Nobody's Son Read Free Page B

muttered. “The nightwind blows them all apart.”
    Under Shade’s cool gaze Mark laid his pallet beside the embering fire and laid down his head. Squirrels squeaked and scratched around him. Far into his dreams their rustles followed him, and the sound of tiny claws.
    He woke suddenly, gasping with fright, though he could not remember what had scared him. The fire was out. Husk and her squirrels were gone. He felt her talisman against his breastbone, a disc of carven cedar-wood beneath his shirt.
    What could it mean? Who was the old woman draped in cloaks she had stolen from murdered heroes? Would her charm really prove lucky? He’d never believed in that sort of rubbish before: such old-wives’ babble offended his common sense. But then what use is common sense in this cursed Wood, that God has framed with a crooked hand ?
    God or Duke Aron anyway. How did the awd bugger lay the ghosts to end the Time of Troubles? You’d think he might have left instructions for the rest of us luckless bastards.
    He wondered uneasily if he would ever return to the time he knew. Maybe’t’other heroes got this far too: handled the quest and all, turned heels an’ left the Ghostwood, only to find themselves — when? A world of winters gone, maybe; their kin nowt but a swirl of dust in the corners of an awd Keep.
    He shuddered, then spat. No fear, lad. You’ve no kin to worrit about you , he thought grimly.
    At least this was his hour: the dark before dawn. He’d lived years in this hour, teaching himself swordplay. Feinting, dodging, thrusting, cut and jump back, stumbling over molehills too small to see by moonlight, feeling his sweat turn cold as the dew on the stubbled fields. In this hour, while the rest of the village slept, he had hammered himself into the man who could dare the Red Keep.
    And now the Keep was before him, a granite giant hunkered on the hillside beyond the moat. Around him stood a grove of cherry trees, their gnarled branches poxed with pale blossoms.
    The moat itself was thirty paces wide and clotted with drifting petals. A clammy, sour-sweet odour rose from it. Couldn’t be a drawbridge to cross a pool that wide; must be a floating bridge, built in sections like the one down below the Mill at home. Pulled up on’t’other side each night, no doubt . By the light of the bright, thin moon he saw a white marble path leading from the water’s edge to a small door in the Red Keep’s outer wall.
    Mark squatted and reached a finger toward the black water, but a sick dread came over him and he snatched back his hand. Something was waiting there, under the drifting blossoms. That time they dredged Mad Tom up from the millpond, his patch-pockets full of stones . Water spilling from his slack mouth like a tipped canteen.
    Mark shuddered and wiped his hands off on his pants. He swore softly to himself. This place was wrong, wrong as summer snow. God, a manor seemed enow, before you came here, didn’t it? But to walk through this horrible Wood is worth a barony at least. Two score servants, a stable and a pack of hounds with a sweet-toned bitch to lead the chase . “All right,” he whispered. “What’s sowed is grown: now comes the reaping.” He would have to cross the moat, get through the outer walls, scale the Tower, and—well, he didn’t know what would happen then. He would deal with the Tower when the time came.
    Strength on craft, craft on strength , he reminded himself. And if you’re fighting fear? Jump in: water’s cawdest before you dive. Don’t let the fear blunt you like a lead axe .
    Well and right. He could do that. Many a time he’d held his fear like a frog caught in his clenched fist and refused to let it loose. He was a master at controlling his own weaknesses.
    First he had to get across the water. He groped in his pack until he found a sweet, withered apple and tossed it into the moat. It fell with a thick plop. A moment later, a swell heaved up the drifting cherry blossoms and rolled