Brand sighed. “What’s the use? If I wait long enough, I suppose you’ll just figure it out in that clockwork mind of yours. The bard claimed that he, himself, slayed Sam.”
Corbin stiffened, and Brand bit his lower lip, feeling his cousin’s pain. Ever since they had spilled Sam’s body from the cliffs into the flood of the Berrywine, Corbin had not been as light of spirit. “I’m sorry to tell you. Who even knows if it’s true, Corbin? We have no way of knowing.”
Corbin nodded grimly. “He could have just been trying to unnerve you,” he said, “but I think not. It makes too much sense. The blow was a clean, single sweep, which Voynod could have managed with his sword. Things were more likely to have been drawn out and messy if the rhinogs had been involved.”
Brand winced at the image that came to mind at Corbin’s words, but he couldn’t refute the other’s logic.
“You yourself had sighted the bard over several days prior to Sam’s death,” continued Corbin. “No, it makes sense. I believe it, and I must say I’m greatly relieved.”
Brand looked at him in surprise. Corbin looked haggard, his eyes dark in their sockets. He seemed anything but relieved.
“No, really,” said Corbin. They halted and Corbin grabbed both of Brand’s shoulders and held him at arm’s length. “I’m indebted to you, Brand. I would never have known if Sam’s death had gone unavenged. It would have always haunted me.”
Brand smiled then, but it was a grim thing, with no mirth in it. His smile turned to a humorless grin. He felt a wave of pleasure that he couldn’t understand, and then he realized that it perhaps had something to do with the axe. It was pleased, pleased that a wrong had been violently righted. Harsh justice had been meted out, and nothing gratified it more.
Corbin looked at him oddly. “The axe?” he asked.
Brand nodded, his odd expression fading.
“I wonder what motivates it,” said Corbin.
“I do too, sometimes. It seems like a strange spirit.”
“I mean,” said Corbin, groping for words, “does it think? If so, what does it think about? Is it just reacting to things or does it make plans and execute them?”
Brand shook his head. He had no answers. Both brooded over this for a time. The two marched the rest of the way to the gatehouse in silence. When they arrived the grille was levered back to allow them to enter.
Modi clapped a heavy hand onto Brand’s shoulder the moment he appeared inside the green dome. “Well done!” he said with more feeling than Brand had ever heard in his voice. “Well done indeed!”
Brand smiled tiredly. “Thanks,” he said, thinking that perhaps Modi wasn’t such a dark-hearted bully after all. It seemed that he could admit when he was wrong, which counted for a lot in Brand’s book.
“What happened, Brand?” called down Telyn. She still maintained her post at the top of the dome. She hung upside-down with her knees crooked over a thick branch. Brand marveled at her lithe form.
“We won!” he shouted up to her, knowing that would please her. “But looking at you hanging up there, I know the battle was nothing next to your acrobatics. I thought I was reckless!”
She laughed and their eyes met. Brand felt a thrill go through him. She swung down a vine that Myrrdin had conveniently grown from the top of the dome to allow her easy access to her perch. She ran to him and kissed him, and Brand learned the best time to greet one’s love was after facing death.
“I feared for you,” she whispered, her head on his chest.
He stroked her head awkwardly, trying not to catch her hair with his gauntlets. He shook them off when he realized there was merling blood and the dust crumbling dead-things on them.
“I need to clean up,” he said in her ear.
She nodded, but didn’t let go. She hugged him and he could almost feel her squeezing even through the armor that encased his chest. Then she pulled away and examined the dent in his breastplate.
“You were nearly killed,” she said matter-of-factly.
Unable to deny it, he said nothing. Corbin came up to say it all for him. “Brand here is indeed the Axeman, the Champion of the Haven,” he began. In glowing terms, he detailed the events of the battle. Everyone hung on his words, save for Brand, who tried to shed his dented armor, and Myrrdin, who brooded near the broken fountain.
He went to rest with Myrrdin. Moodily, Myrrdin scratched at the soil between his feet with the freshly-carven tip of his staff.
“Did you enjoy it, Axeman?” he asked after a time.
“No, and yes,” said Brand.
“What do you mean?”
“It was like smashing your hand on a table after drinking too much in the tavern. It feels good at the time….”
“But afterward, when the glow fades, you’re left picking splinters from your bruised palm?”
“Exactly,” agreed Brand.
Myrrdin nodded. “I’m glad to see that the glow has faded.”
“So am I.”
“You will have to wield the axe again, Axeman. Very soon, I should think.”
“I know,” said Brand, rubbing his sore arms and legs. The armor he had shed had bruised him.
“Soon the sun will set, and all through the night, the goblins will not let us rest,” said Myrrdin in a faraway voice. Brand felt that he wasn’t predicting the future so much as describing a painful memory. “In the last hour of night, when humanity is at its lowest ebb and the Shining Folk at their peak fervor, they shall flail and torment their brutish offspring into a frenzy great enough to overcome their natural cowardice. At that hour they shall attack us.”
Myrrdin dipped his head back down and continued to scrawl shapes and lines in the soil at his feet. Brand looked at them for a moment, but found them disturbing to the eye and quickly looked way. He gave an involuntary shudder as he rose and left Myrrdin to his sorcery.
He looked up into the dome of greenery and thought he could make out the steady glow of Telyn’s unnatural beacon. It burned still, although there had been many gusts of wind that should have blown it out and it should have long ago exhausted the tallow coating its wick. It made his mouth go dry to think that Myrrdin was teaching his arts to Telyn. Could he truly marry and bed a witch? He made an effort not to cast his eyes to where she now built a fire. After pondering it, he concluded that if she could stand living with a moody, murderous Champion of Ambros, he could learn to tolerate her witchery. He sighed and once again longed for the simple life of the Haven. It seemed all but lost to him now.
Some hours later Tylag and his lieutenants came to inspect the domed gatehouse and the defenses they had put up. Brand was gratified to see that they now wore proper armor and bore real weapons of the sort that normally only hung over the mantles in most of the Haven. Tylag carried a fine broadsword, its shine and luster showing a keen edge.
“What I can’t understand,” Tylag told him after he had gotten over his initial amazement and distrust of the unnatural dome, “is how this weaponry was so well cared for! It must have been a dozen centuries since our clan manned these walls in whatever great battle brought them down.”
“Nine centuries, to be exact,” said Gudrin.
Tylag shot her an odd glance, and then turned back to Brand again. “How is it possible? If I didn’t know better, I’d say that this sword had been freshly oiled within the last month!”
“Most likely,” said Brand, “it has.”
“And the oils and the leathers used,” marveled Tylag. “I’ve never seen their like! Could it be merling skin?”
“There are many wonders here beyond the borders of the Haven, Uncle. Some are best left unquestioned.”
He gave Brand a hard look, and Brand returned it. Tylag nodded as if in understanding, and eyed the blade speculatively. He took Brand’s hint and asked no more on the subject. They needed the weapons, and perhaps even more they needed the morale that the weapons gave his ragtag army of farmers.
“There isn’t enough room in here for our whole force,” s
aid Tylag, switching subjects. “Not even for half of us. But, it will make an excellent headquarters and bulwark for our troops to rally around. Crossbowmen can man the loopholes you’ve been setting up and easily shoot over the heads of the footmen outside. We can maintain a shelter in here for the wounded, as well.”
The wounded. Those words echoed in his mind. He had marched on ahead, still wrapped in the glow of the axe after the last battle. He had thought only of his own killing, but had little considered the number of Haven people who must have died in the fighting. He felt a pang in his gut. Which of his childhood friends had already fallen unnoticed into the mud behind him?
Soon after that thought, the wounded began to arrive. Borne on palettes and makeshift stretchers from the shoreline, tired and muddy troops began to carry them into the cool gloom of the gatehouse. Outside the sounds of digging could be heard as fresh, shallow graves were being dug. The dead of the Haven were buried outside the borders of their homeland where they had spent their entire lives up until this very day.
“Here,” said a bass voice behind him. Brand turned to see Modi, thrusting his breastplate at him. Brand took it, and saw immediately that the dent had been hammered out. He smiled at him and Modi looked uncomfortable.
“Here, wear a helmet this time, or the rhinogs will shoot your fool eyes out,” said Modi gruffly. He extended his other thick-fingered hand and gave Brand a steel helmet with a neck guard of fine mesh hanging from it. The helmet was brightly polished to a mirror-like surface. A single spike protruded from the top of it.
Brand took both the breastplate and the helmet with a nod. “Thanks,” he said, “those of the Haven say that there are no finer arms or armor than that made by the Kindred.”
Modi smiled briefly. “Then they are right. I chose this helm from the pile because it is indeed from the forges of the Kindred. The cursive mark of the forges beneath Snowdon decorates the spike.”
Brand nodded, examining it. Fortunately, Modi had left before Brand went to put the helm on his head experimentally. Inside the helm, the protective sheath of leather padding had that same disturbing softness to the touch that so much of the other gear from the redcap’s horde had. Brand rubbed his fingers together as if to rid himself of the feel of it. Was it merling, or human? He wondered what marshman had never returned to his humble hut after perhaps hunting for merlings in the far north….
Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to place the helm upon his head. If one of his fellows had given his life to help arm the army of the Haven now, in its hour of need, he told himself he must accept the gift and hope the man’s spirit would be forgiving.
“Rhinogs!” came a shout from above. Others had taken over Telyn’s post among the leaves now, giving her a rest. A red-faced man with long, skinny limbs had clambered up the rope and now shouted the alarm to those below. Even as he cried his warning, the man fell from his perch. He crashed down onto the stone fountain that stood in the center of the gatehouse. A huge shaft, perhaps an inch thick, had pierced his skull. The black tail feathers of a raven fletched the heavy bolt. Blood filled the fountain where once sweet water had flowed.
Even as the warning shout came, Brand realized that he could hear something in the distance. It was the beat of the rhinog wardrums. This time, however, there wasn’t just a few of them, hammering out messages from scout band to scout band. This time, there were hundreds of drums – maybe thousands, all pounding at once, all in unison.
As the next few hours passed, the noise grew and grew. By nightfall, the sound was that of an army of ogres hammering on the door at midnight.
Chapter Thirteen
Hilltop Meeting
Brand and Corbin stood together on the top wall of the old keep, one of the few structures that remained relatively intact. The night had closed around them and everywhere was the noise of the rhinog army. Brand turned his eyes to the west, where three great catapults had been dragged through the muck and into a ragged line. Riding upon each of the catapults were five or six goblins, their eyes slitted and their thin long whips flicking out viciously. Scores of rhinogs strained in the mud to drag the catapults closer to the ruined castle. When they staggered or fell, the goblins whipped their offspring furiously.
“What do you think they’re loading into those catapults?” asked Brand, watching. “There is little stone over that way, they would have to drag each load up from the river.”
Corbin eyed him sidelong. “I can barely make out the silhouettes of the catapults themselves, much less what they are loading into them!”
Brand glanced at him, and then peered out into the darkness. He watched as a rhinog fled from his task, dropping the heavy rope and dashing toward the trees. A goblin sprang after him and ran him down quickly. The rhinog, although he was twice the size of his sire, fell to the ground in submission. The beating was lengthy and wickedly thorough. Brand watched the brute thrash in agony and felt some small remorse for the creature.
“What about those two?” he asked Corbin. “Surely, you can see that devil of a goblin beating his own offspring so viciously.”
“What are you talking about?” responded Corbin. “Brand, it’s dark out. Night fell an hour ago! These creatures need neither torches nor lanterns, it seems. I can’t see a thing out there.”
Brand felt a cold hand squeeze his insides as he realized the truth of Corbin’s words. It was dark out. The enemy only had a few fires going here and there. But somehow, he could still see them.
Corbin turned to him. Brand kept watching the goblin beat his offspring, refusing to look at Corbin. He could all but hear his cousin’s mind working.
“You can see in the dark, can’t you?” asked Corbin simply.
Brand nodded. He continued to watch the goblin. The creature’s thin arms lifted the whip again and again. The whip was slick with blood now. The rhinog only quivered as each blow fell upon it.
“You’re glad you can’t see it,” he said quietly.
Corbin continued to stare at him. “It’s the axe. Ambros has worked a change upon you,” he said.
Brand breathed deeply, but said nothing. The goblin halted its punishment and now kicked the rhinog repeatedly until it heaved itself up and staggered back to the rope it had dropped.
“What if you become something…else?” asked Corbin. “Maybe you should put aside the axe while you can, Brand.”
“You know I can’t,” answered Brand. “The Haven needs me as a champion. I’ve borne the axe for days now. I can bear it one more day. I only pray to the River that I never become something wicked.”
“I think we should talk to Myrrdin about this,” suggested Corbin. “I don’t recall him mentioning any such changes coming over the bearer of Ambros.”
Then Brand told him of what Myrrdin had said, about finding Vaul in the center of a great oak tree that had encased within it the bones of its previous owner.
Corbin’s eyes were haunted as he envisioned it. “It consumed its master,” he said. “Just as Lavatis went feral and consumed Dando. Just as perhaps Osang has taken the human heart from Herla and turned him into a wraith of the night.”
Brand nodded. “I wonder how Myrrdin has managed to keep Vaul at bay, supposedly for centuries.”
Together, they returned to the gatehouse of rustling greenery and sought out Myrrdin. They learned from the others there that Myrrdin had left, heading out on an unexplained errand to the east.
Brand and Corbin looked at one another. “That’s where the Faerie mound is,” said Brand. Concerned, the two headed out with more urgency into the night again. As they trekked toward the mound, they heard an odd sound. A tremendous cracking sound rang out across the ruins. Then a brilliant ball of flame arced through the night sky. It made an eerie, whooshing sound like the flaring of a smithy’s forge when it is being stoked when it passed overhead.
“Burning pitch!” cried Brand, halting. “They are going to fire our camp!”
“Should we turn back?” asked Corbin.
Brand looked at him for a second, then snapped his head back up to the sky as another great crack was heard and the catapults launched another crackling fireball at the army of the Haven. He realized that the decision was his, as the Champion of the Haven. He had become a leader and even Corbin reflexively turned to him for guidance. He didn’t like it, but there it was. He had to decide.
“No. We’ll find Myrrdin. He said they would harass us all night until just before daybreak when the real attack would come.”
“Let’s pray that he’s right,” said Corbin, following his lead. Soon they reached the Faerie mound, and Brand could tell in an instant that something was happening. The mound seemed brighter than it should be, as if the moon shined down upon it, although there was no moon overhead. The silvery light that he had seen while summoning Oberon was growing upon the mound.
“There he is!” shouted Brand pointing toward the ghostly image of Myrrdin, who was just rounding the mound. “He’s walking the mound!”
“What? I don’t see him,” replied Corbin, peering into the darkness. He took a step in the direction that Brand had indicated.
As Brand watched, he saw Myrrdin fade in and out of his vision. A shiver ran through him. It was as if he saw a ghost walking the circle of fallen grass around the mound. “No, we must follow his path. Widdershins, we must walk, nine times around the mound.”
He set off, and after a moment’s hesitation, Corbin followed him. As they marched around the mound, it seemed that the fireballs quieted and dimmed as they burned wide swathes across the sky. The flaming explosions they made as they struck the gatehouse and the encampment around it seemed dream-like and distant.
“How many times have we walked the circle, Brand?” asked Corbin behind him. His voice seemed a trifle faint.
“Three times,” he said.
“The mound seems brighter each time we circle it.”
“Yes,” said Brand.
“But,” said Corbin, “there is no moon tonight, Brand.”
Haven 3 Shadow Magic (Haven Series 3) Page 10