The Dowry Blade

by Cherry Potts

  Brede woke fully and swore, incapable of being civil.

  Enemy territory, she reminded herself, thinking of Maeve, and suddenly missing her scorn. She could use someone to keep her up to the mark. Away from the constant threat of the city, secure with a horse, her horse, once more, she was already getting careless. Using the sword as a crutch Brede hauled herself up. The damp earth had aggravated her pain. Ashe saw all of this. It would take only a few notes of a simple song to ease, and she couldn’t do it. Brede staggered bad-temperedly away to relieve her bladder and Ashe set about seeing to some food and a warming drink to drive the cold and damp from their limbs.

  Now that they were some distance from the city, the urgency had left Ashe, and there was only a nagging ache in her mind that told her to get home. She had an odd dryness in her throat that caused her anxiety, for she had no way of healing it.

  Brede returned, her temper under control, and devoured food with no less ferocity than the night before, ignoring the pain in her stomach, desperate to end her weakness and get strength back into her muscles. She scrambled from a fallen tree to Guida’s back, closing her mind on the lack of dignity, the shame of a Plains woman struggling to mount, somehow more acute now she had her own, Plains-bred horse again; as though Guida was noticing and sneering at her rider.

  She tied Ashe’s belongings to the saddle and helped her up. Ashe watched the wards fade as they passed them and wondered what her sisters would make of her devastating choice of silence.

  Brede whistled to Guida, a string of subtle communication that had Guida’s ear forward and alert, good spirits surfacing easily. Ashe half listened, and hope rushed over her.

  Whistling: surely she could whistle? She could still use tune, it wasn’t the same as song, but there were some small things that didn’t need words, some small things that could be hers again. She would not be able to set wards, but she could bring sleep and, perhaps, take some of the pain from Brede’s leg – if she could find the right tune. No words – damage came only from words.

  Ashe hadn’t whistled in years. She wasn’t sure she remembered how.

  The forest stretched before them. Brede kept a wary watch for the suggestion of other paths, and or trouble.

  With nothing else to occupy her, Ashe inspected the trees, noting which had lost their leaves; distracted by the way the earth smelt and the way the light fell, green and strange, peaceful. Her throat ached, and she coughed fitfully –leaning against Brede’s back to draw breath.

  ‘If you will travel half-dressed you can expect to catch cold,’ Brede observed. ‘Sorcha used to dress so, but then, she could keep the cold away.’

  Sorcha.

  Ashe knew that name. It shook her. Goddess, yes, she knew that name. Surely there couldn’t be another?

  Sorcha of the voice like molten sunlight, of ice turned water? Sorcha who had enough skill for twenty: Sorcha the Songspinner? Could she be the witch this woman once travelled with? Was it possible? Ashe shook Brede’s shoulder.

  Brede turned, but Ashe couldn’t explain. She reached round Brede and pulled at the reins, forcing Guida to stop.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Brede asked, exasperated.

  Ashe fell from the horse, replacing pain for pain, and scrabbled in the leaf mould. Brede stared at the writing, then at Ashe. She understood that what she had written was important, but they were doomed to silence between them.

  ‘I can’t read,’ Brede said.

  Ashe glared at her in disbelief, and still crouched in the dirt she buried her face in her hands, giving way to the frustration and anger and grief that had been brewing for a day and night, weeping until she had exhausted herself.

  Ashe wiped her face on her sleeves and straightened. Brede was settling the edge of Guida’s saddlecloth with great concentration. She looked up at last with an expression Ashe didn’t recognise and offered a hand to help her up, and brushed the worst of the dirt from her clothes. Ashe tried to explain. She made the sign she knew for witch and pointed at Brede, then again wrote Sorcha in the earth. She hissed an ‘S’. It was the best she could do.

  ‘Sorcha?’

  Ashe nodded, relieved that Brede understood. Brede wished she did not.

  ‘Sorcha?’ her voice shook, but she must know. ‘You knew her?’

  Yes, no: how could Ashe explain without telling Brede who she was? Could she afford to risk that? Could she make herself understood? Hesitantly Ashe shook her head. A drained look passed over Brede’s face, and Ashe decided to trust her. She made the ugly shape for witch again, then pointed at herself. This time Brede was sure she had misunderstood.

  ‘You? You can’t be a witch. You’re too young, besides, you’ve got no voice.’

  Brede’s own voice faded and she covered her mouth, understanding at last, and that terrifying precipice was at her feet once more.

  ‘Who did that to you? Who took your voice?’

  Ashe shook her head and pointed again at herself – when Brede shook her head in confusion she touched her throat and closed her fist against her chest.

  ‘You did it?’ Brede asked at last.

  Ashe nodded. Brede took off her hat, and drove her fingers into her hair.

  ‘Why?’

  Ashe shrugged hopelessly. How could she explain even if she had speech? Brede thrust the hat back on her head, and helped Ashe back onto Guida. Ashe settled on yesterday’s bruises and wondered what Brede’s silence meant.

  Brede’s anger melted at last, but she had no compassion. She twisted her head, unwilling to respect Ashe’s self-imposed silence.

  ‘So you’re – you’re a witch. And you took your own voice. Why didn’t you just kill yourself?’

  Ashe recoiled from the bitterness, recognising a quality in Brede’s voice, an undertow of power. Ashe tried to avoid her question, but it persisted.

  Why didn’t I? Because that wasn’t the point – even as she thought, Ashe doubted. There was no way to encompass how she felt about herself, no way to atone, and no way to explain.

  ‘Sorcha lived for her voice. She couldn’t have lived without it,’ Brede said, trying to understand. She continued her one-sided discussion, castigating Ashe for being everything that Sorcha was not; for being alive; building a wall of dislike for Ashe, as protection from the rawness of the loss of Sorcha. ‘She’d never have given away everything that she was. What could you possibly have wanted that was worth the loss of your voice?’

  Ashe winced away from Brede’s scorn. She couldn’t undo what had been done; but she had at least made sure she could never do it again.

  ‘Sorcha’s dead, did you know?’ Brede said.

  Ashe heard the careful control of that tone and recognised the effort it cost Brede, and the jagged anguish it attempted to disguise.

  No, Ashe didn’t know. She bit hard on her knuckle, trying to drive away the pain by a physical hurt. Her eyes stung.

  Dead?

  Brede wondered at the shocked intake of breath, but made no attempt at further communication; blanking her mind to any thought of Sorcha, refusing to look any further into the dark uncertainty that Ashe had so unexpectedly illuminated.

  Hunger prompted Brede to halt at last. Ashe refused to eat at all. Brede shrugged, and ate Ashe’s share. Ashe watched the food vanishing without regret. She crouched against a tree, unconsciously rocking forward and back, chewing the skin beside her thumbnail.

  Brede wandered through the trees, to walk some of the stiffness out of her legs, and to put some distance between them. Ashe stood abruptly, staring at her hands, thinking of Sorcha. There were too few Songspinners left. She should never have discarded her heritage with such haste – she saw again that field covered in blooded bodies.

  Sorcha, dead? Ashe remembered her voice, so full of life. Her voice had cut the air, lifting words into power, lifting Ashe out of herself. Her throat ached to pour out a tribute to Sorcha and tears threatened again. She forced them down, forced the ache from her throat, breathed. Then she tried, hesitantly
, to whistle.

  It was ugly at first, then she caught a note that told her something. She followed where it led and there was a tune she didn’t recognise. A fine tune and there must be words for it if she but knew them. She faltered. It made no difference if she knew the words. She tried again. Phrase followed phrase and she knew that there was something in the making here. A strong sense of spinning. She had stumbled on a song of rare power– it was a song of pain and grief, and of hope and defiance and love and – abruptly, she lost the sense of where the melody led and fell silent. She wanted desperately to know whose song it was; there was a scent of belonging to it.

  She listened to the horse snorting and stamping one foot impatiently, and to the hurried, scrambling, uneven, footsteps of the horsewoman. Brede crashed through the undergrowth. She came to a halt staring wide-eyed at Ashe, her hat crushed in one hand –

  ‘That tune,’ Brede said carefully, controlling the urge to strike out at Ashe and twisting her hands into the leather to hide their trembling. ‘Sorcha sang that when she was dying.’ Brede reshaped her hat and thrust it back onto her head, glaring at Ashe. ‘You really are a witch,’ she said sourly. She caught up the trailing reins. She half turned, an unthought-out word on her lips, but she rejected the momentary urge to confide and mounted, holding out her hand to help Ashe onto the horse.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  As Ashe took Brede’s hand a strange sensation took hold with it. Dizziness held her still, so that Brede pulled against resistance. Ashe shook her head to clear the confusion and scrambled up.

  She held on to Brede’s belt, but part of her wanted to put her arms around Brede’s waist. She sat more upright on the horse, and instinctively used her knees for balance and control; as though she had taught herself to ride.

  She opened her mouth to say something to Brede, her silence forgotten in her excitement – Silence – Ashe listened to the deadened sound of the horse’s hooves on leaf mould and mud, and the occasional break of a twig – there was no birdsong, no movement from the small animals that had scurried away from them before. The horse’s ears swivelled and Brede slowed her, turning to one side then the other, listening, waiting; recognising the signs, trying to judge in which direction to run.

  Ashe shuddered, feeling that there was another presence waiting with them, that if she were to turn her head she would see someone at her shoulder.

  A flurry of motion and a ring of blades surrounded them. The horse shied and Ashe clutched Brede’s arm. She stared wildly – there were only seven swords, but that was more than enough.

  For the first time Ashe looked death in the face, and wondered if this was the presence that had waited at her shoulder.

  It was too late to run now; there was only a faint hope of talking their way out of trouble.

  ‘What do you want of us?’ Brede asked, looking for a weakness in that barrier of swords.

  A woman near Guida’s head caught the reins and replied, ‘We want the witch.’

  ‘I know of no witch.’ Brede said firmly.

  ‘She rides at your shoulder, woman. We recognise her.’

  Ice-cold heat ran through Ashe – a kind of terror she had never felt before in her life. The lurking presence at her shoulder reached out, and entered. Death, her heart whispered to her; and somewhere in the dark void of fear that engulfed her, she was glad.

  ‘This woman is mute, you must be mistaken.’

  ‘She wasn’t mute yesterday morning.’

  The woman gestured with the knife, and one of the men grabbed Ashe, pulling her down from the horse. Her head spun and she staggered, backing away. Was this it? Was this her answer? She straightened quickly. Atonement – perhaps she had been fooling herself, perhaps this was what she deserved, perhaps she had no right to choose her own punishment. She shook her head, seeing double.

  Brede drew her long knife.

  The finest feather touch of hope brushed Ashe, painful in its slightness. She had not been forsaken. But it was pointless against so many and Brede knew it. Even so, she wasn’t giving up.

  ‘I will say it again: this woman is mute. I offered her my protection as we both go in search of a witch to heal us. And I mean to keep my word.’

  ‘We’ve been watching this one. We know who she is.’ The woman almost spat the words. Her cold, angry eyes fell on Ashe. ‘She may have chosen silence, but she is a witch for all that, and she owes us – so much, so many – an army. If she can’t raise our army from the death she sent them to, she’ll die – slowly.’

  Ashe hadn’t dared hope for survivors.

  ‘You make a habit of keeping company with witches.’

  Ashe couldn’t see the man, but memory supplied a face – not her memory. Brede’s breath escaped in a hiss: a sound of anger and pain. Madoc, again.

  Madoc smiled.

  ‘I did not think to see you again. Devnet was convinced you had died, not the witch.’

  Ashe strained her neck to see Brede, regardless of the knife a few inches from her face. All she could see was the hand that tightened round the hilt of Brede’s knife, knuckles whitening. Such beautiful hands – a scar starting just below Brede’s middle finger stood stark and sharp against her skin.

  ‘Last time we met I took a witch from you. I shall do it again,’ Madoc said.

  Brede gathered herself for what must come – this time she would kill him.

  Guida moved swiftly, pulling free of restraint, wheeling, front legs flailing. A hand grabbed Ashe away and held her still, as she tried to follow Brede, terrified that she was to be abandoned after all.

  The horse staggered.

  Brede threw herself awkwardly out from under the falling body, losing her knife, falling because her legs would not hold her. She landed heavily, knocking the breath out of her; one ankle pinned beneath Guida’s jerking body. She gritted her teeth against the pain and utter vulnerability. A long knife pressed against her throat, black with Guida’s blood.

  Brede pulled her head back and squinted at the blade.

  Assassin? she thought in surprise, recognising the double-edged blade.

  ‘We want the witch, not you,’ the assassin said. ‘We want our blood price.’

  ‘On the other hand,’ Madoc said softly, ‘it would be a simple matter to kill you too.’

  Brede stared up the length of metal at the woman, nursing a strange certainty that no blade would touch her this time.

  Ashe tore the bag of gold from around her neck and threw it at the assassin’s feet. She didn’t move: it was scooped up by another woman and weighed in her hand.

  ‘Is that all it costs to buy you? You can’t buy us back our families, our loved ones. We want you.’

  They closed around her, all but the woman standing over Brede. The assassin frowned at Brede, puzzled by her calm, then abruptly stepped away, wrenching the longsword from Brede’s pack, passing it to Madoc. Brede’s eyes followed that blade, knowing that Madoc would recognise it. The assassin picked up the fallen knife. Her sneer was eloquent.

  ‘Witch love,’ she spat.

  Brede lay where she had fallen, the woman’s words finally filtering through the shock of seeing Madoc handling the Dowry blade.

  Finally Brede realised that Ashe was the Songspinner hired for the battle, the witch hired to drag her back to the city to starve, all for the sake of a well forged sword, a sword now in Madoc’s grasp. Madoc still gazed at the blade, astonished, and said nothing to his comrades.

  Ashe was hustled away held by each arm and forced to run. She stumbled, trying to turn, to see what had become of Brede.

  Brede forced her foot out from under Guida, ignoring the spasm that seized her as she wrenched herself free. She contorted her reluctant body until she could reach the saddle pack, and her remaining knife. She didn’t think about whether what she did was wise, she only knew that she couldn’t live with the contempt of those rebels, who thought her so little threat they would turn their backs.

  She felt better with the blade i
n her hand; the tremor of rage lessened. She pushed to her feet and shouted after them,

  ‘You’ve not finished with me yet.’

  Ashe heard that shout, and recognised the insane anger behind it. So did the man who had her arm. He laughed, and took a step away, to give himself room to draw his sword.

  Ashe swung round trying to loosen his hold on her and saw Brede staggering after them, her knife in her hand.

  Madoc stepped back towards Brede, all too willing to finish her, but the woman who had taken the gold called him back.

  ‘No, we want them to know we have the witch, leave that mad woman to tell them,’ she said.

  Madoc recognised the sense of that, and now that he stopped to think, he scorned to fight a cripple.

  Brede called out, ‘Come on you bastard, let’s see you take another witch from me.’

  Ashe cursed silently, knowing the cause of her persistence. That spell, still binding the sword to her.

  You see what happens, clinging to power that you don’t deserve, she told herself, putting others in danger.

  But Brede no longer had the sword, so why? Abruptly, Ashe saw double again. She saw a younger version of Brede, fuller, fresher, whole and sound; the longsword clasped in both hands and the same terrible look on her face.

  Ashe’s lungs filled and a voice rang through the forest.

  No Brede, no.

  It came from Ashe’s mouth, but it was not her voice. A knife stroke of fear went through her.

  Brede faltered. She slowed and that look slipped from her face. Half afraid to speak, she whispered, ‘Sorcha?’

  Oh, sweet Goddess, Ashe thought in despair. No. Not Sorcha; I am Ashe.

  Brede stared at her. Ashe stared back.

  Brede. A wave of warmth and longing shook Ashe.

  Stay back, this is not the way, that voice called, taking her useless vocal chords and bending them to a stranger’s will. She sang: a small swift song and they were all motionless.

  Ashe reached out and took back Brede’s weapons, took back her gold, then threw it on the ground in sudden fury, spilling yellow coin in the dirt.