Chapter II
It was noon, the sun at its zenith and merciless in its heat, beating down upon the arid trail with golden ferocity. The roadside dwellings had grown fewer as they walked, until now all that was visible was a wide expanse of green, open field, the air above it shimmering in the haze like rippled water.
And yet the small feet that trod the path were light and happy, voices lifted in high spirits. Seventeen elves, their packs half-full with what little they owned, swinging loosely from their shoulders and crooked arms.
Raiwen Dale was one of these, smiling and walking arm-in-arm with her husband, Tevin. The air was so fresh, so clean, so strange on her lungs, used as they were to the choking darkness of the mines. She breathed in, long and deep.
‘Smell that?’ she said. ‘Grass. Living, growing grass. Isn’t that something?’
‘Something special,’ Tevin answered, affectionately gripping his wife’s hand and following her gaze out over the meadows. ‘Haven’t seen such a sight in… Well, a long time. So it feels, anyhow.’
‘So it is.’ Raiwen returned the squeeze of his fingers. ‘First time for the kiddo, I should think.’
They turned together to watch their son, Arrian, as he and his friend kicked a stone along the path between them, a trail of dust rising behind it as it rolled. At twenty years of age, it had only been two years since Arrian had moved from working outside the mine to working down below; not long enough for the dust to have settled in his lungs, but long enough for the coal-black scarring to be evident over his arms and hands. His head too, shaved as all their ilk were, bore the occasional dark fleck, darker than his hair which he hadn’t grown in years. Raiwen had almost forgotten what colour it was, until she remembered him as a babe, with a shock of oak-brown locks that reminded her of her own, when she’d worn it long.
‘The scars will fade,’ Tevin said, as though reading her mind. ‘Maybe not fully, but they will fade some. A few years in Woodston and you’ll never know he was in the mines.’
‘I hope so.’
Most of those travelling were miners too, males and females alike. Many were headed for the neighbouring city of Fennering, where the Duke and Duchess were reported to be a just and gracious pair, and understanding of the needs of the people, both nobles and serfs alike. It was said that some elves had even risen to the position of landowners, lived in a house with a separate room for sleeping and its own privy. Raiwen and Tevin Dale, though, were on course for Woodston, a small town settled comfortably on Fennering’s outskirts, close enough for easy contact with the city, but not so far that they fell too close to the borders of the wild Outerlands. It was here that their elder children had made their home, their son educating the youngsters in reading and writing, and their daughter taken on as apprentice to the town midwife. With her predecessor now advancing in years, she was preparing to fully assume the role herself, a position of great respect and responsibility. Their relative isolation, clinging to the cusp of civilisation, meant that they rarely came into contact with human nobles, and thus were left to their own devices, to prosper as they could. Now that half the elven population of Mandeville had fled, and Arrian was old enough to take care of himself, it struck Raiwen and Tevin as the opportune moment to start again, to put down roots where they could flourish, and blossom into happiness.
Arrian saw his parents looking over, and waved, which they returned with their joined hands.
‘They look happy, don’t they?’ said his friend, Gwyn. ‘Don’t see many smiles like that round serf-turf.’
‘First day in the sun for a decade,’ Arrian replied, shrugging as his parents turned back round to resume their steady march. ‘Feels like ages to me and I’ve not been down there half as long as they have.’
‘I’d hardly call it ages, Ari. Two years, tops.’
‘As if you’d know. Never done a proper day’s work in your life.’
Gwyn gave him a look of affront but Arrian stood by what he said. Gwyn was the son of a cooper, a barrel-maker, and spent his days carving and polishing wood for the nobles’ hogsheads and casks. It was an enviable position; he was tanned where Arrian was pale, stood tall where Arrian was used to crouching, and even able to keep his hair long, less likely as it was to catch or burn or turn black from coal dust. He had something of a miner’s build though; a stockiness, a width to his chest and shoulders that Arrian lacked. When their playful sparring was a test of strength, Gwyn went undefeated, but when it came to speed and dexterity, he was outranked by his friend. Arrian did not hold Gwyn’s fortunate position against him, knew they each had their own job to do, but he’d make sure Gwyn knew how lucky he was. A cooper couldn’t know the darkness of the mines, couldn’t know the heaviness of the rock pressing down from above, from all sides. Couldn’t know the strange wailing noise that echoed through the chambers as they caved, which they did, and often. Like a banshee at the bedside crying down your death.
‘Swap you for a day,’ said Arrian. ‘Then we’ll see what you say.’
‘Won’t have to when we reach Woodston,’ Gwyn said with a wink and a slap on the back. He and his father too were heading to the town, where his father’s cousin had a talented carpenter’s hand. ‘You can do what you like up that way.’
Arrian snorted, and in a moment of irritation he kicked the stone they’d been passing far into the grass. ‘So you say. I’m getting stuck with my brother.’
‘Well he teaches, doesn’t he? Could be worse.’
‘Could it? Could be better.’
‘Lighten up, Ari. You could be with your sister.’ Gwyn laughed at the thought. ‘You, a midwife. Founder’s bones, imagine that. Blood, tears, and babes. Couldn’t imagine anything worse.’ He shook his head in humour. His hair shone beneath the sun’s rays and Arrian felt a pang of jealousy, and ran a hand over his own shorn scalp.
‘True,’ he conceded, but shrugged again as though uncertain. ‘I don’t know. It’ll be better than the mines, I’m sure, but… is that it? I didn’t think it would just be better than the mines.’
Gwyn tutted and lightly punched him on the arm. ‘Trust you. Only just got out of Mandeville – only just got out of the dark – and you’re whinging already.’
‘I’m not whinging.’
‘Yes you are. You know what you need?’ He left it open for an answer but Arrian didn’t humour him. ‘You need to make an honest woman out of Morna before any Woodston sinners get their eye on her.’
Arrian still wouldn’t play along, wouldn’t rise to his remarks. But he did lift his eyes to look at her, Morna, treading lightly along beside her parents and sister, ragged skirt fluttering round her lower legs in the noonday breeze. As though she could sense him looking, she turned too, her violet eyes watching him from beneath dark lashes, and she smiled, quickly, secretively. Arrian smiled back. She was a curious one, Morna. Quiet, but not shy; she could have a sharp tongue and a quick wit when she wanted to. A strong woman too, had worked beside him in the tunnels, fast and careful, never a complaint, never a mistake, never a cry. Not even in those first few weeks, when so many of them did cry, when their hands bled and their chests burnt and they forgot what the sun looked like. She had felt her beautiful brown hair shorn from her head and hadn’t made a sound. She was brave. Braver than he, and he admired her for it.
‘Arrian, you’re staring at her.’
He shook his head and looked away. He didn’t meet Gwyn’s gaze but he could feel him smirking, and scowled in response.
‘Why are you so interested in me and Morna?’ he said. ‘Isn’t there anyone interested in you to occupy your time?’
He meant it as half a joke, half an insult, but Gwyn merely laughed and took up kicking another stone. ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you if the Woodston folk are keen.’ And he passed the stone to Arrian to continue the game.
By the time they stopped to rest the sun hung a little lower in the sky, but nearly cloudless as it was, the heat still burnt. Arrian sat with his back against a large oak, his parents too taking shelter from the rays beneath its shady boughs, their pale skin acclimatised to the darkness of the underground.
‘Here,’ said his father, tearing away a chunk of some stale loaf and handing it across. ‘Keep your strength up.’
‘Thanks.’ Arrian took it and eyed it with suspicion. He hit it against his knee, and winced. ‘Pap. You’ve given me a rock. You could kill a man with this.’
‘Cheeky beggar,’ said Tevin with a chuckle. ‘You’ll eat it and you’ll like it. Enjoy it while you can; it’ll only get more stale.’
‘It can’t get any more stale, it’s fossilised.’
‘Just eat your bread, Arrian,’ his mother tutted, struggling to tear her own in half. She popped a chunk in her mouth and chewed it thoughtfully. ‘I could get used to this. Lunch under the sun, warm grass, family and friends.’
Arrian bit into his own and it almost took out a tooth, but he had to agree. ‘And the food’s not covered in soot.’
‘Very true. No soot.’
There came a soft rustling from the other side of the tree, the sound of someone settling themselves at the base of the oak. Arrian turned to see who it was, and was greeted by a smile and a pair of large, violet eyes.
‘Morna,’ he said, shifting round to better sit by her side. ‘How are you holding up?’
Morna lifted her foot. She had removed her leather shoes and now she wiggled her toes. ‘My feet have been better,’ she said, lowering it again and pressing it into the grass so that the small green blades rose up between her toes. ‘But they’ll get me there. What about you?’
‘The same. Ma says we’ll make it there tomorrow though. I’ll live ‘til then.’
She laughed a little in response, picking at her own bread and letting tiny crumbs fall and disappear into the ground beside her. ‘Have you got a rock for lunch too?’
‘Rock, stone, flint. Think a rock might taste better.’
She laughed again and he felt a warmth in his chest that he often felt around her, especially when she laughed, especially when it was at something he’d said. But then something in her look darkened, and her smile faded.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
She held out her hand to him, palm upwards, to reveal a small black M tattooed over the criss-crossing blue veins at the top of her wrist. ‘Wherever we go,’ she said, lightly brushing the tip of her finger over the ink, ‘we’re never going to get rid of these, are we?’
Arrian looked at his own wrist, where an identical letter was scratched over the soft skin. The M of Mandeville, the mark of the Duke’s jurisdiction, permanently etched into their bodies. As much as they were serfs and not wholly under his control, it always felt like a mark of property, like they were owned.
Arrian reached out and took her gently by the wrist, so that her fingers softly slipped around his own, and the marks were hidden.
‘It won’t matter once we’re there,’ he said. ‘They won’t mean anything, to anyone. Just another scar. And we’ve got enough of those, haven’t we?’
She smiled a little at that, and squeezed his wrist to show she understood. But he could see it in her eyes, that look of not quite believing, that lack of conviction. And he didn’t say it but he felt it himself too, and it worried him, if they would look at that mark every day, and feel they were never truly free.
As though she could read his mind, Morna took his other hand and spoke in a voice that was barely above a whisper. ‘At least it’ll remind us that we changed things. They couldn’t make us stay.’
She was a wonder, he thought, and he made up his mind.
‘Morna,’ he said. ‘There was something I wanted to talk to you about.’
She smiled, wide, and he knew he’d made the right decision. But just as he opened his mouth to go on, there was a shout from close by.
‘Something’s coming! Something’s coming down the road!’
They followed the sound of the cry. Davi, another miner getting on in years, stood a short ways from them, hand raised and pointing in the direction they had come from, back towards Mandeville.
‘What is it? Humans?’
‘Animals, I’d say.’
‘They’re moving fast.’
‘Too fast. They’ll be on us in half a minute.’
It came like a cloud, a swift, dark cloud, emerging from the horizon and getting closer with every passing second. Morna stepped up to the roadside for a better view and Arrian followed her, momentarily forgetting what he’d wanted to say. The ground began to shake and thunder as the black shapes approached, and the unmistakable pound of horse hooves grew loud, like war drums beating out an imminent attack. Then a red banner appeared, rising from the cloud, tall and formidable against the blue sky.
Arrian suddenly found his mother at his shoulder. ‘Arrian,’ she said, her voice quick and breathless. ‘Get off the road. Hurry now.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘Get in the ditch, kiddo.’ She pushed him back so that he slipped a couple of inches down the grassy verge, but he caught himself, steadied himself, and by the time he looked back up the figures in the cloud were visible.
Horsemen. Dark, armoured horsemen, their tunics emblazoned with a red crest he didn’t recognise, and swords hanging at their sides, polished hilts flaring in the sun. The horses beneath them, mouths flecked with foam and huge teeth champing at the bit, their dark flanks glistening with a thin sheen of sweat. They rode with frightening speed, and the dust rose at their hooves and the ground seemed to echo each stamp along the road. They carried something with them too, something that couldn’t be seen but hung over them like mist over midnight water. A malevolence, a palpable sense of danger, of peril, merciless and closing fast.
Davi was still stood at the far side of the path, and now he stepped into the centre and addressed the riders.
‘Who are you?’ he cried, raising his voice above the hammering hooves. ‘What’s your business here?’
It was impossible to tell if the riders heard him, because the man at the head responded not with speech, but with action. His right hand released his horse’s reins, and went down to his sword. With one swift movement he drew it free, raised it high into the air. Its blade flashed, piercing in its brightness, and then came down hard and fast, slicing cleanly across Davi’s unprotected neck. His head tipped back and a red spray arced through the warm air, splattering in neat droplets across the ground. He rocked slowly, back on his heels. Then he crumpled and fell, blood pooling about his head, eyes wide in shock. And then the brightness left them, and they took on the cold, dim hollowness of death.
Then came the screams. A chorus of voices raised in terror, and people were running, the horsemen among them like wolves upon sheep. Arrian didn’t move, his feet rooted to the ground in sheer, terrified disbelief, eyes fixed on the red puddle growing beneath Davi’s corpse. Another body fell close by, and there was more red, and one less cry.
His mother was beside him still, and now she jolted into action. ‘Hide!’ she screamed, eyes wide and wild. ‘Hide, Arrian, now!’ And she pushed him again, forcefully this time, so that he fell back fully into the ditch, and for a moment stars flashed across his vision as his head knocked hard into the ground. He tried to shake them away, blindly pushing himself upright but still aware of the screams, of the hooves, of the screech of iron blades cutting through the air.
His sight began to clear and he clawed his way back up the bank, tearing fistfuls of grass out in panic, desperate to know if his parents lived, if Morna did, if Gwyn did. He raised himself above the verge and devastation met him.
More had died and one was dying, a young woman, blood pouring from her mouth and crawling, crawling vainly to the place where Arrian lay. For a second her eyes met his own, blue and bright and terrified before, like Davi, the light left them and she fell forwards onto the dirt. He couldn’t see Morna, or Gwyn. Then he caught sight of his mother and father, racing towards each other, arms outstretched in a desperate attempt to hold the other, their faces stricken with fear and flecked with blood. And then he saw the black hooves of a horse coming at his head, felt a brief and blinding pain as they struck, and then he lost himself in darkness.