The Dowry Blade

by Cherry Potts

  ‘We have a wounded companion; we need a healer to take a look at her. We’d be grateful for somewhere warm for the night.’

  ‘And in return?’

  ‘We can pay.’

  Keenan shook his head impatiently. ‘There’s nothing much we need money for.’

  ‘Information then?’

  ‘Possibly. Depending what it is. Start by telling me what you’re doing here, and where the rest of your force is.’

  Maeve hesitated.

  ‘We do have a healer,’ Faine put in, encouragingly.

  Maeve nodded quickly.

  Keenan tilted his head expectantly, and Maeve took a settling breath.

  ‘There’s been a big battle, way south of here, almost a week ago now. I don’t know who won, exactly; the weather drove us all off eventually. As far as I’m aware everyone but us is long gone, having Tegan slowed us down, and we’ve seen no one for more than four days.’

  ‘Now there’s a lie already,’ Keenan said. ‘Brede came across a larger group than yours not an hour before she spotted you.’

  ‘She did? Then we were lucky not to have encountered them ourselves. We didn’t see them and I thank the Goddess for it. I can be sure they weren’t ours.’

  ‘And who was fighting?’

  ‘Phelan, and Ailbhe.’

  ‘And which side are you?’

  ‘We are mercenaries.’ Maeve said, deliberately obscuring. Keenan nodded, he wasn’t going to trust her whichever side she said she was, and he didn’t much care, really.

  ‘Do you think they’ve done for the winter?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure of that.’

  Keenan smoothed his moustache.

  ‘All right then, you can come in, you’ll get your healer.’

  Faine pushed through the leather-curtained doorway.

  Brede watched her, schooling her face to patience. Faine glanced at the faint stirring of steam still rising from the trough. She peered in, and her easy smile creased her face.

  ‘I see you already know the answer,’ Faine said, fishing with the tongs for the still warm metal. She pulled out the piece Brede had been working on. She squinted down its length.

  ‘A good edge that will have, true and straight, but the length’s a little strange, and there won’t be enough strength in it. What have you been told about planning your work?’

  ‘They’re staying then?’ Brede asked, ignoring Faine’s words.

  Faine shook her head slightly, and let the long knife that Brede had made slip back into the water. Brede moved out of her way, restless for the answer.

  ‘The injured one will stay. Her name is Tegan. The others will go tomorrow. I have agreed that they can come here to get warm and dry. They will eat, they will sleep, and they will go.’ Faine crossed her arms, her hands gripping above her elbows. ‘What, Brede? You want me to keep the whole band of them fed all winter just so you have someone to talk to?’

  ‘I’m not sure I want any of them here,’ Brede said.

  ‘It’s as well no one is asking you for a decision then.’

  ‘The injured one,’ Brede said, feeling a way through Faine’s amusement, wanting a serious response, ‘will she die?’

  Faine frowned.

  ‘That depends on Edra – and on you.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘I told Keenan you’d care for her, once Edra has done everything she can. We don’t want a stranger taking too much of our healer’s attention.’ Brede shook her head slowly, confused. Faine said, ‘They’re leaving her horse, you can nurse that too.’

  Brede laughed.

  ‘The black gelding?’

  ‘No; nothing showy for her. She has that ugly speckled one with the white streak on its rump. It’s called Guida.’

  ‘That old nag?’ Brede said crossly, but a grin spread across her face. The horse might be old, even ugly, but she had been, and could again be a magnificent animal. As a consolation for the desertion of the remaining mercenaries, the horse was adequate. Faine shook her head.

  ‘Get rid of that excuse for a weapon you’ve made from Finley’s metal. There will be no more of this work today. Clear up in here, dismantle the bellows, we need space. And when you’ve done that, find somewhere for those horses. Ask Darcie if they can go in with the oxen – failing that, use your initiative.’

  Brede nodded, rising to her feet. She took her not-quite-sword blade from the trough, giving it an experimental whirl. Not bad. She stashed it carefully in one of the baskets lodged in the rafters above her head.

  Chapter Two

  Maeve moved swiftly out from the gate, her skin prickling with relief. She nodded to Riordan and within moments the camp was dismantled and her small band of mercenaries were headed for the village, Cei pushing a bound Adair before him, Maeve keeping up a steady murmur of instruction and warning.

  As they stumbled in through the gate, Cei let Adair loose. The gatekeeper glared and straightened his clothes as he caught his father’s eye. Keenan nodded carefully, and Adair walked over to cuff Darcie not overly gently about the shoulder. Darcie’s lip trembled, then Adair grinned at him, forgiving him for his incompetence, and his own brief captivity. Adair straightened and caught Brede watching, he nodded to her, an unconscious echo of his father. Brede lowered her head and followed the mercenaries to the forge.

  There was scarcely room for them all in the building, but the warmth of the forge fire was wonderful. Maeve basked as steam rose from her clothes, but she did not drop her guard.

  Tegan was equally grateful for the warmth and for the woman who examined her wound.

  ‘You’ll live, providing you stay still and warm,’ Edra said at last, and began to rebind the deep sword wound; ‘the blade went deep, but you are lucky. There’s no serious damage. Infection and exhaustion are the dangers here.’ Tegan nodded, silent in the face of that warning. Edra turned to Faine. ‘Are we keeping her then?’

  Faine gave Tegan a long look, aware of the tension in all those about her, waiting for her final decision. Then she nodded firmly. Tegan let out her held breath. But for Faine’s word, infection and exhaustion would be her fate.

  Corla eyed the healer resentfully, absently making a sign against witchcraft.

  Maeve returned to her minute inspection of their temporary lodging.

  Tegan met Edra’s eyes in silent apology, uncomfortable with her own vulnerability and with her welfare utterly in Edra’s hands. She snagged Maeve’s hand as she passed, tugging her down.

  ‘I’ll be safe here,’ she whispered.

  Maeve put aside the temptation to shake her into caution.

  ‘We may have no choice but to leave you here,’ she said steadily, ‘but we are still in enemy territory.’

  Brede, lounging in the doorway, was more diffident on her own ground than she had been in the warrior’s camp at the gate, but she was indignant at Maeve’s careful searching. ‘If we wished you harm,’ she said, ‘we’d have left you where you were. The river would have swept you away by morning.’

  Maeve bowed slightly in acknowledgement of Brede’s comment, and reached down the basket containing Brede’s half-made weapon. Brede flinched, but Maeve merely frowned at the blade and returned it to its perch. She nodded silently at her companions. They stripped away their outermost garments spreading them in dripping curtains wherever they could find space.

  Brede drank in newness, strangeness; variety. A smooth faced giant, who moved with an agility startling in one so solidly made; a thin silent man who turned immediately to care of his weapons; a woman with hair so fine and pale that rain flattened, she looked almost bald. All of them had a hungry look about them, faces sharper than they should be. Brede tried to stop categorising them, but she was giddy with newness. Maeve was the most striking. She was tall, and not as slight as she at first appeared, more wiry than slender. Brede could see now, as her unbraided hair started to dry and the colour lightened, that she was red-haired. Her skin was unnaturally pale, freckled, giving an impression of consta
ntly moving sunlight on her face. She was difficult to look at, full of movement and sharp angles.

  Trouble, Brede decided, shifting her gaze away. The young guard resembled Maeve, as though he might be her brother. He was scarcely out of boyhood. Brede looked again, guessing that Maeve must be at least five years younger than herself.

  Maeve glanced up, and caught Brede’s eye upon her.

  Trouble, she thought wearily. She frowned, distracted. She was afraid for Tegan and would miss her; miss her assurance, her good sense, her warmth at night. Maeve twisted her thoughts away from that temporary loneliness. At least she could hope she wouldn’t lose Tegan this way, as she might have, would have, if they had continued to struggle eastward through uncertain territory in ever worsening conditions.

  Brede pressed warm bread into Maeve’s hand. Maeve took it, observing her thoughtfully, noting a strength of feature which Brede did not share with her kin. She had a bright defiant expression and a carelessness about her; dark hair tied into a loose braid that did not serve to keep her eyes clear. Maeve wanted to call it a lack of discipline, but it was more than that: she was alive with curiosity, dangerous with it. Maeve made a small adjustment in her assumptions about Marsh dwellers, and remembered what the smith said when Tegan thanked her for her hospitality.

  I’m not doing this for you.

  Brede’s keen dark eyes made her uncomfortable – darting about – following every movement. She was relieved when Faine came to beckon her away.

  Brede went reluctantly, unwilling to settle back into her established routine. She allowed herself another check on the horses. Perhaps her mother would like to see them? Brede considered, and rejected the possibility. Leal wouldn’t want to be reminded that she had once been entranced by movement and uncertainty, by the wind patterns on the tall grasses of the plains, that she had once lost her heart to a Plains rider.

  And this was no time to be thinking of Devnet.

  Brede returned home, intending to be a gracious and dutiful daughter, but her gentle kiss went unacknowledged, her greeting unanswered. She settled the other side of the smoky fire; her eyes smarting, and delved into the pot of stew hung over the flames.

  Leal watched her daughter and was afraid for the first time since returning to the safety of her birthplace. She wanted to scream at her daughter,

  You know what happens when you go. Something terrible always happens. Don’t leave me again.

  Thoughts of that terrible time brought Leal to thoughts of Devnet, and Leal’s anxiety spilt into accusation.

  ‘I suppose you find one of these mercenaries attractive?’

  Brede put her bowl aside, her stomach tightening into revolt.

  Dear Goddess, she thought, I don’t believe we’re going to fight about this now.

  ‘In what way?’ she asked, scrupulously neutral.

  ‘Like Devnet.’

  Brede considered. She was tempted to agree, to say –

  Yes, Leal, there’s a stunning redhead.

  ‘They are leaving tomorrow,’ she said instead.

  ‘And what will you do?’

  ‘What the Elders ask of me.’ Leal snorted and struck out again.

  ‘Why aren’t you more like your sister?’

  ‘Falda is dead,’ Brede said, her voice barely under control.

  Leal recoiled, then went on: ‘Why couldn’t you have hand-fast and had babies? Why couldn’t you be a real daughter?’

  ‘I take after my father,’ Brede snapped, a phrase often used to cover what made her different from her mother, a disappointment, a problem.

  She unfolded her legs, and went out into the cold night air.

  Leal regretted her temper at once and she was out into the rain almost as swiftly as Brede. There was no sign of her daughter, and her anxiety took her to her sister, Faine.

  ‘I’ve been expecting you,’ the smith said gently, beckoning Leal in.

  Leal raised her hands in a gesture of helplessness.

  ‘Tomorrow, when the mercenaries go, Brede will go.’

  Faine sighed. ‘You may be right. You know Brede can’t settle, Leal. You should never have expected it.’

  ‘It’s been almost ten years, that should have been long enough. She should have found herself a hand-mate by now.’

  ‘It’s a small village, in difficult times, there aren’t many for her to choose from.’

  ‘Oh Faine, you know that isn’t it. She thinks she’s too good for the likes of us, just as her father did. She despises us – she despises me.’

  ‘No,’ Faine hesitated, trying to find words for her partial understanding of Brede. ‘She has nomad blood, yes. That’s why she finds it so hard. She’s like – like a river that has been dammed.’

  ‘She has no more conscience than a river.’

  ‘Conscience? She’s stayed all this time, Leal. I never thought she would. What more d’you want of her?’

  ‘I want her to stay. I want her safe,’ Leal shook her head. ‘Brede is all I have left in the world.’

  Faine snorted.

  ‘Your world needs expanding then.’ She caught Leal’s expression. ‘I’ve no sympathy to offer you. She’s a grown woman. She’ll do as she pleases, just as you did at her age.’

  ‘But I was wrong.’

  Faine caught at Leal’s hands.

  ‘How can you say that? You loved Ahern. How could that be wrong?’

  Leal looked at the hands about her fingers, and said nothing.

  Brede, out in the rainy darkness, stood in the forge doorway, watching.

  Maeve sat cross-legged beside her leader, her hair still loose on her shoulders, polishing the sword laid across her knees. The edge of her mail sleeve caught the metal with a soft ringing. Her head was bent to her work and she was oblivious to Brede’s silent watchfulness.

  Brede glanced around. Three of the men were missing. The others seemed to be asleep, except Tegan, who watched Maeve as carefully as Brede.

  Maeve finished one side of the sword and turned it over. Tegan reached to catch her hand. Maeve turned her head, and the curtain of her loosened hair covered her face as she leant to kiss Tegan softly, putting aside the sword.

  Brede turned quietly away, ashamed to be standing in the rain, watching where she had no business to watch. She walked back through the cluster of huts, noticing, as she did so, the silent movement of Maeve’s scouts returning to the forge. Brede stood where she was, letting them see her, letting them know that she had seen and was unconcerned. In their place, she too would be checking her surroundings in preference to sleep. She watched them slip past in the darkness, listening to their breath, the slap of feet in mud, and knew abruptly that she wasn’t going to sleep any time soon. She turned and set off towards the gate, thinking to talk to Adair. She glanced up at his habitual post, and saw, not the familiar welcome bulk of his wolf-skin cloak, but Rhian in his mass of cloaks and scarves. She could tell even from a distance that he was shivering. She sighed, and turned away, heading now for the ox-stall. There were horses that would be glad to be groomed properly for once in their wretched lives. In the darkness she could pretend they were hers, pretend they were well bred, pretend that at any moment Devnet would come to stand at her shoulder, or that tall sun-lit Maeve would find her in the morning and suggest that she join the mercenaries. Anything, anything, but stay here for the rest of her life.

  Brede knew that any thought of joining the mercenaries was insanity. She put away the brushes, and stumbled out into the depth of night, back to her bed. She lay and watched the darkness and felt again the probing of Maeve’s grey eyes, the distrust and prejudice of Corla’s ice blue gaze. She forced her thoughts away, turning instead to horses, remembering animals that she had bred: the feel of hot horse skin beneath her hands, the sound of a particular young stallion’s breathing at full gallop, harsh and regular. At last she lost herself in that remembered sound, and drifted into fitful dreaming.

  She dreamt of Devnet, of lying in semi-darkness flushed with th
e residual heat of the enormous gather-fire and one too many cups of brew, and the afterglow of an afternoon spent riding and dealing and lovemaking. The soft comfortable murmur of many voices engaged in their own affairs, the gentle rumble of someone making rhythms from a stretched skin, the shrieks and giggles of the child-herd about their usual nonsense, just far enough away to not be annoying.

  Brede dreamt belonging, acceptance.

  Someone was singing; his voice was muffled, but Brede knew the tune well enough to fill in the words for herself. She reached up and pulled Devnet close for a kiss. Devnet threading heron feathers into Brede’s hair.

  Brede dreamt darkness, waiting, and Devnet – face outlined in the firelight, brow, nose, cheekbone, chin; eyes cast deep into shadow, and tightly curling hair bronzed and flickering. The line of Devnet’s neck and collarbone sharp and glorious and her own hands reaching up to touch.

  Brede dreamt feathers in her hair, and a rich, searching, passionate kiss, laughter and the illusion of privacy, and a warning; and Devnet still with that look, hungry, purposeful, playful.

  Brede dreamt herself travel-stained and sweaty in Devnet’s tent, and not enough trading to justify the Gather … and woke with hot tears running into her ears, and her heart pumping with the old anger, the anger that had grown between Devnet and herself, as sharp as a thicket of thorns, so that every time they tried to reach across it they tore themselves.

  Chapter Three

  Morning: Brede forced herself from her bed, anxious lest the mercenaries had already gone. She threw clothes on, her head aching from her restless night.

  But they had not gone. The horses still crowded the ox stall.

  Brede slowed her scurry and checked whether the animals had been fed. They hadn’t, and she saw to it. The closeness of so many horses brought back the comfort and certainty of childhood, although her father would never have allowed his beasts to be ridden so hard, nor starved of food. She rubbed the forehead of the black gelding and left the makeshift stable for the forge.