Thornhold (3 page)

He felt the old despair now, a shadow in the memory of his father’s deep, ringing voice intoning, ‘When you hear the Dessarin sing just so, it is time to turn off the road.”

Dag Zoreth pulled his horse’s reins toward the south, tugging so sharply that the beast whinnied in pain and protest. But the horse followed his command, just as the heavily armed men behind him waited obediently on the eastbound road to Tribor.

He rode for several minutes before he got his bearings. The old path was still there, marked not by the passage of feet and horses, but by the slender trees that grew in the once-open space. It was remarkable, Dag Zoreth mused, how fast a tree could grow once it was out from beneath the heavy shadow of the older forest.

A song slipped into his mind, unbidden and unwelcome. It was a marching song, an old hymn of praise to Tyr, the god of justice. His father had often sung it to mark the passage to the village. The path and the song were of like length, his father used to say. Dag Zoreth knew that before he finished humming the final chorus, the forest would give way to a clearing, and the village would be spread out before him.

A small, cynical smile tightened his lips at the thought of actually giving voice to the song. He doubted that his own god, Cyric the Mad, had much of an ear for music.

But habit proved to be stronger than caution. As he rode, Dag recalled the verse and marked out the measure in the silence of his mind. When the remembered song was over, Dag Zoreth did indeed find himself in the clearing he sought. Along the edges young trees had made great strides toward reclaiming the forest.

Dag Zoreth slid down from his horse. He was unaccustomed to riding, and the trip had introduced him to a legion of unfamiliar muscles. Though the journey from his home in Darkhold had been long and hard, his body had adamantly refused to take on strength and muscle. There was nothing wrong with his will, however, and he thrust aside the throbbing pain as a lesser man might flick aside a fly. He left his horse to graze and began to circle the clearing.

The site was familiar and strange all at once. The buildings were gone, of course, burned to the ground in that terrible raid more than twenty years ago. Here and there he caught a glimpse of charred wood or scattered foundation stone under a tangle of spring-flowering blackberry brambles, but the village of his birth was irrevocably gone. And lost with the village was the heritage Dag Zoreth had come to reclaim.

Frustrated now, he looked around for something, anything, that would provide a market The years had changed him even more than they had altered the forest, and he no longer saw things with the eyes of a boy who had yet to weather his seventh winter. Then, his whole world had been comprised of this tiny village in the foothills south of Jundar’s Hill. His world was wider now and vastly different from anything he could have imagined during his years in this sheltered enclave different from everything, of course, but the raid that had ended his childhood.

Dag Zoreth took another long breath, massaging his temples with both hands as he dredged his memory. A sudden, sharp image came to him: a red leaf framed with jagged points, drifting lazily down, and then disappearing against the brighter crimson of his brother’s shattered chest.

He spun on his heel, quickly, as one might retreat from some chance-glimpsed horror. Tilting back his head, he scanned the treetops. There had been an oak tree over the place where his brother died. There were oaks in plenty, but none of them looked familiar. Perhaps he should have come in autumn, when the leaves turned color. He smiled slightly at the foolish thought and shook it aside as quickly as it came. He had the power to claim what was his, and the will to use it. Why should he wait?

But the years had changed and filtered his memories, just as the forest had closed in around his childhood home. There was no mortal way that Dag Zoreth could retrieve what was lost. Fortunately, the gods were less encumbered by issues of time and mortality, and they were occasionally willing to share their insight, one glimpse at a time, with their mortal followers.

Though he dreaded the task before him, the young priest’s hands were steady as he pulled the medallion bearing the holy symbol of Cyric from beneath his purple and black tabard. Dag Zoreth wore the colors of his god at all times, even though he knew better than to go abroad flaunting the priestly vestments and symbols of Cyric. It was Dag Zoreth’s opinion, based on his own experience and his own ambitions, that people who claimed no reason to fear and hate Cyric’s priesthood, simply hadn’t lived long enough to find one.

The young priest closed his eyes and clenched his fist around the medallion. His lips moved as he murmured a prayer for divine guidance.

His answer came suddenly, with a cruel force that slammed Dag Zoreth onto his knees, and into the past. “The hymn,” he muttered though a rictus grin of pain. “Cyric must have heard the hymn.” Then the thought was gone, swept away by more than twenty fleeing years.

Dag Zoreth was a child again, kneeling not in a new-growth forest, but in the darkest corner of a smoke-filled cottage. His small, skinny arms clutched a butter churn, and his black eyes were wide with terror as the bar on the door splintered and gave way. Three men strode in, their eyes burning with something that both repelled and fascinated the shrinking child.

One of them backhanded Dag’s mother, who had leaped forward to defend her children with the only weapon that came to hand—a long-handled iron skillet. The ridiculous weapon fell from her hand and clattered to the hearth. Again the man struck out, and his mother’s head snapped back. She went down hard, striking the hearthstone with an audible crack. Blood bloomed like an obscene crimson flower against her too-pale face. But somehow she found the strength to haul herself up, to dart past the man who strode purposefully toward the wide cradle at the far side of the room. There lay Dag’s twin sisters, shrieking with fear and rage and flailing the smoky air with their tiny pink fists. His mother threw herself across the cradle, scooping both little girls into her arms and shielding them with her own body as she cried out in prayer to Tyr.

The man drew a sword and swung it up high. Mercifully, the churn obscured Dag’s view and he never actually saw the blow fall, but he knew what the sudden silence meant. In the rough, angry exchange that followed the sword’s fall, Dag read his own fate.

He shrank back, flattening himself into the indentation his impish little sister had carved into the thick wattle-and-daub wall. It was a hiding place for her “treasures”—smooth or shiny rocks, a bluebird feather, and whatever other small wonders she discovered around the village. Dag fervently wished that his sister had dug deeper, turning her trove into an escape doot. He held his breath and willed himself to disappear into the crevice, the smoke, and the shadows.

The men searched the cottage, tossing over the chests and beds in their haste to find the boy before they were overcome by smoke from the smoldering thatch roof. They did not move the churn, probably because there was no apparent place behind it for a child to hide. Finally they gave up the search, concluding that Dag had bolted as his sister had done.

She had left the cottage well before the fire had started. Ever curious, she had gone to investigate the noise caused by the approaching raiders, evading their mother’s frantically grasping hands and wriggling through the one small window left unshuttered. Her old night tunic had caught and torn on the shutter hook. Instinctively she’d clapped her hand to the little crimson birthmark on her bare hip— no doubt a defensive gesture honed by Dag’s frequent teasing. Then she was gone, the soles of her small feet flashing as she spilled headfirst out of the window. Dag wondered, briefly, what had become of her.

Dag waited until the men had left his home, then he slipped out of his cubby and crept over to the side window. He left his mother and his baby sisters behind without a glance, all the while hating himself for his cowardice. Though he was but a child, he was the son of a great paladin. He should have fought. He should have found a way to save his family.

His thin fingers shook as he tugged at the latch holding the shutters closed. For a few terrible moments he feared that he would not be able to open the window, that he would be forced to choose between dying in the smoldering building, or walking out into the arms of the men who had come to steal him away. Terror lent him strength, and he tore at the latch until his fingers bled.

The metal bar gave way suddenly. The shutters swung outward, and Dag all but tumbled over the low sill and into the herb garden that framed the side of the house. He lay where he fell, crouching low amid the fragrant plants until he was certain that his precipitous move hadn’t drawn attention. After a few moments, he cautiously lifted his head and darted a wide-eyed look over the clearing.

What he saw was like something from the lowest layers of the Abyss, horrors that no son of Tyr’s holy warrior should ever have had to endure.

Mounted raiders circled the village, swords raised to cut down any who might try to escape. The thunder of their horses’ hooves echoed through a hellish chorus of voices: the shouts of the raiders, the screams of the dying, the terrible keening grief of those who were yet alive. Above it all was the roar and hiss of the hungry fires. Most of the village houses burned freely, and bright flames leaped and danced against the blackness of the night sky.

Nearby a roof timber crashed to the ground, sending an explosion of sparks into the smoke-filled clearing. The sudden light illuminated still more horrors. Crumpled, blood-sodden bodies lay about the ground, looking more like slaughtered geese than the people Dag had known from his first breath. Surely that couldn’t be Jerenith the trapper over there, gutted like a deer, his own bloody knife lying at his feet. The young woman draped limply over the stone circle of the village well, inexplicably naked and nearly black and purple with soot and terrible bruises, could not be pretty Peg Yarlsdotter. Wasn’t it just this morning that she’d given Dag a honey cake, and kindly assured him that his father would return to the village before first snow?

A familiar voice, raised in a familiar cry, seized the boy’s attention. A wave of relief and joy swept through him. His father, the bravest and most fearsome Knight of Tyr in all the land, had returned at last! The child’s terror melted, and with it disappeared the pain of long days spent watching for his father’s horse, envying the boys whose fathers stayed in the village to tend less exalted tasks.

Suddenly brave, Dag leaped up from the herb garden and prepared to race to his father’s side. There could be no better or safer place in all of Faerfin than on the broad back of a paladin’s war-horse, shielded by his father’s strong sword arm and implacable faith.

He ran three steps before he realized his mistake. The voice was not his father’s after all, but that of Byorn, his older brother. His brother was fighting, as his father would have fought. As he, Dag, should have fought.

Not yet fourteen, not quite accounted a man, Byorn had the courage to pick up a sword and face down the men who rode into his village with cold steel and burning torches. And his voice, when he called out to Tyr for strength and justice, held the promise of matching his father’s deep, ringing tones.

Hero worship battled with terror in Dag’s dark eyes as he watched his brother flail about with a blood-streaked weapon. It was plain even to Dag that Byorn lacked skill and strength, but the youth fought with a fervor that kept two grown swordsmen at bay, and left neither unscathed. A third man sprawled on his back nearby, his head lolling to one side on a throat torn open, and his eyes still wide with the surprising knowledge that Death could wear a beardless face.

No wonder it was Byorn who wore the family ring, thought Dag with more admiration than envy Their father had given Byorn the ring not only because he was the oldest of the five children, but because he was the most worthy.

The ring.

Once again, Dag’s fear retreated, this time before the grim fire of purpose. He was not quite seven, but he sensed in his bones and his blood the importance of that ring. He believed he would have done so even if he had never heard the fireside stories of the great Samular, a noble Knight of Tyr and his own distant ancestor. The ring must be kept safe, even if the children of Samular could not. By now, Dag understood with cold certainty that there would be no safety, no rescue, for any of them.

He crept around the back of the house and into the cover provided by the remnants of a neighbor’s summer garden. On his hands and knees, he scuttled between long rows of withering vines toward the place where his brother stood and fought like a true son of Samular’s blood. He was almost in the clear when Byorn slipped and fell. He heard the raider’s shout of triumph and saw the killing stroke descend.

With a sharp, painful gasp, Dag dragged in a lungful of smoky air to fuel a scream of rage and horror and protest. All that emerged from his lips was a strangled whimper. Nevertheless, he kept moving steadily forward until he reached Byorn’s side.

His brother lay still, horribly still, in a silent patch of blood-soaked ground. None of the raiders paid Byorn any heed now that he was no longer putting up a fight. They’d left the boy at once and turned their attention to ransacking the few remaining buildings. Dag understood: they were searching for the descendants of Samular. That was the only treasure this tiny, hidden village had to offer. He had heard the men in his own house, berating the soldier who had killed two valuable infant girls with a stroke meant only for their mother. Byorn’s death must also have been a mistake. The men had come for children, and to Dag’s adoring eyes, Byorn was already a man grown. With a sword in his hand and a battle-prayer to Tyr on his lips, Byorn must have fooled the raiders, as well.

Dag took his brother’s limp hand in his. He tugged at the family ring, all the while fearing that Byorn’s fist would clench to protect and keep, even in death, what was rightfully his. But valiant Byorn was truly gone, leaving the battle in the hands of his younger brother—a boy of nimble mind, to be sure, but cursed with a body too thin and frail to ever bear the burden and glory of Tyr’s service.