by Anthony Ryan
“Well?” he asked.
The swordsman continued to whisper his prayers for a moment longer, and then, gripping the sword in both hands, he let out a roar and charged. It was over in a heartbeat, as I knew it would be. Deckin was right; even I could tell this Ascarlian was no true swordsman. His grip was too tight and his balance poor. He charged with excessive speed, leaving himself no opportunity to dodge clear as Deckin nimbly danced clear of the blade, wrapped both arms around the northman’s neck and bore him to the ground. Deckin emitted a hard grunt as he jerked his arms and I heard the loud crack of the Ascarlian’s upper spine being wrenched apart.
Rising from the twitching body, Deckin turned to regard the other northerners. A few were weeping openly at the death of their countryman, but most were too stricken by terror to do more than stare. The golden-haired girl was the sole exception, watching the swordsman’s death throes with a face that betrayed only weary disappointment. When he lay still, she drew the long dagger from her belt and tossed it on to the ground. Looking to her companions, she spoke a soft word in Ascarlian and they quickly followed suit, axes and hatchets falling into an untidy heap at Deckin’s feet.
“I think we’ve covered enough miles for today,” he said, reaching down to take the sword from the dead northerner’s limp hand. It was different from the swords found in the duchies of Albermaine, the blade broader and the handle shorter, made to fit a one-handed grip.
“Gerthe,” he went on, “ask our visitors if they’d care to join us for supper. In the morning they can take their weapons and be on their way, their toll having been paid in blood.” He paused to squint at the blade’s edge as it caught the sun, grunting in appreciation before adding with a faint grin, “And steel.”
Come the evening, Deckin bade me join him for supper. Raith, Lorine and Gerthe were also present, as was the northern girl. I saw Todman prowling the shadows beyond the fire, the glow illuminating the stern frown of resentment he directed at me. In response, I raised a cup of ale in his direction while offering a smile of comradely warmth. This brought the expected reward of seeing his frown tighten into a snarl before he stalked off into the gloom. I also noted a less bulky form moving about among the flickering trees, hungry eyes catching a gleam from the firelight. While Todman’s baleful gaze had been fixed on me, Erchel’s interest was focused entirely on our golden-haired guest.
As he ate, Deckin directed a series of questions at the girl. His demeanour was that of an affable host towards a welcome visitor, but the girl was evidently too clever not to understand the truth of her circumstance. She maintained a downcast gaze for much of the meal, eyes rarely shifting from the fire, and then only to shoot a worried glance at her hosts. The other northerners were clustered together at the neighbouring fire, their position in the heart of the camp making any attempt to run off a pointless and dangerous enterprise.
“Berrine,” the girl said when Gerthe translated Deckin’s request for her name. Her answers were short and stripped of inflection, from either fear of causing offence or a desire to avoid giving too much away.
“Berrine,” Deckin repeated. “A name with a pleasing sound. What does it mean?”
“Daughter of the Sea,” Gerthe supplied. “It’s a common thing for Ascarlians to make everything about the sea. Seems like all their songs and stories make mention of it in some way—”
“Just her own words, thank you, Gerthe,” Lorine cut in. She smiled kindly as Gerthe faltered to silence. “I think we would all like to know the very interesting tale of how she and her friends came to be here.”
I saw the Ascarlian girl’s mouth tighten at this, just a fractional movement that all others present missed, but it told me something of singular value. I kept a close watch on her face as she listened to Gerthe relate Lorine’s request. The girl’s response was as clipped as her previous answers. However, I detected a sour undercurrent that, later in life, I would recognise as youthful idealism confronted by experience.
“She’s from the Aldvir Geld, the southernmost province of the lands ruled by the Sister Queens of Ascarlia,” Gerthe translated as Berrine spoke. “She and her friends belong to something called the Skard-ryken.” Gerthe’s brow creased in confusion at the next few sentences. “Not sure what exactly it is, but skard means axe and ryke is something like a Supplicant or priest.”
She hid it well, but Berrine’s mouth formed a very small, contemptuous curve in response to this translation. Once again, I opted not to share what it told me.
“Fanatics,” Deckin concluded. “Warriors sworn to the Altvar, the Ascarlian gods.”
“I think so,” Gerthe said, the confusion on her brow fading as Berrine continued. “Months ago, a man came from across the sea, a messenger from one who called himself the True King of the Southlands.”
“The Pretender,” Lorine surmised. “So, he’s been seeking an alliance with the Sister Queens.”
“She says the queens wouldn’t receive him,” Gerthe related a moment later. “But he was permitted to speak to any who would listen. He promised great things to warriors of stout heart who would come and fight the hated southerners. And not just gold: land in the Fjord Geld which would be returned to the Sister Queens when the Pretender gained the throne.”
Deckin let out a faint snort of derision. “Her and all these other whelps believed this dung, did they?”
“She says regaining the Fjord Geld is a sacred trust of the Skard-ryken. That’s what they fought for. They had no interest in gold.”
“Which is a shame,” Deckin said, favouring Berrine with a sympathetic smile. “Because they’ll need some if they’re going to buy passage home. I want to know about the battle. How badly did the Pretender lose?”
The Ascarlian’s face darkened in response to this question, anger plain in the answer she snapped out. “She says he lost perhaps two dozen men at most, of his own host that is,” Berrine explained. “The way she tells it, the Pretender got word of Crown Company’s approach and broke camp before they could attack. The Ascarlians held them off while most of the Pretender’s mob got away. She and these others are all that’s left. They’ve been running from the king’s host for days.”
I saw Deckin direct a brief but smug glance at Lorine before turning back to the northerner. “Can’t say I’m surprised. If that fool with the sword was any indication, these Skard-ryken can’t fight worth a fly-covered turd. Don’t tell her that,” he added in tired admonition when Berrine began to translate his words.
Deckin shifted his gaze from the girl to me, eyebrow raised. “So, Alwyn, is this fanatic devotee of false gods lying, or no?”
I was impressed by the way Berrine managed to endure the weight of my scrutiny while maintaining a confused quirk to her brows. I’m sure it convinced the others that she had no notion that my next words might mean her death. In recent months, Deckin had increasingly called upon my facility for detecting untruths, a gift stemming from what he termed my over-keen eyes and overly busy brain. There was nothing arcane in it, just an instinctive ability for perceiving falsity in the confluence of voice and facial expression. I wasn’t always right, which had unfortunate consequences for the unconvincingly truthful. But I was right more than I was wrong, at least I hope so.
It would probably have enhanced my standing a little if I’d shared all of what I’d had seen in Berrine’s face, but I didn’t. Instead, I turned to Deckin and shook my head. “If she’s lying, she’s very good at it.”
Deckin eyes slipped to Raith. The Caerith didn’t look at the girl, or betray any particular interest in what she’d said, instead staring into the fire while he fingered one of the charms on his necklace: a crow skull etched with some form of minuscule writing. Raising his eyes, he gave Deckin a very slight nod before resuming his contemplation of the fire. I saw Lorine shift in discomfort at this wordless exchange. I had divined before how she took a dim view of Deckin’s rarely mentioned but obvious reliance on Raith’s supposed insights. To be an outlaw is one thing, bu
t to be a heretic would invite the condemnation of the Covenant as well as the law. Such a weight of official disapproval was dangerous even for the Outlaw King.
“Thank her for her candour,” Deckin told Gerthe, inclining his head in a sign of dismissal. “Come the morn, she and the others are free to go on their way, as I said. Give her the names of the smuggler captains most likely to carry them home, but warn her the price will be high.”
Gerthe began to usher Berrine away from the fire, then paused as Deckin grunted out an order to wait. “This should fetch a decent enough price,” he said, hefting the sword he had taken from the slain Ascarlian. “Recompense for her honesty. Besides, I never had much use for swords.” He tossed the weapon to a startled Berrine, who caught it by the scabbard, almost dropping it before she clutched it to her breast.
Deckin fell to silence as Gerthe and Berrine departed, apparently ignorant of the weight of Lorine’s gaze. Risking a closer look, I saw worry mixed with expectation on her face, emotions she chose not to hide. It was clear to me that something of importance had happened tonight. Berrine’s tale had confirmed Deckin’s assumptions regarding the Pretender’s War being far from over, meaning the course he had set us upon would not be changed. None of which, I felt sure, was at all to Lorine’s liking.
“With the Pretender still abroad,” she ventured when Deckin’s silence grew long, “the country around Ambriside will be thick with patrols.”
“There’ll be some soldiers about,” Deckin conceded, his tone distracted. “But I’d guess most of Althus’s horse will be off chasing after the Pretender, wherever he’s gone. He won’t march his foot away until he’s tried the duke. Don’t fret, love.” His voice took on a slight edge as he said this, eyes flicking to Lorine in clear instruction.
“Tell all to rest well,” he said, rising to cast a brief glance around the fire. “We’ll be pushing hard tomorrow, making for Castle Ambris, if you hadn’t already guessed it.”
Turning, he walked off into the gloom. I found it noteworthy that Lorine made no effort to follow him. Instead, she fixed a hard, accusing eye on Raith. “If those trinkets of yours are so powerful,” she said, “how is it they haven’t warned him against this path?”
The Caerith continued to afford his full attention to the dancing flames, still fingering the etched crow skull. “Some paths have to be walked,” he replied, his musical tones now possessed of a dreamy quality that made me wonder if he had partaken of his pipe earlier in the evening. “Regardless of all warnings.”
Lorine’s lips curled as she let out a disdainful snort. “Known a few like you in my time. Trinket pedlars and charm weavers taking coin from honest folk in return for telling them lies they want to hear. It’s all just shit.”
“I take no coin, except my due as a member of this band,” Raith replied, tone still placid, although he finally consented to return her stare. “And where, pray tell, are the honest folk here?”
Lorine gathered her cloak and rose from the fire, unconcealed dislike writ large on her face. “Oh, fuck a tree, you heretic arsehole,” she told the Caerith before turning her glare upon me. “You heard Deckin. Get some sleep.”
I watched her storm off into the night, pointedly heading in the opposite direction to Deckin. Discord between them made me uneasy, it being so rare.
“Paths to walk, fates to meet.”
I turned back to Raith, finding he had resumed his contemplation of the fire. However, instead of the crow skull, he now held his necklace bunched tight in his fist. His face betrayed only the same serene placidity even though I could see a trickle of blood welling between his fingers, the fist shuddering.
I found the sight fascinating but also too off-putting to endure. Edging back, I slipped into the shadow, thinking it best not to offer a parting word.
Berrine regarded me with unabashed suspicion as I bedded down, choosing the hollow of an ancient oak trunk only a few feet from where she and the other Ascarlians huddled together.
“A fine and dry night,” I offered as I unrolled the stitched-together, fur-filled blankets that formed my bedroll. “Something to be thankful for, at least.”
She gave no reply, watching me settle myself with an unaltered expression. Her companions, I suspect due to simple exhaustion, were all asleep, some snoring which was a strange sound among our company. Outlaws who snore rarely last long in the forest and the body’s instinct for survival tends to quell the impulse.
Resting my back against the oak, I passed time repeatedly tossing a stone into the air. I had gathered it upon leaving Raith’s side, a small flat boulder with suitably sharp edges. Berrine’s gaze narrowed as it tracked the stone’s rise and fall. She continued to sit, the sword resting on her shoulder and arms wrapped around the scabbard. Although she must have been tired, her eyes remained steady and her head didn’t loll. I suspected that, if she were to sleep, she wouldn’t snore.
I stopped my stone flipping as the surrounding fires dwindled to smoking embers in the dark. Soon the forest adopted its nightly song of creaking branches, wind-twisted leaves and the occasional skitter and scratch of unseen creatures. It required an experienced ear to detect the one sound out of place: a faint scraping of the earth punctuated by the muted snap of fern stems. Luckily, my ear was very practised.
I waited until I caught the sway of a sapling a few paces to my right. It was a marginal movement, but against the breeze. Whipping my arm out, I cast the stone, hearing the thwack of it finding flesh followed by a harsh exclamation and a brief, quickly swallowed outburst of profanity.
“Piss off, Erchel,” I said, voice hard and flat. I drew my knife as I spoke, knowing he would see the gleam of the blade despite the meagre moonlight.
This was the most dangerous moment, the interval during which Erchel’s base urges vied with his instinct for self-preservation. He could draw his own blade and rush me, but the resultant ruckus would surely wake the camp, not to mention arouse Deckin’s ire. Also, if it came to knife work, it was a toss of a coin who would win.
The mingled groan and grunt of vexation from the shadows told me that, for tonight at least, Erchel’s better judgement had prevailed. A short pause then I saw his wiry shadow flitting through the trees. I wondered if his aversion to nursing grudges would hold come the morn, given the prize I had denied him. For Erchel, the despoilment of a maiden like Berrine was a thing to be cherished and enjoyed, although I doubted she would have proven an easy victim.
“He won’t be back,” I told her.
Berrine’s face, quarter-lit by the fractured moonlight penetrating the forest canopy, was noticeably more fearful now. When she failed to reply, I shrugged and lay down on my bedroll, pulling up a blanket to cover myself. I knew sleep would come quickly despite the excitements of the day, for outlaws soon learn to grab what rest they can.
The first tendrils of slumber had begun to creep across my mind when Berrine spoke, her words a whisper of precise if accented Albermainish. “What did he want?”
Sighing, I raised myself up, finding she had edged a little closer, still holding tight to the sword. “What do you think he wanted?” I asked.
She darted a glanced into the surrounding shadows, quelling a shudder that told me sleep would be long in coming for her this night. “My thanks,” she breathed. “But if you’re expecting payment…” She fell silent at my soft laugh and the fear lingering on her face caused my mirth to fade.
“I’ll take some more information as payment,” I said. “If you’re offering. You speak Albermainish with more fluency than Ascarlian and your accent is of the Fjord Geld. You’re not really one of them, are you?”
“Ascarlian blood runs in my veins,” she said, fierce insistence adding a hiss to her voice. “As it does in all true Fjord Gelders, regardless of the southern kings we are forced to bow to.” Her voice caught and faltered for a second. When she spoke again it was with a practised cadence, as if reciting scripture. “There are those who hold to the old ways, before our Geld was s
tolen, before our weakness dishonoured us in the eyes of the Altvar and our blood became corrupted by southern ways and misbegotten faiths.”
I noticed how her hands clutched the sword as she spoke, as if trying to draw conviction from the steel beneath the scabbard. I knew then that this was a soul as wedded to her faith as Hostler was to his, albeit shaken by dire events.
“Your friend,” I said, nodding at the sword, “the one who wielded that. He wanted to die, didn’t he?”
She lowered her face and I heard the working of her throat as she swallowed her sorrow. “Skeinweld,” she murmured. “He had the heart of a true Ascarlian warrior, but the skills of a wool merchant. It was his father’s trade, you see, on the coast of the Aldvir Geld where things are more settled than elsewhere in Ascarlia. Yet, there it was that the Skard-ryken were born, among the young but true sons and daughters of Ascarlia. It was to the Aldvir Geld I fled when I could no longer stomach my family’s adherence to your death-worshipping faith. There I met Skeinweld and found my true calling with the Skard-ryken. There we heard the words of the True King’s emissary.”
She paused to let out a bitter sigh. “We thought our time had come. We would fight his war and win freedom for the Geld, but war is not what the sagas would have you believe. War is a life of hardship lived among wretches of the worst habits. War is deceit, and murder.”
I didn’t prompt her, having keen ears and eyes for those who have more to say. There are things folk will voice to strangers they would never confess to friends or family, for a stranger’s judgement matters little.
“This,” she said, smoothing a hand over the scabbard, “was Skeinweld’s grandfather’s sword, once wielded in war against the southern army. He died with this in hand, thus winning his place among the mighty lords and ladies of the Endless Halls. Skeinweld wanted to emulate his forebear, be the warrior he had heard so many stories about. But when the battle came…”
