‘I’m too important, that’s it, is it?’ She cursed under her breath, standing awkwardly among the low undergrowth, struggling to straighten her breeches. ‘Well, I suppose I should feel honoured. At least you wouldn’t hang back from the armour … Blast this hook!’
‘Here,’ he said ‘Let me.’
The touch of the back of his fingers against the warmth of her belly was enough. Neither was the least in thrall now, and yet there was no space to argue. ‘Oh damn it!’ she hissed, and slammed him against her as she might a door.
They walked back to the camp in sullen silence. ‘I feel humiliated,’ was all she said.
‘That it was your turn to hesitate?’ he said. ‘After so many plaints?’
‘I only baulked at a leap,’ she said. ‘As a spirited horse might. You could have … gone on.’
‘You don’t know much about the game, do you?’
‘Game,’ she muttered. ‘Very well! I hope you still enjoyed your play.’
‘Of course,’ he said.
‘Fine! So now you know what a princess feels like. Tell your friends!’
He took hold of her and swung her to face him. ‘My instinct was right,’ he said softly. ‘This was neither the place nor the time. Later … we’ll see. A princess ‘well, I know now that she feels like everything I have ever wished.’
‘Except one thing,’ she said acidly.
‘No. That’s no matter of wanting. That’s something I have to have. That armour is my knowledge. That armour is my achievement. Without it I have neither. What I want is you. But She began to cry a little. ‘Kunrad, things are bound to happen before we come through this. Aren’t they? Horrible things.’
He put his arm around her shoulders. They felt stiff and unyielding. ‘Yes, princess. Yes.’
They rode apart as the morning sun climbed the sky, until the narrowing path forced them together. Kermorvan squinted at them from under yellowed eyelids, and grumbled to himself, or turned to bellow at the trail of workers with the carts and teams. Kunrad was none too happy with them himself. They looked willing, these sothran peasants, but they were not overly well fed, and they mostly bore farm shovels and mattocks, poor stuff for mining.
Again the gorge opened before them, and in this early light it was a sun-struck channel glowing in the grey rock, as if the bare layers of brown and yellow and purple-red were those mysterious minerals said in smithlore to lock in the secrets of the sun. It was a splendid sight, but it swiftly soured upon him as their horses crested the path, and he saw the length of it. It was empty. The gorge held nothing but that light, and the warm wind sighing against the wall.
Kermorvan dangled a sun-bracelet and snorted. ‘Knew you couldn’t trust the little …’
Kunrad leaned closer, peering at the curious workmanship of the bracelet, and the sharp-edged shadow the perforations cast across it. ‘This is a fine antique piece of work. Very precise. We’re a few minutes short of the hour.’
‘If you say so. Can’t see it that close – what’s that?’
Kunrad was already looking around, and Alais. The sense of sudden watchfulness was Back. Something had triggered it. Something was stirring the hairs on his neck. Something in the wind …
Kunrad rose in his saddle, and shouted. ‘What’s this? Did you never mean to help us?’
Silence, Then he heard it clearly; that faint sizzle once again, louder now and easier to locate, spitting and fizzing from high above to their right.
There was no more warning than that. The noise was a thunderclap, and in the narrow gorge it was redoubled, not echoing but shivering the cliffs like a vast stone gong. The horses shied, and kicked, the peasants dropped their tools and fled screaming down the path. Red flame and grey smoke spurted out of the cliff, and for a moment Kunrad half expected to see a dragon burst out on gigantic batwings. Instead he flinched as he saw a long streak of the hillside shiver and slip downwards. He yelled to Alais, tried to get control of his horse and for his pains was sent flying from the saddle to land painfully upon the path. Alais turned to him, but Kermorvan thrust her back and sprang from his saddle with a thump. His huge hands clamped on Kunrad’s arm with bruising force and, as the others scattered, the old man more or less hurled the smith back down the path, then threw himself flat by his side. Some ways beyond their feet the slip of brownish rock went rolling and rumbling and crashing across in a tongue of dust and rubble, and smashed like a wave against the further side. Lesser rocks came bounding down in its wake, and the men yelped and covered their heads, and took the bruises, hoping that nothing bigger was following.
The silence that fell was of a different kind again, the shocked and empty echo of riven air. It was broken by a harsh cawing sound, a deep-throated crow-laugh that had too much resonance for the voice of a bird. It might have been the mountain itself mocking the plundering pretensions of mere men. Cautiously the two of them heaved themselves up from a tide of gravel, coughing and choking at the dust. ‘Bastards!’ groaned Kermorvan, trying to shake his fist skyward, and falling over.
Alais came running up to them, ‘Daddy! K – Are you all right?’
‘Just mocking us, the louseridden little rockfuckers—’ Kermorvan’s voice streamed away into some remarkable cursing and coughing. Kunrad caught his arm and shook his head. He too was coughing, but he was laughing.
‘Bastards!’ spat Gille, as he and Olvar stumbled through the stones to help. ‘Ambushing us like that!’
‘No!’ Kunrad hacked. ‘Wrong, wrong – all wrong – couldn’t be more wrong—’ He clutched at the rocks and roared, a little hysterically. ‘Not ambushing!’ He brandished a stone. ‘Whassat look like?’
‘My umbels!’ groaned Kermorvan. ‘Damn near strewed ’em across the hillside, too!’
‘Yes!’ panted Kunrad. ‘Kidneys!’ He hurled the stone at Gille, who fielded it neatly, and stared. ‘What they call kidney stone, boys – remember?’
‘Powers above!’ said Olvar, peering over Gille’s shoulder.
Kunrad suppressed his coughing a little. ‘What you did—’ he said to Kermorvan, clapping the old man’s shoulder. ‘Never forget! But that was a controlled slide. They set those fires of theirs in the mountainside like that, very careful – see? It’d never have hit us. And these rocks—’ He shook his head. ‘That up there, it must be a huge seam. They’ve been working it a long time, maybe, very carefully. That’s why I only found a few fragments. But I never dared hope – Kidney stone!’
‘One of the purest iron ores there is!’ grinned Gille. ‘And in nice convenient pieces! We’ve no more than to shovel it up, and be on our way!’
Olvar was peering into the margins of the fall. ‘There’s something else—’ He plunged forward, and took up what looked like a heavy sack. ‘Two or three of these!’ He delved, swore, and held up a bleeding finger. ‘Spearheads! Fine ones, if my hide’s any test.’
Kunrad nodded, dislodging a great avalanche of dust from his hair. He stood up, painfully, and waved his arms. ‘Wish they’d show themselves! If I could only get a closer look at that arm articulation – Thank you! Thank you very much!’
It was a listening silence, for a second; and then, just as certainly, it was no longer. ‘Well,’ humphed Kermorvan, dusting off his paunch. ‘A help and a warning both, if I’m not mistaken! Now we round up those yellow-livered dungdancers and set ’em shovelling. And best you don’t shout at those friends of yours any more, my lad. Or they might get generous!’
It was long hours into the night before the train of weary peasants left, their carts groaning under the load, as also the huge oxen that drew them away. Of the duergar they saw and heard no more; save, as they quitted the gap for the last time, the sound of many deep voices echoing away among the peaks, deeper than human tones and in a close harmony that throbbed through the darkness.
‘Might be a marching song,’ said Kermorvan. ‘It has that beat. It comes to me that I’ll be keeping my word indeed, if we come through this, lest one night I hear
it marching to my door.’
‘I think you are wise, my Lord Kermorvan,’ said Kunrad.
The older man brushed some more dust out of his moustache, and looked along the line of carts. ‘Well, at any rate you have your metal now.’
‘Not quite,’ said Alais acidly. She was still not speaking to Kunrad. ‘Our gallant smiths still have to render it down, don’t they? Smelting, is that the word? I wonder how they plan to manage that, in time. Gille? Olvar?’
‘Well,’ said Gille uneasily. ‘It does take time, it could be difficult – but I’m sure the Mastersmith has something clever in mind …’
‘I’m sure he has, too,’ she said. ‘The Mastersmith’s mind is deep enough to hold many strange things, and dark enough, alas, so mere mortals trip over them. I’m sure he’ll be only too ready to enlighten us, when he manages to remember we exist!’
Kermorvan stared at her as she turned her horse to the far side of the wagons. ‘Beak of the Raven!’ he rumbled to the prentices. ‘Now what’s this all about? There I was frettin’ about … Ah, never mind! Never mind! Soon enough when we’re back at the castle. Probably all asleep in their nice warm beds, rot ’em! Like any man of sense.’
When they came to the hilltops above the lake, though, it was clear that nobody had been idle. ‘The walls are manned!’ exclaimed Kermorvan; and as they looked down to the bristling hedge of spears about the ramparts they shared an instant of common dread, that the Marchwarden might have returned and retaken it in their absence.
Olvar broke it with a chuckle. ‘Don’t think one in ten of those pigstickers has got a head on it. Not much use ’gainst corsair tinplate. Well, we can fit them out a hit fancier now!’
Nonetheless they all watched warily as the bridge was run out. All save Kunrad, who was gazing absently around the lakeshore, contemplating the trees, plucking leaves from bushes and watching how they fell.
‘What’re you up to now?’ boomed Kermorvan.
‘There’s a prevailing wind in these parts, isn’t there?’
Kermorvan stared. ‘’Course, yes. What the lake’s named for, and the castle. Whistles off the sea, straight across the Marches, bounces back off the mountains and forms a sort of eddy around the lake, see? Strongest up on the ridges there. Worse in winter. Get a sea-gale’ll freeze your—’
‘Yes, I thought so. It’s very like the land where I used to live, rolling country with a mountain background. And I remember the Marsh winds … My lord, I don’t think we need to take the carts into the castle.’
‘What? Well, where then?’
Kunrad pointed. ‘Down around the shoreline there and up to the hilltop beyond.’
‘Overlooking the castle? That’s the ridge I meant. Yn Aruel – Hill o’ the Winds. What in Raven’s name d’you want the ore up there for?’
‘An idea. Something that came through a note in that smith’s book, and a coughing corsair … Gille, Olvar, you go with them! My lord, I’ll need the working party still, and another for tree felling. Another over to where they cut peat. And are there clay beds in the area?’
Kermorvan roared. ‘Why, man, how would I know? What’s pottery to me? The farmland south o’ the lake’s heavy river clay. I know that murder to plough! But—’
‘There’s clay along the south shore,’ put in Alais stiffly, looking at nobody in particular. ‘Fine clay. I used to play with it. One of the peasants could show you.’
Kunrad looked at her. ‘Won’t you?’
She glared at him. ‘A shame. I’m otherwise engaged. I’ll await you at the castle, Father!’
She turned her horse and went cantering away down the shore while Kermorvan was still spluttering. ‘Now what’s got into her? Ah well, no arguin’ with her in this mood. Just like her mother!’ He leaned over to the prentices and gave a conspiratorial whisper.‘Take my advice, lads. Never have a daughter!’
Olvar’s stolid features cracked in a brief flash of teeth. ‘No need to tell Gille, my lord. He just has other people’s.’
Kermorvan gave a great snort, stifled it and took on a look of moustache-bristling disapproval. ‘Well, better watch himself in the Southlands here. No laughing matter. Cut a man’s – cut him off in his prime, some fathers will!’ He rounded on the peasants. ‘All right, you heard the Mastersmith, take your wagons along to that hilltop there with these lads! Come on, look lively, it’s barely a step further it won’t kill you!’
‘Why there?’ Olvar wondered aloud over the groaning chorale of wagons, oxen and wagoneers. ‘Why that hill in particular? And all that about the wind? Maybe he’ll try laying a furnace chimney up the hillside to strengthen the draught. I’ve heard something of that. What d’you think, Gille? Gille?’
For once Gille was the silent and morose one. ‘You shouldn’t have joked like that! I was wondering … what if I do have a daughter one day? I mean, what’s it going to be like?’
Olvar, unusually, threw back his head and roared with laughter. ‘The searing justice of the Powers, is what! A poacher turned gamekeeper! You’ll lock the poor lass up in an iron cage!’
‘Better than a gilded one,’ said Gille seriously. ‘Think that’s what’s bothering the Mastersmith? About the princess?’
Olvar looked askance at him. ‘Maybe. Ask him, and beware of your ears. He’s a lot else to bother him right now.’
Gille brushed him off. ‘Not him, you oaf! Her! You wait!’
When the carts toiled up to the hilltop, an hour or so later, Gille found it already a mass of activity. The few bent trees on its upper slope were fallen or being felled, and a trench was being cut along past their roots, right across the lakeward slope. Kunrad, standing on a great displaced bole, caught sight of him and waved. ‘Just the men! Olvar, I need the ore dumped on the hilltop above, but so none of it rolls down – not yet! And Gille, will you take my compliments to Lord Kermorvan and say I need some lengths of that earthen piping they use for drains? About ten good armspans will do! That’s it, lads! Hurry along! A few more days’ grace and we’ll set a ring of steel about the castle!’
It was three hours more before Gille returned, and when he did the hilltop was already changed still further. The trench now ran in a great halfmoon around the summit, easily two hundred paces long, and was still being widened. The sun was high, and even in the strong lake breeze men were sweating and flagging; but Kunrad drove them like sheep.
‘We tore up the drains themselves, Mastersmith!’ called Gille. ‘That was all they had!’
‘No matter,’ Kunrad shouted back. ‘If we can’t make this work they’ll have worse worries! Now—’ He stopped dead. There, leading the packhorse that carried the malodorous earthenware pipe, was Alais. He sprang down and came running.
‘My lady, I—’ He stopped in confusion. ‘What I want is this, Gille! Get Olvar and his lads. See those slots? There’s loads of clay coming up from the lakeside. What we’re going to do is line those slots with stones, separated so there’s a thin course between them, and then a thick layer of clay with stones in it, about kneehigh. Through that, as we lay it, a length of pipe to make a hole, right through to the trench, but we shape a wide mouth in the clay at the front, like a trumpet. Got it? Then we’ll get brushwood and fire each, lightly, so that it’s solid, like making a clay mould – right?’
Gille looked around wildly. ‘Mastersmith, I think I begin to understand. But nobody’s ever made such a thing! Would not a tall flue—’
‘Not in a hundred ways!’ snapped Kunrad, eyes gleaming. ‘Go to it, lad! Go! Run! And you, my lady—’
‘Yes, Mastersmith? Where would you have me?’
‘Safe within walls, far from strife, like anything a man holds dear. But failing that, anywhere you wish, my lady. Command me as you like.’
She gave a wry smile. ‘I meant to say as much to you. Your prentice all but haled me out by the hair. He said you needed me.’
‘I never told him to do that!’ blurted Kunrad, deeply shocked. ‘I’ll have his hide!’ And then, subs
iding, ‘But he was right, the little sod.’
‘I didn’t quite believe him. But, yes, he was right. He said something about having a daughter himself.’
‘That’s a new one. But then this danger sets us all to thinking, doesn’t it? It’s no time for love, not if you’re practical. I tried to be practical; it’s all I know. I was wrong.’
‘No more than I was.’ She seized his hands. ‘Kunrad, I promise you this – I will be jealous of that armour no longer. Not enough to stand in your way, anyhow. What now? Time is riding hard at our back. We may have wasted what little we had. Is there anything left for us, amid all this?’
The first load of clay arrived, in panniers across the shoulders of more packhorses. From up the hill came the sound of Gille and Olvar swearing at one another, and the clatter of shovels.
Kunrad managed a smile. ‘Maybe not. But if we gain through to the other side, maybe. And my lady …’ He squeezed her hands, gently, and felt the wiry strength of her own grip. ‘This I promise you. I will not abandon my quest; but if ever it comes to a choice between that armour and you – then my choice is already made. Let it rot and rust before you come to harm!’
She stared. ‘But … even if you know no peace again, as you foretold?’
He shrugged. ‘I would know as little, or less. I have grown, my lady, and it is your doing.’
She pulled him to her then, and they kissed there on the hilltop amid the noise and confusion of the building, and it fell away around them and faded from their minds. Only when their embrace ended did they realise it had stilled in truth, and saw every eye in the site turned upon them, men standing statue-like with earth still upon their spades.
They looked at one another in horror. ‘There’s only one thing we can do!’ panted Kunrad.
‘Yes. Kiss me again.’
Manhandling a lady of quality – probably something a man would get flayed or impaled for in this stiffnecked Southland, thought Kunrad cheerfully. Well, let them stare. There was something to be said for more immediate worries.
‘What’re you gawping at?’ he snarled at his audience, when he came up for air again ‘idling till the corsairs come for you? Work! Work till you drop! Get those slots cut as we marked them out! And stack up that wood there – d’you want it rolling down the hill? Get those timbers to length, and stripped!’ He turned back to Alais. ‘And best I follow my own orders,’ he added ruefully.
The Castle of the Winds Page 34
