A Bright and Terrible Sword Page 4

  Eventually he regained command of himself, and I risked a question. ‘What do you want of me?’

  ‘To give you a message. First – have you water?’

  I handed him my goatskin bag, filled at the spring that gushed a mere few feet behind him. He was clearly not accustomed to travel; no one sets out on foot without a waterbag. He drank deeply, water dribbling from the scarred side of his mouth, and swiped his hand across his lips. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You are welcome. Now – who sent you?’

  ‘I belong to the Brotherhood of hisafs, those fighting Soulvine Moor. As I suspect you already know.’

  He did not look to me to be a likely fighter. ‘How did you know where I am?’

  ‘They knew.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Did they tell you why you should follow me?’

  ‘To give you a message from your father.’

  It was like a blow. Watching me, Leo again gave that faint, twisted-lip smile from half his ruined face.

  I said, ‘My father? In …’

  ‘Yes. He is still imprisoned in Galtryf. As was I, but I escaped. Rawley could not.’

  Rawley. It was the first time I had ever heard my father’s name. Rawley and Katharine. Who birthed Roger and the second Katharine, the half-sister I had killed. Rawley, who had abandoned my mother and who had abandoned me. Twice.

  ‘Roger?’ Leo said.

  More harshly than I intended, I said, ‘I want no message from my father.’

  ‘That’s too bad, because he sent you this.’ Leo drew from a small bundle from his pocket, wrapped in the same rough cloth as his tunic, and held it out to me.

  I did not take it. ‘If you escaped from Galtryf, why can my father not do so? Hisafs can cross bodily now—’ as we had both just done ‘—so how can stone walls hold him? How can they hold any of your Brotherhood?’

  ‘Stone walls cannot. When the bodily crossings became possible – and I think you know how much you had to do with that change, Roger Kilbourne – many of us escaped, including me. But Rawley was held by the threat of harm to your mother if he left Galtryf.’

  ‘Harm to my mother! My mother is dead!’ I wanted to strike him for even mentioning her. My mother, whom I had last seen in the Country of the Dead, in the centre of one of those cursed circles.

  ‘And you of all people know what can be done to the Dead, don’t you? You have done it to many. The rogue hisafs threaten to carry your mother back to the land of the living, where she would have a fortnight before she crumbled into nothing, losing all chance at eternity. Just like the Blue army you brought back, like Lady Cecilia—’

  ‘Stop!’

  He did, raising the gun again at my angry tone. Hunter woke and looked at me in puzzlement. The dog had not objected to Leo, which lent belief to his tale that he meant me no harm. But just as my dislike for him hardened, Leo’s face changed. The burning dark eyes softened into compassion.

  ‘I’m sorry, Roger,’ he said with more gentleness than I would have suspected him capable of. ‘I lost my mother, too, and not very long ago. Just before this was done to me.’ He touched the hideous scar on his face.

  He was giving me a chance to shift the conversation away from what pained me. ‘What was done to you?’

  ‘Badger baiting. Only instead of a dog, they used me.’

  Badger baiting had been staged at the rougher of the country faires Hartah had once dragged me to. A badger was put into a small enclosed space and a dog dropped in to fight it. Wagers were laid. A full-grown badger, thirty-five pounds of terrified wrath with sharp teeth and powerful claws, would often win, killing the dog. Leo was larger than a dog but far less equipped to fight, even if he had been given a knife. I looked at Leo’s face. My imagination is too good; I could picture the scene in all its cruel horror. That, and the compassion he had shown me, wakened mine towards him.

  I said awkwardly, ‘I am sorry you had to endure that.’

  He shrugged. ‘In Galtryf, Rawley was kind to me. So I said I would carry this to you.’ Again he held out the small bundle and this time I took it, untied the string, and unwrapped the cloth.

  A miniature portrait of my mother, just as I remembered her. She wore a lavender gown, with lavender ribbons in her hair. The same brown hair and eyes my half-sister had had, although my sister’s eyes had been darker. My sister—

  ‘Roger?’ Leo said softly.

  ‘I don’t want it. Here, take it back, I remember her well enough without this. Why did my father send it? We have no more to do with each other!’

  ‘Why do you hate him so?’

  ‘He promised me a rescue that never came!’

  Leo’s face furrowed. ‘But he had been captured and so could not rescue you. Surely you make allowances for that?’

  Yes. No. Of course a man who was in prison could hardly rescue one who was not … but I had relied upon my father’s promise, had held it to me during the long weeks of being carted over the mountains towards the savage kingdom, forced to teach the Young Chieftain what could not be taught. All the fear and helplessness of those weeks I laid at the door of my father, who had insisted that I, a lad of seventeen, undertake this hopeless mission. And that mission had ended with Tom Jenkins, my only friend, killed in battle. I did not trust my father, who had deserted my mother and me, and I no longer believed his statement that he had done so only for our own safety. He was an adventurer, and we the victims of that lust for adventure. I could not forgive him, and I did not trust him. In memory I could still feel the blow he had given me in the palace dungeon.

  I said, ‘The miniature is a marker, isn’t it? So that your “Brotherhood” will always know where I am.’

  Leo looked surprised. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I thought you were a member of the Brotherhood.’

  ‘I am. That does not mean that I am told everything.’

  I could believe that. Skinny, timid, huddled in his cloak against chill even though the summer night was not cold, Leo Tollers looked completely ineffectual, someone whom nobody would tell anything much. Probably he didn’t know if the portrait was a marker, and probably it was. I took one long last look at my mother, wrapped up the miniature, and handed it back to Leo.

  ‘What am I supposed to do with it?’ he said, and now compassion had been replaced by querulousness.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Hunter looked from one of us to the other and back again, puzzled by the sharpness in our voices. Then Leo’s demeanour changed once again. ‘May I sleep here tonight? Near you and your dog?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ We could just as easily part in the morning.

  ‘I’m afraid to be alone.’

  ‘All right.’ I felt uncomfortable with his timidity and abasement. My last camping companions had been Tom Jenkins, brash and confident, and Jee, who had the survival skills of a boulder.

  ‘Where are you going, Roger?’

  ‘East.’ That much was already evident.

  ‘But where?’

  ‘Go to sleep, Leo.’

  ‘Can I go with you?’

  ‘No.’

  He looked at me bleakly, his ruined face grotesque in the moonlight. ‘I have nowhere else to go.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that, but you cannot come with me.’

  ‘Are you going to find work on some farm someplace?’

  I didn’t answer, merely lay on the ground and pulled my cloak loosely over me. Nonetheless, tension shot through me like lightning. Leo’s questions implied that the Brotherhood of hisafs did not know about Maggie and my son. Was that true?

  The web women knew: ‘He is our last hope.’ My sister, too, had known: ‘The child is the one! Your son!’ But my sister was gone for ever, and the web women and hisafs were at odds with each other over strategies to fight Soulvine Moor, none of which I understood. I believed that this Brotherhood was ignorant of my destination and my unborn child, but I waited in the darkness for Leo to say so
mething that might contradict my belief. And if he did? What would I do then?

  He said humbly, ‘Maybe you have other kin to take you in? An uncle or brother?’

  ‘I do not.’

  ‘Nor have I. Perhaps two maimed youths could better find work together than separately. We could offer two workers for one pay.’

  He waited, then, for me to agree. I did not. The minutes stretched out uncomfortably. I thought that he must give up and go to sleep, but instead he surprised me.

  ‘Would you like to hear a song on my lute?’

  I could not say no, not after my much greater refusal to take him with me. Ungraciously I said, ‘All right’, and there was much sighing as he drew the lute from its oiled bag, plucked a few strings, tuned it. He began to play, and I sat up once more, in surprise, and stared.

  His voice was astonishing: pure and clear, a man’s voice but with the sweetness of a girl’s. The plaintive tune of love’s loss was commonplace, but Leo’s singing of it was not. At court I had heard many musicians. He bested them all.

  Although you to the hills do flee,

  My love you can’t escape.

  Your heart, my sweet, belongs to me

  Though you may change its shape.

  Never, never will I cease

  To follow where you go,

  And ever, ever will I be

  The hound upon your doe.

  Do what you will and what you can,

  Employ the arts you know—

  Ever, ever will I be

  The hound upon your doe.

  Leo raised his gaze and in the moonlight filtering through branches of the oak, his eyes met mine. Never, never will I cease to follow where you go … Still that steady gaze held mine, and I saw in them the same burning look as when he first trained his gun on me. Ever, ever will I be the hound upon your doe …

  Then Leo laughed. ‘It’s merely a song, yes, Roger?’ He put away his lute, lay down, and went to sleep.

  But I lay awake for a long time.

  5

  We travelled together one day more. I set a punishing pace, one that tested my returned strength to the limit. I wanted to tire Leo as much as possible so that he would sleep deeply. Before my illness I had been toughened by months of mountain walking; it was clear that Leo was unused to moving much at all. He was meant to be a musician or a scholar. Why had the Brotherhood chosen him to follow me? There must be a reason. I needed to know what it was.

  ‘That’s a village … ahead,’ Leo said, panting. ‘Could we stop … for ale?’

  ‘I have no money,’ I lied.

  ‘I have money.’

  ‘Then you may stop. I will go on.’

  He scowled, his dark eyes flashing with the strong feeling that always seemed to lie just below the surface. I quickened my stride. He kept up, with difficulty, and so we passed through the tiny settlement, which did not seem to be having any trouble with tranced children.

  The village was followed by fields, which gave way to sheep pastures thick with clover, and then to rolling hills dotted with great tracts of wood. Here the road, obviously less used, dwindled to a track. The long afternoon was warm and fragrant, and it was The Queendom at its loveliest. Wild cherries and plums blossomed pink and white. The nightingales had returned from their winter home. Finally, just as the sun set in tender pinks and golds, I left the road to camp by a noisy stream bordered by bulrushes. Weeping willows grew along the bank, dipping their branches into the water and filtering the light to a green glow. I dropped my pack under a huge willow tree. Leo, groaning, sank to the ground.

  ‘Hunter, go find!’ I said. He bounded off. ‘Leo, gather some twigs for a fire.’

  ‘I can’t. I can’t move any more.’

  I snorted and left the willow. When I returned with twigs Leo had unwrapped his lute and was strumming it softly. His whole body drooped with weariness.

  ‘Do you think,’ I said sarcastically, ‘that you can bestir yourself enough to skin a rabbit if Hunter brings one?’

  ‘You skin it, Roger, and I’ll make the fire.’

  ‘Don’t tire yourself too much.’

  He raised those burning eyes to me. ‘I cannot help it if I am not strong.’

  ‘No, you cannot. But since you are not, why did you agree to bring me that miniature?’

  ‘I told you, your father was kind to me in Galtryf.’

  I made the fire while Leo rested. Finally I said, ‘So you knew my father in Galtryf.’

  ‘I already told you so.’ He had laid his lute aside and sprawled full-length on the ground.

  ‘And what is ”Galtryf”?’

  ‘It is an old castle used by the Brotherhood as their command post.’

  ‘How did you come to be there?’

  ‘I was captured in the war we wage with Soulvine Moor.’

  We had come to the information I wanted. Hunter returned with a rabbit and I took it from him, drawing out my knife and making a great show of skinning the rabbit so that Leo did not have to. I wanted him to feel in my debt.

  I said, ‘What was your part in the war?’

  Leo took a long time to answer me. ‘I was a decoy.’

  ‘A decoy?’

  ‘You don’t know how the war is waged, do you, Roger?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I cannot tell you much because I don’t know much. Until I was approached by the Brotherhood, I lived at the manor house of Lord Jasper Vincent, at the northwestern edge of The Queendom, in the mountains near the border with the country of Queen Isabelle. I was musician there. And a kitchen boy and jack-of-all-work; whatever was deemed within the feeble powers of a weakling like me.’ His voice held bitterness.

  I could picture the remote, rough-country manor house. The pages and young lords, as wild as the landscape, would not have used a boy like Leo gently.

  ‘Was that where the badger fighting took place?’

  ‘Yes. There was a wedding, my lady Judith with a rich lout from Her Grace Isabelle’s queendom. The feasting and drinking went on for three days. The night of the third day the merry sweet lads … they …’ His fingers, as if of their own volition, touched the scar on his face.

  ‘Leo, did the older nobles not recognize your talent? Not treasure it?’

  ‘That lot could not recognize any talents but fighting and whoring. Except Lady Judith. She was married against her will to that … that oaf … she with her sweet heart and beautiful …’

  Hs voice had dropped in pitch, full of emotion. I knew what I was hearing; I had once felt it myself. Leo Tollers, kicked and ridiculed, the butt of vicious pranks, had loved a high-born girl he could never have.

  I said, ‘Why did you not cross over to escape the badger?’

  ‘I did. But this was before the breach between the lands of the living and the Dead had crumbled enough to permit hisafs to cross bodily. My body remained behind, and so I was maimed. And crossing over … I hate it. I always have. How can you do it so blithely? The passage through the grave ….’ He shuddered.

  ‘Doesn’t that make you an odd recruit to your Brotherhood of hisafs?’

  ‘They saved my life,’ he said sharply. ‘One of them chanced to be at Lord Jasper’s manor; he stopped the lordling’s sport and saved my life. A week later more arrived with a spare horse and took me away.’

  ‘Then how did you end up in Galtryf?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ He bent over his lute, strumming and tuning the strings. I reached out and put my hand across the fret.

  ‘I know you don’t want to talk about it, Leo. But I must know. I don’t understand this war, and now that the Brotherhood has found me, I must. Why were you sent to me? I do not wish to take part in the conflict, and the web women have told me I should not.’

  Leo spat a curse, so filthy it startled me. ‘The ”web women”! Those old hags! They would lose us this war with their prattle about the web of life and death and their cowardly reluctance to kill anything!’

  It seemed
an odd statement, given that Leo did not seem very brave, but perhaps he did not see himself as a coward. Men seldom did. I ignored his anger about the web women and returned to my question.

  ‘What is the Brotherhood trying to do? And why are you with me?’ Certainly it was not as protection.

  In the dimming light under the willow tree he gazed at me a long time. Finally he said, ‘The Brotherhood is trying to kill all the hisafs who are making the obscenities performed on Soulvine Moor possible. You know about those, I think. You have been there.’

  I had. Twice. The second time I had barely escaped with my life. ‘How many hisafs have sided with Soulvine Moor?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘How many have the Brotherhood succeeded in killing?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What do they want with me?’

  ‘They only want to know where you are.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You brought me this marker so that I may be located at any moment, and yet you don’t know why?’

  His temper flared. ‘I told you, I am here only because your father was kind to me! I don’t care about this war any more than you do, not really! But I must live and eat the same as any other beast!’ He picked up his lute and began to strum, harsh angry chords. I could see that he would tell me no more tonight. I left the willow to gather more wood.

  As I hunted for dead branches, I considered Leo’s story. Some parts of it did not seem consistent. If he were really an intimate of my father at Galtryf, wouldn’t he know more than he professed to? And if the Brotherhood had rescued him once, from Lord Jasper’s manor, wouldn’t they continue to see that he could ‘live and eat like any other beast’ without setting him the task of bringing a marker to me – a task for which he seemed very ill suited? Dissatisfied with what he had told me, and insufficiently moved by pity for his helplessness, I was more determined than ever to shed him. Now. Tonight.