The Spirit Stone (13 page)

‘As well it should be. And now we’d best get inside, because it’s starting to rain.’

By the morrow the weather had cleared, and they took up their slow travelling west again. At intervals Gwairyc would think about Nevyn’s words. Try though he did, the only benefit he could see was that he wouldn’t die in this summer’s fighting, which was a coward’s benefit and beneath contempt.

On the longest day of the year they reached Matrynwn, a proper town near the headwaters of the Vicaver. From the dusty village square they could see mountains, rising squat and rocky off to the west.

‘They mark the Eldidd border,’ Nevyn told him.

‘Good,’ Gwairyc said. ‘That relieves my heart.’

‘Of what?’

‘The fear of meeting some lord I know. I’ve never been this far west in my life.’

‘Ah, I see. Well, we could easily travel on to Eldidd.’ Nevyn paused, thinking. ‘I’ve got friends off to the west.’

‘What about the herbs you were looking for? In old forest, I think you said.’

‘I did say just that, and truly, old forest’s easy to find in western Eldidd. Done, then! Let’s ask around about the road ahead of us.’

Matrynwn turned out to be the last town on the only road that would lead them through the mountains. Thanks to its position it sported several proper inns, each with fenced pastures for the horses and mules of the caravans that came through. After a little asking around, Nevyn found an inn that was sheltering a caravan heading west. Its master, a Cerrmor man named Wffyn, considered himself lucky that a herbman wanted to join them. He was a burly fellow, with a sandy beard streaked with grey and a scatter of grey hairs on his mostly bald head. Judging by the heavy muscles of his long arms, though, he could still wield a quarterstaff if he had to. And sometimes, or so he told them, you had to.

‘You never know who’s lurking about the mountains, but you’ll be safe, riding with us,’ Wffyn said. ‘I’ve got ten men who can fight as well as tend the mules. By all means, good sir, you and your apprentice will be most welcome.’

Wffyn had an apprentice of his own, of sorts—very much of sorts, Gwairyc decided. Tirro was a skinny lad, probably no more than fifteen summers old, with the bright blue eyes and high cheekbones of a Cerrmor man, though red pimples dotted those cheekbones and clustered around his mouth. His hair—actually, he seemed to have none, because he wore on his head a little linen cap, all stained with some sort of grease—but his eyebrows were blond, as you’d expect of someone from the south. When Gwairyc first met him, Tirro refused to look him in the eye. Every now and then, while their two masters discussed the trip ahead, Tirro would stick a skinny finger under the cap and scratch viciously, to the point where he eventually made himself bleed.

‘Ye gods,’ Nevyn said. ‘What’s vexing you so badly, lad?’

‘Ah, well, uh.’ Tirro kept his gaze on the floor.

‘Ringworm,’ Wffyn broke in, ‘and come along, lad, you’re not supposed to scratch it. Get some more salve if you need it.’

‘I will, master.’ Tirro stood up. ‘My apologies.’ He turned and ran out of the tavern room.

‘What kind of salve is it?’ Nevyn said.

‘I don’t truly know. The apothecary in Cerrmor made it up for him. Ceruse, he called it, in emollients.’

‘Ah,’ Nevyn said. ‘Ceruse is the calx of lead, that is, whitened lead.’

‘Lead? Now that I know.’ Wffyn nodded sagely. ‘It does seem to be working, when I can get him to stop scratching.’

‘Good. Is he bloodkin of yours?’

‘He’s not, and I thank the gods for that. An unfortunate sort of lad, Tirro. I’m taking him along as a favour to his father, naught more.’

‘I see,’ Nevyn said. ‘Giving him a taste of the merchant life?’

Wffyn started to speak, paused, had a sip of ale, frowned into his tankard, started once more to speak, then sighed. ‘Well,’ he finally said, ‘I didn’t mean to go telling tales, but truly, I wouldn’t mind a little help with keeping an eye on the lad. He had to leave Cerrmor, you see, and sudden like.’

‘Stealing?’ Nevyn said.

‘Worse.’ Wffyn hesitated briefly. ‘He’s somewhat of a loricart, if you take my meaning.’

‘I don’t,’ Nevyn said. ‘Cerrmor cant-words are beyond me.’

‘Well, now, I’ve heard this sort of man called hedge creepers in other parts of the kingdom, or lobcocks.’

‘I’ve heard those, too.’ Gwairyc cleared his throat and spat into the straw on the floor. ‘He means men who fancy little children.’

‘That,’ Nevyn said slowly, ‘is truly disgusting.’

‘It is all of that,’ Wffyn said. ‘There was a lass name of Mella, a pretty little thing but not more than six summers old, and Tirro got a fair bit too friendly with her, if you take my meaning. Her father and her uncles were going to beat the cursed wretched young cub to a bloody pulp, but fortunately they saw reason when I said I’d take him away on caravan.’

‘I gather there was no doubt that the lad was guilty.’

‘None. On top of everything else, he gave the poor child his ringworm.’

Nevyn made a profoundly sour face. ‘But you’ll take him with you?’

‘Well, now, I wouldn’t have lifted a finger to help him, but I owed his da a fair bit of money, if you take my meaning.’

‘I see. So he’s erased the debt now?’ Nevyn said.

‘He has,’ Wffyn glanced at Gwairyc. ‘But if you see Tirro hanging around some little lass during our travels, tell me, will you? I can’t be everywhere at once.’

‘Gladly,’ Gwairyc said. ‘Have no fear of that.’

Wffyn raised his tankard in salute and smiled his thanks. ‘What’s going to happen when you get back to Cerrmor?’ Nevyn asked.

‘Tirro will be shipping out for Bardek,’ Wffyn said. ‘His father has a friend with a ship, you see, but he’d left harbour before this thing happened—the ship’s captain I mean, not the father. He’ll come back late in the summer and then make the last run over to winter in Bardek. Tirro will be going with him, and good riddance.’

‘I see,’ Nevyn said. ‘Exactly where is the ship going, do you know?’

‘Myleton.’

Nevyn nodded, as if merely acknowledging the information, but by then Gwairyc knew him well enough to see that something had troubled him. Later, when they were alone, he asked the old man about it.

‘Bardek is a very strange place,’ Nevyn said. ‘There are men there who share Tirro’s particular vice, and some of them are rich and even powerful. They pursue their prey in the shadows, because most Bardekians are decent folk, but at the same time, in the larger towns, there are brothels where they can satisfy their wretched cravings in safety.’

‘That’s loathsome!’

‘Indeed. So I was wondering if I could send a message to some friends of mine there, to suggest they tell the archons to keep an eye on this unfortunate cub. Alas, they live on Orystinna, nowhere near Myleton.’

‘A pity. This Orys-whatzit—it’s another island?’

‘It is. Most likely Tirro will alert the archons to his presence on his own, by doing some wretched thing too openly. He strikes me as more than a little dim-witted. I wish I could prevent it, but alas, like our good merchant, I can’t be everywhere at once.’

‘Indeed.’ Gwairyc shook his head in disgust. ‘Ye gods, if the lad was as hard up as all that, he could have gone after a sheep. It would have been cleaner.’

‘True spoken.’ Nevyn managed a twisted smile at the jest.

Gwairyc realized that for this moment at least he and his master, as he always thought of Nevyn, had found a common bond of sorts in their disgust. It would be a good time to bring up a matter very much on his mind.

‘There was somewhat else I wanted to ask you,’ Gwairyc said. ‘About these bandits, my lord. I can’t defend the caravan with my bare hands.’

‘Ah. You want your sword back, do you?’ Nevyn considered, but only briefly. ‘Very well. I’ll give it to you. Just don’t go drawing it on anyone but the bandits.’

‘I won’t, I swear it.’

The return of his sword raised Gwairyc’s spirits more than anything else could have, except perhaps the chance to kill a bandit or two with it. Unfortunately to his way of thinking, though not to anyone else’s, the ride through the mountains proved hot, tedious, and uneventful—except for a strange accident.

It happened on the steepest part of the road up to the main pass. In the sticky summer heat the caravan made slow progress that day and camped early when they found a reasonably flat area off to one side of the dusty trail. Lined with some sort of shrubby tree that Gwairyc couldn’t put a name to, a muddy rivulet ran nearby, flowing out of the forest cover and heading downhill. The hot day had exhausted everyone. The stock had to be tended and fed, exhaustion or no, but no one spoke more than they absolutely had to. With his share of the work done, one of the muleteers pulled off his boots, rolled up his trousers, and trotted off to soak his aching feet downstream from their drinking water. Gwairyc had just turned Nevyn’s mule into the general herd when he heard the man scream. Without thinking he drew his sword and ran just as a second agonized shriek rang out to guide him.

In the spotty shade the muleteer was lying sprawled with one leg held high in the air. It was such an odd posture that it took Gwairyc a moment to notice the blood sheeting down the muleteer’s leg. The fellow had stepped into a wire snare and tripped it. Now the thin wire was biting ever deeper into his unprotected ankle as he flailed his arms and screamed.

‘Hold still!’ Gwairyc put all his noble-born authority into his voice. ‘You’ll be hurt worse if you don’t.’

The fellow looked his way, sobbed once, and fainted. Gwairyc trotted over and considered the wire. He had no desire to blunt his blade by trying to cut it. His inspection showed that the thin strand forming the noose had been knotted repeatedly over a much thicker wire, reinforced with rope, that formed the long portion of the snare and anchored the whole contraption to a nearby sapling. By then another muleteer and Wffyn himself had come at the run. With a cascade of foul oaths the muleteer set to work untwisting the strands whilst the merchant supported the injured man’s leg.

‘I’ve never seen such a cursed strong snare,’ Wffyn remarked. ‘What was the hunter after, I wonder? A bear?’

‘That thing would never take a bear’s weight,’ Gwairyc said. ‘A deer? Not likely, either.’

‘Huh.’ Wffyn’s face was beginning to turn pale. He looked away from the muleteer’s blood-soaked leg. ‘Makes you wonder if that trap was set to catch a man. Guarding somewhat, like, close by here.’

‘It might be.’ Gwairyc sheathed his sword. ‘I’ll get Nevyn. Our friend here should thank the gods that the old man’s nearby.’

Indeed, whether it was the gods or luck, the fellow would have lost his foot and perhaps his life as well if it weren’t for Nevyn. Still, the process of getting the embedded wire out of the wound and the whole mess washed clean and stitched up was painful enough to watch, much less experience. The poor fellow would keep coming round only to faint again the moment Nevyn touched the leg. Gwairyc busied himself with heating water in an iron pot for steeping herbs while the rest of the caravan stayed strictly elsewhere. Only Tirro stuck close to them.

‘I could help,’ Tirro said. ‘I can look for firewood if you need to brew herbs.’

‘That’s not a bad idea,’ Gwairyc said. ‘Go to it, but be cursed careful where you put your feet.’

‘I will, sir.’

With a little bow of his head Tirro hurried off into the underbrush. In but a little space of time he came back with a good supply of dead branches. By then Nevyn had begun to stitch the wound. Tirro glanced at the muleteer’s leg and went decidedly pale.

‘Just feed some wood into the fire,’ Gwairyc said. ‘Don’t look.’

‘I won’t, sir.’ Tirro hunkered down by the fire.

The pot of water hung from a tripod. Tirro concentrated on breaking up branches and feeding bits into the fire underneath. He was doing well until the muleteer came round from a faint and began moaning. Tirro straightened up and looked at the leg just as Nevyn started pouring warm herb water over the wound, releasing a flood of clots and bits of skin. At that the lad turned dead-white and rushed away to vomit among the bushes.

By then Gwairyc could see even worse sights without feeling sick. Instead he merely felt shamed, as if he’d sunk even lower in the world by simply knowing enough herbcraft to act like the apprentice he nominally was. Still, once the muleteer was lying on a pad of blankets with his ankle wrapped in clean bandages, and his pain eased with one of Nevyn’s herbal mixtures, Gwairyc had to admit a certain admiration for the old man’s skill. When they were sitting by their own fire and eating a delayed dinner, Gwairyc told him so.

‘I wish we had chirurgeons like you with the army,’ Gwairyc said. ‘There must be naught that you can’t cure.’

‘My thanks, but I only wish that were true, lad. There’s many a foul illness that baffles my herbs, wasting diseases of the lungs, strange fevers from Bardek, and the like.’

‘I see. I’ve never been down on the southern coast, but I’ve heard about those fevers. Doesn’t make me want to go there.’

‘Well, even in Bardek the fevers are not what you’d call common.’ Nevyn paused, glancing away in thought. ‘Strange ills can strike a man down anywhere. In fact, my master in herbcraft told me once about a very strange disease that someone contracted not far from Dun Deverry. The patient—one of the king’s own riders—had been wounded in a fight against bandits. They’d finally cornered the bandits in an apple orchard, of all places, one where the trees had gone untended for years, and—’

‘Wait a moment,’ Gwairyc interrupted. ‘There haven’t been any bandits near Dun Deverry for a cursed long time.’

‘True spoken. This incident happened when my master’s master was young, or so he said.’ Nevyn paused to count something out on his fingers. ‘It must have happened not long after the Civil Wars, now that you mention it.’

‘Ah, now that makes more sense.’

‘Anyway, this fellow was a fine swordsman, but he and the warband had never had to dismount and fight among trees before.’

‘That’s doubtless why the bandits made a stand there.’

‘Doubtless, but would you let me finish?’

‘Apologies, my lord. Go on.’