“If you were hoping for another chance at the knife, my friend,” Cullen said at last, “I’m afraid your luck has run out.”
He turned, his shoulder twisting away from my hand, and busied himself with striking a flint. Sparks bloomed from his fingers to die upon the mossy ground. His torch, an oily rag wrapped around a splintery fragment of wood that might have come from the palisade, flared to life and illuminated the standing stones.
My arm dropped to my side. The loss of contact was like ice in my chest, far too cold for the mild evening. I looked away. “That’s not why I’m here.”
He raised the torch, and I could feel his gaze on my face. “No?”
“I was looking for you,” I said. It was true, though now that I was here, the uncovered obsidian pommel glinted at me from the tree like a watchful eye. Deinaros had claimed that his master had created it, but it appeared that the god of the grove believed otherwise. I would have had to destroy the tree to retrieve it—if, indeed, the powers both human and divine in this place permitted me even to touch it.
A moment passed, the only sound the sputtering of the dim torch. “I’m sorry,” Cullen said softly, and all thoughts of the blade fled from me. “You fought well. You don’t deserve mistrust after you risked your life for us. I should thank you, instead.”
I shook my head. “There’s no need. The fort was my home, too, if only for a short time. I could not have done otherwise.”
“Well, thank you, all the same.” He moved to stand beside me again, the light falling upon the silver tree. “My father was the last to wield it. He lost it, and his life, the last time Lord Oeric’s men came this way with their torches and spears. They put his head on a pike and strung his body from their wall—him, and my sister’s husband, and our brother. The women they buried in a shallow pit at the edge of the forest.”
I bit back my empty words of sympathy. He did not need them. What he needed was my silence as he told his tale.
“I got them back. My father and my sister’s husband and my brother, who led the warband, and three more of my friends. I cut them down myself. I smelled of rot and old blood for days. The others I didn’t find, not before the wolves and the crows got to them. My cousins, my friends, my former lover. The ravens ate her eyes.”
In the camp, a short distance away, someone had lit a small fire. The trees danced in low, red light. Someone else was weeping.
“They took my sister and her little boy this time,” Cullen said. “And half a dozen others. I have to get them back.”
“Do you think they still live?” I asked.
He turned as if he had just remembered I was there. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. They need to come home.” Half a mirthless smile flashed across his face. “Or to what’s left of it, anyway.”
All thoughts of the knife and Deinaros fled my mind—though I still thought of my quest, and of Khalim, and the hollow cavern where my heart had been. It was especially empty now. Cullen was a warrior born and bred, and so unlike the man I had loved. They certainly looked nothing alike, but I could not help but find a similarity in the set of his jaw and the grim acceptance of an impossible task.
“I’m yours to command,” I said. “I will help in any way I can.”
Bran was relieved to be free of the fort at last, and I believe he was happy to have found my company again, though by all evidence, Ansgard had not treated him ill. He grazed on the underbrush as the warband, now only a few in number, conferred around the low fire. The scant remaining grain stores had to be preserved for human consumption in the days to come.
I was the only one in possession of a horse. Cullen had learned to ride, he said, as a child, but in the long years of hardship since then, all the horses his people once kept had been sold, slaughtered, or stolen. They also no longer possessed the herds of cattle that had made their forefathers prosperous. What few sheep and chickens had lived in the fort were now scattered in the forest, and only a handful had been recovered.
It was decided that I would ride out to Lord Oeric’s fort and draw the attention of his riders. Gods willing, his archers would also pursue me. I would have to move quickly—far quicker than I was accustomed to, even after years of travel with Bran. I concealed my trepidation. Bran was a swift horse, whether his rider liked it or not, and a swift horse was needed. A few others would attack the fort on foot, slipping away into the forest as soon as Oeric’s men emerged to chase them.
Once the guards upon the wall had thinned out, Cullen would lead the remainder of the warband to scale the walls and recover the people who had been taken.
I slept uneasily that night, and spent the day helping to construct makeshift shelters. The forest folk had ceased their weeping, even the children; they had been displaced from their homes at least once already, fleeing to the relative safety of the palisade wall. They had mourned then. Now, most were too exhausted to cry.
These people were my kin, however distantly. They spoke a similar tongue and prayed to familiar gods, and I saw the same spiral pattern that was tattooed on my arms wherever I looked: on their textiles and metalworks and on the standing stones of the burial ground. I felt a certain obligation to help them.
That I could not bear the thought of Cullen believing me a traitor, one who had earned his trust only to destroy his people’s sacred place and abscond with their relic, was a secondary concern.
And so, I rode out before sunset, with enough daylight left to keep Bran’s feet sure as we crossed the fields and night close enough at hand that I could disappear into the forest before long. I took a winding path through the woods, guiding my horse through the underbrush. The trail I inevitably laid behind me could not lead the men of King Wulfric back to the burial ground and the people sheltering there.
The western sky glowed red, and the yellow grasses undulating in the evening wind was like a field of fire. The ring-fort stood hunched upon the hill, shrouded in shadow, the domes of the watchmen’s helmets pacing back and forth behind the edge of the wall. I slowed Bran’s pace as we came nearer, listening for their shouts.
More helmets gathered on the ramparts facing me. I lifted my harpoon to my shoulder and threw.
It sliced through the heavy, damp air, whistling as it went, and landed at the base of the wall with a thunderous crash. The men above ducked, disappearing behind the ramparts.
They need not have worried. Their fortification was unharmed, and so were they. I called the harpoon back to my hand and urged Bran on to the gate.
The first arrows pursued us before we had completed a quarter circle around the ring-fort. Bran took off at a gallop, leaving me clinging to the saddle, the wind tearing at my clothing and stinging my face. I tried to steer him back toward the fort, but he paid me no heed. His hooves tore at the tilled ground and kicked up clods of mud that spattered behind us.
After a third volley, we were out of reach. Bran slowed and let me turn him back toward the fort. I could tell, however, by the tilt of his ears, that he doubted the wisdom of my directions.
“Lord Oeric!” I called out. “Your son is dead by my hand. I had no choice but to slay him. Release the people you took, and I’ll see that his body is returned to you.”
I had no idea what had happened to Ansgard’s earthly remains. He was likely still lying beside the ruins of the palisade, but Oeric did not know that. If our scouts were correct, his men had yet to reenter the forest after their raid. I suspected, by the count of helmets upon the wall, that King Wulfric’s army had returned to their own lands, pleased with the success of their brief campaign.
Yes, I did think of them as our scouts. How quickly I had come to count myself as one of the forest folk.
The gate to the ring-fort shuddered open. Two men on horses, dressed in mail and armed with short spears and shields, came out at a run. Behind them, a dozen men on foot followed.
Another volley of arrows, this one from the edge of the forest, darkened the sky. The riders abruptly turned, their horses screaming in protest. Feathered shafts sprouted from the ground beneath their hooves. The men on foot scrambled into formation, raising their shields.
The warband had arrived.
I had to keep the gate to the fort open. I called to Bran, and he started forward, skirting around the other horses and avoiding the spears of the shield line. The riders followed me. We cut a muddy swathe through the grass.
I threw the harpoon again. It landed by the gate, sending the closer end of the shield line into disarray. The pair of guards struggling to close the gate fell to the ground, their arms over their heads, as earth and bits of plant matter rained down upon them.
As my weapon returned to me, the riders in pursuit raised their spears and charged me in a tightening arc. They were pressing me into the shield line, whose spears were already braced to skewer Bran.
I turned, pulling hard on Bran’s reins and eliciting a disgruntled whinny from his strained mouth. We had to keep moving, or the archers on the wall would put a swift end to my campaign of distraction. We slipped out of reach of the spears and flew down the hill, Oeric’s riders in close pursuit. In the briefest of moments before the shield line passed out of my sight, I saw their formation break as they turned to face the advancing warband.
I had opened the gate. Now I had to keep as many of the ring-fort’s eyes on me for as long as I could.
Bran and I reached the bottom of the hill and turned back to the wall. The hill was a field of broken arrows, and in the fading light they cast long, interwoven shadows. With the two riders close at our heels, we charged back to the fort, shafts splintering beneath Bran’s hooves, while the few archers not preoccupied with the gate added to their number. An arrow grazed me across the shoulder. Pain like fire lanced down my arm.
I could no longer see any of the warband. For better or worse, they had made it inside the fort.
I circled again, riding out of reach of the arrows and back again. My pursuers fell behind, their attention divided. I threw my harpoon to draw their eyes back to me.
Suddenly, Bran screamed and reared. I fell from the saddle and landed hard on my back in the torn grass. I got to my knees—standing would make me an easier target—in time to watch Bran run away toward the forest, an arrow protruding from his flank.
My part in this had ended all too soon. Muttering a curse, I stood and ran into the growing darkness.
Back to Chapter LVIII: King Wulfric’s Frontier
Forward to Chapter LX: The Fire
This arc will conclude next chapter, and then it’s onward toward the end! Thanks for reading.
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