Knight and Champion Page 4

  Today would be different, he told himself as he marched through Tavalen’s wrought iron gates and east along River Lane. He had an important meeting at the Ebbe Tavern later, but his first engagement was down by the swift-flowing Ebbe. The luxuriant shade of the willows cooled him down a little - he disliked being hot and flustered when there was business to be done. At first Tanis thought Gillan had left for the day, but then he spotted the grizzled fisherman setting a crab pot upriver. Swatting at the first of the spring may flies, Tanis picked his way over a bed of flattened saw reeds. Already he longed to be away from the grasping tendrils of nature. He couldn’t stand the clinging dirt and the relentless attention of every insect under the sun. Mankind was a sentient creature capable of art and complex theorems - why should it subject itself to the cruel whims of the wild? Surely that time had passed.

  Gillan grunted at the boy as he approached.

  “Brace o’ perch,” he said, nodding to the oilskin package by his feet. “Good ‘uns, too.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Tanis said, testing their weight. He also took a quick sniff whilst Gillan was looking away. Satisfied, he produced a silver necklace. He’d found it in Devon’s cellar days ago and kept it in his pocket ever since. A perfectly hideous lattice-work from another age. Might have been inherited from some distant relative. He’d attempted to clean the grime away but couldn’t get it to shine. Still, silver was silver. Devon had accumulated quite a collection over the years.

  Now it was Gillan’s turn to weigh his bounty.

  “Do nicely for the wife,” he said, grinning through chipped teeth. “Caught me fucking the new ale girl last week.”

  “I have no interest in your sordid life,” Tanis muttered, regretting it immediately. He would need to tighten up his personal skills if he wanted to establish lasting relationships. Luckily, Gillan seemed oblivious to his scorn.

  “Two fish, every day for three weeks?”

  “Aye, kid,” the fisherman replied. “Just don’t be late. A man has to work, even if the La Bernes don’t.”

  Gillan’s thoughtless comment weighed heavily on Tanis as he headed back towards town for his appointment with Sam Gerrity. There could be no doubt that the village was slowly turning against the local gentry. Tanis blamed his father for the precarious position the family found itself in. He had the utmost respect for the old man’s achievements, but surely he could’ve managed his finances better? A royal pension was never going to be enough, not with nine children. And yet there were so many opportunities for a man in his position. Tavalen was perfect for archery contests, night markets and the like. But no, according to Devon, such potentially lucrative events would ‘spoil the natural character’ of his estate.

  Devon la Berne’s apparent aversion to wealth didn’t stop there. Tanis had lost count of the times his father had waived Representative fees because the client, usually some two-bit villager, was hard up for crowns. The old man needed to shoulder responsibility for the way things were turning out. Luckily for him, Tanis was finally of an age to do something about it. It needed to be him, as his older siblings seemed wholly determined to remain useless.

  Doran was bogged down in his ‘heroic’ training, which was fine for him but how did the family benefit? Even if he made it as squire, his daily reward would be a straw bed and a bowl of gruel. As for Hadley, well, she seemed to be waiting for a white knight to come trotting through the front gates. It simply wasn’t going to happen. Not in a dying village like Guill. Tanis suspected that many of the businesses in the village were facing insolvency. Travelers seemed to be a thing of the past. The only folks he saw on the Ebbe Road these days were dispatch riders and trade convoys. No one stopped at Guill.

  The air was chilly as Tanis made his way along Hearth Street, promising rain later in the afternoon. Several villagers had commandeered the village green in order to set up for the following night’s Equinox Feast. The main event would of course take place at Durlaine, the Baron’s castle, but there would be dancing and singing in the village once Duskovy shut his gates on the flea-ridden Guill folk. The feast was his only real concession that the village existed at all. Despite the excellent quality of the spring harvest, Tanis invariably found it to be a tedious affair . It was all a bit of a waste, really. Once the off-duty soldiers and villagers were sozzled on mead, the night usually descended into a chaotic mess. He liked to be home well before midnight - life was too short for that nonsense.

  One eye on the darkening clouds, Tanis studiously ignored the general hubbub and quickened his pace. A movement drew his gaze - Sylvia Pannet was beckoning him from the bakery doorway. He nodded curtly and kept moving. The apprentice baker never failed to pick him out in the crowd. She was comely enough but dull-witted. One day Tanis would tell her he wasn’t interested - but only after he’d exhausted all available trading options with her boss, Ariel Marber.

  Business at the supply depot was concluded quickly. Olem Marafair was indeed interested in the horrible silver earrings that matched the necklace he’d sold earlier. The great thing about Guill was the lack of initiative among the older residents. Why travel all the way to Andra if one could simply acquire jewelery from the la Berne estate? Tanis pocketed his eleven royals and continued west, keen to honor his appointment with Sam Gerrity. He took the short cut to the tavern, risking the wobbly log spanning the Ebbe Minor and cutting through Laskin’s yard. Thankfully the hunter’s bull mastiff was nowhere to be seen.

  The cylindrical curve of the Ebbe Tavern loomed to Tanis’s right. A hub of raucous prejudice and misogyny by night, the la Bernes studiously avoided it if they could. The average Guill farmer was a picture of practiced civility by day, if a little reserved of late; when the sun deserted the land, his hungry mind swam in darker waters at the bottom of a tankard. No place for “gentry”, even the diluted, Guill version.

  And yet Sam Gerrity’s tavern was a business like any other. For Tanis, it represented a world of opportunity. As far as he could tell, Old Man Gerrity sourced his various supplies through the Ebbe Trading Company like everyone else. If the sheer number of ale wenches and burly “wranglers” were any indication, it was one of the few profitable ventures in the district. Sam Gerrity was in Tanis’s sights because he seemed like a man strong enough to buck the ETC monopoly if a suitable alternative became available. There was more than enough muscle around the place to protect against coercion. Or so Tanis hoped. He rapped on the front doors with more than a little trepidation, sweat trickling under his stiffly-pressed jacket.

  A gruff, disheveled man with a straggly white beard led the boy across an immaculately clean floor. All the chairs were upturned on their hardwood tables and a sinewy woman scrubbed at a recalcitrant stain on the wall.

  “Bring him here,” Gerrity called from an alcove at the back. The crag-faced proprietor was poring over his records on a circular divan. Without looking up, he motioned for Tanis to sit.

  “Thank you, sir,” the boy said stiffly, heart hammering in his mouth as he laid out his own documents on the plush material.

  “You have five minutes,” Gerrity said, flashing a gap-toothed grin.

  “Right,” Tanis stammered, his figures suddenly meaningless to him. Even in repose, this man had an unsettling presence. “I wanted to see you about a business proposition.”

  Gerrity sniffed but still didn’t look up. “You’re a pretty young thing, but most o’ the farmers aren’t into buggery. Not that I know of, anyway.”

  White Beard wheezed with laughter. Tanis hadn’t even noticed him standing by the wall. The second man’s presence adding to the crushing pressure. Tanis swallowed - was Gerrity baiting him? Testing him? Or merely being himself? Whatever the case, Tanis was in no position to respond in kind. One day, he promised himself. One day I’ll take a hulking brute wherever I go.

  “A formidable jape,” Tanis ended up saying, keeping his voice under control. “But it hasn’t advanced our business.”

  Now Gerrity looked up, seeing something
in Tanis he’d never seen before.

  “You la Bernes keep growin’ like weeds,” he said. “The flow of time scares the white shit outta me.”

  Grinning, he shoved his papers aside and looked Tanis in the eye. “Go on.”

  “I have a contact in Feyn Bridge,” Tanis said. “He has twenty-nine bottles of kastayne to shift. Pure. The real stuff.”

  Gerrity scratched his nose, but Tanis had spotted his tell. The old man’s interest was as intense as it was immediate. Out of the corner of his eye Tanis registered White Beard taking a half-step forward. Strange that he didn’t even know his name. Growing up he’d just been a nondescript barfly who slept most of the day. Now that Tanis saw the world through adult eyes, White Beard assumed a whole new menace.

  “Kastayne, you say,” Gerrity repeated. “Is your man certain of this?”

  “He showed me a bottle,” Tanis said. “Green, with a red wax band around the waist.”

  “Aye,” Gerrity said softly. “Not much call for such a drink around here. Perhaps you mistake my tavern for a gaudy carnival.”

  Tanis told himself to hold his nerve. Gerrity was probing his defenses, trying to catch him off guard. It was all part of the negotiation and he needed to stay firm.

  “I do not, sir.”

  Gerrity grunted. Tanis relaxed a little - he was actually doing OK.

  “Call me cynical, but when a man says he can move twenty-nine bottles of kastayne, I wanna know why he’s lyin’ to me.”

  White Beard took another step forward and Tanis felt a stab of anxiety like a knife through his intestines.

  “The man’s a deserter,” Tanis said quickly. “Served in the Hespades. The liquor came from a skrim supply wagon.”

  “I fuckin’ knew it,” Gerrity said with savage glee. “It’s Red Worm. I know all about ‘im, the slippery bugger. Mad as a cut snake.”

  “When shall I ride, Sam?” White Beard asked merrily.

  Tanis suddenly had a horrible feeling about this deal.

  “Today,” Gerrity snapped.

  White Beard took his leave. Gerrity flicked Tanis a gold coin, which the boy caught reflexively. It felt heavy with scorn.

  “Thanks for telling me, kid,” he added, returning to his work. Tanis just sat there for a moment, unable to collect his thoughts. He opened his mouth to protest but nothing came out. Sometimes a man had to accept he’d been played. Anger and shame burned fiercely, leaving scar tissue Tanis would feel forever.

  “I hope the Worm is out of town,” he eventually said, gathering his papers.

  “You know he won’t be,” Gerrity murmured, not bothering to look up. Tanis had become a doe-eyed boy again. “After all, he’s expecting you.”

  Humiliated, Tanis made straight for the door. The maid had managed to defeat the wall stain.

  The walk back to Tavalen was difficult. Tanis felt self-consciously foolish, as if word had already spread like wildfire and he was the village idiot. To enhance the effect, he could see the dust thrown up by White Beard’s horse to the east. The wretch would make Feyn Bridge by late afternoon and Red Worm would be firmly in Gerrity’s clutches not long after that. Tanis couldn’t bear to think about all the crowns he’d thrown away through his vile, youthful incompetence. Despite Gerrity’s feigned nonchalance, kastayne was treasured throughout the Kingdom. The dune skrim were extremely particular in its preparation, which had remained a secret for as long as anyone could remember. The cerebral effects on humans were so varied and, it some cases, profound, that taverns and ale-houses across the land relished the rare product as a chef would the finest, most delicate truffles.

  It was best to move on from the incident. The reality was that Gerrity, aside from claiming a nice windfall through minimal outlay, was unlikely to spread word of his new source of exotic liquor. And Tanis would simply remain the pretty but ineffectual boy he’d always been. As Tanis stalked a smiling, still morning ripe with the overtures of a warmer season, he reflected on how much he resented Guill. It just wasn’t a place where things happened. The farmers, so necessarily cautious and married to routine, were in no position to innovate or think outside the square. Of course, the recent Hespades War didn’t help. The southern range was only two days hard ride from Guill, which made the Southern Reaches particularly vulnerable to dune skrim attack. In theory. In practice, the dune skrim hadn’t mounted an invasion for a thousand years.

  But the problem was perception. Guill was just isolated enough to prevent visitors from filtering down from the north. It was a nowhere village on a nowhere road. Andra was eighteen hours by horse, even more by barge as it was upstream. It was a large town, at least by the modest standards of the Southern Reaches, and Tanis was increasingly drawn to the idea of settling there. There was no reason he couldn’t support his family remotely. It was an idea he’d often floated with his older siblings. Hadley, in particular, seemed a perfect fit for town life. Flame-haired, voluptuous and skilled in social mores, it was past time she allocate her time to securing a wealthy husband. And Catelyn? Hers was the most obvious case of wasted talent. She had a brain the size of a harvest moon but regularly failed to use it for anything other than pointless legal arguments with their father or that tiresome game Song of Salany. She was seventeen years old now - ready to take on the world and win. According to Devon, there were many successful female Representatives in Lakeshore - it was one of the few professions where women could get ahead in this violent world.

  As Tanis finally removed his jacket, letting his sodden undershirt dry in the sun, he resolved to march straight to Devon and ask for enough capital to establish a modest money-lending venture in Andra. He would begin by renting a stall at the Bridge Market and work his way up from there. The thought sent tingles down his spine. Finally - a La Berne unafraid of the world. He would lead the way and show his family they could thrive in this cold new world.

  Tavalen’s gates were visible down the lane. Tanis bounced into the yard, buoyed by his pleasant thoughts. Billy and Ril almost knocked him over as he passed through the orchard.

  “Come, Tanis!” Ril shrieked. “Doran asked for volunteers!”

  Tanis rolled his eyes but allowed himself to be dragged along. At least these two were entitled to act like children.

  Doran was indeed preparing himself for battle. Catelyn was fitting his chain mail under the shade of the scarlet blossom by the pig sty. The old armor looked crushingly heavy and was several sizes too big. Tanis might’ve laughed out loud if he were less discreet. Instead he nodded to his elder siblings and stood aside to watch proceedings. He couldn’t tarry long - banks of dark cloud scudding across a pale sky threatened to ruin the promise of the morning.

  Doran looked at Tanis shrewdly.

  “No,” Tanis said, shaking his head. “I’m not sparring with you today.”

  Tanis very rarely joined in. He hated the feel of the sweaty, faded leather armor Doran made him wear and resented the cuts and bruises he always seemed to collect.

  “You don’t have to,” Doran said lightly. “Greta is ready.”

  A burst of laughter preceded Greta’s appearance. She was dressed in a cracked leather breastplate he’d last seen gathering dust in the cellar. Tanis didn’t recognize the small iron mace - probably a second-hand purchase no one had been prepared to tell him about.

  “Like my weapon?” Greta asked triumphantly.

  “How much?”

  “Nine royals,” she said. “Father subtracted it from the Debut Fee I never got to use.”

  Tanis pursed his lips. Yet another example of wrong-headed justification.

  “You’ll fight Greta in the warm-up bout, Tanis,” Doran explained. “Go on, strap on a chaff roll.”

  Tanis frowned at the bulbous, makeshift armor sitting in the mud. Chaff armor was the lowest, most rustic armor available to the children. It rendered the user incapable of anything but the most basic movement. On the flip side, it was almost impossible to penetrate with a blade.

  “I have documen
ts, plus … some fish,” Tanis said, feeling stupid. Giggling, Hettie relieved him of his light burden and skipped along to the house.

  “Don’t lose that parchment,” he called after her. Sick in the stomach, he allowed Catelyn to fasten the chaff roll around his torso.

  “Thanks for humoring Doran,” she whispered in his ear. She had a knack of guessing his state of mind. It spoke of emotional intelligence, but Tanis didn’t like it. Perhaps sensing his discomfort, Greta was hesitant to assume an attacking stance.

  “He’s ready, Gret,” Doran urged.

  Tanis wasn’t so sure about that. He didn’t have a weapon for a start.

  “Tanis,” Catelyn said urgently. He turned just in time to see her short sword arcing toward him, hilt first. Mis-judging its flight, he watched helplessly as it bounced off the over-sized cushion he had somehow agreed to wear.

  Billy and Ril laughed uproariously as Tanis tried in vain to collect the sword. The chaff roll didn’t allow him to bend over. Catelyn collected the weapon for him and he was finally ready to begin. Greta had inherited Vesna’s solid frame and was learning how to use it. Like Catelyn, she showed a keen interest in the melee arts, only she was more more of a bruiser than her petite sister. Tanis tried to concentrate, sweat irritating his eyes. It was hot under the chaff roll - he couldn’t imagine how fully-armored knights fought when the sun was out. But surely his ridiculous armor was the ultimate defense. As long as actual movement wasn’t a priority.

  As it turned out, Tanis’s theory was only partially correct. Chaff was an effective buffer against bladed weapons but more vulnerable to crushing weapons. If Tanis was six-foot and two hundred pounds, he stood a good chance of keeping his feet against a mace, but at his size he was liable to be knocked down in quick fashion. Greta seemed to recognize her advantage, circling Tanis and forcing him to adjust his half-hearted defensive stance. Flanking him with ease, she penetrated his defense and hammered him with a series of blows.

  Tanis felt the reverberation through the chaff roll and toppled over. Raucous laughter rang in his ears as he tumbled to his back. To add insult to insult, his mouth filled with cloying dust. Catelyn helped him to his feet and he took several long breaths. He realized he wasn’t just short of air - he was heaving with rage.