The Hallowed Hunt

Jokol gave a little whistle, and clucked in sympathy. 'That is a hard tale.' He offered after a moment, 'Still, she sounds a good, strong girl. My beautiful Breiga and Ottovin once killed two horse thieves that came to their father’s farm. Ottovin was littler, then.'

Brother indeed! 'What came of it?'

'Well, I asked her to marry me.' Jokol’s grin flashed. 'They were my horses. The thieves’ blood-price was made low, because of the dishonor of their crime. I added it to her bride gift, aye, to please her father.' He glanced benignly over at Ottovin—his future brother-in-law?—who had slid off the bench a short while ago and now sat draped half over it with his head pillowed on his arm, snoring gently.

'Justice is not so simple, in the Weald.' Ingrey sighed. 'And the blood-price of a prince is far beyond my purse.'

Jokol cocked an interested eye. 'You are not a landed man, Lord Ingorry?'

'No. I have only my sword arm. Such as it is.' Ingrey flexed his bandaged right hand ruefully. 'No other power.'

'I think you have one more thing than that, Ingorry.' Jokol tapped the side of his head. 'I have a good ear. I know what I heard, when my Fafa bowed to you.'

Ingrey froze. His first panicked impulse, to deny everything, died on his lips under Jokol’s shrewd gaze. Yet he must discourage further dangerous gossip on this topic, however poetic. 'This'—he pressed his hand to his lips, then spread it on his heart, to indicate what he dared not name aloud—'must stay bound in silence, or the Temple will make me outlaw.'

Jokol pursed his lips, sat up a little, and frowned as he digested this.

Ingrey’s somewhat liquefied thoughts sloshed in his head and tossed up a new fear on the shores of his wits. Jokol’s face bore no look of dismay or revulsion, though his interest was plainly deeply stirred. Yet even a good ear could not recognize something it had never before heard. 'This, earlier'—he touched his throat, swept his hand down his torso—'have you ever heard the like?'

'Oh, aye.' Jokol nodded.

'How? Where?'

Jokol shrugged. 'When I asked the singing woman at the forest’s edge to bless my voyage, she gave me words in such a weirding voice as that.'

The phrase seemed to slide through Ingrey’s head as sharply as the scent of pine needles. The singing woman at the forest’s edge. The singing woman at... Yet Jokol seemed untouched by the uncanny; no demon-smell hung about him, certainly, no animal spirit hid within him, no geas clung to him like some acrid parasite. He gazed back at Ingrey with a blank affability that one might easily—fatally—mistake for oxlike stupidity.

A thump sounded upon the deck from outside the tent, then a silvery rattling, a bass growl, and a strangled cry.

'Fafa at least does not sleep through his watch,' murmured Jokol in satisfaction, and rose to his feet. He prodded Ottovin with a booted toe, but his kinsman-to-be merely stirred and mumbled. Jokol slipped a big hand under Ingrey’s elbow and heaved up.

'I don’t,' Ingrey began. 'Whups... ' The ship’s deck heaved and swayed under his feet, though the tent’s sides hung slack in the windless and waveless night. The lamps were burning low. Jokol’s smile twitched, and he kindly kept Ingrey’s arm, guiding him toward the tent flap. They stepped out into the gilded shadows to find Fafa sniffing and straining at the end of the taut chain toward an immobilized figure with his back pressed to the vessel’s thwart.

Jokol murmured some soothing words in his own tongue to his pet, and the bear lost interest in its quarry and returned to flop down again by the mast. Ingrey staggered as the boat really rocked, this time, and Jokol’s grip on his arm tightened.

'Lord Ingrey,' Gesca’s voice choked from the shadows. He cleared his throat, stood upright again, and stepped forward into the lapping orange light of the cresset in its clamp beside the gangplank. His eyes shone a trifle whitely about the rims as he glanced again at Fafa.

'Oh,' said Ingrey. 'Gesca. ’Ware the bear.' Ingrey smiled at his rhyme. The big islander shouldn’t own all the good poetry. 'Yes. I was just coming to see m’lord Hewwar. Het–war.'

'My lord Hetwar,' said Gesca, recovering his dignity and a frosty tone, 'has gone to bed. He instructed me to—after I found you—inform you that you may wait upon him first thing tomorrow morning.'

'Ah,' mumbled Ingrey wisely. Ouch. 'Then I’d best get some sleep. Hadn’t I.'

'While you can,' muttered Gesca.

'A friend?' Jokol inquired, with a nod at Gesca.

'More or less,' said Ingrey. He wondered which. But Jokol seemed to take him at his word, and he handed off Ingrey to his lieutenant. 'I don’t need... '

'Lord Ingorry, I thank you for your company. And other things, you bet. Any man who can drink my Ottovin off his bench is welcome on my ship anytime. I hope I see you again, in Easthome.'

'You... you, too. Give my bes’ to dear Fafa.' He groped with his numb tongue for further suitably princely farewells, but Gesca was steering him toward the gangplank.

The gangplank proved a challenge, as it was seized with the same wavering motions as the ship, and was much narrower, after all. Ingrey, after a short pause for consideration, solved the problem by tackling it on all fours. After crawling across without falling into the Stork, he rolled over and sat up triumphantly upon the dock. 'See?' he told Gesca. 'Not so drunk. Jokol is a prince, you know. S’all good diplomacy.'

With a growl, Gesca hauled Ingrey to his feet and draped his arm across his shoulders. 'Grand. Explain all this to the sealmaster, tomorrow. I want my bed. Now, walk.'

Ingrey, a little sobered in mind, though his body still lagged, made an effort to put his boots one in front of the other for a time, as they made their way up through the gates and began to wind through the dark streets of Kingstown.

Gesca said in a voice of aggravation, 'I’ve been hunting all over the city for you. At the house, they said you’d gone to the temple. At the temple, they said you were carried off by a pirate.'

'No; worse.' Ingrey cackled. 'A poet.'

Gesca’s face turned; even in the shadows, Ingrey could see the lieutenant was looking at him as though he’d just put his head on backward.

'Three people up there said they’d seen you enspell a giant ice bear. One said it was a miracle of the Bastard. Two others said it was no such thing.'

Ingrey remembered the Voice in his head, and shivered. 'You know what nonsense frantic folks in crowds come up with.' He was starting to feel steadier on his feet. He withdrew his arm from Gesca’s shoulder. Anyway, in the absence of a menacing bear in the midst of a funeral miracle, it hardly seemed something likely to happen again. No god-voice jarred him now, and animals were a quite different proposition from men. 'Don’t be gullible, Gesca. It’s not as though I could say'—he reached down within himself for that hot velvet rumble —'halt, and have you suddenly—'

Ingrey became aware that he was walking on alone.

He wheeled around. Gesca was standing frozen in the dim light from a wall lantern.

Ingrey’s belly twisted up in a cold knot. 'Gesca! That’s not amusing!' He strode back, angry. 'Stop that.' He gave Gesca a short shove in the chest. The man rocked a little, but did not move. He reached up with his bandaged hand—it trembled—and took Gesca by the jaw. 'Are you mocking me?'

Only Gesca’s eyes, wide with horror, moved, and that only to blink.

Ingrey licked his lips, stepped back. His throat seemed almost too tight to speak at all. He had to take two breaths before he could reach down again, and that barely. 'Move.'

The paralysis broke. Gesca gasped, scrambled back to the nearest wall, and drew steel. Both wheezing, they stared at each other. Ingrey was suddenly feeling far too sober. He opened his hands at his sides, placating, praying Gesca would not lunge.

Slowly, Gesca resheathed his sword. After a moment, he said in a thick voice, 'The prison house is just around the corner. Tesko is there waiting to put you to bed. Can you make it?'