Prince Marek had climbed back up to his feet. He stood down on the bank watching, gripping the trunk of one narrow sapling for balance, until the soldier went under. Then he turned and clambered up the slope. Janos had slid down from his own mount, catching Marek’s reins; he reached down an arm to help him up. Another one of the soldiers had caught the reins of the other now-riderless horse; it was trembling, its nostrils flaring, but it stood still. Everything settled back into quiet again. The river ran on, the branches hung still, the sun shone on the water. We didn’t even hear any noise from the horse that had run away. It was as though nothing had happened.
The Dragon pushed his horse down the line and looked down at Prince Marek. “The rest of them will go by nightfall,” he said bluntly. “If not you as well.”
Marek looked up at him, his face for the first time open and uncertain; as though he’d just seen something beyond his understanding. I saw the Falcon beside them looking back along the line of the men with unblinking eyes, his piercing eyes trying to see something invisible. Marek looked at him; the Falcon looked back and nodded very slightly, confirming.
The prince hauled himself up into his saddle. He spoke to the soldiers ahead of him. “Cut us a clearing.” They started to hack at the brush around us; the rest of them joined in, burning and salting it as they went, until we had cleared enough room to crowd in together. The horses were eager to push their heads in and butt up closely against one another.
“All right,” Marek said to the soldiers, their gazes fixed on him. “You all know why you’re here. Every one of you is hand-picked. You’re men of the north, the best I have. You’ve followed me into Rosyan sorcery and made a wall beside me against their cavalry charges; there’s not a one of you who doesn’t wear the scars of battle. I asked every one of you, before we left, if you’d ride into this benighted place with me; every one of you said yes.
“Well, I won’t swear to you now I’ll bring you out alive; but you have my oath that every man who does come out with me will have every honor I can bestow, and every one of you made a landed knight. And we’ll ford the river here, now, however best we can, and we will ride on together: to death or worse perhaps, but like men and not like frightened voles.”
They must have known, by then, that Marek himself didn’t know what would happen; that he hadn’t been ready for the shadow of the Wood. But I could see his words lift some of that shadow from all of their faces: a brightness came into them, a deep breath. None of them asked to turn back. Marek took his hunting horn from his saddle. It was a long thing made all of brass, bright-polished and circled on itself. He put it to his mouth and blew with all his voice, an enormous martial noise that shouldn’t have made my heart leap but did: brash and ringing. The horses stamped and flicked their ears back and forth, and the soldiers drew their swords and roared along with that note. Marek wheeled his horse and led us in a single headlong rush down the slope and into the cold dark water, and all the other horses followed.
The river hit my legs like a shock as we plunged into it, foaming away from my horse’s broad chest. We kept going. The water climbed up over my knees, over my thighs. My horse had its head held up high, nostrils flaring as its legs beat at the riverbed, surging forward and trying to keep purchase on the bottom.
Somewhere behind me, one of the horses stumbled and lost its footing. It was tumbled over at once and carried into another soldier’s horse. The river swept them away and swallowed them whole. We didn’t stop: there was no way to stop. I groped for a spell, but I couldn’t think of anything: the water was roaring at me, and then they were gone.
Prince Marek sounded another blast from his horn: he and his horse were lurching up on the other side of the river, and he was kicking it onward into the trees. One by one we came up out of the river, dripping wet, and kept going without a pause: all of us crashing through the brush, following the purple blaze of Marek’s light up ahead, following the sound of his calling horn. The trees were whipping by us. The underbrush was lighter on this side of the river, the trunks larger and farther apart. We weren’t riding in a single line anymore: I could see some of the other horses weaving through the trees beside me as we flew, as we fled, running away as much as running towards. I had given up all hope of the reins and just clung to my own horse with my fingers woven into the mane, bent over its neck away from lashing branches. I could see Kasia near me, and the bright flash of the Falcon’s white cloak ahead.
The mare was panting beneath me, shuddering, and I knew she couldn’t last; even strong, trained warhorses would founder, ridden like this after swimming a cold river. “Nen elshayon,” I whispered to her ears, “nen elshayon,” and let her have a little strength, a little warmth. She stretched out her fine head and tossed it, gratefully, and I closed my eyes and tried to widen it to all of them, saying, “Nen elshayine,” pushing out my hand towards Kasia’s horse as though throwing it a line.
I felt that imagined line catch; I flung more of them out, and the horses drew closer together, running more easily again. The Dragon threw a brief look back at me over his shoulder. We kept on, riding behind the blowing horn, and now I started to see something moving through the trees at last. Walkers, many walkers, and they were coming towards us rapidly, all their long stick-legs moving in unison. One of them stretched out a long arm and caught one of the soldiers off his horse, but they were falling behind us, as if they hadn’t expected our pell-mell speed. We burst together through a wall of pines into a vast clearing, the horses leaping to clear a stand of brush, and before us stood a monstrous heart-tree.
The trunk of it was broader than the side of a horse, towering up into an immensity of spreading branches. Its boughs were laden with pale silver-green leaves and small golden fruits with a horrible stink, and beneath the bark looking at us was a human face, overgrown and smoothed out into a mere suggestion, with two hands crossed across the breast like a corpse. Two great roots forked at its feet, and in the hollow between them lay a skeleton, almost swallowed by moss and rotting leaves. A smaller root twisted out through one open eye socket, and grass poked through ribs and scraps of rusted mail. The remains of a shield lay across the body, barely marked with a black double-headed eagle: the royal crest of Rosya.
We pulled up our snorting, heaving horses just short of its branches. Behind me I heard a sudden snapping noise like the door of an oven slamming shut, and at the same moment I was struck by a heavy weight out of nowhere, thrown out of my saddle. I hit the bare ground painfully, the air knocked out of my lungs, my elbow scraped and legs bruised.