The Hallowed Hunt c-3

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  The Ravens were rugged but not high; no snow, either early or late, clung to their green-and-brown heights, though here and there some sheer fall of rock, gleaming in the sun, gave the illusion of ice. Their deep folds were rucked up like a blanket, cut with sharp ravines and secret places. Autumn had turned their summer verdure to gold, brown, and in places splashes of scarlet like sword cuts, laced in turn by the dark green of pines and firs. Beyond the first line of slopes, seen through an occasional gap, the humped ranks swiftly receded into a hazy blue distance that blended imperceptibly with the horizon, as though these hills marched to some boundless otherworld.

  Ingrey wondered how in five gods’ names Great Audar had ever dragged an army through here, at speed. His respect for the old Darthacan grew despite all. Even though Audar had lacked the uncanny charisma of the hallow kings he opposed, his leadership must have been impassioned.

  They were in Badgerbank country now, Ingrey was reminded when they swung around the mining town of Badgerbridge in a suddenly busy river valley that poked up into the hills like a green spearhead. Smoke rose both from the town and from sites farther up the valley, marking smelters, which thickened the autumn haze. He wondered where in this place Ijada’s stepfamily lived. The five-sided temple, a big timber structure, stood out above the town walls, prominent in the distance.

  For a little while, they joined a larger road until they crossed the river by the stone bridge just above the town. Under the arches, lashings of timber and some barrels moved down the rocky stream, attended by nimble men and boys with poles. They passed carts, trudging husbandmen with their beasts, pack trains of mules. Horseriver hurried them along here without pausing, turning upstream, ignoring a main crossroad, then once more striking west into the woodlands on a lesser track.

  Horseriver marked the course of the sun and picked up the pace for a while, but as the track dwindled was forced to a more careful progress. The horses labored up and slid down the steepening slopes. More up than down, and finally they turned right onto a faint trail, heaved up a short slope, and descended into a hidden dell.

  No hamlet or farmhouse awaited here, but a mere campsite. A pair of grooms jumped up as they approached and ran to take the horses. The usual three remounts were picketed among the trees: sturdy cobs, this time, rather than the long-striding hot-blooded coursers Horseriver had favored for the roads. Fara, exhausted, dismounted slowly and stiffly and stared in dismay at her next proposed abode, bedrolls sheltered in a stand of fir trees, less even than last night’s dire hovel. If she had ever camped before on royal hunts, Ingrey was fairly sure her days had ended in silken pavilions attended by cooing handmaidens and all possible comforts. Here, every other consideration was clearly sacrificed to speed and efficiency. We travel light now, and will not be here long.

  “Did you bring it?” Horseriver demanded of the older groom.

  The man signed himself in respect, ducking his head. “Yes, my lord.”

  “Fetch it out.”

  “Aye, my lord.”

  Leaving the tired horses to his younger companion, the bowlegged groom trudged to the campsite and bent over a pile of packs. Horseriver, Fara, and Ingrey followed. The groom rose clutching a pole some seven feet long, wrapped about with ancient, brittle canvas tied with twine. Horseriver sighed in satisfaction as he took it, his hands wrapping about the canvas binding, and swung it upright, planting the butt by his boot. Briefly, he leaned his forehead against it and squeezed his eyes shut.

  Ingrey led the weary Fara to one of the bedrolls and made sure she was able to sit down without falling. She stared up through shadowed eyes as he turned back to Horseriver. The groom trod away again to assist with the horse lines.

  “What is that, sire?” Ingrey asked, nodding to the pole. It made his hairs stir, whatever it was.

  Horseriver half grinned, though without mirth. “The true king must have his hallowed banner, Ingrey.”

  “That’s not the royal banner you had at Bloodfield, surely.”

  “No, that one was broken and cut to shreds and buried with me. This is the one I carried when I last was king in name, if only to the remnant of the faithful kin who followed me, when I raided Audar’s garrisons from across the fen borders. It was wrapped after my last death in battle and put away; and later delivered, it was thought, to my son and heir. Little comfort it brought me, but I was glad to have it nonetheless. I hid it in the rafters at Castle Horseriver. For three hundred years it has lain up there, preserved against some better day. Instead, it comes down to this day. But it comes.”

  Horseriver leaned it carefully against a great pine tree, propped up and sheltered by a couple of sweeping low branches, then stretched and dropped cross-legged to a bedroll. Ingrey followed suit, finding himself between Horseriver and the princess. Ingrey’s eyes were drawn again to the bundle. “It gives me… it has some weirding upon it, sire.” It gave him cold chills, if he was honest.

  Horseriver licked his lips in something like satisfaction. “Good, my wise wolfling. Being so shrewd, have you realized yet what the other function of a banner-carrier was?”

  “Eh?” said Ingrey. When Wencel wasn’t deceiving him or terrorizing him, the earl also did a very good job of making him feel a fool, he reflected glumly.

  “And yet you cleansed Boleso, no small task,” Horseriver mused. “I do weary of trying to herd your wits, but last time pays for all.” He glanced aside at Fara, as if to be certain she was listening, which caught Ingrey’s attention, for Wencel had avoided looking at her or speaking to her beyond the most direct commands.

  “The banner-carriers slit the throats of their comrades too wounded to carry from the field, you said,” Ingrey put in. A ghastly enough duty, but Ingrey was suddenly sure there was more. Ghastly, ghostly, wait…

  Horseriver took a breath. “Put it together. The soul of a slain spirit warrior had to be cleansed of its life-companion before it might go to the gods. But a warrior was likely to fall in battle, when there was not time for proper rites or sometimes even the chance to carry the body away. For when even the wounded must be abandoned, the dead fare no better. Nothing of spirit can exist in the world of matter without a being of matter to support it, I know you have been taught this orthodoxy. That a warrior’s soul might not drift as a sundered revenant and be lost, it was the banner-carrier’s task to bind it to him or her as a haunt, and carry it away to where it might at length be cleansed by his true kin shaman. Or whatever shaman might be had, in a pinch.”

  “Five gods,” whispered Ingrey. “No wonder the bannermen were desperately defended by their comrades.” And had Wencel’s binding of Ijada to him been some variant of this ancient practice?

  “Aye, for they carried their slain kinsmen’s hopes of heaven away with them. And so every fighting cadre who were led by or contained spirit warriors had such a sacred banner-carrier.

  “Now, the hallow king’s bannerman… “ Horseriver trailed off. He straightened his shoulders and began again. “He had this same duty to his lord’s soul, should the hallow king bear a kin beast. Not all elected kings were so graced, though many were, especially in unsettled times. But whether his lord were spirit warrior or no, the hallow king’s banner-carrier had another sacred task, and not only when his lord died in a battle going ill. Though you may take it that if the hallow king was slain on the field, that battle was generally going quite ill indeed. Water.” Wencel licked dry lips, and stared into his lap, his back curving again.

  Ingrey glanced to the pile of packs, spotted a flaccid waterskin, and brought it to the tale-teller. Wencel tilted his head back and drank deep, indifferent to the musty staleness of it. He then sighed and propped himself on one hand, as though the burden of this telling was slowly driving him into the earth.

  “It was the royal banner-carrier’s duty, upon the death of his lord, to capture and hold the hallow kingship itself, until time to transfer it back to the ordained heir. And so this greatest of native Wealding magics was passed down from generati
on to generation, from times lost in time until… now.”

  “Lord Stagthorne—the late king—had no banner-carrier when he died, day before yesterday,” Ingrey observed suddenly. “Was this your doing?”

  “One of several necessary yet not sufficient arrangements, yes,” murmured Wencel. “If true interregnums were easy to come by, more would have occurred by chance ere now, I assure you. Or by design.”

  He grimaced and drew breath, continuing: “The royal banner-carrier, by tradition and profound necessity, had several qualities. He—or she”—his glance at Fara sharpened—”was usually of the same kin, close-tied by shared high blood, though not always the heir. Chosen by the king, bound to the task by the royal shaman—the king himself if he was one—acclaimed by the spirit warriors assembled in the kin meeting. And so we have all here that is needed to make another such, if in miniature. Though ceremony, likewise, shall be lacking. Not in song but in silence, shall the last royal banner-carrier of the Old Weald ride at her beloved lord’s side.” His side glance at Fara was blackly ironic.

  Her gritted teeth shifted for speech, but Wencel raised a hand; his lips moved in an unvoiced Voice. This time, Ingrey could feel it when the geas wrapped itself around Fara like a gag, held knotted by her own fear and anger. Her lips moved, closed, pressed tight; but her eyes burned.

  “To what purpose?” whispered Ingrey. For he does not tutor us for no reason, of that I am certain. Horseriver had been instructing him for days, he realized in retrospect.

  Wencel crouched, hesitated, pushed himself up with a pained grunt. He turned his head and spat a gobbet of blood into the gloom. The iron tang smote Ingrey’s nostrils. The earl stared into the gathering twilight where the grooms had finished with the horses and were diffidently approaching. “We must have a fire. And food, I suppose. I hope they brought enough. Purpose? You’ll see soon enough.”

  “Should I expect to survive it?” Ingrey glanced at Fara. Either of us?

  Wencel’s lips curved, briefly. “You may.” He walked off into the resin-scented shadows.

  Ingrey wasn’t sure if that last was meant as prediction or permission.

  Ingrey was awakened in the dark before dawn by horseriver himself, tossing wood on the fire to build it up to a bright flare. They had all slept in yesterday’s riding clothes, and the grooms, it seemed, were to be left to break camp and ride the spent horses home. So there was little for Ingrey or Fara to do to prepare beyond sitting up, pulling on their boots, and eating the stale bread, cheese, and blessedly hot drinks shoved into their hands.

  The cobby horses were lightly burdened also, Ingrey noticed. Food for a day was packed into the saddlebags, including measures of grain for the mounts, but most of the spare clothing and amenities, largely for Fara, were stripped out; neither were the bedrolls or other camping gear added. The implication of these lacks disturbed Ingrey, an unease he did not confide to the voiceless princess.

  Through the night fog that had risen from the forest, creating a dripping hush, gray light began to filter. Fara shivered in the cold and damp as Ingrey boosted her aboard her horse, a sturdy little black with a hogged mane and white socks. Horseriver disposed his banner pole rather awkwardly along his horse’s off side, tied beneath the stirrup flap to ride under his leg. He mounted and motioned them forward with a wave of his arm: as he had promised, in silence. Ingrey glanced back at the grooms. The elder stood at attention, looking worried; the younger was already climbing back into an abandoned bedroll to steal some extra warmth and sleep.

  Horseriver led them up into a gap in the hills, first on a trail, then on a path, then on deer paths. Ingrey, bringing up the rear, ducked swinging branches. Gray twigs scraped on his leathers like clawing fingernails as the way narrowed. The horses’ hooves crunched through the fallen leaves, and slid, sometimes, on last year’s black rot beneath the drifts, sending up a musty dank smell.

  The brightening day drew up the soft curtain of mist, and the boles of the beeches stood out in sharp relief at last, as though the fog had clotted into firm gray bark. Then, beneath the pale blue bowl of sky, it grew hot. Biting black flies found the riders and their mounts, so that to the heave and plunge of the horses over the uneven terrain was added the occasional squeal and buck as the insects tormented them. When Horseriver led them into a ravine that ended in a cleft, with no way out but back the way they’d climbed in, Ingrey grew aware that however well Horseriver had known this land once, it had changed even beyond his recognition. How long…? They backtracked and scrambled up an opposite ridge instead.

  Horseriver pushed on slowly but relentlessly. Hours into the trek, with the sun high overhead, they stopped at a clear spring to feed, water, and rest the horses and themselves. Yellow leaves fluttered down in the filtered light like breaking promises to clutter the glassy surface of the pool. Not all the leaves had fallen yet, and the view around the site was still half-obscured; Horseriver climbed up to a higher point and stared out for a time. Whatever he saw apparently satisfied him, for he returned and commanded them aboard their horses once more.

  We are in Ijada’s country, Ingrey realized. He was not sure at what point they had crossed into her dower gift: possibly as far back as the campsite. The scene took on a sudden new interest, and he was almost prepared to forgive even the black flies. Broad lands did not precisely convey their mood, though if they could be rolled out flat, Ingrey thought, they would equal a small earldom. Instead they were crimped into something difficult, stony, and wild; beauty that arrested rather than soothed. Yes, that is Ijada.

  He felt in his mind for her absence, like a tongue probing the wounded socket of a drawn tooth. All he could find was the hot infection of Horseriver. Alone together, this taciturn royal procession of three seemed to him. Godsforsaken.

  The sun was sinking toward the western horizon when they clambered up through another gap, angled left, and came out upon a sudden promontory. They pulled up their horses and stared.

  Two steep-sided, undulating ridges embraced a valley about two miles wide and four miles long, then curved around again to enclose the far end like a wall. The valley floor was as flat as the surface of a lake. On the near end, beneath their feet, lay a stretch of dun grasses and yellowing reeds, a half-dried marsh. Beyond it, a few twisted oak trees stood out like sentinels, then a dark and dense oak wood crouched. Even with half the leaves down, backlit by the setting sun, its shadows were impenetrable to Ingrey’s eye. His head jerked back at the miasma of woe that seemed, even from here, to arise from the trees.

  He drew in his breath in sharp dismay, then tore his gaze away to find Horseriver looking at him.

  “Feel it, do you?” the earl inquired, as if lightly.

  “Aye.” What? What do I feel? If Ingrey had possessed a back ridge, all the fur along it would be rising in a ragged line right now, he thought.

  Horseriver dismounted and untied his banner pole from under his saddle flap. He stared briefly and without pleasure at his wife for a moment; Fara stared back wide-eyed, her shoulders bowing in, then dropped her gaze and shuddered. Horseriver shook his head in something that, had it more heart, would have been disgust, and strolled over and handed the pole to Ingrey.

  “Bear this for a time. I don’t want it dropped.”

  Ingrey’s left stirrup included the small metal cup of a spear rest. He swung the pole up and seated it, and took up his reins with his right hand. His horse was far too tired by now to give him trouble. Horseriver remounted, swung his animal around, and motioned for them to follow.

  They descended from the promontory in a zigzag through a thinning woods. At the bottom, Ingrey was compelled to dismount, hand the banner back to Horseriver, draw his sword, and hack a path for them all through a head-high hedge of brittle brambles that seemed not just thorny, but fanged. A few whipping backlashes pierced even his leathers, and the punctures and scratches bled flying drops as he fought his way in. On the other side, at the edge of the dried marsh, Horseriver dismounted again and unwr
apped his banner at last.

  The desiccated twine parted with faint puffs of powder as his knife touched it, and the brittle canvas cracked away. A discolored nettle-silk banner unfolded, bearing the device of his house, the running white stallion on a green field above three wavy blue lines; in the fading light, more gray stallion above gray lines on a gray field, disappearing into a fog. This time, he made Fara take it. He murmured words Ingrey could barely hear and still less understand, but Ingrey sensed it when a new, dark current sprang up between the two. The silent—silenced –Fara’s backbone stiffened as though braced, and her chin came up; only in her eyes did pools of muted terror lurk.

  Horseriver handed his mount’s reins to Ingrey and took the bridle of Fara’s black cob. He led off this time on foot, weaving his way oddly through the tussocks of yellow grasses. Ingrey saw why as they passed deceptive dark patches, sucking bogs lethal to a horse’s heavy step. He took care to steer his mount precisely in the earl’s wake. The day’s warmth lingered in the air despite the dankness rising from the marsh. But then the shadow of the wood, cast long by the setting sun, crept out to meet them; when they passed into it, the sudden biting chill of it turned their exhalations to pale mist.

  They approached the outlying oak tree, and the name of Wounded Woods seemed doubly earned to Ingrey. The tree was huge and old, but seemed blighted. The leaves still clinging to its withered branches were not crisp, brown, fluted curls, but limp, blackened, and misshapen. Trunk and branches seemed knotted and twisted far beyond the rule for oaks—wrung like rags—and tumorous burls wept sickly black ooze.

  A warrior stepped from the tree. Not from under it, or beside it, or behind it: he stepped from the trunk itself as though passing through a curtain. His boiled leather armor was rotten with age. From the haft of his spear, upon which he leaned as though it was an old man’s staff, an unidentifiable scrap of animal fur fluttered. His blond beard was crusted with dried blood, and he still bore the wounds of his death; an ear hacked away, ax gashes splitting the armor, a dismembered hand tied to his belt with a bit of rag. A badger pelt was attached by its skull to his rusty iron cap, peering through sightless dried eyes, and the black-and-white fur dangled down the back of his neck as he turned to slowly scrutinize each of the three before him.