Raven's Edge

by Alan Ratcliffe

  They went outside together, and after exchanging goodbyes Raven swung back up onto her horse, who was still noisily chewing. “You’ll get fat,” she chided, and was rewarded with a cursory flick of the ears.

  She took hold of the reins, but before she could move off Bronwen appeared at her side. “I figure I owe you more than a mug of bitter tea and a couple of carrots,” she said. “I remember what you said last night, about looking for one particular witch.” Her mouth twisted on the last word, as if she found it distasteful. “What is she like?”

  Raven shrugged and described the crone Conall seen. When she was finished, the brown-haired woman nodded. “Aye, I suspected as much. I think I know who you seek, though not where you might find her. Aggy. A proper beldame, if half the rumours I’ve heard are true. Gives the rest of us a bad name, she does. It wouldn’t surprise me if she was the one that kicked over this hornet’s nest to begin with.”

  “Have you no idea where she lives?”

  Bronwen shook her head. “I only know her by reputation. But I don’t think it’s far. You might ask at Firbank, that’s the next big town you come to on the main road, not the little shitsplat one you’ll come to first. It could be someone there knows the way. Is that any use to you?”

  She smiled. “I’d say we’re more than even.”

  “Glad to hear it,” said Bronwen, returning her smile in kind.

  With a final farewell, Raven left the brown-haired woman standing outside her storybook cottage, picking her way back through the bracken towards the road.

  * * *

  Raven found the main road with little difficulty and resumed the trek west. At first, it was a strange feeling, finding herself alone again after spending the previous day and night in constant company.

  She smiled wryly, thinking how odd it was that you so quickly adapted to a change of circumstances. Or is it more that you lie to yourself when you say you prefer to be on your own? piped up a sly, treacherous voice in her head. The smile abruptly vanished.

  It didn’t take long to reach the first village Bronwen had mentioned. Her description of it, while unflattering, was not unjust. A few mean huts sat cowering almost apologetically beside the side of the road, as if so acutely aware of their low station they lacked the audacity to direct it through their centre.

  Raven did not slow her pace. She had nothing to offer the inhabitants, and likewise they had nothing for her. A young girl of perhaps three or four years stood upon the grassy verge, barefoot and covered with mud to the knees. She watched Raven pass thoughtfully, one dirty finger diligently exploring every nook and cranny of a nostril. When their eyes met briefly, Raven nodded her head. The girl nodded in return, still carrying on with what was apparently her chosen activity for the day. One or two pale faces appeared at darkened windows and stared at her distrustfully, but that was all.

  She wondered whether any of the faces belonged to the one that, when the witch-hunters had arrived seeking information, had pointed them towards Bronwen’s hut. It was possible, even probable. She felt no anger towards them, as likely they’d been forced to speak at the point of a blade.

  Nevertheless, though Bronwen hadn’t divulged the name of the village, Raven felt no desire to learn it. And when she passed by and was once more surrounded by open, rolling countryside, it was with an almost unconscious sense of relief.

  Part II

  The Mire

  The ramshackle hamlet was a dozen miles or more behind her when the outlines of larger, stone-built houses appeared on the horizon. An hour later Raven was steering her horse along bustling streets and into a packed town square.

  “I guess this is Firbank,” she murmured. Meara’s ears swivelled back at the sound, but the animal passed no further comment. The difference between it and the meagre collection of tumbledown huts that preceded it could not be more stark. Raven had visited many towns the length and breadth of the Empire, but even an eye less experienced than hers could tell at a glance this one was thriving.

  Perhaps half a dozen market stalls lined the square, their owners proudly displaying a wide array of wares, from fruits and vegetables likely freshly harvested from surrounding farms, to racks of cured meats and mounds of thick furs and pelts. A large throng of people wandered between them, their voices blending together to form a persistent hum, above which rose the entreaties of the stall-holders.

  She was still gazing around when a young boy ran up, panting from exertion, and waved an arm to attract her attention. “Stable, miss?”

  She glanced down. “Pardon?”

  “For your horse, miss,” the boy explained patiently, as if talking to a simpleton. “Three coppers a day, an’ he gets hay, an’ oats, an’ I’ll brush him down meself.”

  “Her.”

  “What, miss?”

  “He’s a she,” she said, patting Meara’s neck. “It’s a poor stableboy that can’t tell a mare from a stallion.”

  He brushed his long fringe from his eyes and squinted up at her. “It’s my da what looks after the horses, I just clear up the shit,” he confided. “Girl or boy, the shit’s the same.”

  Raven laughed. “You know, I think that might just be the wisest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  The boy grinned, pleased but baffled. “Does that mean you’ll let me have her?”

  She looked the boy up and down. He was scruffy, his clothes grubby, but in the way of one who works hard at a dirty job. She could quite believe he was what he claimed to be. “This stable, where is it?”

  The boy pointed vaguely between a couple of buildings in the direction from which he’d run. “Just on the road out of town, you can’t miss it.”

  Raven shrugged, then climbed down from the saddle. As the boy took eager hold of her mount’s reins she deliberated whether to remove the saddlebags hanging over the beast’s rump. In the end, though, she decided that everything she owned of worth – her weapons and dispiritingly light coin-purse – already hung from her belt, and left it where it was. One less thing to carry, she thought. She dipped into the purse and drew out four light brown coins. “For tonight,” she said, pressing three of them into the boy’s outstretched palm. Then, offering him the last she added, “and this is to make sure you give her extra special care.”

  “Promise!” The boy snatched the coin from her fingers as if worried she’d change her mind, then hurriedly led her horse from the square. A sudden thought occurred to Raven, and she called out, “Is there an inn?”

  “Just over there miss,” he called back, pointing towards the far side of the square. She nodded her thanks, and watched Meara being led away. At least you won’t be the only one to eat well tonight, girl, she thought.

  In truth, she’d harboured little doubt that so prosperous a town would have a tavern or inn of some description, but even so she was pleased. An inn meant a bed for the night, a hot meal... and something even more important.

  Information.

  * * *

  While it was a time-honoured cliché that whenever a stranger entered a drinking establishment in an unfamiliar town all conversation would immediately cease and every hostile, bloodshot eye would be trained upon them, it nevertheless did have some basis in reality. Raven had been to taverns where it had happened, and generally those were the places where it was wise to never let your hand stray too far from the grip of your sword.

  The inn at Firbank, thankfully, was not one of those. At least at first.

  As she pushed open the door and stood framed by the late afternoon light, the muttered conversations of those within continued unabated. One or two patrons raised their heads momentarily, regarding the new arrival disinterestedly before resuming their chatter, but that was all.

  Not that there were many sat within to react to her presence. The main room was less than half-full, and most of those she saw were older men, their hair either grey, white or long departed. Every so often there came a faint clink from a corner, where two men sat hunched over a table engaged in some sort of ga
me involving oblong tiles. Doubtless it would fill up as evening approached and become rowdier as the ale flowed, but for the time being she appreciated the tranquil atmosphere.

  She approached the bar, behind which stood a heavyset, florid man polishing – if indeed that was the right word in the circumstances – a clay mug with the grimiest cloth she’d ever seen. “Help you, stranger?” he asked without looking up.

  Raven hesitated, perplexed. Whether it was through being a woman very obviously carrying weapons (one who, she realised now she was inside, smelled distressingly of unwashed horse) or because of the unusual shade of her hair, she was used to causing more of a stir upon entering somewhere new. The indifference with which she’d been greeted was an entirely new experience.

  But not an unpleasant one.

  “A room,” she said. “Have you one?”

  At her words, the innkeeper glanced up from his task. As his gaze fell upon her at last she recognised the expression she’d grown to know well. A slight widening of the eyes, eyebrows almost imperceptibly raised. The telltale signs of a mind scrambling to adjust to new information. It seemed he’d not been uninterested in her, merely oblivious. It was reassuring, in a way.

  “Aye... miss,” he said uncertainly, as if mentally running through the various reasons why a young woman might want to stay in such a place and drawing a blank. Suddenly, his eyes lit up in inspiration. “Ah, you’ll be here for the revels, then?”

  “Revels?”

  The innkeeper set the mug onto the bar-top and pointed past her with a calloused finger thicker than her thumb. “They’ve been setting up all day,” he said.

  She turned to look in the direction indicated, and saw a sheet of paper plastered on the wall beside the door, which had escaped her notice when she’d entered. It was a playbill, of the sort wandering troupes of players displayed in the villages they stopped at, trying to entice unsuspecting folk to pay to see their performance. There was a woodcut of a tumbler atop a stage, contorting his body into some improbable and probably anatomically impossible position. Below this were some lines of text she was unable to make out, but no doubt was a series of excitable and risible claims as to the extraordinary talents of the various acts.

  Raven sighed inwardly. During her travels she’d spent an inordinate amount of time in dismal, lifeless villages and townships and had occasionally, in moments of extreme boredom, ignored her better judgement and paid to see such follies. Each time they promised much and spectacularly failed to deliver even a whit of entertainment. The moth-eaten troupes of players who made their living touring the remotest provinces of the Empire were, without fail, comprised of drunks, idiots and charlatans, who were as likely to pick your pocket as they were to vomit on-stage mid-act and collapse in an inebriated stupor.

  The reason why this was the case was simple – those with any genuine talent were drawn inexorably to the big cities like moths to a flame, leaving the dregs to eke out a miserable existence on the road, never settling in one place for more than a night or two.

  Sounds like my life, she thought.

  She turned back to the innkeeper and shook her head. “I’d rather stick two daggers in my ears until they meet in the middle,” she said, with feeling.

  The heavyset man chuckled and resumed smudging the dirty cloth around the inside of the mug. “Well, I’d please you not to do it on my floor,” he said. “Blood’s hell to shift.”

  She smiled. “I’ll try to bear that in mind.”

  “There’s one room, if you want it,” he went on. “It ain’t much, but it’s clean and the roof keeps the rain off.” He thought a moment. “Most of the time, leastways.”

  “How much?”

  “Six coppers for the night, and for another one Ginny’ll put in another blanket to keep out the chill.”

  It was a fair price and Raven delved once again into her purse and laid half a dozen coins on the bar-top. Compared to the places she usually slept, it would be like the Imperial Palace in Ehrenburg, and if she got cold she could always lay her cloak on top of the coverlet. The innkeeper raised an eyebrow, then shrugged and stashed them in the pouch on the front of the apron around his waist. “Will that be all?” he asked briskly, his tone belying his disappointment.

  “There is one other matter,” she said. “I’m looking for someone.”

  “That right?”

  “Perhaps you know them. Or can point me to somebody who does.” She leaned forward and dropped her voice. “A wise woman. Name of Aggy.”

  The innkeeper looked up sharply. Then his eyes drifted down to the weapons at her belt, as if reassessing their purpose. “And what do you want with her?”

  “Just to talk.” She refrained from mentioning what would happen if she wasn’t satisfied with the answers she received. “I come on behalf of the duke. His son...”

  Her voice trailed off. If the innkeeper’s failure to extract another coin from Raven’s purse had caused his manner to become chilly, ice-cold air, like the hoarfrost the hunters spoke of that covered the frozen wastes to the far north all-year round, now seemed to radiate from him in waves. “I’ll thank you not to mention that wretch’s name round these parts, nor his title neither,” he said. Then he spat onto the floor, as if even indirectly mentioning the object of his scorn had left a bad taste in his mouth.

  “But isn’t he your liege lord?” Raven asked, bewildered.

  “Aye, some’d say so.” The innkeeper set down the mug once more, harder this time, placed his hands on the bar-top and leaned forward threateningly. “But those as do don’t darken my door more’n once.”

  He nodded his head back at a shield hanging on the wall behind him. With a sinking feeling Raven saw a crest she recognised; a black, ruined fort on a field of red and gold stripes. The sigil of Caer Lys.

  “These are Lord Hyland’s lands,” the innkeeper went on, confirming what Raven had already deduced. “And those as live here are loyal to none other.”

  She became aware that the ambient noise in the inn’s main room had ceased. She half-turned her head and saw a dozen pair of eyes watching her keenly, all other conversation ceased. Of course, she thought, cursing her own carelessness, they’re old now, but back then...

  She wondered how many of those watching her had marched north with Caderyn, and was suddenly glad for the reassuring weight of the sword at her hip. She turned back to the innkeeper, considering her next move. More carefully this time.

  She’d not yet been born when the great general Caderyn, then lord of Creag an Tuirc, had rebelled against the imperial yolk, yet even in the small village where she’d been brought up the old men still talked of it. In what had seemed the blink of an eye, but was doubtless the culmination of months – years – of secret machinations, Caderyn had brought all the clans and noble houses north of Strathearn under his banner and declared himself High King of the North.

  The emperor’s response had shocked everyone. He’d done... nothing. Emperor Frederick, known affectionately to his southern subjects (and mockingly by those of the north) as Fat Fredi, was as complacent as he was corpulent – and while his appetite for all vices known to man was legendary, he apparently had little for war. And so, incredibly, peace reigned over both kingdoms.

  It lasted almost a decade.

  There were numerous accounts of Fat Fredi’s death, and it was indicative of his hedonistic lifestyle that none could be considered too outlandish to be true. That he had choked to death on a partridge bone while sat at his banquet table. That, intending to win a bet he had dived into a tun of ale to prove that he could drink his way out, and had failed only because he’d done so head-first and become wedged. That during one of the emperor’s notorious orgies he had suffocated beneath a mound of naked courtesans and that, when his body was at last discovered the only thing larger and more prominent than the smile on his face was the royal privy member. Almost everyone you spoke to seemed to have heard a different tale.

  But whatever the circumstances of his d
eath, when at last his body was interred his only son, Maximilien, by then a man with sons of his own approaching adulthood, ascended to the Golden Throne of Ehrenburg.

  The two men could not have been more different. Maximilien was austere where his father had been decadent, aloof where Fredi had been a man of the people. Above all the newly crowned ruler was a hawk, a committed imperialist, who had chafed against his father’s inaction and upon his ascension wasted no time in seeking to reclaim the provinces that had been lost. Within six months of his coronation, what had begun with rebellion ten years before became full-scale civil war.

  At their monarch’s instigation the Imperial Legion mobilised and swarmed north, bolstered by levies from each of the southern lords. Alarmed by their strength and numbers, Caderyn and his subjects fled before them, looking to take shelter beyond the mountains. As they went, they torched the land behind them in an attempt to starve the encroaching army.

  Raven had been perhaps three or four years old at that time. Too young to have had any real understanding of what was happening. She had vague memories, though, of her father leaving home for a time, of being sent to stay with an aunt. Many of the men in their village had left as well, and her father had been one of those to return. Not all had. It was only years later she realised that, as a blacksmith, he’d probably not been called on to fight – instead using his skills to keep the soldiers’ arms and armour repaired.

  Nevertheless, even as a young child she’d noticed changes in him upon his return. Always a quiet man, his long silences suddenly seemed to stem less from a natural reticence as from grim reflection. It was a subtle difference, but young children can be surprisingly sensitive to the currents and eddies of their parents’ state of mind, even if they can’t put words to their feelings. All she knew was that in the quiet moments, often when the day’s work was done and the forge was dark and still, a heavy silence would descend on him. His eyes would take on a distant look, and he would remain like that for long moments stretching into minutes. I never spoke to him about it, she thought, and then it was too late.