I flushed. I could tell him he did not need to know, the usual, gentle refusal. “Galen,” I said, “of the third regiment, born at Skeld.”
Dern nodded. “My father is Valder. He sails on Albatross,” he said, holding my gaze.
I looked away, up to the hills, confused. The heather made waves of purple between the rocks. Sheep dotted the lower hillsides, and a golden eagle soared far above them. “There are caves, up on the heights. We played in them as children. They’re not large. I think streams like this one made them. One or two of them still have a trickle of water running through them. They could hide a woman or two, and weapons.”
“Can you find them again?”
I shrugged. “Some of them, yes. The children will know better, the older ones. Lara will remember, or we can ask the shepherd apprentices. They shelter in them, sometimes, when it rains.”
“We could send the children there if we have is sufficient warning.”
“We could,” I said doubtfully. “But food cannot be stored in the caves. Wildcats take it, or the foxes.”
Dern grinned. “Not even a fox can take ship’s biscuit from inside a metal box, and there is a good supply of such on Skua. If there is water, as you remember, then we can equip the caves for survival, if not for comfort. No one,” he added ruefully, “would call ship’s biscuit comforting.”
I laughed. “We can look over the caves,” I said. “We’ll take Pel. He spends a good deal of time up there with Sarr, whose sister is apprenticed to Gille. The girls stay with the flocks, but the boys wander, playing soldier. Sarr and Pel will know the caves.”
“As I did, once,” said a voice from behind us. We turned to see Casyn approaching. “Good morning to you both,” he added. “I am going to shoe Siannon. Dern, is your horse in need of reshoeing?”
Dern considered. “Yes,” he said. “It’s been some weeks. My thanks, Casyn.”
Casyn nodded. “I heard you speaking of the caves,” he said. “If memory serves, there is one, quite large, where a stream runs across the back and into a pool of some size. I remember it as being big enough to live in, comfortably, but those are the memories of a child of six. If you can find it, it should be equipped with food, blankets, and a store of firewood. And weapons. It was a good thought, Lena. I had forgotten the caves.”
I flushed again. I found being praised in front of Dern by this man, once his teacher, now his superior officer, discomfiting. I felt Casyn’s eyes on my face, but he said nothing, turning instead to Dern. “Does Tasque stand easy to be shod?”
Dern nodded. “He’ll give you no trouble.” He paused. “Did you ever climb the waterfall, Casyn, up or down?”
Casyn looked surprised. “No,” he said. “I was too small. Oh, I clambered on the rocks and in the little pools on a hot day, but no more. I remember falling, once, on a slippery rock at the base and truly scaring myself. We thought, the little boys, I mean—” He glanced at me. “My pardon, Lena, if I trespass here. We thought it a ritual, a rite of womanhood, I suppose, because only the girls who were of an age to be apprenticed climbed down it. I did not know anyone ever climbed up it.”
I grinned. “The only rite it was, was one of defiance. When Cate fell and broke her arm, we carried her along the shore until we came to the shellfish pools and then told her mother she had slipped there.” I stopped, thinking of what Casyn had said. “I had never considered,” I said slowly, “that my mother, and her sisters and their mother before them, had climbed down that waterfall, too. It’s never spoken of. I’ve climbed up it, and Freya too, but no one else that I know.” Half to myself, I added, “I will have to ask Tali.”
“You are thinking of it as an escape route?” Casyn asked.
“Possibly,” Dern said. “But more as a way up to the top of the village, if needed.” Casyn cocked his head. “If the fight goes badly,” Dern continued, “there could be several reasons to have Lena’s cohort able to climb up the waterfall: to coordinate an attack from the heights, to send a messenger out from the village, to reach the caves if we use them. And an equal number of reasons to climb down: to reach their boats, to fire the Lestian ship, to kill.”
Casyn nodded. “Sound thinking,” he agreed. “But a last resort, I hope. We will talk tonight. Can you eat with us this evening, Lena?”
“Me?” I said.
Casyn laughed. “You are a cohort leader, and you have proven again this morning that you know more about this village than either Dern or myself. We need you there if we are to plan tactics. Bring Tice. You will both need to know the plans and the reasons behind them and be able to explain them to your cohort. Those plans, and your cohort, may be Tirvan’s saving.” His tone had become serious, with his last words. “And now I am going to heat the forge and shoe horses,” he said, cheerful again. He turned away, moving back toward the forge.
I looked at Dern. “We have forty cottages to look at and nearly as many outbuildings.”
“Do you know how many might have lofts or cellars?”
I shook my head. “No. Most cottages will have a cellar of some sort, if only to store root vegetables and apples. Both my mother’s cottage and Tali’s have cellars and lofts. But there is something else, too,”
He cocked his head.
“Some of the older cottages have tunnels between the house and the barn.”
“Tunnels,” Dern said, thoughtfully. “Yes, Serra had these, too. I can just remember one between my grandmother’s house and her barn. She showed me, once. The blackness and the cobwebs scared me.” He shook his head in wonder. “I had completely forgotten the tunnels. They were built because of the snows, many generations ago. Is that right?”
“So we were taught,” I said. “But they’re long unused and may have collapsed. I only remembered them in the night.” I had lain sleepless, thinking about Dern. “Perhaps we should start by speaking with Casse.”
“The snows,” Casse said. “I remember my mother speaking of them from her own mother’s memories. But yes, I think I remember where all the tunnels are.”
“What about the forge?” I asked.
“No. There is a cellar, of course, where ore and wood are stored, and the unwrought bars of metal, but the stable isn’t connected.”
“Thank you, Casse,” Dern said. “Tirvan is lucky to have you.”
She smiled. “You flatter as well as any young man ever did, but I am glad to be useful, and even gladder I still have my mind. Now, go to work. You should start with my loft and cellar.”
After we examined Casse’s home, we moved on to her neighbours. When women could not be found at home—the case more often than not—we investigated anyway. Our etiquette required knocking, and checking the garden and byre or stable for the owner before entering an apparently empty house during the day. Word of what we did would travel quickly.
After the first five houses, we stopped. All had lofts, and three of the five had cellars. None had tunnels. We stood looking at the village. Casse’s house, and the four nearest, lay on the northern, rockier side of the wide, curving bowl of flatter land where Tirvan had grown. The northern side of the valley rose more steeply to the headland and the deep valley of the waterfall. Large boulders embedded in the ground meant suitable building space for only a few houses, with small yards that ran upward to the edge of the cliff. Between these five, and Tali’s house below them, a ridge of reddish rock ran parallel to the shore. Above them, a deeply eroded gully blocked easy access to Tice’s cottage. “Perhaps,” Dern said, turning to look northward, “we could find a route up to the forge behind these houses, along the cliff edge. It might be safer than the waterfall.”
“It may look that way,” I said, “but it isn’t. The rock here is soft and the cliff edge dangerous. And we would have to bridge the gully, somehow.”
“It can’t be that soft.”
“It is. A foot or more of the cliff edge falls into the sea every year, either after heavy rain or after the winter. That’s why there are so few houses on this side
.”
He walked nearer the edge of the cliff. “See?” I said, following. I pointed out the cracks feathering the rock. “And look at the waterfall. It’s washed out all the softer rock, leaving only the big grey boulders, like the ones in the ground on this side.”
He nodded, turning back to look southward, to the far side of the valley where most of Tirvan’s houses stood. Here, the land sloped slowly up to the hillfields and the headland; the stream on this side of the village flowed gently down to meet the ocean behind Siane’s workshop and the docks. “Then we need to concentrate on that side.”
“I think so,” I said. “All the tunnels are over there, at the oldest houses.”
We crossed the central common of the village to where three more cottages stood in a loose cluster. I knocked at the first. From inside, a voice bid us enter. The door opened into a large, low-ceiling room, windowed on two sides. Cate sat at her loom. She turned on her stool, her pregnancy just beginning to show in the curve of her belly. “Lena,” she said, surprised. “Dern. How can I help you?”
“We’re planning defences,” I said. “Remind me, Cate, does this cottage have a loft?” She nodded. “Is there a cellar? Or a tunnel to the byre?”
“Why, yes,” she said. “There is a tunnel, but no real cellar, only a space dug out under the kitchen floor for vegetables in the winter. No one has used the tunnel in years and years.”
“May we see it?” Dern asked. Cate pushed her stool back, indicating we should follow. She walked through the kitchen, out into the lean-to at the back of the cottage. Firewood lined two walls in neat stacks, and a large vat held spun wool soaking in a dye bath.
“We’ll have to move the wool,” she said. Dern stepped forward and took one handle. I took the other, and we managed to move it without slopping. Behind where the vat had stood a door lay, flush to the floor at the bottom but angled up by stone walls to about my waist at the top, where it abutted the shed wall. Dern pulled its handle. Nothing happened. He tried again, and this time the hinges gave just a bit. A smell of dank and damp rose from behind the door.
“Try this on the hinges,” Cate said, taking a crock down from a shelf and handing it to me. I opened it. I knew from the distinctive smell that it was fleecefat, the natural oils that make the fleece of sheep repel water. I dipped my hand in, rubbing the hinges with the oily substance, doing my best to work the fat into the mechanism. Cate handed me a rag for my hands. Dern pulled at the door again, and this time it opened with a shriek of metal.
Stone steps angled downward into cobwebs and darkness. “We’ll need a lantern,” I said, and Cate disappeared into the kitchen. I looked at Dern. “Shouldn’t we see if the door in the byre isn’t blocked before we explore the tunnel?”
“A good idea,” he agreed. Cate returned with the lantern. “What about the other end?” Dern asked her. “Is the door blocked there, too?”
She shook her head. “No,” she said. “We store the turnips there, the ones we feed the goats in winter. So I know the steps and the first part of the tunnel are good. It’s empty, now, but the door opens easily.”
Dern held the lantern up as we descended the steps. We could just stand upright. In the lantern’s glow, I could see the beams and crossbars that supported the earth. White fungus grew on several of them, gleaming damply in the light. Roots curled downward between some of the beams, and cobwebs furred the walls. I shuddered.
“Come,” Dern said. When I hesitated, he reached out a hand.
“I’m all right,” I said. We moved forward, slowly, Dern holding the lantern up so we could inspect the beams. He took his secca from his boot to pry at a beam where the fungus grew in profusion. The tip penetrated the wood, breaking a chunk off.
“Rot,” Dern said.
A short distance further, one of the roof beams had collapsed, partially blocking the tunnel. Enough space remained in the gap between the fallen beam and the roof of the tunnel to allow a slim and agile person to pass.
Dern raised the lantern to light the space beyond the fall. “It looks clear,” he said. I eyed the gap.
“Do you want me to try to go through?”
“No,” he said. “We can investigate from the other side. If this is all that has collapsed, we should be able to shore it up and dig it out. The rotten beams will need to be replaced.”
I nodded. I waited for him to precede me with the lantern, but he didn’t move. Slowly he put the lantern on the floor, his eyes, wide and dark in the low light, never left mine. He took a step closer. “Lena,” he said, his voice deep. I swallowed. He put out a hand to touch my face, then pulled me to him. He kissed me, gently, tentatively, and then more deeply. I felt the response in my body, low and deep. I pulled away.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know if I can. I….” I hesitated. “I want to, Dern, but…not yet. I need to think.”
“Thinking hasn’t got much to do with this,” he said. He watched me for a moment. “I won’t stop asking, you know.”
“I know,” I said. “And I will tell you, yes or no, soon.”
He smiled. “I’ll try to be patient.” He picked up the lantern.
The other end of the tunnel proved to be cleaner and drier, probably due to its use as a turnip store. The fall that blocked the passage could be easily cleared. We climbed out, closing. Outside, we breathed fresh air gratefully.
Dern looked around. “This is the only house Casse thought had a tunnel, of this group?” he asked.
“Yes,” I answered. I measured the distance from this cluster of cottages to the next with my eyes. “Not a lot of use, if we’re trying to move any distance through the village.”
“True,” he agreed, “but potentially useful as a hiding place. Look,” he said, squatting in the swept earth of the yard. He sketched the harbour with his finger, placing small pebbles to represent the houses. I squatted beside him. “If I were commanding this raid, I would divide my men into four. One squadron I would send up the main path, one up the right side of the village, and one up the left.” He drew the routes in the dust.
“And the last group?”
“Would stay at the harbour to guard the boat.”
I looked at the sketch. “So these cottages could provide shelter for an attack on either the left group, or the centre.”
“Exactly. But an attack from archers, maybe swordswomen. One or two of your cohort can hide in this tunnel until need brings them out. If need brings them out,” he amended.
I studied the rough map. “Or,” I said, “we could fence the common, at least on the harbour side. That would force the left squadron over to the cliff edge. It’s rough going through those rocks, and with a bit of luck, the cliff will collapse and take a few with it.”
“Very good,” Dern said. He grinned. “And a knife or two in the back, thrown from the loft of Tali’s house, might encourage them to move closer to the cliff edge.” He straightened. “Those tactics we can repeat, from any of the lofts or tunnels throughout the village. But you also need to be able to move about the village, up and down, and maybe across, without being seen. We haven’t found those routes, yet.”
“The oldest houses are over there,” I said, indicating the southern cluster of houses. “They have more tunnels and less space among the houses.” We—Maya and Garth, Cate and the other boys and girls under seven—had played hide-and-seek among those houses and barns in the long summer evenings, with bats hunting insects around us and the first stars gleaming in the deepening blue of the sky. I thought I still remembered some of our hiding places and the spots where hedges could be wiggled through. Whether or not they would be useful remained to be seen. “Let’s start at the harbour.”
Investigating the oldest houses took most of the rest of the day. One or two of the tunnels needed digging out and shoring up, and several lofts needed knotted ropes to provide quick egress. When we finished in mid-afternoon, I poured water for Dern on the porch of my mother’s house. Chaff and cobwebs clung to our clothes an
d hair. I could hear Tali calling the guards with the sword cohort and the clang of metal as they struck and parried. The heat of the day had not yet begun to recede. I glanced at the man beside me, who drank deeply of the water.
“This evening,” I said on impulse, “do we have to talk of tactics?”
“What did you have in mind?” Dern asked, putting his empty mug down.
“Practice,” I said. “I think I can move from the docks to the forge without Casyn seeing me. At dusk.”
“Only unseen by Casyn? Not by me?”
“You know where the routes are.”
“True,” he agreed. “But perhaps you can prove too evasive for me, too.”
“Perhaps. Even better, if I can.”
“I think Casyn will agree to this,” he said. “I’ll leave a lantern at the forge. When you get there, light it. We’ll watch from the meeting hall, on the hillside.”
Just before moonrise, I crouched in Siane’s dockside workshop. I eased open the shutters that covered the storeroom’s window, slipping out into the shelter of the bushes. The shutters moved silently; we had greased them earlier. I wore dull green and grey and had darkened my face and hands with ashes. On my feet, I wore soft deerskin boots. From the hedge, I picked a careful route up the hill, keeping behind bushes and boulders, moving slowly. Haste here would be a mistake. I could move faster on the flatter ground of the village. I gained the first building: Kyan’s woodshop. The woodshop’s big doors, which were tall enough to allow long timbers to be passed up directly to the second floor, opened onto the village street. On the other side, a rough shed abutted the back of the workshop. This shed sheltered oddments and enclosed a privy, with doors at both ends as well as into the workshop. Regardless of the ventilation, it stank. I passed through the shed, holding my breath. The next building, a stable, lay about thirty feet away, and the cottage’s goats kept the space between close-cropped.
At the door, I paused, watching the shadows. A bat quartered the goat’s field, hunting insects, and then suddenly changed direction to disappear over the cottage roof. I dropped to my stomach to crawl across the space, moving a foot or two and then stopping, keeping my breathing steady and quiet. Goat droppings covered the area, and I could feel them squash beneath my weight. I thought wryly that I might cause less commotion in stable and byre if I smelt like goat and not human. At the stable, I pulled the door open just enough to slip inside. Three goats munching hay looked up at me in the dim light and then went back to their haybags. I edged my way to the corner of the stable to a trapdoor. As I bent to raise it, an animal jumped, snarling. I froze, my arm raised over my face in instinctive defence. The creature crouched and spat. I could hear mewling: the straw-filled corner beyond the trapdoor held a nest of kittens. I moved forward to open the trap. The tabby growled low in her throat but made no move toward me.
Empire's Legacy- The Complete Trilogy Page 10
