Brag whickered, likely thinking of oats. Heremund had heaped blankets across the horse's back and freed him of his saddle.
When Durand pushed back into the low darkness of the hut, the bow-legged skald's pack was loaded and he was busily grinding out the fire's last embers with his toe. Looking round, Durand discovered that the man had brought Brag's saddlebags inside. Bread and beer of his own was stowed away.
When he had finished eating, Heremund stood. "And where am I taking you?"
"What?"
"Well. I'm not one to leave a thing half-done, and I'd feel an awful fool if you died tomorrow after I saved you today."
Durand was legitimately surprised. "There's no call for that. You've business of your own, I'm sure."
The little man caught hold of the various bags and waddled past Durand into the light.
"Ah," said Heremund. "But you are a knight errant, are you? You are fixed on it?"
Durand called out through the low doorway. "I thought we'd agreed I was no priest
." He curled and uncurled a cal
lused fist. A decade of drills, sparring, hunting, and tilting at the quintain had given him the hands of a woodcutter.
Noticing, Heremund winced. "Or milkmaid either, I'm sure. Poor cows'd never forgive you."
"One thing is certain: I cannot stay here forever."
Heremund was heaping bags around Brag's ankles. Abruptly, the little man stopped, peering round at the close hills and mist.
"No," he agreed. "The shepherd will likely come back."
Durand ducked under the doorframe, and stood up under the pale skies, twisting his neck. 'There's one way, as I see it I must catch the train of some lord at tournament and show the man I'm worth keeping."
The skald was now busy, swinging saddlebags over Brag's back. Once more he seemed distracted, squinting off into the mist.
"If there's a wellborn man who needs another strong back among his retainers, you might hold on. Still, it's late in the year and an awfully long shot."
Durand, one eyebrow raised, had walked up behind the little man. He had to look up a good foot before he saw Durand's face.
"Of course," he said, "they're a practical lot, some of them."
"Where's the next tourney?"
The little man held up his thick-necked mandora, searching in vain for a spot on Brag's back. "I think I'll have to carry this. We should find you a packhorse."
Shaking his head, Durand swung up into the saddle, and extended a hand to the skald.
At the last moment, Heremund made a face. He snuffed at the air. "All right, what
is
that?" A night on the hills had packed Durand's head past noticing a stray scent.
"Awful, whatever it is," said Heremund. "We'll try for Ram's Hill. They have a good tourney there most years, come the Blood Moon. It's a bit of a trek, but we've got time. We should try to find an inn tonight, I reckon."
"Right." Imagining a dry room with a big fire, Durand urged Brag down the track.
He caught the reek nearly as soon as Brag moved. Heremund, right in his ear, said,
"Gods."
Not more than
a dozen paces from the hut, a matted form sprawled in the bushes. As Durand drove Brag a few steps further, a bald-faced rook jerked its head from a wound and lurched into the air. There were white-tined antlers.
It was a red deer: a full-grown stag.
"Host of Heaven," Heremund muttered. "It was a wild night I suppose the rut's just ending. He must have been driven out and died on the hills. Panicked in the storm."
Durand saw the great head in profile, neck ruffed like an eagle. Ten points. A match for the Col stags painted on his own shield.
"I—I'm plagued with omens," Durand murmured. "Now this, on setting out. What is a man to read here? A wild stag killed in the storm. Torn and lying. What doom am I meant to read here?"
Heremund was silent at Durand's shoulder, shaking his head: tiny convulsive gestures. "You see something, don't you?" Durand said. "I read no dooms," Heremund breathed. 'Tell me what you see."
"No." Heremund was whispering. "Once, in warmer days, I served at a court. A great man. And his wife was with child. They summoned the wise woman. But it went wrong, and, though the child lived, its mother could not."
Durand glanced to the stag, its gray tongue curled. "What has this to—"
"There—there was a prophecy. While the wise woman, she's rubbing linseed and balsam into dead mother and live son under the Paling Moon, there is a hard, cold glimpse of the babe's doom.
"Everything the lad did would come to nothing,"
Heremund said, quiet as thought.
"Hells." Durand remembered cringing in the well with that thing that might have been a Power. What would he have done with
that
news?
"Was it true, Heremund?"
"I have heard things lately. I have heard things that make me wonder."
4. Th
e Hungry Leagues
I
t should be any time," said Heremund, peering down the trail. They hoped for a town. Always, they were too late.
For two weeks, they had chased the skald's hunches round the south and east of great Silvermere. At Ram's Hill, they missed a tournament by three days. At Mereness, a pockmarked gatekeeper barked that there would be no tourney that year, someone had died. After a week, the few hard pennies in Durand's purse were gone with the last heel of bread. Now, Heremund was only certain of one final open tournament before the winter snows: Red Winding. Worse, a safe way around Silvermere might take them more than a hundred leagues through wild country, and they had only a week to reach it.
They rode hard. The king's messengers covered fifteen leagues in a day. But the king's men rode fresh horses. And they did not ride double.
Still, Durand knew that he must reach Red Winding. Already, they were waking hungry and riding tired. Durand feared that traveling in his company might kill the little skald, but there was no way a man could wait out the long empty winter.
Now, though, they were hunting the chill twilight for a town. Heremund had promised.
A dog barked somewhere ahead.
"What do you think?" Durand said.
"Aye," Heremund agreed, and, sure enough, between a pair of mud-dark hills, emerged the thatched hovels of a village.
Heremund leaned from his perch behind Durand's saddle. "Now, I'll see if I can't sing for our supper, eh? We'll—"
"You there, stop!" ordered a woman's voice.
Lean men filled the track ahead, billhooks and mattocks in their fists.
Heremund crumpled his hat in his hands, and called out: "We mean no harm."
"Fancy that. They mean no harm. Let them in," said the woman, and, when a few of the plowmen in the track glanced around, unsure, "Hold your ground, you daft whoresons!"
"Listen strangers," she advised. "It's after curfew, and we've had some trouble with lads on the road. Thieving. Filching livestock. We lost three wethers meant for salting just yesterday. There's no work here till the Sowing Moon, and we don't need no trouble from strange men now, do we?"
"Madam," Heremund called, "we ain't common laborers come scrounging for—"
"You'd say that, now, wouldn't you?"
"On a fine steed?"
"Riding double. And I've half a mind to ask where you came by the brute. He don't look too well looked after to me."
"My friend here has been at the court of—"
"Right! You've had polite, now it's time you were off. Lads?"
A couple of the long-faced peasants wound up with slings.
"Ride, Durand!" Heremund hissed. Stones whistled and zipped past them.
They rode safely up into the nearby hills and out of range.
"That was lucky," Durand said, having felt the stones pass close.
"Speak for yourself." The skald was rubbing the side of his head. "I think I'm going to have a thick ear out of this." "You all right?"
"Aye. Or I will be. Always bad at Blood Moon, with winter coming on. And this year, with Mad Borogyn's uprising in the Heithan Marches, and the king's new taxes
...
Still, by the Bitter Moon, the mobs will be gone."
"Aye." He had no trouble imagining that the destitute laborers who staggered into the snows of the Bitter Moon weren't much trouble to anyone much longer.
Again, poor Brag was trudging through wet woodlands. Durand didn't know how long the hunter could stand the abuse. A well-fed horse didn't much mind the cold, but, lean and sopping, Durand worried about the animal.
The track mounted the flank of a wooded ridge.
"I don't suppose you know a hut round
here
somewhere?"
"Why should I need a hut when the people are so friendly?" He gasped at a lurching stride from Brag. "I swear, jostling around back here is going to split me in two. When you're trudging in the muck, it looks like luxury, but there's nothing left of me but a—"
The big horse had put a foot wrong. Poised on the slope, his legs shot out from under him. Without a lifetime's practice, Durand would have had his leg snapped as Brag slammed hard, then slid. Heremund yelped.
In a rushing instant, all three were crashing downhill, catching at saplings and tumbling. Bracken, gorse, and blackthorn lashed at them as they bounded through.
Finally, Durand was free and on his feet. A stand of dogwood had finally caught Brag in a black tangle of wreckage. Heremund was gathering himself up. They had torn twenty yards of bush. Brag thrashed his limbs.
"Oh God," Durand said and scrambled down the slope. .
The horse was screaming. Heremund slid in close.
"Gods," he said.
Durand scrambled through the tangled stand of saplings and tried to reach the animal's legs. Durand had to feel for breaks. The hunter's stiff lashings threatened to brain him, but he slipped close and saw what he had feared. No horse was made for such a fall. There was a sick bend in the animal's right hind leg. The cannon bone had been snapped right below the hock.
"Ah God," said Durand.
The animal lashed harder for a moment, feeling trapped, no doubt, or scared by the pain.
Heremund's wide eyes were on Durand, fearful or hopeful from beyond the animal's flank. But Durand shook his head quick, half-denying what was in front of him. He had pushed too hard.
"Queen of Heaven," he said through clenched teeth. He remembered a thousand forest leagues chasing red deer and roe, driving the boar from his den, pounding through the sunlight with the hunters an
d liegemen of old Duke Abravanal’
s court by Silvermere.
The animal was screaming. Durand swallowed, seeing that Heremund would be no help with what he must do. While Durand had no sword, he still had his knife. He laid his hand on Brag's cheek, then, pushing to hold the animal, he made the butcher's cut where the blood pulsed in the big animal's throat. There was nothing to do then but hold on as the animal bled out
When it was finally over, Durand stood, shaking. He gathered their belongings: bedrolls, mandora, and an iron roll of mail. Heremund watched, saying nothing, but then joined him.
Durand fought a fierce compulsion to return to the village and teach a few villagers the cost of turning travelers away.
Exhausted, cold, and
starving, the two men trudged west. The ungainly roll of iron on Durand's shoulder weighed on him like some Power's curse, but he would not abandon it. Tens of thousands of iron rings, tens of thousands of rivets, all hammered and woven and hardened in the forge. Like Brag, it was a gift from Kieren. A man could buy every ox in a village for the price, and without one a man was no knight. Still, he staggered under the iron weight when the track was uneven. It drove thought from his skull.
On and on they walked, under a dull Heaven. Red Winding dangled just beyond reach, but Heremund could not persuade him to relent. They tramped past stooped swineherds beating the branches for the last acorns, fattening pigs now that the Blood Moon was upon them. A field of women with their hips in the air bent to jerk blunt sickles through fistfuls of stubble. Where the land tended toward marshes, poor men waded barefoot in the muck to cut reeds. Leagues staggered past. The Eye of Heaven fled them west.