The Hallowed Hunt

'Hadn’t you better tell us how, then?'

'Yes,' sighed Horseriver. 'It is time.' He glanced skyward. 'With neither sun nor moon nor stars to witness, in an hour neither day nor night; what more befitting a moment than this? Long was the preparation, long and difficult, but the doing—ah. The doing is simple and quick.' He drew his knife from his belt, the same he’d used to cut the throat of Ijada’s mare, and Ingrey tensed. Kingly charisma or no, if Horseriver turned on Fara, Ingrey would have to try to... He made to lift his hand to his sword hilt, but found it heavy and unresponsive; his heart began to hammer in panic at the unexpected constraint.

But Horseriver instead pressed the haft into Fara’s limp hand, then took the banner pole and ground it deeper into the soil so that it stood upright, if slightly tilted, on its own. 'This will best be done kneeling, I think,' he mused. 'The woman is weak.'

He turned again to Ingrey. 'Fara'—he nodded to his wife, who stared back with eyes gone wide and black—'will shortly cut my throat for me. Being my banner-carrier, she will hold, for a little moment, my kingship and my soul here. You have until her grip fails, no more, to cleanse my spirit horse from me. If you do not succeed, you will have the full, but not unique, experience of becoming my heir. What will happen then, not even I can predict, but I am fairly certain it will be nothing good. And it will go on forever. So do not fail, my royal shaman.'

Ingrey’s pulse throbbed in his ears, and his stomach knotted. 'I thought you could not die. You said the spell held you in the world.'

'Follow it around, Ingrey. The trees, and all the living web of Holytree, are bound to the souls of my warriors, and support them in the world of matter. These'—he gestured broadly at the clustering revenants —'create my hallow kingship that binds them to me. My spirit horse'—he touched his breast—'my power as a shaman, binds the trees to the men. I told you that the hallow king was the hub of the spell for invincibility, I do remember that. Cut the link at any point, and the circle unwinds. This is the link you can reach.'

And you cannot? No... he could not. Horseriver was bound up in his own spell, like a key locked inside its box. 'That’s what this has all been about, then? An elaborate suicide?' said Ingrey indignantly. He struggled once more to move, to jerk his physical body into motion, but achieved only a shudder.

'I suppose you could call it that.'

'How many people did you actually kill to arrange this?' As carelessly as you set me on Ijada?

'Not as many as you’d think. They do die on their own.' Horseriver’s lips twisted. 'And to say I would rather die than to have all this to do over again both sums and fails even to touch the truth.'

Ingrey’s mind lurched. 'This will break the spell.'

'It’s all of a piece. Yes.'

'What will happen to these, then?' Ingrey waved about at the crowding ghosts. 'Will they go to the gods as well?'

'Gods, Ingrey? There are no gods here.'

It is true, Ingrey realized. Was that part of what disturbed him so deeply about this ground? The interlocking boundaries of the spell, the will of this unholy hallow king, excluded Them. Had done so for centuries, it appeared. Horseriver’s war with the gods had been in stalemate for that long, while his host had slowly become instead his hostages.

Horseriver pressed Fara to her knees and knelt in front of her, facing away. He pulled her knife hand round over his right shoulder and briefly kissed the white knuckles. A flash of memory washed over Ingrey, of his wolf licking his ear before he’d cut its throat.

The unmaking of this twisted spell, the long-delayed cleansing of Bloodfield, seemed no intrinsic sin, apart from Wencel’s self-murder. Yet five gods had opposed this, and Ingrey could not see why. Not till now.

Once broken free from the misfortunes of the world of matter, the divines said, souls longed for their gods like lovers, save for those who turned their faces aside and chose slow solitary dissolution. And the gods longed back. But this was no mutual suicide pact between Horseriver and his spirit warriors. Even as his fortress fell, he meant to slay his immortal hostages along with him: eternal revenge, a death beyond death and a denial absolute.

'You will be sundered? Wait—you will all be sundered?'

'You ask too many questions.'

Not enough. A very late one came to Ingrey then. Ijada, she had said, had given half her heart to these revenants. They held it still, somewhere here, somehow. What would happen to whatever piece of her soul she had pledged when these lost warriors went up in smoke? Could a woman live with half a heart? 'Wait,' said Ingrey, then, reaching deeper, 'wait!'

A ripple ran through the revenants as if they swayed in an earth shock, and Fara looked up, gasping.

'And you argue too much,' Horseriver added, and drew Fara’s knife hand hard around his throat.

Blood spurted for three heartbeats while Horseriver stared ahead, his expression composed. Then his lips parted in relief, and he slumped forward out of Fara’s grasp. She clutched the banner pole to keep from falling atop him, her lips moving in a soundless cry.

The world of magic peeled away from the world of matter then, ripping apart the congruence, and Ingrey found his vision doubled as it had been in Red Dike. Wencel’s body lay facedown upon the mound, and Fara bent over it, half-fainting, the bloody knife fallen from her grasp. But upon the mound there arose...

A black stallion, black as pitch, as soot, as a moonless night in a storm. Its nostrils flared red, and orange sparks trailed from its mane and tail as it shifted. It pawed the mound, once, and a ring of fire shimmered out around its hoofprint, then faded. Upon its back a man-shaped shadow rode astride, and the figure’s legs curved down into the horse’s ribs and united with them.

This brutal, ancient power was not at all like Boleso’s thin, miserable menagerie. I don’t know what to do with this, and I have no god on my side in this place. Frenzy reverberated in Ingrey’s belly. His beginning howl of terror transmuted in the voicing of it into a bellow of challenge. He leapt away from his frozen body, landing astonished on all four paws, heavy claws ripping up the dirt in clots. Completing a transformation he had only been half-able to effect, to mere man-wolf mixture, the time before.

The stallion snorted. Ingrey pulled back his black-edged lips along his long jaws, bared his sharp teeth, and snarled back. His tongue lolled out to taste a rank sizzle in the air, like burning rotted hair, and saliva spattered from his jaws as he shook the toxic tang from his mouth.

The stallion stepped off the mound and circled him, tracking little flames.

If I lose this fight, what returns to my body will not be me. It would be Horseriver re-formed. With such a prize, no wonder Wencel had not bothered to bespell him further in his cause. Ingrey was battling for more than his life.

So.

He circled the stallion in turn, head lowered, neck ruff rising, the earth cool and damp under his pads. Fallen leaves crackled like real leaves, and the sharpness of their musty scent amazed his nose. The stallion swirled, its hind legs lashing out.

Ingrey ducked, too late; one hoof connected with a heavy thunk to his furry side, and he rolled away, yelping. How could an illusion not be able to breathe? He would have to pay as implacable an attention as in any sword fight, but now he had to watch four weapons, not just one. How do you kill a horse with your teeth? He tried to remember dogfights he had witnessed, boar-baitings, the climaxes of hunts.

Any way you can.