Son of the Shadows Read online

  “That’s it,” said the black one, Gull. “You’re the healing woman, aren’t you? The one they said might pass through the village?”

  “I have some skills,” I said cautiously, for I did not want to give too much away. If they were who I thought they were, then it would be wise to be very, very careful. “What’s the matter with this man? Can I look at him?”

  “That’s what you’re here for,” said Dog. “Better make it quick. Chief’s due back and we need a good answer for him, or this man won’t see another sunrise.” The language they used was quite odd, a jumbled mixture of Irish and the tongue of the Britons, word and phrase chosen, it seemed, from whichever happened to suit them. Their speech was fluent but accented; Snake, perhaps, was a man of Ulster, but I doubted the others had owned either of these tongues from birth. It was just as well I had a parent of each extraction; I could follow well enough, if I concentrated, though here or there they slipped in a word the meaning of which was quite unknown to me, as if still another language lent its own touch to this peculiar speech.

  I had seen and tended to many injuries, some of them severe. A festering knife wound; a nasty accident with a pitchfork. But I had never seen anything like this. The man lay in a sheltered area in a sort of half-cave, safe from rain and wind and the sun’s heat. There had been some attempt to make him comfortable on a makeshift pallet, and there was a rough stool by it, and water and a quantity of stained linen. On the ground were a flask and another of the dark, metal cups. The man was gasping now, turning his head from side to side in pain, and his skin was pallid and beaded with sweat. His right arm was bandaged from shoulder to fingertips, and the whole length of it was red with blood. You could see, without unwrapping the stained cloth, that the limb was more than broken. The flesh of bare chest and shoulder was streaked with a dull, angry crimson.

  “What have you given him for the pain?” I asked crisply, rolling up my sleeves.

  “He can’t keep anything down,” Dog said. “There’s strong wine in the flask; we tried that, but he can’t swallow it, or if he does, he’ll be retching it back before you can count to five.”

  “We doctor ourselves here and do well enough,” said Gull. “But this—this we can’t deal with. Can you help him?”

  I was unwrapping the bloody dressings, trying not to screw up my face at the smell.

  “When did this happen?” I asked.

  “Two days since.” Snake was there too now, one eye on me and my patient and the other keeping a lookout. For the chief, I presumed. “He’s careful, mostly. Lost his grip, this time, trying to shift a load off the cart by himself. Caught a weight of scrap iron, crushed his arm to nothing. Would’ve been a goner if Dog here hadn’t pulled him away in time.”

  “Not fast enough,” said Dog, scratching the bald side of his head.

  I finished unrolling the stained and stinking linen as the injured man bit his lip, feverish eyes fixed on my face. He was conscious, but I thought not really aware of what was before him or of the words that were spoken. I turned away from the pathetic, shattered remnant of his limb.

  “This man has little chance,” I said quietly. “Ill humors are already spreading through his body from his injury. The arm cannot be saved. He has days of agony ahead of him. I can help with that. But it is unlikely I can save his life. It might, indeed, have been better if he had died then, straight away. You’ve done your best; I can see that. But this may be beyond the skill of any healer.”

  They were all silent. Outside it was growing darker.

  “I can at least make him more comfortable,” I said finally. “I hope you had the sense to bring my things.” My heart sank at the prospect of dealing with such an injury out here with no tools, no ready supply of the strong herbal mixtures I would need.

  “Here,” said Dog, and there it was, my small bag, neatly packed and strapped. He dropped it at my feet.

  “What happened to my guards?” I asked, as I crouched to undo the bindings and find what I needed.

  “Best you don’t know,” said Snake from where he still kept lookout. “Less you know the better, if you want to get home.”

  I rose to my feet. The three of them were all watching me closely. It would have been intimidating had I not been so intent on my task.

  “We’d hoped you’d be able to do more,” said Gull bluntly. “Save his life, if not the arm. This man’s a good smith. Strong. Steady.”

  “I’m no miracle worker. I’ve told you what I think. I can promise no more than to make his last days easier. Now, can you fetch me some hot water, and is there any clean linen? Get this out of here, and burn it, for it’s beyond washing. I’ll need some sort of jug, if you have one, and a bucket or bowl.”

  “Not now,” said Snake sharply. “Chief’s coming.”

  “Curse it.” Dog and Snake were gone in a flash. Gull hovered in the entrance.

  “I take it this chief’s not going to throw out the welcome mat for me?” I asked, trying not to show my fear. “You’ve broken some rule in bringing me here?”

  “More than a few,” Gull said. “My doing. Best thing you can do is keep your mouth shut. Chief can’t abide women. Let me do the talking.” Then he, too, was gone. I heard the sound of voices farther away. My patient let out his breath and sucked it in suddenly, and his body began to tremble all over.

  “It’s all right. It’s all right,” I said, silently cursing the isolation and the lack of ready materials and reliable assistance. A pox on them. Asking me to do good here was like—was like expecting a man to plow a field with his bare hands. How could they do this to me? How could they do it to one of their own?

  “ … help … help me …” The injured man was looking right at me now, and there was some sort of recognition in the too-bright eyes. His features were so drained and white, it was hard to tell what manner of man he had been, of what years or origin. He was tall and strongly built, in keeping with his trade. The left arm was well muscled, the heaving chest sturdy as a barrel. It only made the pathetic bundle of flesh and bone on his right side more pitiful. He would take a long time to die.

  “ … lady … help …”

  The voices outside came close, and now I could make out the words.

  “I’m not sure I heard right. Much against my better judgment, I give you two days to prove to me that you know better than I. 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 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 o
f 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 gray and clear, the mouth well formed if unyielding in character. On all the right side, extending from an undrawn mark down the exact center, 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 colored 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 armory. 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 fairy 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 me through narrowed eyes, and then he slipped the wicked knife casually back into its sheath.

  “Seven days,” he said. “You think that’s enough?”

  I could hear the labored breathing of the smith, and the cynical tone of the questioner’s voice.

  “The arm must come off,” I said. “Tonight, straightaway. I’ll need help with that. I can tell you how to do it, but I don’t have the strength for the cutting. After that, I’ll tend to him. Ten days would be better.”

  “Six days,” he said levelly. “In six days we move. It can be no later; we are required elsewhere and must allow time for travel. If Evan is not fit to accompany us, he’ll be left behind.”

  “You ask the impossible,” I whispered, “and you know it.”

  “You wanted a trial. This is your trial. Now if you’ll excuse us, we have work to do. You, Gull, and you,” nodding at Dog, “since your folly brought her here, you can help her with the job. Fetch what she wants. Do her bidding. And the rest of you—” He glanced around the circle of men, and they fell silent. “The woman is out of bounds. I should not need to tell you that. Lay a hand on her, and you’ll have extreme difficulty in picking up your weapon the next day. She’ll remain here with a guard outside at all times. If I hear so much as a breath of any breach, you’ll be painfully aware of it.”

  Chapter Four

  I kept a brave face, but under it I was petrified with fear. I, the girl who wanted nothing more than to stay at home and tend her herb patch; I, the girl who loved above all to exchange tales with her family of an evening after supper, instructing fierce strangers on how to hack off a dying man’s limb and cauterize the wound with hot iron. I, the daughter of S
evenwaters, alone in the lair of the Painted Man and his band of feral killers; for it had become blindingly clear to me that these must be the very outlaws Eamonn had told of. I, Liadan, making bargains with a man who—what was it Eamonn had said? That he carried out his missions without pride or commitment? I wasn’t sure, now, that this description was accurate. I thought both qualities were present, though not perhaps in the way Eamonn would have defined them. The man was singularly unpleasant, there was no doubting that. But why had he agreed to what I proposed if he thought me so misguided?

  I pondered this as I told Dog to make ready a brazier just outside and to keep the heat up, and to get a broad dagger ready, red hot, if he could. Gull fetched the other things that were needed. In particular, a small bowl of warm water and a very sharp knife with a toothed edge. Snake brought more lanterns and stood them around the rock shelter. Meanwhile I sat by the smith, Evan, and tried to talk to him. He slipped in and out of awareness, one moment speaking nonsense in his fever, then suddenly back with us, staring up at me in a blend of hope and terror. I tried to tell him, during these brief, lucid moments, what would happen.

  “ … your arm is beyond saving … To save your life, we must cut off your arm … . I will put you to sleep as well as I can, but you’ll probably still feel it. It will be very bad for a while … . Try to keep still. Trust me. I know what I’m doing …” There was no telling if he understood me or believed me. I wasn’t sure if I believed myself. Outside there were sounds of quiet, orderly activity: horses being attended to, buckets clanking, weapons being sharpened. Not much talk.

  “We’re ready,” said Gull.

  I had taken a small sponge from the deepest corner of my pack, and this had been soaking in the little bowl for a time, not too long. Gull sniffed.

  “That takes me back a long way. Reminds me of my mother’s potions. Pretty strong stuff. Mulberry, henbane, juice of hops, mandrake? Now where would a good little lass like you learn how to make up a draft like that? As soon kill a man as cure him, that would.”