The Castle of the Winds Read online

  ‘I thought you at least would understand, Master-smith!’ said Kunrad fiercely. ‘It’s not vengeance. Well, not foremost, not alone; though Merthian owes me a life now. But he owes me mine, too. There’s too much of me in that suit. He might as well have cut off my right arm as take it – and by the Powers, I think he knew it! And there’s that flaw – in the armour, and therefore in me. If I don’t get it back, maybe I’ll never find it. Even if I make another one, just the same as far as I know, it may not show it. Then it’ll haunt me! Will it lurk in everything I make? Will it come back when I least expect it? I’ll be incomplete in every sense. And I’ll never be wholly a master.’

  He hesitated, looking down at the waxed wood of the table. ‘Guildmaster, Mastersmiths, masters – since you won’t help me more, I must help myself. I must leave you, and my home, and go alone in search of what’s been riven from me.’

  ‘Metrye had the right of it!’ exploded the Guild-master. ‘You’re clean daft, boy!’

  But none of the other masters protested, not even the baker. Galdred looked down at his boots. ‘Yes, lad, I do understand. But that’s not to say I think you’re right. And as acting Head of Guild there’s a question I’m bound to ask. What about your prentices, now? You’re bound to them as they to you. I can’t take ’em, and I don’t know a Master in town who can. We’re well served by ours, and yours, well, let’s say they’ll take some training up. Sorry.’

  Kunrad looked around at the two young men. Gille was ashen, Olvar sitting like a piece of carven wood, but with a downward twist to his mouth. Kunrad knew him well enough to read the signs. ‘You’re right. And swift. I had been going to ask you to help. I won’t, now. Lads, I’m truly sorry, but I’m going regardless. You must go back to your families and seek another indenture, or make what way you can with me. Maybe in another town there’ll be places for you.’

  He turned hastily away from their faces. ‘I will ask you one thing, though, masters. To lend me some money.’

  The Guildmaster snorted. ‘As well toss it down the privy. Worse, for you might recover it even then. Nobody’ll lend to a man who’ll never come back!’

  ‘Not even to a friend? Not even the Guild? What about those losses made good you promised? And there’s the security of my house, my forge and all within it. That’s worth something!’

  Galdred shook his head sharply, and went on staring at his boots. Kolfe and the others avoided his eye. Kunrad said nothing, but nor did he move. It was the baker who finally spoke up. ‘I’ll lend what I can, Kunrad. Not much, but then I fear you’re not going to need much. I doubt you’ll do better.’

  It was barely a quarter of what the house was worth, and Kunrad could hardly decide whether the baker was being generous or chiselling him. He suspected the baker was none too sure, either. With that in hand, he went to buy himself a horse from the town stable, and settled for the big bay that had borne him on the first day’s hunt. But as he bargained, Gille and Olvar walked in.

  ‘What about us? Expect us to run alongside, do you?’

  ‘Or were you going to use us for baggage mounts?’

  Kunrad shrugged. ‘I didn’t know you were coming. You haven’t said a word about your choice.’

  ‘Choice?’ exploded Gille. ‘To go back and rot as my father’s youngest, and no good to him – as he’ll be forever telling me? He’ll blame me, whatever the truth of it. I’ll be lucky if I’m set to sweep the floors and not banished to the stable, or worse. No gold and no future. Some choice!’

  ‘And I’ll be the deckhand for my brothers,’ grunted Olvar. ‘They don’t care for smithcraft, not fishermen. They’ll keep me half-starved and gutting fish, and laugh at it. You know that well enough! Choice!’

  ‘So we’re coming,’ said Gille acidly. ‘But not willingly! And at least were going to be there when you admit this was all a fool’s quest, and turn home with your tail between your legs – Master! And then maybe we’ll be able to pick up the threads of our lives once again.’

  ‘You may,’ said Kunrad. ‘I’ll say it again, I’m sorry, lads. But I never could!’

  So more of his money went on two more mounts. Packing what little gear remained to them did not take long, and it was only afternoon of that day when they led them down the main street to the gate. Metrye stood on the porch of her house, with its swirling sea-paintings leaping about her, and shook her head as they passed. ‘A young fool in his folly. Men! If he’d stolen your balls, you couldn’t be more frantic! But I say this to you, young Mastersmith – if you pass that gate now, on this wretched errand, then you will never ever return. Think upon that! And remember I have seen things true in my time, though I am not a smith to make a magic mirror.’

  ‘I know of no smith who ever did, save in tales!’ answered Kunrad. ‘I’m sad to have offended you, as all my other friends. For that I blame Merthian all the more. But I say to you that you’re wrong, Healer! I will have my justice. I shall succeed!’

  Gille and Olvar looked at her sadly, and twirled their fingers about their temples.

  ‘The more fools you, then!’ she snorted, and went noisily inside and slammed the door.

  The gate guards stood aside as they passed, as men did, sometimes, from the unlucky or accursed; and they too shook their heads. Kunrad held his high.

  But Metrye saw truly; for as the Chronicles record, that day the Mastersmith Kunrad rode forth from his Northern home for the last time, and saw it never again.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Trail of Ashes

  ‘WELL,’ SAID OLVAR, ‘WE can’t say the bastard’s making himself hard to follow!’

  They surveyed the skeletal remains before them, nothing left to show what they had been save the great blackened anvil still standing by the shattered hearth. Pavi, weaponsmith of the little town of Folby, clutched his singed head in anguish. ‘He’s done this to you, too?’

  Gille grimaced. ‘This much, only to us – though our forge didn’t catch so well. More clay in your walls and less wattle, next time, Mastersmith! But he’s left a trail of everything from unpaid tallies to armed robbery along the road south these last few weeks. Like little piles of horse apples along the way.’

  Kunrad nodded grimly. ‘And with the weaponsmiths worst of all.’

  In that short time they had ridden all the way down from their own corner of the North into the very heart of Nordeney, fully two-thirds the length of the land to its southern border; and with Merthian’s ravages for stark signposts. At Aldreby, Athalby’s first neighbour along the High Road, the Guild’s messages had already arrived, but too late to prevent the taking of another weaponsmith’s stock, this time by subterfuge. Merthian bought, then his men stole back the gold even as it was paid and swept out of town at speed, leaving the honest burghers still half-convinced there must be some mistake. Aldreby’s guard had eventually ridden after the raiders, with even less success. When Kunrad pressed them to join him, they wished him well, called him a dreamer behind their hands and went back to their daily round once more. Again Kunrad rode hard on the trail, and again nobody would join him. He found himself lagging further and further behind now, without spare mounts; desperate as he was, he would not kill or lame a horse.

  At Karrborg, a fortified town, it was the same story, though here the weaponsmith’s stocks had been quite calmly taken at swordpoint and in broad daylight, while Merthian passed the time of day with citizens in the street. By the time the smith and his journeyman escaped their bonds, the sothrans were hours away, bearing nights of fire and fear to the next towns along their way.

  ‘But Merthian was so agreeable on his way north!’ protested Pavi. ‘A true sothran gentleman, I thought him. And so knowledgeable about the art of arms! I’ll swear it was no pretence!’

  ‘Sure!’ said Olvar, with heavy cynicism. ‘He saved his stealing for the homeward road!’

  Kunrad shrugged. ‘I felt the same, Pavi. But I guess there’s more to it than that. Some change in him, that made all this possible.’
>
  Gille looked around. ‘You mean – once he’d raided us, that dropped all his barriers? He’d do anything after that?’

  ‘Something like that. Not anything, perhaps; but anything he could find a good enough excuse for. Was it just weapons he took?’

  Pavi groaned. ‘My best! And almost all my ordinary stock, even my steel-shod bows the bow-wright shapes for me. That, and some horses from the inn. Maybe to bear the booty, for I had plenty. Had! And I sought to call out the town upon him – and that hog-headed captain of his ordered – this!’

  ‘I know how you feel,’ said Kunrad. ‘None better. I’m going after him.’

  The squat little smith blinked in popeyed surprise. ‘You? Just you? But he’s a lord and a sothran, he’s got a whole following of men! And three good days start!’

  Olvar and Gille exchanged looks. They were growing used to this reaction.

  ‘He’s still in our land,’ said Kunrad. ‘And if everyone he’s robbed only got on his tracks, he’d stay here. And we’d get back most of what was stolen, maybe all. Will you help? Will you come along?’

  ‘Me?’ Pavi wagged his head sharply. ‘Not for anything! I can’t just go chasing off into the blue, I’ve a wife and children without a roof! I’ve got to rebuild here and earn my livelihood. The Guild’ll help me, but I couldn’t expect them to do anything if I went haring off to – to wherever! No, what can one or two men do against all this sothran arrogance? I wasn’t going along with all this war talk – but now …’ He shrugged. ‘If you must fight, save it for that. I’m sorry I can’t help. The Guildhall’ll give you food and lodging – and listen, when you give up, we’ll gladly find room for you here, I’m sure! But I’ll be sticking to my anvil, thank you!’

  ‘The same louseridden answer as always,’ grunted Olvar, as the pretences strolled along to the Guildhall. ‘How many towns is it, now? Nine? Ten?’

  ‘And the villages he’s stripped of provisions!’ added Gille gloomily. ‘At least Master Pavi didn’t actually laugh in our faces. I’d swear some of ’em were ready to set the dogs on us.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ said Gille. ‘The Mastersmith shows them up. No matter why, he’s doing what they should have done, only they’re too scared. They hate him for that. So they fob him off with a little charity, or laugh, or they get angry – anything they can share, and round on him with.’

  Olvar was silent a moment. ‘You’re not telling me you’re beginning to agree with him?’

  ‘Should and ought don’t always mean the same. There’re times I hate him too. I want to go home, damn it! To a decent house and clean clothes and warm haylofts and girls who respect me, not treat me like some beggar off the wayside!’

  ‘Me, I want regular meals and a comfortable bed, and regular work that leads somewhere, not slaving piecemeal in strange forges for someone of half the craft and a miserly hand with pay. Is that so very much to ask? And all these things we could have had by now. The town would’ve fallen over itself to help. All these other towns would jump to have someone of the Master’s name. But we had to leave it all, and keep leaving it. What for? A dream, a daze. A lost soul. And Merthian gaining at every step. Three days ahead! Who knows where we’ll be headed next?’

  In town after town they found the pattern repeated. In the great community of Rasby, with more than half a million citizens and a huge indoor market that made Gille and Olvar gape, a whole series of swift thefts had been carried out in a single day.

  ‘Becoming quite a practised felon!’ was Kunrad’s sour comment. ‘And nobody even thought of following?’

  Rasby’s Guildmaster, himself a smith, spread his hands helplessly. ‘To what profit? Could we have caught them, with such a start?’

  ‘They have to camp sometime. They’re far from home, they have to live on what they can carry from town to town. A little hard riding, and you could have had them. You still could.’

  ‘Aye, with a force that would leave our town half undefended. You may sneer, Master Kunrad, but that is a real concern! Up there in your snug little backwater you don’t know what’s been happening down here!’

  ‘The war talk? I’ve heard that. And if we can’t band together to catch one thieving sothran, what chance have our armies?’

  ‘A war’s different. People swallow their pride and their differences, as they will for nothing less. But I didn’t mean that!’ The Guildmaster rapped the map of the Northlands richly inlaid in the top of the huge council table. ‘I meant the raids and banditry that have brought us to this pass. They’re on the increase, not just in numbers but in scale, by land and sea. All the stories we hear point to one band, a growing band that can strike at well-defended targets with an order little less than our own. Every bad character and outliver throughout the North seems to be flocking to join them, and in the South too, as I hear. Some say the South approves; certainly, with all its power, it does little enough to stop them! Did you know Thuneborg was attacked?’

  Kunrad was taken aback. He had heard of Thuneborg as a rich castle town, one of the commanding points founded by the lord Vayde when he first scouted out the Northland for settlement. ‘They surely didn’t break through Vayde’s fortifications?’

  ‘They did not – but they tried. And not too badly, either. An assault upriver, from a sea landing, in some force. They were beaten back, but in good order and with few losses. It was almost as if they were trying themselves, or tempering their men. That was a week ago, and the word reached us yesterday. Men are still shaking and calling on the Powers.’

  ‘A week ago …’ mused Kunrad.

  ‘So Lord Merthian didn’t have anything to do with it, if that’s what you’re wondering. No, I’ve had word of him here before. He visited my brother Guildmaster in Dunmarhas a few years back, and made a fine impression. He’s who he says he is, and a lord of renown in the Southlands, by all accounts. Why he’s getting up to these little larks is beyond me. If he’s robbed as many as you say, he must be gathering a mighty hoard of arms. Better made than any in his land, of course, but still … Maybe he just wants to have his men well equipped against these raids – or in case of war.’

  ‘He seems to be doing his best to provoke it.’

  ‘What, looting the odd shop? And with no backing from the Syndicacy of his land? Ill feeling, yes. A war, no. It’s the great towns of the North that will decide for or against war, my lad. And that means their elected Guild-masters, and that means me, among others. That’s the benefit of having no king any more, nor Syndicacy of great lords, as the sothrans do. We’re responsible to our folk. We won’t go rushing in at such petty provocation. Nor will the Syndics, if my intelligencers are worth their fees.’

  Kunrad tapped his winemug on the table. ‘I’m glad to hear that, Guildmaster. Is Merthian a Syndic?’

  ‘Has to be, lad! And not the least, though among the youngest.’

  ‘And truly rich, too? So that he could afford to buy all these arms he’s stealing?’

  ‘Rich enough, aye. Though rich folk are no fonder of paying than you or I, when they don’t have to.’ Kunrad took in the Guildmaster’s bejewelled fingers and gold chains, and smiled sourly to himself. ‘In fact,’ said the older man sagely, ‘when I come to think about it – these sothran lords, lad, they may be decent enough to begin with, but they’ve too much power. Within their own lands they’ve the high justice, power of life and death, and nobody to so much as question. They’re not in touch with everyday folk like you and I, not used to considering anyone’s feelings, except on the surface. They’re not used to being turned down. Could be they’d take it hard. Like insolence. Loss of dignity.’

  ‘You mean – you think I offended Merthian enough to make him feel aggrieved?’

  ‘Aye. Insulted. And maybe he could take against mastersmiths as a class, and be determined to teach ’em a lesson. Within limits, of course – and you’ll notice he’s killed nobody. He might think of that as restraint, a sothran aristo.’

  That idea left Kunrad
momentarily speechless, and gave the Guildmaster his opening. ‘Well, lad, it’s been grand to see you, though I wish it were in happier circumstance. You’ll see, as things stand there’s naught I can do to help, not truly. But you’ll dine with me at the Guildhall tonight, you and your boys? Grand, grand. And if you ever give up this will-o’-the-wisp chase of yours, come make your fortune in a fine rich town. Your work’s come of note down here, and I’ll be glad to stand you sponsor. Fare you well now!’

  The talk left Kunrad thoughtful, and the prentices also when he told them, that night in the Guildhall’s guest-chambers. ‘You know I’ve never taken much account of affairs of state, nor even of the town governance. But the way things are – well, the Guildmaster may be right, but I can’t help wondering if Merthian has some purpose behind all this. Something deeper.’

  Olvar, sprawled on the best bed he had slept in since leaving home, and full of the best food, was only up to a grunt. Gille, though, caught Kunrad’s meaning. ‘You mean – something for the Southlands against us?’

  ‘Well – he might be testing our unity, the way we respond to a threat.’

  ‘In which case he’s got a pretty fair answer. He’s robbed nine towns, stripped food from villages, and ended up with nobody on his trail but two abused apprentices and one mastersmith with a bent head. Proof conclusive, I’d say.’

  ‘That’s just the way Nordeney is,’ Kunrad said. ‘He didn’t need to test that, it’s well known. I knew it, I suppose. I just hoped some towns might be readier to react. Could he want war? Could he want people to hate the very name of Bryhaine?’

  ‘He’d have killed, then, wouldn’t he? War would be killing, so why hold back? He doesn’t seem to do anything more than he needs to. Even the fire was largely accident, with us. Of course—’ Gille looked blandly innocent. ‘He may have done something worse by now. We’re lagging pretty far behind. What is it now, two, three days? We’ve done well to keep that close!’