by M. C. Planck
With a start he realized he had no idea how much time had passed. It couldn’t have been long, but the euphoria of the experience distorted everything. What he would give for a wristwatch! Instead, he swooped down and circled around, searching for his army. Flying over their heads would make them look up to him. It was hard not to respect a man whom even gravity deferred to.
When he found them, their startled cries alerted him to one last danger. They might shoot him by accident. He went lower, until he could see their faces and they could presumably see his, and found the head of the column again. Then he floated in, like the witch in Oz, and once his boots touched the soil, he let the spell dissipate. He didn’t dare risk a second ascent, not having any clue how much time was left.
The men gaped open-mouthed at him, except for Karl, of course.
“Did you find a suitable location?” Karl asked, the pure normalcy of his tone more grounding than the earth beneath Christopher’s feet.
“No,” Christopher admitted. “All I saw was more trees.” All of his cares and burdens scrambled up from the mud, climbing onto his back where they belonged. But they seemed lighter now, unreduced in number or import but nonetheless robbed of their crushing weight. “We’ll keep going south, and try again tomorrow.”
Gregor and the cavalry finally rejoined them, trotting in as the sun set.
“No ulvenmen,” the blue knight reported, “but we found a good camp.”
“What makes it good?”
“Why,” Gregor said with a grin, “it’s next to plenty of mud.”
They only had a week before the wizard would come out to find them and start the magic. The men had a lot of shoveling to do, and easy access to the raw materials would count highly. But Gregor was joking, of course. Everything out here was next to mud.
11
FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE
In the morning, as he was eating breakfast and ruminating on how badly the quality of his victuals had fallen in the last three days, his sentries brought him a visitor.
The young man was dressed in green leather, with a six-foot bow on his back and a short sword on either hip. He went to one knee as soon as he saw Christopher.
“Get up,” Christopher said, annoyed at the formality. “Have some porridge.” That seemed like punishment enough for far worse crimes, so he put his annoyance aside.
“You do not even know my name, and yet you offer me food from your table?”
Christopher shrugged. “It’s not food. It’s porridge.”
“I see your reputation for generosity is not unmerited.”
He had to think about that one for a while before he decided the young man wasn’t mocking him.
“So what’s your name, and why are you here?”
“I am Ser D’Kan,” the young man announced, and then muttered under his breath, “and not for the porridge,” looking sourly at the bowl after his first spoonful. Christopher’s men were very good at many things. Cooking was not one of them.
“I am here for a job, my lord.” He squatted next to the small campfire that Christopher and a few others were sitting around.
Christopher was trying to remember the speech Lalania had written him for dismissing applicants and petitioners.
“Not a partnership, my lord. I do not pretend to be so significant that you would take me into your retinue. No, I desire a job, for pay, a simple quid pro quo.”
“I don’t need archers, really.” Not with two hundred riflemen.
“I offer my skills in woodcraft. I am ranked as a Ranger.”
Now Christopher remembered where he had seen green leather before. “You mean like the Baronet D’Arcy?”
“Not so very like him.” D’Kan’s face flashed a hint of distaste. “For instance, I am only a Knight. Still, I believe I can lead your hunt in vastly more profitable directions than you have hitherto experienced.”
That wouldn’t be hard.
“Are you willing to work with my scouts, and teach them what you can?” D’Arcy had seemed to enjoy doing that. But this fellow looked scandalized by the idea.
“I suppose that is not unthinkable.” Apparently it was not that scandalous. He must want the job pretty bad.
“So how much is this going to cost me?”
“In salary, my lord, not a single coin. Though I ask that you feed and shelter me, I will be glad to contribute to the rations with my hunting. And naturally if you choose to share some of the spoils of the hunt, I will be grateful.”
Christopher put down his empty bowl.
“You haven’t actually said what I will be paying.”
D’Kan bowed his head in acknowledgment. “Only this. If I aid you in your hunt, I would ask aid of you for mine.”
“I don’t think I can find anything you can’t.” Only after he had spoken did Christopher guess the obvious.
“It is not the finding I require assistance with. It is the laying low of the prey I cannot do alone.”
Which is what he wanted an army for. Killing a dragon or some other nonsensical monstrosity with gods knew what obscene powers.
“I think you better tell me what kind of monster you expect me to help you with.”
“The worst kind, my lord. A brigand, a traitor, a murderer, a killer of women, a thief of children, a kin-slayer.”
Only a man. A very bad man from the sound of it, but Christopher was pretty sure his army could take a lone man. Conveniently he ignored the fact that his army had just retreated from a lone woman.
“That sounds like the kind of deal I could make. But maybe you should tell me who he killed, first.”
“I will, with great regret, for it brings me great pain. His victim was my dear sister. You knew her as the Lady Niona.”
Christopher leapt to his feet. Instinctively, irrationally, his hand went to his sword.
“What the—what is Cannan doing about it?”
“I imagine Cannan is doing nothing about it, my lord.”
Christopher stared at D’Kan, waiting for him to make sense.
“This is why I came to you. Because you know of Cannan and have dealt with him in the past.”
“So what?” Christopher growled. “Get to the point.” They should be out finding her body to revive, not sitting around chatting.
“The point, my lord, is that Cannan is the murderer.”
There was, of course, no urgency. Nothing in this world was hurried; news traveled one footstep or horse-step at a time. The trail was long cold, the deed many weeks in the past.
D’Kan explained that the Rangers had tracked Cannan as far south as they could and had lost him. “We cannot rely on the Wild to serve justice on him. He travels without fear, walking openly where we must skulk, protected by some powerful enchantment that foils mortal creatures.”
That would be the ring Christopher and Cannan had won in their joint duel with the terrifying Black Bart. Only their enchanted blades had cut through its protection. Cannan had claimed it as his share of the spoils, and Christopher had agreed, because Cannan had fought the better part of that duel. At the time it had seemed a small price for Cannan saving his life.
No, D’Kan explained, they had no knowledge of why Cannan had killed his wife. Nor did they care. All they knew was that their kinswoman was dead.
And ashes.
“Our woodcraft is strong. We found where he did the deed and searched for her body. We do not revive our dead, considering that a violation of the cycle. But we reincarnate them, allowing them to finish their life in whatever guise the Mother cares to give them. For many years, my favorite aunt was a cat. But Cannan denied us even this, burning her remains with savage thoroughness. All he need leave us was a single strand of hair. No doubt he learned that fact from Niona. Her trust sealed her doom.”
That was what the Saint needed, too. Despite the fact that Christopher personally knew two men who could raise the dead, it was still possible to die on a permanent basis.
“Something has to have happened,” Christ
opher argued. “An accident or a misunderstanding. Cannan was a good man.” Despite his prickly exterior, Christopher had seen how gentle the knight had been with Niona, when he thought no one was looking. Christopher had recognized the signs of true devotion, the kind that bound across time and space. It was inconceivable that Cannan had turned from such love to foul murder.
D’Kan shrugged stiffly. “I did not come here so that you could defend him. I came here to enlist your help in destroying a monster with a heart of darkness and a protection that renders my arrows useless.”
“Not useless,” Christopher sighed. “I saw a crossbow quarrel hurt him once. You just need a bigger weapon.” Like a rifle.
D’Kan seemed mollified by the new information. “That is good to know. Then you will help?”
“I will bring him to justice, yes. But if I can do that without killing him, you must accept that.”
“I will agree to that condition,” D’Kan said, “because I know it is impossible. He chose to embrace darkness, whatever the reason. And now that he has, I do not think any power can compel him to choose otherwise. Your Saint does not atone the Black. It is a waste of time to even try.”
“This is an army,” Karl said. “You’ll do what the Colonel tells you to, or you’ll go your own way.”
D’Kan glared haughtily. “I am a Ranger. We swear obedience to no man.” His face changed again, grief replacing anger. “But I will swear obedience to your Curate, for as long as vengeance takes. Before I was a Ranger, I was a brother.”
Exhausted with the grievous topic, Christopher asked what he thought was an innocent question. “Then why does D’Arcy serve Nordland?”
“For love” was the cryptic answer, but D’Kan made a face when he said it, which rather undercut the nobility of the sentiment.
They slogged south, while Christopher bottled his impatience. D’Kan had only come to him after losing the trail. There was no guarantee the druids would ever find it again, and what they could not find, Christopher could not even begin to search for. Cannan could disappear into the Wild and never come back. He could flee back to the barbarian tribes he and Niona had visited, or presumably there were other Kingdoms he could go to. Although no one seemed to know the names of those other lands, they all took it for granted that men built cities elsewhere on this world.
Those unknown people might find a murderer equally undesirable and mete out an appropriate punishment, which in this world invariably meant a death sentence. While that would serve the interests of dispassionate and druidic justice, it would leave Christopher uninformed and unfulfilled. He wanted to talk to the man, to find out what had happened. He wanted to know why. He wanted to believe that Cannan had saved a piece of Niona, just the tiny sliver the Saint would need to bring her back. He needed to believe that miraculous reuniting was possible.
Those answers and possibilities lay deeper in the wilderness, where Cannan and the ulvenmen were hiding. He tapped his heels into his mount, trying to hurry the crawling column of men forward.
That column came to a halt, jerking to a stop in pieces like a Slinky running into a wall. Impatiently, he rode to the front.
Several soldiers were engaged in rescuing a cavalry horse that was knee-deep in quicksand. The horse, panicked and frustrated, was not helping.
“Get more ropes. And can anyone calm that poor beast down?” Christopher’s commands were unnecessary. The men knew how to handle their animals.
But the horse’s fear rose steadily, despite their efforts. Christopher tried to guess how close he could push Royal without getting him trapped in the mud as well, since the big warhorse usually had a calming effect on other horses. That’s when he noticed that Royal had his ears flat, the equine equivalent of balled fists.
Royal’s perspicacity was wasted. The ambush happened before Christopher could utter a single word. The bushes on the opposite side of the mire exploded, and a truckload of striped leather, shaped vaguely like a giant naked chicken, sprung across the gap, landing on the horse like a piano dropped from a rooftop.
The horse broke with a sickening thud, dying so quickly it did not even have time to squeal. The massive creature squatting over it on two legs flicked its impossibly long tail, bent its serrated maw to the dead animal, and tore out a chunk of flesh, swallowing it whole. Then it reared its head and bellowed, the sound unnervingly different than a lion’s roar but no less impressive. It waved a pair of huge sickle-shaped claws at them, like a cat telling the world to stay away from its mouse.
The rest of Christopher’s cavalry bolted, taking their hapless riders with them. Only Royal stood firm. Christopher drew his sword, although he could not honestly imagine what a yard of metal could do against two tons of angry theropod. But he was tired of running away.
The creature noted his defiance and gathered itself for another tremendous leap. The dead horse was not an entirely stable launching platform. This time the beast fell short, landing ten feet away from him, sinking immediately up to its knees in the mud. It bellowed at him again, so close he could feel its hot breath, smell the carrion rotting in its teeth. Stupefied, he pointed his sword at it and waited for Royal to charge to their certain death.
Men, sans timorous horses, came running up on foot. Then the roll of thunder, over and over, as they emptied their rifles into the thrashing creature. The noise disturbed Royal, and the steed trotted back behind the lines, while men reloaded, advanced to point-blank range, and fired again.
“Hold your fire!” Gregor shouted, dismounting. With drawn sword the blue knight approached the dead beast, poking it to see if it would move.
From the mud rose two men, completely covered in black goop. They had been closest to the horse when the monster attacked and had demonstrated their extreme sensibility by simply sinking under the surface and not moving until the thing forgot about them. Then, they had even more sensibly not moved while the panicked riflemen were firing.
“A brave act, Christopher,” Gregor said. “To hold your ground and stall the monster till your men could finish it. Braver than I might have been; this is a fearsome beast indeed.” Then he laughed at the muddy cowards and threw out a rope to pull them in.
Christopher wondered at the fact that his standing still and doing nothing was counted as courage, while their lying still and doing nothing earned them a ribbing from their fellows. It didn’t seem fair.
“What in the Dark was that?” D’Kan exclaimed, finally forcing his horse to the front. The Ranger’s horse was not a great destrier like Gregor’s Balance or Christopher’s Royal, but it was as superbly trained.
“It’s a dinosaur.” Christopher was amazed to discover that word in this language. “Megaraptor, I think.” Bizarrely he remembered being humbled by a nephew with a picture book, the five-year-old expert carefully explaining how the huge single claw on each forelimb established its identity.
“Not that.” D’Kan rolled his eyes. “I know what that is. What was all that noise?”
“Rifles!” a grinning young soldier said, carefully reloading the six chambers on his carbine.
Christopher could see the wheels turning in D’Kan’s head as the Ranger put the pieces together. Many unranked men, a thunderstorm, and one dead dinosaur. And no blood on Christopher’s sword.
Gregor grinned in sympathy, no doubt remembering the first time he had discovered the effect of rifles. “It’s something to think about, isn’t it, Ser?”
D’Kan looked back where the long column of armed men stretched into the jungle. Then he looked at Christopher, with an entirely new attitude. Christopher wasn’t sure if it was respect, fear, or disgust. He suspected the young Ranger wasn’t sure, either.
“You’ve seen dinosaurs before? There are dinosaurs here?” Christopher wished somebody would tell him these things.
“They are not uncommon to the swamp,” D’Kan said. “Although I confess I have never met one face-to-face. If I had, I would hardly be here to tell about it. This breed is considered the equal
of a sixth-rank.”
“So it should have tael, then.” Gregor poked disconsolately at the creature’s head. It was bigger than any of the pots they had brought.
“I’ll do it,” Christopher said. Placing his hand over its forehead, he used an orison to draw the tael out, a tiny purple grain.
“That’s not a sixth-rank’s worth.” It was a fraction of the expected amount. Immediately Christopher regretted how greedy he sounded. Then he regretted even knowing such a gruesome fact.
“It’s only an animal,” Gregor said, when it became clear D’Kan was not going to answer but merely stare in amazement at the village idiot.
Karl had ridden up by now. He stayed only long enough to make sure there were no casualties and to toss out a helpful comment. “He’s always like that, Ser D’Kan. Best you get used to it.” Then he went back down the line, restoring order and chastising the gawkers.
“If you are so eager for tael, my lord, we could search for its fellows. Although likely that dreadful noise has warned them away for miles.” D’Kan had finally found his voice again, and it was sour.
The little purple dot was worth three pounds of gold. Gold was worth less to him than horseflesh, out here in this blasted swampland. And it was sheer luck that the creature had not killed any of his men.
“No, the King didn’t send me out here to kill dinosaurs. But Gregor, make sure the scouts are warned. We don’t want to be surprised again.”
“This will keep them on their toes,” the blue knight grinned. Then he set to guiding the column around the mud-hole.
“Can we eat it?” Christopher asked.
“If you’re really hungry,” D’Kan said. “For my part, I’m not that hungry yet.”
From a distance, Christopher could hear Gregor’s angry bawling. The treacherous mud had blocked his new line of advance.
“We need to get a visual on this, see if we can find a way around this muck.” Thinking about flying made him both excited and nervous. It was tremendous fun, but it was also nerve-wracking, and he’d had enough wrackery for a whole week, even one of these absurd ten-day weeks. He might as well share.
