‘You have earned that and more, dear Ferlias. Go and call!’
He bowed again, and cantered his huge horse forward through the few trees ahead, drawing a great horn from his saddlebags. Beyond the trees they saw him halt, and sound the horn. Its note, clear and strong, echoed out across the lake; and a second later it was answered. They rode on after the captain, hearing him sound again, and at last, as they emerged from the trees, call out. Another trumpet answered; then, suddenly, a whole fanfare. And it seemed to Gille and Olvar, seeing for the first time what lay before them, that the sound was merely the expression of the sight.
To Kunrad it had looked like a jewel; but here it rose before them in all its power, and the blue mountains beyond shrank to a backdrop for its towers. This close he could see there were windows in them, a few high under the eaves and facing mostly inwards. Below them were mere arrowslots; but in the walls themselves there were none. The gate itself was puzzling. A drawbridge fronted it; but that opened only on to the rocks below, and the jetty. To one side of the gate the wooden quay stretched out, wider than it had seemed from the hill, with an arched gateway at either end and a string of small boats moored beneath; but of any other bridge he could see none. Without one the castle could be assailed only by water; and the fate of any but the largest boats beneath those lowering white walls was in little doubt.
They might have been made in mockery of the Ice itself, sheer, smooth, baffling the eye and daunting the mind. Yet the sunlight on them was joyous, and the old red tiles of the round tower rooftops glowed mellow, and the banners that streamed from tall white masts at their summits waved a welcome in the winds. For sheer strength this stronghold made even the corsair fortress look crude and feeble, yet there was a sweeping, airy grace on its lines, so that it seemed like a bright ship sailing on the constant breeze.
‘Why,’ exclaimed Gille suddenly, riding up behind them, ‘it is the corsair fortress! They must have seen it and sought to copy it as best they could, in that fell place!’
‘A flattery, I suppose!’ said Alais, and Gille bowed, a little stiffly, for it was the first word she had spoken directly to him.
‘A weak one!’ said Olvar. ‘These sothrans are a mighty folk!’ He bowed also.
She inclined her head gracefully to them both. ‘You must not think of me as altogether a sothran!’ she said, with a seriousness that caught their attention. ‘My line ruled over the ancestors of both peoples once, and I am blood kin to both. I always believed the North must be of great worth. Now I know how far short even my belief fell; and I shall see the South knows it also.’
Her smile, calm as it was, left them both speechless. Then another fanfare from the castle caught their attention. At the gate the drawbridge was winding slowly downward; but something else was moving. The construction they had taken for a pier was rocking gently in the waves as it swung outward from the base of the rock. The boats were not moored beneath it, they were part of it, a massive pontoon bridge that was being hauled into position by a complex system of chains and cables and pulleys running out from the rocks beneath the wall.
‘What of our skills with metal now, Mastersmith?’ teased Alais.
‘What indeed?’ Kunrad answered absently, studying the mechanism with a critical wag of the head; and she shot him a smouldering glare.
‘Now, now, my duck!’ announced the nurse firmly from beside her. ‘here’s the gate away opening, and you still playing around in your riding habit! Off with you now and into your best as is fitting, while I comb out your poor hair! Come along now and don’t be all-a-pout like that! Mustn’t spoil your face for your poor Lord Warden!’
The prentices watched her led back to the carriage, with barely concealed chuckles. ‘Mustn’t spoil your face!’ cackled Olvar.
‘Into your best now!’ squeaked Gille, and nudged his master heavily in the ribs.
Kunrad turned on him furiously. ‘Leave me in peace, you young idiots! As if I haven’t had enough prattling and pontificating! Stars and Powers, these women, never a minute’s peace they give you! And the kind they breed here most of all! Lady this, lady that – excellent! Bravely done! All that silly pretence! Never set foot out of the South and hardly credits the Ice that it’s cold! By Glaiscav’s bow, I pity her poor husband to be!’
The procession was moving past, and he goaded his horse to the fore. The prentices stared at each other a moment, then collapsed, whooping with laughter. ‘They say it’s the sun!’ crowed Gille, urging his astonished horse after Kunrad.
‘No, something in the water, definitely the water!’ boomed Olvar. ‘It’s finally happened!’
‘He’s woken up! All those nice town girls wasting their time billing and cooing, when they should have been treating him like muck—’
‘Kicking him about a bit!’
Gille gurgled. ‘Shall we tell them he likes it rough?
Legends tell each Power and Hero
Learned a better half to fear, oh!
Come in drunk from wandering, Raven
From his angry wife turns craven!
Hunter Glaiscav drops his arrows,
When his fair one scolds and harrows!
When he wants his jollies, Artes
Licks Saithana’s nether partes!
Who’s to doubt that Mistress Vayde
Beat her husband every Friday,
When he …‘
Kunrad’s large fist, clenched tight in Gille’s tunic, all but lifted him bodily out of his saddle. ‘Now hear me, you brainless little worm! We are presently escorting a great lady of a land in which we’re guests, and to whom we’re indebted for our lives, to greet an even greater lord whom she’s going to marry! And there’s a fair chance some folk here understand our tongue about as well as we do theirs. Do I make myself clear? Then get to the rear, the pair of you! And don’t so much as show your faces till I tell you!’
The chastened prentices dropped back at once, to sympathetic mutters from the soldiers – which probably meant they hadn’t understood the song. Kunrad was deeply relieved. More woman trouble!
The cavalcade reached the bridgehead and the planked walkway which led across the little islands. Beyond it they could see the gate on the end of the bridge swinging smoothly in. An arch at the end met and married with the one on the end of the bridge to make a solid gateway, and soldiers in armour snapped home wooden bars to steady it. They wore decent mail, Kunrad noted, with black surcoats bearing an image of the castle itself. They saluted captain Ferlias, who led the way, while the other soldiers and Kunrad with them pulled aside to let the carriages rumble across. The guards knelt as they passed. The bridge rocked gently, but took the weight well; clearly you could march an army across it. Then the soldiers waved Kunrad on, and fell in behind, in pairs, sitting very straight in their saddles and carrying their spears high.
The drawbridge was down and a black portcullis rising before gates that were already opening. Beyond a wide stone arch, so deep it was almost a tunnel, Kunrad could see trees, tall ones growing, he realised, at the centre of a wide courtyard, out of flags and cobbles, with stone benches around their ancient trunks. Flowers blazed in deep troughs around the sides, or trailed in long locks like hair from the boxes at the inner windows of the tall buildings round about. Guards were drawn up on parade order in the courtyard, and trumpeters sounded, scaring doves out of the dovecotes among the trees. It was more like a small town square than a place of war, and Kunrad found himself warming to it, as he reined in his horse behind the carriages.
Alais was already leaping out of the door, running to greet a tall man in the black castle livery who strode down through the crowd. She established his identity by springing up to embrace him with a force that made Kunrad smile wryly. An older man? He might well be a lot older soon. Then her hair came away from his face, and their eyes met.
And, strange as it may seem, all Kunrad could think in that moment was, if she believes he is so very old, what must she think of me?
He s
tared in utter unbelief, and the other stared back, no whit less stunned. The girl looked from one to another, and almost doubled up in whoops of undignified laughter.
‘Your faces …’ she spluttered. ‘I had to see your faces!’
Kunrad’s voice came only in starts. ‘Y-you said you were t-taking me t-to s-see the M-Marchwarden … Yes. Of course!’
‘And so I have!’ she said happily. ‘Permit me to introduce you. Merthian, by birth Lord of Anlaithann, by merit Lord Warden of the Northern Marches, Governor of the Northern Provinces, Lord Commander of the realm of Bryhaine. Darling, meet the Mastersmith Kunrad of Athalby, a very brave and clever Northerner who never stops arguing, and has come all this way to settle some claim of honour with you. So, since he seemed to want to meet you so much, I felt I could do nothing better than bring him along. I told him he would get justice from the Marchwarden – and he will, won’t he, my lord?’
Merthian’s voice was in better condition than Kunrad’s, and he managed one of his impressive bows. ‘My darling, I’m more than delighted to welcome you here! You’ve often surprised me, but never more than turning up for your wedding with an angry debt collector in tow! But you’re right; no amount of haggling ever satisfies these Northerners. Still, since you promised, my dear, I am bound to attend to his complaint – in due course.’
She beamed up at him, and at Kunrad. ‘I knew I could depend on you!’
‘Always,’ said Merthian fervently. ‘And now, you must be utterly exhausted after your journey. And you, my dear Nanny, and you, captain – join us for rest and refreshment, while my men will play host to yours in the finest style they can. And to our Northern guest especially,’ added Merthian, ‘until I am ready to attend to him. At such a happy time you will excuse the wait, Mastersmith, I’m sure?’
He swept Alais off towards the wide steps of the tallest tower, with such engaging energy she had barely time to waggle her fingers at Kunrad as he sat there, more stunned than he could have believed possible. Merthian, as he went by, turned to the grizzled soldier who had accompanied him in the North. ‘Look to him well, Erlan! Till I’m ready for him!’
Kunrad did not move. He was surrounded by the Marchwarden’s men, and Alais’s soldiers, without their captain, were already dismounting and greeting old acquaintances with heavy hints about wine and meat. The red-haired captain bowed to Kunrad, and, evidently unsure he spoke the language, gestured to him to dismount. No weapons were drawn; but then, they did not need to be. The gate was not closed, but that too was not necessary. It was far behind him, and the way full of men and horses.
Slowly, dully, Kunrad swung down from his horse, automatically taking his scanty roll of baggage. The captain bowed courteously, handed his horse to a groom, and led him through the confusion to a side-door of another building. A discreet enough door; a roundabout way, probably, to an inevitable end.
But as he was led away, Kunrad looked back to the end of the possession, and his heart thrilled. At the very rear of the procession he saw only two horses. Their saddles stood empty; but the gate, at last, was swinging shut.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Light Airs, Dark Waters
HE HEARD THE GATE boom shut behind him, saw the door open ahead, and they seemed like happenings in another world. The door closed silently, the courtyard light was cut off, and he was not at all surprised to find his arms seized and pinioned. The shrug with which he threw his captors off was almost unthinking, and he looked without emotion at the sword against his throat. ‘That’s one of mine,’ was all he said.
Merthian’s officer relaxed. Swift hands plucked the sword from his belt, searched him lightly, taking his eating knife and his tool-roll, but nothing else. Hands prodded him forward, rather than sword-points, and in his detached thoughts he guessed the captain was taking care with a prisoner who might be valuable. There was a long corridor, shadowy and echoing, a single shaft of sun striking through a slot window somewhere high above. There was a door, a chamber, another door, double this time, and a long stairway leading to yet another corridor, low-roofed but clean-swept, like all the rest, lined along one side with heavy iron-bound doors, with numbers and spyholes. It all seemed too familiar, and too closed in. Light manacles were thrust on to his wrists and locked with a linking chain. He might have made some cold jest about the corsairs, but he felt too weary and heartsick to speak. A door was unlocked, he was thrust in, not at all brutally, and it closed quietly behind him.
He stood there a moment, dumb; until a sound unexpected called him to himself, and he looked around in growing surprise. He was certainly in a cell, but the like of which he had never seen. Its builder had made use of a portion of the island where the layers of bedrock had been separated, perhaps by the weathering out of softer intruded stone. This had created a deep notch – a whole line of them, probably – shaped like a canted arrowhead. Rubble had been packed in with some kind of hardened earth to make a slightly sloping floor, and the end and roof sealed off with massive stone blocks – that awesome outer wall, he realised, and shrank momentarily at the thought of the weight above his head. There was light from somewhere, but no window, only water washing at the far wall, gentle wavelets lapping some way up the floor. He made out a narrow slot there that must open on to the lake, at water level; and each wave that washed against the outside wall revealed the deepset bars that sealed it. Air could get in, and more light than he expected, mirrored in the water; but for anything else to pass seemed impossible. It was clean, humane, impassable, and from the outside must be all but invisible, a brilliant means of both airing and concealing a dungeon without windows to weaken the outer wall.
On the natural shelf created by the lower edge of the notch lay a large hay bale with a coarse blanket draped over it. There was nothing else at all. Kunrad sat slowly down on it, eyes fixed on the narrow line of light at the water-line, and abandoned himself to his thoughts.
When the clack of the bolts brought him back to himself, he realised by the change in the light that some hours must have passed. A dim sunset glow reddened the water, and it matched his state of mind. The door swung back, and a man stepped in. He looked at Kunrad a moment, then tossed a swift word to somebody behind the door and elbowed it shut. Kunrad stood up and strode towards the man, who stood and waited calmly enough. It was Merthian.
‘I looked at you through the spyhole,’ he said, almost apologetically. He was dressed in quiet richness, some stuff of gold-laced green, though it was hard to be sure in this light. ‘You seemed to be lost in thought, Mastersmith. About what, may I ask?’
‘Renewing my curses on womankind and sothrans,’ said Kunrad. ‘Are you surprised?’
Merthian ducked his head slightly. ‘You should understand, my Lady Alais meant no harm in the world.’
Kunrad sighed. ‘I acknowledge that. She’s besotted with you; so however it appeared, I had to be the one in the wrong. She just can’t conceive you’d do anything so ill.’
‘No more can I,’ said Merthian heavily; and Kunrad drew a breath in surprise. ‘In normal times I would never, never have done such a thing. But I had to have that armour, had to! It was more than a foible. It is more important than your feelings or mine—’
He reeled backwards, clutching his mouth. Kunrad himself stood aghast at the speed with which he had moved, the broken chains swinging from his skinned wrists. The manacles had taken almost all the force of his blow, or it might well have laid Merthian witless on the spot. By his eyes, the Warden knew it. He dabbed at his cut lip.
‘I suppose,’ he said thickly, ‘that I owe you that, at the least.’
‘You’re forgetting,’ said Kunrad icily. ‘I saw the other towns. Until I turned off to Saldenborg, anyhow. The money, the weapons, all else – did you have to have them also? Spare me your little pieties. What you owe, you would not survive.’
Merthian’s face twisted in pain that did not come from Kunrad; at the least, not from his hand. His voice trembled, and yet he seemed not at all humbled.
‘All –all! – I will faithfully repay, with money for use, with generous compensation too. All, and soon. That is the best I can say. But meanwhile—’
‘And the life of my friend? Shall I see you repay that?’
Merthian stood his ground; but he seemed to writhe faintly. ‘I had no hand in that!’
‘You’d not be human if you had. But you knew of it.’
The Marchwarden hunched his shoulders. ‘That, and other things I wish I could have prevented. Worse, too, that I may yet prevent!’
‘A fine beggar’s tale, to cadge a copper!’ snorted Kunrad, but not as scornfully as he felt he should. In part it was the way the man stood there before him, unarmed, unafraid. Of course he had men within call, but he had not done so. It was more the calm intensity behind that voice, like the arrow quivering faintly on the taut string.
‘Whatever you may say, it is true! I will show you, smith, one day. One day soon.’
‘Is that all you came here to say?’
Merthian smiled lopsidedly. ‘I came to ask you something, but I can see you are in no mood for a calm answer.’ He turned and knocked commandingly at the door. ‘I’ll return tomorrow, when you are grown cooler.’
‘Ask me now.’
‘Very well,’ said Merthian, as it opened. ‘Whether you would agree to work for me, Mastersmith. I would value that.’
The door closed swiftly and solidly before Kunrad could think of an answer. He glared at it a moment, and returned to his thoughts. What he had said to Merthian was less than the truth. He had been brooding indeed, but on nothing so petty as curses; at least, not all the time.
He had been stunned, at first, at his own stupidity in allowing himself to walk from one captivity into another. He had been worrying about the prentices, hoping they would try nothing so stupid as a rescue. He was not sure that they would not. He could do nothing to stop them, or to redeem his folly; nothing that was, save free himself. So he had been turning his mind to the problem, like a man flexing his arms after long labour, and finding he had grown strong.
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