Gamelyn avoided the chapel proper, found himself further relieved—and for no good reason—that Brother Dolfin wasn’t in the library, either. The familiar, sane comfort of parchment and leather bindings reestablished some semblance of order to his scattered thoughts.
Unfortunately, there weren’t many answers to be found. Gamelyn finally looked up from his examinations to find the day nearly spent, the sounds of the courtyard outside dulled considerably, and a huddled figure waiting just inside the door, peering everywhere but directly at him.
How long had he been there? Gamelyn blinked, straightened. His lower back twinged a protest, quickly disregarded as Gamelyn recognized the soldier.
It was Much, the one whom Johan had assigned to dog his steps—and report on them.
Gamelyn straightened further, eyes narrowing. “What do you want?”
“I… I’ve been looking for y’ every which ways, milord,” the young soldier said. “Since I came back. I had tae find y’ and let y’ know.”
“Does my brother want me, then?” Gamelyn gave a longing glance to the books spread on the table, then began to gather them up.
“Nay, milord. ’Tisn’t that, and I want you tae be understandin’ what is… what I… I ent knowin’, y’ see? Had I known, I nivver would’ve….”
He was stammering, Gamelyn realized suddenly, nearly speechless with some sort of dread.
“There’s nae help for’t, y’see? Lord Johan, he orders us new lads, he does, and I gots to do as he says. Surely you understand, he’s yer brother an’ you gots tae do as he says, right enou’.”
“Why are you here, then?” Gamelyn said, frowning.
“I meant nowt by it. Y’ must tell ’em, tell th’ Mother that I dint mean tae mess with Her consort, or His own. John tol’ me, he did, what I’d done and that I should be sorry… and I am, I nivver wanted to give offence… only John ent understanding, he ent a soldier likes tae me, and I gots no choice. Please, milord, please tell ’em, please say you understand why I has to follow y’ to Her place.”
“Her place?” None of this was making any sense. “Look, I’m not angry with you. It’s not your—”
“Please, milord. Say you’ll tell ’er. I’ll say nowt t’ betray you, nor what passes between you and the Hunter—”
The Hunter. Who in Christ’s good name was the Hunter?
Wait. Brand had said it, once, with the same, strange reverence. The “Hunter,” and his son.
“Brand and his lad think your father’s hung the moon.”
“Adam?” Gamelyn said suddenly, softly. “When you say the ‘Hunter’, do you mean Adam? Or Rob?”
The young soldier paled. “I meant no ’arm, that I swear tae y’ milord. Her ways are true tae me, and I mean no harm to Her consort. Please. Please tell ’er I won’t betray ’er own!”
A disturbance in the chapel, the door swinging shut, and bootsteps pausing at the door. In the tiny fraction of a moment Gamelyn’s attention was diverted, Much had slipped out the side door and disappeared.
Mystified, Gamelyn sat there for some time, then began to put away the books.
X
“SEE TO our horses, boy, then come straight away in. Don’t dawdle.”
Rob took the rein from his father, watched him march to the cottage. Then, mouth tightening, he went and did as bidden.
It had been a fast ride. They’d pushed both their horses and themselves, and the miles between Blyth and Loxley had been quickly eaten away. In silence. Any time Rob had thought to speak, he’d taken a second look at his father’s taut profile and kept his mouth shut.
Something had happened. That much he could ken even without the peculiar senses that seemed to only rear their head when they chose. They sure weren’t being a lot of help to him now.
Surely his father would have told him, had it been something wrong with his mam or Marion. Surely he would have known….
It was the only surety he had right now, that realization. Anything else could wait while he did right by their sweated mounts. He untacked them, gave them each a bit of swede. And they certainly deserved a good rubdown. Rob took his time, his smile coming easily as he scratched the exact spot on Arawn’s withers that would make him stretch his neck and upper lip, quivering.
And found his thoughts going to Gamelyn.
That shouldn’t surprise him, should it, when Gamelyn had responded to his touch with no less pleasure than Arawn… only more subtle, as if Gamelyn wouldn’t know what to do with such a pleasure unless it reared up and bit his arse.
Arawn’s knees were trying to buckle. Rob chuckled, gave him a slap on the rump. “It’s quite easy, you see,” he told the black. “I want him. It’s that simple.”
Only, it wasn’t. It should be, and it could be, but it wasn’t, and the sense of it clanging about in his head, unanswered and complicated, was enough to make Rob want to run into the middle of Loxley Chase, crouch on his haunches and howl like a deranged wolf.
Instead he finished brushing down Arawn then his father’s horse, threw woolen blankets over their haunches, and tied them to the manger. They’d have to cool more before he could feed them, and it was time he went in, found out what was going on.
Beside the fact that the little stable lad, John, had possessed a marvelous mouth and Rob wanted—really, really wanted—to find out if Gamelyn….
Impossible. Forget it. He probably had a better chance of coaxing Will Scathelock to give it a go.
“Has Scathelock come here, then?”
His father’s voice shook with something that felt like rage, yet smelled more of pain and fear than any fury. Rob halted halfway to the cottage.
His mother’s voice answered. Rob was too far away to hear what she said, but again, the fear was there. The pain.
Rob started forward, his steps more rushed as it broke over him like a wave. Scathelock. What had happened to Will? George?
“—spelled the arrow?” Adam’s words, first unintelligible, raised back into clarity, escaping the windows of their cottage as if it was too small to hold his voice. “You Saw it?”
Marion’s voice, soft and dull. “I did. He waited until everyone was asleep, then went and found the rowan. He knew what he had to do from the moment he saw the soldier unhelmed. So he killed him.” Sudden and shrill, her voice rose. “And it was deserved! You canna say it wasn’t!”
“Deserved or no, he went too far! One brazen act, and it could be t’ ruin of us all!”
By the time he reached the cottage, Rob was running.
“And what good is any of it—our powers, our places!—if we have to keep bending our necks?” Marion retorted. “Worse, because when cattle need butchering, they receive our reverence at least! That one; he deserved what he got and more!”
“Marion, you don’t understand.” Eluned sounded nearly in tears.
Rob took the cottage steps two at a time and slid to a halt just inside. Marion’s eyes leapt to his, as if in escape. Eluned also peered at him, standing behind Adam. Adam was sitting across from Marion, who had her head in her hands.
Rob said the first thing he could. “It was Will, wasn’t it?”
Adam looked up, held Rob’s eyes.
“He killed that soldier, aye? ’Twas the one who murdered his mam, waint it? He said….” Said he knew his voice. That something was… familiar.
Adam looked away. Eluned wrapped her arms about Adam’s shoulders, murmuring to him.
“I… I canna believe it. We were t’ meet on th’ m-morrow at the ale house, Will an’ I,” Rob stammered.
“Thinking of drinkin’ at a time like this!” Marion yanked her hands from her face, rising from her chair. “Are you—?”
“I ent thinking of ale,” Rob protested, stung. “It was just… I… aw, bugger, think what y’ like, then!”
He had the satisfaction of seeing Marion’s face blanch, and then it leached into anguish as he fully took in that face: white, tear-streaked, full of hope shattered. It was too much to bear
, that he had rended his own; Rob whirled and escaped the cottage.
Eluned’s voice rose, calling him, but Rob kept going. Running, not with the panic of the hunted, not with the hunger of predation, but horror. Helplessness. He had to move, to breathe, to react… do something… yet nothing was possible save the running. His feet had eyes in them, as ever, took him careful and cautious into the Wode, where the dark and the green and the mists covered him, soothing as lullabies sung with a honeyed tongue.
He should have known. Should have seen it… should have Seen it, known what was coming, because otherwise, what good was any of this… this tynged?
As suddenly as anger had lent him speed, it deserted him, leaving him lurching to a halt in a gnarled stand of trees. With sudden ungainliness, Rob lurched sideways, panting, and half fell onto an ancient oak. He clung to it, laid his cheek upon it, breathed it in as if the iron strength of the old tree could somehow morph itself into him.
He wasn’t sure how long he hunched there, eyes clenched and teeth bared, wishing he could at least cry but no tears coming, even as a favor. Finally he shuddered and opened his eyes, turned around and put his back to it. And breathed.
There was an odd gap next to him; a hawthorn had been coppiced in the recent past, sending tender shoots that rose up beside him. They caressed his fingers as he reached down and touched them, sunk to his knees. Rob sucked in another deep, slow breath; wood-rot and bruised green filled his senses, steadied and grounded them.
He should have known. Not only that Will was set on vengeance… always had been, just waiting for it to fall, ripe, within his grasp… but that Marion had fancied Will.
It was all lucid and sudden, clear as the night around him, pocked with stars and cool as an early summer’s evening could be. Marion had fancied Will Scathelock, and now any hopes had been taken from her before she’d even realized them. All the scorn she’d heaped on Will’s flighty ways and uncontrolled urges were signs Rob had been too thick-witted and self-involved to read.
He’d been so convinced she liked Gamelyn.
Self-involved—aye, that and more. Because he’d been convinced that Marion and Gamelyn were infatuated with each other, not looking past his own nose… not looking where his own wanting was leading him. And now that Rob had more than ample evidence—proof of his own passion, evidence of where Marion’s heart would fain turn—the way cleared only to become more convoluted.
And why was he thinking on Gamelyn now, of all times? Will was his friend. His dearest friend save Marion—and Will was like him, of his own kind—Will had killed one of the sheriff’s men. And Rob had never seen it coming.
Sure, and when Will wasn’t wooing Calla and Rob wasn’t tilting into Simon, they had sat to drinks across the alehouse table. And for every hour Rob and Will had spent getting buzzed and bragging, they’d also spent another getting blind drunk. And while Rob was a morose drunk, Will was an angry one, with where else for that to lead but to the both of them railing against fate, bemoaning the conquered and damning the conquerors. Sotted with drink and unspent fury, Will had diagrammed and detailed the suffering he’d give the man who’d murdered his mother. Rob had listened and agreed and felt utterly powerless, because what good was having such things as sorcery and Sight when you couldn’t so much as See your way clear to a place where justice would be done?
Why was he thinking on Gamelyn? Dreaming of him? Rob should bloody well despise him! And instead Rob wanted him… and the recognition curdled on his tongue: humiliation instead of joy, resentment instead of release.
Will was his friend. Was his oldest, best friend and might have been Marion’s lover. Instead Will would be riven from the Shire Wode, likely outlawed for seeing justice done. While Gamelyn was of the ones who’d ground them into dirt, was merely some noble having a lark in that dirt for reasons Rob still didn’t fathom and certainly was unable to fully trust.
So wrapped in his own misery, Rob almost didn’t hear the low-pitched voices. The urgency of them alerted him; that and the barely audible drag of a boot not a pike’s lob away. Instincts pinning him to the wide, worn shelter of the oak, Rob rose from his crouch, soundless, breath held behind his teeth.
“What must I do?”
The voice was shaky-soft, almost plaintive, threaded all hollow. Rob had never heard such in his father’s voice—for several halting breaths he was unsure it was his father’s voice.
He peered around the tree, saw his father kneeling, a scrim of moonlight tracing his lowered head. A familiar silhouette stood before Adam, sheltered from even the moonlight by a thicket and a stand of overarching trees. Cernun’s shape wavered, from fur-wrapped old man to pale, ancient hind, all of it overlaid with the visage of the ebon, horn-crowned shade. Rob gritted his teeth, closed his eyes, and shook his head, ever so slightly. Now was no time for visions or dreams.
Now was reality. What good were dreams?
“They’ll send for me. They’ll summon me and I’ll have no choice but heed, for I’m forester to the king and one of me own has broken the laws I am sworn to uphold… Lady protect me, one of me own… our own! Of us, sworn to our covenant—”
“From the moment he spelled the arrow, he was lost to us.” Cernun’s voice was forbidding.
“But it waint just be ‘he’, aye? FitzAaron might well declare them both outlaw and set me to hunt them. My underforesters. My responsibility.”
Adam’s voice was breaking, raw. It was… unnerving. Rob gripped tighter to the tree and tilted his head, truly not wanting to listen but unable to do otherwise.
“You must do what the law commands, else lose all.”
“He’s only a lad—”
“He’s a man.”
“He’s a boy,” Adam insisted, “who lost his mother to that bastard he killed. The same one who struck my boy down like an animal, and what did I do? Nothing.”
“What could you have done?”
“I don’t know!” It was full of helpless fury. “Had I known who it was, I would have killed him myself.”
“You do not,” Cernun answered, just as terse, “have the luxury of dealing death.”
“Yet I am Lord of Life and Death, the Horned One—”
“The Horned One, aye. Talk of death is obscene from you, life-bearer. You are not the Hooded One.”
Rob watched his father recoil as if Cernun had struck him, and felt… nothing. It was as if those words—the Hooded One—had sucked from him every reasonable response, setting a hum and twitch of tynged to fill his senses.
“I know Scathelock.” Adam’s voice, when it sounded again, was wooden. “He’ll not let Will be taken from him, too.”
“It is ever a father’s prerogative, to shield a son.”
Layer upon layer, the words seemed to echo into ten more, tens upon tens of meanings threading out beyond him, possibilities….
Nay. Rob dug his fingers into the bark. I need to hear.
“They have broken covenant and it could betray us all. You have told me of the Maiden’s visions; what has the Mother Seen?”
For long moments, Adam did not answer. When he did, his voice was wooden. “The Hood comes, bearing the goddess’s terrible arrow. But it is the nobleman’s son who walks alongside, who would supplant him and bring the battle ’twixt the Lords of Summer and Winter.”
“Those of cruithna know the ways of the Lady deeper than any horns can pierce. And She knows all. Abred, Annwn, Gwynfydd… all worlds are within Her sight.”
“Then why does she look into our son’s future and See… nothing?”
Nothing. It rang, echoed deep into the Wode. Rob tried to turn away, couldn’t, had to clench his eyes shut. His head was fairly throbbing and Rob wished he could just lop it off and be done. It was too much. Too much.
His own future, a cipher even to Mother-kind. The cruithna, the People of the Barrow, his mother’s kin. The trine of the Ceugant: mortal, other, and undying. A Hooded One to deal death where the Horned One could not… like a king’s exec
utioner, then? With a nobleman’s son to supplant him?
It made… no… sense. Only broken covenants. Fathers shielding sons.
When he finally could look back toward Cernun and Adam, his father was gone, and instead of Cernun there was only the great, ebon visage of the Horned Lord.
Suddenly He turned, fixed gleaming eyes upon Rob. Rob found himself unable to move, rooted in place as if he were the oak beneath his hands.
Then it gusted away, wisped into smoke and darkness, leaving Cernun looking after where Adam must have gone.
“I know you’re here, youngling.”
Rob froze.
“If now is no time for visions and dreams, then when will it ever be?”
Suddenly Cernun was beside him, hand upon the oak that Rob still leaned upon, and either the old man had moved that fast, or Rob had again lost track of time.
Rob was no longer sure which was more possible. “What… what will happen to Will and his da?”
“They go to face their own tynged, as must we all. Young Scathelock accepted that when he spelled the rowan to the fires of death. Everything is taken with a price.”
“They paid it first!”
“You have no idea what has been paid and what has not. You are too young to understand the meaning of consequence, of sacrifice.”
Stay, and watch the King die. Do you not know the true meaning of sacrifice?
Cernun sucked in a quick breath and his gaze met Rob’s. “So. That is what you see.”
Rob wasn’t sure what was more disturbing, the way Cernun was suddenly looking at him, or that the old man had also heard, somehow, the memory of the Horned Lord’s words from the Seeking.
“But then, how could I expect otherwise? You have never been the innocent one, have you, Hob-Robyn?”
The very sounding of the name seemed to echo through the Wode, to call him. Rob shook his head, denied it, denied… all of it. “You canna mean that you would have my da turn his back on them. Or betray them.”
“What is the meaning of betrayal?” Cernun countered. “Other than it is oft met with more betrayal. It is the way of things. The web is spun, merely to be plucked and torn and spun again. The question is, my son, are you willing to hold fast should it wrap you, or will you tear it to win free?”
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