'Stand to!' Dieter yelled at the top of his voice, though all through the bivouac men were already struggling out of their bedrolls and reaching for their weapons.
'What the hell's going on down there?'
'We couldn't see. They came out of the gully. Some kind of animals, black as a wolf's throat and moving on their hindquarters like men. But they aren't men, sir.'
Horses were trying pitifully to drag themselves up the rocky slope to the bivouac where their riders stood, trailing their picket ropes. But their forelegs were securely hobbled and they reared and screamed and tumbled to their sides and kicked out maniacally to their rear. The men could see the black berry-shine of blood on them now. One had been disembowelled and was slipping in its own entrails.
'Sergeant Dieter', the ensign said in a voice that shook, 'take a demi-platoon down to the horse lines and see what is happening there.'
Dieter looked at him a moment and then nodded. He bawled out at the nearest men and a dozen followed him reluctantly down into the wooded hollow from which the hellish cacophony of dying beasts resounded.
The rest of the men formed up on the bluff and watched them as they struck a path through the melee of terrified and dying beasts still struggling out of the trees. Two men were knocked from their feet. Dieter left them there, telling them to unhobble every horse they could. The terror-stricken animals mobbed the men, looking to their riders for protection. Then Dieter's group disappeared into the bottomless shadow of the wood that straggled along the foot of the bluff.
A stream of horses was galloping up the slope now as they were loosed of their restraints. The men tried to catch and soothe them but most went tearing off into the night. The men gathered around the ensign were as much baffled as afraid, and angry at the savagery of the attack on their horses. Many of the mounts that had escaped were bleeding from deep-slashed claw marks.
A single shout, cut short, as though the wind had been knocked out of the shouter.
'That was Dieter', one of the men on the bluff said.
There were alder and birch down in the hollow below the bivouac, and these began thrashing as though men were shaking their branches. Cursing the darkness, those on the hill peered down the slope, past the keening, crippled horses that littered the ground, and saw a line of black figures loom out of the trees like a cloud of shadow. The smell in the air again, but stronger now - the musk-like stink of a great beast. Something sailed across the night sky and thudded to the ground just short of their feet. They heard a noise that afterwards many would swear had resembled human laughter, and then one of their number was pointing at the thrown object lying battered and glistening on the earth before them. Their sergeant's head.
The things in the trees seemed to melt away into the darkness, branches springing back to mark their passing. The men on the hill stood as though turned to stone, and in the sudden quiet even the screaming of the horses died away.
The lady Mirren's daily rides were a trial to both her assigned bodyguards, and her ladies-in-waiting. Each morning just after sunrise, she would appear at the Royal stables where Shamarq, the ageing Merduk who was head groom, had her horse Hydrax saddled and waiting for her. With her would be the one among her ladies-in-waiting who had chosen the short straw that morning, and a suitable young officer as escort. This morning it was Ensign Baraz, who had been kicking his heels about the Bladehall for several days until he had caught the eye of General Comillan. He had accepted his new role with as much good grace as he could muster, and now his tall grey stood fretting and prancing beside Hydrax, a pair of pistols and a sabre strapped to its saddle. Gebbia, the lady who was to accompany them, had been assigned a quiet chestnut palfrey which she nonetheless eyed with something approaching despair.
The trio set off out of the north-west postern in the city walls and kicked into a swift canter, Gebbia's palfrey bobbing like a toy in the wake of the two larger horses ahead. Mirren's marmoset clung to her neck and bared its tiny teeth at the fresh wind, trying to lick the air with its tongue. The riders avoided the wagon-clogged Kingsway, and struck off towards the hills to the north of the city. Not until the horses were snorting and blowing in a cloud of their own steam did Mirren rein in. Baraz had kept pace with her but poor Gebbia was half a mile behind, the palfrey still bobbing simple-mindedly along.
'Why a court lady cannot be made to ride a decent horse I do not know’ Torunna's Princess complained.
Baraz patted his sweating mount's neck and said nothing. He was regretting the King's momentary interest in him, and was wondering if he would ever be sent to a tercio to do some real soldiering. Mirren turned to regard his closed face. 'You sir, what's your name?'
'Ensign Baraz, my lady - yes, that Baraz.' He was getting tired of the reaction his name produced, too.
'You ride well, but you seem more put out even than Gebbia. Have I offended you?'
'Of course not, lady.' And as she continued to stare at him, 'It's just that I was hoping for a more - more military assignment. His majesty has attached me to the High Command as a staff officer—'
'And you wanted to get your hands dirty instead of escorting galloping princesses about the countryside.' Baraz smiled. 'Something like that'
'Most of the young bloods are very keen to escort the galloping Princess.'
Baraz bowed in the saddle. 'I am uncouth. I must apologise, lady. It is of course an honour—'
'Oh, stow it, Baraz. It's not as though I blame you. Were I a man, I would feel the same way. Here comes Gebbia. You would think she had just ridden clear across Normannia. Gebbia! Clench your knees together and kick that lazy screw a little harder or you'll lose us altogether.'
Gebbia, a pretty dark-haired little thing whose face was flushed with exertion, could only nod wordlessly, and then look appealingly at Baraz.
'We should perhaps walk them a while to let them cool down,' he ventured.
'Very well. Ride beside me, Ensign. We shall head up to the hilltop yonder, and then maybe I'll allow you to race me.'.
The three horses and their riders proceeded more sedately up the long heather and boulder-strewn slope, whilst before them the sun rose up out of a roseate wrack of tumbled cloud on the undulating horizon. A falcon wheeled screaming out of the sun towards Torunn and shrank to a winged speck within seconds, though Mirren followed its course keenly with palm-shaded eyes. The marmoset gibbered unhappily and she shushed it. 'No Mij, it was just a bird is all.'
'You understand him?' Baraz asked, curious.
'In a way. He's my familiar,' and she laughed as his eyes widened. 'Didn't you know that Dweomer runs in the blood of the Fantyrs? The female line, at any rate. From my mother I gained witchery and from my father the ability to ride anything on four legs.'
'You can cast spells then?'
'Would you like me to try?' She wagged the fingers of one hand at him and he recoiled despite himself. Mirren laughed again. ‘I have little talent, and there is no one to tutor me save Mother. There are no great mages left in Torunna. They have all fled to join Himerius and the Empire, it is said.'
‘I have never seen magic worked.'
Mirren waved an arm, frowning, and Baraz saw a haze of green-blue light follow in its wake, as though trailed by her sleeve. It gathered on her open palm and coalesced into a ball of bright werelight. She sent it circling in a blazing blur round Baraz's astonished face, and then it winked out like a snuffed candle.
'You see? Mountebank tricks, little more.' She shrugged with a rare sadness, and he saw at once her father's face in hers. Her eyes were warmer, but the same strength was in the line of the jaw and the long nose. Baraz began to regret his assignment a little less.