‘Sure. Sure you are.’
I gave the old man my best attempt at a menacing glare. Judging by the easy smile he offered in return, it hadn’t been particularly persuasive. Morn could pass well enough, but Kest, Brasti and I didn’t make convincing villagers. We’d had to leave our horses back in Den Chapier with Rhissa and Tam, although Arsehole had promptly run off to who knows where, no doubt in hot pursuit of a particularly intriguing butterfly. I hoped he’d find his way back at some point. We’d hidden our greatcoats in our packs before we’d joined the long line of those who’d left their villages and were heading for Avares, like pilgrims in search of a newer, better God to worship. The heavy woollen cloaks we now wore felt flimsy and awkward in comparison, hardly more than blankets tied at the neck with cord to keep them from falling off. I felt horribly exposed, both to the increasing cold as we plodded our way to higher altitudes, and to the stares of those around us.
‘Look like soldiers to me,’ the old man went on. His own cloak was practically threadbare, and I wondered how he planned to make it through the mountains. Those born and bred in the north must be better able to tolerate the cold than I could.
‘Labourers,’ Brasti said. ‘You know how I know? Because I’m listening to you flap your mouth and it’s quickly becoming labourous.’
‘He means laborious,’ Kest corrected.
The old man’s laugh followed us as we walked around a boulder that must have fallen from the mountain eons before. Brasti had a way of setting people at ease that I really envied at times like these. He would have made a half-decent spy, if not for the fact that he’d likely have walked around bragging about being a spy all the time.
‘A little help here?’ the old man called out, and I looked back to see the end of his walking staff was caught between two rocks. ‘Thought I saw something shiny in there. Damn fool that I am, I poked my stick inside. Now it’s stuck.’
Kest gave the old man a shoulder to lean on while Morn pulled the staff free. ‘Best not to poke at things,’ he said, handing it back before coming over to where I was waiting.
‘Fair enough,’ the old man said, rushing to catch up to us, ‘but since you helped me out of a little jam, let me help you avoid one: when we get to the border, just tell them the truth – that you’re former soldiers.’
‘We’re lab—’ Brasti began.
‘Won’t they kill us if they think we were soldiers?’ I asked. Telling people we were just farm workers clearly wasn’t going to work. We could try to act a bit, maybe attempt talking like labourers, but the chances were we wouldn’t be able to keep it up. Better to go with a lie that fit people’s expectations.
‘Not if you’re truthful with the bordermen,’ the old man said. ‘A soldier’s back is just as strong as a farmer’s, and there’s plenty of hungry veterans struggling after their discharge who’ve headed into Avares. That what happened to you four?’
My first instinct was to just agree with his assessment and leave it there, but that might have made us look too eager to follow the explanation he’d given us, so I embellished a bit. ‘We weren’t discharged, well, not exactly . . . damned captain decided he could make us tend his fields if he said our unit needed to stay together. That’s why we said we’re labourers.’
‘Son of a bitch. How can he get away with that?’
‘There were no generals left,’ Kest said, picking up the story. ‘And no Duke. Who’s going to tell him otherwise?’
‘So . . . I don’t mean any offence, but doesn’t that make you . . . ?’
‘Deserters?’
He nodded a little cautiously.
‘No. It’s like I told you, we’re just labourers.’
The old man gave a laugh. ‘Fair enough, fair enough. Still, though, best to just tell the warriors in Avares that you’re former soldiers. There’s a phrase they use in that rough tongue of theirs: “Tota valha, maksa verta”.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘“The truth will set you free, the lie will cost you blood”.’ The old man paused a moment to lift a flask to his lips. ‘The Avareans don’t take kindly to deceivers and spies.’
Brasti shrugged it off. ‘Well, I’ve never been a soldier and I don’t plan to be. I’m a poacher, born and bred.’
That statement had the virtue of being the truth and looking at Brasti, the old man believed it readily. ‘You should probably lie, then.’
‘Lie? I thought you said—’
‘The bordermen hate poachers worse than liars.’
That set off one of Brasti’s favourite rants, the one Kest and I like to call ‘Requiem for the Sainted Poacher’. It has no particular tune, the words are largely incomprehensible and it can go on for several hours. On the positive side, Brasti’s determination to convert the old man banished any questions he might still have had about Brasti’s background and, by extension, our own. We were soldiers, right enough, and although we might not be particularly honourable, we were clearly nothing to be concerned about.
‘Hells of a war that was,’ the old man said, probably more to change the subject from Brasti harping on about ancestral hunting rights than out of any genuine interest.
‘I imagine all wars are hellish,’ I said.
‘Maybe. I’m no soldier, never have been, but seems to me, we’ve never come so close to ruin as when that bitch decided she wanted to make the world her own. Saints’ praise to the man who one day puts the tip of a sword through her heart. Doubt I’ll live to see it, mind you.’
‘You never know,’ I said, giving myself a moment to savour the idea. Give me one chance, and with it, one moment of perfect clarity. Give me that, you Gods and Saints, and I’ll rid the world of half its evil in one strike. ‘Perhaps that day will come sooner than you expect.’
The old man clapped me on the shoulder. ‘Ha! Look at you now. Maybe we’ve got a hero here with us, eh?’
‘Not me,’ I said, cursing myself for showing my true desires . . .
‘Ah, I can see it now: you’ll ride south on a fine horse, ride right through the gates of Castle Aramor and past the bastard Trattari.’ He spread his arms in a ludicrous impression of a fencer. ‘Then you’ll bound into the throne room where you’ll cut the little bitch’s head off in one clean strike.’
I felt Kest’s hand on my arm before I could even make sense of the old man’s words. Aline. He’s talking about Aline . . .
‘Ah, don’t be sore, lad,’ the old man said, catching my expression. ‘I’m not mocking you. Hells, I’d be the first to call you Saint if you did do the deed.’
Whether to distract attention from me or simply because he never pays any attention to the dangers in such talk, Brasti said, ‘You know, that’s the King’s true heir you’re talking about.’
The old man spat. ‘That’s for the King’s heir.’