.

  “Brien?” Ever eagle-eyed, Arya made her way over.

  He regarded her warily. “Is Scarlet back?”

  Arya shook her head; she had made attempts to neaten her hair and clothing, but there were purple smudges under her eyes, and she looked exhausted. “No. He hasn’t returned yet. I’ve sent several parties to search for him, though. We’re worried.”

  “I’m sorry. I should have kept closer to him. I…I…” He trailed off and almost laughed. “Although I’m suspecting you’re going to say the problem was I got a little too close?”

  Arya inclined her head in what appeared to be a gesture of conciliation, but he didn’t have much time to ponder it. A glint of something buttercup yellow caught his eye, and his gaze slid to her hands. “Is that…?”

  “It’s Scarlet’s neck cloth,” confessed Arya. “I was entreating to the Goddess for him, and I thought it might help, but…it’s yours, really, isn’t it?” She handed it to Brien. “You could give it back to him, if you want to.”

  Brien grunted, rubbing the smooth fabric between his finger and thumb as he had done once before. When he stuffed it beneath his cloak, it felt warm and soft against his heart. Then he felt like a fool. Arya’s lips curved into an unfathomable smile, as perfect as the crescent moons on her pendant.

  “Do…do you think he’s all right?” It was all that Brien could think of to say.

  “We won’t know until we find him, or until he chooses to come back to us. But at least we will have good news for him when he does. You see, whether you meant what you did or not, you helped us to succeed back there.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  Arya laughed then, and her tiredness all but evaporated. “A group of the girls just returned from the very skirts of the Greenwood. They did not find Scarlet, but they saw Hastings and his sons fleeing from the forest, witless with terror. Apparently they galloped straight through Little Lyndton and onto the Southampton road without as much as a fare-ye-well. They did not look like they wanted to return to the Greenwood anytime soon.”

  “There’s not much of a house left for them to live in,” Brien pointed out.

  “If you had any affection left for your old home, it was quite a sacrifice to make.” Once again Arya inclined her head, and there was something very humble about her manner. “We are truly grateful for your help. And I promise I will do all I can in pleading on your behalf for an audience with Jemima.”

  He shrugged. “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure. Now please, will you join us to eat?”

  The hour of the day dictated the meal was breakfast. Given that the majority of the company had been left as jaded as he by the night’s events, Brien was stunned by the willingness with which he was welcomed into the circle, once he had brushed off the worst of the dirt and retrieved his original clothes. They had been cleaned in his absence and now possessed a mild scent of primrose oil, the pleasantness of which made him cringe. But the women’s joyfulness was infectious, and he relished the view afforded of Urhelda’s cleavage when she leaned down to fill his goblet with mild honey ale. Nevertheless, Urhelda continued to parry his flirtations with finesse, and Brien soon found his ruminations upon Scarlet held sway once more.

  The sun was already over a third of the way across the sky when, rising abruptly, Brien announced he wanted to continue his search for Scarlet. He turned, lurching off toward the tree cathedral, and then froze.

  A slight figure stood just beyond the altar, staring through the company as if he hadn’t noticed were there.

  “Scarlet?” he murmured. Drunk more on a sudden tidal wave of relief than the ale, Brien staggered forward, arms outstretched and ready to pull the woodsman into an unquestioning embrace. Then he saw the blood drenching the boy’s cloak, and Scarlet’s two-handed shove nearly had him sprawling backward into the dirt.

  “Get away from me,” spat Scarlet. “I need to speak to Arya.”

  Brien stared after Scarlet as he sprinted away. Was that Scarlet’s blood? His guts lurched, but something told him it was not, that the lad was not in pain—at least, not of the physical kind. The faint notion then crossed his mind that he ought to tan the whelp’s hide for his impudence. But no, Brien just felt drained and a little dejected. Didn’t Scarlet have any clue about the hellish hours he’d spent seeking him after everything that had passed between them?

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. God, he needed to sleep.

  * * *

  “They’re coming for me. Niogaerst needs my blood, and Holgaerst will no longer protect me. Herne the Hunter told me that…that…I no longer belong to the Green Man.”

  Under the shelter of Arya’s cabin and wrapped tightly in a wool blanket, Scarlet spoke in a hushed, breathy voice. The salve still smarting against his welts and scratches, he explained as clearly as he could everything that had happened to him as he’d wandered through the twilight world between wakefulness and dreams.

  When he finished his tale, the priestess smoothed her fingertips across her brow. “I wish I understood more than I do. The reoccurrence of the white arrows is strange. They are the…”

  “…the weapon of the fairies,” finished Scarlet. “And of Jemima Brien. Do you think she is involved in some way?”

  “I wouldn’t like to say. Some of my girls are archers too. Urhelda is a splendid shot…but no, no. None of them possess the power to have fired into the realm of Niogaerst.”

  “Could Jemima do that?”

  Arya shook her head slowly. “I doubt it. Besides, her life has been devoted to Holgaerst, and she believes the fouler spirits are a thing of the past. Maybe it was Herne the Hunter, if he is at large? Or it could be your friends, the fairies. They may well have been trying to tell you something.”

  Scarlet ruffled his hair back from his eyes, exasperated. “And what sort of fairies do you think will be travelling at large in the forest with the catkins turned bloodred? Only those who would tie a boulder about your neck, push you into a bog, and dance while you foundered!”

  Arya sighed, reaching into the inglenook for her sewing, under which she had hastily concealed that morning’s catkins. “There’s no hiding anything from you, is there?” She held out one of the flowers. “But see, the stain still only reaches halfway up the shaft.”

  “Just over half,” Scarlet pointed out.

  “Only just. There’s hope, Scarlet, and there’s still time. But another thing I cannot see clearly about is Melmoth Brien. I feel no aura of malice about him, and everything that happened to you last night seems to support what I believe: he is not faederswica. He might be able to help us in ways that we cannot yet see.”

  “He doesn’t make any bloody difference!” Scarlet slammed his fist onto the ground, his voice imbued with a desperate bravado. “I’m still marked for sacrifice, and it’s his fault that sacrifice is needed.”

  “Do you really believe that is so?”

  “Yes, I damned well do. Herne said the Green Man has turned his back on me, and I woke up covered in rabbit’s blood. What else could it possibly mean?”

  “It could mean many things, none of which have anything to do with Brien. I really need to talk to Jemima.”

  “She’s no better than her brother. They’re both foul.”

  “Scarlet! How can you say that? I can understand your reservations about Brien, but even he is not of Niogaerst. The flow of true power through the protectors, and the power that flowed last night, is that of light and love.”

&nbs
p; “No! I won’t believe it!” Scarlet could do nothing to contain his rush of emotion, and he hated that. His suspicion was verging on becoming a truth, but if Brien was not faederswica, his cravings for the man became all the more complicated. How could he fight a being of Holgaerst? He ought to hate Brien with all his heart for severing his bond with the Green Man, and to be seeking any ritual, even begging on his knees, to induce the Green Man to reclaim him. Yet deep down, he didn’t want to. Scarlet raked his fingers shakily through his hair, trying to blink back the push of tears from his eyes, which just made him all the angrier. Arya touched his arm, and he jerked it away.

  “Brien is a protector, Scarlet. And you are bound to the forest. I said before, the attraction between you is quite natural.”

  “No,” said Scarlet. “No, it’s not. It’s dark; I can feel it. He…he makes me crave things that are painful and wrong.”

  A smile twitched at the edge of Arya’s mouth. “Pain is not always evil. Pain and pleasure can be much nearer kin than even love and hate. You don’t need me to tell you that.”

  No. He didn’t. Scarlet dropped his face into his hands. “But…if I give myself to him, even if I wanted to…he will still leave the forest. You know he does not wish to remain here, and…I cannot go with him. Where would that leave me, bound to an absent protector? Surely that would be death in itself? And either way…oh, in the name of the spirits, isn’t there anything you can do to help me?” He peered up at her between his fingers, stretching his eyes wide. “There must be some potion, some spell—something to stop Niogaerst draining my blood?”

  After a moment of contemplation, Arya reached out and touched his hand. Scarlet did not shrink away this time. He actually felt grateful, even though her fingers were icy cold. He thought of Brien’s hot, callous touch…and dragged a long, calming breath into his lungs. He wanted to live.

  “There is one thing I can think of,” said Arya. “A ceremony that I can perform. It is not dissimilar to the anointing process we tried before, but this one is more powerful and more dangerous. It will also be slightly more painful.”