The Iron Hound

by Tim Akers

  “Consider our present company, Dav,” Sir Doone said nervously. Sorcha ignored her.

  “It is not roaming,” Sorcha snapped, “and we will not leave its fate to hope.”

  “We need to get you to safety, my lady,” Doone said. “We can’t linger here any longer, and that means my people need to finish packing their kit. Dav, get the horses loaded. Lady Blakley and I will remain here.”

  “No,” Sorcha said. She turned on Doone, glaring. “We are not lingering here. Nor are we carrying all that junk with us. It will slow us down.”

  “There is nowhere that we can safely get without bedrolls, food supplies, cooking…” Doone started. Sorcha clapped her on the shoulder and spun her around. She pointed at the Fen Gate.

  “That is our destination, sir,” Sorcha said. “And you will not need to cook anything between now and our arrival. You would not carry a stove into battle, would you? Nor a blanket.” She turned to Sir Davon. “See the troops to their horses, and be sure they carry not an ounce of extra weight.”

  “If we go to the Fen Gate, the inquisitor is sure to see you,” Doone said. “I am sworn to protect you, my lady. I am sworn to see you safely to Houndhallow.”

  “And so you shall,” Sorcha answered. “As soon as we have ended this threat to Tener, and driven these fools from our land. No sooner.”

  Sir Davon stood uncomfortably between the two women, looking from one to the other for direction. Finally, Doone nodded.

  “Leave the saddlebags behind. We ride fast and hard, with battle to greet us at journey’s end.”

  * * *

  The sally court was a tight stone box, meant to serve as a muster point for small units of troops preparing to strike out from the castle’s flank. The entrance to the sally was a narrow gate, and outside the approach was hidden among the bluffs and easily defended. Neither was designed for a host of armored knights.

  Malcolm and his men were packed in knee to shield, their lances tangling in the close air above. The gheist horn continued its drone. The horses were nervous, surging together and muttering into their bits. The nerves spread to the men, as well. A feral god was churning through the castle behind them, and an army of angry Suhdrin waited beyond the wall. Blakley hitched himself high in his stirrups and looked out over the host.

  “This will not be a good fight,” he said. The riders quieted, looking up at their lord. He looked at each of them in turn. They were all knights of Houndhallow, born of families that had been true to his house since the time of the tribes. “I think the time of good fights has passed us by. The sort of battles that make poets sing and artists paint belong to history. Our fathers carried those banners. Our mothers rode those charges, and, with us on their knee, told stories of glorious times. More glorious, surely, than this.

  “Powers beyond our ken do battle on our hearths,” he continued. “They break the walls our families raised, and break the promises our houses have sworn. Gods walk among us, but there is no glory left for mortal blood.” Malcolm shifted uncomfortably. His knees were screaming at him for standing in the stirrups so long, and his back groaned under the weight of his battle plate. “But Suhdrin bastards at our gate are trying to take advantage of this. They will let the pagan god destroy our defenses and rout our guards, and then walk in to pick up the pieces like crows. Well, I for one am sick of hiding behind these walls and waiting for them to pounce!”

  A rumble of agreement went through the troop, calming their nerves. Malcolm tightened his grip on the lance, then continued, raising his voice.

  “I am tired of waiting for the glorious fight! I am tired of praying to Suhdrin gods for protection, and Suhdrin priests for mercy, while Suhdrin spears gather at my door!” His knights answered heartily, their voices echoing off the close walls of the sally court. “I am going to fight! They wait for us to falter, but I am going to show them that Tenerran spirits never fail.” More yelling, more spirit in their hearts. “They will meet us with steel, but we will answer them with blood!”

  The knights surged forward, nearly knocking Malcolm from his horse in their enthusiasm. He twisted in his saddle, leaning down to the man at the door.

  “Open the gate!” he yelled. “Open the gate before they crush each other!”

  The man nodded, throwing his weight into the winch that handled the heavy barrier. Gears creaked and thick rope groaned, and the sally port slowly peeled open. The armored column streamed through, raising a cloud of dust and scree as they rattled down the narrow approach, banners unfurling as they cleared the walls. Malcolm waited until most of them were through, then followed.

  To his surprise, a rider in white and gold joined him. He looked over at the priestess of strife. She wasn’t dressed for battle, and her robes were already grimed with the dust of their hasty exit.

  “What are you doing here?” he shouted over the hammer of hooves. “Isn’t your place with the inquisitor?”

  “My place has never been with the inquisitor,” Catrin yelled back. “Strife has given me another path!”

  “Go back! You are not fit for battle!”

  “There is more to war than fighting, Houndhallow,” she answered. “I am where I belong. I am where the gods have placed me.”

  Malcolm was about to answer, but then the host was riding free of the narrow path that hid the sally port. The forest was cut back, and at one time this clearing was overlooked by the castle’s northern tower. But the northern tower had fallen—along with the rest of the Fen Gate during Gwen’s supernatural assault—and now no eyes guarded the sally port’s exit. The knights milled about in the clearing, waiting for their lord to lead them forward.

  “Form a column,” Malcolm said. The priestess stuck to his side, which was annoying. If she insisted on riding beside him, Malcolm wouldn’t feel right leading from the front, as was good and proper. “Form on Sir Baird. Bannerman, to the front. Spears of Maebrook and Tollee, beside them. The rest fall in behind. We will take to the godsroad, and find the Suhdrin flank before they can gain the castle.”

  The column formed while Malcolm watched the cloud of spider-thin tendrils of shadow that occasionally arced over the castle walls, telling of the inquisitor’s battle inside. He wondered how long he had before the Suhdrins made their push. He wondered if he was leading his men into death.

  The first arrow fell at his feet. Another dozen rattled off of armor, more than a few striking flesh and drawing blood, riders falling to the rough ground with a scream and the crash of steel. The priestess was among them. Her white robes blossomed red, and she slumped against her mount, spooking the courser into the forest. Malcolm whirled to face the surrounding tree line.

  The Suhdrin were waiting. Their spears stirred between the trees, sunlight shining off hard helms and harder eyes.

  “To me!” Malcolm screamed. He put spurs to his mount and charged into the forest. “The Hound! The Hallow!”

  32

  IT WAS A god of fire and shadow. Lucas caught glimpses of it between the trees, its body arcing over the canopy, clouds of ember drifting in its wake as the dry autumn leaves of the forest caught fire at its touch.

  As they ran the frair wove ghosts of naether, trying to put the gheist off their trail. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes his tricks seemed to draw the demon closer.

  “We are never going to get away from it on foot,” Sacombre said. The high inquisitor had discarded his casual mockery. Fear lined his eyes, and his voice trembled as he ran. “We need those damned horses.”

  “I would pray for them, if I trusted you enough to close my eyes,” Lucas said. He and Sacombre both were running ragged, their age showing in empty lungs and quivering legs. “We never should have left the godsroad.”

  “Nor stayed the night in a haunted city,” Sacombre said. “But the time for mourning our errors has passed, Frair.”

  “It was safe. I thought it was safe,” Lucas said. He stopped at the edge of a clearing, leaning against a withered elm as he tried to catch his breath. The night ai
r hung on his lips in a ragged fog. “The demon was gone from the stone.”

  “Apparently not,” Sacombre said. The high inquisitor settled against a tree, opposite Frair Lucas, his arms folded over his knees like a fisherman. It had been some time since they had seen the gheist, and their greatest danger now came from old bones and the chill night. Lucas watched the man warily.

  “Why haven’t you run?” Lucas asked.

  “Have you not been watching?” Sacombre said. “We’ve been running all night.”

  “From me, I mean. From your shackles. You’ve made threats enough. I would think you would want to make good on them.” Lucas folded a little bit in to himself, letting the fatigue weigh him into the cold ground. “You wouldn’t even need a knife.”

  “Are you so anxious to die,” Sacombre asked, “that you remind me of my threats? Do you hope to stir me to violence, so you can do away with the trial and see me dead tonight?”

  “If I wanted you dead, I’d have left you in Sophie Halverdt’s care. Or shackled to the fountain. It’s you the gheist seeks.”

  “Or you,” Sacombre said. “My captor, and the two of us separated from our guards. Did you ever consider that this might be the work of some slighted pagan, seeking to kill the man who revealed Adair’s heresy?”

  “You still see pagans in every rogue gheist,” Lucas said, “and yet you won’t admit the wrong in yourself. You’re unbelievable, Tomas. Simply…”

  The gheist’s roar took them both by surprise. It shuddered the trees around them, sending loose leaves to the ground. Sacombre cowered behind his trunk, staring up at the sky. The sound came again. Closer.

  “We can’t stay here,” Lucas said. He pulled himself up to his feet, the bones in his knees snapping and cracking as he stood. “Even in Suhdra, the godsroad is better protection than flight. Come on.”

  Before Sacombre could stand, the sky to their east flared into brilliant color. Lucas barely had the time to draw the shadows of the forest to his beck before the gheist vaulted over their hiding place. Lucas shifted the light, hiding the two priests of Cinder from the gheist’s vision.

  The feral god hovered over them, turning in slow circles and figure eights, as though it chased its own tail. Its face was turned toward the earth, the long, thick tendrils of its beard dancing over the trees like wind. Slower and slower it turned, until the snake hung directly above Lucas and his hidden dome of shadow.

  Sweating through his vestments, Lucas held his staff in white knuckled hands, the tip planted firmly in the mud between his feet, the iron icon of Cinder pressed against his forehead. He mumbled prayers into the gray lord’s ear, weaving just enough of his body into the naetherealm to hide himself without disturbing the natural world enough to draw the gheist’s attention. The old gods were creatures of the unnatural processes of Tenumbra, keen to scent the workings of Cinder’s priests, just as the inquisition was tuned to the disturbances wrought by a gheist’s presence. If he could hide himself well enough, the gheist would go on its way, leaving Lucas alone.

  Gods willing. Gods pray.

  The gheist bent lower. The trees peeled apart to let it pass. A gentle song traveled through its scales, like a wind chime set to dancing. Light from its coat of plates filled the grove, turning the shadows of the trees into narrow spears, crisscrossing the grass in darkness. Lucas huddled beneath its gaze.

  The creature huffed, sending a wall of air through the grass. Its breath smelled like stiff leather and stone. It came closer, bending its head to where Lucas was hiding.

  The frair opened his eyes and looked up into the wide grin of the feral god. Its eyes swam with fog and small, bone-like chips that circled the center like whirlpools. The mouth folded open, revealing teeth as clear and thin as icicles.

  “Gods bless,” Lucas whispered to himself, then let his hand slide from the staff, undoing the bindings that kept him hidden.

  From behind Lucas, Sacombre pushed a wall of shadow through the air and into Lucas’s staff. The vein of purple light that traveled from the high inquisitor’s hand into the ashwood staff traveled as fast as lightning, as hard to see as spider webs on the breeze. It reinforced Lucas’s veil of naether, driving the frair further into the naetherealm, extending the deception to the rest of the tiny grove.

  The world darkened, and a film sprang up between the priests of Cinder and the gheist. Like a face peering into troubled water, the creature grew murky and indistinct. To Lucas’s clouded mind, there was a moment of recognition in the feral god’s eyes, something that passed quickly, to be replaced by confusion. The frair knelt there for a heartbeat. The gheist rose back into the sky and continued its hunt, disappearing into the forest. The song of its scales mingled with the shuffling of autumn leaves, and then it was gone.

  Sacombre unwound his arcane grip on Lucas’s veil. The deception collapsed, starlight returned to the grove. The high inquisitor stood stiffly. His face was pale, his brow bright with sweat. He turned away from Lucas.

  The frair stayed in the center of the grove, his hands limp in his lap, his knees sinking into the cold grass. When he looked up, Sacombre was staring into the woods, in the direction the gheist had fled.

  “You fear death,” Lucas said. “That is why you stay with me. With us.”

  “Afraid of death?” Sacombre asked. His voice cracked with tension, but he cleared his throat and continued, sounding much stronger. “I have bound death to my soul, Lucas. Or had you forgotten?”

  “And what did you learn in those months you were bound to pagan death?” Lucas asked. “Is that why you fear the quiet house? Did you gain a glimpse into what waits beyond this life? Something more than what Cinder promises? Or something less?”

  “The pagans live their bestial lives, and they die their bestial deaths. It has nothing to do with me. I am high inquisitor. Faithful of Cinder. Faithful of the celestial church. Besides, if I truly feared death, why would I stay with you? Have you forgotten our destination?”

  “No,” Lucas said, shaking his head. “And neither have you, but that is a distant death, cold and merciful at Cinder’s hand. Months away, if not years. If I turn you loose here, however, in the wilds, there are countless knives willing to cut you down.”

  “Now, or months from now,” Sacombre shrugged, still not looking back. “I would still be dead.”

  “If it isn’t the fear of death that keeps you at my side, it must be something else,” Lucas said. He cocked his head. Curiosity had always driven him. “Bestial lives of pagans, and bestial deaths. Do you seek redemption in the eyes of the gray lord? Are you afraid of being named pagan by the celestriarch, and denied the quiet house? Is that it?”

  Sacombre sniffed dismissively, but didn’t answer. Lucas stood, wobbling on ruined legs, propping himself up with his staff.

  “Redemption, then,” he said. “That is not Cinder’s way, you know. He judges, and harshly. You will not find mercy in his court.”

  “I do not seek mercy,” Sacombre said. “Do you? We are inquisitors, Lucas. Of different station, and different method, but we ply the same waters. You traveled with Gwen Adair, fully aware of her heresy, dealt with pagans, you even defended the witches’ hallow from an agent of the inquisition! If our positions were reversed, if it was Halverdt who triumphed at the Fen Gate, and not Blakley, you would be riding south in dark iron chains.”

  “That is hardly relevant…”

  “No?” Sacombre said. “Would you resist? Or would you submit to Cinder’s judgment, to justify your name, and free yourself from suspicion? You believe that you did what was right, yes?” He turned and came closer, bending to look close into Lucas’s face. “You did what you thought was necessary, and I did no less.”

  “You bound a pagan god, and drove these nations to war…”

  “War, because the inquisition is not enough. And a pagan god, because we use the tools Cinder has given us. The tools we need. The tools that will do the job.”

  “You’re mad,” Lucas said.

&n
bsp; “No,” Sacombre said stiffly. “The world is mad. I am necessary.”

  Lucas was about to answer when footsteps shuffled through the leaves behind him. He turned to see Stefan LaGaere, leading his horse and in the company of his men once again.

  “Gods bless that you’re safe, Warhome,” the frair said. “We have to get the prisoner back in his chains and down the godsroad before the gheist returns.”

  “No,” LaGaere answered. “Not chains.”

  “Do you… are you defying me, duke? I am charged by holy Cinder to see this man taken to Heartsbridge and tried for his crimes. If you think for one minute you’ll stop me, you are sorely mistaken.”

  “Am I? Because unless I miss my guess, you weren’t even able to hide from that gheist, much less fight it. You wouldn’t be alive without the high inquisitor’s intervention. So, no, I don’t think we’ll be putting him in chains.” LaGaere walked casually forward, putting one meaty hand in the middle of Lucas’s chest and shoving the old man to the ground. “As for your protection? I’ll do without, thank you.”

  “You don’t know what you’re doing!” Lucas cried, struggling to get the air back into his lungs. LaGaere led a spare horse to Sacombre and held it steady while the high inquisitor mounted. “You saw what he did at the Fen Gate. The lives he took!”

  “People die in war,” LaGaere said simply. Then he signaled to his men, swinging onto his own horse. The knights of Warhome flowed around Lucas, hooves hammering the leaves just inches from his hand, leaving him lying on the ground gasping for breath. Sacombre followed them. Before he left, LaGaere paused at the edge of the forest. “We’ll take him to Heartsbridge, frair, but I think it’s the Circle of Lords that’ll judge our friend Sacombre. For what he did to Halverdt, and Adair.”

  “That is not your place,” Lucas said. He stumbled to his feet. Cold mud slid down his back, miring his robes. “Judgment belongs to the church!”

  “The church has done damage enough,” LaGaere said. “The church has my faith, frair, but it doesn’t have my trust.”