by Cherry Potts
She walked carefully so as not to spill the liquid and when she came to the offering place, at first thought she had misplaced her steps. She walked cautiously to and fro, but there was no entrance to the mound of earth before her.
Brede let her hands fall and gazed at the mound, water dripping from her fingers. She stepped back, half expecting the sword to be gone; but it was still there, lying half in and half out of the water. She took up the sword and an unexpected quietness settled within her, and about her, as though she was completely at one with her surroundings, as though she had stepped for a few seconds, not upon the earth, but within it.
Chapter Four
The rain struck again just as Brede reached the closed gate. She whistled, a sharp sound that cut through the faint murmur of the village. Brede smiled to herself, knowing everyone would have heard, and that Rhian would have to open the gate promptly or answer, at the least, to her mother.
However she wasn’t prepared for how swiftly the gate opened. Brede ducked low and rode through while it was still swinging open, crowding Adair, as he struggled to close the great door again. Adair ought to be asleep, not gate-keeping, that wasn’t promising. She headed for stabling and privacy.
Safe from prying eyes in the ox stall, Brede slipped from the horse and thrust the sword into a manger, scuffing hay over it. She turned quickly to loosen the girth as Faine appeared at the entrance.
‘You were only meant to be exercising the horse, not wearing it out. Where have you been? Your mother thought you’d run off to join the mercenaries.’
‘There was an army on Westerly ridge. Red banners; thousands of them. I had to wait before I could come back, in case they saw the horse and followed. Do you think I should tell Keenan?’
‘Which way were they going?’
‘West.’
Faine nodded.
‘I will tell him by all means, but no need to get him out of bed if they were going away.’
Faine leant back against the doorpost and picked her teeth; studying Brede’s turned back.
‘Were I you, I would make peace with your mother.’
‘How?’ Brede asked.
Faine shrugged in response, and was gone.
Brede glanced swiftly to make sure her prize was properly hidden, and then finished removing the gear from the horse. She took more time over the grooming than she had taken when she had all the horses there to attend to. Running her hand over the horse’s neck, under the mane, Brede felt the slight ridging of a tattoo and made a mental note to look in the light of morning. She had delayed long enough. Brede slapped the horse gently and brushed down her clothes to remove the mud, dust and loose horsehair. She stepped out of the ox stall and into Adair’s arms.
‘Not a word – gone all that time and not a word to me.’
Brede tried to extricate herself, but he stepped closer, blocking her way.
‘Your mother thought you’d gone after the warriors.’
‘What did you think?’
‘I think you can’t be trusted with a horse.’
‘What is that supposed to mean?’
‘I got to thinking you weren’t coming back.’
‘Well you were both wrong. Here I am.’
Adair stepped back, and nodded.
‘Here you are. Yes.’
‘Here, and tired and hungry – and in trouble with my mother – and with you, apparently.’
‘No.’
Brede smiled. ‘Sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. Just Leal to apologise to, then. So go get your sleep and let me get at it.’
Adair threw his arms up in capitulation. Brede laughed, and after a moment he joined in.
‘I was scared,’ he admitted. ‘I worry.’
‘Me too,’ Brede said softly, as she squeezed his arm and pushed past.
Leal did not scold as she had intended, she burst into a torrent of weeping. Brede settled beside her and put her arms about her mother, rocking her tenderly until Leal hiccupped into silence.
Leal laughed unsteadily, pushing her away. Brede sat back on her heels, watching her mother mop the tears from her face with her sleeve.
‘I thought I’d lost you. I thought you’d stolen that horse and run away.’
‘I’m here, I’m safe. There’s no need to worry.’
‘I always worry about you. Always. Something always happens.’
Brede sighed and hugged her mother again.
‘Nothing happened this time.’
They spent the remains of the evening in close companionable silence, and it wasn’t until the morning that Brede felt she could leave her mother, collect her new sword, and take it to the safety of the forge.
Wiping the dust carefully from the blade, Brede was reminded that she wanted to check the horse’s tattoo. She rested the sword against the wall, and lifted the horse’s mane. The tattoo was a folded wing. Brede caught her breath. Not just Wing Clan’s mark; but Falda’s name mark. The irony of that naming struck her, Folded Wing, never meant to take flight with the rest of her kin.
Brede rubbed her finger along the mark, to make sure she wasn’t seeing things, trying to remember whether Falda had a mare like this at that last Gather. The mark hadn’t been cancelled to show the beast was sold, so, she had been stolen. Brede took a ragged breath, caught up the sword, scarcely noticing the weight in her haste, and went to speak to the current owner of that horse.
Tegan was awake, feverish and disturbed. Her wound did not allow her to sleep long, the slightest movement brought pain, and with it, wakefulness. For all she was awake, she thought she was dreaming when she saw a tall woman bearing a greatsword enter the forge. She opened her eyes wider, wondering if she had died, and this was the Battle Maiden, come to guide her soul through the Gate. Then the apparition stumbled, and used the sword to hold her balance. Tegan let out her held breath in a short laugh.
‘Where did you get that monstrosity?’
Brede laid the sword beside Tegan.
‘I found it.’
‘Found? No one would leave that lying about to be picked up by a village apprentice.’
Brede smarted under the implied slight.
‘It was in the hands of the Goddess,’ she replied, deliberately ambiguous.
‘Meaning?’
‘I found it in an offering place, all covered with blood. I took it away to clean it, and when I went back, the entrance to the offering place was no longer there.’ She waited for Tegan to sneer disbelievingly. Tegan dragged her eyes from the blade, and considered Brede.
‘What are you going to do with it?’
‘Learn to use it.’
Tegan shook her head.
‘It’s too big for you. That thing was made for someone a good four inches taller than you and plenty broader. It would unbalance you every time you swung it. Stick to the double knives.’
‘The Goddess gave it to me. She must have had a reason.’
Tegan frowned, raising herself cautiously onto one elbow. The effort set sweat running across her skin, and her arm shook under her weight. She leant carefully into the rooftree, trying not to let Brede see her weakness.
‘You don’t strike me as fanciful, Brede. It’s just a sword, a sword she didn’t want. The most mysterious thing about it is why anyone thought she would.’ Tegan stopped, her head spinning. She swallowed carefully, willing solidity into the ground beneath her. ‘Melt it down. Turn it into something you can use. It’s good metal, use it to pay off your bond, but don’t imagine the Goddess wants you as a holy slayer, people don’t go in for that sort of thing anymore.’
Brede answered angrily, listening to only half of what Tegan said.
‘I’m not bonded. Faine gave me the apprenticeship as a favour. I can go any time I please.’
‘Then for pity’s sake, why haven’t you?’
‘I choose to stay – my mother needs me.’
‘No,’ Tegan agreed, shifting to lie on her back; suddenly exhausted. ‘No amount
of metal will buy off that bond.’
Brede shrugged away Tegan’s words, uncomfortable with the truth and turned the subject back to the sword.
‘I can’t melt this down, it would be a waste. Look how well it’s made – I couldn’t make anything half so fine.’
‘It’s no use to you as it is. It’s probably a liability. It will make you conspicuous and you’ll never master it. If this were my blade, I would not part from it willingly, and I would know it again if I saw it in another’s hand, and want to know how it came to be there.’ As she said it Tegan looked again at the blade, a prickling under her skin making her wonder.
Brede’s eyes narrowed: a cold, wintry look. Tegan suddenly felt vulnerable, lying there beneath that icy regard.
‘That is a question I’d like you to answer. You have in your possession a horse with a distinctive breeder’s mark. Where did you get that horse?’
Tegan shifted uneasily under the tone of Brede’s voice.
‘She came to me at a Gather, I couldn’t resist her.’
‘Which year?’ Brede asked.
Tegan considered the bearing of the woman sitting beside her. She wished Brede were really a Marsh-dwelling smith to whom it would matter not at all where she had got her horse. And since she was not, since she was a survivor of the worst mistake Tegan had even been party to, there was some truth needed.
‘The last year. The year there was the trouble,’ she answered.
‘Do you remember the man you bought her from?’
‘I don’t remember anything special about him, no.’
Brede slammed her hand flat against the sword hilt and glared at Tegan; her teeth bared as she struggled to control herself, to spit out the next words.
‘You were one of the raiders. If you had bought that horse, you would remember my sister. Perhaps it was you who rode her down, or one of your friends who sold her into slavery?’
Tegan’s blood raced painfully and her wound tore at her, making breathing hard. She forced her eyes from the fingers curling about the hilt of that sword.
‘I was there, yes.’
Tegan said no more, staring levelly at Brede, waiting for her response.
Brede made no move to use the blade that lay between them.
‘That is all you have to say?’
‘I’ve already told you, being a warrior is a job. I go where I am sent.’
‘And kill whomever you are told to kill.’
Tegan sighed.
‘Yes. If my orders include a specific death, then that is what I will do, either that or end my contract and starve when I get a reputation for refusing work.’ Tegan did not take her eyes from Brede’s face, but she was acutely aware of the hand that still touched the sword lying between them. ‘Now, I tell you,’ she said, with slow emphasis, ‘this horse came to me of her own free will, after the skirmish. I found her wandering, lame. I did not cut her tether, I did not kill or enslave anyone to gain her, and I do not know what became of your sister. Believe me or not, as you wish.’
Tegan stopped abruptly.
Brede listened to the unsteady breath she drew. She could see the sheen of sweat on Tegan’s face; she found it hard to ask her next question.
‘Did you take prisoners? Did you make slaves of my kin?’
‘No.’
Brede sneered disbelievingly.
‘I don’t take prisoners.’ Tegan said carefully.
‘Oh? And I suppose you’ll tell me now that you killed no one that night?’ Brede wanted Tegan to deny it, to lie, so that she would know she had been lying all along.
‘No, I’d be lying if I told you that.’ Tegan said, very quietly.
‘How many?’
‘Four, I think.’
‘You think?’
‘You don’t stop to check you’ve killed someone, not in a battle.’
Brede’s glance dropped to the sword, and her hand resting against the hilt.
‘Teach me to use this sword.’
Tegan took a careful breath, tension beginning to ebb into trembling. Brede’s hand no longer rested on the hilt of the sword.
‘So that you can kill me with it?’ Tegan whispered.
Brede tried to smile but the movement went awry.
If not you, then someone else, she thought; I am owed a life.
‘No, so I can be a holy slayer, what do you think? It’s a skill; it may come in useful sometime. We’ve all winter. When you are well enough you’ll need to practise, I can partner you.’
‘Brede, have you ever seen a real fight? Blows struck in anger?’
‘Oh yes. I’ve seen – I was there that night, at the Gather. I saw – I felt.’ Brede rubbed her face; uncomfortable with the rage that made her fingers ache to hurt someone. ‘I know what I’m asking,’ she said, ‘and why. This is no idle fancy.’
‘I didn’t think that.’
‘Yes you did. I have another question for you. What colour is the banner in your pack?’
Tegan gave Brede a sharp look.
‘Surely you know if you were at the Gather.’
‘And you know, since you were at the Gather, that the raiders wore no colours, and I stayed out half the night to keep from leading an army here so I’d like to know whether I need have bothered.’
Tegan nodded, and forcing her curiosity down, pointed at the rough leather sack that held her belongings.
‘Help yourself. It’s wrapped in the mail shirt.’
‘You could just tell me.’
‘But would you believe me?’
Brede shrugged and pulled the pack towards her. She loosened the neck and extracted the shirt. Unfolding it carefully, she found the banner. It was green. Running her fingers lightly over the coarse cloth, trying to soothe remembered pain; Brede sighed. She was about to thrust the shirt back into the pack, when she saw the condition it was in. There was a large tear in the leather, and many of the rings of metal were broken. Brede spread the armour out, inspecting the rings closely. Tegan watched uneasily. Brede turned the leather, stiff with dried blood, and looked from it to Tegan.
‘That was a blow that meant to kill.’
‘I am fortunate to be alive,’ Tegan agreed. ‘Do you think the mail can be mended?’
Brede raised an eyebrow, and forced the shirt back into the leather sack. She kept the banner across her knee, slowly folding it into as small a space as she could, and did not answer Tegan’s question.
‘Why?’ she asked at last, holding out the government colours.
‘The horses,’ Tegan said, ‘they wanted the horses.’
Brede choked on a laugh.
‘They made a poor bargain there. No Clans, no horses. Did they think we’d ever deal with them again after that?’
‘It was a mistake. Most of the Clans are dealing with the rebels now.’
‘Which rebels?’
Tegan narrowed her eyes thoughtfully.
‘Now should I tell you that?’
‘You think I’m going to go riding after the red riders to tell them something they already know? They had plenty of horses.’
‘Red? It was them yesterday? How many?’
‘Thousands. I don’t know. It took them a long time to go away. West, before you ask.’
Tegan’s face twisted with anxiety.
‘They could have seen –’
Brede considered.
‘They were on the next ridge south and west, not the one you came down, so they wouldn’t have been into the valley.’
‘Maeve would stick to high ground.’
‘Further north though, as she wanted to get across the river.’
‘I don’t know.’ Tegan’s voice was thick with worry, ‘I don’t think she was sure where we were, or where to go next.’
‘Not sure, no, but with wit enough to ask. I saw them heading off north. And they would have been going fast, and under cover of trees.’
‘Yes –’
‘Yes. And the red banners had other things on their mind. T
hey left the sword, I think.’
Tegan pulls the sword closer to her, grateful for a distraction.
‘Why do you think that?’
‘I saw five of them go down into the valley and then rejoin the rest.’
‘You said it was bloody.’
Brede nodded, puzzled. Tegan fingered the blade, admiring the quality of the forging. It was a very fine sword. She could never afford a sword that fine.
‘It can’t be a ritual sword, it’s too well used, or perhaps I mean ill-used,’ Tegan said, without taking her eyes from the blade, ‘look at the state of the edge. Why would they leave a blooded sword in an offering circle?’
‘I thought perhaps someone important had died,’ Brede offered, thinking of that roar of voices, and doubting the memory. Perhaps that strange sound had only been thunder after all.
‘Yes, perhaps they would leave the sword as a promise of revenge. If this was the weapon that struck him down.’ Tegan’s fingers flexed, stroking the smooth flat of the blade, finding the subtle indentation at the centre, failing to find a hint of a maker’s name.
‘Him?’
‘Just a thought. If they didn’t know who was responsible – why not ask the Goddess for a sign as to the culprit?’
‘But the blood was still sticky. They had to know – they had to have done it. And I took it away.’
‘Perhaps she’s on our side then.’
‘Our side? I don’t understand.’
‘Not yet, perhaps, but you will.’
Tegan ran a hand down the blade again; restless to be up and away, to let her friends know this news. She coveted that sword.
‘You’d best put that thing away before Faine sees it, or she’ll have you turning it into a pitchfork.’