The Gold Falcon

Men who could ride in a warband were harder to come by, but the lords put together the biggest troops they could. Everyone remembered the Horsekin, who years before had ridden out of nowhere to besiege Cengarn itself. Yet at first, the settlement of the Melyn Valley proceeded so easily that it seemed the Horsekin had forgotten about Deverry. Farms spread out, villages grew among them. The virgin land produced splendid crops and the farmers plenty of children. It seemed that the gods had particularly blessed the valley and its new inhabitants.

Then, some fifteen years before Neb and his brother came staggering out of the forest, the raiders struck at a village near Cengarn in the first of a series of raids. Each time they slaughtered the men, took the women and children as slaves, looted, and burned what they couldn’t carry off. Finally the gwerbret in Cengarn and his loyal lords had caught them and crushed them. Gerran’s father had come home from that battle wrapped in a blanket and slung over his saddle like a sack of grain. Gerran could remember rushing out into the ward and seeing two men lifting the corpse down. His mother’s scream when she saw it still seemed to ring out, loud in his memory.

‘What’s wrong with you, captain?’ Pedrys said abruptly. ‘You look as grim as the Lord of Hell himself!’

‘My apologies, my lord,’ Gerran said. ‘I was just thinking about the raiders.’

‘That’s enough to make any man grim, truly,’ Cadryc said, then yawned. ‘We’d best get some sleep. I want to be up at dawn and riding as soon as we can.’

‘Very well, your grace.’ Gerran stood up. ‘I’ll just take a last look around the camp.’

Scattered across the meadow, most of the men were asleep in their blankets by dying campfires. The warm night was so achingly clear that the stars hung close like a ceiling of silver. Nearby, guarded by a pair of sentries, the horses stood heads down and drowsy in their hobbles. Gerran was starting out to have a word with the sentries when he saw someone coming towards him. He laid his hand on his sword hilt, but it was only the gerthddyn, his pale hair strikingly visible in the dark.

‘Lovely night, isn’t it?’ Salamander said.

Although Gerran had been thinking just that, hearing this unmanly sentiment voiced annoyed him.

‘Warm enough, I suppose,’ Gerran said. ‘Tell me somewhat. What made you ride with us?’

‘I’m not truly sure,’ Salamander said.

‘You told our lord that you wanted vengeance.’

‘Well, that’s true enough. The Horsekin killed a good friend of mine some years ago. And I’m looking for my brother, of course. You may remember that when I last passed your way, I told you –’

‘– about your brother the silver dagger. What is this? Do you think you’re going to find him just wandering around the countryside?’

‘Imph, well, you never quite know where he’ll turn up.’

Gerran waited, then realized that Salamander was going to tell him no more unless he pried.

‘Well, now that you’re here, you’re riding under my orders,’ Gerran said instead. ‘I want you to stay well back out of the way if it comes to battle.’

‘Fair enough.’ Salamander bowed, took a few steps away, then suddenly stooped down and picked something up from the grass. ‘One of the lads is getting careless. I wonder whose bridle this belongs on?’

When he held up a brass buckle, Gerran could barely see it. Salamander pressed it into his hand, then walked on with a cheery goodnight. Gerran rubbed the buckle between his fingers as he watched him go. So, he told himself, that’s why he’s so cursed odd! There’s Westfolk blood in his veins.

Around noon on the morrow, the combined warbands reached a stone marker beside the road. The tieryn called a halt to rest the horses and let the men eat a scant meal from their saddlebags. Although the cairn, a mere heap of grey stones, carried no inscriptions, those who had been let in on its secret knew that a shallow canyon nearby led due south. The road itself ended at the marker, because extending it south would have given their enemies an easy path to the tieryn’s lands.

At the head of the canyon, a small waterfall trickled down over ragged shelves of dark rock, fringed at the edges with long streamers of ferns. The men dismounted and led their horses down a narrow path to the reasonably flat floor of the canyon, where a faint trail led along the edge of a stream through pine forest. After a mile or so of this difficult travelling, the canyon walls grew lower and began to splay out. The trail widened just enough to allow the men to mount up and ride single file. They could see bright sunlight and open space ahead through the trees where the trail widened once again. Gerran yelled at his men to fall into their regular riding order, two abreast and ready for trouble, as he remarked to Lord Pedrys.

‘Do you think the Horsekin would lay an ambuscade?’ Pedrys said.

‘I don’t know, my lord, but I wouldn’t put it past them.’

In dappled sunlight the men rode through the last of the pines. No one spoke; everyone kept one hand on his sword hilt and the reins of his horse in the other. Cut stumps appeared among the grasses and weeds of second growth. One last bend in the trail brought them to a long broad valley, green with ripening wheat and meadowland. A couple of miles off to the west the Melyn ran, a thin sparkling line at this distance. Gerran could just make out a patch of black beside it – Neb’s farm, he assumed.

‘I don’t see any Horsekin,’ Cadryc remarked. ‘Don’t see much of anything but grass.’

‘True spoken, your grace,’ Gerran said. ‘Most likely the bastards are long gone.’

‘We’ve got to get more fighting men down here. All there is to it!’

‘Or else stop these cursed raids once and for all, your grace,’ Gerran said. ‘If the king would lend us an army –’

‘That’s in the laps of the gods,’ Cadryc said. ‘We’ll worry about the grand schemes later. We’ve got a hard job to do right now.’

With a wave of his arm the tieryn led them forward. They rode on down to the smoking tangle of wood and ashes that had once been Brwn’s farm. The fire had leapt to the apple tree outside the earthen wall and left it as black and gaunt as a dead sentry, but the damp grass still grew green beyond. Nearby lay the corpse of a tall, burly man, its head torn half off its shoulders. In the hot sun he lay swollen and stinking. Birds and foxes had eaten a good bit of him. Salamander rode up to join Gerran and the noble-born.

‘Neb’s uncle,’ Salamander said. ‘What’s left fits the description anyway.’

‘Let’s get him buried,’ Cadryc said. ‘There’s naught else to do for him.’

‘We might as well wait and dig one long ditch,’ Pedrys said. ‘I’ll wager there’s more dead men ahead of us.’

Unfortunately, Pedrys had spoken the truth. When they rode up to the ruins of the village, they found the first corpses about three hundred yards from the bridge. Four men lay in a straggling line, cut down as they tried to flee. Another twelve lay in the village square, either rotting and spongy or half-burnt. The latter had most likely been killed in their houses, then caught under burning beams and walls.

‘But who pulled them free?’ Pedrys said. ‘What is this? Did the raiders want to count their kills?’

‘Most likely they just wanted to make sure they’d slaughtered the lot,’ Gerran said.

‘If so, they did a bad job of it,’ Salamander said. ‘Neb told me how many men and lads were in the village, you see. The women and children are long gone by now, of course, prize booty, all of them. So there should be twenty dead, not counting Neb’s uncle.’

‘Then that leaves four men missing,’ Pedrys said. ‘Maybe they got away in time.’

But three of the men turned up lying dead, clustered together by the village well where, apparently, they’d tried to make a stand. One corpse still clutched a hay rake.

‘Why didn’t the raiders put these men with the others?’ Salamander said. ‘I wonder if someone interrupted them?’ He looked up as if he were studying the sky.

‘I doubt me if the gods came down to help,’ Gerran said. ‘Come along. There’s one villager still missing.’

Although the men searched the village thoroughly, they never found that last corpse. By the time they’d finished, the younger men in the warband had turned white-faced and shaky; a few had rushed off to vomit. It was the pity of it more than the stench and rot that troubled Gerran: peaceful farmers, slaughtered like their own hogs as they tried to defend themselves and their women with sticks and axes against swords and spears.

Yet even though they’d lost the fight in the end, the farmers had gained one small victory. Pinned under a half-burnt roof beam lay the charred corpse of a Horsekin warrior. Gerran found him as he searched the ruins of the village smithy. At his shout Daumyr strode over with Warryc trotting after. The three of them fell silent, staring at the corpse.

Like most of his kind, he was well over six feet tall, broad in the shoulders, long in the arms. What was left of his skin was milk white, but heavily decorated with blue and black tattoos. Some designs portrayed animals; others seemed to be letters of some sort. He sported a huge mane of dark hair, braided into many strands, tied off with amulets and studded with charms, but the magicks had failed to protect him. Daumyr picked up a nearby plank and used it as a lever to turn him over. He’d been killed by the thrust of three sharp prongs – a pitchfork, Gerran assumed – into the middle of his back.

‘Haul him out,’ Gerran said. ‘We’ll leave him for the ravens.’

‘Good idea!’ Daumyr tossed the plank back down. ‘May he freeze to the marrow in the deepest hell.’

Warryc stooped, brushed away cinders with one hand, grabbed something from the rubble, then stood back up, clutching his prize. ‘This must have fallen off the bastard’s jerkin.’ Warryc opened his hand to show a golden arrow, about four inches long and backed with a heavy pin. ‘I’ve seen somewhat like it before, somewhere.’

‘A clan marker?’ Gerran said. ‘Maybe a troop badge?’

Warryc shook his head and studied the arrow; his narrow dark eyes narrowed further, nearly to slits. ‘Somewhat to do with their religion,’ he said at last. ‘The cursed Horsekin, I mean.’

‘Well, hand it over,’ Gerran said. ‘The tieryn might know.’

Gerran set the warband to digging a long mass grave outside the earthwork, then rejoined the tieryn, who was standing by the line of corpses and talking with Salamander. Gerran was honestly surprised to see the gerthddyn so calm in the midst of so much death. His opinion of Salamander rose.

‘We never found that last man,’ Cadryc said. ‘Well, we’ll be riding downriver to Lord Samyc’s dun. If he’s hiding somewhere, perhaps he’ll hear or see us and come running.’

‘We can hope, your grace,’ Salamander said. ‘I’m more afraid of what else might appear along the way.’

‘Naught good or so I’d wager.’ Gerran fished the gold arrow out of his pocket and held it out. ‘One of the men found this. He was thinking it had somewhat to do with their wretched gods.’

Cadryc held out empty hands to show his ignorance, but the gerthddyn took the arrow and weighed it in his palm.

‘It most assuredly does,’ Salamander said. ‘It’s the token of a goddess, actually, Alshandra, huntress of souls, the archer who dwells beyond the stars, the hidden one.’

‘I’ve heard of her before,’ Cadryc said. ‘It’s a pity she’s not a fair bit more hidden than she is.’

‘Oh, absolutely. Her worshippers, alas, are both conspicuous and near to hand.’ Salamander glanced at Gerran. ‘Does the fellow who found this want it?’

‘Probably. For the gold, most likely.’

‘I think I’ll ask him to sell it to me. Somewhat tells me that I should keep it. Might be useful, like.’

‘Useful for what?’ Cadryc snorted.

‘I know not, but I have a feeling, a deep hunch, hint, or portent, that I should own this little bauble. Which man was it, captain, if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘Not at all.’ Gerran pointed to the men digging the trench. ‘It’s Warryc, the skinny short fellow with the brown hair down at the very end. Next to the tall blond fellow, Daumyr his name is.’

Salamander trotted off, and Gerran and the tieryn followed more slowly. The warband swung the remains of the villagers into the trench, then covered it over with earth, a brown scar in the green meadow. They finished just at sunset, and off to the cloudy west the light blazed red like a funeral fire. For lack of a priest, the tieryn tried to say a few reverent words. For a long moment he stood at the head of the trench and struggled with this unfamiliar activity while the men watched in silence.

‘Ah, horseshit,’ Cadryc said at last. ‘There’s only one thing to say: vengeance!’

The warband shouted back the word. ‘Vengeance!’ rolled across the farmlands to echo back from the distant cliffs.

As they walked back to their horses, they passed the corpse of the Horsekin warrior, left sprawled in the open air for the ravens as a final insult. Salamander paused for a moment to contemplate him, and Gerran stopped to see what the gerthddyn was up to.

‘Doesn’t this strike you as odd, captain?’ Salamander said. ‘The Horsekin never leave their dead behind.’

‘So I’ve heard, truly,’ Gerran said. ‘He was killed by a farmer, though. Maybe they see that as a dishonour.’

‘Maybe, but I have my doubts. And then they didn’t finish searching the village. I wonder, I truly do.’

‘Searching?’

‘Why else line up the dead? Were they trying to make sure they’d killed everyone or was it mayhap a certain person they were looking for? I don’t know, mind. I’m merely considering possibilities.’

The warband camped that evening a spare mile downriver from the ruins, just far enough to leave the smell of the dead village behind. The missing villager never appeared, even though they built campfires in the hopes of drawing his attention should he be hiding nearby. On the chance that the raiders were lingering out to the west, Gerran doubled the usual number of sentries. He also had his men hobble their horses as well as tethering them, a precaution that proved wise on the morrow.

Towards dawn Gerran woke abruptly. He could have sworn that he’d heard someone calling his name. He sat up in his blankets and looked around, but in the cold grey light of first dawn he saw nothing but the sleeping camp. He pulled on his boots and got up, buckling on his sword belt. He was planning on relieving the sentries out by the tethered horses, but when he glanced at the river, he saw Salamander standing on the bank. He picked his way through the sleeping men and walked down to join the gerthddyn.

‘You’re up early,’ Gerran said.

‘I am, and so are you.’ Salamander glanced at him and smiled, then returned to staring out across the river.

‘Someone out there?’

‘Not a Horsekin in sight, but look, there’s some odd thing in the sky. A flock of ravens perhaps, most deeply grieved with us for burying their gruesome feast.’

Gerran looked up to see, far off to the west, a flock of birds flying towards them in the brightening dawn. Or was it a flock? He heard a distant sound, a thwack and slap like a hand hitting a slack leather drum. The supposed flock looked remarkably like one bird, one enormous bird, flying steadily on huge silver wings. The sound swelled into a boom as the enormous wings carried the creature straight for them. He could see its long neck, its massive head with flaring nostrils and deep-set eyes, the silver scales touched about the head and spiked tail with iridescent blue, glimmering in the rising sun.

‘It can’t be,’ Gerran muttered. ‘Ye gods, it is! It’s a dragon!’

Behind him the camp exploded with noise – men yelling and cursing, horses whinnying in terror. Gerran knew he should turn and rush back, should impose some kind of order or at the least guard the horses, but he stayed, staring at the huge silver wyrm. It was so strong, so powerful, and beautiful, as well, in his warrior’s eyes, with the sun glistening on its smooth skin, stretched and supple over immense muscles. It reached the river, dipped one wing, then sheered off, heading north. On its side, just below the wing’s set, Gerran saw a smear of reddish black – old blood from a wound.

‘Rhodry!’ Salamander started yelling at the top of his lungs. ‘I mean, blast it, Rori! It’s me, Ebañy! Rori, come back! Rhod – I mean Rori! Wait!’

Screaming like a madman, waving his arms, Salamander raced down the riverbank, but the dragon flapped his wings in a deafening drumbeat and rose high, banking again to head back west. Gerran set his hands on his hips and glared as the gerthddyn came jogging back to him.

‘And just how did you know its name?’ Gerran said.

Salamander winced, tried to smile, and looked away. ‘Actually, you see, well, um, er – that’s my brother. He was a silver dagger named Rhodry, but now that he’s a dragon, he’s known as Rori. I keep forgetting to use the right name.’

Gerran started to speak, but his words twisted themselves into a sound more like a growl.

‘I’m not a dragon,’ Salamander said hastily. ‘Neither was he originally.’

‘What? Of all the daft things I’ve ever heard –’

‘Scoff all you want. He was turned into a dragon by dweomer.’

‘Dafter and dafter! What are you, a drooling idiot? There’s no such thing as dweomer, and a witch could never have done aught as that.’

‘I should have known you’d take it this way.’ Salamander looked briefly mournful. ‘I’m telling you the exact truth, whether you believe it or no. So I thought I’d best find him and see how he was faring and all that. It seemed the brotherly thing to do.’

‘Daft.’ Gerran was finding it difficult to come up with any other word. With a last angry shrug he turned on his heel and ran back to camp.

It took till noon for Gerran and the two lords to transform the warbands from a frightened mob of men and horses into an orderly procession. Even then, as they rode south along the riverbank, the men kept looking up at the sky, and the horses would suddenly, for no visible reason, snort, toss their heads, and threaten to rear or buck until their riders calmed them. To set a good example Gerran kept himself from studying the sky, but he did listen, waiting for the sound of wings beating the air like a drum.

In mid-afternoon they stopped to water their horses at the river. As soon as his horse had finished drinking, Salamander handed its reins to one of the men and went jogging eastward into the meadowlands.

‘What in all the hells does he think he’s doing?’ Gerran said. He tossed his reins to Warryc and ran after the gerthddyn.

Not far off a small flock of ravens suddenly sprang into the air, squawking indignantly. With his Westfolk eyes, Salamander must have seen them from the riverbank, Gerran realized, and sure enough, he found the gerthddyn standing by the scattered remains of the ravens’ dinner, a dead horse, or to be precise, the mangled bones, tail, and a few scraps of meat of what had once been a dead horse. Lying around it in the tall grass were torn and broken pieces of horse gear. Salamander nudged a heavily painted leather strap, once part of a martingale, perhaps, with his toe.

‘Horsekin work,’ Salamander said. ‘They decorate all their horse gear. I think we now know what disturbed the raiders at their foul, loathsome, and heinous work.’

‘The dragon?’ Gerran said.

‘Exactly. Their horses doubtless panicked as ours did at the thought of ending up in a great wyrm’s stomach. I wonder if dragons follow the Horsekin around? Where else are you going to find heavy horses like theirs?’

‘The best meal going, eh? It could well be, but come along, we’ve got to keep moving today.’

When the sun was getting low, the warband came to another burned village, a tangled heap of ruins spread out over a charred meadow. Once again the horses began snorting and trembling. Swearing under their breaths, Cadryc, Pedrys, and Gerran dismounted some distance away and walked over to the ruin, expecting the worst, but they found no corpses, not even a dead dog, among the drifting pale ash.

‘Well and good,’ Cadryc said. ‘I’ll wager they got to Lord Samyc’s dun in time.’

‘And I’ll wager they’re still there, your grace,’ Gerran said. ‘One way or another.’

‘Just so. Let’s get on the road.’

Lord Samyc’s dun stood on a low artificial hill, guarded by a maze of earthworks on the flat and a stone wall at the top. Not far away lay a patch of woodland. As the warbands rode up to the earthworks, Gerran saw a straggle of farmers leaving the trees with a cart full of firewood and an escort of two mounted men. When Tieryn Cadryc rose in his stirrups to hail them, the riders whooped with joy and galloped straight for the warbands waiting on the flat. One man dismounted and ran to grab Cadryc’s stirrup as a sign of fealty. A dark-haired young lad, he grinned from ear to ear.

‘Ah thank every god, your grace,’ the rider said. ‘How did you get the news?’

‘Someone from the farther village escaped,’ Cadryc said. ‘How fares your lord?’

‘That’s a tale and a half, my lord. Here, the farmers from our village got to the dun in time. One of the lads was out looking for a lost cow, so he saw the Horsekin coming and raised the alarm.’

‘That’s good to hear.’

‘Truly, your grace. So, the first thing we knew about it was when the whole cursed village comes charging up to the gates and yelling about raiders. So we let them in, and Lord Samyc wanted to ride out, but his lady begged him not to. There’s a woman for you, but anyway, cursed if the whole stinking village didn’t take her side.’ The lad looked retrospectively furious. ‘They stood in front of the gates, and our lord was yelling and swearing, but they wouldn’t move, and all for her ladyship’s sake. So in the end Lord Samyc gave in.’

‘It gladdens my heart to hear that,’ Cadryc said. ‘This raiding party must have been a large one.’

‘It was, your grace. Cursed if thirty Horsekin didn’t ride up to the maze here.’ The lad gestured at the earthworks. ‘We could see them from the top of the wall, and they were yelling back and forth in that cursed ugly language of theirs, as bold as brass they were.’

Cadryc glanced Gerran’s way with troubled eyes.

‘We’ve not seen that many in a long time, your grace,’ Gerran said.

‘Indeed.’ Cadryc raised one hand to get everyone’s attention. ‘All right, men, let’s get this wood up to the dun.’

The villagers had turned Lord Samyc’s small ward into a camp, crammed with their cows, children, poultry, dogs, and heaps of household goods. When the warbands rode in, the men and horses filled the last available space. As he dismounted, Gerran saw a pair of hysterical servants rushing around and yelling back and forth about trying to feed so many guests. Red-haired, freckled, and a fair bit younger than Gerran, Lord Samyc ran out of the broch and knelt before the tieryn.

‘It gladdens my heart to see your grace,’ Samyc said. ‘Even though you have every right to despise me for my dishonour.’

‘Suicide brings little honour, my lord,’ Cadryc said. ‘Now get up and stop brooding about it.’

Startled, Samyc scrambled to his feet and glanced over his shoulder. In the doorway of the broch, a young woman, so great with child that she’d slung her kirtle over one shoulder rather than wrapping it round her middle, stood watching the confusion in the ward. Gerran was surprised that Lord Samyc’s lady hadn’t delivered under the stress of the raid. She needed the help of a servant girl to curtsey to the tieryn.

‘Have I done a wrong thing, your grace?’ she said. ‘Have I truly ruined my husband’s whole life by refusing to let him die?’

‘Oh, horse – oh nonsense,’ Cadryc said. ‘He’ll get over his sulk in time.’

Since Lord Samyc had no room to shelter everyone, Lord Pedrys and Tieryn Cadryc stayed in the broch while Gerran led the warbands down to the riverbank to camp. On the off-chance that the raiders would try a night strike, Gerran posted guards. When the gerthddyn offered to stand a watch, Gerran’s first impulse was to turn him down, but then he remembered Salamander’s formidable eyesight. Gerran gave him the last watch and decided to stand it with him.