The Pale Maraud

by Andrew McEwan

  Chapter Seventeen - Summer's Hold

  His own wounds were light. He wielded the curved sword now, having plucked it from amongst the rushes. The stranger had become a mercenary.

  Jerian was no longer a young man; he had aged inexorable, his hair and beard grown lank. While not yet grey there was time clearly braided in his curls. After the coming battle he would have it shorn. But if he was to die either side of the tall men's walls, he wished to appear as if he had outlasted his days.

  He rode up now to join his troop, the horse he straddled a reddish-brown, sleek and autumnal, a bay stallion the marsh king had made Jerian a gift of on his return from the isle of silence, teaching him the art of its riding, to grip with his knees as he pulled taut the string of a bow...

  The sun had risen on the third day of the siege.

  The outer wall of the nameless city was blackened by fire and smoke, its pale stone battered from repeated assaults. An army, a diverse alliance of far-flung powers, lay in part broken before the sturdy defences of the tall men's fastness, the living remainder camped a short distance away midst the uniform trees, the needled foliage. A number occupied the open ground between, the stranger amongst them, riders and ladder-bearers, soldiers kneeling behind oval wooden shields as others wound the mechanical engines of their profession, cast flaming spears into the structured forest across the blocked and cemented barrier. The distance separating the two camps was not great, a hundred paces, and the return fire from the battlements, with the advantage of elevation, was as cruel as it was sudden, the defenders flinging lighted containers of oil and cracking open foolish heads with rocks and the butts of ax. On the first day the tall men's gathered enemies had made no direct attack, satisfied to linger at the edge of the firs. On the second they began moving forwards, closing from two directions, all but ignoring the city's iron-screened gateway, bellowing shapelessly as they levered crude ladders against the as yet undamaged fortifications, firing volley after volley of colourfully flighted arrows even as the dawn ignited the whites of eyes, stabbing with a grim resolution unmatched by either faction. The assault lasted all day and well into the night, until the dead could no longer be easily distinguished from the merely exhausted. And thus had come a pause.

  This third day would see more war. The sporadic exchanges he witnessed were a preamble, the true contest to begin when the commanders of the many belligerents agreed, as Jerian knew they must, to repeat the tactic of storming the wall, losing ten for one, a campaign of attrition that would succeed in the end through superior numbers, fear and the knowledge that not all men are equal.

  Jerian, for one. The marsh king had presented his champion with a cloak of flowing silver that rippled on the breeze as the stranger rode, his flank protected in this instance by a hammered shield, enamelled metal whose visible pattern was composed of vertical black and white stripes each four fingers wide; argent and sable, unknown to Jerian the twin hues of the hidden city's mistress, she of the central keep, the hated mother whose blue five-pointed star radiated from the heart of this monochromatic field. It was insult he offered her; once more in his ignorance an unwitting tool.

  *

  Fires tore asunder the veil of night, red and yellow tongues of searing flame that ripped the air from houses and lungs, wrapped itself like a crushing vine around skeletons of wood and bone, casting slate, skin and brick, sloughing the leather hides of men and animals; ensconced in so many orifices, the sooty breath, burning a passage through flesh that was hacked and alive.

  Screams arose, the baleful excrement of a thousand torn throats and twisted mouths...

  Anguished cries.

  Jerian was oblivious. His horse had died under him, its forelegs cut away. He had tumbled amidst a chaos of noise. He had killed.

  And gone on killing. Killing was this mercenary's role.

  The curved blade swung, the hampering cloak discarded, steel connecting with panicked flesh as it slowed in its arc. The metal shield rang, fending directed blows as the stranger bearing it continued on foot, deeper and deeper into the torrid, fire-ravaged city. The joined armies camped outside its walls had broken the stone from the earth and like water from behind a holed dam burst inwards to lay waste and practice murder, their honed lust here enacted as they took bloody pleasure on the horrified populace. There was no soldiery to match them on the inside. No tall men were seen to fall under this bright wave, the attackers' singing bows seeding death and engendering the swelling, near liquid inferno.

  It was a terrible scene. Bodies, dismembered, clogged the already congested streets, the produce lining these narrowed ways unrecognisable, all images warped beneath a luminous patina, the animate conflagration overwhelming shape and colour as it devoured, a spreading frenzy of gaseous coition whose blistering energy was drawn from sources as varied as silk ribbons and copper bowls.

  But Jerian was looking for Udioe. His gaze fixed ahead, his sword cutting left and right, the stranger advanced towards the city's middle, that goal his only legitimate end. He killed as he went, women and children, their entrails sliding, their limbs flailing as he slashed and gouged, certain that nothing could stand in his way. Still there was no sign of the tall; safe behind their inner circle. They abandoned the folk of the outer to their flaming homes, perhaps convinced the army, in its delirium and abuses, would somehow exhaust itself, glutted and weakened upon the lesser corpse.

  Then a counter attack? Nothing was for sure. Jerian had no intention of waiting till morning, the revealing day to expose - a more immediate revelation drove him, led him as far as the barred gate at which he had last seen the girl.

  It was as if he had stepped from the war. The clamour receded, the heat also, his own ragged breathing to be felt and heard. He pushed at the barrier and to his surprise it gave.

  What lay beyond? He might be cut down like the stallion the moment he passed below the arch, his head separated from his body by a golden sword...

  But nothing occurred; nothing so drastic. He met neither death nor destruction. Instead, the wanderer's feet settled first on gravel, second on grass, deserted pasture.

  Darkness reigned, closing about him like a hand, fingers cool, palm damp, the sky empty of cloud and the sickle moon clasped to an armoured chest of stars. He walked on, eyes piercing the night, the distant sounds of battle thinned to an echo. There was no hint of outline, no telltale light from the keep. The grass dragged at his boots, longer and thicker, and the air carried scents not of man but of meadow. Jerian halted. Dare he look back? No, back was no longer a true direction; he must continue forwards. The curved blade shone wetly in the moonlight. And from the midst of his shield the blue star detailed his whereabouts.

  But no cast spear found its mark. The stranger was swamped in odours, sweet aromas and bitter tangs that drifted over him, filled his mouth and nostrils.

  Summer fragrances, they reminded him of Udioe, the shining girl in her white shift amongst the firs, pale limbs splashing, dark hair whirling as she swam naked in the chill lake high in the mountains.

  So was it summer's hand that closed about him?

  Or no?

  Jerian commenced once more his walking...

  Chapter Eighteen - A Matron Of Elms

  His hair was flattened against his face by a sudden breeze, the loose material of his riding garb to billow. He thought to hear running water. The moat? That could not be. By the moon's translucent glow no water reflected, quiet or stirred to motion. No encircling obstacle mirrored the lunar crescent under a surface of starry glimmers.

  The air's movement help sweep him along, a secret tide whose direction seemed to match his own. The sword's bloody tip trailed freely through the invisible grass, like a pen across parchment, although the stranger had no way of knowing what it was he wrote in red ink. The moon's luminescence was insufficient to distinguish between shape and shadow, its wan light spread too thin, offering a few spectral hints; but nothing of substance emerged beneath its lazy sickle. Je
rian maintained his grip on both blade and shield. He stumbled into wilder growths, was reminded of the silent isle where he had slain the blind, his adversary. Trees, young and supple, interfered with his passage then as now, only now he was lacking that fatal vision. He tensed, wary of attack. No extraneous sound came to him. Even the water's murmuring had vanished. Was he to have all his senses inhibited? Or was there truly no noise and the cause of is blindness outside him, beyond his bearded, naked skull, the wanderer's eyes as sharp as a squirrel? He imagined it so. There was no smell of fear, either his own or another's, on the cool draughts that nudged him.

  Shades, hollow figures accompanied Jerian. He fancied they were the ghosts of slaughtered children, death's mutilated progeny here assembled from darkness and breath. There were amongst them a number this mercenary had dispatched with careless strokes to a grave of gutters and ashes, hacked to pieces and part burned, their wounded souls occupying a world forever fenced beyond sleep, a world of loss and pain.

  They pleaded with him.

  They were drawn to him, Jerian's wandering having once more led him into a world unmade...

  And the girl? Was she here? The image of her white shift stung his eyes.

  *

  Dawn revealed many things. In separating the sky from the earth, the new day proffered the illusion of wholeness, of a complete reality, a picture whose frame extended as far as and farther than the woody horizon. Jerian lay in a hollow, his face to the clouds, the shield covering his body, the sword sheathed and the sheath loose to his side. He imagined the trees to have sprung up overnight. The thought amused him. His belly rumbled and laughter escaped him. But it was weak, those mirthful sounds fading a short distance above his lips. Recalling the violent stream of events that had brought him to this peaceful spot, the blood he had let and the open gate through which he had passed, he was suddenly bitter at the protracted nature of his fate. He did not feel he could die, and was less of a man for that. He could not say which of the emotions he was experiencing, this day and others, belonged to him. Indeed, if he held claim to any. Might they not all be false? But then, equally true - products of self, greedy and vengeful traits that were entirely his, unnatural desires and cruel, deceitful needs. Where lay the responsibility for his actions if not with himself? A morality of such complex features simply muddled him. Between the twinned poles of his psyche there raged a conflict. The mute aspect he had again engendered, imposed unconsciously, his failure to speak and communicate with those around him, to use the voice grown inside, was testament to his lack of courage in facing his own secreted humanity.

  He was a stranger. The wanderer had been led astray, the gift of words stolen from him, the finished mien reflected in still water a lie; a series of bogus guises, masks pulled tight over his skull, characteristics, expressions that were not of his making.

  These weapons he bore were not his. They belonged to another, a hireling. He was no king's champion. No archer. No rider. He was a broken child wrapped in an adult's bruised and hoary skin.

  Jerian stood and shook himself. Dropping the shield, the sword abandoned at his feet, he continued his luckless journey, penetrating deep into the wood. The trees were young, identical, of a type, slender elms whose leafy outlines dappled the air in the likeness of swarming butterflies. In searching for Udioe he hoped to be striving towards an end he had chosen himself. But he could not be sure of that. However, should the opposite prove the case and he have no volition, then he was justified in all he did. Such a man could be blamed for nothing.

  Not even his own misfortune.

  So what manner of creature was he?

  *

  She appeared, a misted shape, her dress the north wind, cold and fresh as it meandered through the straight trees. At first Jerian ignored her, thinking her an apparition, a ghost escaped from his past, a wraith of darkness here draped in milky light. Her persistence belied this. Her mocking smile told of greater substance, of hidden strength. She was of herself, outside him, not a figment dragged from one world into the next. The lady was true to life.

  It seemed to him obvious that she knew who he was and why he was here. Jerian was reminded of the elegant woman who had taken Udioe's hand at the gate.

  Might she help? Was she benign? Her own master? Or was she the messenger of some implacable god?

  Might he ask?

  He could not open his mouth.

  Her billowing dress, translucent and fine, brushed chill folds across his chest.

  She wished to dance for him, her smile less mocking than playful, hers a realm where everything was firmly rooted to the ground.

  Perhaps if he were to accompany her...

  Might she lead somewhere? He did not know, was too afraid, or merely unsure, to talk.

  But Jerian followed.

  The lady floated, passed easily through the inanimate trees, elms whose spirits composed her, a coolness that was motion in her gauzy limbs. The warmth of the sun lifted her feet and skirts off the woodland floor, a daytime wonder whose fleeting existence might pass unnoticed, as dampness rising, an especially vibrant fog.

  Jerian was not concerned by her strangeness. He chased her imagined shadow, tripping on the indistinct hem, her swirling dress disturbing birds and leaves, colours that blurred in her wake. She was a joy, full of the day, the few clouds no more than a distant menace. The largely uninterrupted rays poured languid, golden spoonfuls into the generated vessel of the elm wood's collective dream.

  *

  It seemed knowledge of his circumstances was of little or no help to him. He had been born. He had not died. He had been gifted an arm, a sword, and taken many lives. He had worn a helm that covered one ugliness with a second, and neither had lasted, both had fallen away. He had walked day and night on a road to the other side. And yet it was always so far from him, the place where roads melted into gases, gases into ether, ether in whose grasp the moon and stars abided. Whatever course of action Jerian chose, the road remained his sole means of attainment. He could but walk, filling mind and belly while his enemies prepared to ambush him, the outcast, the jeria so rightly named from his mother's bitter tongue...

  To fight was all. To fight was everything.

  *

  The trees had aged and thinned, the grasses taller between, the afternoon lengthened and the dancing lady more substantial as the light slanted in thicker bars through the branches of an increasingly fragmented canopy. Her form was leant greater definition. Her dress sparkled with pearly jewels. This enhanced detail encouraged Jerian; she was no mere phantasm to glint and fade, but a purposeful herald, a credible guide amongst the boles.

  That he perceived no direct threat in the wood did not serve to diminish her value, for he might easily become lost in so mysterious a place. The ground was flat, the trees, although older, grown to maturity, were likened one unto another, a rough backdrop of serrated foliage against whose staunch presence the sun itself might be intimidated into straying from course.

  Brown and green. Bark and leaves. Blue and white. Sky and dress, her flushed pink and her laughter the sun-bloated consequences of smiles.

  And who practised what deceits?

  He was bound to her as if by strings.

  Chapter Nineteen - The Wych Queen And The Wyvern

  And there was Udioe...

  Glistening.

  *

  Rain swept the trees, the space between each upright bole diminished, streaking silver-blue water over the wounds of the elms as the ax connected. The heavy metal head bit hard, bit deep, its sound, the sound of cut wood, reverberating all round Jerian, that ax the same he had taken from the ground by the armoured corpse of the Chalian lord, that lord a proud warrior from beyond the horizon, beneath the sea...

  The world was twilit and sodden, the lady dispersed to mist in the sun's absence, the grey sky cloud-filled and turbulent, an ocean of water wrung from its skirts.

  A blue star, born of steel, fired by motion, swam bli
ndingly in the charged air, scything through bark to the pale flesh of an ancient elm, a tree whose thin canopy swayed in protest, its angry snapping amplified as the once generous crown toppled to running earth.

  And now the ax was singing, the stark outline of a massive figure wielding it, perhaps Death incarnate, perhaps the ghost of that knight of the Chalic king, a soldier of Hell whose fury was infinite.

  Cold and frozen, Jerian could not run.

  Another tree was felled, and another, the elms' contorted trunks fracturing like dry reeds, old residents of the forest parted from their life-soil and sent crashing down, tearing at their neighbour's arms even as they were levelled, churning the soft loam, the sap bleeding from stems and roots washed away by the rain.

  The axman was demented. Could he see? Did he appreciate the damage he wrought? Was he deaf to screams? The wanderer, himself transfixed, did not know. He waited his turn, the falling of blue steel as he raised his outstretched fingers...

  Then, water pooling in his eyes, blood swelling his tongue, Jerian lay amongst the elms.

  As night wrapped him in silence and the downpour slackened, he listened to water dripping. A red moat surrounded him. The wood lay shattered, trembling - but not all was ruin; many a tree still stood. He had not been sliced in two. He had simply lost what he had gained, his right arm severed, hacked in one stroke from his shoulder, perhaps another there to bud, or his withered own to show. He could sense the dampness in the knuckles, the oaken digits of that fostered limb. It was real in his mind, if separated from his body, the carved appendage Odil had grafted to him.

  *

  His chin clean, as yet smarting from the knife, Jerian woke amongst white sheets, his head on a pillow. The ceiling was low and beamed, the beams hung with steel and copper pots of every shape and size. There was a fire in a hearth of bricks and a burnished kettle issuing pungent steam. Yellow light filtered through an ill-fitting door and a single window whose murky glass was draped with a thin curtain. Dried flowers and grass-tied bunches of herbs adorned the stone walls. Living flowers, bluebells and orchids stood upright in patterned vases on a slight wooden table and in niches shaped into the chimney breast, their liquid fragrance rising from the sheets, the bandages criss-crossing his chest, from the skin itself that he wore.