The Forgetting Moon

by Brian Lee Durfee

  Still, there was something familiar about him. Nail had seen him before, somewhere. In the muddy dreams of my youth? Or more likely through a thin red film of his own blood whilst standing on a corpse-strewn beach. A Bloodwood! The newcomer’s eyes raked over him, the dark gaze burning with intensity. The Bloodwood who killed Shawcroft!

  “Who is this you torment?” the Bloodwood in pearl armor asked Jenko.

  “Nail.” Jenko faced the dark-haired fellow.

  “Ah, yes.” The Bloodwood narrowed his eyes, studying Nail. “A face I have not seen in over fourteen years. Older. But yet the same.”

  “The boy Aeros hunts for?” The second knight removed his helm. There was a familiar, animal-like bearing about this young Sør Sevier knight that Nail recognized. He had squinting eyes that were dark and fierce, with thick smears of blue war paint under each. Carefully pressed russet braids draped down his back in long cornrows. This was the young knight who had struck him down on the Gallows Haven beach.

  “Ser Mancellor, unstrap that leather satchel from Nail’s pony and go straight back to camp,” the Bloodwood ordered the second knight. He then pointed to the ax on the ground, and to Dusty. “Make sure both the battle-ax and satchel reach Aeros. I trust you with this task. That ax is a priceless treasure.” He turned to Jenko. “And you go with him.”

  Living in Jenko’s dark-amber eyes was a sizzling rage. “Not before I kill Nail.”

  “Aeros wants him alive.” The Bloodwood pulled a thin black rope from the folds of his white cloak. “Do as I say, Jenko Bruk, and follow Mancellor if you wish to live out the day.” He leaped from his devilish steed and drifted silently toward Nail.

  Nail scrambled back, feet kicking up dirt, butt sliding along the roadway. But the Bloodwood was fast. In two loping strides he circled behind Nail. In one slick motion he wrapped the rope around Nail’s neck and pulled with such force that Nail’s legs jerked straight out and all air was sucked from his lungs. “Do not worry,” the man whispered in his ear. “I do this for the sake of my horse. Scowl does not suffer strange riders unless they are unconscious or dead . . . or very pretty girls. So give in. Let the darkness take you.”

  Nail had never known such pain. His lungs refused to breathe as the rope cut into his flesh. He clawed at it with his hands. But the Bloodwood only increased the pressure.

  Beer Mug let out a short, sharp bark and lunged at the man, mouth pulled back, bearing daggerlike teeth. The man’s stallion, braying more like a saber-toothed lion than any horse Nail had ever heard, blocked the dog’s attack, front hooves lashing out, raking Beer Mug’s hindquarters, sending the dog tumbling away. The black stallion reared, pawing at the air above Beer Mug, stomping down. The dog darted backward, barely escaping the beast’s crushing hooves. The horse, undaunted, forced Beer Mug back even more. Blood matted the dog’s haunches from where the stallion had first struck.

  Through blurry eyes, Nail looked beyond the dog and horse. The Sør Sevier knight named Mancellor trotted down the roadway on his stout destrier, untying Shawcroft’s leather satchel from Dusty’s back. Jenko Bruk followed on his own mount, Sør Sevier standard in one hand, battle-ax in the other. Nail’s vision soon faded and a bleak darkness engulfed him, blackness swimming at him from the very air. His lungs screamed in protest. Slaver and foam gurgled from his mouth as he choked and choked.

  “Let the boy go, brother.”

  From a vast distance, Nail heard a familiar voice. “I said let the boy go.”

  The rope eased up on his neck. He could see again, but through a haze darkly.

  “You can save either the boy or the stone,” the man strangling Nail said. “The choice is yours, Hawkwood. Two Sør Sevier knights carry the stone and ax to Aeros. If you take off after them now, you might catch them. Kill them. Take back your treasure. The boy or the stone, brother? Answer me now. My blade grows thirsty.”

  Hawkwood stepped smoothly into Nail’s line of sight, both of his curved swords drawn, his roan horse just behind him. “I said let him go, Spiderwood.”

  The man strangling Nail let out a shrill whistle. At the piercing sound, the demon-eyed horse backed away from Beer Mug, red eyes now fixed on Hawkwood. The roan behind Hawkwood appeared to offer challenge, then trotted back in defeat.

  The man named Spiderwood released Nail, but in the same motion threw a black knife straight at Hawkwood. With a spontaneous ease, Hawkwood casually deflected the flying dirk with one of his swords. The clash of metal on metal rang sharp in Nail’s ear. Freed now, Nail found he was not so much breathing the air but gulping it down, his hands gingerly feeling the torn flesh of his throat. There was blood there, warm and wet to his fingers.

  His vision still faded in and out of focus. He saw naught but red fog. The town was turned sideways. His head was lying on the ground. His neck hurt, his legs hurt, his entire body hurt. Even his eyes hurt. He blinked madly to sooth the burning, catching glimpses of the men before him, both now fully engaged in battle.

  Hawkwood launched the first attack, flashing a right-handed strike that thundered toward Spiderwood’s face. The Bloodwood reacted with an upward slash of two black knives that hammered like lightning toward his opponent’s belly. But Hawkwood danced away, feinting to the right and striking again, fast and furious. The Bloodwood backed away, not even bothering to unsheathe the bright longsword at his side.

  They circled each other like saber-toothed lions, their movements graceful, liquid, and refined. Where is Roguemoore? Bishop Godwyn? But there was no one else, nor any sound save the soft crunch of the two combatants’ feet in the dirt road.

  Spiderwood attacked. Hawkwood swayed back, then stepped in quick with a combination of strikes that drove his opponent away. The Bloodwood counterattacked, the black glint of his whirling knives severing the air with a flowing hum, every move of his arms blindingly fast. This man needed no sword. Daggers were clearly enough. The two circled again, each man testing the other.

  Nail pressed his hands to the ground and tried to rise. Beer Mug was at his side, whimpering, tugging at his plate armor with his teeth, trying to drag him from harm’s way. Nail rose to his knees, dizziness nearly toppling him again.

  “Aeros’ armor slows you considerably,” Hawkwood said, circling.

  “You’ve let your hair grow,” Spiderwood countered. “You look like Leif Chaparral now. Like a Gul Kana woman.”

  Hawkwood surged forward, ducking under a murderously wicked strike, catching Spiderwood under the arm, his curved cutlass grazing the other man. The Bloodwood seemed unfazed, yet his daggers seemed to do little more than lick and graze over Hawkwood’s back and left shoulder. But when Hawkwood danced away, his black boiled leathers were slashed open, glistening red with blood.

  Still, Hawkwood glided forward and struck back just as quickly. But Spiderwood spun, sending a stinging slash upward. Hawkwood lurched back awkwardly, bicep sliced open, spraying blood over the dirt roadway. He dropped one of his swords.

  Nail’s body felt leaden, as if his knees had been sewn to the ground. He fell, rolled onto his back, and took a deep breath. Beer Mug’s tongue licked at his face, the wetness of it awakening him. Blue tendrils of mist rising up from the ax blade . . .

  “You fight with swords now,” Spiderwood said. “Black Dugal will be most disappointed to hear that you’ve given up the knives.”

  “Black Dugal and his poisoned knives and his twisted honor can rot. I haven’t given up much.”

  “Today you give up your life.”

  “Is Father still swallowing the Blood of the Dragon? Have you too taken up the habit, older brother? I see the streaks of red alight in your eyes.”

  Spiderwood struck again, exploding with a flurry of strikes, sending Hawkwood tumbling unceremoniously to the ground, bleeding from more wounds. Hawkwood rolled, many cuts now opened up in his torso, arm shredded, holding aloft his remaining sword in feeble defense. But it was too late. Spiderwood was on him, slashing, stabbing.

  Nail levered himself to h
is knees. His mouth tasted of dirt and his eyes were full of dust and grit. He stood, rubbing his fists in his blurry eyes. He searched the ground for a weapon, but there was none.

  “You have grown weak in your skills, brother,” Spiderwood said as he halted his attack. “Is one beautiful princess worth betraying your country?” he asked, one booted foot now planted atop Hawkwood’s chest. “Is Jondralyn Bronachell worth betraying your own father? There are many beautiful women. One is much like the next. Even Spades is beautiful. And she is the vilest creature in the Five Isles. How the shame of your weakness must eat at you.”

  “There is no weakness in falling in love,” Hawkwood said, his voice strained from the pressure of the other man’s boot on his chest. Scarlet pumped from his wounds all over the roadway as redness welled from a dozen different slashes and holes in his chest.

  “Women carry naught but weakness in them,” Spiderwood said. “It infects all whom they touch.”

  Nail saw the stack of wooden planks lying against the fountain not ten paces away. Hawkwood’s roan lingered there with Dusty, head lowered. Nail took a step toward the wood planks, legs sore, injured neck and scorched lungs heaving for air. Spiderwood’s stallion watched him with naked red eyes. The sound of the crunching dirt beneath Nail’s uncertain feet whispered promises of safety if he just ran and saved himself. What did he owe this man Hawkwood? He scarcely knew him. He could run. By all rights he should run. There was nothing to panic about now. He was alive at least. He had survived. He had come through almost unscathed. If he just fled, nobody would know of his lack of bravery but for Dusty, Beer Mug, Hawkwood’s roan, and the red-eyed horse.

  The black stallion was pawing at the ground now, looking ready to charge at him at any moment and crush him underfoot. You can save either the boy or the stone, Spiderwood had said. The words rattled in Nail’s head and gave him pause. Hawkwood had let the angel stone go with Jenko. Hawkwood had chosen to save him over the battle-ax and stone. Determination in every painful step, he stumbled toward the wood. The first board he grabbed was about four paces long, heavy, with half a dozen rusty nails jutting from one end like crooked little spikes. Wielding it like a club, he advanced on the man looming over Hawkwood.

  The stallion charged. Nail kept moving, eyes focused on the two men before him. Through the thunder of hooves, he heard Spiderwood say, “I will look into your eyes as I kill you, brother.” The Bloodwood knelt on Hawkwood’s chest, black dagger poised over his throat. “I will look into your eyes so you will know there was never any weakness in me.” And his knife slashed toward Hawkwood’s throat.

  Nail swung the plank with all his might. Like a pickax on rock. It smashed into the back of Spiderwood’s head with a wet slap. The Bloodwood spun away and folded to the ground, legs and arms stiff, clenching, then twitching. Globs of scarlet flowed from the Bloodwood’s ears. He coughed blood over his shiny armor. “That was for Shawcroft,” Nail muttered.

  Then the demon-eyed horse reached Nail. Bellowing in rage, it reared up on its hind legs, pawing at the air with its razor-sharp hooves. Beer Mug was between Nail and the stallion again, lunging high, snapping at the horse’s neck. Nail cursed and swung at the beast with the wood. The black monster leaped aside as his swing connected, the nails of the board raking into the horse’s flesh. Beer Mug leaped for the beast’s throat again, but the stallion flicked the dog aside with a wide sweep of its body. The horse bucked and snorted, a raspy bellow escaping its maw. It lunged and feinted at the dog again, pawing at the dirt with its hooves, positioning itself over its fallen master, eyeing the dog with two danger-filled orbs, blood streaming down its chest and forelegs with each beat of its evil heart. Seeing that the stallion was not going to attack again, Nail dropped the length of wood and slumped down beside the inert form of Hawkwood. The man was dying; blood poured from a dozen or more wounds.

  “What is happening?” Nail mumbled, voice hoarse, barely audible even to himself. “Who are you?” he asked a little louder.

  “I’m nobody.” Hawkwood struggled to sit up but fell back, eyes now closed. Nail tried to rouse him but could not. He turned toward Spiderwood. The man lay in the pearl-colored battle armor of the White Prince, blood pooling on the roadway around his head.

  “Why did Aeros want me?” Nail murmured, knowing that the one man in the Five Isles who might know the answer to that question he had just bludgeoned with a stout length of wood and rusty nails.

  “Wyn Darrè, boy,” Hawkwood mumbled, voice slurred.

  “Sit up.” Nail propped the man’s head up with his hand. “You must sit up.”

  Hawkwood struggled to sit, arm dangling uselessly at his side. He looked only slightly more lucid now than he had a few heartbeats before. He crawled forward and snatched his own two curved blades, and then pulled the longsword from the sheath at Spiderwood’s belt. He slowly sheathed his own swords.

  “Nail,” he muttered, examining the other sword, which gleamed blue in the sunlight; its gleam reminded Nail of the ax. “There may be other . . . Sør Sevier knights around. And my brother’s horse . . . it has been injected with rauthouin bane, a serum that can turn a horse rabid as a dog. I would not trust it to remain still for long. . . . Lift me to my feet.”

  Nail helped Hawkwood to a sitting position, eased his neck under the man’s uninjured shoulder, and lifted him. Hawkwood stood, one arm around Nail’s neck, the other using Spiderwood’s sword as a crutch, trying to talk, each of his words struggling to the surface. “That . . . that my brother . . . was attempting to strangle you tells me that he . . . that he needed you unconscious quickly. It tells me the poison on his blades is of a kind that works slowly. I know not how long I will last . . . I have never before suffered the bite of his blades. Have to find the dwarf. Get me over there to my horse, my . . . my . . . saddlebag . . . poultice kit . . . if I’m to have a chance.”

  Bearing the weight of them both, hesitant and uncertain, legs so weary he feared they might just drop out from under him, Nail led Hawkwood toward the roan and Dusty. Beer Mug followed.

  The red-eyed horse stood guard over the Bloodwood.

  Though he’d taken some medicines for his wounds, Hawkwood sat like an awkward, burdensome weight atop his horse when they rode into the courtyard with the Laijon statue. Spiderwood’s sword was cradled in his lap, his own two curved blades again strapped to the baldric crisscrossing his back. Gul Kana knights in bright-silver-and-blue livery were near the statue. Banners, also blue, rippled above. Warhorses milled about. These warriors, sixty or so, gathered near a litter bearing the body of a long-haired knight in silver and black.

  The dead knight’s head was cut from forehead to chin, face peeled back from the wound. Above one eye was pale bone and skull, nasal cavity partially exposed, chopped white and ragged. One eye gazed up vacantly; the other was hidden under a mess of blood and skin that was twisted, wrinkled, and shrunken, no longer completely stretching around the head but crawling away from the huge gashing wound that stretched from forehead to cheekbones to chin. Like a hunk of meat, it was just another poor dead fellow who would never again breathe or love or ride a horse, Nail figured. The sight of the knight with the destroyed face was merely one more horrible image in a lifetime’s worth of horrible images Nail had suffered through. Jenko Bruk was wearing the colors of the enemy! The thought curdled his blood. Is Ava one of the enemy too?

  Then the knight moved, and Nail realized that the injured fellow might still live.

  Another knight with darkened eyes was silently tending to the faceless knight on the litter. He wore black-lacquered armor and made the three-fingered sign of the Laijon Cross over his heart.

  “Ocean Guard,” Hawkwood muttered. “And Leif Chaparral with them.”

  A blond knight in similar black armor stood near Leif. The blond fellow had a very familiar look to Nail.

  “We must go.” There was urgency in Hawkwood’s voice.

  “Who lies on that litter?” Nail muttered.

  “I can
’t quite . . .” Hawkwood swallowed. “My vision plays tricks on me.” His dark eyes struggled to focus on the litter bearing the knight with the destroyed face. “I’m afraid . . . no.” Hawkwood’s face looked pained beyond measure as he slumped low in his saddle. “Leave me, Nail. Flee! At once!”

  Leif and the other knight in black armor were now staring at Hawkwood and Nail with purpose. Some of the blue-clad knights beyond them were taking an interest in them too, moving slowly around the litter. Dusty nickered and shuffled aside. Nail regained his balance on her. Beer Mug let out a sharp bark.

  A fearsome-looking bald knight, sitting in the dirt at the foot of the litter and wearing the colors of Sør Sevier, looked up at the bark. Rope bound his wrists and ankles. A heavy rope drooped from around his neck down to the ground and back up again, connecting to a stout iron ring tied to the litter.

  “That’s Gault Aulbrek in chains,” Hawkwood hissed. “A most dangerous man.”

  “All men prove dangerous,” Nail said.

  He detected rage simmering behind Hawkwood’s next words. “A grand day for Leif Chaparral to capture Gault Aulbrek along with the turncoat Hawkwood. And . . . and Jondralyn.” He went limp, nearly sliding off his horse. Nail moved Dusty next to the larger roan and helped Hawkwood stay upright in the saddle.

  The two knights in black, Leif and the familiar blond, were now striding toward them. “I know that man,” Nail said, an undertone of puzzlement in his voice. “He is Shawcroft’s friend. It is Culpa. He is a knight?” The last time Nail had seen Culpa Barra, it was at Deadwood Gate and Culpa was no older than Nail was now. But it was certainly his master’s friend who approached.

  Hawkwood wobbled in the saddle again. The sword with the sky-blue blade slipped from his lap to the ground with a clank. Nail tried to right Hawkwood, but a firm hand stopped him. “Go, Nail. Run. Now.” Hawkwood drew him close. “Remember Lord’s Point. The Turn Key Saloon.”