The King’s Arrow (12 page)

Too often a crackling twig or leaf gave away a hunter's hiding place, as Simon had been told by regretful bowmen over cups of wine. Now as Roland and the king took their new positions on either side of the holly, Walter quietly cleared the ground where he and Simon were waiting across from them.

Simon could not tell which square-built, hooded figure was the king and which the marshal, although surely it was the king enjoying another long taste of wine from the goatskin.

Judging by the excited baying of the hounds, a promising deer was surely in flight in the woodland to the north. The dogs were not heading toward the ambush, however. Walter sighed impatiently at the sound of the muffled clamoring of the hounds, now lost, now clearly audible, but not driving any closer.

Simon knew from fireside stories that the game was never easy. The deer often sensed trouble and veered off the intended path, and sometimes took flight so successfully that the hounds could never pick up the scent again.

Even if the ambush worked, and the king and his companions loosed their arrows, and even if an iron-headed arrow or two found their target, the one or two shafts were rarely fatal. The most exciting stage of the sport would begin as the hunters followed the blood, sometimes not finding the wounded deer for many hours, through bogs and brambles, with a chance that the deer was neither fatally wounded nor even seriously hurt.

In any event, the point of the day's venture was venison. Fresh meat was often scarce, even on a king's table, and no man enjoyed the prospect of the approaching autumn, and the ensuing winter, without dreaming of a roast haunch.

Simon felt a daydream of successful feasting slip over him, the king calling for more wine and asking Simon to sing the song of the unicorn and the lion, or the one about the fox and Saint Michael, Simon elated and secure in the king's command.

And then the stag appeared.

When the deer arrived at last, he was more beautiful than Simon would have thought possible.

He was not running at top speed. In fact, the animal seemed to hesitate at the peak of every leap, as though considering whether to continue his existence as a four-legged creature or to slip into the fabric of the air and vanish.

Walter took a step forward and held back his gloved hand toward Simon. The stag stopped completely, and looked ahead at the horses, browsing among the ostler's grass, scattered beyond the leafy screens. Walter wiggled his gloved fingers, a gesture of nearly comic impatience.
Quickly
.

The arrows whispered together, a hollow clatter in the tightly woven quiver. Simon fumbled, found an arrow, lost it, and seized another, gritting his teeth with the effort to be quiet. He selected an arrow with a long, slender head and no barbs, fletched with gray-and-brown goose feathers.

The deer lifted its head and froze at this dry-bone, willow-stick noise.

They'll be singing about this for generations, thought Simon—how a novice varlet frightened off the paramount stag in England.

22

The arrow was in Walter's yellow glove at last, his fingers closing around the shaft.

The buck had a spread of darkly gleaming antlers, and as the animal shook his head to clear his eyes of the tiny flies, Simon was certain he could hear the sound of the antlers, the points cutting through the air.

The stag took a step and then breathed in and out, a lung-expanding inhalation and a windy exhalation, much like a horse. It was hard to guess what emotions flickered in the great buck's heart, but the animal was less and less apprehensive as he stepped forward, his legs elongating and contracting, the creature stopping and starting, continuing and halting, hesitant and sure.

Walter made a small sound, nocking his arrow so that the bowstring softy twanged, like a musical string just touched by a fingertip. The deer aimed the interior of his dusky ears at the noise. The stag's forelegs locked straight, his black eyes peering directly at Walter's thickly mantled form.

The following horses then did their part, the mild-mannered steeds mounted by Oin and his men, placid pacers who approached from the rear, appearing unhurried and more interested in nuzzling the passing shrubbery than making any swift progress. But on they came, and this inverted wedge of slow horsemen emboldened the stag to reach a black hoof forward, dip his head, raise it again, and once again make his stately progress.

Walter drew his bow—not all the way, but testing it, the spruce-wood arrow squeaking faintly against the yew. The stag drew up, ears cupped again in Walter's direction, black eyes seeing where Walter and Simon stood still.

Not yet, thought Simon.

The deer isn't close enough
.

He thought this even as he wanted to clap his hands together, or take a step to one side to crunch a weathered and leafless fallen branch with his foot, a wordless
fly, fly
. For some unfathomable reason, Simon wanted to warn the deer.

As though sensing Simon's desire, Walter let the air out of his lungs slowly, and then looked back at his varlet.

The character of Walter's glance surprised Simon. Walter was cool and focused, intent on this long instant of impending violence. But it was not the deer that Simon suddenly feared for most.

Walter turned to his quarry and bent the bow, the yew span trembling and then growing still with the effort. At that instant Simon sensed, in some wordless corner of his soul, that a crime was about to follow. The exact subject of the offense he could not guess, any more than he could foresee that the arrow that whipped the air as the bowstring gave out a low, sweet note would strike any living flesh.

But Simon knew that something was wrong.

Too soon, too soon
, Simon would have whispered if he had made a sound.

The flight of the splinter of light made the stag shrink back, alarmed at the snapping, discordant hiss across the shadows. The arrow did not fly straight, but arced, clearly visible and then vanishing.

As so often happened in song and story, the arrow disappeared. It would be Simon's task as varlet to find it, searching among the drifts of old leaves. He followed its flight mentally right after it vanished, tracing it with his eyes.

He estimated its course all the way to the green-shrouded figure groping toward the holly bush, the sharp-edged, glossy leaves offering little support.

The hooded man faltered, one of his gloved hands finding a clasp undone on his hunting cloak, and working at it. But the stubborn attachment was not a clasp, Simon could see now. A feathered stub protruded from the heavy green cloth, and the man stumbled, falling to his knees.

23

The stag wheeled and dodged the sunlight, moving in such crisply separate, well-defined movements that he did not seem to make haste. Four hooves lofted over a heap of leaf meal, and the animal was gone.

Simon ran to give assistance to the figure he believed was the stricken Marshal Roland.

The wounded hunter fell forward, onto the feathered shaft. Simon approached swiftly, but quietly. Some part of Simon believed that if he did not startle the injured individual, then surely events could recover their balance and the arrow prove to have been tangled harmlessly in the thick woolen hunting cloak.

Simon was aware of a certain rank justice. The killer of poachers and terrorizer of goose girls now felt the arrow's tooth.

He reached the injured man's side, Walter right behind him. Even though his instinct shrilled,
don't move him
, Simon knew that the only hope was to take the weight off the projectile at once. Simon pushed the injured man over as the hood fell away.

Simon closed his eyes and opened them again. His mind tried to make sense out of what lay before him. But thoughts would not come. All that Simon knew for certain was that this was not the marshal.

The king lay sprawled on the forest floor, his eyes half open, like a man trying to recall a dream. Blood was soaking darkly into the fine weave of the hunting cloak, and a small, dainty jewel of scarlet appeared at the king's lips. The arrow had snapped off, the feathered end dangling, red now with blood.

The king's quiver had spilled, arrows scattered across the forest floor. The stocky bow with its resin-dark string lay nearby, like instruments briefly set aside. Surely the king would wake up, call for his bow, and command that someone pick up his fallen arrows.

But after watching the death of Edric the day before, Simon had become more proficient than he had ever wanted to be in recognizing mortality. He put his hand on the king, but the absence of breath and pulse was not necessary to tell Simon what he already knew.

He also knew that Walter was in very great danger.

Simon was in peril, too.

With the death of the king, Simon thought, the king's men could not be blamed for cutting down Walter, Simon, the servants, and the horses they had ridden that morning. As a half-English interloper, furthermore, Simon would be especially suspect. What Englishman, after all, could be trusted?

Simon felt a recognition beyond fear, a giddy, clear-sighted understanding.

“Ah,” said Walter, the syllable sharp with surprise and sorrow. “Ah, William,” he said, his voice heavy with feeling. “My old friend.”

He knelt and stretched out his gloved hand, holding it before him like a man reaching into a shelf and afraid of what he might find. Then he lowered his hand, all the way to the king's chest.

Walter spoke the king's name again and slapped his face lightly, like a man joking with a friend. He slapped it harder.

Walter stood.

His recent movements had been rapt but unhurried, and not for the first time Simon realized that he did not know this foreign visitor well. He could not decide whether Walter's tense quiet was the result of a temperament suited to danger, or the struggle of a man of uneven intelligence to understand the trouble about to fall on him from all sides.

The marshal would be here in a moment, alerted by the extraordinary silence. Simon stood, too, and folded his arms, feeling very cold. He tried to sort through the events of the last minute, wondering how he could unknot the day, untangle it to find the king alive again, drinking from his skin of wine.

Leaves rustled, the tawny carpet of long-dead oak chaff on the forest floor disturbed by a pair of boots. Roland made his way around the holly tree, his lips already parted as if to ask what was wrong.

He stopped short. Simon could nearly feel compassion at the horror that lit Roland's eyes, and at the sudden anointment of perspiration that gave the marshal's features an inner light.

The marshal's short sword was already in his hand, and he hooked one arm around his hip, like a man who had been stabbed from behind. He was not hurt. He plucked at a sheath, and his fist came out with a long, thin-bladed dirk. He held two weapons.

Walter reached under his cloak and drew a blade of his own. Walter and Simon backed away from the king, and the marshal remained silent as he made his way toward the stricken monarch, a blade in each hand.

The question was all but spoken:
What happened?

And the answer was as clear in the silent air. An accident.
The
accident, the one all hunters fear.

What the marshal did next mattered very much to Simon. It was as though Roland's touch would have healing powers, and his voice the ability to stop the hour in its course.

Roland knelt, setting aside his short sword, the blade flat on the chips and fragments of leaves. He felt for a pulse in the king's neck, closing his eyes, looking nearly overcome by shock or grief or more—some harm to his own spirit increasingly sapping his powers. Or perhaps he was offering a prayer, thought Simon, the most heartfelt a royal guardsman would ever offer.

This is my last hour, Simon thought.
The weapons of the king's men will hurt when they cut into me, axes and swords severing limbs, cracking bone. It will not be a quick end, either
. He had seen the hounds seizing the weasel, the wiry, cunning carnivore torn and torn again, its limbs struggling, its jaws snapping even when they no longer lived.

He would die with a prayer on his lips.

But not quite yet. Simon was not ready to join the king in death right that very moment.

Like a beggar silently pleading the necessity of mercy, Simon advanced on the marshal, one hand out. Roland picked up the short sword and rose. He retreated from the dead body, and was calling out, “Hoi! hoi!”—a cry of alarm that could be mistaken as a call for the huntsmen to start after the startled deer.

Except that the marshal's voice was rasping and nearly soundless, some alteration in his sense of purpose impeding him. But he took a breath, to cry out again, and this time the determination was clear.

The marshal's call was powered by a lungful of air—
“Hoi!”
—a long note, the one that ordered
Look here
, but also meant
Get ready
. To a hunter it could only indicate that the game was afoot, while to someone already awakened to a felony it meant that trouble was far advanced.

Every past slight returned to Simon's awareness, every assaulted goose girl, every prick of the sword. Edric's flight, and the enduring poverty of Edric's family, they all sprang to life. The neglect his mother had known, his own instantly dashed hopes, they were all there in the bones and sinews of this gathering fist, and it never occurred to Simon that he could do anything but this.

He struck the marshal with his fist. It was not a light punch, a fending-off, or a blow easily explained as purely a gesture of self-defense. This was a solid, through-put strike, a straight-armed clout with all Simon's weight. The marshal did not fall so much as collapse. He struck the ground like a man who would never rise again.

Until that instant, in one region of his consciousness Simon had felt a lingering hope that events could be combed out, reality made simple and harmless once again.

Some small, sputtering query had wondered if matters could be as bad as they looked. He wanted to find this all a clumsy, hideous joke, the royal taste for comedy extended to brutal lengths. How they would all laugh when the king sat up and pointed comically at Simon, a robust, lively chortle distorting his now ashen features.