David Farland - Wizardborn

It was not hard to envision the wars fought here against the Toth so long ago, or to imagine that the dark pools still held traces of blood.

She wanted to ride through quickly. But the muddy roads forced them to slow their horses to a walk.

It was a stagnant land. In spite of the yawning emptiness, time and again she found herself reaching for her steel bow, slung in its case on her saddle pack.

The forest was dead. No squirrels danced round the sides of the trees to hide when they passed. No deer were startled from the grass if they happened on a glade. Only once in a great while would she catch sight of some dark-winged bird as it darted for cover in a shadowed glen.

She strained for any sound—the buzz of a locust, the pattering of a woodpecker, or the caw of a crow.

But the woods held little in the way of life, and none of it was pleasant. Myrrima imagined that nothing much could live here. Biting flies and mosquitoes swarmed in clouds over brackish pools, and in places they seemed so thick that she imagined that they’d simply strip the hide off any animal that held still long enough.

She did not hold still.

Wights haunted this place, Myrrima knew.

That’s why Borenson shushed her every time she wanted to speak. Wights were drawn to sound, to movement. They hid in shadows. Their icy touch would kill a man.

The shrouded bogs where oily water gave rise to night mists, the creepy woods with their folds and hollows, both were the perfect abode for such creatures.

And while the wights of the Dunnwood back home protected the realm, the same was not true of the Westlands. Sixteen hundred years ago, nomen and Toth had died here by the uncounted score. Their revenants craved vengeance. At times it was said that the shades of men could be seen fighting them still, as if reenacting their deaths on old battlegrounds.

Once, they came upon a hill and heard the rush of wind through the trees in the valley to their left, a distant sigh like the beating of waves upon an endless shore.

Myrrima imagined that the wind heralded a coming storm, and that soon all of the trees would begin bobbing and creaking in the gale.

Instead, the wind merely passed—as if it were an invisible rider heading south through the forest.

When it was gone, Borenson whispered, breaking an hours-long silence, “What was that, do you think?”

“Wights?”

“There are wights here,” he admitted, “and they’re aware of us. But that wasn’t one. Something else passed by.”

Myrrima’s mind returned to the Darkling Glory, to the howling tornado that had issued from it. Binnesman had warned that it was capable of great evil still.

“If we ride slowly,” Borenson whispered, “we won’t reach Fenraven by sunset, but if we ride fast, we might catch up to whatever passed us by.”

Myrrima bit her lip. “Ride fast,” she whispered.

Myrrima glimpsed another rider just before sunset, and knew for sure that they were being followed.

They’d been cantering through the hills, and had come down for the hundredth time into another marsh. They let their horses forage for a few short minutes, and had then ridden on for half a mile, until they reached a bog so wide that the road itself was submerged.

The forest ended here. A few gray skeletal trees struggled up from fetid pools, but otherwise there was no cover for nearly a quarter of a mile. In midwinter the bog would have been a lake.

So Myrrima slowed her horse and let it pick its way through the water, wading through muddy pools where it sank up to its withers. With every step, the smell of rot rose from the depths, and the splashing of the horse obscured any other sound. Myrrima had to lug her saddlebags on her own shoulder, lest her provisions get wet. Mosquitoes buzzed around her in a starving cloud.

As her horse waded through the pools she saw someone—or something. She happened to glance over her shoulder, checking the road behind, when she glimpsed a horseman on the hill three quarters of a mile back.

A dark, hooded figure sat ahorse under the trees, peering toward her intently. In the gloaming woods, she couldn’t see the color of his horse. So well concealed was he that at first she wasn’t sure if he was real or simply an unhappy confluence of sticks and shadows, an invention of her fears.

But a moment of squinting through the cloud of mosquitoes convinced her otherwise.

It was a man, hiding in the trees just off the road.

Myrrima swallowed hard, thinking, Assassin? Or the wight of some long-dead wolf hunter?

It could be anyone. Perhaps it was only a fellow traveler who had been frightened to hear a force horse riding through these lone woods, and had decided to exit into the trees.

She haltingly waved at the fellow in greeting. But he didn’t move. He held as still as a deer as it tastes the air for the scent of the hounds.

“Who are you waving at?” Borenson hissed.

“There’s a man in the trees,” Myrrima said.

“Are you sure it’s a man?”

She suddenly realized that she hadn’t seen fresh-cut tracks in the road. Nor had she smelled warm horseflesh along the trail either. Which meant that the fellow had not been ahead of them on the road.

That left only two possibilities. He might have been riding cross-country through the bogs—something only a madman would try—or he might be following them.

Only a man on a fast force horse could have kept up.

Muyyatin assassins rode force horses.

She reined in her mount, and sat for a moment, braving the mosquitoes, pointedly staring at the fellow. At last he turned his head and urged his horse forward, onto the road, spurred it north into the shadowed woods, and was gone.

His horse made no sound as it trotted through the trees.

“I saw him,” Borenson whispered. “Can’t tell if he’s alive or dead.”

A wight, she decided, one that has no interest in us. Or perhaps it was still too light yet, and he would come after them in the full darkness.

Her heart was pounding. She suddenly recalled a tale of Muyyatin assassins who booted the hooves of their horses with layers of lamb’s wool, so that they could ride quietly.

“Water and cold iron can sometimes turn a wight,” Borenson whispered. “But if that fellow is alive, just give him cold iron.”

Myrrima reached into a pouch, pulled out an iron spear tip that Hoswell had once showed her. It had a flaring blade, and fit nicely onto the end of her steel bow. She twisted it in place.

She spurred her horse through the fetid swamp, and rode on for five miles. The woods grew darker as night thickened, and in many places the roots of huge trees snaked out into the road, creating a hazard for any who dared ride at night.

A dim haze covered the sky, muting the stars, and Borenson convinced her to abandon their journey for a while as they waited for moonrise.

They reached a dark copse on a hillside, where the roots were especially thick, and turned off the road. They led their mounts into blackness under the trees. Myrrima’s horse lowered its head, then sniffed at molding leaves as it sought forage. She’d ridden far, and the mount had got nothing to eat for the past two hours. It whickered in consternation.

“Quiet,” Myrrima whispered. The beast had endowments of wit from other horses, and was well trained. It suddenly went still as a statue, ignoring even the mosquitoes that eagerly settled on its rump.

For long minutes, Myrrima and Borenson waited.

She hated the silence, wished that they could speak. She occupied herself by watching the heavens. Almost immediately a trio of shooting stars arced across the sky. One was a fireball that left a guttering trail of ash. She’d seldom seen such a display. No crickets chirped. No frogs croaked.