The romance of the lone Knight Errant dissolved, as Flyn wished he stood beside Sir Corc. Muckle Gutbuster would not be unwelcome either. Still, he was unafraid. He had fought against greater numbers many times. His fellow squires at the tourney, the Red Caps and the Unwound at Castle Gaunt, all had outnumbered him. These skulking savages would not succeed where greater foes failed. Nor would he play their cowardly, sneaking game. Let them come! He would best them and a dozen more.
But they did not come.
For hours Flyn watched them. They moved rarely, only shifting slightly as they too waited through the long night. Flyn lowered his sword and leaned upon the cross-guard, but he did not relinquish his vigil.
The Pritani moved off just before dawn, scrambling back across the crags and vanishing before the first light touched the rocks. Flyn was stiff and weary. He turned to Deglan, finding the gnome looking at him with red rimmed eyes. Flyn made a halfhearted gesture at the still form of Inkstain.
“Scribbler will sleep through anything.”
Deglan gave him a token grin, then winced as he stood up. Flyn heard his joints pop.
They worked quickly to get the ox yoked and set off once more. Flyn kept his mail on as he drove, keeping an eye out for any threat. He was grateful when the cliff face finally receded and they once again ran the back of a ridge. The sky opened up on either side, a clear blue adorned with bright sun and pure clouds. Within hours, they descended into a lush valley. Grass and wildflowers covered the flat expanse for a goodly distance and Flyn let the ox come to a halt.
“We will rest here for a spell,” he told Deglan as he hopped down from the bench. “Let this noble beast graze awhile.”
A queer, ululating cry went up through the valley. Flyn snatched Coalspur from the driver's bench as figures began leaping up from the dense foliage at the edges of the valley.
“All sides!” he heard Deglan yell from the bed of the wain.
Flyn tore his greatsword from its sheath, discarding the harness as he ran around to the back of the wain. The gnome was right, the Pritani were rushing in from every direction, too many to count. Flyn put his back to the tail of the wain and braced himself. He heard the ox give a wail of distress and the wain lurched forward as it tried to flee. There was nowhere to go. The Pritani closed in, surrounding them, staying half a spear's throw removed.
In the light of day, Flyn got his first true look at the Painted Men. What he thought were helms from a distance turned out to be hair, grown long, formed into wild shapes with lard and dyed with woad. Some wore hide breeches, but many were naked, the hair above their genitals styled and colored the same as that on their heads. They were long of limb and thick with muscle, screaming their war-cries through beards of yellow, green and blue. Spears, axes and swords were brandished over their heads, each bladed in iron. The color of their skin was near impossible to tell as every man was covered in intricate tattoos, the swirling lines and bestial pictures detailed in black, blue and copper.
Flyn held Coalspur before him, gripped firmly in both hands. He kept his stance wide, ready to spring to either side to meet the direction of the inevitable charge. He allowed himself a smile.
This was a battle well suited. The valley offered the space needed to bring Coalspur to bear. The long reach and sharp steel would lay these unarmored brutes low, while Flyn's own mail would help protect him from their crude iron. He could unleash his full speed and strength, tear through their ranks with blade and spur, leaving dozens dead. It would be a glorious, bloody, pitched battle. The Pritani would be cut down by the score, learning what a coburn was capable of at the cost of their lives.
And still he would fall.
There were near a hundred Painted Men in Flyn's field of vision alone. Three times as many likely encircled the wain, more than he could hope to defeat. If he could close the distance he would make them pay, but if they stayed well removed and began raining spears upon him, the battle would be done.
Quiet settled over the valley. The Pritani had ceased their screaming. They lowered their weapons, readying them for the charge. Flyn watched as those before him hunched slightly, the muscles beneath their tattooed flesh coiling. The calm before the kill.
“Creule-hun!”
The strange words came from behind Flyn. He turned to see Deglan standing in the wain, his axe ready and a puzzled expression across his face. Inkstain stood behind the gnome on unsteady legs. He swayed alarmingly, his head flopping around on his neck as he tried to look up. Flyn shot a glance back at the Pritani and found all eyes focused on the reeling chronicler.
“Creule-hun!” Inkstain cried again, his unused voice hoarse and wavering. He waved his good, quivering hand at the Painted Men as he spoke, more strange words issuing haltingly from his pale lips. Flyn saw doubt creep into the faces of the men surrounding them and they began to take several paces backward. Inkstain continued to call out to them in the strange tongue, his hand shooing feebly in front of him. The circle broke and the Pritani shuffled away, keeping their wide eyes fixed on the chronicler as they moved away.
Soon they were gone, leaving nothing in the valley but the wind.
“Flyn!” Deglan cried out. Inkstain was collapsing, the gnome struggling to keep him from falling.
Flyn leapt into the wain and took the man's weight, lowering him back down to the bed. Inkstain's face was wan, sweat shining on his skin. His eyes were again closed, but Flyn could see them rolling around beneath the fluttering lids. Deglan went to work, rummaging in his satchel while Flyn peaked over the sides of the wain.
The Painted Men were truly gone.
“By the Hallowed, Staunch,” Flyn exclaimed. “What did he say?”
Deglan shot a frown up at him. “How would I know?”
“Well,” Flyn shrugged, “you are really old.”
A sound came from Inkstain's lips, barely discernible at first. The chronicler's eyes remained closed, but his voice grew stronger.
“Creule-hun,” he forced out. “Difficult...to translate. Jumping. Jumping...sickness.”
“Jumping sickness?” Deglan said, his face scrunching. “Plague? You told them you had a plague?”
Inkstain nodded weakly. Flyn smiled.
“He speaks Pritani,” he said happily.
“Not, not Pritani,” the chronicler said weakly. “Qrutani. They were, were Qrutani. Different dialect.”
“Bugger a toad,” Deglan whispered, his jaw slack.
Flyn laughed, giving Inkstain's leg a squeeze and Deglan's shoulder a slap as he clambered up onto the driver's bench. He gave the reins a gentle snap and the ox trudged forward. Flyn could hear Deglan working behind him, instructing Inkstain to swallow a few concoctions. After a mile, he could hold his tongue no longer.
“Six thousand year old doctor,” he called back. “And you never thought to tell a bunch of barbarians he had the plague?”
Deglan's stream of curses lasted the next several miles.
NINE
Ingelbert's head still ached. It felt as if a leaden weight was pressed between his brain and his skull, grinding one to pulp and the other to dust. His eyes had trouble opening more than a squint for days, a pressure forcing them closed, causing a sickening roar in his ears. Often he would wake to the feeling of a great weight on his chest, compressing his breathing, but upon inspection found nothing. Nothing that could be seen. The problems lay beneath the skin, in his lungs and ribs. Master Loamtoes told him his hurts would take time to properly heal, but Ingelbert wondered if he would ever truly recover.
He had never been strong, envying other young men their comfort with physical labor. And yet he found it difficult at times to understand their inability to remember exact details or reason out quandaries he deemed simple. He knew from experience that not all burly men were dullards, but even the cleverest he had known seemed to struggle with mental challenges he found all too obvious. It did not take him long to perceive that it was no deficiency on their part, but a useful abnormality in him. He
learned quickly, retained everything and could recall in an instant, traits that had served him well, making his lack of somatic prowess less a drawback. His present injuries, however, made him realize how capable, if not formidable, he had truly been. Walking under his own power, once so simple as to be inconsiderable, was now a feat Master Loamtoes used to measure his rehabilitation.
Ingelbert rose from his bed, unable to keep the wince from his face, but he managed to bite back the whimper. He tried to keep from waking Master Loamtoes whenever he needed to move about in the midst of the night, but the gnome always sensed his stirring and sat up in his own bed, ready should he be needed. Ingelbert gave the herbalist a conciliatory wave of his plastered arm, keeping his blanket clutched closed under his neck with his good hand as he shuffled over to the table holding the basin and ewer.
The room of the fishwife's hut was mean, but Deglan had seen it was furnished with the needed comforts. Ingelbert filled a cup from the ewer and drained it in several long swallows. The water was warm and a touch brackish, flowing sluggishly down his throat, but Ingelbert had a thirst of late. Master Loamtoes dosed him with a surfeit of teas which eased his aches, but the craving for drink never abated.
He did not return to bed, finding the pressure in his chest more bearable while standing. The swollen wood of the door caught upon the stone lintel as he dragged it open. He was too weak to force it, but he managed enough of an opening to fit his slim frame through. Outside, the wind from the sea met his throbbing skull, increasing the pain for a moment before it was eclipsed by a light-headed numbness marginally less unpleasant. Night near the port was a dreary presentation of sounds and smells, with little to see beneath a seaside moon. The air carried a fetid mixture of turf-smoke, rotten fish, salt and sour bodies. Everything was wet and unwashed.
Gipeswic.
Ingelbert witnessed little of the journey here. He had floated in and out of consciousness, initially due to his injuries and later because of Deglan's medicines. There were vague pieces of moments, little more than sensory echoes, that he could summon. The rough jolting of the wain, the heat of countless campfires making him sweat, rough voices haggling with Bantam Flyn and the long, queasy passage on board a groaning ship. That memory was the most vivid, though beclouded with nausea and an impotent dread of a destination unknown. His last complete recollection was the scarred goblin and the horrifying fall. He had been at the Roost in Albain and now he was in Sasana, hundreds of miles away. It was a queer thing to have come so far with nothing but disjointed fragments to fill the gap in time. It was almost too ludicrous to fathom. And yet he found himself in Gipeswic, one of the largest port settlements on the eastern shore of Sasana, having had no choice in the matter.
Once they arrived, he remembered Master Loamtoes asking him where his kin resided, but Ingelbert had said nothing. His ability to speak was well returned, it was simply that there was no answer he could give. So he remained silent, allowing his infirmities to excuse him from any further questions.
Bantam Flyn had seen them lodged in the hut and stayed barely a day. From his sickbed, Ingelbert was dimly aware of the coburn leaving, exchanging a few words with Deglan outside the door. He heard something about Flyn's intention to journey upriver, but chose not to waste his limited ardor to discern further details. Near a week had passed and the coburn had not returned, though Ingelbert could read in Deglan's demeanor he was not expected. Wherever Flyn had gone, Ingelbert was well quit of him. Him, the Valiant Spur, the Roost and all its denizens. It had not been his wish to abandon his posting, but since the choice had been made for him, he felt no small amount of relief. No more iron collars and armed escorts, no more constant fear and doubt.
Still, he would have preferred not to have ended up here.
The hut where they stayed was one of several that belonged to a widow who survived not just her husband, but her children as well, inheriting their property as each was eventually claimed by the sea. No doubt her usual tenants were drunken stevedores or dockside whores, looking to pass a night or two in relative comfort, but the hard earned coin of such itinerant locals could not compare to the advantages of having a Fae healer take up lodging to ease the myriad aches and afflictions of her aging body. Deglan went daily to her own hut nearby to see to her complaints, always returning with a deluge of his own. The week spent in residence made them both ready for Ingelbert to be fit enough to take their leave. He knew the gnome had been making fruitless inquiries throughout Gipeswic concerning him.
Ingelbert shivered slightly in the damp dark, though the air was fairly warm. Somewhere in the jumble of fisherman’s huts and sailors' flops, a baby began to wail in the night. Ingelbert smiled, knowing it was not a genuine response. He did not know what else to do. His injuries prevented him from fleeing down the greasy cobbles. It was an unexpected feeling, but that unseen infant, crying in the dark, seemed to Ingelbert to have the worst fate he could imagine. To be helpless in this sprawling sea-side settlement, new to life and its hardships, unable to alter a single facet of its existence, all direful thoughts. How fortunate that babes are denied memory, for without such designed ignorance, Ingelbert did not think a person born would reach maturity free of the grip of madness.
Abruptly, the crying stopped, but there was nothing sinister in the silence. Ingelbert did not know in which of the low, sodden dwellings the baby lay, but somewhere it was soothed. A tired mother, waking in the late watches to care for a child dependent and trusting of her surrounding compassion, a trust which she had not broken. Might she even be smiling? It was difficult to imagine anything but bitterness in this harsh place, but somehow Ingelbert sensed the tenderness in the sudden absence of that distinct, needful sound. The breadth of varied human experience in a shared environment, separated only by a paltry amount of years, was fascinating.
Ingelbert heard the door scrape open behind him. He could smell the tea before Deglan handed it up to him. He took a cautious sip from the steaming cup, allowing the fragrant vapor and infused liquid to work on his head. Ingelbert looked down to see Deglan standing beside him, staring out with a frown across the muddy lane where rats plied the refuse piles behind a sagging storehouse.
“Place is a bloody spawning pool for disease,” the healer grumbled, his lips crinkled with disgust.
Ingelbert blew on the contents of his cup and hummed his agreement.
“A week more,” Deglan continued. “Maybe two and you should be hale enough to travel. Go where you will. That,” the gnome cocked an eye at Ingelbert's plaster encased arm. “That will take a while longer.”
“If you, um,” Ingelbert said. “If you give me proper instructions. I am sure I can, I can remove it myself.”
Deglan nodded slowly, returning his scrutiny to the shadowy lane. “You are a smart lad, Ingelbert Crane. That was clear at the Roost.”
Ingelbert wondered about the truth of the gnome's statement. They had served the same Order for over a year and this was as many words as they had ever shared. Ingelbert had never needed the herbalist's care and Deglan never needed anything from anyone.
“Smart lad,” Deglan repeated almost to himself, then he looked up at Ingelbert with a calculating look. “Too smart to come from this stinking harbor. You know your letters, history and I cannot figure how many damn tongues. Even the sharpest fish-counting clerk in Gipeswic does not possess a quarter of your brain. And I know! I have talked to all of them. No one here knows you, Master Crane.”
“No,” Ingelbert said. “No, they would not.”
He heard the gnome issue a snort. “Confounded Flyn.”
Ingelbert let that go unanswered for a long time. He did not consider himself a spiteful man, but he found it satisfactory at times to allow the sentiments of the more visceral to speak for him. The impetuous coburn had, in an alarmingly brief acquaintance, drastically affected his life. Living in the Roost had been a treacherous path since the first day Ingelbert stepped through the gate. He knew Flyn was not to blame for the danger, but
prior to the arresting rascal's involvement, it was a danger he had learned to manage. Now, he was purposeless and that caused a certain amount of resentment. He was content to ride in the wake of Deglan's ill-humor for a moment.
Still, it was unjust to allow the gnome to continue to work tirelessly on his behalf without answers. Ingelbert realized the herbalist must have come on this unexpected journey to save him and for that he was grateful. Bantam Flyn had only brought them here because of Ingelbert's own words. If he was misguided, then Ingelbert could only blame himself.
“Do you, do you know what a Gautland cabbage is, Master Loamtoes?”
The gnome looked up at him with an impatient grimace.
“Raiders from Middangeard often, often plunder these shores,” Ingelbert went on. “Gipeswic has, has fallen prey to them many times. They have even held it a time, that is, a time or two. But a Sasanan warlord always takes it back…eventually. Mostly, the fjordmen come, pillage and, and leave. They take. They take riches, they take lives, those they do not kill they take as thralls. The, the Gautland cabbage is the only crop they sow. It is what the locals call the children born after a raid.”
Ingelbert did not look down at the gnome to see what impact, if any, his words had. Deglan was obviously well seasoned in the ways of the world, it was likely he knew the tragic details of a Middangeard raid or was at least wise enough to glean them. Ingelbert did not want to see pity on his face, nor could he bear to see apathy. It was simpler, safer just to look out in the dingy streets while he related his own besmirched beginnings.
“I was born here. I do not, do not know if my mother saw herself as, as fortunate or deeply cursed. The dead could be mourned, the taken missed or, or even forgotten, but those like her had a living reminder of the...the stain of Middangeard. She was alive and, and free, but was forced to care for a, a, a raper's get. Forgive me such base words, Master Loamtoes, but I cannot waste eloquence on such ugly deeds.”
The Errantry of Bantam Flyn (The Autumn's Fall Saga) Page 13
