Authors: Tim Akers
“What’s that for?”
“You,” the master of the guard replied. “You look like my grandfather, right before he forgot all of our names and wandered off into the forest.”
“Show some respect for your elders,” Malcolm said. “I could still beat you in the joust.”
“The joust is a sitting man’s game. Try me in the melee, and see how we measure up.”
“I’m tempted to try you in a court of law for such insubordination,” Malcolm snapped. Standing was no good. He tottered over to the altar and pressed his palms against the cool ivory. “I am still your liege lord.”
“And I will follow you into the depths of hell, my lord, but if we get to the point where someone needs to help you with your toilet, I may have to reconsider.”
Malcolm laughed. He was about to turn and give Dugan a good whack on the cheek when a priest appeared at the door. He was dressed in the black and gray of Cinder’s anointed.
“The duke has been delayed,” the priest said, giving Malcolm a disapproving glare. Malcolm slouched casually into a standing position, removing his hands from the altar and clearing his throat.
“He certainly has,” Dugan said sharply. “Though I mean the duke of Houndhallow, not your master.”
“My master is Cinder, lord of winter and—”
“Yes, yes, he meant nothing by it,” Malcolm said, cutting in. “I only wish to offer the duke of Greenhall my blessings and respect. As you know, I am here at the invitation of the high elector.”
“The high elector does not rule in Greenhall. It is the duke’s invitation you should have sought,” the priest said stiffly.
“And to whose whims do you attend?” Dugan muttered to himself. The priest bristled, but Malcolm stepped sharply between them.
“I would hope that the word of the high elector would be honored in Suhdra, as it is in Tener,” he said. “We share a common faith, my frair.”
“Your faith is common enough.” The man sniffed.
“Will you please just fetch the duke?” Malcolm said, ignoring the slight. “We only want to offer the visitor’s gift, and secure the promise of honor from his lordship.”
The priest bowed and exited without another word. Malcolm spoke to his master of guard without turning.
“You have to be kinder than that,” he said.
“I don’t feel that I do,” Dugan answered. “The priests the church sends north are decent enough, but this lot Halverdt keeps in his walls need a good punching.”
“I think Halverdt may be more to blame for that than the church. Speaking of which…” Malcolm eased his way to one of the pews and began to lower himself. “If he’s going to treat us like servants, I’m at least going to have a seat while we wait. And see if there’s any wine.”
A distant sound echoed through the doma, drifting down from the shuttered windows. Malcolm stopped himself.
“Was that…” he said.
“War horn,” Dugan finished for him, rushing to the door. Malcolm followed, the pain in his back forgotten. He threw the door open. The walls were alive with torches and the sound of soldiers. The horn sounded again, a low rolling blast that echoed through the canyons of the city and filled the air with dread. It was a familiar sound in the north, the universal warning given when the old gods stirred.
Malcolm just never expected to hear it during the Allfire.
“Gheist,” he whispered.
* * *
The horn brought Ian running, along with the rest of the occupants of the tavern. The mud streets of the tournament village were filled with drunken celebrants, most of whom were rapidly tipping into panic. Torches lined the city wall above them. The gate, held open due to the Allfire celebrations, boomed shut.
“What the fuck is going on?” Martin shouted. His face was flushed with the wine, but even through the glaze of his eyes, Ian could see his fear. Before he could answer, the horn came again. The rolling panic of the crowd matched the surging sound.
“Gheist, gheist, gheist…” Murmurs danced through the night. People began to run toward the safety of the castle gates.
“They’ll never open up, not with a gheist out here,” Ian said. “Do you see anything?”
“Nothing. Shouldn’t there be priests, or…”
Hooves thundered behind them, coming down the street. Ian grabbed Martin and pulled him to the side of the road, up against the tent wall of the makeshift tavern. A trio of knights hammered past them, half-armored, half-drunk, flying the black spear and red rose of House Marchand. The crowd parted before them, though more than one reveler went to the mud with a horseshoe in his back.
“Bloody lot of good that’s going to do,” Ian said angrily. “Come on.”
Still in a daze, Martin followed him as they ran to the Blakley pavilion. A few of his father’s men were milling about, pulling on armor and splashing water in their faces. Sir Doone stood in the middle of the muddy lane, her face grim.
“Where is my father?” Ian demanded, dragging her around. “Where is the duke?”
“Not returned from the castle,” Doone answered. “These damned Suhdrin aren’t going to know what to do with this.”
“No, they won’t. Which is why the gods have put us here. Fetch my spear and kit, and my father’s, as well.”
“This is no hunt, my lord. They don’t blow the horn for a lesser god.”
“This is Suhdrin land, sir. They blow the gheist horn if one of their horses farts too loudly. Now get moving!”
Doone hesitated a moment, then nodded and disappeared into the pavilion. Ian started stripping down. Martin drew his sword, but didn’t seem to know how to hold it.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Preparing,” Ian replied. “You should stay here. You aren’t exactly dressed for this.”
“You aren’t exactly dressed at all,” Martin said as Ian’s tunic dropped into the mud. Sir Doone ran up with two bundles of leather, and two spears. She handed one bundle to Ian and set the other on the ground.
The tree line at the edge of the tournament ground was alive with torches and the shouting of men. It was hard to see from among the tents, but Ian could hear the slow chant of priests and the hunting horn of the Marchand knights. He struggled into the pants Doone had brought him, then shrugged on the bulky shoulder armor and padded sleeves of his hunting gear. His chest he left bare.
“You mean to hunt it?” Martin asked. “You must be insane.”
“Hunt or be hunted, friend. I haven’t time for chain or plate, so this will have to do.” Ian took the spear and held it to the light. The head was long and sharp, the metal dull and red as rust. A rune carved into the shaft marked the spear as Ian’s, showed that it was his blood that had been used in the blade’s forging and sealed the spells. “Bloodwrought steel. As close to magic as we’ll get tonight.”
“Leave it to the priests,” Martin said. “There’s no reason to risk your neck out there.”
“Listen to you. Just this afternoon you were talking up the advantages of having peasants pound you in the head with hammers, so you could learn a little something about true combat—and now you want to hide behind the church?”
A terrible sound rolled out of the forest. It was a creaking scream, like trees torn asunder. Martin winced at the sound of it.
“I wouldn’t call it hiding,” he said. “Just clever positioning. Find a place of strength, and depend on it.”
“I’ll be my own strength, thank you,” Ian answered. He motioned and a few soldiers from his father’s company followed him, each in various states of preparedness. Their column clanked and clattered as they strapped on armor, and belted scabbards to their waists. Sir Doone was at their head, her face grim in the flickering torchlight.
A crowd was gathered at the perimeter of the camp. Most of the people were just as unprepared as the Blakley party, standing around in piecemeal armor, many of them drunk or half-asleep. A ring of priests stood by the warded fence that surrounded the tourney ground. Ian looked them over. By their dress and nervousness, he pegged them as common frairs, untrained in the mystic powers of the Celestial church.
In the woods beyond the barrier, the light from the perimeter torches faded and the trees dissolved into shadow. Here and there distant spots of light danced between the trunks: scouts, darting along hunting trails, looking for the source of the alarm. The horn on the city wall droned on, the sound echoing through the night. Above, Cinder shone his silver light, crowded on all sides by his host of stars.
Ian forced his way to the fence’s edge and leaned over.
“Did Marchand ride out?” he asked the closest priest. He was an older man, wrapped in the crimson robes of Lady Strife and wearing a costume of cheap brass. He blinked slowly in Ian’s direction before answering.
“On horses, yes,” he said. His voice was slushy. “I tried to stop them.”
“How many vow knights does Halverdt command?”
“The knights of the winter sun are not under the command of any mortal…” the frair began. Ian waved him off and hopped the narrow picket fence that the priests had set up to keep the nervous Suhdrin hearts safe from the frightening woods.
“Never mind,” he said, and he turned. “Sir Doone, you and the rest stay here. I’m sure the vow knights will be with us soon enough.”
“Not bloody likely,” Doone muttered, climbing ponderously over the fence and dropping into the mud. “If your father hears we let you walk the gheist hunt alone, he’ll have our bones for batons before morning. It’s not like we can leave you in the care of Marchand’s clan, can we?” A few more men followed her example.
“All the faithful are to remain behind…” the priest began. Ian ignored him.
“Three good knights have ridden out, and we can’t leave them to gather all the glory on their own. Besides, they’re southern boys. Probably have no idea what to do with a proper gheist.”
“I’d wager it’s a false alarm anyway,” Doone said, though she didn’t sound convinced. “Creepy sounds in the night, and the watchmen have their tits in a twist.”
“Hopefully,” Ian answered. “I don’t like to think what sort of gheist could break into the Allfire.” With a nod to Martin and a condescending glare for the priest, he led his little band into the woods. He was more worried than he let on. The gheists were the gods of the old religion, the spirits of stream and forest that the Tenerrans had worshipped for generations before the crusades. Now deprived of their sacrifices and abandoned to the quiet places of the forest, many of those spirits had gone mad. They manifested in strange and unexpected places, sometimes demanding tribute, other times taking their sacrifice in blood and fire.
One universal truth, though, was that the Celestial church held sway over them. The sanctified godsroads that crossed the forests and connected south to north were almost always free of their profane incursions. The blessed ranks of the vow knights and the priests of the inquisition could break the gheists with their gods-given powers. The divine calendar of the Celestial church could track their manifestations and predict their intrusions into the mundane world.
The Allfire was the height of Strife’s power, as Frostnight was the apex of Cinder’s worldly rule, each set at a solstice. During the equinox, when Cinder and Strife were most briefly in the sky, that was when the gheists were most likely to roam the land.
Ian stood at the forest’s verge and listened to the distant roaring of this forgotten god. It was almost unheard of to see any kind of manifestation this close to the Allfire. Whatever was out there, it was either extremely weak, oppressed by Strife’s abundant power, or it was so powerful that it didn’t fear the bright lady.
Either way, he meant to face it.
A lesser horn sounded in the forest, a hunter’s call. Ian lifted his spear in that direction.
“Marchand and his men,” he said. “They have sighted it. We’ll beat our way in their direction and hope they flush out the beast. How many of you carry bloodwrought weapons?”
“We’re no hunters, my lord, but we carry good steel,” Sir Doone answered.
“If this is a true gheist, good steel won’t be enough,” Ian said. “If this thing is larger than a dog, stay away. Form a funnel and try to beat it toward me, or at least away from the city. If it comes for you, to hells with your honor. Run.”
“Aye, my lord,” a nearby man said, and others mumbled with different degrees of enthusiasm. Sir Doone didn’t answer at all.
The woman would never run.
“Fine,” he said. “Then form on me. Stay tight and fast, and may the gods watch your blood.” With that Ian held the spear aloft and trotted into the forest, Doone close on his heels. His cadre followed in a clanking line. The shadows swallowed them quickly. The forest was loud with vibrant insect life and the eerie creaking of wind-whipped trees. Only the drone of the gheist horn stayed with them.
They tromped through fallen branches, squinting into the darkness, the ghost world of trees and flickering leaves slowly dissolving out of the shadows as their eyes adjusted to the gloom. The gheist horn’s drone warped the air around them, only slightly louder than the chattering bugs, the forest floor alive with scampering creatures that only stayed in sight long enough to startle the increasingly nervous men. Ian was afraid they had lost their way when Marchand’s horn sounded again, very close.
It was followed by the short scream of a horse, a clatter of armor, and then meat and metal tearing. The column stumbled to a halt.
“So,” Sir Doone whispered in Ian’s ear, “bigger than a dog.”
“Aye. Draw the men together and take them back to the camp.”
“Not going to happen.”
“You’re no good out here. None of you are. Spare my father the pain of your burial cost and return to the camp. Halverdt will have summoned the vow knights. You can give them some direction.”
“A very practical suggestion, my lord,” the knight said. She made no move.
“Well, if you’re hells bent on getting killed…” Ian said with a shrug. He looked down the column behind him. All were scared, but none were leaving. “When we see the beast, have the good sense to stay away from the killing bits. Spread out, draw it close, then let me do what needs to be done.”
“Any idea which sweet god we might be facing?”
“This close to Greenhall? The Darkhenge is beyond the horizon, and the river Grehl can only draw its spirit once a season.”