The Barrow

by Mark Smylie

  “They are, Lord Arduin,” said Stjepan. “This is—”

  “Godewyn Red-Hand, at your service,” interrupted Godewyn, and he gave an exaggerated and ill-formed bow, as did several of his men.

  Arduin ignored the big man and fixed angry eyes on Stjepan. “These men are common bandits,” he fumed.

  Stjepan paused, a confused look on his face. “We’re headed into the Bale Mole, my Lord, to dig into a dead man’s barrow and rob it. Whom did you expect to help us?” he finally asked. Several of Godewyn’s gang snickered at that.

  Arduin looked as though he was about to strike Stjepan, and at the last second seemed to reconsider. He drew himself up and contemplated Stjepan coldly. “If any of them so much as sneezes in my sister’s direction, I’ll cut him in half,” he finally declared.

  Arduin turned and walked back to the rest of his knights and the coach.

  Godewyn looked at Stjepan and Gilgwyr and raised an eyebrow. “We haven’t even started this little expedition and already I’m tired of you lot talking about me and my crew in front of us as though we ain’t even fucking here,” he said. “And I think there’s a part of this story that you lads neglected to spin when we were talking last night.”

  Stjepan and Gilgwyr looked at each other. Stjepan cleared his throat, and indicated Arduin with a nod. “He and his sister are our patrons, and they’re coming along to . . . protect their investment,” said Stjepan. Gilgwyr maintained a bland, blank look on his face.

  Godewyn turned to watch Arduin mount his destrier, a toothy grin starting to spread across his face. “I’ve seen him fight in the tourneys, he and his brothers. That was years ago, but you don’t forget quality. So you’re taking a full-fledged champion knight of the High King’s Court on a barrow run? And his sister?” Godewyn laughed heartily. “Oh, Black-Heart! And you told me there was no pleasure to be found on this trip!” He shook his head, chortling. “Fine with me. Some of the king’s steel will be handy to have around, less bleeding for the rest of us to do. A treasure hunt like this takes a price in blood and flesh, and better theirs than ours.” He leaned in and stage-whispered to them. “And I’m sure we’ll find a use for the Lady, too . . .”

  Godewyn sauntered off laughing at the sky as his crew started loading their goods onto the wagons, while an exasperated Stjepan watched.

  Leigh appeared at his elbow. “So we’re . . . ready . . . now?” he asked, barely able to contain his laughter.

  Before he could answer, Stjepan’s attention was drawn to the coach; Malia had opened the window shutter on the door and she beckoned to him once he saw her. He nodded and walked over.

  Stjepan looked in through a dark curtain. In the shadows of the coach, Annwyn sat with the hood of her cloak still settled over her head. She locked eyes with him, appearing fatigued and testy, but more bemused than angry.

  “You spoke last night of my safety. So I will be safe on the road and into the hills, protected by this lot, protected by you, map reader?” she asked him softly.

  “With that map upon you, my Lady, your life is in danger no matter where you are,” said Stjepan. “At least this way you will be rid of the map, once its purpose is fulfilled and Harvald’s enchantment has no reason to linger.”

  Annwyn looked at him for a long moment, her dead eyes unreadable.

  “And what is the purpose of a map to the barrow of an evil wizard?” she finally asked.

  Stjepan looked at her blankly for a few moments. He withdrew from the window, and reached in to close the curtain.

  Azhararad. Gladringer. Those were not names that Godewyn had expected to hear when Gilgwyr and Black-Heart had gotten down to brass tacks. When he’d heard Gelber Woat calling out to him over the noise that the Countess was making that Gilgwyr of the Sleight of Hand in Therapoli was there looking for hard men for a trip into the Bale Mole, he hadn’t figured it would be a barrow run. He’d figured that, like some he’d worked for, they needed protection while aiming for a secret meeting with strange folk from the mountains or the wild, wild west, as fit what he knew about Gilgwyr as a dealer in secrets and whispers; that would’ve been fine by him. Sometimes it was the eggs of the great Black Vultures up by Vulture Lake that a man might be after, prized by alchemists; for some, a chance to hunt for wyverns or wyrms and make their mark as hero-huntsmen; for others, a chance to sit on the great carved seat of what everyone called Geniché’s Throne, looking out over the Vale of Barrows for a glimpse of the dead and the future.

  But arguably those were for folks with a bit of imagination or ambition. For the average treasure hunter, it was a box of coin or some trinket rumored lost or buried up in the damned hills or the Wastes or the Vale, and of those artifacts there were countless options: the Horn of Palé Meffiré, that could summon ghostly knights from their graves; the three magic rings of Taran, ancient King of the Vale, that bound three of the four elements; the great black dragon-scale shield of Dyfyr, buried with him somewhere in the Vale, which no blade made by man could pierce or shatter. For other dreamers, it’d be one of the weapons of legend associated with the rough Danian west: the sword Mhorismal, the so-called Red Talon of the Wyvern King, a dark and barbarous blade that was said to drip poison, last seen in the Black Tower of Azharad; Glimmerdras, the sword of the Dragon King Petraeus of the Danias, last held by the traitor lord Brandeslas of Angharad and supposedly buried with him; Bonebreaker, the warhammer of King Cynan of Finleth, commander of the Daradjan forces that aided the Middle Kingdoms against Akkalion and the Empire at the Black Day Battle, lost in the Vale of Barrows by Rorik of Finleth in 1232. And on and on, up until the two at the top of the legend pile: Gladringer, the sword of the High Kings, forged by Gobelin to kill the Last Worm King; and Ghavaurer, the sword forged by Nymarga, the Devil Himself, and wielded by the Last Worm King until his last undying breath—the most cursed and evil thing made in the history of the Known World.

  All of them were wild goose chases, as far as Godewyn was concerned, but smiling he took the coin and promises of the men who sought them, and smiling he led them up into the hills, and smiling he all too often picked their bodies clean when they ended up dead or dying through no fault of his own and despite all his best advice and efforts. A fool gets what’s coming to him, Godewyn figured, and a lot of men were fools of one sort or another, particularly when they announced they knew some secret that had somehow escaped countless smarter men over the last thousand years. He’d been around, had Godewyn, not just into the bad places of the Bale Mole and the Wastes but up into the wild Highlands and the length and breadth of the Middle Kingdoms at least once or twice, and if he thought he knew anything it was how to know a man was a fool.

  Godewyn had many ways to divide the world in his mind—sharp and dull; eager cunt and closed cunt; strong and weak; lord and servant and free; dangerous and ignorable—but above all else he’d always placed knowing who was a fool and who wasn’t. Fools weren’t usually dangerous on purpose; they tended to be dangerous by accident, all inadvertent-like. When he was young, he remembered being in a fortuneteller’s shop with his mother, who had wanted a Reading for some reason or another. He remembered vividly the cards of the Book of Dooms that had been laid out on the table, and the image on the unnumbered Fool card had caught his eye and imagination in particular. The card had been decorated with gold leaf, with a band of writing in its ornamental borders that he could not read. But the image had stuck with him: a handsome young man wearing a jaunty coat and with a bag tied to the end of a stick and slung over his shoulder, the very picture of the casual, effortless world traveler, gazing up in joy at the bright sky . . . even as he was about to walk off a cliff. To be so intent on your destination and your dreams that you don’t see the danger right in front of you; the idea had filled the young Godewyn with a kind of existential dread, and in the years since, he had seen its echo all too often in the mad and desperate faces that filled his end of the world.

  He didn’t care if a fool wanted to hire him; indeed, they were often
easier to part from their coin than most. He just liked to identify the fools so he could minimize their danger to him and his crew. Godewyn liked to think he was a quick study, able to size up a man (or woman) in a glance or two. He liked to think it was what had kept him alive through some tough and hairy spots. Sitting in the back of a wagonload of supplies as their little caravan worked its way through faint trails north of the West King’s Road and through the Scented Hills gave him plenty of time to observe his new companions. The knights were the easiest to read: brash, overconfident, born rulers and killers, masters of everything within arms’ reach, typical of the Aurian specimens that he had encountered before in the east. The one called Helgi was the lead knight, and the ones named Holgar and Clodin both carried themselves like they’d one day take his place. The two brothers and the Theos and the squires were followers and crow fodder, as far as he was concerned. Godewyn hadn’t lied when he said he remembered Lord Arduin from the Tournaments, even though it was a decade or more in the past; the future Baron of Araswell was born with a gift for swordplay, that was for sure, and now all that was left to figure out was whether he’d lost a step since Godewyn had last seen him fighting in the melee. A dark cloud hovered over him, but it occurred to Godewyn that a man like Arduin might not notice.

  The two women piqued his interest, of course, but they were locked up nice and safe in the fancy coach and getting past all those knights was a high hurdle. That neither bothered nor offended Godewyn too much, he figured that on a trip like this there was plenty of time to figure out if they were the eager sort or the closed sort; indeed, he was already figuring closed, and unlike some men he didn’t see much point in chasing after a closed cunt or trying to make it something it wasn’t, so he was happy to save his energy and spend it elsewhere until opportunity to revisit availed itself. He still wasn’t sure what the magician’s name was, no one seemed to like to talk about or even to him; but the magician was obviously insane and obviously dangerous, so he went pretty quickly to the top of Godewyn’s Do Not Trust and Kill As Soon As Possible list and, having been so quickly and safely defined, was promptly forgotten.

  That left Gilgwyr, Black-Heart, and the young Erim for him to figure out.

  Being a new (at least, to Godewyn) companion to the other two known individuals, Erim was the most interesting to him; the youth was cagey and guarded, a wall around him to prevent anyone from getting too close. He seemed confident on his horse and wore his weapons with practiced ease: a pair of point daggers and a cut-and-thrust rapier. A duelist and city fighter, then, and probably quick; he moved with an easy physical grace and seemed to watch everyone and everything with sharp, wary eyes under a furrowed brow. Hard to surprise, unless you’re on the inside of the wall, Godewyn thought. But then aren’t we all. Godewyn knew how to handle city fighters, they were always surprised at how fast he could move for a man of his size, but there was something about Erim he couldn’t quite put a finger on, something that made him a bit uneasy that pushed Erim toward the top of the danger list. Maybe it was simply his proximity to Gilgwyr and Black-Heart, who were most definitely in the dangerous category. He hadn’t figured either Gilgwyr, who he’d thought a sharp canny-too-canny operator in their previous dealings, or Black-Heart, who still made Godewyn nervous precisely because he couldn’t figure out what his real game really was, as fools.

  But here they were, saying they were going after the Barrow of Azharad and the sword Gladringer. So fools, then, the both of them, and dangerous fools at that.

  But he had to admit he’d been wrong before on rare occasion.

  “Whatcha think, chief?” came a voice to one side. He glanced over at “Handsome” Pallas Quinn, a lean, wiry dark-haired man with a handsome scar running down across his face. Handsome must’ve spotted him sizing up their employers and companions, and was looking at him with an expectant grin. Godewyn glanced over the rest of his crew. Caider Ross was driving the wagon that Godewyn rode in, glancing back over his shoulder to hear his response. Caider was from Westmark, and once upon a time had been a city fighter, discreetly fleeing a murder writ; now he was a veteran jack-of-all-trades, who’d been practically everywhere and could kill with practically anything. In addition to Handsome, golden-red-haired and -bearded Giordus Roame sprawled his big-boned frame out in this wagon, as did Garrett Akin, a short man from down near Volmore that they all called Too Tall on account of him being so fucking short. Too Tall was sharpening a long wicked dirk with a whetstone. Isham Wall with his shaved head drove the other wagon behind them, the newest addition to their hearty company, with Cole Thimber, a dumb brute of a man that Godewyn knew he could trust to follow any order, sitting next to him. Gilgwyr and the magician had settled into the back of the wagon that Isham was driving, apparently feeling it more suitable than continuing to ride the rumble seats of the Lady’s coach.

  He looked his crew over and felt pride, knowing them for what they were: one of the hardest lots in the Danias, roustabouts and cutthroats, rogues and rutterkins, wag-halters and thugs all, no deed too low, no crime too ugly to contemplate, every single one of them loyal and dependable to the bitter dark end that they all knew was coming for them.

  He grinned back at Handsome. He knew exactly what they wanted to hear.

  “No worries, boys, we got this lot covered,” he said easily.

  Those that heard him laughed quietly and nodded to each other as he turned back to stare at Black-Heart and Erim in the lead, his eyes narrowing.

  Stjepan aimed to get them across the Scented Hills and into the trackless Plain of Flowers so that they could stay off both the West King’s Road and the Road of the Mark, which ran up and around the Plain of Flowers and marked the onetime limit of the wood of An-Athair. As they followed the shepherd’s paths through the gently rolling hills, Erim could occasionally feel the eyes of the newcomers tracking her as they passed each other. No more or less than she expected or was used to, particularly the faintly curious stare of their crew captain, Godewyn. She knew that stare well, the one that asked and what, pray tell, are you?

  She measured them the same way they were measuring her, though she felt she managed it a bit more discreetly. She catalogued the weapons they wore, the weapons they hid, their scars, their missing teeth, their haphazard but effective-looking gear. She pinpointed the one who looked like he’d fight left-handed (the one named Garrett); the one with a bum knee and every-so-slightly limping gait (the one they called Too Tall); the street duelist (Caider Ross); the one she shouldn’t find herself alone with (the big scary one with the dead eyes they called Thimber, who just smelled wrong). She found herself intrigued a bit by Godewyn; under the greasy, unwashed hair and rough-hewn stubble he was handsome enough in a brutish sort of way, all peasant muscles and a cock-sure swagger that called some part of her to attention.

  But she was surprised that the primary response Godewyn invoked in her was a kind of sadness, as he and his crew seemed little more than uncouth, country cousins to the late departed Guilford and his crew. And Guilford and his men had themselves been in turn little more than down-market versions of the great city crews of Therapoli. She had no doubt that Godewyn and his crew were a dangerous lot, destined for the same Hells as most of the men to whom Stjepan had introduced her, but there was also no doubt in her mind that they utterly lacked the glorious delinquency that marked the Gilded Lady or Bad Mowbray, Petterwin Grim or Mina the Dagger, Jon Deering or Red Rob Asprin. Give me true city folk any day, and not these pale country echoes, she thought glumly.

  That sadness was compounded by the sneaking suspicion that the fate of Godewyn and his crew would be the same as Guilford and his; she was beginning to suspect, in fact, that being a friend and traveling companion to Stjepan Black-Heart was a fast way to an early and unfortunate end.

  This somewhat morose thought was forgotten when she crested a final rise as lead scout and saw the beginnings of the Plain of Flowers ahead of them.

  In the hills they had been riding and rolling through
a landscape of shrubs and brush and tall grasses, with the occasional copse or a lone tree silhouetted against the sky, a gentler, greener version of the hills of the Manon Mole. Signs of spring were everywhere, with trees and flowers budding or blooming. But ahead of them, the green hills sloped down and leveled off into a vast rising plain that filled the western horizon with myriad shades of white, mostly white with dots of yellow, orange, pink, and red—flowers, flowering shrubs, even occasionally flowering trees, as far as the eye could see. She reined in her horse and stood in the saddle, staring at the sight. Stjepan rode up next to her and stopped. They said nothing for a while. From their spot on the hill, she could see hilltop castles to their north and their south, each about three or four miles from where they had emerged from the hills. She thought she could make out what would be the West King’s Road leading to the castle to their south, and there was a pair of roads, one minor and one major, that cut cross across the vista in front of them. The minor road led up to the castle to their north, and also seemed to mark more or less the starting point of the flowering fields. The major road was a dark line that ran through the field across the horizon, north to south.

  “The Plain of Flowers,” she said, when she finally found her voice. “I always thought it was . . . I don’t know, just an expression, you know? An old bard’s tale, the ‘fields that never lose their color’ . . .”

  “No, I’m afraid the name is a sad testament to the lack of imagination in our modern language,” said Stjepan drily. “In Athairi this is the Caewyr drum Genichallach, the Bed of the Earth Goddess; in old Maelite it was Mathene d’am’avargas Dessine, which is more or less the Place of Drowning Dreams; in old Éduinan the palaza rememorigas de Paradiso, the Memory-Place of Paradise. But nowadays in the Middle Tongue, we call it the Plain of Flowers. Since, after all, that is what it is. Over thirty miles of them, at its widest point.”