Black Rose

(We're just dropping in on Freya and Five for a quick visit, and then we have to deal with Solveig.

Did I say she hit rock bottom in the last episode? I did, didn't I.

Naaaaah. It's this one.

Contains violence. But not the kind of violence we saw in Part 2. This is going in a quite different direction.

As in previous parts, three asterisks in a row signifies a change in time or location; one asterisk signifies a change in POV within the same scene.)

***

I'll sing you 12 oh

Green grow the rushes oh

What are your 12 oh

12 forty 12 are parcels

Eleven are eleven who went to heaven, and

Ten forty tan commanders

Nine forty nine white shiners

Eight forty eight for raiders

Seven forty seven speech of the sky and

Six forty six are walkers

Five forty five sinners at your door and

Four forty parcel makers

3 times 3 arrivers

2 2 silly white noise

Clothe Ed all in green oh

None is none and all alone

And Naziha shall be so

--Children's song, Pascone

***

Chapter 6: Arrivals

Part 1: The Road out of the Hills

They walked and walked and walked.

Five had never known such tiredness.

Being the squire, Five was lumbered with more gear, and was less fit, and Freya was going where she was going because she was drawn there, wherever it was; whereas Five was going where Freya was going, because Five was now, apparently, her blood brother, or something, and had to do what she wanted. It didn't seem to work in the opposite direction; if Five wanted to stop for a break, Freya would scowl and stand there seething with impatience while Five sat, sweating, on a rock, and got the breath back.

They did stop, though. For the first couple of days, Freya had often to duck behind a rock and void her bowels. She would return from these red in the face, angry and embarrassed, and Five knew better than to behave as if it was in any way out of the ordinary. Then, her system seemed to right itself and they were off again.

They had turned north, and were walking into the mountains southeast of Casman, and it was a hell of a stride. Five had never been the most soldier-y of the soldiers, but when you looked at your bleeding feet on the fifth day, you had to admit that some toughening was going on.

What was harder to get used to was so little food.

The brilliant thing about being the cook, as Five saw it, was that you got to eat.

You got to nibble things as you worked, and you got to try things to make sure they were ready, and when you were cleaning up, you got to eat anything that anyone had left over.

But with just Five and Freya, there wasn't much to eat, and they ate all of it between them. Five was constantly hungry.

The only good thing about it was that walking got easier. Five had always carried a few extra pounds, but after days on the road, it started to melt off. An extra belt notch had to be made. Britches that had once been comfortable became flappy. Climbing up hills had used to make Five sweat buckets, but soon it was more like a chance to get the lungs glowing.

Five was in two minds about this.

On the one hand, Five's was a stupid body, as the little voice in Five's ear liked to point out.

It just wasn't right. It went in when it should have gone out, and when it should have tapered off, it went round. Where other people were smooth, it had flabby bumps, and where other people were hard and tough, Five was soft and smooth.

Nobody looked for anyone with a body like that.

Five found it hard to think about Five's body without feeling a bit ill. Eating made Five swell up and go round; so it all became a bit of a clerks' problem, because you couldn't see anything any more, and eating made Five happy because that's what eating was for.

But now there was very little eating, and Five's body was beginning to emerge again from the roundiness, and it became harder and harder to deny that Five was just all wrong when it came to having a body and being someone who did things in the world.

But then, after a while, that became a clerk's problem too, because of the bleeding of the feet.

Freya inspected Five's feet and nodded and silently indicated to to use whatever ointment was available, and each morning they inspected their food stores to see what they were short of, and if they needed meat, Freya would shoot a coney or a bird. One evening, Five saw her bring down a wild goose in low light, and they feasted that night, and Five saved the grease for cooking. And if it was herbs or grain, they'd quietly sneak into a field and steal what they wanted.

It helped that they were travelling through rich hill country. Five had tools to winnow barley and oats and grind them and make porridge, and knew which mushrooms were good and which you shouldn't go near with a ten foot pole, and could spot wildsoo-anandshamarand other useful herbs.

But these were not always available, and when they weren't, it was fruit and nuts from trees or hedgerows, and anything they could get their hands on.

Five dreamed about cakes.

Hot-baked spiced cakes with dried fruit and nuts on them, and good butter melting on the cut sides. The bread they made for the baron when he had special guests, enriched with egg and flavoured with wild cherry. Fried cakes, spiced with fragrant kapulagha, dipped in honey. How when you were unhappy you could just grab one and suck one down from a tray and nobody would notice, and the sweet chewy hug of the cake in your mouth would make you feel better. Until you'd finished the cake.

But there had always been other cakes.

Until now.

So, after a while, this got too painful and Five started to dream about bread.

This was a bit less painful, except that the bread ran out too, and Five used the last of the flour to make a starter, but there wasn't enough to make a loaf, and after more days walking in the heat the starter died, and Five had to chuck it away.

But Five got used to not having bread or cake, and the need for them withered away.

Freya taught Five, without ever speaking, how to move silently, and how to be invisible, and how to hide if someone was coming down the road. She did not want to be met, or so it seemed. She wished to make the journey to wherever they were going in silence and in darkness. If they encountered someone, or if they saw someone far off in the distance, she would steal into the undergrowth and wait with him until the stranger passed, and then some, rather than meet anyone. Five saw the fear in her eyes as they hid, and didn't question it.

At their rests, or over their meals, Five would talk, and Freya would listen. Stories about growing up an orphan, leaving out one or two details. Stories heard from other squires. Perhaps a song now and again. She seemed to be listening, anyway. From time to time she'd throw over a look and a half-smile, but mostly her eyes seemed to be on the darkness that surrounded them, or, if it were day, on the hills they were passing through.

It took a long time to come out of the hills and reach the plain that stretched to the sea, and Five had lost count of the days they'd been walking. Five's feet were hard as rocks; the rest of Five was leaner, constantly hungry, burned by the sun.

A soft bed, some beans and bacon, and a cool beer. That was all that was needed.

***

They came down out of the mountains and struck northeast across the coastal plain, towards the city of Memika.

Memika: the city of the wall. A place Five had heard all sorts of stories about, but had never visited.

It was a port, a glamorously shabby, polyglot place with a warm climate and lots of ways that a man might find a good time. It was close enough to the South that they were able to keep their beer cool in cellars; it was close enough to the North that the typical citizen was not blonde and pale but dark-haired and olive-skinned. Memika had been the ruin of many a weak man, and the making of many a strong one.

The night before they entered, after they had eaten, Freya signalled to listen.

'Yes, lady,' Five said, sitting down.

Freya stared at the ground for a moment, trying to think of a way of conveying her meaning. Then she looked up, nodded, and pointed down the road, and mouthedMemika.

'Yes,' Five said, 'we're in Memika tomorrow.'

She looked at him inquiringly, pointed to him, and pointed in the direction of the city.

'No, I've never been there.'

Freya nodded, and help up a warning finger.

Attend, Five thought. Right.

She pointed down the road again, and mimed stabbing.

'It's a tough place,' Five guessed. She nodded, and gestured with hands, holding them up, and wide, making a spreading gesture.

'And big?'

Freya gave an affirmative nod. Then she pointed directly at Five, wagged her finger no, and then mimed looking up with wide-eyes and open mouth at the buildings.

'Don't be all country boy,' Five said. 'Right.'

Freya shook her head emphatically, and did the wide-eyed look again, but this time mimed with her fingers someone taking things out of her pockets.

Then she looked at him again, pointed to her own eyes, and swivelled her fingers around so that they showed the direction of her gaze, and moved them from side to side.

'Keep an eye out,' Five said. Freya nodded, pointed to her and then him, and put her hands together, palm to palm.

'Um, stay close to you?'

Another emphatic nod. Then Freya put her hands on her legs, stared at the ground for a moment, and looked up at him. She pointed at him, did the talking-mouth gesture with her fingers, then pointed to herself and shook her head, swiping her finger across her throat.

'You want me to speak for you? Because you can't?'

Freya nodded, looking at him oddly, her head tilted slightly.

Five realised after a moment that it wasn't an order; it was a request. She was waiting for a yes or a no.

'Oh,' Five said, 'um, course I will. Glad to help.'

She nodded grimly, leaned over and patted him on the knee. Then she reached for her blanket and started to unroll it.

'How will I know if I've not understood your meaning,' Five said.

She glanced at him, gave a thin smile, held up one hand very stiff, and made a gesture that Five knew meant 'a clip round the ear'.

***

Part 2: The Son of a Good Family

An inn. The Wild.

It wasn't much of an inn. Solveig knew that. But for the middle of nowhere, it would do.

There was just one man running it, a fat man in middle life with a hollow-eyed look, barely able to keep on top of things. Solveig was used to Hargest, where people took pride in keeping the place clean. She had to admit that the room was good and big, and the bed was less crawling than she'd expected.

The other customers were a craggy, cynical swordsman, once handsome but depressed and drunk; a gloomy youth who couldn't hold his beer; a flabby merchant with a loud line in banter, and a pale, heavily-bearded young bookman who kept himself and his books to himself.

Solveig had paid herself up till the full moon, and she spent her days walking the foothills and quietly weeping for her brother, and her evenings sitting near the fire, but not too near because she was clearly a woman, numbing herself with the landlord's surprisingly respectable ale. She would go to bed and sleep dreamlessly and wake with a dry mouth and a bad head and do it all over again.

She had little thought of what she'd do once she'd got herself back in one piece. She had little idea of what it would mean to be in one piece, now that Siegfa was gone.

Somewhere, deep down, she'd always believed that the day would come when it would be the right moment to sit down with him and sayBrother, there is something I must tell you, and confess that she loved only him, but as a brother, nothing more, and that she had no desire to find a husband or be parted from him, but had great plans for the two of them. And she'd believed that he would at last have recognised that she was the wiser one in every respect, and he would have agreed to follow her counsel.

She had never thought that he would get it into his head that sleeping in a bed with him, and sharing a bathtub with him, meant that she wanted to be as his wife, and do all the other stuff too.

And she was obliged to admit that that wasn't a completely unreasonable conclusion, under the circumstances.

God, the shame.

She took her empty mug to the counter and the landlord roused himself from his seat and took it from her and tapped the barrel and handed it back.

Solveig had never much liked ale, but this stuff wasn't bad. She liked what it did to her when she felt that she wanted to die. It enabled her to wallow, delightfully, in her misery, but dissolved the urge to step up and honourably end it.

She knew that this was no life for her, really. She knew that she must straighten up and go out and do something. Apart from anything else, the money she had taken had been only a fraction of their capital, and her room and board had made a large dent in it. There was only a few weeks' worth left.

Whatever things were like at Hargest, she hardly liked to think. Siegfa was dead. Tine was dead. She had gone. It couldn't look good.

If someone had killed Siegfa as brutally as that, they could come for me in my sleep. And I would never wake up.

Sometimes she thought of Freya, and wondered what had really become of her. Had she been left as a corpse outside the village? Had Siegfa really seen what he thought he'd seen?

As time went by, Freya came to seem more and more of... a model? Something to aspire to, perhaps.

Solveig could wield a sword. She had strength, and she could last longer in a spar than Siegfa could, and she was quicker than he was.

She was a woman, which was a major stumbling-block to being accepted. But why couldn't she be a swordsman? What, other than custom, prevented her?

She would brood on this and drink more ale, and then the image of Siegfa would come before her: his beauty, his chivalry, his gentleness, his fierceness.

Why did I not tell him sooner. Why did I not.

Because I feared he would reject me.

As he did.

After a few mugs Solveig would stumble upstairs to bed and lie there and weep and call Siegfa's name.

Then she would sleep, without dream and without rest, until she woke up to another day without him.

One day, she would think, staring at the beams across the ceiling, one day, this must end.

*

Solveig was so preoccupied with her own grief that she failed to notice that most of the men staying at the inn were becoming more and more preoccupied with her.

The merchant's name was Ernold Foder, and he was celebrating a deal he'd brokered to sell a hundredweight of salt pork, sight unseen, to the household of a local baron who'd been desperate for provisions, on account of a long-running feud he'd been conducting with his bigger and richer neighbour. Ernold had turned the deal in such a way that the warlord wouldn't find out until much later that the salt pork he had paid good money for was green and flyblown. By then, Ernold would be leagues away.

The youth was named Gavan Stuke, and he had walked away, for a while, from the house of his father, a wealthy local landowner, on account of being the sixth of six sons, and not seeing any chance of inheriting anything of value any time soon. He'd stolen the spear from a sleeping man-at-arms he'd encountered. Just to be sure that the man wouldn't wake up and chase him, Gavan had also killed the sleeping man with a rock, and was now at once very nervous of being discovered, and also puffed up with the idea that he was a desperate fellow because he'd killed a man. The fact that the dead man had happened to be asleep at the time, made no difference to Gavan's sense of his own bravery.

Ernold Foder noticed the attractive young gentlewoman, and immediately turned on her the full force of his charm, throwing amusing little observations her way, offering her pieces of food, trying to draw her into the conversation after supper. Solveig at first smiled politely at the observations, declined politely the food and soon began to ignore him completely. His demeanour stayed cheery. Ernold had long ago learned to conceal his rage beneath a varnish of manly good cheer.

Gavan looked at the woman from a long way off, and lusted after her.

She had dark, narrow, vaguely foreign eyes and a grave expression, and he could see that she was a ripe one: tall and strong and nubile. Her hips hinted at curves that he could only imagine. She reminded him of the girls his eldest brothers had married, the ones who mostly regarded him as being a stupid clod. He knew that if he tried to say anything to her, she'd look at him like the way they looked at him.

She had no idea that he'd killed a man. He was a serious man. A killer.

But she had no idea.

The mercenary, Owyn Durberry, had once been a man who had managed to combine enterprise and honour.

He'd sold his sword to many lords and had fought bravely and conscientiously, but as peace had taken hold in the land, it had got harder to find work, and he'd become less choosy about who he fought for. And so, in the course of things, he'd become more aware of the contrast between the nasty little jobs he did now, and the more noble causes he'd been paid to fight for in the past.

He saw the young woman, too, and he couldn't convince himself that she was interested in any of them, or would ever be. She was upper-class, on the run from something, but there was more to her than that. Yet he could see her shiny hands were calloused. What was her story? She clearly had one.

There was nothing like having a rich girl. Smooth, clean, usually disease-free. He sat and eyed her and wondered what she would look like naked.

The fourth man, Paul Beckhulder, was a student of the Book, away from his own family.

Like the others, he had not failed to notice the young woman in what appeared to be man's clothes. It was written in the Book that it did not do to pay too much attention to the appearance of women of the word, because they had wiles, and could lure a man from the path of virtue. But that meant nothing to Paul, for he was already promised to another, whom he loved dearly.

He had simply noticed the woman of the word, one guest among the others.

*

This young woman was dressed as a man, which was perplexing. And yet she was, Paul could see, in objective terms an attractive woman, even in her mannish garb; healthy, strongly built, with a sensible, serious look of the kind that, in one of his own people, would have been considered suitable in a woman.

Paul felt no attraction towards the young woman, for she was a woman of the word, and he was a man of the Book. People of the word thought that God could be praised and worshipped by keeping in their frail heads a few trite sayings and childrens' stories. But Paul was a student of the Book, and the Book was to the word as the world is to a child's drawing of the world.

He had been noted early as a studious little boy, and his parents, who were of course both people of the Book, were delighted when their youngest son was accepted as a student. He had been a student of the Book now for fifteen years, and felt confident to give detailed judgments of about forty or fifty of its seven or eight thousand pages. He revered its great commentators: Katav, Ronell, Frechette, Omona, the great Hafzawy. He knew that in about ten more years he would qualify to be examined for the clerkship. In the meantime, study, study, study.

He had gone to this inn with his father's consent, to get away from the noise of home, and his older and younger brothers and sisters. He'd known that at an inn, he could expect to find lone men of the word and no distractions, because they wouldn't want to go bothering a bookman, having no interest in that kind of thing. One day he would be charged with awakening their interest, because the people of the Book wanted everyone to be a person of the Book, because the more people understood the Book, the easier it was for everyone. But for now, he had not the skills for that task, and his job was to learn what it would one day be his job to teach others.