The Ring Of Truth

by B Cameron Lee

  Tansy, looking content, fetlock-deep in clean straw with her coat shiny and freshly groomed, bunted him gently with her head, seeking contact. Arwhon hung a companionable arm over her neck and stroked her nose gently, deep in thought. So this was how rich people lived.

  The door at the far end of the stables swung open and a gust of cold air blew in to disturb the quiet warmth inside. Voices could be heard raised in argument. Arwhon kept quiet, awkwardly feeling like a commoner intruding where he shouldn’t be.

  “I tell you Ripley, whether your uncle is related to the King or not, this is still a dangerous mission we’re on and I won’t go with you any further.”

  “Don’t be melodramatic Driscol. The information we were given was pretty sparse and just because we couldn’t find a boy we didn’t know on the Trugor road is no reason to quit now. The other part of the deal still holds. All I have to do is deliver a ring and this stupid horse to Cumbrisia’s End, collect the substantial reward that’s promised and another horse to get home.”

  The original voice continued. “What if he don’t like the condition of the horse? I’ve heard he can be a vicious bastard.”

  Ripley’s barely audible voice replied.

  “It’s not my fault the bloody thing’s not eating much. It’s been off its food since its owner was killed. Related to nobility he was too but that did him no good. Remember I’m only the messenger; my uncle made all the deals and acquired the horse. It was him told me where to look for the boy too.”

  Silence.

  Then the sounds of hay being forked and a water bucket filled.

  “You’re still intent on leaving tomorrow then?”

  “I am,” Ripley replied. “Up through Durhain’s Pass to Cumbrisia’s End, collect my money and head back. Should be home in Encarill within the month.”

  “Aye, I hope so for your sake. Up there,” Driscol said, gesturing with his thumb, “the Laws of Myseline do not apply.”

  Ripley’s voice took on a note of entreaty.

  “Sure you won’t come? We could split the reward.”

  “Not likely, I’ve had enough of traipsing around the damn countryside and I’ll be buggered if I’m going halfway up a damn mountain to deliver a ring and a poxy horse to a traitorous, bad tempered turncoat. I’m for home, a warm fire and the arms of the buxom Penelope Starlingham.”

  There was silence for a few moments then the sound of a stall door being closed firmly. Still chatting to one another, the voices grew fainter as they headed for the outer door. Finally the stable was left silent again apart from the odd burp and gurgle from the stabled horses. Arwhon let his breath out slowly. Those were the men who had been searching for him. Murder, deliveries and vicious people were involved in all this. What had he stumbled into? And why had they involved him in all of it?

  Arwhon waited over ten minutes before returning stealthily to his room, scouting around corners to avoid bumping into the strangers.

  Polite but persistent knocking on the door roused Arwhon from a deep sleep. He arose and groggily stumbled across the darkened room to open it. There stood the Houseman bearing a tray.

  “Breakfast is nearly finished young Sir, so I took the liberty of making you up a tray. Will you being staying another day?”

  “What time is it please?” asked the stupefied Arwhon.

  “Eight by the waterclock Sir.” replied the Houseman as he brushed past Arwhon to enter the room, automatically checking the bed for another unpaid guest before placing the breakfast tray on the table then striding to the windows to draw open the heavy drapes.

  Morning brightness burst into the westerly facing room causing Arwhon to squint.

  The Houseman smiled warmly.

  “The rain’s gone and we’ve finally got a taste of summer. Rain then sun, just the thing to grow grain and grapes. I’ll fetch your cleaned clothes young Sir while you eat your breakfast.”

  The kindly Houseman exited, softly closing the door behind him, leaving Arwhon to gather his thoughts while slowly demolishing the sumptuous repast; trying all the while to get the sleep out of his system. The last thirteen days had truly wearied him.

  When Arwhon eventually took his gear out to the stables, dressed in his newly cleaned clothes and wearing his chainmail, there was no sign of the grey stallion. Ripley had gone. Off on his delivery no doubt. The black mare was also missing. Driscol was most likely well on his way south to Encarill, back to the arms of Penelope Starlingham.

  It was only as he led Tansy from the back of the ‘The Princely Spot’ and out of the courtyard’s southern gate, that Arwhon first saw the full expanse of the mountain range known as Mehgrin’s Wall in the clarity of the new day. The misty rain of the previous week had hidden its huge rampart, now filling his sight from north to south. He had never been anywhere near this close to the mountains before and the scale of the range beggared belief. He still had another eight days of travel to Durhain’s Pass. How vast must the mountains seem then?

  He mounted Tansy, feeling the weight of his chainmail once again, and turned her head toward the mountains. She stepped out briskly; seemingly fortified by the previous evenings energy-rich hard feed.

  For day after day of travel, the weather held fair and the rugged mountain range loomed ever closer, its snowy peaks thrusting to the heavens like white-capped, jagged fangs. As Arwhon headed still further east, the ground rose steadily and he passed through some small villages, built into the slopes of the foothills. Eventually he was able to discern the steep trail up the mountain proper as it left the tree line off in the distance, zigzagging back and forth through the heather, ascending ever upwards into the mists. His neck became sore from looking up as he searched to find its end.

  That night Arwhon chose to stay at a cheap but decent inn in the last village before leaving the cover of the trees for the final ascent to the pass. The three day climb would be hard on both him and Tansy and once through Durhain’s Pass they still had far to travel before reaching Belvedere in Southland.

  Home to his Grandmother.

  Mehgrin’s Wall had towered before him in the clear air each day of his journey since leaving Bentwood. Durhain’s Pass, when the last of the scudding clouds clinging to the mountain finally revealed it, appeared nothing more than a narrow little cleft high up in the vastness of the cliffs. At first, the mountain range’s true height had not been apparent due to the distances involved but in the past few days, since leaving the comfort of the last village on this side of the pass, Arwhon had to crane his neck back to make out the clouds hooding the high peaks. The air was thin here and cold. He led Tansy, not willing to push her too hard in the thin air. The old sword, now back at his hip, was yet another burden to bear as he struggled to walk up the long inclined stretches of road zigzagging up to the pass. Arwhon had begun to doubt his resolve there on the side of the mountain and felt miserably insignificant in the vastness of it all, especially when he looked back over Myseline and saw how far and how high he had come. Adventure wasn’t that much fun really, just a lot of effort for little reward and lonely to boot.

  That final stretch of road was steep and bare of vegetation, cut into the living rock in a series of steep switchbacks which went on and on. Here and there, where terrain permitted, level areas were provided for a place to overnight on the long haul up the mountainside. On some of them, built from worked stone, a few sturdily constructed huts and stables, roofed with slate, stood in defiance of the elements. The excellent construction of both the road and rest areas made him think of dwarves and other things which delved in rock.

  Creatures from bedtime childhood fantasies and whispered stories.

  Leaving the last hut behind early this morning was both difficult and liberating. There was a finality to it. He was leaving Myseline and his old life behind. Who knew what his future would be?

  Arwhon made that final ascent to Durhain’s Pass before midday, struggling up the steep incline on foot in the chill shadow of the western slopes of Mehgrin’s Wall,
hoping to reach a village on the other side of the Pass before darkness fell.

  3. A Bond.

  It was miserable, cold and damp, walking in the freezing mist. Arwhon blew on his hands through chapped lips, wishing he’d thought to bring gloves as he trudged wearily up the last few yards of the steep road leading to Durhain’s Pass. He’d decided to go armed since he left the last village days before, as he was now totally alone, having seen no one on the road. Few travellers dared this way so early in the season.

  The bare sword, tucked through a loop of his belt, banged against his left leg as he walked. Behind him, at the end of the rein clutched tightly in his right hand, Arwhon’s sweat-flecked old horse, Tansy, laboured to keep up. For the fifth or sixth time that day, Arwhon cursed the weight of the old, rusting chainmail hauberk he still wore, now hidden beneath his leather jerkin which helped to keep out the cold but he wouldn’t part with it. The chainmail was his inheritance, along with the battered sword blade at his side, bequeathed to him by his late father, Bryan, slaughtered in a senseless Reaver raid. The mail hauberk was much too bulky to tie behind the saddle and had too much intrinsic value to leave behind in Trugor. Besides, Tansy was struggling as it was in the thin air, without having to carry the extra weight of his mail. He would have to rest her for a while when he found a place out of the chilling westerly wind.

  Directly ahead, to the east, the way levelled at last as the road entered Durhain’s Pass. Narrow and steep sided, it looked to be cut from the living rock but the scale of construction was immense. Dirty, melting snow still lay in the shade beside the ancient roadway, its steep rocky walls forming the base of cliffs soaring up to disappear into dark swirling clouds high above, momentarily visible when gusts of savage wind tore through the mists hiding them.

  He was so cold.

  The landlord of the last inn he stayed at told him about the village just on the other side of the mountain. It was known as Cumbrisia’s End and supposedly lay not far down the road from the other end of Durhain’s Pass. A bed at an inn would be quite a welcome change from camping out, especially with the temperature dropping so rapidly at this elevation.

  Tansy blew gratefully through her nose as she finally struggled up to the level ground at the entrance to the pass, legs quivering. Arwhon decided to give her a few minutes to catch her breath before they continued onward.

  Out of Myseline.

  Turning, he faced toward the mid afternoon sun as the mists parted for a moment and shading his eyes with his hand, gazed out from his lofty viewpoint. The air was so clear he thought he could just make out the ocean far away on the horizon. That way lay home or what had once been home. A chill shadow slid over him as fleeting clouds once more swept around the pass, covering the sun again.

  Home.

  At least it had been until the Reavers showed up.

  Tearing himself away from what could be his last view of Myseline, Arwhon tugged on Tansy’s reins and coaxed her into the pass. She badly needed a longer rest after that final climb, her old legs still wobbly from the effort, so once through the long pass, out of the probing westerly wind, Arwhon paused for a break beside a mountain freshet. He rubbed the caked sweat from her with handfuls of the tough dry grass he found growing near the road, then eased the saddle’s girth to let her breathe deeply and take a drink from the stream. After seeing to Tansy he sat and ate a meagre lunch of dark bread and hard cheese, washed down with icy cold water from the chuckling brook. Tansy was too tired to graze and just stood, head hanging, her flanks heaving to draw oxygen from the thin air.

  Arwhon was not yet used to being alone; still missing the companionable sounds of home and hearth and the care that Raleen had given him.

  Maybe adjustment would come with time.

  Having eaten, Arwhon packed his rations away in a saddlebag, tightened the saddle girth against Tansy’s grunting and mounted up to continue his journey. It was downhill from here and he would need to find an inn before sunset.

  For both their sakes.

  Durhain’s Pass was over a mile behind him as Arwhon’s old brown mare picked her way slowly down the gradual slope from that windy gap. On this side of Mehgrin’ Wall, just down from the top of the pass, the road was straighter and the incline more gentle. Its surface however, was in a poor state of repair, breaking up in places, with many of the ancient paving stones jutting up at odd angles, mud thick in the many holes between. Scented heather, intermingled with the short, hardy alpine grasses, grew on each side of the road and the tree line lay just ahead of him, downslope. Evergreens mainly, with some scattered, bare-branched deciduous trees standing amongst them. Those bare branches were just starting to show the first green buds of spring.

  Sunlight from behind him briefly lit a swath of the long valley ahead as he rode. The steep walls of the pass blocked most of the sun’s rays and cast sharply delineated shadows to each side of his own along the roadway before him. Arwhon felt a tingling sensation in his scalp and glanced over his left shoulder, momentarily catching the bright afternoon sun outlined by the walls of rock in the pass. It was a beautiful sight and he twisted in the saddle to get a better view.

  That action saved his life.

  The crossbow bolt thumping into Arwhon’s right side felt like a kick from a bucking horse. It struck an angled blow low on the side of his chest. The chain mail he wore under his long leather jerkin slowed its speed enough so the heavy broadhead of the quarrel only scored along his lower ribs, cutting through the flesh and muscle overlaying them rather than punching a fatal hole right through to his liver. The impact however, threw him forcibly from Tansy’s back and he fell heavily to the soft muddy ground beside the road, lying where he landed, partially on his left side, the short feathered shaft sticking up into the air. Tansy jumped sideways a few steps, ears up, blowing noisily through her nostrils as she nervously tried to look everywhere at once.

  Head awhirl and with a painful burning sensation in his side, Arwhon lay as still as possible, wondering if another crossbow bolt was going to follow the first.

  What to do?

  How many assailants were there?

  There was no cover here.

  Out of view of anyone who may have been observing him, the fingers of Arwhon’s left hand unobtrusively fumbled to undo the thick leather belt at his waist as he lay listening for any sounds from his attacker, praying to Fate that another crossbow bolt would not follow the first. Luckily, he was too poor to own a scabbard for his sword, which left it bare, poked as it was through a loop in his belt. As the belt came undone, he surreptitiously gripped the hilt of the trusty, old weapon with his left hand and lay still, eyes almost closed, feigning death.

  The wound in his side was throbbing and he felt dampness there but there was no time to worry about it now as he heard approaching footsteps.

  Motionless as though dead, with breath held, he waited.

  Through slitted eyes he observed a lean, ungainly man, dressed in an odd assortment of ill matched clothing, cautiously approaching the place where he lay sprawled. A large, powerful looking crossbow, held loosely in the man’s filthy left hand was cocked and loaded, while a pigsticking longknife was gripped firmly in the man’s right. It looked as though he was intending to use it to make sure of his quarry.

  Tansy stood off a little way, snorting in fright and rolling her eyes, showing the whites but the tall man paid her no heed as he came to stand beside Arwhon with a gap-toothed smile creasing his ugly, bearded and unwashed face. He stepped around Arwhon and placing his foot on the lad’s upper side, pushed. Arwhon limply rolled onto his back, feigning unconsciousness. The big man smiled as he moved to stand astride Arwhon, hefting the pigsticking knife and bent down to sink it into the chest of his motionless victim.

  Totally intent on the finishing thrust, he leaned forward to deliver it. As he did so, Arwhon quickly raised the old sword up and in one smooth motion, ran it point first under the breastbone of his would-be killer; thanking Fate the man wore no mail. R
eflex caused the thief’s finger to tighten on the trigger of the crossbow and the fresh quarrel bit deeply into the ground, right beside Arwhon’s head.

  The hoarse cry the big ambusher made as he reared back, tearing the sword from Arwhon’s grasp, would be his last, as gurgling on his own blood he turned and fell heavily forward. Unfortunately, the angle at which he fell embedded the hilt of the old sword in the soft ground and the twisting motion of the attacker’s dead weight snapped the worn and dented blade clean through the middle.

  Arwhon groaned with pain as he sat up and groaned again when he spotted the broken sword.

  It had saved his life while giving up its own.

  Satisfied his attacker was now a corpse, Arwhon laboriously pushed himself up from the ground, keeping his right arm against his body, trying not to stretch the pulsating wound in his side too much as he rose to his feet. He thought to retrieve the two halves of his sword but stood for a moment, silently contemplating the body of the first man he had ever killed but felt no remorse. The thief had tried to kill him first.

  It was a struggle to remove the pointed end of the sword from the man’s dead body with only the use of his left hand and he couldn’t resist giving the thief’s remains a few hefty kicks for all the damage done.

  Arwhon quickly checked the pockets of the corpse, hoping for some reward for his troubles but there was nothing of value to be found. As he straightened to stand, a flash from the dead man’s little finger caught his eye. It came from a strangely worked silvery band, covered all over with an intricate design. In a moment the ring was quickly and easily removed to be placed in his belt pouch for later inspection.

  Back on his feet, swaying with the effort, Arwhon carefully checked up and down the road, looking for a possible accomplice but saw no one. He felt very alone at that moment, a crossbow bolt in his side and a man, dead by his hand, lying at his feet. He gazed back up to Durhain’s Pass and stood a moment in thought.