In the Eye of Heaven Part 5

The skald smiled. "No death. Not in the plan. Yes? But men were dying-sort of. Right? No birth. None of that. But some of them died before the Mother was moved to join us. No Queen of Heaven. Check your Book of Moons." Book of Moons."

No birth. No crying babes. No silver moons. It was nonsense.

"There was a time before the Queen came," Heremund declared. "Before she sorted men and women, birth and death. Right? So what happened to those who died before, eh?"

"I'm no priest, skald."

"What's become of the poor b.u.g.g.e.rs who died then, before death? Then and in all the Ages since? The Book Book is silent. That's who you met." is silent. That's who you met."

Durand didn't much like the thought of those twisted men and their dark eyes festering in the Dawn of Creation. He had had enough. One explanation eluded him.

"And they're prophets?"

"No. Not exactly. They hate us, is all, and they want to know whose blood is in us. They want to know which of their old friends is laughing at them, living on. But sometimes they'll let slip. The wise women reckon you can divide us up by which of those forefathers we favor. The old b.u.g.g.e.rs are accidental prophets."

Durand tried to remember the name he'd heard. "I was Bru-"

"-No!" snapped Heremund. The man actually clapped his hand over Durand's mouth-only surprise let him get so close. 'Talk to the wise women. Tell your b.l.o.o.d.y horse. I won't hear it!" The man took a breath, lifting his palm. "Still, it's something you've met the old b.u.g.g.e.rs. That's something. And it's something else that you've got loose. There ain't many alive." The skald was thinking now.

He smiled, waving the whole thing away. "The wise women make too much fuss over the First Ones. Most of us are muddled up. A bit of one, a bit of the other. Mongrel pups. It's only when the line pops out pure, you've got to worry. Then things can start happening. New songs chiming with old tunes."

Durand closed his eyes. "Why the blackthorn?"

"Hmm? Oh that? There's poetry in the old world sometimes. Blackthorn: the dark tree of fate, with its guarded, bitter fruit?"

Durand grunted, his head swimming. "My horse." Brag was likely freezing. "Someone's got to do something about the horse."

"Yes. I'll see what I can manage."

HE OPENED HIS eyes on the cottage dark. eyes on the cottage dark.

"It was you with the tapping as well, yes?" Heremund's voice was very quiet.

"What?" said Durand. He had been sleeping.

The skald abruptly bustled to make a meal of bread, cheese, and beer.

"So you're awake, are you?" he called across the low room.

Durand had no notion of whether it was morning, night, or noon. Little light found its way into the windowless hut. "Good morning," Durand replied warily, climbing to his feet. He was sure he had heard the other question, but his bladder was full to bursting, so he slipped out through the door into what did indeed seem to be a morning mist. Brilliance swelled the eastern Heavens. Durand thought of the King of Heaven and his perfect world all those Ages ago, and felt an urge to drop in the wet gra.s.s to pray the Dawn's Thanksgiving. Instead, he untied his breeches and did what he had come to do.

Brag whickered, likely thinking of oats. Heremund had heaped blankets across the horse's back and freed him of his saddle.

When Durand pushed back into the low darkness of the hut, the bow-legged skald's pack was loaded and he was busily grinding out the fire's last embers with his toe. Looking round, Durand discovered that the man had brought Brag's saddlebags inside. Bread and beer of his own was stowed away.

When he had finished eating, Heremund stood. "And where am I taking you?"

"What?"

"Well. I'm not one to leave a thing half-done, and I'd feel an awful fool if you died tomorrow after I saved you today."

Durand was legitimately surprised. "There's no call for that. You've business of your own, I'm sure."

The little man caught hold of the various bags and waddled past Durand into the light.

"Ah," said Heremund. "But you are a knight errant, are you? You are fixed on it?"

Durand called out through the low doorway. "I thought we'd agreed I was no priest." He curled and uncurled a callused fist. A decade of drills, sparring, hunting, and tilting at the quintain had given him the hands of a woodcutter.

Noticing, Heremund winced. "Or milkmaid either, I'm sure. Poor cows'd never forgive you."

"One thing is certain: I cannot stay here forever."

Heremund was heaping bags around Brag's ankles. Abruptly, the little man stopped, peering round at the close hills and mist.

"No," he agreed. "The shepherd will likely come back."

Durand ducked under the doorframe, and stood up under the pale skies, twisting his neck. 'There's one way, as I see it I must catch the train of some lord at tournament and show the man I'm worth keeping."

The skald was now busy, swinging saddlebags over Brag's back. Once more he seemed distracted, squinting off into the mist.

"If there's a wellborn man who needs another strong back among his retainers, you might hold on. Still, it's late in the year and an awfully long shot."

Durand, one eyebrow raised, had walked up behind the little man. He had to look up a good foot before he saw Durand's face.

"Of course," he said, "they're a practical lot, some of them."

"Where's the next tourney?"

The little man held up his thick-necked mandora, searching in vain for a spot on Brag's back. "I think I'll have to carry this. We should find you a packhorse."

Shaking his head, Durand swung up into the saddle, and extended a hand to the skald.

At the last moment, Heremund made a face. He snuffed at the air. "All right, what is is that?" A night on the hills had packed Durand's head past noticing a stray scent. that?" A night on the hills had packed Durand's head past noticing a stray scent.

"Awful, whatever it is," said Heremund. "We'll try for Ram's Hill. They have a good tourney there most years, come the Blood Moon. It's a bit of a trek, but we've got time. We should try to find an inn tonight, I reckon."

"Right." Imagining a dry room with a big fire, Durand urged Brag down the track.

He caught the reek nearly as soon as Brag moved. Heremund, right in his ear, said, "G.o.ds." "G.o.ds."

NOT MORE THAN a dozen paces from the hut, a matted form sprawled in the bushes. As Durand drove Brag a few steps further, a bald-faced rook jerked its head from a wound and lurched into the air. There were white-tined antlers. a dozen paces from the hut, a matted form sprawled in the bushes. As Durand drove Brag a few steps further, a bald-faced rook jerked its head from a wound and lurched into the air. There were white-tined antlers.

It was a red deer: a full-grown stag.

"Host of Heaven," Heremund muttered. "It was a wild night I suppose the rut's just ending. He must have been driven out and died on the hills. Panicked in the storm."

Durand saw the great head in profile, neck ruffed like an eagle. Ten points. A match for the Col stags painted on his own s.h.i.+eld.

"I-I'm plagued with omens," Durand murmured. "Now this, on setting out. What is a man to read here? A wild stag killed in the storm. Torn and lying. What doom am I meant to read here?"

Heremund was silent at Durand's shoulder, shaking his head: tiny convulsive gestures. "You see something, don't you?" Durand said. "I read no dooms," Heremund breathed. 'Tell me what you see."

"No." Heremund was whispering. "Once, in warmer days, I served at a court. A great man. And his wife was with child. They summoned the wise woman. But it went wrong, and, though the child lived, its mother could not."

Durand glanced to the stag, its gray tongue curled. "What has this to-"

"There-there was a prophecy. While the wise woman, she's rubbing linseed and balsam into dead mother and live son under the Paling Moon, there is a hard, cold glimpse of the babe's doom.

"Everything the lad did would come to nothing," Heremund said, quiet as thought. Heremund said, quiet as thought.

"h.e.l.ls." Durand remembered cringing in the well with that thing that might have been a Power. What would he have done with that that news? news?

"Was it true, Heremund?"

"I have heard things lately. I have heard things that make me wonder."

4. The Hungry Leagues

It should be any time," said Heremund, peering down the trail. They hoped for a town. Always, they were too late.

For two weeks, they had chased the skald's hunches round the south and east of great Silvermere. At Ram's Hill, they missed a tournament by three days. At Mereness, a pockmarked gatekeeper barked that there would be no tourney that year, someone had died. After a week, the few hard pennies in Durand's purse were gone with the last heel of bread. Now, Heremund was only certain of one final open tournament before the winter snows: Red Winding. Worse, a safe way around Silvermere might take them more than a hundred leagues through wild country, and they had only a week to reach it.

They rode hard. The king's messengers covered fifteen leagues in a day. But the king's men rode fresh horses. And they did not ride double.

Still, Durand knew that he must reach Red Winding. Already, they were waking hungry and riding tired. Durand feared that traveling in his company might kill the little skald, but there was no way a man could wait out the long empty winter.

Now, though, they were hunting the chill twilight for a town. Heremund had promised.

A dog barked somewhere ahead."What do you think?" Durand said.

"Aye," Heremund agreed, and, sure enough, between a pair of mud-dark hills, emerged the thatched hovels of a village.

Heremund leaned from his perch behind Durand's saddle. "Now, I'll see if I can't sing for our supper, eh? We'll-"

"You there, stop!" ordered a woman's voice.

Lean men filled the track ahead, billhooks and mattocks in their fists.

Heremund crumpled his hat in his hands, and called out: "We mean no harm."

"Fancy that. They mean no harm. Let them in," said the woman, and, when a few of the plowmen in the track glanced around, unsure, "Hold your ground, you daft wh.o.r.esons!"

"Listen strangers," she advised. "It's after curfew, and we've had some trouble with lads on the road. Thieving. Filching livestock. We lost three wethers meant for salting just yesterday. There's no work here till the Sowing Moon, and we don't need no trouble from strange men now, do we?"

"Madam," Heremund called, "we ain't common laborers come scrounging for-"

"You'd say that, now, wouldn't you?""On a fine steed?"

"Riding double. And I've half a mind to ask where you came by the brute. He don't look too well looked after to me."

"My friend here has been at the court of-""Right! You've had polite, now it's time you were off. Lads?"A couple of the long-faced peasants wound up with slings.

"Ride, Durand!" Heremund hissed. Stones whistled and zipped past them.

They rode safely up into the nearby hills and out of range.

"That was lucky," Durand said, having felt the stones pa.s.s close.

"Speak for yourself." The skald was rubbing the side of his head. "I think I'm going to have a thick ear out of this." "You all right?"

"Aye. Or I will be. Always bad at Blood Moon, with winter coming on. And this year, with Mad Borogyn's uprising in the Heithan Marches, and the king's new taxes... Still, by the Bitter Moon, the mobs will be gone."

"Aye." He had no trouble imagining that the dest.i.tute laborers who staggered into the snows of the Bitter Moon weren't much trouble to anyone much longer.

Again, poor Brag was trudging through wet woodlands. Durand didn't know how long the hunter could stand the abuse. A well-fed horse didn't much mind the cold, but, lean and sopping, Durand worried about the animal.

The track mounted the flank of a wooded ridge."I don't suppose you know a hut round here here somewhere?" somewhere?"

"Why should I need a hut when the people are so friendly?" He gasped at a lurching stride from Brag. "I swear, jostling around back here is going to split me in two. When you're trudging in the muck, it looks like luxury, but there's nothing left of me but a-"

The big horse had put a foot wrong. Poised on the slope, his legs shot out from under him. Without a lifetime's practice, Durand would have had his leg snapped as Brag slammed hard, then slid. Heremund yelped.

In a rus.h.i.+ng instant, all three were cras.h.i.+ng downhill, catching at saplings and tumbling. Bracken, gorse, and blackthorn lashed at them as they bounded through.

Finally, Durand was free and on his feet. A stand of dogwood had finally caught Brag in a black tangle of wreckage. Heremund was gathering himself up. They had torn twenty yards of bush. Brag thrashed his limbs.

"Oh G.o.d," Durand said and scrambled down the slope. .The horse was screaming. Heremund slid in close."G.o.ds," he said.

Durand scrambled through the tangled stand of saplings and tried to reach the animal's legs. Durand had to feel for breaks. The hunter's stiff las.h.i.+ngs threatened to brain him, but he slipped close and saw what he had feared. No horse was made for such a fall. There was a sick bend in the animal's right hind leg. The cannon bone had been snapped right below the hock.

"Ah G.o.d," said Durand.

The animal lashed harder for a moment, feeling trapped, no doubt, or scared by the pain.

Heremund's wide eyes were on Durand, fearful or hopeful from beyond the animal's flank. But Durand shook his head quick, half-denying what was in front of him. He had pushed too hard.

"Queen of Heaven," he said through clenched teeth. He remembered a thousand forest leagues chasing red deer and roe, driving the boar from his den, pounding through the sunlight with the hunters and liegemen of old Duke Abrava.n.a.l's court by Silvermere.

The animal was screaming. Durand swallowed, seeing that Heremund would be no help with what he must do. While Durand had no sword, he still had his knife. He laid his hand on Brag's cheek, then, pus.h.i.+ng to hold the animal, he made the butcher's cut where the blood pulsed in the big animal's throat. There was nothing to do then but hold on as the animal bled out When it was finally over, Durand stood, shaking. He gathered their belongings: bedrolls, mandora, and an iron roll of mail. Heremund watched, saying nothing, but then joined him.

Durand fought a fierce compulsion to return to the village and teach a few villagers the cost of turning travelers away.