by Karen Miller
Finger by finger, Ewen let go of his blade. “He’ll put you on the ground and I’ll let him, Ivyn,” he said, his throat tight. “Mention my brother again and I’ll put you there myself and could be I won’t think to let go of my dagger.” Temper still simmering, he turned to Bryn. “You were on foot in the Croft, you were, when the beasts attacked. Could be you’ll feel the spirit path if you slide off that horse and wander for a bit.”
“Could be,” Bryn admitted, his eyes anxious. “I’ll try.”
“And if you can’t—” Ewen looked to Refyn and Duff, feeling Ivyn’s burning glare on his skin. “You’re three good trackers, you are. You’ll find the king’s trail.”
“You hope,” Ivyn muttered.
“Ivyn…” Ewen shook his head. “Clap tongue, else you’ll have no words left for greeting your brothers, you won’t.”
His cousin offered a snarling smile. “It’s plenty of words I’ve got, Ewen. For my brothers. For the king. And for you.”
Suddenly weary, Ewen smoothed Granite’s mane. Trouble was, he knew why Ivyn was so prickly. Behind the angry bluster his cousin was full of fear. He feared for his brothers and for himself. He feared that if they did ride into strife he’d fail to wield his sword like a king’s nephew should. He was the youngest, in his brothers’ shadows his whole life.
He understood that, he did. But even so…
Ivyn, I should’ve left you behind.
“Bryn,” he said, turning again. “Do your best. We’ll wait.”
Sliding out of his saddle to the muddy ground, Bryn handed his horse’s reins to Noyce.
“Highness,” he said, and started to search.
Bryn found the spirit path roughly fifteen crow hops from the border stone marking the edge of the Vale.
Hearing his shout, Ewen cantered Granite to join him, the fingers of his right hand lightly clasped to Tavin’s great sword. As he pulled up hard, the horse sitting on its haunches, a raven flapped complaining out of a nearby stunted tree.
Bryn of the Croft’s plain face was lit up like morning. “It’s here, Highness. Right here, the path begins.”
“You’re sure?” Ewen looked around, but he couldn’t see anything unusual. Couldn’t even see turned earth, or faded hoof prints—not a single sign to show that the king and his party had passed this way. Fallen leaves and scattered twigs, only. A hurrying of black ants. “Bryn…”
“It’s here, my oath on it,” Bryn insisted. “Climb down and feel it for yourself, you can. Or stay on your horse and ride where I point. It’s strong enough you’ll feel it mounted, I think.”
The others were straggling over, Ivyn in the lead and ready to bluster some more. Spirit, not another argument. Clicking his tongue, Ewen nudged Granite forward—and let out a surprised cry.
“You see?” said Bryn of the Croft, his smile small and shy. “I said it right, didn’t I? Just like drinking sunlight.”
Granite’s head was up, grey ears pricked, every muscle tensed with surprise. Ewen kept his fingers on the hilt of Tavin’s sword. There was a lightness in him, that hadn’t been in him a heartbeat before—and he could feel a gentle warmth rising from the earth. Then, as he kicked Granite forward another pace, he felt something in his path though his eyes showed him nothing.
“It’s like trying to cross an unseen creek,” he said to Bryn, astonished. “There’s a drag against Granite’s legs, there is. And I can feel a humming in my bones.”
A humming that eased the ache in his broken, mended arm.
Pleased and relieved, Bryn nodded. “That’s it.”
“But you can still see me. I’m not vanished?”
“Vanished?” said Ivyn, halting his horse at a prudent distance. “Is your mind fogged, Ewen?”
“No,” he said shortly, and swung Granite round. “There’s a power here, right enough. Bryn, you say we stay with this—this feeling—and it keeps us safe, it does?”
“Yes, Highness,” said Bryn, subdued again with Ivyn glaring. “It’s how I survived the beasts.”
“It’s a boy, you were,” he said. “How did you know the path would save you?”
Bryn looked away, his face a turmoil of sorrow. “I never did, Highness. Not at first. I had a friend with me when the beasts attacked. We both found the spirit path. But Alun got ahead of me, and he stumbled off it unwary. A beast saw him then. It didn’t see me.”
“This is madness, this is,” said Ivyn, staring at the ground. “There’s nothing there, Ewen.” He turned to Noyce and the barracks men, halted off to his side. “You’ll trust this, will you? With no proof? With nothing to see?”
Refyn glanced at his barracks companions, then rubbed his crooked nose and shrugged. “Our orders are plain. We follow where the prince leads.”
Noyce’s dogs weren’t worried by the spirit path. They sniffed around the sparse undergrowth, seeking game.
Ewen nodded at them. “Mind the hounds, cousin? Bred to scent sorcery, they are. If there was trouble here they’d be hackled and howling by now. Ivyn, I can’t prove this for you. Feel the spirit path yourself.”
Ivyn glowered. “And if I can’t?”
If you say you don’t feel it I’ll call you a liar, I will. “If you can’t, and you can’t trust me? Ride home, cousin. We’ll ride on.”
Still glowering, Ivyn kicked his horse forward. As the gelding crossed into the spirit path it snorted, head tossing. Ivyn gasped.
Ewen fought not to smile. Gloating will lose him. Be smarter than that. “A strange feeling, isn’t it?”
“Strange,” said Ivyn, sitting his saddle stiff as a tree. “I’ve never felt this in the Vale.”
He hadn’t, either. He looked again at Bryn. “Have you?”
“No,” said the Crofter. “I don’t know why.”
“And never felt it in the Croft before the beasts came, did you?”
“No,” said Bryn, shaking his head. “But where the beasts chased me and Alun, we didn’t often play. It’s all a mystery, it is.”
And not one they had time for solving here. Ewen tightened his reins. “Mount up, Bryn. We need to ride on, we do. Hob—”
The barracks man tapped a fist lightly to his chest. “Highness?”
“Let loose a pigeon, so Tavin knows we’re on the right track. Our swordmaster will be pleased to learn the king’s son can read a map.”
Grinning, Hob tugged their packhorse close, unlatched the pigeons’ wicker cage, plucked out a bird and tossed it into the sky.
For a moment Ewen watched the bird’s grey-and-white striped wings beat the air, escaping. Then he shrugged, and looked away. It would reach the Vale safely or it wouldn’t. No use worrying about it, there wasn’t.
“Ivyn,” he said. “Riding with us, are you?”
His cousin scowled at the ground as though a hard enough stare could make the spirit path reveal itself.
“I’m riding,” he grunted, not looking up. “But I meant what I said, Ewen. There’ll be words about this in the Vale, there will.”
No use worrying about that, either. Ewen nodded at his companions. “So we’re riding on. Noyce, give your dogs the signal. We’re hunting now, we are. You barracks men, keep your swords to hand.”
Refyn, Duff and Hob closed fingers round their blade hilts. “Highness,” they said, their eyes keen. Their horses danced a little, sensitive to the change in mood.
Ewen felt the spirit path hum through him, singing sunlight in his blood and bones. But where the sun shone, clouds gathered, they did. He pulled Tavin’s Blood-drinker from its scabbard and rested the blade across his saddle’s pommel.
“To the king,” he said, and led his companions into the rough.
Vharne beyond the Vale was vast and silent. There were birds. There were conies. Wild sheep and other game. Ivyn’s belly stayed full, and that stifled some of his complaining. They had creeks for water and sometimes a bubbling spring. But there were no fields of grain. No grazing flocks. The first spirit path they rode took them past two sma
ll villages, nameless and long deserted. Hardly a roof remained on the few upright walls. They saw bleached bones in the rubble. No sign of living folk. That path dwindled and died around noon on the third day, but after riding four nervous hours without their strange protection, with help from the king’s map they found a second path that kept them riding north.
Sleeping rough was a hardship, aching backs and sore heads. Wherever they could, they made camp on the path. When they couldn’t, when it led them down a ravine or into crowded woodland as the sun was setting, they camped as close to it as they could reach and Noyce stayed awake with his dogs.
Sunrise followed sunrise, and they never saw a brain-rotted wanderer. They didn’t find a trace of the king. Falling asleep each night, with his saddle for a pillow, Ewen told himself: Tomorrow. Tomorrow we’ll find him.
Not once did he voice the doubts gnawing his gut. But he could see their echoes in Ivyn’s face, in Refyn’s eyes. In the way Noyce and Bryn glanced at each other, and then looked away.
On the sixteenth day after leaving the Vale they saw dwellings in the distance, eastward off the spirit path.
Neem.
There the cautious villagers told them of the king, passing through with his people days and days before. Headed for the Croft, he was, heading west, along the northern border. Beyond that they knew nothing and cared less. What was the king to them in their lonely, miserable lives? Ewen tried not to hate them for it. It wasn’t their fault the Vale had all the people it could feed. Instead he nodded and smiled and thanked them, working hard not to show anyone, especially Ivyn, the growing canker of his fear.
The king is out here somewhere. I’ll find him, I will.
He sent a written message back to Tavin, letting him know they were pushing on from Neem, then consulted the copied spirit map. It showed a path out of Neem, most likely the same path Bryn had escaped on as a boy. Where it ended, there was the Croft. They found it after nearly an hour of searching and rode it for three days, seeing no-one. Finding nothing.
On the fourth day past Neem, still two days distant from the Croft, Noyce’s dogs scented sorcery. Slavering and howling, the hounds led them across the treacherous countryside at a fast canter, until they reached a copse tangled with undergrowth…
… where they found a scattering of bodies, rotted to their broken bones.
Holding Granite hard between his hands and knees, Ewen counted them, bile rising into his throat, as Noyce struggled to leash his dogs and Tavin’s barracks men beat the undergrowth with their swords, searching for more danger. Ivyn and Bryn sat their horses in shivering silence. The cool air was thick and wet with old death, the stench of it burning their eyes and coating their tongues.
Eleven men. Some of them were dismembered, limbs strewn about haphazard, the flesh torn off them in strips. At first glance he didn’t think the king was among them, but to be sure he’d have to dismount and inspect each rotten corpse up close.
And I will. I’ll do it. Only first I’ll catch my breath.
There was no sign of the dead men’s horses, just churned up ground and partly dried hoof prints leading away from the copse. Whoever—whatever—had done this monstrous slaughter was gone. And while Noyce’s eager dogs were still aquiver, tugging at their leashes, their frantic agitation had calmed. Not waiting for permission, Hob slid off his barracks mount, the packhorse abandoned, fell to his knees and started puking.
Grim-faced, Duff pointed. “That’s Warin, that is,” he said, and pressed the back of his four-fingered hand to his mouth. “Lost his left ear in the rough six years ago, he did.”
“And that’s Bailie,” Refyn added, his face ashen, nodding to the half-devoured body beside Warin. “His face is eaten off, but I know the hilt of that blade. There’s other barracks men there, only—”
Only they were rotted and ruined, and deciding who was who would be a gruesome task.
Ewen nodded. It’s glad I am, that Tavin’s not here. “I’m sorry. You knew them better than me, you did, but I know enough to say they were good men, they were.”
“They were friends,” Duff said heavily. “Every one.”
Duff was a hard man, but he wasn’t made of stone. His grief, and Refyn’s, and Hob’s, struck painfully close to home. Padrig. Hard riding and fear for the king had scabbed that wound over, but now it was torn loose and bleeding.
Then Duff nudged his horse a step forward. “Highness, look closer,” he said, his voice low and grim. “Weren’t no swordsmen here but our own—and some of those wounds, they’re blade cuts, they are. And that means—”
It means these good men turned their swords on each other, they did, as well as fighting whatever pulled some of them limb from limb.
“I know, Duff,” he said softly. “Sorcery.” His belly churned. The king. The king. He turned to his cousin. “Ivyn, your brothers. Can you tell—”
Sickly pale, Ivyn shook his head. “I don’t—I can’t see—” His voice was high-pitched with distress. “I’m not sure.”
And he never would be, if he stayed in his saddle. But it seemed Ivyn was nailed there. Ewen looked at Duff, beside him. “Hold Granite,” he said, and as the barracks man took the horse’s bridle he kicked his feet from his stirrups and slid to the ground.
It can’t matter that it’s sorcery. I have to look for the king.
He inspected every corpse, his heart hammering, his fingers tight around Blood-drinker’s hilt. Tried not to see the maggots and the beetles and the gummy gleam of teeth. But the king wasn’t one of the dead.
Oh, spirit.
Neither was Tavin’s man, Ryne, one of the murdered. But he could name four other barracks men. The rest were too rotted. And he could name his cousins, Ivyn’s brothers, Van and Lem. Van was in pieces, his skull split in two.
Ewen felt his eyes sting. They’d never been close, he and his cousins, not even as children, but still—they were blood. He looked up.
“Ivyn, I’m sorry.”
Choking, his cousin leaned forward and spewed vomit down his gelding’s shoulder and onto the trampled ground. Ewen stood and crossed to him, flicking a glance at Refyn. The barracks man, experienced, pulled everyone else back with a stern look and snapping fingers.
Ivyn swiped feebly at his vomit-flecked lips. “How can this be?” he mumbled, his eyes puddling with tears. “Both dead? There’s only me left, is there? How is it just me?”
“Cousin.” Ewen rested his hand on Ivyn’s forearm. “I grieve with you, I do. I know—”
Nose running with snot, Ivyn snatched his arm free. “What do you know, Ewen? You only lost one brother. I’ve lost two, I have! I’ve lost—” His voice broke. “Spirit save me. How will I tell my mother?”
Weeping, suddenly boneless, he toppled sideways out of his saddle. Ewen dropped Blood-drinker and caught him, stifling a curse as his right arm protested. Ivyn slumped against his chest, hiccupping like a child.
And then he found a shred of self-control. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “That was unkind, that was. You’re mourning Padrig.” With a shuddering breath he pulled away and stood unsteady, but straight enough. “The king?”
Ewen shook his head. “Not here.” Relief and fear shuddered through him. “Ivyn—” He had to clear his throat. “Will you ride with me to look for him, or ride back to the Vale? I’ll understand if you ride back. And I’ll give you Hob for an extra sword, I will.”
Sickly pale still, but with a new hardness in his eyes, Ivyn looked at his dead, mutilated brothers, then dragged a sleeve across his wet face. “No, Ewen. I want to find the king, I do.”
Ewen touched his cousin’s cheek, lightly. “Good man. So do I.” Then he looked at his companions, gathered sombre and close. “We can’t linger to burn our dead,” he said, brutal. “Let the spirit keep them. We’ll come back if we can. Now we ride after the king—and the creatures who took our brothers from us so cruelly.”
This time Ivyn did not bluster his choice.
Sooled on by Noyce, the d
ogs picked up a sorcerous scent again soon after, but this time Ewen ordered they be kept leashed. For three days they followed the trail steadily but with caution, travelling north-westwards towards the Ranoush border. They were nowhere near a protecting spirit path.
“It can’t be helped,” Ewen said shortly. “We keep going, we do, until we find our prey. There’s not a soul in Vharne safe until the murderers are run to ground.
Again, not even Ivyn challenged him.
So they kept on hunting, but even though the wanderers’ scent lingered and the dogs slavishly followed it they found no sign of the king or his surviving barracks men, or any other man or woman or child. Vharne’s emptiness oppressed them. They felt like the only breathing humans in the land.
And then, as that third day waned cool and the long afternoon shadows summoned twilight, Noyce’s dogs hackled and started to howl, threatening to strangle themselves as they fought against their leashes.
Ewen raised Blood-drinker, every instinct rousing, and looked at Refyn. “Close up. I fear we’re—”
Out of the trees ahead of them lumbered two horned, scaly-hided beasts, taloned and tusked and stinking of evil. Ewen stared at them, sickened, Blood-drinker aching his arm.
Beasts. In Vharne. You were right, Tavin. Curse you.
Frenzied, Noyce’s dogs wrenched free of his restraint and attacked. The beasts roared and grunted and killed them, ripping them to meat and blood.
Noyce slithered from his horse and fell howling to his knees.
“Bryn!” Ewen shouted, holding Granite against bolting. “Stay with Noyce and keep well back. If this goes ill, ride for the Vale and Swordmaster Tavin! Ivyn and you barracks men—with me!”
No time for last words. Running sweat, they charged.
The vicious beasts were man-sized and nimble, the frothing horses mad with fear. Shouting defiance, Ewen wielded Blood-drinker in a fury, hacking and slashing, spurring Granite in for a strike, hauling the horse onto its haunches in feinting retreat. Dimly he knew Ivyn and the barracks men fought beside him but his vision was blurred scarlet, his blood a thundering flood through his veins.
Horses screamed. Men screamed. Duff went down, ripped in half, and his blood-soaked barracks mount fled. Hob went down next, his skull crushed with one blow. Refyn’s horse died with its throat torn out and smashed the barracks man to the ground beneath it.