by Whyte, Jack
My ruse worked, after a fashion. The rider aborted his blow and the horse snorted in surprise as I passed under its belly, the top of my head brushing the bottom of its barrel. Came a moment of confusion as I scrambled to regain my feet, and then I saw the huge horse standing erect on its hind legs, its front hooves waving in the air and the rider on its back straining forward, his visored face close to his mount's neck and his free hand clutching white-knuckled at the pommel of his saddle as he fought to stay on the animal's back. I caught a glimpse of his two companions, still motionless at the forest's edge, and then there came a whistling hiss and a solid, meaty thump as an arrow smacked into the rearing beast's throat, taking it beneath its upraised chin and toppling the animal over backwards so that its rider had to fling himself free, scrambling to avoid being crushed as the creature fell.
He managed, somehow, to retain his balance and stay on his feet, but a mere moment later he was sent flying as Ursus drove his horse right into him, smashing him with its shoulder. I watched Ursus wrest his mount to a sliding halt and then spring off, dagger in hand, to roll the downed man over onto his stomach, plant one knee in his back, then grasp the crest of the fellow's helmet and pull it back as hard and as far as he could, placing the edge of his blade against the stretched skin of the exposed throat.
"Now, whoreson," he hissed, hefting the dagger again and placing it more firmly where he wanted it. "All you have to hope for is that your friends there place more value on your life than I do." He looked up at the other two riders, who were still coming, but showing signs of hesitancy in the face of such a sudden reversal.
"Stay away," he roared, "unless you want to see your friend here lose his head."
The two riders stopped, glancing at each other for guidance that neither would provide.
Ursus spoke to me then. "Get your bow. No, get mine. It's strung. Don't aim at them but be ready to let fly if they don't listen to me. Try to take one of them down, but if you can't, then aim for the horses and we'll take them on foot. But move slowly now, as you go. Don't panic them into putting up a fight."
As I moved towards his horse he pulled back again on his prisoner's helmet and shouted again to the others.
"We are friends here, not enemies. Can't you see that? Had we not been, this one here would already be dead. As it was, I took his horse instead of him. Look at the boy there. Don't you know him? He's Clothar, youngest son to Ban and brother to Theuderic and Brach. Brother to Gunthar, too, but that's not his fault. He's been up north and just came home, to this. But his fight is not with you. He now wants vengeance for his brother, Theuderic."
One of the two men facing us hefted his spear slowly and threw it down into the ground, where it stood swaying as he reached up and undid the strap securing his helmet. He pulled it off and I recognized him immediately, although I could not recall his name. He was staring at me, narrow eyed, and then he waved one hand in a gesture to his companion to lower his weapon.
"It's true," he said. "I recognize the lad. It's young Clothar, right enough." He looked then at Ursus and nodded. "So be it. Let Charibert go. No more harm between us. Why are you here and whence came you?"
Ursus stood up, freeing the man called Charibert, who rose to his feet without a word or a look at his captor, fingering the skin of his neck and grimacing as he moved his head cautiously from side to side. I had not even had time to collect the bow Ursus had sent me for, and so I left it hanging by his saddle and went instead towards the man who had recognized me, trying to remember his name and recalling it as soon as I reached his side and his eyes turned to meet mine.
"Corbus," I said. "Corbus of Renna. Well met. I'm flattered that you should remember me, for the last time we two met was the day I left here with Germanus, to attend his school, and that was six years ago."
"Aye," Corbus said quietly, smiling. "And you have changed much since then, grown up and put on some meat, but those eyes of yours are unmistakable. That color struck me the first time I ever saw you and I've never forgotten it." He turned to his two companions. "Look at those eyes. Have you ever seen the like? They're violet, my wife said when she saw them first; the color of the flowers. The only other eyes I've seen like them were Theuderic's, but his were bluer. These things are purplish . . . unmistakable." His face hardened then. "But you still have not told me where you came from and why you're here. You know what's been going on?"
I shrugged and glanced at Ursus, who stood watching, saying nothing, his face thunderous.
"Aye," I said. "We have a fair idea. My friend here is called Ursus, and he comes from a place south of here, a town called Carcasso. He was separated from his military unit, which was supposed to be escorting me. He and I have been together ever since." I paused, collecting my thoughts, then spoke again directly to Corbus. "We found the King and Chulderic encamped on our way here, and the King was wounded, as you probably know by now." Corbus nodded. "Aye, well the wound was fatal. King Ban is dead." I paused again, waiting for their reaction, but there was none, and I realized they had been expecting to hear of the King's death. "Before he died, and while we were there, the King issued a decree." I went on and told them about everything that had happened since then, up to the point of our meeting.
"Aye, well you have the right of it," Corbus said. "Gunthar heard the word and made the choice to gamble. He must have been afraid that Ban would do what he did, giving the succession to Samson at the last. God knows what he was thinking, for he has damned himself to a course no man in his right mind could ever choose to follow. Anyway, he set out to find his mother the Queen a bare hour before we arrived back at the castle, and when Lord Theuderic heard of it he set out after him immediately. We thought we had a chance of catching him before he could do anything foolish. But he knew when he left that we were due to arrive at any moment, and he knew, too, that we would be bound to follow him because Theuderic was already deeply suspicious of Gunthar.
"He must have had it plotted in advance because I have never seen a better-marshaled operation or a trap so cunningly set. Gunthar planned his brother's death, very carefully . . . and that, in turn, means inescapably that he has also planned the elimination of his other brothers, Samson and Brach. He'll add your name to those, Clothar, once he knows you are here. All of you will have to die, and quickly, if he is to sit in safety on the King's seat."
The fear that flared up in me at that almost took my breath away. "I have to find my mother. Now, instantly, before it's too late, because he must mean her death, too. He cannot leave her to live."
"Breathe easy, lad. We have the Queen."
"You have—?"
"Aye, she is safe with us, right here, concealed from all the world." He saw the question in my eyes and answered it before I could ask. "We met her on the road, between here and where your brother fell, and purely by accident. The Lord Brach rode with her, accompanied by his original escort. They had concluded their business at Vervenna and were on their way homeward, bringing the Lady of Vervenna and her newborn child with them to await Lord Ingomer's return from patrol. It was an unbelievable stroke of fortune. They turned around and came with us."
"Where are they now, then?"
"Behind us, almost within bowshot, save that there are rock walls between us and them. One of my scouts was born close by here and knows these woods better than his own wife's rump, and so in your mother's hour of need he brought us to the refuge he and his family have used in times of danger for a hundred years and more. His brother still lives nearby and has made us welcome."
"He has made the Queen welcome? In her own domain?"
Corbus inclined his head respectfully enough, but his words implied a hint of censure. "The Queen is aware that some of her people have lived here since before this was a kingdom. In their time, they were kings of their own lands."
"I see. How is the Queen?"
"Mourning a new-lost son. Apart from that, she's well."
"And now I have to tell her of her husband."
Corbus nodded, his face solemn. "Aye, you do, and that will not be a pleasant task. But my Lady the Queen already knows her life has changed beyond redemption. She is so deeply steeped in grief that increasing her burden is a mere matter of degree." He sighed. "Still, we should go to her directly. She will be happy to see you, after such a long absence."
"Aye, mayhap . . . until I tell her what she wishes least to hear. Take me to her, if you please."
"I will, as soon as you are ready."
As I turned towards my own horse, I saw the third man extend his arm to the horseless man called Charibert and pull him up to ride double with him. Ursus's horse and mine stood side by side, not far from where we were, and as we walked towards them Ursus finally spat out his last word on the subject of my enthusiastic error.
"It was a stupid thing to do."
I stopped. "I know, Ursus, and I almost died of it. I know that, believe me, I know. I can but promise you that I will never again take the appearance of a stranger at face value."
"Fine, then." He made one last harrumphing sound in his throat and swung himself up into the saddle, and we made our way over to where Corbus and his two companions sat waiting for us. As soon as we reached them, Ursus nodded to the man Charibert and apologized for killing his horse. Charibert, now mounted behind the third man, nodded in acknowledgment, his face unreadable, and then murmured that he would rather be looking at his horse lying dead than have others looking at him lying dead. They turned their mounts around and accompanied us, but no sooner had we left the large meadow and entered the woods from which they had first appeared than the horses were fetlock deep in standing water.
"I knew it had rained a lot," Ursus said, looking down at it. The long grass through which we were riding was almost completely submerged and the lower branches of the trees and shrubbery ahead of us were barely above water. "But I didn't think it was this bad."
"It's not," Corbus replied. "It's always like this here. It gets better, too, wait and see."
Sure enough, as we progressed into the woods, the water rapidly grew deeper until it was knee deep on the animals and the last vestiges of grass had disappeared beneath the surface. And yet we were still within the woods. Trees towered all around us, although we could now see that many of them were dead or dying, and the dead growth increased as the distance increased, so that the trees farthest from us were uniformly gray and lifeless, drowned by the lake in which they stood.
Corbus tugged on his reins and brought his horse to a halt. "This is as far as we can go in safety." He lifted his hand to his mouth and blew a low, piercing whistle that was answered instantly from deeper among the trees, then went on speaking as though we were in the middle of a common grazing ground. "Something broke, underground, about two lifetimes ago, according to the man you are about to meet, and what had always been a small, healthy spring became a raging torrent." He glanced over at Ursus. "You saw the gully carved by the stream where we were attacked, did you not? That is spring- fed, too. There's something about the terrain here that causes water to come up to the surface from beneath the ground with great force—force that does not abate and is impossible to withstand." He waved a hand towards the figure who was approaching us, wading through water that rose almost as high as his crotch. "This is Elmo. He'll tell you about it better than I can."
We sat silent, watching the man called Elmo approach, and eventually he came to a stop just in front of us, still ankle deep in water and clad from head to foot in a single robe of blackish brown wool that was completely drenched. There he stood, staring up at Ursus first, taking in every detail of my friend's appearance before turning his eyes on me and scanning me so carefully that I felt as though there could be no flaw, no blemish on or about my appearance that escaped his scrutiny. Only when he had finished cataloging me did he glance at Corbus, who told him immediately who we were, naming me first as Ban's youngest son. Corbus continued, "They know nothing of you or why you are here, Elmo. I was about to tell them the history of this place when you came, but decided to wait and let you tell them. Will you?"
Elmo's eyes narrowed as he looked at me. "I live hereabouts, and my family has been here more than six full generations. My brother Theo rides with Corbus. My grandsire's grandsire name was Elmo, too, and he lived here before your grandfather, Ban the Bald, was even born, before there was a king of Benwick, and when what is now called Benwick had no name at all. When my ancestor Elmo lived here, though, this place was like that other place at your back, green sward and scattered trees, and we grazed our kine on it— oxen, sheep and goats. It was sheltered, and close to where we lived, yet far enough removed to keep our beasts free from being plundered. It was boggy in places and it could be dangerous, but it was well watered with sweet, clear-running springs, half a score and more of them.
"But then one day, during my ancestor Elmo's sixteenth summer, something happened here—a great shifting, somewhere in the earth, beneath the ground. Elmo was here tending his kine when it occurred and he told people the earth shook and threw him on his back and he could not stand up again while it lasted. And after that the springs all dried up and ran no more. People were afraid, thinking some god had grown angered at them, and they offered sacrifices of all kinds to every god they knew and some even to gods they didn't know but thought might be there, watching.
"Even the Romans heard of it and sent some soldiers—engineers, they called themselves—to look at what had happened. But nothing came of it for nigh on another year. The springs were all dried up, but nothing else had changed, and the ground was still a bog in some places, although different places than before." He paused to scratch his nose, and I found myself wondering, although not yet impatiently, what the import of all this could be. Why were we sitting our mounts knee deep in water listening to a tale from a stranger, when we should be on our way to deliver our tidings to the Queen? Elmo heaved a deep sigh at that point, reclaiming my attention, and turned with lowered head to look at the surrounding water.
"In the spring of the following year, less than a year after the upheavals, my ancestor heard a great cracking noise in the middle of the night and awoke to the terrified screaming of all his cattle and a great hissing, splashing noise of roaring, rushing water. It was the dead of night and there was no moon, so it was black as charcoal here under the trees, and all he could tell was that in the midst of the unseen but frightening chaos around him he felt, and seemed to be, safe against the bole of the tree under which he had been sleeping. He crouched there all night long, waiting for the sun to rise, and when it did he could not believe the sight that awaited him." Elmo paused again and glanced up at us to see if he had all our attention, knowing full well that he had. We all sat rapt, even the three who had heard the story before.
"He found himself sitting on what would turn out to be a spine of stone running most of the way across the meadow. It had not looked anything like that the day before, but something had ruptured in the ground and released a terrifying scourge of solid water that had scoured away all the soil in its path and bared the rocky sides of the spine. There was another outcrop of rock behind the place where he now sat, and it was crowned with dirt and grass, but the face of it was the clean, bright gray of new-split rock and it was out of a fissure there, lower down than my ancestor's perch, that the water was spewing.
"His cattle had all vanished, scattered in terror of what was happening, and so my ancestor's main task that first morning was to escape from the spine of rock on which he had found himself. The great scoured channel swept down to his left and the ground there was collapsing and disappearing even as he watched it, undercut by the ferocious strength of the newborn stream that was causing great lumps and chunks of solid earth and clay to rip free from above and fall into the waters to be churned into mud and swept away.
"The ground on his right-hand side appeared to be sound and solid, however, so my ancestor set out in that direction to remove himself as far as he could from what was happening on his left. But at hi
s first step he sank to his knees and fell forward into what was no more than a sea of thick mud covered with bright, clean growing grass and wild flowers. He almost drowned there, in that mud, but his gods were on his side that day, he swore, and he was able to scramble back to the rocky spine. Once there and safe again, he walked all the way to the farthest end of it, looking for a way to jump off it and on to solid ground, but he could find no place that tempted him to put any trust in what he could not feel solidly under his feet. The gully that yawned on his left was several long paces wide in places by that time, and growing wider and deeper with every moment that passed. At the endmost tip of the spine there was another gap, he said, less than two paces wide and out of the worst of the current on his left, but just far enough away to prevent him from jumping. So he turned around and went all the way back to his starting point, following the twists and turns of the spine as it wound aimlessly back and forth.
"Back at his starting point, he looked again at the rock across from him, from the base of which the water was still hissing and roaring with no lessening of its fury. That rock offered a solid landing place, for he could see the handspan's depth of soil and grass that lined its broken top. But its surface was above the level on which he stood, which meant he would have to jump up and across, and if he fell short, he would fall directly into the roaring deathtrap beneath him and be smashed to a bloody froth.
"He made the jump safely and for the next month and more he watched the gradual destruction of what had been a safe and pleasant grazing spot. And he discovered many things about what was happening. The ground on the right of the spine that had been bog and then became mud simply sank into the earth and disappeared, slowly and steadily, washed and sucked and sifted away by the waters until that side of the spine lay as bare and exposed as the left side.