Chapter 9 - Dangerous Silence.
The main tower of the Forest Watch stood an hour and a half's ride from Ockhaven, where the road of packed earth gave way to a narrow strip of gravel between two rows of old boundary stones.
The forest began three kilometers out, and the air that came from it was a different air altogether, heavy and cool even at the end of August.
The tower was built of dark stone, four floors high, with archers' openings on every one of them, and a narrow lookout platform crowned its roof of black slate. Around it lay a small fortified yard with a stable, a storehouse and a long barracks for the watchmen.
The gates of the yard stood open, and two watchmen went still at the posts as the royal party rode in, their eyes fixed straight ahead.
Sir Aurey dismounted first, his black plate ringing dully against the stone, and he took in the yard with a single sweep of his eyes before stepping aside. Five knights spread out behind him, while Edith swung down from her saddle unaided.
Sir Bram Wellard, master of the Forest Watch, was waiting for the queen's arrival at the door of the tower.
He was past fifty. A uniform coat the color of wet moss stretched across his broad shoulders, his grey hair was cropped short, and the skin of his face had been tanned hard by wind and by the nearness of the forest. His right hand held a helmet, the fingers on it perfectly still, while he himself stood facing Edith without lowering his chin or shifting the set of his shoulders.
He bowed briefly, no more than a slight dip of the head.
"Your Majesty."
"I want to see the site," Edith said, crossing the yard and stopping in front of him.
"As you command," the watch master answered.
He signaled to one of his men, who brought him a horse a moment later. The royal party, Bram and three watchmen took to their saddles and set out for the boundary of the Great Forest across the green plains of Waldruhm.
They came up on it through ordinary woodland, where pines and firs stood along the tree line, each about as thick as a grown man could get his arms around.
Fifty paces further in the ground began to fall away, and out of it rose other trees, so colossal that the mind refused to place them in any category it already knew.
Trunks ten and twelve meters across went up into the sky as sheer walls of grey-brown bark, split along their whole length by deep vertical grooves, in any one of which a man could have lain on his side and gone unseen from six paces off.
The first branches began forty meters up, and from below they were all but impossible to make out in the half-dark that the closed canopy held overhead. Sunlight broke through in narrow, whitish columns that stood between the trunks.
The bed of rotted needles and last year's leaves gave under every step with a soft, quiet sound, while the roots ran out from the trunks in wide curving ridges, rising a meter and a half to two meters above the ground and forming closed hollows between them, where moss glistened wet and the cold collected.
"The watch found it toward evening on the fourth day of the Hunt," Bram said, leading the way forward.
"My men scouted the ground toward the end of the Sacred Hunt and... found this."
They came out onto a stretch where the grass was flattened in broad patches and the earth between the trees was torn up, and the smell that hung there was heavy and rusty.
The bodies had been carried away, leaving only the traces.
Edith dismounted and walked slowly between the trees, stopping where steel had been driven into the root of an old oak.
A shard of blade some ten centimeters long jutted out of the wood at an angle, having gone into living timber as easily as into butter, and the steel carried a runic engraving, visible in the faint gleam of the etching.
"An Order weapon, by the look of it. Runed steel. Second class of forging," Bram said, coming to stand beside her and looking at the same fragment.
"Besides the broken blades, some were struck out of their owners' hands and some stayed in them. But the hands were found apart from the bodies."
Sir Aurey stood motionless while his eyes worked across the clearing from left to right, marking every torn patch of ground, and came back to the center.
"Show me the tracks," Edith said.
Bram led them further left, down a short slope to where the soil was softened by the stream close by, and there went down on one knee, pointing out the enormous prints of the beast.
There were six points of pressure to every cycle of movement, set in pairs, and each print ran the length of four grown men's strides and the width of three.
Edith stood over the print for a long while, tracing its edge from one end to the other.
"I've seen tracks like these before, twice. Once when I was Master Sennor's apprentice, and once when I had only just taken over his post. They were always inside the inner boundary of the forest. Seventy meters from the edge itself, at the very most," Bram said, rising from his knee.
"And now?" Edith asked, raising her eyes to him.
"Now..." Bram began, straightening fully and turning his face toward the forest.
"About three hundred paces past the inner boundary."
Wind went through overhead, and the canopy answered it with a distant rustling.
"There is only one creature that fits the description completely... this was an Urs, plainly. It went in and it came back out. Judging by the depth, carrying something. Or someone."
Aurey turned to Edith, who went on looking at the print and only then straightened slowly, adjusting her cloak and taking two steps to the side.
"What has changed, Wellard? You've served on this boundary for thirty years. What has changed these past months? Why has the forest's guardian decided to come out?"
"It started with the animals. From the beginning of summer they began leaving the forest for the tree line, in packs. That's normal with a large predator about, only there has always been just the one large predator here. Then they simply went quiet. The forest went silent. Completely," Bram answered, meeting her eyes straight on.
"The men of the Forest Watch have a rule: if on a patrol along the inner boundary you notice that the forest has gone quiet, it means the guardian itself is close by, and you are bound to leave that place as fast as you can. But now, even at the outer boundary, from the western edge to the eastern, the whole forest has gone still. I ran a patrol myself, in spite of the risk of meeting the guardian, and I found no tracks and no other sign of its presence... until this," he went on, the muscles working at his jaw.
"This..." Bram said, looking around the clearing, and nodded toward the tracks.
"This is plainly his doing, and at the same time it's nothing like him."
"Could anything have angered it?" Edith asked.
"I'm afraid I cannot answer that question, Your Majesty."
Aurey shifted his weight from one foot to the other without a word, moving his eyes from the watch master to the queen.
"I hear you, Wellard," Edith said with a slow nod.
"I want your written report on every anomalous event at the boundary over the past six months. Everything that seemed insignificant. Animal behavior, disturbances in the terrain, unusual sounds. Everything."
"I'll send it to you as soon as I can."
Edith started back toward her horse and Aurey moved after her, while Bram stayed standing at the print, looking to where the trees closed into a solid wall.
The last knight had taken three steps toward his horse when something cracked deep in the forest, and he turned around.
Between two gigantic trunks, in the gap where the greenish half-light lay thickest, a man came into view from behind a jutting ridge of root.
The Green Order breastplate had been torn away almost entirely, held by a single surviving strap buckle at his left side and hanging off him as a ragged, uneven shard.
Under it swung a mail shirt, split in several places so that the rings bristled outward in sharp loops. The right pauldron was gone, while the left held on by the sinews of a leather mounting that had lost its shape.
His greaves and gauntlets were intact, but covered in a layer of dried mud and dark streaks of dried blood.
He walked with one palm braced against the bark of the nearest giant.
"Sir Aurey!" shouted the knight who had spotted him.
Aurey spun around, his hand going to his hilt in the same motion.
The survivor moved slowly and heavily, putting visible effort into every step, and when he raised his eyes and saw the watchmen together with the royal party, his face flickered and set again.
The survivor's lips moved slightly, but instead of words all that came out was a movement of air that assembled into no sound at all. His palm slid down the bark, his legs gave under him, and he went face first into the forest floor.
Bram and two of his men reached him at a run, and the watch master went down on one knee beside him, turned him onto his back in a single movement and set two fingers to his throat below the jaw before lifting his head.
"He's still alive."
Edith stood over them and looked into the survivor's face, in no doubt that this was one of the five missing men, since the mark of the Green Order had survived on the intact fragment of his breastplate.
Aurey came up shoulder to shoulder beside her and said nothing, studying the man on the ground, while Edith drew her brows together and turned her eyes into the depth of the forest.
"I don't like this at all," Edith said.
"We're leaving. Now."
The knights exchanged a look for a fraction of a second and moved without a word, two of them taking the sides, a third catching up the legs and a fourth steadying the head until the body hung clear of the ground. The fifth took position behind them facing the forest, one hand laid on his hilt.
They set the unconscious body across a saddle while the rest were already mounted.
The party started back, while Bram hung behind and looked to where the man had come from, at a road that had begun in the darkness beyond the trees and broken off here.
He ran his eyes over the trunks around him, over the lower tiers of the canopy, over the gaps between the root ridges, to where it darkened and where the resinous air stood without moving, to where, if a man looked long enough, it usually began to seem that something was looking back.
This time, though, the place was uncommonly empty.
Bram followed the others without adding a word to what had already been said.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
The sun had already passed its zenith when the streets of Ockhaven filled again with life and with the noise of townspeople looking ahead to one of the great events of the year in Waldruhm.
Children with wooden swords divided the air between them at the crossroads, casting themselves as duelists of the tournament.
At that same hour the corridor of the Green Order's headquarters ran long and straight, cut into the white stone of the castle wing back in the days of the first Born, and in all the centuries since nothing in it had changed but the floor stone, worn down by the boots of hundreds of men. Narrow arrow-slit windows let in bands of daylight that fell across the flagstones at even intervals.
Sir Alistair Sterling walked alone and unhurried, his green cloak fastened and his hands free, while the greatsword on his belt mount tapped its scabbard faintly against his cuisse with every step.
"Sir Alistair," came a voice behind him.
Sterling stopped and turned halfway, finding behind him a knight in the Order's full plate, his gorget buckled and his head bare, the helmet held under his elbow.
By the look of him the knight was no more than twenty-five, and three more stood at his shoulder, likewise bare-headed, likewise in full harness, coming no closer and showing no sign of dispersing.
Sterling stayed where he was and said nothing, giving him room to go on, while the knight took two steps forward and halted at a distance that was not yet a breach of rank.
"Don't take this for insolence, but I want to understand..." he said, tightening his grip on the helmet under his elbow.
"Our brothers went out on the Hunt five days ago. Thirteen men, not counting the other fighters. Two came back. Two, sir. One of them isn't from our order, a local adventurer, and the other isn't even from our lands, and unconscious at that. Not one of ours. And what are we doing? We're hanging banners at the arena and cleaning our weapons for a tournament..."
Sterling let a short pause stand, his head still turned and his eyes set on the knight's.
"Have you said everything you wanted to say?"
The knight set his teeth, while one of the three behind him shifted his weight a little.
"Outsiders went into the sacred forest. It was their people who angered the thing that lives there. It's because of them our brothers are lying somewhere in the thickets now. And that magister from the Trade League is sitting in a castle cell alive and whole while we get ready to entertain the townsfolk," the knight added, his voice shaking on the last word.
"Tell me, sir, where is the justice in that?"
Sterling turned to face him fully, without hurry, and covered four steps forward, stopping a pace from the knight.
He stood a head taller, so that the young knight had to lift his chin to hold his gaze level, and the horizontal scar on the commander's left cheek stood out with particular clarity in the band of light from the side.
The commander was in no hurry to answer and stayed silent a few seconds longer.
"What is your name?"
"Sir Rowan Hart... sir."
"Hart," Sterling repeated.
"You think I don't know how many of ours didn't come back?"
Hart closed his mouth and gave no answer.
"Twenty-three men went into that forest. Thirteen of ours and ten free fighters," Sterling said.
"I know their names. Every one. So there is no need to explain to me what happened."
"Then why the tournament, sir? Why now?"
Sterling turned and walked on down the corridor, throwing the words out ahead of himself, but loud enough for all four of them to hear every word.
"Because the decision was not made by you, or by me, or by your brothers standing behind you. Because your queen knows things you do not. And because your business right now, Hart, is to put on your helmet, take your post and do what you entered service to do."
He kept walking, while the muscles clenched at Hart's jaw.
"Justice will come when its time comes. And you will see it," Alistair added.
He reached the turn of the corridor and stopped there without looking back.
"Dismissed," he ordered.
The three behind Hart exchanged glances, while Hart himself stared at his commander's back for a long second, gripping the helmet under his elbow hard enough to whiten his knuckles.
He turned without a word and walked off the other way, and his friends went after him.
Sterling rounded the corner and stopped there, closing his eyes for a few moments, then opened them and looked out through a narrow arrow slit at the clouded sky beyond it before moving on.
The palace wing met Alistair with warm air, high ceilings and walls thick enough that the noise of the city, filling the afternoon with anticipation of tomorrow's tournament, barely came through them.
Sterling nodded to the sentry at the turn and climbed to the second tier by a wide staircase whose stone banisters had been polished to a faint shine by generations of hands.
The door to Ulrich Thorne's study stood ajar, and from behind it came a low voice, broken by pauses that gave away the handling of papers.
Sterling knocked twice on the door with a bent finger, and the voice behind it stopped.
"Come in."
Inside were two tables, one with papers laid out in an obvious working order, the other with a city map unrolled across it and several small figures set on it to mark the guard positions.
The walls carried nothing but a plan of Ockhaven under glass in a frame and the banner of Waldruhm on a wooden mount by the window.
Thorne himself stood at the table, his left palm pinning a corner of the map and a goose quill in the other hand, while the silver stag pauldron on his right shoulder caught the light and threw a thin band of it onto the ceiling.
A lean man in the clothes of a common laborer stood beside him, and he bowed at once and left.
"Alistair. Sit, if you like," Ulrich said without looking up, the quill still moving.
Sterling crossed to the nearest chair but did not sit, standing beside it instead and setting his helmet down on the seat, then bracing a palm on the back of it while his eyes ran over the map and its figures and settled on the point marking the arena.
"The tournament."
"The tournament," the Hand confirmed, setting the quill aside and lacing his fingers.
"In spite of what happened in the forest, the people are plainly set on having it," Ulrich added, glancing at Alistair and then returning his eyes to the map.
"They believe it was meant to happen. That it was the Mother Goddess's decision."
The Order's commander straightened and turned to the window.
"And the foreign woman who broke our laws and trespassed on forbidden ground, by that logic the Mother Goddess sent her too?" Sterling asked.
"Time moves on. For all our efforts to keep other powers from working on our culture and our statutes, they still manage to find a way in, and because of it the people of Waldruhm meet outsiders with curiosity more and more often, rather than with a sense of threat or risk," Thorne answered with a slight smirk.
Sterling stood at the window with his back to Thorne, looking out at the run of rooftops beyond which the distant white bulk of the city wall could be made out.
"Curiosity..." he repeated.
"The Trade League sends its agents to study the state of the forest, and two of them die along with more than twenty of our men. The death of ours is a tragedy and a cause for mourning. The death of theirs is a separate story, and by tomorrow somebody at the market will be retelling it so that the newcomers supposedly shared the fate of our brothers, which makes them bound to us by a common grief," Sterling went on, turning from the window, while Thorne did not argue, taking up the quill and carefully setting a small mark on the map beside the arena gates.
"Yes... water a culture long enough with other people's money and other people's stories, and at some point it starts growing in a different direction, even if the roots stay where they were," Ulrich said, his eyes on the map.
Sterling crossed from the window to the table and stopped opposite Thorne, folding his arms and looking at the markings on the map.
"What about Kyle?" he asked.
Thorne raised his head, understanding that Alistair had no wish to carry the previous subject any further.
"Alive. In as good health as is possible after what he did to his own nervous system. Her Majesty spoke with him last night."
"The result?"
"He told us enough to be useful. And little enough to remain valuable," Thorne answered with a shake of his head.
"A clever man. Not the kind of clever I care for, unfortunately."
"His people died in our forest on his orders. There are knights of ours who think he should answer for it now, without waiting for Her Majesty to reach a decision," Sterling said after a short silence.
Thorne held his gaze and took his time answering.
"Only among your knights?... Or do you think so yourself as well?"
"Do I look like a man who goes behind his queen's back?" Sterling asked, meeting his eyes.
Thorne nodded, straightening and clasping his hands behind his back.
"Kyle stays in the castle wing under guard until Her Majesty decides. That is not open to discussion. Not with you, not with your men, not with anyone. Tell me about the arena instead. Have you checked the guard schedule?"
Sterling looked at him for several seconds, then dropped his eyes to the map.
"I have. Three shifts, eight men to a detail, plus four mounted patrols around the perimeter."
Thorne came around the table and took a place beside Sterling on the other side of the map, studying the plan of the city with him in silence.
"Is the woman who survived still unconscious?" Sterling asked.
"According to the Archiater's last report, yes."
Sterling had no time to add anything to that, because there was movement in the doorway, and both of them lifted their heads.
Two people came into the Hand's study without knocking.
The first was tall, with dark blue hair cropped short and amber eyes. A black double-breasted uniform with red trim sat on him perfectly, the Aisengard crest showing in silver on the left breast and a decorative gold chain running from the right shoulder to the central buttons, while his face stayed symmetrical and unreadable.
A young woman kept station at his shoulder, with a straight dark blue fringe and the same porcelain cast of skin. She stopped in the doorway and came no further, while her amber eyes went around the study, resting on each corner in turn.
"Vector Fray. Lieutenant Schtance," Thorne said, breaking off from the map and laying the quill down on its edge.
Vector John Fray inclined his head slightly, marking a greeting.
"Master Thorne," he said, and his eyes slid to Sterling and held there a second.
"Commander," he added.
Sterling answered him with a level look and no bow of his own, while Fray went on, addressing Thorne.
"We've heard a good deal about the tournament that was announced. Tomorrow, if I understand correctly."
"Correct," Thorne confirmed.
"Waldruhm's martial traditions deserve respect. We have heard a great deal about how magnificent the warriors of the Green Order are, and so, if it does not conflict with protocol, we would take great pleasure in attending," Fray went on after a small pause.
Thorne threw a glance at Sterling, just for a second, while the silence in the study thickened.
Sterling looked at Fray, at the black uniform with its red trim, at the gold chain, at the vertical straightness with which the man stood.
"The tournament is open to observers. That is a tradition of the kingdom," Sterling answered, not taking his eyes off the Vector's amber ones.
"Seats will be allotted. I'll see to it before morning," Thorne said, breaking into the silence.
"You have our sincere thanks," Fray answered, repeating his short bow.
He turned and went out, and Schtance moved after him, drawing the door carefully closed behind her, after which the study returned to its earlier light and quiet.
Thorne took up the quill and set one more mark on the map, this time in the area of the arena's principal boxes, then laid it down and looked at Sterling.
The commander stood at the table without moving, counting to himself the moves that would follow from this permission, not one of which he liked.
"My men will see them in the box above the stands," he said.
"Yes," Thorne agreed.
"After what happened in the forest."
"Yes."
The study went quiet again.
"I should go," Sterling said, breathing out through his nose.
Thorne lowered his chin a finger's width and added nothing, while Sterling collected his helmet from the chair and left the study.
The Vector and the lieutenant moved down the long corridor at an even pace that was a working state for them both, equally suited to a headquarters, to a street, and to a place where they were being watched.
Fray looked ahead, then turned his head to the right and let his eyes pass across Schtance's face.
"Errøfeil?"
[Something wrong?] he asked, switching to Stalvorin, the native language of Aisengard.
Schtance did not break stride and did not turn to him, keeping her eyes directed forward, at the turn of the corridor.
"Stabiløm"
[All fine.] she answered.
"Urbøstad durøm fatigøtrett ørk."
[This place is simply starting to wear on me.]
Fray gave no immediate answer as they passed a sentry standing at a niche with a family crest in it, who followed the Aisengarders with his eyes.
"Præsisøklar."
[Be specific.] Fray said once they were past him.
Schtance let out a small breath through her nose.
"Hicøher totøll movøbeveg tardøtreg øk uneffiktøv. Populøk, decisøavgjør, konversøsamt."
[Everything here moves slowly and inefficiently. The people, the decisions, the conversations.]
"Dørk nøn querøklag. Observatøm."
[That is not a complaint. Simply an observation.] she added.
"Dørk Valdrum."
[That is Waldruhm.] Fray answered, registering the fact.
"Tardøm hicøher kånne judikvørdet intentøbevisst arkøbygg åv ordønsyst. Ølldei strøktured totøll — åv løvex tøl konversøsamt — utøslik extørytr pressøstress cessøslutted impulstøt antøfør attingønåed kjørn."
[The slowness here can be judged less as a flaw in the system than as deliberate architecture. They have built everything, from the laws to the conversations, so that outside pressure loses its momentum before it reaches the center.]
Schtance cut a look at him out of the corner of her eye.
"Ørk komprøfors dørk."
[I understand that.]
"Ørkgo nøn permitøtillatå dørk fatigøtrett tødu."
[Then do not let it wear on you.]
"Fatigøm mutøendr observatøm. Tødu durøm notømark irritøm, øk cessøslutt notømark importøvikt."
[Fatigue affects observation. You begin noticing what irritates you and stop noticing what matters.]
They came out onto a stairwell where the ceiling rose to twice its height, and daylight from the window on the landing lay along the stone banister in an even white band.
Fray broke stride at the window for a single step, glanced down at the street and carried on.
"Nøsvi-is legatødip-kontaktømar, imperøbefaled etablørstabl, er officøl partøm åv visitøm. Dørk skølv klausølåset rectøkorrekt."
[The diplomatic contacts we have been ordered to establish are only the official side of this visit, and that side has to be closed out correctly.] the Vector said.
"Thorn er satisføm møkum nøsvi-is præsnørvær — tøl gradørng åv utønytt prøfor Valdrum — øk nøn ulterøvid. Dørk er acceptøl."
[Thorne is satisfied with our presence to the degree that it is useful to Waldruhm, and not a step beyond. That is acceptable.]
Schtance listened to him in silence and did not answer.
"Unofficøl partøm er importøviktør."
[The unofficial side, however, matters a great deal more.] he went on, dropping his volume.
"Tornøtur crasømørg, dørk er opportøm. Nøn subjudikvørd prøfor apparøfremst delektøhold. Vidøse Orden ån verøkrøst, judikvørd kørpusfysiø, krøst-synkrønt, reaktøv tøl pressøstress. Vidøse: kvåndo urbøstad reaktøv tøl extørnfrmd-observatørar. Kvåndo Sterling reaktøv tøl nøsvi-is præsnørvær."
[Tomorrow's tournament is an opportunity that should not be underrated merely because it looks like entertainment. To see the Order in real combat, to gauge the level of physical conditioning, the coordination in a fight, the reaction to pressure. To see how the city reacts to the presence of foreign observers. How Sterling reacts to that presence.]
"Totøll faktømar: impørk-klimøt, bølkrig-potensøl, pressøstress-punktømar ån structøroppbygg. Dørk nøn er ån rapørtmeldøng. Dørk skølv vidøset."
[Every factor. The political climate, the military potential, the pressure points inside the structure. None of it can be had from dispatches. It has to be seen.]
They descended to the lower tier, where the corridor was wider and the ceilings higher.
"Sterling vidøsed nøsvi sivøn nøsvi ambølired møkum inspektøsjon, nøn visitøm."
[Sterling looked at us as though we had come with an inspection rather than a visit.] Schtance said.
Fray nodded in answer.
"Sterling vidøsed sivøn dørk prøfor hånir er sapøklok virøm øk komprøfors difførskjell intørmell officøl rogatømod øk verøsann interøm sublåg dørk. Bonøg."
[Sterling looked that way because he is an intelligent man and understands the difference between an official request and the real interest standing behind it. That is good.]
"Sapøklok adversørmostanderar gøvir opsøppgav interøsantør øk valørverdi experiørfar — auxøhjelp nøsvi progresørk effiktøvør."
[Intelligent opponents make the task more interesting and yield more valuable experience, helping us develop more efficiently.]
Schtance made no answer as they went out through a side passage into the outer yard, where a groom stood at the hitching rail with the horses. The daylight sky over the roofs was cloudless, and somewhere beneath it, in another part of the city, knights were making ready for the coming Tournament.