“Who are you?” The question was out before he realised he had spoken aloud.
Sincai smiled. “I’m the man who’s spent these past eight years sneaking out beyond the walls to search every nook and gully for the place where the eagle must be buried, after hearing my grandfather’s tale of his father carrying it away for safekeeping.”
He looked at the rest of the men. “My family name is Dorsin. We’re leather workers and we live around the Aspen Gate.”
“I’ve sold hides to a Rever Dorsin,” Uderil said thoughtfully.
“The eagle wasn’t carried off. It flew away.” Thulle was still gazing, entranced, at the statue.
No one paid him any heed. Uncle Isom looked at Plore and Nedi saw something pass unspoken between them.
“What do you have in mind?” Isom asked cautiously.
“Men were hanged for talking treason in the old margrave’s day.” Plore tossed another log into the firepit sending up a shower of sparks.
Sincai nodded. “We cannot debate and discuss our plans in the streets and taverns. Word will get back to the garrison and the castellan will send ten men to seize each one of us. We need to strike as unexpected as lightening and in as many places as we can. Let the garrison try stamping out ten different fires when twenty more have sprung up before the first is quelled.”
“Fires?” Thulle looked around with unnerving eagerness.
“No one will be lighting real fires, you old fool,” Uderil said scornfully.
“Just kindling a lust for freedom in people’s hearts.” Challenge shone bright in Sincai’s eyes.
“Fine words,” Uderil observed. “What do you actually want us to do?”
“Raise a cry for Hatalys and the eagle,” Sincai said promptly. “Rouse everyone to come to the castle and see it for themselves. Then we’ll tell the castellan and his men that they’re no longer welcome. If they come out to confront us, they’ll be outnumbered and we can drive them to the gates. If they hide behind the castle’s walls, we bar the gates to keep them inside until they’ve emptied their store rooms. Then the price of food and drink will be leaving the town.”
“Why should we be the ones to start this landslide?” Zanner demanded.
“Who goes around the town more unnoticed than goat herders and their wives?” Sincai grinned.
He was right, Nedi realised. Day in and day out, men too old to endure these hills drove freshly purchased beasts to each district’s butchers, from the tender and sweet-fleshed kids to the aged nannies destined for the stewpot. The women sold milk and cheeses from door to door each morning, leaving the dogs and younger children watching over the milking flocks grazing around the town walls.
“The townsfolk will laugh in our faces,” one of the grey beards prophesied.
To Nedi’s surprise, Sincai shrugged. “Then what have you lost? What have you risked? Calling folk to come and see a marvel isn’t treason. You won’t even look foolish when the mockers learn that the eagle is there for all to see.”
Uncle Isom raised a hand. “How do you propose to get something that size back up onto the gatehouse pinnacle?”
“We need someone who can climb.” Sincai looked around the fire. “That’s my other reason for coming out here.”
Muted laughter eased the tension a little. Goat men were well known for their surefootedness. They had to be as nimble as their charges, given the beasts’ perverse ambition to scale the steepest crags in search of forage. Come the winter, when the snows penned everyone up within the town, Nedi’s father and uncles mended leaking roofs and rebuilt unsteady chimneys.
Abruptly he realised that everyone was looking at him. Despite the heat from the fire, Nedi felt chilled to the bone.
“The lad’s the best climber here.” Thulle’s unblinking gaze was profoundly unnerving.
Nedi silently cursed his own readiness to help the old man rescue a cragfast goat the day before last.
“The garrison would just think some lads were larking about,” Uderil observed slowly.
“I couldn’t!” Nedi’s voice rose embarrassingly and he swallowed hard. “Not without my father’s say-so.”
“Your father would agree in a heartbeat.” Plore looked steadily at him and Isom nodded.
Zanner grinned. “You’ll be up there, back down and away before any River Kingdom man can find a foothold.”
“If we’re to do this, let’s do it sooner than later.” Plore rose to his feet.
Half the other men joined him, their faces eager in the firelight. Did that mean it was agreed? Was there to be no show of hands? No further discussion? Nedi wanted to ask but the words froze in his throat.
“If we leave now, we can be at the gates by daybreak,” Sincai said swiftly. “You can go and wake your wives and all spread the word.”
“We’ll tell your father and mother,” Isom assured Nedi.
“If they forbid it, we’ll come at once to call you down,” Zanner promised.
“We’ll keep the goats penned until you come back,” one of the greybeards announced. “The dog boys can cut fodder and shovel shit for a few days.”
Nedi saw the other men were already rolling up their blankets and securing their few possessions in the bags which each herder carried. He rubbed a shaking hand across his face and felt the prickle of bristles. So much for his pride in those. At the moment, he’d give anything to still be a smooth-faced dog boy.
“Come on, young hero.” Sincai was at his side. “Don’t you want to be the man who restores the eagle to Hatalys?”
Nedi supposed that would be something, since it seemed he had no choice. He gazed at the statue. Thulle was wrapping it in the sacking again, as gentle as a man swaddling a baby. “Who’s to tote that weight back to the town?”
“I will,” Sincai assured him.
Nedi looked up at him. “Where did you find it?”
Sincai grinned. “In the last place I looked.”
Before Nedi could press the stranger, Isom came over. “Your father will be proud of you.”
And that was that. The rest of the night passed more quickly than Nedi could have imagined. The men all knew the path and then the familiar road and the air was cold enough to turn muddy ruts sufficiently firm for them all to find sure footing. The moon rode high in the sky, round and full, to light their way.
By the time the sky paled, the town’s walls cut a jag-toothed line of darkness across the horizon. Nedi was stumbling with exhaustion but he still kept pace with his uncles at the head of the straggling column. Though his fear of falling behind and being lost on the road was fading, dread at what was to come took its place.
Someone cried out from the rearguard, chagrined “The gates won’t unlock till dawn!”
“They’ll open to me,” Sincai shouted over his shoulder.
Nedi caught a glimpse of his face in the strengthening light. The stranger had carried the eagle’s great weight all this way yet his pace was unflagging, his certainty undimmed. Nedi began to wonder if this madcap plan might actually succeed.
Reaching the gatehouse, Sincai knocked with a brisk triple rap on the porter’s door cut into the great double oak gates.
Like every boy, Nedi knew that opening the gate was completely forbidden between the dusk and dawn horn calls from the castle. Get locked out, their mothers warned, and you’ll be cold and hungry all night, if the moor dogs don’t eat you for their own supper.
But the porter’s door opened up and a man greeted Sincai with a fervent smile. He ushered them all through the portal before locking it securely again.
The goat herders quickly dispersed, each man heading for home. Zanner clapped Nedi on the shoulder. “We’ll meet you at the castle. You need not climb if your parents forbid it.”
Before Nedi could answer, he hurried away to catch up with Isom.
“What’s the matter?” Sincai murmured.
Nedi turned to see the gatekeeper drawing Sincai close to say something in urgent low tones. Nedi couldn’t make a
ny of it out.
“Let me take that.” Thulle had been following Sincai so closely that he’d been all but treading in the younger man’s footprints. Now he reached out to slip the rope sling supporting the sack-swathed eagle from Sincai’s shoulders.
“I’ll take the boy to the castle. No one will look twice at an old fool like me.”
Sincai let the old man take possession of the bird before looking intently at Nedi. “There’s something I must attend to. Can you see this through without me?”
He’s asking me, Nedi realised with nervous pride. Not old Thulle. He nodded jerkily, his mouth dry and not just from the long night’s journey.
“Come on.” Cradling the eagle in his arms, Thulle forced the boy onwards like a grizzled dog herding a young billy goat.
Nedi didn’t need any old man chivvying him. He knew the quickest routes to the castle through the town’s back alleys, up the sloping streets to the highest point of the wall-girt hill. More than once, he glanced over his shoulder to see Thulle labouring under the eagle’s weight and had to slow to let him catch up.
All the while, the daylight was strengthening. Nedi saw the first signs of households waking; threads of smoke from chimneys and upper shutters unlatched as chamber pots were emptied into the gutters below.
The castle’s gates were still firmly bolted when they arrived in the cobbled square in front of the ancient stronghold. Twin towers, as round as a drum, stood on either side of the peaked arch of the gate. Above the iron-bound oak, the wall linking the towers stretched upwards high, as sheer as any cliff. Rising like steps on either side, the stonework rose to a pinnacle above the wall-walk which circled the castle’s battlements. The highest point was the plinth where the eagle had once stood.
How was he supposed to get up there? One slip and he would plummet to his death. Nedi turned to Thulle. “I can’t –”
He gasped as Thulle’s knife prodded his belly. The old man had set his burden down and drawn the long, square-ended blade that every goat man carried to hack a path through brush or to cut fodder.
“You will,” Thulle assured him.
“Or you’ll gut me?” Nedi cried, incredulous. “Who will carry the eagle up then?”
“I’ll say a cavalryman killed you.” Mad cunning lit the old man’s eyes. “While the townsfolk raise a hue and cry, I’ll slip inside and go up the stairs.”
He was, Nedi realised, quite crazy enough to imagine he could succeed.
“So climb,” Thulle snarled, “before your fool of a father arrives or your uncles.”
Could he yell for help, Nedi wondered, if the castle gates opened? Not before the old lunatic killed him.
Trembling, he studied the angle between the curve of the closest tower and the wall spanning the gateway. The stonework had been coarse when it was first built and long years of rain and frost had crumbled the mortar away. Moss outlined useful ledges and tufts of yellow grass were seeded here and there. Nedi and his friends had climbed just such weathered stretches of the town wall when they’d been supposedly herding milch goats in the pastures.
“Take it up!” Thulle jabbed his arm with the blade.
Nedi felt a sting like a wasp. Had the lunatic drawn blood? “All right! All right!”
He grabbed the loop of rope and slung it over his shoulder. The eagle wasn’t as heavy as he had feared but it was still a substantial burden. He worked his other arm through the second loop to pull the lump of sacking tight between his shoulder blades.
“Let me look for the best route,” Nedi snapped as Thulle advanced his menacing blade again.
He contemplated the round towers. They were only two storeys tall, albeit high-ceilinged within. If he could get as far as the top, he could climb up the stepped side of the stonework rising behind the wall-walk easily enough. It wasn’t so far. Not as far as he had climbed before in the hills, at least a few times.
Nedi reached for a handhold on the gatehouse wall and found another on the side of the tower. As he pulled himself up, he wedged his toes into convenient cracks. He was grateful for his sturdy boots, though he knew his mother would scold him for scarring the leather.
More handholds presented themselves. Nedi climbed as quickly as he dared to get beyond Thulle’s reach, pressing himself close to the masonry.
“You have two hands and two feet. Keep three of the four firmly planted all the time.” He recalled his father’s words when he’d first been sent up a crag to chivvy a young goat who saw no need to be penned for the night.
Moving more slowly as he climbed higher, the cold stones numbed Nedi’s hands. Perversely though, his fingertips felt scoured raw. He should have put on his gloves.
As he stopped for a moment, his foot slipped on sodden moss. The eagle on his back swung sideways, nearly dragging him to his doom. The ropes cut deep into his shoulders, agonizing. Heart pounding, Nedi scrabbled desperately at the masonry. Finally his boot caught on some foothold.
Breathlessly, he tested its strength. Would it bear his weight? He clung to the stones with one hand and forced his other toe deeper into its own crevice. Snatching for the next handhold, he pulled himself upwards.
Someone exclaimed below in the square, only to be cut short by a warning murmur from a handful of people. Nedi could not look down. He wasn’t even sure he could climb back down. He had no choice but to continue with this madness even though his arms and legs were trembling with exertion and fear.
Nedi pressed his face against the cold stone and craned his neck, trying to see upwards without fatally unbalancing himself. He was heartened to see he was closer than he had imagined to the dubious safety of the tower’s crenellations.
He could hear baffled voices within the tower. Narrow windows overlooked the approach to the gate and along the length of the castle wall to either side. Nedi guessed that more windows overlooked the courtyard within the gate. The garrison had woken up. What would happen when someone roused the castellan?
Was there someone already up on the tower roof keeping watch? Nedi couldn’t see. Would he get to the top only for grasping hands to drag him onto the leaded roof, demanding to know what he was doing?
Then they would seize the eagle and he would have risked his life for nothing. Thulle would never forgive him. Whatever Sincai and the others might say, the old madman would cut his throat one dark night, Nedi was sure of it. Or the castellan’s men would throw him off the tower to fall to his death, smashed and broken on the cobbles below.
He began climbing faster regardless. He must climb up onto the gatehouse pinnacle as soon as he possibly could. His only hope of safety was getting higher than bigger and heavier men dared to climb.
There was no one on top of the tower. Nedi hauled himself up and toppled forward between the upthrust masonry to land painfully hard on his numbed yet aching hands. The eagle’s weight bore down mercilessly between his shoulder blades.
He scrambled across the tower roof. The stepped facade of the wall spanning the gateway seemed impossibly narrow. How could he hope to do this?
How could he turn back? Hearing shouts in the castle’s courtyard, Nedi looked down to see men pointing upwards. He unslung the eagle from his back and looped his arms through the ropes again so that the ungainly bulk was held against his chest. He began climbing up the stepped stones rising behind the wall-walk on his hands and knees, even though the wall itself was barely wide enough.
He kept his gaze fixed on the next step and then the step after that. If he slipped, he would try to fall sideways towards the gatehouse’s outer face. He might just land on the wall-walk. Capture and a broken arm or leg would be a fair trade for his life.
Nedi reached the top, breathless and sweating despite the cold air. Agonisingly careful, he sat astride the last stone below the plinth and gripped the wall with his knees and ankles. The sacking-wrapped bundle sat safe within the circle of his arms as he clung onto the plinth for added reassurance.
Now he dared to look down. Outside the castle, he s
aw a crowd with their pale faces turned upwards and hands pointing just like the garrison men. They had all come to see the eagle returned. So Nedi had better oblige them.
He began picking at the ropes with his sore, cold fingers. His breath came faster, harsher, as he broke his nails on the knots pulled tight by the eagle’s weight. Finally the hemp yielded and Nedi could unwrap the coarse sacking to reveal the eagle’s head.
Close to, it was crudely made. Rough edges on the cast metal hadn’t been filed smooth. The incised lines marking its feathers were uneven and incomplete. Its head and beak looked more like a crow than an eagle and Nedi had never seen any real bird spread its wings in such ridiculously rounded fashion. Its legs were slightly different lengths with clawed feet seemingly melting into the square pedestal.
The crowd below began cheering nevertheless, as the strengthening sunlight struck golden fire from the brass. So now Nedi had to secure the thing in its plinth. He could see the four holes where the brass pedestal’s stubby feet would hold it secure. He held on tight with his knees and feet as he lifted the eagle up.
His arms burned, already so tired from climbing. Nedi was seized with terror. He wasn’t going to be able to do this. At the last moment, with his last despairing effort, he lifted it a little higher and further. As his strength failed, the pedestal’s brass feet slid into their sockets.
A triumphant cry rose up from the crowd below the gate. Newcomers were swelling the tumult. Now pots and pans clashed loudly together, punctuating a rhythmic chant.
Rough music. Nedi had heard it a few times. When a man persisted in beating his wife. When a mother let her children go hungry and barefoot. When some adulterous couple dishonoured their vows and their spouses. When remonstration had failed. When help was rejected or abused. Then the clamour would start. It would last night after night until exhaustion wore away defiance and the guilty sneaked away with nothing but the clothes on their back.
Did the River Kingdom men understand? Did they realise that the Hatalys folk were telling them to leave? That they would brook no refusal? Nedi looked down into the castle’s courtyard and shuddered so violently that he almost lost his balance. He clung to the stone, pressing his cheek against the eagle’s plinth.
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