by M. K. Hume
Hubert sighed with satisfaction.
The king had asked his devoted servant for an account of the coin spent to facilitate Theudebert’s felicity. With a gentle smile that resembled the grin of a hyena, Hubert took up his stylus and added a stupendous and unearned extra charge for his trouble. The king was content in the arms of his woman, so Hubert would be satisfied by a profit commensurate with his expert planning and devoted silence.
The lords of these lands would never know who had brought Deuteria to Reims, even when they eventually became aware of her presence. Hubert had ensured that his master, as well as himself, were protected from gossip and unseemly rumor. Hubert had already planned for her poisoning in case Deuteria should weary of her tenuous position in Reims. One more death would scarcely be noticed, and in any case his master rarely thought so far ahead.
Hubert toasted his intelligent use of the three travelers with his ruby wine. Life was very, very good.
The courtier felt a draft of cold air behind him and the icy blade of a very sharp knife against his throat at the same instant. His flesh tried to shrink away from both, and he gasped involuntarily.
“Are you cold, Hubert?” a young voice said from behind his back. “I am so sorry, but I need the window open so I can leave just as quietly as I came. Your guards are pathetic! A child could find them and kill them without being seen, and I can assure you that I’m no child.”
“Who are you?” Hubert croaked, but he already knew the answer. He’d only heard the voice once, but he remembered the hot blue stare very well.
“You know me, my friend! I’m one of the travelers from Britain whom you sent on a wild-goose chase to Septimania. For forty-four days of my summer and autumn, I had to endure that woman’s company. Really, Hubert, I’d happily force the same fate on you if I had more time, but I’ve another gentleman to see tonight, and I needs must be in the land of the Dene before spring. Do you understand my dilemma, Hubert?”
“No!” Hubert found his teeth were chattering. He hated to show any weakness in front of a cur such as this man, but something about this young Briton filled Hubert with terror.
Something warm trickled down his legs and soaked into the cushion of his seat. Hubert flushed with shame.
“You’re a very dirty boy, Hubert! You’ve pissed yourself! But never mind, for I’m sure they’ll clean you up before anyone sees what you’ve done to yourself.”
“Please don’t!” Hubert whispered. “I have gold, so there’s no need to be hasty.”
“But you killed that poor little barmaid at Egbert’s inn. Now, I didn’t know her, but I can imagine that if you’ll kill a harmless creature like her, then you’ll have me slaughtered without a second’s thought. Am I right, Hubert? I can’t hear you.”
“Please?” Even to Hubert’s ears, his voice sounded ineffectual, so he was hardly surprised when the Briton carefully and delicately cut his throat from ear to ear from behind.
“You can try to hold the wound together, I suppose. But I don’t like your chances, Hubert. I’m sorry that I can’t wait to see you bleed through to the end, but I’ve promised myself, and that harmless little girl, that I’d also visit Egbert of Wurms before this night is over. You do understand how it is when your life is so busy.”
Hubert struggled to hold his wound closed, but his blood jetted out in front of him. As his eyesight began to fail, he watched as the Briton moved in front of him, carefully avoiding the bloody puddle that was spreading far too quickly over the tiled floor.
“Good-bye, Hubert. I hope Hell is really hot for people like you, just as the priests promise. I’m sure there’ll be a queue of sufferers who’ll come from your past who are dying to meet you again. Forgive the pun, but I couldn’t resist it.”
Then, as the Briton laughed at his little joke, Hubert drifted away. Staying alive was just too much trouble.
Uncharacteristically, Hubert’s very last thought was about someone else.
“Jesus Christ, won’t Egbert of Wurms be surprised!”
And so Hubert passed into the shades.
The Battle of Mirk Wood
Chapter XXIII
THE BATTLE OF MIRK WOOD
Vain the ambition of kings
Who seek by trophies and dead things,
To leave a living name behind,
And weave but nets to catch the wind.
—JOHN WEBSTER, The Devil’s Law-Case, ACT 5
Arthur awoke from a night horror of particular clarity. His skin was fast cooling in the crisp northern air, but the dream was so pervasive that he was unsure if he still slept. The fearful lassitude that comes after terror drained his limbs and made him feel ill and dislocated.
The forest of this dream was unfamiliar. At first, he had thought himself at home in Arden, but the trees and the terrain were so different that Arthur felt a little jolt of disappointment. Then, as if the earth had vomited him forth, a man in black appeared under a hazel tree, playing with a handful of nuts which he tossed carelessly from hand to hand.
“That tree is sacred, so you should beware,” Arthur warned the stranger, as if such a chance meeting was a normal matter.
The man in black recoiled into the shadow of his cowl, ensuring that Arthur could see little of his face except for a curl of amber-colored hair.
“Do you know the secret language of trees, boy? I think not! Your foster father taught you very well, but Bedwyr was a man of oak trees. And so he had no need for any other green and growing things. His wife, the lovely Elayne, knew him very well, so she bundled him up with oaken logs when he died, and spared no expense. I never met Bedwyr in the flesh, or his compelling woman, but I have heard tell of him. But I belong to the hazel tree. And you? I will think on it . . .”
Arthur felt as if he was caught in a mire of cloying mud. His feet refused to move, although he willed them to run so he could escape the concealed eyes of this stranger who saw too much and said so little. The cords stood out on Arthur’s neck as he twisted and tore at his feet, trying to will the deep drift of moldering leaves that surrounded them to set him free from an inexplicable, fantastic bondage. The black-clad figure extended one arm, which was reassuringly solid, muscular, and vigorous, and then patted Arthur on the side of his face with the casual affection that a man shows for his dog.
“You think I’m your father, come in a dream to tell you that Bedwyr is dead. Well, you’re partly correct, but I’m not the shade of Artor . . .” The black-clad figure laughed, the sound grating unpleasantly.
“I, too, have a part of your blood and your bones, although whether I become lodged in your heart and your brain is up to you. Can you see? I came to you in my youth, because your aunt made me a caricature of myself at the time of my death. I, too, have a beauty, like the son I fathered. Do you know me now?”
Arthur recoiled in horror. Bedwyr had told him stories of Uther Pendragon; if this was a truth dream and not some fantasy conjured by the horrors he had seen on the Vagus River, then how could Uther Pendragon be dragged back from the cold vastness of Tartarus to send a message to one of the last survivors of his bloodline? Uther had never embraced the ties of kinship.
“Why would the hazel tree be your symbol, Dragon King? The Old Ones worshipped this tree because of its cleanliness, its power of prophecy, and its spirituality. But you only lived for death and the torture you could inflict on the human heart. The hazel would reject you!”
“Yet it doesn’t!” the funereal figure laughed, and one hand swept away the cowl to reveal a divided face. One side was as fair as any imagined angel could be. But the right-hand side of the face, although each detail was ostensibly the same, was repellent, grotesque, and fascinating, like looking into the eyes of a great hunting cat that had no empathy or sympathy for its prey.
“I can see it now!” Uther giggled, and the sound was a travesty of laughter. “I know what tree is yours—an
d dark is its message! You are the yew, the tree of the graveyard. Try as you will, Death will follow you, because I am your sire, and your blood comes from me as its fount.”
The dreamer felt sick to the bottom of his soul.
“I reject you—and everything about you,” Arthur gasped, and recoiled until he felt the bark of an oak at his back.
“But you can’t! Like your father, you’ll discover that I’m impossible to remove. I’m the hazel in your bloodline, the voice in your head, and the ability in your strong right arm. Ask your friends! You’re just as monstrous as I am, if not more so because you drag the innocents along in your wake with little understanding of what you’re doing to them. As I’ve said, you are the Yew of Death.”
Racked by tears and shame, Arthur began to waken, and the oak tree became the vigorous young body of Bedwyr standing firmly behind his foster son while generously pouring his own essence and strength into the child he had cared for as if the boy was his own flesh. Words of love sprang into Arthur’s mouth and told the demon that Bedwyr’s voice rang true.
“The yew binds past to present and beyond. It endures when the hazel dies. The yew stands alone and draws nourishment from the earth, which it repays as a memorial to life itself. As a symbol of self, it is no bad thing to be—so the yew will be Arthur! But the boy isn’t for you, old wight, so be gone and trouble him no more. Arthur belongs to a new way that will replace everything you fought for, even what his father struggled to achieve, and you have no part in what he will become. I say again, this boy is not for you—and never will be!”
Arthur’s mouth framed the words, but they came from Bedwyr behind him and the core of wood that was the soul of the oak tree. Warmth flowed through that conduit between tree and man so that Arthur stood in his dream, embraced by the ancient accord between tree men and the miracle of God’s genius that set itself against the demon of self-delusion that raged and gibbered as it tossed away the last hazelnuts and stamped at the earth with its cloven feet.
“Be gone now, demon of the dark. Don’t bother to argue because he will know how to avoid you when he wakes. You came to poison his mind! He’ll be on his guard against you now, even in his sleep, and I will remind him through his voices how you deal out petty games of sleight of hand. You are a fairground trick to cheat the unwary and a pale shadow of malevolence used to frighten children. Arthur has now become a man.”
The figure in black shrieked furiously and thrust its jaw towards Arthur’s face, until the young man could smell the fetid breath of the wight’s anger.
Then Uther Pendragon began to shrivel . . . smaller . . . smaller . . . until he was the size of a hazelnut. Then, with a wisp of smoke, the small creature disappeared into a hole in the earth.
With the sound of a metal door clanging shut, the crack in the earth closed and the demon was gone.
• • •
“YOU’RE DEEP IN thought, Arthur. We’ll be on the move again tomorrow, so you’d be best placed if you’re well rested.” Stormbringer sank down onto his haunches on the moist earth where Arthur had wrapped himself in his cloak and was now resting with his back against the trunk of a spreading oak. Stormbringer noticed how the Briton surreptitiously returned the Dragon Knife to its scabbard.
“I’ve been having a bad dream, Stormbringer. What of you? The commander of an army should be well rested rather than spending his time checking on sentries and doing menial work. You have to trust someone, my friend.”
Even as he spoke in the companionable darkness, Arthur wondered when Stormbringer had ceased to be his captor and slave master and had become his companion and friend. Eamonn kept his distance these days, preferring the fireside of Rolf Sea-Shaper and his young friends, where good ale, mead, and song were more important than strategy, the politics of the Dene throne, and the complex heritage of the Sae Dene. Arthur understood that the exuberance in Eamonn’s nature called out for entertainment and fun, but Arthur required something more out of life. He did his best to take his pleasure when he could, but he knew he’d always prefer the company of men like Valdar Bjornsen.
“I know, friend, you’ve told me often enough. But of all men, you understand the responsibility I feel for my warriors. Have I thought out our plan of attack with sufficient detail to achieve the task we’ve set for ourselves? Or have I misjudged the number of enemy warriors that we’ll face when we arrive at Lake Wener? Thank Heavens that Hoel Ship-Singer arrived with his reinforcements when he did, because it allowed us the leeway to ferry the sick and wounded to the villages up the coast. Just as important, he brought intelligence with him that will be essential to my plan of attack.”
“You have Loki’s luck, Stormbringer,” Arthur replied. He recalled how the shipwright had arrived with one hundred men in three ships. As a man who knew the local waters, Hoel cautioned Stormbringer against sailing up the Vagus River; there were too many enemy villages on the riverbanks to bypass them without such a large number of vessels being seen.
“It would be impossible to arrive unannounced, lad. It’s far better that we run to the enemy on foot. We’ve no horses left to give you, certainly not in the numbers that you’ll need, so we should do what Olaus Healfdene will least expect. I suggest that we should run to his summer quarters, across country and in the darkness of night, while resting during the day when sunlight prevails.”
And now, here they were, almost at their destination.
They had avoided the small village called Bohus, which provided many of the stores and servants used by the king and his favored jarls as they camped on the margins of Lake Wener. As the entire army slid silently past the village in the early hours of the morning, Arthur’s heart almost stopped when he thought he saw a horse dancing in the sky above the village, its hooves and mane turned to silver in the reflected light from the full moon.
“It’s the village good-luck horse,” Stormbringer told him later when an incredulous Arthur asked his friend if he had imagined what he had seen. “The skin of a dead horse is kept intact, including the skull and the bones in the legs. Its carcass is lightly stuffed and hung over large stakes so the legs dangle, giving an appearance of movement whenever a strong wind blows—especially at night.”
Now, as Stormbringer and Arthur talked quietly on a low hill above the cleared edges of the river, Stormbringer sighed with relief. “We’re only one day distant from Hoel’s estimate of the place where Olaus went into bivouac with his army. I intend to travel inland now, pass through the edges of the Myrkvidr, and attack the Geat force from the rear.”
Stormbringer shuddered.
“I react badly to the thought of entering the Myrkvidr in much the same way that you responded to the Flying Horse of Bohus. Myrkvidr is a dangerous place that is reputed to be the haunt of trolls and outlaws, all of whom are perversions of nature and unclean things. I feel the hair rise on my arms when I think of entering its black shadows—and I’ve never even been there! It has a foul reputation.”
“I grew up with trees, and forests hold no fears for me. Forests are places of richness and life, even here in the north, where the summers are short and the winter nights are very long. No trolls or dwarves can harm me.”
Stormbringer laughed at his friend’s show of bravado. “I had forgotten that you are the Last Dragon and can, no doubt, destroy trolls with your poisonous breath.”
Used to the way that his friend’s mind worked, Arthur felt no insult in the jibe. “I refuse to be frightened of trees, Stormbringer, but I’ll not think the less of any man who’s been raised to distrust the wild places.”
Stormbringer had obviously been maneuvering his way to his real purpose for seeking Arthur out. All their talk had merely been a polite prelude.
“I expect you to assume command of my thirty men from Sea Wife, Arthur. As the overall commander of our forces, I’m responsible for over one thousand warriors, but the crew of my personal ship still need a
strong and capable leader who isn’t distracted by larger issues. Many of my warriors are capable of handling this duty, but I’d prefer that you assumed this role because you know them—and you’ve already fought with them as their leader. My men are used to being at the forefront of any battle, so they would resent not being in the van of the attack. I’m reluctant to trust their lives with anyone else but you, because you’ll worry about them as much as I do.”
Arthur was rendered speechless. Stormbringer’s men were more important to him than The Holding, probably as close to his heart as his own daughters. He sailed with these men; he ate and drank with them; he fought with them; he knew their families, and he was fully aware of their fears and hopes for the future. In the uncertainty of this war of honor, Stormbringer had accepted that his crew was his lifeline in a sea of trouble, banishment, and loss of favor.
“I would be honored to accept this command, Stormbringer. I promise too that I’ll lead them into the forefront of the battle, but I’ll not waste their lives like base coin that is useful for nothing but thoughtless spending.”
Arthur took Stormbringer’s hand in gratitude, and their bargain was sealed.
A force of over one thousand men is difficult to deploy across wooded countryside without attracting attention from the local population, so Stormbringer decided to continue with the tactical ploy of individual crews commanded by their own ships’ captains that had been used during the attacks on the Geats at the mouth of the Vagus River. He issued orders that each group of men would make a concerted dash through the Myrkvidr as quickly and as unobtrusively as possible.
Congregation points had been determined for each night’s trek through the woodlands until such time as the force reached their final jump-off point on the western edge of the Mirk Wood, the British name Arthur considered more fitting for an obstacle that seemed to engender such superstitious concern among his Dene compatriots.
