Firebrand (20 page)

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘All right.’

‘I’ll cut her throat and then I’ll cut my own. Don’t worry about me any more.’

‘Aye,’ I said. ‘As long as you don’t waste too much time on her. See to yourself. And do it right, you clumsy sod.’

I thought I glimpsed his grin in the darkness. ‘I will, if you bring it. I promise. Now go.’

‘I don’t want to leave you,’ I said.

‘I know.’

‘What will they do now?’

‘Don’t worry,’ he murmured.

‘Don’t make me laugh.’

He laughed, instead, a little hoarsely. ‘The interrogation’s over, all right? They’ll bring me food and water to keep me alive for burning. Bring me a dirk, that’s all.’

‘Shut up. You don’t have to keep asking me.’

‘How often do I have to ask you to
go?
If they catch you they’ll burn you, and they’ll do it slowly. And they won’t even burn you till they’ve made you sorry, and me sorrier. How much dignity do you think you’ll have left, Seth? How much of your precious pride?’

I pressed my face to the small grille as if I could somehow melt through it and touch him. The stink of
urine was unbearable. I thought, I’d know those guards anywhere by their smell. I could track them down now like a hound. And one day I would.

‘Seth.’ His voice was almost a whisper now. ‘They’re coming. Try to bring me what I want but don’t risk capture. That’s an
order
.’ Then he was silent again, just for a moment.

~
Don’t let them catch you. Go home and live. That’s what I want most. Go
.

The girl was stirring in his arms, I could hear her.

‘Hey,’ he said, and his chains clanked as he shook her. She must have woken at once, because she scrambled from his arms and across the cold stones, gasping with fear.

Backing away, I almost tripped over the unconscious guard. I swore. The man had a dirk, and if I’d had my wits about me I’d just have taken it off him and passed it through the bars to Conal. Now the bolts of his dungeon were being shot back with an echoing clang, and the guards were coming in. It was too late.

Besides, I don’t know if I could have done it then; the shock of Conal’s request was too new. And after all, this had been so easy. I could slink back and put the guard back to sleep any time. Next time, I’d slit his throat before I gave his dirk to Conal, and then I’d disappear, and Conal would be beyond their vengeance. I smiled. There would be a next time, after all.

I’d be back.

I’m an arrogant toad. Full of myself, always have been. But I have never again been so arrogant when the life of someone I love is at stake: literally at stake, in Conal’s case. I know now that I have to think ahead and plan for the worst. Now I know I’m not the cleverest fighter who ever walked the earth. Now I know I can be out-thought and outsmarted and outfought. Now I know the value of contingency planning.

Not then, I didn’t. But I learned.

It was the following evening when I made my way back to the keep. I stayed in the tree line for more than an hour, panic squeezing my skull and my chest till I could barely think or breathe. I put my hands in my hair and gripped fistfuls of it and tore it till it hurt, trying to make myself think clearly, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t even think in a straight line.

The guard at the outer keep wall had been trebled, and they were no longer local clansmen. Cold-eyed, unsmiling, they were the paid mercenaries of the priest and I knew that they would have the wits to keep their eyes open and to watch each other’s backs. There would be no putting sleep on these grim fighters, and they’d be damn sure to hold onto their weapons.

I hunted in a wide circle around the keep, staying in the trees. Only at the wall outside Conal’s dungeon had the guard been changed and strengthened. My brain and spine prickled with terror. How had they known?

Two days. Could I reach the watergate in that time? Yes, but the time might unbalance. It often did. No speed would matter if a month passed while I ran helpless to my clann. Or a year.

How long would he take to die? How long would it feel?

The courtyard gate swung wide and out came the priest, hands clasped piously before him. Close to me was the vertical base of an uprooted pine, blown down in a spring gale. The trunk and branches were gone, but the mud-choked tangle of roots was nearly twice my height, so I ducked behind it and watched through the trees.

The priest walked to the new guards, his robes flapping like batwings, and spoke to them for a minute or two. There was much nodding, many gestures up into the surrounding hills and trees, and at one point they all looked up simultaneously, almost directly at my hiding place.

The priest glanced down at his feet and stamped hard. I heard the clang of solid metal. He leaned down and tugged at something with his fingertips, quite hard, then straightened, nodding in approval. Sickness turned my stomach, and tears burned my eyes.

They’d covered up the little barred hole. They’d taken away his last light, and his last air, and his last chance of a death of his choosing.

When he left the guards, the priest did not go back towards his pony as he usually did. He walked out towards the trees, straight towards me. For a moment panic almost made me leap from my hole and run, and I
felt for every hare and bird I’d ever hunted to its death.

But his pale gaze swept the low slopes and the trees, and I knew he hadn’t seen me. I thought I was safe, I thought I could breathe again, but the next thing that happened almost knocked the air from my lungs.

~
Where are you?

His voice was clear in my head. I was scared for a fraction of a second that I’d left my block down, but no. At least I hadn’t been quite that careless, but how was he doing that? How could the thoughts of a full-mortal echo through the forest like a hunting cry?

~
Where are you, my little warlock?
He sniffed the air and smiled, a death grimace if ever I saw one. ~
I smell you, little one. I smelt you in the grass by the keep and I smell you now
.

Do not panic, I told myself. Do not run. Do not run.

~
We gave your brother an extra whipping, to celebrate your visit. He’s good, he’s very good. He only screamed the once, when we hung him up by his poor sore arms
.

You’re dead, I thought. My fingers flexed and clenched, wanting his throat. But not now. Not now. I had to live to kill him.

~
There. You don’t interest me, so forget your brother. Run along home now, or I’ll warm my chilly old fingers on your burning bones
.

He snuffed the air again, and turned, and made his unhurried way back to the courtyard and his pony.

It’s not a priest
. That’s what Conal had said. I’d thought he was correcting my vocabulary, like always.

I’d thought he was saying
It’s a minister, you daft greenarse
.

That wasn’t what he’d been saying at all. A shudder went through me, and wouldn’t stop for more than a minute.

It’s not a priest. It. It
.

* * *

No-one cared about the western wall of the keep. Obviously, whoever was rotting or screaming in the dungeon on that side had no brother who was trying to get them out of it. That side was still protected, for want of a better word, by clansmen who were by now chafing at the contempt of the professional men, and resentful enough of their presence to be careless. They bitched and moaned to one another endlessly, and shared drams from their flasks, and wandered off to relieve themselves less entertainingly now that their amusing latrines had been sealed. They left their weapons lying while they did it, among them new and alien weapons that I doubt they could even use. Some of them I couldn’t, either; I knew nothing of the slender steel pistols and how they killed. Others, though, I could use better than anyone here.

And one of the clansmen was so drunk, and so tired, and in such a furious temper with the sneering professionals, I knew fine he wouldn’t even miss the crossbow.

* * *

I whittled bolts from lengths of hazel. I rubbed them
smooth and honed their tips to a needlepoint that would have pleased a witch-pricker. I took my time with the job; what else was there to think about? One day. Two days. I had a store of bolts, far more than I needed: every one perfect and deadly. When I was finished, I looked into the blue dawn and blinked. The cloud cover had dissipated at last. The day was going to be blazing. He would not die today. The priest would not stand in the courtyard.

Not till the shadows were long.

My woodland lair was beautiful: a clearing that was green with life. It smelt of summer and rain and newness. It was patterned with shifting light and shade, alive with the trill and whistle of flirtatious birdsong. Oh, this was too lovely a day to die, too lovely to kill.

But the shadows would, in the end, grow long.

I walked with my crossbow to the middle of the forest clearing. The grass was cool beneath my bare feet, still damp with dew despite the warmth. Sitting down cross-legged, I let the birdsong distract me from reality, and in my head I went to the courtyard. I walked it in my mind, counted stones, timed my paces. I had watched guards and clansmen and doomed prisoners walk it; in my memory I watched them again, and walked with them, and measured my paces to theirs. And when I’d sat there and walked it over and over again in my mind, I stood up and opened my eyes and paced the length of the courtyard in the clearing, my stolen crossbow clutched against my breast.

When I had the distance I scrambled into the branches of a high pine with the bow slung across my back.
I saw the clearing and replaced it in my head with the courtyard.

And when I’d done all I could do I shinned down the tree, and hung my last small bag of meal on a branch at the far side of the clearing, then climbed once more into the pine. I fired bolts at the dangling target till oatmeal lay wasted and scattered through the grass, and the hessian bag hung in shreds, and as far as I could possibly estimate the distance, my stolen bow was sighted for death.

* * *

You would never have thought the keep walls were scaleable. But then, no-one I knew had thought the dun’s northern wall was scaleable, till I made a habit of scaling it. One of my father’s fighters had spotted me once, clambering down hand over hand to avoid my chores. He’d yelled for his companions and they’d stood there, leaning over the parapet and chucking things at me, anything that came to hand, and laughing their heads off. When I made it safely to the bottom, and brushed bits of oatcake and horse manure from my hair and clothes, I stepped back and made them an elegant bow, then gave them two insulting fingers. That had made them laugh even more as they clapped and cheered. I was smaller than most of them, and lighter, and from then on whenever anyone needed a climber they called for me. I could find handholds and footholds where any Sithe would have sworn there were none. There were always handholds, always. And—so far—I
was living proof that I’d never fallen.

I tried to remember all of that as I looked up at the sheer keep wall that evening. One of the clansmen snored at my feet; the guard was light again. It was all over. The prisoner who was going to die was the one they all wanted to see, and there was no hope of rescue for him now. Even the professional fighters had gone inside the keep walls to help tend the fires and enjoy the entertainment. I’d made mistakes. Well, so could the priest. He’d underestimated me.

I wouldn’t do the same for him, not a second time. I swore that day I’d never again make the same mistake twice. I kept all my senses fixed on the priest, all but the one he could track. I knew where he was all the time, and I stayed downwind.

I made sure my crossbow was slung tightly on my back. Running my palms across the wall, I found a first small uneven ridge. For a second I paused, and leaned my forehead against the cool rough stone, and breathed hard, and got a hold of myself. Then I curled my fingertips round the invisible handhold, and found and gripped another, and began to climb.

Why have they bothered to put them in a cart for a journey of a hundred yards? So he can be seen and spat at and pelted with shit and sent to Hell with their curses ringing in his ears?

Yes. I suppose so.

The crowd is not under the priest’s control. I do wonder for a moment if they are. I want them to be, but I only have to look at them once to know their sacred free will is intact. No one is bending these minds, though bent they are. I certainly can’t twist so many, though gods know I want to. Even the priest, whatever he is, couldn’t do that.

He’s shown Conal to them, and he’s told them what they didn’t even know they wanted to hear. The rest is their own instinct, their own foul cravings. The priest has nothing more to do, only watch and smile. There among the mob is my quiet black-haired girl with the sceptical green eyes. She’s not so quiet now: she’s howling her hate.

The priest stays in the long shadow of the courtyard wall. I notice that. I’m trying to remember something I was taught, a long time ago, when it was all fairy stories to me. I’m trying to remember, but instead I remember the pale sun coming out as he rode from the rowan copse not three days ago. I remember his nervous glance, and his ironic smile. And now I do remember what I saw: I see it again, clear in my head.
I saw the sun cast a shadow on the track, but it was the shadow of a saddled pony, no more. The priest threw none.

It
threw none.

Conal is a dead man limping to his death-fire, and I know it.

I can’t do this alone. And the priest isn’t watching for my mind. Either he doesn’t care any more, or he’s so in thrall to the coming spectacle that he wants to concentrate on nothing else. He can’t. He’s in a trance of ecstasy.
It’s
in ecstasy, I mean. It’s loving it. It’s what it was born for. You can’t blame it.

It isn’t watching, and that’s why I can talk to my brother one last time. I can let him know I haven’t let him down, that I haven’t failed after all, that his black despair when they sealed the dungeon vent wasn’t the end of everything. Finally, at the end of his life and possibly the end of mine, I’ve done something right and I’ve done it for him. I’ve returned the favour he’s been doing me since I was eight years old.