Across the Face of the World (3 page)

Driving sleet, a frost and a day of low cloud and chilling temperatures followed. This year the villagers had at least finished gathering the harvest when he arrived.

One villager didn't even see this onslaught, this precursor of winter. Icewind fever was seldom serious; those who suffered it usually spent two or three days with a cold, a sore chest and a headache. Leith, however, could not shake it off. The cough broke after three days, the fever dissipated, but still he stayed in bed. He seemed not to hear the often-expressed concern of his mother and, as his lassitude grew, answered conversation more and more seldom. For most of the time he lay quietly in front of the fire, eyes closed. The village Haufuth called in on organisational matters for the Midwinter festival, but even he failed to get a response from the youth.

'It isn't natural!' the stout headman puffed, leaning on his staff, a recent affectation. 'He should be out and about, helping you get the house ready for winter, not lying about in bed. It looks like a long and hard winter this year. Had I known, I would have sent one of the young men around to give you a hand.'

'Thank you, Haufuth,' the woman replied carefully. In the North March the elected village headman was always known as the Haufuth, for reasons long forgotten, and his birth-name was seldom used. 'To tell you the truth, Leith hasn't been the same since his father left. I'm sure he will be all right when Mahnum returns home.'

The Haufuth frowned. 'But how long will that be? You have work to do before winter's heart.

Your boy won't be able to lie about when the snow sits heavy on your unrepaired roof. And Kurr came in to see me yesterday. He tells me that Mahnum owes him a few days on the farm

- I forget how many exactly - and asked me if Leith would do in his stead.'

She stared at him, eyes cold, the familiar anger stirring within.

'I've already agreed, Indrett,' he said, his forehead furrowed and his troubled eyes pleading with her. 'Please don't cause any trouble with old Kurr just now. You know how I need him for Midwinter. Without his mutton we just couldn't have a Midwinter. Please get Leith to go and work for him this week. For all our sakes.'

Indrett nodded reluctantly. It was past time for stern words. She wasn't worried about Kurr; the old man was all smoke but no fire. In fact, she rather liked his hard-bitten manner. Better than the polite standoffishness she encountered daily at the market. But the village Haufuth could cause Leith a great deal of trouble if he desired. Perhaps the Haufuth was right. Perhaps she had been too soft on the boy. If only Mahnum was here ...

'He'll be there,' she said flatly.

'Good, good. Now, about Midwinter. The council have decided that this year we will have new masks. Would you be so good as to make the Snowmask and the Flowermask? You always do such good work.'

'What about the Sumar?" Indrett believed in giving them their proper names: Snaer and Falla, not Snowmask and Flowermask. Sumar, not Sunmask. Strange, she reflected, that a woman from the civilised south would want to hold on to traditions the uncouth northerners seemed so careless about. Still, she would make no comment; it would be wise not to antagonise the village headman.

'Herza is making the Sunmask this time. We thought that with Mahnum away, you wouldn't have time ...'

'Of course I'll do it.' Indrett's quick answer covered his awkward¬ness.

'Excellent, excellent!' the big man beamed. 'And we would so much like to see the reappearance of your honey cakes. They went so fast last year I never got to try even one.'

In spite of herself, Indrett smiled. The appetite of the Haufuth of Loulea was legendary. Other villages could boast the quickest runner, the strongest woman or the fastest woodchopper, and these claims were put to the test when the villages gathered for Midsummer at Vapnatak. But Loulea was famous for the culinary capacity of its Haufuth, and this distinction had never been seri¬ously challenged. At the table, if nowhere else, the Haufuth truly led his people.

'Why, you should have said!' she replied with a flourish. 'I could make you a batch this week -

in fact, I'll send Hal over with a basket tomorrow.'

The Haufuth rubbed his hands together, then frowned. 'Merin put me on a diet yesterday,' he muttered pensively. He thought a moment, and his face brightened. 'She loves your baking.

Maybe we could postpone this diet to next week. Yes, that's the answer!' he said, pleased with himself. 'She told me about those cakes. Crisp wheat. Honey centres! Tomorrow, you said?'

'They'll be there,' Indrett said laughingly. 'Off with you now, before you promise me out of provisions.'

I'll pay for the cakes,' the Haufuth protested.

'Don't be ridiculous.'

The large man laughed out loud: a heavy, laboured laugh. Then his round face grew more serious, and he hitched up the belt around his huge girth, a sure sign he was nervous. 'Look, Indrett, let me pay for the cakes. Some of us are concerned about you. You put on a brave face, but tell me, how are you going to make it through the winter? The council think that maybe if a few of the men of the village donated a day each—'

'We'll make it!' the short woman snapped, her anger rising. 'My family made it through last winter on our own and we'll do it again, with no favours. And who's to say Mahnum won't be back before Midwinter?' Her face lifted proudly, daring the Haufuth to gainsay her.

Wearily, the big man sighed and sat down. 'Look, I didn't want to start on this. We miss your husband in the fields, in the village, on the council. We need him - well, not as much as you do, to be sure,' he said cautiously, noting her icy expression, 'but ours is a small village and even the lack of one man is keenly felt. Your son, now—'

'If it's hands you are short of, I have two to give! I won't have this family beholden to the village!'

'You know that's not possible, Indrett. Women have their tasks, their place, and we need them there ...'

All thought of not antagonising this man evaporated with those words. 'May all stubborn northerners perish in the snows along with their backward peasant ideas! If only you would think, really think, for just one minute! Mahnum is gone who knows where on some foolish errand for the dead King. Leith is not yet seventeen, and he isn't ready. Hal does the work of three men but no one ever notices. Just women's work, all a cripple's fit for. And all the while we're treated as though we don't exist! No say on the Village Council, a council made up of the leader of every house - if he's a man. People feel we've deliberately hurt them by depriving the village of manpower - as though Mahnum leaving was my fault -and they simply ignore me at the market. All we're good for is masks and cakes at Midwinter! Yet none of those who resent us refuse Hal's ministrations when Icewind fever strikes! Can't you see that if I and the other widows in the village were allowed to work with the men and sit on the council, we could hold our heads high? That no one would have to despise us? That we wouldn't have to be treated like beggars? Can't you see?'

She paused, red-faced and out of breath, anger flickering danger¬ously in her dark eyes. The Haufuth leaned forward in his gently protesting chair, and softened his expression still further.

'Indrett, we can't let this go on. Already you work yourself to exhaustion caring for your boys.

1 watched you in the market the other day. Remember when that silly woman from Vapnatak tried to set up her sweetmeat stall in opposition to you? I was proud of how you stood up for yourself without becoming rude or offensive. Honestly, could you do more? Those villagers who scorn you, well, maybe they are scared and ignorant, fearing a foul winter and the loss of their own husbands. And maybe they might even help you, but for your proud independence.'

Indrett shook her head, more to keep the tears from her eyes than to disagree.

'Come to the next council meeting and voice your grievance,' he said gently. 'The council will listen.'

She nodded her head dumbly, unable to speak through the hurt and loss that seemed suddenly to well up within her. Watching her with sympathetic eyes, the Haufuth relaxed tense muscles and looked towards the door. He wasn't much good when it came to crying.

'Now, don't forget about Kurr, will you?'

'No, Haufuth, I won't.'

The sweaty man raised himself from the chair with a groan and walked slowly to the door. 'I'd better be going. It's nearly lunchtime!' he said lightly, in an effort to break the tension. 'I should be just in time for Herza's table. Good day to you.' He touched her shoulder on the way out.

Indrett shook her head as the door closed. She sighed and turned towards the figure sleeping in front of the fire. Time for tears later.

This was not going to be easy; if she didn't handle it right she might lose her son's heart forever.

The wind that blew straight off the snow-cloaked mountains to the northeast rattled the gnarled branches of the oaks and bent the tall, leafless poplars towards the sea. A blond-headed boy with a knapsack on his back trudged down a frosted road, stamping irrit¬ably on any ice-covered puddles in his path and only occasionally glancing up at the wispy clouds scudding across the pale blue sky. Around him the rolling hills sparkled silver in the early morning light, speckled here and there with farm animals grazing or lying asleep, their breath steaming around cold nostrils. The road on which he walked led to a farm, where the boy was going to work for the day.

The name of the farm was chiselled on the mossy, slatted farm gate, and on his mind. For a long time the boy rested there, leaning against the half-opened gate, running his fingers absently over the name carved in the splintering wood. Heaving a vast sigh, he straightened and looked beyond the gate and down the rutted track that disappeared over a grassy ridge in the distance.

Better get it over with, Leith thought. Kurr was a legend to the children of the village, the old man who caught boys and girls and locked them in his dark, cold barn. What he did with them then no one knew for sure, though many of the young boys claimed to have escaped from his clutches. Leith himself had once stolen some apples from the bottom paddocks, and had hidden in fear under a hedge while the irate farmer scoured the area for the thief. It had only been for a dare. He didn't really believe all the stories told about the old man - at least, he hadn't believed them last night as he lay in bed - but he would rather have been at home in front of the fire than shivering in the crisp morning air. He thought of what his mother had said, how angry she had been. Rather the old farmer than more of that. Shutting the gate to Stibbourne Farm behind him, he walked slowly down the narrow road.

How could she have thought that he was betraying his father? Would his father really have been hurt by his behaviour? Would he have thought it childish? Well, if he had been here, things would have been different, he thought angrily. It's not my fault! Where was his father?

When would he come home? If he had really loved them, if he had really loved Leith, he would never have gone away.

Leith vividly remembered the day his father had left them. It was at the end of a back-breaking afternoon of seed planting, and the family were sitting quietly together on freshly cut, upturned logs in front of their small house, backs to the reddening sun. A group of finely clad men rode up on tall horses, mail-shirted and armed with glittering swords menacingly drawn, the children of the village trailing excitedly behind them. The men dismounted and hailed his father. Leith could remember how frightened he had felt then. There had been a discussion that rapidly heated into a quarrel, ending with the men abruptly mounting their horses and riding noisily, arrogantly off down the road through the village. Hermesa's little brother had been knocked over, he remembered that. The soldiers never stopped to check if the small boy had been hurt, they just rode off as though they owned the world. Then his father had tried to explain things to them, his mother crying already and Leith wanting to run away or to knock someone down but not knowing where or who.

'The King is dying,' his father had said, 'and he sends me to my death.'

That night he had held them close, and then he had gone away.

An image came unbidden to his mind, an image of a tall man stooping over a log, trying to pull an axe from it. The muscles of his unshirted torso strained with effort. With a grunt the axe came free; then down it came, again and again, until the log was split in two.

Leith knew it was his father, but try as he might, he could not see the face.

He shook his head to clear it of the image, and forced himself back to reality, shivering as the cold wind whipped around him. If growing up meant having to do things he didn't want to, things like walking down the narrow, rutted path leading to the house of Kurr the farmer, then he wasn't sure he wanted to grow up. He wanted to be exploring with his friends, talking with Hal, walking with Stella, working the fields with his father.

He could see the farm buildings now. They nestled below him

in a small defile, surrounded by trees bravely fluttering their few remaining autumn flags against the winter wind. Behind the ochres and golds rose another cattle-grazed hill, stretching lazily away towards the sea.

The old man was watching the road from the door of his barn. He saw the silhouetted figure shuffle slowly into view, with head down and hands in pockets, reluctance clearly showing in his demeanour. Good. He still remembers Kurr the farmer. Well, Kurr still remembers a little episode concerning an apple or two. There's nothing like fear to make a boy work harder.

He waited until the youth had trudged up the steps to the house and had knocked lightly on the door, as if he didn't really want an answer. Then he eased open the barn door.

'You! Boy! Over here!'

The white-faced boy started, then looked in the direction of the barn. He stood where he was, irresolute.

'Quickly, if you know what's good for you!'

The voice was definitely coming from the barn. More than anything Leith wanted to run, but he forced himself to walk ner¬vously towards the old building.