‘The woods are too thick. If we flush out something big and it gets between us and the entrance … Spin it again.’
On the second spin, the sword pointed the same way.
‘I’ve heard there’s good hunting up at the Crag,’ said Rix.
Tobry twitched the reins; his horse danced backwards on the narrow path. ‘For us, or for them?’
‘I need this, Tobe.’
‘Why, exactly?’
Rix swallowed. ‘Yesterday’s nightmare wasn’t like the others. It — it’s as though something is taking control of me, and when I’m at the palace I can’t fight it. I’ve got to fight, Tobe, or I’m dead.’
‘All right. Give it another twirl.’
This time the blade kept spinning, and spinning, for at least two minutes. Rix gave Tobry a suspicious glance. ‘Are you using magery?’
‘Who, me?’ Tobry said in injured tones.
‘Well, stop.’
The blade stopped, pointing towards the slot-like entrance.
‘You’re right about that sword,’ said Tobry. ‘I don’t like it either.’
CHAPTER 11
As Rix took his sword back, the shadows dwindled and the nightmare faded. ‘Oddly, I feel better when it’s in my hand.’
He swept it through the air. He was not a reckless man — unlike Tobry when one of those dark moods overcame him — but now Rix longed for the cleansing of violent action.
‘And that doesn’t bother you?’
‘Why should it?’
‘Where did you say the sword came from?’
‘No idea. It’s been in the family for ages.’ Rix was irritated by Tobry’s persistence. ‘Let’s go hunting.’
‘Not up there.’
‘There are more predators around than last year, and they’re hungrier.’
‘Stands to reason, with the winters getting harder every year. But I don’t — ’
‘Winter is weeks away, yet they’re already attacking our outlying steadings and killing our serfs. Our scouts say they come from the Crag.’
‘That’s why House Ricinus has an army,’ said Tobry. ‘It’s not your responsibility.’
‘Army isn’t as big as you think.’
‘Then hire mercenaries.’
Rix looked away. ‘It’s not a good time.’
‘Why ever not? House Ricinus could buy the chancellor himself.’
Rix started; Tobry was awkwardly close to the truth. ‘Our treasury is a trifle short.’
‘Oh, come now,’ said Tobry.
How could Rix tell him about the wealth his drunken father had squandered, or the fortunes outlaid by social-climbing Lady Ricinus in bribes and kickbacks to a purpose only she knew? Even Rix, inexperienced though he was, could have managed House Ricinus better.
‘As the heir to House Ricinus,’ he said pompously, ‘it’s my duty to protect my lands and my people.’ It was another excuse. To avoid going home he would even lie to his best friend.
Tobry shook his head in disbelief. ‘You’re a throwback. The heir never risks his own life — especially when he has no brothers or sisters.’
Rix had often wondered why his mother, who was obsessed with the family line, had only one child. Had she refused to do it a second time, or did the problem lie with his father? Was that why Lord Ricinus drank, or was the problem because of his drinking?
‘Earlier, you said I was running away from my problems, and it’s true.’
‘It’s an endearing weakness,’ said Tobry. ‘I wasn’t suggesting you become responsible.’ He spat on the rocks.
‘I come of age in a few weeks. It’s time I started acting like the next lord.’
‘Until you are of age, leave the worrying to your parents.’
‘They’re not doing any worrying!’ Rix cried. ‘They’re making things worse.’
‘Besides, you need to marry and produce an heir.’
Rix frowned, not sure what he was hinting at. ‘Coming from you, that’s rich.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You’re five years older. Where’s your heir?’
‘I’ve got nothing to pass on save a ruined name. I don’t need an heir.’ He studied Rix sidelong, grinning. ‘Actually, a good woman could be the making of you. I might have a word to Lady Ricinus about my cousin, Callista. Lovely girl, after a while you hardly notice the crossed eyes — ’
‘You swine! Don’t you dare.’
His friend arched an eyebrow. ‘Touched upon a sore point, have I?’
‘Mother has lined up half a dozen candidates already,’ snapped Rix. ‘All mindless, simpering and controllable.’
‘It’s a mother’s right to propose suitable wives,’ Tobry said sententiously. ‘And as a dutiful son …’
‘I’m not marrying some idiot who’ll run from my bed to my mother, taking her orders and reporting everything I do.’
‘You certainly wouldn’t want Lady Ricinus to know about your bedtime activities.’
‘I thought we came up here to kill something!’ Rix snarled. ‘If you don’t shut up it might well be you.’
He turned Leather towards the valley entrance, checked his spear was to hand, his bow and quiver, then shook the reins. Leather looked him in the eye as if to say, Do you really expect me to go in there?
‘The nag has more sense than either of us,’ said Tobry wryly.
It was dark as twilight under the canopy of the blood-bark trees, which clung to their leaves even in winter. The trunks, clotted with oozing red sap like the bloody wounds in his nightmares, grew so close together that he could not make out the obsidian walls of the valley to either hand. He felt their stifling presence, though.
The forest was silent apart from the horses’ breathing and the muffled thud of hoof beats. A narrow trail led up the valley beside a partly frozen rivulet and Rix made out the tracks of rabbits, a scrub turkey and two kinds of deer. Shortly he stopped in a glade, looking down at the remains of a hare — ears, tail, back feet and some intestines draped like a string of bubbles across the bloody snow.
‘Whatever ate that,’ said Tobry, no longer smiling, ‘it left no tracks. Yet a falling feather would mark this snow.’ He patted his trembling horse on the back of the head. ‘Steady, Beetle.’
Rix’s gut tightened. ‘I’ve heard reports of jackal shifters up here.’
Small creatures, no bigger than scrawny children when shifted to human form, but either as jackals or jackal-men they were deadly in a pack.
Tobry greyed beneath his tan. ‘I wish you’d mentioned that before.’
‘I only just thought of it. Where do they come from? The pits of Cython, I’ll bet.’
Tobry did not reply.
‘And to think the Pale serve the enemy there,’ said Rix. ‘Stinking traitors.’
‘Perhaps they don’t have a choice.’
‘Everyone has a choice.’
‘Including House Ricinus’s serfs,’ Tobry said sardonically. ‘They can work like dogs for a basin of gruel, or they can starve.’
‘They work for us. In return, we protect them, and that’s getting harder every year.’ Rix swallowed and looked around, hand on sword. ‘Tobe, do you think Hightspall is haunted?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘The winters are worse every year, our crops fail one season out of four, and now the ice — ’
‘Even the gramarye our ancestors brought here isn’t a shadow of what it was. Everything fails, everything decays, and soon the world will end.’ Tobry said it with ghoulish relish.
‘That’s not what I meant,’ Rix said hastily.
‘Really? What did you mean?’
‘Do you think our land is rising up against us?’
‘I’m not sure Hightspall was ever ours.’
‘Now you’re talking like the enemy,’ Rix snapped.
‘They were here first. We stole their land and drove them underground.’
Rix spat in the snow. ‘It was all the filthy savages deserved after they broke their sworn oath to the Five Heroes.’ He made the sacred helix over his head, heart and sword arm.
‘I don’t share your worship of our noble founders,’ said Tobry.
It was so close to sacrilege that Rix wanted to thump him. Sometimes a punch in the mouth was the only rebuttal for a man who did not believe in anything.