Taking a deep breath, I close my eyes and jerk my right hand quickly, feeling sick as the head snaps cleanly away and Kirin screams.
When I look at him, sweat is streaming down his face.
“Kirin,” I say, but he holds a hand up weakly.
“Check the end of the arrow,” he says, his voice sounding strained and far away. “Is there any wax still attached? What about splinters, any loose bits of wood, or cracks?”
“None. I’m sorry, Ki—”
Without warning he grips the shaft of the arrow just above the fletching and pulls the arrow out. Then he collapses, rolling face down on the mud, lifting himself a moment later to vomit.
I leave him to it, pulling out my knife again and opening out his discarded cloak, cutting a strip from the top of it, where it’s cleaner, and tying a tourniquet below his knee. The flow of blood slows immediately and I rip a second strip free, using it to clean the wounds. They’re neat, thank the Gods.
“You’re lucky,” I say as I saw at the thick wool, hacking off two more strips to make pads, and a third as a bandage. “And stupid.”
“Sorry,” Kirin says, spitting on to the dirt.
“You should never do that. Ever. You had no idea of what might have happened. You might have bled out in moments.”
“I’d rather die here than in a medical tent.” He takes the two pads from me and holds them to the wounds while I wrap the other strip over them, holding them in place. When I’m done, I look at him, and notice he’s wearing an amulet, dull in the wintry light. Real gold, then. I see the three stars on it and bite my tongue.
“What are you doing here, Errin?” Kirin asks, wiping his mouth on the remains of his cloak and staring as though I might disappear at any moment. “Where’s Lief?”
The sounds of fighting are quieter now; whether it’s the distance or one side winning I don’t know. “You really need to have that wound seen to properly. It could get infected.”
“Errin, where is he?”
I push aside the familiar feeling of tightness in my chest, and I tell him as simply as I can what I know: that Lief was in Lormere when the Sleeping Prince attacked, that we’ve heard nothing since. But that I think he’s still alive.
Kirin doesn’t look relieved by my words though. In fact his entire face falls; he looks ancient, tired and ruined; it seems as though the bones beneath his skin are shifting and making him someone else, someone new. I see him age before me, losing the last of his boyishness, the spark in his eyes dulling.
“Errin,” he says, and I know that tone; it’s exactly the same one Silas uses whenever I talk of Lief. And I’m tired of it.
“Don’t,” I say, before he can tell me how unlikely it is my brother lives. “You know Lief. You know him as well as I do. Do you honestly think he would have let himself get into any situation that might have got him killed?”
“Then where is he?”
“I … I don’t know. Maybe he’s hurt somewhere, or trapped. But I know he’s alive, Kirin, I feel it. He wouldn’t leave us. He’ll be on his way back, as soon as he can. I know he will.”
“I’ve heard the reports that have come out of Lormere, and—”
“So have I. And I’ve asked every refugee I’ve seen and none of them has heard of a Tregellian being caught up in it all.” I don’t let him speak, talking loudly over every attempt to protest. “My theory is that he got injured escaping from the castle and is holed up somewhere, recovering.”
“Then why hasn’t he sent word?” Kirin’s tone is maddeningly gentle.
“Maybe he has. Maybe he’s tried but he hasn’t managed to get through yet. And the border is closed now. We might not hear from him for ages.”
“I don’t think he’d leave you here,” he says quietly, his eyes full of pity. “Not if he could help it. Errin, you have to face facts. It’s almost certain Lief is dead.”
“No.” There’s a horrible buzzing in my ears, as though I’ve rested my head against a wall full of wasps.
“I don’t want to believe he’s gone either,” Kirin begins.
“Then don’t,” I snap at him, raising my hands to cover my ears like a child.
We both fall silent.
“Do you live in Almwyk? In one of those shacks?” Kirin asks after a moment.
I lower my hands, which did nothing to shut him out anyway, and nod, forcing words past the scream that’s become a knot in my throat. “Yes. Lief found it for us.”
I don’t miss the frown that crosses his face, but before he can speak the sound of shouts reaches us.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he says, trying to stand. “Come.”
And though I’m angry with him for being so doubtful, I tuck my arm under his right one and help haul him to his feet, ignoring the whimper he makes when his left foot presses into the ground.
“When did you join the army?” I ask as we make slow progress towards the centre of Almwyk. Back in Tremayne, he’d been apprenticing, as I had, but with the blacksmith. It had been his dream, to have his own smithy. He would have been due to apply for his guild licence this harvest.
“I’m doing my duty,” he says, his voice curiously flat.
“Your duty? Since when has it been your duty to be a soldier?”
He stops beside one of the abandoned huts, his breathing laboured, and looks down at me, soft brown eyes now hard, his mouth a line. “I was drafted,” he says finally. “Every fit man between eighteen and forty has been. The call to muster was mandatory for the fit and able, across the whole of Tregellan.”
I blink while I take in this news. “How? How can they make it mandatory?”
“Arrest and imprisonment for those who refuse. Confiscation of land, property and goods. Family be damned. If you don’t fight, you’ll be arrested, and your family evicted from their home.”
“But that’s wrong. That’s not our way. It sounds like something the Lormerians would do.”
Kirin raises an eyebrow. “It’s an old law. It was never repealed. Every household must provide at least one man for military duty when ordered by the ruler of the land. Last time it was used was during the war with Lormere. The Council has revived it. The Justices are enforcing it.”
“Can they do that?”
“Clearly.” Kirin’s voice is dark. “Though if you can prove you’re religious, you can be exempted.”
“But no one is, any more,” I say slowly. “What about everyone else? The older men? The women? Master Pendie? Lirys? Ulrik?” I reel off the names of people I care about.
“Anyone useful has been sent to Tressalyn, including Ulrik.” His mouth twists as he mentions his old mentor. “They want all able hands preparing for war. The older men have been sent to the great forge to make weapons, even some of the women. Pendie is still in Tremayne, though. Still running the apothecary. Lirys is at home too. Most of the women have been left at home to keep the farms and businesses running. For now.”
“For now? Are they going to ask women to fight?”
“If it gets bad enough.” He looks at me thoughtfully. “Wait, don’t tell me you’d want to?”
“You think I couldn’t?”
His mouth tightens before he tries for a smile. “Oh, I know you could. I think it should be a choice, that’s all.” He pauses. “An educated one. Not telling people it’s for glory. Because there’s nothing glorious about death—” He stops himself, too late, and looks at me, paling. “Sorry,” he says, and I wave his apology away. “Anyway, you’re an apothecary. They’d want you for that.”
“I’m not licensed.”
“If this carries on, it won’t matter. I was a blacksmith; now look at me.” He gestures at his bloody uniform.
“What’s it like?” My voice is quiet. “Is it likely to get bad enough for women to be called to fight?”
“I don’t know,” he
says slowly. “In Tremayne, things are fine, on the surface, at least. There’s no rationing yet, at least not that I know of. No attacks. People are preparing, stockpiling food and fuel, clearing out cellars to hide in, but there’s no real sense of panic.”
I hear something in his voice that makes me think there’s more than that. “But?”
Kirin shrugs and takes a step without thinking, immediately yelping and gripping my shoulder painfully, taking long, deep breaths. I wait until the colour has returned to his face before I bend down to look at his leg. Blood is soaking through the cloak bandage, but not much. I nod for us to keep moving, putting my arm back around him.
“When you leave Tremayne, you see the rich heading towards Tressalyn with carts full of valuables,” he continues. “You see lines of men – boys – leaving to be soldiers, their mothers, and sisters, and wives, and children crying as they walk away. And you smell the refugee camp at Tyrwhitt long before you see it. And here, there’s men in the woods and a new report every day or so of where he is and what his golems have done. Lortune, Haga, Monkham…
“Truth to tell, we’re all hoping that it won’t come to a proper battle at all. We simply don’t have the men, even with the drafting. We’ve been at peace for one hundred years; we’re not ready for a war. Especially not a war against bloody golems. How do you kill stone? We have no siege engines, no nothing. You can’t send men against rock. We can barely fight other men.”
I look over my shoulder to the woods, where his comrades still haven’t emerged. But then again, neither have the others. “So, who were they?” I jerk my head at the forest. “Are they refugees, or the Sleeping Prince’s?”
“Oh they’re his, all right.” I notice that he doesn’t name the Sleeping Prince. “Human raiding parties. It doesn’t take people long to turn on their own if they think it’ll keep them alive. The Silver Knight commands the human army, recruiting the dregs, and the traitors, to raid and kill the Lormerians who try to resist, or fight back. He’s started sending parties into the woods to try to break our army’s lines. Testing us. This is the third lot here, so far. They never get out of the forest though. Or back to him.”
“The Silver Knight?” It’s the first I’ve heard of him.
“The Bringer. He leads his father’s mortal army.”
“Of course.” I shiver. United at last.
“We have companies all the way along the border, from coast to coast, patrolling and keeping them back, and so far…” He trails off, frowning. “Obviously this can go no further.” He looks at me warily.
“My lips are sealed.”
“If I had to guess, I’d say he was toying with us. I reckon if he planned to invade, he’d do it. But this? Sending small parties to harass us, engaging in back and forth with the Council? He knows we’re running scared, and that we can’t beat him. It’s a game to him. Lortune was locked down straight away, and the first we heard of it was the message he sent to the Council to say it was done and he’d declared himself uncontested king.”
“So you think he won’t invade?”
“Not yet. His main focus now seems to be destroying the temples and killing the devout in Lormere. He’s taken against the Lormerian Gods in the worst way.”
“Why, though? Why is he targeting holy people?” I’m not religious, few here are, but the idea of burning down temples and butchering nuns and monks makes me feel queasy. It’s like hurting children. They’re harmless, mostly.
“Burn all the food, and people will starve, weaken, and turn on one another. Destroy the temples and their acolytes, and the people will have nowhere to turn, no sanctuary, no charity. No hope. Especially somewhere like Lormere. They’re already distraught because their living Goddess has vanished; it’s child’s play to him at this point.” He pauses, disgust coating every word. “What he does, to the pious… It’s awful, Errin.”
“What does he do?” I don’t want to know, but the question is ready on my lips before I can stop it. And from the speed Kirin replies at, he knew it too.
“He cuts out their hearts. Men, women, seminarians, novices, altar servers. He doesn’t discriminate, doesn’t care how old they are, or how young. He has the hearts cut from the bodies, and he puts them on display in the town squares. He has men guard them so they can’t be claimed. The birds can get at them, and the rats. But not the people. The bodies are thrown in pits, and they’re denied the Eating. He’s outlawed that too; there’s a price on the Sin Eater’s head. A good one. She wasn’t loved anyway, from what I’ve heard. Given the price she’ll fetch, I reckon he’ll have her before Midwinter Day.”
I stop moving. “Why? Why is he doing this?” I’m sickened by it, by the bestial, savage cruelty of it.
“Because he’s a monster. Because the Lormerians are mice who spent years cowering under their royals and their Gods, afraid of their own shadows. They couldn’t have made it any easier for him if he’d strolled up to the doors of the castle and knocked. They haven’t done a thing to fight back. They’re too scared, too busy praying for salvation. And because he’s trampling across Lormere unheeded, our Council has had to make sure he won’t get the same chance here.” He glances down at his uniform and his fire falls away, leaving him looking more like the boy I used to know. “Why are you still here? You should have been evacuated this morning, shouldn’t you? We were told all civilians would be gone today. Which hut is yours? Come on, I’ll speak to your mother now; we can try to get you out this afternoon.”
“Don’t be stupid,” I say swiftly. “You need to get back to your camp. Your leg needs proper attention.”
“Surely you can patch it up. Isn’t that what you were training for?”
“You need a physician to look at it, not an apothecary. Why don’t I meet you somewhere later on? We can arrange what to do then. Come, I’ll see you back to the road.”
Kirin leans forward and peers into my eyes. “What are you up to, Errin Vastel?”
“Nothing.”
“Liar. I know you. You’re hedging me. What’s going on?”
“If you must know, Mama is sick.” I feed him the same line as I fed Unwin. “I can’t move her yet. As soon as she’s better, we’ll go. But I don’t want to risk her on the road, or in a camp, as she is.” It’s as close to the truth as I dare. “We’re keeping a low profile until then.”
“Maybe we can move her to the barracks. It’s a safe distance from the woods. We’d be on hand to keep an eye on her while she’s recovering. I’ll come now and we’ll—”
“Your leg.” I talk across him and he scoffs, raising an eyebrow at me. I force myself to look into his familiar, friendly eyes. “I’m scared of wounds left alone,” I say quietly. “You know why. It doesn’t take long… A puncture wound…”
“Oh, Errin.” Kirin looks wretched, and I feel horribly, horribly guilty for playing that card. “I’m sorry. I’ll go now and have it patched up. Then I’ll come for you. Gods, if I’d known you were here I would have come sooner and got you out, you know.” He shakes his head. “Why would Lief turn down the farm for this?”
I stare at him. “What? What are you talking about?”
“The farm, we all… Wait. You don’t know, do you?”
“Know what? Tell me,” I insist when he shakes his head.
He swallows, unable to meet my eye. “Ulrik told Lief we’d help; half the town was ready to pitch in to save the farm. We’d buy it, then he could pay us back.” He looks at me with pity. “Your father was respected, loved even. We wouldn’t have let anything bad happen to one of our own, but Lief refused us, said you didn’t need charity and that he’d found work, and a new home for you all. Then you were gone, and no one knew where to.”
“I—” I can feel my mouth is hanging open as I turn alternately hot and cold. “He wouldn’t… He wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t take us from our home to come here.”
“We t
hought you’d all chosen it. A fresh start, away from bad memories.”
“I didn’t know any of this.” The buzzing returns and I have to shake my head to clear it. We had a choice and Lief chose this? “I didn’t know at all. I thought… I thought no one cared.”
“You thought Lirys – or I – didn’t care?” The hurt in his tone is plain and it shames me. “What about Master Pendie? What about the Dapplewoods? Ulrik? How could you think that?”
I shake my head, unable to speak. Why would Lief do that? Why drag us halfway across the country to live in Almwyk when we could have stayed at the farm? He loved the farm, he took the loss harder than even Mama, so why choose to leave it? What about “family first”? If we’d stayed there, Mama would be… He would be…
“Errin, I know how much you loved Lief. We all did.” Kirin’s words break into my thoughts and I look at him. He opens his mouth to speak again, but then stops abruptly, looking over my shoulder.
Two soldiers are jogging to us. Both stop and raise their hands in salute before one gasps, staring at Kirin’s bound calf.
“Are you hurt?” he asks Kirin.
“I’m fine, Kel.”
The soldiers look at me with undisguised curiosity.
“You’re lucky to be alive, miss,” the soldier, Kel, tells me. “When we saw you come running towards us we thought you were a ghost at first. What were you doing in the woods?”
“She’s a camp follower,” Kirin says swiftly, and the two soldiers exchange a knowing glance. “With the healers, she was collecting willow bark for her stores. I’ve already questioned her and extracted her word that she’ll not stray there again,” he adds tartly. “So what happened?”
“We saw them off. Killed three of theirs, but they killed two of ours, and wounded two more. Three more.” Kel nods respectfully. “We didn’t know what had happened to you, but Cam said he saw you go down.”
“I’m fine. Cam, send word to bring the bodies of our men back to the camp for burning. Leave the enemy as a warning to others. Kel, wait over there for me. I’ll need aid getting back.”
Sin Eater's Daughter 2 - The Sleeping Prince Page 7
