The Nethergrim Page 16

  “We emerged into a great empty chamber that ran flat and carven to our right, but ascended sharply up to our left as a rough-hewn tunnel to meet the masonry wall somewhere in the darkness far above. It was clear that the wall was no more, though, for we saw the glow of firesprites descending the passage, and felt the rumble of stonewights following. Tristan and I rushed out into the open. I imagine that the chamber we ran through would have made me stop and gasp in awe at any other time. All I can recall are great vaulted ceilings and pillars shaped into the likenesses of grim and mighty creatures—a boggan, a coiled serpent, a giant with its face inside its belly. At the end of it stood a pair of stone doors as high as a castle wall, carved with designs I could not place. It seemed a hopeless thing, but we put our shoulders to the doors and shoved with all our strength while our doom thundered ever closer behind us. Those hinges must have been very cunningly built, for despite their great size and weight, the doors began to give way, and we slipped between them into the lair.”

  John swallowed, and licked dry lips. “And there, laid out upon the bier—there, the Nethergrim.”

  “What was it, Papa?” Katherine could not keep the question in. “What did it look like?”

  “A beautiful young woman,” he said. “Fast asleep, her belly swollen big with child.”

  Katherine would have guessed almost anything before that. “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither did I,” said her father. “I have never understood.”

  He wept then—the tears sprang out, as though they had been pressed within him for years. “I did not know what to do. I stood dumb—I had steeled myself for anything, any sort of horror from a nightmare, but not for this. The woman—hardly more than a girl—she lay with her hands across her middle, as though to feel or to caress the child within her. Perhaps, had I time to think longer on what to do, I might have stopped, but there was no time to think, for the enemy was upon us. A rumble sounded from the passage behind, the servants of the Nethergrim racing in to kill us before we could kill their master. But then, was their master truly what lay in beauty on the star in the chamber before us? I looked at Tristan—all this passed between us in a moment—and he decided.

  “He pushed me into the chamber. ‘Go,’ he said. ‘Heed Vithric—it is asleep! He said to kill whatever we saw!’ So I stumbled forward. Tristan turned to defend the doorway, to buy with his life enough time for me to do what we had come to do. I think if I had looked back, I would have seen the full measure of his skill in that moment, but it did not matter. He faced a host, an army, and even his vantage in the doorway would not hold as the stonewights came to batter it open. Just as I reached the dais, I heard the clang of Tristan’s sword as it fell to the floor. I felt despair, for I knew nothing now stood between me and the Nethergrim’s servants. I would not have time to strike before I was cut down.

  “Then Vithric came, and at last I knew what a great wizard can do when pushed to the final gasp of desperation. The whole chamber shook, the statues outside shattered and fell, yet still I stood as though I was a statue myself. The sleeping girl before me bore a smile of undying love, a mother’s love. I have never forgotten that smile. Some nights it is all I see.”

  Katherine bit her lip—if she had not, she would have begged her father to stop. The rooster crowed again outside.

  “I raised my blade, there in that place beneath the earth.” John moved his trembling hands in echo of his words. “I stood above her, I took a hard grip upon my hilt—then she opened her eyes. She looked up at me in pure and innocent confusion. She asked me who I was, where she was, then said she had been stolen, taken from her village by the bolgugs. She asked me if I was there to save her.”

  “Papa—”

  “And I did it.” He spoke almost too low to hear. “I brought my blade down upon her.”

  “Then—you killed the Nethergrim.” Katherine clutched to the thought, the hope of it. “Not Tristan. You did.”

  He would not let her keep it. “I don’t know what I did. I have never known.”

  He looked outside again. “Even as I struck, Vithric’s spell began to shake every chamber of the mountain. The creatures turned to flee—I think most were crushed as the pillars gave way in the passage before us. Tristan had taken wounds in the leg and side, and Vithric was out cold, but I tried to drag them up and make a run for it. I found the door through which Vithric had entered, and between Tristan and myself we managed to pull him along and heave our way up through the shaking passages. It must have been luck that brought us back the way we came. We emerged at the mouth of the opening and saw the scattered bodies of our friends and comrades, just as we had feared. We staggered out into the night and rolled down the snowy slope, and for a while we knew not whether we were alive or dead.”

  Katherine tried and tried but could not think of what to say. The truth was much more horrible than anything she had dreamed, and she had dreamed many horrible things.

  “And that was it,” said her father. “We all three swore never to speak of what had happened under the mountain—how could we explain what we had truly done? Folk wanted to hear that we had slain a beast, a thing that looked like what they feared. If we had told them what we had truly seen, and truly done, then the world might be left in as much doubt as we were—or worse, make trips into the Girth to see for themselves. I begged Tristan to let the poets make what stories they would, to let fond legend cover over the truth. We drifted apart soon after—we could no longer stand the sight of one another; it made us remember too much. Tristan was granted lordship over all the lands in the Girth he could claim, and rode off with a few hundred folk to settle in a long-abandoned valley. Vithric went south and rose to great renown before he passed away far too young. I lived alone in the hills for a while until your mother found me and brought me down into the world again. After a few years of peace I started to think that perhaps I truly had killed the Nethergrim, that what I had seen was a trick to make me falter at the last. I awoke to life again, lived in love for a time, and raised my beautiful daughter.”

  He breathed out a long, slow sigh. “And then this.” He snuffed the wick. “Come outside, child.”

  Katherine rose, heartsick and bewildered. She followed him out, down the path between the turned trestles of the garden.

  “I have made arrangements, for you and for the horses.” He drew on his gloves. “Lord Aelfric will be here with his men before dusk.” He raised the leather loop and pulled back the door of the stable.

  “Arrangements? Papa, please, wait—” The stable was old and close, lovely and warm with the heat of horses. A few heads rose along the fieldstone passage—a snort, a whicker here and there, all calm.

  John stopped at the stall that held his own riding horse—a chestnut stallion of middle years with three white stockings and a long, glum face, still in saddle and bridle and chewing on his morning hay. He reached into the sack by the stall and fed him a handful of oats. “Whatever may happen, whatever else you may one day learn of me, you must know that I have always loved you, that you were the whole of my life. I did all that I could. I truly did.”

  Katherine hugged herself behind his back. It was not supposed to be this way. She had held Peter Overbourne’s body in her arms—she had nearly died herself. She thought she had scrubbed everywhere, bent over the Bales’ washtub with a rag in the dark, but Tom had told her there were still spatters of black-blue blood behind her ears. She wanted breakfast, a day to sit and let the memories shudder through her, and for Papa to tell her—

  “I am sorry, child.” John opened the door to his stall. The void rose to claim her.

  Behind the door lay his sword, his shield, and two saddlebags packed full. She leaned against the wall to hold herself up.

  “Katherine.” Her father touched her arm. “I must go away for a while.”

  “You’re going back.” She could hardly see him for the tears. “You’re going back to the mountain.”

  He bent to take up his sword
belt and buckled it to his waist. “Lord Aelfric will keep you safe until I return. This farm is too remote, too near the Girth. Do you understand?”

  She drew back from his offered hand. “Oh, no, no, you cannot do this. You can’t do this—you can’t just tell me a story like that and expect me to just—Papa, let me come with you!”

  He reached down for his shield and strapped it across his back. “Please don’t make this harder than it already is.” He heaved the saddlebags over his horse’s withers. “Will you give me your hand before I go?”

  Tears stung at her eyes, but she held out her hand. He took it, and she threw her other arm around his back. “Is it dangerous, where you are going?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why?”

  “Because the danger will grow worse if I do not. I must find the Nethergrim—whatever it truly is—and destroy it, once and for all.”

  She stepped back. “I can do things, Papa. I can help. Let me help!”

  “No, child. I never meant for you to take on the troubles of the world. My road will be hard enough—I need to know you will be safe.”

  “You raised me, you trained me to fight. Why?”

  “You seemed to like it. Now promise me you’ll stay out of trouble. Please, child.”

  She trembled a moment, and gave in. “I promise.”

  He pressed her hands once more and took the reins. She stood aside as he led his horse from its stall and down the passage. He opened the door and the dawn came through to frame them dark before her.

  She followed to the threshold. “If I had been your son, would you have taken me with you?”

  He stopped and half turned. “Be safe. I will come back soon.”

  She sat down in the open doorway and watched him go. Horse and rider disappeared around the curve in the Dorham road.

  “You can’t know that,” she said.

  Chapter

  17

  Tom slumped through the door of the byre and in from the blustery chill. The oxen staggered in behind him and laid themselves down side by side in the straw. Oswin sat at their tree-stump table, slurping at his meal of frumenty porridge. He leaned over to push the door closed behind them. “East furlong done?”

  “Most of it.” Tom dropped down by the dent in the earth that served as their hearth. Jumble raced over barking and licked at his face.

  Oswin ladled out the rest of the porridge into the bowl they shared. “Cold one today. Who’d have thought it so early?”

  Tom sat up and took the bowl in his lap. He leaned some kindling in the hearth and blew the fire back up to a blaze. Jumble lay down at his side and put both front paws across his knee.

  “Heard about what happened,” said Oswin. “Get any sleep last night?”

  Tom yawned, wide and long, curled down over his hand.

  “Thought not.” Oswin shook his head. “That’s the thanks you get.”

  Tom scraped out the last of the porridge from the pot and filled it with water from the leather skin that leaned by the trunk. He felt behind him in the straw, pulled out a sack and rummaged through it with one hand while spooning up his porridge with the other. He drew forth a few bunches of herbs from the sack, a mass of roots and a handful of willow bark.

  “I was down in the village this morning for drill and practice.” Oswin laughed short and hard. “That’s right, they think I’m Moorvale enough now to draft me into the levy. Guess those bolgugs have them worried.”

  Tom set down the bowl for Jumble to lick clean. He ripped the bark and scattered the pieces in the water.

  Oswin dug around by the hearth and pulled up his cracked clay mug. “I’ll tell you what else.” He filled the mug from the waterskin, then settled back in the straw. “That friend of yours—what’s his name, the blond kid—he’s the worst shot with a longbow I’ve ever seen.”

  Tom smiled. “So they say.” He pulped roots of bruisewort and tansy and mashed them between two stones, then scraped off the paste he had made into the bowl. He dipped his finger into the pot—warm enough. He ground some mallow leaves into the paste with the broken end of an axe haft, then searched around him on his hands and knees for a cup.

  Oswin scratched at his pockmarked chin. “Can’t help but wonder how you know what to do.”

  “Plants talk to me sometimes.”

  Oswin snorted.

  Tom picked up the cup and poured out a careful measure from the pot. He brought cup and poultice to the oxen.

  “Drink.” He raised the cup to Thunder’s lips. Thunder sniffed at the mixture and balked.

  “Your master’s made his fortune on your back, you know,” said Oswin. “Never seen livestock driven so hard do so well.”

  Tom reached down and gripped under Thunder’s chin. “Drink.” Thunder opened his mouth and let Tom pour the pungent mixture down his throat.

  “There. Not so bad.” Tom tied the poultice around Thunder’s leg, smoothing the cooling paste around the injured flesh so it would set and harden all along the strain. He touched a hand to the ox’s forehead. “Rest.”

  Thunder gave out a long, grateful breath. His eyelids began to droop. Tom returned to the hearth and poured himself some water from the skin.

  “Listen, Tom.” Oswin leaned across the fire. “I’m going to give you some advice. You’ve got to leave this place. You’re a fool if you stay here.”

  Tom looked up. There was something oddly eager in the way Oswin spoke, but he could not work out why.

  “I’m only telling you this because I’ve come to like you,” said Oswin. “I’ve been about, seen folk who have it rough, but you’re about the limit.”

  “Where would I go?”

  “Anywhere. Hardly matters. Get clear of Elverain and you’ll be too far gone for your master to find you. A year and a day in town air and you can start again. You could be an apothecary if someone taught you to read, get paid good silver to make those potions of yours. You know how well they do? Velvet cloaks, Tom, velvet cloaks and wine.”

  Tom shook his head. “I can’t leave. I’m needed here.”

  “By who? The oxen? You’d heal more oxen off this farm than on it, if that’s what you care about.”

  “My friends need me.”

  “Spoken like a boy. No one needs his friends, not for long. Family, sure, a wife maybe, but the friends of your childhood are like the clothes—you grow out of them. Those two friends of yours are bound down different roads than you are. There’ll come a day when the distance gets too wide, and then they’ll find ways to be rid of you.”

  Tom looked into the fire. He saw Katherine, married and happy. He saw Edmund, busy and important. He could not see himself at all.

  “You know what I’m going to do?” said Oswin. “I’ll tell you. I’ve been saving since the day I got here. I’m no more than a penny short of enough to get me back to Tambridge and buy into some land. I’ve got a cousin or two down that way who’ve done well enough for themselves—should be no trouble talking them into a bargain. As soon as I’ve got enough, off I go. I doubt I’ll even tell your master goodbye. He doesn’t deserve it.”

  Tom heaved himself up. He reached for the shepherd’s crook. Jumble followed him to the door.

  Oswin drained his mug. “Nothing to hold me here.” He reached a hand for Tom to help him to his feet. “Same goes for you, Tom. You remember what I said.”

  • • •

  Blackbirds sang over the Marshal’s farm. The wind ripped at the lone red oak on the pasture hill, pulling off one leaf and then another.

  Katherine crossed the yard from house to stable with a jug of water in her arms. The warm, safe feeling that had always greeted her when she stepped within made its depth known by its absence. She worked past noon, alone, grooming and feeding, cleaning stalls and bringing in fresh straw. She left Indigo to the last. When she had brushed him down, mucked his stall and given him a carrot, she found at last that there was nothing more to do but wait. She sat down in the straw beside him.

 
Indigo slurped at the water in his trough, then munched through the last of his grain. He stepped near and put his nose to Katherine’s hand.

  “He’ll come back soon, with Geoffrey and all the children.” Katherine ran her fingers down Indigo’s long, straight face. “Everything will be put to rights. You’ll see.”

  There rose from outside the meterless clamor of many hoofbeats. Katherine stepped from the stables to see a company of riders approaching on the Dorham road. Sunlight caught glints on shirts of burnished mail—Lord Aelfric led, followed by Harry and surrounded by the knights of his household.

  “My lord.” Katherine kept her head inclined. “All is ready.”

  Lord Aelfric looked about him, and waved his men down from the saddle. “Each of you, take one horse with you on a lead. If there are too many, we will come back for the rest. We must have them all safe within the castle by nightfall.” The men spread out through the paddocks, hopping the fences and reaching for the mares.

  Harry dismounted at Katherine’s side. “They hurt you.” He reached up, almost touched the bruise on her chin. “Has someone seen to it?”

  “Tom did,” said Katherine, and when the name did nothing: “My friend. He was also up on the hill last night.”

  “I meant a proper healer.” Harry had shaved off his sparse and silly fuzz of a beard. “We have two at the castle, of different schools. Please let them see to you.” The chin beneath bore a cleft, though very faint.

  “There is a girl from my village who is hurt much worse than me,” said Katherine. “She got a splinter through her foot. We fear that the wound might fester.”

  “Yes. Yes, of course.” Harry turned. “Father, may we take the peasants injured last night to be tended at the castle?”