“Scared of a bit of pain?” He grabbed my hair, bending my head back and starting to bring the point of his knife down. “Not feeling so blessed now, are you?”
His fun was interrupted by a single, quietly spoken, word.
“Enough.”
Dollis turned. His grip on my hair loosened so I could turn my head to see a stocky figure standing between the two shadows who I thought were the twins.
“This is castle business,” said Dollis. “Who are you to tell me enough?”
“You know who I am. The boy’s learned his lesson; now leave him be and we’ll agree never to speak of this or each other again.” I knew the voice of the speaker but alcohol and panic had left me confused.
“Nywulf,” said Dollis. “Ain’t no need for you to interfere here.” He walked away from me and towards Nywulf. As he came within arm’s reach of the squiremaster he began to speak again, “You should walk away unless you want me to t—”
Nywulf’s arm shot out, and Dollis’s sentence ended in a scream. He fell to his knees in the filth, clutching his face and sobbing in agony.
“Anyone else?” shouted Nywulf. “Anyone else want to argue with me?” No one answered. “Then go.” The remaining five men and boys streamed past Nywulf while Dollis remained kneeling in the mud moaning with his hands clasped to his face. Nywulf stalked over to me. “Did they hurt you, boy?” he said surprisingly gently.
“No worse than after sword practice.”
He pulled me up and helped me walk to the end of the alley between the caravans. Lying in the mud in front of Dollis was his eye. Nywulf had plucked it out. “One moment, Girton,” he said and walked back to Dollis. He placed one hand on the man’s chin and one on the back of his neck. “Are you ready, Captain?” he asked. Before Dollis had time to reply Nywulf broke the man’s neck with a vicious twist of his upper body. Then he picked up Dollis’s limp corpse and threw it over a fence. The excited squealing of hungry pigs filled the air and I realised, with dismay, I would never find out who had ordered me locked in with the dogs. “No remembrance parade for him,” said Nywulf. “No great loss either. Come on, boy.”
“Thank you, Nywulf,” I said, staring at the heaving mass of animals. “How did you …”
“I saw you at Festival and then I saw Dollis signal to his friends and follow you. He’s up to no good, I thought.”
“I think the other squires—”
“Will be sorted out if they had anything to do with this. But that is for me to do, so no reason to mention what happened tonight to anyone else, you understand?”
I nodded. Nywulf saw me up to the castle, and I did my best to sneak into our room without waking my master. I may as well have been trying to grow corn in the sourlands.
“Girton?” she said, and sat straight up. “What happened to you? You stink and are covered in filth. Are you all right? Let me see to you.”
“I am fine, Master. I was set upon is all—some of the other squires trying to settle a score—but I am only bruised, nothing more.”
“I have salves.” She reached for the bag she had hidden under my bed. “You saw who did this?”
“No, they were masked.”
“And you let them beat you? They could have been brigands, Girton.”
“I did not want to risk giving myself away.” I peeled off my shirt with a grunt. “And I had been drinking. I wasn’t sure—”
“Child,” she said softly, “what a world this is I have forced you into. I am glad you suffer no worse than bruises. This is not the first beating you have taken, eh?” She rubbed salve into the bruises on my arms.
“No, but you were always there before, Master. This time …” The image of the knife descending sent a shiver through me. I may as well have written a letter to my master saying I had not told her everything.
“What else happened, Girton? Was this Rufra boy part of this?”
“No, I do not think so. From what was said it was Tomas. He hired the captain of Aydor’s dayguard, Dollis, who beat me.”
“The same who was involved in locking you in the kennels?” I nodded. “You defended yourself though? Escaped?”
“No, Nywulf, the squiremaster, turned up. He saved me. Dollis feeds the pigs now.” My master helped me remove my boots and then rubbed salve into my clubbed foot. My clothes were caked in mud and pig shit. I had got it on the bed but could not bring myself to care.
“You should stay away from alcohol, Girton. You are not used to it and it is not good for—” a gap in her words “—people like us.” I stared at her as her hands worked over my twisted foot and it all seemed too much—the beatings, the magic, the fear and the lies.
“He wanted to take my eye.” The words leaked out of my mouth as if they were ashamed of being heard.
“Your eye?” Her hands paused in their movement.
“He was going to blind me, Master.” A dam broke. Tears came in great shudders and my master put her arms around me, not caring that I was filthy with pigshit, holding me the way she had done when I was a child woken by yapping nightmares. “What use is a blinded assassin, Master? Who would want me then?”
“I would, Girton,” she said and she kept repeating it, “I would.”
Interlude
This is a dream of what was.
He is ten. He knows what his master does but he has never seen her kill. He is not sure he wants to, but there is foreknowing in the dark clouds of the horizon, in the brown crisp leaves whipped up by the wind biting through his woollen clothes, in the whispering bare tops of the stunted trees.
Today he will witness death.
“Master, are they people or hedgescares?” he says as he trots along behind Xus. His master raises her hand to cover her eyes and stares into the distance. The long golden grasses with heavy seed heads hiss in the wind.
“People,” she says. “Come.” She puts down a hand and lifts him up onto Xus’s saddle. “Shade your eyes, Girton. Tell me what you see.”
He does as he is told. It is hard to tell the difference between rag-wrapped people and the rag-wrapped statues believed to scare away the hedge spirits of field, forest, pool and souring.
“Mounts, Master. Three mounts and a blood gibbet.”
“Yes,” she says. Her words are no more than breath on the wind. “Down, Xus,” she says, and the mount hunkers down into the grasses. She does not want to be seen by the people. He does not need to ask why so he stays quiet and counts as he has been taught. “One my master. Two my master.” He loses count at two hundred and twelve and, eventually, the people leave and Xus rises.
They make their way to the blood gibbet. It has been erected on the line where the grasses abruptly stop and the yellow land of the souring begins. Below the gibbet is a black mark where blood has been spilled on the ground. Green shoots are pushing their tips through it.