Phantom Stag (A King's Watch Story Book 1)

by Mark Hayden

  I made stag’s horn gestures with my fingers on my head and pointed around the forest. He nodded eagerly and smiled. No wonder he looked hard done by – the poor bloke only had half a dozen teeth.

  ‘I may regret this,’ I muttered. I closed the gap and knelt in front of him. He placed his hands on my shoulders and …

  ‘Ave Maria, gratia plena,

  ‘Dominus tecum.

  ‘Benedicta tu in mulieribus,

  ‘et benedictus fructus ventris tui…

  The words flooded out of my mouth like a torrent. I couldn’t stop saying Hail Marys as fast as my lips would form them. I bucked and tried to break away, but his spectral hands pressed on the nerves in my shoulder and I couldn’t move. I felt it coming: the panic that takes over me when I’m underground or locked in a room with a spider…

  ‘Ave Maria, gratia plena…’

  My head was bowed. I stopped trying to fight the words and let them flow for a second. There was peace in the rhythm, and the pressure on my nerves slackened enough for me to lift my head. The Spirit monk had his eyes closed, and he wasn’t using his Sight, either. Around his neck, the wooden cross had gone from a generic gold to jet black. Except at the edges. The arms of the cross had a brighter etching on them, as if someone were colouring them in. Another Hail Mary finished, and one more line was etched in.

  I put two and two together and came up with an even bigger slice of evil. This monk had passed out of the mortal world on a promise: the Fae had promised him something in return for his service. This wasn’t slavery – it was bondage, and I bet the monk couldn’t tell the difference. And his service would last until he’d said a few thousands of Hail Marys and filled in the whole of his cross with etchings.

  When you’re a Spirit, that’s no biggie. And then the Fae took his voice away.

  ‘Ave Maria, gratia plena…’

  I don’t know much Latin. Enough to recognise a few key words of magick. What I needed was a three syllable word, preferably a name. Of course: Diana, goddess of the hunt.

  ‘Ave Diana, gratia plena…’

  He didn’t notice the first time round. The next time, I said Diana a bit more forcefully, and he staggered back, letting go of my shoulders. Pain and sorrow washed over his face.

  I moved towards him and lifted my hand. He flinched and covered his face, expecting me to strike.

  ‘Easy, father,’ I said. ‘I just want to bridge the collar. It won’t hurt.’

  He backed into a tree. When I didn’t attack him, he slowly lowered his hands and gave me a pitiful look. I reached out and ran my finger over the Fae collar. There was no way I could take it off, nor would I want to (the Fae would not take kindly to that), but I could bridge it. I put my thumb below the collar and my forefinger above it, then I let the Lux flow up and down.

  ‘Try to speak,’ I said.

  ‘Ave Maria, gratia plena…’

  I took my hand away and shook my head firmly. The pleading look came back, and he held up five fingers. I shook my head again and held up one. We compromised on two.

  When he’d said his two Hail Marys, he went quiet.

  ‘Father?’ I said. ‘Have you seen the Stag? Did you see the Royal Hunt last night?’

  He spoke. I’d tell you what he said, but I don’t speak mediæval Gaelic at all. Great. An Irish monk. Of course, in the last six hundred years, no one’s talked to him, so he hasn’t had a chance to pick up modern English.

  I dropped my hand and started to play charades. Five minutes later, I figured out that, yes, he’d seen the Stag, but no, he’d run away from the Hunters. Marvellous.

  I was about to head off when he came forward and touched my arm. He grabbed his rake and quickly heaped up a pile of leaves of Lux. I have no idea why the Fae wanted him wandering their forest doing this. It could be a crucial part of the magickal ecosystem, or it could be a pointless joke. That’s the Fae for you.

  He rummaged in the pile and separated a few tiny silver acorns. He made the horns of a deer and pointed to the magickal seeds. Now that was worth knowing. He passed me the acorns and lifted his hand in blessing.

  All the shenanigans with Father Patrick (which may or may not be his name) had cost me a lot of time. The Hunters would be well into the woods by now. I went back to the path and looked around. Father Patrick had mimed being frightened of the Hunters, and that gave me a clue. He wouldn’t be lingering in this part of the forest if the Hunt were nearby, so I made an executive decision: I was going much further in before I started a proper search. I shoved the silver acorns in my pocket and started a gentle jog through the wood. Don’t tell Conrad I was running; he might make me do it more often.

  It was about this time that I realised that it was actually very quiet in here, compared to most forests (real or enchanted). I hoped that the Fae had remembered to round up the wild boar before sunset.

  The path sloped down a bit, then twisted sharp left round a dense bit of matted undergrowth and tangled brambles. I’ll bet that corresponded to a mundane structure – a lambing shed or something rural. Because of the bend, I got no warning of what was round the corner.

  She was sitting on a tree stump right next to the path, in a pool of silver light cast by her own hair. That’s just showing off, that is.

  I’ve met the Fae in person before. There are always a couple knocking round Salomon’s House, for one thing, and they’re very popular as party guests, if you like seriously wild parties. Again, don’t tell Conrad, but everything you’ve heard about Fae anatomy is true. That was different. They were guests. On their best behaviour. Bound by the rules of hospitality. Not here, they’re not. This is their wood, their rules.

  ‘My lady,’ I said, bowing.

  She giggled. ‘Well met by moonlight, my dear.’ She said it in a funny way, as if it meant something. No idea what.

  I straightened up and took a good look (she was taking just as good a look at me). Her glowing, fine-spun hair was long, but not too long, and it managed to be both blond and silver at the same time. It was blond if you looked at the whole creature, silver if you looked at the hair. Her dress was one shouldered, long, and effortlessly satin in the way it clung where it needed to and draped where it didn’t. Her legs were crossed, and diamante strapped sandals showing off perfect toes completed her outfit. She was holding her knee with long, slender arms. I shivered all down my spine at the thought of exposed flesh on a night like this. Seeing a Fae on their home turf reminds you that they don’t feel the cold: they are the cold.

  ‘I am so loving the rambler-chic look that all the girls are going for tonight,’ she said with a toss of her hair. ‘Though I must say, it would have been nice to meet the Dragonslayer.’ As the light from her locks spread behind, I got a glimpse of a stocky male figure carrying a sword. That meant she was at least a couple of rungs up the hierarchy. Even more reason to be on my guard.

  I ignored the comment about my appearance. I’ve heard a lot, lot worse. When she didn’t get a rise out of me, or a comment about Conrad’s absence, she stood up and rested her chin on her fingers. Her fingernails were blood red and pointed.

  ‘I am sent by our Prince,’ she announced. ‘The anointed of Nimue are welcome here, and we wish you well in your journey.’

  The Fae will not utter the words The King’s Watch. They don’t accept our authority, but they don’t reject it either. To them, the Watch is the bodyguard of a Nymph called Nimue and not a police force.

  In one sense, we are bodyguards, actually. Long story. Doesn’t matter. The Prince had gone out of his way to make it known that I had a free hand in here, and that was a relief.

  ‘Thank you, my lady,’ I said with another bow.

  ‘I also have a message for Oma Bridget. If this Stag is not taken by a Hunter tonight, there will be no Royal Hunt until the turn of another winter. We are not pleased by this.’

  ‘My lady.’

  She considered me again. ‘You’d better hurry along before you miss the fun. Fare you well.’<
br />
  I backed off and turned round. Then I ran.

  I’d gotten off lightly back there. Only one insult, no dangerous illusions and no sexual propositions: just a message. She must have been under strict instructions, and she couldn’t have been more accommodating, which meant that the Prince wants this business over with as quickly as possible, and that holding me up wouldn’t have helped.

  I kept jogging (again, the presence of the Fae Lady meant no Stag nearby), and what stopped me was a vibration on the thigh. Eh?

  I pulled out my phone and checked. An enchanted wood is about as dead a dead zone as you can get for modern technology, so what was happening? On the screen was a message from Conrad: Can you get this? Any news?

  It seems like years since the Battle of Lunar Hall. Just before the battle, I’d entangled our phones, and when he brought me back from the dead, we developed a magickal bond of some sort. Clearly, the bond was strong enough for his message to get through, somehow, because I was getting no mundane signal at all. I took a minute to text back: No luck so far. Met a Fae and got a free pass. They want it over tonight. No more Hunts for a year if not.

  Conrad has an aversion to wishes of good luck. He text back: All quiet here. And that was it. Time to move things on.

  ‘Ow,’ I said when I put my phone back in my pocket: it had dug the silver acorns into my hip. Sharp little buggers. I took them out and was going to move them to a different pocket when I had an idea.

  I left the path and found a space. With great care, I placed the five acorns at the points of a pentacle and took out my pick. Conrad’s Badge of Office is on a handgun; mine is on a little golden pickaxe, in honour of me dad’s time down the pit (and his father, and his father’s father etc.). What I was about to do was something I hadn’t tried since I took my final examination at the Invisible College.

  I stood in the middle of the acorns and touched the pick to one of them. The golden pick trailed a thread of silver, like a spider’s web (ick), and I drew it from acorn to acorn, creating a pentacle of silver light. I wouldn’t have tried this without the Prince’s all clear – I was piggybacking off Fae magick here. That Lady and every other Fae who cared to look would know exactly what I was doing. I hope they’re impressed. I was.

  When the pentacle was complete, I closed my eyes and let like call to like.

  Little lights lit up around me, like stars in a dark sky. Crowns of them – ripening acorns on the branches of enchanted oaks, and carpets of them underneath. I turned round slowly to get a feel for the scale of the vision.

  There were gaps, huge gaps of nothing then clusters of spectral oaks. I nearly turned round too quickly and forgot where I’d been, but one of the oaks had an extra glow. That was the tree these acorns had fallen from, so that was the way I’d come in. Turn round again and … Over there, to the right. A big group of oaks.

  The Phantom Stag starts out as a real flesh-and-blood ruminant until the ghostly antlers lift it into the realm of the forest, like the way-marker had done for me, and a spectral animal needs sustenance. I imagine the acorns tasted delicious, and that cluster of oaks down there is exactly where a Stag would go looking for food.

  The lights winked out. I’d overloaded the acorns and they’d evaporated, so I’d better not forget which way the oaks were. With a spring in my step, I set off up the slope of a hill in search of the Hunters or their prey. Either would do.

  5

  There wasn’t much to see until I got to the top of the hill and had to catch my breath. I’d been a bit keen up that hill, not that it was much of a hill by Conrad’s standards. I did get a better view from the top, though.

  The Work I’d done with the acorns had given me enough of a sense of the oaks to try looking on my own now that I was closer. There. Down the other side of the hill. I was about to set off when a human figure appeared below me. A mortal, Witch-shaped human figure, coming in from the right. Erin. Shit. I put on a Silence and started to run.

  Erin was heading towards the cluster of oak trees and trying to look sneaky. She looked about as home in the woods as I did. With the Silence on me, she had no idea I was coming until I was nearly on top of her. She swung round … and lifted a shotgun.

  I couldn’t help it. I hit the deck and rolled to the side. It was only when I hit a tree and the Silence broke that I cringed: not with fear, but mortal shame. My Ancile would have stopped the gun. Wait till Conrad hears about this. She didn’t even fire it.

  Beyond the screen of oaks, I felt rather than heard the Stag take fright and run off. I got up just as Aaron detached himself from a tree. Bloody hell, I’d run right past him, and Erin had missed him, too. Not now, though. She’d been tracking me with the shotgun barrel; when Aaron appeared, she switched targets and brought the gun up to her shoulder. Aaron had no Ancile. Not allowed on hunts.

  ‘Stop!’ she shouted, but he was off in pursuit of the Stag, the stupid bloke. Who does that when there’s a mad woman with a shotgun? His only hope was for me to get between him and Erin.

  I sprinted ahead and made it just in time for an arrow to whack into my Ancile from the left. What the hell?

  Erin screamed, a roar of frustration, and charged after Aaron. I was right in the way, of course. She lifted the shotgun and went to take a swipe at me. My adrenaline was going now. I didn’t flinch this time. I used my magick to send a blast of air along the floor. It blew her feet from under her and sent her sprawling. The gun had a soft landing and didn’t go off, but it did fly out of her hand. Mine, I think.

  ‘Leave it,’ said a woman behind me.

  A high-pitched voice. Totally unfamiliar to me, but not to Erin. ‘Karina!’ she said.

  I did leave the gun, but I moved to put myself between Erin and the weapon before I turned round. The missing Witch, Colwyn’s sister and sponsor, was all in tight black combat gear and carried another of those bows with red flames licking along the stave. She was thin and wiry, her face almost gaunt with prominent cheekbones. She’d pulled her Braid right back, too, making her face look even tighter.

  ‘Who do you think you are, pet?’ I said. ‘Katniss Everdeen?’

  Why did I have a go at her? She’d just tried to shoot me, that’s why. Conrad and I have that in common. We tend to get sarky when people shoot at us. She did look good, mind, if you go for that sort of thing, and a lot of blokes do.

  ‘I will have that Stag,’ she said. With the grace of a ballerina, she dropped to a squat and placed the bow gently on the ground. In one silky movement, she stood up, drew a knife and came at me.

  I gave her the same blast that had floored Erin.

  And it swept past her. Bugger. Hunters aren’t supposed to wear Anciles. They’re not supposed to be women, either. I started to retreat. Quickly.

  The biggest danger was a tree root, and I swerved right to avoid it. Karina didn’t look as confident with the knife as she clearly was with the bow, and she knew that I had enough magick to fight back when she got close. If she didn’t kill me first. She got ready to take a run at me, moving to a half-crouch. I set myself to defend as if I knew what I was doing. We were both focused so hard on each other, we’d forgotten about Erin. And the gun.

  Erin had put a Silence on herself, and must have used a Glamour, because neither Karina nor I knew she was there until she appeared at my side. The gun was pointing at Karina. ‘You bastard,’ said Erin. ‘You sneaky bastard. You killed Ioan.’

  Karina went white (no camouflage makeup for her). She looked totally stricken.

  ‘This is gonna take some sorting out,’ I said and turned to my left. Conrad’s always on about priorities. ‘Give me the gun, Erin, before you make things worse.’

  ‘Ioan?’ squeaked Karina. ‘Ioan’s dead? He can’t be. I’ve just seen him!’

  I ignored her and tried to channel my inner Vera Stanhope. ‘Erin? Let the Watch deal with this. C’mon, pet, give us the gun.’

  We hadn’t got a good look at Erin when we arrived at the field this morning. She’d been w
rapped up against the cold, and hadn’t stayed to be interviewed. She had a pleasant face, not striking or stunning, just open and wide-eyed with lovely fine blond hair. Much more my type, if I were into women, not that she looked very pleasant right now. She wasn’t holding the gun properly, and might break her wrist if she fired it. I saw the black smudges on her hands from her work as an Enscriber and shuddered. Last month, an Enscriber had tried to kill us. Several times. I’d bashed her head in with a metal crutch. That image still gives me the shakes. I forced myself to focus on the present.

  ‘Look at your fingers, Erin,’ I said. ‘Ink stains, not blood stains. Hand it over and help me out, eh?’

  She held the gun out to me and looked away. I took it from her, and her shoulders slumped. It was my turn to stare at the gun. Conrad has run me through the basics of shotguns, just in case, but his shotguns are breech loaders. This was a pump action. ‘Is this even loaded?’ I said to Erin.

  She perked up a bit. ‘Of course. And there’s one in the chamber. What are you going to do about her?’

  We looked at Karina. She was wiping away tears. ‘Is Ioan really dead?’ she said.

  ‘Aye, he is. Colwyn shot him. That’s why we’re here.’

  ‘Who are you, anyway?’

  ‘A Witchfinder,’ said Erin. ‘There’s another one somewhere.’

  ‘Hey, less of that,’ I said as sharply as I could. ‘Oma called in the King’s Watch, and we’ll sort this out.’

  Karina looked appalled. ‘No. No, no, no.’ She started backing away from us. From me. ‘I didn’t shoot to kill you. I was only going to tie you up.’

  She was so light on her feet, she almost danced back to where she’d left her bow. There was no point trying to grab her, or shoot her. She fumbled her dagger, trying to sheathe it, and dropped it. She cursed and picked up her bow. Then she was off, a ghost slipping through the trees.

  ‘That bow,’ said Erin. ‘It was blessed.’