Sword of Fire

by Katharine Kerr

  Finally, when the hourglass on her lectern ran dry from the fifth turnover, she closed her books and stumbled off to bed in the sleeping room she shared with six other women. As senior students, each of them had a narrow cot of her own, rather than sharing a mattress as the first-year lasses did. Moving carefully in the dark, Alyssa took off her skirt and tunic, folded them on top of the carved chest that sat at the foot of her cot, then lay down in her underdress and fell straight asleep.

  She dreamed of Cradoc, not the skeletal person she’d seen at the end, but as he’d looked in the prime of life, tall and slender, with a mane of silvery hair that he wore combed straight back from his high forehead. They stood together in a landscape of mist and old stone walls, the collegium, perhaps, when the winter fogs rolled thick over Aberwyn.

  “Mourn me,” Cradoc said, “but don’t wallow in grief. You have work to be done. You were my best student, and the work will be yours to do.”

  “Am I truly worthy?” Alyssa said. “I wish you were still here with us.”

  “So do I.” He smiled with a wry twist of his mouth. “I deem you worthy. Take risks, Alyssa, but judge them carefully. Don’t throw yourself away by starving like I did. You have a wyrd to fulfill.”

  “What is that wyrd?”

  “Now that I can’t tell you. No one can know another man’s wyrd, nor a woman’s either. Farewell.” He took a step away into the mist, then turned back. “Oh, and do remember to breathe deeply and evenly while you speak.”

  Overhead a raven cried out. She saw three of the carrion birds circling in the misty sky. When she looked for Cradoc, he’d disappeared, but another glance skyward showed her four ravens where three had been before.

  Alyssa sat up in bed, awake and shivering in the morning light streaming through the windows near her bed. Had he come from the Otherlands one last time to speak with her? That bit of advice about breathing—it was so like him! She sometimes did run out of breath when she reached the peroration of a speech. She shivered again, but not from cold.

  CHAPTER 2

  SILVER DAGGERS OCCUPIED AN odd position in Deverry. They were all proven fighters who’d made one bad mistake, either broken a law or incurred some sort of dishonor that had gotten them kicked out of a warband or exiled by their kinfolk. Although they were outright mercenary soldiers, they had more honor than most men of that sort and a name to protect as well. To become a silver dagger, a man had to find a member of the band, ride with him a while, and prove himself. Only then could they visit one of the rare silversmiths that knew the secrets to forging the alloy in the silver dagger itself. Thus merchants and lords alike trusted them more than your ordinary hired guard. Even so, they had a cold welcome everywhere they went in the kingdom.

  Cavan of Lughcarn had found shelter of a sort down near the main harbor. He and his horse shared a smelly shed at the back of the sagging building that housed the tavern, the innkeep, his thin shrew of a wife, and their one servant, a potman of advanced age who moved more slowly than anyone Cavan had ever seen. Just crossing the round room to fetch a tankard of ale took him enough time for a man to die of thirst, as customers often remarked. It was, however, one of the few places in Aberwyn that would take a silver dagger’s coin. Blood money, most people called a mercenary’s hire.

  The tavernman himself, Iolan by name, was as fat as his wife was bony. Unlike wife and potman, he enjoyed talking with his customers while he swilled down his own ale. That morning, while Cavan ate a bowl of cold porridge, Iolan sat himself down on the bench opposite.

  “So you had some excitement last night, did you now? I heard the noise of it, and that was enough for me.”

  “Too much for me, almost,” Cavan said. “When the gwerbret’s riders charged into the crowd, I thought we were all done for.”

  Iolan sucked his few remaining teeth and nodded.

  “Tell me summat,” Cavan continued, “are the courts here as bad as all that? A cause worth dying for, I mean.”

  “Not to me, but there’s some like Cradoc, a good man he was, too, the voice of the people, just like they say a bard should be. The courts? Well, some are rotten, but not so much in Aberwyn. Abernaudd, now—the things you hear! But Aberwyn’s got its troubles, sure enough. A potter here in town, a man I know, some bastard-born servant of a lord cheated him out of a week’s work. Took the bowls away, never came back to pay. The lord refused to pay. The gwerbret told the lordling, you have the potter’s merchandise, so pay the man. But he never did come across with the coin. Nothing more Ladoic could do about it, either, without starting a war with his vassal. Potter had his day at the hearing. No way to make the noble-born pay after.” Iolan paused to spit into the straw on the floor beside him. “Noble as my fat arse.”

  “Sounds like it, truly.”

  “Other towns, from what I’ve heard, they wouldn’t even have let a poor man into the chamber of justice.” He spat again. “If you have the coin, you can buy off priest and lord both.”

  “And the bards have been speaking out about it?”

  “They have, for all the good it did that poor bastard last night.”

  Cavan scraped the last spoonful of oats out of his bowl, laid the spoon down, and got up. He swung himself clear of the bench.

  “Which way is the old harbor?”

  “Just follow the street outside downhill.”

  Cavan found his way to the marketplace just as the sun was reaching zenith. A rough square some hundred yards on a side, too small now to handle all the trade of the growing city, it lay close to Aberwyn’s Old Harbor, where the local fishing boats docked. Once that area had been a tribute to the power of new ideas. In the early 1300s, the fashion for square and rectangular houses and shops had arrived from Bardek. The last gwerbret of the Maelwaedd dynasty had given coin to lay the square out among the rows of the then brand-new buildings, which stood in solid rows like walls around the square. Two narrow alleys, one at the northwest corner, one opposite it at the southeast, gave access to the markets and to the houses themselves.

  By Cavan’s time, the dwellings had decayed a fair bit. The stonework had turned black from years of cooking fires. The wooden buildings drooped and leaned against one another thanks to the settling of the ground. In back of each row of buildings, privies and chicken coops had replaced the once-elegant gardens. When Cavan walked along, looking for the entrance, he even passed the occasional milk cow, tethered out at her hay behind a house. The pungent atmosphere thickened further when he came into the square and realized without having to look that at least half the market stalls sold fish.

  Still, he decided, a chance to see Alyssa again made the smell bearable. She was lovely, true, but also he’d never known a lass given to such clever ways of speaking. The combination intrigued him. The square was so crowded with marketers, servants, and town wives that he searched for some time before he spotted Alyssa standing on the south side of the square. She wore her flame-red surcoat over a plain linen tunic and a pair of brown skirts cut in an outmoded fashion, narrow around her slender hips, flaring at the knees to fall in folds at her ankles. She’d put her thick brown hair back in a silver clasp, her only real ornament. Her face was ornament enough, he decided, with her wide dark eyes and slender features.

  A half-dozen of her fellow women students stood with her. Around them stood young men with orange surcoats and, in the outer ring, men wearing woad blue. Since Lughcarn had a King’s Collegium of its own, Cavan knew that the blue surcoats ranged from the dark color of the first years to the honorably faded light blue of those about to finish their course of studies. Over one shoulder the noble-born among them had pinned scarves in the tartan of their clans. Most of their surcoats bunched at the hip over half-hidden swords. Things could become exciting fast, Cavan thought. He took a quick look around and saw four town marshals, conspicuous in their red and brown vests and striped breeches, standing in the entrance to the southeast alley. Th
ey carried quarterstaffs, and one had a horsewhip tucked into his belt as well. Cavan glanced over his shoulder, and sure enough, more marshals arrived to stand in the mouth of the northwest entrance.

  The men with the orange surcoats dragged over wooden crates from a nearby vegetable stand and stacked them into a rough platform. Two of the men in the blue helped Alyssa climb onto them. The patrons and stall owners paid little attention at first, but when her clear voice rang out, those nearest all turned to listen. Her voice carried a good distance over the buzz and hum of the busy market.

  “My fellow townsfolk!” Alyssa called out. “Spare me a moment to share my mourning! Three good men died yesterday under the hooves of the gwerbret’s horses, all because of a bard who starved at his gates.”

  She’d been well-trained, Cavan realized, and he was shocked to find a woman who’d been given a bardic education. Not even in Dun Deverry did you find such a thing! Noble-born women sometimes studied other subjects at the collegia there, but never public speaking. He made his way closer and fetched up next to a skinny fellow in a pair of striped breeches and a red and brown vest over a linen shirt. The man had his thumbs hooked into his belt and a sneer on his face.

  “Come to listen to the students?” Cavan said.

  “Students, hah!” the fellow said. “Bunch of whores, more like, paid to keep the lads out of trouble. What would females want with books and suchlike?”

  Cavan crossed his arms over his chest to keep his hands confined. His temper had gotten him into too much trouble already in his young life for him to want to indulge it again. Besides, he barely knew the young woman who spoke so eloquently. Why should he care about what some mangy dog of a stinking townsman thought of her?

  “You all know our cause,” Alyssa was saying, “justice in the law courts! What we want would be such a small concession for the gwerbret to make. After all, is he not a busy man with many a serious undertaking weighing down his mind, many a burden that he alone can lift? Why should he not delegate some of the mundane tasks to others, such as the judgments in Aberwyn’s law courts?”

  Here and there her listeners murmured a thoughtful agreement. Very clever of her, Cavan thought, to make the change seem to the gwerbret’s advantage.

  “And to us, it would mean so much, a chance at justice and fair dealing. The laws of the land would still hold. The priests of Bel would still be the true arbiters of what is law and what mere tradition. A small thing, truly, is what we ask, and yet Cradoc was willing to die for it! Where is the justice for the likes of us, if a great man dies in vain?”

  Most of the townsfolk were nodding in approval. A few called out, “That’s right, lass!”

  A pair of town marshals pried themselves off the guildhall wall and made their slow way toward the front of the crowd. Two of the noble-born students twitched their blue surcoats back and laid hands on their sword hilts. They stepped in front of the marshals and smiled.

  “I would mourn Cradoc ap Varyn with tears, but the tears of a woman come too easily to honor a great man.” Alyssa paused to take a deep breath. “A bard deserves the words of a true bard to mark his passing. I would remind you of the words of Gweran Henvardd, that the wild wind of wyrd blows where it wills, cold and bitter at times. A bitter wind has swept away not merely Cradoc, but Lord Grif of the Bear clan, Procyr of Abernaudd, and Scomyr the butcher’s son.”

  At the mention of Scomyr, a woman cried out in a high-pitched wail of grief. Cavan glanced around and saw a stout market-wife who’d thrown her apron over her face. Her shoulders shook with sobs. He found the news of Lord Grif’s death more interesting—oil poured on the fire of feud smoldering up in Northern Eldidd.

  “If there was no justice for Cradoc,” Alyssa continued, “if there was no justice for these three good men, what may we expect, should we need the courts for some redress?” She paused and peered into the crowd as if she looked each and every one of them full in the face. “What? Naught! That’s all, nothing at all!”

  This time voices in the crowd called out. “That’s the truth, she speaks true!” Almost everyone else murmured in agreement. The sneering fellow cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Ah, stop your tongue, you cackling hen! You’re naught yourself, you twopenny whore!”

  Cavan turned and without one thought swung straight for his face. His right fist collided with the fellow’s chin with a painful but satisfying blow. His left darted forward of its own accord and sank itself in the fellow’s stomach. With a grunt and a spew of vomit the heckler folded over himself and fell forward onto the cobbles.

  Yelling for order, the marshals rushed into the crowd, only to be met by a solid block of the blue-coated students. Townsfolk yelled, the crowd swirled, the marshals began swinging their long staves. Up on her pile of wooden crates Alyssa screamed for order, but no one listened. In all the confusion it took Cavan a moment to realize that he was the man the marshals were trying to reach.

  “Here!” a young voice shouted from behind him. “We’ve got to get you and Lyss out of here!”

  “Cursed right!” Cavan turned and saw a dark-haired lad who wore an orange surcoat but no sword.

  “The men from King’s will handle the marshals,” the lad went on. “Come on!”

  They forced their way through the rapidly thinning crowd. Behind them shouts broke out. Cavan glanced back to see the noble-born men from King’s surrounding the marshals, who could do nothing but swear and threaten with their staffs. Whacking some powerful lord’s son in the head would cost them dear in the long run. As the threat of trouble eased, the stall holders stayed to guard their merchandise. Some of the bolder shoppers paused their flight and stood looking back at the square, as if deciding whether or not to return. There’d be no riot after all.

  By the time her would-be rescuers reached her, Alyssa had already jumped down from her improvised rostrum. Men in orange surcoats surrounded her.

  “This is the fellow who felled the gwerbret’s spy,” the dark-haired lad said to her. “The marshals saw him do it.”

  Cavan’s stomach twisted. Gwerbret’s spy? He’d done it, all right, gotten himself into deep trouble without thinking twice.

  “We’ll hide you in Wmm’s,” the lad continued. “They won’t dare come into our hive.”

  Alyssa turned and gave Cavan a glowing smile. “You felled him good and proper,” she said. “My thanks! I do wish I’d gotten to finish my speech, though.”

  “And an excellent beginning it was,” Cavan said. “I wish I’d gotten to hear it all.”

  Cavan started to bow to her, but she reached up, laid her hands on either side of his face, and kissed him. The students around them whooped aloud and laughed. Cavan felt that kiss run through his body, as hot as a sword thrust. He would have taken another, but she stepped back into the safety of her knot of women friends.

  “There’s your hire, silver dagger,” the dark-haired lad said, grinning, “but ye gods, we’ve got to get out of here!”

  Cavan glanced over his shoulder and saw more marshals shoving their way into the square from the southeast alley.

  “They’ve blocked the cursed way out of the square,” Cavan said. “Where can we—”

  “Into the baker’s,” Alyssa said. “There’s a back way out between the ovens.”

  In the midst of a mob of students, Cavan followed Alyssa. She yelled orders, gathered her troops like a captain, and led them on the run to the downhill side of the marketplace. Farmers swore and grabbed hens and produce out of their way. Hogs squealed in excitement as they passed, dodging through the rough wooden stalls. Ahead lay a row of proper shops. Alyssa waved and pointed. Her troop poured into the doorway of a bakery.

  The smell of fresh bread perfumed the warm, moist air. To one side of the dimly lit room stood a long wooden table, piled with loaves. The young baker, draped in a flour-dusted apron over his shirt and breeches, looked so much like
Alyssa that Cavan knew he had to be close kin, a brother, most likely, from the way he spoke to her. She was common-born, he realized to his surprise. Somehow he’d thought that a women of her sharp wits must come from a noble clan.

  “You’ve done it this time!” the baker snapped. “Don’t you ever learn?”

  “Oh, hold your tongue, Alwen! We’re just passing through.”

  “Very well, but hurry! I don’t want the wretched marshals in here!”

  She laughed, blew him a kiss, and led the way round the table to an open door. The door led to a short stairway, which in turn led to a huge room, as hot as a blazing summer day. Four big brick ovens stood like beehives on one side, while firewood lay piled up on the other. Between them stood a wooden door, guarded by a lad of perhaps ten years. He too looked much like Alyssa.

  “Arwy,” Alyssa snapped, “shut the door after us!”

  “I will.” He scrambled out of the way. “But Da’s going to be so mad. He told you last time—”

  “That was last time. This is different.”

  Alyssa lifted the bar and shoved the door open to sunlight and the over-ripe stink of Aberwyn’s fishing-boat harbor. The mob of students and one silver dagger rushed out into the sunlight. Cavan could see the stone towers of the Collegium rising over the alleyways and stone houses no more than half a mile away. Distantly from the market square he heard shouts of rage mixed with taunting laughter.