Potts The Dowry Blade

1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-1-909208-21-6
Verlag: Arachne Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 392 Seiten

Nine years after the loss of her sister, and near obliteration of her clan in an ill conceived raid, Brede, a plains' nomad, is living unwillingly in the marshes. The sudden ending of a decade long drought, brings with it many changes; rumour has it that the rain was bought at the price of a King's head, and the sword needed for such a sacrifice is missing. Change comes for Brede in the arrival of Tegan, a wounded mercenary. Brede's discovery, first of the Dowry Blade and a stolen horse, and then of Tegan's history, sets in train a journey to the capital in search of her missing sister and leads to an unexpected role in the Queen's household, and a powerful lover.

Cherry Potts is the Director of Arachne Press, for whom she is editor of almost all our anthologies and runs the Annual Solstice Shorts Festival. Cherry is the author of an epic fantasy novel, two collections of short stories, a photographic diary of a community opera, and has had many stories in anthologies, magazines and online. Her novel of sibling hatred in the 1920s, The Bog Mermaid, won the Quill LGBTQ+ Prose prize 2022.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Potts, Cherry

Leseproben

Chapter Two

Maeve moved swiftly out from the gate, her skin prickling with relief. She nodded to Riordan and within moments the camp was dismantled and her small band of mercenaries were headed for the village, Cei pushing a bound Adair before him, Maeve keeping up a steady murmur of instruction and warning.

As they stumbled in through the gate, Cei let Adair loose. The gatekeeper glared and straightened his clothes as he caught his father’s eye. Keenan nodded carefully, and Adair walked over to cuff Darcie not overly gently about the shoulder. Darcie’s lip trembled, then Adair grinned at him, forgiving him for his incompetence, and his own brief captivity. Adair straightened and caught Brede watching, he nodded to her, an unconscious echo of his father. Brede lowered her head and followed the mercenaries to the forge.

There was scarcely room for them all in the building, but the warmth of the forge fire was wonderful. Maeve basked as steam rose from her clothes, but she did not drop her guard.

Tegan was equally grateful for the warmth and for the woman who examined her wound.

‘You’ll live, providing you stay still and warm,’ Edra said at last, and began to rebind the deep sword wound; ‘the blade went deep, but you are lucky. There’s no serious damage. Infection and exhaustion are the dangers here.’ Tegan nodded, silent in the face of that warning. Edra turned to Faine. ‘Are we keeping her then?’

Faine gave Tegan a long look, aware of the tension in all those about her, waiting for her final decision. Then she nodded firmly. Tegan let out her held breath. But for Faine’s word, infection and exhaustion would be her fate.

Corla eyed the healer resentfully, absently making a sign against witchcraft.

Maeve returned to her minute inspection of their temporary lodging.

Tegan met Edra’s eyes in silent apology, uncomfortable with her own vulnerability and with her welfare utterly in Edra’s hands. She snagged Maeve’s hand as she passed, tugging her down.

‘I’ll be safe here,’ she whispered.

Maeve put aside the temptation to shake her into caution.

‘We may have no choice but to leave you here,’ she said steadily, ‘but we are still in enemy territory.’

Brede, lounging in the doorway, was more diffident on her own ground than she had been in the warrior’s camp at the gate, but she was indignant at Maeve’s careful searching. ‘If we wished you harm,’ she said, ‘we’d have left you where you were. The river would have swept you away by morning.’

Maeve bowed slightly in acknowledgement of Brede’s comment, and reached down the basket containing Brede’s half-made weapon. Brede flinched, but Maeve merely frowned at the blade and returned it to its perch. She nodded silently at her companions. They stripped away their outermost garments spreading them in dripping curtains wherever they could find space.

Brede drank in newness, strangeness; variety. A smooth faced giant, who moved with an agility startling in one so solidly made; a thin silent man who turned immediately to care of his weapons; a woman with hair so fine and pale that rain flattened, she looked almost bald. All of them had a hungry look about them, faces sharper than they should be. Brede tried to stop categorising them, but she was giddy with newness. Maeve was the most striking. She was tall, and not as slight as she at first appeared, more wiry than slender. Brede could see now, as her unbraided hair started to dry and the colour lightened, that she was red-haired. Her skin was unnaturally pale, freckled, giving an impression of constantly moving sunlight on her face. She was difficult to look at, full of movement and sharp angles.

Trouble, Brede decided, shifting her gaze away. The young guard resembled Maeve, as though he might be her brother. He was scarcely out of boyhood. Brede looked again, guessing that Maeve must be at least five years younger than herself.

Maeve glanced up, and caught Brede’s eye upon her.

Trouble, she thought wearily. She frowned, distracted. She was afraid for Tegan and would miss her; miss her assurance, her good sense, her warmth at night. Maeve twisted her thoughts away from that temporary loneliness. At least she could hope she wouldn’t lose Tegan this way, as she might have, would have, if they had continued to struggle eastward through uncertain territory in ever worsening conditions.

Brede pressed warm bread into Maeve’s hand. Maeve took it, observing her thoughtfully, noting a strength of feature which Brede did not share with her kin. She had a bright defiant expression and a carelessness about her; dark hair tied into a loose braid that did not serve to keep her eyes clear. Maeve wanted to call it a lack of discipline, but it was more than that: she was alive with curiosity, dangerous with it. Maeve made a small adjustment in her assumptions about Marsh dwellers, and remembered what the smith said when Tegan thanked her for her hospitality.

I’m not doing this for you.

Brede’s keen dark eyes made her uncomfortable – darting about – following every movement. She was relieved when Faine came to beckon her away.

Brede went reluctantly, unwilling to settle back into her established routine. She allowed herself another check on the horses. Perhaps her mother would like to see them? Brede considered, and rejected the possibility. Leal wouldn’t want to be reminded that she had once been entranced by movement and uncertainty, by the wind patterns on the tall grasses of the plains, that she had once lost her heart to a Plains rider.

And this was no time to be thinking of Devnet.

Brede returned home, intending to be a gracious and dutiful daughter, but her gentle kiss went unacknowledged, her greeting unanswered. She settled the other side of the smoky fire; her eyes smarting, and delved into the pot of stew hung over the flames.

Leal watched her daughter and was afraid for the first time since returning to the safety of her birthplace. She wanted to scream at her daughter,

You know what happens when you go. Something terrible always happens. Don’t leave me again.

Thoughts of that terrible time brought Leal to thoughts of Devnet, and Leal’s anxiety spilt into accusation.

‘I suppose you find one of these mercenaries attractive?’

Brede put her bowl aside, her stomach tightening into revolt.

Dear Goddess, she thought, I don’t believe we’re going to fight about this now.

‘In what way?’ she asked, scrupulously neutral.

‘Like Devnet.’

Brede considered. She was tempted to agree, to say –

Yes, Leal, there’s a stunning redhead.

‘They are leaving tomorrow,’ she said instead.

‘And what will you do?’

‘What the Elders ask of me.’ Leal snorted and struck out again.

‘Why aren’t you more like your sister?’

‘Falda is dead,’ Brede said, her voice barely under control.

Leal recoiled, then went on: ‘Why couldn’t you have hand-fast and had babies? Why couldn’t you be a real daughter?’

‘I take after my father,’ Brede snapped, a phrase often used to cover what made her different from her mother, a disappointment, a problem.

She unfolded her legs, and went out into the cold night air.

Leal regretted her temper at once and she was out into the rain almost as swiftly as Brede. There was no sign of her daughter, and her anxiety took her to her sister, Faine.

‘I’ve been expecting you,’ the smith said gently, beckoning Leal in.

Leal raised her hands in a gesture of helplessness.

‘Tomorrow, when the mercenaries go, Brede will go.’

Faine sighed. ‘You may be right. You know Brede can’t settle, Leal. You should never have expected it.’

‘It’s been almost ten years, that should have been long enough. She should have found herself a hand-mate by now.’

‘It’s a small village, in difficult times, there aren’t many for her to choose from.’

‘Oh Faine, you know that isn’t it. She thinks she’s too good for the likes of us, just as her father did. She despises us – she despises me.’

‘No,’ Faine hesitated, trying to find words for her partial understanding of Brede. ‘She has nomad blood, yes. That’s why she finds it so hard. She’s like – like a river that has been dammed.’

‘She has no more conscience than a river.’

‘Conscience? She’s stayed all this time, Leal. I never thought she would. What more d’you want of her?’

‘I want her to stay. I want her safe,’ Leal shook her head. ‘Brede is all I have left in the world.’

Faine snorted.

‘Your world needs expanding then.’ She caught Leal’s expression. ‘I’ve no sympathy to offer you. She’s a grown woman. She’ll do as she pleases, just as you did at her age.’

‘But I was wrong.’

Faine caught at Leal’s hands.

‘How can you say that? You loved Ahern. How could that be wrong?’

Leal looked at the hands about her fingers, and said nothing.

Brede, out in the rainy darkness, stood in the forge doorway, watching.

Maeve sat cross-legged beside her leader, her hair still loose on her shoulders, polishing the sword laid across her knees. The edge of her mail sleeve caught the metal with a soft ringing. Her...