He was lying on something that was neither soft nor hard. He opened his eyes, and saw that he had tumbled across the body of Rinan. Although he still had no idea what had happened, he tried to scramble back so that he did not crush the harper. Something was holding his legs. Something . . .
Another thundering noise, that of hoofbeats this time, and then a flurry of pale shapes burst out of the darkness of the hillside and galloped past him, swift and unexpected. He rolled onto his side to watch the white horses as they rushed away, following in the track of the giant. The creature’s great back was toward Simon now as it led the Norns toward the road. The White Foxes galloped after him, their hair whipping like pennants as they sped toward freedom, toward escape. Simon was stunned to count no more than half a dozen Norn riders—so few to cause so much horror, so few—!
“But I’m . . . I’m not dead.” He realized he had said it out loud. He could not understand how the giant had failed to kill him. He tried to move his legs again, but couldn’t. A panicky moment ended when he saw that someone was clinging to him.
“Jeremias?” he asked. Jeremias had his arms wrapped tight around Simon’s knees. It seemed so unlikely—like another part of the dream: the king’s oldest friend had grabbed him and dragged him down so that the giant’s blow had missed. “God’s Blood, Jeremias! You saved my life.”
His friend stared back at him for a moment, his bloodless, shocked face covered in dirt and ashes, then Jeremias Chandler, Lord Chamberlain of the Hayholt, burst into helpless tears.
Count Eolair knew that the gods had gifted him with life and vitality beyond many, and he was grateful for that. At an age when most men were dead or doddering, he still moved among the greatest and the most powerful of all lands, and had responsibilities that any ambitious man would envy. Instead of sitting in the sun or playing with grandchildren before the hearth, he spent his days in the saddle with the young men, and worried at night about the fate of entire kingdoms. But in this hour he felt truly old—older than he had ever felt. It was as though the previous night had hollowed him out, leaving nothing but a fragile shell, as if any sharp blow or even a hard breeze might crumble him into flakes and powder.
“Just tell us the worst of it.” Queen Miriamele was composed, the only sign of her misery in the redness of her eyes. For an instant, he thought he saw in that sharp, stubborn face what her father Elias might have been had he not been lured by the priest Pryrates, had he not fallen into madness and shadows. “How many dead?”
“It makes my heart ache to tell you, Majesty. Twenty-three men dead, but with several others not likely to last the day. Twice that number hurt. Colfer will lose his arm, but he was lucky—the man beside him was crushed like a rotten fruit—” Eolair shook his head. “Forgive me, Majesties. You do not need to know all the horrors this day has seen.”
“Of course we do,” she said. “In fact, I will go visiting with you when we have finished here. The king has been wounded, so he can wait to go among them until tomorrow.”
“That’s foolish. I’m scarcely hurt, Miri,” Simon said, but to Eolair he seemed worse than hurt. If the queen looked like she had been crying, Simon looked like someone who could not even remember how to cry, as though something important inside him had collapsed and might never be rebuilt. He could certainly understand why the queen didn’t want Simon going out among the men yet. Still, there was no way he could tell that to the king.
“Rest and let the queen visit the men, sire,” he said. “I will bring your commanders here, and you can take stock with them.”
“Take stock? What is there to discuss? A handful of White Foxes just killed two dozen of our people, one of them right in front of me. Right in front of me.” Simon took a long time before speaking again. “An innocent, God save us all.”
“We must discuss whether we send a troop of men after the enemy, for one thing,” Eolair said.
“Pointless.” The king shook his head. “They would be hard enough to catch on foot, but on those tireless Stormspike horses . . . there is no sense in even following. Believe me, if I thought otherwise, I’d be leading the way myself.”
“No you wouldn’t,” his wife said. “Do not even speak that way.”
“Why?” The king grimaced and rolled into a more comfortable position on the cot. “I took no real injuries.” Simon pointed at Tiamak, who was rolling his cutting instruments back into their oilcloth wrapping, preparing to go out among the wounded again. “Ask him.”
Tiamak turned and nodded wearily. “The king is bruised and scraped and his ribs are tender—but, yes, his Majesty is largely correct.” He shared a quick glance with Eolair before turning to the king. “Still, you are terribly weary, Simon.”
“I’ve already slept. The rest of you haven’t.” The king had been all but tricked into an hour’s worth of rest around dawn after Tiamak—at Eolair’s quiet suggestion—had insisted that the shocked, heartsick monarch down a cup of strong Perdruinese brandy. “I can’t lie around any longer when the men are hurt and frightened, and many are dead. You already stopped me from going among them once.”
“They didn’t need to see you like that, husband,” the queen said. “You would have brought them no comfort. Bleeding and filthy—you looked like some monster yourself.”
The king was now almost sulking. “Only because Jeremias pulled me down into the muck. When he saved me, of course—saved my life! I don’t want to sound ungrateful. Bless him and keep him, I couldn’t believe it when I looked down and—” Simon trailed off and looked around. Eolair politely waited for him to catch up. “Your pardon,” he said. “What else is there? Why were those creatures here, so far south?”
Eolair could only shake his head. “At this point we can but guess, Majesty. No, I do not think we are even ready to do that.”
“And has anyone found evidence of how many of the evil things there were?” Miriamele asked. “Did we kill any?”
“If we did,” said Tiamak, quietly as was his usual way, but with unusual firmness, “I would very much like to see the body.”
“None.” Eolair spread his hands. “We found no fallen but our own. Apparently the five we saw—and the giant, of course—were all.”
“They are terrible, fierce fighters,” said Simon. “Cold and difficult to kill as snakes. I’d truly hoped we would never have to face them again.”
A herald appeared in the doorway of the tent and announced Sir Kenrick, the burly, bearded young captain marshal, who held one hand close to his side. Eolair stirred, wondering if the captain was injured. The way he kept the hand out of sight made Eolair anxious, and he took a few steps closer to Kenrick and let his hand fall discreetly to his sword hilt, wondering if he still had enough of his old speed should something be badly amiss. “Captain, what do you have there for us?” he asked.
“Any sign of the bastards?” the king called from his cot.
“Gone, sire,” said Kenrick. “Melted into the open lands on the other side of the road. You’d think the Hun? would leave an easy track to follow, but there are a lot of rocky stretches in the grassland here—I’d warrant they’re on their way back to Stormspike, heading due north.” He raised his hand to his chest. “But, I beg your pardon, Majesties, as the lord steward noticed, I have something else to show you. I sent men sweeping both ways up and down the road, looking for other enemies. I told them especially to look for any sign of recent activity, something that might suggest another ambush. They saw nothing of that, but they did come across this a short way down the road to the south, sticking right out of the mud—the man who found it said it looked at first like a spring flower.” He carefully offered the thing he had been cradling to the queen.
It was an arrow, but not one of the Norns’ black shafts. It looked like mortal work, and made in haste at that, the rawhide cord irregular where it wrapped the arrowhead, as though a broadhead from one arrow had been used to repair a different one. But what was most unusual about it was the roll of blood-smeared parchment wrapped around the shaft and tied tightly with another rawhide thong.
Miriamele looked it over. “You said this was found close by, in the road? It certainly doesn’t look to be one of ours.”
“No, Majesty,” said Kenrick.
“It looks like the arrow of someone who has been living rough,” said Eolair. “And it isn’t the first. We found several more like this one on the hill this morning—but only sticking in trees. As far as we could discover, not a one of these hit any of our soldiers. All those who had been shot, it was Norn arrows that pierced them.”
“Unpeel that bloody hide,” said Simon. “What is it?”