Читать книгу A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr - Страница 9

The year 843. In Cerrmor that winter, near the shortest day, there were double rings round the moon for two nights running. On the third night King Glyn died in agony after drinking a goblet of mead …

The Holy Chronicles of Lughcarn

The morning dawned clear if cold, with a snap of winter left in the wind, but toward noon the wind died and the day turned warm. As he led his horse and the prince’s out of the stables, Branoic was whistling at the prospect of getting free of the fortress for a few hours. After a long winter shut up in Dun Drwloc, he felt as if the high stone walls had marched in and made everything smaller.

‘Going out for a ride, lad?’

Branoic swirled round to see the prince’s councillor, Nevyn, standing in the cobbled ward next to a broken wagon. Although the silver dagger couldn’t say why, Nevyn always startled him. For one thing, for all that he had a shock of snow-white hair and a face as wrinkled as burlap, the old man strode around as vigorously as a young warrior. For another, his ice-blue eyes seemed to bore into a man’s soul.

‘We are, sir,’ Branoic said, with a bob of his head that would pass for a humble gesture. ‘I’m just bringing out the prince’s horse, too, you see. We’ve all been stable-bound too long this winter.’

‘True enough. But ride carefully, will you? Guard the prince well.’

‘Of course, sir. We always do.’

‘Do it doubly, this morning. I’ve received an omen.’

Branoic turned even colder than the brisk morning wind would explain. As he led the horses away, he was glad that he was going to be riding out with the prince rather than stuck home with his tame sorcerer.

All winter Nevyn had been wondering when the king in Cerrmor would die, but he didn’t get the news until that very day, just before the spring equinox. The night before, it had rained over Dun Drwloc, dissolving the last pockets of snow in the shade of the walls and leaving pools of brown mud in their stead. About two hours before noon, when the sky started clearing in earnest, the old man climbed to the ramparts and looked out over the slate-grey lake, choppy in the chill wind. He was troubled, wondering why he’d received no news from Cerrmor in five months. With those who followed the dark dweomer keeping a watch on the dun, he’d been afraid to contact other dweomer-masters through the fire in case they were overheard, but now he was considering taking the risk. All the omens indicated that the time was ripe for King Glyn’s Wyrd to come upon him.

Yet, as he stood there debating, he got his news in a way that he had never expected. Down below in the ward there was a whooping and a clatter that broke his concentration. In extreme annoyance he turned on the rampart and looked down to see Maryn galloping in the gates at the head of his squad of ten men. The prince was holding something shiny in his right hand and waving it about as he pulled his horse to a halt.

‘Page! Go find Nevyn right now!’

‘I’m up here, lad!’ Nevyn called back. ‘I’ll come down.’

‘Don’t! I’ll come up. It’ll be private that way.’

Maryn dismounted, tossed his reins to a page, and raced for the ladder. Over the winter he had grown another two inches, and his voice had deepened, as well, so that more and more he looked the perfect figure of the king to be, blond and handsome with a far-seeing look in his grey eyes. Yet he was still lad enough to shove whatever it was he was holding into his shirt and scramble up the ladder to the ramparts. Nevyn could tell from the haunted look in his eyes that something had disturbed him.

‘What’s all this, my liege?’

‘We found somewhat, Nevyn, the silver daggers and me, I mean. After you saw us leave we went down the east-running road. It was about three miles from here that we found them.’

‘Found who?’

‘The corpses. They’d all been slain by the sword. There were three dead horses but only two men in the road, but we found the third man out in a field, as if he’d tried to run away before they killed him.’

With a grunt of near-physical pain Nevyn leaned back against the cold stone wall.

‘How long ago were they killed?’

‘Oh, a ghastly long time.’ Maryn looked half-sick at the memory. ‘Maddyn says it was probably a couple of months. They froze first, he said, and then thawed probably just last week. The ravens have been working on them. It was truly grim. And all their gear was pulled apart and strewn around, as if someone had been searching through it.’

‘Oh, no doubt they were. Could you tell anything about these poor wretches?’

‘They were Cerrmor men. Here.’ Maryn reached into his shirt and pulled out a much-tarnished message tube. ‘This was empty when we found it, but look at the device. I rubbed part of it clean on the ride home.’

Nevyn turned the tube and found the polished strip, graven with three tiny ships.

‘You could still see the paint on one shield, too,’ Maryn went on. ‘It was the ship blazon. I wish we had the messages that were in that tube.’

‘So do I, your highness, but I think me I know what they said. We’d best go down and collect the entire troop. No doubt we’re months too late, but I won’t rest easy until we have a look round for the murderers.’

As they hurried back to the broch, it occurred to Nevyn that he no longer had to worry about communicating with his allies by dweomer. It was obvious that their enemies already knew everything they needed to know.

Even though Maddyn considered hunting the murderers a waste of time, and he knew that every other man in the troop was dreading camping out in the chilly damp, no one so much as suggested arguing with Nevyn’s scheme. If anyone had, Maddyn himself would have been the one to do it, because he was a bard of sorts, with a bard’s freedom to speak on any matter at all, as well as being second in command of this troop of mercenaries newly become the prince’s guard. The true commander, Caradoc, was too afraid of Nevyn to say one wrong word to the old man, while Maddyn was, in some ways, the only real friend Nevyn had. Carrying what provisions the dun could spare them at the end of winter’s lean times, the silver daggers, with the prince and old Nevyn riding at the head of the line, clattered out of the gates just at noon. With them was a wagon and a couple of servants with shovels to give the bodies a decent burial.

‘At least the blasted clouds have all blown away,’ Caradoc said with a sigh. ‘I had a chance of a word with the king’s chief huntsman, by the by. He says that there’s an old hunting lodge about ten, twelve miles to the north-east, right on the river. If we can find it, it might still have a roof of sorts.’

‘If we’re riding that way to begin with.’

They found the murdered men and their horses where they’d left them, and it ached Maddyn’s heart to think how close they’d been to safety when their Wyrd fell upon them. While the servants looked for a place where the thawing ground was good and soft, Nevyn coursed back and forth like a hunting dog and examined everything – the dead men, the horses, the soggy ground around them.

‘You and the men certainly trampled all over everything, Maddo,’he grumbled.

‘Well, we looked for footprints and tracks and suchlike. If they’d left a trail we would have found it, but you’ve got to remember that the ground was frozen hard when this happened.’

‘True enough. Where’s the third lad, the one who almost got away?’

Maddyn took him across the field to the sprawled and puffing corpse. In the warming day the smell was loathsome enough to make the bard keep his distance, but Nevyn knelt right down next to the thing and began to examine the ground as carefully as if he were looking for a precious jewel. Finally he stood up and walked away with one last disgusted shake of his head.

‘Find anything?’

‘Naught. I’m not even sure what I was hoping to get, to tell you the truth. It just seems that …’ Nevyn let his words trail away and stood there slack-mouthed for a moment. ‘I want to wash my hands off, and I see a stream over there.’

Maddyn went with him while he knelt down and, swearing at the coldness of the water, scrubbed his hands in the rivulet. All at once the old man went tense, his eyes unfocused, his mouth slack again, his head tilted a little as if he listened to a distant voice. Only then did Maddyn notice that the streamlet brimmed with glassy-blue undines, rising up in crests and wavelets. In their midst, and yet somehow beyond them, like a man coming through a doorway from some other place, was a presence. Maddyn could barely see it, a vast silvery shimmer that seemed to partake of both water and air like some preternatural fog, forming itself into shapes that might not even have existed beyond his desire to see it as a shape. Then it was gone, and Maddyn shuddered once with a toss of his head.

‘Geese walking on your grave?’ Nevyn said mildly.

When Maddyn looked around he saw Owaen and the prince walking over to them and well within earshot.

‘Must be, truly. Here, Owaen, did you and the lads find anything new?’

‘Doubt me if there’s aught to find. Young Branoic did come up with this, though. Insisted it might be important, but he couldn’t say why.’ Owaen looked positively sour as he handed Nevyn a thin sliver of bone about six inches long, barely a half-inch wide, but pointed at both ends. ‘Sometimes I think that lad is daft, I truly do.’

‘Not at all.’ Nevyn was turning the sliver round and round in his thin gnarled fingers. ‘It’s human bone, to begin with. And look how someone’s worked it – smoothed it, shaped it, and then polished it.’

‘What?’ Owaen’s sourness deepened to disgust. ‘What is it, some kind of knife handle?’

‘It’s not, but a stylus to rule lines on parchment.’

‘A stylus?’ Maddyn broke in. ‘Who would make a thing like that out of human bone?’

‘Who indeed, Maddo lad? That’s the answer I’d very much like to have: who indeed?’

In his role as a learned man Nevyn recited a few suitable lines of Dawntime poetry over the corpses; then the silver daggers mounted up and left the servants to get On with the burying. Since, when they rode out they headed for the river, Maddyn spurred his horse up next to the old man’s and mentioned the decrepit hunting lodge.

‘It’ll be better shelter than none, truly,’ Nevyn said.

‘You don’t suppose our enemies camped there, do you?’

‘They might have once, but they’re long gone by now.’ He gave Maddyn a wink. ‘I have some rather reliable information to that effect. Tell the men we won’t be out hunting wild geese long, Maddo. I just want one last look around, that’s all.’

Only then was Maddyn sure that he had indeed seen some exalted personage in the stream.

Just at sunset they reached the lodge, a wooden roundhouse, its thatch half-gone, standing along with a stable behind a palisade that was missing as many logs as a peasant has teeth. As soon as they rode within five hundred yards of the place the horses turned nervous, tossing their heads and blowing, dancing a little in the muddy road. Maddyn had the feeling that they would have bolted if they hadn’t been tired from their long day’s ride.

‘Oho!’ Nevyn said. ‘My liege, you wait here with Caradoc and most of the men. Maddyn, you, Owaen, and Branoic come with me.’

‘You’d better take more men than that, Councillor,’ Maryn said.

‘I won’t need a small army, my liege. Most like there’s naught left here but bad memories, anyway.’

‘But the horses –’

‘See things men don’t see, but men know things that horses don’t know. And with that riddle, you’ll have to rest content.’

Nevyn was right enough, in the event, although the ‘bad memory’ turned out to be bad indeed. The men dismounted and walked the last of the way to the lodge, and as soon as they stepped through the gap they saw and smelled what had been spooking the animals. Nailed to the inside of the palisade, like a shrike nailed to a farmer’s barn, was the corpse of a man, half-eaten by ravens and well ripened by the spring weather. Yet the worst thing wasn’t the stench. The corpse was hung upside down and mutilated – the head cut off and nailed between its legs with what seemed to be – from the fragment left – its private parts stuffed into its mouth. Branoic stared for a long moment, then turned and ran to the shelter of the palisade to vomit heavily and noisily.

‘Uh gods!’ Owaen whispered. ‘What?!’

For all his aplomb earlier, Nevyn looked half-sick now, his face dead-white and looking with all its wrinkles more like old parchment than ever. He ran his tongue over dry lips and spoke at last.

‘A would-be deserter, most like, or a traitor of some sort. They left him that way so he’d roam as a haunt forever. All right, lads, get back to the troop. I think they’ll all agree that we don’t truly want to camp here tonight, shelter or not.’

‘I should think not, by the asses of the gods!’ Owaen turned to Maddyn. ‘I know the horses are tired, but we’d best put a couple of miles between ourselves and this place if there’s a haunt about.’

‘You’re going to, certainly,’ Nevyn broke in. ‘I’m going to stay here.’

‘Not alone you aren’t,’ Maddyn snapped.

‘I don’t need guards with swords, lad. I’m not in danger. If I can’t handle one haunt, what kind of sorcerer am I?’

‘What about this poor bastard?’ Owaen jerked his thumb at the corpse. ‘We should give him some kind of burial.’

‘Oh, I’ll tend to that, too.’ Nevyn started walking for the gate. ‘I’ll just get my horse, and then you all go on your way. Come fetch me first thing in the morning.’

Somewhat later, when they were all making camp – in a meadow about a mile and a half downriver – it occurred to Maddyn that Nevyn seemed to know an awful lot about these mysterious people who had left that ugly bit of sacrilege on the palisade. Although he was normally a curious man, he decided that he could live without asking him to explain.

With the last of the sunset, Nevyn brought his horse inside the tumbledown lodge, tied him on a loose rope to the wall and tended him, then dumped his bedroll and saddle-bags near the hearth, where there lay a sizable if dusty pile of firewood already cut, left by the hirelings of the dark dweomer-master behind this plot – or so he assumed, anyway. As assumptions went, it was a solid one. After he confirmed that the chimney was clear by sticking his head up it for a look, he piled up some logs and lit them with a wave of his hand. Once the fire had blazed up enough to illumine the room, he searched it thoroughly, even poking at the rotting walls with the point of his table-dagger. His patience paid off when under a pile of leaves that had drifted in through a window he found a pewter disc about the size of a thumbnail, of the kind sewn on saddle-bags and other horse gear as decorations. Stamped into it was the head of a boar.

‘I wonder,’ he said aloud. ‘The Boar clan’s territory lies a long way from here but still, if they thought the journey worth it for some purpose … are they in league with the dark dweomer then?’

The idea made him shudder. He slipped the disc into his brigga pocket, then paced back and forth before the fire as he considered what he was going to do about the possible haunt. First, of course, he had to discover if indeed that poor soul whose body rotted outside was still hanging about the site of his death. He laid more wood on the fire, poked it around with a green stick until it burned nice and evenly, then gathered up a mucky little pile of the damp and mildewed thatch that had slid from the roof over the years. If he needed it, the stuff would produce dense smoke. Then he sat down in front of the hearth, let himself relax, and waited.

It was close to an hour later when he felt the presence. At first it seemed only that a cold draught had wafted in from the door behind him, but he saw the salamanders in the fire turn their heads and look up in the direction of some thing. The room turned thick with silence. Still he said nothing, nor did he move, not even when the hair on the back of his neck prickled at the etheric force oozing from the haunt. There was a sound, too, a wet snuffling as if a hound were searching for a scent all over the floor, and every now and then a scrabbling, as if some animal scratched at the floor with its nails. As the air around him grew colder he concentrated on keeping his breathing slow and steady and his mind at peace. With a burst of sparks the salamanders disappeared. The thing was standing right behind him.

‘Have you left somewhat here that won’t let you rest, lad?’

He could feel puzzlement; then it drifted away, snuffling and scrabbling round the joining of floor and wall.

‘Somewhat’s buried, is it?’

The coldness approached him, hesitated, hovering some five feet off to his left. He could feel its desperate panic as clearly as he could feel the cold. Casually, slowly, Nevyn reached out and picked up a handful of the grubby thatch.

‘I wager you’d like to feel solid again, nice and solid and warm. Come over to the fire, lad.’

As the presence drifted into the warm light Nevyn could feel its panic reaching out like tendrils to clutch at him. Slowly he rose to his knees and tossed the half-rotten hay onto the hottest part of the fire. For a moment it merely stank; then grey smoke began to billow and swirl. As if it were a nail rushing to a lodestone the presence threw itself into the fire. Since it ‘lived’ as a pattern of etheric force, the matrix immediately sucked the smoke up and arranged the fine particles of ash to conform to that pattern. Hovering above the fire appeared the shape of a youngish man, naked but of course perfectly whole, since his killers’ knives could do no harm to his etheric body. Nevyn tossed in another handful of thatch to keep the smoke coming, then sat back on his heels.

‘You can’t stay here. You have to travel forward, lad, and go on to a new life. There’s no coming back to this one.’

The smoke-shape shook its head in a furious no, then threw itself out of the fire, leaving the smoke swirling and spreading, but ordinary smoke. Yet enough of the particles clung to the matrix to make the haunt clearly visible as it drifted across the room and began scrabbling again at a loose board between floor and wall. Nevyn could see, too, that it was making the snuffling noise inadvertently, rustling and lifting dead leaves and other such trash as it passed by.

‘What’s under there? Let me help. You don’t have the hands to dig any more.’

The presence drifted to one side and gave no sign of interfering as Nevyn came over and knelt down. When he drew his table-dagger and began to pry up the board, the haunt knelt too, as if to watch. Although that particular board was somewhat newer than those around it, still the rotted wood broke away from its nails and came up in shreds and splinters. Underneath, in a shallow hole in the ground, was an oblong box, about two feet long but only some ten inches wide.

‘Your treasure?’

Although it was faint now, a bare wisp of smoke in the firelight, the thing shook its head no and lifted both hands – imploring him, Nevyn thought, to forgive it or do something or perhaps both. When he reached in and lifted the box, some weight inside lurched and slid with a waft of unpleasant smell from the crack around the lid. Since he considered himself hardened to all forms of death, Nevyn threw open the lid and nearly gagged – not from the smell, this time, but from the sight. Crammed inside lay the corpse of an infant boy, preserved with some mixture of spices and liquids. Only a few days old when it died, it had been mutilated in the exact same way as the corpse nailed to the palisade.

Since the box brought a lot of dust up with it, the haunt kneeling nearby looked briefly solid, or at least its face and hands were visible as it tossed its head back and threw up its arms in a silent keen.

‘Your child?’

It shook its head no, then slumped, doubling over to lay its head on the ground in front of him like a criminal begging a great lord for mercy.

‘You helped kill it? Or – I see – your friends were going to kill it. You protested, and they made you share its Wyrd.’

The dust scattered to the floor. The haunt was gone.

For some minutes Nevyn merely stared at the pitiful corpse in its tiny coffin. Although he’d never had the misfortune to see such mutilations before, he’d heard something about their significance – some half-forgotten lore that nagged at the edges of his memory and insisted that he examine the corpse more carefully. Finally he summoned up all his will and took the box over to the fire where there was light to work in, but he got bits of rag from his saddle-bags to wrap his hands before he reached in and took the mutilated pieces of the tiny mummy out. Underneath he found a thin lead plate, about two inches by four, much like the curse-talismans that ignorant peasants still bury in hopes of doing an enemy harm. Graven on it were words in the ancient tongue of the Dawntime, known only to scholars and priests – and some words that not even Nevyn could translate.

‘As this so that. Maryn king Maryn king Maryn. Death never dying. Aranrhodda ricca ricca ricca Bubo lubo.’

His face and hands seemed to turn to ice, cold and numb and stiff. He looked up to find the room filled with Wildfolk, staring at him solemnly, some wide-eyed, some sucking an anxious finger, some gape-mouthed with terror.

‘Evil men did this, didn’t they?’

They nodded a yes. In the fire a towering golden flame leapt up, then died down to a vaguely human face burning within the blaze.

‘Help me,’ Nevyn said to the Lord of Fire. ‘I want to get that corpse outside in here, and then burn it and this pitiful thing both. Then both souls can go to their rest.’

Sparks showered in agreement.

Nevyn slipped the lead plate into his pocket, lest melting it cause Maryn some harm. He gathered his gear and loaded up his mount, then untied the horse and led it about a quarter mile down the river, where he tethered it out in safety. When he got back to the lodge he found that the fire had already leapt from the hearth to smoulder in the woodpile. With the Wildfolk pulling as he pushed, Nevyn got the rotting log that bore the corpse free of the ground and hauled it inside. He positioned the corpse and log as close to the fire as possible, then laid the mutilated baby on the desecrated breast of the man who’d tried to save it. Although he felt more like vomiting than ever, he forced himself calm and raised his hands over his head to invoke the Great Ones.

‘Take them to their rest. Come to meet them when they go free.’

From the sky outside, booming around the lodge, came three great knocks like the claps of godly hands. Nevyn began to shudder, and in the fire the flames fell low in worship.

Even though Nevyn had asserted, and quite calmly, too, that there was no danger, none of the silver daggers were inclined to believe him. After the men had tethered out the horses and eaten dinner, Caradoc gave orders to scrounge all the dry wood they could find and build a couple of campfires. Maddyn suspected that the captain was as troubled as any man there by this talk of a haunt and wanted the light as badly, too.

‘Full watches tonight, lads,’ Maddyn said. ‘Shall we draw straws?’

Instead so many men volunteered that his only problem was sorting out who was going to stand when. Once the first ring of guards was posted, some of the men rolled up in their blankets and went to sleep – or at least pretended to in a fine show of bravado – but most sat near one fire or another, keeping them going with sticks and bits of bark as devotedly as any priest ever tended a sacral flame. After about an hour, Maddyn left the prince to Caradoc’s and Owaen’s care at one of the fires and went for a turn round the guards. Most were calm enough, joking with him about ghosts and even making light of their own nerves, but when he came up to Branoic, who was posted out near the herd of horses, he found the younger man as tense as a harp-string.

‘Oh now here, lad! Look at the horses, standing there all peaceful like. If there was some fell thing about, they’d warn us.’

‘You heard what Nevyn said, and he’s right. There are some things horses can’t know. Maddyn, you can mock me all you like, but some evil thing walks this stretch of country. I can practically smell it.’

Maddyn was about to make a joke when the knocks sounded, three distant rolls booming out like thunder from a clear sky. Branoic yelped like a kicked dog and spun round to point as a tower of pale silver flame shot up through the night. As far as Maddyn could tell, it was coming from the old hunting lodge. Even though they were over a mile away, Maddyn saw the river flash with reflected light as it seemed that the flames would lick at the sky itself. Then they fell back, leaving both men blind and blinking in the darkness. In the camp, yells and curses broke like a rainstorm. Around them horses neighed and reared, pulling at their tethers.

‘Come on!’ Maddyn grabbed Branoic’s arm. ‘Somewhat’s happened to Nevyn.’

Stumbling and swearing, they took off downriver, running because it would take too long to calm and saddle horses. Just as Maddyn’s sight was finally clear someone hailed them: Nevyn himself, leading his horse along as calmly as you please.

‘Ye gods, my lord! We thought you slain.’

‘Naught of the sort. I did get a little carried away with that fire, didn’t I? I’ve never tried anything quite like that before, and I think me I need to refine my hand.’

Nevyn refused to say anything more until they reached the camp. Shouting for answers the men surrounded him until Maryn yelled at them to shut up and let the councillor through. It was a good measure of the prince’s authority that they all fell back and did so. Once Nevyn reached the pool of firelight, he mugged a look of mild surprise.

‘I told you I’d lay the haunt to rest, lads, and I did. There’s naught more to worry about.’ He glanced around with a deliberate vagueness. ‘If someone would take my horse, I’d be grateful.’

Owaen grabbed the reins and led the trembling beast away to join its fellows.

‘Oh come now, good councillor.’ With all the flexible courage of youth Maryn was grinning at him. ‘You can’t expect to put us off so easily.’

‘Well, perhaps not.’ The old man thought for a moment, but Maddyn was sure that he had his little speech all prepared and was only pretending to hesitate. ‘To lay a haunt you’ve got to bum its corpse. So I made a huge fire and shoved the ghastly thing in. But I stupidly forgot about the corpse-gas, and up went the whole lodge. I hope your father won’t be vexed, my liege. I’ve destroyed one of his holdings, old and decrepit though it was.’

Much to Maddyn’s surprise, everyone believed this to him less-than-satisfying tale. They wanted to believe it, he supposed, so they could stop thinking about these dark and troubling things. Later, when most of the men, including the prince and the captain, were asleep in their blankets, Maddyn heard a bit more of the truth as he and Aethan sat up with the old man at a dying fire.

‘You’re just the man I want,’ Nevyn said to Aethan. ‘You rode for the Boar up in Cantrae, didn’t you? Take a look at this pewter roundel. Is that pig the same heraldic device or some other version of a boar?’

‘It’s the gwerbret’s, sure enough.’ Aethan angled the bit of metal close to the last blazing log. ‘The curve of those long tusks gives it away, and I’ve been told that pointed mark on the back is the first letter of the word apred.’

‘So it is. That settles it, then. There was at least one Boarsman in that lodge this winter – although, truly, he could have been someone who was ousted from the warband, I suppose, and brought his old gear with him.’

‘I can’t imagine any of the lads I used to ride with treating a dead man that way.’

‘Ah. Well, the man this belonged to might well have been the man who was killed. He was murdered for trying to do an honourable thing. I did find out that much.’

‘You talked with the haunt?’ Maddyn found it hard to speak, and Aethan was staring horrified.

‘Not to say talked, but I asked questions and he could nod yes or no.’ The old man gave him a sly grin. ‘Don’t look so shocked, lad. You were mistaken for a ghost yourself once, if I remember rightly.’

‘True enough, but I wasn’t exactly dead.’

‘Well, while this poor fellow was a good bit less alive than you, he wasn’t exactly dead either. He is now, and gone to the gods for a reward, or so I hope.’ Nevyn considered for a moment, frowning at the roundel. ‘Tell me somewhat, Aethan. When you rode for Cantrae, did you ever hear any rumours of witchcraft and dark wizardry? Did anyone ever say that so-and-so had strange powers or the second sight or suchlike?’

Aethan started to shrug indifferently, then stiffened and winced, like a man who shifts his weight in the saddle only to pinch an old bruise.

‘An odd thing happened once, years back. I rode as a guard over the gwerbret’s widowed sister, you see, and once we went out into the countryside. It was late in the fall, but she insisted on taking a hawk with her. There’s naught to set it on, say I, but she laughed and said that she’d find the game she wanted. And she did, because cursed if she didn’t fly the thing at a common crow, and of course the hawk brought it right down. She took feathers from its wings and its tail and threw the rest away.’ He was silent for a long moment. ‘And what do you want those for, say I, and she laughed again and said she was going to ensorcel my heart. And she did, truly, but whether she used the wretched feathers or not, I wouldn’t know. She didn’t need them.’ Abruptly Aethan rose to his feet. ‘Is there aught else you want from me, my lord?’

‘Naught, and forgive me for opening an old wound.’

With a toss of his head Aethan strode off into the darkness. Maddyn hesitated, then decided it would be best to leave him alone with his ancient grief.

‘I am sorry,’ Nevyn said. ‘Did Aethan get thrown out of the warband for courting the gwerbret’s sister?’

‘He did, but things came to a bit more than fine words and flowers, or so I understand.’

‘Ah. I saw the Lady Merodda once. She was the most poisonous woman I’ve ever laid eyes on. I wonder, lad. I truly wonder about all of this. Here, keep what you just heard to yourself, will you? The men have got enough to worry about as it is.’

‘And I don’t, I suppose.’

‘Oh here.’ Nevyn chuckled to himself. ‘As if you weren’t burning with curiosity.’

‘My heart was ice, sure enough. Well, my lord, I’m about snoring where I stand, and I’d best get some sleep.’

Once he lay down in his blankets, Maddyn drifted straight off, but he did wake once, not long before dawn, to see Nevyn still sitting up and staring into the last embers of the fire.

On the morrow a subdued troop of silver daggers rode straight home to Dun Drwloc. That night Nevyn summoned Maddyn and Caradoc to the king’s private chambers for a conference. Casyl had a map of the three kingdoms, drawn in great detail by the priests of Wmm, and, as he remarked, it had cost him far more than the weight of its thin parchment in gold. While Nevyn and the king chewed over the problems involved in getting Maryn to Cerrmor, Maddyn stared fascinated at the map in the flaring candlelight. Although he couldn’t read, he could pick out the rivers and the mountains, the Canaver and the Cantrae hills where he’d lived his early life, the long rivers of central Deverry running down from the northern mountains, and finally, the Aver El, the river with the foreign name whose source lay in the lake just outside the window of the conference room.

All the borders of the kingdoms and their provinces were there too, marked in red. Even without letters Maddyn could see that it was going to be a long ride and a dangerous one from Loc Drw down to Cerrmor. As long as the prince was in Pyrdon he was safe, but the Pyrdon border lay a good hundred miles from the border of the Cerrmor holdings. Part of his journey, therefore, would have to lie through hostile Cantrae lands.

‘It aches my heart that some enemy knows of Maryn’s Wyrd.’ Casyl’s voice brought Maddyn back to the present meeting. ‘What matters the most, of course, is where their lands are, and whether or not the prince is going to have to pass through them, though I can’t help wondering just who they are, and where their loyalties lie.’

‘I strongly suspect, my liege,’ Nevyn said, ‘that their loyalties lie only to themselves, but I’ll wager they’re not above selling information to whoever can buy it.’

Caradoc nodded in a grim agreement.

‘There’s mercenary troops, and then there’s mercenary spies,’ the captain pronounced. ‘I’ve come across a few of the latter. Fit for raven food and naught else, they were. All the honour of stoats.’

‘If that’s the case,’ Casyl went on, ‘then I’ll wager the chief buyer for their foul goods is the king in Cantrae.’

‘Don’t forget, my liege, that Cerrmor is doubtless boiling over with intrigue at the moment,’ Nevyn said. ‘For a long while now there have been omens of the coming of the True King as well as much speculation as to his name. I’m sure that by now Maryn’s bloodlines are well known there. And then we’ll have a good many ambitious men who won’t see why the omens couldn’t apply to them or their sons – with the right trimming and fitting, that is.’

‘Just so.’ The king traced out the Pyrdon border with his fingertip. ‘There could be several different enemies laying for our prince. Here, Nevyn, do you know who’s regent down in Cerrmor? Or has the fighting over the throne already begun?’

‘I fear the latter, my liege, but I don’t truly know. If you’ll excuse me, I intend to find out.’

The king nodded a dismissal, taking this hint of dweomer with a casual indifference. It was odd, Maddyn thought to himself, just how easily one did get used to dweomer, as if it were the natural order of things and a world without magic the aberration. Maryn was practically jigging where he stood in sheer excitement. Although Maddyn could sympathize – after all, the lad’s Wyrd lay close at hand – he was also worried, just because he could remember being fifteen and sure that he would never die, no matter what happened to other men. He knew better now, and he had no desire to see his prince learn as he had: the hard way. It seemed that the captain agreed with him.

‘If the Cantrae king comes out in force, my liege,’ Caradoc said. ‘There aren’t enough men in Pyrdon to keep our prince safe.’

Casyl winced.

‘Forgive my bluntness, your highness, but –’

‘No apologies needed, captain. The point is both true and well-taken. What do you suggest? I can see that there’s somewhat on your mind.’

‘Well, my liege, maybe our enemies, whoever they are, know that the prince will be trying to reach Cerrmor, but they still have to find him on the road. I suggest that you send a troop of picked men, the sort you’d choose to guard the prince, down the east-running road. Then, a while later, we leave, heading toward Eldidd, say. The prince goes with us – as a silver dagger. Who looks in a dung heap for a jewel?’

‘Just so.’ Casyl nodded in slow admiration. ‘Just so, captain.’

‘Oh splendid!’ Maryn broke in. ‘I’ve always wanted to carry one of those daggers. Have you looked at one close up, Father? They’re truly beautiful.’

‘So they are.’ Casyl suppressed a smile. ‘One thing though, captain. I understand that you left Cerrmor in some disgrace. Will you be endangering yourself by returning?’

‘If I live that long, my liege, I suppose I will. Haven’t thought about all that in twelve, thirteen years, truly.’ He glanced at Maryn. ‘I suppose I could petition the True King for a pardon, if things came to that.’

‘You have my pardon already, captain.’ Maryn drew himself up to full height, and all at once they could see the man he’d be someday. ‘No doubt you’ll redeem yourself thrice over by the time I ride into Dun Deverry as king.’

Abruptly Casyl turned away and paced over to the window. Maddyn was the only one who noticed that his liege’s eyes were full of tears.

The next morning, Nevyn came out to the barracks and fetched Caradoc and Maddyn both for what he called a ‘little stroll’. They went down to the lake shore just outside the walls of the dun and sat down on the rocks right next to the water. For a moment Nevyn merely looked around him, but his eyes were so heavy-lidded and strange that Maddyn assumed the councillor was working some dweomer.

‘I think we should be safe here,’ Nevyn remarked, confirming his suspicions. ‘The presence of the water will act as a sort of shield, you see, from the wrong sort of prying eyes. Now then. Captain, I’ve received news from Cerrmor of a sort. The capital’s in an uproar, but it’s being torn apart by despair, not politicking. The only thing that’s keeping the Cerrmor side together is the regent, a certain Tieryn Elyc, an honourable man and a shrewd one, apparently, but even he hasn’t been able to stop a great many lords from switching their loyalties to Cantrae.’

‘Elyc? That’s not Elyc of Dai Aver, is it?’

‘The very one. You know him?’

‘Did once, a cursed long time ago now. If he hasn’t changed, he’s a decent sort, truly.’

‘Well and good, then. In theory he’s charged with running the kingdom until Glyn’s eldest daughter marries and has an heir, but I doubt me if he’ll be able to impose order for that many years.’

‘How old is the lass?’ Maddyn said.

‘Thirteen, just old enough to wed this year. Our prince will have to marry her, of course, and as soon as ever he can. I’ve no doubt that her mother will see reason if only we can get Maryn there. I’m told that everyone in the city lives in terror of anarchy.’

‘Then no doubt they’ll welcome him with shouting and flowers in their hair,’ Caradoc said. ‘Good.’

‘Perhaps, but first we have to get him there. I suggest we leave on the morrow.’

Since Caradoc wanted to keep the plan as secret as possible, he and Maddyn told the other silver daggers that they were going to ride a raid on the Eldidd border to provide a distraction when the Marked Prince left for Cerrmor with his escort. No one thought to question the plan, which was a decent one in its way. In a chilly dawn Maryn and Nevyn made a great show of riding out with a hundred members of the king’s own guard and a wagon train filled with supplies and gifts for the Cerrmor lords. Ahead of them rode a herald holding the banner of Pyrdon. With them on the road went the king with an honour guard of his own – to escort them to the border, or so it was said. The queen wept openly; silver horns blared; the assembled populace cheered the young prince and his splendid Wyrd. Only Maddyn and Caradoc knew that hidden among the silver daggers’ supplies were shabby clothes and armour for Maryn, and that those coffers of gifts were empty.

When the silver daggers assembled in the ward later that morning only their own women came to watch. As he kissed Clwna good-bye Maddyn felt a pang of guilt; she was expecting them all home in a week or two, while he knew that it would be months before they could send for the women, if indeed they even lived long enough to do so. From his manner she seemed to pick up that something was wrong, because she kissed him repeatedly and clung to him.

‘Here, here, my sweet, what’s so wrong?’

‘I worry, that’s all. I do every time you ride to war, or haven’t you even noticed?’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Oh Maddo, it’s worse this time. Somewhat’s going to happen. I just know it.’

‘Whist, whist, little one. If it does, then it’ll be my Wyrd, and what can either of us do about that?’

Although she tried to force out a smile, her lips were trembling. She gave his hand one last squeeze, then ran for the barracks. She would be crying her heart out, he knew, and the guilt stabbed again, worse than a sword.

‘Ah come on, Maddo!’ It was Aethan, striding over with his horse in tow. ‘We’ll be back soon enough. Those Eldidd dogs can’t fight worth a pig’s fart.’

‘So they can’t, true enough.’ He forced out a smile of his own. The captain had insisted that he keep the truth to himself until they were miles from the dun. ‘Where’s young Branoic?’

‘Here, sir.’ Branoic came up, leading his horse into line. The lad was grinning as broadly as if they were going to some royal entertainment. ‘Let’s hope our enemies can fight well enough to give us some sport, huh? Ye gods, I thought I’d go mad this winter, shut up in the dun with naught to do but loll around and dice.’

‘Listen to him!’ Aethan rolled his eyes heavenward. ‘I’ll wager we get our fill of blood soon enough.’

The words stabbed Maddyn like an omen, but he kept smiling.

‘Aethan, do me somewhat of a favour, will you? Ride with our young Branno here, and keep an eye on him.’

Although the lad bristled as if to say he didn’t need such help, Aethan forestalled him with a friendly punch on the arm.

‘I will at that, at least until the fighting starts. Then he can keep an eye on me.’

They laughed, both as excited as young horses turned into pasture after a winter in the stables. The sight of them together wrung Maddyn’s heart for reasons that he hated to put into words, the one dark and grizzled, his oldest friend, the other blond and young, so new to his life that winter, and yet it seemed that he’d known Branoic for a hundred years. When the captain started yelling orders, the moment passed, but still, as they rode south, laying their false trail, Maddyn found himself brooding over it. It was a dangerous thing for a fighting man to care so deeply for his friends, especially when they were starting out on the bloodiest road they’d ever ridden.

‘What’s so wrong with you?’ Caradoc said abruptly. ‘Your bowels stopped or suchlike?’

‘Oh hold your tongue!’

‘Listen to him! Feisty today, aren’t we?’

‘My apologies, Carro. I hate lying at the best of times, and these are the worst. Saying farewell to Clwna, and her and the other women thinking we’ll be back in an eightnight or so – it ached my heart.’

‘They’ll have to live with the truth just like the lads will. Listen to me, Maddo. Today we start a ride ordained by the gods themselves. Our petty little troubles are of no moment. None. Do you understand me?’

‘I do, at that.’ He shivered suddenly, just from the quiet way that Caradoc spoke of such grave things. ‘Well and good, then. A man’s Wyrd comes when it comes.’

‘So it does, and ours is upon us now.’

Maddyn turned in the saddle to look at him and wonder all over again just who Caradoc had been, back in his other life before dishonour sent him down the long road. It occurred to him that at last he was going to find out – if, of course, they all lived long enough to ride through the gates of Dun Cerrmor.

Branoic was surprised at how little ground the silver daggers covered that afternoon. Even though the spring days were short they could have made some twelve miles before sunset, but instead they stopped for their night’s camp on the banks of the Elaver just some five miles from the dun. Branoic tethered out his horse and Aethan’s while the elder man carried their gear to a campsite and drew them provisions from the pack train. As glad as he was to be out of the dun and riding, Branoic’s mood was dark that evening, and he swore at the horses for ducking their heads and grabbing grass while he was trying to change bridle for halter. He was disappointed, that was all, heartsick that he was stuck in Pyrdon instead of riding behind the True King on his journey to Cerrmor – or so he told himself. Since he’d never been an introspective man, the excuse rang true enough.

When he went back to the camp he found the troop settling in. Some men were spreading out their bedrolls; others were cursing flint and tinder as they struggled to light a fire. He found Maddyn and Aethan by a fire that was already blazing; although no one was sure why, it was common knowledge that fires always lit easily for the bard. As he walked up, he felt his heart pounding in the strange way it did lately, a fearful sort of wondering as he looked over the campsite until he saw that Aethan had indeed dumped his gear there along with his own and Maddyn’s. That he would be allowed to camp with them was so welcome, such a relief, really, from his fear that he’d be put somewhere else, that he briefly thought of going elsewhere just to pretend that he didn’t care. Maddyn looked up with an easy smile, and he broke into a jog, drawn by that smile like a thirsty man to water.

‘Does your horse need tethering, Maddo? I’ll do it for you.’

‘Oh, I’ve already got him out. Are you lads hungry? We’d best eat now, because there might be a bit of a surprise later.’

‘A what?’ Aethan looked vaguely annoyed. ‘Talking in riddles again, are you?’

‘It’s good for you, makes you exercise your wits. Well, what few wits you have, anyway.’

Aethan threw a fake punch his way and grinned. They had known each other so long that at moments like these Branoic’s heart ached from feeling that he was an outsider, some foreigner who would never know their private language.

‘But I’m hungry, sure enough,’ Aethan went on. ‘What about you, Branno? Care to gnaw on some of the king’s stale hardtack?’

‘It’ll do, truly. Maybe when we’re raiding we can snag us a barrel of ale to wash this foul stuff down with.’

At that perfectly ordinary remark Maddyn looked sly, but Branoic let it pass. The bard would tell him his secret when he wanted to and not a minute before.

As it turned out, they didn’t have long to wait. Just as the sun was setting, they heard a guard shout from the outer limits of the camp and rose to see what the trouble was. Two men came riding toward them from the east, and as the setting sun washed them with gold, Branoic realized that it was the Marked Prince and the councillor. Beside him Aethan laughed, a crow of triumph.

‘So we’re going to Cerrmor after all, are we? Well played, Maddo! They took us in good and proper with that fanfare and pomp in the ward this morning.’

Cheering, laughing, the entire troop left the camp and jogged down the road to meet their liege. Since he was acutely aware of his place as the newest man in the troop, Branoic lingered off to one side rather than shove his way forward to get near to the prince. Muttering under his breath, Nevyn made his way free of the mob and came over, leading his horse.

‘Ye gods!’ the old man snapped. ‘They’ll be able to hear all this shouting back in Dun Drwloc if it keeps up.’

‘Well sir, we were all cursed disappointed when we thought we wouldn’t be riding with the prince.’

‘Were you now? An honourable sentiment, that. Now listen, lad. From now on Maryn is a silver dagger and naught else. No doubt Caradoc will impress that upon you all, but it won’t hurt to say it more than once.’

‘Of course, good sir. I take it he’ll have a new name and suchlike?’

‘He won’t.’ Nevyn gave him a sly smile. ‘I decided that if our enemies saw through this ruse at all, they’d be expecting a false name, so he’ll just be Maryn. It’s a very common name in this part of the world.’

‘Well, so it is, but –’

‘Trust me, lad. There are times when the safest place to hide something is out in plain sight.’ The smile faded, and he looked suddenly very weary. ‘I’ll pray that this is one of those times.’

‘Well and good, then, sir. So will I.’

‘My thanks. Oh, by the way, lad, I have a favour to ask of you and Maddo – and Aethan too, of course. Can Maryn share your fire and generally camp with you?’

‘Of course! Ye gods, we’ll all be honoured beyond dreaming, good councillor.’

‘No doubt, but please, do your best to treat him the way you’d treat any other man. He won’t take offence – he knows that his life depends on it.’

Branoic nodded his agreement, but mentally he was half-giddy with pride – not because the True King of all Deverry would be dining with him that night, but because Nevyn had somehow assumed that Maddyn and he formed a unit, a pair you could take for granted. Me and Maddyn, he thought, it sounds right. Then he blushed, wondering why his heart was pounding so hard, the same way it did when he saw some pretty lass he fancied.

Although he of course never explained them to Branoic or indeed any of the silver daggers, Nevyn had several tricks at his disposal to hide the prince. For one thing, he simply withdrew all the glamours that the elemental spirits had been casting over the boy, so that when he changed into the scruffy brigga and much-mended shirt that Caradoc had ready for him, all his supernatural air of power and magnetism vanished along with the fine clothes. For another, with Maryn’s complete cooperation he ensorcelled the prince and suggested to his subconscious mind that he had difficulty in speaking – though in nothing else. He also suggested that on a simple cue the difficulty would vanish. Once he removed the ensorcelment, the suggestion took effect, and the prince who’d always held forth like the hero of an ancient epic now stammered as he struggled to find the right words to express a simple, routine thought. All of the silver daggers swore in amazement and said that they wouldn’t recognize him themselves if they didn’t know better, but they, of course, thought that the prince was merely acting a part.

Which in a way he always was, or, what was perhaps worse, the prince always lived his part in the strange epic that they were composing not with their words, but with their lives. At times, when he remembered the happy, charming little lad that Maryn once had been, Nevyn felt like a murderer. Over the years he had trained the prince so well that he’d stripped away all trace of the lad’s individuality, pruned and sheared him as ruthlessly as a gardener in the king’s palace shapes an ornamental hedge or splays a climbing rose over its trellis in order to torture it into an unnatural form. It was hard to tell at times whether Maryn was larger than life or smaller, a grand hero out of the Dawntime or a picture of a hero such as a Bardek illuminator would draw, all ink lines and thin colours.

Either way, the kingdom needed him, not some all-too-human and complex man who would use the kingship rather than the kingship using him. Nevyn could only hope that in some future life either he himself or the Lords of Wyrd would make it up to Prince Maryn for slicing his personality away like the peel of an apple.

First, of course, they had to get the lad and his councillor safely to Cerrmor before he could be any kind of king. Nevyn figured out a way to hide himself, too. Since there had to be some reason for an old man to be travelling with a mercenary troop, he decided to pass himself off as a jewel merchant who’d paid the troop a fee for allowing him to ride in the safety of their numbers. He knew enough about precious stones to bring this ruse off, and since Casyl had given him what few royal jewels there were to take to the Cerrmor princess, he could use them as his stock-in-trade. The real danger now lay in their desperate need to keep up these ruses. Since working dweomer leaves obvious tracks on the etheric and astral planes for those who know how to look for them, Nevyn could use no dweomer at all until the prince was safely in Cerrmor territory – not one single spell, not even lighting a fire or scrying someone out. He’d also asked the Kings of the Elements to keep their people away from him and the prince, which meant that he was deprived of any danger-warning that the Wildfolk might give him, too. After two hundred years of living wrapped round by dweomer, he felt naked, just as in one of those hideous dreams where you find yourself being presented to the High King only to realize that your skirts or brigga have somehow been left behind at home:

In the morning they had a more mundane problem to worry about, or at least, Nevyn profoundly hoped that it was mundane. They woke to a slate-grey sky and a western wind that smelt of spring rain, and just after noon the storm broke. Although the rain held steady, the wind dropped in a few hours. Nevyn agreed with the captain that they’d better keep riding as long as the roads were passable. What troubled him was wondering if the storm were a natural phenomenon or if some dark dweomerman had called it up. There was nothing he could do to find out without giving their ruse away, and much less could he fight back with dweomer.

That evening, when he shared a cold dinner with Caradoc, he had to force his eyes away from the campfire lest he start seeing the Wildfolk in it. Since the captain was wrapped in a black hiraedd of his own, they had an unpleasant meal of it until Nevyn decided to ease Caradoc’s mood since there was naught more he could do for the prince.

‘What troubles your heart, captain? It must be a grave thing indeed.’

‘Do I look as glum as that?’

‘You do, truly.’

Caradoc sighed, hesitated, then shrugged.

‘Well, good councillor – I mean, good merchant – I’ve just been wondering what kind of welcome I’m in for down in Cerrmor.’

‘Well, the king’s pardoned you already – for all and sundry and in advance.’

‘But I’d never hold him to it if it was going to cause him trouble, and it might. There’s a powerful lord who just might take umbrage at that kind of pardon, and I don’t want him stirring things up behind the prince’s back, like.’

‘Oh.’

They sat in silence for a moment more.

‘Ah horseshit!’ Caradoc said abruptly. ‘What happened was this. I wasn’t welcome at home for a number of reasons that I’ll keep to myself, if you don’t mind and all, and my father found me a place in the warband of a man named Lord Tidvulc. Ever hear of him?’

‘I haven’t, truly.’

‘Well, he was decent enough in his way, but his eldest son was a slimy little tub of eel-snot, not that you could tell his lordship that, of course. And so our young lordling – gods, I’ve almost forgotten his name – let me see, I think it was Gwaryn or Gwarc or suchlike – anyway, this little pusboil went and got a bondwoman with child. I guess he was enough of a hound to not mind the fleas. And then he had the stinking gall to try to kill her to keep the news from getting out! I happened to be passing by her hut, and luckily there were a couple of the lads with me for witnesses, because we heard the poor bitch screaming and sobbing as his noble lordling tried to strangle her. So I grabbed him and broke both his arms.’ Caradoc looked shame-struck rueful. ‘Don’t know what came over me all of a sudden. She was only a bondwoman, but it rubbed me wrong, like.’

‘I wouldn’t let myself feel shamed if I were you, captain. Rather the opposite.’

Caradoc shrugged away the implied praise.

‘So of course Lord Tidvulc had to kick me out of the warband. I got the feeling he didn’t want to, but it was his first-born son and all. The trouble is, his lordship was no young man when I left, all those years ago, and I’ll wager anything you please that his son’s the lord now.’

‘And no doubt he’ll be less than pleased to see you? Hmm, I see your point, but you know, he may be dead himself by now. There’s been plenty of fighting down Cerrmor way.’

‘True spoken.’ The captain looked a good bit more cheerful. ‘Let’s pray so, huh? Naught I can do about it now, anyway.’

For five days the silver daggers rode wet and slept that way, too, as they picked their way across Pyrdon, keeping to the country lanes and wild trails and avoiding the main-travelled roads. Although the mercenaries grumbled in the steady stream of foul oaths typical of men at arms, they stayed healthy enough, but Nevyn began to feel the damp badly. At times he needed help to stand in the mornings, and he could hear his joints pop and complain every time he mounted his horse. Even his dweomer-induced vitality had its natural limits. Just when he was thinking of dosing himself with some of his own herbs, the storm blew itself out, only to have the weather turn hot and muggy. The midges and flies came out in force and hovered above the line of march as thick as smoke. Finally, though, just on the next day, they reached the river that marked the Pyrdon border, and, at its joining with the Aver Trebyc, the only truly large town in the west.

At that time Dun Trebyc was a far different place from the centre of learning and bookcraft that it is today. Although it was nominally in Cantrae-held territory, and its lord sent some small tribute to reinforce the fiction, in truth it was a free city and scrupulously neutral, a town where spies from both sides mingled to the profit of both or neither, depending on how many were lying at any given time. Since it was also a place where everyone went armed, and mercenaries were common, no one remarked on the silver daggers when they rode through the gates late on a steamy-hot afternoon. After the slop-muddy road, the streets Were welcome, even though they were only paved with logs instead of cobbles, and the prospect of a night in an inn more welcome still.

‘I only hope we can find a place to ourselves,’ Caradoc remarked to Nevyn. ‘Last thing we need is a brawl on our hands, and when you mix two free troops in the same tavern, brawls are about what you get.’

Much to Nevyn’s relief, and doubtless the captain’s, too, they were indeed lucky enough to find an inn over by the east gate that had just been vacated by another pack of mercenaries. Although the men had to sleep four and five to each small room, everyone had a place to spread their blankets and a roof over their heads. As befitted his supposed station as a wealthy merchant, Nevyn had a tiny chamber with a proper bed all to himself. Branoic carried his gear up for him, and Maryn insisted on coming along with a bucket of charcoal for the brazier.

‘Nobody’s going to believe a pr-prince would c-carry c-coals,’ the lad said. ‘Ye gods, I’ll be g-glad when we reach the harbour town! Its rotten name is too hard for me to say. I’ll never make f-f-fun of anyone who st-st-st-st who has trouble talking again, I sw-sw-swear it.’

‘Coming down for dinner, my lord?’ Maddyn said.

‘I don’t think so, truly. I’ve already told the serving wench to bring me up a tankard of dark and some cold meat. These old bones are tired, lads.’

They were indeed tired enough to make him take a nap for a couple of hours after the girl had brought his scant supper. Since Nevyn usually only slept about four hours a night, he was quite surprised when he woke to a dark room and a charcoal fire that was burning itself out in the brazier. He added more sticks, blew on them like an ordinary man, then wiped his hands on his brigga and sat down to think.

More than ever he wished he could simply scry through the fire and talk with the other dweomer-masters who were part of this scheme. He badly wanted to know whether the situation in Cerrmor had changed since his last talk with the priests of Bel there, and he would have liked some opinions on the character of this Tieryn Elyc, too. There remained as well the problem of their enemies, who might well have seen through their ruse.

‘Nevyn?’ It was Maddyn, hesitating in the doorway. ‘Have you seen Maryn?’

‘Not since you two brought up my things.’ Nevyn leapt to his feet like a bounding hare. ‘Have you?’

‘I haven’t. I’ve looked all over this cursed inn, even out in the privies.’

Swearing under his breath Nevyn followed the bard down to the tavern room, where a handful of silver daggers were drinking and dicing in the uncertain lantern light. From the way they fell silent and froze at the first sight of their lieutenant, Nevyn felt trouble was brewing. Maddyn apparently agreed.

‘I want answers!’ he snarled. ‘Where’s Maryn?’

The men looked back and forth between each other for a good minute before a slender lad named Albyn finally spoke, and he stared fixedly at the far wall rather than at Maddyn.

‘Out and about with a couple of the lads.’

‘That’s not good enough. Out where and with whom?’

‘Er, well, Branoic and Aethan, so he’s in good hands.’

‘Where are they?’

‘Ah, well, we were all talking, like, during the evening meal, and it turned out the lad had never …’ He glanced Nevyn’s way with a nervous tic of the cheek. ‘… never been with a lass, like. So we were all thinking what a pity that was, and …’

‘By every god in the sky!’ Maddyn’s voice was a growl. ‘Are you saying those two piss-poor excuses for dolts took Maryn to a brothel?’

‘Just that. Er, it was just a prank, Maddo.’

‘You lackwit dog! Which brothel?’

‘How would we know, Maddo? None of us have ever been in Dun Trebyc before. They went out to ask around, like.’

When Maddyn’s cheeks flushed a dangerous shade of purple, Albyn shrank back, half-ducking a blow that never came. With a deep exhalation of breath, Maddyn got himself under control.

‘We’re all going to go out and ask around. All right, you six – hunt up the other lads and go out in squads, four men to a squad, say, and scour this wretched town down. Find him. Do you hear me? Find him fast.’

As the men scrambled up and hurried off to follow orders, Nevyn barely saw them leave. He could feel the blood pounding in his temples, partly from rage, but mostly fear. Maryn was off in one of the most lawless towns in the kingdom, and he didn’t dare use a trace of dweomer to find him.

‘We’d best go look ourselves,’ Maddyn said.

‘Just so. And when I get my hands on Aethan and young Branno …’

‘Whatever it is you’re going to do, I’ll hold them down so you can do it.’

Since Dun Trebyc was the kind of town it was, finding a brothel turned out to be easy enough. Down near the river the two silver daggers with their prince in tow came across the Tupping Ram, a surprisingly big two-storey roundhouse with its own stableyard out in back and a palisade made of split logs all round. Over the gate, right next to the painted wooden sign, hung a well-worn broom smelling of sour ale.

‘I’ll wager they sell more than beer, judging from the look of that sign,’ Branoic said with a grin. ‘In we go, lads.’

The stable turned out to be a big open barn without stalls. As they hitched their horses to a rail near the far side, Branoic noticed Aethan looking over the various other horses, as well as he could in the dim lantern-light, anyway.

‘There’s a lot of devices and suchlike on this gear. Looks like the marks belong to some free troops. Listen, young ones: watch what you say in there. We’ve got rivals, and I don’t want a brawl. Understand?’

‘Just so,’ Branoic said. ‘I didn’t come here with fist-fights on my mind, anyway.’

The aleroom was stinking-hot from the fire in the hearth and the press of men packed into it – merchants, riders for the local lord, a couple of other silver daggers, and a good-sized mob of men from a mercenary troop that wore a black sword embroidered on one sleeve for a device. Strolling around or perching suggestively on the tables were a variety of young women in varying states of undress while three older women with hard eyes rushed round serving ale. Even though they’d had plenty to drink back at the inn, Aethan insisted on collaring one of the women and ordering three tankards of dark. Once they had their beer they found a free spot to stand in the curve of the wall and eyed the merchandise. Maryn’s face was flushed scarlet, whether from the heat or embarrassment, Branoic couldn’t tell. A little of both, he supposed.

‘I rather fancy that redhead over there,’ Aethan said. ‘Either of you want her?’

Maryn merely shrugged and buried his nose in his tankard.

‘Not me,’ Branoic said. ‘Go to, lad!’

As Aethan strolled off, a pale blonde who reminded Branoic a bit of Clwna came bobbing over, wearing nothing but a drape of red Bardek silk around her hips. Although she gave Branoic a smile it was Maryn that she sidled up to.

‘And what’s your name, lad?’ she said, batting eyelashes pitch-black with Bardek kohl.

‘M-m-maryn.’ He could hardly keep his eyes off her breasts and their nipples, which gleamed an unnatural red. ‘W-wh-wha – ah c-c-curse it!’

‘Oh now here, don’t let a bit of a stammer bother you! A well-favoured lad like you doesn’t have to worry about fine words when it comes to winning a lass’s heart.’ She gave Branoic a sly sidelong wink. ‘As for you, my handsome friend, it looks like our Avra’s sitting all lonely over there.’

By the fire a tousle-headed blonde in a gauzy shift was lounging on a cushioned bench and eyeing him with some interest. Branoic left the prince to the practised attentions of the young whore and made his way across the room in a hurry, before someone else could claim her. As he approached she sat up and gave him a slow, sleepy smile. The shift was stuck to her back and breasts with sweat. For some reason, that night, he found the sight utterly arousing, and he sat down next to her and kissed her without saying a word. From the sweet taste of her mouth she’d been chewing cinnamon.

‘Oh, I do like that,’ she said, giving him another smile. ‘A man who’s got his mind made up. Can I have a sip of that ale?’

Grinning he handed her the tankard, which she took in both hands so she could gulp like a thirsty child.

‘Hot in here tonight.’

‘Too hot.’ She handed him back the nearly-empty tankard. ‘It might be cooler upstairs. Want to go see?’

For an answer he set the tankard down on the floor and got up, holding out his hand to catch hers and haul her to her feet. Moving carefully through the packed crowd they made their way to the back door and out, where a wooden staircase listed against the outside wall and led up to a doorway and a spill of light from lanterns hanging from the ceiling. At the top, just inside the open door, a toothless old woman, her hair dyed sunset-orange with henna and her gnarled fingers covered with cheap rings, sat on a high-backed chair and made a desultory pretence of spinning wool.

‘Take him down to the end, Avra love. The one with the window’s free,’ she said, yawning. ‘Gods, things are busy tonight, eh?’

Soot-stained wickerwork partitions cut the top storey of the building up into a warren of tiny cubicles that reeked of spilled ale and sweat and other humidities, but somehow the squalor matched the whore’s sweaty breasts and tousled hair, as if they were all ingredients in some strange but potent sexual spell. When she pulled aside a dirty blanket to reveal a tiny cubicle with nothing but a straw mattress on the floor, he ducked in after her, caught her round the waist and kissed her hard, his hands digging into her back.

‘Oh, this could be nice,’ she murmured. ‘I like a man who’s a little bit rough, if you take my meaning, like.’

When he slapped her across the buttocks, she giggled and reached up to kiss him in turn.

‘Avra!’ It was the crone’s voice, as harsh as a crow. ‘Avra, you come out here right now, you little wench! There’s Caer the blacksmith here, and he swears you stole a silver out of his pockets!’

‘May a demon shit in his eye!’ Avra yelled. ‘Did naught of the sort, you old harpy!’

‘He’s threatening to bust up the place, he is! You get your ugly ass out here now!’

‘You’d best go.’ Branoic was wishing he could strangle the old hag and be done with her. ‘I’ll wait. You look worth waiting for.’

‘My thanks, and I’ll say the same for you. Open the shutters for a bit of air, will you, love?’ This last as she was leaving: ‘I’m on my way, sow-tits!’

Shrieking at each other they moved off down the hall, where their voices were met by an angry masculine bellow. With some care for the rotting leather hinges, Branoic opened the shutters and stuck his head out to breathe the night’s cool. Down below in the stableyard, in pockets of lantern light men were standing around, drinking, singing, or merely laughing together at some jest or another. When a woman giggled behind him he pulled his head in, hoping for Avra back again, but the sound was coming from the other side of the rickety partition to his right. Although he could hear a woman plain enough, the man with her was talking in a rumbling dark voice, and he couldn’t understand a word.

‘I learned it from a Bardek sailor,’ she went on, giggling. ‘And you’ve never felt anything like this before, I swear it. Oh come along, five extra coppers can’t be much to a man like you.’

The rumble sounded sceptical.

‘Because it’s not so easy on a lass’s back, that’s why! First you’ve got to …’ Here her words were drowned by mutual giggling. ‘And then I squeeze a bit, like. They call it coring apples. What do you say?’

Judging from his snigger of laughter, he was agreeing to the extra expense. Branoic paced over to the doorway and pulled back the blanket to look out, but there was no sign of Avra. As he was considering leaving to find her, the couple next door began giggling and grunting in turn, as if whatever exotic trick she was showing him took a great deal of coordinated effort to bring off properly. Branoic did make an effort to do the honourable thing and ignore them, but he was, after all, only human, with the stock of curiosity normal for that breed. He went back to the window, hesitated, then bent down to peer through the tiny holes in the partition, which proved to be clogged with old filth.

‘Ooooh ye gods,’ the wench next door snickered. ‘Well, let’s try again, shall we?’

Her piece of work agreed with a long bellow of laughter. Cursing his own curiosity, Branoic looked around and discovered that the wickerwork stopped somewhat short of the ceiling about two feet above his head, and that the windowsill stood about three feet off the floor. After one last attempt to ignore this perfect confluence of circumstance, he gave in and hauled himself up to totter on the sill and look over the top of the partition. Unfortunately he’d forgotten that he’d been drinking ale for hours on a hot night, and the effort made his head lurch and swim. Without thinking he grabbed at the flimsy wickerwork to steady himself. It buckled, he grabbed harder, the couple beyond yelped and swore, and his foot slipped on the mucky sill. With a yell of his own that was half-a-warning Branoic pitched forward, all fifteen stone of him, and crashed into the partition. In a tangle of broken wicker he swooped down and landed on the half-naked pair.

Shrieking and screaming the woman writhed around and got free just as the next partition over went down from the impact, and knocked the one beyond it, too, into the one beyond – and so on all along the round room. Stammering out a stream of apologies of some sort – he never could remember exactly what he said – Branoic rolled over and staggered to his feet just as the fellow jumped up, pulling up his brigga and struggling to belt them, a big burly man and too furious to swear. The blazons on his shirt showed him to be a member of the Black Sword troop.

‘Who are you – a cursed silver dagger! I’ll have your ugly head for this, you young cub!’

‘I didn’t mean – my apologies –’ Branoic was gulping for air out of shame, not fear.

Although the fellow started to draw his sword, his brigga slid down to his knees and forced a brief moment of peace as he swore and fumbled round for his belt. Just to be on the safe side, Branoic reached for his own hilt and was rewarded with another bellow of rage. The lass started screaming just as Aethan came ploughing into what was left of the doorway.

‘Put that sword away, Branoic you asshole, and come with me!’

The fellow was so stunned that he merely stood there, hiking his brigga, as Aethan shoved Branoic bodily ahead of him, down the collapsed corridor. Judging by the shrieking and writhing under the pile of broken wickerwork the brothel had indeed been busy that night. They shoved their way out the doorway and clattered down the stairs fast to the stableyard, where a curious crowd was beginning to form.

‘I was just going downstairs again with the red-haired slut when I saw your stupid ugly mug poking up over the wall.’ Aethan’s voice was so choked that Branoic thought him still furious until all at once the older man broke out into a howl of laughter. ‘Oh ye gods, the look on everyone’s face! Wait till we tell Maddo about this!’

‘Ah shit! Do we have to?’

‘I do.’ Aethan gasped out. ‘Don’t know about you. I – oh ye gods! Where’s Maryn?’

In a wave of ice-cold shame Branoic spun around and headed, all unthinking, back toward the stairway with Aethan right behind. By then, though, men and women both were rushing down, clutching pieces of clothing or struggling to get clothing on, cursing and snarling and swearing they’d find the lout Of a silver dagger who was responsible and slice his heart out. Aethan grabbed Branoic by the arm and pulled him back into a patch of shadow.

‘Go get the horses and take them round to the street,’ he hissed. ‘I’ll find the lad and try to warn the rest of our men, too.’

Keeping to the dark places Branoic scuttled to the stable and found their three mounts. His heart was pounding in terror – what if something had happened to the one True King of all Deverry, and it was all his fault? All at once he realized that their little prank was a dangerous one all round, taking Maryn into the heart of a strange town with only a couple of guards – who had then let him go off with a whore on his own. What if the lass had been in someone’s pay? He gathered the horses’ reins in one hand, threw open the stable door with the other, and started out only to run straight into Maddyn and Nevyn.

‘Where’s the prince?’ Maddyn snarled.

‘I don’t know. Aethan’s looking for him.’

With a foul oath Maddyn slugged him back-handed across the face.

‘I shouldn’t be surprised you’d do such a stupid thing, but I expected better from Aethan. And why by the name of every god is this wretched crowd milling round out here?’

Branoic tried to speak, but his voice clogged and tears filled his eyes, no matter how hard he tried to choke them back. Nevyn grabbed his arm and shook it.

‘Think, lad! Save the cursed shame for later.’

‘I-I-I …’

The horses began to stamp and toss their heads. By then Branoic’s hands were so sweaty that he could barely hang on to the reins.

‘Nevyn!’ The whisper came from directly above them. ‘Is th-th-that you?’

‘It is!’ The old man sounded as if he’d weep too, but from relief. ‘Maryn, where are you?’

‘In the hayloft. We c-c-came up here to be private, like.’

‘Then come down! Give the lass some coins – I imagine she’s more than earned them – and get down here right now!’

‘I will, sir. S-s-straightaway.’

There was a chink of silver, a giggle, and a rustle of hay; then Maryn clambered down the rope ladder and dropped lightly to the floor nearby. Nevyn threw both arms around him and hugged him.

‘My apologies,’ Maryn stammered out. ‘But I –’

‘I don’t want to hear a word more about it, but if you ever do such a stupid thing again …’ All at once Nevyn broke off with a warning glance up at the hayloft, where the lass was lingering, prudently out of the way. ‘Well, no harm done, I suppose.’ He turned to Branoic. ‘Here, lad, you don’t need to grovel and look like cold death. The prank ended well enough.’

Branoic only shrugged for an answer. He could never explain that what was eating his heart was Maddyn’s scorn. The bard himself had run over to the stable doors and was peering out the crack between them; with an oath he came trotting back.

‘Nevyn, take two of these horses and get Maryn out of here. When we rode in I saw a back gate over near those trees. Branoic, you come with me. We’ve got to find Aethan. I don’t like the look of that crowd.’

Much later it occurred to Branoic that he should have told Maddyn the truth right there and then, but at the time he was quite simply so miserable, wallowing in shame and the bard’s disgust, that he was sure that Maddyn would think him a coward if he didn’t go back. Outside they found about thirty people of both sexes milling around and talking at the top of their lungs. Quite a few people were laughing, actually – one could guess that they’d all been elsewhere when the walls started going down – and promising to spread this magnificent jest around town, much to the rage of those caught in Branoic’s unintentional trap.

‘I think that’s Aethan over by the tavern-room door,’ Maddyn whispered. ‘You’re taller – can you see?’

Branoic raised himself up on the balls of his feet and shaded his eyes against the lantern light with one hand.

‘It is.’ He started waving. ‘Good, he’s seen me.’

Unfortunately so had the burly fellow from the next cubicle. Fully dressed now and howling like a banshee he came shoving his way through the crowd.

‘You! You’re the little prick that started this whole cursed thing!’

His mouth half-open in surprise, Maddyn turned around to stare at Branoic, who felt as inarticulate as the ensorcelled prince.

‘My apologies, I didn’t mean –’

‘You were trying to watch, you bloody little debaucher! I’ll grind your head on the cobbles for this! I’ll –’

Just at that moment Aethan and another two men from the Black Sword troop reached them. Behind them Branoic could see a gaggle of silver daggers and a bunch of black swords rushing forward, too, while all the other men round started taking sides. The experienced and politic women drew back to give them plenty of room as Branoic’s victim threw a punch right at his head. Profoundly relieved that the matter wasn’t going to sword-play, Branoic punched right back and connected with the fellow’s jaw. Women screamed; the fellow went down, out cold; somewhere the old crone was shrieking for the town wardens. He could hear Maddyn shouting and Aethan howling as the rain-washed and slippery tavern yard exploded into a brawl.

In that kind of press it was hard to see who was enemy and who friend, especially as men kept slipping and falling into the mud and clambering back up to fight some more. Branoic squared off with a squint-eyed brown-haired fellow, slammed him once in the stomach and once on the jaw, nearly fell over him as he fell, dodged free and ducked a thrown tankard, paused to catch his breath on the edge of things only to have someone rush straight at him. He grabbed the fellow by one arm, swung him around, and flung him back into the heaving shouting mob, which reminded him at that moment of a bowl of yeast working and bubbling over. Just as he started back in someone grabbed him from behind. He swung around only to pull his punch barely in time: Aethan.

‘Come on, lad – they don’t even remember why they’re fighting. Hurry!’

‘I was just starting to enjoy myself!’

‘Come along and now! You won’t be enjoying yourself if the captain decides to take the skin off your back, will you?’

Without another word Branoic followed him into the shadows by the open back gate, where Maddyn was riding one horse and holding the reins of two others. Out on the riverbank he could see the rest of the silver daggers, mounted and ready to ride.

‘No one can beat a silver dagger when it comes to ducking the law,’ Aethan said, grinning. ‘Mount up, Branno. The town wardens are pounding on the front gate.’

After he mounted, Branoic turned to the bard.

‘Maddyn, I’m cursed sorry.’

‘Oh hold your tongue! We’ll sort it all out later, but I tell you, lad, I don’t want to see your ugly face till I’m a good bit calmer, like.’

As they rode back to the inn, at a nice stately trot to avoid suspicion, Branoic was thinking seriously of starving himself to death out of shame.

With all the trouble brewing out in the tavern yard, Nevyn and Maryn easily slipped out the back gate and rode off with barely a soul noticing. As soon as they were back at their own inn, Nevyn turned the horses over to another silver dagger and dragged the prince up to his private chamber. Although he tried to feign embarrassment, Maryn couldn’t quite keep from grinning.

‘Listen, lad,’ Nevyn said, and he felt defeated before he truly began his little lecture. ‘It’s your safety I’m worried about. Slipping off into town with only those two bumbling idiots for guards was a very bad idea.’

‘Well, true enough, and I’m sorry.’

‘You don’t look sorry in the least. After this, if you simply can’t live without a lass, have your friends bring you one. For enough silver that sort of lass is always willing to take a little walk.’

‘No doubt my learned c-c-councillor would know.’

Nevyn restrained the impulse to give the one True King of all Deverry a good slap across the chops. Very dimly he could remember being both that young and that smug about his first lass – some two hundred years earlier or about that, anyway. Such anniversaries had rather lost their importance for him. All at once Maryn let his grin fade and sat down in the one rickety chair to stare at the floor.

‘Somewhat wrong?’

‘Not tr-tr-truly. I was just thinking. Both you and Father were telling me that I’d have to marry Glyn’s daughter.’

‘So we were, and so you do,’

‘How old is she?’

‘Thirteen.’

‘Well, at least she’s old enough.’ He looked up with a worried frown. ‘Is she p-p-p-pretty?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘I suppose I’ll have to many her even if she’s got twenty wens and a besom sq-sq-squint.’

‘Exactly right, your highness. She represents the sovereignty of the kingdom.’

Maryn groaned and went back to studying the floor.

‘Well, I hope she is pr-p-pretty,’ the prince said at last. ‘Now that I know what …’ And then he did blush, looking at that moment some ten years old. ‘I’d best get to b-b-bed.’

‘So you had. If I were you, I’d pretend to be asleep and snoring when Maddyn comes storming in. Our bard didn’t seem to find the evening’s sport amusing.’

In the morning, over breakfast, Maddyn assembled the silver daggers who’d been at the Tupping Ram to piece out what had happened. He knew that it would be a good bit better for the miscreants if he settled this matter before Caradoc or Owaen took it in hand. As this less than pleasant meal progressed, he noticed that Branoic sat at the end of the table as far from him as possible, ate nothing, and spoke only when the others tormented him into doing so. Although Maddyn started out furious, by the time Branoic, stammering as much as the prince and twice as red, repeated the whore’s remark about coring apples, he was laughing as hard as all the other men there.

‘Oh well and good, then,’ Maddyn said at last. ‘No one was killed, and so that’s an end to it. Cheer up, Branno. I can’t lie and say that I’d never have done such if I’d been you.’

Everyone smirked and nodded agreement. Looking a bit less miserable Branoic grabbed a slab of bread and busied himself in buttering it. Although everyone went on eating, Maddyn could tell that something was still bothering a couple of the men.

‘Out with it, Stevyc.’

‘Well, by the hells, Maddo, I was just wondering.’ He glanced at Branoic. ‘Did you ever find out what they meant? About coring apples I mean?’

‘I didn’t. Everything happened too fast.’

When Stevyc swore in honest regret, everyone howled and hooted. There was the true end to the matter, Maddyn assumed, and he pitched into his breakfast. Yet as he was leaving the tavern room afterwards his little blue sprite appeared, and with her were two grey gnomes, dancing up and down with their normally slack mouths twisted into frowns. Her mindless blue eyes peered up at him in something like worry.

‘What’s all this?’ Maddyn whispered. ‘You’re not even supposed to be here. You’d best run away before Nevyn sees you. Whist!’

Yet they stayed with him, the sprite riding on his shoulder, the gnomes clinging to his brigga leg like frightened children. He considered for a moment, then went upstairs to Nevyn’s chamber with the Wildfolk hurrying after. He found the old man sitting on the windowsill of his chamber and staring idly out across the spring countryside. Although Maddyn hesitated, wondering if he were interrupting some meditation, Nevyn turned to him and started to smile – until he saw the Wildfolk.

‘What? You shouldn’t be here!’

All three of them began to jump up and down and point up at the ceiling, their little faces twisted in an agony of concentration.

‘Ye gods!’ Nevyn sounded truly alarmed. ‘Someone’s watching us?’

They shook their heads in a no, then frowned again and began pinching and shoving each other.

‘Someone saw last night, when the men were fighting.’

They all nodded, then disappeared. Even though Maddyn had no idea of what was happening, he went cold with fear just from the look on Nevyn’s face – an icy kind of horror mingled with rage.

‘This is serious, Maddo lad, truly serious. When did they come to you?’

‘Just now. I came straight up here.’

‘Good, good. You did exactly the right thing.’ Nevyn began to pace back and forth across the chamber. ‘Ye gods, I don’t know what to do!’

Maddyn’s chill of unease deepened. For so long he had so blindly trusted Nevyn to solve every problem that hearing the old man admit helplessness was as bad as a death sentence.

‘We’ve got to get out of Dun Trebyc,’ the dweomerman said finally. ‘But we’ve got to do so in the right way. We need to keep up our ruse of being a perfectly ordinary troop of mercenaries.’

‘Well, if we were, we wouldn’t be leaving without a proper hire. No single jewel merchant’s rich enough to engage a whole band of mercenaries. If he was, he’d have bodyguards.’

‘Just so. We’d best find a better excuse than me. I – who’s that? Come in!’

The footsteps they’d heard turned out to belong to Caradoc, who came in with a bob of a bow for the old man.

‘We’ve got to get out of here today, Nevyn. Been lucky so far, but I’ll wager the town warden and his men are going to be coming around soon, asking questions about that brawl last night.’

‘I had the same thought myself. Hum. I think I know where I can find us a hire. Since I’m a merchant now, I’d best go pay my respects to my new god, hadn’t I? I’ll be down at the temple of Nwdd if you need me.’

When the old man returned, not more than an hour later, he brought two merchants with him and prosperous ones from the look of the fine wool in their checked brigga and cloaks. Stout men in their thirties, the pair stood uncertainly near the door of the inn chamber as Nevyn introduced them round as Budyc and Wffyn.

‘We might have a hire for you, captain.’ Budyc stroked his dark moustaches with a nervous hand. ‘The jewel merchant here swears you’re reliable.’

‘More than most, anyway,’ Caradoc said. ‘And every one of my lads can fight like a fiend from hell. I’ll swear it on Gamyl’s altar if you want.’

The merchants exchanged speculative glances.

‘They’ll have to do,’ Wffyn said. ‘This time of year, it’s a stroke of luck to find a free troop that isn’t pledged to a lord already.’

Budyc shrugged in nervous agreement.

‘Very well, captain. Name your price.’

‘A silver piece a man on contract, then one a week, two if we see fighting, and you pay full wages for every man killed.’

Again the two looked back and forth, and again Budyc shrugged.

‘Done. It’s fair, and there’s no time to haggle. Leave the city gates as soon as you can, captain. I’ll meet you on the south-running road.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘I’ll tell you after we’re well clear of Dun Trebyc.’ Budyc allowed himself a scant smile. ‘This town is full of ears.’

After a solemn handshake all round, the merchants left. Maddyn and Caradoc turned on Nevyn the moment the door swung shut.

‘I can’t tell you one blasted thing.’ Nevyn held up both hands flat in protest. ‘All I know is that they’re Cerrmor men going south, and that they’re both rich and reliable.’

‘Well, that should be enough, truly.’ Caradoc paused, thinking hard while he rubbed his chin with one hand. ‘Maddyn, make sure our young lad rides in the middle of the pack on the morrow, will you?’

‘I will. I might detail Aethan and Branoic to keep an eye on him – personally, like. Give them a chance to redeem themselves.’

‘Good idea. Carry it out.’ The captain glanced Nevyn’s way. ‘I was thinking of putting him between me and Owaen, but that’d look too suspicious.’

‘I agree. By the way, captain, I heard all sorts of news down at the temple. I must say that the merchant guilds do themselves proud when it comes to hearing what there is to hear. The Cantrae king seems to be planning a major offensive on the eastern side of the border – round Buccbrael, the rumours say. He’s been stripping the west of men for some big march, anyway.’

‘Splendid, if it’s true. Let’s pray it is.’

‘Provided he doesn’t strike at Cerrmor before we get there. The extreme west has always been Cerrmor’s weakest point, and it’s doubtless worse now that the Wolf Clan’s had to surrender their lands and go into exile.’

‘Uh, you know,’ Caradoc said. ‘The border’s held a long time without the Wolves on it. They went into exile – oh, at least twenty years ago.’

‘Has it been that long? When you get to be my age, it’s so easy to lose track of time.’

Just before noon, the silver daggers left Dun Trebyc under a sky striped with scattered clouds that had everyone groaning at the thought of more rain, but it held off till they met their hire. About two miles down the road Budyc was waiting on a splendid roan gelding. When Caradoc slowed the troop, Maddyn fell back beside Nevyn, and the merchant trotted over and took the place beside the captain.

‘We’ll be continuing south till mid-afternoon,’ Budyc said. ‘Then heading west for a-ways. Not far, though.’

‘How about telling us somewhat about this hire?’

‘Not yet.’ Budyc rose in the stirrups and looked round the flat view as if scanning for enemies. ‘Still too soon. Tonight, captain. Everything will come clear tonight.’

When Maddyn shot Nevyn a nervous glance, the old man merely smiled and shrugged, as if telling him to rest easy in his mind. If it weren’t for the prince, Maddyn might have, but as it was, he kept turning in the saddle and glancing back at Maryn. Since the road here was wide, the troop was riding four abreast, and Maryn was in the second file with Branoic on one side of him, Aethan the other, and Albyn just beyond Aethan – a formidable set of guards by anyone’s standards. No doubt the young prince could swing a sword himself if he had to – he’d certainly had the best teachers that warlike Pyrdon could offer – but all that sunny afternoon Maddyn kept brooding on the painful difference between swordcraft on the practice ground and swordcraft in a scrap. Sooner or later Maryn would have to blood his blade, of course; Maddyn merely prayed with all his heart that it would be later.

A couple of hours before sunset the silver daggers came to a trail that led west off the main road, and Budyc pointed it out to Caradoc with a wave. Yelling orders, Owaen rode down the line and sorted the troop out into single file, with Maryn between Branoic and Aethan about half-way along. Although Maddyn was less than pleased with this vulnerable arrangement, the countryside around was certainly peaceful enough. As they jingled their way along they saw two farmsteads, one herd of cows, and naught else but field after field of cabbages and turnips sprouting under the watchful eyes of crow-chasing small girls. At last, just when the sun was so low in the sky that everyone in the troop was squinting and cursing, they came to a deep-running stream, bordered by willows and hazels. Standing beside his black horse Wffyn the merchant was waiting for them, and through a clearing in the trees Maddyn could see what seemed to be a canal-barge tethered to the bank.

‘There you are!’ Wffyn sang out. ‘Good! First shipment just pulled in.’

As Budyc trotted forward to meet him, it dawned on Maddyn that these men were smugglers of some sort, a suspicion that was confirmed later that evening after the silver daggers had made camp. Along with Owaen, Maddyn followed Caradoc upstream to confer with the merchants on the morrow’s route and found a line of four barges being loaded from a parade of wagons. Stripped to the waist and sweating in the torchlight, Budyc and Wffyn were bounding from barge to shore and back again as they gave orders to the crew or even lent a hand themselves to haul the cargo on board.

‘Those look like ale-barrels,’ Owaen remarked. ‘But I never heard of ale that heavy. Look at those poor bastards sweat!’

‘Just so, and ale doesn’t clank, either – it sloshes.’

‘What in the three hells is going on?’ Caradoc muttered, somewhat waspishly. ‘And what?! Look at that lead barge!’

The cattle-barge had slatted wooden sides, and just visible above was a row of cows’ skulls stuck on poles and padded with wisps of straw. As the three silver daggers watched, open-mouthed with amazement, a barge man began wrapping the skulls with bits of leather, humming as he worked and stepping back now and again for a good look at his handicraft.

‘At night and from a distance they look a good bit like. cows,’ Budyc remarked as he joined them. ‘Enough to convince the passers-by that we’re a perfectly ordinary line of barges.’

‘All right, good sir,’ Caradoc snapped. ‘Just what is all this?’

‘Know how the smelter-masters weigh out raw iron up north? They say they have so many bulls’ worth of weight – the measure’s actually as much iron as you could trade a bull for back in the Dawntime, or so the guildmaster tells me. So that’s what we’ve got – a load of bulls, and barrels of the darkest ale in the kingdom.’

With a bark of laughter, Maddyn got the point of the joke and the journey both, but Owaen merely looked baffled.

‘Iron, lad,’ Maddyn told him. ‘They’re carrying smuggled iron down to Dun Cerrmor, and I’ll wager they’re getting a good bit more for it than a bull in trade.’

‘You could say that.’ Budyc preened a little. ‘But we’re not making some splendid profit, mind. Think about it – we have to hire wagons for the dry parts of the journey, barges for the wet, and the country folk’s silence, and then guards like you for the border crossing – it’s worth our while, but only just, lads, only just. Then count in the danger. Why do you think we hired you? The Cantrae men’ll stop us if they can, and they won’t be making an honourable prisoner out of the likes of me. If it weren’t helping to save Cerrmor, I doubt me if I’d make these runs.’

‘Tell me somewhat,’ Caradoc said. ‘Think there’s going to be much left of Cerrmor to save by the end of the summer?’

‘I don’t know.’ Budyc’s eyes turned dark. ‘We’re living on hope alone now that the king’s dead. Hope and omens – every cursed day you hear someone prattling about the True King coming to claim the throne, and the city still believes it, well, for the most part, anyway, but I ask you, captain – how much longer can we hold out? The regent’s a great man, and if it weren’t for him we’d have all surrendered to Cantrae by now, but even so, he’s just a regent. Too bad he’s so blasted honourable – if he’d marry the king’s daughter and give her a son, we’d all cheer him as king soon enough.’

‘And he won’t do it?’

‘He won’t, and he says he never will, unless someone brings him irrefutable proof that the True King’s dead and never coming to claim his own.’

‘Interesting, that kind of denial. Is he putting it about that he’d pay well for that kind of proof, like?’

For a moment Budyc stared; then he swore, glaring disgust at Caradoc.

‘I take your ugly meaning, but never would Tieryn Elyc stoop so low, you –’ He caught himself just in time. ‘My apologies, captain. You’re not a Cerrmor man, and you can think whatever you like.’

‘Oh, I was a Cerrmor man once, and I knew Elyc, you see, and thought well enough of him. I just wondered, like, what being elevated to a high place all of a sudden had done to him. One day he was just a lord with a smallish demesne; the next, practically a king. Some men can take that, some can’t.’

‘True spoken, but Elyc’s still got his feet on the ground. It’s a good thing, too.’ Budyc’s face turned wan. ‘Like I say, who knows how long the people can live on hope?’

It was well into the next morning before their strange caravan set out for the south. Although the stream was just deep enough to float heavy cargo, the current couldn’t push it very fast and so for the first stage of the journey the bargemen had their mules harnessed and pulling hard. Even so, the pace was dangerously slow. As the silver daggers let their horses amble along at their own pace, the line spread out into a ragged excuse for order along the streambank. Out of sheer impatience, Branoic thought he just might go mad before they reached Cerrmor.

‘Ye gods, you look like you’ve bitten into a Bardek citron!’Aethan said. ‘What’s making you so sour?’

‘What’s it to you? Go bugger a mule!’

‘Br-bran, he’s right,’ Maryn stammered. ‘Somewhat’s aching your heart.’

Since he couldn’t bring himself to insult the young king, Branoic merely shrugged, wishing that he did indeed know what was bothering him so badly. Maryn thought for a minute, his eyebrows furrowing as he struggled to pick words.

‘Leave it and him be, lad.’ Aethan forestalled him. ‘I don’t take any offence. Branno, look – it’s this cursed foul journey, never knowing if there’s an ambuscade behind every bush or suchlike. I feel like I’ve got brigga full of burrs myself.’

‘Well, my apologies. You were right enough about me being sour. I wish we could travel faster.’

‘We will, we will. If I understand rightly, this stream widens into a proper river a few miles from here.’

Although Aethan was right about the stream widening, it was nearly sunset before they reached water that was significantly faster-flowing. That night Caradoc posted a double ring of guards round the camp, and in the morning when they rode out, he sent point-men far ahead of them on both sides of the stream and rotated squads of ten men apiece on rear-guard and in the van. Over the next three days, as they inched their way south, going from stream to stream and from sheltering stand of trees to concealing thicket, caution became routine. With every prudent delay, even if it was only a brief wait to change point-men, Branoic’s bad temper swelled like the black clouds of a summer storm.

That Owaen decided to harass him helped not at all. Maybe the lieutenant just needed something to pass the time, but it seemed to Branoic that every time he turned round Owaen was there to point out that his gear wasn’t properly polished or his horse well enough groomed, that he slouched too much in the saddle or else sat too straight, that he looked sour as weasel-piss or told too many stupid jokes. Since he was determined to win himself a silver dagger, Branoic gritted his teeth and said nothing to anyone. The last thing he wanted was to be known as a whiner. On the fourth night, when they were setting up camp in a bend of the river, Branoic went over to one of the barges to draw provisions and came across Owaen talking to Maddyn. Since Owaen’s back was to him, and a lot of men were bustling around, the lieutenant never heard Branoic come up behind him.

‘I’m not badgering him, curse you! He’s just not measuring up,’ Owaen snapped. ‘What’s our little Branno been doing, running snivelling to you and saying I’ve been persecuting him or suchlike?’

Branoic grabbed him by the shoulder, hauled him round, and punched him under the chin as hard as he could, all in one smooth motion. Owaen quite literally left his feet and flipped back to fall like a half-empty sack of grain into the grass. Swearing under his breath Maddyn ran over and knelt down beside him just as the captain came rushing up and half-a-dozen silver daggers crowded round to see the show. Branoic stood there rubbing his smarting knuckles and wanting to die or perhaps turn to air and drift away. He was sure that he was going to be flogged at best and turned out of the troop to starve at worst. When he felt someone’s hand on his shoulder he spun round to find Nevyn, and much to his utter surprise, the old man was smiling – just a little, and in a wry sort of way, but smiling nonetheless.

‘Arrogant little bastard, isn’t he?’ Nevyn remarked. ‘But you need to learn to control that temper, lad.’

‘Usually I can. There’s just somewhat about Owaen …’

‘I know. Oh, believe me, I know. Ah, here comes the captain. Let’s see what he has to say about this.’

Caradoc wasn’t smiling in the least.

‘Curse you, Bran! Haven’t you got a lick of sense inside that ox’s skull of yours? You could have killed him, slugging him like that! Broken his blasted neck! You had every right to challenge him, or come to me or suchlike, but to just –’

‘Captain.’ Nevyn held a hand up flat for silence and arranged a portentous expression on his face. ‘Please, hold a moment! There are peculiar forces playing upon us, dark things beyond your understanding. I strongly suspect that our enemies have been trying to undermine us with strange magicks. Branoic is more susceptible to such evils than most men.’

‘By the Lord of Hell’s crusted balls!’ Caradoc went a little pale. ‘Can you do somewhat about that?’

‘I can, if you’ll turn the lad over to me.’

‘Of course. And I’ll talk to Owaen – don’t trouble your heart about that.’

Nevyn tightened his grip on Branoic’s shoulder and hurried him off before anyone could say a word more.

‘My thanks, Nevyn, for getting me out of that. You know, I’ve felt so odd and grim lately that I could almost believe I was ensorcelled, at that.’

‘You’d best believe it, because it’s probably true.’

Branoic swore, a brief bark of a vile oath.

‘I’ll admit that I was fancying things up a bit, like, for the captain’s benefit,’ Nevyn went on. ‘But it’s more than likely that our enemies are working on us with every foul sorcery at their command. If we start fighting among ourselves their job will be much much easier. Watch yourself very carefully, lad, from now on. If you find yourself getting into another black mood, come and tell me immediately.’

‘I will, sir. I promise with all my heart.’

Yet, as he walked back to camp Branoic found that his spirits had lifted, just as if their enemies had stopped attacking now that their scheme had been discovered.

Since Caradoc was taking Owaen in hand, it fell to Maddyn to ride herd on Branoic, not that he minded the job, especially since the lad seemed to have put his sulk behind him. On the morrow morning Maddyn picked him, along with Aethan and six other men, to ride in his point-squad. The country here was mostly flat and some of the richest earth in all Deverry, thick black loam, well-watered by the network of streams and small rivers that was currently carrying the royal iron down to Cerrmor. Before the civil wars, this area, the Yvro basin, as it is called now, had been covered with small freeholds, all marked out with hedges for want of stone to build fences; now they rode a long time between living farmsteads, and here and there they saw the black skeleton of a burnt-out house standing lonely on the horizon. Once the squad left the main body of the troop and Owaen with it, Branoic became his usual cheerful self, whistling and chattering as they rode along a shade-dappled lane.

‘I hope the prince will be all right without us there, Maddo.’

‘Well, there’s some seventy other silver daggers around him. I think he can spare the likes of us for a morning.’

‘I guess so.’ Branoic seemed utterly unaware of the sarcasm. ‘How much longer will it take to get into Cerrmor territory?’

‘Two days, maybe?’ Aethan joined in. ‘I heard the captain and old Nevyn talking last night. Actually, we’re probably on Cerrmor-held land right now, but we’re still too close to the border to take life easy.’

‘Oh, we won’t be taking life easy for years and years,’ Branoic said. ‘If ever again. The war’s lasted for close to a hundred years already, hasn’t it, and for all we know, it’ll be another hundred before –’

‘Hold your tongue!’ Maddyn snapped. ‘Squad, halt! I hear somewhat.’

Jingling and scuffling the squad pulled up and eventually fell silent. At that point they stood in a twisty lane bordered with a hedge, tangled with grass and burdocks, but by rising in the stirrups Maddyn could see over it. Some hundred yards ahead the lane gave one last twist and debouched onto a wild meadow, where four dismounted riders were standing and holding their horses while they talked, heads together and urgent. Maddyn sat back down fast.

‘Men ahead,’ he whispered. ‘Couldn’t see their blazons clearly, but one of their shields had some kind of green winged beast on it.’

‘Like a wyvern, maybe?’ Aethan said.

‘Maybe. Let’s get back.’

As the squad turned and retreated, Maddyn was cursing the inevitable noise, but if the men he’d spotted did indeed hear them, they never followed. It seemed to take longer than it should to reach the main troop and the barges; when they finally found them, Maddyn realized that the barges had been pulled nose into shore and tied up to hazels. Caradoc came trotting to meet him.

‘Scout came in, Maddo. Looks like trouble ahead. Did you see anything?’

‘We did, and that’s why we’re back. Looked like another point-squad, and one of the men might have been carrying the green wyvern of the Holy City.’

‘The scout said he might have seen a Boar or two.’

Aethan swore under his breath.

‘Bodes ill, bodes ill,’ Caradoc went on. ‘Full arms, lads. We’ll leave the barges here with a token guard.’

‘What about the prince?’

‘He’s safest coming with us. If this warband ahead’s only on the track of the contraband iron, they’ll try to outflank us and strike the barges, so there’s no use in leaving him behind. If they’re after him, as I somehow suspect they are, then they’ll have to fight our whole ugly pack to get him.’

‘We’ll want to circle around ourselves and try for a flank strike. There’s a narrow lane ahead that could trap us good and proper.’

‘All right. Across the fields it is.’

Heading south, they swung out to the east across ploughed land that bore only nettles and dandelions. Since the fields sloped up from the river bed, after a few minutes they were riding along a very low ridge of sorts and could see a reasonable distance ahead of them. To the south, on the same side of the river as they were, a warband was coming to meet them. Swearing under his breath, Caradoc flung up one hand for a halt, then rose in his stirrups to stare and count.

‘About sixty, seventy?’ he said to Maddyn and Owaen. ‘A good enough match, anyway. Well and good, lads. We’ll make a stand and see if they come after us.’

Just across a meadow was another thick hedgerow that would do to guard their rear, and in a shallow crescent they drew up their lines, two men deep, with Caradoc and Owaen in the centre and the prince disposed anonymously in the second rank of the left horn, with Branoic on one side of him and Aethan the other. Even after all these years Maddyn felt faintly shamed as he followed their standard procedure and withdrew, taking shelter in some trees a couple of hundred yards away. For this battle, at least, he would have a crucial role to play as liaison between the troop and the fifteen or so men left behind to guard the barges. The orders were clear: if the scrap went against them, the survivors were to retreat back to the barges and die fighting around the prince.

Straight and purposeful the other warband came jogging along, pulling javelins from the sheaths under their right legs and loosening swords in their scabbards. There was not even going to be a pretence of a parley. The silver daggers sat slouched, from the look of them half-asleep in their saddles – a pose that had cost many a gullible warband dear in the past. As the enemies came closer, Maddyn could see that they were carrying a variety of blazons on their shields: the pale blue ground and golden ram of Hendyr to the north, the green wyvern of the Holy City sure enough, and scattered among them – indeed, in the majority as he counted - the red boar of Cantrae. Maddyn’s stomach wrenched as he wondered how many old friends of his had survived the intervening years of warfare only to face up against his troop now.

As the warband drew up for the charge across the meadow, something else occurred to him with the force of a blow: this warband had been waiting for them, had indeed travelled hundreds of miles to catch them here, had somehow known exactly where to find them. He remembered then the rumours that the Dun Deverry king would be stripping the west of men – a ruse, a trap, to ensure that no loyal Cerrmor men would be within reach as the Boar lured the True King to this meeting of Wyrd. His heart thudding, Maddyn looked wildly around, wondering if he dared ride back to tell Nevyn. As if she felt his agitation, his blue sprite appeared on his saddle peak and grabbed one of his hands in both of hers.

‘Go back to the barges. Get Nevyn. Get the guards. Hurry!’

Just as she vanished, the Boars howled out a warcry and led the charge. Sod flew shredded and dust plumed as they raced across the meadow, their captain pulling ahead to face off with Caradoc as the silver daggers threw their javelins in a flat arc, points winking as they whistled home, crossing paths with the enemy darts, flying just as straight and true. As the two captains met both troops howled out a challenge and broke position: the mobs were joined. Cursing a steady stream of the foulest oaths he knew Maddyn rose in the stirrups and tried to make out what was happening, desperately tried to find the prince in the swirl of rearing horses and shrieking men.

As he watched, he would just spot Branoic, whose height made him stand out above the mob of riders, when some squad or clot of fighting would swarm around him and lose Maddyn the view again, but he could never see the prince, who was one of the shortest men in the pack. He rode this way and that, on the edge of terror, wondering if Maryn had been killed in the first charge, while he struggled to see through the dust and chaos. Suddenly he realized that the fighting was coming to centre on Branoic, that more and more enemies were struggling to cut their way toward him as more and more silver daggers peeled off to stop them. He could only assume that Branoic was desperately guarding Maryn – perhaps even a wounded Maryn – and without thinking he drew his sword.

He was just about to spur his horse down to join in the battle when he heard hoofbeats and shouting behind him. He turned to see the last squad of silver daggers, with Nevyn at their head like a captain, galloping straight for him.

‘To the prince!’ Maddyn yelled. ‘Behind Branno! To the prince!’

Howling a warcry the men swept past him and down the rise to slam into the fighting from the flank. Nevyn pulled up beside him.

‘Look, my lord,’ Maddyn gasped, half-hoarse from screaming. ‘Branoic must be trying to save him – that’s where the fighting’s thickest.’

Dead-pale but as calm as death, Nevyn shaded his eyes with one hand and peered down at the screaming shoving mob.

‘It’s not Maryn they’re after – it’s Branoic! Ye gods, I should have thought of that! Ah by the hells – the ruse is torn anyway, and cursed if I’ll sit here and not use the dweomer the gods gave me!’

With a snarl of rage the old man raised his arm to the sky as if saluting the sun with a sword, then slowly lowered his hand until he pointed straight at the battle below. Under his breath he muttered a few words in some strange language that Maddyn couldn’t understand even though it sounded oddly familiar.

‘Now!’

A thousand Wildfolk swept into manifestation and raced down the hill toward the enemy. When Nevyn shouted, blue and silver flames leapt from his hand and followed. Like bolts of lightning the illusory fire fell among the enemy horses just as the Wildfolk dove down from the air, pinching, clawing, biting beast and man alike. The terrified horses reared and pawed, screamed and danced, and the Boarsmen and their allies could do not one thing about it. Shrieking and bucking they broke. Those horses lucky enough to be on the edge of the mob plunged free and galloped away as if all the devils of hell were behind them; those caught in the middle began kicking and biting anything in their way. Owaen and Caradoc began screaming at the silver daggers to pull back and let them go. As the mob loosened its grip, more and more Boarsmen pulled out of line and fled, the men screaming louder than their mounts as the Wildfolk streamed after, all claws and teeth.

Maddyn heard a strange noise. It was a moment before he realized that he and Nevyn both were laughing.

‘I doubt me if they’ll be re-forming for another charge,’ the old man said in the mildest possible tone of voice.

‘True enough, and look, my lord, there’s the prince, safe and sound and riding to meet you. Here, I’d best go fetch Caudyr and his wagon. We’ll have wounded men down there.’

Maddyn had gone only about a half-mile when he met the chirurgeon trotting his team to meet him. They went to the battlefield together to find Nevyn already supervising as the silver daggers pulled the wounded free of dead and dying horses, while Caradoc, Owaen and the prince held a hasty council of war off to one side. Since the battle had been so brief, the damage was small. A number of men were badly cut, but all in all, as Maddyn coursed the battlefield with a squad to look for prisoners, he found only three dead silver daggers, and a couple of horses so badly hurt that they’d have to be put out of their misery. Maddyn was just congratulating himself on their light losses when he found Aethan.

His legs trapped by his dead horse Aethan lay on his back near the riverbank. A chance thrust had split his mail and gone through his side to catch a lung. Although he was still alive, at every rasped breath he drew a bubble of blood broke on his lips and trickled down his chin. Maddyn dropped to his knees beside him and half-kicked the horse away, half-pulled him free, then slipped an arm around his shoulders to cradle his head against his chest. Aethan stared up at him with cloudy eyes.

‘It’s me – Maddo. Do you want some water?’

‘Don’t leave me.’

‘I won’t. We’ve got to get Caudyr over here.’

‘Won’t do any good.’

Like a spear in his own heart Maddyn felt the truth of it.

‘I’ll make a song for you. Just like you were a lord.’

Aethan smiled up at the sky with bloody lips. It was a long time before Maddyn realized that he was dead. He shut Aethan’s eyes, laid him down, and sat back on his heels, simply sat there for a long time, staring at nothing, trying to put together a proper gorchan for Aethan and wondering why the words wouldn’t come. Out of nowhere, it seemed, Caradoc materialized and knelt down beside him.

‘He was a good lad. I’ll miss him.’

Maddyn nodded. When Caradoc laid a hand on his arm, he shook it off, and after a few minutes the captain went away again – Maddyn never noticed in what direction or why. All at once he was so tired that the world seemed distant and faint, stripped of all colour and sound. He lay down next to Aethan on the blood-soaked earth, threw one arm around him and rested his head on his shoulder. Dimly he heard his own voice in his head telling him that he was daft, that nothing in this world or under it was going to bring Aethan back, but at the time reason no longer mattered. Daft or sane, he wanted to stay there with Aethan for a while, just a little while before they dumped him into a shallow grave on the battlefield. Although he was never conscious of falling asleep, all at once it was dark and Caradoc was shaking him hard.

‘Get up. Get up, or I’ll slap you up. You’ve got to come away.’

When Maddyn sat up, Branoic grabbed him by one hand and the captain by the other and between them they hauled him to his feet.

‘Stay with him, Branno. I’ve got to get back to the prince. For the gods’ sakes keep him from watching the burying.’

Maddyn let Branoic lead him like a blind man to the camp upriver, where the barges were safely tucked into shore and already campfires bloomed in the meadow. Branoic sat him down by one of the fires, then rummaged in a saddle-bag and brought out a clean shirt.

‘You’re all over gore. Change – you’ll feel better.’

Maddyn nodded like a half-wit and changed his shirt, tossing the filthy one onto the ground, then took the tankard of ale Branoic handed him.

‘Those bastards on the barges had ale with them all along, but they were holding out on us. Old Nevyn made them hand it over. Said if we were going to risk our necks for them they could at least stand us a drink.’

Maddyn nodded again and drank a few sips. When Branoic sat down next to him, he saw that the lad’s calm was all a sham – tears were running down his face. Very carefully, very slowly, Maddyn sat the tankard down next to his blood-stained shirt, then dropped his face into his hands and sobbed, howling like a child and rocking back and forth until Branoic grabbed him and pulled him into his arms to hold him still. Even as he wept, Maddyn heard his own voice rise to a keen, and for a long time that night he mourned, caught tight in the comfort of a friend’s arms. Yet even in the depths of his grief, he felt that the most bitter thing was that Aethan had never lived to see Cerrmor and the True King come into his own.

‘N-n-nevyn, I don’t understand,’ Maryn said, picking each word carefully. ‘The enemy weren’t after me. They wanted Branoic. I was p-p-protecting him – or trying to, anyway.’

‘Trying, indeed!’ Caradoc broke in, and he was grinning like a proud father. ‘You did a splendid job of it, my prince. You can swing that blade like a silver dagger, sure enough.’

Maryn blushed scarlet from the praise, but he kept looking at Nevyn, waiting for his answer. The three of them were sitting at Caradoc’s fire, talking softly to keep the rest of the men from hearing. Although he debated, Nevyn decided that after the spectacle he’d put on that afternoon he might as well tell the whole truth of the tale.

‘Well, my liege, it was an oversight on my part, though I’ll admit it was a lucky one, all in all. I want both of you to keep this a secret.’ He glanced back and forth at prince and captain until they nodded their agreement. ‘Young Branoic has a natural talent for dweomer. Since it’s totally untrained, he can’t use it, mind – he’s not going to ensorcel anyone or suchlike. But consider our enemies, working in the dark, as it were, searching desperately for any trace they can find of the True King. Now, back in Pyrdon everyone knows what the prince looks like, but we’re a long way from home, lads. And so, as our enemies here scry and work their spells, what do they find but a magical – oh, what shall I call it? Here, you know how a hearthstone will radiate heat after the fire’s been burning for a good long time? You can see it glow red, and the air above it shimmers, like? Very good. Well, magical talent in a person puts out an emanation that’s somewhat like that. So here’s Branoic – tall and strong, a splendid fighter, a good-looking man – easy enough to mistake for a prince just on general principles, and on top of all that, he absolutely reeks of dweomer.’

‘They thought he was me!’ Maryn burst out. ‘They might have k-k-killed him, thinking him me! I’d never forgive myself if they had.’

‘Better him than you, your highness,’ Caradoc said drily. ‘And I know Branno would agree with me a thousand times over.’

‘Just so,’ Nevyn said. ‘You know, my liege, I’ll wager they think you’re the prince’s page. Excellent. Let’s let them go on wallowing in their error, shall we?’

‘What shall I do? S-s-saddle and c-c-comb his horse on the morrow? I will and gladly if it’ll help.’

‘Too obvious,’ Caradoc said. ‘We’ll just go on like we were doing, your highness, if it’s all the same to you. Seems to have worked splendidly so far.’

‘So it has.’ Nevyn thought for a moment. ‘Do you think I should go take a look at our Maddyn?’

‘Leave him alone with his grief, my lord. There’s naught any of us can do to heal that wound, much as it aches my heart. Ah by the hells, he knew Aethan these twenty years at least, more maybe, ever since he was a young cub and fresh to a warband.’

‘That’s a hard kind of friend to lose, then, and you’re right. I’ll leave him be.’

For a few minutes they sat there silently, looking into the flames, which swarmed with salamanders – though of course, only Nevyn could see them. Now that he’d rolled his dice in plain sight, he saw no reason to try to lie about his score, and Wildfolk wandered all over the camp, peering at every man and into every barge. Later, after the camp was asleep, he used the dying fire to contact the priests in Cerrmor. They needed to know that the one True King was only some three days’ ride away and that his enemies had tried to slay him upon the road.