Lois McMaster Bujold - Chalion 3 - The Hallowed Hunt

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The Hallowed Hunt

LOIS MCMASTER BUJOLD

CONTENTS

CHAPTERS

ONE THE PRINCE WAS DEAD.

TWO THE CORTEGE, SUCH AS IT WAS, LUMBERED OUT

THE CASTLE…

THREE WHEN THEY ARRIVED BACK AT THE WAGON

WAITING ON THE…

FOUR THEY ESCAPED REEDMERE LATER IN THE

MORNING THAN…

FIVE IJADA'S LAUGHTER WAS ABRUPTLY

EXTINGUISHED. INGREY QUIETLY…

SIX INGREY WOKE FEVERISH FROM DIMLY

REMEMBERED NIGHTMARES.

SEVEN AFTER FORAGING A MEAL OF SORTS IN HIS INN'S

COMMON…

EIGHT INGREY RETURNED UPSTAIRS TO PACK HIS

SADDLEBAGS, THEN…

NINE THE SERVANT'S COT CREAKED IN THE NIGHT

SILENCE OF THE…

TEN THEY CRESTED THE RANGE OF LOW HILLS

NORTHEAST OF THE…

ELEVEN AS INGREY MADE HIS WAY UP THE CORRIDOR

TOWARD THE…

TWELVE INGREY DIDN'T HAVE TO POUND ON THE DOOR

TO WAKE THE…

THIRTEEN THE PORTER ADMITTED INGREY AGAIN TO THE

HALL. INGREY'S…

FOURTEEN THE TEMPLE SQUARE WAS ALREADY CROWDED

WITH COURTLY…

FIFTEEN APERFUNCTORY RAP SHIVERED THE PARLOR

DOOR, AND IT…

SIXTEEN IN THE WANING AFTERNOON LIGHT, INGREY

MADE HIS WAY…

SEVENTEEN HE WAS HALFWAY TO HETWAR'S WHEN THE

REACTION SET IN,…

EIGHTEEN IJADA WAS SITTING AT THE BOTTOM OF THE

STAIRCASE AS THE…

NINETEEN BY RELENTLESS PROWLING, INGREY

FAMILIARIZED HIMSELF…

TWENTY INGREY COULD NOT MUSTER MUCH SURPRISE

WHEN, AFTER…

TWENTY-ONE THE HALLOW KING'S BEDCHAMBER WAS LESS

CROWDED THAN…

TWENTY-TWO BY THE TIME THE MOON WAS HIGH, THE

LATHERED HORSES…

TWENTY-THREE THE SENTINEL LED OFF, LIMPING, USING HIS

SPEAR AS A…

TWENTY-FOUR HORSERIVER FELL BACK A PACE. HALF HIS

FACES SEEMED…

EPILOGUE INGREY LEFT IJADA'S FOREST THAT AFTERNOON

CLINGING…

ABOUT THE AUHTHOR

ALSO BY LOIS MCMASTER BUJOLD

CREDITS

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

CHAPTER ONE

T HE PRINCE WAS DEAD.

Since the king was not, no unseemly rejoicing dared show in the

faces of the men atop the castle gate. Merely, Ingrey thought, a furtive

relief. Even that was extinguished as they watched Ingrey's troop of

riders clatter under the gate's vaulting into the narrow courtyard. They

recognized who he was-and, therefore, who must have sent him.

Ingrey's sweat grew clammy under his leather jerkin in the damp

dullness of the autumn morning. The chill seemed cupped within the

cobbled yard, funneled down by the whitewashed walls. The lightly

armed courier bearing the news had raced from the prince's hunting

seat here at Boar's Head Castle to the hallow king's hall at Easthome in

just two days. Ingrey and his men, though more heavily equipped, had

made the return journey in scarcely more time. As a castle groom

scurried to take his horse's bridle, Ingrey swung down and straightened

his scabbard, fingers lingering only briefly on the reassuring coolness of

his sword hilt.

The late Prince Boleso's housemaster, Rider Ulkra, appeared

around the keep from wherever he'd been lurking when Ingrey's troop

had been spied climbing the road. Stout, usually stolid, he was

breathless now with apprehension and hurry. He bowed. “Lord Ingrey.

Welcome. Will you take drink and meat?”

“I've no need. See to these, though.” He gestured to the half

dozen men who followed him. The troop's lieutenant, Rider Gesca,

gave him an acknowledging nod of thanks, and Ulkra delivered men

and horses into the hands of the castle servants.

Ingrey followed Ulkra up the short flight of steps to the

thick-planked main doors. “What have you done so far?”

Ulkra lowered his voice. “Waited for instructions.” Worry

scored his face; the men in Boleso's service were not long on initiative

at the best of times. “Well, we moved the body into the cool. We could

not leave it where it was. And we secured the prisoner.”

What sequence, for this unpleasant inspection? “I'll see the body

first,” Ingrey decided.

“Yes, my lord. This way. We cleared one of the butteries.”

They passed through the cluttered hall, the fire in its cavernous

fieldstone fireplace allowed to burn low, the few red coals half-hidden

in the ashes doing nothing to improve the discomfort of the chamber. A

shaggy deerhound, gnawing a bone on the hearth, growled at them

from the shadows. Down a staircase, through a kitchen where a cook

and scullions fell silent and made themselves small as they passed,

down again into a chilly chamber ill lit by two small windows high in the

rocky walls.

The little room was presently unfurnished but for two trestles, the

boards laid across them, and the sheeted shape that lay silently upon

the boards. Reflexively, Ingrey signed himself, touching forehead, lip,

navel, groin, and heart, spreading his hand over his heart: one

theological point for each of the five gods.

Daughter-Bastard-Mother-Father-Son. And where were all of You

when this happened?

As Ingrey waited for his eyes to adjust to the shadows, Ulkra

swallowed, and said, “The hallow king-how did he take the news?”

“It is hard to say,” said Ingrey, with politic vagueness.

“Sealmaster Lord Hetwar sent me.”

“Of course.”

Ingrey could read little in the housemaster's reaction, except the

obvious, that Ulkra was glad to be handing responsibility for this on to

someone else. Uneasily, Ulkra folded back the pale cloth covering his

dead master. Ingrey frowned at the body.

Prince Boleso kin Stagthorne had been the youngest of the

hallow king's surviving-of the hallow king's sons, Ingrey corrected his

thought in flight. Boleso was still a young man, for all he had come to

his full growth and strength some years ago. Tall, muscular, he shared

the long jaw of his family, masked with a short brown beard. The

darker brown hair of his head was tangled now, and matted with

blood. His booming energy was stilled; drained of it, his face lost its

former fascination, and left Ingrey wondering how he had once been

fooled into thinking it handsome. He moved forward, hands cradling the

skull, probing the wound. Wounds. The shattered bone beneath the

scalp gave beneath his thumbs' pressure on either side of a pair of deep

lacerations, blackened with dried gore.

“What weapon did this?”

“The prince's own war hammer. It was on the stand with his

armor, in his bedchamber.”

“How very…unexpected. To him as well.” Grimly, Ingrey

considered the fates of princes. All his short life, according to Hetwar,

Boleso had been alternately petted and neglected by parents and

servants both, the natural arrogance of his blood tainted with a

precarious hunger for honor, fame, reward. The arrogance-or was it

the anxiety?-had bloated of late to something overweening, desperately

out of balance. And that which is out of balance…falls.

The prince wore a short open robe of worked wool, lined with

fur, blood-splashed. He must have been wearing it when he'd died.

Nothing more. No other recent wounds marked his pale skin. When

the housemaster said they had waited for instructions, Ingrey decided,

he had understated the case. The prince's retainers had evidently been

so benumbed by the shocking event, they had not even dared wash or

garb the corpse. Grime darkened the folds of Boleso's body…no, not

grime. Ingrey ran a finger along a groove of chill flesh, and stared warily

at the smear of color, dull blue and stamen yellow and, where they

blended, a sickly green. Dye, paint, some colored powder? The dark

fur of the inner robe, too, showed faint smears.

Ingrey straightened, and his eye fell on what he had at first taken

for a bundle of furs laid along the far wall. He stepped closer and knelt.

It was a dead leopard. Leopardess, he amended, turning the

beast partly over. The fur was fine and soft, fascinating beneath his

hands. He traced the cold, curving ears, the stiff white whiskers, the

pattern of dark whorls upon golden silk. He picked up one heavy paw,

feeling the leathery pads, the thick ivory claws. The claws had been

clipped. A red silk cord was bound tightly around the neck, biting

deeply into the fur. Its end was cut off. Ingrey's hairs prickled, a

reaction he quelled.

Ingrey glanced up. Ulkra, watching him, looked even more

bleakly blank than before.

“This is no creature of our woods. Where in the world did it

come from?”

Ulkra cleared his throat. “The prince obtained it from some

Darthacan merchants. He proposed to start a menagerie here at the

castle. Or possibly train it for hunting. He said.”

“How long ago was this?”

“A few weeks. Just before his lady sister stopped here.”

Ingrey fingered the red cord, letting his brows rise. He nodded

at the dead animal. “And how did this happen?”

“We found it hanging from a beam in the prince's bedroom.

When we, um, went in.”

Ingrey sat back on his heels. He was beginning to see why no

Temple divine had yet been called up to take charge of the funeral rites.

The daubing, the red cord, the oak beam, hinted of an animal not

merely slain but sacrificed, of someone dabbling in the old heresies, the

forbidden forest magics. Had the sealmaster known of this, when he'd

sent Ingrey? If so, he'd given no sign. “Who hung it?”

With the relief of a man telling a truth that could not hurt him,

Ulkra said, “I did not see. I could not say. It was alive, leashed up in

the corner and lying perfectly placidly, when we brought the girl in. We

none of us heard or saw any more after that. Until the screams.”

“Whose screams?”

“Well…the girl's.”

“What was she crying? Or were they…” Ingrey cut short the just

cries. He'd a shrewd suspicion Ulkra would be a little too glad of the

suggestion. “What were her words?”

“She cried for help.”

Ingrey stood up from the exotic, spotted carcass, his riding

leathers creaking in the quiet, and let the weight of his stare fall on

Ulkra. “And you responded-how?”

Ulkra turned his head away. “We had our orders to guard the

prince's repose. My lord.”

“Who heard the cries? Yourself, and…?”

“Two of the prince's guards, who had been told to wait his

pleasure.”

“Three strong men, sworn to the prince's protection. Who

stood-where?”

Ulkra's face might have been carved from rock. “In the corridor.

Near his door.”

“Who stood in the corridor not ten feet from his murder, and did

nothing.”

“We dared not. My lord. For he did not call. And anyway, the

screams…stopped. We assumed, um, that the girl had yielded herself.

She went in willingly enough.”

Willingly? Or despairingly? “She was no servant wench. She

was a retainer of Prince Boleso's own lady sister, a dowered maiden of

her household. Entrusted to her service by kin Badgerbank, no less.”

“Princess Fara herself yielded her up to her brother, my lord,

when he begged the girl of her.”

Pressured, was how Ingrey had heard the gossip. “Which made

her a retainer of this house. Did it not?”

Ulkra flinched.

“Even a menial deserves better protection of his masters.”

“Any lord in his cups might strike a servant, and misjudge the

force of the blow,” said Ulkra sturdily. The cadences sounded

rehearsed, to Ingrey's ear. How often had Ulkra repeated that excuse

to himself in the depths of the night, these past six months?

The ugly incident with the murdered manservant was the reason

Prince Boleso had suffered his internal exile to this remote crag. His

known love of hunting made it a dubious punishment, but it had got the

Temple out of the royal sealmaster's thinning hair. Too little payment for

a crime, too much for an accident; Ingrey, who had observed the

shambles next morning for Lord Hetwar before it had all been cleaned

away, had judged it neither.

“Any lord would not then go on to skin and butcher his kill,

Ulkra. There was more than drink behind that wild act. It was

madness, and we all knew it.” And when the king and his retainers had

let their judgment be swayed, after that night's fury, by an appeal to

loyalty-not to the prince's own soul's need, but to the appearance, the

reputation of his high house-this disaster had been laid in train.

Boleso would have been expected to reappear at court in

another half year, duly chastened, or at least duly pretending to be. But

Fara had broken her journey here from her earl-ordainer husband's

holdings to her father's sickbed, and so her-Ingrey presumed,

pretty-lady-in-waiting had fallen under the bored prince's eye. One

could take one's pick of tales from the princess's retinue, arriving barely

before the bad news at the king's hall in Easthome, whether the cursed

girl had yielded her virtue in terror to the prince's importunate lusts, or

in calculation to her own vaulting ambition.

If it had been calculation, it had gone badly awry. Ingrey sighed.

“Take me to the prince's bedchamber.”

The late prince's room lay high in the central keep. The corridor

outside was short and dim. Ingrey pictured Boleso's retainers huddled

at the far end in the wavering candlelight, waiting for the screams to

stop, then had to unset his teeth. The room's solid door featured a

wooden bar on the inside, as well as an iron lock.

The appointments were few and countrified: a bed with

hangings, barely long enough for the prince's height, chests, the stand

with his second-best armor in one corner. A scattering of rugs on the

wide floorboards. One was soaked with a dark stain. The sparse

furnishings left just room enough for a quarry to dodge and run, a

gasping chase. To turn at bay and swing…

The windows to the right of the armor stand were narrow, with

thick wavery circles of glass set in their leads. Ingrey pulled the

casements inward, swung wide the shutters, and gazed out upon the

green-forested folds of countryside falling away from the crag. In the

watery light, wisps of mist rose from the ravines like the ghosts of

streams. At the bottom of the valley, a small farming village hacked out

of the woods pushed back the tide of trees: source, no doubt, of food,

servants, firewood for the castle, all crude and simple.

The fall from the sill to the stones below was lethal, the jump to

the walls beyond quite impossible even for anyone slim enough to

wriggle out the opening. In the dark and the rain. No escape by that

route, except to death. A half turn from the window, the armor stand

would be under a panicked prey's groping hands. A battle-ax, its

handle inlaid with gold and ruddy copper, still rested there.

The matching war hammer lay tossed upon the rumpled bed. Its

claw-rimmed iron head-very like an animal's paw-was smeared with

dried gore like the blotch on the rug. Ingrey measured it against his

palm, noted the congruity with the wounds he had just seen. The

hammer had been swung two-handed, with all the strength that terror

might lend. But only a woman's strength, after all. The prince,

half-stunned-half-mad?-had apparently kept coming. The second blow

had been harder.

Ingrey strolled the length of the room, looking all around and

then up at the beams. Ulkra, hands clutching one another, backed out

of his way. Just above the bed dangled a frayed length of red cord.

Ingrey stepped up on the bed frame, drew his belt knife, stretched

upward, cut it through, and tucked the coil away in his jerkin.

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摘要：

TheHallowedHuntLOISMCMASTERBUJOLDCONTENTSCHAPTERSONETHEPRINCEWASDEAD.TWOTHECORTEGE,SUCHASITWAS,LUMBEREDOUTTHECASTLE…THREEWHENTHEYARRIVEDBACKATTHEWAGONWAITINGONTHE…FOURTHEYESCAPEDREEDMERELATERINTHEMORNINGTHAN…FIVEIJADA'SLAUGHTERWASABRUPTLYEXTINGUISHED.INGREYQUIETLY…SIXINGREYWOKEFEVERISHFROMDIMLYREMEM...

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Lois McMaster Bujold - Chalion 3 - The Hallowed Hunt

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