Leofwine nodded. “I believe so. What puzzles me is the Niflsekt’s involvement. The witch told Bren the Niflsekt tortured her. I think he was looking for information about Isarvalos’s intentions. I don’t think he knew about the pact, or how his spell would aid Isarvalos’s plans.”
“He took one of her eyes,” Othin said. “I’d call that a statement.”
“She called him Destroyer of the Math Gate,” Bren said. “That means he is actually the one who did that in the First Gate War, and very nearly the Second.”
Othin took a bite of bread, recalling his dream of Millie and the spinning wheel. If you step into his path, he will crush you. “If it is the same entity, I can tell you he fears the Hooded One’s magic. Maybe he’s worried Isarvalos will stir up the wrong sort of trouble and destroy his plans, whatever those are.”
“Like what?” Helasin said. “The demons are killing witches and warlocks who serve the Hooded One. Wouldn’t the Niflsekt be happy to let them do it?”
Bren said, “I think the Niflsekt sought the witch out because he didn’t know why the demons were here. She told him about Magnfred’s Pact. It’s obviously a threat to him.”
Leofwine nodded. “Millie used the Hooded One’s magic to cast down the Niflsekt in the war. He would want to know that the Blackthorn Guild was powerful enough to have nearly destroyed Isarvalos. I agree with Captain Helasin. The Niflsekt has little reason to get involved with the demons.”
Helasin said, “For now, let’s assume we’re on our own.” She addressed Othin and Heige. “I received news from Magreda that the demon army we came up here to delay is already besieging Merhafr. They have the whole area surrounded, every rat hole, crack, road, gate and path. They must have waited for us to leave and then come in behind us.”
Leofwine grabbed a stick and poked at the fire. “From what we can tell, the force we were sent up here to waylay went east. The demons must have had another force already on the way that was shapeshifted, so we didn’t see them.”
Helasin rubbed her forehead. “The demons obviously set this up to cloak their true numbers. Which reminds me.” She leaned forward and leveled a sidelong look at Magreda. “You, my dear, have yet to explain on whose orders you rode up here and told us this. I’ve not received a bird’s chirrup about it from Command.”
Magreda looked at the ground. She didn’t have the nerve to look at Othin, no doubt knowing the hard, expectant expression she would see on his face. She sat there, her mind working like a spider spinning a web.
“I had no orders,” she said finally. “High Constable Lisefin put me out of the Rangers’ Square. I had no place to go.” She looked up. “When I got here and realized you hadn’t received word from Merhafr, I assumed the rangers’ ravens and riders were targeted to isolate us.”
Othin leaned back casually on one elbow. “And yet you got through. I should like to know how you did that, with Isarvalos’s demons harrying the lands between here and Merhafr.”
Everyone waited for Magreda’s response with varying expressions of interest and curiosity.
“I don’t know.” Her tone was both firm and defensive at the same time. “I just rode. I hid. I didn’t bring attention to myself.” She tossed her head. “Maybe I got lucky.”
For several moments, no one said anything. Then Heige leaned back, rubbed his nose and said, “What are your orders, Captain Helasin?”
Helasin set down her cup. “At dawn, we’ll release the raven to Merhafr. With any luck,” she shot a dry glance in Magreda’s direction, “Ingifrith’s plan will work and the birds will be protected.”
Magreda got up and left the tent.
“Until then,” Helasin continued, ignoring her, “we wait. You two,” she said to Othin and Heige, “get cleaned up and get some rest. And you,” she added to Othin in a stern, motherly tone as she gestured to his shoulder, which had bloodied his tunic. “Do get that seen to.”
~*~
Othin found Magreda by the raven’s cage, running her fingers over the branches. “A word?” he said.
Saying nothing, she gazed longingly at the bird, resting in its makeshift nest.
“Magreda,” Othin pressed. “You get shit marks for honesty. You didn’t tell me about your background, and when I learned of it, I was forced to decide whether to expose you or hope that no one ever found out. Unfortunately, you made an enemy. Now Diderik is angry, and I promise you, it’s me he’s blaming. He’ll assume I hid this from him to get you into the order. I could lose my rank for good. So perhaps you can clean the horseshit off your tale and tell me the truth.”
“I was trying to protect you,” she said.
“Well, that hasn’t gone well, has it?”
Alarm shot over her face. “You don’t understand. One does not leave the Leopard Clan. The women are untouched by men and must remain so to work their art. I violated those vows with the son of a shaman. He got me with child, and I was forced to give it to the swamp. After that, I couldn’t stay. My mother told me I would be hunted. I left anyway.”
“Were you hunted?”
“Without a doubt. But they wouldn’t have wasted their time coming up here. Leopard women don’t have to prowl in their bodies; the old ones use sorcery to find and kill their marks. They hunt like cats, seeing in the dark, looking for patterns, imprints, sounds no one else hears. They remain virgin to contain their power so they don’t confuse the energies of lovers with those of their targets. They know each other’s energy and can draw on the clan like a pack.”
“So by breaking ranks you gave up your power.”
She shook her head. “Not exactly. I never finished my training, so what I know is not as dependent on the clan. But they could still find me, even after my transgression, because they knew the shaman’s son. My mother told me that losing my child would hide me long enough to go to ground. Then she told me about the Crow’s Nest in Merhafr. The mistress there, she has great power. She hid me for a time, and then advised me to fade beneath the seed of men. So I took work in a cathouse and mingled my life force with that of men so the Leopards wouldn’t see me.”
“So all we were to you was a shield?”
She swung around, her dark eyes blazing. “I was a prostitute. Since when does a man care why he’s getting fucked in a cathouse?”
I did, Othin thought. “How did you get out of Merhafr without getting caught?”
As he studied her face, her expression wavered and shifted with the night. A chill gripped his spine as the image of a black panther fled over her countenance. She tilted her head like a child, and the cat vanished.
He cleared his throat to shake the creep from his bones. A shapeshifter. “Understood. So why did you leave the Pink Rose? Aren’t you now in danger?”
She nodded. “Possibly. I took the chance, hoping that my time there was enough to throw the Leopards off my scent. I told no one about my past. If what I am got out, the Leopards would get wind of it. They are ruthless, Othin. They would kill every man who knew me just to clear the fog, to bring me into their sights.” She hung her head, her hair sliding down and catching the light of a nearby torch. “I didn’t come up here to deliver news. I came to find you. I have no place else to turn.”
“What about the Crow’s Nest? Would’ve been a lot less trouble, and safer too.” As he watched her standing there like a courtyard statue, he had another thought, a cruel thought he should have left alone. But prudence fell to grief and fatigue, and so he said, “Are you thinking to maintain your anonymity in my bed?”
She lifted her chin, her eyes shining with tears. “No, you smart assed fuck,” she said, her voice as cold as Hel’s gates. “I am in love with you.”
Shifting with a breath, she turned and fled into the night, leaving the Captain of the North Branch blinking stupidly at the wounded raven sleeping in the branches of its cage.
The Dark Elf
When the blush of predawn touched the sky, the rangers released their black-winged messenger to the south bearing
a request for orders and a claim that the birds were now being protected. Left alone, the raven would get to Merhafr and back in a matter of hours. As the raven flew off, everyone in camp watched with hope in their eyes, praying to the gods it would return.
When Prederi ran into camp, alone, pale as a sheet and shouting for Ingifrith, Leofwine knew no gods were on their side.
His little sister had vanished into the morning mists like a wraith. She had kissed Prederi on the cheek, told him she had to go and then rode off on Trisker, which she had brought on some pretense or another. Prederi, left dozing under a dryad’s song, had awoken thinking it was a dream, until he came into camp to find Trisker, Ingifrith and all her belongings gone.
Helasin had sent out twenty-five rangers to track her down. The captain believed they would find her before the raven returned. Fanned out in a search pattern, far apart but within each other’s sight, the rangers rode, paused to study signs, and continued on, their moods grim. As many of them knew, Leofwine’s sister wasn’t just any fugitive.
Leofwine stood atop a brushy knoll, facing north. Arvakr grazed by his side. A cool, early morning breeze carrying the scent of the sea stirred the leaves on the trees and the wisps of his hair twining from the edge of his hood. He clutched a wound dripping blood in one hand and hagalaz in the other. The rune burned dark against his palm. Witch magic, banishment, the rise and rule of buried patterns, stripping veils and the catastrophe of transformation. Wherever Ingifrith had gone, she meant business. If the gods were on anyone’s side, it was hers.
Prederi had found Trisker’s tracks leading to the hills. The demons had not returned, but no one was assuming they wouldn’t. Very late, just before the dawn, two Blackthorn witches had joined the camp, one riding a pony and the other a mule, both animals laden with belongings. Word was getting around in the guild that the demons sought the witches’ lives. The women had offered their knowledge in return for protection, an agreement Helasin accepted without hesitation.
Leofwine turned as Bren and Prederi rode up to his side, their cheeks flushed. “Nothing,” Prederi said. “There are tracks all over the place. I can’t find Trisker among them. She must have gone another way. We should’ve have caught up to her by now.”
“I don’t think we can assume that,” Bren said.
“Trisker is no match for our horses. And Inga can’t vanish like a fucking demon.”
“She can do other things,” Leofwine said, but there was little point in argument; no truths or comforts would appease Prederi. Earlier, at camp, Othin had threatened to put the blond ranger on the ground if he didn’t calm down. Once he finally did, he went dark, saying nothing, a storm cloud around him.
It had become clear to everyone that, grief, bindweed and whisky aside, Prederi had fallen in love.
Seasoned dark with matters of love and loss, Leofwine had worried that the devastating loss of Perderi’s family might predispose the ranger to falling for Ingifrith for the wrong reasons. But Leofwine’s anxiousness calmed two nights ago, when he saw the phooka in the shape of a shadowy black horse sitting next to the ranger as he slept, its head bent over him, red eyes calm as faintly glowing coals. Not even Ingifrith would have the ability to ask a phooka to watch over someone it didn’t wish to. And a phooka would know Prederi’s heart for true.
“This is my fault,” Bren lamented, fingering his reins. “I told her something my brother had once said to me, that those who were cast from the world after being struck by darkness must walk in two worlds. I fear it influenced her.”
“She’s been walking between the worlds for most of her life,” Leofwine informed him.
“Wounded,” Bren added.
“You did nothing that hadn’t already been set in motion. Healing those wounds creates a tear in the Veil itself. I know; I’ve done it. Whatever she means to do, it is beyond us now.”
Bren said nothing.
“Where could she have gone?” Prederi asked, gazing afar at the distant foothills.
“She had intended to go to Faersc,” Leofwine said. “To seek training and protection. She was told by her mighty demon friend to do so. But that was before the Niflsekt took over. I can only guess she’s headed for Wyrvith Forest.”
“Alone? Why?”
“Perhaps her Otherworld friends are guiding her,” Bren said.
Leofwine wrestled with remorse. “Inga once told me she wanted to be a warden. I all but mocked her. She probably assumed I would try to stop her. And I might have, even before finding out the Niflsekt took Faersc. It’s too dangerous.”
“I’d have gone with her,” Prederi declared.
“You answer to Helasin,” Bren said.
Leofwine took a deep breath. “You know these lands, and your mounts are swift. We’ll find her.” He slipped the hagalaz rune into the pouch in his pocket, pulled out a rag, wrapped it around his bloody hand and mounted Arvakr.
Prederi clicked his horse down the knoll and rode northeast toward the rising hills. Bren and Leofwine followed him.
“Can you not use your arts to find her?” Bren said.
“Do you think I haven’t tried? She has dark elves and a phooka hiding her.” Privately, Leofwine knew he could cast the spell he had used to keep track of Grimar many suns ago, and again to find Othin during the war. But it was an unwholesome spell and would require a great exchange. There was also a risk that it could rebound on him, if Ingifrith’s powerful friends had half a mind.
Ahead, Prederi rode up the side of a hill covered in young aspen trees. At the top, he shielded his eyes.
Leofwine’s heart thumped uneasily in his breast. He had to assume Moust was also hunting Ingifrith. The adept most likely believed she had been the one to summon Fenrisúlfr to destroy Pawel and the Master of Curses. Ingifrith’s death would be Moust’s mission now, and to that end he was capable of invoking not only a tracking spell but something much worse, like a soulcleaver.
Prederi disappeared. The rising sun shimmered in the aspen leaves and cast deep shadows in the hollows. The shade wavered behind stones, blending. Something made a rumbling sound.
“Leofwine...” Bren started to say.
The ranger always did have the most uncanny sense for things. Before Leofwine fully registered what was happening, they were surrounded. Demons rose up from the earth, first shimmering and insubstantial, and then as solid as rocks, gray and black, heavily muscled, baring teeth and claws.
“Prederi!” Bren shouted. He drew his sword and pressed his horse into a strained canter, avoiding the swing of an axe. The shouts of other rangers sounded in the distance. The shrill cries of horses and clanging metal filled the air.
Leofwine wheeled Arvakr around. The demons closed in on him, but they would only get so far. The phooka protected Arvakr, and the demons would sense it.
Unfortunately, Arvakr’s rider was another thing. One of the demons swung a long, curved blade; Leofwine twisted out of the way to avoid losing an arm. Another beast raised a bow, arrow nocked. The shaft was as thick as a man’s finger and tipped with a black, shining head, three sides thinning to a wicked point.
Leofwine froze. If he moved, the demon would sink the arrow into his chest. The same thing would happen if he didn’t. He breathed a distraction spell with as many points of interest as there were leaves on the trees.
One of the demons barked something at the archer. It grunted in return, fighting the spell.
“Leofwine!” Bren shouted. The demon archer turned and loosed the arrow. Leofwine twisted around, ducking and guiding Arvakr back. The arrow flew wild, striking a rock with a snap and a clatter.
Then the battle turned. Fear bled into the demons’ eyes as the space filled with glimmering forms, tall warriors with fair skin, hair of black, white and gray, supple armor of ebony and forest green, and shining weapons. Elves. They materialized from the landscape, and with a shattering cry, attacked. Eyes shining red, the demons screamed and wielded their might as the battle ensued.
Bren, his blue e
yes wild, turned around, his horse prancing about. “Come on!”
Leofwine went after him, threading through the fray, a writhing sea of flashing blades, shields, axes, spears and mail. Demons fell by the dozens, though a few elves did also, rolling over, twitching in pools of blood.
“Where’s Prederi?” Leofwine shouted over the noise.
“I don’t know!”
As they rode up the hill, something crashed through the trees, splintering the trunks and knocking the shimmering boughs to the ground. Tangled in the branches lay a demon, charred and smoking like a coal.
“What did that?” Bren said.
Leofwine shook his head, foreboding gathering in the pit of his belly like a stone. The two men reached the top of the rise, slowing their mounts and keeping between the thicker trees. Below lay a field of flowering brush and saplings crowded by the shadows of taller trees. A bog, glimmering through cattails and irises, edged the wood. The greenery was stained by the bodies of demons and elves.
Prederi stood, still as dusk, a long, curved knife at his throat. Holding the ranger’s long hair in a cruel grip with the other hand, an elf with dark skin gazed up beneath a hooded brow, his black hair loose and shimmering like water.
The rangers dismounted. “What is this fresh shit?” Bren muttered. The unease in Leofwine’s gut swirled like sickness as he stepped down the bank, Arvakr thumping beside him. A dark elf; the others were light. Was he in command? Unlikely, as light and dark elves hated each other. His armor was black as coal, scaled and ridged like the hide of a dragon, and his boots and belt were strapped with silver. He wore a cloak the color of milk. A pendant hung at his throat, a wicked scythe that could have been a tooth or a claw. His eyes, dark as a crow’s, held no light or mercy.
“No friend of ours,” Leofwine returned quietly.
“Ah,” the dark elf said in a singsong voice. “Bren of Ottersun, I believe you are called.” His gaze rested on the red-haired ranger, seeing through. “A seer with great talent, inexperienced, yet skilled nonetheless.” He turned his attention to Leofwine. “And you must be our renegade wolf, a beast without a master, a sorcerer without his familiar. Your reputation precedes you, Master Klemet.”
The Fylking: Outpost and The Wolf Lords Page 71
