The road east. Six weeks after the name day.
Later, when Lucian thought back to the weeks after Thornby, he did not remember days. He remembered things.
Rain. Rain that fell for so long that he forgot what it felt like to be dry. That ran into his boots and down his collar and under his skin, until he believed he would never be warm again.
Hunger. The feeling when his stomach was so empty that it no longer growled but only hurt, a dull, quiet ache that went with him everywhere like a second shadow. The first piece of bread after three days, hard and mouldy at one corner, which he ate without breaking off the mould and which tasted better than anything he had ever eaten at the table in Ravenhold.
Roads that led nowhere. Desmond avoided the main ways. They walked along cattle tracks and woodcutters’ trails, through forests so dense that it grew dim at midday, over hills from which you saw nothing but more hills. They went south, then east, then south again, in curves and loops, until Lucian no longer knew where Crownhaven lay and where Ravenhold.
That, said Desmond, was exactly the point.
And he remembered the fever.
It began in the third week.
Desmond had said nothing. He never said anything. But Lucian saw that he got up more slowly every morning. That he no longer raised his left arm, the arm with the wound from the crossbow bolt, if he could avoid it. That his forehead sometimes glistened, although it was cold.
On the evening of the nineteenth day he collapsed.
They had taken shelter from the rain in an abandoned charcoal burner’s hut at the edge of a forest, and Desmond had sat down against the wall to catch his breath. He had said: “Just a moment.” And then his head had sunk to the side, and he had not answered any more.
Lucian knelt beside him and shook his shoulder. Desmond’s skin was hot. So hot that Lucian pulled his hand back as if he had burned himself.
“Desmond. Desmond, wake up.”
The captain murmured something. A name. Lucian did not catch it. Perhaps Aldwyn. Perhaps something else.
Lucian sat for a long time in the darkness of the hut and stared at the man who had carried him out of the burning house. Who had brought him through the River Gate, over the bridge, through weeks of rain and hunger. Who had promised him that he would not die from a scratch.
He’s dying, Lucian thought. He’s dying, and I’m sitting here watching.
Again.
The thought struck him so hard that he felt sick.
Then he stood up.
He did not know much about wounds. But he had watched the healer at Ravenhold tend to the huntsmen, and he remembered things. He remembered hot water and clean cloths. The bitter smell of a herb with jagged leaves that grew by the wayside, which the healer had boiled in water and laid on inflammations.
He remembered the book about plants that had stood in the library at Ravenhold, with the bright drawings he had looked at for hours as a child.
And he remembered the flame. The little flame above his palm, at the well in the courtyard, on the morning of the name day. Six breaths long.
In the charcoal burner’s hut there was a rusty kettle, a heap of damp wood and a tub of standing rainwater. Lucian stacked the wood in the fireplace. It was wet. It would not burn.
He held his hands over it and pulled at the thread deep in his chest.
The flame came. Small and trembling. It licked at the wet wood, hissed, grew weaker.
More.
He pulled harder. It hurt. It felt as if he were tearing something out of himself that did not want to be torn out. He grew dizzy, and black spots danced before his eyes. He counted. Six breaths. Seven. Eight.
At twelve the wood finally caught.
Lucian toppled sideways and lay there for a moment, his cheek on the cold clay floor, gasping. Then he scrambled up, filled the kettle and hung it over the flames.
The next morning he found the herb with the jagged leaves on the bank of a stream, half a mile from the hut. He boiled it, as he had seen the healer do. He washed Desmond’s wound with the hot brew, and when Desmond cried out in his fever, he held him tight, the way Desmond had held him under the bridge.
For four days he did this. He hardly slept. He ate the last of their provisions and then berries he found at the edge of the forest, and once a fish he caught with his bare hands in the stream, after watching it for an hour. He kept the fire burning. Every time it threatened to go out, he pulled at the thread in his chest, and every time it came a little more easily.
On the fifth day Desmond opened his eyes.
He looked at Lucian for a long time without saying anything. The boy sat beside him, face dirty, hair matted, rings under his eyes as dark as bruises. Next to him the kettle of bitter brew was simmering.
Desmond’s voice was only a croak. “How long?”
“Five days.”
Desmond was silent. Then he raised his good hand, slowly, and laid it on Lucian’s head.
“You made the fire.”
“The wood was wet.”
“I know.” Something in Desmond’s face changed. “How long did you hold the flame?”
Lucian shrugged. “Twelve. The first time.”
Desmond closed his eyes. Lucian thought he had fallen asleep again. But then he saw the corners of the captain’s mouth move. Only a little.
“Your father would have laughed himself sick. I spent ten years trying to teach him how to light wet wood. He never managed it. Every time he scorched it until there was nothing left but charcoal.”
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Desmond said nothing about it. He simply left his hand on Lucian’s head until the boy could breathe again.
Fernwick, Eastreach. Six weeks after the name day.
Fernwick lay at the end of the world.
At least that was how it seemed to Lucian when they first saw it from the crest of a hill, on a grey afternoon in late autumn. A village of perhaps two dozen houses, with roofs of straw and walls of fieldstone, surrounded by a palisade of sharpened tree trunks that had seen better days. A stream flowed right through the middle. In the fields all around stood sheep, woolly and stupid, watching them as they came down the hill.
And beyond, in the east, far behind the forests and the grey hills, the mountains rose.
Lucian had seen the mountains of Orvundar once before, from the towers of Ravenhold, as a dark line on the horizon. Here they were closer. Much closer. Enormous snow-covered peaks that braced themselves against the sky like a wall, so high that the clouds caught on their flanks.
Desmond stopped beside him. “Orvundar. Three days’ march to the first passes.”
“And Ravenhold?”
“Twelve days’ march to the north.” Desmond did not look at him. “Far enough.”
Lucian understood. Far enough that no one here had ever seen the Ravenmoors. Close enough to the border that no one asked a stranger too many questions. There were many strangers in Eastreach. Mercenaries heading for the border. Traders who did business with the dwarves. Refugees from villages that had been raided by orcs.
And men with scars who answered no questions.
The village elder was called Odell, an old, bent man with a beard that reached his belt and a single tooth in his mouth, of which he seemed very proud. He looked Desmond up and down, then Lucian, then Desmond again.
“You’re no farmer,” he observed.
“No.”
“Soldier?”
“Once.”
“Where?”
“Here and there.”
Odell chewed on something Lucian could not see. “And the boy?”
“My nephew. His parents are dead. Fever.”
Lucian stood very still. He had known Desmond would say that. They had talked it over on the way, again and again, like the business with the bridge. All the same it felt like a blow to the stomach.
Fever. His mother on the stairs, her hand at his collar. His father in the white light.
Fever.
Odell looked at him for a long time. Lucian held his gaze.
At last the elder scratched his beard. “Widow Wilmot’s old hut stands empty. At the east edge, beyond the stream. The roof leaks and the chimney draws badly. But it’s cheap.” He spat to one side. “And out here we don’t ask where someone comes from. Only whether he can lend a hand when the orcs come.”
“I can lend a hand.”
“I can see that.” Odell studied the scar above Desmond’s eyebrow, his hands, the way he stood. “Name?”
Desmond hesitated for only a heartbeat.
“Owen. Owen Harlow.”
“And the boy?”
Desmond looked down at Lucian.
They had talked about that too. On the way, in the charcoal burner’s hut, on the long evenings by the fire. Desmond had said that Lucian should choose his new name himself. It’s the only one you’ll ever give yourself. Choose it well.
Lucian had thought about it for nights on end. He had tried names on like clothes, had whispered them to hear how they sounded. Tom. Will. Hal. None of them had fitted. They had felt like someone else’s clothes, too big or too small or simply wrong.
And then, one evening, as he stared into the fire, he had thought of the crest. Of the silver bird on a black field. Of the carriage that had rolled through the streets of Crownhaven, and of the people who had cheered. Ravenmoor! Ravenmoor!
Raven.
He could not keep the name. Not all of it. But he could keep something of it. A piece. Just enough that he himself would know and no one else.
“Ren,” said Lucian.
Odell shrugged. “Short. Good. Then welcome to Fernwick, Owen Harlow. And Ren.”
He turned and shuffled off, back to his house, and Lucian was left standing with Desmond on the muddy village green, among the chickens and the sheep dung and the smell of woodsmoke.
Desmond waited until the old man was out of earshot. “Ren.”
“From Raven. Just the end. So I don’t forget.”
Desmond looked at him. He said nothing. But he nodded slowly, and Lucian knew he had understood.
Widow Wilmot’s hut was just as bad as Odell had said. The roof leaked, and the wind whistled through the gaps in the walls. The chimney smoked so badly that their eyes watered on the first evening. There was a table with three legs, two straw mattresses and a pot that looked as if Widow Wilmot had cooked her entire marriage in it. Follow the newest chapters on novelping.com.
Lucian had never seen anything more beautiful.
It was dry. In one corner, at least. And it had a door you could close behind you.
On that first night in Fernwick Lucian lay on his straw mattress and stared up at the soot-blackened beams. Through the hole in the roof he could see a single star. Desmond slept by the hearth, on his side, his sword within reach. He had always slept like that, since that night.
Lucian could not sleep.
He thought of everything he had thought in the last six weeks, over and over, in circles, like a horse at a millstone. Of the stairs. Of the collar. Of the voice from the window. The letters into the study. Of the crier in Thornby. Traitor. Of the king with the smile that did not reach his eyes. Of Duke Winterhall with his face of wax. Of the nod.
He had seen it. The look from the king to Winterhall. The nod.
He had not known then what it meant. Now he knew.
Lucian sat up.
“Desmond.”
The captain was awake at once. He did not move, but in the glow of the hearth Lucian saw that his eyes were open.
“Owen,” Desmond corrected quietly. “In here as well. Get used to it.”
“Owen.” The name felt strange in his mouth. “I want to say something. And I want you to listen.”
Desmond sat up. He said nothing. He waited.
Lucian took a deep breath.
“I won’t forget.” His voice did not tremble. “Not the king. Not Winterhall. Not the man with the scar. I’ll learn. Everything you can teach me. And everything you can’t teach me, I’ll learn somewhere else. And one day …”
He faltered. The word that came next was so big and so heavy that he could hardly say it.
“One day they’ll pay. For Mother. For Father. For everything.”
It was quiet in the hut. Outside, the wind whistled through the gaps. A log cracked in the hearth.
Desmond looked at him for a long time. Lucian had expected him to say something. To tell him he was too young, that he didn’t know what he was saying, that revenge was not for children. All the things grown-ups said.
Desmond said none of it.
He stood, crossed the dark hut and sat down on the edge of Lucian’s straw mattress. When he spoke, his voice was perfectly calm.
“Do you know what the first thing I’ll teach you is?”
Lucian shook his head.
“Anger is a tool. Not a master.” Desmond raised his hand and tapped him on the chest, right where the mana slept. “What you’re feeling right now, that will keep you alive. In the mornings, when it’s cold and you don’t want to get up. In the evenings, when everything hurts and you can’t lift the sword one more time. It’ll drive you on when nothing else does any more.”
He leaned forward until Lucian could see every line in his face in the glow of the hearth.
“But if you let it lead you, Ren, it will kill you. As surely as the Calder gives nothing back. It’ll make you run into every trap they set for you. It’ll make you look only ahead.”
Lucian flinched. He could not help it.
Desmond saw it. His voice grew quieter.
“Whoever only looks ahead,” he said, “dies from behind. You know that better than anyone.”
Lucian nodded. He could not speak.
“So that’s what we learn first. Before I show you how to hold a sword. Before I show you how to make something faster out of fire.” He looked Lucian firmly in the eyes. “You learn to hold your anger in your hand. Not the other way round. Are you ready?”
Lucian thought of his mother, of her hand at his collar. Of his father, who had stood on the stairs as a thunderstorm so that his son could flee.
He thought of the name he had given himself. A small piece of what he had been.
“Yes,” said Ren.
Winter came early that year, and it stayed long.
The snow fell in thick, silent flakes on Fernwick, on the straw roofs and the palisade and the woolly backs of the sheep. It fell on Widow Wilmot’s hut, whose roof Owen Harlow had mended by now, and on the little patch of ground behind it, which he had trampled into a training ground.
It fell on a black-haired boy who got up every morning in the dark, before the cocks crowed, and struck a post with a wooden sword until his hands bled. Who sat by the hearth every evening holding a flame above his palm and counting, for as long as it took for everything to go black before his eyes.
And who sometimes, in the middle of an exercise, suddenly stopped, turned round and looked behind him.
Just to be sure.
The people of Fernwick grew used to Owen Harlow’s quiet nephew. They grew used to the sound of wood on wood that could be heard behind the old hut every morning. After a few months they no longer noticed him.
After a year no one asked any more where the two of them had come from.
After three years no one in the village would have believed that they had ever lived anywhere else.
And after seven years …
But that is another story.