by Jude Fisher
‘Give up this foolish idea, man. Join my expedition to the Far West instead. At least we know it exists! And in the meanwhile, enjoy the Fair. Are you trading?’
‘Sardonyx, sire.’
‘Good, good.’
Aran watched the King’s eyes lose focus again, as if he were terminally stupefied. ‘So,’ he said at last, rather stiffly, feeling the rage and disappointment welling up inside him. ‘I’ll take my leave, sire.’
Ravn’s head came up. He saw the desperation in the other man’s eyes and smiled. ‘Not so fast, Aran Aranson. Now that you have had the benefit of my wisdom, at least do me the courtesy of giving me your own good judgement.’
Aran stopped in his tracks, the old fury rising.
‘Who do you think I should take to wife, man? It’s a tedious business, this political marriage thing, and the women they offer me are all so dull. Moreover, it seems everyone who holds a view has an axe to grind.’
‘I have neither view, nor axe.’
Ravn shrugged. ‘You must have some thought, surely?’
There was a commotion outside the tent, the shuffling of feet and muffled voices as if someone were trying to manoeuvre something awkward through a narrow space. The Lords Stormway, Southeye and Forstson had returned, it seemed, with a cask as big as an ox.
King Ravn leapt up, filled with sudden energy. ‘My stallion’s blood! Excellent!’
The lords manhandled the cask with difficulty through the tent’s opening, where it thudded onto the ground with such force that the table bounced, and all the charts and maps – no longer carefully anchored by their stones – cascaded onto the floor with a clatter. Southeye, who owned many of them – charts made in his grandfather’s day and earlier – fell to his knees and began to gather them frantically.
Aran, seeing his chance to leave in the midst of this chaos, took it, stepping round the monstrous cask and past the lords, and headed for the doorway without making his farewells.
‘Which one shall I choose, Westlander?’ the King called at his departing back. ‘Shall I take a good northern girl or a strange southern one?’
‘Take a troll to wife, for all I care,’ came Aran Aranson’s reply, low but entirely audible, as he disappeared through the door-flap.
Nine
Deals
It was early evening by the time the Vingo brothers found their way to the blade-stall, though they had set out some hours before. Tanto had been diverted by jewellery and clothes stalls, by innumerable stands selling araque, spiced wines and nuts baked into cakes that made you oddly lightheaded, and finally by a group of exotic dancers travelling with the nomads, but purporting to come from the southern desert tribes (and everyone knew the strange practices they specialised in). Wearing nothing but a thousand thin strips of cunningly tied leather, which they invited onlookers (for a small consideration) to untie and unwind as they spun and leapt like dervishes, these hard-muscled, hard-eyed women had mesmerised Tanto for the last hour, and Saro was getting seriously infuriated. Added to which, he had found that walking through crowds now carried its own difficulties. He had bumped against one man’s shoulder, and been assailed by a sudden terrible anxiety about his ailing wife’s health; another man, watching the desert women, had brushed his arm, and from him Saro had learned the lewdest possible thoughts of what might be done with a naked dancer, some strips of leather and a group of men. Saro had stepped aside briskly, feeling filthy himself, only to be nudged by another man feeling wretchedly nauseous. At last, exhausted by these unwished-for intrusions, he had pulled Tanto away by the arm.
‘The swordplay starts at quarter-sun tomorrow: do you want to get your dagger or not? Besides which, if you spend any more on the dancers you’ll have nothing left to spend.’
Tanto shrugged him off angrily. ‘If I’m soon to be wedded I deserve a bit of entertainment first.’
‘But I thought you wanted this marriage?’
‘I want the castle. I want the title. I want to be my own man at last. And if I have to marry some lord’s tight-arsed daughter to get it all, I will. What I don’t want is my prissy little brother making my ears ache in the middle of a crowd.’
Saro sighed, tempted to turn around and head for the family pavilion and leave Tanto to stagger drunkenly round the fairground on his own for the rest of the night. But the truth of it was, he’d be glad to see big brother wed and off the estate, and the sooner the better, for the sake of himself, the slaves, the cats, the horses, the surrounding wildlife . . .
‘We passed a blade-stall back there and on the left, between the sheepskin-seller and the ropemaker.’
And so here they were now, peering over the shoulders of a number of customers clustered around a stall offering a large array of beautifully-crafted weapons shown off to their best advantage against a cloth of rich blue velvet. It was the velvet, in fact, that had first caught Tanto’s eye. It was the girl behind the stall who had caught Saro’s.
She was tall and wiry, with bare arms in which each muscle was clearly defined as she lifted the weapons and passed them, pommel-first, to interested buyers. Her face, downcast as she pointed out the intricate inlays and forged patterns in the blades, was mobile and intelligent; her nose was long, her cheekbones sharp and her eyebrows like the wings of a kestrel – tawny-dark, and up-tilted. But that hair! It was as red as the embers in a dying fire, but a fire that had been carelessly kicked over and trampled by a dozen feet. Locks of it fell this way and that, and much of it stood on end, as if someone had taken the sheep-shears to her. It was the hair of a kitchen-lad, a stablehand: a street urchin. And the tunic she wore – grubby boiled leather mottled with foodstains and seasalt, and clearly both too short in the leg and too tight under the arms – served only to emphasise the image of chaos. Who would employ such a creature to show such expensive wares? The weapons were clearly of the finest order: even from where he stood, Saro could tell from the way the would-be customers handled them that the swords were perfectly weighted, the daggers deadly sharp. And yet she spoke with some authority, and clearly knew enough to answer the keen questions that came her way. She bent to retrieve a carved wooden scabbard from a box on the ground, and Saro was treated to a view of smooth, tanned thigh that had his heart beating like a trapped rabbit’s. As she straightened up again, she caught him staring. Their eyes met – hers mocking and with a hint of laughter in them that suggested she knew his thoughts entirely – and he felt his own go wide. Something about this girl, something nagged at him. He searched those grey-blue eyes for a clue, but now she was talking to a huge man at the other end at the stall about the knotwork that had been incorporated into the design of the sword he was interested in. It was shorter and broader than a Forent blade, heavier than a southern sabre, and in the man’s big, scarred hands it looked entirely lethal.
Saro leaned closer to catch their words.
‘And this,’ she was saying, ‘is the Dragon of Wen.’ She pointed to an intricate sweep of silver that curled about the hilt. ‘See, this is his tail, wrapped around his opponent, the Snowland Wolf, and his wings here and here, braced along the guards.’
The grizzled man bent his head and traced the pattern approvingly.
‘And then his head comes right up into the pommel: I countersunk the red gem – see, there – for his eye so that it would feel smooth in the hand. See what you think.’
The fighter hefted the sword in both hands to feel the balance of it, then stepped backward and made some complicated passes with it. Folk moved aside to give him room. Despite his age and his great size, he was remarkably nimble on his feet: he danced to his right and lunged, fell back with a supple twist of the spine and brought the sword about in a sheeny arc so that the blade came cutting down through the falling twilight in what in combat would likely have been a killing blow.
‘It’s a beauty, Katla Aransen,’ he conceded. ‘The best I’ve tried.’ He handed it to the woman who stood beside him: no wife, this, but a tough-looking islander with a square c
hin and skin the colour of seasoned pine. She wore the same outlandish gear as her companion: a jerkin of leather and mail, bright metals discs interspersed with dull iron, strung across the torso. She wore three knives in her crossbelt, and another strapped to her thigh. A sword was slung across her back. ‘What do you make of it, Mam?’
The woman took the blade from him, switched it from hand to hand, then lifted it closer to examine the knotwork. ‘Very fine,’ she pronounced at last. ‘Very fine, Joz.’
‘Aye, it’s a beautiful thing,’ he said, taking it back from her, ‘and hard as adamant. You’ve outdone yourself, Katla. Light it is, and keener of edge than any of your competitors’ weaponry. Makes your fingers tingle, too. You sure you’ve not been using magic in the forging?’ He grinned at her.
Katla grinned back. She shook her head. ‘Falko, he uses whale oil for the quenching, and Trello Longhorn swears he uses blood, though I know different. Me, I have my own method,’ Katla said, tapping the side of her nose. She laughed. ‘I’m not sure I’d call it magic, though.’
Saro gaped. The girl – Katla – had made these weapons? Surely he had misheard?
But Tanto was way ahead of him.
‘Hey, you, yes, you! Are you a woman, or a northern troll, to be claiming to have forged these weapons?’ He stared around at the onlookers, eyes wide and slightly unfocused. ‘Women can’t make swords: it’d be like—’ he searched doggedly for an analogy ‘—like men embroidering smallclothes!’
A guffaw from the back of the crowd, followed by a certain amount of shuffling as folk got out of Tanto’s way.
Saro could smell the araque fumes coming off his brother. He looked at the old fighter and his companions: the woman, two other tall men who looked hard as iron, and a small round one who looked bored and alarmingly distracted. They might once have been Eyran in origin, but their gear hinted at a dozen foreign influences; and to have a fighting woman with them, that was an oddity in itself. Sell-swords, then, and probably thoroughly dangerous. He held his breath, but the one the woman had called Joz just stood there grinning, watching Katla, his hand at his belt.
Katla’s eyes narrowed dangerously. ‘As I’d heard it,’ she said tightly, ‘in the south embroidering smallclothes is all the men are good for.’
A great bellow of laughter this time, and not just from the mercenaries.
‘No need to fight your battles for you, eh, girl?’ said Joz.
‘Got her mother’s tongue on her, has Katla Aransen,’ said the tall, bearded man beside him.
‘Aye, I recall feeling the sharp edge of Bera Rolfsen’s tongue a time or two in my youth!’
‘That was how you lost your hand, eh, Knobber?’
‘Nay, that was to some dog of an Istrian not much older than this young whelp at the battle for Hedera Port.’
Tanto, somewhat lost for words, was reduced to sneering, but luckily the sell-swords were in a good mood. The tall man called Joz started to haggle with Katla on the price of the blade, until at last she brought out a fine leather scabbard lined with oiled wool and sealed the deal with it. The old fighter counted a stream of coins into her hands, which Katla immediately transferred into an iron box behind the stall, looking immensely pleased with her sale.
With the purchase concluded, the other buyers began to drift away, until only the two Istrians were left behind.
Tanto, however, started to fiddle in a desultory fashion with some of the decorated daggers near the front of the display. ‘A child’s paring knife,’ he declared disparagingly of the first he examined. ‘Cheap rubbish.’
Katla cast him an unfriendly look, then, deliberately ignoring him, began to pack the larger items away. Clearly it was the end of the trading day: the light was fading and she had just these two idiots left to deal with. Not much chance of a major sale now, particularly to a callow, loud-mouthed youth who couldn’t tell the difference between a glaive and a toothpick.
Tanto stared at the back of her head, annoyed at her obvious dismissal of him. He picked two daggers up and started to tap the edge of one on the edge of the other, gently at first, then harder and harder, like a wilful child smashing its toys together. The metal rang out, clear and true. Saro nudged him.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Testing the blade,’ Tanto answered sulkily, staring at Katla’s turned back. ‘No point shelling out for a weapon that might shatter on me in the final.’
Katla whirled around and stared at him. ‘You’ve made the finals of the swordplay?’ Astonished contempt sharpened the mellow vowels of the Old Tongue.
Tanto raised an eyebrow. ‘I’d soon take out that old fool,’ he said, indicating the northman who bought the sword and was now tarrying at the ropemaker’s stall.
Katla laughed. ‘Joz Bearhand? I truly doubt it! He’s fought his way around the world and back again, that one. You wouldn’t stand a minnow’s chance. Look at the pair of you,’ she included Saro in her gaze, then reached quickly across the stall and caught each of them by the hand, turning their forearms this way and that as she scrutinised their dark skin. ‘Not a scar on either of you. Never seen a day’s genuine action in your lives.’
Saro was swept through by a wave of warmth: cheerful good humour filled him, the confidence of a young woman who felt at home in her hale body, unperturbed by the brags and threats of a drunken youth, with the muscle born of hard work in the forge and years of cliff-climbing to see her through. He’d never have the nerve to do what she had done. A sudden vivid, unforgettable image jarred itself into Saro’s mind.
‘It was you,’ he breathed, pulling away from the northern girl’s disturbing touch. ‘You I saw up on the Rock—’ And then he stopped, aghast.
Time slowed. Saro watched the blood drain from Katla’s face; and saw Tanto’s dawning realisation. He could even tell the exact moment when his brother remembered the bounty that had been offered that morning for the perpetrator’s capture; before Tanto started to shout.
‘Guards! Here!’
And then Saro hit him. It was a movement so reflexive, so intuitive that his fist connected with the side of his brother’s jaw with unerring, astounding force. Tanto dropped like a stone.
Katla came round the stall at a run. She stared at Saro, then down at his brother, who lay as if poleaxed, arms flung wide, one hand still grasping the dagger he had been toying with. His jaw had slipped to one side. Saro wondered, with a moment’s profoundly guilty pleasure, whether he had broken it. Several folk looked round from other stalls at the commotion, saw Tanto lying on the ground and his brother smiling, and drifted back to their conversations.
‘Why did you do that?’ Katla asked flatly, her grey eyes almost black with some unreadable emotion.
Saro regarded her gravely. ‘I— I don’t know. It just seemed to happen.’ He paused, then poked his brother with a careful toe, but there was no response. ‘It was you, wasn’t it? Up on the Rock?’ he asked softly. ‘Though your hair was long then.’
Katla gave him a knowing look. ‘You’re an Istrian,’ she stated grimly. ‘I’m hardly going to admit it to you.’
‘I am. But I’m not the most devout believer.’ And as he said it, he knew it to be true. He remembered long mornings under the instruction of the priests, harsh in their black robes, quick with a rod. He remembered their grave intonations of the observances, the dire warnings of the torment that awaited those who displeased Falla, or even her blasted cat. How could he believe their lurid stories, all those grim threats? Why should a volcano erupt just because you hadn’t made the correct sacrifices to a deity? Why should your house burn down because you had made an offensive remark? He’d never seen a volcano; but he’d seen enough fire to know it was a natural force, not some magical property; and as for Falla herself: how could he believe in something he’d never seen with his own eyes? The worship of the Goddess had never meant more to him that an excuse for punishment, for control; a way of keeping you in line. Suddenly, faced with this new actuality, this possibility o
f mad, unnecessary death, it all came into clear focus. ‘To give someone to the fires for climbing a rock, it’s . . . well, stupid, barbaric’
‘Would they really do it?’ Her face was curious, intent.
Saro laughed. ‘Oh yes, in an instant. It’s a cruel religion. It thrives on suffering.’
Katia was indignant. ‘But all I did was climb a rock: no harm in that. Besides, this land was ours, and not so long ago: in my great-great-grandfather’s day, and before him for generation upon generation. It was Eyran territory, the Moonfell Plain, the Skarn Mountains, the Golden River all the way to Talsea. Your people stole it from us, drove the settlers off their land, murdered and raped anyone not quick enough to run. Or made them into slaves to work for their bloody Empire. It’s not forgotten, you know, even now.’ She gave him an angry glance.
‘I know. The last war’s not so long past. My father fought in it.’
‘And mine.’
‘My grandfather died.’
‘So did mine.’
She barked out a laugh then, and he noticed how long and sharp-looking were her dog-teeth, how like a wild animal she could look when animated thus. ‘So who’s to says it’s Falla’s Rock anyway? If it’s anyone’s, it’s Sur’s. We call it Sur’s Castle.’
‘That’s just as bad, though, isn’t it? That’s just substituting one god for another.’
‘At least ours doesn’t demand we kill people in his name.’
Saro shrugged. ‘Fair point.’
Katla smiled. It changed the whole shape of her face, he saw, and the colour of her eyes. She looked less . . . wolfish. Then she leaned forward and gripped him by the arm again, and again a wave of heat travelled through him. This time, however, it was not just the gratitude of the girl he felt, but a heat all his own, spreading quickly up through his abdomen and into his chest.
‘Thank you for not giving me up,’ she said simply. ‘Tell me your name. I like to know whose debt I’m in.’