Lorr rolled his eyes. “We can’t mount a rescue unless we’re free. I need to scout the immediate area, secure more weapons, but first I have to find some hollow tree to plant your wide arse. You’re not exactly built for sneaking.”
But apparently others were.
Lorr pushed past a heavy branch and found himself facing a circle of hunters. Spears bristled, arrows waited. An ambush. Lorr immediately judged the others, weighing the threat. They were dressed in woodland greens and blacks, but their clothes were ripped and ill-fitted. They appeared no more than boys, wild-eyed but grim. The two parties eyed each other for a wary breath.
Neither sure of the other.
Friend or foe.
But Lorr noted one hopeful sign.
These hunters’ lips were unstained.
“Who are you?” Lorr asked. “Whom do you follow?”
One of the hunters merely pointed up.
Up toward the castillion.
Where the Huntress ruled.
As the hunters circled tighter around them, Tylar backed the others behind him, hobbling on his bad knee. He fed shadows into his cloak, along with his anger and certainty. If the Huntress wanted a war, so be it.
“Brant!” Dart sobbed behind him.
Krevan closed on their other side, protecting the dead boy and the girl. Calla closed on his left flank, Rogger on the other. But they had no weapons.
Or rather only one.
Tylar grabbed his barely healed finger. He would bring god against god, his naethryn against the Huntress. If necessary, they would burn bone from flesh and forge a path out of this tree.
Determined, Tylar snapped his finger straight back, refracturing the new bone with a starry flash of pain. He braced for the agony to spread, to break more bones, to release the naethryn from its bony cage. But nothing happened. A rib snapped in his chest like a weak echo of his cracked finger-but nothing more.
He gasped between clenched teeth, staring down at his throbbing hand. He leaned away from the side with the broken rib.
Something was wrong.
He felt the naethryn stir behind his breastbone, still trapped.
Like all of them.
Rogger glanced over to him. “Maybe that finger hadn’t set completely. You have nine others. I suggest you pick one right quick.”
Tylar lifted his head.
The Huntress had paused after Marron’s arrow killed Brant, perhaps gloating, perhaps even juggling a bit of regret. How firmly had the seersong re-rooted? Was there any residual grief that still panged? Impossible to say. Her face remained impassive.
Either way, Tylar was past trying to talk her back from the ravening edge. All it had done was get the boy killed. He grabbed his next finger, stirring afresh the pain in his hand.
Then the silence was shattered.
Eyaaahhhhhh!
But the scream was not his own. It rang out across the canopy, drawing gazes toward the misty heights. Arrows sliced out of nowhere and whistled through the treetop gathering.
Hunters stumbled all around, pierced through arm, thigh, chest, and belly. Bows dropped, and bodies fell with pained exhalations. Krevan and Calla grabbed weapons. Tylar tried to do the same, but his left hand was too crippled. His side flamed with agony.
He had not been arrow-struck. It was only the protest of his shattered rib. He glanced around. None of them had been hit.
“Stay low,” Rogger whispered and pulled him down.
On one knee, Krevan drew upon his bow and let an arrow fly. It sliced through one of the hunters’ throats with a great spray of crimson. The man fell over a railing and tumbled without a sound.
In his place, a shape swung out of the mists upon a vine and vaulted over the same railing. He landed in a crouch, a dagger in one hand. A boy. Tylar heard others landing elsewhere. Cries arose on all sides.
A sharp scream, higher than all the others, keened across the misty balcony. The Huntress. She was being herded back toward the open doorway to her castillion by Marron and the others, protecting their god.
“No! The boy! I must have the stone!”
But the confusion after Brant’s assault had left her still dazed, allowed her to be led, unable to fully drain the panic from the unsettled hunters, to control them. They reacted with instinct, to protect their god.
She vanished into the shelter of the castillion. “I must have it!” she cried out of the darkness. “It is not of this world. It is not of Myrillia.”
A small band of young hunters settled around them. Their faces were painted, but their lips were unburned by Dark Grace.
“We must go,” said the closest, perhaps the leader. He pointed to the railing, where vines were tethered, waiting to swing them away from the balcony. “We must be gone before they rally.”
Tylar waved the others to follow. Still, he hung back, listening to the fading ravings of the Huntress.
“The stone…It is not a rock of Myrillia!”
An arm tugged at his elbow.
Tylar strained to hear. The words were faint.
“It is of our old kingdom! A piece of our Sundered land!”
Tylar took a stumbled step forward, wanting to hear more, but Krevan grabbed his other elbow. He had Brant’s body over his shoulder.
“Leave now,” said the leader of the young hunters. He was gangly and loose-limbed, eyes too large for his face. “If there is to be any hope for Brant, we must fly now!”
Tylar finally turned. “Hope?” he asked. The word almost didn’t make sense to him. “How did you know who-?”
“Hurry.”
Scowling, the boy headed toward the railing.
With one last glance back, Tylar followed. All that rose from the castillion now was the distant screams of fury. The Huntress’s earlier words still echoed in Tylar’s head.
A piece of our Sundered land.
Tylar pictured the stone. He studied Brant’s limp form.
What did it mean?
Tylar hurried after the leader, limping to catch up. He noted the boy also bore a distinct hobbled trip to his gait, which did not slow him down. Tylar finally caught up with him at the railing. He grabbed the boy by the shoulder.
“Who are you?”
“An old friend of Brant’s.” He shoved a loop of vine into Tylar’s good hand. “My name is Harp.”
A PARLEY AT THE BLACKHORSE
Kathryn shouldered the shutter closed against the gust of wind. She prayed no one on the daywatch stumbled past and noted that the shutter was unbarred on the inside. She had chosen the window because it was well hidden in a dark corner, near the cookery’s privy. None had noted as she slipped the bar and climbed out. She planned on returning to Tashijan as surreptitiously as she had left it.
If she was allowed to return…
She pictured the ilked wraith, hunched and brittle-winged.
And the offer.
Come alllone. To parlllley. In town. Blllackhorse tavernhouse.
Kathryn set out across the wintry yard. She was dressed in heavy woolens, feet pushed into furred boots. Over it all she wore her knight’s cloak. She had chosen this place in the yard to cross because it lay in the shadow of Stormwatch Tower, but the low cloud and gray day offered only meager shadows. She gathered what power she could into her cloak, fading her form. She did not want any of the guards from Stormwatch to note her departure.
Gerrod knew where she was headed. That was enough. She did not want all of Tashijan to know her folly. But with no word from Tylar, the safety of Tashijan remained her responsibility. While Argent might be content to burrow inside and shore up their defenses, Kathryn intended to discover what brewed beyond the curtain of this storm. If that meant meeting with Ulf of Ice Eyrie on his own terms, so be it. He had sworn her safety.
But was the word of this god to be trusted?
She gazed to the left, to the shield wall of Tashijan, a cliff of piled brick and stone. Beyond the top, the world swirled with ice fog and snow.
The storm
waited.
And it would wait a little longer.
She trudged into the wind toward the stables. She noted the steam rising from the crossed thatching. The stableboys and horsemen must have stoked the hearths against the cold, not just for themselves but for their charges. She knew they had been offered shelter in the towers, but the stablemen would have had to abandon their horses.
Not a one had accepted the offer.
This warmed her more than her heavy woolens.
Kathryn also knew the men would remain silent about her trespass into the stables. They bore little love for the Fiery Cross, since a couple of the warden’s knights had switched a horse near to crippling it. She had already sent a raven down with a terse message, to ready a horse.
An eye keener than any guard noted her approach. The stable door creaked open. The stableboy, Mychall, bundled almost to obscurity under horse blankets, waved to her.
She hurried forward and pushed into the steamy warmth. The smell of patty and hay welcomed her. Only a single lamp was lit here, over by one stall. A shadowy form huffed and dug a hoof, recognizing her scent.
Mychall threw back his blankets. “Did you hear?” he asked breathlessly as he led her forward.
“Hear what?”
“Eventail threw her foal this morning. We was worried. She came close to colicking, back…” He waved an arm to indicate the past. “But she dropped a handsome little mare. Color of bitternut, with bright white stockings up to her fetlocks.”
“How wonderful,” she said, suddenly smiling. The warmth and the boy’s enthusiasm helped dispel the darkness around her heart. And the fact that life was born in the middle of the siege somehow gave her hope.
She was now doubly glad to have decided to fetch a horse for the short ride to the tavernhouse. Ulf’s emissary had not forbidden it. The snow had fallen thick. And the storm winds were not empty. In case it proved necessary, she wanted a means of fast travel.
Ahead, a taller man, Mychall’s father, stepped out of the hay crib, leading a piebald stallion, colored white and black, snow on stone. The boy circled the horse, mimicking his father’s inspection of the horse’s tack, hands on hips.
“All saddled, Castellan Vail,” the head of horses gruffed, plainly not pleased with her decision to ride in this storm. “Stoneheart has been grained this morning against the cold, so he should do you fine.”
“Thank you.”
Kathryn accepted the lead and ran a palm over the soft velvet of the stallion’s nose. He pushed against her, nuzzling, nostrils taking in her scent. Before Kathryn had risen to the hermitage, she had ridden the horse almost daily. But since then, her visits grew less and less frequent. And with the endless stretch of winter, it had become a rare pleasure.
For the both of them.
“I would be honored to attend you,” the horseman said. “I have another mount already saddled.”
She stepped away. “Better to keep the fires stoked here. We may need their warmth when we return.”
He nodded, offering no further argument. With Mychall’s help, they hauled the door wide enough for her to walk the horse out. They waited while she mounted.
She sank into the warm saddle and hugged her cold legs against Stoneheart’s flanks. Here was home as much as any hermitage.
At the door, the horseman’s eyes remained shadowed with worry. She knew it wasn’t just for the prized horseflesh under her. He simply nodded. No well wishes. No good-byes.
She preferred it.
Laying the reins across his neck, she turned the stallion toward the main gate through the shield wall. She found the way unmanned, cleared during the emptying of the town. Dismounting, she crossed to the small door in the main gate. Bars allowed a view of the parade grounds that lay between the town and the walls. Snow was piled knee-deep, untrammeled by footprints. The town lay shrouded in fog, more phantom than real.
Kathryn undid the thick latch and lifted yet another bar with a tremor of trepidation. Had that been the plan all along? To get her to unlock the gates and open an easy breach into the towers? She quickly squashed down that worry. Eylan had demonstrated the extent of Ulf’s might. He had breached their main gate, a door that had stood for centuries. If Ulf wanted to get inside, she doubted there was any way to stop him.
So why had the god hesitated these three long days?
It was one of the reasons she had set out alone. You could not defend what you didn’t understand.
Pulling open the door, she faced the full gale of the storm. It shoved against her and ripped her hood back. An icy hand slid down the back of her neck and cupped her buttocks, squeezing the air from her with its freezing touch. Swearing, she yanked her hood back up and hunched into the winds. She kept cursing as she walked the horse, using her anger to warm her.
Behind her, the gate door slammed a resounding bang, as if reprimanding her for her obscenities. Startled, she jumped a bit. Still, she heeded the warning and remounted without another word.
She guided Stoneheart across the frozen moat and into the stormswept fields. Here snow climbed into deeper drifts, requiring more plowing than stepping to cross the way. The stallion heaved, head low, breath blowing white.
She searched the skies, the gables of the first houses, the dark streets. She had heard the stories. The wind wraith at her balcony door was not the only one of its brethren out here. And what else might be hidden within the storm?
At last, they passed into the town and down a narrow street. The winds initially picked up, chasing them, scattering dry snow at their heels. Then deeper under eaves and overhanging dormers, the winds finally gave up their hunt and dribbled away. Snow still covered the streets, but most of the fall was piled high on roofs and sculpted by the winds into frozen waves at their edges.
She feared that even the muffled clop of Stoneheart’s walk might shake down an avalanche upon her. But worst yet, she heard the occasional creak of board and crunch of ice, reminding her that the town was shuttered and abandoned-but it was far from empty.
Still, she did not hesitate. She had committed to this parley, so she rattled her reins to keep the piebald stallion moving from shadow to shadow, turning corners and slipping down alleys.
Kathryn needed no directions. She knew the way to Blackhorse as well as any knight. The inn and tavernhouse had been a place for many a rowdy night and sour-stomached morning for most of Tashijan’s knights and a fair smattering of its masters.
But not this day.
She spotted the sign over the doorway, depicting a rearing dark stallion on a plain white board. Not exactly the most imaginative decoration for a tavernhouse named the Blackhorse, but customers weren’t attracted by the establishment’s imagination as much as by its cheap ale and cheaper rooms, where many a dalliance and ribald tale began.
Kathryn slowed Stoneheart by the inn’s neighboring stable. Its door already lay halfway open. She slipped from her saddle and walked the stallion into the barn. It was little warmer inside than without, but it would have to do. She threw the lead over a stall rail and noted a pile of oat hay within reach. She ran a hand over Stoneheart’s flank to make sure he hadn’t sweated too badly to be left standing in a cold barn.
Satisfied, she had no reason to delay. She headed back outside and over to the tavern. She crossed to the door and found the latch unlocked. Then again, it was always unlocked. The Blackhorse never closed its doors. Though its windows had been shuttered as some measure of security.
Kathryn shoved the door open and slipped inside. A counter stretched to the right. To the left opened the main hall, with scarred tables and chairs. Firelight flickered. The warm light frightened her more than the darkness. She shifted to peer inside, taking a moment to draw more shadows to her cloak.
But the room was empty to its four walls.
She entered warily, surprised at how small the room seemed without its usual crowds singing and arguing.
She moved closer to the fire. The logs looked freshly lit. But she’d ba
rely had time to warm her hands when the outer door creaked open. A whisper of wind and an icy chill swept inside.
She turned.
Footsteps approached. She was prepared for one of the wraiths or some other emissary from Lord Ulf. With the god landlocked in his realm, he had to work from afar-like sending forth his wrath wrapped in storm winds and burying a flock of wraiths at its heart.
Finally, the figure rounded the corner and stepped into the room, glittering in the firelight.
It was no wraith.
“Lord Ulf!” Kathryn gasped.
The god entered-or rather a perfect sculpture of the god in ice. The detail was exquisite, from every fold of his fine cloak to every wrinkle of his aged face. Even here, Lord Ulf did not feign vanity with a youthful demeanor, preferring the craggy to smooth, like his mountain home.
As he approached, his form melted to allow movement of limb and cloak, then crystallized again. The sculpture reflected the flames but also shone with an internal radiance.
Pure Grace.
He spoke, his features as dynamic as flesh, though with a slight swimming melt. “Castellan Vail, thank you for coming. We have much to discuss.”
Kathryn took a moment to find her voice.
Lord Ulf filled the void. “To set matters straight. I know you helped Tylar ser Noche escape. And while I might not agree with your decision, it was yours to make. Understandably so. You were once his betrothed.”
Kathryn struggled. She had expected horror and raving, not this calm and calculating figure in brilliant ice. She finally freed her tongue. “For what purpose have you summoned me here, then?”
A hand rose, melting and freezing, asking for her indulgence.
“Let it also be known that I still consider the regent an Abomination. Such Grace was never meant to wear human flesh. And to place him in the center of the First Land, in Chrismferry, a land already cursed, can only lead to even more ruinous ends. This I will both portend and attempt to thwart. But with Tylar gone, I have a new matter that requires both our attentions, and I come to ask for your cooperation.”
Before she could think to stop herself, Kathryn blurted out, “Why should I cooperate with a god so plainly cursed?”
Hinterland g-2 Page 36
