by Helen Gosney
“Hello, Tess,” he said, “How are you this fine day? I was just talking to your son as I came out the Gate.”
“Oh, were you? And what’s that great lump up to now?” she smiled up at him, but she still looked concerned.
Rowan shrugged.
“Not much, Tess. Bryn’s the Duty Sergeant today, so I imagine he’ll be spending most of the day just watching the world go by and drinking cups of tea. Were you wanting to see me, or was it Scrap you were after? Here we both are.”
She smiled again and leaned down to tickle the little cat’s whiskers.
“Oh, Captain… I don’t know if I should say anything to you or not. Har says I’m seeing problems where none exist, but…” her voice trailed away doubtfully.
“What’s the problem, Tess? Have you got some drunks that need throwing out?”
Tess and Har ran the best inn in Den Siddon, the Dappled Stallion. They’d named it that after Bryn’s safe return from Messton. They’d wanted to call it something to honour the man who’d saved their son and the sons and husbands of so many others, and Bryn and Thom had managed to convince them that Rowan would much prefer the Dappled Stallion to the Hero Returned or any of the other ideas they’d had. It was a favourite haunt of the troopers, but they rarely had a problem with drunks.
“No, no. Nothing like that… Oh! I feel daft now, bothering you like this, but…”
Rowan shook his head.
“Tess, love, you’re not bothering me. I can see you’re worried about something,” he said, puzzled, “If I can help you, I will. Just tell me what’s wrong.”
“Well… we’ve got a man staying with us at the Stallion… he’s only been here five… no, six days, and… Captain, he keeps asking about you… about Messton…”
Rowan shrugged. Folk often asked about him, particularly in the Dappled Stallion. He wondered why Tess should be so concerned about this particular man.
“There’s still a few, Tess, even after all this time,” he said slowly, “And with the damned Trophy coming up again so soon, too…”
“Aye, there are, but… it’s different with this one…” she twisted her hands anxiously in her apron, “He’s… well, to start with he says he’s from Bettra, but he’s from Plait or I’m a brindled cow…”
Suddenly Rowan was much more intent.
“From Plait?” he asked quickly, “Is he by any chance a shortish, stocky fellow with mousy brown hair and a gap in his front teeth, about twenty-three or so? Miserable-looking bugger, scowls a lot?”
She nodded, wide-eyed.
“Aye, that’s him. But how did you know?”
“I’ve seen him around the town a bit the last few days.” He had, too. Far too many times for it to be a coincidence. “Don’t worry, Tess. I’m sure ‘tis nothing… probably just another silly lad looking for a damned hero to worship,” he said lightly.
She sighed and shook her head.
“Captain, I’m truly sorry to say this to you, but you’ve always been a woeful liar. Who is this man?”
Rowan smiled down at her. He was as hopeless a liar as any forester ever born.
“I should know better than to try, shouldn’t I?” he laughed and then became serious, “But truly, Tess, I don’t actually know who he is. I’ve just noticed him following me around when I’ve been outside the garrison the last few days. In fact I was going to have a word with him if he turned up down by the river again today. And now I’m definitely going to have words with him today, but first I’m going to try and catch some trout for supper. I promised Bella I’ll catch enough to feed her brood if she’ll cook it for me.”
“Gods, those little lads of hers eat like there’s no tomorrow. And I’m sure Captain Fess is the same, with all respect of course,” Tess smiled at Rowan, but she still looked worried, “You’ll be careful, Captain, won’t you? Shall I send Har down to the river too?”
“No, Tess, don’t do that. Thanks, but ‘tisn’t necessary. I’m big enough and ugly enough to take care of myself,” Rowan said. And he didn’t want Har getting hurt by some fool from Plait.
It’d take a hell of a lot more than a broken nose to make you ugly, my lad, Tess thought to herself. If only more men were as ugly as you.
“Well… just be careful, that’s all. He’s got a sword…” she could see that Rowan wasn’t carrying his sabre, and he rarely did these days.
He laughed at her.
“Tess, love, I promise I’ll be careful, but I’ve got three knives and a nice strong fishing line. ‘Tisn’t very sporting of me, is it? Don’t fret now,” he smiled at her again, “And thank you for the warning. I’ll bring you back a nice trout if I manage to catch some.”
She watched him saunter off through the market square, his little cat trotting at his side. She couldn’t see the mousy haired man with the gap in his teeth anywhere, but quite a few folk stopped Rowan to pass the time of day and he smiled and spoke with them all. He seemed unworried, but she knew that he was taking this very seriously indeed. For a moment she shivered as she thought about what he’d said. This Plaiten would be very, very silly if he thought he could simply walk up to Red Rowan brandishing a sword and expect him to do nothing.
**********
Estel followed the Siannen through the market. It wasn’t difficult to do, the fellow was tall and his long silver braid marked him among everyone else in the town. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry, Estel thought as he stopped and pretended interest in a market stall when somebody hailed the Siannen and chatted to him for a few minutes. Gods, everyone in this cursed town must know him, he thought savagely as the same thing happened again and again. Then again, they would bloody know him, wouldn’t they?
Ah, it looks like he’s going down to the river again. He’d been down there three or four days ago, fishing with three little lads. Estel had wondered if they’d been his own children, but they hadn’t looked like him; no, they’d looked more like Wirrans with their sturdy build and blonde curls. They’d spent a couple of hours by the river, talking and laughing and kicking a ball around, and playing with the dog and cat that had followed them there. They’d even managed to catch a couple of fish, but they’d been small and the Siannen had carefully eased the hooks from their mouths and let them go.
“Sorry, lads. No trout for supper tonight,” the Siannen had said with a laugh, “We’ll have to try again another time.”
“Aye, Uncle Rowan,” the biggest lad had replied, “Next time we’ll try to be quieter so we don’t frighten the fish away.”
“Doesn’t matter, laddie. Your Ma said she was going to make a stew in case we didn’t catch anything. I don’t think we’ll starve.”
“Have we got anything left to eat now? I’m already starving,” the middle boy piped up.
The Siannen rummaged around in a bag and found an apple. He cut it into quarters with a very fine dagger and handed it around.
“That’s all there is, Stefan,” he smiled at the lad, “I hope it’ll keep you going until we get back home.”
“Aye, I hope so too,” the boy had grinned back at him as they’d collected up their belongings and gone on their way.
Estel wondered again who the boys were. Not the Siannen’s sons, they’d called him ‘Uncle Rowan’. Well, it didn’t really matter anyway. They wouldn’t stop him from doing what he’d come here to do.
**********
The Siannen turned off the road and onto the track down to the river. He wandered along, stopping every so often to look up at a tree or watch a flight of birds. Once he stopped and picked up the little black cat that trotted beside him, draping it across his shoulders like a scarf. The daft creature seemed perfectly happy with its unconventional position. The damned man was certainly in no hurry and equally certainly he had no idea that he had a follower. A shadow, as Estel smugly thought.
For some reason the Siannen didn’t seem to carry his sabre much. Estel had been following him at every opportunity for the last five days and he hadn’t seen him with
the sabre once. He didn’t have it today, either. All the better, Estel thought. He loosened his own sword in its scabbard.
Estel came around a bend in the track and… nothing. There was no sign at all of the Siannen who’d been ambling so carelessly along. Estel frowned and looked around warily. No, no sign of his quarry at all, and Estel had heard nothing. It wasn’t far down to the water from here and he could see a good long stretch of the river. A fish jumped for an insect and splashed down heavily into the water.
Estel walked forward a little and still saw nothing. Where the bloody hell is he, he wondered, puzzled. He looked around again.
There was a sudden horrible snarling yowl from somewhere above his head. Estel jumped and looked up wildly. For a moment he saw nothing, then as the creature yowled again he saw a pair of glowing green eyes glaring at him through the leaves.
What the bloody hell is that thing, Estel thought in horror as he hastily stepped back a few paces. He drew his sword.
“Please don’t hurt him, because then I’d have to hurt you,” a quiet voice said from somewhere behind him.
Estel spun, sword at the ready.
The Siannen stood in the centre of the track behind him, perhaps twenty feet away. He looked calm and unworried though he held no weapons.
“What the hell is that damned thing?” Estel said, the hair on the back of his neck rising as the creature yowled again, following it up with a surprisingly deep growl and a fierce hiss.
Rowan shrugged.
“’Tis only Scrap… my little cat… he spent some time with a forest cat recently and he learnt how to do that. He likes to keep in practice. I’m sorry if he gave you a fright,” he said, “More importantly though, why the hell have you been following me every time I’ve put my nose outside the garrison Gate for the last five days? I don’t particularly care if you feel you must follow me, but truly, I didn’t like you following me while I had the little lads with me. Whatever you’re doing, you’ve got no business with them.” And you were bloody lucky you weren’t silly enough to try anything while they were under my protection, he thought fiercely.
“Are you the one they call Red Rowan?” Estel asked, his voice and body tense.
Rowan looked at the shortish, unhappy looking fellow with the mousy brown hair and the gap in his front teeth, recognised the accent of Plait and sighed.
“Aye, that’s what they call me. But my name is Rowan d’Rhys del’Quist of the Forest Giant and g’Hakken clans. What can I do for you?”
“You’ve done enough already.” Estel’s face hardened. “You killed my brother.”
Rowan looked at him more closely.
“Then I’m sorry for your loss,” he said softly.
“Is that all you can say to me?”
Rowan nodded slowly.
“Aye. What else would you have me say? I don’t make a habit of killing folk, generally speaking, and I’ve certainly not been doing any of it lately… so your brother must have been killed at Messton or Trill… either way, he knew the risks he faced when he crossed the border into Wirran bearing arms with that murdering bastard Rollo.”
“But he… you killed him!”
“If he’d killed me, you’d have thought he was a hell of a hero,” Rowan sighed again and looked troubled for a moment. “Look, I regret the deaths of all those I killed, but that’s what happens in a battle like that and if he was one of those at Trill… I’m sorry to say it, but I regret their deaths much less. Their brutality was unspeakable.” He looked at the other man more closely. “And what makes you so certain that I killed him? I wasn’t the only man there.”
“Some of those who came back from Messton said he was killed by a man on a grey horse… a young man who had no helmet, and a long braid of red hair… ‘Red Rowan’, the Wirrans called him,” he looked at Rowan’s silver braid, suddenly uncertain.
“Ah. That would be me, then. I’m truly sorry.”
“You will be…” Estel ran forward and lunged at Rowan, his sword aimed at his heart. The weapon clanged against a gleaming dagger and the Plaiten found himself pushed away with surprising ease.
“Please don’t do this, laddie,” Rowan said as he parried another blow, “I don’t want to harm you.”
As the fellow rushed forward again, Rowan turned his body… so… moved his wrist… thus… and his assailant’s sword fell from his hand. Rowan quickly kicked it out of reach as he grabbed Estel’s arm and twisted it hard behind his back.
“Now… stop struggling or I’ll break your arm,” he said conversationally, “And when you’ve calmed down a bit, we can talk about Messton like civilised folk.”
“Aren’t you going to kill me too?”
Rowan stared at him in surprise.
“Why the hell would I want to do that?” he said. I get enough damned nightmares as it is, he thought, but if I was going to kill you, laddie, I’d have bloody done it by now and I’d be half way back to the garrison or down there by the river catching my supper.
Estel’s aggression faded quickly as he realised that he’d bitten off a great deal more then he could chew; realised too that perhaps Red Rowan’s reputation wasn’t exaggerated after all. He himself wasn’t a bad swordsman at all, yet he’d been disarmed by a man with a dagger. He still couldn’t believe how swiftly and easily it had been done and he couldn’t quite believe the sheer strength and power of this man who’d done it.
“Tell me about your brother…” Rowan said when he saw his would-be assailant was calmer.
“Timon? He was… only twenty-three… he was a halberdier…” Estel said slowly, “They say he was a hero, he unhorsed you, but when he and some of the others tried to finish you off… your horse attacked them and kept them at bay until you got back onto your feet,” he frowned and shook his head, “They said it was the most terrible, terrifying creature they’d ever seen. It could do things no other horse could do. It could… it could fly, they said. And it had a horn and it attacked them with that and with its hooves and teeth. What sort of horse attacks like that, with no rider? And…”
“Fly? No, he can’t fly, I promise you… and he doesn’t have a bloody horn, either. ‘Twas part of the armour that protected his head. Like a helmet,” Rowan had heard this many times and would have laughed under other circumstances. He sighed softly, “Mica was upset with those who’d unhorsed me, and even more upset that they were trying to kill me. He’s a warhorse, he’s trained to protect me, and that’s what he did. And if it was your brother’s halberd that tore my shoulder…” he looked at Estel thoughtfully for a moment, shrugged, and slipped his arm from his sleeve.
Estel gawped at the awful scar on Rowan’s shoulder and down his arm and blanched.
“You must have nearly lost your arm…”
**********
42. “’S a… a halber’…”
Rowan knew that he’d been very close to losing his arm, and if he’d not been so desperately ill with the lung fever he certainly would have. The thought of it being cut off at the shoulder still made his blood run cold. He had a vague memory of Griff and Rhys supporting him as Thorn had done what he could for the shoulder wound that simply wouldn’t heal.
The healer had believed the arm should be amputated, but he’d known that the shock and trauma of such surgery would be too great for Rowan’s battered body to withstand on top of the rampant lung fever, and so he’d cleaned the wound as best he could and hoped for the best. He’d found a couple of tiny links of chainmail deeply embedded in the wound, which wasn’t too surprising really, and then to his horrified fascination he’d found a startlingly big piece of metal… perhaps the point of a blade or something that’d hit the bone and snapped off.
“What the hell do you suppose it is?” Thorn said, appalled as he worked the metal shard from the wound with a gush of blood and pus. No wonder the damned wound wouldn’t heal with that in it.
“’S a… a halber’…” Rowan slurred very softly, “’S a piece of a bloody halb… halber’…”
“What was that, Rowan lad? I didn’t quite catch what you said…” Rhys said, leaning closer to him. He was helping Rowan to sit up a bit so he could breathe more easily and Griff was holding Rowan’s arm steady and carefully not watching what Thorn was doing. “Did you hear him, Griff?”
“No… I couldn’t really make it out. Sounded like a… a ‘halby’, or ‘halba’, or something, whatever the hell that might be,” Griff said unhappily, “The poor lad’s barely conscious …”
But he’s still feeling everything we’re doing to him, poor brave lad, Thorn thought. Rowan hadn’t tried to thrash about or fight them though, no matter how confused he was or what they were doing to him, hadn’t even screamed though nobody would blame him for doing so. He might only have the strength of the proverbial kitten now, but he was still as brave as a lion.
“I’m nearly finished now, Rowan lad. Just a bit more cleaning up to do and then I’ll stitch it up again. I’ll just leave a bit of it open to drain, put a sort of a wick thing in it to help it to drain better,” the healer said gently. Thorn always explained things to his patients as he went along, whether or not they were capable of understanding what he said, or if they were even conscious, and he didn’t necessarily expect any response. He simply found it helped him to plan his course of action verbally. “… It’s messy, and it’ll probably scar badly, but it’s the best way to do it.” A wound like this would leave a hell of a scar anyway, but that was the least of their problems. He was surprised when Rowan nodded weakly.
“’Twas a… a bloody halberd. They do make a mess…” Rowan whispered a little more distinctly, “They’re a… a polearm, sort of like a spear and a… and an axe together…”