Then Durand was free. They'd snaked back into sight, and one of the duke's guard had turned, his lined face all suspicion. But there was nothing to see; Gol had chosen his time well. Durand remembered Fulk and digging the shallow grave in the woods for the outlander. There were three wounds like harlots' mouths on the pale body: hand, chest, and back. Gol had not even been breathing heavily. Durand touched his neck; his fingers came away slick.
As
the Eye
of Heaven rose over the plain, Ferangore seemed a fortress island. From Durand's spot in the line, he could make out the keep and, almost eclipsed by the spire of the Patriarch's high sanctuary, the tower prison of Alwen and her son.
Duke Ailnor was like a man in a dream. Something shivered in his gray eyes that shot chills through whoever looked at him. Durand recalled the horror of recognition in those eyes when they first saw his own face.
"No bells," the duke said, his voice loud in the dawn stillness. 'The Patriarch should be ringing the dawn."
"It could be a wind, Your Grace," said one of his knights.
His mind was not lost now. He said with grim certainty, "There were no bells."
8. The Nigh
t of Two Hills
T
he folk of Ferangore watched their party with sidelong glances. Now, the gatekeepers held their tongues. To Durand, the people seemed like sailors hunkered down on deck, staring up at the belly of a storm.
The duke's party scattered the carrion birds in the courtyard round the high sanctuary. A thousand black-beaded eyes stared down from every roost. As the party climbed into the keep itself, Durand felt Gol's soldiers all around him.
A Rook popped into the arch at the top of the entry stair. The men stopped as the Rook grinned down.
"Your Grace," he said, and bowed with a flourish so low that the sleeve of his robe licked the threshold. "Where is my son?" said the duke. "In your feasting hall, Your Grace. He expects you." The duke made no answer, and they pressed on into the feasting hall, Durand counting eight more of Gol's men. Some smiled at him. Every one was armed. Radomor had not left his father's throne. The duke stood before his son as he had stood before Gol's soldiers at Mantlewell. "My son."
"Father." Radomor did not move. "Where are the bells of the high sanctuary?" Radomor said nothing, though his two Rooks shared a knowing smile. "I have come about Alwen and the boy," the duke said.
"Yes."
"Yes. I must see them."
The duke's guard were wise enough to have their hands on their blades. "That will be difficult, father."
The duke's head turned an inch. "Tell me I am not too late."
One of the Rooks spoke out: "Oh no. Not too late. Not the way you imagine. He has been advised to relent. He has been told it was wrong of him to keep them here, but you must understand that he was angry. Alwen wished to leave Ferangore. The country seemed a better place. She could let the scandal pass. Lord Radomor's impulse was to contain the news, but this man, Durand, made him see that it would be difficult."
The duke returned his gaze to Radomor.
"Where is she now?" he asked.
Another Rook answered. "She is traveling to her dower lands in Gireth."
"And the boy?" asked the duke. "My grandson?"
Now Radomor answered. "He is with her, father."
"Then we will go to her."
"You may do as you wish."
"Yes, my son, and you will come with me."
Now, Radomor stood. Durand looked for rage or triumph in the man's features but found nothing there he could understand. Then Radomor's eyes turned on him, dark as lodestones.
Durand knew they
must be dead.
They rode east as though Alwen and her baby might be waiting. It was a game, or the last verse of some skald's saga. Durand couldn't see the end, but he could not stop. He massaged his hand. Until the game was over, there was still a chance that he had killed no one, and it would all end. But he wished he'd stuck with Heremund in Tormentil.
Armed men surrounded him. There were two parties: knights, soldiers. They glared under the ornate brows of iron helms, eyeing each other with the tight attention of wolves and dogs.
"Here." Duke Ailnor stopped the column as the Eye of Heaven sank below the hills behind them. Daylight's twelve hours were gone, and now a hill rose in the gloom, swathed in ferns and long grass. It looked to have a high flat top. The duke pointed toward the crest, and they rode for it, ready to make camp. Durand could not argue. He had to sleep. It was no longer a matter of will.
At the top, the party stared over a wide, dark river. To Durand's surprise, he knew the place. This was the Banderol. It had been his road from Acconel, and he had waded it to follow Radomor's train. He must have seen this hill.
Duke Ailnor joined Durand at the ridge, saying nothing. His gray eyes were on the shadowed lands beyond the river: Gireth.
Men were climbing from their saddles, dropping into the grass. As Durand rested on horseback with the duke, too tired for courtesy, the Rooks took the chance to approach, half-bowing as they cringed forward.
"An intriguing stopping-place you've chosen, Your Grace," said one, peering up. The man's gaze fell on a cluster of standing stones nearby: lichenous slabs rising from nests of small boulders. There were sockets of darkness caught between, places that must have been chambers. "Very intriguing indeed."
Duke Ailnor made no answer.
"Oh," the second Rook said. He fished in his gardecorps, grinning up at Durand. "I think I have something here for you." With a flourish like a conjurer, the little man drew a long blue rag from his robe. As Durand's stomach lurched, the Rook jabbed the rag into Durand's palm and passed a hand by Durand's ear. "And what have we here?" With another flourish, he produced a small smooth stone. Just the thing for shying at crows. "Don't worry, my friend. They are yours now. You may keep them."
The two men bowed once more and said, "Your Grace." Durand remembered the boy.
Before settling, Radomor and his henchmen had taken themselves off a couple of dozen paces. The duke's steed nodded.
"It is an old place," Ailnor said. He didn't ask about the rag. "Your Grace," Durand agreed.
"These stones. Tombs from the days before the
Cradle's
landing. They say Gireth was named for a tribe. Savages stealing among the birches as Cellogir the Pilot sailed into the Bay of Acconel. You can see it in the villagers even now, I fancy. That knowing silence."
Durand knotted the boy's sling round his fist, not in so mystical a mood. From what he had seen, plowmen knew hardship. It had likely been the same all those winters ago.
"Your people are from Gireth, yes?" the duke said.
"Yes, Your Grace. My fa
ther holds the Col of the Black
roots."
"Ah. An old line. Like
mine. Shipmates, maybe, on Saer
dan's
Cradle.
What do you think?"
"I would not guess, Your
Grace." Ailnor's line was Saer
dan's.
"Bloodlines matter. We Sons of Atthi. The wise women, the wellborn, we breed our children like horses. But they matter." The old man's eyes were on the camp across the hill. "If not in the ways most imagine."
He nudged his mount a step forward, his long beard and hair flashing as cold as silver. "Do you know this hill, boy?"
"No, Your Grace."
'They call it the 'Fetch Hollow.' They can see it from the Banderol. There was a battle." He stopped. "Somewhere here ..." He was looking downhill, toward the river. "I can hardly make it out. We are standing on the great bend of a horseshoe. The two points swing down for the river. Between is the Hollow. It's a ravine, full of oaks." Durand thought he could make out the place. "Some ancestor of ours drove an army into that ravine, and a skald will tell you that no one came out. There was a monastery, as well, later and for a thousand winters, right where we are standing, but it burned."
"Our lines were old even then."
With a familiar nod of his chin, the duke swung down from the saddle. Durand followed. "When they have all bedded down, I want you to get away." Durand had not expected this. "I must play out this game. As long as there is any hope, I must go on. I cannot give up my grandson. But you. You are young yet, and I fear my son will not permit you to live. You were not meant to survive this long, I think, and some way will be found. Perhaps that cur Gol will come smiling to breakfast, saying he caught you trying to run off. Perhaps he'll kill one of my men and put the knife in your hand. My son is proud, and you have run across his land carrying tales of his shame."
The duke looked over the camp. Somewhere, he could see Lord Radomor.
"They say he led the vanguard of the king's army. On the first day, Borogyn and his Heithans surged down upon the king's men like a sea. My son and his vanguard held them back but at great cost. Hero
es. On the second day, King Rag
nal held the vanguard in reserve. They were to recover. Radomor was wounded. So many were dead. But the battle shifted. The Heithans ground hard. They drove a slow advance against the king. Borogyn seemed ready to turn the line, and so, I am told, my son rose from his sickbed and threw his broken vanguard at their heart. They struck deep and drove themselves deeper. Ten men died for every step, but they reached Borogyn—or Radomor did—and hamstrung the Heithan advance. Borogyn's young princes turned coat. But so many died. All of Radomor's men.
"My boy lost himself in that battle. He is gone," the old man concluded. "I still remember when my wife was alive. The future was so very different then."
"Your Grace," said Durand. "I don't know if it is my place, but a messenger came from Beoran. They are trying to move your son to treason."
The long shadow of their hilltop stretched leagues into Gireth. Ailnor said nothing.
"You are in danger" Durand pressed.
The ancient lord looked Durand in the eye. His voice was a rattle.
"When they sleep," he said. "Take the Hollow down. I think they will not follow."
That night, Durand
dreamt of blood. The whole hilltop covered in it. Thick. His hands came away as if caught in pitch. He heard clashing weapons. Someone was whispering. The syllables wound around each other, coiling and uncoiling in the dark.
But he woke into stillness. He picked out a pair of sentries on either side of the camp. It was time. First, he must get a few things together. He knew well how far a man got with no money and no supplies.
The baggage bulked under a tarp behind Duke Ailnor's pavilion. Durand padded quietly past sleeping men and horses before scrounging for a couple of loaves and a wedge of cheese. Most important, though, was the iron roll of armor he had salvaged from the barracks hall at Ferangore. He had lugged it for leagues, and was still not ready to leave it and all it meant behind, though part of him wondered at his greed in keeping the thing.
The two parties had tied the horses in a sort of trough between the camps, right above the Hollow. Keeping the touchy animals between the camps was like keeping geese in the yard, the poor man's substitute for a guard dog. Durand set his gear down and began the awkward job of picking his nag from the rest. Horses nodded and spluttered, identical in the dark. He tried to keep his attention fixed on the task at hand and soon spotted a swaybacked brute that looked familiar.
"Durand,"
said a voice, close.
Like a knife, the word stuck in his back. Shadows rose from the grass as men stepping out from behind horses.
He jerked the dagger from his belt.
"Brave," the voice said: Lazar Gol. A glance revealed five, or maybe seven, others. Durand called upon Heaven.
"But brave'11 do you no good," Gol said.
Durand prayed again. There was nothing for it. He couldn't beat Gol alone. With another half-dozen men thrown in, he wouldn't even get a chance to shout.
They moved.
He bolted.
In an instant, he had rolled under his stolen horse and was up, blocking and dodging like a plowman in a football match. The horses made a tangle of invisible ropes and a barricade of bodies. He cut and dodged, making for his gear on his way to the ravine. He saw a white face and mashed the heel of his hand in the middle, and then he had his bundle and was plunging into the steep-sided ravine called the Hollow.
Almost at once, he fell. His heel struck the slope and cartwheeled him over. There was nothing but the breakneck pitch and tumble, and the certainty that trees and dagger branches waited below.