At the foot of an old gnarled tree, Dunwich began digging with his bare hands, shaking his head to disperse the sound. Every colour went back to its place, and his eyes reappeared in their sockets. There was no need to burrow for long. His fingertips hit the unpleasant sensation of touching something soggy and putrid.
It was his mother’s leg.
Dunwich fell backwards and stammered out a choked cry.
***
“DAMN YOU! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!”
The horse was galloping so fast its long legs seemed to barely touch the paving stones covering the road. The hills, the forest and the front were now all behind him. He couldn’t remember a moment of his hasty retreat. He only knew he’d yelled curses laden with caustic rage, and he’d never stopped to rest. The animal was wheezing desperately, with its heart close to the end. Dunwich yanked on the reins with even more force.
“I know it was you... you vile bastard!”
He’d been expecting to find that his family had perished in the flames or beneath the house collapsing on top of them, and he was ready to bear this. But what he’d unearthed went far beyond even his blackest dread.
His father’s body had been riddled with stab wounds, score upon score of gashes inflicted by an unsteady but brutal hand. His mother could never have done something of the kind. And Gwern was but a child.
Mordraud.
“Why did you do it? WHY?!”
Eglade had died from fear and hardship. Varno had been murdered. The house he’d been born in no longer existed.
Dunwich grabbed the horse’s head, bawling a short angry and unkind tune in its ear. The animal whinnied desperately and, drooling copiously from its open mouth, sped up even more, well beyond its capability.
He had to find Mordraud.
***
“Fancy a glass of wine? There are some dry biscuits too, that the cook made yesterday...”
“Mmm, why not?!”
“I’ll see to it.”
Mordraud got up from his soft armchair, and stretched his legs after yawning. The reading room was warm and pleasantly scented by a vase of fresh flowers – a subtle, sleepy fragrance. Deanna spent most of her time in that room, not even leaving it for lunch occasionally. Then Mordraud would sit with her on the broad windowsill, which overlooked the villa’s rear courtyard and the house roofs stretching as far as the walls south of the fief. They ate with their plates in their hands, like at an outdoor party. When Adraman was at home they would eat together at the table in the dining room. Mordraud would wait in respectful silence for the moment when Deanna grew tired of conversing inattentively with her husband, and would then follow her to her beloved little room.
The first few months with her hadn’t been easy. Deanna was used to ordering people about, and Mordraud hated being summoned for every slightest whim.
‘Mordraud, tell me the story of Cambirian again,’ or ‘Mordraud, read me that tale about the sorceress Isella while I do my hair.’
Or perhaps, ‘Mordraud, go into town and buy me some raisin biscuits, and get a bottle of sweet wine too.’
‘Mordraud do this, Mordraud do that...’ was the refrain wearing thin his patience. He’d already passed his eighteenth birthday and was almost the same age as her, but his childlike appearance condemned him to being little more than a page-boy or, even worse, a wet-nurse. Sometimes Deanna would even ask him to tell her a story at bedtime, and Mordraud had to cope with the worry of having Adraman burst into the bedroom, furious at his wife’s lack of respect.
Spring brought with it yet another season of fighting, and most of the fiefdom’s soldiers left to be stationed along the border. Adraman had gone without even saying goodbye to him, after a nasty row with Deanna. Mordraud heard everything from his room, even though it was on the other side of the house.
“Why do you treat me this way?! I don’t deserve all this!” Adraman had yelled, more in pain than anger.
“What right do you have to demand things of me? You spend months away from home, and you expect me to be awaiting your return with open arms, or rather... with open legs?!”
Deanna didn’t hesitate in answering back to her husband. It was almost always Adraman who had to bow his head and accept in silence. But that time he conveyed no intention of backing down.
“You have to show me some respect, Deanna!” he answered, raising his voice. “You can’t even imagine how men usually treat their wives!”
Mordraud had come out to hear better. He was hiding at the bottom of the stairs, ready to slip away at the first sign of danger.
“Ah really?! So you want to toss me on the bed and screw me, do you? Want to punch me in the face to bring me round to order?! Look, I’m in my dressing gown already! Look here... It would take you just a moment to rip it off me.”
An unnatural silence had descended on the house, as if the argument had never taken place. But it didn’t last long.
A thump, and then the sound of something flying to the ground and smashing. One single, clear squeak of the bed. And then a terrifying scream. Mordraud had seen Adraman hurl himself out of the room, slamming the door with such force that the hinges groaned; he followed him with his gaze as far as the hall.
The cavalryman was red in the face, and was panting and shaking. His eyes were red from recent crying. He rushed out the front entrance, head down, without even closing the door behind him.
The next day it was very hard to convince Deanna to open her bedroom door to him. She’d locked herself in and didn’t come out for breakfast or lunch. When he at last managed to get in, Mordraud had to draw on his scarce self-discipline all he could.
Deanna was half-naked, stretched out on her back on the bed. She had no marks on her: no bruises, no scratches and not even the faintest sign of a slap. She was fine, but looked as if she’d fainted with her eyes open. She’d only got up to let him in, and then went straight back to her large unmade bed.
Her grey silk dressing gown was pulled up beyond her thigh, and was as sheer as gossamer. Mordraud tried all he could not to stare at her bare legs or at the inviting contours of her bust. Her black hair tumbled down in dishevelled clumps over her skin, fanning out over the creased sheets. Mordraud swallowed uncomfortably. It was the first time he’d seen a woman’s body close up, with the exception of his mother’s. Or Larois’s, which he’d glimpsed.
“Deanna, come and eat something...”
She didn’t answer. Mordraud sat down and waited for her reply.
“Like to play draughts later? I want revenge for your last win!”
No reaction. For an instant Mordraud felt the insane urge to turn around, grab her hot-bloodedly and, looking her in the eye, say I’m the man you want.
The most idiotic idea he’d had in his whole life.
“I was a little older than you are now when my father promised me to the Adren family... or rather, sold me,” mumbled Deanna in a faraway voice. “Do you know how much he sold me for? Me in return for grazing pastures in the east, a stock of wood and first refusal on a good wheat harvest.”
“I was still young, and didn’t yet understand what marriage meant. And I found myself having to sleep with a man old enough to be my father,” she went on. Mordraud listened in embarrassment, unable to say the right thing. “He didn’t take me by force, even if it would have been his right. He waited for a year. In the end I gave in. What else could I do?!”
Mordraud slowly shook his head in agreement. Deanna turned to look him in the eye. She hadn’t shed a single tear.
“He’s always treated me well and showered me with gifts. I have a lovely house and everything a wife could wish for. I managed, at first, to get used to the idea of spending the night with him. But it didn’t last long.”
Mordraud felt his hand trembling. It was so close to her breast that he could have touched it without moving his arm. The thought that Deanna saw him in that precise moment as a kind child ready to be confided in drove him crazy.
“Perhaps I’m fed
up with him constantly setting off for the front... I expect to end up alone from one day to the next – one of the many war widows abounding in this town...”
“Adraman knows what he’s doing. He’s not the sort to get himself killed,” he put in suddenly. He hadn’t managed to find a better way to say what he thought.
“When I feel this wretched fear, the nightmare of loneliness... I reject his kindness, and I oust him from our bed... It’s as if... he were already dead for a part of me. And I hate him for it, for deserting me. I’m a fool, aren’t I?”
“No, I wouldn’t say that,” he tried to comfort her.
“But what am I doing?!” she exclaimed, sitting up on the bed. “You’re just a child and you shouldn’t hear talk about certain things... For love of the Gods, what have I started speaking about...?”
There, that blasted word again. Mordraud fetched her a dress, took her to the kitchen and ate something with her, smiling and joking to cheer her up. He went on until Deanna’s first yawn, and only then did he leave her, to let her go to bed.
In the middle of the night, when he was sure nobody was in the hall, Mordraud took one of Adraman’s swords hanging on the wall there, and rushed out into the courtyard behind the villa.
Until dawn crept up on the horizon, Mordraud fought against empty space, leaping and running without ever shouting or uttering a sound. Deanna’s last words kept rumbling around in his head, like hammers on brass.
‘...You’re just a child... a child...’
It became a habit. When the servants, Deanna and anyone else who might see him from the windows overlooking the courtyard had all gone to bed, he seized one of Adraman’s swords from the rack and trained alone. He wasn’t interested in technique or strength. Everything he sought was enclosed in the simple gesture of lifting and lowering the blade, seeing it gleam in the moonlight, or admiring the raindrops spray off it when he was caught by surprise outside in a storm. If he realised in time that he’d been too noisy, he’d hide against the wall circling the courtyard, concealed by its solid shadow.
***
“Can I come in?” Gwern asked shyly, knocking gently on the door.
“Huh?! Ah, you’re here already! Come in, my boy.”
The small house stood a stone’s throw from the north wall, in Eld’s poorest neighbourhood. It was little more than a wood and clay hovel, built artlessly on the foundations to an old lookout for soldiers, which had been flattened countless years before. Outside, the unpaved road was a river of mud. Moss-covered rubble poked out between the hut wall and the fiefdom’s mighty fortifications.
“I’ve brought you a few fresh vegetables, and those stock bones you asked me for last week.”
“You remembered! You’re very kind... Leave it all on the table, and come through to the lounge.”
Calling it a lounge was an amusing stretch of the imagination. Two seats padded with straw-filled bags that had been cut and shaped, a table made of four boards resting on fire logs, and a cast-iron wood stove with a wonky flue that went through the peeling ceiling. Gwern entered with soft steps, after taking off his boots so as not to dirty the old threadbare rug covering the beaten earth floor.
“What are you reading today?!”
“Advice for Sowing Wheat, year 1522. An excellent handbook, but the last pages are missing. A real pity.”
His new friend must have been more or less six times older than him, and showed every one of his years. Skinny and stooped, and always dressed in shabby but clean attire, Sernio spent his days reading the array of books filling the house: stacked in corners, heaped on floors, or hidden under the table. Gwern had met him at the market, shortly before the winter. He sold second-hand book in a fief in wartime.
Naturally, business was extremely slow.
Gwern took to him at once. He’d never seen his stall before, because Sernio only set it up a few times per month. One day he’d wiled away a few hours leafing through the volumes on display, reading the first page or two and immediately returning them to their places, for fear the bookseller might reprimand him. But the man didn’t say a word. So, the next day, Gwern went back to look for something else to read. This pleasant distraction lasted several days. Sernio would remain seated, his eyes on the page of a large leather-bound tome, while the boy thumbed and turned the parchment leaves, picking up from the point where he’d left off.
Gwern was greatly saddened when his little pastime suddenly came to a halt. One morning, he found the stall had been dismantled, and nobody at the market knew if and when Sernio would return. The winter came, and Gwern went on relentlessly combing the stalls, in the hope of finding the bookman, as he’d come to call him.
Larois helped him without realising. The innkeeper, who knew everyone in the town, would occasionally do home deliveries for people who had trouble walking, for the ill and for the wounded. One particularly icy day, while she was laid up on the sofa with a nasty backache, she asked Gwern to do her rounds for her, and listed the houses he was to call at. Sernio’s was the last.
When Gwern saw the mountains of books piled everywhere, he was left speechless. He’d learnt to read alone – at least that’s what his mother had told him many a time – thanks to the fairytales she’d written for Mordraud and that he used for playing. Eglade’s condition had worsened after his birth, and she hadn’t had the chance to teach him everything she knew. Observing those treasure troves of knowledge, Gwern understood just how much he yearned to study. Like his brother Dunwich had done.
Sernio had worked in Cambria in his youth, as a librarian at the Arcane. Called up to fight against his will, he’d spent almost a year at the front as a foot-soldier, stealing away to the back ranks every time a battle began. The idea of using a sword trapped inside a casing of armour disgusted him to the point of coaxing him to risk the exemplary punishments doled out to cowards. In fact, he had to endure them a couple of times. Twenty lashes to the chest for fleeing when facing enemy lances. Those torture sessions had indelibly undermined his health, and so he ran away from the army at the first opportunity.
He’d lived in Cambria for a while, holing himself up in his own house like a mouse, till one night, terrified of the Imperial watchmen, he readied a cart with all the books he possessed and set off, mingling with the many merchants always coming and going in the capital. The choice of the fief of Eld was sort of out of spite for what the Empire had inflicted on him.
After his first visit, Gwern begged Larois to let him do the deliveries, and the innkeeper agreed without any objection. Her back was glad of it, since it was already strained by the long evenings of work in the tavern. Gwern got to know the old librarian better, until he himself invited the boy to read something together. Sernio socialised with nobody and was on the brink of abject poverty. Gwern always found something to take him. And in exchange, the old man allowed him to borrow the books he wanted, and the boy spent his nights learning them off by heart. When he returned them, he could borrow others. Sernio soon became his best friend – and his only one besides Mordraud.
“Have you finished The Story of the Talbiad Islands? Did you like it?”
“Yes, I loved it! Pity it was so short.”
“Huh?!” Sernio chuckled and placed another piece of dried root in the wood burner. “Short?! It’s a nice chunky volume. It usually takes ten days or so to read it all... How long did you take?”
It was a game of theirs. Gwern lifted his chin proudly and held up some fingers.
“Three days?! You can’t have!” the old man exclaimed, shaking his head in disbelief. “Tell me then, what’s the name of the farrier’s wife who takes care of Tal after he nearly drowned?”
Gwern pretended to think on it, although the answer was ready on the tip of his tongue. He wanted to give the scene the right rhythm.
“Hmm... Let’s see... Clara!”
“Well done!” replied Sernio, snapping his fingers. “It was easy. Now I’ll test you with a hard one! At the start of the story, Tal comes acro
ss a headstone that’s different from the others in Calhann’s cemetery. What was unusual about it?”
“It was made of obsidian, with silver streaking!” replied Gwern. It was one of the parts of the story he enjoyed most.
“You really are amazing, Gwern!” and Sernio clapped his hands in lengthy applause.
“I read every night, and in the morning too, if I don’t have to work. Otherwise I wouldn’t know what to do...”
“Hmm... It’s about your brother, isn’t it? You miss him a great deal, I suppose...”
Gwern nodded silently. Since Mordraud had been living at Adraman’s house, he was always alone. Before meeting Sernio, he’d never had anyone to talk to. Larois kept him company in the evening while they worked, but she was often busy running the inn during the daytime, and couldn’t always have him hanging around. He seldom played with the other children, because he was frail and often suffered from the attacks whose cause was still unknown.
“Is his work at Adraman’s going well?” Sernio inquired, putting down the book he’d been reading before his arrival.
“Yes, he says Deanna has grown fond of him, and they spend most of the day together. They play draughts, they read... To be honest, it’s hard to picture my brother chatting about gossip, but he seems happy there...”
“And that thing troubling you? Think it really could happen?”
“It’s still early to say. I hope not.”
Gwern had feared right from the first that Mordraud had taken the job just to get closer to Adraman, with the worrying aim of joining the army. Larois suspected it, but hoped the company of a girl might mellow his sharp spiky character, as well as his dangerous plans. And then, in the innkeeper’s eye, Mordraud was still very young. There was time for him to change his mind. Yet Gwern knew his brother showed an age that did no justice to his real number of years. His dream of fighting wasn’t a mere romantic infatuation with war. It was something running much deeper.
Mordraud, Book One Page 19