Initiate’s Trial: First book of Sword of the Canon

The estate possessed no more excess belongings or chattel to spare. Belts would have to be tightened, again. What cloth goods and staples they gained by straight barter had to be savagely scrimped.

‘We could be facing worse,’ Tarens declared in attempt to lighten the pervasive gloom. Town law allowed a year’s grace in which to square the account rolls. A margin at least to assure them of shelter under the hardship of winter. ‘Did anyone see if that crazy vagabond found a patron to hire him?’

‘Can’t be our problem,’ Kerelie grumbled. ‘We’re too pinched ourselves to fret over another.’

Which should have left Tarens ashamed for the coin he had gifted in soft-hearted folly. If Kerelie and Efflin knew that such charity set him back more than a copper, they rightly would skewer him as he deserved. But guilt over untoward generosity did not resolve his anxiety over the strange fellow’s fate.

Softened, Efflin peered through the drizzle that streamed off his drooped hat. ‘Last I saw, your simpleton was muscling casks for the brewer.’

Tarens sighed with relief. Tafe Aleman was sympathetic towards beggars. Always gave wretches who free-loaded a beer, and ones willing to shoulder a few extra chores found dry lodging inside his store shed for a halfpenny.

‘The man seemed willing. Didn’t balk at hard work.’ Kerelie blew a strand of wet hair from her lips. ‘Careful too. He broke nothing he handled. He’s likely to fare well enough.’

Dismissed, the subject lapsed into silence. The home-bound cart creaked through three more sluggish leagues, wheels sucking through dreary mud and frothed currents of run-off. Lashed in by the storm and a cruel risen wind, the lumbering ox turned at last through the painted posts of the farm-gate. The hooked lanterns swung, darkened on their chains. The cottage at the end of the lane had no cheerful aunt waiting, with a warm supper and candle-lit windows gleaming in welcome. No uncle stepped out to take charge of the reins, or hustle them inside to warm by the fire. Efflin did not pull up in the yard but drove the wagon straight through the open barn-doors and into the cavernous, hay-fragrant darkness. The ox huffed and stopped, bawling in complaint. Everyone piled out, too chilled for the burdensome chore of unloading. The barn was pitch-dark, and wax candles too scarce. The paned lamp must be reserved for emergencies, and the risk of a pine-knot torch was too dangerous in the draughts gusted through the gapped plank walls. Kerelie hefted down the hen’s wicker cage. The dry goods, the crates, and the empty coin-box could wait until tomorrow’s daylight.

Efflin squelched in filled boots to unyoke the tired ox. While he goaded its reluctant tread to a stall, Tarens dashed ahead through the downpour, with a breathless promise to lug wood from the shed. Hungry and cold, no one lingered. Battered by the frigid wind, Kerelie shoved outside and dumped the errant hen back in the chicken coop’s pen. She fed the livestock and hastened inside to scrounge crusted bread and heat soup for an overdue supper. Efflin was left to hang up the harness. Since preservative grease could not be applied before the wet leather dripped dry, he stamped after his sister and never looked backwards.

The dreary night passed, and the icy rain stopped before anyone realized the heaped tarpaulin in the wagon-bed sheltered more than the goods fetched from Kelsing market.

Tarens woke the next morning with sun in his eyes. Or so he presumed, until he squinted and found that the dazzle that blinded him glanced off three silver coins, stacked beside his crumpled pillow. Dawn was well gone, the past evening’s storm broken to a flawless blue sky. The shaft of clear yellow light through the window burnished the placed silver like gold.

He shot upright, dismayed, the oddity of the coins eclipsed by embarrassment. A selfish indulgence to have overslept, with the winter wheat-field to be tilled and sown before the frost hardened the ground. The family prankster who needled his conscience by leaving the silver could wait; but never their jeopardized stake in the croft, strung up by hard work and a thread. Tousled hair in his face, Tarens kicked off his blankets and slid out of bed. He snatched up his dropped shirt and breeches, jolted to a hissed breath as last night’s damp clothes pebbled gooseflesh over his skin.

Arms clutched to quell the violent shiver wracked through his sturdy frame, he paused in disbelief.

Downstairs, Kerelie was busy cooking.

Plain fare, sure enough, in a house plunged in debt, and still muted by the grave-seal of grief. The upstairs felt quiet as an abandoned tomb without the boisterous yells of the boys.

Tarens bit his lip. Past was past. No use to dwell on what might have been. Quickly dressed, he grabbed his dank boots and plunged barefoot down the shadowed, board stair.

He slunk into the brick-floored kitchen, braced for a facetious scold from his sister, backed by Efflin’s bull-dog bark.

Instead, Kerelie spun from her stirred pot and glanced up. As though shocked by a haunt, she dropped the ladle of water just dipped from the bucket slung by the hearth.

‘Light’s blessing, you startled me!’ she blurted. Then her round cheeks flushed pink. ‘Tarens! Lay off your quack foolery. You didn’t wake up just this minute! Or else who’s already tended the cattle and finished the chores in the barn?’

‘Efflin, of course,’ snapped Tarens, sarcastic. ‘I notice the butcher’s knife’s gone from the peg. He’ll have fumed himself black out in Aunt Saffie’s rose patch, bent on an ambush to flense me.’

Kerelie dried her chapped hands on her skirt. ‘Efflin’s knocked flat with an ugly green cold. Which is why I’m in here, stirring up gruel to coddle him.’ She retrieved her fallen implement and plunked on the hob, blue eyes wide and lips pinched with distress.

Tarens regarded her fraught state, amazed. ‘What under sky’s strapped your tongue when you ought to be yelling fit to raise the roof?’

‘You men weren’t the only ones laggard in your blankets.’ His sister shed her awkward reluctance, and admitted, ‘I snored through the sunrise, myself. We’ve all been bone-tired! I’d planned to surprise you and muck out the barn. Give your lazy bones an undeserved rest and let Efflin’s sourpuss mood have one less target to savage. He’s been such a wounded bear since our fortune’s turned. Why won’t he tell us what’s cankered him?’

‘He’ll speak when he’s ready.’ Tarens treated her angst with the same stubborn patience that had argued the sale of the bull. ‘What’s upset you, Kerie? I’m too thrashed to guess.’

His younger sister sucked a vexed breath, her pinched forehead suddenly pale. ‘Who’s moved the ox,’ she began, ‘and the milch-cow’s been taken—’

Tarens outpaced her slow explanation. Protective to a fault, he abandoned his boots, grabbed the fire tongs, and banged open the door. He charged outside, hackled to gore any thieving intruder.

First step, his brandished tool snagged a dangled wrack of frost-burned tomato vines. As dry leaves and green fruit yoked his lowered head, he yelped, ‘Light avert!’ and thrashed the pungent stems aside in annoyance.

The uprooted vegetables had not hung there, yesterday. Since Efflin slept, and with Kerelie barely shucked out of her night-rail, who had dug the plants from the kitchen patch and strung them from the porch rafters in the pre-dawn dark? Each year, his aunt had tied the yellowed stems upside down for late ripening, a last frugal harvest snatched from fate’s jaws before winter. But Aunt Saff was dead. Two months had passed since the Light’s priest settled her with the blessing of passage and torched her remains to sad rest.

Tarens shook off his wild-eyed startlement and bashed the straggle of vine from his neck. As the wrack slithered off him, he swept a frantic glance over the muddy yard but saw no tracks left by rustled livestock.

Broad daylight revealed only the pruned canes of the roses and the crude prints left by Kerelie’s pattens.

When the dry cow and the ox raised their horned heads in the field, his glare confounded to befuddlement. The animals were as they should be: routinely turned out to pasture and chewing their cuds behind the shut gate. They had not moved by themselves from the barn, any more than a garden turned over its frost-wilted rows and laid down leaf mulch by itself.

More, the broken handle on the well’s crank had been fixed, a skilled task Uncle Fiath bequeathed to his heirs by neglect.

‘Fiends plague!’ Tarens swore. No mischievous iyat visited mankind with the untoward kindness of miracles.

Thoughtful, the huge crofter padded between the mercury gleam of the puddles. Oblivious to the cold nip to bare feet, he entered the barn and paused, impatient while his sight adjusted to the dusty gloom. The fragrance told him the stalls had been mucked. The mangers also were forked with fresh hay. More, the ox harness hung set to rights on the hook, freshly oiled, and for the Light’s sake, who bothered? Even the buckles were polished! Beside the whetstone’s damp wheel, the missing butcher’s knife showed the argent shine of a whetted edge.

Footsteps at his back, and a prim swish of skirts prompted Tarens to task his sister, ‘The vagabond did this?’

‘Had you listened and not belted off with the poker, I would have suggested as much.’ Kerelie sighed. ‘He must have trailed us back here on foot.’ Her hateful cooking abandoned for gossip, she sniffed. ‘Or else he snuck into the wagon. The empty bird crates were loosely stacked, and nobody tidied the tarp.’

‘He’s accomplished all this?’ Tarens capped his amazed gesture with a chuckle of flat disbelief. ‘One starved little wretch? Merciful Maker! The man would’ve laboured all night!’

‘In the dark,’ added Kerelie, uneasy and shaken. ‘See for yourself. The candle stubs in the lanterns weren’t touched.’

Sure enough, the horn lamp had never been lit. No spent reek of oil and charred pine bespoke the foolhardy use of a cresset.

Tarens scratched at his stubbled chin. ‘Done us ten favours, we owe him that much.’

‘Don’t be daft!’ Kerelie snapped. ‘We can’t possibly keep him!’ Since her brother would argue, she slapped him down first. ‘I don’t care how hard the miserable wretch works. Another mouth to feed through the winter will strain us nigh onto breaking. We can’t meet the croft tax on inheritance, besides. And why should a rootless man swipe the best knife from our kitchen only for sharpening? The fellow might be quite ruthlessly mad! Touched by Darkness itself and hell-bent on slitting our throats as we slept.’

The firm line of Tarens’s sealed lips gave a twitch. His blue eyes widened and glinted. Sparked into sudden, inexplicable merriness, he stifled the laughter that would only fan his sister’s volatile fury. She looked apt, as things stood, to make a quick snatch for his poker and brain him. Ever the sort to enjoy taunting fate, he outfaced her stormy reproof. ‘I don’t think it’s our necks the bloke means to cut.’

Kerelie flounced. Heated enough to pummel the fool who played her for a dreaming idiot, she glanced over her shoulder just barely in time. Her large jaw dropped. ‘You!’ she exploded, burned red with embarrassment for her feckless outburst of unkindness.

In fact, the small fellow her words had reviled crept in silently, right behind her.

Evidently, the knife had been borrowed to shave. The barbarous straggle of beard was razed off, and the matted tangles trimmed from his raven hair. The loose ends were neatly tied up with twine, snipped from one of the lengths that had strung the tomato vines. Cleaned of wild growth and masking dirt, the features revealed showed a man in his prime, taut cheek-bones and brow line distinctively angled and nowhere ill-bred or unpleasing.

Inquisitive, piercing, his vivid green eyes surveyed Kerelie’s blanched surprise. The intensity of that fixed stare ruffled her skin into gooseflesh.

Then the vagrant glanced down, disconcerted as she.

Kerelie recovered her rattled wits. Like her brother, she noticed the man’s roughened hands. His chapped knuckles cracked from the setting of his snares, he cradled a brace of limp woodcock and a fat winter hare, hung by the hind legs from another filched string.

Then Tarens gripped Kerelie’s shoulder and gently steered her aside. ‘Sister, I believe we’re blocking his way.’

The beggarman smiled, an expression so honest with contrite apology that Kerelie gasped, lost for breath.