by B. V. Larson
“I’m sorry, sire. I misspoke.”
“Indeed.”
Gruum cleared his throat. “But, um… milord, what do you think of the girl? How is it she still lives?”
Therian eyed him. “You don’t want to know.”
Gruum opened his mouth to insist that yes, he very much did want to know, but then stopped himself. He realized he did not want to know anything upsetting about Margaret. Perhaps an unplumbed mystery was better than the truth in such situations.
-13-
Outside in the courtyard, the hunting party assembled. The skies were brighter than they had been the day before, but still fully overcast. Gruum was glad for this, as the direct sun would have been blindingly bright if it were to reflect from the snow into their eyes. As it was, every tree was blanketed in snow. Broken branches and icicles like crooked spears hung down everywhere. To him, the frozen world looked as if it were caught in the very pit of winter. He had to remind himself that the true season was autumn. He wondered what kind of storms they would have up here later this year when winter truly took hold. It was unimaginable. Surely, no one could dwell up here then.
The hunting party seemed unperturbed by either the cold or the depth of the snows they were about to go plunging through. The hounds had been loosed, and the hunters milled on their horses in the snow, talking and waiting until they caught a scent.
Baying rose up to ring from the stone walls of the mountain in short order. Margaret rode up to Gruum, her eyes alight with excitement.
“They’re after something. Let’s hope it’s an elk, I don’t care for bear meat.”
“Venison is your favorite?” Gruum asked. “You have good taste. I wouldn’t mind a platter of fresh meat tonight.”
Margaret eyed Gruum and Therian, seeing the swords that still rode on their belts. She laughed. “Spear, crossbow, sword and dagger? You shall break your horses’ backs! You are geared for battle, not hunting.”
Gruum smiled and shrugged. “Force of habit, I suppose.”
Margaret goaded her horse then, and Gruum felt the urge to gallop after her. He glanced over at Therian, who inclined his head forward, giving his permission.
Gruum tilted forward in his saddle and held his spear with the tip high and well out to his side so as not to clip his own horse or another’s. He set off after the girl, and heard the thunder of many more hooves behind him.
The chase led to a clearing. Following the hounds was a simple matter in the snow drifts, they left a well-plowed trail as they plunged along. Gruum looked for signs as to the nature of their game as they went, and soon saw the deep hoof-strikes that sank all the way to the stony soil beneath the snow.
“Elk!” he cried ahead to Margaret.
She turned her head and glanced back at him, rewarding him with a smile. She increased her speed then and was soon lost from his sight. Gruum muttered curses. His pony was unable to keep up with its short legs and the heavy load it bore.
They were gaining on the elk, he felt sure. He could not yet hear it crash through the trees ahead, but the baying of the hounds was closer every minute. Soon, the hounds would corner the beast and it would have to turn and make its stand. The hunting party must arrive quickly then, lest the beast kill the dogs.
Gruum was excited to see the elk with his own eyes. He had glimpsed elk before, but those that dwelled high in the mountains were known to be bigger than the ones that grazed on the steppes. The stags were monstrous animals, standing higher than a man at the shoulder and often possessing a set of antlers that spanned ten feet. Not normally dangerous, a stag could be ferocious in rutting season or when forced to fight.
Blood trails! There they were, glistening and fresh on the white snows. He looked over his shoulder and saw none of the others from the hunt. Odd, he thought. Perhaps they had driven their mounts with less urgency down the snow-covered trails.
Gruum lifted the horn he’d been given to his lips. He blew a blast, calling the rest of the party that may have lost their way to this spot. He knew he was close, whether the blood on the snow was from the veins of a great elk or a hound.
He rounded a bend in the trail, heading down slope, when his eyes lit upon a strange sight in front of him. A large, dark shape lay stretched across the trail. It was black against the snow, with one end showing bright red. His first thought was he had found the fallen body of the elk they hunted. If that were the case, he had to wonder next where the hounds were. He heard them then, baying up ahead. This carcass in front of him then could not be the elk.
A moment later he was close enough to identify what he gazed upon. It was Margaret’s horse, and it was stone dead. He pulled hard on his reins, but it was already too late. A hulking figure stepped out into the roadway in front of him.
Shaped like a man, but impossibly large, the giant had a blue face and a white beard. It was dressed in a mass of layered furs, each of which still bore the head, feet and rotting eyes of the animals whose flesh they’d been scraped from. The giant held a club high. The head of the club was a round stone, fixed to the haft with leather thongs. The stone head was stained dark.
Gruum was far too close and his horse could not change directions or halt in time to avoid the giant. Reflexively, Gruum thrust with his spear. The furs belted to the monster’s belly absorbed the spear tip. Then the club came crashing down.
The skull of pony that had borne him faithfully up the mountain was bashed in. Shivering, the small horse collapsed, and Gruum rolled free of it. He scrambled to his feet and ran with snow flying from his heels. He glanced back toward the bulky figure on the roadway. It reached down with one massive fist and plucked the boar spear from its belly. Gruum took the moment of its distraction to look around for Margaret. He thought to see her, floundering through the snow and the trees. His heart leapt, she had escaped.
Gruum turned his head back to the snow giant—for that’s what he was now sure he faced—and ducked just in time. His own spear came whistling back at him, hurled with fantastic force. The tip and the blade missed him, but the quillon caught his right ear as it passed over his hunching shoulder. It tore an inch long gash there, then sped into the trunk of a tree twenty paces behind.
The snow giant turned its attention back toward Margaret, perhaps judging her the easier prey. It lumbered forward, heedless of the blue blood spurting from its belly and flowing over the hanging skirt of furs.
Gruum had lost his crossbow when he’d been cast from the horse. He still had his blades, however. He drew them both. He followed the giant and the girl.
Margaret was at a clear disadvantage. She was heading into fresh, deep snow. The giant had no trouble with this, its waist being six feet up. The snow came up no further than its knees. Gruum’s path was likewise made easier, all he had to do was follow the giant who plowed deep furrows through the snow with each step.
Gruum did not quite make it to the giant in time. The monster caught the girl, and although she threw her dagger at the blue face and cut it open, her attack did no more than cause the monster to grunt. The stone head of the club swung once, twice. The girl was a crushed and broken doll on the snows.
Gruum howled and cast his dagger into the giant’s back. It winced and turned. It cursed him then, in its own grating tongue. The words sounded like the speech of trees.
Gruum had his saber out and slashed at the huge being. It was hopeless, but he felt he wanted to at least hurt it. Attacking was better than running when there was no hope of escape. With both horses down and this monster clearly able to outrun him, there was no point to being chased down.
The giant’s boulder head swiveled. They both heard a sound Gruum thought was most welcome: The sound of approaching hooves.
Therian rode into the clearing and came up to the two of them. He addressed the giant.
“Man of the forest, parlay with me,” Therian said.
“Don’t talk to it, kill it!” Gruum demanded.
“Don’t be rude, Gruum,” Therian said.
“Rude? It killed Margaret.”
“This is its place. Possibly, these events are all a misunderstanding.”
Therian spoke again, this time in the strange speech of the Dragons. Gruum gritted his teeth. The giant, however, smiled. It answered in the same tongue, and the two held a brief, ear-shattering conversation. At the end of it, the giant turned and trudged away into the snows. It left a dribbling trail of azure blood on the snow as it went.
“What did you tell it?” Gruum asked, amazed.
“I apologized and promised it a favor from my people, should it ever have the need of such a thing.”
“Are you mad?”
“This is the giant’s home, Gruum. Its territory. The girl has led you astray.”
Gruum made his way to Margaret’s crushed body. He thought to see—no! It could not be!
“White breath still comes from her lungs…” Gruum said. “Her spine must be broken. Her chest is crushed. Yet she still lives, milord! How can this be?”
“Leave her, Gruum,” Therian said.
Gruum stooped over the girl and touched her throat. “She’s warm yet. I don’t know how—she can’t have survived.”
“No one could have.”
Gruum looked over his shoulder to his lord, who still sat upon his horse. He stared up at him. “What are you saying?”
“That she is dead. That she was dead when we first found her.”
Gruum fell to his knees by the girl’s mangled body. “Is this true, Margaret?” he asked in a voice that was barely above a whisper.
Her eyes snapped open. They slid to meet his, but her head did not turn, because her neck was too badly broken to function. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Gruum sucked in a gasp. He let it out again in what sounded like a sob.
Margaret’s eyes stared at him, unblinking. The whites showed all around her unnaturally wide orbs. Gruum got to his feet again, but felt as if he wobbled on his legs. Her eyes followed him as he moved. He turned back to Therian.
“She is Vosh’s creature,” Gruum said, understanding at last. “He made her into something—something full of false vigor.”
Therian nodded. He looked around the clearing. “We’d best be leaving.”
“What of the girl? What of the hunt?”
“The girl will wait for the next man to find her. Of the hunt… do you hear the hounds?”
Gruum listened. All was silent save for the whisper of the wind. “No,” he said.
“Do you hear the thunder of hooves, the winding of horns, or the crashing of the great stag’s antlers?”
Gruum shook his head.
“Then come. The hunt is over—if it ever was. We shall return and have words with our hosts.”
“Yes,” said Gruum, his lips compressing tightly. “Let us have words.”
Therian rode uphill then, and Gruum followed on foot. As they were about to leave the clearing, he dared glance back at the crushed girl. Margaret remained hopelessly broken on the snow. Her eyes… he thought to see them still. They followed his every step, staring.
Gruum realized her eyes had never blinked since the moment they had snapped open to meet his. Not once.
-14-
When Therian and Gruum arrived at the hunting lodge, they found the gate standing open, but no one was there to greet them. Therian dismounted and removed a leather pouch from his saddlebags. He handed the pouch to Gruum.
Gruum almost dropped the pouch when he recognized it. He held on with trembling fingers.
“Milord, do not ask me to carry this shadow,” Gruum said.
“It will do no harm until you release it.”
“Release it? I have no intention—”
“You will know the moment. Remember the girl in the snow. Remember what it is we face. And remember the sun that should be shining and bright here, bringing life and good cheer to all.”
Gruum’s face hardened. He nodded once and followed his master into the courtyard. He carried the leather pouch carefully, as if it held a viper. In truth, he knew he carried something far worse.
The Duke stood just inside the open doorway that led into the Great Hall. He did not come forward to greet them, but instead stayed within the shadowy interior. Gruum wondered as to the Duke’s true nature, and whether he could leave his house at all in the light of day. Was that, perhaps, the true mission of these beings? To end the tyranny of sunlight completely, so they may walk the cold earth in everlasting darkness?
“Hyborean,” called the Duke from the dimly lit doorway. “You return early from your hunt. How was your luck?”
Therian stepped forward several more paces before answering. Each step was measured, unconcerned. He walked as if he were strolling in his own palace gardens back in Corium.
As Therian approached, the retainers of the house stirred themselves. Silently, glancing around, a handful of them filed out into the courtyard. Others stood behind their Duke in a knot. Gruum reached with his left hand and loosened his saber and dagger in their sheathes. He kept his right fist tightly wrapped around the mouth of the pouch. The pouch bulged with its strange contents, but felt as if it were weightless. It reminded him of carrying a blown up bladder full of nothing but air.
“My luck has failed me this day, Duke Strad,” Therian said, halting his advance. He took no notice of the men who gathered around.
The retainers squinted in the sunlight and rubbed their gear with their gloved thumbs. None of them smiled.
“How so?” asked the Duke.
“I took a man at his word, and he betrayed me.”
The Duke stared, all playfulness and jocularity gone from his face. “You dare insult me in my own house, standing before my own servants?”
“My apologies. It is rude of me to have hard words with a man in his own house. Come outside into the light of day. Let us set matters straight in the open air as two gentlemen should.”
The Duke attempted a smile, but failed. If anything, his pale, oval face looked longer and less pleased than before. “I would instead invite you inside. Let us discuss your grievances by the hearth.”
Therian made a broad gesture of dismissal, as if he had tired of the conversation. “I will let the matter pass. But there is another, greater thing I must ask of you.”
“Speak,” Strad said.
“I would ask you to release your physician from your service.”
“Vosh is a guest, as I’ve said.”
“Then expel him from your house.”
“And why would I do that?” Strad asked.
Therian looked surprised. “Is it not obvious? So I may slay him without breaking my pledge of peace.”
“Why would you want to do that? He is a strange one, but there is no better master of the healing arts.”
Therian laughed then, and the laughter had more than a hint of mockery in it. “Surely sir, you jest. Vosh is a monster. He cannot lodge with the living. He is an indescribable evil that needs to be erased from this world at all costs.”
The men-at-arms standing around them looked uneasy at these words. They shuffled from foot-to-foot and traded dark, uncertain glances between themselves. Gruum felt they clearly agreed with Therian.
The Duke took an angry step forward. His black boots were visible now in the gray light of the day. The bottom edge of his vermilion cloak swayed over the threshold and ruffled there in the cold breezes. Still, his body remained inside the doorway.
“I will not release you from your pledge. I would rather ask you to leave my house this day. You have overstayed your welcome here.”
Therian smiled. It was not a pleasant expression. “Very well. I swore not to harm your retainers or guests. However, I swore nothing concerning your own person. I would have satisfaction, Duke Strad of Kem. In fact, I demand it. Now.”
It was the Duke’s turn to laugh. It was a deep, sonorous sound. “Duel me? A mortal cannot kill that which is already dead.”
Gruum looked around at the retainers. Was t
he fiction finally unveiled? Surely, these men had to have known in their hearts that their lord was no longer a man. But to hear it said aloud in the cold light of day….
The men registered shock. Some licked their lips. Others looked this way and that, including over their shoulders. They appeared to be looking for an exit. All of them, Gruum knew, had sworn to protect their lord, to serve him with their hearts and souls. But did that include such circumstances as these? At what point might an honorable man quit his lord and run?
Therian continued smiling in the face of the Duke’s wrath. He utterly ignored everyone else. “Perhaps I cannot truly kill you. But I can relieve you of your vitality, and I can relieve this world of your foul presence. Twin deeds worthy of doing.”
The Duke stopped laughing and eyed Therian appraisingly. “You do not fear me?”
“Certainly not.”
“I have never before met one of the living who could stand at my door with such unflagging self-confidence.”
Therian stared at him flatly. “You have not yet answered my challenge.”
“Well then, a duel it must be,” the Duke said thoughtfully. “As the challenged, I will choose the time, place and weaponry.”
“As is your right,” said Therian.
“I choose now. We will duel here, inside my Great Hall. For weapons, we will use our bare hands.”
Therian stared at him for a moment. The Duke grinned. His flat, white teeth were like those of a nickering horse.
“Accepted!” Therian boomed.
Gruum watched the Duke’s eyes. They widened slightly. Had he perhaps expected Therian to quail upon hearing his terms?
Therian removed the black leather belt from which hung his twin blades, Seeker and Succor. He handed the belt to Gruum and asked that he keep the weapons safe. Gruum nodded.
When Therian handed his weapons to Gruum, the two exchanged glances. Therian tilted his head slightly, indicating the knot of retainers. Gruum dipped his head to inform his master he had gotten the message. After Gruum took Seeker and Succor into his hands, he went to stand among the retainers. At first, they looked at him in surprise, but then they seemed to accept him. He was, after all, a man-at-arms in service of another strange lord. The armsmen could sympathize with his status.