The Shattered Vigil

by Patrick W. Carr

  “By the lakes and forests old,

  The Fayit guard their eldritch gold.

  Walking the wood and water there,

  Call the Fayit, if you dare.”

  He stopped. I’d heard the song any number of times and had sung it myself when I was a boy in Bunard and we would play the circle game.

  “And if you catch one—” I laughed, feigning a grimace to match his indignation—“will you force him to surrender his wealth?”

  “Humph. First you ask me to tell you what I know about children’s rhymes, and then you dismiss them. You’re inconsistent, Willet.” He stared through me for a moment the way he did whenever he pulled his focus inward to the vast library he kept in his head. “That one hasn’t changed much, but the language is odd.”

  “How so?”

  He shrugged. “It’s like many of them, actually. The words are so old, it’s almost impossible to ferret out the original intent. Too many of them could have multiple meanings.”

  Rory laughed the clean, joyful sound of a boy, and for a moment my heart lifted. “All you have to do is catch one and ask him.”

  Volsk stopped, turning his horse to check directions or landmarks before he caught Bolt’s gaze. “We’re close.”

  Bolt shook his head the way people do when they’re commanding silence. The sound his sword made as he drew it drained the joy from our conversation like water running out the hole of a bucket. “Draw your knives, Rory. If you see anyone, anyone, you tell us. Don’t assume that we can see them as well.”

  Another two hundred paces farther into the wood we entered a clearing and the smell of blood. Bolt growled an unceasing stream of curses under his breath at the sight. Volsk echoed him on the other side of me. Mounds of fur matted with blood were scattered across the clearing between a small cabin and a barn. Dead sentinels lay everywhere. So still.

  And two human bodies.

  I hadn’t realized I’d dismounted and walked to the first of the dead sentinels until I’d already knelt to place one hand on the thick, coarse ruff of fur around the neck. I peered into the empty blue-eyed stare of the oversized hound, caught by the same spell that had kept me in thrall since my days in the Darkwater. “What do you see, boy?” I asked. “What’s out there beyond the sky and stars that draws you so?”

  “Willet?” a small voice called behind me. “It’s dead.”

  I turned to see Rory looking at me, his expression uncertain and a little afraid. Of course. He wasn’t aware of the malady that afflicted me in the company of the dead. Volsk stared at me with an expression that left me feeling naked and exposed. My mutterings might have been justification or confirmation for his betrayal. I couldn’t tell.

  Bolt just looked at me, waiting, his sword out, but in the deep wrinkles that tracked across his forehead I thought I detected an emotion I hadn’t seen before. Resignation. Whatever had killed an entire pack of sentinels was more than a match for a Vigil guard.

  With a start, I stepped back from the sentinel. Aer, have mercy. It was just an oversized dog. When had I ever been drawn to the stare of a dead animal? The farmyard pitched in my vision, tilting back and forth like the ocean seen from the deck of a ship. First Ealdor and now this. What was happening in my mind?

  I dropped to my knees and squeezed my eyes shut, digging my hands into the dirt of the clearing, trying to prove its reality. But Ealdor had been real. I remembered his touch, warm and welcoming on my shoulder, recalled him standing next to me while I officiated behind the altar. Oh yes, Ealdor had been real right up until Bronwyn had proved he wasn’t.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Rory asked.

  Hands that felt strong enough to gouge stone hauled me to my feet, and Bolt’s thumbs pried my lids open. Bolt gazed at me, his face close, peering from one eye to another.

  “Is it real?” I asked. He couldn’t possibly understand my question. I didn’t know myself.

  “It’s real,” he nodded. “Willet, you need to be a reeve now. We need to know as much as we can about who did this and why.”

  I stepped away and pulled my shoulders back. Yes. I could do that. I looked at Rory, tried to give him a comforting smile that must have failed, and then nodded to Custos and Volsk. “Don’t touch anything.”

  I backed away from the dead sentinel and searched the ground for the impressions that might tell me what had happened. I didn’t have Gareth’s knack for it, but I hoped I wouldn’t need it. “Volsk, how many people lived here?”

  “Three,” he said. “Faran.” He pointed to the crumpled body of an old man within a couple of paces of the cabin’s door. “That’s him there. The other one is his apprentice, Afyred. Viona you know about already.”

  I tried to keep the contents of my stomach where they belonged. “Viona killed herself to keep this place secret, and it didn’t matter. They found them anyway.”

  Volsk nodded, his eyes dark. “They had to have supplies. Faran and Afyred had no way of knowing what happened to her.”

  A thought struck me. “Why two apprentices?”

  “Faran was almost done. When we stumbled across Viona a couple of years ago, we recruited her.” His voice hitched. “They were all different, like your friend Myle.”

  That caught my attention. I knew the answer to the next question but asked it anyway, testing to see if I could trust Volsk’s answers. “Were they all gifted?”

  He shook his head. “No, only Faran held the gift of devotion, but they all had surprisingly strong talents for nature.”

  I stored that away in case I needed it again and moved to each of the bodies, checking their boots, memorizing the shape of each heel in the hopes of finding something I could use. But when I surveyed the ground around the sentinels, I had to swallow my disappointment. The hard-packed earth denied impressions that might have aided me. A smaller mound of fur near each of the sentinels caught my attention.

  Whoever had killed them had struck down the pups as well. That only made sense, but it still heated coals within my chest. Back in Bunard, I’d never had much use for men or women who made it a practice to abuse animals.

  I stopped. “Custos, count the sentinels. Rory, you count the pups.”

  They moved off to circle the clearing while I pondered the strange assortment of bodies. Faran and his apprentice had been done in by sword strokes, as had the sentinels and the pups. Many of the small furred bodies had been cut almost in two, killed instantly by sword strokes from various angles, scattered around the clearing as if they’d been killed while they were in chaotic motion. I shook my head. But not the adults. In fact, every wound on the adults had been placed with surgical precision. Vast pools of blood surrounded each of them. It appeared as though it was as Bolt had expected and hoped for—they’d been killed by a dwimor, presumably the one Rory had killed the night before.

  A scattering of arrows lay in random positions close to the center of the clearing near one of the sentinels, and a bit farther away a couple of daggers littered the ground as well. I picked up one of the arrows. The broadhead dangled from the rest of the shaft, held on by a few threads of wood. “Somebody saw the dwimor coming,” I said to Bolt. “Volsk told me Afyred was nearly forty.”

  “Yes, he’d apprenticed under Faran for almost twenty years.”

  “That doesn’t fit. Afyred had ten years on me, and I could barely catch a hint of the dwimors I saw. Unless there’s something about the way Myle’s type of mind works that allows them to see someone no other adult can, I don’t think Afyred ever saw the dwimor. He probably fired his bow the same way you aimed your sword strokes in Braben’s.”

  I sighed and handed the ruined arrow to Bolt. “The dwimor knocked at least one of Afyred’s arrow down with his sword in midfight.” I caught Bolt’s gaze. “Could you do as much?”

  He gave me a tight gaze and nodded. “It’s not as hard as it appears. Killing the sentinels would be more difficult.”

  I shook my head. “Obviously not. Look. Each of them was taken in the throat
with a single stroke.”

  Bolt nodded. “The adults couldn’t have seen him coming. Not even Robin could have killed a pack of sentinels. You’d have to see one fight to understand.”

  My mind conjured the ferocity that could take down the most gifted trained swordsmen in the world. “I’d rather not.”

  I kept coming back to it, though. I’d witnessed Bolt in a fight. He didn’t flaunt his gift the way I’d seen others do, with acrobatic jumps and leaps that defied imagination, but even advanced in years, he could move so fast the eye had a hard time keeping up. How could a single oversized dog hope to defeat such a man?

  “Twelve.” Custos broke me from my abstraction.

  I looked to Bolt and he nodded. “The trainer here in Collum kept more sentinels in reserve since the border with the Darkwater is longer.”

  “Ten,” Rory said, walking up, his gaze filled with threats. “Who kills a bunch of pups?”

  Bolt’s eyebrows lifted.

  Volsk’s gaze sharpened, turning outward from whatever hell he’d been reliving within his memories. “It’s not impossible, but highly unlikely. Half the sentinels are females, and they always give birth to a pair. Always.”

  Custos’s eyes widened. “Fascinating, but dogs will often lose a few of their litter, yes?”

  Bolt shook his head. “Sentinels aren’t dogs. They’re hardier. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it’s more likely that there are a couple of pups hidden beneath the adults.” He looked at me. “We have to be sure.”

  The four of us moved to the nearest sentinel and worked together to roll the body, a female, over. I grabbed the legs and lifted, overwhelmed with shame at the indignity of the animal’s death and the necessity of moving it like an oversized piece of furniture. “I’m sorry, girl,” I said. “We’re trying to find your puppy.”

  Rory’s face twisted as he tried to keep from crying. “I’d like to put a dagger through the eye of whoever did this.”

  The earth beneath the sentinel was bare. We moved to the next, a male, and repeated the process with the same result. When we put our hands on the sixth one, another female, sound came from the forest behind us and we stilled, listening. I put my hands on the sentinel again and heard a faint growl that ended in a whimper.

  I straightened. “That’s one,” I said. I looked at Bolt. “What do we do now?”

  “We need that pup,” he said.

  “No question.”

  “It’s hurt,” Rory said.

  “Is there some greeting or training you use to distinguish friend from foe?” I asked Bolt.

  Volsk shook his head. “We never needed one. Each trainer has at least half a dozen sentinels to protect him. It would take scores of men to get through such a defense.” He waved at the trees. “And almost no one knew he was here.”

  “I’ll get it,” Rory said.

  “Boy,” Bolt said, “that is about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. It may sound small and hurt, but that sentinel pup is already fifty pounds of teeth, with fur so dense you’d be hard-pressed to cut through. If it goes for your throat, I won’t be quick enough to help you.”

  Rory’s eyes hardened in defiance. “I know what it means to be an orphan.”

  Bolt opened his mouth to respond, but a moment later he nodded. “That you do. Be careful.”

  Rory walked to the edge of the brush bordering the clearing, and a growl rumbled from the foliage. Then he sat on the ground and spread his arms. Leaning forward he made kissing noises. “It’s okay. I’m here.”

  The growl scaled upward in pitch, as if the pup questioned him. Rory continued to beckon, and a few minutes later a black nose poked its way between the leaves where two bushes grew together.

  “C’mon, boy,” Rory crooned to the nose. A moment later the rest of a black-and-gray muzzle emerged. Then, dropping its head as it came limping from the bushes, the sentinel pup emerged, watching Rory.

  Bolt tensed, but his posture held conflict, as if he didn’t know who to save.

  The pup put its nose into Rory’s cupped hand and then moved to lie down, exposing a long, open cut along its flank. The rest of us, even Volsk, all breathed silent curses. I’d seen hunting dogs with less severe injuries put down to save them from a slow death by infection.

  “Rory,” I called softly, “we can’t save him. He’s half dead already.”

  Rory’s head jerked. The pup started, then whimpered in pain. For a moment, no one else spoke, neither condemning nor supporting my suggestion.

  Then Bolt stepped forward. “Yes, we can.”

  “Look at that wound,” I pointed. “You can’t be serious.”

  “We have to at least try. Do you think this is the only camp that got attacked?” Bolt asked. “That pup may be our only chance at restoring the sentinels.”

  I turned on Bolt with a mix of anger churning in my gut—that the pup would suffer needlessly, that Rory would have to watch it die slowly, that I alone had been put in the role of executioner. “It’s a pup. We’ll never be able to get it to stay still enough to heal.”

  I gestured at the oozing trench that ran down the side of the sentinel. “How many feet of thread do you think it will take to close that wound? How is that going to happen?”

  Bolt’s face hardened, going from stone to iron. “We’ll take him to a healer.”

  I looked skyward, but Aer didn’t seem of a mind to help me make Bolt understand. I pulled a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. “Fine. We need to be about it then.”

  Bolt shook his head. “Not yet. We have to find the other one.”

  “We don’t even know if there is another one,” I said.

  “There’s always the same number of pups as there are adults,” Bolt said. “Always. Help me with the others.”

  I shrugged, resigning myself to Bolt’s strange sense of duty. “Custos, search the cabin, and, Volsk, the barn. Let’s get Fluffy over there fed and watered before we ride out of here. The little fella’s going to need all his strength for the ride.”

  Bolt and I searched beneath the rest of the bodies for the missing pup. The stench of blood and death couldn’t dispel the strange attraction I felt every time I met the gaze of the dead animals. Bolt preceded me to each one, closing their eyes before we checked beneath them.

  “We’ll need to drag the bodies into the barn and fire it,” Bolt said. “It’s not perfect, but there will be fewer questions that way.”

  I pointed at the sky. “A plume of smoke isn’t exactly subtle.”

  “There’s no one in the area to see it.”

  Custos came out of the cabin laden with supplies and stood a few paces away from the pup, watching it the way a city-bred man would eye a snake, wondering whether or not its bite would be poisonous. Volsk exited the barn soon after.

  “Volsk,” Bolt called. “Where is the closest healer worth anything?”

  The former apprentice to the Vigil pulled his attention from the pup nuzzling Rory’s hands. He pointed off to the northwest. “Gylden, but we’ll have to cut through the southern portion of the Everwood.”

  Bolt nodded. “Three days. Maybe more, if we have to slow our trip for the pup.”

  “Gylden? Are you crazy?” I closed my mouth around what I’d been about to say and tried not to gape. “You want me to voluntarily walk into the seat of Duke Orlan’s power?” I didn’t bother giving Volsk and Rory context for my outburst. They knew. Everyone in Bunard and most of the people of Collum who possessed a working pair of ears knew I’d exposed and killed the duke’s brother for gift stealing. The fact that he’d intended to set himself up as king hadn’t earned me the duke’s favor. He viewed his brother’s actions as a stain on the family honor, a very public smudge that my death would help to clean.

  “If I’m recognized, someone is going to try very hard to put a knife in my ribs.” I stepped closer to Bolt. “The pup can’t survive. You know this. A man might allow a healer to put ten feet of thread in his skin and remain still enough through
the following days to recover, if he didn’t bleed to death first—but not a dog, a pup.” I shook my head. “No. I will not walk into Orlan’s stronghold and give him the opportunity to kill me.”

  Bolt looked at me, and I wondered how eyes so clear could hide so much. “You’re doing it again.” I ran through Jeb’s vocabulary in my head, but none of his words seemed like the right fit. “Out with it. Give me a reason to put my life in jeopardy for an animal that can’t survive.”

  Bolt glanced down at my hands, then over at the pup cradled in Rory’s arms. “You’ll need to take your gloves off.”

  Someone must have cut the strings holding my heart in place, because I felt it drop into my stomach. I pulled the glove from my right hand and walked over to the pup, its light-blue eyes eerily similar to Bolt’s. The thick fur on the hound’s head ran from pitch black at the neck and ears to a light gray around the muzzle. At the top of the head, a ghost-white patch in the shape of a rough circle only served to accent the deep hue of the rest of the fur. The effect gave the pup a perpetual frown. I tried to ignore the open wound and the blood that matted the fur as I reached out to put my hand on its head.

  My experience delving my horse, Dest, hadn’t prepared me. With a lurch I fell through the pup’s eyes and into memories that carried hints of reasoning and intelligence, an awareness no animal should have possessed.

  Pain flooded through the bond, and I sucked air and flinched against the wound in my side. Thousands upon thousands of smells cascaded into my awareness—blood, plants, woodland animals, birds, horses, men, and steel all painted the clearing and woods around me in a tapestry I could almost touch and see through my nose. Thought colored each odor, evaluated and catalogued it, separating each into classifications of friend, food, or foe.

  I fell back through time, saw figures on horses that I recognized as myself and my comrades entering the clearing, bearing the smell of men, but not knowing if they were enemies or allies. Further back I saw the eyes of my dam, one paw on my head as she breathed her last, awareness stifling the pain that danced along my side like tongues of fire. Mourning cut through me like a second sword stroke, the loss of the pack.