Knight of the Tenebral Sword

The inn smelled of mildew and rotten rushes. Water dripped from holes in the thatch making mires in the dirt floor. The tavern had been a barn when Godric’s Ford had been a farming town before the murder of King Eduard the Pious. With the civil war raging a week to the north, the sleepy one-cow town had become a waystation on the road to refuge.

Miall doggedly ate her greasy stew whose contents she did not wish to investigate and prayed with the fervour of a fanatic. Knight of the Tenebral Sword please make Padraic keep his temper. The auburn haired highlander sitting across from her had four tankards under his belt and a fifth in his fist. His upper lip bristled with foam making him look rabid.

The description would become very accurate if the light in his eyes sparked any brighter. Miall slunk low on the bench and shifted her feet in her boots. She was cold, tired and disgruntled. Travelling with Padraic often had that effect on reasonable people. Were he not the best tracker in the Brethren, she would have left him soused in an alehouse three counties ago.

He smelled like a tavern outhouse and had the manners of a wharf heavy but she could not abandon him. They were on the hunt as were many of their comrades for a red haired boy in the company of two older men and an unmarried girl. The quartet was not an easy party to find quietly. Amongst the thousands of refugees fleeing from the war, they were near anonymous.

Miall jabbed the spoon into her paltry dinner. She had paid for it so she might as well finish it. Someone tugged at her cloak. The scout twisted around to see who had touched her, left hand going to a hidden knife hilt. It was a small dark haired boy with a hunger-pinched face. He wore a ragged smock patterned with blocky patches in many shades of blue. It was a tribe design she thought was Otter or perhaps Heron.

Reluctant to let down her guard, Miall studied the boy for a long moment. Otter tribe she was sure now after noting the shells braided into the tail of hair at the back of his head. He was about six or seven years old, compact and lean like most of his people. The boy wilted a little under her stare but he had a mission and no tribesman would leave anything unfinished.

“You have bread for mother?” He asked, indicating a blue-clad woman huddled by the door nursing an infant. Normally tribeswomen would refuse to enter a tavern but this hovel was likely the only place she could rest without coin. The tavern staff made no effort to chase away those not drinking for there was space enough and the bodies ranged about the walls kept the draughts out.

Miall’s first instinct was to give the boy some money so he and his mother could find a better place to stay. The tavern was not safe for a lone woman with children. Then a memory surfaced of a cripple throwing back a silver piece to his benefactor with a look of outrage. The lame man had been Kestrel Tribe not Otter but the insult translated.

“Tell your mother a daughter of Lalage may always eat at my table.” Lalage was the Otter’s founding ancestor, which was known by few people outside the tribe. The boy swallowed his surprise, scampered away and quickly returned with his mother. She sat down beside Miall with a shy smile. The tribeswoman was barely twenty and rigidly polite.

“It is with pleasure do I join your table.” She spoke carefully in the Niemi tongue. Her pronounced accent was a discordant cadence that threw her words off key. The scout dropped into the Rockcoast dialect as she offered her stew to the woman, who was thinner than her son. The unweaned infant sapped what strength privation had left her.

Usually tribeswomen stayed close to home venturing out only to help haul in their family’s catches. It was a matter of pride among their people their womenfolk only ever saw one horizon. To find an Otter woman without a husband or exile brands this far away from the tribe lands bespoke calamity. Though her curiosity sparked, Miall kept her inquiry courteous.

“You are far from coast, sister of Otters. Where go you?”

“We for Port Lacine. Tribe boats dock there if storm sweep them across bay. Grace of the Winds, I find kin.” She gobbled barely half the stew before giving the bowl to the boy. “My float burned with Sepp-on-Wier. I am widow.” That explained her lack of a veil, Miall thought. The woman had likely traded the silver of her wedding headdress for food.

“You find no Otter in Port Lacine.” The scout spoke bluntly. “City close harbour walls day after sakoi sacked Sepp.” The townsfolk shut themselves inside their fortifications with the delusion that walls built to repel pirates would fend off hardened mercenaries. “They expel ships not under Lacine flag. Last I hear free boats for Grey Isles.”

She and Padraic would have been on one of those ships following a lead had he not started a fight and been arrested for affray. The harbour was barren of foreign craft by the time she had found the tracker and bailed him from custody. No local vessel would risk leaving the safety of the port for money or menaces. They were forced to travel down the peninsula on foot, delayed again.

“Then I never see kin. I have no passage coin and I will no pay other way.” She looked close to tears. Tribe widows would kill themselves rather than let another man touch them outside of remarriage. That was not an empty custom, Miall knew to her sorrow. She had lived among the coastal tribes for several years to learn their oft confusing traditions.

Uncertain how to proceed the scout ruminated on the best strategy to deal with this situation. She turned to her comrade, not for advice but to count his tankards. Padraic was trying to persuade a barmaid to sit on his knee. He was oblivious to everything but the blonde girl’s low cut blouse. Miall would get no aid from him so she swallowed curses and returned her attention to the tribeswoman.

“Your baby spar with fish or dance on coast?” She used the formal way of asking whether the infant was a boy or a girl. The tribes had many taboos. Few outsiders would ever master them all, the scout included. Miall did know not to ask the gender of an unnamed baby for until they reached their first birthday a child had no personal identity.

“She dance like gulls if I find sea again.” The widow did not fall into laments or beg for assistance. Tribal mores allowed someone to ask for bread as the very basic courtesy but not for any other charity. To offer assistance would shame the young woman greatly. She had very little left other than her pride and Miall did not want to take that from her.

“I esteem kin tie with you.” The scout spoke diffidently. She wanted to help the widow but it was difficult to do so without insulting her. “I spend many fine days with Otter. For year I live in house of Rodrigo the Broad Hand and taught his daughters to read. When you return to Otter, ask him give me good name. If he does, I ask you give that name to baby.”

The tribes cherished ties of obligation almost as much as they did their ships. They regularly made personal alliances as a way of offering aid without contravening the offence of charity. Miall had seen the ritual but she was not certain whether she had used the correct wording or how to salvage the conversation if she had made an error.

The widow regarded her seriously. The knuckles on her hands clenched white as she suppressed a sigh of relief. Her near cloistered upbringing had deprived her of the means to find her own way in the world leaving her adrift. She clutched at the offer of help like a drowning woman would a thrown rope. The tribeswoman’s response was the ritual reply.

“You know nothing of my name.”

“You are daughter of Lalage. I see no exile mark on your face. Otter is good name for me.” That phrase was not customary. However, the way the woman nodded and discretely blinked away tears showed the words were close enough. Miall doubted this course of action would further her mission but she owed the Otter tribe for their hospitality.

Padraic’s opinion on the diversion was likely to be profane. If the young woman starved on his doorstep he would not bestir himself until the corpse began to smell. Even then the tracker would sell the body to a knackerman rather than pay for a funeral. Miall wilfully ignored her companion’s antics as she chatted to the tribeswoman.

She learned the widow’s name was Imeltha and her son was Boneo. With her husband dead, they would have no family name until the boy came of age. The scout ordered more stew for them. The barmaid was happy to get it, squirming away from Padraic. The tracker gripped his sword and grumbled under his breath. Miall’s hopes for peace sank further. Once he started talking to himself a fight was soon to follow.

It would be best to get Imeltha and Boneo out of the tavern before Padraic took offence at something. Once his ire rose, nothing short of unconsciousness would stop him. The scout assessed the barn. It was crowded with poor or miserly travellers, low company on the whole and not people she would trust in a crisis. Decided, Miall waited until the young woman and her son had finished their stew.

When the scout suggested they find a more suitable hostelry Imeltha readily agreed. It was still raining when they emerged from the tavern. The streets oozed. Miall picked up Boneo and they ran to the nearest eaves. These proved to belong to a brothel so they moved quickly onwards until they found a modest house with an old blanket over the front fence; the sign rooms were for rent.

A portly, ruddy-cheeked matron answered the door and ushered them in. The cottage was small but ruthlessly clean. The older woman cavilled a little at their appearance until Miall produced a badge from the Steel Inlet Militia to assert she and her kinswoman were of sound character. Imeltha goggled at the badge but the matron accepted its respectability after a cursory examination.

There was one bedroom or the attic available. The scout inquired which Imeltha preferred after casually observing she was leaving with the dawn caravan and it would soon be her shift on watch. She said this to further assuage the matron’s suspicions. Unaccompanied women raised moral questions but the implied guard job led her to assume Miall would return when the wagon train did.

Imeltha picked the bedroom as attics should store provisions not people in her opinion. The widow carefully made her mark in the guestbook while Miall paid a dozen coppers into the landlady’s hand for the night and breakfast on the morrow. The matron escorted them upstairs and bade them a civil good night. Boneo instantly jumped onto the bed to snuggle down.

Miall gave Imeltha a small green purse. It was full mainly of silver; enough for passage with a caravan to the Great Bay and thence a ship to the Isles. Now they were to be kinfolk money between them was not shame. The scout gave Boneo one of her dwindling supply of sugared plums and smiled as the boy gleefully ate it. She ruffled his hair affectionately then made to leave.

“You do much for us but you not tell me your name.” There was misgiving in Imeltha’s voice. The young widow was still wary of charity and mistrusted the omission. Miall chuckled as though laughing at her oversight. She was frantically trying to remember what she had called herself amongst the tribes. To stall for time, she used the name the Broad Hand had given her.

“Rodrigo named me Paper Witch because I know to read. He think it magic.” Miall pulled the coverlet over the already dozing Boneo and smiled at Imeltha. “You give your child that as baby name.” The tribeswoman’s frown told the scout how little she liked that idea. Desparation bore fruit and Miall recalled her alias. “My good name be Varvara naiConor.”