The Outlaw King: The Line of Kings Trilogy Book One

by Craig Saunders

  Eventually he deemed himself far enough from his old home that he began to risk cooking over an open fire. He had grown so accustomed to Molly’s cooking that for the first few weeks he found himself hungry despite the fare, and weak early on from a sparse amount of meat that he caught, and lately from an endless diet of spit-roast rabbit and bark-baked mirs.

  Vegetables were rare in the woods, but mushrooms were plentiful, as were tubers, and autumn berries could be found. Tarn counted himself lucky. He knew how to forage. Silently, on the long flight, he thanked his father and wished he were still by his side to share in the hunt.

  Tarn thought back to the first time he tried to make a fire, under his father’s unforgiving eye.

  That night they had slept in a cold camp, his father refusing to light a fire if his son could not. Tarn vowed never again. He did, he realised, miss Gard more than his real father, and for that he was sad.

  He missed Rena’s ready smile and soft, warm touch also, and as he stared at the fire growing in the kindling, wondered what she did while he sat all alone, with the evening cold growing all around him.

  Soon the snows would come, and Tarn knew from bitter experience how much he would miss all that warmth.

  Eventually the fire took. The fire was colourful, the rabbit bland.

  He ate with no passion. Sadness bore heavily on him, as it did each night of his exile. He set thoughts of revenge aside while his heart was weak from loss, the loss of his second parents, their cold murder, the loss of his home, all unforgiving and hard injuries to bear. He was too caught up in his own sorrows to spare much thought for the future. He did not think of all he must do to return to his life, again, to return to Rena, in whom all his remaining love and hope lived. He did not think of the death of the Thane, or Tulathia’s visions of the future. He was, in short, swallowed whole in a deep depression. During the day he could walk to forget, and set it aside. Yet at night the very air clouded with despair from which he could not escape, as if the cloud followed him at a slower pace, and could only catch him when he rested.

  The fire grew low, the bones of the skinny rabbit were buried, and Tarn rolled himself upon the floor to sleep, and hoped that his dreams would keep him warm. He prayed for dreams of Rena, and her tender arms.

  Deer barked in the depths of the woods, and wolves howled. Sometime during the night a short-sighted badger wandered close to the camp. Perhaps sensing the fleeting warmth of the fire it turned around and returned into the cold woods. Badgers did not like the smell of humans, but were eternally curious.

  Tarn awoke and stretched out next to the embers of the night’s fire. He dreamt that his father, in a crown made of some dull, heavy metal with a silvery sheen, refused him permission to wed a witch who he loved. The dream made him feel sad upon waking, but he brushed the feeling aside. What could his father know of witches?

  It was, after all, just a dream.

  *

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  While Tarn awoke and cleaned his teeth with the sleeve of his shirt, the Thane of Naeth, far to the north, hunted in the fields with his goshawk, Valierion. Whenever vexed, he liked to get out from the castle and the city, and let his bird spread its wings. He imagined he could fly as he watched it, wondering how it would feel to have the wind streaming past a feathered body, the sure knowledge of your own power and speed and nothing on your mind but the hunt and the wind.

  Instead, he was weighed down with the rigours of governance; lining his treasury with taxes and other, secret funds from piracy and banditry, his own form of taxation on the other Thanes, those that refused to grant him fealty. His men, dressed as bandits, were a scourge on main roads throughout the land of Sturma. He paid his soldiers handsomely, while leaving his peasants to starve. He let them have barely enough to eat, and horded the grain for war. His soldiers patrolled his borders, and he set up a guard who did not wear uniforms, but reported directly to Savan Retrice, the mysterious captain of his secret guard, more important even than the guards outside the palace.

  While he could not wear the crown he had become obsessed with the thought of revolution from within his own borders. He paid spies to watch the other Thanes, should they grow restive, and guards without scruples to watch his own people. There was nothing he did not know.

  But for the boy.

  Man, he mused. He must be of age by now. While his advisor assured him that there was no sign of the boy, and that even if the boy lived there would be no threat to the Thane, Hurth could not be mollified. He wanted the line dead. He wanted, more than anything, to be the king of Sturma. If he could not be king, then he would have to rule by force.

  He knew from bloody experience what a civil war would do to the country.

  It would not be long now.

  The sleek bird flew from his arm, and swooped high, its form lost against the sky in the brightness of the suns. Carious now in its highest phase, losing all heat as it moved away from Rythe, seemed a giant in the sky, dwarfing its brother.

  *

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Autumn came with all its bluster, rustling the leaves and turning the long grasses into rolling seas. The wind did not overly trouble Tarn, but the cold grew, and he still had not found a place to winter. No woodsman roamed through the harshest months. That was for fools and desperate brigands. During the winter the people of Sturma were like bears – they horded their stores and waited for the returning birds. The birds, Tarn’s father told him, sung because they knew where paradise lay, and only came during summer to tell mankind their tales of the beautiful land. But mankind could not hear, and could not follow, because they had fallen to earth long ago when the world broke. Once, man soared in the skies, and visited paradise like the birds. They had flown on the winds, and knew how to sing, but Madal took their flight from them and forced them to roam the earth instead.

  Their affront to Madal had been great. They stole words from him, and set themselves above other beasts. Never would the great god allow them to fly again. But some still knew how to sing, and that was why troubadours sung of the past with great regret and anguish in their song – the song remembered the days in the sky, and why youthful voices were so much prettier than the old – they had not yet the words to spoil the song.

  Tarn thought much about his true father while he roamed. It felt strange to be living in the woods again, adrift with no companion to spin him tales and tell him stories. But he was past stories. It was time to make his own. His would not be a sad tale, a song of lament, but one of glory and returning happiness, like the spring.

  Unfortunately, autumn and spring always brought rain. He would have to weather the harshness of autumn and winter before he could smell the spring’s flowers again.

  For now, he had to take winter’s herald with its torrents and chilly downpours, and just be thankful that it was not yet winter. The heavy rains poured stubbornly from the sky, soaking through his skin. There and then he decided that he would make himself some deerskin clothes as proof against the cold and damp and sodden skies before the snows set in. Clothing, for the woodsman, was never a problem. But shelter would be.

  He thought about the Culthorn mountains, the seemingly eternal barrier between Sturma and the neighbouring Draymar in the west, but game would be rare, even though caves and wood would be plentiful. The Fresh Woods seemed to be the only place.

  Although the region was called a wood, it was a vast forest, covering the mid-western part of Sturma.

  Tarn set about preparing for the winter and the journey north, and forgot about joy and revenge for a while. He made himself a needle shaved from a thigh bone and ten lengths of gut. Then he cured deerskin, and set about sewing. Within a week he had deerskin trousers and boots. Setting the skins to cure, tied taut in an unusual bout of sunshine and accompanying dry wind, took the longest time. Scraping the fat from the hide made his fingers ache so that he could not clench his hand for a day afterward.

  It was hard work, making clothes from hide w
hen you only had the basest of tools, but in the end he had warm clothes and deemed the effort worth it. His new finery was supple and warm. He also made himself a pair of deerskin bracers. With his cloak of wolf furs and a pair of mittens he looked every inch the accomplished woodsman, but for his blades and the silver bow, which set him apart. He even made himself a quiver, which he slung across his back with the bow. Should he need to roll in a fight he would be in trouble, and the cumbersome amount of baggage he accumulated would mean that he would have difficulty fighting in a pinch, but the skills of the woodsman were paramount in his current situation, not those of the warrior, and a woodsman always went prepared.

  Eventually, Tarn deemed himself fit for winter. He turned himself north-west, and set out for the Fresh Woods. If he could just survive the winter, he might just make it through another year.

  Travelling and working kept Tarn’s mind from despair. It had always been so. He walked all day, pausing only to eat from his pack, or to hunt when his stores were low, or when he saw a good spot for foraging. Some days on the journey he went without meat, or plant, but never both.

  At some point on the journey he even decided that he was fit enough, and had reserves of energy, to resume his training.

  In the dark of the evening when he found a spot to camp he would spend half an hour or so practising with his sword, or with his knife. His skills, he decided, should be honed, for one day, perhaps many years from now, he would once again think of revenge, and following it, should he do it right, a return to all that he loved and the life he had grown to like.

  But as much as he would have liked to have a plan, none presented itself to him. He could just not see a way in which one man could storm a castle and kill a Thane.

  Such problems, Tarn decided, were not for the present. The winter first, then when he was strong enough he would leave the Fresh Woods, and head north. Opportunity favoured the brave. He would find a way.

  He put one foot in front of the other, occasionally pausing to heft his pack on his back, or rearrange his blades at his hips, but ever moving forward.

  He found a way station at a road he crossed leading to Orioth, one of the larger towns in Gern’s Crest, to the east and the coast. He was well out of the Spar and into the region of the Fresh Woods. The Fresh Woods had no Thane, no soldiers patrolling the main routes, and so were rife with bandits.

  The way station had seven guards, all armed with short swords. He sold pelts there and moved on with some money in his pocket at last.

  He crossed from the Spar, across Ulbridge, into the farm lands that surrounded the fertile lands north of the river, Lare Bog to the west, between him and the mountains, and Gern’s Crest to the east.

  One day, the clearings, the woods, and the roads that he had seen on his journey thus far were no longer there. Trees were older, of greater girth and heavier in the bough. He reached the edge of the Fresh Woods.

  Winter was just beginning.

  The first snows fluttered through the darkening air when Tarn happened upon an inn set in a clearing in the woods, with one dirt road running past its door, and with stables set in a ‘U’ shape at the rear. The hanging sign out front read ‘The Drunken Bear’.

  Tarn wondered why such a place would be out in the thick of the woods, about five miles in by his reckoning. It could only be a haven for bandits and thieves. He thought of passing by, but the call of civilisation was too strong, the thought of danger secondary to the hopes of a home cooked stew. Tarn longed for warmth. Perhaps this would be the last chance before the cold void of winter.

  He stepped inside, slinging his pack and the wrapped bow from his back (he wrapped the bow before stepping into the inn – it would mark him out as a rube, and he had no illusions about his chances of leaving such a place with a fine bow, or his life should he show signs of wealth), leaving his right hand free. His scar was not too obvious in the dark, but he could not afford to take any unneccesary chances.

  Tarn looked around the tavern. Candles burned in bottles set on thick wooden tables casting dancing shadows around the bar. A fierce fire roared in a giant stone hearth, spitting as damp logs burned bright. It was not busy – too few travellers were abroad with the snows moving in from the sea.

  Crushed between the Culthorn mountains to the west, and the endless sea to the east, snow had nowhere else to fall and so blanketed Sturma’s fields and forests for a rest from the burning skies. Tarn knew this, as his father told him why it snowed. The snow needed to rest each year away from the suns, which were their bitter enemy. Tarn did not begrudge the snow a rest once a year. The suns held court for the rest of the year.

  Those few that were in the inn were obviously a rough sort. They sported scars, and blades. They lived by their wits, and only risked losing them in a place of safety. Tarn understood this without thinking about it. This place was a haven for all robbers and men of low character – they were drinking quietly, and many were drunk. He would be safe enough. No man would attack him and risk losing face in this home away from home.

  Outside, though, was another matter. It would not do to lose his wits.

  Tarn did not look out of place, like a fresh-faced youth. He looked older than his years. His beard was thick, his dark hair long and curling about his scarred face. The others wore cloaks of wool, and fine, warm trousers. Some were stripped to their shirts, sitting around the fire where the heat was at its best. Tarn’s blades set him apart as a warrior. Many, he knew, would have swords or daggers, but few both.

  Leaving his belongings by an empty table to mark it his, but keeping an eye on his pack just the same, Tarn approached a burly barman and ordered an ale and some stew. He sat alone at his table far removed from the other drinkers while he waited for his food.

  With the bitter taste of ale on his tongue he considered his options.

  He could stay the night, or move on before the snows became too thick. From the smell of the air the snow would not be heavy tonight. There was no reason to stay. Besides, one bed was as good as any other, and in Tarn’s experience, sleeping at the feet of the stars was one of life’s grandest reasons to forgo the comforts of civilisation. No, he would have an ale – maybe two – and be on his way.

  When the stew came it was accompanied by a small hunk of hard bread. He broke this up and soaked it in the stew. Passable fare at best, but hot and filling.

  When he eventually stepped out into the snow, later than he planned, there was still a dusky light in the western sky. The inn’s light seeped from the cracks in the shutters and reflected off the falling snowflakes. Tarn shouldered his pack, and set out.

  The four ales he drank were warming him, but Tarn knew the warmth was dangerous. He would allow himself an hour’s walk, to be sure the inn was well behind him, then he would make camp.

  Tarn’s footfalls crunched the snow underfoot, and the sound made him smile. Or perhaps it was the ale.

  As Tarn walked smiling in the snow, a figure detached itself from the shadows under the eaves of The Drunken Bear, and followed in his footsteps.

  *

  Chapter Fifty

  Tarn walked for two hours in the snow, still heading northwest, into the centre of the forest. Eventually, he came to a rest at a place he deemed had enough shelter from the storm, the snow gathered in the boughs of a great tree keeping the snow from the ground. Tarn unrolled his bed, a thin deerskin, enough to keep the damp of the earth from his bones, but little more, and lay as close to the tree as he could get.

  He pulled his cloak over his face and slept.

  The cold descended that night and loneliness engulfed him. In the morning he woke, groggy from the previous evening’s ale, frost crusting his beard.

  Had he slept more lightly, he might have heard footsteps by his camp, crunching in the snow. But perhaps not, with the falling snow dragging sounds to the ground.

  Tarn moved on after a breakfast of Saril vines, which he found near his camp. With their bloody leaves chopped fine they made a nourishing
stew, a supplement to his diet of meat, along with what tubers and roots he could dig from the frozen earth, using his sword like a spade to break the ground.

  Gard would have skinned him alive.

  Instantly saddened by Gard’s absence, Tarn concentrated on walking.

  As he moved further into the forest snow became sparse on the ground. There was a thin covering in some areas, where the trees gave each other breathing space, but more often than not the trees crowded in together for warmth, and their branches intertwined, giving the snow no room to break through. Going was easy, if a little wayward where clumps of bushes pushed Tarn from his true path.

  Coming upon a knot of trees and bushes that blocked his path, Tarn doubled back in order to move past them. He was forced to move to his right, and as he did so he sensed a movement far behind him.

  Tarn well knew he could not keep a watch for followers in his sleep. Instead he took pains to clear away sign of his camp and fires, buried his waste and scraped the ground to remove indication of his passing. Perhaps it had not been enough.

  *

  Chapter Fifty-One

  A little way east of Tarn a weary traveller paused in his pursuit. He was not yet desperate enough to risk attacking the man he followed, but he was coming close to it. He followed his prey’s footsteps while the snow was fresh on the ground, but now the snow was patchy at best. Still, it was enough to discern the man’s course. He travelled northwest.