Bridge of Swords

by Duncan Lay

  He looked around the confused faces and realised that was too much to ask.

  ‘What about goldenseal? Or comfrey? Sage is good as well …’

  ‘Delia knows about herbs.’ Glyn pointed to her.

  Delia was ushered forwards.

  ‘I have those herbs but we only use them for rashes, fevers and the like — they do nothing for cuts …’

  ‘And the dirty old tunics and elfbolts do any better?’ Sendatsu asked sceptically. ‘Give me the herbs and they will work.’

  ‘Everyone knows that an elfbolt is best for those, to keep out evil spirits that make it go bad …’

  ‘I’ll take my chances,’ Sendatsu said hurriedly.

  ‘Come with me, I’ll boil up the bandages and help you,’ Rhiannon offered.

  Sendatsu was not sure if she had the experience — but did not trust the other villagers not to do something strange. At least Rhiannon would do what he asked.

  ‘Let’s go then,’ he agreed, the pair of them following a dubious Delia to choose herbs from her home.

  ‘The elf and the dancer, eh? Sounds like a good tale for you to sing!’ Glyn nudged Huw as Delia led Sendatsu and Rhiannon away.

  Huw watched them leave, feeling as though someone had sunk a blade into his stomach. After the battle, he had been filled with exultation, a soaring certainty he and Rhiannon would be together. But the elf was the real hero of the day — Huw was just a man who knew how to talk and could use the elven crossbows. And what could he ever say to stop them?

  ‘Get some men together — we need to collect the wounded Forlish raiders, put the horses out of their misery and find as many bolts as we can out there,’ he said gruffly.

  ‘Of course!’ Glyn clapped him on the shoulder and then began shouting.

  14

  One of the side effects of all the plans going on was that I heard little of what was happening with the humans. Once, Velsh had been welcome to walk through the streets of Dokuzen. A few Forlish and a handful of Breconians had even made their way north to see us. But now, those that tried were killed before they got to me. Afterwards, of course, I could see the pattern, I could understand why reports of what was happening in Vales, in Forland and elsewhere were not getting back to me. Of course, hindsight is always the clearest vision.

  Huw walked slowly back to his house. The villagers had spent the rest of the day cleaning up after the battle. Wounded horses had been killed, then dragged away to be butchered; that much fresh meat was not to be wasted. As for the Forlish, most were dead or dying — the ones still able to move had crawled away and then been rescued by their fellows. Their weapons were stacked up inside the village, their bodies were burned in a huge pyre. Everywhere there were small bolts, and women and children had gone over the ground carefully, retrieving every one that could still be used. They were too valuable to be left.

  At the end, there were still six Forlish living, and these were all in a bad way. Struck by several of the bolts, they had all lost plenty of blood and the village argued what to do with them while these men still bled.

  ‘They would have shown us no mercy,’ Glyn pointed out.

  ‘But we cannot just kill them, like they were animals!’ Kelyn said doubtfully.

  ‘They are animals. And we would not let a good sheepdog suffer, were it dying. We should at least show them that mercy. We don’t know how to draw out our bolts without killing them anyway,’ Glyn snorted.

  ‘Perhaps we should send them back to their king,’ Kelyn suggested. ‘We have a few living horses they left behind. Put them on there and send them south. Then their fate is their own and out of our hands.’

  ‘No,’ Huw spoke up. ‘We must not send them back to Ward. He must not know what is going on here. If he thinks we are resisting him, he will send his armies. We have to protect ourselves first.’

  ‘So what do we do?’ Glyn asked.

  Huw waved him down. He was still thinking this through himself. He had worked hard to clean up the battlefield but had been unable to get his mind off Rhiannon and Sendatsu, neither of whom had reappeared. Now he had a different thought to follow. They could not send the wounded back to King Ward. Patcham had defences sufficient enough to hold off a pack of Ward’s raiders but the Forlish armies could smash through stone walls and towers, bring down entire cities. They could wipe Patcham off the map in less than a day, if Ward thought it was a threat to his plan to bring the Velsh under his control. For now they were safe, for the survivors would not go running back to Cridianton with the tale of how a Velsh village defeated them. Not yet. But there would come a day when Ward would hear the Velsh were defying him. His reaction would be swift and brutal.

  So they had to protect not just Patcham but all the Velsh villages. One village the Forlish could destroy in a day — but if every village was protected, ready and waiting for Ward’s men … Huw’s imagination raced ahead. The Forlish were fighting wars in two southern countries, had troops patrolling the two they had previously conquered. If the raiders failed, then Ward would face a choice — begin a third war or leave the Velsh in peace. He sighed to himself. Ward would never choose peace. So they needed some way to defeat the Forlish army. There was only one possibility — the elves. Nobody else could hope to defeat Ward’s Forlish.

  So the key to all this was Sendatsu. Not only did he need to use the elf to go and show every other Velsh village how to protect themselves, he needed him to persuade the elves to break their self-imposed exile. As well as being archers and peerless warriors, they had the magic no human could wield. Not even the Forlish could stand against that.

  But this was going to take some work with Sendatsu. It was clear the elf had his own agenda. He was helping them now but for how long? He said, time and again, once he found what he sought, he was off to Dokuzen. Huw’s head said he wanted Sendatsu around as long as possible to help the Velsh but his heart said he wanted the elf gone now. Not that he had shown much interest in Rhiannon but, with him around, Huw stood no chance. Huw knew he was no warrior, he had no idea about magic and he possessed little of the elf’s knowledge and almost none of his physical prowess. He was not a hero, a saviour of the village. Nor did he offer the excitement of being a fairy tale come to life — or the hope of taking her to see Dokuzen, where she had dreamed of dancing and singing with the elves since she was a little girl. Put like that, it made sense for her to choose Sendatsu over him. But it hurt. Skies above, it hurt! Worse, he had to hide his feelings and pander to the elf, to get him on side. His people needed a hero — and there was only one choice available. No matter how unpleasant, he had to do this.

  ‘Kill them. None must live to tell the Forlish that the rabbit has grown fangs,’ Huw said harshly, gesturing to the Forlish wounded.

  ‘But …’ Kelyn began.

  ‘If they live, we shall die. It is as simple as that!’ Huw snarled.

  ‘He’s right,’ Glyn said after a moment. ‘We cannot let Forland know we have an elf and can defeat the raiders they send.’

  The big Velshman took up a Forlish sword and finished off the badly wounded men swiftly, mercifully, as he would an animal marked for slaughter.

  ‘What are you planning?’ Kelyn asked.

  ‘Once we are sure Patcham is safe, I need to take Sendatsu and journey to the other villages — we all need to be protected,’ Huw said simply. That was enough for them to know now. In fact, it would be better if he kept his plans to himself, at least for now. Sendatsu always acted strangely when they asked him about Dokuzen and returning to the elves. One step at a time, that was the best way. Huw could almost hear his father telling him this, sitting in his chair by the fire, talking about farming but also about life. Huw had not always listened, instead begging his father to tell him stories about heroes, about elves and magic. But now he was surprised how much seemed to have stayed in his memory.

  Reflective, he walked back to his house, not sure what he would find there but knowing he had to swallow his pain and concentrate on getting
Sendatsu to help him. In this Rhiannon would no doubt prove to be the greatest help, which made it doubly difficult. Huw could almost see them now — the elf had his shirt off and Rhiannon had her hands on him, the way he often dreamed she would touch him …

  He waited outside the door for a moment, forced himself to hide his feelings, so nothing would show on his face when he walked inside. But when he pushed the door open, it was to find nobody in the main room.

  Huw knew where they were, because he could hear them.

  The door to his father’s bedroom, where Rhiannon had been sleeping, was shut but it was thin wood and Huw could hear the sounds coming from behind it, including the rhythmic creaking of his father’s old wooden bed.

  That was almost too much for him. He did not know whether to rage, or cry, or both. Tears of hurt, of frustration, of despair and anger streamed down his face and he cuffed them away furiously. That Sendatsu could be in his father’s bed, with the woman he loved … for a moment he wanted to storm in there, hit the elf until the hurt stopped. Of course, he knew that would be pointless — Sendatsu would have no more trouble beating him than he’d had in winning Rhiannon.

  His next thought was to disappear. The village was safe, his father avenged, he could go away, far away, forget all about the pair of them, about Ward and his plans for the Velsh.

  But the sight of his father’s chair by the fire stopped him.

  He could never say whether a whim or something deeper made him cross the room and sit down. He had not sat in his father’s chair since his return, had not even gone near it. It had too many memories. But now he sat back and thought. Just being in the chair seemed to clear his mind.

  He had ignored, deliberately walked away from many of his father’s teachings down in Cridianton. His father would never have tolerated the slavery, the cruelty, the evil that festered at the heart of Forlish civilisation. Huw had managed to convince himself he was doing the right thing by staying, when all he was doing was indulging his own selfishness. He had rationalised staying there, taking on a new name, pretending to be Forlish, refusing to speak out against the brutality he saw every day, just so he could go on pretending he was doing the right thing. Not only that, so he could entertain the foolish hope he and Rhiannon could be together one day. And look how that turned out!

  No, it was time to stand up, to take responsibility. It was time to be the man his father wanted him to be. He reached up to the elfbolt that hung around his neck and, with some difficulty, tore loose the thong. He looked at the charm for a moment and then hurled it into the fire. It was time to stop putting his hope in a small rock; it was time to put the trust in himself. He sat there in the chair, the tears rolling down his face for the mistakes he had made, the things he desperately wanted to tell his father and the things he would have to do now. The noises from the bedroom were like salt in those wounds. If he had not been in his father’s chair, he would never have been able to stay in the house. But he used it, as well as the realisation of his own mistakes, to turn inside himself. His father was no longer there, there was nobody to protect him, to shield him from the harsh world and the truth. He had to stand up for himself. He had to face it all. He forced himself to stay there until the noises stopped, until his tears stopped also.

  Then he busied himself with getting the fire going, hung a pot and set water to boil, so he could cook some oats. He was not quiet about it, trying to use the everyday tasks to blank out everything else. It hurt, it stung like nothing he had ever known, but he gritted his teeth and kept going, because there were more important things at stake.

  He put the oats in the water, added salt and stirred it vigorously, slapped three plates on the table, hunted along shelves until he found some honey in a comb, in a small wooden bowl covered with cloth. By the time he had judged the oats were almost ready, the creak of the door opening made him turn.

  ‘Huw! How long have you been here?’ Sendatsu asked as he walked out, wearing just a pair of trews. The muscles of his upper body were in sharp relief, rippling in the firelight. Huw hated him.

  ‘Long enough,’ he said shortly, staring directly at the elf.

  Sendatsu flushed under his gaze and Huw took that as a small victory, although a feather to weigh against the lead weight in his gut.

  ‘Sit down. Have something to eat. We need to talk.’ Huw took the pot from the heat and began spooning porridge onto plates.

  Sendatsu stared at Huw with a mix of shock, horror and guilt. He had not meant this to happen. He knew Rhiannon had built up this picture of him as a fairy tale come to life and was obsessed with meeting an elf. He also knew Huw yearned for her. He was not out here to get involved with anyone, let alone a human woman. His love was Asami, although she was untouchable.

  The wound along his ribs was painful but, when he took off his tunic, proved to be relatively shallow. He had instructed Rhiannon on how to boil a cloth clean, as well as a needle and thread, then boil the herbs they had selected from the bunches hanging inside Delia’s roof and put them into a compress. She had been obviously nervous but determined enough to sew the long wound together, add the poultice and cover with a clean bandage.

  ‘You’ve done a good job.’ He smiled as she washed her hands clean.

  ‘It was a pleasure to help a hero,’ she replied. ‘I’d better check there’s nothing else. Are you sore anywhere?’

  Sendatsu admitted his shoulder ached where he had dived forwards under a sword stroke.

  Instantly Rhiannon was running her hands across his arms and shoulders, down his back and stomach.

  ‘It all feels good to me,’ she said, a little huskily.

  Until then he had looked at her as merely helping fix up his wound. But the feeling of her fingers over his skin made the goosebumps stand up. The battle had left him on top of the world. Having the whole village hail him as their saviour had him feeling ready to burst through a stone wall. She was so close to him, her lips slightly parted. It had been over three years since he had been with a woman; since Kayiko’s death he had been with no other. The closest he had come was Asami’s kiss in the garden, just before he fled Dokuzen. Rhiannon’s hand went down his side, brushed the top of his trews and he felt his control crack. She might be a human but, this close, she looked no different to an elf. The feeling of her hands set him on fire. He had to have her, simple as that.

  Getting her into bed had been a blur. He was not sure what he had said or promised to get her into bed with him.

  She had wanted to talk about Dokuzen almost as soon as they had finished, while he lay there, horrified at what he had done. Surely this was a mistake that would come back to haunt him. Part of him should have been disgusted he had slept with a human. Back in Dokuzen that would be considered little better than a sheep. But that was not bothering Sendatsu. He was struggling to see the difference between elves and humans now. He knew the truth of what happened three hundred years ago was hidden but he was wondering how much else might be hidden. Certainly there had been little difference in the firelight. It had been a long time but it hadn’t been that long. No, he was more concerned about Rhiannon’s reaction. He needed to get out, needed time and space to think, to come up with a way to fix what he had just done. They could never have a future — but that was exactly what she was talking about. He needed to let her down gently, find a way to leave her that did not break her heart. She would not understand.

  He mumbled some excuse and walked out into the main part of the house but was shocked to see Huw cooking porridge. Had Huw heard what was going on in the bedroom? How was he to cover this up, how would Huw react …

  ‘Huw! How long have you been here?’ he asked, to give himself time to think.

  ‘Long enough,’ came the reply, while the knowing gaze was enough to make Sendatsu flush. He knew how Huw felt about the dancer — even a blind man could see the attraction the bard had for her. And Huw had shown him nothing but kindness, had even shown him how to lead this village to victory, then had wait
ed out here, listened in, known Sendatsu and Rhiannon were in his dead father’s bed … Sendatsu burned with shame. This was all a terrible mistake. He should leave them now before he did any more harm.

  ‘Sit down. Have something to eat. We need to talk,’ Huw said, serving up the porridge, thumping it onto the plates as though it had offended him.

  ‘I’m not really hungry,’ Sendatsu lied.

  ‘Sit!’ Huw thundered, his trained voice almost rattling the rafters.

  Sendatsu sighed. He supposed he owed the bard this much. He would have to explain himself, apologise and then leave.

  ‘What do you want to talk about?’ Sendatsu sat down tiredly. He felt a little sick but, strangely, also hungry. He hauled a plate of porridge towards himself.

  ‘Today was a victory. But we need to repeat that at every village across Vales,’ Huw stated, taking a seat opposite Sendatsu and reaching out for a heaped plate, then for the bowl of honey.

  ‘What do you mean, every village?’ Sendatsu took the honey himself. This was not what he expected Huw to say.

  ‘We need to travel to every village and show them what we achieved here. We need to protect every Velsh village, not just this one. We have to show them how to build the crossbows, how to protect themselves with palisades, ditches and walls, so that Ward’s Forlish raiders will be thrown out, wherever they try to attack.’

  ‘And how long will that take?’

  ‘As long as it has to. We won’t need to stay for days at each village after a while, for they will get the idea, and we can leave them to finish the work themselves. Of course, for the bigger villages, there will be a need to think of different ways to protect them. So you’ll need to talk to all of them.’

  Sendatsu was wrong-footed by Huw’s approach. They both knew what had been going on in the bedroom. Why was Huw not talking about that? He forced himself to think. He might feel guilty but he was not going to commit to what sounded like moons of travel and effort — and little promise of the answers he so sorely needed to get back to his children.