The Curse of the Mistwraith (58 page)

His conveyance was open, low-slung and in sorry need of fresh paint: the beast between the shafts, a glossy buckskin with a tail like black wire and a feisty dislike of boy grooms. He carried his ears cocked back as if listening for excuse to flatten them down in displeasure.

By contrast, the driver was ascetically thin. He sat atop his jolting board seat with a slouch that gave with the bumps; if his narrow face was creased by eight decades of life, the fingers laced through the reins were clean, supple and sure. He whistled between widely-spaced front teeth and his jaunty melody carried over the creak of harness and cartwheel to a pair of barbarian children lying flat in the brush above the verge.

Twelve years of age and bold as coin brass, Jieret puffed a rust-coloured tangle of hair from his lips. He frowned in stormy concentration. Bored with long feasting, impatient since the returned sunlight had disrupted the passage of caravans to raid, he elbowed his younger companion. ‘Ready, Idrien?’

The other boy shifted a sweaty grip on the stick he had sharpened for a javelin. Sneaking out of camp had been Jieret’s idea. When their play at scouting had surprisingly turned up a victim, the excitement of plunder and ransom somehow lost their dashing appeal. A touch scared, Idrien wished himself back at the feast, tossing out nuts to the squirrels. ‘You know, his relatives might not be so rich.’

Jieret grinned through another unruly red curl. ‘You saw the topaz brooch that fastens his cloak. Are you chickening out on me?’

Wide-eyed, Idrien shook his head.

‘Well, come on, then.’ Jieret wormed from the thicket, too brash to care if he snapped twigs.

Idrien followed, cautious in his uncertainty. Appearances could deceive: the man’s jewel might only be glass. Yet already Jieret scrambled to his feet and charged full-tilt down the hillside. Clan honour demanded that his companion not shirk him support.

Jieret slithered into the open roadway, hampered by a bouncing fall of stones. His jerkin had torn and slipped over one shoulder and his javelin wavered despite his determination to threaten the elder in the cart. ‘Halt, as you value your life!’ He shrugged up his deerskin to unburden his throwing arm, then fought for balance and decorum as Idrien plunged down the bank and crash landed into his back.

The whistled melody ceased. Under threat of two sharpened sticks, capable hands tightened on the reins. The buckskin bared teeth and rolled eyes as it sidled and stopped between the shafts. Keeping tight hold on its mouth, the raid victim bent his light, startled gaze upon the dirty, briar-scraped pair of boys. His lips pulled crooked in a smile and silver-tipped brows twitched up underneath his hood.

‘Get out of the cart and disarm. Slowly!’ Jieret elbowed Idrien to take the pony’s bridle.

The old man hesitated. Then he released the reins and stepped down carefully, the gold silk lining of his cloak a fitful gleam in failing light. As if ready for Idrien’s howl as the buckskin snaked its head down to nip, he shot out a fist and hammered the pony with an expert blow at the juncture of shoulder and neck. The creature grunted in curbed belligerence and sullenly shook out its mane. Its master, nonplussed, removed an ornamental dagger from his belt, turned the blade and offered the handle to Jieret. He stood quietly while Idrien’s grubby fingers rifled his rich clothing in a vain search for concealed weapons.

At length, threatened by his own knife as well as the brace of whittled sticks, he offered up ringless hands. ‘Whose captivity have I the honour of accepting?’ His voice was pleasantly pitched, unmarred by the quaver that characterized the very old.

Jieret scowled. Hostages ought to show fear, not make genial greetings. Since the pony was demonstrably nasty-tempered, he settled for binding its owner’s hands with the reins, then made him lead the miserable beast. He and Idrien clambered onto the buckboard and directed their mismatched draft team to haul the cart off the road.

The boys punched each other’s sides, intoxicated by their success. A man taken for ransom; the clanlords would surely praise their prowess! The stranger might fetch the price of a sword, or better, a horse. Then, in consternation, the raiders recalled they had neglected to choose cover beforehand.

‘Stupid,’ Jieret whispered, crestfallen at the lapse. ‘We can’t drag a cart through the forest.’

Idrien sucked his lower lip. ‘Drive to the dell and unhitch?’

‘Maybe.’ Jieret nicked bark off his stick in serious thought. ‘Wind smells of rain. Our booty could get a good soaking.’

At this point, the captive good-naturedly interrupted. ‘A storm won’t hurt. The tarps are new enough not to leak.’

‘Quiet!’ Idrien glanced around in fresh worry. ‘Too much chatter will fetch the scouts.’

Their captive considered this, his long, lean legs quick to compensate for the buckskin’s short-strided trot. ‘Young raiders don’t have their own scouts?’ He might have been laughing; or not, dusk had deepened too much to tell.

Jieret skinned his knuckles in a belatedly frantic search, but found neither socket nor driving whip. He tried to hasten the pony’s pace by flapping his arms. The buckskin snapped up its round quarters. Hooves banged vengefully against the buckboard. Smacked through the soles of his boots, and stinging mightily, Idrien scowled.

Jieret clung grimly to propriety. ‘Our scouts are off to find other marks,’ he lied grandly. ‘If you hope to stay alive to be ransomed, keep silent.’

For all their unplanned excitement, the boys guided the little cart swiftly through the darkness. In a natural declivity between chalk bluffs they ordered the pony unhitched. Idrien held the old man at stickpoint, while Jieret piled brush to conceal their booty. Then, smothering back whoops of exhilaration, the boys chivvied their captive through the forest to the clan gathering they had forsaken to seek adventure.

Control broke on the camp perimeter. Jieret burst into shouting, while Idrien startled the dancers into uproar by casting his toy javelin straight into the central fire. Sparks flew; the celebration unravelled in confusion as leather-clad scouts scrambled to grab weapons, and others on guard patrol converged from the wood with drawn steel.

Blinking against the shifting glare of torches, the captive stumbled to a halt. Jieret braved the buckskin’s teeth to grasp a fistful of black and gold cloak and drag his catch a reluctant step closer to the fires.

‘Here!’ He waved to the tallest of the approaching men. ‘A sure ransom we’ve brought, father, and a pony for Tashka.’

Steiven, reigning regent of Rathain, was a hard man to miss, even in uncertain light amid his pack of leather-clad scouts. Lanky, dark headed, he ran with the grace of a deer. His eyes, deep hazel, were wary as any forest creature’s whose kind has been too long hunted. His hands were large and strongly made; his clean-shaven chin was square. The bones of his face hinted at a rough-cut, handsome beauty, an impression spoiled at first sight by a scar that grooved his cheekbone and jaw to end in a ridged knot of flesh above his collarbone.

A wild boar’s tusk might have ripped such disfigurement; in fact, Steiven’s looks had been ruined by a harness buckle heated red-hot by a caravan master when, at ten years of age, he had chased the wagon that carried his brothers’ scalps for credit as a bounty hunter’s kill.

He had been fortunate to escape with his life.

The sight of his half-grown son gambolling into camp with a captive clad in town clothes gave Steiven a start that had much to do with memories that recurred in nightmares. Yet he was a man for listening before action; half a lifetime of chieftaincy had taught him to be exactingly fair. Though his heart beat too fast and he wanted to strike his boy for this latest insanely foolish prank, he forced himself to think and to walk; and then the captive raised his head. Spaced front teeth flashed in a smile and a snag of white hair escaped his hood.

Steiven stopped cold, the drift of Jieret’s chatter disregarded. His fists uncurled. ‘Bare your head,’ he commanded.

For answer, the old man half-turned.

The clan chief’s ruddy complexion turned pale. ‘Dharkaron, forgive us.’

At his tone, Jieret faltered into silence. Sweating, aware he had earned himself a hiding, he stared wide-eyed as his father drew his dagger and with shocking diffidence toward a townborn, cut the ties from the captive’s wrists.

The elder raised his freed hands and pushed back his hood. Black cloth lined in yellow silk fell away to expose a knife-blade nose and a spill of shoulder-length silver hair.

‘Grant us pardon, master,’ Steiven said softly. Then he rounded in fury on his son. ‘You captured no merchant, foolish boy! Shame you’ve brought your clan, not ransom. You stand before the Masterbard himself.’

‘Him?’ Jieret’s insolence rang defensively loud as he gestured with his sharpened stick.

Steiven ripped the makeshift weapon out of his child’s hands. ‘Didn’t you find the lyranthe when you reviewed his possessions for arms?’

Jieret started to tremble.

‘Ah,’ said Steiven. He caught the Master bard’s desperate attempt to hide amusement, and regained his own equilibrium. He effected a ferocious scowl anyway. ‘Not only did you raid the wrong man, son, you also kept slack discipline!’

Somebody giggled on the sidelines; Jieret’s older sister Tashka. Humiliation would serve the boy better than a strapping in private. Steiven decided to pass off the affair as a stupidity beneath the notice of grown men. ‘Apologize at once and offer Halliron your hospitality. Or else amend your insult by meeting his demand for honourgift, and give him escort back to the road for the stupid bit of nuisance you’ve caused.’

Jieret looked wildly around but Idrien had seized his chance to vanish. Crestfallen, but still brazenly unapologetic, he straightened before the tall minstrel.

‘Don’t speak,’ Halliron said with a wicked twinkle in his eyes. ‘Instead, I’ll thank you to care for my pony and fetch back my lyranthe from the cart.’ Solemnly, he surrendered his buckskin’s hacked-off reins into the hands of the miscreant.

At Jieret’s first tug at the headstall, the pony snapped back black-tipped ears. A forehoof flashed up in a snake-fast strike and the boy, yelling curses better suited to a caravan drover, jumped back to escape getting whacked.

‘He can handle cross-grained horses, I trust?’ said Halliron to the father, only to find the huge man sitting down without warning in wet leaves. Steiven’s arms were clutched to his ribs as though he might tear a gut stifling laughter. ‘Fair punishment,’ the regent of Rathain snorted between wheezes. ‘A pony for Tashka, indeed! That creature would as likely rip his poor sister’s hand off.’

‘Probably not.’ Halliron smiled, watching thoughtfully as bystanders scattered and the buckskin’s striped rump bucked and sidled through the leaping ring of torchlight. ‘The little imp only hates boys. And, truth to tell, I’m not sorry. A storm rides the wind, can you smell it? Not even an initiate’s hostel graces this stretch of forest. I expected to endure a nasty night.’

When the weather finally broke, young Jieret was hours in bed and Halliron comfortably settled on cushions in the lodge tent of the regent of Rathain. Although no one had asked the Masterbard to perform he had generously offered his talents to the clan chieftain’s family until nature’s fury defeated even his trained voice. The storm struck Strakewood from the south, battering with windy fists and rattling rain over oiled hide with such force that the crack and roll of thunder could barely be heard above the noise.

Steiven came in wet from helping the scouts secure the horse lines. ‘Strange,’ he mused as he peeled his sodden jerkin and swiped dripping hair from the unmarred side of his face. ‘We don’t often get squalls from the south. Usually they spend themselves over the Mathorns and rattle the mansions in Etarra.’

‘Greater changes are afoot than mere weather, since the return of true sunlight.’ Halliron hooked the final ties on the fleece-lined case that protected his lyranthe, and took wine from the hand of Steiven’s lady. ‘You’re too kind,’ he thanked her, and raised the flagon in tribute to clan hospitality.

Clad in rare finery, her magnificent, heavy russet hair braided with sequins worn for dancing, Dania shone with pleasure. ‘We’re blessed. Your singing is a treasure unequalled.’

Her warmth sparked sorrow from the bard, who seemed suddenly absorbed with savouring the taste of his wine.

‘No successor yet,’ the lady sympathized with an insight that tended to disorient grown men. She shared a quick glance with her husband, who knelt and tugged a fresh shirt from a chest alongside the wall.

Halliron sighed. ‘Not for want of trying, lady. I’ve auditioned candidates by the thousands. Many had talent. Yet I was never satisfied. Something indefinable seemed lacking.’ He tried and failed to shrug off a bitterness at odds with a nature smoothed over by advanced years. ‘I’ve earned the reputation of an overbearing old crank. Perhaps justly.’

But the bard’s face by candlelight showed only heartsore regret. Halliron’s the tragedy, Dania thought, that no apprentice had been found to inherit his title, perhaps the deepest regret of his long and gifted life.

‘Dania,’ Steiven said gently. ‘Bring out the telir brandy and refill the Masterbard’s cup.’

The lady moved with the lightness of forest-bred caution to fetch the cut-crystal flask, while the bard’s attention strayed toward the shadows that dimmed the rear of the lodge. Lord and lady followed his gaze, to find Jieret slipped from his bedroll, the heavy curls that matched his mother’s tousled still from sleep.

‘Afraid of the lightning, are you?’ Halliron said in gentle satire.

‘Like Dharkaron he is.’ Steiven straightened up in annoyance. Muffled by a thick layer of linen as he belatedly donned his dry shirt, he said, ‘Jieret, haven’t you stirred up trouble enough for one night?’

The boy licked his lips. As he took a hesitant step closer, the light fell full on him and revealed his alarming pallor. Shaking, he announced, ‘Father, I had a dream.’

‘Ath, it’s the sight,’ Dania exclaimed. Sequins sparkled like wind harried droplets as she sprang across the carpets and swept her young son in her arms. ‘Steiven, he’s cold. Find a blanket.’