Red Rowan: Book 2: All Gone, the Gods

by Helen Gosney

  “And fair enough too,” said Rowan quietly, sipping at the last of his tea. He’d just realised what had seemed so strange about Gnash: no dogs. He thought it best to keep his thoughts to himself.

  They sat in amicable silence for a few minutes before Cris spoke again.

  “And what of you, Rose? Did you never marry?” he asked idly.

  She looked across at him, her bright face suddenly sad. She touched the gold band on her thumb for a moment

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked... It’s none of my business really,” he said hastily, wishing he hadn’t spoken.

  “It’s all right, it’s a long time ago now... nearly ten years,” she said, sounding a little surprised that so much time had passed. “Glyn lived just a few houses away from us in Borl Quist; we grew up together, we three. He was a couple of months older than us, but we were inseparable, the boys and I, and I think we always knew that Glyn and I would marry one day...”

  “I did,” Rowan said gently, “but I think it took Glyn a little longer to catch on to the idea.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” said Rose with a rueful smile at some old memory, “But he did eventually. We were wed when I was just eighteen. He was so tall and strong and handsome... we were so happy together...” she stared into the fire for a moment, remembering him.

  “He was a timber cutter, like nearly everyone else in Borl Quist,” she glanced at Rowan, who shook his head slowly and bit his lip but said nothing. She continued sadly, “One day they brought him back to me from the forest... a tree had fallen the wrong way, they said, an impossible way, and Glyn had rushed across to push aside the two lads who were there so they wouldn’t be crushed... he was very strong and he lived for two days more, but there was nothing anyone could do... it was the will of the Gods, they said...” she shook her head slowly, “We’d been married for three years.’

  “Rose, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to...”

  “No, truly, Cris... it’s all right; it still makes me sad to think of it, but... I like to remember him as he was, as we used to be... this is Glyn’s ring,” she said, rubbing it with her other thumb, “It’s our custom for a widow to take her husband’s wedding band, and he’s buried wearing hers…”

  They were silent again for a time; the only sound the soft lapping of the sea in the darkness.

  “We had no children,” Rose continued softly, “Somehow it just didn’t happen... and the teacher in the little village school needed help; she was very old, she used to teach us, and we’d thought she was ancient then,” she smiled at her younger self, “Anyway, I became a teacher. When Rowan came home again, after Messton, he… well, he was very ill for a time, but we talked about what had happened when we could... about what had happened to Glyn, and to him... he was so determined to go to Plausant Bron, nothing could change his mind. He’s always been very stubborn, and I just couldn’t let him go alone... and... And here I am...” she finished quietly.

  **********

  They sat talking for a while longer, but it had been a long day and sleep was a tempting prospect. Cris was a little worried that he mightn’t sleep well with only the stars above him for a roof, and the quietness all around him for walls, but his fears proved to be groundless; he slept as soundly as the proverbial log, as he always did.

  The next morning he awoke to see a set of sand-covered dark legs ending in big hooves not far from his nose. The twins laughed at him as he scrambled hastily to his feet.

  “Don’t worry, she won’t step on you... I think she would have by now if she’d been going to,” Rowan said with a grin, “But I’m most impressed by the sprightly way you leapt up, I thought we might have to somehow lever you up ourselves.”

  “It’s all that good liniment, I suppose,” said Rose wickedly.

  “Er... yes... it must be,” Cris said, rather surprised himself, “But I have to tell you, fear of being trodden on by a horse is a wonderful spur... now I’m actually upright and I’ve got time to think about it, I am finding a few muscles I didn’t know existed.”

  Rowan exploded in laughter.

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t laugh at you, I know,” he said, controlling himself with an effort, “Saddles really are damned hard until you get used to them, and horses are a very odd shape to sit on, too... and we rode a lot further yesterday than you’ve been used to. A bit more liniment and a lot more stretching will see you right... and after we’ve had breakfast, you and I have got four very sandy and salty horses to brush.”

  Cris groaned, but he managed to unkink himself with a careful session of Rowan’s stretching exercises as Rowan himself flowed through an intricate routine with all the grace and flair of a dancer; even his training drills with the sabre had an elegance to them that Cris had never seen in the Guardsmen of Gnash. Meanwhile, Rose was perfectly happy to leave the two men to their exertions and busy herself with the breakfast chores. Though she was fit and active, she’d never been the natural athlete that Rowan was.

  Cris found himself fascinated by the intricate dance of man and sword and he sat beside Rose to watch as he got his breath back. The blade seemed almost an extension of Rowan’s body, a beautiful, lethal length of curved blued steel, chased in silver and gold.

  “Rose…is that Rowan’s Champions’ sword? Tadeus told me a bit about it…”

  She nodded slowly.

  “Yes, it is. After Messton, he wanted to give it back to the dwarves, but… they said he was the only one who could wield it properly, it was made for him and no other. And they said if he was truly daft enough to try and find Plausant Bron he’d still need a sword of some sort whether he really wanted one or not, and there were simply none better than the one he held. He thought about it long and hard and realised that they were right, so he carries it still. He just doesn’t tell folk of it.”

  She watched Rowan for a moment or two.

  He hadn’t even practised with the sabre in the towns they’d passed through: he hadn’t wanted to attract undue attention and he certainly didn’t want some fool to challenge him, as they inevitably seemed to when they saw his expertise. She’d thought that nobody with any sense at all would do more than perhaps ask to spar with him, but it seemed that some swordsmen had more arrogance than sense and they took a better swordsman as a personal challenge. Rose doubted they’d be so brave if they realised this unknown and very talented swordsman was in fact the dual Champion, but Rowan wasn’t about to blow his own trumpet about it.

  Rhys, Griff, Finn, Hibbon, Telli and Johan had all warned Rowan of the dangers of unwanted challengers when he first won the Champions’ Trophy at barely eighteen… and of course they’d been right. A few times Rowan simply hadn’t been able to avoid the challenge, but he’d soon shown that his win at the Trophy hadn’t been a mere lucky fluke and as word of his true ability quickly spread, the challenges dried up.

  As the dual Champion, he’d never been challenged and in fact had had difficulty even getting partners to spar with him until he managed to convince them he was only playing games. But now, with his skills and reflexes honed by his experiences at Messton, he truly didn’t want some idiot with a sword trying to take him on.

  Rose sighed and turned back to Cris, who was still watching Rowan in amazement.

  “The tattoo on his chest, the one with the crossed sabres, is for the Championship too… every other winner has one sabre tattooed over his heart, but Rowan already had his clan tattoo there, so his is on the right side and he has two sabres because he’s won it twice,” she said softly.

  Cris nodded, hoping he hadn’t said the wrong thing. Rose didn’t seem upset, but he thought it might be better to say nothing of it to Rowan. He watched him dancing light-footed and graceful across the sand with the beautiful sabre, totally engrossed with the thrust and flow of the blade.

  “I don’t think our Guardsmen in Gnash could do anything like that,” he said to Rose hesitantly. He was sure of it; most of them were a swaggering, arrogant bunch of bullies and he couldn�
��t imagine any of them wielding a sabre like this; nor could he imagine them facing up to the things that Rowan and his men had had to do.

  “No, probably not…” she replied. “There aren’t many who can, not like that. Rowan would wipe the floor with most swordsmen, as our Gran would say. He’s the only man to have ever won the Championship twice, though he won’t tell you that himself, and he’s a Weapons Master as well as Horse Master. Horse Whisperer, as we say in Sian. It’s very rare to have both abilities. That’s what the tattoos on his arm and his shoulders signify. He hates the thought of ever having to use the sabre against anyone again, after Messton. He’d do almost anything to avoid it, I think, but he says he keeps up the practice because he promised Pa and Gran that he’d keep me safe, and he doesn’t want to have to tell them – especially Gran, I think – that he’d let them down.”

  “But he swears by his other exercises and does them always, though usually I just swear at them. I get enough exercise riding Soot all day… oh, sometimes he drives me mad, you know,” Rose confided to Cris as Rowan resheathed the sabre in a plain scabbard and began to amuse himself with a tumbling run of backflips and somersaults as he cooled down, as he always did. She sometimes thought he did it just to annoy her. “He makes it all look so easy, and we both know it’s not.”

  “No, it certainly isn’t...” Cris replied, looking at Rowan’s bare muscular back and strong tattooed shoulders. As Rowan moved around Cris could see that he had an interesting collection of tattoos and scars. Over his heart was tattooed a tree completely unlike anything the little ratcatcher had ever seen before; it seemed to be a eucalypt but somehow the image conveyed a strength, power and sheer grandeur that most eucalypts simply didn’t have. This was Rowan’s clan tattoo, made when he’d turned twelve and become a man in the eyes of the clan, permitted to wear his hair in a braid and entitled to bear the clan symbol of the Forest Giant.

  Around the side of his body at about the level of his lower ribs was curled a small, beautifully detailed dog: a mastiff, complete with its spiked collar… the sleeping dog of Den Sorl.

  On the right side of his chest was an image of two sabres, crossed, surrounded by a garland of oak leaves. They were unmistakably g’Hakken blades; this must be the one that Rose had said was to do with the Champions’ Trophies he’d won.

  On Rowan’s right shoulderblade was a strange, oddly beautiful rune, again quite unlike anything Cris had ever seen – the g’Hakken clan mark.

  The horses that galloped from the centre of his back and across one shoulder were superbly lifelike, but the image that covered most of his right arm from mid-forearm to the top of his shoulder, an intricate and fascinating arrangement of weapons – swords, axes, spears, arrows, morningstars, maces and other dangerous looking things that Cris had no names for –was marred by an ugly jagged scar that slashed through it and down his arm.

  Despite the obviously serious past injury, the arm didn’t seem to hinder Rowan at all. It must have taken a damned lot of work to make it useful again though, Cris thought.

  The tattoos were beautifully wrought, obviously the work of a master of the craft and truly remarkable, and Cris saw that Rowan had an intriguing collection of scars to go with them. The scar on his right arm was bad enough, but the disturbingly long scar that came from somewhere under his left arm to run across his ribs and around his body was, well, truly alarming. It hadn’t missed the little sleeping dog by much. Cris found he couldn’t even think about what might have caused such wounds without feeling queasy. He’d always thought the Guards in Gnash and indeed everywhere else led a glamorous and rather indulged life.

  **********

  Certainly the Guards in Gnash were an arrogant loud-mouthed lot of swaggering braggarts. Two of them had cantered past Cris and Rowan only a couple of days ago when the two friends had been on their way to the horse market grounds, leading their horses through fairly crowded streets. Rowan had grabbed an unwary toddler from almost beneath the hooves of the troopers’ horses and returned it to its horrified mother with a bow and a smile. Then he’d muttered something unrepeatable to Cris and suggested the Guard could all benefit from a good kicking of their collective backsides if they insisted on riding through crowds of people at that speed. Cris couldn’t help himself; he’d laughed out loud and the Guardsmen had swung their horses around and come back to loom over them menacingly.

  Oh Gods, thought Cris, what the hell do I do now? He didn’t think he’d be able to get away from them no matter how fast he ran. Rowan wasn’t fazed though. He stroked the horses’ noses as they snuffled at his hands.

  “A good morning to you, lads,” he said amiably. “Nice horses you’ve got there, but what a shame they’re not groomed properly and their gear is filthy. Shame you near as dammit ran down a little lassie just now too. Who’s your Captain?”

  The Guards gaped at him, flabbergasted that a civilian – an outlander civilian at that – would dare to speak to them so. And he had the damned cheek to pat their horses too.

  “What the hell…?” one of them managed, his face and ears going very red.

  “Who the hell are you?” the other demanded, fumbling with his sword.

  “Me? I’m nobody you’d know, but I don’t go around bloody nearly running over children in the street and I do know how to take good care of my horses, as you should too. A man’s life can depend on his horse. Oh, and please don’t draw your sword like that; you’ll only cut this poor beast’s ears off if you swing it at that angle. And you’ll come a very nasty fall if that happens, believe me.”

  The Guardsmen sputtered curses at him as they struggled to get their swords free of their scabbards. Their horses shifted uneasily beneath them, making the task more difficult.

  “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you, lads,” Rowan said, his voice still polite and his face sincere apart from the laughter in his eyes, “But, well, the truth is as ‘tis. I’m not sure who’s the bigger disgrace, you for near as dammit riding folk down and not bothering to stop, or your Captain for letting you out of the barracks like this.”

  One of the Guards, a Sergeant, finally managed to draw his sabre and he levelled it at Rowan menacingly. Cris stepped back, appalled, and thought very hard again about running away… no, he probably still couldn’t escape them, he decided reluctantly. But Rowan seemed quite undisturbed and perfectly prepared to set these two Guardsmen straight in matters of etiquette.

  “’Tisn’t polite to be drawing a sabre on folk who’ve not done you any harm… especially when you can see they’ve not got a sabre themselves. ‘Tis simply not done in the best of circles…” he said softly as he moved in front of Cris, “But now that you have, I suppose you’ll feel that you have to use it…”

  “I’ll use it all right, you… you outlander bastard!” the Guard Sergeant snarled, lunging at Rowan’s chest.

  His sword fell to the ground with a dull clang.

  The Guard stared at Rowan in amazement, trying to work out what the hell had just happened. He saw a beautiful, gleaming dagger in the other’s left hand. No. He couldn’t have been disarmed by somebody with a… a dagger.

  Rowan smiled at the man’s confusion.

  “’Tis not only impolite, in fact downright bloody rude, to draw a sabre on innocent folk, but ‘tis also not a very good idea unless you have some idea of what they might be able to do,” he said, “We’re not all useless with a blade and we’re not all afraid of facing them either.”

  “Who the hell are you?” the Sergeant demanded again.

  Rowan shrugged.

  “I’m the man who’s just disarmed you, and I’d advise your friend there very strongly not to try his chances either unless he’s a hell of a lot better at it than you.”

  The second Guard glared at this very surprising outlander. He looked perfectly calm and completely unconcerned by the prospect of facing another sabre, armed only with a dagger. How the hell had he disarmed Sergeant Myron with a cursed dagger? The damned man hadn’t seemed to move muc
h at all, only enough to shield his friend, but there was something subtly different about his stance and there was suddenly something infinitely dangerous about him. The Guard moved his hands away from his sabre.

  “Much better,” Rowan smiled at him, “At least one of you is starting to show a few manners.”

  Rowan’s two stallions had aligned themselves beside him and the Guards’ horses were going backwards. They at least had the sense to know when to simply leave. Rowan soothed them with a gentle hand on their heads. With a movement that was too quick for Cris to follow, he cut the horses’ reins, slipped the bridles from their heads and threw them at the speechless Guards. Then he slapped both horses hard on the shoulder. The horses shied and bolted gladly, their hapless riders unable to do anything but hang onto saddles and manes, mere baggage as their mounts galloped back to their stables.

  Cris gaped at Rowan. So did the small crowd that had gathered. They couldn’t believe that this stranger had been so devastatingly insulting while sounding perfectly polite and they couldn’t believe he’d stood up to and disarmed the Guard Sergeant so easily.

  “Sorry, Cris. I couldn’t help myself. ‘Tisn’t right to nearly kill someone like that; besides, I can’t stand pompous arrogant bullies at the best of times, they just bring out the worst in me. And I truly don’t appreciate louts drawing sabres on me like that either. They were damned lucky that’s all I did to them.” Rowan looked at the fast disappearing horses with a discerning eye. “How far do you think they’ll get before they fall off? That corner down there, or another block or so? Oh, dear… he didn’t last long, did he?”

  “Rowan… they were Guards…” Cris couldn’t believe it. He could see the bridles and the sabre laying on the ground, and the hapless Guard picking himself up down the road, but…