Stillbright

by Daniel M Ford

  “Give them a k—”

  “Do not finish that thought,” he snapped.

  “I didn’t mean you. Cold, but you’d be a horrid king. Worse than the Rhidalish.”

  “Oyrwyn fought for the Rhidalish kings, you know. For or against, does not seem to matter much today,” he admitted. “The Vale of Kings is naught but a ruin now, and what bits of valuable land surrounded it have been snapped up by Innadan, or Machoryn, or Damarind. Every once in a while a pretender shows up, but why one man over another, anyway, even if one could prove his patrimony? Strength is so often an accident of birth; Her words. So is kingship.”

  “So is knighthood—which is precisely why it is foolish.”

  Allystaire was silent a moment, his eyes searching the darkness that was now nearly total in the wood around them.

  “That is true. And yet, mayhap it is just how we go about it. The idea of knighthood, Idgen Marte, that is not so foolish. It could mean something, if only we went about it the right way.”

  “What in the Cold do you mean, the idea? A rich man gets to stay rich so long as he’s willing to put on five or six stone of steel and clobber other rich men?”

  “Well, that is one kind of knighthood. What about knights in stories? What did they do?”

  “Mostly kill things. Monsters and brigands and other knights.”

  “Aye, but it is not the what that matters. It is the why. I have heard a few songs in my day. Reddyn the Redoubtable, Reddyn of the Red-Hand. Cold, if half the stories have an ounce of truth it would be more like Reddyn-the-Red-to-the-Elbow. But why? Like other knights and heroes in stories, he did it so that other men, women, children—some that he knew, many that he did not—could sleep well by their fires and never worry about the darkness surrounding them. He did it without asking them for their links, or the fruit of their labors, or their daughters. If knights did that, could be made to do that? Then the idea would not be half so foolish.”

  Idgen Marte absorbed his words in silence. Finally, she spoke, smiling wryly. Though it was too dark to read her face, Allystaire could hear it in her voice now, he knew it so well.

  “If knights could be made like you, then yes. The idea would have merit, as you say. But, Ally, they can’t. The path you walk is a narrow one. Most men would founder.”

  “I might.”

  “You won’t. And even if you did, I’ll be there behind you to set you right.” She clouted him companionably on the shoulder, then turned away. “Enough with foolish talk. Wake me in two turns.”

  Chapter 10

  Into the Thasryach

  Afew short turns later, Allystaire was awake, dressed in his riding leathers, with his iron-banded gloves and thick bracers around his forearms, standing silently just a few yards outside the camp, a straight length of wood in his hand that didn’t quite reach his shoulder. Bark still clung to it, but it was straight, strong, and dry—everything he had hoped for.

  He stood, waiting, his back to the camp, for longer than he’d hoped he would. Eventually, he heard quiet footfalls on the grass, a few of the first-fallen leaves crackling under Gideon’s careful steps.

  “How’re you awake? The sky barely suggests dawn. Bhimanzir knew tricks that would allow him to do without sleep for days, yet always with a price to pay.”

  “No tricks, just a long habit. I sleep when I can and wake when I must. Now.” Allystaire turned to face the boy, who was rubbing sleep from his eyes, and held the staff out for Gideon to take. “Did you come to talk of sleep or did you come to learn?”

  “To learn,” Gideon said, then recoiled as Allystaire lightly tossed the not-quite-ready staff at him, but corrected himself in time to fling his hands out and catch it, one end dragging on the ground.

  “Good. The first lesson, and our first exercise, just like the knife: hold on to that staff so that I cannot take it out of your hands.” With only a moment’s wait, Allystaire stepped forward and reached out, wrapping his left hand around the staff and giving it a rough tug, then another. Gideon held on briefly, but the second pull ripped it from his hands, the rough bark tearing at the skin of his palms.

  “Again.” Allystaire held the staff out to the boy, who took a deep breath and accepted it.

  This went on for roughly half a turn, with Gideon struggling more and more, till eventually he fell to the ground and curled his legs around the staff, locking his feet at the ankle. With both hands, Allystaire grasped the staff and lifted it from the ground, bringing the boy with it. He raised the staff till he was looking Gideon eye to eye, and then nodded approvingly.

  The boy uncoiled himself from the staff and dropped his feet to the ground, roughly. His thin arms were trembling, and when Allystaire relinquished his grip, the staff nearly clattered to the ground.

  “Is this what training a knight is like?” the boy asked, panting softly.

  “No,” Allystaire replied. This is much easier, he thought, but did not say. “Besides, why would you want to know anything about training for such foolishness? Now. Carry that staff all day. At times I may ask you to do something with it, hold it above your head, say, or carry something with it. Will you do that?”

  “I will try.”

  “Good enough.”

  “What would you be doing, if I might ask, if you were training me to be a knight?”

  Goddess help me, I would be sending you away, to your mother, to the priests or the scriveners, where you belong, Allystaire thought, his mind instantly and unflinchingly sizing up the boy’s spare frame, thin arms, and narrow shoulders. What he said, though, was, “Putting a chain shirt on you and making you run the yard.”

  “Seems it would be hard to run in a chain shirt.”

  “That is rather the point, lad.”

  They headed back to the small camp. Idgen Marte was slowly waking up and Torvul was sitting atop his wagon with his crossbow in his lap. He had fallen back asleep once Allystaire had woken up; his snores drifted on the morning air. Bethe, as was her habit, was huddled deeply into her blankets, unmoving.

  After a moment of silence, Gideon said, “I don’t want to be a knight. I do want to learn utility. I don’t want you to regret bringing me with you.”

  “Listen, lad, that you want to learn is a good thing. Even if you did not, it is not as though we would leave you behind. Besides, you already saved my life once. What would I be if I abandoned you after that?”

  That seemed to mollify the boy, and he nodded. He lifted one hand from his staff and studied the raw red lines that a half turn of scratching against bark had raised. “Can you teach me to do anything about this?”

  “I can tell you two things,” Allystaire said. “The first is that Idgen Marte probably has some sort of salve. The second is that you should talk to Torvul about cutting the bark away and smoothing the wood. He will have the tools.”

  “Could you not heal it?”

  “I could, but I will not,” Allystaire replied. “And I have reasons beyond mere cruelty,” he added. Allystaire pulled off one of his gloves and held his hand out towards the boy. “Look at my hand. Tell me what you see.”

  The boy leaned forward, studying Allystaire’s hand, turning it over to look at the back, and then again at the palm, gnawing his lower lip. “I see that you have broken two fingers and two of the knuckles on the back of the hand, and that they probably hurt in damp weather, that your life line is odd—long, but odd—that your nails are cracked and dirty…” The boy glanced at Allystaire’s increasingly impatient face, and added, “And also that your hands are very calloused, which is what you wanted me to see.”

  “Yes. If I heal your scrapes, you will never grow them, and your hands will always be scraped. Proves my point, lad. Some hurts are good for a man, aye?” The boy nodded, let go his hand, and Allystaire quickly asked, “What was that bit about a life line?”

  Gideon shrugged. “Parlor tricks sorcer
ers sometimes perform to impress their patrons. Reading the future in the hand. Mostly nonsense.”

  Allystaire shrugged it off and motioned the boy to Idgen Marte, who was groggily strapping on her sword belt. Gideon went to her, gingerly wrapping his hand around the staff and swinging it in front of him like a walking stick.

  Allystaire rapped on the side of Torvul’s wagon. The light sounds of snoring stopped, and were replaced with rumbling Dwarfish oaths.

  “We leave in half a turn. I mean to make some distance today. No time for loafing.”

  “Loafing! Boy, in a quarter turn of sleep my mind does more work than yours has in a score of years,” Torvul answered, through a yawn. “Never call it loafing.”

  “As you say, Torvul,” Allystaire replied. “Nevertheless, it is biscuit and cold meat and breakfast in the saddle today.”

  As the dwarf rattled more stone-chewing words he clambered—rather nimbly, Allystaire noted—from the top of his wagon, to the board, and finally back inside, slamming the door behind him.

  * * *

  Two turns later, the sun was up and bright, but brought very little warmth as they climbed. Their winding track through the foothills had begun to cut back and forth across the mountain it ascended, and their going was slow, till it finally halted when Idgen Marte, walking a few paces ahead, called back for Allystaire.

  Sweat streaming down his face despite the chill in the air, he swung from his horse, landing on his heels with a heavy, clanking thump, and trudged up to meet her. She was crouched to the inside of the track, near a pile of fallen rock and broken branches. She looked up, saw him coming, stood, and pointed with one finger—at a corpse.

  Allystaire frowned and moved closer. The body was fairly fresh, not rotted yet, wearing the remnants of a mail vest and the scraps of a tabard. Allystaire knelt, reaching out with one gloved hand to rip free a strip of the cloth.

  “Faded, but this was red once, I think. Innadan red,” he said, as he held it to the light.

  “Aye. When’s the last time any Innadan man got this far into Delondeur?”

  “The last time they were allied, I suspect,” Allystaire replied. “Still, they made a good go of it, two years ago. Probably a deserter.”

  “Look at his neck,” Idgen Marte said. She pulled her sheathed sword free from her belt and used the tip of the scabbard to push away some of the detritus obscuring him. His throat had been torn out, and dark brown stains covered his light beard and the neck of his mail and clothing.

  “Torn out by a beast? Bear, wolf?”

  “Body’s still here. Bear or wolf wouldn’t have wasted it.”

  Allystaire stood, wincing at the click of a knee, and said, “Unless they were scared off. This man was probably not surviving up here alone.”

  “Deserter’s Brotherhood,” Idgen Marte said, though without force or conviction.

  “Could be,” Allystaire replied, and was about to go on before he stopped himself short, frowned. “If so, they would have taken the body. Buried it. And the vest, his clothing…Cold, even his sword is still sheathed.”

  Idgen Marte looked at him, an odd light in her eyes. “Man dies with his throat slashed, his sword still in its sheath, and the beast or man that did for him does nothin’ with the body?” Allystaire started to shake his head, but she spat once, and muttered, almost growled one word as she shifted her eyes back to the body.

  “Chimera.”

  Allystaire spat, reflexively, over his left shoulder, moved by superstitious need. He collected himself, shook his head. “Plenty of reasons before we go reaching into legend to frighten ourselves. And,” he added, lowering his voice, “the boy, and Bethe.”

  “Only one reason the stories put here in the Thasryach. Legends stay with us for reasons, Allystaire,” she said, her words clipped short by thinly pressed lips.

  “Then remember what you are, and act like it, not like a frightened child,” Allystaire said, his eyes widening as his voice rose. “We have chosen our road, and that is over the pass. We will fear nothing we might meet upon it. Will you take the lead, or shall I?”

  “I’ll do it. Goddess only knows what you’d blunder us into.” Her anger at his words was evident in the set of her jaw and clenched teeth. But, Allystaire noted, she stood straighter again, looked him in the eye.

  Shaking his head, he headed back to where Ardent waited for him. The destrier’s ears were moving, his eyes slightly wide, nostrils flaring. He didn’t shy or protest when Allystaire took the reins and swung back into the saddle. He felt the stallion’s restiveness in the bunching of huge muscles, and patted the long grey neck softly. “We have many turns of light left. Let us not waste them,” he called.

  The little column moved on in mostly uncomfortable silence for the time being. Behind him, Allystaire could hear Torvul speaking quietly with Gideon on the seat of his wagon, prying and needling information out of the boy about the sorcerers and their history. Most of the conversation was too quiet and too circumspect for him to follow, but he sensed the dwarf was learning quite a bit.

  As morning gave way to afternoon, despite the brightness of the sun, the day seemed to grow colder. They were gaining height as they moved up the switchbacks, but Allystaire didn’t think the elevation was enough to explain the cold.

  Then something, a thought, a notion, a warning, perhaps just irrational, animal fear, tickled the back of his neck. He raised a hand to call a halt. Even though he did not speak, and she was dozens of paces ahead of him, Idgen Marte drew an arrow from the quiver at her hip and fitted it to her bowstring. He lowered his hand and began easing his hammer out of its loop, then looked behind him, towards the dwarf’s wagon.

  “Torvul,” he said quietly, “is there room for Gideon and Bethe in your wagon?”

  The dwarf puffed out his chest as if to complain, but when his eyes met Allystaire’s, his demeanor changed. “Aye.” He reached back and twisted the doorknob, swinging the door open. “Get in there, boy. And you too, lady,” he said, waving to Bethe, who had slid off of Idgen Marte’s horse, slowly, and begun taking tentative steps towards the wagon.

  She paused, though, hesitating, looking around at the mostly barren trees, squinting.

  Gently, trying to sound urgent, but not angry, Allystaire spoke. “Please get in the wagon.”

  She stopped, cold, turning suddenly widened eyes on him. “It…I don’t…is it dark in there?”

  Allystaire shot a glance at Torvul, who was stepping down off the step and extending a hand. “I’ll set up a lamp for ya. Now please, go on in.”

  Gideon stuck his head out of the door, holding one of the dwarf’s small metal lamps, fiddling with its pump and dials. “There is a stove,” he pointed out, “and chairs. Dwarf-sized, but big enough for us. It is quite warm inside.”

  The woman hesitated, then nodded slightly and began to walk forward.

  Allystaire started to release a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding, when suddenly, something hard and strong and vaguely man shaped swooped down onto him, knocking him clean out of the saddle. He landed on the ground with a clatter, his hammer knocked clear from his grasp. Bethe froze in place.

  He didn’t bother searching for his weapon. Instead, Allystaire pushed himself to his feet, his leather-and-iron clad hands curling into familiar fists. The thing that had attacked him was giving him no chance to recover, though, and was already pouncing. It was man-shaped, but with, he could see, one feathered arm. No, he thought, even as it leapt upon him, a wing. And a man’s face, twisted into a muzzle, bristling with teeth that had no place in a man’s jaw.

  Chimera. The one thought, certain and overpowering, sounded in his brain like a bell even as the thing began beating its wing upon him. Its other arm was clawed, like a rodent’s, and it sought his face. Allystaire caught the claw descending upon him with his left and began punching with his right, seeking out any vuln
erable spot, but in the beast’s wild thrashing his blows seemed to glance away.

  The strength of the arm he had caught was wild and daunting, and it ripped free of his grasp, then descended again, clawing three hot lines of pain across his cheek. Then the thing hopped, skittered, fluttered away, crying out in some half mad sound that was neither the cry of bird, nor the anguish of man, nor the growl of a beast, and leapt towards the stock-still Bethe.

  No. Allystaire thought, though the creature was faster, faster than him, and its clawed arm was reaching for her even as he dove towards it.

  As his extended hand caught the feathers of its useless, flapping wing and tore a hank of them free, Idgen Marte had suddenly rippled into sight at his side, her curved sword swinging in a quick upward arc towards the chimera’s face—even as a crossbow bolt from Torvul, who stood propped on the step of his wagon, bow in hand, pierced its side.

  Still, it shrieked and turned in a rage upon the swordswoman.

  That it got a claw briefly sunk into Idgen Marte’s shoulder was a testament to its speed, a fact Allystaire had undue time to reflect on as he tried to grab the beast and missed, feeling like he was running through water to try and reach it. His senses sharpened in the way they always seemed to do when blood was first spilled. He could hear Torvul cursing as he drew back the string of his bow, could hear Bethe’s rapid, frightened breathing, saw Idgen Marte twist out of the chimera’s grasp and draw back her blade for a two handed swing.

  He also saw that as fast as she was, even with the Goddess’s Gifts aiding her, her swing left her too exposed. What’s more, a sudden shift in the beast’s stance told him it saw that too. With a control and agility unnatural as the muzzle growing out of its otherwise human face, it flung itself forward, jaws opening, claws extended, at Idgen Marte’s midsection.

  Allystaire dove at it, managing to seize one of its feet, a five-toed, padded cat’s paw in mottled brown and grey fur, in one of his hands, and bore it towards the ground, just enough for its claws to slash Idgen Marte across the stomach, even as its jaws snapped shut on air.