The Forest
Silvius!
Louis stopped dead.
Who else but the father he’d murdered when he was but fifteen for the golden bands of Troy about Silvius’ limbs?
This is no way to found a Game, Silvius had said to Brutus when he’d founded the Troy Game with Genvissa. You cannot found a Game on the corruption of my murder.
So what was this, then? Silvius come to exact retribution? Was this what the Stag God demanded?
Louis ran lightly forward. He was not scared so much as angry, and not running away so much as finding time and space in which to think. His father Silvius, trapped in the heart of the Game all these thousands of years, was coming to murder him, to set the Game to rights, to enable Louis, as Brutus-reborn, rebirth as the Stag God.
Why run from it, then?
Why this anger?
Louis’ footsteps slowed. Throughout his lives as Brutus and then William, the Troy Game had been steeped in murder. Asterion’s, to start with, and then Ariadne’s murder of so many in the name of revenge. Silvius’ murder, by his son’s hand. Genvissa’s death. The death of his and Cornelia’s daughter. Coel’s murder. Caela’s. Swanne’s. Harold’s.
Blangan. Gods, how many years was it since Louis had given her a single thought? She had been the reviled mother of Loth, elder sister of Genvissa, exiled from Llangarlia, brought back to the land by Brutus, only to have her heart torn out in the centre of Mag’s Dance by her son.
What was it about that death? Louis frowned, trying to remember what it was Genvissa had told him about it. She’d manipulated Loth into murdering Blangan, not so much to rid herself of Blangan (although that was a true bonus for Genvissa), but because she’d wrapped this murder within so much dark magic that Blangan’s murder effectively caused the Stag God Og’s murder.
When Loth tore out his mother’s heart, he also tore out Og’s heart.
Louis stopped dead on the pathway, breathing heavily, although more from inner turmoil than from any effort. He heard the footfalls further down the way—Silvius, hunting him—but for the moment he paid them no concern.
He knew what was going to happen, and why.
He knew what part both Silvius and James—Loth-reborn—had to play.
And it terrified Louis.
Why all this lack of courage to face your own death, Brutus, when it was but a simple matter to arrange my murder and to execute it?
Louis straightened and spun about, all in one movement.
His father, Silvius, stood fifteen or sixteen paces behind him.
It was Silvius in his prime. He stood straight and tall, tightly muscled, skin bronzed with good health, crisply-curled black hair tied with a leather thong at the nape of his neck, and white waistcloth beaded with scarlet and emerald and tasselled in gold.
Both eyes stared at Louis, dark, liquid, intense.
About his limbs shimmered six bands of light—Silvius might no longer have the bands, but their legacy still gleamed about his arms and legs.
Silvius held a hunting bow in his hands, a single arrow strung and ready for flight. He had no other arrows.
Louis stared at that arrow, unable now to keep his fright contained, then looked at his father. “Silvius—”
Silvius bared his teeth. Run! Run! I am the hunter, and you the hunted. I will not kill a standing prey, for there is no honour in that. Run! Run!
Louis looked at his father a single moment longer, his eyes wild, then he turned and ran.
Behind him Silvius grinned, and raised the bow to his shoulder.
Then, the bow still held to his shoulder, he also began to run, although he moved with a curious high-stepping gait, his back straight, his arms held almost at shoulder height in order to keep the bow in position, his head high and unmoving, his eyes sighted down the length of the arrow.
It was as if Silvius did not so much run down that forest pathway, but dance.
Ahead of him, panting now, Louis ran as desperately as he could. What if the true test was escaping his father’s justice?
There is no escape for you, murderer.
Louis slid to a halt, staring wildly ahead. Just as that new voice had spoken inside his mind he’d run into the opening approaches to a wide and pleasantly shaded glade.
Standing in the centre of the glade was a man, hobbled and knobbled, crippled and distorted, a terrible mixture of Loth and Saeweald.
In his hand, dangling loosely at his side, this nightmarish creature held a knife, a long, wicked blade.
Louis looked over his shoulder, certain that Silvius was, at any moment, about to run into him.
But instead he heard his father call out from behind some intervening shrubbery.
Hark? Hark? Is that a stag I hear crashing about in that leafy gloom?
“No!” Louis screamed. He tried to duck, to turn aside, to run, but before his brain could send that message to his muscles, the shrub before him parted, as if by magic, and a single arrow sped through it.
No! Louis screamed in his mind, one of his hands instinctively raised to his face, and in the next instant the arrow thudded into him, punching straight through the palm of his hand and embedding itself in his left eye.
The force of the impact sent Louis sprawling to the ground. He writhed, in agony. The arrow had skewered his right hand to his left eye, and as he moved the hand, instinctively trying to pull it away, it tugged at the arrow, making its barbed point wriggle deeper and deeper into Louis’ orbit, scraping against bone and nerve endings.
He screamed, his back arching off the forest floor, his heels thudding frantically on the ground.
A man stepped up to him, and Louis knew it was his father. “For all the gods’ sakes,” he screamed, his voice now hoarse with pain and fear. “Do it! Do it!”
No, said Silvius.
“For gods’ sakes…” Louis moaned. “Please, push this arrow in, and kill me. Do it now! Now!” Oh gods, the agony, the agony…
No.