The Hollow March

by Chris Galford

  Several of Isaak’s dogs had been injured in the brawl as well, but it had been one of them that had finally taken him by the leg and borne him down. Then the guards fell upon him, and the force of four men held him back as his weapons were stripped and steel pressed to his throat. Speed was supposedly the man’s true gift. Without it, he was but another killer.

  “Why did you bring him?”

  The Kuric’s shoulders heaved with a hearty sigh. “The boy walks his own. Had I not, he would have died to get here on his own.”

  Kasimir’s eyes glowed with some untraceable emotion. His face remained otherwise as stone. “You cannot handle a boy,” he said, though there was no accusation in his tone.

  “A man,” Alviss curtly retorted. “Not when daggers seek him, even in furthest reaches.”

  Kasimir ignored the rebuke. If he had any indication of what the barbarian meant, he did not show it. Instead, he shifted his gaze to Alviss’s companion, if only briefly, gauging him for some undefined quality. The young man shifted uneasily, but stared back all the same.

  “Did help he want kill you, witmaan.” The Zuti chose that moment to wag his filthy tongue again. “We just follow for de trill.”

  Darris cursed the Zuti and rattled his cage, peppering him with idle threats. The Zuti grinned and motioned him on, but all eyes were on them, and Darris dared not stretch too far. Even Kasimir’s gaze swiveled, locking on his baiter, with a look that was equal parts disgust and loathing. Roswitte stepped forward, gently putting herself between her lord and the Zuti. The southerner looked her over once, wrinkled his nose, and tried to lean his gaze past her, back toward the lord.

  “You ‘ide behind skirts, little ghost?”

  “Shut your tongue, Zuti, or lose it.” She did not bother drawing steel. Her tone was enough to lend force to her words. The Zuti merely chuckled, mumbling something in his own heathen tongue.

  “Will you shut it, Chigenda?” To her surprise, it was the colorful prisoner who spoke. “Quit baiting the chaps with nasty knives. I rather like living, you know, and blood would really ruin this ensemble.”

  Undeterred, the Zuti blundered forward. “Must take work make de boy ‘ate ‘is fadder so. Patetic ghost-man in all ‘is pretties.”

  There was a touch on her shoulder, at that. Kasimir said nothing, but she moved beneath his stare, making room for him. The lord moved forward with Merten following at his heel. He came to a halt mere feet from the Zuti’s cage, leaning casually on his cane. When he stood straight, he was of a height with the Zuti, but even so, he seemed the taller one. She could imagine the man staring down his nose at the Zuti. It was no less than the killer deserved. Yet the Lord Matair met him levelly, as he did with all men.

  One only knew a man’s worth when he looked them on level ground, he told her once.

  “You speak like a rabid dog, Zuti,” he addressed him calmly. “Is that what you are?”

  “I am not’ing less than what de Spirit make me. Difference be, I no hide it.”

  Kasimir nodded slowly, but it was his advisor that responded. “It is no wonder the young lord makes so many ill mistakes, with council such as yours.”

  The Zuti shrugged. “Your words are not’ing. Is my actions name me.”

  “Your actions name you murderer. Rapist.”

  “More words. Take my actions furder den dey take demselves. None dead did not draw steel to me breast. I cannot judge meself for lies.”

  Merten snorted. The old man put up his hands as if in defeat and shook his head in disappointment. “How did you fall in with the rest of these? I would have thought them better judges.”

  “I swear debt Alviss. De rest but there. So be it. It be food and water. It be blood and iron.” With a surprisingly white smile, he shifted his gaze back to their lord. “And de boy at least ‘ave fire. You see, I ‘tink.”

  Even Kasimir bristled at that. His fingers flexed against the head of his cane, tightening into paleness against the wood. Satisfied, the Zuti slunk back. He had made his mark, and that was all he wanted. No amount of threats would stir him otherwise.

  Flicking his gaze back to Alviss, Kasimir said simply, “Rest well.” Then he was on his heel and moving away from the cells. Roswitte snapped at Darris to get him back in line, then fell in with the others about her lord, watching as the flames played shadows across his hard features. The man said nothing until they were free of the basement, with a nod from Sirche the jailor, who looked up from his book in time to watch them go. The gate clanged behind them as it shut, Sirche’s keys jingling as they sealed the prison.

  Merten was the first to speak. “We should be off with that one’s head,” he said breathlessly. “I believe the court would be pleased at that.”

  “I’ll do it,” Darris said with a bit too much gusto. Roswitte shot him a scowl, and the man backed off somewhat.

  “No one’s heads shall move an inch,” Lord Kasimir pronounced, over the rabble.

  “My lord?” Merten wore a puzzled expression.

  “The town, I am afraid, will already think differently,” she interjected.

  The pace of the group halted immediately, with their lord. He turned toward her, and she felt her throat clench as his eyes swiveled severely over her. A finger tapped against his cane.

  “At whose command?”

  “Master Isaak,” she said, lowering her eyes. Around her lord, she never quite felt the bear the others made her out to be. “He sent word with his men. Thought it might make Rurik do something rash.”

  Kasimir sighed, turned and resumed their paces through his halls. “Of that I have little doubt,” he murmured. “Is Cullick’s rat still lurking about?”

  “He is. I’ve not seen him since dinner though.”

  “Make sure it stays that way. I’ll not have him blundering into the middle of this mess.”

  The steward peeled off from the group to make it so. Kasimir fell silent and the rest followed suit.

  They were ascending the steps to the second floor before he spoke again. “Ros,” was all he offered.

  “Yes, milord?” She feared he might yell at her, but when he spoke there was no anger in his words, only a profound sense of disinterest.

  “All men are dogs. Some are but a touch wilder than others.”

  * *

  The path was dark, but she could find it with her eyes sewn shut. The chill hemmed them in, but the thought of salvation warmed her. Snow fell in a great white shower, but that merely made them harder to see.

  This trail was hers. These trees were her domain, and in them she flourished. It was the thought of what lay within the walls that worried her.

  She remembered those warm halls well, but they were not her domain. They were Rurik’s, and he seemed as ill about them as she did, though he did his best to hide it behind a mask of grim determination. She could smell the fear about him, but it was just so. People needed a little fear to keep them on their toes.

  Essa crouched beside the low stone wall that rimmed the yards of the manor. The boy beside her was still picking brambles from his cloak. The trees broke at least a half mile from the wall—a purely defensive move that left them crawling through a vineyard, lest they stir the shadows too deeply. Keeping low, they cut themselves on brambles, but slipped beneath the gaze of the lone sentry and sought their path amidst the stone.

  Rurik fumbled, his eyes spoiled by the torchlight above. Such ill-trained eyes were unnecessary though. Essa saw deeper in the darkness than even the best of Kasimir’s woodsmen. Fortunate for them, too, as it had spared them from a close call early on, when two of Isaak’s hunting party came blundering through the woods toward them. She forced Rurik flat and lay prone beside him, while slowly shifting her bow into position. The two had come close enough to smell, but in the end, as she had stretched the string of her bow back far enough to make her elbow quake from the effort, the men moved off again and into the night. If they’d had one of Isaak’s dogs with them, they would not have been so fortunate.
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  The trail they took was not marked so much as it was remembered. It was not paved, but merely a curve between trees that relied on certain landmarks for guidance. The deeper they walked, the more readily its contours returned to her, and Essa sprang between them like a gazelle. Rurik, it was readily apparent, did not remember. Despite being the one to suggest the path, had she not been there to guide him he would have crashed through the trees like a bear.

  More than once she had to wait for him to catch up, or lecture him for his reckless bounds. Amidst the hunt, one could ill-afford to leave such obvious tracks.

  As always, he did his best to follow her commands, but there were some things one could not learn in a moment’s teaching. Many men spent their whole lives ignorant to them. These were things she had been taught young: how to blend into the shadows and make the world as one with her, how to spring across a field of leaves without a rustle or a sound, how to drive an arrow home through the cruelest of winds.

  When she had been learning these things, Rurik had been learning how to speak with grace, dine with nobles, and move a quill upon a paper. Different lives bred different sorts.

  She stopped when her hand found the outline of a hole, an old drainage gap that had only once seen actual use, to her knowledge. When the rains fell at their strongest, just before the winter chill, it was not so unusual to see the Jurree overflow. Ranches near the river were often flooded, the ranchers forced to move their animals north to higher ground. The manor was built above this, but given the soft and fertile nature of the earth, they still recognized the danger of the rains. So they dug their ditches and poked their little holes into the walls.

  The hole wasn’t big enough for a man grown, and certainly too thin for a knight to breach, so they had thought them well enough designed. The young had no problem, though. A rusted grate barred passage inward. It could be peeled away like grated cheese.

  In their younger days, Essa and Rurik had oft used such places for a hasty entrance or departure, when they wished to extend a visit a touch longer, or escape unseen when the hours were against them. They were caught occasionally, but the punishment had never been severe enough to make either quit.

  Before her father had embarrassed himself before the lord and his family, Essa had been well-liked there, and no one was about to lay a finger on the lord’s son. If punishment was called for, it had been up to Rurik’s father to evoke, and for all the bluster about the man, she had never once seen him raise a hand against his own child. His power lay purely in the threat of it. The look behind the eyes.

  That one had the most unnerving stare, when he wished to. It was the look that scorched her father as the whip cracked, time and again. She did not like to think of it.

  A sudden prick drew a gasp from her, and she promptly yanked her arm back from the drain. She sucked at her finger, scrunching her face in distaste as the murky flavor flooded her senses. Her blood tasted like copper, thick and coarse, and she ground her tongue against the roof of her mouth in an attempt to drive it away. The taste clung.

  “Are you alright?” Rurik whispered behind her.

  She brushed him off. It was only a bramble. Drawing one of her knives, she cut through the long grass to reveal the drain. Vines smothered it. Similar weeds traced their way up large portions of the wall, without offering even the promise of grapes or other sweet bounties of the earth.

  She struck through the weeds with haste, and brushed the remainder aside with the flat of her boot. The path cleared, she handed both her quiver and bow to Rurik, and slid herself into the tunnel.

  She had grown over the years, same as anyone, but she was still small enough that she slid through the drain with little effort. Rurik would have a more difficult time of things, she fretted.

  Pescha had always said her body was one of the kinder gifts from her mother. This was between drinks, of course, in those increasingly rare moments of clarity he had graced her with as she aged. Most of the time, it was one comment she could not deny. She was lighter than she had any right to be, and the grace with which she moved gave even her pause at times. Even her father, himself a virtual ghost amongst the trees, had harped on the fluidity of her motions.

  Like a doe in the dirt, he called her. Ever ripe with compliments, that one was.

  Once she wriggled out the other end of the short drain, she plopped into the manor’s courtyard and shrank against the wall. The yard was expansive, with a few scattered trees and many shriveled fields of flowers for cover. Hedges wound through a section of the yard, forming makeshift walls. No one walked the yard as far as she could see, though she could hear others moving through the grass. She would have to keep a careful watch, especially on the open ground.

  With an eye to the walls, as well. They seemed curiously undermanned for the moment, but she supposed they were the cause of that. All gone for a hunt have we now? That thought gave her a twinge of satisfaction. Their pursuers, in an effort to take them, had departed the very place they meant to take. Brilliant, that. Though one could not chide them for such. Only fools would come loping into the lion’s den.

  Lucky her, she had chosen love for a fool.

  Glancing back into the drain, she urged Rurik to hurry. First came arms and armor. Then he grunted back at her, wriggling his way through, but as expected, it was a trickier fit for him. More than once she feared he might be stuck, but somehow he managed to twist himself just right and wiggle free.

  After moments of uncertainty, he slid both head and arms through, and they worked together to slide the rest of him out, and quietly. Panting, he huddled down beside her, and looked at her with a stupid grin. “Getting fat, aren’t I?” She rolled her eyes at him and started her crawl across the yard as he fiddled with his mail.

  When she reached the hedges she drew flat to them, waiting until she could catch sight of the guard on the wall. The guard stood off to one side, leisurely perched atop the parapet, his head resting on his arms. His bow lay across his back, his pike propped haphazardly against the stone beside him. Catching a moment’s rest, she mused. The man would regret his decision if Kasimir ever heard of it. If the man was one thing, it was a soldier through and through. Slovenliness was met with the strictest of responses from the old knight—especially if it was Brickheart doing the actual enforcing.

  Each wall had a man, though, and she could see the other two loping back toward their side of the house. Gesturing for Rurik to stay, she pressed into as small and still a shape as she could muster, and waited until the men had moved off again. It was more difficult for Rurik, she imagined. When one of the men drew close to the back wall, he shouted at the slouching watchman and jostled him back to attention. They conversed for several moments, Rurik trapped in the shadows beneath their feet, before they returned to their paces.

  It was a close call, but she had to remind herself it would only be worse the further they got. It didn’t help that she could also hear the soldiers in the yard drawing closer. With a bated breath, she motioned Rurik in, and he darted across the yard, the tattered remains of his cloak fluttering behind him.

  He started into another witty quip, but she would have none of it. Cutting him off, she shimmied into position for another run, and darted out as quickly as she had before. Rurik remained as motionless as possible until she motioned him again. Again he ran and again they crouched, waiting for the sound of silence.

  As they lay behind another section of the hedge, two men rounded the side of the manor, carrying on about some woman. She ducked back, instructing Rurik to do the same. There they waited, until the sounds of their passing grew farther away. Overhead, the clouds were thickening even as the sky was lightening. Dawn drew nearer, but the snow fell heavier.

  In the runs that followed, the snow aided them in more ways than one. As the flakes began to fall heavier upon the land, and the earth grew whiter with every passing moment, the patrols along the wall began to slack. Not to weariness, as the one had surrendered. Rather, to warmth.


  The patrolmen drifted toward their watch fires, and lingered longer than they otherwise might have, warming themselves beside the flames. It distracted them, but one better, it destroyed whatever night vision they had. Not that they would have minded. No one in their right minds would have clambered against the manor walls with an army encamped below.

  With their sight so reduced, Essa became bolder in their crossings. Sound was their only real foe, and she did her best to see to that. Following the pattern set by her lead, they steadily picked their way across the yard, first to the rear of the manor, then around the side to the cellar doors. There they lingered a moment, first for her to guarantee that no one watched or followed, then to pick at the lock that barred them.

  She lost a pick in it on the first try, cursed, and had to rut around her satchel for another. Both startled at the sudden flutter of wings overhead, and as they watched, huddled like black splotches against the snow, a pigeon took to flight, circling once overhead before fluttering off into the north. The pair exchanged a glance, and she redoubled her efforts on the lock. Her second pick did it quickly enough, the click of the metal weights inside signaling their entrance. Easing open one side of the doors, both slipped inside, and Rurik pulled the door shut again behind them.

  There, huddled in the musky darkness beneath the stone, they paused to catch their breaths.

  Essa stepped cautiously to the foot of the steps and took a seat beside one of the rows of kegs and barrels that ran the length of the cellar. Rurik’s father had spent decades accumulating all the vintages he had. It helped, Rurik had once told her, that in the time before his expedition into the Ulneberg, his family had kept a villa somewhere off in the west, near the border with Asantil. Vast vineyards peppered that fertile stretch, though the harvest time for them was notoriously short. The Empire did not keep the proper climes for good wine, unlike Ravonno to the south.

  Even so, she had never quite understood the man’s fascination with wine. In all the time she had seen him, never once had she known the elder Matair to touch upon a single glass himself. For the guests, perhaps. Or one of the displays the nobles were always making—little gestures to assert their dominance.