The River King's Road

by Merciel, Liane

  Behind him was the creeping red fog. Ahead, the bowstrings sang. And that was no choice. No choice at all.

  He climbed onto his nameless horse, sliding low to the left like a Jenje trick-rider and pulling Ellyria’s reins so that the gray stayed close on that side. He tried to keep from crushing Wistan between himself and the horse, but that wasn’t easy and he had other concerns. Brys listened for the bowstrings, straining his ears, and when he heard three of them snap in quick succession, he kicked his bay gelding to go.

  The horses came down the slope with all the speed they could muster, dodging or trampling the wounded and dead. An arrow sheared along Brys’ jaw, sketching a line of hot pain and stinging his ear with its fletchings. He felt Ellyria stumble as another arrow buried itself in the gray, and dropped the reins lest the mare pull down his own horse if she fell.

  At the gate the archers scattered. They had no pikes to stop him, and they had already seen that Brys was willing to trample men to make good his escape. The rider with the morningstar drew back to meet him, but Brys had no intention of getting dragged into a fight here. The gate was low, made to corral wandering sheep, not keep armed men out—or in. He thought he could clear it. Hoped he could, anyway. He shifted his weight back to center, flattened himself against the bay gelding’s back, and sent a silent prayer to Celestia to guard his unworthy soul.

  Then his horse bunched its muscles and leaped, and there was no more time to pray.

  The landing rattled the teeth in his skull. He had to use both arms to keep himself from slamming into the saddle and crushing Wistan; the baby wailed in panic. Brys tasted blood and realized he must have bitten his cheek. He heard a thundering crack of bone or wood behind him and the scream of an injured horse, but he kept his eyes on the road ahead.

  Another arrow punched into the saddle an inch from Brys’ thigh. And then he was to the tree line, and then he was screened by the forest, and then he was safe.

  Panting for breath, Brys unsheathed his sword and listened for signs of pursuit. Only when minutes had passed, and he was satisfied that no one was chasing, did he climb down from the gelding’s saddle to assess the damage. The horse was breathing hard but unwounded save for a long, shallow scratch on its left shoulder.

  “At this rate, I might have to name you,” he said to the horse.

  The gelding flicked its ears, eyeing him.

  Brys snorted, patted the horse’s neck with rough affection, and then checked over his saddlebags. He had a half-full waterskin and enough food for a fortnight. Autumn was a good season for foraging, so he should be able to stretch that out longer. A few knives, a dicing cup, a traveling solaros’ prayerbook—all things that he could use to get money, or sell if he had to. Spare clothes, and a cloak if the weather turned cold. And, most importantly, his weapons.

  Not bad. He’d survived worse with less.

  A small voice in the back of his mind asked if that was altogether true. His liege lord was dead, a Thornlord was likely responsible for the killing, and he was caught without friends in enemy territory. Not much cause for cheer in any of that.

  Brys pushed his doubts away. He had survived worse with less, and he would survive this too. But he had to believe it to make it true.

  He unfastened his cloak and shrugged off Wistan’s carrier. The child wasn’t hurt, as best he could tell, and had quieted down considerably. Brys had expected more crying, but Wistan was only making the little hiccuping sobs that he’d heard in the stables.

  Good. Another small blessing. He strapped the carrier back on again and started down the road, leading his gelding by the reins.

  A long while later, as the sun cast red shadows across the west sky, Brys permitted himself—for a short time, until dusk fell—the small bitter luxury of guilt. And grief. He’d had friends back there, as much as he’d ever had friends, and he’d done nothing to save them. There’d been nothing he could do, but that truth never went down easy no matter how many times he had to swallow it.

  Night descended. Brys kept walking. There was a long road ahead.

  2

  There had never been a lovelier day in the world, Odosse decided as she walked back to Willowfield. The autumn afternoon was crisp but pleasant. Sunlight lancing through the leaves of ash and maple turned the forest into a cathedral of gold and crimson; she felt grand as a queen beneath such glory. And soon, she promised herself, soon she would be beautiful as one too.

  Her fingers closed around the little bottle that the charm-crafter had sold her that morning. Its dark blue glass was warm to the touch, promising power that she could only imagine. Even the ingredients that the charm-crafter listed sounded like secrets: mulberry and musk, amber and myrrh. The Tears of the Empress, from faraway Ardashir, and a drop of red wine to arouse the blood.

  As she would arouse it, once she was beautiful.

  “And then I’ll marry a rich man,” she told the baby strapped to her back, “and you’ll have a new cradle, and a room of your own, and you’ll learn your letters and numbers and someday you’ll be a great man too.”

  Aubry burbled and Odosse laughed, taking her child’s coos for agreement.

  She had just reached the last waystone when she heard something large crashing through the brush. Wary, but not yet afraid, Odosse readied her iron-capped walking stick and moved to the center of the road, where she’d have more room to swing.

  Every child old enough to walk knew the dangers of the road. Wolves, bears, and great tawny hunting cats roamed Bayarn Wood, and sometimes hunger drove them to attack. Bandits terrorized the lonelier stretches of the River Kings’ Road, preying on travelers who strayed too far from the protection of the Wayfarer’s riders.

  And, of course, this close to the river there was always the risk of raiders. The rival kingdoms of Langmyr and Oakharn stared hard at each other across the Seivern River. There was no love lost on either side; there hadn’t been for a hundred years, since Uvarric’s Folly. Both lands traced their heritage back to the ruined glory of Rhaelyand, both worshipped under the Bright Lady’s pillared domes, and yet Langmyrne and Oakharne hated each other with the ferocity of estranged brothers. One could never be sure when a group from one side might cross over to visit bloody horror on the other. It was that way when Odosse’s grandmother was a girl, and she expected it would still be the same when Aubry’s children grew gray. People held their hatreds dearer than their loves.

  Today, however, she was not worried about Oakharne raiders. It was the wrong time of year: professional soldiers would be hard in training for the Swordsday matches, and farmers would be busy with the harvest. More importantly, it sounded like only one person was rustling through the leaves, and no raider in his right mind crossed the border alone.

  “Who’s there?” Odosse called, keeping her walking stick raised.

  The rustling stopped. A man’s voice answered, sounding tired and, she thought, a little angry. His accent marked him as a stranger; from where, she could not say. Not from the border lands. She knew all the local village dialects, and he had none of those. “I should ask you the same.”

  “I have a stick,” she said, “and I don’t have any money, so if you’re looking for a traveler to rob, you’d best look elsewhere.”

  “I’m not.” The rustling picked up again, becoming louder as the man came nearer. Before long he stepped out onto the road, shaking yellow leaves from his cloak.

  He was a big man, broad-shouldered, with a face that could not have been harder if it had been hewn from stone. His bright green eyes were sharp and pitiless as a hunting cat’s, and he moved with that great predator’s grace. An angry red line scarred his jaw; it looked like the wound was freshly inflicted. A pair of dead rabbits dangled from his belt, and long knives in well-worn sheaths hung on each of his hips.

  Another woman, meeting him in another place, might have thought this man handsome. But Odosse was alone on the River Kings’ Road with her baby on her back and nothing but a stick in her hands, and she felt on
ly fear.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “I don’t see how that’s your concern.”

  “I’d say it is, if you plan to get there.”

  She lowered her stick slowly, looking for a reason to avoid answering and finding none. He already had her on the open road; it was not as though she had to worry about an ambush ahead. “Willowfield,” she said, reluctantly.

  “That the little village about two leagues west?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that where you’re from?”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded, and for an instant it seemed that he looked through her, as if his thoughts had gone somewhere beyond their meeting in the wood. Then his eyes fixed back on her, unsettlingly bright, and she felt pinned like a mouse beneath a snake’s gaze. “You can’t go back there.”

  Odosse stiffened. Aubry, sensing her tension, made little plaintive noises and waved his fists in the air. Her hands tightened on the iron-capped stick and she brought it up defensively, though the man had not moved. “Why not?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead his eyes flicked to the baby carrier on her back, and, more slowly, back to her. The man looked her over carefully, appraising, as if he were considering a goat at the market.

  Odosse felt herself reddening against her will. She knew what he saw. It was the same thing every man saw: a thick-legged, plain-faced baker’s girl with hair and eyes the color of mud. Her nose was too broad, her mouth too wide, her hands coarse with calluses. She had a strong back and good arms and she could haul water or chop wood all day without tiring, but she was not beautiful and she never had been and she never would be. The dreams of the morning crumbled to ashes under the reality of his gaze.

  “Is that your baby?” the man asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Who’s his father?”

  “I don’t see how that’s your concern either,” she snapped, her cheeks hot.

  “No,” he agreed, smiling faintly, “I don’t suppose that one is. Are you still giving milk?”

  The indecency of the question shocked her. “What?”

  He ignored her outrage. “Listen,” he said, as if he had decided something, “because I will only explain this once. You can’t go back to Willowfield. Your village is dead. A Thornlady and a company of armsmen killed everyone there. Everyone, do you understand me? They used bloodmist. No one survives that. Even the barn mice are dead. I don’t know who sent them or why, and I don’t know what they wanted in Willowfield. I intend to find out. But first I need to get somewhere safe, and I need to get my lord’s child safe too.”

  He paused, looking hard at her, but Odosse was too astonished to respond. After a moment the man went on. “I don’t know how to care for a baby. I don’t have milk and I don’t know what else he needs. I trust that you do. I will take you to the nearest town and see that you reach it safely. In return you will tend to the baby. Do we have an agreement?”

  Still Odosse said nothing. Mistaking her stunned silence for hesitation, the man added more kindly: “I don’t mean to make light of your loss. My friends died there too. But your village is dead, and the border roads are dangerous enough without Thorns on the hunt. I am your best—your only—hope of safety.”

  Odosse nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Aubry began to whimper behind her.

  The man gave her another brief half smile and started down the road. After a few steps he paused and looked back over his shoulder. “Do you have any questions?”

  Yes, Odosse wanted to shout, yes. What is a Thorn and who are you and how can Willowfield be dead? How can an entire village die? Mother and Father and little Aileth with her new twins, and Vostun the ostler who told japes to his horses, and the skinny old solaros who drank himself stupid after every funeral—how could they be dead? They were all well this morning.

  She said none of these things. Instead she clamped her lips shut until the urge to laugh or sob or scream at the stranger had passed, and then—proud that her voice barely shook—she asked: “What is your name?”

  “Brys Tarnell,” he said, and there was the beginning of respect in his eyes.

  HIS HORSE WAS WAITING BY A small, crooked stream that Odosse had never seen before, though she knew Bayarn Wood as well as the palm of her hand. He’d left the animal saddled while he hunted his rabbits, and as Odosse came nearer, she was horrified to see that Brys had stuffed the baby into one of his saddlebags. The child had been bundled up in blankets until he was fat as a dumpling, dropped into the bag, and left hanging with his head poking out from the top. Miraculously, by the Bright Lady’s mercy, he appeared to be peacefully asleep.

  Brys shrugged at her scandalized look. “I couldn’t take him with me, and I couldn’t leave him lying on the ground either. He seemed comfortable enough in there. Besides, he needed the sleep. He was crying all day.”

  “Small wonder why,” she said darkly, and pushed past him to pull the child out.

  Something was wrong with the baby. Odosse recognized that even before she had unwrapped his swaddling. The child barely moved as she pulled him from the saddlebag. His head lolled limply against her arm, and he made no sound beyond the soft whimpering shudders of his breath. Her own son was a quiet child, but Aubry had never been this still, and he had never failed to open his eyes and demand a breast when she lifted him from slumber.

  “What’s his name?” she asked.

  Brys raised a black brow at the worry in her voice. “Wistan.”

  She made a cradle of her arms, rocking the infant to rouse him. “Wistan? Wake up, dearling, you must be hungry.”

  The baby did not stir. Gently, fearfully, Odosse pried open his eyelids with the tips of her fingers. His pupils were dark and so enormous that they swallowed up the pale blue of his irises. A thin line of red stained the white of his right eye like a blood trail crossing fresh snow.

  She let go of the baby’s lids. Dread thundered in her chest.

  She’d only seen one infant with blood in its eyes like that: Erisse, the swineherd’s daughter, who had been laid to rest by the chapel when Odosse was a girl. Everyone knew that the swineherd beat his wife and children when he was drunk, so it was no surprise when his baby daughter suffered the same. Odosse and her mother had been paying their respects to the village solaros when the swineherd’s wife burst into the chapel, her baby barely breathing and clutched tight in her arms. The solaros had been powerless to help her, and Erisse had died before nightfall. Odosse still remembered the mother’s wailing and the baby staring blankly at the darkening sky, her eyes filling slowly with blood.

  Wistan had the same emptiness in his eyes. The sight of it sent a chill through her bones.

  “He’s not well,” she told Brys, carrying the infant over to the big man. She handed the baby to him while she unslung Aubry’s wicker carrier from her back and took her own son out, surreptitiously studying Brys’ handling of the infant Wistan as she did so.

  Brys held the child awkwardly but competently, supporting the baby’s heavy head against his arm and keeping the body secure. He looked as uncomfortable as a man handed a jar of lit clingfire, but she didn’t think he was responsible for the baby’s condition.

  That was a relief, if only a small one. She still had no idea how to help the child.

  Odosse untied the straps of her nursing blouse and gave Aubry a breast. She took Wistan back to offer him the other, but the baby showed no interest. When she tried to help him suckle, he turned his head away weakly as if disturbed in some deep and unpleasant dream. Seeing nothing else she could do, Odosse simply held him and crooned a soft, wordless song while Aubry fed.

  After her son had finished, she took both babies down to clean and change them by the stream. Aubry shrieked and flung his fists in protest at the splash of cold water on his skin. Wistan only rolled his head from side to side and hiccuped little sobs. He never opened his eyes.

  A medallion glinted from the tangled folds of Wistan’s blankets. She hadn’t noticed
it while preoccupied with his condition, but when she unraveled them to dry off the babies and wrap Wistan up again, it fell loose from the cloth. The medallion showed a black bull rearing on a disc of blood-red enamel set in gold. A noble’s sign, and one she knew: the emblem of Lord Ossaric of Bulls’ March, a border lord from hostile Oakharn.

  That was a knight’s medallion. Why would a child have such a thing?

  Brys had gutted his rabbits and gone upstream to refill his waterskin while Odosse tended to the infants. She was waiting with the medallion cold and heavy in her hand when he came back. “Who is this baby?”

  His lips thinned in annoyance when he saw the medallion, but he brushed it off with a shrug. “Thought I’d taken that out. Must’ve been more distracted than I realized.”

  “Well?”

  “I didn’t lie. Wistan is his name. Wistan Galefring of Bulls’ March, if you’re feeling formal.”

  Lord Ossaric’s grandson. Odosse felt faint. She didn’t recognize the child’s name, but his father’s … “Oh.”

  “Does it change anything?”

  “No.” It didn’t, truly. Whoever he was, the baby was a baby, and he needed her help. “You said he was crying earlier. What did it sound like?”

  He shrugged. “Quiet. Like what he’s doing now, that little hiccupy noise. That’s not normal? I thought he just knew we might be followed.”

  “He’s a baby. He can’t know that.” Odosse shook her head in wonderment at the idea. Did the man know anything about children? “No, it’s not normal. The child needs a healer. A good one, and quickly. He won’t eat, he doesn’t cry, and there’s blood in his eyes. I’ve only seen one baby like this before. She was crying too loudly, and her father grew angry. She died within hours.”

  Perhaps he had suspected the same, or perhaps he had already come to trust her judgment that far, because Brys did not question her. He nodded, taking Wistan from her, and strapped the child into a makeshift carrier that looked like it had been pieced together out of a horse’s nosebag and a whip. “How good?”