Raian remembered little of the wild chase that followed. The land dipped, rose, and plunged this way and that; the forest lay clear, then tangled, then cleared again, but whenever the way seemed doubtful, a glimpse of glimmering ghost-stuff far off through the trees set the pursuit springing after again. He knew nothing but the heady lust of the hunt. His blood drummed. His lungs swelled and gushed on deep draughts of laughter, and his muscles thrust their power again and again upon the earth. Life was in the chase, and the chase was all, and the hunting horns rang through the wooded world.

He tripped. Heading nose-first for the thick-needled floor, he realized he had not seen the branch that snared his foot, could not have seen it, and could scarce see his own brown arm thrust out to catch him: Night was almost upon them.

“Hey!” he yelped, hit, rolled, and leaped up again. “Hey—waaaugh!” as a man behind slammed into him and they both fell.

Maglad jumped at once to his feet, throwing Raian an instinctive hand up, and shook his head like a wet dog. “Where is the king?” he shouted, peering wildly about through the trees and the galloping throng. “Deor-GARD!” he bellowed, and then loosed the war chant of Dunmadroch:

“Come ye forth, come ye free, Madroch arising!

“Come to the battle-call, ride to the raid!

“Madroch forevermore, du! Ho, oeroe!”

Dunmadroch men wheeled round like horses to a bridle hard-yanked. Among them, Duncardrogh, Dun Padanring, clans Agdaen and Manan, Aenwin, Flotweland and the rest, turned to answer the challenge; then, recalling their status now as allies, rallied to Maglad’s cry. And so they woke, out of a collective dream into a mutual nightmare.

Shouts went up, men calling for friends or brothers lost in the gloom, but tentatively, as all drew in to Maglad: what nameless else might follow their calls? A hand gripped Raian’s arm; Wolf’s hairy chest brushed Raian’s back and his beard tickled in his ear. “Here’s hell, right enough,” Wolf muttered. Raian said nothing, but shifted his weight closer to his friend. They steamed and sweated like driven horses, and both took comfort in the living heat between them, and the human smell.

“QUIET!” The thunderclap burst among them: Deorgard. Behind the sudden silence of the men, the Myrinine Forest murmured and chuckled, patient and old. The last light faded.

“Camp here,” grunted Deorgard, and hurled himself to ease upon the ground.

Few things comfort like the chieftain’s implacable confidence. Slowly, the rest followed his example, as best they could, hunkering down close like a vast wolf-pack, feeling the bolder for the closeness of their brothers in the blind dark.

“Light!” commanded the king, and men who had the gift spread magelight under the trees, gold, green, silver, blue glowing strangely from the very air, nowhere and everywhere, shadowless. Some muttered and complained against the witchy aura, though none wanted the dark.

Again they named themselves over, and a grimmer fear, unlike their earlier frantic dismay, settled on them. Only a hundred and thirty-nine, barring the two thralls, remained, and no voice of some brother wandering lost reached them from the depths of the wood.

Their blood chilled with their sweat. They were hungry, having eaten nothing since the morning, and they were desperately thirsty. This was to have been a raid, not a campaign. Most had brought at least a packet of provision, biscuit and jerky, enough for a light lunch and no more; these the king forced to be shared out by distributing his own. And many had waterskins, all dry now, though no one could recall the drinking.

The soft rush of a cascade reached them between the low voices and the high whisper of unseen leaves. Was it far? “Let the witch-sighted find it for us,” grumbled someone, and “Hear him!” cried others, then swiftly hushed.

“We are not water-bearers,” the proud handful of dragon-gifted warriors retorted.

Deorgard snapped his fingers. Raian understood. Rising, “I will go,” he said coolly, far more coolly than he felt: he had not seen Fergunor pulled down into the pool that morning but he wished that he had, for the truth was usually quite tame beside his too-lively fancy.

He schooled his face to impassivity that it might not betray the fear in his belly. Then a sudden flock of moths, big as an outstretched hand and pale as opal swooped about his head and fluttered into his face, drawn perhaps by the highest figure in the eerie glow.

“Douse the lights!” the band cried out, fearing what more than moths might be drawn from the dark fastnesses. Then muttering against the dark rippled through them, but swiftly muted lest the sound, too, draw evil notice. Groping and fumbling man to man, they passed their empty skins towards where they had last seen the slave-boy.

He could hardly carry water for so many, in one trip, alone, but even before they had put out the magelights, Wolf stood up with him, unasked. No one else volunteered. They were not water-bearers. And if on this occasion pride but masked fear, Raian at least could not grudge it them. Wolf, he discovered, had other reasons for like indulgence.

Plugged bladders dangling all about them, the two picked their way along a lane opened for them through the silent warriors. Once clear, Raian cast a faint shimmer on the ground ahead of them, from his feet to some ten yards ahead, the limit of his reach with it. Not more than a furlong took them to the tree-entangled bank of the water. Fireflies winked, tracing idle paths through the dark beyond the water. Away from the stream, the silence of the Myrinine lay hollow, a vast hunger waiting for the slightest sound from them to devour. But here the splashing and purling blinded their one distance sense: anything could approach, and they unaware. Their heads turned all about, looking and looking and never enough.

Raian heard Wolf draw a deep breath, and “Scared, boyo?” he murmured, half an octave too high.

Raian crushed a cold giggle. Scared? He opened his mouth for some sarcastic remark, and the giggle escaped, and he snorted, trying to master himself and Wolf too tittered helplessly and they dropped to the damp ground together and gibbered, quietly, fighting for silence. At last Raian managed, “S-scared? So what’s this place got that’s worse than Curfew-wards?”

“What’s this place got for magistrates?” Wolf hissed back. “Rai—I’d meant to nick off, instead of fetch water . . . but. . . .”

Raian nodded, though Wolf could not see. “Yah,” he agreed softly. “Me, too—at first.” But now the ‘fireflies’ had begun to fly as matched pairs, as like to green eyes as ever drifted idly through a dark air.

They watched in silence for an unknown time, Raian racking his memory for any spell that might be even remotely useful, and all he could recall fully was one he used for projecting his voice to annoy his brother. Screaming would bring who-knew-what upon them, and even with magelight he could not see far enough fast enough to run. Sitting quietly screwed up the horrible waiting tension that much tighter—and was a bore, besides. Of all actions, and inaction, that Raian could then imagine, doing what they came to do was better than nothing.

“What the hell,” he murmured, and reached for the first skin. “Ah—by your leave,” he added, aloud, and dipped in his bottle.

“Whose leave?” Wolf whispered, startled.

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Raian waved a vague arm. “Who knows? Oughtn’t we be gentlemen about it anyway?” and laughed, a little less of a giggle than before; pleased, he laughed again.

“Yah. Sure,” Wolf agreed warily. “By’er leave,” he mumbled, feeling at once silly and profoundly respectful. They filled their burdens, drank deeply themselves from their cupped hands—and maybe it was only their sweat-salted lips that made it so, but never had water tasted so sweet—and gathered their collection and shuffled back to the waiting men.

Thanks were gruff, indifferent-sounding, but men made way for them. Twice more they went to the water, joined the last time by Kerrnev. And when thirst was slaked, men began to sing.

Lay after lay they shared, some in common—with the occasional variant, for which fight was offered, that Deorgard commanded should wait for the sun—but most were the hearth-tales of many holdings. The king demanded of Raian a song of the dragon-lords. His memory blanked, as it had with his magic, leaving only the last one he learned before leaving home, an ancient favorite of the newly-Proved: unbearably lewd. He sang it, for the king commanded, though he felt certain that even his voice blushed. The genre seemed new to this Geillan horde, but though at first startled, they understood the point of a chorus and joined in lustily.

At last, vigor waned. Some stood sentry, listening to the night, while the rest attempted sleep. Deorgard at least slept almost at once, snoring gently, using Raian’s belly for a pillow. Raian snarled inwardly, and lay awake, plotting in vain before he slept.

He woke just enough to notice when the watch changed, and when it changed again. He thought it might be the fourth change when he roused more fully, enough to note his hunger and to wonder if it would keep him uselessly awake now. Then he was flung wholly alert by a harsh mutter:

“How many watches, now?”

“Six, aye!”

Six! He hoisted up onto his elbows. Deorgard whuffled but did not seem to wake.

“And ne’er a glim o’ dawn—nought but hellsmirk all about.”

“Tha’s lost count. Or hast pulled short shifts!” someone else growled, heavy with drowse.

“Take that back, thou! Twice through I’ve sung Minorgard’s Lay, and ’t is an hour’s chanting, that one!”

“Sing slower,” retorted the sleepy one, and silence returned, but not wholly.

Raian drowsed uneasily, listening as the rustlings of sleepers, shifting in search of retreating comfort, came more often, and more determined. Even Deorgard curled onto his side, took his own elbow for pillow. Raian, too, curled up, but kept his face turned skywards, fully awake now, watching for the least thinning of Night’s shadow. At least the fireflies, twinned and singular, had gone.

Wolf rolled over, poked till he found Raian’s shoulder. “Chants, I don’t know. But it’s my bladder says this’s been a hellish long night. Think this old forest’ll understand if it’s scared the piss out of me?” Raian could not tell if Wolf meant to be funny or not.

Together they crept on all fours to spare their fellow sleepers, out to find a tree away and yet not too far away from their companions. A Cardrogh on watch greeted them dismally as they passed. Preparing himself at his own tree, Raian heard a curious little sound from Wolf at his. For all he could tell, his friend was gently patting the tree-bole with great tenderness, followed by an awkward, reverent whisper: “It’s not like among men. Right?” And then the sound of water being unborne. On reflection, Raian too offered polite intentions.

They crept back among more men waking to a similar awareness. Murmurs rose, as eyes strained for any light. Where was the dawn? Men cursed the dark, their hunger, their clumsy brothers, and the forest. Where was the dawn? And how could the king sleep so blithely?

“When,” Deorgard’s voice rolled through the blackness, and all quieted at once, “When have you ever known the sun not to rise?”

Some sense of comfort answered that; then someone cried out, “And when have you ever broached the Demonwood?”

“Aye! Aye! Hear him!” Men leaped up, crying out. “The Demonwood!”

Deorgard seized Raian in a savage grip. “Light!” he snarled in his ear, and as Raian cast a dim golden spray to the leaves above, he roared out, “Du! Ho, oeroe! Are you men—or girls?”

They paused, blinking in the grateful light, light that glinted upon raised spears, and not a few drawn swords. “Make a fire,” Deorgard grunted.

And, “A fire!” someone echoed. Men sprang to the work, some to clear a circle before the king. Their brothers with axes, seeing no deadwood to hand, set with savage glee upon a robust pine, whose resinous wood would give a fine homely light. The forest resounded, chock! chock! chock!

At last the tree wavered. Everyone stopped in talk and labor to watch, and cheer the last strokes. A mighty sigh of tearing foliage and the tree toppled slowly, its remaining heartwood shrieking with the strain. The shriek swelled to a scream, a man’s bellow as of a bitter battle-wound, and a dark jet spurted from the gash in the trunk like blood from some monstrous vein.

The scream choked off. The branches crackled loudly as they shattered under the tree, and the forest fell silent.

Then, “Gods of hell!” a strangled voice sobbed, and a man in the checky of Dun Eftring stumbled forward through the broken branches. A terrible keening broke from him, and broke the spell of immobility that had seized them all. Out of the tumult of horror that rose at the bloodlike geyser, and puzzlement at the Eftring spearman’s dismay, news found no sure path but was overtaken by a swift-running flood of panic.

Men screamed and yammered. Many turned to flee, and turned again daunted by the waiting wood, only to look again upon the dreadful fallen pine and recoil. No few simply bolted. And Raian stood agape and ignorant and Wolf yelped, “What? What?”

Deorgard thrust his fingers in his mouth and blew an auger-sharp whistle. Roused by some instinct, Raian began to struggle free of the Dunmadroch battle-horn and still its thong nearly took off his ear as Deorgard seized it up. A great ringing blast stunned the woods, and panicking men turned towards command like hungry infants to the teat.

And, “Whaaat?” Deorgard demanded, and his exasperation steadied them. The Dun Eftring men ceased their keen and their noblest-born, taking something from his cousin, advanced on the king.

“This!”

He held forth an armband of gold; it looked like one Deorgard had given an Eftring only a few weeks ago, shaped of intertwined hounds—a popular motif in the Midlands.

“Aye?” barked Deorgard. The noble Eftring glanced back at his kinsmen, and the one who had first cried out, Samnach Spear-beater, stumbled forward.

“But it is Hamlech’s,” he blurted into the stillness, and hiccoughed. “’T was round about the branch—that branch—” He waved vaguely at a point that must have been four fathoms above the earth, when the tree stood.

“Aye? What of it?” roared Deorgard. “A man hangs a bauble in a sapling, and half a lifetime later a bunch of nursery-wives fell the tree and think it wore jewelry!” He spat.

Raian held his tongue. Now was not the time for lessons in philosophy, to teach that the branches of a sapling were not carried aloft as it grew into a tree but stayed forever at their first height.

For a moment they dared to believe. Then Samnach screamed. “This was my brother’s! His this morning, not someone’s an age ago! Here—here is his scratch, that he made when you gave it!”

“And what of the blood?” cried another, echoed by his fellows. “We all saw it bleed!”

Another confused yammering arose. Raian left Deorgard’s side, and picked his way to the black pool at the base of the trunk. Shuddering, he dipped in a finger. It was sticky as blood is, but it smelled of pine, not meat.

“It’s not blood!” he cried, and though his voice was thin and shrill, he saw Deorgard nod. But others near him shouted him down.

“Blood! Blood! Trees that bleed—our brothers are enchanted and we are tricked to murder them!”

Again the Dunmadroch horn sounded, but this time they paid no heed.

“You brought us here!” shouted someone, and Raian groaned—someone, some idiot just had to say that, oh yes.

“Silence!” bellowed the king, and his voice achieved what his horn did not. A restless stillness followed, for a moment.