The Nethergrim (9 page)

“Fourteen, your eminence.”

“Fourteen.” The wizard spat a laugh, though the sound was too flat to be seriously taken as mirth. “By the time I was twelve, I had written a summation of commentaries upon each of the Seven Roads. By fourteen I could call and command forces that you could not even name, spoken words that you could not in a year perceive the meaning, pressed my mind through realms of thought whose merest shadow will be forever unknown to you. You aspire beyond your station. If you had come to me five years ago, I might have considered you, but now you are far too old.”

He bent to cough again—it seemed to sharpen his anger. He stepped over Edmund and stretched out an arm toward the stables. “Now go get my horse before I discover that you have started to annoy me.”

Edmund backed away. “Yes, your eminence. Please forgive me, your eminence.” His voice came out just like Geoffrey’s—a broken little squeak, the sound of someone who knows he cannot win.

The stables leaned up beside the inn, a newer and much flimsier construction set well back from the road beside the Twintrees’ tall and ancient hedge. Edmund did not need to be told which horse. He set down the bags in the straw that lined the stall.

Anger flared in him, hotter than the shame he had swallowed. The flap of one of the saddlebags fell open to expose the silvered edging on the binding of a book. He stared down at it. His mouth went dry.

It was done in a heartbeat. Sweat broke on his palms—he wiped them on his breeches and felt along the wall for the bridle.

“Aren’t you finished yet?” The stranger followed him in through the doorway of the stable.

“Almost, your eminence.” Edmund threw the bags over the horse’s back and covered them with the saddle. He bent down to fasten the girth, fumbled and tried again.

“Boy! Do you need light?”

“No, no—done, your eminence!” Edmund led the horse from his stall. He handed the reins to the stranger. He could not stop his fingers from shaking.

The stranger took the reins without looking. He gazed around him at the darkening village—the statue and hall up in the square, then back at the inn and then across the street at Jordan Dyer’s workshop—all as though he expected to find something but did not.

“Hmm. Somewhat shabbier than I remembered it.” He used Edmund’s hands for a step into the saddle, then set his horse to a canter up into the square and onward into darkness.

Edmund breathed in through his nose, and out. He waited for the sound of hoofbeats to fade out of hearing, then raced back into the stable. He seized the book out of the straw and slipped behind the inn. His skin prickled—it was done. He would need to find a new hiding place.

Chapter
8

A
raw wind raked the field. The sun rose behind clouds that stretched out to spin into wisps at the edge of the sky. Tom grasped the stilts of the plow. “Cush, now.” The oxen strained in the yoke, and then the plow started moving through ground still heavy with damp.

“Your master should have had you go over this in spring.” A hired man named Oswin followed just behind, smashing clods of earth left in Tom’s wake with a mallet. Oswin wore a cap pulled tight over woolly dark curls. His face bore the marks of a childhood pox. His shirt was like Tom’s, all stitch and mending.

Tom’s floppy old shoes were little use against the seeping cold. The water got in and soaked him to the ankles, puddle after puddle in the furrows. “Cush. On we go.” The oxen lowered their heads and pulled, blowing hard, battling their way toward the distant headland and a moment’s rest at the end of the field.

“Aye, that’s grand, how you do that,” said Oswin. “Look at ’em go! Never seen that done without a whip.”

The plow kicked and dragged in the hard-caked earth. Tom fought to hold it straight. The day promised work and nothing else, one furlong and the next until he dropped. The world was beautiful, the world was good—he said it to himself at the rise of every morning. Most days it was enough to get him through.

A blackbird took to singing in the trees beside him. She kept pace with him, flying from branch to branch along the field, then swooped in to perch on his shoulder. He felt her dig her talons in, just enough to keep herself from falling off. The wind swung in from the west, bringing news: tomorrow promised rain, by noon and not later. The blackbird ruffled and preened her feathers. The world was beautiful, the world was good.

“Hoy, Tom! There’s a bird on your shoulder!”

Tom glanced behind him. He did not like the look on Oswin’s face.

“Oh, ho, and she’s a nice plump one.” Oswin dropped his mallet. “Hold still, now. Blackbirds are good eating.”

Tom shrugged up his shoulder. “Go.” The blackbird sprang to flight just in time, flapping off an inch past Oswin’s reach.

“Aw, curse it, what did you move for?” Oswin jumped and clapped the air, but had no hope of making the catch. “We could’ve had her in the stew!”

They reached the headland, a strip of treed and ragged ground between the fields. Tom steered the oxen through the long slow turn and set down the plow at the edge of the next furrow. He found himself wishing that he had not been sent to the fair. It seemed to make him want things that he knew he could not have. It was easier not to want them.

“Mother’s grace, I’m hungry.” Oswin leaned against the mossy boulder by the stream. “When’s your master going to bring us something?”

“I’m trying not to think about it.” Tom drew up his tunic against the cut of the wind. The sweat on his skin began to chill. The breath of the oxen steamed out—slower, slower. They looked at him. They were hungry, too.

“He doesn’t pay me enough. He doesn’t pay me half enough.” Oswin knocked his mallet against the boulder. “So there, Tom, I’ve been wondering—why are you here?”

Tom could not guess what Oswin meant. When he could not guess what people meant when they talked, he just waited for them to try again.

“You’re a bit slow, aren’t you?” Oswin chuckled. “Why are you here, Tom, on this farm, a bonded slave to your master? What happened—your family all die on you?”

“Oh.” Tom shook his head. “I don’t know what happened. I was left on the step of an inn down in the city. My master bought me and brought me up here. I was just a baby; I don’t remember it.”

“Ah, right. That sort of thing.” Oswin scratched his chin. “Just as well you don’t know your parents, then. Wouldn’t be the sort you’d want to meet.”

Tom shut his eyes. It was enough to make the day a bad one, all the way to night. It was enough to make him wish for sleep and the end of thinking. He took up the stilts and whistled. The oxen started down the field.

“Hey now, no harm meant, there.” Oswin fell into step behind them. “I know who my mother is, and let me tell you, I wish I didn’t.”

Some people seemed to talk just to stop themselves from listening. That was what Tom had always guessed it must be. The words people spoke so often seemed to get in the way.

“So hungry I could eat that ox, and then the other one for afters.” Oswin smashed a clump of earth with more effort than was needed. “I was at a feast once, you know, a great big feast up at the castle, just before your master hired me on. Did I ever tell you? It was one of those things the nobs do sometimes—throw a banquet for a few of us poor folk so they can sleep easy at nights. I was out begging by the gates one day, and they just pulled me in, sat me down and, oh, you should have seen it! Beef-and-onion stew, smoked herring on trenchers with peas and beans on the side. And they had things called figs, too, drenched in honey. Have you ever had a fig?”

The plow lurched sideways in the furrow. Tom set his weight against it and looked down. The ox on the left, a mottled dark creature twelve hands high at the shoulder, pulled up a hind leg and wobbled with every other step.

“Well, they’re chewy and sweet,” said Oswin. “I could eat them all day. And they have bowls full of salt at the table, did you know? Everyone gets one—you can just sprinkle it all over your food. And at the end they had baked apples with cloves and some white stuff that I thought was more salt, but it turned out to be pure sugar! You ever had sugar? Never had anything like it in my—hoy, what are we stopping for?”

Tom set down the plow. “Thunder’s pulling lame.”

“We can’t stop now, we’ve got a whole acre to do.” Oswin pointed all around him with his mallet. “We’ll be at it till sundown as it is!”

“We won’t be going anywhere if Thunder goes off his hooves.” Tom knelt at Thunder’s side. The ox rolled an eye at him, his face pinched in pain.

Tom touched his fingers down the injured haunch, felt the tremble and the heat. No good. “We should get the horses.”

“Can’t—your master rented them out to the Millers for the day. You’re sure it’s so bad?”

“It’s bad, and it will get worse if we keep going. He needs rest.”

Oswin snorted, then jutted his weak chin across the field. “Tell that to your master. Here he comes.”

Tom stood and turned. His master, Athelstan Barnwell, stomped down the path from the farm—old, bent of back, his face a mask of sour lines. He held a whip in his hand.

“Morning, Athelstan.” Oswin waved as he approached. “I don’t suppose you’ve brought us some breakfast?”

“You’re slow.” Athelstan’s voice was a salted field. “You’re accursed slow. You make us miss good growing and you’ll regret it.”

Tom bowed his head. “Thunder’s lame, Master.”

Athelstan shouldered past and bent to examine the ox. “Which?”

“Back left, Master.”

“Walk them.”

Tom took up the stilts and murmured to the team. “Cush, now. On we go.” They started off again.

The whip cracked down. Thunder gave a bellow and threw himself forward in the yoke. White fear blinded Tom—for a moment he could not tell where the whip had struck, could not tell panic from pain. He lost his grip on the stilts, then darted forward to seize them before the plow fell over. Athelstan watched their progress for a few paces, then held up a hand for them to stop.

“Pull him off,” he rasped. “We’ll slaughter him.”

The oxen quaked, their heads curled to the earth. Blood seeped from the welt on Thunder’s back. Tom reached out to touch his side.

“Master.” He chose his words with care. Any hint of pleading would seal the ox’s fate. “I can fix him, Master. He’s a good worker. He just needs some rest.”

Athelstan grunted. “I’ve no time for laggards and layabouts. Finish the acre today or that ox isn’t worth his feed.” He turned to Oswin. “You’re off to Jarvis Miller’s. You work to dusk. The pay’s a penny—you keep a farthing.”

Oswin raised his eyebrows to the brim of his cap. “A farthing?”

Athelstan thrust out his stubbled chin at Oswin’s chest. “Get on with you, or you’ll be back to begging your bread by nightfall.”

Oswin muttered something ugly, then dropped the mallet and walked away across the field. Tom’s stomach chose that moment to growl.

“Not a morsel, not a bite until you’re done.” Athelstan pointed down the field with the coils of his whip. “Get to work.” He turned on his heel and slumped off.

Tom found his grip on the stilts and dug the share of the plow into the earth. He tried his best to shift the load from Thunder to his partner, Lightning, a somewhat smaller ox with a blaze of white around one eye. He spoke no more words—his urgings were hums and grunts, the push and pull of his hands on the plow. The sun reached its highest, then made for the west and fell. The sky turned orange-red, then dark blue. A flock of starlings ten thousand strong took possession of the trees. They were a kingdom, and talked of nothing but themselves.

Evening came to night. The cold returned. Tom’s shoulder throbbed from the effort of making up for Thunder’s limping gait. His stomach gnawed and churned. Weariness enfolded him. He sank until he saw nothing but the furrow dividing on the plowshare below him, dark waves cresting in a pattern that never quite repeated itself.

The plow stopped. Tom sagged against the stilts, letting himself breathe into the peace that came over him until he felt himself falling asleep. He jerked up his head. “Not far now. Come, now, onward. Not far.”

The oxen did not move. Tom looked around him. They had turned the last furrow. An acre.

He stumbled forward to lay a hand on Thunder’s heaving side. “You did it.” He untied their harness and wound the leather straps over his shoulder. He grasped the plow by the stilts to drag it behind him. The oxen followed him home.

The door of the master’s house hung wide. “You’re accursed late.” Athelstan leaned through the doorway and kept an eye on Thunder’s shambling walk across the yard.

Tom dropped his head. “An acre, Master. All of it.”

“To the pasture with you.” The door slammed shut.

Tom dragged the plow into the byre. Heads rose from the straw all around him, most of them pink and woolly white with dark lobed slots for pupils, but among them a few whose eyes glimmered green in the moonlight that came in over his shoulder. Oswin snorted awake, then turned in the straw and put his arms over his face.

“Jumble.” Tom whistled. “Jumble, come now!”

A laughing face thrust up from the straw, patches of black-and-white fur under a pair of half-cocked ears. Jumble woofed for joy and jumped from his bed in the corner of the byre. He leapt on Tom and licked his nose, beating his ragged plume feather of a tail on the hard earth floor.

“Good boy, Jumble. Good boy. Time for work.” Tom reached down for the cloth bundle that lay on the tree stump he used for a table. “Bring them, Jumble. Get by, now.”

Jumble raced to the back of the flock and barked. The cats
mrrfed
and scattered to the corners of the byre, leaping out of the way of the swelling mass of sheep. Tom picked up the shepherd’s crook that leaned by the door and led the flock out into the yard. The oxen fell into step, dark shadows in a cloud of dirty white.

They marched north off the rise where stood farmhouse and byre, making for the pasture on a narrow path between the hedges. Jumble capered along at the back, darting left and right behind the stragglers. The bell that hung around the neck of the ram made the loudest sound in the world.

Tom found a place with good grazing where the land began to rise again. He sat down at the trunk of a lonely elm. Jumble pranced up and put a paw on his shin.

“Watch them, boy. Watch awhile.”

Jumble padded away to the edge of the flock. The sheep got on with their evening meal, making slow circuits inside Jumble’s guard, lambs following close to their mothers. The oxen lay themselves down to rest, too tired even to eat.

Tom opened the bundle. It contained a hunk of stale bread and a turnip. He wolfed them down, then sank back against the tree. The stars wheeled above him. The wind shook the grass at his feet. Peace came over him and sang him down. . . .

• • •

He startled up, not knowing where he was or what side of a dream he was on. The veil of sleep dropped away and left tom sure he was awake and watching the sheep scatter wide across the pasture. Jumble backed away from the trees, growling with his tail dropped low.

The terror grew. Tom smelled, he heard, he felt something watching him, something sizing him up for a meal. The oxen stared about them white-eyed, ears perked, ready to bolt but unsure of which way to run. Jumble licked his chops—his growl broke into a whine.

“Calm.” Tom got to his feet. “Calm now, all is well.” Something made a noise, somewhere west down by the bend of the stream—a quick, hard clacking. He could not place the sound with any animal he knew.

“Round them, Jumble.” Tom felt about him for his shepherd’s crook. “Get by, round them, hurry!”

Jumble turned to dash. Tom was not sure if he was just running away, but when he reached the edge of the flock, he cut a hard left with a spate of frantic barking, rounding in the sheep before they scattered. More clacking came from a gap between the trees, and the sound of breath drawn hissing through teeth.