Read Online Bristling Wood by Katharine Kerr - Free Book Online Page A

she smiled, she revealed a mouth full of needle-sharp, bright blue teeth.
    “Oho!” Nevyn said. “You see her, don’t you?”
    “I do, at that. Will I go on seeing the Wildfolk after I leave here?”
    “I’d imagine so, but I don’t truly know. I haven’t come across a puzzle like you before, lad.”
    Maddyn had the ungrateful thought that if he were a puzzle, then Nevyn was the greatest riddle in the world.
    The next afternoon, Nevyn rode down to the village to hear the gossip and brought back the tale of Maddyn’s meeting with the squad in its new and doubtless permanent form. Lord Romyl’s men had foolishly ridden by Brin Toraedic in moonlight, when every lackwit knows you should avoid the hill like poison during the full moon. There, sure enough, they’d seen the ghosts of Lord Brynoic’s entire warband, charging across the meadow just as they had during the last battle. Yet in the morning, when the riders came back to look, they found the hoofprints of only their own horses.
    “ ‘And what did they think they’d find?’ the tavernman says to me,” Nevyn said with a dry laugh. “Everyone knows that spirits don’t leave tracks.”
    “So they did come back, did they? I’m cursed glad you thought of that.”
    “Oh, it’s one thing to be spirit-plagued by moonlight, quite another to think things over in the cold light of dawn. But they found naught for all their looking, and now none of Lord Romyl’s men will ride near the hill, even in daylight.”
    “Isn’t that a handy thing?”
    “It is, but ye gods, you warriors are a superstitious lot!”
    “Oh, are we now?” Maddyn had to laugh at the old man’s indignation. “You show me a world full of spirits, send those spirits out to run me an errand, and then have the gall to call me superstitious!”
    Nevyn laughed for a good long time over that.
    “You’re right, and I apologize, Maddyn my lad, but surely you can’t deny that your average swordsman believes that the strangest things will bring him luck, either good or ill.”
    “True, but you just can’t know what it’s like to ride in a war. Every time you saddle up, you know blasted well that maybe you’ll never ride back. Who knows what makes one man fall and another live in a battle? Once I saw a man who was a splendid fighter—oh, he swung a sword like a god, not a man—and he rode into this particular scrap with all the numbers on his side, and you know what happened? His cinch broke, dumped him into the mob, and he was kicked to death. And then you see utter idiots, with no more swordcraft than a farmer’s lad, ride straight for the enemy and come out without a scratch. So after a while, you start believing in luck and omens and anything else you can cursed well turn up, just to ease the pain of not knowing when you’ll die.”
    “I can see that, truly.”
    Nevyn’s good humor was gone; he looked saddened to tears as he thought things over. Seeing him that way made Maddyn melancholy himself, and thoughtful.
    “I suppose that’s what makes us all long for dweomer leaders,” Maddyn went on, but slowly. “You can have the best battle plan in the world, but once the javelins are thrown and the swordplay starts, ah by the hells, not even the gods could think clearly. So call it superstition all you want, but you want a leader who’s got a touch of the dweomer about him, someone who can see more than you can, and who’s got the right luck.”
    “If being lucky and clear-sighted made a man dweomer, lad, then the world would be full of men like me.”
    “Well, that’s not quite what I meant, good sir. A dweomer leader would be different, somehow. Doubtless none exist, but we all want to believe it. You’d love to ride for a man like that, you tell yourself, someone the gods favor, someone you can believe in. Even if you died for him, it’d be worth it.”
    Nevyn gave him such a sharp look that Maddyn hesitated, but the old man gestured for him to go on.
    “This is