Lorrie dumped the ashes in the barrel where they waited to be leached and the potash used for soap, and brought the bucket back to the house. Then she marched to the barn and gathered the peg-toothed rake for mucking out the bundles of flax and the tarp for carrying them to the drying field. She also tucked her sling and bag of stones into her waistband under her apron, then headed for the retting pond.
The packed earth of the farmyard was littered with things – a broken plough-handle, an old wheel, foraging chickens that scattered clucking from around her feet, bundles of kindling – but she walked among them without needing to consciously use her eyes. They were as familiar to her as all the smells – smokehouse, the outhouse, the manure-heap. Too familiar; right now it all seemed like a prison.
Lorrie could sense her mother watching from the house through the warped boards of the closed shutter and knew her mood. Annoyed; that was how Mother felt. These days she and her mother struck sparks as often as not.
But how can I help it? Lorrie asked herself. It’s always, ‘you’re almost a woman’ or, ‘you’re almost grown up’. Then they treat me more like a child than ever! Who wouldn’t lose their temper? And now, suddenly, no more hunting! Not even, no, especially not with Bram! That just isn’t right.
As she walked along the hedge-bordered path, brooding, Lorrie slowly became aware of her younger brother’s presence and sighed. This strong awareness of family was a gift inherited from her great-grandmother, who was secretly a witch, or so her mother said. She could always tell when her mother was thinking about her, or was nearby. But she was especially aware of her little brother, Rip. Right now Lorrie sensed he was as focused on her as an arrow speeding toward its target.
Wonderful, she thought, a wry twist to her mouth.
Her brother would be seven on the next Midsummer’s Day but he’d already discovered the benefits of blackmail and he was disturbingly adept at it. She supposed she could work on the flax until he got bored or disgusted by the smell and went away.
But if I start then I might as well finish, she thought. Once you got that smell on you only soap would take it off. And the stink could drive off rougher creatures than the birds and hares she was after.
Maybe even the robbers and murderers her mother was so frightened of. So it wouldn’t be worthwhile to go into the woods.
Rip was off to the right and a little ahead of her, uselessly creeping from bush to bush in the bit of scrubby pasture-cum-orchard to the right of the path. He knew she was aware of him. He could sense her just as clearly as she could sense him. Sometimes she thought he was better at it. Lorrie didn’t call out to him because she needed time to think of some way of getting rid of him.
At last the stand of currant bushes ended and he leapt out with a cry of, ‘HAH!’ His hands raised over his head and curved into claws.
Lorrie raised an eyebrow in his direction and marched on without comment.
After a short pause he skipped up beside her.
‘Can I come?’ he asked, bouncing up and down in excitement.
‘You want to help me clean flax?’ she asked dubiously.
Rip laughed and Lorrie frowned. He knew, he always knew when she was up to something.
‘It’s messy and smelly,’ she warned.
‘You’re going hunting!’ he accused, then covered his mouth to hide his grin.
‘What makes you think that?’
Rip rolled his eyes at her elaborately casual attitude, put his hands on his hips and gave her a look of such adult condescension that she had to smile. ‘You promised you’d teach me to hunt and track,’ he said. ‘You said you would.’
She nodded, feeling rather sad. ‘I know. And if I can talk Daddy around I still mean to.’ She stopped walking and looked at him. ‘I really do mean to, Rip. Honest.’
Looking down, he scuffed the earth with his bare foot. ‘I know,’ he muttered. ‘But if this is the last time you can go …’ He looked up at her from under his eyelashes. For an instant she realized what a beautiful boy he was, and he knew it. He had used those long lashes more than once to wheedle his way with his father and mother.
She gave him a small smile. ‘It’s up to Daddy.’ She shrugged. ‘If I took you today then we’d both get punished.’
He considered that, still scuffing his foot back and forth.
Lorrie watched him sympathetically. ‘When Bram gets back from his uncle’s in Land’s End I’ll ask him to take you. Hey,’ she gently punched his shoulder, ‘maybe that way I’ll be able to go, too.’
He rubbed his shoulder and smiled ruefully. ‘That’s all right,’ he said.
‘Then that’s what we’ll try to do,’ Lorrie said positively. ‘But it would be a bad idea today.’
Rip nodded wisely. ‘Yeah. You’re gonna get it.’ He thought about this, then added, ‘You’re really gonna get it.’ He looked at her, his expression somewhere between awe and doubt.
Lorrie saw the moment his mind turned to making the situation work for him by the slight change in his expression and headed him off. ‘If you tell on me I’ll tell Bram not to take you, ever. And you know he’ll listen to me.’
Rip’s brow furrowed and he gave her a considering look. Lorrie folded her arms and looked back, one eyebrow raised. He tried, unsuccessfully, to imitate that and gave up after a moment with a frustrated hiss.
‘All right,’ he muttered resentfully. ‘But if Mummy asks me where you are I won’t lie.’
‘Of course not,’ Lorrie said, picking up the rake and the tarp. ‘Tell her the truth, tell her that you don’t know where I am. Which you won’t.’ She grinned and ruffled her brother’s hair to his considerable annoyance. ‘You won’t be sorry, Rip. I promise.’
He snorted and after a moment turned and walked away. Lorrie smiled at his back and headed off toward the pond and, just coincidentally, the beckoning woods beyond, humming a dancing tune.
Rip was confused and a little angry. Why couldn’t Lorrie go hunting any more? And if she really couldn’t, then why couldn’t she wait to stop hunting until after she’d taught him everything she knew? And what was it that boys would want and make Lorrie give them? Her hunting knife? Rip craved Lorrie’s hunting knife. It had a deerhorn haft and a seven-inch steel blade that took an edge so sharp there was nothing in the world it couldn’t cut.
Some day it would probably be his, but not yet. If Lorrie was too old to do certain things then he was still ‘too young’. He glanced over his shoulder in the direction his sister had been walking. He hoped she’d be all right. Mummy had sounded like she really was worried about her. Even about Bram.
Why would she worry about Bram? Rip wondered. Bram was the best person ever. And he liked Lorrie, you could tell. Rip shook his head. Grown-ups worried about all manner of things that he didn’t understand. And asking questions just made things worse mostly.
With a sigh, Rip looked around. He’d done his morning chores so he was free to play until lunch time. I’m a warrior! he decided and galloped off on an imaginary horse to slay the invaders from the other world. He swept up a likely stick and waved it with a flourish.
‘Ah ha! Villains! Attack my castle will you?’
And the battle to save the Kingdom began.
Come to Lorrie, the girl thought.
The coney was young, plump, and even by rabbit standards not too bright. Right now it was hopping slowly through the undergrowth along the forest edge, which was emerald and colourful with the first spring growth, stopping to nibble at berries or shoots now and then. And it was about to find Rabbit Paradise – a stretch of wild blackberry canes.
Now!
The coney’s head was down and its ears forward, its full attention on what it was eating. The next generation would be more alert.
Lorrie had the sling ready, a rounded pebble in the cup, the inner thong gripped securely between thumb and forefinger, the outer pinned against her palm by the middle fingers. She came out of her crouch with a smooth steady motion, the sling beginnin
g to move as she came erect. Then it blurred as she whipped arms and shoulders and torso into the movement, one full circle around her head. The coney rose on its hind legs, eyes and ears swivelling to find the sound, herbs dropping from its still-working jaws.
Whupp!
The stone went out in a long sweet curve, travelling almost too fast to see as more than a grey streak. It caught the rabbit on the side of the head just as it began its leap, striking with a flat smack sound that always made her wince. Still, food was food, and the rabbit died before it had more than a moment of fear – she hated pig-slaughter time far more, because the pigs were smart enough to know what the preparations meant.
The long furred shape was kicking its last as she loped over.
‘Two or three pounds at least,’ she said happily, picking it up by its hind legs. Good eating. Rabbit stew with potatoes and herbs, grilled rabbit leg, minced meat pie with onions and carrots … The guts wouldn’t go to waste either: the dogs and pigs loved them, and the bones would be broken and thrown onto the compost heap.
A good day, she thought happily. Four pheasants and four fat little coneys. And since they wouldn’t keep, dinner would be like a harvest festival all week.
The sun was low on the horizon as she lay at her ease beneath a great oak, daydreaming. Bram would be home from Land’s End soon and she was imagining what it would be like when he came to see her. He might bring her a small gift, a hairpin, or some fine cloth for a shawl to wear at a dance. If he lacked the means for those tokens, he’d almost certainly bring her meadow flowers. He’d hand them to her with that charming smile of his and perhaps he’d kiss her. She felt her cheeks grow warm at the thought.
At fifteen Lorrie was more than ready to start thinking about who her husband would be and Bram was the best candidate in the neighbourhood. Handsome, skilled at everything a countryman needed to know, and heir to a good farm. He was hardworking, honest and sincere, but not without intelligence and humour, qualities the hard life of a farmer often beat out of a man even as young as Bram’s seventeen years. And she was sure he felt the same way about her. With a contented sigh, Lorrie remembered his handsome face, his golden hair and the special smile he’d given her when he’d come to say goodbye.
Bram’s mother, Allet, wanted him to concentrate his attentions on plump, spoiled Merrybet Glidden, whose father owned the grandest farm in the area, and who put on airs that she never had to turn her hand to honest work, what with three maids and a dozen farmhands. Lorrie smiled grimly; no doubt that stuck-up Merrybet would prefer it that way, too. Then she wrinkled her nose, and grinned, settling her shoulders deeper into the soft grass beneath her. Both Bram’s mother and Merrybet were going to be disappointed – Bram was going to be hers. She just knew it.
Lorrie sighed. It was time she headed back, even though it was earlier than she’d intended. The plan had been to stay out until just after dark. If this was to be her last time hunting alone, or ever, and she was going to catch some punishment anyway, Lorrie hadn’t felt obliged to be considerate. Let them worry, she’d told herself. She’d wanted to have as much time as possible in the cool, green solitude of the forest amongst the musty autumnal smell of mushrooms and fallen leaves – she was going to miss it so.
But guilt was calling her home. Lorrie hated the thought of worrying her mother, and her father. Daddy would patiently take the brunt of her mother’s worried temper until she turned up, listening to threats that became more dire with each passing minute. But then they’d argue about her punishment, each claiming the other was being too harsh, until they settled on something that was hardly a punishment at all. Lorrie smiled: they were so predictable.
As she stood up to go a strange feeling began to grow in her, flowing down her neck to curdle in her stomach. At first she thought it was her imagination, but then she felt a flash of something that shrilled like fear. Or even more than fear, but it was gone almost instantly. Lorrie was so far away from home that the feeling had to have come from Rip. It shook her so that she started back at a jog, trying to think of every possible thing that could cause such a spurt of terror in a six-year-old boy.
Now, as she grew closer to home, her worry increased, until she was running flat-out, her long slim legs flashing like a deer’s as she hurdled bushes and ran right through a sounder of half-wild swine grubbing for acorns.
She could sense Rip, but it was as though he was asleep, and with a stab of fear she suddenly realized that she couldn’t sense her mother at all. All her life there had been that contact, the warmth of her mother’s presence somewhere in a corner of her mind. Never had she felt an absence there, like the aching void left by a pulled tooth. The bag holding the string of coneys and pheasants banged against her leg, and then her lungs began to burn and her heart to hammer. She ignored it all.
Gradually she became aware that she was smelling smoke. What’s burning? she wondered. Lorrie stopped and tried to tell where the smoke was coming from. If this had been midwinter she’d have thought her father was burning off a field. But it was far too late in the year for that: the new seed was already in and any pile of weeds being burned wouldn’t put this much smoke in the air. Besides, it was too late in the day. Her mind jumped to the ashes she’d thrown out this morning. No, she thought. The barrel wasn’t big enough to throw up this much smoke and it was right next to the watertub by the eaves which captured soft rainwater from the roof for the leaching process, and you could dump it right in with the pull of a rope.
A new thrill of horror ran through her stomach as she thought: The house is on fire!
People died in fires – there was a bad one in the district every couple of years … ‘Mother! Father! Rip!’
Panic left her gasping. She threw down the game-bag and left the trail, vaulting over the snake-rail fence that separated the seven-acre field from the woods. The hay had been cut, stubble only calf-high, and she raced across it like the wind.
As she dodged around a huge and ancient oak, that her father had judged too much trouble to uproot – leaving it as a marker between fields, her foot caught on a gnarled root. Her arms windmilled for balance, but it was too late. The ground rose up and struck her as she landed full length with enough force to stun; she could taste blood in her mouth – iron and salt – where her teeth had grazed the inside of a cheek.
She lay panting for a moment and was about to rise and run again when she saw two strangers. Both male; they were a rough-looking pair and Lorrie dropped down again, frightened. The brown homespun and leather of her clothing would be hard to see against the earth and faded straw, and her hair was much the same colour. The late afternoon sun was throwing long shadows, and the landscape was now painted in bright edges around opaque darkness. In the shadow of the ancient oak she was invisible to the men. They would have had to have been looking straight at her as she ran down the hill to have seen her before the fall.
The men looked exactly like the kind of men who seemed to haunt her mother’s nightmares, with their greasy hair and filthy clothes and faces that bore witness to a life lived hard. They were young and strong, though; she could see the corded muscle in their necks and forearms.
They were standing over something on the ground that she couldn’t see from where she lay, and one drew a tool out of a stained burlap bag. It looked like the sort of long-handled pliers the blacksmith used, but with a broad front end.
One of the men worked the handles of the tool while the other bent over something on the ground. With a cry of disgust the man with the tool yanked and stepped back, something wet and floppy held in the grip of what looked like teeth.
Lorrie realized that it was blood and meat and her breath froze in horror. If they’d butchered a sheep, why tear it apart like this? Why not cut it up with the perfectly serviceable-looking knives they wore at their waists?
‘Makes me want to puke!’ the man with the pliers said. He dropped the torn meat into a sack and reached forward with the tool again. ‘Why do we have to do it this
way?’ He dropped another strip of meat into the sack.
‘We have to do it this way,’ the other said, rising, ‘because this is the way we’re being paid to do it.’ He gave a snaggle-toothed grin. ‘And if I’d known you was a girl, I could have got more use out of you.’
The other man spat close by his companion’s feet by way of comment, but not quite on them.
The second man studied what they’d been tearing at. ‘Do you think that’s enough?’ he asked.
‘It is for me,’ the one with the pliers answered, dropping the tool into the sack. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
They moved away as Lorrie watched. She waited until they’d vanished behind a hedge and she scuttled over to see what they’d been doing, staying low. Glancing nervously in all directions Lorrie caught sight of one of the strangers disappearing over the hill toward her home and froze. She held her breath until she was sure they were gone, then cautiously moved forward again until she stood over what they’d been tearing apart.
For a moment Lorrie couldn’t even breathe; was so shocked that all she knew was that this used to be a man. Suddenly something went snap behind her eyes, and she realized she knew him.
It was Emmet Congrove, the man of all work; she could tell by his clothes, and the thinning grey hair, and the wart on the back of his right hand, always inflamed where he picked at it.
He’d been with the family since just before Rip was born. How could they do that to him? How could anyone do such a thing?
Tearing her fascinated gaze from the terrible wounds on the body Lorrie turned aside, her hands covering her mouth. Falling to her knees she was instantly, helplessly sick; heaving and sobbing uncontrollably. Finally the nausea passed and Lorrie hugged her middle to ease the ache, spitting to clear her mouth.
A sudden stab of fear that was not her own sobered her. Rip! Lorrie leapt to her feet and ran toward home. Rip was in danger. But where is Mother? Why can’t I feel her? In her heart Lorrie feared the answer, and she refused to believe it.
The Complete Legends of the Riftwar Trilogy Page 79
