“No harm,” I said, making my voice fearful. “No harm at all. I am only passing through.”
“Going where?”
“To the coast, and to the Raske Hoys if I can find a fisherman to take me,” I said. “I am gathering songs.”
“A scáeli, then?” the man carrying the pelts asked. He shrugged the bundle off his shoulders. “A bit of music would help pass the evening.”
“Not a scáeli,” I said. “Not yet. I have not enough songs. That is why I hope to reach the Hoys; I am told there are different songs there.” I watched them, hoping I only looked nervous. They had relaxed as I spoke. The first man was unbuckling his pack.
“I don't care about new songs,” he said. “Old ones suit me. You sing for us, and we'll share some food. A bargain?”
“A bargain,” I agreed. I laid the squirrel on its spit over the fire, the branch resting on a pair of taller rocks, and began to tune the ladhar. The two men settled on the ground, leaning against rocks.
“I am Saaren,” I said. A common-enough name in the north, and close enough to mine.
“Engus,” the taller of the two offered.
“Janni,” the other said. “We are Harr Snetti’s men. You?”
“I was Harr Pietar’s,” I said, naming the owner of the lands that ran to the south of Gundarstorp. I was gambling on these two not knowing the north. “I fought for him in the war. When I was wounded, he left me behind.” I shrugged. “So now I am no one’s man, and I can sing, so I thought, be a scáeli. It is not a bad life.”
“I suppose,” Janni said. “You don't speak like one, though.”
“I can learn,” I muttered, as I thought a man who doubted his dream might do. I turned the squirrel over. Engus pulled some bannock from his pack.
“We'll share this. Janni, fill our waterskins.”
“Wait,” Janni said. He reached over to touch the fur that lined my cloak. “Where did you get this? No wandering would-be scáeli has a cloak like this.”
I swore, silently. “It was given to me,” I said, the first thing that came to mind.
“For singing? I don't think so. I know what my lord used to give wandering singers, and it wasn't a cloak like this.” Engus said. He stood over me. “Did you steal it?”
“No,” I protested, my mind desperately sorting through explanations. “No, honestly. It was given to me in Linrathe.”
“Then what did you do to earn it?” Engus asked. “Or can I guess? Good with your hands and mouth, are you, all that playing and singing? Is that it, pitëog?” He kicked my leg, none too gently.
“No!” I said. “I — I know a bit of medicine. For animals, not people. I made a poultice that cured a horse’s leg, that’s all. It was the lord’s favourite horse,” I added. Cold sweat beaded on my neck and under my arms.
“I don't believe it,” Janni growled. “Look at his kit, Engus. It’s all too good for what he claims to be.” I cursed my luck. Ruar’s steward had given me soldiers’ gear, but what was issued to the men of the Teannasach was far better than my clothes and pack should be.
“Except the instrument,” Engus said. He picked it up. I reached towards it, involuntarily. “Ha!” he cried. “So you really are a musician. You've been some southern lord’s channàdarra pet, haven't you? Did he grow tired of you? Or did his wife find out?” He kicked me again. I scrambled backwards, trying to stand. My hand went to my knife, taking it from its sheath on my belt. Janni knocked it out of my hand in a move too swift for me to counter. He kicked it away before punching me hard in the gut. Then he grabbed my arm, wrenching it behind me. I screamed.
I remember Engus smashing my ladhar, laughing as he did, and the first few blows. I remember trying to protect my hands, terrified they would break my fingers. They were strong and wiry and fast, fuelled by anger, and once Janni pulled me upright, my arms behind me and a hand tight across my throat, I could do nothing. I was going to die here. Jumbled images flashed behind my eyes: Druise. Gundarstorp. Cillian. Forgive me, I thought, through the pain, as darkness descended.
Chapter 48
Cold woke me, cold and pain. I was alive. For now. Shivering, I moved each limb. Nothing broken, as far as I could tell. I tried to sit up. That hurt, terribly, my gut and lower back and sides exploding. I lay down again and examined my torso with my hands. No blood. I hadn't been stabbed. I held my breath, and sat up again. It seemed more manageable this time.
I propped myself up until the throbbing in my abdomen eased, looking around. Daylight filtered through the mesh of evergreen branches. Above me, the ground sloped upward. They'd thrown or pushed me down the scarp to the west of the trail, leaving me to die.
A violent shiver ran through me. I must move, I thought. I need a fire. My pack might still be up there, or a few coals in the fire ring. My legs felt colder than the rest of me, my breeches clammy. I felt them: wet, and when I brought my hand near my face I could smell urine, the tang sharp in my nostrils. I'd pissed myself.
But, no. My crotch was dry. I gagged when I realized what they'd done. I fought down the impulse to retch: it hurt too much. I collapsed back onto the earth, tears seeping from my eyes. Sobbing took energy I didn't have. I can't get up there, I thought. Just go back to sleep. Dying of exposure is supposed to be kind. My mind drifted.
Sorley, get up, Druise’s voice said. You made Cillian live, but you don't have to? I jerked awake. “Druise?” I whispered, but I knew the voice hadn't been real. My fists clenched. Swearing, I pushed myself up again, moaning, and began to crawl.
I passed out at least once more, but much later I dragged myself over the lip of the scarp and onto the trail. I used the boulders to help me to my knees. Scattered around the campsite, my belongings had been smashed and fouled, and my cloak and what food I’d had was gone. Fire, I told myself. Make a fire.
I searched the campsite on my hands and knees, finding first my flint, and then, at the base of a tree, my steel. Deep in the fire ring a few coals held some warmth, and those and the sparks from my flint were enough to make dried needles catch, and then twigs. Finally I laid the pieces of my broken ladhar on top to make a decent blaze.
I shook with exhaustion and hunger and pain. The bones of the squirrel lay in the dirt. I rinsed them in the stream, filled my kettle to just below the split in its side, and threw them in. I set the kettle on the fire. A few mushrooms grew along a fallen log. I added those, hoping I recognized them correctly as edible.
The thin broth revived me a little, enough to give me strength to gather what of my things were worth keeping. My tent had been slashed, long rents making it useless except as a ground cloth. I spread it out as best I could. I had had one change of clothes: Janni or Engus had taken a knife to those, too, so I simply put the rags on over what I wore. Then I pulled the tatters of blanket over me, cushioned my head on the folded pack, and fell into a fitful sleep.
I woke to add wood to the fire, and to relieve myself, a burning stream of urine that made me gasp in pain, then slept again until morning. When I woke again, I felt better. Not well, but better. I could think. I sat up, the strips of blanket around my shoulders. My stomach spasmed with hunger. I needed to eat, but first I added twigs to the fire, blowing on it as best my ribs — cracked at the least, I thought — would allow.
Food. I couldn’t hunt; the pain in my ribs prohibited it. I looked at the stream, a memory stirring. Had I seen the silver flash of a fish last night? I followed the burn eastward, and found a pool worn into the rock of the hillside, and in that pool, fish.
I had the strings from the ladhar, and perhaps I could fashion a hook from thorns or a sharp piece of twig. But these were little fish. From a tangle of bushes, I picked a red berry, dropping it in the pool. Fish swarmed to it. I grabbed one, wincing at the pain even that quick motion caused. But I had a fish.
I realized I needed to scoop the fish out when they came to the berries, not try to catch individuals. A remarkably short time later, my left side throbbing, I had a meal. I gutted them, la
ying the bodies on the coals of the fire, flipping them over with a twig. The first two I swallowed half-cooked.
For the next two days I ate fish and berries and mushrooms, and even mice that came nosing around for what tiny bits I dropped. I slept a lot, my body demanding it, but on the third morning I woke with a strong sense that I needed to leave. If there had been one trapping party out here, there could be others.
I still hurt, but when I relieved myself my urine looked yellow, the red tinge of the last two days gone. Standing made the world swirl and spin. I sat down, hard, my ribs screaming: it was that or fall. I waited for the dizziness to pass, my head bent. After some minutes, I turned my neck gingerly, assessing the effect. Under ferns to my left, I saw the glint of metal.
I edged over, reaching out. My knife! They hadn’t bothered to search for it, I realized, thinking they were leaving me for dead. With a knife, I had a chance. I pulled myself to my feet. With difficulty, I cut a walking stick, whittling one end into a dull point to dig into the ground. Resting every few minutes, fighting light-headedness, it took me most of the morning to pack up.
I'd forced myself to smoke some of the fish I'd caught, not eat it, so I had a little food, and the low-growing blue berries that clambered over stumps and fallen trees were plentiful. I ate some, and a few fish, and then I lifted my pack onto my shoulders, gasping at the pain, and began, very slowly, to walk north.
I doubt I made it more than a mile or two that afternoon, before fatigue and pain made me stop. My sleep was broken, and my dreams fragmentary and frightening, engendering strange and powerful thoughts. Some southern lord’s channàdarra pet, I heard again. Wasn't that what I had been? Cillian’s plaything? Part of my mind knew this was wrong, but the thought wouldn't go away. He'd known I loved him, and he’d used that to convince me to sign away Sorham. Betrayed his country, again. Betrayed me.
For perhaps a week I made my painful way north along the trail, travelling only a few miles each day. I suppose my body healed, but I was constantly hungry and light-headed, and the insistent fear of discovery meant I slept badly, adding to my disorientation. I thought there were voices once, and hid, shaking and dry-mouthed, behind a fallen trunk, only to realize after some time that what I had heard was the cawing of crows. At night by my fire, I recited danta to myself, under my breath, just for the comfort of it, and in the darkest hours I railed angrily at Cillian, for all the wrongs he had done, both to me and to my land.
Early one morning, just as I rounded a bend in the trail, I saw a marten on the trunk of a tree ahead of me, a squirrel in its mouth. Without thinking, I threw my walking stick at it. The stick bounced harmlessly off the tree, but to my surprise the marten dropped the squirrel, flowing up the trunk to challenge me from a branch. I picked up the walking stick, and keeping an eye on the marten, reached for the squirrel, still warm.
Well away from the marten, I gutted the squirrel, and at the next appropriate spot I built a fire and cooked it. The smell of it roasting! But I waited, although my hunger overruled prudence, and I ate it all. After enough to eat—at least for my shrunken stomach—for the first time since I had been attacked, I sat, considering my situation.
I would starve to death before I reach the coast, I concluded. Already I was gaunt, my clothes loose. But what options did I have? I couldn't hunt; I'd tried throwing the knife, and the pain in my ribs made an accurate throw impossible. Berries and water weren't going to keep me alive.
Water. The streams ran down off the mountains. To where? I closed my eyes, trying to remember maps. Wasn’t there a river? I became convinced there was. I got up and went to the edge of the trail, looking down the scarp, my walking stick well planted. I could see nothing: no glint of water, and certainly no path down.
Food had sharpened my mind. In my condition — possibly in any condition — trying to climb down the scarp without a path was folly. But if trappers and hunters came up from the lowland torps, then there should be trails. Had I passed one? I couldn't remember, but for days I had walked with my eyes only seeing the path immediately in front of me.
In the lowlands I could not likely hide from other people. But it was my only chance of survival.
Chapter 49
I found the descending trail the next day. It was steep and precarious, and I edged my way down with the help of the walking stick. It took me hours, sometimes clinging on to trees for several minutes before attempting a step. At one almost-vertical drop I stopped, convinced I would fall if I continued, and after many minutes I sat down and scrambled and slid down the rocks. Tears of pain and fatigue wet my cheeks by the time I reached the bottom, where the river I had correctly remembered ran between the scarp and the rolling plain beyond.
Reedmace grew along its bank. Reedmace roots were edible, even raw. I dug my hands into the mud, pulling them up, rinsing each one in the flowing water before I ate it, although I tasted mud regardless. My stomach full, I found a sheltered place along the bank, wrapped myself in my tatters of tent and blanket, and slept.
I woke to rain. I wrapped myself in both layers of my rags, pulling the blanket up over my head for added warmth. An hour’s walk north, I met two trappers taking beavers along the river. I stopped, uncertain. They stared at me, but no hand went to a knife. Instead, one made a sign I remembered the torpari using in my boyhood.
“A gubbë!” he said to his companion. “I thought they were all gone, after the war.” I had forgotten the northern belief that the god wandered the land as an old man with cloak and staff. It meant any apparent beggar, if the description fit, was treated with courtesy, in case he was more than he seemed. But even if I had remembered, did I look that bad?
I must, I realized. Mud caked my clothes and skin, and at a distance my pale beard and hair, half-obscured by dirt and the blanket over my head, could be white. And I stank, so no one would come close to me by choice. A useful disguise, I thought. Perhaps I would forgo the swim in the river I had planned.
Gubbë!” the trapper called. “Are you hungry?”
I tried to make my voice low, and hoarse. “Yes,” I said. He bent to a pack, and straightening, tossed me half a loaf of bread. I managed to catch it. “Takkë,” I said. “Meas. I wish you good harvest.”
“Takkë,” he replied. He hesitated. “You'll find a carcass or two, up the path. They're fresh. I would have taken them back for our pigs, but you're welcome to one, if you want.”
“Óski’s blessings on you,” I said, silently thanking the deity I had invoked. Maybe, I thought, I should just become a gubbë, wandering the land, sleeping in barns and byres and haystacks, begging my food. I would be free. Free of my allegiance to Ruar, free of Gundarstorp. Free of Cillian. I tore a bite off the bread and chewed.
Fool. Druise’s voice again. You cannot be free of Cillian. You are too angry, and, amané, you promised Lena.
“Lena already hates me,” I muttered. “And why should I not be angry? So many betrayals, Druise.”
“Gubbë?” one of the trappers called. “Were you speaking to us?”
“No,” I said, startled. “No. Only a blessing, over the bread. I will go my way.” Ten minutes down the path I found the beaver carcasses. I took one, hefting it over my shoulder; the blood would add to the smell of my garments, but what did that matter?
Later, I found a cave where the escarpment and river met. At its mouth I fashioned a smoking rack from branches, lashing it together with the strings from my ladhar. I cut most of the meat into strips for curing: I'd have to stay here a few days, but the cave provided shelter, and the local trappers would leave me alone, so why not?
I was wrong on only one thing: the trappers did not leave me alone. In the late afternoon the two men reappeared, this time with their wives and children. “Will you give blessings to our families?” the one who had given me the bread asked. They had brought the other beaver carcass and some cheese as an offering. I nodded. “Óski’s benediction on you all,” I said. Then, remembering, I sang a verse of a song dedicate
d to the god.
“Takkë,” the women breathed, and urged their children to thank me too.
“You will remember this,” I said to the oldest child, a boy, not knowing why I did. “All your life.” He looked at me, a long stare, and nodded silently. “I will be here three days,” I said. “Tell no one else.”
For three days I added bracken to the fire, and twigs, and ate cheese and meat and bread, the oldest boy sent daily with a new loaf. He never spoke to me, just put the bread down and backed away a few steps before turning to run home. In preparation for packing the cured meat, I washed a section of my blanket in the river, and dried it over the fire, so I had a clean wrapping. When the sun was high on the third day, I wrapped the dry meat, put the remnants of the loaf on top of it in my pack, and moved on.
I had slept well the last two nights, dry and warm in the small cave, and with a full belly. The frantic flickering of thoughts and images through my mind had ceased, and for the first time I took a deep breath without serious pain. I would, I decided, maintain the disguise. No one looked closely at a gubbë, and I would be fed at any cottage or torp in exchange for a blessing.
I made better progress on the flat trail along the river, and when I reached the coast some days later I had gained both strength and sanity, thanks to sufficient food and sleep and a lessening of fear. I was drenched, though: it had rained for the last three days. The river had broadened and slowed. I had crossed to the west bank at a ford a few days past, carrying my boots and gritting my teeth against the icy water. My feet were the only clean part of me, save my hands.
As I had expected, a fishing village occupied part of the headland above the river’s mouth, cottages nestled half-way down the cliff, tucked into folds of the land in partial protection from the unceasing wind. The tide was out, and with it the fishing boats, so only women and children, and a few old men repairing nets and traps in the shelter of the cots were to be seen. I approached cautiously, not speaking: gubbë never did. I might be welcomed, or ignored, but I wouldn’t — shouldn’t — be in any danger, if the old ways were kept to here. And if they weren’t, on this north coast that had always looked far more to Varsland than Linrathe, well, then I was in trouble.
Empire's Reckoning Page 27
