by Ann Marston
And slammed right into the waiting arms of Dergus Keepmaster, head steward to Lord Mendor.
The Keepmaster grabbed Mouse’s arms, spun him around and shoved him backward into two Falian border guards. The sword fell into the soaked weeds with a muffled splat. Mouse sagged in the grip of the guards, sickened by the knowledge that Dergus had, after all, a little magic. He must have used it to track him. Mouse still smelled the stench of it on him, and revulsion knotted tight in his belly, raising every hair on the back of his neck. He shivered, trying not to retch.
Magic. He hated magic. It made his skin crawl.
Dergus Keepmaster carefully wiped his hands on a silken handkerchief. He hated to soil his own hands by actually touching a slave, even to kill him for Lord Mendor. Hence, the bounty hunter, Mouse reasoned, still dizzy from the reek of magic.
“Bind him,” Dergus ordered distastefully. “And chain his legs.”
“Now what’s the lad done to make you so upset with him?” a new voice asked.
Mouse shook the hair out of his eyes and saw a man framed in the light of the doorway behind Dergus. The newcomer was tall and broad, and seemed to fill the doorway. His face was in deep shadow and Mouse saw nothing of his expression, but there was laughter in the voice. Mouse frowned. He had seen the man before. He was certain of it, but he could not remember where.
“Seems to me to be a shocking waste of manpower,” the man continued, amusement lilting through the words. His Falian was slightly accented but fluent and correct. He stepped out into the courtyard. The light behind gleamed on hair turned to a blaze like flame in the dark. “Three men just to hold one scrawny boy?”
Dergus straightened his tunic. “The boy is an escaped slave,” he said coldly. “He burned half my lord’s manse and killed several guards in his escape. He also badly wounded my lord’s son, and for that, Mendor will have his head.”
The hint of a smile curled at the corner of the wide mouth. “A fractious and vexatious lot, these slaves,” the newcomer murmured. He glanced over his shoulder back into the inn. “And he’s just polished off a nasty looking specimen of a bounty hunter, too,” he remarked. “Mayhap you’re right. He’s more dangerous than he looks, that one.”
“He’s going back for hanging,” Dergus said. “You would be well advised to stay out of affairs that do not concern you.”
“Just out of curiosity, how much was he worth to the bounty hunter?”
“Three silver.”
“Three silver?” The man glanced at Mouse and grinned. “A lot for a lad his size.” He turned back to Dergus. “How much is he worth to his lord?”
Dergus spat into the mud at the man’s feet. “About that much,” he said. “He also despoiled a girl the lord was saving for his son.”
The other man nodded gravely. “A very dangerous boy, then,” he agreed. He reached for the purse at his belt. “He might be worth something to me, if you want to sell him and save your lord the trouble of killing him quickly. I’m in need of a slave to work the galley and he looks strong enough to last a year or two before the work kills him. What do you say to three silver?”
“Seven silver,” Dergus said quickly.
The stranger laughed, and again, Mouse had the feeling he had heard that laughter before. “Seven silver? Even you’re not worth seven silver, my friend. Four, then?”
Mouse pressed his teeth against his lower lip, watching the stranger closely. If he had known Dergus all his life, the stranger could not have chosen a better way to persuade him. Mouse saw only Dergus’s profile, but he read the avarice there, saw the swift calculation and the smile when Dergus came to the conclusion that four silver for Mendor with one left over for himself would satisfy Mendor’s thirst for Mouse’s neck, especially when Mendor heard of the fate awaiting the runaway slave in a galley—a slow, lingering death for most men.
“Five and he’s yours,” Dergus said.
“Five it is,” the stranger said, smiling. “And he might even be worth it.”
“I’ll have the guards shackle him for you,” Dergus said. “Give me the silver.”
The stranger dropped five silver pieces into Dergus’s outstretched hand. From the expression on Dergus’s face as he heard the healthy jingle of the purse when the stranger closed it again, he was wishing he had pushed the price up a little higher.
“Don’t bother shackling him,” the stranger said. A hand like an iron collar gripped Mouse’s arm. “He’ll not be running out on me.” He bent and scooped up the sword Mouse had dropped when Dergus grabbed him. “I believe the boy had a horse. I’ll be taking that, too.”
“For another silver,” Dergus said quickly.
The stranger laughed. Mouse wondered how a laugh could be so full of mirth and at the same time, sound so dangerous. He watched the stranger with renewed interest.
“Don’t get greedy, little man,” the man said softly. “That horse might be worth two coppers but certainly no more. You can afford to be generous after what I paid you.”
Dergus turned away, beckoning the guards to follow. They mounted and rode off into the wet night while Mouse stood helplessly with the stranger’s hand gripping his arm. When they were gone, the stranger turned and dragged Mouse to the stable. Once they were inside, he let go of the boy’s arm. Mouse got his first good look at his new master in the guttering light of a torch that gave off more smoke than light.
The man was in his late twenties or early thirties. He was a big man, tall and heavy boned, broad shoulders tapering to narrow hips. He was dressed as a Tyran clansman in a kilt of a green and blue tartan, a white wide-sleeved shirt, and a draped plaid of the same tartan, secured at his left shoulder by a large, round brooch embossed with a clan badge. His tall boots were of good, soft leather and the baldric holding the sword across his back was studded with silver interspersed with red stones. His shoulder-length copper-red hair, streaked liberally with gold, was worn loose but for a single thick braid plaited with a leather thong by his left temple. It was longer than the rest of his hair, as if he never cut the hair that went into it. Mouse had heard of that. A clansman’s braid was his strength. The Tyr’s eyes were a soft, clear green above a beard of copper-gold. A large emerald on a short length of delicate gold chain swung from his left earlobe. Mouse had never seen a Tyran clansman before, but there were more than enough tales spun by bards of their fighting abilities.
The clansman carefully placed the dead bounty hunter’s sword onto the straw, then put his hand to Mouse’s chin and turned his face to the light. “Let me look at you, boy,” he said. “I bought and paid for you. I want to see what kind of a bargain I got.”
Mouse tensed to make a break for the door, but the clansman laughed and held his grip. “Don’t try it, lad. I’ll snap your neck for you if you move.” Defeated, knowing he had no chance, Mouse relaxed. The Tyr studied him for a moment, then nodded. “Small and scrawny,” he commented. “But you’ll grow a fair bit before you’re finished. And you’ll fill out into a man’s shape when you’ve stopped growing. How old are you?”
The clansman’s grip on Mouse’s chin made it difficult to speak. “I don’t know,” he said. “Almost sixteen, I think.”
“Then you’ve a lot of growing time left.”
“I’ll die of overwork on that galley before I grow much taller,” Mouse said hoarsely.
“What galley?” the Tyr asked, grinning widely. “I’m a dreadful liar, boy. I own no galley.”
“Then why—?”
“Did I buy you? Hellas knows. But now that I’ve got you, what am I to do with you?”
Mouse had no answer for him.
The Tyr grinned. “I could sell you again,” he said. He paused. “Or I could even free you.”
Mouse looked up at him, his mouth gone suddenly dry, unable to breathe for a moment as his heart kicked painfully against his ribs.
“How much is your freedom worth, boy?”
“Everything,” Mouse said softly, hardly daring to hope.
“You cost me five silver,” the Tyr said. He reached out with his free hand and took the two daggers from Mouse’s belt. He held them up to the dim light and frowned as he studied them. They were a fine matching pair, the hilts inlaid with silver and gold wire in an intricate design. He nodded. “A fair exchange,” he murmured. “A pair of daggers for five silver, and I make a profit on the transaction. Fair enough?”
Mouse’s knees gave way and he sagged in the Tyr’s grip. “Fair enough,” he whispered, hardly daring to trust him.
The Tyr let go of Mouse’s chin, eased him down into a heap of straw, and sat on his heels in front of the boy. His expression softened and he smiled. “There are no slaves in Tyra, boy,” he said, “and I’m a man who hates slavery. It’s against the laws of all the gods and against the laws of nature. Men were made to live with no chains binding them. You’re free to go where you choose.”
“Do you mean that?”
“Trust me,” the Tyr said and suddenly, irrationally, Mouse did. Completely and without question.
The Tyr laughed again, and Mouse knew where he had heard that laugh before. “You were at Mendor’s Landholding when I escaped,” he said, startled.
“Aye, I was. I had business with him.” He grinned widely. “You created quite a kerfuffle that night.”
Mouse frowned and clenched his fist. “I wish I’d killed Mendor.”
“Aye, well, you didn’t do his son a whole lot of good, if that’s any compensation.” The Tyr drew a dagger from a boot sheath and replaced it with one of the silver-chased daggers. “You might want this,” he said to Mouse, handing him the slender weapon. Hesitantly, Mouse took it and slipped it into the top of his boot.
“Where will you go?” the man asked, more gently.
Faced suddenly with real freedom rather than mere headlong flight, Mouse stared blankly at him. “I have no idea.”
“I have need of men to work with me, if you’re interested,” the Tyr said. “I have a band of merchant train guards. We need good men for this coming season. It pays your keep, ten silver per trip and a bonus for any fighting. Interested?”
Unable to speak, Mouse nodded. Then he cleared his throat and said, “But I don’t know how to use a sword or bow—”
The Tyr grinned. “You’re scrawny now but you managed that bounty hunter well enough,” he said. “You’ll learn, I think. Men with red hair like ours learn as well as they want to. Stubborn, we are. Very stubborn.”
“Stubborn is one of the least offensive things they called me.” Mouse smiled for the first time. “Then, yes. I’m interested.”
The Tyr stood up and extended his hand to help Mouse to his feet. “I’m Cullin dav Medroch dav Kian,” he said. “And you?”
“They call me Foxmouse. Or just Mouse.”
One red-gold eyebrow rose in surprise. Or amusement. “Mouse?” he repeated. “What kind of a name is that?”
Mouse shrugged. “A slave name,” he said bitterly.
“Well, it surely is no name for a free man and one of Cullin dav Medroch’s merchant train guards. I’ll give you my grandfather’s name. He’s not needing it anymore.”
He picked up the bounty hunter’s sword with his left hand and tossed it to Mouse. Mouse reached up automatically and grabbed the hilt before it hit him in the face. For the first time, he saw that it was truly a wondrous sword. The blade shone with a silvery gleam in the dim light of the torch. Runes he could not quite read spilled down the centre of the blade, glittering like facets of a hundred gems. When he tried to look closely at them, they blurred and ran together, as if seen through a thin curtain of moving water. The plain, leather-bound hilt was long enough to be used two-handed. An echo of his dreams reverberated faintly through him as he hefted the sword and found it balanced perfectly in his left hand. When he switched to an experimental two-handed grip, the balance shifted subtly so that again, it was perfect.
“From now on, you’re Kian,” Cullin dav Medroch said. “You’ll have to earn a last name. But Kian’s a good name. A name with pride on it.” He smiled grimly. “And don’t you ever forget that.”
Kian straightened his shoulders and shed the slave name as a man might shrug off an ill-fitting cloak. “I won’t,” he said fervently. “By all the gods, I won’t.”
Cullin grinned. “Then get your horse, Kian, and come wi’ me. What we both need is a good night’s sleep in a decent inn. We’ll talk again in the morning over our fast-breaking.”
Part Two — Kian
III
I cannot look back, now, on that time before I met Cullin dav Medroch dav Kian, without feeling that it all happened to someone else. That boy named Mouse was someone I knew, perhaps, but I cannot feel that he was really me. His time is as blurred in my memory as the first seven or eight years of his life were blurred in his. What I have become—who I have become—since then has turned Mouse into a faded painting on a crumbling wall. I can feel nothing of the pain he endured, only pity for him and admiration that he survived. There is an odd detachment in my mind when I try to think of him, a separation as sharp, as keen as the blade of a dagger. Sometimes, it is strange to think that nearly ten years of my life were spent as someone else, but it is something I do not allow myself to dwell on. There is enough in my life now to compensate. I am content to let Mouse be who he was, and let me be myself.
***
I hardly remember the long, hard ride to the inn across the Isgardian border. Exhaustion, reaction and relief combined to send me into a daze where moving was like wading through a pond of thick pitch. I nearly tumbled from the sorrel when we finally stopped. I think it must have been sometime near dawn. Cullin used more of the silvers from his purse to buy a small room on the second level of the inn. I was hardly aware of anything but the clean smell of the bed the innkeeper led me to. I was asleep almost before I toppled into it.
The late morning sun streaming through the window like warm honey finally woke me. I lay naked in a soft bed, covered by a quilt of such fine quality it felt like silk against my skin. Confused and disoriented, I sat up abruptly, spilling the bedclothes over the edge of the. The clothes I had worn lay across a chair near the bed, neatly folded, cleaned and brushed, the boots, polished to a glowing sheen, tucked under the chair. A longsword lay across the folded cloak, catching the sun like burnished silver. I stared at it blankly and tried to sort out where I was, how I got there and why I was there.
Someone knocked softly. I snatched the quilt off the floor and pulled it up over my hips as the door opened and a serving girl entered carrying a tray laden with food. She was followed by a man with hair almost as red as my own who moved with the grace of a mountain cat. The memory of the previous evening rushed back, and I relaxed. The slave called Foxmouse was a thing of the past. In his place stood a man named Kian, a free man, a man who would prepare to be a merchant train guard. I fell back on my elbows and wanted to laugh out of sheer exultation.
Cullin dav Medroch smiled. “Rhoch’te ne vhair, ti’rhonai?” he asked.
Still stunned from the deep and profound slumber, I smiled back. “Vhair chinde,” I replied, then gaped at him as I realized I had no idea what he had said, and even less what I had replied. A chill of apprehension shivered down my spine. Was it some kind of magic? It didn’t have the foul stench of Dergus’s magic. “What language was that?” I demanded.
Cullin dav Medroch laughed and closed the door behind him. “One you obviously recognize,” he said cheerfully. “Awake now, are you? I expect you slept well.”
Not trusting my voice, I nodded.
The girl set the tray onto the bed by my knee. It held a jug of milk, fresh bread and cheese, and a bowl of dried fruit. She gave me a shy smile. “If you wish anything more, let me know,” she said. “I’ll be happy to serve you.” She bobbed a small curtsey and slipped out of the room. I stared after her, startled. Nobody had ever shown deference to me in my life. I wasn’t sure how to react.
“Hungry?” Cullin asked.
I looked at the food. There was more of it on the tray than all three of Mendor’s stable slaves saw in one day. “Starving,” I admitted.
Cullin grinned again. “Aye, you look it,” he said. “Well, get yourself outside of that lot, and we’ll have a good start at putting some meat on those bones. You’ll need it if you’re going to swing that sword.”
I wasn’t sure any one person could eat that much food, but when I finally got to the point where my stomach felt stretched tight, there wasn’t a lot left on the tray. I pushed it away and reached for my clothing.
“First a bath, I think,” Cullin said. “You’re still wearing quite a lot of Falinor. I’ll have the innkeeper send up a tub and hot water to wash it off. When you’re finished, I’ll be downstairs.”
I had never in my life experienced anything as wonderfully luxurious as that bath. I revelled in that huge vat of steaming hot water, blissfully aware that even paradise offered nothing finer. The cake of soap the innkeeper provided smelled faintly of fresh herbs, and it made a wondrous lather on my body and in my hair. When I finally climbed reluctantly out of the cooling water, my fingers looked as wizened as raisins. Drakon’s stolen clothing felt sensuously and lavishly fine against my damp, glowing skin. It wasn’t until I was dressed and on my way down to the common room that I began to wonder why Cullin dav Medroch was doing this for me. Cullin owed me nothing. If anything, I owed him even more than my life.
Cullin was waiting at a table near the door, his plaid flung back over his shoulders to reveal the long, hand-and-a-half sword slung across his back in an ornate scabbard. Even relaxed, he looked dangerous and deadly. Not a man one wanted as an enemy.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked. Something wasn’t right. Everything he had done so far—rescuing me, freeing me, bringing me along with him. He had to have a reason. Not knowing what it was bothered me.