The Black Robe (The Sword and the Spell) (64 page)

“I didn’t know you were a father?”

“Of course I’m not, or at least not knowingly, but I know how to be sympathetic. Now all we’ve got to do is get a few of the fathers together, tell them what is going to happen to their boys and their lovely forest, and point them in the right direction. If we play it well the fathers will give their lads a talking to and the boys will all gallop off to play soldier somewhere else and that’s the last we’ll see of them.”

“What if Borman finds out?”

Sharman shrugged. “It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve arranged things in order to save the lives of those who don’t deserve to die, only this time it’s not people we’ll be saving, but some ancient trees.”

Malingar thought about it for a while, weighing the dangers of yet another deception against the lives that would be lost and the ancient forest which would be destroyed. “If you are well enough to walk I think you should stand me a pot of ale and introduce me to your innkeeper friend.”Sharman grinned and threw off his blanket.

*

Jarrul opened his eyes slowly and tried to remember what had happened. There had been a cart or a wagon, of that he was certain, and there had been men, lots of them with swords and bolt bows. There had been women too and screaming, only he couldn’t work out the order in which things had happened. He closed his eyes again and let the soggy wool in his mind pull him back into darkness.

When he opened his eyes again it was instantaneous, and all the memories came flooding back with a rush. There had been a wagon, although he hadn’t been in it, and there had been armed men in temple uniforms and Birrit with an armsman on top of her. He cried out in alarm and tried to sit up, but the pain in his shoulder and across his ribs made him gasp and fall back against the pillow.

It was a long time before he opened his eyes again, although he didn’t sleep. He remembered being hit, once in the shoulder and then again in his chest, and he remembered being knocked down, but nothing in between that and arriving at this place, wherever it was. Cautiously he opened his eyes again and took in his surroundings. He was in a narrow, stone building with beds on either side stretching from one end to the other. There were windows high up on the wall opposite where he lay, letting light and air into the room, and a door at one end which stood open.

Most of the beds were empty but two, at the far end away from the door, were occupied. It was difficult to make out who was in them but one was definitely a woman and his heart raced at the thought that it might be Birrit. He needed to find out so he tried to rise again, only more slowly this time. Gritting his teeth against the pain in his shoulder he managed to sit up, but could go no further as waves of dizziness threatened to send him back into oblivion.

The sound of approaching footsteps made him open his eyes again and he watched as a man and a girl walked from the door towards him. For a moment he thought the girl was Birrit, but his heart dropped when he realised she was far too young. The man was older, probably in the middle of his life span, and had an air of authority about him which could only come from being in command. By the way the girl kept looking up at him he guessed the man was her father.

He watched them until they reached the end of his bed knowing he should wait to be introduced before he asked them any questions, but he couldn’t wait that long. “Where is Birrit?”

The man frowned for a moment and then realised who he must have been asking about. “Was Birrit the woman who was with you?” Jarrul nodded and the man looked grim. “I’m sorry, my friend, there was nothing we could do. The woman was dead when my men found you, the armsman too.”

Jarrul closed his eyes to hold back the tears that threatened to fall. Birrit had been everything to him, she had made him a man. “How?” he whispered.

He didn’t see the man and his daughter exchange looks. “She was stabbed and died almost instantly. The guardsman wasn’t so lucky, he’d been stabbed in the side and shot in the back by a bolt bow. It must have taken him a day to die.”

Were they friends of yours?” asked the girl, getting a stern look from her father.

“Birrit and I were going to be wed, but the armsman was just some rake from the Enclave who deserved to die.”

“And you, friend, where are you from?”

Jarrul opened his eyes and wiped the wetness on the back of his hand, trying to pull his thoughts together into some sort of order. “Northshield I suppose, and Vinmore, and more recently the Enclave. I was escorting a wagon with some friends in it when we were attacked and someone shot me, twice I think, but I don’t remember anything after that. How did I get here?”

“Some of my men were out hunting and found you and brought you back here. You are lucky to be alive. If the first bolt hadn’t caught you just right and spun you around, the second bolt would have taken you in the heart instead of scraping a line across your chest and cracking a couple of ribs. It looks like you must have hit something hard as you fell because you have a lump on your head which hasn’t gone down yet.” Jarrul touched the bump and winced. At that moment he didn’t feel very lucky.

“You’ve also lost a lot of blood and will need to rest for a few days before you’ll be fit enough to ride. We are moving on but the older women are staying here with the children, so they will attend to your needs until you are ready to leave. Now if you will excuse me I have to get back to my men. There is a lot to do before we can ride out.”

The man went to leave but Jarrul reached out, grabbed his sleeve and held him back. He knew he should be grateful for what the man had done for him but he wished that they’d just left him there to die next to Birrit. “Please, did your men bury Birrit, or just leave her there?” As soon as he said the words he knew it sounded rude and ungrateful but the man didn’t seem to take offence.

“Neither. They brought her body back and we dealt with it according to the Goddess’s laws. When you are strong enough to walk you may visit where her ashes are scattered if you wish, but that will be some time yet.”

The man tried to pull away but Jarrul hung on. “How long have I been here?”

“My men found you at the dark of the moon and you have been here for a seven day. Now you must rest. Ennett here will see to your wounds.”

“Thank you.” Jarrul leaned back again into his pillows and closed his eyes, thinking of Birrit alive and laughing and lying next to him, but it was difficult to concentrate with the girl unwrapping the bandage around his shoulder. He opened his eyes again and watched her at work. He felt uncomfortable being treated by a slip of a girl without saying something. “Did your father teach you to do that?”

“He ain’t my father, he’s our leader, but ‘im and my ma are going to get wed when the fighting is over, and if things work out we’ll go and live in Vorglave, only it ain’t going to be called that any more now the king’s dead. Dozo is going to be on the council and might even be leader ‘though he says he don’t want to be.”

It took a moment for the words to sink in. “Vorgret’s dead?”

“Yeh, we stopped a rider coming from the Enclave soon after you got ‘ere and ‘e said Vorgret got all burnt up by some old magician, so now everyone’s asking who’s going to be the next king because Vorgret didn’t have any kids. We don’t want no king no more, so Dozo is taking us all to Vorglave to sort it out.” She tied off the bandage and stood up to leave.

He couldn’t believe it. If Vorgret was dead that meant they had run from the Enclave for no good reason and Birrit had died for nothing. He could have wept but that would not change the futility of it all. “When is he leaving?”

“Today if ‘e can get them all sorted into a line and the carts all packed up. I’m going with ‘im so I can patch people up if there’s a fight. It’s what I like to do, patchin’ people up. Dozo taught me and ‘e’s good at healing.”

“I’m going as well.” Jarrul pushed back the blanket and swung his legs out of the bed, ignoring his aching ribs or the pull of the stitches on his shoulder.

“You shouldn’t you know. Dozo says that you lost a lot of blood and you’re going to be weak for a few days and your ribs are going to ‘urt like a six legged grunter ‘as rolled on top of you.”

He almost smiled at the image. “Help me up.”

Ennett shrugged but did as he asked, helping him out of the bed and fetching his clothes and his boots. The shirt and jerkin she gave him were not new, but at least they didn’t have any holes in them or bloodstains and the boots were scuffed but fitted reasonably well. With Ennett’s help he managed to walk to the small area at the rear of the building where someone had planted a few pots of flowers. They were the hardy kind with thick petals and small stems and thorns instead of leaves. Many would call them weeds, but here in the drab surroundings of the old mine workings they provided a welcome splash of colour.

Jarrul stared down at the scattered ash and charred bones. He had wanted to take some of Birrit’s remains away with him, but it was clear that other ashes had been scattered there as well. As he stared down at the littered ground, he wondered which pieces had once been the woman he’d loved. It didn’t matter now of course, but he would have liked to have known. He said a prayer to the Goddess to be gentle with Birrit’s soul, and then returned to where the girl was waiting for him.

“You’d better hurry if you are coming with us. Dozo and the others are all ready and about to leave.”

He hurried after her as quickly as his aching ribs would allow and then stopped in surprise when he turned the corner of the building. It had never occurred to him that the camp would be so big or that there were so many people gathered there. In the open area outside the mine’s main entrance, around two hundred men stood in roughly ordered ranks, whilst another fifty or so, some of them women, were mounted ready to leave. They could hardly be called an army, none of them wore uniforms except a blue band around their right arm, and the horses ranged from tough little mountain ponies, to those better suited to ploughing the land. They did have one thing in common though; they all carried swords or knives and at least a dozen carried bolt bows.

Dozo scowled at him when he and the girl appeared but said nothing. He just watched as Ennett helped him into the wagon and she climbed in beside him. Jarrul wished he could be left alone with his thoughts and memories so he could mourn his loss, but Ennett settled a blanket over him and then wedged herself between two crates. Without looking at him she drew a knife and started whittling away at a piece of wood that had been waiting in the wagon for her. An animal was slowly emerging from the wood, but what sort of animal was impossible to tell.

Jarrul watched her for some time, expecting her to prattle on as girls of her age usually did, but she remained silent, concentrating on her carving. He guessed she was not the same as most girls he’d come across. Left in peace he closed his eyes and thought of Birrit and the days they had spent together in the lonely cottage in Vinmore’s woods. They had probably been the happiest days of his life, and like a fool he’d thought they would never end but, of course, everything did. Sometime in the afternoon he fell asleep, and when he woke, the sun was low in the sky looking like a dull silver ball through the thin, hazy cloud.

It wasn’t the sunlight which had woken him though, but the absence of the wagon’s soporific sway and the noise of the activity all around him. He pulled himself into a sitting position and peered over the edge of the wagon. For a moment he thought they must have turned around and returned to where they had set out from, until he realised that this mine was different. For a start it was much bigger and had two entrances instead of one. The stone buildings, where the miners lived, were far more plentiful, and were built in a double crescent around the two entrances to the mine.

He eased himself from the back of the wagon, clutching at his aching ribs, and watched the confusion around him as men and women greeted each other, horses were taken away for watering, and provisions were unloaded from the wagons. Clearly their group had met up with another group, as the number of people wearing blue armbands had more than doubled. He stood by the wagon, not certain of what he was meant to do, and feeling lost until an elderly woman, all smiles and wrinkles, came and took him by the hand and led him to one of the low buildings with the familiar rows of sleeping pallets. After his sleep in the wagon he didn’t think he was tired and only lay down to keep the old woman from fussing, but he was asleep in moments.

Ennett woke him later with a half-shuttered lantern in her hand, and he was surprised to find that all the pallets in the long room had been occupied by sleeping men and women. He followed Ennett out into the starlit night and was amazed at the number of people who were now gathered in the clear area in or around the front of the mine. Most were sitting around two large fires to one side of the clearing, whilst others were wrapped in blankets and slept outside, protected from the wind by the low buildings. There were even some sheltering in the entrances to the mine. To the right and further out from the mine, he could see at least another three fires burning, and the air was filled with the smell of wood smoke and hot stew.

He followed Ennett to a smaller fire away from the others where a dozen or so men and women sat eating or drinking herb tea. Ennett pushed him down onto one of the spare boulders which had been rolled to the fire, and went to fetch him some of the stew which was thick and hot, but lacking in meat. Despite that he ate it greedily, whilst the others waited for him to finish.

“Master Jarrul,” began Dozo handing his pot to Ennett for a refill of herb tea. “I won’t burden you with the names of my companions; suffice it to say they are the leaders of other groups which have been gathering in these hills. For a long time we have been waiting for our opportunity to free Essenland from the corrupt rule of King Vorgret and his thugs.

“It would appear though that someone has beaten us to it, so now that the king is dead, we believe the time has come for us to act. However, we are cautious about moving on Vorglave until we have a better picture of the situation. When we first met, you said you had been in Vinmore, the same time as Vorgret, but had then moved to the Enclave. Perhaps in your travels you came across those who worked for Vorgret?”