The Seventh Friend (Book 1) (61 page)

“My lord,” the first clerk of the tannery stepped forwards again. “It took us the best part of an hour to get her out of the house, and as you can see we had to break the door in. I will not let her back inside.”

“Will you go back into the house?” he asked her.

“No, my lord.”

“Release her.”

The clerk hesitated, then nodded, and the big man let her go and stepped away as though he expected her to attack him the moment her arms were free, but Sara Bruff did not spare him a glance. She pulled her hair back behind her head, dragging it into a tight bundle behind her neck which she tied deftly with a cord.

For the first time he could see her face. She had the pale, white skin common in the north, the sort that never took any colour from the sun, and her eyes were like blue chips of ice in a field of snow. They were hard and clear. Her nose was straight and narrow, and her mouth a pressed, determined line. She was, what? Pretty? No. Striking was a better word. Now that she was upright and disentangled from the clerk’s man he could see that she had a figure, too, that went in and out in the right places.

“Thank you, my lord,” she said. He felt the questions in her eyes.

“Is there anything in the house that you need?” he asked.

She glanced back at the broken doorway. “No, my lord.”

Skal stared at her for a moment. It was not long, but it was enough for people to notice that nothing was being said, and nothing was happening.

“Can you read and write?” he asked.

“Well enough, my lord,” she replied.

“I will offer you an alternative,” Skal said. “Employment at my estate at Latter Fetch.  Neither you nor the boy will want for food or warmth or shelter. I will see that the boy is taught his letters and numbers when he is old enough, and when he comes of age I will see him placed in whatever trade or profession he chooses.”

There was a brief silence again, and Skal could sense the surprise from all of them, even Tilian.

“May I ask what the price is for this kindness, my lord?” she asked. She was wary, thinking perhaps that he expected something she would be unwilling to give.

Skal met her stare. “It has already been paid, Sara Bruff. I was your husband’s commander at Henfray. It was a victory, but even in the greatest victories there are some who die, and your Saul was one of the unlucky ones. Before he died he fought at my side, and in that brief time an action of his saved my life. This is not kindness. It is payment of a debt. His death robbed me of the chance to reward him, and so I must render a service to you in his stead.”

Her hand went to her mouth at the mention of her husband’s name. Skal could see that there was still pain there. Two months dead and still loved. It was not something he could say of his own father.

“I will accept your offer, my lord,” she said. “I will go to your estates for the sake of my son.”

It was done. He turned to Tilian. “We will leave in five days when the general gets back,” he said. “Quarter her in the Seventh Friend until then, food and board. See that she is comfortable, Tilian.”

He turned his horse away, dug his heels in and let it carry him away, deliberately not looking back. He was not certain what he had just done, what the meaning of it was, or why he had done it. It was the right thing, though. He was sure that it was the right thing. He just worried that he had done it for the wrong reason.

If Narak could have been drunk he would have been. One of the drawbacks of godhood was that this voluntary oblivion was denied him. No matter how much wine he drank he felt no more than a light buzz, a slight sense of detachment. He had drunk enough to kill two mortal men, but it had done no good. He was still lucid, still worried, still sober.

He was angry, too; sitting alone in the darkness of the lair, listening to the silence of the stone all around him. He was alone because he had sent everyone away, forbidden them from entering. Even Caster would not presume come to him now.

A faint glimmer of light showed him where the door was, but he had lit no lamp. He sat in the dark with his aspect upon him scenting the life of Wolfguard. He could almost see in the dark, see by scent, but there was nothing there that brought him any comfort.

He could hear noises; faint, dark remnants of sound filtered and thinned by the rock above him, but mostly it was scent that came to him. He could smell the others – Jiddian, Sithmaree, Pascha – they were all in Wolfguard, sticking together to avoid the attentions of whoever or whatever had killed the rest of the Benetheon. That made him angry. He did not like them being here. There had not been four gods here since the days of Remard, Beloff, Pascha and he. Their presence tainted that memory. Yet he was angrier still at the killings. The Benetheon had been created for a reason, and their deaths were unstitching that purpose, laying waste to Pelion’s design.

He could smell the kitchens two levels above, smell the spices that they were using to flavour the lamb, identify the turnips and beans, even the sweat of the cook was definite, positive, identifiable.

He could even smell the Bren. The messenger was still there somewhere, invisible to the eye with all the light in the world to shine upon it, folded somehow into the rock, but his nose could find its scent among all the others; a thin, acid vapour that reminded him of granite and smoke. If he called its name it would appear, listen to whatever he said, and somewhere in an underground chamber a hundred, two hundred, three hundred miles distant the Bren Morain would know the words that he had spoken.

There was another. Another messenger and another who would know: the Bren Alar. Narak was troubled by the Bren Alar. Pelion had never mentioned them, or it. He did not know if there was one of them or many. Many, he thought, but only from the Ashet’s words. He did not know what form they took, what power they had, what drove them.

If anyone stood to gain by killing the Benetheon it might be the Bren Alar. Certainly the Bren as a whole would benefit if men were wiped from the face of the world.

There. He had formed the thought that he had been trying to avoid for over a day:
if men were wiped from the face of the world
. Could it really be so?

He knew that the Bren had no love for men. Talking to the Bren Morain had confirmed that. They had no love for the Benetheon, either. It was also beyond doubt that they had manipulated Pelion’s law, whatever that might be, to permit them to exterminate Seth Yarra. Seth Yarra, on the other hand, seemed to have indicated by their deeds in southern Avilian, by the slaughter that had ended at Henfray, that they intended to make the kingdoms an empty land. They did not want to convert the people. They did not want the risk of rebellion, resentment, resistance. They wanted the land, just the land, and all its people gone.

If Seth Yarra succeeded then they, too, would be gone shortly afterwards. For all their numbers they could not stand against the Bren, and that would leave the world to the Bren alone.

It was the one card that he had yet to play. He had not told anyone what the Bren Morain had said to him. Only he was aware that the war would end in a year come spring. It was what gave him hope. If they could find a way to survive that long, to hold off the vast army that he expected to assault the white road at the end of spring, and keep them at bay for less than six months – just so long as the pass was open – then they had every chance.

But how?

He knew Seth Yarra’s strength. The Bren Alar had told him. Now that they had a base in Telas there would be no limit to the army they could land. He could be facing a hundred thousand men in spring, and he doubted they could raise and train half that number, even with all the levies called.

He knew the White Road, knew it well. It was part of his domain. In summer the wolves ran its length to move out onto the great plain, and hunted among the great herds that filled the open lands in the time of plenty. It was a broad valley, five miles long, and half a mile wide. The slopes were mostly scree and broken rock, the floor a mat of heather and scrub. It could not be bypassed on either side, but there was no cover, no real advantage to be had from the ground. If he fought Seth Yarra there it would be a brutal, face to face encounter. There would be no surprises for either side, and that was exactly how Seth Yarra would want it.

To the west lay the great forest. There was plenty of cover there. In fact there was too much. It was impossible to engage the enemy in the forest and hope for any degree of success. They would scatter and regroup. His own men would do the same. It would be chaos, and that, too, would suit Seth Yarra well enough.

On the East there was nothing at all. The plains opened out quickly. There was no cover, no barriers, no rivers or ridges for miles; just flat grassland. Once out there the enemy could march in any direction they chose and he would be forced to pursue and harry them. It was not the way to win a battle. Somehow he needed to bring them to a fight at exactly the right point, a prepared position, a clear advantage. Even then, how do you wipe out fifty thousand men and more without taking significant losses yourself?

There would be two battles. If they won the first there would be two. He had to win them both. He must hold the White Road until winter closed it, and then hold it again in the spring until the Bren acted. He guessed that it would be the last day of spring. The Bren Morain had promised spring, but it would be as late as they could make it.

He needed a strategy. In the past it has always been easy. There had always been a way to manipulate the Seth Yarra army into doing what he wanted, but the White Road was too simple, too clean.

Nothing came to him. The only thing he saw was to get through the pass so early, so far ahead of Seth Yarra that he could get clear of the forest to the south and fight them in Telas, but surely they would not be so lax as to permit that? He himself would have followed the snow, been through the White Road while it was still thawing, relying on the cold nights to freeze the mud and give his men a firm, if slippery, footing. But there was an arrogance about Seth Yarra, a deliberate slowness, a trudging inevitability about the way they conducted their war. They did not doubt that they would win, just as they knew that they would lose battle after battle until their numbers began to tell.

That was not his only problem. He had an enemy. He did not believe that Sithmaree had imagined the figure at Hellaree, the one that had put an arrow through her calf. The thought had crossed his mind that she was the enemy, that she had killed Fashmanion and the others and used the wound to cover her tracks, but he had dismissed it almost at once. He had known the snake god for well over a thousand years, and unless she had been replaced by an exact duplicate he knew that she did not have the imagination, the ambition or the intelligence to do what had been done.

So who?

Three thoughts came to mind. The first was the Bren Alar. It was a creature of undoubted power, intelligence and influence. The first creation of Pelion would have to be so. Narak knew Pelion’s mind, understood his way. The old man would have tried to achieve perfection with his first attempt. Never shoot for the edge of the target, he had told Narak once. Perfection first, second and always was his rule. Compromise was defeat.

And that’s what we were, what the Benetheon was, he thought: a compromise.

So what was the Bren Alar? He needed to learn more, but there was no library old enough, no memory long enough to give him the answers that he craved, none but the Bren themselves. Yet perhaps there were questions that he could ask, questions that would seem innocent enough but may yield fragments of the truth. He would have to think about that.

Secondly he thought of Hammerdan. The Mage King of Durandar was a man of subtlety and consequence. He had power, and after their last encounter he was no friend of Narak’s. He could be playing the part of Seth Yarra. Yet Narak doubted it. Whoever his enemy was he had played a long game. He had studied Seth Yarra, he knew the language and the customs, knew what strings to pull to make them dance, and also how to play to their strengths. If Hammerdan had set out to do this he must have begun years ago, before he killed Baradan, and perhaps even before he had the skill he now possessed. No, he did not believe that it was Hammerdan. He was simply not old enough to have played so long a game.

The third possibility was the unknown; some remnant tinkering by one of Pelion’s race, some mage out of Seth Yarra lands, or still other lands across oceans yet undiscovered. Seth Yarra were a seafaring race. Their ships were finer than those of the kingdoms, more capable, and who was to say that they had not visited other lands, that the world was not more than Seth Yarra and the kingdoms?

It was the third possibility that disturbed him most. Hammerdan he knew; the Bren Alar he could explore, but with the unknown he was at a fundamental disadvantage. His ignorance was complete. He did not even know where to begin.

He poured another cup of wine and drained it down. He stood, stretched his limbs and closed his eyes, drawing a great breath into his lungs and all of Wolfguard with it, every secret scent.

His anger had not faded. It worried him that he was angry most of the time now. His temper seemed to be growing shorter, and sometimes he felt the need to apologise to the servants at Wolfguard, though he never did. They would not understand. He felt the weight of his responsibility crushing him. He remembered that Pascha had rebuked him for it, his refusal to share his worries, his solitary ways. It was true that he had found comfort in company in those days. He had talked to Remard, and they had shared the weight. He had talked to Beloff, and in his own way the bear had eased the burden with a nod of approval or a disbelieving snort. It was surprising how much so little could mean. Pascha, too, had been a friend to him in that regard. She was more subtle. She asked him questions. It was her way of pointing things out.

So it was true that he was not alone. Not now. Most of what was left of the Benetheon was above him in his own home. Why not ask them?

In his mind he heard Beloff snort. Ask Jiddian? Ask Sithmaree? He liked Jiddian. The Eagle was an honest and true friend, but he had seen the light of belief in Jiddian’s eyes. Jiddian believed in Narak. Jiddian knew that Narak would find the answer, even if Narak did not. Jiddian was just not that bright. And Sithmaree? Cunning, perhaps, but not clever. Sithmaree thought mainly of Sithmaree and what might benefit her, personally. He did not trust her.

Then there was Pascha; Passerina, the god of sparrows, the lady of a thousand eyes. She had rejected Pelion’s gift five hundred years ago. He did not think that she was foolish, or that she lacked courage. Had she not stood with the hard pressed army at the Fal Verdan? But he did not understand her any more. She had gone away and become a stranger. There was a time when he could have read her as easily as he read Caster and Poor, but now she was all twisted up, always looking both ways at everything, and he could not see what lay beneath.

He had loved her once. He still felt something when he looked at her face, but he could no longer put a name to it. What had been between them had been so worn by time that he could not recognise it, and he had let her go, lost himself in duty and the eternal pleasure of being the Wolf, of being the god of wolves.

Yet these were all he had; these three questionable heads were his only council.

He allowed the veil to roll over him again, and became just a man. The scents of Wolfguard disappeared. The darkness became darker. He called for Poor, and for light, and both came at once as though they had been waiting no more than a few yards beyond the door to the lair, which they probably had been.

“Have they eaten?” he asked. He did not have to name them.

“No, Deus,” Poor replied.

“Then carry my word to them that they are to join me in the throne room for the evening meal, but don’t call it the throne room. Plenty of food, Poor. Lots of light. Make it a good show. In an hour from now, say.”