Peter Morwood - The Clan Wars 01

by Greylady

  Well, he had found the sorcerer at least, even though he had turned out to be she – and his unexpected personal involvement was making further discussion of the less creditable parts of the mission stick in his throat even worse than the bacon had done. Bayrd ar’Talvlyn could speak three languages, or four if the various older dialects of Alban spoken in this country were counted as something separate – but not one of all of them used ‘traitor’ in other than its pejorative sense. He finished choking on the bacon and his problems, and took a careful swallow of the strong black beer that Youenn Kloatr of Redmer had pressed on him. “The Overlord Albanak,” he began formally, and saw the usual small smile that the name prompted in a speaker of Old Alban, “required me to find a sorcerer…”

  “Yes. I was thinking it might be that. Or something like. Your Landmaster and his people alone are a thorn in Lord Gelert’s backside. So a way to poison the thorn makes sense.” She leaned forward and wrenched a leg off the roasted woodgrouse, then waved it at Bayrd like a truncheon of office. “Have you Albans no Talented ones among you? Are you too honourable for it? Or just too honourable to admit it?”

  Eskra sank her white teeth into the rich dark meat and stripped it from the bone in three or four neat bites. She chewed thoughtfully, swallowed, drank beer, and eyed Bayrd over the rim of the horn cup. “And what makes Albans so different? The rest of the world has its sorcerers. Why not you? Did you kill them all?”

  She tilted the cup and drained it, but when she lowered it again her eyes were still fixed on Bayrd’s face in one of those long looks that could mean half a dozen things, depending on how guilty he was feeling. “You now. You’re good at killing. I watched you. But you don’t like it.” Was that a commendation or a criticism? There was nothing in her tone to let him know one way or the other.

  It was a compliment.

  “The lord’s-men like it. They like it too much. And now they can’t stop. It would make them look weak if they did. So they kill their enemies. And each other. And the peasants who grow their food. All for glory. All to show how brave they are. So let them kill everyone. Let them eat glory and courage. And then let’s see how fat they get!”

  Eskra threw the cleaned bone into the fire; but Bayrd’s eyes were quick enough to see that it was burning with a hot white flame well before it hit the embers. He watched it sizzle for a few seconds, then looked up and said, “I don’t want a traitor.” I want you. “I want – that is, my lord wants… We need someone to help us. Gelert is—”

  “Using the Art Magic against you. Yes. I was told. And it isn’t working. Which is why they brought me here.”

  “Isn’t working?” Bayrd’s voice went shrill, and he laughed hollowly. He had been there, that first night. He had seen with his own eyes how it hadn’t worked on Goel ar’Diskan. “If it isn’t working, how did Gelert’s sorcery kill seventeen people the first time it was used? I saw one of them die. He was an old man, but some of the others—”

  “—Were children. Yes. I was told that too. And I also know that Gelert killed three of his wizards to do it. To miss every important target. I call that a poor exchange.”

  “Poor, is it?”

  “Yes. Their parents can replace the children in less than a year. But the wizards… Not so easy.”

  “That is the most ruthless—”

  “—Piece of good sense that you’ve heard for a while. Understand me. Gelert is losing this war. Not even the wizards can help him. And anyway he keeps killing them.” Bayrd stared at her. “Oh yes. Because of impatience. Demands for results. And then rage when results aren’t forthcoming. There are no wizards left in his service.” Then Eskra hesitated, and her thin lips curved in a mirthless smile. “Not quite true. There is one. If you can call it service. But young Kalarr’s safe enough.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the precocious brat is Gelert’s son.”

  “Precocious?” Bayrd frowned a little. “How old is he?”

  “Twelve years. No. Thirteen. Old enough at least – and skilled enough – to have earned his nickname. ‘Spellwreaker’. Except that he prefers the old form: cu Ruruc.”

  “And Gelert tolerates a wizard as his own son?” Eskra looked at Bayrd sharply, hearing at first only the meaning of what he said; but her look softened as her ears detected the faint wistfulness which underlay the words.

  “The child was a sorcerer first. Born with the Talent. And yes. He is tolerated. Or was. Now… Now he is feared.”

  “At thirteen years old?” said Bayrd, grinning slightly.

  “Save your amusement until after you meet him,” snapped Eskra. “Then laugh. If you can. He’s a red serpent, that one. He deserves to die.”

  “At thirteen years old?” Bayrd repeated, and this time he wasn’t smiling. Eskra met his stare without flinching, and nodded.

  “At birth,” she said. Then her eyes narrowed. “And give me no moralizing about the right to live and the right to die. One day Kalarr cu Ruruc will trouble this unhappy world. And you’ll know the truth of what I say, for the little good it’ll have done.”

  She looked away, and when she turned back it was as if the subject had never been discussed. “But that is the sole exception. No others will go anywhere near him. So you and your lord don’t need me as much as he does.” I do, thought Bayrd. But not as a wizard. “And he won’t have me. Not again. Not after…this attempt at a so-called alliance. Do you still want to listen? Or would you rather take refuge in your affectation of outrage. Your choice.”

  Her abruptness was the verbal equivalent of, if not quite a slap in the face – there had been too much of that already this morning – then certainly a good shaking, and it jolted him back to sense. There was the same chilly logic about it as he had heard a hundred times during tactical discussions before battle, even though in his case none of those battles had ever come to anything. He had never objected to it then, even though some of the opinions expressed by his fellow kailinin had been even more callous and unfeeling. It was just that…

  Reluctantly, Bayrd smiled. It was just that here was the second sorcerer he had ever – knowingly – spoken to in his life, and she was as different to the first as it was possible to be. Never mind that Eskra was a slight and definitely pretty woman, while Hospodar Skarpeya had been a huge and hearty man with a beard like a bramble bush, who gave an impression of being almost as broad as he was tall or at least of expanding to fill all the available space around him. But the way they each had addressed him was more disparate even than that. Eskra said no more than was absolutely necessary for her meaning to be clear, while Skarpeya had littered the landscape with words as though he was a tree in autumn and they were his leaves. Granted, one tended to be told much more than the simple answer to a question, which was something unlikely to happen where Eskra’s guarded speech was concerned, but there had been times during his single long conversation with Skarpeya when Bayrd had wished himself elsewhere.

  “Something amusing you? Good. It’s about time. So listen. And learn something. Your Landmaster sent you to find a sorcerer. You found a wizard instead. Me. Does the difference concern him?”

  “No,” said Bayrd. “Albanak-arluth didn’t know there was a difference at all, until…” He hesitated, and Eskra pounced on it at once.

  “Until? Until someone explained it to him. Until you did. Yes?”

  “Yes.” Bayrd said it reluctantly, not sure how much that simple agreement might sound like a confession to knowledge he wasn’t supposed to have. Confession or not, Eskra approved.

  “So there’s at least a trace of intelligence you don’t need to find out in the wilds.” So she noticed that as well, Bayrd thought. What else have I let slip? “And you? Did you want a wizard or a sorcerer? Does it matter?”

  “I said no.” There might have been something more defensive in his tone than he had intended, another piece for whatever she was constructing, because Eskra gave him a swift and rather knowing smile. “That is, if one can help us as well as th
e other, then it doesn’t really matter.” He gave her a long look full of wide-eyed innocence. “Does it?”

  “You might be surprised. Yes. You might indeed. The question’s moot anyway. You don’t have a sorcerer. A wizard will have to do.” She slapped the heavy leather satchel resting by her side, and grinned cheerfully. Bayrd had already noticed that since she had recovered the bag earlier on, she never let it further away than she could comfortably reach, moving it whenever she moved, treating it, in fact, as any honourable kailin might treat his swords and especially his tsepan dagger.

  “Your books?” he ventured, doing his best to keep the raw edge of curiosity out of his voice; but again, from the way that Eskra looked at him and raised her narrow eyebrows, that best was not quite good enough.

  “My books. Interested? And I thought Albans had no time for the Art Magic.”

  “They’re books, and I like books,” said Bayrd with dignity. “The subject doesn’t matter. And I’m not under my Overlord’s eye out here, so I can find time for whatever I please.”

  “Is that so?” Eskra grinned at him again, her eyes glittering, so that Bayrd felt certain that she had read all the subtexts of that simple statement and found entertainment in every one of them. “Then we might expand your awareness somewhat. But not now. I’d like to leave this place.”

  “Because of the haunting?”

  “Haunting? Stories! There’s no haunting here. And if there was, it wouldn’t disturb me. The dead are dead. It’s the living that are dangerous. And three of them got away. Remember?”

  “I’d hoped to frighten all of them away – but the ones who ran are probably still running.”

  “Running home. Benart’s hold at Tauren is about a long day’s ride away. At the rate they were going they’ll be there by nightfall. If they don’t run into a patrol first. Either way,” Eskra stretched luxuriously, reluctant to leave the warmth of the fire, “by noon tomorrow this place will be crawling with lord’s-men. Looking for me. And whoever did that piece of skilful butchery outside. So gather up your arrows. No sense in advertising you were here. Or who you are.”

  “So there’s nothing to the old tale after all?” Bayrd was disappointed. Youenn Kloatr had sounded so convincing that he was prepared for almost anything. He smiled inwardly. Prepared, at least, for everything except what had really happened. “No Lord Ared, no stolen child, no wizard—”

  “Ah. Now your presence makes some sense. As much as mine, anyway. How much more than nothing do you want there to be?”

  “I want to know, that’s all. We write down our history; we don’t turn it into tales for children.”

  “So everything in the Alban clan Archives is true.” Eskra covered her mouth with one hand, but her eyes twinkled at him. “Now that I’d like to see. I really would.” She cleared her throat, probably of any remaining tendency to laugh out loud. “And if you worry about children’s stories taking the edge off history, don’t. I’ve heard some so-called children’s tales that would scare any child I know out of sleeping for a year. But you really want to know about Ared and this fortress?” Bayrd nodded. “Then give me some more beer. Not much. We should go soon. But this won’t take long.”

  It didn’t. Even though Eskra’s speech was expanding a little from her usual staccato phrases, it didn’t take long at all. Ared had been a local lord, like Benart, or like Gerin ar’Diskan and all the other clan-lords Bayrd knew. He owed fealty and service for his lands to a provincial High Lord, one of Gelert’s or Yakez’s ancestors, but he was fortunate to marry into influence and wealth. Lady Elyan’s father was the High Lord’s chief henchman, rich, powerful, with influence at court and in hall. Ared was elevated in rank, granted more land, and given permission to build himself a fortress; all thanks to his father-in-law, who would not have tolerated his daughter living in anything less. They had a child – but that was when everything fell apart.

  Ared refused to acknowledge it, claiming his calculations proved – “Whatever that means,” said Eskra – that the child had been conceived during his absence at the High Lord’s citadel. He dismissed insistence that the baby was born prematurely as no more than an excuse to cover Elyan’s betrayal of his honour, and finally, in a fit of red rage, flung the infant to its death from the walls of Dunarat. Mad with grief and in blind terror of worse, Elyan jumped after it. Her father called down blood-feud, for the insult to his family as much as the murder, and after a battle and a short siege, watched as Lord Ared was flung from the same walls as his wife and child. After that the fortress was pulled down and Ared’s very name struck from the chronicles and abolished.

  Bayrd sat in silence for a long while after she had finished, staring at the dying fire and thinking his own thoughts. “I preferred the story,” he said at last. “It might not have been true, and it might not have had a happy ending, but at least it wasn’t as black as that.”

  “Believe what you like,” said Eskra, and there was less sharpness in her voice than usual. “That history might be no more true than the story. It might not have turned out that way at all. Or it might have been changed in someone’s favour. Not every Archivist is an Alban who writes only truth.”

  “Ha-ha,” said Bayrd sarcastically, but not very. At least he had found his wizard – and something more besides. All that remained was to deal with the convoluted bargaining and persuasion both cases were likely to involve. Then his teeth shut with an audible click and the expression which crossed his face – before he controlled it – was as clear as anything written down in an Archive. And probably more truthful as well. “Say that again…?”

  “I said: ‘Of course there is still the sword’.”

  “The sword is real? The sword from the story?”

  “Real enough. Your version has it made by a wizard. But wizards aren’t usually swordsmiths. I should know. My version has Ared stealing it from one of the old grave-mounds.”

  “Your version would.” Bayrd tried a small sneer that didn’t work properly. He was still too intrigued by what she had said, and also slanted towards optimistic belief by the empty scabbard hanging from his own weaponbelt. Besides, there were weapons and artefacts highly regarded by clan-lords of excellent repute – Gerin ar’Diskan was one – whose provenance would not bear too much close scrutiny. Clan ar’Talvlyn themselves had various small golden bits and pieces which, though they came from the distant past, were not quite the family legacy they were claimed to be. Scorn for others didn’t go very far in such circumstances.

  “High Lord Gelert of Prytenon—” even though the words weren’t shaped well for that sort of delivery, Eskra still contrived to spit most of them, “—knows your version better. We weren’t here just for the haunting. Though I think that was in his mind as well.” She waved one hand casually at the ruins surrounding them, the tumbled stones, the snow, and the desolation. “If he thinks that ghosts did this, made one hold abandoned, then they might do the same to the Albans. Their fortresses are plaguing his province. But I never did learn what he planned for the sword when we found it. Cutting his toenails, perhaps. Now let’s go.”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “I’d much prefer not to be here when Benart’s men come back.”

  “You said when, not if. About the sword. About finding it.”

  “Ah. The sword.” She gave him an indulgent smile that from anyone else would have set his teeth on edge. “You Albans and your weapons. After no more than half a year in this country you’re already…”

  “Lady, my own sword was broken. Saving your life, remember? So if there’s a replacement here, I mean to find it before we leave.”

  “There’s no magic in it.”

  “I don’t want magic, I don’t need magic – at least, not magic like that. But I want and I need a new sword, or even an old one, and Greylady will—”

  “Who?”

  “Greylady. It’s the sword’s name.”

  “No it isn’t.”

  “Yes it…” For just a moment they h
overed on the brink of a farcical argument, until Bayrd bit down on the usual response and changed it to, “Well, that’s what I heard,” instead.

  “You must mean Isileth.”

  Bayrd eyed her thoughtfully. “No I don’t,” he said, and there was the merest malicious hint of an invitation to mischief riding his choice of the words.

  “If it’s the sword from your story, then I’m sorry to correct you, but without any doubt, yes it is,” Eskra replied, taking refuge from the obvious in a longer sentence than she usually allowed past her lips. “The blade’s name is Isileth. Starsteel. Even the story got that part right. Think about it. Then tell me I’m wrong. If you dare.”

  Bayrd thought about it, and didn’t dare. The sword in the story, Greylady, had a name appropriate to high rank – or at least, aspersions that way. The historical name was more appropriate: Isil-aleth, ‘iron of Heaven’, ‘starsteel’. Most of the named-blades of any lineage were like that, simple titles, descriptions of origin or function rather than anything more grandiose. They needed nothing more. Serej ar’Diskan’s taiken Lethayr was just ‘noble-steel’, aleth-eir, and even the best known sword of all the old Alban legends, Erwan ar’Matan’s blade Kelet, the name that every child had given to their favourite weed-slashing stick at one time or another, was called nothing more imposing than ‘sharp-edge’. The legends lay in what was done by the sharp edge, the noble steel, and the men and women who wielded them, down all the long years from the forge.

  Bayrd puzzled briefly over the coincidence of the Landmaster of Alba, and some possibly-fictional character in a dubious and gloomy tale, sharing the same name for their sword; then he dismissed it as no more than another of those insertions made by a travelling storyman, adding something a little more up-to-date and authentic to his next telling of an unlikely yarn.