by Daniel Ford
The choiron descended his dais and bid Allystaire to join him in the center of the platform. “Braech Wave-father extends to you His hand. He would see your boldness in His service.” Symod smiled widely, all those around them forgotten, the absurdity of the tiny courtyard and its toy walls seeming to melt away. Allystaire felt a thrum of power in the air, something he could taste, like salt, only he tasted with his whole body.
The choiron drew closer, laying a hand on Allystaire’s shoulder; his voice dropped, but it still resonated with power. “You have left all that you knew, and all that you were, and all that you had. And yet before you now lies the chance to be so much more. You need but kneel and swear your service. The Sea Dragon listens. There have long been bold warriors in His service, and power is granted to those who are truly willing to live their lives in His name.”
Allystaire stared cautiously at Symod for a moment, then at the retreating back of Yolande. He cleared his throat and fixed his blue eyes on the choiron’s sea-green. “Then I hope he hears me when I say that I will have no part of any god who sides always with the strong and favors only the victor.” He shrugged Symod’s hand off his shoulder, but he felt the buzzing current of power move to a higher pitch, a more threatening one, its edge thinning to a blade. He took half a step forward.
“The favor of Braech is not lightly turned away,” Symod seethed, sliding to stay in front of the armored man.
“Neither am I,” Allystaire replied, his tone answering Symod’s. “Where was your Sea Dragon’s favor for the folk of Thornhurst who were driven from their homes to be sold as slaves? Where is his favor when he is given glory by men who sack towns and burn villages? The bold and the strong need no more favor; they have Fortune’s.” He tilted his head and smiled mockingly. “Mayhap your god is but bearing Her upon his back. A misbegotten pair, and I say to the Cold with the both of them, along with any other god who gives meat to the rich and dirt to the poor, who rewards the strong and damns the weak. Now get out of my way.” Each of his last four words was punctuated by a half step forward that pushed Symod to the very edge of the platform; he had no choice but to move or fall backwards.
The choiron stepped aside carefully. As Allystaire hopped down and began to stalk off, he raged at his back. “You will regret this, you crusading fool! Braech’s favor denied is quick to become Braech’s wrath!”
Allystaire ignored him and bellowed, “Ardent! To me!” The broad, muscled, grey horse stood placidly in the rain; it lifted its head and cantered easily to Allystaire’s side. Behind him, the sun poked through the thunderheads and the rain died into a spitting patter.
He swung into the saddle and with a flick of the reins, crossed the courtyard to the gate, riding through it and out onto the street, leaving Baron Tallenhaft Windspar of Bend, his laughable pretense of a castle, the coldly raging priest of Braech, and the afternoon sun behind him.
On the street, he spotted a huddled figure and rode to her side, extending a hand toward her and saying, as gently as he could manage in his anger, “Come with me.”
CHAPTER 13
The Widow and the Knight
She’d had a bad week of it. Morrys coming home had been a bright spot, for a bit. But in the weeks he’d been out his cough had gotten worse and the strength had gone out of him. It wouldn’t be long before it left him altogether—hadn’t she always told him he’d die on the road or on the water? Maybe this way he’d die at home and that would be something.
Then just two nights ago he’d come in with that hunk of blue gemstone, proud of it like a boy with his first catch, and he’d given it to her and promised there’d be more, that their luck was finally turning and maybe he could buy a boat.
She’d heard all of that before, and watched him drink and dice any number of boats away, but she let it go and smiled and went about mending nets and sails and whatever other scraps people brought her because she didn’t know how to spend a piece of blue rock like she did copper links.
And then he hadn’t come home, but that wasn’t unexpected, really. When Rugard had limped to her door with some watchmen, that was something else. She hadn’t met any of Morrys’s crew before; he’d always said they weren’t for mixed company. This big rough man talked a lot, and fast, but couldn’t stand on his own and seemed too eager to tell her that Morrys was dead, that some angry lord had done for him the way you do a pike that’s flopping around in the air, clubbed him in the head till his brains were done for.
Done fer ‘tweren’t a far road for Morrys’s brains to travel, she’d thought, but hadn’t said. Then she’d gone along with the watch because she learned a long time ago, when Baron Delondeur’s men had razed the little fishing village she’d grown up in on the other side of the Ash, that you did what the men with the swords and the horses and the bows did, or they killed you. And Yolande was a survivor.
She’d survive this, too. Maybe she couldn’t find another man—too many bright mornings on the water with the sun beating up into her face had seen to her looks—but her hands had a few years with the needle in them yet.
And now another man with a sword was telling her what to do. He’d ridden up on his big horse like some knight out of a story. Except knights in stories, she remembered, wore bright armor and plumed helms and carried flaming swords. They didn’t have broken noses or cold bleak eyes. Knights in stories didn’t wear ugly grey armor or ride broad squat horses that looked as like to bite her as soon as carry her. But she swung up behind him on the saddle and held on, and the horse moved with clean purpose. It was like trying to ride on the stern of a squat, broad-beamed boat.
She thought she could just about smell the knight’s anger, though. It was something clean and pure and cold, like snow melt in a rain barrel.
Yolande thought that just maybe that kind of anger was something like the knights in stories.
She was frightened, but she didn’t think this lord meant to kill her, and soon enough they were near the quays. He swung down out of the saddle and stared up at her, his broken nose flaring in the ugliest way; in the sudden and dazzling sunlight of the afternoon that the nearby Ash flung back at them, she could see dozens of tiny scars around his eyes, cheeks, and the nose that splayed to the left.
“Have you any possessions you need to fetch?” His voice was a deep calm well with something older and stronger than rock underneath of it. She was convinced now that she was right to be afraid of this man.
But maybe not afraid for herself.
“Fetch? Why? Where’m I goin’?”
“Wherever the Cold you want. But you are going today.”
Yolande blinked, startled by the blunt phrase, and shook her head. “I’ve spent two-score years, or near enough, on one side or t’other o’the Ash and I don’t mean t’leave it.”
The man shook his head, his mop of thick dark hair brushing the back of the steel plate shirt he wore. “You do not have to leave the Ash,” he said, forcing himself to speak more quietly. “Yet you must leave Bend. Understand this. Things went poorly for your beloved baron back there, and while an Oath to Braech may keep him away from me, in his anger he will look for others to hurt.” He raised a gauntleted finger and pointed it at her. “You seem a likely target.”
“I ‘aven’t any money and no goods the likes of him’d want,” Yolande protested. The pile of nets sitting on her table in her shanty were on her mind. They weren’t going to mend themselves and there were still many turns of light tonight.
The big, homely man shook his head. “It will not be money he wants. It will be blood. If he cannot have mine, he will have someone’s.” He reached behind his steel plate and pulled out a purse and pressed it into her hands. “This has three gold links, more than a score of silver, and a bit of copper. Take it, buy a place on a ship, go wherever you want, but go now. Today.”
The purse weighed heavy in her hand and heavier in her mind, and she already knew she’d never dr
eamed of having this much wealth. “Why’re ya givin’ this to me, m’lord?”
“I am not even sure I know. Payment for the lapis. Payment for the life you have had to lead. Your husband may have been a slaver, but you were not. No reason for you to die for his choices.”
“Did you really kill Morrys? Why?” She couldn’t avoid sounding plaintive; so much weight in her hand now and no Morrys to see it, to share it.
“He was a reaver, a bandit, and a slaver.” The man’s voice was hard and so was his face; there wasn’t a hint of sorrow anywhere on it. “I am sorry for where it has left you. But I am not sorry that I did it.”
“Y’re a hard man, ya are,” Yolande accused, lifting the purse as if she meant to hurl it in his face, but this purse was more nets that she could ever mend—she knew she’d never hurl it. “A hard man.”
“Someone ought to be when it comes to slavers. If there were a hundred Morryses taking slaves I would kill every one of them if I could, and if it made a hundred widows like you mayhap I would beggar myself giving them all a new life,” the man said, all in a rush. His face remained as hard as the stones under her feet. Then, softer, a little of that stoniness fading, he said, “But I killed one Morrys and made one widow who will die if she does not leave this place. Let me set that right.”
Finally, as she knew she would because somehow here was still a man with a sword telling her what to do, even if it was take a great huge pile of silver, she nodded. But she added, reflexively, “Can’t leave today. Will have to wait till the morrow.”
“Oh you people and your freezing tides,” the man muttered, rolling his eyes skyward and throwing out his hands impatiently. And, she thought, revealing that he knew nothing of rivers or ships.
“Why can a gods-cursed ship not just sail when the men on it have a mind?” He held up a hand to her and cradled his head in the other, shaking it, then said, “Go. Talk to captains. Find a ship, decide where to go, pack what you want and I will see you onto it. The sooner I put my back to this place the better.”
Yolande knew when a man’s patience was near an end. It was a line she’d walked with Morrys for twenty years, though even in his cups he’d never raised a hand to her. She didn’t think this man would, either, but she wasn’t about to test him. She gave a rough curtsy and hurried away.
Her shanty wasn’t far from the quays; it couldn’t be if she wanted to get the mending business. She gathered up her sewing kit, a little store of copper she’d managed to save, a few things she’d knitted, a muffler, and a warmer cloak, and wrapped it all up in the quilt that had been on her bed since she’d wed Morrys a score of years ago. Then she dropped the packet of tea she’d just bought into a pocket in her cloak. No use wasting it. She bustled back to the quays.
Soon, maybe a hair under a full turn, she’d booked passage down river into the bay and beyond into Londray. A city that big on that much water, surely she could get mending work. Maybe better than mending work. It had only cost a handful of silver. Only! A handful of silver was more than she had ever had.
After that she was back to the quays to look for that big homely lord and his broken nose. Yolande was half-certain he’d be gone, ridden off impatiently. She found him standing in the exact same spot, one hand resting on the head of that big black-headed hammer, the other holding the reins of his horse. They were of a piece, those two—huge in the shoulders and bigger than they were tall, homely, mean, and menacing. The crowd gave them a wide berth.
She took a few steps toward him, and suddenly a cloud passed away from the afternoon sun, and its rays reflected off the water and lit him in a kind of golden fire. In that moment she truly thought she was looking at the hero of some minstrel’s story, a legend walking the sad streets of Bend, his armor dazzlingly bright, his right arm a blinding white thunderbolt. His face was still stern, it was still angry, but it was an anger that looked at the world, found it lacking, and was waiting for the moment to set it right. She felt an urge to run away, and just as sudden and strong, an urge to run toward him and ask what he would have her do. She wanted to ask his forgiveness and his protection and his blessing, all at once.
In the end she did none of that. She walked toward him, calmly, carefully. With the first measured step, the blaze disappeared. He was just a man in armor again, standing and waiting while the crowd moved around him. Yolande gave her head a shake; fool notions filled a dazed head too easily. Yes, it had been a long, hard week.
CHAPTER 14
Ordination
By the time the haggard fishwife had approached him again, Allystaire had had quite enough of the quays. The smell was repulsive, hanging in the air like a filthy curtain, and the people were abhorrent. So far as he could tell, the primary trades were not fishing or sailing so much as cheating, robbing, swindling, and whoring. In the time he stood there he had stopped counting whores and started on panders. He got up to a dozen and a bit of itchy bloodlust, his hand closing under the head of the hammer, before he stopped himself. Since when did whoring bother you anyway? He chewed on the inside of his lip as he considered one, a swaggering brute with heavy shoulders, a long knife on his belt digging into his paunch. He saw the way the two thin, frightened women that stood behind him twitched at his every word, forced themselves to laugh at his jibes, and walked in clear fright of him. It was then, with his hand starting to lift the hammer free of its own volition, that he realized the answer to his own question.
It is not the women that bother me, he thought. It is the men forcing them into it. He slid the hammer back into place and shook his head. Get out of this place without shedding more blood.
By then, Yolande had returned, approaching him hesitantly, as if she were still fearful of him.
“Found me a ship. Gonna take it to Londray and see wha’ I can find there. Mebbe go on t’ Keersvast in time,” the woman drawled slowly.
Nodding, he said, “Take me to the ship.”
When they reached the ship of choice, Allystaire realized that he’d anticipated a much smaller vessel; this one was bigger than most of the others in view. The finer points of seamanship eluded him; water was wet and you needed a good wind or a lot of strong backs on oars—that summed up most of what he knew. But the ship didn’t look likely to sink and appeared in good trim and boasted a curious carving of a northern troll on the front. “The bow?” he wondered aloud; Yolande stared at him a moment but said nothing.
She approached the ship and called out something he couldn’t make out to the men on board; one of them strolled down the gangplank in a ridiculous rolling walk. Allystaire grudgingly admitted to himself that bare-chested and barefooted looked a lot more comfortable in the day’s heat than the three stone of steel he wore.
The rolling walker was bald-headed but heavily bearded and browned by the sun. A small whistle or pipe gleamed lightly against his skin, held around his neck by a whip-thong.
“Are you the captain,” Allystaire asked brusquely.
“No m’lord. I’m the bosun.”
Allystaire squinted and thought a moment. “That something like a bannerman or a sergeant? You keep things running while the officers swan about?”
The man laughed, an overdone gesture with a thrown-back head. “Aye, m’lord, you’ve the right of it, y’ do.”
“Good. This woman, I understand, has booked a passage on your vessel at considerable cost. I want you to understand this and understand very well, and realize that I have no malice toward honest men such as yourself,” Allystaire said. He leaned forward then, filling this bosun’s vision with his broken-nosed, scarred face. “When she reaches Londray she will send me a message; if I do not receive that message it had best be because this boat, and all the men on it, are on the bottom of the bay. If they are not, they will be. Do you understand?”
The bosun bristled a bit, and his hands curled into fists. “Not every man on this piece of water is a pirate, m’lord. We say we�
�ll take a passenger somewhere, we do it.” His back straightened, his chin lifted, and he looked evenly at Allystaire as if ready for a fight.
Allystaire considered the man’s posture, his expression, studied him closely with narrowed eyes. Then he nodded and extended a gauntleted hand. Sweet Fortune. This one is like every good bannerman I’ve ever known. The bosun took his hand, and they shook. “Take her aboard straightaway, if you please, bann…bosun. There are men in this city who mean her harm.”
He nodded, with a curt, “M’lord,” and extended a hand to help Yolande up the gangplank, which she slapped away, then strolled halfway up the flexing board with ease. She stopped and turned toward Allystaire.
“Why? Why’re ya doin’ this after y’widowed me?”
“I told you. I am doing it because I widowed you.”
She shrugged and nimbly scooted up the ramp. Allystaire turned and mounted his horse and rode straight for the gates of Bend.
No crowd gathered for long between him and the gates. Ardent’s hooves rang sharply off the irregularly spaced cobbles with a martial cadence. Feels rather more like riding to a battle than from one, Allystaire mused. He didn’t quite let Ardent have his head the way the destrier would’ve liked for fear of crushing anyone who strayed into the street. Even so, some of the slower moving folk that found themselves out in Bend’s afternoon sunlight were scampering for the sides of the road, certain that they would have been trampled had they not cleared the road.