The Bloody North (The Fallen Crown)

by Tony Healey

  He was more than aware he owed Crowstone. A part of him found the prospect of doing a mage a favour unnerving. Just what might such a person ask of a mere swordsman?

  As he sat at the table, his hand drifted to the place on his hip usually occupied by his sword. He found it foolish not to have brought the weapon, however friendly the place seemed at that moment.

  "No staff?" he asked Crowstone.

  The mage's eyebrows rose as he smiled. "Sometimes I like to let my hair down."

  "Yeah I see that," Rowan said. "And plenty of it there is, too."

  Annette laughed. "You can take the man out of the wild, but you can't take the wild out of a man," she cut in, glass to her lips. "But I'll admit he scrubs up well."

  "I thank you Madam," Crow said. He raised his glass, chinked it against hers, and drank. "It warms my old heart to know my appearance meets with your esteemed approval."

  Annette, for all her keen observational abilities, failed to register the sarcasm in what he said. She instead seemed to take it as a compliment.

  "You're welcome," she tittered.

  The landlady dropped by their table. "Rooms to your liking?"

  "Yes my dear, most regal," Crowstone said. "Might we have another round of drinks? The same for us, and whatever young Master Rowan is having."

  "I wouldn't call me young," Rowan said. He looked up at the landlady. "Just a pint, if you please."

  "Got it. What about your lady friend?" the landlady cocked her head at someone entering the tavern from upstairs. Rowan turned in his seat to be met by Patti, clean and tidy, out of her travelling clothes for the first time since they'd been reacquainted. She wore more feminine attire and with her hair down, soft brown locks hanging over her shoulders, face glowing in the candlelight, Rowan felt a stirring in his chest. A palpitation, or something else.

  "I . . . uh . . . I don't know . . ."

  The landlady slapped a hand on his shoulder as she brushed past, as if to say, "Don't worry. I know you're speechless," and asked Patti directly. Rowan didn't hear what she ordered, nor was he interested at that point in time. He got up, pulled the remaining free chair out from under the table so that she could sit down.

  "Ah, well, chivalry isn't dead," Patti said.

  Could it possibly be she is the same girl I rescued from the hand of that bastard? The same feeble girl cowering from his every word?

  "You look . . . radiant," he said awkwardly, not sure if he should have spoken out loud the first word to enter his head, and doubting it as he said it.

  She giggled. "Thank you."

  Rowan saw Crowstone studying him with keen interest, a wry smile somewhere beneath his beard.

  The landlady returned with their drinks, set them down and left.

  "I suggest a toast," Crow said. "To this fortuitous, if brief, fellowship."

  They toasted, then set to drinking. A round later, the landlady brought them plates of food. Roasted chicken, potatoes in their skins, cut through and laden with salty butter. Sausages and ham. Hefty chunks of yellow cheddar. A heavy, dense cake full of currants and peel. They ate until they simply could not eat any more. After another few rounds, Annette declared her intentions to head for bed and they all three stood to see her off. As if on a whim, she caught Rowan by the shoulders and planted a dry kiss on his cheek.

  "What's that for?"

  "For being a good man," she said. "Even if you think you're not."

  He watched her go, then felt Patti's hand on his arm.

  "She's right you know," she said.

  Crowstone excused himself. A group of old timers sat in a semi-circle in the corner, singing. He wandered over, preparing his pipe, already swaying to the melody of their broken voices singing in unison. Rowan felt plenty merry himself. It was so cosy in there, what with the flickering candlelight, the shadows, the singing voices, the tobacco smoke making the air thick and soupy. They'd had a long, tiring ride. He looked down and her hand was still on his arm.

  Could the two of them be right? Annette and Patti telling him he was a better man than he thought of himself as being?

  "I've done a lot of bad things," he said earnestly, feeling more than a bit of angst at being seen as foolish.

  "I know."

  "But bad stuff has happened to me, too," he said.

  She reached up with her free hand, touched the side of his face, the side with the long scar from his eye to his mouth. He closed his eyes.

  "Lay with me," Patti said.

  He opened his eyes, studied her face in the soft glow of the candles, heard the bass of Crowstone's deep voice join those already singing. "Okay."

  Patti took him by the hand, led him to the door at the back of the tavern, up the stairs into the quiet. To her room.

  Nineteen

  It's been a while, he thought as Patti peeled off her clothes in front of him, eyes locked on his the whole time. It was fair to say he'd already risen to the occasion. His fingers fumbled with the buttons at the neck of his shirt, but he got them undone and pulled the shirt up, tossed it into a corner. Patti stood before him, dressed only in her briefs, nipples of both breasts ripe and hard. She came forward, one candle on the nightstand illuminating her as she ran her hands across his chest, down his abdomen. She gave his stiff cock a squeeze through the material of his trousers.

  Rowan groaned.

  "Better get these off," Patti said, already loosening his belt. He helped her along, then sat on the bed as she slid out of her underpants. Rowan pulled her toward him, held her close, her tits against his chest as he sank back on the bed with her on top. They kissed, her tongue finding his through the firm press of their lips.

  Her legs either side of him, she ground herself against his throbbing member, his hands tracing the line of her back, her hips, up to the soft rush of her hair. There was no need for him to touch her, to prepare her. She was ready for him when his cock found her entrance and she settled down on him, buried all the way to the hilt before she drove herself back and forth. Patti breathed in his ear, husky and frantic as she fucked him, and Rowan held her close. He welcomed the feeling of another's body against his own, her skin on his, her building sweat when she sat up, leaning back and bearing down on his cock.

  Rowan reached up, caressed her tits, stroked her nipples as she rode him harder and harder, breath pulling up short as she came on top of him. The sensation of her cunt tightening on his cock brought him to join her and he arched his back in ecstasy, eyes closed, taken years in the past to a happier time, a life he'd once had and lost. A woman he had loved, and married and with whom he'd had children. They had often made love, sometimes in front of the fire, holding one another long into the night.

  Patti came to rest on top of him, and he felt around, found the edge of the sheet and pulled it over them. She kissed his chin, his lips. He responded in kind, held her close to him, eyes still closed, not wanting the illusion to end. But he knew it must, knew he must eventually open his eyes and return to the present – where he'd lost everything. But the old adage was true.

  A man who has lost everything has nothing to lose . . .

  Twenty

  Later that night he felt the urge again. This time he lay on top of her, the bed smashing the wall as he surged in and out of her, their wet parts slapping against each other. They kissed, and he held her as he came inside of her, and she kissed him after.

  He drank cold water from a jug on the nightstand.

  "That's a big scar up your back," she said, watching him. He got back in the bed and she made him turn over so she could touch it and confirm it real. Her finger traced the long, jagged line of the cut Quayle had delivered. Rowan thought back to the pain and fever brought about by that cut, one the good Ceeli had had the requisite knowledge to seal up without him getting an infection.

  "It's the reason I'm here," he said.

  "Oh."

  The silence stretched out for a time. "I'm going to kill some people tomorrow."

  Again her finger ran along
his scar. It made his hair stand on end. "The same people who did this?"

  "Yeah."

  "Will I see you after?" she asked.

  Rowan sat up, his head in his hands. She stroked his scarred back. Right where it always hurt. "Patti . . ."

  "It's all right," she whispered. "I never believed this would be more than a one-time thing anyway. You have to do what you have to do."

  Her hand found his shoulder. He reached up, placed his hand over hers. "Thank you for tonight. You don't know how long it's been."

  "Lay with me. Just for tonight. It's been a while for me, too," she said, reclining back on the bed. He lay back down himself, on his side, curled into her with his arm around her waist.

  "Have you ever been South?" he asked her.

  "No. Have you?"

  "When I was a young man. I lived down there for a while. In a fishing village on the coast. I doubt you've ever seen the sea, either, have you?" Rowan asked her.

  "Is it as big as they say?"

  He smiled, though she couldn't see it in the darkness. "So big you can't see the end of it."

  "Why didn't you stay down there?"

  Rowan drew a deep breath. Exhaled. Felt his chest ache at the memory of that time. "I missed home," he lied. It couldn't have been further from the truth.

  He had run South, a scared boy with his tail between his legs. He'd come back a man, the final impression of Rowan Black set in stone by then. By what happened.

  He'd found love down there by the sea. Found it . . . and lost it. Like much of his past, it seemed a lifetime ago to him now.

  "Come on. Let's sleep," Patti whispered to him.

  Sleep came easy, but was short-lived. As the first blue hints of dawn crept into the room, Rowan snuck out dressed in only his trousers, the rest of his clothes bundled in his arms. He went to his own room, quietly shut the door and set to work.

  He had steel to sharpen, though it remained little more than a ritual.

  * * *

  Crowstone stood outside in the early hours, smoking from his pipe. The narrow streets were quiet. In the distance, away from the buildings, the frozen lake shone pearlescent in the moonlight.

  He watched his smoke rise slowly into the darkness, and for the not the first time in his life, he considered the scattering of constellations. Patterns of stars meant to hold great meaning – just a way of finding order in chaos, he supposed.

  Men were want to do that. Find something in the mad jumble of life that had meaning. That told them something about the universe in which they lived that they could comprehend.

  He peered about. No-one in sight.

  Crowstone reached inside his clothes, removed the pendant he'd carried about his neck for longer than he could remember. The metal shard glimmered, the chain running through a hole at the top of it.

  Star metal.

  It was hard to believe that metal could fall from the sky, but it had in the past. And he knew it would do again. Just as he knew that the stars were fiery orbs – the same as the sun that rose in the morning – he knew that up there in the dark folds of space there were rocks hurtling through the nothingness. Occasionally they fell to the ground and left behind great scars across the landscape.

  And deposits of metal that had felt the kiss of a thousand suns, the ice cold embrace of the void in between. Such metal went back to the beginnings of time, to the dawn of all magic.

  He kissed the pendant, then pushed it back down inside his clothes. "One day," they'd said, "you'll need this."

  Crowstone still had very little comprehension of what exactly they had meant by that. But the thought of carrying with him a small remnant of a star about his neck was thrilling enough not to question their words. And besides, for all he knew, they were right. One day he would hear the metal calling.

  Then he'd have to answer . . .

  * * *

  The sun broke through the thin, cheap curtains and caused Patti to stir. She felt like she'd not properly slept a wink since Rowan had liberated her from the store prior. But last night, sleep had found her, and found her good. She shifted back, expected to feel his body there. She turned to look and found herself the only occupant. Not that it surprised her, but Patti found herself disappointed in either case.

  She dressed quickly, went out into the hall and tapped on his door. It swung open. She walked in, quiet as a mouse, looking for any sign of him. The bed was made, everything as it should be. Except no lodger. And no sign of his things.

  A board creaked out in the hall and her heart nearly leapt from her chest.

  "Oh my, you startled me!" she cried.

  Crowstone peered into the room. "Gone already I see."

  "Yes," she said, looking back. "He didn't say goodbye."

  "I'm afraid that man has said goodbye a great many times in his life," Crowstone said with a sigh. "So I do not hold any ill will against him for not having done so."

  "I suppose you're right."

  "It doesn't mean he wouldn't have liked to though, I bet," Crow said. "He's a very complex man. And yet he is, at the same time, a simple one."

  "I don't follow."

  "Come with me downstairs. We shall have the landlady fetch us tea, and perhaps something to eat, while I discuss an item of business with you," Crowstone said. "I believe you will find what I have to say quite relevant when it comes to yourself and Mister Black . . ."

  * * *

  The horse breathed smoke as it stamped through the snow, the farm looming into view. Behind him lay the town of Greyside, and beyond that, the frozen lake. The sun made the icy expanse look like smooth granite, reflecting here and there like so many imperfections.

  It's a good town, he thought as he looked back at it. Not a bad place to live, I'd wager. Then he looked forward, saw the farm in the mist that coiled and writhed above the snow, and his heart hardened. Hope lay behind him, with only misery and hate ahead. He had waited a long time – once he'd believed it would never happen. But Rowan had continued to fight with Larch West in either case, just to be completely sure. Quayle had done a good job of hiding at the end of the war between the King and Wagstaff. He'd had no part to play in the civil war but that hadn't stopped Rowan looking for him.

  Got you now you bastard, Rowan thought as he brought the horse to a stop and climbed down. He secured the reins to a snapped tree trunk at the side of the road, ensured he had all his gear and proceeded the rest of the way on foot. Although he would make more noise than usual, he also knew that none of it could possibly be compared with that made by the horse. His travel worn boots allowed him to move swiftly, even through the snow and ice. He was soon at the gate to the farm, electing to climb up and over it. The gate itself was lodged firmly in the snow, unable to swing left or right. It didn't so much as shift an inch while he climbed over it. The path leading to the big farmhouse had been shoveled clear, allowing him to run along it to the front door. He got there, stood under the threshold, hand on the hilt of his sword. Sounds rang out from within. Rowan stood with his hand braced to pull the blade, took a deep breath to help him keep his nerve, then knocked on the door.

  Twenty One

  "Yes?"

  Rowan blinked.

  A woman with curly black hair tucked into a headscarf stood in the doorway, a pinafore on. She had a warm, welcoming face despite the frown there at Rowan's presence.

  "Uh . . ." Rowan croaked. Words left him. They dried up like weeds in summer.

  He'd expected men at the farmhouse. Quayle's crew, perhaps.

  "Mister, no offense, but I don't have all day. How can I help you?"

  He cleared his throat. "I'm, uh, looking for Quayle."

  How strange those words are, now I say them.

  The woman's expression changed instantly. She smiled, stepped to one side. "Well then come in, by all means. Step on through to the kitchen," she said.

  Rowan was across the threshold without thinking about it, was following her down a hall, toward a kitchen bustling with activity. Steam
y with cooking.

  "Smells good," he said absently, every nerve standing on end, muscles bunched like coiled springs.

  "A good stew," she said as she led him into the kitchen. "Nothing like it in this weather, wouldn't you agree?"

  A long table dominated the center of the kitchen. A bowl of bread in the middle, bottles of wine. A man with his back to Rowan conversing with four children on either side of him.

  He looked up as the woman walked past. She nodded in the direction of the doorway. "You have a visitor, John."

  Quayle turned around.

  There was no hat this time. Just tightly curled red hair, grey at the temples. His one good eye regarded Rowan, widening ever so slightly with recognition. Once again Rowan noticed the scar up the side of Quayle's nose, the split up the left nostril. This time he had a patch over his other eye, the one that was just a gaping hole in his head.

  "I know you."

  Rowan stood in the entrance to the kitchen, jaw set, heart beating in his ears.

  "That you do."

  "We met . . . years ago, far as I recall," Quayle said cryptically. His children had turned to look at Rowan, too. The woman – who had to be Quayle's wife, when he considered the red hair of the three young girls and boy at the table – continued with her cooking, back to them. She hummed absently as her husband dealt with their visitor.

  "We did."

  Quayle glanced sideward at the children, then back to Rowan. "As you can see, things have changed some since we last met. I've settled down."