They descended into a wide, flat valley filled with an expanse of reeds, broken up by wind-ruffled meres over which flights of wildfowl made straggling chevrons. An oily path led through the reeds, between the walls of rustling stems. It came out on a rough grass marsh where the sky was reflected in ribbons of water. On far side lay a broad river, crawling towards the sea. A line of posts stood across its width; weed-hung rope looped from top to top. Fallott and Pode went out on the shingle by the water’s edge and righted some of the punts that had been left there beyond the tide’s reach.
After the crossing they turned south, in the shelter of bramble-clad cliffs of crumbling chalk, and by a steep path climbed the headland where wizened shrubs bent before the salt spray.
As the team emerged from the lee of the headland the sea wind struck them. Below, beyond the cliffs, white crests showed against green swell, in irregular patches deep blue where cloud shadows were passing. Puffins whirred overhead. Terns, delicate grey and white, patrolled offshore, plunging for sand-eels; a pair of black skuas, heavy, sinister, selected one and relentlessly chased it, twisting and turning, gaining altitude till they were high against the sky. At last the tern could take no more and disgorged the contents of its crop. The skuas dropped back, and with easy, tumbling flight caught the fish-mash as it fell.
The road along the cliffs was firm and the team made better progress. In an hour they had covered nearly four miles. Soon afterwards, three hours after leaving Burh, Fallott ordered the first rest stop. The panniers were taken off the goats, which grazed quietly on the clifftop turf. Fallott, Bico and Pode took out the ale and bread given them in Burh, and at Bewry’s suggestion the slave’s wrists were temporarily untied from his yoke.
Tagart fell back on the grass and shut his eyes. He could hear the voices of his captors, talking as they ate. One them laughed, the sound of it swept away on the wind. Bewry said something. There was an indifferent reply. Tagart became aware that the boy was shaking his shoulder.
“Some food,” Bewry said.
Tagart sat up and accepted the proffered bread. It was unfamiliar to him. He sniffed at it, tasted a corner, bit off a mouthful. “These men,” he said, in a low voice. “You do not wish to walk with them.”
“I have no choice. I am a slave. At least I am too young for the mines.” Bewry looked over his shoulder. The three were taking no notice. “That is where they’re taking you.”
Tagart nodded. “I know.”
“What tribe are you?”
“The Cosks.”
“I am Guelen. Guel was my father’s brother. We were on the beach at Lepe, by the big island. Then they came with dogs and spears. They chased us into the saltmarshes. Some of us drowned. I got stuck in the mud with my sister and my parents and some others. The soldiers killed many of us there, on the saltings. They killed my mother and father. Guel was killed too. The rest of us were killed or taken for slaves. They took me and my sister Segle. If I do not do as they wish, Segle will be put in the whores’ place where the miners go.”
Tagart had heard of such things. He looked into the boy’s open face. “How old is she?”
“Sixteen.”
Tagart had never heard such despair in a child’s voice.
“She is the niece of a chieftain,” Bewry said. “And they make her serve swill to the mine slaves.”
Sixteen. Two years younger than Mirin. “I can help you,” Tagart said. Bewry looked up. “I will get your sister out of Valdoe if you help me to escape.”
Bewry’s eyes widened.
Tagart said, “We are hunters. Not slaves.”
“What are you whispering there?” Fallott shouted. “Get away from him!”
The rest stop lasted five minutes more. Even as Bico came to pull Tagart to his feet, Tagart was toying with the idea of jumping over the cliff. It would be better than Valdoe. There was no real chance of escape: Fallott was a very different man from Sturmer or Groden. The only chance, if chance it was, lay perhaps with Bewry.
* * *
They did not stop at Whitehawk fort, one of the Valdoe outliers. It passed them to the north, its palisade topped by ramparts where Tagart glimpsed the movement of men. Fallott kept to the cliff road. He was forcing the pace, making up for lost time. Soon Whitehawk was far behind.
Six miles on, at the approach to Thundersbarrow fort, the road swung inland, north-west and into the hills. The chalk track climbed at a gruelling rate up the lower slopes of Thundersbarrow. Rain was blowing off the sea as they came within sight of the fortifications; Tagart felt his stomach fill with sick fear as the faces of the guards by the gate became discernible.
Fallott was recognized and the team admitted for fresh pack-animals and a meal. Tagart had never been inside a fort before. Compared with the Trundle, this was nothing, but he stared despite himself and the yoke, marvelling at the timbers of the palisade, the earthworks, the buildings, the horn and leather armour of the soldiers.
“More Valdoe meat?” said one of the guards, as Fallott came through the gate.
“Fallott has a talent for it,” said another with a grin.
“Serve as I did on the slave runs and you will learn it too,” Fallott answered. He crossed the inner compound to the door of the mess room, looked round once, and went inside.
Pode and the guard exchanged glances. “He does not like delay,” Pode said.
“Or anything else.”
Pode smiled agreement. “Food for the boy and slave,” he said. “Keep them apart.”
The team did not remain long. Less than an hour later they were on the move.
To their left, seemingly tilted towards them, spread the expanse of grey sea. The track, glaring white against dark-green scrub, dipped and rose with the land, past a small village on the hill next to Thundersbarrow where the farmers paused to gaze at the prisoner as the team went by.
The few huts of the village dwindled. Ahead and below, a mile away, wound the course of a river. At its mouth it became lost in the waters of an estuary, protected from the breakers by a long shingle-bank mottled green with seablite. Westward along the coast rolled wetland as far as the eye could see, with scattered lagoons, salt creeks, and mile upon mile of reeds, the plumes in mass making the horizon purplish-brown. The line of hills rose again from the river a mile or so inland, running away from the coast. Parts of it were covered by forest, parts by old farmland turned to scrub; but with each mile nearer Valdoe more of the landscape was given to cultivation.
Fallott led the team down into the valley and across a flooded field. The water came to their knees: they splashed and waded through the shallows, the grass green at their feet. Strands of hay-coloured seaweed drifted on slight currents, and under the water they could see drowned thistles and clumps of burnt ragwort.
The river was too wide and too frequently crossed to depend on punts. The Flint Lord had built landing stages on either bank, and a ferry station to house the men who worked the raft. The ferry station, with stone walls and a plank floor, stood on raised ground between the river and the flooded field. Beyond it the river slopped and slapped against the logs of the raft as it rode its moorings. The sun showed behind the clouds and lit up the hills on the far side, then the flooded land at their base, the river, the ferry station; and the sunlight moved on towards Thundersbarrow.
“More rain coming,” Pode observed.
Fallott grunted and climbed the steps to the threshold. Before he had had a chance to knock, the door was pulled back and a tall, red-haired man appeared. Like the soldiers Tagart had seen earlier, he was wearing armour. With a nod at the other members of the walking team, he said something over his shoulder and two more men came out, both in soldiers’ clothes, with oxhide greaves and vambraces, helmets and cuirasses of thick leather, and mail made of linked ovals of deer-horn. On their feet they wore thick-soled boots in pattern like the fur-lined walking boots issued to the team. Their belts, studded with bone, carried sheaths to take knives, and axes with sockets cushioned by cart
ilage and blades of the finest ground and polished flint.
The red-haired soldier said, “You’ve found us more work, then, Fallott.”
“I would like to stay and talk, Gane, and even drink some of your filthy ale, but as it is we shall not be making Valdoe by nightfall.”
Gane shrugged and walked along the duckboards to the landing-stage, followed by his assistants. “Bring the beasts on first!” he called out.
While Bico and Pode helped Fallott to manhandle the seven goats, Bewry stood next to Tagart, pretending to keep guard. Tagart, weak with exhaustion, watched the farce of loading the animals on the raft, no expression on his face.
“I will help you,” Bewry said.
Tagart slowly turned.
“I will help you to escape. If you promise to free my sister, I will help.” Bewry looked at Fallott. His back was to them. “Do you promise?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me what I must do.”
Tagart struggled to think. His mind would not respond. He could think of nothing but the raft, the goats, the drab river and the silvery light in the droplets of spray. He saw the wicker panniers filled with provender, the goats’ backs, Bico striking them with his elder switch. Gane had grasped one animal by the horns and was dragging it bodily from the landing stage to the raft.
“At the next rest stop,” Bewry said, “shall I help you then?”
“Yes. Help me then.”
“If he lets me take off your yoke, I’ll steal a flint from the panniers and give it to you with the bread. You can cut your fetter and run.”
Tagart wearily nodded.
“You must run hard. If they catch you, say you had the blade in your clothes. My sister is in the slaves’ quarters, by the gate. She serves in the kitchen there.”
“Yes.”
“You’ll want to know what she looks like.”
“Yes.”
“Her hair is dark-brown, to here.” Bewry indicated the nape of his neck. “Her eyes are brown. She has a soft voice. She wears a deerskin tunic with a circle on the back.”
“And her name is Segle,” Tagart remembered.
“Everyone knows her.”
Again Tagart nodded.
“You promise to help her?” Bewry insisted.
“I promise.”
“Fallott will beat me if he finds I helped you to escape.”
“We will be careful.”
The last goat was aboard. Gane’s assistants went to the mooring-lines and untied them. Pode shouted to Bewry, telling him to bring the slave. Tagart preceded Bewry along the duckboards and onto the undulating deck of the raft. For a few seconds the men were busy shoving off, Gane and the two others bending poles against the bank, while Fallott, Pode and Bico drew in the mooring-lines and made sure of the goats. Bewry examined Tagart’s face anxiously, beginning to doubt whether he could be trusted.
Tagart noticed and looked into the child’s eyes. “I keep my word,” he said, quietly.
* * *
The next stop came eight miles further west.
From the valley they had climbed to the ridge of the hills and followed it, through scrubby woodland where the wind groaned and made dead branches squeak, and onward to the fields of the open settlement by Cissbury fort. A flock of sheep with wooden bells scattered in their path, and the shepherd with a hand to his brim acknowledged Fallott’s nod. Dogs barked as the team went by. One ran out and snapped at Tagart’s ankles until Pode growled and struck it with his stick. They went on, skirting Blackpatch Hill and the small flint mines at Findon, and, leaving the fields, entered a belt of forest.
The road became a leafy ride, the grass still lush under the trees despite the summer’s drought. A mile into the wood the ride opened into a glade, hemmed in by piles of bracken, shaded by the quiet branches, and here, beside an old fallen oak tiered and clustered with brackets of brown fungus, Fallott decided to halt for rest.
He and Pode unpacked the last of the route-victuals, while Bico went into the bracken to relieve himself. Fallott instructed Bewry to give food and water to the slave.
The sun had gone behind cloud; the air was grey. Early afternoon in the wood was silent, with no bird-song. Hoverflies, striped yellow and black, hung momentarily like little wasps in front of Tagart’s face before darting away to investigate something else.
He was sitting alone, a little way apart, leaning against the fallen trunk. His wrists had been untied and the yoke left lying on the grass nearby.
He stared at the ground. The whole of his body was a mass of tiredness. The yoke had drained all feeling from his hands and arms. As he sat there he slowly clenched and unclenched his fists until a trace of sensation returned. Where he had stumbled his feet were raw; criss-cross lines showed where brambles had torn at his legs. Bruises covered his thighs and body, bruises from being punched and kicked or from falling helpless to the ground, unable to put out his arms to shield himself. His left eye had turned red and puffy: he could no longer see from it. Dried blood was crusted in his beard.
Tagart looked up and into the network of leaves and light above. He was thinking of Burh, wondering how soon he would be able to get back there.
“Take it,” Bewry hissed. “Quick, before they see.” He was pressing something cold into Tagart’s palm. “Take it.”
Tagart turned and came face to face with Bewry, and he remembered what they had arranged earlier. He was to cut through the fetter. Bewry was going to help him escape.
“Take it.”
“Yes,” Tagart said. His fingers tried to close on the flint. It slipped from his grasp.
“It’s on the ground,” Bewry whispered. “I cannot reach it yet. Fallott will see.”
“I’m sorry. My hands are slow. I’m tired …”
“Drink.”
“Those bastards have done for me.”
Bewry had positioned himself between Fallott and Tagart so that nothing suspicious could be seen. He raised the water-bag to Tagart’s lips. From time to time Fallott glanced in their direction: Bewry and the slave had been whispering at the first rest stop and it seemed prudent to watch them, not that there was any serious danger of trouble.
“The flint is by your leg,” Bewry said, as he corked the water and broke off a piece of bread.
“I know.”
“Can you reach it unseen?”
“Even if I reach it I won’t be able to use it. I have no strength to cut my fetter.” Tagart dropped his head again. “Leave it till later.”
Bewry looked over his shoulder. It was a mistake. Fallott noticed and with a frown got to his feet. “What are you doing there?”
“Giving the slave his bread, Fallott.” As he spoke, Bewry sneaked his hand to the ground; and, changing his mind, did not palm the flint, but pushed it under Tagart’s thigh.
Bewry’s manner made Fallott narrow his eyes. “Show me your hands.”
Fallott’s gaze revealed no feeling as he saw the opened hands. It went to Bewry’s face, to the ground, to the slave’s bent head. “Move aside that water-bag.”
“I was just doing as you ordered,” Bewry said, lifting the bag. There was nothing underneath it.
“You. Slave. What were you whispering?”
The slave mumbled.
“What was that?”
“He was giving me food.”
Fallott looked round. He had an audience. Pode was watching; Bico had returned from the bracken and found himself a piece of bread.
“I asked what you were whispering, nomad.”
“He was giving me food. He asked if I wanted more. I said I did.”
Fallott was unconvinced, but didn’t know why. He was on the point of turning away when Bewry said, far too quickly, “The slave is exhausted, Fallott. Leave him alone.”
“And why should I do that?”
“If he dies he’ll be worth nothing to you when we get to Valdoe.” There was a tremor in Bewry’s voice.
“What has he been saying to you? What do you care
if he lives or dies?”
“Nothing. I care nothing.”
Fallott’s frown deepened. “You care nothing, but you conspire with him at every stop.”
“At the ferry station too,” Bico called out.
Fallott could see that the boy was terrified. He wanted to know why.
“What are you hiding there?”
“Nothing. Nothing, Fallott. I’m hiding nothing.”
With the sole of his boot Fallott thrust against Tagart’s shoulder and pushed him aside.
His eyes fell on the flint.
He bent and picked it up. “Nothing, you say. A sharp nothing from our panniers. Is this why we haul a slave across country, so you can cut him free with a knife stolen from your masters?”
“It was my plan,” Tagart said weakly. “I made him bring it.”
For an instant Fallott contemptuously studied him before turning back to Bewry.
“No,” Bewry said, backing away as Fallott advanced.
“Nothing, you little heathen. Nothing, you say.”
Now Pode had risen, worried for the first time that Fallott was losing his temper.
Fallott shouted at Bewry. “Get to your feet!”
“It’s nothing, Fallott,” Pode said. “Forget it. Forget it and we’ll be on our way.”
“Get to your feet!”
The boy put his hands against the fallen tree. He could back away no further. With his eyes fixed on Fallott’s face, he seemed to shrink against the bark, as if he would melt into the wood itself.
Fallott drew back his hand.
“No!” Bico cried out. “Don’t hit him!”
* * *
The Brennis Gehans had made the beginnings of Valdoe over a hundred years before. The flint mines, discovered at first and tentatively worked by local people, lay on the southern slope of a commanding hill, its summit six hundred and seventy feet above sea level. The presence of the flint mines, the configuration of the landscape – not least the proximity of a system of saltmarshes and creeks and natural harbours – and the high quality of the local forest, had all persuaded the first Lord Brennis that Valdoe would make a suitable base for his operations in the island country. He was not the first colonist: for eight hundred years ships had been coming from the German homelands, and most of the coastal farmers shared his ancestry, but the Gehans were something new.
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