Legends of the Riftwar (100 page)

‘We're yer men,' the standing man said. ‘For six hundred, we're yer hands and fingers, m'lord.'

‘And when you bring him in, put a bag over his head. I have no wish to see his face. None!'

‘Then how'll ye know it's 'im, sir?'

The smooth-talking man said, ‘That needle will only point at one person in this entire world. That is who you will bring here. Now go!'

They both bowed low; after a moment the old man and his companion followed them, talking.

‘Oh, good,' Rip whispered, and opened the door a crack. It
was set into the panelling, and even Mandy would have to stoop to get out of it. ‘All right–come on–they're all gone!'

The four children scampered out into the room. Rip almost stopped as he felt them again, the bad ones, but he was hungry. Mandy and Neesa ran straight to the table and began to gather food up in handkerchiefs; bread, cooked chicken, pastries stuffed with vegetables. Rip and Kay didn't stop for that, although it smelled very good; instead they raced over to the door.

They cracked the door and peered through, waiting while the girls grabbed up as much food as they could carry. Rip wanted to stick his head out into the hall, but resisted the urge.

Kay grabbed his arm. ‘I can feel something coming,' he whispered.

‘Me too,' Rip said. He had a sick feeling in his stomach, as he had in the room they'd been locked up in; and it was getting worse.

Without a word, they stuffed the candles back in their pockets and bolted for the secret door; the girls were already through, eyes wide, and all of them gave a sigh of relief as the panel clicked closed.

Immediately they all felt better too; the sense of peering malice went away as if the stuffy darkness of the secret passage was part of another world.

I wonder why it's always like this when we come out of the passageways?
Rip thought.

Then Mandy started unfolding one of the napkins. ‘What did you get?' he asked eagerly as they started their trek back to their safe room.

Jimmy reined in.

He'd followed Jarvis Coe all the way around the lands belonging to the great house they'd seen, from sea-cliff edge to sea-cliff edge, a long ride in a rising wind that reminded you with every step that spring was young.

A long trip and an unpleasant one. The only way to find out if they'd gone beyond that skin-crawling feeling was by testing; one step in–run away!–one step back–perfectly normal.

‘What is it?' Jimmy asked, struggling to keep his old nag from bolting like a racehorse.

‘Nothing good,' Coe answered.

Jimmy snorted. Brilliant! How fortunate that he had someone along to tell him that. The awful feeling seemed to have no end. He certainly wasn't going to try climbing up the cliff face to see if the way to the manse was clear from that direction because it probably wasn't. He'd long ago learned not to squander his energy.

‘Ever felt anything like it before?' he asked.

Coe turned to look at him. ‘Ever been in a haunted house?'

Jimmy grinned. ‘Not that I've noticed.'

‘Oh, you'd notice,' the older man said. ‘As I recall, it feels a great deal like this.'

After a moment of contemplating his companion's broad back Jimmy asked, ‘When were you in a haunted house?'

‘Long story,' Coe said without turning his head and then lapsed into silence.

Jimmy grunted in irritation. This seemed to him to be a perfect time for a long story. Because, except for those soul-curdling moments when they went too close to the manse, he was bored stiff. If they kept on like this he was going to be grateful for the distraction of his aching arse.

They reached the edge of the cliff and Coe sniffed the wind, looking out over the white line of snarling surf where sea clashed white-green on rocks and the blue-grey waves topped with foam beyond. ‘There'll be weather tonight,' he said. ‘We need to find ourselves some shelter.'

‘I guess asking at the manse is out,' the young thief muttered.

Coe gave him a wry look and turned his horse, heading off across the ring of forest and through it, into the cleared fields beyond. The line of…unpleasantness…nowhere reached the cultivated land, but it had little embayments well into the woods and rough moor kept as barrier and hunting grounds for the manor.

Jimmy sighed and followed, feeling the oppression on his spirits lift as they came back into land that bore the sign of man, not to mention sheep, goats and cattle. All he could see from this lane–it was too narrow and irregular to be called a road–was a rising field of something green, probably young grain, and a ridge lined with tall trees.

‘I don't think that was even your typical haunted house,' he muttered.

‘Not quite,' Jarvis Coe said grimly.

Even then, Jimmy felt a little startled at his tone. Coe was
looking back towards the fortified manor, and his mouth was a hard line; his right hand kept straying to his breast, and the young thief thought that there must be something beneath the cloth–an amulet, perhaps.

‘In the meantime, the day's mostly gone and if we're to find out what's happening, we need shelter,' Coe said. He cocked an eyebrow. ‘Unless you'd rather ride back to Land's End?'

‘If you're staying, I am,' Jimmy said, flushing. ‘I gave my word.'

Coe smiled, then more broadly at Jimmy's scowl. ‘No, lad, I'm not laughing at your keeping a debt of honour,' he said. ‘I'm just remembering some situations I got myself into with promises, once. The more credit to you.'

He reined his horse about and Jimmy followed. The setting sun made it hard to look west–not something that was often a problem in Krondor, where tall buildings were more common. Despite that, Coe led them to the junction of two lanes in that direction, and cocked his head to one side.

‘Ah, I thought so,' he said. ‘There's a brook there. Hear it?'

Jimmy tried; all he could make out was rustling, whooshing, crackly sounds of wind through vegetation, birdsong, and a lot of insects. But…

‘That tinkling sound?'

‘You've a good ear, Jimmy.'

‘Thank you, Jarvis,' he said.

‘Well, in the country, where a road or path crosses water, chances are you'll find folk living,' the older man said.

They rode down the lane through a belt of trees that arched over the road; it reminded Jimmy of an alleyway, in that you wanted to look seven ways at once to make sure nobody was sneaking up on you. The trees all seemed of the same size, and most were in rings around thicker stumps.

‘Coppicing,' Coe said, noticing his puzzlement. ‘If you cut an oak or beech, a ring of saplings comes up from the stump. Leave
them ten years, and they're good firewood, or the right size for charcoal, or for poles, and when you cut them you get more coppice shoots–think of it as farming trees. Another sign we're near some dwellings.'

Ah, rural mysteries
, Jimmy thought a little snidely.

Jarvis pulled up near the footpath that led to a small cottage. ‘That's a farmstead off that way,' he said, pointing to a haze of smoke. ‘But we'll stop here. A cottager will be more glad of a few coins, and more likely to be gossipy.'

He rose in the stirrups. ‘Hello the house!' he called.

The cottage lay a hundred yards or so to their right, in the direction of the manor; a huge oak overshadowed it.

Which isn't hard
, Jimmy thought.
A small bush would overshadow it.

The building was a single storey of wattle-and-daub, whitewashed mud plastered over interlaced branches and poles; the steep roof was thatch, with an unglazed dormer window coming through it above the doorway like a nose. Smoke trickled out of a stone-and-mud chimney, and a shed of the same construction stood not far off. The large vegetable garden beside it was newly planted, the dark soil as neatly turned as a snake's scales, and a nanny-goat stood in a small rail-fenced pasture beside a young sow; a few chickens scratched around the plank door of the modest home.

‘Hello, strangers,' a man said, as he turned from latching the wicker garden gate with a twist of willow-twig.

He had a spade in his hand, oak with an iron rim; he smiled as he set it down against the fence, but that put his hand within reach of a billhook leaning against the same barrier. That was a six-foot hickory shaft with a heavy hooked knife-blade socketed to the end, a common countryman's tool but also a weapon at need; some soldiers carried them, although military models added a hook on the back of the blade for pulling mounted men out of the saddle.

The man himself was in patched and faded homespun breeches and shirt, barefoot, and no longer young, but tough as an old root from his looks.

Jarvis Coe bowed slightly in the saddle. ‘We're travellers,' he said, and gave their names. ‘We'd appreciate a place to stop for the night, for we've seen no inn, and would be glad to repay hospitality with a silver or so.'

The cottager's eyes went wide, then narrowed: that was a great deal of money for an overnight stay. Jarvis flipped the coin, and the man caught it, examined it and tucked it away.

‘That's generous of you, sir,' the man said.

Jimmy found his accent thicker than Lorrie's had been, a yokel burr that swallowed the last syllable of every word.

‘And it will help pay the tax on my cot. We've room for two on the floor–my sons are living out, working for Farmer Swidden–and I've some comforters with clean straw, and there's the paddock for your horses. My Meg has some bean soup on the hob, and she baked today.'

The top half of the cottage's door opened, and a woman looked out–late in middle age, as brown and nondescript as her husband, with lips fallen in on a mouth mostly toothless, and shrewd dark eyes. She nodded and went back inside as the men unsaddled, watered and rubbed down their mounts–Jimmy carefully copying what his companion did–and turned the horses into the small paddock.

The cottager came up with a big load of hay on the end of a wooden-tined pitchfork and tossed it to the horses, giving the nanny-goat a thump in the ribs when she tried to snatch some.

‘I've oats,' he said. ‘Get some from Farmer Settin over there for helping with the reaping.'

Jimmy looked around as they ducked into the cottage. It was a single room, not overly large, with a tick bed on a frame of lashed poles in one corner, the hearth in the other, and a floor
of beaten earth–which Jimmy would have minded less if there hadn't been evidence that his hosts neither wore shoes nor scraped their feet before coming in from the yard. A ladder ran up into the loft, where the vanished sons had probably slept.

For the rest, there were a few tools on pegs–a sickle, two hoes, a scythe–and a few garments, along with the iron pot that bubbled over the low fire in the hearth. It was warm enough, and not so small they'd feel cramped. It was better than sleeping outside, Jimmy decided, even if the food didn't look particularly inviting.

The cottager leaned the billhook against the inside wall beside the door; Jarvis and the young thief took the hint, and propped their swords beside it.

 

‘Let me see if I understand,' Bram said uncertainly.

He felt intimidated by the tall stone house in town, and by the two–well, ladies–who were sitting across from him.

Mind you, they look friendly enough
, he thought.

One, who everyone seemed to call Aunt Cleora, was dressed as finely as a lord's wife, although not in quite the same style; she was probably about the same age as his mother, but looked a decade younger to peasant eyes. Miss Flora, her niece–newly arrived from Krondor–was a pretty enough lass, although not a patch on Lorrie. Lorrie looked strange herself, in one of Miss Flora's dresses, with her bandaged leg up on a settle.

Even the cook, who looked to be right brutal when she wanted, had been sweet as candy to him; but then, he supposed she felt motherly.

Serenely unconscious of his tall, fresh-faced blond good looks, brought out by a bath and clean clothes, Bram finished the last pastry and wiped his hand on the napkin provided, remembering not to lick his fingers. Which seemed a pity, since they were covered with fine clover honey. The kitchen was about the
size of the ground floor of his parents' farmhouse, but more homely than the rest of the fine house: flagstone floor, copper pots and pans on the walls, a long board table, and sacks of onions and hams and strings of sausage and bundles of garlic and herbs hanging from the rafters.

He could eat in comfort here, and was glad that Miss Flora had suggested it. He was still overwhelmed by the reaction he had received upon presenting himself at the house; Lorrie had nearly cried for joy at seeing him–which had caused his chest almost to burst at the feelings he was just beginning to confront–and that had caused Flora to treat him as a long lost-friend. Her aunt had instantly taken the young man under her wing, insisting he bathe and refresh himself, providing clothing belonging to one of her male kinsmen–he was vague as to who, exactly–and then set to feeding him. Apparently Aunt Cleora liked to see a man eat.

‘So Miss Flora's brother here–' he said around a mouth full of food.

‘Jimmy,' Flora said helpfully.

‘Rescued you from thief-takers, and found you a place to stay, and then he and she bound up your leg, and he's gone to look for Rip?'

Lorrie nodded vigorously. ‘And then you came after me. Thank you, Bram!'

Bram felt himself blush, and at the same time swell with pride; he was as ready as the next man to bask in feminine admiration.

‘Well, I couldn't leave you to sort this out alone,' he said. ‘Whatever that bunch of greybeards back home thinks. Wild beasts don't burn down farms, or attack men in the light of day. Why they couldn't believe you, Astalon alone knows,' he observed, invoking the God of Justice. ‘Lorrie's no bubblehead, like some I could name but won't, like Merrybet Glidden.'

Lorrie's eyes filled with tears, which made him feel bad and good at the same time. Flora sighed at him, and Aunt Cleora clasped her hands together beneath her slight double chin.

‘This is as good as a minstrel's tale!' said the older woman. ‘Young men setting out to rescue folks! Why, it's downright heroic!'

Bram blushed even more. ‘I'm no hero,' he said softly. ‘Only a farmer's son. But I'm still going to head after Rip, to help your brother, Miss Flora.' He yawned enormously. ‘Best start early, too. On foot, it's going to be a fair old chase, they being mounted.'

Flora nodded decisively. ‘You'll have to get a horse, then,' she said.

Bram laughed. ‘Miss Flora, I'd like nothing better. But I can no more afford a horse than I could dance north on my hands.'

Lorrie reached into the pocket of her borrowed skirt. ‘But Bram, I've got the price I got for Horace!' she said. ‘Surely you can get something for that.'

Bram fixed Lorrie with a wry look, and both knew he was intentionally ignoring the coins she had filched from his room. It wasn't much, but it was all he had.

‘And if you can't, I'll top it up,' Flora said.

‘And you can take what you need from the kitchen for supplies on the way,' Aunt Cleora said. ‘Best take my cousin Josh's rain gear, too, by the look of things.'

Overwhelmed, Bram looked down at his toes in their home-cobbled shoes. That reminded him of something. ‘At least I'll be able to track your foster-brother, Miss Flora,' he said. At their wide-eyed look: ‘Well, seems he bought Lorrie's Horace. And there's a nick in his left off shoe that I'd know anywhere.' Then softly he added, ‘If the rain doesn't wash away everything, that is.'

 

Jimmy looked out at the pouring rain and sighed. Why Jarvis couldn't just ask what he wanted to know was beyond him. But by now he knew a great deal more about the family who had agreed to give them shelter than he did about some of his friends.