An earthy darkness swung up around him.
He struck, hand and head first, ending up against a scabrous bulk he took for a tree trunk. There was iron in his mouth, and he knew that if his fingers hadn't caught between the tree and his temple, the Hollow would have done Gol's job for him. As it was, his hand and head throbbed.
As he lay there, he became aware of a sharp odor spiking above the loamy dampness of the ravine and its tangled oaks. It was a slit-bowel smell: the piercing reek when the huntsman nicks something deep in the guts of a stag or boar.
Durand forced himself to move. Gol's men would be on top of him any time. With a pair of ringers stiff as a rod, he jabbed at his guts, making sure the stench wasn't his, but there was no pain.
He sat up.
It was black as the bottom of some dark pool. Carefully, he climbed to his feet. The ground still sloped. The reek caught him when he tried a deep breath. Knowing only that downhill was safer than up, he resolved to make for the river. The Hollow led straight for it, so he set off, moving as quickly as he could in the tangle—sometimes falling, sometimes picking his way.
As his eyes groped the blackness, pale shapes floated out of the dark. He began to think he should have taken another way down to the river. The shapes flickered out of sight at the pressure of his glance. There were things in the trees: round shapes. Lines glinted.
Toward the bottom, the ground leveled out, but the catching branches crowded close, making every blind step a matter of tearing clothes and gouging skin. For the dozenth time, he lost his balance. As he caught himself—imagining he was grabbing a branch, his grip closed on something else. It was flesh.
In that first instant, he thought of Gol's men and tripped himself jerking back. The pale shape of a man stood before him, and he had nothing but a dagger.
But the shape didn't move.
Durand got back to his feet. His eyes told him it was a sanctuary icon, some marble Power lost in the ravine, but he remembered the feel of skin under his fingers. Durand squared off with this strange figure, and, as he looked, he realized there were others around, all still as idols.
He forced himself closer. He saw a spear's shaft and upraised arm. Sinews stood under the skin. The eyes were open, like glass beads. The stubbled face was twisted as though the man had suddenly turned. He wore a bare tunic, but there was a shield in his left hand. Durand looked round to see the cover of the shield. Curled around an iron boss—a cupped guard for the fist—was a stag painted in the old style, all curves and knots. He had seen a thing like it once, hanging in the Painted Hall in Acconel. Only a skald—or a grave robber—would know how old.
And there were others.
He had no time.
Though he could hear nothing, Gol's men could be stealing through this wood even now. As he moved on, however, he could not help but puzzle at the uncanny scene around him. It was as though he moved through a frozen instant in the battle for Fetch Hollow. He passed dozens of warriors. Some men wore only their breeches. There was a brass horn curled at one soldier's hip, the metal hammered to resemble a lion's roar. Men's mouths gaped. Wide eyes shone like pearls.
Then, as Durand looked into one set of those eyes, the whole of Creation suddenly throbbed—a bell tolling—and the eye twitched round, spinning like a leech in a glass. The bell's memory shook the trees and moaned in his lungs. And, for that instant, he was face-to-face with a screaming man.
For all his years of sparring and brawling and meeting omens in the dark, Durand was off like a startled rabbit. He slithered over corpses, leapt, and bounded on. He tried to remember the river. No matter how mad the place got, it ended at the river. And the Lost did not cross running water.
These were the men of Ailnor's tale: Sons of Atthi, despite their antique gear. Here were his kinsmen—Atthians meant to be driving an army into the Hollow. He saw emblems he knew, twisted by years. But it was backward.
And it was an Otherworld thing. Even as he blundered through the maze of paralytic corpses, he fought to touch nothing, ducking around and stepping over arms and legs. The
Otherworld had endless strange and fatal rules—names must not be uttered, food must not be eaten. A slip, and a man's soul might be trapped beyond reach of Heaven.
The bell tolled again. And, in that instant, he saw blades flicker like the workings of some Hellish clock.
Fires winked through the screen of oaks and frozen war. Durand stretched his stride, bounding through the tightest, most savage knots of the fighting. The world reeked. Men hung spitted on silent lances. Helms burst under the bite of blades.
He careered onward, understanding against his will that here Atthian men fought Atthian men: hundreds of kinsmen knotted together, motionless and trapped in their raging. There were no tribesmen in the Hollow. Upon the shields were slathered Atthian charges. Some were men of Gireth. A herald would know them all. It was civil war.
This was the kind of madness that Cassonel's masters proposed.
The bell tolled again, and, with its titanic throb, shadows twitched across a hundred shields. In the back ranks, many of the warriors looked high beyond the field. Durand could see a fire glittering in their massed stare. Behind him, the dark hilltop was gone. A village was blazing. Spires and broad windows dripped lead. He remembered the monastery. Men pouring down the hillside into the Hollow.
The bell tolled again. Then, high in a monastery tower, the great bell tumbled. They had fired a holy place. He knew how it must have been. One lot of these fools had seized the monastery—a makeshift fortress—and their foes had set it alight. And this was their curse. Both sides were here now, forever tearing in the dark.
Durand ran like a leaf before a storm.
Even scared witless
and running for his life, Durand found there were limits. For a time he blundered through camp stools and bonfires, but soon there was nothing but unending forest, league after league. Finally, he wove to a halt, the jouncing weight of armor overcoming him. He was not sure how far he had traveled when he stopped, and so he turned back to the hill.
There was nothing: no blaze and no battle. Somehow he had run out of the horseshoe and never touched the river. He was shaking.
A wineskin had been slapping around his neck since Gol's men made their grab, and he decided that it would be safe to drink what he had brought with him. He drank deep, then dropped to his knees, the mail coat landing like a body beside him.
He fought to breathe, shutting his eyes. He had left old Duke Ailnor to the mercies of his son. He had abandoned his search for Lady Alwen. Even though he had stood outside her door when her baby was crying, he had left her now. It was hard to see how this was what he had intended.
For a time, he listened to his heart pound, then, like an echo of his own imaginings, a cry came out of the dark. He blinked hard, setting his teeth, but the cry came again: a woman's voice. And he stood. He knew it could not be Alwen, but, equally, he knew that he had seen a hill vanish. There was no choice but to follow the sound into the dark.
A man spoke. Though Durand couldn't catch the words, he could tell that the man thought he was funny. He might be drunk. The woman spoke again, her voice pitched high and loud. Splashes and sloshes rang out through the trees, and Durand knew that he must be near. He tore through a close-woven screen of willows and out into a bed of reeds. The sound and smell of running water filled his head.
Now, he peered through the curtain of reeds. Over the water of a stream, he saw a pale shape. It was a woman, her back straight, and her skirts spread on the glassy surface like a water lily.
He looked with a shaky sort of wonder.
Then someone laughed, coarse. "Host of Heaven, if she ain't a river maiden." A fat man on the far bank bent and swung big hands. He already had a black eye. Other shapes moved among the trees. They had driven the woman into the water. She was backing away, getting closer to Durand with every step. Running water was a treacherous thing, and this was no shallow ford.
"You're a pretty thing to be out alone like this," the fat man said. "Hrethmon, would you let a thing like her out like this? You wouldn't, would you?"
Another thug stepped closer to the bank. He was young, and white-blond hair flashed in the moonlight. He was shaking his head "no." Durand heard chuckling from the gloom— too many voices.
Now, the girl spoke, her voice a clear note. "I'll warn you once more. The pair of you had better get yourselves far from here quick, or you'll regret it." The dark volume of her hair bobbed at her shoulders. She held herself straight as a lance.
But they had her in the river up to her hips, and the current was hauling.
"Right, lads," the fat man drawled. "He'll be along any time. The water maiden's man." His head rolled mockingly. "If I had a thing like you, I'd keep you under lock and key." The man was hardly over five feet tall, and his paunch made his tunic stand out like an apron. But there was a mace. "Why don't you come here, and me and the lads'll show you?"
The girl breathed a curse; it would be over soon.
No matter how many there were, Durand knew that he would not step aside.
The girl's hands settled in her skirts, a subtle movement. To run, she would need to tear the dress from the water. Durand saw her fingers closing. The black-eyed fat man looked as though he had also seen her grab her skirts. He waited, smiling. Three more thugs stepped onto the far bank, leering. There were dark shapes in their fists: hatchets, truncheons. Finally, the woman snatched what she could from the water and ran.
Five pursuers launched themselves from the far bank, beginning a wallowing rush for the woman. She was moving, but Durand settled low in the reeds, unarmed and knowing he must have surprise.
She hit the deepest part of the stream, but fought through, and, in an instant, was in the reeds and past Durand, scrabbling up the bank.
The sopping length of skirts caught and dragged.
She couldn't get far, and the two thugs saw it. As they hit the reeds, faces shining with lust, Durand exploded.
The blond passed closest. Durand caught the man's shoulder, and hooked a heavy punch into the side of his head. The fat man wheeled. His forearms bulged like hams, and the iron mace blossomed in his fist.
"Are you this man we've—" Durand clapped his jaw shut with a hooked fist. The blond thrashed in the reeds, downed but not unconscious. Three more were coming on. Durand risked a glance to the girl. All he could see was the batter-white of her dress spread against the bushes.
The fat man swung the mace, and missed by inches. A mace was an awful thing when swung by a strong arm.
The others were nearly upon him.
Behind Durand, the girl was on the move—circling or falling, Durand couldn't see. But the fat man glanced, too. Durand launched himself into this moment of distraction. He hit hard and high, leading with a driving fist against the man's jaw and knocking him sprawling into the reeds. The mace was in Durand's hand.
To fight, he needed solid ground, but to win he needed to keep the whoresons off-balance.
He surged forward into the river, skittering the mace-head over the water and roaring like an outlander. He caught one man a blow on the elbow. And, in a pell-mell moment, they were all on the run.
The fat man was up again, shouting "coward" at his comrades. But Durand rounded on him. They were alone, and, now, Durand had the mace. Water flew as the true coward joined his friends across the river.
And the stream ran cold around Durand's legs.
He heard hooves from the gloom over the river. The men were gone.
Suddenly, he-was caught in a sopping grip, tight and cold. It was the girl. She squeezed, and Durand felt a sudden flare of unexpected lust. But then a shudder passed through her. There was a catch in her breath.
She staggered free.
The young woman who faced him did not seem half as tall as the one who had challenged the brigands, but it was her— and not the daughter of Duke Abravanal of Gireth. She fixed him with a long look he could not decipher.
"Why did you? ..." she began.
"I could hardly leave you there."
"They didn't know you were there."
"I heard you calling." The young woman was close, off-balance. Durand found it hard to catch his breath. She looked up at him, her lips parted. "We should get away from here," Durand said. "If any of them can count, they'll come back."
Now she nodded, glancing over the water, and then leading him up the bank. Her sopping dress dragged over sticks and forest earth. And it clung over the curve of her hips. As she climbed away, he couldn't help but look.