The Hollow March

by Chris Galford

  The rest of them were to be banished in the meanwhile, over Rurik’s own protest on the behalf of breakfast. They had until high noon, Alviss said, but what they did with it was their own. To a degree. Neither Rurik nor Chigenda were permitted about town, and Essa was charged with making it so. She did not look particularly enthused to have to entertain two men for the better part of a morning, though it was hard to say how much of that was from her own interrupted sleep. She kept a skittish watch on the Zuti, clearly unsettled at the prospect of entertaining him. To Rurik’s face, she said there was no problem. He read otherwise.

  “If it makes you feel any better,” he told her, “our Zuti looks as thrilled as you do at the prospect.”

  It did not.

  Rowan alone was given leave to follow his heart’s content, and he exerted that right at the first opportunity, abandoning them as soon as Alviss took to the trail. He wished them all the best, even as his cousin gestured crudely at him with her finger. Doffing his hat in a show of mock respect, Rowan scurried after Alviss.

  Without the town or the tavern, what remained to the rest of them were the woods. Even then, there were wide swathes of it they would have to avoid, for fear of patrols and any number of lumberjacks that could potentially recognize their young former lord. Much land was still left to them, but the question was what they intended to do with it.

  When they emerged into the sun, the light was playing through the trees and all along the stones. The dawn sparkled, its crisp rays catching bits of dust and dew drifting through the algid air, forming outcroppings of powdered gold wherever it touched the earth. Essa shook her hair free and yawned deeply as she stretched, the rays alighting delightfully across her skin. With a few moments in the light, she seemed much rejuvenated, and her eyes began to flit playfully about, the restless gears turning in her mind. Then, with a smile and a shout, she beckoned them on into the trees, and bounded off, goading all the while. Rurik took up her challenge, springing after her through the clouds of pine needles, but Chigenda merely loped after them, eyes to the trees.

  Their play was pointless at first, in the manner of children. Every pile of leaves was a new adventure, boy and girl scrambling over one another in an effort to drag the other down into the sodden waste. Chigenda put up with it silently, watching at a distance, or hunkering down to examine a stray branch or an impression in the mud. He largely ignored them, and they him, though his was the sobering presence on their play.

  In a particularly large pile, under the shelter of an ancient oak, Rurik cornered Essa. She feinted left and darted right, but he proved quicker on his feet, promptly tackling her. Though she squealed beneath him, each went laughing into the pile, one rolling over the other, groping and pinning. When his hand dared a crease of her backside, she slapped at him playfully, giggling all the while. Catching her arms by the wrists, he pinned her to the ground, his hips on hers, but her squirming and her laughter quickly faltered. Turning, he found Chigenda looming over them, sternly regarding them. If nothing else, the Zuti kept them grounded, aware. If they got too roughshod in their play, they need but look to him, and know that they had other things to do. Such was his power, as the somber outsider among them.

  In time, their play lost its appeal anyhow, but they found other ways to occupy themselves. Essa began to pick up other trails, and led them round and away from what semblance of direction they had been steadily pursuing. Always they moved further and further from the tavern, but that seemed to be their only sense of purpose. Beyond that, the goal was adventure.

  Around mid-morning, when the distant buzz of the saws began to stir in earnest, Essa stopped abruptly. Holding a hand to him, Essa bent down, frowning into the dirt. She shooed Rurik back a pace, first her eyes, then her fingers tracing a trail in the mud. She dug at it a little, pressing a few leaves from about their feet. Rubbing the grains between her fingers, the corners of her lips began to work at a smile.

  “Deer,” the girl murmured. “There’s a deer afoot.” She held up the mud as if it would mean something to him. Rurik pressed her hand away, though he encouraged her eagerness. She frowned back at him and promptly wiped the mud along his tunic.

  Chigenda joined them shortly, crouching down beside Essa in the mud. She scooted back for him. He did not seem to notice.

  After a moment, the Zuti’s head bobbed affirmatively. “Fresh trail,” he acknowledged. “East?” He looked to Essa expectantly.

  “Looks like. Probably—probably in the hour.” Essa glanced over her shoulder, peering into the trees. There was nothing there that Rurik could see, but that didn’t mean anything. She had twice the eyesight he did, and the brains to use it, as Alviss once so eloquently put it. “We might catch him, if we’re lucky.” She looked as if she expected Rurik to agree with her, and he did so, whether it was wanted or not. Chigenda did not even seem to notice his insight, so lost was he in the soil beneath him. They must have seen something that he could not, because when Rurik looked, all he saw was a dirty pair playing in a muddy copse. There were reasons he was not the hunter for the Company, and more reasons than the obvious for why he praised Essa’s presence among them.

  “Gives us something to do, and a fresh deer would be a godsend,” Rurik said.

  With a clap of joy, Essa had them off again, on the elusive trail. It was a marvel to watch her work, eyes and head to the ground, bow at the ready. But it was frightening, in its own way. She lost all sense of humor in such moments, her personality going as frosty as her purpose. When death became the declaration, all else slunk away. She was like one of those jungle cats explorers liked to bring back to the capital whenever they returned from sea. Sleek, professional, and deadly.

  He might have said the same for Chigenda, but he did not like to shower such praise on the Zuti. The southerner kept to his own, and Rurik to his, doing his best to mimic Essa while avoiding the Zuti entirely. He did a poor job of it, he knew. Try as he might, leaves crunched and branches snapped underfoot. More than once, Essa rounded on him with a fierce scowl, and he found himself throwing up his hands in protest of his innocence. If she wanted differently, then she should not have brought him at all.

  Chigenda was less understanding. Bending at the sight of some concealed sign, he seemed almost delighted at the looming prospect—until Rurik tromped over to him, so that he could see the sign as well. Chigenda exploded on him.

  “Be quiet, fool witman,” he snarled, sweeping him back with the pole of his spear, “Like rolling thunder move, wit none de beauty.” Rurik started to protest, but his words cut off in a yip as the Zuti dragged him down by the collar of his shirt. “Scare it off, you keep it up.” The Zuti’s stare left little to be desired. Patience was not his strong suit, and Rurik knew he was pushing it. Fortunately for him, Essa intervened long enough to guide them back to the proper trail, leading east.

  In the end, they did not find the deer. The deer found them.

  Tracking it to a small meadow between a wedge of sheltering pines, the trail became muddled with other prints. Essa and Chigenda fanned out, leaving Rurik with the instruction to wait where he was, lest he scare it off. With a sigh, he was prepared to do just that, when a pair of antlers rustled through the brush across the field from where he stood. He froze. The deer loomed into view, gingerly poking its head into the sunlight. Rurik tried to gather Essa’s attention, but by the time he did so, the deer was beginning to withdraw. Its head vanished, and Rurik started for him, but even as the antlers fell away, a spear sailed after them.

  There was a pitiable sort of whine and the animal went down. They could heard the tumult of its crash even through the brush, and by the time they reached it, the deer lay in a pool of its own blood, a spear embedded through its throat. On closer inspection, it was a good-sized buck, with more than a foot’s spread between the antlers. Chigenda kicked it once, then stooped down and pulled out a bone-handled machete from his belt, which he used to carve open a second bloody line across its neck. Running his hands through
the animal’s fur, he spoke a silent prayer for it, and promptly tore his spear from it. A single throw had done it in. One could not help but marvel at that.

  Since its throat was already cut, Essa and Chigenda hoisted up the body and hung it from one of the smaller trees to let it bleed out. Essa made a few other incisions to hasten the flow, then stepped back to admire their handiwork. Rurik made it a point not to watch. Try as he might, there was just something about the process that got under his skin. He could kill a man, but this was something else. Something more…animal. This was what she and Chigenda did, though, and it was one thing they did well together. Rarely did either watch the other work. Now, they seemed to nod appreciatively at each other’s motions and incisions. They were hunters, recognizing a touch of one in another. It was both mystifying and terrifying, for Rurik.

  After a time, they carved it open to let the cool air in. Its insides sagged and a foul smell came with them, such that Rurik fell back with a gagging rasp. Essa laughed at him, asking, “What’s the matter, lord? ‘Fraid we’ll scoff them shiny boots?” She held her reddened hands out to him and took a great deal of pleasure in watching him recoil, he noted, but she refrained from pushing him too hard. She was merely a trickster.

  After a few hours, they set about the grizzly task of carving into the deer’s body itself. Essa began by peeling off the hide, and Chigenda laid into the carcass itself, first with his machete, then with his bare hands. If they had more time, Rurik was fairly certain Essa would have made the effort to carve off the antlers as well. The hide was good for cloaks or blankets, whether to use or to sell, and she was skilled enough with the process that she could do it in a day’s labor. The antlers made for good weapons, or at the least, good hilts. Properly fashioned, a hunter could make a mint off the proceeds, if she knew where to sell them.

  They harvested what they could carry of the deer’s meat. Some would have to be abandoned, but while Rurik’s stomach growled in protest at that, he knew it would not go to waste. The other scavengers of the woods would strip it bare in a few hours’ time. That would appease Essa, or so he thought. As he hacked at a thigh, Rurik noticed Essa’s pace had slowed, her eyes wandering. She stared off into the forest, not unlongingly.

  “What is it?”

  “I recognize a lot of these,” she responded, holding out a bloody hand toward the trees. “The trail’s gone now, but I think…” Her voice lightened, then fell, and her hand as well. Some of the color seemed to fade from her cheeks. “No, it’s nothing. I’m being stupid.”

  “No you’re not.” Even as he said it, he heard Chigenda give an irreverent snort. “What? Are we being followed?”

  “I think we’re nearly home,” and she paused there, quietly adding, “Pescha’s home.” Her home.

  He had not realized it, but as she said it, he could see it, or at least, form the image of it in his mind. The paths between the trees, led by a little brown-haired girl, laughing as she vanished in the shadows of his memory. Pescha’s house, she called it, to distance herself from the memories, but the past was one thing no one could change. It was not the house she ran from, but the man behind it.

  There were certain parallels there Rurik did not particularly want to follow.

  “Do you want to see it?”

  There was a pause, as Essa considered the notion. He watched her teeter between her sense of morbid curiosity and her own, diligently covered fears, and then, without further adieu, she shook her head and sheared off another slice of meat. “No. I think some things are better left where they lie.” The words were for her own demons, but her eyes were watching him.

  When they had finished with the body, they cut the remnants down and laid the deer out for the scavengers to digest. Gathering together what they could, they hauled their load of meat back the mile or more to the Prancing Prixy. Chigenda led them on, and they made good progress because their haul guaranteed they did not have time to stop and play.

  The sun shone high overhead by the time they arrived, and Alviss, appropriately, was there to greet them. Legs splayed across the tavern deck, the old man nodded to their newfound cache, his worn smile swathed in rings of crisp, grey smoke. That was something new. Alviss had few vices, and those he had were but rarely indulged. Rurik had not seen him smoke since the earliest days upon the road, before Alviss had hawked his own pipe and tobacco for a night’s shelter at a farmhouse, many and more miles from Verdan.

  The pipe fell away as they neared. Nodding to them, Alviss observed, “Good catch.” Chigenda returned the nod and pressed past him into the tavern. Rurik and Essa lingered a moment longer. “Wasn’t too much trouble was he?” Alviss directed the question at Essa.

  “Not at all,” she answered, with the faintest hint of surprise. “In fact, Rurik even helped.” Somewhat taken aback, but not intending to pass up the opportunity for praise, Rurik beamed, though his smile soured as Essa smirked at him. “Made the deer feel so secure, he walked right up to us. Might’ve eaten out of my own hand, if Chi-chi hadn’t given him the pointy bit.”

  Alviss chuckled faintly. “Glad he could be a help.”

  “Funny,” Rurik sourly said.

  Essa patted him on the head and made a sad sort of cooing sound.

  “And how did your trek go, oh fearless leader?”

  The quest to find a way into the Matair manor had, as Alviss told it, been significantly less eventful than their own journey. Though he found his man easily enough, he had little to offer them. Renovations had just been completed on the manor’s battlements near the end of spring, guaranteeing they remained unassailable from without. Isaak, the younger of Rurik’s two elder brothers, had added a pair of new dogs to his already ferocious pack of hounds. Vardick of Tarney, more popularly known as the Brickheart—for reasons obvious to anyone that had ever had to share a moment of his time—remained the captain of the guard, though Ivon had taken control of the forces without.

  There was precious little new information, save word that a final band of soldiers was rumored to be riding from one of Count Witold’s more southern landings. Their informant, who remained nameless, offered no way of entry into the manor. In fact, he cautioned strongly against it, though Rurik remained doubtful as to whether those were the informant’s actual words, or Alviss’s. Supposedly, the pipe had been consolation for the bad news.

  Rurik was less than thrilled. He wanted to move as soon as possible, but they would be going into it with no plan and no possibility, at least as far as they could see. The only conclusion he could come to was that they had to get there before this latest batch of soldiers. The more armed men about, the worse their chances grew, and if they waited too long, his father would simply ride out of his life forever, with all those swords in tow. It was not, by any means, the ideal situation. But then, it had never had been.

  When Alviss inquired as to whether they had been noticed, they proudly informed him they had not, save a few woodsmen that might have caught them at a distance hauling off their catch. Alviss did not seem particularly troubled by the possibility. He had a nose for trouble, that one. If he was not worried—and that was a sure rarity in and of itself—then Rurik judged they had little to fear.

  “Rowan back yet?”

  Alviss shook his head. “Afraid not.”

  Essa huffed. “Well he had best be back ‘fore dinner. I’ll carve him up right good if he thinks to step out on us.”

  “I know.” Alviss’s smile spread cynically. “I know.”

  Once the last of the still-smoldering tobacco was finished off, they headed inside and added their chunks of deer to the neat pile Chigenda had already formed on the innkeeper’s counter. Her son watched the pile grow with some dejection, but he knew enough not to question it. His mother, however, smiled as the last of the meat was piled, her tongue once tracing the dried bottom of her lip.

  Turning to Alviss, she directed, “Mud man says you gots us something fresh. I’ds tell him sure as take a shit as go bringing that heap in here,
but old Jez’s nose don’t go, and I can smell it clear as day. All that bit o’ eatin’, but now you need someone to fry it up real good, no?” Patting a thigh, her ruthless smile spread. “Oh, you are cruelty to an old woman.”

  In exchange for half of what they brought her, old Jez agreed to cook and season the other half for them to eat. The rest would be salted and stored, for her own purposes. It was a fair enough deal, since the old woman would be doing all the work. They also reluctantly refrained from asking how she knew exactly whom to address.

  All the rest of that afternoon was spent awash in the smell of broiling meat, while everyone else moved back into their own orbits. It was hard to concentrate, though. With every breath, Rurik felt his stomach lurch. He had never been a patient man. That was one thing, at least, which he and the Zuti shared in common.

  That, and an uncanny knack for attracting unwanted attention.

  * *

  Voren was pulling the last loaf from the oven when he heard the voice call out from the door. At first, it did not register. If it was not his mother’s shrill trill, then he presumed he wasn’t needed. As the footfalls clapped nearer and the floorboards creaked, however, he became distinctly aware of the absolute lack of being of his mother’s voice. There was no reply, no sound of her beckoning. He set the bread upon the counter and leaned out over it as he tried to peer into the front of the store. There was no sign of his mother, just the void of silence that always stalked her wake.