The Very Best of Kate Elliott (9 page)

The hoof-falls touched as lightly as the light itself.

Shadows tangled, stretching and winding, coming into life.

The Hanging Woman’s noose took shape as a rope of darkness coiling across the grass.

The old oak had a cleft, and in its hollow many years ago an old cunning woman well versed in herbcraft and mystery had lived for several winters. That was the old woman of the wood, the witch for whom the hill was named, although there had been another cunning woman before her according to the stories told to Anna by her grandmother when she was a child.

Anna glanced once more toward Uwe and, as she hoped, he had not moved, trusting to the bitterberry’s prickly scent to shield him. Rising, she grasped General Olivar by the armpits and dragged his limp weight halfway around the tree, whispering the chant of protection she had learned from the old woman: “Leaf and branch and grass and vine. Let me be like them, what the eye sees but does not notice.”

Just in time she hauled him in through the cleft, into the dusty dry shelter of the tree’s heart. The smell of smoke still lingered. He gasped softly, and his eyes opened.

“My sword,” he said in a hoarse whisper, as if he already knew what she was about.

She had to risk it. The sword would betray their presence. The narrow cleft had been barely wide enough to admit the general’s shoulders. She squeezed back through it now and to her horror heard the creaks of men shifting on saddles and the thump of many ordinary horses rather than the eight-legged steed ridden by the Hanging Woman. Pulling her bridal shawl up over her head gave her cover, of a sort, as she glided around the base of the tree. Four riders emerged into the clearing from the path that led, through thickets, to West Hall. They were too far away yet to see the ground clearly but if she moved again they would see her, so she did not run but instead placed herself to stand squarely over the fallen sword, letting her skirt cover it.

Their pale tunics and dark sashes marked them as Forlangers, a fine lord and three of his retainers to look at them all agleam in their pride. But the moonlight showed their faces: a wolf and his gaunt and ugly brethren, hard of heart and bitter of blood.

Night and the ill-omened tree made them nervous. Battle had strung them taut. She had no trouble hearing their too loud voices.

“. . . said they saw someone running in this direction, my lord.”

“I want him dead,” said the lord in a high coarse voice.“This is all for naught if he is not dead.”

“My lord, we came the wrong way,” said a second retainer, his tone brittle with nerves. “This is the witch’s tree, the hanging tree. It has an angry and hateful spirit.”

The Hanging Woman was already here. Her shadows swelled with the rope of fear. The horses shifted nervously, ears flaring. In the sky above, clouds crept toward the moon.

Why not? What weapon had she, except her wits?

She raised her arms to make the shawl flutter like dark wings.

“Here are you come, so which is it who will offer himself to my rope?” she said in a voice that carried across the clearing lit with a gauzy glamour.“I take one for my noose.”

The moon slid beneath the cloud. A gust of wind shook through the vast branches. An owl hooted from the verge, and there came out of the forest the sound of a clop of horse’s hooves, slow and steady as the approach of death.

The Hanging Woman was coming.

Night, and the oak’s mighty shadow, did the rest.

The Forlangers turned tail and rode back the way they had come, toward the fields and buildings of West Hall. Brush rattled around them, marking their passage, and one man shouted as he lost control of his horse.

The cloud passed, and the moon re-emerged. The shadows untangled, and Uwe rose with wide eyes from the bitterberry where he had been hiding and dashed across the clearing to fetch up beside her.

She hoisted the heavy sword. “Was that you, with the owl call? I reckon I have heard you test that other times.”

He grinned, then popped his tongue in his mouth to make the clop-clap hoofbeat sound.

She laughed, then frowned, for it was dangerous to insult the Hanging Woman.“They will come back,” she said.“If not at night, then at dawn. You must help me carry him to the rose bower.”

Uwe did not want to enter the cleft. Into that cleft one night several years ago the Hanging Woman had dragged the person Uwe had been before, and he had emerged changed, become what he was now.

Anna grasped his elbow and shook him. “The wounded soldier is General Olivar himself. The Forlangers mean to kill him. If they do, there will be nothing but theft and indignity for us and all our kin. You see that, do you not?”

He nodded. They all knew it was true.

The general had fallen unconscious again although he was still breathing. They dragged him as gently as possible out of the cleft. In the moonlight, Anna unclasped his coat of plate armor and cut away padding and under-tunic to lay bare the wound. It was just above his hip, in the meat and muscle of the torso. She bent to sniff at it, and while the scent of blood was strong, it seemed the blade had missed his gut for there was no fetid sewage breath from the cut.

That meant he might live.

If they worked quickly and covered their tracks.

They got his coat of plates off him, which woke him up, but he was a soldier who did not complain or panic. He just watched, eyes fluttering with pain, as she bound the wound with strips cut from his tunic.

Because he was awake, it was easiest to drape him over Uwe and let the slight man walk with the general’s weight on him. Anna followed with the sword and the coat of plates. They halted beyond the clearing so she could go back with a branch and confuse the ground to make sure no one guessed they had been there.

“Leaf and branch and grass and vine. Let them see but see nothing.”

The old cunning woman had lived for six years in the wood, wintering in the oak and living the other seasons in a hidden refuge. During the time she had bided at Witch’s Hill, the Hanging Woman had never once ridden out.

There is more than one kind of power in the world.

They made their way into the trees, following trails in the dim light all the way to a rocky spine of land where boulders made a great jumble of the forest floor. A stream burbled through the undergrowth, running low at this time of year.

In the other three seasons, the old woman had lived deep in the forest in this rocky dell within an astounding growth of sprawling evergreen rose-trees that were more shrub than tree. Sticks woven into the arched branches made a house of remarkable grandeur, one so artfully concealed that you could not see it unless you knew it was there.

Anna had herself lived here off and on for five years as a girl, because the old woman had demanded an apprentice from the village, someone to fetch and carry for her, and Anna had been the only girl bold enough to volunteer. She had been paid with learning. The old woman had instructed her in herbcraft and many other cunning skills, although Anna had not passed some subtle test and so had never been taught any deeper secrets. Most of all, she had been given the gift of freedom, able to speak her mind, to ask any question she wanted regardless of whether the old woman answered it, and to run where she willed on summer nights. She had met her husband in the forest, for he was a woodsman’s son and became a woodsman himself in time. So they had set up house together after she got pregnant. By then the old woman had vanished, never to be seen again.

“Uwe,” she said. “Go back and make sure no trace remains of our trail.”

He left his heavy pack behind with its store of grain, for they had known they would have to depend on feeding themselves if the stores in West Hall were burned or looted.

Anna visited the rose bower several times a year to sort out its store of firewood, rake the ground, lay in grass, clear out any animal nests. The old woman had taught her that a fire must always be laid, ready to light. She was glad of that teaching now, for even in darkness she could start a fire on the old hearth. By its golden light she shifted the general onto a layer of grass.

His eyes were open but he did not speak. By the reckoning of his cold glare, she suspected he was in so much pain he dared not speak. Perhaps he was barely conscious, half sunk into the blinding haze that separates life from death.

She opened her bag and got to work.After peeling back the temporary bandage and his bloody clothing and giving him a leather strap to bite on, she cleansed the gash with a tonic of dog rose and whitethorn. Afterward she sewed it up with catgut as neatly as a torn sleeve. A poultice of mashed feverbane leaves she bound over the wound with linen strips. That he did not pass out again during all this surprised her, but it took men like that sometimes: the heart would race and keep them wakeful despite the pain. She therefore lifted up his head and helped him drink an infusion of willowbark and courage-flower. She then fortified herself with the cider and bread she had brought for herself, since the old woman had also taught her that no one could keep their wits about them if they were starving or thirsty, especially not those who were needed to care for the ill and injured. He watched her from the pallet of grass. Being evidently a polite man, he did not speak until she finished eating.

“Where am I and how did you come to find me?” he asked in a voice made harsh with weakness and pain.

“You are in the forest between West Hall and Woodpasture, my lord general.”

“You know me?”

“I live in Woodpasture, my lord. We have a market in our fine market hall every week.”

“Woodpasture?” He murmured the word, seeking through his memory. “Ah. Bayisal.”

“That is the name they call it in the king’s court, I think,” she said kindly.“But it is not our name. How came you to fall under the Forlanger sword, my lord?”

He breathed in silence for a time, measuring the pain in his hip or perhaps simply fishing back through the last few days. “Treachery. They and I are ever at odds in court. Lord Hargrim is ready to steal my command and my lands. I must get back to court. Have you men in your village who can convey me?”

“We have men, my lord. My husband died in your service, and my brother lost his leg.”

He slanted a look at her, shifting a moment later to notice that she had placed the sword near his side, where he could reach it.

“I blame the Forlangers. Not you, my lord. In case you are wondering.”

His smile had a force that cracked the distance between them.“Generously spoken, Mistress. May I know your name?”

“Anna, my lord.”

“And the other one. There was another woman, was there not? The one who was supporting me as we walked?”

“No other woman. A man.”

“I was sure, for my arm was wrapped around . . . I meant no offense by it . . .” He rubbed a callused hand over his eyes. “I suppose I was delirious. Perhaps I am roaming not on earth but in the shadows cast by the gods.”

“No, my lord. You lie on earth. If men from the village convey you to the King’s City, my lord, what is to stop the Forlangers from killing you all?”

“They could hide me in a wagon . . .” He shook his head at the same time she did. “They’ll be watching the roads. They will not rest until Hargrim can throw my corpse before the king and claim me as a traitor.”

“How will he claim you as a traitor when all know you serve the king loyally?”

“Men lie, Mistress Anna. They tell stories that are false.”

“So they do, my lord. All but my husband. He was a good man and never lied to me, except for the time he had to come tell me that my son was dead.”

“I hope your son did not die in my service too. I would hate to think I had repaid you for this by having measured so much grief into your life.”

“No, my lord. He was a boy and died of a sickness, as children do.”

“Sad tidings for a mother. What of you, Mistress Anna, do you lie?” He paused, a hand probing the linen bandage.“Can you heal me?”

“I have some knowledge of herbcraft and have done what I know how to do. I have a tea that should help with the pain and any fever. It is a bad wound, and you may yet die of it, but you may live. It is not for me to say. That is the choice of the Hanging Woman.”

“Who is the Hanging Woman? Some country name for death?”

“Death is death, my lord, not a person. Do they not know that at court? The Hanging Woman has a rope and will hang you in it if she chooses to capture you. Those who are hanged are changed. Maybe that change will be life into death or maybe it will be something else, something you never expected.”

He gave a rough cough, then winced. “This is not the work of your Hanging Woman, then, for I have been expecting an attack for months now. Ever since the poison has reached the king’s ear, a rumor that I plan to raise my army against him and place myself on the throne.”

“Do you, my lord?”

All at once the pain and exhaustion and blood loss overwhelmed him, or perhaps the infusion finally took hold. He looked so tired, as if the fight had dragged on too long and he wondered if he had the will to keep struggling.“No. Never. But it may be too late. The rot of that story may already have tainted the king’s heart.”

“Can you rest, my lord?”

He twisted and turned as well as he could, restless and aggrieved. Lines of pain wrinkled his forehead. His lips were pale, and his eyes shadowed by the effort of speaking.“If only . . . if I could get to the king and not be murdered on the way. I was on my way to court now, and you see what has happened. Lord Hargrim’s people control the roads. I will never get through.”

“Have you no allies in court?”

“The king’s sister has the king’s ear. He trusts her. And I trust her.” He paused and looked at her. A yellow-beak’s whistle chirred twice from out among the leaves. “We were not lovers. It is nothing to do with that.”

“I did not think it was,” she said, surprised at how quickly he had hastened to deny an unasked question.“It is no business of mine.”

“She was married to Lord Hargrim’s brother back once. She knows what they are.”

“Wolves,” said Anna, for they had returned to a subject she cared about.“Winter wolves, on the hunt.”