I was hungry again and growing cold. Two spells of warming were hard to maintain. Banking up the fire, I moved closer to the flames.
My father’s castle on the south coast would be warm, with heavy velvet curtains against the narrow windows, huge log fires burning in the many hearths. There would be wine and spirits, hot meats and pastries.
Ah, but I forget, ghost! You do not yet know me save as the threadbare bard. I was the youngest of three sons born to the second wife of the Angostin count, Aubertain of WestLea. Yes, an Angostin. Neither proud nor ashamed of it, to be sure. My eldest brother, Ranuld, went to live across the sea, to fight in foreign wars. The second, Braife, stayed at home to manage the estates, while I was to have entered the church. But I was not ready to wear the monk’s habit, to spend my life on my knees worshiping a God whose existence I doubted. I ran away from the monastery and apprenticed myself to a magicker named Cataplas. He had a twisted back that gave him constant pain, but he performed the Dragon’s Egg like no one before or since.
That, then, was me, Owen Odell, an Angostin bard who in that dread winter was unable to make a living and who was sitting against a tree, growing colder by the moment, while his powers were being expended on a heartless killer who slept by his fire.
I was not a happy man as I sat there, hugging my knees, my thin, stolen blanket wrapped tight around my bony frame.
An owl hooted in the branches above me, and Jarek stirred but did not wake. It was very peaceful there, I recall, beneath the bright stars.
Toward dawn Jarek awoke, yawned, and stretched. “Best sleep I’ve had in weeks,” he announced. Rolling to his feet, he gathered his bow and quiver and set off without a word of thanks for my efforts. My power had faded several hours before, and I had barely managed to keep Mace warm, while I was almost blue with cold. With shivering hands I threw the last small sticks on the fire and held my numbed fingers above the tiny flames.
The morning sky was dark with snow clouds, but the temperature was rising. Standing, I stamped my feet several times, trying to force the blood through to the frontiers of my toes.
Walking deeper into the forest, I began to gather more fuel. The weight of the recent snow had snapped many branches, and the smaller of those I collected in my arms and carried to my campsite, returning for larger sections, which I dragged through the snow. The work was arduous, and I soon tired. But at least I was warmer now, save for my hands. The tips of my fingers had swelled against my nails and throbbed painfully.
But all my discomfort was forgotten when the three men emerged from the forest to approach my fire.
There are times when the eyes see far more than the mind will acknowledge, when the heart will beat faster and panic begins at the root of the stomach. This was such a time. I looked up and saw the three, and my mouth was dry. Yet there was nothing instantly threatening about them. They looked like foresters dressed in homespun wool, with leather jerkins and boots of soft hide laced at the front with leather thongs. Each of them carried a bow, but they were also armed with daggers and short swords. I pushed myself to my feet, sure in my heart that I faced great peril.
“Welcome to my fire,” I said, proud that my voice remained steady. No one spoke, but they spread out around me, their eyes cold, faces grim. They seemed to me then like wolves, lean and merciless. The first of them, a tall man, looped his bow over his shoulder and knelt beside the fire, extending his hands to the flames. “You are a bard?” he said, not looking at me.
“I am, sir.”
“I don’t like bards. None of us like bards.”
It is difficult to know how to react to an opening like that. I remained silent. “We come a long way in search of your fire, bard. We seen it last night, twinkling like a candle, built where no sensible man would. We walked through the night, bard, expecting a little coin for our trouble.”
“I have no coin,” I told him.
“I can see that. It makes me angry, for you’ve wasted my time.”
“How can you blame me?” I asked him. “I did not invite you.”
He glanced up at one of the others. “Now he insults us,” he said softly. “Now he says we’re not good enough to share his fire.”
“That’s not what I said at all.”
“Now he calls me a liar!” snapped the man, rising and moving toward me, his hand on his dagger. “I think you should apologize, bard.”
It was then that I knew for certain they planned to kill me.
“Well?” he asked, pushing in close with his hand on his dagger. His breath was foul upon my face, his expression feral. There was nothing to say, and so I said nothing. I heard his knife whisper from its sheath, and I tensed myself for the lunge.
Suddenly his head jerked, and I heard a soft thud and the crack of split bone. I blinked in amazement, for an arrow had sprouted from his temple. He stood for a moment, then I heard his knife drop to the snow; his hand slowly moved up to touch the long shaft jutting from the side of his head. His mouth opened, but no words came, then he sagged against me and slid to the ground with blood seeping from his shattered skull.
The other two men stood transfixed.
And Jarek Mace appeared from behind a screen of bushes, walking forward to the fire with his bow looped over his shoulder. Ignoring the corpse, he approached the two men. “Good morning,” he said, his voice smooth, his smile in place. “It is cold, to be sure.”
In that moment everything changed. The two robbers, who had looked so threatening and tough, appeared suddenly to have lost their power. I looked hard at them but could see only unwashed peasants, confused and uncertain. What strength they had had was gone from them, their power leached away. They were wolves no longer.
“I think,” said Jarek Mace, “it is time for you to move on. You agree?”
They nodded but said nothing. “Good,” Mace told them. “Very good. Leave your bows behind and take the body with you.”
Dumbly they dropped their bows to the ground, then walked slowly to where I stood. They did not look at me but hauled the corpse upright and half carried, half dragged it away.
Within moments the little clearing was bare, and apart from the dropped bows and the blood by my feet there was no sign of the intruders.
“Thank you,” I managed to say.
“You are most welcome,” said Mace, “but it was nothing.”
“You saved my life. He would have killed me.”
“Yes. Now for the breakfast I promised you.”
“Breakfast? Shouldn’t we be gone from here? They might come back with others.”
“They won’t come back, bard,” he assured me.
“How can you be certain?”
“They don’t want to die.” Standing, he strolled back to the bushes, returning with a small deer slung across his broad shoulders. Thankfully he had already gutted and prepared it, but even then I could not tear my eyes from the deer’s delicate features. I have no aversion to eating venison, but I prefer it skinned and boned. It does my digestion no good at all to see the meat in its original form, and it is hard to appreciate food when its owner’s head lies close to your fire.
Even so, the meat was good, and Jarek cut the remaining portions and wrapped them in the hide for later use.
“Well, what are your plans?” he asked me as we finished our breakfast.
I shrugged. “I was told there was a village some six miles to the north. I intend to walk there and try to earn my supper.”
“And then?”
“I have thought no further on the subject. I would have starved in Ziraccu had I stayed much longer. Perhaps I will try for the ports and seek passage south.”
He nodded. “That’s good thinking. No one in his right mind would want to stay in this war-torn land. Is your power returned yet? I’m getting cold.”
“No,” I lied, basking in magick warmth. “Not for another hour, maybe two.”
“Then let us be moving,” he grunted, pushing himself to his feet and swinging the hide s
ack to his shoulder. Taking up my harp bag, I walked alongside him.
“Where are we going?”
“To the village you spoke of. I have friends there.”
I said nothing more and trudged silently behind him down the narrow trails through the trees. After a while we heard voices and laughter and emerged into a clearing beside the forest road.
It was a scene of murder and pillage. A score or more of rough-garbed woodsmen were moving among the bodies of the slain, ripping away rings and boots, cloaks and jerkins. Two wagons stood by, piled high with furniture and chests. I glanced at the dead—several men, three women, and beyond the road a monk in a bloodstained habit with an ax still jutting from his back.
“Good morning, Wulf,” called Jarek, striding across the murder site and hailing a hunchback with a forked beard.
The man looked up and grinned. “It is so far, Mace,” he said. Lifting a small hand ax, he brought the blade down on the hand of the dead man below him. I grunted in shock as the fingers were sliced in half. The hunchback lifted them, pulling the rings loose before discarding the shattered bones. “Who is your squeamish friend?”
“He is a bard and a magicker,” Jarek told him. Then he pointed at the corpse. “You’ve missed an earring.”
The hunchback grunted and tore the gold loose; the dead man’s head flopped in the snow. “I wouldn’t have missed it for long,” Wulf muttered. “What’s in the hide?”
“Venison.”
“Looking to share it with friends?”
“Are you looking to buy it?”
The hunchback let out a cackling laugh. “Why should I not take it? There’s twenty of us, and only a fool would fight. You are no fool.”
“No. I am not,” Jarek agreed, smiling. “But I would kill you, Wulf, then offer to share it with the others. You think they’d fight to avenge you?”
“Nah,” said the hunchback. “What do you say to this here brooch?” His bloody hand flicked the gold through the air. Jarek caught it with his left hand, then hefted it for weight.
“Nice. It’s a bargain.” Dropping the sack, Jarek walked on, stepping over the body of the priest. I hurried after him, keeping my mouth shut and my disgust to myself until we were some distance from the scene.
“At least he didn’t rape the women,” said Jarek. “He’s very moral that way.”
“Are you using that as an excuse for him?”
“He doesn’t need me to excuse him,” he answered. “Wulf is a woodsman—and a good one. But the war has taken its toll, even in the forest. The Count of Ziraccu needed money to hire his mercenaries. So even a count has a limited income: he could not afford to maintain his work force here. Wulf has no job now. Food supplies are scarce, and prices have risen fourfold. He has a family to feed yet no coin to buy food. What else could he do but take to the road?”
“He has become a murderer!”
“That’s what I said, didn’t I?”
“You condone the murder of innocent women?”
“I didn’t kill them,” he said. “Don’t vent your anger on me.”
“But you were happy to trade with their killers.”
He stopped and turned to face me, the smile, as ever, in place. “You are angry, bard, but not with me. You were filled with horror back there, and loathing and disgust. But you said nothing. That is what is burning inside you … not the trade.”
I let out a long sigh and looked away.
“Come on,” he said cheerfully. “It is a short walk to the village.”
The village was a collection of some twenty-five dwellings, some of simple wood construction beneath sloping roofs of thatch, others more solidly built of clay, mixed with powdered stone, beneath wooden roofs weighted with large stones. They were all single-story but equipped with narrow lofts where the children slept. The settlement was situated on the western shore of a long lake, and a dozen fishing boats were drawn up on the mud flats by the water’s edge.
Jarek and I walked into the village, passing a group of children playing by the open doors of the central hall. There was much giggling as the youngsters, dressed in simple tunics and trews of wool—most of them grime-ingrained—chased each other around the building. An old man sitting in a narrow doorway nodded at Jarek and lifted a weary hand in greeting. Jarek waved and moved on.
A young girl, scarcely in her teens, watched us as we passed. Her blond hair was cropped close to her head, and her eyes were wide and frightened. She shrank back against the side of the building, her gaze locked to us. I smiled at her, and she turned and sped away between the houses.
“Ilka,” said Jarek. “The village whore.”
“She is but a child.”
“Fifteen or thereabouts,” he said, “but she was raped two years ago in the forest and left to die. She is an orphan with no hope of marriage. What else could she become?”
“Why no hope of marriage? She is comely.”
“The rapists cut out her tongue,” he answered.
“And for that she is condemned?”
He stopped and turned to face me. “Why do you say condemned? She has employment, she earns her bread, she is not despised.”
I was lost for words. I could see from his expression that he was genuinely curious and lacked any understanding of the girl’s grief. Her future had been stolen from her, the gift of speech cruelly ripped from her mouth. Yet she was the one who faced a lifetime of punishment. I tried to explain this, but Jarek merely chuckled, shook his head, and walked on. I wondered then if I had missed some subtlety or overlooked an obvious point. But her face stayed in my mind, haunted and frightened.
We came at last to a narrow house built near the water’s edge. Beyond the dwelling was a tall net hut and a fenced area that had been dug over and shaped for a vegetable patch. Nothing was growing now, but inside the house there were sacks of carrots and dried onions and various containers filled with edible tubers that were unknown to me. It was a long one-room dwelling with a central hearth of fired clay and stone. Screens had been set around the hearth, and there were four rough-hewn seats close to the fire. Against the far wall was a wide bed. Jarek loosened the string of his bow and laid it against the wall, his quiver and sword alongside it. Shrugging off his sheepskin cloak, he sat beside the fire, staring into the flames.
“Who lives here?” I asked, pulling up a seat alongside him.
“Megan,” he answered, which told me little.
“Is she your lover?”
He chuckled and shook his head; he had a fine smile, warm and friendly. “You’ll meet her soon enough,” he said. “Show me some magick. I have been here for only a few moments, and already I’m bored.”
“What would you like to see?”
“I don’t care. Entertain me. Pretend I’m a full audience in a tavern.”
“Very well …” I sat back, thinking through my repertoire. Then I smiled. Before his eyes on the dirt floor a small building appeared, then another, and another. Between them was an alleyway. A young girl, no taller than the length of my hand, came running into sight, pursued by ruffians. A brightly garbed young man carrying a harp entered the scene. “Stop that!” he cried, his voice thin and reedy and far away. The ruffians advanced on him, but suddenly a tall hero leapt from an upper balcony. He moved like a dancer, yet his sword was deadly, and soon the ruffians were either dead or fleeing. I let the scene fade from sight. It took great concentration, but to have enchantment merely vanish always seemed to me to be the mark of a clumsy magicker.
He was silent for a moment, staring at the dirt floor. “That’s good, bard,” he said softly. “That’s very good. Is that how it looked to you?”
“It did at the time.”
“How have you lived so long?” he asked me.
“What do you mean?”
“The romance in your heart. This world of ours is a garden of evil. You should have been a monk, locked away in some gray monastery with high walls and strong gates.”
“Life can be lik
e the stories,” I said. “There are still heroes, men of great soul.”
“You have met them?”
“No, but that does not mean they do not exist. Manannan, the last knight of the Gabala, and Rabain the Vampyre slayer, both walked these woods, saw the stars above the same mountains. It is a dream of mine to see such a man, perhaps to serve him. A soldier or a poet, I do not mind. But someone with the courage to change this world, a man with a soul as bright as the last star of the morning.”
“Dream on, bard. Morningstar, indeed! You know much of weapons?”
“Very little. My older brothers were trained to be knights. Not I.”
“A morningstar is a terrible weapon. It has a short handle of iron, and attached to it is a chain; on the end of the chain is a ball of spiked metal. It is a kind of mace. When a man is struck by it, he dies, his skull smashed to fragments.”
“That is not the morning star I spoke of.”
“I know, but you spoke of a dream. I am giving you the reality.”
“Only your reality.”
“What is it you are looking for? Glory? What?”
I shrugged. “What do all men seek? I want to be happy. I would like a wife and sons one day. But I want them to grow in a land where there is hope for the future, where men do not take to the road. If that is a hopeless dream—and maybe it is—then I will sire no sons. I will wander, and play my harp, and weave my magick until the end.”
I expected him to laugh or to say something scornful. But somehow what he did was worse. He stood and walked to a nearby water butt, lifting a copper gourd and drinking deeply.
“You think the weather will break soon?” he asked me.
I did not answer him. I felt a sudden need for music and took my harp outside, walking to the water’s edge and sitting beside a long, narrow boat. The wind was rippling the water, and small sections of ice came floating by on the gray surface. Snow began to fall, and I played for the snow, my fingers plucking daintily at the shorter strings, the higher notes, the music drifting out over the lake. Darker, deeper tones crept in as the storm clouds gathered.