Dil had already run over to start inspecting the contents of the shelves and hold them up towards the light.
“Another lantern!” he exclaimed. “That’s not my gift, I’m just saying it because it’s a useful thing.”
“It’d be more useful if we had more lamp-oil,” Elket commented.
“We’ll grow that in the summer,” Yaret said. “There’s a flax field on the east-side. With any luck it’ll have self-seeded. Or even gold-cabbage seeds would do.” She was picking up pots and jars to examine them. None of them contained food but many could be put to use for storage or for cooking.
Turning to the piles of cloth, she unfolded them. There were four long robes of mildewed linen and three short tunics of frayed, moth-eaten wool. She recognised one of her grandfather’s woven patterns – it was one of her own favourites – and felt her heart turn over.
She stood quite still, holding the worn-out garment to her heart.
None of the others seemed to notice. They were too busy examining the jumbled objects on the wall of shelves. Dil gave a cry as he picked up something from the bottom shelf.
Blowing a small flurry of ash off it, he handed it to Elket.
“For you,” he said. It was a lutine. When Elket plucked the strings they made a dull, tuneless sound; after tightening them, she tried again, and then smiled with pleasure.
“Shuli? Can this lutine be mine?”
Shuli assented with a lordly gesture. Yaret was relieved, for a lutine would make the long evenings of winter dark more bearable. At present she felt the weight of keeping everybody occupied with discussion, story, song: now they could try to learn to play the lutine too.
“I’d like this, please,” said Lo, holding up a double candlestick of earthenware, glazed in a blue as bright as a clear winter sky. Renna held out a small carved wooden box, opening it to show that it was empty.
“You’re welcome,” Shuli said.
Dil was hovering over the shelves, unable to decide.
“I like this,” he said, picking up a pottery horse that pulled a tiny wooden cart. “But I like that too.” It was a child’s puzzle, a wooden castle with interlocking pieces. “I’ll have…. I’ll have… the castle.” Reluctantly, he put down the horse and cart.
Charo picked them up. “May I choose this?” When Shuli nodded, he handed the horse and cart ceremonially to Dil.
“Happy winterfest, Dil,” he said.
“Oh,” said Dil and Elket together, Elket in something like dismay, and Dil in delight.
“But then you’ll have nothing,” said Dil. He looked appealingly at Shuli, who just shrugged.
“And can this be my choice?” Yaret said, still grasping the tunic to her chest.
“I don’t think clothes should count,” said Elket.
“This one is special.”
“It counts, then,” Shuli said. “Things that are just useful and boring don’t count. Like the lantern, and that pile of plates. That’s for everybody.”
Yaret picked up a pair of dusty boots and turned them over. “Badly stained. Sound enough otherwise. Are these useful and boring enough not to count, Shuli?”
“Yes. And too big for you. They’re really wide. I already tried them on.”
Yaret nodded. “They’re not for me; they’re for Charo. His are splitting down the seams.”
She handed the boots over to Charo, who immediately began to prise his battered old boots off to try them.
“All right,” said Shuli. “I suppose. Now there’s only Ondro left without a gift. What would you like, Ondro?”
“This’ll do me,” said Ondro, holding up a metal tankard. “What’s in the barrel?
“It’s wine, I think,” said Shuli. “I tried a little bit. It’s fruity and quite strong.”
“Let’s try a little bit more then, shall we?” Ondro said. He looked at Yaret and after a moment’s hesitation she nodded. She had visions of Ondro rolling drunk and carolling down the streets; but he had spent weeks in the cellar alongside several barrels of beer without asking to broach them.
Now he uncorked the spigot and caught half a tankardful of dark liquid before sealing it up again.
“I’d best just test it,” he said. He took a sip and raised his eyebrows. “Well.” He handed the tankard to Yaret.
“Whew,” she said after one taste. It took her breath away. “Three sips each. We could use that as antiseptic. What on earth is it made from?”
“Plums, I think,” said Shuli. “There used to be a plum tree in their garden.”
“You know who lived here?”
“An old lady and her husband. I didn’t know them.”
“Well… We give our thanks to them.”
They took turns to sip the wine and say variations on Whew. Yaret pictured that old man and lady, picking plums. Telling each other where they’d missed some. Don’t overfill that bucket; mind your sleeve. Busy and careful. Turned to ashes.
As we all shall be, eventually. Enjoy the wine for now.
“That’s enough for you, Dil,” she said, and as she spoke she heard a noise right overhead.
She froze. So did everyone else. It had been a thump, not loud, but quite distinct: a sound like someone stepping into the room above them. And they had been making a fair amount of noise down here. Too much noise.
“The bear,” mouthed Dil, tankard clutched in both hands, his eyes wide.
The bear. It was entirely possible. Or stonemen...
Either way, she had no bow and arrow. Incredibly stupid of her to forget. Danger hadn’t heard of winterfest.
She stepped silently over to the wall and lifted down the curved stoneman’s sword.
Handing her knife to Ondro, she gestured to him to follow her. Then she crept stealthily up the narrow stone staircase and slowly put her head up to look out.
No bear. Two people. She saw the feet first, then the legs. One wore long skirts.
Not stonemen. Nor the old couple she had just been imagining: this pair was young. They looked astonished to see her emerging from the floor; almost as astonished as she was to see them – and what was more, to recognise their faces.
“Anneke!”
The former schoolmistress put both her hands up to her mouth.
“Then there is someone here! Berlo saw the footprints.” She turned to the young bearded man who stood beside her. “So you were right,” she said.
Yaret realised that Anneke was heavily pregnant. That was something she hadn’t known before she left Obandiro last summer. But Anneke looked healthy: not ragged or begrimed.
They were all still staring at each other when Ondro emerged from the trapdoor and went over to take Anneke’s arm.
“Come down,” he said, “come down out of the wind,” speaking as gently as he might to an anxious sheep.
So the couple descended the steps and at once the lamplit cellar was full of greetings and exclamations of delight. Dil ran over and hugged his former teacher. Elket hugged her too, and Charo patted her shoulder in an awkward but affectionate way. Even Shuli looked pleased, which made Yaret think that Anneke must have been a good schoolmistress.
The young man was, of course, her husband: Berlo, who was originally from a village fourteen miles away. They had gone back to stay with his parents two days before the stonemen came, they explained, tumbling over each other’s words, for Anneke to rest before her baby arrived.
“I didn’t like the new teacher as much,” said Dil reproachfully.
“You didn’t have a chance to get to know her,” said Anneke, ruffling his hair. Dil put his arms around her waist again and Yaret realised what she herself had failed to offer him in comfort. Not motherly enough. Ah well. Ondro stood one of the old chairs upright and tested it before gesturing to Anneke to sit down.
“The first time we came home,” said Berlo, “we saw Obandiro… like this. And still smoking. So we went back to my parents’ house. Every so often I rode over this way to look for any sign of life. Last week I saw some smoke down on the south-side, which made me wonder… and then I saw somebody moving around.”
“Who?” said Dil accusingly.
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. But when I went back and told Anneke, she decided we should both come here and see.”
“His parents were running out of food,” put in Anneke.
“And no-one’s selling anything to anybody. We decided if we left they’d have enough for the winter. We knew where there was some food stored in Obandiro; but if we really needed to, we could always go back to my parents. So we came over today in the cart.”
“You’ve got a cart? Then you’ve got a horse? ” asked Dil excitedly.
“We’ve got a cart-horse, parked up outside the town,” said Berlo. “And a cart with quite a lot of things in it. We won’t need to borrow much from you.”
“I didn’t know about this cellar,” said Anneke, gazing around. “I know of a couple of other well-stocked cellars, though. As well as the store-room underneath the schoolhouse.”
“There’s a store-room underneath the schoolhouse?” Shuli was both astounded and indignant.
Yaret laughed and Anneke turned around to look at her.
“I know your face, but not your name,” she said. “Of course you’re too old to have been taught by me.” So Yaret introduced herself, as did Ondro. But the sisters Anneke already seemed to know.
“I haven’t seen you for a few years,” she said thoughtfully. “How are you, Lo? And Renna?”
She held out her hand. Renna walked over and took it. And then to Yaret’s amazement, she spoke.
“We’re all right now,” she said. Her voice was thin and fluting. Everybody else just stared at her.
Anneke did not seem to notice. She smiled and kept holding Renna’s hand while asking questions about where and how they all lived. Some of these Renna actually answered. Dil was eager to answer the rest.
“How much room do you have in your cellars on the south-side?” Berlo asked.
“Not much. But there are at least two other cellars where there might be room for you.
There’s a dead deer hanging in one of them, but we could move it,” Yaret said.
“I give you this cellar,” Shuli announced grandly. She spread her hands open. “This is my winterfest gift to you. You may use anything in it. Only the sword’s mine.” She pointed to the sword which was now leaning against the barrel.
“There’s wine in that barrel,” Dil announced. “I’ve had some. It’s really strong. You should try it, Anneke! Have a drink!”
“Wine might not suit the baby,” replied Anneke with a laugh; but Yaret was worried.
What would the teacher think of her offering the children wine? Especially when it was closer to brandy.
“Your baby,” Elket said. “When is it due?”
“About a month now, or a little less.”
So that was another worry, although Anneke and her husband seemed quite calm about it.
Once Berlo had tried a sip of wine, and exclaimed his own “Whew,” they all left the cellar.
Carrying their gifts, they began to walk back to the south-side to show the couple the inn.
While Dil was dancing around Anneke, Yaret fell into step beside Ondro.
“It’ll be good to have them here,” Ondro said with satisfaction. “Good for the children.”
“Yes. Only what about this baby? Maybe she should go back to Berlo’s parents before it’s born. I know nothing about midwifery.”
“I do. I’ve birthed enough lambs.”
“Ondro, it’s not the same.”
“It’s not so different. I’ve birthed one or two babies too, on farms when there was no time to fetch the midwife.” He pointed at Renna. “I birthed her.”
“What?”
“Her mother sent a runner for me. It’s not so bad. We’ll manage.”
“I hope so,” Yaret said. On a day of astonishments, this was just one more.
A year of astonishments. Why had she foreseen and feared one single change? They never stopped.
And tomorrow would see the fresh year start: the first year of this new, impaired, yet still extraordinary world.
“Veron,” said Huldarion. “Welcome back.”
The man nodded, stripping off his gloves and hooded cloak, which were heavily encrusted with snow. There was no snow at Thield, for the encampment was sheltered; but Veron had ridden hard and far from the north, through the hills and their wild weather.
You wouldn’t have guessed it, though. No sign of tiredness. His face was as alert as ever.
He shook his head at Huldarion’s offer of a chair and contented himself with holding his hands out to the central brazier that warmed the tent.
Huldarion waited. You couldn’t rush Veron. Neither could you tell him what to do. The man was half wolf-hunter, and three-quarters wolf, he thought, not for the first time.
Now Veron looked over the brazier at him, his eyes glittering.
“They’ve taken over Erbulet, small fur-trading town in the far north-east,” he said. “Two thousand stonemen, give or take a dozen. About twenty-seven darkburns, stowed away in various sheds and outhouses. They’ve set one or two sheds on fire, accidentally. But they haven’t fired the place by design, not like other towns I saw.”
“Where’s Arguril?”
“Thawing out,” said Veron, “and trying to loosen up. I worked him hard. Give him a week off.”
“I will. Did he do all right?”
“Not bad, considering what he went through last year. He didn’t flinch at the sight of the darkburns.”
“How close to them did you get?”
Veron gave him one of his wolfish grins.
“Close enough.” He rubbed his hands together over the embers. “I ambushed a stray stoneman one night. He was drunk on too much ethlon or whatever they dose themselves with. They get doses twice a day after eating. I’ve watched ’em line up for it like little boys waiting for a treat. The others must have assumed this one had wandered off and got lost in the snow. No alarm bells were set ringing, anyway.”
“What did you do with the body?”
“Down a nice deep crevice over a mile distant. No chance of them finding it there with all its stones dug out of its head. I’ve got some of them in my bag.”
“Not on you?”
“I don’t like carrying them around,” said Veron without explanation. Huldarion was always intrigued by these hints of superstition in a man otherwise so level-headed, and so ruthless.
“And did you get a chance to try the stones’ effects?”
Again, the wolfish grin.
“The next night,” said Veron, “we crept into the town, to a darkburn shed. Easy to spot.
All the snow round them and on the roof had melted. Tiles were steaming. And of course you feel ’em. But I’m getting used to that, and Arguril bore up.”
“Nobody saw you?”
“The stonemen hadn’t bothered setting sentries. No wariness at all. They’ll reckon they’ve no enemies up there. They’ve killed off all the locals. And who would follow them all that way up north except a crazy Rider of the Vonn like me?”
Huldarion nodded, and waited.
“So we got to the shed, no trouble. I took one of the stones. We’d managed to hammer it into pieces: so if the stonemen found a piece, it wouldn’t be obvious what it was. The darkburn got restless as soon as I crept close. I’d say ten yards, or less. By seven yards away I
heard it thump against the far wall. No wooden door, of course. They’d replaced them with iron plates and grids, just like they’d replaced the rafters, or taken them out altogether.
“This shed had a large grid for a door. I got close enough to toss a piece of stone through it. A bit of the pointed end. Retreated fast, before I set myself on fire. But as I backed off, the darkburn calmed down again.”
“So the point had no effect.”
“No. Next, a piece from the other end of the stone. Part of the domed bit. Did the same thing, tossed it in through the grid. Retreated. This time the darkburn went wild.” Veron paused, and shook his head. “I almost felt sorry for the thing. Throwing itself against the walls, trying to get out of there. Made a great dint in the metal grid. Would have climbed the wall, I daresay, if it could.”
“But they can’t climb?”
“This one couldn’t. It banged and crashed around so much that four stonemen came to see what was going on. Darkburn keepers: they wore heavy leather gear. Must have weighed a ton even if they kept the heat off. They wouldn’t be able to run in those.”
“Worth knowing.” Huldarion became aware that he was adopting the same terse form of speech as Veron.
“Could be. They used iron bars to lever up the grid. Only needed to go up an inch or two and then they could lift the whole grid out towards them. Clever mechanism.”
“But the darkburn wasn’t clever enough to work it out?”
Veron shrugged. “Who knows what darkburns think? If they have minds. But if they could work it out, they’ve got no limbs to do it with. This one hadn’t, anyway. It shot out of its hole as if it was catapulted. Bowled one of the stonemen over and then rushed away from them.
Didn’t come near us. Zigzagged through the town from the sound of it. Couldn’t see it in the moonlight. It probably got right away.”
“And is now roaming around the northern wastes?”
“Melting them,” said Veron.
Huldarion tapped his fingers on his leg. “So it’s not the stone itself that has the effect,” he said, “or not the whole stone, just the top. That implies it’s something on the stone. Some sort of coating, maybe.”
“I reckon so.”
“How many stones did you bring back?”
“Only four. The man we ambushed was low-ranking. We tried to get a few more on the way back. Found a troop of eight stonemen, a little out of town. Used the morilan. It works well on ’em. Catches in the stones around their heads.”
“But you didn’t manage to take any of those stones?”
“No time. Only just killed the eighth man when another company came running,” said Veron. “Won’t hurt all the same. They’ll spread the word.”
Huldarion nodded slowly. Veron’s weapon of choice, the morilan, was bloody at the best of times. No doubt the word would be duly spread.
“Anything of interest on the bodies?” he enquired.
“Nothing.”
“None of their drugs, then.”
“Seems that has to be doled out to them. It was kept in one of the houses, always guarded.
The only place with sentries. Two at all times.”
“Guarded against their own men.”
Veron nodded.
“Good,” said Huldarion. “Good work, Veron. We’ll talk in more detail later, when the others are here. How’s your wife? Did you get to see her?”
“She’s all right,” replied Veron, without elucidation. Huldarion had never met his wife, who lived somewhere up in the northern wastes where Veron’s father also came from. Veron hardly ever spoke about her, except to say she was a huntress he had met up north. His mother, who was of the Vonn, had married one of the Northern hunters before being killed by wolves some years ago. Maybe that was why Veron, who seemed to understand and even love wolves like his own kin, also killed them without compunction when they were in the wrong place.
“Many wolves round there this winter?”
“They’ve been pushed north and further west,” said Veron, “like everything else when the stonemen marched through.”
“Everything except the people.” Huldarion stared into the brazier, grimly contemplating all those deaths by burning: all those devastated farms and villages.
“We couldn’t have stopped it,” Veron said. “Would have taken an army bigger than the Vonn, with all those darkburns.”
“How many burn-outs did you see on you way up there?”
“At least two dozen villages. A few farms. We met one or two survivors, wandering around looking dazed. They said the stonemen took the stock before they fired the buildings.
So they didn’t get everybody. Just nearly everybody. We saw a couple of bigger towns –
Byant and another one – burnt out too. No sign of life. But here and there we noticed smoke rising, long after the darkburns had done their business.”
“Much smoke?”
Veron shrugged, again. “The odd fire.”
“The odd survivor, then.” Huldarion sighed. “Those poor people.”
They were not his people, true. It was not his land. Not his job. But it pained him deeply, none the less, that he had been able to protect neither land nor people.
Dil was carefully writing on the slate the words that Anneke had dictated to him when suddenly she went “Oh!” and straightened up from the dough that she was kneading.
“What is it?” said Dil.
She put her hand to her stomach and pulled a face as if she’d stubbed her toe.
“Whoa,” she said after a minute. “Dil, I think maybe you’d better leave your lesson and go and fetch Berlo for me.”
“Is it the baby?” asked Dil, at once anxious and eagerly alert. He’d been aware all morning that every so often Anneke would go quiet and seem to be counting.
“Yes.”
“Then we shouldn’t leave you alone,” he told her. “I’ll go and get Charo to stay with you and then I’ll find Berlo.”
Charo wasn’t far away. He was just behind the plum-wine cottage – that had become its name by common consent – sorting out the woodstore. Yaret had told him to stay close to Anneke while all the others helped the new family from Byant clear out the houses by the mill.
“I’ll look after her,” said Charo immediately, and he followed Dil back down into the cellar. He began to get out the clean cloths they’d put aside ready, while Dil patted Anneke’s hand to reassure her, and told her he’d be back soon. She nodded, holding her stomach.
While he ran along the streets Dil thought about this baby. At first he’d looked forward to it coming because it would mean he wasn’t the youngest any more. But then two days ago the new family had arrived and that had made him the fourth youngest, all at once, because their children were five and six and eight. They seemed all right although the youngest one cried a lot. The grandfather kept telling him off. He was a very grumbly grandfather but perhaps that was understandable. Old people didn’t like the cold, and now, a full month after winterfest, it was colder than ever.
The snow that had arrived three weeks ago still lay thick on the ground. They had had to spend the first week of those three huddled in the cellars while the blizzard blew outside. It wasn’t too boring because Anneke began to go through his last year’s lessons. He found them surprisingly welcome. They played lots of games as well, and he started to learn the lutine.
After Elket showed him where to place his fingers on the strings he found he could work out little tunes for himself, and was pleased when Shuli couldn’t.
The donkeys had been a worry. Dil had wanted to go out and check on them several times a day, and the others wouldn’t let him go alone. He understood why; for whenever he had ventured up into the street he had nearly been blown off his feet by the force of the wind and the blast of the snow. Without its former buildings to shelter it, the town soon filled with snowdrifts. It made walking around difficult. It ought to have been fun, but wasn’t.
However, to his relief the donkeys and the horse seemed to be all right in their own broken-down stable despite its lack of roof. Ondro shovelled out any snow and when the wind dropped cleared a patch of grass so Dil could lead them out to graze. Dil fed the donkeys red roots and amazingly they seemed to like them.
Once the snow had stopped falling, Ondro had cleared the routes between the inhabited houses. He never seemed to get tired. Yaret said that shepherds walked all day, and certainly Ondro always strode round at a great rate. Dil had to run to keep up with him.
Now he ran through the snowy streets towards the miller’s house. Beyond the forge he spotted Shuli practising her archery and shouted at her,
“The baby’s coming!”
Shuli turned round and lowered her bow. “Tell me when it’s over,” she said, before aiming at her target again.
Dil ran on to the houses by the mill and told his news to everyone there. Yaret immediately put down her wooden shovel.
“Berlo, Ondro, we’d better go,” she said. “Dil? Do you want to stay here?”
“I’ll come back with you to run errands,” said Dil. He didn’t care for shovelling ash. The new family from Byant would have quite a nice house, though, when it was done; it used to be the miller’s own house and once it had been cleared it would only need a new roof and a few repairs. They were clearing out a small, adjoining house next door as well. The grandfather wanted his own, apparently. A cellar wasn’t good enough for him.
He looked at the youngest child, Paro. Crying again. Dil went over to him and patted his shoulder.
“It’s all right,” he said. “Babies are usually all right.” In fact he knew this wasn’t true in his own family’s case, but he also knew he shouldn’t say that now. “I’ll come and tell you when it’s born. You won’t be the youngest any more then.”
Since that prospect didn’t seem to make Paro any happier he cast around for something else kind to say. “And you can give the baby a present. Look for something in the ash. If you find something bright or shiny, Anneke says babies like to look at shiny things.”
Paro gazed up at him silently, the tears running down his cheeks. Dil knew why he was crying, really. It was because his father had died back in Byant just before they came here through the snow. The older boy, Korli, had told Dil that his father had been badly burnt and had never recovered. The middle one was a girl called Frali. She had four braids in her hair.
Now she came over and gave Paro a hug.
“Is Anneke a kind teacher?” she asked Dil.
“Yes. You’ll like her,” Dil assured them. “She’s really nice.”
“She won’t be teaching with a baby, though, will she?” said the grandfather testily.
Everything was a grumble with him.
“I’ll tell you what happens,” promised Dil, and he ran after the others.
Elket and Lo and Renna stayed to help the children’s mother. The mother was very quiet, though not as quiet as Renna, who still hardly ever talked. Dil wasn’t sure how much use Renna would be at clearing up, although she did more now than she used to. He knew that Elket didn’t want to see the baby because of those sick babies of their mother’s. Dil found that he was hoping very much that this one didn’t die. The tight knot that had been slowly loosening inside him over the last few weeks seemed suddenly to have tied itself into new complicated coils.
Back at Anneke’s cellar not much was happening at all. However, Dil did not feel that he could wander off to play: duty kept him at his post by the fireplace of the kitchen that was open to the sky. They wanted warm water, probably to wash the baby in when it was born. So he looked after the bucket and stoked the fire and put some food on to warm as well.
Still nothing happened. Charo came out and sat with him and talked about this and that.
Dil wasn’t really listening. They tried to play Look over there! but it petered out quite quickly. He could tell that Charo was worried too. Ondro came out and got some water and said everything was fine. He looked quite cheerful but then he always did.
After a while Dil ran over to the mill to give a report that nothing much was happening; but when he got back to the inn a lot was happening. He could hear Anneke groaning and crying out, and he was just worrying that he would need to tell everything to go away when Charo came up out of the cellar and said smiling that the baby had been born. And it was a little girl. And it was all right, and so was Anneke. And they were going to call it Royet.
Dil’s relief was huge. “Can I see it now?” he begged. Five minutes later he was allowed down to peep at the tiny bit of the baby he could see, mostly red cheek and nose as Anneke
held it close and wrapped up. She sat up on the bed and gave Dil a kiss and told him what a big help it had been to have him there as errand boy.
So then he went to give the news to Shuli – who put down her bow at last – and the others busy digging with the Byant family. Paro wasn’t crying now, and when Dil told them about Royet he silently opened his clenched palm to reveal a coin.
“Is that your present?” Dil asked. Paro nodded.
“That’s a good present. We’ll polish it up.” Dil wet his finger and rubbed the sooty coin.
Underneath it looked a bit like silver. “It’ll be nice and shiny. Where did you find it?”
“Frali found it,” said the older boy. “It was over there.” Dil went and poked in the corner which he was pointing at. The floor was thick with powdery ash that he thought might have been flour. At the bottom of the pile he could feel more coins.
He looked up at Frali.
“Better go and get your mother,” he said. “I think you might have just found treasure.” On seeing their eyes widen, Dil hoped that he was right.
So that evening there were plenty of Best Things for the council. Dil knew it should be called Thanks-saying; but now that the little children had arrived it seemed more sensible to stick with Best Things. They didn’t seem to have heard of evening council although Elket had explained it to them.
This evening they held it in Standard, because the new family did not speak Bandiran.
Even though the children always seemed to understand him, Dil was not entirely comfortable with Standard. However, Anneke had told him it was important to keep practising. They had the council by the fire in the plum-wine kitchen, some of them sitting on logs, so that Anneke and the baby could be there; and of course the first thing was the blessing of the baby. Most of the Best Things were the baby too – although not all.
Shuli said, “The baby, and I hit my target three times in a row.”
Paro’s mother said, “The safe arrival of the baby, and the help with our two houses.” She smiled around at them. “Thank you all.”
Frali only said, “The baby,” although she had found the money. They had retrieved quite a lot of coins – thirty-four so far, mostly silver, some strange and foreign. It was Korli who said, “The baby and the treasure.”
Little Paro just held up his coin silently. At least he wasn’t crying – not until his grandfather said,
“Obviously we’re pleased about the baby. Can’t see that we’ve got much else to be thankful for.”
“The houses,” whispered Paro’s mother. “The food.”
“Hmph,” said the grandfather. “This is all very childish if you ask me.”
“We didn’t ask you,” said Shuli.
“Shuli,” said Yaret, and although it did not sound as if she was telling her off Shuli closed her mouth and looked down. “We will now say Oveyn,” continued Yaret, “which is our thanks and blessing to the dead who lie around us and who will not be forgotten. And to your dead also, who lie in Byant and will not be forgotten. I will say it in Bandiran and Lo will translate.”
Lo was good at translating. She could come up with exactly the right words quickly, which Dil found it difficult to do. But there were not so many words tonight because it was not the Ulthared version, just the ordinary one. Dil understood that this was not just because the new family were strangers, but because three of them were too young. He felt himself grow a little taller with his own knowledge of the Ulthared.
But at the end the grandfather said, “What use is this to anybody? It won’t bring any of them back.”
“We know that,” Yaret said. “That is why we honour them.”
“You’re very rude,” said Shuli.
He looked at her and threw his head back. “And so are you, young lady, although I think lady is hardly the word. You should respect your elders.”
“And you should respect your hosts,” said Shuli.
“I didn’t ask to be here!”
“Then go somewhere else,” said Shuli, ignoring Elket’s attempts to shush her.
“Shuli,” said Yaret, and this time she was definitely telling her off. But the grandfather had already got up from his log and stalked out of the house.
Paro’s mother began to get up too, but Yaret said, “Stay. Let him have some time to himself.”
She sat down again. “I’m sorry. He’s grieving for his son.”
“Well, aren’t you all?” said Shuli. “I don’t see what makes him so special.”
“Shuli,” said Yaret for a third time.
“What? He needed telling.”
Then Yaret spoke some words in Bandiran which Dil was instantly sure were Ulthared although he had never heard them before. It was about how we cannot know the minds of others, but we ought always to try, even for the smallest thing. Be a child. Be a bird. Be a mouse.
Dil liked it. Be a donkey, he thought. It shut Shuli up, too, but now Paro was crying again, quite loudly, although his mother tried to quiet him.
He looked at Yaret and said, “Can I sit next to Paro?”
“If he wants you to.”
Dil looked at Paro. “Do you want me to sit next to you?” Paro gave the tiniest nod through his sobbing so he went and sat next to him on the log. Then he said the first thing he could think of that might cheer Paro up.
“Did you know that Yaret has a wooden leg?”
Paro stopped crying in mid-sob. He stared at Dil and then at Yaret.
“It’s quite true,” said Yaret. “Although it’s not my whole leg. It’s just from here down.”
She touched her leg between knee and ankle.
“There’s a long story,” said Dil, “all about how she got the wooden leg, in a magic forest.
It’s a story about the donkeys and the horse and other people too. Do you like my donkeys?”
Paro nodded.
“Would you like to hear the story?”
Paro nodded, again.
“Then I’ll start telling it to you tomorrow,” promised Dil, “and Korli and Frali can listen if they want.” He looked at Yaret. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’ll leave out the really gory bits.”
“Thank you, Dil,” said Yaret. “Shall we go on with council? Plans for tomorrow. I think we know yours already.”
So evening council went on, rather mutedly. Dil felt very protective of Paro, sitting small and warm next to him, and thankfully not crying any more. It made him think about his dead brothers – he thought that as well as baby Jeret there had been at least two others, from something Elket said, although he wasn’t sure. He hardly ever thought about them because he hadn’t known them. He usually forgot about them. But now he wondered what they would have been like, and what it would have been like for him to be a big brother.
It made him feel a little weepy, which was stupid. But maybe it wasn’t. He had never thought of those dead babies when they said Oveyn. But now he said Oveyn for them, inside his head, and found it was a comfort.
After the council was over, and because it was not yet dark, he ran races with the younger children in the snow-cleared streets. He was just wondering whether to let Korli win a race, when Korli won it anyway. Dil didn’t mind. He felt generous.
Korli made up a game called Bear – for Dil had already told them all about the bear – and they took it in turns to be the bear while the others joined hands and sang and shouted. Dil told Frali that she made a very good bear, which was true. She had the growl.
Then he showed them how to dance the Rannikan: they liked that. It was not the same as having Armendo with him, but he now thought that Armendo probably wasn’t coming back.
Although sometimes he imagined that Armendo had found a safe place to live, more often now he knew he hadn’t. It made him ache inside.
Yaret had said they should put everyone in songs because songs were easy to remember.
So they were making up new songs in the evenings amidst all the old rounds and ballads. It made him ache even more to put Armendo in a song. But it was also a bit like putting him in a safe place.
Once their mother had taken the three children away Dil ran home and on the way saw Yaret and the grandfather sitting on a wall and talking. They hadn’t noticed him so he sneaked along the inside of the wall to listen. He heard Yaret saying,
“We have all lost someone that we love. Some of us have lost everyone we love: Charo, for example, and Shuli, and Ondro.”
The grandfather just snorted. At least it sounded like a snort. After a moment Yaret spoke again.
“I know there seems to be nothing for you now but grief. But that will change. I know you don’t want to be here. But for the moment here is the best place for your family, and your responsibility is for them and not just for yourself.”
Still no answer. Just another snort.
“We will make a memorial to your son here, if you wish: or at his homeplace, in the future. Meanwhile we will honour him every evening at the council. We will look after his wife and children.”
The grandfather grunted something that Dil couldn’t catch.
“That is your prerogative,” said Yaret, and she stood up and walked away. Dil felt quite impatient with the old man and wondered if she did too. He didn’t seem to pay much attention to his grandchildren except to tell them off. Dil and all the others would have to make up for that.
Just because you were old you didn’t have to grumble. Be an old man, be a grumpy grandfather, he told himself, experimentally. No, that was too hard. He couldn’t be a grandfather. But the grandfather ought to be able to be a child, because he’d been one before.
And Dil knew what it was like to lose people, yet he didn’t grumble. Yaret was quite right.
Charo had lost everybody but he didn’t grumble. Nobody grumbled. Well, Shuli grumbled, but not about losing people.
It occurred to him that surely Yaret too had lost everyone she loved. She hadn’t mentioned that. But of course Yaret loved her donkeys; although maybe not as much as Dil himself did, or she wouldn’t have made him their official keeper. Because you didn’t give up the things you loved so easily, without a tear.
The third time Bruilde went back to her ruined farmstead at Deloran, she found that someone else had moved in.
The place was smoking all over again, but this time from the chimney. She cursed as she dismounted stiffly from her horse – her long trip along the Darkburn having left a legacy of aching muscles and stiff joints – and stalked over to the building to confront the intruder. She knew it wasn’t any of her own people; she’d just come from visiting them in the village a few miles away.
She drew her sword before she entered, moving as stealthily as she knew how. In the hands of a rheumatic old lady the sight of the sword wouldn’t scare off bold invaders; but she knew how to use it. They would discover that if necessary.
However, she at once perceived that there was only one intruder, squatting huddled by the great stone fireplace where the remnants of the roof still gave some cover. The fire was smoking dreadfully and the cloaked and hooded trespasser was poking it with a stick to try and rouse the flames. After a moment, with an impatient exclamation, he dropped the stick and pointed a thin finger at the hearth. At once the fire sparked and crackled with energy.
And then Bruilde knew who it was. She stepped forward.
“You’re on my property, Leor,” she said coldly.
The intruder stood up and turned round. He let his hood fall back to reveal a head of startlingly red hair, tempered with two long streaks of white. He was very tall, and just as upright as he had ever been.
“Hello, Bruilde.” The same deep voice. It seemed to speak out of the earth. It had always pulled her to listen.
“What are you doing here, Leor?”
“I came to ask you for your hospitality. I’ve been travelling a lot lately, and hoped to find some rest and comfort.”
“Well, you won’t find it here,” said Bruilde tersely. “You can see what’s happened. It was months ago now. Where have you been?”
“I’ve been all over,” Leor said, “gathering news, and hunting.”
“Then you won’t need me to tell you what’s been going on.” Bruilde knew she sounded waspish. But what did he expect? The cheek of the man – the wizard, rather – turning up like this after a year’s unexplained absence and then not even bothering to say Sorry about your farm...
Instead he asked, “Have you got anything to eat?”
“In my saddle-bags,” she said coldly, and made no move to fetch them.
“Bruilde, please will you put that sword away?”
She compressed her lips and did so, sending it reluctantly back into its scabbard with a long metallic sigh.
And now he came over to her and took one of her cold hands in both his warm ones.
“Bruilde. I’m sorry about what happened here.”
“You could have prevented it,” she said, pulling her hand away.
“How?”
“You could have used your wizardry. You could have prevented all this–” she waved her arm to indicate not just her farmhouse but the wider world beyond – “all this mess. You could have stopped Adon, who surely is behind it all.”
“I could only have stopped him if I knew where he was. And not even then.”
“No? So you allow him all the power in the world to use his magic, and you won’t use yours to thwart him?”
“You know I have forsworn all wizardry,” Leor said gravely. For once his eyes were dull, not alive and bright as usual.
“No, you haven’t. You miss it too much to do that,” said Bruilde sharply. “I saw you light the fire just now.”
“That was nothing. A small faradiddle.”
“Fire is never a small faradiddle. Look around you! Is this a faradiddle?”
“I couldn’t make it any worse,” said Leor. “That’s why I risked lighting the fire.”
“And yet you won’t use your wizardry for anything that counts. A senseless decision if you ask me. What’s the point of being a wizard if you renounce all use of magic?”
“The point of being a wizard is to be wise. And I have not been, in the past.”
“Oh, for goodness sake,” said Bruilde. She shook her head. “Wait here. I’ll go and get some food.”
She marched outside and Leor followed.
“Hallo, Hama,” he said to the horse, who responded with a whinny of recognition and an investigating nose. Leor had an annoyingly good way with horses; with all animals. Perhaps it was from long years – or centuries – of learning how to deal with them. But she suspected some residual magic that clung to him in spite of his vow.
“You could mend these walls for me, Leor,” she said, pointing to the ruins around them.
Many stones had cracked and crumbled in the heat. “It’ll take me most of this year to rebuild.
Then two years to restock. You could do it in a moment.”
“I couldn’t. I can’t make sheep and cows breed any faster than they should.”
“You know that’s not what I mean! Anyway, I expect you could do even that if you tried.”
“I wouldn’t want to try,” he said, caressing Hama’s head. “You shouldn’t tamper with biology. There are always unforeseen consequences: I’ve found that in the past.”
Bruilde sighed. Then, digging the loaf of bread out from her pack, she broke it and gave Leor half. She leaned against the blackened wall to study him.
He looked just the same as he had over the fifty years – almost sixty – that she’d known him. A little younger maybe: though most likely that was just because she herself was old now. She was leaving him behind. Heading towards the death that he would never know.
Bruilde gave herself a mental shake. She had no plans to let death catch her for a long while yet.
“So what are you doing here, Leor?”
“Like I said – looking for rest and comfort.”
“And what else? Why didn’t you just go away again when you saw the place burnt out?”
“I knew you’d been here, Bruilde, and I knew you’d come back. I wanted to see you, because I have news from Ilo.”
Bruilde paused with her bread halfway to her mouth. This was awkward. Leor had been her lover too, once; long before Ilo, when she had still been young. Too young for Leor, she thought now. Another instance where he ought to have known better – even if she had made the running. She had been the one who wanted him. That voice. That sense of wisdom. She had assumed, back then, that Leor was wise.
But that had been more than fifty years ago. If she had been too young for Leor then, she was too old now; and she had no wish to revisit that particular past. It was over.
“News from Ilo?” she repeated. “The weaver in Obandiro? So what did he have to say?
No, don’t tell me. I think I can probably guess. I had a letter from him. Or I should have had a letter. I heard enough about the contents.”
Leor was silent. She turned to look harder at him. “Well? What did Ilo say?”
“He said nothing. Bruilde – I’m afraid he’s dead.”
“Ilo’s dead? Oh...” She let out a long breath and rubbed her face. “Oh, Ilo. The old charmer. I know he was eighty, but I thought he’d keep going for a few years yet. Did you
see his wife when you were up north? How is she? I know you were always more friendly with Thuli than with Ilo.”
“Thuli knew a lot of interesting old lore. I used to be friendly with them both, many years ago. But I hadn’t seen them lately, not for twenty years and more. Nor did I see them this time – not alive. I’m afraid Thuli is dead too.”
She stared at him. “Both of them? Was it the fever? What happened?”
“A darkburn happened,” said Leor soberly. “Along with a stoneman army which swept through the area. Obandiro wasn’t the only place.”
“Obandiro? What… Burnt? The whole town? Leor, you can’t mean that!”
But he nodded.
Bruilde put down her bread. Her appetite had gone. She gazed across at the farmhouse, seeing it again in flames: feeling the heat’s murderous intensity, hearing the dreadful roaring fury of the fire.
But she’d had warning. She’d got out in time.
“What about the people?” she said, her mouth dry.
He shook his head.
“Leor, there must have been some survivors.”
“Maybe there were, somewhere. I don’t know. I didn’t see any.” He sounded very weary.
“I didn’t stay long: I was passing through, travelling down to Farwithiel from the north. I wanted to talk to the Farwth.”
Bruilde rested her head in her hands for a moment before raising it again. “Was Yaret still in Farwithiel when you got there? Ilo’s grand-daughter. She was staying there for a while.”
“Yaret… Do you know, I’d forgotten her. I haven’t seen her since she was a toddler. No, I didn’t see anyone in Farwithiel, not even the Wardens. My business was only with the Farwth.”
“I hope it had something useful to tell you,” said Bruilde bitterly, “worth abandoning a whole razed town for.”
“It told me only what I already knew: of fire and destruction. It had no remedy for the burnings and neither did I. There was nothing that I could have done,” said Leor, his voice very low.
She knew that was probably true. Her anger should not be at him. The knowledge did not lessen it.
“If you had allowed yourself to use your magic, Leor, would you have known of this disaster in advance? Would you have been able to act against it?” she demanded.
Leor did not answer; nor did he even look at her. Instead he strode over to a portion of the farmyard wall where the sooty stones had cracked and splintered in the heat and had fallen to the ground. As he bent to pick one up, it split some more, revealing an interior that was as clean and sandy-pale as a ripe apricot. He placed the stone on the broken wall, picked up another and jammed it in next to the first. Took up a third and tried to prise it in.
Bruilde stood back and watched his hands at work as more stones were clunked on to the wall. The gap was slowly filling but left many smaller gaps. The sight of his long fingers filled her at first with the shadow of fond memories, and then with exasperation.
“What are you trying to prove?” she said. “That you don’t need magic to rebuild a wall?
Well, that one is full of holes. And it’s already bulging. You don’t need magic, but you do need skill.”
Leor hefted up another stone without replying. His knuckles were bleeding: she saw red scrapes amidst the soot.
“And how else do I gain the skill,” he said slightly breathlessly, “except by trying?”
“You ask somebody who knows.”
“And how did they gain the skill?” More stones clunked on to the ragged wall. They would not fit. Leor pushed and pulled at them in vain until three fell clattering to the ground, narrowly missing his foot. He was inept.
When he paused to wipe his brow, Bruilde noticed that the bloody scrapes on his hand had gone. Did he do that himself, or was it some gift inflicted on his body? Just an everyday miracle for Leor, no doubt. Despite the pain in her own hip and knee, she felt no jealousy.
She’d rather be human than be him.
Leor leant against the wall, and another stone fell off.
“I only learned the stoneman army was marching,” he said in a low voice, “once it was too late. And when I was in the north they almost caught me. I had to… ” He stopped, and after waiting for a moment she filled in the words for him.
“You had to use your wizardry to hide. You turned yourself into a jackdaw. Something of the sort. Didn’t you?”
“Not a jackdaw.”
“You fraud,” she said. “Hypocrite. So you’ll use magic to save your own skin.”
“The smallest amount possible. I’d gone north on an errand,” said Leor, “looking for something that I think may offer a defence against the darkburns. It wasn’t just a casual journey.”
“And did you find it?”
“No. The stonemen got there first.”
“So what marvellous weapon were you looking for?”
“Not a weapon. A defence. It’s something I made a great mistake about, many years ago. I was hoping I might set it right. Or alleviate it, at least.”
Bruilde put her bread back in the saddle bag. She couldn’t eat. What had the population of Obandiro been? A thousand? A thousand and a half? All slain by stonemen or annihilated by darkburns. Her imagination began to work, too efficiently. To stop it she said,
“You’d better explain that to me. What mistake?”
Leor sighed. “Many years ago – two centuries ago – I brought some seedlings down to the southern coastlands from the far northern wastes, and planted them where they should not have been planted. I did it as a favour to the people living by the sea, who revered those particular trees in their worship, and whose own sacred trees had died. There was no more to it than that – simply goodwill. I used my wizardry to make the seedlings thrive. I meant well, but it was an error.”
“What people?”
Again he paused. “Don’t shout at me.”
“Am I shouting?”
“No. But you will. They were stonemen, only they weren’t called that then, and they weren’t as they are now.”
“Stonemen. I’m not shouting. But I am surprised.”
“This was two hundred years ago,” said Leor.
“All right. What were these seedlings?” Bruilde’s eyes narrowed as she made deductions.
“Were they used for a drug? Because we know the stonemen drug themselves.”
But he shook his head. “They didn’t back then. It’s not a drug. The stonemen’s ancestors had carried the trees with them in some long-ago migration. As the trees aged and died, they asked me to look for others on my travels. It seemed a harmless enough request.”
“A harmless request from stonemen.”
He shrugged with something like despair. “Like I say, they weren’t then as they are now.
They worshipped stones, it’s true – or rather, the spirits of the stones and of the earth – but back then, they didn’t drill stones into their own skulls. That only started after they came into contact with Adon.”
“So what did they use these sacred trees for?”
“To make incense for their rituals. They felt it gave them control over the spirits. I didn’t think much of it at the time. But recently I learnt the stonemen have been hunting for these trees again: so the replacements that I brought them must have died. I think the trees may offer a defence against the darkburns, or hold some power over them – hence the stonemen’s urgency to find more.”
“As far as I am aware,” said Bruilde coldly, “the stoneman army marched up to Outer Kelvha to raid and invade, not to do a little light gardening.”
“But that army heading north split into two. Half the stonemen turned north-east towards the wastes where those trees grow. I know because I arrived up there before them.”
“To do what?” she demanded.
“To prevent them from getting their supplies, if I could.”
Now she was angry. “You gave the stonemen this means of power over darkburns, and it took you two hundred years to realise that, oops, that wasn’t such a good idea?”
Again he shook his head, the red hair rising briefly against the breeze like a smoking flame. It brought an answering flame of memory. That first time she had seen him… Well, she had been young and foolish; so she ignored the unwanted lurch of her heart.
“You must remember that darkburns didn’t even exist all those years ago. Believe me, Bruilde, I meant nothing but good. Don’t be angry with me.”
“We all mean nothing but good,” she said. “Or we think we do.”
“Most of us do. Not all. Not Adon. He means nothing but harm. He enjoys harm. He enjoys destruction. He’s behind the darkburns: I don’t know how or why, but I am sure of that much.” Leor’s voice was hard again.
“And yet he’s your brother.”
“He’s not. Never call him that. We were made from the same clay, that’s all. Wizards can’t have brothers. They don’t have parents.”
She wanted to ask him what they did have, then; but that was not important right now.
Instead she asked,
“What sort of tree is it, that repels the darkburns?”
“An ancient one,” said Leor quietly. “A very rare tree, called by some the skeln, and very hard to grow. It was the trees’ resin which the stonemen valued.”
“And did you find these trees, on your trip up north?”
“Yes, I found them.”
She waited. “And you destroyed them before the stonemen got there?”
“There was no need,” said Leor. “They were already dead. And they were the last of their kind.”
“Can you be sure of that?”
“I hunted through the region without finding any more. That’s why I then went south to consult with the Farwth, because of its unsurpassed knowledge of all things that grow.”
“And what did the Farwth tell you?”
“It said I had confirmed what it already feared. It was saddened. It seemed to mourn – in fact, it grieved more for those lost trees than for all the burnt-out houses and their dead. Walls can be rebuilt, it said, and humans will insist on breeding: but a family of trees once lost cannot return. The Farwth told me that no more skeln remain alive within its reach. And its reach is very wide indeed.”
Charo found himself surprisingly reluctant to leave baby Royet behind. He was leaving all the others too, of course, but it was the baby he thought about as they rode north. Which was ridiculous when she was only six weeks old and almost certainly didn’t even know who he was.
It must be because he’d seen her born, he thought, or almost had, at least. Anneke had told him that he’d been a real support while they had waited for the others to arrive. Although Charo doubted that this was altogether true, it might not be altogether false.
It was strange how his relationship with Anneke had changed. He would have thought he would be horribly embarrassed being present while his former teacher gave birth, but when it happened he’d felt adult and sensible and calm. He had surprised himself. And although she was still teaching him occasionally – mainly Standard grammar, and calculations – it was more like being advised by a friend. A friend who carried a sling containing a squeaking baby. Because Royet did squeak. She was funny.
Now he became aware of Yaret eyeing him as they rode along.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked.
“Baby Royet,” he said, since there was no reason to lie. “I’ll miss her squeaking.”
“So will I,” said Yaret, with a sudden smile. “But we’ll only be away for eight or nine days. Maybe ten, at most.”
He nodded. This expedition had been Yaret’s idea. She’d put the plan before the council soon after the two injured brothers had appeared from the north, seeking shelter. The new men were quite young, only in their twenties; but both were badly burned, and one was almost blind. It was amazing that they had survived at all, let alone managed to ride for four days to reach Obandiro.
But then they were tough men, being trappers. One night, just before the dawn, they said, they’d been awoken by the sound and smell of fire. The stonemen had raged past their snowy hut in the woods, the darkburns at the front melting a path and setting alight anything that would burn.
The stonemen didn’t bother stopping at the blazing hut – that wasn’t their target; it had just been in their way. The trappers got out alive but injured. They described an army of hundreds, maybe thousands of stonemen, in long streams heading west. Charo didn’t want to believe that estimate, but it must have been a lot.
Luckily the fires had fizzled out quite quickly in the snow. The pair had sheltered in the half-hut that was left to them, the younger tending his blinded brother despite his own severe burns. After two days he managed to find their horses – which had ripped out their tethers and fled – and they set off to ride south in search of help.
And they had found Obandiro. It had been Ziya, the mother of the young family, who had run to meet them, ignoring the grandfather’s warnings, and who had tended their burns diligently since then. The grandfather had reluctantly allowed the two to stay with him in his little house. He said they were less noisy than the children.
Not long afterwards Yaret announced her intention of riding north to the trappers’
territory, to see where the stonemen had been. She wanted to look for other survivors, as well as to work out where the army had been heading for. She was quietly resolute and no-one could dissuade her. Since the winter snows had melted, she said, the round trip would only take about ten days at most. Eventually Charo had announced that he would go north too.
So here he was now, mounted in state on Poda, while Yaret was riding the blind trapper’s horse. It was smaller and rougher-haired than Poda and a little wayward. But it trotted fast
enough over the dry ground, which was free of snow now, although the peaks that slowly loomed to the far north were still white-topped.
This was the third day of their journey and already Charo felt himself to be lost in a world that was far wider and more daunting than he had ever realised. All familiar landmarks were left far behind: they had skirted unknown hills and crossed a leaping river he had never heard of by a treacherous stone bridge.
But Yaret seemed to know where they were going, whether by lore or the trappers’
directions or from her previous travels. She spoke aloud her means of navigation, discussing the positions of the sun or stars with him as if he knew the way north just as well as she did.
She pointed out unusual landforms as if she were merely reminding Charo of their names.
These woods that they were passing through she called the Hallik. It sounded like a trapper word.
And three times she stopped her horse Wulchak – which was a strange name for a horse, but the trappers’ language was full of sounds like an axe falling – and turned in the saddle to stare across at something that he could not see.
“What is it?” he would ask.
“Lin.” And then he’d hear her murmuring the rhyme.
“I didn’t see it.”
“It wasn’t close. It might have been a woodwone,” she said the third time it happened,
“given the burning of all these trees. I suppose they have to go somewhere.”
Great stretches of the Hallik woodlands were burnt through and cold. They rode on paths of charcoal. Still, Charo was not convinced that there was a woodwone or anything there at all, although he was a little too much in awe of Yaret to say so. She was a friend yet he sometimes felt he did not know her.
For she seemed unlike any woman he had known, even in Obandiro where male mode was fairly common. His two neighbours who had used male mode had been brisk and businesslike and loud. They had wielded axes and chopped trees but they had not wielded swords. If it came to that, nobody in Obandiro had wielded swords except on ceremonial occasions. The mayor, the miller...
The miller must have been richer than anyone had known. All that money under the ashes of his floorboards – when they dug it out, there had been a hundred coins and more. Both he and Yaret carried some of the silver in their pockets now, although he was not sure how much use it would be, since there appeared to be nowhere in this wilderness they could spend it.
Suddenly Yaret brought Wulchak to a halt again. This time he could see that it was not for a lin.
It was a cart – two carts, coming slowly towards them along the old worn grassy road which threaded between the patches of woodland. The carts were moving so slowly that it seemed a long time before they met. Yaret did not hurry forward.
“We don’t want to alarm them,” she said. However, Charo noticed that she did not attempt to move her sword and bow out of sight as she had yesterday, before they’d spoken to the woodcutter.
Yet the woodcutter had far been surlier than these carts’ inhabitants. He’d refused to answer any questions, and had snapped at them to leave. These people in the carts just looked exhausted; they hardly spoke even when Yaret told them that Obandiro was only two or three days away. There were eight of them including two small children, and a hungry looking dog.
They were all hungry, not just the dog. Because they looked too tired to set a fire, Charo gathered wood and made a fire for everyone to share. Yaret cooked and handed round the two rabbits which she had shot that morning, along with tough old wintergreens and the last of their bread. It didn’t go far. Still, the two families seemed better after eating, and talked a little more in the firelight.
It was the same old story, of course, told in hesitant murmurs: the sudden wakening to dreadful fear, the burning – burning that would not stop; the ashes and the desolation and the blankness afterwards.
“I know,” said Charo to the youngest man and woman, who he thought were probably not much older than he was beneath the soot and grime. “We all know. It’s been the same for all of us.”
“You too? The… the things… and the burning?”
“Most of our town died,” said Charo. It felt very strange to say it aloud. He had never had to say it aloud before because everybody knew and it did not even need to be discussed.
He cleared his throat. “I only escaped because I was a baker’s apprentice. I had to get up early to set the loaves in the oven; and when I was half way up the street I heard something coming, and then I smelt the darkburn, and then I – I just felt so scared that, that I had to run away.”
“So did I.” This was spoken in a very low voice.
“I kept thinking I should have gone back to wake my family. But by then it would have already been too late and we would all have died. There was nothing anybody could have done to stop it,” Charo said. It was Yaret who had talked it through with him and made him see this. She was right: he would have died beside his family if he’d gone back home. The stonemen were to blame, and no-one else.
But he brooded now, as he often did, on how it had been his own error that had saved his life. He’d woken in the night, remembering with a lurch of panic that he hadn’t set the loaves in the warming oven to prove. Stupid, stupid, he’d berated himself as he struggled out of bed.
That was the reason he’d been up before the dawn. It was because he was an absent-minded idiot. His own stupidity had led to him being the only one of his household – and the baker’s – to survive. He had never told anybody this.
And his parents, and his older sisters, whom he had taken for granted, whom he had never really thought about as being separate people, just part of his surroundings, had ended up on the other side of that great burning divide. They were Then and he was Now. There was no bridge across.
For weeks he hadn’t even dared to think about them. For the first two weeks all he could think of was his own traitorous idiocy. How he had let them down by not dying alongside them. He couldn’t put his mess of feelings into any sort of order. Only recently had he ventured to remember them deliberately.
Other memories arose unbidden. It was sometimes dreadful when that happened; but not always. Sometimes he could think of them without having to recall that fatal dawn, that nightmare that had enveloped the streets and transformed everything.
“I know it seems like the end of the world,” he said to the forlorn pair now. “But things will change. They will get better.” Yaret was already drawing a map in the dirt to show the travellers how to reach Obandiro.
But at nightfall, after they had left the occupants of the carts to sleep, he said to Yaret,
“Are you sure we should be sending everybody to Obandiro?”
“Everybody? It’s two families. That woodcutter yesterday won’t go.”
“Yes, but what if more people follow? What if word gets around and too many people turn up wanting food and shelter?”
“Then we’ll cope,” said Yaret. “We’ve got shelter enough and we can rebuild once the weather’s better, and we can sow more crops too.”
“We’ve got no grain to sow,” he objected.
“Barley’s already starting to come up in a couple of the old fields. Oats too. The beets and roots will have seeded themselves as well. There’ll be enough to get us going.” She looked
directly at him. “What would you have me do? Say no, you must go home to your houses full of ash?”
“No, of course not. But… they don’t even speak Bandiran.”
“The children will learn,” she said, which made him realise with a jolt that she regarded these visitors as long-term, even permanent. “They can make Obandiro a town again. They will all bring something, different skills. We saw that with the grandfather.”
The grandfather was still bad-tempered. He did not like to be called by his name, Lundo, saying it was disrespectful, and demanding to be given the customary honorific for the unknown elderly, Great-uncle. However, he had turned out to be more useful than Charo had expected; for he was a tanner and leatherworker – the stink of his trade being the reason the family had lived outside Byant and hence avoided the worst of the burning. He had brought with him his awl and shears.
Charo had decided that when he got back home, he would have a go at making shoes for the children, if the grandfather would tan some skins as he had promised. Although they now had a number of deerskins and sheepskins, these were hard and somewhat smelly. Ondro said that in the spring he might go south to try and find some cows, which could mean proper leather. Charo had already taken apart his old boots to see how they were made. It didn’t look that difficult. His new boots were a good fit, with Lo’s knitted socks to pad them out. They were well-made and had kept his feet dry through the worst of winter.
So he went to sleep thinking about shoe design and got woken up by Yaret creeping away in search of deer. She came back soon after dawn with a stag slung over Wulchak’s back.
They revived the fire and cooked the offal for breakfast. Yaret gave the travellers most of the remaining meat to take with them on their onward journey.
“They should just about make it,” she said, watching the departing carts. Then she set her face to the north and urged Wulchak on again.
As they continued north the air unexpectedly grew milder. Yaret said it was the beginnings of spring, although the trees were leafless and the birds still huddled disconsolately on their boughs and did not warble.
The trees here were not large, but they were many, scattered across the rocky landscape like giant ragged weeds. And they were not burnt, which reassured Charo, until the horses emerged from a patch of thicker woodland onto a long, wide, charred-black trail. It ran right across their path from east to west.
“Here we go east,” said Yaret to his relief. The trappers had told them that the stonemen had gone west; and he hoped that it was true.
Three miles up the trail, in a depression backed by a long low hill, they saw the town.
From that distance it was like a patch of burnt mess in a frying pan. It looked horribly familiar. A thin grey haze lay over the ruins and the smell of smoke was bitter in his nostrils.
He swallowed hard.
“What’s it called?” he asked, trying to sound casual, although this place’s name could have no meaning now.
“It was called Erbulet,” she murmured.
“Do you think there’s anybody left?”
She squinted at the haze. “I don’t see any sign of cooking fires. But we won’t know until we go and look.”
Charo did not much want to go and look. Even without the dead town stretched out in the foreground, this land seemed bleak and hostile. The whole place felt as vividly alarming as a nightmare, but one from which he could not wake. Around the corpse of the town the bare trees shrank and crouched like old men weakened to the point of paralysis; but to the north a threatening mass of dark pine or fir forest loomed over the lower slopes of the long hill.
Above the trees the hill came to an abrupt flat top where all was bare, raw, grey-purple rock: the colour of dried meat.
He felt that they’d gone far enough. This world was way too dark and hard and strange.
Although he knew he ought to hope for survivors, he found that he did not. He didn’t want to see any ragged children creep out of lightless cellars. It had been bad enough for him: he couldn’t wish that horror and grief on anybody else.
But that meant he had to wish them dead. Everybody, the whole lot. He felt guilty for hoping the little town would prove to be empty, so that Yaret would be done with her exploring and they could set off home again.
As he followed her horse towards the fallen town, he looked at its grey silence, and then at his own thoughts. He felt ashamed: deflated. It made no difference what he hoped for in any case. Things were as they were. A nightmare of sad crumbling streets.
He had imagined this trip would be a fine adventure. Somehow he’d seen himself beforehand as a hero, riding boldly across the plain on his high-stepping horse, his sword ready by his pommel, in search of some brave deed or other. But at no point had he had any notion of what that brave deed might be.
So far, the expedition had just brought aching legs from spending too long in the saddle, and inadequate meals, and nightly shivering in his sleep. Although the cellar back home was not exactly warm – there had been winter nights when they had all huddled together and had barely slept for cold – it had at least kept the wind out. They had felt themselves become worryingly weak and tired but they had survived.
Charo had assumed that he was tougher than Yaret, being younger; but now, she seemed unmoved by these chilly wastes, while he just wanted to be home and near a warm fire. Even
Poda appeared more eager than he was to reach the ruined town. Yaret turned to him as if she guessed his thoughts.
“Not far now,” she said reassuringly. “We’ll find some building where we can shelter out of this wind tonight. Then tomorrow we can have a look around before we head off home.”
He nodded glumly. They entered up what must have been the main street, passing empty, blackened shells that were full of ash and dotted with occasional charcoal remains. Guardians with nobody to guard. Nobody to name them. He tried to ignore them, but despite their lack of names or eyes they all seemed to be watching.
They rode through the ashen streets seeing nobody apart from the burnt watchers until Yaret stopped abruptly, putting her hand out to make Charo stop as well. He sat frozen in the saddle.
Then he heard it: a faint thump from somewhere further down the road, behind the sooty walls. His own heart thumped as if in answer. The nightmare had come suddenly alive.
Probably an animal, he told himself, it had to be an animal. He wondered what he should do if it were a bear. Sword or bow? His recently made bow was over-firm and hard to use.
His sword was buckled to his saddle. Should he draw it?
But it might be just some harmless survivor. While he was hesitating, Yaret quietly dismounted, drew her own bow and nocked an arrow to the string. When Charo saw that, he did the same. She walked noiselessly to the corner of the street: looked round it, and let the bow drop.
He followed her to see what it was. Immediately he recognised this as the market square, with the remains of a hall not unlike Obandiro’s. Its stone tower still stood erect amidst the jumbled ash and debris.
And standing by the tower was a man – a live man, streaked in ash and blood. He did not look their way. As Charo watched, he banged his head against the tower wall.
Then Charo registered the tunic, red beneath its layer of soot; and when the man raised his head he saw a stone there in his forehead, surrounded by dark bruises and smeared with blood.
Yaret laid down her bow upon the ground and walked up to the stoneman. But Charo ran back to Poda to draw his sword before he followed her with its hilt clenched firmly in his fist.
He had no intention of approaching the stoneman unarmed and thought her alarmingly foolhardy. She only had her knife. As he came up behind her he held his sword outstretched in warning.
When the stoneman turned he did not seem to see the sword; at least, he did not react.
Maybe he was stunned, thought Charo, or blinded by the blood that ran into his eyes.
But he could see them, for he spoke. He voice was husky, with a strange accent.
“Where are they? Are they coming back?”
“Do you mean your companions?” Yaret asked. She was only a yard away from the enemy. Charo gritted his teeth, trying to make himself ready to strike with his sword at any sign of danger. The stoneman seemed to be unarmed, but still…
“Where are they? When are they coming back?”
“They have all gone west, I think,” she said. “At least, we saw the tracks of an army headed out in that direction. There’s nobody else left here in town, so far as we can tell. What happened?” Charo could not believe she was talking to a stoneman in this way, as quietly as if he was – as if he was Dil.
“Kill him,” he muttered. He would have leapt forward and killed the stoneman himself, if he had known how to do it cleanly. But he might so easily get it wrong. And then the man would be enraged.
Neither Yaret nor the stoneman seemed to hear him.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“I got left behind on the hills,” the stoneman said. His words sounded thick and blurred as if he could hardly talk.
“Why were you up there alone?”
“I was looking for the burner. I got lost. I don’t know where the others are. Can you find them for me? I need them. I need athelid.”
“Do you mean ethlon?”
“Athelid. Have you got any? Can you find some? I need some athelid! I’ve been waiting so long! It’s hurting! I can’t stand it any more!”
And to Charo’s bewilderment he threw himself at the wall again, hammering it with his head as if to hammer the stones further into his skull.
Yaret caught at his arm. “Stop. Come away from there,” she said. “Stop it. That won’t help. How long is it since you last had athelid?”
“Days, days, I don’t know. Please, give me some athelid.” The words slurred and Charo realised to his horror that the man was crying.
Yaret held the stoneman’s arm, and then his hand, as if he were a child. He raised his other hand to his head as if he could hardly bear to touch it.
“What’s your name?” she said.
“Brael. Oh, it hurts. It hurts.”
“How old are you, Brael?”
“I’m ten. Please give me some. I need it. Please.”
“I have no athelid,” said Yaret.
The stoneman stared at them through the blood and tears. He seemed to see Charo’s sword now for the first time, and made a lunge at it. Charo pulled it away, out of his reach.
“Stop,” said Yaret, holding firmly onto the stoneman’s arm, “stop it. No swords.” It was lucky, thought Charo, that the stoneman must have been weakened by pain and maybe hunger too, for he was bigger than either of them. A big stumbling bully. Not so brave now, without his darkburns.
“I’ll kill him,” he said breathlessly.
“Give me the sword! I’ll kill, I’ll kill myself,” the stoneman stammered thickly. “If there’s no athelid and they’ve all gone, I have to. Have to kill myself. Stop it hurting. Or kill me.
Please.”
“Wait,” said Yaret. “What were you and your army doing here?”
“Kill me.”
“Answer me first.”
“We came here…” He shook his head as if he couldn’t remember, and then groaned and put his hands to his head again as if the very shaking of it caused him agony.
“You came here to destroy and murder,” Charo said accusingly. His voice sounded too high. He was angry and did not know what to do with his anger except to throw it at the stoneman. Run him through. Cut off his hands. Slice off his head and use it as a football…
He began to feel a little sickened, but had this man and his companions not done even worse?
Had they not murdered his entire people?
“Wait,” said Yaret again, with commanding patience. “Why this town?”
“The hills,” the stoneman said. “It’s in the hills.”
“What is?”
“The skeln,” he said. “Now kill me. Kill me now.”
Yaret seemed to go completely still. “What is the skeln?”
“Up, up there, on those hills. The trees.” The stoneman waved his trembling arm towards the bare, bruised slopes above the town.
“Trees.”
“All dead. None left any more.”
“What do you use the skeln for?”
“Heads. Please. It hurts.”
“Is the skeln a medicine? Does it make the pain go away?” she asked; again, thought Charo, far too gently.
“No. That’s athelid. Please, give me some athelid! I need it.”
“I have none. Your companions took it. Where can I find them? Where were they going?”
“Somewhere called, called Kelvha. I don’t know where it is. Please find them. Please get me athelid.”
“I’m afraid they have long gone.”
The stoneman began to tremble all over, not just his hands. Then he was crying again. “I have to die. You have to kill me. Hurts too much. I can’t do it. Not on my own.”
Charo’s mouth was dry. He felt sick; but he would have to do this. He just didn’t know how. All these months he’d thought he longed to kill a stoneman: to plunge the sword in through the odious red tunic and see his enemy collapse in fear and disbelief. Now he just felt paralysed. He couldn’t kill a crying man.
He raised the sword without knowing how he would use it. Yaret put her hand against his arm. “Wait,” she said, with the same quiet authority as before, and he lowered the sword again.
“Brael,” she said to the stoneman.
“Kill. Kill me now.” The eyes that stared at her were full of blood. The man was shaking from head to foot.
“Brael. Know that you have served with loyalty, and that you die with honour.”
Then she drew her knife. The stoneman seized her hand and together they drove the blade down through the tunic, deep into the man’s breast. He gazed into her face and let out a long, slow sigh and then began to pant. She supported him with one arm round his shoulders, her other hand still clasped by his around the knife-hilt, as he sank down to the ground.
Eventually his hand fell away. It was another moment before she pulled out the knife.
Charo could not see her face; but he heard her say Oveyn, and then he burst out.
“That was a stoneman! What are you saying Oveyn for? Why did you tell him that he died with honour when he killed all our people?” He was shaking almost as badly as the stoneman had, and now he felt ashamed that he hadn’t used the sword himself right at the start.
“He was ten,” said Yaret.
“He was crazy.”
“Yes, he was crazed, that’s true. And he was ten.”
“That’s ridiculous. He can’t have been ten. He was at least eighteen!”
“That was what I thought too, when I asked his age. I expected eighteen or twenty. I didn’t expect ten. But I had to take him at his word.” She was wiping the knife on the stoneman’s tunic. She seemed quite calm. Charo didn’t know how to stop himself from shaking. He was no better than the stoneman. It was terrible.
Thankfully she wasn’t looking at him: she was looking at the stoneman’s hands.
“Such fine skin,” she said. “Uncalloused. His face, too, so unweathered. He was young.”
Her voice was meditative.
“I hope you don’t want to bury him as well,” said Charo, trying to sound indifferent, although his voice came out high and harsh.
“No.” She stood up. “What I want to do now is to go and look for the skeln, up in those hills.”
“It’s in the wrong direction!” Then he felt ashamed again.
“Yes, it is; but it’s not far. We can be there and back before nightfall.” She looked at him.
“You stay here if you wish.”
“No, I’ll come with you,” said Charo. He didn’t want her to think he was a coward. Nor did he want to be left alone in this nightmarish town, with its pointless guardians and the dead stoneman – stoneboy – stoneman – seeping blood into the gutter.
She nodded and began walking back towards the horses. Charo looked down at the stoneman again. How could he be ten? He was simply mad with pain. Delirious. All that blood around his battered head. Beating it against the wall.
Charo swallowed and said Oveyn hurriedly, underneath his breath, before he stumbled back to remount Poda. His limbs did not seem to be working properly and he was glad when Poda followed Wulchak of her own accord. He wanted to get out of this dead place as fast as possible.
Yaret did not talk. She sat upright and steady in the saddle, gazing out at their surroundings, and yet he felt that she was different. Or maybe it was because his view of her was different.
He had never thought that she could kill a man…
But she had, and now he did not seem to know her. He felt even less of a hero than he had before, more lost and smaller, as they rode across the dreary plain towards the looming flat-topped hill. The wind was bitterer than ever and after a while he took out the woolly cap which Lo had spun and knitted for him, and jammed it on his head. It wasn’t a hero’s hat but it didn’t matter what he looked like. Nobody was watching. Nobody cared.
At least the hat was warm, and it made him think of Lo. He might be able to tell her about this. No, he wouldn’t. Not the stoneman. But he could tell her that he wore her cap. He liked her best of all the girls, although she was the oldest. A woman really. But Lo was interested in him; she would want to hear his story.
So there had better be something that he could tell. The thought made Charo overcome his strange stiffness to urge Poda into a trot and then a canter. Yaret had to speed up behind him, and by the time they halted at the hill’s base she was breathless.
“My word, but Wulchak’s a bone-jolter,” she said. “You ride Poda well.” And then as they climbed the slope, winding between tall, forbidding conifers, she began to talk once more in the old familiar way, making jokes about the blind man’s ungainly horse and wondering how its owner, the trapper, was getting on, and what the children would be doing back home.
She also remarked on any signs of life they passed. Which were not many: a badger’s earth or two, claw scratches on the trees that might be bear; but nothing else until they found a distinct, much-trampled path, leading upwards through the trees.
“That looks like an old trail,” observed Charo, trying to speak as normally as Yaret did,
“though there have been lots of stonemen here lately. Those footprints with the cross-roped soles: they’re the same as we saw earlier. But this path’s even cobbled in places – that must have been done years ago. Why would anybody bother laying cobbles? Who would come up here, to this star-forsaken place? What for?”
“For skeln, perhaps, whatever skeln may be.”
“A tree… Do you think it’s something like the Farwth?”
“I have no idea,” said Yaret, “nor why it might be so important.”
When they emerged from the mass of crowded firs onto bare rocky slopes and climbed wearily on foot, leading the horses to the flattened summit, they were none the wiser. Charo had thought that the nightmare lay behind him in the town, but it was here too. There was no escape from it – from the uncaring emptiness.
The sun sinking on their left gave the landscape a sour, bilious appearance. The land did not fall away again, but spread in a level, bleak expanse of sickly yellow grass blotched with purpled rock, to the distance where it changed to white. As white as bone, he thought, although he knew it must be snow. Behind the white plateau, far jagged peaks rose up like snarling teeth.
Then, not far away, he saw them: a twisted clump of old, bare tree-trunks.
“They look dead,” said Yaret softly. They left the horses and walked towards the clump.
There were several gnarled and convoluted trunks, bigger than Charo had thought at first –
and very dead indeed. They were mostly bare of bark, with not a single bud or even twig to be seen. True, it was still winter, but no dead leaves from last year or the years before lay piled beneath.
He pointed this out to Yaret.
“You’re right. Old age… or maybe they’ve been over-harvested,” she said.
“For resin. Like myrrh or balsam. See the marks.” She pointed.
He had already noticed the multitude of cuts along each trunk. Some were more like gouges. He ran a finger over them. They looked old. Whatever bark remained was rotting; there was no sign of any resin leaking from the cuts.
“What would they use resin for?”
“Well, it’s usually for medicine. Or else in religious ceremonies, I think.”
“He – the stoneman – he said it was for their heads.”
“Yes. But not medicine. Not a painkiller. He called that athelid; it’s something different.
So what is skeln? What do they want it for?”
“It’s for their stones,” said Charo, with sudden certainty. “If it’s for their heads, it’s something they put on the stones. Maybe they make a sort of varnish, or a coating.”
“The stones… Well. You could just be right, Charo. The stones on Brael’s head, close up, did look as if they might have had some sort of coating.”
Charo did not want to think about Brael. He said, “But it can’t be just for looks, surely. It must be really important or they wouldn’t bother coming all this way to search for it.”
“Those stonemen back at Obandiro,” she said thoughtfully, “digging out the stones from corpses’ heads…”
“Maybe they’re running short of it, whatever it is,” said Charo. “If there’s none left here, then maybe the only place they can get it is from dead bodies.”
Yaret nodded. “You’re right. Skeln must be something vital to them. I never told you in the tale about my travels, but when I was in Farwithiel the Farwth told us to look for the skeln. It wouldn’t or couldn’t give us any details. I had an idea it might be in a song by Madeo, so I hunted through my mental store of songs. But I never found it there, although I spent long enough thinking about it.”
Charo said, “I wonder if there’s any resin here that the stonemen missed.”
They both searched the lacerated trunks, feeling with their fingers, and then hunted around the base of the lifeless trees. They found nothing. Charo was about to give up when, a few yards away, a tiny lump on the ground like a dull brown teardrop caught his eye.
He picked it up and held it in his palm. Although it was the size of a piece of gravel, it was not stone: he could mark it with a fingernail. “Do you think that’s resin?”
“It could be. Keep it just in case.”
He put it carefully in his pocket. They knelt to scan the ground again, without seeing any more.
“I guess if there was any to find, the stonemen would have found it,” Charo said at last. He raised his head to gaze north across the wilderness towards the white horizon.
Then he frowned. There was something out there, small and dark against the snow – and it was moving.
“What’s that?” He stood up. It was coming towards them.
“I don’t know,” said Yaret, getting hurriedly to her feet and screwing up her eyes. “It’s…”
“Smoking.”
“Or steaming. It looks like…. Oh, stars, it must be a darkburn.”
“We have to get away,” said Charo, and they both began to run towards the horses. But he knew they could not ride them down from this summit – or even gallop away along its edge, for the ground was too uneven. Whichever way they went they would have to lead the horses.
Slowly.
And all the while the blurred dark object was drawing closer.
“We can’t get down in time,” he said. Suddenly it was hard for him to breathe.
“Then better to meet it up here where it’s flat, and we can fight it.” Yaret drew her sword ringingly from its sheath on Wulchak’s saddle, and Charo did the same. “Leave the horses here. Move back towards the trees. Stay behind the skeln. We can hide there, perhaps.”
“It’ll burn the trees.”
“At least they’ll be a barrier. There’s no other place up here with any cover.”
But Charo knew the thing would burn straight through the trees, and then it would run them down and burn them too, burn them alive. He stared at the advancing darkburn. How could it move so fast? It had no legs that he could see. Its body seemed like a core of darkness enveloped in smoke.
And now he smelt it. The memories of that night rushed back at him. That night that had never ended, that had lasted ever since.
And now he felt it: the dread and desperation that he had tried so hard, so often, to forget.
The horror. The nightmare was fully round him now, enveloping, encircling him, and he was trapped. Smothered by it. He could not move.
“I know,” said Yaret next to him. “Hold on to your sword. They can be killed.” She stepped in front of him, although from the way she gripped her sword in both hands he knew that it had become a difficulty.
He could barely keep hold of his own hilt: the blade had dropped and was resting on the ground. When he tried to raise it he could not. It might have weighed a ton. He wanted to just curl up in a ball and hide. The dread was overwhelming.
The darkburn was growing swiftly now, not big in size but huge in fear and heat. Already the air was warm, although it was twenty yards away or more on the far side of the dead gnarled trees. Fifteen yards. Ten.
And then it stopped. A shadow made solid but without features. He seemed to feel it studying them through the dead bare branches although it had no eyes. He could not move.
After a second or two it veered away to his right and headed for the horses.
But even as they began to bolt and panic it veered away from them again, now seeming to spin. It rushed back towards him and Yaret as they cowered behind the trees, and stopped again ten yards away, a blur of darkness. Towards the horses. Swerved and stopped. Towards them: stopped, and then rushed to and fro as if it could not decide.
He stared through the dead branches at it, his sword still unmovable in his hand. He would have turned and run had he had the strength. But he seemed to have no strength at all.
The darkburn paused, heat radiating from its smoky shadow. Then, as if driven by some unseen force, it began to hurtle back the way that it had come, a small dark whirlwind made of terror. It was rushing north again, rapidly diminishing. The heat and fear receded, yet Charo still felt all his limbs trembling as he watched the plume of smoke rise up across the empty land. Soon the darkburn – tiny now – must have met the snow; for a great cloud of steam boiled up into the air and hid it from their sight.
He let out a long, shuddering breath.
“What happened? How did we drive it away?” he asked. His voice seemed to have disappeared along with the darkburn.
“It wasn’t us. It was the trees, I think, that did it,” murmured Yaret. She touched the nearest branch.
“The skeln. So they repel the darkburns,” Charo said. “But no, that doesn’t make sense –
because it ran away from the horses too.”
“In Wulchak’s saddle-bag is one of the stones from the dead man by the Dondel Bridge.”
Charo thought about this. “So if the stones are coated with the resin, it’s to keep darkburns away. To control them. That’s why the stonemen need it.”
“And they need it badly,” Yaret said.
“But where did that darkburn come from? Do you think there are stonemen around as well?” He looked round wildly in sudden fear.
Yaret was gazing north. “Brael said he was looking for the burner,” she replied. “That must mean a darkburn. I’d guess one got loose and ran away, and he got lost trying to find it
– and was left behind.”
“So it could have been running around up here for days. Weeks, maybe.”
“Yes. Until it detected us. And then it came straight for us.” She sounded meditative. “I wonder why?”
“They must be trained to hunt down humans,” Charo said.
“Perhaps. I suggest we leave now, in case it comes back. I know you have the piece of resin and I have the stone, but I don’t feel inclined to put them to the test again.”
Charo couldn’t wait to leave. But before they descended from the hill, Yaret paused on a high point to gaze south, studying the burnt trail left by the stonemen many days ago. It was clearly visible below, leading west as far as his eye could see.
“All right,” she said, nodding, and then turned to soothe Poda, who was nervy and restlessly stamping. “At least it didn’t get so close to her this time,” she said. “I think she’ll be all right. I’ll lead her down to start with; you lead Wulchak.” She handed him the bridle.
Half-way down the slope she added, “I think you worked it out. The skeln is a darkburn repellent.”
They said nothing more until they were on the fringes of the burnt-out town. Then Charo spoke his thoughts.
“Even if the darkburn comes down off the hill to look for us, it won’t come near that dead stoneman. If we sleep inside the market tower we’ll be close enough to have protection from his stones. And I can leave my bit of resin with Poda to protect her too.”
“Good thinking,” Yaret said.
Back in the market square, she asked him to build the fire and prepare the supper while she checked the streets for any survivors. He did not expect her to find any, and he was right.
When she returned they ate without speaking, listening to the wailing wind blow off the hill.
Charo did not think that he would sleep that night, with the dead stoneman so close and the call of the wind hunting through the empty town and the knowledge of the darkburn running wild and lost up on the snowy plateau. This was a place beyond normal human life.
He wondered how long it would take before the wilderness reclaimed it: before the buildings tumbled down completely and the forests began a slow march into the streets.
He expected the nightmare to attack him as it had so many nights back in Obandiro. Once he had asked Elket if she had that dream too: the screams, the running in the streets, the roaring walls of fire. She had merely nodded, as if it was quite normal.
So he foresaw no respite now. But the shelter in the narrow market tower was the best they’d had all trip, and the shifting ash beneath his cloak felt like a feather bed after the hard ground. He’d no sooner finished his cheese and biscuit than he fell asleep. He had no dreams at all.
He awoke to find Yaret repacking saddle-bags.
“We’ll set off home as soon as you’re ready,” she said.
“I thought you wanted to follow the stonemen’s trail?”
But she shook her head. “I don’t think there’s much more to be gained from that. We’ve seen the trail heading west. We know they’re going towards Kelvha. We’ve done what we set out to. We found two cartloads of survivors even if there are no more here. And we’ve found the skeln, and gained some useful knowledge. That’s enough.”
He felt a huge gladness to be going home at last. As they crossed the market place, he glanced down from Poda’s saddle at the dead stoneman lying slumped against the wall. The
stones were missing from his head. He’d only had the two – but now he had none, just two black holes.
He glanced at Yaret. “Did you…?”
“I thought they might be useful. We could use them to protect Obandiro,” said Yaret distantly. She seemed a stranger again as they rode out of town and headed south. But within a couple of miles she began to chat as normal, and he gradually relaxed.
“It’s been a tough journey, Charo,” she said suddenly. “Harder than I expected. I thought it would be easier. I wish I knew how the Riders of the Vonn did this.”
He was surprised. “I thought… you seemed to know what you were doing.”
“I assumed I would. I’ve travelled enough, but only through the summer months. Coming north in winter has taught me how difficult it is. To be honest I’m just making it up as I go along.”
“It doesn’t show.”
“Well. Thank you. But if the weather had turned bad we could have been in trouble. I probably shouldn’t have brought you here.”
“I’m glad you did,” he said.
She smiled at him. “I’m glad you came.”
Charo felt warmed by that smile. And something that had been running in the background of his head came to the forefront now.
“I know where the skeln is!” he exclaimed.
“Whatever do you mean?”
In answer, he began to sing.
“Above the snow the skellen tree,
Beneath the snow lie you and me,
And all around and looking in
The gentle faces of the lin…”
Yaret stared at him. “The skellen tree! That’s from…”
“The Last Guard.”
“Yes. I never understood that song. I always thought it was a skellentry, all one strange word. I didn’t know it was an actual tree. I had no idea what the song meant. Still don’t, if it comes to that.”
“I don’t see any gentle faces of the lin,” said Charo, glancing around.
She laughed. “Don’t worry, we will. Or I will, anyway. Admittedly I haven’t seen any up here, but further south I expect they’ll be there again.”
“Do they have gentle faces?”
“I don’t know. They’re never visible for long enough. They don’t seem ill-disposed, at least.”
“Tell me when you next see one.”
“It’s always too late,” said Yaret wryly. “But that’s the song about the skeln all right. Well done.”
She began to sing it softly as they rode along. Charo glanced backwards at the sullen hills, which were now receding rapidly. He was going home: not to a nightmare, although Obandiro had seemed like one for a while; but to the place where his friends waited.
Maybe the trip hadn’t gone so badly in the end. As Yaret said, they’d gained some useful knowledge: and he had been the one who worked it out. They’d confronted an attacking darkburn, and had survived unscathed. Plenty to tell Lo there, after all.
The Gyr Tarn was beautiful, thought Maeneb, even in this dull grey light. Or especially in this dull grey light. Its polished surface cradled the reflection of the domed hills like a leaden mirror.
She loved this place for its remoteness: for the sense of solitude. Nothing moved – not even the smallest breeze ruffled the metallic sheet of water laid before her. It looked so smooth she felt she could have walked across it. She had no idea how deep it was. The only flicker on the surface was not a wave but a reflection: she glanced upwards to see some bird of prey spiralling far above her in the sky.
And there was another, noisier movement behind her. Durba with the horses. It was impossible to have true solitude, even though the other woman was normally so quiet that Maeneb could almost forget that she was there. Almost. On all the long journey from Thield across the strange empty highlands and the rancid swamplands, Durba had made perhaps two dozen remarks. Say three a day.
“Shall we camp here?” being one. Durba said it now.
Maeneb nodded. “In the cave. But first we’d better do what we came here for.”
She wasn’t looking forward to it. She had the tool ready in her saddle-bag: a pair of slightly round-ended pliers. Best get it over with.
They led the horses along the last stretch of the tarn’s edge. Again she stopped to gaze out at its heavy beauty. So still, so obscure… she felt an odd emotion ripple through her: almost love. She could feel it for places if not for people.
Enough of that. Now she could see the cleft that led up to the Gyr cave, and had to set her mind to her task. Taking the pliers from her pack, she walked up the narrow passageway alongside the stream, towards the cavern with its hidden entrance.
The corpses were still there, although not in the pile in which the Riders had left them months ago, before the winter. They were scattered round like bits of scarecrow that the rooks had been at. Not rooks, though, in this case: the stonemen’s bodies were dismembered and several limbs were missing. Animals had torn at them – moorhounds, or perhaps even lions. She pulled a face at the disorder and the smell.
It wasn’t the fact that they were dead that was the problem. It was the fact that they were bodies. Maeneb disliked touching any bodies, alive or dead, and in some ways dead were preferable. At least they didn’t try to touch back.
Behind her Durba held out the bag that was to take the stones. Maeneb squatted down to the nearest body with a grimace. The head was partly eaten and what flesh remained was shredded and discoloured.
And the stones had gone. She turned the head with the pliers to make sure.
“They’ve already been taken.”
Standing up, she went to check the other bodies. They were all the same, with stained holes gaping in the skulls where the stones had once been. One had a full twelve holes; the others, between six and eight. Twelve stones denoted command, supposedly. Well, he wasn’t commanding anybody now.
And her journey had been wasted.
“Who did it?” said Durba. Her fourth remark today.
“Other stonemen – I presume. It certainly wasn’t animals. Let’s look around for any marks.” She could see no footprints on the cold wet rock.
But once they ventured through the narrow entrance to the cave – which was no colder than the outside – she pointed at the earthen floor. “There. Those are stonemen’s boot-prints: the crossed cord underneath the sole.”
Durba nodded and picked up a checked woollen square which lay damp and dirty on the ground. She gave Maeneb an inquiring look.
“Yaret left that,” said Maeneb. “I think she left a pan and other things as well: but they’ve gone now. I’m fairly sure that stonemen have been here for the same purpose as us – to take the stones. It’s hard to say how recently, however.”
Durba nodded again. Without being told, she went to fetch the horses and lead them carefully inside the spacious cave.
Maeneb looked around, remembering Yaret when she had been whole. And Eled, who had not been whole at all. Occasionally, when she was least expecting it, an image from the Farwth would blaze briefly in her mind: Eled in a Warden’s hut, or beside a pool, smiling, talking. It seemed that he was doing well. Or well enough. Of Yaret, although she asked, there came no word from the Farwth. It worried her a little. Although Yaret had been foreign to her she had not disliked her.
Durba began to fix the evening’s meal: the dried meat had been soaking in a leather bag all day, along with the dried fruit. They had finished the bread two days ago and made do with biscuit.
“A pointless journey,” Maeneb commented as they ate.
Durba shrugged.
Maeneb half-laughed. “You are allowed to talk,” she said.
The younger woman looked up at her a little shyly. “I know you prefer your companions to be quiet.”
“I do. But they don’t have to be silent. I’m not totally averse to speech.”
“I’m quite averse to talking, though,” said Durba. “So many of my thoughts sound like gibberish when they come out.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“I haven’t talked.”
“Well, try me now. I’ll tell you if it’s gibberish.”
But Durba hesitated. “You’ll think this remark is,” she said eventually, “but on the journey here – especially on the uplands – I kept thinking that I saw someone.”
“Who? A shepherd? Or a stoneman?”
“Neither. Somebody quite small, who disappeared when I looked harder. There wasn’t anybody there. I’m not explaining very well. But I wondered… if that area is known for mirages or something like that? I’ve never ridden out this way before.”
“No, not mirages,” said Maeneb thoughtfully, “although I believe the area may be known for lins. That’s what you’re seeing.”
“Lins?” Durba looked blank.
“Hobs? Secret folk. Well, folk isn’t the right word. They’re not people. Spirits of the land, maybe.”
“I’ve heard of hobs,” said Durba slowly, “only I thought they were just stories made up by old people to tease children with. Except…”
“What?”
“Well… in Thield’s last camp but one, that farm nearby that we bought supplies from: the old woman there wouldn’t sell me damsons because she said the hob liked them. I thought she was just being awkward when I saw her set them down before the hearthstone. But then…
“Then what?”
Durba shrugged. “Something seemed to flicker just beside her hearth. Even when there was no fire. Something…” She spread her hands and did not finish.
“Some people see them quite a lot. Yaret saw several lins, I think,” said Maeneb. “Hobs are indoor: lins are outdoor. So how many did you see on the uplands on the way here?”
“Twenty? ”
“But it might have been all the same one, twenty times.” Durba looked embarrassed. “Or two or three of them, at least. They weren’t all the same size and shape.”
“What size and shape were they?” asked Maeneb, curious.
Durba spread her hands. “Ah… hard to say. But some were squat and some were taller. I don’t know. When I looked properly there was nothing there. It’s all just an impression.”
“It’s an impression that I’ve never had,” said Maeneb, aware that she felt a slight, unreasonable resentment. Wasn’t she meant to be the one with special powers?
“You’ve never… detected them, they way you can detect people?”
“No, I’ve never felt a lin. Tell me next time you see one.”
“I will.” Again the younger woman hesitated. “Maeneb. Can you… when you feel people in your mind, can you feel me?”
“I know you’re there,” said Maeneb. “Barely. You’re very quiet. In mind, I mean, as well as in speech. I can’t read your thoughts.”
Durba seemed to relax noticeably. “Well, I’ll try not to think loud thoughts while we sleep!”
“I’ll appreciate that,” said Maeneb.
Soon afterwards they blew out the lamp and lay in the cool peace of the cave, their breathing and the faint gurgling of the brook outside the only audible sounds.
Maeneb lay awake, listening not with her ears but with her other senses. They were such a long way from anybody that all that she could hear were distant murmurs. Quite a disturbing tone to some of them; there was a great mass of stonemen somewhere, but they were far away to the north and west and not near any of her kin.
Also to the north but closer was the Farwth, a dense green bulk, a barrier: just now it told her nothing. She could just feel the presence of the Riders back in Thield and elsewhere as faint prickles on her consciousness, but they were so far away as to be barely distinguishable.
Nearer to her though, Durba’s mind was perfectly distinguishable although she was pretending to be asleep. While it was true that Maeneb could not read her thoughts, she could sense the cast and colour of them. And she knew that Durba was happy.
Durba had been happy throughout this journey, which was slightly puzzling. Even the loss of the stones did not perturb her. This was their first time travelling together as riding partners, so maybe happiness was the norm for Durba. Maybe she just liked journeying.
Maeneb could sympathise with that.
But she had the feeling it was more, because she’d sensed this happiness in Durba previously, before the trip. In Olbeth’s house at winterfest it had been quite noticeable.
Maeneb had arrived a day after Durba, blown into the hall by the winter wind. Durba had been busy chopping something at the table; there’d been nothing unusual at all about her frame of mind until she looked up and saw Maeneb. And then her thoughts lit up like a lantern. She was happy.
It worried Maeneb slightly, that maybe she was happy because Maeneb was there.
The oats and barley were growing strongly, if sparsely, now that the days were more rapidly lengthening. The warmth of early spring was welcome, although the rains were not so greatly appreciated – not in the town, at any rate. The plum-wine cellar had flooded and Anneke and Berlo had moved in with Lundo, the grumbly grandfather, until it dried out. Giving him something else to grumble about. He wasn’t a tavern, he said, the trappers had been bad enough; and no sooner had they moved out than he was lumbered with a squalling baby.
Nonetheless he had been caught crooning to it.
Yaret smiled as she stood up, wiping soil from her hands. It was almost time to sow the beans and peas; this patch on the east-side by the barley field should do fine. That would be Lo and Renna’s responsibility. Their grasp of farming knowledge – especially Lo’s – was becoming evident and increasingly useful.
Lo was intent on cultivating spearweed too. While it was nobody’s favourite food, it grew fast and easily. And on the north-side the callanet was already pushing up its feathery spikes.
It must thrive on ash. That was fortunate, not just for her – she had dried some for her own use and for Elket – but for the older girls in Obandiro. With the number of young men and women now living in the town since the carts arrived, the inevitable would soon happen without callanet. Better that they should be able to plan for children.
Two of the young men, the trapper brothers, were currently out hunting: for meat, not furs, although Yaret did not expect anything bigger than a rabbit to be brought home. The blind brother was determined to ride out on Wulchak, having regained perhaps a quarter of his sight, and she admired his strength of purpose.
However, they were not dependent on such hunting. A supply of small dead lambs and worn-out sheep was trickling in with spring. And soon Obandiro would have beef as well.
Ondro, on his cattle-search, had found the newest arrivals: a cowherd and his teenage son, who had survived the winter alone on a remote farmstead. Now that their supplies of flour had run out they had promised to bring their herd closer to the town.
That made… She counted on her fingers. Twenty-eight inhabitants, including baby Royet.
Not a town again by any means, but a respectable size for a village.
But it will be back to twenty-seven soon, she thought, as she walked towards the houses.
Ondro came out into the field to meet her.
“The oats are looking healthy,” he observed.
“Not bad, are they? How about your lambs?”
“Another two born today,” said Ondro. “Tomorrow I’ll go up to the hut and spend a couple of weeks there while the lambing’s in full swing.” He had rebuilt his shepherd’s hut sufficiently to make it habitable.
“Alone?”
“I’ll take Shuli. I think it’ll be good for her to help out with the lambing. Teach her a bit of care. And small hands, should be useful. I’d take Dil, too, if he didn’t always have three little followers trailing after him.”
Yaret laughed. “He makes a good big brother for them. I think Paro actually worships Dil.”
“I think Paro actually worships you, because of the wooden leg.”
“It doesn’t take much, does it? To be worshipped, I mean.”
Ondro paused. “Yaret. Stop. Stay here a minute. Don’t go on just yet. I’ve got something that I need to say.” She stopped in the middle of the field, while he seemed to fumble for words. “I don’t worship you, I mean – I mean not exactly worship, that’s the wrong word, but I do respect and like you very much, and I think – I mean, I hope, I hope I could make you
happy. I’d certainly try, and it would give the place something more to build on, maybe another family, you know?”
Yaret drew in her breath. She wasn’t totally surprised, yet she was taken by surprise.
Unsure of what to say, she waited. The words were pouring out of Ondro now.
“What I mean is, would you marry me? I’d be so glad. We could have the ceremony in the burial ground, I mean the remembrance circle, and I’m going to start rebuilding that end cottage on the Cross-street once the lambing’s over. Brichek says he’ll help and I’m sure Berlo will as well. And we could… start again.”
“Oh, Ondro.”
She saw the hope in his cheerful face collapse. “That’s a no, then.”
“That’s a no. I’m sorry, because I do respect and like you very much as well. You’re a good man, Ondro.” And now she found herself fumbling in her turn, because she did not want to give him false hopes, but she did not want to blight him either. “If things were different… but they’d have to be very different, and I just don’t think that it would work. In any case, I won’t be here much longer. In a few days I’m hoping to go west.”
“What?”
“I’ve been thinking about it since I got back from the trip up north. The stonemen all marched west to Kelvha and I think there’s going to be a war. Well, I know there’s going to be a war.”
“What does that have to do with us?”
“It has everything to do with us.” She began to walk through the newly sprouting field back to the streets, which were no longer still and ashen. There were signs of rebuilding work in the market and elsewhere, now that all the guardians had been removed and buried.
On the burial day everyone had stood in a circle and sung the Memorial Song that they had been composing slowly through the winter evenings, accompanied by Elket’s lutine. Too many undirected, helpless tears had been shed over the winter, Yaret thought: but the ritual gave their grief a shape if not a meaning.
Dil and the other young children had made up their own words to say over the mass graves. Even Bidi, who had arrived in the carts and was only four, took her part.
“Have a happy time, and have nice dreams, and lots of dogs to play with,” Bidi had carefully announced, and then helped their dog wave its thin paw. It would have made Gramma smile, thought Yaret.
But although their remains were safely underground, the dead still stood there at her shoulders, urging her to action. Or something did.
“If war is coming,” she told Ondro now, “I don’t want it to come here. I don’t want the stonemen here ever again. And I think the best way to prevent that is to join in the fight against them, whether with Kelvha or someone else. I know I can’t really make any difference: but I feel that if there is to be a war against the stonemen, Obandiro ought to be represented.”
“But that would be dangerous!”
“Maybe. I don’t know. It can’t be as dangerous as having the stonemen return here.”
“Well… I suppose you’re right. But I’d rather you didn’t go. If anyone goes off to fight, then I should be the one to do it, really,” said Ondro mournfully.
She looked at him with compassion. “Do you want to go to battle?”
“I wouldn’t know where to start. But I’m the only man in the town who’s not too old or too young, or blind or burnt, or doesn’t have small children.”
“That’s why you’re needed here, Ondro. Your strength and fitness are far more useful here than they could be on the battlefield.”
“It’s true I’ve never touched a sword.” He sounded both relieved and rueful.
“Whereas I have, and I’ve travelled west many times before; I know where I’m going. I just need to get the others to agree. I intend to tell them my plan at council tonight. But I wanted you to hear it first, so that you wouldn’t think I’m leaving because of you.”
By now they had crossed the Dondel brook and were walking up towards the market place. The sound of hammering rang through the spring-scented air.
“When will you set out?” asked Ondro.
“In two or three days, if the weather holds.”
“All right. Then since I’m moving up to my hut tomorrow, I’ll say my goodbye now.”
Once more he halted, turning round to face her. “I’ll come to this evening’s council but I can’t say it there. So. Yaret. I wish you all good speed and good luck and I just hope to the stars that there is no war, or that you get through it and come back home safely. You have to, you know, for the sake of all these children.”
“They don’t need me any more,” she said, somewhat ruefully. “They’ve got more important people than me now – people like Anneke and Ziya. And I think Habiya will become important to them too.” Habiya, Bidi’s grandmother from the carts, was already proving both patient and practical.
“You’re still important to them. You rescued them, the first four, and they won’t forget it.
So don’t you forget it either.”
“You did some rescuing yourself, Ondro.”
He shook his head. “Not much. I’d wait for you, if I thought it would do any good.”
Yaret bit her lip. Would it do any good? It wasn’t impossible… yet she didn’t think so.
Things would have to be very different. But maybe they would be very different.
“There will be other women, other chances,” she said at last.
“Not for me.”
“You don’t know that for sure. Everything changes, all the time.”
“And not always for the worse. That’s your favourite saying, isn’t it? But some things don’t change. Some feelings.” He looked at her with unusual solemnity, and then he turned and walked away.
Yaret had to sit down on the nearest wall. Such a good man, she thought. So strong and able in so many ways, and not a fool at all. Well, he can’t be a fool if he chooses me, can he?
Although she tried to laugh at herself, she felt a little shaky. Overwhelmed. It was no light thing to be so wanted; albeit by a man without much choice.
Have I made the right choice? I have just taken a fork in the road, she thought, without even pausing to consider it deeply. Before I’ve even taken one step west. Before I even know if I can go.
She was not sure what she would do, if too many people opposed her at the evening council. She might have to give way to them. But to her surprise, when it came to it there was no opposition.
All the town was there. The two new families from the carts had taken to holding their own council every other evening in the market square; and the grandfather and the trappers were often absent also – the grandfather seeing it as irrelevant, and the two brothers being busy with their snares. But this evening they all came.
And the first news was from Dil.
“Yaret wants to go away and fight the stonemen,” he announced to everybody.
“Thanks, Ondro,” she said wryly.
“I passed it on, because people needed time to think about it,” Ondro answered.
“But where will you go?” Elket asked her.
“I believe the stonemen are planning an attack on Kelvha, probably striking at the outer provinces first – the least well defended. So I’ll go to Gostard, where I’m known, and see what’s happening there.”
“I should go instead,” said Brichek, the younger trapper.
“No; your leg’s not healed yet. Yaret’s the best person,” put in Shuli. “She’s been west before and she’s fought stonemen. And I agree that somebody from Obandiro ought to go and fight to represent us. I’d like to go with her but I know she won’t let me.”
“You’re right there,” Yaret said.
Nobody tried to tell her how dangerous it would be. They had all lived too close to danger for too long, she thought, to worry about that. On the contrary, everyone agreed that someone ought to go and fight. Only Ziya made any objection to it being Yaret, on the basis of her gender.
“A woman’s place is to protect,” said Ziya, who had become more assertive lately. “To heal. It’s not a woman’s job to fight. Nor kill. We have enough of that from men. Women shouldn’t be doing it too.”
“I hope by fighting to protect those who can’t,” said Yaret. “If somebody attacked Paro and your other children, what would you do?”
“I’d fight them like a bear,” said Ziya. “Only not like a bear, because I’m not strong enough. So I would lose. And then I’d be dead and my fighting wouldn’t have helped anyone, least of all my children. I would have been better off hiding them to start with, or negotiating with the attackers.”
“Have you tried negotiating with stonemen?”
Ziya shrugged. “Have you? And how much did fighting back help any of the people in Obandiro?”
“And you’ve got a wooden leg,” added the grandfather. “How much use do you think you’re really going to be?”
“Some,” said Yaret firmly. “At least the leg’s impervious to blows.” She noticed with dismay that the smallest ones had started to look solemn and even tearful at the mention of stonemen and fighting. Paro took a great sniff, apparently resolving not to cry.
“You could kick the stonemen really hard,” said Dil, who had also noticed Paro’s trembling lip. “And go hopping into battle.” He demonstrated. Paro did not laugh, but at least he did not burst into tears.
“Indeed I could,” said Yaret. “Although I think that I’d prefer to ride. I plan to take Poda, because I suspect she’s used to conflict.”
“You won’t take the donkeys?”
“Not on this trip.” She saw Dil relax a little.
“You’ll need a lot of gear,” said Charo. “I’ll help you sort it out.” She knew from his manner that he felt he ought to ride out with her. But she did not think he actually wanted to, and she would certainly not encourage him to do so. So she merely nodded.
Frali put up her hand. “Who will look after the town while you’re away?”
“Everybody,” said Yaret. “You all know what to do if stonemen come. But I don’t think they will, not for a long time anyway. They’ve all marched to the west. That’s why I’m going there.”
“But,” said eight year old Korli, “but, but, what if other people come here?”
“I hope they will. And I hope you’ll make them welcome.”
“But what if a lot of people come?”
“From where?” said Yaret, somewhat sadly.
“But,” said Korli, “but, but, what happens if those Riders of the Vonn come here?”
“I’ve told them most of the story,” explained Dil.
“It’s not very likely they’ll come here,” said Yaret. “But if they do, then you can make them doubly welcome.”
“But,” said Korli, “but, how can we tell if they’re real? There are some bad men out there.”
“There certainly are,” said the grumbly grandfather. “You never know who you’re letting in. Could be anybody.”
I sometimes wish I hadn’t let you in, thought Yaret. But since Korli was looking genuinely anxious, she thought for a moment and then said,
“That’s easy. If somebody rides into town claiming to be one of the Vonn, just ask them if they know Rothir the dwarf.”
“How will that help?” demanded Korli. “Because Dil said he’s not a dwarf at all. Is he?”
“No, he’s not. He’s quite tall really. But, Korli, you stand there: and just imagine you’re guarding the south-gate. Now, I’m a stranger who comes riding up the road.” Korli jumped off his seat and took up a fist-fighter’s stance while she walked towards him. “Clippety clop, clippety clop.”
“Who goes there?” yelled Korli.
“Ah, hallo there, sentry. This looks like a nice town. I’m a Rider of the Vonn and I think I’d like to stay here. Now, what do you ask me?”
“Do you know Rothir the Dwarf?” shouted Korli at the top of his voice.
“Rothir? Yes, I know Rothir,” said Yaret. “Now you say, tell me about him.”
“Tell me about him!” shouted Korli.
Yaret scratched her head. “Well, for a start, he’s obviously a dwarf,” she said.
“No, he’s not! He’s not! You don’t know him at all! You’re an enemy spy!” And Korli charged at her legs. As she caught him and swung him up and round in the air, all the other children laughed, even Paro – although he looked completely baffled.
So that turned out all right. The children wouldn’t feel her leaving as a loss, now that they had so many others to look after them.
Two days later she was ready to set out, having said only brief, unsentimental farewells.
She did not want to make too much of this journey, in case she were to come crawling back a fortnight later with her tail between her legs. It was not out of the question.
Charo helped her load up Poda. Clothes, food, weapons – her sword, her bow and as many arrows as she’d been able to knap stone heads for. Without a working forge, she’d scoured the eastern fields for flints, and used the stone-chipping skills she’d learnt three years ago from the father of her one-time lover, Dalko.
She had chosen not to think of Dalko for the last few months. She thought more often of his father, Colne the fletcher, who had painstakingly taught her the old craft of knapping –
while Dalko, looking on, had laughed at her for wasting time in learning it.
It had annoyed her. But forget it now. No room for unwanted memories any more than sentimental ones. Yet she had kept room in her pack for her one-string gourd, wrapped in a woollen pouch made from the last of the slightly blood-stained samples.
“If you’re not back in a year, I’ll come after you,” said Charo as he strapped up her bags.
She found she could not speak. A year? But that too was not out of the question.
Charo added, “Don’t worry about us. We’ll be careful. We’ll keep practising our archery and keep lookouts and we’ll defend the town if need be.”
“I hope it needn’t be. The stones should give you some protection against darkburns, at least.” For the stones that she had gathered from the stonemen – eight in all – were mostly distributed around the town: four were placed strategically by the main roads at the town’s margins, one was at the Dondel Bridge, and one was in the cellar at the inn. The remaining two she kept herself. Although there was no certainty about how well they would keep darkburns away, or how long they would work for, it made her feel a little better to know that the town had some defence.
As she mounted the laden Poda, Charo said, “Just wait a minute.” Then he beckoned down the Cross-street. All the children, and teenagers too, and Anneke, appeared flowing in a
stream from the house where they’d set up the school after fitting the new roof. They arrayed themselves along the road.
Charo waved at them and they began to sing. It was the Journeying Song, that strange wistful mixture of sadness and anticipation; and Yaret paused to listen.
Then, while they were still singing, she nudged at Poda’s flanks and rode on slowly past them, turning only once to wave as she left the edge of town. It was a good way to go, she thought. It saved any more farewells.
The singing voices drifted after her as she set out on the track leading west. After fording the Dondel upstream from the bridge, she turned to look again. She could no longer see anyone. But the remnant of voices still hung in the air like the thinnest wisp of smoke.
So this was it. It hurt to be leaving now, as it had never hurt to leave her grandparents on her annual journey. Perhaps the old couple stood at her shoulders with all the other dead.
You too, Grandda. The only people who have loved me, she reflected, other than the parents that I never knew. Just those few fleeting images I have of my father walking alongside me, so high up. My mother who left no memories at all. Yet I have been assured that she loved me... Which Dalko never did. Everything was a laugh with him: it was refreshing until it became wearisome, and then painful. When he said he loved me, that was just another joke.
I will not marry an insincere man, she thought, or one whom I cannot respect. I can respect Ondro. Maybe I could grow to love him, if. If. So many ifs.
If I even make anything of this journey. Where will it lead? What am I doing? How do the Vonn manage this – the travelling into unknown risk, the heading off to battle? I am like a child with a toy sword pretending to be a soldier. Although I told Ondro that I knew what I was doing, I have no idea.
Just making it up as I go along… Charo assured me that it didn’t show. But it’s true none the less.
I leave behind a trail of my errors and omissions, she thought. I hope this journey doesn’t prove to be the biggest one of all.
As the land slipped past her, the sadness did as well. Yaret knew this territory; she knew her horse, and she began to breathe more easily as the quiet landscape unfolded before her. After the constant demands of Obandiro’s twenty-eight people she admitted to herself that it came as a relief to be alone.
When she set Poda to a canter the horse sped willingly along the dirt trail that led due west. It was overgrown with weeds, making her wonder if anyone had used it in the last few months. Many miles to the north the stonemen also had marched west; but she would rather take this trail than theirs. She knew the spots to camp and sleep and shelter, and for the first day or two could almost pretend she was on her usual annual journey with her load of woollen samples.
But without her donkeys. She missed the donkeys until she resolutely visualised them thriving under Dil’s diligent care. Dolm was a handful, and together with the cart-horses and the trappers’ horses, kept Dil busy; it meant that he would not have time to feel the loss of Poda. Better for them all that way.
As Yaret crossed the Birchfields – which were not fields at all, but swampy woodlands of thin, lichen-decorated trees – the sense of normality increased. This place was untouched by fire; she could almost imagine that no such devastation had happened after all.
When she found a spot amongst the spindly birches that was dry enough to camp, she ate her bread and apple and then rolled herself in her blanket beneath the lacy boughs, as if she was on her usual summer journey. A little cold for summer, though not as chilly as the winter they had endured down in the cellars. It had been a worrying time, as she had needed to ensure that everyone stayed warm enough. The hot stones had worked in the evening but by morning all the heat had gone.
The next dawn she was awoken by the hopeful song of warblers. Early bog-bean was flowering by the ponds; in the water were dim clouds of frogspawn waiting for the spring.
She passed two beaver dams that were newly built since last year. Not everything had been destroyed. Not even most things; in here she could pretend that all was as it should be.
Emerging on the far side of the Birchfields to the meagre pasture with its scattered farmsteads, she clung on that sense of normality for a while, until gradually the differences became too obvious to ignore. While the farmsteads here were not burnt out, some were empty and seemed to be abandoned. At several others she got the impression that the inhabitants were hiding. On her approach to one house that she knew well, a strange man appeared round the corner of the building and pulled a bow on her.
“Where is Bina?” she said, naming the owner, but perhaps too quietly for him to hear. At any rate he stood still aiming at her with his bow and saying nothing, until she went away.
Two miles further on, the signs of many feet marching over this land became obvious even to her untrained eye. She could not tell how recently it might have been invaded; for none of the footprints had survived, only the deeply trampled trail. There must have been hundreds of them.
After crossing several empty fields through broken fences, she stopped at a long farmhouse where she’d previously done business. As she approached, an elderly woman came to the door. Yaret recognised her as the place’s grandmother; but to her civil greeting the woman made no reply except to say curtly, “Leave us alone.” She had two small children clinging to her skirts.
“Where are the menfolk?”
“They took them. And the animals.”
“Who did? The stonemen?”
“Is that what you call them? I call them monsters. Go away. Leave us alone.”
When Yaret tried to tell her about Obandiro and the help to be found there, the woman shook her head as if she’d never heard of it. It might as well have been a thousand miles away.
There was nothing to be done except move on. The fields were showing signs of new crops, even if they were only roots and spearweed. This was not fertile country. But the sodden water-meadows were as empty of cattle as their farmsteads were of people. Yaret presumed the cattle had been stolen to eat; but what of all the men? Had they been taken as slaves? Or killed and thrown into some ditch? Although she saw no evidence of such burials, it seemed all too possible.
She rode on doggedly but in increasing apprehension of what might lie ahead. The sparse farms and empty pastures petered out again: in place of them arose the knobbly unremarkable hills known as the Uin-Buin. They were really hardly tall enough to be called hills – rather, they were mounds, but too steep and shrubby to grow crops easily.
None the less they were inhabited. Or so she hoped. If the farmsteads had been vulnerable, the people here were doubly so.
As Poda trudged uphill on the winding track between green hillocks, Yaret looked round with trepidation. The path was too rainwashed for her to read any footprints here. The groves of plum and cherry trees that nestled in the shelter of the Uin-Buin were thankfully unburnt, though still bare of leaves; and the place was worryingly bare of people. Only three fat wood-pigeons plodded complacently underneath the boughs.
The track dipped down again between the steeply rising slopes. She passed through glades that were overhung with leggy hazel stems. No voice was heard: no inhabitant was visible, although a thin waft of smoke drifted in the air. That was not altogether reassuring.
When she reached a tiny glade hidden between two mounds, Yaret pulled Poda up.
Dismounting, she unstrapped her saddlebags and looked around. Still no sign of anyone.
But just as her concern was growing, the grassy slope ahead of her was disturbed by an abrupt movement of the turf. An oval door popped open and a head poked out.
“Not today, thank you,” it said, and disappeared again.
Yaret grinned in relief. “Rubila? Is that you?” she called. “It’s Yaretkoro the cloth. I’m not selling today, but I’ll happily buy food off you if you have any to spare.”
The door popped open again, with a faint but distinct noise as of a cork being unstuck. She knew that despite appearances the oval door was made not just of turf, but of scored wood cleverly covered with a living layer of grass, close-fitting in its frame.
“Yaretkoro the cloth is it? You’re very early this year,” said Rubila, shuffling out and squinting against the light, even though the sun was well-shrouded by a thick layer of grey cloud.
“I know I’m too early,” said Yaret. “I’m travelling. It’s a long story.”
As she had hoped, the word story was a key that unlocked the green oval doors of other groundhouses. These doors did not pop but squeaked open as more heads poked out to listen.
“Who’s that? Is that Yaretkoro?”
“It is, and greetings to you, Hubilo,” Yaret called out.
Meanwhile Rubila continued her sideways shuffle down the path to the track where Yaret stood with Poda stamping alongside her. Yaret put out a hand to take her outstretched fingers: Rubila gently stroked it and then reached up to touch Yaret’s wet hair before turning her attention to the horse.
“What happened to your donkeys?” Her stubby fingers were as gentle as a breeze on Poda’s coat. “This one’s big. Smells noble.”
Yaret laughed. “More noble than the donkeys? I don’t think Dolm would agree. But I left them behind this time. I left …” She stopped, unable to list the many things that she had left
behind since visiting the Uin-Buin hills last year. So much explaining she would have to do, and she did not know where to begin.
“And how are your grandparents?” asked Rubila.
Yaret swallowed, opened her mouth and said nothing.