Free The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year-Volume Four by Jonathan Strahan Page B

caught sight of a gleam of light far off among them. "What's that?" he asked, pointing.
    The company all turned to look, with much champing of bits but not many stamped hooves, for the horses were tired at the end of such a day. "It is a light, and that means there must be habitation," the king said, with a little less confidence than he might have said it in any other part of the kingdom. The Great Forest had a certain reputation for unchanciness.
    "I don't know of any habitation in this direction," said the master of the hunt, squinting at the light.
    "It will be some rude peasant dwelling, rat-ridden and flea-infested, far less comfortable than your own pavilions," the counselor said, stroking his fine white beard. "Let us set them up here and pay no attention to it."
    "Why, where's your spirit of adventure?" the bard asked the counselor. The king smiled, for the bard's question was much after his own heart.
    The king raised his voice. "We will ride on to discover what that gleam of light might be." In a lower tone, as the company prepared to ride off, he added to the counselor, "Even if you are right, and no doubt you are, at the very least we will be able to borrow fire from them, which will make our camp less cold."
    "Very wise, your majesty," the counselor said.
    They rode off through the twilight forest. They were a fine company, all dressed for hunting, not for court, but in silks and satins and velvets and rare furs, with enough gold and silver about them and their horses to show that they were no ordinary hunters. The ladies among them rode astride, like the men, and all of them, men and women, were beautiful, for the king was young and as yet unmarried and would have nobody about him who did not please his eye. Their horses were fine beasts, with arching necks and smooth coats, though too tired now to make the show they had made when they had ridden out that morning. The last rays of the sun had gilded them in the clearing, touching the golden circlet the king wore about his dark unruly locks; now they went forward into deepening night. The sky above them was violet, and a crescent moon shone silver like a sword blade. The first stars were beginning to pierce the sky when they splashed across a brook and saw a little village.
    "What place is this?" the king asked the master of the hunt.
    "I don't know, sire. Unless we have come sadly astray it isn't marked on my map," the master of the hunt said.
    "We must have come astray then," the king said, laughing. "I don't think the worse of you for it, for we were following a hart through the forest, and though we didn't kill it, I can't think when I had a better day's sport. But look, man, this is a stone-built village with a mill and a blacksmith's forge, and an inn. This is a snug little manor. A road runs through it. Why, it must pay quite five pounds of gold in taxes."
    The counselor smiled to himself, for he had been the king's tutor when he was a prince, and was glad to see he remembered the detail of such matters.
    The master of the hunt shook his head. "I am sure your majesty is right, but I can't find it on my map."
    "Let us go on and investigate," the bard said.
    It had been the red gleam of the forge they had seen from far off, but it was the lamplight spilling out of the windows of the inn that the bard waved toward.
    "Such a place will not hold all of us," the king said. "Have the tents set up for us to sleep, but let us see if we can get a hot supper from this place, whatever it is."
    "A hot supper and some country ale," the bard said.
    "There are three white cows in the water meadow beside the stream," the master of the hunt pointed out. "The country cheese in these parts is said to be very good."
    "If you knew what parts these were, no doubt my counselor could tell us all about their cheeses," the king said.
    They dismounted and left the horses to the care of those who were to set up the tents. The four of them strode into the village to investigate. The