Bridge of Swords (28 page)

Sendatsu felt his frustration rise anew. ‘But where does this come from? Surely someone must have told you …’

The old man shrugged. ‘It was something from my grandfather. Kind of a saying he used to have when he was asked to do something he didn’t want to: I might as well pray to Aroaril. I was but a lad and asked him what that meant, so he told me.’

‘Thank you for your help,’ Sendatsu said absently. He could not see Aroaril destroying humans for daring to pray to him — but perhaps it tied in somehow with the church he had found destroyed. Had the elves spread this story, backed it up with magic? Should he try to get some Velsh to pray and see what happened? If only he had more knowledge of Aroaril or even a prayer book …

He thanked the man and left — only to run into Rhiannon.

‘Any luck?’ she asked.

‘None at all,’ Sendatsu grumbled. ‘We should move on and try another village.’

‘But this one has hardly begun …’

His desperation to get back to his children outweighed any regard for sense.

‘If you want to go to Dokuzen, then you need to help me against Huw. We need to move faster around the villages,’ he said.

Rhiannon nodded immediately. ‘I can’t wait to go there, to meet your friends and family, walk through the beauty and the wonder … oh, I can see it now!’

Sendatsu forced a smile onto his face. This is for Mai and Cheijun. I can explain everything to her later, say sorry then, he told himself.

It worked. Smoke on the horizon the next morning, far across to the east, helped inspire the village to greater efforts. Thanks to Rhiannon’s persistent arguments, Huw agreed the village’s progress was so good they could also ride on.

‘We shall keep a good lookout. The beauty of Catsfield is none can sneak up on us — they must ride across miles of pasture to reach our village,’ the leading farmer in Catsfield, a grim-faced, grey-bearded man called Llewellyn, promised as they left.

‘Keep a good watch. That is your best defence,’ Sendatsu agreed. ‘Use the dogs too. I know you Velsh like to have them sleep beside you but a dog’s nose is the best warning you have. Then use a horn — anything you can find to warn your people as soon as something is spotted. Then get everyone behind the walls and drown any Forlish who attack in a sea of bolts.’

‘Oh, that we can do,’ Llewellyn vowed. Whatever the doubts they had about moving, and about spending the next few days building a wall, they had all been impressed by the elven crossbows.

‘Maybe we should have stayed a little longer,’ Huw fretted as they rode away, the wall not even half finished yet.

‘We could stay for a month and they would not all be safe. Some of those farmers won’t leave their homes until they are in flames. And by then it will be too late,’ Sendatsu said grimly. ‘We cannot save everyone. We just have to give as many as we can a chance.’

‘We have to save as many as possible,’ Huw insisted.

‘How? There’re only the three of us,’ Sendatsu pointed out. ‘How can we be everywhere at once?’

‘He’s right, Huw,’ Rhiannon agreed.

Huw opened his mouth to argue but could not find the words to convince them both. But there were so many people who still needed to be helped. Sendatsu might have won Rhiannon over but he still had a secret weapon — neither of them knew Vales like he did. He decided to take them south, into the poorer province known as Rheged. There would be less knowledge but plenty of people to help.

I had known Naibun since boyhood — and he had always hated humans. His father was one of those who thought of himself as an Elf, not an Elfaran, and raised his son the same way. It was the main reason the forefathers chose me and not Naibun to lead. But, while I mourned my wife, Naibun decided to make sure the humans learned their proper place. Humans who knew how to use magic were tracked down, while any churches of Aroaril were also marked. Naibun also created what he called a Border Patrol, ostensibly to protect Dokuzen but, in reality, to drive humans away from elven areas.

Humans who knew the truth about us were rounded up and books and scrolls that contained the real history were taken; in their place was left stories about a human rebellion and how the humans had betrayed elves with their lust for violence. He intended for the humans of these lands to never dare challenge elven supremacy. He did it slowly and carefully — and very effectively.

Much of the smoke seemed to be coming from the south each morning and Huw was bursting to get down there and help the people. He steered them that way, although it did not take long for Sendatsu to realise which direction they were travelling.

‘It’s too late for the people down south,’ Sendatsu growled. ‘We should cut our losses and worry about saving those who still have
a chance. If we hurry, we can protect many of the villages in this central part of Vales before the Forlish can get in there.’

‘And we condemn the people living in Rheged to a nightmare of rape and fire and blood!’ Huw spat.

‘Better a few than many. Who knows how many more bands of Forlish raiders are heading north every day? Would you have us waste our time saving ones who are already lost? Remember, it takes days to build a wall around a village. Do you think the Forlish will sit and watch us do that — or will they come rushing in one night, through a half-finished palisade? We could doom more people that way …’

‘We still have to try!’ Huw cried, stopping Sendatsu’s flow of reasonableness. ‘We have to try,’ he repeated. ‘I cannot walk away when I know people are suffering. Think of the children!’

Sendatsu was silenced instantly. It was all he thought about. Huw, not knowing, pressed his advantage.

‘Can you bear to see them dead, can you stand to ride away knowing all those tiny faces will cry out in fear, will haunt your dreams for ever more?’

Sendatsu shuddered at the thought.
Curse the bard — he has found my weakness
.

‘That’s enough, Huw — can’t you see how it hurts him?’ Rhiannon cried.

Sendatsu managed to give Rhiannon a smile and congratulated himself for getting her on his side — even if he had been forced to lie to do so. But he could not hold his tongue when Huw declared they would also stop at villages on the way to Rheged.

‘If we are going to do this, we need to get south as fast as possible, give ourselves time,’ he argued.

‘But we can’t just ride past villages and not tell them, not help them protect themselves,’ Huw said.

‘You can’t have it both ways! You have to make a decision about who you want to save!’

Huw could hear the sense in Sendatsu’s argument — he just could not bring himself to accept it. He knew, deep inside, that
if he rode past a village, then the Forlish would strike it, people would die and it would be his fault. It was stupid, perhaps, but it was how he felt.

‘Perhaps he is right, Huw …’ Rhiannon ventured.

‘But we can’t let people die! Not if we can save them!’ Huw said in anguish.

‘Huw, I know how you feel,’ she tried to begin.

‘No, you don’t!’

That was too much. ‘You are not the only one to have lost your father!’ she snapped.

Huw, as ever, was silenced by the memory of his lies to her.

‘Look, we can stop at these villages but if we get to Rheged and there’re too many raiders, we agree to come back.’ Sendatsu seized his chance.

Reluctantly, Huw agreed.

King Ward had given up on his two sons some years before. Their mother, Queen Mildrith, had poisoned their minds, until all they cared about was slaughter and glory for themselves. She also hated him for his philandering but he could not blame her for that. But the way she had filled his sons’ heads with foolishness and frippery was too much. Still, of late, he had felt time slipping away from him, so called them in once more.

‘What are we doing here, Father?’ Wilfrid was the older, a powerful young man with a flat face and vicious eyes.

‘Captain Edmund here will brief you on our campaign in Vales and how we shall bring them under our control. When they are begging to become part of Forland, I shall send one of you north to make it happen.’

‘Why don’t we just kill them? They’re a pack of sheep-shaggers and there’s nothing worth taking up there,’ Uffa grunted. He was shorter than Wilfrid but had the same eyes as well as wide lips, which made his mouth always look vacant.

‘Listen to Captain Edmund and find out,’ Ward said, controlling his temper.

‘Why do we need to know?’

‘Because you are princes of Forland and must learn to use your minds as well as your muscles! I did not devote my life to this kingdom to have you throw it away after I am gone!’ he roared at them.

Instantly their faces closed down and he cursed.

‘Edmund, see what you can do with them,’ he snarled, stalking out of the room before he said something worse. He did not have the time or patience for them.

They left the villages of Glottenham and Abergavenny protected but, by the time they left Pigstrood, both Huw and Sendatsu were about to blow — for completely different reasons.

Huw was furious with the way Sendatsu was using Rhiannon against him. If only he could discover the elf’s secret, tucked in that belt pouch, he was sure he could stop that. But Sendatsu kept it hidden. Then there was Rhiannon herself. She was obviously happy, laughing at the funny names of villages such as Pigstrood. He found himself resenting her. She was glowing, as well as growing, obviously revelling in her new-found freedom — and in Sendatsu. He hated that she was so happy to be with the elf and he could not make her feel that way.

Weighed against that was the work Sendatsu was doing in those villages. Thanks to him, they were all protected. He was keeping up his end of the bargain — but he was growing more frustrated with the lack of answers these villages were yielding. Huw longed to see the elf go, yet was afraid Sendatsu might find something that would take him back to Dokuzen — and take Rhiannon and hope for the Velsh away with him. He was torn.

When the third village had yielded nothing, Sendatsu was about to put his fist through a wall. The fear was growing inside him that there were no answers. He had even showed the book to a few Velsh in Glottenham and Pigstrood but they had no idea what the strange writing meant. Huw had claimed the people of Abergavenny knew nothing either. What if Sumiko was wrong? She had been so sure all the evidence the Magic-weavers needed was out here but all that remained were fragments. Every day
took him further from his children and just saying goodnight to their toys was not enough any more. Especially when he suspected Huw was trying to catch sight of what he was doing. Several times he had nearly been caught by the bard. He dreaded to think what would happen with Rhiannon if she found out he had children. He found himself contemplating just returning to Dokuzen. He lay awake at night dreaming about seizing back Mai and Cheijun, persuading Asami to leave with him and all of them coming to live here, far from his father and the reach of the elves.

Then he recalled Hanto’s angry face in the bushes and knew it was hopeless — he would never be able to relax.

But he was left tired and irritable, more so by his inability to find something familiar to eat or have anything resembling a bath. Being forced to endlessly repeat the same things to Velsh villages hardly helped his mood. If only he could get something, some hope to keep him going …

‘Where do you Velsh get your names from?’ Sendatsu asked, as they rode away from Pigstrood, Rhiannon still snorting with laughter but able to add her thoughts.

‘Aye. Why are there names you can barely pronounce and then others that are just obvious?’

Huw’s vow to keep what he knew to himself could not survive this provocation. ‘It is not a joke. Some of the names are our own, while others are in the tongue we all use now, after the elves took away everyone’s languages,’ he blurted.

Sendatsu stopped laughing. ‘What do you mean?’

‘It is nothing.’ Huw tried to cover it up.

‘Nothing? This is what I have been seeking and you have had it all the time!’ Sendatsu roared.

‘Come on, Huw, you have to tell us — this could be our ticket to Dokuzen,’ Rhiannon said excitedly. ‘Please, Huw, tell us what you know.’

Huw cursed himself but there was no going back now.

‘Well, you have probably seen there is a connection between the names of the villages and when they were founded. My father told me those with strange names, like Abergavenny, are
much older and date back to a time before the elves came here, when we had our own language. Those names have meanings in old Velsh, meaning that has been lost through the centuries, with only the strange words remaining to us. Newer villages, built since the elves left, have more ordinary names, that we can all understand.’

‘So this is all to do with your father’s belief that the Velsh had their own language?’ Sendatsu accused.

Huw hesitated but Rhiannon’s glare made him open up. ‘My father said once we all had our own languages — the Velsh, the Forlish, the Balians — everyone. Maybe even the elves. That’s why the names we call ourselves are so different, why older towns and villages sound like they’re from another place. He thought the elves did something, used magic to give us all the one language …’

‘Why, it’s a brilliant idea! That way everyone could talk and understand each other — what a wondrous thing for the elves to do!’ Rhiannon exclaimed.

‘Was it? My father used to say that a country without a language of its own is a country without a heart. Said the elves might have given us new words but also took something from us. That’s why villages and towns that have been built since they went away have such ordinary names, no matter whether they are here or in Forland, Balia, or elsewhere. Like Catsfield and Browns Brook, rather than Pontypridd or Hamtun.’

‘The cost in magic must have been enormous,’ Sendatsu breathed. ‘What else is hidden away in plain sight, I wonder?’

‘Probably many things,’ Huw admitted. ‘My father told me there are ruined buildings, relics of old settlements, hidden away in the woods — woods that the elves made grow overnight, to hide what was there. One day we humans knew how to build, how to make things — the next, all the knowledge was gone.’

‘But how could that be? The elves would never do anything bad,’ Rhiannon insisted.

Sendatsu dug into his saddlebag and produced an oilskin-wrapped bundle with shaking hands. It was time to share.

‘I found this in a burned-out Velsh church to Aroaril,’ he said solemnly. ‘It is written in a language I cannot read.’

‘A Velsh church to Aroaril?’ Huw gasped.

‘Something you cannot read?’ Rhiannon gasped.

Sendatsu explained about his find in the woods near Pontypridd, while Huw inspected the book with great care.

‘I saw something similar once before — in the tombs of the elven forefathers. There were books there written in all different languages, none of which I could read,’ Sendatsu said.

‘I would dearly like to see that church, and see those books,’ Huw said thoughtfully. ‘If only we had time now!’

‘Well, you’ll be able to see the books when we go to Dokuzen. Sendatsu will take you there himself,’ Rhiannon said brightly.

‘Why don’t we travel to that church now? Maybe we could ask around there?’ Sendatsu tried to drag the conversation back to where he wanted to go.

‘We shall return there — but we have work to do here first,’ Huw said defiantly.

‘You seek to turn back the tide with a wall of sand. There is no way we can protect every village, nor stop every raider. Do you really think just the three of us can save Vales?’

‘Maybe not — but we have to try, not go running back to our safe little home, protected by our nice magic barrier!’ Huw yelled. ‘Sometimes you have to make a stand. Sometimes you have to take a risk to do what is right. You elves just hid rather than do something. I won’t do that. Perhaps I can’t save everyone but at least I shall try.’

Sendatsu had heard similar things from his father all his life, and from Asami of late, and was not prepared to take it from this human bard who was keeping him from his children with his stupid plans. He swelled up, ready to explode.

‘But none of this explains a name like Pigstrood,’ Rhiannon said hastily.

They swivelled to face her.

‘Obviously they love their pigs in this area,’ Rhiannon continued. ‘But what is a Glotten-ham? Is it a pig that’s eaten too much?’

Huw and Sendatsu stared at her.

‘We shouldn’t fight among ourselves. There are too many other people who want to kill us,’ she said defiantly. ‘Come on, there will be answers for us aplenty in Dokuzen!’

She eased closer to Sendatsu, who forced a smile to his face to avoid another conversation and another lie about taking her there. He thrust the book back into his bag.

‘Come on. We are wasting riding time,’ he said shortly.

Sendatsu lay in bed, Rhiannon asleep beside him, and thought about Asami.

They had arrived at Five Ashes, the last village before they were officially in Rheged, although there were no borders, just a line of hills to mark where one district ended and one began. As usual, the people had been willing to do whatever an elf wanted. But they could not give him answers. He even resorted to trying to see if any of them had magic. He had to keep that one quiet, because he did not want Huw to know. He gathered a handful of young Velsh and made a flower bloom for them, tried to see if any of them could feel the magic as he worked it.

None had — and then Rhiannon had come looking for him, so he had to hand the flower to a young woman and hurry away.