Darkling Fields of Arvon

by James G Anderson

  "Don't mind if I do, Master Aelward. Speaking for myself, I'm famished." Galli lifted the codynnos from his shoulder and left it with his bowstaff leaning against the wall of the chamber. Devved and Gwyn did likewise and followed him to the food-laden sideboard. Broq and Aelward joined their guests in breaking fast and, as they ate, made animated conversation with the Holdsmen.

  "Be at ease, Devved. There's not a safer spot in all of Ahn Norvys," Broq said between bites of cheese. "The Marshes of Atramar are an impregnable haven. Indeed, there is truly no safer place for your folk to remain. It was with good reason that Ardiel and the Seven Champions chose to hide here, in order to regroup their meagre forces." The Telessarian bard went on to explain how the Cot dated back to the very time of Ardiel and possibly even before. "So, truth be told," he said, the hint of a grin teasing his lips, "this Cot was, in the early days of its construction, someone else's Cot, not Aelward's."

  Aelward himself soon left the others to talk among themselves and fell into subtle conversation with Gwyn, drawing the mute Holdsman out and communicating with him by means of word, gesture and expression.

  For his part, Kal felt a curious want of hunger. Perhaps it was the anxious excitement of this day, or that Aelward had thrown a sumptuous feast the day before, at which he had eaten his fill. He picked desultorily at a plate of food, but soon abandoned it and drifted to the map in the centre of the chamber.

  He traced their route again with his finger. From the Cot, all six of them—he, Aelward, Broq, Gwyn, Galli, and Devved—would strike out along Hoël's Dyke, which lay mouldering and marshbound, in most places not discernible as even the faintest footpath, impassable to all except the marshfolk and their rugged ponies. From Hoël's Dyke, they would veer east to where the marshes merged with the Asgarth Forest, making for the vicinity of the town of Melgrun in the Keverang of Pelogran along the foothills of the Bowstaff Mountains, which were in effect a northern extension of the Radolan Mountains. At this spot, later today, if all went well, they would part ways to pursue their separate ventures.

  Aelward and Broq would proceed by their own devices to the tower at Irminsûl, while Kal and his three companions crossed the Bowstaff Mountains as stealthily as possible, trying to avoid detection along the Westland Road. Once they gained the leeward side of the Bowstaff Mountains in the marchlands of lowland Arvon, they would make their way through the sparsely populated county of Glastanen, bypassing the town of Woodglence and striking north into the cover of the thick forest of Rootfall Frith. From this great forest, they were to head across open country to the protection of Stonderwood, yet another ancient woodland, and thence onward to the coast to the isolated port of Seabank.

  Kal's finger hovered over the map at Seabank as he considered the strategy that Aelward had proposed during their deliberations. At Seabank, he had suggested, they would find any number of mercenary seamen, from whom, if the price pleased them, they could secure passage to wherever they wished with no questions asked. But as an added measure of prudence, to avoid drawing suspicion on themselves, Aelward had counselled that they break their sea voyage in two. It would be best, he argued, for them to secure passage to Gorfalster first. There was an old acquaintance of his in Gorfalster, Aelward had said, a resourceful merchant named Telin, who would be able to provide for them both ship and crew to sail them on to Kêl-Skrivar.

  Kal's finger followed the coast of the Dumoric Sea from Seabank south and east past the boundaries of Arvon to the Hoffgar River and then upriver to the bustling port town of Gorfalster. The advantage of Gorfalster, according to Aelward, was that it enabled them to lose themselves in the coming and going of trade traffic from all parts of Ahn Norvys that made use of the busy river port. But at what cost? Frowning, Kal tapped the map at Gorfalster and considered its distance from the sea. It added needless miles to the total length of their already long journey.

  "Not hungry, my lord Hordanu?" Broq looked over to where Kal stood leaning over the map. Kal shook his head and made reply absently, still lost in thought.

  "Come," Broq said and gestured to the depleted sideboard. "By midmorning, after a few hours in the saddle, you will wish you'd eaten even a little."

  "He's too preoccupied in brooding over something," Aelward said, turning his attention from Gwyn. "Look at the knitted brow."

  Kal glanced up from the map, his frown deepening. "I've been studying our course again. Do you truly think it wise that we split the journey in two, Aelward? Making the side journey to Gorfalster? It's a fair stretch out of the way."

  The grey man's sharp features tightened with mirth, and his eyes sparkled. He moved from the sideboard, taking a couple of slow paces closer to Kal, his hands clasped behind his back.

  "What you mean, my lord Hordanu, is, 'There we'd be up the river'—so to speak—'in a garrison town crawling with spies and informers. Can this Telin fellow be trusted?' "

  Kal fixed his gaze, wide-eyed, on Aelward. "How did you . . . ?"

  "I sensed your misgiving, even when we first discussed our possible courses of action. You gave way to my counsel against the inner protest of your own doubts—" Aelward raised his hand to forestall further comment from Kal. "But I tell you, Kalaquinn, calm your fears. Telin is indeed to be trusted. Although he's an artful merchant, he is also a man of honour, and he will provide for my friends, even as he would his own—even as I do mine." Aelward returned to the sideboard, where he pushed breadcrumbs into a line with his finger, then took up his ale mug and lifted his cool gaze to Kal. "As for the bustle and intrigue of Gorfalster, its teeming dangers—they're all as meat and drink to a man like Telin. He thrives on them, but manages all the while to remain totally trustworthy, utterly above reproach. I cannot say the same for whomever you may hire to take you from Seabank. I'd not trust them past Gorfalster, if even you can trust them that far. But, that, for now, is in Wuldor's keeping."

  Kal's eyes fell again to the map, and he leaned on the table, his head hanging. "So, he's our fellow," he said, then looked sideways at Aelward. "Forgive me. I stand humbled by my doubts."

  "No, no, Kal. It's not your doubts that have humbled you. Rather, what led to your discomfiture, shall we say, was your reluctance to give utterance to your doubts at the fitting moment, when we first discussed the options before us. Your failing was that you were too ready to defer to Aelward Lamkin. That's never a good thing, my lord Myghternos Hordanu—to attend not the promptings of your heart." Aelward's face held the thin hint of a smile, and he shook his grey head, turning his attention once more to the victuals on the sideboard.

  "Aye, Aelward, that may be so." Kal straightened, combing stray locks of black hair from his eyes, a crooked half-smile on his face. He left the map table and clapped a hand on Galli's shoulder. "The trouble is that you're too easy a man to trust. It would help if you were a simple shifty-eyed Telessarian like Galli here, with perfidy stamped all over your features. I think I will eat." He stepped to the platters and laid a thick slab of cheese on a piece of honeyed bread.

  "If I may, my lord Hordanu," Galli said, turning to his friend with the slightest bow of his head. "There is a small matter that this troublesome Telessarian would bring to your attention. Something that you may not have considered."

  "And what might that be?" Kal asked.

  "Our folk are safe and provided for. And we are well planned and provisioned for as we embark on this journey that needs be made. But there are still other duties that you must attend to. What of the Summer Loosening, Kal? It's less than a fortnight away. You know the orrthon must be performed, but where and how?"

  "He's right, Kalaquinn. We've not discussed it yet. Perhaps we should now, though I doubt not that you have already considered the event." Aelward's grey eyes had resumed a serious cast. Broq nodded in agreement.

  Kal shook his head and washed down a bite of the bread and cheese with a long pull from his mug, then shook his head again, placing the empty cup on the sideboard. "No, there's no need," he said, wiping a sleeve across his
mouth. "Come, the morning sun is gaining on us. We've lingered over breakfast long enough. We'll worry about the Loosening when we must, closer to the time, for so my heart prompts me."

  "Well-spoken, my lord Hordanu. Well-spoken, indeed," Aelward said and nodded to Kal.

  Kal wolfed down the last of his food and strode across the room to retrieve his codynnos, his bowstaff and quiver, along with his sword belt and Rhodangalas at the entrance of the meeting chamber. Close on his heels followed the rest of the group, as if infected with Kal's sudden air of urgency, and they left the room and turned down the stairs.

  Outside the Cot, the marsh ponies waited, their saddlebags well stuffed. The grooms helped each of the companions adjust their stirrups and settle on their ponies. Kal grinned with amusement at Devved, whose legs dangled almost to the ground. He looked almost as big as his mount. An expression of helpless uncertainty passed across the blacksmith's broad face.

  "Don't look so worried, Devved," said Broq. "This pony has carried marshmen bigger even than you."

  "Aye, Devved. You should know," Galli said, a mischievous glint in his eye as he sidled his pony beside the blacksmith's. "You said yourself you've not seen horseflesh better." With that, the blond Telessarian slapped the pony's rump, sending the big man reeling to keep his seat as the small creature lurched forward to join its fellows along the path.

  The marsh ponies, with their riders, plodded down the hillside from the keep, now bathed in light from the rising sun. Below them, the roofs and chimneys of the sprawling settlement could be seen through the thinning fog. Bren and Chandaris emerged from Marina's cottage to wave a last farewell. So, too, did Marina, brushing hair from her eyes, a kitchen ladle in her hand. Kal bowed his head to his mother. The rest of the village was stirring, and the vaporous morning mist was lifting, even as the smoke of cooking fires filled the air. Kal nodded to Thurfar, who stood with his arm around Fionna, clutching a handful of arrows. Thurfar left his wife's side and stepped to the roadside to meet his son. The mounted company stopped.

  "Here, more arrows for you, made last night," he said.

  Gwyn took the shafts from Thurfar's hand, appraised them for a moment with an admiring eye, then nodded his thanks and slid them into the quiver slung by his saddle.

  "Mind you keep your bowstring dry, Gwyn, and they'll shoot true. And don't you waste them. Make every one count." Thurfar turned his attention to Kal. "You'll keep an eye on my son, Master Kalaquinn? Make sure he takes no fool risks."

  "The past has proven that he keeps better care of me than I of him," Kal said, breaking into a thin smile. "But rest assured that I will mind him, Goodman Thurfar. I will mind him as surely as I count on you to look after these folk of the Holding here in the marshes. Briacoil to you." The two men locked eyes. They understood one another. Then, in silence, Kal nudged his pony, and the company continued plodding slowly along the path, each man acknowledging last words of encouragement from Holdsfolk and from the handful of marsh dwellers there among them.

  Aelward pulled up alongside Kal as the riders left the settlement, the way still open and solid underfoot, running straight through a broad meadow of lush grass that merged in the middle distance with a wilderness of reedy marshes between the rugged walls of the Sheerness Spur. Far off ahead, through the break in the mountains, a towering pillar of black granite rose hundreds of feet into the air from the seemingly endless bogs. Kal squinted, looking at it—the Llanigon Mark Stone, the Black Rock—standing like a lone dark sentinel, solid and immovable, over the vast treacherous reaches of the swamp.

  "Thurfar's a good man, Kalaquinn. You've left your people in good hands," Aelward said, staring ahead at the broken remains of Hoël's Dyke.

  "Aye," Kal replied without looking at him. "With able help from your own folk."

  The two rode together, leading the party for a time, until the way grew spongy and uncertain, and Kal fell behind. Broq moved forward to join Aelward. From soft, moist ground, still covered by grass, they entered the perilous beds of the marsh in single file, the ponies boldly picking their way across half-submerged tussocks. Once their path led through ooze and muck, and Kal felt the raw power of his sturdy mount as it pulled its hoofs from the sucking mire step upon step. Leaning back, Broq spoke to Kal over his shoulder.

  "It's far easier with the ponies. We'd have a far longer way through the marshes without them. They follow trails that would be death to a man."

  "Even a Telessarian?" Kal said.

  "Aye, even a Telessarian."

  By midmorning they had passed between the dark walls of the Sheerness Spur that loomed over the marshes and passed the bulking mass of the Llanigon Mark Stone, against which their path pressed, climbing for a short time out of the muck of the marsh only to plunge once again, disappearing into the slurry of mud and peat-stained water. Soon, however, the dull sameness of reeds and sedge began to yield to marshland broken by bushes and stunted trees that grew on hillocks ringed around and separated by brackish water. After half an hour's more plodding, they entered a sodden woodland laid open to the sky now and again by stagnant ponds where silver-grey trunks, stripped of life and bark, stood like guarding sentinels over the murky swamp water that had choked them. They skirted the spaces of open water, clinging to treed verges, their way often blocked by tangles of rotting windfalls. But then their path rose across a gentle swell of low rolling hills that grew from and fell into shallow valleys, until, at length, they reached a long clearing on a rise of land. Here they stopped and let their ponies graze. Before them stretched the faintest seam in the swaying grasses of the open field, a line running straight into trees that broke the sea of meadow more than half a mile away.

  "I recognize this place," said Galli, twisting in the saddle to look around. "This is Hoël's Dyke, what Old Jock called the Lyndway."

  "That it is," said Aelward. "We've been following it all along, though the Marsh has claimed much of it. Old Jock's haunt goes right through the Black Rock Gap."

  "Miserable countryside to be prowling around in," Devved said as he dismounted to wipe his swamp-stained feet and shins clean of mud in a clump of tall grass.

  "Provides a road for the enemy," Kal said softly.

  "Hardly," Aelward said, snorting a chuckle, as he reached for his waterskin. "No doubt we'll encounter patrols, Gawmage's or even Ferabek's, but not yet and not here. In these parts, Hoël's Dyke is a path fit only for marshmen and their ponies." He lifted his skin and drank.

  "The best of the Lyndway's like this," Broq said, "and a welcome enough respite it is for the next couple of miles, so thickly covered with sod that you can scarce make out the cobbles, save in spots where they have been heaved by tree root or winter frosts to the light. Even within short years of its construction, many long centuries ago, the Dyke was already tumbledown and derelict, disappearing into the swamp. But here, at least, it remains sound."

  "Suits me fine after that wretched bog," said Devved, wiping the last of the loose mud from his boots.

  "For now."

  "For now?"

  "Wait 'til you see the rest of the Lyndway," Broq continued. "Where it hasn't been overgrown by forest, its embankments have been rutted and gouged by the rain of centuries upon centuries. Or else washed away entirely into the surrounding marsh."

  "Well, let's have done with it, then," said Devved as he remounted his pony.

  They continued north along the decrepit remains of the ancient trackway and soon entered woods. Wherever their way was not obscured by trees on either side of the Hoël's Dyke, they overlooked a wasteland of marsh stretching as far as the eye could see and were grateful that for the most part they were able to remain atop the raised bed of the ancient roadway, no matter its state of disrepair.

  By late morning, the wide views of marshland had disappeared, replaced by a pressing, dense phalanx of trees that stretched into the distance wherever they were afforded a point of vantage on a ridge or a height. They had entered the Asgarth Forest, Aelward explained. As the pat
h led them through the forest, Kal had recognized landmarks from their first meeting with Old Jock, but soon enough the woods grew unfamiliar to him as he peered into their shadowy depths.

  "He's watching us, I wouldn't be surprised," said Aelward.

  "Who?" Kal asked, startled from his thoughts.

  "Old Jock. It wasn't far from here that he found you. But he won't show himself without good reason."

  "Or what he considers good reason," corrected Broq from behind. "Strange old bird, he."

  "Aye, but he'd not thank you for describing him so," Aelward said over his shoulder, then scanned the surrounding woods. "All the same, if he hasn't shown himself by now, he won't, for we're passing out of his range."

  Slowly, the roadway began to improve. In many places, the bare cobbles were now visible, and there were recently made ruts from the traffic of wagons. Soon they arrived at a well-tended track that forked away from Hoël's Dyke, running northeast to their right. Aelward called the party to a halt.

  Kal sniffed the air. "I smell smoke. Can you?"

  "Charcoal burners. They ply their trade in these woods, supplying the forges of Melgrun and thereabout," said Aelward. "At one time they supplied forges even in the marchlands, as far afield as Woodglence. But those days are now passed." He shrugged and shook his head, then nodded forward. "From here Hoël's Dyke goes on to meet the Westland Road. That's too far out of our way. We'll leave it now and take this sidetrack. It meets up with the Westland Road, but farther east, near Melgrun. We'll avoid the town, skirt around it, and then take our leave and embark upon our separate journeys."

  "It looks well-travelled. Is it safe?" Devved asked.

  "You'd rather be following the swampland trails, Devved?" Galli said, grinning at the blacksmith's ill ease. Devved waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal.

  Aelward ignored the banter. "It's used by the charcoal burners. They look after it, as they do the Lyndway hereabouts. They use these roads to cart their wares from their hearth heaps in the forest. Broq and I are known to them. They are friends to the marshfolk. All the same, we must be on our guard, especially as we get nearer Melgrun. It'll be an important marshalling point—the town seat of the Keverang of Pelogran and the first place Gawmage's soldiers encounter when they're crossing the Bowstaff Mountains from lowland Arvon." Aelward pressed his pony forward along the new trackway. "Come now, mind you keep your voices low and your eyes and ears sharp."