Brotherband 3: The Hunters (17 page)

‘Erlic! Where are you? Get yourself out here!’

‘Coming, Milo!’ a high-pitched voice replied. Then a side door banged open and a young man of about twenty emerged into the hall. He was wearing rough clothing, stained and discoloured. He was thin and had a mean and suspicious face, which was partially covered by a red rash. He rubbed at it now.

‘Leave your face alone!’ Milo shouted and the young man dropped his hand to his side. Even so, it continued to twitch convulsively, as if he wanted to scratch the offending rash once more.

‘Take this girl to the third floor – the detention room. Then stay on guard outside.’

Erlic turned side on, and edged away slightly, as if he were fearful of Milo’s anger and was planning to escape.

‘But I have Master’s boots to clean,’ he protested.

‘Then take her to the third floor, lock her in and come back for the boots. You can clean them while you stand guard.’

Erlic nodded several times, not meeting Milo’s angry gaze. ‘Yes. Yes. I can do that,’ he said, half to himself.

‘THEN DO IT!’ Milo thundered and Erlic actually jumped backwards, before recovering and bowing to the head steward.

‘Yes, Milo. Come with me, girl!’ Erlic ordered. He reached out to grab Lydia’s arm but she brushed his hand away. Shrugging, he beckoned for her to follow. As they reached the staircase, Milo’s voice stopped her.

‘All the doors and windows in this house are locked, girl. And I have the keys. So don’t bother trying to escape. You don’t leave unless I say so. Understood?’

She nodded, trying to assume a suitably browbeaten demeanour.

‘Yes, sir,’ she said. Then, at Milo’s imperious gesture, she turned and followed Erlic up the stairs. As they moved from the second floor to the third, the stairs became progressively narrower. On the third floor, the ceiling levels were noticeably lower. These were the servants’ quarters, she assumed. Erlic led her along another narrow hall to the rear of the house. Solid timber doors led off the hallway at regular intervals. She reached out and tried the latch on one. It opened easily and the door swung inwards, giving her a quick glimpse into a sparsely furnished room. Erlic, hearing the click of the door handle, turned to look at her.

‘What are you doing?’ His voice was shrill. She shrugged, hoping to calm him down.

‘Just looking,’ she said, pulling the door closed.

He shook his head at her. ‘Well, don’t!’ he ordered. Then he ushered her past him so he could keep his eye on her, shoving her in the back to keep her moving. He stopped at the end of the corridor, at the very back of the house. There was one door, set at right angles to the line of the corridor. It was fastened by a simple lift-latch, she saw. There was no sign of a lock or key.

Erlic raised the latch and, when the door swung open, pushed her roughly inside, slamming the door behind her. Unlike the door she had tried a few minutes earlier, it opened outwards. She turned angrily at the rough treatment, then saw the reason why there was no need for a lock or key on the door. There was no handle on the inside – no way of raising the latch.

She took stock of the room. It was small – three metres by three metres. There was a wood-framed bed with a thin straw mattress and a threadbare brown blanket against one wall, a small pine table with a straight-backed chair in the same material, and that was it. No closet or armoire. Not even a hanging rail covered by a curtain. Just bare walls. A jug of water with a chipped beaker stood on the table.

There was a small window, and she moved to it and studied it. The window space itself was approximately one metre square. The window was in two halves, each one hinged to swing outwards. Heavy wood frames filled the window space, with small glass panes set into them. The frames were thick hardwood and, in the absence of a saw or an axe, they formed effective bars. The windows were latched on the outside, with a simple bar dropping into two metal brackets. At some stage, there must have been provision to raise the bar from the inside. She noticed a hole drilled in the top of one window frame. A cord must have run through there to the latch bar, she realised. But it had been removed after the window had been latched shut. Like the door, there was no way now to open it.

She moved to the bed, raised one corner of the mattress and hid the small knife under it. She had just finished doing this when she heard the door rattle. She stepped quickly away from the bed and turned in time to see one of the women from the kitchen enter. Erlic hovered nervously in the background, peering round the door frame. If she could get out of that door, Lydia thought, she’d be able to deal with him easily enough.

The woman set a large bucket of water on the floor, and tossed a cloth bundle onto the bed.

‘Milo says to clean yourself up,’ she said. ‘And put on the dress.’

She left as abruptly as she had arrived. Lydia stepped to the bucket. It was full of water – hot water, she realised, seeing the vague wisps of steam coming from it. The cloth bundle consisted of a grey woollen dress – old and patched, but clean – a washcloth and a bar of soap, wrapped in a towel.

‘Might as well get clean,’ she muttered. She went to undress, then had second thoughts. She lifted the chair onto the table and studied it for a several seconds. She saw that the legs were connected by thin dowel rods twenty centimetres from the bottom, designed to stop them flexing or twisting. She raised her hand and brought its edge smartly down on one of the dowels, breaking it loose from the chair. Then, armed with the wooden rod, she went to the door.

There had been an interior latch at one time. The hole that used to accommodate it was still in the door. She bent and peered through. Peering up on an angle, she could see the top of the iron latch outside. She worked the rod into the latch hole, angling it up until it sat over the latch, forcing it into the narrow space until it was a firm fit. Then, satisfied that the latch was blocked and the door couldn’t be opened in a hurry, she stripped and washed herself all over, luxuriating in the feel of the hot water.

She worked carelessly, sloshing water in large amounts on the bare boards of the floor. She was almost finished when she heard the latch begin to move, then stop. She smiled at the pine rod protruding from the latch hole. It was moving up and down, a few millimetres at a time, as Erlic tried unsuccessfully to raise the latch. For a few minutes, he failed to notice the splintered end of the broken rod protruding through the latch hole. Then she heard him calling in that annoying, high-pitched voice.

‘What have you done? You’ve broken the lock!’

She pulled on her clothes – the long dress would restrict her movements if she had to leave in a hurry – and moved to the door.

‘Get away from there, you sneak,’ she called. ‘Try and spy on me and I’ll scratch your eyes out.’

She heard his footsteps as he moved away from the door, heard the creak of a chair as he sat in it, mumbling to himself. Then the sound of a brush moving backwards and forwards on leather. Obviously, he was polishing the Gatmeister’s boots. Smiling grimly, she seized the rod and pulled it free. It might come in handy in the future, she thought.

She went to the bed. There was no pillow, so she rolled the grey dress up and used that. She stretched out on the hard, scratchy mattress and made herself comfortable. The light coming through the uncurtained window told her that it was mid to late afternoon. No point in trying to escape in daylight, she thought. She’d wait till night fell. She assumed at some stage they would bring her food. Once that was done, she’d work on getting out of here. She already had two ideas in mind.

Until then, she thought, she might as well rest and conserve her energy.

‘T
he Wildwater Rift?’ Hal asked Pedr. ‘What’s that?’

The other members of the crew moved closer to listen. Pedr smiled grimly at them.

‘It’s not the sort of place you’d choose to go,’ he said. ‘Not if you had any other choice.’

Hal made an impatient gesture at the theatrical reply. Pedr was obviously a person who enjoyed the sound of his own voice. He wasn’t the type to answer a simple question with a simple answer.

‘Let’s assume we don’t have any other choice,’ he said. As he did, it occurred to him that they probably didn’t.

Pedr glanced round the circle of interested faces, making sure he had their full attention.

‘It’s a small channel that leads off the main river, about four kilometres north of here. You would have passed it on the way.’

Hal shrugged. ‘Can’t remember it particularly,’ he said. ‘We saw quite a few narrow streams leading off the river. I assumed they were dead ends, because they weren’t marked on the map.’

‘This one’s a dead end, all right,’ Pedr said, with a smirk. ‘You could come to a really dead end if you tried to go down it.’

‘Can we cut the dramatics and just get a clear answer?’ Hal asked impatiently.

Pedr drew back, his eyebrows arching. ‘Well, if you’re going to be ill-mannered about it, perhaps I’ll keep my information to myself,’ he said, a supercilious smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. He enjoyed being the centre of attention, as Hal had surmised. And he planned to tell his story in his own time.

At least, that was his plan until Ingvar leaned forward and seized his wrist.

‘I think that would be a bad idea,’ he said quietly, and began to squeeze Pedr’s wrist.

The gambler went pale as he felt the amazing force of Ingvar’s grip. The bones in his wrist twisted and ground together as Ingvar flexed his fingers. The pain was intense. Pedr gasped and reached forward with his other hand, trying to open Ingvar’s fingers. It was like trying to open a rock.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘bad idea. I agree. Please . . . let me go?’

Ingvar held his gaze for a few seconds, then abruptly released his grip. Pedr fell back slightly. Without realising it, he had been leaning towards Ingvar in an instinctive, and ineffective, effort to lessen the pain.

‘So tell us about this rift,’ Hal said.

Pedr rubbed his wrist, glaring spitefully at Ingvar. But he decided it was a better idea to answer the question without excessive embroidery.

‘As I said, it’s a narrow channel that leads off the main river. About four kilometres back. There’s a small fisherman’s hut just this side of the entrance. If you know what to look for, you’ll find it easily.’

‘And what will we find?’ Stig asked.

Pedr glanced briefly at him, then back at Hal, who seemed to be the spokesman for the group.

‘Well, you should know that once the river passes Bayrath, it swings out to the east in a huge winding sequence of bends that go for almost ten kilometres.’ He saw the impatience rising in Hal’s eyes and hurriedly added, ‘You need to know this. It’s relevant, I swear.’

Hal nodded and Pedr continued. ‘As you’re probably aware, we’re on high ground here and the river splits into two streams – the North and South Dan. The northern fork, the one you’ve been travelling on, runs north to the Stormwhite Sea. But the other fork, the South Dan, drops away to the south, heading for Raguza. It winds around and drops about fifty metres over the next ten kilometres. The rift falls the same height, but it goes down a gorge and does it in about three hundred metres.’

‘So it’s a waterfall,’ Hal said.

Pedr frowned, shaking his head. ‘Not so much a waterfall. It doesn’t actually drop vertically. But it angles down in a series of steep chutes. And because of the downhill run and the narrowness of the channel, the water builds up tremendous speed.’

‘Rapids, then,’ Hal said and, when Pedr nodded, he continued, ‘But they are navigable? You can get a ship down them?’

Pedr shrugged. ‘They say that people have managed it. But I’ve never met anyone who did. From what I’ve heard, it would be difficult to get a large ship down the rift. A small boat might have a chance.’

‘
Heron
’s not very big,’ Edvin said.

Ulf shook his head. ‘She’s no small boat.’

Wulf couldn’t help it, he had to speak up. ‘He didn’t say she was. He said she’s –’

‘Shut up,’ Hal said quietly. Wulf instantly fell silent. ‘So where does the rift come out?’ Hal asked.

Pedr nodded several times, indicating that he considered this was a good question. ‘That’s the thing. After you’ve gone down the rapids, the rift continues pretty well straight for another two kilometres. Then the Dan curves back from that long detour to the east and the rift rejoins it.’

‘So we’d end up back on the main river, and we’d save about eight kilometres of twists and turns by going down the rift,’ Hal said thoughtfully. Pedr looked at him as if he were crazy and shook his head.

‘The only thing that’s likely to make it back to the main river is a handful of splinters and the odd dead body,’ he said. ‘Your ship will be smashed on the rocks and you’ll all drown.’

‘Are you a sailor?’ Hal asked him suddenly.

Taken aback by the question, Pedr hesitated. ‘No.’

‘And you’ve never actually seen this rift, have you?’

‘Well, not exactly. But –’

‘Just answer the question. Have you seen the Wildwater Rift?’

‘If you put it that way, no. I haven’t.’