But the defenders didn’t answer his war cry. They didn’t face him on the empty walls, and they were not huddled in the courtyard, and they were not waiting at the Inn’s great doors or in the common room or upstairs, or down.
The Inn was empty. There were no people, and no animals-no cups, no plates, no glass in the cupboards. The whole of the great stone complex was so empty that it was as if it had been stripped by robbers, or emptied by a rapacious seller looking to cheat the buyers of his goods. It was uncanny, curiously malevolent, and it cheated two thousand men of their sack, their rape and their looting.
At the base of the hill, Thorn watched and, as he watched, Ash manifested-more swiftly than usual, and more fully, being almost solid to the touch.
“He’s clever, my kin,” Ash said, and spat. His saliva burned the grass. “As usual, he avoids conflict with his cunning and cheats me of a simple contest. He has taken his people elsewhere. The coward.”
“Where?” Thorn asked.
“How would I know?” Ash shrieked.
Thorn tried not to show his unease. “There is a rumour in camp that…” Thorn hesitated.
“That those fools, Treskaine and Loloth, were defeated? They were. Massacred.” Ash’s round, black eyes were themselves uncanny, and they rested on Thorn. “And their Outwallers betrayed them, for which they will pay. But you know who defeated them? My old friend Tapio.” Ash nodded, solemnly.
“I should have killed him,” Thorn said.
“You should have, but you lacked the ability, then.” Ash nodded again. “Not now.”
Thorn considered what the Faery Knight’s position implied. “He is on our flank.”
Ash laughed. “In the Wild, there is only here and now. Flank is a human concept, and thus, worthless.”
Thorn grunted. “Humans excel at war.”
Ash shook his black mane of hair. “No. That is a lie. As well say beavers build great cities.”
Thorn took a great breath, and let it out slowly. “What do you wish of us?”
Ash nodded, pleased. “Take this rabble and go to Albinkirk.”
Twenty Miles East of Dorling-Morgon Mortirmir
The moonlight made it possible to move, and Ser Milus had made it clear that the white banda would not halt until they reached Albinkirk, five days away. At least.
They’d left the road the first day, and tried to pass south and west, skirting the enemy. Instead, they were almost lost in the endless long green hills and valleys, all identical, all laid out in every direction so that no valley ran in the direction you expected, and scouts would climb to the top of one hill to find that they were merely at the base of another.
Most of the men-at-arms were stripped to mail shirts and breastplates, helmets and gauntlets. The rest were with the baggage, or simply left-a fortune in leg armour and war saddles abandoned on the high moors of the eastern Green Hills, for nesting mice and snakes.
“Just the parts of your harness you want most, if you face a couple of dozen boglins on a dark night,” muttered Ser George Brewes. His curses were reflected a hundred times-almost all the rouncys were gone and almost all the war horses, so that the archers and the men-at-arms alike were walking. Every surviving horse, including a dozen magnificent chargers, were harnessed to the baggage wagons without which they could not move at all.
Morgon Mortirmir walked on, working carefully on a couple of different invocations simultaneously. He knew that something had gone awry from the soul-screams of his fellow practitioners a day back. That haunted him. He knew those aethereal voices, and they were gone.
He thanked God, guiltily, that none of them were Tancreda Comnena, whose family would never have allowed their daughter out of the confines of the city. A wise choice.
In the security of his palace, he could see Thorn as a nimbus of green power almost due west. He could feel the comings and goings of other powers, and he was aware that in the last hours there had been some mighty shift in the currents and breezes of Power-something had been done, some great invocation cast, some massive working engendered.
As he walked in the real, he was building traps and fall-backs in the aethereal, for whatever had killed his peers.
The hilltops that flanked the road held life, but no thaumaturgy that he could detect-merely wandering flocks of sheep and goats, and some herdsmen who were chary of the armoured men in the defile.
When all the herdsmen vanished, Morgon sought Ser Milus.
“My lord, the herds are gone. They were there-above us, towards Mons Draconis, and now they are gone.”
Ser Milus was one of the few men besides wagoners and scouts still mounted. He put a fist in the middle of his back to ease the pain. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered. “What the hell?”
Mortirmir shook his head in the darkness. “I have no idea, my lord, but I think there are men moving on the ridges-perhaps worse than men. But my notion is that there are horsemen.”
Milus was grey in the moonlight, but eventually he summoned a few of his scouts-his own archer, Smoke, and Tippit and No Head.
“I’ll put it to you straight, boys,” he said. “I need you to ride up slope and see what the hell is happening.”
“Ambush?” No Head asked. He sounded interested.
Mortirmir shrugged, a useless motion in the darkness. “Men on horses, I believe.”
“You coming, smart boy?” Tippit asked.
Mortirmir stiffened his spine. “I’d be delighted,” he said.
Tippit spat. “Let’s get it done.”
The four men rode up the slope slowly, without speaking, fifteen paces between horses. They were hard to see even in the moonlight, and Mortirmir kept drifting, but always managed to find his way back into the line.
The slope was deceptive, both steeper and longer than it had seemed from the base.
The burst of a partridge from cover shattered the night.
A dog barked. Shapes moved suddenly at the crest of the stony ridge, which rose steeply above them-still higher than Morgon had imagined.
“Freeze!” hissed No Head.
A voice shouted far away, and a horn sounded.
Sheep gave voice at the sound of the horn.
“I know that voice,” No Head said.
“Shut the fuck up before we’re all made into someone’s breakfast,” spat Tippit.
“Sod yourself, ya whack.” No Head stood in his stirrups. “Hullo!” he roared.
The shout rang, and echoed off two great hillsides. A dozen No Heads greeted each other.
“Ya daft weasil!” growled Tippit. “Fuckin’ scout? Fuckin’ dimwit is what you are. That’s what comes of readin’ books!” He was sidling away.
Another horn sounded, this one closer, and then there were horsemen-at least a hundred of them-pouring over the ridge.
“Fuck me!” Tippit shouted. “It’s the Wild Hunt.”
But No Head had been in the company since its earliest days, and he sat on his small mare and waited while Tippit started noisily down the slope. “Wager you ten silver, hard coin, it’s friends,” he said.
Tippit pulled in his horse. “Yer only saying that ’cause if ya lose we’re all dead anyway.”
“That’s just stupid,” No Head said. “Death against ten silver?”
Smoke was a man of few words. But he put out a hand. “Shut up,” he said gently. “Shut up and listen.”
Nonetheless, his hand went to his sword.
Three horns sounded, and one was already down slope of them.
“Hulloooooo!” No Head roared.
The horsemen were close enough to be more than movement and noise. They were big men on ponies, their feet incongruously close to the ground, but the leader rode a war horse that stood seventeen hands, black as the night.