The Hallowed Hunt

Ingrey staggered into the farmhouse to find the cot that had been prepared for him, then lay staring upward in the dark despite his weariness. Surely his thrall to Horseriver was not absolute, or it would not chafe him so. Wencel’s glamour sat ill upon his crooked shoulders, like a king’s gilded armor, made in the flush of his youth, put upon a wizened old man. A dissonance between the man and his kingship that even Ingrey could sense whispered through the fissures.

Even in its mis-fit, though, Ingrey felt the power of the thing like heat from a furnace on his face. On an Old Weald warrior of even ordinary merit, the kingship must have fallen like a mantle of light. Then he wondered what it had been like when it chanced to fall upon a man of extraordinary character: when soul melded to sacred trust in one continuous arc like a perfect bell casting. Such a Voice might make the mountains march. His mind shied from the vision.

His own present duties, to penetrate Horseriver’s secrets and to defend Fara, both glued him to Horseriver’s side perforce. Perhaps an effort to escape was premature. Better to lull his captor, watch, and wait his chance? Trust in the pursuit that his reason and private knowledge told him must follow? Pray?

He hadn’t prayed before bed in his adult life. But sleep gave dreams and in dreams, gods sometimes walked. And talked. His dreams were no garden for Them to stroll in, as Hallana’s were said to be, but in this remnant of night he prayed to be possessed.

BUT WHATEVER INGREY DREAMED VANISHED UPON AWAKENING. He shot up with a start when the groom shook his shoulder. Washbasin, food, and drink were thrust at him; Wencel had them on the road again within half the turning of a glass.

The rising land grew ever more rural and remote. There were other people and beasts on the road now in the broad day: farm wagons, pack trains, slower riders, sheep, cows, pigs. Wencel’s gallop of last night gave way to a less conspicuous canter, alternated with trotting and walking where the road grew steep or, increasingly, bad. Nonetheless it was apparent that the pace was finely calculated to wring the maximum distance from their mounts in the minimum time. An hour after noon, another aging farmhouse yielded up another meal and change of horses.

Ingrey studied Fara. The past day that she had endured, beginning with the inquest, going on to her father’s deathbed, then this forced flight, would have devastated any woman and most men. Her spirit animal, he suspected, was lending her a physical strength as surprising to her as it was to him. Other sorts of strength... she had, perhaps, not lacked in her own right.

Given the effect that Wencel’s kingship had on him, it occurred to Ingrey to wonder what it would do to women. He watched Fara’s response to Wencel, seeking his female mirror. She was dazzled, even astonished, when her eyes rested on her transformed husband, her lips parting in unconscious desire. But not happy. She already possessed what other women might vainly aspire to, and yet... not. Wencel’s gaze in return offered nothing but cool evaluation, as though she were a mount of dubious soundness somehow foisted upon him, and she flinched under the disdain. Fara might not be brilliant or brave, but neither was she safe to betray. She had resisted Wencel’s perceived infidelity before, if to disastrous consequence. Was she as entirely his chattel as he seemed to think?

Was Ingrey? Ingrey sought inward. His wolf and he were no longer divisible in this life, but it seemed to him that the uncanny part of himself was more fully and fawningly under Horseriver’s spell than the rational. The part of him that thought in words remained more free. He had chained his wolf once, when he’d been younger and more frightened and bewildered than this. If the hallow king had leashed his wolf, did he truly control all there was of Ingrey?

He seeks speed. To resist, I should seek delay.

Horseriver slowed them to a walk again, looking leftward. At length, he turned toward the river upon a lesser road, and the horses slithered down a long bank through a thin screen of pine trees. Dirt gave way to stones; they faced not a rickety rural bridge, but a ford across the upper Stork. The Raven Range gave forth steady and abundant springs. The water here was not in so muddy a spate as the ford at which Boleso’s cortege had so nearly come to grief, but the river was wide and deep despite the recent drought in this region that put a dusty autumn haze in the blue air.

The earl pushed his horse ahead, finding the way through the shallower sections. Fara followed obediently. If I do not pause to think—Ingrey pressed his horse upstream of Fara’s, watched till the water came up to the beasts’ bellies and half lifted them off their hooves, then spurred and jerked his mount sideways into hers.

Both horses stumbled, and Fara’s went down. Ingrey had already kicked his feet free of his stirrups. He lunged out of his saddle, slid over the flanks of her plunging horse, and made a valiant grab for the princess.

She’d kept a grasp on one stirrup. Her wallowing mount might well have towed her to the far bank, but Ingrey’s grip and weight yanked her away. She gave a brief cry ending in a gurgle as her head went under. Horseriver whipped around in time to see Ingrey trying to pull her back to the surface as they both were swept downstream.

'Stay!' the earl cried. Ingrey jerked in response, but though that uncanny voice might command man or beast, it had no effect on the heavy current. The water was chill but not bitterly so, and this time, Ingrey managed to avoid clouting his head on a boulder. But this time, he also discovered immediately, his partner could in truth not swim. He renewed his grip on the flailing woman and gasped as he in turn went under, and his struggle for breath grew as unfeigned as hers.

He still managed to push them back into the swiftest current three times, as his longer legs dragged the gravel, until at last the stream broadened and slowed in a pool so shallow that even Fara’s feet could touch bottom. Sliding and floundering, they waded to shore.

Ingrey scanned the bank. They had passed some mighty tangles of brush, a stretch of high and rocky overhangs that had constricted the waters into a frighteningly speedy chute, and now, a clot of young willows growing thickly along the farther shore. Wencel, especially if he’d stopped to secure their abandoned mounts, would not soon catch up with them. Ingrey had a very clear idea of just how much delay such a sopping mishap might cause, and hoped to extend it even further.

Fara coughed. Her face was milk-colored with the cold, and she trembled in Ingrey’s firm grip. She was, he thought, owed some tears by now, but to his intense secret relief she did not at once burst into a weeping fit. 'You saved me!' she gasped.

It was not in Ingrey’s present interests to clarify this. 'My duty, my lady. And my fault—my horse stumbled into yours.'

'I thought I—I thought we were both going to drown.'

So did I. 'No, my lady.'

'Did we... ' she hesitated, turning her dark eyes up at him. 'Did we escape?'

Ingrey took a long breath, and let it out slowly. Distance from the hallow king was, as he’d hoped, sobering—but not enough. The unwanted sense of Wencel that had replaced his link with Ijada was still present, body deep. The earl was urgent, somewhere upstream. But not panicked. 'I don’t think so. But we may be able to delay.'

'To what end?'

'We must be followed. You must be followed. Maybe more quickly than Wencel thinks. Biast will be frantic on your behalf.' The earl might have pictured them not being missed till the next day, but Ijada would have known instantly. Would she have thought him killed? Would she have been able to communicate with anyone? Lewko, Hallana? Would Gesca have listened to her pleas to seek them, late last night? Once faintly guilty for intimidating Gesca on her behalf, Ingrey was now sorry he had not terrorized the lieutenant more. Five gods help her. And us.

And if They are as interested as They seemed, where are They now, curse Them?