The Book of Swords Read online

“…the fish-smoking shed,” Carber was saying. “It’s mostly empty now. But we can start up the fires for heat instead of smoke and gather a lot of folk there.”

  “That would be good,” the stranger said.

  Marva smiled up at him. Peevy had stopped struggling. He had his arms around his cousin’s neck and his face buried in her cloak. “There is room in our home for you to sleep, sir. And too much room now in our goat shed for your horse.” Her smile twisted bitterly. “The raiders left us few animals to shelter. What they did not take they killed.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said wearily, and it seemed to Taura it was a tale he had heard before and perhaps that was what he always replied to it.

  —

  Carber sent runners through the village, calling the folk to gather in the fish-smoking shed. Taura felt childish satisfaction when he ordered Kerry to take up his watch. She followed the crowd to the shed. Several families were already sheltering there. They had a fire going and had set up makeshift households in different parts of the shed.

  Had her mother thought of coming here? At least they would still be a separate family, a household. They would still have had Papa’s sword.

  Carber tipped over a crate for the messenger to stand upon, as the villagers gathered in the barn-like shed that always smelt of alder smoke and fish. The folk trickled in slowly and Taura could see the stranger’s impatience growing. Finally he climbed onto his small stage and called for silence. “We dare not wait any longer. The Forged will be returned to your village at any time now. That we know. It is a pattern the Red-Ship Raiders have followed since they first attacked Forge and returned half its inhabitants as heartless ghosts of themselves.” He looked down and saw the confusion on the faces that surrounded him. He spoke more simply. “The Red Ships come. The raiders kill and they plunder, but their real destruction comes after they have left. They carry off those you love. They do something to them, something we don’t understand. They hold them for a time, then give them back to you, their families. They will return tired, hungry, wet, and cold. They will look like your kin and they will call you by name. But they will not be the folk who left here.”

  He looked out over the gathered folk and shook his head at the hope and disbelief that his words had stirred. Taura watched him try to explain. “They will recall your faces and names. A father will know his children’s names and a baker will recall her pans and oven. They will seek out their own homes. But you must not let them into your village or homes. Because they will care nothing for you, only for themselves. Theft and beatings, murders and rape will come with them.”

  Taura stared up at him. His words made no sense. Other faces reflected the same confusion, for the man shook his head sorrowfully. “It’s difficult to explain. A father will snatch food from his little boy’s mouth. If you have something they want, they will take it, regardless of how much violence they must use. If they are hungry, they will take all the food for themselves, drive you from your homes if they wish shelter.” His voice dropped as he added, “If they feel lust, they will rape.” His gaze roved over them, then he added, “They will rape anyone.”

  He shook his head at the disbelief on their faces. “Listen to me, please! Everything you have heard about the Forged, every rumor you have heard is true. Go home and fortify your homes now. Tighten the shutters on your windows, be sure the bars on your doors are strong. Organize the people who will protect this village. Assemble them. Arm yourselves. You’ve set a watch. That’s good.”

  He drew breath and Taura called into the pause, “But what are we to do when they come?”

  He looked directly at her. Possibly he was a handsome man, when he was not cold and weary. The tops of his cheeks were red and his dark hair lank with rain or sweat. His brown eyes were agonized. “The people who went away are not coming back to you. The Forged will not change back into those people. Ever.” His next words came out harshly. “You must be prepared to kill them. Before they kill you.”

  Abruptly, Taura hated him. Handsome or not, he was talking about her father. Her father, big, strong Burk, coming back from a day’s fishing, unarmed and unprepared to be clubbed down and dragged away. When her mother had screamed at her to run and hide, she had. She’d been so sure that her father, her big strong Papa, would fight his way clear of his captors. So she had done nothing to help him. She’d hidden in the thicket of the willow’s branches while he was dragged away.

  The next morning, she and her mother found each other when they returned to the remains of their house. Gef had stood outside their burned home, wailing as if he were five instead of thirteen. They’d let him stand and weep. Both Taura and her mother knew there was no getting through to her simple brother. In a light drizzle of freezing rain, they’d poked through the scorched timbers and the thick ash of the fallen thatch that had been their home. There had been little to salvage. Gef had stood and bawled as Taura and her mother had poked through the smoldering wreckage. A few cooking pots and three woolen blankets had been in a heavy cupboard that had somehow not burned through. A bowl and three plates. Then she’d found, sheltered beneath a fallen timber and unscorched, her father’s sword in its fine sheath. The sword that would have saved him if he’d had it with him.

  Worthless Jelin now claimed it as his. The sword that should have been hers. She knew how her father would have reacted to her mother’s bartering the sword for shelter. She pinched her lips tight as she thought of Papa. Burk was not the kindest, gentlest father one could imagine. He was, in fact, very much as the king’s man had described a Forged man. He ate first and best at their meals and had always expected to be deferred to in all things. He was quick with a slap and slow to praise. In his early life, he’d been a warrior. If he needed something, he found a way to get it. She knew a tiny flame of hope. Perhaps, even Forged, he would still be her father. He might come home, well, back to the village where their home had stood. He might still rise before dawn to take their small boat out to…

  Oh. The boat that now rested on the bottom, with only a handspan of its mast sticking up.

  But she knew her father. He’d know how to raise it. He’d know how to build their house again. Perhaps there might be some return to her old life. Just her family, sitting beside their own fire in the evening. Their food on the table, their beds…

  And he’d take back his sword, too.

  The king’s man wasn’t having a great deal of luck persuading the village that their returning kin should be barred from the village, let alone murdered. She doubted he knew what he was about; surely if a mother remembered her child’s name and face, she would remember that she cared about that child! How could it be otherwise?

  He soon saw he was not swaying them to his thinking. His voice dropped. “I will see to my horse and spend one night here. If you want help to fortify some of your homes or this shed, I’ll help with that. But if you will not ready yourselves, there is little I can do here. And yours is not the only village to be Forged. The king sent me to Shrike. Chance brought me here.”

  Old Hallin spoke up. “We know how to take care of our own. If Keelin comes back, he’ll still be my son. Why wouldn’t I feed him and give him shelter?”

  “Do you think I will kill my father because he behaves selfishly? You’re mad, man! If you are the sort of help King Shrewd sends us, we’re better off without it.”

  “Blood is thicker than water!” someone shouted, and suddenly everyone seemed angry at the king’s messenger.

  His face sank into deeper lines of weariness. “As you will,” he said in a lifeless voice.

  “As we will indeed!” Carber shouted. “Did you think no one would look in the panniers on your mount! They’re full of loaves of bread! Yet seeing how devastated we are, you said nothing and made no offer to share! Who is heartless and selfish now, FitzChivalry Farseer?” Carber lifted his hands high and cried out to the crowd, “We ask King Shrewd to send us help, and he sends one man, and a bastard at that! He hoards bread that wou
ld ease our children’s bellies and tells us to slay our kin. This is not the help we sought!”

  “I hope you touched none of it,” the man replied. His eyes, so earnest before, had gone distant and dark. “The bread is poisoned. It’s to use against the Forged in Shrike. To kill them and put an end to the murders and rapes there.”

  Carber looked stunned. Then he shouted, “Get out! Leave our village now, tonight! We’ve had enough of you and your ‘help!’ Begone.”

  The Farseer didn’t quail. He looked out over the gathered folk. Then he stepped down off the crate. “As you will.” He did not shout the word but his words carried. “If you will not help yourselves, there is nothing I can do here. I’ll be on my way. When I have finished my tasks at Shrike, I will come back this way. Perhaps by then, you will be ready to listen.”

  “Not very likely,” Carber sneered at him.

  The king’s envoy walked slowly to the door. His hand was not on his sword hilt, but the crowd flowed back to make way for him. Taura was one of those who followed him. His horse was still tethered outside. The lid of one pannier was loosened. The man paused to secure it. He patted the horse’s neck, untethered her, mounted, and rode off into the darkness without a backward glance. He left the way he had come and the sound of his mount’s hooves faded slowly.

  —

  In the morning, the rain continued and the day dragged by. None of the kidnapped folk returned. The red-hulled ship was no longer anchored at the edge of the bay. Jelin began to assert his authority over her family. Her mother helped with the cooking, and Gef salvaged wood that could be used to rebuild or as firewood. When Taura came in from standing her watches, Jelin commanded her to tend his brat so his wife Darda could rest. Cordel was a spoiled, snotty two-year-old who toddled about knocking things over and shrieking when he was reprimanded. His clothing was constantly soiled and they expected Taura to rinse out his dirtied napkins and hang them on the line above the fireplace to dry. As if anything could dry on the chill, damp days that followed the raid. When Taura complained, her mother would hastily remind her that some folk were sheltering under salvaged sails or sleeping on the dirt floors of the fish-smoking shed. She spoke low at such times, as if fearful that Jelin would overhear her complaints and turn them out. She told Taura that she should be grateful to help the household that had taken her in.

  Taura did not feel grateful at all. It grated on her to see her mother cooking and cleaning like a servant in a house that was not theirs. Even worse was to see how Gef followed Jelin about, as anxious to please as a hound puppy. It was not as if Jelin treated him well. He ordered the boy about, teased and mocked him, and Gef laughed nervously at the taunts. Jelin worked the boy as if he were a donkey, and they both came home from trying to raise Jelin’s fishing boat soaked and weary. Gef didn’t complain; rather he fawned on Jelin for his attention. He had never behaved so with their father; her father had always been distant and gruff with both his son and daughter. Perhaps their own father had not been affectionate, but, simple or not, it was wrong for Gef to forget him so soon. Likely their father wasn’t even dead yet. Taura seethed in silence.

  But worse came the next night. Her mother had made a fish stew, more like a soup for she had stretched it to feed all of them. It was thin and grey, made from small fish caught from shore, and the starchy roots of the brown lily that grew on the cliffs and kelp and small shellfish from the beach. It tasted like low tide smelled. They had to eat in shifts, for there were not enough bowls. Taura and her mother ate last, with Taura given a small serving and her mother scraping out the kettle for her dinner. As Taura slowly spooned up the thin broth and small pieces of fish and root, Jelin sat down heavily across from her. “Things have to change,” he said abruptly, and her mother gaped silently.

  Taura gave him a flat look. He was staring at her, not her mother.

  “It’s plain to see that there’s not enough in this house to go around. Not food, not beds, not room. So. Either we have to find a way to create more of those things or we have to ask some people to move out.”

  Her mother was silent, gripping the edge of the table with both hands. Taura gave her a sideways glance. Her eyes were anxious, her mouth pinched tight as a drawstring poke. She’d get no help there. Her father taken less than five days ago and her mother already abandoning her. She met Jelin’s gaze and she was proud her voice didn’t shake as she said, “You’re talking about me.”

  He nodded once. “It’s plain to see that caring for little Cordel doesn’t suit you. Or him. You stand your watches for the village, but that doesn’t put more food in the house or more firewood on the stack. You step over a chore that plainly needs doing, and what we ask you to do, you do grudgingly. You spend most of each day sulking by the fire.”

  A coldness was running through her as he recounted her faults. It made her ears ring. Her mother’s silence was condemnation. Her brother stood away from the table, looking down, shamed for her. Frightened perhaps. They both felt Jelin was justified. They’d both surrendered their family loyalty to Jelin at the moment that they gave him her father’s sword. He was talking on and on, suggesting that she could go with some of the people who were scavenging the beaches at low tide for tiny shellfish. Or that she might walk for four hours to Shearton, to see if she would find work there, something she could do for a few coins a day to bring some food into the house. She made no reply to any of his words nor did she let her face change expression.

  When he finally stopped talking, she spoke. “I thought our room and board here were well paid for in advance. Did not you take my father’s sword in its fine leather sheath, tooled with the words of my family’s motto? ‘Follow a Strong Man,’ it says! That’s a fine sword Buckkeep made. My father bore it in his days in King Shrewd’s guard when he was young and hearty. Now you have the sword that was to be my inheritance!”

  “Taura!” her mother gasped, but it was a remonstrance for her, not a heart-stricken realization of what she had given away.

  “Ungrateful bitch!” Jelin’s wife gasped as he demanded, “Can you eat a sword, you stupid child? Can it keep the rain from your back or warm your feet when the snow falls?”

  Taura had just opened her mouth to reply when they heard the scream. It was not distant. Someone pelted past the cottage, shrieking breathlessly. Taura was first to her feet, opening the door to peer out into the rainy night as Jelin and Darda shouted, “Close the door and bar it!” As if they had learned nothing from the folk who had been burned to death when the raiders had torched their cottages.

  “They’re coming!” someone shouted. “They’re coming from the beach, out of the sea! They’re coming!”

  Her brother came crowding behind her to slip under her arm and peer out. “They’re coming!” he said in foolish approval. A moment later, the whistles sounded. Two blasts, over and over again.

  “El’s balls, close that damn door!” Jelin roared. The sword he had so decried a moment before was bared in his hands now. The sight of it and the fine sheath discarded on the floor raised Taura’s fury to white-hot. She pushed past her brother, seized the edge of the door, and slammed it shut in his face. An instant later, she wished she had thought to take her cloak with her, but it was too fine of a defiant exit to spoil by going back for it.

  It was raining, not heavily but in penetrating small insistent drops. Other folk were emerging from their homes, to peer out into the night. Some few had seized their pathetic weapons, cudgels and fish-knives and gaff hooks. Tools of trades that were never intended for battle or defense were all they had. A long scream rose and fell in the night.

  Most folk stayed within their doorways, but some few, the bold or the hopeless, ventured out. In a loose group they walked through the dark streets toward the whistle. One of the men carried a lantern. It showed Taura damaged homes, some burned to cinders and others skeletons of blackened beams. She saw a dead dog that had not been cleared from the street. Perhaps his owner was no longer alive. Some homes stood relativel
y intact, light leaking from shuttered windows. She hated the smell the rain woke from the burned homes. Items that the raiders had claimed then dropped were scorched and sodden in the street. The scream was not repeated and to Taura that seemed more frightening than if it had gone on.

  The lantern bearer held it high and by its uncertain light Taura saw several figures coming toward them. One of the men in the group suddenly called out “Hatilde! You live!” He ran toward a woman. She made no reply to his greeting. Instead, she abruptly stopped and stared at the rubble of a home. Slowly Taura and the others approached them. The man stood beside Hatilde, a questioning look on his face. Her hair was lank, her wet clothes hung limp on her. He spoke gently to her. “They burned your cottage. I’m so sorry, Hatilde.”

  Without a word, she turned from him. The house next to her rubble had survived the attack. She walked to it and tried the door, and then pounded on it. An elderly woman opened it slowly. “Hatilde! You survived!” she exclaimed. A tentative smile began to form on her face.

  But the Forged woman said nothing. She pushed the old woman out of her way and entered the cottage. The old woman stumbled after her. From within Taura heard her querulous cry of, “Please don’t eat that! It’s all I have for my grandson!”

  Before Taura could wonder about that, a woman came running down the street toward them. She shrieked in terror as she passed two plodding silhouettes then, as she saw the huddled group, she sobbed out, “Help me! Help me! He raped me! My own brother raped me.”

  “Oh, Dele!” a man in Taura’s group cried out, and doffed his cloak to offer it to cover her torn garments. She accepted it but shrank back from his touch.

  “Roff? Is that you?” the lantern-bearer asked as a tall man strode out of the darkness toward them. The man was bare-chested and barefoot, his skin bright red with cold. He made no response but abruptly knocked a young man in the group to his knees. He tore the cloak from the youngster’s shoulders, half choking him in the process. He wrapped himself in it, glared at the gawkers, then turned and stalked toward a house.