Black River

by Peter Fugazzotto

  "There it is," said Harad, his voice pushing veins through the memories.

  "Never thought we'd be back here," said Patch. "Hopefully someone recognizes us and we don't end up with a spear through our chest."

  "How could anyone forget the Hounds after those summer games?" Harad roughly combed through his red beard and hair with his thick fingers.

  "Getting ready for your bride?" asked Patch. "Hate to break the bad news to you but you're still ugly and, on top of that, uglier. Might be able to find an old maid for you, as long as she's near blind. And can't smell."

  Tears formed in Harad's eyes. "So good to be home."

  "This is it, Hounds," said Shield. "We have returned."

  BOTH WORLDS

  SPEAR WALKED BESIDE the horses, letting Pullo and Vincius ride.

  They had pushed on northwards since the Hounds had abandoned them. Spear led the small party through the hills and ravines, the grassy gullies and sudden thick patches of forest. Then the ancient forests of smooth barked trees gave way and they were exposed to the sky again, climbing a hill of stone and struggling grasses, and when they reached the crest he could see that the land lay in folds before them. The journey north would be difficult.

  "Shield shows his face again in Cullan town and I'll see him flogged," Pullo said. "Maybe worse. They were soldiers of Dhurma, you know, and when we need them most, they run off."

  Spear knew this outsider would never understand the North. During their rest, he had painted fingers of woad across his cheeks. The gristle of a beard was forming on his face and his bald head darkening with the return of hair.

  "Never a soldier of Dhurma," said Spear.

  "You?"

  "No, them."

  "Well, as close as could be expected for Northerners," said the sergeant. "Stories of what they did, the killings, the hunting down of dark magic, their stands in battle, it all came to us. They were a part of Dhurma."

  "They fought for you. But they were never soldiers of Dhurma. They were always the Hounds, always clan warriors of the North. Once in the blood, never out."

  "And you? What are you?"

  Spear chuckled. He swept his hand across the grasses before them. "I am Spear Spyrchylde, son of the North, little lord of Cullan town, moving farther and farther north, away from my Yriel, my happiness, for a handful of coin. I am a ghost, neither this nor that."

  "Toeing the line between Dhurma and the North."

  "What better place than at the border, with a foot in both worlds?"

  Vincius scoffed. "You'll need to make a choice. You can't just live between worlds."

  "Well why the hell can't I? I've done it for near a dozen years. I don't follow the North or the South. I follow the coin."

  "A man needs to make a decision about where he will lie down."

  Spear spat to the ground. "I'm not ready to cave in and, you, boy, should not be talking about what a man should be doing. Days out here and nary a shadow of hair on your face. What kind of men are you growing down there in the South?"

  "Hey, hey, hey," said Pullo "The both of you shut up. We've got miles to cross and my ears already hurt with the arguing between you two. So just shut it."

  As they crested the next of the craggy hills, Spear let out a low whistle.

  To the east were riders. Three horses, two riders.

  "What do we do?" asked Vincius.

  "We see who it is," said Spear.

  "But what if it's the warlock?"

  Spear laughed. "Then we kill him and return to Cullan and a warm bed."

  But it was not the warlock.

  As the figures shaped up with the nearing distance, Spear saw that the man dressed in the heavy fur cloak was not a Northman, but Urbidis, the lost commander of the fortress.

  The sergeant kicked his horse across the remaining hills and gullies, goading the panting horse up the final hill.

  Spear jogged alongside them, his lungs aching with the effort.

  Urbidis was all smiles. "Pullo. I had wondered what had happened to you. And Spear? Along for a handful of coin I suppose."

  "We've been searching for you," said the sergeant. "When you didn't come back, I led men north." Pullo swallowed. "If there was a chance that you were alive, I had to find you."

  "All those men, Sergeant."

  "I'm sorry." Pullo looked around at the great empty lands about them. "If I had known, I would have come alone."

  "He baits us, Pullo. He wants us to drag legion after legion into his trap. I see it."

  "One of your cowardly soldiers said that the dead rose," said Spear. "Is that true?"

  Urbidis related his tale of the ambush, his capture, the boy, his escape and then what happened in the village. He told them where he left the bodies of the Painted Men and how he acquired the horses.

  "The Hounds were with us," said Vincius. "But Shield turned from us. He has broken from Empire. I want his head for this betrayal."

  Urbidis's eyes hung heavy on the Apprentice Chronicler before finally speaking. "When we get back to Cullan town, we can sort things out."

  "It's not what we intend. We must go north after the warlock. We must finish this."

  "Has word been sent South?" Urbidis asked. Pullo nodded. "Then the legions should be on the move. They will come to Cullan town and then venture to cross the Black River."

  "We should warn them," said Pullo. "We can't let them walk into a trap."

  "When you were ambushed, the dead did not rise?" asked Urbidis.

  "Mud men came at us. The warlock bent his song and it was too much for us."

  "He has powerful magic," said Vincius. "To control so many at once."

  "And the witch?" asked Urbidis.

  "There was no witch," the Apprentice Chronicler answered. "He faced us alone."

  "The witch raises the dead," said the grubby boy, finally breaking his silence.

  "Then it's more than just the warlock we will need to hunt down," said Urbidis.

  "And do we send someone to Cullan? Let them know where we are going?" asked Pullo. "They could help us."

  "A full legion will just walk into their trap again. We must get to them first, and especially the witch."

  With that, the party began to move north again. All but Spear, who busied himself with the extra horse that Urbidis had brought with him. Spear checked the hooves, tightened the saddle, and ran his hands through the horse's mane.

  He was heading north with these men, north to hunt to down and kill his own. All for a handful of coin. All to buy his citizenship in a country where he did not belong.

  LAKE'S END

  HARAD WATCHED SHIELD and Patch making the final descent towards Lake's End. He hesitated, suddenly empty of the unspoken eagerness that crossed the faces of his two companions.

  For Harad, doubt lingered.

  He returned with a gift, the magic of the South. But would the clan accept what he had to offer? Would they sit while he struggled to read the words that had been captured on the page?

  The book lay hard against his ribs, bloated from the crossing of the Black River, dented from a blow by one of the mud men. But he held it there, close to his heart, hopeful.

  He clicked and his horse plodded forward down the well-worn trail that meandered among the heather and craggy white stones. A small party of men on horse had already passed through the sapling fence that surrounded the village and were coming at a trot across the massive meadow where the summer games were held. The grasses still hung heavy, pressed down with the memory of so many Northmen.

  He wondered who, after all these years, still remained? Would he know anyone? Would he find familiar and welcoming faces? Had any of the Hounds found their way back here?

  How would he fit in again after all this time?

  It was not just the passage of years that concerned him but how he had changed.

  When he was young, an unscarred youth, he knew of nothing but life at Lake's End. He stuck to his mother's side as she cooked and mended clothes and f
ished along the shores of the lake, clinging to her leg in the icy cold water, whining to go back to the shore while she and the other women laughed at how soft the sons of the North had become.

  As he grew, he fell into the circle of unscarred boys, boys not yet men, who ran as a gang about the village, getting scolded and turned back by their fathers who left for week-long hunts along the edges of the great forest to the north. The gang of boys, ignored by the clan, banded together, fighting amongst themselves with stick and fist, establishing their pecking order, sneaking off beyond where they were allowed to go – from the far side of the lake to the wind swept hills above the valley.

  Sword came from Lake's End like Harad and he quickly rose to the top of the pecking order in the gang. Sword with his heavy fist and cruel streak kept others content to stand beneath him.

  Then one night, Harad and the others were herded about the fire, their first scar given, unearned except by age. The scar on the back of his hand was not considered an earned scar, just a marker of the years passed.

  But this mark opened another world to Harad as soon afterwards his father brought them along on the hunts, taught him how to use bow and spear, hammer and shield, allowed him a horse of his own.

  That year, Harad was given free rein in the summer games. Free to roam without being at his mother or father's side, his world expanded once again as other clans descended on the valley at Lake's End. With wrestling matches and stick fights, bonds among the boys were formed regardless of clan.

  Here the Hounds formed, drawn to Spear, Shield and Sword, the boys who in their own clan gangs had established their places at the top of the pecking order.

  The Hounds were the vehicle through which the boys would become men. They would win scars in raids on the distant villages far to the north and east, on the people who were not proper Northmen, those who were never invited to join in the food and revelry of the summer games.

  This was the world as Harad knew it.

  During those days, he had known what the future held: his scars earned, his role in the village established, a wife, hunting and raiding trips throughout the year. Life beside the lake, children, grandchildren, the end of years.

  But he had left and during that time away he had seen a different world, a world wide beyond what the clan had to offer, a world that painted his mind in such a way that he wondered how he could return to a place of such smallness.

  How had Dhurma seeped beneath his skin?

  What was he becoming?

  The riders from Lake's End, a half dozen of them, closed the distance. They were young and scarred, lips tight, spears held up towards the heavens, a cautious distance kept.

  "Who shall I say comes to Lake's End?" asked one of the young riders.

  "Little whelps are young enough to be our children," said Harad.

  "They just might be," said Patch. "But not a single one with my lovely looks."

  "I am Shield Scyldmund, leader of the Hounds of the North, son of Aros Scyldmund, great chief of the Clan of the Broken Mountain, a people who were born of the earth and the water of the North. I come with open hands to share story and mead. I come with the Hounds of the North."

  One of the young warriors spat to the ground and then wiped his lips with the back of his hand. "And what do you want here, traitor?"

  "I've come to talk to the elders."

  "You can talk to us. We have no need for outsiders to come."

  "This is how Lake's End welcomes me home," said Harad, his hands tight to his hammer, trembling with fear that he would unleash it.

  "Don't hurt yourself with your toy, old timer."

  "Fucking respect I will teach you, you little pup. Give you a scar that you'll tell your grandchildren about."

  Shield raised his hand.

  "All these years gone and to return to this dishonor." Harad could not stop his words.

  "Hold," said Shield and, with reluctance, Harad stayed his hammer, his hand still trembling madly. Patch had his sword across his lap. The Hounds had seen too much to know that the scent of blood was in the air.

  The leader from the gang of young warriors from Lake's End yawned. "Turn around."

  "I come for Birgid Wordswallow," said Shield.

  The eyes of the other young riders immediately went to their leader. "She is not here. She is no longer of our clan. That witch is dead to us. Much as all of you are dead to us. Damned Hounds of the North."

  "Boy, you don't even know who we are," said Harad. "You were still sucking at your mother's teat when we were knee deep in blood."

  "Your brothers and fathers curse you around the fires. I know what Shield Scyldmund, once a son of the North, did to the Warlock King. I know what Shield Scyldmund and his Hounds did to his own people. If it were up to me, blood would fill these grasses."

  "Choice is easy, boy," said Harad.

  "What do you mean if it were up to you? Who is it up to?" asked Shield. His hand had never drifted near his sword the entire time, instead always resting easy in his lap with the horse's reins lightly held.

  "She would speak with you. She knew you were coming. She told us you would come."

  "Who told you?" asked Shield.

  "Eliode. The witch. Birgid's daughter."

  ESCAPE

  THE MISTS WERE so thick that Birgid could barely see her outstretched hands.

  "We should go back," said Gyrn. The Painted Man was near invisible in the mists, his wiry frame dissolving only to regather in the next moment.

  "We shouldn't go back."

  "He will come back soon."

  "I want to feel the warmth of the sun."

  "He will be angry if he finds that you are not in the tower."

  "Is he ever not angry?" asked Birgid.

  The warlock Fennewyn was returning. She could feel it. Each night, she could feel his presence, like an oppressive blanket weighing heavier and heavier on her. It was worse at night when she tried to sleep, the feeling that a mass was bearing down on her chest, a slow pressure, not sudden but gradual, so that each breath contained a bit less air, so that each beating of her heart was more felt, more labored. She became aware of just how easy it would be for the last breath to leave her chest, how simple it would be for her heart to no longer gather and beat.

  But Fennewyn did not want her dead. Not yet. She was still useful to him. Her words captured those fleeing wisps of souls. He could not muster the souls. She was the perfect counterpoint to his ability to animate the corpses.

  But he would not be able to raise her if she was dead. Her soul would flee. She wondered whether she would slip off to the underworld or if her deeds would mean an entirely different fate, one unimaginably worse than the torments of the underworld.

  Her greatest fear was that if she were never able to reach the underworld that Fionn would be lost forever. She had lost him once, her beautiful son. She could not imagine what it would be like to lose him for eternity.

  There was hope in death.

  Gyrn moved alongside so quietly that she could not hear his breath. He was her shadow. Even at the battle with the men of Dhurma, she had not noticed him. He lived in the shadows, an afterthought. This was his talent, the ability to be present but unseen, an invisible guardian.

  Or an invisible killer.

  "He will come back," the Painted Man repeated.

  "And we will keep walking."

  She let the words that had gathered deep in her chest unfurl. But they seemed to have no effect.

  The mists remained thick, the furious heavens descended to earth. She struggled with each step through the bog, her feet settling into the damp peat or sinking into the muck. She caught Gyrn's eyes on her bare legs again, following the line of her thighs to where the hiked up skirt folded at her waist.

  She was tempted to turn to see if the tower still clung behind them. It had every other time she had tried to walk away, sticking to them, never letting them get out of its sight, as if a tower could be watching them. What depths of dark mag
ic had Fennewyn gathered? Had his misery allowed him access to such untold of things?

  Gyrn was talking to her, making the comments he was apt to, but she was deep in the river of words that flowed from between her lips and he had faded even further into the mists, dissolving to less than a shadow, more a wisp than anything else, and then his voice was clear and the bright sun warmed her cheeks.

  "What have you done?" the Painted Man asked.

  They stood free from the mists, and behind them in the distance, more distant than it had ever been, loomed the stone tower of Fennewyn.

  "We walk for a while," Birgid said.

  "He will come for us. He will not let you go."

  "But here we are walking in the sun, the warm, warm sun, away from his tower."

  "You are bound to him, just as I am."

  "And how are you bound to him, Gyrn?"

  The Painted Man looked at his feet. "He saved my wife. His words drove illness from her. But he asked a price. And I will honor my word."

  "And where is your wife?"

  He looked west to the distant purpled range. "Near the Whale Road."

  "Why don't we go visit her?"

  The warrior shook his head. "I have given my word."

  "And what word was it that you gave him?"

  "That I would serve him until the end of my days."

  Birgid felt the creep of the mists as if tendrils reached out to pull her and the Painted Man back into its embrace. How easy it would be to step back into the world of Fennewyn. She too was bound to him. But she knew that bonds could be broken, that when bonds became fetters they were best shattered.

  "He told me to keep you at the tower. He said your words of power might find a way out and that if they did I must stop you and bring you back."

  "So you give your life to this warlock with the understanding that you will never see your wife again."

  "You must come back."

  "We will go west, across the mountains, towards the Whale Road, return to your village and your wife."

  "I am bound."

  "No, you are enslaved to a wicked man. Why would he save the woman you love only then to ask you to be separated from her forever? He is a cruel master and you do not have to serve him. You can see it, the blackness that surrounds him. He brings death. He does not care for the North. He only wants blood."