The Skeleth (25 page)

She raised the lit lantern behind him. He turned his head and looked up at her with an encouraging smile.

His smile died. All at once, he knew what was wrong—too late, too late.

“I am sorry about this.” Both of her eyes were blue. “At least, I think I am.”

She kicked him hard. He tumbled down into the dark.

T
he Elder gasped in fright. Tom's heart leapt into his throat. He started paddling furiously, driving the nose of his boat in between the pilings of the bridge.

The sternsman goggled. “What's—?”

“Ambush!” Tom hissed. “We're under attack!”

The Elder called upward as their boat slipped under the span of the bridge. “Warbur—sister, if it is me you want, I will come quietly! These folk are innocent of all that might be between the two of us.”

The answer came muffled from above: “Oh, sister, if only you had read a little more and spent fewer of your days nursing injured sheep. How many times have I told you, through the years? There is no such thing as innocence.”

The Skeleth awaited the boats on the other side of the bridge, standing in two lines along the banks. They sprang to the attack in utter silence, flinging themselves onto the boats without the slightest care for themselves. Blades flashed, coils
writhed, and screams did not last long. Tom was nearly sure that the one busily slaying people left and right in the boat nearest the bank was a mild, kindly faced man he had last seen in the castle at Harthingdale.

“To the banks, to the banks!” The sternsman of Tom's boat whispered it in fright. “We've got to beach and run, it's our only chance!”

“No, into the middle.” Tom looked back. “We must get through—and the Elder could never outrun one of those things.”

The sternsman nodded once. He jammed his paddle in to turn them, steering them to the very center of the current. The other boats passed on toward the ambush, helpless to stop themselves before they drew level with the rushes.

Tom paddled as hard as he could, watching the Skeleth leap onto the other boats. He had one hope—that the man inside the monster still had to breathe, and that there was a limit to how far they could jump.

“We cannot leave them!” The Elder grabbed his shoulder. “No, Tom, we can't leave them!”

Tom did no more than glance back at the sternsman. They did not slow their pace. Their boat shot out under the bridge, right in the middle of the river. They braced themselves, but none of the Skeleth seemed able to reach them from the banks, though no few of them tried. They failed, though, flopping into the water yards from Tom's boat. The rushes fell back to either side. Waves struck the bow as river gave way to lake.

Then a thump rocked the boat, nearly turning it over. Something landed heavily right behind Tom, nearly throwing him out into the water. He turned around, his paddle held up
to block the blow that he knew must be coming—and looked into the face of the Skeleth standing over him.

“Master Marshal.”

John Marshal's face loomed dead above him, mindless and unfeeling within the reaching, grasping glow. He kicked the Elder down beneath him, then raised his sword.

Tom did not know where the thought came from, but it seemed to him that, if he was about to die, he did not want to die trying to kill the nearest thing to a father he had ever had. He lowered his paddle.

“It's me.” He stared up. “It's Tom. I will not fight you, Master Marshal.”

John froze at the apex of his swing. His face twitched, and then his eyes fixed and focused.

A surge of wild hope ran through Tom. He thought of every time that John had ever been kind to him, everything John had ever done to ease the burdens of his life. “Master Marshal, it's Tom.” He thought of the evenings he had spent, once a month, eating at John and Katherine's table. He remembered how he had stored those evenings up inside himself, doling out their joys over the hard days in between. An image formed in his memory, John Marshal feeding him and Katherine a stew so bad that they could hardly choke it down—and all of them laughing at it, all of them smiling, one instant when it felt as though he had had a family. “I won't fight you.”

The face came alive. “T . . . Tom.” John Marshal lowered his sword. “Tom.” The waving limbs around him shuddered, pulling away from his body. Pain crossed his face—effort. He shook himself, like a man trying to wake from a nightmare.

The sternsman leapt from the back of the boat and swung his paddle hard across John's back. All trace of recognition vanished from John's face. He turned, leaping over the Elder with his sword held high.

“No, wait, please!” Tom reached out, but too late. The sternsman died without making a sound, tumbling backward into the water. The creature that was John Marshal turned, stepping lightly in the stern to come back around, blade at the ready—but then he stumbled and tripped.

“Paddle, Tom!” The Elder jammed her walking stick between John's legs and twisted it—the glowing limbs flowed around it, but not the flesh beneath. John Marshal flipped into the river with a loud splash.

Tom had no time to grieve or fear. He took up his paddle and jammed it into the water, on one side, and then the other, to keep them going straight. The boat leapt forward, from the river out onto the lake.

“Kill them! Kill all of them!” Warbur Drake shouted from atop the bridge behind them. “That boat, there! Kill!”

The Elder scrambled to the stern of the boat and grabbed the sternsman's fallen oar. Tom took the opposite side and drew water with all his might. More of the creatures leapt from the rushes, stretching themselves to the very limits of what sinew could bear, but none of them reached the boat.

Tom lunged out and drew hard, through water that was much less forgiving than the river had been. Currents crossed and roiled under the boat, slowing their progress out onto the lake. He dared not glance back. Castle Garafraxa loomed ahead, across a stretch of choppy black. Helmeted men moved
along its battlements, and a murmur of alarm sounded over the water.

“Isembard!” The Elder raised her voice to a scratchy scream. “Isembard, it's Thulina Drake! It's Thulina! We are under attack!”

Tom spared a glance up at the walls of Garafraxa. The men atop them knew that something was wrong, that was plain enough. They shouted and moved along the battlements in ever greater numbers. A gate winched up ahead—if only Tom could keep them on course, they could paddle right through to safety.

“The dock's just past the gate.” The Elder spoke between huffing hauls of breath. “Go right in, right in and we're safe.” She had skill, but little strength, forcing Tom to double-paddle. They were not half so fast as they had been with the sternsman at the paddle, but they were moving.

Tom spied men rushing out onto the landing, hauling boats along a dock and leaping into them. One man seemed to direct them, an old man dressed in green, with a shiny bald head fringed by short white hair.

“Into your boats, men, hurry!” The bald man waved his sword from the gate of the castle. “Bring them in safe. Cast off, cast off!” As soon as the first boat had been loaded, he leapt into it and cut the line that held it to the dock.

Tom's bangs fell damp with sweat across his eyes. His shoulders screamed with every pull, and the castle ahead grew closer slowly, so slowly. It already felt as though he had been rowing all his life, but they were almost there.

“
W
ATER SHALL BE DEATH IN TH
E VEINS.”
Warbur Drake's voice took on a terrifying resonance, seeming to hiss and leap
along the surface of the lake. It came in bursts, an awful cadence:
“
B
ETWEEN EA
RTH AND METAL
I
SHAP
E WATER INTO DEATH.
W
ATER CHOKES YOU, WATE
R WILL HAVE YOU, WATE
R SHALL BE DEATH IN
THE VEINS.”

Tom gaped and froze. A snake rose from the lake before him, a snake made of nothing but water.

“Goodbye, sister,” Warbur Drake called out across the waves, ragged and breathless from the exertion of her spell. “Your kind cannot be permitted to exist. You are not part of our plans.”

The snake twisted upward in a fume of white water and lunged for the Elder.

“Leave her alone!” Tom leapt backward over the Elder's cowering form, swinging his paddle out in a wild arc at the snake. The paddle splashed through the coiled column of water without effect—and the snake bit him instead of the Elder, sinking its fangs into his side where his shirt had ridden up from his hip.

Pain ripped through Tom, ice in his veins, spikes in his mind. He let the paddle slip. His vision twisted until he saw only sky. Everything in him was agony, everything his body did—breathing, heartbeat, thought.

Jumble leapt up and started barking from the middle of the boat, each sharp noise a molten torture to Tom. He felt the boat begin to slew around, rocking sideways on the waves. Everything in him ached to slip into the water, to drown and end the pain.

Warbur Drake cursed, her voice shrill with anger and exhaustion. She began the chant of another spell.

Tom heaved himself up again, though it felt as though his flesh were coming off his bones. He found the paddle—such
utter torment even to touch it—and drove it back into the water. He did not know whether the Elder was helping their course across the waves. He did not really know anything anymore, save for the pain, and what he meant to do before he died.

“Oh, Tom.” The Elder sounded very far away. “It's not far. Hold on.”

The chanting rose in rage, and then there sounded a chorus of hissing splashes. Tom could not tell if he had been hit by another spell. Jumble's barking seemed to get farther and farther away, growing dim, as though he had jumped inside a sack. What a funny thought . . .

Tom remembered that he was supposed to be paddling the boat. Shapes bobbed over the waves before him, men in boats up and down, up and down. The pain in him seemed to turn to sleepiness.

“We are almost there, Tom. Keep going.”

Tom kept moving his arms, but could not quite remember why. It seemed much better to go to sleep.

“It's not far, Tom.”

The shapes ahead drew closer. Tom saw the face of the old, bald man—then it smeared and melded with the clouds in the sky.

P
apa,” murmured Katherine, hunted through the shadowed forests of sleep.
A hand reached out for her, blooded and trembling.
She tossed and turned onto her back. “Papa.”

She woke. The cloak she used for bedding lay crumpled down around her ankles. Sweat chilled in beads on her skin. She sat up, shivering, trying to hold on to the substance of her dream—why Papa, and not Harry?

More than a hundred people huddled close in slumber on the floor of the great hall, whole families rolled under blankets all together in the only decent shelter they would ever know. The fire in the great stone hearth had gone to embers—it cast just enough light for Katherine to pick her way amongst the sleeping forms at her feet. Men and women, young and old, lay entwined all around her, piled over with their children, dogs and cats, all at peace, all breathing out into the frigid air in their separate meters and registers. Katherine stopped
in the middle of the room and listened, entranced for a time, then picked her way between them and slipped out into the courtyard.

Silence was everywhere. The dark walls of the inner ward held it cupped. A lone watchfire shone atop the keep, its feeble light drowning in the sky. Katherine crossed the courtyard, shoes rustling in the tended grass, her eyes on the stars framed four-square above her. She shot a glance up the walls, to where candlelight shone through the arrow-slit window of Harry's room. She spared herself time for one more pleading wish, then opened the door on the long day's work ahead.

Goody Bycross turned from the washpots with a scowl. “Girl, you begone.” She waggled her laundry-stick in Katherine's face. “You're wanted in the stables today.”

Katherine stopped at the threshold of the laundry shed. “What? Why?”

“Request from Lord Wolland.” Goody Bycross looked a good deal less than pleased to be bearing such news. “The lords go a-hunting today, and they want you to come along with them. Well, don't stand here with your jaw as wide as the door, shut them both and get on with you!”

Katherine closed the door on the row of women washing clothes and breakfast linens. She turned and raced back to the hall to change into a tunic and breeches. She would have skipped through the grass on her way to the stables, but for the light in the arrow-slit window above.

A boy slept on a bed of straw by the door of the stable. He awoke as Katherine approached and challenged her in a whisper: “Who goes there?”

“They say I'm wanted here today.” Katherine peeled the melted stump of a candle from the shelf by the boy's bed and took up flint and steel to light it. “Do you know why?”

“Not a clue.” The boy rubbed his eyes and let out an apple-wide yawn. “You're the old marshal's daughter, aren't you? You might as well do some work, while you're here.”

“I'd like that.” Katherine carried the candle down the passage, holding it to the wick of each lantern hanging on the wall. Boys uncurled from the straw and stood blinking, dogs gained their feet and shook themselves out, and the horses woke one by one as she passed.

“Here.” Katherine held the apple she had brought along under Indigo's nose and stroked his mane as she fed him. Sorrow returned—Indigo was Wulfric's now, won by the custom of the joust. He would soon be gone, taken away to Wolland, never to be seen again. She could bear to stay with him no longer, though she would have wanted to linger until someone came to throw her out. She snuffed the candle and left.

The stables warmed with the heat of activity. Boys drew water, poured oats and mucked out stalls. They danced past one another in the narrow passage with tack and saddle in hand. The faint rumor of the sun's rising seeped in around the shutters, and with it the first of the knights and ladies coming for their horses. Katherine kept in the thick of the work, moving swiftly from one noble personage to the next, ensuring that they all left with steeds well fed and prepared. She cleaned out the shoes of a visiting stallion, then ran her hands through his tack, checking it for frays. She walked over to the storage stall and hauled up a sack of grain with her back to the door.

A voice spoke from behind her: “My son does not love you.”

Katherine felt her insides give a squeeze. She dropped the sack and turned to curtsy. “My lady.”

Lady Isabeau had not slept, and no amount of careful arrangement of her hair, veil and dress could disguise it. “He thinks he does, but he cannot. I do not say it to wound you.”

A stablehand brought Lady Isabeau her riding mare, then bowed and backed away. Lady Isabeau led the mare off down the passage, causing everyone to stop and make their reverences. Katherine followed her outside, then bent to make a step from her hands.

“Men of his station in life do not have the luxury of those feelings.” Isabeau gained the saddle with Katherine's help. “Be thankful it is not your lot.”

“He called for me, my lady.” Katherine handed her the reins, but kept her gaze averted. “He sent for me. Why would you not let me see him?”

“You know the reason. I'm sure you will be pleased to know that he is expected to live.” Lady Isabeau arranged her skirts over the side of her mare and rode away toward the gates.

Katherine blinked back tears, for she had no time to cry them. A herald called out from the courtyard, and the door of the keep swung wide. Through it stepped Lord Wolland and Lord Aelfric, walking as far from each other as good manners would allow. Sir Wulfric followed behind, seeming not to notice the hateful looks shot his way by every groom, smith and washerwoman in the castle.

Katherine took the reins of Lord Aelfric's own courser and
led him from the stables, followed by two stable boys with steeds for Wulfric and Wolland.

“Katherine Marshal.” Lord Wolland favored Katherine with a smile that made her want to punch him right in the mouth. “Your second name rings true once again.”

“She is no marshal, my lord.” Lord Aelfric looked as though he had aged into his final years overnight. “She is a ward of this castle, a girl without parents to speak for her.”

“It is custom, my lord, for a marshal to attend to the horses of the lords on the hunt.” said Wolland. “More than that, it is simple good sense. Shall our steeds wander off into the woods while we stalk our prey with the longbow?”

Lord Aelfric made a weary wave of his hand. “Do as you will.”

Sir Wulfric stepped out before the other men. “I beg you again, my lord, to accept my apologies.” He bowed to Lord Aelfric. “I would rather cut off my own hand than do injury to young Harold. It cheers me to learn that he will survive.”

“Those are the chances of life, sir knight.” Lord Aelfric's creaky old voice seemed to have lost what remained of its strength. “Every father learns in time that he cannot shield his child from the wandering cruelties of this world forever.” He flicked a glance at Katherine, making her insides squeeze again.

A page boy in Wolland's colors stepped before them and bowed. He offered out a handful of arrows, all very straight and well crafted, each with identical fletching, black feathers from a bird that Katherine did not recognize.

“A gift,” said the page. “From my lord Wolland.”

Lord Aelfric took an arrow and turned it over in his hands. Two other pages made the rounds of the nobles, offering similar arrows to all present.

“What think you, my lord?” said Wolland. “Have my men made shafts to rival the storied arrows of Elverain?”

“They are of excellent quality.” Lord Aelfric looked up at the boys distributing dozens of arrows to the hunting party. “This is a lordly gift to be given so widely.”

“Consider them tokens of my esteem.” Wolland waved a hand. “Emblems of my wish for a more harmonious union between our lands.”

Lord Aelfric shot him an icy look. “I will gladly take them, my lord.”

“Good.” Wolland climbed into his saddle and rode away with Wulfric to join the hunters.

Katherine held out the reins of Lord Aelfric's courser. He did not seem to see her, so she pressed them into his hands.

“What is the proper course for an honorable man?” Lord Aelfric did not look at Katherine, but no one else was near enough to hear him. “The lessons of my youth come back to me across the long years. I feel the sting of it; the face of my own father gazes down on me, questions me. Have I failed?”

Katherine's dream returned. She saw her papa in chains, bound and wrapped in them up and down his arms—somewhere dark, somewhere cold. He reached for her, blooded and trembling.

“You see before you an old fool—the very pattern of the oldest of fools.” Lord Aelfric put a hand to the pommel of his saddle. “The fool seeks to purchase safety at the cost of honor.
The fool pays in coin for his life, but then finds himself paying again, and yet again, in things more dear to him than life.”

Katherine glanced around her. She stood alone with her lord in the center of the courtyard. The hunters waited by the outer gates. The commoners went about their business in stable, smithy and garden, all of them out of hearing.

“My lord, it is right to fear the strife of war.” Katherine stepped up beside Lord Aelfric and knelt with her hands laced together. “But there are times when we must do that which we fear.”

When the stern cast of his face relaxed, Lord Aelfric looked a good deal more like Harry. “Spoken as your father would speak.” He stepped into Katherine's hands. “How I wish that I had heeded him, while yet I could.”

Katherine raised him into his saddle. “My lord, what is happening?”

“Too many things. I wish these dangers had not come so late in life.” Aelfric slipped his feet into the stirrups. “Lord Wolland is quite right; it is custom to have a marshal to attend our horses on the hunt. We will follow that custom as closely as we may.”

Katherine curtsied. “I will gladly serve, my lord.”

Lord Aelfric took his reins. “You seem to like the horse my son rode at the joust. I do not think Wulfric will take it ill if you ride him one last time.” He spurred his mount and cantered off through the gates. The hunters turned and followed him.

Katherine spent as long as she could in Indigo's stall, feeding him and brushing him down as though it were not the
last time she would ever do it. At last, when she could no longer ignore the ever more urgent summons to her duties, she saddled him and rode from the castle, following the nobles through Northend and up the Longsettle road. She turned at Thrawnthrup, passing through the humble cluster of cottages under old shade oaks and following an ox-trail through wide, flat fields harvested down to stubble. She found the hunting party gathered on a grassy slope by the eaves of the wood. The horn sounded just as she reached them, and she found herself riding in amongst the lords at a gallop down the trail that ran between forest and field.

Half a mile along they turned onto a track that wound up the side of the ridge and led into the trees. Katherine found Wulfric keeping pace at her side, a few lengths back of Lord Aelfric and Lord Wolland. Lady Isabeau's party of noble ladies rode some distance behind, while from ahead rang the shouts of the other lords and knights, singing rounds of verse best meant for the worst of taverns.

Wulfric steered in so close that his knee bumped Katherine's thigh. “I have never seen a match for that horse.” He cast a satisfied look over Indigo's great and graceful back. “He will be a joy to ride.”

Indigo shifted away and rode his own course along the trail. When Wulfric turned his horse to close the gap, Indigo put on just enough speed to stay clear, raising his head ever so slightly and eyeing his pursuer, until Wulfric found his horse reluctant to press the issue.

“So, my lord.” Wolland rode at a comfortable pace ahead. “We are off to the usual spot?”

“We are, my lord,” said Aelfric.

“Good, excellent,” said Wolland. “I have never known a better place for shooting. Girl, attend us here.”

Katherine nudged Indigo to the space Lord Wolland had opened up between himself and Lord Aelfric. She kept her head low in deference, even as she rode, for she could see Lord Aelfric stiffen at the impertinence of a peasant girl riding abreast with lords of the realm.

“I wish to resume our earlier conversation.” Lord Wolland nodded to Katherine. “Do you recall? We spoke of the uses and purposes of war.”

Katherine looked to Lord Aelfric, but when he did not move to stop her, she spoke. “I remember, my lord. I said that most folk just want peace. War brings nothing but strife and ruin. We men and women have enough trouble already in this world, and to make more of it is the mark of a fool.”

Wolland smiled. “So says woman always. But she would have her sons defend her daughters.”

“If everyone fought only to defend, no one would need to fight at all.”

“Ah, no.” Lord Wolland shook his head, his smile turned wistful. “The world is too small, my girl. It is too hard. Someone's line must fail, someone's house must crumble, someone's kingdom must disappear. A mother asks the world that her children prosper, but the children of all mothers cannot prosper. Thus, war.”