B007IIXYQY EBOK (9 page)

A slingstone slashed through the boughs from above and grazed the pony’s rump, searing flesh and bringing blood. Auriane looked up. A warrior left to serve as a sentry had climbed a pine. She watched, paralyzed by the sight of him, as he took aim a second time.

Brunwin kicked out once, nearly throwing her over his head. Then he bolted. His belly low to the ground, with strenuous strides he flung her toward the busy ford. She clung to his mane, knowing bit and rein were useless now. Brunwin would not slow until he reached his own shed in the horse pens of the hall of Baldemar. Branches lashed her face. Dark patches of sweat appeared on the pony’s neck. Then they broke free, onto the wide, treeless bank of the river.

She shut her eyes. They saw her. Sharp barking shouts were raised. With a grim innocence she thought—and so, death comes. Except for Hertha’s torments, life was kind and good. Why should anyone expect to live long?

Her one hope was that they would consider a lone maid on a bolting pony not worth their trouble while greater plunder waited beyond the river. Brunwin had just enough wit left to know to stay away from them; as he galloped he edged to the right. Four of the warriors broke from the band, shouting and laughing in the tribal tongue, and darted across her path. One playfully cast a spear that missed.

But a firm command in a strange tongue called them back. More surprising to her still, the four obeyed.

Brunwin’s hooves broke the river into showers of crystal; as he lunged through knee-deep water, she heard bits of a shouted argument.

“…a pretty wench…spirited and proud….”

“This one’s mine,
you lust-maddened brigand!”

“Take one of mine if you’re so in need. We’re already found out—there’s no time.”

“We’re doubly found out if you let her live. Get her!”

Auriane gained the stone-strewn far bank. A spear was aimed in earnest. It ripped through the side of her bearskin tunic and tore flesh near her ribs. The pain was like scalding water but panic quickly numbed it.

Then the pony’s right shoulder pitched sharply down. He struggled up with Auriane clinging to the side of his neck, skittered sideways, then settled into a lurching canter that was painfully slow. With a fresh seizure of dread, Auriane realized he had slipped on a stone and lamed himself.

From behind came the sound of leather-clad feet slapping the ground in rapid rhythm, followed by splashing as they struck the water. She looked back. Three warriors raced each other in their eagerness to catch and kill her. Each was lightly armed with one short spear. Two had hair of dirty yellow, menacingly long, trailing in the wind. The third was smaller in stature with hair that was unusually dark. He pulled slightly ahead with a grin on his face that was fixed and triumphant like a skull’s.

Fright froze her muscles. She cried out jumbled words to Fria, hardly knowing what words she spoke, and managed to lash the trailing end of the rein across Brunwin’s rump, but her hardy mount, as terrified as she, was already doing his best. The pony followed no path, struggling and crashing through the underbrush, while she bowed her head to avoid being struck from his back by low-hanging branches. For the moment at least, the thick forest rendered their spears useless. She prayed they would become discouraged and give up the chase.

She looked back to see if they gained ground. They had. She felt her bones go limp. Her soul slid quietly toward death, not protesting, feeling a dull throbbing acceptance, a muddy sense of punishment deserved, dragging her down.

It was meant to be. Was I not cursed from birth?
Hertha knows it. Could I not always see my evil reflected in her eyes? The earth purges itself on me. My own cursedness coughed up these fiends. Why struggle? Why not slip from Brunwin’s back…and into the talons of the Fates?

The forest broke; they burst in on the side path of a narrow field of einkorn wheat. Here she sensed human presences. On the field’s far side was a humble thatched house smeared with brilliant clay; it resembled a misshapen hornet’s nest. A crone named Herwig lived there with her thralls, the grandmother of a vast family scattered over all their lands. But now there was only evil stillness about; the house and all who sheltered there had taken to the souterrains—the farm’s underground storage pits—at
the first sounding of the horns. Some, doubtless, hid in the field. She screamed out the old woman’s name, even though she knew her voice would not carry far enough. From the door of the thatched house a curious cow thrust her head. Auriane’s tears of hopelessness were blown off by the wind.

One fair-haired runner dropped back, exhausted. The remaining two gained a horse length. She realized Brunwin’s staggering canter would take her through the great Ash Grove, a dread and hallowed place she would never enter willingly for fear of rousing the brooding spirit of the Ash. Hope surged again. Surely her pursuers would fear to follow her there.

Another spear was cast. It arced above her, piercing the ground ahead of her, standing upright as a boundary pole. She looked back and saw that one of the remaining runners meant to come no closer to the dark grove; he slowed, then cast his spear before turning back. But the dark-haired warrior seemed not to know an ash from an apple tree. He ran with the frenzied energy of a hound closing on game, powerful strides pulling him steadily closer. His broad chest strained against the close-fitting red tunic. The muscles of his upper arms seemed ready to burst the warrior’s ring that encircled them. He meant to have her.

With one hand she sought beneath her tunic for Ramis’ amulet of sacred earth, the
aurr,
and pressed it to her breast. She thought she felt it quicken and grow warm. Sacred earth, flesh and mind of Fria, keep me on the path to my fate, she prayed. But perhaps her fate was to die.

When she came alongside the upright spear, she acted without thought, grappling with it desperately, then managing to pull it up, nearly unseating herself. From behind she heard a sputtered curse. The spear felt heavy and awkward in her hand. Athelinda had taught her spear-casting along with the many arts of the homestead, for a woman must be able to defend field and hall in time of raids. But the spears she used were lighter, and not iron tipped, and she cast them at nothing more fearsome than posts.

I’ve enraged him—now he will kill me cruelly and slowly. But he has one spear—if he misses, I’m armed and he’s not. Surely he will think of that. I’ve never killed a man, only hares
….
I cannot! Yet it is done every day. Will his ghost pursue me off the world’s edge? I know my ghost would pursue him. Does Baldemar consider these things before he slays? I will not live to ask him.

The sky disappeared behind a rippling canopy of ash boughs. She was swallowed up in holy gloom. The warrior of the Hermundures was but four horse lengths behind; his heaving breath was rasping and loud in this hushed place. Why had he no fear?
“Should any man enter the Ash Grove who was not called in by its Spirit,” the Holy Ones warned, “he will not walk out again in human shape.”

We will become sparrows. Or both of us will be imprisoned in a tree, living a life of tiresome sameness, our feet embedded in earth, our leafy hair touching the sky. My mother and father will never guess what became of me.

The ash trees watched her dourly, too venerable and aged to react swiftly to this intrusion. Where were the grove’s priestesses and priests? No one ever told her if they too sought cover in a raid. Hollow silence pooled in the bluish deeps between austere trunks; gauzy shafts of light occasionally illumined the forest floor. The slender pillars of this temple stood free and alone: The Ash was proud and let nothing grow beneath it—any hapless plant that tried was strangled by its roots or killed by its shade.

Brunwin staggered pitifully, and she knew he must rest or die. His coat was now wholly soaked and his wheezing hurt her to hear.

It is time. I must try to save myself, or I disgrace all my kin.

She pulled hard on the reins, but the pony would not slow. So she raised herself up and sprang from his back while keeping a good grip on the reins with one hand and holding the spear aloft in the other. She fell hard. Brunwin reared, his body twisting round as he came to the end of the rein. The warrior slowed in surprise. He danced lightly toward her, balancing the spear, deftly taking aim. She saw he was fair of face and full of brash confidence.

She moved behind an ash tree, careful not to injure it by touching the gray-green bark, dragging the pony with her. Sick terror rose in her throat. The warrior approached with caution, gracefully springing sideways round the tree. She did not understand why he was so determined to slay her rather than take her alive; it was one more element of the raid that was both horrifying and peculiar. To him, she was no more than a wild animal to be taken down; the random malice of a troll flickered in his eyes.

As she moved too, careful to keep the tree between them, she was dimly aware of a dark, low hum on a bone pipe, a persistent sound that rose and grew stronger until it poured into the air around like some warm liquid. Her eye just caught the movement of a priestly robe, spectral and white, far back in the labyrinth of trunks.

The Holy Ones
were
here, watching, marking all she did. Her cry for help died before it formed in her throat. They would give no aid, for she had stumbled out of daily life and into mythic life. “What passes in the Ash Grove,” they would say, “is a sign for what will pass in the world.” Her fate would be read as a portent. They would watch with detachment to see if she lived or died, then interpret the future from her final writhings. She was numbed by how suddenly all that protected her vanished: her family’s fame, her numerous kin, and her father’s many Companions—the most celebrated warriors of the tribe. She was a maid alone, stripped naked for death.

The dark-haired warrior lunged unexpectedly to the left, and the tree no longer shielded her. His spear-arm snapped out. The weapon was skillfully aimed and powerfully thrown.

Swifter than thought, she dropped into a heap on the forest floor. Had she not, the spear would have torn through her chest. She heard it sink deep into the flesh of an ash at her back. From the warrior came a low husky laugh. He is a madman, she thought. He struck an ash tree to the heart and yet he feels no terror.

Before she had time to scramble to her feet, he was sprinting toward her to take her with his hunting knife.

The sound of running feet held her transfixed. She saw a quick vision of her blood splattered on the bark. He was all the enemies she ever feared—the ogre with its swampy breath, the stooped shadow of a lurking man-thing seen at dusk beyond the last field, the Romans with their terrifying relentlessness, the guest-murderers of the winter tales.

But in the next instant she felt a powerful stillness gathering within, as if there were a holy grove in her heart. It seemed a spirit far older than her own took possession of her—it might have been an ancestor who worshipped here, or the vast soul of the Ash itself. A dark steady strength flooded into her limbs.

I can live. Arise and fight. The blood on the bark is not mine but his
.

She sprang up with collected grace. Almost playfully, as though she were testing her skill rather than fighting for her life, she centered the spear’s weight in her palm and drew her arm back, eyes on his heart. She whipped forward.

It was a hard, straight throw. But he was alarmingly quick and he dodged it; she succeeded only in tearing off part of his tunic. He slowed for a moment, face contracted in pain from the flesh wound she made, looking back once to see if her spear fell close enough to be retrieved. It had not. He raised the hunting knife and lunged for her.

But she was already gone, darting like a deer to the tree in which his spear was lodged. He ran hard, meaning to fall on her before she got it free.

Working feverishly, she disengaged it. As she spun round, he sprang, knife bared like a single tearing tooth. He grinned. His hair was sweat-darkened. Distended nostrils gulped in air.

Fria, lady of Night, I am your servant, let me live
…

She cast the spear with all her strength—it was the last leap of a festival dancer before she drops into exhaustion. The spear seemed to jump lightly from her hand, glad to be free.

It struck high in his chest, pitching him backward. He staggered a few steps, seizing the spear in both hands as though he could not believe it was embedded in his body.

Her joy was mingled with dread as the eyes of the warrior of the Hermundures became sky-blank, his gaped mouth stopped in place—a mouth no longer, but a frightful hole. He fell heavily to his knees, then sank quietly to his side. The blood pulsed out in a low fountain, darkening his tunic, reddening the ground. For long moments she stood very still, her breathing labored, not yet believing the struggle was done.

She edged toward him and almost humbly knelt down. The huge nostrils that moments ago grabbed at air as if with a strong fist
now reached for it with a slack hand.

One fluttery breath eased out and he took no more.

I killed.
Earth will collect in an empty skull where once a mind had been. A body carefully tended all the days of his life is set by me on a course of rot. A spirit is ripped from its housing and set adrift. However commonly it is done, still it is an awesome part to take.