The Gauntlet and the Fist Beneath Page 2
‘No trial for rust-folk,’ he said, his voice barely a whisper, and Floré shook her head at him.
‘You owe me a joke,’ she said, but Janos only fell back to his knees and wept. Floré blew out a breath through her nose, checked the straps on her gauntlets, and took a final look at the colossal bones, the ribs of the dead god reaching up into the sky just at the edge of her vision through the storm. She turned her gaze out to the mire beyond and the horrors to come. It was time to go to work.
ACT 1
ORBS OF LIGHT
Orbs of light
Dead of night
Hide your eye
Take your flight
‘Sop for the mewling ones in the darkness that they might remember true fear and grow still.’
– Antian children’s rhyme
1
LIGHTS IN THE FOREST
‘Berren died, Anshuka slept, and for a hundred years of fire the empire spread forth. Tullen One-Eye rode the god-wolf Lothal into battle and together they broke Undalor, bowed the warmongers of Tessendorm and traders of Isken in the name of their empress. The years of war were followed by the slave generations, until the whitestaffs broke their chains and awoke Anshuka. The great mother woke from her sleep and slew the wolf and the army of Ferron. Anshuka in her wrath brought down the unending storm and ruined Ferron utterly. The owl fell into darkness, the bear slew the wolf, and Anshuka crossed the world trailing ice and pain and came to rest in Orubor. With the snows that year came the first Claw Winter, her nightmare as she slept.’ – The Fall of Ferron, Whitestaff Anctus of Riven
Floré put down her tea and gripped her right wrist with her left hand and held tight, trying to keep the tremors in check. They came swift, and as sure as night follows day she felt the nausea, felt the pulse in her skull, and then the hot waves of pain coursing up her right arm deep down in the bone. She clenched her teeth and focused on her breathing for a long moment until the pain began to fade. She glanced along the kitchen, but Janos hadn’t seen her tense, so she shook her head and forced herself to stay calm as the tremors passed. Janos was at the other end of the room half singing a song to himself as he prepared her a parcel of food for the road: a wedge of sharp cheese, a half loaf of dark bread, two apples. It was an old song: Three daughters of the mist, unkind. The melody was simple enough, and he sang quiet and off key. He bundled the food up in a cloth and tied it off primly then came to the table and slipped it into her pack.
‘So they aren’t sure what it is?’ he said, feigning nonchalance, one hand on the chair and the other fidgeting with a button on his shirt. His voice was deep and his accent clipped, and Floré couldn’t help but smile at him. He looked worried, always looked worried when she had to leave Hasselberry, and she loved the way his brow furrowed over his dark brown eyes. Janos was a slight man, with soft hands and a soft heart, prematurely grey hair with a high widow’s peak tied loosely behind his head. His skin was a light brown, smooth and unblemished save for crinkles at the corner of his eyes. She let her grip slacken on her wrist and stood and went to him and kissed him gently.
The kitchen was lit by the low fire and the last light of the day, a safe space of wood and old iron. Janos wrapped his arms around Floré and they stood in silence for a long moment. His sleeves were rolled up and as he embraced her she glimpsed the sigils inked into his forearms, red and stark on soft skin. Outside the kitchen window the sun was skirting the treetops, and a wood pigeon called out from the forest.
She pulled herself away and returned to the table, to the weapons and armour laid across it, scanning them with a practised eye.
‘It’s a wee rottroll at worst, likely a few goblins,’ she said, grinning at the idea of action, of blades in the night, and she started pulling on a light leather jerkin over her wool shirt. ‘It’s nothing much, my love, but Larchford have no Stormguard and so I must valiantly ride into the night!’ Her smile faded as she remembered the pale farmer’s boy telling his tale in the back room of the inn.
‘The lad said five sheep gone last week,’ she continued, sparing him the details. ‘We’ll get there before dawn and by the evening probably we’ll be eating dinner in triumph in the inn, toast of the town.’
Janos nodded and cast about for a task, his eyes landing on Floré’s scuffed and battered riding boots. He picked up the boots and tutted, and then opened the back door and sat down on a stool and went to work with a stiff brush on the muck encasing the heels as Floré took another mouthful of her tea and pulled the ties on her jerkin tight. The leather was thick but supple. She pulled her Stormguard Forest Watch tabard on over the top, the green fabric trimmed in gold and embroidered with a yellow lightning bolt in the centre of the chest.
With great care Floré drew her sword from its scabbard to rest on the table with its blade bare, and then buckled on her sword belt, her scabbard and old silvered dagger with its hilt of antler pulled tight to her hips, her dull copper rank buckle locking the belt in place. She lifted her bare longsword from the table and pulled it into a brief salute in front of her eyes before sheathing it, the smooth grey of the blade and the familiar weight at her side reassuring her. Tied around the pommel of the sword was an intricate knot of wet red silk, with a single white streak. The sword-knot did not drip, but was cool and moist to the touch, as it had been for a decade since she received it, as it had been for three centuries since the war of liberation.
As she hooked her heavy metal plate gauntlets onto a loop in her belt, Janos deposited the boots and went back to the kitchen. Floré took another mouthful of the bitter tea and watched him silently. He filled a waterskin and tied it to her pack and stared out the window for a few moments before disappearing to collect a rain cloak. Floré was pulling on her boots when he returned and was still pulling on her boots after he had packed the cloak, folding down the thigh guards of her boots so they rested just at the knee. He came and stood behind her chair and ran a hand through the cropped loose curls of her hair, the ashen grey lightening with every winter. She closed her eyes. She could tell Janos was about to speak, and so spoke ahead of him, smiling.
‘No, love, Tyr can’t go. He’s too old, and past him it’s just me and the cadets and they’re all children.’ Floré felt her husband stiffen as she spoke; clearly, he was bemused she’d so easily guessed his next words. ‘Garrison promised us a few privates to round up our numbers start of summer, but no sign of them yet. They’re waiting for someone to screw up badly enough.’
‘You always know what I’m thinking, pretty one,’ he said, smiling. ‘I reckon you’re at least a bit Oruboro. Well. Teeth are sharp enough.’
Floré laughed and stood and kissed him again, first his mouth then his cheek and then she playfully bit his ear.
‘If I’m Oruboro,’ she whispered, ‘then you would be my snack for the road, darling poet.’
Floré went through the kitchen to the front room and the door leading to the bedroom. She pressed a hand against it and pictured little Marta asleep inside, and then quietly walked to the back door of the house, swinging her pack to her shoulder as she went. The girl was a light sleeper, and as much as Floré would have loved to open the door or wake her to say farewell, Marta needed her rest more than most children. Every week there was another fever, another worry. She felt an ache in her gut at the idea of leaving her, but there was a thrill as well, a shiver down her spine at the idea of a sword and a forest and a monster. She blushed and blew through her nose, then went back across the room to Marta’s door and gently opened it by an inch. The firelight from the hearth cast a dim light into Marta’s room, and Floré smiled and felt the shiver disappear when she saw her daughter, her love, a shadow under blankets. She let the door close gently. Janos came with her down the garden path and kissed her once more at the gate.
‘You’ll be safe, mighty Bolt-Captain?’ he said, and she laughed at his sincerity and her amber eyes flashed with mischief as she pushed against his chest with her strong right hand.
‘I’ve killed more rottrolls than you’ve written soppy verses, dearest,’ she said, ‘and that is certainly saying something. Worry not. I’ll take one of the young blades with me and rally a few sturdy folks from Larchford. No risks. It’s hardly a night raid in the rotstorm.’
Janos winced at the mention of the rotstorm and rubbed at the tattoos on his arms absently. They pressed their foreheads together, both closing their eyes.
‘Watch the little one, and write me a poem,’ she said, and felt Janos gently nod.
‘Eyes sharp, blades sharper,’ he said sternly, with no hint of a smile, and she laughed again and went through the gate, stopping to snatch a sprig of lilac from the bushes bordering the fence. When she reached the end of lane she turned and threw a quick salute, the first two fingers of her right hand pressed to her forehead, and smiled at the sight of Janos leaning on the gate smelling his own sprig of lilac, arm raised. Their house sat behind him, the dark wood of the walls turned to burnt umber by the setting sun. Floré put a hand on her sword hilt and turned towards Hasselberry, fingers trailing gently against the deep green of the hedgerow as she walked.
~
The village of Hasselberry had no Stormguard garrison proper; the guardhouse was an old barn with a single cell in it for drunken millworkers, and three old horses that were tended by the cadets. Most of the equipment was held in Captain Tyr’s house, a sturdy log cabin at the east end of town. Captain Tyr formed an informal council with the shaman, the whitestaff, and the leader of the millworkers, debating for long hours over minutiae of fence placement and fishing rights. As the ranking representative of the Stormguard in Hookstone forest he could dictate and demand, but instead he listened and debated. Floré liked that. The protectorate preached self-sufficiency and co-operation in equal measure, but whilst lumber left the forest every year, trade in return was sparse. The pine of Hookstone forest grew fast and wild, but the constant winds from the coast bent the boughs and trunks and kept most logging crews much further inland, north near Birchollow, in the sheltered forests where the wood grew fast and straight.
To the north of the village green sat the placid waters of Loch Hassel, and to the south-west were the shaman temple, the whitestaff’s schoolhouse, Wheatgum’s Provisions, and the Goat and Whistle Inn. There were maybe two dozen houses spread south of the green, and the bunkhouse for the lumber millworkers pressed up against the mill and the forest of dark pines behind. Floré knew the lad from Larchford was asleep at the Goat and Whistle; Captain Tyr had been visiting the Yulder farmstead to the east, so Floré had debriefed the boy that morning.
Marching into the village green, Floré saw the three Stormguard cadets fussing with their packs by the watch house. Petron was trying vainly to string a longbow that he certainly wouldn’t be able to draw, and his brother Cuss was sat on a log trying to stuff a blanket into his overfull pack, sweating in the mild evening heat. The third cadet, Yselda, dour-faced and serious, was practising short sharp cuts with a training sword against the battered wooden training dummy leaning against the side wall of the barn. Floré raised an arm from across the green but kept walking towards the Goat and Whistle.
She found Captain Tyr at a trestle table on the village green; Shand from the inn left the tables out all summer from the last snowdrop to the first snow. The captain was in his fifties, a broad man with bowed legs and a barrel chest, thick salt-and-pepper mutton chops framing a wide face. He had the amber skin of the people of Cil-Marie, but in the Undal Protectorate that meant little; Floré certainly had a healthy measure of that herself. In Cil-Marie they would be sorted into castes by the shade of their skin, and in Tessendorm likely enslaved, but in Undal it was not important; they were a nation of slaves, the dregs and leftovers of a dozen countries and continents, raised from dirt. Mistress Water was always depicted hooded and robed, at her own request, to show she could have been any one of them. The protectorate didn’t care spit where your stock was from, who you loved, who your people were before. If you were with them, they were with you. If you were against them or theirs, a sharp blade could always be found.
Tyr was sat playing chissick with three men from the village, and Floré nodded to them. They nodded back deferentially. The sound of Loch Hassel lapping at the thin beach north of the green turned her head; the long dock was bustling as the few small fishing skiffs were unloaded of their day’s catch. There was a cold breeze coming off the water and Floré took a moment to revel in it, and the dying heat of the day, waiting for Tyr to speak first with a hard practised patience even as she wanted to speak, to push forward. Instead, she counted down from ten.
At four, Tyr took a long swig from his flagon, and when she saw him glance at her wet red sword-knot, she forced herself to be still, not to hide it away. She might be practising her patience, but she would not hide her sword-knot. Any captain of the Stormguard knew what the red and white signified. Tyr had never asked, and she knew he never would. Had he noticed the wetness, that strange unending damp that pervaded the red and white silk? Perhaps. He knew she had been something else before she came here, and even after five years of quiet service in Hasselberry she could tell he still had his pride and his worry. He saw in her his end, his replacement. His blade did not carry the red silk, let alone the white stripe, and the enduring wetness and all it connoted was rare enough to be rumour even amongst the elite. His sword hilt was bare, which was a story in itself; any captain would have, must have, at least one sword-knot, to commemorate their greatest deed. Floré had never asked, with an appreciation that he had never asked her.
The captain finished his swig and set down the flagon by the time Floré finished her ten-count, and then moved one of the chissick stones between him and the men to change the pattern. The figure immediately opposite was Rodram, father of Shand, old and grey with a bent back and wizened face. He muttered and peered at the altered pattern and Tyr smiled. Finally he turned his full attention to the woman standing at ease before him.
‘Sergeant Artollen,’ he said. ‘You look geared up. Word from Larchford that bad?’
As Tyr spoke a serving boy from the Goat and Whistle refilled his flagon from a jug of thick brown ale, and Rodram started shuffling his own chissick stones, considering what to place. The other two men at the table stared with unabashed interest at the conversation before them; one was Tellen, a burly red-headed boss at the lumber mill, and the other was one of the outlying farmers. Floré thought his name was Essen, or Essom, or something like that. She frowned at the audience.
‘Shall we head to the guardhouse and debrief, sir?’ she asked, but Tyr waved a hand and took another gulp of ale.
‘I’ve been out east at the Yulder’s all arsing day, and it’s hot. What’s the boy got to say for himself? I put my head in but he was fast out.’
Floré shifted her feet and sighed. The rumour would spread in a matter of hours and all because Tyr wouldn’t walk fifty feet to debrief in private. She wanted to say as much and would have done so five years ago. She scrunched up her eyes and forced herself to relax. A rumour in Hasselberry doesn’t matter, she thought.
‘Five sheep gone in the last week,’ Floré said. ‘One found mutilated. No meat taken and odd wounds. Sounds like a rottroll or a few goblins have them spooked most likely but might be something funny or someone funny. Last rotstorm surge we know of was early spring, so odd to still have goblins and trolls lingering; might be a delayed hatching. I’ll take one of the cadets and march through tonight, give them a chance to practise their night navigation in the forest. Get a few likely hands from Larchford, and head out. We should be back within a day or two. Any delay past then or funny business and I’ll send word. Do you approve, sir?’
Tyr nodded and ran a hand across his face, pensive.
‘Good. Good,’ he said, ‘All sounds in order. I’ll let the Larchford lad rest the day and he can follow you tomorrow. Oh, and don’t be taking Petron. The whitestaff caught him using the skein to clean a pot, or summat similar. She had a face like a skelped arse. I reckon the lad has a day scrubbing ahead of him tomorrow.’
Tyr’s three companions laughed at that and old Rodram placed a chissick stone and then let out a long sigh at his forlorn position on the board before turning to Tyr and Floré. Sizing up Floré he took a long draw from his ale and then let out an underwhelming belch.
‘Tyr,’ he said, his voice a rattle, ‘tell the bonny lass about Yulder’s fireflies!’
Floré grimaced at the old man and opened her mouth to tell him where to put his chissick stone, but Tyr interjected, tugging at his whiskers.
‘She’s a sergeant in the Stormguard, Rodram, not a “bonny lass”. I’d remember that or you might find yourself swimming.’
Rodram bowed his head in deference, and the other two men grinned at Floré. Enough of their drunken companions had been laid out by her fists for causing trouble; they knew the risk of misbehaving far better than old Rodram. Hasselberry was quiet enough but the sergeant had earned a reputation for fists first, questions later, as was the way of the Stormguard. She was trying to learn patience, to look to a diplomatic answer, but only the week before she had broken the jaw of a seasonal worker who tried to rough up one of the old fishermen over a game of cards. She remembered the hot satisfaction in her heart when he hit the dirt after a single punch, and looked out at the loch, sickened with herself. It is a sickness in me, she thought, grimacing. The worker had taken the next carriage to Hookstone to seek a healer, since old Izelda said the wound was beyond her knack. Tyr took another sip of his ale and stared out at the flat waters of the loch and the pines on the northern shore.
‘Yulder,’ he said glacially, eyes not leaving the water, ‘says last three nights there have been… strange lights, in the sky. Orbs. White lights, moving fast as a bird, but then hovering like a dragonfly over the trees. Orbs the size of wood wagons, silent and fast-flying. He reckons it’s magic. And, his dog is gone.’