Bristling Wood (48 page)

“So,” the equerry said, “I’ll see if I can have a word with our liege myself. Never in all the time that I’ve been here have I asked for a private audience, so perhaps I can get one now. We’ll see on the morrow.”

When the coaster put into Dun Mannanan, early on a clear day whose crisp wind proclaimed the coming autumn, Jill was profoundly glad to get onto dry land again. In her joy at feeling solid ground under her feet, she barely registered Salamander’s stream of chatter as they unpacked their gear and piled it up at the end of the pier. Finally, though, some of his words caught her attention.

“ . . . can’t stay in an inn, it’s too dangerous.”

“Probably so,” Jill said. “I’ve got a friend here in town, but I don’t think he’ll put you up.”

“What? How ungracious, my turtledove. Why not?”

She leaned close to whisper.

“Because he’s a dwarf, and he thinks all elves are thieves.”

“And I consider his people to be dullards and sots, and bad cess to him. But you’re right enough. We’d best acquire some horses and get on our way.”

“We might stop in at Otho’s, though.” Jill was looking forward to seeing the silversmith again. “He’ll be able to tell us the best place to buy stock.”

Otho’s house was at the edge of town, down by the river. Over the door hung three silver bells that rang in a gentle cascade when Jill pushed it open. They went into the antechamber, a narrow slice of the round house, set off from the rest by a wickerwork partition. In the partition hung a dirty green blanket for want of a proper door.

“Who’s there?” Otho called out.

“Jill the silver dagger, and a friend.”

Wiping his hands on a rag, the smith pushed aside the blanket and came out. He glared at Salamander in exaggerated suspicion.

“So, young Jill, your taste in men gets worse and worse. You’ve left one misbegotten elf for another, but this one’s a fop to boot!”

Salamander’s mouth dropped open, but Jill hurriedly started talking before he could recover from his surprise.

“I haven’t left Rhodry at all, Otho! This is his brother, not some lover of mine.”

“Humph. Fine family you’ve married into.” He paused, looking the gerthddyn over carefully. “You must be cursed clever with your fingers, lad, to have such fine clothing. I’m not letting you into my workshop, that’s for sure.”

“Now here! I’m not a thief!”

“Hah! That’s all I have to say to that: hah! Now, what do you want with me today, Jill?”

“Just some advice. Is there an honest horse trader in town?”

“Not in town, but there’s one about a mile north of here. Bevydd’s his name, and he’s somewhat of a friend of mine. I’ve made him many a fancy piece of tack over the years. Tell him I sent you. You take the river road straight out of town to the north, and then turn left at the lane edged with beech trees.”

“A mile?” Salamander said with a groan. “Walk a whole mile?”

Otho rolled his eyes up so far it looked like he was going to lose them.

“And doesn’t her ladyship have soft feet today? Ye gods, Jill, I’d find some other clan to marry into if I were you.”

“They grow on you once you get to know them.”

“Like moss, no doubt, or mildew.”

“I beg your pardon,” Salamander snapped. “I don’t have to stand here and be insulted.”

“No doubt you could be insulted anywhere you went.”

When Salamander opened his mouth for a retort, Jill elbowed him sharply.

“Please forgive him, Otho. I was wondering if you had a map of the Auddglyn I could look at. One that shows what lies to the east.”

“Well.” He paused to scratch his head with one gnarled finger. “I might have somewhat like that, and for old times’ sake I’ll go look for it. You keep an eye on this fancy lad out here for me.”

Otho pushed his way back through the blanket, and in a moment or two they heard the unmistakable sound of heaps of objects being rummaged through, a rustling, a banging, and the occasional oath.

“May the gods shorten his beard for him!” Salamander hissed. “The gall, calling me a thief.”

“Now, now, it’s not like it were personal or suchlike.”

“Humph! And you’ve got gall of your own, asking
him
to forgive
me
.”

“Well, I was just trying to smooth things over. Hush—here he comes.”

Otho made a triumphant return with a yellowed and cracking scroll in one hand. He took it to the window and unrolled it carefully while Jill and Salamander crowded round for a look. It mostly showed the Auddglyn coast, and Jill got the distinct impression that it had been drawn long before the province was truly settled. To the east beyond Dun Mannanan it showed the island group known as the Pig and Piglets, but the village of Brigvetyn just to the north of them was missing. Even farther on, the eastern side of the parchment was blank, except for a small banner bearing the words “Here there be dragons.”

“Dragons?” Jill said. “That must be some scribe’s whimsy and naught more.”

“Just so,” Salamander said. “Deverry dragons all live in the northern mountains.”

“What?!”

“Oh, just a jest.” Yet he spoke so hurriedly that she knew he was covering something over. “A tale for another time. Now see that little river here, my turtledove? The Tabaver? That estuary is where we’re going.”

“I never heard that there was any town out there.”

“Of course. That’s why I said you were in for a surprise.”

Salamander was speaking naught but the truth for a change. After they bought new stock, a sturdy gray for Salamander, a battle-steady chestnut for Jill, and a pack mule, they headed east, following the coast road to Cinglyn, about four days’ ride away. For this part of the journey, the gravel and packed-earth road was well kept up, and it ran through good farmlands, where the farmers were beginning to harvest the golden summer wheat. Cinglyn itself was on the verge of growing into a small town from a large village; they had no trouble buying provisions there. When it came to knowledge of the road ahead, however, all they got was blank stares or outright mockery.

“There’s naught out there,” the blacksmith said. “Naught but grass, that is.”

“Perhaps so,” Salamander said. “But hasn’t anyone ever been curious, like? Surely someone’s ridden out just for a look.”

“Why?” He paused to spit in the dirt. “Naught out there.”

For the first couple of days, Jill had to agree with him, and she began to wonder if Salamander were daft. The road dwindled first to a dirt track, then to a deer trail, then petered out entirely some fifteen miles from Cinglyn. Salamander led the way down to the beach itself, and for the rest of the day and on into the next they rode on the hard-packed sand by the water’s edge. Wildfolk appeared in swarms and mobbed them, riding on their saddles and horses’ rumps, running alongside, swirling thick in the air, rising up from the silver waves that crashed and boomed close at hand. When they made their evening camp, the spirits sat around in orderly rows, as if they were waiting for something. Jill found out what when Salamander obliged them with a song. They listened, fascinated, then vanished the moment he was done.

On the fourth day, though, she was in for a surprise. They left the water’s edge and turned inland to find another road. Long disused, it was only a narrow track through the sea meadows of grass, but it ran straight and purposefully. Just at noon, they came to an orchard gone wild, where under the tangle of unpruned trees apples lay rotting. Just beyond was a circular grassy mound that looked like the remains of a village wall; inside it Jill could pick out dimpled circles on the earth where houses had once stood. As soon as they came close to the ruins, the Wildfolk vanished.

“What happened to this place?” Jill said. “Do you know?”

“It was burned by pirates.”

“Pirates? What would they want with a farming village? I’ll wager there wasn’t any fabulous plunder here.”

“No gold nor jewels, truly, but wealth all the same. Slaves, my innocent turtledove, slaves for the Bardek trade. The raiders would kill all the men as being more trouble than they’re worth, and take the women and children over in the carracks. Deverry slaves are rare in the islands, you see, exotic and therefore expensive, like Western Hunters in the Eldidd horse trade. There used to be a lot of small villages out here, scattered up the river into the Auddglyn. All gone now.”

“By all the ice in all the hells! Didn’t the local gwerbret put a stop to it? Why did it take him so long?”

“The local gwerbret is about a hundred and forty miles away, my sweet. The pirates finally ended it themselves. They’d overhunted the place, and there weren’t any villages left that were safe to raid.”

“Oh. You’d think that blacksmith in Cinglyn would’ve know about this.”

“Of course he did. He refused to mention it, that’s all. That whole town must live in fear that one day the scum will be bold enough to come take them.”

The biggest surprise of all lay two more days along. Here the coastal cliffs became lower and lower, finally fading out into a long stretch of dunes, scattered with coarse grass. As they rode east, the grass grew thicker; tiny streams appeared; the ground grew damp, and here and there trees stood beside ponds and rivulets. Quite suddenly they found a road made of logs laid down in the muck. Whenever Jill tried to get some information out of Salamander, he would only grin and tell her to wait After a couple of hours more, the road brought them to a straggle of fishermen’s huts in a sandy cove at one side of a broad, shallow estuary. Drawn up in the harbor were ships, a few tattered fishing boats, and then three sleek carracks and two galleys, all with suspicious-looking accouterments on their prows.

“By the Lord of Hell himself,” Jill said. “Those look like corvos and ballistas.”

“Thats exactly what they are. Remember those pirates I told you about? This is where they winter. They’ve got a whole town here they do, just upriver, and farther on farms to feed it. This, my dearest turtledove, is Slaith.”

For a few minutes Jill sat on her horse in something like shock stared at the peaceful harbor. Through the scattered trees along the riverbank she could see other buildings, and far beyond what appeared to be the roofs of a sizable town. Finally she found her voice again.

“Since you know so much about this place, why haven’t you told one of the gwerbrets in the Auddglyn about it?”

“I tried. They wouldn’t listen. You see, the only way to take Slaith is to have a fleet of warships. None of the gwerbrets out here do.”

“They could petition the king.”

“Of course—and surrender part of their independence to our liege. No gwerbret in his right mind asks the king for help unless his proverbial back is to the wall. The king’s aid brings with it the king’s obligations, my little pigeon.”

“Are you telling me that the misbegotten gwerbrets are willing to let these swine breed here just so they don’t have to ask the king a favor?”

“Just that. Now come along, and leave the talking to me. Saying the wrong thing is a good way to get your throat cut in Slaith.”

As they rode down to the harbor, Jill noticed that all along the sand were wooden racks covered with fish drying for the winter. She could also smell a thick reek of rotting fish entrails, heads, and tails, the thinner smell of the fish themselves, and an undertone of swamp stench.

“One forgets about Slaith,” Salamander said in a strangled voice. “We should have brought pomanders.”

The town proper was about a mile north on the riverbank. The road picked a precarious way through swampland up to an open gate in a palisade of whole logs thickly covered with bitumen to keep the rot away. To Jill that protective covering showed utter arrogance; those walls would burn from a couple of thrown torches if ever the place came to a siege. Although the gate had a pair of iron-bound doors just like a dun, there was no one standing guard at them.

“Getting into Slaith is easy,” Salamander said. “Getting out again is another matter altogether.”

“And what were you doing here before, anyway?”

“That, my little nightingale, is another tale for another day. My lips for now are sealed.”

Inside the walls were about five hundred buildings, set on curving, nicely cobbled streets. Although most of the houses were well made and recently whitewashed, the swamp stench lay thick over everything. Jill supposed that after a while, one got used to it, just as one got used to the stench of the streets in a large city. In the center was a crowded market square that looked just like any market day in the rest of the kingdom, with peddlers and craftsmen displaying their wares in wooden booths, while farmers spread out produce on blankets or displayed rabbits in wicker cages and chickens tied by their feet to long poles. Not so ordinary, however, were the customers, men with the rolling walk of sailors, but all carrying swords, and women whose faces were heavily painted with Bardek cosmetics. As Jill and Salamander led their horses past the market, people looked up, gave them a glance, then carefully looked away again with no sign of curiosity. Apparently no one asked questions in Slaith.

All around the market square were inns and taverns, far more than a town of this size would normally have. They all seemed to be enjoying good custom, too. At one prosperous-looking place there were four horses tied up off to the side in the cobbled yard. With a hiss of breath, Jill grabbed Salamander’s arm.

“See that bay gelding? That used to belong to a man we know.”

Muttering an oath, Salamander slowed down, but he kept moving, looking at the horse out of the corner of his eyes. The gelding was no longer carrying Rhodry’s gear; instead of his obvious warrior’s saddle, it had a lightweight saddle that was little more than a pad with stirrups, such as a messenger or pleasure rider would use.

“It has a new owner, sure enough,” Salamander said. “Don’t stare so, my turtledove. Very rude.”

Jill turned away and casually looked over the various inns, but inside she was burning with rage. Everyone on these streets, everyone in this stinking town was her enemy now. She wanted to burn their walls, burn their ships, fall upon them and kill everyone as they ran screaming from the blazing death. Salamander interrupted this pleasant fantasy.