The Demon of Darkling Reach (The Black Prince Book 1)

by P. J. Fox

  The change in musculature effected was more or less permanent, and a real bowman was easily recognizable by his strong shoulders and trunk-like arms. His upper arms might be enormous, but what separated the bowman from the swordsman was the fact that he possessed such strength in his forearms as well. His wrists, too, were always very strong and his fingers often bore calluses from where he held the bowstring. The classic fuck you gesture, the first two fingers splayed outward and turned around, was a reference to this phenomenon—and to the vital importance of those digits to the bowman. A classic, and needless to say unchivalrous move during wartime was to sever a captured bowman’s fingers before ransoming him. He might live, but he’d never fight again.

  Their own master at arms was one such. After losing his fingers in the seemingly ceaseless civil war, he’d taken up a position training others and had done reasonably well for himself. He was married, with several children. His wife seemed to like him. He’d trained Hart.

  Isla recognized her brother, standing near the edge of the field and gesticulating at one of the targets. And she recognized the duke, not so much by his build or coloring as by his posture. He radiated an aura of command, not as though he were grasping for it but in the sense that he already possessed it and didn’t care who knew. He didn’t have to make an effort, or bend men to his will. They followed him naturally. And indeed, he interacted with his men as an equal. The only thing picking him out as their leader was their clear deference, almost reverence, toward him.

  Hart, too, gazed at the duke with that same species of hero worship that Isla had seen earlier and that continued to make her intensely uncomfortable. She’d suggested, mostly jokingly, that he speak with the duke about joining them in the North but hadn’t had any real belief that he’d do so. To talk about taking service with a particular person was one thing; to actually throw in one’s lot with him, especially when he was someone as cold and downright evil as her supposed future husband, was another thing entirely. And yet Hart listened avidly as the duke explained something or other, gesturing at the target with a far more subdued hand wave of his own.

  She’d lost him, Isla realized. Whatever problems she had with Mountbatten, her brother—who still loved her as much as ever—wouldn’t see them. Not because he didn’t support Isla, but because he wasn’t capable of seeing the duke for the man he truly was. He’d tell Isla that things weren’t that bad, and counsel her to see the good in the situation. Were Mountbatten a woman, Isla was half-convinced that Hart would be in love with him. Her. She sighed. She felt more alone than ever.

  She cantered forward slowly, her eyes still riveted on the field. She wanted more than anything to be gone from here, but she couldn’t manage to pull herself away from the spectacle unfolding in front of her. A younger boy, some sort of page judging by his costume, brought the duke his bow. It was, indeed, enormous, its plain lines belying the beauty of its curve. Accepting it from him with a quiet word, the duke prepared to shoot.

  Although the deadliest archers often did use elm, the preferred material for both bowyers and archers of all skill levels was still yew and Darkling Reach produced most of the yew in the kingdom as well as many of its finest bowyers. Learning to produce a longbow was equally as challenging as learning to shoot one, if not more so. The process began by carefully selecting lengths of yew and then drying them for one or two winters. After which point, the wood was fashioned into staves and slowly worked into shape in a series of steps that took another one or two winters. Producing just one bow, therefore, took four winters; which accounted for the fact that production of a child’s first bow usually began immediately after his birth. It would be ready to shoot, right around the time that he was first ready to draw.

  The bowyer’s craft took a keen understanding of wood, much the way the dyer’s craft took a keen understanding of wool and flax and all the other various types of fibers that made up cloth. For strength, the curve of the bow had to follow the natural curve of the wood. The heartwood at the center of the bow resisted compression and the outer sapwood, just beneath the bark, performed better in tension. Lesser craftsmen made what were known as composite bows, joining the pieces together, but no composite would ever be as strong as the natural laminate created by a true master bowyer.

  The duke’s bow shone, having been rubbed with a water-resistant coating of wax mixed with resin and milled tallow. His page, undoubtedly the son of some nobleman too poor to educate the child at home, would start learning the craft of archery by caring for another’s weapon and, in time, his own. The child, a bright-eyed thing with the same short hair so common in the North, couldn’t have been more than about seven or eight at the oldest. But he didn’t seem frightened of the duke; rather, he looked on interestedly as the duke nocked a fresh bowstring onto the tip of his bow and pulled it taut.

  The arrow he selected was long, thin, and well made. His target, bales of hay that had been dressed in various pieces of scrap armor, was about two hundred yards distant. He contemplated the shot, his eyes narrowed against the sun.

  This must, Isla realized, be where his vast fortune came from—or at least where part of it came from: yew. Yew, and woad, the same woad that had been used to dye his men’s garments. According to Hart, the price of bowstaves had recently risen from ten guineas per hundred to sixteen guineas per hundred; and in a kingdom where the average yeoman’s land wasn’t worth more than five guineas altogether that was astonishing news indeed. No wonder he rode a warhorse the price of which exceeded the average knight’s yearly income.

  Armor, once it became too worn out for reliable use and had degenerated past the point where patch repair was practicable, was often used as target practice before it was melted down and the metal reformed into something else. This way, the archers could get a feel for the penetrative force of their arrows at different distances. Regardless of the bow he used, each man’s effective range was slightly different. In the hands of a decent archer, at a hundred yards a bodkin point would penetrate steel.

  The duke’s stance was practiced. He positioned the arrow against the bowstring as he raised the bow, all in one fluidly graceful motion. In battle, an experienced archer tried for six arrows per minute. Until now, watching the duke, Isla had never conceived of how such speed was possible. But he leaned his body into the bow, pressing forward as much as he pulled back, not relying on the strength of his arm as she’d seen other men do but using his whole weight to his advantage. The bow wasn’t so much a tool in his hands as an extension of himself; where such a large weapon should have been awkward, this was just the opposite.

  Isla held her breath as he loosed the arrow. Less than a second later, the fletching on its hind end quivered as it punched through a chainmail doublet. Hart howled his rather over-enthusiastic praise. The duke, for his part, seemed unmoved. He motioned his page over and then bent down to explain something. All around them, the training continued as men took turns shooting at their targets and then stepping back as their trainees ran out onto the field to retrieve them. Arrows, even in practice, were dear and retrieving them from an ongoing battle wasn’t unheard of. The earl’s men seemed a little awed by their northern counterparts, who in turn regarded them with a kind of affectionate indifference. Isla wondered how many of them, like Hart, were considering leaving. Would leave.

  The spell broke. Realizing that at any moment one of the men might turn and see her, Isla spurred Piper into action. Piper, annoyed, tossed her head and whinnied. She’d been perfectly content to clip the grass at the side of the road, and viewed this sudden rush to action as most undignified.

  But Isla, having caught herself for a moment actually admiring the wretched man and wondering what he was saying to his page—a boy whose story she’d discovered she was eager to know—was more determined than ever to be elsewhere. Pulling roughly on Piper’s reins, she dug her knees into the horse’s flanks and galloped toward the gate.

  SIXTEEN

  Piper picked her way through the sun-
dappled forest. Isla let her have her head, trusting the mare to know her way over the treacherous ground better than Isla. And the mare did. Piper, for all her fire, was a solid and reliable horse. She and Isla had a bond. Hart, and others, had told her that such notions were foolish and for all that some horses were better than others, a horse was still a horse. But they were wrong.

  She patted Piper’s neck, loving the feel of the mare’s dappled gray coat: smooth and rough at the same time. She loved the velvet-soft feel of Piper’s ears, too, when she stroked them and fed her treats. Piper liked that especially, and her favorite treat was one of the stunted little apples from the old orchard. Baked in pies, or roasted in honey, they were bearable; otherwise, they were really only fit for a horse.

  “We’re almost there,” she said.

  Her father would have apoplexy if he knew that she was taking this route alone. All manner of outlaws and who knew what else roamed the woods. Isla had a dagger and her eating knife, but she wasn’t proficient with either and she wasn’t very strong. She’d be easy prey for an attacker—as even a grown man would, and an armed one at that. Very few men, however brave or well-trained, were capable of fighting off ten or even twenty times their number. And outlaws were like coyotes, roaming in packs. What they lacked in actual skill they more than made up for in sheer force of numbers.

  Women were raped and carried off into the hills, or worse. Slavery was illegal in Morven, but that didn’t keep it from happening. Murder was illegal, too, and the murder rate in all of Ewesdale was so high and the roads so poorly policed that even the sheriffs had a hard time keeping an accurate count. Some had given up.

  But no one ventured too far to the west of the main road, where Isla was headed, because they were afraid of the witch.

  The sunlight filtering down through the trees had been turned a brilliant green by the leaves. Apart from the occasional rustle in the underbrush, the forest was quiet. No birds called. And though the day had grown warm enough, the air under the canopy was as cool and refreshing as lake water. Isla thought briefly of what Tristan—the duke—had said about curses.

  This part of the forest was especially beautiful, and so lushly verdant that her eye could barely take it in. The sense of green was overpowering and, passing through the watchful trees, Isla thought that this tiny little corner of the forest seemed untouched by the forces ravaging the rest of the world. Here, war had never intruded.

  She knew that she was welcome but, even so, she felt a strange current of…unpleasantness lurking just beneath the surface. Coming to this part of the forest had always unsettled her and it did so doubly now. She thought back, yet again, to Tristan’s mention of curses and wondered if a curse might explain Isla’s gnawing and utterly inexplicable sense of disquiet. It was certainly true that even the most intrepid robbers left this part of the forest alone…but there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for that. She didn’t believe in curses.

  And she didn’t believe in men who were 140 years old.

  Still…Isla shook her head, as if to clear her thoughts. She felt like someone had stuffed cotton wool between her ears, making her thoughts vague around the edges and hard to hold onto. Every time she felt like she’d finally gotten a firm grip on one idea or another, it slipped away. The truth was, she wasn’t sure what she believed anymore, and she was confused. More confused than she’d ever been, to the point where she barely knew whether she was awake or in the grip of some hideous dream. Certainly this entire morning—this entire week—had felt like a dream.

  Ahead of her, the trees grew sparser and finally opened out onto a little clearing. At the far edge of the clearing sat a house or, more properly, a sort of hut that looked like something from a fairytale. The half-timbered structure had been built back into the hillside, so only the façade and part of one side wall protruded. A stout chimney rose up to just above what, judging by the tiny window near the sloping sod roof, was some sort of sleeping loft. Isla had been into the cottage before, but never upstairs.

  As she reined up, a woman hurried out of the front door. She glanced nervously at Isla before hurrying into the trees and disappearing. Isla swung down onto the soft bed of moss that covered the clearing’s floor and tied Piper to a nearby tree. Piper, who knew where she was and approved, whinnied once before turning slightly and staring off into the distance. Horses were, Isla mused, philosophical creatures.

  Giving Piper a final pat, she herself turned toward the door. The timbered beams had been cut from ash and had silvered over time to a deeply gray patina. The wattle and daub between them was, like the ground, covered with moss. The sod on the roof was as verdantly green as the rest of the forest, and tiny yellow dandelions even dotted its surface. There were two matching windows on either side of the stout front door, both of which contained glass. Isla had never seen so much glass in one place, and wondered again how the witch could afford it. Glass was a luxury that most merchants were hard pressed to afford and to the best of Isla’s knowledge the witch’s only source of income was customers like the woman who’d just left.

  The front door had been painted a dusky yellow, and it opened now as the witch herself stepped outside.

  “Took you long enough,” she croaked. She batted at a length of wisteria vine that had sprung forth from the main and now threatened to curl around the doorknob.

  “The roads….” Isla made a halfhearted gesture. What was she going to say, that she’d been admiring the looks of a man she hated in his breeches? Besides, the roads did need work. Weeds sprouted up between over-large pebbles, and no new gravel had been added in who knew how long. She wished the roads were better maintained, as did half of Enzie, but maintenance took money. Money: the refrain to every verse and one that Isla was sick of hearing, even in her own head. Money this, money that. The same want of money that made her worry constantly over Piper’s shoes had consigned her to doom with a man who—

  “You’d better come inside,” the witch counseled. She sounded resigned.

  “Who was that?” Isla asked, gesturing vaguely toward the direction where the last visitor had gone.

  The witch held open the door. If she’d had a name at some point, nobody knew it now and the witch had certainly never told; so Isla called her Cariad, which meant friend in the old tongue.

  She’d known the witch for a long time, since she’d been small and had come across the hut by accident during a storm. She’d been cold and frightened and had skinned her knee and Cariad, who looked exactly the same then as she did this instant, had taken her in and given her something to eat. Isla still remembered sitting on the bench by the window and watching in fascination as the rain drove against the glass. By the time the skies had cleared, Isla and Cariad had become friends.

  Cariad was easily twice her age, perhaps thrice. Isla wasn’t sure and, once again, Cariad had never told. She moved silently about the single large room, beckoning Isla in and then seemingly forgetting about her as she busied herself with various domestic tasks like putting on a kettle and laying out some bread and cheese. “My patients won’t eat my food,” she said caustically, “for fear that it’s poisoned. But it’s the same cheese they buy from Goodman Johnson, or from your estate.” She wrinkled her nose. “Which is terrible cheese.”

  “I know,” Isla agreed, settling herself at one of the stools by the table.

  Patients was an apt term for the men and women who visited Cariad. What few doctors there were in Enzie charged the earth and did more harm than good. Trepanning and bleeding and rubbing bacon grease on everything in sight had brought more than one reasonably healthy man to the brink of death—or beyond. They lived in terror of Cariad, but they went to her anyway. Because there was no other option. As far as Isla knew, she was the only one of Cariad’s patients—she wasn’t sure that Cariad had friends, precisely, or wanted them—who’d given her a name. The others just called her the witch, or Crafter, as was the respectful honorific for same. Isla suspected that Cariad herself did a good bit t
o encourage the mystery.

  A witch was an herbalist. She understood the uses, both for good and evil, of the thousands of plants that made up the forest. Many of the same plants that cured could also kill—like foxglove. Cariad had taught Isla something of her art, in a casual sense, enough for Isla to fully appreciate just how little she knew. Willow bark, Cariad had told her once, when boiled, could be chewed for relief from headache or muscle pain or, in some cases, the shortness of breath that accompanied mild pains of the heart.

  But strong pains, the killing kind, were often incurable. The only thing that might help was foxglove and administered quickly. Cariad believed, as the church taught was heretical, that the source of intellect was the brain and not the heart and that when air—another heretical concept—was cut off, the brain began to die. Women, equally as innocent of consorting with the Dark One as Cariad, had been burned alive for speaking less.

  The church taught, rather, that the brain was a vestigial appendage dating from before the fall of man and served no purpose. Which, as Cariad had been known to remark darkly, explained why men seemed to think more with the other head. Isla had wondered before how the church explained that decapitation was a sure recipe for death on the battlefield. She’d never asked, however, being too afraid of incurring her own priest’s wrath. She both disliked and mistrusted the man, an effeminate little ogre who believed that there was no purpose in women being taught how to read.

  Isla helped herself to some bread while Cariad, taking the stool opposite her, tied handfuls of freshly cut herbs into little bunches with twine. After she’d finished, she’d hang them all upside down to dry. Dozens of bunches of herbs already hung from the rafters, filling the cottage with a heavenly scent.

  But for all that earthenware jars and books and all manner of other implements of the trade crowded every surface, Cariad kept the place scrupulously clean. Isla frowned at a shallow bowl sitting on a tall sort of pedestal near the window. About an inch of clear water covered the bottom, as motionless as glass. A talented potter had made the vessel, glazing it with a salt and copper glaze that seemed to glow from within. The color was rich, and as red as blood.