by Anna Thayer
The three who were there from the beginning:
Esther, a faithful bookkeeper; Jonathan, a tireless consigliere; and
Thea, a first-rate “guinea pig”.
For your friendship, enthusiasm, and words of courage, my thanks!
Text copyright © 2014 Anna Thayer
This edition copyright © 2014 Lion Hudson
The right of Anna Thayer to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Published by Lion Fiction
an imprint of
Lion Hudson plc
Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Road
Oxford OX2 8DR, England
www.lionhudson.com/fiction
ISBN 978 1 78264 075 2
e-ISBN 978 1 78264 076 9
This edition 2014
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Cover illustration by Jacey: www.jacey.com
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Copyright Page
Map of the River Realm and its World
Map of the River Realm Towns and Provinces
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Sir Philip Sidney once wrote, “Look in your heart, and write.” There are many without whom I never would have done so. First and foremost, I heartily thank my family: my mother, Costanza, who never tired in feeding me with books (even when they weighed a tonne in holiday suitcases); my father, Andy, who insisted on reading to his children every night and who piqued my curiosity with references to obscure facts and ancient stories; my sister, Giulia, whose fascination with a badge-making kit one rainy afternoon first drove me to take up the pen for myself, and who was the hearer of my earliest tales; my brother, Nicolas, and my great aunt, Giulia – whose obstinate affection and encouraging lunches upheld me during the writing of a tale that soon grew more complex than I had envisioned – and my grandfather, Leopoldo, whose gracious gift to me was the space and time I needed to write it.
Many friends and colleagues were the first purveyors of Eamon’s misadventures; in weekly instalments Esther, Jonathan, and Thea acted as my first soundboards, continuity checkers, and “guinea pigs”; they helped me to flesh out and refine the world that grew up around Eamon as he journeyed into the dark heart of Dunthruik. There were many others who read and commented on early drafts; of these “beta testers”, Matthew Davison and Tony Prior deserve special mention – the first for unbridled enthusiasm, and the latter for his exquisite, fine-toothed comb!
My thanks also go to my many students, all of whom, upon learning that I was writing a book, unabashedly and delightedly encouraged me to persevere with it.
I am indebted to all at Lion Hudson, for working so tirelessly and dedicatedly with me to see my novel come to fruition – and for giving me the chance to do so!
Lastly, I thank my amazing and loving husband, Justin, whose heart for story and eucatastrophe beats in time with mine.
Leith: Two ways you see, each from the other parts.
The one with broken stones is packed, and briars
That rend and grots that swift devour a man;
The other upward leads. Though toilsome steps
They be at first its region is the sun.
This is no choice! These cannot mingled go.
Perhaps before this day you might plead blind
But the dread wheel has turned, and choose you must.
Tobias: O cursed all-cleaving soul!
If I but knew I would not tarry more.
The Standard Won,
The River Poet
PROLOGUE
Darkness smothered the valleys and lurked in the curves of the River, shrouding the light of every star.
The slopes around Edesfield were marked with trees that surrendered their leaves to the wind in weeping moans. Beyond them, what had once been a mighty tower lay impotent in ruins. The trees spread blackly up towards it.
Groups of torches moved through the tower copses, combing fiercely back and forth across the muddy woodland. But the lights did not mark every man in the valley that night.
One felt the wind pulling at his face as he moved through the treeline. Branches clawed his face; roots and weeds clutched at his ankles like snakes. The glint of torches was behind him, casting an eerie glow across the trunks of the trees: pillars of harsh, reddened stone.
His hand slipped on the grizzled bark; he drew his fingers up to his face and tasted blood.
He spat it out. “Light!” he called softly.
A torchbearer came across the dell towards him, struggling not to sink in the mud. A second man came with him, with dark, tousled hair and eyes that glinted keenly under the torchlight. Both wore the Gauntlet’s red uniform and had cloaks thrown over them to ward off the September chill.
The second man gave him a small smile. “I bring you light, Mr Goodman.”
“Thank you, Mr Kentigern, sir.”
“Report.”
Cadet Goodman held forward his bloodied hand. The dark-haired lieutenant gestured and at his command the light was directed towards the tree. Goodman winced as the heat of the torch passed his face.
The light showed what he had known it would; blood on the bark, smeared in part by his hand and in part by the flight of the hunted man who had left it there.
The lieutenant turned to the torchbearer. “Fan along this treeline. Concentrate on the north ridge.”
The torchbearer swept off; the dell receded into tombed blackness.
The cadet turned to his lieutenant. “He’s making for the River?”
A flash of moonlight illuminated the lieutenant’s face for a moment, showing a smile. “That he is. Our fleeing friend will be distraught when he finds that we know it!”
Together they moved to the eaves of the treeline. Goodman heard shouts farther up the hillside and saw the flicker of torches fanning out across the stretches of woods. In the heart of the valley below, torchlight sharply figured a rider in black: Lord Penrith. Even with the distance between them, the sight of the Hand chilled Goodman to his marrow. A man in Gauntlet uniform rode beside the Hand; lord and captain surveyed fields and woodland with grim faces.
Goodman swallowed in a constricted throat and glanced at the lieutenant. “What kind of man are we hunting, Ladomer?”
“Concentrate on the matter in hand, Eamon,” the lieutenant answered. “You can ask Lord Penrith in person tomorrow, if the mood takes you.”
Goodman did not know whether to shiver or laugh. “Do you think me mad?”
<
br /> “I have known you for far too long, Eamon Goodman, to think otherwise.” Suddenly the lieutenant gestured to the trees where another Gauntlet man stood. “Move into the line here with Spencing.” His voice had taken on a tone of crisp command. “Barns and Ilwaine will be to your right and left. I want this bastard found, Mr Goodman; so do Captain Belaal and Lord Penrith.”
“Yes, sir.” Goodman did not hesitate a moment before going into the trees.
Ensign Spencing looked him over with distaste.
“You’re with me?”
“Lieutenant’s orders, Mr Spencing,” Goodman returned sharply.
“Just don’t make an idiot of yourself, Goodman,” Spencing growled.
Goodman didn’t answer him; they were already moving. Briars snatched at him as they passed into the line of men trying to force their quarry to surface. There were torches to his left and right, but light was poor; his best sense of direction came from the sounds of Spencing’s movement.
Suddenly he heard a heavy thud somewhere to his left. He stopped; Spencing glowered back at him.
“The line is moving, Goodman!”
“I heard something.” Goodman pinned all his sense on the dark.
“You heard nothing,” Spencing spat. “We have orders to search the ridge. The done thing with orders, Mr Goodman, is to carry them out!”
The noise again. What good would it be to follow orders and lose the fugitive?
Impulse shot through his limbs.
“Goodman –!”
He didn’t hear the rest but plunged into the thorny thickness of the trees, pushing on through ankle-deep mud and stinging branches. He knew what he had heard.
He came suddenly through the trees into a clearing and stopped. The torchlight was distant.
He heard someone drawing breath.
The wind swept through the trees and a stroke of moonlight illuminated the mud. It showed deep footprints and the shape of a man caved in the roots of a tree. The man clutched at his arm; blood flowed about his fingertips, weaving dark threads in torn clothes.
For a moment Goodman simply stared. Was this bloody wretch the man they had been hunting for so many hours?
It did not matter. He surged towards the fugitive, hand flying to his dagger. As the cadet crossed the clearing the fugitive seemed to see him for the first time; his face went white.
“No –”
Goodman seized the man’s throat and hauled him bodily to his feet.
Goodman smiled. “The hunt is up,” he said. But it wasn’t.
Someone rushed at him from behind; the unexpected force of the impact shocked through him. A sudden arm latched about his throat.
With a cry he struck at it with his dagger. He drew blood. But before he could follow up the blow, his arm was seized and wrenched harshly backwards.
The fugitive fell from his grip. Goodman spun back and to one side, trying to free himself. He was too slow; both his arms were caught and driven up behind him, wresting his dagger from his hand. He saw the glint of his blade, a shrinking shard of the moon as it disappeared into the trees.
A blow forced him to his knees and he was thrown to the ground; mud plastered his ears and mouth.
He heard men speaking softly to the wounded man. He knew there was torchlight nearby and would have struggled wildly to make a noise – but it was as much as he could do to breathe. Some of his captors disappeared into the woods; they were moving south.
South!
The hiss of a blade being unsheathed. He stiffened. His heart lay in his throat.
Strong hands seized his. He lay still, fearing the worst; but the new hands violently bound his own together.
“Lucky little Glove!” laughed a snide voice. Its keeper delivered him a belittling pat on the shoulder before shoving his face down.
Goodman heard the last of the men vanish as he writhed and gasped in the mud. He did not think about how nearly he had lost his life, nor did he wonder how it had been spared; all he could think was how easily the men would slip through the Gauntlet’s northward-roaming line.
Driving his hands into the mud he slipped and slid them together, trying to escape the ropes. He lost both gloves in the process but eventually drew them free. Shivering with cold and rage he tore his hands across his face, peeling mud from his eyes.
The fugitives were gone.
Staggering to his feet, not stopping to recover gloves or dagger, or to wonder where Spencing was or whether he should return to him, he turned and hurtled through the trees.
His feet brought him swiftly back to the fields. The lines still combed the hillside, moving north towards the River. With a cry of immense frustration, he ran on.
His lieutenant, Ladomer Kentigern, stood with Captain Belaal and Lord Penrith. He could not imagine how he looked to them, a mud-spattered cadet racing madly across the field, but he knew only too well how they would look on him when he delivered his news.
He tripped to a slipping halt before them, only just remembering to bow before Lord Penrith, the Master’s chosen Hand over the town and province of Edesfield.
“His glory,” Goodman panted. At least while he bowed he did not have to meet their eyes.
“Mr Goodman.” Captain Belaal’s voice was icy as the biting wind.
“The fugitive, sir,” he spluttered, gesturing wildly behind him. “He’s aided, he’s gone south.”
“South?” Belaal repeated harshly, incredulous. The faces of both Hand and lieutenant echoed it.
“I swear it, sir!”
“Leave your swearing until tomorrow, Goodman,” the captain retorted. “That’s if any of you will merit the swearing.” Sensing his displeasure, his horse fretted unevenly. The captain drew his reins tightly into his hand. “By your leave, Lord Penrith, I will redirect search parties immediately.”
The Hand nodded silently. With an angry grunt Belaal wheeled his horse to the side and spurred it towards the northward-roving torches.
Goodman’s chest was still heaving as the Hand’s gaze settled darkly on him.
“You let him escape.”
Goodman blinked hard. “My lord, I was taken by surprise and –”
“Taken by surprise?” the Hand replied contemptuously. “How could that be so, when you were searching in pairs? Unless you disobeyed an order.”
Goodman stopped. He had – and with good reason. But he could hardly say that to the Hand.
“Did you disobey an order?” The Hand’s tone had grown as pitch as the night about him.
“My lord –”
Ladomer flashed him a warning look.
Goodman quailed. He swallowed hard. “Yes, my lord.”
There was an agonizing silence.
“Name, cadet,” Penrith commanded.
“Eamon Goodman, my lord.” He did not meet the Hand’s gaze; he did not dare.
The Hand raised a mocking eyebrow. “The bookbinder’s boy?”
Goodman felt Ladomer Kentigern’s gaze on him, commanding him not to speak out of turn; he obeyed it. “Yes, my lord.”
“So, after three years of cadet training, you are woefully vulnerable to surprise and are incapable of obeying orders? You are a disgrace to your dead father, to yourself, and to your captain, Cadet Goodman,” the Hand spat. “You’ll be lucky to swear tomorrow.”
“Yes, my lord,” the cadet answered. It took all his will to keep insolence from his voice. They could not take his swearing from him! He had worked so hard…
“Where’s your dagger?”
Goodman looked up. The Hand’s gaze pierced him; he knew how condemning his reply would be.
“I don’t know, my lord,” he said at last.
“I can see that Gauntlet work is best left to the Gauntlet,” he hissed. His ire was crushing. “You’re of no further use here, cadet. You will not present yourself at college until you’ve found your dagger.”
Goodman gaped. Quivering in every limb, he bowed low. “Yes, my lord.”
The Hand turned to fo
llow Captain Belaal. Goodman remained bowed until the sound and feel of hoof-beats receded. He was reeling as he straightened; breath fled from him in ragged bursts.
A firm, kind touch alighted on his shoulder. “Are you hurt, Eamon?” Ladomer asked.
Eamon turned his stinging eyes out over the fields and hills. “No,” he answered as the lights passed by.
CHAPTER I
It was a September morning in the 532nd year of the Master’s throne. In distant fields the sun was rising, stirring all the world to gold, the sky so clear and crisp that an upward glance might yet catch sight of hidden stars.
But Eamon had eyes for none of it; all his look and thought was bent fastidiously on the filthy dagger in his hands. With a grim sigh he tried to scrape more mud from the details of the small hilt; he had not yet dared to assess the state of his boots or uniform. As he scrubbed furiously at the weapon, fatigue sapped his limbs.
For over five hundred years the River Realm had lain in the charge of the Master and, from Dunthruik – the city that had always guarded the river-mouth – the Master’s power had kept the land strong against its enemies. To the north, south, and, across the sea, the west lived merchant-lords with whom a grudging peace was sometimes granted by trade; to the east in the land of the Seven Sons roamed strange lordlings who were little more than inbred, misfit chieftains. The Master had held against them and their like and, since the River Realm had been bathed in the glory that emanated from the Master’s throne, none had dared to come across the mountains from Istanaria.
The strength and endurance of that power was seen in the Master’s Hands and in the Gauntlet, the ancient and noble legion of soldiers that kept his law. To bear their uniform was to be marked as the Master’s own, and to serve him was the greatest honour that the River Realm could afford. Though there were regional militia forces across the land it was to the Gauntlet that men aspired: this was the Master’s eyes and ears, his blade and blood. To run them was a dangerous business indeed.
There were few young men who did not dream of setting their hands in the Master’s Gauntlet. Training was long, arduous, and fierce; it was not uncommon for cadets to be killed in their extensive preparation, but the families of such men were well honoured. Men who glorified the Master in the Gauntlet guaranteed honour for themselves and for their heirs; the exceptional were promoted and made draybants and captains, and some were taken from the Gauntlet’s ranks to join the Hands.