was tomorrow. With luck he might not live that long.
He shouldered open the heavy wooden door, fell inwards with it and staggered in. He managed to kick off his boots and begin to struggle out of his dusty tunic. Arms and head still wrapped in its neck and sleeves, he fell backwards onto the bed. His exhausted brain registered the existence of something cold and hard beneath the aching muscles of his back. Rolling over, he stripped the swaddling tunic away and cast it onto the bedside chair. His right hand closed over a familiar object. He retrieved it from beneath himself and held it up. In the dying light of the day, he found he held his own belt-knife, which he had been unable to find that very morning. Its hilt was shit-smeared and foul.
With a shudder of repulsion he dropped it on the floor, where it lay, shining dully, its blade as red with the sunset as if it had been freshly dipped in blood.
And he knew, with a sudden fierce, instinctive knowledge, just where it had been in the time it had been absent from him, and how it had returned here.
He slept no more that night.
Five
The King’s Shipmaker
They slept that first night in the King’s city in the loft above a fletcher’s with whom the mercenaries had business. When Katla asked what this business might entail, Dogo had pulled an idiot face and girned at her horribly and Halli had shaken his head. So Katla had desisted from asking more until she and Halli had parted from the sell-swords the next morning and they were on their way to Morten Danson’s shipyard to carry to him Tam’s ‘royal’ invitation to the mumming – no common knotted string this, but a fine parchment of goatskin inscribed with fish-ink in Tam’s careful hand. For authenticity, Katla had donned a quartered tunic in green and red borrowed for this very purpose before they had left the ship from Silva Lighthand, one of the tumblers; and Halli was looking most uncomfortable crammed into a ridiculous suit of gold and green, its garishness partly mitigated by an all-encompassing cloak in sober grey on which the Snowland Wolf and its serpent enemy were picked out in neatly stitched red silk. Surprised though she had been by his skill in writing, Katla had been rather more amazed to discover that Tam Fox had sewn this piece himself. It was hard to think of those great, hairy hands engaged in anything much beyond wielding knives, hauling sail or squeezing women, let alone something so delicate, or so traditionally feminine, as embroidery, but the leader of the mummers had been unconcerned when she had laughed at him. ‘Mumming’s not all fun and games,’ he had said. ‘You’re on the road all the time. It can get very boring, especially when some pretty lordling’s decided to keep you waiting for a day or three while he hunts some mythical dragon or swives his latest piece to death. Besides, we can’t afford to keep a seamstress, a cook or a laundress, so we all have to muck in. We make and maintain all our own costumes, men and women alike: my troupe need to be as proficient with a needle as they are with batons, balls and knives.’ And Katla had to admit the workmanship on the clothes they had borrowed far exceeded her own. If she had to produce her own costumes, the audience would be entertained by rather more than they had bargained for, she thought wryly.
The first half hour of the walk through Halbo city had been an entertainment in itself for Katla. She could not help but exclaim at every turn –
Look, brother, windows with glass!
–
See that woman, her hair is purple! Oh, ’tis a headdress! – What sort of person lives in such a house? – Why are there bars on the door and spikes on the wall? – What are those marks there like burned tar? Oh, they are burned tar. From the war? – But why would an Eyran lord fight his king? A woman? Surely not
– and so on, until Halli had threatened to knock her cold and leave her in a ditch for the next beggar to find. Then, nearing
He shouldered open the heavy wooden door, fell inwards with it and staggered in. He managed to kick off his boots and begin to struggle out of his dusty tunic. Arms and head still wrapped in its neck and sleeves, he fell backwards onto the bed. His exhausted brain registered the existence of something cold and hard beneath the aching muscles of his back. Rolling over, he stripped the swaddling tunic away and cast it onto the bedside chair. His right hand closed over a familiar object. He retrieved it from beneath himself and held it up. In the dying light of the day, he found he held his own belt-knife, which he had been unable to find that very morning. Its hilt was shit-smeared and foul.
With a shudder of repulsion he dropped it on the floor, where it lay, shining dully, its blade as red with the sunset as if it had been freshly dipped in blood.
And he knew, with a sudden fierce, instinctive knowledge, just where it had been in the time it had been absent from him, and how it had returned here.
He slept no more that night.
Five
The King’s Shipmaker
They slept that first night in the King’s city in the loft above a fletcher’s with whom the mercenaries had business. When Katla asked what this business might entail, Dogo had pulled an idiot face and girned at her horribly and Halli had shaken his head. So Katla had desisted from asking more until she and Halli had parted from the sell-swords the next morning and they were on their way to Morten Danson’s shipyard to carry to him Tam’s ‘royal’ invitation to the mumming – no common knotted string this, but a fine parchment of goatskin inscribed with fish-ink in Tam’s careful hand. For authenticity, Katla had donned a quartered tunic in green and red borrowed for this very purpose before they had left the ship from Silva Lighthand, one of the tumblers; and Halli was looking most uncomfortable crammed into a ridiculous suit of gold and green, its garishness partly mitigated by an all-encompassing cloak in sober grey on which the Snowland Wolf and its serpent enemy were picked out in neatly stitched red silk. Surprised though she had been by his skill in writing, Katla had been rather more amazed to discover that Tam Fox had sewn this piece himself. It was hard to think of those great, hairy hands engaged in anything much beyond wielding knives, hauling sail or squeezing women, let alone something so delicate, or so traditionally feminine, as embroidery, but the leader of the mummers had been unconcerned when she had laughed at him. ‘Mumming’s not all fun and games,’ he had said. ‘You’re on the road all the time. It can get very boring, especially when some pretty lordling’s decided to keep you waiting for a day or three while he hunts some mythical dragon or swives his latest piece to death. Besides, we can’t afford to keep a seamstress, a cook or a laundress, so we all have to muck in. We make and maintain all our own costumes, men and women alike: my troupe need to be as proficient with a needle as they are with batons, balls and knives.’ And Katla had to admit the workmanship on the clothes they had borrowed far exceeded her own. If she had to produce her own costumes, the audience would be entertained by rather more than they had bargained for, she thought wryly.
The first half hour of the walk through Halbo city had been an entertainment in itself for Katla. She could not help but exclaim at every turn –
Look, brother, windows with glass!
–
See that woman, her hair is purple! Oh, ’tis a headdress! – What sort of person lives in such a house? – Why are there bars on the door and spikes on the wall? – What are those marks there like burned tar? Oh, they are burned tar. From the war? – But why would an Eyran lord fight his king? A woman? Surely not
– and so on, until Halli had threatened to knock her cold and leave her in a ditch for the next beggar to find. Then, nearing
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