Dark Enchantment (15 page)

This is what I do, he told himself, staring at the roofline as
he
thrust patiently. I fulfil the same role as Bastion: injecting new blood into an inbred backwater. I am a farm animal servicing other farm animals.

Her bottom bounced under his hands, warm and soft and infinitely eager. Stars shimmered in the sky; the clouds had evaporated and the night was now still and chilly. He fixed his eye on one bright one whose red tint identified it as the planet Mars. The star of warriors, he told himself. He’d been a great knight once; forged in war, looking always for the moment of heroism, the cause that would be worth dying for and the leader to whom he could pledge himself wholeheartedly. It wasn’t fame that had drawn him, but the quest for something greater than himself. He’d remained loyal to Cunicpert through his exile even though the King was a Catholic, because he’d believed the man was a better monarch than the Arian who’d deposed him, and Herrick’s lifelong quest was to find a man worthy of his service.

But Cunicpert was no longer loyal to the men who’d been loyal to him – and rulers of the duchies further south had proved no better, not in Friuli or Spoleto or Benevento. He’d met monarchs and dukes and popes, and all had fallen short of the true standard, so now he roamed the Lombard duchies and lands even further afield, killing bandits and slaying the monsters of a pagan past. This was what he’d reduced himself to, he told himself bitterly: swiving peasant girls in murky villages, garnering the acclaim of people who lived one notch above their animals and two steps from starvation.

‘Harder!’ moaned the servant girl, and Herrick obliged. His cock made a wet noise in her with every thrust. She spread her big pale cheeks with her hands and squealed. ‘Fuck me! Fuck me!’

By the good Christ, yes, he’d tried. He’d saved lives and brought hope to people who hardly recognised it. The star
seemed
to burn into his eyes as he focused unblinking upon it. His body was a dull beast heaving beneath him, disconnected from his mind.

I want … he thought. I want …

But he could not articulate what he wanted except that it was the star, the point of light, the beacon far overhead. And as the girl began to moan and jiggle her hips he became aware that he was not going to come this time, that there would be no face-saving end to this exchange, just a shamefaced acknowledgement of failure. He slid his hand surreptitiously down to his crotch. The root of his cock was hard still, but he felt almost numb. Pinching a fold of his own skin between thumb and forefinger, Herrick dug in his nails. Pain lanced through his groin, like life returning to a dead thing. He inhaled quickly, tasting the night air. His cock jumped and his spine prickled with sweat. His nails bit in harder, shearing the skin. There would be half-moons of blood when he took his hand away, but for now there was only pain. Pain bright as a star. The Mars-light poured through his veins and down into his cock and there, at last, was the climax he was reaching for. It boiled through him into the sex of the girl, and it didn’t matter that she didn’t know what was making him spend or that he didn’t want her, it didn’t even matter whether she was there; his whole being was fixed on that blazing star.

In the morning, when he was alone, Herrick made his prayers and donned his armour. Preparing for battle was a ritual thing. It focused his mind, leaving no room for his doubts. The last act of the ritual before lacing on his vambraces was to kneel by the fire slab and pull out the dagger whose tip had been resting in the hot embers. Baring his left forearm, Herrick pressed metal to flesh. Pain flashed through his nerves, bright and fierce. He gasped in welcome.

His forearms were smooth where the burning over the years had seared the hair follicles.

If he ever found himself flinching from this moment, he’d told himself, that would be the day he would turn from questing and retire to court, because he would no longer be able to confront an enemy. Pain was the companion of the soldier and a knight could not fear it. He had to accept it, even embrace it, and Herrick’s relationship with pain was longstanding and intimate. Not fearing pain was what raised a warrior over a civilian; it was what raised men over women. Pain was the keen edge of life; it was the only time he felt his life in him as a tangible thing, to be cherished.

When he was dressed he descended the stairs and met the crowd of villagers waiting outside for him. A hard frost had settled overnight and the ground and rooftops were painted white. People huddled in their winter cloaks and stamped their feet. Antonius made a little speech to which he hardly listened. Then Fosca rushed up, flung her arms about his neck and pleaded, ‘Come back safe to me!’

Without looking her in the eye Herrick extracted himself from her grip.

Antonius and a few of the other men accompanied him out of the village as far as the old church on the knoll; no one else cared to go that close to the dryad’s wood. The tiny windows of the building were broken through and choked with the black stems of briars, the doorway likewise impassable. It didn’t look like anyone had been in the building for a century, though Antonius told him the attack had taken place less than three decades ago. Beyond the church the hills rose, and the forest that spilled down their flanks was advancing on the village; young birches and hawthorn and elder had turned the rank grassland to scrubby wood. They didn’t even dare graze their livestock this side of the village, Antonius said bitterly.

Herrick left them at the church wall and went on alone. Sheathing his sword and slinging his shield across his back, he nocked an arrow to the bow, carrying it across his body with deceptive casualness.

The
capo
had been right about this land not being suitable for horses. The slopes were steep, falling away to deep gullies, and the footing was made treacherous by fallen trees and dead wood. But there were the remnants of trails; people had been here once, unmistakably. He came across what looked like a lumber yard quite soon, the piles of rotting timber furred with moss, and there were small houses hidden here and there, with roofs all broken by sprouting trees and floors thick with autumnal litter. Miners’ huts, he guessed. There were bones lying about here too, among the broken pots and rusted trivets and fallen beams: just skulls, which are always the last to disintegrate when left out in the open. Not all the skulls were adult-sized. Herrick turned one over thoughtfully with his foot and passed on into the deeper forest.

Away from the village the chill seemed fiercer, the frost thicker. The day was quite still, as if it held its breath. All but the oak trees had shed their leaves and frosted twigs hung like a froth of lace against the black trunks and the iron-grey sky. Every long weed stalk was turned to a feathery plume by ice. He was crossing a stream on a fallen log when a deer stepped out from the frozen undergrowth, glanced at him curiously but without fear, then paced gracefully away. He watched it go without raising his bow, thinking that it must have been generations of deer lifetimes since the last human dared hunt in this place.

Another beast gave him greater pause for thought. Upon one stag-headed oak sat a large bird with bronze plumage. Not just bronze-
coloured
plumage he noted; the heavy individually
discrete
feathers and the metallic clinks as the bird preened them made that clear. It was a Stymphalian bird, a type he’d thought extinct. They were dangerous in flocks, he knew, but this one seemed to be alone and indolent. Herrick gave it a careful berth nonetheless.

The going was steep. Despite the weather Herrick was starting to feel uncomfortably hot in his arming jacket and mail hauberk. Then he heard singing.

It came from a valley steep enough to be called a ravine, and when he’d descended carefully through the trees he found a level floor and a river that was probably ferocious in spring, but now only half filled its bed, lying in dark pools between stretches of moving water and broken rock. It was markedly warm down here; no frost lay on the ground and there was a steam in the air and a scent of warm earth. Primroses bloomed unseasonably in drifts among new spikes of grass. In one of the pools the singer was bathing. Her song was gentle and wordless.

It was as it should be, he told himself with a half-smile, as he edged forwards: nymphs and goddesses of old were always discovered at their bath. He raised his bow, the arrow aimed straight at the pale glimmer of skin in the shadows under the trees.

It was a narrow target; she was slenderly built. Her long hair was the black of ash buds in winter while her skin was a pale uncanny green, like the flush on the petals of snowdrops. Defying the season overhead, white petals of hawthorn were drifting down in the still air from trees on the cliff face, and lay on the pool’s surface or clung to her damp skin like snowflakes that refused to melt. The water must have been gelid, but she washed herself slowly, with great concentration, as if enthralled by her reflection or the slim body under her hands. The surface of the pool cut across her form at the exact
point
at which the cleft of her gently curved rear started, and Herrick’s keen glance found that precision peculiarly frustrating.

The smell of the may blossom was heavy and sweet, like honey.
The scent of hawthorn is the scent of death
, the old woman had said – but hawthorn blossom at different times may smell alluring, or of sex, or of corruption. It depends on the tree, and the time, and the man.

Her song faded away. She lowered her hands to the water. ‘Why don’t you shoot?’ she asked, without turning. Her voice was low-pitched.

He didn’t answer. He stepped forwards out of cover though, the bow at full draw, the arrow tip aimed unwaveringly.

‘You don’t shoot deer or birds,’ she continued. ‘Do you shoot unarmed women?’

That hurt. ‘I’ve never shot anyone in the back.’

She laughed. ‘What about in the front?’ she asked, turning. Her face was triangular and delicate, with slanted green eyes under angled rows; a hungry face, not beautiful by any courtly standards but entirely arresting. And her body – oh, her body made Herrick’s heart thud against his ribs, so he dragged his eyes back to her face, away from those breasts upon which the water droplets sat like pearls. Her lips, like her nipples, were the dark red of ripe haws. She smiled. ‘Well? Will you shoot me now?’

Then she walked forwards out of the pool, up onto the spit of sand and grass where he waited, and as she did, her hair changed colour, blanching to the blond of new-cut pine, and her skin warmed to the cream of peeled willow strips. Her expression with its mocking smile did not change though.

‘No,’ he said with resignation, dropping his bow to one side. But he put his hand on the hilt of his sword.

‘Your mistake,’ she told him. She was nearly as tall as he
was
when she came up close, with long clean limbs. ‘How are you going to kill me now, man of iron? You are here to kill me, aren’t you?’

‘I’m here to stop you.’

‘Stop me doing what?’ Her hair moved about her like a live thing, undulating softly. It reminded Herrick of the twitch of a cat’s tail before the beast pounces.

‘Killing innocent people.’

‘And when have I done that?’ She looked him up and down. ‘You don’t look innocent to me.’

He raised a brow in acknowledgement. ‘The people of Estoli. The woodsmen and the hunters and the miners.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘They were innocent, were they? Felling the trees? Killing the animals? Raping the earth?’

‘They were just trying to stay alive.’

‘So am I.’

‘There were children,’ he growled.

‘Ah.’ Her eyes glittered with ire. ‘There is no end either to the greed of men, or the begetting of their children. They will fill the earth and take everything.’

‘A child is of more worth than a tree!’

She laughed. ‘Says you, human.’

‘Says God.’

‘Not this one!’ Her arm lashed out, faster than he would have believed, and she backhanded him stingingly across the face. Herrick felt his blood surge in his veins. He blinked hard, meeting her mocking eyes, but his sword did not leave its scabbard and his hand did not leave its hilt.

She shifted on her toes, clearly frustrated by his lack of reaction. ‘Well,’ she sneered, ‘aren’t you going to fight me? Shall I strike you again? Will you turn the other cheek?’ She raised her fist again, but this time he saw it warp, changing, and as she swung at him he jerked back out of the way. Her hand
swung
past his face and he glimpsed six-inch thorns jutting from the knuckles. She’d have ripped his throat out.

Without needing to think he was in the fighting stance, his sword out in his hand. She danced around him, laughing, her damp hair swirling, her feet barely seeming to touch the ground. Herrick’s face burned, not just from the blow she’d struck him but from shame that she should scorn him. He was a knight and not used to being treated to lightly. When she feinted at him he slashed back, meaning to catch her knuckles on the flat of his blade, but her hand was not where it should have been and he struck only empty air.

‘Faster than that, man of iron,’ she mocked. She stabbed at his eyes. As he swiped back she slid past beneath his guard and ripped her other hand across the exposed underside of his arm, just at the edge of his mail sleeve, drawing blood.

She was inhumanly swift, he realised. And her nails were now as sharp and thick as lion claws. A duel that should have been hopelessly one-sided – armed knight against naked nymph – turned instead into a twisting dance of slash and dodge, both combatants proud and angry, she grinning but he grim-faced and increasingly discomforted. He had the armour and the sword and the reach on her; she had a litheness that would have put a cat to shame. They circled each other frantically. Herrick took a moment to unsling his shield, but it was hardly in his hand before the wood warped, burst into leaf, turned sear and then withered to dry sticks that fell apart. The iron boss and rim fell uselessly to the ground, and she laughed.

Then a raking blow from her snagged her curved claws in his mail, trapping that hand long enough for him to seize the wrist. His grip was harsh enough to grind her wrist bones together, but she responded by growing thorns from her skin like the spikes of blackthorn, long as fingers and narrow as
awls,
which punched clean through his palm and out the other side. He gasped, but didn’t let her go – not until the points emerging from her hand pierced his hauberk and the padded cloth beneath and drilled into his abdomen. Then he wrenched away and released her, scattering droplets of blood as he staggered out of her reach, and cursed in shock.