A short walk east of the harbour was an inn called the Bellied Sail, a dour flint building perched just off the coastal path, hunkered down as if in anticipation of rain.
Garric pushed the door open and stepped into a flood of memories. This place was the closest thing to home he’d found, these past thirty years. The gloom and the familiar warmth of the fires comforted him. He breathed in the smell of old smoke and ale and roast beef from the kitchen. Low, heavy beams, notched by a hundred knives, had dented the heads of generations of drunkards. He walked the narrow way between the cramped wooden booths to the bar, and a feeling of welcome and warning stirred in his heart. The Bellied Sail had borne witness to some of his best times, and some of his worst. As much as he loved this inn, he feared it a little, too.
His eyes tightened, a fractional wince of shame as he remembered his hopeless years of drunken drifting, seeking death at the bottom of a bottle or anywhere else he could find it. Eight years ago, he’d washed up here with nothing left to live for, after two decades of failure had brought him to despair. Two decades of resistance against the Krodans, of plotting uprisings and fomenting discontent, of disruption and sabotage, assassination and blackmail. Two decades of doing terrible things in the name of freedom, and all of it worth naught in the end. His allies had died or given up the fight. His countrymen’s desire for revolt had diminished as they came to accept the new way of things. In the end, the disappointment had broken him.
It was a stranger who put him back together. In his darkest hour, he’d confessed the shame that lay at his core, told his true name to a man he’d met over a bottle of black rum. Keel took him in, invited him onto his boat and into his crew, showed him the fury of the sea. In pain and toil, Garric found new purpose, in the red-raw joy of rope-flayed hands and the icy slap of sea spray on his face. He witnessed the wild terror of nature, and was made puny by the waves and the slick humped backs of breaching monsters.
It took years, but as they rode the waves and slew the monsters, Garric had become himself again. Eventually, his spirit renewed, he turned his back on the sea and set about his task once more. When he left, Keel left with him, desperate to escape Wracken Bay and a life that was strangling him.
In such a way, they’d saved each other.
It was early yet and only a few patrons had taken their stations. Most of them drank alone, gazing out at the half-empty room with blearily placid expressions. Garric used to wonder what drunks thought about all day as they nursed their mugs of ale and spoke to no one. Then he became one, and he realised they weren’t thinking about anything, and that was the point.
Morvil the landlord was behind the bar, a scrawny, lanky man with a bulbous nose and a little pot belly. He was fascinatingly ugly, as if some clumsy deity had assembled him from the parts of various other men and none of them quite matched. Right now he was half-heartedly wiping the counter with a rag, perhaps because he knew the stains wouldn’t be shifted by anything short of burning the inn down.
He looked up as Garric approached. ‘Laine,’ he said, as if it had been only yesterday since he’d last seen him. Nothing was remarkable to Morvil; nothing excited him. He was a man without judgement or opinion. Keel had once joked that if he ever had an emotion, it would be swiftly followed by a massive stroke.
‘Morvil,’ Garric said, equally gruff. ‘Give me a mug of ale and a hot eel pie, and I’ll need paper and something to write with.’
‘Gonna be three decims for the paper and ink. Eight and three bits in all. Call it eight even.’
Garric took out a guilder, got two decims back, then headed to his favourite nook. After a time, Morvil brought over his drink and his meal, and a quill and ink and paper. He put them down and left without a word.
Garric ate slowly, washing it down with the hoppy brown ale of the Bitterbracks. When he was done, he ordered another pint and set himself to writing.
He’d learned his letters as a boy, but he was no scholar and had fallen out of practice since. It took concentration and care to set the words down, more so because he knew the recipient would notice every mistake. Mara was a scholar, and a pedant, too. He detailed exactly what he needed her to do, then read it over half a dozen times to ensure he hadn’t missed anything. This letter was too important to be misunderstood. When he was finally satisfied, he folded it up, wrote the address and called for some wax to fix the letter shut. He put no seal into it. He had no crest or mark he could claim as his own any more.
He handed the letter to Morvil with a coin. ‘First and fastest post you can.’
‘I’ll send a boy down to the town,’ Morvil grunted.
Garric sat back and finished his ale. Gradually he relaxed, tension leaking out of him. The endgame had been set in motion, then. He was committed, and he found great relief in that.
Once he’d fallen to despair; he wouldn’t do it twice. If the people of Ossia needed something to get them off their knees, as they had in the days of Jessa Wolf’s-Heart, then he’d give it to them.
Hold the course. That was all he had to do now. Hold the course, to the bloody end.
56
The day had grown late and the shadows in the woods were beginning to merge, but a merry fire burned in the camp. Orica’s covered cart stood on the edge of the clearing, busy with bright fabrics and trinkets; her horses were tethered nearby, cropping grass. The others sat around the fire, on blankets or fallen logs or, in Grub’s case, a large flat stone. The doe was suspended over the flames on a metal spit, filling the air with the delicious smell of cooking meat. They ate with their fingers from tin plates, accompanied by boiled potatoes from Orica’s supply, wild mushrooms Vika had gathered, and coarse bread. Aren devoured his food, leaving nothing. He’d been hungry for months before their feast at the Reaver’s Rest, and he no longer took meals for granted.
Cade chewed in silence across the fire from him, lost in an ecstatic daze. If hunger had been hard on Aren, it had been worse for Cade, who found eating a form of meditation. Aren hoped the meal would improve his mood a little. He’d been pouting ever since Aren and Fen returned with the kill, pretending there was nothing wrong when there obviously was.
Orica wiped her hands and took up her lute. It was a Sard instrument, with a long, thick neck and a bewildering array of tuning pegs for its thirteen strings. After a few runs up and down the fretboard to stretch her fingers, she strummed a sequence of chords that Aren had come to recognise.
‘What is that song?’ he asked. ‘I’ve heard you play it over and over. I feel I’ve known it all my life, but I can’t place it.’
Orica gave him one of her languid smiles. ‘I would be surprised if you could. It is a song of my own devising. One I’ve been working on all my life, I think; but only now am I beginning to hear it true.’
‘Will you play it for us?’
‘It is far from finished,’ she said. ‘But I will play you what I have.’
She began, and Aren was struck again by how familiar it sounded, how it recalled other melodies from his childhood without imitating them. He heard old Ossian folk tunes in there; stout, grave battle songs harking from the days of the Fall; even a touch of ‘The Mourner’s Elegy’, which he’d first heard as a child, sung by a woman as she hung out her washing. It rang with echoes of his ancestors, and hearing it stirred something in Aren’s breast, the same dangerous sense of pride he felt when he thought of the Ember Blade.
The others felt it, too. Vika straightened, and Ruck raised her head and sat up. Fen, who was whittling a short way back from the fire, stilled her knife and listened. Harod, poised stiffly by Orica’s side, closed his eyes in mute appreciation. Only Grub seemed unaffected. He sliced another piece of venison off the doe and set to it noisily, grease dribbling down his tattooed chin.
Then Orica began to sing, her husky voice rising into the quiet of the woods, and Aren felt himself swept away.
The king stood at his window in his castle on the shore.
His family were sleeping, his
foes were no more.
As he looked o’er the sea, he heard knuckles on the door.
’Twas his seer, white as a ghost.
‘Sire, please beware, for a storm does draw near
That will tear down your walls and take all you hold dear.’
But the king laughed and knew he had nothing to fear
And he turned his old eyes to the coast.
He said, ‘I see no clouds, and the waves are not high.
Your omens mislead you, your bones fall awry.’
But the seer said, ‘Sire, not all storms come from the sky.
There are depths to which you cannot see.’
She let the final chord fade away, and for a few heartbeats her audience sat in silence, expecting another verse. Then Grub thumped his chest and let out a thunderous belch, loud and sudden enough to startle a nearby fox from hiding. Harod gave him a glare of furious disapproval, but Grub didn’t notice, occupied as he was with stuffing more venison into the space vacated by the burp.
‘There is more,’ said Orica, ‘but it is not ready yet.’
‘I love it!’ said Cade. ‘Especially the diddly-daddly bit at the start.’
Aren winced on his behalf. Cade’s talent for musical critique was almost equal to his skill at flirting. ‘The tale feels familiar, somehow,’ he said.
Cade frowned a moment, then clicked his fingers. ‘King Cavil the Lionhand!’ When Aren looked at him in puzzlement, he explained. ‘Cavil was a king in the Age of Legends. His father usurped the throne from the Bastard Lord and Cavil went on to conquer half of Embria, driving out the urds and almost pushing the elaru back into the sea. If he hadn’t died, the urds probably would never have conquered us at all, and the First Empire would have looked a lot different. But he got a bit, er, full of himself in the end.’
‘Grub want to hear what happened!’ thundered the Skarl, who was a lot more interested in Cade’s story than Orica’s song.
‘His seer dreamed an army of the dead marching from the sea, made up of all the urds he’d slaughtered, and he warned the king to stay away from his castle on the coast,’ said Cade. ‘But Cavil did the opposite and went there straight away. He wanted to show everyone that he wasn’t afraid of ghosts, that the Lionhand was too mighty to pay heed to omens. Many of his followers went with him in support, the best of his army, his right-hand men and women. Not long after, the omens proved true. A great wave came from the sea and washed the castle away, and in the struggle for the throne that followed, the urds invaded and conquered us.’
Grub bellowed with laughter, spraying flecks of meat. ‘Ha! Stupid king not listen to omens! No wonder urds squashed you!’
‘Is that what it’s about?’ Aren asked Orica.
‘Perhaps,’ said Orica slyly. ‘And perhaps not. It is … it will be a lament for our land, a song for what was lost and what will be again.’
Aren opened his mouth to speak, decided against it, and was grateful when Cade said what he’d been thinking.
‘But you’re a Sard!’ Cade said. ‘I thought you … You know …’ He coloured and fell silent.
‘Yes, I am a Sard,’ she said. ‘One of the Landless, the Chosen Folk, forever exiles. But I am Ossian, too. I grew up in this land, ate the fruits of its soil, danced under the same skies as you. My people keep no histories, but there are more of us here than anywhere else, and that must mean something. We are all children of the wolf.’
‘Not Grub! Grub has bear blood, like all his people. Urds never conquered Skarl lands.’
‘Small wonder,’ said Cade. He was eager to take out his pique on someone, and Grub was a safe target. ‘Frozen wastes, howling winds and beasts with teeth as long as your arm. Who’d want it?’
‘Grub does! Grub will go back one day, when his body is covered in glorious deeds.’
‘No one’s stopping you,’ said Cade, glancing at Fen to see if she approved of his retort; but she was back to whittling and wasn’t listening.
Grub shook his head. ‘Not yet. Grub has much to do still. Escaping camp not enough. Outwitting dreadknights not enough. Even when Grub defeated Beast of Skavengard, it not enou—’
‘Hang on, you never defeated the Beast of—’
‘Grub must do deed so great his people stand in awe!’ he cried, thrusting one stubby finger into the air. ‘Only then can he return in triumph!’ He picked up the meat on his plate and muttered bitterly. ‘Grub show them.’
Aren wasn’t sure if Grub knew he’d spoken that thought aloud. He changed the subject before Cade could pounce. ‘Harod, back at the inn you said you’d visited several towns, and the Sards had been moved on from all of them.’
‘That’s so,’ said Harod, but didn’t elaborate.
‘That is why we came back to Ossia,’ said Orica, her mouth in a grim line. ‘I am searching for my family.’
‘What happened?’ Aren asked.
She gave him that look again, appraising him, judging whether he could be trusted. Though she always seemed relaxed, she was permanently on her guard. Aren was beginning to see why the Sards had a reputation for secrecy.
‘There were rumours in Harrow,’ she said. ‘Sard caravans disappearing. My people quietly moved out of settlements along the coast. We made for my home town, but we were too late. The Sards had gone, and no one knew where. It was the same in other towns. Asking questions was dangerous. Twice I would have been arrested, if not for Harod.’ She laid a hand on his forearm in gratitude.
‘It was no more than my duty,’ he said solemnly; but Aren saw a tiny flare of triumph in that impassive face.
‘Morgenholme has the largest concentration of Sards in Ossia,’ Orica said. ‘Not all of us wander. Some choose to live in cities, though it is not a life I would choose, penned like cattle as they are. The Krodans have been moving my people east, so it is likely they are heading to the capital. That is why we must go there, too.’
‘But why are the Krodans taking them there?’ Cade asked.
‘That is the question,’ said Orica darkly. ‘I believe they want to keep us all in one place, the better to control us. We have always been free, answering to no masters, and that unsettles them. Maybe they want to stop our wandering for good. We shall see.’
Aren felt a chill. It was hard not to see the parallels. The Krodans had confined his people, too, with permits and passes. Would the Ossians be moved on one day, to make space for more Krodans?
He rubbed the mark on his wrist with his thumb, as had become his habit. His promise to Eifann had been fulfilled, at least to his mind, but the mark remained. Would it fade, in time? He wasn’t sure he wanted it to, now. Standing up for Orica had been one of the proudest moments of his life.
You made another promise, too, he reminded himself. A promise to a pirate to complete one task for him, without condition, no matter how abhorrent he might find it. He wondered if Rapha would ever claim that debt, and what its nature would be. He doubted he would be quite so proud to fulfil it.
‘And how did a noble from Harrow become involved in all of this?’ asked Vika from across the fire. She was scratching Ruck’s neck. The wolfhound closed her eyes and flexed her claws in rapture.
Harod stiffened at the question. Aren suspected that the druidess discomfited him, with her painted face and unwashed hair, her motley of trinkets and hides. She wasn’t like the women of Harrow, who were said to be beautiful and cold, their behaviour and dress dictated by strict codes of etiquette.
‘I … was compelled,’ he said at length.
Orica favoured him with a smile. ‘He followed my song,’ she said fondly. ‘I played at his father’s house, and afterwards he swore himself to my service, and told me he would ever after be my guardian. He is my knight, and my dear, dear friend.’
Harod looked like he was about to choke with embarrassment, or joy, or both. Aren couldn’t help marvelling that two people with such opposite personalities had come to travel together.
‘Bowlhead followed a song?’ Grub splu
ttered. He cackled and rolled his eyes.
‘I wouldn’t expect you to understand.’ Harod sniffed. ‘The height of Skarl musical accomplishment is knocking a bone against your ancestors’ skulls.’
‘Ha! Grub think you need to pull that bone out of your arse. Hey, Grub got a song! Listen!’ He began to blare tunelessly:
Once there was man with no chin
He had a stupid haircut
He heard song and went ‘Duh-duh-duh.
Bowlhead better go that way!’
The Skarl chuckled at his own wit, ignoring the appalled stares of his companions, and clambered to his feet. ‘Ah, Grub done here. Grub going to take enormous brown dump in woods. You should come, Tonsils. They tell tales of this one for centuries!’
‘T-Tonsils?’ Harod squeaked in horrified disbelief.
‘That is a kind offer,’ said Orica to Grub, unfazed. ‘But if it is as you say, I would likely not survive being close enough to witness it.’
‘Your loss,’ Grub said with a shrug.
He waddled away from the fire, leaving Harod wobbling like a kettle on the boil with the effort of suppressing his indignance. Red splotches crept up his neck and one eye twitched furiously.
‘Sorry about him,’ said Aren. ‘He takes a bit of getting used to.’
‘Think I’ll go for a walk, too. Stretch my legs,’ said Cade. He watched Fen hopefully in case she wanted to go with him, but she showed no interest. Crestfallen, he threw a sullen glance Aren’s way and headed off into the gloom beyond the clearing.
Harod made his excuses and retreated to the covered wagon, where he could nurse his battered pride in private. Orica set to work on her song, trying new variations, stopping and starting again. Every so often, she put her lute aside and scribbled some marks on a roll of parchment. Aren knew it was musical notation, but the signs were a mystery to him. He’d seen Krodan sheet music on Nanny Alsa’s harpsichord, but he’d never been interested in learning and his father thought music a waste of time.
He roused himself, walked round the fire and settled next to Ruck and Vika. Ruck licked his hand and he stroked her back absently.
The Ember Blade Page 47
