The Gold Falcon

‘These’ll have to be smoothed off and then scoured down with sand,’ Horza said. ‘That’s your doing.’

‘It is, and a thousand thanks!’ Neb took the panels with a little bow. ‘You’re a grand man with an axe.’

‘Imph.’ Horza tipped his head to one side and looked the boys over. ‘Scribe, are you? What sort of name is Neb, anyway? Never heard it before.’

‘Well, it’s short for somewhat. My father was a man of grand ideas. He named me Nerrobrantos, for some Dawntime hero or other. And my brother’s name is truly Caliomagos.’

‘Or Neb and Clae, and the shorters are the betters, true enough. Now run along, lads. I’ve got work to do.’

‘My thanks. I’ll take these back to the great hall and work on them there.’

As soon as Horza was out of earshot, Clae turned to Neb. ‘He’s got his gall talking about our names,’ he said. ‘What kind of a name is Horza, anyway?’

‘A very old one,’ Neb said, smiling. ‘His ancestors must have been some of the Old Ones, the people who already lived here when our ancestors arrived.’

‘Well, it sounds like a lass’s name.’

‘Their language must have been a fair bit different from ours, that’s all.’

‘Oh.’ Clae considered this information for a moment, then shrugged. ‘Can I go play white crow with the pages? Coryn asked me.’

‘By all means. I’ll not need any help with this, anyway.’

Neb took his tablets to a table by the servants’ hearth, where a bucket of sand stood ready to smother any sparks that found their way onto the straw-covered floor. He fetched some water in a pottery stoup, helped himself to a handful of sand, grabbed some straw from the floor and set to work. He sprinkled the sand on the wood, then wet down the straw and used it to scour the splinters away.

As he worked, he found himself wondering about this lass, Branna, whose life was going to be decided by the letter he would write on these tablets. Would anyone ask her opinion about being packed off to the rough border country? No doubt she’d have no more choice about it than he and Clae had had about Uncle Brwn’s farm. He felt a sudden sympathy for her, this lass he didn’t know, and found himself wondering if she were pretty.

That night Neb and Clae shared a comfortable bed in a wedge-shaped room high up in the broch tower. They also had a wobbly table and two stools, a carved wooden chest to store whatever possessions they might someday have, and a brass charcoal brazier for the winter to come. The curved arc of the stone outer wall sported a narrow window, covered by a wooden shutter. In Arcodd at that time, these furnishings all added up to a nicely appointed chamber, suitable for an honoured servitor to the noble-born.

Although Clae fell asleep immediately, Neb lay awake for a little while and considered this sudden truth: he was indeed a tieryn’s servitor now, the head of what was left of their family and a man who could provide for that family, as well. He only wished that Uncle Brwn’s death hadn’t been the price. If they rescue Mauva, he thought, I’ll see if I can get her a place in the kitchen. Brwn would like that, knowing I’d taken care of her.

When he fell asleep, he dreamt of Lady Branna, or rather, of a beautiful lass that his dream labelled Lady Branna. He could see her clearly, it seemed, in the great hall of some rough, poor dun. She sat in a carved chair near a smoky hearth, her feet up on a little stool to keep them from the damp straw covering the floor. A little grey gnome crouched by her chair. In the dream some man he couldn’t see announced, ‘The most beautiful lass in all Deverry.’ Neb moved closer, smiling at her. She looked up, saw him, and smiled in return.

‘My prince, is it you?’

Her voice sounded so real that he woke, half-sitting up in bed. In the darkness Clae muttered to himself and turned over, sighing. Neb lay down again, and this time when he slept, he dreamt of nothing at all.

Gerran woke well before dawn. Since he’d laid out his clothing the night before, he could dress by the faint starlight coming through the window. Even though he would have preferred sleeping out in the barracks with the other common-born riders, Tieryn Cadryc had insisted on giving him a chamber in the broch tower. Gerran was just buckling on his sword belt when he saw a crack of light beneath his door. Someone knocked.

‘Gerro?’ Mirryn said.

‘I’m awake, truly.’ Gerran swung the door open. ‘I wondered if you’d be up and about.’

Mirryn gave him a sour smile. He carried a pierced tin candle lantern inside, then put it down on top of the wooden chest that held the few things Gerran owned. Neither of them spoke until Gerran had shut the door again.

‘I know it aches your heart,’ Gerran said. ‘But I can understand why your father’s making you stay behind.’

‘Oh, so can I, but it doesn’t lessen the ache any.’ Mirryn leaned against the curve of the wall. ‘The men are going to start thinking I’m a coward.’

‘Oh here, of course they won’t! They heard your father give the order.’

Mirryn cocked his head and considered him for a moment. ‘It’s an odd thing, the way you say that. Your father. He’s yours, too, a foster-father truly, but –’

‘I’m not noble-born, and that makes all the difference in the world. It was an honourable fancy of the tieryn to treat me like one of his own when I was a lad, but I’m grown now.’

‘You’re still my brother in my eyes.’

‘And you in mine.’ Gerran hesitated, then merely shrugged. ‘I’m grateful for that, but –’

‘But in the eyes of everyone else,’ Mirryn said, ‘you’re not?’

‘Just that. Which is why your father will risk my life but not yours.’

‘I know that, and I suppose everyone else does, too, but ye gods, Gerro! What’s going to happen when I inherit the rhan? If I’ve never ridden to war, who’s going to honour me?’

‘It’s too cursed bad the gods saw fit to give you naught but sisters.’

Mirryn laughed with a shake of his head. ‘I’ve never known anyone who could parry questions like you can.’ He glanced out of the window. ‘Sky’s getting grey.’

‘I’d best get down to the stables. It’s not truly my place, but if I’m given the chance, maybe I can have a few words with his grace.’

‘Talk some sense into him.’ Mirryn looked away with a sigh. ‘I might as well be another useless daughter if he’s going to keep me shut up in the dun.’

By the time that Gerran saddled his horse, twenty men from the warband had begun to assemble in a ward flaring with torchlight. Gerran rode through the mass of men and horses, sorted out the riding order, and decided which men would lead the packhorses with the supplies. Behind them would come ox-carts with full provisions, but the carts travelled so slowly that they would doubtless only catch up to the troop in time to provision their ride home. Gerran was just telling the head carter about the route ahead when he saw the gerthddyn, mounted up and walking his horse into line. Gerran assigned him a place at the end of the riding order, and Salamander took it cheerfully with a small bow from the saddle. Gerran jogged back up the line and fell in next to Cadryc.

‘Your grace?’ Gerran said. ‘What’s that magpie of a minstrel doing along?’

‘Cursed if I know,’ Cadryc said. ‘He begged me to let him ride with us for vengeance. Must be a good heart in the lad, for all he dresses like a stinking Deverry courtier.’

‘Vengeance? For what?’

‘Now, that’s a good question.’ Cadryc paused, chewing on his moustaches. ‘He must have lost kin or suchlike to the raiders.’ He shrugged the problem away. ‘I don’t see your foster-brother anywhere. I thought he’d have the decency to come see us off at least.’

‘Well, your grace,’ Gerran said, ‘suppose he’d been happy to stay behind? Wouldn’t that have ached your heart?’

Cadryc turned in the saddle, stared at him for a moment, then laughed, a rueful sort of mutter under his breath. ‘Right you are, Gerro,’ the tieryn said. ‘Let’s get up to the head of the line. Sun’s rising.’

Panting, swearing, the ten men left behind on fortguard hauled on the chains that opened the heavy gates. With one last heave and a curse, they swung them ajar, then dropped the chains and ran out of the way. Cadryc yelled out a command and waved his men forward at the trot.

The warband travelled south through the tieryn’s rhan, that is, the vast tract of half-wild country under his jurisdiction, within which he could bestow parcels of land in return for fealty and taxes. Near the dun, the freeholds of the local farmers stood pale green with wheat, but ahead lay the pine forests, covering the broken tablelands of Arcodd province and beyond. The plateau itself stretched for nearly two hundred miles. To the west, it sloped down into lands marked on no Deverry map. To the north it steadily rose until it became the foothills of the Roof of the World.

To the south, where the warband was heading, lay the rich farmland of the Melyn Valley, but once the men reached the edge of the forest cover, they turned west onto the dirt road that had so surprised Neb. Cadryc had levied a labour tax on his farmers to hack it out of the forest. No one had grumbled. They could see that its purpose was their safety.

A few hours before sunset, the warband rode up to an open meadow. Cadryc called a halt, then leaned over his saddle peak to stare at the trampled grass.

‘Someone’s been here recently,’ the tieryn said. ‘Ye gods! If the raiders have found this road –’

‘Your grace?’ Salamander trotted his horse up to join them. ‘Allow me to put your mind at rest. I’m the culprit. It was on this very spot, it was, that Neb and Clae found me.’