Reva placed her cloak and sword on the bed. “Do the Realm Guard patrol the peaks?”
Shindall blinked, then shook his head. “The lowland roads only, most likely places for outlaws. Don’t get ’em in the mountains, too cold I expect.” He placed a lit candle on the room’s only table and went to the door. “Earliest bell’s at the fifth hour.”
“I’ll be gone by then. My thanks for your diligence.”
He gave her a final glance before leaving the room, swallowing before he said, “Seeing your face is the only thanks I’ll ever need.”
? ? ?
She had never been to the Greypeaks before and found the sheerness of the mountains disconcerting, unassailable cliffs rising on all sides to ever-greater heights the deeper she went. The air held a perennial chill made worse by frequent drizzle or descending mist. The road ended at a broad, swift-running river tracking away towards the east. She began to follow it, the silk map having told her it provided the most direct route to the keep, the grey hunter snorting in protest as she guided him over the rock-strewn bank.
“Snorter,” she said, smoothing a hand along his neck. “That’s what I’ll call you.”
A clacking scatter of stone made her turn in the saddle, seeing another rider arriving at the road’s end. Reva sat and waited for him to catch up, a large boy on a small horse.
“Did you steal that?” she asked as Arken drew level.
“The brothers’ coin,” he said, coughing then fidgeting in his too-small saddle.
Reva sat in silence, watching him blush and cough some more.
“I stay with them one more day and I’ll kill him,” he said eventually. “And I owe you a debt.”
A faint rumble of thunder sounded overhead and Reva looked up to find a dark bank of cloud approaching from the west. “We’d best move back a ways from the river,” she said, kicking Snorter forward. “It’s like to flood when it rains.”
? ? ?
“He was just a wheelwright,” Arken said. “Skilled and a little more learned and Faithful than most men in the town, but still just a wheelwright. Then one day the Aspect of the Second Order came to visit the mission house and father went to her for catechism. After that, everything changed.”
They had found shelter from the rain in a narrow crack in a cliff face. It kept the worst of the deluge off but was still too damp for a fire, obliging them to huddle in their cloaks, warmed only by the breath of the horses.
“Every spare hour spent speaking to any who would listen,” Arken went on. “Every spare coin gone to pay the blocker to print his tracts, handed out for free to any who’d take them, me and my sister standing in the street hour after hour whilst he droned on. The worst thing was some people actually stopped to listen. I hated them for that. If no-one had listened, he might have given it up, and the Fourth Order might have left us alone. Your god has no Orders, does he?”
“This world was made by the will of one Father,” she said. “So we might know his love. One world, one Father, one church.” Venal and corrupt though it is.
Arken nodded then sneezed, a bead of water lingering on the tip of his nose.
“Will they look for you?” Reva asked.
His face became downcast. “I doubt it. Words were said.”
“Words are not arrows, they can be taken back.”
“He ordered us to do nothing!” Arken’s jaw clenched, his fists balled beneath his cloak. “Just sat there when they came riding out of the woods, whispering his catechisms. What kind of man does that?”
A faithful man, she thought. “What did he have to say that angered them so much?”
“That the Faith had lost its way. That we were guilty of a great error, that the Red Hand had twisted our souls, made us hate when we should have loved. Made us kill where we should have saved. That the persecution of the unfaithful had raised a wall between our souls and the Departed. One day a brother from the Fourth came to the house with a letter from his Aspect. It was polite but firm: stop speaking. Father ripped it up in his face. Two days later the shop burned down.”
Snorter began stomping the rock with his fore-hoof, head jerking in impatience. She was starting to understand his moods, and inactivity was not something he appreciated. She got up, taking a carrot from the saddlebag and holding it to his mouth as he chomped. “You don’t owe me any debt,” she told Arken. “And travelling with me could prove . . . dangerous.”
“You’re wrong,” he said. “About the debt. And I don’t care about any danger.”
His gaze was full of earnest intent, and something more, which was a shame. Still just a boy, she thought. Despite all his troubles. “I’m looking for something,” she told him. “Help me find it and the debt between us is settled. After that, you go your way.”
He nodded, smiling a little. “As you wish.”
She took something from the saddlebag and tossed it to him. “Your father forgot to check the Ranter for weapons.”
He turned the knife over in his hands, pulling the blade free of the scabbard. It was a long-bladed weapon of good steel, well balanced, the ebony hilt cross-etched for a strong grip. “I don’t know how to use it. Father wouldn’t even let me have a wooden sword when I was younger.”
She peered out at the rain, seeing it was starting to dwindle into a light drizzle, and took hold of Snorter’s reins to lead him from the crack. “I’ll teach you.”
? ? ?
It was like playing with a child, a child half a foot taller and twice the bulk of her, but a child nonetheless. He’s so slow, she wondered as Arken stumbled past, his sheathed knife missing by an arm’s length as she dodged away. She leapt onto his back and put her own knife to his throat. “Try again,” she said, jumping clear.
She saw a slight flush on his face as he turned towards her, a flustered hesitancy in the way he hefted his knife. It’s not shame, she realised. I’ll have to stop jumping on him.
For the next four days she spent an hour at night and another in the morning attempting to teach him the basics of the knife, finding it a mostly hopeless task. He was big and strong but had none of the speed or agility required to match even her weakest efforts. In the end she told him to put the knife away and concentrated on unarmed combat. He did better at this, mastering the simpler combinations of kick and punch with relative ease, even landing a stinging blow on her arm as they engaged in some light sparring.
“I’m sorry,” he gasped as she rubbed at the bruise.
“For what? My fault for being too”—she ducked under his guard, delivered a hard open-handed smack to his cheek and twisted away before he could react—“slow. That’s enough for tonight. Let’s eat.”
She was aware allowing him to stay was another indulgence, meeting a need for human company unfulfilled since her escape from Al Sorna. Also, he had taken on the role of menial without complaint, making the fire, seeing to the horses and cooking the meals every night with an almost martial efficiency. This is unfair, she thought, watching him cut strips of bacon onto the skillet. I don’t need his help. And the way he looks at me . . . It wasn’t lustful exactly, or leering in any way. More a kind of longing. Still just a boy.
The High Keep came into view the next day, a jagged spike in the distance. From the tales she had heard of the place she had expected something grander, taller, a fabled castle fit for her father’s martyrdom, but its lack of glamour became more obvious the closer they came. There were large holes in the walls and jagged gaps in the battlements, as if some giant had come along and taken a few bites out of the stonework. The road on the earthen ramp leading up to the gates was marked by patches of broken stone and home to a herd of long-horned mountain goats, feeding on the weeds sprouting from the paving and paying them scant heed as they passed.
“It’s amazing!” Arken enthused as they stood before the gate, looking up at the walls rising above. “Never knew a tower could rise so high.”
A squeal of metal called their attention to a door set into the gate, seeing an aged face peering out from the shadowed interior. “Got nothing here worth stealing,” it said.
Reva made the sign of the Trueblade and the hostility faded from the face. “Best come in,” it said then disappeared back into the gloom.
The old man stood back as she entered. Reva found it impossible to guess his age, anywhere past his seventieth year was her best estimate from the sagging wrinkles dominating his features. He wore mean clothing which she doubted had seen a wash-stone for some months, his torso wrapped in a threadbare blanket. He carried a head-high staff, more, she suspected, for support than armament from the way he leaned on it. “Vantil,” he introduced himself. “And I think I know who you are.” He nodded at Arken, left standing outside with the horses. “Him I don’t.”
“He has my trust,” Reva said.
That seemed to be enough for Vantil as he began hobbling towards a steep flight of stone steps. “’Spect you want to see the chamber first.”
“Yes.” Reva found her heart was beating harder than it had when she faced Ranter and his brothers. “Yes I would like that.”