by Tim Stead
“Thank you for showing me this, Welcart,” he said. “Now we need to find an area that we can build. It probably needs to be a couple of acres, but not too flat. Is there a stream nearby?”
There was a definite pause. It was as though they had expected something else of him, Welcart and Tilian both. Well, that was their affair.
“There is. To the east, my lord,” Welcart said. “A stream runs in a shallow valley there.”
He led the way, weaving as before between the low branches. Skal was reminded of another reason he hated pines. Nothing grew beneath them. There was no game here, nothing to hunt, just the dead, dark, cushioned carpet of needles that whispered beneath his boots. He would have thought it haunted, but not even ghosts would dwell in such a dismal place. It dawned on him that he was quite lost. Without the groundsman to guide him back it might take an hour to find the house, though it could be no more than ten minutes walk. He glanced across at Tilian, who was close behind him, concentrating on his footing.
He almost walked into Welcart. The old man had stopped and Skal could see why. There was a place where a tree had fallen, and the gap it left afforded a view down and across a low valley. It was all pines, a rich green carpet of silence. Skal leaned against a tree and studied what little he could see.
“Can we build here?” he asked.
“We can. There’s two acres this side of the water and four the other,” Welcart said.
“How far are we from the house?”
“A motion less than half a mile, as a crow flies.”
“It is a good site then.”
“Bold as I am to ask, my lord, but can you tell me what you intend?”
Skal smiled. It was simple enough. He’d seen the servants’ rooms, the squalid little boxes they slept in, and he’d thought to shoot two birds with one arrow. He’d cut the trees and use them to build cottages here – decent places where a man or a woman might live in a little comfort, with light and warmth and water to hand.
“Cottages,” he said. “But first we must have a road…”
Pain blossomed in his side, and he knew at once that he’d been shot. He heard the arrow, but did not known the noise until it struck. He looked down in amazement. The thing was down on his left side, firmly lodged in the tree, and by some miracle it had cut through his shirt, drawn blood, but barely. The breath was driven from his lungs as Tilian crashed into him, throwing him to the ground. Six seconds, maybe ten – that was all it took for a bowman to fit another point, and sure enough another flight sprouted from the tree above him.
Having knocked Skal down Tilian was pulling out an arrow, fitting it to the string, lifting and dropping his head to try to get a sight of their assailant but Welcart put a gentle hand on his forearm.
“Wolves,” he said. “Best I see to this. You’ll not see him to shoot. The lord’s not badly done.”
He rolled sideways, slipping down the slope, and was gone. He moved quickly for one so old. Skal put a hand to his side and felt the wound. It was no more than a cut, like a shallow slice from a knife, but his hand came back red. He should bind it.
“Assassins, my lord,” Tilian whispered.
“Just one, I think,” Skal said. “And lucky for me he’s not a good shot.”
“We should move,” Tilian said. “He knows where we are.”
“It is a good place to be,” Skal said. “There is the fallen tree for shelter and we are on the down slope. If he wants another shot he’s going to have to come pretty close.”
“Do we trust Welcart, my lord? He may be a part of this.”
“What does your heart tell you, Tilian?”
The boy did not hesitate more than a moment. “We trust him,” he said.
“I am glad that we agree on that, Tilian.” His voice made light of the situation, but Skal was more concerned that he chose to reveal to the boy. It was true that he was inclined to trust Welcart. The man seemed a solid, honest woodsman, but he knew little of him. Somewhere out in the pine wood was a man with a bow who was trying to kill him, and the only thing between him and that man’s arrow was Welcart and a log. He wanted something more.
He looked around their tiny clearing. There must be something that he could do to rebalance the odds. If Welcart failed them, or simply left to save himself, then the assassin would have to come close indeed. He could not get a shot at Skal without showing himself. He regretted not bringing his own bow.
“Get down into that thicket,” he told Tilian, pointing down slope to a place where the dead branches of the fallen tree had tied in with a live pine. It was a good hide.
“I’d rather stay and defend you, my lord,” Tilian said.
“That’s exactly what I want you to do. If he comes over the rise you’ll see him from there, and he won’t see you. You’ll get a clear shot before he can get his.”
Tilian looked at the place, then nodded and descended the few yards crablike, scuttling with his head down to avoid being seen. He was quiet about it, and in a moment he was out of sight. Skal fingered his dagger. It was no real use against a bowman, even at quite close range. He could throw it, but it would likely do no more than make the bowman duck. Even that might do some good, though. It would buy Tilian a few moments more to make his shot. The boy was fair with a bow, but no particular archer. Yet even Tilian should be able to make a shot from less than twenty yards. He just prayed that the boy didn’t rush it and miss.
The silence went on. He could hear no sounds from the forest beyond the rise. Perhaps Welcart was dead. He had no way of knowing. Now that he could neither see nor hear Tilian he felt very alone. It would be ironic if he were to die so close to his mother’s grave.
He shifted and the cut in his side stabbed at him again, but he made no noise. He had to admit that he preferred the traditional species of battle, where men stood face to face and hewed at each other with swords. It was probably because he was good at it. This was worse because it would all be over with a single arrow, and that could come at any moment.
He strained to hear again, but there was nothing at all. Just a sigh of wind in the high branches. In the distance a solitary finch played up and down half scales.
A small noise to his left made him turn, and Welcart was standing there.
“Your man can rest his bow, my lord,” he said.
“You killed him?”
“Thought you’d want to talk him for a spell,” Welcart said. “So no.”
“And he was alone.”
“He was.”
Skal stood, levering himself up against the fallen tree to minimise the pain. It still hurt. It seemed to hurt more than when he’d been cut at the wall, and that had been a grievous injury. He wondered if he was poisoned, but he doubted it. He recalled the physic at the Green Road telling him that great wounds often threw the body out of its ease so much that it denied pain. He wished his body would deny this pain.
“Tilian, time to break cover.”
Tilian stepped out of the hide, threading his body awkwardly through the branches. Skal saw Welcart nod appreciatively.
“Good boy you have there, my lord. Took me the best part of a minute to see where he’d gone.”
Skal refused any help and followed Welcart back through the trees away from the slope. Now that the danger was gone his apprehension was replaced by anger. Someone had tried to kill him. But who? No mere bandit would single him out of a group of three, hunt him in the forests of his own estate. This was a man who had acted on another’s behalf, and again the question: who? The obvious reply was Elejine, but the steward was a servant. He would not dare kill his lord. Even standing to lose everything as he did, Elejine would have to be a cold and wicked man to order Skal’s death. Yet it could be no other.
They came to the place where Welcart had overcome the assassin. There was a lot of blood, and the man was unbound. Skal realised that Welcart had hamstrung him, cut his legs behind the knee so that he could not walk – would never walk again. It was a cruel but effective
deed. The assassin, a young man, was weak from loss of blood, but still terrified. He was weeping and mumbling, incoherent with pain and fear. Skal felt pity, but reminded himself of what this man had done to be brought so low. He was a woodsman himself, by his clothes, and Skal noted that his bow was still there, though broken, but there was no sign of the arrows. Welcart must have thrown them away. Tilian insisted that they bind the cuts before they moved him, saying that he might bleed to death before they got him to the house, and when that was done he and the old woodsman picked him up, an arm each, and dragged him through the wood.
It took fifteen minutes to break out of the trees and come within sight of the house. All that time Skal’s anger was goaded by the pain in his side, and he was ready to set things right.
The sight of him bleeding, and the bloody man they dragged behind them caused a commotion in the house. People ran out and back inside again as they approached, but there was no sign of Elejine.
“I want to speak to the steward,” Skal shouted at the first footman to approach. “Fetch him now.”
The man vanished again, running inside without a word. Tilian and Welcart dragged the assassin round the side of the house and laid him down none too gently on the cobbles of the stable yard. By now the bolder servants were outside, and the more timid packed into the doorways and peering through the windows. The footman who had gone to find the steward came back.
“Can’t find him, my lord,” he panted, out of breath from running.
“Search again. Take others with you. Search every room.”
Four others followed the footman back into the house, and now Sara Bruff appeared, a puzzled look on her face. She had been apart from the others, the only one in the house proper. She came out of the house with her infant son on one hip, an arm wrapped around him. She saw the blood.
“He’s hurt.” She said. “Have you sent for a physic?”
“Go back inside,” Skal said.
She looked at him, saw something in his face that made her blanch. Tilian took her arm, tried to steer her away, but she resisted.
“What’s happening here?” she asked. Skal ignored her, waiting to see if Elejine would be brought before him. He doubted it. If he was right about the old man he would be difficult to find, knowing what being found might mean.
Tilian pulled her away, sent her back inside the house, and in a short while the five footmen came back.
“We have searched every room, my lord,” the first said. “He is not in the house.”
Skal looked about him, at the dark woods, the long road rising up the long hill that found the southern estate village. Elejine was an old man. If he had any power it was here. If he knew anything better than anyone else it was the house. Elejine would not hide in the woods with men like Welcart set against him, he would not have run to the village, or beyond.
“He is in the house.” He looked around at the worried faces of his servants. “Who is the senior footman?” he asked.
There was an uncertain pause. Looks were exchanged among the footmen, and it was the one that he had first sent to search that stepped forwards again.
“There is none, my lord,” he said. “We are all the same.”
It was very unusual. In a household of this size there was always a hierarchy. It was necessary to the orderly running of a great house.
“Then who is the oldest among you?” Even as he asked the question he could see the answer himself. They were all young, not a man among them over thirty years. The maids were the same – all young. He could see none among the household staff that might pass for a senior anything.
“I am, my lord.” The same footman again. He was the oldest, then, and the only one who seemed to have a voice.
“Then you are senior footman,” Skal said. “The conduct of the others is your responsibility, and they must answer to you.” He turned to the others. “Welcart will be landskeeper. Who is the cook?” A young girl raised her hand. She could not have been more than sixteen years. Skal shook his head. He could not make her housekeeper. The others would rebel. “Who is the oldest house maid?” Another girl stepped forwards, and at least this one was twenty-something. He went on, creating senior positions so that he would have only one person to deal with in each function of the household, one name to remember. This was not the best way to go about things, but his urge to impose order was strong.
That done he set Tilian the task of searching the house yet again, and watched as the young corporal divided them up into teams of two, created a plan of the house in the gravel beyond the cobbles and set each team an area to investigate. It looked suitably military.
He walked back into the house himself, slowly passing down each corridor, letting his eye wander through every room in the house proper. Every moment he was more certain that Elejine had not left. He was here, hidden. But what could he gain by it?
The answer was obvious. Elejine wanted the house the way it was. He wanted to be de facto lord of Latter Fetch, to live in the comfort he had become accustomed to. Skal made that impossible, so he would try to kill Skal. The man had tried once, sending a woodsman with a bow, and it was only through good fortune that Skal was still alive. He would therefore try again. He must try again. The stakes were higher now. For Elejine it was life or death.
The simple thing would be to leave. He could ride with Tilian to the neighbouring lordship, ask for help, and there would be fifty men hunting Elejine by tomorrow, and once the word was out of Latter Fetch, once someone else knew what had happened here there would be nowhere he could run within Avilian. That was the easy thing, perhaps the clever thing to do.
But Skal wanted to catch Elejine himself. He wanted to demonstrate that he was the better man.
But the problem remained. Elejine was hidden somewhere in the house, and it was a house that he knew better than anyone. To Skal’s certain knowledge the man had been steward here for twenty years, and perhaps for a decade before that, and even longer, he suspected in less exalted positions. The rest of the staff were children by comparison. Elejine would know the house’s secrets, and houses this old always had them. There would be hidden passages, perhaps, forgotten rooms walled off, cellars long since bricked up. There could be any number of secret places, or none at all.
He did not doubt that Elejine would have allies. There would be those among the servants who had almost as much to lose as their steward; those whose ascendancy over their peers was no longer guaranteed under Skal Hebberd and whoever he chose to be the new steward. Indeed it was likely that the ascendancy would be reversed, and the powerful would become the lowest of the low, picked on and distrusted by the others.
It would be necessary, therefore, for Skal to die, and Tilian, too. So it was life and death for both of them.
Tilian’s search proved fruitless. Skal had expected that, but it was a necessary first step. The second step was their prisoner, the hamstrung woodsman who had tried to kill him. It would be necessary for him to tell them what he knew, but Skal did not have a taste for torture, and neither did Tilian. Never the less, he sent Tilian to speak to the man. The boy had a silver tongue, and if by some miracle he could get something out of the prisoner then torture may be unnecessary.
It was still an hour before midday. Whatever happened, he could not sleep until this was resolved.
3. A Dream
Narak dreamed. He knew that he dreamed, which was surprising. Dreams are usually separate worlds, complete in themselves and we do not guess their deceiving nature until we wake and know them for what they are.
He stood in a passageway, in the dark. But it was not dark. The walls were spotted with the light giving lichen that the Bren used to illume their tunnels, and like the Bren he could see. He was alone. He felt the isolation, but the tunnel was busy, thronged with Bren of all shapes and sizes. Most prominent were the tunnel makers, for this was a new tunnel, a place of expansion. Narak knew them from before, from when he had known Pelion and his children from the time the Benethe
on was made. But in the dream he knew them a different way, also, one that was not natural to him. He knew them as kin.
He was Bren. He knew the tunnel makers as the Bren knew them. He saw their strength through two sets of eyes.
He stood and watched, pressed against the wall of the tunnel by the needs of others, others who must cut rock, carry rock, make progress towards the goal. He stood out of the way, apart from what he watched. He was Bren Ashet.
The huge hands of the tunnel makers tore the rock from the wall, passed it back, reached forwards again, fingers like steel chisels cutting into stone with a thrust of a great arm, the huge power of the arms gripping and tearing. It was a sight that no man had ever seen. The noise, more than anything, amazed him. The chisel fingers struck like five picks, driving into the stone, and the stone groaned as the fingers tightened and pulled, muttering its pain. The rock came away with a crack that stabbed at Narak’s ears and made him flinch within the body he occupied. It was a noise like a breaking tree, but all in an instant and a hundred times as loud.
