by John Gwynne
Haelan grunted a response.
‘Besides, it’ll be highsun soon enough and you’ll be filling your belly before you know it.’
I’m not a bairn, thought Haelan. When I have my crown I’ll make you fetch me food all day long. He scowled at Tahir’s back as the warrior pulled himself into the saddle, the bay dancing a few steps.
‘Go on with you, then,’ Tahir said. ‘I’ll not be going far; just around the paddocks. If harm comes knocking I’ll be close enough to shut the door, as my old mam used to say.’
With a sigh he began walking across the paddock.
Gramm’s hold spread before him, a sturdy timber wall surrounding a collection of buildings scattered across a low hill, the main hall standing at the hill’s peak. People were busy, working on the various trades that kept the hold thriving – timber and horses being the main ones. Gramm had built this place with his own hands within sight of Forn Forest’s borders, raised his sons and daughters here, and now more than two hundred souls dwelt about the hill.
Over half a year Haelan and Tahir had been here. Gramm had taken them in, looked after them, protected them. At first Haelan had thought his mam would come for him soon. After a ten-night he’d asked Tahir what was taking her so long. The young warrior had just muttered about patience – one of his annoying sayings, of which there were many. After a moon had passed Haelan asked again. This time Tahir had not been able to meet his eyes. Soon after, Gramm had come to him and sat him down.
‘How old are you, lad?’ Gramm had asked him.
‘Ten summers; but I’ll be eleven on Midwinter’s Day,’ Haelan had replied.
‘Aye. Well, you’re still a bairn, but I’ll talk to you like a man, nonetheless. It’s the only way I know how, and it never did my boys much harm.’ He’d scratched his beard; a sadness in his eyes had stopped his words for a moment.
‘We’ve had word from the south, from Dun Kellen. About your mam.’
Haelan’s heart had beat faster.
‘She’s dead, lad. Or so my messenger tells me, and I’ve no reason to doubt him.’
‘Dead,’ Haelan had echoed, the word sinking in his chest like a heavy stone dropped into deep water.
‘Aye. Jael’s put her head on a spike. And he’s looking to do the same to you.’
The tears had come then, a seemingly endless flood.
‘Doubt that it helps much, but I share your grief. My eldest son died there. Orgull. He was a captain of the Gadrai, friend of Tahir. He held the door to the tunnel you escaped in.’
Haelan did remember him, the huge bald man with no neck, looked as if he could never be defeated. In blurred images he remembered Gramm trying to comfort him, then leaving the room and Tahir entering. He’d sat quietly, waiting for Haelan’s tears to run their course.
‘I’ll look after you,’ Tahir had said. ‘We’re two of a kind, you and me – the last of our kind. Me, the last of the Gadrai; you the last of your line. But things will be different from now on. You’re hunted – Jael knows we escaped Dun Kellen and he wants you dead. You’re the rightful heir to Isiltir, and Jael wants that crown – so you mustn’t be found . . .’
I know I’m hunted, Haelan thought. Once a group of warriors had been spied riding towards the hold. As they’d drawn closer Haelan had made out the banner that rippled above them; a lightning bolt on a black field, a pale serpent entwined about it. Jael’s banner. They have come to kill me, Haelan remembered thinking, the fear as he had seen them cantering along the road freezing him in the courtyard. Tahir had swept him up in his arms and run, hiding him in the cellars beneath the feast-hall’s kitchens. They had stayed there together, Haelan trying to control his shaking limbs, Tahir staring at the trapdoor, one hand permanently fixed to his sword hilt. It had felt like days before Gramm had opened the door and told them the warriors were gone. That had been over four moons ago.
The courtyard was heaving with activity. A score of warriors were climbing into saddles, horses stamping and blowing. Wulf, Gramm’s eldest son, shouted a call and led them clattering towards the gates. Haelan jumped out of their way, aiming for the shadows, trying to hide from Wulf’s eyes – the warrior had scolded him more than once for shirking his duties around the hold.
Haelan put his head down and ran across the courtyard, heading for the timber yard, which was situated in the far north of the settlement, beside the river. He sprinted along the edge of the feast-hall, pausing for breath as he crested the hill the hold was built upon. His eyes were drawn eastwards, towards Forn Forest, the river disappearing into the endless expanse of trees that consumed the horizon. Closer on the river Haelan saw line after line of felled timber bobbing in the water, like the body of some half-submerged creature, the current and long barges speeding it towards the hold.
An open gateway in the hold’s wall led to the river, and to the stone bridge that spanned it, remnant and reminder of the giants that dwelt here once. Haelan saw figures moving on the bank amongst the moored craft. He glimpsed Swain, Wulf’s boy, the closest thing to a friend that he’d ever known. Back at Dun Kellen he’d had playmates, but there was always a divide between the future heir and future subjects. I am still heir of Isiltir, but here that does not seem so important. Sometimes he struggled to remember his mam and da’s faces.
Swain was the natural leader of those who were not old enough for the Rowan Field, and from Haelan’s first day at the hold had looked out for him.
Haelan ran down the hill, through the gates onto the riverbank.
‘There you are,’ a voice boomed, old Kalf beckoning to him, as barrel-chested as the boats he tended.
‘You’re late, but better late’n never, so here you go,’ Kalf said as he handed Haelan a mallet and a bucket, Haelan wrinkling his nose at the hemp and pine-tar inside. ‘Get cracking, then, before the day’s over.’
Haelan found a barge without workers and began. He knew what to do now, having performed the same task every day for the last ten-night. Gramm’s hold had grown wealthy on timber from Forn Forest, and most of it was transported down the river, great floating rafts of it tied and pulled by barges. Over a dozen of those barges had been dragged from the river and now hung suspended on timber frames in various stages of repair. All of their hulls needed caulking with the pitch in Haelan’s bucket.
I can do this now. Haelan felt a flush of pride as he banged tarred fibres into gaps between the timber strakes of a barge’s hull, the pine-tar sticking to everything. He managed to get most of the tar in the right place, unlike his first day, when his wastefulness had earned him more than one clump around the back of his head by Kalf. He’d felt ashamed and useless, until Swain had taken pity on him and shown him how to scoop and spread the pitch without losing half of it to the ground. Now with something resembling competence he scooped, spread, hammered and repeated, kept going until his arms were aching.
‘You’re getting better at that,’ a voice said close by. Swain appeared with a bucket of his own, his younger sister Sif and a scruffy dog at his heels. ‘I’ll help you finish up.’
‘I’ll help too,’ his sister said.
‘No,’ Swain said firmly. ‘Last time you tried you ended up with more tar on you than the boat. You looked like a river-wraith. Mam had to cut your hair and Da nearly killed me. You sit there and play with Pots.’
Swain was half a year away from entering the Rowan Field, his limbs looking too long for his body, wiry muscles stretched upon his frame. He was all energy and ideas, always coming up with ways to brighten each day, whether it was leading stealthy night-time excursions to catch river rats or organizing raids on the kitchen ovens. Tahir had caught Haelan more than once as he was sneaking after Swain and a dozen others – You can’t go, Tahir had said, it’s too dangerous – but lately either Haelan had perfected his skulking skills or Tahir had decided to turn a blind eye to the adventures.
Swain climbed the scaffolding to work on the parts of the hull that Haelan couldn’t reach; working together they made qu
ick progress along the barge. The sounds of Sif giggling drifted around them as she played with the dog, a wiry ball of white fur that took a willing part in Swain’s adventures, sniffing out pies that had been hidden in the kitchens or rooting out rats’ nests along the riverbank. All of a sudden the dog abandoned Sif and began jumping at the scaffolding below Swain, trying to bite his dangling mallet.
‘Stop it, Pots,’ Swain ordered.
‘Why do you call him Pots?’
‘He was born in a cook pot in the kitchen, him and six others. And he kept going back after the litter was grown and given out. Maybe that’s why he’s so good at finding the pies.’ Swain grinned conspiratorially as he climbed down from the scaffolding. He crouched low, beckoning Haelan closer, and pulled something from a pouch at his belt.
‘Here’s some of the last pie Pots found, keep us going till highsun.’ He passed some to Haelan and Sif, then threw the rest to the dog, who swallowed it without chewing.
‘Thank you,’ Haelan mumbled over pie-crust. He gave his last bit to Pots and scratched him behind an ear.
‘Well, it’s a family business, looking after you.’ Swain winked at him. ‘You mean Orgull. He was your uncle? Your da’s brother,’ he said, steering his thoughts away from his mam and Dun Kellen.
‘Aye. He left here a long time ago, joined the Gadrai in Forn Forest after killing a giant from the north.’ Swain’s hand dropped to a hatchet hanging from a loop at his belt, running a thumb along its edge. ‘He gave me this, when he left.’
It was a perfect, smaller copy of the throwing axes Haelan saw the warriors of Gramm’s hold carrying.
‘What was he like?’ Swain asked him, something other than his usual confidence in his face.
Haelan shrugged. ‘Big.’
Swain laughed. ‘I remember that. He used to throw me around like Pots with a rat. Do you remember anything else?’
Haelan thought hard. This obviously meant a lot to Swain, and Haelan was grateful to him for many things since he’d arrived here, not least the piece of pie he’d just gulped down.
‘Tears,’ he said at last. ‘Tahir wept as we left Orgull and the other one. They were good friends, is my guess.’ He knew there was a tale there, of sword-brothers. Part of him wanted to know more, another part shying away from anything that reminded him of the circumstances in which his mam died. He looked at Swain, saw a desire for more, a need to know. ‘I’ll ask Tahir about him.’
Swain patted Haelan’s shoulder and gave him a weak smile.
A murmur of sound drifted over to them, growing quickly. Haelan saw a dozen or so lads and lasses gathered in a huddle down by the riverbank. He and Swain hurried over, Sif trailing after them.
It was Trigg, holding a willow-trap high.
The half-breed.
Trigg was of an age to Swain, but she stood a head taller than him, her face broad and angular, limbs long and muscular. Her mam and da had been part of Gramm’s hold, and part of an expedition that had rowed up the river into Forn. They hadn’t returned. The barges they’d used had eventually been found, half-sunk in the river, signs of battle on the vessels, but no bodies.
A year later Trigg’s mam had staggered back into the hold from across the bridge that led into the Desolation. Her belly was swollen with child and she was half-mad, babbling about being made slave to the Jotun giants.
Trigg had been born, her mam dying in the act of giving birth, so the hold had raised Trigg, not one person taking her on, but many of them. Now she was just part of the hold, although Swain and the others behaved differently around her. Nothing they said, but Haelan could see a wariness in the way Trigg was treated, like an unbroken colt. As if she were dangerous. Haelan had only spoken to Trigg fleetingly, the tall girl always standing on the edges, when she was around at all. She disappeared for long lengths of time, Swain told him that she travelled into Forn. What for he didn’t say.
‘What’ve you caught?’ Swain asked, pushing through the crowd.
‘Biggest rat you’ve ever seen,’ Trigg grinned, hefting the basket. Whatever was in it was heavy, as even Trigg was straining to hold it high. As Haelan watched the basket bucked and rocked.
And angry.
‘It was in the river, after the salmon.’
Swain peered through the willow slats and whistled. ‘I’ve caught bigger,’ he said, winking at Haelan.
‘I don’t believe that,’ Trigg said flatly, no anger in her tone, no insult, just a statement of a fact as she saw it. Pots was yapping at Swain’s feet, jumping up at the basket. ‘Looks like your ratter wants a go. How about a wager?’
Haelan had seen Pots sniff out and kill a score of rats down by the river, and he was good at it, quick and deadly, the rats always dead within heartbeats.
‘No,’ Sif said. She tugged at Swain’s hand. ‘Don’t do it,’ she said.
Swain peered back into the basket and frowned. ‘Old Kalf’ll catch us, then we’ll be scrubbing these barges till midwinter.’
‘There’s an empty barn over there.’ Trigg smiled, sensing a victory over Swain. ‘Are you scared for your pup?’
Swain snorted. ‘What’s the wager, then?’
‘My knife for your axe.’
‘No chance.’
‘Don’t have much faith in your dog, do you?’
Swain was silent a moment, then he nodded and they were all rushing to one of the timber barns. As he hurried with the others, Haelan glanced across the river. Beyond a strip of green vegetation the land to the north quickly changed, turning into a wasteland, barren and pitted, punctuated by a scattered range of mountains receding into the distance. The Desolation, it was called, a peninsula of land where the Scourging had raged hottest, so Tahir had told him. The battleground where Asroth and Elyon’s hosts had met, the Ben-Elim and the Kadoshim. The land was still scarred and broken from the outpouring of Elyon’s wrath, a place of rock and dust, of ruins and bottomless chasms. Haelan often looked out at the northlands, imagining the clash of angels and demons filling the landscape. He shivered. Now only giants were supposed to roam the wasteland, occasionally raiding across the river on their great bears. A huge war-hammer and a bear pelt hung in the feasthall to remind Haelan that the giants and their bears were more than just tales.
Once inside the barn Swain and Trigg threw together a circle from hay bales while others started shouting wagers. Haelan was holding Pots.
‘Kill it quick,’ he whispered in Pots’ ear; the dog gave his face a quick lick.
Swain came and took Pots, holding him by the scruff of the neck as Trigg placed the willow basket on the far side of the makeshift ring. Pots growled, his hackles standing, and Trigg opened the basket.
Something black and sinuous leaped out, a collective gasp issuing from the small crowd. It was a rat, but bigger than any that Haelan had ever seen before. From snout to tail it must be as long as my arm. Yellow incisors gleamed in a malevolent face, thick bristly hair coating its body, and suddenly Haelan was scared for Pots.
Pots was surging towards it, all fur and snarls.
The rat didn’t try to run, it just bunched up, then leaped.
They collided with a meaty thump, Pots twisting, trying to get his jaws at the rat’s neck. They rolled on the dusty ground, teeth snapping, spittle flying, then parted, skidding in different directions, Pots’ feet scrabbling for purchase.
The rat found its balance first, darted forwards, and the two animals were a swirling mass again. Abruptly there was blood spattering the ground, an animal whine. Haelan closed his eyes, scared, saw a memory of blood flying in a dark tunnel and quickly opened his eyes again. The fighting animals crashed against a hay bale. Haelan saw the rat’s jaws clamped around Pots’ shoulder, the dog squirming frantically, teeth snapping, head twisting as he tried to get to the rat.
Pots shook violently; the rat flew off with a ripping sound, bouncing off of a hay bale.
The two animals stood staring at one another, Pots holding a front paw in the air, blood pulsing
from a ragged gash in his shoulder.
He’s going to die, Haelan thought, knowing Pots killed with speed. That was gone now.
‘Help him,’ he whispered to Swain.
‘I can’t,’ Swain said, looking on in shock.
Sif buried her face in Swain’s breeches.
The rat approached Pots, slower this time, nose twitching. Pots lunged forward, teeth snapping and stumbled, the rat leaping aside, then it was on Pots’ back, teeth gouging, Pots crying out, high-pitched. Haelan screwed his eyes shut, clenched his fists, trying to blot out the sound. Memories surged, Pots’ screams becoming deeper, morphing into something else, something worse; the sound of men dying in a dark tunnel, blood flowing. He grabbed his head, fingers squeezing, trying to stop the sound, but Pots’ cries of pain filtered through everything. Distantly he realized he was moving, a hand grabbing at him, but he shook it off, voices shouting at him, then his arm was rising and falling, faster and faster, warm liquid spraying his face, in his mouth, blurring his vision.
Then silence; only the heaving of his breath, a dog whining.
He wiped blood from his eyes, saw Swain’s hatchet in his hand, slick with blood. The rat was a twitching mess on the floor, hacked into savage ruin, intestines spilling about Haelan’s feet. Pots had crawled away, watching him.
He looked up, around the ring, saw faces staring back at him, mouths open. Sif was crying.
‘Not fair,’ Trigg said. ‘My rat was winning.’ Swain stepped into the ring and picked Pots up.
Haelan felt tears bloom, leaving tracks through the blood on his cheeks. His shoulders started to shake.
‘Come on,’ Swain said, putting an arm around Haelan. Sif came and took his hand.
‘Look at my rat,’ Trigg said, frowning. ‘I would have won. You put him up to it.’
Swain stopped and turned, then took the hatchet from Haelan’s grip and threw it at Trigg’s feet.
‘Your prize,’ Swain said.