The Fell Sword (13 page)

‘And beaver,’ Peter said. ‘I have more than thirty pelts.’

Ota Qwan made a motion that suggested that he thought beaver to be too much work. ‘If we’re quick, we can harvest as much as we can carry,’ he said. ‘I did it last year.’

‘And lost a warrior,’ Peter said.

Ota Qwan’s face darkened, but he and his brother had long since established their borders. Ota Qwan shrugged. ‘Yes.’ He looked at the ground. ‘In fact, it was my fault.’

Peter knew more about it than he wanted to know, so he remained silent. Wives talked. Husbands heard. Finally, he said, ‘I’ll be with you, anyway. You know that.’

Ota Qwan stood. ‘I’d take it as a favour if you’d say so at the fire,’ he said.

Peter nodded. ‘When do we leave?’ he asked.

Ota Qwan looked at the smoke from the hearth. ‘Water’s boiling,’ he said. ‘Two days, if I can get ten men to go.’

Peter slapped him on the shoulder, stooped for the pot, and made tea.

Harfleur and the Sea of Morea – Ser Hartmut Li Orguelleus, the Black Knight

The three round ships towered over the quay, like towers over a castle wall.

The Black Knight towered over his fellows on the quay in direct proportion. He was a head taller than any Galle around him; his arm-harnesses had the circumference of a lady’s waist. He was fully armed and armoured, despite being in a merchant port in the very best-protected roadstead in Galle.

He was watching his warhorse swayed by a crane driven by fifty criminals as it carried the drooping equine up, up, up the ship’s side. But the dockmen knew their business, and, despite his curses, they got his horse aboard, and those of all his knights – twenty great horses, and ten more besides as spares.

At his side, Oliver de Marche looked up from a tablet. ‘. . . crossbows, mostly. They sell well among the Huran, or so the Etruscans tell me.’ He shrugged. ‘They’ve never dropped a horse, my lord.’

Ser Hartmut turned to Etienne de Vrieux, his squire. He raised an eyebrow.

De Vrieux bowed to the merchant captain. ‘I must remind you that Ser Hartmut does not speak with members of the third estate.’

De Marche cleared his throat. ‘But – That is – he
asked
me what we were carrying!’

De Vrieux shook his head slightly. ‘No, Master Captain, if I may beg to differ, he asked the air a rhetorical question. If you would care to inform me just what you have in lading, I will pass that information on to my knight, if it proves to interest him. Otherwise, it will best become you not to address him directly.’

‘And if we enter battle?’ de Marche asked the squire. ‘Does your Lord know I was knighted by the Lord Admiral himself?’

Ser Hartmut’s eyes never left his horse. ‘Battle ennobles,’ he said. ‘If we enter battle as companions, tell the man I will have no hesitation in speaking to him, nor even in listening to what he might have to say.’ He shrugged. ‘I do not know the Lord Admiral.’ His eyes passed over his squire and locked on the merchant captain. ‘Tell him that his unseemly staring will eventually anger me.’

In truth, the Black Knight was one of the handsomest men Oliver de Marche had ever seen. He stood a head taller than any other man on the dock, with blue-black hair and smooth, unscarred olive skin like the southerner that he was. His moustaches shone as if oiled. Perhaps they were, de Marche thought to himself. And his eyes were blue. De Marche had never seen a man with blue eyes and such dark skin.

They were also a very unlikely shade of blue – a dark blue, like lapis.
Damn me, I’m staring at him again.

Maistre de Marche bowed to the squire. ‘Please tell monsieur your master that his wishes will be complied with. And please assure him that these men have never dropped a horse.’

Ser Hartmut’s eyes met his, just for a moment. ‘Best they not start with mine, then,’ said the giant. Rather than madness or arrogance, the dark eyes held amusement. ‘And ask our captain, Etienne, while we have his attention – how well armed are your sailors?’

‘I won’t ship a man who can’t fight,’ de Marche said, waving the squire aside. ‘The Etruscans are growing more outrageous every year. They won’t want us in the Great Huran River, either.’ He paused and bowed, again, to the squire. ‘That is, please tell your master that my men are all armed with a coat of mail and most have a breastplate of the new steel; everyone has a steel cap, a sword, and a pair of spears.’

Ser Hartmut managed a thick-lipped smile. ‘With three round ships and all my men-at-arms,’ Ser Hartmut said, with a slow smile, ‘I will endeavour to give these Etruscans an ill jest.’ He nodded. ‘We shall have some good adventures, Etienne.’

‘Yes, my lord,’ Etienne de Vrieux replied, somewhat woodenly.

The Long Lakes – Squash Country – Nita Qwan

They left in the darkness, with dawn just a murmur of orange in the east. Each man had a pair of pails made of birch bark with spruce-root handles. They weighed almost nothing, and men tied them to their spears, put bows over their shoulders, quivers on their backs, five handfuls of pemmican in their pouches, tobacco for smoking while complaining about their wives, and one blanket per man. There were women who usually ran with the warriors, but not this time.

Ota Qwan led them out at a run, and women gathered and screamed or keened farewells, sounding like irks in the warm summer morning – many affectionate farewells, most of them taunting. Peter’s wife screamed that he was leaving her to bear the child alone, and Se-hum-se’s wife complained that she already felt empty, so empty . . .

They left to laughter.

Running hard.

Nor did they slow. Men who went with Ota Qwan knew who he was and who he wanted to be. He made no secret of his desire to be named war chief again. Every man present had fought by his side, painted like demons, against the drovers and the Hardskins, and every man present knew that the matrons already talked of war with the Huran to the east. Another tribe of Outwallers with dangerous ideas and a penchant for expansion.

A few months with the Sossag had shown Peter they were as complex as any other people. For example, at home, his people had trained for war – a small caste of warriors within each tribe had trained hard. Among the Sossag, almost all men and no few women were warriors, and they never trained. Or rather, every other act was also training. Sossag warriors ran everywhere. There was never a time they walked, except to cross the village. Every hunt was training for war, and every war was practice for the hunt. Hunting in the Wild was war of a sort.

And so was gathering honey.

The first night, because he was fresh, Peter made a little oven from a bank of good clay and baked cornbread. Other men found rabbits and squirrels, and they were well fed, and no one needed a handful of pemmican. A young man – a distant cousin of his wife’s called Ayen-ta-naga – leaned over and grinned at him.

‘Men say your bread is worth coming to eat,’ he said. ‘By Tara’s bum, it is good to call you cousin.’ He laughed.

Other men nodded. In the early days no one had ever thanked him for his cooking, but now that he was fully Sossag, it seemed to be an odd, but real, fame. Nita Qwan, the life maker, was a cook. A damn good cook.

The second day it rained and he was wet, and cold. He didn’t relish sleeping in a pile of other men, but he did, and he was getting better at it – he got more sleep than he’d expected, and he rose to a drizzle that hadn’t quite extinguished the small fire that had warmed last night’s meat. He and his wife’s cousin built it big enough for the men to enjoy a little warmth. They made tea, drank it, pissed on the fire, and Ota Qwan told a sullen youngster named Gas-a-ho to carry the pot, which he did with an ill grace.

Peter stopped by the young man. ‘Wash it and put it into your honey pail,’ he said. ‘Much easier.’

The young man narrowed his lips, looked at Peter, and shrugged. ‘Fine,’ he said.

Later, when he was running beside the former slave, he said, ‘You were right. It’s easy. Tomorrow I’ll just offer to carry it.’

Peter knew he was supposed to grunt with amusement, but he nodded. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘You know, the more work you do, the less crap they’ll give you.’

Gas-a-ho ran on in silence.

They ran all day. Peter was bone tired by the end, but proud, too – when he’d first joined the people these all-day runs had nearly killed him. Now, he understood their necessity.

He still hated to run.

That night it rained so hard that there was no point in making a fire. But Ota Qwan sent two of their older men up the ridge on their left – the north – and they found a cave. Really, it was more of an overhang than a cave, and the inhabitants – a troop of coyotes – had to be driven out. They gathered wood while their muscles cooled and the shaman’s son lit it with a flick of his hand. They ate pemmican; Peter – the cook – loved pemmican. Other men groaned and complained.

In the morning they ran west again. The weather cleared so that there was a lowering mist in the streambeds, low cloud rolled over their heads, but it didn’t actually rain. Peter got a deer through nothing but luck, standing with his back to a tree, pissing down a hill, he saw a doe break cover. He had all the time in the world to finish his business, string his bow, put an arrow to it and watch her stop innocently almost at his feet in a little gully. He watched her sniffing the air – spooked by his urine, no doubt – and he put an arrow neatly between her shoulder blades. She fell dead without a single bound, and the other warriors pounded his back and praised him.

They spent a day there, made shelters, and ate the deer and another that Gas-a-ho brought down. They dried some surplus meat and rose on the sixth day to run again. They had a dry trail and no rain so they ran further than any day before, yet stopped earlier, made a fire, and cooked a sort of stew of half-dried meat and pemmican and raspberries picked from bushes around the campsite.

At darkness, Ota Qwan tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Guard,’ he said. He went from man to man, naming night guards – an hour of lost sleep.

But they were deep in the Wild, and Nita Qwan knew Ota Qwan was right. He stared into the darkness for an hour – it was an easy watch. Towards the end Ota Qwan came to him with a lit pipe, and they shared it, passing the stone and antler pipe back and forth.

They sat in complete silence for long enough that Peter could see the passage of the stars overhead. He sighed.

Ota Qwan did the same. ‘Smell it?’ he asked suddenly.

Nita Qwan had no idea what he was talking about. ‘Smell what?’ he asked.

‘Honey,’ Ota Qwan said. ‘Sweet.’

Peter realised he’d thought it was a lingering taste of sweet tobacco. ‘Ah,’ he said.

‘Quick strike and we turn for home,’ Ota Qwan said. ‘There’s something out here with us. Probably boglins after the honey, too.’ He shrugged. ‘There’s plenty for everyone.’ His body rocked as he chuckled. Peter could feel him.

‘Better hope so, anyway,’ he said.

North and West of Lissen Carrak – Thorn

Thorn sat at the base of an immense maple tree, perhaps four or five centuries old, its branches a natural tent, its trunk home to myriad creatures great and small. A burl the size of a man projected from the trunk to make a rainproof shelter, even for a frame as large as Thorn’s.

Thorn didn’t mind rain, or snow, or sun. But the tree was
beautiful
, and full of power of its own, and the burl and the shelf seemed to have been made just for Thorn.

He was north of the lakes – two hundred leagues and more from Lissen Carrak. The Dark Sun could not track him here. Not that he heeded the Dark Sun.

That was all behind him.

Instead, Thorn sat in the rain, smelling the air. He had felt Ghause Muriens’ sending, and he let it wash over him. She was far away, and her sending did nothing but remind him how much he disliked her and her easy carnality and her foolish passions. She had positioned herself at court as Sophia’s enemy long ago, and even though the world had changed since then, still he found her easy to despise.

Sophia is dead.

Thorn shuddered.

Nonetheless, he disliked Ghause Muriens. Almost as much as he disliked moths. And butterflies. He flicked a stick-like hand to drive a large moth off his stony hide.

He disliked moths, he had since boyhood, but just now he disliked everything. Since his escape from the field of Lissen Carrak, Thorn had questioned everything – his allegiance to the Wild, the theory that supported his relationship to other creatures – even the soundness of his own mind.

He had been a fool to attempt command of an army. That way lay nothing but emptiness – it was an empty power. He wanted something more – something palpable only in the
aether
.

He wanted apotheosis. And no amount of temporal posturing would take him closer to his goal. He needed time to study, time to recover, time to evaluate. The world had proved far more complex than he had imagined – again.

If Thorn could have smiled, he would have. He rose, his immense legs creaking like trees in the wind, and put an armoured hand on the trunk of the ancient maple.

‘I will go into the far west, and learn a thing or two,’ he said aloud. His voice sounded harsh.

I have made myself a mockery of what I ought to be
, he thought. But then the thought
I shall retain this shape to remind myself of what I allowed to happen.

If he was having a conversation with the tree, it wasn’t answering. Thorn turned to walk west, and in that moment lightning struck.

The lightning struck all around him, a moment of awesome power. The great maple was destroyed, its heartwood reduced to steaming splinters, its great trunk split as if by a behemoth’s axe.

Thorn – whose body was bigger than a giant Ruk or a mighty troll – was struck to earth and pinned under the tree’s ancient branches. And still the air around him was like a thick porridge of sheer power.

If Thorn could have screamed, he would have.

Thorn felt he had been
invaded.
But not destroyed. There was something in his head that he couldn’t fathom – in his web of tree roots and spiderwebs, where he cast his workings and remembered the hundreds of options he had to his
potentia
,
he now had a black space, like rot in the sapwood of a healthy tree.