The Pagan Night (39 page)

“What will be done with me?” Gwen asked.

“That remains to be judged,” Frair Lucas said. He arranged a blanket around his legs and nestled into the ground, pulling his hood over his eyes. “However, as I have told you, I am beginning to think that our way of doing things has served us poorly. There is something holy in the gheists, those few who escape corruption.” His voice began to drift as sleep approached. “There are a few. Which is why I’m interested in your hallow, my lady.” Moments stretched, the silence growing. Lucas stirred.

“And its god.”

Elsa sighed and collected the frair’s cup, cleaning it with a wad of grass. She gave Gwen an uncertain look.

“That’s heresy,” she said very matter-of-factly. “I will take first watch. Sleep, and I will wake you for the second.” Then she disappeared out into the night, leaving behind the spark of sun that stirred among the embers of the fire. Gwen couldn’t help but feel that the flames watched her.

She settled into her blankets, whispering the forgotten names of the Fen, and wondering what the frair’s words could mean.

* * *

It wasn’t Elsa who woke her, but a dream. Gwen was floating in darkness, wrapped tight in arms of air and earth, when a light rose from her chest and pulled her ribs into the sky. She was following it, shrugging free of the flesh that held her, drifting through a city of dark towers and gray rain when she woke up and realized she was standing in the middle of the forest, alone.

She looked behind her and saw, some forty yards away, the strange circle of light that marked their camp. Elsa was still sitting on the stump, just barely visible, facing away from Gwen. She could see nothing of the frair. A twig snapped in front of her.

A witching wife stood just an arm’s length away, holding a broken twig in her outstretched hand. Gwen stumbled back.

“Thought you’d walk all the way to the Fen Gate if I didn’t wake you,” the woman said. Her voice was as quiet as a snake’s whisper, passing the distance between her mouth and Gwen’s ear and no farther. “You have strange friends, Huntress.”

The wife said that last word with stiff contempt. Gwen’s place in the world of the Celestial church had always troubled the guardians of the witches’ hallow, though her father insisted that they understood the necessity.

“Not friends,” Gwen said as quietly as she could. “They rescued me. There are others in these woods, a frair with the old ink. I think he’s looking for the hallow.”

“A score, almost, and twice that many shadows,” the wife answered. “They bring the stink of the south with them.”

“Have they found it yet?”

“No, but we can’t hold them for long. They hound the little god.”

“Little god?” Gwen asked. “You mean the gheist?”

“A tangle of shadow stitched into the shape of men and horse. Quick through the woods. I know it. It was sealed away generations ago, a god that had gained a taste for mortal blood, and had to be imprisoned. The fools must have let it out. It’s a hunter, Gwendolyn Adair. Like you.”

“The gheist from Gardengerry,” Gwen said with a nod. “Frair Allaister seems to have tamed it.”

“A priest of the moon god, riding a gheist? What is this world becoming, Huntress?” The witching wife settled against a tree, and Gwen caught sight of a glimmer of slick blood on her side. Gwen took a worried step forward. The wife waved her off. “We have been bending the inquisitor’s path, but his shadows harry us. They bite. Anything hunted will bite, eventually.”

“You’re hurt,” Gwen said.

“More than that, child. I am dead. How else do you think I could find you?” The woman laughed, and Gwen realized the sound rustled only through her head. “Many of us have moved on to the everealm, but I remained behind, to warn you, and prepare you.”

“For what?”

“Tomorrow. Those few who remain will bend the gheist’s path. It will take all that they have. You must take the chance.”

“Where will you bend it? I should leave the priest and the vow knight here if I’m to keep them from discovering it,” Gwen said.

“You will need them, Huntress. You will not be able to kill this demon on your own. We have tried to tame it, to feed it, to return it to its cycle—but they have broken this god, Gwen. Broken it beyond hope. So you and your friends must kill it.”

“Then where?” she asked. The witching wife was fading, her form slipping into the tree at her side. The wives could shift through the forest this way, wrapping tree bark around their skin and sliding from sacred grove to holy branch, covering great distances in the space of a thought. The wife’s body was losing definition, her face melting into the bark. “Where will you drive the gheist?”

“Here, child. We will bring the god to you, and you must kill it before the corruption spreads.”

“How…” Gwen started, but the woman was gone. The tree where she had been standing creaked and shifted, raining leaves. They shuffled off her shoulders, velvet and soft, to gather at her feet.

She returned to camp. Sir LaFey never moved, and when Gwen settled back into her tent, the vow knight shook herself and then came to wake the huntress for her turn at the watch.

Gwen considered warning LaFey about the coming threat, but to do so she would need to reveal the presence of the witching wife—something she dared not do. No life—not even her own—could be worth the risk to the hallow. It was her life’s work to keep its secret safe. So she spent the rest of the night watching the trees, and wondering when the little god would find them.

T
HE SHADOWS OF
an unnatural night followed them north. The darkness between trees loomed deeper, and each sunset brought shivering terror to Malcolm’s bones. He stopped sleeping. The men and women around him followed suit, the whole ragged mob shambling forward without thought to formation or discipline. They were running. They were in a rout, easy pickings if the Suhdrin bothered to follow. It was Strife’s blessing that they didn’t do so immediately.

Sorcha was among them, though her eyes were hollow and her fire broken. She rode beside Malcolm during their long retreat. He didn’t ask where the others were. In the sharp madness of the attack, each had looked to his own. He cursed himself for leaving her side. At least she had survived. Her death would have sealed his own madness.

They didn’t speak for days, but even her silent presence was enough to give Malcolm hope. They held hands at night, though neither of them slept. There were dreams waiting for them in the darkness that neither wanted to face.

The one thing they didn’t discuss was their son. Both knew that Ian had been with the forces that fell at the western ford, knew by the presence of knights of Marchand and Roard in their flank that his position had been overrun. Few of the men assigned to that post counted among the survivors, and none had news of the heir of Houndhallow. Malcolm continued asking, each night, searching the camps of stragglers for some sign of his son.

Sorcha stayed quiet, and a faint spark of anger began.

A week on the road, gathering survivors as they fled and giving them some direction, pulling broken men from the forest and goading them north. This had given Malcolm some purpose of his own. North had been the natural direction, the way the horses had run, the direction soldiers and knights and attendants had taken when their lines broke, and the way they kept walking when the rout had ended. It was the path home.

After the initial flight ended, and the days continued with no sign of Suhdrin pursuit, Malcolm began to form a plan. It took time for it to settle in his mind, and more to work up the courage to speak of it.

“We must hold at the Fen Gate,” he said finally. Sorcha gave no hint of having heard him, so he repeated himself. She looked over. Those hollow eyes. They would spark again, he promised himself. They would be bright again. “We don’t have a choice,” he added.

“The men are scattered,” she replied. “The shields are crushed and the spears broken. You can’t make them whole, Malcolm.”

“If I don’t, the winter will break them. Most of these men are weeks from their homes. Months, in their current condition. The storms will come before they reach any destination. They’ll die on the roads.”

“So you would have them die at the Fen Gate, instead,” she said. “What’s the difference?”

“They’ll die fighting, and maybe we’ll hold. We have to,” he said. “If we run, there will be nothing to stop Halverdt. If these men freeze along the road, the strength of the north dies with them.”

“They will find friendly hearths along the way. Thyber. Runninred. Dunneswerry. There will be shelter from the storms.”

“Those, yes, and Houndhallow, as well. If the Fen Gate falls, do you think Halverdt will stop there? You brought the armies of the north to oppose him. Will he rest while those armies still exist?”

“I came to find you,” Sorcha muttered angrily. “He was merely in the way.”

Malcolm smiled, glad to see a little of his wife’s fire still smoldering. He laid a hand on her knee. She slid her fingers into his, and they rode in silence.

“So,” she said at last. “The Fen Gate?”

“If we mean to fight, rather than crawl home and hide until the high inquisitor comes for us.”

She nodded, squeezed his hand, then split off from the road to start gathering the men. Malcolm watched until she disappeared into the trees, then turned and went the other way. The army was spread thin and wide. They had to be formed up. They had to be given a direction.

* * *

They found most of the banners. Thaen’s crown of frost and splintered sun, white against the blue and gray of his field, was tattered but proud, flapping beside the flaming crescent moon of MaeHerron and the hart and harrier of Dougal, each stained with blood and the filth of a week-long rout. Even a few battered knights in Drownhal’s multi-green filtered in from the forests, trailing slowly behind the rest of the column.

At the column’s head stood the hound of Blakley, the white now the dirty color of sleet, the beast’s snarling jaws torn and tired. Sorcha rode beneath the banner, with Malcolm beside her and the remaining strength of their force behind. What remained of the army was moving again—marching, rather than fleeing. It was enough to bring a smile to her face.

The one presence that discomforted them was that of Lord Daeven. The mourning earl of Blackvaen marched with the ruins of the army, carrying the blanket-bound corpse of his young son in his arms. Malcolm wasn’t sure how the man managed, though madness could bring strength. Daeven talked to no one, acknowledged no one. It was as if he traveled the mourning road alone.

The Fen Gate lay slightly west of the main road that cut through Adair’s territory, the same road that led to Houndhallow, splitting to find Dunneswerry to the east and the river Wyl. A good part of their army had fled into the Fen, never to return, and many more likely were making for Houndhallow and points north. Nevertheless, the Blakleys had managed to gather enough spears and knights to present a respectable force to Lord Adair for the defense of his walls and his name.

To the west lay the Fen. There were stories about Suhdrin forces in its murky depths, but so far the scouts had seen nothing. Other stories told of gheists, many more than should be expected, even this close to the equinox. None of them attacked. Somehow that worried Malcolm more than if the old gods had been ravaging the landscape. There was a stillness in the air that promised great snow and greater cold. The season was turning against them.

Sentries patrolled the borders of orderly camps, scouts ranged into the lightening forests, rangers brought game to the spit and reported troop movements at the duchess of Houndhallow’s nightly council. Big Grant MaeHerron, having taken command of his father’s forces when the baron disappeared in the rout, showed up each night and silently honed the edge on his axe while Lord Dougal and Sorcha Blakley talked about the coming defense of the Fen. The soldiers seemed alive for the first time since they had been forced across the Tallow in the dead of that bloody night.

A week brought them to the Fen Gate. No fires burned in the village that huddled at its foot. The surrounding fields hung heavy with unharvested grain, but there were no farmers in sight. At the castle, the famous black gate was sealed, and the walls bristled with archers. Two banners flew from the keep, one from each of the black towers of the castle: the crimson flag of House Adair, and a black banner of mourning.

“Not the reception I was expecting,” Sorcha said.

“They look ready for war,” Malcolm answered. He rode beside Castian Jaerdin, whose men of Redgarden had broken free of the rout and ridden hard to reinforce his allies of Blakley. The Suhdrins spent the nights grimly discussing whether they would be welcome back in the south when this was all over.

“Such readiness is fortunate, given the circumstances,” Castian answered. “Look, the sally gate has opened.”

Malcolm squinted, but couldn’t make out what was happening at the gates. A few moments later a rider came into view, galloping from the castle under a white flag. Malcolm smiled when he recognized a familiar face.

“Sir Merret!” Malcolm called when the rider came into range. “I’m glad to discover that you weren’t lost at the Redoubt!”

“One of few who survived, I’m afraid,” Merret said. He reined in his mount beside Malcolm and Sorcha, keeping the Blakleys between himself and Jaerdin. “We depended on the river for our defense, but they came at us from the woods. Gwen had thinned our ranks to pursue her own glory, and when Volent fell on us from the east we were ill equipped to defend.”

“Volent? I thought he rode with Halverdt’s army. How did he get behind you?”

“Gods know,” Merret responded. “Is Gwen Adair among your ranks?”

“The huntress is missing?” Sorcha asked.

“Aye, she went reaving to the south, thinking to take the fight to Halverdt’s flank. A few survivors stumbled back to the Fen Gate three nights ago. They ran into a Suhdrin force deep in the Fen, led by Sir Volent and accompanied by a host of inquisitors. They tell incredible stories.” Merret paused, his eyes flickering to Jaerdin. “Unbelievable stories. And we must believe that Gwen has fallen into Suhdrin hands.”