Black River (The Hounds of the North Book 2) Read online

  But there had been little rest. The stench of the dead piled in the creek was too much, so Pullo ordered the bodies burned. The men, vomiting and dry heaving, pulled the corpses and body parts out of the creek and piled them on a byre of sticks and branches, clumps of grasses, a portion of the fence. But the wood they scrounged was too wet and would not accept flame. So instead of providing them relief, the bodies formed a giant monument to the failure of Empire.

  Then at night, wolves drawn by the smell of the blood and death tried to breach the fences. Little sleep was had by any.

  Morning brought a thick rain.

  Morning also brought an argument between the Dhurman sergeant and the Apprentice Chronicler. They had walked off away from where the men tore down the tents and kicked dirt into their dead fires and rinsed their wooden bowls with water carried far upstream of the corpses, and the two began arguing in one of the burnt out round houses where the Hounds had passed the night.

  Spear sat on a stool running twine through one of the gashes in his leathers to bind them.

  "If there's any chance that he is alive, I will find him," said Pullo.

  "A fool's quest, and not the one we are after. There are greater things afoot than to seek out another corpse in this forsaken land," said Vincius. The little man from Xichil shivered beneath the folds of his cotton cloak.

  Spear wondered why the Apprentice Chronicler refused to secure a fur cloak. The cold would be the death of that man yet. A man who could not meet his own basic needs had little reason to be leading a party of men into battle. Maybe Spear should have just vanished into the mists. But he was no man to slink away.

  "Urbidis was not among the bodies. The woman said she saw him being forcibly taken north. I have a duty to my commander," said Pullo.

  "You have a greater duty to Empire."

  Pullo scoffed and pointed a finger at the little man. "I'm a soldier first, and I'm faithful to those under whom I serve. Urbidis would not leave us to their clutches." His eyes flashed at the Hounds and Spear suddenly aware that they were hearing everything he was saying. "I will not abandon him to the death they will bring him."

  "He's right," said Spear, leaning against the burnt out wall, running a long piece of straw through his teeth. "Those Painted Men are savages." He winked at Patch. "Savages among savages. They'll skin him, pop out his eyes, shove splinters beneath his finger nails. Abandon him and it's worse than death."

  "The warlock is near. We must go after him now," said Vincius. "If we lose track of him now, who knows how long until we find him again."

  Shield spoke from the shadows. "The warlock will never be far from us. He is waiting and, if we don't find him, he will come to us."

  "Then we go after him now, while he is unsuspecting," said Vincius.

  "Like lambs," said Spear.

  "I will not abandon Urbidis," said Pullo. "I'm taking my men north while we still have a chance of saving our commander. That's the final word."

  "I'll give you one day," said Vincius, "but then we turn east for the warlock."

  "We'll see," said Pullo.

  Within the hour, they had left the village and headed north under the command of Pullo. The tight column of men, armored, spears ready, pushed north through the long valley of swaying grasses. By midmorning they had entered low hills where the land had wrinkled as if two ends of the earth were driven together. They kept to a narrow trail, horses and men struggling for sure footing as they rose among the white faces of boulders and descended into tight ravines. Far in the distance, herds and their tenders watched them. After lunch, the column cleared the hills, one final steep descent that nearly sent Vincius tumbling from his horse, and then they entered a peat bog.

  Two hours later, the mists were so thick that Spear has lost all sense of direction. Half the time he wondered if they had not circled back and were heading towards the Black River.

  Mists rose from the bog and the gray sky pressed down from above. It no longer rained but Spear was soaked to the bone. The mists had a way of seeping under collar and cuff, its cold moisture sending chills through the body of the Northman. Worse of all was the way his feet sunk into the frigid mud and peat.

  He despised the bogs. He hated them as a child sitting around the fire while the poets sang of the beasts of old. He hated them when he followed Shield on their marauding runs while they tried to earn their scars. He hated them now that he returned across the Black River.

  Death, slow and sudden, ruled the foul bogs. The ground sponged beneath his feet. The leaves of the stunted plants were black with slime. Several times, the bones of rats and other vermin crunched beneath layers of muck. In the distance, a pale bird, wings sodden, struggled to rise.

  But death also came fast in the bog. He had seen horses plunge into hidden holes, legs snapping suddenly. Without a horse the distances of the North had a way of swallowing men up. How many men had entered the swamps foolishly chasing a stag or a boar only never to be heard from again?

  Spear cursed the creep of the slime up to his thigh as he navigated the unseen pits in the bog. But better him falling than his horse.

  Still he walked cautiously leading his horse.

  Once years ago, one of the Hounds had been swallowed up completely. He had been walking ahead of them, testing the ground one moment, and then the next he was gone, eaten up by the bog. Spear remembered how the panicked men had gathered around the water, the brown swirl of mud, Spear reaching the full of his arm into the slimy waters, another poking in the back end of his spear, but to no avail. Their companion had been swallowed up.

  One of the Dhurmans mumbled something about why hadn't they made an offering to the gods before they entered this hell hole. Spear laughed.

  "The gods of the North do not care. You can burn incense, bend your head in prayer and slaughter the finest of bulls, and nothing will change. The gods only want to destroy men, to blast us from this world, to fill our lives with suffering. Only fools pray to uncaring gods."

  The Dhurman soldier cursed Spear and turned away.

  Spear walked his horse near Patch. "Never thought you'd come back here, did you?"

  Patch laughed. "Thought I'd be dead long ago in some far off land. But we survived."

  "You three? You were two dozen to start with. Now what's left?"

  "Not all died. Cook went east, and Night just vanished one day. More than a few of the Hounds did not fall to blades."

  "All as good as dead."

  "I stand here before you. I kept true."

  "To what?" asked Spear. "To Shield? To the man that should have been the hero of the North? There was no great destiny that he led us towards."

  "You gave up on us, Spear," said Patch. "You were the one who left the Hounds."

  "The Hounds were dead before that. Shield killing Sword. The man hell bent on getting as far away from Birgid as possible. His murder of the Warlock King."

  "He had no choice. The Warlock King killed his father. Honor demanded a price be paid."

  "Did honor demand that he betray us?"

  "What of you?" asked Patch. "You're worse than the Dhurmans. You're one of us, but you bully us and extort our money, weigh a heavy hand."

  "How can you say 'us' when you've been more than a decade gone?" Spear threw his hands wide. "I never left our beloved land." He lowered his voice. "Not all of us ran from Empire. Some of us fought back like the Hounds should have. Many a long year without clan, without fire, without comfort. But what can a handful of men do when the rest of their people run away or lie down to their conquerors? I was alone. You left me here. I fought, I survived and I've now found a foothold to scratch my way back so that when Empire abandons the North, and it will, I will be ready to lead my people."

  "You're a hired killer for the Dhurmans."

  "And you and Shield and the rest of the Hounds, hunting down old witches in the South for who? I never left our lands, Patch. Know that. You're the ones who betrayed the North. You're the ones that will have to pay the
price for your actions. You're the ones who will have to make amends."

  Spear turned his horse and let himself drift away from Patch, away from the Hounds, away from the war party until he was alone in the mists surrounded by nothing by the emptiness. He had crossed the Black River. But for what?

  PRISONER AGAIN

  THE CHILDREN SAW Urbidis first and shrieked back to their roundhouses.

  He imagined how he must have looked to them – a giant emerging from the brambles – bloodied, stumbling, crawling, draped in bedraggled furs, soaked in mud and water. He was the beast of the stories that their old grannies whispered to wide eyes well past bedtime. He was the monster of nightmares.

  But they were his only hope if he was to survive the Painted Men who came after him. He needed their help.

  He dragged himself forward and then collapsed back into the stream. Cold water rushed across his face. He lifted his head and crawled up the slight embankment. How far behind were his pursuers? Was it possible that they had lost his trail?

  He heard himself laughing at the thought. The laughter of another man.

  That dream was not possible. He was the prey and they the hunters. He was the prize that they were unwilling to give up. Ransom. Torture. Vengeance. Death in some vile and protracted form and he hoped it would come soon.

  But then he remembered Giulia and his girls. What did they even look like any more? Had they grown up? He imagined them by the wide river of the South screaming as a nightmare dragged itself through the mud.

  Where were they now?

  The rain came again, hard and cold on his face. Could he even feel his limbs any more?

  Then hands were on him and he was turned belly to the sky. A circle of faces, woad painted, long matted hair, shoulders draped in fur. A man prodded him with a stick and Urbidis moaned.

  "Help." He pointed to the children through the legs of the villagers. "My daughters. See them again. My daughters, my wife. To the river. A picnic." His laughter widened the circle of villagers. He fell in to blackness.

  He woke, warm, the light of the fire in the center of the roundhouse pulsing. A wind lifted the curtains and he saw the deep black of night. An old man sat by his side, a man with one hand missing, and the man pushed a bowl towards Urbidis's lips. A warm, watery gruel with strands of meat, hardly enough to sustain a man of the commander's girth, but he gulped it and savored the warmth streaming down his throat and nestling into his belly. Another bowl and then he let sleep take him. He could stay awake no longer.

  He woke to voices, a language that stretched the edge of his imagination. They were ancient words, words of the far North, words whispered in the shadows of the market of Cullan town. He could not understand these words. They were close to being understandable but just beyond the reach of familiarity.

  Urbidis could barely move. His back burned as if a knife had been scraped across it. His knees were black and blue where the skin has not been torn from them. His hands were swollen.

  But worse of all, a blanket of weakness covered him and sleep pulled at him. He knew that he needed to organize some kind of defense before the Painted Men tracked him down. They would come to this village. It was as inevitable as his next breath.

  "Help me," he said. He could see faint understanding in their eyes. One of the women, wrapped deep in her furs, whispered something to the others. He spoke to her directly. "Warriors come for me. They will kill me. They are men painted all in blue. I need your help. Can you hide me? For the sake of my daughters."

  Her whispers filled the roundhouse and the eyes of the villagers pressed down on the commander of the fort at Cullan. He needed only a few days to recover enough strength and then with a blade in hand he could find his way back to the fort. Then he would send word south and muster troops. He would hold the fort with Pullo. When the legions came from the south, their horns blaring, the lands across the Black River would pay a price in blood for their treachery. He would spare this village, of course, but the rivers and streams would turn red with the blood of those who thought to betray Dhurma. Then he would wipe his blade clean one last time and return to Vas Dhurma, to Giulia, to his daughters and hire out that wagon for that lazy, warm day by the river,

  The villagers argued, voices sharp back and forth, a few hands pulling short blades from scabbards. He pleaded to the woman and her whispers intertwined among the raised voices, the harsh spoken words, and then he could see that the others were listening to her. He smiled and she smiled back.

  She came to him, wrapped in old furs, and took his hand. Her palm was calloused and her index finger was missing. Up close, he was repulsed by her sour smell. Her eyes made her seem much older than he thought she had been from a distance, eyes wrinkled, bagged heavy beneath, teary in a way that suggested festering sickness rather than honest emotion.

  She helped him stand. He thought his legs would give out beneath him but he tottered forward. He followed her outside. The sun warmed his skin. She led him to a small grain building near one of the other round houses. It was a small structure of thick pieces of rough cut timbers, just big enough for him to fit into but only if he crouched. It was a place that he saw that he could hide. The villagers removed wood and broken tools that were stacked against the outside. He had not noticed the small structure when he had entered the village and he could see how outsiders would never consider it as a hiding place.

  The woman removed a thick piece of wood that barred the door. She pulled the door back and motioned with her hand for him to enter. The villagers had formed a semi-circle around him, a small group of children staring wide-eyed at him.

  "In here?" he asked. "Right now."

  "The Painted Men come," she whispered, her voice like the wind tearing through the sharp grasses.

  He bent over, squatted and shuffled in, moved about trying to get comfortable among the round stones and branches on the floor. The door slammed shut and the wooden latch dropped in place.

  "No, not the latch. In case, I need to escape," he said. But they were already turning away. The woman was talking to two men who were provisioning horses. "Do you not hear me?" he asked. "It's better for the latch to be open. I will be trapped in here."

  The riders were setting out, off in the direction that Urbidis had come, in the direction of his pursuers. He shook the door of his prison but it would not budge.

  Cold stones and sticks covered the floor, and as his eyes adjusted, he reached down to shove them away. That was when he saw that they were not stones and sticks, but skulls and bones, the remains of men, and unable to contain himself Urbidis screamed, cursing the gods for the fate they had dealt him.

  MONSTERS

  VINCIUS WAS STRUGGLING to kick the swamp mud off his boot when the soldier shouted.

  "They come."

  Swords rasped out of scabbards, and shields clanged together to form a wall.

  "What is it?" asked the Apprentice Chronicler.

  "Scout saw something," said Pullo stalking behind his men, nudging them closer together. "There." His fat finger pointed over the top of the wall.

  Vincius could not quite see what it was. The sun angled at them from across the top of the hill. He squinted. Then he saw shapes, giant silhouettes, lumbering, and he heard the sound of feet heavy on the mud. The stench of urine flooded the air.

  "Tighten the line," shouted the fat sergeant. "Hold, hold."

  At the far end of the wall, Spear was on his horse, cursing.

  Suddenly Vincius heard the words floating in the air.

  The Apprentice Chronicler tore his pack from his horse's flank and began to unroll a scroll. He could hear the words. He could capture them.

  A thunderous clash broke the shield wall. His horse flew against him knocking the parchment from his hand. The scroll fluttered into the mud.

  "No," he shouted.

  As he bent to pick the scroll up again, hoping to recover his captured words, the horse hit him hard again and sent him sprawling. Then the horse stepped sideways
and then splayed into the mud, its guts spilling out red and white into the swamp.

  Far down the line of men, the shield wall collapsed. Men screamed.

  At that moment, the wall parted.

  On a distant rise, Fennewyn stood. The warlock spread his fingers to the sky, words dancing from his lips. He was a small man, haggard in beard and face, near lost on the hill. His bony limbs swam out of an oversized black undulating cloak.

  Vincius clutched the scroll to his chest. It was ruined, the fragments of captured words washed away. Everything, however little, lost.

  A body fell on him mashing him back into the mud. He kicked it off cursing.

  Then he saw the monsters.

  Beyond the back stepping Dhurman soldiers loomed a dozen mud men, smashing against the shields with their fists. They were giant creatures formed of the stick and stones and mud and peat of the swamp. He could imagine the clansmen wrapped beneath the layers, driven by the magic of the warlock.

  The line of soldiers had already caved in. At first, they had rallied to the cry of fat Pullo, and formed a shield wall, plates overlapping, spear and shield ready to defend themselves. But Pullo was unprepared for what came at them now. He had spent the days and nights previous talking to the Northmen devising a strategy to deal with a legion of undead, to break through their numbers and get to the warlock, but now that the mud men came at him, his whole strategy fell apart. He could not improvise. Failure surged around him.

  The soldiers had just stood there waiting to repel a surge of men, but instead the mud men came, giants who smashed down on the shields crushing the men beneath them. The men, as told, held the line, while the mud men came crashing towards the center of the line and splitting the defending force in two.

  The Northmen at the front and rear of the column were useless to stop this. They sought to get around the wall of men to bring their swords and spears and hammers into play but the ground was their enemy. Their feet pitched into deep holes hidden beneath the surface of the water. They fell to their knees.