Full Circle (22 page)

Acton spoke again. “Find your Travellers. Reassure them. Plan your defences with them. And treat them well — because they
are your shield and your sword.”

“Stupid idea,” a woman muttered. “Acton wouldn’t say that. He just killed the bastards.”

Acton turned slowly towards her and she backed away a little, reacting to the authority in his look. Bramble wasn’t sure how
he did it; his face was calm, not stern, but nonetheless he suddenly felt dangerous.

“For a thousand years this land has been divided, in part because I chose poorly at times. Division has led us to the dead
taking revenge upon the living. Unity is our only defence. If we are not divided, if the people of the old blood stand with
us, we cannot be defeated.”

“Is that true, lord?” the smith asked. “We can’t be defeated?”

Acton stared at him with compassion. “We will be defeated, my friend, if we are fighting each other. Work together, or die.”

As soon as Baluch finished echoing him, he strode off. Northeast.

“Tell everyone what Acton wants,” Baluch added. “Spread the word.”

The smith nodded in obedience. It made Bramble’s gut curl in a knot. Obedience, deference — Acton and Baluch expected them,
just like any warlord’s man.

But then she caught sight of the puzzlement and uncertainty of the other villagers, and almost laughed. It was so like him,
to upset everything, to come back and take over, to do what everyone least expected.

“This wasn’t quite what I imagined we’d be doing,” she said. Ash was annoyed.

“He’s heading the wrong way. We’re supposed to go to Sanctuary.”

But when they caught up with Acton, he refused to turn around.

“Sanctuary’s too close to T’vit,” he said. “We have to stop this enchanter before he gets there.”

“Since when is that
your
decision?” Ash demanded.

Medric moved in front of Ash and glowered. “That’s Acton you’re talking to!”

For a moment, Ash looked at him with hatred. Medric hunched himself, preparing for a fight. Bramble began to move forward,
ready to intervene. She knew how Ash could fight. If he exploded, Medric would die. But Ash turned away from him, towards
Acton.

Acton considered him. It had been a long time, Bramble thought, since anyone had challenged his leadership. Even Asgarn had
pretended, until the end, to follow him gladly.

“Enchanter,” he said with courtesy, “your business is spells and power. Mine is fighting. It’s bad strategy to let your enemy
get to your most valued stronghold. You must stop him early, before he reaches it. Or people die.”

Bramble wondered which battle he was thinking of — one where he was a defender, or an attacker? Either way, he was right.

“We agreed to meet the Well of Secrets in Sanctuary,” Ash said.

“She is a great prophet and healer,” Baluch explained to Acton.

“We don’t need her,” Acton said. “From what you say, I must confront these ghosts. Do we need this Well of Secrets for that?”
They hesitated, and he kept speaking. “Does it matter
where
I do it?”

“Not so far as we know,” Baluch said. “But we may not know everything.”

“Nobody knows everything,” Acton said, his cheerful face at shocking odds with the terrible grating voice. “Baluch tells me
that there is a stream in Central Domain which ran red with the blood of dead soldiers.”

Information from the Lake, Bramble thought.

“Draw me a map,” Acton said to Baluch, who crouched and sketched a rough outline of the Domains in the dirt. Acton beckoned
over one of the young men from the village who had followed them.

“Show us where we are,” Baluch said to him. The boy dragged his eyes away from Acton and pointed. They were much further east
than she had thought. The Caverns had transported them a long way. Good, she thought, that would save them time.

“Thanks, lad,” Baluch said, and Acton clapped the boy on the shoulder. The dead-cold sent him on his way shivering, but he
was walking tall.

“Central Domain is where?” Acton asked. Baluch pointed to the map and Acton nodded. “Then the enchanter will make his way
down to Turvite this way.” His finger traced a route and stopped at the Fallen River.

“There’s only two places to cross that river,” Bramble said. “Up near the source, and here” — she pointed — “at Wooding.”
Her voice had been steady, she thought, but Acton glanced up at her as though she’d betrayed her unease. Her parents and grandfather
were in Wooding. If the enchanter crossed the River there… “That’s where I’m from,” she added. “I know that countryside.”

Acton nodded and stood up, brushing the dirt from his hands. “We make for Wooding, then,” he said.

Bramble reached in her mind for the local gods, as she had done so often.
Wooding?
she asked, but they didn’t answer. All their attention was on Acton. Perhaps that meant they approved of his plan.

She had sworn not to become one of his followers. Giving in to her own desire to go to Wooding seemed like a betrayal of that,
a betrayal of Maryrose. Then she remembered Ash’s pouch. The gods could decide for them.

“Cast for us, Ash,” she said.

Ash looked relieved to take some kind of action. He sat down on the grass and spread out the square of linen he kept tucked
in the top of his pouch. Acton’s face lit with interest, as it had in the cave when Dotta had cast the stones for him. He
crouched next to Bramble as she sat opposite Ash, spat in her palm and clasped hands with him.

“Which way should we go?” she asked.

Ash cast five stones. They clinked as they fell. Four of the faces were up.

“Necessity, Danger, Travel, Uncertainty,” Ash said, touching them one by one. As when he had sung Acton back, his voice was
the voice of the dead, harsh and grating. As Baluch had said, it was a voice of power. The final stone was plain black, blank
faced. She waited for Ash to turn it over, but instead he touched it lightly as it lay. The blank stone, then, the one that
meant anything could happen.

But Ash said, “Evenness,” his tone full of dread.

“Evenness?” Bramble said. “Never heard of that one.”

“It’s new,” Ash said, his face carefully blank.

Bramble stayed very still for a long moment. The other two, who came from a culture without stonecasters, looked puzzled.

“Change the stones, change the world,” Bramble quoted, and Ash nodded. “But what does it mean?”

Ash took a long breath and let it out. “I’m not sure.” He sounded light and young and a little afraid. “Justice? Equality?”
His face seemed strained, as though this was not a responsibility he relished.

“So what do these stones mean for us?” Acton asked.

Ash looked down at the casting. “They mean that neither choice is perfect,” he said. “We will be taking a chance either way,
and the chances are evenly balanced, good and bad.”

“Wooding, then,” Acton said immediately, standing up.

“Because it’s your choice?” Ash said, standing to face him.

“It’s
Acton
,” Medric protested again.

Acton waved Medric silent and turned to look at Ash seriously. “You brought me back because you have need of me,” he said.
“I think you need more of my skills than you know. We are enemies — I understand that. But I have stood shoulder to shoulder
with my enemies before, because we were both confronted with a greater threat. And I think that is what you and I must now
do against this enchanter.”

“Under your command,” Ash said bitterly.

“Are you a commander? If you are, I will follow you,” Acton replied.

It was the simplicity of it that disarmed Ash. If Ash was a commander, Acton
would
follow. That truth was clear in his face.

Ash turned away and crouched down to pick up his stones and put them back in the pouch. Bramble expected his face to be red,
but instead he was pale, as though Acton had said more than she had heard.

Acton nodded as if Ash had answered and began walking north-east, Baluch following after a backward look at Ash.

Bramble waited for Ash to pack up then slung her saddlebags back over her shoulder, in their accustomed place. She’d walked
the length and breadth of this country, and it looked like she was going to walk halfway back. Her boots would be worn through,
she thought with a grin, and she’d be forced to go barefoot, as she preferred.

“My family are in Wooding,” she said, not looking at Ash. He walked ahead without meeting her eyes and she turned to Medric.
“If you want to go home now, Medric, no one will think less of you.”

He was surprised. “Go
now?
Oh, no. I’m following Acton.” His eyes were alight with a vision of glory, of being part of legend.

“It will be risky.”

“Fine with me,” he said. That was bad, Bramble thought. That was very bad.

“We’re not going on some kind of adventure,” she continued, “where you can get yourself killed so you don’t have to feel guilty
any more, or so you can die in glory.” Her voice was deliberately harsh, to startle him. “I need to be able to trust you,
or you get out of this right now.”

“You can trust me!” he protested.

“Trust you not to take the easy way out if an opportunity presents?” she demanded. “Not to dive into death to get away from
your own thoughts?”

He flushed and looked away, and she knew she’d been right. He had been courting Lady Death in his mind as a way out of dealing
with his need for Fursey, and Fursey’s need for the gold buried deep in the mine Medric hated to enter. Lady Death would help
him forget what the ox had said to him, back in the Caverns. And the promise of fighting with Acton had just made it easier
to court her. Deliverance and glory, all in one.

But to Bramble’s surprise he looked back at her, chin up. “Aye,” he said. “I’ll back you best I can till you don’t need me.”

She nodded. “Good then.” Her voice softened. “Maybe by then Lady Death won’t look so fair to you.”

Medric grinned, a sudden sweep of humour across his face that brought an answering smile from her. “It’s the first time a
female’s had any attraction, so might could be you’re right!”

Acton and Baluch walked together and Bramble could hear that Baluch was still giving language lessons — the names of things,
the words he had used to the villagers, Domain and town names.

And they weren’t travelling alone. Like Medric, some of the young men from the village chose to follow Acton at a respectful
distance.

The first step, Bramble thought. He’s raising an army.

W
HEN THEY
arrived at the fort, Leof took Vi and the other councillors to the hall, moving through the muster yard slowly, to let them
take a good look at the men training, the smiths hammering, the masons working on the defences. He had no hope that the huge,
complicated apparatus of war being created here would impress Vi, but he wasn’t sure of the others; it was worth a try.

He left them in the empty hall with Alston and went in search of Thegan, but found Sorn first, supervising the cleaning of
Thegan’s office. His heart jolted and then lifted as he laid eyes on her. She was instructing a young maid, a new girl by
the looks of her, about leaving Thegan’s map table strictly alone. Her voice was like rain after drought. He took a deep breath
and let it out, glad she hadn’t seen that first, unmistakable reaction.

Then she turned and saw him and he saw her eyes light, her mouth open to say his name and then close again, firmly, as she
took control of herself. It broke his heart, an actual pain inside his chest, to see her in difficulty, but he could do nothing
that wouldn’t make it worse.

“Lady Sorn,” he said formally, bowing. “I seek my lord.”

“With the smiths, Lord Leof, I believe,” she said.

“There are… guests, in the hall.”

Her eyes lifted sharply to his, but they betrayed nothing.

“The town council of Baluchston,” he said.

“They will be treated with honour and offered comfort,” she said, the formal oath of a warlord’s lady. It was a serious thing
to say, and he was both solaced and worried by it. Sorn would honour that oath, and it might cost her dearly.

He bowed again and walked slowly back to the hall so his breathing would be as calm as her voice by the time he reached it.

The older man, Reed, spoke as he entered the room. “Where are the Travellers being kept?”

“In the barn.” Distaste crossed their faces, and he was nettled. “I assure you, we have done what we could to make them comfortable,
but as you have seen, our accommodations are stretched to breaking point. Stay here. My lord is with the smiths. I will come
back after I have seen him.”

Irritation at them went with him across to the smiths’ forge and hardened his voice when he found Thegan with Affo, the head
smith, and a group of other men he didn’t know.

“I’ve brought those bloody Baluchstoners back,” he said. “The whole town turned out and said they had Traveller blood and
we should take all of them. I brought the council back. I’ve stuck them in the hall.”

Thegan nodded. “Let them wait. I’ve been talking to the smiths and the weavers from town about making heavy weighted nets,
like the ones the northern fishers make to catch the fish that are too strong for their lines.”

Leof gladly dived into the discussion, gloom lifting from his spirits. Defence, weaponry, the organisation of their forces:
these were what he had been trained for, and what he loved. Let Thegan deal with politics.

Sorn rose as Thegan entered, and bowed. “My lord,” she said, and waited, hands by her sides.

Leof and Thegan had returned to the hall to find Sorn sitting with the town councillors at one of the lower tables, discussing,
it had appeared, the music of the Lake People and how it differed from that of Acton’s people. Leof hadn’t realised she knew
anything about music. There was so much he didn’t know about her.

Vi lumbered to her feet and the others followed, a little reluctantly, and faced Thegan. Leof wondered what they saw: he himself
was looking at Thegan a little differently nowadays, but he still saw a handsome, strong man in the full possession of his
power. Vi’s face gave nothing away, her heavy-lidded eyes blank.