Bridge of Swords

by Duncan Lay

  He could feel a new determination within him, a grim desire that would not be stopped by anything. He would turn the human and elven worlds on their heads to hold Mai and Cheijun again.

  Down the hill there was a human village, smoke from its fires staining the afternoon sky. It was a place to start. He began to walk towards the village.

  3

  Lies will kill me. But the truth must live on. My enemies will find what I have already written and they will either destroy it or lock it away where none can find it. My instructions from the forefathers are written on a scroll, hidden inside an old book. That might survive — or might be burned. But not this. I shall hide it too well — and it will be in the last place they expect to look. I pray the one who finds it can use my tale to change Dokuzen for the better, make it a place where the truth is more valued than lies.

  I hate lies. And yet they are so much more powerful than truth, so much easier to believe. The people think we built the magical barrier around Dokuzen to keep the humans out. No, the barrier was built to keep us away from the humans. For our magic was too strong. Elves might have used it wisely, done things to improve the lives of all. But we are human, we just pretend we are elves. We would have used it to rule the other human tribes, turn them into our slaves.

  The Elfarans, our forefathers, realised this. They had a plan to give the humans back their future, the future we took away from them. I was the one chosen to make it happen. For a while I dared to dream of success — but then I was betrayed by those I trusted. Friends who I thought protected my back in fact stood behind me because it was easier to plunge the knife home. My dearest friend, who called me brother to my face and held me close, was the one to bring me down. The leader of the Magic-weavers, who I thought my ally, plotted for herself. So many had their own motives that I stood no chance of success.

  Yet I was not a complete failure. I saved the humans from us — for now, at least. We took so much from the human lands we found here. Death would be too bitter for me if I knew we had also taken their freedom. I hope they learn and develop, away from us, so that when we finally meet again, it can be as equals. I hope for many things — but then, hope is all I have in the little time left to me.

  Rhiannon screamed.

  Huw jumped out of his chair, heart racing, not knowing where he was or what was going on for a moment. He had drifted off to sleep and been in the middle of a dream, where King Ward’s soldiers had been chasing him. In the dream, he had been unable to run away fast enough, his feet seemingly churning through the thickest mud while Ward’s men raced lightly across the ground after him, wicked swords thirsting for his flesh. He had been trying to scream himself when Rhiannon screamed for him.

  He looked around, the dream’s fears still holding him, but the room was empty, the door still locked and a chair braced under the handle.

  He spun to where Rhiannon was sitting up in bed.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked, trying to blink open eyes still gritty with sleep.

  ‘I keep having nightmares about King Ward killing my father,’ she said in a small, choked voice.

  She had gone to bed while he had been downstairs seeing to the horses and now he saw she had also taken the time to change into her nightgown. It was impossible to ignore the fact it was far more flimsy than it had seemed to be when he had stuffed it into a bag for her, along with a handful of other clothes.

  He reached out to hold her — then hesitated. Firstly, although he had sworn on the stars above they were just friends and he would never take advantage of her, he had been desperately in love with her since the first time he saw her in King Ward’s court. Secondly, he had lied and tricked to get her away from Cridianton. Her father was not only alive, but he and Ward were probably plotting a hideous vengeance on Huw right now. Luckily he had also lied to them, so they were probably searching for him hundreds of miles away. They thought he was one of them, a Forlishman. Instead he came from Vales. Ward would certainly never let a Velshman into his court, even a bard as talented as Huw. He had lied to them, said his name was Hugh of Browns Brook so he could make his dream of being a bard come true. He had lied to Rhiannon to save her from King Ward. One lie was already coming back to haunt him. He could only hope the other lie would protect him long enough to make up for it.

  ‘I too am having bad dreams about escaping from the king’s castle,’ he said softly, sitting on the very edge of her bed and holding her hand. Friends would do that, he told himself. Just try to look at her eyes, not lower down …

  ‘Just before I open my eyes, I think I will wake up in the king’s palace and imagine that everything is as it was, everyone is waiting for me to sing and dance, so they can cheer for me. Then I remember what really happened …’ She stopped there, tears overtaking her.

  ‘It’s all right.’ Huw leaned in and she clung to him, crying into his shoulder. He patted her back and tried not to think about how sweet her hair smelled, or how smooth her back was, or how good it felt to hold her. Every night he had been in Ward’s castle, he had dreamed of having her in his arms. But now she was here, he could do nothing. Not until he had admitted the truth, at least.

  He told himself he had done the right thing. He had been about to leave anyway, for he had discovered King Ward was planning to bring Vales under his rule. The Forlish had spent the last twenty years slowly crushing every southern country. Vales, to the north, had been no threat, for it had no army and no leaders. But now, with almost nobody to oppose him, Ward was turning his attention north, to complete his conquest of the human lands. Only he was not sending his unstoppable armies north, for they were still finishing off the Balians and Landish. No, he had a much worse plan for the Velsh. A plan nearly as revolting as the one Ward and Rhiannon’s father, Hector, had for Rhiannon.

  He had overheard them discussing the transaction as if Rhiannon had been a favourite horse. The whole court had been captivated by Rhiannon. The way she sang and especially the way she danced would have been enough in themselves. But she was also tall, willowy, with glorious red hair and a face that made every man’s head turn. It was currently snuffling into his shoulder now, blotched and running, but she had sparkling green eyes, a slightly upturned nose, bow-shaped lips and a light dusting of freckles across high cheekbones. In a world where faces were covered in dirt, where hard work and illness ate into every line of your face, she stood out like a star at night.

  Everyone coveted her — but her father was always there, always protecting. Until the day Huw had heard him sell Rhiannon to the king, auction her off as if she was some creature. Even without his own desperate love for her, he could not leave her to that fate. To be the plaything of a cruel king, abused and then discarded … it was monstrous. Yet he knew she would never believe the truth, at least until it was too late. So he lied, pretended her father had been killed defending her from Ward, and smuggled her out of the castle and come north. She was the beautiful maiden and he had sung enough legends and sagas to know he had to rescue her. And yet, by doing this, he was lying to her and tormenting her. She would forever have this distorted view of her father as a hero who had laid down his life to save her, when in reality Hector had wanted to lay her down to enrich his own pockets.

  Huw made a deal with himself to prove he had really snatched her from Cridianton, her father and all she knew for her own good, not because he was filled with impossible dreams about her. He would be no more than a friend to her until he told the truth. That way she could still make her own decisions. The fact she would only learn the truth when she was alone, in Vales, miles from anything and everyone she knew, was a sticking point, but he was able to ignore that. It had seemed like the perfect plan in Cridianton, only they were now in Vales, and he still could not bring himself to explain everything to her. It would be more sensible to wait until they were at his village of Patcham, he decided. His conscience protested a little but he was able to push it aside. After all, he had spent the last few moons ignoring it. He had taken on a fa
lse name, pretended he was not even Velsh and looked the other way when fresh slaves arrived in the capital, victims of the southern wars. The vicious way Ward and his nobles treated servants, the filth, hunger and despair in the backstreets of Cridianton and the cruelty of slavery, people ripped from their homes and loved ones and made to work and suffer for the glory of the brutal king — he managed to pretend they were not happening. He even stayed in Cridianton for almost half a moon after discovering Ward’s plan for the Velsh, when he should have rushed home immediately, because he had befriended Rhiannon and cherished the mad hope she would want to leave her dream and come home with him. By then his conscience, which had been loud and strident when he left home with his father’s blessing, was but a whisper. Keeping up the lie to Rhiannon seemed easy in comparison.

  He realised, with a start, her tears were drying up.

  ‘The first few days are the hardest. But the pain will always be there. It is difficult but it is also a fitting reminder of your father,’ he said soothingly.

  ‘I don’t know what I would do without you. You are a true friend,’ she sniffed, sitting up again.

  Huw tried to smile, guilt and lust warring within him. ‘Whatever I can do to help,’ he said, trying not to look at the way her nightgown clung to her breasts.

  ‘I am sorry for falling asleep like that but I am so tired …’

  ‘Don’t worry. Do you want something to eat?’

  ‘I’m not really hungry.’

  ‘But you should eat something, especially as we are going to perform here tonight.’

  ‘What? Perform? Why?’

  Huw smiled carefully. ‘We spoke about this before. We have to let the people know the Forlish are coming. We have to warn them. And this is the best way to do that.’

  ‘Should we be drawing attention to ourselves by performing? Shouldn’t we just try to hide? After all, King Ward is still after us. If there are any Forlish in the audience tonight, then we can expect to be dragged back to our deaths. Or worse!’

  ‘Ward’s men might be after us but this is Vales and he does not rule here — yet. We have to warn these people. We both heard what he plans, saw the men he will be sending north. These villages won’t stand a chance unless they know what they are facing.’

  ‘But what can they do to stop them?’

  Huw hesitated. He did not really have an idea, beyond knowing he had to do something. His whole plan was based on going home, telling his father and handing the problem to him. Ward was sending hundreds of his soldiers north, into Vales, disguised as bandits. There they would wreak havoc across the hamlets and villages and isolated farms, until the Velsh begged Ward to come and save them. Even now, thinking about it made his blood boil. Ward wanted the Velsh tin and iron and coal and food to feed his war machine but didn’t want to go to the trouble of another war. And he didn’t really need to. The Velsh had no army, no organisation. Villages traded with each other on occasion but the three Velsh districts of Rheged, Gwent and Powys had little to do with each other. Men could hunt and farm and mine but there were few proper weapons and none trained in their use. This was beyond him. They didn’t need a young bard — they needed a hero.

  ‘I don’t know what they can do — but we have to give them a chance,’ Huw admitted.

  ‘Should we not perform under different names, at least?’ Rhiannon pressed.

  Huw bit his lip. It seemed like a sensible idea but he had always dreamed of being famous, of having people across Vales point him out when he walked past. It was why he had gone to King Ward’s court. True, he had pretended to be a Forlishman while he was there but there was no need to mention that and to throw his glory away now seemed unfair. Besides, Ward was not going to hear what was being said in a small Velsh hall. He was looking down south.

  ‘It will be safe enough. The people here are not going to run south and tell everyone that we are here,’ he dismissed her concern airily.

  ‘Well, how exactly are we going to perform when my clothes are soaked through, and I have no powders or makeup?’ she demanded.

  ‘We’ll stick one of your dresses before the fire and then just get out there. When people hear you sing, see you dance, they’ll listen,’ Huw promised. ‘It doesn’t matter how you look, they will all be captivated by you.’

  Rhiannon was not so sure. Her father had said it to her again and again: ‘Men are only interested in you if you look good. Talent can only get you so far.’ And she had always listened to him.

  He was the centre of her world. She lived to make him smile, to win his approval. Since her mother had died giving birth to her, Hector had devoted himself to her. He explained how he had sacrificed his own skills to help her, how not one father in ten thousand would do all he had for a small girl. He patiently pointed out how lucky she was to have him and how grateful she needed to be for all he was doing.

  ‘Make your mother’s death mean something!’ he always told her.

  With those words in her ears, she threw all her energies into training, working from dawn to dusk.

  She had no time for friends, for anything but what he said she must do. As she grew older, she begged him to take her to Cridianton, give her a chance to honour him.

  ‘When you are ready,’ was all he ever said. ‘If you work harder and listen to what I say.’

  And she had. She worked until the sweat poured off her, obeyed not just his every command but his every suggestion as well — until the moment when he turned around and declared she was ready.

  Now he was gone, she had fled Cridianton and her life was in ruins. But she had to cling to something.

  ‘I’ll dance and sing with you but I have to look the part,’ she insisted.

  So Huw spent the best part of a turn of the hourglass going through the village, buying chalk powder and jars of crushed berries to stain her lips and highlight her cheeks.

  She was dressed when he returned and happily accepted his trophies. While she peered into a small bronze mirror and tried to do something with her hair, he thought she looked better than she had for days.

  ‘You’re wearing that ring?’ Huw pointed to the chunky gold ring that sat on her thumb, looking out of place against her slim hand.

  Rhiannon twisted it around, so the seal was uppermost. ‘I shall always wear it,’ she said sadly. ‘It is all I have to remember my father by.’

  Huw nodded solemnly, trying to keep his thoughts from his face. It was the thing he had used to convince Rhiannon her father was dead — and evidence of his lies. He would have been far happier never to see it again.

  ‘As long as it doesn’t fall off when you dance,’ he managed to say.

  ‘It won’t,’ she promised. ‘I wonder who will be the audience tonight?’ she continued, dabbing her lips with the berry juice.

  ‘No one of interest,’ he assured her.

  Sendatsu hurried down the hill towards the village. He doubted he would find the answers he sought at the first village he found but, for the sake of Mai and Cheijun, he hoped he might find something. The rain swept in then, a thick curtain of it, dropping down from the skies with a vengeance. The path he took, already muddy, turned treacherous in the downpour. His boots were tall, of rich leather and bearskin, but he had to work hard not to become bogged, dragging them out of the clinging muck, and doubly hard to avoid slipping and falling.

  Grunting with the effort, he made it to the bottom of the small hill and began to walk into the village. To someone used to the stone precision and beauty of Dokuzen, it was horrifying. The rain seemed to have brought out the worst of its smell, although it looked just as bad; crude wooden circular huts, plastered with mud, their roofs thatched but the thatch covered in a bedraggled mass of grass and moss. They were built low, the roofs sweeping down almost to the ground, while dung heaps were stacked against side walls, almost reaching to the roof, their stink making the gorge rise in his throat. It was hard to tell the difference between one and the other. Dogs tried to shelter from the rain, while t
he people stayed hidden. A few dogs barked half-heartedly but quietened when someone yelled at them.

  Smoke curled despondently out of the very top of these roofs, as well as from the doorways, but not from a chimney. None had anything so fancy. And none had a window. The walls were blank, featureless, unless chunks of missing mud, showing the rough wattle walls beneath, counted as decoration.

  Even with the rain, he found it hard not to stare. How could they live like this? Even the esemono, the lowest of the low classes, lived better than this in Dokuzen. There they had brick homes, proper chimneys, proper food. He began to fear he would find no answers at all.

  He walked towards the nearest house, but the rank smell coming out of its open doorway made him turn away. Unwashed humans, wet animals, thick smoke and dung. Nothing that smelled that bad could hold anything useful.

  He squelched down the middle of the road through the village until he came to a building that was different to all the rest. He stood in the middle of the crude street, heedless of the rain, and stared at it, hope rising in his heart.

  It was elven — had to be elven. It looked nothing like the crude huts he had walked past. Two storeys high, made of stone and with a tiled roof, it towered above the rest of the village. His heart beat faster. Perhaps in there he would find answers.

  He slopped over until he could step onto the crude flat rock that served as the door stone. He kicked it with his boots, but the mud and dung that clung to the soles were reluctant to leave.

  ‘Get inside! No day to be outside and there’s just as much mud in here as out there!’ someone boomed from within the smoke wafting out the door.