The Way to Babylon (Different Kingdoms) (23 page)

The dark man was helped by the warden, Guillamon, and by Ratagan’s father Udairn, but he had little enough time to spare, all the same. He came to Riven’s room sometimes in the evenings, often accompanied by Guillamon, and they spent hours discussing and speculating, until Riven’s head ached and the bed seemed like a prison.

It was Ratagan, the other invalid, who spent most of his time with him. There were others, also. The girl, Madra, seemed to have taken it upon herself to become Riven’s nurse while he recovered, much to Ratagan’s amusement, and she was in and out every day until her face was as familiar to him as the big man’s. It was heart-shaped, framed by long tresses of feathery brown hair, with thoughtful eyes almost the same colour and heavy eyebrows that made her look as if she were frowning half the time. Riven both liked and hated having her near him.

Finally there was Isay, the Myrcan. Being what he was, his conversation was not plentiful, and he tended to stand solidly at the door of Riven’s room, for all the world like a statue of a sentinel. He was younger than most of the other Myrcans, though, and Madra was good at raising sudden, almost shy smiles from him. He was Riven’s bodyguard, and never left his side.

There were politics in the air, Riven discovered in his evening talks with Bicker, Guillamon and Ratagan. The Lords of Ralarth, who owed allegiance to the Warbutt, were unsettled on two counts. Firstly there was the obvious disaster facing them with the total destruction of the harvest, but there was also the fact that they saw the people of their own fiefs deserting them in droves and heading for the safety of the Rorim itself, with its walls and Hearthwares. They could not give the same protection that the Warbutt offered, having only a few retainers apiece to defend their own interests, and they eyed with dismay and apprehension the militia that was being trained in the shadow of the Rorim.

‘The fools think we’re trying to use the opportunity to leech power from them and centralise it here, in the Rorim. They cannot see that what we are doing is best for the whole Dale,’ Bicker said hotly one dark evening, when he had come in from a round of patrols that had taken in the residences of the five most powerful lords of Ralarth.

Ratagan laughed deeply, his flagon dancing on his good knee. ‘Though you will have to admit this is a golden opportunity to cut down some of the Warbutt’s more troublesome vassals once and for all.’

Bicker smiled unwillingly. ‘I shall have to resist the temptation. As it is, it would seem that they want some kind of meeting with the Warbutt to thrash things out. Our burgeoning militia has them scared stupid.’

The big man chuckled once again. ‘If they could but see what left-footed, addle-headed idiots Druim and his comrades are working with, they would not be so afraid.’

‘They are fools,’ Guillamon put in darkly, and his blue eyes flashed. ‘Do they think they must fear us more than the very beasts out of the mountains?’

‘Turn them into toads, Guillamon. That’ll show them,’ Ratagan said, his humour unquenchable, and everyone laughed.

Riven’s arm was still in a sling, and his ribs did their best to cut off his breath every once in a while, but he was healing. He was looking forward to feeling the wind on his face again, even if he could go no farther than the ramparts of the fortress. He wanted to taste the keen air he could feel outside the windows. It no longer seemed so odd that he was breathing the air of a world that could not possibly exist. He was glad now he was being given this thing—for the moment. He preferred not to think of the darker side of it.

‘It is Marsco who is the real instigator,’ Bicker was saying. ‘He is a good man, but stubborn as a goat. He sits up in that crag of his at Ringill and reckons he can go his own way, but as soon as he thinks we’re infringing on his rights, he’s gathering together the other lords like hens under a hawk’s shadow, putting all sorts of ideas in their heads. If it weren’t for the fact that Ringill is so damned strong and in such a ticklish place, I’d have manoeuvred him out of it years ago.’

‘You would?’ Guillamon asked with a raised eyebrow.

‘Well—I’d have got you to do it,’ Bicker said, grinning wickedly.

‘Why is Ringill so strong?’ Riven asked. He knew the name, but it had had only a mention in his books. It conjured up an image of a black, sheer rock topped by stone walls.

‘Ringill is the northernmost of the Ralarth fiefs,’ Bicker explained. ‘Hence its seat was chosen with care to be the best fortress, since it borders on the territory of Garrafad Rorim—Bragad’s lands. And we have never been overfond of our northern neighbour. It is the poorest of the fiefs, but also, by tradition, the most independent.’

‘Too blasted independent by half,’ Ratagan muttered.

‘All the Dale lords have private forces of their own,’ Bicker went on, ‘but they scarcely amount to much—maybe a dozen men apiece, and nowhere near as well trained as our Hearthwares. But Ringill has always had more, partly because of its strategic importance—’

‘—And partly because the lords of Ringill have always tended to think a mite too highly of themselves,’ Ratagan finished, and he drained his flagon.

Guillamon smiled. ‘You are a Hearthware, Ratagan, and so see things like the soldier you are, but from where I see it it is no bad thing to have a man as able as Marsco in a place like Ringill. If the worst happened, he has at least the ability and the pride to defend the place to the last. That knowledge is worth the nuisance he makes of himself from time to time.’ Here he looked pointedly at Bicker. ‘The Warbutt’s heir might also be expected to take the longer view of things.’

Bicker shook his head ruefully. ‘Politics. I need more practice.’

‘You’ll get it soon enough,’ Guillamon told him. ‘The lords should be here any day now, to air their grievances. No doubt the Warbutt will be wanting you to do most of the listening for him.’

‘As usual,’ said Bicker, a little bitterly.

Guillamon ignored his tone. ‘And there are things in the offing from north of Ringill, also,’ he said.

‘Bragad?’

‘The very same. Murtach has run into two of his patrols whilst quartering the hills up there—twenty strong apiece, and only two of them Hearthwares.’

‘So Bragad builds himself an army of sorts,’ Bicker remarked.

Guillamon nodded grimly. ‘It would be no bad thing to remind Marsco of that when he comes here complaining of our militia.’

‘Nothing like an outside threat to cut short the squabbling,’ Ratagan said with satisfaction.

‘Bragad is good at talking, and the fiefs are in dire need of strong reinforcing. If he comes here preaching about combining Rorims the squabbling may get worse, not better,’ said Bicker, frowning.

‘Politics,’ said Guillamon, shaking his head. But his eyes were bright.

T
HREE DAYS LATER,
Riven left his bed for the first time since the Rime Giant attack. Madra and Isay helped him vertical, with Ratagan sitting on a nearby stool venturing helpful advice.

‘Take his waist, Madra,’ he was saying, with a grin in his beard. ‘He won’t bite you. And you, Michael Riven, lean your weight on her. She’s a strong, sturdy girl, and your bulk will hardly make her knees buckle.’

Riven was pelted with images of Beechfield. Corridors and walking frames, and Doody telling him Rome wasn’t built in a day. His life seemed to be going in crazy circles of injury and recovery. He wondered why Madra’s face seemed so familiar to him. She was not one of his characters.

They draped a heavy cloak around his shoulders and supported him as he stood by the open window. He looked out on to the green-gold land, with its silver glitter of river and the crawling patches of grazing herds, the clumps of buildings far off with their ribbons of woodsmoke, and the long snake of the Rorim outer wall in the distance with the two towers of the south gate like stubby megaliths, dark against the grass. There was a tang in the air—greenness and growing things, the smell of dung. And punctuating the quiet was the rhythmic ring of a smith’s hammer, clear as a bell in the wideness of the Dale, evocative as a call to prayer.

Riven breathed in the air as though it were wine. He felt as though it could lift him off his toes and knit his bones for him at a draught. His two helpers supported him wordlessly, one to each side. He had come to realise that neither Isay nor Madra was overfond of needless talk, whilst to Ratagan conversation was a game and an art, as necessary to life as bread and beer.

‘It’s all right,’ he said at last. ‘I can stand on my own.’ And their arms fell from him at once. He swayed slightly on the balls of his feet and heard Ratagan shuffle up behind him. The big man was still lame, but surprisingly mobile.

‘I’m thinking we should find you attire suitable to your standing,’ he was saying. ‘With the Ralarth lords clustering here like bees around a foxglove, you should look the part.’

‘I will see to it,’ Madra put in. ‘Bicker is something of the same build as my lord here.’

Riven caught Ratagan’s eye.
My lord?

‘Your reputation precedes you, Sir Knight,’ the redbeard said, humour lighting his eyes. But Riven scowled. If there was a thing he did not need it was the titles Ratagan and the others had bestowed on him. They were something he could never hope to live up to.

There was a knock at the door, which Isay immediately answered. Riven took a seat on the edge of his bed as Murtach slipped into the room, Fife and Drum at his heels. The two wolves immediately began nuzzling Madra’s palms, and she gave one of her rare smiles, the dark brows lifting.

The shapeshifter was clad in grey sheepskins, and his eyes were bright as buttons.

‘Greetings, O wounded ones,’ he said, and dodged a swing from Ratagan’s crutch.

‘What news?’ the big man asked.

‘I hardly know what to tell you,’ Murtach replied, lifting his hands. ‘We have the lords gathering in ones and twos, their retainers eating up Colban’s meagre stores; we have news of a possible embassy from Bragad, and there are rumours of a battle to the north concerning Mugeary’s son.’

Ratagan’s face hardened. ‘The outcome?’

Murtach shrugged. ‘Ill. He is said to be slain, and a score of his men with him. Rime Giants overran them.’

‘So much for the sudden spring,’ Ratagan said quietly.

‘Aye. Carnach Rorim is in mourning tonight.’

They were silent for a few seconds, the only sound that of the insistent smith’s hammer beating out time on an anvil in the Dale beyond. Riven sat mute and tugged his invalid’s shift down below his knees with his sound arm. He stared at them—Isay as expressionless as always, Ratagan with his humour quenched for once, Murtach with his eyes darting over the room, and Madra, her hair tumbled on her shoulders and shining in the light from the window, the two wolves striving to edge their heads into her lap. Riven had a sudden, irrational urge to place his own there.

‘But the rub,’ Murtach said, ‘is that you, my fur-faced friend, are needed in the hall. Matters of import call, don’t you know.’

Ratagan groaned. ‘Cannot they leave a cripple alone for a while?’

‘There’s beer,’ Murtach remarked.

Ratagan brightened. ‘Duty is a burdensome thing, but it cannot be shirked... Come on, it’ll get warm.’ And the pair trooped outside, Murtach sparing a wink for Madra as he left. Fife and Drum cast her a regretful glance and then followed. The room seemed very quiet when they had gone, and Isay had taken up his role outside as sentry once more.

Beyond the window, the hammering smith had stopped, and all they could hear was the faint, far-off buzzing of humanity that might have come from the market place. Madra rose and picked up Riven’s rucksack.

‘What are you going to do with it?’ he asked her, reluctant to see it taken away. It was all he had left that bound him to his own world.

‘Sort through it and pack it neatly,’ she said. ‘You won’t be needing these clothes for a while at least, and there are a few tears I might mend.’ She pulled out his trousers and fingered a rent in them. It was an old one, and had been stitched before; once, clumsily, by himself, and then by Jenny. But her neat stitches had come undone. He felt a pang at the thought of Madra unpicking what was left of them.

‘What can I do?’ he asked her, and was angered by the plaintive note in his voice.

A faint smile hovered on her lips. Was she seventeen, eighteen? There was something about her that seemed ageless. ‘I could mend them here, if you wish,’ she said, and suddenly she looked like a hopeful child.

‘All right,’ he said roughly, and felt an odd relief which disturbed him.

The day wore round. He occupied himself with cleaning his boots whilst Madra bent over her needlework at his side. As the afternoon waned, she laid a fire, and the world outside the window became blue with dusk even as the flames cast a saffron glow about the room. The needle winked like a glede in the firelight, weaving in and out of his clothes in the grip of her deft fingers.

Only the sound of the sea missing.

He could imagine it now, the long breakers shooshing on the shingle before the bothy, the smell of peat smoke in the air, the twilight looming up out of the glen and reaching the first stars.

His eyes closed.

H
E WAS WITH
Jenny again, and they were riding together through a wide, unspoilt land of valleys and stone-strewn hills, with the sky a vast blue bowl above them and the mountains mere guesses of blue on the far horizon. They rode two fine horses with deep saddles and mild eyes, and the long grass of the open country swished at their stirrups as they travelled.