out with thick iron nails hammered through the palm of each hand and each foot. Judging from the amount of dried blood around each stake, he’d been alive for the process and perhaps a little while after. He was bearded in blood, too, because he’d gnawed his own lips half away in his agony. Where his eyes had been black ants swarmed. At some point in this ghastly process the Horsekin had slit him from breech to breastbone and pulled out his internal organs. In a pulsing mass of ants they lay in tidy lines to either side of him, bladder, guts, kidneys, liver and lungs, but the heart was missing.
‘What – who in the name of the Lord of Hell would do such a thing?’ Gerran could only whisper. ‘Ye gods, savages! That’s all they are!’
‘In the name of Alshandra, more likely.’ Salamander sounded half-sick. ‘I’ve heard about this, but I’ve never seen it before, and I thank all the true gods for that, too.’
‘What have you heard?’
‘That they do this to selected prisoners, always men, and usually someone who’s been stupid enough to surrender. They send them with messages to Alshandra’s country. That’s somewhere in the Otherlands, I suppose.’ Salamander paused to wipe his mouth on the sleeve of his shirt. He swallowed heavily, then turned away from the sight. ‘As the prisoner’s dying, they tell him he’s lucky, because their goddess will give him a favoured place in her land of the dead.’
‘I hope to every god that he lied when he got there.’
‘That’s why they keep the heart. If he lies, they say, they’ll torture it, and he’ll feel the pains in the Otherlands.’
Gerran tried to curse, but he could think of nothing foul enough. He turned away and saw that even Cadryc had gone white about the mouth.
‘Let’s bury him,’ the tieryn said. ‘And then we’re heading home. There’s naught else we can do for him or any of the other poor souls they took.’
‘Good idea, your grace.’ Gerran pointed to a pair of riders. ‘You – take the latrine shovels and dig him a proper grave.’
As they dismounted, Gerran heard a raven calling out from overhead. He glanced up and saw a single large bird circling – abnormally large, as he thought about it. With a flap of its wings it flew away fast, heading east. Gerran turned to mention it to Salamander, but the gerthddyn had walked some yards away and fallen to his knees. He appeared to be ridding himself of his breakfast in a noisy though understandable fashion. And after all, Gerran told himself, there’s naught strange about a corpse-bird come to carrion. He put the matter out of his mind.
Everyone was very kind. Perhaps that was the most painful thing of all, this unspoken kindness, or so Neb thought. None of the other servants resented his sudden arrival into a position of importance. They gave him things to put in his chamber – a pottery vase from the chamberlain, a wood bench from the cook, a wicker charcoal-basket from the head groom’s wife. One of the grooms gave Neb a nearly-new shirt embroidered with the tieryn’s blazon of a wolf rampant; his wife gave Clae a leather ball that had been her son’s before he went off to his prenticeship. Neb saw every gift as an aching reminder that he’d been stripped of kin the way he stripped a quill of feathers when he made a pen.
But it’s better than starving, Neb would forcibly remind himself. It was also better than being enslaved by Horsekin, but Neb did his best to keep from thinking about that. In the farming village he’d had two friends, boys his own age who were most likely dead now, and their mothers and sisters enslaved. At times, memories crept into his mind like weevils into grain, but he picked them out again. Now and then he indulged himself with the hope that at least one friend had managed to escape, but he never allowed the hope to blossom into a full-fledged wish.
To distract him he also had work to do. With the winter wheat almost ripe for harvest, the tieryn’s farmer vassals would soon owe him taxes in kind – foodstuffs, mostly, but also some oddments such as rendered tallow for candles and soap. The elderly chamberlain, Lord Veddyn, took Neb out to the storehouses, built of stone right into the dun’s walls.
‘I must admit that it gladdens my heart you’re here,’ Veddyn said. ‘I used to be able to remember all the dues and taxes, store them up in my mind, like, but it gets harder and harder every year. I’ve been wishing I knew a bit of writing myself, these past few months.’
‘I see,’ Neb said. ‘Well, we can set up a tally system easily enough, if you’ve got somewhat for me to write upon. Wax on wood won’t do.’
‘I’ve got a bit of parchment laid by. It’s not the best in the kingdom, though.’
In a cool stone room that smelled of onions Veddyn showed him a wooden chest. Neb kicked it a couple of times to scare any mice or spiders away, then opened it to find a long roll of old vellum, once of a good quality, now a much-scraped palimpsest.
‘It’s cracking a bit, isn’t it?’ Veddyn said. ‘My apologies. I thought it would store better than this.’
‘We can split it into sheets along the cracks. It’ll do.’
Out in the sun Neb unrolled about a foot of the scroll and released a cloud of dust and ancient mould. He sneezed and wiped his nose on his sleeve, then held the roll up to the light.
‘This must have been a set of tax tallies,’ Neb said. ‘I can just make out a few words. Fine linen cloth, six ells. Someone someone ninety-five bushels of somesort barley.’
‘It’s from our old demesne – what’s that noise?’
Neb cocked his head to listen. ‘Riders coming in the gates,’ he said. ‘I wonder if his grace has ridden home.’
‘Not already, surely!’
They hurried around the broch to find a small procession entering the ward. Four armed men with oak-leaf blazons on their shirts escorted a heavily laden horse cart, driven by a stout middle-aged woman, while behind them came a person riding a grey palfrey. Taxes, Neb thought at first, here early.
As the pages and a groom ran out to take the horses, the rider dismounted with a toss of her long blonde hair, caught back in a silver clasp. A pretty lass, though not the great beauty he’d seen in his earlier dream, she was wearing a faded blue dress, caught up at her kirtled waist, over a pair of old torn brigga. The Wildfolk of Air, sylphs and sprites both, flocked around her, and perched behind her saddle was a little grey gnome, who looked straight at Neb, grinned, and waved a skinny clawed paw. The gnome looked exactly like the little creature in Neb’s dream.
‘It’s Lady Branna!’ Veddyn said. ‘Here, greet her and her escort, will you? Where’s Lord Mirryn, I wonder? He’s always off somewhere when you need him! And the pages have their hands full. I’d better go tell Lady Galla her niece has arrived.’
When Neb walked up, the lady turned around and smiled at him, a distant but friendly sort of smile such as she doubtless would give to any stranger, but Neb felt his heart start pounding. Instantly he knew two things so crucial that he felt as if he had waited his entire life for this lass to appear. One, he loved her, and two, she shared all his secrets, perhaps even secrets he hadn’t realized he was keeping. He tried to speak but felt that he was gasping like a caught fish on a riverbank.
Fortunately Branna appeared just as startled. Her smile vanished, her eyes grew wide, and she stared at him unspeaking. He studied her face with a feeling much like hunger: narrow mouth, snub nose, a dusting of freckles over her high cheekbones, dark blue eyes. He had never
