Читать книгу Dawnspell - Katharine Kerr - Страница 11

The year 834. This was the year of the first omens of the coming King. A two-headed kid was born in a village near our temple. It died soon after, because a kingdom with two kings cannot live. In the sky we saw a vision of a great horse, running before a storm, and coming from the west. Although the omen was duly recorded, only later did we realize its import …

The Holy Chronicles of Lughcarn

Spring came too fast that year for Maddyn’s liking. Every morning, he would walk up on the hill and search the sky for weather omens. Although he would have to stay until the snows were well past, at the same time he had to be well away before the real spring, when the riders would be swarming on the Cantrae roads for the summer muster. First came the rains that melted the last of the snow and turned the world to brown muck; then the nights grew warmer until it seemed a hardy man could sleep beside the road without freezing. Yet he found excuses to stay until the pale grass began to come out in sheltered valleys. That very night, he rode down early to see Belyan.

When he climbed through her window, he found her still up, fussing over the fire in the clay stove. She gave him a distracted sort of kiss.

‘Take off those boots before sitting on the bed, will you, love? I don’t want muck all over the blankets.’

Maddyn leaned into the curve of the wall and began to pull them off.

‘Spring’s here,’ he said. ‘Will it ache your heart when I ride?’

‘It will, but not half as badly as seeing you hanged would ache it.’

‘True enough. But, Bell, I wish I could stay, and all for your sake. I want you to know that.’

‘It would be splendid, having you with us on the farm, but I don’t see how we could keep you hidden. A few of our friends already know I’ve got a man, and in a few months, the whole village will know.’

When he looked up, he found her smiling, her dark eyes as calm as always.

‘Oh by the hells, what have I done? Got you with child?’

‘What did you think would happen after all the rolling around we’ve done? I’m hardly barren, am I? Oh here, don’t look so troubled, love. I’ve wanted another babe for ever so long now. I’m just glad we had the time for you to give me one.’

‘But I have to desert you! I don’t even have the wretched coin for the midwife.’

‘Oh, the midwife’s a friend of mine, so don’t trouble your heart over that. I can tend a babe on my own, but I couldn’t have got one without a bit of help, could I?’ She laid her hands delicately on her stomach. ‘Oh, I do hope it’s a daughter, but if it’s a son, shall I name him after you?’

‘Only if you truly want to. I’d rather you gave him my father’s name. It was Daumyr.’

‘Then Daumyr it is, if it’s a lad. Well, either way, I hope it has your curly hair.’

Maddyn hesitated with a troubling suspicion rising in his mind. He’d always known she didn’t truly love him, but he was beginning to wonder if he’d just been put out to stud.

‘Bell? Will you miss me when I’m gone?’

Somewhat startled, she considered the question. ‘Well, I will,’ she said at last. ‘A bit.’

When Maddyn left that night, the air was warm with the moist rich smell of spring earth. At the hilltop he dismounted and stood looking out over the dark countryside, the glitter of streams in the moonlight, the distant mound of the sleeping village, and far away, the gleam of the lake where the gates of the Otherlands had almost opened to receive him. I’ve been happy this winter, he thought; ah, curse both false kings and their balls, too!

In the morning Maddyn led his horse down the gully one last time. Overhead, white clouds sailed by, sweeping their shadows over the pale grass on the muddy moorland. When they reached the foot of the hill, Nevyn handed him a worn leather pouch, jingling with coin.

‘Take it without arguing, lad. I didn’t save your life only to have you starve on the road.’

‘My thanks. I wish I could repay you for everything you’ve done for me.’

‘I’ll wager you will. Your Wyrd brought you to me once, and I suspect it’ll do so again, but in some strange way that neither of us can understand.’

Although Maddyn wanted to head straight west and put Cantrae behind him as soon as he could, he was forced to turn south, because the hills between Cantrae and Gwaentaer province were still snowy at this time of year. He went cautiously, avoiding the main road that ran beside the Canaver down to Dun Cantrae, sticking to winding farm lanes and what wild country there was. The only people he allowed to see him were farmers, who, like Belyan, cared less for the honour of war than they did for the coppers he spent for food. After four days of this careful riding, he was at the Gwaentaer border at a place roughly parallel with Dun Cantrae. Here the hills were low and rolling, dotted with small farms and the winter steadings of the horse-breeders who roamed with their herds all summer in the pasturelands. This time of year, every house bustled with activity. Mares were foaling; hooves needed shoeing; gear needed repairing; food had to be packed against the first long spring ride. No one had time to notice or to care about a solitary rider with a warrior’s saddle but a farmer’s shirt.

Just at dusk one warm day Maddyn came to the pillar stone that marked the boundary between the two gwerbretrhynau. As he rode past, he let out a long sigh of relief. Although he was still an outlaw, his neck was a good bit safer now. Once, back in that peaceful and now nearmythical past, every gwerbret in the kingdom would have honoured Tibryn’s decree of outlawry, but now in the midst of the long-bleeding wars, fighting men were too valuable for lords to go driving them away with awkward questions. For the first time in weeks he felt relaxed enough to sing. Two Wildfolk came for the song, the blue sprite perching on his saddle-peak and showing him her pointed teeth, a gnarled brown gnome who was new to him dancing in the road beside his horse. Maddyn was so glad to see them that he almost wept. At least one small part of his magical winter would travel with him.

As it turned out, he soon had human company, and in a way that he never would have expected. The morning after he passed the boundary stone, he came to the last of the hills and paused his horse for a moment to look down and over the vast green plain of Gwaentaer, the wind’s own country indeed, where the trees that the farmers laboriously planted soon grew leaning, as if they shrank in continuous fear from the constant whistling of the wind. Since the day was sparkling clear, he could see for miles over the land, softly furred with the first green of grass and winter wheat, dimpled here and there with tiny ponds or the round steadings of the widely separated farms. He could also see a well-marked road running deadwest, and on it, not more than a mile ahead of him, a solitary rider.

Something was wrong with the man. Even from this distance Maddyn could see it, because the fellow was riding doubled over in the saddle, and his horse was picking its own way, ambling slowly, pausing every now and then to snatch a tuft of grass from the side of the road before its rider would come to himself and get it back under control, only to slump again a few moments later. Maddyn’s first impulse was to ride on by a somewhat different route and not burden himself with anyone else’s troubles, but then he thought of Nevyn, risking his own life to heal and shelter an outlawed man. With a chirrup to his horse, he started off at a brisk trot. The rider ahead never heard him coming, or else cared not a whit if he were followed, because he never turned or even looked back the entire time that Maddyn was closing with him. Finally, when Maddyn was close enough to see that the entire back of the man’s shirt was thick with rusty-brown dried blood, the fellow paused his horse and sat slumped and weary, as if inviting Maddyn to have a clear strike at him and be done with it.

‘Here,’ Maddyn said. ‘What’s wrong?’

At that the rider did turn to look at him, and Maddyn swore aloud.

‘Aethan, by all the gods! What are you doing on the Gwaentaer road?’

‘And I could ask the same of you, Maddo.’ His voice, normally deep and full of humour, was rasped with old pain. ‘Or have you come to fetch me to the Otherlands?’

Maddyn stared for a moment, then remembered that everyone in Cantrae thought him dead.

‘Oh, here, I’m as much alive as you are. How were you wounded?’

‘I’m not. I’ve been flogged.’

‘Ah, horsedung and a pile of it! Can you ride any farther?’

Aethan considered this for a long moment. He was normally a handsome man, with even features, dark hair just touched with grey at the temples, and wide blue eyes that always seemed to be laughing at some jest, but now his face was twisted in pain, and his eyes were narrow and grim, as if perhaps he’d never laugh again.

‘I need a rest,’ he said at last. ‘Shall we sit awhile, or are you riding on and leaving me?’

‘What? Are you daft? Would I run out on a man I’ve known since I was a cub of fifteen?’

‘I don’t know any more what men will do and women neither.’

In a nearby meadow they found a pleasant copse of willows planted round a farmer’s duckpond, with the farmer nowhere in sight. Maddyn dismounted, then helped Aethan down and watered the horses while his friend sat numbly in the shade. As he worked, he was wondering over it all. Aethan was the last man in the kingdom that Maddyn would have expected to get himself shamed, flogged, and turned out of his warband. A favourite of his captain, Aethan had been a second-in-command of Gwerbret Tibryn’s own warband. He was one of those genuinely decent men so valuable to any good warband – the conciliator, everyone’s friend, the man who settled all those petty disputes bound to arise when a lot of men are packed into a barracks together. The gwerbret himself had on occasion asked Aethan’s advice on small matters dealing with the warband, but now here he was, with his shame written on his back in blood.

Once the horses were watered, Maddyn filled the waterskin with fresh drink and sat down next to Aethan, who took the skin from him with a twisted smile.

‘Outlawed we may be, but we still follow the rules of the troop, don’t we, Maddo? Horses first, then men.’

‘We need these mounts more than ever, with no lord to give us another.’

Aethan nodded and drank deep, then handed the skin back. ‘Well, it gladdens my heart that you weren’t killed in Lord Devyr’s last charge. I take it you found a farm or suchlike to hide in all winter.’

‘Somewhat like that. I was dying, actually, from a wound I took, when a local herbman found me.’

‘Gods! You’ve always had the luck, haven’t you?’

Maddyn merely shrugged and stoppered up the skin tight. For a moment they merely sat there in an uncomfortable silence and watched the fat grey ducks grubbing at the edge of the pond.

‘You hold your tongue cursed well for a bard,’ Aethan said abruptly. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me about my shame?’

‘Say what you want and not a word more.’

Aethan considered, staring out at the far flat horizon.

‘Ah horseshit,’ he said at last. ‘It’s a tale fit for a bard to know, in a way. Do you remember our gwerbret’s sister, the Lady Merodda?’

‘Oh, and how could any man with blood in his veins forget her?’

‘He’d best try.’ Aethan’s voice turned hard and cold. ‘Her husband was killed in battle last summer, and so she came back to her brother in Dun Cantrae. And the captain made me her escort, to ride behind her whenever she went out.’ He was quiet, his mouth working, for a good couple of minutes. ‘And she took a fancy to me. Ah, by the black ass of the Lord of Hell, I should have said her nay – I blasted well knew it, even then – but ye gods, Maddo, I’m only made of flesh and blood, not steel, and she knows how to get what she wants from a man. I swear to you, I never would have said a word to her if she hadn’t spoken to me first.’

‘I believe you. You’ve never been a fool.’

‘Not before this winter, at least. I felt like I was ensorcelled. I’ve never loved a woman that way before, and cursed if I ever will again. I wanted her to ride off with me. Like a misbegotten horseshit fool, I thought she loved me enough to do it. But oh, it didn’t suit her ladyship, not by half.’ Again the long, pain-filled pause. ‘So she let it slip to her brother what had been happening between us, but oh, she was the innocent one, she was. And when His Grace took all the skin off my back three days ago, she was out in the ward to watch.’

Aethan dropped his face into his hands and wept like a child. For a moment Maddyn sat there frozen; then he reached out a timid hand and laid it on Aethan’s shoulder until at last he fell silent and wiped his face roughly on his sleeve.

‘Maybe I shouldn’t be too hard on her.’ Aethan’s voice was a flat, dead whisper. ‘She did keep her brother from killing me.’ He stood up, and it was painful to watch him wince as he hauled himself to his feet. ‘I’ve rested enough. Let’s ride, Maddo. The farther I get from Cantrae the happier I’ll be.’

For four days Maddyn and Aethan rode west, asking cautious questions of the various farmers and pedlars that they met about the local lords and their warbands. Even though they sometimes heard of a man who might be desperate enough to take them in without asking questions, each time they decided that they were still too close to Cantrae to risk petitioning him. They realized, however, that they would have to find some place soon, because all around them the noble-born were beginning to muster their men for the summer’s fighting. With troops moving along the roads they were in a dangerous position. Maddyn had no desire to escape being hanged for an outlaw only to end up in a rope as a supposed spy.

Since Aethan’s back was far from healed, they rode slowly, stopping often to rest, either beside the road or in village taverns. They had, at least, no need to worry about coin; not only did Maddyn have Nevyn’s generous pouch, but Aethan’s old captain had managed to slip him money along with his gear when he’d been kicked out of Dun Cantrae. Apparently Maddyn wasn’t alone in thinking the gwerbret’s sentence harsh. During this slow progress west, Maddyn had plenty of time to watch and worry over his old friend. Since always before, Aethan had watched over him – he was, after all, some ten years Maddyn’s elder – Maddyn was deeply troubled to realize that Aethan needed him the way a child needs his father. The gwerbret might have spared his life, but he’d broken him all the same, this man who’d served him faithfully for over twenty years, by half beating him to death like a rat caught in a stable.

Always before Aethan had had an easy way with command, making decisions, giving orders, and all in a way that made his fellows glad to follow them. Now he did whatever Maddyn said without even a mild suggestion that they might do otherwise. Before, too, he’d been a talkative man, always ready with a tale or a jest if he didn’t have serious news to pass along. Now he rode wrapped in a black hiraedd; at times he didn’t even answer when Maddyn asked him a direct question. For all that it ached Maddyn’s heart, he could think of nothing to do to better things. Often he wished that he could talk with Nevyn and get his advice, but Nevyn was far away, and he doubted if he’d ever see the old man again, no matter how much he wanted to.

Eventually they reached the great river, the Camyn Yraen, an ‘iron road’ even then, because all the rich ore from Cerrgonney came down it in barges, and the town of Gaddmyr, at that time only a large village with a wooden palisade around it for want of walls. Just inside the gate they found a tavern of sorts, basically the tavernman’s house, with half the round ground floor set off by a wickerwork partition to hold a couple of tables and some alebarrels in the curve of the wall. For a couple of coppers the man brought them a chunk of cheese and a loaf of bread to go with their ale, then left them strictly alone. Maddyn noticed that none of the villagers were bothering to come to the tavern with them in it, and he remarked as much to Aethan.

‘For all they know, we’re a couple of bandits. Ah, by the hells, Maddo, we can’t go wandering the roads like this, or we might well end up robbing travellers, at that. What are we going to do?’

‘Cursed if I know. But I’ve been thinking a bit. There’s those free troops you hear about. Maybe we’d be better off joining one of them than worrying about an honourable place in a warband.’

‘What?’ For a moment some of the old life came back to Aethan’s eyes. ‘Are you daft? Fight for coin, not honour? Ye gods, I’ve heard of some of those troops switching sides practically in the middle of a battle if someone offered them better pay. Mercenaries! They’re naught but a lot of dishonoured scum!’

Maddyn merely looked at him. With a long sigh Aethan rubbed his face with both hands.

‘And so are we. That’s what you mean, isn’t it, Maddo? Well, you’re right enough. All the gods know that the captain of a free troop won’t be in any position to sneer at the scars on my back.’

‘True spoken. And we’ll have to try to find one that’s fighting for Cerrmor or Eldidd, too. Neither of us can risk having some Cantrae man seeing us in camp.’

‘Ah, horseshit and a pile of it! Do you know what that means? What are we going to end up doing? Riding a charge against the gwerbret and all my old band some day?’

Maddyn had never allowed himself to frame that thought before, that some day his life might depend on his killing a man who’d once been his ally and friend. Aethan picked up his dagger and stabbed it viciously into the table.

‘Here!’ The tavernman came running. ‘No need to be breaking up the furniture, lads!’

Aethan looked up so grimly that Maddyn caught his arm before he could take out his rage on this innocent villager. The tavernman stepped back, swallowing hard.

‘I’ll give you an extra copper to pay for the damage,’ Maddyn said. ‘My friend’s in a black mood today.’

‘He can go about having it in some other place than mine.’

‘Well and good, then. We’ve finished your piss-poor excuse for ale, anyway.’

They’d just reached the door when the tavernman hailed them again. Although Aethan ignored him and walked out, Maddyn paused as the taverner came scurrying over.

‘I know about one of them troops you and your friend was talking about.’

Maddyn got out a couple of coppers and jingled them in his hand. The taverner gave him a gap-toothed, garlicscented grin.

‘They wintered not far from here, they did. They rode in every now and then to buy food, and we was fair terrified at first, thinking they were going to steal whatever they wanted, but they paid good coin. I’ll say that for them, for all that they was an arrogant lot, strutting around like lords.’

‘Now that’s luck!’

‘Well, now, they might have moved on by now. Haven’t seen them in days, and here’s the blacksmith’s daughter with her belly swelling up, and even if they did come back, she wouldn’t even know which of the lads it was. The little slut, spreading her legs for any of them that asked her!’

‘Indeed? And where were they quartered?’

‘They wouldn’t be telling the likes of us that, but I’ll wager I can guess well enough. Just to the north of here, oh, about ten miles, I’d say, is a stretch of forest. It used to be the tieryn’s hunting preserve, but then, twenty-odd years ago it was now, the old tieryn and all his male kin got themselves killed off in a blood feud, and with the wars so bad and all, there was no one else to take the demesne. So now the forest’s all overgrown and thick, like, but I wager that the old tieryn’s hunting-lodge still stands in there some place.’

Maddyn handed over the coppers and took out two more.

‘I don’t suppose some of the lads in the village know where this lodge is?’ He held up the coins. ‘It seems likely that some of the young ones might have poked around in there, just out of curiosity, like.’

‘Not on your life, and I’m not saying that to get more coin out of you, neither. It’s a dangerous place, that stretch of trees. Haunted, they say, and full of evil spirits as well, most like, and then there’s the wild men.’

‘The what?’

‘Well, I suppose that by rights I shouldn’t call them wild, poor bastards, because all the gods can bear witness that I’d have done the same as them if I had to.’ He leaned closer, all conspiratorial. ‘You don’t look like the sort of fellow who’ll be running to our lord with the news, but the folk who live in the forest are bondsmen. Or I should say, they was, a while back. Their lord got killed, and so they took themselves off to live free, and I can’t say as I’ll be blaming them for it, neither.’

‘Nor more can I. Your wild men are safe enough from me, but I take it they’re not above robbing a traveller if they can.’

‘I think they feels it’s owing to them, like, after all the hard work they put in.’

Maddyn gave him the extra coppers anyway, then went out to join Aethan, who was standing by the road with the horses’ reins in hand.

‘Done gossiping, are you?’

‘Here, Aethan, the taverner had some news to give us, and it just might be worth following down. There might be a free troop up in the woods to the north of us.’

Aethan stared down at the reins in his hand and rubbed them with weary fingers.

‘Ah, horseshit!’ he said at last. ‘We might as well look them over, then.’

When they left the village, they rode north, following the river. Although Aethan was well on the mend by then, his back still ached him, and they rested often. At their pace it was close to sunset when they reached the forest, looming dark and tangled on the far side of a wild meadowland. At its edge a massive marker stone still stood, doubtless proclaiming the trees the property of the long-dead clan that once had owned them.

‘I don’t want to be mucking around in there when it’s dark,’ Aethan said.

‘You’re right enough. We’ll camp here. There’s plenty of water in the river.’

While Aethan tended the horses, Maddyn went to gather firewood at the forest edge. A crowd of Wildfolk went with him, darting around or skipping beside him, a gaggle of green, warty gnomes, three enormous yellow creatures with swollen stomachs and red fangs, and his faithful blue sprite, perching on his shoulder and running tiny hands through his hair.

‘I’ll have to play us a song tonight. It’s been a while since I felt like music, but maybe our luck is turning.’

Yet when it came time to play, Maddyn’s heart was still so troubled that he found it hard to settle down to one ballad or declamation. He got the harp in tune, then played scraps and bits of various songs or practised runs and chordings. Aethan soon fell asleep, lying on his stomach with his head pillowed on folded arms, but the Wildfolk stayed to the last note, a vast crowd of them stretching out beyond the pool of firelight across the meadow. Maddyn felt awed, as if he were playing in a king’s court, the great hall crowded with retainers. When he stopped, he felt more than heard a ripple of eerie applause; then suddenly, they were gone. Maddyn shuddered profoundly, then put the harp away.

After he had banked the campfire, Maddyn paced a little way into the meadow out of restlessness and nothing more. He could see the forest edge, looming dark not far from them, and even more, he could feel its presence, like an exhalation of wildness. He was sure that more than human fugitives lived there. It occurred to him that while the long wars were a tragedy for human beings, to the Wildfolk they were a blessing, giving them back land that men had once taken and tamed. As he stood there in the silent meadow, it seemed that he heard faint music, an echo of his own. Again he shuddered convulsively, then hurried back to his safe camp.

On the morrow the blue sprite woke him just at dawn by the expedient method of pulling his hair so hard that it hurt like fire. When he swatted at her, she laughed soundlessly, exposing her needle-sharp teeth. Nearby Aethan was still sleeping, but restlessly, turning and stretching like a man who’ll wake any moment.

‘Listen carefully, little sweet one,’ Maddyn said to the sprite. ‘Somewhere in that forest are a whole lot of men like me and Aethan, warriors with swords. They’ll have lots of horses, too, and they live in a stone house. Can you lead me there?’

She thought for a long moment, then nodded her agreement and promptly disappeared. Maddyn decided that either she’d misunderstood or had simply forgotten, but as soon as they were ready to ride, she reappeared, dancing and leaping on the riverbank and pointing to the north.

‘I don’t suppose that misbegotten tavernman gave you any directions to this place,’ Aethan said.

‘Well, he had a confused idea or two. I’ll try to lead us there, but don’t be surprised if it’s a bit roundabout.’

It was a good thing that Maddyn had put in his warning, because the Wildfolk’s idea of leading someone left much to be desired. As soon as the men started riding north, two grey gnomes appeared to join the sprite, but they kept pinching either her or each other and distracting her both ways from her task. Once they were all well into the forest, the Wildfolk disappeared, leaving the men to follow a rough deertrack for several miles. Just when Maddyn had given up on them, they flashed back into being, perching on his horse’s neck and saddle-peak and pointing off to the west down a narrow and rough track indeed. Although Aethan grumbled (and a welcome sign of returning life it was) Maddyn insisted on following it, and every time the path branched, he faithfully went the way the blue sprite pointed. By noon, Maddyn was hopelessly lost, with no choice but to follow where the Wildfolk led. Hopping from tree to tree, they grinned, giggled, and pointed in various directions, but Maddyn always followed the blue sprite, who threatened to bite the grey fellows whenever they contradicted her.

‘Maddo, I hope to every god and his horse that you know what you’re doing.’

‘So do I. I’ve got the ugly feeling I may have got us lost in here.’

Aethan groaned with a drama worthy of a bard. Just as Maddyn was thinking that he’d spoken the bitter truth, the sprite led them to a big clearing, ringed round with stumps of trees. Out in the middle was a hut built of logs, piled up whole to form a square structure – a house different from any that Maddyn had ever seen. The roof was neatly thatched with branches, and a wisp of smoke trailed lazily out of the smoke-hole in the roof.

‘What in the three hells have you found?’ Aethan sputtered. ‘That’s not big enough for a band of mercenaries.’

‘So it’s not. More likely it’s some of those runaway bondsmen the taverner mentioned.’

At the sound of their voices, a man came out. He was one of the shortest men Maddyn had ever seen, not more than five feet tall, but he had broad shoulders and heavy arms like a miniature blacksmith, and his legs were in perfect proportion to the rest of him. His long black beard trailed past the round collar of the wool tunic he wore over brigga. He carried a long woodsman’s axe like a weapon. When he spoke, his voice was rough with a heavy guttural accent. ‘And just who are you, lads?’

‘Naught but a pair of lost travellers,’ Maddyn said.

‘Thieves, more like.’ The fellow hefted the axe. ‘And what brought you into these wretched woods in the first place?’

‘We were looking for a mercenary troop,’ Aethan broke in. ‘A tavernman in Gaddmyr said there might be one quartered in this forest.’

‘All we want to do is see if they’ll take us on,’ Maddyn said. ‘I swear it, we’re not thieves, and I don’t know what a hermit like you would have that’s worth stealing, anyway.’

The man considered, his axe at the ready. When Maddyn noticed the blade, he nearly swore aloud in surprise. Although the metal gleamed exactly like silver, it had an edge as sharp as steel by the look of it, and it carried not one nick or bite.

‘Now here,’ Aethan said. ‘We’ll be more than glad to leave you alone if you’ll only show us the way out of these blasted woods.’

‘Go back the way you came, of course.’

‘Good sir, we’re lost,’ Maddyn said, and quickly, because he didn’t like the black look on Aethan’s face.

‘Indeed? You found me easily enough.’

‘Well, I was following one of the …’ Maddyn broke off just in time.

As if she knew he was thinking of her, the blue sprite popped into existence, settling on his shoulder and kissing his hair. The fellow frankly stared, and lowered his axe to lean on it like a walking-stick. Quickly he darted a conspiratorial glance at Aethan, who of course had seen nothing, and then gave Maddyn a grudging smile.

‘Well, perhaps I could take you to the old lodge after all, but your horses look worn out from all these wretched trees. There’s a spring over there, by that bit of stump. Give them a drink first. My name’s Otho, by the by.’

‘And I’m Maddyn, and this is Aethan. My thanks for your help. Do you know this troop?’

‘Somewhat. I did a bit of work for them this winter, fixing buckles and suchlike. I’m a smith, you see.’

It was Maddyn’s turn to stare. What was a smith doing out in the middle of a wilderness? Then it occurred to him that Otho might have some dishonour of his own behind him.

‘Now, Caradoc – that’s their leader – isn’t a bad man, considering what he is,’ Otho went on. ‘He wants me to ride south with him when they go. I’ve been thinking it over.’

While Aethan watered the horses, Otho went into his cabin, then reappeared wearing a leather vest over his tunic and carrying a different axe, one with a long handle banded with metal and obviously made as a weapon, which he used to good advantage for clearing brush and overhanging branches. The trail was so narrow and twisty that the men had to lead their horses. It was about the middle of the afternoon when they came into a vast clearing of some five acres and saw the high stone walls of what once had been a noble’s hunting-lodge. The wooden gates were long since rotted away, letting them see the broch, still in reasonable repair, and a collection of tumbledown sheds inside.

As they walked up, Caradoc himself came out to meet them. Otho introduced him, a tall, slender man with the long, ropy arms of a born swordsman and the high cheek-bones and pale hair of a southern man. He seemed about Aethan’s age, in his mid-thirties, and for all that he was a dishonoured man, there was something impressive about Caradoc, the proud way he stood, the shrewd way he looked men over with eyes that seemed to have seen a lot of life.

‘Since you’re looking for bodies to sell,’ Otho said, ‘I brought you a couple.’

‘Interesting.’ Caradoc gave them each a pleasant smile. ‘Here’s Aethan with a Cantrae boar on his shirt, and Maddyn dressed like a farmer but carrying a sword. I looked like the pair of you, once. Left a warband down in Cerrmor a bit … well, sudden, like. Never did bid a proper farewell to my lord. I’ll wager, Aethan, that there’s scars on your back, judging from the stains on your shirt.’

‘More than a few. Cursed if I’ll tell you why.’

‘I’d never ask. Now, here’s the terms, lads. I’ll take anyone on for a summer. If you can’t fight, then you’ll die in a scrap, and we’ll be rid of you. If you can fight, then you get an equal share of the coin. And remember: I’m the leader of this pack of dogs. You give me one bit of trouble, and I’ll beat the shit out of you. Scribe that deep into your ugly hearts: you ride at orders, or you don’t ride at all.’

It was obvious that Caradoc meant what he said as soon as they went into the dun. Instead of the bandit-like pile of filth that Maddyn had been dreading, the camp was as clean as a great lord’s barracks. There were thirty-six men in the troop, and their gear was well-tended, their horses good, healthy stock, and their discipline tighter, in fact, than that of Maddyn’s old warband. As Caradoc introduced the new recruits around, the other members of the band paid him such strict and respectful attention that Maddyn began to wonder if he were noble-born. Otho came along with them, listening to Caradoc and stroking his beard in thought, but he said naught a word until they all went outside again so that Maddyn and Aethan could unsaddle their horses and unload their gear.

‘Well, Otho,’ Caradoc said. ‘We’ll be pulling out soon. Coming with us to Eldidd?’

‘I might, at that. I’ve got used to a bit of company, especially company that can pay a smith better than the stinking bondsmen in this forest.’

‘So we can, and you’ll like Eldidd well enough once we get there.’

‘Hah! I’ve got my doubts about that. They always say that there’s elven blood in Eldidd veins.’

‘Not that again!’ Caradoc mugged a doleful expression. ‘As much as I admire your craft, good smith, I have to say that your wits are a bit thin in places. Elves, indeed!’

‘Mock all you want, but elven blood makes a man unreliable.’

‘It’d make any man unreliable to have a myth in his clan’s quarterings.’ Caradoc ran one finger down the silvery blade of Otho’s axe. ‘But talk about elves all you want, just so long as you keep working your witchcraft on metals. When we’re all as rich as lords and the most famous free troop in all of Deverry, you’re going to make us swords out of that warlock’s metal of yours.’

‘Hah! You’d have to be a king to afford that, my friend. You’ll be blasted lucky if you ever get rich enough to have so much as a dagger out of it.’

After Maddyn and Aethan had their horses settled and fed in the stables, one of the men, Stevyc by name, came to help them carry their gear into the broch. When he picked up the big leather bag that held Maddyn’s harp, he broke into a grin.

‘Which one of you is the bard?’

‘I am,’ Maddyn said. ‘But not much of one, a gerthddyn, truly, if that. I can sing, but I don’t have a true bard’s lore.’

‘And who gives a pig’s fart who some lord’s great-great-great-grand-dam was? This is a bit of splendid luck.’ Stevyc turned, calling out to Caradoc, ‘Here, captain, we’ve got a bard of our own.’

‘And next we’ll be eating off silver plates, like the great lords we are.’ Caradoc came strolling over. ‘But a bard would have come in handy this winter, with the pack of you causing trouble because you had naught better to do. Well and good then, Maddyn. If you sing well enough, you’ll be free of kitchen work and stable duty, but I’ll expect you to make up songs about our battles just like you would for a lord.’

‘I’ll do my best, captain, to sing as well as we deserve.’

‘Better than we deserve, Maddyn lad, or you’ll sound like a cat in heat.’

After a rough dinner of venison and turnips, Maddyn was given his chance to sing, sitting on a rickety, half-rotted table in what had once been the lodge’s great hall. He’d only done one ballad when he realized that his place in the troop was assured. The men listened with the deep fascination of the utterly bored, hardly noticing or caring when he got a bit off-key or stumbled over a line. After a winter with naught but dice games and the blacksmith’s daughter for entertainment, they cheered him as if he were the best bard at the King’s court. They made him sing until he was hoarse, that night, and let him stop only reluctantly then. Only Maddyn and Otho knew, of course, that the hall was also filled with Wildfolk, listening as intently as the men.

That night, Maddyn lay awake for a long while and listened to the familiar sound of other men snoring close by in the darkness of a barracks. He was back in a warband, back in his old life so firmly that he wondered if he’d dreamt those enchanted months in Brin Toraedic. The winter behind him seemed like a lost paradise, when he’d had good company and a woman of his own, when he’d seen a glimpse of a wider, freer world of peace and dweomer – a little glimpse only, then the door had been slammed in his face. He was back in the war, a dishonoured rider whose one goal in life was to earn the respect of other dishonoured men. At least Belyan was going to have his baby back in Cantrae, a small life who would outlive him and who would be better off as a farmer than his father would be as a warrior. Thinking about the babe he could fall asleep at last, smiling to himself.

On the day that Maddyn left Brin Toraedic, Nevyn spent a good many hours shutting up the caves for the summer and loading herbs and medicines into the canvas mule-packs. He had a journey of over nine hundred miles ahead of him, with stops along the way that were crucial to the success of his long-range plans. If he were to succeed in making a dweomer king to bring peace to the country, he would need help from powerful friends, particularly among the priesthoods. He would also need to find a man of royal blood worthy of his plans. And that, or so he told himself, might well be the most difficult part of the work.

The first week of his journey was easy. Although the Cantrae roads were full of warbands, mustering to begin the ride to Dun Deverry for the summer’s fighting, no one bothered him, seemingly only a shabby old herbman with his ambling mule, his patched brown cloak, and the white hair that the local riders respected as a sign of his great age. He followed the Canaver down to its joining with the River Nerr near the town of Muir, a place that held memories some two hundred years old. As he always did when he passed through Muir, he went into the last patch of wild forest – now the hunting preserve of the Southern Boar clan. In the midst of a stand of old oaks was an ancient, mossy cairn that marked the grave of Brangwen of the Falcon, the woman he had loved, wronged, and lost so many years ago. He always felt somewhat of a fool for making this pilgrimage – her body was long decayed, and her soul had been reborn several times since that miserable day when he’d dug this grave and helped pile up these rocks. Yet the site meant something to him still, if for no other reason than because it was the place where he’d sworn the rash vow that was the cause of his unnaturally long life.

Out of respect for a grave, even though they could have no idea of whose it was, the Boar’s gamekeepers had left the cairn undisturbed. Nevyn was pleased to see that someone had even tended it by replacing a few fallen stones and pulling the weeds away from its base. It was a small act of decency in a world where decency was in danger of vanishing. For some time he sat on the ground and watched the dappled forest light playing on the cairn while he wondered when he would find Brangwen’s soul again. His meditation brought him a small insight: she was reborn, but still a child. Eventually, he was sure, in some way Maddyn would lead him to her. In life after life, his Wyrd had been linked to hers, and, indeed, in his last life, he had followed her to the death, binding a chain of Wyrd tight around them both.

After he left Muir, Nevyn rode west to Dun Deverry for a first-hand look at the man who claimed to be King in the Holy City. On a hot spring day, when the sun lay as thick as the dust in the road, he came to the shores of the Gwerconydd, the vast lake formed by the confluence of three rivers, and let his horse and mule rest for a moment by the reedy shore. He was joined by a pair of young priests of Bel, shaven-headed and dressed in linen tunics, who were also travelling to the Holy City. After a pleasant chat, they all decided to ride in together.

‘And who’s the high priest these days?’ Nevyn asked. ‘I’ve been living up in Cantrae, so I’m badly out of touch.’

‘His Holiness, Gwergovyn,’ said the elder of the pair.

‘I see.’ Nevyn’s heart sank. He remembered Gwergovyn all too well as a spiritual ferret of a man. ‘And tell me somewhat else. I’ve heard that the Boars of Cantrae are the men to watch in court circles.’

Even though they were all alone on the open road, the young priest lowered his voice when he answered.

‘They are, truly, and there are plenty who grumble about it, too. I know His Holiness thinks rather sourly of the men of the Boar.’

At length they came to the city, which rose high on its four hills behind massive double rings of stone walls, ramparted and towered. The wooden gates, carved with a wyvern rampant, were bound with iron, and guards in thickly embroidered shirts stood to either side. Yet as soon as Nevyn went inside, the impression of splendour vanished. Once a prosperous city had filled these walls; now house after house stood abandoned, with weed-choked yards and empty windows, the thatch blowing rotten in dirty streets. Much of the city lay in outright ruin, heaps of stone among rotting, charred timbers. It had been taken by siege so many times in the last hundred years, then taken back by the sword, that apparently no one had the strength, the coin, or the hope to rebuild. In the centre of the city, around and between two main hills, lived what was left of the population, scarcely more than in King Bran’s time. Warriors walked the streets and shoved the townsfolk aside whenever they met. It seemed to Nevyn that every man he saw was a rider for one lord or another, and every woman either lived in fear of them or had surrendered to the inevitable and turned whore to please them.

The first inn he found was tiny, dirty, and ramshackle, little more than a big house divided into a tavernroom and a few chambers, but he lodged there because he liked the innkeep, Draudd, a slender old man with hair as white as Nevyn’s and a smile that showed an almost superhuman ability to keep a sense of humour in the midst of ruin. When he found out that Nevyn was an herbman, Draudd insisted on taking payment for his lodging in trade.

‘Well, after all, I’m as old as you are, so I’ll easily equal the cost in your herbs. Why give me coins only to have me give them right back?’

‘True spoken. Ah, old age! Here I’ve studied the human body all my life, but I swear old age has put pains in joints I never knew existed.’

Nevyn spent that first afternoon in the tavern, dispensing herbs for Draudd’s collection of ailments and hearing in return all the local gossip, which meant royal gossip. In Dun Deverry even the poorest person knew what there was to know about the goings-on at court. Gossip was their bard, and the royalty their only source of pride. Draudd was a particularly rich source, because his youngest daughter, now a woman in her forties, worked in the palace kitchens, where she had plenty of opportunities to overhear the noble-born servitors like the chamberlain and steward at their gossip. From what Draudd repeated that day, the Boars were so firmly in control of the King that it was something of a scandal. Everyone said that Tibryn, the Boar of Cantrae, was close to being the real king himself.

‘And now with the King so ill, our poor liege, and his wife so young, and Tibryn a widower and all …’ Draudd paused for dramatic effect. ‘Well! Can’t you imagine what we folk are wondering?’

‘Indeed I can. But would the priests allow the King’s widow to marry?’

Draudd rubbed his thumb and forefinger together like a merchant gloating over a coin.

‘Ah, by the hells!’ Nevyn snarled. ‘Has it got as bad as all that?’

‘There’s naught left but coin to bribe the priests with. They’ve already got every land grant and legal concession they want.’

At that point Nevyn decided that meeting with Gwergovyn – if indeed he could even get in to see him – was a waste of time.

‘But what ails the King? He’s still a young man.’

‘He took a bad wound in the fighting last summer. I happened to be out on the royal road when they brought him home. I’d been buying eggs at the market when I heard the bustle and the horns coming. And I saw the King, lying in a litter, and he was as pale as snow, he was. But he lived, when here we all thought they’d be putting his little lad on the throne come winter. But he never did heal up right. My daughter tells me that he has to have special food, like. All soft things, and none of them Bardek spices, neither. So they boil the meat soft, and pulp apples and suchlike.’

Nevyn was completely puzzled: the special diet made no sense at all for a man who by all accounts had been wounded in the chest. He began to wonder if someone were deliberately keeping the King weak, perhaps to gain the good favour of Tibryn of the Boar.

The best way to find out, of course, was to talk to the King’s physicians. On the morrow he took his laden mule up to the palace, which lay on the northern hill. Ring after ring of defensive walls, some stone, some earthworks, marched up the slope and cut the hill into defensible slices. At every gate, in every wall, guards stopped Nevyn and asked him his business, but they always let a man with healing herbs to sell pass on through. Finally, at the top, behind one last ring, stood the palace and all its outbuildings and servant quarters. Like a stork among chickens, a six-storey broch, ringed by four lower half-brochs, rose in the centre. If the outer defences fell, the attackers would have to fight their way through a warren of corridors and rooms to get at the King himself. In all the years of war, the palace had never fallen to force, only to starvation.

The last guard called a servant lad, who ran off to the royal infirmary with the news that a herbman waited outside. After a wait of some five minutes, he ran back and led Nevyn to a big round stone building behind the broch complex. There they were met by a burly man with dark eyes that glared under bushy brows as if their owner were in a state of constant fury, but when he introduced himself as Grodyn, the head chirurgeon, he was soft-spoken enough.

‘A herbman’s always welcome. Come spread out your wares, good sir. That table by the window would be best, I think, right in the light and fresh air.’

While Nevyn laid out packets of dried herbs, tree-barks, and sliced dried roots, Grodyn fetched his apprentice, Caudyr, a sandy-haired young man with narrow blue eyes and a jaw so sharply modelled it looked as if it could cut cheese. He also had a club foot, which gave him the rolling walk of a sailor. Between them the two chirurgeons sorted through his wares and for starters set aside his entire stock of valerian, elecampe, and comfrey root.

‘I don’t suppose you ever get down to the sea-coast,’ Grodyn said in a carefully casual tone of voice.

‘Well, this summer I’m thinking of trying to slip through the battle-lines. Usually the armies don’t much care about one old man. Is there somewhat you need from the sea?’

‘Red kelp, if you can get it, and some sea-moss.’

‘They work wonders to soothe an ulcerated stomach or bad bowels.’ Nevyn hesitated briefly. ‘Here, I’ve heard rumours about this peculiar so-called wound of our liege the King.’

‘So-called?’ Grodyn paid busy attention to the packet of beech-bark in his hand.

‘A wound in the chest that requires him to eat only soft food.’

Grodyn looked up with a twisted little smile.

‘It was poison, of course. The wound healed splendidly. While he was still weak, someone put poison into his mead. We saved him after a long fight of it, but his stomach is ulcerated and bleeding, just as you guessed, and there’s blood in his stool, too. But we’re trying to keep the news from the common people.’

‘Oh, I won’t go bruiting it about, I assure you. Do you have any idea of what this poison was?’

‘None. Now here, you know herbs. What do you think this might be? When he vomited, there was a sweetish smell hanging about the basin, rather like roses mixed with vinegar. It was grotesque to find a poison that smelled of perfume, but the strangest thing was this: the King’s page had tasted the mead and suffered not the slightest ill-effect. Yet I know it was in the mead, because the dregs in the goblet had an odd, rosy colour.’

Nevyn thought for a while, running over the long chains of lore in his memory.

‘Well,’ he said at last. ‘I can’t name the herbs out, but I’ll wager they came originally from Bardek. I’ve heard that poisoners there often use two different evil essences, each harmless in themselves. The page at table doubtless got a dose of the first one when he tasted the King’s mead, and the page of the chamber got the other. The King, alas, got both, and they combined into venom in his stomach.’

As he nodded his understanding, Grodyn looked half-sick with such an honest rage that Nevyn mentally acquitted him of any part in the crime. Caudyr too looked deeply troubled.

‘I’ve made special studies of the old herbals we have,’ the young chirurgeon said, ‘and never found this beastly poison. If it came from Bardek, that would explain it.’

‘So it would,’ Nevyn said. ‘Well, good sirs, I’ll do my best to get you the red kelp and what other emollients I can, but it’ll be autumn before I return. Will our liege live that long?’

‘If no one poisons him again.’ Grodyn tossed the packet of beech-bark on to the table. ‘Ah ye gods, can you imagine how helpless I feel? Here I am, fighting to undo the effects of one poison while someone is doubtless scheming out a way to slip him a second!’

‘Wasn’t there any inquiry into this poisoning?’

‘Of course.’ Abruptly Grodyn turned guarded. ‘It found out naught, though. We suspect a Cerrmor spy.’

Oh, I’ll just wager you do! Nevyn thought to himself; that is, if there are Boars in Cerrmor, anyway.

Their business over, Nevyn put on a good show of expressing the gossipy interest that any visitor to the palace would have on seeing the place where the King lived. Caudyr, who seemed to be a good-hearted lad, took him on a tour of the semipublic gardens and outbuildings. It took only the slightest touch of Nevyn’s dweomer to sense that the palace was filled with corruption. The omen came to him as the smell of rotting meat and the sight of maggots, crawling between the stones. He banished the vision as quickly as he could; the point was well-made.

As they were walking to the front gate, they saw a noble hunting party returning: Gwerbret Tibryn of the Boar, with a retinue of servants and huntsmen behind him and his widowed sister at his side. As Nevyn led his mule off to the side out of the way of the noble-born, he noticed Caudyr watching the Lady Merodda wistfully. Just twenty, the lady had long blonde hair, bound up in soft twists under the black headscarf of a widow, wide green eyes, and features that were perfect without being cold. She was truly beautiful, but as he watched her, Nevyn loathed her. Although he couldn’t pinpoint his reasons, he’d never seen a woman he found so repellent. Caudyr was obviously of the opposite opinion. Much to Nevyn’s surprise, when Merodda rode past, she favoured Caudyr with a brilliant smile and a wave of her delicately gloved hand. Caudyr bowed deeply in return.

‘Now here, lad,’ Nevyn said with a chuckle. ‘You’re nocking an arrow for rather high-born game.’

‘And don’t I just know it? I could be as noble as she is, but I’d still be deformed.’

‘Oh, my apologies! I meant naught of that sort.’

‘I know, good sir, I know. I fear me that years of being mocked have made me touchy.’

Caudyr bowed and hurried away with his rolling, dragging limp. Nevyn was heartsick over his lapse; it was a hard thing to be handicapped in a world where women and men both worshipped warriors. Later that day, however, he found out that Caudyr bore him no ill will. Just after sunset Caudyr came to Nevyn’s inn, insisted on buying him a tankard, and sat them both down at a table in a corner, far from the door.

‘I was wondering about your stock of herbs, good Nevyn. You wouldn’t happen to have any northern elm bark, would you?’

‘Now here! I don’t traffic in abortifacients, lad.’

Caudyr winced and began studying the interior of his tankard.

‘Ah well,’ the lad said at last. ‘The bark’s a blasted sight safer than henbane.’

‘No doubt, but the question is why you’re doing abortions at all. I should think that every babe these days would be precious.’

‘Not if it’s not sired by your husband. Here, please don’t despise me. There’s a lot of noblewomen who spend all summer at court, and well, their husbands are off on campaign for months at a time, and well, you know how things happen, and well, they come to me in tears, and –’

‘Shower you with silver, no doubt.’

‘It’s not the coin!’

‘Indeed? What is it, then? The only time in your life that women have come begging you for somewhat?’

When tears welled in Caudyr’s eyes, Nevyn regretted his harsh accuracy. He looked away to give the young chirurgeon a chance to wipe his face. It was the infidelities more than the abortions that bothered Nevyn. The thought of noblewomen, whose restricted life gave them nothing but their honour to take pride in, turning first to illicit affairs, then to covering them over, made him feel that the kingdom was rotting from the centre out. As for the abortions, the dweomer lore teaches that a soul comes to indwell a foetus only in the fourth or fifth month after conception; any abortion before that time is only removing a lump of flesh, not a living child. By the time a noblewoman was in her fifth month, Nevyn supposed, her indiscretion would be known already, and so doubtless Caudyr was solving their little problems long before the foetus was truly alive.

‘Now one moment.’ Nevyn was struck by a sudden thought. ‘You’re not using ergot, are you, you stupid little dolt?’

‘Never!’ Caudyr’s voice rose in a sincere squeak. ‘I know the dangers of that.’

‘Good. All it would take is for one of your noble patients to die or go mad, and then you’d be up to your neck in a tub of horseshit good and proper.’

‘I know. But if I didn’t find the right herbs for these ladies, they’d be cast off by their husbands, and probably end up smothering the babe anyway, or they’d go to some old witch or a farmwife, and then they would die.’

‘You split hairs so well you should have been a priest.’

Caudyr tried to smile and failed utterly, looking like a child who’s just been scolded when he honestly didn’t know he had done a wrong thing. Suddenly Nevyn felt the dweomer power gathering round him, filling his mouth with words that burned straight out of the future.

‘You can’t keep this sort of thing quiet. When the King dies, his murderers will need a scapegoat. It’s going to be you, because of this midnight physic you’ve been dispensing. Live ready to flee at the first sign that the King is sinking. Can Tibryn of the Boar find out about your unsavoury herbs?’

‘He could, the lady Merodda … I mean … ah ye gods! Who are you, old man?’

‘Can’t you tell dweomer when you hear it? The Boar will take his sister’s evidence, turn it against you, and have you broken on the wheel to avert suspicion from himself. If I were you, I’d leave well before the end comes, or they’ll hunt you down as a regicide.’

Caudyr jerked to his feet so fast that he toppled both his tankard and Nevyn’s, then fled, racing out of the tavern door. Although old Draudd gave Nevyn a questioning look, he also shrugged as if to say it was none of his affair. Nevyn retrieved the tankards from the floor, then turned on the bench so that he could look directly into the peat fire smouldering on the tavern hearth. As soon as he bent his mind to Aderyn, his old apprentice’s image appeared with his enormous dark eyes and his grey hair swept up in two peaks at his forehead like the horns of a silver owl.

‘And how’s your scheme progressing?’ Aderyn thought to him.

‘Well enough, I suppose. I’ve learned one very important thing. I’d rather die than put any Cantrae king on the throne.’

‘Is it as bad as all that?’

‘The palace stinks like the biggest dungheap on the hottest day of the longest summer. I can’t see how any young soul could grow up there without being corrupted from birth. I’m not even going to bother talking to the priests here. They’re corrupt, too, and doubtless in new and unusual ways.’

‘I haven’t seen you this angry in about a hundred years.’

‘Naught’s been so vexing in a hundred years. The most honourable man I’ve met here is an abortionist. Does that give you a hint?’

Floating about the fire, Aderyn’s image rolled its eyes heavenwards in disgust.

Caradoc and his band of mercenaries left the deserted hunting-lodge soon after Maddyn and Aethan joined the troop. Although everyone was speculating about where they would go, the captain told no one until the morning of their departure. Once the men were mounted and formed up in neat ranks that would have done the King’s Guard credit, Caradoc inspected them carefully, then pulled his horse up to face them.

‘It’s Eldidd, lads. We’ve got too many men who can’t let themselves be seen around Dun Deverry to take a hire on Slwmar’s side, and I don’t dare be seen in Cerrmor. I’ve hoarded some coin from the winter, seeing as our lodging was free and all, so I think we can ride straight there.’

Although no one cheered this prospect of leaving home for a foreign land, no one muttered in discontent, either. Caradoc paused, as if waiting for grumblers, then shrugged and raised his hand.

‘Otho the smith’s meeting us on the road with a wagon. Forward … march!’

With a jingle of tack the troop executed a perfect turn in ranks and began to file out of the dun gate, two by two. As a mark of honour to a bard, Maddyn rode next to Caradoc at the head of the line. Over the next few days, as they worked their way south-west as quickly as possible, he had plenty of chances to study his new leader. The biggest puzzle that ate at his bardic curiosity was whether or not Caradoc was noble-born. At times, when the captain was discussing some point of the royal law or giving orders with his firm authority, Maddyn was sure that he must have been born the younger son of a lord. Yet when it came to coin, he had all the grasping shrewdness of an old peasant woman, an attitude he never would have learned among the nobility. Occasionally Maddyn dropped hints or half-questions about the past into their conversation, but Caradoc never rose to the bait. When the troop camped for the night, Caradoc ate alone like a lord, and Maddyn shared a fire with Aethan and a small crowd of Wildfolk.

After a week of riding, the troop crossed the Aver Trebyc at a point about a hundred miles west of Dun Deverry. Caradoc gave orders that the men were to ride armed and ready for trouble. He sent out point men and scouts ahead of the main body of riders, because they were approaching the border between Cerrmor-held and Cantrae-held territory. The precautions paid off with a rather strange prize. On the second day of riding armed, when they were finally getting close to the Eldidd border, the troop stopped for the noon rest in a grassy meadow that had never known plough nor herd. When the point men came back to change the guard, they brought with them a traveller, an unarmed man with rich clothing, a beautiful riding horse, and an elegant pack-mule that had obviously been bred from the best stock. Maddyn was surprised that the poor dolt had survived unrobbed for as long as he had. The young, sandy-haired fellow looked so terrified that Maddyn supposed he was thinking similar thoughts.

‘He says he comes from Dun Deverry,’ the point man said. ‘So we brought him along in case he had any interesting news.’

‘Good,’ Caradoc said. ‘Now look, young fellow, we’re not going to slit your throat or even rob you. Come have a meal with me and Maddyn here.’

With a most discourteous groan, the stranger looked around at the well-armed troop, then sighed in resignation.

‘So I will, then. My name’s … uh … Claedd.’

Caradoc and Maddyn each suppressed a grin at the clumsiness of the lie. When the stranger dismounted, Maddyn saw that he had a club foot, which seemed to ache him after so many days in the saddle. As they shared a meal of flatbread and cheese, the supposed Claedd told them what little he knew about the troop movements around the Holy City. The current rumour was that the northern forces were planning to make a strong strike along the eastern borders of the Cerrmor kingdom.

‘If that’s true,’ Caradoc said thoughtfully, ‘we’ll have no trouble getting a hire in Eldidd. Probably the Eldidd King will want to take the chance to raid into Pyrdon.’

‘Oho!’ Claedd said. ‘Then you’re a free troop! Well, that’s a relief.’

‘Oh, is it now? Most men would think the opposite.’ Caradoc shook his head, as if he were utterly amazed at the innocence of this lad. ‘Well and good, then. Who’s chasing you? It’s safe to tell me. I’ve sunk pretty low, lad, but not so low that I’d turn a man in for the bounty on his head.’

Claedd concentrated on shredding a piece of flatbread into inedible crumbs.

‘You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,’ Caradoc said after a moment. ‘But think about travelling with us. You’ll be a blasted sight safer. Ever had a fancy to see Eldidd?’

‘That’s where I was trying to go, and you’re right enough about it being safer. I’ve never swung a sword in my life. I’m a … uh … a scholar.’

‘Splendid. Maybe I’ll need a letter written some fine day.’

Although Claedd managed a feeble smile at the jest, his face stayed deadly pale. Yet, when the troop rode out, he came with them, riding by himself just behind Otho’s wagon. At the night camp, Maddyn took pity on him and offered to let him share their fire. Although he brought out food from his mule-packs, Claedd ate little of it, merely sat quietly and watched Aethan polishing his sword. When, after the meal, Caradoc strolled over for a chat, Claedd again said little as the captain and the bard talked idly of their plans in Eldidd. Finally, though, at a pause he spoke up.

‘I’ve been thinking about your offer, captain. Could you use a troop chirurgeon? I finished my apprenticeship only a year ago, but I’ve had an awful lot of practice at tending wounds.’

‘By all the ice in all the hells!’ Maddyn said. ‘You’re worth your weight in gold!’

‘Cursed right.’ Caradoc cocked his head to one side and considered the young chirurgeon. ‘Now, I’m not a curious man, usually, and I like to leave my lads their privacy, like, but in your case, I’ve got to ask. What’s a man with your learning doing travelling the long lonely roads like this?’

‘You might as well know the truth. First of all, my name’s Caudyr, and I was at the court in Dun Deverry. I mixed up a few potions and suchlike for some high-born ladies to rid them of … ah well … a spot of … er well … trouble now and again. The word’s leaked out about it in rather a nasty way.’

Caradoc and Aethan exchanged a puzzled glance.

‘He means abortions,’ Maddyn said with a grin. ‘Naught that should vex us, truly.’

‘Might even come in handy, with this pack of dogs I’ve got.’ Caradoc said. ‘Well and good, then, Caudyr. Once you’ve shown me that you can physic a man, you’ll get a full share of our earnings, just like a rider. I’ve discovered that a lord’s chirurgeon tends his lord’s men first and the mercenaries when he has a mind to and not before. I’ve had men bleed to death who would have lived if they’d had the proper attention.’

Idly Maddyn happened to glance Aethan’s way to find him staring at Caudyr in grim suspicion.

‘Up in Dun Deverry, were you?’ Aethan’s voice was a dry, hard whisper. ‘Was one of your high-born ladies Merodda of the Boar?’

In a confession stronger than words, Caudyr winced, then blushed. Aethan got to his feet, hesitated, then took off running into the darkness.

‘What, by the hells?’ Caradoc snapped.

Without bothering to explain, Maddyn got up and followed, chasing Aethan through the startled camp, pounding blindly after him through the moonshot night down to the riverbank. Finally Aethan stopped and let him catch up. They stood together for a long time, panting for breath and watching the silver-touched river flow by.

‘With a bitch like that,’ Maddyn said finally, ‘how would you even know that the babe was yours?’

‘I kept my eye on her like a hawk all winter long. If she’d looked at another man, I’d have killed him, and she knew it.’

With a sigh Maddyn sat down, and after a moment, Aethan joined him.

‘Having a chirurgeon of our own will be a cursed good thing,’ Maddyn said. ‘Can you put up with Caudyr?’

‘Who’s blaming him for one single thing? I wish I could kill her. I dream about it sometimes, getting my hands on her pretty white throat and strangling her.’

Abruptly Aethan turned and threw himself into Maddyn’s arms. Maddyn held him tightly and let him cry, the choking ugly sob of a man who feels shamed by tears.

Two days later the troop crossed the border into Eldidd. At that time, the northern part of the province was nearly a wilderness, forests and wild grasslands broken only by the occasional dun of a minor lord or a village of free farmers. Plenty of the lords would have liked to have hired the troop, because they were in constant danger of raids coming either from the kingdom of Pyrdon to the north or from Deverry to the east. None, however, could pay Caradoc what he considered the troop was worth. With thirty-seven men, their own smith, chirurgeon, and bard, the troop was bigger than the warbands of most of the lords in northern Eldidd. Just when Caradoc was beginning to curse his decision to ride that way, the troop reached the new town of Camynwaen, on the banks of an oddly named river, the El, just at the spot where the even more strangely named Aver Cantariel flows in from the north-west.

Although there had been a farming village on the site for centuries, only twenty years before the gwerbret in Elrydd had decided that the kingdom needed a proper town at the joining of the rivers. Since the war with Pyrdon could flare up at any time, he wanted a staging-ground for troops and a properly defensible set of walls around it. Finding colonists was no problem, because there were plenty of younger sons of noble lords willing to risk a move to gain land of their own, and plenty of bondsmen willing to go with them since they became free men once they left their bound-land. When Caradoc’s troop rode into Camynwaen, they found a decent town of a thousand roundhouses behind high stone walls, turreted with watchtowers.

About a mile away was the stone dun of Tieryn Maenoic, and there Caradoc found the kind of hire he’d been looking for. Although Maenoic received maintenance from the gwerbret to the south, there was a shortage of fighting men in his vast demesne, and he had a private war on his hands. Since the authority of his clan was fairly new, he was always plagued with rebellions. For years now the chief troublemaker had been a certain Lord Pagwyl.

‘And he’s gathered together a lot of bastards like himself,’ Maenoic said. ‘And they claim they’ll ask the gwerbret to give them a tieryn of their own and not submit to me. I can’t stand for it.’

He couldn’t, truly, because standing for it would not only take half his land away but also make him the laughing stock of every man in Eldidd. A stout hard-muscled man, with a thick streak of grey in his raven-dark hair, Maenoic was steaming with fury as he strode back and forth looking over the troop, who were sitting on their horses outside the gates to Maenoic’s dun. Caradoc and Maddyn followed a respectful distance behind while the lord judged the troop’s horses and gear with a shrewd eye.

‘Very well, captain. A silver piece per week per man, your maintenance, and of course I’ll replace any horses that you lose.’

‘Most generous, my lord,’ Caradoc said. ‘For peacetime.’

Maenoic turned to scowl at him.

‘Another silver piece per man for every battle we fight,’ Caradoc went on. ‘And that’s paid for every man who dies, too.’

‘Far too much.’

‘As it pleases Your Lordship. Me and my men can just ride on.’

And over to your enemies, perhaps – the thought hung unspoken between them for a long moment. Finally Maenoic swore under his breath.

‘Done, then. A second silver piece per man for every scrap.’

With an open and innocent smile, Caradoc bowed to him.

Maenoic’s new-built dun was large enough to have two sets of barracks and stables built into the walls – a blessing, because the mercenaries could be well separated from Maenoic’s contemptuous warband. At meals, though, they shared the same set of tables, and the warband made barely tolerable comments about men who fought for money and quite intolerable comments about the parentage and character of such who did so. Between them Caradoc and Maenoic broke up seven different fist-fights in two days before the army was at last ready to ride out.

After he had called in all his loyal allies, Maenoic had over two hundred and fifty men to lead west against his rebels. In the line of march, Caradoc’s troop came at the very end, behind even the supply wagons, and ate dust all day long. At night they made camp by themselves a little way off from the warbands of the noble-born. Caradoc, however, was summoned when the lords held a council of war. He came back to the troop with solid news and gathered them around him to hear it.

‘Tomorrow we’ll see the first scrap. Here’s how things stand, lads. We’re coming to a river, and there’s a bridge there. Maenoic claims the taxes on it, but Pagwyl’s holding out. The scouts say Pagwyl’s going to make a stand to prevent the tieryn from crossing, because once he crosses against Pagwyl’s will, it’s his bridge again in everybody’s eyes. We’ll be leading the charge – of course.’

Everyone nodded, acknowledging that they were, after all, the disposable mercenaries. Maddyn found himself troubled by a strange feeling, a coldness, a heaviness. It took him a long time to admit it, but then he realized that he was quite simply afraid. That night he dreamt of his last charge up in Cantrae and woke soaked with cold sweat. You coward, he told himself; you ugly little coward! The reproach burned in his very soul, but the truth was that he had almost died in that last charge, and now he knew what it felt like to be dying. The fear choked him as palpably as if he’d swallowed a clot of sheep’s wool. What was worst of all was knowing that here was one thing he could never share with Aethan.

All night, all the next morning, the fear festered so badly that by the time the army reached the bridge, Maddyn was hysterically happy that the battle was at hand and soon to be over. He was singing under his breath and whistling in turn when the army crested a low rise and saw, just as they’d expected, Lord Pagwyl and his allies drawn up by the riverbank to meet them. There was a surprise, however, in the men who waited for them: a bare hundred mounted swordsmen eked out by two big squares of common-born spearmen, placed so that they blocked any possible approach to the bridge itself.

‘Oh here,’ said Maddyn, forcing a laugh. ‘Pagwyl was a fool to rebel if that’s all the riders he could scrape together.’

‘Horseshit!’ Caradoc snapped. ‘His lordship knows what he’s doing. I’ve seen fighting like this before, spearmen guarding a fixed position. We’re in for a little gallop through the third hell, lad.’

As Maenoic’s army milled around in confusion, Caradoc led his men calmly up to the front of the line. The enemy had picked a perfect place to stand, a long green meadow in front of the bridge, bordered by the river on one side of their formation and on the other, the broken, crumbling earthwork of some long-gone farmer’s cattle corral. Three rows deep, the spearmen stood shield to shield, the spearheads glittering above the chalk-whitened oval shields. To one side of the shield-wall, the mounted men sat on restless horses, ready to charge in from the side and pin Maenoic’s men between them and the river.

‘Horseshit and a pile of it,’ Caradoc muttered. ‘We can’t wheel round the bastards without falling into the blasted river.’

Maddyn merely nodded, too choked for breath to answer. He was remembering the feel of metal, biting deep into his side. Under him, his horse tossed its head and stamped as if it too were remembering their last charge. When Caradoc trotted off to confer with Maenoic, Aethan pulled up beside Maddyn; he’d already settled his shield over his left arm and drawn a javelin. While he followed the example, Maddyn had to work so hard to keep his horse steady that he suddenly realized that the poor beast did remember that last charge. He had a battle-shy horse under him and no time to change him.

The spearmen began calling out jeers and taunting the enemy for scum on horseback, screaming into the sunlight and the wind that blew the taunts into jagged, incomprehensible pieces of words. Some of Maenoic’s men shouted back, but Caradoc’s troop merely sat on their horses and waited until at last their captain left the lord’s side and jogged back, easy in his saddle, a javelin in his hand.

‘All right, lads. We’re riding.’

There was a gust of laughter in the troop as they jogged forward to join him. Maenoic’s own men pulled in behind, but the rest of the army wheeled off, ready to charge the enemy riders positioned off to the side. With an odd jingling shuffle, like a load of metal wares jouncing in a cart, the army formed up. Caradoc turned in his saddle, saw Maddyn right next to him, and yelled at him over the noise.

‘Get back! I want to hear our bard sing tonight. Get back in the last rank!’

Maddyn had never wanted to follow an order more in his life, but he fought with himself only a moment before he shouted back his answer.

‘I can’t. If I don’t ride this charge, then I’ll never have the guts to ride another.’

Caradoc cocked his head to one side and considered him.

‘Well and good, then, lad. We might all be doing our listening and singing in the Otherlands, anyway.’

Caradoc turned his horse, raised his javelin, then broke into a gallop straight for the enemy lines. With a howl of warcries, the troop burst after him, a ragged race of shrieking men across the meadow. Maddyn saw the waiting infantry shudder in a wave-ripple of fear, but they held.

‘Follow my lead!’ Aethan screamed. ‘Throw that javelin and wheel!’

Closer – a cloud of dust, kicked-up bits and clods of grass – the infantry shoving together behind the line of lime-white shields – then there was a shower of metal as Caradoc and his men hurled javelins into the spearmen. Shields flashed up, caught some of the darts, but there was cursing and screaming as the riders kept coming, throwing, wheeling, peeling off in a long, loose circle. Maddyn heard battle-yells break out behind as the reserve troops charged into Pagwyl’s cavalry. Snorting, sweating, Maddyn’s horse fought for the bit and nearly carried them both into the river. Maddyn drew his sword, slapped the horse with the flat, and jerked its head round to spur it back to the troop.

The first rank of Maenoic’s men were milling blindly, waving swords and shouting, in front of the shield-wall. Caradoc galloped among his troop, yelling out orders to re-form and try a charge from the flank. Maddyn could see that Maenoic’s allies had pushed Pagwyl’s cavalry back to expose the shield-wall’s weakest spot. In a cloud and flurry of rearing horses, the troop pulled round and threw itself forward again. Maddyn lost track of Aethan, who was shoved off to the flank when Maenoic’s men, blindly pulling back to charge again, got themselves mixed up with the charging mercenaries. One or two horses went down, their riders thrown and trampled, before Caradoc sorted out the mess into some rough order. Maddyn found himself in Maenoic’s warband. For one brief moment he could see Caradoc, plunging at the flank of the shield-wall with a mob behind him. Then his own unit rode forward for the charge.

On and on – the shield-wall was trembling, turning towards its beleaguered flank, but it held tight directly ahead of Maddyn. From the men behind him javelins flew. Maddyn’s horse bucked and grabbed for the bit; he smacked it down and kicked it forward. A split-second battle – of nerve, not steel – Maddyn saw the slack-jawed face of a young lad, his hands shaking on his braced spear, his eyes suddenly meeting Maddyn’s as he galloped straight for him. With a shriek the lad dropped his spear and flung himself sideways. As the man next to him fell, cursing and flailing, Maddyn was in. Dimly he saw another horseman to his right. The shield-wall was breaking. Swinging, howling with an unearthly laughter, Maddyn shoved his horse among the panicked spearmen. Ducking and bobbing in the saddle like a water bird, he slashed out and down, hardly seeing or caring whom or what he was hitting. A spearhead flashed his way. He caught it barely in time and heard his shield crack, then shoved it away as he twisted in the saddle to meet another flash of metal from the right. Always he laughed, the cold bubble of a berserker’s hysteria that he could never control in battle.

His horse suddenly reared, screaming in agony. As they came down, the horse staggered, its knees buckling, but it couldn’t fall. All around was a press – panicked infantry, trapped cavalry, horses neighing and men shouting as they shoved blindly at one another. Desperately Maddyn swung out, cutting a spearman across the face as his dying horse staggered a few steps forward. All at once the line broke, a mob-panicked scuffle of men, throwing spears down, screaming, pushing their fellows aside as they tried to get away from the slashing horsemen. Maddyn’s mount went down. He had barely time to free his feet from the stirrups before they hit the ground hard, a tangle of man and horse. Maddyn’s shield fell over his face; he could neither see nor breathe, only scramble desperately to get up before a retreating spearman stuck him like a pig. On his knees at last, he flung up his shield barely in time to parry a random thrust. The force of the blow cracked the shield through and sent him reeling backwards to his heels. He saw the spearman laugh as he raised the spear again, both hands tight on the shaft to drive it home for the kill; then a javelin flew into the press and caught the man full in the back. With a scream, he pitched forward, and the men around him ran.

Staggering, choking on dust and his own eerie laughter, Maddyn got to his feet. Around him the field was clearing as the horsemen charged the fleeing infantry and rode them down, slashing in blind rage at men who could no longer defend themselves. Maddyn heard someone yell his name and turned to see Aethan, riding for him at a jog.

‘Did you throw that dart?’ Maddyn called out.

‘Who else? I’ve heard you laugh before, and I knew that cat’s squalling meant you were in trouble. Get up behind me. We’ve won this scrap.’

All at once, Maddyn’s battle-fever deserted him. He felt pain, bad pain, cracked ribs burning like fire. Gasping for breath, he grabbed at Aethan’s stirrup to steady himself, but the movement made the pain stab him into crying out. With a foul oath, Aethan dismounted and caught him round the shoulders, a well-meant gesture that made Maddyn yelp again.

‘Hard fall,’ Maddyn gasped.