Drem opened the door, looking out and along the track that led to their hold. Riders were approaching. Lots of them.
‘Da,’ Drem said, stepping out onto the porch. His da followed, moved in front of him, wrapping a cloak about his shoulders and slipping the Starstone Sword inside it.
Riders cantered into their courtyard, ten, twelve, sixteen men, more still coming. Drem felt a leaden weight shift in his belly, because he recognized some amongst them. The man at their head was shaven-haired and had a scar running from mouth to jaw, and behind him rode a man with a wispy red beard. He had a new bruise that covered half his face, one eye purpled and swollen.
Has he been fighting someone else?
As they reined their mounts in before the cabin, Drem recognized more of them: one had a splinted forearm, and another splint upon his hand, where Drem had crushed it and broken finger bones. Others gathered behind, an aura of bad intentions radiating from them. Drem was used to living amongst trappers and men who existed on the fringes of civilization, men who lived by their own laws, or none at all. But there was something different about these men, something worse, as if there was a stain upon their souls.
‘What do you want?’ Olin said to the bald one with the scar, who still seemed to be their leader. ‘Why are you here?’
‘We’re here to hang the murderers of Calder the smith,’ the bald man said as he dismounted, ‘and then I’m going to strip your hold of anything worth a coin and burn the rest, leave you two swinging from a beam.’ He grinned at them both as he unstrapped a long thick rope from his saddle and strode towards the cabin, men swarming behind him.
‘What are you talking about?’ Drem said. ‘Murderers?’
‘Don’t deny it,’ the bald man said. ‘Ulf’s saying Calder was stabbed and left in the woods for a bear to maul. Everyone knows you were in Calder’s forge all night long – robbing him, no doubt. There’s witnesses. The town guards saw you leaving Kergard at dawn, and your hold is the closest to where he was found.’
He put a boot on the first step to the cabin, men either side of him.
Drem felt a jolt of panic ripple through him. He opened his mouth to protest, to point out that their logic was flawed: how could they have murdered Calder and left him in the woods if witnesses had sighted them in Kergard at dawn? But he knew it would be futile.
These men mean to see us dead and just want an excuse to make it happen, and there’s near enough a score of them! Not even Da’s weapons-skill and magic can fix this!
‘Drem,’ his da said, a hissed whisper. One look at him and Drem knew he’d reached the same conclusion. ‘Back inside, through the cabin and out the back window.’
For a moment Drem almost did it, so used was he to following his da’s instructions. Then he realized his da did not intend to follow him. Fingers to his throat, counting the beat of his heart. It was a lot faster than normal.
‘No,’ Drem said, stepping forwards to stand beside his father.
Olin glanced at him, saw the resolve in Drem’s face and gave a curt nod.
‘We’re innocent of Calder’s death,’ Olin shouted, ‘but another step closer and I’ll have your blood on my conscience, and not lose a single night’s sleep over it.’ He shrugged his cloak from his shoulder, freeing his sword arm, and raised his black blade, high, two-handed, over his head.
The bald man hesitated on the steps, whether at Olin’s words or at the sword in Olin’s hands, Drem did not know, but his eyes were fixed on the blade of the black sword.
Others around and behind the bald man pressed forwards, though, and, for Drem, everything slowed. He saw Wispy Beard climbing the steps, a spear in his hand, a frenzied grin splitting his face, realized the man had shaved his head.
He must be cold. An impractical act for one who is wintering in the north.
Then someone was stabbing a spear at Olin, blade aimed at his da’s gut. Olin just seemed to shuffle his feet and then the spear was stabbing past him, through thin air, at the same time Olin’s black sword was chopping down, cutting into the man’s head, just behind his ear. There was a wet cracking sound, and what looked like a burst of flames around the starstone blade and the man’s head, except that the flames were black and sulphurous, and then the sword was shearing out through the bottom of the man’s jaw, the front of his face falling to the step with a slap, blood and bone and brains splattering those either side of him. Olin kicked the still-standing corpse back into those behind, men falling, tangled.
Drem fought the urge to vomit. The sight of a man swinging a sword at him helped him to get that under control. He stumbled back a step, felt the hiss of air past his face as the sword missed by a handspan.
How can this be happening? I just watched my da kill a man, while others are baying for our blood. Can I do this? Can I take another’s life?
He felt sick, wished for a moment he’d taken his da’s advice and run for the back window, though he wouldn’t have left without his da.
What do I do? Stand and fight? Kill or be killed?
A glance at his da, who was holding the top of the stairs, chopping through a spear shaft, splintering it like kindling, back-swinging across someone’s eyes, a spray of blood as they fell away.
And then the decision was taken from Drem. As more men pressed onto the steps to the cabin, the man with the sword who’d just tried to carve a slice from Drem’s face was pushed forwards, and without thinking Drem stepped in to meet him, slipping past his sword, slashing with his bone-handled seax across the man’s arm, chopping with his axe between neck and shoulder. The man screamed, blood bubbling in a fountain as he collapsed, tripping the man behind him.
Pain lanced across Drem’s arm, a spear-thrust grazing him, a hand gripping his axehaft, pulling him forwards. He slashed and stabbed wildly with his seax, heard a scream, the grip on his axe pulling him off balance. He stumbled, dropped to one knee, something hard glancing off his head, white lights exploding in his vision as he stabbed blindly, felt his blade punch into something, the resistance of flesh, the grate of bone.