by J. V. Jones
A sharp tug on the cloth was all it took to reveal the knight. The livid pink flesh of a frozen corpse met his gaze. Plump flesh, whole and at rest.
Raif closed his eyes. He could find no words to give thanks, and as he let the cloth float to the ground, something wound tight inside his chest relaxed.
I have done no harm here.
It was a comfort he took with him as he passed through the redoubt and continued his journey east.
TWELVE
Fair Trade
“You’d better move faster next time, you big ox, or I’ll take the legs right off you.”
Crope cowered by the roadside, waiting for the wagon train to pass. The head drayman had a whip, and Crope’s gaze stayed upon the six-foot curl of leather until it was nothing more than a line in the distance, and the mud flung up by the wagons’ wheels had settled once more upon the road. He did not like whips, or the men who wielded them, and the dread beat hard in his chest.
It was morning and it was icy cold, and he had thought to enter the next town and trade his goods for warm soup and crusty bread, but the drayman and his wagon train were headed in the same direction, and Crope feared to have that whip raised against him. Stupid, thick-headed fool. I always said you had no guts. The bad voice made him climb from the ditch and brush the mud and twigs from his coat. A waystone marked a fork in the road ahead and since he could think of nothing better to do he headed toward it.
His feet hurt, for although diamond-miners’ boots were made sturdy and tipped with bronze to deflect glancing blows with an ax, they were not meant to be walked in. Yet he had walked in them now for many days—exactly how many he could not say, for the numbers kept getting muddled in his head. Very long, it seemed. Past frozen lakes boiling with mist and queer little villages where men armed with pitchforks and cudgels had lined up along the roadside until he’d passed. Always the mountains followed him, a world of peaks rising sharply to the south. It was cold in the shadow of their snowy slopes, and the wind blowing off them shrieked like pack wolves at night. He did not like to sleep anymore. He took shelter in ditches and abandoned farm buildings and once in the rubble-filled shaft of a dry well, but he could never get warm or feel safe. The bad voice always told him he’d picked a poor place to rest and as soon as he closed his eyes the slavers would come and chain him.
Crope shivered. He missed being in the pipe. Men knew him there, and no one looked at him with mean eyes and shouted bad things. He was giant man, and when a hard wall needed breaking everyone knew to call upon him. Now there were no walls to break, and after seventeen years of wielding an ax—first in search of tin, then diamonds—he did not know what he was good for anymore.
Arriving at the waystone, he knelt on the roadside and brushed the snow from the worn, thumb-shaped marker. He could not read the words scored into the stone’s surface, but he recognized the arrows and signs. One arrow pointed due north, and there was a number with several slashes marking a great many leagues by it, and a seven-pointed star atop that. Morning Star, Crope thought, a small flush of satisfaction rising up his neck. Bitterbean said that Morning Star was two weeks west of the pipe. Now he was north of it . . . which meant he’d traveled quite a way. The second arrow pointed south-west, and the number alongside it was even longer than the first. A dog’s head surmounted the point, and Crope tested the image against his knowledge of the land. Dog . . . Dog Lord . . . Clan Bludd. No, all clans lived to the north, everyone knew that. Wolf . . . Wolf River. No, Bitterbean said that was north, too.
Suet for brains. Wouldn’t remember your own name if it didn’t rhyme with rope. Crope’s shoulders sank. The bad voice always knew what he was thinking. It made him feel small, but it also made him try harder, and he frowned and concentrated as fiercely as he could. Dog . . . pup . . . hound. Hound’s Mire! That was it. Hound’s Mire.
Slapping a hand upon the waystone, Crope raised his great weight from the road. His back ached in the deep soft places where his ribs met his spine. Diamond back, Bitterbean called it. Said that once a man had dug for the white stones his bones knew it for life.
Turning slowly, he surveyed the surrounding land. Ploughed fields lay to the north, their furrows tilled for onion and turnip planting come spring. A small flock of black-face sheep was nosing through the snow close to the road. The town lay to the west, its buildings raised from timbers and undressed stone. Most of the houses had thatched roofs, but one or two were tiled with slate or costly lead. Crope had traveled enough with his lord to know that money lay beneath such roofs, money and comfort and hot food. His stomach rumbled. The last thing he had eaten had been a meal of six stolen eggs. He felt bad about that—though the farmer he had taken them from hadn’t known enough about hens to cut off their wattles and combs in such a climate. Some of the hens had gotten frostbite, for they were tender in those unfeathered fleshy parts, and Crope feared the black rot might set in. He would have liked to stay and tend them, but he could not ignore the call of his lord.
Come to me, he commanded, his once beautiful voice cracked and raw. He was trapped in a dark place, broken and hurting, and he needed his sworn man to save him. How Crope knew this he could not say. He had dreamed during the night spent in the dry well, a strong and terrible dream where flies broke free from his living flesh and shackles circled his wrists. Suddenly there was iron, not stone, beneath him and the darkness was so deep and black it felt like cold water upon his skin. He woke up shivering, and as he blinked and worked to still his racing heart his lord’s voice sounded along the nerve that joined his ears to his throat. Come to me, it said. And Crope knew he must.
Eighteen years had passed since the day in the mountains when his lord’s burned body was taken from him by men wielding red blades. Unhand him, a cold voice had commanded. If you fight you’ll die. Crope remembered the man’s pale eyes and the hairless shine of his skin. Baralis’s body was bound to the mule, his bandages wet and stinking. The fever was upon him and he had not spoken in three days. The left side of his face was burned and his hair and eyebrows were gone. Crope feared for his lord’s life, and doubted his ability to save him. It was one thing to heal creatures. Another to heal a man. The rider with pale eyes commanded his red blades to circle the mule, and then spoke again to Crope. Your lord’s so close to death I can smell it. Fight and the struggle will kill him—don’t make the mistake of guarding a corpse.
But Crope had fought anyway, for he could not abandon his lord. He remembered the pain of many cuts, the laughter of the red blades, and the taste of blood in his mouth. Still he fought, and he hurt many men, dashing their bodies onto the rocks and ripping their arms from their sockets. He could see the fear grow in them. They had thought him simple, but they did not know that a simple man with one thought in his head and one loyalty in his heart could be transformed into a force of nature. Crope felt his own strength burn like a white light within him, and when a mounted red blade charged him, he stood his ground, waited until horse breath puffed against his eyes, fixed his hands upon the stallion’s neck and wrestled the creature to the earth.
All fell silent after that. The red blades fell back. The man with pale eyes reined in his mount, his face thoughtful, a gloved hand stroking his chin.
Crope dropped to his knees by the downed stallion. Its rider was pinned beneath the beast, his scalp torn open and showing bone. The man was struggling for breath, and a froth of bile and blood was bubbling from his mouth. Crope only had eyes for the horse. The creature was jerking horribly, its hoofs clattering against the rocks, its eyes rolled back in its head. Crope felt shame pierce him. Fool! Look what you have done! Told you to look, not touch. Shoulders sinking along with his rage, Crope reached over to where the red blade’s sword had fallen upon the ground. He did not like swords, and never used them, but he knew what to do to kill a horse. Gently, he comforted the creature, whispering soft words that only animals could understand. Sorry, sorry, sorry, he murmured as he opened the stallion’s throat.
The
first arrow pierced him high in the shoulder, and the pain and surprise of it winded him. He fell forward into the horse’s blood. More arrows hit. One entered the meat of his upper arm, another grazed the tendons of his neck, and a third pierced the flank of muscle beneath his ribs, puncturing his kidney with its tip: All shot from behind, at the order of the pale-eyed man.
A day later when Crope awoke to find himself in a gully halfway down the mountain, the red blades long gone along with the mule bearing his lord, he realized it was the stallion’s blood that had saved him. He was drenched in it from head to foot, and it did not take a clever man to see that the red blades had mistaken it for his own. They thought they had mortally wounded him, and had simply rolled his body down the mountain to be rid of it. They did not know that Crope had the ancient blood of giants in his veins, and it would take more than four arrows to kill him.
Abruptly, Crope started down the road to the town. He would not think of what came later—not here, out in the open, with the selfsame mountains so close. All that mattered for now was following those mountains west, to the slopes where his lord had been taken and the place where the red blades lived.
The road was well traveled by carts and cattle, and a season’s worth of cart oil and dung had been trampled into the snow. The sheep grazing by the wayside scattered as Crope approached, and he saw that many were ready to lamb. This small sign of approaching springtime warmed him, and he picked up his pace and began to sing one of the old mining songs:
“O Digger John was a bad seed and he carried a big bad ax,
O Digger John was a bad seed and he kept all his grudge in sacks,
One day he came upon a seam, made his eyes gleam
And he hit it with a whack. Yes, he hit it with a whack.”
By the time Crope got to the third verse where he couldn’t remember all the words, just the bit about Digger John’s toe falling off, he’d arrived at the town’s outer wall. Many of the towns and larger villages that he’d passed along the way had sections of earthwork and masonry defending them. This wall was mostly mounded dirt, with a trench behind it filled with dirty water that had hardened to brown ice. Crope was relieved to see there was no gate, for he had a fear of gatekeepers and their suspicions and clever words. As he stood inspecting the earthwork, an old man wheeling a handcart passed him by. Crope immediately looked away, for he knew how easy it was for lone men to fear him, and he had no wish to cause a stir.
The old man was dressed in the bright clothes of a tinker, with a red woolen coat held together by a great deal of showy lacing, and patched green-and-yellow hose. Crope was surprised when the man didn’t alter his course as he approached. More surprised when the man addressed him.
“You. Yes, you busy pretending not to see me.” The tinker waited until Crope met his gaze, and then motioned to the town with a finger gloved in sparrow skin with the feathers still attached. “I wouldn’t go there if I were you. Sweet Mother, I would not! They’re an ill bunch, these goatherds, and they don’t take kindly to outsiders. Think they’d welcome a bit of trade, stuck out here in the hinterlands with only goats and ground-chuck for company. The women are still dressing in stiff corsets, for heaven’s sake! But would they look at my nice lace collars—all the rage in the Vor? No, they would not, thank you very much. ’Fraid of looking like whores, they said. Whores, I ask you—with this stitching?” The old man pulled something white and frilly from beneath the tarp on his cart and thrust it toward Crope’s face. “See the openwork. Finest to be had in the North.”
Crope politely inspected the lace thing. It seemed a bit flimsy, but he didn’t say so since he wasn’t quite sure what it was for.
The old man took Crope’s silence for agreement. “You’re a man with an eye, I see. Wouldn’t care for a pair yourself? Gift for your lady mother and your . . . er . . . lady.”
Crope shook his head.
“A fellow trader, I perceive. How about the pair for the price of one?”
Feeling a little overwhelmed, Crope continued to shake his head.
“A more wily negotiator I have never met! Very well, out of respect for your obvious discernment I’ll give three for the price of one. Just five silver pieces. There! The deal’s done.” The little man held out his open palm, twitching his fingers for payment.
Crope began to feel the first stirrings of panic. Somehow it seemed as if he’d agreed to this without speaking a word. He felt hot blood rush to his neck, and he swung his head back and forth, looking for escape.
The old man’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t you be looking to run out on a lawful agreement. You owe me five silver pieces, and I’ll take you to a magistrate if you don’t pay up this instant.”
The word magistrate struck more fear into Crope than the sight of a dozen drawn blades. Magistrates meant jail and chains, and cells with iron doors. It meant being locked up and never let out. In full panic now, he put his hands upon the tinker’s handcart and turned it over. Ribbons and lace goods and all manner of twinkly things went tumbling into the snow. The wheel axle snapped and a wheel went bouncing down the slope toward the ditch. Crope felt his chest squeeze tight. Look what you’ve done! Told you not to touch. The old man was gabbling on, pointing at the cart and hopping up and down in rage. Crope looked around wildly. He had to get away, but he didn’t know what he feared more: an open road where bad men could ride him down and hurt him, or a town full of strangers who could ’prison him.
His mind was made up for him when a pig farmer and his boy appeared on the road driving six winter-thinned sows before them. The way back was blocked. The tinker would call to the pig farmer for help, and the pig farmer would be glad to, and a cry would go up and more men would come and circle him and beat him with sticks. Crope knew how these things went. Seventeen years in the mines wasn’t long enough to forget.
Crushing wood beads and painted brass trinkets beneath his feet, he fled toward the town. Behind him he heard the tinker shout, “Stop! Come back here!” But Crope didn’t stop—he ran with his head low and his shoulders hunched forward as if he were about to break down a door.
People stared at him as he entered the shadows of the streets. A goodwife dragged her two children into the nearest doorway to avoid his path. A handsome youth in a pointed hat shouted out to no one in particular, “I’ll be damned! Is it man or bear or both?” A scrawny white dog with a black mark over his eye came racing from a dunghill, yipping and wagging its tail like a mad thing as it chased after Crope’s heels. Crope felt his face redden with shame and exertion. Everyone was looking and laughing. He had to get off the main thoroughfare and find somewhere dark where he could catch his breath and think.
Turning corners at random, kicking up clods of muddy snow and skidding on patches of ice, he wove his way in toward the oldest part of town. The buildings here were low and in ill repair, their cross-timbers greasy with rot, the iron ore in their stonework bleeding rust. An old woman on a street corner was boiling horse hooves in a pot. The caustic stench brought tears to Crope’s eyes, and its after-whiff of meatiness made him feel both hungry and queasy at once.
Panting, he slowed his pace to a walk and spat out a wad of streaky black phlegm. Digger juice. Bitterbean said it was the mine’s way of striking back: you entered the mine, the mine entered you. Realizing that the scrawny dog was still following him, Crope turned and told it to shoo. The dog sat expectantly, thumping its tail against the cobbles and cocking its pointy ears.
“I said go.” Crope raced at the dog, raising his hands and stamping his feet.
The dog skipped back, yipped in excitement, then launched an attack on Crope’s diamond boots. Crope pushed the creature away, but just as quickly it came back, dancing and pouncing, delighted with this new game. Crope frowned. His back and neck were sticky with sweat, and he suddenly wished for the comfort of a closed room and a hot bath. Deep down in the underlevel of the tin mines, below the shaft the tin men called Devil’s Throat, there were caverns filled with steaming hot wat
er. Once you got used to the bad-egg smell, you could soak in the pools until your fingertips wrinkled and your back muscles relaxed like jelly. Crope knew better than to wish himself there—life in the tin mines was dark and crippling and the life of a digger was worth less than an ax—but there had been good things along with the bad. Food. Songs. Fellowship. Now there was nothing—just running and hiding and fear.
Spying a tar-stained door with the sign of the rooster hung above it, Crope turned his back on the dog and made his way across the road. The rooster door was set in a squat structure that bore the marks of recent fire upon it. The stonework was blistered with soot, and great cracks in its mortar had opened up where the heat of flames had touched upon it. Timbers framing the door were charred and crumbling, and a stang of green wood had been hammered into place to prevent collapse. As he approached, Crope felt the old wariness grow within him. The sign of the rooster marked an alehouse where men came to trade. He needed to trade. Badly. He had no food or coinage, and a chicken tarp instead of a cloak. Yet trading meant dealing with men, and Crope could recall few times in his life when men had treated him kindly. They either feared or despised him. Often both.
Letting out a slow breath, he shrank himself, curving his back and slumping his shoulders and bending his legs at the knee. He lost perhaps half a foot that way, but it was enough to give him courage to push open the door.
The alehouse was a one-room tavern reeking of goat tallow. Gobs of fat in the lanterns hissed and sputtered, giving off musty green smoke. Tables and stools hewn from unmilled timber were crowded around a copper cook stove. Old men in goat fleeces and pieced skins turned to look at Crope as he made his way toward the front. A big man in a leather apron shouted, “No dogs!” and it took Crope a moment to realize that the white dog had followed him indoors. Crope didn’t have the courage to explain that the dog wasn’t his, so he simply turned around, picked up the dog and deposited the creature outside. By the time he shut the door everyone’s attention was upon him, and it took all his willpower not to turn and run. One of the old goatmen made a warding sign as he passed, and the man with the leather apron folded his great meaty arms and spread his weight evenly between his legs as if bracing himself for a fight. Eye signals passed between him and a young bravo standing at the ale counter.
