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The knight muttered a few half-believed words of
reassurance to her and did as he was bade. He d only walked a
few heavy, aching steps when he came upon the bodies.
They were three, he thought. Two adults, and a child. But
it was difficult to tell. The marsh had turned them grey. Their
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faces were bloated and fly-blown. Flesh wrinkled like the skin
of an elbow, and open eyes turned to the milk-white of cut
quartz. By his reckoning, they had been dead about a week.
The knight tried to remember how to breathe.  We are not
the first ones to try this way, he said.
The Red King waded through needles of marsh grass to his
side.  Southerners, he said.  Farmers, most likely. The blight
has driven most of them out of their homes. Since your great
and noble master has been turning back any refugees on the
North Road, most of them try the old paths through the hills in
the hope of better fortune.
 Do you expect to make me pity these people? the knight
demanded.  To turn my back on Gwyn?
 No. The Red King stood.  I don t.
They worked in silence after that, laying out whatever they
could find around the courser. Somewhere far away a peal of
thunder trembled in the mountains. When they had done all
that they could, the Red King put his palms to the mare s
hindquarters and the knight took up her bridle. She was tired
now, and without her help they were soon sweating and
breathless.
 You never answered my question. The Red King stood
back and rubbed his watering eyes.
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The knight gave one last pull, raised both hands in defeat,
and sank down to his haunches.  What do you want now,
Goch?
 Where are you from? the Red King asked.  Who were
you, before you became a bloody bane in my side and set my
brother back upon the north?
 I was no one, the knight said.  Just another unwanted
bastard weaned in an orphanage in the wildwood. A farmer
paid them for me when I was ten. The courser slumped down
defeated, stretching her neck out until her nostrils were barely
above the water.
 Old enough to work, the Red King said.
The knight made a soft sound of agreement. He put his
hand under the courser s jaw, lifting her head enough to
breathe.  He wasn t a cruel man, he said.  But he wanted his
money s worth from me. Worked me like a draught horse for
six years before I managed to slip away and enlist with your
guard. Six summers of the sun on my back and the breath of
the wind in me. Six winters digging in those blasted, frozen
fields.
 Do you miss it?
The knight looked towards the southern horizon.
 Sometimes.
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 Let s try again. Come here, maybe you can push better
than I can. Use those shoulders of yours, plough boy.
The knight put the flats of his hands to her hindquarters
and pushed until his muscles shook. The courser shrieked and
thrashed at the pulled grass until she finally found footing.
Then she heaved forwards, screaming and kicking out with her
powerful back legs. As she came free, one of her shod hooves
slammed into the knight s chest like cannonshot.
Concussion rang in his ears, and the marsh reached out to
catch him as he fell. He found that he was looking down on his
own body his chest imploded, ribs dashed into the hollow
space of his lungs, and the whole marsh shifting and surging
underneath him like a wave.
An explosion of coughing pain brought him back into
himself. He strained for a breath that wouldn t come, but the
front of his shirt was drenched with marshwater instead of
blood, and when he put his hand to the ache in his chest his
ribs did not feel broken. The Red King offered down his hand,
and the knight took it, pulling himself back up.
He followed the grim look on the Red King s face to where
his courser stood, three-footed. One of her hind legs was
snapped at an impossible angle below the knee, bone
puncturing bay fur and blood dripping from her hoof.
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A deep calm drove down into the knight s fingertips, and
he forced his voice to soften as he took her head up in both his
hands. He let the steadiness of his body pass into hers and
bowed his head until it touched her muzzle.
 Gwyn gave her to me, he said softly, his voice twisted out
of shape.  I had her from a yearling.
 Mercher....
 Be quiet.
The knight drew his sword slowly so as not to startle her. A
murmur of metal against leather, a few more gentle words, and
one sharp, deep thrust that drove the blade up to the hilt in her
chest. Her howl filled up the whole valley as she wrenched
away, overbalanced, and fell hard onto her side. A huge flower
of dark blood blossomed out into the grey water. The knight
knelt and put his hand on her neck. Her eyes rolled white. She
sucked down a lungful of mashwater, spasmed, and fell still.
 I m sorry, he said, catching his tongue between his teeth.
 I m so sorry.
He grasped the bloody hilt of his sword and worked the
blade out of her body.
 Come here, he told the Red King.  I ll need your help to
butcher her.
* * *
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Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #167
Y Brenin rose out of the valley like the arched back of a
fish: a high ridge of bare jagged granite sculpted by time and
weather into a host of peaks, buttresses, and gulleys. More a
wall than a mountain, dividing the southern high places from
rich northern lowlands with a serrated ridge of bare granite.
They approached it swathed in the fog of a grey morning,
rounding a scree slope that sank down into a high valley filled
with a crooked finger of black lake. A heron raised its head on
the far shore, poised between the worlds of fog and water, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]