The Barrow (70 page)

Stjepan reached out and his hand slowly closed on hers. Gently he took the dagger back from her, and slowly he stood up.

“You can be of much use still, my Lady,” he said.

“I shall do my best, Master Stjepan,” she said coyly.

Tucking his notebook back in his satchel, Stjepan excused himself with a bow.

Stjepan crouched inside his tent, a low lantern nearby, searching through a small pack crammed with small books, codexes, maps, and scrolls. He took out a single leather-bound book with arcane markings upon it and began flipping through it.

Stjepan was so engrossed in his book that he was unaware of a presence filling the tent behind him.

“Stjepan,” came a voice from within the tent.

Stjepan jumped with a start, and then relaxed. He glanced over his shoulder.

“Erim! Yhera, Queen of Heaven, don't sneak up on me like that . . .” he said.
You're getting far too good at it
, he thought.

“Sorry, it's not my fault you're not paying attention to what's around you,” Erim said with a shrug. “What are you reading?”

“It's a copy of the
De Secretis Libris
of Eldyr, son of King Myrad,” he said. “It's . . . a book of secret magic. Written by a powerful, and very mad, enchanter, who was one of the Hundred Sons of Myrad the Mad.”

Erim sat down opposite him and thumbed through a book from Stjepan's stash, pretending to read it. He frowned, for it seemed an odd pantomime for Erim. “She's changing. She's acting different,” she said; it wasn't so much a question as a statement.

“Yes. Each day, it seems, by both Malia's report and my own observations,” he said ruefully, running his hand through his hair and rubbing his mouth.

Erim was now looking at him intently. “What are you thinking?” she asked.

Stjepan hesitated. “I'm not entirely sure. But I'm starting to wonder if perhaps something else is acting upon her, or through her,” he said, his voice so low it was almost a whisper. “Eldyr described how you could place an enchantment upon someone to make them pursue a goal not their own. I think she may be under some sort of compulsion . . . or possession.”

“A spell of some kind? By Harvald?” Erim asked.

“I don't know . . . perhaps,” Stjepan said with a frown. “I did not recognize the type of Sending that he was performing in the library before he died, so perhaps he placed some sort of command or compulsion upon her to ensure the map would be followed. But the map itself may have had powers to compel those who possess and read it, perhaps even the power to transform them . . .” He hesitated. “I am not entirely sure if burning the map freed it of its curse, or simply transformed the curse into something new.”

He looked up at her and sighed. “Yet I still want to believe that the Lady is innocent. I can sense my own hesitation to judge her with a cold eye and see her for what she really is. So . . .” he said, and paused for a moment. His words began to slow as he stared at Erim. “I fear . . . I'm not looking hard enough . . . I'm not seeing something I should . . .”

They stared at each other.
Something is wrong
, Stjepan thought.
Something doesn't look right. Something doesn't smell right. Erim doesn't just look like a man. She
smells
like a man.

Erim put the book back down, frowning back at Stjepan. “What's the matter, Stjepan?” she asked. “Are you okay?”

“What's the matter with me?” Stjepan said, frowning back at her. “What's the matter with you?”

Both of them could suddenly hear the sound of someone approaching one of the tent's entrances.

“Someone's coming,” Erim said, rising up into a standing crouch and backing toward the far tent flap. Stjepan was confused by her behavior but her worry and concern were contagious and he turned to await the new arrival, his hand slipping to the hilt of a dagger.

Erim pulled open the tent flap and stepped inside, laughing. “Hey, Godewyn's trying to . . .” she said, then stopped short, looking at herself standing at the back of the tent. “Fuck.”

For a moment the two Erims stared at each other, as Stjepan looked back and forth between them in confusion.

The Erim to whom Stjepan had been talking smiled a sneering grin as its body turned black and its face a ghostly white. And then the figure suddenly slipped out the far tent flap, leaving the mask of its false smiling face hanging in mid-air behind it, slowly dissipating like smoke from a candle.

The real Erim stood frozen, staring at the fading false face, but Stjepan threw himself out to the tent in pursuit of the fleeing figure with a curse, weapons coming bared.

He quickly turned in a circle, falchion in his right hand and point dagger in his left, but there was nothing to see. The figure from inside the tent had vanished in an instant.
Where'd he go? I was right behind him . . .
Under his breath he began to quickly whisper:
“Show me! Show me the World, show me that which is hidden . . .”

He began to move about the camp. Everything seemed normal, though a wind was rising. His eyes scanned the ground, looking for tracks, but the ground was covered by broken grass and fresh overturned earth and where footprints were possible there were many of them, from a dozen different shoes and boots. There was a faint trail in the air, though, the faint firefly lights of powerful magic, and he started to follow them, cursing the wind. He ran into Too Tall and Caider Ross, drunk and laughing. With the Incantation of Seeing, magic in the world began to glow before him: a hidden rune here on Too Tall's dagger, the amulets that Leigh had given them glowing there under their shirts. But neither bore the signs of a recent glamour upon them. They paid him no mind as he passed them, glancing in tents and wagons.

The softly glowing firefly lights that danced in the wind seemed to be dissipating where he was, and he was about to turn toward the central campfire to see who was there when he heard horses softly whinnying and shifting on the picket line off to one side. He shifted course immediately, stalking swiftly and quietly.

He turned the corner of a tent and was surprised to see several lean, pale-skinned, almost cadaverous men in barbaric masks and partial armor a dozen paces away, sneaking up behind the next tent over. They were as surprised as he was, and they all froze for a moment, staring at each other.

The three men were dressed similarly to the Nameless Cultists that had come upon them under the ground in the hills of the Manon Mole, but of markedly superior gear. They wore black oval masks of leather and wood that covered their entire faces, with slanted eye holes to give them a feral appearance and curled or straight spiral horns from rams and gazelles sticking out from their foreheads; tall spikes of wild black hair stuck up from behind the masks. One of the three had animal teeth inlaid on the front of his mask. He could see that the masks were enchanted to make their wearers all the more fearsome and terrifying, and the enchantments were certainly working. They wore leather bracers and rags and furs dyed black, their pants tucked into leather and cloth wraps that snaked around their ankles and short boots. Two of the three had bare chests, and he could see the gleam and glow of runes of warding and protection and strength branded into their pale skin, while the third bore a great round shield with red runes painted onto it. He could also see glowing amulets dangling around their necks next to gleaming golden torques, torques around their upper arms, amulets wrapped in leather cords around their wrists under their bracers, and the gleam of runes on their blackened, barbed spears and poisoned, curved swords.

Azharites
, he had time to think.

And then the men screamed and suddenly charged.

Before they could reach him, Sir Theodore and Sir Helgi crashed in wearing their full three-quarter plate harnesses, sending two of the Azharites sprawling while Theodore's sword ran the third one through the stomach. The two Azharites sprang swiftly back to their feet as Sir Theodore pulled his sword out of their companion. Sir Theodore commenced to bashing away at the Azharite holding a shield, who blocked his flurry of blows, while Sir Helgi rather expertly threw the other back on the ground and then stabbed downward into his gut with his greatsword. As the sword streaked down Stjepan saw the flash of a gleaming rune of victory on the blade, and it pierced through the Azharite's warded skin to pin him into the ground.

Freeing his sword, Sir Helgi bellowed at the top of his lungs: “To arms! To arms! We are attacked!”

A wave of Azharites came rushing in on foot out of the dark as a partially armored Sir Theodras ran in to back up Sir Helgi and Sir Theodore. They met in a clash of arms, blood flying as Azharites went down, but Sir Theodras' unarmored leg took a great blow to the knee from a heavy iron mace and he went down with a scream with two of the masked berserks on top of him, trying to stab him to death. Sir Theodore leapt to his rescue, killing one of the Azharites with a sharp blow that sheared mask and skull, but a black-clad berserk behind him drove a barbed spear into Theodore's right buttock and ripped downwards, opening up the back of his thigh where it was unprotected except by cloth, and blood gushed out in great spurts as the knight screamed and stumbled away from the prone Sir Theodras toward where Sir Helgi held off three of the foul attackers. The Azharite shield man used the opening to bring the edge of his shield down in a strike on Sir Theodras' screaming mouth, silencing him with a bloody crunch.

All this barely registered on Stjepan; the moment the fighting started he had resumed his search, intent on finding the intruder to his tent, and he saw a trail of firefly lights waft into the air nearby. He slipped through the tents, scanning left and right, following the lights like floating embers. He could see Azharites streaming in on foot through the tall grass, and leaping over the short gaps between the wagons, and he ducked out of the way as one of them ran past him, charging at and spearing Cole Thimber as he lumbered forward. Despite the spear in the gut, the big man waded into a group of the Azharites with a long-hafted iron-headed mace, and bellowing proceeded to start knocking them about. Arrows and darts came flying out of the dark to pepper into the sides of the tents; some of the arrow were on fire, and a couple of the tents looked like they were about to go up in flames.

Stjepan reached the Ladies' Tent, where Sirs Lars and Colin Urwed were beset by more of the Azharites. A masked berserk, larger and more muscular than his lean fellows, spun a long-hafted axe in both hands, knocked Sir Lars' sword aside, and swiftly brought the heavy head of his axe down on the knight, crushing his sallet helmet. The squire Brayden rushed the axe-wielding berserk, and was cleaved almost in two. Seeing the odds going so badly at Annwyn's tent almost diverted Stjepan from his mission, but an armed and partially armored Arduin, runes gleaming on his sword and breastplate, charged in and with two quick cuts of his war sword he had separated one of the berserk's arms at the shoulder, and then his head. Squire Wilhem Price leapt in, sword ready, to stand behind Sir Colin, who swung his greatsword around to fend off the rest of the Azharites, and Stjepan kept moving.

The trail of firefly lights was fading and growing thinner, his frustration growing. A few dozen weaving steps and he found himself almost back at his own tent, having made a rough circle through the camp. Stjepan had to step over Giordus Roame, who'd had an arm lopped off. Stjepan's heart leapt into his throat and he picked up speed, and he came upon Godewyn, Caider Ross, and Too Tall using poleaxes and bills to advance into a small group of the Azharites, trying to fight side-by-side with some practiced discipline but mostly succeeding in pushing the Azharites back through wild enthusiasm, while Erim was acrobatically fighting two Azharites left standing from a larger group of a half dozen. One of them had an extra long mask, almost shaped like a teardrop and coming to a point, with two great antelope horns jutting up from its top, and he wore a leather cuirass affixed with brass scales and glistening with enchantment. Erim ducked in and out between the two Azharites, stabbing the one with a normal-sized mask in the throat. The long-masked Azharite with the leather cuirass bore down on her, their blades clashing in a cut-and-parry back and forth; he cut her across her left arm and she cried out, but then she dropped low under his next swing and came up, driving her rapier through his stomach under his cuirass and up into his rib cage. He spat blood, then collapsed.