Jon Sprunk: Shadow’s Lure

Northmen.

Keegan watched them with awe, but then another entered the hall, and a sick feeling uncoiled in his stomach. Clad from crown to foot in a shell of black steel, the new arrival stood even taller than the other Northmen. Keegan clenched his hands into fists. He knew this one from stories, too. Wherever he appeared, people died. The clans called him the Beast.

A pair of figures entered behind the steel-skinned giant. The man had a narrow build and a lean face with features some might call refined, and he wore enough gilt to bury a prince. But it was the woman beside him who stole Keegan’s attention. The way she moved, and the curves under her sheer black gown, made his blood boil. Her skin glistened like wet silk. This was no ordinary woman. Upon her arrival, the hall fell into perilous silence.

Preceded by the Beast, the man and his lady walked arm-in-arm down the center of the hall, and the clansmen fell back before them. Those who did not move quickly enough were smashed out of the way by the Northmen. In that instant, Keegan understood who these people were. The man had to be Erric Eviskine, the Duke of Liovard. And that meant the lady at his side was…

The Witch. Sybelle, Queen of the Dark.

Keegan looked away from her eyes, not daring to meet them again even from this distance. The heels of the duke’s polished boots clacked on the floor until he and his paramour came before the thanes.

“Eviskine.” Comarc Ragarson’s mouth twisted. “This peace-meet is for patriots of Eregoth.”

The duke clasped the gold pommel of his sword. “Who dares to say I am no patriot?” He turned, and the large medallion around his neck swayed. “Am I not thane of one of the oldest clans?”

Mutters circulated through the crowd, but no one dared to speak up, not even Comarc, though he and the other chiefs glared back and forth. Then another voice spoke. Keegan’s stomach shrank as Caedman pushed through the crowd.

“I name you traitor, Eviskine,” Caedman said. “Even if no one else has the stomach to do it.”

The duke made a half-smile as if he’d heard a poor jest. “Jevick, it seems your house is infested with vermin.”

“I am a free man of Eregoth,” Caedman said. “Again I name you a traitor. A traitor to this land, which you have sown with blood and fear. A traitor to your own people by the company you keep. While others fought and bled for their country, you rolled over like a whore and let the enemy in.”

The lady laughed. For a moment, it seemed to Keegan that time stood still, and all he could hear was the cool melody of her voice. Then the moment was gone. He coughed into his sleeve. The back of his throat tasted like a burnt copper penny.

“Come, Erric,” she said. “I told you they would be intractable.”

The duke shook his head at the high table. “I would have saved you. Remember that.”

Keegan watched with an uneasy feeling as the duke and lady departed. They halted on the threshold and turned around. Keegan expected some parting words, some base insult. Instead, the witch whistled. The candles and hearth fires went out, plunging the hall into darkness.

Shouts echoed off the walls, punctuated by screams and the wet smacks of cleaving steel. A strange blue light flashed above Keegan’s head. What it illuminated below was like a vision from Hell. The weaponless clansmen used table legs and eating knives-anything they could find-as they fought for their lives, but the axes of the Northmen rose and fell like threshers’ flails, reaping a harvest that washed the floor in blood. Not three paces away, a warrior was cut down by a Northman. Keegan went for his belt knife, but the killer moved away to find another victim.

Samnus and Obert led the band into the mayhem after Caedman. Keegan started to go after them, but remembered his war leader’s words from before they entered the keep.

No matter what happens, Keegan, you must survive. You must tell the clans what you’ve seen and heard this night, or we are all lost.

Keegan located Caedman in the fray. Dark patches of blood matted the war leader’s leathers as he fended off the attacks of a Northman with his bare hands. Then Samnus and the others arrived and bore the invader to the floor. Keegan smiled, until the crowd parted as if drawn back by invisible strings, and a tide of dread filled his chest.

The Beast approached.

Steam rose from the giant’s armored hide as he strode toward Caedman. Keegan yelled a warning to his comrades, but it was swallowed by the cacophony. Then the crowd surged, and he lost sight of the fighters. A moment later he glimpsed a body on the floor. It was Caedman, laid out on his back like a dead man. Bile flooded the back of Keegan’s throat as he stumbled down from the table. He couldn’t catch his breath. The air was thick with the stench of blood and sweat. He turned, looking for a way out, and spied the window above his head. He leapt to catch the stone sill. As he pulled his upper body over the ledge, his shoulders caught in the narrow casement. A frantic wriggle broke him free from the stone’s embrace, and he pushed into the empty space beyond.

Keegan landed in a snowbank. A sour taste coated his tongue as he heard the cries from inside the keep. Then he was up and running across the frozen fields.

He didn’t look back.

Caim drew in a breath and held it. The bow shaft creaked as he pulled the string back to his ear.

Forty paces away, the target turned his head, but then went back to his meal. Caim measured the distance again, allowing for wind and a slight difference in elevation. The temperature had dropped to near freezing with the sun’s setting, which would affect the arrow’s flight.

“Still playing around out here?” a voice whispered in his ear.

Caim shivered as Kit passed through him, and then she was beside him. Her hair gleamed like quicksilver in the dying light.

“You’re going to shoot without giving him a chance?”

“Don’t-” he said as she leaned across his field of vision to look down the arrow.

The mark glanced up again. Caim’s hands were cramping from the cold, the bowstring biting into his fingers.

“-move,” he breathed.

But it was too late. The stag gathered its legs and leapt away between two leaning evergreens. Snow from dislodged branches showered over its trail. Caim ducked away from Kit and tracked his quarry’s movement through the thicket. Time slowed. In the space between two heartbeats, he found the target and shot.

The arrow spun in a tight spiral as the stag emerged from the trees, hooves churning in the deep snow. Caim leaned forward as the arrow and its target collided. The stag’s high-pitched squeal startled him when the missile punched into its side. The arrow struck high and behind the foreleg. The stag foundered, but then it took off through the snow. How long could it run? By the brightness of the blood running down its tawny coat, the shot had punctured a lung.

Caim fumbled for his quiver as he ran after it, but the stag raced like lightning through the snow. In another few heartbeats, it would be gone. His breath burned in his chest as the creature passed behind a thick bole. What emerged on the other side nearly caused Caim to stumble in his tracks. It had the rough size and shape of the stag, but its coat was silky black like the fur of a jungle cat. Two slender horns of bone-white ivory rose from the back of the narrow skull. A twinge ached in Caim’s chest, and the stag returned, galloping away through the snow. Without thinking about it, he reached out to the shadows gathering in the trees around him. The stag snorted as a ribbon of darkness fell over its face. It slid in the snow, just a momentary hitch in its gait, but that was enough for Caim to draw and fire. The second arrow went high. He shot the third almost without aiming. It looked like it was going to veer wide until the stag blundered into its path. This time the animal fell.