The Witchwood Crown
“My name is not important,” the stranger said. “Until a short time ago I was part of the Crane Clan from south of the Littlefeather, down in the Lake Thrithings. They called me Unver. But I have left them now. I have no clan.”
“No clan?” Cudberj shook his head and spat into the fire. “You might as well say you have no heart, no cock. What kind of man renounces his clan?”
“A man whose clan treats him badly.” The tall stranger had dark hair like a clansman, but even in the late daylight Hyara could see that his eyes were unusually pale, like someone from the far north, but more gray than blue. Something else about him caught her attention, too, something about his long, narrow face that seemed almost familiar. “But my leave-taking was not a pleasant one,” he went on, “and my mood is still foul, so do not keep me standing here when I have asked you a question. Is this the camp of Thane Fikolmij?” He looked past the men to the wagon. “Is that his?” He began to walk toward the steps, but Cudberj stepped out to block his path.
“Turn around,” Cudberj said, hefting his ax. He might have been no match for his cousin the March-thane, but he was still a dangerous man. “Turn around, or I will send you back to those Crane Clan cowards in pieces.”
The stranger ignored him and tried to walk past. Cudberj let out a hiss of rage and grabbed at the stranger’s arm, at the same time drawing back his ax to deal what would no doubt have been a mortal blow, but instead the dark-haired man grabbed Cudberj’s wrist and pivoted, twisting the arm until Cudberj shrieked in astonished pain and dropped his weapon. A moment later the stranger’s fist hit him full in the face, knocking him to the ground as though he had been slaughtered with a horse-maul.
The others leaped up to attack the stranger, but within a time so short it seemed to Hyara like some kind of magical vision, they were nearly all down, one with his head rammed between the spokes of the nearest wagon wheel, another with his jaw clacked violently shut by a blow from the stranger’s knee. A third managed to swing his curved sword once, but by the time he brought it around, the stranger was no longer where he had been. He kicked the swordsman hard behind the knee, then again in the other knee, so that the man dropped his sword and fell to the ground, howling and clutching his injured joints. The last of Cudberj’s companions had seen enough and did not attack the stranger, but sprinted away from the wagons, probably to find Hyara’s husband, the thane.
During the fighting Hyara herself had climbed up onto the wagon steps, and now she blocked the stranger’s way. “Do you mean harm to the women or children here?” she asked. “We will fight you if we must.”
“I do not hurt women,” he growled. “I do not hurt children. I want answers only. I seek my mother, the woman called Vorzheva.”
“By all the gods and all the saints of Sacred Mother Church!” Hyara was so astounded she muddled her prayers together again. “Vorzheva? You are my sister’s child?”
He looked at her, not particularly interested. The familiar thing she had noticed was now much plainer—a likeness in the eyes, in the hawklike nose and strong jaw, that could only have come from her own family’s blood. “So I’ve been told. Is she still alive?”
“She is alive and she is here,” said Hyara. “By the Thunderer, I do not know what to say!” A sudden thought came. “But if you wish to speak to her, you had better be fast. They will bring back my husband any moment now, and he will be angry. You must leave before he gets here. He is a terrible man.”
“No,” said the stranger, and his face suddenly went hard, as her sister’s face sometimes went hard. It was like seeing a ghost. “Your husband is strong, perhaps, or cruel, or even dangerous, but those are not the same.”
“I don’t understand,” she said, but she fumbled off the latch and pushed the wagon’s door open. “What do you mean?”
His look suddenly made her feel sick to her stomach—he was so cold, so terribly, hopelessly angry. “I am what a truly terrible man looks like.” He vaulted up the steps and pushed his way into the wagon.
Inside Vorzheva stood waiting, a look on her face that Hyara had never seen before, a mixture of both hope and horror. “No,” she said as she saw the stranger, and pawed at her iron-gray hair, still stubbornly streaked with black even after so many years. “No, go away. You cannot see me like this, covered in ashes.”
The gray-eyed man looked her up and down, and if Vorzheva’s face was something hard to read, his was suddenly even more so. “You are my mother,” he said at last. “Why?” There was something damaged in his voice that Hyara had not heard before. “Why did you do it?” He strode forward and took Vorzheva’s face in his hand, examining it as though it were some rare object, staring at each fold and wrinkle while she stood motionless but for her eyes.
She slowly lifted a hand to clutch the stranger’s wrist. “By my soul, it truly is you—!”
He shook her fingers off, then pushed her back so that she thumped against the wall of the wagon. Confused and only half-awake, their father Fikolmij struggled to sit up in his corner bed and failed.
“Tell me what is happening!” the old man demanded. “Who is this?”
Vorzheva and the stranger stood eye to eye. Hyara was frightened the man would kill her sister—she could see his arms trembling where he held her prisoned against the side wall—but before she could move toward them, he let her go and his hands fell to his sides. His face seemed empty of all feeling now.
“Why did you send me away?” he asked. “They told me that you and my father were dead.”
Vorzheva did not use her sudden freedom to escape him. “I had no choice. Send you away or see you killed—those were his orders. Him!” She pointed to the old man in the bed, who looked from his daughter to his grandson, still not understanding.
Fikolmij blinked, then looked to Hyara, his face almost pitiful in its confusion. “I don’t like this. Where is my supper?”
“Shut up, you old fool!” Vorzheva cried. “This is my son, do you hear? My son! And he has come back to kill you.” Her lined face was suddenly lit with some deep exhilaration. “My Deornoth has returned, and now all will be put right.” She turned back to the stranger. “That is your name, your true name—Deornoth! You were named after a hero.”
Her son showed his teeth like a dog. “What sort of name is that? A stone-dweller name? But it does not matter, for it is not mine. I am Unver, and Unver I will remain.”
“But your father was a prince!”
“My father left us for another woman before he died—you told me so all those years ago! And where is my sister, Derra? What did you do with her, marry her to one of those smirking brutes outside?”
Old Fikolmij suddenly seemed to understand what was happening. His eyes went wide, and his nearly toothless mouth gaped in a grin of delight. “By the Thunderer, is this the wretched stonedweller’s son? Is this Prince Josua’s bastard come back?” He laughed, an explosion of surprised amusement that turned into a deep cough.
“Where is my sister?” Unver demanded.
“She is gone, Deornoth, my son.” Vorzheva’s usually guarded expression was so naked, so raw that Hyara could barely stand to look at her. “She ran away from the family that took her. Twenty years ago, and I have mourned for her every day, as I mourned for you.” She lifted a hand toward Unver, but he backed away. “No, do not blame me! When your father left us, I tried to take you away to a safe place, but the grasslands were at war and we were captured—”
“Vorzheva, you cannot speak of this now,” Hyara said. “Gurdig will be back any moment. I can hear them shouting for him out by the paddocks. If this truly is your son, he must go before my husband gets here.”
“Run away?” Unver gave her a brief look of contempt. “After being cast out like a lame colt or a sickly hound? No. I will stay until I have answers.” He turned back to Vorzheva. “Where is my father? Why did he leave us?”
“Because
he was a coward,” Fikolmij wheezed from his bed. “He was always a coward. And he made your mother his whore.”
Vorzheva grabbed a cup from a shelf beside her and threw it at him. It sailed wide and smashed against the wall. Fikolmij laughed, as pleased with chaos as a demented child.
“Shut your mouth!” Vorzheva screamed at the old man. “You tried to drive us apart from the beginning.” She turned back to Unver. “She lured him away. That Perdruinese witch Faiera, that Scrollbearer, she stole your father from us. He left to go to her and never came back. And his noble friends did nothing to help us.” Vorzheva looked around wildly for a moment, then hurried across the wagon to a chest piled with blankets. As Unver and the rest watched, she threw the blankets onto the floor and opened the heavy chest, sinews straining in her bony arms, then lifted something long and black from inside. It was a scabbard, and as the rest of it came into view Hyara recognized it—Vorzheva’s husband’s sword, a slender weapon even for the blades of city folk.
“Here!” Vorzheva cried. “Here is his sword! Tell me Josua was not bespelled by that Perdruinese she-demon! Otherwise, why would he go away and leave this behind? This is the blade he used to kill Utvart and win me!”
The tumult outside was growing very loud; Hyara could hear many people shouting. She had time only to say, “I warned you—it is Gurdig—!” before the door of the wagon was yanked open so powerfully that one of the hinges snapped. A tall, wide figure shouldered its way through, and for a moment the darkening skies behind and the flames from the wagon’s cookfire made it seem a kind of demon.
Not so far from the truth, thought Hyara, her stomach like a cold stone.
“Where is this stranger?” her husband bellowed but did not wait for anyone to answer his question. Gurdig crossed the wagon so quickly that Unver scarcely had time to raise his arms before the thane hit him with the back of his fist hard enough to knock him sprawling into the crockery chest, which overturned. The lid flew open and bowls and cups tumbled out onto the wagon’s floor, but even as Unver struggled to find his footing, Gurdig, who must have outweighed him by a hundredweight, caught hold of his tunic and yanked him to his feet, then threw him out through the open front door of the wagon and sprang out after him.
“Kill him, Gurdig!” shouted old Fikolmij, wheezing with delight as he struggled to get out of his bed, something he had not done in many moons. “Yes! Kill the stone-dweller’s whelp!”
“One thing I swear,” said Vorzheva, her voice gone icy cold. “Whatever happens, you will not be there to gloat, old man.” And even as Hyara watched in astonishment, her elder sister snatched the first thing that came to her hand, a long meat fork, and jabbed it into Fikolmij’s wattled neck. The old man shrieked, his eyes rolling like a panicked cow’s, but even as he thrashed in the tangling blanket, his long, straggling beard slowly turned red on one side, Vorzheva picked up another object, a great carving knife, and set the point of it against his nightshirt, between his ribs. “I promised myself this day,” she said, leaning close to the old man’s terrified face, then shoved the blade into him until it would go no farther. Fikolmij’s shrieks turned into gurgles. For a moment he waved his hands to no purpose, like an infant unable to control its limbs, then he slumped sideways in his bed in a widening red stain.
Hyara fled the wagon as if demons were after her.
At first, because of the deepening twilight, she could barely make out what was happening outside the wagon. Perhaps half a dozen men had dragged Unver to the ground, with Gurdig leaning over them like a bear trying to pick fish from a river. Dozens more had crowded into the camp and surrounded the combatants, shouting and cursing in excitement. Crows, startled from their nearby nesting tree by the noise, wheeled above the mêlée in their hundreds like a squawking thundercloud.
By sheer weight of numbers the Stallion clansmen had overwhelmed the stranger, kicking and pummeling him, shouting as they did so, some of them laughing as though it were only a rough game. Hyara suddenly wished she could set all of them on fire—the brutish clansmen, her husband, the wagon and the entire camp—then fly away like a bird.
“Off him!” Gurdig bellowed. “Off him, you shit-eaters! He is mine!”
Her husband was a very large man with a terrible temper, as Hyara and the clansmen knew well; the men swiftly untangled themselves from Unver and rolled away. The last pair dragged the stranger to his feet and pushed him staggering toward Gurdig, who felled him with a single blow of his thick fist.
“How do you dare to push your way into the March-thane’s wagon?” Gurdig said, standing over him. “What clan do you come from?”
Unver looked up at him, his eyes still bright in a mask of blood and dirt. “I have no clan. I came for what is mine.”
One of Gurdig’s followers handed him a long, curved sword. “Then die nameless,” the thane said, and spat on the ground. Gurdig turned to the men who had now formed a rough circle around the two of them. “Someone give him a blade so that I will have at least a hoof-paring’s less shame when I kill him.”
Hyara felt someone shoulder past her, almost tumbling her off the wagon’s shallow front step. It was Vorzheva, who threw something toward Unver. It struck, pommel first, and fell flat on the ground—a long, thin, straight sword. A stone-dweller sword.
“Take it!” Vorzheva cried. “Your father called it ‘Naidel’.”
“He named his sword a needle?” Gurdig threw back his head and laughed, the twin braids of his beard bouncing on his chest. “Good! Very good! To call a man’s weapon, especially such a puny one, after a woman’s tool.”
Unver looked down at the sword, blood dripping from his chin, but he did not pick it up. “I want nothing of his.”
Thane Gurdig laughed again. “Then I shall give you something of mine!” he said, and leaped forward, swinging his great sword in a horizontal arc meant to decapitate the other man with one stroke. Unver rolled out of the way and let Gurdig’s momentum carry him past, but it was a near thing.
The March-thane turned. His smile was wolfish. “I see there is some fight left in you. That is good, by the Grass Thunderer! I will have some evening entertainment after all!” He moved toward him, this time in a more controlled way, swiping this way and that, making Unver creep backward toward the fire pit.
“Watch out for the fire!” Vorzheva cried.
“Wife!” shouted Gurdig. “Tell your sister to keep her mouth shut or I will shut it well and truly when I finish with this horse-stealer.”
For the first time, Unver’s face showed something other than disgust and resignation. “I am no thief. I came only for what is mine.”
“But everything here is mine, little man,” said Gurdig, slashing again. Unver leaped backward over the pit before he could be driven into the flames, but landed badly; when he turned, he could barely stand straight. Several of the other clansmen moved to shove him back toward Gurdig, but the thane waved them off and began to stalk Unver, the fire now between them.
The trees were thick with crows. Their squawking cries almost overtopped the shouts of Gurdig’s men, and even in the midst of all that was happening before her, Hyara felt a moment of superstitious dread. Nesting season for the black birds was over. Where had they all come from? It was like the famous story of Edizel Shan, when the crows came from all over the world to salute the hero’s birth. But sometimes they came to herald a disaster, too.
For long moments Unver kept the fire between them, but Hyara knew the stalemate could not last long: the younger man was staggering, while her husband had not only the advantage of size but was not covered with bruises and bleeding welts from a beating as his opponent was. Gurdig already seemed almost bored with the chase; after a feint first to one side and then the other, the March-thane leaped over the fire pit and landed on the other side with a thump of impact and a scatter of sparks. Now nothing lay between him and the stranger but trampled grass. Swiping his blade
again and again like a scythe, Gurdig drove the other man toward the ring of spectators, but they only fell back a little way before stopping. When Unver reached them, rough hands shoved him back toward Gurdig.
“I did not come seeking a fight,” he said, breathing hard, blood bubbling in the corner of his mouth. “But you and your people gave me the back of your hand.”
“I don’t care if you came in a wagon with golden wheels.” Gurdig was now nearly within the span of his long blade. “You forced your way into the March-thane’s wagon. You struck my cousin. That is enough to earn you death and a vulture’s belly for your grave, No-Clan.”
“Then strike,” said Unver, and lowered his arms. Many of those watching gasped in surprise or perhaps disappointment. “I will be happy to leave this world behind.”
Suddenly there was a vast clatter and a chorus of shrill, creaking cries. Crows came swirling out of the nearby trees like a black cyclone, swirling up and out. But instead of flying away, the birds turned and stooped abruptly on the camp, wings and beaks everywhere, crowing in their flat, urgent voices. The onlookers shouted in surprise, throwing up their hands to protect themselves as the cloud of black birds dropped on them. Some of the clansfolk broke and ran away; others fell to their knees, but the thickest part of the flock descended on Gurdig and Unver. The March-thane, suddenly blinded by wings and bright eyes, whipped his heavy blade from side to side like a horsewhip, knocking black shapes from the air. Most of those struck fell to the ground around him, but a few were batted into the fire.
“The stranger called the birds,” someone cried. “He is a witch!”
“No!” roared Gurdig. “He is my meat!” Hyara’s husband had been forced back almost to the fire pit by the flurry of squawking shapes. The sword Vorzheva had thrown her son lay at Unver’s feet where it had fallen, still untouched. Gurdig’s violent swings began to drive away the nearest of the crows. Others had taken to the sky and were barely visible against the deep evening blue, wheeling just overhead, still croaking in what sounded like outrage or warning.