A Skillful Warrior (SoulNecklace Stories Book 2) (16 page)

Will watched the Noyan. Plainly accustomed to horses, he was gentle and thorough in his handling. Dana had once dreamed of an army beheading villagers. She’d been inside someone’s head, she had said. TeSin lifted the mare’s leg and scraped mud from her hooves.

The man looked up and saw Will watching him. ‘I find these horses, by cave. They come with me. Down the hill.’ He held his hand side on, as if to show a vertical slope.

‘You came down the cliff?’

‘Cliff. Yes. Horses come too. They good horse. Strong.’ He stroked the mare’s flanks and smiled.

‘The magicians have taken Dana. Do you know why?’

TeSin’s eyes were bright. ‘Those men — want honor. Want to be great. They take bright one to Lord.’

‘Lord?’

‘Eternal. Live many many years. Magicians take prisoners to him.’

‘Why?’

‘I not know.’ But the man looked troubled, as though he could guess. Will stared at him. TeSin was an officer, used to command. He would be intelligent, brave and ruthless. What was he holding back?

‘Where is your Lord?’

‘He far, far from here. In City. Black City.’

Black City. Another word for the Stronghold.

‘Are you from the Black City?’

TeSin bent to another hoof. ‘Yes.’

A wave of excitement washed over Will. ‘Jed!’

Jed poked his head around the stable door. ‘Bloody lazy stablehands here. I’m paying good coin for them and they’re not even lifting a finger to help.’ He came into the stable and poked at a piece of rope with his boot. ‘What is your problem, young Will?’

‘How long would it take us to get to the Stronghold?’

‘The Stronghold? Why?’

‘I think that’s where they’ve taken her.’

‘Are you sure? That’s a powerful long way, lad.’

‘Tell him,’ Will said to TeSin. ‘Tell him what you told me.’

Jed sat on the base of an upturned barrel while TeSin, waving his hoof pick, spoke of the dishonored magicians. He described his emperor briefly, and with awe. Small, all bent over. Old, even older than the city.

Will shook his head. It was all too strange. Dana had tried to kill this TeSin once. So why, now, would she save the same man’s life? Maybe it was a female thing. Not that he’d say such a thing to her face.

‘Your dreams,’ he said suddenly to the Noyan. ‘She dreamed of you once. That you’d killed villagers.’ He ran his hand across his throat. ‘Cut their heads off.’

‘Bright one? Dream of me?’

‘It was a long time ago.’ Will felt a sudden flash of jealousy at the connection between this stranger and Dana.

‘Maybe now,’ said TeSin, ‘I dream of her.’

‘Why do you say that?’ asked Jed.

Will felt so suddenly furious that he could barely hear what TeSin warrior was saying. How dare this man, little more than a murderer, have this connection with Dana?

‘Hold still, lad,’ Jed set a hand on Will’s shoulder.

‘My dreams. They ... all dark. I feel ... everything moving.’ TeSin waggled his hand up, down. ‘Like ship.’

Later that afternoon Will sat on the bench outside the taproom, watching the sun pass below the horizon. At the jetty fishermen made ready to set sail. It was a peaceful enough scene, but it meant little to him — how could he enjoy it, when he knew Dana had gone? A bird called, harsh in the quiet dusk, and he jumped, remembering the dead men in the field and their empty eyes.

‘Will? What are you thinking?’ N’tombe stood in the doorway.

‘Wondering where she is. And hoping ...’ he couldn’t finish the sentence.

‘You hope she is well.’

He rubbed at his eyes. A young girl, a boat full of sailors. For a moment, he felt such fear that he could not breathe. Yes, he hoped she was well.

‘You wish to follow her?’

‘Of course.’

‘Well, then. We shall do so.’

‘You can do that? Just follow her across the sea?’

N’tombe smiled. ‘There are ways. Jed told me you talked with the warrior. That he knows where she will be going. And fortunately, we have someone with a ship. Many ships, in fact.’ She turned and spoke to someone behind the doorframe. ‘Bring her.’

Ma Evans peered around the door of the inn. N’tombe stepped towards her, encouraging her forward like a shepherd with a particularly reluctant sheep.

‘Well?’ N’tombe waved at the fishing boats. ‘Are any of them your men?’

Ma smiled grimly. ‘All of ‘em.’

‘What? You own all the fishers in the village?’ asked Will.

‘In a manner of speaking. In a manner of speaking.’ She looked around. ‘It’s a pretty enough village, Towyn. Reminds me o’ when I was young.’ She sniffed, wiped her nose with the back of her hand. ‘Shove over there, young man.’

Will shuffled along the bench seat and Ma Evans sat next to him. N’tombe kept watch at the door. Jed’s voice rumbled in the background. He was conferring with the host about the meal and the tariff.

Ma Evans’ face was threaded with veins. She reminded Will of the Saucierre Chef at the Castle, who was rumored to be fond of the bottle.

‘Your sons are missing?’ asked Will

Reluctantly, she nodded.

‘And you think we know of them?’

Again, she nodded. Suddenly, like a man drops a cloak, she seemed to let fall her aggression and became naught but a woman, tired and old and afraid for her kin. Will felt a rise of compassion, then remembered her armed men, how they’d attacked so viciously, with such little cause.

‘Why did you assail us?’ said Will. ‘We meant you no harm.’

‘Do you, lad? Mean no harm?’

‘Ma Evans,’ said Will. ‘On my life. We mean no ill.’

The old woman’s eyes lightened and she smiled slightly. ‘Strong words.’

Will told her how yesterday — was it really only yesterday? So much had happened since then — her sons had galloped through this village, carrying a bundle. How a strange ship, moored in the bay around the headland had carried her sons away, along with his ... friend.

Will swallowed. What should he call Dana? She wasn’t his wife or his sweetheart; a Princess couldn’t be sweetheart to a bakery apprentice. “Friend” would have to do, although it seemed a mighty lightweight word for his feelings for her.

‘What did this ship looked like?’ Ma asked.

‘Three masts,’ Jed came to the door. ‘Square sails. Very unusual. They were folded — pleated. Hoisted from a winch on deck, and drawn up from the base to mast-tip.’ He winked at Will. ‘Did I get that right?’

‘Small ship,’ observed TeSin, behind him.

‘Compared to the others,’ agreed Jed. ‘Reasonable size for a vessel hereabouts.’

‘Well?’ said Will. ‘Have you seen anything the like of that?’

‘Aye. There was something,’ Ma frowned. ‘A few years ago, at winter. But my boys weren’t on it.’

‘The ship? It been here before?’ TeSin sounded surprised.

‘Aye,’ said Ma Evans shortly. ‘So, what of these, then?’ From a pocket of her skirt she took four silver rings, handed them to Will. They were made to be worn on a man’s hand. All four showed signs of wear. Ma Evans set them out across her palm, stroking them as a miser rubs his coins. Each ring seemed to be made out of a single wire, looped and knotted about on itself so the ends of the wire could not be seen. Will sighed — oh, yes, he had seen such rings before. On the fingers of the dead Evans brothers.

‘You know aught of these?’ Her angry voice seemed to echo around the village.

The fishermen’s heads shot up. ‘That’s Ma Evans!’ They stopped stowing their nets.

Will shook his head ‘Ma Evans, we did not kill them.’

‘Ha! You admit they are dead?’

Will spoke rapidly of the bodies they’d found in the field. She didn’t look at him as he spoke. Instead, she watched the fisher folk step out of their boats and move up the hill towards them.

‘I’m sorry,’ he added, when he finished.

‘You all right, Ma?’ asked the head fisherman.

‘Tell me boys,’ said Ma, ‘Did my sons ride through here yesterday?’

Will was reminded, for a moment, of a queen holding court. A somewhat battered queen maybe, but still a ruler for all that.

The fisherman turned his cap in his hands, his eyes nervous. ‘Aye, Ma. Went away on a ship, so they did.’ He gestured behind him, out to sea.

The old woman looked at Will. ‘So tell me, Peter Fisher. This young man says to me that he found my sons dead in a meadow near Abervale. They’d been like to have been dead for a day or more, he says. Yet how they can be dead, and galloping through Towyn at the same time?’

The fisherman swallowed and shuffled his feet.

‘Because,’ said N’tombe, ‘the men who killed your sons also stole their faces.’

TeSin hissed. ‘Black magic! They very evil.’

‘Yes,’ N’tombe said. ‘They are.’

‘I want them,’ spoke Ma suddenly and deliberately. ‘I
want
them. No one steals from me and mine. They must pay, do you hear? They must pay.’

So for the second time in two days Will found himself in a bar with the fishermen. Tonight, the fishermen appeared plenty merry — free drinks were better than a chancy day at sea. Yesterday, when the Evanses had galloped through the village with Dana as their captive, the fisherfolk had seemed unnerved by the brother’s presence. But now that the Evanses were safely deceased and Ma Evans was standing a wake for her boys, the fishermen declared that the world was a poorer place from their leaving of it. Crowding around the bar, they called orders to the innkeeper and sometimes burst into song.

Will sat on a wooden bench in the corner of the taproom and sipped his ale. He felt guilty for his comfort; the rough voices, the companionship. But Jed made the most of the free beer. Ma Evans sat beside him in the far corner of the room and drank ale like the men, matching Jed pint for pint. She drank with an air of desperation, as though there was an answer at the bottom of her tankard.

TeSin, though, sipped at his drink slowly and cautiously; the taste, he explained, was “strange”. N'tombe had disappeared. Hopefully, she was searching for Dana, for the trace of her passing on the trackless sea. But probably she was taking a bath, or eating, or generally celebrating being free of the trail, and forgetting totally her lost charge.

Leaving TeSin to his sipping, Will put his tankard down and returned to his room.

He slept badly, troubled by dreams. Once, he thought he saw Dana, silhouetted against the light. She turned towards him, smiling, then dissolved, disappearing into brightness. He stretched towards her but she slipped through his fingers. Gone. She had gone.

He woke in the middle of the night. His mattress sagged and it was hard to sleep on such softness when he’d been months on the ground. Nearby, on a makeshift mattress of straw, TeSin snored gently. When he moved, the straw rustled like a hundred mice had taken residence in it. And Jed’s bed was empty.

Where had the man gone? Surely he couldn’t be still in the bar? But all was quiet below; the fishermen must have finally made their way back to their homes. Will got out of bed quietly, trying not to disturb the sleeping TeSin. He needed to use the latrine.

Outside in the stableyard all was quiet. The moon was low and to the east, the sky glowed pearly white. The sun would be a-rising soon. The horses stamped at their straw and a cat blinked at him with lazy eyes.

For a moment, Will felt he was back with Aunt Agnes. Every stableyard was the same. Even the smells: horse dung, the sharp smell of the privy, the scent of fowls. There would be a pigsty around the corner, if he was any judge.

He stepped from the privy and bent to wash his hands at the water trough. Stopped. Was that a voice, speaking low? A woman’s voice, soft laughter? Stepping quietly, Will crept to the stable door and peeped in. A man reclined naked on the straw with a woman, equally naked, beside him. They were talking in soft voices. Lovers, newly-made. It might have been a sweet scene, had the man been more handsome, the woman younger. Her long white hair brushed the man’s chest and he smiled, reaching up to touch her face.

Will meant to tiptoe away and leave them to their loving but the man sat up, and the dull moonlight fell on his face. Will gasped. Jed! The woman turned, startled. It was Ma Evans!

Will stood there, mouth agape, and stared at Jed and the woman. These folk were
old
! Past the age of loving in a stable! Past the age of loving at all, when one thought about it. He felt struck with surprise, unable to move.

‘What you staring at, son?’ said Ma. ‘Ain’t you ever seen a woman naked before?’

Will swallowed and thought briefly of Dana, floating on the lake. The water sluicing from her skin as she walked towards him. Pushing on a knee, Ma Evans stood. She looked nothing like Dana. There were bags and sags and wrinkles. Will shut his eyes.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to disturb you.’

Jed laughed and threw a handful of straw at Ma Evans. ‘You’re too much woman for him,’ he said lazily. ‘Come back to bed.’

‘Call this a bed?’ Her voice was warm, affectionate. She sounded as though she was speaking to a pet.

‘Nearest thing we have,’ Jed patted the straw beside him. ‘Come on, lass. Lay you down.’ He looked at Will. ‘You’ve seen enough, boy?’

Quickly, Will stepped backwards. How could the woman do this thing, with her sons so newly dead? ‘Aye,’ he said, shakily. ‘More than enough.’

––––––––

I
stood on the quay. Beside me the wreck of the boat flamed, sending sparks lifting into the darkness. What would I do now? And where should I go? As if in answer, a horse snorted and behind me a man coughed nervously. I’d forgotten the coach. The driver, small and dark and compact — he looked like something you could fold into a trunk — stared at me with anxious eyes, as if wondering if he would be the next thing to burn.

Tiredness hit suddenly and it was hard to lift my head. I felt like laughing or crying, or both. I wanted to creep into some dark, quiet place, curl up and go to sleep like a beggar. The analogy was strong, for standing on this empty quayside and wearing only rags, I was without family, friends, money or clothes. I was poor indeed.

In the flickering light from the still-burning ship, the coach appeared monstrously tall. The coachman motioned to the coach door, as if inviting me to step inside. The beads screamed at me:
No
! But I was so tired — I needed somewhere safe to sleep.