Dennis sighed. ‘Dead. Killed last week.’
‘Ahh.’ Wolfgar spat again. ‘There was a man who could shake the dice.’ There was a tremor to his voice. ‘Is there anyone left from the old days?’
‘The war took them all.’ Dennis’s tone indicated clearly enough that he didn’t wish to say more.
There was a long silence of several moments. The two old friends watched as the heavy flakes gently swirled.
Dennis looked back at the long house where all the men were sleeping. Wolfgar’s great hall was a heavy building of logs that stretched for over thirty paces. On the other side of the courtyard were stables, some workshops, and at the far end a detached kitchen, connected by a stone corridor to the long house so that if a fire started it would not destroy the entire dwelling. It was a fortress typical of the frontier, enough to keep a small band of marauders out, but against an army like Bovai’s it would fall in a matter of hours.
It was, however, the difference between life and death for Dennis and the men with him.
After being allowed in, the men had built up roaring fires to warm the long house and all had collapsed into exhausted slumber. He had even managed a few hours’ rest until he was awoken by Tinuva, who suggested that a scout should be sent back to the gorge, just to make sure that their pursuers had truly given up the chase for now and were not attempting to somehow get a party across so that the bridge could be rebuilt. So shortly after midnight Tinuva and Gregory had ridden back out. Unable to sleep, Dennis decided to keep watch until their return.
‘They’re all asleep in there, snoring and breaking wind,’ Wolfgar announced. ‘Gods’ how they are stinking up the place! A hundred men in there, a tight fit, with a dozen more wounded packed into the blacksmith’s shop. What in the name of Kahooli’s Loins am I to do with them all?’
‘Kicking us out now, I don’t think my men would go along with it.’
‘That Tsurani leader, Ass-you-gag.’
‘Asayaga.’
‘However you say the bastard’s name. How by Astalon’s Blood did you ever fall in with them?’
Dennis briefly recounted their tale and Wolfgar nodded appraisingly.
‘Shrewd move. When do you plan to kill him?’
‘Once this is over.’
‘When is that?’
‘I’m not sure now,’ Dennis said. ‘At first I figured it’d last a day at most. Now I just don’t know.’
‘Can you trust him not to stab you in the back?’
‘Trust a Tsurani?’ Dennis asked, incredulous.
The question had never been asked so directly since all this started. He realized he had been, in general, thinking minute by minute, always keeping a watchful eye for the first false move which had yet to come, but not seriously contemplating that this arrangement could go on for weeks, even months.
‘In their own way they’re honourable I guess,’ Dennis finally ventured. ‘They don’t torture prisoners, they kill the wounded cleanly as we do.’
‘That’s a mark on their side,’ Wolfgar said quietly.
‘He needs me more than I need him now.’
‘How’s that?’
‘I know the way back, he doesn’t.’
‘Do you? The bridge is down. Do you know the way back?’
Dennis looked at his old friend, and then at the surrounding peaks brushed with the first light of dawn. Even as he looked at them the light blurred and softened. The overarching clouds sweeping in from the west blanketed what little blue sky was left on the eastern horizon. The flurries began to thicken.
‘Like I said yesterday, a big storm coming,’ Wolfgar announced. ‘With luck it will close the last of the passes. Now answer my question, Hartraft. Do you know the way?’
Dennis shook his head. He had never ventured this far north before.
‘Then you know nothing more than the Tsurani. But you still haven’t answered the question, boy.’
‘I was a boy twenty years ago, Wolfgar,’ Dennis replied sharply.
Wolfgar threw back his head and cackled like a demented old bird. ‘At my age, anyone who can still remember to button his trousers after making water is a boy. Now answer me: can you trust him not to stab you and your men in the back?’
‘Yes, damn it,’ Dennis snapped. ‘They seem to have this thing, this code in how they fight duels. When the time comes he’ll shout some sort of challenge first, the others will back up, and we will fight. Once that’s settled I guess the general slaughter begins.’
‘Can you take him?’
‘In a fair fight?’
‘Like the one you described. Not in the woods, not in the night, but deliberate, out in the open, one on one with only blades.’
Dennis hesitated.
‘You’re not sure, are you?’
Dennis shook his head. ‘I’ve watched him,’ He said. ‘He’s as swift as a cat – he cut two goblins in the flash of an eye, the head of the first had yet to even hit the ground and the guts of the second were already spilling. He’s the fastest I’ve ever seen.’ Dennis hesitated. ‘Even Jurgen in his prime would have had a hard time taking him.’
‘That’s saying something,’ Wolfgar replied. ‘I bet on that old bastard more than once and won – bar-room brawl, duel of honour, nothing could touch him.’
‘Something finally did,’ Dennis said, his gaze distant.
‘What will you do?’ Wolfgar pressed.
‘Fight him when the time comes.’
‘That will be a show,’ Wolfgar snorted. ‘Tell me, do you want to beat him?’
‘What the hell kind of question is that?’
‘Some men, when they’ve lost too much become fey. They don’t know it, but already the gods of the dead have touched them. Their memories dwell so much with those who have crossed over that in their inner heart they wish to cross as well and therefore place themselves upon the path unknowingly. Dennis, have you become fey?’
Dennis shook his head. ‘That’s madness.’
Wolfgar laughed. ‘The whole world is mad right now. Not fifty miles south of here the Kingdom and the Tsurani are fighting over gods know what when I half suspect if the damn royals of both sides sat down and drained a keg together it’d soon be straightened out. Fifty miles north of here moredhel hack one another up for sport, and you sit here and talk about madness. Dennis, you haven’t answered me, do you want to win?’
‘Of course I want to win, to live. My men – if I’m killed in the opening move it might destroy their chance. I’m pledged to get my men back. I’ve done half a hundred patrols since the war started and always we get back.’
‘We. What about you, do you always come back? How much of you stays behind with each of these patrols of yours?’
‘You speak in riddles, Wolfgar.’
‘I’m a bard, that’s part of the trade at times. Do you like this Ass-you?’
‘Asayaga.’
‘Do you like him?’
Dennis looked at Wolfgar in surprise. ‘Your questions are addled.’ He regretted the word even as he said it.
Wolfgar, however, chuckled. Then, coughing, he leaned over, gasping until he finally caught his breath. ‘You respect the way they fight, I know that. I heard some of your men speak of it last night before they settled in – grudging praise for the Tsurani skill in battle.’
‘They’re good. At least they’re good in a stand-up fight in the open. Catch them by surprise in the woods and you have them every time, but a stand-up infantry against infantry and you’d pay a terrible price. I think we’d have been overwhelmed retreating up here if it hadn’t been for them. There weren’t fifty arrows left in my entire command, my men were collapsing from the cold and exhaustion.’
‘I dare say the Tsurani are saying the same about you right now. They know they’d all be dead back at poor old Brendan’s Stockade if you hadn’t wandered in. They know as well your skill in the woods: they respect it, and deep down they fear it. So we have two sides here who both respect and fear each
other.’ Wolfgar laughed. ‘Damn, how the gods love to play jokes. I’ve seen marriages like this – hell my third one was damn near identical to what you now got. So now you’re stuck with each other.’
Dennis nodded. ‘If I can keep the peace.’
‘You will. That Ass You, or whatever it is he calls himself, you could find worse allies out here. Hell, better an enemy you can trust than a friend you aren’t sure of. Try and extend your agreement. But damn my soul, if you can’t, take your argument somewhere else: I don’t want my long house turned into a slaughter pen.’ He hesitated and looked over at Dennis with a calculating smile. ‘But then again, your rotting bodies piled up outside my gate might buy off the Dark Brothers when they finally show up.’
Dennis started to reply but Wolfgar held up his hand.
‘I might be a renegade bard with a price on my head, but I honour old memories, Dennis Hartraft.’
Dennis said nothing for a moment then finally he looked up. ‘Your story? I haven’t heard a damn thing about you since the King’s warrant for your head was handed to my grandfather. Hell, I was still just a stripling then.’
Wolfgar laughed. ‘Twenty years. That’s what I get for composing bad verse about the pustulating sores on the royal buttocks.’
‘Well it never would have started if you hadn’t been seen jumping out of the window of the favourite royal consort,’ Dennis replied. ‘Prince Rodrick, now our King, is as you may have noticed, mad, or so they say. That woman was his favourite. Of all the women to stoke your lust.’
‘I’d prefer to think that my troubles arose from art rather that lust.’
‘I remember the day a squadron of royal troops arrived, angry as hornets, figuring our place would be where you’d choose to hide out.’
‘I don’t bring trouble on to friends.’
‘My grandfather laughed so damn hard when he heard the story he swore he’d fight the prince himself if you came to us.’
‘Like I said, I don’t bring trouble on to friends.’
‘So what happened then?’
‘I decided it was wise to make my precious body scarce. I have an aversion to hangings, drawings and quarterings, and worst of all the litigators – if you can afford one – you have to put up with first before they get around to the punishments. Damn leeches, drain the last copper out of your coffer with their fees and you wind up dead anyhow. I couldn’t work. That fornicating son of a dung-eating proprietor of a knocking-shop who calls himself a King these days had his agents everywhere. So there I was, a victim of me own fame, unable to work, and all because of a beautiful doxy, and a sore on the royal backside she had told me about.’
Dennis laughed. ‘You brought it on yourself. He might have let it pass, I mean the tumbling of his consort. He threw her out of the palace the following day. Admitting the truth—that he had been cuckolded – would have been embarrassing. Oh, you’d have been dodging assassins for a while, but it would have finally blown over. But to compose that epic poem, dedicated to all the prince’s failings in bed and the sores on his backside was more than anyone could stand.’
Wolfgar chuckled. ‘It was a good piece of verse.’
‘They still sing it,’ Dennis said with a smile, ‘though far from the King’s Palace in Rillanon.’
‘Well, after that little fiasco I figured it was time to go to a land where royal warrants couldn’t find me. I tried to take ship to the southern lands but the dockyards were crawling with royal agents and snitches that would sell me for a few pieces of silver so I headed north instead. ‘That is where I met my precious Roxanne, on the road not far from here.’ As he said the name the old man smiled wistfully. ‘Had my heart on the spot she did. She was a fortune-teller, a true wizard with the picture cards, the reading of entrails and cracked bones. She was travelling with a merry band of vagabonds and thieves, and there was always room for a minstrel in their company.
‘Said I’d be hanged if I didn’t stay with her, and so I did. Ahh, there was a time in my sin sodden youth when I thought I’d never worry for the companionship of a lovely woman, but at that age, to find just one more like her was a blessing. So we jumped the fire-pit together as they say, and soon thereafter she smiles and says we need to find a place to raise our family.’
Again he laughed wistfully until a coughing fit doubled him over. The seizure passed and he wiped the spittle from his chin.
‘It was Roxanne who knew of this valley. Her little band of performers had found it years before: it was one of their secret hideouts and she led me here. We settled in; our two daughters came, and life continued, free, I might add, of any royal warrants and grasping lawyers looking for their fees. Free as well of the asinine wars that kings just love to get their people slaughtered in while they hide out in their palaces.’
‘Daughters?’
Wolfgar smiled. ‘Two lovelies they are.’
‘Where?’
Wolfgar laughed. ‘With a hundred hungry wolves at my gate last night, do you think I’d show my most precious treasures? I had them hide in the woods till things were settled. They came in with the other woman and children after your men bedded down for the night and slept in the servants’ quarters. When the boy on watch came in reporting your arrival I knew we couldn’t hold out against a hundred heavily-armed troops and was expecting the worst. We have a couple of small stockades up in the forests in case of trouble. This place is deliberately, out in the open. Bait, almost.’
‘Why didn’t all of you go up in the woods and hide?’
‘Would you? Too many signs that we were here. Someone had to stay behind and lead you to believe that all of us had been taken.’
Dennis nodded. ‘Where are the men?’ he asked. ‘I didn’t see a dozen here capable of bearing arms. All the rest are oldsters like yourself.’
‘The men?’ and Wolfgar shook his head. ‘Roxanne’s people are wanderers. If they’re in trouble, a warrant on their heads, they’ll come here for a year or two to hide out, then they move on. One year we might have less than thirty living here, another year it might be a hundred. Most of the performers found ample riches working the army in the west. Those lads brighten up a great deal at the sight of a pretty woman dancing to the songs of a talented bard. The jugglers and acrobats get a copper or two also.’
‘And a couple of purses vanish from the crowd, as well, I warrant,’ suggested Dennis.
Wolfgar shrugged. ‘Even when most of the performers are gone for months, we have a score of men around – too much work to be done by just women and children.’ His expression darkened. ‘A couple of months back, twenty of the men and most of their women went out of here to trade. Furs for salt, tools, a few trinkets and baubles for the children.’
‘And they never came back,’ Dennis replied.
Wolfgar nodded.
‘They most likely ran into the same trouble we did,’ Dennis said. ‘Don’t know what’s up, but a lot of Dark Brothers are moving through the region just over that bridge.’
‘Figured it was something like that,’ Wolfgar grumbled. ‘Never much cared for Roxanne’s people. Pack of thieving scoundrels, but fair enough if you married into the clan. I guess with all them gone, I’m the leader here now.’ He looked back at the long house. ‘We’ve got around twenty children here to look after now. As for the women who lost their men, they’ve mourned. Practical people though, and with a hundred men to choose from with your party, they’ll get over it soon enough.’
‘What about the Dark Brotherhood?’ Dennis asked.
‘Them bastards? Remember this is the between-lands. Until the war started your border marches only came up to the Broad River. The moredhel rarely ventured beyond the next range twenty miles to the north of here.’
‘You had an understanding with them, is that it?’
‘They never knew about this place.’ He paused, glaring at Dennis. ‘At least until yesterday. We stayed out of each other’s way. I guess all that’s changed.
‘You hear rumours a
nd gossip. This isn’t the only human community north of the King’s law. I’ve heard stories of … well, some are pretty far-fetched. Lost cities and ancient gods. Mostly scams to sell lost treasure maps to the gullible, I suspect. But there are those rumours that seem to have a gleam of truth in them. The Dark Brothers don’t get close to the other side of those mountains, for a reason. Something keeps them away. I’m just as content not knowing what it is, rather than climbing over those icy crags to find out.
‘But until yesterday no Dark Brother ever stumbled across that entrance to the valley. How much trouble that’s going to bring, I don’t know. I guess it depends on how badly they want to dig you out of here. You could be safe for the winter, or maybe only for a few hours. I just don’t know.’
A gust of wind caused the snow to swirl back into their faces so that they turned, facing back towards the long house.
Men were beginning to stir, a few were out in the courtyard relieving themselves, a coil of smoke puffed up from the kitchen house carrying with it the scent of roasting meat.
‘How long are you staying?’ Wolfgar grumbled.
‘Depends – on what the Dark Brotherhood is doing, the weather. I don’t know.’
‘This storm keeps up you’ll be here a while. Damn, a hundred mouths to feed, I wasn’t planning on it.’
‘We can take care of ourselves. I’ll get hunting parties out before this storm really hits. I saw a lot of game signs; the valley seems rich.’
‘Best damn place in the world right now. At least it was till yesterday.’
Dennis saw Sergeant Barry coming out of the long house, a dozen men following him, bows slung over their shoulder, and with them, several local boys to act as guides. With a nod to Dennis they ventured out and started up the slope to the treeline, spreading out as they advanced until they were lost to view in the snow.
As he watched them leave he experienced another flash of memory: days like this, heading out with his father to hunt, the fresh snow helping them to track. His father was not the type to go out with a fanfare and a score of beaters to stir up the game for him, he much preferred the solitude and the opportunity to teach his son the ways of the woods on his own. If the weather was fair they’d go for as long as a fortnight, taking enough game to eat well, but no more, many times just tracking an elk for the pleasure of it, then leaving him alone.