The hunt of the king, p.12
The Hunt of the King, page 12
part #1 of Symphony of Madness Saga Series
“The Guard of the Lord of Myrr,” said Sir Gerhard, his voice as strong and solemn as ever. “That means Lord Ludvig himself has decided to send us off.”
The carriage stopped near the encampment, and the first to come out was a tall, silver-haired man wearing the most magnificent armor Sinod had ever seen. It combined the golden and the black in almost perfect symmetry, and it was full of designs and engravings depicting scenes of war. What was most notable about the man, though, were his intense green eyes. Just like with most knights he had met, they expressed a grand bravery, a high desire for adventure, and an utmost thirst for glory. Yet these green eyes also evinced something else: An unmatched wisdom, the kind of knowledge a person simply cannot acquire from books or a war, but after going through absolutely everything life has to offer.
After the man, who Sinod immediately recognized as the Lord of Myrr, came two more figures, a little less impressive than the first one, yet still stunning and appealing. The first of them was a young man, his hair as golden as the armor he was wearing, short on the sides and thick on the top, and his lower face bristling with a thick beard. The other one was a woman, quite possibly one of the most beautiful girls Sinod had seen in his entire life. Her wavy light-brown hair was tied in a tall ponytail, not a single thread of hair falling over an untarnished skin that seemed to be glowing, and her long-lashed eyes gleamed with a vivid shade of green, almost as polished emeralds. Her features were exquisite and delicate, as those of a carefully-crafted marble statue, yet also firm and severe, particularly because she was bearing the same austere and haughty look as the Lord of Myrr. Something that caught Sinod’s attention, though, was that the girl was wearing the same suit of armor as the rest of the men, which fully concealed her figure from the lecherous eyes of the knights in the encampment.
The spoiled children of the Lord, thought Sinod with a tinge of disdain as he saw the group strutting toward the fields at a steady pace. The three of them stopped near their tents, surrounded by their guards, their looks making even the noble-looking knights among them resemble beggars. And then, with a powerful grin upon his face, Lord Ludvig started addressing them.
“Noble Knights of Midten,” the man said with elegant and formal voice. “In the name of the king, I bid you welcome to this magnificent event… I bid you welcome to the Hunt of the King. Your prey,” he pointed at the sky, “is on top of our heads at this very same moment. As Knights of Midten, it is your duty to defend the kingdom from any threat that stands before it. And I tell you now, King Swein considers this black beast to be the greatest threat the kingdom has faced in years. He has summoned you here because he is aware of your bravery and courage. The king knows that you will not back off, not even in the face of death itself. He knows that you will stand before that creature and, without a moment of hesitation, you will tear off its head and bring it back to His Grace as a gift. And your reward, of course, will be in accordance with your feat: Lands, servants, gold, glory… Everything awaits the courageous men who take down that thing and send it back to the abyss whence it came.”
The knights burst out into cheers and celebrations as Lord Ludvig made a tiny reverence and went back to his fancy carriage, followed by his two children. The group took the same road back, soon disappearing from sight. Most of the members of the Guard left with the carriage, but a couple of them stayed behind.
“Well,” voiced an old guard, his bushy eyebrows as wide as caterpillars, “it’s important that you understand that, as with every other competition organized by the king, there are rules to be followed. For your benefit, however, there’s only one this time: You will enter the forest in groups —” The guard raised his hand, trying to calm the suddenly-heated atmosphere. “Gentlemen, please… As I was saying, you will enter in groups—thirty people at most—and in the order we’ll indicate you.” There were more shouts of disapproval, forcing the guard to speak louder. “Once you’re inside, you can do as you see fit, though we advise you to stay together in order to prevent someone from getting lost… The forest can be… deceitful.”
“That beast,” said one of the noble-looking knights, taking one step forward. “How are we supposed to kill it? Unless you have failed to realize it, no arrow or spear could ever hope to reach such altitudes.”
“Finding the way to do it is part of the competition, Sir…”
“Ruben… Sir Ruben Stensen of Gronnen.”
“Stensen… Sir Ruben Stensen… it’s… it’s a pleasure to… to have you here… we weren’t expecting a presence like yours in this —”
“Quit the flattering and tell us all you know about that thing. You don’t want to send us in a wild goose chase, do you?”
“No… no… of course not, Sir.” The guard was red with embarrassment. It was more than obvious that not solely Sir Ruben’s rough looks and shiny green armor inspired respect, but also his name. “The Wise Men of Myrr have been watching the beast from the top of the Tower of Knowledge for several weeks. It flies during most of the day… but they have seen it descending after nightfall, usually over the Pink Mountains… but sometimes over the forest as well.”
“It seems we have a long road ahead of us, then,” said Sir Ruben, his voice a little irritated. “Very well… hurry up with this groups nonsense. I’ve been here for almost three days and boredom is killing me.”
“Yes… yes, of course, Sir.” The guard pulled several pieces of parchment out and started calling knights and squires by name. Every time one of them would hear his name, they would head back toward the encampment, grab their stuff, and press on toward the edge of the forest, where they would wait for the rest of their group. Once the groups were completed, the Guard of Myrr would give its approval and the knights would step out into the Forest of the Spirits.
Some of them entered silently while others chose to yell the names of their cities and their families. Some of them entered with all the speed their legs would allow them while others kept swiveling their heads around, perhaps wondering whether they would see the green fields of Myrr again.
Sir Ruben entered with the first group and, as they were marching in, one of his ten squires raised up a banner featuring a dark green pine surrounded by six emeralds over a bright aquamarine background. Watching them going into the forest turned into quite an entertaining activity, and so it was to see the knights who followed him in the later groups. And while most of them were as elegant as Sir Ruben himself, none of them matched the magnificence of his green suit of armor or the greatness of the entourage of squires by his side.
His entertainment turned to disappointment, though, when Sir Gerhard was called in the eleventh group and Sir Larson was not. He had expected the Gods to lend him a friendly hand and place the blue knight in the same group as him. But unfortunately that did not come to be. “We will meet again in Vittarn, for the celebration feast,” he told both Sir Larson and Sinod as he shook their hands and nodded in sign of goodbye.
As noon drew near, the Guard of Myrr kept calling different names, some of them as melodic as poems, others as peculiar as the names of jesters. But thus far, neither the name of Sir Larson nor his very own name had been mentioned. The Knight of Litten was beginning to lose his patience and composure, and so were the other knights who had been left for last.
“Damn them!” shouted with fury a man with only a breastplate protecting his body. “They’re giving unfair advantage to the bloody noblemen. But they’ll see… oh, yes, they’ll see… When we go into the forest, all rules will be put aside. Then… then I’ll run with such speed that I’ll reach the beast while those idiots are still polishing their armors and making their squires wash their feet.”
And so he did. As soon as he was summoned, in the twentieth group, the man rushed toward the forest and, ignoring the shouts coming from the guards and the rest of his group, he faded out of sight behind the thick trees.
As time kept passing, Sinod started thinking that perhaps the Guard of Myrr had lost the piece of parchment in which Sir Larson’s name had been written. Or perhaps that they had used it to clean themselves after relieving their bladders, just like Sir Larson had told them the noblemen did in the cities of the north. But all his assumptions were proven wrong when both knight and squire were called in the twenty-fourth group.
They headed back to the encampment and, after taking their luggage, tents, and horses, joined the group of people that was starting to gather in the edge of the forest. Among a small pond of gray and silver, only one knight caught his attention: A slim silver-haired knight with a light-yellow suit of armor, a skinny lance on his hands that seemed to act both as weapon and as support, and three squires by his side. There was also a knight wearing a gray rusty armor, his arms as skinny as the branches of a dead tree, and an old one-eyed knight carrying a rusty spear and using solely a metal skirt that barely protected his private parts. As if he could use them, Sinod laughed inside his head.
More knights kept joining them, everyone more raggedy and apathetic than the one who came before. Sir Larson, using the same silver armor he had taken to the war almost ten years ago, looked like a nobleman next to them. In the end, and by the time the Guard of Myrr finally gave them permission to go into the forest, there were exactly thirty men in his group.
Sinod climbed over Rasktur and followed the group toward the Forest of the Spirits. His mood had indeed improved, but he was still incapable of getting rid of some of the dark thoughts that had taken over his mind and heart after his last conversation with Sir Larson. And he could not get rid either of an odd voice that had sprung in his head, whispering foul words into his ears, and getting stronger as he went closer to the tall trees of the forest. You will never make it out of it alive, the voice said in a gloomy and dismal tone.
All the same, Sinod managed to keep his composure as the whole group kept moving forward at a steady pace. He could not help every so often swiveling his head around and looking back into the emerald fields, though—perhaps with the naive intention of memorizing the beautiful landscape he was about to leave behind. However, the more he moved away from it, the more insipid and shady he found it. And then, all of a sudden, the fields around the Golden City of Myrr vanished from sight and an unbreakable and terrifying darkness shrouded it all. A fitting welcome to the Forest of the Spirits, thought Sinod, as he took the first steps into the newest stage of his perilous journey.
CHAPTER 11
The Forest of the Spirits
Sinod had never been fond of the Forest of the Boar: Its uncouth terrain, its trees absent of fruits, and the wild boars that populated its deepest sections had always made him try to stay as far away from it as possible. However, and in comparison to the Forest of the Spirits, that place was a paradise. Not only were the trees high, dark, and dense, but also their branches were low and twisted in unnatural ways, almost as old thin fingers waiting to wrap around their throats. Furthermore, the terrain was rocky and irregular, thronged with spiny bushes and hidden slopes. Several times, they were forced to climb down their horses to avoid the low boughs and use their swords to cut off the overgrown wilderness. They also had to once and again clean the ground off dry leaves and heave aside fallen logs that hindered their advance. And, more often than they would have expected, they were impelled to pull their horses’ legs out from secluded mud puddles. Soon, their march turned into a crawl, and Sinod could not help starting to wonder, taking into account the vast extension of the forest, how long it would take them to reach the alleged lair of the beast, far away into the Pink Mountains.
“Don’t you worry,” said at one point the knight with the light-yellow armor, his voice feigning confidence with little success. “The terrain will soon turn more merciful. I heard that the so-called… spirits that inhabit this place filled the first couple of miles of the forest with darkness and obstacles, to chase away those who would dare enter it.” The knight laughed. “But not even those things were powerful enough to fill its whole extension with nightmares.”
And, as it turned out, the knight had been right. Almost as sudden as it had started, the darkness around them disappeared, and the light of the sun reached the ground of the forest again. Even the terrain turned leveled and manageable, their steps barely resounding as they marched over the pervasive undergrowth. And the trees, while remaining tall, thick, and mighty, abandoned their ghastly looks and went back to their regular and inoffensive shapes.
But, even with the changes, the forest was not a pleasant place. Despite the fact that it was autumn, the air was terribly sultry and heavy, turning the sole act of breathing into a titanic task. Moreover, the further they moved away from the fields of Myrr and into the secret lairs of the forest, the more tired and weary Sinod felt. It was almost as if a large stone had been put over his shoulders, impairing his ability to move and walk. Worst of all, though, was that strange feeling that had seized him as soon as he ventured into the trees, the foul sensation that somebody was watching him, their eyes piercing through his naked flesh while their figures remained shrouded in the shadows of the forest. When it first came to occur, he had thought one of the knights had set his eyes upon him. Nevertheless, the instant he swiveled his head to meet those eyes, all he found was sheer darkness. There was not a single occasion when he was overwhelmed by that ill sensation in which he found something other than an eerie realm of shadows.
They had walked for almost four hours, under a silence barely broken by the distant cows of the ravens and the occasional sounds of their own steps breaking a dry leave or a fallen branch, when they finally reached a glade. The sun was at its peak at the moment, its light penetrating the tall trees and creating beautiful golden shapes on the ground. The knight with the light-yellow armor, who had been leading the march thus far, without any warning decided to stop his horse and address the rest of the group.
“My dear knights,” the knight said with a smile and a voice that now did denote confidence, “given the fact that our roads have been united by destiny, I consider appropriate to introduce ourselves. We’ll be together for a while and I believe that calling each other by name will create a much friendlier atmosphere than if we would start naming us by some aspect of our physical shapes.”
“And I believe,” said the one-eyed knight, his voice weary, “that we should quit this nonsense and hurry. Otherwise, the nobles will steal our prey.”
“My name is Sir Ragnar Aven, from the heroic and proud town of Belisnin,” the knight said, ignoring the one-eyed man’s words.
At that moment, Sir Larson moved forward on top of his elegant white steed.
“My name is Sir Larson Bakken, from the town of Litten.”
The rest of the knights soon followed the example. Most of them would use the same word structure, just changing their names and their towns, but others would only say their names, sometimes even omitting the Sir before them. There was a small group that did not listen to Sir Ragnar’s well-intended suggestion, but the knight paid them no attention.
“I propose, my friends,” started Sir Ragnar, “that we change our course… If we head northeast, we’ll eventually reach the river Kogelven. Marching over the riverbank will turn everything into an easier task, as we’ll have fresh water and fish right next to our feet. Besides, I’m sure the rest of the groups have taken the very same decision and —”
“If the rest are walking across the riverbank, then what we must do is try to gain advantage through the middle of the forest.” The knight who had just spoken had a long untidy mane of black hair and both his beard and moustache were so broad that he looked as if he had recently been released from some prison.
“This forest is unpredictable,” said Sir Ragnar. “It may turn very difficult to walk across as we move further in. Staying in this route is dangerous… Besides, I’m convinced that the first groups, given the large amount of luggage they were carrying, are marching at the pace of a snail.”
“Maybe… but once they see us coming, they’ll surely speed up.”
“And how exactly are they going to do that? Will they throw their luggage to the water, draw their swords, and stop us from advancing?” Sir Ragnar started laughing at his last words, but the other knight turned red with fury.
“Rot in hell, you damn old bastard!” cried all of a sudden the man, startling everyone with a deranged voice that seemed to have flowed not only through the man’s throat, but from the trees around him as well, and startling them even further when he drew this rusty sword from his belt and pointed it at Sir Ragnar’s chest. Sir Larson, sensing the tension, immediately took a step forward and stood next to the knight with the light-yellow armor.
“I support Sir Ragnar’s decision. It’s the best choice we have.”
“Well rot you too! Rot both of you!” The man’s eyes were filled with anger and desperation. “I won’t go with you! I’ll head west! And I’ll find the beast and slay it with my own hands! You’ll see! You’ll all see!”
The group headed northeast with six men less, since the mad-looking knight had managed to convince several others to follow his cause. As they were slowly walking away from the glade, Sinod felt compelled to turn his head and give one last look at the knight. And it was then when he saw it, something he could not say whether it was real or chimerical: This powerful red gleam in the man’s pupils, unnatural and abnormal, shaped as a wound, shaded as blood. The foul image made his bones freeze, and for one second, one minuscule instant, as well it made him sense a fear he had never experienced in his entire lifetime: A fear not of pain, and not of loss, and not of death either… but a fear of life itself.
