Barrion was trying to break the ice.
‘A fine harvest this year, lad. Enough to brew twice the mead we had last year. I doubt we’ll wake ’til long past sunrise two days hence.’
Cade grunted, preoccupied, his arms in torment, though he was determined not to show it as he dragged the clattering sled behind him.
‘You know Estrilda?’ tried Barrion. ‘That dark-haired one from the stables? She was asking after you. Wanted to know where you’d be seated at the feast tonight. That Sara from the smithy asked the same, and so did her sister.’ He laughed.
Cade scowled. Barrion clearly thought him a fool, a child, easily patronised.
‘Fish from the rivers, fruit from the soil, girls from the village.’ Barrion winked. ‘The Cradle provides, lad. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.’
‘You’re wrong about Abi,’ Cade said.
Barrion stopped dead and turned with a look of concern.
‘The rest of us call her “Abigael”, lad. When we have to. Sounds like you two have become close. For how long?’
‘Long enough to know that what everyone says about her is not true.’
‘’Tis true she’s trouble, lad.’
‘So you keep telling me.’
‘So does everyone in the blasted village, but still you won’t listen.’ Barrion managed to staunch his frustration and laid gentle hands on Cade’s shoulders. ‘Understand. She’s not…’ Barrion struggled to find the words. ‘She’s not right! She doesn’t fit. You know even the Matriarchs couldn’t divine a use for her.’
Cade snorted. ‘Abi shamed them all, that’s why. She could interpret the old scrolls better than any in the cloisters.’
‘And questioned those scrolls too often, which is why she’s shovelling dung in the goat pens these days. Not only that, she’s got your nose turned places it shouldn’t be. What are you thinking? I can see she’s got pretty eyes and a full figure. Come on, lad. Tell me that’s all you’re after…’
Cade calmly set down the sled.
‘Speak of her that way again, Barrion,’ he said, ‘and see if I don’t raise my hand to you.’
Barrion stepped back, muttering in astonishment.
‘It’s as they say, then,’ he said. ‘First she has you peering over the walls into the Lands Beyond. Then she has you threaten your master without a glint of fear in your eye. She has a hex upon you, lad, whether you know it or not. I knew she was wrong. She’s a mistake. She doesn’t belong here.’
‘Of course she belongs here, Barrion. She’s an orphan like us. Like all of us. She was sent to the Cradle from the Lands Beyond to be cared for after her parents died.’
Cade jabbed his finger at the Tor. ‘Is that not His custom? The creed of the Horned Throne welcomed her. If there’s a mistake, Barrion, then is it not of His making?’
The blow landed hard across Cade’s cheek, knocking him onto the sled. The stag shifted beneath him, the sled slipping down a shelf of rock onto the ledge beside the trail. He went to stop it, but Barrion grabbed him by his tunic, lifting him off his feet and bellowing in his face.
‘No orphan leaves the Cradle! That is His law. He provides and so we obey. That is His custom. For even one of us to cross the boundary would bring ruin to us all.’
Cade struggled but Barrion’s arms were like branches of oak, his teeth bared behind his spit-flecked whiskers.
‘The Matriarchs cannot protect her forever, boy. Not when she persists with her blasphemies, and poisons others with them.’
Cade looked down. The sled’s escape had been stopped by a sapling, perilously close to the brink. Realising his own feet hovered near the ledge, he grabbed Barrion’s arms for fear of being dropped. The man glared back at his apprentice, eyes cold.
‘Folk won’t stand for it,’ Barrion said. ‘And nor will I.’
‘She’s not what you think she is,’ Cade said. ‘She’s not a witch.’
Before Barrion could answer, their attention was stolen by a soft but insistent chime, carried upon the wind. The village bell. Someone far below was hammering that bronze shell in a panic. Barrion flung Cade to the ground, shrugged the dead hog from his shoulders and bolted down the slope like a hound. Cade’s own heart rang as he gathered himself to sprint after him. The great stag shifted on the slope beside him, then vanished over the ledge. Cade peered after it. He watched the animal tumble through the air for a second before it cast a sheet of blood and spinning splinters over the rocks below.
The goats had got loose. They were everywhere – braying, humping, clashing in the streets. They nibbled at the white cloths laid upon the feasting tables, spilling empty plates and cups onto a ground now strewn with dung. They gobbled fruit from the overturned horn-baskets woven by the children in annual thanks for the Horned Father’s protection. The animals munched and gazed stupidly as their human keepers raced about them.
Cade stumbled and kicked his way through the whinnying throng, close behind Barrion as he entered the village. The alarm bell had ceased long before they arrived, but the place remained in a state of panic. Cade saw frightened nursemaids dragging children behind doors, infants bawling. Men rifled through sheds, barns and cellars, frantically searching. Cade froze as he heard one of them call out.
‘Abigael?’
Barrion grabbed one of the field workers and demanded to know what was going on.
‘The queer one,’ the man said. ‘She’s gone missing, slipped away. Some say she’s already fled the Cradle!’
Cade’s legs were reeds in a gale, his belly an empty pit. Abi was gone? She had been so distant these last few weeks, fearful. The awful logic of her disappearance knocked him dizzy. Perhaps she was only hiding in the woods. Perhaps she had stumbled upon a bear or a pack of sabre-wolves.
Perhaps she was even more reckless than he thought. She may have crossed the boundary into the Lands Beyond, and she had done so without him.
‘Where is she?’ Barrion had Cade by his jacket once again, shaking him, flecking Cade’s face with spit.
‘I don’t know,’ Cade spluttered.
Cade had never seen Barrion so wild, his lips curled, snarling like a cornered bear.
‘You two are wedded in this mischief, I know it. Now tell me!’
