Betrayal at Falador

“I shall put your idea to Sir Amik tomorrow,” he said thoughtfully. “But it is not the flower that I am so interested in Theodore-not yet. It is the ring in her hand.”

The older man’s eyes glazed over as if he were searching for some memory of an event long past, the ring held closely before him, its small diamond faded to a milky white since Theodore first retrieved it.

“Do you recognise it, sir?” Theodore asked eventually.

Sharpe shook his head.

“No. No, I do not. I thought it was something that it was not, something it could not be. But I shall be certain in the morning, when I discuss this with older heads than yours.”

“What did you think it might be, sir?”

Sharpe peered at him for a moment.

“It was a foolish idea, Theodore, and it is time you went off to bed. It will be light in a few hours, and if I know Sir Amik he is going to want a reliable squire to drill some sense into the peons for their boisterous behaviour. They had no business being up at such an hour.”

Theodore bowed his head and left, yet he felt entirely unsatisfied at their findings. He returned to his chamber to try and snatch a few hours’ sleep, which he knew he would find evasive. All his thoughts were on the girl.

Sharpe did not sleep either. He sat silently in the armoury, alone under a burning torch, his eyes fixed on the broken ring.

Could it be? Is it possible? His mind ached with questions, none of which he could answer.

Finally, as the cold grey light of a winter dawn began to appear in the eastern sky, he stood, his bones cold and weary from his long vigil. He stretched briefly and then took the ring in his hand, carefully, reverently. With a furtive glance around him, he left the armoury.

TWO

It was the dream again.

She felt the fear and cold that always came with it. It started with the screams of the villagers and the shouts of the black-armoured attackers.

She had escaped the men. It was always that way. She always escaped, just as she had done all those years before. Yet she knew what was to come.

She ran for the cover of the trees, but as soon as she touched the frozen bark the cry went out. She had been seen.

Her father’s bag was heavy enough to slow the eight-year-old down, but she gritted her teeth and ignored the thin whips of the branches that tore at her face and hands as she ran, leaving red welts across her exposed skin.

She could hear the baying of the starving dogs the men had brought with them. The animals had her scent and her running figure caught their attention. She heard their growls and the jeers of the men who watched the spectacle, certain of the outcome.

And yet she knew she would escape and live. She knew it even as the first animal-running far ahead of the others-drew back to leap at her. For she had been taught how to protect herself.

Instinctively she ducked as the dog jumped, its eyes flashing in the winter sun, its red tongue anticipating the taste of young flesh. But its anticipation would be denied.

With a speed and skill that was unheard of in one so young, she slashed at its jaw with a knife from her belt. The dog howled. Then, startled at finding an enemy capable of fighting back, the beast fled-content to return to the warm corpses that lay unclaimed in the burning village.

But that was only one animal from several, and she knew already what she would be forced to do to escape the others. She knew of an island that stood in the heart of a frozen pool, not far away. In the summer evenings she had enjoyed the peace of the forest there, comfortable in the knowledge that her father, a woodcutter, was never far away.

With the baying of the other dogs close behind, she reached the pond and stepped onto the ice, making for a fallen tree that had toppled years before and lay like a bridge across the frozen pool. Clambering atop it, she was halfway across when the first dog leapt onto the fallen trunk, its starving eyes fixed feverishly upon her.

Her young heart was consumed with an anger that she had never imagined possible, a hate for the men who had destroyed her life and burned down everything she had loved.

For the first time in her life, she wanted to kill.

The dog advanced along the trunk, cautious at the sight of the girl’s savagery, wary of the angry tears that came into her eyes as she suddenly realised that all she loved was dead.

The girl kicked downward and shook the trunk as hard as she could. Then she shifted slightly and stamped her feet onto the frozen surface of the pond. At once it began to crack.

The end of the trunk shuddered.

The starving dog dug its claws into the decaying bark, trying to steady itself, aware that something was wrong.

The other dogs arrived and bunched, displaying the pack instinct, then crept to the edge of the pool. But they were unwilling to commit their full weight to the ice.

With a sudden loud crunch, the ice shattered. Losing her balance, the girl fell into the freezing water. She clung to the trunk to keep herself from drowning, yelling in shock, unconcerned whether her cries were heard. The trunk twisted, taking the dog under the water, trapping it beneath the icy cover and condemning it to a frigid end.

Then the trunk twisted again, rising as it turned, carrying her up and lifting her clear of the biting cold water.

For a brief minute she lay on the bark, shivering uncontrollably, indifferent to the dogs that stood a dozen yards from her, separated only by the dark eddies of the water. They didn’t matter, she thought to herself, nothing did. Her family was gone, her home destroyed.

Let them take me, she thought. Let them do with me what they will. For the cold was too strong for her to fight, too seductive in offering its escape from the weariness that was replacing her rage. Ignoring the hungry growling of the starving dogs nearby, she lay her head gently on the bark to rest.

Despite the many hundreds of times that she had relived the episode in her dreams, whether or not she had found sleep she could never tell. If she had, she knew it could not have been for more than a moment.

It was the voices that stirred her-harsh words of men drunk on plunder and violence, rejoicing in their wickedness. The dogs stared at her in hungry desperation, their appetite dimmed as they became aware of the men and their metallic boots stamping over the frozen ground.

She had to hide, for if she failed to do so she would die-the final victim of the men who had destroyed her village. But it was hard for her to move farther along the trunk toward the snow-covered island. She had gone only a yard when her strength failed.

As her thoughts began to dim, she recalled the stories her father had told her, of centuries gone, when the gods fought for the destiny of the world and their terrible powers reshaped the continents and destroyed civilisations. There was one amongst them, her father had told her, who would give aid to those in need.

“Saradomin…” she whispered. The word felt awkward on her lips, as if she only half-believed the tales her father had told her on those winter nights in their cramped log cabin at the edge of The Wilderness.

“Saradomin… hide me.” The word gave her strength now-the strength necessary to clamber across the trunk and onto the small island. Her energy spent, she half-fell and hid behind a crimson bush of thorns.

She could not move, certain she was going to die on the island she had made her own in happier times.

“Well, Sulla! It looks like she got away!”

The man’s voice was hard, and he spat the words as if he meant to insult his companion.

“You think so? With no shelter? If the dogs didn’t get her then the cold will-or did you not hear the cry as we