Elof swallowed, though his mouth was dry. "Lord, I will. And may I never value mastery greater than the mastery of myself, and the truest desire of my heart."
Korentyn nodded. "So be it!" Then he stepped back suddenly, and stared out at the forest, turned all to white beneath the rising moon, and spoke softly. "And farewell, all! To you, smith so wise, yet unknown even to yourself! You, strong craftsman, worthy citizen! You, princess of our elder kin! You, warrior who could be a king, in the full flower of your youth and strength! See how it ends! Think on me!" And with clawed hands he tore the helm from his head, and hurled the heavy thing the length of the forge, to crash and roll among the coals of the hearthfire. Roc, with a cry, reached for the tongs. But Elof waved him back, and shook his head, and his voice was bitter with grief and disgust.
"Let it melt!"
When they looked back, Korentyn was gone. His long paces in the snow led back to the castle, but that night they saw him there no more, and in the dawning he was gone, departed as he had planned to with the westward hunt. And whether the prince ever came back to the Halls of Summer they never knew, for no mortal man looked upon Korentyn Rhudri again.
Chapter Seven
- The River of Night
Shoulder-deep among the thick bushes the huge beast threw back its head, shaking its shaggy mane in the thin sunlight, its long horn gleaming. Elof and the
alfar
woman ducked hastily lower on their high branch, though they knew it could neither see nor smell them this far downwind. Strings of soil-caked roots hung from its mouth, tangling among the fringes of coarse cream-white fur as its champing jaws pulled them in, its breath steaming in the cold morning air. Its small ears flicked, its little wrinkled eyes blinked about, reddened by the new-risen sun: then it snorted thick clouds from its nostrils and went back to its rooting.
"Be he not a beauty?" whispered the
alfar
woman, half hugging Elof with the spidery arm she kept across his back, nervous he might fall. "And his winter white not yet shed. Long I am watching that one, hasty to have the chase of him, but only this year is he of a lawful age. Already the young males best him at the matings, so he forages alone; soon he will be too old to run far, and then the wolves will have him, or the daggerteeth. Or some nightwalkers. Better and quicker he falls to us!" White teeth flashed in her long brown face.
Elof smiled; though his muscles creaked from endless hours crouched among treelimbs. "Better indeed!" he whispered back. "And all the more honor to us that you share this hunt, Hari!"
"Honor is ours, lord!" Haf! whispered, stabbing Elof still more keenly with shame at the deception he planned. And yet… That odd name Hari was a diminutive of Halveth, an ancient and honored woman's name among the northern royal kin. What blood flowed in her veins? What great lord or lady of Morvan had let fall the shackles of their old life to become her parent? She looked around. "Ah, Gise comes! Do you watch with Lord Elof, Gise, I go to fetch the others." Silently she slithered along the branch and was gone. No less silently, Gise's massive frame, clad in an
alfar
tunic and harness, swung down in her place beside Elof.
Elof looked around, anxious, angry. Gise was at home here, so much so Elof still wondered whether it had been safe to trust him. "By all the powers, Gise!" he hissed as low as he could. "I tell you once more, you've got to come with us! We'll need you, you of all people!" But the big forester only looked away, and shook his head slightly. Elof grabbed him by the shoulder. "You joined this venture to aid the Northland fugitives! It's your duty!"
Gise shook his head again, firmly; more than ever he seemed to fumble for words. "No, Master Elof, no! You, where you will; me, I stay. Like I said to my lord 'fore now. A new home it was I came t'find, and that I have, and damned if I'll leave it!"
Elof sighed. "So you fail us, as well as Arvhes; nothing will detach him from the court."
"And why not?" whispered Gise, the accusation stinging words from him. "Him 'n' me, we're the oldest! We've not the summers left to build new lives, not like you younkers. What'll we find, us, that's better than this? They're gentle folk, these, though a mite slow in the head; take you in, not fuss you. Not jealous with their women, either. I've one among them already, maybe a little 'un on the way." He jabbed a blunt finger into Elof s chest. "You, wise master, don't you go prating to me of your long tomorrow! What's it to me, so far hence even my sons' sons won't see it? You tell me in the here and now what life's better for a forester like me!"
"A free one?"
But Gise shrugged. "Free's as free does, to a plain man like me. The Forest's not half the hard taskmaster your Headmen or town elders were back home; you should know that, master, from all I hear of your beginnings."
Elof grimaced; there was truth in what he said. Now, though, he had fewer doubts; Gise had not changed much, if only because little change had been needed. But that, oddly, made it harder to leave him behind. "If only it did not feel so much like abandoning you…"
Gise grunted. "The River for that! We choose with our eyes open, Arvhes and me. More open than yours, maybe. Hist now, lest he hears us, he below!" But it was to the heights he looked, for just then a soft rustle in the foliage announced the arrival of the other hunters. There was a slight springing of the branch beneath them and Kermorvan inched silently along it. Elof was glad to see him so limblithe after many months of inactivity; they would have need of all his skill and speed for this. Kermorvan's brows arched as he saw the beast their prey.
"Does the onehorn please you, lords?" demanded Hafi softly. "No easy quarry is he! Against his hide mere arrows from the treetops do not serve. Spear or halberd it must be, in belly or throat where he is softest, on the ground and close to! We stalk him through the leaves and of a sudden drop down, fft!"
Elof swallowed, and stole another look at the brute. The idea seemed impossible; the great horselike head was carried higher than any horse's, the horn on it alone almost as tall as himself. It was bulkier even than a dragon, and, save for that living wall the mammut, the largest beast he had ever seen on land. This was madness, and yet Kermorvan was taking it quite calmly, deciding with Hafi which trees would be best. Finally they waved to the others, and the
alfar
moved up to help the humans through the branches. Elof needed little help, even with the halberd slung across his back, and the clumsy pack the
alfar
had tried to persuade him to leave. He had grown used to this way of getting about; there was no denying the thrill of being at home so high up. It made the Forest seem a different place, less hostile, more fascinating in the richness and variety of the life that worked out its purposes below. It was like nothing he had ever experienced in the world outside…
And then he realized with a little tremor of shock that the world outside scarcely seemed real anymore. Once again, far from his shielding forge, he could hardly imagine a world beyond the trees. For the passing of two seasons he had been immured within them, more than half a year of travel and of rest. Or was that all? He seemed to have resisted the Forest's timeless thrall better than his fellows, but might not that be an illusion also? Might not a century have passed out there while he had shaped and schemed in the shadows? Kerbryhaine might be long since fallen and overrun, mere circles of overgrown ruins haunted by owl and wolf, or torn down piecemeal to surround the Ekwesh stockades… He shuddered. A sudden horror of the outside passed through him, of haste and peril and problems he could not solve with study and cunning and skilled labor; he did not want to face it, he wanted to lurk and lair among the trees, and forget. Then the touch of a hand jolted him alert, a silent signal passing among the shadowy shapes in the leaves. He peered down; he could see
little
save bushes, but he could hear the
snort
and grunt of the onehorn all too loudly. A bush jerked noisily aside, and a shoulder of tangled white hair came into view, too close for his comfort. Slowly, silently, he unslung the halberd, made sure his pack would not hitch upon the branches. To his left he heard a faint sound, and saw there Borhi, sweating and shaking, green with fear. The young corsair had balked violently at the idea of leaving the castle, but had decided he liked being left there rather less. Elof gestured reassuringly, but himself began to shiver. He would have been tense enough simply with the prospect of facing that beast. But far more than that was about to happen.
Another touch, a sharp one, and then a sudden fierce springing in the branch beneath him. There was no time to think, to hesitate; Elof simply kicked out his legs, the whipping branch jerked out from under him, as the trap below the gibbet, and into empty air he plunged. But the ground was nearer than it looked, his feet were ill prepared. It slammed into his soles with bruising force, he fell aside and rolled on his back, holding the halberd high. There was a snort and a crash and he sprang up to find the light before him blotted out by a wall of tangled whiteness that reared and plunged among a flurry of greenery, shaking the earth. A figure bounced past, caught his arm; Roc, and beside him Bure and Tenvar, jabbing with their halberds at the mountainous beast that wheeled and bellowed defiance, unable to find a clear path to charge. "This way!" screamed Roc. As they had planned, they were not attacking the beast, but keeping it between them and the startled
alfar
. Elof was only too ready to turn and bolt under the trees; he saw Ils and Kermorvan there, but where was Borhi? The corsair stood still where he had dropped, staring aghast at the travelers as they ducked past the plunging onehorn.
"Borhi!" yelled Elof. "This way!
Now
!" The corsair seemed to hear, turned and ran a few steps, then halted, hesitated, shaking his head and gesticulating frantically. "No!" he wailed. "I can't, I won't! I'm safe, I'm safe here! Come back, you'll all die, all die—"
Cursing, Elof tore free of Roc's arm and whirled back after Borhi. Then he had only the fraction of a heartbeat to throw himself aside, as the maddened beast at last ducked down its immense head and charged. Borhi, unmoving, seemed not to see it, or to understand what he saw, the monstrous thing bearing down on him like the corsairs's own gallery with outthrust ram. The great conical horn, the length of his own body, struck into the center of him and hurled him torn and spilling through the air. A trampling hoof shattered the half-frozen earth a handbreadth from Elof's head, the great flank whirled past him, red-streaked from halberd thrusts, and then a huge hand was scooping him up; Gise's. "Run!" growled the tall forester. "While you can!" He all but hurled Elof into the arms of his friends, and spun about to fling his halberd at the beast. It whirled and charged again across the path of the
alfar
, who had to dive for cover among the bushes. Then Kermorvan's clear voice called and the travelers were running, running with abraded throats and agony in their sides, chests working like Elof's bellows, the fire of his forge in their tortured lungs.
Behind them the uproar grew, trampling and smashing in the brush and shouting they could hear even over the roaring in their ears. The hunters would have to slay the thing before they dared follow; Elof found himself hoping it would not slay any of them. As Gise had said, in themselves they were gentle enough folk; it was the Forest's power that made them shadows of malignity, woodsprites working dark secrets within the tree-gloom. Better to evade them thus if they could, than come to open fight. A stream gleamed among the trees ahead, and Kermorvan gestured to them; into the water they must go, and upstream. But as they splashed into the icy shallows, he himself ran right across and out onto the far bank, leaving a fine trail of muddy footprints, then as the ground grew hard underfoot he leaped for an overhanging branch and swung himself back with the others, into the stream.
On and on they trotted, their feet soaking and numb, their packs and weapons turning to lead about them, their heads bowed down and staring at the water that seemed to suck the heart out of them. At last it dawned on them that they were walking, and slowly at that; Bure and Tenvar were weaving as if about to fall down in the water, and Ils, whose legs were shorter, suffered badly from the cold. With wordless gasps Kermorvan drove them up the bank among thorny bushes, and there they collapsed, numbed to stab and scratch, deaf to anything save their own whooping gasps. Elof heard somebody retching, and his own stomach turned over; his feet turned slowly from numbness to fire.
"So," wheezed Kermorvan at last. "We have some small advantage of them. And we must not lose it! To the Forest's edge, by Gise's guessing, was a good day and a half's march. Up, all, and to the north!"
There was a chorus of groans, but nobody failed to stagger to their feet, or to keep up with the brisk marching pace Kermorvan set. Indeed they seemed almost more enthusiastic now, weary as they were, as if some burden invisible and intangible were lifted from their shoulders. After a while, when he was sure enough of his breath, Elof mentioned this to Kermorvan, who nodded. "I feel as much myself. We draw near the Forest's rim. May that shield us from Tapiau's sight!"
All that day the dwindled company marched at a relentless pace, until the sun, hidden hitherto beyond the leaden clouds, blazed angry orange behind the dark treetops around them. Mercifully the undergrowth grew thinner the further they went, for now it was chiefly a forest of pines, firs and spruces, with only a few hemlock and cedar and cypresses; their soft needles carpeted its floor, and few lesser things grew in their shadow. The brief spring of those climes was not yet come, to fill shrubs and grasses with a short spasm of life and growth ere the chill closed in once more. The air was still but raw, burning in their nostrils and on their cheeks, and, with their wet boots, draining the warmth from their bodies. As night fell they chose a dry spot to camp; fire would have been infinitely welcome, but they did not dare build one, lest it drew down the
alfar
or worse upon them. A shelter of pine branches was the best they could contrive, and they huddled together to keep warm. They ate little, for they had not been able to bring much food with them, and knew it might have to last some time; then, too weary to set a watch, they slept. But it was a poor night's sleep, for the Forest was full of strange noises, and many things unknown passed close by them. And some way past the middle hours dreams of conflict and tumult jolted Elof awake. Parting the branches, he peered out at the sky in the hope of seeing some trace of dawn, and caught his breath. For a faint light shone through the treetops, but it was cold and constant, and it paled not the eastward but the northward stars. So once again, after many years and many other perils, he beheld the sign and banner of their fountainhead, the eerie glow of the Ice.