Full Circle (3 page)

Now the four warlord’s men followed as the ghost army, frustrated by the solid doors and shuttered windows of Bonhill, headed
out into the countryside, looking for easier prey. Horst strung his bow, the short bow he kept for using on horseback.

“My lord,” he said to Leof, indicating the enchanter and the bow.

During the battle, the wind wraiths had plucked their arrows out of the air and they had lost their best chance to take the
enchanter. If the wraiths stayed away now, Leof knew they might have a chance. “Yes,” he replied. “Anytime you get a clear
shot, take him.”

But as they rode, slowly, always at a distance, they could see that the wraiths were hovering far overhead. The enchanter
probably couldn’t see them, but they were ready to protect him.

Leof turned to Alston. “If we can charge them suddenly, Horst might get a shot away. He only needs one.”

He expected Horst to preen at the praise, but the man just nodded. Something was worrying Horst, more than the ghosts. He
had arrived back from the Last Domain only just in time to come south with Thegan, but without Sully, who had been killed
in an ambush in the Golden Valley. Another problem for Thegan to deal with, but not one Leof could think about now.

Perhaps Horst was missing his friend. He kept glancing at the sky and wiping his hands on his breeches. Well, wind wraiths
were enough to make anyone nervous. Gods knew they made Leof jittery enough.

“Do you know this country, Alston?” Leof asked. He knew it well himself, from riding chases all over it.

Alston nodded. “Aye, my lord, a little.”

“The road goes between a small hill and a stream, up ahead, about a mile away. Once they pass the hill, we can come after
them fast and catch them up on the other side. If we come in fast enough, the wind wraiths may be taken by surprise. It might
give us a chance.”

Nodding, Alston considered it.

“We should close up the gap, maybe,” he ventured, and Leof agreed.

“But slowly, and gently. Don’t alarm the wraiths.”

Hodge and Horst both shivered at the thought, then exchanged embarrassed glances. Horst set his face in a scowl, as though
preparing himself for the worst.

They urged the horses to a faster walk and gradually, as the ghosts and the enchanter strode on, unheeding, they closed the
gap little by little. The wraiths seemed unaware of them, but Leof didn’t hold out much hope. As soon as they moved in, the
wraiths would swoop to protect the enchanter. He wondered if he should give Horst his own horse Arrow to ride — she was by
far the fastest, and would get him closest to the ghosts. But she wasn’t used to her rider shooting as he rode, and Horst’s
bay was. He would just have to take care not to get in Horst’s line of fire.

Ahead, the last of the ghosts disappeared as the road bent behind the hill. “Draw weapons. Horst, ready bow. Now!” Leof ordered.

They spurred their horses, Arrow getting away first, but the others catching up fast as Leof held her back a little. Horst
took the lead, arrow nocked and bow held down, reins between his teeth. His horse knew what was expected of her, and she gave
it: a steady pace, like a regular drum beat, so that Horst could loose the arrow at precisely the right moment in her gait.

As they rounded the hill, Horst was just in the lead.

“Spread out!” Leof commanded, and he and Alston took point either side of Horst while Hodge brought up the rear, his own bow
out and ready.

The ghosts turned at the sound of their hoof beats, but they were too far from the horsemen to interfere. Horst was almost
within bow shot. The enchanter turned.

“Wait, wait, not too soon,” Leof called.

Horst took aim and the enchanter put up a futile hand to ward him away. As the arrow left the bow the ghosts moved in front
of the enchanter, but too late.

Then, in the split second before the arrow reached him, the wraiths dived between, snatching the arrow from the air, screaming.
They turned towards Horst, claws out, teeth bared, and lunged.

“Fire again!” Leof commanded, but Horst screamed, too, and turned the terrified horse, kicking her away. The other horses
were also panicking, and the ghosts had closed in around the enchanter. They had lost their chance. Bitterness in his mouth,
Leof shouted, “Back! Back!” and they turned their horses and took off after Horst, who was well down the road, his bay galloping
faster than ever before.

The wraiths nipped and scratched at them as they went, scoring the horses’ rumps and scratching long furrows in their scalps.
It was terrifying. The wraiths’ shrieking seemed to sap all the strength from Leof’s muscles, but he was bolstered by fury,
and he rounded on them and shouted, “We are in settled lands and there has been no betrayal. Begone!”

They were the words his father had taught him, to banish wind wraiths. The words had worked for a long, long time, part of
the compact between the spirits and humans, which had been established so long ago that its beginning had passed out of memory.
The spirits — water, wind, fire, forest, earth — were free to hunt in wilderness but forbidden to attack humans in settled
lands. Unless a human betrayed one of their own to the wraiths, as humans sometimes did. But that did no harm to the compact
itself. Without the compact, the wraiths could feast on body and soul right across the Domains, with nothing to stop them.
They were even harder to fight than ghosts. Without the compact every stream would be full of water sprites, every wind a
carrier of death, every step into a wood a step into peril…

Leof wasn’t sure the compact still held, and the thought that it might have broken irrevocably was frightening. But the wraiths
hovered behind him and screamed disappointment, their claws dripping blood. Arrow would not be held. She pulled her head around
and made off after the other horses, the herd instinct taking over.

Leof let them run half a mile or so before he called them in. The horses’ sides were lathered and their eyes still showed
too much white. He had to let them rest and drink before following the enchanter again. For all the good that would do, he
thought.

The stream was close to the road here, and Hodge walked the horses for a few minutes to cool them down, then watered them.
He was shaking, still.

“Horst,” Leof said. “Come.”

He took Horst aside. The man wouldn’t look him in the eyes. Like Hodge, he was still shaking, but Leof suspected it was with
shame as much as with the aftermath of fear.

“You did not follow my order, Horst.” Leof kept his voice deliberately calm.

“I’m sorry, my lord! Please — please don’t tell my lord Thegan.”

Leof considered that. Could he blame this man for panicking in the face of those deadly claws and teeth? A human enemy was
one thing, but a foe who could eat your soul was something very different. Thegan, on the other hand, would blame him and
punish him. And Horst was Thegan’s man. He worshipped his lord. A hard word from Thegan was enough to cause anguish — real
punishment, real shame, would be unbearable.

They needed every archer they could get, if they were to have any chance at this enchanter. There would be opportunities in
the next battle. Horst was the best they had.

“There will be another time,” Leof said slowly, “when we may confront the enchanter again,
with
his wraiths, and only an archer can save us.”

“It won’t happen again, my lord. I swear it. I swear it.”

There was something else here, something Horst wasn’t saying, something that accounted for the panic. Leof took a guess. “You’ve
met wind wraiths before.”

Horst looked astounded “Aye, my lord,” he mumbled. “They almost killed me.”

“And now you have faced them again. Tell me honestly, Horst, if I needed you to face them one more time, could you?”

Horst stared at the ground for a long moment, then looked up and deliberately met Leof’s eyes, as a common soldier rarely
did to an officer. “I could,” he said firmly.

“Then I think Lord Thegan may not need to know any more than that the wind wraiths stopped our attack.”

Horst’s face was flooded with relief. “Thank you, my lord.”

“Don’t let us down, Horst.”

“I’d die first,” Horst promised.

Leof slapped him on the shoulder. “I’d prefer you didn’t. We have need of you.”

They remounted and took the road again, watching with beating hearts for the first sign of wind wraiths in the sky above them.
Where there were wind wraiths, they would find the enchanter.

The horses were rested and their wounds staunched, but they didn’t like being asked to go back down the road towards the spot
where they had been so terrified. Hodge’s black gelding dug in his hooves and refused to move.

“We might do better on foot,” Leof said. “The horses won’t face the wraiths without bolting.”

Hodge cleared his throat the way sergeants do when officers are about to make a big mistake.

“Well, sergeant?” Leof asked.

“Without the horses, we’d’ve been dead back there. Sir.” Hodge said it simply, and he was right, of course.

“Very well, then. Our aim is to keep them in sight until sunset, when the enchanter will be without his army, at least, and
we may have a chance to waylay him without the wraiths seeing us.”

They nodded together, Alston, Hodge and Horst. Good men. Experienced, level headed. Leof wondered if they would all make it
back home, but shoved the thought away, down where it belonged, in the well of shadows that every soldier avoided thinking
about.

“We’ll go across country, then,” Leof said. “Skirt the hill and find him on the other side.”

The black gelding — Canker, a bad name for a horse, Leof thought — was happy enough to take to the fields and the other horses
followed Arrow eagerly.

By mid-afternoon they had traced a big circle around the hill and made their way back to the road. But there was no sign of
the enchanter.

“A hand canter until we have them in sight,” Leof ordered. “Horst, you lead. Keep an eye out for signs they’ve left the road.”

It was a strange journey. The sun was shining brightly, the breeze was warm, Leof could hear thrushes in the hedgerows and
grasshoppers shrilling. A beautiful day, and a lovely ride. But behind them lay death and before them terror. It was as though
they rode in a bubble of safety that might be popped at any moment. He shook his head to clear it. It had been a long night
and longer morning, and he was much too tired. He should eat something, although he felt at the moment as though he’d never
again be hungry. He dug some dried grapes out of his belt pouch and chewed on them stolidly, the sweetness making him thirsty,
so he drank. The others were doing the same, he noted, except Horst, who had no attention to spare from the dust of the road.

They should have caught up with the enchanter quickly enough, despite their long detour, but the road stretched on and they
came eventually to the next village, Feathers Dale, which lay so quiet and orderly under the sun that Leof knew immediately
that the ghosts had not come this far.

“We’ve missed them,” he said, turning Arrow. She moved reluctantly, smelling water and stables and hay in the town somewhere.
“Come on, lass,” he encouraged her, and they went back again to investigate more thoroughly.

It turned out the ghosts had left the road just after the hill where they had tried to ambush the enchanter. They’d wasted
more than an hour and a half. Hodge swore, and Leof felt like joining him. “Let’s go,” he said instead, taking Arrow through
a gate into a field. The ghosts had left the gate open, and he made sure Alston closed it again behind them. For some reason,
that carelessness with the gate made him angry, angrier even than during the battle.

He was suddenly sure that this enchanter had never worked with his hands, never sweated in a field to get the hay in as he
had, next to his father and brothers and all the inhabitants of their town, as just about every person in a warlord’s domain
had at one time or another. Bringing in the hay, harvesting the grain or the grapes or the fruit or the beans, these were
a part of life, one of the patterns of life which brought people together in comradeship and common purpose.

Up until this moment, he had feared the enchanter’s scheme, but he had not thought about the man himself. Now he was filled
with hatred. Contempt. This man was a destroyer of lives and he deserved to be destroyed in return.

The trail was clear enough, and they followed as fast as the horses could bear. Arrow was tiring badly, after her great run
from Carlion the day before, and the others, not as fit as she, were in much the same case. The wounds the wraiths had made
weren’t deep but the horses had bled enough to weaken them.

The country here was a series of dales and small hills, fields separated by coppices of beech and birch and ash, the trees
for spears and chairs and trugs and charcoal. Settled country, with farms regularly spaced. Peaceful.

Cantering down a gentle hill towards a farmhouse, they heard screams. Dying screams, familiar to them all from many battles.
They urged the horses forward, Leof feeling sick, because what could they do to protect these people? Nothing. Nothing except
try to get them inside and barricaded.

“Hunda!” they heard someone scream. “Run!”

A young man came skittering out of the farmyard, a ghost close behind, two wind wraiths sailed down from the heights and swept
across his path. Perhaps it was fear that made him stop in his tracks and watch them as they sailed up again into the sky
and disappeared, but it gave the ghost behind him time to catch up and bring down his scythe. The youth fell, fair hair darkening
with blood.

“There they are!” Alston shouted.

The ghosts were outside a barn, arguing with the enchanter, it seemed. There were three bodies already on the ground, but
no wind wraiths, thank the gods. The ghosts looked up as the horsemen approached, and the leader, the short one with beaded
hair, hefted Leof’s own sword and grinned at them. But the enchanter pulled him away, speaking urgently, and the ghosts, reluctantly,
followed him out of the farmyard, running.