Cold Iron (Masters & Mages)

by Miles Cameron

  ‘I’ll be back soon,’ he said to Lecne.

  ‘Come and visit me in the City,’ he said to Tiy. Despite the aristocrat’s search of his new possessions, he liked the man.

  The acolyte stifled laughter and bowed his head.

  ‘We’re going the other way,’ he said. ‘But I imagine I’ll make it back to Megara in time, and perhaps I’ll visit you with my begging bowl, at that. If you’re wealthy now.’ He grinned.

  ‘School,’ Aranthur said. ‘School will eat it all. Will you take the road with me?’

  ‘My Lightbringer says it’s a bad day to travel – so who knows? Perhaps I’ll still be here when you return. But let me offer you a word of counsel.’

  Aranthur stiffened.

  ‘The cannone – in the city, it’s illegal.’ He shrugged. ‘But possession of one qualifies you for the Selected Men.’

  ‘Oh!’ Aranthur said, with pleasure.

  The Selected Men performed in all the great processions, and marched ahead of the guilds at festivals. They were part of the city militia.

  Drako nodded. ‘I have written you a letter to open a door or two. Please – no thanks required. Pray for me!’

  Without another word, the acolyte handed him the letter, turned and went inside.

  Aranthur hugged Lecne again.

  Only later, when he was munching bread with oil on it, did it occurred to him that when he asked the Lightbringer if there were Darkbringers, the man had never answered. And Aranthur chewed, and thought, and he did not like his conclusions.

  Riding was difficult and, initially, dangerous as well. No one had tried to dissuade him from riding towards Volta, and perhaps someone should have, because twice in the first parasang he encountered groups of soldiers. But he was wary, and they were on foot, and in both cases he and his excellent mount simply trotted into the frozen fields that flanked the road.

  The second time, a more determined soldier loosed an arbalest, a very heavy crossbow, at him. He never saw the bolt, but the thud of the heavy metal bow sounded over the snowy fields, and his horse – clearly trained for war – gave a little curvet that almost threw him off.

  After that, he rode wide. He began to worry for his friends at the inn, but they had the man in brown and numerous other travellers.

  His luck was in – within an hour of leaving the road, he found a parallel path running through the trees two fields north of the road. In places it was impassable, but for two parasangs it ran reasonably clear and well off the road – which didn’t prevent Aranthur from riding with caution. He had to, as his riding skills were relatively meagre and every stade increased his awareness of his own shortcomings.

  When he could see the mountains that nestled his home village between his horse’s ears, he gave a whoop of delight at his own navigation, and his horse dumped him in the snow. But the horse – better trained than his rider – then stopped and stood, head down, and waited. He got up, none the worse for his fall except for the cold and wet, and Lecne’s best fustanella kept him warm and dry enough. He remounted – a more exciting operation in deep snow than he’d imagined – and he realised that he would never have caught Rasce if he had run. He spent long minutes rewinding his turban in the proper Arnaut way, and then he let the horse move forward.

  Chastened, he rode even more cautiously until his path went down a steep slope. There, he dismounted, unsure of how to stay in the saddle. He and his mount picked their way very slowly down the slope in a series of self-imposed switchbacks. By the end Aranthur was as cold and wet as he had been arriving at the inn.

  But at the base of the hill lay a winding road, paved once, hundreds of years before, with cobblestones. Now there were small trees growing through it and many pits under the snow. He knew it immediately as the ancient road that ran along the Amynas River, which he could hear, rushing in winter-flooded fury, down the gorge beyond the road. He was sharp enough not to whoop again. He knew where he was, and it was a dangerous place.

  He noted the tracks in the slush and snow of the road, however. On the side path, he’d been alone, and the utter absence of tracks had lulled him into a feeling of safety. Here, it was different.

  He drew and checked the carbine, feeling self-conscious – a fraud or an actor. He touched the hilt of his sword. Then he loosened the sword in its sheath and carefully mounted his horse. The touch of the hilt against his hand was oddly comforting, like a kind word from a teacher.

  The sun was setting in the west, in a spectacular blaze of golden orange – but full dark was only an hour away.

  Full dark on the darkest night of the year. In the village, they would be dancing in a great circle, holding the dark at bay.

  He reconsidered, dismounted, and gave the horse a bite to eat from a nosebag. Then he put some water from his clay water bottle into the nosebag and the horse drank it greedily before it could leak out of the heavy linen.

  ‘That’s all I have,’ he said.

  His feet were numb and he was becoming afraid – of nothing. Of everything. He thought of Iralia’s seductive attraction and how like Tiy Drako’s charm it was, and wondered what the priest and the acolyte really wanted. He wondered if he had just played a small part in a larger story, or been made a fool of. It didn’t matter, because it was Darknight, and he needed to get under cover. His horse was solid, and he got back into the saddle, turned his mount north, and they began to climb in a world suddenly bathed in the bloody red of a midwinter sunset.

  An hour later, the last light of the sun was just a glow on the western sky. He was much higher now, and the air was much colder. The river splashed along mightily on his left side, and the dark woods of his childhood, heavy spruce and old, tall pine, pressed in on his right. He told himself that there should not be soldiers or deserters from the Volta troubles on this road, but he was aware that smugglers to Volta used it sometimes, and he was also aware that it had seen a great deal of traffic lately.

  But his horse had heart, and strong muscles and a steady desire to get the day done, and kept plodding on. In the very last light of the failing day, Aranthur plucked up his courage and cantered along a flat stretch of road at the very top of the Syomansis Ridge, past the beehive-shaped tomb of the ancient ones. He was close to home. Indeed, when he lost his nerve and reined in, the road was broader and better defined – and he could see twinkling lights and smell smoke. Rasce pricked up his ears.

  ‘You are a good soldier,’ Aranthur whispered to his mount. The horse’s ears moved again, and Aranthur laughed, his nerves fading as he neared his homestead. ‘I should call you Soldier and not Rasce!’

  Full dark sat on the fields like a gargoyle in the eaves of a great temple by the time he turned into his home village’s side road. The howling of wolves across the valley where the Amynas flowed over fast through Combe, downstream from Wilios, made the night seem darker yet, but the snow reflected the starlight. It seemed bright enough, though the shadows tricked the eye everywhere.

  It was Darknight and he was alone, out on the road. There wasn’t another mortal to be seen and no one but a fool rode abroad on Darknight. He’d lost time and was out later than he’d imagined – he taxed himself with tarrying too long with his new friends and his fancy weapon.

  In the field off to the right, four dark shapes began to pace him. He saw them from the corner of his eye, and Rasce knew they were there, too.

  The Studion taught that wolves were not servants of the Dark – indeed, that no animal served any need but its own – but Aranthur had a farmer’s sense of the animals. He feared them and was not wholly satisfied with the rational explanation. Still, although his right hand drew the carbine halfway from its case, he resisted the urge to shoot it at the pack. He was no more than two stades from home. When he finally turned into his father’s lane, his heart soared – and his fears fell away. He pushed his carbine back into the case, and his mount, scenting a barn, began to trot.

  The sound of horse’s hooves in the lane – not so common in the de
ad of winter, on Darknight, in a mountain village – brought Hagor, his father, to the door with a spear in his hands. Behind Hagor, his younger sister Marta stood with her bow half-drawn, still dressed in her best from dancing against the dark. Light and warmth seemed to stream through the door. In heartbeats he was off his horse and locked in their embraces, passed from sister to mother, mother to father.

  Rasce, forgotten, gave a snort.

  ‘You’re mad!’ said Hagor, obviously impressed. ‘You came home on Darknight?’

  ‘For First Sun!’ Aranthur said.

  On its accustomed place on the small table that usually held the family gods and the household shrine there sat a sun disk, magnificently polished bronze. Above it four winged spirits blew trumpets as they coursed around and around, their wings driven by the rising hot air off six candles in a sacred hexagon. The First Sun shrine had been in his mother’s family for generations, the work of some master artificer in the City from some long-forgotten holiday visit, or perhaps loot from some long-ago raid into more settled lands. The spirits had tiny bells that struck the sun’s outstretched rays very softly as they rotated and gave a constant chime. Something about the sight made his eyes fill with tears.

  Then he had to curry Rasce and bed him down, all the while telling Marta that he was not stolen or rented but his very own. Then, with hot mulled wine in his hand, he had to tell the whole story again. He found that telling Mira, his mother, that he had killed a man and taken his horse was not nearly as heroic as he’d expected, and Mira’s expression was forbidding.

  ‘Why do you even own a sword?’ Hagor asked. ‘No—’ He raised his hand, a powerful patriarch. ‘Our boy’s come back on Darknight, and we’ll not take this any further. Let’s be merry, and keep old cold winter away! And spite the Dark, as my grandfather liked to say.’

  Long into the night, they sang hymns to the Sun, and farmers’ songs, told riddles and played the games of childhood. Then each went to their favourite corner of their small house, and wrapped the little things they had prepared as presents.

  Aranthur had his own notions. The work of his pen, the little missal with his careful capitals, went to Marta, along with the fine hairbrush he’d found in the travelling case, and all ten gold Imperials in a little bag to Hagor. For Mira he had the pair of bronze and iron spoons he’d bought in the market in the City – originally his only presents. One was a large dipper for serving soup, and the other a skimmer for taking the fat off – both implements that any good housewife could live without, but lovely to have. These were well made, the rivets attractive and decorative, the metal burnished.

  And when the stars turned and the middle of night came and passed, Hagor blew out the last candle, and they sat in the darkness of the longest night, and said prayers. Different peoples celebrated the long night in different ways; some kept candles burning all night to the Lady, or the Sun. Or Coryn the Thunderer, or Draxos the Smith. But the Arnauts sat in darkness, and awaited the coming of the First Sun. They called it the Long Watch.

  Lying in the attic trundle with his sister, Aranthur looked at the ceiling. Marta was already snoring and he smiled to hear it. He’d made it home.

  In the morning, it was First Sun, the best day of the year to every child and still a delight to Aranthur. He awoke to the smell of his mother’s cooking, full of spices – cinnamon and nutmeg and something wilder and sharper. And sugar, and bread, and meat, which he was forbidden at the Studion. Oregano and thyme.

  Aranthur woke Marta and they went down into the main house. The attic was almost as cold as the outside air, and they dressed by the fire while Mira tended to two puddings in a pot and turned a pheasant over the coals. Aranthur looked at the matchlock over the fireplace: his grandfather’s mounted silver weapon, now black with age, tarnish and old smoke.

  ‘Is Uncle Theo coming?’ Aranthur worked up the courage to ask.

  The musket always made him think of Uncle Theodoros.

  Marta made the shush sign.

  Mira pursed her lips. ‘No,’ she said primly.

  His father’s brother was a drinker. It was a dark thread woven through their life: he would come to festivals drunk; he would embarrass himself; he would walk off, humiliated, promising never to do such a thing again. For part of Aranthur’s childhood he had lived first in the house, and then in the barn.

  For complex reasons having to do with swords and shooting the musket and various bows and crossbows, Aranthur liked him. Uncle Theo had carved a lot of wooden horsemen and toy swords. He’d been a playmate; he’d taught Aranthur to ambush his mates in a snowball war. His drinking wasn’t the whole of him. Aranthur had a notion that his own love of the sword had come from his uncle, even if the Arnaut sword dance with its curved sabre and explosive leaping was as far removed from Master Vladith’s lessons as Arnaut dancing was from the ballet of the Byzas.

  But he let it go. He’d been foolish to ask his mother.

  And when it was time to illuminate the sun disk, Aranthur grinned, held up a hand, reached inside himself, and cast the volteia of fire. Mira’s gasp of astonishment was its own reward. Hagor had to stop and put the family’s tiny kuria crystal back in its velvet box.

  Hagor regarded him with a mixture of astonishment and amusement.

  ‘You wanted to do that,’ he said.

  Aranthur grinned in triumph. ‘Since I learned how, I imagined lighting the Sun on First Sun day.’

  They all laughed together, and sat at the table for breakfast.

  There was a saying in the City – ‘No man is impressive to his horse, his tailor, or his wife’ and after a week at home, Aranthur wished to add or his sister or his father. His family was delighted by their presents and his talents, but then equally appalled at his relative wealth and its source. Every night brought on a debate concerning the morality of the thing and the implications.

  On the fifth day, he was in the barn, moving hay. Despite the cold, he worked stripped to the waist, his pitchfork moving with precision. He was using the work to practise his footwork – his stance, the way his legs moved, the front leg with its foot always splayed off line like a dancer’s – and for the same reason, his balance.

  He was almost dancing, skimming the wooden floor of the hayloft. But he got the hay moved, as his father had asked. He thought that into the bargain he’d chop wood, so he went to the mountain of sawn wood behind the barn and began to chop. Chopping wood had been one of his favourite pastimes since he was old enough to be allowed to use an axe, and every piece he split with a single cut seemed a victory. He made a game of it, choosing tiny flaws and marks in the surface of the cut ends as a target and then cutting as close to that as he could manage – two handed and one handed. Sometimes he would step before he cut, and sometimes he would stand too close on purpose and make his cut backing away a pace.

  Then he stacked the newly chopped wood on the low wooden wall his father had built across the front of the yard – a long wall of firewood. It was a family habit and Aranthur could stack the wood without conscious thought. He’d learned to cut firewood from his uncle. He wondered why Uncle Theo wasn’t coming.

  When he’d added twice the length of his body, as high as his waist, to the wooden wall, he stretched for a while, as his lower back was tired. Then he began to move bags of grain from the grain cellar to the heavy farm cart.

  Hagor came in with a calf on his shoulders.

  ‘Two more, born early and frozen,’ he panted.

  It was the first time Aranthur had fully appreciated that his father was getting older, was not as indestructibly strong as he had seemed in Aranthur’s youth. But he ran out into the snow and followed Hagor’s tracks through the olive groves and down the hillside. The snow was already melting – snow was never of very long duration there. He found the calves mired deep, almost newborn. One was very close to death, and the other seemed sprightly enough.

  He thought he could carry them both. He got one over either shoulder and began to plough through the dri
fts where the sun had not yet reached, consciously using his footwork to push, glide left and then push, glide right in a powerful zig-zag. After a few minutes the wind froze the sweat to him and the calves seemed to weigh more than full-grown horses. His muscles began to feel the strain. But the animals themselves were alive and warm, and he did his best to use his power. A ritual was difficult to invoke while moving and carrying things, but he did his best, focusing on his will and shoring it up.

  He made it to the barn, and found Hagor warming the first calf with warm milk and two stones heated by the fire.

  He grinned to see him. ‘You are strong, son.’ He took the weaker of the calves, breathed on it, saw its head move, and nodded. ‘This one’s for t’ house,’ he said. ‘Whatever your matur says.’

  They exchanged a grin. It was the first time his father had spoken to him in his old way since … Well, since the Byzas nobleman had come down the lane two summers back to inform his father that Aranthur had been chosen for the Studion.

  ‘I miss you,’ Hagor said. ‘I’d forgotten how easy the work was with another man to do it.’

  High praise in many ways.

  ‘Go have some fun,’ Hagor said. ‘Don’t just do work.’

  Aranthur wanted to ask if his father was feeling well.

  ‘Have fun?’ he asked.

  Hagor shrugged. ‘Life isn’t all work.’

  He had fun. He visited friends and took part in a Sun Rise footrace and he helped Marta prepare for her dances. He loved to dance; his fencing master had told him it was the reason he was such a quick study. Because he didn’t advertise his origins in the City, he never mentioned that Arnauts had swords, too.

  Every day, the City seemed farther, home seemed sweeter, and the Studion seemed less important.

  But his father wouldn’t entirely let the matter of the sword go. The two of them sat in the house’s main room, each holding a new calf on his lap while they spooned in milk.

  ‘Did you even try to find the dead man’s relatives?’ Hagor asked. ‘I imagine that if I was killed on the road, Matur would like to hear of it, and maybe have my things back. And my money.’ He pointed at the initials. ‘That’s a coat of arms. A Byzas – probably a noble. X di B.’