Raven's Edge

by Alan Ratcliffe

  RAVEN’S EDGE

  A Raven’s Tale adventure

  ALAN RATCLIFFE

  Copyright © Alan Ratcliffe 2019

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  First edition, 2019

  Visit the author’s website at:

  www.alan-ratcliffe.com

  @alanrratcliffe

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental.

  Cover art by Luke Horsman

  Table of contents

  Part I: The Witch

  Part II: The Mire

  Part III: Blood and Salt

  For my wife and daughters

  Part I

  The Witch

  The road never changed.

  It was a friend, though it would never love you. It was a teacher, the cost of failing to heed its lessons both sharp and sudden. It could set you free. It would carry you to far-off places beyond imagining and, if you turned from it, it would call to you; a sweet, seductive song for your ears alone.

  But its gifts are not given freely. The road is hard, and those who travel too long upon it in turn became hardened. The road never changed.

  But it changes you.

  “So it comes to this.”

  The man’s dark eyes appeared almost black in the fading light. In his arms the boy squirmed, seeking escape. He stilled as a blade pressed against his throat; denting the skin but not breaking it. Yet.

  She said nothing. The sound of the waves breaking against the shore far below filled the space between them. Overhead, gulls wheeled lazily on the breeze, which carried upon it the sting of sea-salt.

  “There’s another way, you know.” His conversational tone was jarring in the circumstances. “Come with me.”

  Further words of enticement fell from his lips, but again she kept silent. Perhaps, deep down, a part of her was tempted. The part that had long since grown weary of the path she’d chosen.

  With an effort, she pushed such thoughts to the back of her mind. The road was rarely straight. It twisted and turned in unexpected directions. Sometimes you arrived at a fork, and the easiest path was seldom the right one.

  Slowly, she raised her sword. Her shadow, made long and monstrous by the dipping sun at her back, pressed the tip of its own weapon to her adversary’s foot.

  The man eyed her curiously, then nodded. “A pity.” He seemed genuinely saddened. “Do you recall what you told me?”

  “I do.” Her words echoed around this place of crumbling stone at the edge of the world.

  He nodded again, though this time uncertainty clouded his face. He moved back, a fraction closer to the edge, pulling the boy with him. “Are you ready to take that step?”

  Her fingers tightened around the sword’s grip. “I’m ready to find out.”

  “As you wish.”

  Her hand moved but his was faster. Steel flashed crimson in the sun’s dying light. A scream tore the air.

  * * *

  Four days earlier...

  “All right! All right! Hold your horses!”

  The cold stone corridors of the castle reverberated with the sound of determined hammering upon wood. Craddock, the duke’s elderly steward, hobbled along winding passageways towards the source of the clamour, grumbling under his breath.

  A brief moment of respite, then another flurry of insistent pounding. “Hold on, I say!”

  The damnable racket came from one of the lesser-used side entrances. Upon reaching it he wrenched it open and was confronted by an upraised fist, caught guiltily in the act of beating upon the wood. “What do you want?”

  “I wish to speak to the duke.”

  Had he been in a better mood, Craddock might have laughed. Instead, he treated the short, slight figure before him to a baleful glare. Enough of their face was visible from within the folds of a black cloak for him to deduce that it was a she, young but on the cusp of womanhood. A score of girls of similar age were employed in various capacities within the castle, but quite what business such a one would have with his master, dressed as she was little better than the beggars and street urchins that gathered in the city’s less salubrious areas, he could not guess.

  He eyed the girl suspiciously before replying, as if a closer inspection might reveal the reason for her presence. She certainly could not have looked more out of place if she’d tried. Her boots and trews were dusty and travel-worn, and the patched and faded leather jerkin she wore was grown so thin in places that the rough linen shirt underneath was almost visible through it. It was a far cry from the elegant gowns worn by the noble ladies the steward was more accustomed to welcoming to the castle. His mind quickly calculated the likelihood of His Grace Duncan Maccallam, Duke of Strathearn desiring any kind of audience with the grubby figure before him and reached the simplest decision he would make all day.

  “Get lost,” he snarled, slamming the door shut.

  The pounding resumed almost immediately. With a sigh, Craddock eased the door open a crack. “Begone,” he told the girl. “Before I set the hounds on you.”

  This time, a sheet of parchment, nearly as crumpled and dog-eared as the specimen holding it, was thrust towards him. “I’ve come about this notice,” she said.

  Craddock peered at the parchment with narrowed eyes. Though his vision worsened seemingly by the day, he recognised it straight away. For it was written in his own hand, and the lower right-hand corner bore the ducal seal, pressed in wax; a warrior in full-plate and great-helm, gauntleted hands grasping both sides of the cross-guard of a broadsword pointed downwards. The house sigil of the Maccallams. “Where did you get that?”

  The girl shrugged. “It was posted in the square of a village half a day’s ride from here.”

  That carried the ring of truth. He’d handwritten two dozen copies himself, to be posted at every settlement between the city walls and the mountains. The problem with posting a notice where it could be seen, Craddock reflected, was that you couldn’t control who saw it. He sighed inwardly, the thought of writing a replacement for the one the girl had taken and arranging for it to be reposted further darkening his mood.

  “Is it true what it says?” the girl pressed. “About the curse?”

  The steward’s glowers had been known to reduce chambermaids to tears. He now turned one of the fiercest in his repertoire onto the girl. “His grace is not in the habit of telling tall tales for the amusement of the peasantry,” he snapped.

  Far from wilting beneath the practiced menace of his gaze, the girl stood her ground. “I’d like to see for myself,” she said, slipping the parchment back into whatever hidden crevice from which it had been drawn.

  Craddock blinked. “What the devil for?”

  “If I’m to break the curse then I need to know more. What form does it take? When it was cast and by whom?”

  A creeping suspicion stole over the steward that he was being played for a fool. He opened the door wide and peered myopically around at the long, narrow yard behind the girl. But of any others there was no sign. “Did Captain Struthers put you up to this?”

  “Who?” The girl frowned. “Look, if you don’t want the help, that’s fine. Only the notice made it sound urgent...”

  “The duke’s heir lies at death’s door,” said Craddock, feeling oddly as though he need to provide justification. He studied the girl again, more closely this time. There was something unsettling about her icy-blue stare, a chill that seemed to pass through
his eyes and pierce his brain. “You really wish to offer your services?” A nod. Craddock leaned out through the open doorway and pointed towards a row of tall shapes set atop the castle’s outer wall; grim sentinels overlooking the city huddled below. “You see those? That’s what became of the last lot of time-wasters.”

  The shapes were formed of three tall inverted L-shaped poles, from the cross-beams of which hung cages. A figure sat huddled on the floor of each, knees drawn up to their chins. Their lack of movement and the unnatural pallor of their skin suggested that whatever life remained to the men when they were placed inside the gibbets had long since departed.

  The girl took them in thoughtfully, then nodded. “Good,” she said. “That means three less people hunting for the reward.”

  The steward threw up his hands, exasperated. “Have it your way,” he spat. “On your head be it.” His tone suggested it was no mere figure of speech.

  He moved as if to step aside, then paused as a thought occurred to him. “How did you get in here, anyway?” he asked. “The castle gates are kept shut and barred, and the guards let no-one through without my express permission.”

  The girl smiled enigmatically. “Consider it my first test. I believe I passed.”

  As she swept past, the girl pulled back her hood. Craddock’s eyes widened. The girl’s hair, worn long so that it reached the middle of her back, was the perfect black of a moonless night, a shade practically unheard-of not only in the north but all the Empire. When revealed, the girl who only moments before had appeared quite ordinary became singular in appearance.

  Then she turned to glance back at him, with the same air of not-quite insolence that had riled him earlier, and the spell was broken. Stifling another sigh, Craddock led the girl through the keep’s passages, before depositing her in a small anteroom. “Wait here,” he instructed.

  With that, he left, happy to be away from the odd visitor. Let her stew awhile, he thought. If she found her way in, she’ll find her way back out when she gets bored or hungry enough...

  Chuckling under his breath, he hobbled off in search of a chambermaid to chide.

  * * *

  The black-haired girl’s gaze travelled around the walls for what seemed the thousandth time since entering the anteroom. On one was hung a tapestry depicting a number of battles between armoured knights and some kind of foe; here a large boar, a long spear thrust into its flank, there a serpent fighting an armoured figure on horseback. She judged that she’d been sat waiting for an hour or more, and by now knew every thread and stitch of the tableau.

  Hanging opposite were a pair of crossed broadswords below a metal shield bearing the house sigil. It didn’t escape her notice that these all bore numerous dents and notches. They’d seen heavy use and the fact they still bore the marks of battle, though removing them would have been a simple enough task for any moderately skilled blacksmith, indicated the castle’s owner was proud of the fact.

  The girl had spent precious little time in the company of the nobility, but she’d seen enough to know the difference between those for whom wealth and luxury were the most important measures of their status, and those who put their greatest store in martial prowess. The duke, it seemed, was one of the latter.

  She swung her feet idly, resisting the urge to whistle. Another hour, she thought.

  “He’s not coming back, you know.”

  The girl looked up and saw a young man standing in the doorway. He was tall for his age, which she judged to be twelve or thirteen years, but in the gangly way of youths who have grown too fast and are yet to fill out their frame properly. His clothes were obviously of high quality if not opulent in style; a dark brown tunic, the same shade as the eyes regarding her curiously. On his chest was pinned a silver brooch fashioned into the shape of the emblem with which she was growing increasingly familiar.

  “How do you know?” she asked.

  “I heard him talking to one of the footmen,” the boy explained, his voice carrying the familiar lilt of the Lowlands. “The old goat seemed pleased with himself. But you aren’t the first. Craddock has taken it upon himself to weed out the chancers. You did well to make it this far, actually.”

  The girl nodded, not entirely surprised. She climbed to her feet and stretched, feeling the click of joints that had been sat still for too long. “In that case I wish the duke’s son a speedy recovery,” she said. “Though I fear that without my help that will not be possible.”

  The boy watched her impassively a moment. “What’s your name?”

  The girl fingers busied themselves fastening her cloak back around her shoulders. “Raven,” she said.

  He waited, expecting more. As the silence lengthened and threatened to become awkward, he finally realised it would not be forthcoming. “Is that it?”

  “I’ve found it to be enough.” A glimmer of a smile touched her lips. “And what about you, boy?”

  He drew himself up to his full height. “I am Conall Maccallam, third in line to the Basalt Coronet of Strathearn, Under-Master of the Hunt and Keeper of the Kennels.”

  “I can see why you’d think it strange to have only one name,” Raven said. “Keeper of the Kennels?”

  “Mostly I feed and clean out the dogs,” the boy admitted.

  “Don’t you have servants for that?”

  “Father says it builds character,” Conall said gloomily. A pause, then, “Was it true what you said? Can you cure Kester?”

  “Your brother, I take it?” A nod. “If I could see him, understand what happened, then there’s a chance. If not, then doubtless one of the brave and noble knights of whom your steward has approved will solve the problem.”

  She regretted her sarcastic tone immediately, but the boy didn’t seem to notice. “I doubt it.” He fidgeted awkwardly. “We’ve burned three witches this past fortnight, all dragged in by my father’s men, yet with every day that passes Kester grows weaker.”

  “The curse was cast by a witch, then? How do you know?”

  The boy tilted his head. “Did you even read the notice?”

  “Enough to know that your father is offering the best part of a king’s ransom to save his son’s life,” she replied.

  “He doesn’t take kindly to those who waste his time.”

  “So I gathered.”

  She saw the young noble hesitate. Sensing the window of opportunity was closing, she went on, “The men your father sent... let me guess. He’ll have dispatched a couple of squads of the household guards to the nearest villages, to stamp around pestering the common-folk and generally making a nuisance of themselves. But he’ll have hired professional witch-hunters as well, or men who purport to be. Gangs of thugs in patchwork leather, matted beards and reeking of stale beer. Each one with a look in their eye as if they’re judging how much coin your life is worth.”

  Conall’s eyes widened. “You know these men?”

  “No, but I know their type. Bullies who abuse whatever authority they’re given. They’ll turf some old ladies out from their beds, beat a confession from them and hand them to your father in return for a bounty, but they’ve no interest in breaking a curse.”

  Conall thought for a moment, before going to the doorway and peered along the passages in both directions. Then he beckoned to her. “Craddock won’t approve, and Divine only knows what father will make of it, but I’ll take you to Kester.”

  He left the anteroom and Raven followed close behind. “Tell me about the witch,” she said.

  * * *

  It was a banquet grander than any the great hall of Strathearn Castle had seen in nearly two decades, the chatter and smoke belched out by the hall’s mighty hearths filling it to the rafters.

  Conall had not yet been born on that last occasion, when the duke and duchess had celebrated their loyal bannermen’s triumphant return from quashing the northern rebels, whipped into a frenzy of discontent against the crown by a treacherous general, Caderyn of House Carlyle. Little more than a year later, Lady Isobel,
Conall’s mother, had passed away after a winter chill and Kester had once told him that feast was one of the last times he’d seen their father truly happy.

  Yet, if time couldn’t really heal all wounds, it at least could numb the pain for a while. Conall, seated at the furthest edge of the long top dining table, glanced towards the figure seated at its head. Though his father, not by nature one prone to gluttony or excess, picked delicately at morsels of food and sipped at his mead while others gorged themselves, he was nevertheless wreathed in smiles and clearly in good spirits.

  As well he might be. The banquet was to celebrate the engagement of his eldest son and heir. It was widely agreed to be a good match; the bride-to-be was the daughter of a lowlands house nearly as ancient as the duke’s own, though fallen on hard times in recent years.

  In recognition of the occasion’s importance, representatives from each of the Maccallams’ bannermen were present – dozens of wealthy landowners and minor nobles all the way from the Golden Valley to the foothills of the Dragon’s Back mountains.

  Even the lords Hyland and Carlyle from the other major lowlands cities of Caer Lys and Creag an Tuirc respectively were in attendance, granted places of honour at the top table. Their presence was somewhat controversial, their houses having fought with the rebels, but the lords who had decided to break their oaths and take up arms against the emperor, their predecessors, had long since been sent to the headman’s block and the duke was determined to heal the rift between his kinsmen.

  For the first few hours, the banquet had gone as well as could be expected for any large gathering of northmen, which is to say that there had been only four broken noses, two brawls, one new blood-feud sworn but no deaths... though most agreed the night was yet young. Course after course of vast, roasted meats – a wild boar, a swan and assorted grouse, pheasants, rabbits and other game – had been carried into the castle’s great hall, to be greeted with increasingly drunken and raucous cheers. Several tuns of ale and mead had been consumed with gusto, much of it used to conduct enthusiastic toasts to the betrothed couple, which left much of the various tabletops awash with a carpet of pale foam.