“I’ve failed twice. I failed the king and I failed the princess. I won’t leave her to the lusts of those animals.”
“Your duty is to the king. Arthur is now king.”
“And Arthur would personally track the bastards down and cut their balls off to choke them with before hanging what was left from the trees to rot.”
“His choices aren’t yours to make. You took an oath.”
“And I failed, as did all of you.”
The others murmured their agreement, shame clear upon their faces.
“By rights we should all fall on our own swords for our failure. Perhaps when this is done I will, but not while there’s any hope I can save her from….I’ll follow them. I’ll find them. If they’ve hurt the princess I’ll kill them all.”
“Whatever they’ve done,” said one, “kill them all.”
“Aye,” agreed the others, “kill them all.”
“And how will you find them?” Adelold asked.
Alnoth pointed to the edge of the clearing. The master of the hunt was emerging from the trees with two pages of the kennels, each holding several leashed hounds.
When Alnoth explained his intentions to the master of the hunt, Hugh of King’s Wold, Hugh objected, “I’m no soldier. I can’t fight Fik warriors.”
“No one is asking you to. Just track them. I’ll do the fighting.”
Hugh looked at the handful of Yeomen, then searched the ground. “Three Fiks remain. They have several female slaves…”
“The princess.”
“…among them the princess. The women will slow them down. You outnumber them two to one. They should be dead by nightfall.”
“The others won’t be coming.”
“What?”
“I go alone. The others return to protect the prince.”
“But there’s three of them.”
Alnoth looked steadily at Hugh, then indicated the fallen Fiks beside the Yeoman. “Three to one. The odds are about right then.”
“You’re mad.”
“Damn right I’m mad,” Alnoth roared, and Hugh stepped back. But Alnoth realised he could not bully the man into tracking dangerous men. He had to try persuasion. “If I die killing them, you’ll have to accompany the princess back, but this is the King’s Forest. You won’t have to fight any bandits.”
Hugh looked to Adelold. “Can’t you go with him?”
Adelold shook his head, angry at being asked. Hugh looked to each of the remaining Yeomen in turn, but each, murmuring an apology, shook his head.
Alnoth tried to appeal to the self-interest of the hunt master, “Once the Fiks are dead, you can return in triumph as the princess’s savior. If I die, you’ll be her sole saviour. If I live I’ll make sure your importance to her rescue is understood at court. Prince Arthur will be grateful and more generous than you can imagine.”
“I’ll go,” one of the pages said, stepping forward.
“You’ll do what you’re told,” Hugh snapped at the boy, then turned to Alnoth, “you can take yourself off on a stupid suicide mission if you like, but I won’t risk my life, or my son’s.”
Alnoth looked the boy up and down. He was hardly into his teens, and yet…Alnoth himself had set out from home seeking adventure at a similar age. He had survived. He had won renown on battlefields beside the young prince Arthur. He had fought so well that eventually he had been granted a place in the elite company of the Yeomen of the Crown. This was a good age for a boy to show the world the man he wanted to become.
“The boy will go,” he said, his hand dropping to the haft of his war-hammer, and his voice and eyes carried such a threat that Hugh did not dare contradict him.
Postscript: Strange Creature: Thedra
In the Crypt of Kings, within the Pyramid of Apotheosis, in the tomb of a murdered king, all was silent, all was dark. The lid of the sarcophagus of William VII had been torn away and shattered by the raging of spirits. For three days and nights the spirits had raged, though down here night and day were as one. But now the spirit wind was gone. The strange creature, having arranged the pieces of the lid into a stairway, had climbed up to the open sarcophagus and, in the light of its flickering lamp, worked on the corpse of the long dead king.
When it had finished it had put out its lamp, and nestled against the corpse like a strange pet. And so it slept, exhausted by its work.
But the darkness soon recoiled at the touch of a sickly yellow light, and the silence was replaced by a wheezing sound. The strange creature woke to the sound of its own voice, twisted to the ends of another.
“Complete your task,” the voice commanded.
The creature took the amulet from about its own neck and placed it on the king. The yellow jewel in the amulet glowed, and viscous shadows of the dead oozed like dark pus across the ceiling of the cell. The corpse of the king stirred, and its eyelids opened. As the sickly yellow light in the amulet faded, leaving a gem blacker than darkest night, within the empty eye sockets of the king’s corpse, red light began to glow.
Horn of the River God: Book I of The Song of Agmar Page 56
