Byren slipped out the back of the farmhouse with them, but he went right, while the others went left to the barn.
The dogs' barking led him past the farmhouse, down the slope and up over the rise. This was steep ground to farm, mostly suitable for sheep and long-haired goats. But the family had built terraces to plant grains and it was on one of these terraces that the dogs had three men pinned.
Unarmed men, who carried travelling kits across their shoulders. Cold, hungry men, who hugged themselves and stamped their feet to keep warm.
Byren whistled.
The dogs broke off barking and sat, waiting for him. He'd always been good with animals. Had he been better with them since the ulfr pack adopted him?
He put this unnerving thought aside to study the men. They had stiffened when he came into view. He was armed and a head taller than the average man, thanks to his father's blood.
Byren jumped from the upper terrace to the one where they waited.
'We don't want any trouble,' the eldest said. He looked about thirty and had the kind of too-ready smile that Byren distrusted. With him were two much younger men. They looked to be about Fyn's age, maybe sixteen. One was short and skinny, the other a little taller and solid with a thick neck. They were both weary, grey-faced and angry. They hugged themselves as though cold to the bone and did not meet Byren's eyes. No... it was not anger, but fear.
'We're just passing through,' the first said.
'To where? Nothing lies above this farm but steep foothills and, above that, even steeper mountains.' Byren pointed to the west. 'Foenix Pass lies that way.'
As the man glanced over his right shoulder he swayed slightly. They were all exhausted and they had no business here unless they were looking for the loyalist camp. But what was there to stop the Merofynians sending one of their own disguised as a loyalist? He'd only have to speak Rolencian to blend in.
Byren waited.
The first man summoned a weary smile. 'We've come a long way and run out of food. You wouldn't have a bite to eat you could spare us?'
Byren thought of his half-eaten breakfast. This would give him a chance to judge the men's veracity for himself. 'Come this way.'
At his whistle the dogs followed. He put his hands on the thigh-high stonework and swung his weight up to the next terrace, then turned to offer his hand to the closest man.
It was the skinny, short one. As he went to take Byren's hand with his left arm, Byren spotted the bloody stump of his right arm held against his chest.
With a curse, he hauled the youth up. In fact, he pulled so hard, the youth stumbled and Byren had to set him on his feet again.
'What happened to you?' Byren asked, afraid he knew the answer.
'The same thing that happened to all of us,' the smiler said. He wasn't smiling now. He'd managed the climb and had paused to help the solid one, who was struggling. For him the terrace was waist-high.
'Here.' Byren stepped in and hauled the other youth up. Three men, all missing their right hands. 'It was the Merofynians, wasn't it?'
'They're searching the valley for Byren Kingsheir. Every house they come to, they drag out the man of the house and ask for directions. If he can't help them, they chop off his right hand. They figure a man without his right hand is one less swordsman to worry about.' The smiler gestured with his stump. 'I was a player. No more juggling for me.'
'And you?' Byren asked the solid youth.
'A butcher. Just finished my apprenticeship. M'master died so I married his daughter and took over. Now who'll look after the shop?'
Byren looked to the skinny one, the youngest who, on closer inspection, couldn't be more than fifteen.
'I'm a scribe.' He gulped. 'At least I was. What good is a scribe who can't write?'
Anger made Byren's breakfast an indigestible lump in his belly. Unless the Merofynians had crippled one of their own men so he could blend in, Byren could trust these three. 'Come on. You can share my breakfast.'
They followed him up over the rise. From here they could see the farmhouse in the hollow.
'I told you we shoulda kept walking last night,' the butcher complained.
'Eh, just as well you didn't,' Byren told them. 'Last night six mounted Merofynians arrived here. Chopped off the right hand of the man of the house. He was all of thirteen. Then they tied a chain around his neck and told him to lead them to Byren Kingsheir, or they'd do worse to his mam and little brother.'
The butcher swore softly.
'What is Rolencia coming to?' the scribe muttered. 'Where's King Byren when we need him?'
'But, how did you escape? I don't -' The player broke off, staring at Byren with suspicion. 'You're no farmer. You're too well spoken. Where are these Merofynians? Where were you when the boy was taken?'
'He's safe. The Merofynians are all dead. Couldn't have them running off and leading others back to -'
'You're Byren Kingsheir. I mean King Byren!' the player said, then remembered his manners and made a passable bow, proving he must have performed for nobles.
The other two would have followed suit but Byren stopped them. 'Here, none of that. Come down and eat. Then we have to leave.'
Before long they had rearranged the family's belongings and were mounted up on the spare horses, with the scribe and butcher both looking as uncomfortable as Seela had the night before. The dogs barked, eager to get going. Tomorrow, Byren would send men down to the farm to wring the chickens' necks and walk the cows up to the camp. No sense in leaving anything for Merofynians to loot.
For now, Byren saw his old nurse off with a stern warning to watch her back. She travelled on foot, disguised as a wise-woman selling simple remedies. Wise-women were welcomed in every village. They helped with anything from treating bad teeth to delivering babies. It was the perfect way to spread word of the loyalist camp, the Leogryf's Lair.
Seela nodded to the three maimed men, who waited further up the path with Esfira and Tikhon. 'If those three are anything to go by, I'll have no trouble convincing others to join you.'
'And all of them maimed. I'll lead an army of cripples!'
'Take that attitude and you deserve to lose,' Seela told him, tapping his chest with her finger, as if he was ten, not twenty. 'After a bit of training, a man can do wonders with his left hand.'
He laughed and kissed her forehead. 'I'll miss you, Seela. Take care.'
'Don't worry about me. All they'll see is a weak old woman.'
Byren had to be satisfied with that. He let her go and returned to the others, leading Tikhon's horse.
'Will I see Vadik soon?' Tikhon asked.
'Soon,' Byren said, hoping the big brother had not been brought low by his fever. And he plunged up the path, leading the horse with the others following.
Fyn blinked gritty, tired eyes. He'd hardly slept, kept awake by the juddering of the ship's timbers as the
Wyvern's Whelp
tried to outrun the Utland raiders. At the crest of each wave she paused almost as if she'd keep rising. Then she slid down the other side, cutting deep into the upward slope of the next - spray leaping left and right - before clawing her way up the wave's rise.
It was just as well he had his sea legs, for the ship ran before the wind with every concertina-sail fully extended. He looked up, seeing the mid-morning sun gleam through the canvas, the sail's thin wooden ribs illuminated from behind.
They'd been prepared to do battle since last night. A brazier stood nearby, the coals hot, ready for the stack of tar-dipped arrows.
Fire on a ship at sea? The thought horrified him. If the ship burned to the waterline, they'd drown out here, far from land.
The quarter-master prodded him in the ribs as he passed by. 'Go help Jaku.'
Jakulos sat at the spinning whetstone, sharpening the crews' weapons.
Fyn went over to the big man, who greeted him with a grin. 'Thought so, Bantam can't abide seeing a man idle.'
He spoke the Ostronite trading dialect with the accent of Merofynia, but Fyn knew he had no love for his homeland. He'd been press-ganged to serve the Merofynian navy. With the big man's shirt off, Fyn could see the many criss-crossing scars stretched across the meaty muscles of his back. The blemishes glistened in the sun, silver and slick with sweat. Here, in the lea of the fore-deck, it was surprisingly warm.
Jakulos selected a sword from the pile waiting to be sharpened. The singing of the sword on the whetstone made it impossible to speak.
As there didn't seem to be anything Fyn could do, he looked around. Everyone had a role, everyone knew their place, except him. Even the ten-year-old cabin boy knew more than him and, at nearly seventeen, that rankled.
Back at Halcyon Abbey, he'd completed ten years' training as an acolyte, and been due to get his final scalp tattoo and shave off his top-knot this spring cusp. Now, he suspected he'd never become a monk. To disguise himself, he'd cut the betraying top-knot and his hair was growing out, obscuring his abbey tattoos.
The
Wyvern's Whelp
reminded him of the abbey in some ways. Everyone had a task, from the ship's carpenter who kept her sea-worthy, to the helmsman who handled the wheel, to the navigator, a true artist who read the sea's subtle signs and took the readings to work out their position relative to the sun. They all worked like the clock in the guildhall bell tower, cogs fitting into other cogs to create a greater whole. And, right now, that whole was intent on escaping the Utland raiders.
Jakulos lifted the blade to study it. Satisfied, he placed it on the sharpened pile.
'We're making good time,' Fyn said. 'I don't think they've gained since we put up all our canvas.'
Jakulos sent him a weighing look, then selected a pouch of knives from the table at his side. He ran his finger over each to test their edge, speaking softly. 'They're Utland raiders. We're sea-hounds, their sworn enemies. We've protected merchant convoys. We've hunted down, attacked and sunk more Utland ships than you've had hot dinners. Nothing is going to put them off the chase.' He lifted his head and glanced out to sea. 'And we're too far from Ostron Isle to make it to port. Barring a convenient storm or mist, they'll catch us. Here, take these down to the ship's surgeon.' Jakulos rolled up the leather pouch and handed it to Fyn. 'We're lucky the cap'n believes in keeping a healthy crew. We've a real, Ostron Isle-trained surgeon, nothing like the butchering carpenter who doubled as a surgeon on my last ship.'
Fyn accepted the pouch. Down below deck he found the surgeon's assistant scrubbing the work-table with lye. Its sharp scent stung Fyn's eyes. Meanwhile the surgeon checked his supplies, which were stored in bags or glass jars, labelled in faded, spidery writing.
'Master Jakulos sends your pouch,' Fyn said. The old surgeon took it with an absent-minded nod. Fyn registered no Affinity from him. Nothing to hasten healing. The least of the abbey's healers had Affinity to hasten healing or ease pain or fight festering. Each trained to hone their gift, then worked as a team to save lives. Very different from here.
'What are you staring at?' the surgeon's apprentice asked.
As Fyn opened his mouth to reply, a cry from above cut him off.
'Utlanders to starboard.'
Weren't they to port? For a heartbeat he didn't understand.
Then the surgeon cursed. 'Another scavenger. Just what we need.'
There were two Utland raiders on their tail? Fyn ran up on deck, hurrying up the steps to the rear deck where Captain Nefysto held the farseer to his eye. The wind flung the captain's long black hair over his shoulder.
The younger son of one of the great families of Ostron Isle, Nefysto wore onyx stones threaded through his hair and these glinted in the sunlight. Their countries had never been more than trading partners, but Fyn had more in common with the captain than anyone else. They were both educated men on a ship of scoundrels.
The captain swore softly under his breath, slamming the farseer closed.
'Can we outrun them?' Fyn asked, joining him to watch the converging sails.
'We would stand a better chance if we dumped our cargo over the side. But that would rather defeat the purpose.' He grinned at Fyn. Even on ship, while fleeing Utlanders, Nefysto dressed like the Ostronite noble he was. Velvet knee-length coat, black lace at his throat and boots, when everyone else aboard went barefoot. The light in his dark eyes, however, was anything but civilised.
Nefysto might enjoy the challenge, but Fyn just wanted to survive long enough to get home and find Byren.
Chapter Three
For Piro the day passed in a blur. As a noble from an old family, Dunstany's mansion was built in a prime position overlooking the Landlocked Sea, not far from the king's palace.
His servants prepared a bath scented with rose oil, then led her to a chamber fit for a queen. Chests lay open, heaped with glittering clothes. There were dresses embroidered with gold thread and inset with jewels, wraps of the finest silk from Ostron Isle, slippers of exquisite wyvern skin and bolts of delicate Rolencian lace.
Judging from all this, Dunstany's wealth easily equalled her father's, and the scholar was only a noble of Merofynia. Piro's mother had never said anything, but her old nurse had often complained about the way they lived in Rolenhold, saying they were little better than barbarian spar warlords. Now Piro saw the truth in this.
Servants dressed her in a gown of dark red velvet. It was laced down her back, the bodice embroidered in gold thread. A gold-trimmed cap was pinned to her head and matching slippers tied around her ankles. All too soon she was ready. She sat and waited, gnawing her bottom lip.
A tray of fruit and sweet wine was sent to Piro's room, but she was too nervous to eat or drink. What was Isolt Merofyn Kingsdaughter like? Would she make Piro's life unbearable?
At last the servants came to say Lord Dunstany was waiting in the entrance foyer. Piro paused at the top of the stairs.
The noble scholar looked up and smiled, the corners of his wispy moustache lifting. 'You look every bit a kingsdaughter, Seelon. I suppose I should call you Seela, now that you have resumed your true gender.'
As she glided down the steps, grateful for her mother's interminable lessons in court etiquette, Piro noted that Dunstany had changed out of his usual woollen scholarly attire. For the feast, he wore indigo silk, so dark it was almost black. His robes touched the floor and his iron-grey hair glinted loose on his shoulders. A single pendant, a star-within-a-circle - the Dunstany noble symbol - hung on his chest. She guessed the amber pendant was under his robe, and once again her resentment surfaced.
'Ready, Seela?'
'Do I have any choice?'
'Do any of us?' he asked gently and offered his hand. Surprised by his courtly gesture, she accepted his touch.
They rode in a carriage around the slope of Mount Mero to the palace. Piro was nervous about meeting King Merofyn and his daughter. Isolt had agreed to marry her brother, Lence, with no intention of honouring that betrothal. What sort of people were these Merofynians, who valued their word so lightly?
The walk from carriage to feasting hall seemed endless. Jewel-bright mosaics covered the floor. Piro could feel the heat rising up from the tiles. The palace builders had harnessed Mulcibar's blessing by piping hot water from deep within the earth to run under the floor. Her people used Halcyon's blessing to provide hot bathing water, but they really could have done with under-floor heating, especially during the Rolencian winters.
At last they came to the feasting hall. The air was heavy here with the scent of candles. A lapis lazuli mosaic of a beautifully stylised wyvern glittered on the wall behind the high table. From the king's table, two long tables ran out at right angles. Every seat was taken. Servants scurried about, answering summons.
Piro's first impression was of a cage of exquisite birds, a multitude of chattering people and no forest of columns to obscure the hall's magnificence. How did the roof stay up? She looked up to discover great ribs running from the walls to points above her. The ceiling was so high it took her breath away.
Someone laughed and her gaze was drawn to the feasters. They wore so much glittering jewellery, velvets, silks and feathered headdresses, that Piro felt under-dressed.
She glanced to Dunstany. In his deep indigo robe with his iron-grey hair, he stood out stark and dark. Now she understood why he had dressed so simply.
As they approached the high table, they drew nearer to Palatyne, who stood in front of King Merofyn recounting the battle for Rolencia. He broke off mid-sentence, seeing them.
The noble scholar bowed low with an elegant sweep of his hand. 'My king.'
Piro felt a tug on her skirt and realised she had been staring at the frail old man who had toppled her father's kingdom and brought them such misery. He wasn't at all what she expected, not arrogant, if anything he looked tired and cranky.
Another tug on her skirt. She flushed and bowed her head, hands by her sides in the Rolencian manner, no fancy flourishes.
'Dunstany,' a thin voice spoke. 'Like a black cat, you've returned unharmed.'
The noble scholar lifted his head and so did Piro.
Dunstany shrugged. 'You know what they say, a cat always lands on its feet.'
'But you've been doing that for ninety-four years now.' The old man's eyes blazed. 'How do you do it?'
'A by-product of Affinity, my king.' From his tone, Piro could tell they'd had this conversation before. 'Affinity affects different people in different ways.'
The king sat back with a grimace. Used to being acknowledged by visiting nobles, Piro felt excluded but also relieved, because she could stand back and observe.
Dunstany turned to Palatyne with the barest of nods. 'Overlord.'
'Duke Palatyne,' he corrected, touching a large, official crest on his chest which rested amidst her family's royal emblems. Every time Piro saw the pendants, her stomach lurched as she was reminded of how her mother and father had died. How had Lence died? Would she ever know? He'd been so much larger than life, he and Byren. She could not imagine anything quenching the fire in them.
'You.' Palatyne tugged Piro forwards.
She lifted her chin determined not to let the grand palace, and its even grander people, overwhelm her.
'And this, King Merofyn, is my gift to your beautiful daughter, a Rolencian nobleman's child for her very own seven-year slave.'
Piro glanced to Palatyne, surprised by his easy lie. Then she recalled she wasn't supposed to understand Merofynian.
She let her gaze meet King Merofyn's. This was the man who had assassinated her mother's young brother to steal the crown, relying on his cousinship to legitimise his claim.
Her old nurse had always said you were born with the face the gods gave you, but you ended up with the face you deserved. If this was so, then King Merofyn had been a mean-spirited, angry man and now she thought she also read fear in his frail body. He sat on the great golden throne, behind the royal table, dwarfed by his mantle of office with its gleaming chains and seals.
Originally, she had put him high on her list of people who needed killing. But, since overhearing Palatyne's plan to poison him and now, seeing him in person, she pitied the king.
Next to him sat Isolt Merofyn Kingsdaughter. Her eyebrows had been plucked completely and her face powdered so that she was very pale. Kohl elongated her tilted black eyes and her mouth had been painted a glistening red, like a furled rose bud. With her high forehead and her hair pulled back under a circlet of silver, she looked like a perfect sculpture, not a living, breathing girl half a year older than Piro.
'You do me great honour, Overlord Pal...' Isolt corrected herself, 'I mean Duke Palatyne.'
Piro felt a little kick of delight. If she was not mistaken, Isolt's slip had been deliberate, to remind Palatyne of his origins beyond the Divide. Piro studied Isolt. Was this kingsdaughter a kindred spirit?
No, she couldn't be, not when she held her honour so lightly.
Palatyne's jaw clenched, but he said only, 'The Lady Seela is at your service, Isolt.' No title for her.
'Seela? That is a Merofynian name. Does she speak Merofynian?'
'No. Rolencian only,' Palatyne said. 'These Rolencians imitate their betters but do not have the scholarship to learn another language. How many can you speak, Isolt Kingsdaughter?'
This was a clumsy attempt at flattery and Piro thought Isolt agreed with her, because her answer was barely civil.
'As many as I need to.' She added in only slightly accented Rolencian, 'Come stand behind my chair, lady Seela.'
Palatyne gave Piro a nudge and she climbed the step onto the dais, going around the table.
Isolt did not meet Piro's eyes or acknowledge her and Piro realised that, as a slave, she was invisible, yet right behind the throne. Dunstany was right, she could go anywhere in the palace and all she had to say was that she was on Isolt Kingsdaughter's business for the guards to let her pass.
While Palatyne went on to boast of his success, Dunstany took his seat at the end of the high table. Between the Power-worker and the king were eleven nobles - men and women who had risen to power with the king, Piro suspected, usurping the nobles loyal to her mother's family. This was surprising, as she would have expected the noble scholar to have wormed his way closer into the king's inner circle of advisers.
Palatyne came around to sit on the king's left hand. On his side were three young nobles she recognised from the voyage, and the Utlander. Here was another layer of new allegiances. Clearly, there was a struggle for power between the older nobles who supported King Merofyn and the ambitious young ones who were eager for power at Palatyne's side. And what did Dunstany do?
She glanced his way, catching him watching her.
He sat back and waited. He was a survivor.
During the long meal Piro wriggled her toes in her fancy new shoes, while she observed the nobility and royalty of Merofynia. Now that she was bored, her stomach rumbled and she wished she had eaten earlier.
The king, his daughter and Palatyne all had their own food tasters. They ate nothing that their tasters did not. If this was an elegant high court, then she was glad she had grown up in Rolenhold where King Rolen did not worry about poison and sometimes wandered into the kitchen to help himself to a slab of leftover apple pie.
Sorrow stung Piro's eyes, but grief served no purpose. Revenge was better. She almost laughed. Here she stood, inside the palace, within a body's length of the men who had orchestrated the downfall of her father's kingdom, and no one knew who she was.
Dunstany thought she was spying for him, but she had her own plans.
Fyn studied the sky, hoping for clouds to obscure the betraying multitude of stars.
'No such luck.' Bantam said, voicing his thoughts. 'Under starlight the ship stands out like a cockroach on a silver plate!'
Fyn turned back to the approaching Utlanders. 'They're -'
'Closer still,' Bantam agreed. 'They'll be on us by midnight.'
Fyn swallowed. To die out here, when Byren needed him... 'We're tacking across the wind. Can't we ride before it like we were doing?'
Bantam grinned. 'We'll make a sailor of you yet. We're tacking because the cap'n's changed course. We're heading towards the Skirling Stones.'
He drew Fyn with him to a better vantage point and gestured by way of explanation.
When Fyn stared in the direction he'd indicated, he was able to make out jagged black rocks, jutting out of the sea. 'What good's that? They'll just follow us.'
'Into the Skirling Stones? Into a maelstrom of seething water, reefs of razor-sharp rocks and whirlpools?' Bantam mocked. 'No one in their right mind would venture into the Skirling Stones.'
Fyn just stared at him. Why hadn't anyone warned him sea-hounds were mad?
'You think we're crazy, don't you, little monk? And we would be, if the cap'n hadn't done this before. He's a true artist, able to feel his way through channels, against tides and over reefs. He knows his way through the Skirling Stones.'
'Why? Why go there in the first place?'
'We're sea-hounds, boy. Ostron Isle pays a bounty for every Utland raider we destroy. But it's hard to catch them unawares on the open sea.' He tilted his head. 'Back home where I grew up, there were spiders big as sparrows. They'd build a trap by digging into the soil and disguise it with bits of twig and bark, so that it looked like a bit of ordinary ground. When an unwary beetle came by, they'd dart out and snatch it. That's a bit like the cap'n's plans. No one expects attack from within the Skirling Stones.'
'That's clever.' Fyn began to hope. 'How many times have you done this?'
Bantam hesitated for a single heartbeat. 'Just the once, to see if it could be done. But the plan's a good one.'
Fyn's heart sank. He'd failed his family, he'd failed the abbot and now it looked like he would die and fail Byren.
Byren arrived at the hidden loyalist camp to find another two maimed youths being treated alongside young Vadik. Equal parts anger and frustration boiled through him, making it hard to accept Esfira's thanks as she hugged her crippled son. At least Vadik was no longer feverish.
Leaving the injured men in the care of Dovecote's stable-master, who was the closest thing they had to a healer, Byren went looking for Orrade. This camp had grown around the survivors of Dovecote Estate, people Orrade had led into the hills to escape the Merofynian invasion. Byren needed to know how many more families had arrived since then, how many were warriors and what food and weapons they had.
Clearly reassured to have Byren back, people came up to him, eager for news, eager for words of encouragement. They'd lost homes and loved ones to the invasion and they looked to him to right these wrongs. He felt the weight of their expectation.