‘In other words, no stones in horses’ hooves,’ Brann said.
‘He will be very assiduous in checking them for you, to ensure healthy and unproblematic travel.’ The man looked pointedly at the pouch of coins.
Brann looked at Hakon and Breta and flicked his head to the door. Both rose, Hakon the more reluctant of the two. ‘Not even a short time available for another course?’
Breta slapped him on the back of the head. ‘You’ll get fat,’ she scolded him. He shrugged and followed her, muttering, to the door.
The innkeeper was still flicking his eyes at the money on the counter. ‘You can’t fault a man for trying.’
Brann looked at him. ‘You or my large friend?’
‘Perhaps both.’
Brann picked up his knife, playing the point against the tip on one finger. ‘Hakon was shown the error of trying by Breta. Do you need your lesson as well? Keeping an inn is hard enough work with all ten fingers.’
The man paled slightly. ‘You have been more than generous in your assessment of the price.’
Brann considered this. ‘You are right. More than generous.’ He started to reach for the pouch.
The innkeeper’s hand closed over the money, then darted away from it as the knife twirled in Brann’s fingers. The man blustered in desperation. ‘It may not be relevant, but in case it is useful enough to warrant payment in full, I can tell you more.’ He was talking fast, lest the money disappear before he was finished, and his eloquence diminished with it. ‘You are not the only person to visit here with questions. A man, not overly tall or,’ he looked at Brann, ‘less than average, but strong of shoulder and arm. He sought a boy or man,’ he was still looking at Brann, ‘of around your size and build, but of paler skin. Said he may have a black cloak, with a distinctive tear that has been carefully stitched where most men would have instead replaced the cloak.’
Brann’s hand moved instinctively around his back to feel for his cloak, but remembered that he had left it stowed in a saddlebag as the early sun had been pleasant.
He sheathed his knife and turned, leaving the pouch on the counter. ‘Thank you for your service.’
Grakk fell in beside him as he headed to the door.
‘Thank you for your custom,’ the innkeeper called. ‘It will be welcome should you pass this way again, er… I did not hear your name.’
‘No,’ Grakk said over his shoulder. ‘You did not.’
Thoughts of his cloak drove the sentimentality that saw his hand drift to pull it free and wrap it around his shoulders, fastening it with the black brooch they all wore; the brooch fashioned from the same metal as his weapons by an eccentric genius of a smith in the desert beyond Sagia. Between them, the cloak and the brooch sparked enough thoughts to occupy his mind during the short ride to the town, and before long they passed through the gate in the low walls – more a token than a defence – without question, the main flow of traffic heading outwards. Konall had hardly passed comment on the paltry – almost non-existent – defences indicating a naïve lack of expectation of any danger, before they found The Griffin exactly where it had been described.
Walwyn greeted them warmly. More rotund than the man who had sent them there, the difference between the brothers was even more marked in his demeanour: he was jovial and bursting with cheer. Too much, for Brann’s liking. If a man works over-hard to seem a certain way, then truth is seldom what you see.
But the man could project whatever character he liked. All that concerned Brann was finding Daric but, on enquiring, his heart sank at the shake of the innkeeper’s head.
‘I am sorry to say, you have missed your friend. He purchased a new horse, leaving his own as part payment, from a trader near here, and left as dawn broke. He will be well on his way now, but where I cannot say, as many roads lead north from this town.’ He looked around the large group. ‘If your party would like to be accommodated here in the hope he will stop by on his return from the North, I can certainly allocate you rooms.’
Brann looked around the common room, filled to half its capacity with merchants and tradesmen taking a break as the day reached its mid-point, and with not a traveller in sight. The nature of the normal clientele was clear, and he was sure the inn did have plenty of rooms available.
‘Thank you, but we must decline,’ he said, his voice as flat as his spirits. ‘The man does not intend to make a return journey in this direction.’ Still, the atmosphere in the room was pleasant and the smell of food enticing. He took off his cloak. ‘We will, however, eat as we consider our options. And if our horses could be fed and watered also…?’
Walwyn beamed. ‘I shall oversee your sustenance myself, and my sons will see to that of the horses.’
Brann looked at him flatly. ‘Make sure to tell them to check that there are no stones in the hooves.’
The innkeeper was a picture of innocence. ‘But, of course, good sir. I would envisage no other scenario.’
Brann stared at him still. ‘Keep envisaging.’
The others were already around a table and he settled on the empty stool at its near end, folding his cloak and sitting it on the end of a bench where there was a small space beside Sophaya. He was never totally comfortable with his back to a room, but it had its advantages: for one, it allowed him more freedom to react to danger than he would have if he had any of his companions in his way or sitting tight beside him. They sat in silence, the others as deflated as Brann at the news that Daric could have headed in any one of a dozen directions.
Brann sighed. ‘This moping is getting us nowhere. Let us look at what we know.’
Cannick nodded. ‘He is heading north, where there is trouble. Trouble instigated, we believe, by those of his ilk.’
‘But,’ Konall said, ‘north covers a fair bit of ground, full of people who would probably try to kill us. After torture.’
Mongoose looked at him. ‘You are scared of people who want to kill you?’
Konall’s expression would have withered most people, but she stared back calmly. He said, ‘I refer to the difficulty in tracing one man in that amount of people and disorder.’
She nodded. ‘That is true.’ She looked at Brann. ‘He has a point.’
Brann thought on it, but before he could speak, Sophaya did so. ‘Remember, in the hunting lodge. He said after he had met people in the North, he was going to Alaria, wherever that town is.’
Brann stirred. ‘It is still further in the same direction, and it is not a town. Alaria is an island. The North Island.’ He looked at Gerens. ‘Our island.’ He felt himself become animated. ‘We do not know where he goes next, but we do know where he will be after that.’
Cannick frowned. ‘The whole of the North Island is not much less in size than the whole of the South Island. If we can’t find him in just the northern area of this island…’
‘That is true,’ Brann said, undeterred. His appetite returning, he broke off a hunk of bread and dipped it in his stew. ‘But if we can get ahead of him, we can start gathering news of the activities of this cult, or whatever it is, and have a better guess at where he might be heading than we would in the north of this country where we would always be chasing a faint trail and asking for information from people who are either frightened victims, nervous soldiers or vicious degenerate lunatics.’
Hakon grinned. ‘Now you put it that way, it might be more fun.’
Laughter rippled across the surface of their tension, and familiar smiles returned. Brann glanced fondly around the group, faces now so familiar that he felt uncomfortable if any were absent for a length of time. He had endured some hard times, but a burden is lighter the more shoulders that bear it.
He felt himself become wary, his breathing caught and his muscles on alert. Why? He looked down, realising his hand had moved to the hilt of the knife in a sheath strapped to his left forearm. He frowned, looking back to his companions. Conversation had stopped; tension was strung taut across them. Gerens and Grakk had slipped their kniv
es free and were holding them subtly ready. All eyes were focused behind him. His own hands had noticed the drawn weapons, even if his eyes had not.
He remained ready, but slowly held up a hand in restraint.
Gerens looked ready to be unleashed. ‘A man approaches.’ His voice was low but every word was clipped with urgency and barely-restrained violence. ‘Medium height, strong shoulders. Eyes on you.’ There was a slight inflection of worry, something Brann had never heard before. ‘Eyes on your back.’
Brann had already prepared his move: spinning low to his left with the leading arm sweeping in the hope of warding off any blow and the knife following ready in his right. It would be effective and would minimise stretching the wound in his side – despite the moment of combat tending to close his mind to any message from the injury, still it made sense in the longer term to avoid aggravating it and counteracting the rapid effects that Grakk’s assiduously applied unguent had been producing.
But for now he sat still.
He looked only at Gerens, but spoke quietly to them all in what little time must remain. ‘If he means to attack me, he must know it means death, with all of you here already. And if his life means nothing to him and he only wishes to take mine, he would most likely have rushed me already, heedless of all else. But… be ready. In case.’
His back felt so exposed, as if he were inviting a blade. He wished he was wearing his mail shirt, as inappropriate as it would have been to arrive at the table in an inn dressed as such. The knife now drawn, his left hand dropped to grip the stool beneath him. He could swing that as he moved to divert a weapon.
He twitched as footsteps scuffed slightly, heightened awareness catching the sound over the hubbub of the room. The sound stopped.
‘You could have run.’ The voice was hoarse, but his insides crumbled at its sound. ‘You could have run. But you didn’t.’
His eyes, wide, stared at the table top, seeing nothing. His breathing sucked in with a violent stuttering gasp that stayed within. The room swayed momentarily, as if he were back on the ship. The knife dropped to the floor.
He stood, slowly. His legs seemed distant, unresponsive, awkward.
He couldn’t turn. He couldn’t turn. He couldn’t make himself turn.
Again, the hoarse voice. This time cracking, the words barely managing to be said. ‘You could have run. You could have, but you… you…’
He turned.
‘Father?’
The man before him shuddered, his mouth working soundlessly. His legs collapsed beneath him and he dropped to his knees, arms outstretched.
Brann fell into those arms, and they grasped him ferociously.
He felt the emotion surge in a judder through the chest his own arms enveloped. His father, his implacable father, his stern, forbidding, unyielding, formidable father, his father sobbed. A great racking groan that dragged years of suppressed emotion with it. And at the sound, Brann’s own emotion released, and he sobbed with him. Hurt and pain and loss and fear and sorrow long held at bay poured forth, his chest aching with the effort.
The sobs gradually eased, and Brann felt the arms around him ease with them. The large familiar hands moved to each side of his head and held him at a distance that let the same eyes as he saw in every mirror he had encountered regard him.
The voice was even more hoarse now. ‘My boy.’ The head shook in disbelief. ‘You could have run.’
‘I did run,’ Brann whispered. ‘You told me to go, and I ran.’ His eyes moved from those of his father in shame.
But the hands raised his head again. ‘No. Not then. When they killed your brother, you could have run. You should have run. Run to live. But you didn’t. You brought him back. You loved your brother so much, even in death he meant more to you than your own life. When I saw you do that…’ He shook again, fighting to resist the sobs again. He took a breath, long and slow, in and out. ‘When I saw you do that, in that moment, I loved you more than I have ever loved anyone or anything.’
Brann gave his head a shake, trying to rethink memories into a new shape. ‘But you sent me away.’
‘To live.’ The hands on his head strengthened, the importance of the words transmitted through the grip. ‘I had lost one son. I knew those who had killed him must be close. All I could think was that I could not bear to lose both.’
Brann’s mind whirled. ‘All this time, I thought you rejected me. You hated me.’
A look close to horror swept across his father’s face. ‘I could not stop loving you. I tried. I told myself every night that you must be dead, that I followed a fool’s errand. But I could not make myself believe it. I thought you lost. But what is only lost is not gone, it can still be found.’ He shook his head again, his eyes never leaving Brann. ‘I thought you lost.’
‘And I thought you dead.’ Confusion brought a frown. Of course, his father would not have known what Brann had seen. ‘I was captured, by those who killed Callan, but it was other raiders who attacked the village. But the one who killed Callan was different from the rest, and he’s now dead, in fact I killed him, and the others – the ones who captured me – are actually now my friends, and…’ He realised he was babbling. ‘Anyway, before I was captured, I looked back, and you were fighting, and then you were forced inside the mill, and it burnt, and you were trapped. And you and Mother and… and…’ Tears filled his eyes again and he brushed his sleeve across his eyes in irritation at the interruption. ‘You and Mother and the twins, you all died.’
His father looked at him, and raised his eyebrows. ‘Well I clearly didn’t, did I? And you will be glad to know that Mother and the twins are alive and well, too. They awaited me in our boat on the river, at the back of the mill. When the timbers collapsed in the fire, I was rendered unconscious, but Kyla held the boat while Mother and Tavin managed to drag me to it. They saved my life.’
Brann sat back, his shoulders hitting the table leg. His family was alive. His family was alive. He rubbed the heels of his hands against his temples, trying to absorb the thought, trying to reject the belief that had become a part of him. He grinned. His family was alive.
He flew again into his father’s arms once more, but this time with joy. He laughed, and his father laughed with him, a sound as rare in his memory as the tears already seen and awkward in the man’s throat – and all the more touching for it.
He felt a hand fall gently on his shoulder and looked up to find Breta’s concerned face. Her voice was unusually soft. ‘You will speak better with your father, I think, if you sit up with us at the table.’
Brann looked around the surrounding clientele in growing horror. ‘Oh gods, what must they think?’
Breta shrugged. ‘Oh, don’t worry. It’s fine. They just thought you a pair of drunks and ignored you.’
Brann laughed, and helped his father to his feet. Cannick had shifted along everyone on his bench to leave space at the end, and Brann righted his stool and quickly ran through the names as his father eased himself down beside the veteran warrior with a nod of thanks.
‘So,’ his father said, ‘this life you say I saved: you must tell me what has become of it since last we saw each other.’
Cannick barked a laugh. ‘We may need another round of drinks or two if we are to do that.’
Hakon was halfway to the innkeeper. ‘Already in hand,’ he called. ‘And food, of course.’
Brann watched his father sit in silence as the story was told, different people chipping in as their part in the tale became relevant. He said little himself, almost every part of his journey having been witnessed by someone in the group.
Instead he took the chance to look at his father. The dark hair was now streaked with grey, his build was as strong as ever and his face carried a few more lines than he remembered, as well as a small scar on one side of his forehead. But it was in his eyes that there was change. Where he remembered grim assurance, he now saw the effects of a man haunted over time by desperation and despair. He thought back to the fa
ther who had raised him – what the boy had thought cheerless repression, the young man now recognised as having been principled determination to instil values and standards for the years when his life became his own. That period had been thrust upon him sooner than had been expected, but it was only in this moment that he realised how much he owed his survival to the lessons once resented.
His father had been waiting to meet him all these years, and it had taken the troubles of nations to open his eyes to the man before him. But he saw him now. And Brann smiled.
‘So, Garryk,’ Hakon said, ‘what do you think of your son’s tale?’
Brann felt his father’s gaze land heavy and long upon him. ‘I sent away a boy with signs of the man, and have found a man with the best of the boy.’
Brann’s finger traced a circle in spilt ale on the table. ‘There is a side to me you will not know.’
His father was unperturbed. ‘There is a side to all of us, and many of us do not know it of ourselves. You may be fortunate to know yourself more fully than most.’ He paused, then: ‘Is it evil?’
Brann almost smiled at that. His father never had been reticent about saying what needed to be said. Almost smiled, but the question itself killed any humour at its birth. He could feel the heat grow on his face as he answered. ‘Some may say so.’
Grakk cut in. ‘Some may say so, but only those who would say a cornered boar is evil, or a wolf with a spear point in its face. It is nature, and there is no good or evil in possessing talent, only in the way that it is used.’
‘And the way it is used?’
Grakk met his gaze. ‘For good. In our opinion.’
‘As it was your opinion I sought, then that is sufficient for me.’
He took a long draught of his ale, and Brann’s eyes widened. ‘When did you start to drink ale?’
The grim face – though now Brann would have it no other way, he realised – regarded him over the tankard. ‘Since before you were born.’ He set it down on the table, but toyed with it as he spoke. ‘Just because you never saw me influenced, does not mean I abstained completely, merely that I wished to be fully myself around you. In any case, the feeling of not being in control of myself does not sit comfortably with me.’ He stared around the room. ‘Though I admit to taking more of it than I am accustomed to do in the past year or so. Men are more inclined to accept questions if asked over a mug of ale or cider.’
Hero Risen (Seeds of Destiny, Book 3) Page 17