Behind him, Thomas beheld nothing but a weird distorted reflection of his friend as if framed in a mirror of running blood.
Waldroup rolled the dead body of the Yvag through the opening. Then he cut upward from the ground, which closed the circle again. The fire sputtered, vanished.
“Why?” Thomas asked.
“I promised to send it home. And I hope it’ll serve as a warning to the rest of these bastards that things are different here now. They don’t need to know we’re scarpering. Let them be afraid for once.”
Thomas thought about it. “That’s a good message. Things are different.”
“So long as we’re careful. We’ll be long gone across the water, and none left from this encounter who can tell them true, Thomas. At least I hope so. No guaranteeing there aren’t crypts in Selkirk or Gallae, but they won’t learn of us from Stroud or his men, hey? Now, here,” he said, and flipped the second ördstone to Thomas. “One for each of us.”
Thomas looked at it. For an instant a tiny ribbon glittered between the two stones, like a straight sprinkle of dewdrops linking him to Waldroup. Then he closed his fist over the stone and the glowing line vanished.
He walked around the site, tore his arrows from the soldiers’ bodies, hunted up the one that had missed its mark. He thought of the first Yvag in the crypt, and the arrow that had bounced off its armor. He said as much to Waldroup, who replied, “You stay here, I’ll go find it. That green fire shows up again, be prepared to shoot whatever comes out.” Then he descended once more into the crypt. Thomas was more than happy not to have to go down there again.
At the point where Thomas began to worry something had gotten him, Waldroup emerged and handed him the single arrow. “Ended up underneath the Yvag in its vault, that did. So, that’s all of them, we’re certain?”
Thomas nodded.
“All right, then. Let’s go.”
As Waldroup had once put it, the Yvag had feasted on Thomas’s heart: They’d murdered his brother, driven his sister mad, cruelly plucked her child from her and left a bundle of living twigs in its place. He wanted them to know they had an enemy who would dedicate his life to paying them back if that’s what it took. He opened his fist and stared at the weird black stone. “Thomas Lindsay Rimor de Ercildoun, Your Majesty,” he said to it. Then he dropped it into his quiver and grabbed the reins of his new horse.
One day he would tell her his name now that the alderman had provided hers—Nicnevin—but not before he’d cut down a whole army of her kind. Alas, that would not be today.
He swung up into the saddle to ride past the grave markers and after Alpin Waldroup.
PART TWO:
TÀM LYNN
XI. The Knight
The knight arrived at the home of the tenant-in-chief, whose name was Cardden, on a fine spring afternoon. The knight was dirty and tired as were his two horses. Outside the palisade gate, he dropped down from the saddle and then, leading the horses, walked across the immense open yard to the keep. Seven people in the yard paused in their duties to watch him pass by. One, nearest the keep and with a face that reminded the knight of a peregrine, turned and hurried up the steps and inside it.
The knight wore a worn leather shoulder cape over his brown tunic. He was bare-legged, and the ragged edge of a pair of braies showed just below the tunic’s hem. He left a sword, two bows, and two quivers on the second horse, along with a bedroll and an old weathered satchel holding his mason’s tools. The weapons, his bearing, and the way his blue eyes, heavy-lidded with fatigue, took in everything around him bespoke his lethal occupation.
The tenant-in-chief met him at the steps up the motte well before he reached the keep. Dressed in a lightweight belted tunic and rolled-down boots, Cardden had bowed legs and the hunched posture of someone who had spent his life bent over the moldboard of a plow. He was balding in the center of his hair, but he still had most of his teeth.
The knight nodded deferentially as he drew from his tunic a small parchment, which he held out to Cardden, who unfurled and read it. It was simple and clear, a document of scutage that assigned Cardden responsibility to make good on a debt owed by King David to the knight for his service in the defending of the Empress Matilda. The king’s seal was affixed, testament to the pledged fealty.
Cardden lowered the document enough to study the weary knight more carefully. No more than twenty or so years of age surely, with strands of black hair across his eyes, which shone like chips of sky seen through the naked branches of winter trees. Although he was smiling vaguely, doing his best to seem unthreatening, the young knight had about him the air of someone used to the unexpected, the violent, and the quick . . . someone who had survived by instincts for so long that he no longer noticed he had them—even here, where there was no situation to threaten him. Plus, he had a scar along the hairline on the right side of his head, mostly hidden beneath the shaggy hair.
He is dangerous, Cardden thought, and for a moment considered sending for Gospatrick, the sheriff of Roxburghshire.
But the document was real. Cardden had promised to pay scutage as a form of tax on behalf of up to three men who had fought for the king. This was the first who’d ever applied. Most, as he well knew, did not survive to take advantage of the offer. While he hadn’t exactly depended upon it, admittedly he’d half expected never to have to pay any scutage at all.
“Two oxgangs of land, a virgate,” he said, handing the parchment back. He owned a ploughgate himself, much of it lying fallow this year. A virgate was not a lot, and anyway, the knight as tenant would be expected to share some of what he grew and raised with Cardden. Aside from that, it might not be a bad idea to have a young and skilled soldier about, and much nearer at hand than Gospatrick who, if sent for immediately, might arrive in a few hours if it suited him. “Very good parcels I have, both fermtoun on a slope near the Teviot, and shielings that include huts higher up where you can graze your livestock. I imagine, in order to plow you’ll be acquiring at least a few oxen?” Purchased perhaps from him.
The knight nodded somewhat uncertainly, as if the actuality of farming had not occurred to him before now.
“What’s your name, then, husbandman?”
“Tàmhas, sir. Tàmhas Lynn.”
“Welcome, then, Tàmhas. Lynn, you say. Are you from Peeblesshire?”
“Eh, no. Ayrshire, sir.”
“Ah. Well, I shall ride along with you and your plot we’ll choose and mark out between us right away.” He went back up into the keep.
The knight stood awhile observing the keep and the walls, and the various wood outbuildings: the main hall where the family would live, and beside it the cooking house and well, a weaving shop, a stable that looked to include a smithy’s or at least a farrier’s workshop. So intently did he contemplate the thirteen buildings within the palisade that a girl carrying a basket of eight eggs almost collided with him. She jumped back, startled, as quickly as he did. She wore a blue gown with flared sleeves, and an embroidered waist belt and hip girdle. Her brown hair was braided. The tips fell past her waist. He counted sixteen braidings on one side and seventeen on the other, but restrained the urge to mention this.
“You should be careful, sir,” she said sharply.
“Forgive me, I do try to be.” He looked upon her with his head slightly bowed. Her face was flushed as if with fury. She glanced at his horses, at his weapons.
“You’re a soldier, then.”
“I have been before now.” He tried to make out whether she was truly angry with him, though he couldn’t fathom a reason. Finally, he added, “I think you walk very quietly.” Her eyes flashed for a second meeting his, and her cheeks reddened darker.
“And you, I think, daydream,” she said.
He stepped aside to let her pass. She curtsied, then started across the yard to the cooking house. To her back, quietly he said, “If I’m dreaming you, may I never wake up.”
