Full Circle (30 page)

Men simply followed him. They felt greater in themselves when they did. Even poor Medric. She knelt by his body and wished
she had known him better, wished she had asked him about how he and Fursey had met, about his family, his work. She’d had
the chance, on the walk and the ride from the mountain, but she’d been too preoccupied with Acton.

Because when people followed him, they stopped seeing anything else.

Not her, she swore to Medric. Not her any longer.

Thornhill, the fort above Wooding, was visible in the late afternoon light even from across the river. It was on the only
high ground, and its palisades picked up the late sunlight in a grey gleam. Far below it, they could just make out the roofs
of the town, the herringbone pattern of reeds visible on each thatch. That was Udall the thatcher’s pattern. Unmistakable.
The only other thatcher who used it was that girl who’d been his apprentice, Merris, who married the butcher over in Connay.

Her whole life rushed back into her head: Widow Forli, the brewer Sigi and her children, old Swith with his arthritic hands.
Her parents, and grandfather. Maryrose.

They were a few leagues above the narrow bridge which spanned the deep chasm that she and the roan had jumped, once, escaping
from Beck and the other warlord’s men. She had died, here. Right here. She dismounted and looked down. Below, the Fallen River
resounded, its spray climbing in swirling clouds of mist. Swifts rode the air currents, constantly in motion.

Looking at the astonishing jump the roan had made, pride and love and grief for him rushed into her heart. No other horse
could have done it. She dragged her eyes from the chasm and looked back at the town she had grown up in. She could just make
out the roof of her own house.

In old songs and stories, when someone came back home they either felt right at home, and sentimental with it, or they felt
like a complete stranger. Neither was true of her. Perhaps it was because she had never felt at home here to begin with.

Ash and Acton were arguing. Again.

“Who is in command there?” Acton said, gesturing at the town. “If we go to him, he can help us get information, better horses
—”

“Go to the
warlord?
” Ash and Bramble exclaimed together.

Acton blinked at their vehemence. “Even Asgarn would have understood this situation,” he said. But Bramble shook her head
decidedly.

Baluch put up his hand in peacemaking.

“I don’t think you understand about warlords and Travellers, yet,” he said. “Just take my word for it, Acton, no warlord is
going to believe two dark-haired people who show up with what they claim is your ghost.”

Acton opened his mouth to argue, but Ash lost patience. “Silence,” he said, and Acton could no longer speak.

Bramble had had enough of this sniping. “I’m going home,” she said, and she strode off, then thought to look back and say,
“You’ll have to lead the horses; they won’t cross the bridge otherwise. They panic.”

The men were staring after her. Acton had that look — a mixture of admiration and laughter, and she thought of Medric saying
“the only warm thing.” She was pretty sure he’d been talking about Fursey. Men did think of the person they loved most, just
before they died. She’d heard enough men in the pressing box calling for their mothers to know that. But although his look
warmed her, it was the same admiration he’d shown to Wili, or the girl on the mountain. To any woman. She was just another
in a long line whom he’d looked at like that.

Suddenly, she wanted fiercely to go home, to see the familiar look of exasperation and puzzlement in her mother’s eyes, to
see her father’s slow smile, to feel her grandfather’s hug. To feel
normal
again, as if she had not died twice, as if she had never loved a ghost or seen the battles and love affairs of a thousand
years ago.

As she stepped off the bridge, leading her lumpy bay, the men following behind, she could feel familiarity rise up through
her boot soles, and her spirits lifted. In her mind, she sent a greeting to the local gods, as she had done every day in her
childhood.

They did not reply.

“We have to go to the altar,” she said, and mounted.

She led their party the woods way to the altar, along narrow trails used mostly by deer. The black rock altar looked as it
always did. Bramble slid to the ground and led the horses to a large chestnut and tethered them, then approached the altar.

Greetings
, she thought to the gods. She laid her hand on the cold rock and felt relief wash through her. They were there, they were
there after all. But their attention was elsewhere, far away.

Greetings
, she thought again, and this time a small spark of their notice flickered towards her. When they recognised her, suddenly
all their attention turned to her.

Child
, they greeted her.
Why are you here? Go to Turvite
.

And that was all. Their attention immediately turned away from her. She had the sensation that they had returned to a battle,
a fight of their own, and a sliver of the same coldness, the same dread, that she had felt as they raised Acton went through
her.

She backed out of the clearing and rejoined the others. “We have to go to Turvite,” she said. “Now.”

Ash simply nodded, and Bramble thought that perhaps he had heard them too. But Acton set his mouth and frowned. Bramble turned
to Ash.

“Let him speak,” she said.

“Speak, then,” Ash said.

“Why Turvite?” Acton asked immediately.

“Because the gods say so,” Bramble said.

He considered that, shaking his head. “But —”

“It’s the
gods
, you idiot,” she said, furious. No one could stir her to greater annoyance than Acton. No one.

“They’re not
my
gods,” he said simply, the statement sounding doubly blasphemous in the dark grating voice. “Who knows how much they know?
They could be wrong.”

She could see them getting dragged down into an argument which would go on for too long. They didn’t have time for this.

“
I
am going to Turvite,” she said. “Ash is coming with me.”

Acton glanced at Ash and saw his assenting nod.

“And without
Ash
, oh Lord of War,” she continued, “
you
cannot speak.”

“The gods are not the only powers in this land,” Baluch said, as if unsure of his own words. “We all agreed to follow Acton’s
leadership —”

“No,” Bramble interrupted. She faced Acton and stared right into his eyes. “I am not your follower. I never will be.”

He smiled at her, the sideways smile that had melted hearts over and over again, but her heart kept a steady beat. The nuthatches
that nested in this glade were calling to one another, an alarm call because of the noisy humans. She had seen them nest and
raise their young every year. This was the place where she had always been strongest, the most at peace. Where she knew who
she was, and who she was not.

Acton stared into her eyes and gradually she saw his face change. The warm expression shifted into a frown, then into something
else. She was reminded of old Swith’s face as she rubbed the swelling from his arthritic hands — a combination of pleasure
and pain. But this was deeper than anything Swith had ever felt. It seemed to her that Acton’s pale eyes flickered with the
vivid blue she remembered, as though the living man had looked out, for a moment, from the ghost’s eyes.

His face showed a mixture of exaltation and loss, the expressions flowing so fast that she wasn’t sure she’d even seen them.
Her heart beat faster, and she flushed.

He turned away from her for a long moment, as if regaining his composure, then faced her, and smiled. It was not the cozening
smile. She had never seen him smile like this before — in his life or his death. It was a smile of regret at something lost.
Something precious. Did he regret that she wouldn’t follow him? Was the loss he felt the loss of his life? His vitality? She
couldn’t tell, but it seemed to her that he had grown older in those few minutes, and it sent a spear through her heart, robbing
her of breath. His eyes were pale again. He was dead, and she had to remember that.

Acton turned to Ash and gestured to his mouth.

“Speak,” Ash said, in almost a whisper, as if he, too, had seen something that moved him.

“We must raise the defences of this place first,” Acton said firmly.

She nodded, unable to speak. Yes, that was right, she thought. Even the gods would want that. She felt a flash of relief that
her parents would be protected, at least as well as they could manage before they left.

“We’ll start with my family,” she said. “They’re used to Traveller and blondies working together.”

“Let’s go, then,” Ash said.

*   *   *

Although the houses were shuttered fast, the shops around the market square had their counters down as usual for evening business.
Wooding had a big market square, being the warlord’s town. They stopped on the edge of the open space, not sure if they should
attract notice or not. In every other village Acton had just walked straight out into the open, but here… A warlord’s
town was different, and even Acton seemed aware of it. Bramble thought that after Medric’s death, he didn’t want to risk her
or the others by being overconfident.

“Hey!” a voice called. They started, and Acton drew his sword. He had kept the sergeant’s and had seemed happier with a weapon
in his scabbard.

One of the warlord’s men had taken a loaf of bread from a stall, it looked like, and the owner, a very young man, was objecting.
“The warlord’s son said you had to pay for what you took!” the man, a red-head, insisted.

Beck. The warlord’s man was Beck, the man who had trained the roan with whips and spurs. The man who had chased her and the
roan until she had jumped that chasm out of desperation, and died. Beck, the man the gods had intended to be the Kill Reborn.
The roan had decided otherwise, and changed her life.

Beck was a veteran of too many encounters like this one. He simply walked over to the stall and spat on the biggest basket
of loaves set out on the counter, then turned and hit the man across the ear with his fist. The man fell to the ground groaning,
and Beck’s companions helped themselves to the clean loaves from the other baskets.

They walked away without saying a word, leaving the man still moaning and clutching his head on the ground.

Acton started to surge forward, his face thunderous, but Bramble called him back. “What do you think you’re going to do?”
she said bitterly. “Even if you beat the piss out of all four of them —” he opened his mouth and she cut him off — “yes, I
know you could beat all four, but what then? Those are warlord’s men and there’s a barracks full of them up at the fort. Are
you going to fight them all?”

Acton stood still, angry and unhappy.

Ash was obviously enjoying Acton’s discomfort. “Speak,” he said.

“Something should be done,” Acton said. “Warriors should protect their people, not exploit and beat them!”

“Yes,” Bramble said seriously, “they should. But they don’t. And they haven’t, for a thousand years.”

For a moment, there was such anguish in Acton’s eyes that Ash looked away.

“We’ll go around the back street,” Bramble said. “And find my family. They’ll know what’s happening.” She added, with a flicker
of humour, “Or we could ask the Widow Forli. She always knows all the gossip.”

Her parents’ house was shuttered tight, but so was every other house. She led the others around the back and left Ash to tether
the horses while she tried the door. It had been nailed shut with a board across it. No one around here could afford proper
locks, so this was the way a house was left secure when the owners were away.

They weren’t here.

A mixture of relief and regret swept over her. She wouldn’t have to face her parents’ grief for Maryrose — but there would
be no homecoming.

“What are you doing, there, you?” A sharp voice, as familiar as the roses growing over the walls came from behind them. Widow
Forli. Bramble turned to face her, smiling despite herself.

Widow Forli was plumper than she had been. She looked like she’d been eating properly at last. Then Bramble remembered. Maryrose
had told her that her parents had come back to Wooding for the Widow Forli’s wedding to… to whom? She couldn’t remember.

“Bramble!” Forli exclaimed, and her hands went to her mouth in a genuine display of surprise.

Bramble glanced around. Acton was nowhere to be seen, nor Baluch. There was just Ash, with the horses.

Forli cast one look at him and jumped to the obvious conclusion, with avid interest. “Brought your young man to meet them,
have you? They’re not here. They’re up to Carlion —” She faltered to a stop, face crumpling a little as she realised she’d
have to tell Bramble why her parents had gone.

Bramble took pity on her. “To bury Maryrose?”

Forli nodded, solemn, pity in her eyes. She seemed kinder than she had been, Bramble thought, or maybe it was she who had
changed.

“You know then? Aye, they went as soon as they heard the news, though I told them it was too dangerous.”

“Nowhere is safe, these days,” Bramble said.

Forli made the sign against the evil eye. “So I hear.” Her old pleasure at knowing all the gossip took over, and she added,
“The warlord’s gone to Turvite, they say, for a warlords’ council about this enchanter and his ghosts. And Eolbert, the warlord’s
son, too. That Beck is acting overlord!” She looked sideways at Ash. “They’re taking everyone’s horses. I’d be careful if
I were you.”

Bramble nodded. “Thank you, Forli,” she said, and the woman looked surprised. Bramble remembered just how rude she’d been
to her in the past. “We’ll stay tonight, and be off in the morning. But if they’re taking horses, I’d appreciate you didn’t
tell anyone that we’re here.”

Disappointment shone in Forli’s eyes, but she nodded. “Aye, that’s best. Sure and secret.”

To reward her, Bramble said, “I hear you have some news? You’re married again?”