The Season of the Plough Read online

  In the weeks leading up to the Harvest Fair and first frost, the miners watched and waited from their hidden claims and highland settlements for the Imperial census to be taken and for head taxes to be tallied. When the census-tellers arrived at last from Haukmere, fearsome and resplendent in their long purple tabards and blackened armour, they went about their business with the usual efficiency. A head count of the village found an uncommonly prosperous town of widows and orphans, with far fewer men of labouring age than might have been expected. By the second day, they found their way to Grimstead, where they discovered an undocumented child of some nine or ten years with the traces of an alien accent—a strange little thing who put them ill at ease.

  They asked many questions about her origins, which Grim mostly deflected. With a face honest as granite, he swore by the Imperator, by Tûr and the Ten, and by whatever other gods they might muster, that Aewyn was his rightful child, begotten of the same good woman, and by the same delightful method, as the other six.

  “There is no record of her,” said one of the census-tellers. “Not in all the years we have come to your door. And any man with eyes can see she’s not your right child. I see six children in the register. Here at your table, I see six fat little heads, as gold as harvest grain. And here, one bony wisp of a girl, as white-capped as the ocean waves. We would have the truth from you, winemonger.”

  “The records sometimes lie,” said Grim. “Sometimes they are mistaken.”

  “Censor Stannon is a very precise man,” said the census-teller.

  “Even so,” Grim said, “children come and go so fast in these lands, it’s hard to keep tally. Life on the frontier is harsh for the wee’uns.”

  Karis, who had just finished putting the other children to bed, laid a comforting hand on her husband’s shoulder.

  “You’d understand, soldier,” she said with a boldness equal to Grim’s, “the day you pass thirteen healthy babes of your own, and raise but six to their grown teeth. When you beget a fourteenth, it’s hard enough work to squeeze out a sickly runt like her, I swear, leave alone a healthy one.”

  “Tûr’s blessing on us,” said Grim, cradling Aewyn’s confused head, “that this wicked plague has not taken her from us as it took the others.”

  “Few in these parts survive the ravages,” his wife agreed, brushing Aewyn’s white hair away from the soft curve of her face. “Fewer still come through so unspoilt. We must be blessed by the gods. Two years now the sickness has come and gone through our house, every winter, without any more going shock white like her.”

  “And no more catching the rot like little Jorvin Half-Face either,” said Grim approvingly. “I suppose once you’ve lived through the plague a few times, it leaves you be. If you survive it, that is.”

  His wife nodded solemnly. “Gods be praised. Poor Jorvin. You should have seen his face, m’lords. Looked like a horse kicked it in, at the end.”

  “Don’t speak ill of the boy, woman,” said Grim. “The sickness just came one too many years on our house. Explains why we can’t foster off the little rats. If they stay at home much longer, we may lose them, too.”

  “Aye, best to wed the girls off before the rot sets in,” said his wife. She exchanged a few silent, urging glances with Grim, who cleared his throat obligingly before addressing the census-tellers, his hands clasped before him entreatingly.

  “My lords,” he began with an earnest smile, “are you both married?”

  The house of Grim had little trouble from the census-tellers after that. Each year after the harvest, a mounted soldier would halt at foot of the path up to Grimstead, record a nondescript nine for the farm’s population, and return his findings to the Censor without comment. But the deception sat uneasily with Grim, and he knew even then it would not stand up forever.

  The spring that followed, in what came to be known as the Year of Gardens, was one of the most pleasant and prosperous on record. Gladdened by the unusual warmth, and eager for a share of the coin set aside for it, the townsfolk one by one began to extend their help to Grim and Karis in the raising of Aewyn. She began to pass more of her time under the thatched roof of a half-dozen farmers and tradesmen, whose rudimentary apprenticeships began to transform her. Living alongside the millwife’s daughters, Anna and Melia, she learned to bake bread in the big stone ovens, and over the course of several days with Jerrold the Mercer, she learned to measure, cut, and even sew—a skill for which Karis, with six other children to tend, was very grateful. Grim taught her the arts of vintning, about which he knew much, and conventional farming, about which he knew surprisingly little.

  In the winters, when the Havenari returned from their rides, she learned to feed and groom and sit on Robyn’s horse, a nut-brown mare named Acorn. The animals took to her with such calm that she exacted—then redeemed the following year—a promise to go out on little rides with them when her legs were long enough. More and more often, Bram was too deep into the wine by midday to ride, and Aewyn took to his spirited, late-gelded horse Jumper with such comfort that she had immediately earned the affection of the Havenari who remained. Two years after Aewyn’s arrival, Toren’s twenty men had dwindled to twelve: the others, jilted and bristling under Toren’s successor, had deserted within the first few months. But those who remained were all the happier for it: Robyn had filled out to greater physical strength, and had proven herself a capable leader with time and counsel. When the smaller band rode out with their horses after the spring thaw, Aewyn was far from the only villager who lamented their parting.

  Year after year, Aewyn’s age, too, became something of a mystery. She was not quite a child, for the blush of Idis soon ripened her body like the first fruit of an early summer, but she remained small in stature as Grim’s eldest boys shot up to the height (if not the width) of their father in the course of a summer. As the seasons passed she played with the daughters of the townsfolk, but they grew taller and fuller of shape, and each year another turned her attention to silks and suitors. Aewyn, though she slowly came to resemble a woman in the height of her springtime, had the look of a child about her face for long years after. She took no interest in the boys of the village (nor, as the millwife’s eldest daughter noted sourly, in the girls). Those who were still wary of her origins, half-waiting for some terrible fairy king to reclaim her or some prophecy to call her to greatness, marked her disinterest the same way they marked everything about her—with cold suspicion under a false veil of prudence and concern.

  Their words, over time, planted seeds of doubt in the mind of Karis, whose concern was genuine, and who had come to regard the strange foundling as something halfway between a benevolent house-spirit and one of her natural children. Her suspicions grew as Aewyn began to venture into the wooded hills alone whenever eyes were off her. She flitted from house to house, wherever there were a few coins to be made by teaching the affable young girl the rudiments of a new trade. For every stern guardian that absolutely forbade such reckless trips, another kind hand would give her leave—or, more likely, simply turn their back and let her disappear.

  In time her excursions grew longer and more frequent, though the promise of a hot meal was usually enough to bring her back. But soon the trips extended into stays that would last nearly the whole night. In the colder seasons, it was more than Karis could bear, and she unburdened her thoughts to Grim. Still perplexed by the girl’s stories, the vintner was a sympathetic ear to his wife, and though he made a manly show of resisting her she knew there was complete agreement buried in him, if only she could mine it out.

  “It’s not natural,” she said one winter night, when Aewyn had gone to sup with Jerrold the Mercer’s family. “A girl her age, in and out of the deep wood, such a winter as this.”

  “She’s no child anymore,” said Grim. “She’s the most part of a grown woman, these days. And children are children, Karis. They will play in the wood as pleases them, with or without our leave.”

  “Aye,” she returned, “and grown wom
en will too. You call her a woman. What do you suppose she’s up to, then?”

  “Running about with druids and fairies,” said Grim with his usual straight face. “Hunting her magical beasts, or whatever she says. She’ll never catch any, and it does her no harm.”

  “Running about indeed,” said Karis—then, whispering low so the children would not hear, “have you forgotten how I got big with Arran?”

  Grim laughed. “Perhaps you’d better remind me tonight.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve forgot,” she teased.

  Grim clutched her and kissed her, but his fatherly concern was never far from his eyes. “Look, she’s pure as the snow,” he said. “I’ve no doubt of that. She’s shown no interest in the village lads—enough that there’s been some talk of it, if you want to know. Widowvale’s a small enough town to fit on a barber’s sovereign, and Aewyn’s on the tongue of every gossip. If she’s already had her strings loosened, I’m sure we’d have heard of it.”

  Karis took away the wooden bowls with a snort and put the stew back over the fire. “I wager she’s the plaything of some bandit, then,” she said. “Or someone who doesn’t keep with the village. Maybe not a bandit, but a deserter from the Iron City. I’ve heard things from back east. Even high-ranking Imperials lose all heart for it, sometimes, and go to green in the Outlands. My sister says—”

  “Your sister’s a merchant and tells merchants’ tales,” said Grim, though he knew that wasn’t to be the end of it.

  “The Havenari haven’t caught that poacher yet, have they?” she asked. That chilled him, as she knew it would.

  “No they haven’t,” said Grim. “Every year we lose another stockhead or two. Widow Oltman’s pig, this year.”

  “Now think. If Ali had become the plaything of some poacher, some brutish Travalaithi soldier turned hovel-dwelling ruffian—”

  “Ali’s twelve,” Grim snapped, his fatherly protectiveness twinged.

  “—I’m sure you’d never suffer it,” Karis finished.

  Grim frowned, then paced, then fumed, in exactly the order she suspected. She laid a hand on his shoulder, just the way he liked when the moots put him in an ill mood.

  “It’s not natural,” she said again. “I worry for her, Grim.”

  He rose and led her away from the children. The house was dark in the gathering twilight—dark enough that Karis might still have passed for a young girl, laughing in the woods, tasting his winter wine.

  “You don’t suppose—they can’t be true, all her stories,” said Grim. “Dryads don’t come into the world anymore, and they especially don’t breed with menfolk. Never could breed with humans, as far as my legends go. That’s why fairy types were always stealing children. But you don’t suppose all that nonsense is real.”

  “I don’t,” Karis said, nodding. “But you do, my love.”

  Grim shook his head. “Fairy children? Miraculous foundlings? Things like that don’t happen anymore. Not in the Age of the Moon, leastwise. They just don’t come to be, these days.”

  “Not without reason,” said Karis.

  “Not without reason,” Grim repeated. “Aye. That’s what worries me.”

  The breathing of the children was quieter than the wind outside. Karis leaned against the wall, still as a stone.

  “There’s ways you could find what she’s up to,” said Karis. “See if we’ve got bandits to fear, or monsters, or worse. My father fought in the Battle of Syrkyst, and his in the Siege of Shadow before him. I may not believe in your fairy-stories, but I know there’s no end of things in this world to keep your babies safe from. And after six children, lover, I can see it in you when you’ve taken a babe to heart.”

  “It’s not my business to follow her,” Grim said weakly.

  Her eyes were bright, powerful, concerned.

  “The town looks out for her,” he reasoned. “Anyone hurt her or brought an unkindness on her, we’d know of it straight away.”

  Karis said nothing.

  “I’ve no care what she gets up to out there,” he said finally. “And I’ve no care to be eaten by her magical monsters. She’s not our born child, woman; her business is hers alone, and I want no part of it! That’s all I’ve got to say on the matter.”

  But if there was a place to hide from his wife’s eyes, Grim knew not where it lay, nor how to get there.

  In the first six inches of an early Audnemaunt snowfall, with the winds spitting curses at one another overhead, Grim crouched against the shadowy trunk of a fir tree and shivered in his vigil. He couldn’t have followed her from his own home, not across the vineyard, without his long shadow betraying him. He was too tall and too old to creep through the low empty trellises in silence, and the crunch of the snow would betray him in the open. But Robyn and Bram’s cabin was built down close to the stream, by the narrow bend called Miller’s Riffle, where the current was loud and the trees came down nearly to the water. It was here he waited, for Robyn was especially soft on the young girl, and Bram fell too easily and hard asleep to be much of a sentry. When Aewyn’s care and feeding passed for a time to the young Havenari captain and her brother, her trips into the forest were frequent and long.

  Aewyn was not late in coming. The edge of the sun was still brushing the tall pines to the west when she quitted the house and made for the tree line. Her long white hair caught the light of the sun and moons, and her youthful step on the snowy hill was sure, but far from silent.

  Grim kept a safe distance as he trudged through the grove, trying to stay on the riverside where the laughing current covered the regular thud of his heavy strides. Aewyn’s gait was long and her pace brisk; more than once Grim found himself breathing like an ox as he struggled to keep up. The biting cold meant little to an old Banlander; his armpits and the small of his back were damp and hot with sweat by the time he mounted the hill. It was all he could do to keep up with his prey, silent or otherwise, but she skipped with abandon up the hill and his presence seemed utterly unknown to her.

  The hill was nameless, at least in Grim’s tongue, but it stood on the north side of the highway and looked down on Miller’s Riffle—and farther to the south and east, on Minter’s Rock, where the first silver mines had been opened after the stream bed was panned clean. Minter’s Rock was itself a tall enough hill, and looking down on it from the far side of Widowvale, Grim realized for the first time the real height of the north escarpment, and the roughness of the climb in the fresh snow.

  If Aewyn was worried by the steepness of the slope, she did not show it. Her movements between the trees were eager and deliberate—she had come this way before, Grim knew, and no doubt knew the strange secrets of the hill, if her stories were to be believed. Grim resigned himself to greater distance, even though the wind at this height covered his footfalls and his laboured breath, and turned his attention to his own progress up the long hill.

  The relief of level ground came some time later, and only then at the cost of torchlight. The fires of Widowvale, burning below, were obscured now by the lip of the escarpment; and although the deepening dusk was still bright enough to find his way, there was something uncomfortable about leaving the lights of the village behind. The rising smoke of the larger house-fires could still be faintly seen, steel-grey against an iron-grey sky, and brought Grim comfort. He gave silent thanks for them, and for the tree cover that thickened overhead as he moved deeper into the wood. In the Banlands, the open sky was a cruel goddess, with a cold unchanging face and a gaze that swept from one horizon to the other. He felt warmed and sheltered beneath the trees, and that feeling was no small part of his decision to set down pack in Haveïl. The forest was thick and growing dark, but to a Banlander of low birth it was preferable by far to a high, flat land under a naked sky.

  Aewyn had stopped, somewhere up ahead, and Grim had to circle for some time before he again caught sight of her. The girl was stooped before a mound of wood and packed earth, shielded from the distant sea-wind by a single standing
stone. Whatever its purpose, the mound and its stone reminded Grim of the old barrows of his homeland, small hills and monuments raised to the dead who were buried there—or sometimes, in tribute to those lost far away. A countryside rich with barrows was, to Grim, the sign of an old and prosperous family. He did not know what such sites meant here—but as he waited, his eyes fell upon the massive pile of bones that surrounded the hut. Some were fashioned into tools, others carved into wicked and threatening shapes. He waited in perfect stillness, less from strategy than from fear.

  The girl’s small voice, after so much silence, nearly shocked the vintner from the low bushes where he hid.

  “Otabia?” Aewyn asked suddenly. Her voice raised at the end, like a question, though he could not guess at its meaning. He was about to give answer when something immense stirred in the darkness, and he knew the word was not meant for him. As he held his breath and advanced a step toward the clearing, the discovery did not relieve him.

  A low, rattling voice, nearly too deep and far too guttural to be human, echoed from the mound. It spoke the same language, in stranger tones than Grim could distinguish, and sounded to Grim the way he always imagined a draugur, a restless corpse of Northern legend, to sound. The vintner trembled, wishing he had thought to bring his knife on this fool’s errand, though he wondered what use it might be against a shambling corpse or restless spirit. In fairness, he thought, it would be little enough use against a bandit or Travalaithi deserter either. He was past his prime, and still winded from the hill. A highway robber, discovered with his booty, would be the end of him as surely as a draugur; and so he resolved himself to be no more afraid of one than the other. He held his breath and slowly advanced, crouched so low in the snow than his back pained him with every step.