lois Bujold - The Hallowed Hunt

“Mercy,” whispered some of the voices of Horseriver, looking to the gates, and “Mercy,” whispered the rest, looking away. One word, encompassing opposite and exclusive boons. Could Ingrey, by any physical or magical strength, wrestle this divided being to any altar? Should he try?

Time had lingered for Ingrey this night, but time was running out. If dawn came without a decision, what would happen? And if he waited for dawn to carry the choice away from him, was that not itself the same decision? If Ingrey fell into his judgment out of sheer weariness, well, he would not be the first man or king to do so. He had thought leading men into battle against impossible odds to be the most fearsome task of a king, but this new impossibility enlightened him vastly. He stared at Horseriver and thought, He must have been a great-souled man, once, for the gods to desire him still, here in his uttermost ruin.

He looked around at the witnesses: three Temple divines, two princes, a princess, and the two royal banner-carriers, the quick and the dead. Biast's earlier little flash of princely jealousy was entirely drained from his face now. Not even he wanted the hallow kingship in this moment. The marshal-warrior's watching face was without expression.

Slowly, like thick smoke rising up from a pyre, Horseriver dissipated, until soul-haze could not be told from the hanging fog. The marshal-warrior's dead eyes closed, for a moment, as if it would spare him the knowledge with the sight. Of all here, he was the only one Ingrey was sure understood the choice. All the choices. The clearing was very silent.

Ingrey tried to stand up, failed, and tried again. He stood a moment with his hands on his knees, dizzy and faint. He did not think he had lost enough blood this night to kill him, but the amount strewn about on the ground and down his leathers was impressive nonetheless. It always looks like more when it's spread around like that. Finally, he straightened his back and looked at the last revenant, and at Ijada, still holding up the wolf's head standard. High upon its steel point, a shadow-heart still pulsed.

He bowed to the marshal-warrior. “I would ask one gift of you in return, my lord bannerman. One moment more of your time.”

The marshal-warrior opened a hand in curious permission. All my time now is your gift, sire, his eyes seemed to say.

Ingrey stepped forward and closed his hand around Ijada's shoulder; she smiled wearily at him, her face pale and dirt-streaked and luminous. Ingrey looked over the five of the sacred band. Yes …“Learned Oswin, Learned Hallana, would you come here a moment?”

They glanced at each other and trod near. “Yes, Ingrey?” said Hallana. “Would you each take one end of this, and hold it level. Not too high.”

Ingrey turned to Ijada. “Take my hand.”

She touched his right hand uncertainly, careful of the damp red mess, but he squeezed her fingers in return, and then she gripped more tightly. He turned them both to face the horizontal staff.

“Jump over with me,” he said, “if we shall be allies in such nights as this and lovers in all nights hereafter.”

“Ingrey…” She peered doubtfully at him, sideways through escaped strands of hanging hair. “Are you asking me to marry you?”

More or less, he started to say, and thought the better of it. It was only more. “Yes. You should marry a king. This is your great chance.” He looked around; Oswin's sober face had lightened in comprehension, and Hallana's had broken into a broad grin. “The company of witnesses could not be improved: three Temple divines of good character, two princes-one a poet who will doubtless immortalize this moment before we've made it halfway back to Easthome-”

Jokol, who had loomed closer to see and hear, nodded delightedly. “Ah, Ingorry, good work! Yes, jump, jump, Ijada! My beautiful Breiga would like this one, yes!”

“A princess…” Ingrey cast a half bow somewhat uncertainly at Fara, now sitting up somberly on the edge of the mound; she returned him a grave but not disapproving jerk of her chin. “And one other.” Ingrey nodded to the marshal-warrior; Ingrey had not known ghosts could be bemused, but this one's surprised smile blessed him in advance for this unexpected last use of his long-defended emblem. “You can have other ceremonies later, if you like,” Ingrey added to Ijada. “With better clothes or whatever. As many as you want. As long as they're with me,” he added prudently. “One or two is the usual limit,” Oswin rumbled from his end of the pole, starting to smile.

Looking at each other, Ingrey and Ijada held hands and jumped.

Ingrey stumbled a little on the landing, as his head was swimming, but Ijada steadied him. They exchanged one kiss, which Ingrey began to make swift and promissory; Ijada captured his face between her hands and made it more thorough. Yes, Ingrey thought, pausing to feel the softness, the warmth, the faint hint of her teeth. This is the only living Now.

They parted, trading pensive smiles, and Ingrey retrieved the standard. The pulsing heart had vanished from the spearpoint. But which of us received back which half? He wasn't sure he knew.

The marshal-warrior knelt on one knee, undid his graying braids from his gold belt, and held his head up before him. Ingrey knelt, too, and shook down one last generous splash of blood to smear across the furrowed brow. The old spirit stallion he released was very worn, but Ingrey thought it must have been a fine fast beast in its time, for this night it flew.

The marshal-warrior rose whole: he rolled his shoulders as if in relief and nodded solemnly at Ingrey. He then turned and reached for Learned Oswin's hand, and, not looking back again, was gone.

The real darkness flowed in across Ingrey's eyes for the first time that night; only then did he become truly aware that he had been seeing, with unnatural clarity, by ghost-light for most of the hours past. Jokol grunted and hurried to stir up a small fire, unnoticed by Ingrey, that he had evidently built to warm Fara sometime during the night while waiting for devotees of his Lady to present themselves. The orange light licked up to gild the tired faces that now huddled around it.

What, indeed? He straightened up and stared at it, discomfited. It felt as solid under his hand as the Horseriver staff Fara had broken, but it had not come from the outer world, and Ingrey doubted he could carry it back there, beyond the borders of the Wounded Woods. He was equally doubtful that it would survive the dawn, presaged by a faint gray tinge in the mists that drifted through the gnarled trees. Ingrey's hallow kingship was more bounded by space and time and need than Biast perhaps realized, or the prince-marshal would not look so uneasily at him, Ingrey thought.

He was disinclined to hand his standard humbly to Biast, politically prudent as that might seem. It was Wolfcliff not Stagthorne, it was a thing of the night not the day, and anyway, anyway…Let him earn his own.

“In the Old Weald,” said Ingrey, “the royal banner-carrier guarded the standard from the death of the old king to the investment of the new.” And now I know why. “Then it was broken, and the pieces burned on the pyre of the dead king, if events made such ceremony possible.” And if not, he began to suspect, someone had made it up as best he could out of inspiration, urgency, and whatever came to hand. He looked around a little vaguely. “Ijada, we must cleanse this ground as well, before we leave this place. With fire, I think. And we must go soon.”

“Before the sun rises?” she asked.

“That feels right.”

“You should know.”

“I do.”

She followed his gaze around. “My stepfather's forester said these trees were diseased. He wanted to fire the woods then, but I wouldn't let him.”