The Wicked Day

by Christopher Bunn

  “A dog,” said the ghost. “A bloodhound. No doubt already on our trail. It was a valiant effort, but now we’re all going to die. Oh well.”

  “That’s not a dog,” said the hawk.

  “I’ve heard that sound before.” Jute tried to swallow but his mouth had gone dry. “Back in Hearne. She called them shadowhounds. I didn’t see them, but I remember the sound of their howl.”

  “Shadowhound, aye,” muttered the hawk.

  “Hounds, shadowhounds, whatever you call them, I don’t care,” said Declan. “Any beast can be killed.”

  “Not these. Your sword wouldn’t suffice. Hiding your trail within a city is the best option. Other than that, the only way to defeat such a beast is with magic, and none of us are skilled in such arts.”

  “They don’t fly, do they?” said Jute, thinking back to that dreadful and wonderful night in Hearne. It seemed long ago now. “You can fly. I can fly!”

  “Thank you very much,” said Declan. “That would leave me to sort things out by myself.”

  “I wouldn’t leave your side,” said the ghost. “Yours will be a brave death, no doubt, and I shall be honored to witness it.”

  “Never fear.” The hawk bobbed his head. “Flying might be an option if the boy didn’t always fall flat on his face the moment his feet leave the ground. He wouldn’t get far that way. No. We must think of another way to lose the beast.”

  But they could not think of a way, no matter how much they discussed the problem as they hurried along. They did not hear the howl again, but no one doubted for a moment what followed on their path. They came to the edge of a valley that yawned open before them. The moonlight shone on cliffs sheathed in ice, frozen in folds and draperies and waterfalls halted by winter’s hand in their downward plunge but still falling away to the depths below.

  “That’s not a descent I’d like to make,” said Declan. “Even in daylight with ropes and axe. We’ll have to skirt it west until we find a better spot, or even further to where the trader’s road must surely find its way through.” He shook his head. “If we had wings, master hawk, this would be no problem.”

  “If we threw Jute over the side,” said the hawk, “he’d learn to fly fast enough, but I can’t vouch for you. Men aren’t made to fly and there’s only trouble if they try.”

  “No one’s throwing me over the side,” said Jute.

  They hiked along the top of the cliffs in growing dismay, for there seemed no end to them. The ground was treacherous with ice, and they kept a distance from the edge of the cliffs for fear of slipping and plunging over. Pine trees grew there in ever-increasing frequency until they found themselves walking through a forest. The trees were heavy with snow and the drifts were deep. The moon shone down in shreds and tatters, wherever it could find a way through the tree branches.

  “Snow down my neck, in my boots, in my socks,” said Jute. “Winter was never so cold in Hearne. Why would anyone want to live in this duchy? I suppose I wouldn’t mind being a farmer. He had a nice family, didn’t he? Too many girls, though.”

  “Shh.” Declan stopped and turned, his face intent.

  “Thank you,” said the ghost. “I can’t stand people who babble. You’re a babbler, did you know that, Jute? I tell you for your own good. A babbler is someone who chatters on about irrelevancies. Going into hideously extensive detail on topics that I haven’t the slightest interest in. You remind me of a fellow named Yoric who, fortunately for the rest of us, was boiled into pudding by a—”

  “I’m not a babbler. Why, if anyone’s a babbler it’s—”

  “Hush. Both of you.”

  Jute and the ghost fell silent, for they saw the tension on Declan’s face. He tilted his head this way and that, eyes shut, as if he might by such slight positioning hear more of what the wind had to say.

  “Something’s coming,” said the hawk.

  Before they could do anything, whether that would have been climbing the nearest tree or drawing a weapon, a quiet scuffling sound came from the bushes nearby.

  “It’s just a couple of rabbits,” said Jute, his voice shaky with relief.

  There were two of them. Two small rabbits with fur so white they were almost invisible against the snow. Their ears were the only part of them that moved, twitching back and forth, for the rabbits sat motionless in the snow and stared at the travelers. They had red eyes.

  “Is it just me,” said the ghost, “or has anyone else noticed these things are only looking at Jute?”

  There was an uncomfortable silence after this, during which everyone considered what the ghost had said. He was right. The rabbits were staring at Jute.

  “Rabbits are harmless, aren’t they?” said Jute. “You don’t think they know we’ve eaten a lot of their relatives, do they?”

  “Speak for yourself,” said the ghost. “I’m sure I never ate a rabbit in my life.”

  One of the rabbits yawned, revealing an unusually large mouth filled with unusually sharp-looking teeth. It shut its mouth with a snap.

  “I think,” said Declan quietly, “that we had better—”

  It was then that it happened. The rabbits grew and stretched and elongated until what stood before them were no longer rabbits but two enormous dogs. Shadowhounds.

  “Jute! Run!”

  Jute was already running. Declan’s sword sang through the air, and the hawk flung himself forward, slashing with beak and claw. The hounds lunged forward to meet them. Jute ran through the snow, stumbling to keep on his feet as he staggered through the drifts. He could not see where he was going. It was too dark. Branches whipped against his face and he tripped, falling to both knees. Somewhere behind him, something large and heavy crashed through the bushes. Jute staggered back to his feet. And realized he stood on the edge of the cliffs. Darkness and the sense of a great emptiness falling away lay before him. He turned around. Something ran out from among the trees and stopped in the moonlight. A shadowhound!

  No.

  Something worse. A huge beast with glaring silver eyes and jaws big enough to swallow him whole. Its fur was so black it was darker than the night around it, a terrible blot of shadow against the snow. Further back among the trees there came a sound of growling and then a sharper, more triumphant howl. The beast before Jute leapt forward.

  Perhaps it will be quick, thought Jute. He raised his hands, hopeless and helpless. Perhaps I won’t feel a thing.

  And then, right when he felt the beast’s hot breath and could smell the rank odor of the thing, he thought, absurdly pleased: at least if I’m dead I won’t be cold anymore. But the beast did not kill him. Instead, it slammed into him with one heavy shoulder, knocking the wind from his lungs and off his feet. Jute’s arms windmilled through the air, desperate to grab onto something, for he knew what was behind him. His fingers closed on nothing, and then he was falling. The cold and the wind whipped by him. He tumbled down, end over end. One second the moon was overhead, and the next second it was gone. The cliffs were a solid wall of darkness. Or was that the sky? Or perhaps it was just the ground, rushing closer and closer to bring him to his final and abrupt end. Oddly enough, he wasn’t afraid.

  Life seems to be mostly about falling, doesn’t it? Falling down.

  The wind chuckled in his ear. Or falling up.

  And just as Jute expected, though he hadn’t realized it until the moment it happened, the wind caught him. It spun him around a few times, merely for the fun of it, and then bore him high up, high into the sky until the cliff and forest below shrank away into the darkness of the night.

  Here, said the wind, forming its words in gusts and sighs and the tumbling torrent of its passage, we shall see. Shall we not? It blew against the clouds until they unraveled like rotten thread. They frayed apart and then vanished, rolled up on the horizon like dirty garments waiting for the rain and their washing. The moon shone down.

  Far below them, beneath the cliffs, a snowy valley stretched away to the south. Further down the valley, miles and mi
les away, the lights of a city sparkled in the night. Wall upon wall and tower upon tower rose to a pinnacle so lofty that it was a wonder Jute and the wind were higher still. Jute’s eyes sharpened. It seemed that he could see across the land if he wanted to, across the mountains and even to the sea if he wanted. But the lights of the city drew him.

  Aye, said the wind. We’ve always been drawn to bright things. You and me. Shiny baubles. Pretty bits of this and that. Careful now. Some are sharp!

  I think that’s the city we must go to, said Jute. Ancalon.

  But then he remembered Declan and the hawk. And the ghost. He could not forget the poor old ghost. And the shadowhounds.

  Let us go, said the wind. We can whirl and blow and dance. Knock over chimneys! Steal the laundry and throw it in the mud. Break windows. What fun we shall have!

  You must set me down near the cliffs.

  No. The wind’s voice sounded petulant. I want to play. I want to break windows!

  You must set me down. Please.

  Hmmph!

  The wind whisked him across the sky, grumbling in a voice that sounded like thunder on the horizon. The stars rushed by overhead and the clouds blew like streamers around the moon. The air was as cold and as thick as water. Snowflakes stung Jute’s face. And then he was on the ground, stumbling with the sudden weight of his own self. The wind whirled around him, mumbling and disconsolate. He floundered through the snow. The cliff rose up high above him. Moonlight shone on ice and crag. Icicles hung down in clusters, sharp as spear points, from the overhanging rocks. He heard a howling on the wind.

  “Well, we’re in tremendous luck.” The hawk swooped down out of the darkness and settled on Jute’s shoulder. “Superb luck, for such a terrible day and an even worse night.”

  Before Jute could say how delighted he was to see the bird, something huge and dark hurtled over the top of the cliff. The shape seemed to fly down the face of the cliff—no, not fly—rather, the thing was running down the cliff. Ice fell in sharp and sudden shards. Jute’s mouth fell open.

  “Get out of the way!” said the hawk.

  Snow showered up around them. And there, standing before them was the terrible creature from the top of the cliff. Its jaws gaped open to reveal teeth as sharp as knives. Jute stumbled backwards.

  “Help!” he shouted.

  He would have shouted a great deal more than that, none of it flattering to himself and the ideal of courage, but at that moment Declan appeared. Rather, he peered over the creature’s head. The creature was so enormous that Jute hadn’t seen Declan sitting on the thing’s back.

  “Ah, Jute,” said Declan. “There you are. Hop on.”

  “Did you say hop on?”

  “As in: get on, mount up, jump on, ascend, clamber up,” said the ghost, appearing from somewhere behind Declan’s head.

  “This is no time to throw about words,” said the hawk. “Quickly now. He’s our friend.”

  Friend? Jute looked over at the hawk. What is he?

  I am a wolf. The voice filled Jute’s mind. It was deep and growling, but there was a hint of laughter in it. The wolf’s tongue lolled out of his mouth in a grin. Get on. We do not have much time. Do not worry. I shall not eat you, little one. You would be exceedingly tough and stringy.

  This did not encourage Jute, but a sudden howl from high above them on the cliff did, and he jumped for the wolf as if someone had filled his boots with hot coals.

  “Climb up,” said the wolf. “Plenty of room for all. Caught hold? Good. Now, we are off.”

  The night surged around them. The wolf ran as fast as the wind. Snow flew up from his paws, shining with moonlight and sparkling like tiny stars in their wake. The countryside blurred past in a confusion of ice-bound trees, of darkness pooled in defiles, and of expanses of snow. The stars glided overhead, their fire frozen into shards of light studding the sky. The moon tumbled by from cloud to cloud. Near them, in the darkness, the hawk flew as fast as an arrow, but even he could fly no faster than the speed of the wolf. They fled through the night, but behind them in the darkness there sounded the belling of the shadowhounds.

  The city rose up like a swath of night sky, speckled with lights like stars. As they drew closer, its aspect hardened into towers, battlements, and walls, spiked with chimney spires trailing smoke from their smoldering tips. The city sprawled at the mouth of the valley, out of whose expanse swam a river that hugged the northern edge of the city before curving away to the west. Bridges spanned the water in several places. Torches burned holes in the darkness, along the walls, atop towers, and at the heads and tails of the bridges.

  The wolf stopped his headlong rush in a stand of trees halfway down a ridge descending to the valley below. Declan and Jute tumbled off and stamped around to awaken their aching muscles.

  “We’re nearly there,” said the hawk. “Why stop now? You, more than us, surely know what’s hidden behind those walls.”

  “I know full well, old wing,” said the wolf. “I’ve approached this city, from south and north, east and west, and every time I’m stopped in my tracks. There’s a strange, dark magic guarding this place and it listens for such as you and I. Each time, the gates opened and a company rode forth on my trail. Shadowhounds, ravens with iron beaks and iron claws, men on steeds and themselves ridden by magic, and other such almost men, but not men, full of death and darkness. This accursed city is shut to me, even though my heart is there.” A growl escaped his throat. “She’s there. I know it.”

  “I wouldn’t regard ravens as much,” said the hawk. “Ugly, smelly birds not good for anything except pecking dead flesh.”

  “These aren’t precisely ravens,” said the wolf. “But time’s passing us by now. The hounds are still on our trail and shall not rest until they find us. You and Jute must make your way into the city alone. Find my mistress—find your sister—and free her from whatever holds her fast, for I can sense her presence somewhere behind those walls. I’m balked by darkness, for there is too much magic in me, but in you it shall find none and so shall be blind to you. If we can, we shall delay the hounds, the hawk and I.”

  “But how’ll we find her?” said Declan. “Ancalon looks near as big as Hearne and I’ve never set foot in this city.”

  “You will find her,” said the wolf, his voice grim. “And we shall await you.”

  He drew near to both Declan and Jute and breathed on them. There was a scent of earth and green growing things in his breath. And with it they gradually became aware of a delicate tug in their minds, almost as if a vine had wrapped its tendrils around them and began to pull with the slow yet inexorable strength of its growth.

  “What about me?” said the ghost. “I expect you think I’m going to stay here and mumble among the trees while you’re gallivanting around. And this after I saved your lives back in that wretched inn. Hmmph.”

  “On the contrary,” said Declan, eyeing the ghost thoughtfully. “You’ll come with us. You might prove useful before the night is out.”

  “Oh?” said the ghost. “Well, I—”

  But he did not get to say more than this, for at that moment there came from behind them on the ridge a sudden sharp howl. The wolf wheeled around.

  “Quickly now,” he said. “We’ll attempt to draw them off. But the shadowhounds have your scent, and they’re not known to give up easily.” And with that, the wolf and hawk vanished into the darkness.

  “Well, that’s that,” said Jute. He glanced nervously back toward the ridge. “We should go, shouldn’t we?”

  “Yes,” said Declan.

  "I suppose," mumbled the ghost.

  They plunged down the snowy slope. Pines grew in miserable and twisted states, hunched over themselves under the weight of their icy branches and the fact that winter had many months before it would relent into spring. Jute’s side ached. His lungs burned. His mind felt numb with cold and weariness.

  If only I could fly. Or at least lighten my feet.

  His thoughts groped for the
sensation of weightlessness, of air and emptiness and sky. Sky. The pale, scraped-thin, gossamer nothingness of sky. Caught and held onto nothingness. He felt his body lighten. His boots glided across the snow. The wind pushed him forward. He could breathe easily again. And then the hawk’s voice whispered into his mind.

  Stop. You’ll draw unwanted attention.

  As quickly as it had appeared, the hawk’s voice was gone. Jute plunged back into the snow. Floundering knee-deep. Gasping. Chagrined. He knew better. Declan glanced back at him, eyebrows raised.

  “I’m all right,” panted Jute. “We’ll be there soon enough.”

  “Aye.” Declan frowned and shook his head. “Searching for a pebble on the shore. Unless this pull, this thing.” He did not finish the sentence but shook his head again.

  But they could both feel it. The delicate tug inside their minds pulled at them ever so gently. It aimed straight across the snowy valley floor, across the frozen black ribbon of river and right at the city walls. And surely once they were within those walls, it would pull them on until they found her. Jute wondered what Ronan’s sister was like. Sometimes she looked like Lena and sometimes she looked like the lady in the regent’s castle. Vines and leaves wove through her hair, rippling around her neck and dangling down to the ground. Her legs grew into the earth, or was it that the earth rose up and became her?

  “What’s her name?” said Jute.

  “Giverny.” Declan paused and then spoke again, more to himself than to Jute. “I can hardly remember her face. She was a tiny thing when I left. Three years old, if that. Toddling around, always getting under the hooves of the horses, though they never stepped on her. The horses and the hounds, they all loved her. Even the wild animals. Foxes, hares, the squirrels would come eat bread from her hand.” His face twisted, though Jute could not tell if it was in anger or in wonder. “Was her path already laid out for her then? Is it like that for everyone?”

  The city grew as they approached. It was difficult to tell in the darkness, but to Jute’s eyes Ancalon seemed as large a city as Hearne. Towers mounted up toward the sky. The massive walls stretched away on either side, bounded by the frozen expanse of the river uncoiled below. Three bridges spanned the river, leading to three gates, each flanked by towers with crenellated battlements.