“You don’t have to do this.” Gorlan twisted to look at Ellen. “Have mercy! You were a nun-”
“A novice. And not by choice.”
“I have money.”
“You’re on the right track there.” Makin offered a smile in the darkness. “Sweet Ellen’s a mercenary soul. I hired her to track you and your officers down. Not that the rabble you brought to my home was really an army … but you called yourself one, and when you named yourselves its commanders you gave me a place to aim my vengeance. Find the right price and she’s yours.”
“My father could give you five hundred in crown gold…”
“But you recall how I said Nessa couldn’t cook?” Makin said.
“Nessa?” Gorlan yanked his hands before him, free of their bonds now but white things, lifeless until the blood returned to them.
“My wife. Pay attention or I might grow angry.” Makin squatted down again, his sword standing between them. “We had a nanny, a gardener, four hands for the fields, a stable boy … a whole household. Our cook, Drusilla, was meaner that a sick dog, but she could work miracles with the plainest fare. Made the best pies I’ve eaten. Chicken soup too – to die for. And your men killed her in the kitchen.”
“My mother.” Ellen stood, the lad’s bonds loose in her hand.
“Her mother,” Makin said. “She ran from that convent and came looking for her dear old ma, only to find her buried by the ruins of my house. Still, offer her enough gold though and I’ve no doubt that Ellen will consider the deal. She’s only here because I’m paying her. She’s told me to let it go more times than I can count. Perhaps that’s what some old nun taught her. Everything has its season, and seasons pass?”
Gorlan looked up at Ellen, eying the blade in her hands. “I’m sorry about your mo-”
“I hated the old witch.” Ellen shrugged. “She put me in that place. Said I was a disgrace to the family and to God. I came back to discuss the matter with her…”
Makin kicked Gorlan’s foot. “We’re here to discuss me and mine. So pay attention.”
“I’m sorry-”
Makin cut across him. “I don’t even think there was any particular malice in the attack. It was, after all, just a little skirmish over who owned what, which boundary ran where. The house Nessa’s father gave us was just in an inconvenient spot. Men die in wars every day, and this wasn’t even big enough to be called a war.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to say.” Gorlan flexed his numb hands and wiped at his mouth. “I didn’t even see your wife die. I had fifty men and an objective. Take the manor.”
“And men die in war every day,” said Makin. He rolled his shoulders, feeling the ache in his back and ribs. The sword hadn’t hurt going in. His lung hadn’t hurt as it filled with blood. The pain moved in days later, seemingly to stay. “And women too!”
“What?” Gorlan flinched at the suddenness of Makin’ addition.
“And women,” he repeated. “Women die in wars every day.”
Gorlan spread his hands, looking younger than his years. He couldn’t have been more than twenty. “I didn’t tell anyone to-”
“Objectives are secured, people die. I understand how it goes. Ellen understands better. She says the hunger for revenge eats a man up. She says killing doesn’t fill that hole. It just makes it echo.” Makin rubbed beneath his ribs, trying to press out the ache of that sword wound, nearly two years old now. “She’s right too. Hanging Captain Orlac with his own guts, impaling Elias Smith on a spear … it didn’t ease what’s inside me, didn’t loosen the teeth of it none. It made me hungrier for the rest of you, made me think that if I just got you all then I could sleep, I could rest, I could close my eyes without seeing them.
“That’s the problem though, Gorlan. I don’t want to stop seeing them.” Makin peered across at the younger man. “You’re trying not to ask. You’re thinking “them?” but you don’t want to say it in case it leads somewhere bloody. Ellen will tell you.”
Ellen cleared her throat, looked down at her knife, then up at the moon. “There was a daughter. Little girl.”
“I’m sorry…” Gorlan glanced at the sword standing unguarded from the ground between his knees, then out into the night as if sizing up his chances if he ran.
“Cerys. Three years old. Pretty as a flower. Sweet as- … but she doesn’t need my broken poetry. She was a child, my little girl. When you make a new life … see her brought into the world … see her grow… You change as quickly and profoundly as the baby. You watch the world through fresh eyes, from a different place. My heart beat for her … do you understand me, Gorlan?”
“Yes,” he said, though his eyes denied it. It’s not something most young men can fathom. He flexed his hands, less white now, and waited.
“She ran into the house and hid. Her mother told her to. A lot of children that age would have panicked and clung to their mother’s skirts. They would have died together then.” Makin drew a deep breath and steadied the waver in his voice. “She hid, but the fire found her. The smoke first most likely, strangling her before the flames came seeking. A kindness really.” His hands made fists and each knuckle creaked. “We found Sergeant Devid in a flea-pit of a village on the borders of Renar. He knew we were coming for him. It should be easy to lose yourself in this Broken Empire … but everyone’s hungry for coin and we all have eyes on us.” Makin drew a deep breath. “I threw whiskey on Devid and let him burn. He screamed something awful. I don’t know if it was him that ordered the fire set… I told myself it was. And when the whiskey burned off and he lay there black and red and groaning, I looked at him and I felt worse. I thought it would close a door … but I stood there and knew they were watching me, Nessa and Cerys, and I felt dirty. I put my sword through him and rode off hard. Took Ellen two days to find me and she’s good at finding people. She’s got the sight and nobody can hide from her for too long.
“So here we are, Gorlan. I understand that you were just a lord’s boy put in charge of a band of levies, doing what you were told. I understand that killing you won’t make this right, or make me feel better. I know that men follow this same path every day, despite knowing all that I know … because they can’t find it in themselves to let the person who wronged them live.”
“S-so you’re going to kill me?” Gorlan asked, shivering despite the warmth of the night. “Is that why the sword’s there? You want me to reach for it, to make it easier for you?”
Makin nodded. “It would be easier if you did.” He looked around. “Do you know what this place is?”
Gorlan shook his head. “No.”
“They call it the Coney Meadows. That’s what keeps the grass short, rabbits. You’d think it would be a fine place for cows, what with the soil.” Makin dug his fingers in and turned the sod, deep and rich and black. “But in the old days, way back when, in the times when men had sharper means of killing than a sword point … they fought here and buried their bombs. Thousands of them. Millions. Walk your cattle out here and before the day’s done half of them will be scattered about in small red chunks, each bit smoking.”
“You bought horses,” Gorlan said.
“I know the paths. Ellen can see what lies beneath, remember? She can see past your bones.” Makin smiled. “You’ll be able to follow our trail a ways in the morning but it goes across stony ground soon enough and you’ll lose it there.”
“You said you didn’t want to kill me…”
“Oh, I want to kill you, Gorlan. That fire burns too hot to go out … but it’s not raging so fierce now that I can’t see past it. I’m going to leave you here. You’ll make it home by yourself or you won’t … and I won’t ever know. I can’t kill you, not and stay whole, not and keep my daughter’s memory a pure thing inside me. But I can’t forgive you either. I can’t just let you walk away from this. So there it is. As close to mercy as I can come.”
Makin stood. He gestured to the sword, waiting to see if the boy would take it.
Gorlan shook his head. “I saw you fight that day. For a while I wasn’t sure I’d brought enough men.”
Makin pulled his blade from the ground and, wiping it on his cloak, returned it to its scabbard. He stepped into his stirrup and mounted the black stallion he’d ridden in on.
“Don’t forget their names, boy.”
“Cerys, and Nessa.”
“And don’t ever let me see your face again.”
Makin rode off. Ellen mounted her sway-backed mare with equal grace and followed on, sparing a single and unreadable glance backward. The night swallowed them both.
Dawn found Gorlan shivering in the blanket they’d left him. He got up in the first grey light, mist coiling about his ankles, and began to follow the trail the pair had left behind them. Even in the gloom and mist the marks of hooves on soft turf weren’t difficult to spot.
He walked on, hardly caring that any stray step might see him blown apart by fires from beneath the ground. Sir Makin had haunted his dreams for the better part of a year. Always drawing closer – reported here, reported there – a trail of dead men in his wake, each death more ghastly than the one before. And now … Gorlan felt himself reborn. He’d regretted attacking the manor almost as soon as they rode out of the vale. His father had told him to convince Makin Bortha to leave. Somehow it had got out of hand, and quickly. He hadn’t got off his horse but it was his spear that impaled the wife. A red day – but one that had finally ended.
The sun showed bloody on the hills to the east and the mist drew back as if inhaled. The ground grew dry and stony, gorse bushes encroaching on the moorland. Gorlan had to look harder for the hoofmarks, bending to study each patch of grass.
“Hello.” A knife blade slipped under his chin, a hand to the back of his head.
“Wait!” Gorlan held deathly still. It had been a woman’s voice, mouth close to his ear. “He said he wouldn’t-”
“Ah, men say a lot of things, especially high-borns. The nuns used to like to talk everything through six ways before breaking fast too. We weren’t a silent order, more’s the pity. Over-thinking I call it.”
“Please don’t.” The blade rested icy against his neck. “Your mother-”
“I didn’t hunt you for her!” She laughed. “The thing is – you were very difficult to find, Gorlan. I’ve ridden a thousand miles finding you and your friends, and I didn’t much enjoy it.” Fingers tightened in Gorlan’s hair. “Now one of these days that good man is going to say, ‘I’ve changed my mind. Fetch Ellen to me. We’re going to track down that Gorlan and kill him proper this time.’”
“You’ll never hear my name again. I swear it. By my mother’s-”
Ellen jerked her arm and pressed hard against Gorlan’s head. Ice turned to fire and warmth flooded his chest.
“And I’ll say, ‘I can save you a trip, good sir, because I absolved the young man of his sins that first morning.’” Ellen let Gorlan fall to the hard earth. “Besides, it doesn’t do to call on your ma when dealing with a woman whose own mother you put in the grave. You stole that particular bit of revenge from me, and theft is a sin. A deadly one in this case.”
Gorlan felt no pain, only sorrow, his limbs seeming to float, the voice growing distant.
“I do miss her soups though. Having found you I would have slit your throat just for that. Some men hunger for vengeance and yet it offers them no comfort – me though? I like the taste. It feels as warm and filling as a good hot bowl of chicken soup.” She smacked her lips. The last thing Gorlan saw was her left boot heel as she walked away.
Footnote – Revenge is a theme throughout the Broken Empire books. Here we see that the Ancraths don’t hold exclusive rights to it. Jorg is characterised in part by a lack of restraint. That can take you to bad places even though each step on the path is attractive. The pursuit of revenge is one such path where restraint is the only real way out.
A Good Name
The scars of his name still stung about his neck and shoulders. The sun beat upon him as it had always beaten, as it would continue to beat until the day came at last for the tribe to put his bones in the caves beside those of his ancestors.
The young man held his name tight, unwilling even to move his lips around the shape of it. He had won both manhood and a name in the heat and dust of the ghost plain. Long Toe had led him out a nameless child. He found his own way back, bleeding from the wounds of a thousand thorn pricks. Long Toe had patterned him with the spine of a casca bush. In time the scars would darken and the black on brown pattern would let the world know him for a man of the Haccu tribe.
“Firestone, fetch me water.” Broken Bowl rose from his bower as Firestone approached the village, dusty from his long trek.
Broken Bowl watched his cattle from the comfort of his shaded hammock most days. Men would come to buy, leaning on the twisted fence spars, chewing betel until their mouths ran bloody, spitting the juice into the dust. Half a day spent in haggling and they would leave with a cow, two cows, three cows, and Broken Bowl would return to his hammock with more cowrie shells for his wives to braid into his hair.
“I’m a man now. Find a boy to bring you water.” Firestone had known Broken Bowl would test him. Many of the new men still fetched and carried for him as they had when they were boys. Broken Bowl might only have worn his scars five years but he had wealth and he could wrestle a cow to the ground unaided when the time came to bleed one. Besides, his father led the warriors to battle.
“Don’t make me beat you, little man.” Broken Bowl slid from his hammock, and stood, tall, thick with muscle, honour scars reaching in bands from both shoulders nearly to the elbow.
“I’m not making you.” Firestone had carried Broken Bowl’s water and his ‘little man’ for years. He was neither little now, nor ready to carry another gourd from the well. On the ghost plain Long Toe had tested him, broken him nearly, left him dry long enough to see the spirits hiding in the dust, hurt him bad enough to take the sting from pain.
Broken Bowl rolled his head on his thick neck and stretched his arms out to the side, yawning. “End this foolishness, Firestone. The young men bring me water. When you have fought alongside the warriors, when you have Hesha blood on your spear, or a braid of Snake-Stick hair on your wrist, the young men will carry for you too.”
“You are still a young man, Broken Bowl. I remember when you came back with your scars.” Firestone’s heart beat hard beneath the bone of his breast. His mouth grew dry and the words had to be pushed from it – like ebru forced from cover before the hunters. He knew he should bow his head and fetch the water, but his scars stung and his true name trembled behind his lips.
Broken Bowl stamped in the dust, not just ritual anger – the real emotion burned in his bloodshot eyes. Two men of Kosha village turned from the cattle pens to watch. Small children emerged from the shade of the closest huts, larger ones hurrying after. A whistle rang out somewhere back past the long hall.
“Do you remember why they call you Firestone?” Broken Bowl asked. He sucked in a breath and calmed himself.
Firestone said nothing. He knew that Broken Bowl would tell the story again for the gathering crowd.
“Your brother found you bawling your eyes out, clutching a stone from the fire to your chest.” Broken Bowl rubbed his fists against his eyes, mocking those tears. “Your father had to take the stone from you and he cursed as it burned him.”
Firestone felt the eyes of the children on his chest. The scars there had a melted quality to them. One of the Kosha men laughed, a lean fellow with a bone plate through his nose.
“Your name is a lesson, Firestone. About when to put something down and walk away.” Broken Bowl cracked his knuckles. “Put this down. Walk away.”
Firestone carried no weapon, he had a spear in his father’s hut, warped, its point fire-hardened wood. Broken Bowl had a bronze curas at his hip on the leather strap that held his loincloth. The larger man made no move to draw it though. He would beat Firestone bloody but do no murd
er. Not today. Even now Firestone could fetch the water and escape with nothing more than a slap or two.
“Harrac.” Firestone whispered his true name, curling his lips around the sound. Every prick of that casca spine lanced again through his skin as he spoke his name – all of them at once – a thousand stabs, a liquid pain. He threw himself forward, the lion’s snarl bursting from him.
Perhaps he was faster than he had thought – and he had thought himself fast. Perhaps Broken Bowl hadn’t taken him seriously, or had expected threats and stamping. Either way, when Harrac leapt, Broken Bowl reached for him too slow, fumbled his grapple, and the top of Harrac’s forehead smashed into Broken Bowl’s cheek and nose.
They went down together. Broken Bowl hammering into the dust, Harrac on top, pounding the edge of his hand into Broken Bowl’s face. Broken Bowl threw him off – the man’s strength amazed Harrac but didn’t daunt him. In two heartbeats he was back on his foe. Broken Bowl managed to turn onto his side but Harrac threw his weight upon the man’s back as he tried to rise. Harrac drove his elbow into the back of Broken Bowl’s neck, brought his knee up into his ribs, pressed his face into the ground with his other hand. A red fury seized him and he didn’t stop pounding his foe until the men of the village pulled him off.
Harrac sat on the ground, sweat cutting paths through the dusk caking his limbs. The crowd about him, an indivisible many, their words just noise beneath the rush of his breathing and the din of his heart. From the corner of his eye he saw five men carry Broken Bowl toward the huts. Later his father came, and Broken Bowl’s father, and Carry Iron in his headman’s cloak of feathers, and Long Toe, Ten Legs, Spiller ... all the elders.
“I am a man,” Harrac said when he stood before them, with the village watching on. “I have a name. I have a man’s strength.”
“Then why do you not use it as a man?” His own father, three of Harrac’s grown brothers at his shoulders.
“I would not carry water for him,” Harrac said.