Weatherwitch: Book Three of The Crowthistle Chronicles (5 page)

Unaware that several of his companions were following him, Conall Gearnach careered through the canting woodlands. The light was fading, but he was tracing a conspicuous trail of broken twigs and crumpled vegetation. The sweet fragrance of crushed mint-bush scented the air, and the dainty rich purple petals of royal bluebells flew up from his running feet.

Presently the trees opened out, and he burst into a glade. He slewed to a halt. Before him two lumbering Marauders, as tall as horses, were hauling the limp form of Prince Halvdan between them in a strenuous effort to cross the clearing and reach the shelter of the trees. The moment they spied the avenging knight they let fall their burden, but it was too late. Whipping out his knife, Gearnach fearlessly leapt upon one of the brigands. Locked together, they crashed to the ground, tumbling over and over in a desperate struggle until, with a lightning movement, Gearnach slashed his throat. Confronted by this apparently berserk fiend, the other fellow made off in reckless haste.

“Are you alive?” Gearnach said, dropping to his knees beside the prince.

Halvdan, barely conscious, nodded weakly. He lay spent but living, amongst the prickly spears of alpine crowthistle. Crashing noises issued from the woods behind them, and Gearnach jumped up. He whirled to face whatever new danger threatened, this time drawing his swords. On spying the three retainers who emerged into the clearing he sheathed the blades once more, barking, “Tend to his highness. Do not wait for me. I will meet you at the lodge.” He dashed off again in the wake of the fleeing Marauder.

“Bide!” Halvdan weakly called after the knight, but to no avail. Gearnach, moving at speed, was already out of earshot.

“Your Highness!” exclaimed the Head Gamekeeper.

“I am hale,” said Halvdan, dismissively waving a hand. His appearance belied his words; he was spattered with ichor and grime, his garments ripped to tatters. “It is Two-Swords for whom you should be concerned. Darkness is nigh, and the woods wallow in shadow. To pursue a lone brig-and is not only perilous but also bootless. I would have stopped him, if I could. It is sheer folly.”

“Lord, it is our duty to bring you safely back to the hunting lodge,” said
Gunnlaug’s equerry, Riordan. “Come, let us bear you to your comrades.”

The retainers half-carried Halvdan back to the scene of the skirmish, where the rest of the hunting party waited. Joyously they greeted the prince, but their delight turned to dismay when they heard of Gearnach’s grim and reckless quest.

“Alone at this time of the evening!” exclaimed Walter. “Unseelie wights will soon be out and about.”

“In the darkness a man might easily lose his footing,” said Ronin of Slievmordhu.

“Let us hope that common sense prevails,” his brother Kieran said, “and Gearnach soon abandons this mad mission. Halvdan, my friend, let my equerry bandage your wounds. I cannot tell you how glad I am to see you!”

“There is no need for fuss,” said Halvdan, swaying as he stood.

“Lo, this one is still somewhat quick!” cried Gunnlaug. He began to kick one of the dying Marauders in the ribs and skull, until Walter of Narngalis pushed him aside and with one clean blow of his sword severed the ill-proportioned head of the suffering colossus.

“We are not unseelie wights,” he said coldly to Gunnlaug. “We do not torment our enemies. It is the duty of honorable men to grant mercy. We owe our fellow men a clean death, at least, be they ever so ill-made.”

“It was only sport,” the Grïmnørslander retorted sourly. “Let’s go hunting the rest of these filth. That was the best amusement I have had since I speared that big boar in the Forest of Svalbard.”

“Nay, Gunnlaug. Darkness falls, and they are gone,” said Ronin.

“In that case, let us hunt game!”

Walter said, “There are some few injured men here, in addition to Halvdan, and we must bear them to shelter. Besides, with all that shouting, the quarry will be far away.”

“Then let us bring our wounded to the village down there in the valley,” Gunnlaug said. “We might get us some beer and enjoy some wenching.”

Wearily, Halvdan clapped a scored and bloody hand on his brother’s shoulder. He shook his head. “Come away, Gunnlaug,” he said. “Come away, come back to the lodge. This night’s work is done.”

Gunnlaug sneered and scowled, reluctantly acquiescing to the decision of the majority.

Prince Kieran’s equerry, skilled in healing, bound the bleeding cuts of the injured men. The other attendants fashioned makeshift litters from birch-boughs to carry their dead and wounded.

The sun had set, leaving a pale orange smear across the roof of the ocean. Lit by the soft radiance of afterglow, the burdened men trudged back to the hunting lodge. The Steward of the Lodge and his staff rushed out to meet the returning party, proffering aid.

Halvdan, who had managed to stay on his feet, his arm across the strong shoulders of Kieran, said, “Send messengers to my father and Hrosskel at Trøndelheim, and to the village of Ødegaard beyond the Fiskflød. Tell them Marauders roam in these parts.”

By the time they reached the threshold there had as yet been no news of Gearnach. He had not returned. White stars blazed over the sky-stabbing crags, and still there came no sign of the avenging knight.

While the rest of the wounded were being doctored, the five princes bathed and put on fresh garments. Afterwards they dined together in a long room warmed by a bright hearth-fire. Lost in their thoughts and their exhaustion, they conversed very little. The only sounds to be heard were the clatter of cutlery, the roar of the blaze in the fireplace and the eerie cries of the wind careering in from the ocean, which plucked at the eaves and rattled the panes. Once, Walter of Narngalis broke the silence.

“I cannot help but wonder why those cave-dwellers traveled so far west.”

“ ’Tis not out of character,” replied Kieran of Slievmordhu. “Marauders prefer to prey in regions they have previously left alone, where villagers are unsuspecting and unwary. It is known also that some amongst them are wont to travel and explore, perhaps in search of new lairs.”

Following this brief exchange, silence again stole over the fellowship. As they hearkened to the wind’s lonely lament their thoughts fled into the darkness beyond the lodge’s thick stone wralls. Somewhere out there in the distance was a lone knight, perhaps wandering lost, perhaps lying dead. They listened for any hint of Gearnach’s return, but all they could hear was the incessant wind, and the scrape of a twig against the roof-shingles, and the sudden sputter of sparks exploding in the grate.

Evening dragged into night. The heads of the royal youths began to nod, and, wearied by their exploits of high adventure the princes took themselves to their couches to rest. Still no tramping footsteps echoed on the steep path leading up to the lodge, signaling the return of a weary knight. Throughout the lightless hours there came no knock at the door, no voice calling out from beneath the windows; only the screech of a passing owl, the disquieting
high-pitched laughter of eldritch wights and the sobbing of some mortal sleeper in the lodge, trapped by evil dreams.

Beyond the walls, mighty breakers pounded the cliffs all night, and the wind barreled in over the brine, sharp with salt and ice. When the princes awoke at first light there was yet no word of their missing comrade.

“Get up a search party,” Halvdan Torkilsalven commanded his retainers. They hastened to obey, but no hope shone in their countenances.

The faces of Halvdan’s companions were also grave. “He was a valiant knight,” said Walter of Narngalis.

“The best of warriors,” said Ronin.

“Aye,” said Gunnlaug. “None shall dispute his worthiness.”

“But many shall mourn,” said Kieran of Slievmordhu. “Many shall mourn.”

It was just as the search party was mounted and accoutred and about to depart that Gearnach came back. The knight arrived haggard, bloodstained and weary at the door of the hunting lodge, in the cold, cobalt light of early dawn. Triumphantly he held aloft a gruesome object; the severed head of a Marauder, which he gripped by the roots of the hair.

“I took him!” he proclaimed, his voice rasping with fatigue. “I took him.”

He staggered, and fell into the arms of the attendants, who bore him indoors to ply him with wine and water. The princes were avid to hear his tale, and indeed the knight refused to eat a bite until he had recounted the story, with the bloody head propped up before him on the table, its eyes glazed and its jaw horribly askew.

“I pursued him without rest,” Gearnach said grimly. “Through thicket and briar, over tor and down dale, though it seemed every unseelie wight in Grïmnørsland was abroad—duergars lurking behind every rock, hobyahs crouching on every bough, drowners beckoning from shadowy streams, fuathan pinning me with their unwinking stares as I ran by. A waterhorse came at me from a black pool deep in some ferny hollow. Once, three maidens in misty robes beseeched me to join their dancing beneath the trees, where human bones, paler than their gowns, lay glimmering. I am too canny to be tricked, but never have the charms I carry stood me in such good stead—my amber talisman, my steel weapons, the four-leafed clover and red verbena stitched into the hem of my shirt, and all the rest. No wicked wight could stop me. All night I hunted him, and at the end I had my way.” He downed a swig from his
tankard and wiped his mouth with a filthy sleeve. “I would not let him escape,” he informed his enthralled audience. “Had I not caught him I would be roaming the wildwoods seeking him yet. A wrong has been righted.”

“Why so zealous, Two-Swords?” Gunnlaug asked. “You might have let the cur go, and saved yourself some trouble.”

Gearnach turned to the questioner and fixed him with a flinty gaze. “My Lord, he tried to abduct one who was in my charge. No thing, foul or fair, man or un-man, shall do dishonor to me or mine and not suffer for it.”

Gunnlaug barked out a short laugh of approval at this vindictive creed.

When the tale had been told, a basin of clear water was fetched. Conall Gearnach laved his bearded face and brawny hands before falling ravenously on a repast of bread and meat. Meanwhile four of the princes went out deerhunting. Out of respect for Halvdan’s deceased footboy, Walter, Kiernan and Ronin had been reluctant to embark on the jaunt, but Gunnlaug was insistent and eventually proved persuasive.

Halvdan remained at the lodge, his arms and ribs bandaged. He watched his brother and companions disappear down the gravel path, the golden glow of morning stretching their shadows long upon the ground. Afterwards he went to the stables to greet his horse and ensure that it was comfortably housed. Many thoughts were disquieting him, and his wounds throbbed painfully.

He was concerned about the intrusion of Marauders so far west, and wondered what had given rise to their enterprise; but more than that, as he ran his mind over the trials he had endured at the hands of the brigands, he mused upon what would have befallen had Conall Gearnach not come to his rescue. His death would have been certain, the length of his suffering open to conjecture. To the knight’s sheer stubbornness and impetuous courage he owed all. Two-Swords could be violently impulsive at times, but that trait could actually be an advantage in a warrior. Moreover, the knight was amongst the most chivalrous of men. Indeed, in Halvdan’s opinion Gearnach was more honorable by far than the master he faithfully served, King Uabhar of Slievmordhu. Thorgild’s son had been privy to certain tales of savagery, and he was not blinded to Uabhar’s character by filial loyalty, as his friend Kieran was. The King of Slievmordhu, Halvdan privately judged, was two-faced; dangerously so.

Continuing to ponder these matters, he returned to the warmth of the lodge’s main chamber.

Illuminated by radiance brightening through the cracks of the shutters in addition to the flicker of lanterns and firelight, Conall Gearnach was still
seated at the table, finishing the last crumbs of breakfast. Halvdan rested troubled eyes upon the man who had rescued him from harm and avenged his abduction. Gearnach’s unhesitating altruism had moved him profoundly. As the knight rose from his seat and made to ascend the stairs to his bed-chamber, Halvdan addressed him quietly, his voice steady.