“Somebody should have my name, if only to remember I once passed this way. I’m Aldric Talvalin, kailin-eir and ilauem-arluth, highborn and a lord in my own right. At least I was once. Not any more. Now I’m eijo, landless, lordless, a wanderer on the roads of the world.” Again the sour smile twisted his lips, and the darkness was on him again as it hadn’t been since the arrows hammered Youenn dead from his saddle to the dirt. “Can you blame me for seeking nameless peace now and then?” Evthan drew his own conclusions.
“You were involved in the fighting we heard of?” he asked. Aldric nodded, because it was true enough. Truer than Evthan could ever imagine. “And you left Alba as a consequence?”
“Persons of rank and power suggested it.”
“So you are a mercenary.” Evthan seemed content now he had a category in which to store Aldric. “Several have already guessed as much. But we protect our friends, Kourgath. You are safe in Valden.”
“I thank you for that,” said Aldric, though he took note that nothing was said about being safe in the woods. Without thinking he pushed the arrows he carried through his belt and when he realised what he had done, it was already too late. Without his hand around them the crudely finished heads were plain to see, and plainly not steel. If Gueynor had kept his secret, his own stupidity had revealed it.
“Those are interesting.” Evthan gestured at them, and his blue eyes narrowed to conceal the fear in their depths. “No one else believes the Beast might be more than… Than just a wolf.”
Liar, thought Aldric. Apart from himself there was Gueynor, Evthan himself and Crisen Geruath – and why the interest from that quarter anyway? The other two had good reason to wonder, and be frightened of what they learned, but Crisen was the Overlord’s son should have had no curiosity at all about the doings of peasants. Yet he had sent messengers asking about the Beast. Unanswerable questions of his own flashed through Aldric’s mind and he glanced northward, towards where Evthan had told him the Geruath hold of Seghar lay.
“As I told Gueynor, these are only a precaution.” He drew in a long deep breath and looked up at the sky. “Time we began. Get the dogs. I’ll see to my gear.” He watched Evthan walk away, twitched his shoulders in a movement that might have been relief of tension or a dismissive shrug, and headed for the stable. Any hunt today or tonight would be a waste of time, at least for the quarry he hoped to flush. But tomorrow could prove another matter.
Especially after moonrise.
*
Even though his arming-leathers were sturdy enough for hunting, he deliberated over his battle armour for several minutes. The full tsalaer was far too heavy, but not its separated parts, so he detached both armoured sleeves from the cuirass and strapped them over his padded jerkin, then hid everything beneath a short leather riding-coat. Just in case. Hidden armour could be as useful as a hidden dagger, and he carried three of those already.
There was rather more reluctance about the way he unhooked Isileth Widowmaker from his weapon-belt and slid the taiken’s scabbard into its accustomed place on his saddle. Aldric disliked being separated from the longsword by more than the length of his arm, but three feet of steel wasn’t practical for hunting. Hunting animals, at least.
His taipan shortsword went alongside it, but not his tsepan. That remained in place, as a matter of self-respect. A kailin could leave off rank and family and name, and even two of his Three Blades, but never the black dirk which preserved his honour.
Aldric belted his shortbow’s case around his waist before sliding the silver-headed arrows in beside it. Besides the special arrows he picked out half-a-dozen more with winged broadheads, flesh-tearing points meant to stop anything unarmoured dead or shockingly maimed in its tracks. Finally he took one of the two holstered telekin hanging on either side of his saddle, adjusted the holster’s straps and laces until it was snug against the left side of his chest, and drew the telek.
It was another of his many gifts from Gemmel, a graceful thing so well-shaped to fit his grip that aiming was as natural as pointing a finger. The spring-gun was no hunter’s weapon, but had distinct advantages in the dangerous distance between sword-length and bowshot. This one and its mate could project eight darts with lethal force for more than twenty paces, as fast as he could pump the spanning-sleeve and squeeze the trigger.
He broke the telek’s action and checked its mechanism before emptying half the darts from the polished cylinder. After a swift over-shoulder glance towards the closed door at his back, he withdrew their replacements from his belt-pouch. Like the arrows cased beside his bow, they too were tipped with silver. Evthan might have seen the arrows, but no one had seen the darts and he meant to keep it that way. Once each one had slid into its respective chamber, he rotated the cylinder once more and snapped it shut, engaging the safety-slide with a push of his thumb.
Behind him the stable door creaked open and Aldric turned, arm snapping up to shooting position. Gueynor stood framed in the doorway, gilded by the sunlight at her back, a wicker basket in her hands and eyes fixed on the unwavering telek. She looked shocked, because it had thrust out at the end of his arm like the head of a striking snake, but there wasn’t even a tremor of fright. As he returned the spring-gun to its holster Aldric wondered how much her hysteria in the forge had been a skilful act, and what reason she had found to bring her back.
“I… My aunt asked me to bring you these.” Gueynor held out the basket, full of small sealed jars and bunches of herbs.
“Are they hunting provisions?”
“No!” It wasn’t simple denial, but a strange noise halfway between shock and a strangled laugh. “Definitely not.”
Aldric examined two or three of the stoneware pots, their stoppers tied down and sealed with wax. Their labels made little sense – speaking a language was not the same as reading it, especially with the part-letters, part-symbols Drusalan alphabet – but the dried herbs attached to those labels were clear enough. Here a stalk of withered foxglove, there a handful of dwale berries, every one of them a plant he had learned from early childhood to recognise and avoid.
“Awos arl’th Dew!” He set the basket down and wondered if he should put on gloves before he touched it again, if he ever did. Gueynor wasn’t wearing any, but that meant nothing. “There are enough varieties of poison here to kill the entire village twenty times over. Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“My aunt said it might be useful.”
“Your aunt is a… A practical woman.”
Gueynor watched him for a few seconds more, but when he stood immobile and said nothing more, she whisked out of the stable and closed the door behind her. That was when Aldric tried to make sense from the brief exchange. He was sure Aunt Aline had nothing to do with this deadly basket. Poison was of no use against a werewolf, so did this gift hint at something else altogether? The difference between Gueynor and other peasants he had met still nagged at him.
The kailinin of Alba had an ingrained dislike of poison. What was medicine today could be a weapon tomorrow, a cowardly, secretive weapon that went against all their honour-codes. But that was when it was being using against other warriors. He lifted one to study the slip of vellum hanging from its neck by a length of cord, and though the crabbed handwriting on one side was still beyond his ability to read, the purple-blue flower painted on the other provoked a grim little smile. Apothecaries at home in Elthan and Prytenon called this distillate ‘wolfsbane’, and he wondered if the irony was accidental or not.
Its wax seal cracked across and across under his thumbnail, and lifting the stopper released a faint sharp scent that prickled in his nostrils. Aldric drew the telek, opened it and, with extreme care not to let the stuff touch his own skin, used a flat-tipped piece of wood to smear gummy black toxin behind each steel point. Then he grimaced, shrugged and did the same for the four darts tipped with silver. Perhaps if one didn’t work, the other would.
And if neither did – goodnight, my lord.
<
br /> CHAPTER TWO
It was warm and still in the forest, with no breeze to cool the heavy air. Under the spreading canopy of branches, sunlight became a green translucent glow, filtering through layered leaves until the tall trunks looked like sunken pillars in a drowned and long-forgotten hall. Although an occasional bird sang, the notes were flat and lifeless and soon died in the oppressive silence. Aldric’s boots hissed through the grass and bracken, while Evthan made no sound at all.
There were no dogs. That had been a source of slight friction, because when Laine refused to subject his precious pets to the lurking dangers of the woods, Evthan hadn’t pressed him on it. Aldric might have done so, except for a feeling that the hunter’s reluctance had more behind it than just good manners to a neighbour.
As the sun slid down the western sky, the light dimmed and the shadows stretched longer. Aldric’s nerves were already stretched by waiting, watching and listening for any movement which might betray whatever made it. He didn’t start at every snap or rustle, but it was a close-run thing. Evthan however seemed relaxed, and though he didn’t speak it was from long solitary habit rather than any rudeness. The latest bird to risk a chirrup faltered and went quiet, and as each leaden minute trickled by it seemed the forest held its breath.
“Which way now?” When Aldric spoke his voice seemed a loud, unwelcome sound, but Evthan raised an arm to point north-east.
“Into the Deepwood,” he replied, and walked on without waiting for a response.
As the forest’s embrace closed around them, Aldric didn’t need to ask why it was called the Deepwood. That name was well-deserved and obvious. The woods near Valden, cleared of undergrowth for hunting until they were virtually parkland, were an open meadow compared to this claustrophobic tangle of brush, brambles and evergreens. After half an hour his eyes yearned for the sight of a beech-tree or an oak to relieve the sombre monotony of pines living, dying or dead, but all upright in one another’s close-meshed needled embrace.
They were old, as old as anything he had ever seen. There was a brooding stillness in the Deepwood, and a sense of such antiquity that even he, cseirin-born with a history of sixty generations, felt an intruder on the peace of long, slow ages.
“Evthan,” he said, his voice hushed now as if to avoid whatever ancient presence slumbered in the warm, close confines, “let’s turn about. Go back to the village. Now.”
Evthan glanced at him and what might have been a smile tugged at the corners of his thin mouth. But the smile didn’t extend beyond that twitch of muscles as he nodded, turned in his tracks and went back the way he had come. Aldric felt an embarrassed blush burning his face. He wasn’t frightened by the claustrophobic forest, even though kailinin-eir could feel fear just as much as anyone else and after that nightmare flight through Baelen Wood four years ago, he had more reason than most. This was only an awareness that the Jevaiden Deepwood was a place where he was neither comfortable nor welcome.
He had learned to heed those subconscious warnings. For an instant, with the hunter’s little half-smile still stinging his pride, he almost called Evthan back to insist that they continue. Another look at the encroaching dusk changed his mind and instead he walked quickly after the Jouvaine hunter.
But not too quickly.
He was whistling a brisk little tune as he drew level and Evthan gave him another of those half-amused looks, sidelong, without turning his head. He said nothing. Above their heads, far beyond the confines of the Deepwood, the sky became a smoky blue-grey which dissolved into saffron as it swept down to the horizon and the last faint residue of sunset. That cool amber light beyond the trees transformed them into hard-edged silhouettes, every branch, every twig, every leaf and needle etched precise and black against the afterglow. Aldric glanced from side to side as the world grew dark and ceased to be the one he knew.
He lengthened his stride; it was difficult to keep pace with a man whose long legs could match a warhorse, and he got a distinct impression that Evthan was walking faster now than he had done before. All around were small sounds as the night-forest came to life with tiny creaks and twitterings or an occasional minute, furtive movement. They were little noises, normal in the evening, and undisturbed by Aldric’s own muted musical contribution. Then his whistle faltered, began again uncertainly and trailed away in a scatter of unconnected notes as an eerie tingling sensation crawled over the skin of neck and arms like the half-forgotten memory of a shiver. He knew it was more than that.
Someone – or some thing – was behind him.
Aldric stopped, holding his breath to hear better while his wary gaze raked across the undergrowth. There was nothing but a slither of fern-fronds and then silence, as if he had heard only the echoes of his own passage through the bracken. Except that this echo came from thirty feet off to his right. And why had everything else gone quiet…?
He knew the answer to his own unspoken question. It was because the lurking presence was still out there, invisible in the thick vegetation, studying him, assessing him with interest and curiosity but no malice. At least for the present. It had stopped whenever he stopped, which made him reluctant to move again for fear of what might follow.
“Evthan?” There was no reply, and with another tremor of shock Aldric realised he was alone. But not alone enough. There was a soft crunch of bracken as something huge moved purposefully closer. A metallic tang soured his dry mouth, and one hand rose to the holstered telek. It cleared leather with a harsh scrape that should have angered him but this time could never be loud enough, then click-clacked as he wrenched back on the cocking sleeve.
The slow movement in the forest ceased at once.
Aldric could feel the clammy embrace of sweat-saturated cloth against his skin, and an all-too-familiar queasiness in his stomach. Having a small claim to courage didn’t mean he couldn’t feel fear, and he was feeling it right now. Fighting a desire to turn and run, he reversed along the narrow track which was all that Evthan had left to ease his passage through the Deepwood’s worst tangles. There was no sound of pursuit. Then he noticed something which for an instant took his mind off whatever he had faced down in the forest. The polished metal of the telek was glinting in the moonlight.
Moonlight…?
Aldric’s head jerked back, his gaze going up between the tree trunks to what little of the sky was visible between their lowering columns, and if he had been uneasy before, it was as nothing to how he felt when he saw the moon. It perched like a bloated fruit on the extremity of a branch, growing ever brighter as dusk crawled into night. That was the last straw. There was a wide difference between brave and cowardly, but much less between foolhardy and stupid, and like anyone out of his depth Aldric knew when it was time to shout for help.
“Evthan!” he yelled, regardless of what else might hear him. “Evthan!” In his secret heart the last thing he expected was an answer, so when the hunter emerged from a jumble of shadows Aldric almost jumped out of his skin. He sagged with relief, trying to get his breath back and thankful the deepening shadows couldn’t betray how much he was shaking.
“What’s wrong?” Whatever else the Alban suspected he might be, Evthan Wolfsbane wasn’t a fool. After a single glance at his companion’s shocked, white face he jerked an arrow from the quiver at his hip and set it to his longbow’s string. “What’s out there?”
“The Beast, maybe.” Aldric managed an inadequate laugh. “Or a bear, or a boar, or just something ugly from the back of my own mind. Father of Fires, I didn’t wait to find out!”
“I don’t blame you.” The hunter’s teeth gleamed. “The Deepwood after dark is no place for a novice hunter, especially one as—” he altered a word on the tip of his tongue, “—as ill at ease in thick forest as you are. Yes?”
“You mean frightened, don’t you?” The forced bravado disappeared from Aldric’s voice. “Scared out of my wits?”
“I do not,” said Evthan. “Every man has his own special fear, whether it be close confinement, o
pen space, deep water or… Or high places. I can climb a tree at utmost need, but only then. Otherwise my feet stay on the ground. So I think it is with you and the forest. But I’m no more ashamed of my fear than of having brown eyes like my mother, when my father’s eyes were blue.”
Aldric’s own eyes blinked as he wondered what had made the Jouvaine shape his words like that. The cseirin-born – the lord’s immediate family – of Alba’s ancient high clans all shared hereditary features as distinctive as their painted crests. In clan Talvalin that meant fair hair, blue eyes and notable stature, yet Aldric, the last clan-lord of all, took after his own Elthanek mother with brown hair, hazel eyes and only average height. He made a wordless noise and noted that this peasant hunter was again proving to be more than he appeared.
How much more he would have to discover later, for though the moon was well along, it wasn’t yet full. He had known as much in the light of day, but the silver disk peering at him through the trees rattled his assurance. Looking again with more care, he could see it still lacked a nail-paring along the rim. Which meant that tomorrow night was full moon, and the night of the summer solstice. Aldric slid his telek back into its holster, but didn’t buckle down the peace-strap which secured it. Not yet.
Evthan’s route out of the Deepwood was much more direct than the one he had followed on the way in. Aldric didn’t know why, unless it was out of consideration for himself and, if so, he wasn’t sure he liked being patronised to that extent. He was still trying to phrase a reply which wouldn’t insult a gesture of honest kindness when he noticed two things. One was that Evthan had become almost as nervous as he had been a half-hour earlier, and the other was that even in the shadow-streaked uncertain light, he could see they were walking along a path. It was narrow, twisting and uneven, flanked on either side by trees, but it was still a path. In the Deepwood…?
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