Wolf In Shadow (6 page)

 ’I have no wagon, sir, nor enough Barta coin to raise one. And I have commitments here that must be fulfilled.’

 The man nodded and then grinned. ‘That’s why I want you. I’d take no footloose rider straight from the Outlands and I won’t import Brigands into Avalon. You are a sturdy soul, by the look of you. Do you have a family?’

 ’Yes.’

 Then sell your farm and follow after us. There’ll be land waiting.’

 Shannow left him watering the oxen and walked inside, where Donna was awake and standing by the open door.

 ’You heard that?’ asked Shannow.

 ’Yes. The Plague Lands.’

 ’What do you feel?’

 ’I do not want you to go. But if you do, we will go with you if you’ll have us.’

 He opened his arms and drew her to him, too full of wild joy to speak. Behind him the tall man from the yard politely cleared his throat and Shannow turned.

 ’My name is Cornelius Griffin, and I may have a proposition for you.’

 ’Come in, Mr Griffin,’ said Donna. ‘I am Donna Taybard and this is my husband, Jon.’

 ’A pleasure, Fray Taybard.’

 ’You spoke of a proposition,’ said Shannow.

 ’Indeed I did. We have a family with us who are not desirous of a risky journey and it could be that they will part with their wagon and goods in return for your farm. Of course there will be an extra amount in Barta coin, should the prospect interest you.’

 Jon Shannow rode his steeldust gelding down the main street of Rivervale settlement, his long leather coat flapping against the horse’s flanks, his wide-brimmed hat shading his eyes. The houses were mostly timber near the roadside, early dwellings of some three or perhaps four decades. On outlying hills above the shallow coal-mine rose the new homes of stone and polished wood. Shannow rode past the mill and across the hump-back bridge, ignoring the stares of workmen and loafers who peered at him from the shadows. Several children were playing in a dusty side street and a barking dog caused his horse to jump sideways. Shannow sat unmoving in the saddle and rode on, reining in his mount at the steps to the alehouse.

 He dismounted and tied the reins to a hitching rail, mounted the steps and entered the drinking hall. There were some twenty men sitting or standing at the long bar -among them the giant, Bard, his head bandaged. Beside him was Fletcher and both men gaped as Shannow moved towards them.

 A stillness settled on the room.

 ’I am come to tell you, Mr Fletcher, that Fray Taybard has sold her farm to a young family from Ferns Crossing, a settlement some two months’ journey to the south. She has given them a bond of sale that should satisfy the Committee.’

 ’Why tell me?’ said Fletcher, aware of the spectators, many of whom were known Landsmen of integrity.

 ’Because you are a murderous savage and a Brigand, sir, who would lief as not kill the family and pretend they were usurpers.’

 ’How dare you?’

 ’I dare because it is the truth, and that will always be a bitter enemy to you, sir. I do not know how long the people of Rivervale will put up with you, but if they have sense it win not be long.’

 ’You cannot think to leave here alive, Shannow?’ said Fletcher. ‘You are a named Brigand.’

 ’Named by you! Jerrik, Swallow and Pearson are dead, Mr Fletcher. Before he died, Pearson told me you had offered him a place on your Committee. Strange that you now have places for known woman-killers!’

 ’Kill him!’ screamed Fletcher and Shannow dived to his right as a crossbow bolt flashed from the doorway. His pistol boomed and a man staggered back from sight to fall down the steps beyond.

 A pistol flamed in Fletcher’s hand and something tugged at the collar of Shannow’s coat. The right-hand pistol flowered in flame and smoke and Fletcher pitched back, clutching his belly. A second shot tore through his heart. Bard was running for the rear door and Shannow let him go, but the man twisted and fired a small pistol which hammered a shell into the wood beside Shannow’s face. Splinters tore into his cheek and he pumped two bullets into the big man’s throat; Bard collapsed in a fountain of blood.

 Shannow climbed slowly to his feet and scanned the room, and the men lying face down and motionless.

 ’I am Jon Shannow, and have never been a Brigand.’

 Turning his back he walked into the street. A shell whistled past his head and he turned and fired. A man reared up from behind the water trough, clutching his shoulder - in his hand was a brass-mounted percussion pistol. Then Shannow shot him again and he fell without a sound. A musket boomed from a window across the street, snatching Shannow’s hat from his head; he returned the fire, but hit nothing. Climbing into the saddle, he kicked the gelding into a run.

 Several men raced to cut him off. One fired a pistol, but the gelding cannoned into the group and sent them sprawling to the dust - and Shannow was clear and over the hump-back bridge, heading west to join Donna and Eric . . .

 . . . and the road to Jersualem.

 Con Griffin swung in the saddle and watched the oxen toiling up the steep slope. The first of the seventeen wagons had reached the lava ridge, and the others were strung out like vast wooden beads on the black slope.

 Griffin was tired and the swirling lava dust burned his eyes. He swung his horse and studied the terrain ahead. As far as the eye could see, which from this height was a considerable distance, the black lava sand stretched from jagged peak to jagged peak.

 They had been traveling now for five weeks, having linked with Jacob Madden’s twelve wagons north of Rivervale. In that time they had seen no riders, nor any evidence of Brigands on the move. And yet Griffin was wary. He had in his saddlebags many maps of the area, sketched by men who claimed to have traveled the lands in their youth. It was rare for any of the maps to correspond, but one thing all agreed on was that beyond the lava stretch lived a Brigand band of the worst kind: eaters of human flesh.

 Griffin had done his best to prepare his wagoners for the worst. No family had been allowed to join the convoy unless they owned at least one working rifle or handgun. As things now stood there were over twenty guns in the convoy, enough to deter all but the largest Brigand party.

 Con Griffin was a careful man and, as he often said, a damned fine wagoner. This was his third convoy in eleven years and he had survived drought, plague, Brigand raids, vicious storms and even a flash flood. Men said Con Griffin was lucky and he accepted that without comment. Yet he knew that luck was merely the residue of hard thinking and harder work. Each of the twenty-two-foot wagons carried one spare wheel and axle suspended beneath the tailboards, plus sixty pounds of flour, three sacks of salt, eighty pounds of dried meat, thirty pounds of dried fruit and six barrels of water. His own two wagons were packed with trade goods and spares - hammers, nails, axes, knives, saw-blades, picks, blankets and woven garments. Griffin liked to believe he left nothing to luck.

 The people who travelled under his command were tough and hardy and Griffin, for all his outward gruffness, loved them all. They reflected all that was good in people, strength, courage, loyalty and a stubborn willingness to risk all they had on the dream of a better tomorrow.

 Griffin sat back in the saddle and watched the Taybard wagon begin the long haul up the lava slope. The woman, Donna, intrigued him. Leather-tough and satin-soft, she was a beautiful contradiction. The wagon-master rarely involved himself in matters of the heart, but had Donna Taybard been available he would have broken his rule. The boy, Eric, was running alongside the oxen, urging them on with a switch stick. He was a quiet boy, but Griffin liked him; he was quick and bright and learned fast. The man was another matter . . .

 Griffin had always been a good judge of character, an attribute vital to a leader, yet he could make nothing of Jon Taybard . . . except that he was riding under an assumed name. The relationship between Taybard and Eric was strained, the boy avoiding the man at all but meal-times. Still, Taybard was a good man with a horse and he never complained or shirked the tasks Griffin set him.

 The Taybard wagon reached the top of the rise and was followed by the elderly scholar Peacock. The man had no coordination and the wagon stopped half-way up the slope. Griffin cantered down and climbed up to the driving seat, allowing his horse to run free.

 ’Will you never learn, Ethan?’ he said, taking reins and whip from the balding Peacock.

 He cracked the thirty-foot whip above the ear of the leading ox and the animal lurched forward into the traces. Slowly the lumbering wagon moved up the hill.

 ’Are you sure you can’t read, Con?’ asked Peacock.

 ’Would I lie to you, scholar?’

 ’It is just that that fool Phelps can be tremendously annoying. I think he only reads sections that prove his case.’

 ’I have seen Taybard with a Bible - ask him,’ said Griffin. The wagon moved on to the ridge and he stepped to the running board and whistled for his horse. The chestnut stallion came at once and Griffin climbed back into the saddle.

 Maggie Ames’ wagon was the next to be stopped on the slope, a rear wheel lodged against a lava rock. Griffin dismounted and manhandled it clear, to be rewarded with a dazzling smile. He tipped his hat and rode away. Maggie was a young widow, and that made her dangerous indeed.

 Throughout the long hot afternoon, the wagon convoy moved on through the dusty ridge. The oxen were weary and Griffin rode ahead looking for a camp-site.

 There was no water to be found and he ordered the wagons stopped on the high ground above the plain, in the lee of a soaring rock face. Griffin unsaddled the chestnut and rubbed him down, then filled his leather hat with water and allowed the horse to drink.

 All around the camp people were looking to their animals, wiping the dust from the nostrils of their oxen and giving them precious water. Out here the animals were more than beasts of burden. They were life.

 Griffin’s driver, a taciturn oldster named Burke, had prepared a fire and was cooking a foul-smelling stew in a copper-bottomed pot. Griffin sat opposite the man. ‘Another long day,’ he remarked.

 Burke grunted. ‘Worse tomorrow.’

 ’I know.’

 ’You won’t get much more out of these animals - they need a week at least and good grass.’

 ’You see any grass today, Jim?’

 ’I'm only saying what they need.’

 ’According to the map there should be good grass within the next three days,’ said Griffin, removing his hat and wiping the sweat from his forehead.

 ’Which map is that?’ asked Burke, smiling knowingly. ‘Cardigan’s. It seems about the best of them.’

 ’Yeah. Ain’t he the one that saw the body-eaters at work? Didn’t they roast his companions alive?’

 ’So he said, Jim. And keep your voice down,’ Burke pointed to the fat figure of Aaron Phelps, the arcanist, who was making his way to the wagon of Ethan Peacock. ‘He’d make a good lunch for them Brigands.’

 ’Cardigan came through here twenty years ago. There’s no reason to believe the same Brigands are still in the area. Most war-makers are movers,’ said Griffin.

 ’Expect you’re right, Mr Griffin,’ agreed Burke with a wicked grin. ‘Still, I should send Phelps out as our advance scout. He’d feed an entire tribe.’

 ’I ought to send you, Jimmy - you’d put them off human flesh for life. You haven’t bathed in the five years I’ve known you!’

 ’Water gives you wrinkles,’ said Burke. ‘I remember that from when I was a yongen. It shrivels you up.’

 Griffin accepted the bowl of stew Burke passed him and tasted it. If anything it was more foul than its smell - but he ate it, following it with flat bread and salt.

 ’I do not know how you come up with such appalling meals,’ said Griffin at last, pushing his plate away.

 Burke grinned. ‘Nothing to work with. Now, if you gave me Phelps . . .’

 Griffin shook his head and stood. He was a tall man, red-haired and looking older than his thirty-two years. His shoulders were broad and his belly pushed out over the top of his belt, despite Burke’s culinary shortcomings.

 He wandered along the wagon line chatting to the families as they gathered by their cook fires, and ignored the squabbling Phelps and Peacock. At the Taybard wagon he stopped.

 ’A word with you, Mr Taybard,’ he said and Jon Shannow set aside his plate and rose smoothly, following Griffin out on to the trail ahead of the wagons. The wagon-master sat on a jutting rock and Shannow sat facing him. There could be difficult days ahead, Mr Taybard,’ began Griffin, breaking a silence which had become uncomfortable.

 ’In what way?’

 ’Some years ago there was a murderous Brigand band in these parts. Now when we come down from these mountains we should find water and grass, and we will need to rest for at least a week. During that time we could come under attack.’

 ’How may I help you?’

 ’You are not a farmer, Mr Taybard. I sense you are more of a hunter and I want you to scout for us - if you will?’

 Shannow shrugged. ‘Why not?’

 Griffin nodded. The man had asked nothing of the Brigands, nor of their suspected armaments. ‘You are a strange man, Mr Taybard.’

 ’My name is not Taybard; it is Shannow.’

 ’I have heard the name, Mr Shannow. But I shall call you Taybard as long as you ride with us.’

 ’As you please, Mr Griffin.’

 ’Why did you feel the need to tell me?’

 ’I do not like living a lie.’

 ’Most men find little difficulty in that respect,’ said Griffin. ‘But then you are not as most men. I heard of the work you did in Allion.’

 ’It came to nothing; the Brigands returned once I had gone.’

 ’That is hardly the point, Mr Shannow.’

 ’What is?’

 ’You can only show the way and it is for others to follow the path. In Allion they were stupid; when you have dusted a room, you do not throw away the broom.’

 Shannow smiled and Griffin watched him relax. ‘Are you a Bookman, Mr Griffin?’

 The wagon-master returned the smile and shook his head. ‘I tell people I cannot read, but yes, I have studied the Book and there is much sense in it. But I am not a believer, Mr Shannow, and I doubt that Jerusalem exists.’

 ’A man must look for something in life, even if it is only a non-existent city.’

 ’You should speak to Peacock,’ said Griffin. ‘He has a thousand scraps of Dark Age remnants. And now that his eyes are fading, he needs help to study them.’

 Griffin rose to leave, but Shannow stopped him. ‘I want to thank you, Mr Griffin, for making me welcome.’

 ’It is nothing. I am not a weak man, Mr Shannow. Shadows do not frighten me, nor reputations such as yours. I will leave you with this thought, though: What point is there in seeking Jerusalem? You have a fine wife and a growing son who will need your talents at home, wherever home may lie.’

 Shannow said nothing and Griffin wandered back into the firelight. Shannow remained apart, sitting beneath the stars lost in thought. Donna found him there close to midnight and sat beside him, curling her arm around his waist.

 ’Are you troubled, Jon?’

 ’No. I was thinking of the past.’

 ’The Prester used to say, “The past is dead, the future unborn. What we have is the Now, and we abuse it.”‘

 ’I have done nothing to deserve you, Lady. But believe me I thank the Lord for you daily.’

 ’What did Mr Griffin want?’ she asked, suddenly embarrassed by the intensity of his words.

 ’He wants me to scout for him tomorrow.’

 ’Why you? You do not know this land.’

 ’Why not me, Donna?’

 ’Will it be dangerous, do you think?’

 ’I don’t know. Perhaps.’

 ’Damn you, Jon. I wish you would learn to lie a little!’

 Shannow rode away from the wagons in the hour after dawn and once they were lost to sight behind him he removed the Bible from his saddlebag and allowed it to fall open in his hands. Glancing down, he read: ‘Behold I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.’ He closed the book and returned it to his saddlebag.

 Ahead of him stretched the black lava sand and he set the gelding off at a canter, angling towards the north.

 For weeks now he had sat listening to the petty rows and squabbles of the two scholars, Phelps and Peacock, and though he had gleaned some food for thought the two men made him think of the words of Solomon: ‘For in much wisdom is much grief, and he that increaseth wisdom increaseth sorrow.’

 Last night the two men had argued for more than an hour concerning the word ‘train’. Phelps insisted it was a mechanized Dark Age means of conveyance, while Peacock maintained it was merely a generic term to cover a group of vehicles, or wagons in convoy. Phelps argued that he had once owned a book which explained the mechanics of trains. Peacock responded by showing him an ancient scrap of paper that talked of rabbits and cats dressing for dinner with a rat.

 ’What has that to do with it?’ stormed Phelps, his fat face reddening.

 ’Many books of the Dark Age are not true. They obviously loved to lie - or do you believe in a village of dressed-up rabbits?’

 ’You old fool!’ shouted Phelps. ‘It is simple to tell which are fictions. This book on trains was sound.’

 ’How would you know? Because it was plausible? I saw a painting once of a man wearing a glass bowl on his head and waving a sword. He was said to be walking on the moon.’

 ’Another fiction, and it proves nothing,’ said Phelps.

 And so it went on. Shannow found the whole argument pointless.

 Individually both men were persuasive. Phelps maintained that the Dark Age had lasted around a thousand years, in which time science produced many wonders, among them trains and flying craft, and also pistols and superior weapons of war. Peacock believed the Dark Age to be less than one hundred years, citing Christ’s promise to his disciples that some of them would still be alive when the end came.

 ’If that promise was not true,’ argued Peacock, ‘then the Bible would have to be dismissed as another Dark Age fiction.’

 Shannow instinctively leaned towards Peacock’s biblical view, but found Phelps to be more open-minded and genuinely inquisitive.

 Shannow shook his mind clear of the foggy arguments and concentrated on the trail. Up ahead the lava sand was breaking and he found himself riding up a green slope shaded by trees. At the top he paused and looked down on a verdant valley with glistening streams.

 For a long time he sat his horse, studying the land. There was no sign of life, no evidence of human habitation. He rode on warily, coming at last to a deer trail which he followed down to a wide pool of fresh water. The ground around the pool was studded with tracks of all kinds - goats, sheep, deer, buffalo and even the spoor of lions and bears. Near the pool was a tall pine and ten feet up from the ground were the claw-marks which signified the brown bear’s territory. Bears were sensible animals; they did not fight each other for territory, they merely marked the trees. When a different bear arrived, he would rear up and try to match the scars. If he could outreach them he would make his mark, and the smaller bear would depart once he had seen his adversary was bigger and stronger. If he could not reach the scars he would amble on in search of new territory. The idea appealed to Shannow. . . but even here a little trickery could be used.