Heritage of Fire

by Dave Luckett

  For a moment he didn't understand, but then she reached out to him. He lay beside her, spreading his cloak over them both, and she came into his arms.

  *

  There was too much smoke in the air. They'd seen it thirty miles away, a pall that rose into a flat-topped cloud. There had been smoke before, from the forges and the mills. Not like this.

  Every village they passed through was in a ferment. Most travellers were headed away from the city, many carrying their goods on their backs. Bodies of horse - lord's men - trotted up and down the road. They had been questioned half a dozen times already.

  That wasn't as bad as the bodies in the ditches. Old people and infants, mostly.

  "It was for nothing. In fact, we might have only hastened the blow." Nela's voice was grim.

  "Then it would have happened anyway. The raid was six days back. Six days ago, we were trying not to fall into a gorge. Do you remember? No power on earth could have got us here more quickly. Unless we tamed a dragon and rode it here."

  Nela disapproved of that. Once she would have said so. Now she knew that Gerd was simply distracting her. She shook her head and walked on, dust caking on her face.

  They were walking in dust, the dust of a column of ... well, not quite soldiers. These were armed, after a fashion, though Corporal - no, Captain - Sankey would have wept to see their gear. It had been resurrected out of some armoury that hadn't been opened in a generation. These soldiers described themselves as the select fyrd from Abivale. If they're the select, Gerd thought, I don't want to see the others. There were about a company of them.

  Jane was carrying camp gear now. They'd been lucky not to have her taken from them. Another reason why Gerd was wearing his mail again, and flexing his hand constantly.

  And now they came around the shoulder of the last hill, and there below them was what was left of Walse. Nela topped the height and squinted through the dust and smoke. Her mouth opened, and she stopped dead in the middle of the road.

  An old manor house on the height marked the top of the Kihreean tide. Its stone walls had saved its defenders, for the raiders had had neither siege gear nor time. They'd come to loot and burn, and that they had done.

  The last of the dead had been buried yesterday, in pits that were still raw scars across the open fields. No tallies had been kept, the diggers said, nor could most of them be identified. What would be the point, anyway? Nobody knew how many more lay in ashes under the burned rubble. Autumn was only starting, and the weather was still warm. They had to be buried before they brought pestilence.

  The fires were out, more or less, mostly because there was nothing more to burn. Walse had burned for four days solid. The streets could be made out, amid the strewn rubble and the foundations of buildings. The bones of the city were still there. Raising his head and squinting, Gerd could even see the occasional stone structure still standing, blackened, roofless. The wind was picking up, lifting little flurries of ash from the ruins. He looked up to the brooding sky. It would rain soon. Good. But it would take years of rain to wash the site clean and flush the ashes into the river.

  The militia bivouacked in the yard of one of the large houses that had stood outside the old walls. There was a garden, now ruined and picked over, but donkeys manage fine on bean shoots and carrot-tops. Gerd handed Jane over to a youngster who seemed to know what he was doing, and flipped him a coin. Then he and Nela walked down into the ruins.

  People swarmed like ants. Thousands must have fled - they'd been passing them for days - but thousands more had returned already. Shelters were going up. Lean-tos. Tents, here and there. Pickers worked over rubble that was still warm from the fires.

  Near the old wall, they got off the road for an ox-waggon hauling grain. They passed a gang clearing a site. Down at the waterfront, Gerd realised, barges would already be tying up at the stone piers, with loads of building stone from the quarries across the river, and from the hills further up. The road was crowded, some going, some coming.

  And then there were the soldiers. A recruiting party passed, and Gerd stepped into a choked and stinking alley to let it go by. One man in the local Count's livery was banging a drum, another was calling cadence and shouting for recruits. They were followed by a tail of peasants whose produce couldn't be sold, small tradesmen whose shops lay in ashes, and apprentices whose masters were dead. No doubt all of them were already wondering at their temerity.

  "Join up. Join up," the man was grating. "Come on, young fellow, yes, you, big lad like you, time to teach those stinking Kihreeans and those whores in robes what it costs, come on, pay and all found..."

  But Gerd simply stood his ground. He could see the man considering pressing him, a hand dropping to the billyclub at his belt. Gerd allowed his cloak to fall open, showing mail and sword. The recruiter found someone else to shout at.

  "So it begins," said Nela.

  "No," he replied, watching them pass on. "It began some time ago."

  He walked on, slowly, asking Alissa in his mind: What would you have done? Grabbed that bow, and tried to pin one or two of them with it? Then died on a Kihreean spear, most likely. Or in the flames...

  He oriented himself by bump of location, the shape of the hills, and the position of the stream. At least some of the buildings in the mill district were still standing. Roofless shells, certainly, but their walls were brick. The forges, too. They were made for the fire, and they might glow again. Here was the fast-running brook that had turned their waterwheels. It still leaped down to meet the river, though it was gritty and fouled with ash.

  They crossed a bridge. It was stone, and had survived. It must be this street here. Yes. Down here, among these skeletons of buildings, roofs fallen in, smashed and gutted. Here. It was here.

  Even now he was hoping that she might be there, sifting the rubble, trying to recover her tools perhaps. It was what she would be doing. But there was only the sigh of the wind stirring the ash. He stepped in through the doorway, the dead coals crunching under his feet. Nothing. He walked on, through what had been the workshop, a roofless shell, its brick walls still standing, its clay floor choked with debris.

  Here was the furnace where the master swordsmith had shaped steel. It was cold now, its bricks sooty but undamaged. No doubt they would rebuild to the same plan. Some, at least, of the smiths must have managed to flee in time. There would be need for their skills in the days to come. Oh, yes.

  Gerd leaned against the raised bed of a forge. "Well, that's that," he said.

  Nela stepped closer, propped her staff, and rested her back against the left side of his chest. His arm automatically circled her waist. She leaned her head back against his shoulder. He closed his eyes, and let himself grieve. He remembered Alissa. He called her face up again as she had told him that he was preoccupied. She had been pleased for him, ahead of him even then. He held Nela tighter.

  The wash of faint minds all around him built slowly up in his own. Already insects scurried in the rubble. Birds flew. A nest of rats had survived, a little further off, between the piers in the foundations. He knew their hard-edged cutlass thoughts, wordless, sharp and bloody-minded. And somewhere else there was pain. Pain.

  He let it come to him, not listening, not reaching for it. He let it build its layers in his mind, pain and bewilderment, horror and despair and loss. Dimming, slowly dimming.

  He found it, centred it. Opened his eyes. The annex where the master swordsmith had examined the Penrose sword. Yes, of course.

  "Help me," he said to Nela, and ran.

  Blackened timbers had fallen across the doorway. They heaved them aside. There had been no door from within, Gerd remembered. The room off the workshop had been no more than a lean-to annex built against the main structure, with mud-plastered walls. The roof timbers had been the lightest of lath. They had burned fierce and quickly, leaving sharp-edged roof slates scattered over the collapsed walls like stone snowflakes. It was the lightness that had saved her.

  Only just, a
nd only because she had been lying, crumpled like a broken doll, against the course of stones at the base of the outer wall. The wall had fallen inwards, snapping itself on the solid old desk, but that had held it for a moment, creating a small space and a shield. Gerd listened, heard, and reached down. He set himself, and then tore the fallen wattle-and-daub panel up with a strength he hardly knew he possessed. And there she was.

  Her eyes were open, but not focussing. Gerd stooped and scooped her up. She was breathing. Blood matted her hair, and there were weals and bruises and burns. Nela put a hand on Alissa's head, whispered, then nodded. He carried the limp bundle out of the ruined building.

  "Shelter," said Nela, "and then water." She looked around. No building had a roof. She shook her head. "How far can you carry her?"

  "As far as I have to," he answered.

  But it wasn't all that far. Two hundred paces, and they enlisted the help of a streetpicker. A silver penny, a labourer's daily wage only last month, to use his barrow as far as the old gate. Then up the hill to the house that had once been some rich man's manor. A bribe got them into a box room off the scullery, where a table was still standing. It had probably been a stillery or a preserve-store once. There was just space and headroom to stand.

  They put her down on the table on a cloak, and Gerd stood over her while Nela worked. Soldiers came and went in the kitchen. They were setting it up to cook for the troops. Gerd glared at any that looked in.

  "Water," said Nela after a while. "Clean water."

  "Will she...?"

  "I don't know. Get some water. Put some more on to heat."

  There was a well in the yard. He found a bucket. It leaked, but he filled a camp-kettle and brought it back. When he returned, Alissa was awake.

  Awake? Perhaps. Or perhaps it was a state like a dream. A nightmare. Gerd knelt, but she shrank away, whimpering, while Nela held her. He put the water down and retreated, keeping his head low, knowing that he must not loom over her.

  Nela held Alissa's head, and the vessel to her lips. Alissa's eyes remained fixed and staring, and Gerd knew that they looked on horrors.

  Nela was whispering again, holding Alissa, one hand on her brow. She twitched her head, and Gerd fled. Food. They needed food. He went in search of it.

  When he returned, it was with the bight of his cloak filled with apples, a loaf from the camp oven that the company had set up and a quart-mug of soup from the field kitchen. Cooks were bribable, he had always found. He put the items down and waited outside. After what seemed like a long time, Nela came out and closed the door behind her.

  "I got some soup into her," said Nela. "She's asleep at last. She was even able to speak a little."

  He cleared his throat. "How bad is it?"

  "She needs water, in sips. Broken finger - I've splinted it, and it'll mend. Fingernail torn clean off, though. Cuts, bruises, and the confusion and swelling that comes with being kicked in the head, but I can't feel a break in the bone. I've reduced the swelling, I think. Burns, bad enough, but the wall shielded her. More cuts and bruises from that. One slash, deep, on a shoulder, that really needed stitching, but won't get it now. I've managed to close it. She'll have a nasty scar. Lost blood." Gerd grimaced. Nela eyed him, grimly. "The rest you know."

  He closed his eyes. "I know, but I don't know," he said.

  "They killed the swordsmith, her master. It took three of them, she said. And most of the other smiths, but some got away. They caught her, too, but she was obviously not a smith, of course not, and they had a use for a woman."

  Gerd said nothing. His eyes had opened again.

  "She'll mend now, I think." He heard the words run on, almost as if Nela had said them: in body, anyway.

  He nodded. After a while, he managed: "You should stay with her. I'll sleep across the threshhold."

  "I think that's wise, for now. And then what will you do, after?"

  He stared. It seemed like a long time. "I don't know," he said at last. "I was a soldier once. They need soldiers, it seems. But I don't know."

  "Alissa needs you. She doesn't need a pile of Kihree heads laid at her feet." He nodded, but it was distant. She paused, watching him. Then: "There is also the small fact that I need you, too. And that I can't stay here. Too many know me, and they know what I am. Mages were seen with the Kihreeans."

  There it was. She fell silent, not really watching the outer kitchen. It had been commandeered by the militia and its long fires now seethed cauldrons of salt meat.

  Gerd nodded again, this time with more conviction. After a moment, he reached out for her, and they stood together. "Yes," he said. "We'll have to go."

  *

  Three days, it took. Nela stayed within, and Gerd chaffered for food. After a couple of days of sky-high prices, the farmers were bringing supplies in again. After all, farms not two miles away were untouched, and the autumn crops were coming in. From the city alone, the raiders had taken more loot than they could carry away. There wasn't much money about now, but where else could the growers sell?

  Mages in robes had been seen on the ships. They had been part of this. The wind that had swept the Kihree fleet in, from over the horizon and then right upriver, had neatly reversed itself to take them out again, serving them to such a degree of perfection that it was unnatural. Magefire had been seen, too, setting the city to burn. So Nela had to stay out of sight. The soldiers here were from upcountry a way. They didn't know her, but others would.

  Now trading ships were coming in. On the second morning, Gerd walked down to the harbour, and came back thoughtful. The Merchants of the Coast were seeking ships, and the first were starting to arrive, Wizard's Islers inbound, arriving with cargoes that were hardly needed now. The lords were recruiting steadily, and the recruits were drilling. Horses were being brought in from upcountry. Cavalry was massing, swooping and manoeuvering on the slopes beyond the city walls like flights of swallows. The city walls – Gerd halted to look at the gangs already labouring on them. Ah yes. The walls were being rebuilt, only this time the houses would cluster within them like chicks under a hen. No doubt there would be a tax to pay for the protection, but people would be glad to pay it. He nodded to himself and walked on.

  And the forges were glowing again, down in Basden, and smoke was starting to rise once more. It was... impressive. Organised. Almost... planned.

  He said as much that evening, and Nela listened. The important thing was, so did Alissa. He spoke of the forges, and she replied directly to him for the first time since they'd found her.

  "Spearheads, it'll be. Arrow points, too. Weapons that are easy to make in bulk. Oh, and all the other tackle. Everything from horseshoes to cooper's hoops. But they'll need sword blades, as well." She flexed her damaged hand, looking thoughtfully down at it.

  Gerd was sitting on a low stool near the doorway. He glanced at Nela, who pursed her lips, but remained silent. "That they will," he said, and no more.

  Alissa looked across at him, and he lowered his eyes, not to challenge, not to confront. "It's all right," she said. "I can stand to look a man in the face, if that's what you're thinking." A ghost of her former self haunted the words.

  Gerd didn't look up. "It's not you looking me in the face. It's the other way around. I am... ashamed." The word was not what he had been aiming for. He didn't know where it came from. It fitted, though.

  "You've nothing to be ashamed of," said Alissa. "Nor you, lady. I haven't even thanked you for my life. Do you think I can't tell who's guilty and who isn't? I've been lying here, more or less in my right mind, for two days now. Two days is plenty of time for thinking." The faintest of smiles, almost reaching her eyes. Not quite, not yet. "I'm not about to run berserk with a gelding knife. From what I observe, Nela wouldn't thank me for doing that."

  Gerd glanced at Nela again, then away. She had reddened to the tips of her ears, but her voice was steady enough. "You need another week at least. I can heal you a little faster than you could heal alone, but you still need that
time."

  "I'll take it. But then I have to get back to work." Alissa looked down at her bandaged hand. "My feet are actually the worst. Smiths get used to working with small burns, though."

  Nela choked off her reply. She simply nodded.

  Gerd cleared his throat. "There's ships coming in now. The older sort, that can get up to Walse, at least. I saw one carrying timber, and that comes from the Outer Isles. It came in yesterday." The hills near Walse had largely been stripped of trees. "They're not being hired as transports by the Guild, mostly - they're too small - but many of their crews are signing on for soldiers, given the wages the lords are paying. I think we could get passage outbound, especially if we work it."

  "You're no seaman," said Alissa.

  "No. But I could hire on as a guard." He looked at Nela, who was biting her lower lip. "You did say we have to get away. That means not just away from Walse. The whole island's up in arms. Nowhere is safe, except oversea."