I stud­ied the map. Forge was north of Buck­keep; I wondered how long our mes­sen­ger had taken to reach us, and if by the time we got there the Red Ship Raid­ers’ threat would already have been car­ried out. But it was no use wast­ing time on won­der­ing.

  ‘What about a horse for you?’

  ‘That’s been ar­ranged, by the one who brought this mes­sage. There’s a bay out­side with three white feet. He’s for me. The mes­sen­ger will also provide a great-grand-daugh­ter for Lady Thyme, and the boat is wait­ing. Let’s go.’

  ‘One thing,’ I said, and ig­nored his scowl at the delay. ‘I have to ask this, Chade. Were you here be­cause you didn’t trust me?’

  ‘A fair ques­tion, I sup­pose. No. I was here to listen in the town, to wo­men’s talk, as you were to listen in the keep. Bon­net-makers and but­ton-sellers may know more than a high king’s ad­visor, without even know­ing they know it. Now. Do we ride?’

  We did. We left by the side en­trance, and the bay was tethered right out­side. Sooty didn’t much care for him, but she minded her man­ners. I sensed Chade’s im­pa­tience, but he kept the horses to an easy pace un­til we had left the cobbled streets of Neat­bay be­hind us. Once the lights of the houses were be­hind us, we put our horses to an easy canter. Chade led, and I wondered at how well he rode, and how ef­fort­lessly he se­lec­ted paths in the dark. Sooty did not like this swift trav­el­ling by night. If it had not been for a moon nearly at the full, I don’t think I could have per­suaded her to keep up with the bay.

  I will never for­get that night ride. Not be­cause it was a wild gal­lop to the res­cue, but be­cause it was not. Chade guided us and used the horses as if they were game-pieces on a board. He did not play swiftly, but to win. And so there were times when we walked the horses to breathe them, and places on the trail where we dis­moun­ted and led them to get them safely past treach­er­ous places.

  As morn­ing greyed the sky, we stopped to eat pro­vi­sions from Chade’s saddle­bags. We were on a hill­top so thickly treed that the sky was barely glimpsed over­head. I could hear the ocean, and smell it, but could catch no sight of it. Our trail had be­come a sinu­ous path, little more than a deer-run, through these woods. Now that we were still, I could hear and smell the life all around us. Birds called, and I heard the move­ment of small an­im­als in the un­der­brush and in the branches over­head. Chade had stretched, then sunk down to sit on deep moss with his back against a tree. He drank deeply from a wa­ter-skin, and then more briefly from a brandy flask. He looked tired, and the day­light ex­posed his age more cruelly than lamp­light ever had. I wondered if he would last through the ride or col­lapse.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ he said when he caught me watch­ing him. ‘I’ve had to do more ar­du­ous duty than this, and on less sleep. Be­sides, we’ll have a good five or six hours of rest on the boat, if the cross­ing is smooth. So there’s no need to be long­ing after sleep. Let’s go, boy.’

  About two hours later our path di­verged, and again we took the more ob­scure branch­ing. Be­fore long I was all but ly­ing on Sooty’s neck to es­cape the low sweeps of the branches. It was muggy un­der the trees and we were blessed with mul­ti­tudes of tiny sting­ing flies that tor­tured the horses and crept into my clothes to find flesh to feast on. So thick were they that when I fi­nally mustered the cour­age to ask Chade if we had gone astray, I near choked on the ones that rushed into my mouth.

  By mid­day we emerged onto a windswept hill­side that was more open. Once more I saw the ocean. The wind cooled the sweat­ing horses and swept the in­sects away. It was a great pleas­ure simply to sit up­right in the saddle again. The trail was wide enough that I could ride abreast of Chade. The livid spots stood out starkly against his pale skin; he looked more blood­less than the Fool. Dark circles un­der­scored his eyes. He caught me watch­ing him and frowned.

  ‘Re­port to me, in­stead of star­ing at me like a sim­pleton,’ he ordered me tersely, and so I did.

  It was hard to watch the trail and his face at the same time, but the second time he snorted, I glanced over at him to find wry amuse­ment on his face. I fin­ished my re­port and he shook his head.

  ‘Luck. Same luck your father had. Your kit­chen-dip­lomacy may be enough to turn the situ­ation around; if that is all there is to it. The little gos­sip I heard agreed. Well. Kelvar was a good duke be­fore this, and it sounds as if all that happened was a young bride go­ing to his head.’ He sighed sud­denly. ‘Still, it’s bad, with Ver­ity there to re­buke a man for not mind­ing his towers, and Ver­ity him­self with a raid on a Buck­keep town. Damn! There’s so much we don’t know. How did the Raid­ers get past our towers without be­ing spot­ted? How did they know that Ver­ity was away from Buck­keep at Neat­bay? Or did they know? Was it luck for them? And what does that strange ul­ti­matum mean? Is it a threat, or a mock­ery?’ For a mo­ment we rode si­lently.

  ‘I wish I knew what ac­tion Shrewd was tak­ing. When he sent me the mes­sen­ger, he had not yet de­cided. We may get to Forge to find that all’s been settled already. And I wish I knew ex­actly what mes­sage he Skilled to Ver­ity. They say that in the old days, when more men trained in the Skill, a man could tell what his leader was think­ing about just by be­ing si­lent and listen­ing for a while. But that may be no more than a le­gend. Not many are taught the Skill, any more. I think it was King Bounty who de­cided that. Keep the Skill more secret, more of an elite tool, and it be­comes more valu­able. That was the lo­gic then. I never much un­der­stood it. What if they said that of good bow­men, or nav­ig­at­ors? Still, I sup­pose the aura of mys­tery might give a leader more status with his men … or for a man like Shrewd, now, he’d en­joy hav­ing his un­der­lings won­der­ing if he can ac­tu­ally pick up what they were think­ing without their ut­ter­ing a word. Yes, that would ap­peal to Shrewd, that would.’

  At first I thought Chade was very wor­ried, or even angry. I had never heard him ramble so on a topic. But when his horse shied over a squir­rel cross­ing his path, Chade was very nearly un­seated. I reached out and caught at his reins. ‘Are you all right? What’s the mat­ter?’

  He shook his head slowly. ‘Noth­ing. When we get to the boat, I’ll be all right. We just have to keep go­ing. It’s not much farther now.’ His pale skin had be­come grey, and with every step his horse took, he swayed in his saddle.

  ‘Let’s rest a bit,’ I sug­ges­ted.

  ‘Tides won’t wait. And rest wouldn’t help me, not the rest I’d get while I was wor­ry­ing about our boat go­ing on the rocks. No. We just have to keep go­ing.’ And he ad­ded, ‘Trust me, boy. I know what I can do, and I’m not so fool­ish as to at­tempt more than that.’

  And so we went on. There was very little else we could do. But I rode be­side his horse’s head, where I could take his reins if I needed to. The sound of the ocean grew louder, and the trail much steeper. Soon I was lead­ing the way whether I would or no.

  We broke clear of brush com­pletely on a bluff over­look­ing a sandy beach.

  ‘Thank Eda, they’re here,’ Chade muttered be­hind me, and then I saw the shal­low-draught boat that was all but groun­ded near the point. A man on watch hal­looed and waved his cap in the air. I lif­ted my arm in re­turn greet­ing.

  We made our way down, slid­ing more than rid­ing, and then Chade boarded im­me­di­ately. That left me with the horses. Neither was anxious to enter the waves, let alone heave them­selves over the low rail and up onto deck. I tried to quest to­ward them, to let them know what I wanted. For the first time in my life, I found I was simply too tired. I could not find the fo­cus I needed. So three deck­hands, much curs­ing, and two duck­ings for me were re­quired fi­nally to get them loaded. Every bit of leather and every buckle on their har­ness had been doused with salt­water. How was I go­ing to ex­plain that to Burrich? That was the thought that was up­per­most in my mind as I settled my­self in the bow and watched the row­ers in the dory bend their backs to the oars and tow us out to deeper wa­ter.

  TEN

  The Pocked Man

  Time and tide wait for no man. There’s an age­less ad­age. Sail­ors and fish­er­men mean it simply to say that a boat’s sched­ule is de­term­ined by the ocean, not man’s con­veni­ence. But some­times I lie here, after the tea has calmed the worst of the pain, and won­der about it. Tides wait for no man, and that I know is true. But time? Did the times I was born into await my birth to be? Did the events rumble into place like the great wooden gears of the clock of Sayntanns, mesh­ing with my con­cep­tion and push­ing my life along? I make no claim to great­ness. And yet, had I not been born, had not my par­ents fallen be­fore a surge of lust, so much would be dif­fer­ent. So much. Bet­ter? I think not. And then I blink and try to fo­cus my eyes, and won­der if these thoughts come from me or from the drug in my blood. It would be nice to hold coun­cil with Chade, one last time.

  The sun had moved round to late af­ter­noon when someone nudged me awake. ‘Your mas­ter wants you,’ was all he said, and I roused with a start. Gulls wheel­ing over­head, fresh sea air and the dig­ni­fied waddle of the boat re­called me to where I was. I scrambled to my feet, ashamed to have fallen asleep without even won­der­ing if Chade were com­fort­able. I hur­ried aft to the ship’s house.

  There I found Chade had taken over the tiny gal­ley table. He was por­ing over a map spread out on it, but a large tur­een of fish chow­der was what got my at­ten­tion. He mo­tioned me to it without tak­ing his at­ten­tion from the map, and I was glad to fall to. There were ship’s bis­cuits to go with it, and a sour red wine. I had not real­ized how hungry I was un­til the food was be­fore me. I was scrap­ing my dish with a bit of bis­cuit when Chade asked me, ‘Bet­ter?’

  ‘Much,’ I said. ‘How about you?’

  ‘Bet­ter,’ he said, and looked at me with his fa­mil­iar hawk’s glance. To my re­lief, he seemed totally re­covered. He pushed my dishes to one side and slid the map be­fore me. ‘By even­ing,’ he said, ‘we’ll be here. It’ll be a nas­tier land­ing than the load­ing was. If we’re lucky, we’ll get wind when we need it. If not, we’ll miss the best of the tide, and the cur­rent will be stronger. We may end up swim­ming the horses to shore while we ride in the dory. I hope not, but be pre­pared for it, just in case. Once we land …’

  ‘You smell of car­ris seed.’ I said it, not be­liev­ing my own words. But I had caught the un­mis­tak­able sweet taint of the seed and oil on his breath. I’d had car­ris seed cakes, at Spring­fest, when every­one does, and I knew the giddy en­ergy that even a sprink­ling of the seed on a cake’s top could bring. Every­one cel­eb­rated Spring’s Edge that way. Once a year, what could it hurt? But I knew, too, that Burrich had warned me never to buy a horse that smelled of car­ris seed at all. And warned me fur­ther that if any­one were ever caught put­ting car­ris seed oil on any of our horse’s grain, he’d kill him. With his bare hands.

  ‘Do I? Fancy that. Now, I sug­gest that if you have to swim the horses, you put your shirt and cloak into an oil­skin bag and give it to me in the dory. That way you’ll have at least that much dry to put on when we reach the beach. From the beach, our road will …’

  ‘Burrich says that once you’ve given it to an an­imal, it’s never the same. It does things to horses. He says you can use it to win one race, or run down one stag, but after that, the beast will never be what it was. He says dis­hon­est horse-traders use it to make an an­imal show well at a sale; it gives them spirit and bright­ens their eyes, but that soon passes. Burrich says that it takes away all their sense of when they’re tired, so they go on, past the time when they should have dropped from ex­haus­tion. Burrich told me that some­times when the car­ris oil wears out, the horse just drops in its tracks.’ The words spilled out of me, cold wa­ter over stones.

  Chade lif­ted his gaze from the map. He stared at me mildly. ‘Fancy Burrich know­ing all that about car­ris seed. I’m glad you listened to him so closely. Now per­haps you’ll be so kind as to give me equal at­ten­tion as we plan the next stage of our jour­ney.’

  ‘But Chade …’

  He trans­fixed me with his eyes. ‘Burrich is a fine horse-mas­ter. Even as a boy he showed great prom­ise. He is sel­dom wrong … when speak­ing about horses. Now at­tend to what I am say­ing. We’ll need a lan­tern to get from the beach to the cliffs above. The path is very bad; we may need to bring one horse up at a time. But I am told it can be done. From there, we go over­land to Forge. There isn’t a road that will take us there quickly enough to be of any use. It’s hilly coun­try, but not for­es­ted. And we’ll be go­ing by night, so the stars will have to be our map. I am hop­ing to reach Forge by mid-af­ter­noon. We’ll go in as trav­el­lers, you and I. That’s all I’ve de­cided so far; the rest will have to be planned from hour to hour …’

  And the mo­ment in which I could have asked him how he could use the seed and not die of it was gone, shouldered aside by his care­ful plans and pre­cise de­tails. For half an hour more he lec­tured me on de­tails, and then he sent me from the cabin, say­ing he had other pre­par­a­tions to make and that I should check on the horses and get what rest I could.

  The horses were for­ward, in a make­shift rope en­clos­ure on deck. Straw cush­ioned the deck from their hooves and drop­pings. A sour-faced mate was mend­ing a bit of rail­ing that Sooty had kicked loose in the board­ing. He didn’t seem dis­posed to talk, and the horses were as calm and com­fort­able as could be ex­pec­ted. I roved the deck briefly. We were on a tidy little craft, an inter-is­land trader wider than she was deep. Her shal­low draught let her go up rivers or right onto beaches without dam­age, but her pas­sage over deeper wa­ter left a lot to be de­sired. She sidled along, with here a dip and there a curt­sey, like a bundle-laden farm-wife mak­ing her way through a crowded mar­ket. We seemed to be the sole cargo. A deck­hand gave me a couple of apples to share with the horses, but little talk. So after I had par­celled out the fruit, I settled my­self near them on their straw and took Chade’s ad­vice about rest­ing.

  The winds were kind to us, and the cap­tain took us in closer to the loom­ing cliffs than I’d have thought pos­sible, but un­load­ing the horses from the ves­sel was still an un­pleas­ant task. All of Chade’s lec­tur­ing and warn­ings had not pre­pared me for the black­ness of night on the wa­ter. The lan­terns on the deck seemed pathetic ef­forts, con­fus­ing me more with the shad­ows they threw than aid­ing me with their feeble light. In the end, a deck­hand rowed Chade to shore in the ship’s dory. I went over­board with the re­luct­ant horses, for I knew Sooty would fight a lead rope and prob­ably swamp the dory. I clung to Sooty and en­cour­aged her, trust­ing her com­mon sense to take us to­ward the dim lan­tern on shore. I had a long line on Chade’s horse, for I didn’t want his thrash­ing too close to us in the wa­ter. The sea was cold, the night was black, and if I’d had any sense, I’d have wished my­self else­where; but there is some­thing in a boy that takes the mundanely dif­fi­cult and un­pleas­ant and turns it into a per­sonal chal­lenge and an ad­ven­ture.

  I came out of the wa­ter drip­ping, chilled and com­pletely ex­hil­ar­ated. I kept Sooty’s reins and coaxed Chade’s horse in. By the time I had them both un­der con­trol, Chade was be­side me, lan­tern in hand, laugh­ing ex­ult­antly. The dory man was already away and pulling for the ship. Chade gave me my dry things, but they did little good pulled on over my drip­ping clothes. ‘Where’s the path?’ I asked, my voice shak­ing with my shiv­er­ing.

  Chade gave a de­ris­ive snort. ‘Path? I had a quick look while you were pulling in my horse. It’s no path, it’s no more than the course the wa­ter takes when it runs off down the cliffs. But it will have to do.’

  It was a little bet­ter than he had re­por­ted, but not much. It was nar­row and steep and the gravel on it was loose un­der­foot. Chade went ahead with the lan­tern. I fol­lowed, with the horses in tan­dem. At one point Chade’s bay ac­ted up, tug­ging back, throw­ing me off-bal­ance and nearly driv­ing Sooty to her knees in her ef­forts to go the other dir­ec­tion. My heart was in my mouth un­til we reached the top of the cliffs.

  Then the night and the open hill­side spread out be­fore us un­der the sail­ing moon and the stars scattered wide over­head, and the spirit of the chal­lenge caught me up again. I sup­pose it could have been Chade’s at­ti­tude. The car­ris seed made his eyes wide and bright, even by lan­tern light, and his en­ergy, un­nat­ural though it was, was in­fec­tious. Even the horses seemed af­fected, snort­ing and toss­ing their heads. Chade and I laughed de­men­tedly as we ad­jus­ted har­ness and then moun­ted. Chade glanced up to the stars, and then around the hill­side that sloped down be­fore us. With care­less dis­dain he tossed our lan­tern to one side.

  ‘Away!’ he an­nounced to the night, and kicked the bay, who sprang for­ward. Sooty was not to be out­done, and so I did as I had never dared be­fore, gal­lop­ing down un­fa­mil­iar ter­rain by night. It is a won­der we did not all break our necks. But there it is; some­times luck be­longs to chil­dren and mad­men. That night I felt we were both.

  Chade led and I fol­lowed. That night, I grasped an­other piece of the puzzle that Burrich had al­ways been to me. For there is a very strange peace in giv­ing over your judge­ment to someone else, to say­ing to them, ‘You lead and I will fol­low, and I will trust en­tirely that you will not lead me to death or harm.’ That night, as we pushed the horses hard, and Chade steered us solely by the night sky, I gave no thought to what might be­fall us if we went astray from our bear­ing, or if a horse were in­jured by an un­ex­pec­ted slip. I felt no sense of ac­count­ab­il­ity for my ac­tions. Sud­denly, everything was easy and clear. I simply did whatever Chade told me to do, and trus­ted to him to have it turn out right. My spirit rode high on the crest of that wave of faith, and some­time dur­ing the night it oc­curred to me: this was what Burrich had had from Chiv­alry, and what he missed so badly.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60