Knight's Dawn (9 page)

twigs or the drumming of hooves on hardened earth. Nothing. No sound, no scent, no sight of any follower. Yet he knew he was being hunted. He had set out from camp to hunt, but now he was the prey. What would go after a man in the daylight? Not the wolves. They might attack a lone disabled or sick traveller at night, but not a healthy man in the light hours. A bear? Unlikely. Bears tended to avoid humans. The only thing Soldier could think of was that he was being tracked by Garnash, the wild boar. There was nothing else, man excluded, which might set out after a human hunter. He looked down at his weapons. If the boar was after him he was in deep trouble. All he had was the bow and a makeshift spear. But if I killed this Garnash, he told himself, I would not need to worry about Kaff or people like him. I would be a slayer of magical beasts. Behold, they would say, the marvellous hunter, slayer of Garnash! He cut a vine and spliced the ends, then made a noose from it. The other end he tied to a thick bough some thirty feet off the ground. When Garnash felt something round his leg, or his neck, he would instinctively run headlong to free himself from it: that was the nature of beasts. In doing so he would simply tighten the noose of the thick vine and entrap himself. Soldier intended to remain up the tree until Garnash had exhausted himself by running around, perhaps getting entangled in other trees. Then he would simply climb down and stab the great creature in the heart with his spear, finishing the job with the dagger he had in his waistband. There was no danger involved, should things go wrong, for Soldier would be high up in the branches of a great tree. All the while these plans and preparations were taking place there were the calls from camp, but he had to kill Garnash before he returned to the boy and Uthellen. Wouldnt they be surprised? Soldier wondered whether the knife he had would be big enough to cut off the head of the boar, so that he would have proof of his kill? It was something he could worry about later. Soldier climbed the tree and sat in the fork, his hand on the vine. Down below he could see the patch of leaves which hid the noose under them. He waited. And waited. Dusk began to fall. Eventually he heard a sniffing and snorting sound, not too loud, coming from the undergrowth. Certainly there was some kind of wild pig, a hog of some sort down there, but whether it was Garnash or not there was no way of telling. Then some leaves of bushes parted and a great creature entered the gloaming of the clearing, slipping along like a huge dark shadow. It was a monstrous black boar. Soldiers heart missed a beat on first seeing this beast. Indeed it was a giant, with a great bristled belly which hung in the dust. Its head was as large as a curled-up man and the back of its neck, and its shoulders, were ridged with rolls of skin. Soldier could see thick wedges of dead flies which had been trapped in these creases in the animals flesh and pulped there. Its snout was flat against its face with two caverns which were its nostrils. A black ruff of coarse hair fringed its lower jaw like a mans beard, and two massive yellow tusks curled out and away on either side of the creature. Set above the crumpled snout were two glaring, intelligent but utterly merciless eyes. This was a vicious creature which would have no compunction in charging down anything on the earth and goring it with those tusks. It lumbered forward, sniffing the air, and then to Soldiers absolute horror, it stood up on two legs. Soldier gagged with fear at that point, seeing this monster with its pizzle erect, its pinky-dark underside revealed, staring around the glade as it stood some twelve feet tall. It scoured the undergrowth around it with those cold, callous eyes, looking for signs of its prey. Soldier was frozen to the fork of the tree wondering what on earth had possessed him to take on this formidable enemy. One step, two steps, three steps. Awkwardly the beast went forward, still turning that great dome of a head this way and that, sniffing and staring. Drool dripped, splattering, from its jaws as it opened its mouth to reveal a thick row of blackened teeth strung between its long tusks. It sniffed hard again. Then it looked upwards, at the tree fork where Soldier crouched, and after a few seconds the jaws went lopsided into a position which might have been described as a grin had it not been on the face of a beast. Garnash had spotted his quarry, hiding from him in the tree above, and did not seem too disconcerted. Down went the huge brute on all fours now. It raced to the other side of the clearing. Then it charged, head down, to butt the trunk of the tree. There was the terrific thump of an inch-thick skull with a ton of weight behind it smacking the bole of a tree. The earth shuddered and a quiver went through the world. Soldier clung on for dear life. The tree was a great oak, very solid, very mature, yet it shook like a sapling on its roots as if it had been struck by a mobile mountain. Rotten branches fell, acorns showered the glade, the roots squealed and creaked. How Soldier managed to hang on to the trunk and remain aloft was a miracle. He was as vulnerable as a birds nest balanced in the fork of a twig. At that moment Soldier saw that the creature had one hind leg in the patch of leaves which hid the noose. He jerked quickly on the vine. The loop tightened around the haunch of the great brute. It let out a terrible scream of anger, and charged away into the brush. For a moment or two Soldier thought his plan had worked. This feeling fled the instant the vine reach its end and was taut around the boars leg. Garnash kept going. The tree did not hold him. It began to lean. Roots started to tear from the soil on the far side. Gradually the grunting boar tore the huge tree loose from its anchor. Soldier clung on desperately. When the oak was at forty-five degrees, he fell. He dropped stone-like onto the hard backbone of Gamash. Reaching to steady his fall he clutched at a bunch of bristles like long needles on the boars back. They were wrenched from their roots. Garnash let out a terrible scream which seemed to explode in Soldiers head. Soldier then began running, terrified out of his wits. Garnash saw him and started out after him. The tree acted as a hold on the leash. The giant boar, still screaming its anger, continued to heave. Finally, just as the oak came crashing down all the way now to the forest floor, the vine snapped. Garnash lumbered after his prey. But Soldier had a head start on the boar. His feet flew, spurred by terror. He went through brake, leaping over streams, around between tree trunks. He ran until he saw the glow of a camp-fire in the darkening green and finally, gasping for breath he stumbled into the camp. Quickly, he gasped, get up a tree Garnash is after me. The boy and Uthellen did not move. They stared in amazement at Soldier. He looked down at himself, expecting to see a leg missing, or at least an arm. There was nothing wrong with him except that he was covered in red mud from head to foot. Did you hear what I said, he cried, frustrated by their inactivity. The boars just behind me! Look, he held up the long coarse bristles he had torn from the boars back, heres my proof. Now, quickly, quickly. Still they did not move and eventually the boy said, Garnash wont come in here. Why? How can you be so sure? Because of the fire, answered Uthellen. Garnash, like most wild beasts, is terrified of fire. Solder felt drained. He allowed himself to relax. What they were saying made sense. It was doubtful the giant boar would risk coming so near to mans greatest weapon. The smell of woodsmoke alone was enough to send any normal animal into a panic. But Garnash was no ordinary beast. Perhaps fire meant no more to him than it did to a human? Are you sure? he blurted at Uthellen. Do you think I would be standing here if I werent? Still shaking, Soldier went and sat down beside the fire. His flight had taken all the last of his energy. He lay back, his head on the turf, and fell asleep. Later he was vaguely aware of being woken and fed with some rabbit stew. Then he was allowed to sleep until morning came. He awoke to the distant sound of trumpets and the rattle of drums. Somethings happening in Zamerkand, said Uthellen. Theres a lot of activity. We can hear them from here? Soldier said. The wind is from the south, carrying the sound over the plain. What could be occurring? The boy, who seemed more interested than his mother in what was going on, said, War. Those are war trumpets. Soldier sat up and shook his head. He went down to the stream with the far-off blare of trumpets still in his ears. There he bathed, before returning to the camp-fire where there was wild fare to be had. He drank cool water and ate. Then he took up the matter of the distant trumpets with the boy again. You say its war? Probably with the beast-people, or the Hannacks of Da-tichett, replied the boy. Id guess they were going after the Horse-people and the Wild-dog-people. Animal-headed people from the northern country of Falyum. Theyve been causing trouble up in the passes lately, threatening to muster and descend upon the castle. If they manage to stop quarrelling amongst themselves and join forces theyre a considerable foe. Fortunately for the Guthrumites the Falyum clans squabble all the time amongst themselves, up in the passes of the mountains. Unwittingly they perform a function for the Guthrumites, just by acting as a buffer between themselves and outlanders outsiders. Whats wrong with outsiders? Im a stranger myself. The boy shrugged. Its the way they are. Soldier asked the question, The Horse-people and the Dog-people? Are they barbarians? You could say that. One of them is responsible for destroying the beauty of the queens sister, your wife. Princess Layana. She was savaged by the Wild-dog-man, Vau. Those twisted scars you see on her face are from the teeth of Vau. A sudden and fierce rage swept through Soldier. She was bitten by someone? I thought it had occurred in a fire of sorts. How did it happen? Princess Layana was out hunting with her hawk, riding her favourite palfrey, when she and her small escort happened upon a raiding party. One of the Dog-men leapt at her and buried his teeth in the right side of her face. They had to prise apart Vaus jaws with the blade of a sword in order to release the princess. In their concern for the princess, Vau, though badly wounded, was allowed to escape. Your wife has never fully recovered from the attack. That is aside from her madness, which has another cause. Inflamed by the story, Soldier got to his feet. He said with venom in his tone, I must join this war. I have to find the Dog-man, Vau, and kill him. This has become my business at last.

Chapter Eight

At the time Soldier was making his dramatic pronouncement to a startled audience of two, Princess Layana was rising from her bed. Her boudoir was a room in the tulip-bud cupola of the Green Tower. On the palace walls below her four windows, covered with white-iron grills to prevent her from jumping to her death in moments of suicidal madness, the trumpeters and drummers were making sounds of war. In between their blaring and rattling, doves and pigeons cooed on the rooftops. The two sets of sounds were incongruous: symbols of war and peace, side by side, competing for attention. Layanas bedroom, like that of her sisters in the Palace of Birds, was padded with soft materials. The door to her bedroom was always locked from the outside by her servants. This too was to do with her insanity. It prevented her from wandering in the night hours, when the guards and maidservants were less alert than during the day. Today she was sane, and would be for two or three weeks, since she had just had a bout of the terrible sickness that afflicted her mind. There was always a respite between attacks of madness. These were not kind to her, because they lulled her into false hopes. The longer they went on, the more she hoped that such a calm period of sanity would be permanent. But eventually, or sooner, the madness returned, ravaged her mind and soul, and left her feeling weak, drained and sickened by what she had done, or might have done, while under the influence of involuntary violence. Still wearing her chiffon nightdress she went to the window of the green tower. On reaching it there was a flurry of white, fan-tailed doves, which roosted on the sill outside. The birds took to the air noisily. She was not sorry to see them leave. Their cooing was so monotonous early in the day. Such a beautiful morning, murmured Layana, staring out at a clear blue sky. May it last forever. Then the trumpets blared again, and the kettle drums rattled, and now some whirling bullroarers moaned. Layana suddenly recalled that she was now married to a man she did not know. Had it been out of pity? Or were there some feelings in her breast for this Soldier? Layana was confused. It would have been trite to say she did not know her own mind. Her mind was not her own much of the time. Yet she had never before allowed her emotions to dictate to her. Her first two husbands may they rest in some kind of peace were not chosen out of love, but for their stable characters. She had hoped at the time they would be strong enough to contain her wild excesses of mindless violence with the strength of their personalities. How wrong she had been about that! But Soldier was different. Contrary to the belief of Kaff, the queen, and others, her first encounter with Soldier had not been in the street, she in her sedan chair, and he in chains. Her first meeting with him had been while she had been roaming the forested hills in the south, secretly hunting. Between her bouts of madness, and during daylight hours only, Layana was given the relative freedom of Zamerkand. The queen accepted that if her sisters madness came upon her at that time there were slaves, guards, or chair carriers, who could restrain her and take her back to the Palace of Wildflowers. However, unknown to her sister, and to the grief and fear of her servants who kept such things secret from the queen, Layana sometimes gave her chaperons the slip. On these occasions she would make her way to a blacksmith named Butro-batan, whom she had befriended in her childhood, when taking her palfrey to be shod. Butro-batan was a big, ugly man with enormous arms and a head which sat right on his shoulders without a neck to turn it. When he did have to look at something either side of him, he turned his whole upper body. The skin on his face and shoulders was pitted with small burn marks where the sparks from hammered white-hot iron had sprayed him. He was a man of fierce temper whose strength frightened those who knew him, although no one could recall if he had ever actually used his fists on another man. On the other hand, he was as gentle with great plough horses as if he were shoeing kittens. The young princess, on first taking her mount to be shod by Butro-batan, had been the same age as his daughter when the child had been killed by a crowd of terrified people near a horse trough. The blacksmiths daughter had died foaming at the mouth. A frightened mob had stoned her to death thinking she was possessed by a demon. Somehow, the heat of the forge, around which the child used to play, had caused her to be subject to fits. One of these came upon her while she was unaccompanied in the market-place and those around her had panicked. The blacksmith missed his daughter, sorely, and of course felt guilty. He always wondered if in some way he had been responsible for her death and there were burn marks from red-hot irons on his forearm where he had punished himself for his negligence. Butro-batan was always ready for the princess. He kept a horse and hunting hawk for her in a stable at the back of his forge, along with weapons and clothes. The blacksmith was in the process of making the princess a beautiful suit of light armour, since she had expressed a desire to wander even further abroad, and he wished to give her the best protection he could offer. Butro-batan knew he would be put to death if the queen ever knew that he was assisting her younger sister in throwing off the restraints that royalty and madness imposed, but he did not care. Butro-batan was past worrying about such inevitable things as death. Thus it happened that while the princess was on one of these illicit hunting trips, swathed in cottons to disguise her female form, she had come across the soldier. She had seen him wake on the hillside and look about him in a bemused way. For a while he seemed to be talking to himself and staring over the landscape. Eventually the soldier had come down to her, ragged, bloody, dazed, and with an empty scabbard dangling from his belt. Youth, he had said, where is the battle? What battle? she had replied. He certainly looked as if he had been fighting. Not only was this indicated by his outward appearance, but by the obvious weariness in his spirit. His blue eyes had enchanted her. She still wondered if there was witchcraft in them. Was she under a spell, or was she at last in the throes of a romance? She did not really believe the latter was possible. Princess Layana had been told by others that she had a cold heart, that she could never love anyone but herself. Over time she had come to believe this statement. You are just like your father, her old nanny, now dead, used to say to her. A heart of ice. Keep it frozen, my little one, and youll never be hurt. She believed her old nanny. She believed her father had been a cold man. There were stories that Layanas mother had spent her life going from one wild affaire to another, looking for the warmth and affection she was never given in her marriage. Captain of the guard, corporal of the watch, musician, poet, cleric, clerk it had made no difference to the old queen - she had bedded all. The embittered husband and consort, seeing himself as victim, had forsworn women in general. As if that were not enough, Layana was now hideously scarred, from her encounter with the Dog-man, Vau. Now she was not only inadequate, she was ugly, and she had no doubt Soldier would find comfort from her madness in the arms of other women. He will not stay in the bed of a witch, she had told her maid-servant and confidante, Drissila, immediately after the wedding, even if she is a princess and he a pauper. So I shall not allow him here in the first place. I shall reject him from the outset, preserve my pride and his life, for its entirely possible I shall attempt to kill him in my madness. The dark-haired Drissila was at that time combing the hair of her princess with the spiny seashell Soldier had brought as one of his wedding gifts. She was standing behind her mistress, who was sitting in an ornate wooden chair. The maid-servants image in the silver hand-mirror waved natures comb at Layana. I think thats a good idea. Hes a handsome man, but those eyes of his make me shudder. Such a strange blue. You would think him capable of murder! Perhaps it would be you who wouldnt rise in the morning, after your wedding night? You think he looks like a murderer? I think he looks like an angel. Thats because youre besotted with his devil-may-care attitude, my lady. Oh, hes a suave, swashbuckling soldier all right, but theres something else about him. Something very, very dangerous, if you ask me. Youre blind to his real personality. Drissila had sniffed at this point. If you want my opinion, my lady, Id say throw him on the rubbish pile with the other two, before were all murdered in our beds. I think he looks vulnerable. You really think hes dangerous? Drissila had been quite adamant about this point, which she spoke about with absolute confidence. She had stopped combing the princesss tresses and had stared her mistress in the eyes. Theres something deadly in him. He seems defenceless and guileless, but I can sense something deeply dangerous about him. Hes a rogue soldier, my lady, whos been through some dreadful experience which has caused him to seek his fortune in a world where hes a stranger. Hazardous adventurers are pushed from behind, as well as pulled from the front. Hes done something dreadful in his past. Hes capable of doing something dreadful in the future. Wed be best to keep him away from us. The fact that he was a dangerous man did not detract from him in Layanas eyes. In fact it made him more desirable. Some women were attracted by such character. Yet, she felt she was chasing after rainbows. Soldier had married her to save his life, nothing more. Who could love an ugly harpy like me? she had sighed, turning her face a little to study the twisted eye, the raked cheek with its crimped furrows of flesh, the torn corner of the mouth. Such repulsive looks would be enough to turn the stomach of a mortuary physician. Never mind your face, you have a beautiful heart, her devoted maid-servant had told her. Thats more important. Not when the madness is on me, Layana had replied. This conversation had taken place several days previously. Now the princess waited for Drissila and her other maidservants to come to her boudoir. In the meantime, she watched the activities of the world outside her palace. The window of her room in the tall tower was high enough for her to witness the Carthagan troops mustering beyond the castle gates. War was in the air. The banners, the standards, the martial music proclaimed it. The red pavilions were being struck, poles and ochre coverings were being stacked and folded. Not all the Carthagans would be marching north. Half would stay to guard the city gates from any counterattack by the beast-people of Falyum. Suddenly Layana stiffened as she saw a figure coming down from the forested regions. Soldier! He was making his way towards the Carthagan mustering ground. Oh, what is he doing? asked Layana of herself. I thought he was safely in the city somewhere. The sound of the door to the room being opened captured Layanas attention. It was Ofao. He looked around the door, staring into her face, seeking, she knew, the signs of ill-humour. Im all right, Ofao, she said. Im fine today. He stepped warily into the room. Im so pleased, my lady. Then he was suddenly concerned and solicitous. But you look so pale? Axe you ill? Why are you standing by that open window in just a flimsy nightdress? Youll catch your death, my lady. I have just seen my husband. Ofao whirled, looking around the room. No, she said, not in here. Hes outside the city walls. Look, she pointed through the window. See how he strides towards that Carthagan captain. What is it hes carrying? A wooden spear? A bow? Can he be thinking of joining the Carthagans in their campaign? It certainly looks like it, my lady. There is determination in his step and in his face, murmured Ofao. Then he added in a wistful tone, Isnt he a fine figure of a man? Layana narrowed her eyes at her man-servant. You forget yourself, Ofao. Hes my husband. Yes, my lady, of course he is. And anyway hes not interested in other men not in that way. Well, Im grateful for the information, she said. Does that mean youve attempted to seduce him? No, no, my lady. One can tell, without doing that. Layana was silent for a moment. Then she said, Sing to me, Ofao, to calm me. My feelings are in turmoil. Ofao opened his mouth and began to sing a song in the high notes of a talented castrate. He sang sweeter than any bird. Layana closed her eyes and let the notes carry her to some place beyond the oppressive world, a place where new husbands joined the army to fight and uselessly die in battles which had no real meaning and served no purpose beyond themselves.