The Two of Swords: Part 12 Read online

  It had been a good road once, but the frost had got into it, followed by the grass and then the briars. But Mother was a single-minded driver and the cart had good springs; just as well the soldiers didn’t want it, of course, but, really, it was a very good cart; they knew how to build them back then, of course you could get the materials then, before the war. At this rate, they’d be in Malfet by noon tomorrow, which would mean missing the first morning of the fair, but that couldn’t be helped, and mostly the first morning was just the village people coming in to town to gawp, the serious people didn’t do any real buying or hiring till the second day. The owners of the six barrels of mead might be a bit upset about missing a morning’s trade, but they’d just have to understand, it’s not easy moving stuff about these days. Take the bridge, there was a very good example: ten years ago the village would’ve come out and fixed it straight away, but nowadays—

  In fact, they were making such good time that Gorna agreed to a brief stop, near the first substantial copse they’d passed in some time; she hurried away and walked back a little later, and suggested a bite to eat before they carried on. She flipped up the hinged lid of the box and came up with wheat bread, dried ham, sausage, apples, honeycakes and a stone gallon bottle of beer; just a snack, she said, to keep them going. She offered Musen some of the beer; he said thank you, but he’d rather have water. Later he washed the jar out carefully in a stream beside the road and filled it up, for later.

  The cart had two lamps, very good quality, imported, so they were able to keep going through the evening and well into the night, until they came to a stretch of road that Mother declared wasn’t fit to drive in the dark. The women slept sitting up, on the box; Musen crawled under the cart and tried to sleep, but every time he started to drift off he seemed to feel the presence of someone close to him, breathing without making a sound. He was glad when the sun rose and they could get going again.

  “I think it was a government road originally,” Gorna was saying. “It’s not straight like an army road, but look at the way they’ve cut through the hill rather than going round. It’s amazing to think there was a time when they could do that sort of thing, though of course it was all other people’s money.”

  Musen didn’t like the cutting. The embankments were steep on both sides, and thorns and ash saplings had taken root in them and grown into dense clumps, big enough to hide an archer. Gorna laughed at him. “There used to be bandits on this road at one time, about five years ago,” she said. “But hardly anybody comes this way any more, and those that do haven’t got anything. If you hung about here waiting for someone to rob, you’d starve.”

  Musen didn’t tell her it wasn’t bandits he was worried about. But they passed through the cutting without any trouble, and beyond it the countryside was flat and open; all the way, Gorna assured him, to Malfet.

  “All this was marshes once, of course,” she told him. “And then they dug the rines and drained it, but the land’s too sour, apparently, so it’s only fit for sheep. Of course nobody clears the rines out any more so it’s getting soft again.”

  There were no sheep; nothing living except for a distant hovering buzzard. Musen tried to remember the last time he’d seen anybody out working on the land – not the sort of thing you notice, until you realise it’s not there. Still, there was a positive side. Axeo would stick out a mile; he’d see him coming, at least by daylight. He wriggled his toes in his boot, wondering if he was fit to run yet.

  “See that plume of smoke? That’s Malfet.” Gorna was pointing; he tried to follow the line of her finger, but the cart was bouncing up and down. He couldn’t see any smoke. “Should be there just after noon, assuming Mother doesn’t run us into one of those damned potholes and crack the axle.”

  Mother scowled at her and flicked the whip; the horses shied forward and carried on at their former pace. A town, Musen thought; a town where there’d be people, a normal place where there was buying and selling, buildings, windows with shutters and doors with locks. And a hiring fair. If half of what Gorna had said was true, he’d have his choice of work – remote farms in the hills where nobody ever went, or in some busy town where nobody remembered faces. Or perhaps it would be better to stick with the women, who were always on the move, at least for now, until he could think straight again and find out about faraway places and how you got there.

  “You wouldn’t have thought anybody had the money to buy fancy mead these days,” Gorna continued, “but apparently they have, because Frassa – that’s the beekeeper – he reckons he could’ve shifted twice as much if we could’ve carried it. Of course, if we could find a bigger cart, maybe something that needs a bit of work doing to it – did I mention we’ve got six horses, though don’t go telling anybody, the last time the soldiers came round we sent them all up to the shieling on the moor and said they’d been stolen, I think the soldiers suspected something but they couldn’t prove it, of course—”

  There was a loud noise, like a crack, but also like a heavy stone falling into mud. Gorna had stopped in mid-sentence; her eyes and mouth were wide open and there was something in the middle of her forehead – like a walnut, only grey. Then she fell back off the box, hit her head against a barrel and slid forward, so Musen had to grab her to keep her from sliding off the box and under the wheels. Mother saw him and turned her head, and there was another noise, slightly different, solid, like a hammer on a wooden wedge, and she dropped off the edge of the box, the reins still in her hands. The cart lurched sideways and something hit Musen in the ribs, like a punch from an invisible fist. He grabbed the rail to steady himself but it snapped off in his hand and he fell and the ground rushed up to meet him.

  “See that?” A boy’s voice. “Did you see, Grandad? I got them both. Two in two shots. Is that good or what?”

  Musen opened his eyes. A boy, maybe thirteen years old, in clothes he recognised as Western army fatigues, sleeves and trouser legs rolled up into ludicrous ruffs; he had a cloth bag over his shoulder, and the thing like a long sock in his right hand was a slingshot.

  “Keep your voice down, for crying out loud. And come down off of there. You don’t know who’s watching.”

  An old man, maybe sixty, sixty-five, and another boy, say fifteen and also with a cloth bag and a sling; both of them in the same fatigues. The old man’s limp suggested a badly set fracture many years ago, and two of the fingers of his right hand were missing. Didn’t General Moisa, Senza’s predecessor, use to cut off two fingers of any Western archer he caught?

  “Look at those barrels, Grandad. Wonder what’s in them. Do you want me to go and look?”

  “Shut up and get up on the box. Pileo, you, too, while I see to these reins. No, leave it, for God’s sake, we don’t have time.”

  But the older boy was tugging at Mother’s hand for a ring; he put his foot on her neck to hold her steady. That couldn’t be right, Musen thought; and then his left hand felt a stone, and before he knew what he was doing, his fingers had closed around it and he was sitting up.

  “Grandad,” the younger boy called out. Musen guessed the range and threw his stone. It hit the older boy on the ear; he rocked, and dropped. The old man stood up on the box; the other boy was scrabbling in his cloth bag. It was a simple case of time and distance. Musen jumped to his feet and ran towards the cart. The old man must’ve seen the little axe; he stooped for it, but he didn’t have time. Musen grabbed his ankle and pulled his feet out from under him, and he went down, cracking his head against a barrel. The boy was still fumbling in his bag; Musen vaulted on to the box and kicked his head like a ball, then bent down, snatched the axe and sank it into the old man’s skull, like you do with a stump in the woods, so you can find your axe again.

  He looked round. The older boy was trying to get up. Musen leapt down, dragging the axe free as he landed. The boy saw him coming and raised his arm. Musen swept low and chopped into his shin; then, as he dropped, he pulled a draw-cut along the side of his neck, skipping sideways to ke
ep from getting spattered.

  The boy he’d kicked was out cold. He chopped into the top of his head and left the axe sticking there.

  There was no shovel or pickaxe on the cart. There were iron hoops driven into the timbers of the bed, for stowing a shovel and a pickaxe in, but the tools themselves were long gone; the war, probably, like everything else. He briefly considered trying to hack a hole in the turf with the axe, or scooping one with a barrel-stave, but both the women were large, you’d have to dig a long way down, and the ground looked like a thin layer of peat over limestone; the hell with it. He scrambled back up on to the box, grabbed the old man by the scruff of the neck and pitched him on to the ground, then sat down. He was exhausted, and his rib hurt like hell, so he could barely breathe. He prodded it gently with his fingers and reckoned it was just bruised, not broken. Just as well he was wearing a heavy coat and that it had been a slingshot, not a bow. But bows cost money; a sling is just a bit of old cloth, you can make them out of scraps and leftovers.

  He closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe, in spite of the discomfort. There was something in the liturgy about not killing – or was that just fellow craftsmen? – but he was pretty sure it was in the same section as not stealing, and he knew the Great Smith had made him to be thief, so maybe He needed killers, too. His father had killed all the time, and not just for the table; there was the time they dug a run-off from the stream to flood the rats’ nests under the barn, and Dad reckoned they’d probably drowned a thousand rats that day, and bloody good riddance. His foot hurt like hell where he’d kicked the boy. He wondered if he’d broken his toe.

  Look at it this way, he told himself. If He hadn’t wanted me to do it, He wouldn’t have rewarded me with a cart of my very own. And there was the pack to consider, of course. If he’d died and the boy had searched his pockets, the boy would’ve found the pack and sold it to some heathen, and He wouldn’t have countenanced that. He wouldn’t even let it go to save a whole city.

  It wasn’t a good place to be, Musen could see that, but finding the strength to get moving again was another matter entirely. Deserters, presumably; he’d heard they were calling up young boys for rear-echelon duties, or maybe they’d scavenged the uniforms. It was all as broad as it was long, as Axeo would say.

  Sitting upright to drive was particularly painful, but he couldn’t help that. At least the horses were all right, though he fancied the right-side horse might have a shoe coming loose. He’d have to check that some time. Not now. He called to them softly to walk on.

  Malfet fair turned out to be smaller than he’d anticipated. There were maybe two dozen stalls, fitted comfortably into the market square, with possibly a couple of hundred people milling round them; clean, neatly dressed. He hadn’t seen anything like it since he left Mere Barton.

  He found a watering trough and a rail to tie up to, then gently lowered himself to the ground and put his weight on his bad foot. It held up better than he had any right to expect. All he could do was choose a stall at random.

  “I’ve got six big barrels of mead,” he explained, “ordered in from up-country. I don’t actually know who they’re for, I’m new with the firm, the women who fixed up the deal couldn’t make it.” The stallkeeper thought for a moment, then referred him down the line; inaccurately, as it turned out, but the woman there put him right and sent him across the square to a stall with a great rack of barrels on solid-looking trestles. “This is a bloody fine time to show up,” the stallholder said irritably. “We’d almost given up on you. What kept you?”

  Musen explained about the bridge being down, though he wasn’t sure the stallholder believed him. But what the hell, better late than never, and the stallholder’s sons would unload the barrels if he’d point out the cart. And presumably he wanted paying? Three angels.

  Musen walked away, turning the coins over in his hand. He stopped by a stall selling fancy metalwork, and pointed to a dear little three-legged stand for a teapot.

  “That’s nice,” he said to the woman.

  “Mezentine,” the woman replied. “If you turn it over, you can see the mark. Twenty stuivers.”

  Musen grinned. “I haven’t got a teapot. What about that?”

  “The knife?” The woman picked it up and put it in his hand. “That’s Blemyan work, very rare. Pre-war, that is. Fifty stuivers.”

  Musen gave her an angel. She raised both eyebrows, then scrabbled frantically for change. “Where’s Blemya?” he asked.

  “What? Oh, way down south somewhere, other side of the sea. Bloody hot, so they say, which wouldn’t suit me.” She gave him a full handful of coins, which he stuffed in his pocket without counting. The woman leaned forward a little. “They do say,” she said, “Blemya’s going to come in on our side in the war, any day now. It’s all settled, apparently. And then we’ll show that bastard Senza what he can do.”

  It was a very good knife, in fact, and he felt sure that if ever he got a chance to draw it he’d be able to put up quite a fight. But against the man who crept up on him and cut his throat in his sleep, he couldn’t see how it would be any use at all.

  For one angel eighty-five he bought eight big jars of flour, a side of bacon, six strings of smoked sausages, a sack of carrots, four sacks of oats, four jars of dried fruit, five honeycombs, four good coats, two hats, three pairs of boots, two linen shirts, four pairs of trousers, two iron pots, a ladle, two wooden bowls and four matching cups, a shovel, an axe, a pick, a sledgehammer, a carpenter’s cross-pein hammer, a frame saw, four chisels, a dozen five-foot oak floorboards, two blankets, a tinderbox, a coil of rope, three iron splitting wedges, a small oilskin tent and a pair of stockman’s gloves. He arranged them in the back of the cart so he’d be able to find what he was looking for, covered them over with the tent and took the right-side horse to the smith to have its shoe seen to. It was dark by then, and the usual crowd of old men, boys and hardened drinkers had wandered away. The smith was a young man, not much older than Musen; he worked quickly and well, but the effort he had to put into striking suggested that his hammers were too heavy for him.

  “I don’t think I’ve seen you here before,” Musen hazarded.

  “Only been here six months,” the smith replied, working the bellows. “Got this.” He pointed to his foot; it looked perfectly normal to Musen. “Which got me my demob, praise be, and I got on my donkey and rode west till my money ran out, and here’s where I ended up. This place was all boarded up, so I had a word with the old smith’s widow and got the whole lot for fifty stuivers a month, tools and fixtures included.” He grinned, and splashed water all round the edges of the fire from a copper can on a long handle. “I lit the fire the first day and it hasn’t gone out since.”

  “You were a smith in the Service, then.”

  “Farrier.” He pulled the shoe out of the fire with the long tongs, inspected it, shoved it back under the coals, worked the bellows a few times. “But if you can make horseshoes you can make pretty much anything. Mostly round here it seems to be gate fittings, nails, busted tires and general mending. You can’t get coal, but charcoal’s quite cheap.”

  “My uncle’s a smith,” Musen said.

  Out came the horseshoe, cherry-red and almost translucent. The smith draped it over the horn of the anvil and gave it a few smart taps. “Is that right?”

  “Yes. He lives in Mere Barton, in the second street. The fifth house, on the third floor. He keeps his hammers and his anvil at our house.”

  The smith held the horseshoe up to inspect it, turned it over, put it back in the fire. “If you’re looking for a discount, forget it,” he said. “Otherwise, I’m Glabria, pleased to meet you. Don’t get many craftsmen out here in the sticks.”

  “I’m Musen.”

  The smith looked at him for a moment. “You ought to be in the army,” he said.

  “I was, for a bit. Didn’t suit.”

  “Ah well. Nobody’s going to give you any trouble round here, and the draft doesn’t bother com
ing here any more. Cleaned this whole district out years ago. You could try walking with a limp, though. You don’t get asked questions if you limp.”

  “Actually, I don’t need to fake it. But thanks for the tip.”

  “Right.” Out the horseshoe came again; many light taps, until the iron turned grey. “Let’s have her foot up and we’ll see if it fits.”

  It fitted; Glabria tapped in the nails and cut off the ends, and Musen thanked him. “How much do I—?”

  Glabria grinned. “Get out with you, I was just kidding. Keep your money.” He tipped charcoal from the bucket on to the fire, heaped it up evenly with the rake, then doused all round with the copper can. “You in a tearing hurry, or have you got time for a drink?”

  The cabin next to the forge was what you’d expect of a hard-working man living alone. There was one chair and a stool, and the table was thick with black dust. Glabria lifted a stone bottle off the floor, pulled the stopper and sat on the stool. “So,” he said. “You stopping here or passing through?”

  Musen hesitated, then sat down. “Depends,” he said.

  “Really? What on?”

  He put his hand in his pocket. “Been a craftsman long?”

  “Born to it. We’re all Lodge in our family.”

  Musen took out the silver box and put it on the table. “Go on,” he said. “Take a look.”

  Glabria opened the box, took out the cards and laid them on the table one by one. “There’s a pretty thing,” he said. “What is it?”

  Musen felt a wave of disappointment. “Lodge property,” he said. “It’s very rare and worth a lot of money, and I need to keep it safe. There’s a man trying to steal it from me. He’ll kill me if he catches me. He’s very dangerous.”