A Bright and Terrible Sword Read online

‘I never forget a face,’ Leo said. ‘Not even when I last saw it dyed yellow in fool’s paint. Here, Kelif, has our Roger been giving trouble?’

  Beside me, Kelif scowled and spoke for the first time. His voice was slow and slightly garbled, as if words must be forced up his throat. ‘Straik wants ye.’

  ‘What for?’ Leo still grinned, preening over his triumph over me.

  ‘Maybe to dig a piss hole,’ Kelif said, and Leo’s grin vanished. He stalked off.

  ‘Kelif,’ I said, ‘are all these men hisafs?’ But the question was asked from desperation; I did not really expect an answer. Nor did I get one. Kelif sat down again under the tree, and I of necessity sat with him. There was nothing to do but watch, learn all I could, and hope to discover something that would let me escape.

  Escape how? I was securely chained to a hisaf who possessed all my ‘talents’, half again my bulk, and twice as many hands.

  Six men besides Leo had arrived with the wagon. Two of them lifted down the bound woman and girl. The woman said something in a low voice and the girl nodded. I saw that she, unlike the woman, had been gagged with a strip of cloth tied tightly across her mouth. One of the men ungagged her. He cut both their bonds with a short knife with carved handle. The woman rubbed her wrists with her fingers.

  She was in her mid-thirties, the age of Queen Caroline when I had first seen her, and like the queen this woman was beautiful. Her hair was dark red, plaited around her head; her eyes bright blue with long dark lashes. She wore a simple gown of blue wool, now mussed and soiled with travel, and shadows and lines ringed her eyes. They roved desperately around the camp until they came to me. She gasped, turned pale, and started towards me. The man with her grabbed her arm and held her, looking questioningly at another man.

  The girl had followed every gesture, only she was too quick for the man who clutched at her and he got only air. Darting through the camp, she stopped dead in front of me and demanded, ‘Are you Roger?’

  I stared at her. Gawky and thin, she also had red hair and blue eyes, but they were utterly different. The rich copper tresses of the mother – the woman had to be her mother – had become carroty and lank on the girl, worn in two tight and unbecoming braids. The woman’s bright blue eyes here were a washed-out, watery blue. The girl had spots on her skin. Her teeth were crooked.

  ‘I asked you a question!’ she said, and only her voice was lovely: musical and deep for a girl. ‘Are you Roger Kilbourne?’

  There seemed little point in denying it. ‘Yes.’

  She spat at me, the thick gob of spittle landing in my beard just as the mother, followed by her guard captor, reached us.

  ‘Rawnie! Stop that! Roger, I’m sorry, she … I …’ A slow blush mounted from her neck to forehead. Almost she seemed about to cry, which seemed too much reaction to a daughter’s crude manners. Abruptly she seized the child and dragged her off, the guard following both silently. Ten feet away the mother turned back to me. ‘I am sorry. We can talk later, perhaps.’ The girl glared at me, hatred animating her pale blue eyes.

  Dazed, I turned to Kelif. ‘Who are they?’

  He didn’t answer.

  The wagons were drawn close to the fire and supplies unloaded. A second fire was built so that the two wagons and two fires made a square. Only then was I brought to the centre, where Kelif and I were given a blanket to sit on and another to, presumably, cover us at nightfall. The others stayed by the fires. I guessed that they would continue to surround me, taking shifts at night, so that I could not be approached by web women in disguise as animals, nor rescued by anything less than an army.

  Why? Was I to be tortured in order to find out about my son? If so, why had these men not done so this afternoon, before help could arrive? And I didn’t understand at all why the woman was here or the girl, Rawnie, who so obviously hated me for reasons I could not fathom.

  She began to shout in her oddly deep, musical voice. ‘Don’t put that thing on me again or I’ll kill you! I will!’

  ‘Rawnie,’ her mother said despairingly, ‘if you’re quiet they will not gag you. So be quiet!’

  She might as well not have spoken. Rawnie screamed, kicked, bit. It took two men to hold her down while a third approached with the gag. The mother pounded him ineffectually on the back and then, far less ineffectually, hit him over the head with a stick of firewood. He crumpled to the ground. Two more men rushed to restrain her. Everyone shouted and cursed. Into this melee, from out of the forest, strode Straik, easily identifiable as the leader here. He took the fighting girl from his men, got her into a headlock, and vanished.

  Another hisaf.

  The mother held her hands in supplication. ‘Please, oh please, she’s just a little girl ….’

  ‘She be a she-cat,’ said the man who had tried to gag her, and whom the mother had hit with firewood. ‘And so be you. If you try that again, you slut, I’ll—’

  ‘Jol,’ another man said warningly, ‘Straik said she is to be used gently.’

  ‘I’d like to use her,’ Jol muttered, but he glanced fearfully at the spot where Straik and the girl had vanished.

  The other man said, ‘Trip through the grave will do that young one good. Frighten her into next sen’night.’

  It did not. Straik and Rawnie reappeared and she looked as furious as ever, and not at all frightened. Her mother rushed to hold her and Rawnie shoved her away. But she had stopped shouting.

  ‘We have a bargain,’ Straik said to the mother. ‘She will not shout and I will not leave her alone in the Country of the Dead without water or food.’

  Rawnie said loudly – but not quite a shout – ‘You said I could have what I want.’

  ‘So I did,’ Straik said, clearly amused.

  The mother said fearfully, ‘What did she want?’

  Rawnie said, ‘To kick Roger!’ She dashed over and did so, right in my belly, leaving me gasping for air. Rawnie walked placidly back to Straik. ‘Thank you. I hate you, too, but I will keep my half of the bargain. But not because I’m afraid of being left in the Country of the Dead!’

  ‘Why, then?’ Straik was enjoying this.

  ‘I have to stay here to look after my mother.’

  ‘So you do,’ Straik said. ‘And Leo shall look after you. Leo, she’s your charge. Lose her at your peril.’ Straik went to the other fire and called his men to him.

  Leo came forward, looked distastefully at Rawnie, and said, ‘If you try to run, I shall beat you.’

  ‘You couldn’t beat a puppy. Look at you.’ Rawnie stalked towards the second fire and flopped beside it. ‘When will that rabbit be ready? I’m hungry.’

  Kelif smiled contemptuously at Leo, who flushed. I saw my chance.

  ‘Who is she, Leo?’ I made my tone as humble as possible.

  I have never known any professional actors, but at court the lords and ladies were forever amusing themselves with masques. A few courtiers always clamoured for the best roles, sulked if they did not get them, and strutted like peacocks about the stage, displaying their dramatic feathers. Leo, now that I saw him as he really was, struck me as one of these. Such actors had resisted no chance to feel important.

  Nor did Leo resist. ‘Who is she? You’re so ignorant, Roger!’

  ‘I know I am,’ I said, more humbly still.

  With his free hand Kelif made a gesture that might have meant Be quiet. Leo ignored him.

  ‘I would think, Roger, that you wouldn’t be so ignorant about your own family. Don’t you recognize—’ long pause, for effect ‘—your other half-sister? Nor your father’s second wife? No, I guess you don’t, you poor doomed idiot.’

  Satisfied with his triumph, he followed the girl to the fire.

  Rawley. Rawnie. Rawley. Rawnie. All night the names clanged in my head, like rusty and misshapen bells. Your father’s second wife. He had married again, then, after my mother had died giving birth to Katharine and I had been abandoned to Aunt Jo. Your other half-sister. This one born here in the land of the livin
g, unlike Katharine, whom I had killed. Rawley. Rawnie. Rawley. Rawnie.

  I could not sleep. Hatred for my father boiled through me. For his irresponsibility, his deceit, his failure to protect either of his families. I hoped they kept him in Galtryf for ever. I hoped he died there.

  Rawnie’s mother had recognized me. I had seen my father only once, but I knew that except for his green eyes and my brown, I looked like him. Perhaps Rawnie had recognized me, too. But why did she hate me so? And what did the Brotherhood of hisafs want with either of them? For it was clear that Leo had told me the truth about that, or at least half the truth. The Brotherhood existed. But they were fighting on the side of Soulvine Moor, not against them. The only thing I was sure of was what Soulvine Moor wanted. They wanted to live for ever, and to channel the power of the Dead to do so. ‘The Dead grow in power over years, over centuries – how could it be otherwise?’ Mother Chilton had once told me. ‘Even stupid youths like you know how much power death has.’

  I knew. I knew better than most. I did not want to die, but I would do so if it meant keeping these monstrous men from my son.

  As I lay beside the snoring Kelif and listened to the night guards moving around the edge of camp, I could not make my mind rest. Rawnie and her mother slept alone in one of the wagons. The guards talked softly, one of the horses whinnied in its sleep, an owl hooted in a pine tree. My heart began to beat faster. But it was just an owl.

  Rawley. Rawnie. Rawley. Rawnie.

  Maggie.

  The thought of her should have been comforting. Her competence, her acerbic resourcefulness, her unwavering love for me. Instead it was a torment. If the Brotherhood knew where she was, if they came after her to obtain my son …

  The mind can travel endlessly in the same worn rut, but the body must sleep. Towards dawn I came finally to the end of the rut, but what followed was somehow worse. I dreamed.

  I crossed over to the Country of the Dead, emerging in a vast stone chamber with crumbling and uneven walls. Something lay in one corner. I walked closer. It was one of the grey dogs, like Shadow and Shep and Hunter and the nameless others. The dog lay unmoving but not dead. The dog opened its green eyes and tried to snarl. But it had not even strength enough to draw its lips back over its teeth. Only its eyes glittered with feeling, and a vague animal scent came not so much to my nose as to my mind—

  I woke. The camp began to stir for the day. Kelif woke. Someone brought me cold meat and bread for my breakfast. To eat, Kelif and I must raise our hands, his left and my right, at the same time. It was awkward when his ale spilled, he cursed at me in his slow, thick voice.

  Straik appeared and studied me in the growing light. ‘Look at you. Did you sleep at all last night, boy?’

  Kelif said, ‘He sleep all yestreen.’

  ‘So I heard. I’m sorry you can’t have a break from him, Kelif. Take him into the woods to piss and then into the wagon. He can ride and sleep, and you can ride, too.’

  Kelif scowled. ‘I want to walk.’

  ‘I know. But it can’t be helped. Your aid is crucial here, my friend.’

  Kelif, clearly unhappy, tried one more time, gesturing wordlessly at Rawnie and her mother.

  ‘They can tell him nothing he doesn’t already know, thanks to Leo’s dramatics,’ Straik said. ‘And it doesn’t matter anyway. Our only task is to get him there.’

  ‘Aye,’ Kelif agreed, still unhappy. He dragged me to the woods to piss and then back to the wagon, where he sat beside me in resigned silence. The wagon bed was cushioned with three or four rumpled blankets, a waterbag, and a half-opened pack. I glimpsed red cloth and a wooden comb painted with flowers.

  When Rawnie and her mother returned to the wagon, I heard the girl before I saw her. ‘No, you don’t have to, you stinking ugly hisaf! You don’t have to chain me! I promise not to get out of the wagon if you leave me unchained!’

  ‘And if I believe that,’ said Leo’s voice somewhere beyond the high sides of the wagon, ‘next you’ll tell me how you can turn the river into honey. Into the wagon with you.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Rawnie,’ her mother said helplessly.

  ‘Just don’t chain me,’ Rawnie said.

  Leo yanked down the backboard of the wagon. He was pretending amusement but his acting skills appeared to be eroded by irritation. The amusement was distinctly sour. He said, ‘I think you’ve overlooked one good reason to get into the wagon, Rawnie.’

  ‘Oh? What reason?’

  ‘Can’t you guess?’

  He could have bodily thrown her into the wagon. I guessed that Leo – all of them – were under orders not to touch either of the women.

  Rawnie said, ‘No, I can’t guess!’

  ‘In the wagon you can abuse Roger instead of me.’ Rawnie’s head popped above the wagon side, saw me, and she hissed. She ran to the back of the wagon, where Leo stood in with an air of elaborate nonchalance, and kicked him hard in the shins. Then she leapt onto the wagon bed and kicked me in the side.

  ‘Rawnie, stop that this moment, or you know what I will do!’ her mother said, looking fearfully at Kelif. Kelif said and did nothing. The mother’s voice did not carry much authority, but Rawnie looked fearfully over her shoulder and then, mercifully, settled into one corner of the wagon. The mother said, ‘I’m sorry, Roger.’ She climbed into the wagon.

  The kick had hurt. I concentrated on trying to breathe while Leo snapped an iron cuff, the twin of mine but with a longer chain, onto Rawnie’s ankle. Her skinny wrist would have slid right through it. He fastened the other end of the chain to the same ring as mine. He left Rawnie’s mother unbound and then climbed from the wagon with evident relief. But he could not resist one last mockery.

  ‘Enjoy each other’s company, Rawnie and Roger.’

  ‘Eat dung,’ Rawnie said.

  Her mother and I stared at each other.

  This was the woman my father had chosen to set in my mother’s place. She did not look formidable. Her face, pale and pinched this morning, nonetheless looked kind. She had been left unchained because there was no chance she would try to escape without her daughter. But she was not an escaper, anyway, nor a fighter. I was forced to admit to myself that I hated that she looked gentle and soft. She reminded me too much of what I could remember about my own mother. Evidently my father had fixed tastes in women.

  ‘Roger,’ she finally began, ‘I know how much of a shock this must be to—’

  ‘You know nothing about it,’ I snapped.

  Rawnie said, ‘Don’t be rude to my mother!’

  I ignored her. She started to get up, probably to kick me again, but her mother repeated, ‘You know what I will do!’ and the child sank back, glaring, into her corner.

  I said to Rawnie, ‘If you’d really wanted Leo to let you stay unchained, you shouldn’t have called him a “stinking evil hisaf”. That’s hardly the way to get people to help you.’

  ‘I hate you,’ she said, but something shifted behind her pale eyes. I hadn’t really meant to instruct her, only to return her insults, but it actually looked as if she was thinking about what I’d said. I didn’t care if she considered it or not. My attention returned to her mother.

  I said, ‘Rawnie is how old? Twelve?’

  ‘Eleven.’ Her voice held reluctance; she already knew my line of thought. Not stupid, then.

  ‘Eleven. So she was born the year after my mother died and I was sent to my Aunt Jo. Rawley did not waste much time mourning, did he?’

  Her lovely face hardened, but into pleading rather than disdain. ‘You don’t understand, Roger. He thought you were dead, too. He was so distraught at being unable to protect Katharine, out of his mind with grief, even though he had left for her own safety—’

  ‘Don’t bother. I’ve heard this all before “Mrs Kilbourne”. He left my mother to be taken by some other man, my sister to be born and go mad on the other side, and me to a life of beatings and starvation from that brute my Aunt Jo married.’


  ‘He didn’t know!’ she cried.

  ‘I have met him, you know. Once. He did not look like such an ignorant man to me. He did look like a faithless and cheating liar. Although of course he had you to console him for his losses. Tell me, was my mother even in the Country of the Dead before he took you?’

  Her gaze radiated despair. Rawnie, wide-eyed, watched us both; evidently some of this information was new to her. Even Kelif, normally stolid as a boulder, had opened his sleepy eyelids and sat listening.

  She said, ‘I had not expected to find you so bitter, Roger.’

  ‘I have cause to be.’

  ‘Yes. But not at your father. He did the best he could in difficult circumstances.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure he did. His best was an abandoned wife and child, another child raised beyond the grave, a gullible mistress and a bastard second daughter.’

  Rawnie leapt up and rushed at me. ‘Don’t talk about my father like that!’

  Her chain would have been long enough to reach me, and her mother’s cry ineffectual to halt her, except that Kelif reached out with his free right hand and stopped her as easily as if she had been made of paper. He pushed her away and said simply, ‘No.’ Rawnie fell heavily back into her corner. Tears came to her eyes, gone in an instant.

  The wagon lurched forward. I had not even noticed the driver climb aboard, nor the camp being struck. In truth, I was appalled by my own outburst. I had not intended to spew so much venom upon this woman. My anger was with my father, not her.

  But she had the last word. With quiet dignity, she said, ‘My daughter is not a bastard. I am Mrs Kilbourne. My first name is Charlotte.’

  I said nothing. And the wagons, guarded by the Brotherhood of rogue hisafs, started south in the sweet summer sunshine.

  8

  I was not only ashamed of my outburst to Charlotte, but also shaken by the unsuspected depth of my own bitterness towards my father. In addition, I had lost my chance to obtain information. Charlotte might know where we were headed, and why. Shortly after the wagons started to move, she fell asleep. I guessed that she had slept as little the previous night as I had. Rawnie and I glared silently at each other for a while, and then she, too, nodded off, her hand protectively on her small pack. Kelif may or may not have been sleeping; it was always hard to tell.