Crusade

by Daniel M Ford

  “That still doesn’t answer how you could teach me. I’ve never seen you play.”

  With another deep sigh, Idgen Marte swung the instrument into her lap. She clenched her hands for a moment, and Gideon watched curiously as she lowered her head and bit her lip. Then, finally, her fingers unfolded and one hand reached for the tuning peg, while the other plucked lightly at the strings.

  The first sounds that she coaxed from the lute were raw and jangly, but quickly she tamed the strings into something approximating tune, and strummed once or twice at the strings. Then she plucked forth a couple of chords, then individual notes, then, while Gideon sat entranced, a few snatches of a song.

  It was something he’d heard Andus Carek play several times since the bard had arrived in Thornhurst. Idgen Marte didn’t play it quite as evenly; here and there a note sounded discordantly, or a run up or down the strings caused her to halt a moment.

  She stopped suddenly. “That’s the first thing I’ve played in about as long as you’ve been alive. It was too slow, not quite in tune, and my fretwork and fingering both were despicable. The instrument needs a lot of work and if my old master had heard it, he’d garotte me with the chanterelle, if it didn’t snap when he tried.” She picked warily at the single highest string, wincing at the resulting note. “But did it prove that I could teach you?”

  “Yes,” Gideon said quickly, leaning forward, eyes wide. “Would you?”

  Idgen Marte nodded. “I would. But there’ll be conditions.”

  “Anything.”

  “It won’t be fun at the start. It’ll be learning fingerings for single notes, and care of the instrument. Then the odd scale. It’ll be a long time, weeks, before you’re even playing simple tunes.”

  “But one day, I’ll be able to play that song.”

  “With practice? Yes.”

  “What’s it called, anyway?”

  Idgen Marte set the lute back down in its case, and took her hands away from it reluctantly, fingertips stroking the wood for just a moment. “The Streets of Cansebour.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Meetings

  Allystaire had outpaced everyone but Norbert as they ran that morning. That in itself was not unusual, but Allystaire felt keenly that morning just how easy it was for the taller, younger man to keep pace with him.

  Allystaire stole a glance sideways at the boy. Man, he corrected himself. The rock that had once sat awkwardly, as if it were crushing one side of him, now seemed an afterthought, tucked comfortably into one arm. His legs weren’t churning like Allystaire’s own were; rather, they glided over the road. Norbert no longer answered to the description of gangly; the work over the winter had put muscle on the young man’s neck and shoulders and arms and the rest of him had slowly begun to fill out.

  He felt his own lungs starting to burn, and Allystaire glanced back over his shoulder and saw Gideon and Harrys both laboring, so he raised a hand to call a halt.

  All of them gratefully dumped their stones from their arms, except for Allystaire, who carefully bent his legs and let it fall gently from his hands.

  “I have seen a man shatter his foot that way, lads,” Allystaire said, trying to keep the struggle for breath out of his words. “Best be more careful.”

  “Why’re we out this far anyway?” Harrys made no pretense of ease, bent over with his hands upon his knees. “Longest run we’ve yet made or I’ve no eye for this country.”

  “It is,” Gideon agreed with him. For all that the boy had lagged a bit behind, he didn’t breath as heavily as the old men. Allystaire supposed he might just be limited by the length of his strides. “I am not sure why we’ve come this way, but I will need to get back soon.” As Gideon spoke, he flexed and bent his fingers, then looked away easy, wincing very faintly.

  “To be honest, I do not know why we are out here,” Allystaire replied. “Mol simply told me we needed to be, and so we are.”

  “We take orders from her?” Harrys straightened up, moving a hand to rub at his lower back.

  “Yes.” The answer came in a three-part echo, Allystaire, Gideon and Norbert all replying at the same time, in the same definitive tone.

  “Fair enough,” Harrys muttered.

  Allystaire turned his eyes back to the western road, squinting, looking for any sign. He wished, for a moment, that he’d thought to ask Torvul for the loan of his glass.

  “Let us move forward at a walk,” Allystaire said. “Leave the stones.”

  He had thought to tell them all to come armed. For Allystaire, that meant his hammer belted around his waist. Norbert had his short bow cased on his back, arrows thick on his hip. Harrys wore his axe and falchion, and Gideon a simple dagger. So when his own hand fell to his hammer, as it tended to do, Norbert pulled free and quickly strung his bow, Harrys gripped his own hilts, and Gideon simply frowned and continued to flex his fingers.

  “Expectin’ trouble?” Harrys carefully slid his axe free and let it dangle from his left hand, his fingers loosely gripping the bottom few inches of the haft.

  “Always, but not particularly,” Allystaire said. “Mol would have told me if it were dangerous.” He paused. “I think.” He looked back over his shoulder to Gideon once again, said, “Could you take a look ahead, lad?”

  Gideon curled his hands into fists and squeezed them for a moment, then nodded. “Aye.”

  Allystaire frowned at the way the boy kept moving his fingers, but said nothing. Gideon put one knee to the ground and lowered his head, closed his eyes.

  Without saying a word, without really thinking on it, the three men moved into a triangle around the boy. Allystaire and Harrys stood in front of him to either side while Norbert stood directly behind him, bow in hand.

  * * *

  It was the work of a moment for Gideon to take most of his Will into the sky. He left just enough behind to keep his body upright, to sense danger if it approached.

  He flew straight upwards, giving himself no perceivable form. The dragon form he’d styled was an affectation, and unworthy of the Mother, he’d decided.

  He didn’t have to reach a particularly great height before he saw what it was Allystaire was there to find.

  A small cart being drawn by a single horse. Two people sat on its board, with a third lying along the back. Three more walked alongside it.

  Walked, Gideon realized, as he raced back to his body, was a poor description of it. They didn’t walk, exactly, or not like most folk.

  They limped.

  * * *

  Gideon suddenly sat up, taking a quick, sharp breath. His return was so sudden that it startled Harrys and Norbert, who both took a sudden half-step back.

  “Forward,” Gideon said, “quickly now. It is not a danger. It is people who need help.”

  The boy took off at a run that left even Norbert falling behind him for the first few span. They hadn’t far to run, though, when the cart that trundled towards them came up a slight rise, spattering mud to either side as it went.

  Allystaire halted. “Do not want them to think we are bandits out to take them,” he said, stowing his hammer and holding his hands up and away from his body, the palms outward. Harrys slid his axe back to its loop, reluctantly, and Norbert unstrung his bow. All four walked steadily forward, showing their hands, Norbert holding his bowstave, the rest empty.

  Walking ahead of others, Allystaire strained to recognize the knot of men that walked towards him. Not a peddler, he told himself. Refugees?

  Squinting hard, he saw that the one walking in front was half-dragging one leg behind him, turning at the hip with every step.

  Something fell into place in Allystaire’s mind and he rushed forward faster, still keeping his hands out.

  As he neared them, Allystaire suddenly pulled to a stop. He knew why they’d come. He knew what they wanted.

  But there were forms to
observe.

  “Travelers.” His voice cut through the air like a stone loosed by a siege engine, a powerful and commanding sound. A few paces behind him, Norbert started slightly. “Why do you come to Thornhurst?”

  “Then are we near it?” The lead man limped a couple of steps further. “We’ve come seekin’ the paladin. Seekin’ his healing.”

  “Then you have found him,” Allystaire called back. He lowered his hands. “I am Allystaire Stillbright, the Arm of the Mother, and what aid I can grant you, I will.”

  * * *

  Tibult cried out and tried to run forward as soon as the paladin identified himself, but he tripped and fell to the mud. He pushed himself on his elbows and tried to drag himself back to his feet, only to look up and find the paladin looming over him.

  Gods, Tibult thought, he is an ugly man. Anyone who looked would see how often his nose had been broken, the scars about his eyes and forehead, the uneven flecking of grey that was starting to come into his hair.

  But as strong hands seized his arms and lifted him upwards, Tibult could already feel the warmth flowing into his limbs from where Allystaire’s left hand gripped his right forearm.

  The days of walking, for Tibult had refused to ride, had brought fresh hell to the hip the paladin had tried to heal. It still wasn’t as bad as it had been, but it was growing worse each day.

  And now the pain was draining out of him, sluiced away like grime under a bucket of water. There was pain, too, in the healing, sharp and fresh, as the bones realigned themselves, as his leg grew straight once more.

  There was more than pain, though. There was compassion. The paladin knew his pain.

  There was love. The Goddess that Tibult had begun praying to saw him, and loved him, and eased his burden. But there was a request in that love, if not a demand.

  By the time Tibult had found his feet, and stood with almost no pain for the first time in years—there was a trace of still, a flare, that remained, but it was so light as to be almost a memory of joy—he faced the paladin, and then dropped to a knee.

  “I am your man, Allystaire Stillbright. For whate’er you can make of a broken soldier such as me. We all of us will be, I think.”

  The paladin eyed him carefully, narrowing those dark blue eyes beneath their scar-chipped brows.

  “I know,” he said, in a voice that was as deep and strong as mountains. “I have been waiting for you. Welcome to Thornhurst; welcome to the Order of the Arm.”

  * * *

  Allystaire pulled Tibult to his feet and looked hard into the man’s brown eyes. The former soldier was of a height with him, though not as big in the shoulders and through the arms. He could see the wear that years of pain, and of drink and poor food had done to him.

  There was some strength in the man yet, though. Allystaire had felt it when he’d healed him. A determination not to let go, a never dead hope of something better.

  I have been waiting for them, he told himself, uncertain how he knew. Mol did, he reminded himself, and that’s enough for now.

  “What is the Order of the Arm?” Tibult’s voice was halting, his legs shaking as he let them bear his weight evenly.

  “Knights who will serve the Mother,” Allystaire said, “and Her people. Who will stand at the farthest edges of the hearthfire’s light, and face the darkness beyond it. Who will bear any burden for the people behind them.”

  “How? I’m no knight,” Tibult said.

  “Neither are we,” Harrys grunted, as he and Norbert walked forward. “At least, we weren’t. ‘Cordin’ t’him we are, though.”

  “You are squires until I say otherwise,” Allystaire said with a faint grin. Then he turned back to Tibult and said, “Mayhap you were no knight. But I see before me a man who walked from Londray to Thornhurst—in the winter, no less—because he had one taste of the Mother’s Gift. And if you had done that by yourself, Tibult, I would consider you a strong and hardy fellow indeed. But you dragged others with you, with old wounds as bad as your own, or worse. I cannot imagine how you kept them alive, much less moving forward, and yet here they are, and at great cost to you. I see a man that I want standing beside me in the darkness.”

  Allystaire clapped Tibult on the shoulder, and said, “And now, I should see to the rest of you, aye?”

  Too dazed to speak, Tibult only stared.

  Allystaire headed to the wagon. Tibult shook himself free of his brief confusion and followed quickly after.

  * * *

  Audreyn accepted the tray of folded papers from a liveried servant and placed them carefully on her desk. Pens, ink, bowls of sand, wax, and stacks of parchment were marshaled into neat, precise ranks upon it, and the new arrivals were quickly shuffled into their proper unit and billeted accordingly.

  Time to begin concocting my lies, she thought. A tiny cold ball of fear blossomed in her stomach, but she pushed it down. In truth, the Lady of Coldbourne Moor and Highgate didn’t truly believe she was going to need to lie much. The Baronial demands on the treasure and the people of Highgate and Coldbourne was two or three campaigning seasons away from breaking them anyway, she’d decided, after a preliminary look at the weight on hand, and the first hints of what Gilrayan Oyrwyn expected them to provide now that spring was here.

  Audreyn reached for one of the sheets she’d already read enough times to have creased it with her fingers.

  Forty barrels of arrows

  Mounts for 50 lances

  Two hundreds of fresh spearmen, able-bodied

  Arms, livery, leather jacks for same

  She tore her eyes away from the list and set it back down, delicately reached for a pen, when she suddenly had the impression of being watched.

  Audreyn looked up, saw the liveried maid who’d brought the tray of fresh letters standing at the door. She’d heard the footsteps and the door close, but never looked up.

  She stood in an instant. “What is the meaning of this?”

  “Beggin’ pardon, m’lady,” the woman said. “But I been doin’ this for your own good.”

  “Doing what?” Audreyn found herself thinking of the dagger in one of the slim drawers beneath the desk’s writing surface.

  “Seein’ how long you’d take t’notice me.”

  Audreyn threw open the drawer and pulled the bare blade free, bringing it up in one hand, but not coming around the side of her desk. She scrutinized the woman carefully. She was young, a bit pretty in a rough way, with large dark eyes and ash-blonde hair. Thin, and ill-fitted by the livery she wore, she did not fit with the surroundings of Highgate.

  “I do not know you,” Audreyn said through clenched teeth. Fear rose in her stomach again, but she forced it down and stood.

  “Nor should ya, m’lady,” the girl said, her accent and bearing suddenly all wrong. “I’m here on behalf of a mutual friend.”

  “What does that mean?” Audreyn came around the desk, the knife held low, blade leading the way.

  “It means, m’lady, that, much like you, I agreed t’walk in the shadow, in hopes of one day walkin’ in the Mother’s light.” She held her hands up, palms out. “And I mean you no harm. Far from it. There’s nowhere I could run from her, e’en if I’d a mind t’hurt you. And I truly don’t.”

  The girl in the maid’s uniform sketched a terrible curtsey. There was grace in her movements but it wasn’t trained; it was perfectly raw.

  “My name is Shary. And Idgen Marte sent me north with ya. I’m here t’help.”

  Audreyn lowered her dagger hand, but not all the way. “Help me in what way? Why would I need it?”

  “Beggin’ your pardon m’lady,” the girl repeated, but the smirk on her face didn’t seem particularly apologetic, “but ya didn’t look twice at me, even though my dress barely fits and ya’d never set eyes on me before. Had I meant ya harm, I could’ve killed ya three times by now.”
<
br />   “I think you underestimate how hard it is to kill a Coldbourne,” Audreyn said, feeling her back stiffening. Despite her standard assumptions of power over a woman in livery, Audreyn suddenly found herself struggling to meet and hold this girl’s deep, dark eyes. They held a haunted knowledge that Audreyn didn’t want to share.

  “If you’re at all like your brother, I don’t,” Shary said. “I saw just how hard it is t’kill him.” The girl’s eyes got a little softer, a little awed, when she spoke of Allystaire.

  “Does everyone go dewey-eyed over my brother these days?” Audreyn’s exasperation vented itself in a question she already knew the answer to.

  “I stopped gettin’ dewy-eyed a long time ago, m’lady, but you didn’t see yer brother durin’ the battle.” The girl shook her head slowly from side to side. “Took a dozen o’those Wights to drag him to the ground, and them piercin’ him all o’er with their blades. No other man could’a lived through that.”

  “Enough of that. Explain yourself, or I may yet use this.” Audreyn scolded herself. She’d let the conversation run out of her control. It shouldn’t be a conversation, she thought.

  “I’d hate fer it t’come t’that,” Shary said. “As to what help ya need, well, learnin’ ya where t’look for threats’d be a start. Beyond that, I can be an extra set o’eyes and ears, I can carry messages and bring ya news, and if it comes to it,” the girl shrugged, “I’ve got a knife, too.”

  Audreyn blanched for a moment. “Are you suggesting your Goddess would condone assassination?”

  The girl shrugged very gently. “I’m not sure about the Mother, but I’m sure about Idgen Marte, and she’ll be bringin’ me t’account ‘fore the Mother does. Like I said,” Shary went on with quietly stunning calm, “I’m in hopes o’walkin’ in Her light. Ain’t there yet.”

  Audreyn sighed and smoothed her dress reflexively, and turned back to her desk, waving for Shary to follow. She deposited her dagger back in the otherwise empty drawer and sat. “It’ll look more natural if we speak here, if anyone should happen to come to the door.”