by B. V. Larson
“Know, river-boy, that I myself slew your cousin Sam,” Voynod told him mockingly.
“Ambros!” cried Brand, blocking another blow. “Know, piper, that I wield Ambros the Golden!”
“When Herla learns of your death, I will be granted a boon,” hissed back the other. “As my boon, I will ask for a steaming draught of your lifeblood, river-boy!”
Brand caught another blow with the axe and this time he slid the edge of it down to the base of the other’s sword. He managed to slip the blade over the sword’s hilt. Three black-gloved fingers fell into the muck and squirmed there for a moment before falling to dust.
Losing only a moment’s focus, Voynod switched the sword to his left hand and wheeled the horse so that he could still strike down at Brand. Brand jumped back and hacked at the horse’s legs. Hamstrung, the dead thing staggered, but didn’t fall. Urging his crippled horse to retreat, Voynod headed back up the slope.
Brand gave chase, crying out as he leapt after the rider and wrestled him from his failing mount. In a last vile act, the bard sank his teeth into Brand’s gauntleted hand. Brand yelled in pain, so great was the power of the bite that it crushed his finger right through the steel mesh. Then the flesh fell away to dust and only a skull still remained, its teeth clamped upon his hand. He tore it away and tossed the crumbling skull from him. The horse, riderless, soon staggered and fell apart.
“Victory!” shouted Brand, holding Ambros high. The golden eye winked, and the army of the Haven came upslope, cheering. Brand noticed that only the dark bard’s sword and pipes remained behind to show that he had ever existed.
“Let no man touch these accursed things!” he commanded them as they swarmed around him. “We’ll carry them with sticks and bury them in the deepest sinkhole of the marsh.” There was no argument from the troops.
Brand led them in the final charge upslope, but the coursers just sat upon their horses, waiting. As the men came close, the white mists that had birthed them closed around them and the Wild Hunt vanished from view. Reaching the spot where they had stood, Brand would have believed them all to have been ghosts except for the hoofprints that marked every inch of the muddy ground.
“Where have they gone?” he snarled.
“Herla has pulled them back,” replied Corbin, gasping as he topped the slope. “Perhaps he awaits the rhinogs—or the darkness.”
Brand nodded. “He won’t wait long. But it matters nothing! We shall be victorious in every instance!”
Corbin nodded and slapped his back. “You fought well, cousin. I did fear for your life.”
Brand tolerated his touch with difficulty. “I fought poorly, but I will do better next time.”
Corbin handed him his shield. “Here. You forgot this.”
Brand took the shield and thanked him. “It seems so much less important than the axe, but thank you.”
“Perhaps it could have taken that blow that so mars the beauty of your breastplate, Brand!” said Tylag, finally huffing up to the top of the slope.
To Brand, his Uncle’s words burned like base insults. He glared at him, and the bloodlust that still gripped his mind caused him to see a mocking smile on Tylag’s face.
“Shut up, fool!” Brand muttered. It was hard for him not to shout at his Uncle. He even thought of shoving the old man back down the slope to see how far he would roll…. That would be good sport!
He reminded himself with an effort that such thoughts must be spawned by the axe, and that he was its master. To demonstrate the truth of this to himself, if no one else, he put the axe back into his knapsack and pried his fingers loose from its haft.
A wave of fatigue and even vertigo passed through him. He swayed on his feet and Corbin slipped a supportive arm around his shoulders. Corbin and Tylag exchanged relieved looks, which Brand noticed and felt embarrassed by. He thought of the things he had said and done and his face flushed redder.
“I’m sorry,” he said to his relatives, almost in a whisper. Tylag came up and hugged him.
“There’s no need, Brand,” said Tylag, gripping his shoulder. “You saved us all! We can take a harsh word from the champion of the Haven!”
Then they all marched to the gatehouse. It had begun to rain, but for most of the men the day had just gotten started. All the supplies needed to be unloaded from their boats and the craft needed to be secured. Tylag himself supervised the unloading and the distribution of the arms found beneath the southern tower.
All that afternoon they worked until, just as dusk reddened the skies, the rhinogs arrived and surrounded the ruins.
Chapter Twelve
Strange Leathers
All the way back to the gatehouse, Brand thought of Voynod’s words. Could the bard truly have been the one who executed Sam in the barn at Froghollow? It seemed so long ago and far away. Should he tell Corbin of it?
“What is it?” asked Corbin, following his thoughts and feelings as usual.
“I—just something that the bard said to me before falling to dust.”
“He was a foul dead-thing, Brand. Nothing he could say would bring anything but pain to the listener.”
“True,” said Brand. They went on several steps in a growing silence.
“So what did the monster say?” burst out Corbin at last.
Brand would have laughed, had the news not been so grim. Instead, he only glowered at his feet, which felt too tired to keep going. Somehow, he managed to force them to keep plodding on.
“Something bad, then,” said Corbin, filling in the silence. “Something about the Haven, about our people there….”
Brand sighed. “What’s the use? If I wait long enough, I suppose you’ll just figure it out in that clockwork mind of yours. The bard claimed that he, himself, slayed Sam.”
Corbin stiffened, and Brand bit his lower lip, feeling his cousin’s pain. Ever since they had spilled Sam’s body from the cliffs into the flood of the Berrywine, Corbin had not been as light of spirit. “I’m sorry to tell you. Who even knows if it’s true, Corbin? We have no way of knowing.”
Corbin nodded grimly. “He could have just been trying to unnerve you,” he said, “but I think not. It makes too much sense. The blow was a clean, single sweep, which Voynod could have managed with his sword. Things were more likely to have been drawn out and messy if the rhinogs had been involved.”
Brand winced at the image that came to mind at Corbin’s words, but he couldn’t refute the other’s logic.
“You yourself had sighted the bard over several days prior to Sam’s death,” continued Corbin. “No, it makes sense. I believe it, and I must say I’m greatly relieved.”
Brand looked at him in surprise. Corbin looked haggard, his eyes dark in their sockets. He seemed anything but relieved.
“No, really,” said Corbin. They halted and Corbin grabbed both of Brand’s shoulders and held him at arm’s length. “I’m indebted to you, Brand. I would never have known if Sam’s death had gone unavenged. It would have always haunted me.”
Brand smiled then, but it was a grim thing, with no mirth in it. His smile turned to a humorless grin. He felt a wave of pleasure that he couldn’t understand, and then he realized that it perhaps had something to do with the axe. It was pleased, pleased that a wrong had been violently righted. Harsh justice had been meted out, and nothing gratified it more.
Corbin looked at him oddly. “The axe?” he asked.
Brand nodded, his odd expression fading.
“I wonder what motivates it,” said Corbin.
“I do too, sometimes. It seems like a strange spirit.”
“I mean,” said Corbin, groping for words, “does it think? If so, what does it think about? Is it just reacting to things or does it make plans and execute them?”
Brand shook his head. He had no answers. Both brooded over this for a time. The two marched the rest of the way to the gatehouse in silence. When they arrived the grille was levered back to allow them to enter.
Modi clapped a heavy h
and onto Brand’s shoulder the moment he appeared inside the green dome. “Well done!” he said with more feeling than Brand had ever heard in his voice. “Well done indeed!”
Brand smiled tiredly. “Thanks,” he said, thinking that perhaps Modi wasn’t such a dark-hearted bully after all. It seemed that he could admit when he was wrong, which counted for a lot in Brand’s book.
“What happened, Brand?” called down Telyn. She still maintained her post at the top of the dome. She hung upside-down with her knees crooked over a thick branch. Brand marveled at her lithe form.
“We won!” he shouted up to her, knowing that would please her. “But looking at you hanging up there, I know the battle was nothing next to your acrobatics. I thought I was reckless!”
She laughed and their eyes met. Brand felt a thrill go through him. She swung down a vine that Myrrdin had conveniently grown from the top of the dome to allow her easy access to her perch. She ran to him and kissed him, and Brand learned the best time to greet one’s love was after facing death.
“I feared for you,” she whispered, her head on his chest.
He stroked her head awkwardly, trying not to catch her hair with his gauntlets. He shook them off when he realized there was merling blood and the dust crumbling dead-things on them.
“I need to clean up,” he said in her ear.
She nodded, but didn’t let go. She hugged him and he could almost feel her squeezing even through the armor that encased his chest. Then she pulled away and examined the dent in his breastplate.
“You were nearly killed,” she said matter-of-factly.
Unable to deny it, he said nothing. Corbin came up to say it all for him. “Brand here is indeed the Axeman, the Champion of the Haven,” he began. In glowing terms, he detailed the events of the battle. Everyone hung on his words, save for Brand, who tried to shed his dented armor, and Myrrdin, who brooded near the broken fountain.
He went to rest with Myrrdin. Moodily, Myrrdin scratched at the soil between his feet with the freshly-carven tip of his staff.
“Did you enjoy it, Axeman?” he asked after a time.
“No, and yes,” said Brand.
“What do you mean?”
“It was like smashing your hand on a table after drinking too much in the tavern. It feels good at the time….”
“But afterward, when the glow fades, you’re left picking splinters from your bruised palm?”
“Exactly,” agreed Brand.
Myrrdin nodded. “I’m glad to see that the glow has faded.”
“So am I.”
“You will have to wield the axe again, Axeman. Very soon, I should think.”
“I know,” said Brand, rubbing his sore arms and legs. The armor he had shed had bruised him.
“Soon the sun will set, and all through the night, the goblins will not let us rest,” said Myrrdin in a faraway voice. Brand felt that he wasn’t predicting the future so much as describing a painful memory. “In the last hour of night, when humanity is at its lowest ebb and the Shining Folk at their peak fervor, they shall flail and torment their brutish offspring into a frenzy great enough to overcome their natural cowardice. At that hour they shall attack us.”
Myrrdin dipped his head back down and continued to scrawl shapes and lines in the soil at his feet. Brand looked at them for a moment, but found them disturbing to the eye and quickly looked way. He gave an involuntary shudder as he rose and left Myrrdin to his sorcery.
He looked up into the dome of greenery and thought he could make out the steady glow of Telyn’s unnatural beacon. It burned still, although there had been many gusts of wind that should have blown it out and it should have long ago exhausted the tallow coating its wick. It made his mouth go dry to think that Myrrdin was teaching his arts to Telyn. Could he truly marry and bed a witch? He made an effort not to cast his eyes to where she now built a fire. After pondering it, he concluded that if she could stand living with a moody, murderous Champion of Ambros, he could learn to tolerate her witchery. He sighed and once again longed for the simple life of the Haven. It seemed all but lost to him now.
Some hours later Tylag and his lieutenants came to inspect the domed gatehouse and the defenses they had put up. Brand was gratified to see that they now wore proper armor and bore real weapons of the sort that normally only hung over the mantles in most of the Haven. Tylag carried a fine broadsword, its shine and luster showing a keen edge.
“What I can’t understand,” Tylag told him after he had gotten over his initial amazement and distrust of the unnatural dome, “is how this weaponry was so well cared for! It must have been a dozen centuries since our clan manned these walls in whatever great battle brought them down.”
“Nine centuries, to be exact,” said Gudrin.
Tylag shot her an odd glance, and then turned back to Brand again. “How is it possible? If I didn’t know better, I’d say that this sword had been freshly oiled within the last month!”
“Most likely,” said Brand, “it has.”
“And the oils and the leathers used,” marveled Tylag. “I’ve never seen their like! Could it be merling skin?”
“There are many wonders here beyond the borders of the Haven, Uncle. Some are best left unquestioned.”
He gave Brand a hard look, and Brand returned it. Tylag nodded as if in understanding, and eyed the blade speculatively. He took Brand’s hint and asked no more on the subject. They needed the weapons, and perhaps even more they needed the morale that the weapons gave his ragtag army of farmers.
“There isn’t enough room in here for our whole force,” said Tylag, switching subjects. “Not even for half of us. But, it will make an excellent headquarters and bulwark for our troops to rally around. Crossbowmen can man the loopholes you’ve been setting up and easily shoot over the heads of the footmen outside. We can maintain a shelter in here for the wounded, as well.”
The wounded. Those words echoed in his mind. He had marched on ahead, still wrapped in the glow of the axe after the last battle. He had thought only of his own killing, but had little considered the number of Haven people who must have died in the fighting. He felt a pang in his gut. Which of his childhood friends had already fallen unnoticed into the mud behind him?
Soon after that thought, the wounded began to arrive. Borne on palettes and makeshift stretchers from the shoreline, tired and muddy troops began to carry them into the cool gloom of the gatehouse. Outside the sounds of digging could be heard as fresh, shallow graves were being dug. The dead of the Haven were buried outside the borders of their homeland where they had spent their entire lives up until this very day.
“Here,” said a bass voice behind him. Brand turned to see Modi, thrusting his breastplate at him. Brand took it, and saw immediately that the dent had been hammered out. He smiled at him and Modi looked uncomfortable.
“Here, wear a helmet this time, or the rhinogs will shoot your fool eyes out,” said Modi gruffly. He extended his other thick-fingered hand and gave Brand a steel helmet with a neck guard of fine mesh hanging from it. The helmet was brightly polished to a mirror-like surface. A single spike protruded from the top of it.
Brand took both the breastplate and the helmet with a nod. “Thanks,” he said, “those of the Haven say that there are no finer arms or armor than that made by the Kindred.”
Modi smiled briefly. “Then they are right. I chose this helm from the pile because it is indeed from the forges of the Kindred. The cursive mark of the forges beneath Snowdon decorates the spike.”
Brand nodded, examining it. Fortunately, Modi had left before Brand went to put the helm on his head experimentally. Inside the helm, the protective sheath of leather padding had that same disturbing softness to the touch that so much of the other gear from the redcap’s horde had. Brand rubbed his fingers together as if to rid himself of the feel of it. Was it merling, or human? He wondered what marshman had never returned to his humble hut after perhaps hunting for merlings in the far north….
Grit
ting his teeth, he forced himself to place the helm upon his head. If one of his fellows had given his life to help arm the army of the Haven now, in its hour of need, he told himself he must accept the gift and hope the man’s spirit would be forgiving.
“Rhinogs!” came a shout from above. Others had taken over Telyn’s post among the leaves now, giving her a rest. A red-faced man with long, skinny limbs had clambered up the rope and now shouted the alarm to those below. Even as he cried his warning, the man fell from his perch. He crashed down onto the stone fountain that stood in the center of the gatehouse. A huge shaft, perhaps an inch thick, had pierced his skull. The black tail feathers of a raven fletched the heavy bolt. Blood filled the fountain where once sweet water had flowed.
Even as the warning shout came, Brand realized that he could hear something in the distance. It was the beat of the rhinog wardrums. This time, however, there wasn’t just a few of them, hammering out messages from scout band to scout band. This time, there were hundreds of drums – maybe thousands, all pounding at once, all in unison.
As the next few hours passed, the noise grew and grew. By nightfall, the sound was that of an army of ogres hammering on the door at midnight.
Chapter Thirteen
Hilltop Meeting
Brand and Corbin stood together on the top wall of the old keep, one of the few structures that remained relatively intact. The night had closed around them and everywhere was the noise of the rhinog army. Brand turned his eyes to the west, where three great catapults had been dragged through the muck and into a ragged line. Riding upon each of the catapults were five or six goblins, their eyes slitted and their thin long whips flicking out viciously. Scores of rhinogs strained in the mud to drag the catapults closer to the ruined castle. When they staggered or fell, the goblins whipped their offspring furiously.