’Gren nudged me with a whisper. ”If that’s the local sport, I don’t reckon much to it.” Fighting for ’Gren is only fun if your opponent can appreciate the pain and danger coming his way.
“Shut up,” Sorgrad said quietly.
Olret bent over the ravaged corpse of the dog and lifted one back leg. Whatever he saw warranted a slow nod. The ill-fated guard ducked away, expecting a blow as Olret whipped round but he simply marched up the hall, face like carved stone. His soft, stained footwear betrayed him and, slipping, he nearly fell. No one so much as smiled as he paused to strip his feet bare.
“You, come with me.” He summoned us with a bloodied finger.
A lackey got to the door barely a breath ahead of his master and flung it open. We followed hastily as Olret took the main stairs of the keep two and three at a time. With Maedror hard on our heels, we passed the floor with the rooms we’d been granted and continued without pause for breath up the next flight of stairs. Olret turned down the corridor and halted before a solid door.
“Ilkehan sent me that dog as a gift for my son.” Emotion cracked the cold mask of his face. “They met on neutral ground at Equinox to agree truce terms. If they had not met, Ilkehan could claim the right to do whatever he pleased. You may see how Ilkehan returned my son to me.”
He opened the door and beckoned us into a hushed and shuttered room, richly furnished by local standards, coffers set along one wall, cushioned chairs along the other, bed hung with embroidered curtains. A still figure lay in the bed beneath a light coverlet. The boy was Temar’s age, perhaps a little younger. It was hard to tell with the bandages swathing the youth’s corn-coloured head. Yellowish matter stained the linen over what I could only assume was an eye socket as empty as the dog’s. A nurse looked at us warily from her cross-stool where the slats in the shutters offered light for her sewing. Olret summoned her with a peremptory hand. Her slow movements betrayed her reluctance as she lifted back the blanket with gentle hands. The lad was naked beneath the soft wool but for the bandages covering his groin which were stained with unmistakable foulness. Now I understood Olret’s reaction to the dog.
The pitiful figure on the bed stirred and his nurse re-covered him, Olret hustling us out of the room. “I do not know whether to wish that he lives or he dies to be spared the knowledge of such mutilations.” He spoke as if every word were torture. “I cannot stand to see how he looks at me.”
“Which is why Ilkehan didn’t take both his eyes.” Sorgrad was coldly furious. In all the years I’d known him, I could count the number of times I’d seen that on the fingers of one hand. I’d also seen the bloody consequences. What people didn’t appreciate was Sorgrad was really far more dangerous than his brother. ’Gren only ever acted on impulse. Sorgrad thought out precisely what mayhem he intended.
Ryshad’s face was a study in disgust. “Do such crimes go unpunished?”
Olret looked at Sorgrad and to Shiv. “Will you truly kill Ilkehan or spend your lives in the attempt? If I help you, will you tell him at the last that you act for my son?”
“I’ll carve the boy’s name on his forehead myself,” promised Sorgrad. My heart sank a little since that was no idle boast.
Olret held his gaze for a long moment then nodded with satisfaction. “Carve Aretrin, down to the very bone.”
“Perhaps Forest lore can ease your son,” I offered slowly. Halcarion help me, if there was some charm to at least save the lad the agonies of death by wound rot, I should try it.
“I will attack one of Ilkehan’s outposts, that you may reach his lands unnoticed.” Olret ignored me, addressing Sorgrad, Ryshad and Shiv. “Come, I will show you.” He turned down the corridor towards the lesser set of stairs.
I stayed put, to see what the reaction would be. There was none. ’Gren stood beside me, watching the others go. “We’re the spare donkeys in this mule train.” He didn’t seem concerned. ”Nice to know this Olret’s got as much reason to hate Ilkehan as we have.”
“Hmm.” I wasn’t so sanguine. “Olret might have provoked him. Sow thistles and you’ll reap prickles after all.”
“You don’t trust him,” said ’Gren with eager curiosity.
“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “I don’t know who we’re dealing with and that always makes me uneasy. Remember that business with Cordainer?”
“Our man’s certainly got something to hide,” agreed ’Gren. “Did you see that gate on the stair?”
“No.” What had I missed?
“This way.”
’Gren led me back to the main stair. A metal gate barred the turn on the next flight, mortared firmly into the stone and secured with the first half-decent lock I’d seen on these islands. ”What do you suppose he’s hiding up there?”
A liveried guard appeared on the stairs below and stared up at us with undisguised suspicion. I turned ’Gren with a firm hand and we went down past the guard. I favoured him with a reassuring smile but all I got back was a mistrustful glower.
“What now?” ’Gren demanded sulkily. “I’m not sitting around getting bored while they fuss over maps and tactics and all the rest of it.”
Not eager for more of Olret’s snubs, I’d already thought of a better use for my time. “Why don’t we see what these people reckon to our host? If his own folk like him, maybe we can trust him.”
“Where shall we start?” asked ’Gren obligingly.
“Shall we see what keeps everyone so busy?” I led the way out through the main hall. The yard around the keep was empty apart from a few guards practising with wooden staves bound with leather to save them from splintering. Scarce wood was well looked after around here.
“They move well.” ’Gren’s was an expert eye.
“They probably start training them in their leading strings,” I commented. Even without Artifice to back them, we’d have found any Elietimm fighting force formidable opponents.
We passed through the main gate without anyone raising a question.
“Let’s see what the boats have brought in,” ’Gren suggested with lively interest.
It was more basketfuls of glittering fish about the length of a man’s hand poured in silver torrents into long troughs where mothers and grandmothers ripped them open with practised knives. Lads barely higher than my shoulder dragged baskets of gutted fish to another set of troughs where girls of all ages washed them clean. Several whistled and hummed tunes with a compulsive lilt to put a spring in a step. I wondered idly if there was any Artifice in the music, to drive these people on beyond weariness and tedium. That would suit what I knew of Elietimm cold-heartedness. Beyond them, a square of sombre old men layered the cleaned fish into barrels, adding judicious handfuls of salt and spice. A cooper stood ready to seal them.
“Fish to eat all winter,” said ’Gren without enthusiasm.
“More than enough for the people hereabouts.” None of whom so much as paused in their work to glance at us.
“You heard them last night. There’s farms and holdings all over this island.” ’Gren shrugged. “They’ve all sent people to help with the glut.”
Such rural concerns never bothered me in Vanam where I bought fish, pickled or dried from those merchants my mother favoured with her master’s coin. Some of them made a tidy profit from the trade. Questions teased me as we watched the islanders work. Did Olret’s people truly eat all the fruits of their labours? Where did he get the spice to flavour the brine? I’d eat one of those little fish raw and unboned if pepper grew anywhere in these islands. Come to that, where did he get all the wood for these barrels? I reckoned he was being a little too coy about what trade he had with the world beyond these barren rocks. No wonder Olret was keen to see Ilkehan dead, if the bastard was sinking any ships but his own venturing on to the ocean. That was some reassurance; I’ll generally trust a motive that can be weighed in solid coin.
’Gren coughed. ”Let’s go somewhere fresher.”
Beyond the gutting and salting, men and women were car
ving bigger fish into long fillets with wickedly sharp knives. More lads were hanging them on racks set to catch the wind while a gang of smaller children gathered discarded heads and spread them out to dry. An earlier harvest of stockfish was stacked flat beneath heavy stones and the last moisture drained slowly into a fishy slick coating the beaten earth, lapped at by eager cats just waiting for a chance to sneak closer.
A young woman saw me looking at the fish heads and paused in her work, bending a wrist to brush back a blond lock straying from her close-tied headscarf. “For winter, for the goats.”
“Ah, I see.” Then they’d even have milk that tasted of fish.
“You are visiting?”
“From the west.”
’Gren beamed back blatant appreciation of the shapely figure beneath her coarse and salt-stained bodice.
She would have replied but froze at a sharp rebuke from an older woman further along the stone workbench. ’Gren swept a bow to the sour old hag but she was intent on her filleting.
“Maybe you’d better rein in the charm,” I suggested as we strolled towards the distant edge of the settlement.
“You can’t ask that, not with so many fine-looking women,” he protested. “And precious few men to go around.”
He was right. “They’re all out fishing?” I guessed.
“Not at this time of day.” ’Gren shook his head. “Let’s see if these beauties have any answers.” We’d reached a high-walled enclosure holding more of the elusive goats. I was surprised to see how patiently they stood as girls combed the winter’s growth from their thick coats, filling baskets with soft tangles of woolly hair.
A buxom lass stood upright to ease her back and smiled shyly at ’Gren. Two other lasses looked up from their work with ill-concealed interest. “Good day to you.” ’Gren rested his chin on his hands atop the wall. “Don’t let me disturb you.”
An older woman, possibly the girls’ mother, certainly looking out for their interests, assessed him in much the same way she was sorting the hanks of goat hair.
I smiled at her. “That makes wonderfully soft blankets, doesn’t it?”
If I’d been a goat, she wouldn’t have treated me to any fish heads. ’Gren on the other hand was winning covert approval from all of them.
“See what you can get out of them without me around.” I slapped ’Gren on the shoulder, speaking in the gutter slang of Selerima. “I’ll meet you back at the keep in a while.”
’Gren nodded, his eyes on one lass bending forward to tease leaves from a goat’s shaggy forelock and artlessly offering him a fine view of her cleavage.
“We’re here to make friends, not babies,” I reminded him.
“I’ll stay chaste as a dowerless maidservant — until I know what the penalty for flipping a girl’s frills might be,” he added with a sly smile.
I poked him in the chest. “I was a dowerless maidservant, so you’d better stay a cursed more chaste than that.”
“I’m hardly going to tumble the first girl who flutters her lashes at me,” he protested. “Not when there are so many to choose from.”
“I’ll see you later.” Given how much ’Gren enjoyed flirtation, I judged I’d be back before he was ready to risk all our necks for the sake of some lass’s white thighs.
As soon as I turned my back, the girls all started talking. As long as he kept his wits out of his breeches, he was well placed to find out a good deal about this place.
The only thing beyond the goat sheds was the pond and the causeway. A narrow-windowed building stood solid in the middle of the rocky dam and closer to, I realised it was a mill. All I’d find there would be busy men who wouldn’t welcome interruption. Where might I find something useful like bored guards ready to gamble and gossip?
I walked idly back towards the keep, passing a building both open-fronted laundry and bathing house. Women pounded coarse, unbleached cloth in tubs filled from a spring that steamed as it bubbled up from the ground. On balance, I’d rather heave wood to boil my water than risk the ground melting beneath me for the sake of easier laundry. Unself-conscious as they stripped, girls were washing themselves clean after their fish gutting, pouring water over each other and soaping themselves with what looked like lengths of fatty hide. ’Gren would be none too pleased to have missed this treat but, given how obsessive these people were about cleanliness, I imagined he’d get another opportunity.
Other girls were giggling and chatting as they sat combing out their damp hair in the sun. I wondered about joining them but they were watching youths wrestling on a smoothed expanse of sun-baked clay. The lads were naked but for belts around their waists linked to leather bands around each thigh by plaited leather straps and a brief loincloth to prevent an opponent getting an unexpected handhold. The object seemed to be to drag your opponent off his feet by these straps. I spared a moment to appreciate the game as well as the players but decided the lasses wouldn’t welcome me.
Then I heard a hastily stifled giggle somewhere behind the laundry. A seemingly casual stroll took me round to a drying yard where shirts and blankets flapped in the breeze. I ducked beneath a swathe of sodden cloth and found a huddle of children shirking whatever tasks they’d been set. Some were throwing knobbly bones from some sizeable fish’s spine into a circle scored on the ground while others tossed a turnip studded with feathers between themselves. They all looked at me with vivid curiosity.
“Good day to you,” I said with a friendly smile.
“What’s your name?” asked a pert little girl with an upturned, freckled nose and dark eyes telling of mixed blood somewhere in her line.
“Livak,” I told her. “What’s yours?”
“Gliffa,” she answered promptly. “You’re not from here.”
“No, I’m not.” I swept a vague arm in the direction of the sea. “My people live in a forest that covers the land with trees taller than your houses.” That should intrigue youngsters from a land where trees rarely reached above knee height.
“What brings you here?” Gliffa was clearly a child always asking questions.
“I wanted to see the sea.” I shrugged.
“What happened to your hair?” demanded a small boy, his own locks close-cropped to little more than gold fuzz.
“Nothing.” I sat down, cross-legged. “It’s always been this colour, same as all my people.”
“Are you gebaedim?” the child asked suspiciously.
That was a word I’d caught last night. I shook my head. “What’s that?”
“Gebaedim live in the western lands.” One of the older girls leaned closer to study my hair and eyes. “They look like real people until they’re out of the sunlight. Then you can see they have shadow-blue skin and black eyes like a beast’s.” Smaller ones who’d been looking distinctly nervous relaxed at her authoritative pronouncement.
So Sorgrad had been right. I smiled again. “We call them the Eldritch Kin.”
“You’ve seen them?” The crop-headed lad’s blue eyes were awestruck.
“No one has, not in a long age.” I shook my head reassuringly. “We tell tales of them. Would you like to hear one?” That won me eager nods all round.
“There once was a man called Marsile who chased a hare inside an Eldritch man’s earthen fort. The Eldritch man made him welcome and offered him guest gifts.” The story of Marsile was one I could tell in my sleep and I gave the children the version my father had told me as a little girl, full of miraculous things like the leaf that prompted fish to throw themselves out of the water when Marsile tossed it into their pond, and the sprig of blossom that made him proof against any fire, even a dragon’s breath. My personal favourite was the purse that called coin to keep company with any he put in it.
“When evening came, Marsile told the Eldritch man he must return home to his wife.” I lowered my voice and leaned forward, the children unconsciously doing the same. “The Eldritch man was angry. He said he had only given the gifts because he thought Marsile intended to marr
y his daughter and, truth be told, she was a great beauty.” Versions I’d learned later in life detailed the Eldritch maid’s charms in terms emphatically not for children, as well as elaborating on just what Marsile did with her to make the Eldritch man so angry. I moved on to Marsile’s desperate bargaining for his freedom.
“Finally, the Eldritch man agreed to let Marsile go, but,” I raised a warning finger, “only if he remained for one night, while the Eldritch man went to Marsile’s house and took what he wanted, in return for the gifts he had made him. Because, as we all know, a gift once given cannot be taken back.” The children all nodded solemnly; that rule evidently held even in these poverty-stricken lands.
I told them of Marsile’s frantic night worrying about what he might lose, rather than his enthusiastic romping with the Eldritch daughter according to the taproom version. Some stories had the Eldritch man making just as free with Marsile’s wife. In those the hapless man returned to find a year had passed for every chime he’d spent within the earthen ring and the Eldritch man’s final gift to him was a brood of black-haired brats at his hearth and a wife who ever after burned his food as she pined for her magical lover. But that wasn’t a tale for children either. What they wanted was a rousing finish.
“As the sky began to pale, the Eldritch man returned and told Marsile to leave. He warned him he’d release his hounds if Marsile wasn’t beyond the river by daybreak. Marsile ran but the sun came up and he hadn’t reached the river. He heard howls behind him and running paws,” I drummed my hands on my thighs and the little ones shivered. “He ran for his life with barking ever closer. He dared not look back, even when something caught at his cloak. He ripped it off and threw it away, hearing the dogs stop to worry at it. But he soon felt their icy breath on his heels again so he threw away his bag, then his jerkin. He emptied his pockets, he lost the leaf, he lost the enchanted blossom and the magic purse but just as the sun came up over the eastern edge of the land, he reached the river. He threw himself in and swam to the other side.” The children all heaved a sigh of relief.
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