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  Using the branches on the curved side of the trunk as a ladder, I climbed down to join her. She was already sitting up.

  ‘No bones broken, I think,’ she said, and to prove it she put out her arms for Lucien.

  We had crossed the ravine safely, but Tamlyn was still on the other side. The savage strike of steel against steel unnerved us. The men seemed to be taking on Tamlyn one at a time, for only a single opponent had fought his way onto the trunk, putting himself on equal footing. The flash of sunlight along his blade frightened me. One slip by Tamlyn and that steel would gouge deeply into his flesh. As soon as he faltered, the others would rush in like wolves, scrambling onto the log to finish him. It was too awful to think about.

  I took Lucien back into one arm and used the other to support Nerigold as she struggled away from the tree that had let us escape. We stopped a little back from the ravine and turned to watch the battle. I saw that, slowly, Tamlyn was getting the better of his opponent. Twice he came close to forcing the other man off the trunk. Then, victory. A savage slash from Tamlyn’s sword caught the other’s a perfect blow on the flat of the blade and, with a snap that could be heard on the mountain tops, I was sure, it broke in two. The tip flew to the side and it was all the desperate man could do to use the shortened stump still in his hand to deflect more of Tamlyn’s savage attack until he’d fallen back to earth.

  In going after him for one final swipe, Tamlyn caught his boot on the curled edge of some dead bark and, before he could regain his balance, he also fell from the log. He landed on his feet, but the brief pause had allowed the man he’d already defeated to grab a sword from one of his companions and he took up the fight again.

  Driven away from the trunk, Tamlyn couldn’t stop the other four from clambering onto the makeshift bridge. Before I’d realised what was happening, they were swinging through the branches as Nerigold and I had done, only at ten times the speed.

  ‘We should have been on the move all this time,’ I cursed.

  We began to run, with me pulling Nerigold behind me. I turned my head to see how far the men had come and noticed movement at the far end of the trunk as well. Tamlyn had pushed his opponent aside long enough to jump onto the bridge. He was hurrying after the pursuers, one man chasing four, with the fifth not done yet, either. Tamlyn had enemies in his face and at his back. Who could survive against such odds?

  Tamlyn knew the danger better than me, and what he did as I watched, horrified, will haunt my dreams for the rest of my life.

  When he reached the centre of the fallen tree, he saw that he wouldn’t catch the men ahead before they jumped free on the other side. He stopped, turned to the side and planted his feet firmly on the trunk, a single pace apart. Then he raised his sword in both hands above his head, holding it there for a moment, his eyes staring upwards in the deepest concentration. When he lowered his head again, the sword came too, swinging downwards so quickly I barely saw the blade cut through the air. The deep, sonorous thump of steel cutting into wood echoed around the ravine below him and, to my utter amazement, the sword sliced right through.

  How? How could he do such a thing?

  The massive tree buckled where Tamlyn was standing and I could only scream for the second time that morning as both halves plummeted into the ravine, taking my Tamlyn to his death in the river below.

  10

  The Secrets of Dead Men

  My scream ended when I had no more breath to howl from my lungs. Its echo resounded from the trees across the gap and from the ravine itself for long seconds, then lost itself in the vast openness of the country behind us. Afterwards, and much too quickly, the ravine fell silent. That’s how fast a life can end, in the time it took Silvermay Hawker to empty herself of all hope, of all dreams, of all care.

  But hope wouldn’t die so quickly, I found. I passed Lucien to his mother and hurried to the cliff’s edge. One half of the tree had speared down through the water and lodged in the river bed, although it wouldn’t stay like that for long. The river foamed white where it surged against the trunk, showing how fast the current was, and already the impaled trunk was starting to topple.

  I took this in without really looking at it. My eyes searched for smaller things, and it took only a few moments to find the first. A man’s body floated face down, with arms spread wide as though he was staring in calm fascination at the river bed. It wasn’t long before I saw another, this one bent and broken by the weight of branches, which must have fallen on top of him. Horrible. I could tell from the clothes that neither of the corpses was Tamlyn.

  I scoured the water’s surface for him, not face down or mutilated but stroking his way to shore or, better still, looking up to wave at me.

  I was fooling myself. No man could survive such a fall, even if he avoided the mighty weight of the tree as it crashed into the water along with him. I was searching for a body, of course I was, but until I saw one dressed in dark britches and vest over a white shirt, I wouldn’t believe he was dead.

  With this in mind I began to follow the ravine downstream. The other half of the tree kept pace with me, floating lengthways and bobbing above and below the surface like a gigantic children’s toy. When it rolled awkwardly to the left, a third body caught my eye, draped like a piece of flotsam across one of the shattered boughs. But that wasn’t Tamlyn, either.

  If the tree trunk was being forced downstream, surely a man’s body, so much slighter, would go with it. Was he trapped underneath? I followed the edge of the cliff, careful not to step too close, until I’d walked a hundred yards or more.

  If I’d gone any further, I’d have missed Nerigold’s scream. As it was, I mistook it for the screech of a hawk, and I looked up, expecting to see the bird in the sky behind me. What I did see had me running even before my legs knew to begin.

  A man had hold of Nerigold — or was it she who had hold of him? How did she find the strength to fight him like that? She was a tiger, but a tiger in a frail woman’s body, and the man managed to push her aside. He seemed more interested in Lucien, and I realised that was what gave Nerigold the strength to hold him back. As I ran, forcing myself on as fast as the rough ground would let me, she went at him again. He threw her off more easily this time and drew his sword.

  I was still too far away to lunge at his sword arm. He would see me coming and hack me to pieces, then kill Nerigold. Unless …

  I stopped and dropped to one knee. The bow was already in my hands, an arrow fitted to the string without even a glance from my eyes to guide it. Before I had time to worry about injuring Nerigold instead, I pulled the feathers back to my cheek and released the bowstring.

  Arrows make a peculiar music as they fly, one much the same as the other, but the sound they make when they strike is never the same, some coming to rest with a loud thump, others with the softest whisper, like a breath taken in too sharply. I wonder, does their target hear any sound at all, or is the shock of pain all the mind knows from the moment of impact?

  My arrow sliced high into the man’s ribs. The sword dropped immediately from his hand, his arm falling limp by his side. He crumpled to the ground, the shaft protruding grotesquely from his torso, but, as I sped across the remaining distance, he raised himself onto hands and knees, determined to stand, to fight on.

  Nerigold screamed again and, snatching up Lucien, backed out of reach.

  Then I was beside the man and put him on his back with a kick at his hips. I could see in his eyes that he wasn’t finished yet, though. His sword was still close by and I picked it up before he could lunge for it. When he saw me with it in my hands, he lay still at last, his eyes ablaze with fear and fury.

  ‘I’m not going to finish you off,’ I said harshly. ‘You’ll bleed to death soon enough.’

  With that, I tossed the sword as far away as my strength allowed. All the same, I kept my eyes on him while I asked, ‘Are you all right, Nerigold?’

  ‘Yes, a little shaky and sore,’ she said. ‘He was trying to get at Lucien. I
had to stop him.’

  She found a grassy place to sit and settled herself with the baby clutched to her chest. He was asleep, I noticed, despite the shrieking of his mother’s struggle. He’d come close to losing both parents in the same day and his own life as well, yet there was such peace in his face.

  I stared down at the man, staying far enough away that he couldn’t grab my ankle. He was raggedly dressed and the stink of his clothes and the body inside them made my nose wrinkle. Then I saw the arrow in his chest. It occurred to me for the first time that I had put it there, and when he died, as he surely would, then I would have killed a man. I’d killed many animals and always with a sense of triumph. They were game, to be cooked and eaten by my family, which was just how it should be. But killing another human being was different. There was no triumph, but no regret, either, because I’d had to do it, to save Nerigold and Lucien. No, what I felt most was the horror of what I’d had to do, made all the worse because I was so close to him now.

  ‘Are you in pain?’ I asked stupidly.

  ‘No, girl, I’m ready to dance a jig,’ he sneered at me. His real answer was the grimace of agony that accompanied his mocking defiance.

  At least his foul humour reminded me of what he was. He might even have something useful to tell me. If he’d managed to stay alive, maybe Tamlyn had as well.

  ‘How did you survive the fall into the ravine?’ I asked.

  ‘I didn’t. I’d almost reached this side when the tree slipped from under me. I jumped for my life and caught hold of a ledge just below the top.’

  So there was no hope for Tamlyn, after all.

  The dying man didn’t know why I’d asked. He laughed bitterly to himself and said, ‘All I’ve done is trade a quick death for a slow one, thanks to you.’ He grimaced again and fought to swallow, but I felt little pity for him.

  ‘You were going to kill Nerigold.’

  ‘And I’d have killed you, too,’ he said, determined to stay brutal to the end.

  ‘Why were you chasing us? What have Tamlyn and Nerigold done to make you want to kill them?’

  This brought another grim laugh. ‘Tamlyn! We didn’t even know he was with the girl until we saw him on the butt end of that tree.’

  I remembered the way they had all stared at Tamlyn in real surprise. Lord Tamlyn, they’d called him. I looked across at Nerigold, who was surely listening, but she stared down at the baby and said nothing. I would ask her about Tamlyn when this man was dead. He couldn’t have long and I had more questions for him.

  ‘Who sent you to kill them?’

  The man stayed silent, although his eyes betrayed the same fear I’d seen briefly when I’d handled his sword. This was what kept him quiet. Whoever had sent the men, no matter how many miles away he remained, this scoundrel was afraid to utter his name, even in his final minutes.

  He was fading, his breathing more laboured and his mouth edged by the white spittle of thirst. Cautiously, in case he grabbed at my wrist, I untied the flask that hung from his belt and held it out to him. He tried to raise his right hand, but the arrow was buried in that side and the pain too great. I held it towards his left, only to hear him snort as though this was a fine joke. He showed me a hand with every finger missing.

  ‘A souvenir of war,’ he said dryly.

  I dropped to my knees and held the flask to his lips while he drank greedily.

  ‘Kindness for a murderer,’ he said afterwards, mocking me.

  ‘Are you such a fiend that you’d kill a baby?’

  ‘Kill him? No, it was the baby we were after. And alive, too, or there’d be no pay for us.’

  ‘Who would have paid you?’ I asked.

  It was the same question he’d refused to answer only minutes before. This time, though, he wasn’t so defiant.

  ‘I’m dying, aren’t I? I won’t leave this field alive.’

  I was surprised he’d lasted this long. ‘I’d save you if there was anything I could do. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I thought as much,’ he said with resignation and rolled his head to look up at the sky. ‘Soon to be a dead man, like the many I’ve killed for whatever master would pay me.’ He thought for a few seconds more. ‘The Wyrdborn can’t touch a man once he’s dead, can they? Not even the worst of them?’ He wasn’t asking me, but the sky.

  Now he turned his head and said, ‘I’ll tell you his name. It’s Coyle, the king’s own Wyrdborn. That’s who wants the baby.’

  ‘Why? What’s so special about him to this Coyle?’

  Pain shuddered through the dying man’s body. Tears of self-pity dribbled from his eyes and I saw a little of his forsaken humanity rise to the surface at the very moment his life was slipping away.

  ‘Thank you for your kindness, girl. I wish I could … repay you with more, but … I don’t know why Coyle …’

  His life ended there, in mid-sentence, with his eyes still holding mine. I had to look away quickly as soon as I saw the glaze of death in his sudden stillness.

  But, despite the death that had just taken place before me, I did get an answer to my question.

  ‘Because he wants his son.’

  The voice hadn’t come from the dead man’s ghost. It came from behind me. I twisted round quickly to look at Nerigold, who sat with the baby still asleep in her arms. Her eyes remained fixed on Lucien and she wouldn’t tell me any more. Instead she rocked her baby gently, saying, ‘I won’t give you up. He will never have you.’

  I asked her what she meant, but when she’d ignored me for a third time I turned my attention back to the dead rogue’s body.

  Feeling callous, I pulled out the arrow that had killed him; a gruesome task I was tempted to skip, but we couldn’t afford to waste a single one, especially now we were alone and must fend for ourselves. Where it had penetrated his body, the shaft was smeared with blood and, as I cleaned it off on a tuft of grass, I was suddenly overwhelmed by what I’d done. I’d killed a man.

  I began to shiver at the horror of what I had done.

  To escape the misery, I made pictures in my mind of Haywode, of Birdie rousing me out of bed when I slept too late. How I’d resented those times, and oh, how I wished I could be back in my home now, resenting nothing more than my mother’s voice. I hated Nerigold and Lucien at that moment. I wished I’d stayed behind and let them take their chances alone instead of getting mixed up in whatever danger they’d brought on themselves.

  The fury inside me was so intense it’s a wonder I didn’t march off across the meadow right then without a glance over my shoulder. But I didn’t, and slowly my trembling died away.

  Neither of us was keen to remain beside the corpse. I helped Nerigold to her feet and, after walking only a short way, found a patch of lush grass and settled her as comfortably as I could. I stayed on my feet to look around in case another of our pursuers had survived. Then I thought of the three bodies I’d already counted. The fourth would be down there in the ravine, along with Tamlyn.

  ‘He’s dead,’ I said and, despite all my efforts not to, I began to weep.

  ‘He would have killed us both,’ said Nerigold.

  I stared at her. What was she talking about? And then it came to me. She thought I meant her nameless attacker. The confusion seemed a terrible mockery of Tamlyn’s sacrifice. Desperate sobs shook me and my legs collapsed as though they had died along with him. I found myself sitting on the grassy ground beside Nerigold, who rocked back and forth, holding Lucien to her chest as she wept as well. It was the baby who comforted the mother this time, even if he had no idea that he was doing it. She said nothing, made no sound, because she simply didn’t have the strength. Instead, her misery ran like rain down her cheeks, and as I repeated those terrible words, ‘He’s dead, he’s dead,’ she nodded and fell against me, her head in the crook of my shoulder. We stayed like that, crying until we were soaked with each other’s tears.

  Lucien was hungry, and let his mother know without the least regard for her grief. Nerigold and I looked a
t one another, resenting his insistent cries, wanting him, just this once, to be patient for a few minutes longer. But a little baby doesn’t know what’s happening in the world around him. He can’t understand that a man has just given his own life so that he may go on living. A baby knows only that his stomach is empty and he wants his mother to fill it.

  Perhaps it was a relief for Nerigold to have something so routine to do when all reason for doing anything seemed gone. Her son must survive; he must grow up to make good use of this sacrifice.

  We stayed in the field all afternoon, unwilling to leave the place where we’d last seen Tamlyn. After Lucien had been fed yet again, Nerigold could do no more than lie on her side in exhaustion. I placed the baby beside her and lay down myself, sheltering his other side, though in truth his mother needed to preserve her body’s heat more than he did.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Nerigold asked.

  I’d been thinking about that all afternoon.

  ‘Tamlyn was trying to reach Nan Tocha,’ I reminded her, ‘but that’s impossible now. At least no one is chasing us any more, not until this man, Coyle, discovers what’s happened. We can go back to Haywode and hope they don’t come looking for you a second time.’

  ‘Only if we can find a way across the ravine,’ said Nerigold, showing that her mind was still agile even if her body was spent.

  ‘It’s the river we have to cross and, further down, the ground might slope down to its banks,’ I replied.

  ‘So there’s hope,’ she said wearily.

  I knew why she’d used such a tone. It didn’t seem right to sound hopeful when Tamlyn had been dead for only a few hours.

  ‘Hope, yes, but we have nothing to eat and it might be days before we can get across. With nothing for yourself, you won’t be able to feed Lucien.’