Foxmask (23 page)

“Sit down, Thorvald. Get your breath back.”

Thorvald sat. Now that he had his chance, he wasn't sure where to begin. Get this wrong and he'd be thrown out with not a single question answered. Asgrim's face was shuttered, his eyes unreadable. Still, he had asked Thorvald in.

“A long time ago,” Thorvald said, “you explained a process to me. Question for question, answer for answer. I have many questions, and little information to give that can be of any interest to you.”

Asgrim gave a murmur that might have been agreement. He seated himself opposite Thorvald, a cup between his hands.

“How do we play this game?” Thorvald asked. “Perhaps you should begin, since we're on your territory. What do you wish to know of me?”

Asgrim's thin lips twisted in a smile. “I see you have learned something after all. Well done. Why are you here, and what do you seek?” The question was rapped out, sudden as a blade in the dark.

Thorvald's heart thumped, then quieted in obedience to his will. “I believed I might have kinfolk here. I was told of a man who sailed to isles such as these, a Christian monk who spent many seasons away, and returned crazed by what he had experienced. I determined to voyage here and learn what it was that could confound even a man of faith. I hoped at the same time to discover whether my kin had indeed traveled this way, and what had become of them.”

“Your companions?”

“As I said, one came because the boat is his and I needed him to sail it. The other accompanied us uninvited.”

“So you told me.”

“It's the truth. I have no reason to lie to you. Indeed, I'm here tonight because Sam wants to leave. He wants his length of wood so he can go back and start mending the
Sea Dove
.”

Asgrim nodded slowly. “And you?”

“That's three questions.”

“Answer, and you shall have three of your own.”

“It's a long-winded way of exchanging information on the eve of a battle. No wonder—” Thorvald fell silent at the look in the Ruler's dark eyes. This was a man who dispensed life and death as easily as he poured ale. “Very well,” Thorvald said. “I would prefer to stay on a while. I've been trying to work with the men, to improve the weapons and the way they use them. There's a lot more I want to do here. I think I can help you. But not without better information. The men don't talk much.”

“The men obey. An army must obey.”

“How long have you been fighting this war? How many battles have you actually won?” Thorvald forgot to be cautious. “These men are worn down, defeated before they even begin. They can see only failure. You can't get the better of your enemy like that—”

Asgrim raised his hand again. “Are these your questions?” he asked smoothly.

To his annoyance, Thorvald felt a flush rising to his cheeks. He took a mouthful of the ale: it was of considerably better quality than the watery brew served down in the shelter. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I would be grateful if you would explain to me the nature of this enemy you call the Unspoken: his numbers, his location, his manner of attack. I cannot help you effectively unless I know that. Sometimes I hear of a battle and sometimes a hunt; how are the two connected? Who is the child we seek? I understand we have to travel out to the Isle of Clouds. Why is it we are so ill-prepared for close combat? These men don't practice with sword or thrusting spear unless I make them. They seem to think it's pointless.”

“
We
are so ill-prepared?”

Thorvald looked down at his hands. “I don't like to see such potential wasted. There's strength here, and talent, if we could just get past their attitude. I think I could do that, given the chance. Given the information.”

“Hmm,” said Asgrim, sipping his ale. “And you could be a spy, though generally spies don't march straight into the enemy's headquarters demanding full details of his plans. Thorvald, perhaps you've forgotten what you told me when you first arrived here. Fishing, a storm, a profound desire to mend the boat and head for home at the earliest opportunity, wasn't that it?”

“This is another question,” Thorvald said. “You owe me some answers first, I think.” He felt a trickle of cold sweat on his neck: here in this isolated hut, it was all too easy to believe the tales of sudden, final punishment. It was all too simple to look at the pale, impassive features, the shrewd, dark eyes, and see his own reflection.
Why don't we work together, like and like? Father and son?

“There's a small difficulty, as I see it,” Asgrim said, rising to fetch one of the rolled sheets of parchment from the recess in the stone wall. “Sam wishes to return home, you want to stay. We don't know the girl's mind; possibly she is happy to wait for you, possibly not. This could be awkward to reconcile.”

“Sam doesn't care for fighting. He could go back to Blood Bay now if you'd instruct the fellows on guard to let him pass. He could visit Creidhe on the way, fix his beloved boat. Then, when I'm finished here . . .” Thorvald's words faltered to a stop as the Ruler unrolled the parchment on the table, setting small stones on the corners to hold it flat. Asgrim moved one of the soapstone lamps to rest beside the drawing that flowed, meticulous in its neatness and complexity, across the coarse, cream-brown surface of the parchment.

It was a map fashioned by a master, a map that showed the islands in every detail, curves and fissures of coastline, lakes, streams and sea currents,
hills and dales and tiny isolated settlements. Here and there words were written, words Thorvald could read: Isle of Storms, Isle of Streams, Dragon Isle. Troll's Arch, at the mouth of Council Fjord. Witch's Finger. Out to the west, all on its own, lay the Isle of Clouds. In the south were islands with no names, realms marked only by a subtle shading of the pen, as if these territories lay beyond some barrier that could not be shown by image or text. They were the lands of the Unspoken. The small, neat script held Thorvald fast; he stared at the page, unable to speak. He knew this writing: he had seen it before.

“Some of your answers lie here,” Asgrim was saying calmly.

“This is a fine piece of work,” Thorvald croaked. He cleared his throat. Now was not the time, he must get a grip on himself. “I congratulate you.”

Asgrim did not reply. His hand moved to hover above the shadowed isles of the south. “Such a chart cannot show all,” the Ruler said eventually. “It cannot show the years of failure, the deaths, the bitterness. Our enemy has a power we cannot match; my men know that, they have seen it. Their despair is not surprising. Each of us has his own losses: father, brother, comrade. I, too.” He bowed his head.

“I'm sorry,” Thorvald said, still struggling to control his voice, now that he had seen the proof, now that he knew. “You have lost family?” Somerled could have married again, probably had done just that; a decree of exile was not necessarily one of total isolation. Strange, though: this possibility had never occurred to him. He might have a stepmother here and a whole tribe of half-siblings. He had imagined Somerled alone.

“A daughter,” Asgrim said quietly, his fingers still trailing gently over the map, across the Isle of Storms to the empty realms of the north. “A girl every bit as lovely as that young friend of yours, with the same bright hair and innocent smile. Taken, despoiled, slaughtered. A boy, also. He was no more than a fool. His blundering efforts to put the world to rights set a dark curse on our future. He'd never have come to anything; he was too much his mother's son. You?”

The question came so abruptly after this flat statement of loss and bitterness that Thorvald hardly understood what was meant by it.

“You have family?” Asgrim asked, gazing at him across the table. Between them, the map lay in all its complexity and wonder, the last piece of a puzzle to which its maker still did not understand the solution.

“Yes,” said Thorvald, heart hammering. “But I will not speak of them until you answer my questions. The rules of your game are to be obeyed, are they not?” The moment he mentioned Margaret, the truth would be known,
and everything would change. Now that he had come so close, he felt curiously reluctant to take the next step. As a stranger, it would be up to him to prove his worth entirely on his own merits. Far better, he thought, to take up the challenge, to make this rabble of dispirited islanders into a real fighting force with heart and discipline, far better to win the battle and then, only then, to make the truth known.
I have achieved this, and I am your son. I will not disappoint you as the other did
.

“As you know,” Asgrim said, “this is a realm of secrets, of strange past, difficult present, unknowable future. We are reluctant to share our story; it pains us to tell it. I have watched you, waiting until it might be appropriate to reveal this tale to you, for if, as you say, you wish to take a role in aiding our endeavor, there are certain matters you must be aware of.”

“And what have you concluded?” Thorvald managed to make his question nonchalant, as if he cared little whether he heard the tale or not. In truth, he could hardly wait. Asgrim was going to tell him the truth at last. His father trusted him.

The Ruler gave his thin-lipped smile. “I've concluded that you may indeed be useful to me. I had thought your talk of expertise in arms merely a young man's bragging, a wild exaggeration designed to impress. Your actions, however, and your evident commitment to improving the men's efforts, seem to prove me wrong. If your will to help me is genuine, then I believe we can work together. If that is to occur, you must first know the truth.”

Thorvald waited.

“Understand,” Asgrim went on, “that it has not always been thus in these islands, the Long Knife people against the Unspoken, the battles, the hunt, the murder of children—”

“Wait a bit,” Thorvald interrupted. “I know the purpose of the hunt is to retrieve a child, but nobody said anything about murder.”

“It is all part of the tale; another thread in the long pattern of suffering. When our kind first settled in the Lost Isles, it was not thus. We came to the islands as exile, as outcast, as farmer and fisherman and hermit, all of us fleeing something, all of us searching for something. Bonds of a kind were forged; one cannot survive long in such a realm without them. We made our settlements and built our boats. We ran our stock on the hills, we scraped a living, we bred our sons and daughters. In those southern isles, the Isle of Shadows, the Isle of Dreams, the others dwelt, those who were here before us. We saw them little.”

“There's been talk of sorcery, of magic,” Thorvald said diffidently. “I was
given the impression that this tribe you call the Unspoken are not entirely human.”

Asgrim's finger moved again on the map, coming to rest on the small, isolated shape of the Isle of Clouds. “We have long winters here,” he said, “summers of mist and storm. It's a climate that breeds superstitious fears. I keep the men occupied as well as I can, but their imaginations tend to get the better of them. The Unspoken come from the same stock as we do. They speak our tongue. But they are not as we are. It's thought there was an older race here, a race possessed of unnatural power and unusual savagery. They interbred and in time became one people: a people like none you have ever encountered, Thorvald. They are a scourge, a curse.”

There was a brief silence while Thorvald decided which question to ask first. “There was some suggestion,” he ventured, “that this tribe prevails by the use of hexes and spell-craft. How can we counter that? I believe it is those charms the men fear, not the prospect of an honest battle.”

Asgrim gave a crooked smile. “This is a real enemy and a real threat. My daughter died; I lost my only son. I have known the pain of this conflict, as they all have. The ancestors of the Unspoken dwelt in these islands long before our kind sought refuge here. The lineage of these folk has given them faculties we do not possess, an ability to tap into a strength that emanates from the land itself. Those skills they employ to their advantage, with devastating effect.”

“Winds, tides, weather,” mused Thorvald.

“Exactly. Call it magic if you will; my men think of it as just that. It is beyond us to counter it, Thorvald. Each confrontation reduces my numbers further; and there are the children. That was the final blow. It is no wonder you see despair in these men's eyes. The Unspoken rob us of our very future.”

Asgrim sat down once more, hands clenched before him. At last Thorvald could see some spark of feeling in the coal-dark eyes.

“Tell me the story,” he said, taking up the flask unbidden and pouring more ale for the two of them. Outside the stone hut, the wind was rising; the rain beat down like a many-toothed flail.

“It is a sorry tale, Thorvald, a tale that has turned us old before our time. Once, we lived peaceably enough. They left us alone; we did not venture across the water to the places where we knew they dwelt. There were chance encounters from time to time, a sudden squall driving a boat to shore where it did not belong, a request for a sheep or two in years of bad harvest. There was tolerance between us, but no formal bond of friendship or alliance. There was a council of sorts, held once a year at midsummer on their Isle of
Shadows. They are a people of many secrets; their ritual observances are governed by complex networks of laws. They would let no more than three of our people attend the gatherings: the Ruler and two of his chosen men. In my early days as chieftain here, I attended several such councils; Einar, too, has witnessed them. We discovered something of their ways.” Asgrim's voice dropped suddenly to a whisper. “It was thus we learned of Foxmask.”

“Foxmask?” This grew stranger and stranger.

“Their priest or holy man. A visionary, a teller of ancient wisdom. At the time when I became Ruler, Foxmask was old. Old, blind and crippled. He did not venture forth, but they held him in utmost awe and reverence, as if he were a creature unearthly in his power, part elder, part feral thing, able to pass to them the wisdom of standing stone and deep well, wild beast and eternal stars. Foxmask was the center of their existence, the cornerstone of their belief. Foxmask kept them safe; he told them how to live their lives, how to survive. You understand, this crippled priest, this old blind man was but one in a long line of such seers. Foxmask is not a single individual, but a title; a position, one might say.”