The Pagan Night

by Tim Akers

  “Nae good,” he said briefly. The scout who sat behind him looked grim. “Wellem believes we should find another route.”

  “Squire Wellem is out of luck,” Gwen said sharply, studying the scout. “We left Sir Hogue at Highbeck, and we’re going to relieve him, regardless of what has happened up ahead.”

  “The path is cursed, my lady,” Wellem said. “There’s nothing but death there.”

  “Death can be anywhere. More men have died in their beds than will ever bleed out on a battlefield, and yet you lay your head down each night without a whimper. Come, show me this place of death.”

  Wellem balked, but he and Sir Brennan flanked Gwen as they rode to the ford. The smell reached them before they caught sight of the river.

  Something lay burst and bloody in the center of the ford. Gwen figured it for a horse at one time, but nothing but rags of meat and the wretched smile of freshly exposed ribs remained. Other bodies lay in the river, just beneath the surface, their armor resisting the current, folding the river over them like a clear, smooth blanket. The water swirled around their bulk, dimpling the face of the ford with swirling eddies and dammed pools, gathered in place by stacked knights and their mounts.

  The river ran clean, the blood long since drained.

  “How many?” Gwen whispered.

  “No saying.”

  “Any sign from the village? Smoke or signal?”

  “Nothing,” Brennan said, shaking his head. “If any of our men survived, they’re making themselves scarce.”

  “Wise enough. If Halverdt’s men got this far, there’s no telling how many of them are ranging through the Fen. Hogue is simply preparing for another assault.”

  “Or his force was killed to a man,” Wellem whispered, “and now it’s the blades of Greenhall that are lying in wait beyond the river.”

  “Yes—or that,” Gwen conceded. “Have the men loose their spears and prepare. Gods know what we’ll find ahead.”

  The remaining men of Gwen’s column gathered at the ford and picked their way carefully through the wreckage of battle. They stared down uncomfortably at the water-softened faces of the dead, stepping over blade-ruined corpses. The horses whickered nervously as they advanced. Many of the dead were familiar, though changed awfully by their time in the river.

  “Sir MaeBrun and young squire Hance,” Brennan noted. “And Steffen. There are many ghosts in this river, my lady.”

  “Many dead,” she agreed. “What I don’t understand is why they are here, and not beyond.”

  “You ordered them to hold the ford. Perhaps they were encircled, and decided to fight their way out.”

  “That would require treachery, sir, or incredible luck.” Gwen twisted in her saddle, judging the lay of the dead. “Maybe Halverdt’s men established a shield wall of some sort, and Hogue thought to break it with a charge.”

  “If so, it didn’t go well,” Brennan said.

  “No,” Gwen answered quietly. “It did not.”

  They had yet to find evidence of enemy dead, though the identity of many in the river could not be determined. Gwen ordered her men into a wide crescent as they approached Highbeck.

  26

  THE RUINS OF the village were silent.

  “Go slowly, building to building,” Gwen ordered. “Expect an ambush.”

  There was no ambush. The dead lay in bed or gathered around a cold campfire. A pot of stew congealed over the charred logs of the fire. Some of the bodies showed signs of rapidly donned armor, or held swords or the remains of torches in their lifeless fingers. Their wounds were horrendous, the edges blistered or crushed, as though the flesh had crumbled like ceramic.

  Of the enemy there was no sign.

  “Demons,” Wellem insisted.

  “Gheist,” Brennan said. “Sir Hogue would never have fallen so completely to a mortal enemy.”

  “What difference?” the younger knight whined. “We need to get out of here.”

  “Patience, Wellem,” Gwen said. She knelt beside one of the bodies that had been next to a fire. The man’s arm had been severed, the edges so clean that even the rings of his mail were cut. Usually such a wound would drive the chain into the flesh, tearing through the skin like a saw, but the sleeve of the dead man’s armor just lay over the wound. No blade was that sharp. “Strange that a gheist would strike here, of all places.”

  “It’s a place of the old gods,” Wellem said. He made the sign of sun and moon, carving their horns and crescents in the air with his thumb. “All know that! We should never have camped in such a cursed place.”

  “Aye, well…” Gwen stood and did a quick count. She turned to Sir Brennan. “I have eight in the village and surrounds. What do you want to bet that if we took the time to dredge the ford we would find twelve good men?”

  “Sir Hogue among them,” Brennan agreed. “Whatever attacked them, they tried to cross the Tallow to escape.”

  “And died in its waters,” Wellem said sharply. “A gheist of the river, then, one of the drowned gods! My lady, we must…”

  “Be silent,” she said sharply. “Sir Brennan, gather the men. There will be no rest tonight, not until this place is well behind us. I don’t think the likes of Wellem here could sleep near these bodies anyway.”

  “What of the dead? We should shrive the bodies, and send them on to the quiet house.”

  “The dead will remain dead. Once this madness is over we will send a priest and build a pyre, or whatever the church requires of us.”

  “Yes, my lady,” he said. “We can have word to the Redoubt in a few days, if we ride hard. Sir Merret and Houndhallow need to know that this flank is lost.”

  “It is not lost yet. Not while we remain.” Gwen circled the ruined village, scouring the woods, looking for signs of passage. She paused to the north and dismounted. “Here. Branches dragged across the trail, and this copse has been rebuilt. A force of some number has passed this way.”

  She plunged into the forest, pulling down branches and trudging through undergrowth until she reached a small hill. Many of the trees had been cut and moved, and were beginning to brown. The ground beneath was trampled. Once she reached the rise, Gwen stopped and pointed. A path north had been cleared by the trample of hooves and boots.

  “See, Wellem? If a gheist was involved, it walked on a hundred feet,” she said.

  “And carried the Halverdt flag,” Brennan said. He stooped and tore a scrap of cloth from the undergrowth. Green, with a stitch of gold across the top.

  “Send a rider to the Redoubt. Our quarry travels north and east, toward the Fen Gate. Father will need reinforcements.”

  “And what are we to do?” Brennan asked.

  “We hunt, Sir Brennan,” Gwen said. She stood and remounted smoothly, turning her horse north. “Gabriel Halverdt has raised his banner in our land. I would see it burn.”

  * * *

  The sun was still high when the soft jingle of armor carried down the trail. Gwen hushed her riders, then ordered them forward at a trot. With luck the sound of their riding would be masked by whatever was ahead.

  Another column sauntered lazily in the same direction down the trail, two horses wide and winding away around the curve, their banners struck and colors covered. Gwen didn’t need banners or colors to recognize Suhdrin knights. The riders at the rear were tired, slumped in their saddles, shoulders bent forward from weeks in armor and little rest.

  The two Suhdrin knights at the back of the column turned slowly, their eyes registering confusion, then surprise, and finally alarm as they recognized the colors on Gwen’s tabard. They opened their mouths to shout a warning.

  “Iron in the blood!” Gwen yelled, her family’s war cry going back to the tribes. “Iron!” The path was too narrow to make effective use of the spear, so she drew her sword and spurred her horse into a sudden gallop. Brennan was right behind her, shouting the charge, and within heartbeats the rest of her column was a thunder of armor and drawn blades, the sharp song of swords and
hoofbeats and fury.

  The Suhdrin riders who had seen them tried to turn their horses, but the path was too narrow and they both wheeled, snarling their bridles together and starting a fight between their mounts. Gwen went between them, bowling the mounts aside and striking at the rider on her right. Her sword bounced off his shield, but she took the momentum and back-swung into the other knight, striking him on the bridge of his helm and cracking metal and bone.

  Leaving them in her wake, she twisted to wrench her shield into her fist, struggling to get it to her shoulder before she reached the next pair of riders. These two held spears, letting the butts drag in the dirt to keep the heads out of the overhanging trees. The man on the left dropped his spear and tried for his sword, but the other executed a clever reversal on the shaft, taking it in both hands and presenting the tip to Gwen’s hammering charge. The iron point skittered off her shield, catching a loop of her hair and tearing it free, jerking Gwen’s head to the side. She battered the spear aside, striking with the forte of her blade and then thrusting the tip into the man’s throat. His blood spilled out of the ragged wound in a gush.

  Gwen whirled the gory blade over her head, taking a swing at the dead man’s companion. He had gotten enough of his sword free to parry the attack, but the huntress merely whirled the sword again and drew it across his shoulder. It bit deep, driving the rings of his armor into the wound and slicing into muscle. He screamed, but she was already past.

  Beyond that, the path became a maelstrom of startled horses and screaming knights and the bright, bloody scything of swords. Gwen lost herself in the rush, barreling past riders and laying about with her sword, howling the charge and trusting her men to cut down anyone she didn’t kill. Someone landed a blow to her arm, and another to her leg, but the pain was washed away in the thrill of combat. Life was a blur of raised shields, wide, white eyes, horses and men—a face that split as she cut it and a man’s innards emptying through the wound opened by the tip of her sword.

  And then she was through. The trail ahead was empty. Behind her she could hear screaming and the rattling crash of shattered wirewood trees as horses were driven from the path and tumbled into the undergrowth. Gwen whirled around, ready to run down any Suhdrin knights who might have survived the charge, but her men were through, as well, their swords hacking up and down at the fallen column.

  Sir Brennan rode up next to her. A gash across his cheek was leaking blood down his jaw, and his eyes were wild. The axe in his hand was bright red, and his armor was sprayed in blood. The knight took one look at his lady and let out a hearty laugh.

  “Well, that was something of a surprise,” he said.

  “More for them than us,” Gwen said. “Any lost?”

  “Gods know. I saw Doucey fall into the trees, and Sir Jance took a spear to the belly, but we’ll have to count the cost later.” He paused, wiping blood from his blade and wrapping a bandage around his knuckles. “Strange to find such a number in column, this deep into the Fen.”

  “Aye. Where in gods’ names were they headed?” Gwen asked.

  “This was no patrol. They rode too heavy for that.” Sir Brennan trotted over to the nearest corpse. “Plate-and-half. Sword, shield, mercy-blade, axe. These are front-line riders.”

  “Days from the front line,” Gwen muttered.

  “Unless the front line has moved,” Brennan mused.

  “There aren’t enough here to have overwhelmed Sir Hogue,” Gwen said. “I don’t like it. Send two riders ahead, whoever has the freshest horses. I want to make sure no one escaped the column.”

  Sir Brennan nodded and peeled two men away from the melee. He pointed them down the trail. The rest dismounted and went among the dead, offering mercy to the wounded and gathering whatever loot was worth carrying. A few knights asked for ransom, but Gwen shook her head.

  “No prisoners, no ransom,” she said. The men grumbled, but they buried their blades in the rich and the poor alike. They rolled the dead into the forest and caught the horses that had survived, to lead them back to Highbeck. They were just preparing to move on when Brennan’s men returned.

  “Any runners?” Gwen asked. They shook their heads, but their faces were as white as snow.

  “No, my lady,” one of the men replied. “We found something more.”

  * * *

  The Fen was an ancient place. Mounds of earth—rocky and topped with iron-hard trees as withered and tough as bones—dimpled the landscape in all directions. The low trenches between these mounds were soft loam, sodden with run-off and groundwater, more swamp than land. The paths that wound through the land were narrow and rocky, hard to travel by foot or horse, overhung with unyielding branches. Limestone bluffs sprouted from the ground like broken teeth.

  Every trail gave a hundred chances for ambush. The sight lines were always close, the air humid and cold, the nights dark and bristling with insect life. It was no place to drive an army. Despite the broken ground, two dozen knights and their attendant men-at-arms were camped at the intersection of three of the old roads, tents thrown across the rocky ground and clinging to root-gnarled hillocks, small, smoky fires palling the air.

  Gwen and her men watched from the thick tree line of a broader plateau, the ground under their feet more stone than earth, the trees twisted from trying to suck nutrients out of the cracks between limestone shelves. Their horses waited two hillocks back, penned like sheep.

  “So we know where that column was headed,” Brennan whispered in Gwen’s ear. “Do you think he’s moved away from the Redoubt?”

  “No,” she said. “We are fewer and traveled faster. The ones we rode down were exhausted. They must have been on the road for weeks.” She scanned the sad banners hanging around the camp, their canvas limp in the humid air. “All of these men are vassals to Halverdt himself. None of the other Suhdrin lords are represented here.”

  “I wonder if Roard and Bassion know about this force?”

  “May yes. May no.” Gwen did a quick count. “They have three times our number, and this is no ground for heroic charges.”

  “We should have brought archers.”

  “Merret needed them to hold the fords.” Gwen slid behind the rise of the hill, resting her head against the mossy ground. “We must warn the Redoubt, and my father, but we have to get around them first.” She nodded toward the encampment.

  “We could ride west. Circle around. There are many trails.”

  “Ride west and we’re too far from the Redoubt to give warning in time,” Gwen said. “Besides, these men are riding north and east. They ride for the Fen Gate.”

  “What happened to hunting?”

  “There are too many,” Gwen said.

  Brennan sighed and rubbed his eyes.

  “So what do you propose?” he asked.

  “We wait until night. Send men back to those bodies. Gather the tabards and their banners. Those men were clearly expected.”

  “You can’t think to just ride up at a canter and through?”

  “Not at a canter, no,” Gwen said. “Not at all.”

  * * *

  Night fell quickly. When the stars came out and Cinder peeked between the thin branches of the wirewood, Gwen cut her hounds loose to find their own way home, then ordered her men to mount up. They were wearing the colors of the dead. Gwen tucked her hair into a dented and bloody helm, then gave Sir Brennan the banner they had plundered. She brought a torch and gave him his lines.

  “A bit dramatic, don’t you think?” he asked.

  “I want them to see the colors,” Gwen said. “Besides, fire always brings out the best in soldiers.”

  They started yelling several curves down the road, spurring to a hard gallop and beating their swords against their shields. They dropped torches into the underbrush, the wirewood taking the flame as quick as dry grass, filling the sky with plumes of black smoke. As they approached the final bend, Gwen leaned over and put the banner in Brennan’s hands to the torch. Fire danced along its trailing edge,
illuminating the tri-acorn and cross of House Halverdt.

  The sentries heard their approach, along with the rest of the camp, and had their spears at the ready. As Gwen and Sir Brennan came into view, the camp guards shouted for the riders to halt.

  “Ambush!” Brennan yelled. “Fire arrows and pitch! Clear the way!”

  The sentries hesitated, and Gwen’s mount faltered, slowing briefly. She kicked it again into a gallop. The banner in Brennan’s hands whipped in the wind of their passage, trailing sparks through the air. By its light, the guards could see that their armor was dented and bloody, their horses flecked in foam. Another moment of hesitation, during which Gwen and Brennan hammered closer, still screaming, and then the sentries gave way.

  Gwen was forced to vault a makeshift barricade before the guards could drag it aside, and then she was in the camp and charging forward. She passed dozens of shocked faces, men and women peering out of tents and stumbling aside to clear the trail. She ran through a campfire, scattering embers into the night.

  “How many?” one of the guards yelled as they passed.

  “Half an army! Gods, maybe the whole of the north is at our heels!”

  “Gheists?” came the reply.

  “Gods be good!” was all that Brennan could manage, and then they were past and bulling their way through.

  Gwen and her men, fifteen strong, slowed once they were past the first round of guards, but kept to a fast pace as they wound their way between campfires and tents. They were forced to ride single file, and she hoped her battered helm proved disguise enough. Not many knew her face, but recognition at this point would mean disaster for them all. More than one knight saw the flaming banner and saluted, muttering curses and the Halverdt words, “Against the night” as Brennan passed. It wasn’t until Gwen could see the sentries at the far end of the camp that she gave the signal and her men picked up the pace.

  “Foray! The pagan dogs have been sighted north of camp!” Brennan yelled at the sentries. The men, confused, pulled the barricade aside and watched in awe as Gwen and her column rumbled past.