The Horse Lord (7 page)

Raw fear welled within the youngster’s brain and was not dispelled when he tore his eyes from the convoluted sky. Something was disturbing the snow just by his gelding’s hoofs. Then the thing broke surface.

Starting backwards in horror, Aldric yelped and clenched his teeth against the stab of pain his sudden movement brought. Then he stared in disbelief. On the ground was what had once been a hand. It was long dead, rotten leather stretched taut over a claw of old brown bones. But it was moving. The Alban looked away, only to meet the empty eyesockets of a skull heaving itself from the earth. Its jaws worked, dribbling ancient mould across the clean snow, and pulpy white things squirmed in its hollow nostrils.

There was a sonorous droning in the air and a humming more felt than heard. Other shrivelled relics rose out of the past into the nightmare present until the whole valley was bubbling like putrescent broth. A vile stench clogged Aldric’s mouth and nose until, despite the scarf around his face, he hung retching over his saddlebow.

The hand he had first seen was thrashing more violently now. It had become fleshy, filling out with muscle even as he watched, and the reek of decay lessened somewhat. Then the hand twisted and clutched his horse’s foreleg, sending the animal rearing back with a neigh that was almost a shriek of outrage. Aldric was almost thrown and kept his seat more through adhesive willpower than any real skill. Trying impotently to quiet the shuddering roan, he looked down to see an almost exhumed body drag itself from the crumbling soil, then clung frantically to his saddle as the champing horse finally got the bit between its teeth and took off at full gallop.

Aldric reeled back and hammered the shaft in his back against a saddlebag. Red agony overwhelmed him and his mouth gaped wide, but long before any cry emerged he had slipped into the dark again.

In the grey light of dawn Aldric regained consciousness to find his left arm cold and stiff, hard to move and painful when he tried. But pain meant life. When he was dead he would no longer feel pain; nor love, nor joy, nor laughter. Though in his present mood he might as well be dead, for he was sure that he would never laugh again in this life. The dead felt nothing—even when they moved, he recalled with a shiver. But he was not dead yet, nor helpless either.

He slid clumsily to the ground, supporting himself with a stirrup when his knees threatened to give way. With only one hand, opening a saddlebag posed problems surmounted only by effort, ingenuity and much use of his teeth. Within was dried meat and wheaten bread for himself, grain and a feeding-bag for the horse, and a bottle of wine. Water he had in plenty from the melting slush around him.

Memory made the boy’s appetite slighter than it might have been, and he queasily set the meat aside after a few mouthfuls. Instead he turned his mind to the arrow; it had struck into the muscles by his shoulder blade and only the heavy leather jerkin had saved him from a fatal skewering. Panting for breath, he worked up his good hand far enough to hook two fingers over the shaft, whimpering as the head shifted in living flesh. Blood seeped stickily through his clothes, leaving a smell in the cold air that made the roan gelding stamp nervously. Aldric clenched his teeth and jerked the arrow hard.

It snapped and he fell forward into slush and dead leaves, sobbing. He only regained his feet again because the horse leaned over him, so that he could grip the reins and let the gelding lift him upright. Patting the beast’s nose, he buzzed affectionate nonsense into its ears.

In the clear autumn-to-winter sky a black crow drifted endlessly. The bird was still circling overhead more than an hour later, descending in lazy spirals wherever the trees grew thick. Now that pain no longer fogged his mind completely, suspicion found some room again in Aldric’s brain. He stopped, listening for any sound of pursuit, but Baelen Forest answered only with the noises of small living things. Then a wolf howled thinly in the distance and the crow cawed. Twice, then twice again. The
kailin
looked up with a strange expression on his face and carefully dismounted.

There was a
telek
bolstered on his saddle, and beside it the crossbow which stayed there all the time. Aldric led the gelding under a tree, forcing deep into the shelter of its needled branches, and saw how the crow swung lower. It was then that he took down the crossbow and painfully cranked it back. Above him he could see the crow straining to sight him, and glared at it. “Stay there, bird,” he muttered, “and you’ll soon find out what I’m doing.”

A bolt ripped up through the screening pine needles and feathers burst from between the crow’s wings. Aldric swore softly, but not at his good shot; rather because the bird did not caw as it died—it screamed.

The wolf howled again, an anguished sound like hunger made audible. Aldric mounted again and let the horse move off at an easy jog. Panic tempted him to lash his steed to a gallop—but panic was no longer a luxury he could afford.

There were dead leaves and mud plastered on his clothes where he had skidded face-down across the ground. Raising himself painfully on one elbow, Aldric tried to shake the whirling stars from his head. How… ? The booming in his skull made it so hard to think…

Then he rolled over and swore hopelessly. The horse, the poor faithful horse, the blasted brute that was his only hope of escape lay on its side, flanks heaving. Its eyes were rolling with pain and fear, and the cause was all too plain.

Some small animal had dug itself a burrow, and the horse’s leg had gone into it almost to the knee. They had only been trotting, but the gelding’s leg had snapped like a stick of celery.

Aldric could do nothing for such a break and only one thing for the horse. Kneeling by its head, he gentled it with soft words and drew the short sword from his belt. When the horse relaxed, trusting him, he drew the blade across its neck and felt like a murderer. He regretted killing the horse more than the two men yesterday. They had been unknown killers; the roan gelding had grown up with him since it was a wobbly-legged foal and he a skinny boy in his teens. What he had just done was like severing a limb;
kailin
and mount were a single unit, and the loss of one diminished the other.

There was nothing on the carcass he needed, not even the crossbow, since his need was now to travel fast and light. Taking only a little food and the water bottle, he began to walk.

The wolfs howl was much closer now and what Aldric had thought—hoped—was an echo was without doubt an answer. He started to run. It was late afternoon now and the sky would soon be growing dark. Though the full moon was almost a week past, Aldric was afraid of nightfall. His breath hung in smoky clouds on still air that grew more harshly cold every time he sucked it into his lungs.

Then the snarl came; a harsh ripple of ferocity right at his heels. In a desperate attempt to run faster and look behind him, his legs went out from under him and he finished up in an untidy limb-flailing bundle with his throat well placed for ripping. It remained undamaged and cautiously he raised his head. The undergrowth rustled, then emitted a throaty, malicious chuckle. When nothing else happened Aldric hauled himself up and sidled towards the bracken. Then he whirled and sprinted away.

After that the flight became a nightmare. Things snarled and giggled out of thin air; bushes and gnarled roots took on distorted shapes in the shifting evening light; and still he ran, though now his muscles were dull and his legs as slow to move as if he were wading in honey. Sweat soaked him, running down his face and blinding him to the hooked branches which tore at his back. Times without number he collided with trees or fell headlong, dragging himself on by force of will and little else. His grey-green eyes took on a glazed, dead look ghastly in a living face.

Night rose from the ground like a fog, made darker by the clouds shrouding the sky in grey. A small breeze began to hiss among the branches, carrying a few drops of rain from the iron sky. Thunder rumbled distantly, chasing the flash of its lightning across the heavens. Reeling from tree to tree, Aldric knew his mind and body were failing fast. Then the thunder bellowed in earnest and he took another tumble, snapping his sword as the rain came down in a solid mass. Finally he gave up and stood cursing and crying in a storm that slashed rain against him like a hail of arrows. When a hand clutched the raw agony that had been his shoulder there was a brief, blinding moment of abject fear.

Then the ground came up to meet him and all the lights went out.

Aldric struggled awake with a pounding headache, hauled up eyelids made leaden by weariness and drugs and looked around him. He saw low wooden beams, simple sturdy furniture and daylight oozing past painted shutters. None of it meant a thing until he tried sitting up. Then a flare of pain tore through the narcotic haze and his memory returned.

After a few minutes spent gathering his wits, he got out of bed and began to dress. There was no trace of his own clothes, except for the leather jerkin and his weapon-belt, but the strange garments were a reasonable fit and clean besides. He finally squirmed into them, even though the operation was punctuated by oaths and gasps of pain, then slung his belt so that both blades were close at hand. Only then did he open the door.

Gemmel saw him from the corner of one eye, blinking owlishly in the watery sunshine, and glanced up from his book. He started to say something, but the words died on his lips at his first clear view of Aldric’s face. Last night it had been concealed by a flaking crust of dirt and gore. Today it was the face of his own dead son.

Closer inspection revealed differences: the Alban was not as tall and his hair was lighter. Where Ernol’s eyes had been a clear and honest green like Gemmel’s own, this young man’s gaze was like a cat’s: hooded, cold and unreadable. The eyes were disks of flint sheathed in green glacier ice. But the likeness was still close enough to tighten the old man’s throat.

Aldric knew the expression “to see a ghost.” That was why he felt uncomfortable about Gemmel’s intense stare, and he laid one hand on the reassuring metal of his shortsword’s hilt. The old man at once looked disapproving. “You won’t need that,” he said. Aldric’s hand stayed where it was and Gemmel felt a twinge of annoyance; suspicion was one thing but ingratitude was quite another. When he spoke again his voice was crisp and commanding. “Let go of that
taipan
at once!” The finger which stabbed out seemed only an emphatic gesture, but Aldric jerked his hand from the weapon as if it had stung him. Which indeed it had. He eyed the old man and forced himself to relax a little.

“Who are you, anyway?” he asked.

“Gemmel Errekren fits most comfortably on short Alban tongues,” was the rather condescending reply. “You can call me that.”

“Errekren—Snowbeard—that’s no clan-name.”

“Since I haven’t a clan it should not surprise you,” Gemmel returned tartly. “Now hurry up. The spell wears off at sunset.”

“Spell… ?” Aldric repeated the word as if making sure of it. “Perhaps I should have asked
what
are you? Well?”

“I have already—no, I haven’t, have I? Forgetful…” He rubbed his cropped beard and smiled faintly. “The villagers call me
pestrior
and
purcanyath;
dialect I know, but you understand the words.” Aldric did, and to Gemmel’s surprise a thin, humourless smile appeared on his face.

“Wizard and enchanter,” the boy muttered half to himself. “Ironic really, to be hunted by one and rescued by another. For which I thank you.” He bowed as well as possible. “But this isn’t your affair. I’ll leave at once.”

“You’ll stay until I have tended that arm properly,” snapped Gemmel in a tone brooking no refusal, and met Aldric stare for stare until the Alban flinched and looked away. He nodded, half in defeat and half in gratitude.

“As you wish. But only until then. I owe too great a debt already.”

“Debts are for merchants,” observed Gemmel. “Put this on.” In the old man’s hand was a thing like a long-dead mouse and Aldric eyed it distastefully.

“Where?” he wanted to know. A shake of finger and thumb revealed the object to be a false beard. Aldric fitted the whiskers round an expression of faint disgust and found, as he had feared, that they itched. Even so, though he looked unlike anyone with a shred of self-respect, he also looked nothing like a high-clan
kailin
— which, he reflected with a gloomy scratch, was the whole point.

Gemmel had acquired mounts for both of them and Aldric studied his own steed with some dismay. It was a stocky, barrel-bellied, shaggy little pony, and not the sort of horse he had ridden for almost thirteen years. It also tried to bite him, twice. Gemmel watched the young man mount the skittish beast without difficulty, even one-handed, and wondered about the Alban’s other and more sinister skills. Then he shifted in his own saddle— on a horse much finer than Aldric’s, something already noted with some envy. “Best come on, son.” If that “son” was noticed it passed without comment. “Twenty riders passed at first light, and it won’t take many questions in yonder village to bring them right back here.”

“How did they miss this place anyway?” Aldric thought aloud. The wizard waved one hand in the air.

“A simple spell that stops you seeing in a straight line.” His explanation explained nothing. But as Aldric rode away he saw—or more correctly, did not see—what the enchanter meant. Stone and thatch faded from sight as if around a corner and left an empty space where grass waved in the wind. He said nothing, being consumed with curiosity while doing his best to seem unconcerned. Gemmel found his facial gymnastics most amusing, but very wisely kept the fact to himself.

Riding as fast as the wizard deemed sensible was still not fast enough for Aldric’s liking. He kept thinking of those twenty horsemen. After half an hour of cantering across the moorland, always due west and mostly uphill, the
kailin
reined in and turned his horse around. There had been a tingling across his back for several minutes now and he felt sure he knew the cause. Gemmel watched him and wondered.