Grimenna Page 10

  She had just finished speaking when suddenly her aunt lifted her head towards the stairwell, like a hound sensing something amiss. Paiva followed her gaze and heard the echo of loud voices from up above. Bessil looked back at her and frowned, swallowing the last of her wine, and rose to her feet to investigate. Paiva followed her up the winding stairwell, curious of the commotion sounding out in the great hall.

  There were guards and rangers surrounding the Wildermen before the fire, who were on their feet shouting at Warden Yulin. Renn stood quietly staring into the fire.

  “What is the matter here?” Bessil cried as she rushed protectively to Yulin’s side.

  “The Lord has disappeared,” Yulin muttered irritably. Bessil gaped at him.

  “Disappeared? Are there dark spirits loose in the Keep?”

  “No, on his own accord. He has taken a turn for the worse. I am afraid he has left a letter informing us to leave his legacy to the Lady Ceitra, and that he would be buried next to his son and wife in the Tomb of the Forefathers.”

  “By my soul,” Bessil whispered. She touched her forehead nervously.

  “Have you searched the Keep? Are you certain he hasn’t flung himself from the tower?” Renn asked bitterly.

  “He’s not in the Keep.” Yulin turned back to Renn. “He took his horse. Where would he go?”

  “Wherever he is I hope he rots,” spat Mikal. “Let him die. When an animal’s sick, it goes off into the woods to die.”

  “Renn, you’re not an animal, you have a conscience,” Yulin said, ignoring Mikal.

  “Let him die,” Mikal protested. “You don’t owe him anything. He won’t forgive you whether you keep him from his peace or let him have it.”

  “It’s a sin,” another Wilderman said. “It is a sin to take your own life. There are men branded for such attempts.”

  “He is not well,” Yulin said loyally defending his Lord. “Rennik, please, come help me search for him. You are not an animal. It will haunt you for the rest of your days.”

  “Have you checked the Tomb?” Renn asked.

  “Yes. Empty.”

  “Don’t do it Renn,” Mikal said warningly. “He doesn’t deserve it.”

  Paiva watched as Renn lifted his eyes from the fire and sighed. She could feel the hatred radiating from the Wildermen towards their Lord who had thrown away their lives. She understood Renn’s silence — how he did not at once jump to help Yulin, who grew impatient.

  “Damn you then,” Yulin hissed and turned on his heel. “I haven’t time to waste on you.” He stormed off, leaving his guards to surround the Wildermen and threaten them into silence with the points of their spears.

  Bessil clutched Paiva firmly by the elbow and began to haul her back to the kitchens, cursing under her breath, but Paiva pulled away. “Renn,” she called out.

  He looked up from the fire, his pale eyes flicking to hers curiously. Bessil reached again and clutched her elbow firmer.

  “Go, Renn,” Paiva said. “If you have the power to save someone, you must try. Otherwise it is as bad as murder.”

  The word ‘murder’ seemed to startle him. Shame swept across his face as he hurriedly returned his eyes to the fire.

  “Leave him be,” Bessil sneered. “You have no right to meddle.”

  “Yulin.” Renn’s voice echoed out into the hall, stopping the Warden in his tracks. “Get me a horse.”

  Chapter 7

  Renn sat atop the finest horse he had ridden in years. When Yulin had stormed into the stables the startled grooms had gawked as the Master Warden ordered a Knight’s charger saddled and readied. Yulin’s own horse was already prepared, nervous and alert. Renn lost patience with the grooms who tripped over their own feet and argued about which saddle belonged to the charger. He grabbed the bit and bridle from the nearest groom and threw it into the horse’s mouth, who tossed its head in protest. The grooms fell silent as Renn swung the stall open and led the horse out, shrinking back from a slew of bitter curses that flew at them from the unkempt Wilderman. Yulin cocked an eyebrow at Renn, then grabbed his own horse and led them out into the streets where he had three mounted rangers waiting for him, each with a tall, thin hunting hound at his side and a torch in hand.

  Renn grabbed a fistful of the horse’s mane and swung himself up on its bare back, not minding that it tossed its head and stamped its feet. It was a fine horse, its mane and coat slippery with grooming oils and its body coiled with well-conditioned muscles. Yet as fine and as tall as it was, Renn felt a pang of longing for his Berg horse.

  “What do you think?” Yulin asked him, watching the dirty young man before him stroke a calming hand down the black horse’s neck. Renn was silent a moment, his face lost in the obscurity of shadow.

  “I remember a place,” he murmured. He then urged the horse forwards and began a trot towards the bailey where there were men at arms, guards and rangers flooding through the gates with torches and hounds to search the woods. He called over his shoulder to Yulin, “There is a place off in the woods, towards the river. He met my mother there.”

  — «» —

  The gatekeeper nodded to Yulin as they passed, but gave Renn a dirty, hateful look. They trotted out into the farmlands where the sky was wide and open above them, with a ghostly moon that hung shrouded in wisps of pale clouds. Renn circled his horse, who was excited from the noise of thundering hooves and the bay of hounds scattering across the farmlands. Yulin and the rangers sat on their still mounts, watching him. He searched through the fog of memory, back to a boyhood that seemed to have unfolded a century ago.

  He felt the glance of pain as the memory flooded back to him. He remembered his father mounting his finest charger, Odrik atop a palfrey and himself on his pony. His father had been happy then, his beard golden and untouched by the gray of age, his eyes not so lost. He rode them down through the farm fields, surveying his land with pride. He talked to them of forefathers, of times past, of histories that Renn had not paid attention to. Odrik had ridden alongside father, his golden head tilted up, listening raptly to every word.

  Behind them followed their escorts, a small score of men at arms and a knight with a falcon on his wrist. Renn remembered being more interested in the falcon, waiting anxiously for the moment when the tall knight would strip off its blind and send it on a hunt.

  Pratermora had lead them into the forest where he had continued his talk with Odrik, telling him of trees that were older than the blood of man and stones that were filled with memories. They went onwards to the river along a small woodcutters’ road, and there he decided to rest the horses and called for wine and a small meal of figs and bread.

  Renn remembered how happy he was to sit in the dirt of the riverbank alongside his father. The jewels in his rings glittered like the water as he lifted food to his mouth, his mouth that was filled with laughter that day. When they were done eating he left the men at arms and took his two boys for a walk through the trees. Renn had been overjoyed, for he had never spent a moment with his father where there had not been the presence of some other person, whether a maid, a servant, a guard, or a knight.

  It was a long walk. They wound their ways through the mossy trees and the senior Pratermora seemed to have lost all pretense. He was no longer a lord, but a simple man, a father. He spoke with carefree ease, telling tales of his own boyhood and its adventures, forgetting any lessons he meant to impart on heritage and history.

  The sun-warmed trees filled the air with fresh, invigorating scents. The moss was soft beneath their feet, their laughter rang out and shivered through the beams of light that flooded through the cathedral of trees.

  Of a sudden his father broke into a run, his long legs pounding the earth, leaving his boys shrieking in delight as they scrabbled to catch up to him. He came to a stop at a huge slab of granite rock that protruded from the earth, thickly intertwined with mossy roots and cre
eping things. There he caught his breath and went to sit beneath it and told them how once long ago he had been on a hunt, chasing a stag through the trees, when he had stumbled across this rock. It had been twilight, he said. The trees were growing dark with a red sun. The stag vanished, bounding over the rock and away, startling a figure that had been lying asleep in the moss beneath it.

  He spoke of a beautiful woman, her hair as black as crow feathers, her eyes silver like a fish’s belly. In her hair was a tangle of moss and crushed flowers, and her clothes were no more than tattered homespun wool. His heart had been lost to him right there. She was no more than a peasant, hiding from wolves and running from nightmares. He had leapt from his horse to throw his cloak about her.

  Odrik had looked disappointed when his father told them this.

  “You found mother under a rock?” he asked indignantly.

  Pratermora laughed and tousled his golden curls. “Not just any rock. This rock,” he chuckled.

  Renn had thought it to be the most beautiful story he had ever heard. He remembered it long after his mother had been taken from them and his father’s eyes had begun to grow sad.

  The knight with the falcon had come in search of them by then, and when he arrived his father became a Lord again, shedding his happy memories and returning to the poise of duty and command. They trailed back to the horses and the other men while Renn had wished to have stolen only one minute more in the sheltering peace of his mother’s rock.

  — «» —

  Renn lifted his head towards the river, pulling himself out of the memory and swallowing a bitter taste in his mouth. Yulin waited, the black charger pawing the ground nervously.

  “Well?” Yulin asked. “Do you remember?”

  “Vaguely,” Renn answered, then swung the horse around and gave him his heading. He grabbed a fistful of mane and lurched forward into a gallop, streaking across the meadows and farm fields like a black arrow. The others flew after him, the hounds howling on the heels of their masters.

  — «» —

  It was hard in the dark to recollect the place. The trees had grown since he had been a boy and the forest floor was twisted and narrow with the overgrowth of roots and slash. Guided only by his distant memory he swung down from the horse when he thought he had reached the place where his father had stopped to eat figs and wine by the riverbank some twenty years ago. He could not say for sure, but he hoped he was headed in the right direction.

  Yulin and his rangers dismounted their horses and the hounds began their search through the trees, circling and sniffing and panting hard from the exertion of running behind the horses. Renn could only smell the oily wick of the torches burning and the dampness of trees and river.

  He grabbed a torch from a ranger without a word. The man’s face twisted into a sneer. Yulin ordered them all to take a different course and they began their search. Renn darted ahead, slinking into the shadows and swinging the torch low over the ground, searching for signs of trespassing.

  “You can’t let a Wilderman like him off loose like that,” he heard the ranger grunt to Yulin. “He can’t be trusted. We might all get out throats cut.”

  Yulin cursed the man out, then their flickering torches disappeared into the trees and Renn was alone.

  He cleared his mind, pushed aside all thoughts that would impair his search. He would remain calm, for being desperate or excited would cause mistakes. He searched, as if he was hunting a Folka and not a sick old man.

  He soon came across a soft print in the flickering light, so faint he almost missed it. He stooped low and inspected it, finding it to be the stamped imprint of a shoed hoof. There was no mistaking the bars in the heel of the shoe: a mark of a Keep smithy. With a quick intake of breath he picked up the trail, raking through the slash until he came across signs of a struggle. In the soft loam and crushed, rotten leaf litter of the forest floor was the tale of a horse spooking, its hoof prints staggered and confused. Branches were broken and snapped overhead, and he followed the jolted direction the horse took, its stride lengthened into a panicked run.

  He stopped when a muffled sound reached him in the dark. A deep, fast breathing. The hair on his nape stood on end and he felt uselessly for his dagger that had been taken from him. He crept forwards, pushing the torchlight ahead of him.

  An eye reflected at him from the shadows of the slash, wide and white with fear. There was a pale horse lying on its side, panting hard, its legs tangled beneath it, torn and twisted in spiky brambles. Its reins were caught in a tree branch, pulling its head at an awful cant sideways. When it caught sight of Renn’s scraggly shape moving towards it, it blew a hot breath through its nose and tried to lever itself up, but only managed to further twist itself into a tangle.

  Renn swung his head around and roared for Yulin at the top of his lungs. The dogs howled in response, and then Yulin’s distant voice shouted back.

  Renn skirted around the horse and found a man’s bare foot prints. His heart lurched in his chest as he followed them deeper into the trees. Then the shape of the great rock loomed ahead of him like a menacing, sleeping giant that ate men and spat out their bones.

  Crumpled in the loam beneath it, like a bird that had fallen from the sky into a disjointed, broken death lay his father. His silk robes were splayed open, ripped and tattered from his struggle through the forest. He wore no more than his nightshift beneath, his legs and feet bare and muddied. One arm was twisted under him, his head thrown back and his mouth slacked open. His eyes were closed. Renn did not know if he breathed.

  For a moment Renn could not move. He simply stared at his father, unsure he had not stumbled into a terrible dream he could not wake from. Then the hounds howled, coming closer, tearing through the bush. He staggered forward and dropped to his knees beside his father, casting the torchlight over him.

  “Father…” he croaked, feeling his bowels turn to water as acid rose in his mouth. A strange smell wafted up to him: sour and rancid, like meat covered in spices to hide its decay. Something glinted in the torchlight and Renn retrieved a broken vial that protruded from the leaves. He sniffed it and with a curse tossed it away. The pungent, herbal aroma evoked unbidden memories.

  After his mother had vanished and his father’s eyes had begun to grow sad, and it was not uncommon for Renn to catch a whiff of that smell on his breath. His beard smelled of it, and his sleeping chambers. Renn had never known what it was, but whatever was in the drinks he took washed the sadness from his eyes. A blank, empty look would replace it. A numbness of sorts, something that made him so tired no sadness or unhappiness could keep him from his sleep.

  Carefully, Renn lifted his father’s head into his lap. The old man moaned and sent relief spiraling down Renn’s spine. It was his breath that was so fowl, for it smelled like death.

  “Father,” Renn said loudly, shaking the old man gently. The Lord Pratermora’s eyes flew open, blindly circling and darting through the shadowy trees.

  “Odrik?” he croaked, as if he had heard the voice of his dead son.

  Renn felt tears sting at his eyes. “No father, it is Rennik,” he answered tightly.

  “Go away.” His eyes clamped shut and his mouth clacked in a nervous twitch. Then he moaned and tossed his head, clawing at his face with limp, crooked hands.

  “It hurts,” he slurred. “I cannot … bear you near.”

  Neither could Renn, yet he clung to his father until Yulin broke through the trees, slashing at branches with his sword. He surveyed the tableau quickly, then lurched to his knees beside Renn and grabbed hold of the Lord.

  “Evrik,” Yulin shook him. “Evrik my good man, what have you done to yourself?”

  The Lord remained unresponsive and limp.

  “What is it?” Yulin breathed, pulling back one of his eyelids to shine light into a foggy eye. “What has he done to himself?” Yulin threw Renn a hounded look.


  “There was a vial of that tonic. That sleeping tonic … he used to drink.”

  Yulin nodded, then shoved Renn out of the way and took the Lord’s head in his own lap. Without a moment’s hesitation he tilted the Lord’s head sideways and shoved his fingers deep inside his throat. Renn looked away as his father gagged and spewed the sickening contents of his stomach over the forest floor. The stench made him weak and he crawled away, staggering to his feet where he went to stare at the shadowy rock and listen to the gurgles of his father’s purge, fighting to keep his own stomach from spilling.

  Yulin was quick about his work. After voiding Lord Pratermora’s guts he wrapped his chilled body in his own red cloak, then ordered the rangers to carry him out to the horses. After wiping his hands in the dirt, he rose to face Renn.

  “Come, Rennik,” he said strongly. “The sooner we get him back to the Keep the sooner we can help him. You did well. He will remember when he wakes.”

  “No, he won’t,” Renn returned bitterly.

  Yulin sighed. “Come, Rennik.”

  “I didn’t kill Odrik,” Renn said.

  A long silence lapsed between them as Yulin registered what he had said. He blinked, shocked to hear such a confession after all these years. “What?” he asked, unable to keep the surprise from his voice.

  Renn turned to Yulin slowly, his face grim and taught with the sickness he felt. “We fought up on the ramparts, over Ceitra,” Renn said quietly. “Odrik had become hateful and cruel and Ceitra was suffering for it. I confronted her about it, I tried to console her, defend her, because I was completely besotted by her. When Odrik came upon us he flew into a rage. He warned me to get away from her, but with foolish valor I stood my ground boldly to defend her, fearing that his rage would turn on her. Then we fought as we never had. Odrik beat me within an inch of my life. I fought him back, but I was going to lose. Ceitra simply stood there watching us, but she had this funny little smile on her lips. As if she enjoyed the spectacle. My nose broke under Odrik’s fist and I fell to the floor, hardly able to see. But what I did see I will never forget.