The Exiled Heir (Autumn's Fall Saga)

by Jonathan French

  The sound of approaching voices ended their conversation. They all went outside, Fafnir leading, to find the villagers returning from the hilly country to the north. Padric counted barely a dozen families and what appeared to be a husky child with thick white hair, which could be none other than the gnome herbalist. The group made straight for the alehouse, but Padric noticed the gnome pull up short at the sight of them and strike off alone down a narrow track leading away from the village. Padric thought he heard him muttering as he went. The rest of the group came steadily on.

  “Still here, master peddler?” one woman said when the group stopped in front of them.

  “I am,” Fafnir answered simply. “Along with my new apprentice and his companion.”

  “They’re welcome, of course,” the woman said. “Come, let us make our introductions within. We all have a thirst and a good man to remember this night.” She gestured towards the alehouse door with a small, but genuine smile and the men made their way inside, each giving Padric a friendly nod as they passed, and some even bowed slightly to Rosheen.

  Soon the common room of the alehouse was humming with low voices and the soft, warm glow of the hearth. Padric and Rosheen were introduced to the woman Jileen, who then acquainted them with the herdsmen. Most were older than Padric; simple, honest looking men. They gripped his wrist firmly and looked him square in the eyes when they spoke, asking about his home and his family. They were equally courteous with Rosheen, but their speech became formal and a little nervous when speaking with her. Rosheen, amused and charming, set them to ease quickly and had them all laughing before the first tankard was drained.

  The light faded outside as the ale flowed and two of the men, Laoire and Dolan, left to relieve their fellows out in the hills watching over the flocks. Jileen filled Padric’s cup for the third or possibly fourth time.

  “So you come from Stone Fort?” she asked. Jileen was a fine looking woman, with a flashing smile and a thick mane of deep auburn. Her nose and forehead were a little broad to call her a great beauty, but Padric liked her capable manner and the way she navigated her curves between the men in the bar while serving the ale.

  “Yes,” he answered, his head swimming pleasantly. “But it was not called such when I was a boy. The fort was little more than a low wooden wall surrounded by a ditch.”

  “Stone Fort is a freehold, is it not?” Ardal threw in. He was a big man with retreating hair and a thick brown beard to make up for the lack on his head. He seemed to be in charge now Brogan was dead.

  “It is,” Padric told him. “The warriors of the fort are fed by the farmers, who rule by council. The warriors give protection, we give food. Some of the farmers in my village were once warriors themselves, laid down the sword for the plough.”

  “Would that it were so in Hog’s Wallow.” Ardal lifted his mug to his lips.

  “Kederic Winetongue offers you no protection?” Padric asked.

  “He did,” Ardal said, draining his ale. “And for years we had no need of it. Then Faabar suffered injury and Kederic sent his men to see us safe. Gone now, of course.” Ardal stared into his mug, Jileen watching him intently. There was an uneasy silence and Padric felt it best to say nothing, turning his attention to the common room. One of the herdsman played a decent wood flute and Rosheen danced with another, standing upon one of the tabletops to give her some height. The other men drank and clapped around them. After a moment, Ardal took a deep breath.

  “We are all free men, the land gifted to us by the gnomes who once dwelt here. They went back to their underground city when my grandfather was a boy, and we have worked these lands, tilling, building, raising our flocks and children. Kederic arrived some…what? Ten years now, Jileen?”

  “Aye,” Jileen said as she refilled Ardal’s mug.

  “He had warriors, a fair size herd of cattle and all manner of treasure from fighting across the water. Made himself known to Brogan and offered his protection. Protection we did not need, what with Faabar here. Brogan said as much, but he welcomed Kederic to these lands as was his way. We fostered his cattle while he built his fortress not twenty miles from here. Gifted us with a good smithy within a year.”

  “This place, too. And the stables,” Jileen added.

  Ardal nodded. “He was generous and we repaid his kindness with our own. Wool, candles, grain. Welcomed he and his men to our festivals, shared what we had, traded with the warriors. Some of our daughters are now their wives. But relations between the Winetongue and Brogan cooled after the first year or so. Both men have…had honor in them, but pride as well. Soon it was all land rights and whether we were Kederic’s tenants or he ours. Kederic calls us bondsmen and Brogan took a sour view of that quick enough. But having his warriors here made Kederic bold, pressing Brogan into acknowledging him as lord of these lands. Wants to be a right and proper Thegn, like they have in Sasana and Middangeard, rule by his own hand. Brogan refused and the warriors were called back.”

  “And Brogan is dead soon after?” Padric asked.

  “Same day,” Ardal said gravely. “But don’t let your mind run with suspicions. Weren’t Kederic that did for Brogan. Those two known each other ten years and quarreled for all but one of them. Kederic is a warrior and killed plenty of men in battle, but murder is not in the man. No. The husk is at the end of that foul doing.”

  “Slouch Hat.” Jileen all but whispered the name, her eyes on the serving table.

  “Aye,” Brogan snarled. “Saw his chance for freedom and took it. I’d stake my daughters on it. Faabar laid up and the warriors gone, none to stop him. Kederic will find him though. Set riders and that huntsman of his on the trail. They’ll run that husk down and then we’ll get justice for a good man.” Ardal pushed himself to his feet and clapped Padric on the back companionably. “Welcome to Hog’s Wallow, lad. Wish it were in happier times. Here’s to Brogan!” He threw back his cup, draining it down and with that he turned, before lumbering over to join the revels. Jileen stayed behind the serving table clutching the flagon and staring sadly at nothing.

  “I am sorry for his passing,” Padric said after a moment.

  “He taught me my letters, when I was a girl,” she said softly, almost to herself.

  “That is a rare skill and a wondrous gift,” Padric said, hoping to sound comforting. “He sounded an honorable man and a fine leader.”

  “It was a gift. One he gave to all the children of this village who wanted to learn.” Jileen looked over at him and gave a resigned smile, “But it was not Brogan who taught us. It was Slouch Hat.”

  “…town’s just resettled and what do we get? Visitors! No sense in it. None at all. A body can’t even get a drink in his own home after burying a friend without stepping on a stranger. Dwarrow and piskies! Soon it’ll be banshees and selkies! What’s to follow? Giants and trolls? Or worse? Hobgoblins?!”

  Deglan spat.

  Bulge-Eye slept.

  The pair sat outside Faabar’s hut and would have been sharing the whisky skin back and forth, but the great toad was not much of a drinker. Inside, the fomori slept deeply, compliments of the elixir Deglan mixed up when he returned from the barrows. The wound had stayed closed, thankfully, but the fevers still came and went, much to Deglan’s frustration. But he was patient.

  “We must stare down injury and illness and never blink,” he said aloud, quoting the old herbwife that taught him so long ago. He took a pull off the skin and looked over at Bulge-Eye. “You’d make a fine healer.”

  The whisky burned a little going down, but settled warmly in his chest. The night was fresh and crisp, chill, but dry. Excellent weather for a good sit and a few pulls off a skin.

  “Mind if I join you?” asked a playful voice.

  Deglan looked up. It was the piskie from the village, perched in a tree near the eaves of Faabar’s turf roof.

  “Yes,” Deglan answered sourly.

  She flew down heedlessly, landing on the toad’s head. Bulge-Eye awoke with a grumpy croak and rolled
his eyes upwards, trying to see what was bothering him. The piskie leaned down and rubbed him enthusiastically between the eyes.

  “He’s adorable,” she cooed. “Been a long time since I’ve seen a riding toad.”

  “Funny. He told me the same thing about piskies. Has a weakness for them. Likes the way the wings crunch.”

  She paid the comment no mind and continued to stroke the toad’s lumpy head. A strange expression of calm contentment seemed to come over Bulge-Eye’s face. If it was possible, the beast seemed even more at ease than usual.

  Piskies kept to ancient traditions, continuing to live rough in the wilds long after the elves and gnomes and the other Fae had built magnificent cities. This piskie was as feral and youthfully beautiful as any he had ever seen. Her skin was pleasantly darkened by the sun, unclothed save for the intricate blue markings painted in sparing patterns across one shoulder and thigh. Her hair was a tangled pile of deep chestnut, festooned with braids, beads, bones and feathers. Her entire body screamed blissful abandon and Deglan found his loins stirring, unbidden and unwanted. Thankfully he knew a tea that would solve the problem and made a point to remember to brew some when he returned home.

  “What’s in the skin?” she asked without taking her attention from the toad.

  “Root whisky,” Deglan said and held the skin towards her. Even half full the skin outweighed the piskie, so she tilted her head back and opened her mouth while Deglan poured a thin stream from the spout. She made a face as the whisky went down and shook her head with a hard sniff.

  “Potent.”

  “Brewed it myself.” Deglan took a long pull. “Jileen’s ale not enough for you?”

  “It was fine,” she replied. “Clurichaun knows his craft.”

  “Who, Two Keg?” Deglan could not help but laugh. “Old bugger’s been drunk for a decade or more. Thought he would keel over and die the day that alehouse was built. Now he was sick of root whisky. Comes up sober once in a harvest moon to lay fresh charms on the ale and then dives right back down again. But, yes…the results are impressive.”

  “Doesn’t seem to have addled his wits any,” she said and Deglan saw the bait.

  “Name’s Deglan Loamtoes,” he dodged. “Master herbalist.”

  “Rosheen,” the piskie winked at him. “Unwanted stranger.”

  “Do you always eavesdrop on folks at night, Rosheen?”

  “Only on gnomes who talk to themselves. Likely to hear something interesting that way.”

  “Well, not from this gnome.” Deglan stood up and stretched, walked a few stiff paces away from the piskie. She was entirely too close.

  “So, you stayed behind?” he heard her ask behind him.

  “Pardon?” he turned back.

  “When the gnomes left, you stayed?”

  Deglan gave a self-mocking bow. “I did. My kin up and packed off for Toad Holm and I remained. Me and the fomori.” And Two Keg, Deglan thought, but he was wary to bring the clurichaun back into the conversation. “And what of you? Why are you here, Child of Summer? To converse with a dwarf and that ill-favored looking mortal youth?” He wanted to turn the talk away from himself and quickly.

  “Child of Summer? You honor me. Would that I were so young.” She smiled coyly at him. Deglan tried to keep the surprise from his face. She saw Spring, then. An Age before his own birth. “The dwarf is nothing to me,” Rosheen continued lightly. “But the ill-favored mortal youth is my friend and where he goes…,” she motioned to herself and the surrounding air.

  Deglan grunted at that and turned back to the night, took another drink.

  “Why did you stay?”

  Deglan wanted to scream. The endless questions! He spun on his heel. “What?”

  “I was just wondering why you stayed,” she pressed on innocently. “The fomori, I imagine, stayed to protect the village even though there were no more Fae-folk. Honor-bound to some oath…fomori are funny that way. But why you? Was it the humans? They do get sick quite often. And hurt. Did you stay to help them? Deliver their children? Soothe their fevers? Close their wounds? Protect them from Unwound?”

  And there it was. Thrown out carelessly and casually into the night, like the rind from a fruit. He found himself standing, looking at her, saying nothing and she stared back. Not accusing, not victorious. Simply knowing.

  “You saw one?” she asked gently.

  Deglan looked to the ground and shook his head. “I thought I did.”

  “I have been around these people most of the night. They think you had their families flee because of a murdering husk.”

  “They came up with that on their own!” Deglan was growing angry, the tension of the past weeks piling in on him. “I had a mind to tell them it was the flux or plague, but when the husk turned up missing it was on everyone’s lips. But I couldn’t worry about that, I had to get them out of here! For all I know the husk did kill Brogan. There is no reason to suspect otherwise! But telling them one of those…those things was on its way here to slaughter them all would have been madness. They don’t know what an Unwound is…”

  “They’ve heard…,” Rosheen cut in.

  “Stories!” Deglan rode right over her. “Legends! So far away from their ken as to be nothing but crouching fable. They’ve fought barghests and ballybogs, wielded iron against them and emerged alive and victorious. They fear them, but they fight. And they would have tried to fight this! And for what? To die? To watch everything die? What good is an iron sword or sickle against an Unwound? Against living iron? The only man who would have listened to me was floating dead amongst the eels. So I let them believe what they wanted and had them flee, for all the good it did. They are all back now, every last child. All in danger.”

  “Have you seen it since?”

  Deglan shook his head wearily. “No. And feel grateful for it.”

  “An Unwound would have been here by now,” Rosheen said. “They do not rest.”

  “I know what I saw.” Deglan glared at her. “It walked from Bwenyth Tor. Heading for the village. What else could it be?”

  “The Forge Born did not fight at Bwenyth Tor,” Rosheen claimed.

  Deglan strode fiercely towards her. “You think to tell me? I was there, piskie! At the siege and well before. Trapped on that blasted hill for months, Red Caps all around, starving us out! It would be folly to charge, too many of them. We were Wart Shanks, born in the saddle, every last gnome, riders to the blood. We vowed we would die before we ate our mounts and we choked on that vow as we choked down toad meat! Faabar was there too, he’ll tell you. But I didn’t see you there! No Forge Born at Bwyneth Tor? True. But they were coming. We had word. A runner got through, little fella, drunk a lot, you might have met him. He told us they were on the march. Liked to have pissed ourselves. Better to have died in a charge then suffer those metal monstrosities!”

  “But they never came,” Rosheen said. It was not a question.

  Deglan lost some of his wind. “No. They never came. Thank Earth and Stone. I don’t have to tell you, you seem to know your history. Might be you lived some of it yourself. The spell against the Forge Born was completed and they quit the battlefield. The Gaunt Prince recalled the Red Caps from the Tor to fight at his side and…we were saved. That sorcerer’s bastard got himself good and killed. Gnome King did that, thank you very much, and the Rebellion ended. Irial Elf-King was put back on the throne and we were heroes one and all.” He looked at the whisky skin scornfully and threw it into the bushes. “Heroes who rode to the Tor…and walked away from it.”

  “Dark days,” Rosheen whispered.

  “Dark days,” Deglan agreed.

  “And nine hundred years in the past,” Rosheen said.

  Deglan laughed bitterly at that. “That’s the thing about living iron. When a Forge Born goes Unwound, it goes more than blood crazy. It seeks to do what it was meant to do before the burden of a heart…of a conscience. Carries out its last order, killing everything as it goes, never stopping. Far as I’m concerned
, those things were on their way the day Two Keg told us they were coming. It’s just taken them nine hundred years to get here.”

  “What will you do?” Rosheen asked.

  Deglan tried to answer, but the words would not come. He did not know.

  “We hunt it down,” the harsh growl came from above them.

  Deglan looked up. Faabar stood looming in the doorway, large and powerful, a blanket around his shoulders, a burning behind his bestial eyes.

  SIX

  The tourney fields were set up a good mile from the Roost. The rocky highlands of Albain were rarely cooperative when it came to expanses of flat ground and the Grand Master had asked leave of the Chief of the Dal Riata for the use of one of his larger grazing fields. The shaggy cattle were herded off, allowing the servants of the Order to set about the simple work of making the field ready for the contest. Colored pennants were hung from poles driven into the mud to denote the boundaries of the combat grounds, and a raised platform was constructed for the Grand Master and the Knights Sergeant so they might view the combats unobstructed. A separate, larger area was cordoned off with the same pennant poles for the squires’ melee. All in all, it was a drab affair; a damp field dotted with sad looking flags under an overcast sky, the Roost squatting gloomily atop its craggy perch in the distance.

  Pocket was disappointed.

  He had expected a grand festival of music and banners, amusing performers and sweets for sale. But the tourney it seemed was to be a dour event, unadorned and without fanfare. He walked around in the cold, moist air of the early morning and tried not to let the dreary surroundings dampen his excitement. What matter if there were no songs and banners? The knights would fight and that would be grand enough. As for sweets, Moragh had made him up a batch of apple cakes, fresh baked and well spiced. He carried them in a sack, desperately wanting to eat them, but holding off so that he would have them for the tourney. He had asked Moragh to come with him, but she balked at the prospect of a mile trip in the cold, only to have to walk the distance again on the return and uphill besides. So Pocket came down alone and paced about, bored.