Ranald sat back. ‘I’m going to find the Wyrm of Erch,’ he said. ‘I mean to ask why he allowed us to be attacked by the Wild.’ The drover shrugged. ‘We pay a tithe to the Wyrm in exchange for protection from the Wild. It’s the Law of Erch. Eh? Ancient as the oaks and all.’
The Keeper put his beer down slowly. ‘You mean to
‘Someone has to,’ Ranald said. ‘I might as well; I’m already dead.’
The Keeper shook his head. ‘I have just a dozen horses left. Your cousin took my herd.’
Ranald nodded. ‘I mean to remedy that first, before I go to the Wyrm. Give me twenty men and I’ll bring in the herd. There’s a lot of it left. A thousand head at least.’
‘You are like your cousin,’ the Keeper said. ‘Always a sting in the tail.’
Ranald shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t bother, but Sarah’s boy will need those beasts, if he means to be a drover.’ He didn’t say the other thing that was on his mind. That he was a King’s Man, and he owed the king a warning of the Wild.
That afternoon, with twenty wary men, he rode south.
They rode quickly, spread in pairs over a mile of ground, scouting every hummock and every stand of trees.
They made a cold camp and Ranald ate the oatcakes that Sarah had given him, and when the sun was a red disc on the edge of the world they rode on.
By noon they found the first beasts. The Dalemen were spooked, terrified of the Sossag, and afraid, too, to find corpses grinning at death in the woods, but they were still, by Ranald’s reckoning, miles north of the battleground. The herd had turned and headed home, as animals will do.
Ranald swept south along the road, and before darkness he found the boy that Hector had sent back as a messenger. He was dead, and he’d either been lost or he’d ridden a long way west to get around something. He lay on his face, a cloud of flies around his bloated corpse, and his horse was still standing nearby. The boy had four arrows in him, and it was clear he’d died trying to fulfil his mission. The Dalemen buried him with love and honour and his cousins, two tall, grey-eyed boys, wept for him.
But the next day held the greatest shock.
They were well west of the fight, collecting animals hard against the great Swamp, and Ranald scented a fire and went to scout it himself. It was a foolish risk to take, but he couldn’t bear to be the cause of any more Dalemen’s deaths.
What he found was the drag – twenty of Hector’s men, alive, with a third of the herd. Donald Redmane had led them west, and they had fought three times against scattered Outwaller bands, but they had lived and kept a great deal of the herd together.
Ranald had to tell the story all over again, and Donald Redmane wept. But the rest of the men in the drag swore a great oath to avenge Hector Lachlan.
Donald took Ranald aside. ‘You fought in the south,’ he said. ‘You think Tom is still alive?’
‘Hector’s brother Tom?’ Ranald said. ‘Aye. Unless the red hand of war has taken him, he’ll be alive. On the Continent or in the East, I reckon. Why?’
Donald Redmane’s eyes were red. ‘Because he’s the Drover, now,’ the older man said.
‘He won’t want it,’ Ranald said.
‘He will if it means he can make war,’ Donald pointed out.
The next morning, scouts killed a strange creature – shaped like a man, short like a tall child, with heavily muscled arms and legs like thick ropes and a misshapen head like a man’s but heavier. Ranald had to assume the beast was an irk, a creature somewhere between myth and reality to the men of the hills. Legend said irks, like boglins, came from the deep woods far to the west.
Ranald made camp with the whole band – forty-four men. They had more than twelve hundred head of cattle, and all of the goats. Seventy-five head of horses. Sarah Lachlan would not be a pauper, and the clan was not dead.
Hector Lachlan was gone.
But Lachlan was for Aa.
The Albin River, South of Albinkirk – The Queen
The Queen watched the banks go by and she smiled at a young guildsman with a crossbow who crouched behind the boat’s high sides, watching the banks. In truth, he wasn’t really watching them. He was of an age where he was conscious of nothing but Desiderata a few feet away. His eyes flicked to her over and over.
She watched the banks and smiled inwardly. The rowers chanted, on and on, and the mosquitoes descended on them in swarms unless a breeze rose upriver.
Lady Almspend lay next to her in the bow, a wax tablet open across her lap and a stylus ready to hand. ‘Another letter?’ she asked somewhat languorously.
The Queen shook her head. ‘It’s too hot.’
