Swords of the Six (27 page)

Seivar landed on Ilfedo's shoulder.

After a quiet interlude, wherein the men stroked the birds' warm, feathered chests, Ilfedo finally patted Seivar's back. "Now go, my friend. Tell Honer and Ganning that, if they'd like to join us for a hunt, then they should meet Ombre and me here later in the afternoon."

The Nuvitors stretched their wings, whistling and cawing with excitement. Ilfedo let them land on his shoulders. His wound responded with sharp pain, but he ignored it. Turning to the stairs, he climbed to the master bedroom in the second level of his home. He pulled a cord hung from the overhead rafters. A portion of the room opened to the blue sky just as a small puffy white cloud passed by.

Taking flight, the Nuvitors brushed his face with their wings as they shot away in a southerly direction. Anticipating their return, he left the roof open.

He breathed in the fresh air, letting it fill his lungs before releasing his breath. He rested his palm against the bedroom's wall, feeling the vertical grooves between the smooth wood poles that he'd laced side-by-side with twine. The upright wood poles gave this room a unique feel from the rest of the house, like a tree fort. Well ventilated and brighter as a result of the skylight-style partitions of the roof.

A crossbow lay on the floor, and he picked it up, replacing it on its peg half-way up the wall. The hilts of various swords and the heads of several axes were spread to the left of the crossbow. Their polished metal surfaces winked back at him as he stepped to the bed at the room's center. Hung on the wall above the bed was one of his father's javelins.

He rearranged and neatened the bearskins, coonskins, and other hides draped across the leather mattress. Then he picked up the soft pillow and patted it back into shape. It had required several rabbits to make the pillow. It was long—as long as his arm—and checkered with both white and brown fur as a result of piecing together several skins from various rabbits. He laid it at the bed's head and pulled the blankets over it.

A floorboard creaked ever so slightly under his foot as he returned to the stairwell. He entered the dining room, glanced around. But Ombre had disappeared.

Shaking his head knowingly, Ilfedo pulled his sheath from its place along the wall. The metal of his blade sang out of the scabbard as his hand closed around the handle, drawing it out.

Ombre rushed at him, the flat of his sword swinging for Ilfedo's leg.

Parrying with ease, Ilfedo rang his blade against Ombre's with great force. With a quick upward swing he forced Ombre to pull back and defend himself against an upper body attack.

He smiled. Ombre had fallen for his feint.

Instead of striking at Ombre's upper body, he struck the flat of his blade against the man's thigh and followed through with a spin that brought his sword around to tap Ombre's neck. He held the sword there until Ombre backed away, holding his sword by its blade and presenting its handle toward Ilfedo in the traditional Hemmed Land custom of surrender.

Ombre snapped his fingers in mock frustration. "I thought I had you this time. Oh well"—he wiggled his finger at Ilfedo—"one of these days I'll figure out how you do it. And then you will present your sword to me instead of the other way around, which, by the way, I am getting a little tired of."

With a shake of his head, Ilfedo chuckled. It seemed that Ombre was bound and determined to one day best him in swordplay. He busied himself prodding the fire with a poker and said, "The Nuvitors are on their way. If Honer and Ganning show up this afternoon then we'll be a foursome. If not, we'll head out before evening. Did you bring a bow, or just the sword?"

"I left both at home."

"Then borrow one of mine." Ilfedo nodded toward the stairs. Long bow or crossbow, whichever Ombre preferred, Ilfedo had several of them.

"Don't mind if I do, brother," Ombre patted Ilfedo's shoulder and ascended the steps three at a time.

* * *

Later that day two men on horseback approached Ilfedo and Ombre as they stood in the clearing. Ilfedo checked the sword hanging from his side, then nodded at Ombre. "Ready?"

"Honer! Ganning!" Ombre welcomed the other men as they swung from their creaking leather saddles. He had the longbow in his hand, and the quiver filled with wood-shafted arrows on his back. Also, he had tucked a hatchet under his belt and a sheathed sword hung from his left hip.

Ganning limped to Ombre and shook his hand, smiling. Then his eyes turned to Ilfedo. "How was your trip to the coast?"

"Ahem," Ombre said, raising one hand. "Don't ask him that. He's having a little problem"—he pointed at his own head—"a little problem with a swelled head."

"We heard about the Sea Serpents," Honer said. "Nice going, Ilfedo." He patted Ilfedo's shoulder, looking at him with his gentle gray eyes. "Word's spreading like wildfire that you single handedly killed the creatures and came out unscathed. You're a hero."

"Unscathed?" Ilfedo glanced up in time to watch Hasselpatch glide from the trees. As her weight settled on his shoulder, her claws gently latched on. Seivar swooped in, perching on his other shoulder. Ilfedo cringed. The male Nuvitor had landed on his tender spot. The long, serpent-fang wound was still healing.

A slight smile showed on Honer's face. He strode back to his horse and mounted. "I guess it is safe to assume 'unscathed' was an exaggeration?"

"Yes." Ilfedo ignored the pain in his shoulder. "Are we ready to go?"

They headed northwest. Ilfedo and Ombre set out on foot. Honer and Ganning rode for the first few hours, but the forest undergrowth forced them out of their saddles for the rest of the journey. Honer kept a third horse in tow behind him. Ilfedo knew from experience that the packs on that animal's back held a few pans, extra arrows, and an assortment of hunting knives.

Taking turns launching off of Ilfedo's shoulders, the Nuvitors scouted the territory ahead. If anything dangerous lay before their master they would warn him.

But nothing of consequence crossed the hunters' path. Darkness thickened in the forest. The evening dew fell, sparse, hesitant drops gathering in the inky-black hairs of Ilfedo's bearskin coat.

They halted a few hours after darkness and, by the light of the rising full moon, they chopped down several trees. It did not take them long to form a clearing from the wild forest foliage.

Laying the logs around the clearing they formed a barrier almost five feet high. Inside of this fort, they corralled the horses and then built a roaring fire in the clearing's midst.

As they lay down around the leaping flames, Ilfedo let the heat wash across his face while the night's cool air gently nudged his back.

"Sleep, Master," Seivar cooed in his ear. The bird stretched its wings and leapt into flight, headed for the trees.

Hasselpatch too, took flight. She rose to the opposite side of the clearing. The light of the fire flickered golden on her snowy chest.

Ilfedo closed his eyes. As on previous hunting trips, his pet birds would keep watch, ensuring that no predators would surprise him with a rude awakening. If the fire burned low the Nuvitors would stoke it. If a wild animal approached the camp, the Nuvitors would wake him.

But he blinked his eyes open moments after closing them, the star-studded heavens parted as if they'd been curtains drawn away to reveal what hid behind them. A vision played out. He could see himself, walking along the bank of a stream he remembered from a past hunt.

Delicate tracks marked the bank, leading him upstream through a haze of milky white light that seemed to pull him with invisible hands along the water's edge. Not a single sound penetrated the air. He could not even hear the wet ground sucking at his boots. He sniffed at the air, a whiff of . . . nothing. Anyway, it didn't matter. All that mattered was running along the stream's bank and reaching his destination.

Miles of ground passed effortlessly beneath his feet, miles that brought him out of the forests of the Hemmed Land and into the Western Wood, a stretch of land west of his home territory untouched by humankind.

He followed the stream to a pool of water, glistening in moderate sunlight. Trees encircled it and a waterfall fell in silence over a face of smooth stone to a pool below. Ripples spread from where the water fell into the pool, building outward a series of watery half-rings breaking around olive-skinned legs, smooth as oil.

A feeling of ecstasy overpowered Ilfedo. The reflecting solar rays painted themselves on her legs and her silken skirt held out of the water in one small hand, fingers clutching the fabric with the grace and strength of a swan. And her hair, dark and wavy, fell down her back almost to her waist. She was short of stature, yet all the more beautiful for it.

He prepared to call out, to make her turn to see him there, so that he could see her face. But she vanished before he could say a word.

The surrounding forest now seemed, to him, a cage. It imprisoned him in his loneliness. The grass beneath his feet, dissolving into dust, was replaced by a searing heat that flooded the air around him so that his body broke out in a sticky sweat. Darkness spread like inky tendrils, choking out the last rays of light.

In a flash he found himself lying on the ground, staring up at the night sky. A cool breeze rustled the leaves in the trees. An owl hooted somewhere in the forest, and bats fluttered overhead, tackling insects. Everything was deceptively normal, as if the vision or dream he'd experienced was nothing more than a trick of his mind.

He smote the ground with his fist, trying in vain to dispel the urge to rise and find out if this sequence of dreams was in fact a strange twist of his fate. Could the young woman standing in the pool . . . could she be real? No.
For such foolish thinking he should slap himself in the face. But what other explanation was there? How else explain the dreams, the visions, which now seemed to haunt him every time he closed his eyes?

Ilfedo closed his hand over the cool metal of his sword's pommel as it lay next to his bedroll. Glancing to the heavens again, he waited for a further revelation. Nothing happened. He set his jaw in a firm line, threw off his blanket, grabbed his sword with its sheath and fastened it to his belt.

Either he would disprove this vision so that it could no longer disturb him, or . . .. He doubted the alternative but it intrigued him nevertheless. Could the hand of the Creator be in this, or was that wishful thinking?

Time to find out.

As he vaulted the barrier he and his friends had built around their camp, he heard the Nuvitors' wings snap against the air. They would follow. He turned and shook his head at Seivar, and the bird reluctantly flew back to its perch.

"Come, Hasselpatch." Ilfedo waited until her talons clamped over his right shoulder, then waved farewell to Seivar.

The bird dutifully saluted with one white wing.

Ilfedo would not have minded having both his birds along, but without at least one Nuvitor watching the camp, his friends would be left without warning if a beast attacked whilst they slept.

Hasselpatch didn't say a word. She flew off his shoulder and circled between the trees, her silvery eyes roving the woodland floor.

Ilfedo advanced through the forest at a half-run, ignoring the dew drenched branches that slapped across his face. He did not keep track of the time but doggedly continued on until he reached the stream in the forest that he had recognized in the vision.

Following the bank, he spotted the imprints of a deer's hoofs, set deep in the wet dirt, and swallowed hard. Kneeling, he reached out and felt them to be certain he was not dreaming. The compacted moist dirt fell apart between his fingers. He stood and eyed the prints. They followed the stream in a line as straight and true as a ruler in a northwest direction.

For a long while he followed the tracks. The stream broadened as it should, for he must be getting closer to its source.

As he rounded a bend in the stream, a wild cat screamed from beside him. Its eyes glowed yellow as it leaped from a boulder, and its clawed paws extended to strike.

A screech of fury preceded a flurry of white feathers as Hasselpatch landed on the animal's head. Her silver talons glinted in the starlight like daggers as they ripped across the cat's eyes without mercy, carving canyons through its fur into the skin. As red streams coursed through the cat's fur, Hasselpatch pulled away, her talons dragged in the cat's flesh.

Not wishing to see the animal suffer, Ilfedo drew his sword and stabbed it through the heart. The cat slumped on the stream's bank.

Hasselpatch dropped into the stream. The flowing water erased all traces of blood from her feathers, leaving her as pure white as before. She spread her wings and resumed a steady circle above Ilfedo's head.

By the time the deer's tracks ended, Ilfedo's legs were feeling sore. He gazed in confusion at the marks. A stretch of fields lay before him. The stream continued on. But the deer's tracks abruptly dissappeared. They didn't just fade onto firmer ground. Instead they ended on the stream's bank without any indication as to which direction the deer had gone. The ground was soft around the last hoof prints and moist for a distance afterward. It was as if the four-legged creature had sprouted wings and flown away.

Putting the tracks to the back of his mind, Ilfedo followed the stream still farther. It gurgled beside him, a pleasant, teasing sound that drew him onward.

Through the fields he followed it until it led him into a forest on the far side. He'd never been this far west. This territory was unfamiliar to him. The border of the Hemmed Land must be behind him by now.

He had entered the Western Wood.

Midnight arrived on swift wings. Exhaustion compelled him to stop. He sat on the moist, cool grass at the base of a tree. Hasselpatch stopped circling and descended into his lap.

"Rest, my friend," he whispered.

She laid her silver beak on his leg and closed her silvery eyes.

Idly, Ilfedo stroked the Nuvitor's feathers. He leaned back against the rough bark of the tree's broad trunk. The stream gurgled past him, as if laughing at him for allowing it to lead him on this fruitless search. Crickets sang, something screeched in the distance, either in attack or terror, a deep-throated scraping screech. He did not recognize the sound.