Blood and Memory (37 page)

Aremys came to slowly. Was someone kicking him? He could not be sure just yet. In fact, he was not sure of anything other than that he breathed. And that there was pain everywhere. Concentrating hard, he determined that there were also voices—men’s voices—and then he made out the familiar sounds of horses. He risked opening his eyes, trying for the life of him to remember why he would be lying down in the open in such a freezing temperature.

“Ah, so you’re alive, then?” someone said.

He grunted. “Just.”

“Get Myrt,” the voice said, and Aremys heard footsteps retreat, crunching on fresh snow. It was a lovely sound, a sound he thought he remembered fondly from childhood. “Can you move?” the man asked.

“Let me just open my eyes,” he replied, squinting through them to discover a fantastically sharp brightness and a big scowling man, tall enough to match even his substantial height. He closed them again hurriedly.

More footsteps. A new voice, deeper this time. “Well, help him up, Firl.”

Aremys felt himself hauled roughly to his feet. His legs were unsteady and leaden, his mind clouded. He forced himself to open his eyes again, but he ignored the man called Firl and regarded the older fellow with knowing gray eyes. Blinding pain sliced through his head as he did so. “I’m sorry.” He smiled crookedly. “My head aches.”

“You must have fallen and hit it,” the man, presumably Myrt of the deep voice, suggested. “What’s your name?”

Aremys reached up to scratch his head. Everything hurt. “I’d tell you if I could. I can’t remember a thing right now.”

Myrt sighed. “Get a blanket on him, someone. You, Firl, double with him. Let’s go.”

Bruised and feeling sorry for himself, Aremys was helped, none too gently, onto a horse with the surly man called Firl—who clearly did not want to double with him—and began a journey he knew not why or where to…or even where from. What he did know was that he was high in the mountains and there was only one enormous range to his knowledge. It could hardly be anywhere else…or could it?

Firl ignored him for the first hour or so. This did not bother Aremys; he was too concerned with keeping his balance and trying to remember his name. He was grateful for the blanket, though.

“Where are we?” he finally asked.

“Razors,” the man bluntly responded.

Aremys never could suffer fools. “Yes, I think I’ve worked that out. But where exactly?”

The sarcasm seemed to have little effect on the young brute. “East.”

He could tell he was not going to get much more out of the chatty fellow, so he delved back into his own mind, which felt like tangled skeins of wool. Ignoring the growing headache, he forced himself to concentrate on recalling anything about himself. Nothing surfaced and he growled in frustration.

“Who are you?” he asked.

His companion spoke again in the same disinterested tone. “Firl. I thought we’d already established that.”

“And the others?” Aremys asked, struggling to keep his irritation in check.

“Did you want me to list their names?”

“Not if they’re all as uninteresting as yours.” He felt the man’s body stiffen and was glad he had struck a blow. “I meant, what are you doing out here?”

“We’re a scouting party.”

“For Cailech?”

“Who else?” the man said, and Aremys, sitting behind him, imagined him scowling.

“Am I a prisoner?”

The man snorted. “Why don’t you make a run for it and see what happens? I’m a great shot.”

“Is your conversation always this scintillating, Firl? I’ll bet the other men in the party just love it when they know you’re coming along because of all the witty repartee they’re going to enjoy with mighty Firl and his equally huge ego. Do you understand what ‘repartee’ means, Firl, or is it one of those words that are just too big for your minuscule brain?”

Myrt overheard Aremys and the threatening tone that had crept into his voice. He steered his horse over and lifted his chin in inquiry. “Anything wrong?”

“No,” Firl mumbled.

“Actually, yes,” Aremys countered. “I want to know if I’m a prisoner and why. I’d like to know where we’re headed and why. I’d appreciate knowing why I’ve been seemingly captured by a scouting party, sitting with this oaf of few syllables, and I’d love to know my own name!” he roared, his headache pounding in tandem with his blood pressure and anger.

“Hop up with me. Firl, you go on ahead,” Myrt ordered. There was something of an admonishment in the man’s expression and it was not lost on the sulking Firl.

Aremys was more than glad to clamber up behind Firl’s superior. “Thank you,” he mumbled. “And for the blanket. I’m sorry for the outburst. I seem to have lost my manners as well as my memory.”

“So I gathered,” Myrt said, clicking to his horse and moving forward again. “Either that or you’re a clever spy.”

“Shar strike me! Is that what you all think?”

“Why wouldn’t we? You’re Morgravian, aren’t you?”

“I…well…I don’t know,” Aremys blustered.

“You dress like one and curse like one.”

“Then perhaps I am. I have no idea who I am. Mind you, I understand the Northernish you were muttering with your men earlier. Does that mean anything?”

“Is that so? And what were we saying?”

Aremys told him.

“All right, stranger, I’m impressed,” Myrt admitted. “Most Morgravians wouldn’t understand a word of it, which is why we used it in front of you. Anything else?”

“No, not really,” Aremys admitted. “The Razors are familiar, although I can’t tell you why or how I even knew their name. No horse, no belongings, save my sword,” he said, and shook his head. “No memory,” he added mournfully.

“Well, perhaps pulling out your toenails will help your memory,” Myrt said, and felt Aremys start behind him. He let out a deep rumbling laugh, enjoying his own jest.

“Shar’s Wrath, man! Will it come to that?”

“Be easy. Did Firl tell you our business?”

“Oh yes, we enjoyed a long and cordial chat.” Myrt waited, unaffected by the biting wit of their new guest. “Only that you’re a scouting party,” Aremys grumbled.

“That’s right. Do you know Morgravia has all but declared war on the mountain people?”

“If I do, I don’t remember.”

“Then you’ll forgive us our suspicions,” Myrt said. “Well, if you’re from Morgravia—which you probably aren’t—you’d know about our problems with King Celimus.”

The name was familiar and its mention sounded a distant series of alarm bells in Aremys’s mind. He pushed at them but had no success. “Why do you think I’m most likely not from Morgravia?”

“Because we’ve picked you up on the Briavellian side of the Razors and your accent isn’t right. It’s Morgravian all right, but it’s covering something else. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were from the northern islands.”

Again, a prick of familiarity, but it was elusive. “I see. Maybe I am. I wish I could dredge up something to help my cause.”

The man called Myrt nodded. “It will come. To answer your question, yes, you are our prisoner, but we shall treat you honorably until the King has decided what to do with you. I’m afraid relations with Morgravia are strained, but your odd accent may save you yet. What shall we call you until then?”

Aremys pondered, unhappy at his situation but fully aware that he had no option other than cooperation. He had no mount, no food, almost no memory, and was somewhere in the Razors, where a single night could be deadly. “What’s a good mountain name?”

“How about Cullyn? It’s one of the oldest.”

He shrugged. “Fine.”

“No such thing as free meals in this troop, Cullyn. We’ll be on the ridges for a few days yet. What can you do to earn your keep?”

Aremys shook his head, feeling suddenly grateful to the big man of the mountains. “I have no idea. You tell me.”

“All right, then. We’re about to make camp here. You can provide the entertainment for tonight. How about you take sulky Firl on with the sword. I think he’d quite like a go at you.”

“And me at him, I assure you.”

Myrt laughed. “I like your arrogance. Hope you haven’t forgotten your skills, Cullyn. Our Firl is one of the best in the Razors with a sword.”

“Just promise me some ale and worry about your mountain boy over there,” Aremys said, grinning hungrily despite his pounding head.

A camp was settled and the horses corralled in a small copse of fir trees that also provided the wood for the men’s fire. Myrt ran a tight troop and gave orders briskly. Some men were designated to prepare the food, others to gather the wood, some to take care of the animals, and the younger ones to restock the water skins. He took Aremys and another man to hunt down some meat. Aremys pleased his host by shooting four hares without wasting a single arrow. Each man returned with a small brace of game, which was quickly skinned and gutted and before long roasting over the coals.

They did not speak Northernish, a language no longer in use except for reasons of disguise and the odd word here and there. If Aremys’s memory had been intact, he would have known that the language only survived because of King Cailech’s love for the mountain culture. He had passed an edict that Northernish would be taught from elder to grandchild in order to keep the language alive. In daily life, however, the mountain people spoke the language of the region, the common tongue from Briavel in the east to as far west as Tallinor. Aremys did not know that he recognized the Northernish because his wet nurse, an old woman of the isles, used to sing to him in the old language.

Sadly, right then he could not even remember as far back as the previous day, when he had been clambering through the Thicket, one moment following the shapely bottom of Ylena Thirsk and the next overcome by a sudden wave of magic. He could not recall the air thickening to a dull, almost solid wall and the powerful blast of the magic that had opened the cleft through which his prone, unconscious self had been pushed…in this case on a northeastern ridge of the Razors into the path of Myrt’s scouting troop, all memory blurred deeply within his subsconscious.

While the meat cooked and a hearty vegetable broth simmered in a pot, Myrt posted lookouts and then called the remaining eleven men around the fireside for the early evening’s entertainment. There was fifteen of them in total; all strong-looking men but none of them, other than Firl, tall enough to go eye to eye with the giant stranger.

“How you do feel, Cullyn?”

“Like hurting someone,” he mumbled, and a roar went up from the delighted audience, ready for sport.

“All right, then. Do we have a sparring partner to go up against our huge guest here?”

Firl stood, cutting the air with his heavy sword. He held it two-fisted and snarled, “He’s mine.”

Aremys shook off the blue blanket that had been lent to him and drew his own sword. As he did so, the movement of the dyed wool reflected off the blade and he momentarily staggered under the fleeting blaze of memory.

“Koreldy,” he whispered, remembering a sword with a blue tinge to its edge.

Only Myrt caught the word and he too was forced to pause in recognition of a name known all too well to the senior members of Cailech’s circle of trusted supporters. This was not the time to confront the stranger with it, he decided, and instead stored it away. It would be brought to light when it counted…before the King. Suddenly this man among them was important.