Knights wyrd, p.8
Knight's Wyrd, page 8
“She’s hiding something,” he said over his shoulder to Will. “They always are. We’ll find out what she knows fast enough, once we start tickling her.”
Ohtere placed the point of his sword at the hollow of the woman’s neck, with just enough pressure behind the blade to dimple the skin. She made a frightened noise deep in her throat. Will’s stomach churned.
“Stop that,” he said. His hand was on the hilt of his sword, and he drew it as he spoke. “Ask her questions if you have to, but don’t torment her.”
“What’s it to you?” said Ohtere. “In these lands, she’s mine to do with as I want.”
He drew back his arm to strike at the woman. Will, still mounted, pressed Gyfre forward and brought his sword down into the path of Ohtere’s blow. The two blades clashed and held.
“I told you,” said Will, over the locked swords. “Leave her be.”
Ohtere snarled. “Are you preaching at me, boy? I’ll give you a sermon you won’t forget in a hurry!” He pulled away and swung at Will’s leg—a nasty blow, meant to hamstring and cripple. Will caught the blow on his sword as Gyfre spun in place, then brought his blade back up and down again toward Ohtere’s shoulder. Ohtere blocked, but not fast enough, and Will felt his sword edge biting through the linked mail into the flesh beneath.
Ohtere dropped his sword and fell to his knees. Bright red blood welled up from the gash in his shoulder. He clasped his left hand to the wound, with his now useless right arm hanging limp. More blood ran down between his fingers and dripped onto the turf. The peasant woman stared at him for a second, wide-eyed, then took to her heels and ran.
Will slid down from the saddle. He let go his sword and caught Ohtere just as the kneeling man collapsed.
“I’m sorry,” Will stammered. “I—”
“You’ve nearly killed me,” Ohtere said. The high color had gone from his face, leaving the skin greyish white. “Why did you have to do that?”
Will shook his head. “I didn’t mean—I was afraid you were going to hurt the girl. She’d done you no harm.”
“Only wanted to put a scare into her,” Ohtere muttered. With a sudden effort, the knight wrenched himself around and fixed his gaze on Will. “She’s one of the outlaws, or else she knows where they are. We’ll never find Harrowholt’s girl now—she’s lost for good.”
“I’m sorry,” Will said. “I thought … I don’t know what I thought. But you shouldn’t have used a helpless woman so.”
Then he shook his head. Fine words wouldn’t hide the fact that he’d wounded one of his host’s own men—maybe killed him, if Ohtere didn’t get back to Grimmersfell in time. And waiting wasn’t going to make things any better. He lifted Ohtere to his feet and put his shoulder under the man’s uninjured arm.
“Here, up on your horse. We have to get you home.”
He was helping the wounded knight back into the saddle when the high, clear note of a horn sounded in the woods off to the east. A moment later the breeze shifted, and he heard shouts and the ringing of metal. The horn sounded again.
Pale as he was, Ohtere straightened in his saddle. “That’s fighting,” he said. “Somewhere close by. Baron Edric is in danger, and I have to help him.”
“You need to help yourself first,” Will said. “You’re wounded, and you’re still bleeding.”
Ohtere pulled away and gathered up his reins in his left hand. “We both know how that happened,” he said. “What’ll you do if I don’t go back to the castle—kill me?”
He rode off in the direction of the fighting. Will stood for a moment, biting his lip. Then he picked up his sword, remounted the patient Gyfre, and followed after.
He didn’t have far to go. Just over the next rise, two groups of men on horseback fought each other with grim seriousness, nothing like the games of the tourney. Ahead of him, Ohtere was already riding into the press. Will marked where Ohtere had gone, and plunged after him into a tumult of noise and furious motion.
For a few seconds nobody in the melee noticed Will’s passage. Then a man aimed a blow at his head, and Will blocked it with his shield before Gyfre carried him past.
Still following Ohtere, he rode on into the mass of armored men, blocking and defending himself against attacks from all directions. He struck no blows of his own, since he didn’t know Baron Edric’s people well enough to tell friend from foe with any certainty. He’d already half killed one man from Grimmersfell today, and that was enough.
A knight on a black horse rode toward Will, sword upraised to strike. A closed helm concealed the rider’s face, but the device on his shield—a leaping stag in silver against a green background—was nothing Will had seen before. Nevertheless, Will countered first one attack from the stranger, and then a second, before risking a stroke of his own.
The rider on the black horse threw off Will’s blow with his shield and struck again. The stranger was fast; Will found himself hard put to block in time and wasn’t surprised when his next two attacks were met as easily as his first.
In spite of the deadly earnest of the combat, Will began to feel a kind of sharp, fierce pleasure in the exercise. Not even in the melee at Strickland had he found himself matched against such an adversary, a splendid fighter who could stretch his own abilities to the utmost. It was almost a pity, a detached part of Will’s mind observed, that one of them was going to die before the contest was over—probably him, and then the wyrd Master Finn had seen for him would have come to pass.
His duel with the strange knight continued unchecked. None of the other knights in the clearing intervened. Instead they drew away from the single combat, giving Will and his opponent more room. Will pushed forward, moving in closer despite the fact that the black charger was bigger and stronger than Grey Gyfre—but Gyfre was steady and unflinching, thanks again to Restonbury’s master of horse, and Will’s blows were at last starting to drive the other knight back.
Without warning the stranger pulled away. For a moment he did nothing, only regarded Will from within the concealing mask of his helm. Then he turned and spurred off into the forest.
Will started to follow, then thought better of the impulse. Chasing alone after a fleeing enemy was a good way to get yourself killed. He reined Gyfre to a halt and looked to see if any Grimmersfell knights were close enough to join the hunt.
And saw no one. The woods were empty, and he was alone under the shadowy trees. The melee had passed beyond him, or else he had ridden clear through it in the course of his combat with the strange knight and now had no idea where he was.
Turning Gyfre, he followed the horse’s trail of hoofprints and broken underbrush back to where the fighting had taken place. The clearing was silent: no horn calls or clashing of arms, nothing but the wind in the trees. He found trampled grass and patches of ground cut up and stirred into mud, but no living sign of what had just happened.
After some thought, Will decided to ride south. Such a course would bring him to the river that marked the boundary between Harrowholt and Grimmersfell. From there he could find the road back to one barony or the other—although after what he’d done to Ohtere, his welcome at Grimmersfell might not be of the warmest.
He soon realized that his earlier searching, coupled with his pursuit of the strange knight, had taken him further afield than he’d suspected. For several hours he rode, guided by the sun, without coming out of the trees, until he realized at last that he wouldn’t reach Grimmersfell or any other lodging before the daylight ended.
Will sighed. It was going to be a long night—no fire, in case the flame should betray him to the outlaws, and no food, since he had expected to be dining again with Baron Edric in Grimmersfell’s hall. And cold, but as long as no storm winds blew in from the sea to the east, cold he could endure.
Will hobbled Gyfre and set the horse to foraging nearby. Then he wrapped himself in his cloak, put his back against a tree, and sat half-dozing as the shadows lengthened.
He must have slept, because when he woke up—with a start that knocked his head against the tree trunk behind him—the forest was dark, an unrelieved blackness broken only by scraps of starlight visible through the branches overhead. He looked around, trying to spot whatever had wakened him.
Nothing, at first. And then, just at the edge of his vision, he spotted a bluish light bobbing and weaving among the trees. He tried to look at the flame directly, but whenever he gazed at the light straight on it flickered and vanished.
Faery-lanterns, Will thought, crossing himself. No matter how strong the urge to see where such lanterns might lead, no good ever came to anyone who followed those pale, wavering flames.
He closed his eyes against the flickering light. Being fated to die, he reflected, didn’t mean he was eager for it. He would not be led so easily to his doom.
For a long time he held his eyes shut. When he opened them again, however, the light was not gone. It was nearer now and coming closer, moving from side to side like a lantern swinging in a man’s hand. But the color of the light was all wrong for a lantern. No candle made on earth had ever burned with such an unstable, blue-white flame.
Will drew his sword as quietly as he could and held it up so that the quillons and the grip made a cross before him.
The light became easier to see as it drew nearer. No longer a flicker glimpsed out of the corner of his eye, it was in the open now—sometimes obscured by the trees as it passed among them, but always there. Always there, and coming straight toward him.
Still holding up the sword in front of him, he eased himself to his feet and made his way quietly to Gyfre’s side. He silenced the horse with his hand and undid the hobble.
He didn’t dare mount, knowing what tree limbs in the dark could do to an unwary man who rode in the woods. Instead he stood motionless, with Gyfre’s reins clutched in one hand and his sword held up before him in the other.
The faery-lantern drew closer, weaving in and out among the tree trunks. Its blue gleam reflected against the polished metal of Will’s upraised blade. Then the light emerged from the trees, close enough now that Will could almost touch it.
He would have gasped, but the breath caught in his throat. The faery-lantern was a lantern in fact, and Beorn of Stanburh was carrying it.
chapter 9
Will stood his ground even though his whole body shook. Not since Master Finn had come to him in the chapel at Restonbury and told him he was doomed had he experienced anything like this: the cold, crawling, marrow-of-the-bone fear of something that neither skill nor strength could turn aside.
The dead man came closer. An arm’s length away he stopped and lifted up his ghostly lantern so that its pale blue light shone onto Will’s face.
Will bit his lips to keep from crying out. If Beorn touched him, he thought, he would have to break and run, or else go mad.
But the ghost only looked at him by the light of the upraised lantern and did nothing. Finally Will forced himself to speak.
“What do you want from me? I never harmed you, Beorn of Stanburh—we fought a fair battle at Strickland, and you yielded to me of your own will.”
The ghost did not answer.
“What do you want?” Will demanded again. “You were never my enemy. You spoke to me kindly during the tourney, and we would have talked more afterward, if you hadn’t—”
He broke off. The dead man was beckoning to him. The ghost made the gesture a second time and then vanished. A moment later, the flickering light of the faery-lantern appeared again among the trees some distance off.
This time Will followed it. Sir Beorn meant well toward me while he lived, the young knight told himself. And he died owing me a ransom. If it’s the weight of his obligation that disturbs his rest, I owe him the chance to pay the debt.
Still leading Gyfre by the bridle, Will went where the lantern guided him. It was dark under the trees; twigs caught in his cloak and in his horse’s gear, and the brush rustled and cracked beneath his feet. When the blue flame of the ghost-light disappeared, he thought for a moment that he had followed it for nothing after all.
Then Will saw a red glow between the trees up ahead. He moved closer and saw a fire burning in the midst of a circle of huts and lean-to shelters. He paused. If this was the sort of place he suspected, his presence might not be welcome. But Beorn’s lantern had guided him here; if he’d trusted it so far, he supposed he should trust it a little further.
He sheathed his sword and stepped out from the trees into the edge of the firelight. “Peace be to all here,” he said. “I’m a stranger in your forest and I’ve lost my way. In charity’s name, I ask for shelter until morning.”
No voice answered him, and no one came out to meet him. But when he drew nearer, he saw a woman sitting on a log facing the fire, so that he could see no more of her than the long hair falling down her back. He thought at first that he’d found the peasant girl over whom he and Ohtere had come to blows. Then she rose and turned to face him—not the girl from the forest, after all, but Isobel of Harrowholt in a plain homespun gown.
“Hello, Will,” she said. “You shouldn’t have come looking for me.”
He shook his head. “I had to—your father sent out riders everywhere, and I couldn’t stay behind.”
“I understand,” she said. “But it doesn’t make any difference. I’m safe here and I’m not going back.”
Will looked around the clearing. All the huts and shelters appeared empty and deserted. “Who are your friends—and where have they gone?”
“People of the woods,” she said. “They have other places. A guest of Baron Edric’s isn’t going to see them.”
“Are they the ones who took you from Harrowholt?”
“No—I took myself.” She returned to her place by the fire and gestured at Will to take a seat beside her. “You can’t stand there all night,” she said. “Come sit down and get warm.”
Will turned Gyfre loose to nibble at the grass around the edges of the clearing and seated himself on the log. He clasped his hands together and looked down at his knuckles. “You should go home,” he said.
“I can’t.”
He glanced up at her. “You said you were among friends. Who’s forcing you to stay?”
Her eyes were dark and steady, framed by the wavy curtain of her long brown hair. “If I go back to Harrowholt, they’ll make me marry you.”
“Oh,” he said, stung, and looked away. “Is the thought of marrying me really that bad?”
“No. But I don’t want to marry anybody at all.”
“You’re the heir to a barony,” he pointed out. “You have to marry someone. Even if your father agreed to let you stay unwed, Duke Anlac would never allow it.”
“I know,” she said. “When you came to Harrowholt, I thought you brought the duke’s command for our wedding.”
Will laughed without much humor. “Just the opposite,” he said. “I came to tell you that you shouldn’t marry me.”
She was frowning now, a thin line between her eyebrows. “And how is your ‘shouldn’t’ different from my ‘won’t’ in the eyes of our lord the duke?”
“I haven’t spoken of this to Duke Anlac,” said Will. “Or to anyone else until now. But the day before I was knighted, my father’s wizard favored me with a prophecy: I’ll never live to be the Baron of Restonbury.”
Isobel didn’t say anything, but he heard her breathing catch a little. Her expression hadn’t changed. He twisted his linked fingers together and stared down at them again.
“I wanted to talk to you,” he said, “because I didn’t think it was fair—that you should have to marry me, and come to Restonbury, and get nothing out of it besides widowhood.” He paused. “Would that be so bad, though? Duke Anlac would have trouble forcing you to marry a second time, if you told Father Padraic and Master Finn that you’d sworn an oath not to. A widow can do that, it’s her right—and then you could go on as you pleased.”
“You do have a kind heart,” she said. “But I’ve chosen my own way. You’ll have to go back to Harrowholt alone.”
“I can’t lie about finding you,” he said. “And your father is certain to ask. Are you sure you won’t come with me?”
“Yes,” Isobel said.
Will gazed into the fire. If Isobel were truly determined not to go back, he couldn’t think of any way to bring her with him to Harrowholt except by force—and even if he’d been willing to try something like that, there was no guarantee that her mysterious friends were as far off as she claimed. On the other hand, he felt reluctant to leave her without any protection except those same unseen allies.
Then he remembered the Earl of Strickland’s ivory bauble. It had brought him good fortune of a sort: He’d found Isobel, and he’d come unhurt out of both the fight with Ohtere and the melee in the woods. Even Beorn’s ghost had not harmed him, but had aided him to what he was seeking. He untied the loop of green ribbon from his belt and held out the carved ivory globe.
“Here,” he said. “This is for you. It brings luck.”
She shook her head. “I won’t take your luck away.”
“I haven’t had it long enough to start depending on it,” he said. “It was the prize at Strickland. Take it—you need the good fortune as much as I do, and it’s too pretty a thing to be worn with a coat of mail.”
Isobel took the bauble, though she still seemed more unwilling to hurt him by refusing than eager to accept. She held it for a moment between her hands, turning it about and following how the nested spheres moved inside each other. Will thought he saw her expression change. But she said nothing, except to thank him and tie the loop of green ribbon to her own belt.
Then she stood. “Rest by the fire, Will—you’ve ridden a long way, and the night is cold. Tomorrow morning is early enough for you to decide what you will do.”
She moved away into the shadows. Will sat by himself with his cloak pulled around his shoulders, watching the red lights shifting and running like salamanders in the burning logs. After a while he heard a woman’s voice singing somewhere in one of the shelters.
