The Witchwood Crown
“Very fair.” Jarnulf got down on hands and knees, then crawled out of the crevasse, waiting until he had gone several paces down the slope before rising.
Nezeru watched, uncomfortably aware of the massive creature behind her whose bulk sealed her off from the rest of the Talons, but even more miserably conscious of her fellow Hikeda’ya on the giant’s far side.
Once he was away from the great, cloven stone, Jarnulf made his way swiftly and quietly down the slope and stopped just before the fallen log, looking back to make certain Nezeru saw him. Then, his mouth moving as if he sang or chanted something she could not hear, he drew his bow and pointed the arrow up and out toward the south, away from the mortal soldiers waiting at the bottom of the hill. When he released the string the arrow leaped into the air, carrying his red-smeared parchment silently across the violet sky, dwindling as it rose until at last it spent its strength and began to curve down into the trees.
Jarnulf scrambled back to the great halved stone even more quickly than he had gone, still blocked from the view of the others by the immensity of Goh Gam Gar. He had only just taken his place again when Nezeru heard the horses snort restlessly as someone came toward them from the far end.
“What have you done here?” demanded Saomeji, his voice a quiet snarl, his yellow eyes wild. It was the first time she had ever heard the Singer sound angry. “Someone has broken the line of my song!” He stood behind the giant on tip-toe, unwilling to get too close to the monster but struggling to see past him. “Was it you, mortal? What have you done?”
“Done?” Jarnulf laughed. “Have we not enough to worry about? I wanted a piss and the Hunë didn’t want to move, so I stepped out and did it on the hill, just there.” He shook his head. “I did not know that joining your company meant I could only piss when and where you said, Singer. If you’d told me, I might have chosen different traveling companions.”
Makho came up behind Saomeji, his face cold. “You do nothing without asking me first, mortal.” He looked at Nezeru. “What did he do?”
Another crossroad had come. “Only what he said, Hand Chieftain.” Lies to her superior now rolled from her tongue as though she had practiced the crime for years. She was troubled by that, but also impressed with her own unexpected facility. “He did it before I knew what he planned, but came back promptly, so I did not slay him.”
“You are far too patient for my liking, Blackbird.” Makho turned to the mortal once more. “Stay there and do not move again until the moon sets or I will have the giant pull off your skin. I cannot deal with you now when there is planning yet unfinished, but I will not forget.”
Nezeru knew better than to question Makho when he was angry, but he turned toward her as though she had voiced some doubt. “When real darkness comes, we will make these mortals fear us.” He shook his head. “I swear by the Garden left behind, you and the Shu’do-tkzayha are both more trouble than you are worth.”
“I can only speak for myself,” said Jarnulf, so lightly that he almost sounded cheerful. “But I am a tool, and a very useful one. A good leader should know how to use me.”
Makho did not rise to the bait. “I will use you until you break, if I so please,” he told the mortal in a flat, dead voice. “Like any slave. Then I will toss you aside and never think of you again. Never doubt that.”
“It is just that you do not seem to have enough warriors at your command to carelessly destroy one as skilled as I am,” Jarnulf said cheerfully.
Was he trying to provoke the chieftain? Nezeru could not understand such recklessness, but Makho seemed to have decided to let him live, at least for the present. She realized that if Makho and the Singer had indeed met in secret with a mortal, if that tale was not merely mischief-making by Jarnulf, she no longer understood anything about what the Hikeda’ya were doing in this strange land.
Help me, Mother of All, she thought, half prayer, half lament. I want only to do your will. Help me see my path.
“Do not worry for me,” Makho told Jarnulf. “I have all that I need. My blood flows for the queen, and I was given this task from her holy hand. I swear by my Talon oath and my ancestor’s fabled sword that the mortal scum below will not take us, alive or dead. And by the time the sun rises again, they will weep over their own fallen.” The chieftain now turned toward Nezeru, his eyes as dark as onyx beads in the white mask of his face. “Others have doubted me or misjudged me before this—Hikeda’ya and mortals alike. They are all dead.” He slapped at his sword hilt. “As I said, we wait only until the moon sets. Then the blood of the animals who stole our land will be spilled across this hillside. A great, red river of the foul stuff.”
23
Testament of the White Hand
Farewell, O my children! Farewell, O my wife!
I am called to defend what I love more than life
For no man who is true hides when battle horns blow
And the fields of his fathers are befouled by the foe
We shall push back this trespass or we’ll die where we stand,
But we’ll give not an inch of our fair Erkynland!
The young harper Rinan was doing his best. It was a spirited rendition of “Fair Erkynland,” and his clear voice floated sweetly through the chill evening air, though he sang to a group of foot soldiers who would not look at him. If anything, they seemed to huddle closer to the fire as he approached, and many of their faces were tight with anger.
Farewell to my family! My neighbors, farewell!
I cannot turn back from the war’s sounding knell
I am called to the battle, so must rush to the field
And there make a stand, and to no stranger yield
We shall push back this trespass or we’ll die where we stand
But we’ll give not an inch of our fair Erkynland!
The king rode a little nearer. The first soldiers to recognize him scrambled to their feet and then fell to their knees, chain mail clinking; others quickly followed suit. Rinan stopped singing as he turned to see what had caused the disruption, his harp ringing on for the length of a heart’s beat before he, too, took a knee and bowed, his face pale as death.
As Simon looked down at the tops of all those bent heads, he felt a pang in his heart unrelated to his fears about the upcoming struggle. What happens when everyone who knew me before is gone? he wondered. All that will be left is a world full of people who only know me as the king. “Oh, saints preserve us,” he said at last, “do get up, men. You don’t want to get your breeks wet just before a battle. You’ll have reason enough to wet them later on.”
Some of the fighting men merely goggled at this, but a few laughed as if against their will, and soon many of the others were smiling as well: the Commoner King as many called him was well-liked by his soldiers. Simon passed a few words with them, naming a couple that he recognized, letting them know in all ways he could find that they were his men, that he valued their lives.
“Remember,” he told them, “it’s harder to go slow. It’s harder to keep up your courage without running and shouting. But that’s what you’ll need to do. The Norns are clever, but here is a good joke—we Erkynlanders are too stupid to care! We’ll have them boxed like a hare, boys, you’ll see.” He turned to Rinan, who was still kneeling. “Do me a kindness, will you, harper? Give me a little company as I go around the camp.”
“I—I have no horse, sire.”
Simon climbed down from the saddle. “Nothing to worry. I’ll lead mine.”
They walked for a while in silence, boots crunching through the occasional patch of snow. Every fifty paces or so a fire burned, mostly small, the pits dug in haste. Each had its contingent of soldiers, with others loitering between the campfire stations. They made something above eight hundred men all together, all the troops Sir Kenrick could spare without leaving vulnerable the camp back up the road.
“They don’t re
ally like songs about blood and killing and such,” he said at last.
“Majesty?” the harper asked. “I mean—I beg your pardon, Majesty?”
“Not just before it’s actually going to happen. Nobody wants to hear about men dying when men are about to die.”
“Do you mean the song I was singing, sire?”
“No, I tell a lie. The Rimmersmen do. They’re mad for it. The night before a battle they drink until they can barely stand, then they sing songs about hacking off people’s heads and the death of the gods. Giants killing snakes! And they’re not even pagans anymore.” He laughed. “God save me, you should have seen them. Duke Isgrimnur, dear old Isgrimnur, he was usually the loudest.”
The harper smiled, but it lacked conviction.
“No, you must think of some songs that will make the men merry instead,” Simon said. “A little teary-eyed? That’s well enough, too. Songs about girls always go down well. And home. Almost everyone likes those. Do you see what I mean?”
“I . . . I think I do, Majesty.”
“Good. We’re all on this road together, young Rinan. We all want to get back home, so we all do what we can to get us there safely. You have an important part to play, young man, just like the rest.”
• • •
The harper was still walking beside him as Simon made his way toward the largest group of men, clumped at the eastern base of the steep hill. He had already had one visit from Eolair and two from Captain Marshal Kenrick. Jeremias had even come to inspect the king’s armor, and had sworn he would return with a better tasset that would not hang askew.
“Aren’t you tired, Majesty?” Rinan asked. “It is past the middle watches of night.”
“My men are all awake—or most of them, at least. Never underestimate a soldier’s ability to steal some sleep. In the Thrithings war all those years ago I saw men sleep standing up, waiting for the trumpet to blow.” He nodded. “But sleeping or not, while they wait, I wait with them.” The king looked over his army. “Do you wonder that most of our forces are set on this side of the hill?”
The weary harper tried to be attentive. By the last of the moon’s light, his face had a sickly look. “Sire?”
“It’s because the other side of the hill is steep. Too steep even for Norns, I’d say, and Eolair and the soldiers agree. No way off until most of the way down. So we have set only a few scouts there to watch. But we have many pickets up there above us—” he started to point up the slope, then remembered he might be observed, even in the near-dark, “—who’ll let us know if the Norns are coming. Then, you see, the rest of the men can be up the hill here and coming around from the sides as well. We even have fowling nets to keep those sly creatures from slipping past us.” Simon was rather proud of the nets, which had been his idea. He would never forget the stories he’d heard from Josua and the others, so long ago now, of being hunted by the White Foxes through the Aldheorte Forest, how the pale devils moved quickly and silently as cats. “And speaking of those pale devils, there may not be more than a few of them,” he said suddenly. “We only know for certain that there are at least two, because Sir Irwyn saw them. Irwyn’s a sensible man.”
Rinan nodded. He was wide-eyed now—mostly from fear, was Simon’s guess—and kept peering nervously up at the forested hillside.
Simon chuckled. “You’re like my Miri. The queen. She thinks I’m going to go charging up there like when I was a young man—well, in truth I was a mere boy for much of the fighting during the Storm King’s War. I was older when we fought the Thrithings-men. But it’s always fearful, just before. Always.” He shook his head sadly. “How many years do you have, lad?”
“Fifteen years, your Majesty. But my saint’s day is near.”
“Hah. I was much the same age as you when . . . well, when I saw the first of all this sort of thing.” He waved to indicate the hidden enemy, the waiting soldiers. “Not by choice, of course. See, that’s what I was trying to tell you the other day. Do you remember? When I lost my temper and grumbled at you a bit?”
Now Rinan’s gaze was fixed on the king and only the king. “Yes, sire. I remember, sire.”
“It’s because you were singing a song about me, but the song wasn’t really true.” Simon scratched vigorously at his chin. The strap of his helmet had given him an itch, and he wasn’t even wearing it any more. “And the truth is important, because . . . because, well, it just is.” Simon was frustrated: For a moment, he thought he had a grasp on something important, the kind of thing Doctor Morgenes would have said. “You see, lad, there’s the world in songs and stories, and then there’s the world that actually happens to you. And they’re not the same. Even the songs that are about real things—songs that are mostly true, I mean—they’re about people thinking about those things afterward. Do you see what I’m trying to say?”
“I think so, Majesty.”
“Because in a song, someone’s riding off to slay a dragon, and his heart is full of noble ideas and fair maidens that need saving and all that. But in the world that we truly live in, someone rides off to save his own life, and then he’s wandering around and strange things are happening to him that don’t make good sense. And it’s not that he’s going to slay a dragon, it’s that suddenly a dragon is coming at him, and he’s trying not to die. And if he’s lucky—or very good, and I wasn’t that, I promise you, I was very, very lucky—he doesn’t die. And then they make a song about him. Do you see?”
Rinan actually managed to smile. “I do, sire. I believe I do.”
Simon felt relieved. “I’m glad. Because sometimes when I try to explain things to people they look at me like I’m a bit mad, but because I’m the king part of the high king and high queen, they don’t say it.”
“That was a very good explanation, in truth, Your Majesty.”
“I suppose that’s the main thing I was trying to get at, then,” said the king. “What I learned from everything that happened to me. That you don’t ever think you’re in a song, if you know what I mean—”
A sound had begun as Simon was speaking, faint at first, but now rising like a storm wind—people shouting, some actually screaming—and he forgot what he had been saying. Torches moved up the hill, wavering like fireflies as soldiers broke rank and charged up to help the scouts on the hillside above.
Simon turned, hoping to spot Eolair or Kenrick, but could not locate them in the scramble. He knew he had to find trustworthy soldiers quickly so he could get the young harper back to the safety of the camp. Then his horse reared, and Simon had to struggle to hold onto the reins and keep the animal from bolting. When he turned, he found that young Rinan was down on his knees, as if praying. A moment later he saw the terrible shape of an arrow quivering high in the side of the young man’s chest, just under his arm. Then the harper slumped face forward into the black dirt.
“Continue with my armor,” Morgan told his squire. Melkin only stared at him, then glanced toward the massive Erkynguard soldier at the front door as if for permission. That made Morgan angry enough to feel he could spew smoke like an oven. “Why do you look to him? Is he your prince or am I?” He turned to the guard. “Am I permitted to put my armor on, guardsman, in case we are overrun?”
The soldier gave an uncomfortable shrug. He was a bulky, blue-jawed man with eyes so narrow they could scarcely be seen in the shadowed slot of his helmet. “Of course, your Highness, that is sensible. I was told only that you were to stay here, not, God save me, to tell your Highness what to do in your own tent.”
“Stay here, my grandmother says. Stay here!” Morgan waggled his arm until Melkin began buckling on the pieces of his vambrace once more. “Sir Astrian is not staying here. Sir Olveris is not here. Even Porto, that tottering, ancient drunkard, is not expected to stay here with the women.”
“I am not a woman, your Highness,” said Melkin with a certain wavering dignity. “And neither is the guard
. It’s just us here.”
“Well, then, we are expected to stay near the women.” Morgan felt curiously light-headed, his stomach empty and his face hot. The thought of the battle he could now dimly hear was truthfully more frightening than exciting, but the idea of everyone knowing that he, the prince, had been kept from it seemed far, far worse. “God’s curse on this, I am a man’s age! I could be doing something!” He whirled to point at the guard, almost knocking Melkin onto his backside. “Those men out there need help!”
The guard stared back at him, and for a moment it seemed he would stay silent. Then he said, slowly and carefully, “They do, your Highness. I’d like to help them myself, and with good fortune I might even do nearly as much as your Highness. With good fortune, as I said.” His words were slow but hard, like the crunch-crunch-crunch of marching feet. “But instead I’m to stay here with you—near the women, as you say—because that is the order my queen gave to me.”
For a moment Morgan felt so hot all over that he could not tell if he was about to laugh or cry or shout until he burst like a bubble. But the disgusted look he thought he saw on the soldier’s face, and Melkin’s cowering posture on the ground, as though Morgan might hit him, made him feel as childish as his sister Lillia at her stubborn worst. More disgrace. He swallowed, then forced himself to swallow again, letting the rest of the angry words drain back into his depths, unspoken. Then, with princely calm belied by tight-clenched fists and palm-scoring nails, he nodded courteously to the guard before sinking onto a stool to make it easier for Melkin to finish dressing him.
Simon’s heart felt pierced, as though the arrow had struck him instead of Rinan. He got down on one knee, fighting the weight of his own armor, and tried to turn the boy over. Another arrow whistled past.
Exposed. God spite me, I’m a damned fool!
He held onto his horse’s reins with one hand and got as firm a grip as he could on the harper’s collar, then grabbed at the back of his belt instead. He dragged the limp, surprisingly heavy body toward the front of the hill and the largest number of his soldiers, trying to let his armored horse serve as protection for both of them. The cries from higher up the hillside had grown in volume and pitch; now the king could hear men screeching in terror and pain. He looked up to see the irregular line of torches run against some invisible wall, many falling away as others continued upward until, having gone a little higher up the slope, they fell too.