Wildfire (20 page)

 

  
“I didn’t defeat him, I gave him a beating,” Spiller said indignantly, “which is what he’ll get any time he’s insolent.”

 

  
The spectators praised Fleetfoot for his courage in defending himself one-handed, and he wore his bruises like banners, having won the fight even in losing it.

 
  

 

  
By the next morning the blanket of snow that had shone so clean and white was filthy and tumbled. The cold was unrelenting. We’d sheltered wherever we could during the storm, and afterward dug in where we found ourselves,
so the camp had no proper order to it. Drudges had scratched holes in the frozen ground with pickaxes to raise their masters’ pavilions; foot soldiers made their own shelters by tunneling into hard-packed drifts. There were heaps and walls of snow all around.

 

  
We drudges were cross because Sire Edecon had stayed in the tent all day yesterday with his dulcet, picking out a tune that never came to an end, and he’d started up again today though the Sun had just begun to yawn over the horizon. If Sire Galan hadn’t been sleeping soundly, he’d have thrown a boot at his armiger.

 

  
Rowney shouldered his ax.

 

  
“Are you getting more wool, wood?” I asked him.

 

  
“Yes, and ham hocks.”

 

  
“Shall I go?” I said.

 

  
“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” Spiller said.

 

  
Of course that made me want to go. Rowney set out in the lead, puffing clouds of breath, breaking the way through snow up to his waist. I followed Spiller, and Fleetfoot followed me, and Piddle came floundering along beside us, covering twice the ground in her eagerness to be everywhere.

 

  
Outside the camp the snow was unsullied. Small winds kicked up plumes of fine grains over the polished faces of the drifts. The road was hidden, so we went through the fields, approaching the town from the south, coming up behind the walled gardens of the larger houses. I saw a few wizened apples with perfect caps of snow, dangling from a bough that reached over the brick wall of a garden. I pointed to them and said, “If you heft me up, I’ll get those.” Imagine, they had apples enough to leave some on the tree!

 

  
Spiller tried the plank door in the wall and found it latched but wobbling on its hinges. He threw his weight against it, and grunted and staggered backward.

 

  
“The snow’s too deep,” Rowney said.

 

  
“Come on! Lift me—I can get on there,” I said.

 

  
“I’ll hoist her,” Spiller said with a bit of a leer.

 

  
“No you don’t,” said Rowney, and he stood by the wall and laced his hands together like a stirrup to boost me up. I climbed to his shoulders and to the top of the wall, and then to the bough, after shaking it to dislodge its load of snow. I threw apples down at them.

 

  
“They have heats of firerough in there,” I said.

 

  
Rowney said, “Can you get down and clear snow so we can open the gate?”

 

  
I let them in, I did. And Sire Rodela’s buzz got louder, becoming a sort of prickle or itch behind my eardrum, where I couldn’t get at it.

 

  
Rowney knocked on the back door, and chickens scolded us from their coop. A streamer of smoke rose from the chimney, so we knew someone was awake. The Sun was just coming up behind the clouds, giving them a pearly sheen.

 

  
A woman’s voice inside said, “Who is it?”

 

  
Rowney found the door unlocked and threw it open. A serving maid was standing in the doorway; her hair was sleeked back and plaited. She wore a thin dress, an apron, a shawl, and a pair of embroidered slippers. She took a step back, saying, “What do you want? What’s your business here?” It sounded like the yelping of a little dog. Rowney pushed his way in and she backed up. The rest of us followed.

 

  
Inside the house, the light was yellow and lively from candles and a new-made fire in an arched stone niche, but it was cold. The maid clasped her chapped hands together. Her face had gone stark pale except for the ruddy tip of her nose.

 

  
Spiller looked in the pot suspended from a pothook over the fire. “Oats,” he said with disgust.

 

  
“Where are your master and mistress?” Rowney said in the High. “Upstairs?” The maid had her back to the table in the middle of the room, and he was standing too close, leaning over her. She kept her eyes downcast as she nodded, and her shoulders were hunched as if she expected him to hit her. My throat was dry. Rowney was a tried soldier, the only one among us who’d been to war before, for he’d accompanied Sire Alcoba’s older brother on a campaign. I knew it, but I’d never seen it till now, when he put menace on like a cloak.

 

  
“Having a cuddle, I wager,” said Spiller. “Hey? Hey? I wouldn’t mind a bit of a cuddle with
her.
” He was in a jovial mood. The girl couldn’t understand his words, because he spoke in the Low, but she knew what he meant right enough; soon she’d be leaking tears. Sire Rodela sniggered in my ear, even noisier now than when I’d opened the gate to the garden.

 

  
Rowney disappeared into the front room, and Fleetfoot down the trapdoor to the root cellar. Spiller climbed on a stool and cut down the half-eaten ham hanging from the roof beam. He sat at the table and sawed the ham with his dagger. He demanded that the maid bring him bread, ale, eggs, and mustard, and she hurried to do as he asked. His bruises from the cockfight were turning from purple to yellow, and his nose was healing askew. He was a fearsome sight.

 

  
I went into the front room after Rowney. The ground floor had but two rooms, the kitchen to the rear and a clothier’s shop facing the street, with a long table and bench for tailoring. Wide shutters, pierced in a crossweave pattern, could be raised along the front to open the shop to the street. The
clothier was prosperous enough to afford sheets of mica in the openings of the shutters. A glazed clay statue of Wend Weaver stood by the door. Rowney was pulling folded cloth from the shelves and shaking it out, looking for money. He emptied baskets of scraps and thread on the floor.

 

  
The stair to the sleeping loft was two notched logs set side by side, steeply inclined. I saw descending a pair of bare feet, shins, and knobby knees, and then the tail of a long shirt. “Rolly!” I called in warning.

 

  
Rowney was there in an instant, shoving the haft of his ax in the man’s belly. The man ducked and saw Rowney, and came the rest of the way down the stairs. “What do you want?” he said. His voice was strong but his looks belied it. He was stooped and nearsighted from his work, but younger than I’d expected after seeing his stringy legs.

 

  
“Sausage wouldn’t go amiss,” Rowney said, smiling. “But we’ll take whatever you’ve got, food, wood, money.”

 

  
“I’m a poor man, Sire,” the clothier said. “I don’t have money, I have debts.”

 

  
The High came out of the mudman’s mouth as if he were born haughty. It made him sound insolent—I couldn’t tell if that was Sire Rodela’s opinion or my own.

 

  
“You have money,” Rowney said, raising the ax blade to the man’s throat.

 

  
I put my hand on Rowney’s sleeve. The muscles of his arm were hard, though he held the ax loosely. I said, “I thought somewhat, a bit of eat and firewool…That’s all we need.”

 

  
Rowney gave me a look.

 

  
A thud from upstairs. Someone had shut the trapdoor and was dragging something heavy over it.

 

  
Rowney said, “So it’s upstairs, your money?” and the man shook his head, but Rowney took his answer from the fear in the man’s eye and pushed him aside. He thumped against the trapdoor with the butt of his ax, and a baby began to cry upstairs. “We’ve got your man down here,” Rowney called. “Best for him if you let us up.”

 

  
No answer. Rowney turned to the clothier again and gripped his shoulder and sat him down forcefully on his bench. The man’s weak gray eyes were watering. Rowney leaned down to talk to him. “I want you to sing out, now. Tell them to open the door up there. We just want a look around, we’re not going to harm anybody.”

 

  
Spiller had come in from the kitchen to see what Rowney was shouting about. “I’ll make him sing. I’ll tickle him with this, see if he sings out then.” Spiller waved his smallsword in the clothier’s face. “Sing a song and we’ll let you go, I promise.”

 

  
“I can’t sing, Sire, I beg your pardon,” the man said. “I have a poor voice, I fear.”

 

  
I heard Sire Rodela’s jeering laughter come out of my mouth. I couldn’t help being amused by the way the man squeaked—Spiller was laughing too. Meanwhile Rowney had climbed halfway up the ladder and was chopping at the trapdoor with his ax, at an awkward angle, sinking the blade in and wrenching it out again. Splinters rained down and a woman screamed upstairs. The baby was bawling, the kind of cry that goes on and on and stops abruptly until the child catches breath to wail again.

 

  
Spiller mimicked the clothier, saying in a high voice, “I can’t sing, Sire, I have a poor voice, I fear!” and then, in his own voice, “I don’t care if you sound like a goose, you will sing. Don’t you know any songs? Sing ‘Will ye or nill ye,’ or ‘The baker’s wife.’” Fleetfoot came to the kitchen door and stood there grinning.

 

  
“I don’t know those songs, begging your pardon, Sire.” The man cringed. He avoided Spiller’s eyes, wouldn’t even sneak a glance at Rowney wielding the ax. He was servile, a coward. He wasn’t going to raise a hand to protect his wife and child, but he was obstinate about his money, wasn’t he? He should have more sense, give Rowney what he was after.

 

  
Spiller was still laughing, but his jest had turned sour. He wanted to make the clothier sing just because he wouldn’t. He put the point of his smallsword to his throat and ordered him to sing; he didn’t care what song. I’d been sure Spiller wouldn’t hurt the man, but now I began to wonder. The clothier opened his mouth and nothing came out, and Spiller leaned closer, pressed harder against his throat. The man sang—though you couldn’t call it singing, it was more of a croak—

 

  

 

  
Hush little one, stop your crying.

 

  
Your mother can sew and she can spin,

 

  
She’ll weave a fine cloth to swaddle you in.

 

  

 

  
Spiller guffawed and said, “Don’t you know any songs fit for men?”

 

  
Rowney was vexed that Spiller was wasting time on the clothier. He shouted for him to come and help, and both of them put their shoulders to the trapdoor and they managed to lift it a handspan, only to have an iron-tipped stave jabbed in their faces. But Rowney was quick. He grabbed the stave away from the woman upstairs and they heaved at the trapdoor again.

 

  
I crouched by the overturned basket of scraps, looking for pieces of cloth the proper color and size for my compass. I looked up to see the clothier sidling toward the front door. He met my gaze with a pleading look. Sire Rodela hissed with laughter in my ear, but I didn’t say a word.

 

  
“Wait!” Spiller called, jumping off the ladder, but by then the clothier was out the front door and blundering in his nightshirt through the snowdrifts to the house next door, howling for help.

 

  
“She let him go!” Spiller said. “Let him prance right out the door!”

 

  
I shoved all the scraps into the basket and stood up. I said, “Guess we’d best hurry now, before he comes back with somebody brawler, braver, like a blacksmite.”

 
  

 

  
Sire Galan’s varlets were angry with me, even Fleetfoot, who spoke longingly of the treasures left behind in the root cellar. Spiller said he’d been getting along well with the little maid, he’d have had her bent backward over the kitchen table if I hadn’t interfered. Though he did admit it had been a fine sight to see Rowney running along with captive hens in each hand: what a battle they waged against him, how they heaved themselves about and flapped and scolded! And Bloodspiller laughed as he said this, his laugh remarkably like the squawking of an outraged chicken.

 

  
Rowney didn’t say anything, but his silence was reproachful.

 

  
I couldn’t pretend I’d been ignorant of what we were about. I’d picked up logs from the woodpile as we ran out through the back garden, warmed myself by the fire made of stolen wood, and helped to eat the chickens. And I had enough cloth now to make myself a new divining compass, for I’d stolen the basket of scraps. I wasn’t above looting—or thieving, call it by its rightful name—if I wasn’t above enjoying its fruits. As Sire Galan had once made painfully plain to me.

 

  
So I went along. And when I saw the serving girl with her lips trembling, hadn’t I felt a sweet thrill of contempt? The more I’d seen of myself in her, the more I’d despised her weakness. It still gave me a queasy, slippery excitement in my belly pit to think of it: Rowney digging his ax blade into the tailor’s throat. What Bloodspiller might have got up to in the kitchen.

 

  
I reproached myself. But I blamed Sire Rodela too. He’d goaded me on, buzzed so loudly I couldn’t think, tainted me with his joy. I couldn’t wait to be rid of him. Mai had promised me it would be soon, very soon.

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  

  
  
  
CHAPTER 8
  

  
The Summoning
  
  

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

  
W
e were pent up in camp while gangs of foot soldiers labored to clear the road, and snow drifted down to cover it again. Tomorrow was Longest Night, and there would be a bonfire and a feast. From now on the days would get longer, which was cause for celebration. Cause to mourn too, for now the Crone had us in her bony grip, and it would be months before she would let us go.