by Tim Stead
It was evening when Tilian Henn returned. The sky was already beginning to darken, and the same bitter wind that had been harassing the men all day was hurrying the bonfires towards extinction.
“What is it?” Skal asked. As soon as he saw Tilian he knew that something required his attention. He could tell by the way the boy stood, leaning forward slightly as though about to speak, his eyes fixed on Skal’s.
“A private matter, my lord,” Tilian said.
Skal excused himself from the officers he was talking to, giving a flurry of orders that would see the day’s training wound up. He walked towards his tent and Tilian fell in behind him.
“Now,” he said when they were out of earshot of the others. “What is it?”
“The man Bruff, the Tanner; he had a wife and a child.”
“And?”
“I believe that you wished to aid them in some way, my lord,” Tilian said. “If so you must move quickly. They are being evicted from their house even as we speak.”
Skal untethered his horse and Tilian climbed up onto his own mount. They rode quickly through the river gate, turned right into the densest part of the low city and pushed their way through busy, narrow streets until they came to a row of low, dilapidated houses with the smell of a tannery strong in the air.
These were simple dwellings, rough cut tree trunks part buried in the ground with the spaces between meshed with lath and plastered with mud. The roofs were crudely beamed and covered with reed bundles cut from the river lands, a hole cut for the smoke to escape. Each house would be little more than a room, sometimes with cloths or blankets hung for privacy. They made them the same way in Bel Arac.
A scene of chaos became a tableau as they approached. Men on horseback bearing swords were a rare sight in these parts, and the poor were cautious when such strange creatures were about. There were a couple of dozen spectators but the main players were clear enough. A thin man dressed in brown, clutching a paper; two heavier men, one with blood on his face and a basket in his hand, a child in the basket; the second man with his arms wrapped around a woman to restrain her. At last Skal assumed it was a woman. She was skinny as a rake, wrapped in rags tied with an end of rope. Her copious black hair had broken free of any restraint and blew about her face like a cloud of darkness.
“What is happening here?” Skal asked.
“Nothing to concern you, sir,” the skinny man said, managing a sort of half bow.
Skal leaned on the pommel of his saddle. “I will judge that for myself,” he said.
The man flapped his hands, a gesture of frustration. Skal guessed his day was not going that well and that their arrival seemed yet another trial, another obstacle to be overcome. “Everything within the law, sir, I assure you; quite within the law.”
Tilian could restrain himself no longer. “You will address the lord of Latter Fetch as ‘My Lord’,” he said. “Or I will teach you to do so.”
Skal gestured to him. Enough.
“Forgive me, my lord,” the skinny man said, and his bow was more pronounced now. If there was one thing that worried the low born more than a man on horseback with a sword, it was a man on horseback with a sword and a title. Skal understood as much. He ignored the apology.
“Tell me what is happening,” he said.
He could see the man give up. He was going to have to explain himself to this lordling whether he wished it or no.
“I am chief clerk of the Westersept Tannery, my lord. This house is a tied house, owned by the tannery, and given as part wage to journeymen workers as the master sees fit. This house was given to a journeyman, this woman’s husband, but he is dead. According to law she may remain in the house for a month after the tenant’s death, and yet we have allowed her two months because he died in the service of the city, and for a month of that we gave her charity, food for her table, but the house is needed for another. So you see, my lord, we are well within the law, indeed, we are not even within sight of illegality.”
Skal directed his attention to the woman. She had stopped struggling. “Is this true?” he asked.
“It is, my lord,” she said. “But I could find no work, and I have a child. We will be on the street.”
Skal was surprised; not by her words, but by her accent. It was northern, the same musical rhythms he had heard as a youth. It was the way his servants had spoken at home.
“You have no family?” he asked.
“Not here, my lord. In Bel Arac I have a sister.”
Bel Arac. How old was she? It was impossible to tell behind her wind roughed hair but she could not be more than twenty-five if she had been married to Saul Bruff. She could have been one of the people he’d looked down on from the castle walls.
“Then why do you not go to Bel Arac?”
“I have not the money, and my sister is poor. We would not be welcomed there.”
“Better than the street.”
“I suppose, my lord.”
She was certainly reluctant to seek the charity of family. A carter’s fare was not so great that she could not have raised it when her husband had died. There would have been some money from his pay, some things in the house that she could have sold.
“What is your name?” he asked.
“Sara Bruff, my lord.”
“How would it be, Sara Bruff, if I paid your way to Bel Arac?”
“Better than the street, my lord,” she replied. It was an impertinent answer, devoid of gratitude, and the man holding her shook her. Skal smiled.
“You do not like your sister, Sara Bruff,” he said.
“It is something that we have shared all our lives, my lord,” she said. “But I will accept your kindness gladly for Saul’s sake.”
“Your husband’s sake?”
“My son’s,” she said, but she had caught the implication of what he had said. “You knew my husband?”
“I knew his name.” The son was named for the husband. It was common enough. Skal was suddenly dissatisfied with everything that was being said and done. One of the two big men still had a grip on Bruff’s widow. “Release the woman,” he said.
“My lord,” the first clerk of the tannery stepped forwards again. “It took us the best part of an hour to get her out of the house, and as you can see we had to break the door in. I will not let her back inside.”
“Will you go back into the house?” he asked her.
“No, my lord.”
“Release her.”
The clerk hesitated, then nodded, and the big man let her go and stepped away as though he expected her to attack him the moment her arms were free, but Sara Bruff did not spare him a glance. She pulled her hair back behind her head, dragging it into a tight bundle behind her neck which she tied deftly with a cord.
For the first time he could see her face. She had the pale, white skin common in the north, the sort that never took any colour from the sun, and her eyes were like blue chips of ice in a field of snow. They were hard and clear. Her nose was straight and narrow, and her mouth a pressed, determined line. She was, what? Pretty? No. Striking was a better word. Now that she was upright and disentangled from the clerk’s man he could see that she had a figure, too, that went in and out in the right places.
“Thank you, my lord,” she said. He felt the questions in her eyes.
“Is there anything in the house that you need?” he asked.
She glanced back at the broken doorway. “No, my lord.”
Skal stared at her for a moment. It was not long, but it was enough for people to notice that nothing was being said, and nothing was happening.
“Can you read and write?” he asked.
“Well enough, my lord,” she replied.
“I will offer you an alternative,” Skal said. “Employment at my estate at Latter Fetch. Neither you nor the boy will want for food or warmth or shelter. I will see that the boy is taught his letters and numbers when he is old enough, and when he comes of age I will see him placed in whatever trade or profe
ssion he chooses.”
There was a brief silence again, and Skal could sense the surprise from all of them, even Tilian.
“May I ask what the price is for this kindness, my lord?” she asked. She was wary, thinking perhaps that he expected something she would be unwilling to give.
Skal met her stare. “It has already been paid, Sara Bruff. I was your husband’s commander at Henfray. It was a victory, but even in the greatest victories there are some who die, and your Saul was one of the unlucky ones. Before he died he fought at my side, and in that brief time an action of his saved my life. This is not kindness. It is payment of a debt. His death robbed me of the chance to reward him, and so I must render a service to you in his stead.”
Her hand went to her mouth at the mention of her husband’s name. Skal could see that there was still pain there. Two months dead and still loved. It was not something he could say of his own father.
“I will accept your offer, my lord,” she said. “I will go to your estates for the sake of my son.”
It was done. He turned to Tilian. “We will leave in five days when the general gets back,” he said. “Quarter her in the Seventh Friend until then, food and board. See that she is comfortable, Tilian.”
He turned his horse away, dug his heels in and let it carry him away, deliberately not looking back. He was not certain what he had just done, what the meaning of it was, or why he had done it. It was the right thing, though. He was sure that it was the right thing. He just worried that he had done it for the wrong reason.
55 A Council of War
If Narak could have been drunk he would have been. One of the drawbacks of godhood was that this voluntary oblivion was denied him. No matter how much wine he drank he felt no more than a light buzz, a slight sense of detachment. He had drunk enough to kill two mortal men, but it had done no good. He was still lucid, still worried, still sober.
He was angry, too; sitting alone in the darkness of the lair, listening to the silence of the stone all around him. He was alone because he had sent everyone away, forbidden them from entering. Even Caster would not presume come to him now.
A faint glimmer of light showed him where the door was, but he had lit no lamp. He sat in the dark with his aspect upon him scenting the life of Wolfguard. He could almost see in the dark, see by scent, but there was nothing there that brought him any comfort.
He could hear noises; faint, dark remnants of sound filtered and thinned by the rock above him, but mostly it was scent that came to him. He could smell the others – Jiddian, Sithmaree, Pascha – they were all in Wolfguard, sticking together to avoid the attentions of whoever or whatever had killed the rest of the Benetheon. That made him angry. He did not like them being here. There had not been four gods here since the days of Remard, Beloff, Pascha and he. Their presence tainted that memory. Yet he was angrier still at the killings. The Benetheon had been created for a reason, and their deaths were unstitching that purpose, laying waste to Pelion’s design.
He could smell the kitchens two levels above, smell the spices that they were using to flavour the lamb, identify the turnips and beans, even the sweat of the cook was definite, positive, identifiable.
He could even smell the Bren. The messenger was still there somewhere, invisible to the eye with all the light in the world to shine upon it, folded somehow into the rock, but his nose could find its scent among all the others; a thin, acid vapour that reminded him of granite and smoke. If he called its name it would appear, listen to whatever he said, and somewhere in an underground chamber a hundred, two hundred, three hundred miles distant the Bren Morain would know the words that he had spoken.
There was another. Another messenger and another who would know: the Bren Alar. Narak was troubled by the Bren Alar. Pelion had never mentioned them, or it. He did not know if there was one of them or many. Many, he thought, but only from the Ashet’s words. He did not know what form they took, what power they had, what drove them.
If anyone stood to gain by killing the Benetheon it might be the Bren Alar. Certainly the Bren as a whole would benefit if men were wiped from the face of the world.
There. He had formed the thought that he had been trying to avoid for over a day: if men were wiped from the face of the world. Could it really be so?
He knew that the Bren had no love for men. Talking to the Bren Morain had confirmed that. They had no love for the Benetheon, either. It was also beyond doubt that they had manipulated Pelion’s law, whatever that might be, to permit them to exterminate Seth Yarra. Seth Yarra, on the other hand, seemed to have indicated by their deeds in southern Avilian, by the slaughter that had ended at Henfray, that they intended to make the kingdoms an empty land. They did not want to convert the people. They did not want the risk of rebellion, resentment, resistance. They wanted the land, just the land, and all its people gone.
If Seth Yarra succeeded then they, too, would be gone shortly afterwards. For all their numbers they could not stand against the Bren, and that would leave the world to the Bren alone.
It was the one card that he had yet to play. He had not told anyone what the Bren Morain had said to him. Only he was aware that the war would end in a year come spring. It was what gave him hope. If they could find a way to survive that long, to hold off the vast army that he expected to assault the white road at the end of spring, and keep them at bay for less than six months – just so long as the pass was open – then they had every chance.
But how?
He knew Seth Yarra’s strength. The Bren Alar had told him. Now that they had a base in Telas there would be no limit to the army they could land. He could be facing a hundred thousand men in spring, and he doubted they could raise and train half that number, even with all the levies called.
He knew the White Road, knew it well. It was part of his domain. In summer the wolves ran its length to move out onto the great plain, and hunted among the great herds that filled the open lands in the time of plenty. It was a broad valley, five miles long, and half a mile wide. The slopes were mostly scree and broken rock, the floor a mat of heather and scrub. It could not be bypassed on either side, but there was no cover, no real advantage to be had from the ground. If he fought Seth Yarra there it would be a brutal, face to face encounter. There would be no surprises for either side, and that was exactly how Seth Yarra would want it.
To the west lay the great forest. There was plenty of cover there. In fact there was too much. It was impossible to engage the enemy in the forest and hope for any degree of success. They would scatter and regroup. His own men would do the same. It would be chaos, and that, too, would suit Seth Yarra well enough.
On the East there was nothing at all. The plains opened out quickly. There was no cover, no barriers, no rivers or ridges for miles; just flat grassland. Once out there the enemy could march in any direction they chose and he would be forced to pursue and harry them. It was not the way to win a battle. Somehow he needed to bring them to a fight at exactly the right point, a prepared position, a clear advantage. Even then, how do you wipe out fifty thousand men and more without taking significant losses yourself?
There would be two battles. If they won the first there would be two. He had to win them both. He must hold the White Road until winter closed it, and then hold it again in the spring until the Bren acted. He guessed that it would be the last day of spring. The Bren Morain had promised spring, but it would be as late as they could make it.
He needed a strategy. In the past it has always been easy. There had always been a way to manipulate the Seth Yarra army into doing what he wanted, but the White Road was too simple, too clean.
Nothing came to him. The only thing he saw was to get through the pass so early, so far ahead of Seth Yarra that he could get clear of the forest to the south and fight them in Telas, but surely they would not be so lax as to permit that? He himself would have followed the snow, been through the White Road while it was still thawing, relying on the cold nights to freeze the mud and give his m
en a firm, if slippery, footing. But there was an arrogance about Seth Yarra, a deliberate slowness, a trudging inevitability about the way they conducted their war. They did not doubt that they would win, just as they knew that they would lose battle after battle until their numbers began to tell.
That was not his only problem. He had an enemy. He did not believe that Sithmaree had imagined the figure at Hellaree, the one that had put an arrow through her calf. The thought had crossed his mind that she was the enemy, that she had killed Fashmanion and the others and used the wound to cover her tracks, but he had dismissed it almost at once. He had known the snake god for well over a thousand years, and unless she had been replaced by an exact duplicate he knew that she did not have the imagination, the ambition or the intelligence to do what had been done.