“Besides,” he said swallowing and taking a bite of the cheese. “It wasn’t just kethat.”
“Trolls,” the woman in black, the woodsman, said. She opened her mouth and tasted the air in the inn, she breathed heavily, eyes raised to the ceiling.
“Trolls?” the boys’ father said. “Trolls at the mine? That’s only…”
“It doesn’t matter,” Heden said, finishing the small amount of food he’d taken and pushing himself away from the bar.
“Who are you to say?!” The father said, his voice bouncing off the walls of the inn. “This is our town, our farms. It’s all we’ve got. And what happens when they come looking to avenge their dead? What happens to us, ratcatcher?!”
The confrontation, the attitude, didn’t bother Heden. People acted in all manners when confused and ignorant. It was natural.
“It doesn’t matter,” Heden said. “Because they’re all dead.”
Heden’s words hit the floor with the weight of finality, shocking the townsfolk.
“You killed them all?” the father whispered, looking Heden up and down, and then looking at the woodsman.
“Unless someone starts working the mine, more kethat will come. They like mines. Caves. It’s natural for them. The trolls I can’t explain.”
“Will there be,” another man in the inn began. “What happens if there are more trolls?”
Heden didn’t smile, he nodded at Dade and Jeremy. “You’ve got a whole passel of heroes here, champing at the bit.” Perhaps a little bitterness crept into his voice at the end.
The townsfolk argued amongst themselves. One man slowly extricated himself from the knot of bickering farmers, carpenters and tanners, and approached. He was shivering and thin and wan and covered in a thick heavy blanket. Heden knew who it was.
He came forward and extended his hand.
“That’s my wife and son you rescued,” the carter said.
Heden nodded and took the man’s hand.
“I don’t know why you did what you did, but we owe you our lives.”
Heden released his grip and shook his head. “I just got your family back,” he said. “The boys and their friends there rescued you. Didn’t need my help.”
The carter looked at him, gratitude and compassion and confusion working their way around his face.
“I’m looking for a place called Ollghum Keep,” Heden said.
“Everyone here knows it,” the carter said. “It’s the seat of the barony. Just take the road north” he said.
“Heden,” the woodsman said.
Heden turned to see her looking only barely recovered from their ordeal.
“I’m going past the keep,” she said, pushing her hair out of her face. “I’ll take you. But not on that thing.”
Heden might have smiled a little. “Okay,” he said. “But we leave now, no rest.”
She nodded, looking at the floor.
“Your name’s Heden?” The innkeep asked.
Heden suddenly went numb. The innkeep had stopped moving, like the Harlequin after its magic had run out. He was just staring ahead at nothing.
Heden nodded once.
“You were with the Sunbringers?”
Heden didn’t say anything. He didn’t look at the innkeep. Everyone in the inn was staring at him. The rain outside had slowed to a trickle, grey light was starting to come through the window.
“My sister lived in Ǽndrim,” the innkeep said lifelessly.
Heden snatched up his backpack. The woodsman stood and looked between Heden and the innkeep, confused.
The innkeep looked from Heden to the woman and boy who were clinging to the carter.
“Get out,” the innkeep said to no one in particular, his voice choked.
Heden was already leaving.
Chapter Sixteen
Ollghum Keep stood on a hill like a lighthouse, warning travelers of the maelstrom that was the Iron Forest beyond to the north. Small copses of trees dotted the rolling hills, the normal everyday trees Heden had grown up with. Forests that weren’t alive and thinking and malevolent. The kinds of forests a man could walk through without fear of being killed in an instant by something that considered you an enemy combatant in an endless war you’d never heard of.
Even though the Wode started a mile beyond the keep, the trees dominated the small walled city. Each rose three hundred feet or more, the stark line of them looking more like a cliff, or a giant wall of water about to wash the keep and its people into the green sea that was the smooth hills.
The keep was a motte and bailey built on a large hill. A stone wall in the old Golish style with no mortar surrounded the keep and a few dozen wooden buildings. Together, the keep, the buildings, the wall made a town. A small one. But the keep was, to Heden’s practiced eye, easily defensible. The Gol built small fortresses with massive underground warrens that could hold thousands of people and were incredibly difficult to siege. Though it was 3 thousand years old and looked like it could fall apart at any minute it would probably stand another thousand years and outlast this Age of Men.
There was a crowd of people waiting to get into the keep. Farmers whose houses and fields dotted the landscape for miles around. They formed a rough and winding line, their livestock milling around them. Packing them all into the town would make life there uncomfortable. They were anxious but controlled. No one was shouting. A squad of guards posted at the gate kept people from flooding in, but they didn’t appear to be turning anyone away. Just noting everyone who passed through. Probably checking to make sure they knew them.
“They work normally during the day,” The woman in black next to him said. “Then gather their families and spend the night in the keep. Some come early. They’re expecting a siege.”
“Yeah,” Heden said, looking into the forest. “We had to do the same thing when I was a boy.” Heden studied the land around the keep. He and the woodsman stood at the edge of a copse of trees, Heden surveying the keep and its surroundings. His companion dressed all in loose black leather, leaning on her bow.
“Sieged by who?”
The woodsman shifted her weight. “Don’t know,” she said. “Heard tell of urmen. Could be. Could be thyrs. Probably urmen.”
“What would urmen want with the place?”
She didn’t answer. It was a rhetorical question.
They were silent for many moments. A hawk cried in the clear air.
“I’ve got to go in there,” Heden said. The woman nodded. He looked at her and did not look away.
“Are you joking?” she asked, slinging her bow over her back. “No. Those people are all going to die and you know it.”
Heden shrugged. “That hill the keep’s on?” he asked.
She grunted assent.
“It’s a mound. Man-made. Probably warrens under the town and stretching out under the forest. Maybe even under us, here. If they’ve stored food and have a couple of wells…,” he left the statement hanging.
She frowned and looked at the keep.
“If it’s a siege, they could use someone like you,” he said.
She crossed her arms and thought, not taking her eyes of the keep. Then shook her head. “No,” she said. “Stupid. Stop being so sentimental. I can be more help out here anyway. Pick off the urq commanders. Slip away whenever I want. If they had good scouts, they’d be doing the same,” she said, nodding to the keep.
Heden agreed. She could make a difference out here and leverage her greatest strength; her mobility.
“Urmen, you said. Have you gone into the forest?” he asked. In a sense, they were surrounded by forests. But the keep marked the boundary between normal human forests, and the Wode.
“That meat grinder?” she said. “I liked you better when you weren’t asking stupid questions.”
Heden was silent. Then he picked up his pack, turned and extended his hand to her. She took it. They looked at each other.
“I don’t know your name,” Heden said.
Her pa
le cheeks turned slowly pink while Heden held her hand, but she didn’t look away.
“Probably for the best,” she said, her voice rough. She didn’t let go of his hand. “I’d like to forget the last sixteen hours, if you don’t mind.”
Heden pulled his hand away and nodded. He turned and headed toward the keep.
“I know what you mean,” he said, without turning around.
Chapter Seventeen
“Who’s this then?” A large woman with a body like a walnut shell sized Heden up.
Heden looked around, as though he didn’t know who she was talking about.
“Hush Gwennog, don’t be rude to the man.” The man standing next to Gwennog looked too much like her to be her husband. Probably her brother. A big man with long brown hair. Heden realized this is what his father must have looked like before Heden was born. When his da was still young and vital. Each of these folk reminded Heden of someone he knew as a boy.
“Don’t you hush me! And it’s not being rude to ask a stranger who he is.”
It was odd for Heden to feel both at home here and like a complete stranger. Like being in two places at once. The older he got, the more he felt this way. It was a feeling he stayed in the inn to avoid. The way his career had changed him. Made him an outsider to these people.
The sun was low in the sky, the day was late and Heden was surrounded by townsfolk, pigs, and chickens. All waiting to enter Ollghum Keep. No one seemed agitated or worried. They seemed bored, as they waited for the guards to vaguely terrorize each person entering.
“My name’s…,” he began, but these folk weren’t interested in what he had to say.
“He’s a ratcatcher, look at him,” the man behind him said. Heden didn’t turn in reaction; he’d heard the wiry goatherd talking before and remembered his face. Heden presumed he was a goatherd. The goats seemed to like him.
“Figures,” Gwennog said, crossing her arms and looking Heden up and down. “Thieving little rats. What’re you doing here, rat? Come to see what coin you can make off our misery?”
Wonderful Heden thought. Making a great impression right off.
“What makes you say he’s a ratcatcher?” a woman to his right asked, her voice high. Long thin hair. “He’s nice looking.”
“And what would you know of nice looking, young Sirona? And you married to that pot roast Edric!”
The people laughed, but Sirona was not going to be cowed by the matronly Gwennog.
“I got eyes, haven’t I? He’s nice-looking, look at him. Seems honest.” She touched Heden on the shoulder. He turned and tried to smile at her in what he hoped was a natural way. What would Gwiddon do? he wondered. Probably pay them all to go away.
“What’s your name, dear-heart?” Sirona asked.
“My name’s Heden,” he said, and felt self-conscious. Two days ago he’d almost told the bishop to go stick his head up a cow’s ass. Now he felt defenseless surrounded by a bunch of dirt farmers. “I’m not a ratcatcher,” he said. Not anymore, he thought.
“His name is Heden and he’s a liar, more like,” Gwennog said with a snif, looking out over the crowd at nothing in particular.
“Dyfan, will you tell your wife there to mind?” the goatherd behind him said.
“I’ll tell her no such thing, she can speak as she finds.” A tree stump man standing behind Gwennog poked his head around the large woman to chime in. “And should too, I don’t see how we need any more strangers here. Got enough as it is.”
“Got that little birdie at the turnip,” another man agreed.
There was a kind of collected sigh from the young girls and a speculative silence from the older women. Sirona was a sigher; Gwennog was one of the silent wonderers. Another stranger in town though.
“Who’s this minstrel then?” Heden asked.
“Never you mind!” Gwennog said. “And who was it said he was a minstrel?”
“I know what a little birdy is,” and Heden found his accent coming back. His voice was a traitor. He didn’t want these people to think he was mocking them and wasn’t enthusiastic about reverting back to his family’s mode of speech. The more he thought about not talking like his brothers, the more he talked like them. “Goes tweet-tweet-tweet all the day long.”
The folk around him looked at him with suspicion. Sirona seemed pleased. “He’s got a fancy crouth,” she said in a voice that was perhaps more sing-song than her husband would have liked, “and nut-brown skin! With oily black hair.”
The men paying attention—a growing number as interrogating Heden was more interesting than standing around while chickens shat on your shoes—sneered at this, but the women didn’t seem to think that dark skin and oily hair was, in this instance, a bad thing.
“It’s a lute,” Heden said, and knew from the description where the man was from. His hair would, in fact, be cleaned with special perfumed soaps every day, and it was the bright sheen the soaps gave that these folk took for oily.
“Aye, that’s what he called it,” one of the men said.
Someone, probably the goatherd, pushed Heden’s shoulder from behind.
“And what would you be wanting with our minstrel?” he said.
Heden turned to find several more men behind him, backing up the goatherd. None of them so far enamored with Heden’s charm.
“He doesn’t want nothing!” Sirona objected.
“Quiet gel,” Gwennog said, and watched like a queen as the men challenged Heden.
“He done something wrong?” a man with a thick mustache and a gaunt face asked.
“Ah, not as far as I….” Heden began.
“You come looking for him, ratcatcher?”another man asked.
Heden wondered if these people would be as protective of him if someone came asking. Probably not, he concluded. I can’t sing.
“He never said what he was here for,” Gwennog stirred the pot.
“It’s folk such as you bring the urq down on us,” the goatherd said. Backed by his friends, he’d let himself get angry, ready for violence. Heden assumed the man’s anger was justified. He was ready to believe these people’s problems with the urmen were the result of someone like Heden—like Heden used to be—stirring up a hornet’s nest.
“We’re none of us in need of one such as you,” Gwennog said, standing still while the men crowded forward. Like a commanding general. “We’re not a chance to put coin in your purse while good men die.”
The people were closing in. They felt not the least bit threatened by Heden. It was a common attitude outside the big cities. Campaigners brought trouble and even though they were skilled with sword and spell, the local farmers and carters, wheelwrights and tanners had no truck with them. Would drive them out of town fearlessly, armed with spades and rocks. And the campaigners would go. What point staying in a town where everyone hated you? When the stars made a decent blanket and there were ways to stay warm and dry, even in the rain.
“What of the urmen?” Heden asked. What else had Gwennog been referring to?
“There’s a thousand of them, I heard tell,” Sirona said, eyes wide. She was, it seemed to Heden, trying to change the subject on his behalf.
“The baron’s called the order,” a man next to her said. The order, Heden noticed. “We don’t need no ratcatchers coming up here to make the forest spit out all manner of beastie at us.”
“I’m not a ratcatcher,” Heden said.
“Oh he’s not then, with that pack and that plate and that broad sword,” Gwennog said. It looked bad, Heden knew. If there was a uniform of the itinerant campaigner, Heden was wearing it.
“I’ve heard about the order,” Heden said. “The Green Order.”
“You better hope they haven’t heard of you,” the goatherd said. “They won’t be having any truck with a thieving magpie of your like.”
“See through his lies right off,” Gwennog said.
“I’m not a liar,” Heden said, letting a little defensiveness show through.
�
�Let him talk!” Sirona said.
“What is he then,” the man with Sirona, presumably her husband Edric who looked, in truth, a little like a pot roast, said.
“I was sent by the Hierarch,” Heden said.
“What a terrible big lie you just told!” Gwennog said, and this seemed to be the consensus of the people.
“You ain’t no kind of priest,” the goatherd said, and Heden was pushed again.
“Come on, godbotherer,” Eidyn said, smiling with newfound joy in menace. “Give us a prayer, then.”
“If he’s a godbotherer I’m Queen Agharat,” Gwennog said.
“I don’t blame you,” Heden said, “I’d be scared too if there were a thousand urmen bearing down on me, and no one to defend me and nowhere to run.” He was provoking them, he knew, but he suspected that in defending themselves and their lord he’d learn more about what was going on.
“We ain’t scared of them,” a new man said, stepping forward. This one was a brawler, Heden could tell, and some women were peering over the shoulders of the men to see what he’d do. “And we ain’t scared of you.”
“No,” Heden said, looking around, registering the faces. Then he looked back at the thug. “But you should be.”
“Why don’t you go home ratcatcher,” the goatherdgrowled at him, “before you get hurt.”
Heden accepted this, as though the man had given him a proper response in a formal exchange.
Heden took a breath and the folk leaned in a little, sensing they were about to get a show.
He spoke a prayer in the first language, just two sentences, but the act of speaking the words impressed these folk. A man babbling in a language none of them knew? That was real godbothering. They were going to get a show, alright.
A shadow covered Heden’s face, his eyes burning out of it, and the folk gasped and recoiled.
“Gowan!” Heden said, his finger stabbing out like a crossbow bolt toward a man. A little man who’d been watching his friend bait Heden shrank back as though struck. His face was bright red and he was shaking and neither were his doing. He was frozen in place by Heden’s prayer.
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