Back | Next
Contents

XXXI. Burying Hodde

icon


From the abbey Thomas and Little John headed west. They’d ridden for an hour or so in their individual silences when John abruptly spoke up. “Tha know spot where I seen the Queen is near thi hut, Woodwose. Certain ya are you wanta go back there? I mean, Robbie ain’t exactly waitin’ on us.”

Thomas had been thinking of how to frame this discussion. He had to get Little John to the gate at night, and knew that wasn’t likely to be easy. “I want to learn,” he said, “if you discovered a gateway favored by the Queen of Faery.”

“Oh.” Another silence, then, “Why’s ’at important?”

Thomas answered, “The first place I encountered her was called Old Melrose, a place where an abbey once stood. Nicnevin, the Queen, came through that single green ring many times. Don’t ask me why—she just seemed to favor it. So I thought, if the place you saw her is another favored gate, I want to see it. But more important, we might get the chance to kill her there and put an end to this invasion, stop the Yvags from torturing whomever they catch, get them to leave, for a year, a decade, forever.”

“An’ take that target off Lady Isabella.”

The statement so startled him that he just stared open-mouthed until John started laughing.

“Ah know tha fancy her, an’ I know what bed tha didn’t sleep in last night.”

“How?”

“Oh, I’d somethin’ ah wanted t’ tell tha, middle of night.”

Thomas couldn’t help but smile. “You’re a sly one, Little John.”

John shrugged. “Ah just see what I see. Tha hope to kill their queen an’ they’ll all pack it in and go home, leavin’ Lady Isabella safe.”

“I do.”

They rode a little farther. “Think tha he’s still there? Robbie, I mean.”

“Still there, and probably the worse for it. I doubt anyone would have moved him.”

“Like, the wolves will’a been at him.”

They rode on across Sherwood, past the great split oak where John’s troubles had begun. The bones of the prelate were gone from the King’s Way. It could have been the Yvag knights had collected him, or someone who imagined they were in the presence of some holy relics.

As they neared his hut, Thomas put aside his mulling over of matters concerning the Queen and Isabella Birkin. He said, “You mentioned you had something you wanted to tell me in the middle of the night last night.”

“Oh, ah did, yeah.” Then he continued without saying more.

Thomas asked, “Well, what was it?”

“Oh, it were just that—I mean, I wanted t’ say that, well, whatever we’re undertaking here and what comes next, I want tha to know that I’m yer man.”

He almost refused, but had the presence of mind to stop himself. It would have been like rejecting Alpin Waldroup’s offer to teach him the bow. And John had now stated this twice.

They rode a little farther then before he said quietly, “Thank you, John. I wouldn’t want anyone else.”

He smiled, John nodded, and that was that. Some bridge had been built in their relationship. He was becoming Robert Hodde’s replacement, from the Lincoln green cotehardie to his knowledge of Sherwood and his bond now with the last member of Hodde’s band. Everything that needed to be said had been.

They rode on.


Robert Hodde’s body had somehow escaped the various predators roaming the forest. The glamouring spell he’d placed upon the hut might have played a part even though the hut stood in full view. The stink of it did spill out past the stone walls now.

However, someone—he guessed the same two Yvag knights—had tortured the corpse, running it through with blades and feathering it with crossbow bolts. It must have made for rousing target practice among the frustrated knights. They couldn’t torture anything out of him. Other than that, Hodde’s body had ripened, swollen, and gone pale and blue, against which his auburn hair seemed artificial.

Thomas found a surviving clay jug and carried it to the same stream where he’d washed the blood out of Hodde’s clothes, then returned, tore a section of the winding cloth, and used it and the water to clean the body.

“Robbie didn’t much care for bathing,” Little John observed.

“I’m sure those nearest him noticed.”

“We knew better’n ta stand downwind.”

Thomas laughed.

“Last time ’e had one I think was when I knocked him into River Went.”

“Still inadvisable to swim there, is it?”

“Well, the fish all died.” Little John was grinning as he said it.

Then they were grim and silent, paying attention to their friend’s body as they wrapped him completely. After, Thomas went in search of discarded stones. He knew there were a few in the rejected pile of hut stones that were vaguely shell-shaped, suitable as digging blades.

The body didn’t weigh all that much. They carried it some distance into the depths of the forest, to a place between oaks where acorns covered the ground but it was otherwise level.

“’Ere’s good,” said John. They set the body down and, from their opposite ends, dug out a hole deep enough to bury him. It took the rest of the afternoon to fill it back in. Then they covered the signs of digging with leaves. Satisfied with their work, they stood one stone at each end of the grave as markers. It seemed most appropriate that Robert Hodde enjoy his final rest hidden deep within his forest.


It was growing dark as John directed the way along a narrow footpath by which he’d fled only a few nights before. They’d left their horses back a fair distance just to be safe.

The trees thinned, oaks giving way to a field of birch and alders, which grew in tall grasses surrounding a depression of standing water. Past the grasses, the ground rose into a wide hillside splashed in purple heather and growths of fern.

Little John pointed but even in the settling dusk it was easy to identify where the ring had been. Everything in one spot on the heath was trampled as if by a dozen horses just riding about in small circles as they might have in taking positions flanking their queen.

Thomas walked to the spot. In one place the plants were scorched, as though a torch had been dropped there, more or less the very center of activity according to John. Hoofprints gouged the dirt and grasses here and there, but the prints that could be seen had been left by no horse. Thomas could almost recreate in his mind’s eye what John had described.

Carefully, he drew his ördstone and held it out on his palm. It flickered, the tiny blue gems lighting as if the stone contained agitated fireflies. It had been a long time since he could recall seeing it so active. Holding it out, however, he watched amazed as a tiny blue line no wider than a hair stretched from the stone to that center of activity. The air seemed to pucker, something like a bubble, and the view of the heath through it distorted. He half expected to see Þagalwood or Yvagddu through it, but that vision didn’t manifest—just a circular area of distortion, the otherwise hidden ring itself. The world had been thinned by the presence of the Queen’s gate.

Little John had been leading the way. He backed up from the distortion, turned and followed the blue thread of color to Thomas’s hand. He appeared ready to bolt should Thomas produce anything else, but approached the stone out of obvious curiosity. Thomas was tempted to slice the air, but was sure a terrified Little John would flee, no matter his allegiance. More than that, this might open onto the middle of one of their plazas, a staging area. The lensing effect revealed nothing on the other side of the gate.

“What is that blinking thing, Woodwose?”

He walked over and showed it to John. The blue “thread” maintained its line to the gate. He held out his hand, but Little John refused to touch the ördstone. “It’s a key that opens doors we can’t see,” he explained, closed his fingers over it and dropped the ördstone back into the quiver at his belt. “Doors between our world and others.”

“You took that off the demon in Chandler’s Lane gaol.”

“Actually, that was another one.”

John glanced back, but the circle of distortion had vanished. “You open this one, we going t’be fighting off a horde a black knights?”

“That’s the problem with a door you can’t see past. You’ve no idea what’s behind it.”

“Tha know I’m with tha, but if thi intent is ta open that one, I would be elsewhere.”

“You’re a wise man. And, no, I won’t open it. But we need to take up positions for when they open it. If Nicnevin comes through, I might only get one shot.”

The sun had almost set—just stripes of pink and yellow clouds remained—and already odd sounds, howls, and cries echoed across the forest.

With his bow, Thomas climbed higher in the upland heath to look over the woods. He glimpsed a distant spark of color—presumably another gate opening. By now surely this was a simple tactic to frighten. Anyone who’d traveled a pathway or road in Sherwood now had seen some of the wheels and the mangled dead, and would have had the good sense to flee. All for show, this nocturnal haunting. But it meant the gate below would probably open soon. He hoped so.

As he climbed back down the hillside, he thought again of Isabella Birkin. He assured himself she would be busy anyway with the trial in Retford; besides, she was safely surrounded by the Keepers. Tomorrow he would catch up to her in time to ride to Laxton Castle and confront D’Everingham.

His contemplation of her was interrupted by a line of sizzling green fire that appeared in the air. It seemed to reach for the ground. The line flexed and split into an oblong, widened finally into a perfect circle. By then, he had taken up his position behind a tree, in sight of Little John.

Behind the circle the darkness of night no longer showed. A shimmering silvery surface filled the ring, and it took him a moment to recognize one of Ailfion’s many plazas—a staging area, exactly as he’d feared. The shining backdrop was one of the city’s towers, close enough that it filled the view. No doubt its needlelike tip would stretch into the red-black sky that couldn’t be seen. The pavement of the plaza was not visible, and the first of the Yvags to cross over stepped up to pass through the ring. It might have been the very spot where, in his escape, he had cut open the way to Þagalwood.

Both John and he held their bows at the ready, waiting for the Queen.

The knight that had cut the ring stood and stepped up and through, followed close-on by another. They took up positions at the sides. Once again they had bothered to glamour as crusaders. There must have been a reason. Maybe they assumed any outlaws would be less frightened of human knights. The number of bodies hanging on wheels suggested it had worked to some degree. He doubted it did any longer. Nobody was foolishly going to approach a gate at this point.

Two more knights emerged, these on horseback though he knew the black steeds to be no horses. The two rode about in sweeping circles that kept the gateway in the middle.

The hoofprints he’d already looked at told him this was a repeat of previous appearances. Were they just showing themselves to be formidable? To throw a scare into . . . someone? Who, in the middle of the forest? What would be the point?

Then, as he speculated about the knights and the gate, two more knights came riding slowly along the same path John had followed earlier. One held a torch. The hairs on the back of Thomas’s neck stood up. Between the two knights walked a naked man, slow, keeping pace with them or them with him. From his face, it was apparent he was in a trance. There could be no doubt: This was the escorting of a teind to Hel. The knights guarding the ring stood still and watched. Maybe Nicnevin would arrive for this, but any further waiting and their captive would be walked right out of the world. However much he wanted Nicnevin dead, he could not let this poor hapless soul be taken. He would force them to sacrifice one of their own.

John was watching him. Thomas lifted his chin. Then he stood up, one arrow nocked and two more between his fingers. He took careful aim, then fired at the nearest escort, following with a second shot at the one with the torch. The first arrow plucked the Yvag knight right out of its saddle. The second knocked the other knight askew, causing the torch to sail to the ground. The Yvag desperately righted itself just as Thomas’s third arrow, as if anticipating this, punctured its armored breastbone. The stallion bounded forward. It knocked down the naked man and galloped straight through the opening. “A real horse,” he muttered. Where had they stolen that?

Little John meanwhile had shot two of the other four knights guarding the ring, one on foot and one mounted. The remaining two had drawn their swords. He and John both knew what that meant.

Thomas ran for the nearest mount. Little John ran erratically back and forth from tree to tree to avoid the deadly sword blade, but continued firing all the while at the two remaining knights.

Thomas swung up into the saddle as one sword blade cut the air close enough beside him that it nicked his forearm. Turning the beast, he grabbed the stumbling naked man by the hair. Instinctively, the man reached both hands up. Thomas caught one of those and hauled the man like a sack over the horse’s rump, kicked his heels, and the beast shot off into the darkness away from the guttering torch.

With their teind gone, the knights quickly retreated back through the portal and sealed it up. The tip of the stone glowed bright blue until, with one last spit of green fire, everything vanished as if it had never been. With the ring gone, Thomas drew up and waited for John.

Back there four Yvag knights lay dead or regenerating. He would have to make sure the latter didn’t succeed while Little John roused their rescued teind from the spell cast over him. The poor man could count himself lucky. Not Thomas. He’d missed a chance to eliminate his nemesis. This would do nothing to protect Isabella, but instead likely sealed up this gate and told Nicnevin that her soldiers were being hunted again for the first time since Ercildoun.


Back | Next
Framed