“You shouldn’t,” Ulca said, but closed her eyes and did not move away.
He kept his own eyes open for fear of missing his mark and tumbling to the snow-flecked ground. Her mouth was strangely firm beneath his, but warm and soft as a blanketed bed on a winter’s night. He let his lips stay there for a moment, trying to remember if he had ever done this before and if so, what to do next. Ulca did not move, and they stood in place, breathing air gently scented with wine into each other’s mouths.
Simon discovered soon enough that kissing was more than just standing lip to lip, and after a short while the cold air, the horrors of battle, even the ruckus of the bonfire a short distance away had disappeared from his mind. He stretched his arms around this wonderful creature and pulled her close, enjoying the feeling of sweetly yielding girl pressed against him, never wanting to do anything else in his whole life, however long it might be.
“Ooh, Seoman,” Ulca said at last, pulling back to catch her breath, “you could make a girl faint.”
“Mmmm.” Simon drew her back again, bending his neck so that he could nibble at her ear. If only she were a little taller! “Sit down,” he said. “I want to sit down.”
They struggled along for a few joined steps, clumsy as a crab, until Simon found a chunk of fallen masonry of appropriate height. He wrapped his cloak around both of them as they sat down, then pulled Ulca close once more, squeezing and kneading even as he continued to kiss her. Her breath was warm against his face. She was soft in some places, firm in others. What a wonderful world this was!
“Ooh, Seoman.” Her voice was muffled as she spoke into his cheek. “Your beard, it scratches so!”
“Yes, it does, doesn’t it?”
It took Simon a moment to realize that someone other than himself had answered Ulca. He looked up.
The figure standing before them was dressed all in white—jacket, boots, and breeches. It had long hair that streamed in the light breeze, a mocking smile, and upturned eyes no more human than those of a cat or a fox.
Ulca stared for a moment, her mouth open. She let out a tiny squeak of amazement and fear.
“Who …?” She rose unsteadily from their seat. “Seoman, who …?”
“I am a fairy woman,” said Jiriki’s sister, her voice suddenly stony. “And you are a little mortal girl … who is kissing my husband-to-be! I think I shall have to do something dreadful to you.”
Ulca gasped for breath and screamed in earnest this time, pushing herself away from Simon so strongly that he was almost toppled from the rock. Curly hair unbound and flying behind her, she ran back toward the bonfire.
Simon stared after her stupidly for a moment, then turned back to the Sithawoman. “Aditu?”
She was watching the disappearing form of Ulca. “Greetings, Seoman.” She spoke calmly, but with a hint of amusement. “My brother sends his regards.”
“What are you doing here?” Simon could not understand what had just happened. He felt as though he had fallen out of bed during a wonderful dream and landed on his head in a bear pit. “Merciful Aedon! And what do you mean, ‘husband-to-be’?!”
Aditu laughed, her teeth flashing. “I thought it would be a good story to add to the other Tales of Seoman the Bold. I have been haunting the shadows all evening and have heard many people mention your name. You slay dragons and wield fairy-weapons, so why not have a fairy-wife?” She reached out a hand, enclosing his wrist with cool, supple fingers. “Now come, we have much to talk about. You can rub faces with that little mortal girl some other time.”
Simon followed, stunned, as Aditu led him back toward the light of the bonfire. “Not after this I can’t,” he mumbled.
18
The Fox’s Bargain
Eolair’s sleep had been shallow and troubled, so he woke instantly when Isorn touched his shoulder.
“What is it?” He fumbled for his sword, fingers scrabbling through the damp leaves.
“Someone coming.” The Rimmersman was tense, but there was an odd look on his face. “I don’t know,” he muttered. “You had better come.”
Eolair rolled over and clambered to his feet, then paused to buckle on his sword belt. The moon hung solemnly above the Stagwood; from its position, Eolair guessed that dawn could not be far away. There was something odd in the air: the count could feel it already. This forest the Hernystiri called Fiathcoille, which spread in a contented clump a few leagues southeast of Nad Mullach beside the river Baraillean, was a place he had hunted every spring and fall as a young man, a spot he knew like his own hall. When he had rolled himself in his cloak and blanket to sleep, it had been familiar as an old friend. Now, suddenly, it seemed different in a way he could not understand.
The camp was stirring into wakefulness. Already most of Ule’s men were pulling on their boots. Their numbers had almost tripled since he and Isorn had found them—there were quite a few masterless men wandering the edges of the Frostmarch who were happy to join an organized band, regardless of its purpose—and Eolair doubted that anything but a major force of arms could threaten them.
But what if Skali had gotten wind of their presence? They were a sizable company, but against an army like Kaldskryke’s they could not hope to be more than a brief annoyance.
Isorn stood before him at the forest fringe, beckoning. Eolair moved toward him, trying to move as quietly as he could, but even as he listened to the soft crunching of his own footfalls, he became aware of … something else.
At first he thought it was the wind, wailing like a chorus of spirits, but the trees around him were still, clumps of snow still balanced delicately at the ends of the branches. No, it was not the wind. The sound had a regular quality, rhythmic, even musical. It sounded, Eolair thought, like … singing.
“Brynioch!” he swore as he moved up beside Isorn. “What is it?”
“The sentries heard that an hour gone,” the duke’s son muttered. “How loud must it be, that we have not seen them yet?”
Eolair shook his head. The snow-dappled plain of the lower Inniscrich lay before them, pale and uneven as rumpled silk. Men were moving up on either side, crawling to the edge of the trees to look out, until Eolair felt as though he were surrounded by a crowd awaiting a royal procession. But the anticipatory looks of the hard-faced men around him were more than a little fearful. Many sword hilts were already clutched in damp palms.
The singing rose in pitch, then abruptly stopped. In its wake, the sound of many hoofbeats echoed along the Stagwood’s fringe. Eolair, still wiping sleep from his eyes, drew breath to say something to Isorn. As it turned out, he held that breath for a long time, and when he let it out it was only to suck in another.
They appeared from the east, as though they had come out of northern Erkynland—or, Eolair thought distractedly, out of the depths of Aldheorte Forest. They were little more than a shimmer of moonlight on metal at first, a distant cloud of silvershine in the darkness. Hoofbeats rumbled like heavy rain on a wooden roof, then a horn winded, an oddly haunting note that pierced the night, and suddenly they seemed almost to burst into full view. One of Ule’s men went mad when he saw them. He ran shouting into the forest, slapping at his head as though it burned, and was not seen again by any of his fellows.
Although none of the others were so badly afflicted, no one who passed that night in the Stagwood was ever after the same, nor could any of them quite say why. Even Eolair was stunned, Eolair who had traveled most of the length and breadth of Osten Ard, who had seen sights that reduced most men to tongue-tied awe. But even the worldly count would never be able to explain just how it had felt to watch the Sithi ride.
As the wild company thundered past, the very quality of the moonlight seemed to change. The air became pale and crystalline; objects seemed to glitter at the edges, as though every tree and man and blade of grass was limned in diamond. The Sithi rolled past like a great ocean wave capped with gleaming spear-points. Their faces were hard and fierce and beautiful as the faces of hunting hawks, and th
eir hair streamed in the wind of their passage. The immortals’ steeds seemed to race more swiftly than any horses could run, but they moved in a way that seemed fit only for dreams, pace smooth as melting honey, hooves carving the darkness into pale streaks of fire.
Within moments the bright company had dwindled to a dark mass vanishing in the west, their hoofbeats a fading murmur. They left behind them silence and, in some of the watchers, tears.
“The Fair Ones …” Eolair breathed at last. His own voice seemed as thick and hoarse as the croaking of a frog.
“The … Sithi?” Isorn shook his head as though he had been struck a blow. “But … but why? Where are they going?”
And suddenly Eolair knew. “The Fox’s Bargain,” he said, and laughed. His heart felt buoyant in his chest.
“What do you mean?” Isorn watched in bewilderment as the Count of Nad Mullach turned and headed back into the forest.
“An old song,” he called back. “The Fox’s Bargain!” He laughed again and sang, feeling the words leap out as though they sought the night air of their own accord.
“‘We never forget,’ the Fair Ones said,
‘Though Time may ancient run.
You will hear our horns beneath the moon,
You will see our spears shine in the sun …’”
“I do not understand!” Isorn cried.
“Never mind!” Eolair was almost out of sight, moving rapidly toward the camp. “Get the men! We must ride to Hernysadharc!”
As if to echo him, a silvery horn sounded in the distance.
“It is an old song of our people,” Eolair called across to Isorn. Although they had been riding at speed since before the sun had risen, there was no sign of the Sithi but for a trample of hoofprints on the snowy grass, hoofprints already fading as the grass sprang back and the snow liquefied in the morning’s warmth. “It tells of the promise the Fair Ones made to the Red Fox—Prince Sinnach—before the battle of Ach Samarath: they swore they would never forget the faithfulness of Hernystir.”
“So you think they are riding against Skali?”
“Who can say? But look where they are bound!” The count stood in the saddle and pointed out across the broad grasslands at the tracks disappearing into the west. “True as an arrow’s flight to the Taig!”
“Even if that is where they are going, we cannot ride all the way there at this pace,” said Isorn. “The horses are flagging already, and we have only traveled a few leagues.”
Eolair looked around. The company was beginning to slide apart, some of the riders falling well back. “Perhaps. But, Bagba bite me, if they are going to Hernysadharc, I want to be there!”
Isorn grinned, his wide face crinkling. “Not unless your fairy-folk left us some of their fairy-horses, with wings on their feet. But we will get there eventually.”
The count shook his head, but pulled gently back on the reins, slowing his gray horse to a canter. “True. We’ll do no one any good if we kill our mounts.”
“Or ourselves.” Isorn waved his hand to slow the rest of the company.
They stopped for a midday meal. Eolair balanced his impatience against what he knew to be the wisdom of having his troop at least somewhat rested: if there was to be fighting, men who were ready to drop in their tracks and horses who could not walk another step would make a very indifferent contribution.
After an hour’s rest they were back in the saddle again, but Eolair now kept the pace more reasonable. By the time darkness arrived, they had crossed the Inniscrich to the outskirts of the territory of Hernysadharc, although they were still several hours’ ride from the Taig. They had passed some encampments that Eolair guessed had belonged to Skali’s men. All were deserted, but signs indicated that the tenancy had been recent: in one of them, the cookfires still smoldered. The count wondered if the Rimmersmen had fled before the onrushing Sithi, or had suffered some other, stranger fate.
At Isorn’s insistence, Eolair finally brought the company to a halt near Ballacym, a walled town on a low hillside that looked back over the western edge of the Inniscrich. Much of the town had been destroyed during Lluth’s losing battle with Skali nearly a year before, but enough of the walls remained to offer some shelter.
“We do not want to arrive in the midst of any struggle at night,” Isorn said as they rode through the shattered gates. “Even if you are correct and your fairy-folk have come to fight for Hernystir, how will they know the difference between the right and wrong sort of mortal in the dark?”
Eolair was not pleased, but he could not dispute the wisdom of Isorn’s words. As he had already known, there was little his small band could do against a large army like Skali’s, but the thought of having to wait was still infuriating. His heart had sung to match the Sithi themselves as he had watched them ride. To do something—to finally strike a blow at those who had devastated his land! The idea had pushed at him like a strong wind. And now he must wait until morning.
Eolair drank more than his usual modest portion of wine that night, though it was in short supply, then lay down early, uninterested in talking about what they all had seen and what they might be riding toward. He knew that even with the wine fumes in his head, sleep would be a long time coming. It was.
“I do not like this,” Ule Frekkeson growled, drawing back on his reins. “Where have they gone? And, by the Holy Aedon, what has happened here?”
The streets of Hernysadharc were strangely deserted. Eolair knew that few of his people had remained after Skali’s conquest, but even if all the Rimmersmen had been driven out by the Sithi—which seemed impossible, since scarcely more than a day had passed since the Fair Ones rode past, half a hundred leagues west—there should still be at least a few of the native Hernystir-folk.
“I do not like it any more than you do,” the count replied, “but I cannot imagine Skali’s entire army would be hiding in ambush for our seven or eight score.”
“Eolair is right.” Isorn shaded his eyes. The weather was still cold, but the sun was surprisingly bright. “Let’s ride in and take our chances.”
Ule bit back a rejoinder, then shrugged. The trio rode in through the crude gates the Rimmersmen had built; the men followed, talking among themselves.
It was disturbing enough to see a wall around Hernysadharc. Never in Eolair’s memory had there been one, and even the ancient wall that circled the Taig remained only out of the Hernystiri reverence for past days. Most of the older wall had collapsed long ago, so that the remaining sections stood vastly separated, like the few remaining teeth in an old man’s jaw. But this rough yet sturdy barrier around the innermost section of the city had been built very recently.
What was Skali afraid of? Eolair wondered. The remaining Hernystiri, a beaten people? Or perhaps it was his own ally, the High King Elias, that he did not trust.
Disturbing as it was to see the new wall, it was even more so to see what had happened to it. The timbers were scorched and blackened as though they had been lightning-struck, and a section wide enough for a score of riders to pass through abreast had been blasted away entirely. A few wisps of smoke still curled above the wreckage.
The mystery of what had happened to Hernysadharc’s inhabitants was partially solved as Eolair’s company swung out onto the wide road that had once been named Tethtain’s Way. That name had passed not long after the great Hernystiri King, and people usually called it the Taig Road, for it led directly up the hill to the great hall. Now, as the company entered the muddy thoroughfare, they saw a great crowd of people standing at the summit of the hill, clustered around the Taig like sheep at a salt lick. Curious but still careful, Eolair and the others rode forward.
When Eolair saw that most of the crowd swarming on the lower slopes of Hern’s Hill seemed to be Hernystiri, his heart rose. When a few of the outermost people turned, alarmed at the sight of a troop of mounted and armored men, he hastened to reassure them.
“People of Hernysadharc!” he cried, standing in his stirrups. Several more me
mbers of the crowd turned at the sound of his voice. “I am Eolair, Count of Nad Mullach. These men are my friends and will do you no harm.”
The reaction was surprising. While several of those nearest cheered and waved to him, they seemed little moved. After staring for a moment, they turned their attention back to the hilltop again, despite the fact that none of them had a better vantage point than mounted Eolair, and he himself could see nothing before him but the stretching crowd.
Isorn was puzzled, too. “What are you doing here?” he shouted to the people standing nearby. “Where is Skali?”
Several shook their heads as though they did not understand, and several others made joking remarks about Skali being headed back to Rimmersgard, but no one seemed inclined to waste too much time or energy enlightening the duke’s son and his companions.
Eolair cursed quietly and spurred his horse forward, letting the beast make room for him. Although no one actively contested his passage, it was slow going to push through the crush of people, and no short while before they passed between two of the standing remnants of ruined fortress wall and onto the ancient grounds of the Taig. Eolair squinted, then whistled with astonishment.
“Bagba bite me,” he said, and laughed, although he could not have said why.
The Taig and its outbuildings still stood on the hilltop, solid and impressive, but now all the fields across the summit of Hern’s Hill were covered with wildly colorful tents. They were every shade imaginable and a hundred different sizes and shapes; someone might have emptied a giant basket of quilt-squares across the snowy grass. What had been the capital of the Hernystiri nation, the royal seat, had suddenly become a village constructed by wild, magical children.
Eolair could see movement among the tents—slender shapes in garb as colorful as the newly-erected dwellings. He spurred forward, passing the last of the Hernystiri onlookers as he climbed the hill. These stared hungrily at the bright cloth and the strange visitors, but seemed reluctant to cross the last open space and draw too close. Many watched the count and his company with something like envy.