The Hallowed Hunt

defense from wild beasts and none from evil men. The sun was setting; Horseriver frowned at its yellow glint through the trees.

'We cannot go farther tonight. There will be no moon till midnight.' His teeth set in a brief grimace. 'And for the same reason, we will not be able to depart from the next change till the dawn after, if we are not to be then benighted in the trackless mountains. We are set back a full day. Well, take your rest. You’ll need it.'

Wencel was indifferent to a set of surroundings that made Fara recoil. She was so unnerved by the slatternly sallow woman with no teeth and a near-unintelligible dialect, drafted to serve her, that she made Ingrey act her maid instead. He himself ended up sleeping on a blanket across her doorway, screened with only a tattered curtain, which she took for courtly devotion; Ingrey didn’t explain that it was excuse to avoid the infested straw pallet he’d been offered. If Wencel slept, Ingrey did not see where.

DESPITE THE POOR AND IMPROVISED BEDDING, BOTH HE AND Fara rose late the following morning, drained by exhaustion of both body and heart. Without haste, but without undue delay, Wencel led them once more onto the rural road, in places hardly more than a track, which skirted the Raven Range now rising to their right.

The Ravens were rugged but not high; no snow, either early or late, clung to their green-and-brown heights, though here and there some sheer fall of rock, gleaming in the sun, gave the illusion of ice. Their deep folds were rucked up like a blanket, cut with sharp ravines and secret places. Autumn had turned their summer verdure to gold, brown, and in places splashes of scarlet like sword cuts, laced in turn by the dark green of pines and firs. Beyond the first line of slopes, seen through an occasional gap, the humped ranks swiftly receded into a hazy blue distance that blended imperceptibly with the horizon, as though these hills marched to some boundless otherworld.

Ingrey wondered how in five gods’ names Great Audar had ever dragged an army through here, at speed. His respect for the old Darthacan grew despite all. Even though Audar had lacked the uncanny charisma of the hallow kings he opposed, his leadership must have been impassioned.

They were in Badgerbank country now, Ingrey was reminded when they swung around the mining town of Badgerbridge in a suddenly busy river valley that poked up into the hills like a green spearhead. Smoke rose both from the town and from sites farther up the valley, marking smelters, which thickened the autumn haze. He wondered where in this place Ijada’s stepfamily lived. The five-sided temple, a big timber structure, stood out above the town walls, prominent in the distance.

For a little while, they joined a larger road until they crossed the river by the stone bridge just above the town. Under the arches, lashings of timber and some barrels moved down the rocky stream, attended by nimble men and boys with poles. They passed carts, trudging husbandmen with their beasts, pack trains of mules. Horseriver hurried them along here without pausing, turning upstream, ignoring a main crossroad, then once more striking west into the woodlands on a lesser track.

Horseriver marked the course of the sun and picked up the pace for a while, but as the track dwindled was forced to a more careful progress. The horses labored up and slid down the steepening slopes. More up than down, and finally they turned right onto a faint trail, heaved up a short slope, and descended into a hidden dell.

No hamlet or farmhouse awaited here, but a mere campsite. A pair of grooms jumped up as they approached and ran to take the horses. The usual three remounts were picketed among the trees: sturdy cobs, this time, rather than the long-striding hot-blooded coursers Horseriver had favored for the roads. Fara, exhausted, dismounted slowly and stiffly and stared in dismay at her next proposed abode, bedrolls sheltered in a stand of fir trees, less even than last night’s dire hovel. If she had ever camped before on royal hunts, Ingrey was fairly sure her days had ended in silken pavilions attended by cooing handmaidens and all possible comforts. Here, every other consideration was clearly sacrificed to speed and efficiency. We travel light now, and will not be here long.

'Did you bring it?' Horseriver demanded of the older groom.

The man signed himself in respect, ducking his head. 'Yes, my lord.'

'Fetch it out.'

'Aye, my lord.'

Leaving the tired horses to his younger companion, the bowlegged groom trudged to the campsite and bent over a pile of packs. Horseriver, Fara, and Ingrey followed. The groom rose clutching a pole some seven feet long, wrapped about with ancient, brittle canvas tied with twine. Horseriver sighed in satisfaction as he took it, his hands wrapping about the canvas binding, and swung it upright, planting the butt by his boot. Briefly, he leaned his forehead against it and squeezed his eyes shut.

Ingrey led the weary Fara to one of the bedrolls and made sure she was able to sit down without falling. She stared up through shadowed eyes as he turned back to Horseriver. The groom trod away again to assist with the horse lines.

'What is that, sire?' Ingrey asked, nodding to the pole. It made his hairs stir, whatever it was.

Horseriver half grinned, though without mirth. 'The true king must have his hallowed banner, Ingrey.'

'That’s not the royal banner you had at Bloodfield, surely.'

'No, that one was broken and cut to shreds and buried with me. This is the one I carried when I last was king in name, if only to the remnant of the faithful kin who followed me, when I raided Audar’s garrisons from across the fen borders. It was wrapped after my last death in battle and put away; and later delivered, it was thought, to my son and heir. Little comfort it brought me, but I was glad to have it nonetheless. I hid it in the rafters at Castle Horseriver. For three hundred years it has lain up there, preserved against some better day. Instead, it comes down to this day. But it comes.'

Horseriver leaned it carefully against a great pine tree, propped up and sheltered by a couple of sweeping low branches, then stretched and dropped cross-legged to a bedroll. Ingrey followed suit, finding himself between Horseriver and the princess. Ingrey’s eyes were drawn again to the bundle. 'It gives me... it has some weirding upon it, sire.' It gave him cold chills, if he was honest.

Horseriver licked his lips in something like satisfaction. 'Good, my wise wolfling. Being so shrewd, have you realized yet what the other function of a banner-carrier was?'

'Eh?' said Ingrey. When Wencel wasn’t deceiving him or terrorizing him, the earl also did a very good job of making him feel a fool, he reflected glumly.

'And yet you cleansed Boleso, no small task,' Horseriver mused. 'I do weary of trying to herd your wits, but last time pays for all.' He glanced aside at Fara, as if to be certain she was listening, which caught Ingrey’s attention, for Wencel had avoided looking at her or speaking to her beyond the most direct commands.

'The banner-carriers slit the throats of their comrades too wounded to carry from the field, you said,' Ingrey put in. A ghastly enough duty, but Ingrey was suddenly sure there was more. Ghastly, ghostly, wait...

Horseriver took a breath. 'Put it together. The soul of a slain spirit warrior had to be cleansed of its life- companion before it might go to the gods. But a warrior was likely to fall in battle, when there was not time for proper rites or sometimes even the chance to carry the body away. For when even the wounded must be abandoned, the dead fare no better. Nothing of spirit can exist in the world of matter without a being of matter to support it, I know you have been taught this orthodoxy. That a warrior’s soul might not drift as a sundered revenant and be lost, it was the banner-carrier’s task to bind it to him or her as a haunt, and carry it away to where it might at length be cleansed by his true kin shaman. Or whatever shaman might be had, in a pinch.'

'Five gods,' whispered Ingrey. 'No wonder the bannermen were desperately defended by their comrades.' And had Wencel’s binding of Ijada to him been some variant of this ancient practice?

'Aye, for they carried their slain kinsmen’s hopes of heaven away with them. And so every fighting cadre who were led by or contained spirit warriors had such a sacred banner-carrier.

'Now, the hallow king’s bannerman... ' Horseriver trailed off. He straightened his shoulders and began again. 'He had this same duty to his lord’s soul, should the hallow king bear a kin beast. Not all elected kings were so graced, though many were, especially in unsettled times. But whether his lord were spirit warrior or no, the hallow king’s banner-carrier had another sacred task, and not only when his lord died in a battle going ill. Though you may take it that if the hallow king was slain on the field, that battle was generally going quite ill indeed. Water.' Wencel licked dry lips, and stared into his lap, his back curving again.