The Free

by Brian Ruckley

  They advanced slowly up the narrow, rough track to the farmhouse door. Partly from tiredness, partly from caution. Akrana had unbuckled her belt and carried it and her scabbarded sword in one hand. Drann could smell smoke, and just make out the thin trail of it snaking above the house. Someone was awake, and cooking or warming.

  “Go and look in that byre,” Akrana whispered, pointing with her sword towards the run-down cow shed around the corner of the house.

  Drann made his way there, glancing nervously through a window as he passed – seeing nothing but the glow of candlelight – and stumbling a little on the uneven ground. There was a shuttered aperture in the near wall of the shed. He lifted up the shutter and peered in.

  “Four horses,” he said as he walked back towards Akrana.

  “Fit for riding?” she hissed.

  Drann shrugged. He was far too tired to feel anything like nervousness at her curt manner. That would be entirely too much effort.

  “They’re not farm horses,” was all he said.

  That was evidently enough for Akrana. She rapped, hard, on the door with the hilt of her sword. It shook in its frame. She gestured for Drann to stand back, and retreated a few steps from the threshold herself. Side by side, they waited. Akrana set her hand on the sword hilt, but did not draw the blade. Not yet.

  “Do you want me to mend that for you?” Kerig had asked quietly, regarding the bloodied bandages about Yulan’s foot with raised eyebrows.

  “No,” Yulan grunted. “I don’t want you spending yourself. We might have greater need of your strength soon enough.”

  He was carefully peeling away the bandages as he spoke. Fresh ones, which Ordeller had ripped from one of her bed sheets, lay beside him on the table, waiting to be applied. His wounds hurt. Less than some he had acquired in the past, more than others.

  It was still three hours from dawn. Candles burned around the room, giving a little light. Ordeller loitered by the door, listening for any sound out on the street. All of the Free – save Hamdan’s archers, who all now stood guard over Hestin and the Clamour in the stables – were crowded around a single large table. Ordeller had brought them bowls of soup, warmed up from the leftovers of yesterday. No one was drinking it. She did not seem to mind. She sat alongside Drann at a separate table. No one had told the two of them to keep their distance, as far as Yulan knew. It was right, though. This was for the Free only, now.

  “I trust his fear,” Hamdan was saying. “He was fit to weep once we convinced him who we were. A few pokes with a knife and he was longing to tell us everything he knew.”

  “Which was not enough,” Yulan grunted, winding one of the clean bandages about his foot, “but it’s what we’ve got.”

  “The Bereaved, though?” muttered Wren. “I can’t believe it.”

  “And I do,” said Yulan. “We know the School turned in on itself, fighting one against another over whether to help Crex or not. We know that the ones who thought not won the day. If they hadn’t, I’d never have taken a single coin from any of the Council.”

  “If they hadn’t, the whole Council’d be dead,” snorted Hamdan.

  “Maybe,” Yulan acknowledged. “The war would not be over, that much is certain. I’d thought that those who lost the argument within the School were all dead, or imprisoned. Evidently not. Clevers, and Clade, and the Bereaved. All camped there with Callotec. That’s what our tongue said.”

  “Do we know how many Clevers?” Kerig asked dolefully.

  Yulan shook his head.

  “Not many. But at least two hundred warriors; Clade, and as many of the King’s levymen as they could round up along the way. All running for the Empire for want of anywhere else to run.”

  Ordeller’s ape had climbed silently up on to the table. It investigated the nearest of the abandoned bowls of soup, stirring its finger in the thick broth. The ape smelled bad, Yulan thought. Ordeller hissed a warning from the far side of the room and the animal retreated regretfully back on to the floor.

  “Why isn’t every army in the kingdom busy turning over rocks, hunting through every copse, if the Bereaved’s got loose?” mused Wren.

  “Because the School hasn’t told anyone,” Yulan grunted. “I’d heard the Clade had companies roving around, but thought it just some unsettled part of their internal squabbles. If anyone but them lays hands on the Bereaved, who knows what will happen? The School would certainly lose their standing, perhaps everything. And the Council might go to war with one another over its possession. Anyone who holds it might think the mere threat of it entitles them to a throne.”

  “Probably does,” Kerig muttered.

  “It’s Kasuman, most likely,” Yulan went on quietly. “He was chief amongst those who wanted the School to stand behind Crex. If you go four generations back, he’s got Hommetic blood in him. He’s the only one I can think of who would have the fire in his belly to actually break the School apart, and the cold stupidity to steal the Bereaved away.”

  “Stupid enough to let Callotec use it, though?” Hamdan asked. “Or deliver it to the Orphans?”

  “Probably,” Yulan sighed. “I imagine Callotec expects the Empire to let a tame king – him – sit in Armadell after they’ve wasted the land. He might convince Kasuman of it, if he needs convincing.”

  Akrana snorted. “King of Ruin, if the Orphans dance over everything first.”

  “Or King of the Dead,” Yulan said. “He wouldn’t be the first to think either of those a better title than King of Nothing.”

  He set a fine bone pin to hold the new bandage in place on his foot, and carefully pressed his sole to the floorboards. Testing the pain. It was bearable. The least of his concerns now.

  “Listen,” he said wearily. “Listen. This is not what we came looking for. This is not what I promised you, when I offered you a choice back at Creel’s camp. Everything’s changed. Creel’s not paying us to fight three hundred men and the Bereaved.”

  “But if we win the Bereaved as well as Callotec, we can name any price we dream of,” Hamdan said quickly. “Every power in the land will want to treat with us, and grovel at our feet. Even the School.”

  “Yes,” Yulan conceded. The truth of it was too obvious to deny.

  “If they carry the Bereaved into the Empire, there’ll be thousands of Orphanidons on the march the next day,” Akrana said. “Uncounted deaths, by plague and sword.”

  “I know,” Yulan nodded. He spoke gently. He knew what that thought, that vision of the future, meant for her.

  He sighed. Too much, weighing upon them all. Clouding what had seemed simple. And none of it going to the heart of what he wanted to say.

  “I’ve served the Free for twelve years,” he said at length. “It’s given me a place to belong. You have. I didn’t know what I was searching for when I walked up out of the south, until Merkent found me and showed me. That I became Captain when he… when he died was a greater honour than I ever deserved, or dreamed of.”

  Hamdan made a show of dissent, about to protest the question of what was deserved or not, but Yulan silenced him with a raised hand.

  “I have tried to be worthy of that honour, and to live up to the traditions of those who went before. But in truth, I’ve known for years that what I really needed to be worthy of was you. All of you. There is more loyalty, more courage, more honour in the ranks of the Free than I have seen anywhere else. So many times, wielding such power, it might have fallen into cruelty or tyranny. It never did, because it has always been something more than all the other free companies ever were.

  “And it was over. We found an ending for ourselves, because the time had come to seek such a thing. I think it was a good ending. So this needs to be said: you do not have to do this. None of you; not any more. It will not be done easily, if it’s done at all. When it was just Callotec and a few Armsmen, sword and arrow might have sufficed. Now it’s different. It’ll take the entelechs.”

  He looked at Kerig, at Wren and last of all at Akrana.
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br />   “It would take everything we have, short of the Clamour. I hope short of the Clamour. So I say again: you do not have to do this. I go on because I choose to put myself between Callotec and Towers’ Shadow, whatever the circumstance. Only for that.”

  They regarded him in silence. The only sound was the heavy snuffling of the ape, settling in beneath the table.

  “I go where you go,” Hamdan said at length and pushed back his chair. “I’m going to check on my boys in the stable. Make sure all’s well with Hestin.”

  As the door closed behind him, Akrana rose as well.

  “Nothing’s changed,” she said. “Nothing important. We go on. We honour the contract, and give Creel Callotec’s head on a table.”

  Kerig and Wren were looking at each other, not at Yulan. Wren’s hand rested over Kerig’s on the table. Yulan thought he detected the slightest of squeezes there. A moment of silent comfort, communication.

  “Go home,” Yulan said softly to them. “Go make your farm, raise a family.”

  Wren smiled at her husband and then turned to Yulan.

  “We’re not done with this family yet. One last war for the Free.”

  Yulan shook his head a little. He felt strangely calm, faintly sorrowful.

  “Do you really not know why we’re doing this?” Wren asked him. “All of us. Even Akrana there, though she’ll deny it with every breath. For you. Because however much you think you’ve been striving to be worthy of us, we know you surpassed that mark a long time ago.”

  Yulan did not know what to say to that. He had to swallow to slow the emotion that rose in his throat.

  “A couple of hours’ sleep for everyone,” he said briskly, getting to his feet. “Then we ride hard. Ordeller?”

  The matron of the house looked up.

  “Does anyone in the town have horses fit for riding? At the pace I mean to set, we’re going to be crippling ours if we can’t find some spares to take along.”

  “Only ones I know of – by rumour, not certain – are out at the Maralon farm. Heard tell they came into possession of a few some weeks back. Nobody knows how, and they’ve got them hidden away if they’ve got them at all.”

  “I’ll need them,” said Yulan. He waved Kerig and Wren away from the table with expansive sweeps of his arms. “Sleep, all of you. Two hours.”

  Drann made to follow the rest as they filed up the stairs, but Yulan beckoned him over.

  “Akrana tells me you were poking around the Clamour’s wagon,” he murmured.

  The guilt that paraded itself across the youth’s face might have been comical in another place, at another time.

  “I suppose so,” he said. “I just —”

  “Don’t do it again.”

  “I won’t. Akrana said she’d cut my stupid head off.”

  “Well, I probably wouldn’t let her do that, so that’s not the reason you won’t do it again. The real reason is that I’m telling you, and that you’re hopefully not quite as stupid as Akrana seems to think. Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” Drann said emphatically. Then, more tentative: “She called it ‘he’, not ‘it’. Hestin did. When she spoke, it was… strange. Jumbled.”

  Yulan sighed.

  “The Clamour’s the pure substance of the Aestival entelech, here in an impure world where it doesn’t belong. Rage is an aspect of the Aestival, so Hestin’s there, spending every moment of every day quieting that rage, dispelling it. It takes everything she’s got. Not just her body. Her mind. She’s losing it all, piece by piece.

  “Now, I’ve got a question for you. You can wait here for us, or go back to Creel if you want to. I’ll not insist you come with us, and there’ll be no shame if you choose not to.”

  The question clearly took Drann a little by surprise. He frowned in consternation and glanced out of the corner of his eye at Wren disappearing up the stairs.

  “Do you not need a contract any more, then? Or a contract-holder?”

  “I don’t know,” Yulan confessed. “I might.”

  Drann shrugged.

  “Then I’ll come with you.”

  “That’s not the wise answer.”

  “Probably not. But I’ll come, a bit further at least.”

  “Then go and try to find some sleep. You’ll be needed in the morning.”

  Drann had come close to pleading with Yulan not to send him at Akrana’s side to the Maralon farm in search of the rumoured horses. But he had known it would serve no purpose. No one was questioning any of Yulan’s instructions now; and someone had to go with her, after all.

  So now he stood at the Clever’s side, leaning on his spear at the door of the farmhouse in a dawn still miserly with its light and warmth. He stared down at his own feet, mind too dull to admit any thought. He noted that the stitches around the sole on his left boot were fraying. Might come apart any day now.

  The door opened so abruptly and loudly that he took a startled step backwards. Akrana, of course, did not. Even when a stream of abuse spilled out and over her.

  The shawled woman delivering the torrent was short and stocky, head shrunk down on to her shoulders. She was old. The two tall youths who peered over her were too young to be her sons, Drann thought. Grandsons, perhaps. This would not be the only farm that was missing a generation these days.

  “We need your horses,” Akrana said into the flood of invective.

  “What horses?” snarled the grandmother. “Get a stick, boys, and chase ’er off.”

  One of the young men disappeared into the farmhouse. Akrana puffed out her cheeks in frustration.

  “Get the horses,” she said to Drann, and then leaned down towards the old lady. “I have a fistful of coins here for you, Mother. We will take nothing without paying for it, but be sure we must take what we need.”

  “Coins ain’t worth more’n shit to me,” the woman shouted. “Who’s got anything to sell these days?”

  Akrana glanced at Drann, who was still standing there, both mind and body heavy. Neither knowing what to do.

  “Would you go and get the horses out of the barn,” Akrana snapped at him.

  And the lash of her anger did move him, send him sluggishly over towards the byre. He watched the confrontation in the doorway as he went, though. The old woman was glaring after him, her wizened face knotting into a scab of fury.

  “He’s stealing the horses, boys,” she shrieked. “Stop him!”

  That put a little life into Drann’s stride, and he darted into the dark, enclosing shed and began unhitching the animals. The place smelled of cows, but there was no stock in here now save the horses. He had no idea how he was supposed to lead or manage four of them. For want of anything else to do, he carried on as if he knew precisely what he was doing, gathering all the long ropes by which they were tethered into his free hand and walking backwards. Trying to ease them from their places and out into the dawn. To his surprise, the animals did not resist.

  As he emerged into the yard, he could hear the argument still raging. On one part, at least. It seemed that Akrana had given up on talk.

  “You can’t take them! I don’t want your coins. You can’t eat a coin.”

  She was trying to push past Akrana, but the Clever stood her ground, and set her sheathed sword crossways across the doorway. Someone had found a way out, though, for Drann heard a door clattering open at the back of the farmhouse. The noise must have disturbed a flock of crows on the field round there, for a great flight of them came raucously up, croaking their way into the sky and rolling over the roof like a ragged cloud of black leaves.

  The birds swirled low over the yard for a moment, before rushing upward and scattering and speeding away over the hillside in a loose, spreading flock. Heading into the rosy blush tinting the clouds on the eastern horizon.

  One of the youths was coming down the narrow path at the side of the farmhouse, staring at Drann. He had an ugly-looking cudgel in his hand. Drann blinked at him, looked towards Akrana. She was pushing back against the other g
randson, who had stepped in front of the old woman.

  “Let go those horses,” the approaching youth shouted at Drann, brandishing his club.

  “We do need them,” Drann called out despondently. “I swear, if you knew why, you’d let —”

  “Let them go!”

  Drann hefted his spear, holding it clumsily as if he meant to throw it. He did not expect much to come of the gesture, but his opponent stopped.

  “Best to just take her coin,” Drann said.

  He had never thrown a spear at anything but a straw bale. What little hunting he had done as a youth had been with snares, sling or fish trap. To his surprise, fear leaked into the farm boy’s expression, replacing anger. He was afraid of Drann, and of his apparent intent. No one, as far as Drann could remember, had ever been afraid of him before.

  “Take the coin,” he said again. “It’s the best you can hope for out of this.”

  He began to edge away, easing the horses across the yard. No one was going to try to stop him, he realised, but he kept the spear up just in case.

  Akrana sprang back from the doorway, tossing a pouch of coins as she went. It burst open, and spilled a tinkling tumble of coppers on to the threshold, the cobblestones. That distracted the farm folk, but it was her sword, swept from its scabbard and held ready, that ensured they would not follow. She backed away from the house. Turned and walked beside Drann down the track, watching over her shoulder all the way.

  The old woman’s shouts pecked at them. Soon enough the door was slammed shut, and although that did not stop the complaints, it at least dulled them.

  “They didn’t seem to have anything but the horses,” Drann said, as they headed slowly for Curmen.

  “And where do you guess folk like that got riding horses from?” Akrana grunted. “No coins changed hands to make that happen, to be sure. Stolen, or looted from a battlefield. They have their profit.”

  “Like she said, they can’t eat coins, though,” Drann said stubbornly. “What if this was your farm? Your family?”