Valour

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CORALEN

Coralen sat at her mam’s table, picking dirt from her nails with her hunting knife.

‘How long are you back for?’ her mam asked.

‘I don’t know, Mam. A day, a few days. Rath didn’t say.’

‘I don’t know what you get out of riding around the countryside with those savages,’ her mam said.

Coralen bit back the immediate response on her lips. Because I don’t want to end up like you. She felt a rush of guilt at that. Her mam was sitting close to a window, studying herself in a polished bronze mirror, daubing her face with rouge and kohl.

She had been beautiful once and a shadow of that lingered still, though her hair had thinned and lost its copper lustre, and her figure had expanded. It was more than that, though, something deeper than the simple passage of time. Coralen noticed it so clearly because she was rarely home. Home? This is not my home. Just timber and thatch in the empty northlands of Domhain. There was a pervasive weariness about her mam that leaked into everything she did, every word or glance.

‘You should try some,’ her mam said, offering her the pot of rouge.

‘No thanks.’

‘You need to be making more of an effort; you won’t have your looks forever.’ Her mam looked at her, and frowned. ‘Look at you, in your prime, and all wrapped in leather and iron. You’ve more sharp edges on you than the knives in my kitchen.’

Coralen smiled at that. ‘Mam, I’m eighteen summers. And all of that — ’ she waved at the pot of rouge, as if it summed up an entire way of life — ‘it doesn’t matter to me. I’m happy riding around with a bunch of savages.’

Happy? Well, that’s probably an exaggeration. But it’s better than the alternative.

Her mam sighed and shook her head as if to say, You poor, deluded child.

There was a knock at the door; a figure pushed in, not waiting to be invited. It was a big man, tall, a belly folding over his belt. He smelled of earth and sweat.

‘Hearne,’ Coralen’s mam said, brightening, something of her old aura fluttering into life.

‘Nara,’ the big man said, his eyes settling on Coralen. He nodded to her. He had small eyes, pinpricks in a large face.

‘Take yourself off for a walk,’ Coralen’s mam said to her as she rose and walked away, crossing into the shadows of another room.

Coralen stood, her chair scraping on the floor.

‘No need to leave on my account,’ Hearne said. ‘You could wait for me, or join us, if you like.’ He reached out a big hand, touching Coralen’s hip.

Without thinking, she burst into movement, sliding around him, twisting his arm behind his back. In heartbeats he was pressed against the wall, Coralen’s knife resting just below his eye.

‘I don’t think so, you fat, stinking pig,’ she hissed. A bead of sweat rolled down Hearne’s forehead, around his eye, onto the tip of Coralen’s knife.

Hooves drummed outside, stopping close by.

‘Cora, get out here. Rath says we’re leaving.’

‘Be nice to my mam,’ Coralen said as she stepped away, sheathing her knife.

Hearne hurried away, following her mam.

Coralen took a deep breath, felt her racing pulse begin to slow. As she left she placed a bag of coins on the table.

‘What happened here?’ Rath said. He was old, his hair white, streaked with iron, but he was as strong and sharp witted as anyone Coralen had ever met. She loved him fiercely, this old man before her, uncle, protector, friend. Not that I’ve ever told him. That was beyond imagination in this group of hard men.

She had become one of them slowly, something within her rebelling against the life that had surrounded her mam. So she had taken to following Rath and her half-brothers about. Six years old, never speaking, just following, watching. Rath had ignored her at first, then told her to get back to her mam’s skirts, then scolded her, eventually clumping her. None of it had made any difference; she had just continued to sneak out, following him whenever he was there. Soon she had become his shadow, accepted, almost invisible, and so she had watched him training with his men, sparring, eating, drinking. She had a vivid memory: eight years old, lifting a practice sword from a wicker basket in the weapons court, of men laughing — all except Rath. He had measured her with his serious eyes, told her to hit him. She’d tried, but ended up on her arse quickly enough. Rath had told her to get up and try again. She smiled at the thought.

It had been Baird who had fetched her from her mam’s house; he was a warrior who had served with Rath for more years than Coralen had drawn breath. He had lost both his family and an eye to the giants of Benoth. Rath’s score or so of warriors had been gathered swiftly. Once they were all together, Rath told them why. Word had come back that a patrol was overdue.

Now they knew the reason.

Bodies littered the ground, spread around a burned-out fire, twisted and ungainly in death. Their heads had been hacked from their bodies. Nearby a cairn had been raised, stones piled high. Around its base were the heads of the warriors, placed like some decoration. Coralen shared a look with Baird. He slipped from his saddle and began pulling rocks from the cairn. Coralen and a few others joined him. It was not long before a huge body was revealed, laid flat with a war-hammer resting upon its chest. Baird lifted the giant’s severed head by its hair.

‘The Benothi are loose in Domhain,’ Rath said. ‘Think we’d better do something about that.’