The Dowry Blade (5 page)

Tegan’s face twisted with anxiety.

‘They could have seen –’

Brede considered.

‘They were on the next ridge south and west, not the one you came down, so they wouldn’t have been into the valley.’

‘Maeve would stick to high ground.’

‘Further north though, as she wanted to get across the river.’

‘I don’t know.’ Tegan’s voice was thick with worry, ‘I don’t think she was sure where we were, or where to go next.’

‘Not sure, no, but with wit enough to ask. I saw them heading off north. And they would have been going fast, and under cover of trees.’

‘Yes –’

‘Yes. And the red banners had other things on their mind. They left the sword, I think.’

Tegan pulls the sword closer to her, grateful for a distraction.

‘Why do you think that?’

‘I saw five of them go down into the valley and then rejoin the rest.’

‘You said it was bloody.’

Brede nodded, puzzled. Tegan fingered the blade, admiring the quality of the forging. It was a very fine sword. She could never afford a sword that fine.

‘It can’t be a ritual sword, it’s too well used, or perhaps I mean ill-used,’ Tegan said, without taking her eyes from the blade, ‘look at the state of the edge. Why would they leave a blooded sword in an offering circle?’

‘I thought perhaps someone important had died,’ Brede offered, thinking of that roar of voices, and doubting the memory. Perhaps that strange sound had only been thunder after all.

‘Yes, perhaps they would leave the sword as a promise of revenge. If this was the weapon that struck him down.’ Tegan’s fingers flexed, stroking the smooth flat of the blade, finding the subtle indentation at the centre, failing to find a hint of a maker’s name.

‘Him?’

‘Just a thought. If they didn’t know who was responsible – why not ask the Goddess for a sign as to the culprit?’

‘But the blood was still sticky. They had to know – they had to have
done
it. And I took it away.’

‘Perhaps she’s on our side then.’

‘
Our
side? I don’t understand.’

‘Not yet, perhaps, but you will.’

Tegan ran a hand down the blade again; restless to be up and away, to let her friends know this news. She coveted that sword.

‘You’d best put that thing away before Faine sees it, or she’ll have you turning it into a pitchfork.’

Brede nodded, and started wrapping the blade in Tegan’s green banner.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Faine would expect you to have more than one weapon. She won’t even notice it if it’s with your belongings.’

Tegan didn’t argue. Brede’s simple logic was faultless.

Chapter Five

The stranger at the forge caused more of a stir in the village than anyone was prepared to admit. Individually, many people sought out the smith, full of questions, motivated by fear and curiosity; for the most part unfriendly. Leal, brandishing her suspicions, demanded progress reports from Faine.

‘I want to know what that woman says, especially what she says to Brede.’

Faine shook her head.

‘If you tell me what Brede says to you, I’ll tell if it’s true, and I might tell you some of what she leaves out – but you shouldn’t intrude on her privacy, Leal.’

‘Don’t presume to tell me how to manage my daughter.’

‘Then don’t ask favours of me. And it was
not
managing her that I meant.’

‘She’s my daughter.’

‘She’s my apprentice. I don’t want to lose her any more than you do, but she has a life of her own to lead.’

Leal’s eyes narrowed in frustration, and Faine recognised the look as one that Brede offered her regularly. She laughed.

‘Don’t worry so. If there is anything amiss, I’ll tell you.’

‘I’m afraid for Brede. There is something wrong between them already Faine, you must have seen it; Brede has become – silent. She is hiding something from me. She’s awake half the night, and she looks at me sometimes, as though she wants to tell me something and can’t bring herself to it.’

Faine frowned uncertainly, reluctant to admit that she had noticed that hesitant silence herself.

Often, when she went to the forge of a morning, Faine would find Brede already there, dressing Tegan’s wound, while Tegan talked, and Brede kept uncharacteristically quiet. But she noticed that although Brede carried out her nursing duties without comment and with very little consideration, she did not shirk her duties, and that she frequently stayed long after her work was finished, idling over unnecessary tasks. Faine resented Brede’s presence at those times, wanting the unnecessary tasks for herself, appreciating Tegan’s efforts, where Brede seemed oblivious. Faine listened to Tegan and answered readily, embarrassed by Brede’s hostility. She was forced to accept Leal’s assessment: there was something not right, and she began to regret her first impulse, which had led to the enforced intimacy between these two.

Tegan was persuasive, witty, charming and challenging. She used every skill she had to get Brede to unbend. Brede listened, and said nothing. It was lonely. Tegan had exhausted everything she could remember about the summer campaign before Brede responded.

‘You’ve not always been a soldier.’

Tegan considered before she answered.

‘I was brought up on a farm, but that failed quickly when the drought came – I don’t think it was ever exactly fertile soil my parents worked, and they were quick to abandon it. We moved to the city, I – got into bad company.
Interesting
bad company mind you, I moved in some very illustrious circles.’ Brede snorted disbelievingly. ‘You can mock. I have shared a bottle of the best with our present monarch before she ever thought she might be in line for the crown, and with our then monarch’s half-brother.’

‘You? A dirt poor farmer’s daughter and
Queen Grainne
drank together?’

‘I was a lot younger than Grainne, she and Phelan used to enjoy rowdying, she took a liking to me, and I was of an age with Phelan. He got me my first posting. As a scout. Being little has its uses.’ Tegan fell into a memory, not an entirely happy one; of the rather dubious uses Phelan had put her skills to in the early days, before there was a purpose to his tirelessness. ‘I made myself useful, and when Grainne became queen, she made sure I got a proper commission in a group of mercenaries, I was pretty good with a sword by then. I’ve fought under Phelan’s command many times since then; he’s a great soldier – and quite the politician too, when he bothers.’

‘So important! Who’d have thought that a tiny band like yours would be so significant?’

Brede’s voice strove for innocence and failed. Tegan felt needled and let it show.

‘I command over forty swords.’

‘And where are they now?’

‘At winter quarters.’

‘And who’s commanding them?’

‘Chad.’

Brede quirked an eyebrow.

‘Not Maeve?’

‘No. She chose to stay with me, so she lost the chance. She could have had the command, but it was her choice, and I’m glad she made it.’

Faine walked into the forge, and glanced at the two of them, Brede, blood encrusted bandages still in one hand, Tegan, still with her shirt unlaced. Brede threw the bandages into the fire; Tegan laced her shirt, and wondered how long Faine had been listening, whether she had heard what had been said about Tegan’s allegiance. Brede handed a length of iron to Faine, and turned to the bellows.

‘So what about the rest of them, how did they end up soldiers?’ she asked, as she settled to her task.

Tegan gazed thoughtfully at Brede, wondering why she was at last taking an interest in this.

‘Soldiering is a profession of last resort for most people. The drought has brought many to it who would never have thought of themselves as warriors. No one would choose to put their life at risk so regularly unless they had a considerable ability and very little choice. Very few people are born into it. One or two, I suppose, if their parents were soldiers; but birthing and raising children as a warrior is something of a struggle. Maeve’s an exception. She and Riordan had a mercenary captain for a father and an archer for a mother.’ Tegan paused and grinned. ‘Maeve was amazing even as a stripling. She’s the fastest thing I’ve ever seen, she knows absolutely what she is doing with a blade, no matter what kind it is.’ Tegan’s happy recollection waned in the face of absence and she was silent. At last she shook herself and started again.

‘Inir, now, he started as a scout, same as me; but I think his parents ran a water mill. He’s better at it than I ever was. He’s good with the landscape as well as with people – he really knows how to melt into the scenery.’

Brede tried to remember Inir, and failed. She remembered noticing that someone was missing when she had confronted Maeve outside the village gate; that must have been Inir.

‘When you say ‘scout’ do you mean ‘spy’?’ she asked.

Tegan took a sharp breath and shot Faine a look. Faine refused to intervene.

‘In some contexts, that is certainly what I’ve done, and Inir; but Corla’s a genuine scout: what she can’t work out from the landscape isn’t worth knowing. And she’s a healer of course. Her parents were healers.’

Brede nodded, she well believed Corla knew how to work the landscape; she’d not have found a way down to the valley else. Tegan continued her list.

‘Cei – Goddess knows where Cei came from, or why; but he’s a tactician – or would be if he weren’t so given to believing the worst of every situation. I sometimes think he tried his hand as an assassin, but found it too lonely.’

Faine and Brede stared at her aghast, and then laughed, Faine because she found it funny, Brede in spite of herself. Faine, pulled gently on Brede’s braid, and said,

‘No smiths, then?’

Brede shook her off.

‘What about Balin?’

‘Balin started life as a sailor, but he was always getting picked on, and learnt to defend himself. Having someone that big around helps to win us contracts. Merchants are impressed by size, but –’

Tegan stopped herself. Brede glanced sideways at Faine, who chose to ignore the blatant veering away from something dangerous. She knew she had taken a risk sheltering Tegan, she was happy to not know how great a risk it might turn out to be.

Brede was profoundly uncomfortable with the idea of handling Tegan’s body in the course of her nursing. She coped by being as impersonal as she could. She did not want to be close; she did not want to have this intimate knowledge of Tegan’s body. She tried to tell Edra that she couldn’t do it, a muttered comment as Edra was leaving the forge.

Edra turned back and stared at Tegan’s huddled form, not caring whether she heard or not.

‘Then let her die.’

Brede backed away. Edra went out into the first fall of snow, impatient with Tegan and with her unwilling assistant.

Tegan covered her face with her arm. Brede stood above her, silent and uneasy. At last Tegan uncovered her face, and looked up at her, unable to make out her expression.

‘There’s a knife within arm’s reach. I’d rather you finished me quickly than be left with this wound festering from my own filth until fever takes me.’

‘No.’

‘No to which?’

‘No, I’ll not cut your throat. No, I’ll not leave your wound to fester.’

Tegan took a deep, steadying breath.

‘Why not?’

‘It would be harder than the alternatives.’

‘Then why did you say you would no longer look after me? If it’s not my death you want?’

‘I don’t want to be the one who allows you back out there to kill more of my people. But I can’t take a step to prevent you either.’

‘That is not a weakness, Brede.’

‘Of course it is. Stop being so reasonable, I can’t match it.’

Tegan was abruptly reminded of Maeve.

Brede pulled her day’s work down from the rafters. She set the bellows, and began the slow process of building the heat in the fire to the temperature she wanted. She fetched more charcoal, sorted her tools and put the ones she needed within reach. Tegan followed her movements, trying to see her face, waiting for the frozen immobility to soften. It was a long time before she dared speak again. Brede was standing over the fierce heat of the fire, watching the metal bar change from darkness to red heat, when Tegan at last broke the silence.

‘Maeve has never liked my attempts at reason. She always fights to have her way. But you don’t do that. If your wants are not met, you pretend they don’t exist. I don’t understand. If you hunger you eat; if you are tired you sleep. Why pretend any other need is less important?’

Brede clenched her hands into fists.

‘If your needs injure others, do you still follow them? If satisfying your hunger took food from the mouths of your loved ones, would you still eat?’

‘Ah, philosophy.’

‘No. Reality. This village hasn’t starved, through twenty years of drought and bad harvest, through as many years of war, although we’ve come close. Now the rains have finally come, they have washed away what little there was. We don’t help our starving neighbours; we congratulate ourselves on the quality of the grain we have stored, and the fact that we got our harvest in on time.’

Tegan flinched, aware that her position in such a culture was precarious.

‘I was thinking of less basic needs,’ she said, wondering what Brede might say if the dam of her silence truly broke.

‘Such as?’

‘Companionship. You’ve not hand-fast, have you?’

Brede turned back to the fire, and took the metal bar from the heat. She steadied the metal against the anvil, and took up the hammer.

Tegan studied Brede’s profile, sharply defined in the firelight. She was beginning to appreciate the curve of Brede’s nose; it fit well under her broad brow, and balanced the width of her mouth. In profile it was almost elegant.

‘Well, I won’t ask,’ she said into Brede’s half mocking silence, ‘but you can’t tell me you aren’t lonely.’

Brede brought down the hammer, a light touch.

‘There was someone, once. Not here.’ She smiled and set the metal ringing under a volley of blows that prevented Tegan from saying more. She rested for a moment. ‘Now you’ll tell me that I’m wasted here, or you’ll start telling me how perfect Maeve is, again.’

Tegan’s laughter became gasping, choking. Brede waited for it to pass, but it continued. She abandoned the hammer, and went to Tegan’s side, helping her to sit up. The choking continued. Brede supported Tegan, holding her, helpless to do more than wait for the spasms to pass. At last Tegan could breathe easily again. She leant against Brede, and wiped tears from her face, exhausted. She felt Brede’s breath against the side of her cheek, and made an effort to move away, discomfited by their closeness. She glanced up at Brede’s face, which was once more closed and distant.

‘How often do I say that, then?’ she asked, her voice a mere thread of rasping breath.

‘I’ve lost count.’

Tegan tried to focus on Brede: too close for comfort – kissing distance. Tegan was shocked at the thought, more so as Brede’s hands probed beneath her shirt, checking the dressing over her wound, brushing against her breast as she did so.

‘I think you’ll live,’ Brede said, careful to keep any emotion from her voice, ‘but if talking about Maeve has this effect, perhaps...’

‘...I miss her,’ Tegan replied, her voice stronger. ‘Talking about her helps.’

‘Are you hand-fast to Maeve then?’ Brede asked abruptly.

‘No.’

‘No? You surprise me. Had I such a paragon at my side and in my bed, I’d not leave her loose to find other partners.’

Tegan stirred restlessly within the circle of Brede’s arm.

‘Maeve wouldn’t agree. I was her first lover, but I don’t expect to be her only, nor her last. What am I saying? I know I’m not.’

‘Not so perfect after all,’ Brede said, loosening her support, moving away from Tegan. ‘So again, if your need hurts others, do you sate it?’

She went back to the anvil, thrust the cold metal back into the fire, and was not surprised when Tegan did not answer.

Brede spent more time than she should with the horse; she wanted the beast in good condition, just in case – but in case of what, she was not precisely sure. By the time the snow had fallen deep enough to cut the village off, the horse was strong once more, growing sleek in the stall. With no hope of travelling, Brede fell back into her old routines. She rose early and took a warmed cup of ale up onto the wooden palisade that surrounded the village to watch the sunrise, to watch the first flight of birds, to see which way the wind blew.

Sitting so, for the first time in more than a month, huddled into her warmest cloak, she felt a momentary contentment. As Adair shuffled up beside her, she glanced up and smiled.

‘Not seen you for a while,’ he said in quiet accusation.