The beast licked its lips and sprang back into the branches.
"Ride!"
hissed Coensar into the silence.
"They're on us!"
In a heartbeat, the forest hissed with the shredding passage of the entire pack. Uncanny horns bleated and shrieked, and Durand could feel the thunder of the charging host's hooves. Knights and shield-bearers and grooms all tore down the track, clinging low as racers.
Durand strained to keep sight of the flying haunches ahead of him, with the trail pitching and dodging like an animal between trees and leg-breaking hollows. The track forked and forked again. Each switch seemed to bat one rider or other from his saddle. But Durand rode on, resolved to keep near the young woman.
The surging thunder of the riders rolled nearer and nearer though they wove through fog and trees and hounds like will-o'-the-wisps. Someone screamed. Every switch in the track smacked another wedge in the face of their line.
Durand followed one rider. Abruptly, a great hound—with a salmon's leap—snatched the man into a silence as deep as the sea.
Cerlac's gray leapt the fallen mount.
As he rode on, the thunder of the chase seemed to drift off to his right hand, until, in moments, there was nothing but open forest to his left. He felt a thrill in his guts—here was freedom—but he was alone.
There was no sign of the maid, and no sign of the lord he'd sworn to serve. He could not leave them.
Hearing a snarl, Durand clenched his teeth, and spurred
toward
the sound.
He plunged into a river of clear air. Thirty paces away, a horse kicked from the earth, its legs in the air. Two great curls of shimmering greyhound rumbled, circling a bearded axeman. Before Durand could spur his gray, the first hound leapt, striking the axeman high and bearing him down. Blood flew from the lashing muzzle.
The Stream Maid stood behind. The second hound coiled. She threw up her arms.
Durand tore her from her feet—and from the jaws of the startled hound.
Down the clear seam they rode, and then back into the fog before the hounds could untangle themselves. The woman struggled, flung over the saddlebow like some raider's prize, but Durand could still hear the baying of hounds on their heels, and he would not stop.
"My guard!" she cried, but Durand didn't answer. "Let me up!"
They dropped into a roadway that cut like a canal through the forest. They had covered leagues since they first heard the Host, never circling.
Durand had only an instant to wonder which way he should go.
"Queen of Heaven," said the maid.
Ten knights waited in the road ahead, armed with shields and lances. Marsh light slithered over their gear and faces. The horses were hale and silver one moment, then pitted as a carcass in the field. He could see in and through men and horses both.
A tall man in a crown of silver falcons waited at the head of the conroi. There was a fringe of ash gray hair at his jaw, and a blade in his hand. A dark-rimmed hole gaped where his heart should be. He looked nothing like Cerlac.
"What is it? Why have you stopped?" said the maid, twisting to look up at him.
"The Host of Hesperand," said Durand.
Whatever the confused myth behind all this, there was no doubt that this duke would not let him go on. "Here. Let's get you down." "Down?"
Durand helped the young woman to the ground. She was warm in his hands where the air was not. He began to climb down himself. Though she was watching the strange riders, she turned when she realized he was dismounting.
"What do you mean to do?"
'Take my seat I'll fight them."
"But you'll die."
He smiled. To him, she seemed as beautiful as anyone breathing. He was willing to take his chances. She looked up into his face, then her dark eyes widened.
"Oh no," she said, straightening. She took a half step back and shot a look down the roadway toward the blockade. 'This is mad. All of it I'm getting up behind you."
'There's no pillion," Durand said.
"Under the circumstances ..." she answered. Stealing one stirrup for a moment she climbed up behind the saddle. Durand found himself smiling still and doing as he was told. In a moment her arms were tight around his waist He could feel her chin digging under the blade of his shoulder.
"I saw you in the field at Bower Mead. I saw you at Red Winding. You're not leaving me here to play martyr."
Durand shook his head, still smiling, and unshipped both sword and shield. There were six riders, gray and centuries old, lined up across the road. Each man wore a conical helm and hauberk of gray mail. Long shields painted with curling animals guarded their sides, and every man held a lance in his fist Cerlac's gray was quick and steady, but Durand wondered if he could make the animal charge such a line. And, if he passed them, he wondered how far they would get two on one horse. He and the girl.
"Milady," said Durand. "I am Durand. Born at Col of the Blackroots. Will you give me your name?"
"Deorwen!" she said. "Deorwen."
He smiled.
"Ride," she said. "And Heaven have mercy on us both." The Duke of Hesperand saluted Durand, sword to gray lips. Durand responded in kind, Cerlac's horse dancing awkwardly
under its burden. The duke urged his shimmering stallion ahead of his men.
From the vantage of an irrationally good mood, Durand considered the puzzle in front of him with the mad feeling that he could crack it. He did have one advantage over the duke.
Limbering his shoulder, he shocked the jangled gray into motion. The spectral duke spurred his own mount forward.
With Deorwen holding tight and the gray running in a good open gallop beneath him, Durand's grin widened madly. The duke's lance was long; its bright point winked steady as the lodestar. The man would never miss. He wondered how many other men had seen the same blade in these woods.
Flickering horse and rider loomed, but, at the very last, Durand hauled Cerlac's gray for the trees. The duke twisted, his lance striking Durand's shield—not squarely enough to bite. The riders in the track twisted as well, fighting to turn from a standing start.
Durand's one advantage was that he did not give a damn about the old duke.
With a whoop, Durand dropped Cerlac's gray back into the roadbed. Now, with the duke's men tangled behind him and the duke himself charging the wrong way, Durand spurred onward with the fog whirling shut behind them.
As the poor gray galloped on—a hundred paces, two hundred paces—he felt its every stride checked by the awkward weight on its back. It was slowing, and the duke's men must overtake them soon.
They rode until, finally, the gray fell into a walk, then stood still, fighting to breathe in the mist.
Durand got his blade between himself and the roadway, knowing he couldn't see far enough to defend them. It had been a good run. But no swords flickered out of the fog to cut them down. Around him, it seemed the light had changed, and the world was a fraction more dim. The gray breathed between his knees as Durand listened. He could feel Deorwen's cheekbone and forehead against his back.
Water dripped, and they breathed.
"Queen of Heaven," said Deorwen. Her hands unlocked, retreating, for a moment, to linger on his hipbones. "We are alive."
Durand turned to look back at her. She was trying to look away, or so it seemed.
"Here. I'll get you down," he said. Durand put his hands on her waist and set her on the ground. For a moment, as he lifted her above the road, she looked into his eyes, surprised. And somewhere in the process, Durand missed a breath.
"I think we'll have to walk this poor brute awhile," he managed, climbing down.
She faced the road behind them. The tunnel of branches vanished fifty paces into the fog. It was hard not to imagine the duke and his men boiling out of the clouds. But, for as long as they stared, there was no sign. Nevertheless, Durand felt the weight of them poised there, ready to thunder down.
"We had best move on, I think," Deorwen said, finally. "Come on."
"Yes," said Durand, tearing his eyes away from the fog.
Deorwen touched him: his belt. She drew the long dagger from his hip. There was a smile. 'The Banished don't like iron," she said.
Both of them glanced back into the mist. There was nothing ahead or behind them.
"Some things must be endured, because we have no choice," said Deorwen.
They pushed on
into the failing light. If someone had asked Durand where he was going, he would have said, "Away."
After an hour or more of walking, Deorwen spoke out.
"Do you know where this leads?"
He hadn't been thinking at all. "You'll be wanting to get back to her ladyship," he said, realizing. "Bertana. I didn't think. Did she—"
"I don't know what's become of her."
"You're right. We should try to find the others. I should get back to Sir Coensar and—" He nearly said Lamoric's name. "And the Knight in Red. And see you safe with your people." The only thing he could think was they should leave the road and ride north for a time. The bulk of the conroi had been off to his right before he turned back to get Deorwen.
"We could pass right by and never know it." She looked up into the low gray ceiling. "I think we may be losing the light."
There was no sign of Heaven's Eye, but the light did seem to be failing.
"You aren't saying we should make camp?" "Well, we've found a road."
"Aye," said Durand. They would be mad to leave a good road behind with dark coming on. "Best to make camp now. There will be no moon, I think," he said, and they found a well-drained bit of ground a few paces from the road. Neither one of them had any way to make a fire.
When Durand gave Deorwen his cloak, she gave it back.
The sky was growing dark.
"You won't be much good frozen," she informed him. "I'll keep warm walking."
She had sat down. There was a good thick carpet of turf, and it would make a better bed than Durand had known in the Painted Hall of Acconel.
"All night?" she asked.
Durand shrugged his cloak up around his ears. "I'll be happier keeping watch. You're the brave one if you can shut your eyes in this place."
"We'll take turns," she murmured, curling on her side.
"You first?" Durand offered.
"I would never have believed that this could happen to me," she said. Durand laughed.
"When I was girl, I was the kind who wandered then. Gave my minders fits. Once, I lost myself in a wood on my father's land. I remember being very frightened. The wood was a wild place then. All of my nurse's stories, they made it sound as if every inch were thick with Lost knights, Strangers, and Banished spirits set to lure me. A child sees herself in such stories."
She stared off—seeing that other wood, Durand supposed.
"But as a grown woman
...
Those stories. Everyday things weigh them down. It's all the wise women do: whispers of the marriage bed, sour stomachs, and what to wash the babes and bodies in."
She stopped a moment.
'This is different. Like my dreams."
Standing under the trees with the wet straps of a shield in his fingers and a blade in his hand, Durand could only nod.
"That wood was like this," she concluded.
To his eyes, the woman looked like a toy, curled there: the small curve of her mouth, her blotched cheek, her hip.
"The wise women say the Lost work in circles," she said. "We all do. You can feel it here. Round and round, old things they can't set down."
Durand nodded, pulling his damp cloak tight. He had seen as much. They were all dancing in circles in Hesperand. The partners changed, but the steps were the same. He tried to pull together the bits and pieces he had seen. He remembered Heremund's talk of a great sorcery knocking the duchy free of Creation, and it was safe enough to guess that Saewin had killed his master. The Lady had nearly said as much. But what did it all mean?
As he looked at the soot and coal forest, the old spell rose before his mind's eye catching them up like a mill could drag a man in by his sleeves or fingers. As the big spell snapped tight round the dead man, all the oath-bound souls tumbled after their master.
And the whole mess was still here, Eorcan still groping after the author of his destruction, and Saewin still hunting for his Lady. It was mad. He thought back to Heremund's talk of echoes. They had broken a world.