The Dowry Blade

by Cherry Potts

  I know what this is, Sorcha thought, aware of each breath she took, the jarring of her teeth as Macsen’s hooves collided with the ground. Stolen time. Her heart jolted violently, her mouth became dry, and she had to close her eyes, overcome by nausea.

  She heard their pursuers, heard them in the tremor of hooves echoing through the earth. She had no thought for the songs that might stop the hunters, or hide their own passage through the woods. She concentrated on the immediate, the physical – the rub of the stirrup straps against her leg, the flicker of half-light between the trees, the leather between her hands where she gripped Brede’s belt; the jolt of Brede’s ribs against her arm as she forced Macsen sharply through the thick undergrowth. She could not think beyond those sensations, because there was nothing beyond them but death, and fear of death.

  The trees ended and Brede forced yet more speed from Macsen. It was better to be moving at speed, but they were exposed out in the open and Sorcha felt her back muscles flinching involuntarily. She hoped the horse could keep up that speed, wounded as he was; it was their only hope of evading the hunt. Hope. She smothered that; she could not afford to hope.

  The hunters reached the edge of the woodland, and Lorcan called a halt, watching the horse speeding away from them, a darker blur in the darkness. His eyes narrowed against the rain that fell once more.

  Lorcan looked to Doran, pointing his desire, meaning too potent for words. Doran notched the arrow to his bowstring, and pulled smoothly until the fletching lay against his cheekbone. He listened for the distance and direction, not trusting his eyes in the darkness. He let loose the arrow.

  For a split second there was no pain, only shock, but then Sorcha tried to take a breath. The Scavenger had her scent. Time had run out.

  Doran lowered the bow. Lorcan nodded in satisfaction. He turned, searching his band of breathless followers. He gestured to Madoc, the least trusted, Doran’s friend, Phelan’s man.

  ‘Go with Doran, make sure of them.’

  Madoc was an excellent tracker, a better killer, the obvious choice; but Lorcan thought him an ambitious man, willing to strike out on his own. He offered Madoc sufficient rope to hang himself, and Madoc grasped it with both hands. If he didn’t do what was required of him, out here with only Lorcan’s men about him, he was a bigger fool than Lorcan gave him credit for.

  Madoc pulled his cloak closer about him against the rain, and followed the archer across the heath. They knew the lie of the land; their quarry did not. There was no hurry now that the fugitives had chosen this route.

  Macsen’s hooves went from under him. Brede instinctively hauled on the reins, struggled to keep him upright but the footing was not there, the brush that went by so fast was not going to stop their falling, the slipping and sliding and scattering of stones could end only one way. She lost hold of the reins, lost contact with the horse, lost her sense of which way she was falling. The earth rose up to block her path, flinging her from one brutal battering to another.

  At last it stopped. Brede lay, grateful for stillness, and fought for breath. Pain dulled her sight, her hearing. She gazed up at the cliff above her. Logic told her that the pain would only get worse, that she was not safe where she lay, that she must move. She raised a hand off the ground, then let it fall again. Impossible. She turned her head, reached about her with the other hand. Her fingers brushed hair. She twisted further, glimpsing a dark hump of bloodiness. Macsen. Her fingers trailed away from the warmth of his body, falling back to rain soaked soil. She concentrated on breathing a while longer, trying to get her brain to untangle the horizon, but pain ate at the edges of her understanding and darkness encroached.

  Sorcha clung to consciousness; she would not allow it to slide from her. She turned her head with difficulty, and found Brede lying close. She reached out but couldn’t touch her – couldn’t move further. She pulled her energy together, forcing the spark of life to reach her tongue, to call Brede. With agonising slowness Brede raised her head. There was blood mingled in her hair, but she was aware. Now that she knew Brede was still alive Sorcha could hear her whimpering, as she had not before, deafened by her own pain. She couldn’t make out all Brede’s hurts; she did not have the strength. She willed Brede to move closer to her; she needed to touch her, needed to have her close.

  Brede inched across the sodden ground, stopping often, overcome. Sorcha felt the burning in her lungs, the torturing of her body that ordered her to cough, but she did not dare, afraid of what more it would do. She stifled the need, breathing shallow, as far as the pain and no further, but the pain was there sooner, and sooner. Brede’s fingers found hers, and Sorcha dragged her hands to her, careless, ruthless in her need.

  Sorcha steadied herself against Brede, allowing her body to feel its pain and weakness for a second, aware of the bitter choice before her. There was nothing to cling to, save Brede’s cold, trembling hands. All she could do was protect Brede, and call help.

  Sorcha coughed, unable to prevent it any longer, and choked for so long that she was too weak for anything more. Brede scarcely stirred, but for the sobs that shook her. Sorcha felt Brede’s strength ebbing from her, felt the grip on her hands slackening. Somehow she found breath, found words, found a tune. She must, she must sing. She spun her tune from love, from her joy in Brede, strengthened it with responsibility, with need. The words were simple, a calling, of anything that might help.

  Sorcha slipped in and out of consciousness. She felt the weight of unspoken grief and loneliness in her heart, the weight of the song on her tongue, and imagined she was singing when she was not. As awareness returned, she struggled back into the song, layering it, adding her own harmonies, discords, anything that might bring help. She started again, then drifted once more, searching for more words, anything to bind Brede to life.

  The call was so violent, so urgent, that it caused Kendra acute pain. She woke with her mind screaming, as the one who called was screaming. Her lungs were filling with blood, closing her breath, burning her veins. Kendra hit her head as she scrambled from sleep into wakefulness, gasping in horror. She lay back, struggling with blindness, her heart pounding. It was not the dark that confined her movements, but the pain and fear. Kendra answered the screaming as well as she could: I am coming.

  She could scarcely breathe for the calling. She would not be in time. The earth beneath her fingers was damp and the air smelt of rain. Kendra crawled from her cave, running before she knew which direction to go, pulled against her will into the dawn.

  Dawn is no time for dying.

  She could sense the voice weakening, a human voice it must be, for as she weakened, her insistence grew stronger.

  The rain was heavy, sheets and sheets of water, the world was drowning. It made the new day silent in its birth, creeping quietly from dark to half-light, without the usual rush and burst of noise. Night was reluctant to leave.

  Kendra wiped the water from her eyes; she could smell blood. It couldn’t be far, the very strength of the call told her so. No, there was more than closeness to the strength of that call, she could taste a difference. This was not the thoughtless scream of the injured creature, human or otherwise. She did not merely cry out, she called Kendra deliberately. Kendra listened to the screaming in her bones more carefully, and recognised the resonance. It was more than a calling, it was a spinning of song. Kendra told her again, I am here.

  Wandering from confusion back into her waking nightmare, Sorcha saw a figure approaching across the rain-drenched ground, and relief stilled her tongue. She closed her eyes, to conserve the shreds of her strength, and the figure was still there behind her eyelids, She searched the face that hovered above her, and recognised it for what it was.

  Dread turned her joints molten. She struggled to find her voice, but there was no song left. She could not feel Brede’s weight against her; could not feel the pain in her chest. She took in a breath: no pain.

  You may not wait here, the figure said. Come, you have no need to stay now.
>
  Sorcha shook her head, clinging to Brede – she could not feel the hands she held.

  This is no longer your place. There is a Gate to pass.

  The Scavenger of Souls reached down a hand and pulled Sorcha gently to her feet.

  I will guide you.

  Sorcha took a hesitant step away from her body, letting out her breath in one last defiant word of love, drifting slowly to settle like a cloak over Brede’s shoulders.

  Sorcha straightened her back, took another, firmer step away – and her heart stopped beating.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Kendra stumbled over the body, too confused by the call to see it. As she got to her feet, she saw the horse – past calling, that one. She was near then; she stepped over the cruelly angled neck, searching. Yes.

  The calling ebbed; she knew Kendra was here. Kendra limped away from the horse to the huddled body – two bodies.

  She could feel the calling here: not in the limp mortality at her feet, but tangible in the rain and trees. Kendra trembled. This should not be possible. She was already dead, and yet she still called.

  Kendra knelt cautiously beside the tangled bodies. The rain was already dispersing the blood. She pulled gently at the nearer body. It rolled easily, unconsciously, away from the other; but the hands were tangled together with those of her companion, tightly caught.

  Kendra felt for the flicker of life as she prised the fingers away. It was there, just, but there was something more pressing in her mind. Kendra needed to know who called her.

  She stared down at the face gazing sightlessly up at her, as she had known she would. This one would not meet death with her eyes closed; but a Songspinner need not pass that gate at all. She could easily save herself, she need not lie in the mud and choke out her last breath calling for help.

  Kendra considered the living one. Her hold on life was tenuous. She needed to be moved, out of the bone-chilling rain. She gathered the unconscious body to her. So slight, these mortals.

  The presence that had hovered about her was gone. This was what the dead one wanted; she did not call for herself, but for her companion.

  Kendra gazed down again, at the pale, determined, frightened face, still taut with her fight for existence.

  Well then, Songspinner, she told the fallen one. I have your precious one, I will do what I can. But the grief she would feel for any creature that had fought so hard for life and lost, was tainted with anger. She didn’t care to be compelled where she would have given aid willingly.

  She tried to shrug off the anger. The light was here now, and the rain was easing. Night had lost her hold; perhaps death would acknowledge defeat also.

  Kendra carried the limp, crushed creature to her cave, laying her as gently as she could upon the ground. She didn’t stir. It did not bode well, although it made the setting of broken bones and binding of wounds easier.

  The flicker of life was still there. Kendra didn’t understand it. The injuries alone should have carried her past the gate; the blood loss and the shock and the chilling rain might easily have taken her, but still she hung on, by so faint a thread – she didn’t seem to fight for her life, and yet... It was wrong; an echo of that calling brushed Kendra’s mind. She didn’t like what she believed the Songspinner had done.

  The mortal was as safe and as comfortable as she could make her. The time had come for Kendra to return to the carnage in her woods, to the place at the foot of the precipice, where the Songspinner lay.

  The rain still fell, less torrential, more of a grieving; water on leaves, the taste of death was in the air.

  Witches burn their dead. Kendra sighed, so she must sacrifice her wood to their beliefs. Well, she would do it. If the Songspinner’s companion survived, it would help her to know that the right rituals were followed, even if the songs were beyond Kendra.

  She knelt once more on the blood-drenched soil. The rain had kept away the crows, but she could feel their presence up in the rain-rocked trees. She would disappoint them.

  Kendra had felt the Songspinner drowning in her own blood. Now she saw the arrow that was the cause. Slow, that way, slow and hard.

  Well, Kendra told her, it is over. It is ended.

  She stroked the woman’s hair, as she might straighten the feathers of a dead sparrow. All endings were alike. Her fingers caught on something bound into her hair. She teased it out: a row of small blue stones. Kendra knew the meaning of that: The woman was, as she had thought, an extraordinarily skilled Songspinner. She had never seen these stones before, but she had heard of them.

  Why? Kendra asked her, as she cut the stones from her hair. she wrapped the stones carefully in the edge of her shirt and tied a knot to hold them safe. She gathered up the dead witch, as she gathered up the dead badgers, the fledglings fallen from their nests.

  As she turned to go, she heard a voice in the distance, no, not so distant. The rain had hidden their approach, now it muffled their voices, but they were close. Kendra leant up against a tree, shifting her grip on her burden.

  The shadows under the branches, the constant movement of the rain, her own stillness, would not be enough. They were searching, and therefore they would see.

  Kendra thought tree. Branch and root, her breath slowed: Leaf and bark, and stillness and age.

  I have grown here more than three hundred seasons; she told the air about her, I am nothing strange. I am part of the wood: I am the wood.

  Two men stepped into the clearing. The taller halted, abruptly holding the other back. He pointed cautiously with his sword. The other nodded, impatient. He wasn’t interested in the horse. He pushed away the restraining hand, stepped forward. He glanced up at the cliff face above him. The marks of the fall were there, the skidding in the wet mud, the bent and broken plants. It was a long way to fall. The horse had broken its neck. He glanced at his companion.

  The swordsman was kneeling, pressing his hand to the sodden earth. It came away stained faintly with blood. He sniffed his palm lightly, and stared about the clearing, a slow and careful sweep. The other, who carried a bow, crouched beside him, inspecting the ground, looking for footprints. He would not find any. Kendra made no mark upon the earth.

  The swordsman tasted the air, as a fox would do. His head swivelled, until he faced her. His eyes narrowed, sensing something not quite right in the shadows. But he didn’t see what he searched for, and therefore did not see that she was not the tree she wanted him to see. He was made uneasy by her all the same; half knowing she was there, half understanding why. He stood. He wanted to go, but did not know how to make his companion leave. The archer did not find the footprints. It worried him. A dead horse, enough blood to have stopped anyone in their tracks, but no body, no footprints.

  ‘They are dead?’ he asked, more for reassurance than anything else.

  Madoc shrugged, the urgency of fear making him careless of their search. The length of metal, which still lay somewhere in the mud and ruin before him, the cause of this hunting, was forgotten. He no longer wanted to know what had happened to the witch and her companion. He didn’t believe anyone would survive the fall down that escarpment, therefore, despite the lack of bodies, he believed they were dead.

  ‘You saw her take your arrow. You know they’re dead. If we tell the others so, they’ll believe us.’

  Still the archer hesitated, doubting. He scanned the ground again. Who knew what happened to a witch when she died? He accepted what he wished to believe. He nodded; decisive, relieved.

  Kendra unthought her branches, withdrew her roots. She breathed. She made a promise to the trees that sheltered her, that they would have her special attention in future.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Lorcan leapt up at the sight of Madoc; eagerly he reached out his hands. Madoc stared blankly at the mailed gloves.

  ‘The sword,’ Lorcan said impatiently. ‘The Dowry blade.’

  Madoc’s eyes widened, horrified. Instantly he knew his forgetfulness to have been caused by witc
hcraft. Equally he knew he couldn’t admit it.

  ‘They no longer had the sword. They must’ve thrown it down,’ he said desperately, hoping he could rely on Doran to back him up. Doran nodded.

  ‘We found them both, and the horse – broken neck, no sword –’ he asserted, trembling in the face of Lorcan’s mounting fury.

  Lorcan considered his still outstretched hands. Madoc had tangled himself firmly in that proffered length of rope, but perhaps not firmly enough. He curled one hand into a mailed fist and struck Madoc a backhanded blow across the face.

  Madoc reeled under the blow, but managed to stay upright. He turned back to face Lorcan. For a moment he bitterly regretted Phelan’s death.

  ‘My liege,’ he said, very quietly.

  ‘You will find me that sword,’ Lorcan said coldly, ‘if it takes the rest of your life.’ He turned his back, calling his horse to him. ‘I’m going back to the city,’ he said unnecessarily. ‘Bring me the sword there, swiftly.’

  The grey horse disappeared into the uncertain light. The men about Madoc mounted their own steeds, and moved away speedily, all save Doran.