The Dowry Blade (36 page)

Brede stepped towards the stranger, sensing that she was about to leave, trying to restrain her. The Scavenger raised a warning hand.

‘I would not advise you to touch me, not this time. We will meet again.’ The Scavenger turned to Kendra. ‘I am disappointed, and puzzled. I don’t understand how you have kept this one from me.’ And she walked through the Gate, and vanished.

Brede turned to Kendra, sensing a tremor of delight in her companion.

It is over
, Kendra signed,
and now you must leave. Take the horse, get away from here, go and find your own kind.

I don’t know if that is what I want,
Brede offered, trying to fathom the urgency of Kendra’s fingers.

You must. It is time.

Brede nodded reluctantly.

‘Kendra,’ she said aloud, trying out the name, recognising why the sign for the name was as it was.

Kendra gazed at her for a while, measuring the life in her, feeling that the balance had been reached. There was nothing more to be done. She felt Brede’s voice slide into her heart, felt her name spoken with love for the only time in her life. She smiled, grateful for the Scavenger’s carelessness, in allowing Brede that knowledge, and herself this unexpected luxury, to hear her name from Brede’s lips.

Take your horse, take that blade, make a life.

Brede glanced at the weapon. The sword was blunt and dull now.

‘It’s not my sword,’ she said aloud. Nor ever had been, yet here it still was, a curse, clinging to her. Well, there was an answer to that.

I will take it back to Lorcan. Let him have the monstrous thing if he wants it, and my curses with it.

It is only a sword,
Kendra signed.
There is no curse on it, no special secrets. It is only metal, wrought by an intelligent smith into something that has been used for evil. It is a tool, nothing more.
Even as she built the words Kendra was rejecting them, knowing they were not her words, not her persuasion. She couldn’t stop her fingers building the half-truths.

Brede shook her head. At every turn, since she found it, the blade had marred her life. The only solution now, was to be rid of it.

It is time,
Kendra signed again, feeling the pain of losing this, her last foundling, and wanting it over swiftly.

Brede stretched her arms to embrace the rough solidity of Kendra’s body. Kendra placed careful hands on Brede’s shoulders, remembering with painful clarity, the last time anyone embraced her. It must be two hundred seasons or more. She sighed.

Brede stepped away from her, gathering up the sword. She glanced about the cave, and gathered up the mushrooms, tying them into a corner of her ragged shirt. Then, with one last look, she turned, and limped from the cave.

Kendra watched her go, and then thought herself into the earth, roots delving deep, seeking solace for the silence of her being; a comfort that seemed, for once, elusive.

Chapter Forty

Brede stumbled from the cave, her mind full of the journey ahead, Kendra already half forgotten. She ran a cautious hand over the horse’s shoulder. Certainly not Plains bred. Not even an animal trained to be ridden, more of a plough beast. Brede glanced back at the entrance to the cave, feeling guilty at her silent criticism of the beast. Kendra had done what she could. But with no saddle, riding an untrained horse would be difficult.

She led the horse to the boulder that had been one of the milestones in her recovery. She steadied herself, scrambling painfully onto the stone, and whispered a terrible threat to the horse, should it dare move whilst she tried to get across its broad back. The animal flicked a deprecating ear, and stood still.

Brede settled cautiously into the familiar position on the horse’s back. Her bare feet reached uncertainly, and she wondered how she would manage to get back to the ground. The horse raised an inquiring head, not, as she had feared, unused to being ridden. She collected the rough rope rein in her hands. She was a child again: too far off the ground, on a horse too broad in the shoulder for her. Frightened, but exhilarated. It was hard to get the horse to respond to her weakened kicking, and she was grateful for the horse’s ploughing, for it responded to spoken commands.

To ride, after so long scarce able to walk, was at once a luxury, and a torment. New muscles were pulled and twisted into a fire of pain. Brede wasn’t sure she could stand it for long. She walked the beast in a slow circle about the clearing. Possible, perhaps even wonderful. Brede grinned – a certain fearful delight. She glanced once more at the cave, wanting to say goodbye, but uneasy with the thought of dismounting from the horse. There was no sign of Kendra. Hesitating only a second longer, Brede sketched a farewell into the air, and encouraged the horse into a more purposeful walk.

As she rode out from the trees Brede was overcome by a haze of memories that she did not wish to examine, full as they were of terror, and of Sorcha. She blanked those thoughts with scrupulous care, and mapped out the lie of the land in her mind, tracing the distances she must cover, the direction to follow. She scarcely noticed the certainty she had for the route. There was a road, and the sun weak in a cloudy sky to give her a hope of finding her way.

She wasn’t as cautious as she should have been. She rode carelessly along the road, without a thought as to the progress of the war, or who held these lands. It was hard to turn her mind to those concerns again, to scan the horizon for signs of habitation, or for riders; her mind was too full of pain and how to endure it.

The first farm Brede came to she entered, careless of danger, hoping only to confirm her tentative mental map. The gate was smashed, the hearth cold. Brede sifted the jumble of rotting furniture quickly, hoping for anything that might be of use. She found a belt, but not, as she had hoped, any food or any boots. She couldn’t continue barefoot indefinitely. Sure sign of a stolen horse, riding barefoot, bareback. She couldn’t afford those suspicions falling on her.

On then, harder to get to the horse’s back this time, her muscles refusing to translate her wishes into motion. She had to lead the horse to a wall, and scramble up. Her muscles leapt in protest, and she was grateful for the patient indifference of the horse, which allowed her to spend many moments gripping his mane, waiting for her body to accept the shock of the climb up the wall, before permitting her the risk of the horse’s back.

Brede started to look about her, at the empty fields, rock strewn, dusty. There had been no drought, so the crops must have either never been sown, or have been destroyed by some passing army. She tried to reckon the time of year. There was a cold bite to the air, and the leaves had turned, some trees already reaching bare branches towards the unpromising sun. Time had been passing, and she hadn’t seen it. She tried to reckon it up. It must be at least two years since she had fallen into that gorge, into Kendra’s land, perhaps a little more. Her reckoning faltered, it could as easily be three years, four – it was not so late in the year. Brede’s mind avoided the thought, trying not to remember the falling, the pain, Sorcha. And another thought lodged, limpet-like. An army, set on starving the villages here, but who, and why, seemed irrelevancies; there was only danger.

And so, darkness. The cold deepened, and her threadbare clothing didn’t keep out the wind. Cold and pain and hunger kept her awake; kept her moving.

Only when dawn greyness lit the sky did Brede stop, brought up short by the sight of a river, and the charred remains of a bridge. On the other bank there was a building, an inn perhaps, with smoke rising in a lazy trail from its smouldering ruins. Brede walked the horse a few paces into the water, determined to cross, but the bank shelved steeply, and the footing was difficult, many-coloured pebbles shifted noisily under the horse’s hooves.

Pebbles.

She stopped. So bright they seemed, those small rounded stones, water-splashed and shining in the wan sunlight. She gazed across the river again, trying to pull her memory into order. This was the same river: she was a few miles further upstream, but it was the same river. Brede forced the horse around, unwelcome memory dragging at her mind as the water dragged against the movement. Out of the water once more, Brede scanned the bank, and the stony path that led alongside it, overgrown with straggling late brambles. The horse, distracted, pulled a meagre mouthful of leaves from the nearest bush. Brede glanced at the plant, and approved the animal’s choice. She pulled an eager handful of not yet rotten berries from the stem, stuffing them into her mouth. The almost bitter juice and the coating of dirt caught her throat, but she swallowed hard, stripping more berries from the bush with concentrated urgency until she had eaten all that she could reach. The acid sat uneasily in her stomach, burning, curdling.

Brede urged the horse along the track, aware that the path had been used recently, despite its overgrown state – the brambles were trampled in places, there were skid marks in the stony earth. Someone had come this way recently, and in a hurry. It was then that she saw the body, lying half in the water. The horse shied away, and Brede allowed him his head, a few steps only, and the beast calmed, but refused to go nearer.

Brede slid from the horse’s back. Her leg collapsed under her, suddenly useless. The horse stepped away, startled, and Brede had to grab the rope rein, to prevent him bolting. She was dragged a few steps, before the horse would settle. She bit her lip against the new pain of the grazes on her unprotected shins, reminded of her first meeting with Sorcha, and Macsen’s ill-tempered stamping. At least this horse hadn’t tried to kill her. Brede folded that memory away, in the part of her mind where she refused to dwell, and tried to work out how to get her legs to move.

The horse had wandered a short distance, its head sunk almost to the ground. Brede whistled to it and it walked back to her, hoping for a handful of oats. Brede pulled herself up, using the horse to rest against. The horse still refused to go any closer to the body, so Brede took the long sword as a crutch once more.

She leant heavily on her sword, bending reluctant knees to get down to the level of the body. She hugged the cold metal to her, desperate for something to hold on to, as a spasm of pain shot up into her back, leaving her gasping. Brede put the sword to one side with slow determination. All she could do was wait. Slowly the worst of the pain ebbed, and Brede turned once more to the body beside her.

The head and one arm trailed in the water, and it took some effort for Brede to drag him clear of the river and turn him over. An oldish man, his throat cut. Brede wiped her hands uneasily. She glanced about her, but there was no sign of anyone nearby. The body was quite cold, losing the first stiffness of death. He had lain here long enough for his murderer to be far away. Brede shifted awkwardly away, wanting no more to do with this ending. She glanced almost furtively at the body. Her eyes strayed to his feet.

Boots.

Her feet were freezing. Brede shuddered, thinking of Maeve going through the pockets of the woman she had killed. She eyed the boots again. Too big, but not much too big. She stretched a cautious hand to the man’s foot, gave an experimental tug. The boot shifted easily; too big for him too. Thanking the Goddess for the waning stiffness in the body, Brede worked first one boot, and then the other off the corpse’s feet. Another wave of disgust hit her. She placed her bare foot beside the boot, measuring. She would need to wrap her feet to stop them slipping and rubbing.

She tore lengths of cloth from the remains of her cloak, trying to keep the cloth smooth as she forced her feet into the boots. Scrambling to her feet, the boot dragged her damaged foot straight for the first time, forcing it into alignment with her shin. Brede hadn’t been aware of her limping tendency to turn her toes inward. The boot acted as a splint, but too late for mending the defect. She gasped, gritting her teeth against this new pain, wanting to rip the tormenting leather from her and throw the boots into the river. The dead man’s bare feet accused her, the toes pointing vainly at the sky. Brede struggled to the horse, every step setting fire in her bones. She stared up at the horse, wondering whether she had the strength in her arms to pull herself up onto its back, with no saddle to give her purchase. She decided that she had not, and headed back to the ruined bridge, and the damaged footing that would give her the height she needed to remount.

Secure on the horse’s back once more, Brede re-examined the riverbank; there was no question of fording the river here. There was no obvious track away from the bridge in the other direction, Reluctantly she turned her back on the water, and took the horse slowly back along the road, looking for a turning. She found one almost immediately, disguised by the gorse and hawthorn growth, but visible now in the early dawn light. This track was more regularly used, and swiftly curved back to follow the river downstream. Barely out of sight of the road, she came upon more bodies. Irrationally, she was grateful that the man had not died isolated from his family. She was shocked at being comforted by carnage. The small farm by the river was deserted now, the raiders long gone, whoever they were. Brede searched through the few remaining possessions scattered across the yard. She took a blanket, and a half loaf of bread, not too spoiled for eating. She thought of her parents, victims of just such a raid, and remembered picking through her own scattered belongings, delirious and in pain, hoping for anything that might still be serviceable. Nothing here could be of use to the slaughtered owners. She forced her thoughts away from the sprawled bodies, determined to prevent herself from trying to work out the relationships between each cold, motionless form. Taking what she needed, she remounted the horse, using the mounting block in the silent yard.

Sunlight spilt across the river, lighting those silvery pebbles, stained dark with blood. Brede encouraged the horse back onto the riverside track. There might be a bridge further on, but there might also be the raiders. Brede wanted only to cross that river and ride as fast as the horse would permit her. She didn’t plan to stop again. It was not so far: if she rode fast, she could be at the city in a matter of days.