The Winter Road Page 9

  We had a small fall, near the house, that he’d stand under every day, coming back red and shivering as though he’d been slapped all over.

  “I am missing it. There hasn’t been time for more than a wash from a barrel since we left.” I knew from the flat way he said it, not rising to the tease, that his mind wasn’t on the answer.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Sorry, bluebell, it’s just those three. If one is a Gildersen heir of sorts, well, if all three of them are from that clan, why aren’t they asking us to go there and defend them, help them take back their land? Where’s the fight? I know, I know, I’m no fighter, but they tell us they’ve been run off their land by a bandit, these whiteboys, and they then just walk away? Even a whipped dog whines.”

  I wish I’d paid full heed. We moved on, the outriders having told us of a good spot for the horses near a large stream we’d be able to ford with the long cords we’d brought for getting the carts through heavier ground and over runs like this. We built a fire up while Eirin organised watches, and after potatoes and some cured cod Chalky had provided we settled down. Mosa lay between Aude and me. I was out cold when the horn blew.

  We all woke with the shock of it. I jumped up, Aude put his hand to my leg to steady me and Mosa instinctively hugged into his da. I heard arrows, the huff of bowstrings and shouting from around us in the camp. There was grunting and gasping to my right. One of our soldiers must have been on watch on a dayer but was now staring at an arrow sticking out of his chest. He started pulling it out, tugging at it with a look of disbelief on his face.

  We’d put the carts around us in a rough circle. There was figures swarming over them, cutting at the ropes that held down the boxes. One of Eirin’s crew was trying to get up from his knees, using his shield to hold off a man in a thick surcoat who was stabbing at him with a spear.

  Aude tapped my hip. I looked back and it was my sword and scabbard. He held the latter while I drew it. “Keep him underneath you,” I hissed.

  “Eirin!” I called. I could hear her yelling for her captains, Jinsy and Skallern. A man landed from a nearby cart, came at me.

  “Ma!” screamed Mosa. The man thrust his knife. I barely escaped it with the instinct of years of training, the knife cutting up the sleeve of my fur, dragging over my skin. My movement gave me the momentum to push his arm across him, seeking the line crossways to his. I put the sword in his side before kicking him to the floor. My blade was coated with paste from the scabbard so he’d die quick. I glanced once more at Mosa as I lit up. He was staring at me wide-eyed. Aude had his arms around our boy, breathing hard, trying to control himself. For now he didn’t matter. I looked around me. Dark figures was everywhere. Eight of them had set about soldiers barely awake, beating or strangling them. Boxes was hitting the ground as the carts were being stripped. Yalle shouted, I heard Thad’s hiss, he must have been fighting but I couldn’t see either of them. No time for a dayer, my belt was in a sack at my feet. Fucking stupid. I dashed for the nearest cart. One of the two men on it dropped down and ran at me, a shortsword but no armour or strength. I forced him into a clumsy parry, he had no training. I ran him through and jumped at the other one, who had dropped the sack he was holding to better run from me. Old Sanger appeared next to me, scared the fucking life out of me and distracted me enough the thief managed to run into the grasses. “Master, I …” A scream, then another. An arrow hit the cart next to us. I squinted to see the dim shape of the archer, reaching for another arrow.

  “Bow, twenty yards straight beyond the cart,” I whispered, pointing him out. Sanger nodded, looked past me to my right, Jem was there, shield ready and licking his fingers with his other hand, must have taken a dayer mix from his belt. He then ran for the bowman. I heard Jinsy and Skallern shouting at their crew, then a scream from my right; one of our bowman had been hit in the thigh with an arrow. Behind me Aude shouted for Thad to help the wounded man. Sanger nudged me to get me to move and ran to where a soldier was rolling on the ground with one of the attackers. As we closed on them, one of their crew appeared from the side of one of Crogan’s wagons. He had a nailed lump of wood raised waiting for a clear hit. A spear punched through him. It was Skallern. I looked about us, three men was running away with sacks or bags they’d looted. Seven or eight more was crowding two of Eirin’s. I pushed Sanger to follow me and I ran at them. One saw the new threat and come at us, his stupidity getting the better of him. Sanger was quicker than me and he stepped in front of me, smartly disarming and killing what was another poorly armed and ragged-looking man. They wasn’t trained, they wasn’t proper bandits. My arm was numbing where I’d been scratched.

  “Thad, I’m cut!” He’d dressed the bowman’s arrow wound, I could smell the elm and bellwort ointment on him when he got to me. Seeing movement on one of the other supply carts, Thad threw a powderball from a bag on his belt, the dust exploding in the faces of the men trying to loosen the ropes and pull down boxes. They screamed, clawing at their eyes and throats.

  I followed him. He killed them off as they was spluttering and retching.

  “Oh fuck. This is Afin from the road,” he said. “So much for our charity.”

  Neither of the bandits wore armour, one knife between them and the man with Afin barefoot. Thad took a bottle from a loop on his belt, turned to me and poured a measure of chestnut vinegar along the length of my cut. Fucking agony. He saw I had no belt so opened his mouth for me to mimic him and put a thumb of caffin butter on my tongue. He ran off to tend to those lying around the camp, the soldiers that had been attacked, some killed, others wounded.

  More cries went up as we organised ourselves under Eirin and Yalle. I could see more clearly now. There must have been forty or fifty that had ambushed us, but they had little to defend themselves against our training as we fought back.

  “Amondsen!” It was Chalky. I ran over the embers of the fire to where he was kneeling over Cride, our carpenter. It looked as though he’d fallen from a cart, might have been smoking a pipe up late with the lads on watch but he was dead now.

  “Poor bastard. Where’s your family?”

  “Safe, Skallern and two of his are moving them to Aude and Mosa.”

  I went after anyone I didn’t recognise, though I caught only two while many more fled for their lives. As I expected, and hoped, Eirin called her men back to the camp to form guard at the wagons. They obeyed despite their dayers giving them shivers, and they was gnashing their teeth and shouting and cursing with bloodlust.

  Torches was lit and we called lines. Seven dead: our carpenter, the two guards Eirin had put up, two of our labourers and two of Jinsy’s men. Jem and Sanger come back covered in blood and carrying a sack each.

  On the tally we lost oil, a week or so’s rations, a few pounds of bacca, salt, flasks of honey and two packs of plant that was going to make gifts. Worth a few gold at least.

  Crogan was first of course, starting on Eirin the moment the count’s done, and Thad and Steyning reported on the state of those wounded. A lot of the line was blowing with what the fighting and fear took out of them. Mosa’s looking at me, first time he’s seen me kill and I’m sorry for it. Might be the first time he’s seen anything like this, and Aude’s holding him and smoothing his hair as he shudders with nerves. Chalky’s daughters was crying, his keep holding them close to her. Eirin’s crew was gathering about their fallen and they went through their embraces, rituals and hollering for each other and for the dead, all of it trying to stone the fires of their brew. I think I should blow Mosa a kiss, show him I’m still me, but I can smell the blood on me, and the caffin mix has sharpened the stink and sorrow of everything so loud, clear and strong in my nose and on my tongue I want to scream. I heard crying far off, voices arguing on the wind. Somewhere somebody shouts as though in victory. Perhaps it’s his first food in days.

  “Anything to say, Master Amondsen?” shouted Crogan.

  “I expected better.”

  Eirin was at the front of he
r line, her head bowed a moment. I glanced at Yalle and her crew, but they was checking over their belts.

  “What will you do now, Captain,” I said to Eirin, “when we set up camp tomorrow night?”

  “Four guards, caffin mix, two shifts.”

  “Should have brought a dog,” said Chalky, but he kept his eyes on the ground as he realised he was speaking to soldiers still all noisy for blood. However, he was right, to a point.

  “I’ve looked over your men, Eirin, the dead guards. No sign of struggle I could see, looking at the grass about them. On their pipes, I’ll bet. You seem clear and commanding at running them and drilling them and they seem to follow you about waggy and bright, but close your eyes and they dissolve into rookies.” This was Sanger, the voice of experience. He had a smooth and deep way of speaking that carried, demanded to be listened to.

  She nodded, and I knew then she needed no more humiliation, though her crew needed to hear what Sanger said.

  “Captain Eirin did all she could do in running the drills and moving the van camp to camp,” I said. “Not a lot more she can be found wanting for if they don’t obey her orders. It’s a short while before dawn, I think. Eirin and me need some help digging a pit for the dead before we move out. Who’ll help?”

  A few of those in the lines looked about each other. Yalle’s crew wasn’t offering, which was a pity.

  “I’ll do it,” said Aude. He’d let Chalky’s keep take Mosa to her children so he could come and stand with me, and it would have been shameful for Eirin had Skallern not then spoken and said they’d bury their dead and ours besides, without help, for it was their failure. It was right and I accepted it because it was about them saving some honour. I said no more on it and put my arm in Aude’s.

  “Sorry Mosa had to see me like this. Sorry you have to see it. I’m struggling to stone it—control it, I mean. I’m going to dig a while and that might help me come down off this butter of Thad’s.”

  “You kept us alive, Teyr. I …”

  “Go on, you thought it would have been safer, that we’d have been better prepared if I’d been paying the colour again.”

  I felt him nod. “I just … When you’re on the brews you get … You change.”

  “I know. I go out of my mind for a time.” I withdrew my arm, for he hadn’t drawn me in or towards him as he would usually do. It was that subtle fear of me, the force that was filling me, and it always made me sick to see it in him.

  “Who’ll speak for them?” Aude meant the families of the dead, someone who would wind them into their rope, adding them to the line of fathers past.

  “Eirin must,” I said. “She’ll keep something of theirs, to be returned home and put in their bloodlands. I didn’t think you had an affinity for such customs?”

  “I don’t. The dead fill the earth everywhere. Is there a square yard of it that remains yet a virgin to blood? But I understand these men may have believed they must return somehow to their bloodlands. These are the rites we should respect if this expedition is to succeed.”

  Aude knew I too did not care for the rites, but then as a woman such rituals concerned only with the need for sons to continue the line was a weakness of our families and clans that was mocked by many in all the lands I’d travelled in except Farlsgrad. I loved those of my family I knew, but my heart was cold to our customs.

  “Ma!” Mosa shouted. He ran over to us from Chalky’s family and stopped just short of us, even though I had my arm out.

  “How many did you kill, Ma? I saw you kill three.”

  “I’m sorry, bluebell, but I did kill them, they was taking our food and they was killing us. I had to protect you. They was hungry and you can get hungry enough you’ll risk your life to eat. I wish I didn’t have to kill them.”

  “Was it the men we saw yesterday?”

  “Yes. We give them food but they might have been planning to steal from us.”

  “Have you had a fightbrew, then? Can you lift Da up in the air?”

  “She can, Mo, she’s much stronger than me.” He smiled, and I mistook it for an invitation.

  “I can lift him up without a fightbrew.” I put my hands under Aude’s arms, bent my knees a bit. He flinched. With a gasp I straightened up, lifting him off the ground. He tapped my arms.

  Mosa clapped. “What’s the matter, Da? Ma, spin him around.”

  I looked up at him. “Shall I?”

  He shook his head. “Put me down, love.”

  I lowered him quickly. “You’ve put on weight,” I said and reached up to put my arms around him. He put his hands on my forearms as I did it, pushed my hands together and kissed my fingertips. It was a gentle refusal.

  “You’re shaking, Ma. What’s the matter?”

  “I’m fine, it’s the brew, but it should wear off.”

  “Let me get us a flask of potskas, a snifter will do us good and I brought a little flask of it,” said Aude, who went over to his horse.

  It hasn’t always been easy for us. “The colour stains inside and out,” as the saying goes.

  “You look like you’re ready to jump up and down, Ma. Your eyes are funny too, like candles are in them. What can you see?”

  “The butter that Thad gives me helps me see much clearer in the dark, and I can hear things far away and smell things far away too. I can smell grissom, there must be some nearby, but I can also hear Skallern peeing behind that tree over there.”

  Mosa cackled with delight. Then, looking at the trees around us, frowned.

  “How do you know it’s Skallern?”

  It took a few days for the van to recover to some sort of normal routine. We was all quiet and agitated, tempers short. We slowed too as we got into the hillier ground of the Seikkerson clan. Ironback and Beiddsen was the Seikkerson-sworn families I recalled in this region, though their respective boundaries was a mystery to me. Both families was known to us Fasties merchants through Elder Hill and west. They mined iron, the Beiddsens more coal. Chalky called them blackies, like most of us merchants did, both for their trade and for the Ironbacks particularly dying their leathers black with vitriol, which was also a good trade for them and a better trade for us. There was heavy mists as the land rose to the hills, and we took the well-known passes to the main run into Seikkerson land among the snowy barren heights and lush valleys, the beauty of which could surprise you around almost every turn of the trail, and where the Families spent their time with their reindeer most of the year apart from summer.

  Over the week that followed we went slow with the wagons, ground was shitty with the thaw. We saw a few more people that looked to be starving or else ill with the winter in these hills. I ignored all pleas to discourage these people from coming near us, for we needed to know what lay ahead. There was a da and two boys about ten or twelve summers the pair. Crogan wasn’t keen on giving them any of our supplies, the piece of shit, and it was Aude who put some berries we’d gathered into the man’s hands with a few copper pieces, though he’d have to have got near the river before he could find anyone could make much use of them.

  As we pushed into Ironback land we was approached by four riders, all in the Family’s long black shawls. Heavy dark cloud muffled the morning, and likely would the whole day. Crogan stepped out front so I had to quickly ride up from the wagons near the middle of the van. He could easily make this much harder than it needed to be.

  “I’m Crogan Othbutter, brother to the chief. We come for trade and a greet with the clan, while I come to hear your news and if required, dispense the chief’s justice.” He’d caught some sort of cold, a head full of snot, a finger of which he snorted onto the ground next to my horse.

  “I’m Teyr Amondsen, a merchant. We have plant: amony, alka, shiel, as well as tanned leathers, gifts should you require them. I would talk with your chief as well, for it is not only trade we seek.”

  They looked to be on Kreigh drafts, heavy and easy horses. One raised his hand to the others and pulled back his hood. He had fine blond hai
r, plaited, his beard short, both thinned and streaked darker in places with the effects of fightbrews.

  The boy I’d known had grown to be handsome, even through the colour; a languid confidence, a haughtiness in the expression. His men relaxed at his gesture. He took his time looking over us, men and horses stamping in the cold. Eirin and Jinsy walked their horses behind us, the green and white chequered shields and cloaks leaving no doubt they was Hillfast guards.

  “Jeife Seikkerson, another brother to a chief. Would rather talk Abra than Common.” He nodded at Crogan and smiled before looking me over. Bela whistled from somewhere behind me. Jeife kept his eyes on mine and continued in Abra, the language of my childhood.

  “Amondsen. A ghost tells me you built the outpost at Faldon Ridge, a bridge and roads too.”

  “A ghost?”

  “No one goes west now, Khiese commands it. But ghosts roam as they will.” He wore a pleased-with-himself smile.

  “You’re in Ironback colours. Seikkersons wear grey, the owl,” I said.

  “I’m still Seikkerson, but I run the Ironback family now. Khiese asked me to kill Gredden and I’m not one to refuse him.”

  “You killed one of your sworn chiefs?” asked Crogan. We was all stunned at this. It was hard to know what to say.

  “Do you swear allegiance to Hillfast or this Khiese?” said Crogan.

  Jeife turned in his saddle to look at the men behind him. Their hoods were still up, hard to see any more than beards, the odd braid. He was signing to them, hard to see it, just his hand moving against his back. Eirin whistled at this. I turned to see that Yalle, Sanger and Eirin’s crews was in the saddle themselves and fanned out across the trail around the wagons. One of Seikkerson’s crew nodded to him. He turned, took in the changed positions of our soldiers and shrugged.

  “Hillfast.”

  “I’m surprised it needed consultation, Jeife,” said Crogan.

  I dismounted and whispered into his ear. Thankfully he repeated what I’d said. “I would be honoured if you’d lead us to your brother at Crimore. I come with gifts from our chief. With the loyalty and good work of Masters Amondsen and Knossen, we mean to strengthen Hillfast, running a road through the Circle to Stockson.”