“No, I mean... yes... but since he was born,” Mordraud replied, reacting to her unfamiliar hand with goose bumps. “He’s always been really weak.”
“And why are you dragging him around the woods? Don’t you have a home?”
“No!” he burst out vehemently. “No, now we don’t.”
“I see...” the woman murmured. “And you wanted to get to Eld, is that right? Why?”
The butcher who’d been the first to help Gwern cursed in a string of atrociously plausible obscenities.
“War orphans – it’s always the same story! Damn Cambria! That bunch of bastardly swine!”
“I was hoping to find work in the fief. I’m able-bodied and I’m ready for any task...” replied Mordraud, trying to make himself heard over Brenno’s torrent of abuse.
“Well then, I’ll take you to Eld. I live there and I’ve got a cart. Perhaps... there might be a job for you. Are you really ready for anything?”
Mordraud pulled himself up straight and tried to seem confident. The woman laughed and nodded in conviction. A hint of involuntary affection lit up her eyes.
“Yes...” Larois exclaimed, chuckling. “I think you can be of help, to the fief and to the rebels.”
Mordraud felt a lurch of joy rise inside. Perhaps he was moving closer to his goal. He was already on his way to Eld and its army. And the war would bring money, respect, and many other occasions for venting his rage.
The tremble in his arm gave a somewhat worrying last shudder, and then faded entirely.
***
Travelling in a cart was fun. The wheels turned, grating on the dirt track; the barrels creaked, rocking in the open back. Gwern was feeling much better after Larois’s treatment, perhaps even better than before the little episode. His sleep had returned regular and deep, to the point that Mordraud even slightly envied him. He’d been suffering from insomnia for years – an insidious ailment that never left him in peace, not even when he was utterly exhausted. The valley slipped away behind them. The road curved back to heading south. At night they slept in the uncovered cart, hiding it among the first trees they came across.
“How long to go?”
“It’s not far now. We might see the town walls before evening.”
“Are we that close?!” Mordraud burst out in surprise. He was seated next to Larois while Gwern slept on a bag of onions in the rear. It was halfway through the third day’s journeying. “I thought that the valley was further away... There seems to be no war here.”
“And why’s that, do you reckon?”
The question threw him completely. He actually knew very little about the war, and all his information had filtered through his father, when they still spoke to each other. Cavalry charges, thickets of clashing spears and swords, lethal clouds of arrows. But nothing about what happened among ordinary folk.
“Perhaps Cambria’s focusing on other areas... Or it’s not interested in this tiny scarcely populated valley.”
“I see you were born in the woods, my boy,” chuckled Larois, bitterly. “It’s thanks to Eldain that the Empire still hasn’t managed to get it hands on this tiny valley, as you call it. The fighting west of here is among the front’s most violent.”
“Why?! Why should that be?”
“What questions you ask! Even a simple woman like me can understand certain things!”
Mordraud reddened, but didn’t give up. He’d have to start somewhere if he wanted to learn.
“If the Imperial Army succeeded in penetrating the valley, it would be protected on the north and south by the hills. It wouldn’t be long before it could attack the fiefdoms beyond Eld – members of the rebels’ Alliance. It would be the end, an immediate and hopeless end!”
“Yes, I hadn’t thought of that...” he muttered, enticed by the strategic reasoning. “So the valley’s essential for Eld, like all the area’s other natural barriers! Of course! I was silly not to work it out for myself...”
“You shouldn’t speak about the war like that. It’s a horrible topic for a child.”
“But... why?!”
“You smile as you think about natural defences, barriers, strategies... But heaps of people die carrying out those plans, did you know?” Larois broke out, shaking her head with chagrin. “You remind me of my son, when he listened to talk of warriors and battles...”
“Have you got a son?”
“I had one.”
“And what happened?” Mordraud asked, without stopping to think.
“He died in battle.”
“Ah...” was the only word he could manage.
“His father decided to follow him in the war, when Eldain called up all the fiefdoms’ men to defend a crumbling border. Just think, it was right here in the west. Ten years have passed since then. He wasn’t much older than you – even his helmet was too big, and wobbled on his head, like a soup bowl...”
“And his father?” Mordraud inquired.
“He died too.”
“That’s awful, I’m sorry...”
“What for?!” Larois blurted out.
“But... well...”
“He was asking for it, that fool Nardic. At least he died before he could see my little Nardo fall... Just think, I’d even accepted his stupid fixation for that name... He insisted his son’s name should show his family’s roots, just like the nobility, like Eldain! What an idiot.”
“But wasn’t he... your husband?!” Mordraud asked in amazement.
“Yep, but he was an idiot too. Nardo followed him like an idol. And so they died together.”
“Near here?”
“Yes, in defending the entrance to the valley. At least they managed it. This wretched war of grief.”
“But it’s right for Eldain to stand up to Cambria...”
“Right my foot! Right and wrong are complex, hazy concepts...” Larois declared, banging her hand on the cart’s planking. Gwern turned over, chewing thin air.
“What is it, brother?”
“Nothing. Go back to your sleep. We’re nearly there. Very nearly.”
“Wonderful...” he murmured, shifting on the makeshift mattress.
“Eldain’s trying to defend our lands – I should be grateful. Yet I find it very hard.”
Mordraud fidgeted in his place, excited at the idea that he’d gladly throw himself into the fray, and as soon as possible. He’d despised the war as a child, since it was the cause of his father’s absence. Before the thumpings and the beatings.
Before that accursed tremor in his arm.
His brother was making a good career for himself, after deserting them. In Cambria – the city strangling the entire East with its endless war. Was Larois right? Mordraud shut out the doubt without hesitation. It was easy to believe in the simple convictions he’d firmly erected around himself. He could do little else than maul and claw – like an animal taunted by its owner – to vent the anger eroding him. The culprits had to die. His father had been the first. Dunwich would be the next.
“... Are you listening to me?!”
Larois’s voice brought him back to reality. Mordraud looked around, bewildered, attempting to remember where he was.
“I said we’ll soon be stopping up. I need to stretch my stiff back – I can’t hold out any more.”
“But what work have you got for my brother and me?”
“You’ll see. It means spending a lot of time with the soldiers, and if I understand right, you won’t mind that at all.”
Brilliant, thought Mordraud. Shield-bearer, stable-boy. Something of the kind, he told himself. Any work connect with the troops was fine.
“I can’t wait to get started!”
“Good. That’s the right spirit,” replied Larois. “See, I told you we’d be home before nightfall. Look!”
Mordraud followed Larois’s outstretched arm, till his eyes fell on the blurred mass of the largest building he’d ever seen. Ten, even a hundred, times larger than his house, as tall as the sky, and weighing down on the hill, flattening it
s peak. Eld’s fortress. The heart of the rebellion against the Cambrian Empire.
“Wake up, Gwern! Look over there!”
“Where?! Ah...” His brother was left gaping, still half-dozy. “It’s a real castle! I didn’t think they were so... huge.”
“But where have you two been living?!” Larois laughed, bending over the cart seat.
“Those are just the walls... If they seem enormous... you should see Cambria.”
Neither of them was paying attention to her words. They were too busy contemplating the sight, submerged in their daydreams.
Bustle, children and playing for Gwern.
Opportunities, ambitions and revenge for Mordraud.
X
“Boy! We need you down here!”
The veteran coughed and wheezed, grasping at his chest with one hand. The surrounding din was unbearable – a storm of voices and shouting that vibrated in the air together with the sound of metal chinking against metal.
“Shift yourself, boy! Hurry up!”
Mordraud sidestepped two men slumped on the ground, and avoided the outstretched arm attempting to grab him. Moving around was almost impossible in the midst of the crush. At last he managed to reach the trooper who, without thanking him, seized the balm he’d made such an effort to carry safe and sound through the bedlam.
“Ohhh... damn chicken bone!” he yelled, thumping the table with the beer mug he’d just emptied. “I was about to choke! Thanks, boy. You were quick.”
The inn was more crowded than a battlefield. The pewter tankards were being emptied at amazing speed. The kitchen couldn’t keep up with the orders for the house’s famous chicken and onion stew. Mordraud wiped his forehead with his already drenched shirtsleeve and helped a couple of soldiers back up onto their benches. There were too many drunks to count. Finding a sober man was an impossible task.
“Mordraud, another trayful!”
Gwern appeared out of the kitchen barely managing to hold a huge wooden board heaped with dishes. Another round of stew and mugs of beer. Larois was very proud of those dishes. She carved them herself, out of the stale bread. The alarming thing was that she kept re-using them, leaving them to dry off in the sun for a few hours after just rinsing them.
“But doesn’t anyone complain? It’s still bread... It gets soggy...” Mordraud asked one day, while watching the woman, with mild distaste, as she scraped out the bowls with a metal rasp.
“Our customers are not very distinguished,” she answered, chuckling. “They’ve just done six months on the front – eating off the same plate is the last of their worries.”
Mordraud took the tray from his brother’s arms and set out on another awful round. The soup was boiling. Its lapping was scorching his fingers, and mixing with the cool beer. He had yet another very long day ahead.
Larois had tricked him, but only partially. She’d promised him and his brother a job and a place they could stay for a while. She’d welcomed them with a small room in her home, which stood right above the sole, large, tavern in Eldain’s fief. She’d told him he’d see a lot of the soldiers, and that he’d be working for them. That was all true. But Mordraud was not expecting to have to play the skivvy in an inn. He’d dreamt about serving a cavalryman, or helping the rebels at the front, even if only by digging, carrying water, or a thousand other things all much closer to his goal.
“What are you complaining about?” the woman always replied. “Didn’t I tell you you’d be helping the soldiers? That’s how you help them! Bringing them drink!”
Larois was the landlady of the inn – a large hall with its wooden walls covered in knick-knacks pegged up at random, painted plates, farming tools, spears and swords pilfered at war... She’d inherited the place from her husband, who used to work with her. She didn’t have the heart to shut it down, as it was the only distraction for the men returning from the front, and so she’d struggled on alone for years. Until she came across two new helpers.
Mordraud served at the tables while Gwern lent a hand in the kitchen. Too small to be at the stove and too weedy to haul up the supplies from the cellar, he did all he could to make her work easier, and Larois was more than glad to have a child to keep her company. Gwern seemed much better with her around. His fits weren’t so frequent. He had a smile on his face and had found a bit of energy.
The work in the inn came and went in waves, following the rhythm of the soldiers returning from the front. Mordraud took advantage of the quiet days to go wandering along the streets in the fief, or to train alone behind the house where Larois attended to her florid vegetable garden. The town was much smaller than it had seemed to him at first. A village squeezed between mighty walls permanently guarded over by lookouts, and Eldain’s castle. Workshops, stores, smithies and stables – everything was squashed inside that stone ring. The houses were juxtaposed to the walls, one row after another, small but wretchedly adequate for the lean families living there. Eld was paying a high price for a war that gave no signs of subsiding in ferocity. Everybody in the town had lost someone, whether he be father, husband or son – and often more than one. The fields were tended by the women and the elderly, watched over by guards for fear of bandit raids. Many residents had not forsaken their farms, thus exposing themselves to constant danger. But Eld’s people were tough, and unaccustomed to compromise. They had no intention of giving an inch of what had been theirs by right for centuries.
Mordraud was astonished by how many people could live so packed together. At times, as he walked briskly past the shops, where the women came to buy what little food still reached the fief, he felt the irresistible urge to escape to quieter lanes. The crowds terrified him. Instead, Gwern seemed to feel at ease among all those adults, who were always kind to him. A hunk of bread, a couple of slices of salted ham, even some of the season’s fruit. He was always holding something when he came back to the inn to start working. They would sleep in the same bed at night, worn out by the day’s hectic pace, and they’d vie to tell each other about the most interesting things they’d seen. Gwern would always win. And if Mordraud hadn’t stopped him, he’d have been able to go on all night.
“There’s that butcher, know the one I mean? Thin and lanky, with those bulging eyes... He’s like that because he used to go with tarts. So a woman behind the counter at the baker’s was saying... Know the one? That tall one who’s always got a red neck... He drinks all day but he’s a good man really. His wife’s always telling her friends. One of them’s... blonde, short... you often see her in the square...”
Mordraud would nod, trying not to lose track. Impossible. His brother was worse than an old maid. He would listen, and chat to everyone: he spent his time with Eld’s people. He’d been a different person since they’d arrived at the fiefdom. Gwern was growing up in the right place.
“Are you listening? You have to pay attention here... it gets complicated. The baker’s wife’s friend... just think! She’s having an affair with a foot-soldier in the army, who’s far younger! They do it in secret, behind the stables south of the walls. Unbelievable, don’t you think?!”
“Huh... what?”
“Well, he’s much younger than her! I suppose it’s like, um...” Gwern whispered so as not to be heard by anyone. “...It’s like if you and Larois did it together!”
“Gwern, do you know what to do it or not do it with someone means?”
The boy considered it, and Mordraud sniggered, letting out a sigh.
“It means they kiss each other, they touch each other. Basically... they do certain things...”
“THAT?!”
“Exactly.”
Mordraud had the distinct feeling he’d revealed to him the biggest secret in the world. Sometimes he forgot his brother was ten years younger than him, and was still little more than a child.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Look, tomorrow go to Larois and tell her: I want to do it with you.”
Gwern shook his head in bafflement. “What’re you
saying?! She’s old!”
“Well, you said I could do it with her...! So why don’t you? What d’you say?”
“But I didn’t know! No, no! You couldn’t do it with her, I’m sure you couldn’t... And let’s stop saying these things – it’s all just coming out of my mouth without me wanting it to!”
“Okay... So, where were you?”
Gwern got back to telling his stories. How much time had gone by since that night with The Stranger, Mordraud thought. He was losing track. He’d not forgotten even a moment of it, and he was sure that Gwern too was not free of that awful burden. But his brother was doing all he could to leave the past behind him, and he was managing wonderfully. Instead, he was making a much worse job of it.
“...What was it like before?”
Mordraud realised he hadn’t listened to even a word. “Sorry... what?!”
“Mum and dad... What were they like before?”
The question made his blood run cold. “Why on earth did you start thinking about that?!”
“You were muttering mum’s name while I was talking.”
How could he have been such a twit, he wondered in amazement. He didn’t feel at all ready to talk to Gwern about their family.
“Let’s see... When before? Ten years ago? Twenty?”
“No, before I was born,” replied Gwern, a serious look on his face.
“You’re not thinking...?”
“Well, perhaps,” said Gwern, stumbling a bit on his words. “Maybe... it was my fault mum got ill, and so dad...”
“NEVER SAY THAT AGAIN!”
Mordraud shouted without realising, springing up from the bed. He covered his left hand at once, to conceal the shaking. “You’re not to blame if mum fell ill. It was dad’s fault... all his fault. And Dunwich’s too, because he didn’t come home to help.”
“But mum once told me our brother was so clever everyone wanted him in Cambria... And that he sent lots of money home, with doctors for me and her...”
“And what good did that do?! Is mum still alive? Are you well?!”
“Mordraud, don’t yell at me... You’re frightening me...” mumbled Gwern, distressed.
Mordraud, Book One Page 15