‘He was harmless,’ Harold said.
‘He was a king’s man, and thus a threat to every free man,’ said Bill.
Harold shrugged. ‘I’ve been a king’s man,’ he said. It was an old argument, and not one likely to be resolved. ‘Here, have some venison and the cider I saved for you. I brought you fish hooks, twenty good heads for arrows and sixty shafts. Don’t shoot any of my friends.’
‘An aristo is an aristo,’ Bill said.
Harold shook his head. ‘Bollocks to you, Bill Redmede,’ he said. ‘There’s right bastards in the nobles and right bastards in the commons, too.’
‘Difference is that a right bastard commoner, you can break his head with your staff.’ Bill took a piece of his brother’s bread as it was sliced off with a sharp knife.
‘Cheese?’ Harold asked.
‘Only cheese I’ll see this year.’ Bill sat back against a tree trunk. ‘I’ve a mind to go put a knife in your guest.’
Harold shook his head. ‘No you won’t. First, I drank with him, and that’s that. Second, he’s wearing mail and sleeping with a dirk in his fist, and I don’t think you’re going to off a hillman in his sleep, brother o’ mine.’
‘Fair enough. Sometimes I have to remember that we must be fair in our actions, while the enemy is foul.’
‘I could still find you a place here,’ Harold said.
Bill shook his head. ‘I know you mean well, brother. But I am what I am. I’m a Jack. I’m down here recruiting new blood. It’s going to be a big year for us.’ He winked. ‘I’ll say no more. But the day is coming.’
‘You and your day,’ Harold muttered. ‘Listen, William. You think I don’t know you have five young boys hid in the beeches north of here? I even know whose boys they are. Recruits? They’re fifteen or sixteen winters! And you have an irk for a guide.’
Bill shrugged. ‘Needs must when the de’il drives,’ he said.
Harold sat back. ‘I know irks is folks,’ he said, waving a hand. ‘I’ve met ’em in the woods. Listened to ’em play their harps. Traded to ’em.’ He leaned forward. ‘But I’m a forester. They kill other folks. Bill. If you’re on their side you’re with the Wild, not with men.’
‘If the Wild makes me free, mayhap I’m with the Wild.’ Bill ate more bread. ‘We have allies again, Harold. Come with me. We can change the world.’ He grimaced to himself. ‘I’d love to have a good man at my back, brother. We’ve some right hard cases, I’ll admit to you.’ He leaned forward. ‘One’s a priest, and he’s the worst of the lot. You think I’m hard?’
Harold laughed. ‘I’m too fucking old, brother. I’m fifteen winters older than you. And if it comes to that—’ He shrugged. ‘I’ll be with my lord.’
Bill shook his head. ‘How can you be so blind? They oppress us! They take our land, take our animals, grind us—’
‘Save it for the boys, Bill. I have six foot of yew and a true shaft for any as tried to grind me. But that won’t make me betray my lord. Who, I may add, fed this village himself when other villages starved.’
‘Farmers are often good to their cattle, aye,’ Bill said.
They looked at each other. And then both grinned at the same time.
‘That’s it for this year, then?’ Harold asked.
Bill laughed. ‘That’s it. Here, give me your hand. I’m off with my little boys for the greenwood and the Wild. Mayhap you’ll hear of us.’ He got up, and his long cloak shone for a moment, a dirty white.
Harold embraced him. ‘I saw bear prints by the river; a big female and a cub.’ He shrugged. ‘Rare down here. Watch out for her.’
Bill looked thoughtful.
‘Stay safe, you fool,’ he said, and swatted him. ‘Don’t end up eaten by irks and bears.’
‘Next year,’ Bill said, and was gone.
Lissen Carak – The Red Knight
Gelfred led them west along the river for miles, on a road that became increasingly narrow and ill-defined, until they had passed the point where they fought the wyvern and the road disappeared entirely. There were no longer any fields; the last peasant’s cot was miles behind them, and the captain could not even smell smoke on the cool spring breeze, which instead carried an icy hint of old snow. The Abbess had not been exaggerating. Man had lost this land to the Wild.
From time to time Gelfred dismounted in patches of sunlight and drew his short, silver-tipped wand from his belt. He would take his rosary from his belt and say his beads, one prayer at a time, eyes flicking nervously to his captain, who sat impassively on his horse. Each time, he would lay the shrivelled, thorned stick of Witch Bane on the ground at his feet, and each time it pointed, straining like a dog on a leash.
Each time, they rode on.
‘You use the power of grammerie to track the beasts?’ the captain said, breaking the frosty silence. They were riding single file along a well-defined track, the old leaves deeply trodden. It was easy enough to follow, but the road was gone. And by almost any measure, they were in the Wild.
‘With God’s aid,’ Gelfred said, and looked at him, waiting for the retort. ‘But my grammerie found us the wrong beast. So now I’m looking for the man. Or men.’
The captain made a face, but refused to rise to the comment about God. ‘Do you sense their power directly?’ he asked. ‘Or are you following the same spore a dog would follow?’
Gelfred gave his captain a long look. ‘I’d like your permission to buy some dogs,’ he said. ‘Good dogs. Alhaunts and bloodhounds and a courser or two. I’m your Master of the Hunt. If that is true then I would like to have money, dogs, and some servants who are not scouts and soldiers.’ He spoke quietly, and his eyes didn’t rest on the captain. They were always roaming the Wild.
So were the captain’s.
‘How much are we talking about?’ the captain asked. ‘I love dogs. Let’s have dogs!’ He smiled. ‘I’d like a falcon.’
Gelfred’s head snapped around, and his horse gave a start. ‘You would?’
The captain laughed aloud. It was a sound of genuine amusement, and it rang like a trumpet through the woods.
‘You think you are fighting for Satan, don’t you, Gelfred?’ He shook his head.
But when he turned to look at his huntsman, the man was down off his horse, pointing off into the woods.
‘Holy Saint Eustace! All praise for this sign!’ he said.
The captain peered off through the bare branches and caught the flash of white. He turned his horse – no easy feat on the narrow track between old trees – and he gasped.
The old stag was not as white as snow – that much was obvious, because he had a patch of snow at his feet. He was the colour of good wool, a warm white, and there were signs of a long winter on his hide – but he was white, and his rack of antlers made him a hart; a noble beast of sixteen tines, almost as tall at the shoulder as a horse. Old and noble and, to Gelfred, a sign from God.
The stag eyed them warily.
To the captain he was, palpably, a creature of the Wild. His noble head was redolent with power – thick ropes of power that seemed, in the unreal realm of phantasm, to bind the great animal to the ground, the trees, the world in a spider web of power.
The captain blinked.
The animal turned and walked away, his hooves ringing on the frozen ground. He turned and looked back, pawed the old snow, and then sprang over a downed evergreen and was gone.
Gelfred was on his knees.
The captain rode carefully through the trees, watching the branches overhead and the ground, trying to summon his ability to see in the phantasm and struggling with it as he always did when his heart was beating fast.
It had left tracks. The captain found that reassuring. He found the spot where the beast had stood, and he followed the prints to the place where it had turned and pawed the snow.
His riding horse shied, and the captain patted her neck and crooned at her. ‘You don’t like that beast, do you, my honey?’ he said.
Gelfred came up, lea
ding his horse. ‘What did you see?’ he asked. He sounded almost angry.
‘A white hart. With a cross on his head. I saw what you saw.’ The captain shrugged.
Gelfred shook his head. ‘But why did you see it?
The captain laughed. ‘Ah, Gelfred – are you so very holy? Shall I pass word of your vow of chastity on to the maids of Lonny? I seem to remember one young lass with black hair—’
‘Why must you mock holy things?’ Gelfred asked.
‘I’m mocking you. Not holy things.’ He pointed a gloved hand at the place where the stag had pawed the snow. ‘Run your wand over that.’
Gelfred looked up at him. ‘I beg your pardon. I am a sinful man. I should not give myself airs. Perhaps my sins are so black that there is nothing between us.’
The captain’s trumpet laugh rang out again. ‘Perhaps I’m not nearly as bad as you think, Gelfred. Personally, I don’t think God gives a fuck either way – but I do sometimes wonder if She has a wicked sense of humour and I should lighten up.’
Gelfred writhed.
The captain shook his head. ‘Gelfred, I’m still mocking you. I have problems with God. But you are a good man doing his best and I apologise for my needling. Now – be a good fellow and pass your wand over the snow.’
Gelfred knelt in the snow.
The captain winced at how cold his knees must be, even through his thigh high boots.
Gelfred spoke four prayers aloud – three Pater Nosters and an Ave Maria. Then he put his beads back in his belt. He raised his face to the captain. ‘I accept your apology,’ he said. He took the wand from his belt, raised it, and it snapped upright as if it had been struck by a sword.
Gelfred dug with his gloved hands. He didn’t need to dig far.
There was a man’s corpse. He had died slowly, from an arrow in the thigh that had severed an artery – that much they could reasoned from the blood that soaked his braes and hose into a frozen scarlet mass.
All of his garments were undyed wool, off white, well made. He wore a quiver that was full of good arrows with hardened steel heads – the captain drew them one by one and tested the heads against his vambrace.
Gelfred shook his head. The arrows alone were worth a small fortune.
The dead man’s belt pouch had a hundred leopards or more in gold and silver, a fine dagger with a bronze and bone hilt and a set of eating tools set into the scabbard, and his hood and cloak were matching undyed wool.
Gelfred opened his cloak and took out a chain with an enamelled leaf.
‘Good Christ,’ he said, and sat back.
The captain was searching the snow using his sword as a rake, combing up old branches under the scant snow cover.
He found the bow after a minute. If was a fine war bow, heavy, sleek, and powerful – not yet ruined by the exposure to the snow.
Gelfred found the arrow that had killed him after assiduous casting, using his power profligately, casting it wider and wider. He had the body, had the blood, had the quiver. The connections were strong enough that it was only a matter of time, unless the arrow was a very long way away.
In fact, the arrow was near the road where they had left it, almost on their trail, buried in six inches of snow. Blood was still frozen to the ground where the arrow had been torn from the wound.
The arrow was virtually identical to the fifteen in the quiver.
‘Mmm,’ said the captain.
They took turns watching the woods while the other stripped the corpse of clothes, chain, boots, belt, knife – of everything.
‘Why didn’t something eat him?’ Gelfred asked.
‘Enough power here to frighten any animal,’ the captain said. ‘Why didn’t the man who killed him strip his corpse and take the arrows? And the knife?’ He shook his head. ‘I confess, Gelfred – this is—’ he snorted.
Gelfred didn’t raise his eyes. ‘There’s plenty of folk live in the Wild.’
‘I know that.’ The captain raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m from the north, Gelfred. I used to see Outwallers every day, across the river. There’s whole villages of them.’ He shook his head. ‘We raided them, sometimes. And other times, we traded with them.’
Gelfred shrugged. ‘He isn’t an Outwaller.’ He looked at the captain as if he expected trouble. ‘He’s one of those men and women who want to bring down the lords. They say we’ll – that is, that they’ll be free.’ His voice was detached and curiously non-committal.
The captain made a face. ‘He’s a Jack, isn’t he? The bow? The leaf brooch? I’ve heard the songs.’ He shook his head at his huntsman. ‘I know there’s folk who want to burn the castles. If I were born a serf, I’d be out there with my pitchfork, right now. But Jacks? Men dedicated to fighting for the Wild? Who would fund them? How do they recruit? It makes no sense.’ He shrugged. ‘To be honest, I’d always assumed the Jacks were made up by the lords to justify their own atrocities. Shows what a little youthful cynicism will get you.’
Gelfred shrugged. ‘There are always rumours.’ His eyes slipped away from the captain’s.
‘You’re not some sort of secret rebel, Gelfred?’ The captain forced the other man to meet his eyes.
Gelfred shrugged. ‘Does it brand me a traitor to say that sometimes the whole sick wheel of the world makes me want to kill?’ He dropped his eyes, and the anger went out of him. ‘I don’t. But I understand the outlaws and the outwallers.’
The captain smiled. ‘There. At last, you and I have something in common.’ He rolled the frozen corpse and used the dead man’s sharp knife to slit his hose up the back. He cut the waistband of the man’s linen braes, stiff with frozen blood, and took them as well. He got a sack from his heavy leather male that sat behind his saddle, and filled it with the dead man’s belongings.
He tossed the purse to Gelfred. ‘Get us some dogs,’ he said.
Naked, the dead man didn’t look like a soldier in the army of evil. The thought made the captain purse his lips. He leaned over the corpse – as white as the snow around it – and rolled it over again.
The death wound went in under the arm, straight to the heart, and had been delivered with a slim bladed knife. The captain took his time, looking at it.
‘His killer came and finished him. And was so panicked, they didn’t know their man was already dead.’
‘Already dead?’ Gelfred asked.
‘Not much blood. Look at his cote. There’s the entry – there’s the blood. But not much.’ The captain crouched on his heels. ‘This is a puzzle. What do you see, Gelfred?’
‘His kit is better than ours,’ Gelfred said.
‘Satan pays well,’ the captain shrugged. ‘Or perhaps he merely pays on time.’ He looked around. ‘This is not what we came for. Let’s go back to the trail and look for the monster.’ He paused. ‘Gelfred, how can you conjure with Witch’s Bane?’
Gelfred walked a few paces. ‘I’ve heard it can’t be done,’ he said with a shrug. ‘But it can. It’s like mucking out a stall – you just try not to get the shit on you.’
The captain looked at his huntsman with a whole new appreciation. Sparring about religion had defined their relationship in the weeks since the captain had engaged him.
‘You are potent,’ the captain said.
Gelfred shook his head eyes on the trees. ‘I feel that we’ve disturbed a balance,’ he said, ignoring the compliment.
The captain led his horse to a downed tree. He could vault into the saddle, but he felt sore in every limb, and his neck hurt where the wyvern had tried to snap it, and he was still more than a little hung over, and he used the downed tree to mount.
‘All the more reason to keep moving,’ he said. ‘We’re not in the Jack-hunting business, Gelfred. We kill monsters.’
Gelfred shrugged. ‘My lord—’ he began. He looked away. ‘You have power of your own. Yes?’
The captain felt a little frisson run down his back. Run? Hide? Lie?
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘A little.’
‘Hmm,
’ Gelfred said, noncommittally. ‘So. Now that I have eliminated the . . . the Jack from my casting, I can concentrate on the other creature.’ He paused. ‘They were bound together. At least,’ he looked scared. ‘At least, that’s how it seemed to me.’
The captain looked at his huntsman. ‘Why do you think someone killed the Jack, Gelfred?’
Gelfred shook his head.
‘A Jack helps a monster kill a nun. Then, another man kills him.’ The captain shivered. The chainmail under his arming cote did a wonderful job of conducting the cold straight to his chest.
Gelfred didn’t meet his eye.
‘Not money. Not weapons.’ The captain began to look around. ‘I think we’re being watched.’
Gelfred nodded.
‘How long had the Jack been dead?’ the captain asked.
‘Two days.’ Gelfred was sure, as only the righteous can be sure.
The captain stroked his beard. ‘Makes no sense,’ he said.
They rode back to the track, and Gelfred hesitated before facing west. And then they began to ride.
‘The stag was a sign from God,’ Gelfred said. ‘And that means the Jacks are but tools of Satan.’
The captain looked at his huntsman with the kind of look fathers usually have for young children.
Which, the captain thought, was odd, since Gelfred was ten years his senior.
‘The stag was a creature of the Wild, every bit as much as the wyvern, and it chose to manifest itself as it did because it opposes whomever aids the Jacks.’ The captain shrugged. ‘Or so I suspect.’ He met his huntsman’s eye. ‘We need to ask ourselves why a creature of the Wild helped us find the body.’
‘So you are an Atheist!’ Gelfred asked. Or rather, accused.
The captain was watching the woods. ‘Not at all, Gelfred. Not at all.’
The trail narrowed abruptly, killing their conversation. Gelfred took the lead. He looked back at the captain, as if encouraging him to go on, but the captain pointed over his shoulder and they rode on in silence.
After a few minutes, Gelfred raised a hand, slipped from the saddle, and performed his ritual.
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