During the course of conversation, one of the minstrels informed Jewel and Arran that they were riding past a spot known as “Gibbet Corner.” “For,” he explained, “a long time ago a chimney-sweep was hanged and gibbeted here. He had committed a murder, right near this place. The gibbet stood for many years after the corpse disintegrated, until at last the timber succumbed to weather, and it, too, crumbled away. But the name remains.”
“And more than the name, some say,” his fellow troubadour muttered uneasily, peering into the gathering gloom. “We have dawdled too long on our way this afternoon, and are now upon the very doorstep of night.”
To the right of the travelers, beneath the broken boughs of a derelict apple-orchard, piles of fruit lay rotting. The last rays of the sun illuminated fluttering cut-outs of brightly printed fabric—red admirals, tortoiseshells, and painted ladies, butterflies attracted by the sickly-sweet putrefaction of the apples.
A breeze shook the branches, and the abandoned orchard came awake with movement: leaves spiraling down, insects bouncing on the gaudy hinges of their wings, men moving silently and swiftly within the camouflage of the trees. The garb of the brigands was motley, dyed with the hues of natural vegetation, and they advanced with the easy stealth learned from practice in the wilderness. Harsh-faced, misshapen fellows were they, and their belts and baldrics sported a vast array of weaponry.
The first to spy them was Stormbringer.
“ ’Ware Marauders,” he warned in a low, clear voice. Then, glancing over to the beech-wood, he added, “On both flanks! Ride hard!”
His alarm was timely. Even as the travelers urged their steeds into a gallop, a deadly hail of crossbow bolts seared through their ranks. The half-dozen Marauders were shooting at them, but even their most practiced archers found it harder to hit fast-moving targets. The young weathermaster let drop the reins, balancing skillfully astride his hurtling mount as his hands began to form subtle signals. Next moment he was flung from his seat as his horse unexpectedly toppled. Other Marauders had been lying hidden amongst the wayside weeds, on both sides of the highway, and had raised a trip-rope. Its legs entangled, Arran’s horse crashed to the ground, closely followed by the mounts of Quoll and Jerboa. Jewel, instantly perceiving the dilemma, nudged her steed, which leaped high into the air and sailed gracefully over the three beasts prone and struggling in the middle of the road. The minstrels were unseated by their terrified, rearing horses, but somehow, both Snake and Caracal managed to swerve, avoiding further injury. Jewel, instead of riding to safety, turned her horse’s head and rode back toward the melee.
As he was thrown down, Arran had reflexively rolled into the fall, then somersaulted to a halt, springing to his feet unharmed save for several bruises. He was in time to witness the second band of Marauders closing in. The fifteen brigands did not hesitate, but plunged toward the beleaguered travelers, running at full speed. They bore no shields, but were armored with chain mail and plates of hardened leather. Quickly they surged across the space between Jewel and Arran like the sweep and clash of two ocean currents. There was no opportunity to practice weathermastery. Flourishing his sword, Arran rushed to meet the enemy.
The close combat grew fierce. Quoll and Jerboa, having managed to survive being jettisoned from their saddles, had regained their feet. They were fighting valiantly, despite that one side of Quoll’s head was soaked with blood. Caracal and Snake had wheeled about and charged into the fray on horseback, crouched low along the backs of their steeds and wielding long knives in both hands. Dextrously they spun their blades of Narngalis steel, which glittered like the spokes of chariot wheels, and would have plowed carnage among the ambushers had they not temporarily abandoned the fight and dodged out of reach. After discomfiting as many as possible, Snake jumped to the ground, unsheathed his weapons, and rejoined the fray on foot. Caracal, still in the saddle, wheeled and charged.
A multitude of pictures stabbed through the mind of Stormbringer, depicting the possible fates of Jewel: imprisonment and mistreatment at the hands of grotesque half-men; torment; terror; she alone in some remote mountain fastness without a champion to aid her, her blue eyes tear-filled . . . His most urgent desire was to force his way to her side. Even as he slashed and parried, he could see, through the gathering darkness, that she was surrounded by brigands and in imminent danger of being pulled from her saddle. Undaunted, she was laying about on all sides with a wooden club, dealing headaches to all within reach.
Caracal reached Jewel first, and commenced to beat back her assailants. Arran joined him a moment later. Together they became her defenders, flanking her horse. Arran was swapping sword-thrusts with a masked and ferocious opponent when the two weapons locked. The bloody blades slipped against each other, sliding up until the hilts jammed and the young weathermaster found himself staring into the mad eyes of his foe. A sudden glint sparkled from Arran’s finger, where his seal-ring reflected an unexpected prickle of light. The ruffian was distracted, his attention wavered, and with a mighty heave of his shoulders he threw off the young man.
The light had emanated from a brilliant burst of fire that had abruptly blazed forth upon a bank at the roadside. Piercing the gloaming, the fire’s radiance rinsed the profiles of the fighters with liquid brass, and they broke apart, shouting exclamations of surprise. The battle came to a dead stop. Every combatant froze with uncertainty, careful not to drop his guard. Jewel’s horse shied and snorted loudly in fear. There was a sifting in the gloaming, an unwebbing of dark gauzes.
A gigantic dog was standing in the road.
If it was indeed a dog, then it was the strangest Arran had ever beheld, the size of a foal, but emaciated, as if it had been protractedly starved. Its shaggy hide was draped over an angular frame. It had lengthy ears, large, long teeth, and an extensive plume of a tail. Sunk within the long-muzzled skull the eyes glowed, orbs of garnet incandescence.
No one spoke a word.
The black dog opened its mouth as if grinning at the men. Instead of renewing their assault the Marauders dodged away, calling out to their accomplices. Arran wiped dripping sweat from his eyes and leaned on his sword, panting. The bandits, wounded and unwounded, were loping silently into the trees.
After several moments the strange dog disappeared, seeming to vanish like a shadow, or to sink into the ground. No clue remained at the spot where it had stood.
“Let us hie from this place forthwith!” one of the minstrels shrieked in a high-pitched and trembling voice. “That was none other than the Black Dog of Gibbet Corner! There’s no knowing what will happen to us if we linger here. Fly! Escape!”
The Bucks Horn Oak liegemen whistled for their horses. Well-trained, the beasts obeyed their masters’ summons, and when they returned the horses of the other travelers were nervously following in their wake. No longer was there any sign of the ominous bonfire on the road-bank. Shades of evening darkness thronged in like black-wrapped executioners. The minstrels were by now gibbering with fear; therefore, as soon as they had captured their steeds the riders mounted up and hastened on.
“We are not far from the hamlet of Snug,” said Quoll as they rode. “There we will take our rest.” He was pressing a wad of fabric to one side of his bleeding head.
“And there we should seek a carlin!” exclaimed Jewel, noting his injury. She herself remained, of course, unscathed.
“Our hurts are not lethal,” replied Quoll, deftly binding a strip of linen around his head while he sat his moving horse. “No carlin’s aid is necessary. From bitter experience of the road we have learned to carry salves and bandages, and to practice some rudimentary healing arts. We are well equipped enough to tend to our own scratches.” He tossed a jar of ointment to Stormbringer. “Here, young warrior—smear it on your cuts. ’Twill help restore you to soundness.”
A wasted moon, pale and diseased, oozed out from behind the clouds. By its bloodless light they made their way, only too aware that the wighting hours were upon them.
�
�Ironically the unseelie Black Dog has proved a boon to us,” muttered Snake, “for had it not frightened off the Marauders, we must surely have been defeated.”
Quoll said quietly, “I can never become accustomed to seeing so many misbegotten things banded together. Some of those brigands were as hairy as beasts, while others were bald as babies. Several seemed patched with scale-armored skin, or sprouted great long toes.”
Caracal nodded, saying, “One or two were of enormous stature, perhaps seven feet tall.”
Arran had not spoken for some time, and seemed lost in thought. At length, as they went on, he observed, “I looked into the eyes of one of those half-men and witnessed no hatred, rage, passion, or desire, no empathy whatsoever—only ignorance and pitiless brutality. If they all be such creatures, how they can even exist as a community defies imagination, for there was no warmth, no fellow-feeling, merely cold clockworks of madness behind those eyes.”
“Aye,” one of the minstrels agreed wholeheartedly. “But thanks be to the Lord Ádh, they did not know what haunts Gibbet Corner betimes. As your comrade said, the sight of that wight drove them off and doubtless saved our skins.”
“Ignorant of local haunts they may be,” said Arran grimly, “but did you mark, they are armed better than many a nobleman’s garrison, with weapons of Narngalis steel and Grïmnørsland chain mail? How such gutter-dwelling wretches got their hands on high-quality arms and armor I cannot begin to guess.”
“Oh, that is easily answered, I dare say,” said the informative Quoll, still dabbing at his cuts and scratches with a blood-soaked rag. “Not long ago there began to be rumors of a network of arms-smugglers based in Cathair Rua, trading weapons to the murdering scum.”
“The Sanctorum will soon find out who is selling arms to the Marauders,” one of the minstrels put in self-righteously, “and then the guilty ones will be made to pay.”
“Be not so certain, my friend,” said Snake. “Other rumors would have it that certain of the druids are in the pay of these arms-runners.”
“Profanity!” gasped the minstrel. “I’ll warrant that any man who repeated such calumny would be flogged, by order of the Druid Imperius!”
Snake turned a hard stare on the musician, who subsided. Dampened, he and his friend dropped back to the rear of the group, and when they were out of earshot Arran asked Snake, “Has there been any mention of names? Of who might be behind this scheme?”
The Bucks Horn Oak liegeman nodded. “It is said that one trader is known as Weaponmonger, and there is another who might be his master—some back-alley fellow who knows how to discreetly grease the palms of High Court judges and other powerful druids.”
“Perhaps not so discreetly,” said Jerboa, “if his secrets are now the subject of whispers.”
“Truth has a way of revealing itself eventually,” said Caracal sagely.
“But what chance has Truth,” remarked Arran dryly, “against the Sanctorum?”
The liegemen blinked at him in surprise at his outspokenness, then laughed together.
“Well,” said Caracal good-naturedly, “I mark you are of one opinion with us, young sir!”
As he spoke, Jewel steered her horse beside him and handed him a stick of wood with a bowl-shaped end. “Here’s your leg back,” she said, “and I thank you for the use of it, for it drubbed a few skulls that required sense knocked into them!”
The big man guffawed again. On noticing Arran’s mystified look, he explained, “I tossed it to the damsel as I was riding to her aid, back there on the road. Across the heads of the Marauders I threw it, and she caught my leg with one hand, while keeping her seat and thrusting her boot in the face of some grasping cur. A masterful rider you are, Mistress Lily!”
The corners of Jewel’s mouth turned up in a sweet smile, until Arran reprimanded her, “Be that as it may, you should never have returned to the site of battle when you might have escaped.”
“I came back to help,” she answered him loftily.
“A fine help you are, a girl brandishing a wooden leg.” The heat of anger still burned within the young man. Visions of losing her to the attackers had unsettled him, so that he spoke to her with uncharacteristic roughness.
Still flustered by the Marauder onslaught and the apparition, but elated at her band’s reprieve, Jewel took his words at face value. She did not think to peer behind his mask of asperity. Her companions of the road were safe—that was her first consideration. Why Arran should rant at her was a mystery that, being beyond comprehension, she shrugged off. Now was a time for forging ahead, a time to be blithe.
“Well,” she said, “the villains ran away, did they not?”
Perceiving she teased him, he could not help but return a grudging smile. Soon thereafter, they reached the hamlet of Snug, where they rested for the night.
Riddle
Beyond Snug the highway bent left and began a gentle, meandering descent toward the next village, where it skirted the outlying hills of Bellaghmoon before winding its way across the countryside to Cathair Rua. Meadows rolled on both sides like oceans of tranquilly waving grasses, and beneath the hedgerows violets were producing a bounty of heart-shaped flowers, mere flecks of deep mauve exuding a heady perfume. Flocks of goldfinches skipped amongst clumps of teasel and crowthistle, pecking at the ripe seeds. Long necklaces of migrating birds threaded their way across the skies—chiffchaffs and redstarts, swallows and house martins. In patches of flame-colored woodland, robins were feeding on the busy clouds of gnats seduced by the mellow sunshine, while squirrels scampered across the fallen leaves seeking beech mast and hazelnuts.
Outside the gates of the capital of Slievmordhu, the Fairfield lay empty. The stamped-down soil of the market arena had lain desolate for four weeks, ever since the closing of the Autumn Fair. A querulous wind had picked up, and was playing at skittles with some broken sticks, remnants of dismantled stalls.
“The equinox approaches,” said Arran, watching the skirls and patterns of debris raised by eddies across the ground. “This is a season of flux.”
Soon after they entered the city, Jewel and Stormbringer parted from their companions of the road. The minstrels were the first to remove themselves, while the Bucks Horn Oak liegemen were slower to take their leave.
“Already it is late Otember,” said Quoll, “and by my reckoning it is only two weeks until Lantern Eve. Our plan is to remain here for one or two nights, before pushing on toward Narngalis. We shall be staying at an inn called the Ace and Cup.”
“We know of it, but alas, that is not close to the Three Barrels, where we intend to take our rest,” said Arran. “Many streets lie between your inn and our hostelry.”
Jewel said, “Notwithstanding, I hope we shall chance to meet again before we leave the city.”
“Even so!” agreed Caracal and Snake.
Jerboa said, “It is with regret that we must leave you, my young friends. Whither are you bound, when you conclude your business here?”
“Home to Narngalis,” the weathermaster replied circumspectly. “We shall not tarry long, here. My wish is to seek out any of my own kindred who might chance to be in the city. Afterward we shall take to the road north, and be not far behind you. If you prove slow, we might catch you up!”
“We do not travel slowly,” said Quoll, laughing. “Not when a happy homecoming awaits us at the end of the road!”
“I am sorry that we must part,” Jewel said to the liegemen. “Your company has been blithe, and without you we must surely have come to harm on the highway.”
“Would you care to join us at the Ace and Cup for one last drink before you depart?” Caracal asked, and to this Jewel and Arran readily agreed.
With many more expressions of cordiality they exchanged salutations and went their separate ways. Jewel and Arran were left on their own in the city. They led their horses through the streets, and the milling crowd of citizens parted to let them through, flowing to rejoin like murmurous waters at their backs. It was just p
ast noon, but the sun was invisible behind the overcast. A savage wind began to barrel through the city, issuing from the west, where a mighty bank of slate-blue storm clouds was rolling in. Garments flapped, detritus whirled past, and hats were snatched off heads.
“Rain and hail are on the way,” observed Arran unnecessarily. “The sooner we get ourselves snug indoors, the better.”
“Where are you guiding us?”
“To the inn of which I spoke, the Three Barrels. It is a hostelry favored by my kindred, who often choose to patronize it when they visit this town a-marketing, or for other reasons aside from royal business. Methinks if we sojourn there we might pick up recent tidings of High Darioneth, and I hope I might chance upon someone trustworthy who could bear a message to my father, letting him know we are safe and hale. I have been long away from Rowan Green, forsaking my duties. I daresay he’s ill-pleased with me.”
The beeswaxed timbers supporting the inner walls of the Three Barrels ran with liquid lampshine. Nailed thereon, hundreds of horse brasses winked cheerily. The inn looked clean and bright. As it happened, no sooner had they finished attending to the comfort of their horses in the hostelry’s stables and set foot in the common-room than Jewel and her companion came face-to-face with Bliant Ymberbaillé-Rainbearer, in the company of a gray-haired weathermage and a young journeyman from the Seat of the Weathermasters. At once they fell upon one another’s shoulders with gladness, exchanging heartfelt greetings.
The three from High Darioneth were elegantly clad. Their dyed leather belts and baldrics were fastened with intricately wrought buckles, the silver-white of platinum alloyed with iridium or the bluish-white of platinum blended with osmium. None wore weathermaster garb, which indicated they were in the city for purposes other than the taming of the elements. A thin ring of platinum pierced the lobe of Bliant’s right ear. His wide mouth was stretched in a grin; his expressive countenance denoted sheer delight. Indeed, joy was shining from the faces of all the reunited friends.
The Well of Tears: Book Two of The Crowthistle Chronicles Page 37