It was good to be home. Olin unloaded the packhorses in the yard, all except the rock they’d dug out of the elk pit. He led the horse with the rock still upon its back around the rear of the barn, telling Drem to carry on until he returned. So Drem did: fires were lit, cobwebs and rats were swept and evicted from rooms, the horses rubbed down and put out to paddock, and a stew was set to simmering in a pot over the hearth. As he was seeing to these routine tasks Drem thought on his da and the lump of black rock they’d dug up.
I wish we’d never found it, and bringing it home with us! If it is what Da thinks it is, then a war that consumed the world began over something very similar.
That was not a comforting thought, and Drem resolved to talk to his da about it. He was carrying their pelts into the barn when his da joined him, hands and boots sticky with mud. Drem gave his da an enquiring look but received no response, so he carried on moving the pelts, his da washing down in a rain barrel and then silently helping. Once all the skins were under cover Drem began sorting through their tools in preparation for tanning.
I hate tanning skins, he thought, wrinkling his nose as he got a whiff of lime milk. It felt as if it singed off all the hairs up his nose.
‘We’ll start the tanning on the morrow,’ Olin said. ‘Just prepare for it now, then we’ll go and put some hot food in our bellies.’
Watching his da rest a hand upon the pile of skins, bow his head and pinch the top of his nose, Drem thought he looked more troubled than he had ever seen him.
Because of that stone we’ve found? I’m troubled, too.
‘Da, should we have brought that stone here? It’s—’
‘It’s better with me than anywhere else,’ Olin said, cutting him off.
‘But we could have left it there, buried it again.’
‘I could not live with the knowledge of it out there,’ Olin said, ‘just waiting to be found. At least with me, I know it cannot be put to any great evil.’
Evil!
‘But—’
‘Enough,’ Olin snapped. ‘Let it lie, Drem, I’ll not be changing my mind.’
Drem sucked in a deep breath, weighing up the worth of continuing.
Once he makes up his mind, there’s rarely any changing it. For now.
Drem loved his da, but more and more of late, he was feeling frustrated at how his da treated him, avoiding questions, treating him like a bairn.
Twenty-one summers old. I’m a man.
His da rolled his injured arm, the one Drem had stitched.
‘How is it?’ Drem asked him.
‘Itching,’ Olin said, then shrugged. ‘A good sign. Your ankle?’
‘Throbbing. I’ll live.’
‘Aye, well, let’s get this finished, stable the ponies and we can look forward to some hot food, a cup of mead and a bowl of hot water to soak our feet in, and we can compare injuries.’
Drem liked the sound of that and the thought of it put some fire in his limbs. It made the job of finding and dusting off the buckets and barrels of quicklime, salt and oak bark less of a chore.
Drem’s belly was rumbling by the time they finished bringing the ponies in from the paddock and settling them in the stables. As tempting as it was, they’d learned the hard way last year that you didn’t leave animals outside through the night. The north had predators that liked the taste of horse.
The clouds were low and bloated, the sun just a faint glow on the horizon when they left the stables and made their way across the small yard to their cabin.
The sound of approaching hooves broke their companionable silence, growing steadily louder. They paused on the cabin steps, Drem noticing his da loosening his knife in its sheath and taking a step closer to the wood axe that was leaning against a timber post.
It was Ulf, the tanner. He trotted into the yard on a bay pony that looked too small for him, raised a hand in greeting and dismounted stiffly, approaching them with his halting gait.
‘Thought you were back,’ Ulf said with a grin, pointing at the smoke rising from the chimney.
Ulf was a few summers younger than Drem’s da, but looked older. Mostly grey with a few streaks of black still in his hair, fat-bellied and fingers stained with the chemicals of his trade. He was one of the few people for whom Olin had more than a passing time, and last winter they had spent many an evening round a fire in each other’s company.
Maybe it is because he was like us, once. Before his injury.
Ulf had been a trapper, like them, liked to boast that he had helped sink the first posts in Kergard’s walls over a score of years ago and used to trap along the Bonefells every spring and summer. After his injury – a tale involving a wolven that became larger and more fearsome with every telling – Ulf had retired from trapping and become the town tanner, buying skins and pelts from those who still hunted this far north and turning them into tooled leather. He was a skilful man; Drem’s da said he’d never had a pair of finer-fitting boots than the ones Ulf had made. When Drem and Olin had come to Kergard five year ago Olin had struck up a friendship with the tanner, who had helped them build their cabin and surrounding homestead.
Now, though, Drem could see a tension in his da at the appearance of the tanner, his eyes flickering beyond the barn, just for a moment.
He’s worrying about that lump of rock.
‘A good season’s hunting?’ Ulf asked.
‘Aye, good enough,’ Olin said.
‘I was hoping to buy or trade your skins,’ Ulf said.
Please, thought Drem. He hated the tanning process far more than the cold nights and hard rock and root of the hunting.
‘We were just talking about starting the tanning on the morrow,’ Olin said, tugging on his short beard.
‘I’ll give you a good price and save you the hard work, and the smell . . .’
‘We’re not afraid of some hard work, are we, lad?’ Olin said.
‘No, Da.’
But the smell. Please . . .
Olin saw Drem’s look.
‘Well, it’s something we’d not be against discussing, I suppose, is it, Drem?’
‘No, no, it’s not,’ Drem said, trying not to let his hope spill all over his face.
‘We’ll come into town on the morrow, talk on it some more,’ Olin said.
‘Well, I’d like to talk on it now, if it’s all the same to you. Don’t like to go to bed with unfinished business, gives me gut-ache and then I can’t sleep. But it’s hard with the smell of that food cooking,’ Ulf said, smacking his lips and raising his head to take a big sniff. ‘Distracting, it is.’
Olin frowned, his eyes flicking beyond the barn again, but then his face cracked in a smile. ‘Best we do something about that hole in your belly, then,’ and with that they all entered the cabin.
‘Kergard’s bigger than when we left,’ Olin said, dipping some black bread into his bowl.
Ulf had produced a loaf from a saddlebag strapped to his horse. ‘Never go anywhere without a loaf of bread – makes every meal better,’ Ulf had pronounced, and Drem had to admit it had certainly made his bowl of stew much better as he ripped off a large chunk and soaked up the last of the thick gravy glistening with fat and onion juice at the bottom of his bowl.