The Season of the Plough Page 6

  Aewyn moved in fearlessly, speaking the strange tongue in familiar tones. The shape that rose from the mound, out of some opening on the far side, towered over her like a cat over a mouse. There was no mistaking it for a spirit then: its deep brown coat and steaming breath were too real against the night sky, and its sheer physical presence was too overwhelming to be some figment of the night. Karach they were called, tribal dog-men who still lived in remote parts of the Banlands. Grim had seen them at great distance, around the fires of their camps, in his youth; his father had traded with them when the winters were desperate enough. To men of the western Empire, at least those old enough to remember them, the karach were savage tribes that preyed on civilized folk—they were fierce creatures, bloodthirsty warriors, eaters of men. Grim knew at that moment that he loved the strange girl, for what it was worth: regardless of whether his knife sat idly rusting on the kitchen-block at home, he would die fighting the beast if it made a move on her.

  But Aewyn spoke to it, and it seemed calmed by her presence. It returned her words in a delicate language unsuited to its deep growl and thin clumsy lips, crouching low to speak with her. It—he, Grim decided, for it was too big to be a female—was surprisingly gentle with her. There had always been something unseelie about her, he thought, something altogether otherworldly, and her discovery in the woods was like something out of legend. He should not have been surprised, he thought, that his fosterling had the power to quell such creatures. They seemed to be having some sort of conversation, her airy voice floating above the deep registers of his gravelly whisper. It occurred to him that the karach was speaking more quietly now, ears flicking warily, even as Aewyn chattered away in the strange tongue with her usual dinner-table exuberance.

  If he had been a master hunter, like his blood father, Grim might have realized then that he stood upwind of the pair. He might even have had the instinct to take his first steps into the thicket, into brush too dense for the karach’s larger frame to follow. But Grim was no hunter; his food came over the market-bench in exchange for bottles of wine. He could hardly read the alien features of the karach’s doglike face, and he did not see the thing move until it was nearly upon him.

  The attack was sudden, but not ferocious. Whether it recognized his man-smell or not, the karach pounced with the metered confidence that suggested that it knew it held the predatory advantage. It did not lead with its claws or its gaping jaws, but took him up with hands that looked, felt, uncomfortably human. Grim’s back struck hard against a thick trunk; he folded at the waist like a sack of flour and pitched down into the snow. The karach was in close before he found his wits, its smoking breath and dagger teeth hot and real around his throat.

  Aewyn’s scream, a barely-articulated order, brought the woods to silence. Even the birds in the trees were stilled by the command, though Grim knew it was meant for the karach when the great beast relaxed its grip and moved warily away. Only then did a scream of his own leave his mouth: it had nearly died quivering in the snow, along with the rest of him.

  “Run, girl,” he said quietly, his courage rallying once the shock had passed. He was maybe half the creature’s weight, and wore much of that around his middle, but he would make a fierce stand now that he was prepared.

  “He’s a friend!” Aewyn pleaded. “Malal ei iara!”

  “Don’t contradict me, child,” he said through set teeth. A desperate fire burned hot in his veins.

  “I wasn’t speaking to you,” she said, which caught him off guard enough to stay his hand for a moment.

  Grim’s laugh was as hostile as his balled fists. “That thing?” he snorted. “Your friend?”

  Although he could not understand the karach’s severe reply, he sensed it was similar in spirit. The beast was not quite naked, clad in coarse trousers and some tattered leathern mantle that resembled a travelling cloak. It watched him warily with an intelligence altogether unsettling. While Grim himself had never come so close to a karach in his youth, seeing one in the flesh took him back to a place he thought he had left behind him.

  The creature sat back awkwardly on its haunches, a seemingly lazy pose that Grim took as an unthreatening one. It extended a hand—too human a hand, Grim thought again, hairy and clawed but with undeniable and disturbing fingers—and eyed the girl, not the vintner, as he did so.

  “That thing, your friend,” it mimicked. Did it misunderstand his words as greeting? Or was it looking to Aewyn for confirmation? Grim reached out a hand and clasped its wrist in his, felt its claws brush around his forearm. A handshake past the wrist, in the North, was a sign of greater trust than a limp Imperial handshake, held only at the fingers. He hoped it was so here.

  Aewyn nodded, wide-eyed, and meekly approached the two as they stood predator-still in the clearing. Grim, out of his element with the towering karach but a dauntless father of six, tried a different tack, fixing his eyes sternly on the girl.

  “You have one chance to explain this, young lady,” he said. Aewyn’s eyes fixed quietly on the ground, and the karach relaxed visibly. A parental threat had an altogether different tone to it, and Grim imagined the creature could read the nature of their relationship, even if it could not understand his words.

  “This is Poe,” she said. The karach barked out a similar sound, as if correcting her. “He is a friend. We lived together here, in the forest, before I was fostered in town. I’ve missed him. He protects me from the beasts and bad men.”

  “Your friend,” Grim said again. The girl nodded. “And where did you get this…friend?”

  “I’ve told you many a time,” she said, though it wasn’t meant to be precocious. “Celithrand brought him to me one spring.”

  “Celithrand,” Grim said. Poe, if that was his name, pricked up his ears. “The lord of druids. The Imperator’s ancient advisor. The hero of the Siege of Shadow. That Celithrand?”

  “I suppose,” she said, “unless there is another.”

  Grim threw up his hands. “You’re my girl,” he said, “if not by blood. I suppose you could have said ‘what karach?’ and still I’d have believed you.”

  “But it’s true,” she said, more earnestly. “He brings us gifts, every spring when the flat leaves come back, and he comes to Haveïl.”

  “And you drink tea with Naeïl the Fairy Queen, I suppose,” he said.

  “My tales of the beast-man were true,” she said, looking to her companion. “Why not the rest?”

  “Beast-man indeed. It’s a karach, Aewyn—their kind exist here and there all through Silvalis, especially in the Northlands. They use them for mercenaries in the Iron City, I hear, those that can fight. Maybe your friend fell away from a Travalaithi legion. Maybe he deserted.”

  The karach tensed unhappily at that.

  “He doesn’t understand me, now, does he, girl?” Grim took a cautious step back.

  “He speaks none of the Merchants’ Tongue,” she confirmed. “But we have both learned Viluri from Celithrand, and from my mother.”

  “Viluri,” said Grim. “From your mother.”

  “Yes,” said Aewyn.

  “Not Karis or Robyn, you mean. Your real mother. The tree spirit who lives in the woods.”

  “Yes.”

  “Right,” he said under his breath. “Come home, girl. I’ve heard enough. I was sent to solve this riddle, and now I have.”

  “This is home,” she said, but saw his meaning and began to walk with him. “What about Poe?” she asked.

  Grim was about to answer when he looked again at the bones surrounding the mound. A sheep’s skull, beak-nosed and grinning, stared back at him.

  “That’s a sheep,” he said. He looked to the karach, who seemed unconcerned with the bones—then to Aewyn. “Did Poe get this sheep from the village?”

  She asked him in a string of strange words. Grim did not understand his reply, but he understood the nodding head.

  “I think the town has been looking for him for a long time.”

  Aewyn’s ey
es brightened. “Can he come back and meet everyone?”

  Grim sighed long and deep, but forced a smile. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, he can.” He looked to the karach, who snorted warily as Aewyn related the good news. There was no way he could compel the beast by force—but if he, a slow-moving old vintner, could bring a poacher to justice where even the Havenari had failed, it would win him the universal respect of the town. And perhaps some good apprenticeships for his six children, too, if they did not take well to winemaking.

  “He will come,” said Aewyn with delight.

  “That’s good,” said Grim.

  “You don’t sound happy.”

  Grim cleared his throat. “I don’t know what storybook you sprang from,” he said, “or what business you have with druids and fairies and karach. But you’re a child of Widowvale now, true and proper. I stuck my neck out for you, girl. I lied to the iron soldiers from Haukmere for you. Haukmere! The vasily of Ashimar. I reckon you’re too young to know that name, and I’m thankful for it. But I could lose my head over you—if I’ve got a head to lose, when the Reeve is done with me.”

  “Why are you in trouble?” asked Aewyn, concerned. “Am I in trouble?”

  Grim looked back to the karach, who had fallen obligingly in step behind them, much to his relief. He tried to make his motions as friendly-looking as possible, and smiled obligingly as only a master liar might.

  “The village is your home now,” he continued, “and a village has laws. When people come together, they live by the same rules. And now it seems old Darmod’s sheep weren’t poached by bandits or Adâni barbarians after all. Though in the circumstances, I don’t expect that news to please him. We’re taking this friend of yours to meet the Reeve. Maybe the village will take him in and adopt him, as it has with you.”

  Aewyn studied his face carefully. “You don’t think they will,” she said with the wisdom of a child.

  “I have my doubts,” said Grim. “But this is what’s happening. It’s what’s right.”

  “Will Darmod Pick cut off my head?” she asked.

  Grim laughed. “No, lass. No one’s cutting off your head.”

  “Will they hurt Poe?”

  Grim’s heart sank in him, but he made sure to smile at the eyes as well as the mouth. “Tell him there will be food.”

  “Poe,” she said softly, reaching back for the creature’s massive hand, “Fena femoiom, otabiam.” The karach responded in kind, the words harsh in his throat.

  “Guri ionai wiwalia golandeom,” the creature spat with a disdainful glare at the vintner. But he followed them willingly.

  “What did he say?” asked Grim. “I don’t understand a lick of aeril-speak.”

  “He cannot read the emotions of your face,” she said, “but he says that parts of your body are weeping with fear, even if your eyes are not.”

  “He’s not wrong,” said Grim. “But you can tell him he’s the least of my fears, now, if that puts him at ease.”

  “It puts me at ease,” said Aewyn cheerfully.

  “Wish I could say the same,” Grim replied.

  The journey down the hill, even in the bluest twilight, was faster than the climb. Aewyn was leading the way before too long, and although Grim puffed heavily behind her he had no trouble picking his way through the snowy rocks. By the time they had come down below the crown of Minter’s Rock, the town fires were being extinguished, and in the dying glow of Widowvale’s hearth-hour, they were met time and again by hastily armed townsfolk who were sure the beast was in pursuit of the vintner and the strange girl. Grim was forced to explain each time, sometimes at the point of a hayfork, just what had really happened on top of the hill; and with Aewyn busy calming the skittish karach, who spoke no Tradespeak at all, Grim’s tongue was free to wander. By the time they had passed Grim’s house-gates, and then the Reeve’s, the vintner could hardly fault Aewyn for the tale of druids and forest folk she was sure to spin. Grim’s second talent, after all, was that of a liar, and the stories of Grim’s desperate battle with the savage creature remained the stuff of local legend for years to come—even after the Year of Strangers, when the town finally came to know Poe as one of their own.

  There were not many Havenari in town that winter. The snows had come early and caught them on the coast, near Seton. Only Bram, too weak to ride, had remained behind; and so the men who took Poe prisoner for his crimes were no proper warriors. They plied him with food and drink, as promised, and he was gladdened for a long while by their treatment, as was Aewyn. When they bound him at last, he was more confused than enraged: looking down at the stout rope, he did not feel especially imprisoned by something so flimsy. And yet, like the bride at a handfasting, this tying seemed of ceremonial importance to them, so he suffered them to bind him with their strings of hemp: he understood by the symbolism of the rope, if not by its strength, they expected him to stay where he was.

  When Bram was dragged reluctantly from his bed to stand for the absent Havenari, and the town had assembled to see the mighty poacher bound before the Reeve’s justice, only then did Grim recount the story of how he succeeded where twenty armed men had failed for years—tracking his prey, subduing him after a mighty battle in the woods. The story passed for truth among all who heard it, right to the moment that the trial began. And in that moment, when the nature of the gathering became clear, there were bigger things to worry about than a boasting Northerner’s tall tales.

  THREE

  THIS IS NOT THE STORY of Darmod Pick, son of Adel, or of his sheep; but he was a poor, proud man who pitied his father, and so a page of it must belong to him as well. His father’s home, which had been named Pickstand after their ancestors, was a narrow, scrubby strip of meadow east of the capital, good for little more than grazing their own sheep and the oxen of the nearing families.

  As a young man, Darmod had little enough love for anyone, and it seldom stood him to favour with his neighbours. But he had no love for the Imperial Grand Army, either, and that earned him some admiration among the poor farmers. During the Siege of Selik, when Adel had surrendered his grazing rights to the two Travalaithi Legions, Darmod shouted himself out the door of his childhood home. He left his spineless father to the company of Travalaithi post-wardens and headed west to Haveïl, taking his birthright in the form of livestock. It was a difficult season for travel, and the journey was long for an angry boy with an unmanageable flock: he came to the valley as a hard young man with a dozen sickly sheep, and his hunger for prosperity never left him no matter how large and healthy the flock grew, no matter what fortune it bore him.

  It was Darmod who first jeeringly dubbed the town “Widowvale” when the men moved into the hills and the women remained—and none of the men minded leaving him behind to tend his flock. He was too bitter to charm their wives, and the young women especially took an easy comfort in a man too spiteful to have designs on them. They preferred his company, at times, to that of more pleasant men—and later, in their efforts to find something kind to say of him, the women simply agreed that old Darmod was “honest.”

  As a sheep farmer and a sheep farmer’s son, Darmod was an unlettered man, and not particularly well-spoken. But when Grim brought a ferocious karach before the Reeve, who determined it had been poaching his sheep for years, he became so uncommonly articulate in his outrage that another moot was called at once to determine the facts—and hopefully, to exact justice from the creature’s hide.

  When the tally was complete, and Aewyn had coaxed the truth from the creature, Darmod counted four sheep he had lost to it in the past three years, and only two to the lower predators—wolves and cougars—that came down from the high hills. In more difficult lands, a man could be hanged for less; and Darmod saw no reason to let the hammer of justice fall lightly just because the soil here was generous and the weather forgiving. The kindness of the land, he said, was a blessing meant for those who earned it by toil and diligence, and granting clemency to a beast who fed on the labours of others made li
ght of those who had built the town by sweat and struggle.

  Darmod left the moot-hall when he knew the argument had been lost. Marin the Reeve made several inquiries about the karach’s origins, and the weird forest-girl who had come to live with Grim made such a shameless defense of the beast’s ignorance that it was clear Marin’s heart would be swayed by those wide green eyes. Darmod stopped short of accusing the Reeve of a conflict of interest—though as Karis’s brother he was virtually uncle to the sickeningly naïve girl—but he was sorely hurt by the opinion of the townsfolk, which had been so easily swayed against him by the sincerity of the girl speaking in the monster’s defense. Many still clamoured for blood, but Darmod knew before any of them that they were not likely to get it. He stormed out in disgust once it was clear that Poe would not be put down for the offense; it mattered little to him what final blow befell the beast after that. As the heavy moot-hall door slammed shut behind him, he cursed the softness of the townsfolk, though perhaps it was his father’s softness he saw in them. Whatever notions of law and justice they had brought with them coming west had been abandoned somewhere on the road from Travalaith, or on trails more distant, like so many sheep too weak to make the trek.

  If he had stayed, Darmod might have heard the wisdom of Alec Steel, who ran horses and kept bees in the meadow adjacent to Darmod’s lands, and who had spent more years in the company of karach than any in the village, even Aewyn herself. He had served once, long ago, in the feared Legions of the Blade out of Travalaith; and in those times the karach of many tribes provided frequent and powerful mercenaries for the Travalaithi host. He, more than any, knew that the karach was yet young and had not reached his full size—and more importantly, that his kind were capable of honour and could be taught what things were of value to men. That familiarity, and his unimpeachable regard in the community, were the chief reasons he was called on to speak in defense of a creature that could not speak for itself.