The Hallowed Hunt

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  The dedicat looked anything but pleased with this prospect; the women servants were downright grim.

  Ingrey glanced around. The place was clean enough, certainly, but…“Here?”

  Lady Ijada favored him with an ironical lift of her eyebrows. “By your order, I am not to be housed in the town lockup, for which I thank you. The divine’s spare room is reserved for you. The inn is full of your men, and the temple hall is full of Boleso’s retainers. More sleeping their vigil than standing it, I suppose, though some are drinking it. For some reason, no goodwife of Reedmere has volunteered to invite me into her home. So I am fallen back on the goddess’s hospitality.” Her smile was rigid.

  “Oh,” said Ingrey after a moment. “I see.”

  To people who knew Boleso only as a rumor of a golden prince, she must appear…well, scarcely a heroine. Not merely a dangerous murderess in herself, but leaking a taint of treason on any who might be seen to aid her. And it will get worse the closer we get to Easthome. With no better solution to offer, Ingrey could only exchange an awkward nod of good night with her, and let the medical dedicat usher him to the door.

  “Off to sleep with you, now, my lord,” the dedicat went on, standing on tiptoe to take one last look at her work and recovering her cheer. “With that knock to the head, you should stay in bed for a day or two.”

  “My duties will not permit, alas.” He gave her a stiff bow, and went off across the square to fill at least the first half of her prescription.

  The divine, finished with praying over Boleso, was waiting up for him. The man wanted to talk of further ceremonies, and after that, hear news from the capital. He was anxious for the hallow king’s failing health; Ingrey, himself four days out of touch, elected to be reassuringly vague. Ingrey judged the Reedmere man an unlordly lord-divine, a sincere soul-shepherd, backbone of the rural Temple, but neither learned nor subtle. Not a man in whom to confide Lady Ijada’s current spiritual situation. Or my own. Ingrey turned him firmly to the needs of tomorrow’s travel, made excusing references to his injuries, and escaped to his bedchamber.

  It was a small but blessedly private room on the second floor. Ingrey opened its window onto the night chill only long enough to glance at the feeble oil lamps on an iron stand in the black square below, and at the stars burning more brightly above, then crawled into one of the divine’s nightshirts laid out for him. He lowered his head gingerly to his pillow. For all his pains and churning worries, he did not lie awake long.

  INGREY DREAMED OF WOLVES…

  He would have thought black midnight to be the time for the rite, but his father summoned him to the castle hall in the middle of the afternoon. A cool shadowless light penetrated from the window slits that overlooked the gurgling Birchbeck sixty feet below. Good beeswax candles burned in sconces on the walls, their warm honeyed flicker mixing with the grayness.

  Lord Ingalef kin Wolfcliff appeared calm, if grave with the strain that had ridden him of late, and he greeted his son with a reassuring nod and a brief, rare smile. Young Ingrey’s throat was tight with nervous excitement and fear. The Temple sorcerer, Cumril, made known to Ingrey only the night before, stood at the ready, naked but for a breechcloth, bare skin daubed about with archaic signs. The sorcerer had looked old to Ingrey then, but through his dream-eyes he saw that Cumril had actually been a young man. With the foresight of his nightmare state, Ingrey searched Cumril’s face for some intimation or mark—did he plot the betrayal to come? Or was he just in over his head—not in control, unlucky, incompetent? The worry in his shifting eyes could have betokened either—or, indeed, all.

  Then young Ingrey’s gaze locked upon the animals, the beautiful, dangerous animals, and he could scarcely thereafter look away. The grizzled huntsman who handled them would die of rabies three days before Ingrey’s father.

  The old wolf was huge, savage, and powerful. Muscles rippled beneath its thick gray pelt, marred with old scars and new cuts. The fur was crusted with blood in a few places. The animal was restless, whining, resistant to the huntsman’s leash. Feverish, though no one here knew that. In a few days, the foaming would have begun, revealing its sickness, but now it merely tried to lick itself in its discomfort, impeded by the leather straps muzzling its jaws. It snarled thickly in its bonds.

  The young wolf, barely more than a pup, scrabbled away from its larger comrade in evident fear, claws scratching on the floorboards. The huntsman took it for cowardly, but later Ingrey would come to believe it had known of the contagion. Otherwise, it was startlingly docile, attentive as a well-trained dog. Its fur was dark and wonderfully dense, its silver-gilt eyes clear, and it responded at once to Ingrey’s arrival, straining toward him and sniffing, staring up in evident adoration. Ingrey loved it instantly, his hands aching to run through the pewter-black pelt.

  The sorcerer directed Ingrey and his father to strip to the waist and kneel on the cold floor a few paces apart, facing each other. He intoned some phrases in the old tongue of the Weald, pronouncing them carefully with many a side glance at a piece of wrinkled paper plucked from his belt. The language seemed to hover maddeningly just on the edge of Ingrey’s understanding.

  At Cumril’s sign, the huntsman dragged the old wolf to Lord Ingalef’s arms. He let go of the young wolf’s leash to do so, and the animal scampered to Ingrey’s lap. Ingrey held its soft warmth close, and it wriggled around to eagerly lick his face. His hands buried themselves in its fur, petting and stroking; the creature emitted small, happy whines and tried to wash Ingrey’s ear. The rough tongue tickled, and Ingrey had to choke down a reflexive, unfitting laugh.

  Muttering briefly over the blade, the sorcerer delivered the sacred knife to Lord Ingalef’s waiting hand, then stepped back hastily as the disturbed wolf snapped at him. The beast began to struggle as Lord Ingalef’s grip tightened. The struggle redoubled as he grasped it by the muzzle and tried to tilt its head back. He lost his hold, the jaw straps slipped loose, and the animal sank its teeth in his left forearm, shaking its head and snarling, worrying the flesh. Muffling a curse, he regained a partial purchase with knees and the weight of his strong body. The blade flashed, sank into fur and flesh. Red blood spurted. The snarls died, the jaws loosed, and the furry bundle subsided limply; then, a moment later, into a more profound stillness.

  Lord Ingalef sat up and back, releasing knife and carcass. The knife clattered on the stones.

  “Oh,” he said, eyes wide and strange. “It worked. How very…odd that feels…”

  Cumril cast him a worried look; the huntsman hastened to bind his savaged arm.

  “My lord, should you not…?” Cumril began.

  Lord Ingalef shook his head sharply and raised his sound hand in a unsteady Continue! gesture. “It worked! Go on!”

  The sorcerer picked up the second blade, gleaming new-forged, from the cushion on which it rested, and trod forward mumbling again. He pressed the knife into Ingrey’s hand and stepped back once more.

  Ingrey’s hand closed unhappily on the hilt, and he looked into the bright eyes of his wolf. I don’t want to kill you. You are too beautiful. I want to keep you. The clean jaws opened, showing fine white teeth, and Cumril’s breath drew in, but the young wolf only lolled out its pink tongue and licked Ingrey’s hand. The cool black nose nudged his knife-clutching fist, and Ingrey blinked back tears. The wolf sat up between Ingrey’s knees, raised its head, and twisted around to gaze into its killer’s face with perfect trust.

  He must not botch this, must not inflict unnecessary torment with repeated strikes. His hands felt the neck, traced the firm muscles and the soft ripple of artery and vein. The room was a silvered blur. The young wolf leaned into him as Ingrey laid the blade close. He drew back, struck, yanked with all his strength. Felt the flesh part, the hot blood spurt over his hands, wetting the fur. Felt the body relax in his arms.

  The dark flow struck his mind like a torrent of blood. Wolf lives, life upon life, huts and fires, castles and battles, stables and steeds, iron and fire, hunt
s; hunt upon hunt, kill upon kill, but always with men, never with a wolf pack; back still farther beyond even the memory of fire, into endless forests crusted with snow in the moonlight. There was too much, too much, too many years…his eyes rolled back.

  Shouts of alarm: his father’s voice, “Something’s gone wrong! Curse you, Cumril, catch him!”

  “He’s gone all shaking—he’s bitten his tongue, my lord—”

  A shift of time and space, and his wolf was bound—no, he was bound—red-silk cords whispered and muttered around him, writhing, rooting in him like vines. His wolf snapped at them, white teeth closing, tearing, but the cords regrew with frightening speed. They wrapped his head, tightening painfully.

  Unfamiliar voices invaded his delirium then, irritatingly. His wolf fled. The memory of his evil dream spattered and ran away like water.

  “He can’t be asleep; his eyes are half-open, see them gleam?”

  “No, don’t wake him up! I know what you’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to lead them back to bed quietly, or, I don’t know, they go all wild, or something.”

  “Then I’m not touching him with that sword in his hand!”

  “Well, how else?”

  “Get more light, woman. Oh, five gods be thanked, here’s his own man.”

  A hesitation; then, “Lord Ingrey? Lord Ingrey!”

  Candlelight doubled, doubled again. Ingrey blinked, gasped, surged to wakefulness. His head ached abominably. He was standing up. Shock brought him fully alert.

  He was standing once more in the temple infirmary, if the room in back of the apothecary’s could be so designated. He wore the divine’s nightshirt half-tucked into his trousers, but his feet were bare on the board floor. His right hand gripped his naked sword.

  He was surrounded by the steward, one of Ijada’s woman attendants, and the guardsman that Gesca had designated for the night watch. Well, not surrounded, exactly; the first two were plastered against the walls, staring at him with wide and terrified eyes, and the third-named hovered in the back doorway of the shop.

  “I’m”—he had to stop, swallow, moisten his lips—“I’m awake.” What am I doing here? How did I get over here?

  He’d been sleepwalking, presumably. He had heard of such things. He’d never done it before. And it had been more than just blundering about in the dark. He’d partly dressed, found his weapon, somehow made his way in unobserved silence down a stairway, through a door—which surely must have been locked, so he must have turned the key—across the cobbled square, and into this other building.

  Where Lady Ijada lies asleep. Five gods, let her go on sleeping. The door to the bedchamber was closed—now. In sudden horror, he glanced at his blade, but it was still gleaming and dry. No dripping gore stained it. Yet.

  His guardsman, with a wary glance at his sword, came to him and took him by his left arm. “Are you all right, my lord?”

  “Hurt my head today,” Ingrey mumbled. “The dedicat’s medicines gave me strange dreams. Dizzy. Sorry…”

  “Should I…um…take you back to bed, my lord?”

  “Yes,” said Ingrey gratefully. “Yes”—the seldom-used phrase forced itself from his cold lips—“please you.” He was shivering now. It wasn’t wholly from the chill.

  He suffered the guardsman to guide him out the door, around the shop, back across the silent, dark square. Back into the divine’s house. A servant who had slept through Ingrey’s exit was awakened by their return and came out into the hall in sleepy alarm. Ingrey mumbled more excuses about the dedicat’s potions, which served well enough given the porter’s own muzzy state. Ingrey let his guardsman guide him all the way to his bed and even pull his covers up, sergeantly maternal. The man retreated in a clanking, board-creaking sort of tiptoe, pulling the door shut behind him.

  Ingrey waited until the footsteps had faded away in the square before he crawled out from his quilts, groped for his tinderbox, and lit a candle, flint and striker uncooperative in his shaking hands. He sat on the edge of the bed recovering for a few minutes, then arose and made a survey of his room. He could only lock the door from the inside, which meant he could unlock it as easily, unless he then threw the key out the window or shoved it under the door, which would create awkward delays and explanations in the morning. He briefly regretted not having had his guardsman lock it as he’d left, although that, too, would have entailed awkward explanations. Or clever lies, and Ingrey was feeling singularly stupid just now. At length, he set his sword and belt knife in a chest that held spare linens, and balanced several potentially noisy objects, capped with the tin basin from his washstand, atop the lid in a deliberately precarious tower.

  He blew out the candle, went back to bed, lay stiffly for a time, then got up again and felt in the dark in his saddlebags for a length of rope. He tied a loop tightly around his ankle, played out a length, and tied another loop around a lower bedpost. Clumsily, he wrapped himself in his covers again.

  His head throbbed, and his strained shoulder pulsed like a knot of fire under his skin. He tossed, turned, came up short against his rope. Well, at least it worked. He started to doze in sheer exhaustion, turned, and came up short again. He wallowed onto his back once more and lay staring up into the dark, teeth clenched. His eyes felt coated in sand.

  Better than dreaming. He’d had the wolf dream again, for the first time in months, though it was now only slippery fragments in his memory. He had more than one reason to fear sleep, it seemed.

  How did I get into this position? A week ago, he had been a happy man, or at least, contented enough. He had a comfortable chamber in Lord Hetwar’s palace, a manservant, horse and clothing and arms by his lord’s grace, a stipend sufficient for his amusements. The bustle of the hallow king’s capital city at his feet. Better, he had an engagingly irregular but solid rank in the sealmaster’s household, and a reputation as a trusted aide—not quite bravo, not quite clerk, but a man to be relied upon for unusual tasks discreetly done. As Hetwar’s high courier, he delivered rewards intact, and threats suitably nuanced. He was not, he thought, proudly honest, as some men; perhaps he’d simply lost too much already to be tempted by trumpery. Indifference served him quite as well as integrity, and sometimes served Hetwar even better. His most pleasurable reward had usually been to have his curiosity satisfied.

  Bastard’s hell, three days ago he’d been an untroubled man. He had figured the retrieval of Boleso’s body and killer to be a joyless but perfectly straightforward task. Well within his capabilities as an experienced, tough-minded, shrewd, and above all, not in the least wolf-haunted or in any other way whatsoever uncanny royal servant.

  The rope yanked his ankle again. His right hand clenched in the memory of his sword hilt. Curse that leopard girl! If she’d just lain down under Boleso like any other self-interested wench, spread her legs and thought of the jewelry and fine clothing she would undoubtedly have earned, all this could have been avoided. And Ingrey wouldn’t be lying here with a line of bloody embroidery itching in his hair, half the muscles in his body twitching in agony, tied to his own bed, waiting for a leaden dawn.

  Wondering if he was still sane.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THEY ESCAPED REEDMERE LATER IN THE MORNING THAN Ingrey had desired, owing to the insistence of the lord-divine in making a ceremony, with more choirs, out of loading Boleso’s coffin aboard its new carrier. The wagon at least was tolerable—very well made, with somber draperies disguising its bright paint, if not the distinct smell of beer lingering about it. The six horses that came with it were grand tawny beasts, massive of shoulder, haunch, and hoof, with orange and black ribbons braided in manes and bound-up tails. The bells on their glossy harness were muffled with black flannel, for which Ingrey, head still throbbing from yesterday’s blow, was grateful. Compared to their usual load, Ingrey imagined, the team would tow Boleso up hills and through mire as effortlessly as a child’s sled.

  Rider Gesca recoiled at the close view of Ingrey when helping him to mount up,
then intercepted Ingrey’s glower and swallowed any comment. Ingrey had shaved, and the divine’s servants had returned his riding leathers dry, supple, and buffed; but there was nothing he could do about the squinting, bloodshot eyes and gray, puffy face. He clenched his teeth, settling his aching body into his saddle, and endured the slow procession to the town gate through the clamor of bells and chants and billows of incense that Reedmere thought becoming to the prince’s send-off. Ingrey waited till the town had passed out of sight behind them before waving the new teamster to chirp his beasts into a lumbering trot. The dray horses seemed the only cheerful members of the party, fresh and ponderously frisky and apparently regarding the jaunt as some horse holiday.

  Lady Ijada appeared as trim as she had yesterday morning, now in an even more elegant riding habit of gray-blue trimmed with silver thread. Clearly, she had slept through the night. Ingrey wavered between resentful and relieved, as his headache waxed and waned. An hour into the bright morning, he began to feel about as recovered as he was likely to get. Almost human. He gritted his teeth at the bitter joke and rode up and down the column taking stock.

  Ijada’s new female attendant, one of the middle-aged Temple servants on loan from Reedmere, rode in the wagon. She was wary of her ward, much more frigid than the rural wife from Boar’s Head who had known more of Boleso. She seemed even more wary of Ingrey. He wondered if the woman had told Ijada of his sleepwalking episode.

  Boleso’s retainers, too, seemed edgier today, as they drew closer to Easthome and whatever chastisement awaited them for their failure to keep their banished prince alive. More than one cast glances of dark resentment at Boleso’s victim-and-slayer, and Ingrey resolved to keep them from both drink and his prisoner until he could turn the whole lot and their dead leader over to someone, anyone, else. Ingrey had dispatched a Temple courier last night to Sealmaster Hetwar with the cortege’s projected itinerary. If Hetwar left it to his discretion, Ingrey decided, Boleso was going to be galloped to his burial in record time.