As Feathers Fall

by Chris Galford

  Ironically, she thought he had never looked more like the men he was supposed to lead. The field doctor, however, had taken to grinding herbs—under Roswitte’s careful discretion—into his nightly cups. “Too long at this pace and even a young soul will find ill humor,” the man claimed. But Ivon was not a young man. Not mentally. His father had never raised him that way—and war only ravaged what remained.

  Now, their lord was to be denied sleep once more, but they bent their heads together and marched to the tune of another Matair. No owls hooted in the dark, nor birds struck up their morning tunes, but Roswitte had the feeling they were marching to one all the same.

  Isaak remained as they had left him—a small, broken man bloodied as much by dedication as any fist. Say what one will about Matairs; they don’t lack for drive. Her former master had folded over in the dark. So still was he at their approach, that she instinctively palmed her cudgel. Among their lot Isaak was, after all, the most like an owl—for he was wise beyond need. And crafty. And quick. Roswitte took it upon herself to give his shadow a jostling kick.

  First one swollen, bloodshot eye opened. Then the other. His shaggy head lifted between the lot of them but settled on his brother. He looked ill. She crossed her arms over her chest—both that she might hide her cudgel and look stern.

  Isaak’s assigned watchers—Ensil’s friends Cranst and Bayer—loitered absent-mindedly beside them. She might have preferred something more imposing, but she also knew they were far more watchful than they seemed. The dust knight, for all his curiosities of character, did not brook the foolhardy or inattentive into his trusted troupe.

  “You’ve a problem, Ivon.”

  “Aye?” Ivon scoffed. “And I think we all know its name.”

  He meant offense, but it did not seem to land on his brother. Their prisoner arched his back and used that motion to inch a little up his binding tree, since his hands were left immobile.

  “You are followed. And you cannot put a name to his steps.”

  Roswitte’s own failure. She looked away, to the trees, where their pursuer lurked. Too much time she’d spent already worrying over that, and yet…it did not cease. She was a hunter. A tracker. And even with a train of bumbling idiots for distraction at her back, she was not able to flush out whatever it was that seemed content to watch them.

  When she found him—and she would find him, eventually—she was quite determined she would either pick his mind or carve it out. It depended on her mood.

  “And?” Ivon asked.

  “I can.”

  “How convenient. As ever, you have the answers to our needs precisely as they arise. It’s not another of your wolfhounds, Isaak. We know that much. And since when do you work with other folk?”

  The lesser brother shrugged. “Since I was chained to our blooded foe. The man has conditions of his own, Ivon. And shadows. Not all of them human.”

  That was enough of that. “Milord?” Roswitte interjected.

  There was nothing of beauty in the look that greeted her. In that look, Roswitte saw only the tousled turmoil of a man far beyond his element. “What?” Ivon snapped. He did not like to be interrupted.

  “A word,” she said simply. Uneven ground.

  He looked to his brother, then back. Belatedly, he detached himself, followed her a few paces from their circle. A defensive cross set his arms and he leaned close, repeating his demand.

  “He’s about something, ser. That much be plain. We already know it’s Chigenda.”

  A grunt shook Ivon. “No. We don’t. We think it is Chigenda because he is not here. I did not come here supposing I would have to bury my old teacher, either, but fate is unkind. You know this better than most.” That he could not even burn Alviss’s remains had eaten at Ivon. Ignoring the jab between them, he turned back toward his brother. “He is a creature of shadows and lies. But he gains nothing in a hunter being left to report his failure to his master. Cullick is not understanding.”

  Shadows and lies and the ability to charm. A talent years had honed to its own sharp point. A man one could only look in the eye to detect anger or distaste, and even then, with a most scrutinizing gaze, for he played his own body like a fiddle.

  “Ser…”

  But he pulled away, like every stubborn fool throughout time. He was set upon a mission, and there was no dissuading him, and the longer elements remained beyond his control, the more unsteady and uncertain he became, though he would abide none of it. Caution was always the first death in the face of fear.

  “And?” Ivon called to his brother.

  “Aswari,” Isaak said.

  “So?”

  “So you’ll not catch him. And if he goes, you will have killed my family.” Isaak spat in the dirt. “Keep me bound. I am not fool enough to ask for freedom. But—”

  “Out of the question.”

  “—but I know how he nests. How he moves. I am a hunter born and bred. If you think I would have walked with him all this time and not—”

  “And yet still you speak,” Ivon grumbled. He had closed the distance between them by this time, to tower over his little brother.

  There was always a certain current of violence between the siblings of the Matair family, but in his stature now, it genuinely looked as though things might come to blows. Roswitte touched Ensil’s shoulder, nodded their way—and in that gentle motion, the man receded, stepping closer with a surer step and clenched fists. Sometimes, it was a guardian’s duty to watch out for one’s best interests even against their own determination.

  “You’ve beaten me!” Isaak snapped, like a frothing dog. “Alright? And now you would deny me this? If he flees—Rurik will not be the only one I am set to kill, Ivon.”

  “Such charm. Yes, cast your hate about. Tell me all that would undermine all but you. How fool do you think we are?” Ivon bent close, slapping a gauntleted hand against the bark cradling his brother’s ear. His brother shrank before him. “Well? Please, threaten more. Hate more. It so becomes you. So becomes this family.”

  “Brother…” Isaak said.

  Before a slaughter, one tried their best not to spook the animals. That tone had that character, but all the rest had been more accustomed to those men that stuck and goaded bulls for a living—and in the same breath that Roswitte made the connection, so too seemed her lord, for he began to pull back.

  But the blow came fast, from a low plane. It drove hard against the lord’s throat, and Ivon collapsed to his knees before his brother’s fist could even recoil. On Isaak, however, his gasping lacked the stunning disbelief it had on the others, and Isaak seemed to coil with him, stooping over his body and beginning to swing.

  And swing.

  Only the ropes on his arms provided any visible cushion to the blows. It did not even matter to him that armed men stood mere feet away. Nor, for that matter, had it seemed to matter on a practical level either. When Roswitte broke the spell that violence had on her, rage boiled in her—and the terror that another Matair might already lie dead within the shadows.

  The ones that had bound Isaak had not realized a critical detail: the matter of double joints.

  Ensil was the first to reach the pair. He heaved onto Isaak from behind, forcing his arms under the hunter’s, but Isaak, as though expecting it, jammed his head back in Ensil’s nose and kicked up in the same instant, sending both sprawling. In foreign curses, Cranst began to shout.

  Ensil tried to hold on, but Isaak would not be settled. He writhed and spasmed, elbowing his side, pitching here and there in an effort to free himself. The dust knight, already stunned, became increasingly desperate, but as Roswitte swung in, he lost control. Isaak hooked under him, twisting, fighting his assailant to reverse their position.

  She swung her club, but halted as Ensil, then Isaak, then Ensil again rolled into the fore—and leapt back as they rolled past. Bald, well-meaning Bayer did the opposite. He leapt into the fray wholeheartedly, to pry his friend free of the debacle. Helpless, Roswitte felt as thou
gh she danced, foot to foot, waiting for her opportunity to strike.

  “Move, you goddamned idiots!” she cursed. That Ivon wheezed and sputtered beside her meant little now.

  All was a careening mass of flesh—of fists and limbs, striking where they might. Other men were running by then, drawn by the commotion. And still she kicked, shouting, “Back! Back you fools!” as the others thronged, not willing to bring any more into the pile.

  She caught Bayer’s knee, kicked hard. By then he was on top, and his knee went sidewise, catching one of Isaak’s as it went. He howled, but she danced to the other side and kicked again, and he wisely rolled free. Ensil rolled atop then, and she thought she might scream for frustration, but as his fingers curled in the neck of Isaak’s tunic, a punch stunned him—and then Roswitte shoved the weight of her hips into his shoulder and physically checked him off.

  Before Isaak could make another play, she slammed the weight of a boot on his sternum. A crack signaled the end of a rib, but that was only fair. There was a moment there, when a sound ripped out of him like a coyote’s sharp, jilting note—but the rib wheezed him, and the pound of her club on the meat of his skull took the rest.

  Drunk men did not bob quite so much as his head did. It did not quite shove him into the dark, but certainly quieted him. He groped, blandly, for purchase, but she kicked his foot aside and stomped his wrist down hard. Then she put the club up under his chin and made sure he felt its pressure.

  “Lord you may be, ser, and mine’n, at that—but it’s master Ivon who’s got the house now, and mark it: it’s the blood you share with’n him alone what didn’t get you brained there.”

  She let him go after that, and turned to the fallen knight beside him.

  “You alright?”

  He shook his head at first; rubbed his jaw, then nodded slowly. Much as she desired to linger and check the truth, duty dragged her back to her lord. Even so, standing over him with her hand extended in offering and a half dozen soldiers gawking about them, she could not resist a jibe. “A poor time, I’d reckon, but I did tell you, ser.” Kasimir would have stilled her with a look. The Brickheart never would have let it happen in the first place. But Ivon—Ivon just sputtered and stared, clutching at his already purpling throat.

  By the time he took his feet again, he had regained some semblance of his voice. His pride, however, would take much longer to heal.

  “Bind him. Hand and foot. Gag him. Blindfold him. If he can—” He hacked himself raw, shuddering from the breathlessness of it. “Hells. If he can do more than breathe for the next day, I’ll have your asses.”

  Men all but fell over one another to hop to, though more than one went about the task with some pithy digs at their commander. He, and Roswitte, pretended not to hear them. She thought it only fair. She could not speak to his justification.

  But there was also the fact that she had a more important question to consider. As the men fumbled about the various Matairs and their own inadequacy, she would have been remiss if she had not paused to wonder what, exactly, the stunt had gained.

  Even a man so wily as Isaak should not have hoped to use it for escape. Nor had he tried. And for all that he was capable of, he was not so dark a man as to kill unnecessarily. He had attacked Ivon ruthlessly, true—but not wildly. If he had wanted to, a punch like that could have—should have—collapsed his brother’s windpipe. He certainly had the arm for it.

  Her eyes roved, judging the camp, judging the trees, judging every man and beast that crossed their expanse. Dust and lies. Dust and lies. But lies came with a purpose, and the dust could only conceal them so long.

  There was no sleep that night. For any of them. Watch was doubled, Isaak’s guards were doubled, and the camp clambered deeper into the airs of a prison than a lodging of convenience.

  Wolves howled their hunting dirges to the purpling sky. They shook the canopies above their heads and made a scratchy rain of pollen and dust and owl wings—for the birds took wing with their own haunting notes, and pecked the earth of prey. Those who survived the night were either more aware than their predators, or quicker.

  Roswitte began to bob sometime around dawn, when the heat rushing through her veins finally subsided—in tune and time with her fourth uneventful stalking of the camp’s perimeter. Yet every time, she was in turn jolted awake again, be it by the flashes of a needling daydream or the rough jab of her bow’s frame on her equally coarse head. Every time, she grumbled, and shifted, but merely pulled her bow tight again, bundled against the damp, and waited.

  When she returned from making water with the dawn’s first rays, however, she found Cranst and Bayer nursing their wounds and bickering back and forth about the morning’s events. Hitching at her loose britches, she muttered to herself about the problems with familiarity and tried her best to slink by.

  Their words stopped her. This was not to say they beckoned to her. Rather, they beckoned to a growing dread within her heart.

  “If he was being anybody but a noble, I’d be sticking him meself,” Cranst sloughed through his swollen cheek.

  Bayer laughed, rolling back into the dust. “Aye. Pissant couldn’t be springing that on the other brother?”

  She was towering over them before Bayer could so much as belch. It startled them, but she cared little for that. The words. She needed to hear the words.

  “What did you mean?” she demanded.

  “Assal’s tits, woman, ever hearing of halloos, being? It’s no—”

  He could not have been so stupid. Nor could she.

  A menacing step drew her forward. “Bayer!” she snapped.

  “About Ivon or—alright, alright. The childling. What is being his name?”

  “Rurik?” Cranst offered, helpfully, but no less perplexed.

  “Roo-rik.” Bayer played with the word a few times, seemingly trying it on, then shook his head. “He wasing the last one to be speaking him.”

  She could have hit him, but it would have served no purpose. Without explanation, she left them as abruptly as she had descended on them, leaving them to call uselessly after her.

  The single guard startled at her approach, and made a show of composure as she all but barreled past him. “Ma’am?” he called, but the tent she sought was there before her, and she would no longer rely on the commonsense of middlemen. She tore open the flaps of the tent and was met by the skinny, sickeningly dulcet face of their resident dandy. He bobbed with her, throwing his arms wide as if in greeting.

  “Ros, m’dear! Why, it’s been too—”

  She put one hand to his shoulder and shoved him aside. It was like a bear giving shove to a leaf—the squeaking man nearly went through the canvas.

  Then all that was left was a frowning girl sprawled in the sheets. The boy, as she had feared, was nowhere to be found.

  “Something wrong?” the girl teased, with all the smug poise of a noble twice her age. Roswitte should have very much liked to tear it from the tip of her tongue.

  Ineffable rage seized her, not at the deception, but at how long it had taken her to see it. Yet one could hardly expect a man to work in tandem with his would-be killer. A sensible man. There was my first mistake. She thundered to the awestruck guard, descending on him like a black cloud. That boy has never played the wise man. For good, or ill. Then she lit into him.

  “How long have they been in there?”

  Realization began to instantly dawn on his face, too. If not the whole picture, than certainly suspicions. “A few hours? It was still dark when they…they’ve been quiet. Very quiet.”

  “And when are children ever quiet?”

  “When they sleep?”

  Smartass. As she wafted away, she found yet another crowd gathering. Smaller now than before, but still the men had come to see what all the commotion was about. Gritting her teeth, she answered none of their whispers nor their stares, knowing that there was one person and one person alone that needed the truth before the rest.

  Given the nature o
f the beast, they would probably be feeling the weight of that truth in the bloody soles of their boots, soon enough.

  It was writ large on her face—of that she had no doubt. Perhaps because of that, no one named themselves fool enough to bar her path. She made straight for Ivon’s fire, where he sat in the open, feeding himself a meal of soup-softened bread and trying, rather pointedly it seemed, to be one of the few not to respond to her obvious distress. At least she would not have to wake him. Again.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Ensil stumbling away from Cranst and Bayer, toward her, but she could not afford the distraction. She set herself before the fire, doing her best to keep to the shadows of its dance.

  Dim, already purpled eyes warily followed her. “What fresh hell is it now,” her master beckoned, not even bothering to seem surprised.

  Sometimes, there was no blunting honesty. Already dark eyes flashed darker still at the words, threatening a violent loss of control. First his hands shook. Then his arms. Finally, he hurled what was left of his food into the embers of the fire and came to his feet with a curse that might have made hounds howl. Never once did his fury stray from her.

  “One reason. One goddamn reason we rode out here, and what does the fool do? Oh, I’ll run him down. Isaak and honor be damned, I’ll run him down myself. Get the horses. Get the men, and if anyone so much as…” The words trailed. His rage did not. To her displeasure, it was beginning to draw its own share of attention.

  “Ser—”

  “And you!” He whirled, without breaking momentum. “Our huntswoman. Well where is the quarry? Tell me. Because I swear, Ros, I swear…”

  But she doubted, in the bubbling veins of his wrath, the young lord even had any idea where he was headed.

  Yet she knew one thing: lose the respect of one’s men, and lose all. Tantrums aided nothing but discord.

  “Ser!” she snapped, determined to be the loudest voice. If’n it works with dogs, by Assal it’ll work with man. “You’re not thinking.”