J. H. Sked Read online

  Most days he was a sunny, good-natured boy, despite the casual cruelty. But today Ricky felt unable to face either the adult’s casual contempt, or the brutality of his peers.

  Bracing himself against the rough boards behind him, he got to his feet and started to head for the one-room hut he shared with his father. He had cleaned up that morning, hauled the water in for the evening meal – if Dakron had any luck catching it. If he even went to try, after the amount he’d drunk last night.

  Maybe he should go into the forest, try to find some mushrooms..

  He saw a couple of youngsters heading his way and ducked quickly behind the nearest house. He had no wish to end today with an extra set of bruises, and if they saw him, they were almost certain to add to his collection. He was an easy target – beating up the village cripple had become a common pastime for the older boys.

  To his dismay they stopped right in front of the house he was pressed against.

  “Jessay did say she’d meet me behind the coop the night,” one of them said, in the insufferably smug tones only a fourteen year old could produce.

  “She never!”

  Ricky rolled his eyes. Jessay had probably met every man in the village behind the communal hen-coop at some point; the only wonder was that her belly hadn’t swelled up yet.

  “She did. She said she had summat to show me, too.”

  “I’m sure – the same summat she showed to Astir last week?”

  The howl of indignant teenage love made Ricky wince. It was followed by the sound of a fist striking someone’s nose with a noise like a soggy tomato splitting.

  “She never did!”

  Ricky sighed. She had. The week before had been Karris, the week before that..

  He shrugged to himself. That didn’t really matter. What did matter was that these two idiots sounded like they were going to be there for a while, and if he tried to get back to street, they would likely interrupt their fight and call a truce to beat the daylights out of him.

  He’d have to cut around the back of the house, and come back onto the street from the other side.

  Moving as quietly as possible, he edged further along the side of the house. A half-rotted piece of board protruded at thigh height, and he had to manoeuvre cautiously around it, the jagged splinters seeming hungry to sink into his exposed flesh.

  Frowning at it, he finally paused to have a good look at where he was, and only just stopped himself groaning out loud.

  He couldn’t have picked a worse backyard to cut through; this ramshackle hovel was where Scrout lived.

  Only the sure and certain knowledge that going back to the street would earn him a very enthusiastic beating kept him going.

  As he rounded the corner he paused, a slight, mousy-haired lad with intelligent brown eyes in a finely drawn face, more fawn than boy as he stood listening intently. Scrout should have ambled down to the drinking shed by now, but he had caught Ricky behind the house previously and the boy had no wish to repeat the experience.

  He had whipped Ricky down the road, although the areas around the village homes were regarded as common property and not fenced off. There was no fencing to speak of in Five Hands, unless you counted the ubiquitous chicken runs.

  Ricky winced at the memory and rubbed his buttocks absently. The only reason Scrout had stopped was because his arm got tired. Ricky had carried the marks for weeks, for nobody had interfered.

  Nobody had dared.

  Ricky waited, listening for any sounds coming from the house. The last thing he wanted in this life was to stir Scrout’s temper once more.

  Scrout, who had tried for three years running to get into the guards, and instead spent five years in exile for attempted murder.

  His years in exile had taught him nothing of pleasantness; Ricky sometimes thought that the man would cross the road to kick a lame dog.

  Looking around once more, he saw that the boys had finished their fight and were wandering aimlessly down the street, pushing at each other. They were still too close for him to step back out in front of the house. Instead, he began picking his way gingerly through the overgrown mess, a tangle of weeds and branches and discarded tools.

  He was halfway across the yard, concentrating on keeping his balance in the litter piled around, when a patch of yellow caught his eye.

  It was a small scrap of cloth, protruding from the log pile at the far end of the house, and he made his way towards it, the necessity of leaving momentarily overridden by sheer curiosity.

  Bright cloth was a rarity in the village; homespun was usually dyed, if at all, in shades of brown and grey, using bark stripped from trees. Nobody went to the effort of collecting flowers and plants for the brighter colours; too much time was spent in merely trying to survive.

  The little scrap of material looked bright and cheerful, a splash of sunshine in the puddled shadow of the wood. If it was large enough, more than just a few frayed threads, he was sure Anna would like it, something pretty to use as a scarf or a kerchief for her hair.

  A couple of paces away from the clumsy jumble of wood he halted, sniffing. There was a hint of decay in the air, faint though unmistakable.

  It was probably a squirrel or mouse, some small animal that found a quiet place in the yard to expire in, but some of the inquisitiveness inside him had died away, replaced by a formless dread.

  Yet he was a boy, possibly the only species on the planet with more inbred curiosity than a hawk, and he could no more leave that scrap of cloth alone than he could grow another leg. It would be a waste to leave it here, to bleach and bleed its sunshine away where none could see it.

  He imagined his aunt smiling when he gave her the material, how her face would light up, the way it did when he brought her the first flower he saw in spring, or the wild strawberries he knew how to find just outside the village.

  He leaned forward, grimacing – the smell was stronger here, a horrid perfume that rose with the buzzing of the late summer flies around his head – and tugged on the cloth. It wouldn’t move, seeming to be firmly wedged between two chunks of wood, so he squatted down, bracing his weight on his haunches, and tugged with both hands, the peg sliding slightly in the crumbly soil.

  There was a soft ripping noise as the scrap of yellow tore loose, and Ricky over-balanced and sat down hard, as the whole mess of wood shifted uneasily, then settled again.

  He clenched his fist around the material so he wouldn’t drop it – he was always dropping and losing things – then looked up at the woodpile, heart pumping so rapidly he felt it in his throat. For a moment he was been horribly afraid that the whole lot would come tumbling down on top of him, and there he’d be, stuck like a rat in a trap until old Scrout came back.

  He shuddered and levered himself back up to his knees, dusting his breeches automatically, still staring dreamily into the wood, and nearly yelled with fright when he realized someone was staring back at him. He flinched back and landed hard on an elbow.

  It was the tinker lady, he realized, once he got over his initial fright and his heart returned to something like normal.

  She had passed through the village just yesterday, with her load of pans and pots and bright new ribbons for sale.

  There would not have been many buyers for her; Five Hands was a poor place at the best of times, the past year had been a bad one, and strangers were suspect.

  She had been pretty, once, with long brown hair tied back with one of her own ribbons, the yellow skirt she wore fluttering gaily about her calves as she passed down the main road and into the forest.

  Now her eyes were wide and staring, lips parted in a snarl. Her skirt was bunched up around her waist and her neck was bruised and swollen, her head twisted enquiringly to one side as though to ask him a question, and she was very, very dead.

  Ricky lay sprawled in the dirt before her and felt the blood pound through his head and ears.

  He was young, but not stupid, and he had a very good idea of what would happen if Scrout should f
ind him now.

  He raised himself up once more, his breath rasping harshly in his throat, feeling his testicles draw up into his lower abdomen at the thought.

  Eventually he stood, still tottering with shock, and realized that he was still clutching the fragment of yellow in one of his fists, darkening rapidly with the sweat from his hand.

  She stared up at him, and Ricky could see the layer of dust on her eyeballs, a gritty grey sifting of powder that concealed the colour of her eyes and turned her into a blindly staring statue.

  He dropped the scrap of material down onto her, and it lay against her dark hair. The bright colour looked obscene, conspiring with the dust and cobwebs in a gloating mockery of the morning light.

  He knew he should close her eyes, they always closed dead people’s eyes - but he could not bring himself to touch her.

  What if she tried to touch him back?

  “Oh, stop it,” he whispered. “Just stop.”

  He whispered a quick prayer to the Goddess, and hastily backed away. He had limped almost to the end of the yard when he stopped short, struck by a new and horrible thought.

  He’ll know you were here, a dry, matter-of-fact little voice informed him.

  The overgrown tangle in the yard meant nothing – he came here to hide her, after all.

  True. And Scrout didn’t like kids running near his house at the best of times. Wasn’t he more likely to check the back when he came home? To make sure his nasty little secret was still a secret?

  “Let him check,” he whispered. “He won’t know who it was. I’m not the only youngling in the village.”

  You’re the only one that leaves little round holes in place of a footprint, the voice responded.

  Ricky shuddered, and turned to look, feeling his neck creak reluctantly. Sheer terror had stiffened every muscle in his body.

  Sure enough, a neat little row of impressions wound their way through the dry soil. Ricky moaned, a hopeless little sound in the back of his throat, and felt his bladder begin to contract.

  Stop that!

  “He’ll kill me. He’ll know it was me and he’ll kill me.”

  No. Move fast, though – there be not much time left.

  It took him nearly twenty minutes, first arranging more branches to hide the woman in her nest once more, then using a leafy branch to obliterate his prints, working frantically, and by the time he was finished he was covered in sweat and dust, and whimpering in the back of his throat, certain that he would turn and find Scrout standing behind him.

  In the end he slipped away from the side of the house not five minutes before Scrout left the shed and ambled his way home.

  Ricky hid against the side of the house opposite, hardly daring to breath until the man stumbled through his door and closed it behind him. Then he doubled over and vomited into the dust.

  Eventually he straightened, wiping his mouth with the back of one shaking hand, his eyes filling with tears of disgust and sheer relief. He limped away from his mess and leaned briefly against the corner of the house, calming his breathing and trying to think.

  He had to keep this secret until he could get to someone outside of the village, unless he wished to join the tinker woman under the wood, for there was nobody other than Anna he could trust – and going to his aunt would be the death of them both.

  She was a good woman, but she would tell her husband – and Garth was one of the men who spent time with Scrout, drinking his poison down with the ale.

  Anna had started showing a lot of bruises, since Scrout came home.

  There was no horse or mule in the village, he would have to walk, and market day in the big town wasn’t for another week.

  He wouldn’t get five larna before Scrout caught him and dragged him back – if he bothered to do so, and didn’t just cut his throat and leave him the forest for the scavengers to feast on.

  And Scrout would come after him, he knew; the man was mean, and probably crazy as well, but he was cunning. He would know why Ricky had gone, with the self-preserving instinct that drove his kind.

  Go with Anna. She always goes for market day, sells her pies and bread there. Go to the hawks.

  ‘Oh, Goddess.’ He felt his heart thud dully in his chest at the thought.

  Go to the hawks, or stay here, with Scrout, and pretend you know nothing.

  Not an option.

  He could avoid the man as much as possible for a week. But for the rest of his life? Could he spend it pretending he didn’t know, hadn’t seen?

  Every time he closed his eyes, he saw her face. Her dusty, open eyes, asking him if he was really just going to pile that wood over her face and leave her there for the ants and the flies to feast upon.

  Ricky shuddered.

  And that was the way things sat in the village of Five Hands for the next few days.

  Until the morning Dakron ripped his clothes off in the middle of the street and tore screaming into the shed, where he found two of his drinking cronies having a quiet game of dice.

  Chapter 3

  Bright Lance squad had been at weapons drill for most of the morning when the message came that there was a lad in the Keep looking for the hawks.

  Bright Lance squad had the closest practice yard, and was currently off-duty, so the message had come to Ariaan, the squad captain.

  “He won’t say anything else, ser,” the human recruit who carried the summons said to him. “He’s a bit young, like, but stubborn. Says he needs the hawks and won’t say boo to anyone else.”

  Ariaan grunted, wiping his face and hands with a bit of cloth. It was a hot, bright day, and they’d been hard at work from early that morning.

  “Right, then. Call those two,” he nodded at Amber and Seiren, seemingly intent on skewering each other on the other side of the practice yard, “and send the lad to me in my quarters in, say, fifteen minutes.”

  By the look on the young recruit’s face, it would take him nearly half that time to interrupt the hawks.

  Ariaan bit back his impatience.

  “Watch them for a few minutes, pick up a few pointers,” he said instead, and saw open relief in the young man’s eyes.

  Sweet Mother, what do they teach their children about us?

  ‘Try not to ignore him for too long, aye?’He sent to the other two, whom he knew cursed well had been fully aware of his conversation, as had every hawk in the yard.

  Hawk ears are sharp at the best of times, and a message sent during a practice session was unusual enough to have every pointed pair twitching, though politeness alone wouldn’t let them show it.

  He sighed, shaking his head, and made his way into the building.

  Sheer curiosity meant that his seconds waited a bare two minutes before turning to the nervous youngster watching them in the courtyard, and joining Ariaan in his room shortly afterwards.

  The three hawks were waiting silently when two pairs of footsteps approached and halted outside the door. A mumbling of voices, and then the heavier tread retired hastily back down the corridor, fading away well before the timid knock sounded.

  “It’s open,” Ariaan called out. There was a startled silence from the other side of the wood, then another of those timid, scratchy taps.

  Seiren reached out – he was leaning against the wall beside the door – and opened it himself.

  The lad outside still had his hand up, staring at the sudden open space as if he didn’t quite know what to make of it.

  He blinked up at the blonde hawk with large, moist brown eyes.

  “Ser.” He stopped. “Ser. I – I need t-to speak to the h-hawks.” He closed his eyes and cringed, as if expecting a slap, and Seiren exchanged a quick glance with the other two in the room before answering.

  “You’re in the right place, lad. Best come in, then.”

  Ricky opened one eye and peered at him. Seiren smiled reassuringly, then took him by the arm and drew him gently into the room, the peg leg thumping on the stones.

  “What’s your na
me, lad?” Ariaan followed Seiren’s lead and spoke softly, running a swift, appalled eye over the boy.

  He was painfully thin, though clean enough – it appeared he had taken the time to bathe his head and hands – and his one foot was bare, covered with scratches and healed over scabs.

  Seiren led him to a chair and sat him down, then looked over his shoulder at the other two hawks.

  Touching the boy had being like handling a bag full of glass marbles; the bones had moved beneath his hand under the fragile skin as though seeking an escape route.