‘I must go.’ The words brushed Berren’s ear like perfumed silk. He let his eyes watch her as she dressed and then he called her to him and ran his hands over her skin once more. His fingers lingered over the scars on her back.
‘I should never have done that to you,’ he whispered. ‘I’m sorry. I had no choice.’ And he felt Tasahre’s memory turn and walk away, sad and shaking her head. There is always a choice, Berren. Always a choice. And she was right. Don’t look to ease the harm, Berren. Look to do good. There is a difference.
‘You weren’t the one who made me a bonds-maid.’ Fasha closed her eyes. ‘And I thought you were a warlock’s boy. I knew what would come of what I did.’
He dressed. As he did, he caught a glimpse of something that lay under the bed, something that glittered in the candlelight. He reached for it and his fingers closed around something small and made of glass. He heard Fasha gasp and then he held what he’d found up in front of his face, a small vial. Another like the ones from Deephaven, with tiny words carefully etched into the glass, like the one he’d seen again in Tethis from the soap-maker’s house: The blood of the Funeral Tree, only this was one of the others. His heart beat faster.
Let them drink this and fall asleep. Whisper a name three times in their ear, so that name may become the object of their obsessions and desires.
Berren almost dropped it. ‘What? What is this?’ He stared at it and then at Fasha. She looked horrified.
‘I. . I. . I did not. .’
‘You tricked me! You ensorcelled me! And you call me the warlock’s boy!’
‘No!’ she cried. ‘No, I did not! Look!’ She lunged and grabbed Berren’s hand, forcing the vial up close to his face. ‘See! It’s full! My mistress. . she gave it to me, yes, and I could hardly refuse it to her face. But I didn’t use it! I would not. And you agreed to help, freely. Please!’ She clutched at him. ‘Please!’
Berren shook his head. ‘I would have hunted Kuy anyway.’
In a flash she grabbed the vial out of his hand and opened it and held it to her lips. She looked at him and then closed her eyes. ‘Berren, Berren,’ she breathed. ‘Say your name if you must. Say it for the third time.’
‘No!’ Berren grasped her hand and held it fast. ‘Go!’ he said. ‘Keep your freedom! Go and tell your mistress that you’ve done what you came to do. And if you’ve got any sense, you’ll throw that potion into the sea.’
After she was gone, Berren lay still. He gazed at the ceiling, lost in a reverie of bliss and remembered sensation. He only had to close his eyes and she was with him once again, her face aglow with lust, her eyes wide with desire. He lay there and dozed and thanked all the gods he knew, and tried to forget their vicious little twist with Kuy’s potion vial. After all, like she said, she hadn’t used it. She hadn’t.
And then later he got up and walked away and joined the Hawks as they marched out of their camp, as they turned towards the south and towards the war that the thief-taker had made.
PART FOUR
24
The rains had made the roads hopeless for wagons, but Talon’s mules didn’t much care, and it seemed that the prince had quietly bought up every one of them for a hundred miles around. Each day the Hawks marched through rain and mud to the next nameless farming hamlet, and each one turned out to have half a cohort of men already shacked up in every barn, a mountain of dry firewood and enough food for the army to eat its fill. And so it went for a twelvenight and a day until they reached the outskirts of Galsmouth. By then word of their approach had raced ahead despite the rains and the atrocious roads. The garrison fled before them, and Talon had his first victory for nothing.
The people of the town endured the arrival of so many soldiers with a tired fortitude. Talon seemed in no hurry to move on, and his men were in no mood to argue about food and shelter and a few warm dry nights with a proper roof over their heads. Every building became a barracks and every house was soon bulging at the seams. This was his homeland, Talon reminded them, soldiers and citizens alike. His country, and so an uneasy peace reigned. Meridian sent out a cohort of cavalry, but since Galsmouth was brimming with food for the winter, there was little they could do. They tried to foul the river but the rain defeated them.
A week passed and suddenly, without any warning, Talon ordered them on. Every mule and horse in the town was rounded up and loaded up with as much food as it could carry. He made a speech that was largely lost to the wind and the rain and then they marched again, with full bellies and dry feet and warm winter cloaks. Which, it seemed to Berren, was all that most of the soldiers cared about. They marched in the open, making no effort to hide their approach ever closer to Tethis, and it seemed for a while that they’d march right up to the castle gates themselves before anyone tried to stop them; but then, a day from Tethis, Talon led them away from the road, out into a sea of mud that had once been fields full of turnips. The Hawks formed up into their battle lines, shields locked together, spears held at the ready, and waited. Meridian was coming.
‘Hold fast, lad,’ muttered Tarn. Men pressed either side of Berren and behind him too, a battle line three ranks deep and more than a hundred wide. ‘Keep your shield up. Keep your eyes open and watch your feet!’ Meridian’s line would be longer, Tarn had already said that, and now Tarn was standing right next to him and Berren’s eyes were wide and ready to fight. ‘If they come at us with horse, get down on your knees. Hold your spear steady and let the crossbows behind you do their work.’ Not that he hadn’t told them the same thing a hundred times, not that they hadn’t practised it with the lancers. ‘When it comes to the push and shove, watch your feet. You slip over and go down — and men will in this mud — you’ll never get up. When they come at you, you stab them in the face with your spear or you stab them in the foot, because that’s all you’ll be able to reach. Your spear gets stuck, drop it and use your sword. Your life belongs to the men either side of you and theirs to you. Remember that.’
Berren’s heart started to beat faster. He thought about how he’d always wanted to learn to fight, how he’d spent every day of his life in Deephaven yearning for it. But this would be no scattered chaos like the battle on the beach where every man had fought for himself; no, here was a real battle, the real thing, where men were crushed together, where it started with a rain of arrows or a charge of horse and all came down to who broke first, and learning swords had nothing to do with it.
Somewhere off through the rain he heard distant shouting. Talon rode along the battle line. Two hundred men lifted their shields and locked them together. The fear started to rise in Berren’s throat. He had nowhere to go, nowhere to run. What use were quick feet and a flashing sword when there were men pressed in all around him?
And then Talon stopped in front of him. ‘You!’ He pointed at Berren. ‘Out of the line! Now!’