Guy Kay - The Last Light of the Sun

"We should pray," he said.

A woman screamed.

It really should have been possible, Meghan thought indignantly, for a girl to crouch and relieve herself in the bushes outside the shepherd hut without having a man on a horse appear right beside to her.

Three men. Coming from the spirit wood.

She'd screamed at the voice, but now a colder fear came as she realized that they'd ridden out of the forest. No one went into the wood. Not even the older boys of their village and farms, daring each other, drunk, would go farther than the first trees, in daylight.

Three men, a dog with them, had just emerged on horses from the woods. Which meant that they were dead, spirits themselves. And had come for her.

Meghan stood up, adjusting her clothing. She would have run, but they were on horses. They looked back at her oddly, as if they hadn't seen a girl before. Which might be true of ghosts, perhaps.

They looked ordinary enough. Or, if not ordinary, at least… alive, human. Then—third shock of a morning—Meghan realized that one of them was an Erling. The riders from Brynnfell that had come and taken all the men away with them had spoken of an Erling raid.

There was an Erling here, looking down at her from his horse, because—of course—her scream had revealed to them where she was, peeing in the bushes before seeing to the sheep.

She was alone. Bevin had gone with the others to Brynnfell yesterday at sunrise. Her brother would have laughed at her for screaming. Maybe. Maybe not, with men coming out of the wood, armed, one of them an Erling. The first man had spoken in a tongue she didn't know.

The dog's fur, she saw, was torn, streaked with blood.

They were still looking at her strangely, as though she were someone important. The Erlings had blood-eagled a girl named Elyn—another farm girl, only that—to the west after the Brynnfell fight. Meghan would have screamed again, thinking of that, but there was no point. No one near them, the farmhouses too far and the sheep wouldn't help her.

"Child," said one of them. "Child, we mean you no harm in all the god's sweet world."

He spoke Cyngael.

Meghan drew a breath. A Cadyri accent. They stole cattle and pigs, scorned Arberth in their songs, but they didn't kill farm girls. He dismounted, stood in front of her. Not a big man, but young, handsome, actually. Meghan, whose brother said she would get herself in trouble if she wasn't careful, decided she didn't really like it that he'd called her "child." She was fourteen, wasn't she? You could have a child at fourteen. That was what her brother meant, of course. He wasn't here. No one was.

The Cadyri said, "How far are we from Brynnfell? We must go to them. There is trouble coming."

Feeling extremely knowledgeable, and not as shy as she probably should have been, Meghan said, "We know all about it. Erlings. Riders came from Brynnfell and took our men with them."

The three men exchanged glances. Meghan felt even more important.

"How far is it?" It was the Erling, speaking Cyngael.

She looked dubiously at the one standing beside his horse.

"He's a friend," he said. "We must get there. How far?"

She thought about it. They had horses. "You can be there before dark," she said. "Up the swale and back down and pretty much west."

"Point us to the path," the Erling said.

"Cafall will know," said the Cyngael quietly. The third one hadn't spoken since his voice had made her scream. His eyes were closed. Meghan realized he was praying.

"Did you really come out of the forest?"

She had to ask. It was the wonder at the heart of this. It… made the world different. Bevin and the others would not believe her when she told them.

The one standing in front of her nodded. "How long ago did your menfolk leave?"

"Yesterday morning," she said. "You might almost catch them up, on horse."

The one who seemed to be praying opened his eyes. The one on the ground swung back into the saddle, pulled at his reins. They left without another word, the three of them, the dog, not looking back at her.

Meghan watched until they were out of sight. After, she had no idea what to do with herself. She wasn't used to being here alone—yesterday had been the first time, ever. The sun rose, as if declaring it was just another day. Meghan felt tingly, though, all strange. Eventually, she went back to the hut and built up the fire. She made and ate her morning pottage and then went to count the sheep. All morning, all day, she kept seeing them in her mind, those three riders, hearing what they'd said. Already it was beginning to feel too much like a dream, which she didn't like. She felt as if she needed to… root it in herself like a tree, make it real.

Meghan mer Gower told the story all her life, only not the part about how she'd been squatting to pee when they came out of the trees. Given what followed, who the three of them had turned out to be, even Bevin had to believe her, which was very satisfying.

Half a century later, it was Gweith, her grandson—having heard his grandmother's story all his days—who took thought one autumn morning after a fire had destroyed half the houses in the village.

After, he walked south, cap in hand, to the sanctuary at Ynant and spoke with the clerics there, asking their blessing for what he was of a mind to do. It was not the sort of thing you did without a blessing.

He received more than that. Fifteen clerics from Ynant, yellow-robed, most of them unhandy in the extreme, came walking with him back to the village.

The next morning they offered the dawn invocation and then, with all the villagers gathered to watch, in awe and wonder, the clerics began to help—after a fashion—as Gweith set about cutting down the first trees at the edge of the spirit wood. Some of the other young men joined them. They were more useful.

Gweith didn't die, nor did anyone else. No one was stricken with palsy or dropsy or fever in the days that followed. Neither were the clerics, though many of them did complain of blistered hands and muscle pains.

Men began taking axes to the wood.

At about that same time, in the way of such things, where an idea, a notion, reaches the world in many places at once, the same forest in the Anglcyn lands was entered into by men in search of urgently needed wood.

They brought their axes to the trees west of Esferth and farther south, beyond Retherly, towards where the young king had ordered a new shipyard and burh to be built. A growing kingdom needed lumber, there was no getting around it. At a certain point, in the name of Jad, you couldn't let old women's tales stop you from doing what had to be done.

None of the first woodcutters on that side of the wood died either, except for those suffering the usual accidents attendant upon sharp blades and falling trees and carelessness. It began, it continued. The world does not stay the way it was, ever.

Years after all of this, a great many years, actually, an Anglcyn charcoal burner at what had become the south-eastern edge of a considerably reduced forest came upon something curious. It was a hammer—an Erling battle hammer—lying in the grass by a small pond.

The odd thing was that the hammer's head, clearly ancient, gleamed as if newly forged, unrusted, and the wood of the shaft was smooth. When the charcoal burner picked it up he swore he heard a sound, something between a note of music and a cry.

Actions ripple, in so many ways, and for so long.

Kendra would remember the days before and during the fair that year as the most disconnected she'd known. Intensity of joy, intensity of fear.

The fyrd had been home for two nights, after riding in loud triumph through the wide-open gates of Esferth amid shouts and cheering and music playing. The city was thronged with merchants. There could not have been a better time for Aeldred to achieve such a victory over the Erlings. Slain in numbers, driven away, no losses at all for the Anglcyn.