The road west. The fifth day after Harlby.
The rider did not come back.
For three days Ren watched for him, on every hilltop, at every forest edge, at every bend in the road. He saw farmers in their fields, a shepherd with his dog, two monks on donkeys and once a fox leaping over a ditch with a hen in its jaws. No rider.
Owen said nothing about it. But he no longer walked beside the mule; he walked at the end of the caravan, behind the last wagon, and he no longer wore his sword on his back but at his hip.
Milo noticed none of this. Since the morning Milo had been telling the story of how the cow Duchess had once pushed the priest of Harlby into a pond, and by now he had reached the third version, in which the priest clung to a willow and called for help while Duchess stood on the bank and, according to Milo, definitely smiled.
Ren shook his head. “Cows can’t smile.”
“Duchess can.”
“Cows don’t have the face muscles for it.”
“How would you know? Have you ever seen a cow from the inside?”
Ren opened his mouth. He thought of the winter when one of the cows of Fernwick had fallen into the stream and half the village had had to slaughter it so the meat would not spoil. He shut his mouth again.
Milo beamed triumphantly. “See.”
Around midday they reached Brackenhollow.
It was not a village, only a name the traders had given to a hollow where the road ran between two wooded slopes. Bracken grew on the banks, hip-high and brown from the winter, and the trees stood so close that their bare branches almost touched above the road. It was quiet. No bird was singing.
Ren felt it at the back of his neck before he knew what it was.
Too quiet.
He looked around. The wool wagon ahead of him. Barnaby Hobb on the driver’s box of the first wagon, whistling a tune, off-key and loud. The two guards Hobb had hired in Harlby, young lads with spears that were more for show than for fighting. The three farm boys on the wool wagon, one of whom was asleep. The smith’s apprentice, walking beside the second wagon eating an apple.
And right at the back Owen, who had stopped.
Their eyes met across the length of the caravan. Owen nodded. Once, barely visible.
Ren laid his hand on his sword hilt.
“What is it?” asked Milo. “Did you hear something? Is it a bear? I’ve never seen a bear. Wes says the ones at the border are as big as …”
Up ahead, something crashed.
A tree fell across the road, perhaps twenty paces in front of the first wagon. Not a big tree, a young birch, but it fell exactly so that its trunk lay across the way and the horses shied. Hobb’s whistling broke off. The lead horse reared, neighed, and the wagon jerked so violently that Hobb nearly fell off the box.
Then they were standing on the road.
They came out of the bracken, from both sides, ahead of and behind the caravan. Ren counted, the way Owen had taught him, before he had even properly looked. Four ahead. Three left. Three right. Two at the back by Owen. One up on the slope, with a bow. Thirteen.
They wore armour. That was what he noticed first. Not the patched-together rags you would expect of bandits, but mail shirts and leather jerkins, worn, mended, but in good order. Over them grey-green cloaks, the colour of the Border Watch of Eastreach. Ren had seen them often enough when patrols came through Fernwick.
On the left breast of every cloak was a darker patch where a badge had once been. Someone had torn it off.
“Nobody moves,” called the man standing in front of the first wagon. “Then nobody gets hurt.”
He was gaunt and tall, with a close-cropped grey beard and deep-set eyes that looked as tired as if he had not slept properly for months. He held a sword in his hand, but he did not raise it. He simply stood there, like someone who had said that sentence many times and hoped not to have to say it again.
“We want the horses,” he went on. “And the food. You can keep the rest. We can’t eat wool.”
Barnaby Hobb had gone pale, but his voice was still loud. “Those are my horses! Without the horses I’ll never get to Crownhaven! You’re … you’re soldiers! You’re the Border Watch! You’re supposed to protect us!”
Something twitched in the gaunt man’s face.
“We were the Border Watch,” he said. “Now we’re hungry.”
One of the two spearmen Hobb had hired threw his weapon into the bracken and ran. No one stopped him. The other stood there trembling so badly that his spear point danced in the air.
Ren did not move. He looked at the slope, at the archer. At the man behind the wool wagon, slowly closing in on the farm boys. At Owen at the end of the caravan, who held his hands calmly at his sides, far from his sword, and looked at the two men in front of him as if he were weighing them.
We want the horses. Perhaps that was true. Perhaps they would take the horses and the food and vanish into the bracken again, and no one would come to any harm.
Then the man behind the wool wagon reached for the sleeping farm boy.
The boy woke up. He saw a bearded face above him, a hand reaching for his collar, and did what every farm boy in Eastreach did when he was suddenly woken and frightened. He struck out. With the pitchfork.
The man screamed.
And then everything happened very fast.
Ren was moving before he thought.
The first deserter came from the left, a bullish man with an axe, charging at the wool wagon. Ren stepped into his path. The axe came from above, heavy and slow, the way a woodcutter splits a stump. Ren did not step back. He stepped aside, half a pace, just far enough that the axe rushed past his shoulder and buried itself in the ground. Then he struck the man on the temple with the pommel of his sword.
The man fell like a sack of flour.
One.
The second was faster. A younger man with a short sword, who leapt out of the bracken and aimed at Ren’s back. Ren heard him. He had spent seven years learning to hear footsteps behind him. He turned, caught the blade with his own, steel on steel, a bright, sharp clash, and forced it down until the point stuck in the mud.
The man stared at him. He was not much older than Ren himself.
“Drop it.”
The man did not drop it. He wrenched the blade up, and Ren struck him across the wrist with the flat of his sword, so hard that he heard the bones crack. The short sword flew into the bracken.
Two.
From somewhere came a shout. Ren glanced to the side and saw Milo.
Milo was standing on the driver’s box of the wool wagon, his green hat askew on his head, arms outstretched, and around him the air was raging. He had no plan, Ren could see that at once. He was simply throwing everything he had. One gust tore the mud from the road and flung it into the faces of the deserters coming at the wagon. A second swept a man’s legs from under him. A third accidentally caught Hobb’s hat and carried it away over the trees.
Up on the slope the archer drew his string. Ren saw where the arrow was aimed. At Milo’s chest.
“Milo!”
Milo turned his head. He saw the arrow coming. He threw up both hands, and a gust of wind rushed to meet the arrow, seized it, turned it aside, and the arrow struck quivering into the canvas of the wool wagon, a hand’s breadth from Milo’s ear.
Milo stared at the arrow. Then he looked at Ren. “That worked!”
“Get down!”
Milo got down.
Ren did not hear the third man coming.
Later he would wonder why. Perhaps because he had been looking at Milo. Perhaps because the man in the mud was quieter than the others. Perhaps because seven years of training were not enough to hear everything every time.
He only saw him when it was almost too late. A shadow on the left, a man with a heavy sabre, already mid-stroke, the blade at shoulder height, aimed at Ren’s left side. At his neck.
Too fast. Too close. His sword was on the wrong side.
One heartbeat.
He felt it in his chest. The thread. Not the warm, patient thread of the fire, but the other one. The one that crackled. The one that burned in the scars on his left arm, always, even when he slept, like an animal scratching at its cage. He only had to pull. One heartbeat. His muscles would be faster than the sabre. He would dodge before the man even understood what was happening.
No lightning. Not in the trial. Not in a duel.
Under no circumstances.
Milo was on the wagon. He was watching. Hobb was watching. The farm boys were watching.
Ren let go of the thread.
He threw up his left arm.
The sabre struck the leather bracer. Ren felt the blow all the way to his shoulder, a dull, numbing pain, as if someone had hit him with a hammer. The leather held. Not entirely. He felt it tear open, felt the blade scrape across it and draw a hot line across his forearm. But it did not go through to the bone. And it did not reach his neck.
Ren turned into the blow, so close to the man that he smelled his breath, onions and sour wine, and raised his right hand.
A flame shot from his palm. Not a large one. Only a glaring, hot flash, right in front of the man’s eyes.
The man screamed and staggered back, hands over his face. Ren kicked his legs out from under him and set the point of his sword at his throat.
“Stay down.”
The man stayed down.
Three.
It lasted no longer than a few dozen breaths. Ren knew that because he had counted, as he always counted. But it felt like an hour.
When he looked around, it was over.
Owen stood at the end of the caravan. Before him two men lay in the mud, both alive, both groaning, both without weapons. And before him knelt the gaunt man with the grey beard, the leader, whose sword lay three paces away in the bracken. Owen had not even fully drawn his own blade. He held it half out of the scabbard, and the point rested on the kneeling man’s shoulder, very lightly, like an accolade.
The rest of the deserters were gone. Ren could still hear them in the forest, snapping branches, panting breath, footsteps moving away. The archer on the slope had vanished. The man whose thigh the farm boy had rammed with the pitchfork lay beside the wool wagon, cursing with a stamina Ren almost admired.
On the driver’s box, Milo slowly straightened up. His hat was gone. His hair stood up in every direction. He looked as if he did not quite know whether to laugh or be sick.
“Is it over?”
“It’s over.”
“Good.” Milo sat down on the box. “Good. Then I’m going to be sick now.”
He was. Over the side of the wagon, very thoroughly.
The leader’s name was Harker. Sergeant Harker, formerly of the Border Watch at Ashford, a watchtower in the south of Eastreach, a day’s journey north of Hollowmere.
He told it without beating about the bush, sitting on a tree stump with his hands bound, and he looked at no one as he did. Not at Owen, who stood before him. Not at Barnaby Hobb, who was pacing up and down behind Owen and muttering something about the gallows every few steps. He looked at the ground between his boots.
“We were forty. In the autumn. Ashford was never a great fortress. A tower and a wall. Enough against a few goblins wanting to steal sheep.” He shrugged. “Then no more goblins came wanting to steal sheep. Then orcs came. Two hundred. Three hundred. With banners. In ranks.”
He was silent for a moment.
“Our captain wrote to Crownhaven. Six times. We waited for an answer. In the winter the Duke of Eastreach sent us twenty sacks of flour and a letter saying the king was watching the situation.” Something meant to be a laugh came from his throat. “Watching the situation. By spring there were thirteen of us left. The captain was dead. The flour was gone. And the situation was watching us, every night, from the hills, with yellow eyes.”
For the first time he raised his eyes. He looked at Owen.
“So we left. Call us cowards. Hang us, if you like. But hang the king beside us.”
No one said anything. Even Hobb had stopped muttering about the gallows.
Ren stood a little apart, holding his left arm. Blood was seeping through the torn leather bracer, not much, but enough. He heard Harker’s words, and he felt something tighten in his chest.
For generations the dwarves have held the east for us. His father’s voice, calm, in the silent throne room. I am only saying that we must listen to them. Now. Before it is too late.
No one had listened. And now men like Harker sat on tree stumps by the road and raided wool caravans because they were hungry.
“Hollowmere.”
Milo had climbed down from the wagon. He was still pale, and he wiped his mouth with his sleeve, but his voice did not tremble. He stood in front of Harker and looked down at him.
“You came past Hollowmere. On the way here.”
Harker looked at him. “Yes.”
“How is it there? Are they still holding?”
“Still.” Harker studied him, the straw-blond hair, the too-long arms, the pale face. “Why do you want to know, lad?”
For a moment it was quiet.
Then one of the prisoners, the young man whose wrist Ren had broken, said in a hoarse voice: “Fairweather?” He sat in the mud, his arm pressed to his chest. “The tall one? With the grin? Always going on about his cow?”
Milo spun round. “Duchess. The cow’s called Duchess.”
“Yes.” The young man laughed, short and rough, and it sounded almost like a sob. “By all the gods. Duchess. He told us about the cow when we came past Hollowmere. He stood at the gate and gave us bread, even though they hardly have any themselves.” He wiped his eyes with his good arm. “And then he called us cowards. And said if we were running away anyway, we should at least not rob the wrong people.”
Milo stood very still.
“So he’s alive.” It was barely more than a whisper.
“Three weeks ago he was still alive.” The young man looked at him. “My name’s Pip. When you write to him … tell him he was right. About the wrong people.”
They let the deserters go.
Hobb protested. He spoke of the gallows and the law and what the city watch in Crownhaven would say if they learned robbers had been let go. But Owen only looked at him, long and calmly, and at some point Hobb stopped talking and went to look for his hat.
Owen kept the deserters’ weapons. But he gave them a sack of bread and two wheels of cheese from Hobb’s stores, which he paid for without haggling. Harker took both with his hands still bound. Owen only cut the ropes once the others had already disappeared among the trees.
Harker rubbed his wrists. “Why? You could have hanged us. No one would have asked.”
Owen slid the knife back into his belt.
“I once served a man nobody listened to either. Go south, Sergeant. To Hollowmere. They need everyone who can hold a sword. And no one there asks where you come from.”
Harker looked at him for a long time. Then he nodded, once, like a soldier, and walked into the forest.
Ren was sitting on the edge of the wool wagon when Milo found him.
He had taken off the leather bracer and washed the cut with water from his flask. It was not deep. A red line across his forearm that would scab over in a few days and in a few weeks would be just another scar among many.
He heard Milo coming and pulled down his sleeve before he turned round. Quickly. Perhaps too quickly.
Milo stopped. He looked at the sleeve. Then at Ren. He had found his hat again, somewhere in the bracken, and the pheasant feather had now broken off for good.
“A little,” he said.
Ren looked at him.
“You said you can do a little fire.” Milo sat down beside him on the edge of the wagon. “And your uncle taught you a little something. And you come from a village so far east that you run into dwarves there.” He turned the hat in his hands. “I saw how you fought, Ren. The guards in Harlby don’t fight like that. Wes doesn’t fight like that. I don’t think Wes’s captain even fights like that.”
Ren said nothing.
“You knocked down three men. Without killing a single one. And the whole time you kept looking around. Behind you. As if you had eyes in the back of your head.” Milo hesitated. “And then, with the last one, with the sabre. You …”
He broke off. Ren waited.
“For a moment you looked as if you wanted to do something,” Milo said slowly. “And then you didn’t do it. And threw your arm up instead.”
Ren felt his heart beat faster. He held Milo’s gaze and said nothing. He had no answer that would not have been a lie, and he found that he did not want to lie to Milo. Not again.
Milo looked at him a moment longer. Then he put on his hat, without the feather, and looked out at the road.
“You don’t have to tell me. I won’t ask any more.” A pause. “Not today.”
“Thank you.”
“But some day I want to hear the story. The whole thing.” He grinned crookedly. “I told you mine, after all. Even the one with the priest and the pond. Three times.”
Ren felt something strange catch in his throat. He did not know exactly what it was. It felt a little like the laugh that had caught in his throat that time at the fountain, only the other way round.
“Some day,” he said.
Milo nodded, satisfied, as if he had been given a promise. Then he jumped down from the wagon and ran ahead to help Hobb clear away the birch, already calling as he ran that he could certainly manage it with the wind if everyone would just step aside a little.
In the evening, when the caravan was camped far beyond Brackenhollow, Owen sat down beside Ren at the fire and handed him a fresh bandage.
“Let’s see.”
Ren pushed up his sleeve. Owen looked at the cut in the firelight, then at the fine, silvery lines beneath it that ran from wrist to elbow. He said nothing about them. He wound the bandage around it, firm and neat, as he had done a thousand times.
“You hesitated.”
“I know.”
“With the one with the sabre. I saw it. From right at the back.”
Ren stared into the fire. “I nearly did it, Owen. I already had it. The thread. I only had to pull.”
“I know.” Owen tied off the bandage. “But you didn’t.”
“And for that he nearly took my head off.”
“Nearly.” Owen leaned back. “You threw up your arm. You turned into the blow. You used fire that any farm boy with a bit of talent could use. And you won.” He looked at Ren. “That’s how it will be at the Academy, Ren. Every day. You’ll feel the thread, and you’ll have to let it go. And every time it will cost you something. A cut here. A defeat there. Maybe more.”
Ren pulled his sleeve down over the bandage.
“Then I’d better get good with the sword.”
Owen laughed. Quietly, briefly, but truly.
“That,” he said, standing up, “is the cleverest thing you’ve said since Fernwick.”
He went to his sleeping place. Ren stayed sitting at the fire and looked at his hands. The right one, with which he had made the flame. The left one, under the bandage, where the lightning slept in the scars and scratched.
On the other side of the fire Milo was snoring. Beside him in the grass lay his hat, without its feather.
Ren found that he was smiling.