Late though it was, Cam was still at the tavern. Drunk, but not as drunk as he might be for the time he spent there. Ban helped him to down some more. ‘How much does an arm weigh?’ he asked. ‘It is that extra weight to one side that does throw you off, I do think.’
Cam’s eyes narrowed with laughter. ‘Do you avoid thinking, Ban. A better thing for us all.’
Don’t, thought Ban, but did not know how to make that one word come out. What he did say was, ‘I’ve something to show you.’
The look Cam gave Ban then had the warmth rising in Ban’s face, and with it the thought, He does! Then, No. Not like that, not me, Ban Coverlast.
It was dark once they were past the lights of the tavern. In this part of the Ridge Road the houses were larger, with low walls that showed an arm’s span of gravel, a stone lantern, the cloud-puffs of clipped pine trees.
Ban halted. ‘Down here.’ Here was a narrow lane between two buildings, dark. Cam made them stop to drink some wine. ‘Here,’ said Ban, again, and looked up at a high wall, the top of it white in the starlight, the rest blue-black.
Ban tried boosting Cam up so he could grab the top of the wall, but Cam was taller and more solid, and Ban simply staggered under his weight, fetching up bruisingly against the opposite wall and dropping him. They lay in the lane laughing, hands over their mouths to quiet their noise.
‘I’ll lift you,’ Cam said. And shoved Ban over the wall so firmly that he was aflight, landed hard. Ban found a barrel to stand on and stuck his head over the wall.
‘Jump and I’ll catch and pull you up.’
Cam’s weight nearly dragged Ban back over the wall and into the lane again. In the end, Ban let Cam in a side gate.
‘What! A gate here all the time, and you made us carry out that show?’
‘More fun, I thought.’
‘What do we do here?’
‘Ah.’ They were whispering, but drunk as they were, it probably carried as loudly as shouting. ‘Can you get these open?’ Ban shook the shutters to Sanderlin’s store.
Cam slipped the blade of that Northerner dagger of his in between the shutters and lifted the bar that secured them, working it back on the knife blade. ‘Be good only for buttering bread after this.’
One shutter opened, swinging outwards. Cam reached in, caught the bar before it could fall aclatter on the counter, and opened the other. Getting a leg up, he vanished inside. More slowly, Ban took hold of the upper sill and clambered in after him.
‘We do need some light.’ Ban pulled the candle from his pocket.
‘You want us to get caught?’
But the wick had already taken.
‘Here.’ Ban produced Sanderlin’s scale. When he saw it, Cam realised what Ban intended, and doubled over in silent laughter. They weighed his arm on the scale. Cam leaned forward, bending his head. His hair stroked Ban’s face, his lips brushed his ear. ‘That much!’ The breath jammed in Ban’s throat.
Cam was already moving towards the window. ‘I’ll feel easier if we don’t overstay our welcome!’
Ban held to the counter a moment, grinning.
Outside and away he said, ‘No wondering, that you are off balance.’
Cam only laughed. He laughed the wall back up between them.
At home, Ban lay in his place furthest from the fire. He does not, he told himself, would not think of me . . . no. It didn’t stop him touching his ear, as if to feel Cam’s breath there again; running his hand up under his shirt, down under the waist of his trews, wishing it was Cam’s hand.
If it was taking some time for his family to forgive him for poaching, it was taking Ban as long to forgive them the things they had said about Cam. Then Hale came in with the dark, the evening after they had weighed Cam’s arm, jumping with the news he had.
‘Sanderlin’s store was broken into.’
‘It what?’ Mam’s mending slipped from her hands to the floor. ‘Such a thing!’ She reached blindly for it. ‘It has never happened here.’
Ban felt the colour come and recede in his face, but in his stomach was a sick feeling that did not go.
‘They say it was Uplanders, come up from their camp, looking for food most likely.’
Ban slipped out to milk the goats. Ardow followed him, bailed him up against the shed. Not one word did he say, only looked at Ban, looked him up and down, and released him.
In the noisy dark of the hut that night, Ban lay wakeful. If Ardow was right about Cam . . . he could not follow that thought through.
The weather was close to turning, and the year. It was not frosty enough to bring out full autumn colours and the trees were tatty with brown leaves, the terraces all cleared to stubble or dirt. It was all dying and drear, and Ban’s mood matched it. The Attlings had crops to bring in. Cam will be worn out with harvesting: he will not be there. These were the things that Ban told himself, as he stayed away and stayed away from the waterhole.
Finally he began to pull his weight, took up tasks the rest of the family had done in his place all the summer long.
‘You managed that well,’ said Da. ‘Turning dutiful in our downtime.’
Ardow clasped his shoulder. ‘You back with us?’
‘Never went.’
‘Better you’re out of all that.’
‘Cam, you mean.’
‘Aye, I do mean him.’
‘His da keeps him busy.’ Ban thought that sounded convincing.
‘Attlings,’ said Ardow. ‘They do all right, but they work hard for it.’
The Coverlasts worked hard too, but differently. Ban took the goats out and into the opens, clearings with names like Ling Open, Old Open. Da was the mushroom man: he liked to pick under the moon, and he and Hale and Ban would be out in that cold ghost-light, filling pails with them. Mam and Jerric made cheeses from goat’s milk. ‘He has the right touch,’ Mam always said of Jerric. Dance and Ardow hawked the cheese around Kayforl and Isych, walking and calling their wares: ‘Fresh goat’s che-eese. Fresh goat’s che-eese.’
Still Ban did not go to the river, the game wood, the tavern, while autumn died with barely a whimper and winter roared in from the south.
‘Ban.’ Cam loomed over him, atop his great grey horse, and looked down from that height. ‘Where have you been? All autumn Third Month, I did not see you.’
Ban dropped the firewood he had gathered and tipped his head back to look at Cam.
Cam wrapped the reins about the saddle-horn and held out his hand. After a moment, Ban reached up. Cam’s fingers closed about Ban’s wrist, Ban’s about his, and Ban was lurching up and behind him. The horse danced a little and tried for more rein. ‘You did vanish these last weeks.’
‘I have never been ahorse before.’
‘That all you do have to say?’ Cam laughed, bright in the drab winter day.
The horse shifted, was walking. Ban clutched the back of Cam’s belt in both hands. His knuckles touched the bare skin of Cam’s back, where his shirt was untucked. They are all wrong. The tangled pulls on his heart cleared. Wrong about Cam, all of them.
Cam slapped his hands away. ‘You cling like an old grand-mam. Move with him, it’s easier. He’s a lovely smooth stride, Geyard.’
‘Smooth, aye?’
‘See? I had a hobbyhorse called Geyard, when I was small. Whoa! Duck!’ He dropped abruptly to one side.
Ban thought, Duck? And watched the branch spring at him. It swept him clear off the horse’s rump, the ground hitting the breath from him. Cam looked down, laughed and laughed.
‘Goddess, gods. Ban, ha, I am sorry but . . .’ Laughing, he held out his hand. ‘Come up. I’ll teach you how to ride.’
‘I don’t want to learn. It’s not for me. It is enough to look at him.’ And you fussing over him. ‘Such a fine horse; you are lucky to have him.’
Cam patted the grey neck, big hearty slaps of affection. ‘Geyard was my friend, in Dorn-Lannet. He did not care that I was Downlander, or that I had only one arm. And then the Lord’s
son gave him to me, when I left.’
‘So high a sign of regard?’ Ban could not help the words, they were out before he knew. But Cam seemed hardly to hear, so busy was he with the set of the halter and the long dark-grey mane.
They went to the riverbank where the waterhole was cool in summer. The water churned, clear and frigid. Ban felt the chill of it from where he stood. ‘It will begin to freeze, soon.’
‘I could dive straight now.’
‘Go on then, I am watching.’
‘Ha.’ Cam shoved at him, friendly-wise. ‘Why have you stayed away?’
‘It’s too cold to stop here.’ Ban started walking, then thought of something to distract Cam. ‘I would show you something.’
The woods had secrets, but not many it could keep from him. Deep in the forest the pines grew big, blocking the light.
‘They look like they have stood here since all life began.’ Cam was gazing around him.
‘Aye.’ Ban gestured for Cam to keep moving. ‘But my grandda did remember their planting. Here.’
It was a hut, or had been, now only four time-broken walls.
‘I’d heard the forest was haunted, but never of any holding left to grow over.’ Cam stuck his head through the doorframe, but did not go in. ‘Strange, that no trees do root themselves inside the walls.’
‘Grandda said it was a witch lived here. When she died they planted the trees, to clean the land, take it back.’
‘Reminds me of up north. Camping out in houses and their owners fled or dead.’ Cam shuddered. ‘I’ll make the fire out here.’
Ban propped his shoulders against the wall and watched Cam: head bent, dark hair falling on either side of his neck. Two steps. Touch. Him. I could. He dragged his knuckles against the rough stone at his back.
‘They did think I was one of them, from behind.’ Cam arranged the wood piece by piece, handling the rough pine as if it were eggshell frail.
‘You’re dark enough.’
‘Aye.’
‘Is that why you do not hate them?’
‘He . . .’ Cam’s eyes gazed inwards. ‘His sword did swing and the blood, it did just . . . jump from my arm and hit him, face and chest and hands, and he . . . he staggered back and fell over a body, so he was kneeling there, righting himself, using his sword as a prop, and I was looking at him, and his eyes met mine and it wasn’t . . . they look different, don’t they, but his eyes showed the same, I mean, a person, just a person. Like me.’ Cam jabbed and jabbed at the fire with a stick.
‘Hold.’ Ban laid his hand over Cam’s, stilling it, then letting go again. ‘Keep on like that and you’ll have the fire out.’
The winter was bitter; the cold wore everyone down. Ardow belaboured Ban, every night when Ban was held captive by the milking, every night until the goats’ milk dried up.
‘Where were you the day?’
‘Out causing trouble, it may be.’
‘I’d know about it if you did.’
‘So why ask?’
‘Not helping, that much I do know.’
‘Where can I be but in the woods, if I don’t want to be beaten by you with words, by all of you, always so many, so close.’ Ban slammed out of the cot and marched down the track to Kayforl.
He went to the tavern to be warm, to be with Cam. Once inside, though, there was a stiffness in the air. ‘Cam, I would rather the cold without.’
But Cam seemed set where he was.
‘Bailey’ said Bubbo Nelsan. He stood over Cam, hooked his boot-toe around the leg of the stool Cam sat on, and jerked it. Cam looked up at him, and Bubbo leaned down. ‘My brother Bailey did march with you to the war. What of him then?’
Ban waited for Cam to speak, but he did not. Finn Pacenot slashed the air with his riding crop. ‘Oda.’ Ssslash. ‘Brae.’ Cousins to Finn on his father’s side. ‘Why do you not tell us?’
Cam shoved his stool back, legs screeching on the stone flags. Bubbo was taken off guard and stumbled back, nearly falling. ‘How often do I need to ask you, to let me forget?’
The tap-maid leaned forward, breasts squished against the bar. ‘Oda was my sweetheart and he never did come home. How do I know he didn’t just take up with some loose maid up north? Dead! If he’s dead, why do you not just tell me!’
Cam was angry, Ban could see it, but it seemed a cold, cold rage: he lifted his beaker and sipped, a slow mouthful of beer. ‘Oda took a fever on the road.’ He set the beaker down. ‘It was Brae who went first, though. Fighting. Oda did lose heart, I think, and so the fever got him. Bailey, he was murdered at rest. Layne Gorlance was took later on.’
Roan Mattow said, ‘The Gorlances lost their best with him.’
Cam lifted his gaze up and onto one face, and the next and the next. ‘It was only Callen Mansto and me, at the very last. He went in the Battle for Dorn-Lannet.’
‘And now you,’ said Bubbo. ‘Of all of that marched off to the fighting?’
‘Most of me.’ Cam lifted the stump of his arm.
‘Aye, and a stolen horse!’
‘No need for that.’ Ban could not believe he had spoken Big Bubbo Nelsan down.
‘Leave out of it, Ban,’ said Cam.
It stung. It worse than stung, it bit, it bored into him.
The silence was like glass, brittle and all edges. Behind the bar, the tap-maid began to weep.
‘How did Bailey die?’ Bubbo shouted into the quiet.
‘I’m away out of this.’ Cam shoved and elbowed his way to the door.
Cam stamped around the clearing in the moonlight, taking big swipes at the trees with a stick, swipes like sword cuts, whap!
‘What do they want me to tell them, that they keep asking? I killed them all and sold my sword to the Uplanders! That is what they want.’ Whap!
‘It’s you coming back alone, of all of them who went.’ Should he tell him of Ardow and his warnings? Ban hesitated, held his tongue. Keeping his eyes from Cam’s, he mimicked the sword swings. ‘You said you were a bowman . . .?’
That halted Cam’s pacing and slashing. ‘Ban, I cannot tell you any more. I cannot. I do just want that you all let – me – be.’
The knot was back inside Ban, pulling every which way at once.
‘Did you steal him? Geyard?’
Silence.
‘You did say he was given you, by our new Lord, our old enemy.’
Cam hurled the stick at a tree bole so hard that it splintered. ‘Don’t you turn, don’t you start looking twice at all I say! You’re as bad as the village. Choose which one you like best.’ He turned his back.
Ban watched the shift of Cam’s shoulders beneath the cloth of his shirt.
‘Ban?’
And the way the tail of his hair hung against his spine.
‘Ban?’ Cam twisted to face him.
It wasn’t that his face had changed, it was that Ban was seeing it differently. He stepped back, and fell. Cam leapt to help him.
Ban hit at him. ‘Leave out of it, Cam.’
Cam simply stood there holding out his one hand, looking not like the grown man he was, but like a boy, awkward and unsure. ‘Ban?’
‘I do think Ardow was right.’
‘I . . .’ Cam rocked back a step. ‘I’ll see you back to—’
‘Think I need your help to get back?’
Cam’s face closed. ‘Right about what?’ He spun on his heel, and walked away as fast as the forest would let him.
Ban curled on the leaf mould and wished himself dead.
Ban waited by the waterhole day after day for as long as he could stand the cold. He walked the pine forest, but there were no hoof prints around the ruin of the witch’s house. He crept through the game wood: empty but for Fenister’s gamekeeper. Cam was not coming. He was not coming, and it must be Ban who went to him.
Walking into the tavern, Ban felt himself going red, white, red again.
‘Face long as a wet week.’
‘Broke with your sweetheart, did you?’
They none of them had seen Cam.
Next morning he skited off to Attling’s holding, the knot in his gut drawing tight. Mam Attling just jerked her head at the terraces. Da Attling was there, the little maid, Cam’s young sister, sitting on the earthwall watching him.
‘He’s gone.’ Da Attling leaned on his fork and shouted it up to Ban, where he stood on the levee. ‘Did take off, and where or when or what-all, he didn’t say.’ He spat. At Ban? At Cam? Ban did not know.
The little maid jumped down from the wall and ran weeping to her da. There was nothing for Ban to do but walk back home.
He went to the waterhole. He tried to see himself – on the road to Dorn-Lannet, going there to seek Cam out. But how? That would finish things at home. And why, for what, when Cam would not think of him once, not like that, not him, Ban Coverlast.
COCK HORSE
Cam had a hunger in him. He didn’t know what it was, and he didn’t know how to assuage it. It was an always-hunger, but worse now, in this after-the-war stillness.
‘Moving does help,’ he had told Ban. ‘You know, moving on.’
Ban had asked, like everyone asked, ‘Where? Moving where?’
Cam shrugged. ‘Don’t know.’ Over this hill, maybe. Across that valley, perhaps. ‘Perhaps something is waiting, just around the corner.’
‘What, something? You do mean what?’
‘Don’t know.’ Completeness? But that still wasn’t it, didn’t explain what he felt.
The hunger pushed him to the stable that dark evening, to saddle the grey, ready to ride away from them all. The going was a tearing inside, but the to, that was a lightness.
When Cam was small, long before the war had fought its way down from the Uplands in the north, the Smiling Women came. Cam and Roan and all of the boys were filching peaches from Da Farmer’s orchard.
‘It’s the Smiling Women,’ said Gillert Smithson. He was sat up on Da Farmer’s orchard wall, looking out for him or his sons. ‘On the road.’
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