The Castle of the Winds Page 4

  Merthian’s long fingers closed about his sword-arm and stopped it without any visible effort. ‘No, captain! We are guests here! I would sooner think the Mastersmith meant no insult.’ He waved the servants back.

  The smith shook his aching head. ‘No insult to you! Though some might feel insulted already by such insistence as yours. I was going to say such things wouldn’t be enough, that was all. But yet, we’ll call it that, if you must insist on a price for a thing that has none. If that’ll end it.’ He gave a weary laugh. ‘Nothing less. That sum, or your castle and your lands. And I wish you a safe journey back to them, Merthian. I am truly sorry.’

  Merthian shut his eyes. ‘Perhaps I do not deal in this as fairly as I would wish. If you knew what is in my heart, and what I must do – if I were only free to tell you, you would at least forgive me my refusal to take your answer. Smith, if you were to help in this project of mine, in this way and others – then, yes, when all is brought to fruition, then I will give you what you ask. The gold. Or, yes, the lands, that I love dearly, and that are worth as much or more. And I swear that! By the name of my father who left me them I swear it. I will write it in blood if you desire!’

  There was a moment’s silence in the smithy, and the noises of the fair outside seemed like an intrusion from another world.

  ‘Master Merthian,’ sighed the smith, ‘it is I who cannot explain matters as they demand. Keep your lands, as you should, and as I must keep this armour. For it is as much the same to me, and more. The work of my heart, a part of myself, with all that I have poured into it; and it must be completed or I will never know rest again. Could I sell the reflection out of my mirror? As I said, I can make other armours, I will make one for yourself before all other men, if you still wish it. This one, though, this must never leave me; and though it gives me pain, the whole Southlands and Northlands together would not buy it of me.’

  Merthian shook his head, his hair flying in his eyes, and his voice was cold and controlled. ‘There are concerns here I do not understand, clearly. I try to respect another’s beliefs, as I said; but this seems to me beyond all reason, to feel that what you make is part of yourself. Believe in the Powers if you will, I do myself in some wise; but this … this religion of metal, this divinity of steel! A savage superstition, as if you worshipped stock and stone like the brown-skinned men you have taken among you. That you should clutch it to you is reasonable enough. Men need faith, however unworthy or demeaning. But that it should prevent you acting sensibly – ah, well. I waste my words, as before. My servants will take up what I have bought, and I thank you for that, Mastersmith, and the good ale. Perhaps we will meet again. Come, captain!’

  He bowed, as politely as before. Kunrad, red in the face, bobbed curtly in reply, but Merthian was already turning away, with the captain stalking at his heels, hand still ostentatiously on his sword-hilt. They stepped out through the door into the warm light outside, and the servants, laden with clanking bundles, closed in behind them. None of the sothrans looked back. Olvar let out a great breath, and Gille sat down as if his legs had begun to shake. Kunrad twitched the curtain violently back into place, and slumped down at the table. Nobody said anything. The atmosphere of Merthian’s departure still hung heavy over the smithy.

  At last Kunrad reached for his alemug. He took a sip, then he stared at it distastefully and put it down. ‘A lesson for a smith. Beware of vanity, and overmuch ale among your customers. And never, never show anything you are not prepared to sell. There I’ve offended a good customer and a fine fellow, as he seemed, and ruined my pleasure in the day.’

  ‘He had no call to be so greedy,’ said Olvar soberly.

  ‘That’s so!’ agreed Gille angrily. ‘With the manners of these sothran lords I’ve heard about, he should have taken no for his answer, and never let matters reach this pitch. He just wanted the thing so much.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Kunrad unhappily. He smiled ruefully, and hefted the bag of gold. ‘Ah well. At least we’ve a fine profit out of the day.’ Shutting the outer door, he and Olvar began to heave a spare anvil off the trap door that hid his strongbox. He stopped, and, delving in the bag, tossed a gold coin to Gille. ‘I’ll keep my word to you both. That’s the worth of a silver penny each, and more.’

  Gille caught it almost absently, and sat turning it over and contemplating the design. ‘I wonder what his great project was?’

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Hand of the Ice

  ‘AND THAT CONCERNS YOU?’ demanded Haldin, putting down his alemug. ‘I shouldn’t let it. If he’s as decent as you think, he probably regrets the brawl himself, no less. Anyhow, you haven’t driven him away.’

  ‘He’s still here?’ Kunrad looked up from his plate.

  ‘Oh aye. Still in his rooms at the Golden Seal, says old Kulle, till the fair’s done; so he’ll be quitting in the morning, most like. I’ve seen the man around once or twice – sold him a dozen swords yesterday, in fact. And a parcel of helms.’

  ‘You too?’

  ‘And Galdred here, a pile of those cheap mailshirts of his – eh, Galdred? And Makke of the Barns, and Bure from Hroby, Tovte the Axewright – every weaponsmith hereabouts, just about. Said he was buying for his housetroop.’

  ‘Yes, to me too. Must be a fair number.’

  Haldin nodded. ‘Could be two, three hundred or more, if he’s a powerful wight. These sothran lords are rich, boy. You should see the place, sometime.’

  Kunrad smiled weakly. ‘I don’t think I’d get on with them, if present experience is anything to go by.’

  Haldin laughed. ‘You’re letting it get to you, my lad. You’d be fine, long as you didn’t push your food about the plate like that. They’re long on manners and deportment. Now me, when I was eating with the quality, every time I slurped the soup through my whiskers, know what?’ He prodded Kunrad painfully in the ribs. ‘I wiped ’em neatly on the tablecloth! ’

  Kunrad couldn’t help joining in the happy guffaws around the table. Haldin was the man who had stepped into his father’s shoes as Town Smith, a mastersmith of ordinary ability but wide experience and far travelling, and a friendly counsellor to all the younger smiths.

  ‘Pay no need to the ignorant old buzzard!’ chimed in Tarkil the Goldsmith. ‘What’s he think the serving-girls’ shifts are for?’

  ‘What’s a tablecloth?’ demanded Galdred.

  ‘What’s a shift?’ demanded Haldin. Guffaws again all round.

  ‘Not in front of the lad!’ said Kolfe the Farrier in mock reproof. Kunrad shook his head and chuckled. Few of his fellow masters were really old, Haldin a vigorous fifty, but they made a point of treating him like a babe in arms. All the same, their plain banter and the sense of support behind it was making him feel far better than he had done for the last couple of days.

  Not that the fair hadn’t gone well. What Merthian had left, a host of other buyers cleaned out – eager, it seemed, to buy at the same place as the sothran lord. He and the prentices had sold all they had and what little more they had time to craft in the two days remaining, and the strongbox was now crammed. For most of the time he had been too busy to give Merthian a thought, but he had been obscurely unhappy. When his guild-fellows began plying him with questions around their fairtime feast, it had all come back. The universal opinion, though, was that Merthian would have been lucky to escape any of them without a boot in his sothran breeches; and that Kunrad should forget it, enjoy his gold and get on with perfecting that armour.

  Nonetheless he left the feast as early as he decently could, and as sober. As the tall doors of the Guildhall, with their painted emblem of Ilmarinen forging the lightning, closed behind him, he pulled his old fleece jerkin close and strolled off down the main street, sniffing at the air. There was a heavy, oppressive feel to it, a brooding hint of coming thunder, and he was eager to get home before rain turned the trodden clay and stones to mud. The night was quiet now that the fairtime revellers had gone to their beds, or in some cases gutters
, but he was faintly aware of distant stirrings, and the sound of hooves in nearby streets.

  Unknown to him, all across the town men were slipping out of lodgings and stables where the casual faircomers slept, donning armour, buckling on weapons, climbing on to horseback, gathering at street corners and byways. They were quiet about it, quiet and calm, and ready to quieten others, so that he heard only the occasional voice raised. Common enough in fairtime, that meant nothing to him until he reached the margins of the green common before the gate, and saw the men who milled around there.

  Men, and the gleam of swords in the near-darkness. Nobody fighting, not exactly, but people shouting, waving, protesting – folk held at swordpoint, he realised, voices he knew, his neighbours. Amazed, struck with that sense of the unreal which surrounds sudden crisis, he took a step closer. Only then he saw there were other men prowling about the common. One loomed up in front of him, sword in hand, mouth open to challenge. Kunrad, outraged, slapped the blade aside and swung a fist into it. The man was stretched flat on the grass, unmoving. Rubbing his knuckles, he trotted on, then stopped uncertainly at a rending crash of masonry, another, hollower, and a roar of rage – Olvar’s. He stood a moment, then swore and ducked back, searching around on the grass for the stunned man’s sword. Fire flashed up behind him, and he found the blade by its glitter. He plucked it up, took a deep breath and ran headlong for the crowd. The fire was flickering around his own doorway.

  All the faces were turned towards it, swordsmen and captives alike and pale. Only as they heard him run up they turned, but in the black of the smith’s guild he was hard to see, and so the blows aimed at him were too late and too weak. The sword felt good to his hand, and he swung it around him in two great slashes, back and forth. The swords that struck at him were hurled back on their wielders, sending them flying, or dashed from their hands, or shattered, and he had a passage clear to the doorway. The door hung loose, lock and hinges dangling broken. He clutched at the frame in shock.

  The flames rolled out from under the lintel, across the ceiling, tasting the wooden rooftiles. The inside of the forge was lit bright. Neither Olvar nor Gille was anywhere to be seen, but the wall of his hearth was shattered, and blood trailed among the debris. The spilling coals had started the fire. In the shattered wall lay the spare anvil, as if hurled aside by straining men, and the trap door was smashed asunder. Beyond it, at the back of the forge, fire licked at the sagging curtain that had concealed the armour, torn aside now and half fallen. A man stood there, with his back to the smith.

  That much Kunrad saw, in the one instant. Then there was an almost musical chime in his head, a point of bitter pain, and the light exploded out at him. He was dimly aware of something rushing up, and the impact, the gritty pain against his lips as he grovelled. There was a duller pain under his chest; he fought to breathe. The strength was out of his limbs, and he made swimming motions like a baby as he fought to raise himself. Something cracked, loudly, and flaming splinters dropped around his face. Men were stepping past him, over him, and he could do nothing to prevent them. With a tremendous effort he managed to lift himself on one elbow, ignoring the ache in his skull and the sickly warmth that dribbled down his chin. He looked up, out of the forge, the way the men had gone.

  He saw Merthian, no great ways away, dressed in dark riding gear, with a sword in his hand. He was looking half over his shoulder, back at Kunrad, and the look on his face was remote and deeply unhappy. He turned, and angled the point at Kunrad as he lay. He seemed to hesitate a moment, then turned sharply away and vanished into the dark. It came rushing in on Kunrad, and he felt his arm give. He was vaguely aware of something dragging at his ankles, worsening the pain in his chest, and he tried to kick against it; but then he felt cold, and his ears rang, and the night dropped away under him.

  Light burst in on him, and he sat up abruptly, or tried to. A firm hand pushed him back on the rough bolster. ‘You lie still!’ said Metrye’s voice, severely. ‘Two such knocks in two months, you’ll be lucky not to become touched as it is. No more than you were already, anyhow! At least this one wasn’t too hard. Didn’t put you out for long.’

  He coughed, and winced. ‘Chest – hurts.’

  The old woman snorted. ‘Oh, that! Just bruises when you fell, and luckier still that it wasn’t on any of the sharp bits.’ She gestured at the wall. ‘Your sword.’

  ‘My sword—’ He stared at it. ‘No wonder it felt right …’ Then the whole vision came rushing back.

  ‘The forge!’ he choked. ‘The boys – Olvar—’

  ‘Here and well,’ said Metrye. ‘Trust them!’

  ‘We’re well, boss,’ echoed Olvar’s voice. ‘They damn near caught me with the anvil, but Gille pulled me loose. You too, after they conked you.’

  ‘Looking after his own skin all the while, I’ll be bound!’ said Metrye acidly.

  ‘No … did the right,’ said Kunrad thickly. ‘Nothing else ’gainst so many … but the forge?’

  ‘Bit singed, boss, but still sound. Like you always said, when you’ve a roomful of fires you don’t build a place to burn easy. Heyle the Glover’s roof caught, though; and the butcher’s house behind, and the builder’s yard, and a clothworker’s house. They raided them all, powers know why. More mess than looting, like they were drunk or something. Though they went right by Ennar Goldsmith’s without so much as a glance, they say. Our house came off lightest, except …’

  ‘Except there’s stuff gone,’ said Gille miserably. ‘All the weapons we had left, just about. And … and the gold.’

  ‘The … gold,’ Kunrad twisted his neck to try and avoid the pain. Evidently he had been hit at the base of his skull. ‘Weapons? We hadn’t much … The armour?’

  Silence was his answer.

  Metrye squawked in protest and astonishment as Kunrad twisted violently around, sat up and dropped unsteadily to his bare feet on the boards. ‘The armour,’ he mouthed, feeling the puffiness of his lip. ‘Get the mastersmiths! Have Haldin … and the Guildmaster, get him …’ His voice faded, and he swayed. But even as he wavered his eyes focused on the prentices. ‘Get them! Now! Run!’ He slumped back over the board bed.

  By the time they arrived, though, he was sitting up, pale but composed.

  ‘Glad t’ see you’re well enough,’ rumbled the Guildmaster, patting his shoulder. ‘Louse-ridden business! Though it could’ve been worse. No lives lost, at least.’

  ‘Dunno what things’re coming to!’ said Haldin grimly, twitching his whiskers. ‘Within our own bloody walls! I mean, here’s these fellows, just like ordinary corners to the fair, in their ones and twos mostly. Then all of a sudden they’re up and in a bunch, ten or twelve, maybe more. And any man gets in their way they knock cold or scare shitless. Much use the guards turned out!’ he added, looking accusingly at the Guildmaster and Kennas, the guard captain.

  ‘We couldn’t help it! We’re more concerned with thieves getting in, and rightly so, this time of year. My lads were all around the walls, no more’n three or four on the gate. They winged a couple with arrows, they think. Hadn’t time for more.’

  ‘Well, maybe that’ll help put the finger on the bastards,’ grunted Tarkil. ‘Small chance otherwise. They had the sense to be smart about it. Raid a few of the houses nearest the gate, break out and gallop off, bang. Nobody knows who they were. Seems they’re right, all these southern tales about bandits getting bolder.’

  ‘No,’ said Kunrad flatly. ‘Not bandits. That’s what they wanted you to think; that’s why they raided the other houses too, or pretended to. I saw their leader. And I knew him.’

  There were cries of disbelief as he told his tale. ‘A man as rich as that? Why’d he stoop to petty plunder?’

  But as Kunrad told his tale his fellow masters grew grimmer still. They knew the young mastersmith from childhood, and they had heard his tale that night. ‘It makes sense enough,’ admitted Haldin unhappily.

  ‘And there’s proof,’ said Kunrad. ‘I took that sword
off one of the raiders, and thought it felt well in my hand. Small wonder. It’s one of mine. A cheap one, that was bought for his men.’

  ‘One thing, though,’ said the Guildmaster, his heavy brows knitting. ‘You saw him. He knew, and he had a sword. Why’d he let you wake up?’

  Kunrad had been chewing that one over himself. ‘I think he considered it, Guildmaster. Maybe he thought his man had dunted me worse than he had. I was bleeding hard at the mouth, I think. And he expected the smithy to burn down over me. And, well, he didn’t look too eager to do aught worse. Sounds as if his men had orders not to kill, too, doesn’t it? Not if they could help it, anyhow. Maybe because he’s a lord and a sothran he didn’t feel it mattered so much if one man recognised him. That nobody’d dare come after him.’

  The Guildmaster nodded, then rounded on the guard. ‘Kennas! Get a patrol down to the Golden Seal and—’

  ‘He quit last even,’ said the captain flatly. ‘Saying he was anxious to be on the road.’

  ‘Well, he can’t have got far yet!’ thundered the Guildmaster. ‘Muster a riding, all the men you can raise, citizens too!’

  ‘Get me a horse,’ said Kunrad.

  ‘He hit harder than he thought, that man!’ barked Metrye. ‘You’re riding nowhere!’

  ‘I know them, remember? There’ll be lots of folk on the roads, southward especially. But I saw some faces – marked a couple, too.’

  ‘I’ll ride along, then,’ said Haldin, ‘with your lads, and look after you. Not named Bold-Counsel for nothing, are you? We’ve come near enough losing you already.’

  It was less than an hour later that the riding swept out of the gates, and the sun still barely over the mountains. Scouts and trackers had already gone before. The riders, twenty guards and sixteen townsmen, made a great thunder as they went, with women waving and children shouting, but a half-mile or so beyond the gate they petered to a rather shamefaced trot. There was no obvious trail, and the captain cast about for his trackers. They rode in a few minutes later, but not from the direction everyone was looking.