“Yes, sire,” Drann said. “I think I might have done.”
“Good. Now you listen close,” Creel rasped into his face. “This contract doesn’t leave your sight. It’s what gives the Free the right to do what they’re going to do. Anyone questions that right, you show them this, you tell them the Free are acting for me. All lawful, all paid for, in accordance with their charter.”
“I understand.”
“Say it like I’m supposed to believe it, boy. You’re there to vouch for the Free on my behalf, so say it heart-strong if you’re going to say it at all.”
“I understand.”
Drann was not entirely convinced he did fully understand the responsibility being bestowed upon him; but he was entirely convinced that now was not the moment to parade his uncertainties. He had no idea whether or not he could refuse this duty, but it hardly mattered, since he did not want to. To ride with the Free, after all, would be the stuff of childhood dreams. Unimaginable.
“Did you tell me your name yet?” Creel demanded.
“I’m not sure, sire. It’s Drann.”
“Is it,” Creel grunted. “Unmemorable sort of name. Perhaps you did tell me before. Anyway, you and Yulan bring me Callotec – alive and whole or just his head, I don’t much mind – and return the contract to me. I pay. That’s all there is to it. You’ll find me in Armadell-on-Lake, likely as not, conferring with my dear and loyal friends on the Council.”
“Yes, sire. Uh… are they going to do it, though? It sounded as if —”
“Oh, they’ll do it all right,” Creel said dismissively. “Yulan will, therefore the rest of them will. Sharp as he is, even he doesn’t grasp how doggishly they’d follow him anywhere. You go up there… oh, around dusk, I should say, and present yourself. They’ll be making ready by then.”
Drann nodded.
“No later, mind,” growled Creel, wagging a stern finger at him. “I don’t want them or you anywhere near here by dawn. I can smell trouble making itself, the way Yulan ran out of here. It’s always making itself when the Free are about.”
Which, Drann had thought then and did now as he rode along with the Free, was entirely as it should be. Troubles should surely flock about the Free like crows about a dead lamb, or they would not be worthy of their reputation. He did not know what was going to happen, but that it would be bigger and grander than anything his short life had offered thus far must be beyond doubt. And if it was truly to be the last ride of the Free, he had somehow, by blind good fortune, found himself a part of history, and of tales to be told by Old Emmins yet to come.
He just hoped he would not fall off his horse in front of them all before the great events began to unfold.
The Free camped by a stream, beneath a canopy of soft, graceful trees. The exhaustion that overtook Drann as he half fell, half dismounted from the horse was as numbing and dumbing as any fever. It left him shambling about the campsite like some drunken sheep, unable to help in any meaningful way. Not that the Free needed, or wanted, any help. They worked in silent, practised unison to tether and feed the horses, set a fire, lay out bedrolls, refill empty water skins. As soon as Drann recognised that nobody cared what he did, he sat in the grass, drifting into a grateful doze.
He stirred from it only when someone pressed a hot, dry meal-cake into his hand. He muttered thanks, but was too bleary-eyed to note who had given it to him. He regretted that, since it was the first small generous gesture any of them had made towards him. He would have liked to know whose it was. He knew all their faces now, save Hestin’s, and most of their names.
As he blinked and cleared his vision, he realised he was sitting with the Free in a great circle about the crackling fire. Embers of gleaming ash were rushing up into the dark sky. More meal-cakes were still baking on flat stones propped up near the flames, filling the air with their nutty, smoky aroma. No one spoke. They ate, or drank, or watched the fire. The sharp heat flushed Drann’s face even as he felt the cool night at his back.
That warmth and that meagre ration of food sent Drann sinking back into a dreamlike cocoon. Only fragments of what came after reached him; passing glimpses of the moments he was living.
Wren dancing, amidst tendrils of smoke and glimmering fire-sparks, to the trilling tune of a flute played by one of the archers. Smiling as she danced, a smile of weightless pleasure. She seemed then as beautiful as any woman Drann had ever seen, with her pale skin, her loose brown hair. Others laughing, clapping. Though he could not be sure, Drann thought he laughed too, for it seemed a wonderful thing to him.
Lying, later, on his side beneath a rough blanket. Plagued by aching limbs, but knowing it was not the pain that had roused him from incipient slumber, but some sound. Hearing it again, and seeing the dark, squat shape of the Clamour’s wagon out just beyond the reach of the dwindling firelight. A guttural, snuffling rasp of sound – perhaps a breath rattling through spittle – coming from beneath those canvas covers. Drann shivered, and rolled stiffly over.
Opening his eyes, the fire more glow than flame now, looking across the circle of sleepers to see beyond that glow a shape, and a movement, that his sleep-fuddled mind could not at first explain.
It was Wren, astride Kerig; the blanket draped across her shoulders hiding all but her face and hair, and she rising and falling, swaying. Drann watched, and dreamed himself seeing another dance. Wren’s head turned slowly, and though he could not see the detail of her eyes, he knew she was looking into his. And she shook her head slightly, gently. He rolled again, to face out into the night once more, and as he went, he saw Kerig’s hand rising smoothly, touching her mouth, slipping a fingertip between her lips and turning her back and down to him.
Drann woke to strange sounds and a cold dew. The moisture beaded his brow. He wiped it away and lifted himself up on his elbow. It was movement enough to make his body sing with stiff agonies, every muscle protesting at the mere suggestion that it should do something. He made a self-pitying sound and sank back. The grey, lifeless light told him the day had barely begun. He needed, by his estimation, another five or six hours of sleep to feel even part rested.
He could hear finches twittering in the bushes along the stream, but that was not the sound he found strange. Nor was it the rustling and clattering and muted conversation of the Free as they quickly and efficiently broke camp around him. Behind all that, separated from it, was a rapping of sticks, stamping of feet, grunts of exertion.
He turned achingly on to his side. On the grass at the very edge of the stream, Yulan and Akrana were sparring. They moved more quickly and more smoothly than Drann would have thought possible, and though they wielded only wooden clubs they did so with a violence that looked more like battle than practice. Their feet slid and stamped on the dew-slick grass. Yulan was naked to the waist, his pale brown skin overlaid with sweat. His arms and torso were hard, sculpted from smooth stone. Marred here and there by old scars. His single length of hair was unbound, falling to his back.
Akrana matched her captain in concentration and force. Every bone-bruising blow he sought to land on her was met, parried, returned with equal conviction. Never in his life had Drann seen a woman who was also a warrior, let alone a warrior of such evident ability. He could not tell which was the better fighter. Both seemed unnaturally accomplished to him. Each seemed utterly committed to doing the other violence.
Hamdan kicked Drann in the backside.
“Don’t admire the scenery, lad. We don’t catch this Hommetic weasel before he crosses the border, you could be a slave of the Orphans this time next year. That or dead as a throat-cut sow. They like making corpses even more than they like making slaves. Lazy’s not the game to be playing now.”
The man was a good head shorter than Yulan. He had a good deal more black hair, though; flat and tight on his head, neat and short about his chin. And his voice, for all it had the same rounded accent as the Captain’s, bore a good deal more humour and verve.
Drann struggled to his feet, hob
bled by his rebellious body’s resistance. As his blanket fell away, the morning’s still cold air took hold of him and he shivered. Even that hurt.
He inadvertently caught sight of the very horse upon which he had spent so many painful hours the previous day. It had an oat bag strapped over its muzzle, but to his suspicious eyes it appeared to be, very clearly and pointedly, watching him. Its gaze, Drann decided, had a baleful quality. His heart sank.
Hamdan laughed. He slapped Drann on the back, which pushed him into a forward stumble and a further chorus of muscular agonies.
Yulan came to them, wiping sweat from his chest with his bunched shirt.
“Want to reach Curmen well before nightfall,” he said to Hamdan. “You ride on ahead and make sure there’s no surprises for us there; and that we don’t come as too much of a surprise to them. Make sure Ordeller’s got a feed ready for us and for the horses. We’ll be no more than an hour behind you.”
“Ha! Ordeller. The Ape’s Mother. You’ll like her, son,” Hamdan told Drann. Then to Yulan: “I’ll take this one with me.”
Drann, though still bleary-eyed, saw the flicker of doubtful reluctance in Yulan’s normally composed face quite clearly.
“Akrana can keep an eye on him here.”
Drann felt a twinge of despondency at that, and was pleased to see Hamdan roll his eyes.
“What’s the boy done to earn such cruelty? Look at him. He’s on the verge of death already. Poor broken thing. I’ll take him along, teach him a bit of riding. Having the contract to hand might do no harm in smoothing our way into Curmen, anyway. You know how nervous folks get when we turn up unexpectedly.”
Yulan shook his head, regarding Drann through narrowed eyes. Drann was uncertain whether any response was expected of him, but he gave a little nod just in case it might make a difference. He saw no sign that it did.
“I’ll take good care of him,” Hamdan insisted stubbornly.
Yulan yielded. He slung his crumpled shirt across his shoulder.
“Be sure you do. If you get him killed, I’ll hear about nothing else from Creel for the rest of my days.”
Hamdan gave a small exclamation of triumph and made to clap Drann once more upon the back. Drann dodged clumsily out of the way. From somewhere at the back of his belt, Yulan produced a little leather coin purse that he threw to Hamdan.
“To calm the townsfolk’s nerves, if you need it,” he said.
Drann was permitted barely enough time to eat a few dry biscuits and to check that the contract stayed secure in its case, bound to his belt. It was not the most comfortable place to keep the thing, but it felt imprudent to tempt ill luck by doing as Creel’s last contract-holder had done and strap it across his chest as it was really meant to be carried. That had not ended well for the man, after all.
Then it was back into that torture chair of a saddle. The day ahead was a dismal prospect, but less so perhaps if he spent it in Hamdan’s company rather than that of Akrana, the Clamour, and the rest of the Free.
Kerig and Wren came to give Hamdan’s horse a farewell pat across the haunch. It was only then, when they were close, and he looked at Wren’s fair face, that Drann remembered what he had seen the night before. Their silent lovemaking by the fire. They were married, he knew; even so, it felt strangely illicit. He did not know whether he blushed at the memory, but he averted his gaze.
“Tell Ordeller I’ll want no fleas in my bed,” Kerig instructed Hamdan, who grunted in soft derision.
“I’m not saying a word that’d suggest there are ever fleas in her beds. She might set her ape on me.”
“And you, lad,” Kerig said. “If Hamdan’s talking too much, pretend to fall asleep. Not likely to quiet him, but at least you won’t be expected to say anything yourself.”
The Clever looked sick and pale, as if he was prey to some common ague or fever. At least he was not coughing for now. That sound had been an accompaniment to much of the previous day’s ride.
“Throw stones at him, if the sleeping thing doesn’t work,” Wren offered.
They were both talking to Drann, and yet not. Neither of them looked at him. He was simply a tool for the goading of their fellow. Not included in the jest, merely the means of its delivery.
“May lice feast in your lower hair, every one of you,” Hamdan said happily as he turned his horse about and rode away.
8
Feet In Water
“It’s not that they don’t like you,” Hamdan said. “They don’t… well, they don’t care enough one way or the other to feel either liking or its shadow. Don’t let it fret you. Just stay out of everyone’s way and all will be well.”
Hamdan had proved to be just as loquacious as Kerig had foretold. The hour since he and Drann had parted company with the Free had been filled with an all but unbroken flow of talk, much of it an idle, if enthusiastic, commentary upon their surroundings. Drann did not mind. It distracted him from his unremitting aches and sense-dulling weariness.
Their surroundings were not of the most interesting sort, however. Rolling hills, given over to rough grazing, with scattered clumps of scrub and woodland; cut through now and again with little streams that were more rock than water. There was not much to be said about it all that could not be said in a minute or two. That was why Drann eventually started asking about Hamdan’s comrades.
“I’m pretty sure Akrana doesn’t like me,” he insisted.
“Well, you might be right in that,” Hamdan conceded, unperturbed. “Don’t worry about it, though. More rattle than fang, Akrana. Although truth to tell, she’s got fangs sharper than any. Just that she tends not to use them. Hibernal Clever, she is, but much prefers the sword. Kerig and Wren, though? Strongest Clevers the Free’s got, those two; and that means strongest Clevers pretty much anyone’s got, these days. They’ll show it, too, if there’s need.”
“They don’t seem so fierce.”
“Do they not? You’d have run like a rabbit from Kerig if you’d met him before he fell in with Wren. Only wed a year, and she’s already gentled him. Anyway, most folk – folk of your sort – would judge any Clever, no matter how gentle, worth running from.”
Drann knew what sort of folk Hamdan meant. Farmers. Villagers. Folk who knew everything there was to know, every single little secret, about the patch of land they lived on, and the people they saw every day; and hardly anything about the rest of the world and its inhabitants save what they had heard from stories and rumour. In Drann’s case, those stories and rumour were largely the tales Old Emmin used to tell him, and they had indeed taught him a little fear, but also curiosity, wonder. A kind of ambition too, he supposed. The desire to experience things for himself.
The only Clever he had actually seen, before the Free, was a walking-witch who turned up in the village when he was around eleven or twelve. She stayed just a couple of days, mending a few sick animals, cleansing the sour water one of the farmers had tapped when he sank a new well. After that, she disappeared. It had been whispered that someone – jealous, perhaps, of the services she had sold others – reported her presence to the School, and she had slipped away before their Clade could arrive and take hold of her. She had seemed harmless to him.
“What happened in Creel’s camp?” he asked Hamdan. “Yulan went rushing off as soon as Creel mentioned some Weaponsmith, and it seems… it feels like something happened. Nobody’s told me.”
The archer grimaced at him.
“None of your business, at a guess.”
There was a shutting of the gate in the words. The closing out that Drann was starting to expect from the rest of the Free, but had dared to think was not going to happen with Hamdan. It irked him.
“Never mind, then. If I’m not allowed to ask…”
“Oh, don’t come over like a scorned suitor. The cloak don’t fit. Nor does that arse-feather fur you’ve got on your lip and chin, by the way. You should scrape that off, and try again when you can grow hair the way it’s meant to be grown.”
“Beards don’t make warriors,” Hamdan went on amiably. “Anyway, I’ll tell you, if you can keep the knowing to yourself. About the Weaponsmith, I mean. That was the old Kerig. The fierce one. Do you know what the Weaponsmith does?”
Drann shook his head glumly, still preoccupied by the matter of beards, still scratching at his chin.
“He crafts weapons, obviously,” Hamdan continued. “Other Clevers do that, but the ones the Weaponsmith makes are Clevered in a particular way. They’re… bonded somehow to the one they’re meant to kill. He cooks their victim’s death into them in the forging. A long while back, before Kerig had even joined the Free, a man had the Weaponsmith make a particular arrow. Then that man used it to kill Kerig’s brother. Never heard all the whys and wherefores.”
Drann frowned.
“Shouldn’t Kerig be after the man who did the killing, instead of the one who made the arrow, then?”
Hamdan regarded him as if he was being wilfully and absurdly dim-witted.
“That man’s been dead four years, son. Some might have left it at that, but Kerig’s one who knows how to share a grudge around.”
There were bodies on the track. Scattered across and beside it, half hidden in the grass like debris strewn by some retreated wave. A fox went bounding away as the horses approached. It stopped and turned its head to stare suspiciously at Drann and Hamdan before trotting more decorously into a clump of bushes. Crows took less fright at the riders’ approach; they hopped heavily from their feeding perches. Flicked their wings as if in indignation at the interruption. There were vultures overhead, idly circling.
Unless Drann looked closely, which he resolved not to do, the corpses might pass for boulders, or abandoned baggage. The stench, and the sound, could not be so easily recast by his imagination. He covered his nose and mouth with one hand. There was nothing he could do to stop his ears. The hum of flies was all about. If he closed his eyes, it could have been the insect drone of a hay meadow in high summer.
The Free Page 8