Читать книгу Ironcrown Moon: Part Two of the Boreal Moon Tale - Julian May - Страница 7

Drumming. Drumming. Drumming.

Dom dom t’pat-a-pat pom…dom

The sound coming from the little hut beyond the byre was soft but still audible in every room of the arctic steading’s main house, repeating the same simple percussive figure, continuing hour after hour for nearly two days, longer than ever before. Sometimes the beat would falter, the timing spoiled because of inattention or the fatigue of the drummer’s aged wrists and fingers; but after a painful pause the rhythmic sound always began again.

Dobnelu the sea-hag was having a particularly difficult time crossing the barrier this time. She could not recall how many false starts she’d made. Fven a single mistake in the three thousand measured patterns of drumming meant going back to the beginning, but it was unthinkable that she abandon the effort. Not even her dire premonition about the woman and the boy who were her special charges must tempt her to give up. Red Ansel Pikan and Thalassa Dru were waiting beneath the ice. Needing her.

And so was the One Denied the Sky.

Dobnelu could only join them in the starless world by means of the drum-trance, a ritual not especially difficult for Tarnian shamans in the prime of life, but an excruciating ordeal for a woman whose years numbered over four score and ten.

Dom dom t’pat-a-pat pom…dom.

Eyes shut tightly against the brightness of Midsummer Eve, resolutely gripping the bone drumsticks in her gnarled hands, Dobnelu the sea-hag forced herself to go on.

The maidservant Rusgann and the boy were somehow able to sleep through the maddening sound of the drumming, but Maudrayne Northkeep always remained conscious of it, even when she slipped into and out of a troubled half-doze. In disjointed prayers, she begged for an end to the infernal noise.

At last, as always, the end did come. The drumbeats ceased abruptly after a single climactic DOM. There was a sudden silence, broken only by the bleating of a goat in the meadow. The hag had succeeded in opening the door to that other place again. She’d entered and so left her prisoners free of her supervision for at least a day, perhaps even two.

Maudrayne pushed aside the opaque curtain of her cupboard-bed and descended on the stepstool, naked except for the ornate golden necklace with the three great opals that she never took off, her Uncle Sernin’s precious wedding gift that she had worn on the night she cast herself into the sea. The air in the shuttered little room was fresh and pleasantly cool, thanks to the sod roof of Dobnelu’s sturdily built home. Outside, under the endless midsummer daylight, it was probably rather warm. Perfect for what she had planned.

After putting on her clothes, she tiptoed to the partly open door leading to the large central chamber, the combined kitchen and sitting room where her serving woman and the boy slept. The hourglass on the mantelpiece indicated about three in the morning. Little Dyfrig’s nook was wide open and he sat unclothed on the edge of his bed, watching his mother with solemn, intelligent eyes. Neither Maudrayne nor her son needed much sleep in the summertime: their Tarnian blood saw to that. But Rusgann Moorcock was a southerner, and she’d demonstrated that she could sleep through a tundra-deer stampede. Her bed-cupboard’s curtains were shut.

‘No more magic drum,’ Dyfrig whispered to his mother. His hair had the same tawny golden color as that of his father, and he also possessed Conrig’s handsome features and unusual dark brown eyes. A moon earlier, the boy had celebrated his fourth birthday.

Maudrayne put a finger to her lips and beckoned him. He slipped to the floor noiselessly and joined her at the kitchen’s single small window. Leather-hinged at the top and held open by a hook and eye fastened to the low ceiling, it was covered with a screen of black gauze to exclude biting midges. Outside, bright sun shone on the meadow and reflected from the island-strewn expanse of Useless Bay beyond the drop-off into the fjord. A distant iceberg with multiple spires, like a dazzling white castle, hovered on the horizon off Cape Wolf.

Maudrayne pointed to the sea-hag’s holy hut at the edge of the steading and spoke softly into the boy’s ear. ‘Eldmama Nelu has drummed herself into an enchanted sleep again. Her body will stay in the hut for a few days now, while her spirit soars away northward to the icecap of the Barren Lands to talk to the One Denied the Sky and the other witches and wizards. Now that she’s gone, we can leave the farm without her permission and go wherever we please! Would you like to walk along the seashore today and have a treasure hunt?’

He squealed with excitement. ‘Yes! Yes! Maybe we can find whale bones, or scales from a mirrorfish!’

‘Shhh. You’ll wake Rusgann –’

Curtain-rings rattled and the maid’s homely face popped out of her enclosure. ‘I’m already awake, Your Grace.’ A lanky body modestly clad in a homespun shift emerged. ‘And you know very well we’re forbidden to leave the steading circle without Dobnelu along to protect us from danger.’

Ignoring the servant’s admonition, Maudrayne went to the larder, where she gathered rye bread, cheese, a small crock of goosegrease flavored with wild herbs, and some sweet cranberry cakes. ‘There’s no danger,’ she insisted. ‘None at all, except from our own misadventure, and we’ll take great care not to lose our footing on the cliff trail or be caught by the rising tide. Now dress yourself, Dyfi. Visit the backhouse and wash your hands, and we’ll be on our way. We can have a picnic breakfast on the beach.’

The boy threw his clothes on and darted outside with a joyful shout, slamming the door. The maid Rusgann lumbered over to her mistress and stood, fists on hips, scowling in disapproval. ‘Your Grace, the spells protecting us extend only to the ring of white stones around this house and the outbuildings. If we venture outside the magic circle, the Beaconfolk could do us harm. Or some windwatching scoundrel of the king’s might scry us!’

‘Do you know what day this is, Rusgann?’ Maudrayne was serene and smiling. Her long auburn hair, freshly washed and hanging free as she stubbornly insisted upon wearing it, shone like burnished copper. ‘This is the Solstice Eve, a very lucky day. No wicked sorcerers or monsters – not even the Coldlight Army – can harm human beings today.’

‘Huh! I never heard of such a thing.’

‘That’s because you’re Cathran-born. We Tarnians know more about dark magic than you do. As for windwatchers – none of them know we’re in this godforsaken spot except Ansel, who brought us here. No one who matters even knows we’re alive! So I say we’re in no danger. And today my son and I will leave this dreary steading and walk free for hours along the sunny shore without a cranky old witch dogging our heels.’

She wrapped the food in a cloth and put it into a basket, together with a long kitchen knife, a leather bottle of mead, and two wooden cups. There would be plenty of good water from freshets trickling down the cliff face. ‘The only question is, will you accompany Dyfi and me on our holiday, or stay behind and sulk?’

The maid was hauling on her garments. ‘It’s not safe, Your Grace! There’s others that could find us here besides magickers. Like that blue fishing vessel that tarried offshore two tennights ago. Dobnelu said the crew peered at the steading with a spyglass! The old woman was in a rare tizzy about it. It seems that plain eyesight isn’t hindered by her shielding magic. The fishermen could have seen you out by the byre.’

‘Please God, they had! For I recognized the lugger as one belonging to Vik Waterfall of Northkeep Port, where my own family’s castle lies. And since catching sight of it, I’ve thought of nothing but how we might use such a boat to get away from here.’

‘Oh, no, Your Grace!’

‘Stop calling me that, you stupid creature! The only one here worthy of such an honorific is my son.’ She turned away, and her next words came through gritted teeth. ‘And I’ll see Dyfrig gets the crown he deserves…if I don’t die of vexation and melancholy first, trapped in this loathsome place.’

The sturdy maidservant persisted in speaking her mind, as was her habit. Rusgann’s fierce loyalty had never equated with submissiveness. ‘My lady, you owe it to the lad to keep him secure. To obey High Shaman Ansel’s instructions and those of the sea-hag. Life here’s boring, I’ll give you that, but Mistress Dobnelu and the shaman know what’s best for you.’

‘Lately, I’ve had my doubts.’ Maudrayne stared out the window at the desolate grandeur of the fjord and the high tundra above it. The snow that had blanketed the windswept plateau was finally melted now, leaving outcroppings of pink and grey granite and patches of vivid green grass tinged with the purple, yellow, and white of short-lived arctic wildflowers.

Rusgann sniffed. ‘I suppose doing housework and taking care of farm animals is a hard life for a high-born lady like you –’

‘You silly thing! That’s not it at all!’

‘Well, what, for pity’s sake?’ the maid muttered. ‘We have a snug place to stay, plenty of food to eat, and magic to keep your enemies at bay.’

‘We’ve been here for four years, Rusgann, hardly ever leaving the stone circle. I have only a small child and you and that senile witch for company, with infrequent visits from Ansel when he can spare us the time. God knows I’m used to northern winters that are eight months long, but not the isolation we have to endure here in this miserable hovel!’ Maudrayne gestured in disgust at the modest kitchen, which was neat and clean enough now thanks to her own efforts and those of the maid. ‘My family’s castle at Northkeep is a cheerful place, full of people. When I lived there we weren’t forced to stay inside during the long winter nights – not even when the Coldlight Army prowled the sky. My brothers and cousins and I played in the snow and went visiting and bathed in the hot springs. There was singing and feasting and games and bards telling wonderful tales. And in summertime we sailed and hunted and fished and gathered berries and went exploring. This wretched steading might as well be a prison. And Ansel won’t even tell me how long we must stay here.’

‘He said we must remain until there’s no danger to you and the lad. How can you dispute the wisdom of that?’

She stamped away from the window with her blue eyes blazing. ‘And just when will the danger be over? When Dyfrig is a man full-grown? When his damned father is dead? All of life is fraught with peril, yet we don’t spend our time hiding safely under the bed!’

Rusgann made a helpless gesture. ‘You seemed content enough to stay here earlier.’

‘When I believed we had no other choice. When Dyfrig was a baby who couldn’t understand the need for prudence and secrecy. But he’s four now, and wise beyond his years. He needs teachers and companions of his own age. If he’s forced to spend his entire childhood here, his spirit will be stunted – just like those tiny winter-blasted birch trees up on the tundra that never grow more than two handspans high. I can’t let that happen to my son! Surely there are better ways for Ansel to secure our safety. Why can’t we live under the protection of my brother Liscanor at Northkeep instead of in this cramped farmhouse?’

‘You could ask the High Shaman that question when next he visits us. But in the end, you have to trust his judgment.’

‘I used to think Ansel was my loyal friend, whose only interest was our welfare.’ Maudrayne spoke in a low voice and her expression was disillusioned. ‘Lately I’ve come to believe he may have other reasons for keeping us confined here that have little to do with our physical safety.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘When last he came, just after the ice breakup, Ansel and the sea-hag were whispering together in the kitchen, thinking that little Dyfi was napping in his bed-cupboard. You and I were mucking out the byre. The boy heard Ansel say, ‘We must make certain he remains king. He’s the only one strong enough to hold them back. Without him, we have no hope of liberating the Source.’ The boy was clever enough to remember the strange words exactly and he asked me about them.’

Rusgann’s brow wrinkled in puzzlement. ‘I suppose Ansel was speaking of High King Conrig.’

‘Yes. Both Dyfrig and I threaten him – but especially me, since I know a great secret of his that would cost him his throne. Perhaps Ansel hopes to eliminate this threat by keeping us out of the way.’

‘But who is it who must be held back by King Conrig? And what in Zeth’s name is the Source?’

‘I know not which particular enemy Conrig’s Sovereignty must hold in check. He has so many! As for this Source, the last time Ansel spoke of it was after I jumped from the parapet of Eagleroost Castle into Cala Bay. As he rescued me, he spoke mysteriously about what his Source would think if my unborn child and I had died in the icy water.’

‘My lady, I still don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘From other things old Dobnelu has said, I’ve come to believe that Ansel’s Source might have something to do with the person the hag visits during her long trances. Perhaps they are even the same.’

Outside, Dyfrig was calling. ‘Mama! Come out! Let’s have our picnic. I’m hungry.’

Maudrayne Northkeep, who had been wife to Conrig Wincantor and Queen of Cathra, picked up the basket and headed for the door. She looked over her shoulder and said to Rusgann, ‘I believe that Ansel and Dobnelu and this Source may be playing some deep magical game. To them, Dyfrig and I are nothing but pawns on their arcane gameboard – and so, evidently, is my former husband, the Sovereign of Blenholme. But I’ll be no one’s gamepiece willingly, and neither will my son. This is the last summer we’ll spend here, Rusgann. We’re going to escape.’

The handmaid’s mouth dropped open in consternation.

Maudrayne laughed. ‘Don’t stand there gaping, woman. If you’re coming to the shore with us, step lively.’

She sailed out the door, and with Dyfrig skipping at her side went through the outbuildings toward the flowery meadow, where honeybees and boreal warblers foraged, and a herd of goats and sheep with their young grazed the fresh grass. At the edge of the enchanted circle, Maudrayne told the boy to wait while she went to the holy hut nearby and looked inside.

The place was windowless, but light entered through a smokehole in the roof. Dobnelu lay unconscious on a rickety cot, her discarded magic drum beside her. She was a small person who could not have weighed seven stone, dressed for the ritual in a tattered blue silk robe that had once been magnificent and costly. Her head had only a few wisps of white hair and the skin of her skull was so translucent that blood vessels seemed to cover it like a netted cap. Her eyes, large and black and smoldering with arcane energy when she was awake, were shuttered by crinkled lids. Her mouth hung slightly ajar, showing a few stumpy teeth. From time to time her lips moved soundlessly.

‘Where do you journey?’ Maudrayne whispered. ‘Whom do you talk to?’

The former queen’s hand stole into the basket where the sharp kitchen knife lay and she fingered the long blade. It would be easy to take the sea-hag’s life while she was entranced and helpless. But would such a deed be justifiable, even to permit their escape? The old woman was terrible-tempered and imperious but without real malice. She had opened her home to three refugees at Ansel’s request (complaining loudly all the while), but had treated little Dyfrig with unfailing kindness, so that he came to love her and called her Eldmama Nelu. Maude and Rusgann she had used as domestic slaveys and farmhands, berating them mercilessly when they were clumsy or negligent. But she had never punished them with her magic.

I cannot kill the witch, Maudrayne realized. Nevertheless, I won’t rest until I find a way to escape without doing her serious harm.

She left the hut and closed the door behind her. Rusgann was waiting with Dyfrig, carrying her own cup and an extra bottle of mead. Maudrayne put the things into the basket, handed it to the maid, then led the way through the pasture to the steep path down the cliff.

After the picnic breakfast was eaten, the three of them embarked on the promised treasure hunt along the narrow fjord beach. Good food and plenty of drink had cheered Rusgann so that she put her former misgivings aside. The bay waters sparkled under the bright sky. Kittiwakes, fulmars, and other birds nesting on the rough rock walls and sea-pinnacles made a raucous din. Green sedges, cliff-ferns, and tufts of white starwort grew in sheltered high places, while some deeply shadowed stretches of shingle above the tide-line were still heaped with slow-melting slabs of ice driven ashore by the winter westerlies.

The tide was receding. They hiked along the emerging sands and slimy boulders below the fjord cliffs for hour after hour, finding all sorts of interesting things: colorful agate pebbles, net floats, shells, the skull of some small animal, and a freshly dead mirrorfish two ells long from which the boy gleefully scraped a heap of huge, gleaming scales. There was even a chunk of white quartz with embedded metallic specks that might have been gold. Maudrayne carried all the treasures in the basket, along with the remains of the food.

Dyfrig raced ahead tirelessly, pursued by laughing Rusgann. After a while the two of them were lost to Maudrayne’s sight behind a jutting promontory at the end of the fjord beach.

She brooded as she hurried to catch up with them. Escape from Dobnelu’s steading was not going to be easy. The sea-hag was a vigilant guardian except when she was sunk in one of her trances or stupefied by strong drink, as happened when changing weather made her bones ache. The drumming happened only at irregular intervals, so they would probably have to rely on ardent spirits to disable Dobnelu’s wind-searching ability. Fortunately, Rusgann was an expert distiller of malted barley liquor, and there was plenty left from last year’s batch. However, tempting the old woman to overindulgence without arousing her suspicions would be tricky.

As the raven flew, Northkeep Castle and its surrounding villages lay only sixty leagues to the south-east, on Silver Salmon Bay; but to get there traveling overland was virtually impossible. Away from the shore, this region of Tarn was a trackless plateau of rolling tundra and bogs. Game would be the only food source unless they waited for the berries that ripened at summer’s end. Maudrayne was an experienced hunter, but without a bow and arrows, she could take birds and animals only by means of inefficient snares. Nor was the upland wildlife entirely innocuous: even if they managed to evade the bears, snow-lions, and wolf packs, biting midges might well eat them alive.

Following the shoreline meant fewer insects and predators, and the tidepools were full of mussels and crabs and stranded small fish. But the irregularity of the coast route more than doubled the distance to the castle, and the going would be appallingly hard, especially for a small child. South of Dobnelu’s home fjord, the shore was jumbled rock and saltmarsh, rather than easily traveled sand. Below Useless Bay lay another broad inlet with a river delta and treacherous flats that could be crossed only by means of ski-like mudshoes. The final obstacle before Silver Salmon Bay and the settled lands held by her elder brother, Sealord Liscanor, was a precipitous headland so sheer that it could only be climbed with the aid of ropes.

No, only an idiot would think of escaping on foot. The terrain was too difficult and the journey would take too long. Dobnelu – or Ansel himself – would be certain to find them with windsight long before they reached Northkeep Castle. Only one course of action had any real chance of success: escaping the same way they had arrived – by boat.

Fishermen came only rarely into Useless Bay, fearing its treacherous shoals as much as the sorcery of the infamous sea-hag who dwelt there. But the sighting of Vik Waterfall’s lugger – and Dobnelu’s warning about the sailors having a spyglass – had given Maudrayne an idea. The next time a boat appeared offshore, she’d try to signal to it from a place out of the old woman’s sight. She’d proffer the valuable opal necklace, and use handsigns to tell the crew what she wanted and where and when to pick her up. If she was lucky, one of the men might recognize her, even though ten years had passed since she sailed her sloop-rigged yacht among the fishing fleet in Northkeep Port, before going south to become the bride of Conrig Wincantor…

She had almost reached the end of the rocky point that separated the long fjord beach from the next cove, into which Rusgann and Dyfrig had evidently vanished. She paused for a moment, setting down the basket and looking out to sea, past the numerous barren islands and shallows that gave the bay its discouraging name, to the distant open water where the great iceberg drifted. As a proficient sailor in northern waters, she knew that with cautious navigation and a fair wind, even a small craft might reach Northkeep in a little over half a day. Given a few hours’ head start, even if Dobnelu woke from her drunken slumber and bespoke Ansel of their escape, he would never catch them at sea unless he conjured up a storm that risked killing them.

And Ansel doesn’t want us dead, she said to herself, else he would have left us to our fate long ago. No, our deaths would somehow spoil his great game.

Mulling the possibilities, Maudrayne made her way around the end of the promontory, climbing among huge granite boulders veined with white quartz and overgrown with thick mats of slippery seaweed. This part of the shore was unfamiliar. In their abbreviated outings with the old woman, she and the boy had never gone so far away from the steading. When the tide turned, the easily traversed sections of these rock piles would probably be submerged, and Maudrayne was beginning to be concerned about getting back safely with Rusgann and Dyfrig ahead of the flow.

The next cove was small and extremely steep-sided, with a towering islet poking up amidst a welter of exposed reefs a few hundred ells offshore. The boy and the handmaid were nowhere in sight, perhaps concealed among the many large rocks at the base of the cliff. She was ready to call out to them when she caught sight of something that brought her to a standstill with her heart pounding.

Barely visible in its anchorage on the far side of the high island was a single-masted fishing lugger with a blue hull. It was almost certainly the same boat that had cruised past two tennights ago.

Dear God! Was it possible that Rusgann had signaled Vik Waterfall to come ashore?

In her haste, she tripped and fell, spilling the contents of the basket into a tidepool. She muttered an oath and hurried to retrieve only the important things – the knife and the finely made wooden cups – thrusting them into the capacious pockets of the peasant apron that was part of her everyday garb at the steading. Unencumbered now, she scrambled over the rocks as fast as she could. Some of them were house-sized or even larger, with narrow gaps between them that had to be threaded with care. She was still unable to see much of the cove shoreline ahead, but she was encouraged by the occasional sight of footprints on patches of wet sand. Dyfrig and Rusgann had certainly come this way.

At last she came out onto the narrow beach, and pulled up short.

About twenty ells away, a leather coracle was drawn up on the strand, one of the lightweight watercraft with whalebone frames that the smaller Tarnian sailing boats often used as tenders. Two men stood near it, hailing her approach with eager shouts. Rusgann sat on the pebble-strewn sand a short distance away from them, with her back pressed against a half-buried boulder and Dyfrig huddled against her skirts. The maid’s hair was disheveled and her face distorted by fury.

The older of the two men came striding toward Maudrayne, and her heart sank as she realized that he was not her affable old acquaintance Vik Waterfall but rather the latter’s younger brother Lukort, a character notorious in former years for his violent temper and unsavory dealings. Eleven years ago, the Waterfall clan had banished him for stealing lobsters from the traps of other fishermen. Yet here he was, wearing a skipper’s cap, in charge of his brother’s boat.

Lukort Waterfall was sinewy, straggly-bearded, and not very tall. His eyes, almost as pale as a wolf’s, were close-set under bushy brows. He wore a vest of pieced and embroidered sealskin, canvas trousers cut off at the knees, a belt with a tarnished silver buckle, and high seaboots. His companion was a burly, oafish-looking youth with a soup-bowl haircut, a heavy jaw, and cheeks as smooth as a girl’s, clad in a homespun tunic and trews of undyed wool. His huge feet were bare.

‘Princess Maudie!’ Lukort exclaimed, doffing his cap with a flourish and bowing deeply. ‘You took long enough gettin’ round the point. We feared you had a mishap.’

‘Mama!’ Dyfrig screamed. ‘Run!’

Before her shocked mind could react, Lukort rapped out a command to the younger man, who darted to the boy, wrenched him away from Rusgann, and clapped a big hand over his mouth.

The maid sprang to her feet shrieking, ‘You stinking whoreson, let him loose!’ The youth fetched her a casual blow in the stomach with his fist and she fell moaning to the stony sand.

His mouth temporarily freed, Dyfrig again cried, ‘Run away, Mama!’

‘Don’t move!’ roared Lukort. A split second later his tone was wheedling and conciliatory. ‘Be easy now, princess. My son Vorgo and I won’t hurt the wee smolt and we won’t hurt you…So he’s your boy, is he? Well well! Yon wench said he was hers! A liar as well as a foulmouthed hellcat, ain’t she?’

Vorgo smirked, keeping a firm hold on Dyfrig as he wriggled. Rusgann struggled to her feet and stood a few feet away from the pair. Her face was unreadable.

‘I know you, Lukort Waterfall,’ Maudrayne said in a stern voice. ‘How dare you mistreat my child and my servant?’

‘The twitch needs to be taught good manners. Got a nasty mouth on her. As to the lad, no one’s mistreatin’ him. We just don’t want him runnin’ off afore you and me have a chance to talk business.’

‘Business?’ Her mind was a turmoil of conflicting emotions. ‘What kind of business?’

‘The world thinks you be dead, princess. Your brother Liscanor was in a black rage when the news come to Northkeep. He tried to talk the other sealords into makin’ war on Conrig Ironcrown to avenge the insult to you and your family. Nothin’ come o’ that. Tarn had too many other troubles, and now we’re part of the Sovereignty whether we like it or not.’ He shrugged. ‘But here you be, alive – thanks to the God of Heights and Depths! – and with a fine young son to boot. Imagine that! How old would the little fella be? About four, eh?’

She said nothing, feeling the hairs at the back of her neck creep with apprehension. The crafty devil had guessed who Dyfrig’s father must be.

Lukort murmured something to Vorgo, who hoisted the child to his shoulder and strode to where the coracle lay. He cut off a piece of line to bind Dyfrig’s wrists, put him into the skin boat, and cast off, heading for the lugger anchored behind the small island.

The skipper beckoned to Maudrayne. ‘Come closer. No need to keep shoutin’ one at t’other. Don’t worry about your lad. I told my son to take special good care o’ him.’

She came slowly toward Lukort, stopping well out of easy reach. It would not do to underestimate the cleverness of this villain. She spoke to the maid. ‘Are you badly hurt, Rusgann?’

‘Nay, my lady. The young lout only punched the breath out of me. The lad and I came on the two men here when we rounded the point. Dyfi was all happy and excited, but I warned him he must say nothing at all until we knew they intended no evil. This Lukort was polite enough at first, asked if I knew the Lady Maudrayne Northkeep who lived nearby with the sea-hag. Said he was one of Lord Liscanor’s subjects, come to see if you were being kept here against your will.’

Maudrayne turned her gaze to the fisherman. ‘Two tennights ago, you saw me at Dobnelu’s steading through your spyglass.’

He nodded, all joviality. ‘And wasn’t it a great shock, seeing a queenly redheaded beauty carrying a milkpail from the old hag’s byre! Us seamen give Dobnelu’s fjord a wide berth accounta her curses. But nothin’s to stop us peepin’ at the place as we sail on by. I studied through the glass and nigh jumped out o’ my skin when I realized ‘twas you: Ironcrown’s wife that was supposed to be drownded in Cathra, alive and well and back home in Tarn. I pondered it for days, wonderin’ what to do.’

‘Wondering how he could turn his discovery to profit!’ Rusgann growled.

‘And did you tell others of what you’d seen?’ Maudrayne inquired.

‘Only a few good mates who know to keep their gobs shut. Needed advice, didn’t I, to figger the best way to outwit the sea-hag.’

Maudrayne said, ‘I’m surprised you dared risk her wrath, setting foot on this forbidden shore.’

A look of low cunning spread over the skipper’s face as he took from his shirt a small pouch hanging on a string around his neck. ‘Got me special charms for that. Vorgo, too. Cost every silver mark I owned to get ‘em from Blind Bozuk the shaman. This here lets us cross the hag’s magic circle of stones without her knowin’. Bozuk said it’d only work on Solstice Eve, when the fires of sorcery burn wan in the midnight sun. We waited till the time was ripe, then sailed back here in my lugger Scoter, keepin’ far out from shore. We came into Useless Bay with the centerboard up, mostly using sweeps to drive the boat. Mortal hard work it was rowin’, but we stayed clear of the shoals and made it to this cove, outta sight of Dobnelu’s steading. We was all set to go afoot along the fjord and creep up to the farmhouse, when the wench and the lad come along.’

Rusgann said, ‘I was fool enough to say you were following us along the shore, my lady, when I thought the men might be friendly. This one started whispering to that blockhead son of his. The lackwit blurted out something about hiding behind a rock and grabbing you when you appeared. I tried to run with Dyfrig then, but they caught us and knocked me down.’

‘And now you intend to kidnap us, Lukort Waterfall?’ Maudrayne said contemptuously.

‘Rescue you, princess!’ The fisherman’s voice was laden with false reproach. ‘First I figgered to take you back to your brother, hopin’ he’d give me a nice reward.’ The yellowish eyes shifted. ‘But now I reckon if I took you and the boy down south, some others – say, your uncle the High Sealord Sernin – might be even more grateful for your return.’

‘I see.’

Others! Sly Lukort knew full well that Conrig Ironcrown was the one who would pay a fortune for her and the child…alive or dead. And if it were not to be the latter, she’d have to think fast.

‘Here comes Vorgo back with the coracle, so let’s be off, princess. Your boy’s waitin’ for you aboard Scoter. She’s a fine craft, a legacy from my late brother, may the fishes eat his eyeballs. You’ll ride easy in her.’

‘How many in your crew?’ Maudrayne asked casually.

He chuckled. ‘For this sailin’, just me and Vorgo. Scoter needs five men when we’re haulin’ in fish, but you’re a catch easier to handle, eh?’

Only the two of them. So the plan that had sprung into her mind might work. ‘You’ll take my maidservant also, of course. She is very dear to me and to my son.’

Lukort’s face hardened and he shot a rancorous glance over his shoulder at Rusgann. ‘Not bloody likely. The big wench stays.’

‘I beseech you not to leave her here with the terrible sea-hag. Look – I’ll give you a fine reward if you but reconsider.’

She pulled the splendid necklace of opal and gold out from her dress and made as if to unfasten the catch at the back of her neck.

‘Swive me!’ the fisherman gasped, undisguised greed widening his eyes. ‘That’s a beaut! Fire-stones the size of quail eggs.’

‘The clasp is stuck. Come help me open it. The bauble is yours in payment for Rusgann’s passage.’

‘Huh! I reckon it’s mine anyhow!’ And he was on her as fast as a heron striking, laughing in malicious triumph. He took hold of the pendant stones and gave a painful tug. She was aware of his wiry eyebrows and foul breath and the bits of food caught in his beard as she pulled the kitchen knife from the pocket of her apron and drove it into his throat just to the side of his windpipe, severing the great bloodvessels of the neck as she’d done many a time hunting, when putting a downed and wounded game animal out of its misery.

Lukort uttered a bubbling croak and, staggering, caught her by the hair. She yanked the knife free and an amazing jet of blood shot from the wound, soaking the two of them as they fell in a tangle of flailing limbs. With him struggling beneath her, she stabbed him again, this time taking him between the ribs. She screamed, ‘Rusgann!’

The maid rushed forward, a granite stone the size of a turnip in one hand. She used the other to pull Maudrayne aside and smashed the rock into Lukort’s crimson-smeared face. Kneeling beside him, she struck again and again and again until there was nothing human left of his features.

‘Stop,’ Maudrayne said at last. ‘He’s dead, bled out like a stuck deer. But take care, his boy Vorgo is coming back in the little boat.’

‘Dad!’ wailed the big youth, his lumpy countenance full of horror. He sat as though paralyzed in the coracle, which drifted in the shallows a dozen ells away. ‘Dad!’

Maudrayne rose slowly to her feet, a figure tall and hideous with gore, holding the red-stained knife high. ‘Now for you!’ she howled, wading into the sea. The youth stared at her in disbelief, then threw himself over the gunwale of the skin boat and began to thrash away frantically in the direction of the lugger.

Maudrayne took a few more steps in pursuit of the swimmer, shouting threats, while Rusgann splashed to retrieve the empty coracle, which she deftly flipped onto the sand.

‘Well done,’ Maudrayne said. ‘Oh, well done, my dearest friend!’ She came ashore.

‘Are you hurt, my lady?’

‘Scratches and bumps. The bastard didn’t get my necklace, but he left a smart welt trying to steal it.’

Rusgann used her drenched apron as a wash-clout on both of them, removing the worst of the blood, until Maudrayne said, ‘Enough. We can finish cleaning ourselves on board the lugger. Poor Dyfrig must be terrified and we must go to him.’

They launched the small craft and climbed into it, after helping themselves to Lukort Waterfall’s filleting knife and belt wallet. A great mob of ravens and gulls had suddenly appeared and were wheeling in a cloud above the body, ready to begin feeding. The noise they made almost drowned out the sound of a distressed human voice.

‘It’s that poor dolt, Vorgo,’ the maid said, ‘wanting us to pick him up. He knows he’ll never make it swimming to the fishing boat. The ice-cold sea water is sapping his strength.’

‘Go back to shore!’ Maudrayne shouted to the youth. ‘Go back! If you strip off the soaked clothes draining your body heat, you may live.’

After a momentary hesitation, the floundering swimmer changed direction and headed toward land.

‘The air’s warm,’ Maudrayne said to Rusgann with a grim smile. ‘He knows the way to the steading, and he has his own pouch of magic trinkets to give him access to the sea-hag’s house. Mayhap Dobnelu will let him stay when she awakes. With us gone, she’ll need a new slavey.’