Priest (Ratcatchers Book 1)
Page 15
Heden remembered his assignment. Kavalen, the dead knight. But this woman was a more immediate puzzle and Heden instinctively believed solving her now would be fruitful later. He decided not to mention the knight he met earlier. Explaining to someone else how he chopped someone’s head off and they put it back on didn’t seem like the best way to make a first impression.
“What are you doing here alone?” Heden asked.
“I have come to prepare the…,” she began without thinking. Then she spun around and became defiant. “I need not answer you!” she said. “I am a squire of the Green, this is our priory, you are the interloper!” She put her hand on the hilt of her sword. “Who art thou and why cometh thou here?” The cant was back.
“I’m here because something’s happened,” he said lamely. Not sure how to phrase it. She reacted by looking at the floor.
“The baron sent you here?” she asked, lowering her voice. “To ask for our aid?”
“No. No, not exactly. I mean, yes in one sense, sure. She knows I’m here. She wants me to succeed. But the Hierarch of the Church of Cavall the Righteous sent me.” He used the formal term for the bishop out of instinct.
“We have had no messenger from Ollghum Keep,” she observed, and leaned against one of the prayer benches. “”Tis passing strange.”
Heden was careful not to respond right away. His instincts told him that just coming out and telling her the forest wouldn’t allow anyone up here would be a mistake.
“Do you know anything,” he said slowly, not sure if this was a good question to ask, “about an army of urmen marshalling to the north?”
Her face lost its expression. She became still and didn’t answer. Heden took that as a ‘yes.’
“The Hierarch sent me,” he said walking forward slowly like a man approaching a wild animal. “because a knight has died.”
She looked down and said “Thou must speak to Sir Taethan, he will be here anon.”
“Taethan,” he said. “Is he the commander of the order now?”
She shook her head in disbelief at the foolishness of his question, more to herself than anything else, and did not answer.
Instead, still leaning against the end of one of the prayer benches, she gave him a very knowing look. “You are a handsome man, though passing old.” Heden raised his eyebrows. “Have you been with many women?” Her eyes flitted to the archway, the entrance to the priory.
“What?” he asked flatly.
“Women,” she reiterated. She pulled her chain shirt down over her leather armor, and inflated herself slightly. She then indicated with a flourish of her hands the inward and outward curves relevant to her point. “You are familiar with the phenomenon? Spear and distaff? Jousting on the fields of love?”
“I’m sorry?” Heden asked, and found himself absurdly blushing and speechless. It suddenly felt warm in the priory.
She laughed. It sounded like birdsong. Her eyes danced. She walked up to him and stood too close, looking up at him with blue eyes and sculpted red lips.
“You are, I can tell. You have won many a tournament, I judge. And though aged, you are still young enough to know to be flattered and flustered when the time comes for it, well played.” She flounced away.
She had caught Heden off guard and now he knew what was strange about her. She was proud, strong, and confident but that wasn’t it. She behaved like someone who’d spent very little time among people. She said whatever came to mind. Fifteen years as a squire in the wode, and she had almost no experience with anyone who was not a knight.
“When was the last time you went home to Brode? Or saw Ollghum Keep?”
She ignored him again. He thought he knew the answer. Part of him was annoyed by the fact that she ignored so much of what he asked, but he respected it. She didn’t answer when she thought the question wasn’t important. And she was avoiding telling Heden a lot.
She went into one of the small rooms to the left and right of the altar, and came out a few moment later with a huge chest on her right shoulder, and a huge wooden maul in her left hand. The chest was so big, it looked like it would crush her. She didn’t even seem to notice the weight.
“My mistress will be here anon,” she said as she walked past him, toward the archway leading outside. “You will wait for her here and she shall take your full measure.”
She left the priory, and Heden alone. He waited a few moments, looked at the stained glass depicting the last battle of Saint Godwin, and put Lynwen’s talisman back under his plate and leather. He wished he could remember more about Godwin.
He shrugged, and walked outside to see what Aderyn was doing.
Chapter Twenty Four
“What are you doing?” Heden asked, leaning against the archway of the priory.
Aderyn ignored him. Again. She was driving large stakes into the ground with the maul. Spread out around her were huge, brightly colored sheets, pinions, ropes and flags with many crests, all taken from the chest. There was a riot of color in the scattered sheets, but the dominant color was green.
They were the makings of a pavilion.
Heden looked around the beautiful glen surrounding the priory. The fresh air on his face felt invigorating. Another horse stood next to his, drinking lazily from one of the troughs on either side of the entrance to the priory. The horse was smaller than Heden’s and lightly armored. It had not been there when Heden arrived and so must be Aderyn’s.
“What is all this?” Heden asked, looking at the colored fabrics on the grass.
“Canst thou not see?” Aderyn asked, mildly.
“We’re back to that?” Heden said with a sigh.
“Hast thou not eyes?” She grunted loudly as she swung again. Though she was half Heden’s weight, she was strong. It took only two attempts to drive a stake into the ground.
Heden sighed and walked around the woman as she worked. It would take her all day at this rate, but she seemed resigned to the task. Heden smiled. He recognized the attitude.
“No, I can see it’s a pavilion, I’m asking why you’re bothering to set it up.”
“The stakes mark the center of the jousting field. Then,” she said nodding to a large circle where no grass grew, “I stake off the melee. Then the tent where there will be food and drink. Whenever the knights gather together,” she said, grunting as she drove another stake into the turf, “there is a tournament.”
“Really?” Heden asked, a little surprised.
Aderyn didn’t answer.
“Every time?” he asked.
“Every time,” she said, and stopped to wipe sweat from her brow. She drew her copper and flax hair back in an impromptu pony tail to keep it out of her face.
“You’re going to erect a whole tournament pavilion in your armor?” Heden asked.
“Never remove your armor in the forest, except to bathe,” she said. Heden got the sense she was quoting someone. “We are never safe, even here.”
Heden took in the idyllic scenery in and tried to imagine an army of urq swarming out of the forest. Even with his experience, it was hard to imagine. The green trees and yellow grass, the blue sky and beautiful white clouds. There were birds and butterflies and bees all around. Occasionally, a grasshopper would leap from Heden’s footfall. This was how the world must have looked, he thought, when it was just the Elves.
“How often do you all get together?” he asked.
“Once a year,” she said, with a shrug. “Sometimes more.”
Heden watched and thought.
“You’re saying the order only gathers together once a year?”
She ignored him. She’d already answered him and he was just trying to catch up.
“But they must…they must see each other between tournaments.”
She hammered another stake into the ground. It was going to be a large pavilion with several tents.
“Each knight,” she said, “has a demesne covering perhaps a dozen leagues.”
“A what?” Heden asked.
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“A dozen leagues,” she replied dryly.
“No, you said something else before that.”
She stopped hammering and thought.
“Demesne?” It sounded to Heden like ‘deh-main.’
“That’s it.”
“It is the knight’s territory. All the forest knows the demesne is under the protection of the knight, and more: knows which knight any part of the forest belongs to.”
Heden tilted his head. “I’ve never heard that word before,” he admitted.
“It is a life of solitude and quiet contemplation,” Aderyn said, going back to work. “A knight may go months without meeting another soul to speak to.”
“Quiet contemplation,” Heden said, watching her work. Watching the strength of her body. She could have used that hammer to crush a man’s skull in one blow.
“It is a noble calling,” she said.
“Quiet contemplation until a thyrs attacks.”
She smiled without looking at him. “Then it is a test of mettle.”
“Or an army of urq,” he said, ignoring her for once.
She stopped smiling and stopped hammering.
“That rarely happens,” she intoned. Then went back to work.
“Let me help you,” Heden said.
“Leave,” Aderyn said immediately, hammering another stake into the ground.
“What?”
She turned to look at him and leaned on her maul. “If you wish to be a help, then leave us. Leave now, leave the forest, return to your world and leave us be.”
“I can’t do that.”
“You could,” Aderyn said. “I have taken the full measure of you and I surmise you have quit the field before.”
“You’re wrong,” Heden said, defending himself. He knew it was uncharacteristic of him, but he was offended that she thought she knew him already.
“Besides,” he continued. “I was sent here to fix whatever’s wrong.”
Aderyn just shook her head. “There is no way to fix what is wrong,” she said. “You can only make it worse.” She had dropped the cant. And for some reason, Heden believed her.
“Do you know what happened to Kavalen?” Heden asked.
“All the forest knows,” she said, taunting him a little.
“But you won’t tell me,” he said.
“You must speak with Sir Taethan.”
“If I ask,” Heden said, trying a trick, “Sir Taethan what happened to Kavalen, what will he tell me?”
She laughed at him. “You are so crude, you stumble about so comically. Do you expect that to work?”
Heden shrugged one shoulder sheepishly.
“Worth a try,” he said.
“Well, Sir Taethan will be here soon, you can ask him your…”
She stopped talking abruptly, and her whole body tensed, though she didn’t take her eyes off Heden. Heden straightened up. It looked like she was about to attack him.
He looked behind him to see if maybe she saw something past him, but as he did so he heard her maul hit the ground.
He turned back and saw her sprinting in two layers of armor to her horse. Her running footsteps the only sound in the suddenly silent forest.
Heden realized he’d left his backpack in the priory. His heart was racing and he wasn’t yet sure what…
The ground shook, like a distant tower toppling. Heden’s legs went a little weak. He became disoriented, and imagined the threat could be behind any of the trees surrounding him. Not now! he thought, and fought to master himself.
Aderyn had gained her horse and from it quickly donned her helm, a shield, and pulled a sword from a scabbard.
The ground shook again. And again. And then several times in rapid succession, the dull roar of impact getting impossibly loud in Heden’s ear. The ground shook violently, the water in the troughs spilled out, but the granite priory didn’t budge.
Bursting from the trees into the clearing was something shaped like a man. A huge man with skin tanned dark brown, wearing animal skins and improvised armor pulled, it seemed, from all manner of man and urq. It wielded a small tree trunk and its teeth were rotting. It had a thicket of chestnut brown hair on top of its head, and its huge eyes burned with hatred. It was a thyrs. Men for whom they were mythical called them giants, and why not? But any folk of the north, the folk of Ollghum Keep, would call them thyrs, or thyrwights. Which was their own name for themselves.
“I’VE COME TO KILL A MAN!” the thyrs bellowed. It seemed massive, but Heden’s instincts took over and he compared the giant to the trees. The trees were much taller. This was a minor giant of the hills. Not one of the really big ones you got in the mountains. It had been years since Heden had dealt with anything like this, and even then he had a whole company with him. But he wasn’t a Prelate then. His heart stilled. He was unarmed, but thirteen years of this sort of thing came back to him.
Aderyn stood in the center of the clearing, the stakes of the future pavilion surrounding her. Heden noted it gave her a small advantage, the stakes acting like pikes set to receive a charge. Her horse stood proud next to her, neighed a challenge and stamped its front hooves.
“I will have to do!” Aderyn called out a challenge. “I will settle your feud with Sir Nudd and end your life ‘ere you take another step if you do not leave this place and return to your home!”
Black Gods, Heden thought. Would I have done that at twenty-eight? I’d have probably shit my pants.
The thyrs looked around, seeming to ignore Heden. He peered down at Aderyn.
“LITTLE KNIGHT,” he pronounced, drawing the words out. Heden thought Aderyn grew in stature. “I’LL CRUSH YOUR BONES AND SUCK OUT YOUR BRAINS!”
This alarmed Heden and his face betrayed shock and surprise. Aderyn didn’t even wait for the thyrs to finish his sentence.
As soon as it was obvious the thyrswight wasn’t going to turn around and leave, she ran forward, closing the distance between them. With several paces left to go, she hurled herself high into the air, her speed and strength supernatural, her sword poised to stab downward into the naked right thigh of the huge man-like creature.
Heden weighed several options carefully, and all in an instant. Calling upon powers beyond the need could have dire consequences for him. Summoning a Dominion or assuming the mantle of Cavall could result in Heden being a slave to his god for years and questing through who knows what foreign lands or underground worlds.
Watching Aderyn summoning strength beyond mortal ken and leaping something like twenty feet into the air, he knew she wasn’t going to make it. The thyrs was as fast as he was big. Heden remembered their speed.
He said a quick prayer, pointing at Aderyn. Warding her. Three words. There was no visible sign of the prayer’s effectiveness. Heden had no doubt the prayer worked.
The thyrwight took advantage of Aderyn’s advancing leap, and swung his club like one might swat at a fly. Aderyn’s attack seemed fast, but not compared to the giant’s reaction.
His tree-trunk club hit Aderyn square in the chest, at the apex of her leap. There was a crunching sound, as of metal on wood, and a loud grunt. Aderyn was hurled up and over the clearing, into the forest beyond. Heden’s head craned up and over and back, watching her sail through the air until the forest behind him swallowed her. The sound of breaking tree limbs continued for several moments, getting quieter and settling down over time.
Aderyn’s horse turned and rode off into the forest after her.
The giant grunted to himself and smiled. He took two steps forward, crushing some of the pavilion’s stakes under his thick-soled feet. He looked around the clearing as though he’d just conquered it and was now seeking other challengers. Then he looked down at Heden apparently noticing him for the first time.
“WHO ARE YOU?” The huge figure asked, sniffing. The words came out like ‘oooeruuu?’ He was aware of Heden, but didn’t seem to care about him one way or the other.
Heden realized something was expected of him.
The thyrs sneered at him. “LITTLE MAN,” he said. “NOT EVEN A KNIGHT!”
It seemed as though the giant figure was considering crushing Heden outright. Heden sighed and pulled the talisman of Lynwen from under his breastplate and leather.
Heden didn’t know the situation with the thyrs, and this meant he had no idea what kind of prayer would be effective. He didn’t think it was evil. It might be safe to blind the thing, or turn its legs to stone, but these were minor orisons and might not work on so strong a creature as a hill thyrs.
Before he could finish praying, and therefore technically before his request was complete, something behind Heden caught the giant’s attention.
“WHUT?!” the giant grunted, confused. “ALIVE?!”
Heden had to turn to see what the thing was talking about, even though he sensed it. He had to see it.
Aderyn was winded, bruised, bleeding, and she’d lost her helmet, but she was grinning like a madwoman bracing herself against a tree at the edge of the clearing, her horse behind her. Heden’s wards had protected her, but more, she had a vitality, a courage beyond anything Heden had seen in many years. He was in awe.
She stepped into the clearing, pushed her hair away from her face, and nodded. “Aye Burran,” she said. “Your father couldn’t kill me. What makes you think you can!?”
She’s taunting him, Heden thought. If he gets mad enough he might really hurt her.
Burran roared, tendons standing out on its neck, and Heden’s ears rung. In response, Aderyn barked a sound like “hai!” and her horse started to gallop forward. She grabbed the pommel of the saddle as the horse rode past, and swung herself up.
The horse lowered its head and seemed determined to bear down on the thyrswight.
Aderyn pulled a javelin from a quiver on the horse’s saddlebags. Heden realized that having stopped his prayer, he’d missed an opportunity to fell the thyrs, and thereby end this conflict. There was something about watching this squire fight the giant that mesmerized him.