Gill Alderman - Lilith’s Castle

‘That is the village of Russet Cross. Not to be confused with the tower of rust and bones,’ he said cheerily. ‘Our shepherd lives there. You must dismount and lead me in and it will be wiser, and more polite, if you take that scarf of yours and lead Mouse-Catcher as well. Shepherds and wolves are never the best of friends.’

Seven low houses, built of rocks from the shore, and a large pen of hurdles in which the sheep were confined, was all the village of Russet Cross. Dogs came barking out to defend it, snapping at Mouse-Catcher as he walked subdued by his leash of blue cloth. In her other hand, Gry held a lock of the Red Horse’s mane, to lead him, and she had secured the dagger at her waist so that its hilt, old and damaged as it was, protruded from the skins there and looked workmanlike, not to be trifled with. Doors opened, light spilled, and someone with a tremulous voice called,

‘Traveller, wolf or wight?’

‘No wight,’ Gry answered, ‘but a traveller – with her horse – and her wolf.’

In the pen, the sheep had begun a tumult of bleating; in the houses, men began to shout wildly, as if they were drunk or crazy with fear. Gry shrank into herself, remembering the men of the Ima. A single flame detached itself from the blaze of lights in the nearest house and moved rapidly towards them. It was carried by the shepherd and he, as he came up and saw them, the soaking, fur-clad girl, the grey wolf on her left and the great horse walking docilely on her right, dropped to his knees and lifted his torch on high like a greeting or a gift.

‘I ran from you this morning,’ he said. ‘Trouble us no more, I beg you.’

‘We won’t hurt you, or your sheep. We are gentle creatures.’

‘A wolf – gentle!’ The man almost laughed.

He was the first living man she had been close to since Heron. He was dark and rough-looking with an untidy beard and wild hair and the smells that rose up from him were meat, smoke, beer and boastful maleness. Gry shivered; yet he was one of her kind, a human animal with two legs to walk on and two arms with proper fingers and thumbs; and that long fifth member – vile, dangerous, inevitable! Her eyes filled with the hot darkness of the storehouse in Garsting and she heard Heron’s lustful breaths.

‘Come up,’ said the Red Horse as if he were a man speaking to a disobedient horse. ‘Come out of it, Gry; step away from the shadows of the past.’

‘I am only an outcast woman,’ she said, hoping to waken the shepherd’s sympathy.

He crouched lower. ‘Wild Lady!’ he said, ‘Lady of the Wolves.’

‘Make him get up!’ she cried to the Horse.

‘You can command him. Be a great lady.’

So Gry tried again, imagining herself a person of consequence like Nemione or the Goddess of the Grasses the Ima men sang of, in their spring song.

‘Stand up, shepherd. We are not used to waiting for our dinner.’

He got up immediately and began to shout for his fellows who came running, burning brands held high, while the women of the village who were dressed like those of her own in heavy skirts and silver and copper jewellery, gestured towards the lighted doorways from which spilled welcoming smells of meat and new-baked bread. The men helped her down and led the Horse away – in the direction of the sheep-pen. Hearing him sigh ‘O, for a jug of wine, a loaf of bread and Thou, dear Gry,’ she thought he mocked her and, standing uncertainly in the middle of the excited crowd of women, tried to sleek down her unruly scrub of hair.

Mouse-Catcher did not try to follow the Horse or herself, but lay down where he was, and curled into a ball, nose between paws, thick tail over all. Gry tied his leash to the leg of a slaughtering-bench, and was ashamed to restrain him.

She woke early and did not know where she was nor, for an instant, who. The mat beneath her was pliant and warm – wool, she remembered and, reaching about in the darkness, found the objects the shepherds had given her, presents of a rare and costly kind. Gry, I am, Gry alone, she thought. I have no place here, nor anywhere. She listened: the shepherdesses in whose hut she had been entertained were all asleep, breathing softly as lambswool clouds in a summer sky, and there was another sound of breathing, deeper, familiar, kind. The Red Horse was close by.

Gry rose from the warm bed and, pausing only to gather her gifts into her skirt, crept from the house. The sky above the distant Altaish was the colour of butter and she could see the Horse waiting by the porch. He had evidently grown tired of his confinement in the sheep-pen and leapt out. She ran to him and kissed him on the nose. The wolf, Mouse-Catcher, rose like a shadow from the place where he had lain down and licked her hand. Some brave person had thrown him meat in the night, she guessed, for a much-licked and gnawed bone was lying beside him. She untied the leash and freed him, putting the torn, blue cloth it to its proper use as the scarf about her neck.

‘Is it time to go?’ she asked the Red Horse.

‘It certainly is! The Altaish are no closer – indeed, they seem to be further away.’

‘Is that where we are going?’

‘Not immediately. Mount, Gry, and let us be gone or the shepherds will interrupt our journey with their fuss and ceremony.’

‘They were kind to me. They gave me lots of presents.’

‘They were hospitable, but you are neither the Wolf Lady nor Goddess of the Grasses. They would beggar themselves feasting you.’

‘I am Nandje’s daughter.’ Gry spoke uncertainly as, burdened by the gifts it seemed she had no right to, she clambered on to the Horse’s back.

‘I am well aware of that!’ He tossed his head and broke into a swift trot before she was settled. The present she had liked best, the multicoloured string of beads, dropped from her bundled skirt and fell behind. She looked back for an instant, full of regret for the pretty necklace; but the Horse would not stop, she knew that. His head and his limbs were full of purpose and soon he broke into a canter.

The wolf ran before them as they travelled in the dawnlight beside the sea. The watery plain was green now and raw and tossed its uncountable heads impatiently. A shoal of ripples escaped the waves and ran on to the beach. Gry, soothed by the rocking motion, gazed out to sea, surprised to see neither mist nor rusty tower. Instead, a strange object moved over the water, almost at the horizon, a floating house or a waggon maybe, pale in colour and glistening like a polished catamountain’s claw. It flew along parallel to the shore and Gry, seeing how inexorably it sped, grew alarmed and called out to the Horse, ‘Faster!’

The Horse laughed softly and plunged to a halt.

‘Watch, and learn!’ he said.

The thing in the sea had huge black awnings above it which flew out from a pole and had many ropes attached. The waves, flying faster than the strongest wind, were broken into white and scattered fragments by its tapering, buoyant body and a multitude of sea birds followed it, mewing and shrieking in their own mournful language.

The Horse, facing out to sea, considered, while Gry trembled on his back and the wolf raised the mane on his neck and all along his back and held his ears stiffly out, listening.

‘You are right to be terrified; and I am wary and ready to flee, my Gry,’ the Horse said. ‘It is a ship, although there are no ships upon the seas of Malthassa. That is the one and only: Hespyne, the Ship of the Dead, which never sails close to the land unless someone is dying, and never lowers her anchor unless there are fresh corpses lying in their graves. Hespyne comes for the souls of the dead and carries them far away, to the Palace of Shadows.’

‘Then I will soon see my father!’