Mordraud, Book One (17 page)

“
For love of the Gods! What’s this boy eaten?!”

Mordraud
thought on their dinner of the day before. He’d finished his supplies and had found nothing better than a handful of limp yet familiar mushrooms. His mother had often cooked them for the pair.

“
Mushrooms. Those grey and white ones with a broad cap.”

“
And you?! Did you eat them too?” the man shouted at him, roughly. Everybody near them fell silent and turned around to look at the scene.

“
No... I gave them all to him – there weren’t enough for two...”

“
I bet this is food poisoning! LAROIS!” yelled the butcher. “Where are you?! LAROIS!”

“
What is it, Brenno? What’s happened?!” asked a farmer who’d come closer, with a wooden mug full of wine in his hand. “Who are these two urchins?”

“
And how should I know?! They just appeared. The youngest is half-dead!” retorted the butcher, whose name must have been Brenno.

“
Is he really that ill?” whimpered Mordraud in despair, cursing himself for his dumb idea of the mushrooms.

“
Ill?! If he’s not given something quick, he’ll be gone before evening!”

Mordraud
staggered, stunned. Out of the small crowd that had gathered emerged a short stout middle-aged woman with her cheeks on fire from a couple of glasses too many. Her hair was like shaggy grey wool.

“
I’m coming, Brenno. What is it you’ve got to bawl about?” she burst out in alarm. “And who are these two children? Are they some farmer’s kids? I’ve never seen them before.”

“
I don’t know, I don’t know!” the man repeated, shaking Gwern like a sack. “But come and look here! The younger one’s in a really bad way!”

“
And what’s he done? Put him down! You’re a heavy-handed brute!” the woman cried, taking Gwern into her arms at once. She used nimble and expert fingers to touch his forehead and neck, she lifted an eyelid and she felt his stomach.

“
It’s swollen and he’s moaning. What’s he eaten?”

“
Mushrooms. Perhaps Madman’s Cap,” replied the butcher.

“
Oh no! We need some hot water, some wild fennel and a handful of linseed... Go on, quick about it!”

All the
men and women at the small improvised market set about acting on her instructions. Mordraud waited next to his languishing brother, in silence. He teetered there, unable to answer Larois’s questions.

“
Where are you from? Where are your parents?”

“
Are you refugees? Did they attack you on the road to the North?”

“
Tell me, my boy! Does your brother suffer from any serious illness?”

Mordraud
merely managed to nod: he was too distraught to think up some sort of plausible excuse. He certainly couldn’t say his mother was an Aelian, his father was dead, and The Stranger had taken his place.

“
For love of the Gods, can’t you see your brother’s in a terrible state? Come on, snap out of it!” the woman yelled in his face, slapping him hard enough to make him sway. “What were you running from? Where were you going?”

“
We’re... we’re on our way to Eld,” stammered Mordraud, staring at her with vacant eyes. His left arm was shaking pitifully.

“
Is somebody waiting for you there?”

“
No, we’re... we’re...”

The first ingredients were brought
, and Larois began mixing the linseed with the boiling water at once, working them directly with her hand. Her skin was red and as tough as old hide.

“
Are you alone?”

“
Yes.”

Gwern
groaned and writhed as if someone were raking through his guts with blades. Larois stripped him down to his abdomen, and spread on it a layer of crushed and squeezed hot linseed, and used the remaining water to pulp the fennel between her fingers. Mordraud missed the rest. The woman moved too quickly for his distracted eyes. Larois made a pungent paste, which she applied inside the child’s nostrils and on his tongue.

“
My son too nearly died once because of a fistful of mushrooms picked in the wrong place...”

Mordraud
began breathing again only when he felt his arm was no longer trembling, and he saw Gwern’s expression relax. The old lady’s remedy seemed to work.

“
And he’s okay now?!”

“
Yes, he is for the time being, but he still needs a couple of brews I know, just to be sure. I’ll make them now – I should have the stuff on my cart.”

“
But... could he really have died?”

Larois
awkwardly brushed Mordraud’s shoulder with her hand, halfway between a caress and stroking a dog. “No, usually they spend days on the toilet, but don’t die. Be more careful next time: Madman’s Cap looks very similar to a field mushroom. But your brother seems feeble. Is he ill?”

“
No, I mean... yes... but since he was born,” Mordraud replied, reacting to her unfamiliar hand with goose bumps. “He’s always been really weak.”

“
And why are you dragging him around the woods? Don’t you have a home?”

“
No!” he burst out vehemently. “No, now we don’t.”

“
I see...” the woman murmured. “And you wanted to get to Eld, is that right? Why?”

The butcher who
’d been the first to help Gwern cursed in a string of atrociously plausible obscenities.

“
War orphans – it’s always the same story! Damn Cambria! That bunch of bastardly swine!”

“
I was hoping to find work in the fief. I’m able-bodied and I’m ready for any task...” replied Mordraud, trying to make himself heard over Brenno’s torrent of abuse.

“
Well then, I’ll take you to Eld. I live there and I’ve got a cart. Perhaps... there might be a job for you. Are you really ready for anything?”

Mordraud
pulled himself up straight and tried to seem confident. The woman laughed and nodded in conviction. A hint of involuntary affection lit up her eyes.

“
Yes...” Larois exclaimed, chuckling. “I think you can be of help, to the fief and to the rebels.”

Mordraud
felt a lurch of joy rise inside. Perhaps he was moving closer to his goal. He was already on his way to Eld and its army. And the war would bring money, respect, and many other occasions for venting his rage.

The tremble in his arm gave a somewhat worrying last shudder, and then faded entirely.

***

Travelling in a cart was fun. The wheels
turned, grating on the dirt track; the barrels creaked, rocking in the open back. Gwern was feeling much better after Larois’s treatment, perhaps even better than before the little episode. His sleep had returned regular and deep, to the point that Mordraud even slightly envied him. He’d been suffering from insomnia for years – an insidious ailment that never left him in peace, not even when he was utterly exhausted. The valley slipped away behind them. The road curved back to heading south. At night they slept in the uncovered cart, hiding it among the first trees they came across.

“
How long to go?”

“
It’s not far now. We might see the town walls before evening.”

“
Are we that close?!” Mordraud burst out in surprise. He was seated next to Larois while Gwern slept on a bag of onions in the rear. It was halfway through the third day’s journeying. “I thought that the valley was further away... There seems to be no war here.”

“
And why’s that, do you reckon?”

The question threw him completely. He actually knew very little about the
war, and all his information had filtered through his father, when they still spoke to each other. Cavalry charges, thickets of clashing spears and swords, lethal clouds of arrows. But nothing about what happened among ordinary folk.

“
Perhaps Cambria’s focusing on other areas... Or it’s not interested in this tiny scarcely populated valley.”

“
I see you were born in the woods, my boy,” chuckled Larois, bitterly. “It’s thanks to Eldain that the Empire still hasn’t managed to get it hands on this tiny valley, as you call it. The fighting west of here is among the front’s most violent.”

“
Why?! Why should that be?”

“
What questions you ask! Even a simple woman like me can understand certain things!”

Mordraud
reddened, but didn’t give up. He’d have to start somewhere if he wanted to learn.

“
If the Imperial Army succeeded in penetrating the valley, it would be protected on the north and south by the hills. It wouldn’t be long before it could attack the fiefdoms beyond Eld – members of the rebels’ Alliance. It would be the end, an immediate and hopeless end!”

“
Yes, I hadn’t thought of that...” he muttered, enticed by the strategic reasoning. “So the valley’s essential for Eld, like all the area’s other natural barriers! Of course! I was silly not to work it out for myself...”

“
You shouldn’t speak about the war like that. It’s a horrible topic for a child.”

“
But... why?!”

“
You smile as you think about natural defences, barriers, strategies... But heaps of people die carrying out those plans, did you know?” Larois broke out, shaking her head with chagrin. “You remind me of my son, when he listened to talk of warriors and battles...”

“
Have you got a son?”

“
I had one.”

“
And what happened?” Mordraud asked, without stopping to think.

“
He died in battle.”

“
Ah...” was the only word he could manage.

“
His father decided to follow him in the war, when Eldain called up all the fiefdoms’ men to defend a crumbling border. Just think, it was right here in the west. Ten years have passed since then. He wasn’t much older than you – even his helmet was too big, and wobbled on his head, like a soup bowl...”

“
And his father?” Mordraud inquired.

“
He died too.”

“
That’s awful, I’m sorry...”

“
What for?!” Larois blurted out.

“
But... well...”

“
He was asking for it, that fool Nardic. At least he died before he could see my little Nardo fall... Just think, I’d even accepted his stupid fixation for that name... He insisted his son’s name should show his family’s roots, just like the nobility, like Eldain! What an idiot.”

“
But wasn’t he... your husband?!” Mordraud asked in amazement.

“
Yep, but he was an idiot too. Nardo followed him like an idol. And so they died together.”

“
Near here?”

“
Yes, in defending the entrance to the valley. At least they managed it. This wretched war of grief.”

“
But it’s right for Eldain to stand up to Cambria...”

“
Right my foot! Right and wrong are complex, hazy concepts...” Larois declared, banging her hand on the cart’s planking. Gwern turned over, chewing thin air.

“
What is it, brother?”

“
Nothing. Go back to your sleep. We’re nearly there. Very nearly.”

“
Wonderful...” he murmured, shifting on the makeshift mattress.

“
Eldain’s trying to defend our lands – I should be grateful. Yet I find it very hard.”

Mordraud
fidgeted in his place, excited at the idea that he’d gladly throw himself into the fray, and as soon as possible. He’d despised the war as a child, since it was the cause of his father’s absence. Before the thumpings and the beatings.

Before that accursed tremor in his arm.

His brother was making a good career for himself, after deserting them. In Cambria – the city strangling the entire East with its endless war. Was Larois right? Mordraud shut out the doubt without hesitation. It was easy to believe in the simple convictions he’d firmly erected around himself. He could do little else than maul and claw – like an animal taunted by its owner – to vent the anger eroding him. The culprits had to die. His father had been the first. Dunwich would be the next.

“
... Are you listening to me?!”

Larois
’s voice brought him back to reality. Mordraud looked around, bewildered, attempting to remember where he was.

“
I said we’ll soon be stopping up. I need to stretch my stiff back – I can’t hold out any more.”

“
But what work have you got for my brother and me?”