It felt as if we were playing a game, a perilous and difficult one. Every day I performed my exercises under his supervision. I ate what was put in front of me and rested when I was told to. I began to help with domestic tasks – preparing food, tending to the fire, washing clothes and hanging them on a line by the hearth. Once or twice he took me outside, well wrapped, for a brief, closely supervised walk. The air was bracingly cold; I could not stay out for long before my chest began to hurt and he bundled me back inside to recover by the fire. But slowly and surely I was getting better. Soon we would have to talk again about the future.
Flint did not ply me with hard questions. From time to time he would remind me that if I was more open with him, we’d both be better placed to discuss what came next. He was patient, working away at my reserve as water works at stone, drop by slow drop.
A wary trust developed between us. His kindness seemed real. With every day that passed, he seemed less Enforcer and more friend, a man who was not given to smiles, laughter or confidences, but who was steady, capable and considerate. He never once raised his voice or lifted a hand against me. And he was patient. He worked me hard and praised my small successes; when I grew too tired to go on, or failed to complete my required exercise for the day, he gave me breathing space, then encouraged me to try again. If he was worried about how quickly the autumn was passing, he said not a word about it.
Of course, it might all be a ploy, designed to win my trust. If that were so, Flint was expert at dissembling. But then, a spy would be. There might be no telling what he truly was: Enforcer or lone warrior, king’s man or rebel. Or none of those. The puzzle was often in my thoughts, but I found no answers to it. Despite the questions that lay between us, we became easier with each other. It was a long time since I had smiled, a long time since I had felt contentment. I had almost forgotten how to be happy, in those years on the road. But here in the hut, where all was order, warmth and quiet, I began to feel a kind of peace.
‘Flint?’
‘Mm?’ He had gone out earlier to fetch a basket of carrots and turnips from a store beneath the hut. Now he was chopping them into a pot while I cut up onions to flavour the brew.
‘When you were a little boy, did you play a game called stanie mon?’ I could not ask him about recent times, his family, where he had lived before he became an Enforcer. Nobody asked those kinds of questions any more, and I thought Flint would be the last man to provide answers even if they did. But the distant past seemed safe. ‘I’m not sure if my brother and I invented it or learned it from someone else.’
I had said one word too many. Flint was quick to notice. ‘Your brother?’
‘He died a few years back. At Corbie’s Wood.’ Died in his blood. Died in his innocence. My lovely, pig-headed, valiant Farral.
Flint’s knife moved steadily. After a while he said, ‘He must have been quite young.’
‘He almost reached his fourteenth birthday,’ I said. The tears that welled in my eyes had little to do with the onions. Curse it. It was Flint’s childhood I had planned to talk about, not my own. My brother’s story was dangerous to tell. Farral had been too young and too angry to recognise the strength of silence. But I had learned that lesson long ago, and I should have known better than to speak of him.
‘Neryn,’ Flint said quietly.
I stopped cutting the onions and looked straight across the table at him. His gaze was perfectly steady, his eyes as clear as a forest pool under a winter sky. They were beautiful eyes. I had not noticed what a fine-shaped mouth he had, thin-lipped, tucked at the corners, a mouth on which I had only once seen a smile. The rest of his face was plain enough, with its crooked nose and its scars. His hair had grown over the course of our stay in the hut. His face wore an untidy beard and his head a short dark crop, ill tended.
‘What?’ he asked, the knife stilling in his hand.
‘Nothing.’ I felt as if I had been caught peering into something secret, private. As if I had set my foot over the threshold of a forbidden place. My thoughts confused me.
‘A look like that isn’t nothing. You were scrutinising me.’
‘I was attempting to guess how many days we’ve been here by the length of your hair.’
Flint ran a hand over his head. Briefly his features registered surprise. ‘More than a turning of the moon,’ he said. Then, ‘You have tears in your eyes.’
‘It’s the onions.’
He put down his knife and looked at me with the same assessing gaze I had turned on him. ‘Tell me about your brother. Did he die of an illness? An accident? Or was he killed when the folk of Corbie’s Wood stood up against the king’s men?’
He knew about that, then. ‘He died on an Enforcer’s spear.’ I heard the bitter edge in my voice. ‘It broke my father’s heart. And they burned everything anyway. Farral sacrificed himself for nothing.’ My hands were tight fists on the table before me. I bowed my head, knowing I should not have spoken thus in anger, but knowing, too, that I had wanted Flint to hear it.
In the silence that followed I could almost feel him thinking.
‘Then you must make sure you do what he could not,’ Flint said, so quietly I wondered if I had imagined the words.
My grandmother’s voice sounded in my memory: You must be the woman I cannot be, Neryn. She had meant: be a wise woman; be a person who understands the uncanny; be a carrier of ancient lore, strong in spirit. Be someone who does not crumple under tyranny. Stand up against the king’s men and make that stand count for something.
The hut felt alive with peril. There was absolutely nothing I could say.
‘Stanie Mon, Stanie Mon, fa’ doon deid,’ Flint said conversationally. ‘I seem to recall a rhyme like that. Part of a jumping game, I believe.’
I lifted my head, looking over at him. ‘You’re full of surprises.’
‘It was one of the things you muttered in your sleep.’
What else had I said? He might have learned my whole story during those days and nights of tangled dreams. Even now that I was almost my old self again, my sleep was still visited by a wild unrolling of confused images, sometimes frightening, often troubling, always vivid. I had wondered if this was what a person felt after being mind-scraped. I had even thought . . .
‘Flint,’ I said.
‘Yes?’
‘While I was so sick . . . did anyone else come here? Someone must have fetched the horse. Brought supplies, maybe.’
‘Why do you ask?’
I hesitated, searching for the right words. ‘When I had the fever I lost the sense of how much time was passing. But I know you were gone sometimes. You went out to check and reset your traps, to gather and chop wood, to fetch water. Perhaps for other reasons too. Even if this hut is well concealed, it is hard to believe you saw nobody during all that time. The folk on the farm must know we’re here.’
Flint poured water from a jug into the pot of vegetables. His eyes were narrowed, his brows crooked in a frown. ‘There’s a lad I can trust,’ he said, not looking at me. ‘He came up once or twice with supplies, yes. Not inside. And he took Shadow. The horse.’
A lad. That did not sound like an Enthraller.
‘You look confused,’ he said, eyeing me.
I shook my head. ‘Just one lad? Who else knows where we are?’
‘Nobody knows,’ Flint said quietly. ‘Just the boy. And even that is a risk, for us and for him. The sooner we can move on the better.’ After a little, he added, ‘If anyone finds you, be sure it won’t be through any careless act of mine.’
‘What about when you were gone? Someone could have come in while I was here on my own.’
I could hear Flint’s sigh. ‘You don’t have much faith in my capacity to keep you alive, do you? Believe me, if I had not been obliged to leave the hut in order to provide food, I would not have done so. The door was fastened securely; folk would not have known how to open it. I kept my outings brief. I have been trained in certain skills; I can assure you that nobody
saw me.’
‘But –’
‘If anyone had been here in my absence, I would have known.’
I was silenced. So, no mind-scraper. Not unless the whole thing was a pack of lies.
‘Does this training of yours also include the capacity to tell convincing untruths?’ I asked. We were deep in it now; I might as well keep going.
A smile; not the unguarded one that changed him so, but a bitter, crooked travesty. ‘Oh, yes,’ Flint said. ‘I have great expertise in that. But I won’t lie to you. The worst I will do is withhold what you need not know.’
‘Your words are a kind of maze,’ I said. ‘A puzzle, a trick. This expertise of yours, I imagine it allows you to sound completely convincing while telling me whatever suits your purpose.’ Part of me already trusted him. Part of me was all too ready to believe he would take me safely to Shadowfell, then leave with no questions asked. But the years of flight and silence lay on me like a heavy cloak. I could not easily set them aside. ‘I could go on alone,’ I said. ‘You could give me directions if you wanted to be helpful. Then you could reclaim your horse and go back to Summerfort, or wherever else your work takes you.’ It was hard to picture: Flint bidding me a courteous goodbye, then returning to the violent, bloody duties of an Enforcer. I did not want to think about it.
‘You’re fitter than you were, but you’re far from ready to do this on your own. Besides . . .’
‘Besides what?’
‘Let’s just say I have a vested interest in making sure you reach your destination in one piece,’ Flint said. ‘Don’t press me for more.’
‘We can’t go on playing this game forever,’ I said. ‘Can’t you explain why you’re helping me? I know knowledge is dangerous, but there’s nobody else to listen, and I don’t need the whole story, just enough to make sense of this.’
‘Every step I take falls under a shadow of danger.’ Flint’s voice had sunk to a murmur. He glanced around the chamber as if there might be spies in the corners, watching us. ‘Every time I open my mouth I raise the stakes higher. You said once that you wanted to live alone, without any companionship save rocks and trees. That makes sense to me. Retreating, falling silent – it’s the only way to be safe. But we cannot live like that. Your brother died fighting injustice and cruelty. You said his sacrifice was in vain. It’s not so. Every man or woman who makes a stand helps keep the flame of freedom burning.’
After that, I had nothing to say. Nothing at all. I sat staring at him, my eyes no doubt as big as saucers, and he gazed back steadily.
‘If the weather is clear tomorrow, we’ll try a longer expedition outside,’ Flint said, and now his voice was level and calm. ‘I judge that we have perhaps ten days, maybe a little more, before it becomes too dangerous to stay here. We have a lot of work to do.’
That night I dreamed of Flint. He was riding back down the valley, his dark cloak billowing out behind him, storm clouds gathering over him, his face sheet-white, his mouth set in a tight line. All alone. The vision swirled and changed and I saw him in a great hall full of men and women in fine clothing. He knelt, bowing his head, then looked up, his grey eyes clear and calm. The eyes of a truthful man. ‘My lord King.’
Keldec, I did not see. But I heard his voice. ‘Ah, my long-absent friend. You are returned at last.’
‘As you see, my lord King.’
‘And with a tale to tell, I trust?’
‘Yes, my lord King. A tale that is for your ears only.’
When I woke, that was all I could remember. Coming so soon after the strange conversation in which Flint had spoken eloquently in support of those who rebelled against Keldec’s rule, the dream confused and unsettled me. I ate my breakfast in silence, and Flint made no attempt to start a conversation. Only, when we were finished eating, he said, ‘The day’s clear. Put on your cloak and shoes and we’ll try a longer walk.’
‘Now?’
‘The sooner the better, Neryn. The boy’s coming up later today; let’s get this done while there’s nobody about.’
I tied my shawl around my shoulders, then fetched my cloak – Flint’s old cloak – from the peg where it hung beside his black Enforcer garment. ‘How do you know he’s coming today?’ I asked.
‘A signal. I need to speak to him briefly. I’ll do so outdoors. He won’t see you.’
‘But he does know I’m here.’
‘As I told you, the place is used to shelter folk who need it. The lad knows I’m not alone. No more than that. The less I tell him, the safer for all of us. Ready?’
‘Just my shoes . . .’ I moved to fetch them, but Flint was ahead of me.
‘Sit down.’
I sat on the edge of the bed. He knelt beside me, holding each shoe in turn as I slipped my foot in. As he tied up the cords, I waited for him to make some comment on the tiny neat stitches, the unusual lining, the fact that the shoes were remarkably unscathed from the trip along the lochs and up the valley. But he finished fastening them in silence, then, when I would have got up, he put his hands around my feet for a moment. The warm strength of them jolted something deep inside me. Part of me woke up, a part I had not known existed.
‘Neryn.’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m sorry. Sorry I can’t tell you more. Sorry we have to move on when you’re still not yourself. Sorry I can’t give you time. But there is no time.’
My heart was thudding; my cheeks were warm. I could think of nothing to say, but I managed a nod.
Flint rose to his feet. ‘Come, then,’ he said, holding out a hand. I took it, and we went outside together.
We walked up the hill. Flint set a good pace, and quite soon my legs were aching, but I gritted my teeth and went on. Our breath made little clouds in the cold air.
‘Fix on a goal you can manage,’ Flint said, pausing while I caught up. ‘That rock up there – perhaps another ten steps. When you reach it, choose the next goal.’
I climbed to the rock. I chose the next goal, the trunk of a long-fallen pine, from which limbs had been hewed, perhaps to fuel our hearth fire. By the time I reached it I was breathing hard.
‘Rest now,’ Flint said. ‘You’ve done well. If you feel faint, bend over and put your hands on your knees. It might help to wrap your shawl over your mouth and nose. The air’s chill; you’ve been used to the fire.’
The kindly tone was misleading. He waited exactly as long as it took for me to get my breath back, then said, ‘Now we’ll walk up as far as the trees. You go first.’ As I began to climb, he spoke from behind me. ‘You can do it, Neryn.’
The band of trees was perhaps thirty paces away, straight up the steep path. A goal. I would do it. I would be strong enough.
At ten steps I felt Flint’s arm come through mine. ‘That’s enough on your own,’ he said.
His body was warm against me. His touch gave me strength. We walked up to the trees. Their leafless limbs were alive with little birds searching for dried-up berries or nuts the martens had missed. We turned to look down the hill. Now we were clear of the rocky outcrop shielding the hut, the valley was revealed below us under a sky streaked with high cloud. Down there, about a mile to the north, lay a blackened, empty place. A broken wall. The crumbling ruins of houses. A row of sad hawthorns. I remembered helping decorate them with ribbons, in spring, to honour a deity whose name was no longer spoken. There had once been a fair wood around that place. Many of the trees had been burned along with the settlement, but an outer ring still stood, sad witnesses, mute guardians.
‘Corbie’s Wood,’ I breathed, slipping my arm out of Flint’s.
Gods, there was the remnant of Grandmother’s house, and there the lone blackthorn beneath which Farral had died. There was the spot where the Enforcers had camped after the rout was over, waiting to see who would come back, waiting to see whether they had missed anyone. Far up the hill on the other side of the valley was the cottage where we’d found refuge, Father and I. The place where I’d tended to Grandmother over those la
st sad seasons; the place from which Father had gone out, day by day, to find what work he could to keep us from starving; the makeshift home to which he’d returned each time sunk deeper into despair. My heart ached with grief.
Flint laid his hand on the small of my back. His touch made me start with some violence; I had been far away. The hand was instantly removed, and that, somehow, was the worst thing of all. I stood cold and alone, looking down over the ruin of my old home, not knowing how to tell Flint I needed the warmth of human touch, an arm around my shoulders, a hand in mine. I longed to believe, just for a little, that I had a friend.
‘We’d best walk back now. You’ll get cold,’ Flint said.
‘I want to go down there.’ My voice was thick with unshed tears. ‘When it happened, there wasn’t time . . . we couldn’t . . .’ I had not dreamed this could hurt so much.
‘It’s not safe.’
I looked again at the place where Corbie’s Wood had been. Nothing lived in that deserted spot now save sad ghosts.
‘Flint.’
‘Yes? Come, we must keep moving; tell me as we go.’
I slipped my arm through his again, unasked. In a landscape of death and loss, he was alive; warm, strong. ‘When you said we would move on . . . you meant going north, didn’t you? How could we do that without passing by Corbie’s Wood?’
‘There’s a track up beyond those trees that follows the ridge and comes down further north. You may even remember it. You and your brother must have roamed about these hills in summer, as children do. It leads past a place called Lone Tarn. That way’s safer. More remote.’ He glanced at me. ‘It’s a hard walk.’
‘I’ll manage,’ I said.
We were passing an outcrop of rocks cloaked in thorny bushes when Flint made a little sound under his breath. A moment later I found myself thrust down into hiding.
I crouched between the rocks where Flint had put me; there was no need for him to say, Be quiet. I didn’t see him unsheathe his knife, but it was in his hand as he moved on down the hill.
I waited, imagining the possibilities. Local people hunting for me in the hope of winning a payment in king’s silver. Wild dogs; hungry wolves. Enforcers. No, Flint would not have left me on my own. I made myself breathe slowly.