Ordination Read online

  “Well,” the man said, “I am already sweating, so that rules out one part of the legend. And I do not imagine I can kill all of you. But what I will do,” he said, raising the hammer and pointing it again at the bearded man, “is be sure of you.”

  “My lads’ll ‘ave you,” the man warned, shifting his feet, trying not to glance behind him at the others, who seemed altogether less ready for action than he did. None had seized a weapon or spread their feet into a readied stance, and one had started to edge away from their spokesman.

  “So they might,” the horseman allowed. “But you and your…lads…have neither bows nor spears, which means getting good and close. I may not be on my warhorse, but this little one will still give me height and speed against a man afoot, and I will put my hammer through your skull like the dull end of a breakfast knife through an egg shell.”

  His warning hung in the hot, close air a moment. He began to tense his thighs against his saddle, started to lift his hammer.

  One of the deserters blurted out, “You’ve knives just for breakfast?”

  The mounted man laughed, though it was a dry and humorless sound. “Some do,” he replied, but, with the laughter, the tension seemed to slip away. One of the other deserters slapped at the one who’d spoken, and the bearded leader turned to face them, glaring.

  It was an opening, and the mounted man seized it.

  “Listen. Traveling in this heat is thirsty work,” he called out. “I am willing to trade you a full skin of wine and a sack of biscuit for more of the news you spoke of. And nobody has to die.”

  “We could take all your wine and your biscuit,” the bearded one muttered darkly.

  “I’d rather be one of six splittin’ the drink than dead while three do it,” one of the other men countered.

  “Your man sees sense. I would rather kill none of you. Hot though it is, I have no wish to go to the Cold today. I doubt you do either.”

  If the bearded one wasn’t ready to relent, his men were, and he could sense it. “Fine. We’ll ‘ave the wine.”

  “News first, then I leave the wine and the biscuit and ride away.”

  “Fair enough. I don’t know all o’ the whys, but seems like Delondeur has let the whole north of his barony go to seed,” the bearded one said.

  “Word is that some slavers are workin’ the villages, takin’ what the press gangs haven’t got already. Villages up here’ve not seen a green-hat or a baronial messenger in years anyway, just men in armor rounding their sons up to fight,” put in one of the others.

  “And he’s engaged down at the southern tip of Innadan and Telmawr, and with islandman pirates at his back.” The bearded man picked up the thread without missing a bit. “Cold, they even say there’s a town out where the Ash gets huge that’s calling itself its own barony now.”

  “I heard there was a den of robbers and river pirates out there,” the mounted man said. “Been rumors of it now for twenty years or more. But a town?”

  “Aye,” the bearded man said. “They’re buildin’ walls, wearin’ livery. All that rot.”

  “I have a hard time believing that Baron Delondeur could let it all go that far. And I thought he made peace with the islandmen?”

  “Those in lost Vyndamere, sure,” the red tabarded man replied. “Rammed it right down their throats. And he’s put enough weight in the pockets o’ real islandman swords-at-hire t’ call it peace, I s’pose. But make good wi’ one batch and another’ll come along, shoutin’ and burnin’ and killin’ for the Sea Dragon.”

  The less Lionel is looking this way, the better chance I have to get across his barony, the horseman noted silently. Then, cynically, needling himself, To get where?

  “Well,” he said aloud, “it is west and south for me no matter what. There are still some villages across the Ash, aye?”

  “Might be. Might be that some of the villages that are standin’ today’ll be burnin’ tomorrow,” the bearded man said.

  “West and south it is anyway.” The horseman slid down from his saddle, hammer still in hand. He walked to his mule and rummaged in the packs, pulling free a small sack and a bulging skin. He set both down on a sun-warmed rock, stood, took his saddle, and said, “I shall be off now.”

  “You might be ridin’ t’ yer grave,” the bearded one said, trying to keep one eye on him and one eye on the food. “Safer up here in Oyrwyn, most like. Plenty of places t’ get lost in all that mountain.”

  “For you, maybe,” the man said, as he gathered up his leads and gently nudged his palfrey back into motion. I could never get lost up there, he thought.

  “Thanks for the food an’ drink…you got a name?”

  “You are welcome to it. And I do.”

  “Goin’ t’let us know it? I’m Malken.”

  Silently, the man rode off, giving the deserters a wide berth, descending further down the hill than he would’ve liked, but round it all the same.

  * * *

  The lone horseman pushed on as far as he could before nightfall. The day was long and the sun stayed with him, so he had a good view of the Ash River valley as he tied his animals up for the night and began brushing them down. He had found a camp at the thickly-wooded top of a lone, rounded hill. He knew it as a good place to set bowmen who wanted to harass a host heading north.

  In the distance, as the air around him darkened, he could see an unusually bright glare of flame, and the deserter’s words came back to him.

  “Standing today, burning tomorrow,” he muttered. “Or tonight.” He stood and watched the distant flame for a while. At least he was a full day from the village that was burning now. And that’s if I give the larger towns a miss completely.

  He studied it a moment more, then nodded faintly. “Good a place as any to get lost, I expect.” He turned back to his own meager fire, made more for the form of the thing than anything else, settled his back against a tree, laid his hammer over his lap, and slept lightly, fitfully.

  A ghost-glow of the distant fire lingered on the backs of his eyelids most of the night.

  CHAPTER 1

  The First Step

  The farmhouse was empty.

  He was sure of that, because he’d watched it from the cover of the treeline for a solid half-turn of the glass. Empty of folk, anyway. There was livestock around, cows and chickens and some dogs that roamed around outside, sniffling every so often at the ground, staring off down the road toward the village proper.

  When he’d risen before the sun the previous morning, he could still see this hamlet burning in the distance. For a day and a quarter he had followed the smoke, as he forded the Ash, crossed the High Road, and finally found himself at the mouth of the slight valley that this village nestled within. It was well wooded on both sides, with stands of old growth as ancient as any he’d ever seen. A few farms clustered around its northern end, spread out along a packed-dirt road.

  From what he’d seen from higher ground, the village center followed a bend in the road as it turned west, leading to the inner plains of Delondeur and the distant rise of the Thasryach Mountains, a thin range that divided Delondeur neatly in half. The road continued south beyond it as a smaller track, making it a kind of crossroads, if old and unused.

  Sweat trickled down his face and back and finally, with a snort and a shrug, he put himself back on his horse and led his other animals down the road. He kept his hammer loose at his side as he rode, dust turning up under the palfrey’s hooves.

  The smell hit him before he even rounded the turn, past a gently sloping meadow with a hillock at its top—woodsmoke, a huge and powerful punch of it. But the air held another odor, something burnt and foul.

  You do not wish to admit to knowing that smell, he thought darkly as he continued riding.

  Aside from the ill-omened, ink-black birds that hopped and flitted about, he decided that he and his animals were the only livi
ng things in the smoking remnants of the village center. Instead of taking flight as the man and his retinue trotted by, one of the carrion birds turned a baleful eye on him, yawped menacingly, and resettled itself on a charred wooden beam.

  The man was large, but it was thickness of chest and broadness of shoulders, rather than height, that gave the impression of an imposing stature. He was no longer young; thin strands of grey mingled with his dark hair. He sat on the smaller of the two horses with his back blade-straight and dark blue eyes alert, though restless.

  Finally, he dismounted, swinging easily out of the saddle, with the economy of motion that comes of having done a thing a thousand times, and more. Dirt mushroomed up as the heels of his boots hit the ground. The larger horse and the heavily laden mule that rode on leads behind him crowded closer, seeking treats, but had to be content with muzzle rubs as the man walked alone further down the track.

  Before he did, he took the reins of the smaller lead horse, dropped them to the dirt, and stepped on them; the small shaggy palfrey whickered knowingly and stood in place. The larger horse and the mule followed suit.

  Around him, buildings smoked and smoldered, adding to the heat of the day. The reavers who’d burned the place had been thorough. Dark stains marked the once carefully swept stones in front of some of the buildings. Few of the charred buildings had once boasted two floors, and only one that he saw had been taller.

  As he neared the source of the smoke and the stink, he instinctively slipped his hammer free of its loop. A hand is better filled than idle, he thought.

  The village green was now green in name only. It had become a mass pyre, and a sloppy one. Corpses lay piled atop one another, more than a score of them. Many were scorched to the bone, while others were simply burned to blackened husks.

  “More than a score,” he murmured aloud, sinking to one knee on the track, a foot or so from the green. The road circled around it, forming a large oval shape. At the far end from where he knelt, the largest building he’d yet seen in the village smoked fitfully; though in the main it was built of stone and its walls still stood, the roof thatch had long since burned away, and several of the framing timbers bowed threateningly.

  He rose and contemplated the green and the pile of ash, char, bone, and flesh at its center. “Not enough of them,” he finally pronounced aloud, though no one else was near to hear it.

  Edging around the green, looking to the ground before his footprints, something drew his eye back to the horror at its center. He shook his head, spat into the dust, and started back towards his animals, murmuring again. “Too many to bury. Be here for days.”

  Could be back to the High Road and following it east in two days. At Innadan’s border in a week if luck is with me. He took a deep breath, careful to inhale through his mouth and not his nostrils.

  The stink got into his nostrils anyway, and his mouth, and his expression soured. Nothing a good half- barrel of Innadan red and someone to drink it with couldn’t wash away. His own jaded voice prodded him into action. He spat, trying to rid his mouth of the foulness. The bodies on that green are not all the folk of this village, said another part of him. And there are deep wagon-wheel ruts in the dust leading west.

  “Wine to the east and slavers to the west. An easy decision, I call that,” he said aloud, gathering himself to take a step back toward his horses and to the best vineyards in the baronies.

  The smell of burnt flesh was too thick in the air to step away from. It coated his mouth, sick and sour at once.

  He turned back toward the pyre.

  A few steps onto the green, then he again dropped to one knee. He picked up an arrow sticking at an angle from the lightly charred grass, turned it around in his hands, and spat again. “Shoddy.” He snapped it between two fingers and tossed it away as he stood. Idly, he tapped his hammer against his calf, letting it dangle head-down from his right hand.

  “They have, what? A day and a half? And a wagon or two. A lot of water and food to haul. You do not mean to follow them, you old fool.” He looked back at the pile of charred bodies.

  He began edging around the green, heading more or less toward the large stone building he’d decided must have been the village inn. It had, despite the missing roof, empty window frames, and scorch marks, the look of a settled and comfortable place. Or, he supposed, it had had such a look two days ago.

  Suddenly, impossibly, over the cawing of the birds, the rustle of the wind, the whickering of his animals, he heard a thin voice crying.

  He ran. He was not fleet of foot and wore heavy leathers, weapons, and worn riding boots, but his legs churned with power, if not grace. He gave the pile of charred bones a wide berth and quickly reached the gutted building. “Ware the house,” he yelled, the force of his voice suddenly cutting the quiet and sending birds flapping away in annoyance. “Where are you?” Even as he asked, he was ducking under the stone doorframe, knocking aside a few charred sticks.

  There was no answer, only another tiny sob, fainter than the first. He sprang again, letting out a piercing whistle. The distant thunk of several pairs of hooves told him his call had been answered.

  Several paces across the room ran a long, low counter, also made of stone and with a hammered metal top, now laden with ash. Piles of shattered crockery surrounded it. He scanned the room. The charred stairs leading upward would not support his weight. He turned his eyes back towards the bar.

  Wagering silently against himself, he ran, planted his hands upon the bar, and leapt it, sword rattling against his back; he landed hard on one knee on the other side, exhaled sharply, and looked for the source of his wager. Staying low, he swept his hands across the floor, scattering jagged shards of wine jars, soot, and charred pieces of wood.

  He didn’t see it, but his thickly calloused fingers felt it: an iron ring set into the floor. Cold well, he thought, and pulled upon it. It gave, but it did not open.

  He dropped his hammer to the sooty ground, set his left hand to his right wrist, and squatted with one boot planted to either side of the trap door. He pulled again, pushing upward with his legs; the trap door flew open and the quiet crying that had twice teased his ears suddenly filled the building.

  Flinging himself down, he chanced a look in. The well appeared to have been dug out from some kind of natural spring, large enough to hold a keg, though none was in it now. Instead, in the cool waters he saw a small, nondescript shape, covered in soot, shivering and soaked head to toe. He reached in, seized thin shoulders, and hauled the child up and out. Laying the small and nearly limp form against him with one arm, he ran for the door and the snorting horses that gathered just beyond it.

  CHAPTER 2

  Mol

  Later, the lass, for so the shivering child proved to be, dozed as close to the fire as the man had dared to put her. He squatted across the spitting and crackling flames, hastily made with scraps of unburned wood from a nearby, unravaged cottage. His sheathed sword rested on a stone beside him, and he watched her intently. There was no telling how long she’d hidden in the chill waters of the inn’s cold well, and he wasn’t entirely sure she’d wake. He’d chafed her arms and legs, dried her, and wrapped her; the soaked, homespun dress she’d been wearing now dried on rocks beside the fire. Reluctantly, for a while, he had stripped his chest bare and held the girl against his skin inside a blanket, hoping all the while that she didn’t wake and find herself being held by a strange, half-naked man.

  The horses whickered impatiently from their hasty picket a few yards away by a bare-branched tree, wanting tending. With a wary eye still on the girl, he moved to them and began loosening straps and uncinching girdles. Soon a small hillock of gear piled up near the edge of the firelight.

  The heaviest bags, taken from the mule, clanked as he set them carefully down. As he strapped small feedbags around the animals’ mouths, a sharp cry spun him around. The girl was sitting bolt upright, backing away fr
om the fire, her wide eyes huge dark circles in her pale, shadowed face.

  The man had the presence of mind to stand where he was and to slowly lift his hands, palms out. “Peace, child,” he said, his voice a careful rumble. “You are safe now,” he continued, but she shook her head hard, side-to-side.

  “No. NO,” she repeated sharply. “Who are you? What were you doing in the inn? In the village? Be y’ another slaver, followin’ to be cert none were missed?” She scrambled around, one hand holding the blanket to her, the other searching behind her; finally she brought it up, brandishing a stone.

  “One question at a time, young miss,” the man said, his voice still slow and careful. He moved no closer. “My name is Allystaire. I am no slaver, nor brigand, blackguard, pirate, or thief. I came down into this valley because I saw the smoke yesterday morn.” He paused, then added, “And the fire the night before.” He lowered his hands, but stayed rooted to the spot, watching the girl carefully, narrowing his eyes.

  She watched him just as carefully. There didn’t appear to be any guile in her appraisal, but her eyes didn’t flinch away from him, and he had the sense of being studied, weighed somehow. He broke the silence.

  “Have you more questions? Shall I guess at them? I heard your cries as I searched your green and I pulled you from the well because…” He paused, shrugged, “because if I did not, then I would be some measure of blackguard, aye?”