‘We will take one of Alba’s wall castles,’ Ser Harmut said. ‘And lead an Outwaller invasion.’
De Marche blinked his eyes. ‘Which castle, my lord?’
‘Ticondaga,’ Ser Hartmut said. ‘Do you know it?’
De Marche scratched his beard. ‘It’s much further west than I had anticipated our travelling,’ he said. ‘We are almost as far as I sailed on my last expedition. According to our Imperial chart, Ticondaga is another three hundred leagues up the Great River. The river will grow narrower each day, and the risk of running aground grows accordingly. Even losing a single ship—’
Ser Hartmut nodded. ‘Take care, then,’ he said. ‘We cannot hope to succeed with any less than all three ships and all of our soldiers.’
De Marche took two full breaths. ‘My lord, my men are sailors, not soldiers, and we expected to rest and—’ he dropped his voice and spoke as if he was using a dirty word to a child ‘—trade.’
Ser Hartmut smiled. ‘I know. But your men have more than proven themselves worthy of better lives. We will lay siege to Ticonaga.’
De Marche took another deep breath. ‘My lord, the fortress there is reputed to be one of the strongest in the world – it was built by the ancients.’
Ser Hartmut nodded. ‘All the more honour when we take it. Fear not, master mariner! God will provide.’
De Marche looked at Ser Hartmut, and his thoughts must have shown in his face, because the Black Knight smiled.
‘You are surprised to hear me speak of God? Listen, master mariner, I am a knight. I kill the enemies of my king and my religion. Men hate me because, in the end, I always succeed. Men decry my methods because they are themselves jealous, weak, or foolish. War is butchery. What matter if I use alchemy? Hermetical magic? If Satan himself were to offer me his aid—’ He smiled.
De Marche thought I don’t really want to get into this. But his curiosity got the better of him, as it always did. ‘Satan’s aid to help God?’ he asked.
‘Every cause has a traitor,’ the Black Knight said. ‘Even Satan’s.’ He nodded.
Ten days sail up the Great River and they passed two Outwaller ‘castles’, both built on high promontories, and both walled with palisades and densely woven thorn fences. The sailors called out to pretty Outwaller girls on the banks and had arrows shot at them for their pains.
De Marche watched the Outwaller communities go by with something akin to his sailor’s unrequited lust. But Ser Hartmut had a letter from the King, and despite de Marche’s knowledge that he’d been used, he did as he was ordered.
But the eleventh day gave him new hope for his trade. He’d cut the rations to all his men, officers and knights included, and the resulting meals had brought Ser Hartmut on deck in an ingratiating mood, if such a thing were possible to the Black Knight.
‘If I gave you leave to trade at one of these huddles of barbarian huts, would we have better food?’ he asked.
‘I expect we might have venison and corn, my lord. Perhaps even bread. But I would have to explore. Trade is never quick.’ De Marche wanted to be off the ship with all his heart, exploring the interior, meeting the people, finding new routes. But offending Ser Hartmut was nothing but a death sentence.
The Black Knight looked over the bow for some time. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Our task will only be eased by winning the trust of the peasants.’
De Marche didn’t expect Ser Hartmut would win their trust, but he was willing to see him try, and so, when mid-morning of the twelfth day on the Great River revealed a third Outwaller town on a great island in the river, he anchored in the lee of the island and summoned Lucius.
‘Shouldn’t you be in harness?’ Ser Hartmut asked. ‘With a retinue? I would be delighted to accompany you.’
De Marche shook his head. ‘My lord, I beg you to accept my guidance in this. If we afright or affront these folk, they will do no trade with us, nor be our allies in any way. We need to approach them with gifts, kind words and open hands.’
Ser Hartmut looked over the side at the island town. ‘We have the resources to storm the town,’ he said. ‘Failing Ticondaga, this would make a fair base for the King.’
De Marche cleared his throat. ‘I’m sure we could storm it, my lord,’ he said. ‘However, I’m not sure we could hold it. Perhaps I have not fully explained that just as each holding in Galle is itself part of a larger holding of a greater lord, so most of the Outwallers are vassals of Lords of the Wild.’
‘Daemons of hell, you mean?’ asked the Black Knight. A light kindled in his eye and his hand went to his sword.
De Marche caught Lucius’s eye. ‘Not exactly,’ he said.
He and Lucius rowed themselves in a small open boat. As soon as they were well clear of the ship, Lucius said, ‘When you told him that your Etruscan source was dead—’
De Marche grunted and pulled his oar. The river was choppy and they were rowing into a brisk headwind. There were a dozen Outwallers on the beach, and two of them wore the long squirrel robes that were the mark of noblemen, along with elaborate caps like crowns. But it was dangerous to draw parallels. Any free Huran could wear the gustaweh. They were not quite crowns.
‘Lucius, would I shock you if I said that Ser Hartmut and I do not have the same goals for this expedition?’ he asked.
Lucius looked away. ‘He’s terrifying.’
‘If he knew how much you know,’ de Marche said, ‘I fear that he’d—’ He paused. There were now more than fifty men on the beach. Some had spears – steel-tipped spears.
Lucius nodded. ‘The Northern Huran are among the most powerful tribes. If our fleet failed this summer then there are bales of furs in every longhouse waiting for the trade. By the gentle Christ, look at them!’
They were three hundred yards from shore, and now there were a thousand Outwallers waiting for them on the shingle.
They landed, and eager hands took their boat and pulled it high up the beach so that the little coracle seemed to skim the ground the way it had skimmed the waves. When de Marche stepped over the side he was embraced, pinched, and prodded by a hundred men and as many women – mostly older women in furs, with beads and quillwork on every robe.
Lucius, who spoke a fair version of Huran, was immediately surrounded by leaders – a dozen men and four women – and de Marche made his way to the Etruscan’s side.
‘The thieving barbarians have taken my dagger,’ de Marche said.
Lucius smiled. ‘I told you not to bring a knife,’ he said. ‘Relax. Your dagger is a small price to pay for their love. As I thought, there has been no Etruscan fleet this year. The silkies who killed the Genuans have left these folk bereft. They are in a war with their southern cousins, and they have no bolts for their crossbows, no armour – Desontarius here was just telling me that they are on the point of making peace, and our arrival will allow them to make war.’
De Marche blew air out through his cheeks. ‘It seems all the world makes war,’ he muttered.
Lucius seemed taller and more commanding. ‘By God, I will crush my cousins,’ he said. ‘We have the whole of the trade – it is God’s will. We will be rich!’
Chapter Ten
The Squash Country – Ota Qwan
Their march back through the Wild was rapid, and made the trip out look easy.
They sighted Crannog People each day. The giants didn’t move cautiously – indeed, they tended to leave a path of destruction wherever they went, whether in the woods, across a marsh, or along the edge of a trail, as if they visited destruction on plants and rocks as easily as on animals or creatures of the Wild. Ota Qwan sent his best trackers out on wide sweeps, and moved them from one cover to the next with the canny precision of a soldier.
Ta-se-ho shook his head after the third day. ‘I’ve never seen so many Ruk,’ he admitted. ‘Something has kicked their nest.’
The going was slow because of the heavy, sticky, ungainly buckets of honey, which the warriors carried on long yokes. A strong man could c
arry four buckets all day on a clear trail, but as soon as they left the main paths, the difficulty of negotiating the narrower capillaries of the Wild with yokes on their shoulders began to remind Nita Qwan of his days as a slave in the mountains east of Albinkirk.
By the time they reached their village they’d seen twenty giants, and they hadn’t lost a man, and Ota Qwan’s reputation as a leader had reached new heights. They had harvested almost fifty bark buckets of Wild honey, and they hadn’t lost one on the dangerous journey back.
Any sense of triumph was immediately overturned by the obvious sense of crisis that pervaded the village. Ruk had devastated a pair of villages at the eastern corner of the Sossag holdings. Only a few of the People had been killed – the Ruk enjoyed general devastation too much to focus on small prey – but the survivors became refugees at the edge of winter, and the trickle of new faces threatened to consume any surplus the Sossag had gathered after a spring spent at war.
The matrons met and talked, and summoned the Horned One, the old shaman who knew the lore of the land, and his apprentice, Gas-a-ho, passed the rumour that he had been asked about the Sacred Island.
‘What about it?’ Nita Qwan asked his wife.
She looked around as if others might be listening in on their conversation. ‘I shouldn’t know – I’m not a matron yet,’ she said, and patted her belly. ‘Although I expect you’ll see that status changed soon enough.’
‘Shouldn’t know isn’t the same as don’t know,’ he said.
She wriggled her toes. ‘To the east, just at the border of our hunting lands and those of the Huran, there is an island in the sea. On the island is a lake at the top of a mountain. In the centre of the lake is an island. It is sacred to all the peoples and creatures of the Wild.’
‘Sacred?’ he asked.
‘No one Power is allowed to hold it,’ she said, and would say no more.
The next day he asked Gas-a-ho while he and Ota Qwan mended nets, and the youth, puffed up with self-importance, said, ‘That is a matter for the shaman.’
They were repairing nets because the matrons had decided to send a fishing expedition out onto the lake to gather as many fish as they could. Their plan was to salt them against winter need. Another party of men would sweep the woods to the north and west for deer – and for early warning of Crannog People.
When the boy was gone, Ota Qwan finished a repair carefully, wrapping the bark thread again and again with practised ease. When he was done, he raised his eyes. ‘It’s Thorn,’ he said.
‘You can’t know that,’ Nita Qwan said with some annoyance. Ota Qwan’s endless sense of his own superiority was more than a little grating, despite his successes.
‘My wife’s mother told her, and she told me,’ Ota Qwan said. ‘Thorn has taken this place of power which I didn’t even know we had.’ He shrugged. ‘I didn’t expect the wilderness to be so small.’
‘What do we do?’ Nita Qwan asked. Thorn was more a name than a threat, but he understood that the sorcerer had been the Power behind their spring campaign. ‘He can’t force us to war in the winter – or can he?’
‘I’ve learned one thing in my years with the People,’ Ota Qwan said. ‘Let the matrons decide. You can shape the decision by influencing the information on which the matrons act, but after that you have to accept their word.’
‘And have you?’ Peter asked.
‘Have I what?’ Ota Qwan asked, biting off a length of bark twine.
‘Have you influenced the matron’s information?’ Peter asked. He wasn’t sure exactly why his brother annoyed him, but he was growing angry.
Ota Qwan spread his hands. ‘Don’t make me the bad guy. All hell is about to break loose on us, brother. There are giants out there, smashing villages. If they hit us we’ll spend the winter in the woods, and most of the children and old people will die. That’s not my opinion. That’s the way it is.’
‘So what do we do – talk to Thorn? Is this his doing?’ asked Peter.
Ota Qwan frowned. ‘The matrons think so. I don’t know what I think. ’
Nita Qwan smiled. ‘That’s a first.’
Ota Qwan shook his head. ‘I don’t want to quarrel, brother. The matrons think we should send for allies. Allies can lead to tangles.’
‘And the Huran?’ asked Nita Qwan.
‘The Southern Huran make war on the Northern. Nothing new there. Who knows who started it? The Southerners get trade goods from the Empire, and now the Northerners get trade goods from the Etruscans. They make war over beaver pelts and honey. The matrons say that this year the Etruscans haven’t come.’ He shrugged and sat back. ‘These are the sorts of things my family used to watch and understand. When I was another man – with another life. Why did I think life among the Sossag would be simple? It is life!’
The matrons debated for three days. It was the longest debate that any of them could remember, and the work of the village all but came to a stop. Rumours flew – that they would pick up their belongings and move until the giants were gone, that they would launch a great raid on the Huran for food and slaves, that they would send an embassy to Thorn . . .
In the end the senior matron, Blue Knife, the tallest woman in the village, called them to council.
‘Thorn has moved to the Sacred Island.’ She looked around with the calm dignity that characterised the matrons in all their dealings. Rumour said they fought like dogs when alone, but if there were any cracks in their unity they never showed to the rest of the People.
‘The Horned One, our shaman, has made his castings. He has confirmed it is Thorn on the Sacred Island, and that it is his workings that send the Crannog People into our lands.’ She looked around, and Peter felt as if her eyes came to rest on him. ‘We lack the strength to fight Thorn without allies,’ she said. ‘We have discussed sending to Tapio Haltija at N’gara, and we have discussed sending to Mogon and her people. It was Thorkhan, Mogon’s brother, who claimed these lands. But he died facing Thorn, and Thorn may well feel that he is now lord here.’
Again her eyes passed over the crowd. Again, Peter felt singled out.
‘We want this conflict to end. The warriors have been consulted. They say that every Ruk we kill does no hurt to Thorn, but will cost us ten men. They say Thorn can bring fire and death in the depths of winter when even men on snowshoes can do little to strike back. So had Tadaio made a decision for all the People: to ignore Thorn’s demands and go our own way. He thought we were strong enough. Perhaps we were – if Thorn had not chosen to become our neighbour. Now we must find another path. Tadaio is dead. We have lost two villages. So the matrons have decided to send an embassy to Thorn.’ She bowed to Ota Qwan. ‘We have chosen our brother Ota Qwan to lead that embassy.’
Ota Qwan rose and bowed. ‘I accept the task and the pipe of peace. I will attempt to bring Thorn to a happier disposition.’
Blue Knife frowned slightly. ‘Promise him anything he requires. Surrender anything but our bodies. Offer warriors in his wars.’
Ota Qwan was clearly displeased. ‘This is craven surrender!’
‘The matrons have seen the rise and fall of many Thorns. We lack the strength to face him. So we will lend him the least aid we can manage without incurring his wrath. We will offer songs to his pride. We will aid him.’
‘And then, when he is weak, we will strike!’ said Ota Qwan.
Blue Knife shook her head. ‘No. When he is weak, someone else like him will strike, and we will rejoice quietly, and grow our corn.’
The People sang three songs – all songs of the harvest season, and then they filed out. Peter was near the door, but a small hand on his arm blocked him as effectively as a giant, and he stepped aside to let others pass. Blue Knife stood there, with Small Hands and the other matrons.
‘You will not accompany Ota Qwan,’ Blue Knife said.
Peter had very little experience of dealing with the matrons. They did not issue orders – no one among the Free People issued orders. So he was taken aba
ck by her tone, and he looked around. His wife was standing behind him and she nodded sharply in agreement.
‘He will not like that,’ Peter said.
Small Hands nodded gravely. ‘He will have other followers and friends. You must not go. Please – we ask this of you.’
Peter bowed. ‘I will not go.’
The next week was one of the most difficult Peter had experienced since becoming a Sossag. Ota Qwan lost no time in asking him to come, and then, once the invitation had been declined, became increasingly angry about it.
‘Don’t let your woman turn you into a coward,’ he said in his third attempt.
Peter shrugged. ‘She won’t.’
‘I need you. Men follow me for my skills – but they also follow me because you follow me. Ta-se-ho has declined to come. You know what he said? He said, Nita Qwan isn’t going.’ Ota Qwan was growing red, and his voice rose, and heads were turning all along the village street. It was a cold, windy day – a presage of autumn. There was rain in the air, and two Ruk had been spotted in the beaver meadow south-east of the village, which had everyone on edge.
‘I’m not coming this time,’ Peter said, as calmly as he could manage.
‘Why? Give me one reason. I led the honey gathering well. I have done nothing to offend you. I am polite to your bitch of a wife—’
The two men looked at each other. Peter was quite calm. ‘Please walk away,’ he said.
Ota Qwan put his hands on his hips. ‘I’m doing this all wrong. I’m sorry – I don’t think your wife is a bitch. Or rather, I do, but I assume you see something in her that I don’t. Listen, brother. I appeal to you. I admit that we have only known each other this summer. But I need you.’
Peter knew in his heart that the admission – that he needed Nita Qwan – had a cost.
He tried to smile. ‘I’m flattered—’ he began.
‘Fuck your patronising shit,’ Ota Qwan said with sudden rage. ‘Stay here and rot.’ He turned on his heel and walked away.