The Very Best of Kate Elliott

by Kate Elliott

  “Where am I and how did you come to find me?” he asked in a voice made harsh with weakness and pain.

  “You are in the forest between West Hall and Woodpasture, my lord general.”

  “You know me?”

  “I live in Woodpasture, my lord. We have a market in our fine market hall every week.”

  “Woodpasture?” He murmured the word, seeking through his memory. “Ah. Bayisal.”

  “That is the name they call it in the king’s court, I think,” she said kindly.“But it is not our name. How came you to fall under the Forlanger sword, my lord?”

  He breathed in silence for a time, measuring the pain in his hip or perhaps simply fishing back through the last few days. “Treachery. They and I are ever at odds in court. Lord Hargrim is ready to steal my command and my lands. I must get back to court. Have you men in your village who can convey me?”

  “We have men, my lord. My husband died in your service, and my brother lost his leg.”

  He slanted a look at her, shifting a moment later to notice that she had placed the sword near his side, where he could reach it.

  “I blame the Forlangers. Not you, my lord. In case you are wondering.”

  His smile had a force that cracked the distance between them.“Generously spoken, Mistress. May I know your name?”

  “Anna, my lord.”

  “And the other one. There was another woman, was there not? The one who was supporting me as we walked?”

  “No other woman. A man.”

  “I was sure, for my arm was wrapped around . . . I meant no offense by it . . .” He rubbed a callused hand over his eyes. “I suppose I was delirious. Perhaps I am roaming not on earth but in the shadows cast by the gods.”

  “No, my lord. You lie on earth. If men from the village convey you to the King’s City, my lord, what is to stop the Forlangers from killing you all?”

  “They could hide me in a wagon . . .” He shook his head at the same time she did. “They’ll be watching the roads. They will not rest until Hargrim can throw my corpse before the king and claim me as a traitor.”

  “How will he claim you as a traitor when all know you serve the king loyally?”

  “Men lie, Mistress Anna. They tell stories that are false.”

  “So they do, my lord. All but my husband. He was a good man and never lied to me, except for the time he had to come tell me that my son was dead.”

  “I hope your son did not die in my service too. I would hate to think I had repaid you for this by having measured so much grief into your life.”

  “No, my lord. He was a boy and died of a sickness, as children do.”

  “Sad tidings for a mother. What of you, Mistress Anna, do you lie?” He paused, a hand probing the linen bandage.“Can you heal me?”

  “I have some knowledge of herbcraft and have done what I know how to do. I have a tea that should help with the pain and any fever. It is a bad wound, and you may yet die of it, but you may live. It is not for me to say. That is the choice of the Hanging Woman.”

  “Who is the Hanging Woman? Some country name for death?”

  “Death is death, my lord, not a person. Do they not know that at court? The Hanging Woman has a rope and will hang you in it if she chooses to capture you. Those who are hanged are changed. Maybe that change will be life into death or maybe it will be something else, something you never expected.”

  He gave a rough cough, then winced. “This is not the work of your Hanging Woman, then, for I have been expecting an attack for months now. Ever since the poison has reached the king’s ear, a rumor that I plan to raise my army against him and place myself on the throne.”

  “Do you, my lord?”

  All at once the pain and exhaustion and blood loss overwhelmed him, or perhaps the infusion finally took hold. He looked so tired, as if the fight had dragged on too long and he wondered if he had the will to keep struggling.“No. Never. But it may be too late. The rot of that story may already have tainted the king’s heart.”

  “Can you rest, my lord?”

  He twisted and turned as well as he could, restless and aggrieved. Lines of pain wrinkled his forehead. His lips were pale, and his eyes shadowed by the effort of speaking.“If only . . . if I could get to the king and not be murdered on the way. I was on my way to court now, and you see what has happened. Lord Hargrim’s people control the roads. I will never get through.”

  “Have you no allies in court?”

  “The king’s sister has the king’s ear. He trusts her. And I trust her.” He paused and looked at her. A yellow-beak’s whistle chirred twice from out among the leaves. “We were not lovers. It is nothing to do with that.”

  “I did not think it was,” she said, surprised at how quickly he had hastened to deny an unasked question.“It is no business of mine.”

  “She was married to Lord Hargrim’s brother back once. She knows what they are.”

  “Wolves,” said Anna, for they had returned to a subject she cared about.“Winter wolves, on the hunt.”

  A smile tightened his mouth. “That’s right. They are wolves. They want to kill me so they can eat the herd at their leisure once I am no longer there to protect those the king has given me to guard.”

  He looked up, seeing Uwe duck into view, but since Anna had heard the bird call she did not turn.

  “This is Uwe. He is my friend, the one who carried you,” she said.

  The general stared for a long, uncomfortable while at Uwe’s beardless face and the loose layers of clothing that hid his slender body.

  Anna rolled up a blanket against the general’s side.“Rest a little,” she said.“You can go nowhere tonight or tomorrow or any day soon.”

  “Do me this one favor,” he said, touching his throat.

  There was a humble iron chain there, well made but nothing fancy. When he fumbled at the chain, she realized he had not the strength or dexterity to pull it out, so she hooked fingers around the links and eased it from under his tunic.

  A hammered tin medallion in the shape of a swan hung from the end of the chain, odd to see around the neck of the general because it was a cheap trinket, the kind of thing peddlers sold when they came through the village with their carts in the summer and autumn. She turned it over. On the back were scratched markings.

  “Do you see what it says?” he asked.

  Uwe stretched forward to look and, like Anna, shook his head.

  “I cannot read, my lord,”Anna said.“I thought a lord like you would wear gold, not tin.”

  A smile brushed his lips. His gaze seemed to track back into memory, or else he was about to pass out.

  “It says ‘one foot in the river.’” His voice was hoarser now, fading as the infusion dulled the pain.“Elland Fort is where I saved the kingdom, even though people say my great victory was at Toyant Bridge. But the ones who I trust know the truth of it. They know I wear this to remind me.”

  “Who are those, my lord?”

  “My young wife. My brother. My three captains, of whom one is now dead. My two aunts. The king’s sister.”

  “And where are these people, my lord? Can they not rescue you?”

  “The king’s sister is at the palace, close to the king. The others are far from here, for we heard a rumor that the Forlangers were going to strike. My wife is pregnant, so I sent her to my aunts’ stronghold in the south. I was riding to the palace with proof of the Forlangers’ treachery. That is why they cut me down even so close to the court. Once the king knows, they will be ruined.”

  Anna pressed another swallow of the tincture down him. His breathing was getting a ragged edge as his body fought him down into the rest he needed if he wished to heal.

  “They will lie about me, about what I did here, how I died here. They will lie about my disloyalty to the king. But whatever else, this is my token. Do not let it fall into the hands of the Forlangers. Better you should have it, if it cannot be returned to my wife.”

  She tucked the tin swan in
to his hand. His fingers closed over the medallion.

  His eyes fluttered closed, as if the swan comforted him.

  For a moment she thought he would finally sleep, but he struggled awake again as a man struggles to climb a slippery hillside. He glanced around the space but because of the darkness beyond the glow of the hearthfire he could see nothing except a glimmer of smoke pooling against the leaves as it sought a way heavenward.

  “No one will find this place,” she said.“And we will keep a watch over you. You can trust Uwe as you can trust me. The Forlangers killed my husband. I will not turn you over to them. I give you my oath by the water of the gods. Let that content you, my lord. You must rest if you are to have a hope of healing.”

  It did content him, or else blood loss and the herbs pulled him down.

  Slowly, the sun came up although it remained dim beneath the leaves. The heavy cover of branches would disperse the smoke by so many diverse channels that it would be hard to see it, but a good nose might smell it and it was not yet cold. So she let the fire burn down and smothered its scent with crumbled leaves of lavender and fennel while Uwe fetched water from the nearby stream to fill the two covered jars she always left here.

  She tidied herself and considered the situation.

  “So here we are, Uwe,” she said.“He will die here, or he will live. If he dies, then he is dead. If he lives, though, what then?”

  Uwe rarely spoke for he preferred the forest and solitude, where he could live within the patience of the trapper and hunter and not have to trouble himself with the difficult passages that a changed man must negotiate among people. His voice had a lightness that made it hard to hear, but Anna knew how to listen.“My sister’s husband can take him to the King’s City in a wagon under guard of a company of men.”

  Anna shook her head. “No. They will be stopped and the general killed.”

  “They can carry him through the forest. I can show the way.”

  “The forest does not grow all the way to the gates of the King’s City. They will still catch you.”

  “Then we can carry him to the other place he spoke of. In the south.” Uwe bit a finger, sorting through thoughts. Anna had rarely seen him so animated.“The lord can write.We could fetch a bit of paper from the priest and have him write a message.”

  “One written word is like another,” said Anna.“How can anyone trust that the message truly came from him and is no trick of the Forlangers? Ten men may write the same word and it will look the same, but each man speaks in a different voice.”

  The general’s hand had relaxed in sleep and the tin swan slipped from his fingers, dangling just above the dirt where the chain caught and tangled through his lax fingers. His hands were calloused and scarred as by the lash of a whip. From far away, chased to their ears by the mystery of how the forest weaves sound, they heard a horn call, soldiers about their pursuit.

  She fished the tin swan out of General Olivar’s hand.“I will go.”

  Uwe blinked at her, then pressed a hand to his throat as if he wished to cry out that she could not, dared not, must not, but knew the words would be spoken in vain.

  “Yes, I will go,” she said more firmly, for she saw it was the only choice. “It is three days walk. I have food enough if I take all the bread and cheese. You know enough of herbcraft to stay with him.”

  Uwe nodded, silent, acquiescing because he had been her pupil once, learning the herbcraft handed down from woman to woman. That was before the Hanging Woman changed him into the man he had secretly known himself to be. So Anna felt assured Uwe could care for the patient while she was gone. She thoroughly described the regimen necessary to keep the wound from rotting, and advised him to brew up a stout broth from whatever grouse he could catch and boil up barley to thicken the general’s blood.

  “But only cook at night. Douse the fire in the day. Stay away from the village until you are out of food. If I am not back in seven days, then go to my brother Joen.”

  She did not like to think about Mari and her other children. She hoped they were well, hidden in the warren of caves where the villagers of Woodpasture had for generations taken refuge in times of strife. She hoped they would not worry on her behalf, but if the general died, then the steady depredations of the Forlangers would make life worse for everyone. West Hall would just be the beginning. Better they suffer a few days’ anxiety now than a lifetime of misery after.

  She took her humble bag and set off, skirting along the edge of West Hall’s fields. No smoke rose, a better sign than she could have hoped for because it meant no houses were being burned. No doubt the Forlangers hoped to be given this grant of land once the general was disgraced and dead; only a fool burned the grain that would feed him. How many West Hall villagers had died or been injured she could not know, but she hoped her relatives had been spared. The Forlangers knew that if they caused too much damage the king would notice that strife troubled the isolated corners of his peaceful realm, so they prowled lightly and struck only for the necessary kill.

  She made good time on woodsmen’s paths that wound through the trees and heavy undergrowth. Twice, on hearing men’s shouts and horses, she found concealment and waited until all sound of soldiers’ presence died away. Once she heard the ring of an axe, and she paused in a copse of trembling aspen. All the woodsmen in this region were some form of relation to her dead husband, sworn to aid each other. But the sound and presence of an axe might bring down the notice of the soldiers, so she walked on.

  West Hall and Woodpasture lay on quiet tracks well off the King’s Road, which led from the large town of Cloth Market direct to the King’s City. Just after midday she came down out of the woods as if she had briefly retired there to relieve herself and was now simply resuming her journey. The traffic on the road was intermittent but steady for all that, no long stretches between a wagon drawn by oxen or a group of travelers striding along. She fell in behind a group of mixed journeyers, kinfolk by the look of them.

  One of the women at the back of the group smiled tentatively at her, for Anna looked neat and tidy, no sores or sickness apparent on her skin.

  “Good day to you, Mistress,” said the other woman in a merry voice.

  “It is a fine day,”Anna agreed.“What a busy group there are of you, out in all your cheer.”

  “We are off to a wedding, my cousin’s son.” The other woman spoke with the clipped ‘d’ of the villages closer to Cloth Market, so the word sounded like “wetting.” She glanced past Anna and saw no one walking behind her.“What of you, Mistress? Walk you alone?”

  Anna gauged her interest and that of the other women, young and old, who turned to listen, for she was something new and interesting to pass the time. The men in the party saw her worn bridal shawl and drawn face and went back to their own conversations at the front of the group.

  “I am recently widowed,” she said in a low voice, and their murmured commiserations gave her the time she needed to settle on which story might be most convincing for such a company.“I am going to the King’s City to get work as a spinner. My cousin said there are workshops there that will take a respectable woman like me.”

  They had opinions about that! They came from a village that lay athwart the King’s Road near to Cloth Market and had heard many a sad story about girls and women from the villages being promised decent work and then finding themselves in far worse conditions, forced to work day and night for a harsh master who took all the profits for herself or, so one heard, sometimes even trapped into indecent work and abused by men. Yet other women did well for themselves! You had to be cautious, prudent, and hard-headed.

  “But come walk along with us as far as Ash Hill,” they said.

  So she did, and heard about all the family gossip, and spent the night in comfort with some of the girls in the hay mow of the cousin’s farm just outside the village of Ash Hill. Late that night a party of Forlangers clattered up to the farmstead, but after they spoke to the farmer and to all the men in the pa
rty, they rode away again.

  Soon after dawn she took her leave and set out, pleased that the weather was fine. No friendly party of relatives appeared. She was careful to always walk close to or alongside other groups of people. For the entire afternoon she shadowed a suspicious group of carters pushing along baskets of apples who allowed her to walk close behind them after she explained that she was going in to the city to live with her sister who was a laundress. That night she slept rough, but it did not rain and it was not cold and she knew how to make a pleasant haven with a cushioned bed of old needles and grass under the evergreen branches of a thick spruce, although she badly missed her husband who would once have shared such a quiet bower with her.

  In the morning she tidied herself as neatly as she could, braided her hair freshly back, and perfumed herself with a bit of lavender to hide the smell of forest. The road was quieter today, and she found herself a place to walk about a stone’s throw behind a trio of wagons bearing threshed grain bound for the king’s granaries. When the wagoners halted to take their midday break on a long spur of grass alongside the bank at the confluence of the Wheel River and the chalky colored White, she sat down away from them, far enough away that they would not walk over to question her but close enough that she was not alone on the wide road.

  The last rind of cheese made a tough meal, and she was out of bread, but she hoped to make the King’s Gate by nightfall. The sky remained clear and the air cool but not chilly, so hearing a roll as of distant thunder made her frown. Worse yet came the sudden appearance of outriders wearing the dark sash of the Forlangers. The wagoners quickly leaped up and raced to get their oxen unhobbled and their wagons moving, but it was too late. A company of Forlangers marched swiftly into view.

  The outriders caught up with the wagoners before they could get out of sight down the road. A dozen soldiers searched the wagon beds, but most of the infantrymen swarmed the bank to take a drink of water and sit down to rest their feet and eat a bite from their stores. They were mostly young men, respectful in their way and quite uninterested in a careworn woman old enough to be their mother, but because there was only so much nice grassy space, a half-dozen seated themselves near to her and opened their kit to get out dried fish and round flatbread suitable for the march.