Dressing hastily, Marin came down from his house atop Grefstead. He crossed the barren fields of its sister estate, Grimstead, whose grapes had long been taken in by Karis and the older children (and eaten off the vines, perhaps, by the younger ones). He came westward with the rising sun at his back, past the village green and the great-tree, already called Traitor’s Oak, past Alec Mercy’s house in the shadow of the escarpment, past most of the miners’ houses, past Darmod Pick’s pasture and down the hill to Miller’s Riffle, where he expected to find the hearth burning and the smell of breakfast from Robyn and Bram’s cottage, filled to the brim with soldiers still at rest.
The house was dark and empty of life. The scent of bread from Alys the Millwife’s immense stone oven wafted down on a cold wind, but from the low cottage downriver there came no sound.
The golden light of dawn cast hard shadows against the fence and the bushes; Marin did not see the lean, stooped figure seated against the fencepost until he had nearly passed the gate.
“You’re hours late,” said Darmod Pick, rising. “They’ve gone in the night.”
Marin nodded, looking up at the cottage with narrowed eyes. “Didn’t expect to find you here,” he said.
“I had some business with the fairy girl,” said Darmod. “Knew she might be riding out with them this year. Fool knows, she’s been talking about it every autumn since I can remember.”
“She’s been with us a long time,” said Marin. “Do you think she’ll be back?”
Darmod shrugged. “She still loves the monster that hurt her,” he said. “More than I’ve ever seen a child love a pet. A good deal more than most wives love their men, for that matter.”
“I’ve come to lift the hunt on Poe, if I can,” said Marin.
Darmod scoffed. “After what he’s done?”
Marin nodded, his mouth tight. “I don’t think that was the whole of it,” he said. “He could have left her crippled with that wound. You think he would have?”
“If she’d got in his way,” Darmod offered.
“There’s not enough of her to get in his way,” said Marin. “He could have batted her aside like she was nothing. What I figure is, she was the little archer who put that arrow in Stannon’s eye. Somehow the tale of the karach has grown in the telling.”
Blindsided by what he knew at first listen to be the truth, Darmod let out a laugh. “I don’t suppose Grim wrestled him into submission and carried him back to town, either.”
“We’ve all got our stories,” said Marin. “Anywise, I’m here to make peace with Poe, at least among the Havenari. Is Bram somewhere about? He can get word to the others, if they’re already gone.”
Darmod laughed. “Listen to this one: Bram rode out with them.”
“Impossible.”
“I swear it,” said Darmod. “Back in his uniform, mailed and mounted. Stone sober again, too. At last, a sign that things are setting themselves right around here.”
“I don’t think it’s a good sign,” said Marin. “The list of things that would pour Gilbram Fane into his armour again is very, very short. And none of them are good.”
Darmod’s grey eyebrows darted up. “Gilbram Fane? The Ratcatcher of Draden? Thought he died when their own thanes betrayed them.”
“Does that surprise you?”
Darmod whistled low. “Smarter men would’ve killed him first. Well, we’ve all come out here to have done with our old lives, haven’t we? I never thought the Iron City would have so much reach, out here in the thick. But now we wait and see just how much the Imperator cares about Master Stannon’s eye. Might be those ghosts have an admirable way of not staying dead.”
Marin turned back toward Darmod’s house, and the shepherd followed. “What do you think the Imperator will do?” he asked the shepherd.
“I think the Imperator, or whoever else, would find it easier to replace Castor Stannon than to bring that karach to justice,” said Darmod. “You tried that once yourself, didn’t you? We got nothing but trouble for it.”
“Trouble? Your holdings and purse are twice what they were before you bought his labour.”
“I bought the girl,” said Darmod, “and it was that bony little thing who came every day to the yoke. The season of the plough belonged to her. Not to the savage who killed my sheep and fled the punishment. I don’t forget, and don’t you forget it, either. Any boon I’ve had out of this mess, I owe to her.” He paused for a moment, as if kind words were the sort of neglected heirlooms he had to dust and oil before putting back into service.
“I owe her a great deal more than I’ve let on,” he finally added, turning his eyes away. “I’d meant to give her Shimble.”
“The yearling filly from Alec Mercy? It’s too soon for her to take a rider.”
“Too soon for a grown man in armour, certainly,” said Darmod. “But maybe just about ready for a girl her size.”
“Orin would have a fit if you saddled a filly that young.”
“No matter. She took Hendec’s horse, in the end.”
“Hendec’s horse?” Marin furrowed his brow. “Did Hendec stay behind?”
“He went East,” said Darmod. “Left days ago, I think, to join the Mage. Left his horse, sold back his kit, kept his sword and his bow. Went south to seek passage east on the Iron Road.”
Marin was caught off-guard by that. “He said nothing of it to me.”
“I haven’t heard much of his reasons,” said Darmod. “Only know what I saw. Was that old sack of bones really the man they call Celithrand?”
“He looked enough the part,” said Marin. “And I’ve never seen the like of that weapon he carried. Niurwyn, they called it. Bird-friend.”
Darmod laughed. “Gods, that’s a grisly name,” he remarked.
“I thought it rather tame, myself.”
“You’ve never spent a day on a battlefield, then,” said Darmod. “I’ve no doubt that sword fed a hundred flocks in his lifetime. Celithrand was a hero of the Siege of Shadow, mind you. He was a hero of a lot of things. He meant something to the people, once. As much as the Imperator ever did. He might have had the Spire himself, if he’d seen fit to push for it.”
“That much I knew.”
“And hanging him in a field, like a common horse thief…it didn’t sit well, even with me, and the fire of youth is ground right out of me. I reckon it was a turning point for a firebrand like Hendec. He’s wanted to turn on Travalaith for some time, I’m sure of it.”
“Whatever his reasons,” said Marin, “he’s a good man, and I’m sorry to see him go.”
Darmod looked back toward the escarpment, toward the deep woods, as if expecting to hear the sound of horses. The trees glistened cold in the light; the morning was turning bright without getting any warmer, and Aewyn was nowhere to be seen.
“It’s a good season to be sorry for things,” he said.
If Marin had come a week sooner, he would have heard the falling-out between Hendec and Robyn, which was civil but uncompromising. He would have seen the big man storming off southward down the village road and the resigned understanding of his companions. As it was, he was only a few hours too late to catch the twelve horses, with Aewyn and Fletch taking Hendec’s place, as they mounted the steep slope of the escarpment and forged their way nimbly into the woods. With the town settling down and the anger fading among the Censor’s troops, it was time the Havenari were away again. But even Marin did not know what terrible errand had occasioned such an early departure—nor, after his own ordeal in the woods, did they think it wise to tell him.
They climbed with stern purpose up the Serpent Trail, patrolling the whole edge of the escarpment on their way back to the body of the deserter. At midday they came onto the promontory and stopped for water. This time, Robyn suffered Venser’s curiosity and allowed him to make the climb down to the body. A few minutes of prodding it unceremoniously with a stick—even he would not touch it directly—suggested that the deserter’s limbs had been mangled not from the
fall, but in direct confrontation with the monster.
“Aldwode or no, he was a fighter,” said Robyn.
“As you’d expect from a Cerulean,” said Bram.
They found the deserter’s dagger nearby, badly rusted, worn dull from too much use as a utility knife. It showed no sign of having struck true before it was lost to him. With some difficulty, Fletch spotted the signs, down below, of the creature’s passing, and tried to establish a fresh trail. It was slow going, though; it had been weeks, now, since the original trail, and they quickly learned that the obvious carnage of its passing in the highlands had been characteristic of a charge at speed.
“It stampedes there, and slithers here,” said Tsúla, and that was the truth of it. In stealth, it could move through very small places indeed, and Robyn wondered with some concern whether their long spears would be much use where the trees were thickest.
Aewyn rode capably but in troubled silence. Her heart was miles away from the chase in that moment, though how many miles she could not tell. As he had in the summers of her youth, Celithrand had slipped back into myth, only this time he had not gone alone. There was a natural hunter in Poe’s blood, and he could be stealthy when he wished, but there was a completeness to his disappearance this time that was hard to forget.
For much of the afternoon—for the whole climb down into the northern valley and the heart of the old wood—she dwelt on the earliest days of her youth, recalling Poe’s days as a cub smaller than she was, and the startling speed with which he surpassed her, of the endless long nights they spent in burrowed shelters and at play in the high grasses. She thought of his gentleness, first with her, and then with Grim: the vintner never learned, not really, just how delicately Poe had handled him, like a guilty child with a glass toy that was not his own. In her hand was the little black knife the druid had brought her so long ago, the one she knew Grim had secretly coveted and perhaps even stolen, sometimes, for the vines and trellises along Grimstead’s southern slopes.
Grim was gone, now. Poe was gone. Celithrand, too, had vanished under circumstances that made it unclear when, or even if, he might return. The little knife felt ugly in her hand, like a prize of pity. She nearly dropped it, once. One day, if she lived as long as everyone had said she might, she knew she would lose it, too. You could lose anything, if you lived long enough; it was just as her mother had said it would be. The outside world is a world of loss. Silvalis gives you more than you could ever imagine—and then takes back from you still more than that.
It was strange that here, in the ranks of the Havenari, the memory of those words should come back to her. Her memories of her mother were faint at best, having faded long ago. She recalled the heart of her mother’s woodland as if out of a dream. Whether the mists she recalled were real, or whether they were the only way she could fathom the timeless spell on that place, was beyond her best efforts to determine.
But in that hour she saw her mother’s face, and heard her mother’s voice. The name Aelissraia, like wind in the trees, quickened on her lips and flew away from her mouth, and she started at the sound.
Fletch leaned back in the saddle suddenly. “Did you say something, Aewyn?”
The hush of the forest was broken. Somewhere above them the mournful chittering of a kingfisher suddenly ceased.
“We should not be here,” she said, though at first she did not know why.
“What?” said one of the men.
“This place is sacred,” she added hastily, and knew in that moment that it was true. She was again in her mother’s land. All things here were suddenly familiar. She could remember faces, conversations, whole years at play. She was no longer cold in the chill of the wood.
She was home.
“We follow our quarry,” said Venser, who had never seen a Horror before and—it was now clear—was unadvisably keen to look upon one.
“If it has come here, to this sacred place,” said Robyn, with a little more sensitivity, “it is all the more reason why we must be here.”
An unexplainable fear gripped Aewyn’s insides at that thought. Her legs, already weak, turned to jelly beneath her; she might have fallen, had she not been firmly in the saddle. Her stomach, though full since breakfast, felt hollow and sick. She could feel her mother’s presence here, somewhere—beyond the lake whose shores she could only now remember. The kingfishers told her just how near to that water she had drawn.
But hers was not the only presence. Something else, something darker, called to her blood.
Aewyn’s veins flooded with some hot urgency. It seemed to come down from her head, fill her lungs and her chest, spread like fire to her limbs. The forest seemed to reel around her. Her mouth was dry, and her hands on the reins were soaking wet.
“Sister,” said Bram, somewhere up ahead. He called Robyn that in town, but never on the trail.
“I feel it,” she answered. “Close ranks and string up.”
The Havenari brought their horses together, flank to flank, two and three abreast. Two by two, they dismounted to string their bows and hang arrows at the ready. Swords were drawn, too—the woods here were too thick, now, to be sure they’d get off a volley of arrows if they were taken by surprise. Their spears—more bladed, slashing polearms, really—were too long to use effectively in the thick. And no one wanted a bow in hand when the thing was fast upon them. Celithrand had called it a moadon—none but he had seen one, or even rightly knew what it was. This time, every sword-point swayed with uncertainty; only Bram, who hesitated and did not draw, had steady hands. When bows were made ready, they rode on.
In the back ranks, propelled by something not quite understood—filial concern, a sense of jealous reverence, some ancient and silent call to her blood—Aewyn inched back from Fletch, shifting nervously in the saddle until he was used to the feel of it. Then, with a still and silent grace, she swung her weak leg quietly over the saddle and slipped off the mount onto the strong one, walking beside the horse with easy steps until it had grown accustomed to walking with its herd. The horse raised its ears with curiosity and Fletch, ever in tune with it, leaned forward and scanned the tree line. They rode in restless silence only a short distance before Tsúla called a halt to the procession.
“Tsúla,” said Robyn, waiting with some displeasure.
He leaned toward Fletch’s horse. “Pardons, Captain. But young Fletch appears to have lost some cargo.” Robyn’s look of confusion lingered only a moment before she recovered her wits—but not her temper.
“Mother of Sorcery!” she shouted. “Where is she? Did you see her?”
“No.”
“Did you?”
“No, Captain.”
She wheeled her horse suddenly, startling some of the others. “Are we not on the most dangerous hunt of the last five years? Are you not looking out?!”
“I was looking out,” Fletch offered. “Not in.” He rubbed the back of his neck like a guilty child. Robyn, riding over, might have cuffed him with her gauntlet if he’d been even slightly bigger.
“Well, look out now, boy,” she ordered. “Bram, with me on point. Fletch, take the rear with the Two Blind Hawks here.”
“She might have got ahead of us,” Venser offered.
“Why would she leave us?” said Bram. “It makes no sense, none that I can see.”
Fletch held up a hand for silence, and the whole company complied at once. He silently slipped down from his horse, his eyes darting almost hungrily through the shadows, eager to make up for their lapse. The breeze had altogether calmed.
“Fletch?” Robyn whispered. She was high in the saddle, muscles hard and tensed, until she saw him visibly relax. The trees closed tight against the road here, and he had to get right into the nettles to retrieve a glinting, fist-sized piece of metal. He held it up for the others: it was a dented stirrup, blackened by long exposure to the elements, and something else.
“Is it stamped?” Robyn asked. Fletch turned it over.
“Yes, but somethin
g’s eaten it away. I can’t make out the maker, but it’s the same, exactly, as yours.”
Robyn held out a hand. “Bring it here,” she said.
“Hang on,” said Fletch. A tall thicket just within the trees was rustling in the still air, and he inched closer, raised an arm toward it. “Aewyn?”
A soft squeaking sound, like the coo of a baby, came back in response.
Fletch reached out his hand. “I think I’ve found her over here,” he began to say.
The lake, of course, was precisely where it should have been. Aewyn’s feet knew every step of the way, even through the mist, even weighed down by coarse-soled riding boots and a troubled heart. Through layers of green that multiplied as the lake-water grew invisibly nearer, Aewyn climbed with the ease of a fast-returning familiarity, even when the land dropped off suddenly and began its descent into the thicker fog below.
With practiced ease Aewyn shed her boots and the heaviest of her clothing on the stony white shore. It was faster by far to swim across to the narrow peninsula than to make the trek around, and she was not so distracted by the numinous beauty of the hollow that she dawdled in her errand.
The motionless afternoon air was cool, and the water here had a biting chill--but as she approached the heart of the forest, the cold seemed lost on her, as it had been in her youth. The lake itself was blanketed with a thick fog that smelled faintly of juniper, cedar, lodris in bloom. Her hair was damp and glistening when she reached the grassy peninsula, though she had not ducked her head under the water. The autumn, perhaps, was dying before its time this year.
The Season of the Plough Page 27
