Eluned peered at him, then slid her eyes to take in Marion, who suddenly found it imperative that she milk that cow, and the sooner the better. She started off for the barn, swinging her bucket with no little nonchalance.
His mother’s eyes narrowed. Aye, Eluned of the March was as canny as her rumored people.
“Off with you, then.” Adam grabbed at his son, boosted him onto the jennet’s back. “No dawdling. Give Willow a good run, mind your business and be back before dark. And.” He caught Rob’s gaze, held it. “Mind you take no shortcuts through th’ Wode. Go around.”
Rob visibly deflated. This put a proper nick in his plans. “I was going to catch some fish. I thought you said outlaws only have the stomach to attack at night.”
“This poacher’s no reasonable outlaw. There’s plenty fish to be had that dinna bide in forest pools.” His father patted the furry bay neck, with the final justification, “You know good ’n’ well mating season’s to hand. Think of Willow’s welfare—to a buck blind with rut, she might be no’ but another challenge to take on. Be sensible, Rob.”
The boy sighed and put heels to his mount’s sides.
ROB RODE at a brisk trot, posting against Willow’s short-legged gait, casting a longing eye upon the thick tangle of Loxley Chase. It was several miles via the plowed roads to Loxley village; it was barely a mile through the forest, and Rob knew every deer trace as well as the map of freckles on his narrow, sunburnt nose.
Even now, he saw a trail; faint, but unmistakably there if one knew how to look. Too many people didn’t. The villagers were scared of the forest. Though Loxley Chase was just the tip of what became the great Shire Wode to the south, most of the farmers that lived in its shadow were convinced that all manner of h’ants and boggarts bided there. They told tales that put even the real dangers of wolves or boars to shame. Or the lord’s men. For it was a fact that those men given leave to hunt—the few not scared of deep forest—tramped through it as if it were merely a woefully overgrown and tangled common, aiming their crossbows at anything that moved, peasant or game.
Crossbows. Rob’s lip curled. Cheating, that was. A simple shortbow—aye, that was a man’s weapon.
A quirk drawing between his dark brows, Rob considered that faint trail with no little longing. As if in answer, more distant than it sounded, the click and smack of antlers tangling stayed and reminded Rob of Adam’s caution. He patted Willow’s neck. She was too nice to get gored by some hey-go-mad buck thinking more with his balls than what little brain he had. Even better not to chance his father’s ire two times in one day. Adam was already up in arms about something. As Rob had heard it, there was a new clutch of noble-born tenants in the castle sitting athwart the shire borders of York and Nottingham, rehashing some perpetual dispute over who should own the rents from Loxley and several other villages. Rob didn’t understand half of it. The lords never came around, only sent others to do their dirty work, soldiers to threaten or sheriffs to bully. The villagers should just look to Adam as they always did; he was more thane of Loxley, it seemed, than the headman there who bore the title.
At least, that was the only explanation that Rob could come up with when the people of Loxley and its surroundings called his father “Lord.”
He rode on, keeping to the road, quite chuffed with his own virtue. The air was nippy, pleasant and cool; Rob smiled as the little mare toyed with the bit. Mabon was drawing ever nearer, the equinox and harvest celebrations. There was excitement in the air even Willow could feel. The year had been prosperous, and the feasting would be good… and on the plowed road, they could make up time with speed. With a small yip, he dug his leather-clad feet into Willow’s brown ribs.
“Go, Willow!”
The little bay leapt forward, eager, as if she had been waiting for Rob to ken that well-cleared roads equaled a good—and easy—run. Rob laughed and leaned forward; her black mane rose to slap his face, commingling with his own hair as he urged her on.
Over and down one hillock, then another, and as they came over the third and around a long curve, something exploded from the forest edge almost atop them.
Willow shied and rolled sideways on her muscular haunches as if some fire-breathing dragon had come roaring from the forest, primed for horseflesh. Rob was first tossed onto Willow’s thick neck, then slid under her chest, then smacked heavily to the dirt. He made an instinctive snatch at the rein, but missed as Willow swerved at the last moment. She trotted off a few paces then halted with a jolt, head seemingly sucked against the earth as she set to a thick patch of grass.
Rob used a word for which his mother had once washed out his mouth with lye soap. Fingers full of dirt, he stood up, brushing at his tunic and leather breeks. His gaze darted about, quickly found the “dragon” that had leapt from the forest at them.
It was another horse. A gray stallion, pale as a thick-stacked thunderhead; tall and long-limbed, blowing and wide-eyed and ready to take to the hills if necessary. He was tacked with a saddle and bridle that together would have paid several years’ worth of Loxley’s taxes. One of the fancy, inlaid stirrups was flung over the seat and the saddle itself kinked to the left. A scabbard pointed skyward, its sword clinging only by the grace of being well laced in.
No commoner’s mount, this. Rob smirked, considering that the stallion seemed quite the overbred noble set adrift, peering down his nose at having his day interrupted by some grubby peasant lad and his hairy jennet.
He also bore several telltale gashes along one ivory flank.
“Easy, lad.” Rob held out a hand, soothing. “Did that buck get the better of you, then?”
The stallion stretched his neck and deigned to let Rob approach. Then, nostrils flaring, he promptly dropped his aloof pose, stuck out his knob, and pranced past Rob over to Willow, arching his neck and grunting and nickering.
Willow greeted this overture with an unearthly grunt, letting fly with a back hoof. She returned to grazing. Despite the pose of indifference, however, her black tail lifted; the roll of her eye was flirtatious.
Rob rolled his own eyes. “Bloody…. You too?”
He knew better than to get in the middle of the poncy stallion and his common paramour—at least, not until the mare had definitely said “aye” or “nay.” Not to mention the possible spoils come eleven moons from now: a fine, if late-gotten, colt from a stallion whose fee they’d never otherwise approach. Rob shrugged and left them to it, once again scanning the terrain.
There had to have been a rider with that horse.
The trail was easily discerned, leading into the dusky canopy of green and fawn. The horse had been panicked, not terribly choosy about where he’d fled, leaving crushed bracken and rent branches and torn-up earth in his wake. He was just as noisy outside the confines of the forest; his loud dalliance with Willow could still be heard. Rob ignored it, ducking beneath branches and sidestepping thick bracken, treading the damp ground light as down and watchful as a priest on tithing day. His father and mother both had taught him well. He made no moves other than ones he intended, left no trace that couldn’t be mistaken for animal spoor, was silent until he saw it, and then that, too, was a mere breath into the forest.
“Bloody damn.”
A leather boot, worn but well made, was snagged against a gorse near Rob’s eye level. Just beyond that was a bundle of fabric crumpled against the gnarled roots of an old oak.
Rob moved closer, cautious.
The bundle of fabric revealed itself, just as he’d figured, to be clothing. Unfortunately it was not empty, but again, just as he’d figured, was wrapped around what had to be the stallion’s rider. The boot in his hand matched the one still worn; of course the other leg was bare, stocking yanked half off. More freckles than Rob himself had ever possessed sprayed across that pale calf.
Tale was as easily discerned as trail. Whoever this was had been riding, run across a buck deer looking for a scrap, the poncy stallion might have challenged the deer—probably not, those gashes
were on his butt end, after all—and the likely as poncy rider had been thrown and then dragged a short ways before he met the oak.
Rob knelt, fingered the cape bunched and flung sideways. Fine stuff, all right, soft woven and well oiled to keep out the damp. Finer than the boots, even. Contrarily, the dark-blue tunic beneath it had seen better days, as had the woolen braies. What kind of lad—and it must be a lad, with that garb—wore such rich clothes until they wore out?
Grabbing the limp figure by his tunic, Rob gave a heave, turned him over. A pale shock of gingery hair spilled from the confines of the cape’s hood. A lad, sure enough, and about Rob’s own age. Rob grimaced as he saw the gash on the high freckled forehead.
Pure trouble, this was.
Tempting to just leave it all to lie, let this trouble find another target. Rob did, after all, have important business in the village. He could tell the headman there what he’d found….
Nay, he really couldn’t. Because sure as crows flew with ill news, that gray stud would follow Willow home, and then wouldn’t Rob have some explaining to do as to why he’d not gone looking for its owner.
Rob sighed, then reached out and tapped his fingers at the lad’s shoulder. “Hoy. You, there. Wake up.”
II
A HORRIFIC, grunting shriek, echoing over and over in his head, then the pounding of hoofs. The buck blasts defiance, charges; he is spit on the horns, thrown aside as if he is parchment ripped from a court ledger, set ablaze in a brazier… his head is burning from the fire, ground beneath the galloping hoofs.
He’s going to die. He can feel the stag’s breath heating and tugging his cape and he cannot even lift so much as his fingers to do anything about it.
Another shriek, wavering then trembling into a growl. The hoofs retreat, panicked and scattered. He groans, tries to turn over but cannot. Something shoves him, yanks him over and his eyes, fluttering and ill-focused, open to take in….
A wolf. Black pelt gleaming, dark eyes glittering with fire and shadows. Lean and dusty, the outlier moves toward him with another growl, soft threat. Hungry.
Consciousness roared back over him like waves against the white rocks of his mother’s south coast home. He lurched upright, flailed, managed by some miracle to throw his cape back over his shoulder and grappled for his sword.
It wasn’t there. Neither was his sword belt. He abruptly remembered hanging his sword on his saddle, which was with his horse, which was….
Gone. The nappy git had run like a bunny from that stag. Of course, it had been the biggest stag he’d ever seen. And it wasn’t his horse, actually—it was his brother Otho’s horse, and no matter that brother’s liking for him, Otho was going to kick his arse for letting the stallion get away.
Of course, his head already felt like his arse would when he got back home. He gave up on grabbing the absent sword for protection, instead clutched his hands to his head and gave a sound that sounded distinctly like a mewl.
Buck up, Gamelyn, he told himself. If you’re about to be supper for a wolf, you can at least go down like a man.
Gritting his teeth, he clenched his fists, opened his eyes again, and looked.
It wasn’t a wolf. It was a lad about his own age, shaking a worn leathern hood back from a frowning face. That frown was a mighty one, dark brows drawn together over the blackest eyes Gamelyn had ever seen, with an even-blacker forelock nearly obscuring them. The lad didn’t say anything, hadn’t moved, just kept peering at Gamelyn, and for a panicked second, Gamelyn wondered if all those tales the old women told about the kitchen fires were true. If the forest here really was inhabited—not by mortal men but ghosts and demons who shifted their bodies to whatever shape they pleased.
After all, the lad still wasn’t moving. Gamelyn wasn’t sure that he was breathing, if it came to it, and in the half-lit forest gloom, his skin was white as the lead chalk some ladies used on their cheeks.
“Did the fall addle your head, or what?”
Gamelyn jumped as the demon/wolf/lad spoke, fell back against the tree, and went sprawling sideways.
“Bloody damn,” the wolf/demon/lad swore. Reaching forward, he grasped Gamelyn by the tunic, and hauled him upright. Purely by instinct, Gamelyn grabbed the lad by his wrists, felt bones grind as he tried to fling him aside.
Now there was no doubt but the lad was surely some ghost or demon in boy disguise. He didn’t even flinch at Gamelyn’s hold, and Gamelyn had been told more than the once that he was quite strong for a lad whose voice hadn’t even broken yet. The demon lad was surely of a height with Gamelyn, but his wrists were slim in Gamelyn’s broad fingers, and his ragged tunic hung on a skinny, lanky frame.
The lad—wolf or demon or ghost, Gamelyn no longer knew what to think—gently but firmly extricated his wrists from what Gamelyn had thought quite the grip, then just as easily pushed Gamelyn down to a seated crouch against the massive roots of the oak. Nostrils flaring as if at some scent, he cocked his head not unlike a wolf.
“I think you have addled yourself,” he ventured, very softly, and reached a hand to Gamelyn’s forehead. Pressure, very light, but it stung like tens of bees.
“Hoy, that hurts!”
“I’ll wager it does.” The lad, or whatever he was, brought his fingers back to his face, sniffed them then shrugged. “I’m not me mam, I’m afraid. She does it all the time and can tell what it means by the smell of it.”
Smelling blood. He was a demon, then, if his mother could tell if blood was fit just by the smell of it.
“What do you want of me?” Gamelyn tried to make his voice steady, succeeded after a fashion. Aye, he’d not go craven, even if unshriven.
A horrific screech echoed through the thick dim, reverberating off the trees. Gamelyn remembered that sound bringing and breaking the delirium of his fall. The buck had bowled them over and he’d gotten dragged a short ways, had lain for some indeterminate time, heard that horrible shriek. He regretted then and there he’d not just fallen in a faint like some tight-laced lass, wondered if the demon lad had called his kin to finish the job and crossed himself.
The demon lad did not, unfortunately, go up in flames at the fervent genuflection. Instead he merely blinked, as if puzzled. The shriek sounded again, this time with a definite thud at the end, and the demon lad suddenly laughed. “Sounds as if they’ve had enough. I know you’re a bit addled, but do you think you can walk? We’d better go and fetch them before they wander off, aye?”
Gamelyn blinked. “What?”
“Your stallion. My mare. I think she’s tired of him for now.” The narrow face bent closer to Gamelyn and said, very slowly, “Our horses. We have to catch them up. Ride home. Do you understand me? At that, do you even know where home is?”
He seemed exasperated.
It was Gamelyn’s turn to frown. He was abruptly unsure he did know how to get back. It was this forest—it had twisted him all about until he was lost.
Not that he was sure he should tell a demon where he lived, anyway. Gamelyn craned his neck—subtly, he hoped—and peered at the demon lad’s ears. If they were pointed, then he’d know for sure.
Wouldn’t he?
Anyway, what if this demon’s family went after his family? If demons had family. He should have paid better attention to the old priest back at Huntingdon. If this demon was a lad, and wasn’t just appearing to be a lad, then it stood to reason that he was still growing and therefore had been birthed from something.
“What are you looking at?” The demon lad looked puzzled again, though Gamelyn wasn’t sure he’d ever seen brows twist that way.
No pointed ears in that mass of black hair. And a good thing too, for Gamelyn realized he was lost. Perhaps he’d have to make some sort of bargain with this little demon; they could have his eldest brother, if it came to it, but he’d definitely miss the rest of his family.
“Bloody damn.” The demon lad certainly flung about curses as freely as any spawn of Hell. “You are addled. I canna just leave you here
like this.” Another, somewhat aggrieved sigh. “Come on, then. Prop yourself against me. We can tie you to that fancy horse of yours, if we have to, and I’ll take you to me mam. She’ll see to you ’til you remember what’s what.”
Again, the amazingly strong hands grabbed him, hoisted him upright. Gamelyn’s head spun and he nearly toppled over. The demon-lad swore, even more inventively, and Gamelyn had no choice but to lean on the skinny creature and accept his guidance to the forest’s edge.
GAMELYN WAS more and more convinced the demon lad was indeed that. He plunked Gamelyn down by a little grazing jennet, more shaggy dog than any respectable horse, and told the jennet to keep an eye on him. Then, striding over bold and self-assured as any tourney victor, the demon lad pinned sloe eyes on nappy gray Diamant and took hold of his bridle. Quick as that.
It would have taken Gamelyn loading up his tunic with swede to get within as much as snatching distance, and even then the stud might decide he wasn’t hungry, ta!
As the demon lad came over, leading Diamant with one negligent hand—as if he just assumed the stallion would follow!—the little shaggy mare plucked her head from her grazing and approached him like a dog. Even a hopeful grunt from the stallion didn’t distract her overlong; she merely made a sideswipe with pinned ears to put him in his place then nuzzled at the demon lad’s breast. Gamelyn eyed her with a mixture of bemusement and disdain.
Surely demons didn’t ride hairy little ponies.
His companion scowled. In the sunlight that frown was no less fierce than in the gloom of trees, even if the lad himself was not so daunting. He was looking more and more human; the death-pale skin proved, out of the forest gloom, to be just fair and freckled, sunburnt across the cheeks and nose. He had brown wrists and hands that didn’t quite match the pale breastbone peeking from beneath the sideways drag of his hood against his rough-woven tunic. His hair was indeed black, unruly and too long, thick as his pony’s mane.
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