Raven's Edge

by Alan Ratcliffe

  Even without those clues there would have been little mistaking his identity; even standing still he somehow managed to exude an indefinable yet unmistakable air of authority. Like his youngest son, Duncan Maccallam was dressed in clothes that, while simple, were undoubtedly more expensive than anything she owned, up to and including her horse. A plain blue doublet, white shirt, dark breeches and black leather shoes polished to a high shine were at once elegant while refraining from boasting their owner’s wealth. His eyes were the same shade of brown as Conall’s, while his hair and beard, both cropped short, were starting to grey as befitted a man who had long since entered his middle years.

  He smiled at them without humour. “The good doctor, while having a peerless reputation among his profession, is also something of an eccentric. He agreed to treat Kester on the condition that he would be free to come and go as he pleases to continue to treat his regular patients. He has been given chambers in the castle, though I understand they have barely been used.”

  Conall was the first to address this new arrival. “Father,” he said. “How long have you been there?”

  “Long enough.” The duke’s thin-lipped smile contained little trace of humour. “Now, come. Kester must rest, and can hardly do so with roving bands of vagrants marching around his bedchamber.”

  Raven’s face reddened, and Conall cried out, “Father! She answered the summons you ordered be posted across the duchy. She says she can help.”

  “Indeed.” The brown eyes alighted on Raven and seemed unimpressed by what they found. “Let us speak in my parlour, then, and decide what is to be done.” He gave a small bow in Niamh’s direction. “My lady.”

  “A moment, your grace, if you please,” the blonde woman said. She approached Raven and took her hands in her own. “I don’t know who you are or where you came from. But if there is an ounce of truth in what you say, that you can help my betrothed, then I beg you: promise you will do all that you can to break the curse hanging over all our heads.”

  Raven looked into the warm blue eyes staring at her, wide and pleading, and found only sincerity. She gave a nod. “I promise.”

  The blonde noblewoman smiled gratefully and, as Conall and Raven left the chamber, she returned Kester’s bedside.

  When they entered the duke’s study a few minutes later, a fire was burning merrily in the hearth. The sudden warmth made the skin on Raven’s face and hands prickle, but it was a welcome change from the persistent, sullen cold of the castle’s stone passageways.

  She wasn’t the room’s only occupant to relish the heat. A large wolf-hound, its coat wiry and grey, was slumped before the fireplace, stretched out and resting its muzzle upon its paws. As they trooped inside one of the dog’s eyes cracked open, regarded them groggily a moment and then drooped slowly closed once more.

  The duke was seated in a padded, high-backed chair beside the fire, and regarded them dispassionately as they came to stand before him.

  “If my son is to be believed, you wish to offer your services in this matter,” he said. It appeared that the duke was not given to niceties. Raven didn’t mind, having little appetite for small-talk herself.

  “I believe I can help, yes,” she said.

  “Is that so?” With a stretch and a yawn, the hound stood and trotted over to rest its head in its master’s lap. The duke scratched absently behind its ears. “Conall has doubtless spoken to you of the events that took place that night, and you have seen Kester for yourself. Tell me, what do you make of his condition?”

  Raven hesitated, trying to judge how she should respond. It was a delicate matter, Kester’s sickness being so grave, and it was always difficult to predict how nobles would react when confronted with the truth. She thought of the duke’s blunt manner, the spartan nature of his keep, and decided to be honest. “I would say that if he still lives when winter comes, then he’ll be the luckiest man in the kingdom.”

  Conall squirmed beside her, but the duke smiled humourlessly. “Such candour. Is it wise, do you think, to speak so to a lord in his own castle?”

  “My guess is that the time for tact has long since passed, your grace.”

  “A good guess, as it happens.” Another smile, barely touching the corners of the duke’s thin lips. “Tell me, my dear, what is your name?”

  “Raven, your grace.”

  “Ah, so apt a name can only have been chosen, not given. Such remarkable colouring. I believe I have seen hair such as yours only once before. But I digress. What is it you do?”

  “I... solve problems.”

  “Indeed?” The duke’s eyebrows arched. “You have broken curses before?”

  “Not as such, no.”

  “But you have dealt with witches?”

  “No.”

  “Then perhaps you are an accomplished healer?”

  Raven hesitated again. Anyone who spent any great length of time travelling the Empire’s roads quickly learned which plants could prevent a wound festering or calm a fever, but she knew the duke was not talking about such tricks of the wilds. She shook her head.

  The duke leaned back in his chair and regarded her sternly. For the first time in the interview he seemed close to losing his temper. “Perhaps you think this some kind of game,” he began. “I can assure you-”

  “Eight bandits, five thieves, three wolves, two bärgeists and a bear,” she said. “Oh, and a hellhound.”

  The duke appeared momentarily lost for words. “What-”

  “Problems I’ve solved for people, your grace.” Raven knew it was a risk to interrupt him again, but for the first time she felt like she had the upper hand and was determined to keep it.

  There was a bark of laughter to her right. Raven turned her head and saw a young man lounging against a table in the corner of the room, half-hidden in shadow. He was grinning at her, and given that he looked like a taller, older version of Conall she guessed she was face-to-face with another of the duke’s sons. “And the difference between a bandit and a thief would be?” he asked, bemused.

  “Leave off, Fearghus,” Conall murmured.

  Raven turned back to the duke. “In my experience it comes down to how many knives they’re carrying,” she said.

  “I see,” the duke said, somewhat weakly. “You’ve... accomplished much, it seems, for one so young.”

  Press the advantage. “Your grace, I never knew my mother. I lost my father when I was six. I’ve been on my own for nearly as long as I can remember, taking jobs where I can. Doing what it takes to survive. I can look after myself, and if I say that I can help then know that I speak truly.”

  The duke held her gaze, saying nothing. She could almost see the thoughts behind it, whirring and clicking into place. For a moment she thought he would agree. But then his eyes hardened... and the thing she’d dreaded arrived and broke her into pieces.

  “Yes, well.” The duke cleared his throat. “As capable as you seem, we can’t have a young gel gallivanting around the countryside getting under the feet of the men I’ve hired to find this witch. To say nothing of all the dangers upon the roads.” He offered her a smile that failed utterly to warm the chill spreading up from her stomach. “However, never let it be said that Duncan Maccallam turned down help offered freely, even when it comes from an unexpected quarter. Very well. Go out to the towns and villages. Speak to the common-folk. If you bring me information pertaining to our witch, then I promise you’ll be suitably rewarded. Now, my dear, if you’ll excuse me.”

  The duke stood and ushered her from the parlour. Even before the door closed behind her, Raven was marching along the passages, unsure of her route but just needing to be moving.

  He actually said ‘gel’, she thought miserably.

  * * *

  “Raven! Wait!”

  She pressed her heels to her steed’s flanks, pretending not to have heard. The horse quickened its pace but it only served to delay the inevitable.

  There was a pounding of hoof-beats from behind, and another rider
drew level, breathing hard. “I was calling you,” Conall said. “Did you not hear?”

  “The wind must have been blowing the wrong way,” she said, her eyes fixed on the road ahead. It was not a particularly convincing lie, not least because there was not even a hint of a breeze.

  Conall was dressed as he’d been when she’d last seen him, stood at her side in the duke’s parlour, save for a blue riding cloak. He sat straight-backed in the saddle and had the look of an assured horseman despite his tender years. “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “Does it matter? There’ll be another town, another job to earn a few coins to keep me going until the next.” And the one after that, and the one after that...

  A look of astonishment crossed the young noble’s face. “But why? Surely not because of what father said? I thought that went rather well.”

  “Well?” She whirled around, eyes flashing. “He did everything but pat me on the head!” The memory of fleeing from the castle after her audience with the duke, cheeks burning as if she’d been slapped – which, in a way, she had – was still fresh. The guards at the castle door had let her through without any questions, their job after all being to prevent people from entering. From there she’d gone straight down into the city itself, retrieved her horse from the stable where she’d left it only that morning, and departed through the nearest gate without a backward glance.

  “But don’t you see? He engaged your services,” Conall said earnestly.

  “Yes, to go swap tales with the local gossips!” It would have stung less if he’d sent me away with a flea in my ear, she thought.

  “And do you think he’ll complain when you capture the witch and save my brother’s life?”

  Raven’s mouth opened, then closed again. Her anger abated. He was right, of course. No lord would appreciate receiving less than was promised, as the hunched figures quietly decomposing in the castle’s gibbets could attest, but he’d surely have no cause to object if she did more than he’d asked. She’d been so mortified by his words she’d failed to see it.

  However, old habits died hard. “I may look into it,” she sniffed. “If time allows.”

  Conall grinned. “Perhaps I might accompany you for a while, then?”

  There was a brief pause as she tried and failed to come up with a suitable excuse. “Fine,” she said. “I warn you, though, I don’t have any kennels in need of keeping.”

  * * *

  They rode awhile in silence, which suited Raven. She wanted time to think, while Conall seemed content to plod along at her side, lost in whatever thoughts filled the minds of young nobles.

  The sun beat down on their heads, but summer had long since given way to autumn, robbing it of most of its heat. When a breeze blew up and plucked at their clothes, it carried with it a frigid promise of the chills to come. This close to the mountains, the winters could be brutal; she hoped that by the time it arrived her travels would carry her to more temperate climes in the south.

  But that was for later. In the here and now it was pleasant enough to simply take in the road – though that was an overly grand description of the dirt track they travelled along. The road that lead south from Strathearn, being the chief route to Ehrenburg, the Empire’s capital, was paved. But west of the city, the lowlands was a vast expanse of gently rolling hills interspersed with small villages and farms. The traffic was sparse and, more pertinently, consisted almost exclusively of common-folk. Not for them the comfort of a solid surface to travel upon, that didn’t cover you with muck after it rained, or that wouldn’t become rutted and uneven after the passage of heavily laden carts.

  It was not so bad now, fortunately. The hooves of Raven’s mount kicked up clouds of dust from the dry, cracked earth. It had been a long, dry summer, even in the lowlands, and beyond the dry-stone walls to either side the crops in the fields were limp and parched. Autumn had brought with it some relief from the sweltering temperatures but not, as yet, the rain.

  The farms nearest the city had fared better than most. Away to their right she could hear the faint burbling of the Lannair river, which flowed down from the snow-capped peaks of the Dragon’s Back in the distance, its many tributaries sustaining farms and crofts throughout the lowlands’ upper reaches.

  She stole another glance at Conall, scrutinising the young noble. Though slim he appeared in fine health, like the rest of his family. Aside from Kester, at least, she added. Food and drink rarely became scarce for the Empire’s ruling classes. Most didn’t concern themselves with such lowly matters as where the meals that appeared in front of them daily came from, but in times of hardship those that collected rents and taxes on their behalf would squeeze the common-folk for as much as they could give... and often beyond.

  A summer like the one they’d just endured... it brought with it a certain kind of madness. Unable to provide the taxes and food being demanded of them, ordinary folk took to the road in greater numbers to evade the wrath of their landlords. Some sought legitimate work, such as there was. Others still became outlaws, preying on those barely more fortunate than themselves.

  Perhaps the young noble’s mind had been running along similar lines, as he turned to Raven and asked, “Is it true, what you told father?”

  “Which part?”

  “All the things you’ve done. Did you really slay eight bandits?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.” He seemed deflated. “So you lied to father?”

  Raven shook her head. “Never said I killed them. I just mentioned all the jobs I’ve done.”

  Perhaps it was the use of the word ‘job’, but the young man’s face screwed up as if he’s just smelled something distasteful. “You don’t mean you-”

  “They’d raided the winter stores of a village just as the snows came,” she said hurriedly, cutting off whatever scene his overactive imagination was conjuring. “The people would have starved without the grain and dried meat they’d set aside. I tracked the bandits to a camp in a nearby forest, waited for nightfall, then snuck in and recovered as much as I could carry. The villagers hid it safely away from prying eyes, and it was enough just to last them through until spring.”

  “That took courage,” Conall said, trying and failing to keep the disappointment from his voice. “But what of the five thieves you mentioned? Surely you made sure they’d not steal again?”

  “In a sense.” Her eyes scanned the road ahead near-constantly. But there was no-one else in sight in either direction. “Would you like to know what became of the last thief I caught?”

  “Of course.”

  “There’s a small township west of here, Kinlochrie. It was there that I saw the duke’s notice. Below it, nailed to the same post, was another job. A thief had made off with some trinket. Not worth a great deal, a few silvers perhaps, but for somewhere like Kinlochrie that’s a lot. The elder tasked me with recovering it.”

  “And you did so, I take it?”

  Raven continued as if she’d not heard. “I tracked the thief down easily enough – he’d not gotten far. I found him hiding in a hedgerow along the road to Silverlake. I called for him to come out, and that it would go easier on him if he did. He saw the wisdom of obeying.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I got the trinket back and cautioned him to never show his face in Kinlochrie ever again. Then I rode back to the elder and told him I’d killed the thief.”

  The young noble scowled. “You should have done. Better to remove another criminal from the world than practically become one yourself through such dishonesty!”

  Raven turned from the road ahead to give him a cool look. “If I’d told him what had happened, not only would I not have been paid, but he’d have dispatched another thief-taker, and likely one with less compunction about taking a life.”

  “As well he should!”

  She held his gaze for a heartbeat before replying. “The thief was a young boy. Eight or nine, perhaps. Just a child, and as thin as a bundle of dry sticks. He was
so frightened when I drew my blade he lost control of his bladder. Before I’d barely said a word he pressed the trinket into my hands and begged me to return it. Tell me, Conall, what would you have done?”

  A flush came to the young noble’s cheeks. “Small thieves have a way of growing into bigger ones and worse,” he said after a pause. “But, to tell it true, I would likely have done as you did.”

  Raven turned back to the road. A shape had appeared on the horizon, which gradually grew in size until she saw it was a peasant pulling a hand-cart. “These are hard times, my lord.” She’d used the honorific pointedly, and saw Conall bridle. “People will do whatever it takes to survive, even if they find it distasteful.”

  “Are you talking about the thief, or yourself?”

  Raven didn’t respond. Conall’s observation had cut a little too close to the bone. The peasant was closer now, bent forward between the handles of his cart, straining to pull it along the uneven track.

  “What of the beasts, then,” the young noble continued. “The wolves, bear and bärgeists? Did you also send them on their way with a mild rebuke?” He thought a moment. “And what even is a bärgeist, come to that?”

  “Picture the biggest, angriest dog you can imagine,” she began.

  “All right.”

  “Now imagine it got fu-” she glanced at him and took in the wide, earnest eyes set in what above all was a young face. “I mean, imagine it mated with a bigger, angrier bear. Picture what their offspring would be like, if it was furious at both its parents. That’s a bärgeist.”

  He laughed, but his humour faded when he saw her grave expression. “You’re serious,” he said incredulously. “And you killed two of those beasts on your own?”

  “I had help.” A faraway look came to her eyes. “A hunter. One of the true hunters, from the Watch.” Why is it, she wondered, that of memories recalled to mind, those we wish to forget are the hardest to dispel? At that moment they were passing alongside a field of ripened wheat. She stared at it, likening the golden stalks to a mane of straw-blonde hair, when the sunlight caught it just right...