The Hawk And His Boy (26 page)

“Sir Mouse,” she said. “Well met.”

Indeed, Mistress! Indeed!

“Can you do me a great favor?”

Aye! What is your wish? We mice will do anything in our power to aid you, even though it cost us our lives! Command us!

“I would have you and yours guard this castle and the town. Parley with the cats, with the hounds, with the horses, and with all that live hereby. Bid them my peace. Bid them that all must be my watch against the Dark.”

The Dark!

The mouse squeaked in alarm and its whiskers quivered.

“Aye, Sir Mouse. Can you aid me?”

The mouse bobbed up and down. It reached out one tiny paw and patted the hem of her cloak.

We shall! We shall! Word shall come to you if we see aught!

The mouse scurried away.

The moon was rising high when she made her way from the castle grounds. A small gate in the gardens opened into the street behind the castle. Though, in truth, it was more of a cattle path than a street, full of ruts and mud puddles. Lights shone from the windows around her. A cow lowed in question from a shed nearby.

Hay.

Hay. And grass tomorrow?

She quieted the cow with a touch of her mind and passed on.

Steps were built into the wall here for the soldiers who walked the watches, but no one was in sight. She hurried up to the top of the wall and glanced at the moon. There would be just enough time. Barely enough, and she would be doubtlessly falling asleep in the saddle in the morning when they left for Hearne.

She took a deep breath and jumped off the wall.

Landed already running. She could hear the galloping of horses in her mind. Herself galloping.

The ground flowed away beneath her, earth and stone and trees blurring into one. The wind whipped through her hair and her cloak, tossing them back like a dark mane. She heard the river Ciele murmuring before her, and then she was past it, hurdling it in one stride. The moonlight flashed on the water, and the moon in the sky was the only thing that stayed motionless with her, watching her with the narrow curve of its unblinking eye. Hills rose and fell before her. The dew sprang from the grass at the strike of her feet. Her cloak was drenched in it. Time slowed, but she ran faster and faster.

Oh, Min!

Her heart was full and it seemed to her that if she turned her head she would see the great horse galloping next to her. She was up higher now, up on the plateau that rises in the northern portion of the Mearh Dun hills. She slowed her pace and felt sweat springing cold from her limbs.

The moonlight gleamed on the whitewashed stone walls of a cottage. A barn stood nearby. The ground was hard underfoot. She smelled the oily tang of sheep in the air. Sheep and hay and death.

And the other smell.

It was unforgettable. The Dark. Nausea twisted her stomach.

A memory struggled to life and for a moment she went blind to the cottage and the silent land around her. Shadows were falling from the sky. A mountain range rose like broken teeth into the night. Fires raged on the plain below. She heard the distant shouts and screams of the dying. The battle lines snaked across the plain. Iron clashed on iron. And the shadows fell from the sky.

They fell and they fell.

So long ago.

Long before we fled to Tormay.

But the stench was the same.

Levoreth forced her eyes open. Her head ached. The cottage sat waiting for her in silence. She swallowed and tasted bile.

In the little garden behind the cottage were two fresh graves. They were heaped over with stones and she touched them. The animals would respect her scent. They would not bother these graves. The lock on the cottage door was shattered. The smell was almost overpowering inside. She doubted, of course, that a normal human would be able to smell the scent. A wizard might be able to. Others would merely become uneasy, fearful, or sick to their stomachs, but they would not know why.

Animals, however, would smell it and know it for what it was.

The cottage was a single room that served as kitchen, living space, and bedroom. Just inside the door, moonlight slanted down onto the wood flooring. The wood was stained dark. Someone had kicked dirt over it, but the stain was apparent, ugly and dark red. Broken crockery, torn bedding, and splintered furniture had been piled up in one corner—all that was left of the Blys besides the two graves in the garden.

There was something else in the room. A thread of emotion fast fading away. Terror. And rage.

Ginan Bly had died fighting.

Levoreth nodded. She looked once around the cottage and then walked outside. The stench was all around. It clung to the stone walls and to the grass poking up from the ground. She stalked around the cottage, her head down.

There.

There it was.

The scent led away toward the north.

North. Yet she had no time to go north herself. Something in the city of Hearne was calling her. She cast her thoughts wide, searching across the surrounding land. Nothing. Not even a field mouse to be found. She pushed wider, but there was only a residue of fear. The animals had all fled. But there—there was something. A weasel skittering along the ground, nervous and hungry. She caught at its mind and pulled it toward her, but the animal shied away. She snared it again and soothed it with thoughts of fat mice and crickets. The weasel shivered.

Come.

The animal came, snarling and protesting, hardly able to talk for fear.

Afraid. Evil. Here! It is here! Run! Run away!

It popped its head out of a bush several yards away, its shiny black eyes darting every which way at once, and then it disappeared.

Come.

Run! Run away!

Come.

The bush quivered and then the weasel burst out from among the leaves and scurried across the ground to her. It wrapped itself around her ankles. She could feel the staccato of its heartbeat trembling against her skin.

Peace, little one.

Here! It is here! Everywhere!

Peace.

The weasel poked its head out from under her cloak and stared up at her. The moonlight glittered in its eyes. She felt the animal quiet down, but its thoughts still darted through her mind, tense and afraid.

Mistress of Mistresses. The Dark has been here. Not long ago. Can you not scent it? Humans lived here. They are dead. All dead.

Aye, the Dark has been here, but it is here no more. Peace, little one, and listen to what I shall say. Alone, there is none of you that can stand against the Dark. That is not your place, for it is the duty of those who have been given charge over you. Now, listen, for I would have you do a great thing for me.

Name your bidding, Mistress of Mistresses! Even if it be death, I shall do it!

Go now to all the nyten, all the four-footed folk who call these hills home. Go to the hares, the deer, the mice, and the foxes. In my name, put aside your enmities for a time and bid all to keep watch against the Dark. Do not stand and fight, but wait and watch.

I shall do so, Mistress. Even to the mice! The plump and tasty mice!

And one last thing, little one. A very important thing.

Aye?

Find me a fleet-footed deer and send her to the Mountains of Morn. Give her word for the wolves, that they must come to this place and track the scent of Dark as far as they dare. If the deer keep my name in her mouth, the wolves shall not harm her.

The weasel bobbed its head up and down in obedience. Then, without a backward glance, it scampered away and was soon lost in the night.

Levoreth sighed.

“I know this stink,” she said to herself. “Damn you to your endless night, wherever you have gone! But my little ones shall keep watch, and the wolves shall track you to your doorstep, and then I shall unmake you, if it’s the last thing I do. If my fate didn’t bid me to Hearne, I would hunt with the wolves. I would hunt you to the ends of the earth. Even if it took me back east over the sea.”

And with these words, she turned once again to the south. The moon gazed down upon her. The wind sprang up and the sky blazed with stars. As she ran, it seemed that the ghostly shape of a horse ran by her side.

They left the next morning for Hearne. The duke was quiet all that day, causing the duchess anxiety. However, the sunlight and the beauty of the late summer soon proved enough to wrest him from his mood into his usual cheerful self. Levoreth yawned and slumped in the saddle, such that her aunt thought her ill.

“You should’ve said something, my dear,” said the duchess. There’s a tea of willow bark and jona flowers I’ve had splendid success with.”

“I’m fine,” said Levoreth.

“You look dreadful.”

“I’m fine,” said Levoreth.

The road wound south, through hills thinly forested with pines. For a time, it followed the east bank of the Ciele, before the river swung toward the west and the great sea. Here, the hill country met the plain of Scarpe, which stretched from the Mearh Dun in the north to the cliffs far to the west that rose above the sea with their rocky heights. The plain of Scarpe extended a good five days’ journey by horse to the forests of Lome standing on the western foothills and flanks of the Mountains of Morn. South was a hard week’s ride before the plain met the river Rennet and Hearne, whose stone walls loomed over that course’s mouth.

The plain of Scarpe was like an ocean of grasses, rippling in the wind toward an endless horizon. In the spring, it was patchworked with wildflowers—the different purples of the allium, the yellow-white spray of saxifrage, and the tiny blood-red poppies. By summer’s end, however, the flowers were faded and gone, leaving only the grasses burnished into gold under the sun. Water was a chancy thing at best on the plain, but Willen, the old sergeant-at-arms, knew Scarpe like his own hand, having fought in the Errant Wars that had raged across that land thirty years earlier.

“Besides,” he said to Levoreth as they rode along, “you give a horse a chance for his own notions, he’ll find a waterhole soon enough. They’re smart in that. There be other ways, too—the flight of bees and birds, the mixture of grasses, even the wind if you have the sense to smell it.” And he chuckled and laid a finger alongside his own weathered beak of a nose.

Levoreth smiled at him, and the roan under her danced a few steps.

They were a day into the Scarpe when one of the outriders came galloping in toward the party. He reined up next to the duke, spoke with him, and then cantered away. The duke spurred his horse alongside his wife and Levoreth.

“Good news!” he said. “The Farrows! Just half an hour south of us!”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

OWAIN GOES HUNTING

“It’ll only be for a few weeks, Sibb. Not long at all.”

The Lord Captain of Hearne was sitting with his wife in the garden behind the house. Sibb grew herbs for her kitchen there. The scent of sage and basil filled the air. Around them, the plants flourished in their tiny plots. Morning sunlight crept down the wall. The honeysuckle vines growing along the wall were covered in a profusion of yellow flowers.

Sibb picked up his hand, turning it over in her own. His palms were callused and his knuckles wealed with scars. A particularly large scar ran between his thumb and finger, reaching almost to his wrist. She ran her finger along the ridge, remembering. A frown crossed her face.

“Three weeks at most,” he said.

She said nothing in reply, but only traced the scars on his hand.

“I’m leaving Bordeall in charge at the tower. He’ll have near enough the entire strength to command, so Botrell can sleep soundly at night. Hearne will keep safe while I’m gone.”

“It’s not Hearne I worry about,” she said, tracing the scar alongside his thumb. He laughed and kissed her.

“Don’t fret, Sibb. With a sword and a good horse, I’ll always have the luck to find my way home. Odds are we won’t find hide or tail of them, so there’ll be no need to worry on that account.”

“Them,” she repeated.

“Aye.” He sighed. “I don’t even know what we’re looking for. Man, beast, or something in between. I have the feeling it’s something in between. At any rate, we’ll ride out to our foundling’s village and see if we can find some tracks. How I wish she would regain her tongue. Without her knowledge, we’ll be hunting blind. Even if we return with only stories of bones and an old slaughter gone cold, it’ll be worthwhile, for I want Botrell thinking beyond this city. He’s able as regent, I’ll give him that, but he forgets that all the lands of Tormay look to Hearne. The other duchies are unsettled about these murders and, so far, Botrell ignores their unease.”

“He’s an odious man,” said Sibb.

“Woman, you forget he is our regent. I’m sworn to protect his city and his personage. In pursuit of such office I’ll have to—ouch!”

She punched him in the ribs and they were both silent for a moment. Bees drifted and settled among the honeysuckle vines.