Darkburn Book 4: The Haunt of Ternss by Tayin Machrie - HTML preview

Chapter 18

“Come on, Mister – Mister Veron,” said Aliya from the doorway. “Wake up and eat your breakfast.” She remembered just in time not to call him Mister Wolfman, although that was what she called him in her head. But when she had called him Mr Wolfman yesterday, he had thrown the bowl of porridge at her.

No, not at her. At the wall, which was not the same thing. Olbeth had pointed that out, and Aliya decided that Olbeth had been right, because the bowl had gone nowhere near her although the porridge had splattered her a little bit. But she was still wearing old clothes so a bit of porridge didn’t matter.

“He just wanted to throw something,” Olbeth had said. “It’s because of the pain, and the medicine he has to take. It makes the pain better but it also makes him angry. He didn’t mean to hurt you, Aliya. But he might hurt you by accident, without meaning to, so best stay out of his way.”

Aliya had thought about this. Should she obey? She was a Lady, or almost, so she didn’t need to do what Olbeth said.

But then the wolfman had thrown a chair at the other hunter, Edrik, the one with the frizzly grey hair, and had shouted at him. And Edrik was his friend. When Edrik walked away from the wolfman’s room he looked very sad. If Edrik was not safe from the wolfman, maybe Aliya would not be either. Moreover, she decided that she liked Olbeth and wanted to please her. So she stayed out of the wolfman’s way.

Sort of. Three times, she ran around the outside of the farmhouse and into the cobbled yard so that she could peek in through his window. He sat on his bed, with his head in his hands, and once was pacing the floor to and fro, to and fro, limping and groaning horribly, with low groans like tearing cloth.

But there was no cloth. He had thrown the blankets on the floor. Olbeth had cut his breeches off above the knee and his legs were covered in red lines, as if they had been painted, or lots of dark red stringy worms had stuck to them. It didn’t look nice.

When he turned towards the window Aliya ducked down out of sight. It felt like playing a game but she knew it wasn’t really. He might throw something.

All the same she wanted to keep an eye on the wolfman. So here she was, offering him another bowl of porridge, having persuaded Camburé to take her to the chamber door. She didn’t like Camburé as much as Olbeth, for she had sharp eyes despite her jokes, but Camburé had said all right so long as they both stayed safely in the doorway.

“Mister Veron?” Aliya called out. “Here’s your breakfast.” Better not to mention porridge, she thought. Breakfast sounded better. “It’s nice and hot,” she added.

When she peeped into the room the wolfman was lying on the bed, his legs stretched out. Camburé said he could not bear to have a sheet on them, let alone a blanket. They looked just as red as yesterday: or worse, perhaps, because the red was turning into purple. Although Aliya did not know what that meant, she thought it was not good.

When he opened his eyes and looked at them he seemed different to before. More far away.

“How was your night?” said Camburé. “Did you manage to sleep without the Athelid?”

“No.” His voice came from very far away as well.

“Do you want some Athelid now, Veron?”

“No.”

“But it will–”

He cut across her. “No. Rather pain. Than turn into a stoneman.”

“Athelid will not turn you into a stoneman.”

“Almost did. Bring porridge. Won’t throw it.” His words were hoarse and short as if it hurt to speak.

“Me,” said Aliya to Camburé, and before Camburé could object, she carried the warm bowl across the room and set it carefully down upon the little table. The wolfman did not sit up to reach for it. She looked at his legs and then away again, because they really did not look nice. They looked quite ugly, as if purple vines were growing up them. It made her anxious. Olbeth had told her that the thing that hurt his legs wasn’t catching; but all the same Aliya felt worried, because she had an idea that the wolfman was important and she didn’t like him being ill.

“Mister Veron,” she said, “shall I tell you another story?”

“No.”

Well, at least he hadn’t shouted it. Or thrown the porridge.

“I could sing you a song,” she suggested.

“Later.” He croaked like a frog. She thought of telling him this, to cheer him up, and then decided not to. A wolfman might not like being called a frog.

But he was not so scary any more as he had been. He was staring at the ceiling and sometimes he closed his eyes and all his face pulled tighter.

“Come away now,” said Camburé. “We’ll leave him to rest.”

“Hah,” said Veron.

Aliya did not want to leave him. She felt it wasn’t good for him to be alone. When she had been sick just after her fifth birthday she had wanted Flodda to stay with her, to sit by her bed and smooth back her hair and talk to her gently. Flodda had told her a story about a magic well and although it wasn’t a very good story it had been better than lying alone and thinking about feeling sick.

“Do you want Edrik?” she asked, although Edrik didn’t look like the sort of person who knew many stories. “You could talk about wolves together.”

“No.” Another croak.

“Come away,” said Camburé again, and this time Aliya allowed herself to be led away.

“Is he not having his medicine any more?” she asked, and Camburé shook her head. “Good. He’s nicer when he doesn’t,” said Aliya.

Camburé didn’t answer. But when they returned to the great hall where Olbeth and Wiln were, Camburé hurried over to them and they began to talk in whispers, frowning.

They were talking about the wolfman. Aliya went over to the fireplace where Flodda was playing with baby Doval. He was a nice baby. She liked the way his eyes scrunched up and he laughed and showed his two little teeth that were growing at the bottom of his mouth. He sat on the hearthstone on a blanket with his legs wide and when he saw Aliya he waved both arms in excitement.

Aliya waved back at him. “I’ll come back in a minute. First I’m going to look at Lally,” she told Flodda, and then she ran outside, past the two big dogs. She always tried to get past them quickly. They lifted their heads to her and seemed sort of friendly but she didn’t try to pat them. They were very big dogs and might bite her by mistake. They might be as big as wolves. The wolfman must be very brave to hunt wolves.

In the yard she stopped running for a moment while she thought. Maybe it was brave to stop taking your medicine if it meant your legs hurt more. Which was worse, to feel really angry, or to have really hurting legs?

She tried to puzzle this out. Whenever she fell over and skinned her knees it hurt horribly but not for long. It would not be nice to have them always hurting. But she decided that maybe it was even worse being angry all the time, if you were a person who killed wolves, because if you got too angry you might kill other things instead.

With this thought decided, she skipped across the farmyard to the big barn where the cows were huffing in the darkness. They had calves beside them in the straw but they didn’t like people interfering with them. Olbeth had told her that. Olbeth knew lots of useful things.

When Mama had brought her here Aliya had been worried that she wouldn’t like it and thought she might have to pretend. She knew Mama wanted her to like it here and she wanted to please Mama. But it was all right because once Olbeth took her out to see the ducks and told her where to find some eggs and then helped her cook them for the wolfman, Aliya knew already that she liked it here and she wouldn’t need to pretend after all.

She hadn’t wanted Mama to go. Mama always sorted problems out and Aliya felt safe with her although she had a growing idea that other people found Mama quite scary. But she knew that Mama would do almost anything Aliya wanted.

Not quite everything, though. Aliya had wanted Mama to stay and look at all the animals with her, but she knew Mama would have to leave soon anyway because she always had to leave. It was because she was important and now she was going to be a queen. She was going to marry the man with the funny face, who was a bit scary too, but Mama said he was a good man and he was going to be a king. Aliya didn’t know why he wasn’t called a prince but Mama didn’t seem to mind.

Now she ran past the calves and past the window by the corner of the farmhouse where the wolfman was, without stopping to peek in at him this time. She almost ran out of the farmyard to find the ducks, but then she remembered why she was here. She had something more important to see about than ducks. It was her piglet, Lally.

She was sure that Lally already knew who she was – even though Flodda said it was only because she gave the piglet food and they were greedy little beasts. But when Lally came scampering across the pen to her in a flurry of straw Aliya felt sure it wasn’t simply out of greed. Lally was a very nice-looking piglet with her orange fur like a frizzly fire and her nose as pink as a mouse’s and one floppy ear. But she was a messy piglet too. Her pen needed cleaning out again.

“Flodda?” said Aliya as the nursemaid came hurrying over to her. “You need to clean out Lally’s pen.”

Flodda stopped and put her head on one side with a puzzled expression. This was something she had learnt to do from Olbeth in the last few days; and Aliya had learnt what it meant.

She pulled an impatient face. “Please,” she added. She had never needed to say Please to the servants at Lord and Lady Hapligan’s house, and she didn’t understand why Olbeth thought it was important. Perhaps it was because Olbeth didn’t really have servants. There were people who helped on the farm and in the dairy, but they sat at the table to eat with everybody else, and Olbeth said please and thank you to them too. So were they servants or not?

“You can help me clean it out this time,” said Flodda. She didn’t sound much like a servant any more either. “We’ll go and fetch the straw together.”

As they fetched the straw and shovel and cleaned up the pen Aliya decided that if she wasn’t a princess she might have liked to be a farmer, although she knew that this would be a shocking thing for her to say aloud.

“I want to be a farmer,” she said, to test it on Flodda.

“You’d be a good one,” Flodda said. “You’re a busy little miss.” Aliya stood still and frowned at her because that was what Mama did when a servant said something that they shouldn’t.

But Flodda didn’t seem to notice. So Aliya had to let it go and instead she said,

“Do you think the wolfm – do you think Mister Veron would like a drawing of a piglet?”

“I doubt it,” Flodda said.

“Because I can’t draw wolves. I’ve never seen a wolf.”

“Lucky you,” said Flodda.

Aliya brushed flecks of straw off her sleeves. She was glad now that she didn’t wear her proper clothes here because they would have got so dirty. And she was getting used to the braids pulling at her hair. It was worth it to be allowed to run around outside like a servant girl.

At Lord and Lady Hapligan’s she hadn’t been allowed to run around outside very much, although sometimes she would escape Flodda and run off to her favourite tree. It was a very wide tree and very low down, so that Flodda had to bend right down to follow her. It was supposed to be an apple tree but Aliya had never seen any apples.

“I will draw Veron a picture anyway,” she announced. “Can you get me some paper and some charcoal? Please.” And she smiled at Flodda, who looked startled.

“Since you ask so nicely, I expect I can,” she said.

So once Aliya had finished playing with Lally she didn’t go and visit the ducks as she had planned but instead ran back inside the house past the two dogs and sat on the bench at the long high table in the great hall, underneath the little windows, drawing her picture for the wolfman. It was meant to make him feel better so she drew her favourite tree and tried to put some magic into it. She wasn’t sure how magic worked but as she drew she recited a spell that she made up: “Whuddy duddy fiddy fuddy. Obby duddy whibby whubby.”

As soon as she had finished she ran off to the wolfman’s room and knocked and went in before he could say no.

“I drew you a picture to make you feel better,” she said, although when she looked at his legs and his face she felt worried that it wouldn’t work after all. It wouldn’t be enough. His face was a funny colour like a rainy sky and all stretched tight as if he wore braids like her, although of course he didn’t. His hair and forehead were damp with sweat although he hadn’t been running.

All the same, she was here now, so she might as well give him the picture.

“Sit up,” she commanded, and then thought to add “Please.” But he stayed lying down and she had to hold her drawing in front of his face. He looked at it and then closed his eyes.

“What is it?”

“It’s a tree,” said Aliya. That should have been obvious. “It’s an apple tree but it doesn’t have any apples yet.”

He sighed and opened his eyes again. “The sticks?”

“That’s you,” said Aliya, “lying underneath the tree. It’s nice to lie down underneath a tree.”

“Too many arms,” he said after a moment.

“Those aren’t arms. Those are your fingers.” A person had to have fingers. She was surprised he didn’t recognise them. But at least he didn’t ask what the sun was.

Another sigh. He closed his eyes again.

Then he opened them abruptly. “What’s that?” he said.

“I don’t know,” said Aliya, because he wasn’t looking at her drawing any more. Then he sat up and swung his ugly purple legs over the edge of the bed.

And now she knew what he was talking about. There was a noise going on outside: a sort of distant shouting, a bit like the pigs arguing over food, but it wasn’t the pigs.

“I’ll go and see,” she said.

“Don’t go anywhere,” said the wolfman fiercely. “Stay right here.” And he stood up on his ugly legs and pulled his shoes on and grabbed the belt that lay over the back of the chair and strapped it round his waist, over his cut-off breeches, and she saw that it had a sword hanging from one side and two knives and some things on a chain on the other side.

She began to feel afraid. “I want to go and find Flodda,” she said, but then the door burst open and Flodda came shooting in and grabbed her by the arm.

“They’re out the front,” said Flodda. “They came hidden in a wood-cart. Calenir went out to meet it and they–” She stopped short. “Where can we go?”

Then Olbeth ran in too, carrying baby Doval.

“Cellar?” said the wolfman to her.

“No time,” said Olbeth. “Use the window. Left through the yard, down the lane past the forge and along the field-walls. There’s a place to hide. Wiln and the others will hold them off.”

He nodded and turned to open the window. It didn’t open properly and he put his shoulder to it and wrenched the whole window out with a crunch of splintering wood and dropped it on the ground outside. Now Aliya could hear the shouting much more clearly. It sounded angry.

The wolfman picked her up and sat her on the windowsill. “Edrik!” he called. Edrik was running over to them across the yard outside. He was tying on a sword-belt as he ran.

“I can jump down,” she said, but Edrik stopped by the window and lifted her down. Then Veron helped Flodda to climb out and she took baby Doval while Olbeth climbed out too.

Veron climbed out last. They all began to run across the yard, past the cow barn, past the pecking chickens, past Lally in her little pen. Aliya wanted to stop and pick up Lally but Flodda dragged her on.

“She’s safe,” she said. “They don’t want pigs.”

Aliya wondered who they were. But it was quite clear to her that if they didn’t want pigs, they did want people. So she ran as fast as she could, which was not fast enough to keep up with the others. Before she could tell them to wait, Edrik stopped in front of her and hunched himself up.

“Climb on,” he said, and Flodda lifted her up onto his back and she rode there clinging round his neck with both arms. He ran with her down the track past the forge, which she had not been allowed to go into. She thought they might be going to hide in there but the wolfman did not stop. Instead he ran on to a gate and putting one hand on it he jumped straight over, so that Aliya thought his legs could not be hurting all that much after all.

Edrik put Aliya down, opened the gate and pushed her through. He was gasping and panting.

“Back’s not up to it,” he said. The wolfman turned round in mid step and scooped Aliya up in both his arms and set off at a run again. His hair was thick and dark against her face and his knife hilts were cold upon her legs. He was squishing her but she knew better than to complain, because by now she was very frightened even though she did not know what they were all running away from.

Twisting her head around she saw Flodda hoicking up her skirts and baby Doval bouncing up and down in Olbeth’s arms, with a startled face. She was glad Doval wasn’t crying because that might have made her want to cry as well. She wanted to cry anyway, a bit. Behind them Edrik was looking over his shoulder and he had drawn his sword.

But nobody was following them and she hoped that nobody would, as they ran on, alongside one big muddy field and then another. She twined her legs around the wolfman’s body because of all the jolting. Carrying her did not slow him down.

“Through the gate,” said Olbeth, breathless, and Aliya reached down to unlatch the next gate so that the wolfman wouldn’t have to do it. When he carried her through, ahead of them there was a great big tree – bigger and wider even than her favourite apple tree that had no apples – and she wondered if they were going to hide under it somehow or maybe climb up into the branches. If someone lifted her up to start climbing she could probably manage that. It was dark under the tree except for a patch of tiny flowers like a pool of white across the grass. It was quite pretty.

But Olbeth said “Stones,” and the wolfman swerved away from the tree and went uphill towards a big stone – house – thing – Aliya did not know what to call it. It had a roof and walls made out of giant flat stones but no windows so it was not a proper house. But it had a very narrow door.

The wolfman put her down and thrust her through the door. She took a few steps in and stopped. It was quite dark apart from two long thin brilliant strips of light at the far end. They weren’t wide enough to be windows although they might be arrow slits. She knew about arrow slits. But this wasn’t a castle, it was only three great big stones propped up together and another great big stone on top.

Flodda and Olbeth followed her in. The two men stayed outside. Olbeth handed the baby over to Flodda. He looked too surprised to cry.

“Sit down at that end, in the middle of the wall,” said Olbeth, so Aliya sat down with her back against the furthest stone. It felt gritty. Now the slivers of light were on either side of her and the bigger slice of light that was the entrance was in front. But it was blocked by Olbeth. She stood in the entrance looking all dark against the light, and Aliya realised that she too now held a sword. Flodda stood in the middle of the stone room clutching Doval. Olbeth threw something backwards onto the ground so that it landed in front of Flodda. It was a knife.

Aliya wondered where Olbeth had been keeping the sword and knife within her skirts, but there was no time to wonder any more because she heard loud yells and people running and then a clashing sound like when Flodda dropped the tin bathtub on the flagstones. Aliya tried to tell herself it was a tin bath but she knew there was no bathtub here and it could only be the sound of swords. She didn’t know who was doing the shouting but they made a horrid noise. They sounded fierce and angry and she remembered what Olbeth had said about the wolfman’s medicine making him angry. But he hadn’t sounded anything like this.

Where was the wolfman? Some of the shouts and crashing noises came from behind her now, through the stone slits on either side. And an instant later it was not just noise – a long curved blade all of a sudden came pushing through the slit on one side of her, sticking out into the air. Then a second blade came through the slit on the other side of her. But the slits were too narrow for the swords to go anywhere but straight ahead. They sliced up and down while Aliya sat quite still in the middle between them and did not move and then there were scuffling sounds and grunts and crashes and the two swords went away.

Aliya thought she wanted to cry but that might make the baby cry and at the moment he was still just looking surprised. So she didn’t. But then Olbeth was suddenly moving backwards and forwards and Aliya realised that there was somebody else on the other side of her trying to get in through the stone door and Olbeth was fighting him.

Flodda turned round and put baby Doval down in Aliya’s arms. Then she snatched up the knife and stood in front of them both. Aliya held on tight to baby Doval and tried to sing him a song but the song had gone out of her head, she had forgotten how to sing and Olbeth was still fighting somebody she couldn’t see and the clashing and shouting outside was still going on as well.

The someone in the doorway fell down and tried to crawl a bit, and then he stopped. Olbeth did not move him although he was blocking up the doorway. Aliya could not see much of him apart from a shaved head which had stones stuck to it. Beyond him someone else was moving and Olbeth suddenly stood up on the bald man’s back and there was more clashing and a second man was almost inside the stone house but he couldn’t quite get in and Olbeth was fighting with him and then Flodda ran over there with the knife.

Aliya did not want to watch. She held on tighter to baby Doval who was trying to pull her braids. Then he reached out with his little curly hands and grasped at something in the air. It was only a shaft of light that came in through the narrow window and tiny dots of dust that floated there. But Doval laughed and waved his hands at the floating dots. The stone felt very solid behind Aliya’s back and for an odd moment she felt that the shaft of light might be solid too, that it was like a sword of brightness and would keep her and Doval safe.

So she held on to Doval and did not look at what was happening in the doorway, although there was a horrible scraping of swords hitting stone and awful gruntings, much worse than pigs. And then Olbeth stepped back inside the stone house.

Aliya looked up and saw another man lying on top of the first. Outside there was a scream and then suddenly it stopped. Again she wondered where the wolfman was. But she did not want to move. She wanted to stay here and hold on to Doval with the shaft of brightness keeping them both safe.

Olbeth climbed over the two lying-down men and went out of the stone house. When she came back a few seconds later she said, “All right.”

Aliya just looked at her. Doval buried his face in her neck and tried to burrow there and had a little wail. He was getting ready to cry now.

“It’s all right,” said Olbeth. She didn’t come over to take Doval. Instead she leaned against the narrow doorway. She looked very tired and there was blood on her face and on the sword which dangled from her hand.

“Are you hurt?” said Flodda, but Olbeth shook her head. Then after a minute she stopped leaning and said, “Come on.”

Flodda took Doval from Aliya’s arms. He didn’t want to go and Aliya didn’t want to let him go. While she was holding him she could not stand up and she didn’t want to stand up yet. But now Flodda had Doval, so Aliya had to stand up although her legs still didn’t want to and then she walked through that bar of light and floating dust and went to the doorway. She had to climb over the men to get out of the stone place and it felt very odd. Part hard and part squishy.

Outside was very bright even though the sun was not really shining much and she had to screw her eyes up. She couldn’t see the others straight away but then she saw Wiln hurrying over from the gate and some of the other people from the farmhouse behind him. There were quite a lot of men lying on the ground and she hoped the wolfman wasn’t one of them but she didn’t want to look too closely to find out. So she peeped and pretended she wasn’t peeping and saw that they all had stones stuck to their heads.

Edrik was there too and he was bending over so maybe his back was hurting him again. But Olbeth went over to him and ripped a bit of her skirt off – it was torn already anyway – and said, “Hold out your arm.” Edrik held out an arm which was dripping blood. He looked over at Aliya but did not seem to see her.

She looked round for the wolfman but he was not there. Then she saw more men lying down underneath the big tree, where the tiny flowers were, and they were all lying quite still so she ran over to them. Flodda tried to stop her but she was too slow because of holding baby Doval.

So Aliya ran right underneath the tree where it was dark and there were four men lying there, no five, no six, amongst the little white flowers. Although now that she was close she saw that they weren’t flowers as she had thought. They were lots of little criss-crossed threads like tiny cobwebs, and not really very pretty after all.

Most of the men lying underneath the tree had stones around their heads but then she saw that one did not. It was the wolfman, next to the huge trunk. He was on his back with his eyes closed and some knives and swirly bits of chain were lying next to him.

“Mister Wolfman,” said Aliya. “Mister Veron.” She could hear her own voice sounding quite strange and she didn’t know what to do.

Then he opened his eyes. He didn’t look at her but just looked up at the thick dark branches over his head. He lay quite still. She noticed that his legs were covered with pale cobwebby threads just like the earth around him. They made his skin look whitish.

She took a few steps closer and saw that the cobwebby stuff was spreading. She couldn’t see any spiders and it seemed to spread all on its own. It was growing over his legs from one side to the other, white and frizzly, and underneath it there was no purple any more.

Was the wolfman too hurt to get up? There was blood on his clothes but maybe he was just lying down to have a rest. He didn’t seem to mind the cobwebby stuff because as he lay and looked up at the tree his face was not pulled tight like it had been before.

“Veron? Are you badly hurt?” That was not her but Wiln who had stooped down underneath the branches. He put his hand onto Aliya’s shoulder.

And at last the wolfman spoke. “Never better.”

But still he did not move or get back up. He just lay there underneath the huge wide tree with the cobwebs growing over both his legs.

Then he stretched his arms out as if he was lying in sunshine and not cobwebby shadow, and heaved a deep slow sigh.

And then another sigh, and then another; until all at once she realised he was laughing.