Black River (The Hounds of the North Book 2)

by Peter Fugazzotto

"If this is so dangerous," said Vincius, "shouldn't we have used boats to cross the river?"

  "Then we would have had to leave the horses."

  "There is no big barge to cross the river near Cullan."

  "Plans for one, but we were never meant to cross the river. Only defend one side of it," said Pullo. "This is how we must do it now."

  Vincius whispered curses into the hood of his cloak.

  Immediately, Spear knew there would be trouble.

  "Let's do this then," shouted Pullo with a raised fist.

  "Don't ride close," warned Spear. "Give yourself plenty of space between riders. You want to see the stones."

  He waited for some kind of reply but the men of the legion looked at him as if he were not there, as if they would never trust to the warning of a Northman, and pushed forward, a blind, unthinking pack.

  Pullo kicked his horse forward. Behind him other horses of the party surged. Their sharp hooves tore at the bank, already mucking the water.

  Spear heard a string of curses raise above the roar of the river.

  The grizzled sergeant from Xichil held too tight a rein on his horse and the beast entered the river only to wheel about and charge back up the bank and nearly toss the rider. The sergeant swatted at his horse's flanks with the reins and turned his steed back into the river. The horse whinnied in protest as the cold water came up as high as its chest. There was barely enough room for two horses abreast on the bridge and Pullo danced his horse precariously close to the edge. Spear could see the terror in the horse's eyes, and the lack of confidence in the rider. The combination of the two could only mean that they would be taken by the river.

  So rather than being the last rider, the one to watch over Vincius who was the worst on horseback, Spear pulsed with his legs and commanded his horse forward. If he did not calm Pullo and his horse, this journey across the Black River would be over before it even began.

  The water was ice up his feet and legs. The surge of the river was higher than he had anticipated, having swelled with the relentless rains. It was hard, near impossible, to make out the white stones that formed that broken and gapped bridge that crossed the river. But he could see at least the vague shape of the stone bridge through the murky water. But where the gaps were that his horse should not step in, he was not sure.

  He pushed past the line of Dhurman misfits that had stubbornly followed their sergeant into the waters.

  Spear and his horse were moving blindly across the stone bridge and were guided only by luck. Within moments, he came alongside Pullo whose horse had frozen near the middle of the river. Spear grabbed the reins of Pullo's horse and led him forward. For a moment, he felt his horse lift off the stone bridge, carried by the current, but then his horse's hooves found purchase and they were lurching forward and across the stones.

  Moments later, they were racing up the bank on the far shore.

  Heads stared at Spear.

  On the bank, a dozen heads, eyes long plucked out by ravens, perched on stakes. Spear remembered these clansmen. He had led the ambush. He had ordered Cruhund with his axe. His hand touched his chest where the bag of coins once sat heavy.

  Someone had turned the heads, the ones that were supposed to send a message to the North. Now the heads of the fallen warriors faced south, a warning for those who crossed the Black River.

  He reined his horse back to help the others, but the animal resisted. Justio the deserter was near across the river, his hand steady at the reins, body upright despite the push of the river. His horse seemed more confident. In fact, the line of men that followed Pullo made strong headway. Seeing their sergeant and his horse successfully cross gave them an unfounded calm in the face of the deadly river but Spear accepted it nonetheless.

  Vincius, on the other hand, still on the bank, was wildly kicking at his horse, snapping the reins. When it could take no more, the horse leapt through the air and into the water. It landed awkwardly and the man on top dug his fingers into the horse's mane to keep his seat.

  Spear's horse reared, refusing to return to the wild waters of the river.

  Then the worst imaginable thing happened.

  The water surged as if all the rains from the sky had been pent up and then suddenly released. A wave of water rolled from up river and in an instant the remaining horses and riders were swept off the stone bridge and into the mighty swirling currents.

  "Go, horse, get in the water." Spear's horse reared again, this time unseating Spear and sending him tumbling to the muddy ground.

  Vincius slipped from his own horse, his head disappearing for a moment before rising again, arms wheeling, screams muffled, half swallowed.

  Spear rose to hands and knees and then ran stumbling along the bank, tripping through the brush, desperate to track the drowning man down the river.

  Vincius gave one last shout and sunk beneath the surface. All was lost. Spear fell to his knees.

  Then from the far side of the river, the riders came.

  Shield, Harad and Patch raced down the slope and their horses, as if one with their thoughts, sprung from the bank, hit the waters and angled towards the drowning man. Shield was there first in the spot where Vincius was last seen.

  The leader of the Hounds plunged his arm deep in the waters, his horse panting wildly, its back legs kicking, fighting the current, and then he pulled the young Xichil from the icy river, dragged him across the back of his horse and, with the aid of the other two riders, made for the shore.

  A handful of the party and their horses were not so lucky. They were swept down the river, into the stones, beneath the surface, limbs occasionally rising to the surface before vanishing forever.

  Spear, out of breath, fell to where the men and their horses pulled out of the frigid river. His breath streamed white before him, and he wanted to say something, wanted Shield to say something. But Spear's lips were frozen, his fingers numb, and there was nothing he could do but stare at the riders above him, wondering whether he should turn back now, whether they should turn back before they all would die.

  NO RETURN

  A WALL OF rain crept across the wide valley of heather.

  "It will be here soon," said Gyrn.

  Birgid nodded. Two days they had been walking, away from the battle with the Dhurman soldiers and towards the tower. Fennewyn had relented, letting her return with her bodyguard.

  She stumbled, but Gyrn caught her elbow. His hand was soft and warm, the flesh cupping naturally to hers.

  "I am tired of this walking."

  "A few days yet to the tower." He stared at the wall of rain, the opaque sheet that swallowed the edges of the world. "We should find some place to shelter for the night."

  "Please not another night on the cold wet ground."

  "Could you create something?" he asked.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Your words? Could you sing us a shelter?"

  She stared at the heather, the soggy earth beneath her cold feet, a distant rise of granite. "There is nothing here. Not for that. And I don't even know if that is something that I could do."

  "But I saw you start a fire with your words."

  "Easier to use flint and steel. I can't imagine how much forming a shelter would take out of me. I am tired. The fight was almost too much for me. I need to rest."

  The Painted Man pulled his cloak tight against a wind foretelling the storm. "He should have given us a horse."

  "He needs all the horses for his army."

  "You deserve a horse for all that you have done for him."

  "I deserve to walk and to suffer."

  "No, you don't."

  They kept north in the direction of the tower. The rains caught them as they reached low hills, dotted with sickly trees. Birgid had thought that Gyrn might be able to make a shelter for them with branches and trunks, but the trees were rotten. They crumbled into his hands. The wood had become spongy and smelled like long rotted fruit.

  Black beetles stared out of small holes in
the bark. As the rain came down harder, the drops tore grooves into the bark.

  "I want to rest," said Birgid.

  "Not here," he said. "It would be no good here. We would get no rest."

  "I just want to lay down. I am tired."

  "We cannot stop here."

  She trailed behind him. With each step, his pale calfs flashed beneath the edge of his cloak. He had to be about the same age that Fionn was, would have been. Birgid wondered if Gyrn's mother worried about him. Did she worry where her son was? Whether he was safe?

  Then they were at the foot of a small rise. At the top, a willow fence stood against the darkening sky. Beyond the fence, the thatched roofs of roundhouses and a few twists of smoke offered warmth and shelter.

  Birgid followed her guide up the hillside, hands and feet on the steep steps cut into the turf. These clans people had sited their village to defend it. Had Fennewyn's army already swept through? Would Birgid only find death?

  The steps led to a narrow landing of cobbled stones. A small wooden ladder rose from the landing to an opening in the willow wall.

  A warrior wrapped in furs rose from a small bench beneath the overhang of a thatched shelter. Gyrn stopped well short of the reach of the bearded man's spear.

  The warrior scanned the land behind the two travelers. "Alone? In all this?"

  "We head north," said Gyrn.

  "There is nothing north," the man responded.

  "It is where we go."

  The bearded man chewed his lip and then spoke to Birgid. "You go willingly?"

  "Shelter for the night is what we seek."

  The villager whistled. Another man in furs came. The two spoke in low voices, and then the first man moved his spear aside and Birgid and Gyrn followed the other into the village on the hill.

  They were quickly led into a roundhouse. Men rose suddenly pulling spears and cudgels from the walls, but they were settled with a flapping of hands. Women sat with children on their laps. A large pot of stew simmered and steamed in the center of the large room. Thick rugs swung in place over the door and warmth touched Birgid, a whisper of memory before the cold enveloped her again.

  The man waved several children away from the fire pit and made Birgid and Gyrn sit there. Bowls of stew were quickly put into their hands. There was little meat, but the broth was strong and sated Birgid's churning belly.

  The eyes of the children were on Birgid. They watched how she tilted the bowl to her lips. They stared at her impossibly dark eyes. They whispered about her long fingers. They giggled into their fists.

  One of the old men, thick in beard and thick around the waist, began to sing. His voice was low at first, barely discernible from the heavy drum of rain against the thatch. But then it rose, deep and sonorous, and she could see the land, wide and green. The sun lit the earth and the warmth touched her skin. Women with hitched skirts laughed among the blackberry brambles by a trilling creek. Young boys ran with their goats among the grasses and stones. Men, eyes wrinkled with smiles, put axes to tree trunks, the wood chips sprinkling their beards.

  When Birgid woke, it was to the warmth of Gyrn. He lay next to her in a pile of furs. Her cheek nestled against his back. Beyond them, the fire was low and the cold whispered through a seam in the walls.

  When she woke again, he was gone and the ice had returned to her bones. The children were wrestling in a mound of blankets and furs. An old woman crooned by the stew pot plopping in chunks of thick pale roots.

  The heavy rugs had been pulled back from the door. Drops of rain clung to the wall of willows, jeweled with the bright morning light. The earth steamed.

  Birgid stepped outside. The cold sun touched her face. Beyond the willow wall, the land stretched green as far as she could see. She wondered if she looked hard enough if she could see beyond the Whale Road to the Western Seas.

  She found Gyrn standing near two men shaping a bow. He held a sleeping baby in his arms.

  "Where are we?" she asked.

  He shrugged, his eyes dropping to the soft cheeks of the child.

  "This place."

  "Almost like home," he said.

  Her breath caught. She stared at the babe. Fionn. Once she cradled him in her arms. She could smell him, his fresh skin, his milky cooing. Heat had been born from their closeness.

  A sudden chill clenched her chest. The chill grew deeper, shards of ice into her heart.

  She turned north. There the sky remained dark, and land cast in perpetual shadow. She could not see the tower, old, frigid, but it waited for her.

  "There is no home any more," she said. "Nowhere to return."

  BEYOND THE FIRES

  AS NIGHT FELL and they sheltered in an abandoned homestead, Vincius finally stopped shivering. He fed stick after stick into the hearth. The fire grew and slowly the warmth returned to his body

  Pullo and Justio huddled by him near the fire, while the Northerners crouched wrapped in their fur cloaks near the burnt remains of the far wall.

  Though the rain had stopped, the air had gotten colder.

  The rest of the party camped outside, white tents pitched on an overgrown field. Only a few men were visible hunched in front of the campfires that smoldered in the mists. The soldiers of the fortress had been silent for most of the day, the loss of their fellows in the river weighing heavily on them. With their numbers already diminished, Vincius worried that they had lost the edge against any encounter with riders from the clans. He hoped the pathway to the warlock would be straightforward.

  "I miss the lovely isle of Xichil," said Pullo. He ran thick nails through the grizzle of his cheeks. "Never thought I'd end up here."

  "Obviously you fucked up along time ago like the rest of us," said Justio. "No one gets sent to the frontier unless you're a screw up. No heroes biding their time in this cold hell."

  "What about you, Vincius? Do you miss old Xichil?"

  The Apprentice Chronicler recalled the incessant taunting by the other children, the heat of the fire and the screams of his parents, the shadows and must of the orphanage, the garlicky breath of Chronicler Cartaga unsuccessfully masking the sour stench of wine. There was nothing that he missed about Xichil. But there was nothing better here in the North.

  "Tell me about the soldiers risen from the dead."

  Justio turned away in disgust. "Do we have to talk about this? I don't want to talk about it. I don't even fucking want to be here."

  "What was the warlock like?"

  "He had a witch with him. A beautiful woman, woad painted cheeks, haughty really, her voice unfurling with his in the wind, a beauty but for those eyes, dark, dark eyes as if looking from death."

  Shield suddenly stood over them. "What are you talking about?" His breath steamed about his head.

  "The warlock wasn't alone," said Pullo. "Justio was just telling us."

  "Who was she? What was her name?" asked Shield.

  Justio shrugged. "Her name? There weren't any long and formal introductions. They came at us out of nowhere, a damned army from hell. She's a witch, a cursed Northerner, yes, just like you, and she was trying to kill us."

  "Why do you ask?" said Vincius. "Do you know her?"

  "Did I see her? How would I know her?" The clansman stared at the Chronicler, eyes and mouth hard, and then he left the light of the fire, stepped over the burnt remains of the wall and vanished into the mists and smoke of the campfires.

  Vincius waited a moment and then followed him. Shield knew something about the witch and the Apprentice Chronicler wanted to know what it was. Perhaps Shield would be able to provide Vincius with the key bit of information that would allow them to ensnare the witch. But how to capture the words this time? None of the methods worked. They never gave up their secrets like his teachers at the Grand Collegium had said they would. Instead, they took their words to the grave with them. He needed to extract words of power from them, capture those words accurately and bring them back to Vas Dhurma. That would be his glory. That would give him the p
lace in Dhurman society that he deserved and erase all that had been thrust upon him in Xichil, erase that part of his family that he wanted lost forever.

  The young man from Xichil wandered into the camp of the soldiers. A few men sat in the mists, warming small pots and meats over smoldering fires. Most of the soldiers, however, huddled beneath the shelter of their tents, the white cloth already splattered with mud and grime.

  They were a misfit crew, not the pride of Empire. There were a few more men of Xichil, whiskered Yberians, small swarthy men of Spyrda, and even a few Hophts already assimilated into the ranks of the legion, though he could tell that they loathed the choice they made. The men rolled bone dice, passed bottles of wine, and simmered in the smoke of forest weed.

  They looked at him with disinterested eyes. He was the reason for their night in the cold and they resented it, but their resentment was much deeper, deeper even than towards Pullo or the fort. Their hatred bent towards the society that had swallowed them up with false promises only to abandon them at the edge of the world, months away from their families, their peoples, and their lives. Here in this muddy field, they bided their time, each wondering whether they would ever be able to return to feel the soil of their birthplace beneath their feet. By the looks on their faces, Vincius knew that most of them were resigned to the fact that they would never return and that their spirits would be doomed to wander lands far from those of their ancestors.

  He walked among those sagging tents and smoky fires looking for the big Northman, the one who knew the wielders of dark magic. How could he have disappeared unless he walked off far from the warmth and the safety of the encampment?

  Vincius stared past the circles of fire to where the land was a horizon of black. What secrets lay beyond the sight of Empire?

  Shouts broke his thoughts. "He's run." "Swords to me."

  Vincius followed the cries back to the burnt out farmhouse.

  "Justio, the little coward, has ran," said Pullo with spitting breath. "Said he had to piss. Didn't come back and one of the perimeter guards saw a figure running."