The Bitterbynde Trilogy (47 page)

Thorn picked up the cloak on which he had lain and whistled softly. A goshawk flew down to his shoulder.

“Come, then.”

He strode from the clearing, and they had no heart but to follow.

Imrhien called to mind all that she had learned of the Dainnan. An elite brotherhood of warriors were they, a company of men who were more than royal bodyguards, for their role was as peacekeepers in these times, and they had been soldiers in times of war. When they were not at court they roamed throughout the lands. In Summer they lived in the open, in Winter they sometimes billeted with the people. Their leader was the famous Tamlain Conmor, Duke of Roxburgh, who was sometimes called the greatest warrior of Erith. Most youths aspired to the ranks of the Dainnan, but those who wished to join had to pass strenuous tests. The first prerequisite was expertise in Erithan historical sagas and poetry, yet this was easy compared with the famous tests of fighting skill and valor, of swiftness, agility, and fearlessness, that the Dainnan demanded. Only the cream of the candidates succeeded.

He traveled light, this Dainnan. Obviously, woodcraft stood him in good stead to survive in the wilderness. He went swiftly but with astonishing silence, causing neither twig to snap nor leaf to rustle. Although revived by the mouthfuls of food she had swallowed, Imrhien had difficulty in keeping up—her tattered skirts hampered free movement. Before her, Diarmid crashed along like a berserk bull, occasionally turning impatiently to offer her his arm—had they both always been so clumsy?

Thorn paid no heed to their noise but drew them aside now and then to reveal the secrets of the season—the shriveled, twining tendrils that must be tracked with patience as they wound through rocks to the point at which they entered the ground, indicating the presence of tubers, which he dug up with a sharpened stick; the white-barked wild fig-tree, its slender branches extending from the crevices of a rocky outcrop, bearing clusters of long, dusty green leaves and reddish orange fruit; in moist gullies, the tree-ferns with their “fiddleheads,” or unopened fronds, never to be eaten without first being roasted to remove their acids.

Once, he pointed to a liquidambar tree, alone in a clearing: 150 feet of brilliant ruby, gold, and deep purple.

“What can we eat of that?” Diarmid asked.

“Nothing.”

“A man cannot draw sustenance from beauty.”

“I can.”

Foods, medicines, dyes—all could be obtained from the wilderness, Thorn informed them in his beautiful voice, and Autumn was the richest season, in other ways as well. The gorgeous hues of the Forest of Tiriendor hung festooned on all sides like jeweled curtains. Spreading tupelos boasted bright red leaves and vivid blue fruits. The flat, fanlike sprays of the white cedars' aromatic foliage were turning from dark green to orange gold. High above, crimson glory-vines climbed rampant, sunlight shining through their stained-glass leaves.

The sun was sinking when they came to yet another rill—there had been no shortage of watercourses along the way; indeed, it seemed they had been leaping over them constantly. Along the banks of this one, among a profusion of fishbone ferns and sword-leafed irises, grew grass bushes, heavy with seed-heads.

“Panicum grass.” Thorn, on bended knee, stripped the tiny seeds off the stalks. Following his example, Imrhien soon had a skirtful of seed. He held out the leather pouch for her to pour it into, then brought the fingertips of his open hand, palm facing inward, down and forward from his mouth.

He smiled, as he often did, and Imrhien imagined how that breath-stopping, white, wolf-smile no doubt made slaves of every lady of the court. So—he had already learned “Thank you” from her earlier inadvertent gesture.

“See,” said Diarmid, indicating with outflung hand, “that tree is leafless, yet it bears bunches of yellow berries, like beads. Beauty that can be eaten.”

“Taste them and die. Melia's berries are poison. Sometimes the most beautiful things are the most ungentle,” replied the Dainnan. “And conversely.”

The goshawk flew off from time to time, but always it returned.

“No jesses, no bell, no hood,” Diarmid remarked, “yet surely at night the bird must be tethered?”

“Not by me.”

“It is trained well. An imprint?”

“No.”

When chill evening drew in, they made camp by a rocky pool formed by the streamlet. It was overhung by red-gold maples whose discarded leaves floated, suspended on its glasslike surface. They piled up dry sticks collected along the way, and Diarmid used the Dainnan's tinderbox. Flames budded along the dark twigs like luminous flowers. Beside the fire, Thorn excavated a hole a foot deep and a little more in diameter.

The Dainnan showed them how to rub the grass-seeds between their hands and let the breeze winnow the outer glumes away. He used a stone to grind the seeds into a thick paste with water in the hollow of a rock. This he poured onto the hot ashes in six small flat loaves, covering them with glowing sticks. By now the fire had burned low, forming coals. He lined the cooking pit with these, placed the washed tubers inside, and covered them with coals and warm soil. When the upper surfaces of the loaves had been toasted, he turned them over, heaped hot ashes over the top, and left them to cook through. While they waited for the baking to be completed, Diarmid and the girl roasted fiddleheads and feasted on figs. Thorn unstrung his longbow and stood rubbing it down with wax.

The goshawk watched them from the branch of a she-oak. He had caught a quail and was mantling its limp form, covering it up with the twin fans of his outspread wings. After a time he folded himself together again, stood on one leg, gripped his prey in the talons of the other, and began to thoroughly pluck the little corpse. Efficiently he tore the skin away and drove his hooked upper beak into the flesh, closed the two halves of his beak like a pair of scissors, and tugged off a bite-size chunk of bloody meat, gulping it down whole.

“Your hawk—you do not fly it?”

“Errantry does not hunt at my command, only to feed himself.”

“And he comes back to you? Does not return to the wild? It is extraordinary.”

Thorn made no reply. Somewhere in the dusk, crickets whirred their last memories of a lost Summer.

“Had we a vessel of clay or metal,” mused Diarmid, “we might have collected the sap of maples to boil on the fire. And with your arrows, we might have brought down a squirrel or two.”

“Why chase after one's supper when there is plenty to hand that does not flee? We do not starve.”

“And save the steel barbs for wights, eh?”

“I prefer my hide in one piece.”

“Your longbow—I have not seen its like before.”

“It was made under my direction, by the Royal Bowyer to the Dainnan.”

“May I see it?”

Thorn passed the bow across, and the Ertishman studied it closely.

“An unusual design,” he said. “The limbs are not round, but rectangular in section.”

“Yet wide enough to compensate against torque as the bow is drawn.”

“Not straight-limbed—a recurve bow, with a sculptured handgrip and arrow-rest.”

“Made to fit my right hand.”

“This material fitted along the bow's back—what is it?”

“Laminations of horn and whalebone behind the yew. They improve performance and prevent it from breaking. It draws a hundred and forty pounds to twenty-eight inches and will send a broad-head over seventeen hundred and sixty yards.”

“A land mile—good sooth! Impressive indeed. In Tarv they tell of a champion of old who could achieve nine hundred, but I thought it a mere wives' tale. I should envy to see this done.”

“Maximum flight is only a measure.” Thorn held up an arrow more than a cloth-yard long and squinted along the shaft to check for warping. “The effective range of this bow as a weapon is no more than two or three furlongs.”

“But it must be over six feet in length—is that not overlong for a hunting bow?”

“Its height matches my own—two inches above six feet.”

“Surely it must prove difficult to carry through the tangling trees.”

“Its measure is a personal preference.”

“I thought the Dainnan used crossbows.”

“For weaponry in dense-wooded country, aye. But the longbow is lighter and more rapid in fire. In open country, archers may stand shoulder to shoulder, needing much less room than crossbowmen.”

“And I note your darts are balanced with goose quills. Is it true what they say, that the arrows of the Royal Family and the Royal Attriod are fletched with the feathers of peacocks?”

“It is true.”

Diarmid digested this information in silence, caressing the polished moon-crescent of the mighty bow with gentle hands. Then he said:

“How long is it, sir, since you were at Caermelor? What can you tell me of the preparations of the Royal Legions to do battle with the northern hordes, should they push down into Eldaraigne?”

Thorn seated himself between his companions with his back against a tree-bole, and stretched out his long legs toward the fire.

“I can tell you that the King-Emperor does indeed intend to send battalions northward as preparation against invasion. The Dainnan are everywhere at this time—even scouting in Namarre to pick up what information they can regarding this Namarran brigand Chieftain who is said to have arisen, who seems to have the power to unite the disparate factions of outlaws and outcasts—indeed, it is thought that he must be a wizard of great power, to draw even the fell creatures of eldritch to his aid—that, or he promises them great reward, such as the sacking of all humanity, save only his own supporters. If so, he is sadly deluded, for unseelie wights would as soon turn on him as on the rest of humankind.”

“Never before in history has man been allied with the unseelie,” Diarmid said gravely.

“Never.”

“And are there as many as it is rumored, sir, answering to that northern call?”

“I know not the numbers of which rumor speaks. But yes, there are many. The Forest of Tiriendor was ever a favored haunt of things eldritch. One of them watches us now.”

Diarmid stiffened, motionless as a stone's shadow.

“'Tis only a urisk,” said. Thorn, smiling, “a seelie thing. It dwells by this pool, as it has dwelled for many lives of men.”

They followed his gaze across the water. The remains of the day reflected up from the mere into dusky shadows, forming an outline of a slight, goat-legged manlike creature with stubby horns protruding from his curly hair. He sat with his arms about his hairy knees, staring at his observers with a mournful look.

“They crave human company,” Thorn explained dismissively, “but their appearance drives men away.”

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Diarmid relayed Imrhien's question. She was rewarded with Thorn's attention, which caused her heart to flop over like a gasping fish.

“I do,” he said.

<>

“The Caermelor Road lies some two miles to the north of here,” the Dainnan replied to Diarmid's translation. “Lady, do you think it would speed our journey to go that way, along a clear path? For certain, your skirts receive too much attention from bushes and briars. But the main Road holds added peril for mortals—it is a focus for unseelie spite. Besides, my work is not yet quite finished, and it takes me from the beaten track onto other roads, those that may not be so obvious at first—animal trails, watercourses, the paths of the sun and stars.”

“I'll warrant the eye of a Dainnan sees many roads,” said Diarmid.

After about twenty minutes, the tubers were lifted out and put on a platter of leaves to be peeled and eaten, after which the loaves were ready also. Firm and nutty, their substance was satisfying.

“If we stay south of the Road, we must pass through Mirrinor,” Diarmid said between mouthfuls. “I fear it may be more perilous than the Road itself.”

“Mirrinor, Land of Still Waters—perilous, yes, but I have passed through it before, unscathed, and intend to do so again. My business takes me there. Also, it is a land of great beauty.”

After she had eaten, an irresistible drowsiness overcame Imrhien. The fire's warmth seemed to soften her very bones. With one last glance at the mossy place where the urisk remained sitting in his loneliness, she lay down on Thorn's cloak and instantly fell asleep. The last words she heard were Diarmid's—“I shall keep first watch.”

Discordant sounds began the morning—shrill whistles, plaintive screams, and ear-piercing cackles. Errantry was greeting the sun. After calling, he began to preen on his perch, arranging his contour-feathers neatly with his bill. His tawny plumage was strikingly barred and mottled, his eyes gold-orange disks ringed with black, centered with darkness like twin eclipses of the sun.

A silver-clasped horn lay on its side in the grass. From its mouth spilled fat blueberries. Beside it, a rich tumble of golden-orange persimmons, their glossy leaves still attached. Two leftover loaves lay on a curl of bark, dark with wood-ash. The sun was sailing, sending diagonal shafts down through the trees. The urisk was gone, and so was Thorn, as she had known he would be. No one had woken Imrhien to bid her take a turn at keeping watch. She considered it very gentlemanly and guilt-provoking of them and went downstream to bathe. When she returned, Diarmid was sitting up, yawning.

“Fair device!” he exclaimed, his eyes alighting upon the container of blueberries. “This horn is wrought more cunningly than any I have seen.” He picked it up, turning it in his hands. Berries scattered like beads of lapis lazuli. “Its aspect is antique,” he murmured to himself, “yet it is as unblemished as if newly made. Such curious and exquisite craftsmanship! Methinks this is some family heirloom, perhaps fashioned during the Era of Glory.”