greater venom.
‘Please! Not now!’
Then I felt the heat of the blow. My hesitation had cost me. She had struck first. She had stuck me with a short knife. My loose leather jack, sewn with its paltry strips of hammered iron, was always a poor man’s armour.
‘Shit!’
It was experience moved me then. We were at close quarters. I turned the edge of my sword and instead of using the blade, drove the pommel down hard upon her head. The contact drew blood and tore a sliver of hair and skin from her scalp, knocked her sideways. But it was a poor, glancing blow; I had meant to break her head open.
I hit her again and she collapsed already senseless.
‘Shit, shit!’
I too was bleeding. And though I should have finished it then, still I held back. I did not kill her. I…could not do it?
Stupidly – there was the noise and the threat of fighting all about me on the fells – I lowered my arm, sheathed my sword, and knelt down beside her. How might I explain this? (How might I explain any of this?) I wanted to touch her. Not a touch that would hurt her, not like that. Hurting her again would have been easy. I wanted…well, if I could make any sense of what I wanted…I wanted to prove that she was real, ordinary, human. And not some deluded man’s fetch; some foul whimsy brought up out of a night-torment.
She was wearing the common breeches and reinforced jack of a fighting-man, and yet at her throat there was a gold amulet. It was a single piece and simply fashioned, but this was enough of a conceit (or perhaps a mistake) to mark her apart…only a damned fool or someone confident, in both her rank and her sword arm, would openly wear such an obvious badge of privilege in the frae. I was a soldier-thief. She was my worst enemy. I should have stolen it from her, taken it as my prize; added it to Notyet’s growing purse. I should have loosened her breeches and stolen more…gone on my way and thought no more of it.
Her arm had fallen into the stream. The closed hand still held the knife. I took it up, threw the knife aside. I lifted her arm and laid it down, clear of the stream. I cupped my hand and, taking water, gently bathed her brow. That was all. As I did I heard the babble of the stream. I would swear this to you; it was speaking to me. Though it whispered, I could plainly hear its call. And I suddenly knew that if I would only listen to its voice then I would understand its words.
This Elfwych and this Wishard…they are the very same…
‘What?’
When I looked again I saw the stream was turning red.
‘Fucking, shit!’
I was still bleeding. I ran my fingers across the cut. The wound was long, but it was not too deep. Yet it had been a deliberate thrust. What was this Elfwych about? Trying only to injure me, to distract me rather than kill? And why would she do that?
Then she was moving again, her hand grasping at a tuft of grass, trying to pull herself upright.
I watched as she slowly dragged herself to her feet.
There was a moment of indecision. She stood almost within reach of me. What was it? Was she going to come at me again? (Even without her knife.) I lifted my sword, only to stay my hand before it ran clear of the scabbard. She turned slowly, almost invitingly, towards me – but invitingly of what?
Afterwards, a long time afterwards, I remembered there was an instant then when our eyes briefly met. What did we each see there? What was there between us?
I could so easily have felled her.
I could so easily have let her go.
I did neither.
Upon the moment, the distant, random clatter of swords striking against swords, the cries and counter cries of men in the frae, was usurped, overlaid by the sudden toning of an iron bell. First there was one, and then came a second in reply, off at some great distance. And then there were many. Each of them, languid, almost soporific in tone; it was a deep and sonorous sound. Their beat was deliberately regular and no sooner heard than the gathered crows – our constant aerial spectators – seemed to scatter above our heads, spiralling ever upwards into the very heights of the sky.
All around us, near and far, men stayed their arms; the fighting was instantly done with.
I let go the hilt of my sword, without a care, let it run freely back upon its scabbard.
The toning of the iron bells was an obvious signal. There were to be no more killings made this day. For it bore all the notes of surrender, and a defeat accepted. Perhaps even the death of a Headman.
When the Elfwych woman turned her back on me and walked away, heading towards The Rise, and Staward Peel, I did nothing more than follow after her.
I walked a-foot. Dandelion came trailing behind me, her ears pricked but without complaint. If there was any danger remaining, it was far enough away now and of little enough concern to ignore.
The toning of the iron bells accompanied us.
‘You have another name, Elfwych?’ I called out to her, raising my voice to be heard.
For the briefest moment she faltered in her step, as if caught, surprised to find me still there. ‘Use your eyes and look about you, Wishard,’ she said. ‘Upon Graynelore people die for their names.’ There was a slow drawl to her speech that told me her head was still befuddled by the blows I had struck. Though it had not blunted her tongue; the way she spoke dared me to make an argument. It was a mute point.
‘Aye, well, listen to the bells…There has been enough of death,’ I said, honestly enough. ‘What do you say to an equal trade instead…a name for a name?’
‘Ha! Does that not depend upon the goods offered being of an equal value, and the trader not simply a common thief?’
‘Are you a thief then, Elfwych?’ I was goading her.
‘And is my name safe with you, Wishard?’
‘Rogrig…’ I corrected her. If I did not answer her question (I did not wish to lie). It seemed she did not want one.
‘I am called Norda,’ she said, without inference.
It was my turn to falter in my step. I turned my head aside, certain I could not easily conceal my reaction to her revelation. I knew the name, of course. Who upon the West or South March of Graynelore did not? This woman was Norda Elfwych, the elder daughter of Stain Elfwych, Headman of his grayne. It was she that Old-man Wishard had set his eye upon (aye, and his lust). She was the prize we were fighting for this day.
Suddenly the iron bells stopped their toning. One by one, they were quickly stilled. Their message was delivered.
The silence they left behind them lay
