The Free

by Brian Ruckley

  He slit the hide ties around the top of his boot and tried to pull his foot free. The mist pulled back. Yulan cut deeper, sawing at the boot itself. The soft, thin leather parted. He returned the knife to its place and tried to peel the boot down his leg. He gave his fear just a little freedom then, letting it run through him, through his arms. He strove to haul his foot out and free. It came. The boot was crumpled and engulfed by the mist. Swallowed.

  Yulan scrambled to his feet and dragged his insensate prize back up the slope a short way. Then he stood, tall and still, and listened to the night. He heard nothing beyond the wind, but did not trust that silence. He took the Armsman’s sword from its sheath and rested it gently against a rock, then slung the man over his shoulder and began to trot, unevenly and uncomfortably, back up the rising ridge.

  The harsh ground was unforgiving to an unbooted foot. Yulan had gone without shoes for much of his childhood, but that had been on sand and dust and hot, smooth rock. His feet had, in any case, softened since then, cosseted. He would be bleeding by the time he reached the horses.

  As he worked his way up and along the ridge’s rough backbone, he stopped now and again to look back. Even for one such as him, the labour was punishing and he was grateful for the occasional brief respite. The last time he did it, though, staring back along his moonlit trail, he saw distant figures moving. Running. Coming closer. He did not look back again after that. There was no point.

  “Yulan’s more dangerous than any Clever, anyway,” muttered Kerig as he distractedly pushed one of his beetle pieces across the Land board. “That’s why the School so loathes him; maybe that’s why Crex came over all doubting. Yulan’s their better, and they all know it.”

  “He was born to lead the Free,” Wren murmured, staring at the game. “That’s what Merkent said. That’s why he marked him as his successor.”

  “Merkent was your captain before Yulan?” Drann asked.

  Wren only nodded, but Kerig said: “He was.”

  “What happened to him? Is he living that rich-as-a-royal life somewhere?”

  “No,” grunted Kerig. A bitter snarl suddenly twisted his face. “He was killed. He was betrayed. We all were.”

  “Who by?”

  “Sullen. The School’s butcher. Ow!”

  Kerig clasped a hand to his brow, covering the spot that Wren had hit with a hard-thrown playing piece. The little wooden beetle bounced off his skull and went skittering away beneath a nearby table.

  Ordeller’s ape looked their way from its perch atop the serving counter. It stared at them for a moment, then towards the table beneath which the playing piece had disappeared. In slow and considered fashion, it lowered itself down from the counter and came on its knuckles in search of the lost beetle.

  “That’s it,” Wren snapped at her husband, true anger now colouring her cheeks. “You’ve gone giddy like a loose-tongued child, just because you don’t feel like death’s got hold of your balls any more. This boy’s got no place hearing things like this.”

  Kerig wrinkled his nose. He slid his feet off the bench and dropped them to the floor, leaned forward still nursing his stung head.

  “What does it matter?” he muttered. “If the Free’s no more after all of this is done, what does it matter?”

  “It matters because we’re not done yet, and there’s some things you’ll not be talking about even after we are. We hold together. You know that. All stand, or all fall; but we don’t tell tall tales to those who’ve not made the same promise. Now, go find that piece before the ape does, so I can —”

  “I didn’t want to play any more anyway,” Kerig said, more than a touch sulkily.

  “Because you’d lost,” Wren grunted.

  “You imagine so if it makes you happy,” Kerig snorted.

  Yulan could dimly see, up ahead, like a rock amongst a hundred others, the shape of Hamdan standing, bow drawn. He had retreated some little way back amongst the swaying kite cords and the cairns from which they rose.

  “Stand your ground,” the archer shouted across the rumbling wind as Yulan came beneath the invisible shadow of the first kites. “Stand still, you fool.”

  He sounded irritated. Unreasonably so, felt Yulan, labouring half shod and beneath a considerable burden on unreliable ground. But he did not hesitate. He sloughed the unconscious Armsman from his shoulder and spun about.

  Five of them were coming at him, strung out one behind another. The wind buffeted them, the lurching strings of the kites above swung at them, but they came on intently. Yulan drew his sword. Settled his stance. The pain in his foot was forgotten.

  An arrow snapped past his ear, close enough for him to hear the hiss of its feathers, feel the cut of it through the air. It hit the first of his assailants in the chest and went through the thin leather tunic. Not deep enough to pierce the heart, but deep enough to make the man fall clumsily forwards and smash his face on a projecting rock. Teeth scattered like unseated pearls.

  The next of them sprang over his fallen comrade, and landed badly. His lead foot slid on loose stones and robbed him of his balance. He veered sideways and ran into one of the tight kite cords as it swayed lower. It strained across his shoulder and neck, and staggered him.

  Another arrow, flashing across the corner of Yulan’s eye to smack itself into the palm’s width of exposed flesh in the man’s throat. He went backwards with blood already at his lips.

  The man’s fate caused Yulan to reconsider. The kites offered little safe room for swordplay. He dropped his blade and crouched to pluck the knife from his ankle sheath. A little too slowly, as it turned out.

  A rangy man rushed him, block-headed iron hammer already raised and readied for the crushing blow to come, shield carried carelessly wide. Yulan drove up and forward without his knife, lunging out to meet the attack rather than await it. That gave him the fragment of surprise he needed to drive the heel of his hand into the man’s chin with all the strength of arm, shoulder, thighs.

  The impact jolted through him. It did much worse to his opponent. The man’s head snapped back like a breaking twig. Yulan felt the jaw dislocating, heard neck bones parting, moving. The corpse fell like a sack of lead. Yulan let his rising movement carry him on, over the slumping body; he caught the dead man’s hammer as it fell from lifeless fingers.

  The last two had learned from the demonstration of their quarry’s nature. One had learned fright, and was already sprinting back the way he had come. An arrow leaped over Yulan’s shoulder and went sighing away into the night in pursuit of that fugitive. Yulan did not bother to track it. Hamdan was not given to mistakes.

  The other had learned caution, or been bred with a greater store of it. He came on carefully, round shield held across chin and throat and chest, sword close. A sterner test, then.

  Yulan rolled his wrist as he advanced, measuring the weight of the hammer. It was well balanced. A horseman’s weapon, really, crafted to dent armour and break the bones beneath. Made to meet the threat of the Empire and their shining Orphanidons. Not to his taste, but it would serve.

  He held his opponent’s gaze with his own. Looked into his eyes and did not blink. He dropped a shoulder, lifted the hammer. The man tipped his shield up, just a fraction; he could not do otherwise. He slashed at Yulan’s exposed flank, but Yulan was already sinking sideways, squatting away from the strike. The hammer hit the side of the swordsman’s knee hard enough to tear its insides.

  The man howled, but to his credit did not quite fall. He hopped wildly backwards, struggling to keep his one good leg beneath him. Yulan rushed after him, pulled the top of his shield down with one hand, smashed hammer to helm with the other. That first blow was enough to send the helmet clattering away amongst the rocks, and to put the man on his back. The second stoved in his temple and killed him.

  Yulan let the hammer fall beside the corpse. He had never much liked the things. A sword could answer more questions than a hammer, in most fights. He heard Hamdan coming out from the darkness, picki
ng his way around the dead. The archer was unstringing his bow.

  He prodded the unconscious sentry with the toe of his boot.

  “We asking questions instead of looking for ourselves?”

  “We are,” Yulan confirmed. “We’ll put an hour between us and Callotec, then loosen his lips.”

  “Best hurry along, then,” Hamdan said placidly, already turning away. Already heading for the horses.

  Yulan lifted his unshod foot for a moment and squinted down at it. He could feel the lacerations, the flow of blood.

  “A fine idea,” he called after Hamdan, “but it’ll need you to play packhorse for our prisoner. I’m a little lamed.”

  Drann found sleep elusive, despite the dreadful weariness pooled in limbs and head. He had allowed himself too much time with Kerig and Wren, seduced by the stories he was told, the half-secrets glimpsed. Sat there too late into the night, until exhaustion turned into something else, something that resisted the needed slumber.

  It might also have been that the bed was too soft, too comfortable. He had been without a bed of any sort for a long time now, and the one he had known before that had been crude by comparison with those Ordeller provided.

  He rolled and twisted, trying to quieten the insistent workings of his mind. He saw again that bloated, blunt finger in the cage, the piercing stare of Hestin’s young but old eyes. What kept sleep at bay in the end was the muffled sound of voices. Just as he was slipping away, the thoughts in his head blurring into the fancies and absurdities of near-dream, he heard people talking in the next room. Kerig and Wren.

  Most of it was indistinct, but fragments came clear to him. Single leaves wind-blown from the talking tree.

  Kerig saying: “He’s barely said a word to me since Creel’s camp.”

  Wren: “… forgive you. Yulan’s not cruel…”

  It was not the ebullient, effusive Kerig of earlier. This was a weary man, burdened. Letting show, Drann supposed, truths he would trust only to a loved one.

  “I’d do it again… my brother…”

  “I know.”

  Drann felt guilty at his intrusion upon these moments. The tones, the words, were too heartfelt to be meant for uninvited ears. But he lay still and quiet. Listened.

  “… my love…’ – Wren, this – “… I’ll always walk with you. All the way. Even if no one else…”

  Whispers, then, that Drann could not make out, until Kerig, trying not to laugh: “… leave the goat-breeding to our grandchildren, when I’m not around to smell the things.”

  And silence, which was what finally shamed Drann into rising from his bed. It was an intimate silence, and he had no desire to witness it; nor whatever sounds might eventually disturb it. He went stiffly to the door, his weariness cruelly engulfing him like a smothering cloak now that he had given up on sleep for the time being. The passageway outside was utterly dark, but he remembered where the stairs were. He even remembered, to his surprise, that one of the steps about halfway down creaked mightily; he managed to avoid it.

  Ordeller was slouched in a chair, feet up on a table. Snoring. Her ape had somehow folded itself into the next chair, its arms wrapped about its head, legs curled up into its stomach. It too slept. Drann rubbed his eyes. He was at a loss. He wandered across to the serving counter and leaned over it, debating whether beer would help or hinder slumber. A loud snuffling and snorting behind him brought him sharply upright. He turned to find Ordeller regarding him with an odd expression.

  “Miserable times, aren’t they?” she said, her voice still thick and a little indistinct with sleep.

  Then there were horses outside in the street, their hoofs loud in the night. Footsteps hurrying to the lodging house. The door burst open. Yulan and Hamdan entered, faces taut with exhaustion and concern. Yulan was hobbling, one foot booted, the other bandaged.

  Ordeller struggled out of her chair, the noise of her ascent rousing the ape, which lifted its head and blinked at the people disturbing its rest.

  “Are the rest of them abed?” Yulan snapped.

  Ordeller and Drann both said, “Yes.”

  “Wake Akrana. Let the rest sleep a time.”

  Drann was not sure whether the command was meant for him or Ordeller. He hesitated; she did not. As she vanished up the stairs, Drann watched Yulan slump into a chair and lift his wounded foot to examine it, grimacing.

  Hamdan’s face was fixed in a fell scowl. The archer unslung bow and quiver from his back and threw them down on to a table with unwonted violence.

  “What happened?” Drann asked.

  “The Bereaved,” Hamdan snarled. “Callotec’s got the Bereaved.”

  PART TWO

  11

  When Drann Was Eleven

  When Drann was eleven, the crops failed. A blight killed the barley in the fields, rotting it where it stood. No farm was spared. No one had the stores to go without the harvest. Without barley to sell or eat, hunger was promised.

  That promise made everything hard. It made tempers short, words sharp, hearts tired. Not for Drann, who being eleven was too distanced from notions of consequence and future hardship to feel their weight, but for his parents, whose moods darkened. And for Old Emmin, who was ailing by then and perhaps made fretful by thoughts of things still darker, and more final, than the family’s hunger. It all set an unhappy air over the cottage.

  One morning, Drann’s father came in from a long night spent awake at the side of their one cow. Trying to ease the bad birthing of her calf. Trying and failing, for the calf was dead, the cow exhausted, fragile. Perhaps dying.

  Drann listened to his mother and father shouting at one another for a time; not shouting about the calf, but about everything else. About the small burdens of their lives. It made Drann anxious, so he fled from the sound and went out into the village.

  There, he fell in with Kurl and Martan, the only village boys near his age. Drann was an only son. He had two sisters, Emmin and Trae. For a time, he had had a brother. Rellick. Rellick had died in his fifth month and, just like that, Drann had become once more an only son. Kurl and Martan were not as brothers to him, but they were friends; good ones, more often than not.

  That day, they took to playing a game of warlords. There was, on the southern edge of the village, a little humpbacked stone bridge over a stream. It had gone without repair for a long time, and was used only to drive animals to and from the fields now and again. For the boys, though, it could be the huge bridge across the Kurn at Karnolan, where Hugent, first of the Hommetic kings, won his crown with five thousand men against thrice their number.

  No one wanted to be Hugent, of course. Whatever love there might once have been for the Hommetics had been squandered by his successors. But Drann was more than willing to play the role of Roluman, Captain of the Free; the red-haired, unnaturally strong giant of a man whose company won both day and throne for Hugent. Kurl and Martan were to hold the bridge against Drann’s assault.

  He lobbed some little sticks at them, a cloud of arrows. He advanced with a bigger, stronger one in his hand, the gleaming blade of Roluman’s famed sword. He stretched as tall as he could, to be that giant, that hero. It felt much better than being himself.

  Kurl went dutifully down, beaten to the cobbles by Roluman’s martial prowess. Martan, though, broke faith with history. For whatever reason, he did not feel like losing that day. He and Drann battled back and forth on the span of the bridge, breaking and splitting their stick swords. Eventually, Martan threw his aside and grappled with an increasingly indignant Drann, pinning him against the low parapet.

  “Drann!”

  The angry cry made the boys spring apart.

  Drann’s mother was standing a short way up the track towards the village. Her face was flushed with anger, fists on her hips.

  “What are you doing?” she shouted. “Get back here.”

  Drann let the shattered remnant of his sword fall. Martan was edging away from him, attempting to disappear.

  “
I’m Roluman,” Drann said.

  He knew it was the worst possible thing to say. Perhaps that was why he said it. His tongue had never acquired as much discipline as some would wish.

  “No you’re not.” Almost a screech, that. “You’re nobody but you, today and every day. You’re the boy who’s going to help your father get the pig’s shed mended. That’s who you are.”

  “Let him be.”

  Drann’s father was coming down the path behind his wife. He looked as wan, as tired, as diminished as Drann had ever seen him. It was the first time in his life his father had ever looked small to him.

  “Let the lad dream, one day at least. This life’ll set itself to taking that from him soon enough. You think it needs our help with that?”

  His wife scowled at him, and the glare carried a fury that Drann had not seen pass between his parents before.

  “Well do you?” his father demanded.

  They left without another word, to Drann or each other. He watched them go in silence. Uncertain what he should feel, or think, or do. He thought to himself that he would not let life take from him the chance to be Roluman, or whoever else he might want to be. And he did not know why that thought, as he watched the receding backs of his round-shouldered parents, made him angry.

  Because he did not know where that anger came from, or what to do with it, he did what was easiest. He became once more Roluman, great Captain of the Free, and fought with Martan. Beat him. Bloodied his nose and bruised his ribs.

  12

  The Mistress Always Wins At Land

  The School’s Home stood a quarter of a mile inland, on the south-western fringes of Harvekka. A market street, almost deserted, was upon one side of it, open fields golden with unharvested grain on the other. Between town and country, the Home. The School’s greatest holding here in the south, the place of its founding and its modest beginnings more than two hundred years ago.