The Hallowed Hunt

They glanced at each other and trod near. 'Yes, Ingrey?' said Hallana.

'Would you each take one end of this, and hold it level. Not too high.'

A little apprehensively, they grasped the pole, as if uncertain at first if it would present a material grip to them, and stood apart. The Wolfcliff banner unfolded and hung down as though the great Wolf bowed its head to the ground.

Ingrey turned to Ijada. 'Take my hand.'

She touched his right hand uncertainly, careful of the damp red mess, but he squeezed her fingers in return, and then she gripped more tightly. He turned them both to face the horizontal staff.

'Jump over with me,' he said, 'if we shall be allies in such nights as this and lovers in all nights hereafter.'

'Ingrey... ' She peered doubtfully at him, sideways through escaped strands of hanging hair. 'Are you asking me to marry you?'

More or less, he started to say, and thought the better of it. It was only more. 'Yes. You should marry a king. This is your great chance.' He looked around; Oswin’s sober face had lightened in comprehension, and Hallana’s had broken into a broad grin. 'The company of witnesses could not be improved: three Temple divines of good character, two princes—one a poet who will doubtless immortalize this moment before we’ve made it halfway back to Easthome—'

Jokol, who had loomed closer to see and hear, nodded delightedly. 'Ah, Ingorry, good work! Yes, jump, jump, Ijada! My beautiful Breiga would like this one, yes!'

'A princess... ' Ingrey cast a half bow somewhat uncertainly at Fara, now sitting up somberly on the edge of the mound; she returned him a grave but not disapproving jerk of her chin. 'And one other.' Ingrey nodded to the marshal-warrior; Ingrey had not known ghosts could be bemused, but this one’s surprised smile blessed him in advance for this unexpected last use of his long-defended emblem. 'You can have other ceremonies later, if you like,' Ingrey added to Ijada. 'With better clothes or whatever. As many as you want. As long as they’re with me,' he added prudently.

'One or two is the usual limit,' Oswin rumbled from his end of the pole, starting to smile.

Ingrey opened his mouth to persuade further, but Ijada extended two fingers and touched his lips to stillness. He wobbled a little, as his knees nearly gave way, and she glanced aside at him thoughtfully. She looked each way at Oswin and Hallana, reached out, and pressed the pole down; the two divines obediently bent to lower the barrier to something their somewhat pallid hallow king was sure to be able to clear.

Looking at each other, Ingrey and Ijada held hands and jumped.

Ingrey stumbled a little on the landing, as his head was swimming, but Ijada steadied him. They exchanged one kiss, which Ingrey began to make swift and promissory; Ijada captured his face between her hands and made it more thorough. Yes, Ingrey thought, pausing to feel the softness, the warmth, the faint hint of her teeth. This is the only living Now.

They parted, trading pensive smiles, and Ingrey retrieved the standard. The pulsing heart had vanished from the spearpoint. But which of us received back which half? He wasn’t sure he knew.

The marshal-warrior knelt on one knee, undid his graying braids from his gold belt, and held his head up before him. Ingrey knelt, too, and shook down one last generous splash of blood to smear across the furrowed brow. The old spirit stallion he released was very worn, but Ingrey thought it must have been a fine fast beast in its time, for this night it flew.

The marshal-warrior rose whole: he rolled his shoulders as if in relief and nodded solemnly at Ingrey. He then turned and reached for Learned Oswin’s hand, and, not looking back again, was gone.

The real darkness flowed in across Ingrey’s eyes for the first time that night; only then did he become truly aware that he had been seeing, with unnatural clarity, by ghost-light for most of the hours past. Jokol grunted and hurried to stir up a small fire, unnoticed by Ingrey, that he had evidently built to warm Fara sometime during the night while waiting for devotees of his Lady to present themselves. The orange light licked up to gild the tired faces that now huddled around it.

Biast nodded cautiously to the Wolfcliff royal standard which Ingrey still clutched, draped upon it for support. 'What are you going to do with that?'

What, indeed? He straightened up and stared at it, discomfited. It felt as solid under his hand as the Horseriver staff Fara had broken, but it had not come from the outer world, and Ingrey doubted he could carry it back there, beyond the borders of the Wounded Woods. He was equally doubtful that it would survive the dawn, presaged by a faint gray tinge in the mists that drifted through the gnarled trees. Ingrey’s hallow kingship was more bounded by space and time and need than Biast perhaps realized, or the prince-marshal would not look so uneasily at him, Ingrey thought.

He was disinclined to hand his standard humbly to Biast, politically prudent as that might seem. It was Wolfcliff not Stagthorne, it was a thing of the night not the day, and anyway, anyway... Let him earn his own.

'In the Old Weald,' said Ingrey, 'the royal banner-carrier guarded the standard from the death of the old king to the investment of the new.' And now I know why. 'Then it was broken, and the pieces burned on the pyre of the dead king, if events made such ceremony possible.' And if not, he began to suspect, someone had made it up as best he could out of inspiration, urgency, and whatever came to hand. He looked around a little vaguely. 'Ijada, we must cleanse this ground as well, before we leave this place. With fire, I think. And we must go soon.'

'Before the sun rises?' she asked.

'That feels right.'

'You should know.'

'I do.'

She followed his gaze around. 'My stepfather’s forester said these trees were diseased. He wanted to fire the woods then, but I wouldn’t let him.'

'Will you allow me?'

'It is your realm.'

'Only till dawn. Tomorrow it is yours again.' He glanced aside at Biast, to see if he took the hint.

'Perhaps it is as well,' sighed Ijada. 'Perhaps it is necessary. Perhaps it is... time. What, um,' she moistened her lips, 'what of Wencel’s body?'

Learned Lewko said uneasily, 'I don’t think we can carry it out with us now. Our beasts were used hard yesterday, and will have burden enough getting us back to the main roads. Someone will have to be sent back for it. Should we build a little cairn, to protect it from the wild beasts and birds till then?'

'The last Horseriver king never had his warrior’s pyre,' Ingrey said. 'No one here did, except for a few trapped in burning huts that night, I suppose. I don’t know if burying them all in pits was a theological act of Audar’s, or part of his magic and curse, or just military efficiency. The more I learn of Bloodfield, the more I think no one really knew, even at the time. It is late; it is the last hour. We will fire the woods.' For Wencel. For all of them.

Ijada moistened a cautious finger and held it in the air. 'The wind’s a little in the east, such as it is. It should do even if the rain doesn’t come on.'

Ingrey nodded. 'Biast, gentlemen, can you help Fara get out? Can someone collect the horses?'

'I can do that!' said Hallana brightly, and took everyone but Oswin aback by stepping up onto the mound, turning to the four quarters, and calling loudly and rather maternally through her cupped hands, 'Horses! Horses!'

Oswin looked a trifle pained, but appeared not in the least surprised when after a few minutes a crashing and crunching through the undergrowth announced the arrival of their several abandoned mounts, trailing reins and snorting anxiously. Jokol and Lewko, at Ingrey’s nod, had quietly collected more dry deadfall from the margins of the clearing and discreetly piled it around Wencel’s body. Lewko took charge of Wencel’s purse, rings, and other items of interest to his future heirs at law. Ijada tucked the broken pieces of the Horseriver banner atop the pile. Hallana helped the widowed princess mount her horse. The company straggled into the foggy shadows in the direction of