Neil raised his brow in surprise. “I know it, lady. My father taught me how to play when I was a boy.”
“I wonder—would you like to play it? No one on the ship knows how, and they’re too busy to learn. But you . . .”
“Well, it’s something I can do from my back,” Neil said. “If you have a board.”
Swanmay smiled a little shyly and crossed to a small cupboard built into the cabin. From it she produced a fiedchese board and a leather bag full of playing pieces. The board was beautiful, its squares made of inlaid wood, one set red-brown and the other bone-white. The throne in the center of the board was black.
The pieces were of matching beauty. The king was carved of the dark wood, and he wore a sharply peaked helm for his crown. His men were figured with shield and sword, and they were tall and slender like their king.
The raiders were of all sorts, no two pieces alike, and they were a bit grotesque. Some had human bodies and the heads of birds, dogs, or pigs. Others had wide bodies and short legs or no legs at all, just long arms that served the function. Neil had never seen a set like it.
“Which would you like me to play, lady?” Neil asked. “The king or raiders?”
“I have played the king far too often,” Swanmay mused. “But perhaps I should play it again, to see if there is an omen in it.”
And with that opaque statement she began setting up the board. The king went in the center, surrounded by his knights in the form of a cross. The raiders—Neil’s men—were placed around the edge of the board. There were four gates, at each corner of the board. If the king reached any of the gates, Swanmay would win. Neil would win if he captured the king.
She took the first move, sending one of her knights east, but not so far as to strike one of his men. He studied the board a bit and countered by capturing the man.
“I thought a warrior might take that bait,” she said. She sent another knight across the board, this one to block one of his pieces.
Five moves later, her king crossed through the north gate and Neil was left wondering what exactly had happened.
“Well,” he said, “if it was an omen you were seeking, you found a good one.”
“Yes,” she replied. “In fact, I am nearly to my own gate. I hope to pass through it soon.” She began placing the pieces back on the board.
3
Leshya
“Aren’t many who can sneak up on me,” Aspar muttered to the Sefry behind him. He hadn’t turned, but he knew two things about the Sefry now that he didn’t know before. The first was that it certainly wasn’t Fend. He knew Fend’s voice as well as he knew his own.
The other was that she was a woman.
“I wouldn’t guess so,” she answered. “But it’s no matter. I mean you no harm if you mean me none.”
“That will depend on a few things,” Aspar said, turning slowly. He no longer feared that the monks or the greffyn might have spotted him. Whatever was coming from the east had attracted all of their attention. His immediate problem was the one behind him.
She was slight, even for a Sefry, with violet eyes and black bangs that dropped almost to her eyelashes. She had loosened her cowl so she could speak unmuffled, and he could just make out the sardonic bow of her lips. She looked young, but he guessed by the set of her eyes she wasn’t. She might be as old as he was, or older, but Sefry aged young in the skin and lived longer than Mannish folk.
He wondered how he could have ever thought she was Fend, even at a distance.
“What things would those be?” she asked.
He could see both her hands, and they were empty. He relaxed slightly.
“You’ve been leading me around,” he told her. “Playing with me. I don’t like that.”
“No? You didn’t have to follow.”
“I thought you were someone else.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “Ah. You thought I was Fend.”
The name jabbed him like a prickle. “Who the sceat are you?” Aspar hissed.
She put a finger to her lips. “I can explain that later,” she said. “You’ll want to watch what’s about to happen.”
“You know what’s coming? You’ve seen it?”
She nodded. “It’s the slinders. See—there they are.”
“Slinders?” He looked back, and at first all he saw was forest. But the trees seemed to be shivering oddly, as if a wind was blowing through them in just one place. Blackbirds swirled up in clouds against the silvery sky. The monks stood like statues, frozen by the moment.
Then something came from the trees, creatures loping sometimes on four legs, sometimes on two. There were ten of them, and their baying became more frantic as their feet hit the clearing and they saw the monks.
At first Aspar thought they might be smaller versions of the utin or some other ugly thing from boygshin stories, but when he understood what they actually were, the shock went cold through him.
They were men and women. Naked, scuffed, dirty, bleeding, utterly mad—but Mannish, just as Ehawk had described.
As the leaves began to rustle in a strong autumn wind, the main pack of them came behind the leaders—twenty, fifty—more than he could count. He guessed at least a hundred. They moved strangely, and it wasn’t just that they sometimes dropped to their hands. They ran jerkily, frantically—like insects, in a way. A few carried rocks or branches, but most were empty-handed.
The majority looked to be relatively young, but some were stoop-shouldered and gray-haired. Some were little more than children, but he didn’t see any that looked as if they had seen fewer than fifteen winters.
They spread to encircle the monks, and their cacophonic yowling settled into a hair-prickling sort of song. The words were slurred and broken, just sounds really, but he knew the tune. It was a children’s song, about the Briar King, sung in Almannish.
“Those are the slinders?” he asked.
“It’s what the Oostish have taken to calling them,” the Sefry said. “At least those who haven’t joined them.”
As she spoke, the slinders began to fall, quilled black by arrows. The monks were firing with inhuman speed and precision. But it hardly slowed the wave of bodies. They poured around the fallen like a river around rocks. The monks drew swords and formed themselves into a ring fortress—only two kept their bows out, and they were in the center.
Almost without thinking, Aspar reached for his own bow.
“You’re not that foolish,” she said. “Why would you fight for them? You’ve seen what they do.”
Aspar nodded. “Werlic.” The monks deserved what they got. But what they were facing was so weird and dread, he’d almost forgotten that.
What was more, he had forgotten the greffyn. He remembered it now as it let out a low unearthly growl. It stood pawing the ground, the spines on its back stiff. Then, as if reaching a sudden decision, it turned and bounded into the forest.
Straight toward him.
“Sceat,” Aspar mouthed, raising his bow. He already felt the sickness burning in the thing’s eyes. He let fly.
The arrow skipped off the bony scales above its nostrils. The greffyn glanced his way, and with blinding speed changed direction, bounded off into the forest and was gone.
Aspar had tracked one greffyn over half of Crotheny. He’d never seen it run from anything.
If the greffyn had fought alongside them, the monks might have stood a chance. He had seen how their kind could fight, and even a poor fighter with a sword was more than a match for any number of naked, unarmed attackers.
But these attackers didn’t care if they died, and that in itself was a potent weapon.
So he watched as the slinders hurled into the monks’ glittering blades like meat into a grinder, with much the same results. In instants the clearing was bathed in gore, viscera, severed heads and limbs. But the attackers kept coming without hesitation, without fear, like Grim’s birsirks—though birsirks usually carried at least a spear. He saw one who had lost a leg dragging himself toward the monks. Another impaled himself on a sword, locking his hands around his foe’s throat.