I heard the whisper of a sword leaving its sheath behind me and didn’t hesitate. I knew if it had been one of the others, they’d have announced themselves first. My rapier flew from its scabbard as I spun around, bringing up the true edge to strike where I guessed my opponent’s weapon-hand would be – barely managing to stop the momentum of my blade before it hit the boy standing behind me holding a child’s wooden sword. My entire arm shook from the effort of holding my rapier still as it lightly kissed the boy’s neck.
He was small, perhaps seven years old, with skin a little darker than the curls of his light blond hair. He looked at me, his own pretend weapon held out front, eyes wide, and stayed very still. A tiny trickle of blood slid down the side of his neck where my rapier had made the tiniest of cuts.
‘Don’t move,’ I said, and slowly took my blade away. Fool, I cursed myself. Another half-inch and you’d have killed a child.
I sheathed my rapier and knelt down so I wasn’t looming over the boy. ‘You’re not in any danger,’ I said. ‘My name’s Falcio. Can you tell me your name?’
‘Tam,’ he said, and threw his wooden sword at my face before turning tail and pounding down the alley.
I followed as fast as I could, but slipped on the dirt as I swerved onto the wider street. By the time I recovered my balance, the boy was gone. Kest came running towards me from the left and shouted, ‘He went down to the other end of the village—’
We checked at every junction to see if he’d turned, but saw no sign of him. Brasti and Morn, drawn by the sounds of our chase, soon joined us.
‘A boy,’ I panted, ‘maybe six or seven—’
‘A boy? What’s a boy doing here on his own?’ Brasti examined the tracks in the dirt. ‘I can find him.’
Tam’s footprints wound their way around the village until they finally led into one of the last cottages on the lane; we’d not yet got as far as checking that end.
The door was open and I called into the shadows, ‘We’re not here to hurt you.’
‘Then walk away,’ said a voice behind us, and I turned and saw a woman in hunter’s greens standing on the opposite side of the street. She had a longbow in hand and an arrow trained on me. The boy had led us here on purpose, I realised belatedly – stupidly – giving her the opportunity to come up behind us. The routine struck me as practised, and I wondered how many times they’d done it before.
Of the three of us, only Morn had his weapon out, but even his six-foot-long glaive wasn’t long enough to reach the woman before she fired. Brasti had his own bow in his left hand; his right was halfway to the quiver on his back.
‘If your bowman moves another inch, I fire,’ the woman said. ‘Better for you if you turn and leave.’
‘What happened here?’ I asked. ‘Where did everyone go?’
‘Away – same as you’ll do if you don’t want an arrow sprouting out of your chest.’
‘Just put the bow down and we can talk. I swear to you we won’t move from this spot.’
‘Who are you, that you parade about like bandits coming to steal what isn’t yours and then act as though I should believe for a second that you won’t have your way with me and the boy the first chance you get?’ she asked.
‘My name is Falcio val Mond,’ I replied. ‘I’m—’
‘You’re him,’ she breathed, almost as if I were some Saint come to her village. ‘The one they talk about – the First Cantor of the Greatcoats.’
I started to nod in agreement as her left eye closed and her mouth tightened, only slightly. She let loose the arrow and I watched as it slammed into my chest.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The Hunters
It’s at times like these that I find myself conflicted about my relationship with the Tailor. On the one hand, she’s a conniving monster who manipulates everyone around her to achieve her own ends, which are always just slightly more vile than I can actually live with. On the other hand, that woman really knows how to make a good coat.
A loud crack filled the air as the arrow struck the front of my greatcoat, shattering one of the bone plates protecting my chest – but it stopped the steel head from driving straight into my heart. It still hurt like seven hells.
Before the scream had even left my mouth my attacker had another arrow ready – but so did Brasti.
‘Unlike Falcio, I can spot your muscles tightening just before you fire,’ he said. ‘You won’t get another shot out.’
The woman bit her lip, uncertainty and fear playing across her face.
‘Don’t,’ Brasti said wearily. ‘Just don’t.’
Whatever sign he was looking for, he must have seen, because I caught the slight motion too – just as he fired. ‘No!’ I shouted, far too late to do any good. The woman fell backwards, hit her head against a stone wall and slipped down to the ground. ‘Brasti, damn you—’
From behind us I heard the boy scream as he ran out from his hiding place to where the woman was lying.
‘She was going to fire again,’ Brasti said. ‘I heard the plate break in your coat, and she did too – and she’s good enough to hit the same spot twice. Besides, I didn’t kill her.’
The boy was standing in front of the woman, his fists in the air as if he would fight us all.
‘I’m . . . all right, Tam,’ the woman said. ‘Just hit my head.’ She stood up and I could see now that Brasti’s arrow had carefully grazed her right arm, just enough to leave a nasty cut. ‘Damn you,’ she said, glaring at Brasti. ‘It’ll be days before I can hunt again.’
‘Well, maybe you should have thought of that before—’
‘Who are you?’ I asked. ‘Why are you and the boy here when everyone else has left?’
She moved protectively in front of the boy. ‘My name is Rhissa. The boy is Tam. As to your other question, go fuck yourself.’ Her bravado lasted a few more seconds before she broke. ‘Do what you must with me, but I beg you, let the boy go free – I don’t have much, but I won’t resist if you—’
‘We’re Greatcoats, woman,’ Morn said angrily. ‘We don’t harm innocents.’
Despite the fear and pain on her face, she spat on the ground. ‘Greatcoats! How many good and decent men and women of Orison have you killed in the name of your child Queen?’
‘None,’ Kest said. ‘We didn’t—’
‘Where do you think all those soldiers come from? When you and your Trattari thugs attacked our Duke last year, who do you think bled and died for him? Did you think he summoned demons from the pits of the thirteenth hell to fight you? When there is war, it’s always the common people who pay the price.’
‘Duke Perault was trying to help Duchess Trin take the country,’ Kest explained.
‘Politics and power – what the hells do we know of these things?’ she snarled. ‘And why should we care?’
I felt a powerful desire to argue with her, to tell her how wrong she was, but hadn’t I just been thinking the same things?
‘My mother needs a salve for her arm,’ the boy said.
I reached into my coat. ‘I have something that will help.’
‘We have our own medicines. Why would we want yours?’ He didn’t wait for an answer but instead took his mother’s left hand and led her past us and into the cottage where he’d been hiding.
‘What now?’ Morn asked.
I rubbed at the spot on my chest where the arrow had struck. It was going to be bruised and painful for a long time. ‘We still need answers,’ I said, and turned to follow the boy and his mother into their home.
*
‘What happened to the rest of the villagers?’ I asked as Rhissa spread a clear, sticky salve on her wound. With visible reluctance, she accepted a length of bandage from Brasti.
‘They left,’ she said.
Morn’s voice was impatient. ‘Yes, damn you, we got that part. But wh
y?’
‘This is a mining village,’ she said. ‘The mines produce good iron ore, but it’s not a place for raising crops or beasts. Duke Perault took all of the ore we dug out of the mountainside, and in return he made sure we had food and supplies and the equipment we needed. Then he died, and everything vanished: no one sent us beef and barley, and there were no traders, neither. We nearly starved last winter.’
‘But evidently, you did survive,’ I said. ‘How?’
She eyed me suspiciously. ‘We had help.’
‘Yes, but from whom? Was it—?’
‘Avares,’ Morn said. ‘The help came from Avares, didn’t it?’
Brasti snorted. ‘What would they provide? Goat turds to eat and jars of their own piss to drink?’
‘Tomatoes,’ Rhissa replied, ‘and bush beans. They brought us meat, too, when they could.’ She stretched out her right arm to test it and winced. ‘Some of us hunted – there are mountain goats up there, if you’re lucky. It was a hard winter, but our cleric kept telling us the Gods would protect us. He said everything we needed to survive was waiting for us in those mountains.’
‘And was he right?’ I asked.
‘Not at first. We were having to go further and further to find anything, until one trip we realised we’d gone too far and we didn’t have the food or the strength to get back home. When the men from Avares found us, we were starving, huddling like children in the snow, waiting to die. They could have killed us, but they didn’t. Do you know what the phrase “tennu ti sinne” means in Avares?’
‘“Brothers and sisters”,’ Morn replied.
‘Yes. “Brothers and sisters” is what they called us. I suppose many people here are just that: there’re plenty of folk in Orison with more Avarean blood than Tristian.’
‘We’ve been at war with them for more than three hundred years,’ Kest said.
‘Your war, not ours. They could have killed us and taken what little we had, but instead they called us “tennu ti sinne” and gave us food and drink. They made dozens of trips across the mountains over the next months, and thanks to them, we survived the winter.’
A chill breeze seeped through the gaps between the wooden slates of the window set into the stone wall of the cottage. ‘And with winter coming again?’
‘The men from Avares said we could move, live in their villages – maybe just for the winter, maybe longer.’
‘That would . . .’ Kest looked at me. ‘Wouldn’t that technically be a crime? We’re still at war with Avares, theoretically, at least . . .’
Rhissa snorted. ‘Go and arrest them if you want.’
I turned my attention back to the question of Avares. What did they have to gain by giving away their own resources? Were they nobler than we’d ever been led to believe? Somehow, I doubted it.
‘The mines,’ I said. ‘Are they empty now?’
Rhissa shook her head. ‘There’s plenty of iron ore left, but the equipment needs replacing and men need full bellies to work.’
‘Who makes your equipment?’
‘We do, given time and supplies, but much of our gear is broken and we’ve been waiting for someone to send us what we need, but no one has.’
‘So they all went?’ Morn asked. ‘Every one of them?’
‘Not everyone; some went east, to family in Orison or Hervor or Pulnam. Most, though . . . they took the trip over the mountains.’
I looked at her, sitting here in this dark cottage with her boy. ‘But you stayed.’
She gave a strangled laugh. ‘I’m not even from here, you know? I came from Domaris, years back, with my father – he was a trader. I met a man from the village who fancied me, and I him, and soon we had Tam.’ She looked away, but I’d already caught sight of the expression on her face.
‘My husband was a strong man,’ she said. ‘When they came looking for soldiers he had to go.’
‘But that was well over a year ago,’ I said. ‘He must be—’ I shut up abruptly.
She glanced briefly towards her child and muttered, ‘I’m not stupid. I know the odds. But there’ve been other men who’ve come back, as recently as six months ago. He might have been injured and still be making his way home. If . . .’ She started to cry, then managed, ‘He’ll be tired, hungry, hurt . . . I’ll not have him be alone.’
It was a foolish dream; the man was almost certainly dead – and yet weren’t there widows all over the country still waiting for their loved ones to come back? And if you let go of the dream, what was left?
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, but even as I spoke, I sensed Rhissa was holding something back, using her tears to keep me from pressing further. There was a practicality to this woman that reminded me too much of my wife to believe she would stay here this long merely on a false hope.
‘What else holds you here?’ I asked bluntly.
She looked at me as if waiting for some sign of deceit on my part to reveal itself. After a few seconds she rose from the narrow bed and gestured for us to follow her.
‘One of us had to stay behind,’ she murmured.
She led us to the door of the next cottage, but held out an arm to stop us entering. Instead, we crowded around the doorway and gazed inside.
The room was identical in layout to hers, but here, the smell of sweat and sickness hung in the air. Heavy fabrics had been hung at the door and windows to keep the heat inside. I could just make out a man lying on the bed, cocooned in blankets. Only the ragged cough and the sheen of sweat on his skin revealed he was still alive, though I doubted he’d be for long.
‘Who is he?’ I asked.
‘We don’t know,’ Rhissa replied. ‘He was grievously wounded when he arrived here. Our healer did his best, but he said the wounds were too deep, and cruelly placed to ensure a slow, painful death.’
‘So when the others left . . . ?’ Brasti asked.
She sighed. ‘I couldn’t leave him to die alone like that.’
‘Why did he come here?’ Kest asked.
‘I don’t know. He just keeps repeating the same two words over and over. It sounds like “Sheen Shitaley”.’
The language was archaic Tristian, but the meaning escaped me.
I turned to Kest who was looking equally confused. ‘“Sien Sitale”. I believe it means “Noisy Footsteps”.’
At his words, Morn gave out a sudden cry and pushed past us, shaking Rhissa off as she tried to stop him, but he stopped at the bedside and stared down at the man – or boy, for with the curtain pushed aside, I could now see he couldn’t have been more than seventeen or eighteen. He had long russet hair and the sharp, broad features of an Avarean.
Morn’s fists were clenched and there was a terrible rage in his eyes.
‘Morn, what in hells is going on?’ I asked. ‘Who is this man?’
‘Sien Sitale,’ he replied. ‘“Noisy Footsteps”.’ It’s what the Rangieri call their apprentices. It’s what my teacher called me – before this Avarean bastard killed him.’
*
Morn appeared to be wrestling with the question of whether he should just strangle the boy, or let him die of his wounds. I hauled him out of the cottage before things got out of hand. It took some time to get the story out of him.
‘How did he come to be here?’ Morn demanded of Rhissa.
‘He stumbled into town, terribly wounded, as I said.’ She was standing her ground despite the uncertainty now clouding her features. ‘He was near death – we thought we should try to help him. We had no idea that he had . . .’
‘It’s not your fault,’ Morn said, though his jaw was so tight you could tell it hurt to say so.
‘Will you . . . ?’ Rhissa hesitated, then she lowered her voice. ‘Will you kill this man now?’
Morn stared out at the empty street. ‘I don’t know. Let me think.’
‘Since when do
we execute people without a trial?’ Brasti asked. ‘Not that I’m against it, mind you; it’s just that Falcio usually has a problem with that sort of thing.’
Morn didn’t look as if my approval was a necessary precondition for his vengeance.
‘You didn’t tell us your teacher was dead,’ I said.
‘There are any number of things I didn’t tell you, Falcio.’ He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘I’m sorry – I’m just surprised, that’s all. My teacher, Yimris, was an old man – he may well have been the last Rangieri master in the entire country.’
‘The boy—?’
‘Don’t call him a boy!’ Again, Morn had to calm himself. ‘Any Avarean who can wield a knife is a warrior, and any man who would kill his teacher is a damned murderer.’
‘So he was also a student of this Yimris?’ Kest asked.
‘His name is Gwyn,’ Morn said, ‘and he was Yimris’ student long before I met the old man. He took in the bastard when he was just eight years old, after his parents had been executed for treason against their own warband. By his people’s laws, the child should have died too, but Yimris took him and trained him in the ways of the Rangieri.’
‘If Yimris saved the boy, then why would he kill the old man?’
Morn gave a smile that had no joy in it. ‘Because Gwyn wanted to prove himself worthy of rejoining his people, and killing a Tristian Rangieri was his ticket back into Avares.’ Morn’s hands clenched at empty air. ‘By the time I found Yimris, he was near death, but he still made me promise not to go after that damned traitor.’
‘Why?’ Brasti asked, looking puzzled. ‘Why would your teacher—?’
‘Because the Rangieri are stupid that way.’
Oddly, it was the boy, Tam, who spoke first. ‘I will kill him if you ask, sir. Murderers should be punished.’
Morn looked at the child for a long time, then he reached into his coat and took out a small jar of black salve, the ointment we carry to treat our wounds. ‘Do you know what this is?’ he asked Tam, and when he shook his head, Morn put the jar in his hand. ‘It’s medicine. You put it on wounds, even the ones that have gone green and stinky, and sometimes it can make them better. Mostly, though, it will ease the pain.’
Tyrant's Throne Page 17
