Vagrant, p.1
Vagrant, page 1
Vagrant
Table of Contents
Title Page
Vagrant
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Epilogue
Vagrant
Hayley Lockwell
VAGRANT
Copyright © Hayley Lockwell 2023
The right of Hayley Lockwell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her.
All rights reserved.
The book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
IBSN
First Edition published in 2023
By Woodhouse Press
www.hayleylockwell.com
To my Lil Sis
who knew about these stories
long before anyone else
xxx
Chapter 1
I HAD NEVER BEEN CONSIDERED a heroine, and today confirmed it.
I doubled over clutching my hand, knife and half-skinned rabbit tumbling to the ground. I shook my fingers with a grimace, sending a trail of red droplets hissing into the fire.
That rabbit was a stroke of luck I hadn’t expected: a flash in the woodland, and my arrow was fitted – and fired – before my heart finished its beat.
I allowed myself two breaths with my eyes shut before I brought my hand up to look.
My palm gaped open. Whether it was down to my blunt knife – in desperate need of sharpening – or fingers too frozen to work properly, it was a costly mistake.
I hesitated, wondering what to do, blood dripping from my fingers. I looked down into the valley at the circle of huts and bit my lip. I tucked the rabbit inside the door of the hut and set off reluctantly towards the tribe’s camp, the icy morning air biting my cheeks, my breath coming in puffs of cloud. Out of habit, I scanned the horizon, then caught myself and shook my head.
Not yet.
I trudged down the hill, blood dripping steadily onto the ground leaving red dimples in the snow. The worn soles of my leather boots slipped on the ice as I walked down to the meadows past the river, which snaked along the landscape like a massive grey serpent writhing through what would become lush, green pastures in spring. For now, the skeletons of trees stretched out on silver grass, rigid with ice, as far as my eyes could see.
Somewhere in that direction was the next tribe’s camp, our closest neighbours. Not that I’d been. There was too much to do here. I couldn’t get it all done as it was.
I reached the outskirts of the village and picked my way through the round stone huts of the camp, their roofs low to the ground, like a giant ring of stocky grey mushrooms.
The tribe leader, the warriors, the families of importance, all held the coveted inner-circle status. Then came the craftsmen, the blacksmith, the farmers. On the outskirts of the ring were the ones just getting by, the ones clinging to the tribe for protection.
Our tiny, solitary hut was a very long way away.
I kept my head down as I passed women and daughters sitting in their doorways chopping roots and meat for supper. I ignored the whispers, the sly looks. I had heard it all before.
I stopped outside a squat hut with cooking smells wafting from the doorway. ‘Craven?’
The chink of cutlery. A long-suffering sigh. ‘Enter.’
I ducked under the doorway and stood awkwardly in his round hut.
Our camp healer was an old man with fat, sweaty fingers and breath that smelt of old beef. He sat at one end of a large person-sized oak table, half-eaten dinner and a tankard of ale in front of him. At the other end of the table, his surgical tools, saws and knives were laid out – some clean, some not.
‘Yes, er ...?’
I cleared my throat. ‘It’s Gelda.’
‘Right.’ He watched the blood drip onto the dirt floor as he mopped up gravy with a hunk of bread. ‘You’re bleeding on my rug.’
I stepped hastily off. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt your supper, but I slipped with my knife.’ I held out my hand.
Craven heaved himself out of his chair, navigated his way around the table and bent over my palm. Or at least as much as he could before his rotund belly hampered his investigation. My skin crawled at his touch. ‘Looks nasty.’
I gazed at him, waiting.
He straightened up. ‘It’ll need stitching. What do you have?’
Surely he could see the problem I had? I shook my head, confused.
He rolled his eyes skyward at my incomprehension. ‘Medicine is not cheap, erm ...’
‘Gelda.’
‘Gelda, and as much I desire to offer my services without charge – out of the goodness of my heart – there is no such thing as a free lunch, as it were.’ His gaze wandered back to his supper, now rapidly cooling.
‘Well, I have ...’
My precious catch. But meals were pointless if I couldn’t use my hand for weeks.
‘A rabbit?’ I offered. ‘Meat and the fur? It’s already gutted. I’ll even skin it for you if you like?’
‘Someone’s already given me a bear skin for the amputation I did yesterday.’ He sighed, clasping his hands around his belly. ‘Nasty business. That poor, unfortunate warrior.’
I grimaced. I had heard the screams all the way from my hut.
He shrugged. ‘Ah well, lose the leg and save the warrior ... not that he’ll be much use as a warrior now. Marauders didn’t used to be so brazen. You need to take care, up on that hill, all by yourself.’
I stared at him. ‘I’m not by myself.’
‘Aren’t you?’
‘He’ll be back any day now.’
He leaned closer. ‘Don’t you get lonely?’
‘No.’ I racked my brains for what I could trade. ‘What else would you take? Potatoes?’
He shook his head, his jowls wobbling beneath. ‘I already have plenty.’ His gaze travelled slowly down my body. ‘But, you see, I get lonely too, so you might have something else I’d be interested in.’
I looked up from trying to hold the fleshy edges of the wound together, wondering what on earth I had to offer.
His smile creased into an extra jowl.
My mouth dropped open. He wasn’t serious—
I walked out of the hut a heartbeat later, trailing droplets of blood behind me, not caring if I got some on his precious rug. Dirty, dirty old man.
On my way back, I debated trying to stitch it up myself, but when I imagined piercing flesh with our old darning needle and string, I wasn’t sure I could do it.
I squatted down by the river and washed the wound clean in the frigid water, and wrapped my hand in an old rag from my pocket hoping that it wouldn’t get infected. My stomach growled as I used my uninjured hand as a cup, lips numb from the bite of the ice. If blood fever set in like that warrior’s leg, the price for a decent amputation would be high, and there was no way I could afford it. If it came to that, I would have to chop it off myself, which I doubted I’d be able to do. Either cowardice or infection would kill me, which seemed a fitting end to the tribe’s outcast.
I called out a greeting as I passed old Alma’s hut. She, too, lived out on the outskirts of the tribe between us and the village. She sat in the doorway of her hut spinning, creamy wool in giant balls around her, fingers gnarled with too many winters. Few of the tribe acknowledged her – or only when they needed a new winter shawl or blanket. She couldn’t see me, eyes milky from age, completely blind, but she nodded, fingers never stopping from their work. I would take her some of the rabbit once I had cooked it tonight; she had no family to look after her.
I glanced over my shoulder, hoping to see him through the trees but instead, a flash of rust caught my eye as a squirrel dug frantically in the earth at the roots of an ancient oak. He caught sight of me and scampered up the trunk, sitting on a bough to chatter obscenities, shaking his bedraggled tail like a fist.
My l
His tufted ears twitched angrily.
I bent down and scooped out the beechnut lodged in the ice-covered ground and placed the nut onto one of the lower branches. ‘Here. A present – from one frozen creature to another.’
I turned as I reached the brow of the hill to see a tiny furry body hurtling back up the tree, nut safe. I tightened my belt another notch. ‘May we both survive this never-ending winter.’
The rabbit was gone when I got back to the hut.
I bit my lip. There was an ache in the pit of my stomach as I stacked more wood on the fire and huddled down next to it, not caring about the smoke in my face. I pulled yet another woollen layer on, fingers catching in the holes in the sleeves as I dragged it over my head, and brought my hands up to my mouth, ignoring the ash covering them, and blew into my fists. My fingers were speckled with tingling red lumps.
It didn’t matter how little you had; there was always somebody who wanted it.
Chapter 2
MY AXE JAMMED AGAIN.
I flexed my clumsily bandaged hand, rubbing my fingers against my trousers, and stood up, braced my foot against the log and levered the rusty axe head out. I could barely straighten up this morning; my bones had seized overnight. My breath hung in frozen clouds around me as I worked but at least the movement was keeping me warm. I would be fine as long as I kept moving.
My stomach growled as I swung my axe. I had survived sixteen winters, but I had only just made it through this last one. With no fat under the flesh, my skin appeared almost translucent against the sparkling snow and blue blood vessels running like icy branches up my arms. Each summer, I tried to add a layer of reserves over my ribs, and each winter the fat leached from my body a little more.
I gave the trunk an almighty smack, trapping my fingers in the splitting handle of the axe, and the blunt head stuck again. I gritted my teeth and placed one foot on the bark; the other was sunk up to my ankle in the mire. I heaved, wrestling with the axe. It released just as Demara walked by, arm in arm with her bosom friends, the twins.
My foot slipped and I flew back, losing my footing, axe head burying itself in the mud less than a handspan from her fur-lined boots and spattering dirt up her trousers.
Ailis and Aine shrieked, eyes bulging in horror.
Demara’s brows snapped together as she stared from the blade by her foot to me. ‘Watch out, idiot!’
The twins nodded in agreement. I often secretly thought the twins looked like the goats their family owned, complete with protruding ears and buck teeth.
Despite the cold, my face went hot as I gazed up at them from the ground. ‘Demara, I’m so sorry ...’ Cold mud was soaking through to my underwear and I scrambled to my feet, grasping what was now just a wooden handle.
Demara glared at me. ‘You could’ve chopped my leg off! What do you think you’re playing at?’
Demara was about my age, maybe a couple of winters more, but she couldn’t have been more unlike me.
She was tall where I was small. She had huge brown eyes and never a strand of glossy dark hair out of place. She never made mistakes and she probably never bit her perfect oval nails – she could have any warrior she wanted with a snap of those immaculate fingers.
My eyes were the colour of water. Not the deep blue of lakes on sunny days, blue skies bouncing off the surface, but the colour of the pond outside camp mid-winter, where nothing would grow except grey algae.
She was the most beautiful girl anyone had ever seen. Everyone said it.
And Demara agreed.
I retrieved the head of my axe from where it had buried itself in the sludge, painfully aware I looked ridiculous with my hair plastered over my face and mud splashed liberally up my tunic.
‘My father will be furious when he hears you nearly crippled me!’
I winced. There were twelve Northern Tribes, and her father was the tribe leader of this one – although considering his self-importance, you would think he ran all twelve.
‘I really am sorry,’ I said awkwardly, my teeth chattering as the cold soaked through my trousers.
She huffed. ‘I can’t believe you manage all by yourself up here.’
‘I manage just fine.’
‘You’ve got trust issues.’
‘Believe me, trust issues are the least of my problems.’
‘Did you just talk back to me?’ Demara drew herself up straighter, her shoulders rigid. ‘Do you have something to say, Gelda?’
I bit my lip to stop myself from saying anything I might regret. It would only come back to bite me. I shook my head, wiping the muddy blade on the one remaining clean patch on the front of my trousers.
‘My father will hear about this.’
‘Please, no, I’m very sorry, Demara.’
Her lip curled. ‘Has he finally had enough of you?’
The twins snickered through their buck teeth.
I avoided her gaze. ‘No.’
‘How many moons is it? It must be at least six, surely?’
I swallowed. She laughed, a light tinkling sound the twins were quick to join in with, then turned on her heel and gestured for the twins to follow her. I flicked clods of earth off my clothes. I could still hear their voices as they made their way back to camp.
‘Do you think she cuts her hair with that axe too?’
‘Cuts it? It looks like one of the asses chews it!’
Their shrieks of laughter floated back to me.
I fingered the ends of my hair. My scruffy straw-coloured hair looked like someone had dumped an untidy haystack on my head. The ends were a bit ragged, but did not look like one of the asses chewed it. It wasn’t my fault it refused to grow past my shoulders, probably because I was always hungry.
My chest tightened as I examined my axe. Tonight I would re-attach the head to the handle. It desperately needed sharpening; soon, it would be quicker to gnaw through the logs with my teeth.
It was past sundown by the time I eventually heaved the last few branches up the hill to the hut, arms aching, injured hand throbbing. I massaged my neck, wishing I had Araf to help me haul the wood. But, of course, he was with Merrick.
I lit a fire. It was the only time I stopped, kneeling next to the flames while I cooked supper, holding my fingers out to the warmth, the backs of my hands nothing but skin pulled taut over sinew like a toad’s webbed foot. I squinted at the cloudy horizon, scanning the south as the sun disappeared somewhere beyond the Beinn mountains.
I hesitated in front of my dwindling store of root vegetables, drumming my fingers against my leg. Finally, I reached in and picked out two small potatoes to lay aside, then filled a dirty hessian sack with the last of the turnips, ignoring the gnawing in my stomach and the dirt floor showing at the bottom of the box. Leaving the potatoes nestled in the embers to cook, I shouldered the sack.
Jatarn and Demara were just walking in from the meadows, quivers slung over their backs, bows in hand. I kept my head down as I passed them, hoping that she hadn’t told him about this afternoon. One of her younger sisters caught sight of them and ran over to greet them. I felt a pang of jealousy and quickly looked the other way.
The blacksmith’s hut – half home, half workshop – was a long squat building. A massive anvil stood outside, and a furnace in a stone chimney glowed with hot embers accompanied by the ceaseless chink of a hammer on metal.
Briar plunged a plough blade into the water trough, sending hissing plumes of steam billowing around his sweating face.
I waited at a polite distance until he saw me.
He wiped his hands on his leather apron. ‘What do you want?’
‘My axe needs sharpening and I wondered if I could—’
‘What’s in it for me?’
I held out my sack. He snorted and turned back to the trough.
‘They’re good ones!’ I opened the sack and showed him. ‘There aren’t any blemishes, or slimers tunnelled inside.
He bellowed a great laugh as he pulled the blade out of the trough, water cascading onto the grass. ‘Get lost.’
‘I don’t need you to do it. I thought, perhaps, could you let me use your wheel?’ I asked nervously. ‘I could sharpen it myself?’
His hand stilled. ‘That bag of measly roots plus the next two rabbits you catch.’
