The Hallowed Hunt

miles beyond the point at which a royal courier would have stopped to change mounts, and Ingrey was beginning to wonder if Horseriver planned for them to ride the animals to death, when the earl finally allowed his big chestnut to drop to a weary walk. After a few more minutes, he pointed and led them off the road toward a farmhouse set alone in the trees toward the river. A lantern hung from its porch rafters, burning faint and red in the moon-blue dark.

Three horses were waiting, tied to the railing. As they dismounted a Horseriver groom scrambled up from a bedroll and set about transferring the tack. Horseriver allowed only enough time for Ingrey and Fara to consume some cheese wrapped in bread, swallow some ale, and visit the privy behind the house before mounting and taking to the road again. Fara was pale and strained, but the hallow king’s will held her to her grim task of clinging to her fresh horse and galloping once more.

Even Ingrey was swaying in his saddle by the time they stopped again, at another old thatched farmhouse just over a hill from the main river road. They had passed no other riders in the deep night, and had swung quietly around the walled villages lying farther and farther apart up the narrowing Stork. Fara fairly fell out of her saddle into her husband’s arms.

'Surely she can ride no more tonight, sire,' Ingrey murmured.

'It is just as well. Even you and I could not ride straight through without stopping. We’ll take a rest here.'

An arranged rest, clearly, for a daunted-looking farm girl appeared to take Fara in charge and lead her into the house. The earl followed another Horseriver groom, obviously stationed here for this duty, as he led the horses around behind the rambling house to a rickety shed. Wencel looked over the waiting remounts and grunted satisfaction. No farm nags, these, but more horses sent ahead from the earl’s own stables.

This flight was well planned, it seemed. Pursuers might inquire at roadside inns and other public liveries where men in a hurry could rent remounts, yet find no trace of them, no witnesses, no abandoned horses. To stop and inquire at every farmhouse along the Stork between Easthome and the northern border would waste precious time, even for men with such resources as the prince-marshal and Hetwar. And they would have half a dozen other roads away from Easthome in all directions to search, as well.

To what degree can I resist this kingly geas? Ingrey wondered, in a sort of melted desperation. If he could but once gather the will and wits, that is. Would escape from the range of Wencel’s voice break this false calm in which he seemed to float, would the trance falter if Wencel’s attention was divided? Ingrey felt as hungry for that royal regard as a dog desiring a bone from its master or a boy a smile from his father. The dogged fawning merely made him grit his teeth, but that Horseriver should so casually pilfer a filial loyalty Lord Ingalef had never lived to enjoy sent a vein of molten rage through Ingrey’s heart. Still he found himself creeping after his lord like a cold tired child huddling to a hearth.

Ingrey trailed Wencel to a seat on the floor of the farmhouse porch, let his aching legs dangle over the edge, and stared with him out over the river valley at the descending moon. The groom brought plain fare again, bread and ham, though this time with a jug of new wine. The farm’s vineyard must have been fortunate in its sun and rain, for the wine was as sweet and smooth upon the tongue as liquid gold. Proximity to his master stirred a drunken elation in Ingrey, anchored by his fatigue, like that lassitude wherein an inebriated man might be quite positive he could rise and walk away, if only he chose. Ingrey drank again.

'It is beautiful, my lord,' Ingrey said, nodding to the light-frosted view.

Wencel’s lips twitched in an odd little grimace. 'I have seen enough moonsets.' He added after a moment, 'Enjoy it while you can.'

A disturbingly ambiguous remark, Ingrey thought. 'Why do we gallop? What foe do we outrace? Pursuit from Easthome?'

'That as well.' Wencel stretched his back. 'Time is not my friend. Thanks to the Stagthorne kin’s shrewd habit of electing their sons hallow kings in their fathers’ lifetimes, it has been more than a hundred and twenty years since the last interregnum. The effort of creating another such gap seems overwhelming to me, just now. I shall seize this one.' His lips drew back. 'Or die trying does not apply.'

So, Hetwar’s suspicions seemed sustained; Horseriver did covet the election, and had been manipulating the ordainers. And possibly the lives and deaths of potential rival candidates, as well? 'Is this all to make yourself hallow king again, then?'

Horseriver snorted. 'I am hallow king. I need no further making.'

He had needed something, however; some missing piece, spun off from the old Stagthorne king’s departing soul. Some... half magic, or fragment of the Weald: but surely not political in its nature. 'Hallow king in name and form, then. Publicly elected and acclaimed.'

'If I had desired the name of king of this benighted land, I could have taken it years ago, Ingrey,' Horseriver said mildly. 'In a better body, too.'

I have a better body, Ingrey could not help thinking. But indeed, if it was the election Wencel desired, they ought to be galloping toward Easthome, not away from it. He wanted something else, something more, then. Something stranger. Ingrey fought for clarity through the fog of fatigue, wine on an empty stomach, and Horseriver’s arresting aura.

'If you don’t want to win the election for yourself, what do you want?'

'To delay it.'

Ingrey blinked grimy eyes. 'Will this flight do that?'

'Well enough. The absence of one earl-ordainer'—Horseriver touched his chest—'alone would not be enough, but Biast will be distracted by Fara’s disappearance on the eve of her father’s funeral, once he discovers it. I have planted a few other disruptions. The multiple proxies I left for different candidates should be good for several days of argument all by themselves, when they surface.' He grinned briefly and not especially humorously.

Ingrey hardly knew what to reply to that, although the term interregnum seemed to rumble in his mind, fraught with elusive weight. Through the mellow glow of his embezzled fealty, he gleaned his wits, and asked, 'What was the stag for?'

'What, hadn’t you guessed?'

'I thought you meant to invest it in Fara, to make her a spirit warrior, or to carry something away from her father. But then you chose the mare.'

'When playing against the gods, sudden unexpected ploys sometimes work better than deep-laid plans. Even They cannot block every chance. The stag was a great beast in the making; four stag-lives it has accumulated since I began it. But the hallow king’s death fell before the stag was ready. I don’t know if They hastened the one or delayed the other.'

'You meant to make a shaman of... of Fara? Or someone?'

'Someone. I had not yet decided whom. Were it not for securing you instead, I would have had to chance the unripe beast. Your wolf is surer, despite being less, ah, tame. Stronger. Better.'

Ingrey declined to wag his tail at this pat, though it took effort. Better for whom? His exhausted mind struggled to put the pieces together. A shaman, a banner-carrier, a hallow king, and the sacred ground of Holytree. And blood, no doubt. There had to be blood in there somewhere. Assemble them and achieve... what? No mere material purpose, surely. What was Wencel about, that the gods themselves should struggle to invade the world of matter to oppose it? What could Wencel aspire to beyond his bedazzling kingship?

What was greater than a king? Had Wencel’s aspirations outgrown matter altogether? Four had become Five once, in the legendary past; could Five become Six?

'What do you plan to make of yourself, then? A god, or demigod?'

Wencel choked on his wine. 'Ah, youth! So ambitious! And you yourself have seen a god, you claim. Go to bed, Ingrey. You’re driveling.'

'What, then?' Ingrey asked stubbornly, although he did press himself to his feet.

'I told you what I wanted. You have forgotten.'

I want my world back, Wencel had cried in fierce despair into Ingrey’s face. He had not forgotten, and wasn’t sure he could if he tried. 'No. But it cannot be had.'

'Just so. Go to bed. We ride at midmorning.'