The Returning (13 page)

C
AM SAT UNDER a red evening sky, in a choir of crickets. He remembered being small, running over the grass laughing as he stamped on the insects and silenced them, only to have them start up their chirruping again from somewhere else. The red of sunset made him think of blood.
“Phhht.”
He spat into the fire.

Travel as he would, the beast inside him hungered. Spring was wearing to its halfway mark and here he was still within all but hailing distance of home. He had ridden from Castle Cross to the Port, then down the coast to Isychmouth, inland as far as Apstead, north again, circling Kayforl. It was as if an invisible rope tied him to the place, pulling him back if he strayed too far.

Something moved at the corner of his eye, red and flashing. He spun about. Spooked, he told himself, by the setting sun. He looked into the impenetrable dark under the trees but saw no red-clad ghosts.

Cam made a story in his head, the same story again and again, of how it would be when he got to Dorn-Lannet.
Free
, the Lord would say.
Make yourself free
. He closed his eyes.

The brush rustled again, over the noise of the fire and the deafness of sleep, bringing him to his feet.

It was a man, thin and unshaven and smelling, wearing only a tunic and trews, no shirt, no boots, a big butcher's knife in his hand, and looking hungry enough to carve Cam up and eat him.

Cam had not seen bandits this far south before. Was he Up- or Downlander? Cam could not tell, and thought,
I am losing my mind, that I think this, here and now
.

The man lurched forward and thrust with the knife, clumsy. Cam slowly held his arm wide.

“No fight,” he said. “I do not want to fight you.”

The bandit had already lowered the knife, a scornful relief passing across his face. Cam wondered,
Because I do not fight him, or because I do have one arm?
And in the moment the bandit was off guard, Cam drew his sword, marked the point where he would strike the bandit's life from him, and remembered . . .

 

. . . WHEN LAYNE GORLANCE had found the body, westward of the estuary.

“Hey!” called Layne. “Quick! Come here!”

They filed down a notch in the creek bank.

“Here. Here.” And he dragged them down to where the water ran a narrow course through a wide and rocky bed. On the stones lay a body.

“There's gold.” Layne stepped wide around the corpse and had to lean forward almost to falling to catch up a beringed hand. He dropped it at once. “Alive!”

Bailey Nelsan toed the body. It, he, curled on himself, just a little, but enough.

All four hesitated. Then, “Come on,” said Layne and among them they rolled him onto his back, and they stripped him. Of his leather jerkin and sword-belt, his filthy trews and shirt, and of course the rings he wore on both hands.

“Why do we take this stuff?” asked Cam.

“Because,” said Bailey.

“But to do what with it?”

“Keep it, sell it.” Layne tossed a ring in the air and watched it spin a golden are, caught it.

“It's war. That's why.” Acton Mansto's da always spoke softly, but people always heard what he had to say.

Standing back from the Uplander, they all looked at one another.

“Boy.”

Now they all looked at him, Cam, though it was Layne who had spoken.

“How many notches you got on that stick?”

Cam hesitated, then, pulling it from his belt, he showed it to them: a length of smooth white driftwood.

“I do think it's time. You've fought through the Battle of the Ford, yet you've not one Uplander to your name.”

Just then the wounded Uplander spoke, lifting his head from the stones of the river.

“What does he say?” said Da Mansto.

Cam twisted the stick in his hands. “H-he asks for life. He has a wife and many children.”

Bailey roughed his hair. “How do you get it, that gab they chutter at each other!”

Cam spread his hands. “I just know.” Though he had made the Northerner's words up.

“Some people are like that with tongues. They take to them.” Layne looked straight at Cam. “Boy,” he said again.

Cam took his bow from his shoulder. He held the arrow firm on the string, and the head was rock-steady and pointing to the man's heart, and—

“I can't.” He said it, but then he loosed, the bowstring singing, and the arrow hit with a hard dull smack. The man screamed, screamed before the arrow struck, the scream cut off with his life. Cam's hands trembled, sending the sunlight in running shivers up and down the polished wood of the bow.

Slinging his bow over his shoulder he fled with the others, tears blinding him. Death was a closed door, and he could never open it for the man lying on those gray stones. As he ran, something dug into his waist. Cam pulled out the tally stick, nearly dropping it in horror, then hurled it away, as hard and as far as he could.

 

NO, CAM THOUGHT. It had been farther back, near the beginning of that spring, the very beginning of his war. The roadside was in flower, the soil dark and rich. Trees bore their early spring colors of bright, light green. The road was a line, pulling them north. Winding along the Highway from Kayforl, Cam had bounced with every step, the bite of freshness in the air filling as food.

“Why did you come?” he asked the other Kayforliers.

“For glory!” Layne Gorlance was teasing him.

“Aye,” said Brae Farmer, more seriously.

Brae's younger brother, Oda, laughed. “If not for glory, then what?”

Da Mansto was silent, but he was often silent.

Layne flicked at the sling, which was the only weapon Cam had at that point. “What about you, Cam-my-lad?”

“I have never been farther from home than Isych, to the market.”

“You'll be a way farther yet before you come back,” said Oda Farmer.

Cam turned and, walking backward, looked at Kayforl. The hillocks poked up, low and squat, skirted with terraces, the cottages with their deep, hanging eaves like warts atop them. Road and river ran round and about them.

It took them a month to reach Dorn-Lannet, the army growing all the way there, fed with new men from every village they passed through.

Pelister Garaman, who was Lord of Dorn-Lannet back then, came out from his castle and spoke fine words.

“This is a fight for our families, our land, our way of life.” He raised his mailed fist and the army of Downlander villagers cheered.

Lord Garaman's force marched north to meet the Uplanders pressing south. The tramping of the army's feet raised a dust that coated the grasses and flowers all along the Highway. That tramping was a beat as regular as Cam's heartbeat and loud enough to drown out wind and birdsong. When they halted of an evening, the absence of it rang in his ears.

The army marched-halted-marched, taking by force what supplies they could not beg or borrow or barter from holdings, stripping bare those properties forsaken for fear of the Uplanders, foraging . . . a great ravening beast, barely held in check by Lord Garaman. Brae Farmer taught Cam how to use a bow—on rabbits and birds, not on Uplanders, for they saw none.

“He's a natural,” Brae said after every practice they had.

Word came that the Uplanders' Lord Ryuu was headed toward the Ald River. There was talk that both armies raced to hold the Ford, for this was the only place the Uplanders could cross the river and continue south.

“That is where we head,” Bailey told them. He always knew what was going on.

As they tramped north, the buildings grew squarer. They huddled together, leeward of the hillocks. It was strange, Cam thought as the army moved onward, how his understanding of north and south had changed. Dorn-Lannet had been at the northern rim of his world. Now it was south—

Up the line was a ruckus, being kicked up by a man very like to Da in age and dress. “I've enough of traipsing the countryside. I do have a crop to bring in and my little ones at home.” He was walking past them all, heading south, two mounted soldiers trotting leisurely after him. He did not try to run or evade them, just kept walking, until they corraled him, one soldier setting his mount before him, the other behind. The soldier behind took a rope and, without dismounting, tossed it over a sturdy branch of a tree. The other swung down from his saddle and took the rope's other end. He had to fight the farmer somewhat to get the noose about his neck, the man shouting, “It is not my war! My daughters!”

Cam turned to Da Mansto. “What do they . . . ?”

“Hush.” Da Mansto touched Cam's shoulder:
Be still
.

The man was hauled up and the army made to watch him die. And when he was dead, they marched again, one and two, and one, and two, drenched, beaten and chilled by the mid-spring rains, unremitting this year, until they reached the river.

 

THEY DID NOT reach the Ford itself; could not, for the river was flooded. The wetlands and marsh about it had become part of the river, the plains beyond them inundated.

The army camped. More than a mile distant, all that showed of the enemy was the fug of smoke from their fires, pressed close to the ground by the rain.

With the end of spring came the end of the rain, and the floodwaters retreated, leaving a bog behind. Brae, who was never cast down, not by rain, or hunger, or blistered feet, badgered them. “While Lord Garaman plans his strategy, let's see what hunting we can find by the river.”

Da Mansto stayed to mind the camp. Layne, Oda, and Bailey foraged downstream, and Brae took Cam with him, upstream and inland.

“To the east, there are ruins of a keep, like Dorn-Lannet. It is still called Aldamar.” Brae pointed back behind them. Farther downstream the river became an estuary, and where freshwater met salt was the Ford. Here the river was swampy, with sandy islets grown over with scrub and titrees covered in bird droppings, though not a single bird was now to be seen.

“Someone's been here before us,” Brae went on. “Did eat them all already. Let's see what we can find.”

They walked through banks of scrub, hearing the tide roll in from the east, but unable to see it through the curtain the trees made. Cam thought the soil poor here, dry and sandy, for all the recent rain. If this was what the land was like to the north, he could see why the Uplanders cast such greedy eyes on the south.

Something pale caught at the edge of his sight, a length of driftwood, bleached to cream by sun and water.

“Make a good tally stick, that.” Brae patted the stick he kept in his belt, ready to notch, one for each Uplander he would kill.

Cam copied him, thrust the stick through his belt. Hungry, they pressed farther into the marsh, searching for game. Cam begged Brae to lend him his bow, begged and badgered until Brae handed it over: “Do you just take it!” He stretched out on the damp ground, under a low tree. “I'll rest my eyes, as I've no work to do, ha!”

Delighted and terrified, Cam stalked alone into the marsh. He finally started a waterfowl; it was taking flight when his arrow struck it. Cam watched it plummet to the ground amidst scrappy bush and marked the spot. He struggled through the scrub, coming on a clearing. In the clearing was a man, and he was, beyond any question, an Uplander.

Too frightened to run, Cam raised his bow. He aimed for the crest, gold on red armor above a beating Uplander heart, right hand drawn back to his ear holding the bowstring taut, though his hands shook.
First notch!
he thought, then met the eyes of his target.

Flinching, he eased back on the bow, letting it droop. More than a boy, not quite a man, the Uplander stared at Cam, and in his face was not fear, the natural fear of death or pain, of meeting an enemy. It was joy, bright and brilliant, that lit the dark eyes, the drab swamp, Cam's unending march north before it—and then, like a candle being blown out, it was extinguished. He said a single word and bowed. Not sure why he did so, Cam too bent his head. Slowly the Uplander turned his back to Cam, a gesture of trust. Cam lifted the bow, but could not, would not draw. He watched scrub settle after the Uplander vanished into it; watched the rain drip from the arrowhead.

“What did you find?” Brae asked, when Cam went back to him.

Cam laid the fowl down.

“That'll go far, a bite apiece.”

“Aye, well,” said Cam. “Like you said, the place is hunted out.”

 

BRAE DIED IN the Battle for the Ford and they left him, full of arrows, as they retreated before the Uplander army.

“Whose crest is this?” Cam traced it in the dirt, three interlocking circles.

Da Mansto laughed and Layne ruffled his hair. “You do have a funny way about you, lad.”