reduced to wraiths at the edge of vision, I thought for some reason of the woman and her brats at that remote cottage-the woman with her dead face and the children like rats around her calves. Isolation comes in many flavours.
“We could wait it out,” Kent said.
A splash and Rike cursed. “Mud past my feckin’ knee.”
Kent had a point. The mist couldn’t hope to hold out against the heat of the day as the sun climbed.
“You want to stay here a moment longer than you have to?” I asked.
Kent plodded on by way of answer.
Wherever the sun had got to, it was doing a piss poor job of keeping me warm. The mist seemed to seep into me, putting a chill along my bones, fogging my eyes.
“I see a house,” Sim called.
“You do not!” Makin said. “What the hell would a house be doing in a-”
There were two houses, then three. A whole village of rough timber homes, slate-tiled, loomed about us as we slowed our advance.
“What the fuck?” Row spat. I think he invented spitting.
“Peat-cutters?” Grumlow suggested.
It seemed the only even half-sensible explanation, but I had it in my mind that peat bogs lay in cooler climes, and that even there the locals came to the bog to cut peat and then went home; they didn’t build their homes on it.
A door opened in the house to our left and seven hands reached for weapons. A small child ran out, barefoot, chasing something I couldn’t see. He ran past us, lost in the mist, just the splashing of his feet to convince me he was real, and the dark entrance to the house where the door lay open.
I approached the doorway with my sword in hand. It reminded me of a grave slot, and the breath of wet rot that issued from it did nothing to erase the image.
“Jamie, you forgot-” The glimmer of my steel cut the woman short. Even in the mist Builder-steel will find a gleam. “Oh,” she said.
“Madam.” I faked a bow, not wanting to lower my head more than a hair’s breadth.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting company.” She looked no more than twenty-five, fair-haired, pretty in a worn-thin kind of way, her homespun simple but clean.
Between the houses to our left a man in his fifties came into view, labouring under a wooden keg. He dumped it from his shoulder onto a pile of straw and raised a hand. “Welcome!” he said. He rubbed at the white stubble on his chin and stared up into the mist. “You’ve brought the weather with you, young sir.”
“Come in, why don’t you?” the woman said. “I’ve a pot on the fire. Just oat porridge, but you’re welcome to some. Ma! Ma! Find the good bowl.”
I glanced round at Makin. He shrugged. Kent watched the old man, his eyes wide, knuckles white on his Norse axe.
“I’m so sorry. I’m Ruth. Ruth Millson. How rude of me. That’s Brother Robert.” She waved at the old man as he went into the house he’d set the keg by. “We call him ‘brother’ because he spent three years at the Gohan monastery. He wasn’t very good at it!” She offered a bright smile. “Come in!”
A memory tickled me. Gohan. I knew a Gohan closer to home.
“Does your hospitality extend to my friend?” I asked, opening a hand toward Makin.
Ruth turned and led on into the house. “Don’t be shy. We’ve plenty for everyone. Well, enough in any case, and there’s no sin like an empty belly!”
I followed her, Makin at my heels. We both ducked to get under the lintel. I had half-expected the interior to be dripping with the mire but the place looked clean and dry. A lantern burned on the table, brass and polished to a high shine as if it were a treasured heirloom. The place lay in shadows, the shutters closed as though night threatened. Makin sheathed his sword. I was not so polite.
I cast about. Something was missing. Or I was missing something.
Rike stood outside, looming over the Brothers who pressed about him. Foolish enough they looked, bristling with weaponry as two young girls ran past laughing. An old woman hobbled up with a bundle under her arm, oblivious to Grumlow’s daggers as she grumbled on by.
“Ruth,” I said.
“Sit! Sit!” she cried. “You look half-dead. You’re a just a boy. A big lad, but a boy. I can see it. And boys need feeding. Ain’t that right, Ma?” She put her hand to her neck, an unconscious gesture, and stroked her throat. Pale skin, very pale. She’d burn worse than Rike in the sun.
“They do.” The mother put her head around the entrance from what must be the only other room. Grey hair framed a stern face, softened by a kind mouth. “And what’s the boy’s name then?”
“Jorg,” I said. As much as I like to roll out my titles there is a time and a place.
“Makin,” said Makin, although Ruth only had eyes for me, which is odd because even if I were handsome before the burns, it’s Makin that has a way with…everyone.
“And is there a Master Millson?” Makin asked.
“Sit!” Ruth said. So I sat and Makin followed suit, taking the rocker by the empty fireplace. I leaned my blade against the table. The women gave it not so much as a glance.
Ruth picked up a woollen jerkin from behind my stool. “That Jamie would forget his head!”
“You have a husband?” I asked.
A frown crossed her like a cloud. “He went to the castle two years back. To take service with the Duke.” She brightened. “Anyhow you’re too young for me. I should call Seska over. She’s as pretty as the morning.” She had mischief in her eye. Blue eyes, pale as forget-me-not.
“So what are you doing out here?” I asked. I’d taken a shine to Ruth. She had a spark in her and put me in mind of a serving girl named Rachel back at the Haunt. Something about her made me unaccountably horny. Unaccountable if you don’t count eight weeks on the road.
“Out here?” Distracted she put her fingers to her mouth, a pretty mouth it has to be said, and wiggled at one of her back teeth.
“Ma” came from the kitchen with an earthenware pot, carried in a blackened wooden grip to keep the heat from her fingers. Makin got up to help her with it but she paid him no heed. She looked tiny beside him, bowed under her years. She laid the pot before me and set her bony hand to the lid, hesitating. “Salt?”
“Why not?” I would have asked for honey but this wasn’t the Haunt. Salt porridge is better than plain, even when you’ve eaten salt and more salt at Duke Maladon’s tables for a week.
“Oh,” said Ruth. Her hand came away from her mouth with a tooth on her palm. Not a little tooth but a big molar from far back, with long white roots and dark blood smeared around it, so dark as to be almost black. “I’m sorry,” she said, holding her hand at arm’s length as if horrified by the tooth but unable to look away, eyes wide and murky.
“No matter,” I said. It’s strange how quickly impersonal lust can slip into revulsion. It probably crosses the tail end of that thin line the poets say divides love and hate.
“Perhaps we should eat?” Makin said.
My stomach rolled at the thought of food. The marsh stink, that had yet to fade, invaded the room with renewed vigour.
Ma returned with three wooden bowls, one decorated with carved flowers, and a chair that looked too fine for the house. She set the bowls on the table, the fancy one for me, one before the new chair. The third she held onto, casting about for something, confusion in her eye. She put her hand to the side of her head, rubbing absently.
“Lost something?” I asked.
“A rocking chair.” She laughed. “A place this small. You wouldn’t think you could lose a thing like that!” Her hand came away from her head with a clump of white hair in it. Pink scalp showed where it came from. She looked at it with as much bewilderment as her daughter, studying her tooth.
“The Duke’s castle you say, Ruth?” Makin said from the rocker. “Which duke would that be?” Makin could take the awkward edge off a moment, but neither woman looked at him.
Ma stuffed the hair into her apron and shuffled back into the kitchen. Ruth set the tooth on the window ledge. “Is it supposed to be lucky?” she asked. “Losing a tooth. I thought I heard that once.” She opened the shutters. “To let the dawn in.”
