Durand looked down the few inches into the captain's face. Lamoric, nearby, had tipped his helmet off. There was no time to look.
"Kneel," ordered Coensar.
Mud clutched Durand's knees, water sopping up his leggings. The others—knights and shield-bearers—had set their tasks aside.
"Draw your blade."
Durand drew, and, when Coensar pointed, laid the polished blade across the slime.
"Old Hesperand must be your altar. You understand? It's time for orisons now. Right, then." The man wound up. Chain links smacked Durand's skull like a sack of nails—Coensar's mailed hand.
For a stung moment, Durand wondered if they were taunting him. "There lad," the captain said.
Men in a ragged circle were smiling down at him—all but a disapproving Guthred.
"That's the last time you take one of those from me or anyone without giving one back. Right?" In one stiff gesture, the captain snatched up Durand's sword, squeezing mud from the blade. He took hold of the scabbard at Durand's waist and stabbed the blade home. "You're knighted."
The captain could not suppress a narrow grin. "Give me your hands."
Durand cocked his head.
"For God's sake, your hands, ox! Don't make me regret this." Coensar turned Durand toward Lord Lamoric. "Stay on your knees."
Durand was beginning to lose track of where the jokes ended. Another smack and he might take his chances against the man.
But Lamoric smiled and opened his hands. In a rite as old as the Atthias, Coensar set Durand's hands between palms of his master.
"Sir Durand of the Col," Lamoric said, "on your soul, swear that you will be faithful, defending me against all creatures who can live and die, and I will be your lord and provider. By God and His Host of Heaven, swear it."
A real grin was spreading on Lamoric's face. Somewhere a horse spluttered.
"By the Lord of Dooms and his Heavenly Host, I swear it," Durand said.
The captain called to the men, "Have you witnessed?" They bellowed their assent.
Coensar gave the joined hands one firm shake. "Good!" No sanctuary vigil, no sermon, no gentle dubbing with the sword. Durand remembered how he had begun: the trip home for coin and new linen. Here there was just fog, muck, and a clout on the jaw, but now he was knight and liegeman both.
The captain snapped him around.
"Now. If you're Lamoric's man, you're mine, no matter what you've done." The captain paused.
"And you're owed a share of our takings in this tournament. You'll need a decent horse at least. We've got that Cerlac's gear after yesterday. You'll have that."
With a vague nod, Durand accepted the belongings of the friend he had slain.
When Lamoric's men
turned to join the procession from Bower Mead, the fog closed around them. They could see no trace of the others. Lamoric's train was left alone in an uneasy dream of ancient trees. They saw no sky and heard no sound but the thud of hooves and rattle of tack.
Durand was a knight. But he rode a gray Germander rouncy that had belonged to Cerlac, with the dead man's packs and warhorse in the baggage train. What else should he do? He needed a horse. He needed all these things. But he could nearly hear the Host Below counting every stolen penny's worth.
Fog boiled and clotted.
Up front, Coensar dug his shield from his packs; most of the others needed no order to do likewise.
And the fog swallowed trees and armored men.
"Hells," Berchard said. "We need to catch the others and get free of this place."
Durand could not see the man's face when he spoke.
After what might have been an hour riding through the roiling void, the cart track dwindled away. Wet grass and bracken dragged at Durand's boots. He hoped that Coensar, up front, could see better than he could.
The trail was failing, and, worse, snatches of sound drifted beyond the hiss of grass and thud of hooves, as though something were moving out there.
Finally, the conroi wavered into a misty hollow of knotted grass where the trail gave up entirely.
"Aw, this is no trail," grumbled Berchard. "We're groping up some kind of deer run." And the man was right. Nothing bigger than pigs or deer could have tugged the kind of path they followed. He muttered, "Or rabbits, more like."
The captain stopped; they were lost.
Coensar climbed from his saddle, and the knights slid down to join him in the grass, grown men warily eyeing the forest like children. Durand joined their council only when Guthred and the skald had tramped out as well.
They spoke in hushed voices.
"Ain't going to let up," whined Badan, unable to stop searching the walls of mist. "And we've marched into the bloody heart of this wood."
"It's no good moaning about the weather," said Coensar. "We'll need to keep our wits. Agryn, where do you reckon we are?"
"Difficult," Agryn said. "I cannot say how far we've traveled. My dial is useless while the Eye is hidden."
"All right," said Lamoric. "We're meant to be riding East."
"Aye," said Coensar. The man's eyes glanced over the walls of mist. "East..." It was easily said.
"We've all hunted," Lamoric said. "We've all ridden forest tracks."
The men stared back at him.
He found the skald in the circle. "You. Heremund Crook-shanks. What is the wise woman's story about moss?"
" Me, a wise woman? Surely no fog's as thick as that." He smiled at his own joke.
"You're a man who's traveled."
Heremund rolled his eyes.
"That
I'll confess." He lifted his hands. "And there are signs in the beasts and trees, though they're fickle things."
Guthred was nodding sternly. 'The skald speaks the truth. There are signs. Moss shrinks from Heaven's Eye. Moist from hot. Birds and bees nest where the wind is weakest."
Heremund pitched in. "Pines, they lean
toward
the Eye. Most others, you'll get the best show of leaves to the south, unless you're right on a track."
"Ah," said Agryn, "and we can use the land as well. There's little enough written of the roads and rivers of Hesperand, but we know the Glass meets the Sanderling and Bercelet in Mornaway. Downhill may take us."
Badan grimaced. "Sailors steer by Hesperand hills along the shore of Silvermere, west. How'll we know we ain't riding down the Silvermere side, leagues the wrong way?"
'Then," said Lamoric, "we will have our birds and branches to lead us." He shook his head, half-laughing at it all. "Birds and branches. I suppose, we must take whatever help is offered if we are to reach High Ashes."
Durand and the others shared a smile then, suddenly men again, and ready to brave the elements.
The wise do
not sneer at the wilds.
Soon, thickets caught men and horses. The line rode up against tangles so dense they would have needed bulls and armor to pass them. More than once, knotted walls forced Coensar to backtrack and hunt for new ways forward.
Always there was fog.
Soon, from beyond their own thrashing and curses, other sounds reached them: snatches of voices far away. Between jolts and lashing branches, Durand would catch a yelp or ebbing moan that might be a goose or fox.
Berchard lifted his chin, reciting:
"Why does he ride, the Lord of the Lost ones?
Why does he ride, the duke, since his doom?
Who does he hunt, coursing the wild runs?
Why does he hunt, his hounds from the tomb?"
"It is a rhyme the Hellebore children say along the borders of this land," he explained.
"Hells, Berchard," Lamoric replied.
There was no mistaking the moan of hounds, baying somewhere beyond the smothering mist. Durand's fingers strayed to the green token he had knotted in his belt. Perhaps she would come as she had said.
Durand turned for some sign that the others had heard the howling, too, and found that some of the men had pulled swords, though no one spoke a warning.
At the tangled bottom of a shallow defile, they fought their way onward. The pack bayed through the fog, sometimes ahead and sometimes behind. Every man's head swung as the sound shifted, left and right. Durand could feel the brutes darting among the trees on silent feet, still a distance away.
Without orders, every man had urged his horse to greater speed, and, as they rode on, the walls of the defile opened and there was nothing to the world but mist and standing grasses lashing under their hooves. Durand heard other riders in the fog. He thought of the Host of Hesperand, trapped and riding after their liege lord, the cuckold Duke Eorcan. Durand heard hooves pounding the forest floor, and their own line sprawled wide until Durand found himself riding between Coensar and Lamoric, their horses now at a long canter.
Until they struck a sudden wall of vast trunks that loomed before them.
Cerlac's gray slid as the whole line balked. A man went spinning over his horse's neck.
Worse, between them and the trees was a wild-eyed gaggle of strangers. They shivered against the branches. Two bearded men-at-arms strained with battleaxes raised. There were women.
For a moment, both groups faced each other wide-eyed, blades hovering over the field. Then both sides seemed to absorb what stood before them. These were mortal men. Behind each of the bearded axemen was a woman, riding pillion. First of these was Durand's tiny Maid of the Stream.
The other, older woman spoke out. "What do you mean riding out of the fog at us?"
Coensar straightened, taking the lead as Lamoric withdrew, guarding his identity.
"An accident, Ladyship," said the captain. "We meant no harm to you or your people."
Durand couldn't take his eyes from the girl he'd met at Red Winding. They were not safe.
The flustered noblewoman seemed to recognize the captain. "Sir Coensar? I—I am Lady Bertana." She hesitated, eyes darting. "With me are my guards and my lady in waiting—as well as a party of knights and sergeants who've come from the tournament and with us by chance," she amended.
Some of the other men nodded bows. Durand watched the girl, thinking that she'd had a hard time, too. She glanced up at Durand, then looked to the now-hooded Lamoric.
Coensar was nodding slowly. "Once again, I apologize on—."
"—Sir Coensar," said Lady Bertana, "I feel I must confide in you. We have lost the others. There have been hounds and hoofbeats—though I suppose you may have been their authors."
"Ladyship, we've no dogs."
"No." She searched among the horses' ankles. "Perhaps, as the Powers have seen fit to draw us together, we would all be wiser to continue as a group."
Coensar scratched his neck. "Surely, Ladyship, but which way do you travel?"
Before the woman could frame a reply, something whooped deep in the forest, unnerving every breathing thing in the clearing. Her axemen tensed.
"Out,
Sir Coensar," Bertana whispered. "We are going out. By the quickest route."
"Follow us, then. We will find the Glass."
17.
Th
e
Hounds of Hesperand
Durand could not believe he had thought of geese or yapping foxes when he first heard these brute howls.
The party jostled westward through mist and trees while the pack coursed the forest, ranging invisibly like a shuttle on a loom. Durand kept close to his redheaded maid.
The ground fell away before them, but they stumbled on. Horns joined the baying of the dogs, bleating out, and the heavy rhythm of burdened horses boomed through the wood.
Shadows played at the edge of vision. There was no time to stop. Every man among them had drawn his sword by then, knowing in his bones that they were being driven.
Abruptly, the column skidded. Animals reared once more.
A fish-silver form had leapt into the roadway. Durand could see only flashes through the screen of startled horses. Urging Cerlac's gray wide, Durand saw the creature: an enormous hound. Though it did not have the heavy boar-hound shape, it stood taller than a calf. A pike-sleek head swung back and forth on its shoulders. Wrong.
Gray flesh bloomed and faded under Durand's gaze like embers at the bellows, baring the hooks of pale ribs one moment and shimmering coat the next. Gray bowels coiled. Veins pulsed like a multitude of worms.