Ash: A Secret History (152 page)

“Look, I’m telling you—” Ash began stubbornly.

“Cobnuts!” Floria said cheerfully. “It’s just a hart. We shouldn’t be hunting it out of season – but there you go.”

The scent of roses fading in her nostrils, Ash hesitated, made as if to speak, and realised she did not know what she had intended to say.
This hunt is not important, there are men I should be leading, men
you
know; look at the sun!

One look at Floria’s intent, lost expression dried the words in her throat. She could not even say,
I am starting to listen to the Wild Machines, I can’t stop myself
—

“The hunt’s scattered over five leagues!” Floria pushed her hood back from her straw-coloured hair. Shrewd, she glanced at Ash. “If Thomas and Euen can’t find their way back to the Visigoth camp, that’s good. If they do find it, they’re dead.”

“If they don’t find it, we’re all dead. I should have managed to stay with them!”

Ash hits fist to thigh in frustration, gauntlet scraping on cuisse; a woman with slave-short silver hair, in armour, astride a muddy pale horse. The gelding whickered in complaint. Ash gazed up through the winter-bare branches of alders, but the sky is too milky – overcast with clouds, or something else – for her to see the invisible sun.

One of the hunters, red-faced and fever-thin, bends down at the foot of the rocks; his shaggy-coated greyhounds with their muzzles down at his side. A very faint baying echoes between the trees. There is the rich smell of horse manure, cast from the two standing beasts.

“There’s no way we can take out the Stone Golem,” Ash said, “so we have to kill her. Sister or not, Florian. If Euen and Thomas aren’t putting an assault in right now, killing her, I think we’re finished.”

For the first time, the surgeon’s attention seemed to shift from the hunt. Her eyes narrowed against the milky light. “What happens?”

Ash suddenly smiled: sardonic. “I’ve never been on the receiving end of a miracle before! I don’t know. If anyone knows what it was like when Gundobad did his stuff, they’ve been dead far too long to tell us about it!”

Floria chuckled. “Shit. And we thought
you
knew!”

Ash reached out, gripped the woman’s hand; slapped her lightly on the shoulder. The two geldings stood flank by flank. Ash saw how Floria’s mud-spattered face was, under leaf-mould and a scrape or two – obviously at least one fall – remarkably happy.

“Whatever’s going to happen, it’s … happening. Starting,” Ash urged. “I can – feel it, I guess.”

Simultaneously, as she spoke, white flicked in her peripheral vision, the greyhounds bayed and darted forward, one of the huntsmen sounded the call on his horn to let the Master of Game know his couple were released; and Floria del Guiz stood up in her stirrups and bawled, “Cy va!
Let’s go, boss!
”

The hart ran between alder trees, a furlong ahead. Ash looked over the furiously humping haunches of the greyhounds, sprinting towards their quarry. Floria’s gelding kicked up great tufts of grass. The huntsmen ran forward.

“
Sweet Christ up a Tree, you can’t go chasing bloody deer at a time like this
—!”

The pale gelding jerked at her shout. It stumbled forward into a canter, across the rough ground, shaking every tooth in her head. She saw red flash as she rode by: realised they had gone from alders to mountain ash, and the autumn branches blazed with red rowan berries. Ahead, across the burned-clear ground, a dozen other dogs streamed into view, heading for the foot of the granite crags ahead.

“Florian!”

The surgeon, bouncing in her saddle even at a trot, lifted her arm in acknowledgement without looking around. Ash saw her trying to stick her heels into her horse’s flanks.

Son of a bitch, she’s going to be off; or the horse will break a leg
—

The deadfalls cleared. Under the rowan trees, moss and brown grass covered embedded chunks of granite. More light shone down: autumn sunlight from a pale, overcast sky. She lifted her head long enough to see that the tree-fringed horizon was clear, no pale dots of stars, and rode on at an agonisingly careful walk, her spirits suddenly lifting.

“
Florian!
” she bawled after the Burgundian woman. “Wait for me!”

A sudden cry of hounds drowned her out. Ash rode up the slope. Long skidding marks in mud showed where one of the huntsmen had fallen on the rocks. She guided the gelding between them. More hounds; horns; and shouting from ahead, at the foot of the crag.

“They’ve bayed it,
Ash—shit!
”

Floria’s gelding became visible between the slender trunks of mountain ash trees. A short-muzzled, prick-eared alaunt
⁴
leaped up, biting the horse. Ash saw Floria kicking at it with her foot. The black hound jumping, snarling. It barked wildly.

“Come and get your bloody alaunt!” Ash bellowed furiously at the huntsman running through the trees. She spurred to Floria, kicked away the hound with her steel-shod foot, turned to speak to the surgeon and found her gone.

“I have to get to the ford—oh,
shit!
”

Ash urged the pale gelding after the rump of Floria’s horse. The wind here, between the rowans, blew keenly; she felt the loss of her sallet and the lack of a hood. Her ear-tips and nose reddened. She wiped at her nostrils with the heel of her hand, breath whitening the steel of her gauntlet’s cuff. Floria pushed her mount ahead, on up the slope.

The land falling away now to either side, it was possible to see that they were coming up on a great shoulder of land, that pushed up out of the leagues of wildwood. Whatever fire had blazed here, a generation ago, had cleared ancient trees. Fifteen- and twenty-foot-high rowans covered the slope. Red berries smeared the rocks, underfoot, crushed by boots and by horseshoes; two or three more couple of hounds pelted past; and Ash reached back with her heels and jammed her spurs into the gelding, that and sheer force of will bringing the exhausted animal up the slope to the foot of the moss-grown granite crag.

A fine trickle of water ran down the rock-face. The sun flashed back from it, in sparkling chill brilliance.

The gelding sunk its head. Ash dismounted, threw the reins over a branch, and plodded on, on foot, towards the ridge where Floria had vanished. A howling of horns split the air. Far down the slope to her left, a great mass of people – a few still mounted, most on foot – streamed upwards, hounds with them; red-and-blue cloth flashed brightly in the cold air. The liveries of Burgundy.

Ash stomped on, breath heaving, chest burning; her armour no more restrictive than in foot combat – conscious, while she plodded up the slope, of the thought
I’ll feel this later!
– and was overtaken by two burly men, split hose rolled down below the knee, sprinting after the hounds.

Horns blasted her ear-drums. Two mounted men in gowns and rich velvet hats spurred up the rocky slope; ducking to miss the berry-laden boughs of the rowans. She swore, under her breath; topped the rise, and found herself in the bramble, briar and leafless whitethorn bushes at the foot of the rocks. An alaunt whined, nosing the rock, and she put her hand to her dagger as it looked around at her.

“Try it, you little bastard!” she growled, under her breath. The alaunt dropped its muzzle, nosed, and suddenly trotted busily off to the right, around the side of the rock.

A great clamour of horns broke out to the left. She hesitated, panting; found herself among two or three dozen people – huntsmen and citizens of Dijon, women with faces flushed under linen coifs, running sturdily behind the hounds. No one glanced at a dismounted knight, they tore on over rough ground, heading around the rocks to the left.

“Godammit,
Florian!
” Ash yelled.

Another knight – the Frenchman Armand de Lannoy: she recognised his livery – clattered past her, on foot, at the trot. He swung round to call, “I swear we have unharboured a dozen harts this day! And none yet brought to bay!” He half-skidded on the wet, cold rock; recovered himself, and ran on.

“Do I give a shit?” Ash rhetorically demanded of the empty air, raising her eyes to the bitter cold sky. “Do I? Fuck, no! I never liked hunting
anyway!
”

Between one heartbeat and the next, the voice of Godfrey Maximillian sounded in her inner ear:

–
But you will have another Duke, if you can.

She bit her lip in the surprise of it, and winced. Her muscles shook in anticipation. In the same beat of time, other voices drowned him out: the braided roar that is chorus, convocation, crowd:

‘
IT IS TOO LATE
:
HE WEAKENS
,
HE DIES
—’

‘
IT IS TIME
:
IT IS ALL TIMES
.’

‘—
IT IS THE PAST WE CHOOSE
;
AND WHAT IS TO COME
—’

‘
HE DIES
.’

‘
HE DIES
!’

‘
EVEN NOW
,
HE DIES
—’

“God rest him and take him,” Ash gasped in a moment of small, frightened devoutness. Knees and calf-muscles aching, she pushed herself into a run, no further away from the voices in her head, but not able to stand still. She ran, boots heavily thumping the ground, armour clattering, in the wake of the alaunt: towards the right-hand side of the crag.

Dry-mouthed, the metal enclosing her making her breath come short, she pounded across the rocks; threw her hands over her face and plunged into the whitethorn bushes ahead. The six-inch thorns scraped the backs of her gauntlets. One raked her scalp. She shoved through, pauldron first, out of the bushes.

“
Ash!
” Floria’s voice called urgently and audibly over the noise of hounds.

Ash stopped, dropping her hands from in front of her face.

Both the black and the white alaunts danced in front of the rock-face, on brown turf; their handler crying them on. The white hart lowered the tines of its horns. Rump against the rock, rubbed green with moss, it glared at the dogs with red-rimmed pink eyes, flanks heaving. There was no crown around its neck, no links of metal on the churned-up earth.

The hart made a darting movement, towards Ash and the whitethorn. The black alaunt ripped, slashing its hindleg above the hock. The huntsman furiously sounded his horn, rushing about behind the dogs, tripping; and sat down hard in the frozen mud.

“Kill it!” Floria yelled, from whitethorn bushes a dozen yards away. The scrawny gelding loped off down the slope. Floria, on foot, rushed from side to side with her arms outstretched, shouting. The hart gazed at her, lowered its head, thought better of it; dropped its tines and slashed one alaunt across the blunt, snarling muzzle.

“Kill it, Ash! Don’t let it get away!” Floria clapped her filthy bare hands together. The gunshot crack of her palms echoed back from the rocks. “We got to see – who’s Duke—”

“Why you need a fucking hart’s entrails – for an augury—” Ash automatically drew her sword. The hard grip bruised her palm, through the gauntlet’s linen gloves. Both her armour and the blade had a thin film of rust coating the polished steel. She moved out from the bushes, covering the gap that would let the hart run down the slope.

The huntsman blew furiously on his horn, still sitting on his rump in the mud. Faintly, hounds and people shouting were audible, but somewhere far off: behind the crag. The white alaunt darted in and suddenly yelped, body twisting. It fell to its side, heaving ribs slashed red and open.

The white hart backed closer to the rock, scattering droppings. Head down, a forest of tines fronted it; and it began to drool from its neat, velvet-nostrilled muzzle.

“Ash!” Floria begged. “
Use
the dog! We’ll kill it!”

Hearing the surgeon’s voice, Ash found herself thinking of it not as a beast or a hunt, but as an enemy and a field of battle. Automatically she widened her gait, moved to the opposite side of the tiny space to the black alaunt, and lifted her sword to a guard position. Eyes on the hart, she moved left as the dog went right, watched its head drop to threaten the alaunt—

Between the tiers of white horn, shining as if the sun blazed down upon it, Ash saw the figure of a man upon a Tree.

Her sword point dropped.

The alaunt whined, backing off, tail tucking under its body.

Delicately as a dancer, the white hart lifted its head and regarded Ash with calm, golden eyes. Every detail of the Tree between its horns was clear to her: the Boar at the roots, and the Eagle in the branches.

The lips of the white hart began to move. Ash, dazed with the sudden scent of roses, thought,
He is going to speak to me.

“Ash! Get a grip!” Floria ran towards her, across the narrow space between the whitethorn bushes. “It’s getting away! Get it!”

The black alaunt threw itself forward, closed its jaws in the hind quarter of the hart, and hung on. Blood splashed the hart’s white coat.

“Hold the abay!” the huntsman bellowed frantically. “The Master’s not here, nor the lords!”

“We haven’t
got
it at bay yet!” Floria bawled.

The dog’s muzzle and jaws stained suddenly red, soaking red on black.

The hart screamed.

Its head went up and back, and it staggered on to its knees in the mud. The sharp tines flailed the air. The huntsman crawled away towards the whitethorn bushes, a yard to Ash’s right, and she could not move, could not lift the sword in her hand, could not tell the yelling and baying outside from the voices in her head:

‘
NO
!
’

Ash could not tell which she saw: a hart with muddy, bloodstained sides, and red rolling eyes; or a beast with a coat like milk, and eyes of gold. She froze.

Someone tugged her hand.

She felt it, dimly; felt someone unpeeling her fingers in her gauntlet from the grip of her sword.

The weight of the weapon left her hand. That jolted her into full alertness.

Floria del Guiz strode forward in front of her, the sword held awkwardly in her right hand. A woman in doublet and hose, with her hood thrown back to the cold air. She circled right. Ash saw her expression: intent, frustrated, determined. Brilliant eyes, under straw-gold hair: all her tall, rangy body alert, moving with old reflexes –
of course, she’s from a noble Burgundian family, she will
have hunted as a girl
– and as Ash opened her mouth to protest the loss of her sword, the black alaunt feinted left, and Floria stepped in.