In his dream, it was still winter. Brown grass, brittle with frost, crackled underfoot as Alweard climbed the southern slopes of Fylstott with spear in hand. The lake, placidly ordinary by day, shimmered like silvered glass in the moonlight.
Remembering how Wrecca fished in Dunland, he hefted his spear and shattered the water’s surface. Yet nothing stirred in the lake—nothing save a pale shape that rolled clumsily in the water like a bloated toad. When he impaled it on the second try, a veil of dark blood swelled up from the wound. The fish was heavier than he expected. Trying to raise his spear, he lurched toward the water only to see that his spear had caught a severed head floating on the surface.
Whose was it? The face was indistinct at first, the waterlogged visage of an old friend who died on campaign. Perhaps it was Cynewulf of Forlaw, or Ealdwine of Grimslade, or another young man so long drowned in the Isen’s waters that his face had become a stranger’s. Perhaps it was Wrecca’s sister-son, cut down in his youth, or one of the young men Thorvall was said to have called to his side in the distant North when Alweard was a child.
As shadows drifted over the head, carving its features into new shapes, Alweard saw hoary Athelbert of Cliving and felt his stomach turn. His face, once reddened by drink, was glaucous and gray; his tongue lolled out of his mouth. Without the hands that could bruise a man through his byrnie, he was as harmless as a lamb, but Alweard could not bring himself to meet Athelbert’s glassy eyes.
A breathless voice, crackling like the pages of old books, broke the silence. “We meet again.”
Alweard looked up to see that the head had changed. Sodden and pale, it bore a sandy beard and a sneer that he had come to know well. Just as familiar was its condition. Alweard had separated Ashmund’s head from his shoulders himself.
“I see you still recognize me.”
“How could I not?”
Ashmund gave him a look between a grin and a grimace. “How fortunate that we should meet again.” The flesh of his cheek quivered. Alweard could spy worms twitching beneath his skin. “All of Fylstott must miss me dearly. I wonder if they would say the same for you.”
“Do not presume that you are missed.” Alweard averted his gaze. “Your name, like the rest of you, is dead and buried.”
“They still speak of me.”
“They do not speak of you, only your foolishness.”
“Foolishness? Had I won the duel, they would say the same of you.” A thin, bodiless laugh rang through the night. “Only success makes the difference between foolishness and bravery.”
Alweard had said as much to his own companions. Ashmund’s derision made his face burn. “Take my words out of your mouth! You lost; I was vindicated.”
“By the law, perhaps.” Ashmund’s voice was buoyed by the night air. “But what laws, I wonder, govern men’s hearts?”
“You know the answer as well as I.”
“I would hear you say it. You are known for your courtesy, Adder. If the rumors are true, will you do a dead man one favor?”
A pall of shadow fell over Ashmund’s face. Alweard looked up and saw the moon smothered by a cloud.
“What rumors?”
Ashmund laughed again, as sweet as the rattle of bones, soft as the rasp of stone on steel. “They follow you still.”
Alweard wanted nothing more but to plunge Ashmund’s head back into the lake and leave it for the fish and worms. Yet when he tried to move, he found his arm frozen still. “Those tales were buried with you. By the King’s law, I proved you a liar and a slanderer when I slew you.”
“A slanderer? I simply said what I saw. Only a coward would slither away from fame and renown as you have. A man with nothing to hide would not have to skulk around by night; he would stand and fight in the light of day.”
“My deeds are well known." His throat tightened. "All of Fylstott knows of the troll-hoard I found in the White Mountains, and of the counsel I gave to Thorvall. The Second Marshal knows me to be a leal servant. That is enough.”
“And yet I saw you not for your deeds, Adder, but for your nature. Although he may wear any shape or hue, a craven is bent and twisted.”
He woke not at the lakeshore but in the comfort of his own bed. Motes of dust drifted in the warmth of a sunbeam shining through the window. Dead men were worlds away, lost in the long slumber beneath the earth, yet the words of the outlaw Dungifu lingered in his mind: “Some of us haven’t forgotten Ashmund.”
If only she knew.
