'A knife cuts more blood,' he said. 'Now turn it loose.'
The lamb stood for a moment, fresh red blood from its mauled ear streaming through its short, tight head-wool. Then it bolted. The old man worked the second lamb the same, mumbling his satisfaction through broken yellow teeth: 'We'll have no long-tails like we did last year. No fights over who owns what, either. Those greedmouths on Tip Hill, they'd suck the spit from our mouths if we didn't stop them. Two years in a row they've snatched lambs we never marked. Now come over here, Durnwold.'
The old man spoke again with Durnwold – Valarkin guessed he was after a promise of more money – then set off after the others, who were carrying the wool sacks back to the small, smoky, dirt-floor huts where Valarkin and Durnwold had been born and raised. The trampled earth around the pen was littered with dirty little scraps of wool. Valarkin shivered.
'Well?' said Durnwold, putting on his chain mail. 'Are you coming with me?' 'Where?'
'To war. Wizard hunting. Swords and hatchets!' 'I'm no warrior. You know that.' 'This is the age of the warrior,' said Durnwold, arming himself with his sword again. 'It's a dark age, then.'
'All ages are dark, for those that won't make the best of them. Are you coming?'
'I need time to think about it.'
'Time is not in my gift, said Durnwold. 'All I can give you is a chance.'
He sauntered over to his horse, unhobbled the animal, swung up into the saddle and rode to the pen at a trot.
'Well?' said Durnwold, looking down, reins in hand, reins falling to the bit which the bridle secured in the horse's mouth. Leather and cold metal. A tall man with a sword.
'What should I bring?'
'Everything you've got that's warm and woollen. We sleep rough tonight, and it's cold despite the summer.'
He helped Valarkin up behind him, and the horse carried them toward the huts.
From the door of his house, the old man, Grenberth-ing, watched his two sons ride away. His body ached from the day of herding and shearing; he knew it would still be aching on the morrow. He saw neither of the young men gave a backward glance at the place they were leaving.
– So there they go then, the strong one and the oddling. Nothing for them but a sword in the belly, but how can they know that? Kits don't know they're born blind till their eyes open. What's to open your eyes, my bravos? What's so fine in living with folks who walk on air? They may walk on it, but they don't eat it. Without us and our like, the castle would starve in less than a season.
– Durnwold. Was a life for him here. A dowry, a dozen sheep. Richness. The woman could still be bred from. She was a child bright enough, till the ice broke under her that winter, and her mother worked her body gone blue till it breathed. Strong body, meat and milk, heat in the right place. I'll have her down myself if you don't come back. Down and under…
– And Valarkin. What does the oddling think he'll do in the cold outside? Stay here, and we could make a man out of him, but no, he has to walk on air. I remember when he was a child. I took him up on that blea hill in the rawky weather, and he croodled down like he was scared of the sky. Stay here, and we could make him something.
– But now, they're going, the two of them. So go then, but there's nothing to gain but a sword in the guts. And the hand that drives it will turn it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Before dawn, Morgan Hearst, and the half-dozen men who had volunteered to go with him, left the castle, riding eastward toward daybreak. They planned to go to the seaport of Skua, taking a corduroy road which the Collosnon had built across the swamps to the north of the Eastway, to give their invasion a road sufficiently wide for baggage wagons.
Hearst's mission was to gain intelligence on the strength of enemy forces at Skua; if the target proved worthy, Prince Comedo's troops would march there to dare another bloodbath under the aegis of the mad-jewels. The plan was for Hearst and his men to link up with the main body of Comedo's troops at the High Castle in Trest: that was when a decision would be made.
At Skua, Hearst would also try to discover – perhaps by kidnapping someone for interrogation – whether Volaine Persaga Haveros was still alive. If the oath-breaker was not now rotting down to earth along with the other thousands of unburied Collosnon dead near Castle Vaunting, then Hearst would try for the traitor's head.
Durnwold had wanted to come with Hearst, who had told him it was more important for him to see how Elkor Alish organised a small army for the march: that way, he would really learn something.
Riding east to the rising sun, Hearst felt light-hearted, excited. War again. What can compare with it? Nothing! Some day he would die – and maybe soon. But war was the only life he chose to live, and he would accept whatever death it gave him. He remembered other places, other times, when, facing death, he had challenged it with a roar which was half berserker rage, half exultation.
So many battles. He had fought on a frozen river that was breaking up in the spring, so that ice would suddenly tilt or break, sending men in full armour plunging into freezing water. He had fought knee-deep in surf, blood in the water bringing sharks among the fighters. He had fought in fields of clutching mud, in forests, in ravines, on mountain slopes. He had fought when wounded, matching sword with sword when he had the sun in his face and blood in his eyes.
– Death will be death, in its own good time.
But for now, a Collosnon cavalry horse under him, companions to left and to right, a shared word, a joke… it was enough.
Soon, the night was defeated. It was dawn. Back at Castle Vaunting, doors banged open; cursing squad leaders roused their sleeping men: 'Get up, you idle corpse-rapists. Come on! Move yourselves! Hands off cocks! On with socks!'
A rising wind, sweeping in from the Central Ocean, caught the doors, slamming them from side to side. A battle-horn sounded: rouse, rouse!
The soldiers yawned and grumbled, stumbling into clothes and armour, but the leave-time feeling was upon them. Hot porridge to fill the belly for the long day. Snort of horses: a Collosnon mount for every man. Jingle of harness. Smells of sweat, leather, horse dung. Arguments.
'Andranovory! That's my horse you're sitting on!'
Last jokes. Sleep rubbed from sore eyes. The laboured breathing of men with brewery breath. Echoes crashing through hangover heads. Men yelling and quarrelling over missing clothes, lost boots. Clatter of swords and armour. Obscenity upon obscenity.
On their mission east, they meant to destroy any Collosnon forces they found in Trest, and to find and kill the wizard Heenmor. The Melski had now told Blackwood that Heenmor had not gone north, as far as they could discover; scouts had found a marshland fisherman who had survived the Collosnon invasion, and who claimed to have seen Heenmor going east at the end of winter.
Prince Comedo himself had solemnly sworn that everything possible would be done to kill Heenmor, and to secure the death-stone which Elkor Alish had described so well, so the wizard could take it south to return it to the Dry Pit.
Prince Comedo woke in his clothes. He reached for the jug by his bed and drank deeply. The door opened; Gorn peered in, then, seeing the prince was awake, withdrew. What was the matter with him? Did he think that a prince of the Favoured Blood would oversleep on this day, his day, the day he rode out at the head of his army?
He took another swig from the jug.
His bottle, where was his bottle? Here! His green beauty, safe and smooth to carry him. That was part of the bargain he had made with the wizards. The woodsman Blackwood would carry the bottle, for the prince – his
