The tree grew around the blade as though it had been there for ten years or more. Its smooth, silvery bark bulged around the base of the blade like a fist, leaving only a sliver of black glass to shine in the torchlight.
“Forgive me,” I said. “Lord Oeric told me you had taken the knife from his hall only a fortnight ago. I see now that he told me a lie.”
The man in the deer-skull helmet crouched down to look me in the eye. “No, he told you true. We recovered the knife, and the bodies of our brothers and sisters that were hung on his wall, and the god of the grove took them back.”
Now I understood. Despite how deeply the knife was embedded in the tree, without so much as a splinter out of place, the leather wrap upon its hilt had not decayed. It was not time that had caused the wood to grow around the blade, but an act of otherworldly power.
I had no idea how I was going to retrieve it.
“So, as you can see,” the man continued, standing and shaking out his cloak of hides, “I’m afraid you won’t be taking the knife back to your employer in the south.”
“And I’m afraid I must insist,” I said. I tried to draw my feet underneath me and stand, but the toes of my boots slipped against the moss-covered stone. “It belongs to Deinaros the All-knowing, who inherited it from his master, Maponos the Ever-living. I need it to return to the hands of its owner.”
One of the others, standing beside the tree, gave me a dubious look, the paint between his brows creasing. “What are you talking about?”
“The obsidian knife. It’s a ritual weapon, and it carries with it the smell of fresh blood, no matter how often it is cleaned,” I said.
“It was, and remains, a sacrificial blade,” the first man said. “You know it well, but it has never left these lands. Your employer was lying to you.”
Deinaros might have lied. More likely, he had simply neglected to tell me all of the truth, just as he had done with the Sage’s Mirror. Or, I thought, his title of All-knowing was a pretention he did not deserve.
What did it matter? I had traveled the whole world to reach him, and he had promised he would open the way for me. If I did as I was instructed, I would see Khalim again. If, on the other hand, I let myself doubt, I would only sink into despair.
“I do not wish to quarrel with you,” I said. “But the knife must return with me to the south. I have no choice.”
The first man dropped his spear, and it clattered to the wet earth. A knife appeared in his hand, this one iron and sharpened to a wicked point. Quicker than my eyes could follow, he brought the knife up under my chin, tilting my face up to his.
He grinned, again, though by now I understood it was more of a snarl. “Then I have no choice but to kill you,” he said.
My neck strained to keep the soft flesh under my skull away from the point of the knife. I tugged at my bonds, but the knots held. “I’m not your enemy,” I said through my teeth.
“No?” He tilted his head to one side, studying my face. “You come here from the hall of a man who has slain our siblings, burned our lands, and stolen our children.”
“I escaped from his hall,” I argued. “His men hunted me across the fields, but I evaded them in the dark.”
My captor went on as though I had said nothing. “And now you wish to take something else from us, something that has finally returned to its proper resting place, and hand it over to some performing magician to do gods know what? If you’re not our enemy, you’re no better than a rat in our grain stores.”
With his face inches from mine, I could see him clearly: he was no older than I, under the blue pigment, with liquid dark eyes and a scar at the corner of his mouth. Even as he stared me down, his knife to my throat, doubt made him hesitate. He didn’t want to kill me—not here in this sacred place, while I was at his mercy. The others looked to him for leadership, and he took up its mantle only reluctantly. He might have hidden from them the way his eyes darted about for some sign to tell him how to proceed, but he could not hide it from me.
“I can help you,” I said. “I have no love for the men in the ring-fort. Once, I think, your people and mine were closer kin. I am a warrior like you. I hunted the lind-worm in the far northern sea, and crossed the mountains alone. I competed in the tournament of Phyreios and emerged a champion. I have faced gods and monsters and the wicked ambitions of men, and still I live to tell the tale. I’m worth more to you alive.”
The knife lowered. A single trickle of blood made its way down my neck.
“Let’s say I leave you alive, then,” the man said. “Will you come back here with an axe at the first opportunity and desecrate our sacred place to obtain the knife?”
It was a distinct possibility. I hoped it would not come to that. “I’ll go only where I’m told,” I promised. “But in the meantime, perhaps I can convince you and your gods that my cause is just.”
His only answer was a smirk. He got to his feet, retrieving the spear and sheathing the knife. “Cut his bonds. We’ll take him to the fort. If he tries to run, kill him.”
***
A thin cast of predawn light fell over the forest as we approached the forest stronghold. The trees had been cleared in a wide circle, leaving no place to hide as one approached. In that vast window, the sky was a pale blue-gray. At the center, a high palisade wall a little wider than the ring-fort of Lord Oeric. Smoke curled up from several fires within.
All at once, I returned to the stronghold upon the Iron Mountain, where I spent my days digging holes for a similar palisade and my nights with Khalim. That peace, I believed then, could have lasted forever, but it had been little more than a space between breaths, a quiet moment just before the arrival of a storm. I had seen that storm coming even as I denied it, as Khalim dreamt each night of the terrible things to come.
The gate cracked and then shuddered open, pushed open by a man in a hide cloak on one side and a strong young woman on the other. I filed in with my captors, my head down in what I hoped was a posture of contrition.
Inside the wall, a village was waking up with the morning sun. A longhouse stood opposite the gate, its doors open and its central fire glowing. Two dozen short-legged sheep ran out the gate as we came in, chased by a small boy with a staff. I could hear the forge before I saw it, its bellows panting and the smith’s tools clanging as she set them out.
I was taken to the longhouse. The other men drifted away to their other duties, leaving me with the man in the deer skull and a pair of women tending the fire.
He pulled a blanket from the shadows and tossed it to me. “You can sleep here for a while. When you wake, I’ll decide what to do with you.”
Exhaustion weighed down my shoulders and turned my eyes dry. I wouldn’t take this kindness for granted.
A frown crossed his face, cracking the paint. “What’s your name, stranger?”
“Eske of the Clan of the Bear,” I said. “World-treader, erstwhile champion, and your grateful guest.”
That drew out the flash of a genuine smile. “If only I had the time to listen to your tales,” he said. “I am Cullen, son of Bearach, now first of the war-band.”
The title fell from his mouth with bitterness. He’d not been long in his position, and he resented it. I wondered if his predecessor had been one of those hung on Oeric’s wall and then buried among the standing stones.
I bade him good morning, and found a quiet corner beside a wooden bench to rest. I slept without dreaming.
When I woke, a small gathering of men were eating a cold meal of bread and cheese beside the fire. They regarded me without surprise, and without speaking, invited me to partake. I accepted with a nod of my head, and we ate in silence.
I left the longhouse, walking out into a soft, steady rain. Thunder complained somewhere in the distance. I looked around at the muddy paths of this walled village and, not for the first time, wondered if I had made the correct choice. I was no closer to obtaining the knife, and Bran was still in Oeric’s fort, but I yet lived.
If I stayed here too long, would Cricket assume me dead? Would Deinaros send another hapless adventurer after me?
Cullen found me standing in the rain like a fool. He’d washed off the paint and removed the antlered headdress, wearing instead a hooded cloak. He was no longer the apparition in the forest, bedecked in bones and skins. By the look of him, he was rather ordinary: short and almost slight, but with a strength in his arms that suggested long years of fighting and labor upon the village’s walls. His great dark eyes gave him the brief impression of guileless innocence, but there was a hungry look to his face. He didn’t quite trust me, not yet.
“The rain will pass soon,” he said. “You should come hunting with us.” He reached under his cloak and handed me my harpoon.
This was a test. I’d have the opportunity to betray the forest folk, to lose myself in the woods and find my way back to their sacred grove or out to the fields surrounding the ring-fort, but I was no fool. They’d hunt me down, surely—their knowledge of these lands was far superior to mine.
Lord Oeric had tried to hold me captive. Whatever quarrel he had with these people, I was inclined to trust their word over his.
“Thank you,” I said. “Truly. I would be honored to accompany you on a hunt.”
And so I passed the next few months, living and working with the war-band of this small settlement in the dense forest. My task remained in my mind, but the long days of labor made the ritual knife a small, distant thing. I intended each morning to ask if I could see the grove again, and what sort of offerings its gods might prefer, but by evening, I wanted nothing more than to sleep. I hadn’t forgotten Bran, either, and hoped to retrieve him.
It was a hard life these people lived, but a good one. If I had come here after my long winter in the mountains, after the loss of my ship, I might have stayed here until the day I died.
It was not long, however, until Oeric’s men brought their torches to the forest, and the illusion of safety was shattered at last.
Back to Chapter LVI: The Burial-Ground
Forward to Interlude Five: A Place Between
In case you missed it, this draft is now complete, with a total of 68 chapters and 6 interludes. I appreciate you following along! If you have questions, comments, or just want to say hi, comments are open on all my posts.
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