A HORRIFIC, grunting shriek, echoing over and over in his head, then the pounding of hoofs. The buck blasts defiance, charges; he is spit on the horns, thrown aside as if he is parchment ripped from a court ledger, set ablaze in a brazier… his head is burning from the fire, ground beneath the galloping hoofs.
He’s going to die. He can feel the stag’s breath heating and tugging his cape and he cannot even lift so much as his fingers to do anything about it.
Another shriek, wavering then trembling into a growl. The hoofs retreat, panicked and scattered. He groans, tries to turn over but cannot. Something shoves him, yanks him over and his eyes, fluttering and ill-focused, open to take in….
A wolf. Black pelt gleaming, dark eyes glittering with fire and shadows. Lean and dusty, the outlier moves toward him with another growl, soft threat. Hungry.
Consciousness roared back over him like waves against the white rocks of his mother’s south coast home. He lurched upright, flailed, managed by some miracle to throw his cape back over his shoulder and grappled for his sword.
It wasn’t there. Neither was his sword belt. He abruptly remembered hanging his sword on his saddle, which was with his horse, which was….
Gone. The nappy git had run like a bunny from that stag. Of course, it had been the biggest stag he’d ever seen. And it wasn’t his horse, actually—it was his brother Otho’s horse, and no matter that brother’s liking for him, Otho was going to kick his arse for letting the stallion get away.
Of course, his head already felt like his arse would when he got back home. He gave up on grabbing the absent sword for protection, instead clutched his hands to his head and gave a sound that sounded distinctly like a mewl.
Buck up, Gamelyn, he told himself. If you’re about to be supper for a wolf, you can at least go down like a man.
Gritting his teeth, he clenched his fists, opened his eyes again, and looked.
It wasn’t a wolf. It was a lad about his own age, shaking a worn leathern hood back from a frowning face. That frown was a mighty one, dark brows drawn together over the blackest eyes Gamelyn had ever seen, with an even-blacker forelock nearly obscuring them. The lad didn’t say anything, hadn’t moved, just kept peering at Gamelyn, and for a panicked second, Gamelyn wondered if all those tales the old women told about the kitchen fires were true. If the forest here really was inhabited—not by mortal men but ghosts and demons who shifted their bodies to whatever shape they pleased.
After all, the lad still wasn’t moving. Gamelyn wasn’t sure that he was breathing, if it came to it, and in the half-lit forest gloom, his skin was white as the lead chalk some ladies used on their cheeks.
“Did the fall addle your head, or what?”
Gamelyn jumped as the demon/wolf/lad spoke, fell back against the tree, and went sprawling sideways.
“Bloody damn,” the wolf/demon/lad swore. Reaching forward, he grasped Gamelyn by the tunic, and hauled him upright. Purely by instinct, Gamelyn grabbed the lad by his wrists, felt bones grind as he tried to fling him aside.
Now there was no doubt but the lad was surely some ghost or demon in boy disguise. He didn’t even flinch at Gamelyn’s hold, and Gamelyn had been told more than the once that he was quite strong for a lad whose voice hadn’t even broken yet. The demon lad was surely of a height with Gamelyn, but his wrists were slim in Gamelyn’s broad fingers, and his ragged tunic hung on a skinny, lanky frame.
The lad—wolf or demon or ghost, Gamelyn no longer knew what to think—gently but firmly extricated his wrists from what Gamelyn had thought quite the grip, then just as easily pushed Gamelyn down to a seated crouch against the massive roots of the oak. Nostrils flaring as if at some scent, he cocked his head not unlike a wolf.
“I think you have addled yourself,” he ventured, very softly, and reached a hand to Gamelyn’s forehead. Pressure, very light, but it stung like tens of bees.
“Hoy, that hurts!”
“I’ll wager it does.” The lad, or whatever he was, brought his fingers back to his face, sniffed them then shrugged. “I’m not me mam, I’m afraid. She does it all the time and can tell what it means by the smell of it.”
Smelling blood. He was a demon, then, if his mother could tell if blood was fit just by the smell of it.
“What do you want of me?” Gamelyn tried to make his voice steady, succeeded after a fashion. Aye, he’d not go craven, even if unshriven.
A horrific screech echoed through the thick dim, reverberating off the trees. Gamelyn remembered that sound bringing and breaking the delirium of his fall. The buck had bowled them over and he’d gotten dragged a short ways, had lain for some indeterminate time, heard that horrible shriek. He regretted then and there he’d not just fallen in a faint like some tight-laced lass, wondered if the demon lad had called his kin to finish the job and crossed himself.
The demon lad did not, unfortunately, go up in flames at the fervent genuflection. Instead he merely blinked, as if puzzled. The shriek sounded again, this time with a definite thud at the end, and the demon lad suddenly laughed. “Sounds as if they’ve had enough. I know you’re a bit addled, but do you think you can walk? We’d better go and fetch them before they wander off, aye?”
Gamelyn blinked. “What?”
“Your stallion. My mare. I think she’s tired of him for now.” The narrow face bent closer to Gamelyn and said, very slowly, “Our horses. We have to catch them up. Ride home. Do you understand me? At that, do you even know where home is?”
He seemed exasperated.
It was Gamelyn’s turn to frown. He was abruptly unsure he did know how to get back. It was this forest—it had twisted him all about until he was lost.
Not that he was sure he should tell a demon where he lived, anyway. Gamelyn craned his neck—subtly, he hoped—and peered at the demon lad’s ears. If they were pointed, then he’d know for sure.
Wouldn’t he?
Anyway, what if this demon’s family went after his family? If demons had family. He should have paid better attention to the old priest back at Huntingdon. If this demon was a lad, and wasn’t just appearing to be a lad, then it stood to reason that he was still growing and therefore had been birthed from something.
“What are you looking at?” The demon lad looked puzzled again, though Gamelyn wasn’t sure he’d ever seen brows twist that way.
No pointed ears in that mass of black hair. And a good thing too, for Gamelyn realized he was lost. Perhaps he’d have to make some sort of bargain with this little demon; they could have his eldest brother, if it came to it, but he’d definitely miss the rest of his family.
“Bloody damn.” The demon lad certainly flung about curses as freely as any spawn of Hell. “You are addled. I canna just leave you here like this.” Another, somewhat aggrieved sigh. “Come on, then. Prop yourself against me. We can tie you to that fancy horse of yours, if we have to, and I’ll take you to me mam. She’ll see to you ’til you remember what’s what.”
Again, the amazingly strong hands grabbed him, hoisted him upright. Gamelyn’s head spun and he nearly toppled over. The demon-lad swore, even more inventively, and Gamelyn had no choice but to lean on the skinny creature and accept his guidance to the forest’s edge.
GAMELYN WAS more and more convinced the demon lad was indeed that. He plunked Gamelyn down by a little grazing jennet, more shaggy dog than any respectable horse, and told the jennet to keep an eye on him. Then, striding over bold and self-assured as any tourney victor, the demon lad pinned sloe eyes on nappy gray Diamant and took hold of his bridle. Quick as that.
It would have taken Gamelyn loading up his tunic with swede to get within as much as snatching distance, and even then the stud might decide he wasn’t hungry, ta!
As the demon lad came over, leading Diamant with one negligent hand—as if he just assumed the stallion would follow!—the little shaggy mare plucked her head from her grazing and approached him like a dog. Even a hopeful grunt from the stallion didn’t distract her overlong; she merely made a sideswipe with pinned ears to put him in his place then nuzzled at the demon lad’s breast. Gamelyn eyed her with a mixture of bemusement and disdain.
Surely demons didn’t ride hairy little ponies.
His companion scowled. In the sunlight that frown was no less fierce than in the gloom of trees, even if the lad himself was not so daunting. He was looking more and more human; the death-pale skin proved, out of the forest gloom, to be just fair and freckled, sunburnt across the cheeks and nose. He had brown wrists and hands that didn’t quite match the pale breastbone peeking from beneath the sideways drag of his hood against his rough-woven tunic. His hair was indeed black, unruly and too long, thick as his pony’s mane.
And just like that, Gamelyn’s head was spinning and his legs didn’t seem to want to hold him up.
“Whups!” the demon lad said, and dropped the gray’s rein to grab at Gamelyn just before he hit the ground.
“Not good,” Gamelyn muttered. “Now you won’t catch him again.”
“Whatever are you on about?” the lad wondered, then, with a shrug, he muscled Gamelyn over to the pony. “Here. It waint be quite the climb, this way. Neither will she jump out from under you if the wind hits her ears. We need to get you to me mam, quicker’s best. I’ll ride yon Testicles.”
Had he really meant it to sound like some ancient Roman general’s name? Gamelyn shook his head, giving a tiny groan as it shook pain outward through his eyelids. “Nay, you can’t… can’t ride him.” Merciful Heaven, was that really his voice, so faint and wobbly? “He won’t let you.”
“I daresay he will,” was the answer. “There’s nowt I canna ride. I can trust Willow to take care of you. Anyway.” A sudden grin, like sun breaking over clouds. “I’m dying to step up in one of those fancy stirrups.”
There was nothing for it; the lad was already starting to muscle him over to the pony, and again Gamelyn was startled at how much strength those scrawny arms had. “Wait,” he said, then again, because it was a murmur and barely audible, “wait, wait… wait.”
The lad waited, again with that considerable frown. And waited. Finally, he said, “What?”
Gamelyn realized that he hadn’t said what he meant to. In fact, he wasn’t sure what he’d meant to say, so what came out was, “What’s your name?”
The brows gave another massive squinch, perturbed to puzzled. “Rob. Rob of Loxley.”
“I’m Gamelyn. Sir Ian’s son.” Somehow this last was particularly important, because he couldn’t remember the name of the castle his father had recently been deeded holding to.
“Aye, Sir Ian’s son Gamelyn,” acknowledged Rob and then, after a pause, “Can we go now, then?”
HE BARELY remembered Rob half lifting, half pitching him into the saddle of the little bay pony, didn’t remember much of the journey at all. But Gamelyn remembered, vividly, the look of dismay on Rob’s face as Gamelyn had pitched out of the saddle and into the dirt just as they arrived at a squat, cob-bricked cottage.
He also remembered the feel of cool hands upon his forehead, and cooler water….
Lurching from fog and fugue, Gamelyn blinked, tried to focus, found a figure bent over him.
He also remembered her. Those hands were still cool, soothing upon him, and she had Rob’s hair and eyes.
“So you’re back with us, youngling,” she said. “That’s a fair-sized knot you’ve gathered on your pate, so lie still, aye?”
She even sounded a bit like Rob, but her accent was thicker, more musical. Which was aptly demonstrated as Rob’s voice sounded from behind her.
“Hoy, Mam, is he back in the living? I didna kill him, did I?”
She smiled at Gamelyn, answered, “Nay, my Hob-Robyn. Not for lack of trying, though.”
Gamelyn blinked. He’d heard that name before, but never applied to any human. His old nurse had told him stories of such things: fey forest sprites, trees that walked like wild, wanton girls, and wolf-men that ate naughty little boys. And all of them, led by their feral master, Jack o’ th’ Green, the Hob, the Robyn Greenfellow.
What kind of woman would name her child such a thing, even in jest?
“I just figured I’d get him here however I could and you’d put him right.” Rob came into Gamelyn’s view and crouched by the bed, peering at him. It was a bed Gamelyn lay in, curtains pulled back and frame piled high with rushes and furs, one of several in the cottage’s back corner. Windows were flung open, letting in light and a cool breeze, and there was a hearth in the opposite corner. A girl—she looked to be nigh grown—was stirring something in a large kettle that hung in the hearth. A glint of setting sun caught her hair and it lit like fire, a fall of unruly copper twisting down her back.
Gamelyn had been told once that his own mother had been red-haired. It was a continual disappointment to him that his own hair seemed more rosy straw than honest red, even if the old priest at Huntingdon told him he’d enough red to be wary of. Red-haired children were Satan’s spawn, no question. It had been the first time he’d questioned the priest, but not the last—and the punishment had been worth it. His mother was in Heaven, in God’s grace, and had not been of any devil!
Now that he considered it, he’d like to hear that priest say such a thing to this peasant girl’s face. Or her mother, seated all poised in her chair. Both of them looked like they’d have something to say back.
Setting sun? It hit him, abruptly. Had he been out so long?
“Will he be all right, then?” Rob peered at him, and Gamelyn wasn’t sure it was as friendly as the query seemed. Rob’s mother reached out and gave a tug, fond but purposeful, at his tangled hair.
“Son, I’ve seen wolves with less baleful stares than you.” Rob shrugged, but lowered his gaze as she continued, to Gamelyn, “I’m Eluned, wife to Adam of Loxley. My bold Rob here,” she said as she reached out and gave another tug, “said only that you were Sir Ian’s son Gamelyn.”
“Would that be Sir Ian Boundys, newly granted mesne lord of Blyth Castle?” A deeper voice, male, and a tall, broad figure striding through the door. “I see our young guest is awake. Welcome to our home, lad.”
This, then, must be Adam of Loxley.
“Here you go, young sirrah.” This from the girl who, as she approached, was revealed to have a bowl in her hands that steamed and smelled positively mouthwatering.
“You never let me eat in bed,” Rob protested.
“You ent as handsome as our visitor,” the girl quipped.
“Bugger, she’s off again—” Rob rolled his eyes.
“Rob.” His mother, stern.
“Dinna mind him, he’s a mouth like a piss pot,” the girl told Gamelyn, almost at the same time.
“Marion.” Eluned’s tone had not changed.
“Well, he does, Mam.” The girl—Marion—shrugged. “Can you sit up, then, Sir Gamelyn?”
“Nor is he a ‘sir’, just son to one—”
Adam calmly went over, wrapped a beefy arm about Rob’s head, and clapped a hand over his mouth. Rob struggled; Gamelyn watched in abrupt anxiety until he saw Rob’s eyes were crinkling with laughter.
Gamelyn sat up, was surprised that he no longer felt as if a rabid warhorse was tromping through his head, and then was further surprised when Marion sat next to him—on the bed. She began to shovel up spoonfuls of whatever it was toward his face. Gamelyn opened his mouth out of self-defense.
The pottage was as delicious as it smelled.
“Da,” Rob was whinging, “dinna I get to eat too?”
He had seemed so mature, out in the forest. It was passing strange to see that Rob might be younger than Gamelyn himself.
“Have you seen to the horses?”
Rob looked affronted. “Of course.”
“Then, aye.”
A good tilting horse didn’t have a quicker start than Rob toward the cauldron. It was beyond passing strange to see him not get clobbered for whinging. Otho didn’t mind the occasional whinge, and their father ignored it. But Gamelyn’s eldest brother, Johan, was not so forgiving.
Adam was speaking, a low, unflappable voice that seemed to radiate calm. “I’ve business east; no bother to see you home proper, help you make your apologies for worrying your folk.”
“My brothers won’t miss me, they’ll worry more after the horse,” Gamelyn muttered. Then, as Adam and Eluned exchanged a meaningful look and Marion cocked her head and stopped shoveling food at him, Gamelyn furthered, “My father’s away to York, doing the pretty as guest of the sheriff.”
Eluned’s eyebrows arched upward, altogether too canny for Gamelyn’s peace of mind.
“Doing the what?” Rob inserted from over the cauldron, huddled over a bowl. He abruptly gave a hiss and sucked at his thumb like he’d singed it. “No wonder our visitor is so quiet. You’ve burned his mouth shut, Marion.”
“Eat, then. Maybe it’ll work on you.”
“You canna be traveling in the dark, at any rate,” Eluned told Gamelyn. “You’ll stay here with us ’til the morrow.”
“I DINNA like him.”
“I do. Nay, really, Rob. He’s nice.”
A snort in the dim, quickly muffled into the bedclothes—or by Marion’s cushion over Rob’s face, Gamelyn discovered when he peeked.
Gamelyn, as he’d found out, was in Rob’s bed. Rob was tucked in with Marion. They’d been quiet for so long that Gamelyn was sure they slept. But no, perhaps they were just making sure their parents were sleeping.
He couldn’t sleep. His head was throbbing despite the potion Mistress Eluned had given him. The moon was full and overbright, the illumination coming directly over the bed in a manner he wasn’t at all accustomed to. And the bed was nothing like he was accustomed to, either. It smelled of horse, boy sweat, and deer must.
“He’s one of them.”
“Everything with you is ‘us’ and ‘them’. What about ‘we’?”
Another snort, softer, and Rob hissed, “You know the only ‘we’ that matters to his kind are those born on the proper side of the blanket.”
“You’ve been listening to Will Scathelock too much—”
“Will’s mam was killed, after they—”
“I know what happened to her.” Marion’s whisper was suddenly odd and flat. “They’re surely all not like that. You canna hem people into one garment, little brother. This one, this Gamelyn Boundys. He’s seen some hurt, too.”
“Did the fae tell y’ so?”
“So you’re the only one allowed to travel along the Barrow-lines?”
Barrow-lines? Fae? What an extraordinary way of speaking. It might have been another language for all the sense it made.
“Aye, me and Mam. Your hair’s too red.”
There was another whump of cushion against flesh, and Rob was… giggling?
“You just like that lad,” this between giggles, “because he’s towheaded.”
“I’ll pitch you from this bed, see if I don’t.”
“Pax, then.” A loud creak of leather and cord; through slit eyes Gamelyn saw Rob sit up. “You kick like a jenny ass even when you’re not set t’ boot me. I’ll go up top.”
Marion merely said, “Take a fur, then,” and rolled over. The moon’s light glinted over her like cold forge fire.
Rob, on the other hand, seemed to swallow the moonlight. He was a shadow, silent once off his sister’s cot; so silent that Gamelyn, closing his eyes against the moonlight and discovery, didn’t hear Rob until he was close enough so his breath stirred Gamelyn’s hair.
“I know you’re awake,” Rob whispered against his ear. It gave Gamelyn a sudden, deep-set shiver. “Spyin’ on people’s no way to make ’em trust you, neither.”
Gamelyn opened his eyes wide, affronted. Rob’s narrow face wasn’t a handsbreadth from his, a thin skim of moon frost on his cheeks and a tiny glitter in those dark eyes.
“I know your kind,” he murmured. “Stay away from my sister.”
A frown gathered at Gamelyn’s brow. The expression stung his injured skull, but not half as much as Rob’s words had. “Grotty peasant,” Gamelyn growled, sotto voce, before he had a chance to rethink the wisdom of brassing off someone whose bed he occupied. “I’m not ‘after’ your sister.”
The dark eyes widened.
“And I’d not be so ill-mannered as to take advantage in a house where I’m guest!”
Rob blinked. Then inexplicably grinned, a flash of white teeth in the dim. “Aye. Well. All right, then.”
And, still silent, Rob backed away from the bed and mounted the rope ladder leading to the loft.