Son of the Shadows. Juliet Marillier
Now the time’s up. There’s no improvement in his condition. All you have done is put off the inevitable. And you bring a woman here. Some girl you abduct off the road. She could be anyone. I’ve misjudged you, Gull. It seems you value your place in my team less highly than I thought.’
‘Chief.’
‘Am I wrong? Is he improved? Has this female effected some miracle cure?’
‘No, Chief, but –’
‘Where’s your sense, Gull? And you? What’s got hold of you? You know the way this should have ended, when first he came by the injury. I should not have let you stand in the way. If you have not the stomach for such decisions, there can be no place for you here.’
They were close to the rocks now, almost in sight. I held my patient’s hand and made myself breathe slowly and steadily.
‘Chief. This is not just any man. This is Evan we’re talking about.’
‘So?’
‘A friend, Chief. A good friend, and a good man.’
‘Besides,’ put in Dog, ‘who’ll mend our weapons, with him gone? Best smith this side of Gaul, Evan is. You can’t just …’ His voice died away, as if something had just occurred to him. There was a pause.
‘A one-armed smith is of limited use.’ The tone was cool, dispassionate. ‘Have you given thought to what the man himself would want?’
At that moment they stepped around the rocks, and under the overhang, and to where I sat by the injured man. I stood up as tall as I could, trying hard to look calm and confident. It scarcely mattered. The Chief’s eyes swept over me dismissively, and settled on the man who lay by my side. I might not have been there, for all the notice he took of me. I watched him as he came close and touched the smith’s brow with his hand. A hand patterned, from the wrist of his shirt to the fingertips, with feathers and spirals and interlocking links, as complex and fascinating as some ancient puzzle. I glanced up, and for a moment he looked straight back at me, across the pallet. I gaped. This was a face such as I had never seen before, even in the most fanciful of dreams. A face that was, in its way, a work of art. For it was light and dark, night and day, this world and the Otherworld. On the left side, the face of a youngish man, the skin weathered but fair, the eye grey and clear, the mouth well formed if unyielding in character. On all the right side, extending from an undrawn mark down the exact centre, an etching of line and curve and feathery pattern, like the mask of some fierce bird of prey. An eagle? A goshawk? No, it was, I thought, a raven, even as far as the circles about the eye, and the suggestion of predatory beak around the nostril. The mark of the raven. If I had not been so frightened, I might have laughed at the irony of it. The pattern extended down his neck and under the border of his leather jerkin, and the linen shirt he wore beneath it. His head was completely shaven, and the skull, too, was coloured the same, half man, half wild creature; some great artist of the inks and needle had wrought this over many days, and I imagined the pain must have been considerable. What manner of man needed such decoration, to find his identity? I was staring. He was probably used to that. With difficulty, I tore my gaze away to where Gull and Dog and Snake were standing mute amongst a group of other men. Their garb was motley, in tune with Eamonn’s description; a shaggy pelt here, feathers there, chain links, leather patches, straps and buckles, silver collars and armlets, and a not inconsiderable display of well-muscled flesh in various shades. It occurred to me, somewhat belatedly, that this was perhaps not the best of places for a young woman on her own. I could almost hear my father’s voice. Haven’t you been listening to a thing I’ve told you, Liadan?
The leader had drawn a knife from his belt. It was a sharp, lethal sort of knife.
‘Let us end this farce,’ he said. ‘You should not have delayed me in doing so before. This man has no further use. He can no longer contribute, here or elsewhere. All you have done is prolong his suffering needlessly.’ He moved subtly, so the injured man could not see his hands, and he shifted his grip on the knife. The others stood silent. Nobody moved. Nobody said a word. He raised the knife.
‘No!’ I put out a hand across the pallet, shielding the wounded man’s neck. ‘You can’t do this! You can’t just – finish him off, as if he were some snared rabbit, or a sheep to be slaughtered for the pot. This is a man here. One of your own.’
The Chief raised his brows just a fraction. The thin line of his mouth did not change. The eyes were cool.
‘Would you not administer such a stroke, if it were your dog, or your hawk, or your mare that suffered thus with deadly injury? You would not wish such agony to be extended without reason? But no, I suppose there was always some man to do your dirty work for you. What could a woman know of such things? Remove your hand.’
‘I will not,’ I responded, my anger rising. ‘You say this man has no further use, as if he were – merely some tool, some weapon in your armoury. You say he cannot contribute. For your purposes, maybe that is true. But he still lives. He can love a woman, and father a child. He can laugh and sing and tell tales. He can enjoy the fruits of the fields and a tankard of good ale at night. He can watch his son become a smith such as he was. This man can have a life. There is a future, after –’ I looked around me, at the circle of grim-faced men – ‘after this.’
‘Where did you learn of life?’ the raven man asked me in the bleakest of tones. ‘In some faery tale? We live by the code. We have no names; no past, no future. We have tasks to perform, and at those we are the best. There is no life for this man, nor for any of us, outside that. There can be none. Step away from the bed.’ It was growing quite dark, and one of the men had lit a small lantern. Crazy shadows fell across the creviced rock walls, and the leader’s face held a menace that was as real as the weapon in his hand. You could see how it might strike terror into an enemy, for in the trickery of the uneven light he did indeed seem half raven, his eye piercing bright and dangerous amid the whorls and spirals of the finely drawn pattern.
‘Step away,’ he said again.
‘I will not,’ I said. And he raised his left hand, as if to strike me across the face. With a great effort of will I managed not to flinch away. I held his gaze and hoped he could not see how I was shaking with fear. The man stared back at me, bleak eyed, and then he slowly lowered his hand.
‘Chief,’ ventured Gull, the only one bold enough to speak out.
‘Hold your tongue! You’re going soft, Gull. First you beg two days’ grace for a man you know has no hope of survival, who wouldn’t want to live even if he could. Then you bring some fool of a girl here. Where did you find her? She’s got a tongue on her, that’s beyond dispute. Can we get on with this? There’s work to be done.’ Perhaps he thought he had intimidated me into silence.
‘He does have a chance,’ I said, much relieved that he had decided not to hit me, for my head ached already from its earlier knock. ‘A slender one, but a real one nonetheless. He must lose the arm. That I cannot save. But I may save his life. I do not believe he would want to die. He asked me to help him. At least let me try.’
‘Why?’
‘Why not?’
‘Because – curse it, woman, I’ve neither time nor inclination to debate issues with you. I don’t know where you came from or where you’re going, and I have no wish to be enlightened on either score, but here you are no more than a nuisance and an inconvenience. This is no place for a woman.’
‘Believe me, I am not here by choice. But now that your men have brought me so far, at least give me a trial. I will show you what I can do. Seven days, eight – long enough to tend to the man properly, and give him a fighting chance. That’s all I’m asking.’ I saw Gull’s face, a picture of surprise. I had, after all, completely contradicted my earlier words. Perhaps I was a fool. Dog had hope written on his plain features; the others looked at the rock wall, the ground, their hands, anywhere but at their leader. Someone at the back gave a tiny little whistle, as if to say, now she’s done it.
The raven man stood very still for a moment, looking at