The Gold Falcon

Some while before dawn, they walked down to the river together. Flecked with starlight, the water flowed broad and silent. Off to the west the rolling meadowlands lay dark. Somewhere out there the Horsekin were camping with their miserable booty.

‘On the morrow, captain,’ Salamander said, ‘do we ride after the raiders?’

‘I hope so,’ Gerran said. ‘We doubtless don’t have a candle’s chance of warming hell, but it would gladden my heart to get those women and children back. Better a free widow than an enslaved one.’

‘True spoken. You know, there’s somewhat odd about this raid, isn’t there? At least thirty fighting men and their heavy horses – that’s not an easy lot to feed on a long journey. And they’ve travelled all this way to glean a handful of slaves from a couple of poor villages?’

‘Huh. I’d not thought of it that way before. I suppose they brought a good number of men because they knew we’d stop them if we could.’

‘Mayhap. But why run the risk at all? Now, far to the south, down on the seacoast, there are unscrupulous merchants who’ll buy slaves at a good price, transport them in secret, and sell them in Bardek. But that’s a wretchedly long way away, and how could the Horsekin move a small herd of slaves unnoticed? They’d have to ride through Pyrdon and Eldidd, where every lord would turn out to stop them, or else travel through the Westfolk lands. The Westfolk archers would kill the lot of them on sight. They hate slavery almost as much as they hate the Horsekin.’

‘So they would. I’ve got a lot of respect for their bowmen. Your father’s folk, are they? Or your mother’s?’

Salamander tipped his head back and laughed. ‘My father’s,’ he said at last. ‘You’ve got good eyes, captain.’

‘So do you, and that’s what gave you away. But here –’ Gerran thought for a moment. ‘The Horsekin have plenty of human slaves already, from what I’ve heard, and they let them breed, to keep the supply fresh, like. They don’t need to raid. You’re right. Why are they risking so much for so little?’

‘It’s a question that strikes me as most recondite, but at the same time pivotal, portentous, momentous, and just plain important. Tell me somewhat. These raids, they started when farmers began to settle the Melyn river valley, right?’

‘A bit later than that. When the farms reached the river.’

‘Oho! I’m beginning to get an idea, captain, but let me brood on it awhile more, because I might be wrong.’

At dawn, Gerran joined the noble-born for a council of war over breakfast in Samyc’s great hall. The three lords wanted to track the raiders down, but they ran up against a hard reality: they lacked provisions for men and horses alike. The crop of winter wheat was still two weeks from harvest. After a bit of impatient squabbling, someone at last remembered that the farther village’s crops would be milk-ripe and of no use to the poor souls who’d planted them.

‘Here, what about this?’ Lord Samyc said. ‘I’ll give you what supplies I’ve got left from the winter. Then my farmfolk can go harvest the milk-ripe crops to feed my dun when I get back to it.’

Cadryc glanced at Gerran. Over the years, whether as father and stepson or tieryn and captain, they’d come to know each other so well that they could exchange messages with a look and a gesture. Gerran, being common-born, had no honour to lose by suggesting caution, and since he was the best swordsman in the province, no one would have dared call him a coward. The other two lords were also waiting for him to speak, he realized, though no doubt they would have denied it had anyone pointed it out.

‘Well, my lord,’ Gerran said, ‘didn’t Lord Samyc’s man tell us that thirty Horsekin rode to the dun?’

‘He did,’ Cadryc said.

‘So I’ll wager their warband numbers more than that. Someone must have been guarding the prisoners from the first village while the raiders rode to the second one. We’ve got thirty men ourselves, and Lord Samyc can give us only a few more.’

‘Ah!’ Samyc held up one hand to interrupt. ‘But some of my villagers have been training with the longbow.’

‘Splendid, my lord!’ Gerran said. ‘How many?’

‘Well, um, two.’

‘Oh.’

‘We’re badly outnumbered.’ Pedrys leaned forward. ‘Is that it, captain?’

‘It is, my lord, though it gripes my soul to admit it. We’ve all faced the Horsekin before. They know how to swing a sword when they need to. If we had more than two archers to call upon, the situation would be different.’

The three lords nodded agreement.

‘So, I don’t think it would be wise to follow them, your grace,’ Gerran said. ‘What if they have reinforcements waiting further west?’

Cadryc stabbed a chunk of bread with his table dagger and leaned back in his chair to eat it.

‘It gripes my soul,’ Pedrys snarled, ‘to let them just ride away with our people.’

‘It gripes mine, too,’ Cadryc said, swallowing. ‘But what good will it do them if we ride into a trap? We’ve got to think of the rest of the rhan, lads. If we’re wiped out, who will stand between it and the Horsekin?’

‘That’s true,’ Samyc said. ‘Alas.’

Cadryc pointed the chunk of bread at the two lords in turn. ‘We need more men, that’s the hard truth of it. I know I’ve said it before, but it’s the blasted truth.’

‘Just so, your grace,’ Gerran said. ‘It’s too bad we don’t have wings like that dragon.’

‘Indeed.’ Cadryc glanced at Samyc. ‘Do you know you’ve got a dragon in your demesne?’

‘It’s not mine, exactly,’ Samyc said with a twisted grin. ‘It comes and goes as it pleases.’

‘When did you first see it, my lord?’ Gerran said. ‘If I may ask.’

‘Well, it was a bit over a year ago, just when the snow was starting to melt. It came flying over the dun here, bold as brass. I’d heard of dragons before, of course, but seeing a real one – ye gods!’

‘Truly,’ Cadryc said. ‘I don’t mind admitting that the sight was a bit much excitement at the start of a day.’

‘Let’s hope it likes the taste of Horsekin,’ Gerran said.

Cadryc laughed with a toss of his head. ‘I’ve got a scribe now,’ he said with a nod at the two lords. ‘So I’ll send a letter to the gwerbret and see what kind of answer he has for us. Get the warbands ready to ride, Gerro, will you? We’re going home.’

‘I will, your grace,’ Gerran said. ‘One thing, though. That last man from Neb’s old village,’ he looked Samyc’s way, ‘did he take shelter with you, my lord?’

‘Not that I know of. Did someone escape, you mean?’

‘Just that. I’d like to hear what he has to say. Any information we can get about the raid is all to the good.’ Gerran stood up. ‘I’ll ask around out in the ward.’

Unfortunately, no one, not farmer nor member of the warband, had seen any escapee arrive at the dun, nor had the wood-cutting expedition turned him up that morning in the coppice. It was possible, one farmer pointed out, that the man or lad was hiding in the wild woods across the river to the west.

‘They’re not far, about three miles,’ Gerran told Cadryc. ‘Do you think it’s worth a look?’

‘I do,’ Cadryc said. ‘I want to hear what he can tell us.’

When they rode out, the warbands clattered across Lord Samyc’s bridge, then headed out into the meadowland on the western side of the river. They found the last man from the village long before they reached the wild wood, along with the site of what must have been one of the raiders’ camps, judging from the trampled grass, firepits, scattered garbage, and the like.

The villager, however, could tell them nothing. About a hundred yards west of the camp, they found a lumpish low mound covered with blankets that had been pinned down at each corner with a wooden stake. They all assumed that it was a dead Horsekin, covered to protect him from scavengers. With a dragon hunting their mounts, the Horsekin would have had no time for a proper burial.

‘Let’s take those blankets off,’ Cadryc said. ‘Let the ravens pull him to pieces.’

Gerran dismounted, and Salamander joined him. Together they pulled up the wood stakes and threw back the blankets. Flies rose in a black cloud of outraged buzzing. For a moment Gerran almost vomited, and Salamander took a few quick steps back.

The corpse was human, naked, lying on his back, and he’d been staked out with thick iron nails hammered through the palm of each hand and each foot. Judging from the amount of dried blood around each stake, he’d been alive for the process and perhaps a little while after. He was bearded in blood, too, because he’d gnawed his own lips half away in his agony. Where his eyes had been black ants swarmed. At some point in this ghastly process the Horsekin had slit him from breech to breastbone and pulled out his internal organs. In a pulsing mass of ants they lay in tidy lines to either side of him, bladder, guts, kidneys, liver and lungs, but the heart was missing.

‘What – who in the name of the Lord of Hell would do such a thing?’ Gerran could only whisper. ‘Ye gods, savages! That’s all they are!’

‘In the name of Alshandra, more likely.’ Salamander sounded half-sick. ‘I’ve heard about this, but I’ve never seen it before, and I thank all the true gods for that, too.’

‘What have you heard?’

‘That they do this to selected prisoners, always men, and usually someone who’s been stupid enough to surrender. They send them with messages to Alshandra’s country. That’s somewhere in the Otherlands, I suppose.’ Salamander paused to wipe his mouth on the sleeve of his shirt. He swallowed heavily, then turned away from the sight. ‘As the prisoner’s dying, they tell him he’s lucky, because their goddess will give him a favoured place in her land of the dead.’

‘I hope to every god that he lied when he got there.’

‘That’s why they keep the heart. If he lies, they say, they’ll torture it, and he’ll feel the pains in the Otherlands.’

Gerran tried to curse, but he could think of nothing foul enough. He turned away and saw that even Cadryc had gone white about the mouth.

‘Let’s bury him,’ the tieryn said. ‘And then we’re heading home. There’s naught else we can do for him or any of the other poor souls they took.’

‘Good idea, your grace.’ Gerran pointed to a pair of riders. ‘You – take the latrine shovels and dig him a proper grave.’

As they dismounted, Gerran heard a raven calling out from overhead. He glanced up and saw a single large bird circling – abnormally large, as he thought about it. With a flap of its wings it flew away fast, heading east. Gerran turned to mention it to Salamander, but the gerthddyn had walked some yards away and fallen to his knees. He appeared to be ridding himself of his breakfast in a noisy though understandable fashion. And after all, Gerran told himself, there’s naught strange about a corpse-bird come to carrion. He put the matter out of his mind.

Everyone was very kind. Perhaps that was the most painful thing of all, this unspoken kindness, or so Neb thought. None of the other servants resented his sudden arrival into a position of importance. They gave him things to put in his chamber – a pottery vase from the chamberlain, a wood bench from the cook, a wicker charcoal-basket from the head groom’s wife. One of the grooms gave Neb a nearly-new shirt embroidered with the tieryn’s blazon of a wolf rampant; his wife gave Clae a leather ball that had been her son’s before he went off to his prenticeship. Neb saw every gift as an aching reminder that he’d been stripped of kin the way he stripped a quill of feathers when he made a pen.

But it’s better than starving, Neb would forcibly remind himself. It was also better than being enslaved by Horsekin, but Neb did his best to keep from thinking about that. In the farming village he’d had two friends, boys his own age who were most likely dead now, and their mothers and sisters enslaved. At times, memories crept into his mind like weevils into grain, but he picked them out again. Now and then he indulged himself with the hope that at least one friend had managed to escape, but he never allowed the hope to blossom into a full-fledged wish.

To distract him he also had work to do. With the winter wheat almost ripe for harvest, the tieryn’s farmer vassals would soon owe him taxes in kind – foodstuffs, mostly, but also some oddments such as rendered tallow for candles and soap. The elderly chamberlain, Lord Veddyn, took Neb out to the storehouses, built of stone right into the dun’s walls.

‘I must admit that it gladdens my heart you’re here,’ Veddyn said. ‘I used to be able to remember all the dues and taxes, store them up in my mind, like, but it gets harder and harder every year. I’ve been wishing I knew a bit of writing myself, these past few months.’

‘I see,’ Neb said. ‘Well, we can set up a tally system easily enough, if you’ve got somewhat for me to write upon. Wax on wood won’t do.’

‘I’ve got a bit of parchment laid by. It’s not the best in the kingdom, though.’

In a cool stone room that smelled of onions Veddyn showed him a wooden chest. Neb kicked it a couple of times to scare any mice or spiders away, then opened it to find a long roll of old vellum, once of a good quality, now a much-scraped palimpsest.

‘It’s cracking a bit, isn’t it?’ Veddyn said. ‘My apologies. I thought it would store better than this.’

‘We can split it into sheets along the cracks. It’ll do.’

Out in the sun Neb unrolled about a foot of the scroll and released a cloud of dust and ancient mould. He sneezed and wiped his nose on his sleeve, then held the roll up to the light.

‘This must have been a set of tax tallies,’ Neb said. ‘I can just make out a few words. Fine linen cloth, six ells. Someone someone ninety-five bushels of somesort barley.’

‘It’s from our old demesne – what’s that noise?’

Neb cocked his head to listen. ‘Riders coming in the gates,’ he said. ‘I wonder if his grace has ridden home.’

‘Not already, surely!’

They hurried around the broch to find a small procession entering the ward. Four armed men with oak-leaf blazons on their shirts escorted a heavily laden horse cart, driven by a stout middle-aged woman, while behind them came a person riding a grey palfrey. Taxes, Neb thought at first, here early.

As the pages and a groom ran out to take the horses, the rider dismounted with a toss of her long blonde hair, caught back in a silver clasp. A pretty lass, though not the great beauty he’d seen in his earlier dream, she was wearing a faded blue dress, caught up at her kirtled waist, over a pair of old torn brigga. The Wildfolk of Air, sylphs and sprites both, flocked around her, and perched behind her saddle was a little grey gnome, who looked straight at Neb, grinned, and waved a skinny clawed paw. The gnome looked exactly like the little creature in Neb’s dream.

‘It’s Lady Branna!’ Veddyn said. ‘Here, greet her and her escort, will you? Where’s Lord Mirryn, I wonder? He’s always off somewhere when you need him! And the pages have their hands full. I’d better go tell Lady Galla her niece has arrived.’

When Neb walked up, the lady turned around and smiled at him, a distant but friendly sort of smile such as she doubtless would give to any stranger, but Neb felt his heart start pounding. Instantly he knew two things so crucial that he felt as if he had waited his entire life for this lass to appear. One, he loved her, and two, she shared all his secrets, perhaps even secrets he hadn’t realized he was keeping. He tried to speak but felt that he was gasping like a caught fish on a riverbank.

Fortunately Branna appeared just as startled. Her smile vanished, her eyes grew wide, and she stared at him unspeaking. He studied her face with a feeling much like hunger: narrow mouth, snub nose, a dusting of freckles over her high cheekbones, dark blue eyes. He had never wanted anything more than to reach out and take her hand, but someone behind them called her name and sharply. Branna flinched and looked away.

‘Here, who are you?’ The stout woman who’d been driving the cart came striding over. A widow’s black scarf half-covered her grey hair, and she wore grey dresses, much stained. She pointed a calloused finger at Neb.

‘My name is Nerrobrantos, scribe to Tieryn Cadryc,’ Neb said. ‘And you are?’

‘Her ladyship’s servant.’

‘More like my guardian dragon,’ Branna said, then laughed. Her voice was pleasantly soft. ‘Don’t be so fierce, Midda. A scribe may speak to a poverty-stricken lady like me.’ She turned back to Neb. ‘Do people really call you Nerrobrantos all the time?’

‘They don’t.’ Neb at last remembered how to smile. ‘Do call me Neb, my lady.’

‘Gladly, Goodman Neb. Here comes Aunt Galla, but maybe we’ll meet again?’

‘I don’t see how we can avoid meeting in a dun this size.’

She laughed, and he’d never heard a laugh as beautiful as hers, far more beautiful than golden bells or a bard’s harp. For a long time after Lady Galla had led her inside, Neb stood in the ward and stared out at nothing. He was trying to understand just what had convinced him that his entire view of the world was about to change.

Mirryn brought him out of this strange reverie when the lord hurried over to the men of the lady’s escort, who were waiting patiently beside their horses.

‘What’s this?’ Mirryn said. ‘I see our scribe’s just left you all standing here.’

‘My apologies, my lord,’ Neb said. ‘I don’t have the slightest idea of where to take them. I’ve never lived in a dun before.’

Mirryn’s jaw dropped. Neb had never seen anyone look quite so innocently surprised. The lord covered it over with a quick laugh.

‘Of course not,’ Mirryn said. ‘You’re a townsman, after all, or you were.’

Neb smiled, bowed, and made his escape. He carried the roll of parchment up to his chamber, where he could cut it into sheets with his new penknife, but even as he worked, he was thinking about Lady Branna.

‘Now, here, my ladyship,’ Midda said. ‘I’m sure we can make you a better match than a scribe, and besides, you just met the lad.’

‘What makes you think I want to marry him?’ Branna said.

‘The way the pair of you were looking at each other. All cow-eyed, like.’

Branna shrugged and went to perch on the wide windowsill of her new chamber. Lady Galla had given her a decent situation, especially for a destitute extra daughter, unwelcome in her own father’s dun. The sunny chamber had its own hearth, a comfortable-looking bed, and a window that sported proper wooden shutters against possible rain. Branna had brought along her dower chest, made of plain wood and chipped around the lid – the best that her stepmother would part with. Midda was at the moment inspecting its contents to make sure they’d not suffered any damage during the journey. Branna had spent hundreds of hours working on them: two woad-blue blankets in an overshot weave and an embroidered coverlet for the marriage bed, the unassembled pieces of a heavily embroidered wedding shirt for her eventual husband, and various dresses and underclothes for herself. The little grey gnome sat on the bed and concentrated on picking at his long toenails.

‘Well, I certainly don’t want to marry Neb,’ Branna said. ‘He just reminds me of someone I saw once. I was surprised, is all.’

‘And where would you have seen the lad before?’

‘If I knew, I wouldn’t have been surprised, would I now?’

Midda sighed with a shake of her head, then resumed the unpacking. From a sack she took out two old, threadbare blankets, another grudged gift. When she spread them over the bed, the gnome vanished only to reappear in Branna’s lap. Neb sees the Wildfolk too, Branna thought. I could see his eyes move, following them.

‘I’m off to get some firewood and the like,’ Midda announced. ‘It might be chilly tonight.’

‘Well and good, then. Has that chamberlain given you a decent place to sleep?’

‘He has. A nice little space set off by partitions, private, like, and only one other woman to share it with, and us with a mattress apiece. Much better than I had –’ She paused to gesture at the room. ‘Than we had at your father’s dun.’

With one last snort of remembered disgust, Midda bustled out of the room. The gnome reached up a timid little paw and touched Branna’s cheek.

‘It is nicer,’ Branna said. ‘And I certainly can’t be any more miserable than I was before. Now, if only I really had dweomer, I’d turn my stepmother into a frog, and I’d not turn her back unless she begged me.’

The gnome grinned and nodded his head in agreement.

‘If only I really had dweomer,’ Branna went on. ‘I say that too much, don’t I? But they were such lovely tales I used to tell us. I suppose I should stop. I’m grown now and marriageable and all the rest of it.’

The thought of abandoning her fantasies saddened her, because she’d told herself those tales for as long as she could remember. They had started as dreams, beautifully vivid dreams, so coherent and detailed that at times she wondered if they were actually memories.From those wonderings she had developed a detailed fantasy about another Then and another When, as she called it – another life somewhere that she and her gnome had lived together, when she’d been a mighty sorcerer who had travelled all over Deverry and far away, too, off to Bardek and beyond. Her favourite tale concerned a magical island far across the Southern Sea, where elven sorcerers lived and studied books filled with mighty spells. The gnome had always listened, nodding his head when he agreed with some detail, or frowning when he felt she’d got something wrong.

‘Neb,’ she said aloud. ‘There was a man with a name like that in the tales, do you remember? But he was old. He can’t be the same person.’

The gnome scowled and wagged a long warty finger at her.

‘What? You can’t mean he is the same person.’

The gnome nodded.

‘Oh here, that’s silly. And impossible.’

The gnome flung both hands into the air and disappeared. Branna was about to try calling him back when someone knocked on the door. Lady Galla opened it and hurried in, with a page carrying a folded coverlet right behind her. Branna scrambled down from the windowsill and curtsied.

‘There you are, dear,’ Galla said. ‘Do you like the chamber? I found somewhat to brighten it up a bit. Now that you’re here, we’ll have to start on some bed curtains for you. We should be able to get them done before the winter.’

‘Thank you so much,’ Branna said. ‘I really really appreciate all this, Aunt Galla.’

‘You’re most welcome, dear.’ Galla took the coverlet from the page. ‘You may go, Coryn.’

The page skipped off down the hall. Together the two women spread out the coverlet, linen embroidered with red and blue spiral roundels and thick bands of yellow interlace.

‘It’s awfully pretty,’ Branna said.

‘And cheerful. Having somewhat cheerful’s important just now, I should think.’ Galla reached out and patted her hand. ‘And don’t you worry, we’ll see about finding you a proper husband.’

‘Tell me somewhat. Would it be horribly wrong of a lass like me to marry some common-born man, one who has some standing, I mean, like somebody who’s serving a powerful lord?’

‘Not at all, truly, just so long as he could provide for you properly.’

‘Oh, I’m used to doing without.’

Galla winced and glanced away. ‘Your dear stepmother,’ she said at last. ‘Well, I’m sure she has her virtues.’

‘She popped out two sons in four years. That’s all the virtue Da cares about.’ Branna heard the venom in her voice and tried to speak more calmly. ‘He never much liked me, anyway.’

‘Now, dear, it’s hard for a true-born warrior like him to show tender feelings.’

‘Oh, don’t try to sweeten it! You know that he blames me for my mother’s death. Well, doesn’t he?’

‘It’s a hard situation all round.’ Galla hesitated. ‘He did at the time, dear, but I tried to make him see reason.’ Again the hesitation. ‘Not that he did. Oh, it griped my very soul! You nearly died with her, you know, and your poor mother was never very strong anyway.’ She collected herself with a little sigh. ‘Well, you’re here now, and I’m glad you’ve come to me.’