Chapter 59
'And that's something to worry about?'
'Aye. She seems less interested.'
'That doesn't sound like her. If anything she's too interested in everyone else's business.' He said it with an affectionate smile.
'Exactly. It's out of character. At first I thought she was ill, but it's not that. She just has no interest in anything. Except her book.'
'The giant book?' Corban asked.
'Aye. She doesn't know I've seen her, but she sneaks away to read it. And she won't let me look at it any more.'
Corban frowned. 'I don't like the sound of that. After Heb...' He fell silent, lost in a memory. 'She grieved hard. But I thought she came through it, in the end. As much as any of us do.' He glanced at Cywen. 'I'll try and do something...'
Laughter rang out from above and they both looked up. Figures were climbing in the rigging about the sail. After a moment Cywen realized it was Dath and Kulla.
'I think she likes Dath,' Cywen said.
'I think so too. The only person that doesn't seem to have noticed is Dath.'
Ha. Cywen laughed to herself. I could say the same about you, brother.
They watched Dath climb through the rigging, swinging between ropes, moving like a monkey through the treetops.
'For a coward he can be ridiculously brave,' Cywen observed.
'Dath's no coward,' Corban said. 'He just screams louder than the rest of us, that's all.'
Another silence settled between them.
'Where are we sailing to, Corban?'
'Dra.s.sil.'
'And then what?'
'War. An end to all of this.'
Aye. But whose end?
'It seems to me a great deal is being asked of you, little brother.'
'Asked of us all,' Corban said. 'And I agree. If ever I meet Elyon the All-Father face to face, I'll have a few things to say to him.'
Me too.
They stared out over the ocean. The sea stretched into the horizon, a foam-flecked world of grey and green, s.h.i.+mmering beneath a hard blue sky.
'We're leaving summer behind us,' Corban observed.
'Aye. And sailing into winter.'
'It feels like that.'
Corban, I'm scared,' Cywen said.
He gripped her hand and squeezed. 'So am I,' he replied.
Cywen crept through undergrowth, looking back at the rows of sleeping forms along the riverbank, framed by the dying embers of a dozen fires. Further off in the darkness their moored s.h.i.+ps creaked in current and breeze.
Can't go too far, or I'll walk into someone on first watch.
She eventually sat with her back to a wind-twisted tree, sharp-thorned bushes s.h.i.+elding her from the eyes of anyone not sleeping at this late hour. She concentrated on becoming completely still, even trying to slow her breathing, and listened. When she was convinced that no one had followed her she opened her cloak and pulled out Brina's book, opening the pages to the bright moon above.
What is Brina so obsessed with?
For a ten-night they had sailed east and north, while the weather turned colder and sullen black clouds hid the sun. Dath made sure they never lost sight of the coast, a line of dark cliffs and shattered coves, each night searching for an inlet or bay, sometimes just a strip of beach to shelter. They had moored in a cove for two days while a storm lashed the coast, the eight s.h.i.+ps bucking and rearing on the waves like wild stallions. On the thirteenth day, soon after sunset, Dath had sighted the estuary of a great river flowing into the sea that Meical confirmed would take them to Gramm's hold. Another two days they'd rowed against the current, the wind still helping them, and earlier this day, as the sun was setting, they'd turned a bend in the wide river and Meical had pointed out Gramm's hold, a pinp.r.i.c.k upon a distant hill. Behind it had been a dark stain on the land, as far as Cywen's eyes could see.
Forn Forest. Cywen had felt a dread settle upon her looking at it.
Dath said it was half a day's rowing, at least, so the decision was made to make camp and approach the hold in daylight.
And so here she was, sneaking off in the dark to take a look at the book that seemed to be leaching Brina's enthusiasm for life.
Carefully she turned pages, knowing how fragile it was, moving steadily to the back of the book. The part that Brina had forbidden her from looking at. In the moonlight the pages took a silvery hue, the writing like black shadows crawling across the pages. Things began to change, as she'd seen before, more diagrams and runes. Occasionally words she recognized.
She paused, mouth working, brain aching as she tried to translate what she was seeing.
'An dorcha sli,' she breathed. She blinked and stared harder, the words seeming to be clawing out of the page at her, the flesh on her arms and neck goose-b.u.mping as the words appeared in her mind.
'The dark way.'
Suddenly she felt scared, a creeping terror filling her, as if eyes were watching her, crawling over her. The darkness around her abruptly felt ominous, the silence malefic.
Almost against her will she turned more pages, eyes glued to the runes scrawled before her.
'Ghloigh gheasa,' she
This is not Elyon's way of faith. What is this? And why has Brina been spending so much time poring over this?
A twig cracked behind her and as Cywen was turning she felt her ear gripped and pulled, hard enough that she either had the choice of following the ear or having it ripped off.
She staggered upright and came face to face with Brina, angrier than she had ever seen her before. Her lips were twisted, noises spluttering from her mouth, but rage seemed to have taken her beyond the use of speech.
Cywen felt truly terrified.
'I'm sorry,' she blurted.
'Not as sorry as you're going to be, you thieving, back-stabbing, soft-footed, plotting little witch,' Brina hissed. Cywen tried to take a step back, but found that unfortunately in her anger Brina hadn't loosened her grip on Cywen's ear.
Escape was out of the question, so Cywen resorted to the next option.
She screamed.
Immediately footsteps were thumping and voices calling.
Brina grabbed the book from Cywen's hands and tugged it out of her grip, slipping it into her cloak just as the first people reached them. Two guards from the first watch Cywen recognized one of them as Akar, the Jehar captain.
Close behind them but from the other direction Meical and Corban appeared, Balur striding out of the darkness from another direction.
'What is going on?' Meical asked.
Cywen looked at Brina, then Meical. She wanted to tell Corban about the book, ask Brina what it was that she'd just read, and what exactly Brina was doing, but something stopped her. Deep down she felt something horribly wrong was going on, like an infection in a wound that ends in gangrene, but Meical and Balur's looming faces served only to keep her mouth closed.
'She was sleepwalking,' Brina said. 'I woke and saw that she was gone found her and woke her. She screamed.'
Sleepwalking! Is that the best you can do?
She looked to Corban, saw the question in his eyes and on the tip of his tongue, but for once he kept it firmly behind his lips.
If Corban can keep his mouth shut, then so can I. Besides, Brina may not wish to remove my intestines with her bare hands if I keep her secret is it a secret? a little longer. I'll talk to Corban alone.
'You were sleepwalking?' Meical asked her, one long finger prodding Cywen.
'I I don't know,' Cywen said. 'I was asleep, and then...' She gestured around her. She stopped her eyes from flickering to Brina.
If anything, Meical's frown bunched deeper.
'Is this a regular occurrence with you?'
No.
'What's that?' Akar the Jehar said, pointing away from Cywen, into the darkness.
They all stopped and stared. A flicker of light appeared in the distance, like a distant candle. As they watched it grew and spread a little, blazing brighter in the darkness.
'What is that?' Corban repeated.
'Elyon, no,' Meical gasped. 'We need to rouse the camp and move. That is Gramm's hold, and it is burning.'
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE.
HAELAN.
Haelan crouched in the darkness and cuddled Pots.
He was sitting on a barrel of apples in the cellars beneath Gramm's hold, a single candle burning, Pots at his side with ears p.r.i.c.king at every strange sound that filtered down from above. And there were a lot of those.
Why did I send Tahir away? I wish Tahir and Wulf were here. They had left a few days after the bear-hunt, riding away one cold morning towards Dun Kellen. Wulf had given Haelan a note to pa.s.s to Gramm. When the time is right, Wulf had told him.
Gramm had read the letter, stared at it a long time, then crumpled it in his fist. His gaze had s.h.i.+fted to Haelan, who'd stared back at him, or tried to.
'They'll be back,' Haelan had whispered weakly.
'I hope so,' Gramm had said and walked away. Haelan had not heard him mention Wulf or Tahir since that day, but he saw him each evening standing on the wall staring into the south as the sun faded into the horizon.
Shouting drifted through the cracks in the boards above his head, sometimes a distant scream, making him jump and sending fear jolting through him. His hand searched out the shaft of the hatchet Trigg had given him and he pulled it from his belt, gripping it tight, imagined becoming a grown warrior and standing on the wall besides Gramm, the man who was risking all to help him.
The warband had been sighted in the pale blush of sunset, approaching from the south-west. It hadn't taken long to see Jael's banner held above them. Gramm had ordered the gates barred; everyone from the houses beyond the hold's wall was herded inside, and every warrior in the hold dressed in his war gear and manned the walls. Eighty men in all. Haelan had climbed the wall and hidden in the shadows by the gate tower, waiting along with Gramm and his men.
The warband had reached the gates soon after sunset, three hundred strong at least. A tall warrior approached the gates in gleaming mail and a horsehair plume trailing from his helmet.
'I am Ulfilas ben Arik, come in the name of Jael, King of Isiltir,' the warrior cried out, his warband gathering like a storm cloud behind him, bristling with iron and malice.
'Give up the child. I know he is in there. Give him up, and be rewarded by your King with more silver than you could spend in a lifetime. Continue to protect him and every last one of you will be dead by this time on the morrow.' His horse had fidgeted, stamping and dancing on the spot. He'd turned it in a tight circle. 'Talk on it; I will return soon.'
'You can have my answer now,' Gramm yelled, looking more like a giant than a man in his war gear of leather and mail, a great axe clenched in his fists. 'Jael's no king of mine, and you can tell him from me to shove his silver up his a.r.s.e.'
Chaos had erupted then, spears flying, Jael's men attacking the gates with an iron-shod ram. Gramm's men on the wall had hurled spears and rocks down upon them, a great cauldron of oil heating over a fire-pit above the gates. Gramm had been yelling orders and suddenly spied Haelan crouching in the shadows.
'To the cellars with you,' he'd growled at Haelan. 'One stray spear and you make all this worthless.' The look on his face had both scared Haelan and made him feel ashamed and so he'd gone running for the cellars, an old healer giving him a candle, opening the trapdoor for him and shutting him in.
And here he was still, what seemed like days later. It was full dark, Haelan knew that, as there was a grate at the back of the cellar that opened onto the world above. Moonlight shone through the bars, and wisps of smoke occasionally drifted down, bringing the smell of burning timber. Other noises filtered down to him through the gaps about the trapdoor. From the feast-hall came the sounds of injured men being tended to, or comforted as they died. Or not comforted. Just watched. Maybe holding their hands. He remembered his mam telling him sometimes that was all you could do.
Footsteps sounded above, dust shaken loose from the cracks in the floorboards, then the trapdoor opened. Light flooded in, making Haelan blink. Gramm stood there, silhouetted. He strode down the steps, ducking his head. Haelan saw blood on his axe, caught the smell of woodsmoke and the sharp tang of metal. No, that's blood. I remember it from Dun Kellen. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to stem the flood of memories that surged up.
Gramm sat on the bottom steps and rested his chin on his fist.
'I can't get you out,' he said.
Haelan frowned at him, not understanding.
'They've surrounded the hold, lit a ring of torches. I was thinking to sneak you over the wall and into Forn while it is dark, but...' He shrugged.
'They're not attacking, then?' Haelan asked.