by Adrian Selby
“What’s that man doing walking up on the roof?” He points at another militiaman, similar leather vest to him that’s behind us. Then the whistles blow. I keep us walking to the gallows stage knowing that the space will give me a chance to judge where they’re coming in from.
I whisper to the children. “I’m going to stay here. There’s militiamen around us who are going to put me in chains and take me away. You need to walk on now, down that hill till you see the anchor. Here’s the scrollcase that Leyden wrote for you.”
Dottke goes to hug me.
“No, bluebell, keep walking, all of you must keep on because if we stop they might catch up and get you too. If anyone asks where you come from, how you got here, tell them …” I remember then the look in that noke herder’s eyes as I swung about with his spear in me, the terror in his face because I should have been dead. “Tell them the Ildesmur saved you. A black-eyed War Crow. Keep my name out of it for it might go worse for you if it’s known.”
Brek nods at me and he takes Dottke’s hand. She can’t help herself, she’s waving at me, so I force myself to turn away and walk back towards the militiaman. This alarms him and he puts his hand out to slow me down. Hawkers and fishers, merchants and clearks all pause as they hear him call my name. There’s a flash of some sort, colour or smell I can’t say with this eye, but I know someone’s moved in from just behind me. The militiaman who was on the roof of a cooper’s shed drops down. They’re sounding their whistles. I glance quickly beyond the man behind me as he pulls a club from its belt loop.
The children are gone, nothing out of sorts with those ambling along the lane they took. I’m sure they was on their way now, and I feel released, like I’m lifted up. I did something right. Now I’m ready to go for there’s no more good I can do and there’s much to atone for as I untie the strap of leather over my mouth and wrap it around my fist.
Chapter 8
Then
With naught but our horses we made good time. From Amondell it’s a short run east to the Auksen settlement. We didn’t take the short run, the trails would be watched. We had a three rolling on luta day and night. With caution we picked our way across the stony hills that was the toes of the Mothers, their bodies to the south cold and beautiful.
I remembered Thende telling me of the chief’s sister he never married, the nose-picker. Chief Olnas I may have met when a girl—he must have been a boy then—but I remembered nothing of him although expected to be reminded on our meeting.
We come to a dell beyond which I knew was the farmlands of the Auksen clan, a proper fort wedged into the curacs, which was what we called the rolling stone-strewn land that faded into the plains of the Almet. The sniffers would have already come back to the settlement as it was getting on in the day. The broken land made for copses of trees. One offered a good vantage over the settlement and we settled in for the evening watching. There was no Khiese banner flying over the Auksen longhouse, no sign of whiteboys. We scouted out to increase our perimeter and there was still no sign.
I agreed with Eirin to wait until the sniffers was out in the morning, by which time the dogs would likely pick us up, so we’d head in if there was no sign of trouble. I washed the luta out of my eyes and got to sleep for I’d likely need my wits tomorrow if I was to bring Auksen into my plan.
Thad was up at first light mixing the crew’s brews and rubs. Eirin and I did each other’s rubs as the sniffers and their dogs leaving the settlement woke us. Three of Skallern’s men signed that there was still no whiteboys. I agreed with Eirin that she stay out of the camp and I go in with four, two spears, two bows, nothing to cause alarm. Olnas had either not yet met Khiese or he’d defied him. Either way we had to be wary of Khiese or a crew of whiteboys coming at the Auksens.
The five of us led our horses through the fields of arnica, amony and flag. North of us the hills which settled down into the great plain was hidden in a heavy mist. The sniffer dogs, being mostly brown or white chutters, was friendly, and was looking to be patted or given their snivets. Our colour, our presence even, didn’t attract comment. I didn’t know how to read that and it set me on edge. Sometimes people get nervous round people with colour, or pretend they don’t see us.
The Auksen settlement was built on a natural rise with the longhouse at the back, where an escarpment made a natural defence behind it, the same as at Amondell. Their banner still flew, green edged with grey links, atop the giant pole carved from a single trunk of a black pine, rare enough when it was brought down from Tusker’s Vale, and fully a hundred feet high. That was Old Auksen’s gredda, who won over our clan to be called the high clan in these lands.
At the gate was only the one guard, and I looked about expecting to see at least a couple more, if only to keep an eye out for the poachers looking to get themselves some of the plant grown in the fields about.
“Are you mercs? I’ve been told by the chief to ring the bell for any mercs that come in.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“Pigeons coming from some of our Families tell us there’s a warlord about.”
“There is. I’ve come from the Amondsens, I’d like to speak with our chief, Olnas.”
He rang a bell just inside the main gate and pointed the way up the slope.
As with Crimore, the settlement was quiet. It was bigger than Crimore as well, and the plentiful stone in the lands about allowed them to wall in properly their runs and plant patches; solid cottages and carved stone blocks that I had admired as a girl that marked those on the rope who had strengthened it. These stood on or formed the corners of some of these walls, or else buttressed the settlement’s great walls, their ancestors standing guard, watching them with a range of expressions from disdain through to joy.
But again, the children sat in twos or threes and didn’t look at us, frightened to, I thought.
“Something’s not right,” I said quietly to Eirin’s guards with me. “Cough if you see anything at all looks like trouble.”
“It’s quiet, Master,” said one. “Usually can’t stop women going on, can you?” The woman next to him give him a nudge.
“Please pardon.” But he was right.
Two more guards come out from the longhouse. I could see, from the fresher stone and thatch, that the house had been expanded, what must have been a room half as long as the main house added on to the left-hand side, which was furthest from the escarpment.
“Weapons and belts,” said the one. Looked relaxed enough, spear leaning on the house behind him and sword still sheathed.
“I’m Amondsen. I’m here from Thruun, I have his seal.”
“Still need them.” The other held out his hand to receive them.
“Give them up,” I said, and we all did. Thad had given us all a dayer. I stood a bit closer to them as I give up my sword and belts. Neither had much colour, probably only paid pennies as we used to say of those who never got on to full fightbrews with all the trouble and the staining they bring.
They pointed us inside. The flat stones was smooth as glass on the main steps and the short run to the longhouse doors. Shutters was open along walls and roof, but the heavy air and cloud left the tables inside gloomy all the same. Two men raked through the firepit, throwing ash up into the air.
“Hail!” I called as we entered. The dayer helped us see better than we would have. Olnas was at one of the long tables with a man must have been his drudha. Nobody in the Circle other than chiefs hooped their beards, and that is how I could tell these two men apart. They sat chopping and mashing cicely roots, by the smell of them.
Olnas stood up and gestured us to him.
“Is it you, Teyr Amondsen? I believe it is.”
“Hail, Chief Olnas. Thank you for your welcome.”
“You are family. Sit with us while we mash, tell me of your brother. You’ve come from there?”
“I have. I’m sorry to say I didn’t recognise you, it’s been many years. Am I so similar-looking to the girl who last come h
ere?”
“You’re not easy to forget, colour or no. I was too young to beg for a kiss back then, and too old now, sadly.” His hair, its wave, was common blonde. Perhaps it was that he’d gained weight, his skin was pebbled with red blotches, like it had never been young.
“My brother sends his respects, but also requests your help, as do many clans in the Circle. There is a bandit, more a warlord. Samma Khiese.”
As I said it one of my men yelled, “Whiteboys!”
I looked out through the shutter on the side wall and saw two of them appear outside it. They’d not drawn weapons and the dayer kept me even. They was fidgeting, grinning.
“I know Khiese,” said Olnas. He rubbed the dirt and root fibres from his hands and wiped them on a piece of cottonleather.
“He knew you’d come and wanted to meet you.”
Olnas got up from the bench we was sat at. For a moment I thought of stabbing him, severing his rope. But he’d done that himself, as much a puppet as my brother. Killing an ally of Khiese would make the parley worse. I was wrong.
“Teyr.”
From the newly built room off to the left near the back of the longhouse Khiese walked through with six of his whiteboys. For all that they looked strong and capable soldiers, taller and larger than Khiese, it was him that I could not take my eyes from.
He was my height, wore a simple brown tunic, a plain belt at his waist with only three pouches. He had a short, coppery beard, close-cut hair. His colouring was similar to that I’d seen on soldiers far to the east near the Wilds, the yellow of mustard seeds, flushes of green around the veins that seemed also to have affected his eyes, for they was a pale green instead of white.
We clasped arms. I didn’t hesitate for I wanted to begin this well. His skin was like hot rough stone, hands scarred, knuckles blown and round, an experienced unarmed fighter.
“Your brother told me much about you and your adventures over the Sar. Yet you come home to the Circle spreading the good word and bribes of that imbecile Othbutter. How did you come so low? Come, sit next to me so we may talk. Olnas, take your drudha outside, tell my captain to begin looking for the rest of Teyr’s crew. They’ll be in the copses, no doubt a vantage point somewhere past the fields.”
I looked to my men. They was unarmed, while Khiese’s men had longswords. I gestured for them to sit at a nearby bench, for there was no fighting our way out of this. I sat side by side with Khiese. He was lean, a strong posture. Despite my dayer I felt nervous now. I’d walked into this simply not believing that Khiese could be here, much less lay this trap. My heart had lifted when I saw the Auksen colours over the settlement. It had softened my thinking.
“You may have heard something from Jeife Seikkerson, but it’s important I outline why I’ve come from Hillfast. It isn’t Othbutter that’s proposed this, though he backed it with coin. You’re right, as are all the clans of the Circle, that he hasn’t come here, has chosen instead to stay around the coast. I could have done that, I was making good coin as a merchant, but I felt Hillfast needed better. I have ploughed much coin into roads and bridges leading to the Sedgeway. Now I’ve learned that you have risen to control many of the clans. There’s no reason why we cannot work in the Circle’s common interest.”
He listened with half a smile on his lips. “I’ve heard this much from my brother. Teyr, you don’t share my ambition for Hillfast, for the Circle is the first step. I won’t be led by the cap by guilds of merchants. I won’t ship away our larch, our plant south and west for profit. You want us to rival the Old Kingdoms, to be a partner to them, to raise our standing in a game of dice they’ve got rigged. And they’ve always had it rigged because they work as one, those countries, they oppress as one. The citadels is the game I will play. These chiefs can’t see past their bellies and cocks. Othbutter is first, the rest follow, and then we might be able to stand for ourselves.”
There’s movement outside, I hear horses whinnying and then galloping away.
“I believe Gruma passed on my warning, at the Almet?” he said.
I struggled to recall it. “We do not pose a threat.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Well now, you’ve wounded Jeife Seikkerson and helped prisoners of mine escape. You have two drudhas of some renown and a good number of soldiers, all well appointed. I’d say you were a threat, except I have you now without any weapons or plant. But most importantly, Teyr, I asked you to leave and you didn’t. My brother was clear on the price you’d pay for ignoring me. I might have asked you to join me had you not already disobeyed me, but you are too much the sort of leader that must win the minds of those you command. I win the guts of a man, for in the wild here, hearts and minds follow food and shelter. Our lives can be broken on a patch of ice on a mountain pass, a bad measure of a mix, a bad harvest. My men and women know this, it is woven in their ropes. Our lands prepare us for the hardships of war, they prepare us for death. You know this because you are one of us. Or you were.”
He turned then to his men and flicked his head towards mine. They took out their longswords. My men stood, looking to me for support. Khiese was turning back to watch his men kill mine, so I brought the edge of my hand up hard into his throat. He was quick. I hit his throat but he leaned back, taking the edge off it. As I brought my other fist round he blocked it. His wrist might as well have been an iron bar, cracking mine to throw the blow off. He punched me hard in the ribs and his other hand came back, the heel of it, into my nose. My head snapped back and I was done. My men started shouting, moving back and spreading out around the whiteboys. Khiese twisted from where he was sitting and put his knee in my belly as I tried to move away, my balance gone, fiery pins crackling like fat through my head and eyes from his breaking my nose. I fell forward unable to breathe. My men, Eirin’s men, screamed as the swords slid in and out of them, the whiteboys working silently. I hit the ground on my hands and knees, unable to think. I looked up enough to see my men fall to the ground themselves as the whiteboys stopped, breathing hard, wiping their blades on their tunics.
Khiese coughed, tried to speak, which gave me a flash of comfort, before putting his boot in my belly again, taking my breath further away from me. I reached out, helpless, then heard him croak, “Beat her, then round up the rest of her pathetic crew.”
My ears rang. I became aware of sucking breath through my mouth, something like a heavy serrated stone sitting squarely in my face, behind my nose and eyes. I thought one of them gone, I couldn’t move it, couldn’t blink, my hands feel cold. They’re behind me, a sharp pain in my wrists, so I’m tied. I can’t feel my feet, but my legs are together, tied as well. I am being moved. The rattling of a wagon, my head bounces against it. I can’t tense, can’t bring my knees up to try and bring myself upright. Something smells, no tastes wrong, raw meat or blood, it’s close, must be if I can taste it. My eye is shut, muffled and constricted by the blood of a bruise. I open my other eye and it’s full of tears. I stretch the eyelids and try to clear them of their water. Before me, twitching with the rolling wheels over the rough trail, is a head. Though most of his face has been cut away, I see it’s Thad. The hair, matted with blood, is unmistakably his, his hairline, creeping back either side of his forehead. I gasp, try to cough and spasm with my body’s rejection of anything so violent as movement.
For all that I couldn’t speak or cry properly, I said his name over and over, whined helplessly, kept looking at him.
A voice. Khiese, from behind me, speaking softly, as though of pleasantries.
“He gave us many good recipes, even without his lips. I kept his head because I thought you’d like to say goodbye before I let our dogs have it. Sleep now, Teyr, you’ll see your family soon. You’ll see as well that I keep my word. It’s all I’m doing, Teyr: keeping my word.”
I could barely move, a roiling wave of hate and despair, a desire to offer my life for theirs, before a cloth was put over my face, the greasy musty tang of hemlock filling my throat.
The next time I
woke, there was a lot of noise, children crying, Khiese swearing.
“I lost twenty at the Auksens and now you’re saying twenty-three more? To two mercenaries?”
Gruma spoke, I couldn’t hear what he said except for a name. Sanger kept to the purse, Sillindar bless him.
I was still bound. My throat was swollen but I could taste piss, it was sharp and sour, all about me. I’d been covered in it at some point. I rolled my tongue about my cracked lips.
“She’s awake, Chief.” A voice above me. Someone jumped down off the wagon then.
Fresh wood was spitting, a fire nearby. Chalky’s keep, Edma, was begging for their lives.
“Give Teyr a splash, she needs to see all of this,” said Khiese.
Someone mounts the wagon. I’m pulled up, pain flares up my arm, it feels wrong, hanging in an unfamiliar way while bound to my other wrist.
Someone else takes my legs, and I’m lifted down before being dragged along grass, further from the fire. Edma is closer, Chalky too.
“Ma!” It’s Mosa.
“Oh Sillindar, oh no.” Aude.
I open my mouth to speak but nothing comes. A wet jelly is rubbed over the eye that isn’t swollen. It’s carefully wiped. It’s Khiese, the hard skin of his hands unmistakable on my chin as he holds it up.
I open my eye. Aoig is setting, long shadows of trees across a frost made gold by it. The hemlock has made me sick, I’m queasy being upright on my knees. I lean forward to lie down but I’m held at the neck of my tunic. A small gob of spit gets as far as my chin, I can put nothing behind it.
“Chief, she stinks. How long do I have to hold her?”
“Hold her.”
“Yes, Chief.”
Aude and Mosa have tears in their eyes. Aude is trying to hug Mosa into him so he doesn’t have to see me. Two of Khiese’s whiteboys have spears on them.
“Amondsen, what have they done to you?” said Chalky.
Chalky and his boy Calut are on their knees like me, bound. I look about and see to my right Edma and the girls, Silje and Lees, kneeling as well, though they are not bound. They don’t look defiled or hurt.