The Season of the Plough

by Luke R J Maynard

  “I am the child of your great Prophecy,” she said. “If you are so confident in my fate, then I may do whatever I please, and you can rest assured it was all ordained.”

  “That is not how fate works,” said Celithrand, though darker thoughts now held his attention and he had no more breath for talking—not at the pace Robyn and Fletch set ahead of them.

  The place was near enough to the lip of the escarpment that readying the horses for the climb would not have brought them any more speed. The five of them climbed straight up and over the steep edge, and pushed back in the same direction they had gone in search of Rinnie and the Reeve. The woods were still and the silence unbroken; there was neither wind nor birdsong in the branches above them. Poe loomed protectively over Aewyn every step of the way: a forest with no birds was a godless place to die.

  They stopped, very briefly, at the hermit’s hut where Aewyn and Poe had found the child. The karach stopped well back of the hut and Aewyn was compelled to wait with him as Robyn ventured forward with Fletch and Celithrand at her side. The three spent some minutes searching the small one-room hut, and tore at its wattled walls until they were convinced it held no secrets but those Poe had already uncovered. They found, just as Poe had said, the rich accoutrements of an officer in the Grand Army: the deserter’s grey tabard and sable cloak were lined with a distinctive and telling shade of blue.

  “Cerulean Guard,” Robyn breathed as she turned the items over. Outside, Poe’s ears twitched uncomfortably as she lifted up the mail-coat; only Aewyn saw him flinch.

  “Well-trained,” said Celithrand, “and completely loyal. Well-paid, too. A deserter from the Cerulean guard is unheard of—or would have been, twenty years ago. Perhaps times have changed.”

  “Perhaps,” Robyn agreed. “Do you see a mother’s drop with his kit? I thought the Ceruleans all wore one.”

  “Perhaps he wears it around his neck still,” said Celithrand. “Or perhaps not. The Cerulean Guard were loyal unto death, once. But those days may be gone.”

  “Anything of use?” asked Fletch. At the sound of his voice, Robyn picked up the guard’s weapon. It was an arming sword, light in hand and well-made. Gauging Fletch’s height, she passed it to him.

  “We’ll induct you properly when time permits,” she said, though his eyes were already lost to her as he cracked the sword from its scabbard and gazed with admiration upon the gleaming steel.

  With intent to return to the site at leisure, they pressed on and climbed a half-mile or so farther into the hilly woods, meeting up with the patrol road and following it on to where the tracks had been found.

  Tsúla and his riding partner Venser were waiting for them on the edge of the narrow trail, flanked by high brambles and blackberry bushes. There was no point in asking them where the trail lay: the verdant wall had come crashing down on both sides of the trail, as if a bull—or several bulls—had come trampling through the foliage. A few slender birch trees surrounding the road had been knocked down at the roots by whatever had come this way. In the cold winters, Aewyn had seen a few felled by the heavy storms, bent and bowed at their height by the gathered ice. But these were healthy trees, or had been, until a few weeks ago, and where they had come down, the grass had died as if the earth had been salted. A whole channel of the forest here, perhaps ten feet wide, had been completely torn apart, and although Aewyn had no doubt she could have made out the tracks of the creature itself, she dared not look any closer.

  “A moadon,” said Celithrand. “Or something much like them.”

  “What is that?” asked Aewyn.

  “Heavy, stout predators,” he said, lowering his voice. “Squarish head, long mandibles. Black or grey, perhaps. Not shaped like any beast of this world. This one’s very large, to my relief.”

  Robyn jabbed with her spear-tip at an overhanging branch that had been knocked loose, gauging the height of the creature. “Not to my relief,” she said.

  “Large means it is old,” said Celithrand. “A relic of the Siege of Shadow, likely. Large means it did not come recently from…beyond.”

  “Do you think this is what frightened the Reeve?” asked Poe.

  “I would have been frightened,” said Aewyn, which was her way of stating that she already was.

  It was not hard to determine the creature’s direction of travel. The swath it had trampled through the forest spared none of the low scrub and few of the slender birches. Sparing no caution, Robyn reassembled the entire company before proceeding, following a long path that cut and tacked its way across level ground.

  “It walks like a drunkard,” Aewyn observed. “Back and forth. Here, there.”

  “No,” said Poe. “It was hunting. This was a chase.”

  Celithrand eyed the karach with interest. “I think you’re right,” he said. “How did you know?”

  “Look at the trees,” said Poe. “Little more than saplings.”

  “Thirty years old, perhaps,” said Celithrand. “There must have been a fire up here. The fireweed is first to come back, then the pinegrass, then blueberries, aspens, willows. These saplings are young birch—thirty years, forty at most. One day all this will be tall spruce trees again.”

  “But today,” said Poe, “It is these thin grey trees, like delicate bones. It crashes through them easily. Look at the destruction. But its smaller prey could not. The man, he has only the strength of a man, so he changes direction here—and here—wherever growth is thick. And the hunter only follows.”

  “Good,” said Celithrand. “You have the makings of a fine tracker.”

  Poe leaned out at the next change in direction, staring down a tunnel of shrivelled greenery, wide as a trade road, torn through the sunny woods. Wherever the creature’s stride met bare earth, the grasses and shrubs had withered in its wake.

  “This is not what karach call difficult tracking,” he said, and marched on.

  The creature’s path wound its way across flat earth and slowly uphill onto rocky terrain. Those who had horses dismounted and walked them across the mossy rocks, until the ground was so unforgiving that the trail was all but gone. They had come out at the very east edge of the long escarpment, onto a craggy promontory overlooking the wide woods of eastern Haveïl and the jagged ribbon of the Iron Road. The forest opened up below them on both sides, and distantly they could make out the wood’s northeast edge far away, lost in the blue fog of distance where it butted up against the marshlands.

  “I have never seen this place,” said Robyn. “What a stunning vantage. With a tall enough watchtower here, we could see clear to the ocean.”

  “The trail ends here,” said Poe. “We cannot track it across this lifeless ground.”

  “There are ways,” said Celithrand, moving in methodical steps across the rocks. He stopped at the leading edge of a stony outcropping and peered down into the misty woods below.

  “Down there,” he said, pointing a bony arm over the edge. The Havenari froze at the word; then, as one, with a grim sense of duty they unshouldered their bows, nocked unsteady arrows, and fanned out along the side of the rock.

  Below them, splayed across a lower plateau, was the broken body of a man, his flesh darkened by decay, his mangled limbs hanging at weird angles and the mottled rock browned with the rest of him. Aewyn fell back from the sight with disgust.

  “There is our deserter,” said Robyn. “Fletch, what can you see with your keen eyes?”

  “Less than with my nose,” said the boy, leaning over uncomfortably.

  “He’s right,” said Celithrand, deep in thought. “That body should be close to bone by now.”

  “It is cursed,” said Poe. “Stay back.”

  A few of the bolder Havenari scoffed at that. Venser was already leaning over the cliff’s edge, looking for a narrow path, before Celithrand’s hand steadied him.

  “Even the flies do not approach him,” the old druid warned. “Decay is slow because they will not touch him.”

  “Nor shall we,” said Roby
n. The men took her comment as an order. Even Venser halted his descent.

  “Where did this thing go? It wasn’t after prey.”

  “They may eat the flesh of man,” said Celithrand, “but they do not hunt us for hunger.”

  Aewyn was far back from the edge, now, clutching herself as if suddenly cold. Robyn came and put a hand on her shoulder.

  “You ride well,” she said softly. “But I’d like Poe to take you back to town now. It is the Havenari’s duty, and ours alone, to find and confront this thing. I don’t want you to be with us when we do.”

  Aewyn nodded uneasily, and turned back to the karach, who had himself fallen back from the stench of the body. He needed no convincing to turn back, eager to take her as far away as he could from the body, the soldiers, the duplicitous druid, these unsettling lies about destiny, and anything else he could find an excuse to shield her from.

  Back on the cliffside, Venser still leaned out over the body.

  “It doesn’t look like he was carrying anything,” he called up. “He’s not out here foraging.”

  Robyn turned back to him. “What do you think brought him out this far? It’s not a short climb, nor an easy one.”

  Hendec stretched up to his full height and peered over the promontory’s edge—not toward the body, but to the far side. He narrowed his green eyes and squinted toward the sun.

  “He may have expected pursuit,” said Hendec. “You said yourself this was a fine vantage point. Perhaps he came up to watch the Iron Road for signs of unwanted company. You could see a campfire from up here, on a dark enough night.”

  “Or the smoke of one, in the early morning,” said Fletch, joining him. “I can see the traces of a fire even now, by daylight.”

  Robyn paced back to where the body had gone over the side, looking for signs that the Horror had followed.

  “Perhaps,” she said over her shoulder. “And a military fire would throw off more smoke than some trader.”

  “I think that is a military fire,” said Fletch. “A company our size, at least, or larger.”

  Robyn turned on her heels. “What? Show me,” she said. She left Venser peering down at the body and crossed to the south side of the rock. It was not hard to spot, once she was looking for it. The sun was still to the east, and a narrow plume of hanging smoke was slowly fading against the bright backdrop of the sky and the distant trees.

  “That’s a huge fire, if it’s from the Iron Road,” she said.

  “I don’t think it’s blown in that far,” said Fletch, squinting. “It looks smaller. I see no split in the trees. Maybe it’s come up from near the trade road. Down where it passes the pond.”

  Robyn stared down at the tree line in disbelief. “What would a Grand Army detachment of that size be doing on the village road? It goes nowhere but to Widowvale.”

  “Looking for that deserter, maybe,” said Venser, who had wandered over. They stared together in silence for a long moment.

  “What do you make of it, Tsúla?” Robyn asked when the younger man had come over.

  He shielded his eyes against the glare of the sun. “Not much,” he said. “I can’t make it out without Fletch’s eyes,” he said. “Is it an old fire? Still burning?”

  “I think it’s out,” said Fletch. “Not long ago.”

  “Venser?” Tsúla asked. “You rode with the Legions, yes?”

  “Don’t remind me,” said Venser.

  “If you were to order forced march by the sun—how long are we after first ride?”

  Venser squinted at the horizon, held out a big fist at the length of his arm between the tree line and the sun, counted his knuckles.

  “First ride, spurs up, would be about an hour ago, where we stand.” he said. “Maybe a quarter hour nearer in the lowland.”

  “That’s a Grand Army detachment,” said Tsúla. “No question. And moving on a tight schedule.”

  “The Empire is on the brink of civil war in the East,” offered Hendec, coming up behind him. “I’ve heard the Iron City itself is infiltrated by rebels, now. They couldn’t spare a whole detachment to mop up just one deserter, not even from the Spire itself.”

  “Well, they certainly don’t need that many men to take the census,” said Venser, chuckling.

  “They’re a week late for that, at least,” said Robyn. “The census has already been and gone. We don’t even send a runner for the miners until—oh, no …”

  Of all the men assembled, only Fletch saw the shadow cross her face. “What’s wrong, Captain?” he asked.

  “Mount up,” she said. “We have to get back to Widowvale. Now.”

  Poe and Aewyn had started down the slope on their own, silent in their thoughts, when the sudden commotion of riders mounting horses drew their gaze back up the hill.

  “What’s going on?” Aewyn called.

  Celithrand was suddenly at her side. “It seems the greed of men has caught up with them,” he said. “The hills were rich enough for the townsfolk to get by, even with an honest Reeve and honest taxes. I have seen to that. But ‘enough’ is never enough, it seems.”

  Although they had led the horses up with due care, the Havenari could ride at speed when they had to, even across difficult ground. They thundered around and past the three figures on foot like a rolling wave and trotted in haste to the tree line whence they had come.

  “Let us follow them,” said Celithrand, “and see what is to be seen. There is a Horror afoot in the highlands. I would not stay in this countryside a moment longer without an armed escort.”

  “And they’re leaving it to roam free?” asked Aewyn.

  “The tracks are weeks old. We can see them only because of the devastation in its wake. But the Havenari will find it again. The young lady seemed to think this a more pressing matter.”

  “More pressing than a Horror of Tamnor?” Aewyn asked.

  “Not all monsters take the form of beasts,” he told her. “Come.”

  “We cannot keep pace with them,” warned Poe, but Celithrand was already moving.

  “Make haste,” he replied. “I know of another way down.”

  NINE

  IT WAS JUST BEFORE NOON that Widowvale began to shake itself out of strange dreams and set itself once again to the serious business of celebration. Before long, the warm smells and boisterous clamour of the Harvest Fair were not so different from the day before. The hum of chattering voices echoed down the valley, and the air was thick with the scent of roasted meat, fresh herbs, and wood smoke. But there was no music, this day; and by the time the Havenari rode within earshot it was the shouts of the adults, not the children, that echoed loudest on the wind. Robyn’s horse nickered at the distant cries, and perhaps at the smell of strange horses, too. They had come down onto the tradeway connecting Widowvale to the Iron Road, the main trunk highway in the northwest; and it was clear now that unfamiliar riders had recently come this way at speed. Fletch rode close to his captain, wishing fervently he were somewhere else, but returning to the village green just the same. Hendec, more than any, understood the gravity of the situation, and had refused to put his spear out of his hands. The rest followed with a deathly calm.

  They came into sight of the village green only a moment ahead of Aewyn and Poe, who by Celithrand’s woodcraft had descended somehow the steepest parts of the escarpment, and rushed toward the unquiet green. There, amidst the brightly coloured festival tents, the inhabitants of Widowvale had been gathered, and now stood half-awake in confusion. A motley ring of black, brown, and white horses, most of them light coursers, surrounded them, and atop them all sat tall pikemen clad in the blackened mailcoats and purple colours of the Travalaithi Grand Army. Robyn counted more than two dozen of them, all well-equipped and armoured—a sizeable enough force to her twelve men, even without superior arms—and there were a few more horses tied to Alec’s honey-tent while their riders went door to door around the green, rousing people from their beds. Orin the groom was just being pushed into place with the othe
rs. Karis was stern-faced but stoic in her nightdress, surrounded by weeping children. Darmod Pick looked overtired and positively wroth. Alec affected a front of serenity, but all who knew him could read his concern, as well as a carefully contained fury. Circling the chattering throng with an air of detached calculation was the last of the Strangers for whom that year was named. He was in uniform, but not in armour, and surveyed the crowd from astride the largest horse of them all.

  “Now, he looks like a census-teller,” said Fletch.

  “That’s Castor Stannon,” Robyn whispered. “He’s the census-teller. He’s the Censor at Wescairn under the ruling vasil of Haukmere…wait, look. Aewyn.”

  Robyn extended a pointing hand toward the far side of the green. As the three climbers arrived into the thick of things, it appeared as though the three had been noticed by one of the riders, who walked his horse over more casually than might have been expected.

  “Good morning and providence to you,” said the rider.

  “Good morning?” Aewyn asked, nearly a question. “Is something the matter?”

  “You’re in no trouble,” the soldier said. “Just the same, step into the circle with the rest of the townsfolk, please.” They did so with some hesitation, and Celithrand kept himself in Poe’s shadow as much as he could.

  “Stay in front of me,” whispered Celithrand. “Try to look menacing.”

  “Celithrand,” said Aewyn, “what’s happening?”

  “Hush, child,” he said softly. “We’re being herded for a head count, nothing more. Stay close to Robyn, when we get to her, and try not to speak. They’ll find a few dozen miners who shouldn’t be here, fine the town, collect their taxes, and be on their way.”

  “I have no gift for menace,” said Poe, but he dutifully bared his teeth, narrowed his yellow eyes, and straightened his seven-foot frame as much as he could. To his surprise, the display had the intended effect, with some of the soldiers (and the townsfolk) fixing him with unfriendly eyes but giving him as much space as they could. Perhaps it was for the best; Poe was distinctly uncomfortable in the crowd. With all of the miners in town for the festival, there were far more people here than he was accustomed to—and upon realizing just how many miners were in attendance, he understood at last why the Censor had come.