Czytaj książkę: «Hero Born»

Chapter 1

He stumbled, just enough to tip him beyond the point of balance. He knew there was no stopping the fall. There never was, these days. And he knew to brace himself against the impact would be too much to ask of old bones. Instead, he dipped and turned his shoulder, hitting the ground rolling. Instincts that once saved him on the battlefield and in the duelling circles now served to save brittle bones. Momentary pride at avoiding injury gave way to irritation at the irony of the comparison. His roll had left him with his cheek pressed against the cold flagstones of the floor, the breath punched from him, and wishing he could somehow move himself forward to a time when the pain coursing through his shoulder might have dulled to a throbbing ache. Maybe he could lie here until then. The floor was cool enough, respite from the searing heat of the balcony he had been escaping when he fell. He twisted, enduring the sharp sting from his shoulder in favour of a more comfortable position on his back. He could easily lie here, watching the dance of the dust in the single shaft of sunlight that entered the gloom of his chambers. There was plenty of it to watch, after all. The layer was thick on the floor, as it was everywhere else in his sparse rooms, and the area around his fall was swirling with it. Pity it had not been thick enough to cushion his fall. Why not just lie there? His two criteria for a successful fall had been fulfilled: break nothing and do it when no one was there to see. Why not lie there, indeed? What else did he have to do but watch the dance of the dust? He sighed, and brushed a long lock of white hair from across his eyes to allow him to better see the dust. Hair that had once been not white, but as deep brown as the soil under the freshly watered plants in the garden far below his balcony. Hair that had once been held in place by more than just the plain leather strap that bound it now. His eyes hardened at the thought.

No.

This was no way for one born to rule to behave. To give in. To be found.

He levered himself onto his front, gritting his teeth against the pain, and gathered his knees under him. Slowly, he raised himself to his feet.

‘Always get back up,’ he growled. ‘Always.’

Carefully, he moved to the full-length mirror at the far side of the room. He drew himself erect, and looked the image in the eye.

‘If I never see you again,’ he said, ‘be sure that the last time we met, my head was held high.’

****

The boy stumbled, then went down hard as several larger bodies hit him in close succession.

His cheek pressed into the hard-packed dirt, the precious bundle of rags clutched to his chest, the wind knocked out of him and the shouts of opponents and team filling his head, he wished he could somehow move himself forward an hour when the game would be just a pain-fuelled memory.

One of the large boys lying on top of him pushed his face harder into the ground and seemed to read his thoughts. ‘Why don’t you just give up, little boy?’ he snarled. ‘Give us the head and in minutes we can all be off enjoying the Midsummer Festival.’

He cursed the stubborn pride that never seemed to let him back down; a trait that had done him more harm than good, but one that he had found as hard to change as it was to fathom. Not pride, stupidity, he corrected himself. He desperately wanted to give his antagonist a smart reply. Instead all he could manage was a suggestion as to where the boy could stick his suggestion. Not exactly witty, he supposed, but it would have to do, as his face was, predictably, pushed into the earth again.

‘Have it your way,’ the youth smirked as several of the village boys pulled him away. ‘Next time we’ll hit you so hard they’ll need to scrape you off the ground to take you home.’

Climbing to his feet, still slightly winded and unsteady, he believed them. He felt a hand on his arm, and looked up to see his older brother, a tall lean boy, built for both strength and agility, universally popular and everything his smaller sibling wished he could be. But where the pair contrasted physically, they shared a quirky sense of humour: something that had made them easy, and inseparable, companions throughout their childhood. Inseparable even on the sporting field: with only eleven months between them, they had been born in the same year and were therefore of an age to play in the same fixture of the annual apprentices’ game.

The tall boy half smiled. ‘Enjoying being a punchbag today, are you, Brann?’

Brann grinned. ‘I am used to it.’ He started to move back towards the rest of his team, then stopped. ‘Callan, call Gareth over, will you? We have a few seconds before we restart and I have an idea.’

Under normal circumstances, Brann would quite happily avoid Gareth whenever possible. The apprentice blacksmith tended to determine the worth of his peers by their strength and size: a formula that left Brann firmly at the bottom of his popularity stakes and meant that the small boy was usually treated with little more than contempt… on a good day. But Gareth was also the leader of their team and so, unfortunately, Brann faced the uncomfortable prospect of speaking to the oaf face-to-face. Spitting out some stray dirt and rubbing his bruised shoulder, he was reminded that there were worse things in life.

Gareth skidded to a halt beside him. ‘This better be quick – and important. If we don’t start now, we’ll have to hand the Head over. What is it, runt?’

Maybe it was stupid, Brann thought. It would be easier just to let them get on with the last few minutes of the game and be done with it. But he could not stand the thought of not knowing if it would have worked or not.

He looked up. ‘I’ve had an idea.’

Gareth snorted. ‘I knew it was a waste of time. There are no “ideas” in this. You take the Head, get it passed them, go up the cairn and put it the basket. That’s it.’ He turned away. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have bothered with anything the feeble runt had to say.’

Brann grabbed at his arm in desperation. ‘No, wait. It is not complicated.’

Gareth wheeled round, his look dangerous. ‘Are you saying I’m stupid?’

Self-preservation and general love of life just managed to overcome Brann’s temptation to answer with the truth. Callan stepped in quickly. ‘Of course not. He is saying it will not take long to explain it.’

Gareth sighed. ‘What is it, then? And hurry up.’

Brann took a deep breath. ‘Look, we cannot batter through them. Too many of them are too strong, or too quick, or both. And they are organised. Once they get set in place, we’ve got no chance of getting through them.’

‘So? We know that. Spit it out, man.’

‘So we have to try something else.’

‘But there is nothing else. All that anybody has ever done in this game, we’ve tried today.’

Callan smiled slowly. ‘But that does not mean we have to do just that, does it? If we do something new, they will not be ready for it.’

The two tradesmen appointed to enforce the few rules the game possessed had started to shout across to them. Gareth stood up. ‘We’ve got to get on with this. If you have anything of value to say, say it now, and quickly.’

‘Right.’ Brann took a deep breath. ‘This is it. Pretend I am injured, and that is why you are over here just now. Restart the game, and work the Head round to the other side of the cairn.’

‘And?’ said Gareth.

‘And throw it over here.’

‘Throw the Head away? Are you mad? We might as well tell them we’ll put it in the basket for them.’ Gareth was disgusted.

But Callan grinned and slapped the ground in glee. ‘Not if we get it over the cairn. There will be no one here.’

‘Except him,’ Gareth grunted in acknowledgement. ‘I know I’m slow, but I get there eventually. Is that it?’

Brann shrugged. ‘That’s it.’

Callan looked at Gareth. ‘Are we going to try it?’

Gareth unceremoniously shoved Brann back to the ground. ‘Not just try. Do. There is no way we’re going to lose to those towny scum.’

Brann felt the baking earth pressing against his face again. Gods, I hope not, he thought. Please don’t let all of this be for nothing.

The dark-haired man stumbled, slightly, as the crowd jostled and surged with excitement.

He moved, but only in the manner of one who allows himself to be moved, just enough to regain his balance and then brace himself. Somewhat in the manner of an experienced warrior, an observer might think.

But no one was watching him. All eyes were fixed on the game unfolding before them as they shouted themselves hoarse. The man, too, watched the sport intently, but there the similarity with his fellow onlookers ended. He stood, silent and impassive, absorbing every detail. And finding more of interest than he had expected.

He had seen more spectacular sport in cities near and distant, from the magnificent gladiatorial arenas of the sun-hardened Empire far to the south, where decadence was masked by a veneer of civilised laws and customs, to the tracks where humans and animals raced, sometimes even against each other, in the more fertile lands at nature’s border where sensible weather stopped and the short sea-crossing began to these rain-drenched islands. Lush and green they may be, but damp and miserable they were, too. He had grown up in a land where the winters were cold, deadly cold, but at least it was honest cold that you could clothe yourself against. Here, the insidious damp worked its way past however many layers you piled on, and seeped into your bones, setting you shivering with an unhealthy regularity.

Which was why he was thankful that his work had brought him here during what must be their meagre summer. A scant few weeks of blue skies and heat that were welcomed with joy and appreciation by the locals but that, to a foreigner, were more of a taunt: here is what the rest of the world gets for much of the year.

And what lay before him was no grand arena, but a field of short grass and hard earth outside a market town in name and function only compared with the larger and more grandiose – but, if truth be told, more lacking in soul – settlements farther south in these islands; it was in truth a glorified village of no more than a thousand or so residents, although a suggestion to any of the inhabitants that it was anything less than a town would be met with outrage and suggestions of lunacy.

Heavy rope, dyed bright red, lay on the grass to mark out a circular area, around a hundred and fifty paces across, and along that boundary the roaring and beseeching crowd was gathered, three, sometimes four, deep and jostling each other as much from excitement as from their attempts to gain a better view. In the centre of the area stood a cairn of large rocks, roughly the height of three men and at least ten paces across the base, with a battered wicker basket (apparently a veteran of many such a contest) sitting at the peak.

The action raged around the cairn. As far as the impassive stranger had been able to determine, the idea was to scale the cairn and place a tightly bound bundle of bright-coloured rags, apparently weighted by rock or metal in its centre, in the basket. Two teams competed to do so: one defending the cairn while the other attempted to break through and scale the rocks. Rules seemed few, and were therefore easily deduced. The team in possession of the rag-bundle, which was around the size of a man’s head, attacked the cairn relentlessly until the defenders managed to wrest the ball from them – at which point the team’s roles were reversed.

Tactics seemed only slightly more numerous than rules. Either a player, or group of players, would attempt to force a breach in the line of defenders through brute force by becoming a human battering ram, or one player would dodge and weave his way as far forward as possible, usually aided by team-mates who would try to block, often violently, the defenders’ attempts to reach the carrier. If the player with the bundle looked as if he were about to be caught, he would try to hand it over to a colleague to allow the attack to continue. If, however, the player was caught by the defenders, or if the bundle of rags was intercepted or snatched, the fun began. An almighty mêlée would ensue, with players from both sides piling in to try to retrieve the rags in a maelstrom of flailing limbs and frantic dives.

If the attackers retained possession, the attack would resume immediately if possible or, if they were under pressure, the rag-bundle would be fed back to a deep-lying player to allow them to regroup; the defenders would not venture too far from the cairn for fear of exposing gaps in their tight-knit ranks.

Were the bundle of rags to be won by the defenders, they would be able to break immediately for the cairn. As soon as such a battle for the rags began, therefore, several attacking players would position themselves between the defenders and the cairn so that, in the event of a turnaround, they would be able to slow down such a break until their colleagues could reinforce them. In positioning themselves in this precautionary way, however, the numbers competing directly for the bundle were then weighted in favour of the defenders, so turnarounds were fairly frequent as a result.

And, as far as sport went, it was brutal. There appeared to be no limit to the amount of physical violence that could be used to advance one’s cause, save blatant attempts to seriously injure an opponent, such as biting or gouging. Kicking, punching, butting and the pulling of any available limbs seemed perfectly legitimate, and even encouraged.

And so it had continued, for almost an hour. The pace was fast and relentless, and the silent stranger was forced to admire the fitness of those who could maintain such efforts continuously at that level for so long. It was even more impressive, given their age: the players, numbering fourteen in each team, looked to be aged near enough fifteen years; probably final-year apprentices, he guessed, if their apprenticeship system conformed to the usual set-up.

A shorter-than-average boy had been hit hard by two much larger opponents, crashing to the ground and only just managing to hang onto the bundle by clutching it to his chest and curling up like a threatened animal until his team-mates could come to his aid.

A heavy man, in the apron of a baker, cheered beside the stranger and jostled him again in his excitement.

‘Apologies, my friend,’ he bellowed, ‘but that’s their weakest link down again. It’s only a matter of time before we win.’

The stranger looked round. ‘It is nearly over, then?’

The baker nodded. ‘You haven’t visited before, I guess?’ The town was boosted by travellers of all sorts throughout the spring and summer as traders brought this year’s wares, hunters trailed back and forth from the hills with fresh game and those who preferred to seek a new horizon every day made full use of the better weather; and every year brought most of the same old faces and a smattering of new ones. ‘Yeah, it’s nearly over. The score is tied, and the time’s up. There must be a winner, though, so the game plays on until the next basket is scored.

‘All we have to do is get the Head off them and we’ve as good as won.’ The man noticed the stranger’s quizzical frown. ‘The Head: it’s what we call the rags they fight over. They say it was an enemy’s head they used hundreds of years ago when the game started.’ He snorted in amusement. ‘It is slightly more civilised now. That was when it was played between the two villages in the valley. These days we are a prosperous town and they are still a village but still they seem to think they have a chance of beating us. Anyway, having that wee runt on their team is like being a man short for them. The others in the village team have given everything to get it to this stage, but that’s all they’ve got. Next time the runt has the Head, we’ll get it back. He gets knocked down every time.’

The warrior looked at him coolly. ‘True. But every time, he gets back up.’

The baker nudged him one more time, unconsciously taking himself one large step closer to an early death. ‘Nah,’ he grinned with relish. ‘The little runt is staying down this time. We are a man up now. It’s all over for this year, mark my words.’

That warrior turned to him as far as the tightly packed throng would allow. ‘This happens every year, then?’

The baker looked at him directly for the first time. His eyes moved over the carefully trimmed beard, the clothes and boots that spoke of efficiency as well as expert tailoring, where wear was obvious but tear was minimal, and the obvious quality of the longsword, dagger and boot knife, and his manner became more respectful. Or, at least, as respectful as an oaf such as he could manage. Even the L-shaped scar on the warrior’s cheek failed to diminish the impression of breeding. He nodded.

‘Every Midsummer’s Day, for as long as anyone can remember. The game takes place between this town and Twofords, the village further up the valley. Final-year apprentices show what they can do and, for the last decade or so, ours have shown they can do it better. The same again this year, as you can see.’

‘Because you’ve got more apprentices to choose from?’

‘Because we are better than those hicks from the village, of course. Class shows.’

The tall stranger nodded towards the game. ‘It is close so far. And not over yet.’

The baker grinned arrogantly. ‘It’s over. Believe me, my friend, it’s over all right.’

The warrior’s eyes darkened at the term of address. He returned to his gaze to the small figure lying alone as the action moved around to the other side of the cairn. There was something about the boy that nagged at him. Something to do with the fact that… He smiled. ‘He always gets up.’

The baker looked at him. ‘What was that?’

The warrior smiled. A cold smile, but a smile all the same. ‘Oh, I was just thinking that you are right. One way or another, it will all be over soon.’