The Black Chalice

Twelve

His dreams were plagued with visions he could neither cling to nor understand. In them, he dreamed he was a blind man battling demons or a demon battling blind men, his focus shifting from one set of eyes to another again and again as the battle raged on. And these were proper demons, devils even, barbed tails, forked tongues and all. Again and again, the Crow Maiden's imprecations that he follow the smoke, find the blind monk and bring her the book, turned over in his mind. Always, as the fight was won, his foe was vanquished in a flurry of wings and feathers as the blind man or the demons transformed into black birds, crows, rooks, ravens, and scattered before him.

He woke sweating and feverish.

His uncle knelt at his bedside, head down in prayer.

Alymere coughed, hard.

The knight looked up, met his eye and said simply, "Thank the maker. You gave me a fright there, boy. What the devil were you thinking?"

Alymere eased himself up onto one elbow, but even as he did the world reeled around him and he sank back into his pillow, groaning. It was no kind of answer, but he couldn't answer, because he had no idea what his uncle meant.

The last thing he could remember was the red hart standing in the middle of the road.

Both Alymere and Lowick flinched as a crow flew up against the window, battering the streaked glass with panicked wings. There was something familiar about the bird: a vague memory that evaded him in the clear light of morning. He lay back in the bedroll, trying to remember how he had got here. "Sorry," he said, finally finding his voice. Meaning Sorry, I don't understand; sorry, I don't know; sorry, I can't tell you.

The knight shook his head, "Not good enough, lad. Words are cheap. You nearly got yourself killed running off into the forest like that. It's nothing short of a miracle that I found you." The words were harsh, but his manner masked genuine concern. Alymere didn't understand what could have happened to warrant it.

He tried to move again, easing himself into a sitting position. He didn't say another word for a full five minutes whilst he gathered his wits. He rubbed at his right eye and temple, trying to get the blood flowing. The horizon slowly stopped canting and settled. He breathed slowly, regularly. It was only then that he noticed the strip of linen tied around his forearm and remembered how he had been given it, and, more slowly, by whom.

And with that memory came the rest: following the hart into the trees, the maiden herself, making love to her, and finally his promise, which had bled into his dreams. But for the life of him, Alymere couldn't recall anything after that. He had no recollection of leaving the Summervale, nor of the fact that the glade itself was not a sanctuary of summer but rather a trick of the mind and that as the so-called summer faded and the sun went down on it he was left lying naked in the snow in the thick of the forest, winter wracking his body. The last thing he remembered was the maiden kissing him like lovers did, her tongue licking along his teeth and lips, and whispering, "Follow the smoke. When the time comes, you will understand. Do not fail me, or the Devil take your soul."

"Do you believe in the otherworld, uncle?"

"Do you mean do I believe in magic?" Lowick asked, his brow furrowing as he considered the question. "There are more things in this life that I can understand or account for. Whether they're magic or not, I don't know. Why do you ask?"

"I think I saw a sign," Alymere said. "A red hart."

"And that's why you took off into the forest?"

"Don't you see?" He reached for the tabard the knight had draped across the chair before the fire. "A leaping hart."

"A white hart, lad. There's a difference. You're reaching."

"Still — "

"Look at the evidence. Discard the fanciful, the wishful thinking, and what have you got? Apply your mind to it like any other puzzle. Be dispassionate, rational, logical."

Alymere didn't answer him, but that didn't mean he was not doing exactly that; picking through his memories in search of the truth. He wanted to believe that it was his father's animal totem that had led him to the maiden and the Summervale, because that would make finding the blind monk so much more meaningful, but wanting didn't mean that it was. It just meant that he was trying to find some sort of reason where there was no reason to be found. He didn't argue with his uncle. Instead, he clambered out of the bedroll and, beginning to dress, asked, "Did you find the men?"

"No," Lowick said, but it was the way he said it, part dread, part resignation, that conveyed the full extent of his expectations. That they still hadn't returned meant the missing men had been out in the snow for at least two full days now, but most likely three. Three days out in the bone-freezing cold. Three days with the mile house abandoned and the wall vulnerable. Nothing good could come of that.

Alymere belted his tunic and stuffed his feet into his boots. He felt woozy and light-headed, but more than anything he felt hungry. It had been more than a day since he had last eaten. He looked around the guard room, saw again the dirty pots, but this time realised what he didn't see: food. There was no food in the place. He couldn't believe he hadn't seen it before.

"We spent so long thinking about what was here we didn't ask ourselves what was missing," he said, rummaging through the pots. "There's no food." The knight looked at him as though he were speaking in tongues. "Think about it. They weren't lured out by anyone; they went in search of food."

"By Christ, you're right," Sir Lowick said, making the sign of the cross over his chest as the blasphemy slipped from his tongue. It was the most telling thing they hadn't seen, and offered one rational explanation why the men had ventured out into the snow. What it didn't explain was why they had allowed their victuals to run so low in the first place? Neither did it explain why they hadn't sent word along to the next mile house to beg rations to see them through until the knight and his squire made their rounds and could send for proper supplies, nor did it account for the fact that one of them hadn't simply returned to the estate whilst the other maintained their watch. There was something that was just wrong about the whole thing.

That was when a second alternative occurred to him; that their food supplies had been tampered with.

It made sense of a couple of the whys. Tampering with the rations would explain why the rations had run out — or rather why they had been allowed to. Simply put, the men hadn't been any the wiser. As far as they were concerned they had supplies to last out the worst of the winter.

"I'll be back," Sir Lowick said. "Be ready to leave as soon as I return."

With that, he donned his cloak and, drawing it about him, pushed open the door and plunged out into the storm. The snow had hardened into hail, which bit into his cheeks as he floundered through the snow to the side of the building. He pulled open the wooden doors of the shed that served as a pantry for the main building. The place was bare. On closer inspection he saw the black shadows of the scorch marks on the walls where fire had claimed the oats and other victuals the men had stored out here in the cold cupboard. Someone had burned the lot. Only the fact that the shed was stone and isolated from the main building had saved the entire mile house from going up in smoke.

Grunting, he threw closed the wooden doors and trudged around to the stables to see to saddling the horses.

Knowing that hunger was no doubt behind their desertion made all of the difference. Without doubt, he had been looking for the men in the wrong place.

When Alymere emerged from the dwelling wrapped up against the cold, without looking up the knight asked him, "If you were hungry, where would you go?"

"The nearest settlement," Alymere said. It was the most obvious answer, and sometimes the most obvious answer was the right one.

"Exactly. We've been looking for them in the wrong place. We assumed they were going to help someone else, not themselves. Saddle up, lad. The road waits for no man."

They rode out, the knight urging his mount into a gallop before they were halfway across the open field. Alymere spurred his horse on. The animal was grateful to be given its head. The nearest settlement was five and some miles south, close to the crossroads where the Stanegate Road met Deere Street, deep in the heart of the valley between the Tyne and the Irthing. Stanegate wound and wandered more than other Roman roads, but offered reivers easy passage deep into the southlands.

The stretch of road from the wall down as far as the crossroads was known colloquially as The Maiden Way.

They rode in silence, heads down, hunched low over the necks of the racing horses, spurring them on to greater and greater speeds despite the treacherous footing the road offered. The wind whipped at Alymere's face. In front of him, Sir Lowick's cloak billowed out behind him like some black wraith looking to snag him and haul him down out of the saddle. The forest raced by on either side, shadows and phantom forms pulling at Alymere's eyes again and again, but not once did he catch sight of anything even remotely resembling the red hart running along beside them.

He knew rationally that his uncle was right; a red hart was a long way from a white hart in terms of symbolism and meaning. White reflected purity, while red equated to guilt, sin, and anger. It conjured images of blood and sex. His mind raced, avoiding the most obvious explanation and the Crow Maiden's parting words, and instead wanting to believe that somehow his father was still with him, watching over him. There was comfort in it. It was as simple as that.

Up ahead, the road widened.

It took him a moment to realise that what he was seeing wasn't snow but rather smoke through the trees ahead, and the maiden's words came back to him: "Follow the smoke…"

"Smoke!" Alymere yelled, his voice torn away from his mouth by the blustering wind. Lowick looked back over his shoulder to see Alymere pointing to the curls of smoke rising from the distant trees, and like Alymere before him, seemed to take an age to distinguish the smoke from the snow and recognise it for what it was, but when he did, he spurred his horse on, urging it to go faster still. Hooves thundered on the road, the two of them riding like the hounds of Hell themselves were snapping at their heels.

Because smoke meant fire, and fire meant suffering, torment, and pain. Because, like the hart, fire was red.