Aloren (30 page)

Gershom walked me to a door in the wall.  Two sentries unbolted it.  One of them prodded his torch inside, as though to scare something away.  In the glow of the torch I saw dim shapes moving, and smelled the stink of excrement and unwashed bodies.  

“Everything’s sodden,” Esperow continued to complain, “and a pyre needs a mountain of wood. Why don’t we just dump the boy in the river?”

“Take your light away,” came a voice from inside the pen.  “Blinding my eyes out.”

“A pyre?” called another voice from the pen.  “Who’s dead?”

“Keep quiet, or I’ll stick this in your neck.” The other guard thumped his spear against the side of the door. 

The first guard didn’t take his torch away.  “Against the wall, you.”

“Who needs a pyre?” said the guard with the spear. 

Esperow spat to the side.  “The Queen’s bastard, shitbrain.”

There was a brief silence.  Then the soldiers started laughing, and someone called out of the pen, “I can’t imagine he’d’ve wanted to go that way.  Did he die of some sort of contagion, that Herist would burn him?”

“No,” said Esperow. “Murdered.”

“He’s really dead?” said the guard with the torch. “How did he come to be dead? Did they catch the girl?”

“Who killed the royal bastard?  Did you kill ’im, rat?” came another voice from the pen. It spoke a mangled Rielde.  “Should we raise a toast to you?  Or did the snake kill him?  Snakey wanted him dead.”

“Who killed him?” echoed the guard with the spear.

Gershom thrust me into the dark doorway.  “Her.” He stuck his head in after me and said, “You three that were to burn, you’re off.  They’re using her.”  He laughed.  “A
proper
insurgent.”

A collective breath of relief blew out from the dark.  Faces, dim in the torchlight, stared wonderingly at me.  They seemed familiar, as if from some half-forgotten nightmare. 

“The Mother’s frozen teats,” said one.

“No, no, look––”  A hand dragged me in further and twisted my face toward the light.

“Lally?” said a girl.  “
You
bumped off the prince?”  Her dirty face moved closer to the light.  It was scrunched in laughter, but I recognized it.  It belonged to a taller, knobbier Emry Nydderwaic. “I allus knew it would end badly with ye.”  

I reached into my battered head and pulled out words.  “He in’t dead.”   My knees buckled and I sat in the straw.

“And I also allus knew,” said Emry, sitting down in front of me, “ye was never mim-mouthed when it came to lyin.  But don’t expect those nitwits ter believe you.”  She pointed at the four soldiers who were still arguing in the door.  “And who cares if you killed him?  Were a good thing you done, so far’s I know.  Especially as they wanted to burn me the most and now you’re takin me place!  They was gonna burn Toad and Gorky, too, cause they fought like baited bears, but it was me they wanted to burn specially.  Cause I’m Chief.”

“Oh,” I said.  Though she was right in front of me I could only see the outline of her.  She was taller than me.  “Are you Chief now?” 

“Yup.”  I put my face in my hands and rolled onto my stomach.  “Don’t believe me, Aloren?  Ask Seacho.  I’m Chief, ain’t I, Seacho?”

“Emry’s Chief,” said the man who must be Seacho.  “She hain’t had much chance to prove her mettle, though.”  This was greeted by laughter from those who’d heard.

“Weren’t by choice,” she said.  “Back about the time we was rustlin horses”––
prattle away, Emry
, I thought,
prattle me into oblivion
––“we was sittin by the town well in Cwdro, selling haul an’ actin like townsfolk.  Guess it didn’t work, cause we was surrounded suddenly by Snakey’s soldiers, and we all backed up against the well till we couldn’t back up no farther.  And some of us drew our steel but them soldiers didn’t want a fight––they wanted our Chief.  So Fillegal says the Chief weren’t around, he was off takin a piss, and then the old goat grabs me and says, ‘but this one’ll please ye far more than any old Chief.’  And then I turns round and pushes Fillegal down the well.  He screamed like a cat, but there were no splash.  Anyway, the soldiers was still askin who our Chief was, and all the boys pointed at me, the shitheads.”

“That in’t no way for a lady Chief to talk,” said a man in the back.  Laughter again.  I closed my eyes and saw the asters, sparkling like ice.  I wished I could go mad now, get it over with.

“Shut up, Maradilly,” said Emry.  “I’ll boil yer balls into puddin and feed em to you, ye so fancy singing like a girl.”

“Stop your jabber,” said one of the soldiers through the doorway, and pointed his torch at us.  “Makes me nervous.”

“Is it true you haven’t any dry wood?” called a man among us to the guard.  “Is Herist making the Ombenelva put it off?”  He spoke in clean Rielde. Too clean for a brigand.  “Again?”

Someone whistled.  “Again? They won’t like that.”

“Remember when they took little Drobo out o’ the pen?” said another brigand.  “I reckon they ate him.  They’ll probably eat you poor sods next.”

“We’ll find wood,” snapped the soldier with the torch.

“Why not use the wood here, from the wall?” said the man who spoke first.  “It’s dry enough under this rock.”

“Aye, the nob’s put his finger on it. Dry as a hag’s cunt, this stuff.”  The brigand named Maradilly slapped the wooden walls.

“Take down the walls and use them like Nobber says,” said another brigand.  “Then the Yellows will save eating you for another day.”

I realized what they were doing.  The soldiers realized it, too.

“Maybe,” said Esperow, “but Snakey wants you snug in your pen.”

“Who cares what Snakey wants,” said a brigand.  “The Ombens want him boned and boiled.  And they’ll boil you fellers, too, if you don’t keep em happy.” 

“Snakey,” said Esperow to Gershom, “might like the idea better if we pass it off as our own.” 

They muttered amongst themselves some more, and the door thunked shut.  Darkness fell down.  I heard boots tromping off through the mud.

“Let me see your hand.”

The man who spoke clean Rielde crawled from his corner.  In the scant torchlight that fell through the logs I could see his shirt had an embroidered collar.  The very same shirt Trid had been wearing at the canal’s edge.

“Trid.”  I sat up.  His voice had gone deeper.  “What the hell?”

“Shh,”he said, “they’ll hear you.”  Maybe I was already mad, going through in my mind all the people I had known.  Maybe my brothers would be next.

“You know the nob?”  Emry leaned forward.  “Not a bad sort.  He even speaks Rielde.  Y’ever hear of an owl speaking Ri––”

“Be quiet,” said Trid.  “We ought to sew your mouth shut.  I’m a hostage.”  He took my right hand tightly in his own––he smelled as ripe as the brigands––and lifted my little finger.  He snapped the joint back in place.  That was real enough.  The pain flashed through my head like a light and I screamed. 

“Sorry.” 

I screamed two more times, for my other fingers.  A guard drummed on the walls and shouted for the brigands to stop using me, and the brigands yelled back in their incomprehensible argot (how had I ever understood it?), and Trid said, “Herist and my uncle are no longer friends.”

“Pity for you.”  I bent, trying not to vomit.  The pain still coursed through my hand and I put it before me in the straw.

“Herist keeps me alive and close so long as Caveira does as he’s told with the troops of Dirlan.  Apparently my uncle treasures me.  How did Andrei die?”  The dark hid his face and I couldn’t guess at his expression.  “Did you kill him?”

“In’t dead,” I said.

“Why’re they burnin him?” said Emry. 

Trid’s breath quickened.  “What happened to him?  What’ve you two done with the
Aebelavadar
?”

“It’s gone,” I said exasperatedly. 

“Gone?  That’s bad.  Really, really bad.  The Ombenelva’ll––”

“Enslave everyone?  Want to hear worse?”  I rubbed my aching fingers.  “Andrei stabbed a djain with a dagger.  That’s why he looks dead.” 

Trid made a sort of humming noise, and began to laugh.

“Ain’t funny.  He’s asleep, been that way for a half a month.”

“And you think he’s not dead?” said Emry, who couldn’t keep from listening.

“I’m sure she knows how to check a pulse,” said Trid. “He’ll live, I think, if Herist doesn’t kill him.  Humans––”  He hesitated.  “Humans have natural defenses against the djain.  Something to do with our eyes.”

There were millions of things I didn’t know about humans.  “Eyes?”

“I’ve been told. We’ve got to think how to rescue him.  And you.  We’ve been making weapons”––he dropped his voice even more––“Bows, staves, mostly.  They’re buried in the ground.  The palisade’s yew.”  He laughed again.  It sounded like a sob.  “We managed to slip a hatchet off a sentry’s belt––it was dark and he was taking out the piss bucket, and he’s probably no idea where it went––and we rip the logs out and split the wood when it rains hard, and the river gets noisy.  And the soldiers sometimes give us viols and things.  They like to hear these fellows play.  They’re uncommonly good.”

“Why, thankee, Nobber,” said Maradilly.  “You ought to invite us to court, and we’ll sing ye a ballad of love––
The Nob and his Lady Chief
––”  Emry reached over and smacked him.

Trid ignored them.  “We just take the strings off them, say, ‘Aw, they broke.’”

“That stuff we make’s rubbish,” said Seacho.  “Once we break out we’ll find better.”

“Once we break out we’ll be eaten by the Ombens,” said a little boy.

“No,” said Emry.  “We’ll escape inter the woods.  Where we belong.”

“I heard on the way here,” said Trid, talking to all of them now, “I heard Even-Alehn troops’ve landed in Ellyned.  And they’re moving this way.”

“So?” said Maradilly.

“My meaning is, if we break out some of us should ride to find them.”

“Ain’t that somethin?  Nobber’s aimin to make good folks of us.”

“You really want the Ombenelva here?”

“Don’t see how it concerns us,” said Seacho.

“You owe me,” said Trid. “I came up with the idea, remember.”

They argued in this vein for some time.  I didn’t listen but stared into the dark and thought of ice asters, thousands of them, running like sea foam through my hands.  I lay down in the stinking straw and tried to think of other things.  My mother, putting down a bowl of water for a big, black dog.  Floy, the freckles on her high forehead, her hair bouncing on her back.  Mordan’s eyes, like two moons.  Arin in the bath, rolling my wet hair into spikes.  A boy with curly hair––Wille––rubbing the cold out of my arms and telling me about windragons.  Another boy, his shoulder still as stone under my head, as if he were scared I would fly away.  His face was so sad I stopped thinking on it and fell into a doze. 

***

Some time later light flooded the place, so bright I put my hands over my face.  “I’ve come to collect the girl,” someone said.  He was silhouetted in the door.

No one said anything.  Hands reached out and pushed me towards the door.  My stomach churned, and my blood beat angrily––I didn’t want to burn.

I grabbed the hands and pulled myself back, biting and scratching.  They howled and slapped me away, and I started screaming. “You whoresons, hiding in the dark.” 

The soldier got me from behind, and Trid’s eyes glinted in the light.  Then the door closed and I was on the outside of it.

Thirty-One

The night was black and the torches sputtering.  The soldier pulled me sharply by the arm, and I slipped on the wet grass and fell.  He looked at me, scratching an eyebrow.  “Wasn’t my idea, this.” His hand loosened on my arm. 

I jerked myself loose and ran, mud squelching under my feet.  Before I had gone three strides he grabbed me from behind.  “No trouble, now,” he said.  “It’ll be over quicker if you don’t squirm.  Poor little mouse.”  He put me over his shoulder and held me there with such ease I thought it pointless to struggle.

He carried me up the hill half covered in its yew wood, and then we were pushing through black cuirasses and wet, glinting mail. 

About the brow of the hill a crowd had already gathered: black and grey, like a sooty fog.  I looked behind me; the Ombenelvan soldiers spread down into the fields below.  There was hardly a light to be seen anywhere in the black countryside.

Faces turned to look at me, hungry eyes shining in the few torches. I concentrated on the soldier’s jerkin and only looked up when he slowed––we’d reached the top.  Three stakes stood out like fingers from the ground.  There was a little rowan tree just behind them, the white of its blossoms twinkling obscenely in the torchlight. 

A few of Herist’s men had gathered near the stakes, preparing for the burning.  The Ombenelva weren’t helping.  They looked on, contemptuous spectators of the terrified garrison.   

A little way behind the rowan, right against the eve of the forest, more of the garrison were stacking Andrei’s pyre. 

My soldier set me down before Herist.  I stared at him unflinching, determined to hold my head high no matter what he did.

He ignored me; he was measuring the length of rope in his hand.    

“Commander,” said Gershom, holding a torch over the center stake, touching it with a palm.  Herist dropped the rope.

“What?”

“The wood is unfit, and all the stakes. Completely waterlogged.  We should wait to burn the boy.”

“We’ll burn him now,” said Herist sharply.  “I want no corpse coming back to haunt me.”  The garrison soldiers around him muttered under their breath.

“The Commander is scared of a corpse,” said an Ombenelvan officer. “Pity.  I would have my sausage cooked.”  His fellows laughed.

Gershom whispered to my captor, “I expect they know, they’ve known all along they ain’t getting that weapon.” 

“I expect they’re looking to torture a snake,” my captor said.

“The snake’s shaking in his skin,” Gershom said, and jumped when Herist addressed him.

“We’ll use the tree as a stake.”  He pointed at the rowan.  “It’s not so wet beneath the tree.”  He picked up the rope and tossed it at the foot of the rowan.

“But the wood, sir,” said a soldier with a hissing torch.

“Gershom,” said Herist, ignoring the soldier, “collect wood from the prison.”  He made a gesture at my soldier. “You, Kalk––Meladrau, bind her to the trunk.”

Gershom crept down the hill, right against the forest, as far away from the Ombenelva as he could manage.  As Meladrau bound me to the rowan I turned my head over my shoulder and watched a group of Herist’s soldiers lay Andrei on the pyre.  He was glistening with oil.  An axe knocked somewhere below, the torches guttered, and it drizzled steadily.

“Set the boy alight now, before the night gets wetter,” said Herist to the soldier with the hissing torch, and he nodded his head toward Andrei.

The soldier walked toward the pyre.  Rain pattered on the leaves overhead. It dripped into my hair and I willed it to rain harder, down on the pyre, down on the tree. 

The soldier stood over the pyre now, and glancing with the light of his torch, he made a strange, stiff movement––and fell to the ground.  The torch tumbled from his hand and went out in the wet grass.  He lay twitching on the ground, two arrows sticking from his neck and back.

The garrison soldiers stopped what they were doing and the Ombenelva muttered in their own language.  “What’s this?” Herist’s breath caught.  “Who shot him?” 

“They came from the wood,” said one of the garrison.  He backed away from the yew wood, pulling one of his fellows back with him.  “Over there.”

“Did they?” Herist walked over and heaved the soldier headlong toward the pyre.  The soldier collapsed at the base of it, and got to his knees, shaking. 

But nothing happened; nothing struck him down.  He rose all the way and stepped cautiously away from the pyre.  “Another torch,” said Herist.  A torch was given him, and he placed it in the hands of the soldier and again shoved him toward the pyre.

There came a whistling noise.  And the man was down, an arrow in his groin, his torch in the grass, extinguished.

I strained to see, wondering.

“Lady Slut,” said Herist to me.  “Are these friends of yours?”  He raised his hand and I shrank from it.  But he lowered it, listening, his nostrils flaring.  I heard it, too.  A distant shouting, coming nearer.

There came a string of muffled words.  Three of the garrison pushed through the wall of Ombenelva, and one shouted, “Gershhom’s dead––axe.  Rerle got it in the stomach.  And I only just got away with my life––”

“What?” said Herist.

“Them that were in the––” the man stopped to catch his breath.  He was one of the guards from the pen. My face flushed; I remembered the axe knocking.  I thought it had been chopping wood. The soldier continued in a strangled voice, “Gershom opened the door and they got him in the head.  The wall’s half gone––they stormed us, took our weapons––”

Herist strode up to the man and struck him in the face.

“Commander,” someone shouted, and soldiers pointed at the pyre.  There was nothing on it. At the edge of the wood the undergrowth stirred––two figures dragging a third into the yews.

Herist ran a hand over his chin.  “The young Caveira.”

He turned around and cried to Meladrau, “In, in, after them.”  But Meladrau didn’t move, and neither did the other soldiers; and when Herist shoved them forward they wheeled away with sheepish, miserable looks on their faces.  “Dogs!  After them. They’ll work some devilry with the boy.” 

“Commander,” said an old Ombenelvan man, and Herist turned. “Mind your duty.” His voice was gross with phlegm, and he stepped close enough that I could see his face.  They all looked similar in that light, but this man––and then I knew.  He had set his dog on me in the city.  “Let them be. Finish the work.”

“If you want the work finished,” Herist snarled into the man’s face, “finish it yourself. You find the wood, you burn the girl.” 

“Show some respect.”  The man made a gravely noise in his throat. “Our traditions are of the utmost importance.”

Herist flung his arms out.  “Fool! She’s the one ran off with your
Aebelavadar
.”

“You lie,” said the man, and thumped his fist on his cuirass.  “Mind your forked tongue.  We will tolerate no disrespect.  If you do not respect our traditions, we will not respect yours.”

“This isn’t your land.”  Herist’s hand crept toward his knife.  “Why should I give a damn for your traditions?”

“Not our land?” said the man.  Water dripped from the trunk and trickled down my back.  “Land belongs to the iron fisted.  You haven’t even a fist of flesh, we think.  First the heir apparent slips through your fist, than a bevy of prisoners.  You are unfit to lead.”  He coughed again, and smiled, his fat face wrinkling up.  “Perhaps if you give Orshinq his due he will take pity and give you a fist of straw.”

Herist looked as though he’d like to yank his knife out and plunge it into the man’s eye.  But he said in a low voice, “So be it.”  He turned to Meladrau, and said he might take men and go and collect the rest of the wood from the prison, as there was no other use for it now.

So Meladrau and a few more of the garrison went down the hill.  The rain fell, and Herist grumbled, his hands clutching at his lank hair, until the men came back up with armfuls of kindling and filthy straw.  They worked silently, furiously, stacking the wood around my feet and bundling the straw into bunches under the wood; and the Ombenelvan officer, Chureal I thought he must be, blended back into the mob of his countrymen, the front line of which looked on mockingly.

“Light it.”  Herist gave a torch to Meladrau.  Meladrau passed the torch to one of his fellows, and he in turn passed it to someone else, and for some time not one of Herist’s soldiers would step forward to light my kindling.

“What’s this about?” said Herist.  “Are we waiting for daylight?”

“They’re scared of the arrows,” said Meladrau quietly. 

“You’re out of reach here.”  Herist took back the torch and gave it to Meladrau. “Stop trembling and get to it.”  Herist stepped back, and Meladrau didn’t move.  The Commander pulled his knife and forced him forward. “Light it.”  Meladrau put his torch to the first bundle of straw.

“Go on,” Herist told me, the knife shaking in his hand, the bones in his fist standing out.  “Curse and sob.  Tell me the details.  What’s this?  You aren’t of the mind?.”  But drizzle had already come through the branches and dampened every surface, and only smoke curled around my feet. 

A shape flitted through the smoke and landed on my shoulder.  “I’d wondered where they put you,” she said.  “The camp’s a mess.  Where’re the tunics?  Is Liskara still packed with your things?  I saw her outside a tent but didn’t look closer.”

“Floy,” I breathed.  I drooped in my bonds.  “What’s the use?  The asters are gone.”

“We can try half the business, can’t we?  Before sunrise?  I’ve brought them all, and we’re going to find the tunics.  And the asters.”  I lifted my head.  The air darkened and grew heavy.

“You shouldn’t have come.  It’s no use, Floy. Tell them to leave.”

“Sure, right away I’ll tell them,” said Floy.  “Boys, it’s your sister!  But don’t look––she’s being burned at the stake and wants you to leave.  They’ll respect your last wishes, oh,
certainly
they will.”

“Floy,” I gasped, coughing. But she had gone.  A flame trickled through the straw, and the men blew life into it.  It ate at the wood under my feet, snapping it up, growing fat.  The tree woke and whispered at my back.  Smoke coated the inside of my mouth, and I closed my throat and held my head up.  A thousand spinning eyes bored into me.  I savaged my lips and tongue with my teeth. 

Hot air billowed under my skirt, hounding the moisture away.  Pain clouded my senses and someone started screaming so loudly it rang in my ears. 

A black shadow flew through the smoke.  A long neck arched, and black wings beat against my feet, stinking of burnt feathers.  “Get away,” I cried.  “Get away.  They’ll kill you.  Get away!”

Arin said nothing, but kept beating and beating.

Herist hung back for a moment.  Then he reached out and crumpled the swan against his chest.  Arin screamed, tore at him with a webbed foot, and Herist caught his neck and twisted it.  “You don’t know what you’re doing,” I whispered.  The neck snapped, and Arin the boy struggled, his face blanched, and Herist, in surprise, let fall the wings from his arms. 

The surprise changed on his face.  Gasping, he dropped to his knees––the grip of a knife stuck out between his shoulders.  A man stood behind him, lacquered with oil.  Herist hit the ground and his mouth darkened the dirt.

“I hate waking up,” said Andrei.  He pulled his knife from Herist’s back, and  I thought vaguely to myself, he must have slipped from the wood and come up from behind. 

I looked at the swan fanned over the straw and closed my eyes.  It felt as though there were a rock in my throat.

“My lord, you daren’t do that,” said Meladrau.  Andrei was cutting through my ropes.  “The other prisoners are gone.”

“My lord,” said another soldier, “she’s guilty. Her scar––”

“Of what?” Andrei hacked away at the ropes, freeing my arms.  “Killing me?” His hands were shaking, his eyes bruised, his skin waxen.  No wonder they’d thought him dead.  “Which should give me sufficient license to pardon her.”

Someone––Trid––put a hand on Andrei’s shoulder, and Andrei wrenched it away, twisting it.  Trid squawked. 

“You’ve lost your mind,” he said.  I looked over my shoulder, but nothing stirred.  The brigands had the sense to stay hidden.  Andrei stumbled and fell to his knees, and Trid squatted next to him.  “You’re weaker than an
infant.
You’ve only got a couple spoonfuls of mash in you; I’m surprised you can even
move
.  You don’t understand what’s going on, the Ombenelva could squash us with one boot, we don’t know if the other troops are anywhere near, you’re going to have to negotiate––”

“Your Grace.” Chureal stepped from his horde of Ombenelva, and Trid looked up, words caught in his throat.  Both the boys became still.  “It’s a delight to see you alive.” He didn’t look delighted. “Perhaps we should find you a cot.”

Andrei’s hand tightened around his knife.  “She’s coming with me.”

Chureal stopped an arm’s length away. “You would grant her pardon?” he said, smiling at Andrei.  “Very magnanimous. She must confess, of course.”

  Trid stood up.  “To what?”