LITMIR.BIZ

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he could bestow parcels of land in return for fealty and taxes. Near the dun, the freeholds of the local farmers stood pale green with wheat, but ahead lay the pine forests, covering the broken tablelands of Arcodd province and beyond. The plateau itself stretched for nearly two hundred miles. To the west, it sloped down into lands marked on no Deverry map. To the north it steadily rose until it became the foothills of the Roof of the World.

      To the south, where the warband was heading, lay the rich farmland of the Melyn Valley, but once the men reached the edge of the forest cover, they turned west onto the dirt road that had so surprised Neb. Cadryc had levied a labour tax on his farmers to hack it out of the forest. No one had grumbled. They could see that its purpose was their safety.

      A few hours before sunset, the warband rode up to an open meadow. Cadryc called a halt, then leaned over his saddle peak to stare at the trampled grass.

      ‘Someone’s been here recently,’ the tieryn said. ‘Ye gods! If the raiders have found this road –’

      ‘Your grace?’ Salamander trotted his horse up to join them. ‘Allow me to put your mind at rest. I’m the culprit. It was on this very spot, it was, that Neb and Clae found me.’

      ‘Ah. Well, that’s a relief!’ Cadryn turned in the saddle. ‘Gerran, have the men make camp.’

      They’d just got settled when Lord Pedrys, one of Cadryc’s vassals, rode in to join them. He brought ten men and supplies with him, and as usual, the young lord was game for any fight going. When Cadryc, Pedrys, and Gerran gathered around the tieryn’s fire to discuss plans, Pedrys had an inappropriate grin on his blandly blond face.

      ‘I wonder if we’ll catch them?’ Pedrys said. ‘If the bastards are this bold, we’ve got a chance.’

      ‘Just so,’ Cadryc said. ‘If nothing else, we can see if Lord Samyc’s still alive. He’s only got five riders in his warband, but I can’t see him sitting snug in his dun while scum raid his lands.’

      ‘True spoken,’ Pedrys said. ‘Five riders! And you’ve got thirty all told, and me fifteen, and we can’t even spare all of them for rides like this. How by the black hairy arse of the Lord of Hell does our gwerbret expect us to defend the valley?’

      Cadryc shrugged and began chewing on the edge of his moustache. ‘We’re going to have to ask him just that. We need help, and that’s all there is to it.’

      ‘It’s all well and good to say that, your grace, but what can he do without an army?’

      ‘He’s going to cursed well have to send messengers down to Dun Deverry and beg the high king for more men.’ Cadryc slammed one fist into the palm of his other hand. ‘I don’t give a pig’s fart if it aches his heart or not.’

      ‘I don’t understand why it does.’ Pedrys sounded more than a little angry. ‘Ye gods, his own father was killed by Horsekin!’

      ‘True spoken. But the gwerbrets of Cengarn used to rule Arcodd like kings, didn’t they? Oh, they sent taxes to the high king’s chamberlain, and they made a ritual visit to court once a year, but still –’ Cadryc shrugged. ‘The king never cared what they did out here. Now – well, by the hells! Everything’s changed.’

      Both Pedrys and Gerran nodded their agreement.

      Some thirty years before, the high king had begun encouraging his subjects to settle the rich meadowlands of southwestern Arcodd. Doing so meant creating many a new lordship and marking out many a new rhan. Technically, of course, all these new lords owed direct fealty to the gwerbrets of Cengarn, but it was the high king, not the gwerbret, who produced the coin and the men to turn these holdings into something more than lines on a map. Royal heralds had travelled throughout Deverry, offering freehold land to farmers and craftsmen if they would emigrate to Arcodd. A good many extra sons, who stood no chance of inheriting their father’s land or guild shop, were glad to take up the challenge, and a good many extra daughters, whose dowries were doomed to be scant, were glad to marry them and emigrate as well.

      Men who could ride in a warband were harder to come by, but the lords put together the biggest troops they could. Everyone remembered the Horsekin, who years before had ridden out of nowhere to besiege Cengarn itself. Yet at first, the settlement of the Melyn Valley proceeded so easily that it seemed the Horsekin had forgotten about Deverry. Farms spread out, villages grew among them. The virgin land produced splendid crops and the farmers plenty of children. It seemed that the gods had particularly blessed the valley and its new inhabitants.

      Then, some fifteen years before Neb and his brother came staggering out of the forest, the raiders struck at a village near Cengarn in the first of a series of raids. Each time they slaughtered the men, took the women and children as slaves, looted, and burned what they couldn’t carry off. Finally the gwerbret in Cengarn and his loyal lords had caught them and crushed them. Gerran’s father had come home from that battle wrapped in a blanket and slung over his saddle like a sack of grain. Gerran could remember rushing out into the ward and seeing two men lifting the corpse down. His mother’s scream when she saw it still seemed to ring out, loud in his memory.

      ‘What’s wrong with you, captain?’ Pedrys said abruptly. ‘You look as grim as the Lord of Hell himself!’

      ‘My apologies, my lord,’ Gerran said. ‘I was just thinking about the raiders.’

      ‘That’s enough to make any man grim, truly,’ Cadryc said, then yawned. ‘We’d best get some sleep. I want to be up at dawn and riding as soon as we can.’

      ‘Very well, your grace.’ Gerran stood up. ‘I’ll just take a last look around the camp.’

      Scattered across the meadow, most of the men were asleep in their blankets by dying campfires. The warm night was so achingly clear that the stars hung close like a ceiling of silver. Nearby, guarded by a pair of sentries, the horses stood heads down and drowsy in their hobbles. Gerran was starting out to have a word with the sentries when he saw someone coming towards him. He laid his hand on his sword hilt, but it was only the gerthddyn, his pale hair strikingly visible in the dark.

      ‘Lovely night, isn’t it?’ Salamander said.

      Although Gerran had been thinking just that, hearing this unmanly sentiment voiced annoyed him.

      ‘Warm enough, I suppose,’ Gerran said. ‘Tell me somewhat. What made you ride with us?’

      ‘I’m not truly sure,’ Salamander said.

      ‘You told our lord that you wanted vengeance.’

      ‘Well, that’s true enough. The Horsekin killed a good friend of mine some years ago. And I’m looking for my brother, of course. You may remember that when I last passed your way, I told you –’

      ‘– about your brother the silver dagger. What is this? Do you think you’re going to find him just wandering around the countryside?’

      ‘Imph, well, you never quite know where he’ll turn up.’

      Gerran waited, then realized that Salamander was going to tell him no more unless he pried.

      ‘Well, now that you’re here, you’re riding under my orders,’ Gerran said instead. ‘I want you to stay well back out of the way if it comes to battle.’

      ‘Fair enough.’ Salamander bowed, took a few steps away, then suddenly stooped down and picked something up from the grass. ‘One of the lads is getting careless. I wonder whose bridle this belongs on?’

      When he held up a brass buckle, Gerran could barely see it. Salamander pressed it into his hand, then walked on with a cheery goodnight. Gerran rubbed the buckle between his fingers as he watched him go. So, he told himself, that’s why he’s so cursed odd! There’s Westfolk blood in his veins.

      Around noon on the morrow, the combined warbands reached a stone marker beside the road. The tieryn called a halt to rest the horses and let the men eat a scant meal from their saddlebags. Although the cairn, a mere heap of grey stones, carried no inscriptions,

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