A Bright and Terrible Sword Read online

  Another? Another was born? Did that mean that Maggie had had twins? Or that another child had been born somewhere else? But Stephanie had called it a ‘bad thing’, and I didn’t think she would refer to a baby as a ‘thing’. Most little girls loved babies. So what had Stephanie meant?

  Then, all at once and as quickly as they had come, my fears left me, lost in awe. My son had been born. I was a father. And Maggie … was Maggie all right? Why hadn’t Stephanie said? Women died all the time in childbirth; my own mother had. Why hadn’t Stephanie reassured me about Maggie? But a dream was not a letter, carefully composed and full of news – it was a vision. I knew that. Visions cannot be controlled. But why hadn’t—

  I had a son.

  Was Maggie all right?

  What ‘bad thing’ was also born?

  When we reached Galtryf and Leo subjected me to ‘what awaits you’, my child would lose his father. Just as I had. I would never see my son.

  Was he a hisaf? I remembered the hisaf baby I had seen flickering in and out of the Country of the Dead, unable to control his infant talent. Was my son already doing that? He was the child of a hisaf, after all. What would Maggie, who knew nothing of what I had wrought in the Country of the Dead, make of her babe’s appearing and disappearing? And Maggie lived with her nasty sister. Would the sister take the baby for a witch? What then?

  Maggie—

  My son—

  ‘Stop twitching,’ Rawnie said crossly. ‘You woke me up with all that shifting and moaning! What’s wrong with you, Roger?’

  Everything.

  And the next morning, even more.

  The attack began at dawn. A light rain fell from clouds that had blown in from the west. The clouds paled without colour or sun, and the moor was grey and misty. I had not slept since my dream, and the view from under the wagon looked eerily like the fog in the Country of the Dead. Its chill tranquillity broke when the dogs began to bark frantically.

  ‘What the by damn!’ Leo shouted. Someone else began to curse. The dogs raced off through the mist until all I saw was two dark blurs. Then another blur leaped to join them.

  Two blurs, three.

  ‘Rawnie! Into the wagon!’ Charlotte screamed.

  ‘What – oh!’ the girl cried. ‘The dogs are fighting!’

  A single shot sounded, frighteningly close. It was followed by a volley of firing from the camp. I couldn’t see anything except the dogs, all at once clear as the fight broke off, the animals circled each other closer to the wagon, and then leaped at each other’s throats again.

  ‘Shoot!’ Leo screamed. But no one could get a clear shot. Three dogs attacked the Brotherhood’s two, snarling and rolling over each other. Blood spouted in foaming jets onto the moss and bracken. And all five grey dogs looked alike – which ones carried Macon and Dick? There was no way to tell. A snarl from forty-two bared teeth, a howl of anguished pain, a tearing of flesh …

  One dog fell and did not rise. Impossible to tell which.

  ‘Shoot them all!’ Leo cried. ‘Damn it, fire!’

  No one did, at least not at the dogs. Shots rang from the mist, some from above us. Charlotte, having shoved Rawnie into the wagon, pulled her out again and pushed her back underneath; the shots seemed a greater threat than the surviving dogs. I grabbed at Rawnie with my one good hand and tried to crawl on top of her to protect her. The short chain between my wrist and Kelif’s prevented me. More guns fired.

  I cried to Kelif, ‘Help!’ He did not move. I shoved at him, and my hand came away covered with blood.

  Gathering both Rawnie and Charlotte into my good arm, I crossed over.

  Darkness—

  Cold—

  Dirt choking my mouth—

  Worms in my eyes—

  Earth imprisoning my fleshless arms and legs—

  Only this time the women came with me, as well as the dead weight that was Kelif, and the crossing seemed longer, harder. I could not breathe, could not move … Then we were over.

  ‘Don’t shoot!’ someone cried. ‘It’s Roger!’

  We stood at the base of the hill, here without obscuring mist. The next moment two of Leo’s men appeared nearby, and a second later, Leo. They, too, had crossed over to escape the guns coming from the mist, the guns so hard to see through the morning mist on the moor. The escape did not work.

  Crack! Crack! Shots sounded, deafening, an obscenity in that calm landscape. They came from the tor atop the hill. Two of the hisafs fell. It was an ambush.

  Leo vanished. Another hisaf appeared, looked wildly around, and swung his gun towards me. I crossed back over, dragging the other three with me, and we were back under the wagon in the land of the living.

  Men appeared, disappeared, fired the guns stolen from savages. Crack! Charlotte cowered beside me, both of us covering Rawnie. Kelif’s blood soaked into our clothing and the ground. I couldn’t tell who was winning. The dogs continued to fight, but now I couldn’t see them and I didn’t know how many were left alive. Was there less snarling, fewer howls of pain? Were men rushing down from the tor on this side, having made the laborious climb up the other slope during the night?

  Everything depended on how many hisafs fought on each side. Charlotte said there were not many in total. And now, from the bodies I could glimpse on the ground, there were fewer. Hisafs could die, both here and in the Country of the Dead. If this was truly a rescue and it succeeded—

  Under the wagon, in the blood and dirt and noise, my heart began a wild thumping of hope.

  Crack!

  And then abruptly it was over. Quiet, except for Rawnie’s sobbing. A pair of boots appeared beside the wagon. The man bent, in a moment I would see his face and then I would know which side—

  Shouting from the opposite direction, another crack of a gun, and the man toppled forward, falling face up, his eyes gone wide with shock. He was not one of Leo’s, and now he was dead.

  The gunfire resumed, filling the air: from behind the other wagon, from the tor, from the moor. People ran towards us, so many pairs of feet that I groaned. Abruptly, for the second time, the guns ceased.

  Charlotte cried, ‘What is it? Who won?’

  I said, everything in me gone numb and cold, ‘Leo did. With help.’

  Warriors from Soulvine Moor had arrived, running flat out across the moor. The hisafs trying to rescue us had crossed over from the Country of the Dead to the equivalent positions on the tor, but they had been outnumbered. The Soulviner warriors had guns, too. Not all of them, and some had been shot before the hisafs on the tor had given up and crossed over to escape death, retreating to the Country of the Dead where the Soulviners could not follow and our rescuing hisafs had the advantage of numbers. Whatever numbers were left alive.

  Had the Soulvine warriors not arrived, their rescue would have succeeded. Had this been my father, coming for me half a year later than promised? And if so, did his body now lie among those broken and bleeding in the morning mist?

  Sick at heart, I crawled off Rawnie. I couldn’t crawl out from beneath the wagon while still chained to Kelif, and Charlotte seemed too paralysed with fright to move. But Rawnie cried, ‘Let me up! My mouse!’ and slithered out from between us. She straightened up beside the wagon and gasped.

  I knew what she was seeing. I had seen it before.

  Leo still shouted orders. ‘Get him out of there and chained to somebody else – they’re still over there!’

  Still over there. The rescuers still held the Country of the Dead. I could grab Charlotte and Rawnie again, drag Kelif with me, cross over to safety with the hisafs who had come for us. I seized Charlotte. Rawnie, however, had climbed onto the wagon – I could hear her above me – and Charlotte must have guessed what I intended.

  ‘No, Roger! Not without Rawnie!’ She struggled free of me.

  Should I leave them here? I could escape by myself, think of a way to come back for them later once I had the other hisafs as allies—

  Then all choice was taken away from me.
Leo crouched by the wagon and hit me on the head with the butt of his gun. Blinding light tore through my head, and then all went black.

  11

  When I woke, the wagon was moving. Never had my head hurt so much. The pain became even more agonizing when I opened my eyes to the sun. I groaned and closed them again. It didn’t help. Spears shot through my head, and when the wagon lurched suddenly, I nearly cried out.

  ‘I thought you were dead,’ Rawnie said conversationally.

  I didn’t answer. But slowly, by tiny and wrenching movements, I opened my eyes. Something was wrong with my vision; there were two of her, wavering in and out of existence as if she were a hisaf.

  ‘Your head is turning purple,’ Rawnie said, leaning closer to inspect me. ‘Leo hit you really hard.’

  Of course he had. Knocking me out was the only way to keep me from crossing over. The wagon lurched again, and this time I cried out.

  ‘Poor Roger,’ Rawnie said, although more with interest than compassion. ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘Yes.’ Speech was the only thing that didn’t hurt. ‘Where’s your mother?’

  ‘Walking behind the wagon. She got tired of riding so she’s talking to Leo. Do you know you’re chained to John now? Kelif got killed.’

  I turned my head slightly; it was torture. A very blurry John sat next to me, staring at nothing, his face slack and mouth open. I had the same impression I’d had when he dug Straik’s grave: that John was, if not feeble-witted, then at best very stupid. But he was big and he was armed. I would not be able to escape him by crossing over, even if I had been able to summon the necessary will. The pain I already had.

  Rawnie put her face close to mine and whispered, ‘We almost won the battle. But only almost.’

  I said, ‘Where are we now?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Somewhere on this moor. It all looks alike.’

  She was wrong. I made myself sit up, biting my lip to keep from crying out at the pain. As before, my chain was just long enough to permit me to rise to my knees and peer over the side of the wagon. John did not try to stop me.

  Everything looked blurry, but I was able to discern Charlotte trudging alongside Leo. She looked weary but not grieving. So my father had not been among the defeated rescuers. Once again he had not even tried to come through for me.

  The monotonous peat moor was giving way to a landscape of greater variety. We were surrounded by tors, higher and more numerous than before, with swift streams running down them. More boulders and great outcroppings of rock. But I also saw clumps of trees, although they looked neither tall nor healthy. A roe deer broke from one grove and streaked across the heather. Still, I knew what Rawnie meant. There were no villages, nor even isolated farmhouses, probably because the soil here was as poor as on the peat moor. In that, the moor was unvarying.

  A band of Soulvine warriors walked beside the wagon. Looking at them, I felt a deep shudder shake my entire body. These were the people who had taken Cecilia and—

  I couldn’t think of that, I would go mad.

  The warriors included both men and women, all young, all fit. A few carried guns; all had spears and knives. At Hygryll I had seen them dressed in ceremonial white robes, but now they wore rough leggings and tunics of animal hide. They all had green eyes. My stomach churned at the sight of them.

  ‘Rawnie, did any of the dogs—’

  ‘They all got killed, ours and theirs. I don’t care – they weren’t nice dogs. Other pets are better.’ Shielded from John’s sight by my body, she opened her hand and finally showed me her mouse. The small rodent, brown with a long pink tail, looked resigned, or perhaps only hungry. If Charlotte had been in the wagon Rawnie would not have dared take the creature from her pack.

  ‘How many of Leo’s men survived?’

  ‘Just John and Tarf. But now we have all these other stupid people guarding us.’

  ‘Did Leo, or anybody else, say where we’re going?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or when we will arrive?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or—’

  ‘Nobody told me anything, Roger! Nobody ever does! They think I can’t—She’s coming back!’

  Rawnie stuffed the wretched mouse back into her pack just as Charlotte climbed into the wagon. Charlotte sagged with exhaustion but nonetheless tried hard to smile at her daughter, now innocently sitting with her hands folded in her lap.

  ‘Roger, you’re awake – does your head pain you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Let me bathe it with a little cool water. I wish I had some semintha leaves, those are good for pain.’ She dabbed at my head with a cloth moistened with water from the waterbag. It made no difference at all. But as she leaned close to my face she breathed, ‘We arrive at Galtryf tomorrow morning.’

  ‘And then—’

  But she only shook her head, and tears filled her eyes before she blinked them away. ‘I tried to talk Leo into freeing Rawnie. She is but a child, no threat to anyone. He said no.’

  ‘They want you – both of you – as hostages to compel Rawley.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said. But neither of us knew what they wished to compel my father to do. And I – I didn’t believe that was my purpose in being carried to Galtryf. I was not a woman nor a child, I was a man grown. Leo and the Brotherhood had something else in mind for me: ‘Let him see what awaits him.’

  What could it be?

  Tomorrow I would find out.

  All day my vision blurred and my head throbbed, like hammers hitting directly on my brain. I drifted in and out of sleep, all of it uneasy and none of it restorative. At one point late in the afternoon, I woke to find only John and I in the moving wagon. Charlotte and Rawnie must be walking again. The back of the wagon had been left down, and I watched boulders and stunted trees blur past.

  A moor cur followed the wagon, just at the edge of my vision. At least I think it was a moor cur; it might have been a wolf (if there were wolves here), or a dog, or even a delusion. But from the way it kept behind rocks and bushes, I guessed it was a cur, attracted by the smell of the food in the supply wagon. Or perhaps by the blood on my head.

  My head hurt so! How long could this headache last? I wanted to escape the relentless, pounding pain, escape myself, escape everything, go somewhere else. But if my body crossed over, John would come, too. And there was nowhere else to go.

  Climbing up a well instead of falling down into it …

  Carefully, as if an effort of will might jar my body, I pictured that well and myself wedged into it, a metre from the top, my back braced against the curved side of the well and my good hand extended to hold myself in place. Above me loomed the dirty-silver fur of the moor cur. Climb, climb by inching my body upward—Now do it more—

  A scent in my nostrils, a black-and-grey landscape alive with smells, food food food danger danger food—

  I gasped and pulled back, and instantly my headache was thrice as bad, so bad that I nearly fainted with pain. So this was the agony felt by the hisaf I had found in the Country of the Dead, unable to breathe from the effort of returning from inhabiting one of the grey dogs. This, too, the agony of the web women who had become diving raptors, afterwards left gasping and barely alive from the effort. And I had scarcely touched the mind of the moor cur.

  But I had touched it. I couldn’t do so when I’d tried before – what was different now? Was it that I was in so much pain? Charlotte had mentioned nothing about pain being needed to cross into the dogs, only the agony and risk of returning. So what else was different?

  I lay the rest of the afternoon, pondering this, pretending to sleep. No answers came to me. Gradually my headache returned to what it had been at first, which was terrible enough but now, in contrast, seemed bearable. So does greater pain reconcile us to lesser.

  As evening fell the wagons halted. John hauled me down to sit with the rest around the fire, but I could not get warm. My head did not stop blazing with pain. I couldn’t eat, althou
gh Charlotte urged me to do so. I could not even listen to Leo, who boasted about ‘his’ victory over the hisafs who had tried to rescue us.

  Finally one of the Soulviners, a young man whose green eyes had grown sharp enough to cut glass, said in the accent of the uplands, ‘T’wasn’t your victory, but ours.’

  ‘I am in command,’ Leo said, ‘by order of—’

  ‘Hush,’ a young woman said. ‘We don’t speak his name.’

  Leo smiled, a look tolerant of less civilized beings with their primitive superstitions. He didn’t even realize what a mistake he was making. The Soulviners gazed at him steadily, and it was not with contempt but with something more dangerous: doubt.

  The young man with the cutting emerald eyes said, ‘Had it not been for us, ye would have lost all. As it be, ye lost the dogs.’

  ‘And they lost theirs!’ Leo retorted.

  Rawnie said, ‘Leo, give us another play!’

  Did she do it deliberately, to defuse tension? She looked all childish enthusiasm at the moment, but I did not believe that. Although why would Rawnie wish to lessen tension? She thrived on it. No, she was still trying to work her way into Leo’s approval, for reasons of her own.

  ‘Well,’ Leo said, ‘if I must—’

  The Soulviners did not speak, any of them, but they could not keep flashes of interest from their faces. Possibly none of them had ever seen a play. But they knew Leo was an actor, and they were curious.

  I suppose that if you hope to live for ever, you expect to have time to be curious about everything, including plays.

  But I did not want to be again enthralled, half against my will, by a performance from Leo. With an aching head, and sick at heart, I wanted only to sleep. I said to John, ‘I would sleep.’

  ‘Aye.’ He stood, pulling me up with him. Laboriously, my head throbbing at every movement, I got to my feet. We climbed into the wagon. Instantly John fell asleep, his mouth open, his slack features gone even duller than when awake. I heard Leo say imperiously, ‘Not a play tonight, I am not thus moved. A song, I think.’