Chapter Two

                                                 2.

The Brewer’s Road was little more than a rutted earthen track strewn with roots and rocks, yet it was a welcome site to Wilhem.  He and Skreeander burst through a thicket and began heading north, at last free to trot after more than an hour of slow plodding through underbrush.  It had taken them most of the afternoon to escape the Gilded Woods, longer than usual because Wilhem had been so distracted he’d twice lost the way and been forced to double back.  Even now the boy’s thoughts were ablaze.  Cob was going to think he’d gone mad when he told him what had happened.  And he was going to be furious about the crossbow. . . 

Whatsmore, the witch had been right.  No one was going to believe him.  Probably not even Cob.  Why should they, when Wilhem scarcely believed it himself?  Every child in the Downs old enough to hold a hayfork knew that witches only existed in stories and Altarians never bothered coming to the Hinterlands.  Wilhem had never seen a real Altarian soldier in his life until that morning.  Hardly anybody else he knew had either, other than Cob and few other old soldiers living in the village that had fought in the Orchard War.  But now there were five thousand of them, if Matha was to be believed, less than half a day’s ride away from the center of town.     

Remorse twisted Wilhem’s stomach.  He should have left the cage at the top of the cave shaft after he’d ridden it up, trapping Matha and her soldiers in the bowl. But he hadn’t.  My reach is far longer than a sword.  The witch’s words had echoed in his head as he’d considered sabotaging the cage; he imagined her working some kind of dark magic on Cob, making him suffer horribly. 

“What’s done cannot be undone,” he told Skreeander, urging the horse to pick up his pace.  They came around a bend onto a cleaner stretch of the road that was sheltered beneath a peaked canopy of tree branches.  “No use dwelling on it.”  Those were Cob’s words though, and to Wilhem’s ears they rang a little hollow when he spoke them.  I couldn’t risk letting Matha hurt him.  I couldn’t.  He gave Skree a nudge with his heel and flapped the reins.  Skree lengthened his stride, gradually working up to a cantor.  

At the end of the tree tunnel the Brewer’s Road intersected with a much wider, smoother thoroughfare paved with cobblestones.  This road had been named the Queensroad after the war, but Wilhem and everyone in the Downs still called it the Old Triton Highway.  It was ancient, older than Thimble Downs even. To the south it ran unbroken for three hundred leagues, right to the foot of Gather’s statue in the central plaza of Triton.  Or so it was said.  Wilhem had never seen more than a dozen leagues of the highway with his own eyes.  At one time the entire thing had been paved with flagstones, but now much of it had fallen into disrepair and only the oft-used sections of the road near large towns were still maintained.  Between the towns, most of the stones had been swallowed up by mud, scavenged by builders, or buckled by grass and weeds.

To the North, the highway led through the heart of Thimble Downs, then on up past Hunthaven to Whitestone Keep, the home of Lord Jondel Breylock and high seat of the Hinterlands.  From there it continued another two leagues north to Hollow Hill, a stark fortress ruled by Lord Jondel’s brother, Lord Jandegar Breylock.  Hollow Hill was the last castle in the Hinterlands and stood at the end of the Triton Highway.  

Skree swung towards the Downs of his own accord, following the smells of home up the new road to the crest of a hill.  At the top the highway plunged steeply downward into a wooded valley.  A wide, swift river snaked in tight arcs through its bottom.  On the far side, a mountain of blue-grey stone with a bald, thimble-like top jutted up out of the tree line.  On the near side, a chapel spire also peeked out above the trees, its four-faced pyramidal point rising a tenth as high as the mountain. 

A traveler new to the land would never know it, but the chapel marked the center of Thimble Downs.  The rest of the town lay hidden beneath a screen of treetops, the only other clue to its existence being two long bridges that spanned the river.  

The two bridges were very different.  The southern one was known as the Rainbow Bridge and was built from the same stone as the mountain.  It rose in a high arch and at both ends, a pair of slender towers with crenelated tops soared into the sky, flying blue and gold flags from their needlelike spikes.  Below them, the bridge was bustling with villagers, though from so far away they looked like nothing more than a writhing mass of ants.

 The second bridge lay a quarter-league upriver.  Unlike the Rainbow Bridge it was wooden and completely covered, as though a barn had been laid across the water.  Its slatted walls were blue, but sun and wind had mottled the paint in places, leaving large grey splotches.  This bridge was known as the Tollhouse, so called for the coin a man inevitably spent on his way across.  Beneath its peaked roof the Tollhouse housed a infamous brothel and tavern that drew custom from all over the Hinterlands. 

At Wilhem’s urging Skreeander raced down into the valley.  When they got to the bottom the road leveled out and clusters of humble cabins appeared.  They were all made of un-milled logs, but some of them boasted mullioned glass windows and stone chimneys while others were plainer, with rough openings and crooked stovepipes sticking out of their sagging roofs.  Skreeander streaked past a good two dozen of them, his hooves clattering loudly. A goat loitering in their path as they came around a bend wheeled and darted away, sending a flock of crows into a frenzy.  The birds had been feeding on the carcass of a trampled dog, but when the goat ran amok amongst them they erupted into flight.  At the same moment a cart driven by a stooped and shriveled farmer was rounding the bend from the opposite side; the crows swarmed and the old man’s horse shied, veering wildly onto Wilhem’s side of the road. 

Wilhem yanked hard on the reins, but Skreeander had already begun to bolt.  The palfrey swerved around the farmer’s horse and cart.  They managed to avoid a collision, but on the edge of the road there were three young men standing with their backs turned to the commotion, sharing a wineskin.  Two of them leapt aside as Skreeander rode them down; the third reacted too late and the horse’s rump clipped him, sending him spinning to the ground.

“Ho!” Wilhem shouted. “Ho!”  Skreeander finally slowed.  Wilhem brought him up short and jumped from the saddle.  The young man he’d hit was climbing unsteadily to his feet, cursing.  The other two rushed to help him but the boy angrily shrugged them off, his complexion flushing red as the wine pouring from a skin he’d dropped when he’d fallen.  Wilhem ran to apologize.  When he noticed the boy’s attire however, the words caught in his throat.  He was wearing a pair of crisp black boots cut from supple leather, an elaborate sword belt trimmed with silver scrollwork, and a long woolen overcoat dyed a vibrant blue.  Breylock Blue.  A crest depicting a snarling valecat was stitched in gold over his breast.  The other two boys were similarly dressed.  One of them was tall and broad-shouldered, the other small and frail with nervous brown eyes.  Their horses were tethered to a trough nearby, equipped with saddles too fine for any commoner to afford.  

Wilhem recognized the horses and the trio of boys instantly.  The old man in the cart must have recognized them also because Wilhem saw him practically flaying his horse with the reins in an effort to get out of sight down the road.    

“Mi’lord,” Wilhem breathed.  The boy he’d knocked down was Lorel Breylock, who was known to have a fierce temper just like his father, Lord Jandegar of Hollow Hill.  The other two were his little brother, Shan, a boy of no more than eleven, and Wyeth Trawn of the Ember Isles, a southerner who’d appeared at Whitestone Keep a few summer’s before amidst a whirlwind of rumors.  Some said he was a war prisoner taken by Lord Jondel during a raid on the Ember Isles, others said he was really Lord Jondel’s bastard son.  Nobody really knew the true story of how he’d come to Whitestone.   “Forgive me,” Wilhem beseeched.  “I—”

“Forgive you!” The flush drained from Lorel’s cheeks, turning his face a livid white.  “How dare you?” He jerked his sword from its scabbard.  The blade was thin and bright. “On your knees!”  He lunged forward, pressing the silvery point of the sword against Wilhem’s breast.  Wilhem slowly knelt in the road, taken aback by the hatred in the lordling’s eyes.  They were black and seething with rage, set in a spade shaped, girlish face.  His mouth was like a rosebud, red and plump, the upper lip nicked by a small white scar.

“Lorel,” interrupted Wyeth.  He was the oldest of them, perhaps sixteen, with a blunt square jaw, light green eyes, and shoulders as broad as an ax was long.  His hair was the yellow of summer beer, growing in tight curls that had been shorn off near to his skull.  He was a man grown, really, though his cheeks seemed incapable still of producing a beard.  “Put the sword down.  It was accident.”

“An accident?” Lorel snorted.  “This filthy peasant runs me down like a quintain and you call it an accident?  Look at this—” Lorel sneered at the sleeve of his coat, which hung in tatters.  “My coat is torn.  What will the ladies of the Tollhouse think of me now?  They’ll judge me too lowly and poor to afford a proper coat and I’ll have to bed an ugly one.  The day is ruined, Wyeth!  I ought to kill him for that.”

“Mi’lord,” Wilhem blurted, “My horse broke rein—” 

“Shut up!” Lorel shouted.  He turned his wrist, driving the tip of the gleaming sword half an inch into Wilhem’s flesh.  William shouted, as much from shock as pain. 

“Enough,” said Wyeth, taking a step forward.  He was imposing for his age, possessing a stony calm that reminded Wilhem a bit of the Altarian captains.  Timid Shan lingered behind, his eyes popping at the sight of the spot of blood spreading through Wilhem’s shirt.   “His horse bolted.  He’ll pay for the coat.”

“Oh—” Lorel snickered, “He’ll pay for it all right.”  He withdrew his sword and jammed it inelegantly into the scabbard.

“A fair price,” said Wyeth, flatly.  Lorel turned on him.

“The price will be whatever I damn well say it is, Southlander.  You’re a guest of my uncle’s, not my keeper.”  Lorel brushed dirt from his coat and refocused his attention on Wilhem.  “Your horse.  If you can’t control him, you’re a danger to others and you don’t deserve to ride.”  He nodded at Skreeander, who had wandered off the edge of the road to drink from the other end of the well trough  “I’ll take him to be properly broken, as a favor to the good folk of The Hinterlands and as payment for my ruined coat.”  

Wilhem heard the lording’s words through a white roar of panic.

“Skreeander?” he whispered.  “No—Mi’lord, you can’t, please.  He only bolted because I was pushing him too fast—there are Altarian soldiers in Ganther's Bowl, thousands of them, coming this way.  I was racing back to warn my father—”

Lorel stepped close to Wilhem and delivered a tremendous backhand to his cheek.  The force of the blow rattled Wilhem’s jaw and knocked him to the ground.  Lorel stood over him, laughing incredulously.

“Altarian soldiers?  You must have piss for brains, peasant, to lie so brazenly to the future master of Hollow Hill.”  Wilhem groaned, trying to right himself.  Lorel shoved him back down to the dirt with a boot to his throat and held him there.  “Stay.”  With half his face pressed into mud, Wilhem could only see a slice of the world; it contained Wyeth’s thick legs up to the waist and all of little Shan.  The boy stood stiff and pale, watching his older brother unblinkingly.  His lips were tinged blue and he was very frail, as though he’d recently been wasted by fever.  

“Are you going to kill him, Lorel?” He asked softly.  

“No,” Wyeth responded.  “He is not.”

“Oh?” Lorel pressed his boot down harder on Wilhem’s throat.  Blackness began to seep into the corners of Wilhem’s vision.  He sputtered, sucking mud into his nostrils.  “Are you certain of that, Wyeth?”

“If you do Lord Jondel will have your head on a pike by sunrise.”  Lorel sighed.  

“Perhaps.”  He withdrew his boot.  “My sweet uncle Jondel, tenderhearted champion of the fleas.”  Wilhem gagged, spitting out the dirt clogging his throat.  “I don’t suppose he’d begrudge me a few good kicks though—”

Lorel struck quickly.  The first blow took Wilhem completely off guard, catching him solidly in the ribs.  He heard a hollow sound like a drum followed by the whoosh of his own breath leaving him.  The pain came later, as Lorel was already delivering a second kick to the same spot.  Unable to shout, Wilhem silently rolled onto his side and curled up like maggot, gagging for air.  Lorel aimed the third blow at the small of his back and the fourth at his head, grunting savagely with each impact.  There was no time for Wilhem to protect himself; the shot to his temple flipped him onto his back, knocking his thoughts loose from his body.  After that he was unable to tell one blow from the next.  

When the beating finally stopped, Wilhem cracked his eyes just enough to see Lorel wipe a sheen of sweat from his brow and sweep back a stray lock of lank black hair that fallen into his face.  He smiled down, his face strangely stiff, like a doll’s.

“Remember this the next time you think to tell lies to a nobleman.”  He adjusted his sword belt and stalked off towards the horses.  Shan followed but Lord Wyeth lingered.  He crouched down on his knees until his face hovered not far above Wilhem’s, his large eyes laced with dismay.  

“I’m sorry,” he said.  Wilhem shut his eyes.  His whole body was throbbing so fiercely it was agony just to breathe.

“It wasn’t your doing, Mi’lord,” he rasped.  Wyeth nodded.

“Nevertheless, I should have stopped him.  But he is mad.  He might have killed the both of us.  Tell me.  What you said about the Altarians—is it true?”  Wilhem opened his eyes.

“I swear it.”  

“Wyeth—” Lorel shouted from a little ways down the road, where he and Shan were tying Skree’s lead to another of the horses.  “Are you coming or would you rather stay here and bugger that pile of rot?”  Wyeth ignored him.    

“Lorel Breylock is a fool,” he said, quietly.  “I’ll speak to Lord Jondel.  If I can I’ll see the horse returned to you.  What’s your name?”

“Wilhem. Of Ashfall.” 

“Can you walk?  I could send a woman for you when we get to the Tollhouse.”

“No.  Thank you Mi’lord.”  Wyeth hesitated, then left to join the other lordlings.  Wilhem lay unmoving in the road, watching the three of them ride off together with Skreeander in tow.  Lord Wyeth glanced over his shoulder before they’d ridden out of sight, his jaw tight with reluctance.  

Wilhem tried to sit up.  A searing jolt shot through his sides and he fell back to the ground.  He remained still a while before trying again, being more careful not to put pressure on his torso.  It hurt something fierce, but he was able to rock himself upright and slowly climb to his feet.  Once the dizziness passed, he lifted his shirt to inspect the damage.  There was blood all down the front of his pale chest, leaking from the spot where Lorel had broken the skin with his sword.  The cut wasn’t very deep though and didn’t hurt much—not compared to the damage inflicted by the lordling’s first two kicks, anyhow.  The spot below his armpit where those blows had landed was already purpling; when he prodded the flesh with his fingertips the pain left him gasping.   

Wilhem dropped his shirt, fighting off the need to wretch.  Worse than the pain was the image in his mind of Lorel yanking Skreeander’s lead, forcing the palfrey to follow his chestnut mare down the road.  A fury powerful enough to stop Wilhem’s breath overwhelmed him.  He couldn’t imagine his life without the horse.  He’d spent more time with Skreeander than he had with any person, even Cob.  Lord Wyeth will talk to Lord Jondel.  You’ll get him back.  Move.  Wilhem took a step, shoving his despair and rage to the back of his mind.  Cob.  He needed to find his father.  He would know what to do.  He took another step.  Ahead of him in the road, he saw his satchel lying in the mud.  Wyeth must have dropped it there for him.  He shuffled over to the bag and slowly bent down to pick it up, grateful to the young lord for thinking of it—though he almost wished he hadn’t.  The bag was heavy and awkward to carry, even when he slung it over his shoulder.

The heart of Thimble Downs was still a half-league distant.  The walk however, seemed about a thousand times longer than that.  Wilhem struggled for each step, wincing and fighting back waves of nausea.  As he drew nearer to the river, more cabins sprang up on the sides of the road until they were lined up one after another. Throngs of villagers began to appear, emerging from paths in the thinning woods like wisps of fog; they crossed from one side of the road to the other, going about their business with carts of firewood, baskets of forest onions, and clothes from their wash lines.  When they saw Wilhem shuffling along a few paused to ask him if he needed help, but he politely refused them.  For the most part they seemed relieved.    

A hundred staffs from the banks of the river the rows of cabins transformed into an alley of two and three story buildings.  All of them were made of the same rough logs, with steeply gabled roofs and mortared stone foundations.  Their chimneys rose just shy of the treetops, which loomed over them like grasping giants, and the walls of one met with the walls of the next so that the only way to tell them apart was by the placement of their leaded windows and narrow doorways.  Over each a door a sign was hung, jutting out into the air on a simple post of black iron.  The first few signs all bore the hearth symbol—a blazing flame under a stone arch—telling travelers that they were inns.  The Logger’s Hall and Ganther's Gate displayed colorful hearths painted below their spidery lettering, but The Triton Head outdid them by incorporating an oil lamp into the sign so that the hearth symbol blazed with a live flame.  Wilhem rarely entered any of those places, they were the meaner inns where the inn keeps served nothing but mutton and goat and wouldn't pay him for anything so fine as venison.  The better inns had been built on the north side of town, closer to the Tollhouse.

Past the inns there were a number of guildhalls with cryptic symbols on their signs, then there was a bookseller with a storefront made completely of paned glass to display the books within and next to it, as if to balance things out, a huntsman’s club with no windows at all.  The buildings ended after the huntsman’s club, giving way to open ground.  The road came to a circular plaza there and forked off in two new directions.  The left fork veered up along the river through another alley of buildings, the right one angled slightly east, heading over the Rainbow Bridge.  In the center of the plaza there was a gurgling fountain displaying a human scale statue of Ganthor, poised to throw a spear into the sky.  His muscled arm was cocked back behind his noble head with the spear in his grip, his brow taut with concentration and fury as he glared up into the clouds.  The statue of Ganthor in Triton was said to be nearly identical, only a hundred times larger.  Directly behind the god’s statue stood the chapel devoted to him, built in white marble with blue veins.  The stonework was simple but masterful, carved so delicately in some places that the sun shone through like it was colored glass.

Wilhem halted in front of Ganthor’s fountain, gazing north.  A blue glint of the Tollhouse was just visible over the tops of the other buildings stretched out in that direction.  No doubt Lorel Breylock was already there, taken up with one of the girls while Wyeth and Shan idled in the tavern, playing squares or reading.  Their horses and Skreeander were probably hitched to a rail outside or in one of the rentable stalls.  Unguarded?

The stream of traffic coming off the Rainbow Bridge parted around Wilhem as he contemplated. Four barefoot farmers dressed in near rags gave him sullen glances, tripping over one another to avoid trampling him.  Then came a bald swineherd driving a sow with a switch, and after that a heavyset Downswife in a bright yellow dress, returning home with bread and what might have been bacon, judging from the smell, in a wicker basket.  “Poor dear,” she nodded, flashing a gruesome, rotted grin.  Wilhem barely noticed.  He was too busy mulling over the possibility of stealing Skreeander back.  

He didn't think it would be difficult to make off with the palfrey undetected. Lord Lorel would never expect him to be so bold.  But Wilhem knew it didn’t matter.  No matter how stealthy he was, Lorel would still know who had taken Skreeander.  He’d just hunt Wilhem down, and when he found him he’d probably kill him.   Don’t be a fool.  Find Cob.  Wilhem let go of the idea and turned toward the Rainbow Bridge.  

From one end to the other the bridge was teeming with Downsfolk, packed so tightly in places that they stood pressed shoulder to shoulder.  It was always like that.  The market was busiest at midday, but from dawn to an hour past dusk the activity never quite ceased.  Of the forty or so vendor’s stalls that lined the bridge, thirty or more flew colorful flags from spear-tipped posts jutting out of their tent tops.  From where Wilhem stood the easiest flags to read were the Sausage Man’s—a fat blood sausage roasting in an iron pan; the metal merchant’s—two linked golden horseshoes on scarlet and azure waves; and the mushroom seller’s—three white mushrooms on green-and-blue checkerboard.  Those three flags had managed to catch the breeze just right, flying horizontally with barely a ripple.  The rest of them were either furled, twisted, or intertwined with their neighbors, their crests becoming legible only for seconds at a time.  

Beneath the tent tops the vendors loudly hawked their wares, shouted negotiations, and banged away with various tools.  Goats brayed, roosters crowed, and dense throngs of customers added their own noises to the clamor, fueling a susurrus roar that rose from the bridge like steam.  It was chaos.  To make things even more confusing, the location of the vendors changed each day, shuffling around according to a schedule set by the Market Magister, who made a better living than most of the merchants collecting daily bribes.  The best spots were the ones closest to the middle of the bridge, where the narrowing of the walls caused congestion and slowed the flow of the crowds down to a crawl.  Any merchant who wanted one of those placements however paid dearly for it.  Only a few of the most thriving tradesmen could afford a middle spot more than once or twice a month.          

Wilhem’s eyes roamed from banner to banner, searching for Cob’s—a brown boot atop blue and yellow stripes.  It took him a while to find it--or part of it, at any rate--peeking out from behind a giant wooden muffin perched atop the baker’s stall, halfway to the top of the bridge.  It was a good spot, which told Wilhem that Cob must have been feeling optimistic about his prospects that morning.  Usually his stall was much closer to one of the riverbanks.      

 “Have you gone daft, boy!”  

Wilhem jumped.  Glancing up, he saw a ruddy-cheeked bear of a man seated on a wayn loaded high with kegs.  He held a tankard of foaming ale in one hairy hand and a jumble of reins in the other, and there was white froth dribbling down his black beard.  His team of scrawny mares stood in front of the cart, the three of them staring at Wilhem with sad, puzzled eyes.     

“Pardon?” 

The fat man growled, his bulbous nose reddening.

“MOVE!” he bellowed.  

“Oh.”

Wilhem leapt aside, remembering too late not to jar his ribs.  The pain hit so hard he felt it roll up into his throat and spill out in a strangled moan.  The brewer gave him a queer look and whipped his team into action, quaffing his ale as the wayn rolled away. 

Wilhem hobbled to the bridge and began to push through the crowd, clutching his sides.  He kept his eyes set on the baker’s muffin and pressed forward against the traffic, wedging himself into gaps between shoulders and backs.  The people in the crowd came from all over but most of them seemed to share course language and the stink of garlic. 

  “Love potions from Sandar!” a booming voice shouted.  

Over the top of a farmer’s straw hat Wilhem glimpsed a seal-skinned man in a robe of blue silk climbing up onto a keg.  He stood over the crowd holding out a vial of  noxious green liquid.  “So potent a single drop will make any man or woman fall to their knees and worship you for the rest of your days!  Made from sand dragon tears and dune cat’s blood!”

“More like drunkard’s piss and whore’s snot!” A rival seller of tinctures shouted back from the other side of the bridge.  Laughter rippled through the crowd but the sea of bodies swelled forward anyhow as fifty pairs of curious eyes strained toward the man on the barrel to get a look at the potion.  The jostling worsened Wilhem's nausea and he felt cold bubbles of sweat hatch on his forehead.  Sensing that he was going to be sick he plunged forward, no longer caring who he shoved aside.  The strangers he pushed out of the way cursed at him, but as soon as they saw his pallid face they turned away grumbling.

“Cob!” he called out.  “Father!”

Slipping between two last villagers he came to Cob’s stall. Across the front of the booth there was thick braided rope, meant to keep the crowd from entering.  Wilhem lurched over it and glanced around.   All of Cob’s things were there—a stack of uncut leathers piled up against the back wall of the bridge, spools of colored stitching thread organized on a little wooden table, rows and rows of finished boots and shoes, some old some new, lined up on the slanting ground; a tool chest, template boards, and the wooden bench with the leather seat where customers sat when Cob did a fitting—but there was no sign of the man himself.  The tool chest was shut and locked, Wilhem noted.  Cob did that sometimes when he needed to step away for a minute to drain his bladder.  

“Father!” he yelled again, his voice cracking. Speckles danced in front of his eyes.  "Cob--" He slumped forward, planting his hands on Cob’s bench.  His stomach roiled and his satchel slipped from his shoulders to the ground. A trickle of bile flooded up his throat.  He tried to spit it out but when he opened his mouth his chest heaved and he vomited instead, spattering the edge of the bench and filling several pairs of shoes that were lying on the cobbles underneath.  

As soon as the heaving stopped Wilhem growled like cornered animal, maddened by the way his body was betraying him.  The spasms were torture on his ribs.  “Cob,” he wheezed, a strand of drool hanging from his lips. 

“Wilhem?” 

Wilhem spat, wiped his mouth, and forced his body to straighten.  The voice had come from the next stall, where the baker stood with a tray of steaming butter buns in her gloved hand, her mouth agape.  Minda, thought Wilhem, through a wave of dizziness, Minda Drobbins.  She was stout and sturdy-faced, nearly forty years but younger-looking than that.  She kept her brown hair close-cropped and wore a flower-dusted apron over a mountainous bosom.  To one side of her a table stacked with hills of muffins, rolls, and skinny white loaves of bread separated her from the chaos of the bridge traffic, and to the other a small brick oven shaped like a tiny house rested on the ground by the back wall.  A fire blazed from behind an iron door in the oven’s front while smoke and the smell of fresh baking apple cakes piped from a chimney at its top.  

The oven was only for effect Wilhem knew—all the real baking was done at night in a cellar beneath an inn at the heart of town—but the scent of a few muffins or cakes baking worked like an enchantment on the crowds.  Normally even Wilhem found those siren scents irresistible, though at the moment the sickly-sweet combination of apple cakes and gorge was threatening to make him spill his guts again.

“Minda—” He swallowed back another spurt of nausea. “My father, where is he?”  

Minda hastily dropped her tray of buns on the table and awkwardly ducked beneath a wooden rail that separated the stalls.  Her forehead creased with concern as she approached him.

“He went looking for you not long ago, Wilhem.  He got worried when you never showed up today and asked us to mind the stall until he got back.”  She waved a hand towards her husband, who sat on a stool by the oven with a long, menacing cudgel draped across his knees.  He was big man, like a barrel around the middle with thick eyebrows and narrow, black eyes that gave him a brutish look.  Wilhem didn’t know him very well but Cob said he was docile as a butterfly except when someone tried to cheat his wife.  He shook his head, confused.

“I don’t understand.  Cob never asked for my help today.  I wasn’t supposed to come here.”  Minda placed her hands lightly on his shoulders, inspecting him from head to toe.

“You weren’t supposed to go fishing?  Cob said the two of you always spend the afternoon fishing the Thimble ponds on your Name Day.”  She gently pulled Wilhem’s hand off of his chest—he hadn’t even been aware that he’d been holding it there—and spotted the blood stains on his shirt.  She gasped.  “Ganther’s Grieves!  Wilhem—what happened to you?”

“My Name Day?” Wilhem mumbled.  He swore.  How could he have forgotten his own Name Day?  “I forgot,” he told Minda guiltily.  “I forgot my own flaming Name Day.  Where is he?  I’ve got to find him—my horse, he. . .”  All of sudden, Wilhem felt his legs giving out underneath him.  His thoughts faded as he fell, smothered by nausea and a tingling blackness.  Minda lunged forward to catch him.  “Gabe!” she shouted.  “Help!”  She managed to get her arms around Wilhem just before he toppled face first into Cob’s bench.  She was very strong for a woman her age, but Wilhem was dead weight.  Awkwardly, she dropped with him to the hard cobbles while Gabe sprang off his stool and came to assist.  

Wilhem’s eyelids fluttered. A blackness oozing over his vision slowly dispersed.  When it cleared he saw Minda and Gabe’s faces hovering over his own, both of them peering at him with the same anxious look in their eyes.  Gabe had a smear of honey and crumbs in the cleft of his blunt chin.  

“Skree,” Wilhem said. “He. . .Skreeander.  I’ve got to. . .Cob.  Where’s my father?”

“Ssshh,” Minda laid a plump finger over his lips. “You’re hurt, Dear.  Save your strength.”  Wilhem took several deep breaths, struggling to regain control of his mind.

“I’m fine,” he insisted, trying to stand.  “Please.  I need to find my father.”  Gabe laid a hand on Wilhem’s sternum, gently holding him down.  Minda ran her palm over his forehead, brushing his hair back out of his eyes.  “Wilhem, what happened?  Who did this to you?”  Wilhem sagged back against the ground.

“Lord Lorel.  He took Skree—he took my horse.”

“Lord Lorel...” Minda snorted, shaking her head.  “Lord of what?  The demon's arse, that one.”  She gingerly lifted Wilhem’s shirt, sucking in her breath when she saw the purple stain covering half his torso.  “By Spirits—Gabe, I think his ribs are broken.”  Her husband eyed the bruising and grunted in agreement.  Minda dropped Wilhem’s shirt and turned to her husband  “He needs help.  We’ve got to get him home.”   

“I’ll take him,” Gabe said in gruff voice.  “Mind the breads.”  

Gabe slid his arms under Wilhem’s knees and neck, hefting him like a sack of barley.   

“Be gentle,” Minda chastised. 

"I am.”  

Willhem grimaced.  It made no difference whether Gabe was gentle or not, any movement of his chest was agonizing.  

“I can walk,” he protested.  “Put me down.”  Gabe frowned at him.

“I don’t think so.  You don’t look good.”  

“I can—” Wilhem insisted.  “I—”  

“I’m more horse than man, Boy.  No shame in letting me carry you.” Gabe glanced at his wife. "Any troublemakers, use the stick." 

“Oh," Minda smiled cooly,  “I will, don’t you worry about that.”

“Not on the knuckles like I do.  Go for the head.”

Minda picked up Wilhem's satchel and hung it over Gabe's neck. They shared a look.  Then the big man stepped over the rope and out into a noisy throng of downswives.  Three of them were haggling with a girl selling eggs from a basket while another two were arguing amongst themselves.

“Move aside!” Gabe bellowed at them all.  “Boy’s got the rat pox!  Rat pox here!”  A murmur spread through the women.  Their faces paled when they saw Wilhem lying slack in Gabe’s arms; in unison they recoiled from him, pushing and shoving at each other to get out of his way.  Gabe strode purposefully through the gap they left behind, continuing to call out Ratpox! Ratpox!  More and more villagers scrambled, letting Gabe cut through them like a bubble of oil moving through water.    

Wilhem tracked their progress up the bridge through glazed, half-open eyes.  They passed  the chandler’s stall with its hundreds of tallow candles dangling by their wicks from the beams of the tent, like an upside down field of wheat stirring in the wind.  After that came the luthier’s, filled with lutes and harps of a dozen shapes and sizes, and the tinker’s den of cook pots, spoons, and tankards. Then there was the fletcher’s booth, where Wilhem had wasted many a nit on new quarrels before Cob had taught him to carve and feather his own.  The next stall he did not recognize; it had no banner and was completely taken up by a silken tent of blue and yellow.  The Irathi girl, he remembered suddenly, recalling how he’d caught a glimpse of her and the merchant setting up shop when he and Skreeander had passed by near dawn that morning.    

As if in answer to his thoughts, the tent opening parted and the slender-limbed girl appeared, her ferocious gaze sweeping the crowd.  She froze in mid-step as her eyes came to rest on Wilhem.  Through his pain Wilhem felt an odd sensation.  The girl’s eyes stayed with him, tracking him as they passed before the tent.  Her expression was flat yet there was urgency and intensity in her eyes.  Wilhem looked away self-consciously, embarrassed that she was seeing him bruised and battered, being carried through the market like a child.  She was very pretty, but there was something more to it than that, something he felt he understood even if he could not name it.  I know her.  The thought came from nowhere.  Wilhem rejected it near as quick as it arrived.  That’s stupid.  He told himself his mind was addled from everything he’d been through.  When he glanced up again to sneak another look at the girl, she was gone.  He tried to turn his head to search for her in the crowd, but the effort brought back the nausea and black spots in front of his eyes.  Gabe’s stride was rattling his head and sending spears of fire through his torso.   

Though the man was surefooted he lumbered along more like a bear than a horse with a heavy, jarring gait. To keep from moaning Wilhem had to clench his bottom lip between his teeth.  He gave up the search for the girl and let his head sag.   

By the time they reached the blacksmith and the wainwright’s booths at the very top of the bridge, his eyes refused to stay focused.  Rather than fight it he let his eyelids drift shut.  Gabe was still shouting “Ratpox! Ratpox!” from time to time but Wilhem heard his voice as though it was coming across a great distance.  His thoughts sank into to a deep, empty space walled on all sides by shifting fields of color.  The mottled oranges were the dull aches in his muscles, the bright white flashes were the sharper pains stabbing through his sides, the creeping veins of blue were his fear of Matha and the Altarians.  Atop all those were bursts of garish scarlet.  

Wilhem sank deeper into himself and the red splotches bloomed brighter and brighter, trumping all else.  Lorel Breylock’s pouty-lipped doll face took shape in the field of color, sneering.  Never in his life had anger burned so hot in Wilhem.  He pictured Lord Lorel’s face cracking from within, the skin peeling away and his black eyes rotting in their sockets.  The power of his fury built steadily and inexorably, blotting out his pain and weariness until the red was brighter than a forge fire.  His eyes abruptly snapped back open.  

Wilhem’s whole body was trembling, his hands balled into fists so tight his fingernails were cutting into his palms.  He let out a ragged breath.

“Put it aside for now, boy,” said Gabe, glancing down at Wilhem knowingly.  “Won’t do you any good until after you’ve healed.”  

“It won’t ever do me any good,” Wilhem replied, his voice hushed.  “He’s a lord.”  Gabe chuckled, darkly.

“A lord’s naught but a man.  There’s ways to sort them out.”  

“They'd take my head off if I so much as touched him.”

“That depends on how you go about it.” Gabe smiled.  “If you charged him in broad daylight like a berserker, swinging a broadsword, most likely you’re right.  But…if you were willing to stalk behind him for days on end, patient as a valecat?  Maybe then the little Breylock wanders alone into a secluded place some time and. . .”  Wilhem gave no response, but he decided he liked Gabe.  

They were nearing the bottom of the bridge now and the end of the market stalls.  The vendor booths were growing shabbier, offering skewers of spiced goat, secondhand dresses, used saddles and the like.  A hundred staffs past the last tent the forest resumed, the tree line trimmed back away from the riverbank to form a crisp wall that ran both north and south for miles.  Over the tops of the trees the bald stone mass of the Thimblemont loomed, hulking above everything but the sun and sky.  The Downsroad proceeded directly toward it, plunging east into a tunnel-like opening in the tree wall.  Where the road disappeared into the forest the gap in the trees was as gloomy and shadowed.

Off to their left, at the end of the bridge, there was a small circular tower made of stone standing on its own.  It was three stories tall but hardly wide enough for two men to lie down in end to end.  Gabe made for it and stopped before its open doorway.                   

“Magister?” he called.  Someone within the tower coughed and a woman giggled.  Moments later a reed-thin man with disheveled grey hair and a pig’s upturned nose appeared.  He wore a plain brown coat, scuffed boots that rose to his knees and and skinny sword that looked far too delicate to serve any practical purpose other than skewering rabbits, maybe.

“What do you want?” he asked, nasally.  Gabe hefted Wilhem a little higher in his arms.

“The cobbler’s son—he’s hurt.  I’ve got to get him home.  Will you open the gate so I can get my mule out?”  

The magister stepped forward and inspected at Wilhem, curiously.  

“What happened to him?”

“Horse thieves, I think, he’s too weak to say.  His ribs are broken and somebody dug a sword point into his chest.”  The magister nodded.

“Doesn’t surprise me.  That grey of his is a fine animal.  Too fine for a boy.  If I wasn’t a sworn man I’d have robbed him myself.”  The magister chuckled callously, lifting a key ring from his belt.  “When you get home boy,” he said to Wilhem, “tell your father he owes me a Trident for this.”  Wilhem grunted but the man seemed to interpret it as a murmur of assent.  He selected one key out of the half dozen that were bound to the ring and stepped around to the back of the tower.  Gabe followed.

Behind the structure there was a wooden gate, nearly as tall as the tower itself, set into a high fence that stretched in an oval along the banks of the river.  Inside at least a score of wagons and two-wheeled bullock carts were parked at random on the trodden grass and mud.  They belonged to the merchants, who set up their stalls before dawn each morning and packed them up again at night, leaving their wagons under the magister’s watch throughout the day.  Their mules, oxen, and the occasional horse stood idly by the carts, tethered to stakes in the ground or the fence posts of the corral.  Cob’s little two-wheeled pallet cart was likely in there somewhere, though he had no horse or mule.  Most of the time Wilhem brought Skreeander around in the evening to help pull the cart back up the hill to their cabin, but on days when Wilhem was off hunting, Cob did all the pulling himself, both ways.     

The magister undid a lock and removed a chain that held the gate in place, then kicked it open and stepped aside.

“Thank you, Sir,” said Gabe.  

“Be quick about it.”

“Yes, Magister.”         

Gabe angled across the corral, weaving around a pair of spotted roans and a fat brown pony who eyed them warily.  A little ways farther on a graying mule stood hitched to a box wagon.  Her head hung low, her nose so close to a mud puddle that her breath stirred its surface. "Wake up, Nettie," Gabe barked, nudging the animal's rump with his shoulder.  The animal woke in a fit, braying and kicking.

“Same as Minda," said Gabe.

“What?”

“Nothing, boy.  A jest.  Rest.”    

The wagon was walled with rough planks, its hitching end packed with straw. Gabe set Wilhem down in a corner where the straw was thickest and dropped the satchel in next to him.  “You’ll be alright there?”  Wilhem nodded meekly.  Ashamed as he was to be loaded into the wagon like a sack of flour, he was relieved he wouldn’t need to make the trek home riding on Nettie’s back or the cart bench. “Give a shout or lift your hand up if I’m going to fast."  Wilhem nodded.  Gabe left him and climbed up on onto the bench.    

The cart lurched into motion.  Wilhem stared blearily past his boots, watching a section of the fence shrink away.  It felt peculiar to be traveling with his back to the front of the wagon, like he was moving through time in the wrong direction.  If only that were true.  I could ride all the way back to this morning when I still had Skreeander and never set foot in Ganther’s Bowl…  

Gabe steered them around the maze of other wagons until they rolled beneath the gateway arch; once they were through Wilhem saw the magister pull the gate shut and reach for the chain.  Gabe yelled a word of thanks and the man glanced over his shoulder, flashing a curt, unsmiling wave.  Wilhem glared at him, though he doubted the magister noticed.  Tell your father he owes me a Trident for this.  Wilhem made a noise in his throat that was almost a laugh.  A whole Trident—like Cob had buckets of silver just lying around to dole out like they were apples.  Hardly.  Most days Cob was lucky if he returned home with so much as a few measly nits leftover to spend on bread, cheese, and candles.  The magister’s “tower upkeep” tax made sure of that.  It was up to Wilhem to supply their meat, and any coin he made selling game to the taverns went into the coffer he and Cob set aside for the winter months, when the Rainbow Bridge went silent.  They usually managed to put a Trident or two aside every year, money they’d sorely need when Cob grew too old and feeble to go on working the market.  There was no way the magister was getting his bony fingers on any of that.        

The wagon swung onto the road.  Wilhem felt every stone that passed beneath the wagon's rough wooden wheels, yet the pain seemed to have grown fainter, somehow.  He wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.  He concentrated on sneaking air in and out of his lungs and watched the Rainbow Bridge dwindle away behind them.  Soon after they’d entered the forest tunnel the tower tops disappeared completely, consumed in a maw of shadow.  The day went dim and stayed that way as they rode beneath a cathedral-like ceiling of tree branches, passing no one.  Gradually the road grew steeper, switching this way and that until they came to a plateau.  Then the alley of trees surrounding them abruptly ended and the cart plodded into a serene expanse of rolling fields.  

Tiny farmhouses perched atop the many hilltops, each surrounded by a ramshackle wooden fence.   Chickens roamed in the fence yards and sheep grazed everywhere, dotting the pastures like tiny clouds.  The farmers and their wives and children toiled in their gardens, carrying buckets or dragging hoes.  Overtop it all, the blue-grey top of the Thimblemont arose from a stretch of forest on the far side of the downs, so near now that its shadow covered a third of the fields. When he squinted Wilhem could make out caves in the heights of the rock, up where the hawks nested.  A few of the fierce birds burst into flight as he gazed up, soaring so high they became nothing but black specks in the clouds.  He tracked their circling until his eyes began to burn.

"You still breathing, boy?" Gabe called out.  William raised one of his arms and waved it around.  "Well, that's something." 

They reached the trees as the sun was crossing its zenith.  Gabe and Minda's house was one of the last they passed, a tiny thatched roof cottage with whitewashed walls and blue shutters on a small grassy plot.  Within its fenced off perimeter there was room only for a herb garden and a lean-to shelter for Nettie, and both looked a little unkempt, as though nobody had been living there in a while.  That was partly true, much of the time Gabe and Minda never actually returned home for the night, instead staying at the bakery where they’d snatch a few hours sleep in chairs arranged by the ovens.  Gabe drove Nettie straight past the little house and uphill into the woods.  Here the road was nothing more than two wheel ruts worn into the roots and dirt which ramped steadily up through the trees, practically arrow straight for the better part of a mile.  Along the way there were posts staked into the rocky soil here and there, each one marking a turn off or new trail.  Most were topped by a distinctive object of some kind, a rusting bucket or hoe or  weathervane.  Whatever the object was, that was the name of the path, as in Bucket Road or Weathervane Trail.  There were cottages at the end of most of the trails, sometimes several of them clustered together.  Gabe urged Nettie past them all until they arrived at the top of the hill.  There the stone of Thimblemont at last emerged from the floor of the forest, shooting up in a series of sheer cliffs and jagged crags.  The rise of the bald mountain was so sudden that from below it just looked like a wall of stone shooting up and out of the forest canopy.  

The very last post along the road was marked by a copper boot nailed to its top.  Water and air had given the metal a mottled green patina, making it seem at home in the woods.  The toe pointed through a stand of grandfatherly, thick-trunked trees and that was where Gabe steered them, winding maybe fifty staffs into a clearing. Nettie circled around it and came to a stop.      

At the back of the clearing there was a lodge, tucked against a bluff wall of rock.  Its peaked roof was blanketed with needles and twigs, and patches of bright green moss speckled its chimney like a pox.  Two small, dust-clouded windows framed the door, which was boxed by a crude porch resting on piles of un-mortared stones.  Iron-banded buckets and stacks of split wood crowded the porch, leaving just enough room for a weathered chair made of saplings.        

To the right of the cabin was an open stable, big enough to house Skreeander and Cob’s bullock cart.  It too was built of saplings and had a roof of dead branches that sagged precariously, as though it might collapse at any moment.  The ground around it was strewn with more pine needles and the occasional clump of dung.  Clouds of flies boiled above the dung and in the stable; Wilhem eyed them guiltily.  It was his job to muck out the stall, but that morning he’d skipped his chores because he’d been so anxious to get to Ganther’s Bowl.         

To one side of the cabin the rock wall wept a steady trickle of water that collected in tranquil pool with a surface like a mirror.  That was where he and Cob drew their water from, and it always tasted cold and sweet and earthy.  Wilhem was powerfully thirsty, he realized.  He attempted to climb out of the cart.

“Stay put.” Gabe leapt down from Nettie’s back.  Wilhem obeyed involuntarily, knocked back down into the straw by a rough fist of pain.  The baker’s husband took a few steps toward the cabin.

“Cobbler?” he called.  He took another step, laying his hand on the railing of the porch steps.  “Hallo, Cob?” he shouted.  The cabin door creaked open from within.  Cob emerged onto the porch, shielding his eyes against the sudden light.  He was a tall man, very thin but so hard muscled that the veins in his arms bulged.  His hair and beard were a little ragged, their color the red-brown of drying blood streaked with grey, and his eyes were a cold, penetrating brown.    

“Drobbins,” Cob said, his tense face relaxing some as he recognized the baker’s husband.  “Spirits, Man.  What’s got you all the way up here?”  

“Your boy,” said Gabe.  “He’s--”

“Ah!”  Cob, sighed relief.  "Wilhem.  He turned up at the market then?”  Gabe raised one of his meaty hands, gesturing at the cart.  

“Yes, but. . .I’ve brought him to you.  He’s been beaten.”

“Beaten?”  Cob’s eyes widened, jumping over to where Wilhem was lying in the cart.  “What in blazes?”  

Cob rushed down the steps, his gait hampered a little by a bad leg.  Wilhem lost sight of him for a moment as he sank from view beneath the wall of the cart.  He tried to force a smile but had only managed to bare his teeth in a grimace by the time his father’s face appeared above him, blotting out what remained of the sun.  “Wilhem!” Cob reached for him, taking him under his chin and lifting his face to be examined.  “What’s happened?  Who did this to you?”  Wilhem reached up and took his father’s wrist.

“Lorel. . .” he said.  “Father…Skreeander.  He took Skreeander.”  Cob’s thick eyebrows knit together.

“Lorel. . .the Breylock?  Lord Jandegar’s boy?”  Wilhem nodded.  His father’s mouth flattened into a grim line.  He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them the fear was gone, burned off by a look so hot it seemed his brow was about to catch fire.  “Come, Son.  Let’s get you inside.”  Cob slipped his arms underneath Wilhem’s back and hefted him out of the cart.  Wilhem grit his teeth, determined not to cry out, but a moan came out of him anyway, escaping on tattered breath.  

“Let me—” said Gabe as Cob began to strain his way up the porch steps.

“I’ve got him,” his father replied.  “If you would, take the satchel and come inside.  You’re due a tankard and I’d hear what you know of this.”

“Little and less.  But I'd be glad of the beer.”  

Inside the cabin was very dim, smelling of leather and the pungent oils and polishes that Cob used to ply his trade.  The only light came from the two small windows, which painted matching four-paned squares on the planked floor.  At each end of the single long room sheets of spotted cow hide hung from ropes which served to give Wilhem and his father at least the pretense of privacy.  Wilhem’s bed was behind one of the hide curtains and Cob’s was behind the other.  At the center of the room a circular  fire bowl built of mortared stones gave off a few tendrils of curling black smoke; these rose up into a large tin funnel which ushered them up a slender pipe and out through the peak of the roof.  There was no second floor but rope netting slung between the cross beams held up a number of old trunks and large jars, empty beer barrels and even a few stacks of books, giving the cabin the look of a frigate’s holds.  A simple wooden table with four chairs stood by the fire and there were tools left out atop it, ball hammers and axes, blades of a dozen lengths, augers, awls, and chisels.  Leaning against the back wall there was even a rare two-handed saw, as tall as Cob himself.  

By Downsfolk standards the cabin held a fortune in steel and iron, but Wilhem knew that the tools and the small box of Tridents hidden behind a loose stone in the wall of the fire pit were all Cob had to show for a lifetime of soldiering and mending shoes.  More than once Cob had wondered aloud in Wilhem’s presence if it would be enough to sustain them once his knee finally gave out completely and he could no longer journey back and forth to town.  

“His bed is there,” Cob told Gabe, thrusting his chin.  “Will you pull the hides down?”  The baker’s husband did as he was asked, yanking the hides free and draping them and the satchel over the back of one of the chairs.  Cob set William down lightly on his narrow straw-stuffed mattress, propped him semi-upright with a couple of pillows, and proceeded to lift his shirt.  When he saw the extent of the blood and bruising the searing heat in his eyes flared even hotter.

“It’s not so bad as it looks,” offered Gabe, hovering back a pace.  “Two or three of his ribs are broken but the cut there on his chest stopped at the bone.  It’s nowise a mortal wound.”  

“Unless it festers,” said Cob.

“It won’t,” said Wilhem.  “It’s just a scratch, Father.”  Cob scowled.  Grabbing Wilhem’s jaw a tad roughly he turned his head this way and that, inspecting the damage to his face.  “This one over your eye will need to be stitched.  The one on your chest as well perhaps, though I won’t know for sure until it’s clean.”  He moved to fire, lifting a black kettle from its perch on the stone rim and setting it down in the glowing heart of the embers.

“Have a seat,” he told Gabe, pointing to one of the chairs.  “I’ll get that beer for you.”  

Gabe lowered himself into the chair.  “Tend to the boy first.”

“Nothing to be done until the water warms.”  

Cob retrieved two tin tankards from a shelf by the door, filling one up with water from a bucket and the other with beer from a corked barrel on the shelf.  He brought the beer to Gabe, then retrieved a tiny jar from the window sill and spooned a small amount of viscous black goop from it into Wilhem's water before handing it to him.

"What is it?" Wilhem asked.

"Vella's Tar.  For the pain."

“I don’t need it,” said Wilhem, wanting to appear brave.  It hurts less now that I’m lying still.”  

“Drink,” said Cob.  “I won’t have you squirming around and biting your tongue off while I’m trying to sew your flesh together.”  His tone brooked no argument so Wilhem drank tentatively while Gabe took a hearty gulp of his beer.  It surprised Wilhem how powerful the Vella's Tar was; it began to take effect within seconds after the tankard first touched his lips.  The feel of it spreading through his mind and muscles was like the touch of a warm and gentle hand, one with the ability to wipe away not just the day's ailments but the morrow’s as well.  It seemed unimportant, suddenly, that there were Altarian soldiers on their way to Thimble Downs; inconsequential that Skreeander was gone.  It will all be fine, the tar seemed to say, no need to fret.  But as much as he wanted to believe it, Wilhem knew it wasn’t true.  Vella’s Promise, the soldiers called it, often adding the word deadly.  “Father—” he said.   Cob returned to his own chair and sat stiffly, stretching his bad leg out to one side.  “I--”

“So,” his father said, cutting him off.  “Fishing not exciting enough for your Name Day any longer, is that it, Wilhem?  You know I had planned on taking you to the Tollhouse afterward for an adventure of a different sort.  Nothing so strenuous as getting thrashed by a lordling but I think you’d have enjoyed it."  Wilhem struggled to stay abreast of the currents that were trying to suck him down into sleep.  The Tollhouse?  Was Cob serious or merely ribbing him?  The idea was both exhilarating and mortifying at once. 

“No, Father," he said.  His mouth was going dry and his tongue felt thick as a blood-fattened leech.  “I still like fishing.  I forgot.  I’m sorry.”

“You forgot?”

“Your own Name Day?” Gabe laughed.   

“His thirteenth,”  said Cob.  “A big one.”

“Ah,” Gabe beat his fist against the table. “His thirteenth.  An important one, indeed.  Marks you as a man, Wilhem.  How could you forget such a day?”

“I. . .”  Wilhem recalled how excited he’d been that morning to get to the bowl.  It had been like that for weeks--every waking minute of the day his mind had been preoccupied with thoughts of hunting and exploring, and when he slept even his dreams had been filled with thoughts of the vale.  “I had other things on my mind.”  His father sniffed.          

“Yes.  Things it’s time for you to share with your father, I think.”  The boy’s eyes fluttered and he took a heavy breath.  “Wilhem?”  Wilhem coughed and sat up a little straighter. 

“I can, but. .  .Father, you’ll likely not believe half of what I tell you.  It will all be the truth though.  I swear it.”

“I know the sound of truth from the sound of lies, Wilhem, I don’t need you to tell me which is which.  Speak.”  Wilhem nodded.  It was difficult to read Cob’s blank expression but he hoped he would hear the sincerity in his voice. 

“Two moons ago,” he began, “I found a way into Ganther’s Bowl.”  Cob’s eyebrows shot up; Gabe stopped his hand in the middle of lifting his tankard to his mouth.

“I swear it,” said Wilhem, seeing their disbelief.  “On mother’s memory, I swear.”

“It’s no small sin to betray your own mother’s memory, boy,” said the baker’s husband. Cob shook his head.

“He wouldn’t.  Go on, Wilhem.”  

“It was hidden in a spruce grove,” Wilhem continued, relieved that Cob wasn’t inclined to doubt him.  “A cave entrance with old statues around it—so old it was hard to tell what they were.  One of them might have been a wolf. . .”  He kept going,  recounting his first journey into the cave.  When he got to the part about riding the hanging cage down into the chasm the blood drained from his father’s lips and his face grew dark as a thunderhead.  “It’s true, Father,” Wilhem protested.  “The cage is there, I can show you.”     

“I believe you, Wilhem.  I’ve seen its likeness before.  Many years ago and a thousand leagues distant.  A Forger’s contraption by the sound of it.  But why in hell you’d have been fool enough to jump into the thing is something we’ll need to discuss at length once you’re mended.  No doubt that device has been rusting away for hundreds of years.  Ganther’s stones, boy!  It’s a wonder you’re not dead.”  Wilhem blanched.  Cob only ever swore when he was furious.

“I’m sorry, Father.  I never thought--”

“I’ve no need for an apology.  I’ve need for you to put that head of yours to use.  I’ve need of a living, breathing son.  You’re all I have, Wilhem.  All I have left in the world of any worth.  I’d be grateful if you wouldn’t deprive me of it.”  Cob stood, returning to the fire to collect the kettle with a leather mitt.  When his back was turned, Gabe silently mouthed the words Yes, Father.  

“Oh--” Wilhem blurted.  “Yes, Father.”  Cob did not reply.  He returned with the kettle and poured into a scrap of cloth ripped from the bedding.  Then he began to clean Wilhem’s wounds, starting with the cut above his eye.  Wilhem winced, feeling the sting of the heat even through the heavy numbness of the Vella’s Tar.  

“Continue.”

“I. . .” said Wilhem.  “Father that wasn’t the only foolish thing I did.”

“I suspected as much.  Go on. I’ll hold my tongue at least until you’ve finished.”  Wilhem took a deep breath.  While he told them about the doe that he and Skreeander had chased down, his father removed his ruined shirt, ripping it apart down the middle to spare him the discomfort of pulling it over his head.  Wilhem was careful to downplay his masterful shot with the crossbow lest he anger Cob further by seeming proud of himself.  Then he came to the part about the abandoned camp and the woman trapped in the rolling prison.  As he described the giant wheels and iron bars both Cob and Gabes’ faces went pale, as though they were watching dead men rise from their graves.

“I’ve seen the likes of these as well,” said Cob. 

“As have I,” said Gabe.  The two of them shared a look. 

“She begged me to free her, Father,” said Wilhem.  “I knew it was a bad idea but it didn’t seem right to leave her.”  His father nodded, tightly. 

“It pains me to say it but I’d have expected no less of you, Wilhem.  No woman belongs in a cage.  Unfortunately I suspect the creature you saw within was not in fact a woman, but you could not have known that.  Did you succeed? ”

“No.”  Wilhem glanced down at his hands, ashamed.  “They caught me.”

“Who?  Altarians?”

“They were, Father.”  His father’s hand stilled as he was lowering the cloth to the dried blood on Wilhem’s chest.  

“Are you absolutely certain?”

“I think so.  They all wore a thirteen pointed star.” 

“Where?”  Cob pointed to his own shoulder.  “Here?”  

“Yes.”

“In bronze?”

“Yes,” said Wilhem.  “And one in silver.”

“Silver,” Cob echoed.  Gabe gave a low whistle.  “A flaming High Captain then.  How many, Wilhem--how many did you see?” 

“A dozen, Father.  But they spoke of many more, hidden away in the trees.  Five thousand in all.”

“Five thousand!”  His father spat, turning his gaze to the baker’s husband.  “Ganther’s cock, a whole legion.  They must intend to occupy Whitestone?”  Gabe shrugged.

“Mayhaps.  Or might be they’re just passing through on their way to Tanis.”

“No,” interrupted Wilhem.  “The witch made me tell her the way to Thimble Downs, Father.  They’re coming here.”

“What witch?  And for what purpose?”  His father resumed scrubbing the last of the blood from Wilhem’s skin with a couple of vigorous swipes, then sat up rigidly in his chair.  “Quickly now, Wilhem--tell me everything.  Everything you remember.  This news is more urgent than I had realized.”

Wilhem did his best, relating everything he could remember about Matha and the soldier, Syros.  Gabe and his father both stared at him intently when he spoke about the pain Matha had inflicted upon him and the test she conducted with the wasps but they remained silent, not interrupting until he’d gotten through all of it, including the beating he’d taken from Lord Lorel and Wyeth Trawn’s promise to see Skreeander returned to him if he could.  When he finished his father was quiet for a time, clenching and unclenching his fist.

“This is a tale that strains credulity, Wilhem,” he said at last.  “But still I hear no deceit in your voice and I cannot fathom how you could have learned of such things as Dreanalai and their wasps unless you had seen them for yourself.  There are only handful of men in The Downs who could have described them to you.  Drobbins here is one, Pram Hornwin another, the Crandell brothers, maybe.  But I doubt any man among those would have found reason to brooch such an unpleasant subject with you.  What do you think, Drobbins?”  Gabe shook his head curtly, suppressing what Wilhem thought might have been a shudder.  It was strange to see such a ferocious-looking man appear so ill at ease.  

“Some things ought not to be discussed without a good reason, Cobbler.  I know that same as you.  He didn’t hear of Dreanalai from me, nor any of the others, I’d reckon.”

“Then he speaks in facts,” said his father.  He unclenched his fist and stared at his hand, grinding his jaw so hard that the point of his beard danced about.  “Can you stitch a wound, Drobbins?  I must seek an audience with Lord Jondel.  He should be informed of the army gathered in his woods, and I need my horse back.”

“I can stitch,” said Gabe.

“Then I’d be in your debt if you’d sew Wilhem while I go retrieve my wares from the Rainbow Bridge.  I’d like to be on my way to Whitestone before the sun sets.  Do you mind?”

“No,” said Gabe.  “I don’t mind.  But seems to me it’d be better to stitch the boy here and now.  Then you and I can take Nettie to collect your things in the wagon and be on our way direct to Whitestone.  You’ll need cover half as much ground that way and I ought to go with you, anyhow.  Lord Jondel may be prone to brush off one man’s word.  Two will be harder to ignore.”

“Three,” said Wilhem.  “I’ll come as well.”

“No, Wilhem,” said Cob.  “You will stay to rest and heal.”

“I feel fine,” Wilhem insisted.  “Please, Father.  Take me with you.”

“You feel fine because you are full of Vella’s Tar.  In an hour or less you will be in a sleep so deep that not even a cold bucket of water will wake you.”

“Father--”

“Wilhem,” Cob raised his voice.  “You will stay.”

“I--” Wilhem stopped himself.  “Yes, Father.”  Cob looked to the baker’s husband.

“I see the wisdom in your plan, Drobbins.  Obliged.  I’ll get the needle.”

Wilhem watched in frustration and growing anxiety as his father reheated the kettle and collected a needle and thread from a wooden box under his bed.  There were a dozen arguments on the tip of his tongue but he forced himself to swallow them all.    When the kettle began to pipe steam Cob took off the top and dropped the needle inside, then he poured off the water and took it out again, shaking it dry.  As he threaded it, Wilhem chewed his lip.

“Father,” he said, “if I must stay, will you at least tell me something before you go?”

“If I can, Wilhem.”  His father brought the needle to the cut above his eye.  “Try to hold still.  This will hurt some.”  Wilhem took a breath and held it, expecting the pain to be intense.  All he felt as Cob pushed the needle into his flesh though was a dull pinch.

“What’s a Phaeon?  Why did the witch say I have Phaeon blood?”  Cob sighed, bringing the needle around for the second stitch.  Out of the corner of his eye Wilhem noticed Gabe scowling, his eyes downcast. 

“Strange that you should ask me that this day.  I had debated whether to tell you of the Phaeons on our fishing trip, Wilhem.  It seems fate would see it done.”  A little blood trickled into Wilhem’s eye; Cob dabbed at it with the cloth.  “The Phaeons are soldiers.  Soldiers that practice an ancient art unlike any other.  They are bred to the task and begin their exposure to warcraft at the age of three.  They wear no shields and fight with two blades instead of one, thin swords made of a light, near-unbreakable steel that no smith but one of their own can forge.  The edge on these blades cuts so swiftly and cleanly that it can make ribbons of a man’s flesh and yet he’ll feel nothing until the pieces of him have dropped to the ground.  But the swords aren’t half as deadly as the men who wield them.  That’s the first hair of it.  There is a great deal more to be said about Phaeons, Wilhem, but in essence they are simply very skilled warriors.  To face one is to stand against the wind, for that is how they move, like bladed breezes.”  

Wilhem felt his pulse quickening in his breast, even despite the Vella’s tar.

“And I. . .I am. . .” he stammered, “I have their blood?  How could the witch tell?”  Cob shook his head.

“The answer to that is dark.  I warn you.  Are you certain you wish to know it?”

“I--” Wilhem had not expected Phaeon blood to be something unpleasant.  The way Matha had said it made it sound like some kind of honor, like being a prince or a nobleman.  “Yes, Father, please.  Tell me.”  Cob nodded, pulling through a fourth stitch.

“The witch could not be certain I don’t think, no more than I can.”  He tied the thread off and snapped it with a blade passed to him by Gabe.  “As far as I know only a Phaeon can recognize the signs in the blood.  But you know now that you are named for Ashfall, Wilhem, and that is why the witch assumes your veins bear the blessing of Phaeon memories.”  Cob rethreaded the needle and began on the wound over Wilhem’s sternum.  This time he felt almost nothing; his chest was thoroughly numb.  It was gruesome to watch the needle poke through the ragged edges of the cut though and that made him woozy.  “I found you the morning after the battle was lost, wandering amongst our dead on a scorched and smoking plain.  You were all of four years old, blackened by the ash rains from head to toe and carrying a single Phaeon blade.”  Wilhem gaped, stunned.  Cob had explained to him that he was not his true blood father when he was very young, even before his mother had died, but he’d never told him the tale of how he’d been found.     

“I don’t understand,” said Wilhem.  “The blade makes me a Phaeon?  Couldn’t I have just picked it up from the ground?”

“You could have.  But it isn’t the blade that marks you, Wilhem, it’s the fact that you were found on the battleground.  Neither Tritons nor Altarians bring their children to war.  It is strictly forbidden on both sides; babes are a nuisance and a distraction and if allowed to run through the camps they turn soldiers’ minds to thoughts of home.  The only exception to this rule is Phaeon children.  Altarian Phaeons are afforded the privilege of taking their young to battle; it is part of their ancient tradition to expose their youths to bloodshed even before they have the strength to lift a sword.”  

Wilhem felt a hollow opening up in his gut.  

“Altarian Phaeons?  What of the Tritons, Father?  Were their Phaeons permitted to bring children to battle?”  Wilhem stared at his father with wide, beseeching eyes.  Cob’s face briefly sagged, touched by remorse, then went hard again, his irises glinting like metal.

“Wilhem, you know what I am saying, I can see it in your face.  Triton had no Phaeon soldiers at Ashfall, nor at any other battle before it.  The Phaeons are creatures of Altaria.  That is the darkness of this knowledge.  In time you will come to accept it, but for now, know this.  You may have been born to Altaria, but you are my son, and no matter what the maps say now we are and always will be Tritons.”

“No, Father.” Wilhem shook his head, stubbornly.  “Just because I was found at a battle with some bloody sword doesn’t mean I was born Altarian.  Perhaps my blood father was a Triton who smuggled me along with him to the battle because there was no one at home to look after me.  Or maybe I was born to one of the Vellas during the war and she kept me hidden.”

“Wilhem, the punishment for a Vella who breaks her vows is death, for her and the child both.  It is possible you were born to a Triton, I don’t deny it, but the the odds are very slim.  And the full truth be told, you have their look, Son.  Raven’s hair and grey eyes are common amongst The Phaeons.”  

Gazing into his father’s eyes Wilhem saw the truth reflected there and felt tears welling in his own.  He jerked his face away trying to hide them.  Cob finished his work with the needle and again cut the thread.

“Who you were born to makes no difference, Wilhem,” said Gabe, gruffly.  “My own sorry father was a rapist and a thief, executed in the games in Gandoa.  If the father’s blood alone made the man, then I’d have lived the life of a criminal.  That isn’t the way of things.  You are who you are now, no less than you were this morning.”  His father nodded.    

“He speaks true.  But a man should know himself completely and embrace it.  That is why I’d thought to tell you of The Phaeons today.  And why I had planned on giving you this. . .”  His father bent over and reached under Wilhem’s bed, coming up with a rolled up doeskin.  The roll was as long as Wilhem’s arm and tied at either end with two narrow strips of a course black ribbon.  Cob set the package down gently across Wilhem’s thighs.   By the shape and weight of it, Wilhem had no trouble guessing what was inside.  The realization made him furious.

“No!” He shouted, knocking it to the floor.  “I don’t want it!”  

His father calmly picked the bundle up and set it on the table, resting his hand atop it.

“I did warn you Wilhem.  I’ve only shared these things with you because today is your thirteenth Name Day and you told me you were ready.  If you would prefer to remain a boy a while longer yet I can pack this away again.”  Wilhem felt tears sliding down his cheeks and gave no reply.  “I’ll have your answer in the morning.”  Cob stood up.  “For now though, rest.  And do not worry on Skreeander.  One way or another, by dawn he will be here with us.”  Cob shot a look at Gabe.

“Are you ready, Drobbins?” The big man stood.

“I am.”

 “We’d best get moving then.”  Cob donned a cloak that was hanging from a knot on one of the ceiling beams and threw it over his shoulders.  Then he slipped one of the knives lying on the table into his boot.  It was a small blade, not much longer than a finger, but both edges were notched with saw-like teeth and the point was deadly sharp.  Once it was safely tucked away he pulled open the cabin door and gestured for Gabe to pass through.  The baker’s husband had to shuffle sideways to clear the narrow frame.  “I’ll be back as quick as I can,” Cob said.  “Promise me you won’t leave that bed, Wilhem.”

“Yes, father,” Wilhem mumbled.  Cob nodded and stepped out, leaving him alone in the silence and dusty gloom of the cabin.  Within minutes the creaking and rumbling of Gabe’s wagon faded away into the distance and Wilhem stared dumbly at the bundle on the table, hating it and wishing that it disappear.  No amount of wishing would change the taint on the blood flowing in his veins, however.  More tears sprung up in Wilhem’s eyes.  He wiped at them frantically, and when they finally stopped he felt empty and more tired than he could ever remember feeling in his life.  “Ganther’s cock,” he cursed, rolling on his side to face the wall.  Before he took another three breaths, sleep claimed him.