The River King's Road

by Merciel, Liane

  Then he left his snow-covered camp and walked to the edge of the wood, and his perfect morning shattered.

  A single trail of footsteps came from the walled town far below the forest: a long line that ran straight from Tarne Crossing to the woods where Severine waited. The trodden snow made a stark blue line across the expanse of dazzling white, dappled darker where each step had landed.

  Near the tree line, yet far enough down the bare hill that it stood out like a bruise on fair skin, the snow was trampled in a wider circle and spattered crimson with blood. Scarlet drops sprayed in long shallow arcs across trampled snow and fresh alike. Whatever had bled there had done so badly, and violently, and in a way meant to draw eyes from a distance.

  The challenge was too plain to mistake, and it was not the one he had planned.

  Albric turned sharply and strode to the camp, careless whether he left any tracks of his own.

  A fox slipped out of the snow-cloaked underbrush and trotted alongside him as he came back under the trees. It was a gaunt little animal, and it moved with a jerky stiffness that he knew too well. It was dead. Something had torn its throat out; the fox’s belly was brown with dried blood, and its head bounced obscenely over the gaping wound in its neck with every step it took. Its eyes were glassy and unblinking; he could not tell whether they were glazed by death or had simply frozen in a head no longer warmed by living blood.

  Either way it was not a thing he cared to have shadowing his steps. Albric scowled at the fox and quickened his pace.

  As he neared the camp he heard a child’s muffled sobs. The sound filled him with a rage that crushed out speech, breath, thought: everything but anger. This was not how it was supposed to be. If Severine had betrayed him …

  She had. He saw that as soon as he came to the clearing.

  A girl sat on the fallen tree, her face red from cold and crying. Mirri. Bitharn’s friend. She had clapped a hand over her own mouth to quiet her weeping, but tears trickled through her fingers and dripped from her nose. Blood smeared her cheek and her left sleeve, although Albric could see no wound grievous enough to account for all the blood he’d seen on the hillside.

  Two of Severine’s ghoul-hounds circled the clearing like vultures wheeling around a dying calf. Their distended faces were drawn taut with hunger; they licked their fangs constantly, staring longingly at the child with empty, fog-filled eyes. But they came no closer than the fringe of trees, for stronger than their hunger was their fear of the Thorn.

  Who was there, abruptly, watching him from the far side of the clearing. The dead fox heeled her like a hunting hound, its head lifted so that the grisly ruin of its throat was on full display.

  “What have you done?” Albric demanded. He took a half step forward, one hand on his sword hilt. Immediately the ghoul-hounds moved to intercept him, but that did nothing to stop him. He welcomed the provocation; he wanted to fight. Albric slid his sword a handsbreadth from the scabbard, and the ghouls hissed at the sight of steel.

  But they did not attack. Severine seemed determined to frustrate him, as ever.

  “What I promised,” she answered. “No more than necessary.”

  “I was to take the girl.” And keep her safe, he added silently. What else was he cursed to fail at today?

  “She came out too early. You were still abed.” Severine shrugged. “The opportunity was there, and I saw no reason to leave it. The trap is perfectly set: How can the Burnt Knight see this poor wounded child, so cruelly stolen, and stay back?” Her voice sharpened to a mocking edge at the end, and the crystal of her false eye glittered.

  “Why is she hurt? You said that wasn’t needed.”

  “You said that wasn’t needed. I do not recall agreeing. Blood adds urgency, and haste makes fools of wise men. But you needn’t be so upset. She has only a scratch. The fox gave most of the blood.”

  “Fine. It’s still damned stupid to have her sitting there while you’re fighting. Letting her run underfoot doesn’t help.”

  “It will confuse and slow him.”

  “It’ll confuse and slow me. You said you wanted my help. Do you or don’t you?”

  Severine frowned minutely and folded her hands into the sleeves of her robe. “What do you propose?”

  “Let me take her home. The trail’s laid: the Burnt Knight has to come. You don’t need her anymore. Once he follows her trail into the woods, you have him. I’ll take her back to town on a roundabout path, so there won’t be any steps leading back to ruin your little display on the hillside.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” The question came out as a snarl. His patience was near snapping, and the ghoul-hounds tensed as if they could feel it. They shifted their weight forward, whining their hunger. They were close enough that he should have been able to smell their breath, like dogs’, but there was nothing. No breath, no life, no scent.

  The Thornlady regarded him impassively, unmoved by his anger. “If you act too quickly, the townspeople will know she is safe. Certainly, if you take her home, her family must know. What reason would they have then to seek out the Burnt Knight? But if you wait, and go too late, you will still be there when he comes to me.”

  “Then let me put her in my tent. He’ll still have to come and I won’t be far. You can put your own tent in the clearing if you want him to think she’s inside. Set the hounds to guard it.”

  Severine’s lips drew into a bloodless line, but she nodded assent.

  Albric didn’t wait for her to reconsider. He shouldered her ghoul-hounds aside and grabbed the little girl’s hand. Without a word he hauled Mirri to her feet and dragged her away from the Thornlady and her hungry, hideous pets.

  Only when they were inside his tent, and well out of Severine’s view, did Albric look down and realize that he had taken the girl’s left hand, straining her injured arm. The child’s face was white as death and her eyes were dark with pain, but she hadn’t uttered a word of protest as she stumbled along at his side. Her hand felt like ice. He wondered how long she’d been sitting there, bleeding through that threadbare coat.

  Albric let go of the hand at once. “I’m sorry,” he muttered gruffly. “Didn’t realize.”

  Mirri didn’t reply. She shivered in her torn coat and began to suck her thumb.

  The tent was just as chilly as the clearing outside, although it warmed quickly with two bodies in the cramped space. Albric bade the girl sit on his rumpled pallet and went out to scoop handfuls of snow into his kettle.

  While the water melted over his cooking-lantern and slowly came to a boil, Albric tried to get the girl’s coat off so that he could examine the wound. Mirri sat there in a daze, neither helping nor resisting. Eventually he was able to tug the coat loose. She wore two thick woolen shirts beneath it. Both were soaked with blood from three narrow slashes on the left arm between elbow and shoulder. The cuts were from a ghoul-hound’s claws, and although they had not pierced the skin deeply through the layers of wool, there was a creeping discoloration in them already. Tendrils of bloodless ivory radiated through Mirri’s flesh from each of the scratches, and her arm was cold as a corpse’s.

  Albric had lived his life by the sword. He knew what infection looked like, and he knew a small cut could kill the strongest man if it sickened with no Blessed nearby. He also knew that no wound, unless poisoned, should sicken so soon.

  “How do you feel?” he asked the girl.

  “Cold,” Mirri whispered back. Her lips seemed to be numb; she had difficulty shaping the word. The tent was warm, but she only shivered harder. “My arm is cold.”

  “I’m going to wash the cuts to keep them clean,” Albric said, although he doubted that any water could do that. “It might sting a little. I’m sorry for that. Try to be brave.”

  Mirri nodded and closed her eyes as he cut off her shirtsleeve. Her arm felt like marble. The hot water he swabbed over the cuts sent up steam when it touched her flesh. The girl kept shivering, but she never flinched, and Albric didn’t know if
she could even feel the rag on her skin.

  “Am I bait?” she mumbled while he worked.

  The rag stilled on her arm. Over the child’s head, Albric frowned. He couldn’t lie, not to this girl who had suffered a morning of horror and a ghoul-poisoned wound because of his failed cleverness. But what else could he say? “You are. But not the way she thinks. You’re bait for her, little one, for the Thorn in all her pride and cruelty. Your friends will come, and she’ll stand to fight them, and then they’ll strike her dead.”

  “Bitharn will shoot her full of arrows,” Mirri agreed, eyes closed.

  Albric patted her shoulder awkwardly. He finished washing her arm and tied linen bandages around it. He was generous with the wrappings; he wouldn’t need the bandages for himself. After hanging the coat loosely over her shoulders, he moved back to the door flap but lingered there, reluctant to leave the tent’s small sanctuary.

  “Why do you help her?” the child asked without opening her eyes.

  He had no good answer for that. He was spared from offering a bad one by the harsh caw of a dead crow outside.

  “I must go.” Albric drew on his gloves. He checked his sword and took up his shield; he expected to need nothing else. No armor today. “If you hear fighting, run. Straight back to your town. Go to the captain of the guard, or the town solaros, whoever you can find. Tell them what’s happening here. Once you’ve done that, don’t leave the town walls again, no matter what happens, until they return and tell you it’s safe.”

  “Why do I have to run? Isn’t the Burnt Knight going to win?”

  “Yes,” Albric said, forcing himself to sound certain. “But once the Thorn knows she’s losing, she may send her pets to kill you, so you’d best run as soon as the chance comes.” That part, he knew, was not a lie at all.

  He didn’t wait for the child to nod. Either she understood or she was dead, and Albric had done what he could to tip fate’s scales toward the first. He hardened his heart against caring any further; it could no longer be his concern.

  Ahead he glimpsed the sloped silhouette of the Thornlady’s tent through the haggard trees. There was more blood on the snow outside its door-flap; he wondered what poor unlucky beast had died for that. Two crows perched in the branches of the highest tree above the clearing, and their lifeless eyes sent a chill through him although they did not look down.

  Severine was still standing where she’d been before; she didn’t seem to have moved at all. She turned her head as Albric approached, her face pale as a shade’s in her wide gray hood. No ghoul-hounds were in view.

  “He is coming,” she said.

  “I gathered that. Where are your pets?”

  “I sent them to the edge of the wood, the better to bring him back here. He comes without his tracker, and I do not want him getting lost.”

  “He came alone?” Albric rasped, too amazed to hide it.

  “Unless he can hide his companions on a treeless field of fresh snow, yes.”

  “Bloody light-blinded gods-cursed fool! What is he thinking?”

  Severine said nothing. But she smiled.

  IT DID NOT TAKE LONG FOR Sir Kelland to come. The Burnt Knight made no attempt at secrecy. He walked straight up the hill, following the trail they’d laid for him, his sun-blazoned surcoat and dark skin proclaiming his identity for anyone who cared to look. He carried his sword and shield and wore a hauberk and chausses of silvery chain, and he came alone.

  If they’d had arrows they could have quilled him from the tree line. It was still early in the morning; the sun was to their backs and in the Burnt Knight’s eyes, dazzling him from the sky and the new-fallen snow. Shooting him down would have been child’s play. Mirri could have done it, even with her wounded arm.

  Severine did not.

  With a sense of creeping unease, Albric watched the Burnt Knight go beneath the leafless trees and out of his view for a while. The crows were still in the branches; the Thornlady could still watch his progress.

  “Pull back,” Severine said moments later. “He is coming.”

  “Why don’t you take him now?” Albric asked. What worse plan could she have for the man if she didn’t take the easy kill?

  The Thornlady shrugged. “He is not as unguarded as he looks. In the open sun his goddess watches over him. But he will come to us in shadow … and I have other reasons to wait.” She slipped back through the underbrush, sliding over clutching brambles and crunching snow without a whisper.

  Albric moved back more slowly, and more noisily. He was competent in the woods but hardly a Northmarchain tree-scout; it was not in him to do these things silently, even if he had been inclined to try. And he was not. He trampled leaves and cracked icy twigs as he retreated to the clearing, and took a brief pleasure in the tightening of the Thornlady’s lips when he arrived.

  He saw the ghoul-hounds slip forward, encircling the maple’s clearing, as he and Severine retreated farther into the wood. There were more than he’d expected. Five, not two. A sixth loped up to join them as he watched. Then a seventh. She’d been killing more men besides the pilgrims to make that many. Albric wasn’t sure whether to be relieved that he wasn’t involved in those deaths or disgusted that he hadn’t had a chance to stop the slaughter.

  “Thought you sent them after the baby,” he muttered as the ghoul-hounds came out. Three against one, the Burnt Knight might have been able to handle. Three against two, certainly, if Albric joined in. But seven to one was death for the one, even if he faced mortal men, and ghoul-hounds did not die as easily as that. Seven against two was not much better. Again he cursed Kelland for leaving his archer behind. What had possessed the man?

  “It does not take so many ghaole to kill a child,” she whispered, the words barely audible over the wind through the branches. “And you barred me from killing the rest, did you not? So I kept most of my pets close by.”

  A crashing through the trees kept Albric from making a reply. Sir Kelland came to the clearing, batting the brush aside with his shield. Snow filled the gaps in his chausses and dimmed the rays of the sunburst on his surcoat; if he lived through this morning, he’d have to spend hours polishing the rust out of his armor.

  The knight hesitated upon seeing the tent in the empty clearing, but after a moment he came forward. Standing to the side of its fluttering flap, he eased it open with the tip of his sword. When no crossbow bolt came whistling out, he peered into the opening.

  Whatever the Burnt Knight saw in there made him pull back with a grimace. “Thorn!” he bellowed. A shaft of sunlight flashed white as it struck the knight’s blade. “Come out! I know you are here. I can feel you. Come out!”

  Severine stayed where she was, that odd little smile still on her lips. Her ghoul-hounds attacked.

  They leapt from the trees with a showering of snow and sprang for him, claws outstretched and jagged teeth bared for the sweet warmth of living blood. They came from all sides, gaunt forms blurred by motion: two, three, four. The others stayed in hiding, Albric could not say why, but the four who came out were enough. More than enough. They ringed the Burnt Knight and crowded him from view, claws tearing, jaws gnashing.

  His sword was moving before the first one was in reach. Kelland’s blade danced through a dizzying set of parries, low to high, left to right, though the ghoul-hounds’ claws were not close enough to be blocked. Albric wondered if the man was mad. Why waste energy moving when there was no enemy to be hurt? Did he think he could impress them? It was a fine display of skill, surely, but squandered on the hungry dead. No one could fight forever; all the knight was doing was tiring himself too soon.

  Then the first ghoul flung itself at him, and Albric saw that he was wrong.

  White-gold light burst from the air in a lattice drawn by the knight’s sword strokes. The net showed only where the ghaole sprang into it, fading into invisibility a handspan away, and it was woven in a pattern too dense for Albric’s eye to follow, but he saw that it was made up of gold threads and white one
s, swirled around and around in a shimmering wall.

  The lattice of white stopped and held the ghoul-hound. The gold seared into its flesh like holy fire. Hairless skin withered and burned, peeling away in curling sheets to show ropy pink muscle and bare bone. The ghoul-hound screamed, a sound that froze Albric’s marrow, and tore vengefully at the web that trapped it, but all that did was shear off its fingers against the fiery net, leaving the creature howling at the burned stumps of its hands as its talons thumped down to the snow.

  Kelland set his back to the spell-woven wall and turned to meet the rest of his foes as they loped forward, cautious now. The wounded ghaole pulled itself away from the scorching net, blackened lines still smoldering across its face, and circled warily around it. When the ghoul-hound came free, the visible part of the web vanished again, and all of them approached uncertainly, not sure which angles of attack were safe.

  The Burnt Knight did not wait for them to decide. He lunged forward, singling out the nearest ghoul to his left. Again and again he hacked at its side and shoulder, driving the creature farther to the left each time. He kept his shield up to catch the ghaole’s frantic claws, but let it shudder slightly with every raking blow. The ghoul-hound took the bait: it grabbed hold of the shield with both taloned hands and tried to rip it from the knight’s seemingly weak grip.

  At once Kelland shoved the shield forward, unbalancing his attacker, who had expected him to resist. Stumbling backward, the ghaole crashed into the sunlit net, and there it burned.

  The Burnt Knight spun smoothly away, trusting his goddess’ power to hold his enemy, and thrust his sword low into the gut of a ghoul who had thought to catch him distracted. He spoke a holy word and light flared from the buried blade, throwing the creature’s ribs into sharp relief: a cage of shadows that tried and failed to contain the radiance burning within them like a captured star. One by one the ghaole’s ribs shattered into flecks of bone cinders. It staggered back, vomiting light, and kept burning as it fell. An eyeblink later there was nothing left of it but a handful of charred bones and a toothy skull in a puddle of slush.