The Tears of Sisme Page 2

  Caldar opened his eyes to find a gangling youth eyeing him across the embers of his fire. The new arrival was every inch a clansman with grey-blue eyes and shoulder-length black hair gathered by a leather thong. For some reason which he did not quite understand himself, Berin had befriended Caldar from the first. Which was just as well, as Berin was older and a good six inches taller and the younger boy attracted trouble like a cowpat drew flies. If it wasn’t the clan children ganging up on him as a Kwett, an outsider, it was their elders seeking retribution for one of Caldar’s more outrageous tricks. Berin always sided with him and it had proved a full-time job. Not that he kept score. Brothers in all but blood, their relationship had long transcended any ordinary feelings of obligation. If he had to do most of the fence-mending, he was content.

  "Guessed you'd be here," the older boy panted, squatting down on his haunches. "I've got..."

  "Berin," Caldar interrupted, looking up at his friend, "at the Rails last year, you’re joking about having to work every day, aren’t you? You must have got some time off?"

  "Dreaming again, eh?" Berin picked up a stick and poked the dying fire. "I've told you ten times already, it's not like that up there. I mean it, Caldar. Don’t go off by yourself. It's so big, cliffs, forests, everything, they’d never find you."

  Caldar absent-mindedly pulled up blades of grass and chewed them while he listened to Berin’s warnings, all stuff he’d heard before, but he couldn’t resist asking. He would be fourteen tomorrow, the age at which boys were allowed up to the mountain pastures at the Rails for the first time. Despite his questions he knew there would be plenty of work and no passengers: his stepfather Taccen alone sent hundreds of cows up every summer. His excitement flared suddenly. He'd waited for it for months in a crescendo of impatience and now here it was, just one night away.

  "Wish you were coming," he said to his friend for the hundredth time. "Can’t they manage without you just for a few weeks?"

  “Father’s legs are still bad and he reckons last year’s swine plague may come back, which’ll make extra work. He can’t spare us both, so Ham goes and I stay.” Berin shrugged, reluctant to explain. The last disastrous year had put their small farm into debt, so there was no question of hiring help. “Maybe they’ll let me come up later with a mule train. Anyway I've got three messages for you. Scholar Rondan’s angry you didn’t come to school on the last day. Really angry. Says he’ll be there late if you want to go and apologise.”

  Caldar did not reply, his face set. School was a winter event in the Rimber valley, which finished in spring when the youngsters were needed on the farms. Even so there were few pupils of Caldar’s age. Berin was still there because Scholar Rondan had argued long and hard to keep his star pupil. Caldar was there because his stepfather Taccen paid for the whole school. Or rather Caldar should have been there: he seldom was.

  “And there’s one from Pilatt. He says…” An icy glare stopped Berin short and also gave him a direct view of Caldar’s swollen face. “He give you the shiner? Bastard.”

  “It’s alright, I’ve left him something to remember me by.” The glare became a grin. “There’s enough setchum in his pants to keep him scratching for weeks.”

  Berin grinned back. “Early start tomorrow then? The other’s from Ham; he's loading the mules down by the bridge and he wants to see you."

  "What about?" asked Caldar, stretching and getting to his feet without enthusiasm.

  "I don't know." Berin answered, shaking his head. "Maybe he thinks you should be helping." Caldar pulled a face. "Or maybe it's something to do with tomorrow. Packed your things yet?"

  Caldar nodded absently as he began to stamp out the remains of the fire. " Days ago. I wonder what he wants. Come on, I'll race you down the boulders."

  He was still putting out the last sparks, when Berin took off running down the bank to where several large boulders stood up in midstream. With a flying leap onto the nearest, he ran up one sloping side, down the other, and leapt again over a narrow channel of boiling water to the next rock. Flat grey boulders slashed with vivid bands of quartz and tufted with thick green moss alternated with tall white ones standing like smooth towers among the rapids or bare round monsters speckled white and brown like enormous eggs. The friends raced hard, sliding down beside the dancing cascades and skipping lightly across the boulder-chains that laced the still surface of the pools. They darted and swooped and climbed in and out of the dazzling sunlight, till suddenly they stopped breathless and laughing, holding onto each other to prevent themselves from overbalancing. There were no more boulders, only a stretch of quiet water, a small sandbar, and then the main river.They splashed merrily across the shallows to the bank, arguing over who had won, and set off along the riverside track.

  Half an hour's walk brought them to Rimberford, the largest village in the valley, where more than forty houses gathered round the bridge over the Rimber. A large low building shaped like a hollow square stood close to the bridge. One side was the village hall, and the next housed the inn, 'The Ford'. The other sides were taken up by stables and barns. Today, as the boys came in through the archway, the square was empty except for a group of men and mules on one side and a couple of empty carts outside the inn.

  The fading flowers lying here and there on the cobbles brought a quick smile to Caldar’s face. At the Ring Festival two days ago Berin had been the center of attention from two girls, one of them Tilanya, the Ring Queen, who had brushed aside his embarrassment and kept him dancing late into the night. The competition over him had excited and bewildered the shy youth in equal measure, as well as providing much amusement for his friends. Caldar to his disgust was still ignored by the older girls because he was so small; he had to content himself with dancing with their younger sisters, bright eyes and silken hair, delightful but unsatisfying.

  Hamdrim looked up as the boys approached and said sternly, "Where d’you find him then, Berin? Not in school, I’ll bet. Always the same when there’s work to be done, I don't know why Taccen lets you get away with it." Then before Caldar had time to think of an answer, he tempered his words with a milder, "It's alright, I’ve a message for Taccen, but you weren’t to know that."

  No need to take his irritations out on the boy: someone else had already done that to judge by his face. He could be trouble, as Hamdrim knew; but there was more to him than his half-brothers’ dismissive comments led people to believe. Taccen’s eldest son Riddigan wasn’t too bad, just another arrogant know-all like his father. Pilatt was a clumsy bully and it said something for Caldar - ‘the Runt’ as Pilatt sneeringly called him - that he stood up for himself.

  Hamdrim was hard put to it not to smile at the memory of Pilatt’s drunken bemusement when he stumbled out of the inn on Winterturn night to find a large pig tied up in place of his horse. Caldar probably paid a high price for that particular joke, but it had been a good one. People were asking Pilatt about his horse’s curly tail and short legs for months. The lad might not be clan - none of the three clans had produced those dark blue eyes and that sandy hair - but he shaped up like a fighter and Hamdrim respected that. Well, he’d have time enough at the Rails to form his own opinion of him.

  For his part Caldar looked at Hamdrim, at twenty as tall and strong as any man in the valley, and thought, as he often did, that he would like to grow up like Berin's brother. Small chance of that. Hamdrim had beaten everyone, even Pilatt and the huge sailor who was the Misaloren champion, in the tests of strength at the last Valley Games, while Caldar’s only success was to win the youngsters’ footrace up Hewor Hill. He loved to run and just as well, he thought: he spent half his time running away.

  At the games Caldar had secretly greased the cloth Pilatt used to wipe his hands before lifting the massive Tund Stone. Or trying to lift it. His increasingly desperate attempts had amused the spectators and left Pilatt puzzled and angry. Caldar couldn’t keep the grin off his face and had sensibly made himself scarce for a couple of days.

  "I
would’ve come and helped, but I thought you'd be loading up in the morning," he said aloud, trying to make his peace.

  "We will," Hamdrim answered, "but we need the loads ready tonight. There’s plenty left to make up; now you’re here, you can help. You too, Berin."

  Caldar followed him across to where the mules were having their loads sorted by a couple of muleteers. Faradan he knew; the other was a tall dark-faced fellow he'd never seen before. He was about to touch Berin's arm to see if he knew the stranger's name, when he caught the man staring at him over the back of one of the mules with such fierce concentration that he was startled. Pale blue eyes, sunk deep in a bare bony face, not even any eyebrows to soften the bare skull. The man turned away quickly and Caldar forgot him as Hamdrim started telling them what needed to be fetched from the nearest barn and packed into the large panniers waiting on the ground.

  They worked hard until all the panniers were full, ready for the muleteers to weigh the loads and try them on the mules. Then abruptly Hamdrim called them over and sent them home.

  “Early start tomorrow, Caldar. We’ll be going the long way by Misaloren. Tell Taccen I’ll be up later."

  The two boys went off, tired now. They said a subdued good-bye as they passed Berin's gate, and in the dusk Caldar trudged on the long mile to Taccen's farm. He didn't even feel like having any of the supper he knew Lazalis would have ready for him and going in one of the back ways he was heading for his room, when he heard voices from the kitchen.

  “I still say my lad should’ve had that prize.” It was Gilliser, a successful valley farmer, and he was drunk. Caldar paused to listen.

  “Are you challenging my decision as Games Master?” Taccen’s tone was friendly, but the edge was there for anyone sober enough to hear it.

  “That orphan of yours is a Kwett, shouldn’t’ve been allowed to enter.”

  “Come on, man, the Games aren’t clan any more. They’re open to all and you know it. We’ve competitors from all over.”

  “My Riffenan won. Sneaky little bugger’s a Kwett.”

  “Riffenan’s a good lad, but he was too slow.” Taccen’s voice was cold with the full weight of a clan chief behind it. The title was honorary now, but it carried respect and authority in the valley. “And you know I held a proper naming for Caldar. Whatever he was, he’s clan now and that’s the end of it.”

  “You’re blind,” Gilliser persisted with alcohol-induced confidence. “Your sons don’t accept him. Face it, Pilatt will have him out of here five minutes after you stop breathing. Why don’t you pack him off to Misaloren to learn a trade, something…”

  “That’s enough.” The interruption was sharp. A moment’s silence, then, “What’s got into you, man? I’ve not seen you like this before.”

  “I dunno, Taccen. Maybe that fellow called at the farm yesterday…”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Ugly-looking bugger, bald as an egg, funny pale eyes. Tax man from Suntoren. Wanted to know how many outsiders there were living in the valley. Never thought of Caldar till he asked about adopted children.”

  “And since then you’ve not been able to forget it.”

  “Aye, stupid, isn’t it? I’m sorry, man. Making a fool of myself. It’s just that Riffenan’s…well, he’s…”

  “The lad thinks he was cheated?”

  “What? No, never entered his head. No, I was hoping to betroth him to Findash’s daughter Tilanya at the Ring Festival and she’ll have none of him. It was in my mind she might have looked kinder on a Games winner. Fool’s thoughts.”

  “Tilanya’s a spirited lass.” Caldar thought he detected a note of humour in Taccen’s voice. “Course the top end of Findash’s land buts right onto yours. Pity to miss the deal.”

  “I’d not…”

  Taccen’s laugh drowned the rest of Gilliser’s reply. It was a warm laugh between friends. Caldar went quietly to bed. Taccen stood up for him, though he wondered whether his stepfather secretly regretted his adoption. And why did they make such a big thing out of being clan? Scholar Rondan was an Espar from Suntoren and no one called him names. But Caldar had heard it all before, many times. In the past the vulnerability and the hurt lying underneath would come close to surfacing, but he had long learned to deal with it in his own way. When Lazalis came to his room looking for him later, he was already asleep with his old dog Brack lying beside the bed.

  She stood inside the door and studied him for a while. Caldar's birthday was simply a date they had chosen for him, for he was a foundling. A fisherman had come across the infant alone in a boat rocking gently beside the shore of the Lake. There had been a great storm the night before, but the boat was dry and in good trim. Every effort to find his parents or anyone who knew the child had failed, so it had remained a mystery which people had theorised about for a while and then forgotten.

  The baby had been taken into the house of Taccen, the biggest dairy farmer in the Rimber valley, whose own sons, Riddigan and Pilatt, were already half grown: they had since taken over much of the farm work and had started to raise their own families among the many corners of the enormous farmhouse.

  Lazalis was Taccen’s second wife. There had been a deal of talk among the women of Misaloren and the Rimber when the most eligible widower of the area had returned from his first and only trip to Suntoren with the beautiful young lady from South Lake. It served him right that she turned out to be childless, teach him not to judge a cake by its icing, especially not a foreign one.

  To the chagrin of its detractors the marriage had prospered: Taccen was clearly a contented man and Lazalis had remained serenity itself. Until the day when she had been standing on the quayside at Misaloren and had watched the fisherman bring the child ashore. Taccen had been there to see her face and had read aright the veiled intensity of her feelings. Since then he had often blessed the chance that brought such simple happiness to his house.

  When Caldar was a child, people said that Taccen spoiled him for his mother’s sake, that letting him run wild was no proper sort of upbringing. Then as he grew older Taccen’s sons had insisted that he do his share on the farm, backing up orders with a ready beating if defied. But they had found Caldar a surprisingly determined opponent for all his small size. He would help when he wanted. When he didn’t, he simply wasn’t to be found, and the punishment his half-brothers regularly meted out - well out of Lazalis’ way - left him tearful, but unrepentant.

  In the end they had fallen into a habitual procedure. When they told Caldar to do a job, he would either say ‘yes’ or ‘no’. ‘No’ would earn him a curse and a clout and that would be that. Or so it had been until recently. Of late Pilatt had come to thinking about his inheritance. By the age of fourteen Caldar had the reputation of being a difficult youth, pleasant enough, but heading for an uncertain future were it not for Taccen’s wealth. And it was this wealth which Pilatt had no intention of sharing with the unwanted stray his stepmother had picked up. His treatment of Caldar had taken on a new edge, designed to encourage the youth to leave home at the earliest opportunity.

  Lazalis looked down at the well-loved face, preparing herself for the morning, for the first of many departures she knew awaited her in the future. This bird would not stay long in the nest. His half-brothers, and even Taccen, did not understand that what was hatching here would never be a farmer. Pilatt’s petty cruelties, which he stupidly believed to be unobserved, were unnecessary. Caldar’s restless drive was going to take him a long way from the Rimber Valley: she just hoped he would return sometimes. At last she drew a deep breath, smiled and left him alone.

  **

  Sometime later, Caldar found himself wide awake. He lay there warm in the dark, feeling afraid without really knowing why.

  Then it came again - the slight scraping noise he half remembered hearing. There was someone or something close to him, and it was something very scary indeed, he could sense it. His hand went out automatically to Brack, but the dog was not there. Caldar’s skin went cold.
He badly wanted to hide under the blankets, but he dare not move. He lay very still, his heart thumping, as he listened to catch the slightest sound and his mind raced to find explanations. It was Lazalis, just putting some extra little thing in his pack - but why didn't she have a light? Or Brack wandering about as he sometimes did in the night . Or a rat. He waited, breathing as quietly as he could. Eventually after several long minutes without hearing the slightest sound he relaxed. The feeling of menace had evaporated, and warmth and security dragged him quickly down into sleep again.

  A rough hand on his shoulder woke him the second time and he started up in fright until he saw Hamdrim's face in the lamp-light and heard him say curtly; "Get up lad. We’re off in ten minutes."

  Caldar jumped up, quickly pulled on his jerkin, breeches and shoes, then grabbed his sac and followed Hamdrim to the well-lit kitchen. He paused in the doorway blinking for a moment before he saw Lazalis beckoning him to a place at the low wooden table next to the huge stove. Without a word she put down a bowl of hot porridge in front of him with a jug of fresh milk beside it and just as silently he set to and ate it, grateful for the spreading warmth inside.

  Lazalis was talking in low tones to Hamdrim, who was scowling in concentration. She came over when Caldar finished and handed him a small bag of food to set him on his way, her smile a bit strained to his eyes, like when she was about to say something she would rather not. Then her face cleared and she drew him close and kissed him, saying; "I'm glad you're going with Ham. Take care and do what he tells you. Now go on, they're waiting for you."