Mordant's Need

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Geraden spotted Argus. The guard stood near a lantern with three horses, already saddled. They nickered and snorted softly, complaining about being put to work so early in the morning. Geraden waved and hurried toward the grizzled veteran.

  Bracing herself to endure Argus’ crude sense of humor, Terisa followed.

  Over leather clothes, Argus wore a mail shirt and leggings; over his mail, a cloak that looked like a bearskin. His iron cap was on his head. A dagger hung at his belt opposite his longsword, but he had left his pike behind. As Geraden and Terisa reached him, he grinned, showing the gaps where several of his teeth had been knocked out. ‘Good,’ he leered. ‘I have horses. I even have brandy.’ He indicated a small pouch tied to the back of one saddle. ‘You have a woman. This is going to be more fun than guard duty.’

  Geraden brushed that remark aside. ‘How far ahead do you think he is?’

  ‘She’s in my debt, don’t you think?’ Argus persisted. ‘I don’t care how fine a lady she is. The finer the better. I’ve risked my life for her twice now. She owes me a little gratitude.’ He reached a grubby hand toward Terisa’s cheek.

  ‘Argus.’ Suddenly, Geraden clamped a hold on the guard’s wrist. Though Argus was much larger, Geraden wrenched his hand down. ‘Do not trifle with me.’ Strength echoed in his voice – strength that Terisa hadn’t heard for a long time. ‘Nyle is my brother. How far ahead is he?’

  Involuntarily, Argus winced. ‘He has his own horse,’ he replied as if he were surprised to find himself backing down.

  ‘He didn’t have to get permission to take it and go. And he didn’t have to stand around here waiting for you. But Ribuld has him. We should be able to catch up.’

  ‘Then let’s go,’ said Geraden impatiently. The echo was gone. ‘Who gets which horse?’

  ‘This one’s mine.’ With a slap to its rump, Argus shifted a rawboned roan stallion out of his way. ‘You get the mare.’ He indicated a smaller horse the color of fresh axle grease. ‘She likes to kick, but you can handle her. At least she’s tough.

  ‘The lady can have the gelding.’

  Terisa found herself staring at a horse with rancid eyes, a mottled coat, and an expression of sublime stupidity.

  With an effort, she cleared her throat. Her voice sounded small and lost. ‘I don’t actually know how to ride.’

  Argus flashed her a look that might have been anger or glee. ‘Geraden mentioned that. He didn’t explain why you have to come with us. I mean, if you can’t ride, and you think you’re too good to spread your legs for a man who saved your life, why bother?’ He gave a massive shrug. ‘But at least he warned me.

  ‘The only way this gelding can hurt you is if he steps on you. He hasn’t got the brains to do anything except follow the nearest thing he recognizes – and the only thing he ever recognizes is another horse. Just hold on to the saddle horn and let him do the rest.’

  Still she hesitated. Geraden and Argus stared at her. Abruptly, Geraden came and took her to the side of the mount. Holding the stirrup, he said, ‘Put your left foot here, grab the saddle horn, and swing your right leg over. Leave the reins where they are. We’ll adjust the stirrups when you’re in the saddle.’

  She looked at him hard and saw that his eyes were dark with suppressed urgency. Swallowing a lump of alarm, she nodded her head. Then, before she had time to panic, she put her foot into the stirrup and lunged for the saddle.

  Argus caught her on the other side and squared her in her seat. The ceiling seemed perilously close. Argus and Geraden made her stirrups longer or shorter without consulting her. The gelding shifted its weight. She gripped the saddle horn until her knuckles ached. To no one in particular, she said, ‘Why am I doing this?’

  ‘Because’ – Argus flashed his remaining teeth – ‘you’ve heard it said that a few hours on a horse make a woman desperate for a man.’

  Geraden was already on the mare. ‘If you don’t stop harassing her,’ he muttered, ‘I’m going to wait until we’re several miles from here, and then I’m going to break all your legs and leave you to walk back.’

  Argus let out a guffaw which made several of the nearby horses whinny in protest and brought an angry insult from a watching stablehand whom Terisa hadn’t noticed before. Argus wasn’t daunted, however. Chuckling to himself, he took hold of the gelding’s reins and tugged the beast into motion behind him.

  Terisa clung to the saddle while Argus led her and Geraden out to one of the main aisles and along it toward the closed passage that went in the direction of the courtyard.

  The guards at the main entrance lifted the gate without a word: apparently, Argus had already spoken to them. But when he and his companion reached the gate to the courtyard – with Terisa shivering again at the sudden drop in temperature – he had to stop and speak to the sentries for several minutes. She saw him point at Geraden, heard him mention Artagel. Finally, the gate opened, and the horses crunched out into the frozen mud of the courtyard.

  ‘One more gate,’ Geraden told her softly. ‘Then we can start hurrying.’

  The sky was clear above the high, dark walls of Orison, but most of the stars were gone, washed out by the oncoming gray flood of dawn. The air was so sharp it cut her throat: she could feel it in the bottom of her lungs, pricking like needles. From horseback, the ground looked faraway and dangerous. The cold seemed to make the leather of her saddle slick; because she couldn’t stick to it, she had trouble keeping her balance over the stiff-legged lurch of the gelding’s stride. Geraden looked like a shadow beside her. Argus was nearly invisible against the darkness of the wall ahead.

  Other people moved in the courtyard, waking up, getting ready for another day. Small lights flickered on the inner balconies. A few more showed in the bazaar. One or two cooking fires had been started. Terisa barely noticed them.

  The predawn gloom and the shadow of the walls hid the gate, but she remembered it – a massive shutter raised or lowered by winches. Because Mordant was said to be at peace, the gate stood open during the day. At night it was down.

  When the horses reached it, Argus dismounted and went to talk to its guards. For some reason – perhaps because his back was turned – his voice was an indeterminate murmur, but the sentry could be heard clearly.

  ‘You’re out of your mind, Argus.’

  Argus made some response.

  ‘We had to let him out. He’s a son of the Domne. We don’t have any orders to keep him in.’

  Again.

  ‘Try explaining that to the Castellan.’

  Geraden shifted in his saddle, fretting. Terisa could feel her face freezing stiff.

  Then: ‘All right. He’s a son of the Domne too. And you’re assigned to him. And we thought it was just some strumpet with you. If you don’t back us up, I’ll personally see to it you never have children.’

  A faint call rose. Geraden let a breath of relief through his teeth as Argus came back to his horse. His boots on the mud sounded like he was striding through broken glass. After a moment, Terisa heard a long creaking noise as rope began to stretch between the winches and the gate.

  She saw the gate go up, a deep darkness lifting off the lighter background of the road.

  ‘Come on,’ Argus muttered. Taking Terisa’s reins again, he put his heels to the stallion and started forward so sharply that she let out a yelp and nearly lost her seat.

  When they were outside, Geraden caught up with Argus. ‘Well done,’ he rasped sarcastically. ‘Do you want her to fall?’

  ‘Don’t be so prickly,’ replied the guard. ‘I didn’t know she’s a squealer.’ Terisa had the impression he was grinning.

  She unknotted her muscles, flexed her grip on the saddlehorn, and began making a conscious effort to find the point of balance on the gelding’s back.

  Overhead, the paling sky seemed impossibly open. The gradual hills immediately around the castle were naked of trees, kept that way so that Castellan Lebbick could watch his enemies approach him; in the dawn twilight t
he bareness of the slopes made them feel as expansive as the heavens, wide and unmeasured to the extreme horizons after the relative constriction of Orison. In spite of her precarious perch, she felt her excitement rise.

  If anything, the air was even colder here. Most of the road had been chewed to mud and iron ruts by days of wagon wheels, but whenever the hooves of the horses hit a patch of snow, the distinct clatter of horseshoes against hard dirt changed to an oddly resonant crumpling sound, a break-and-echo as the hooves stamped to the ground through the iced surface, the snow melted by the thaw and then refrozen. The graying of the sky grew stronger, enabling her to see the black trees that lined the road after it branched. One branch, she remembered, went south; another, northwest; the third continued northeast toward the Care of Perdon: roads running toward secrets and surprises in every direction. The world was something she had hardly begun to discover.

  Although spring was drawing closer, the sun was still so far to the south that she couldn’t glimpse the source of the dawn past Orison’s bulk until she had ridden almost to the road’s branching. By then, the trees were tipped with light as if they were catching fire. Sunshine glowed coldly on the towers and battlements behind her, making Orison look less dire – but larger somehow, as though a sense of its true size were impossible from inside. Its gray stone appeared stronger and more enduring than she had expected.

  From the branching, she watched the sun come up and wished she were a little less cold so that she could feel its touch on her face.

  ‘Now what?’ Geraden demanded of Argus. His mind was clenched to what he was doing. ‘How do we know which way to go?’

  ‘That’s Ribuld’s job.’ Argus scanned the area. ‘He’s supposed to leave signs. Probably in the snow beside the road.’ Tossing her reins to Terisa, he moved toward the left edge of the road. ‘Start looking.’

  Geraden took the other side. The two men began to work around the branching. Experimentally, Terisa picked up her reins, gripped them as her companions did, and gave the gelding a tentative kick, trying to make it follow Geraden. But it went after Argus instead.

  When Argus burst out laughing, she looked where he pointed and saw a mark shaped like an arrow in the snow. It had been drawn rather unsteadily with a warm, yellow liquid.

  Northwest.

  Geraden came to look at the sign and grinned in spite of himself. ‘That’s got to be him.’

  ‘Right. Now we can start moving faster.’ The guard glanced at Terisa as if he anticipated entertainment. ‘But we’ve got to be careful. They might turn off.’

  Geraden nodded and cantered his mare to the northern side of the road. Although he didn’t appear especially smooth or self-contained in the saddle – his elbows flapped, and his weight bounced with the horse’s gait – his experience was evident. He knew how to ride well enough to do so without thinking about it.

  Argus hadn’t resumed his hold on Terisa’s reins. ‘Come on. You’ve got to learn sometime.’ Watching her over his shoulder, he started away, matching Geraden’s pace along the western margin of the road.

  She was still trying to decide how hard to kick her mount when it lumbered ahead, following the stallion.

  For one moment that seemed to last a long time because it was frozen by panic and cold, she dropped the reins and clutched for the saddle horn, but the gelding’s gait hit her so hard that she missed her grip and started to fall.

  When she failed to fall, she didn’t immediately understand why. By degrees, however, the strain in her legs made her aware that she was clenching the beast with her knees.

  This development amazed her so thoroughly that she only put one hand back on the saddle horn. With the other, she retrieved the reins. Then, borne along by a burst of exhilaration, she kicked the gelding to make it catch up with Argus.

  The guard gave her a nod of disappointed approval and turned his attention to the road.

  Her mount’s spine pounded her up and down. Its tack jangled so loudly – and her legs and rear slapped the leather so hard – that she wanted to shout, Do we have to go this fast? But a residue of common sense told her that for her sake Argus and Geraden were already going more slowly than they wished. She closed her mouth so that she wouldn’t bite her tongue and held on.

  Orison looked surprisingly far away. She had to glance back over her left shoulder to see the castle. A purple flag flew from the King’s tower now, raised to meet the day. Then the road crested a hill, dipped into a hollow, and Orison was gone.

  A short distance later, a spur of the road ran north to a village nestled picturesquely in a little glen. Most of the twenty or thirty houses had wooden frames, but a few had obviously been constructed of stone. The snow had melted off their slate roofs; smoke curled from their chimneys as fires were built up for cooking and warmth. The angle of the sunlight enabled her to make out cattle pens in the shelter of the hills. These people raised meat for the castle.

  In a war, a siege, they would have to evacuate their homes and live in Orison.

  Geraden found no indication that Ribuld had taken the spur. The three riders went on.

  Terisa’s hands were red and freezing, despite the exertion of holding herself on her mount’s back. Her face was so stiff it felt like it might break. Whenever a scrap of breeze caught her eyes, tears ran to ice on her cheeks. Gradually, she understood that it would actually be easier to keep her seat if the horse moved a bit faster. But Argus and Geraden now seemed to be going as fast as they dared. They had to watch for Ribuld’s signs.

  Over the rise of another hill, they came suddenly upon a wain loaded – Terisa would have said overloaded – with barrels of all sizes. Although it faced toward Orison, it was stopped by the side of the road for no apparent reason. At a glance, Terisa couldn’t tell which looked more miserable, the shaggy, club-headed workhorse in the traces, or the driver huddling on the wagonbench, clutching his reins with hands that barely protruded from the mound of wool blankets wrapped around him. A moment later, however, the driver explained himself by croaking, ‘Argus? One of you Argus?’

  The stallion skittered to a halt beside the wain. ‘I’m Argus,’ the guard said, studying the driver.

  ‘Guard like you gave me a silver double to wait here.’ The driver sounded like he was being strangled by the weight of his blankets. ‘Too cold for that. About to give you up.’

  ‘Now why would Ribuld do that?’ drawled Argus.

  The man’s eyes glittered shrewdly. ‘Too cold. One silver double—’ His horse snorted vapor. ‘Not enough.’

  At that, Argus guffawed. ‘Pigshit! Taking this load into Orison won’t earn you more than half a dozen coppers. You’ve already tripled your take. Don’t push your luck.’

  The mound of blankets moved in a shrug. The driver made a clucking noise, and his horse pricked up its ears. When he twitched the reins, the horse leaned into its harness, and the wagon started to move.

  Geraden swore under his breath. Argus was unperturbed, however. Over the groaning of the wain’s axletrees, he commented amiably, ‘I’m thirsty. Before you leave, I think I’ll knock a few holes in some of these casks.’ He drew his longsword. ‘Most of it’s probably swill, but you may have something drinkable back there.’

  The driver tugged his horse to a halt. He considered for a moment, then said, ‘Glad to help the King’s guards. Guard like you left the road here. Asked me to mark the place.’

  ‘Which direction?’ demanded Geraden.

  ‘North.’

  The Apt fisted his mare to the north side of the road. Almost at once, he called, ‘I’ve got his tracks. It looks like at least two riders went this way.’

  Argus sheathed his sword and gave the driver an elaborate bow. In a tone of gratitude, he said, ‘I’m sure it’s all swill,’ and went to join Geraden.

  Terisa’s gelding followed with an air of lugubrious endurance.

  As soon as she and her companions left the road, she was surprised by the noise they made. Crunching through the frozen
white crust and thudding to the ground beneath, the horses’ hooves were loud enough to be heard half a mile away – a sound like a cross between shattering glass and a distant cannonade. Nevertheless Argus set a somewhat faster pace and pulled ahead. After a moment, she realized that he was trying to match the stallion’s gait to Ribuld’s trail, riding as much as possible on already broken snow. When Geraden swung in behind him, and the gelding transferred its affections from the stallion to the mare, their progress became noticeably less noisy.

  Ribuld’s trail ran along a shallow valley between small hills, then crossed a ridge and began to descend a series of slopes marked with brittle thickets and black copses. Woods filled a fold in the terrain ahead, and the fold deepened as the ground around it rose into sharper hills. Argus followed the trail straight into the woods.

  There he had to slow down. The ground between the trunks wasn’t particularly cluttered; the wood itself wasn’t thick. But many of the branches grew low enough to swipe at riders.

  Barely cantering now, listening to the way the metallic sound of tack seemed to echo delicately back from every tree because of the steeper hills on either side, and wondering why she felt so much like holding her breath, Terisa followed Geraden into a gully which became a rocky streambed with its bottom less than half full of ice and crusted water. The trees on the slopes grew more thickly together, pointing their dark twigs like fingers at each other; but the bed remained clear. Now when the horses broke fresh crust their hooves clicked and clattered on stone.

  Her legs ached. Her hands hurt like raw ice. She had the impression that the cold had begun to peel her face back from the bone. How else could she explain the sensation of numb pain in her cheek and chin and nose? She should have been as miserable as the driver and his workhorse.