Alais took him by the arm. ‘Be serious, Father!’
‘It’s just the thought of his face when he hears! Ah, here’s these boys of yours, smith!’ Kermorvan waved them over. ‘Handsomely done, my lads! Any time you get weary of bashing metal, you come to me and I’ll learn you the fine art of headbeating. Though you’ve a decent start – What’s this, a little looting?’ He prodded the bundle under Olvar’s arm. ‘You’re learning fast, all right!’
‘Not exactly, sir!’ said Gille cheerfully. ‘We got a touch weary of Galdred’s cheap-jack mailshirts, and found some of our captives wore good Northern work – some of it very familiar!’
Kunrad smiled. ‘Ours, you mean?’
‘Seems to be. Officer’s choice, we are. So we helped ourselves to a couple, and brought one more for you. And that put us in mind of another thing or two, and we managed to persuade one helpful fellow to remember where your gear had gone. Your tools were in the farriery, and Erlan had your sword; but he wasn’t prone to argue. Which we present to you now, in token of all else.’
‘Along with some news,’ said Olvar, holding out the weapon Kunrad had made among the corsairs. ‘Armouries here are damn near stripped. Apparently Merthian hauled all his thousands of hauberks off with him.’
‘Doesn’t surprise me,’ said Kunrad, taking the sword gratefully, and told them what had happened, and what had been learned. They grew graver as they listened, and all Kunrad’s new-found joy could not suppress a rising sense of panic.
Alais took her father’s arm again. ‘We’re going to have to think of something, Father. If you’re right, and Merthian’s going to be bringing his whole army back here…’
‘Yes!’ said Gille shakily. ‘Hammer of Ilmarinen, how soon could he manage it? How soon?’
‘Weeks?’ suggested the old man, his ebullience fading. ‘Days? Your guess or mine, boy! However long he needs to hear the castle’s been taken, whip up his pack of strays and bring them howling down on us – that’s how soon! And they won’t have the time or patience for a long siege. They’ll be out to roll over us, fast, whatever the cost in men. Time’s more costly to them!’
‘We’ve got to go, then!’ said Alais. ‘Get out of here before the corsairs come, get away southward! Or take refuge somewhere else—’
Kermorvan shook his head. ‘There’s no refuge safer than this within reach. And if we hand Merthian his castle back, we’re handing him the trump. He could cover up his plans then, or fight off any force from Ker Bryhaine till it grows weary and compounds with him. Joins him, even. It’s happened before.’ He straightened up again. ‘And besides, I for one ain’t willing to hop away south’ard like a hunted coney. That little prick wants his grubby paws on what’s mine, if it’s anybody’s. Dammit, I want to fight him! It’s a matter of honour! At least until Ker Bryhaine can get the lead out of its rear end and deal with him!’
Kunrad glared at him. ‘Will honour ward off arrows? Or the touch of the Ice? That sounds pretty stupid to me!’
‘Oh yes?’ demanded Alais. ‘And what about the matter of a certain armour?’
Kunrad glared out across the lake. ‘That’s different! I mean, yes; but … well, there are more important things!’
‘More important than your heap of clever tinkering?’ she inquired sweetly. ‘Do my girlish ears deceive me?’
‘People’s lives!’ roared the mastersmith. ‘Your life, damnation! We’ve got to get you away, at least!’
‘My life?’ she said, and her manner was no longer mocking. ‘Does that mean something to you, Mastersmith? Then understand that yours might also mean something to me. And consider that my honour is also at issue here, more than anyone’s. I am stricken deeper even than you with your armour, perhaps. The taint of the Ice is upon me, and I shall see it washed away, or never feel clean again. I too must fight!’
Kermorvan had been hissing and bubbling like a kettle-lid, eager to protest; but he said nothing, when he had the chance. Instead the strength seemed to sap out of him. ‘Words,’ he said, as he had before. ‘If we could man our walls with words, we might stand a chance.’
Alais bridled. ‘But, Father, if this place is so strong—’
‘With a proper garrison, blast and blind it! Even if I rope in Merthian’s own men and these cutgullet wretches he’s been trying to train, I couldn’t muster a full siege garrison! Not nearly! There’s not enough men to be had this far north!’
‘Maybe you’re not looking far enough north,’ suggested Kunrad. ‘Dunmarhas, the last great city before the Marshes – send word to them, for their guard! They love the corsairs as little as you. They may not strip their own defences, but they’ll send some aid, at least!’
Kermorvan was making little bubbling noises. ‘What? An army of bloody Nordeney sheepshaggers? On Suderney ground? In our damned castle?’
‘Your precious forebears wouldn’t have said that!’ Kunrad pointed out acidly. ‘We were their subjects, too! Until Syndics drove us out, and stripped the throne from under you. They did that, not we!’
‘Besides,’ put in Olvar practically, ‘Dunmarhas is full of sothran blood, being so close.’
‘They’re right, Father!’ said Alais forcefully. ‘And remember, if it wasn’t for some of those sheepshaggers being so brave, Merthian would still be about his business, and me ready to hop into his bed with a crown on! And while we’re about that, why not remind a few other people we once wore one? It was always our right to raise levies of the people. Why shouldn’t you do so now?’
‘Eh? Call up the peasants? Powers above us, first the sheepshaggers, now the sheep!’
‘They may have more spirit than you give them credit for!’ suggested Kunrad, remembering the hound and the dung-fork.
Kermorvan’s face twisted into a horrible scowl. ‘That so? Ever tried running an impressment on ’em? All the young’uns take to the hills, and anyone with a wrinkle is suddenly over sixty and has Grandpa’s papers to prove it!’
‘Well,’ demanded Kunrad, ‘wouldn’t you say that was showing some spirit? Come to the North, old man! There are divisions everywhere, I suppose; but there high’s not so far from low. All folk there will unite to defend their own, if they’re given enough of a stake in it!’
‘Way they did with you and your thrice-damned armour?’
‘That wasn’t everyone’s problem, not directly. I shouldn’t have expected it to be. You give the peasants a chance at the corsairs, and you’ll see.’
‘That’s right!’ chipped in Gille. ‘After all, it’s not the lords behind their castle walls who’re suffering worst, is it? Not yet! It’s the farmers and the village folk, isn’t it?’
Kermorvan’s face creased up horribly. ‘That’s so. Never dispute it. That’s why they need lords to protect ’em, train soldiers to fight for ’em.’
‘Well,’ said Olvar, ‘Gille’s lot, for all their fat rent-rolls, still spend half their lives up to their arses in dung; as do mine in fishguts! Yet, lord, you say we fight well enough!’
‘That’s so, truly!’ said Kermorvan heartily. ‘And, Old Raven himself knows, we’ve little enough to lose! But suppose we can make the shitkickers fight – what with? Maybe in your land a peasant can afford a sword, but not here. Metal goes where it’s needed. They’ve got – what? Scythes, billhooks, maybe weaving-swords and suchlike, and a few hunting-bows, but no real manslayers.’
Kunrad grinned at him. ‘They must have smiths, then – of a sort!’
‘Of course! What d’you think we are? No big towns round here, of course, and the Castle man’s gone; but all the bigger villages’d have at least one. Plenty more lads who can turn a hand to it along with all the other farm tasks. Have to, among the outlivers. But they’re hardly weaponsmiths!’
‘I’m sure!’ said Kunrad. ‘But we’ll see how they work under my instruction. And under Olvar and Gille here!’
‘But what’ll they work on?’ demanded Alais. ‘This isn’t like Ker Bryhaine or one of our other cities, Kunrad.
There’s no markets to bring metal in, no great mines. I don’t suppose there’s any metal to be mined in these parts—’
Kunrad laughed aloud. It was a touch grim, perhaps, as suited his mood; but there was that in his voice which startled the prentices. ‘No metal? And you said you knew the hills, princess! Your guidance led us well, but had you only seen them with my eyes … My lady, all along your favourite woodland ways the very pebbles speak of iron, the earth is red with the rust and dust of it! Not more than two days’ ride among those foothills, and I’ll find you iron as rich as currants in a marriage-cake! If you can find me men to mine it, beasts to bear it, you shall have it flow in rivers before you!’ He laughed again. ‘I laboured years to shape one suit of armour, and was damned for it! Well, now I’ll make a thousand blades to lift against it!’
‘If you have the time!’ said Kermorvan, whose mood had sunk even as the mastersmith’s arose. ‘And if you don’t?’
Alais looked from one to another, and seemed startled by what she saw, there in the growing brightness. ‘Why then,’ said Kunrad, more softly, ‘then what we have must serve. I came here dead, and awoke to new life; and I’ll not let go of it so easily, ever again!’
CHAPTER NINE
The Voice of the Winds
FOR ALL LORD KERMORVAN’S pessimism, he could bestir himself. Before noon of that day scouts were sent out towards the Marches and the Great River, and a trusted messenger was being despatched northward to Dunmarhas, picking up a guard at Kermorvan’s tower on the way. This far inland, and in the advancing summer, he could skirt the top of the Marshes with little enough peril, and come to Dunmarhas from the east. With him he carried letters, and which would bear more weight was hard to say. One was from Kermorvan to the Guildmaster and notables, but another from Kunrad to the head of the Smiths’ Guild in that city. He had signed and sealed it with his name and character, Kunrad, Mastersmith of Athalby; yet as he looked at that once-familiar title he felt a deep inner stirring. Was he in truth that man, any longer? Was he, who had travelled the length of the Northlands, across the great Marshes and the paths of the Southlands, truly of Athalby any more?
He sat back, and sighed. He could hardly see the place, in his mind’s eye. The land around it, yes. Scenes from his childhood, his lost home, the long years of peace, those he could see; even some familiar faces. But the town itself he saw only distant, shrunken, grey and small. Something was not in it, not any more. It was his heart. He had torn it up by the roots, to follow a mad quest, not realising that to have any chance of winning, one must also, always, lose. He had become Kunrad of the Armour for a while. He still was; but he was Kunrad of some other thing now, something that he could never quite grasp.
He listened to the music of the waters below the window of the tower room. These had been Merthian’s chambers. He had them now, not least because Kermorvan refused to climb all those stairs. He had Merthian’s chair, Merthian’s bed, even with Merthian’s chamberpot underneath – a childish thing in bright yellow glaze he had put back hastily, and would never use. He had something else, though; and what that was, also, he could not think.
A hand touched his shoulder, and the very lightness of it made him jump. ‘It’s not an Ice-witch!’ smiled Alais. ‘Father says the messenger’s ready!’
Together they watched him go, the young crossbowman who had kept his nerve in the tower. ‘I hope his way north is less perilous!’ said Alais. ‘And now we had better lay plans for our own journey.’
Kunrad blinked ‘Our…’
‘Of course. For iron, you great windbag! Father doesn’t know the hills half as well as I do! If you’re going to go blundering around them, you’ll need a good guide!’
Lord Kermorvan did not absorb the idea at first. He was already busy sending as many men as he could spare out among the peasantry, with trumpets and declarations that Alais had helped him draft. He treated the problem like a scouting expedition in wartime, covering the most ground with the least men, and spent the rest of the day with Merthian’s great maps of the region spread out on tables all around him. Occasionally he would lose his temper and throw everything in the air, but the effort appeared to agree with him; and, rather to Kunrad’s surprise, he seemed to be making sense of the business. It was only at the hastily prepared dinner they shared with Alais, Ferlias and the prentices, that he caught the drift of what was planned; and for a moment they thought he was going to throw the table in the air.
‘You’re schemin’ to take my daughter off on this bloody mining trip? With Powers know what roamin’ those hills, and a full-scale war brewin’? Northerner, if I wasn’t that grateful to you I’d call you out and chop your head off, first strike! Or your—’
‘Father, he isn’t scheming anything,’ said Alais patiently. ‘I am!’
‘You?’ exploded the old man. ‘Never schemed anything in your life, you! Wish you did, more – no, not that! Just wish you thought a mite about things! Just rushed at ’em, head down, all you’ve ever done! Same as your poor dear mother, ‘n’ look what happened to her!’
‘Yes, Father dear,’ she answered sweetly. ‘She ran off with you.’
Kermorvan’s purple deepened to bursting point, then faded just as swiftly. ‘So she did. Silly little biddy! Fine prospect I was. Just like her, you. Same’s when you took a header into the lake to see if you would swim, ‘n’ you couldn’t. Or took that hedge high at the jump and damn near left your brains on that branch … Ah well. I can’t talk, you’ll be sayin’! Almost let you marry Merthian ’cause I thought that was what you wanted. Just tryin’ to stop you makin’ another mistake, that’s all! But then, well, maybe it isn’t a mistake at that … Eh?’
Kunrad had tried in vain to stem the flow. ‘What isn’t a mistake?’
‘Oh …’ Kermorvan looked shifty. ‘Swimmin’, minin’ trips, that sort of thing. But this ain’t any pleasure jaunt, see? We go out, we get what we can and back here quick, and no hanky-panky or you’ll have a damn great pain in the panky! The pair of you!’
And Kermorvan turned back to his joking with the prentices, with whom he was already a great favourite. He left Kunrad feeling battered and confused, unable to understand half of what the old man was prattling about. He gulped at one of Merthian’s choice vintages and longed for Northern beer. He and the old man had become allies, but it was with the young men that Kermorvan was making friends. Alais echoed his thoughts. ‘Look at Father! That was why my brothers were such a disappointment to him. They’re so staid and careful, and he’s still half a boy himself – but then I suppose most men are, really.’ She hesitated, and looked at him sidelong. ‘Except you, perhaps, Kunrad. And I almost wish you were, so I could understand you better. I thought this obsession with the armour was childish, but now … I don’t know. There’s something worse about it, something dark. You grew up so near the Ice, didn’t you? I could almost imagine you could have been shaped, as Merthian and I were. Shaped to make that awful thing, shaped to make things for war, things that kill …’
Kunrad was becoming reconciled to the wine, beginning to notice how the flavour changed as it grew warmer in his mouth. It no longer tasted like ink. Subtle fragrances swirled across his palate and seemed to dissolve directly into his blood. Alais’s comment brought him back to earth with a bump, a little hurt. ‘You know I’m no bloodthirsty manslayer, lady. And as for that accursed armour, I heartily wish I’d never laid maul to metal. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to bed. I’d suggest you do the same. We’ve an early start in the morning.’
He stalked off, winecup in hand, giving her no chance to reply. She looked after him for a long moment, only to become aware that all conversation had stopped, and that everyone else was looking at her.
She was there on the steps at dawn, though, in her riding clothes, now somewhat stained and rumpled, glaring defiantly at her father. He sighed and waved her to her horse, then looked to Ferlias. ‘Look, cap’n, I don’t like bein’ away, but you should be all right. Chances are
his Wardenship hasn’t even reached the corsairs yet.’
‘It’ll be well enough, my lord,’ said Ferlias patiently. They had thrashed all this out the night before, but Kermorvan was clearly worried. ‘I’ll keep myself busy with the peasants, as they come in.’
‘If any do!’ rumbled Kermorvan.
The captain allowed himself a brief smile. ‘I’d say you need have no concern about that, my lord. The first are already waiting at the lakeside there, come in with the wagon levy. The recruiters tell me there’ll be many more. Seems our Marchwarden’s not as universally beloved as everyone seemed to think. A good many guessed at some dirty doings with the corsairs, what with midnight comings and goings!’
Kermorvan’s bleary eyes widened. ‘Eh? And never thought of reporting it?’
Ferlias shrugged. ‘Never. Dead afraid of them as they are, too! There’s peasants for you!’
‘Be reasonable, Ferlias!’ protested Alais. ‘Who could they report to? Who would ever have listened to the country folk?’
‘I would!’ snapped Kermorvan.
‘Well, sir, you weren’t too hasty with us, sir!’ Gille reminded him. ‘And that although we had her ladyship’s word, too!’
Kermorvan shook his head. ‘Mmph! Still listened, didn’t I? This, this is the turn things have taken in this bright new commonwealth of ours! All that tattle about abolishing the distinction ‘twixt man and master, yet the gulf grows ever wider! And me too sunk in my own miseries to see it!’ He blew a great shuddering breath. ‘Well, we’ll improve things a mickle around here, right now! Bridge out, captain!’
Ferlias’s men bent to the wheels, now freed, and the drawbridge swung out across the deep blue water. The. lead rider raised his banner, and Kermorvan led the little cavalcade out of the gate. There on the shore awaiting them were all the wagons that could be raised in the area – Merthian had taken many already – and around them some hundred men and women, dressed as roughly as the farmers the smiths had seen. ‘Hope our friend with the dung-fork’s not in that lot!’ hissed Olvar.
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