The Iron Hound

by Tim Akers

  In the silence that followed, Malcolm could hear screaming, distant and soft. Frowning, he peered in the direction of the gate.

  The ground shook.

  The shadows grew.

  Something rose from the road just in front of the Fen Gate, a twisting shadow rising on wings of tangled starlight. Startled screams came from the Suhdrin camp.

  “He came,” the girl whispered, “and you will answer.”

  28

  GREENHALL WRAPPED AROUND them like a smothering blanket. After weeks in the wild, surrounded only by the forest and the silent presence of the druids, Gwen found the city’s bustle deafening.

  A carpet of children and geese and hungry dogs swarmed underfoot. Buildings reached to the sky on either side of the street, leaning closer together the higher they got, stringing ropes of laundry between them, until the cobbles lay in squalid shadow despite the sun. The streets were thick with filth flung from the windows above or dropped by the endless stream of passersby. The air stank of stale sweat and fresh shit, yet none of the citizens seemed to notice.

  If Gwen thought it overwhelming, the druids found it abhorrent. Cahl kept gagging beneath his bindings, while Folam breathed deeply and evenly, as though in meditation. Only Noel, raised in the cities of the south, seemed comfortable on Greenhall’s streets.

  “Gods, do they just shit where they walk?” Cahl asked, then he fell into a spasm of coughing and gagging that nearly undid his disguise. They were forced to stop until he collected himself.

  “We aren’t lucky enough to have rivers everywhere we go,” Noel said. “It’s better after a rain, or in the winter.”

  “In Fenton, we have groups whose job it is to wash away the filth,” Gwen said. “They must have a similar operation here.”

  “On the nicer streets, perhaps,” Noel said.

  “These are apparently not the nicer streets,” Folam said quietly.

  “They are not,” Gwen agreed, “and the less time we spend on them, the better, I think.”

  “Yes,” Folam said. “Cahl, can you sense the shrine?”

  The shaman slowed, turning his bandaged face up to the sky. The crowds pushed around them, swearing at the blockage, bumping into Gwen and Noel, shooting nasty looks as they passed. Cahl shook his head.

  “There’s too much here. I need…” He turned his head, blind, his hands reaching out for nothing. “I need quiet, and raw stone.”

  Gwen looked down between her feet at the swirl of refuse and stagnant water. She grimaced.

  “There’s little of either here,” she said. “Let’s keep moving.” They walked on for a while in silence, each woman leading a shaman by the hand. Most of the passersby gave them little notice, though a growing crowd of children followed at a distance, whispering among themselves.

  “Is it always like this?” Noel asked, quite suddenly.

  “Crowded? Yes, Greenhall is always packed. Though it’s probably worse now, with the war. Anyone isolated and scared of the pagan night will seek the blessed safety of Halverdt’s walls—any who aren’t marching to war, that is,” Gwen said. “Though I’ve seen enough able-bodied men.”

  “Not that,” Noel said. She motioned to the banners that hung from the buildings. Each one was red and yellow, Strife’s holy flame stitched across the face. Some were much nicer, while others looked to have been made quite recently, and in great haste. The braziers that burned at every corner were laced with frairwood or lesser incense, and contributed to the stench in the air.

  “As you said,” Gwen said, “Sophie seems to have found her faith, if only for the goddess of summer.”

  “Yes. Strange that she keeps the sigil of summer up, even though we are at the threshold of winter,” Noel said.

  “Celestials and their calendars,” Cahl muttered. “The spirits move the weather, not the cycle of days.”

  “And yet winter is always winter,” Noel countered, “and summer always summer. It’s as though the young duchess seems determined to hold on to the light a little longer than she should.”

  “It feels desperate,” Gwen said. “It feels mad.”

  “I find it comforting,” Noel said quietly, and Gwen was reminded of the cloak of flames that had wrapped the witch when she faced off against Judoc.

  “There is less traffic this way,” Gwen said suddenly. All the talk of celestials and calendars was making her nervous. They couldn’t afford to attract attention. So she led them down a different street, though truly it didn’t seem any quieter than the one they had been on. Nevertheless, Noel followed.

  In fact, each turn they took brought them to a narrower, louder street, more crowded and less clean than the last. Gwen was getting antsy. Cahl was getting sick. Finally, they stopped beside an old well situated in a tight courtyard with barely enough room to walk around the watering hole’s ancient walls. Strangely, there was less traffic here. Noel led Folam to the well’s edge, guiding his hand to the stones.

  The old man smelled the air, puffing out the bandages around his face, leaning down into the well’s gaping mouth. He coughed, drawing back quickly.

  “The water is fouled,” Folam said around a mouth full of bile.

  “Small wonder there are fewer people,” Noel said. She pulled Cahl out of the corner of the courtyard, where the shaman had been hugging the wall nervously. “The water may be foul, but the stones are true. Tell us what you sense, shaman.”

  Grimacing, Cahl knelt, shifting his bandages so he could see. He ran calloused fingers over the stone of the well, tracing the wall until his fingers reached raw earth.

  “This is good,” he said. “An ancient vein. The children of flowers drank from these waters and knelt at this font.”

  “And now it lies fouled by this open sore of a city,” Folam rumbled, showing uncharacteristic anger. “This insult should be answered.”

  “We’ve no time to right every wrong we will find within these walls,” Gwen said. “Let’s locate the shrine and be gone.”

  “It is… deeper. The sun does not touch it, nor the wind.” Cahl stood, rubbing his hands together to brush them clean. “There is no hint of frairwood tangled in its breath.”

  “That’s helpful,” Folam muttered. “No sun, no wind, and none of this damned incense. The shrine must be buried deeper than I thought. Perhaps too deep.”

  “There is a section of collapsed homes in the north end of the city,” Gwen said. “Halverdt’s Curse, it’s called. When the first Lord Greenhall claimed this land he built a palace in true Suhdrin style. Marble arches, iron trellises, the works. They say it collapsed under the weight of its own pretension.”

  “More likely destroyed by the disrupted spirits of Tenerran dead,” Cahl said as he readjusted his bandages to once again cover his face. “Especially if it was built over the vernal shrine.”

  “I agree,” Folam said. “Take us to this place.”

  “Going to be hard to find,” Gwen said. “They built over it after the collapse.”

  “Get me close,” Cahl said gruffly. “I will find a way.”

  With their disguises secure, Noel and Gwen led the two shamans out of the quiet courtyard and back into the busy crush of the streets. As they were leaving, Gwen glanced back.

  There was a child perched on an archway overlooking the well. He was dressed in rags, but carried a length of wood across his back, like a paladin’s sword. As soon as he saw Gwen looking at him, he swung into a narrow window, disappearing from view. The child’s wooden blade clattered against the window’s shutters as he leapt. Gwen paused, straining to listen, watching the window.

  “What did you see?” Noel asked.

  “Gods, woman, nothing!” Cahl answered. “Have you forgotten that I’m blind?”

  Gwen shook her head. “Let’s get out of here,” she said. “Before it becomes something.”

  Where they ventured next made the main boulevards of Greenhall pristine by comparison. Not even the braziers of frairwood could mask the scent of rotting filth. Many of th
ose braziers had been robbed, the smoldering wood snatched by nimble hands, to be burned in one of the hovels that lined the narrow road.

  The road itself was splintered and uneven, the cobblestones jutting in every direction, often buried under generations of accumulated grime. A sluggish stream ran down the center of the road.

  The banners that hung in this part of town were stained, and the people who watched from open doors or alleyways were thin and desperate, or too drunk to care. There was no shortage of children, but the usual cloud of animals that haunted the rest of the city was missing.

  “We mustn’t spend long here,” Noel said. The Suhdrin witch’s clothes were more suited to a merchant than a pauper, and while Gwen and the two shamans fit in nicely with their forest-stained rags, Noel was attracting unwelcome attention.

  “It’s getting easier,” Cahl said. He walked with outstretched hands, brushing the rare stone lintels and chimneys as he walked. Most of the buildings were clapboard and piled trash, but there was enough of the essential element for the shaman to find his way. “Shouldn’t be long now.”

  “Very good,” Folam said. “Very good, indeed.”

  “There’s sun and wind enough,” Noel said, grimacing at the sky. “Even if we’re close, we’re going to have to go down at some point.”

  “The Curse is little more than an open sewer,” Gwen said. “There will be gates enough. We just have to find them.”

  “I can lead you to the Curse, if that’s what you’re looking for,” a voice said from their side. Gwen and Noel turned to see a boy, the one who had been watching them at the well, sitting and swinging his legs from a ledge that overlooked the road.

  “And what will that cost us?” Gwen asked.

  “Our coin, I imagine,” Noel said. “And probably our throats slit in a back alley.”

  “That’s the price if you wander around here much longer,” the boy said. “A merchant girl, her skinny brother, and two blind farmers?” He waved a hand down the street. “Continue on, if you must. I’ll say a prayer at your burial. If anyone finds the bodies.”

  Noel snorted derisively. “You make a hard sale, little one, but I think we can handle ourselves against a bunch of bread-starved beggars, if you please.”

  “Not in the Curse, you won’t,” the boy said. “Folks like you step into those shadows, and it’s your life for the quiet house, and nothing less.” He dropped down from his ledge, bandage-wrapped feet slapping lightly against stones as he crossed in front of them, barring the way. “Sir Horold will lead you to safety, though. You can pray on that!”

  “Sir Horold, eh?” Gwen asked. The boy’s rags were cut to look like a knight’s tabard, and the smear of stains on his chest might be mistaken for a flame. “And what is your price, Sir Horold?”

  “For a lady such as this?” the child asked, bowing to Noel. “It is my honor.”

  “Well, your honor will earn you half a crown, if you get us there and back safely,” Noel said. “No tricks.”

  “My honor forbids it,” Horold said. The child bowed again, an awkward, gangly motion that revealed the scabs along his legs. “Follow me.”

  “He thinks himself a knight,” Gwen whispered to Cahl as they set off.

  “A vow knight,” the child piped in. “I have dedicated myself to Lady Strife, and the glories of summer.” He winked sideways at Noel. “The season of love, my lady.”

  “Gods preserve,” Cahl muttered.

  * * *

  True to his honor, Horold led them to an entrance to the Curse. On the way there they passed several more obvious paths down, from storm grates to a gaping archway hung with chains and leading into darkness. Their guide took them through several abandoned buildings before pulling back a trapdoor. A ladder dropped out of sight, followed by the sound of splashing water.

  “Most ways are guarded by unsavory characters, my lady,” Horold said. “Black marketers, slavers, possibly even servants of the pagan gheists. But not this path. This way is as safe and true as Strife’s embrace.”

  “Of course it is,” Noel said. “And what waits for us beyond? Your band of earnest little knights, ready to take our possessions?”

  “You harm my honor,” Horold said, “but I will allow it. After all, trust is built on action, yes? I have led you here, as I swore I would, and I will guard your passage through these depths, as is only befitting a knight of my station.”

  “You should quit playing this foolish game, boy,” Gwen said angrily. “It will get you killed. Or worse.”

  “Game? This is no game,” Horold said. He stood away from the trapdoor’s edge and drew his wooden sword. “When Lady Sophie took her throne, she swore to raise a true army of the goddess, one that will cleanse the corruption from this land. I took my pledge that day, to work with each dawn and each dusk, that I might be worthy of the bright lady, and one day take the winter vow.”

  Gwen and Noel exchanged dark glances, but it was Folam who spoke.

  “Such a bright child,” he said. “You have surely done the bright lady’s will in bringing us here, but now we can find our own way.”

  “So you say,” the boy answered, and he turned his attention again to Noel. “Why are you seeking the Curse, anyway? A lady such as yourself is better served in sunlight, is she not?”

  “I am no lady,” she hissed, “and you are no knight.” She slid onto the ladder and wormed her way into the darkness. There was a splash a moment later. “We will need light,” she called up.

  “Your blind friends won’t know the difference,” Horold said. “But for the ladies, I will bring Strife’s light into the darkness.”

  He scampered out of the room, leaving the pagans alone in the dimness.

  “We should go, before he returns,” Gwen said.

  “I would rather keep him close,” Folam said. “He is harmless enough, but now that we are this far, I do not want to risk the child talking. Especially not one so earnest in his faith.”

  “And when we find the shrine?” Gwen asked. “What then?”

  Folam turned bandaged eyes to her, his old lips parting in an understanding and patient smile.

  “He is a child,” the voidfather said. “What do you think I am?”

  “I agree with Gwen,” Cahl said. “We don’t need him any longer. I can feel the shrine in my bones. We are close.”

  “Maybe I should stay behind with him,” Gwen said. “Keep him distracted while you find the vernal god’s shrine. Then once you’ve done whatever it is you need to accomplish, we can be safely on our way. All of us.”

  “No, no,” Folam said, shaking his head. “That will not do. We’re not leaving anyone behind.”

  “I don’t like it,” Gwen said. “I don’t like any of this.”

  At that moment the boy returned. He was carrying a brand from one of the braziers in the street outside, its end wrapped in the linen from his feet. He held it up like a benediction.

  “The bright lady has provided us light, just as she will provide us safety in the darkness,” Horold said. “Come, let us bring the light into the darkness.” He rushed past Gwen and Cahl, disappearing into the Curse. With a sigh, Gwen motioned to the ladder.

  “Try to remember you’re supposed to be blind,” she said. The two pagans felt their way slowly down into the tunnel. Gwen followed a moment later, closing the trapdoor behind her.

  29

  IAN AND ELSA were given better rooms, though just as isolated. The tower where they were held had burned at some point in the recent past, and the stone was charred. The wooden floors were newly hewn and still smelled of sawdust and pitch. However, they each were given a room, with a common area between, all with windows. The shutters hammered day and night with the force of the storm outside.

  “There is much of this I don’t understand,” Ian said, sitting in the common area and preparing to eat. The servants brought them their meals. They had yet to see the other occupants of the castle, though two days had passed since their strange audience with Lord
Halfic. “To begin, why should we give a damn? We’ll be on our way as soon as this storm passes, unless you think Lady Gwen is hidden somewhere within the confines of Harthal.”

  “No,” Elsa said. She was back in her armor, clearly more comfortable wearing steel and blade. “You may be right. This may have nothing to do with us, but I’m getting restless.”

  The shutters clattered loudly as a strong gust struck them. Cold air leaked through the slats, stirring the flames in the hearth and giving Ian goosebumps. He laughed.

  “The storm is hungry for us, sir,” he said. “Perhaps we should just leave. Give the god of winter what he wants.” He tore off a hunk of bread and dipped it in a miserable stew. “A fair fight, and our frozen bones.”

  “No, I want to get a look around the castle. It seems strange that we’ve seen so few people, especially in this weather. It’s not as if they could simply be beyond the walls, hunting or some such.”

  “The kitchens were busy enough,” Ian said. “There must be people here, even if the great hall lies fallow. We’re just being kept away.”

  “What do you know of our host?” Elsa asked.

  “Halfic? He keeps to himself, always has. Protects his lands and pays his vassal gold,” Ian said, then he shrugged. “I’ve had no hint of pagan heresy from him. But I knew nothing of Gwen’s faith, either.”

  “It might explain why he didn’t lend spears to Adair’s defense,” Elsa mused. “If he didn’t want to draw attention to himself. Yet if Halfic were a pagan, you would think he would want to protect his fellow heretic. If only to protect himself.”

  “If he’s trying to summon a gheist, though…” Ian started.

  “Or cast one out,” Elsa said. “Let’s not assume anything. And I haven’t been able to sense anything unholy on the castle grounds. Inquisitors are better for that. Gods I wish Frair Lucas were here.”

  “Right, or cast one out. If he’s trying to do either of those things, the presence of a vow knight in his castle could change things for him,” Ian said. “So why not speak with us. Why keep us isolated?”