The Castle of the Winds

by Michael Scott Rohan

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Military Sci-Fi

Synopsis

Centuries before the building of the Great Causeway, when the enveloping Ice seems to be in retreat, the lands of the North and South are on uneasy terms. War appears to be inevitable. But there is still some trade between them, particularly for the peerless weapons created by the Northern mastersmiths. In one small town, Kunrad, one young mastersmith, has carved out a reputation as a fine armourer. Helped by his two apprentices, the ox-like Olvar and the silver-tongued Gille, Kunrad has created the greatest suit of armour ever made: armour fit for a hero or a king. When that armour is stolen by a powerful Southern lord, Kunrad has only one concern - to regain it. And so begins an epic journey of discovery, filled with danger, magic - and love.

Release date: December 14, 2012

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 464

Sample

THE ICE LAY EMPTY beneath the cold moon, as if seeking a mirror for its own no less jagged and barren beauty. From sky’s end to sky’s end of that immense glacial wilderness nothing stirred save the pale sky-shadows, and the pattering wafts of powder snow. And yet faint shimmers of light glanced among the cold crags, and voices awoke. They sang in the glassy air like the chime and fall of icicles.

‘He is coming.’

‘We must see him, speak with him. We have taken too much on trust already.’

‘He will be here soon. He is making preparations. There is so little time, with these vermin. To dwell among them … I am weary.’

‘Soon others will carry on.’

‘He will be overawed.’

‘Yes.’

‘In the right way! Nothing must go wrong now.’

‘Then you had best turn south again. At once!’

It was a dream that woke him, as he nodded over his work. Suddenly, sharply, so that his heart raced and his breath came shallow. He seldom if ever remembered dreaming, and it shocked him. He looked around wildly, and saw that his work was cooling evenly, and the workshop was quiet. Through the open upper half of his door the sky was black, the stars pale; but suddenly a brighter light streaked between them, a brilliant, instant slash across the sky, rising to the zenith and falling away. ‘A starstone,’ he thought sleepily, stumbling to the door. ‘They don’t usually last that long.’

But when he reached the door it had gone. The cold air on his cheeks woke him a little, and he stretched, yawned, groaned. Nothing met his eyes but the fading stars, and the moon impaled upon the distant summits, spilling its thin glare down their flanks. Around the horizon, like veils it drew before the dawn, fluttered the faint colours of the aurora; but a colder light shone beneath. He knew what lay there, not so many leagues distant, but rarely in his life had he given it much thought. Yet could it have been that he dreamt of – and the voices? He searched his memories anxiously, but they were already fading. He could remember only an urgent command, to go south. And that was nonsense, if ever he’d heard it. He’d never been to the South, where it was so hot men had red hair; and he never wanted to.

So it began, as he told it, and as the Chronicles record. Perhaps it was only in looking back that he added meaning to that vision, and those words to the voices. Perhaps, though, some faint echo did reach into his sleep, of the powers that were stirring, the wave that was rising and was soon to sweep him away for ever. But a sudden sizzling creak from the furnace caught his ear, the first faint contraction he awaited. It drove away all other thoughts. Seizing the great tongs that stood ready, he knocked free the catch of the small door and swung it squeaking back. Shading his eyes against its withering breath, he plunged in the tongs and pulled out a chunk of metal, strange and uneven in shape, glowing dully in the near dark. He turned it this way and that, inspecting it by its own light, absently humming a slow tune. Then, without haste, he carried it to the great anvil, braced it against the heavy round-topped swage he had set up, and reached for the largest of the hammers he had ranged out ready. A tap or two and his hand went to a smaller one, and some time after that to a file. From time to time he thrust the metal back into the furnace, to renew its glow; he needed no other light. And as he tapped and scraped and shaped he sang, softly, in a tuneless baritone; words of holding, resisting deflecting, defending. He never faltered, and he never looked. Every tool lay under his hand as he reached for it, every word flowed, so that his mind and his eyes never for an instant left his work. For he was a mastersmith, and the virtues within him poured into the metal he was forming, and made them, for that moment, one.

At last, as the darkness itself receded and the morning mists rolled over the town, he straightened up, sighed, plunged the darkened metal into the open fire once more, and then, with careful calculation, into the trough by his side. Steam squealed, the tongs shivered an instant in his grasp like something alive, and then there were only bubbles. He pulled the metal out and dipped it into a narrower jar, raising throat-stabbing fumes from which he retreated, and then into a sandbox. Enough for now, he told himself, as he washed away the sand and the corrosive pickling stuff. Polishing and decorating could wait. He would try it out now.

Exulting, he stormed through to the back of his workshop and the little rooms where he and his apprentices slept. Even in the dark he knew Olvar was there, snoring gently to himself, a long contour of darkness like a miniature hill. ‘Hoi!’ barked the smith. ‘It’s done! Up, up and into the saddle, you lazy slugabeds! It’s a bright day beginning!’

The hill gave an uneasy quiver, snorted, broke wind, sighed happily and shrugged deeper into the worn fur covers of the cot. The smith growled and aimed a boot somewhere just below the summit. It was like kicking a rock, but a head shot out from under the cover. ‘That wasn’t necessary!’ complained a richly petulant voice. ‘I was just—’

‘Getting ready to sleep out the morning? No, I do you wrong. You’d never have missed breakfast – or breakfasts, in your case,’ added the smith cheerfully. ‘Well, today you can earn your bacon for a change. Up and out!’

Olvar heaved his dark bulk upright. His cot complained bitterly. ‘I warn you, Master Kunrad,’ he yawned. ‘I’ll be working up an appetite.’

‘Then you can start on your own toes, and keep going. And you, Gille – Gille?’ The other cot stood empty. The mastersmith swore, pulled his heavy sheepskin jerkin off the hook and stamped out of his back door, across the rutted alleyway to the stables opposite. The air within was warmed by the beasts who nodded peaceably in their stalls as he strode by to the raised hayloft at the end and kicked the wicker panelling hard. There was a yelp, a flurry of hay and a slight, swarthy youth sprang upright, stark naked and staring wildly around. Then he blinked at the smith in the odorous dimness and sighed. ‘Oh, it’s you …’

‘Yes. Not her father, not this time and bloody well lucky for you too!’

The young man shrugged elegantly. ‘I’m just a poor prentice. I can’t afford to marry and settle down. What am I to do?’

‘Take up knitting! If you’re trying to pretend you can’t afford clothes. Put some on or I won’t be able to face my sausages. Who is it this time, anyhow?’

‘This time?’ A round-faced young woman sprang upright beside him, clutching a crumpled gown as rather inadequate cover. The smith blinked.

‘Oh – er, hallo, Stejne, isn’t it? Well, yes, this is rather a popular place—’

She shot a smoking glance at Gille, who had been frantically gesturing at the smith. ‘Popular!’ He gave her a studiedly boyish half-smile and a little shrug.

‘You wait!’ she snorted and turned away, making the gown even less adequate. But she took rather longer about stalking off through the hay than modesty demanded, giving Kunrad ample chance to admire the curves of her back; and as she passed him she launched a glance of a different kind under her long lowered lashes. It made him pray to the Powers that Gille hadn’t noticed.

‘Whew!’ said the young man, hopping on one leg to get straw out of his shoe. ‘See that, did you? Isn’t she a peach? I reckon you could—’

‘I could use a better couple of prentices!’ snarled the mastersmith, making as if to cuff him on the ear. ‘One does nothing but sleep and eat me out of house and home, the other can barely lift his hammer of a morn because he’s been banging away all night!’

Gille ducked away easily. ‘You should talk! But I can still make you songs and verses for your great works, better than your own—’

‘And one of these days you’re going to make more than that, and who’ll have to cope with the father? Aye, fine, you’re a ready wordsmith, but I wish there was some way to keep your head and throw the rest of you away!’

‘Wouldn’t have a lot to sing about, then, would I?’ grinned Gille, flinging his shirt over his shoulder as they came out into the alley. ‘Anyhow, this is all your own fault for rising at such an hour! Look, the sun’s not even through the mist yet, and an hour or more till breakfast.’

‘I haven’t been to bed. I’ve been working. And we’re going to make good use of that hour. Get Olvar and—’ Kunrad grinned. ‘Come help me into my armour! Oh, and get some clothes on. Working clothes!’

‘These are my working clothes!’

Nevertheless Gille was soberly enough dressed a few minutes later, as he and Olvar led the mastersmith out of his front door on to the open green beyond, beneath the high gate in the palisade wall of the town. At every step he clanked, but he was already moving more freely, testing and flexing the joints. As they passed the door he did a clumsy little dance step, and the mailrings and the plates and gadlings chimed faintly in harmony. The prentices stood back admiringly. ‘Something to see it all together at last!’ rumbled Olvar. ‘Ready for the big fairday! You’ve fixed the gardbrace, boss?’

‘It was in the cooling,’ nodded the smith, noting that the recut lining held the helm exactly level and unmoving on his head, and the visor’s browpiece no longer showed that slight tendency to tilt over his eyes. Mist droplets were collecting on the mirrored surfaces, beading the delicate inlays, trickling away down the fine fluting that both strengthened the plate and ornamented its flowing profiles. ‘I was too hurried with the first ones. This time I’ve been more careful. Well, shall we see?’

The prentices exchanged glances. Gille hefted the big, roughly made sword he carried. So did the smith – and took a swing at him. Gille ducked it as easily as ever, and as the glittering arm passed he struck at the opened shoulder joint. The long blade struck the ornamented shoulder armour, and skipped off across the new gardbrace, the one unpolished point, to slither feebly down the smith’s back. ‘Perfect!’ whooped the smith behind the stern features he had moulded on to the visor’s facemask. ‘Another!’

Gille, recovering, drove at the chest armour. His point struck, driving the breastplate back on the fine mail beneath. It linked, stiffened and spread the force, and the smith parried skilfully. ‘Hardly felt it! Another! You now, Olvar!’

The burly prentice swung up his sword with stolid unconcern and brought it down on the high crown of the helm. The smith disengaged easily, and it clanged and clattered across the other shoulder. ‘Featherlight!’ jeered the smith cheerfully. ‘Come on, laddie, you’re holding back! These are blunt edges, remember? Put a bit of weight behind it or you’ll get no breakfast!’

Like most of the smith’s threats, this meant nothing and Olvar knew it. His cut to the left thigh clanked away of its own accord, off cuisse and greave, to stick in the turf. ‘Ha!’ growled the smith suddenly. ‘I’m going to chop off your head, you great useless lump of buffalo lard—’

He whipped his sword back with enough forceful intent to startle a more imaginative man than Olvar. As the mastersmith twisted back, swinging the blade high to deliver what would be a devastating blow, the prentice lashed out in a wild clumsy parry. But the sword quivered at the crest, did not fall. The mastersmith gave a strange choking cry; and then the edge of Olvar’s sword, with all his huge strength behind it, smashed into the loricated plates that shielded his side, with a noise like new forging. Appalled, the big prentice let fall his blunted blade. But even as it struck the ground the smith toppled with it, like a steel statue, flat on his back, jingling as the helm bounced off the hard earth.

Gille sprang over him, fumbling with the helmet straps and gibbering. ‘Olvar, you idiot! Master! Master Kunrad, are you killed? Olvar, oaf, wantwit, don’t just stare, go fetch a healer, you sow’s head! Fetch Mistress Metrye, and the Guildmaster – run!’

A gaggle of inquisitive neighbours carried the mastersmith to the healer’s house on a door, still in his magnificent armour. Everyone had browbeaten the prentices so thoroughly that they were shaking too much to remove it. En route Gille managed to unlace the tabs of the plate collar, spilling out the smith’s dark tousled curls but, mercifully, nothing worse. Kunrad’s face, normally best called amiable, was unmarked, but very pale. He groaned suddenly, and his carriers almost dropped him. But he raised himself on one elbow, and said thickly ‘Twist the catch about, idiot!’ and dropped back with another groan.

‘Master!’ moaned Gille. ‘What happened? Why didn’t you move when that ox Olvar—’

‘Not … fault,’ said the smith clearly enough. ‘Mine … ’nother flaw … tell you ’bout it when …’ His voice uncoiled like a broken spring.

‘He’s cracked a rib or two and rattled his brains,’ said the silver-haired woman severely. ‘Which if he is very unlucky will leave him little better than you two morons. But it’s much more likely he’ll be his old self in a day or two, with rest.’

Gille breathed out. Olvar sat down hard, and almost destroyed the bench. ‘Thank you, mistress,’ said Gille. ‘Well, at least his armour is well proven. I thought he’d been cut in two with that blow!’

The old woman picked up the breastplate, angled it to the window and sniffed. It mirrored the painted planks of her house, wild images of seabeasts she had never seen, and shipbattles her father had fought in; but to the prentices’ sight it showed something beneath, a burning shimmer like sunlight on clear water, transient yet somehow embedded in the metal. To her eyes as well, they realised; for often healers had a touch of smithcraft in the blood. ‘Strong stuff indeed, by the look of it.’

‘Masterly!’ breathed the Guildmaster. Like Olvar, he was one of the copper-skinned men whose forefathers had first come from over sea, and his narrowed eyes were like coals above his cheekbones. ‘Getting it ready for the spring market, was he?’

‘His great project,’ said Olvar hollowly. ‘His dream. Beyond any fair I could think of. The greatest armour that ever smith since Ilmarinen made, it was to be. He’s crafted suit after suit till he came to this pattern, all the time he could spare from supporting himself and us – and then he’s made three of the type, shattered half the pieces testing and stuck the best ones together.’

‘Testing,’ huffed the Guildmaster, who headed all the local guilds and hence the town. ‘Like this?’

‘And on us, sometimes,’ said Gille, wincing at the memory.

‘So?’ mused Metrye. ‘Then I suppose he’s earned what you gave him this morning.’

‘He said it wasn’t our fault!’ protested Olvar.

‘Did he?’ grunted the Guildmaster. ‘Well, he ought to know, I suppose. I still don’t know what prentices are coming to. Rack and ruin, no discipline – it’s a proper household that young fellow wants. Thirty-six and still unwed – you should encourage him!’

Gille recalled that the Guildmaster’s eldest girl was among the many who had tried to snare Kunrad, and the few who had succeeded, briefly. ‘It’s not as if we don’t try, sir,’ he said lamely. ‘I mean, we’d be glad of a woman’s touch around the house, us.’

‘Decent cooking,’ groaned Olvar.

‘And filthy clothes washed and backsides run after,’ said Metrye sardonically. ‘A fine prospect for some poor innocent, I’m sure. No wonder they never stay with him long.’

‘Something to take his mind off work, anyhow,’ said Gille sourly. ‘That’s why. He gets lost in it. For a week he’s head over heels in love, and then he gets some new idea – about the armour, usually – and, well, just forgets about them. Along with eating, washing, sleeping, you name it, for days at a time. He doesn’t mean to, he doesn’t mean any harm! But then they see what he’s going to be like.’

‘And they give him the breeze!’ grunted Olvar. ‘And he doesn’t notice that, either.’

Metrye, with two husbands behind her, wrung out the damp cloth on the smith’s brow. ‘Then he can’t really have cared. Nor they. A shame there aren’t more woman smiths!’

‘Woman – ridiculous idea!’ growled the Guildmaster.

‘Well, I can’t think who else is going to land him,’ said Gille. ‘Not while he has this idea set in his mind, anyhow.’

‘Lucky to have anything still set – ah, he’s coming round.’

Kunrad rolled on his side and was promptly and noisily sick. But after he relaxed, and drank some of the wise woman’s herbal infusion, he seemed to recover his wits quite quickly. Until, that was, Olvar, still in anguish, asked him what had gone wrong with the armour.

Kunrad stared blankly. ‘Wrong? Well – oh yes, something did … I suppose. But …’

‘What, Master?’

‘Why …’ His face mirrored Olvar’s anguish. ‘There was something. I know that. But I can’t remember what it was. Not a thing. Not a damn thing!’

‘Common enough,’ said Metrye, brushing the prentices back from the couch like so much fluff. ‘A wound or a dunt on the head’ll often blot out the memory of it. You take your rest and don’t fret your stupid self, and the chances are it’ll come back to you in a week or two, when all else is healed. Lie back quiet, now, and bless your luck your brain didn’t run out your ears!’

Kunrad did his best to take her advice. The grating pain in his ribs every time he breathed made that a lot easier. Leaving a problem alone, though, was not in a true master-smith’s nature. Even when, strapped up and bandaged, he was allowed back to his own bed, it kept him awake all night, as much as the aches and pains did, or the aftereffects of Gille’s cooking. When he did sleep, too, he dreamed again, feverish dreams in which he chased an empty suit of armour that danced eerily through a spectral landscape, lush and pleasant one moment, but the next falling away to reveal the stark bones of the Ice. The awful thing dangled the answer in his face, mockingly; but when he awoke, the bandage sweat-soaked and tight over his swollen ribs, he could remember nothing.

Nor could he still, by the first day of the great spring fair, some five weeks later. The bandages were off, the bruising yellowed and healing, the ribs no worse than tender, but the inner itch was still there. Kunrad was back at work, polishing up the blades and hafts and hauberks that made up his stock-in-trade, for this was the occasion of the year, not only in the town of Athalby but in the whole of the lands around. It would draw buyers from all across the Northlands, from the seacoast to the mountains, from wandering bagmen peddlers to the great merchants who traded between cities, and still sometimes with the hostile South. There, he had heard, the sothrans despised and mocked the idea of true smithcraft. They called it a superstition of half-savages that crafted metal could be infused with virtues, strengths that went beyond the merely physical, influences that could strengthen or direct the purpose of the metal artefact, sometimes in very powerful ways. They scorned it as they did all things northern, yet they were still ready enough to pay high prices for the work itself. Merchants had made a good profit from his work there, he knew; well, let them! They earned it by the trouble of such a long journey among such nasty folk. If they bought from him again, as they always did, that was enough. Of course, the price might go up a little …

It was at a past fair that Kunrad had found his path in life, very early. He was born in Athalby, a quite large town in the rising years of the Northlands, some two centuries after their first painful settlement. In those days there was no Great Causeway across the Marshlands to the South, the land of Bryhaine, and both lands still stood in fear and distrust of their neighbours. This was made more so as the Northland settlers intermingled with the rustic, peaceable folk who came across the sea to settle there, and took on the copper hue of their skins, which many in the South despised. But to the people of Athalby both the sothrans and the Great Ice seemed like very remote menaces, problems for others to get concerned about. They were, by and large, a quiet, stolid folk, hard to impress, harder to daunt, well-nigh impossible to panic and proud of it, shaped in the tough image of their land.

This lay well to the north and inland, a wide lowland on the southern margins of the Starkenfells, beneath the crook of the arm that the mountains of the Meneth Scahas thrust out northwestward, barring the advance of the Great Ice. They sheltered Athalby and its surrounding villages and farms from the worst of the chill winds, and broke rainclouds upon their slopes to send down a maze of small rivers and lakelets. Other, less welcome streams flowed in summer, swollen with meltwater from the vanguard of the glaciers. The mountains were young and sharp, their rock new. On the higher ground its jagged bones showed through the thin earth, and few trees grew, or much except scrub and heathers and mountain herbs. The rich silt the streams brought down kept the lower ground fertile, but it was never lush, with only small patches of woodland, stunted and wind-bent. It was not especially attractive country. Indeed, the townspeople themselves said that its chief virtue was that it was impossible to get lost, because the country was exactly the same no matter which direction you went. They also joked that Athalby stood at the centre of the world, because no matter how you rode around it, you always seemed to stay in the same spot.

With such reflections, repeated endlessly to one another and even more often to strangers, Athalby folk contented themselves through long and generally peaceful lives. They were not a people to be much concerned with the need for adventure, or change; the seasons were variety enough for them, and the increase or otherwise of their flocks, harvests and families. The frequent markets and fairs, of which spring was the greatest, furnished all the trade and society they required, and a wide range of diversions. It was to one of these that Erlik, Town Smith of Athalby and one of its most solid citizens, took his young son Kunrad, who till then had seemed another of the unexceptional breed.

The first the Chronicles show us of him is a small boy watching a friendly contest of arms, mailed riders sweeping by with lances couched to meet in jangling disorder, or rising in their stirrups to loose long arrows at tiny targets on wands beside the track. Others on foot contest with swords and bucklers, setting the air alive with the toneless music of metal. It is a sound his home is already full of, but there it takes on a newly exciting life. The fighters are the armed guardsmen of various towns, the nearest the Northlands ever came to armies; and the boy watches them, mouth agape. Yet he is held, not by the battling, as many boys would be; but by the beauty of the weapons themselves. And most of all by the bright armour, the rippling shirts of mail, the shining plates at leg and breast, the gaudy shields and the polished helms. They fasten themselves in his mind, these shining skins of metal and their companions and tormentors the bolt and blade. These are friendly contests, and he sees nothing of their killing quality, only their bright power and the skill with which they can be wielded. Wonderful things they seem to him, attributes one should be born with, instead of flesh and bone. And yet, they are so very crude. So many small details he notices that could be better shaped, so obvious that he wonders why others have not corrected them. All the way home he prattles about them, and Erlik listens patiently; for even an Athalby mastersmith has to have some imagination, and he sees the beginnings of a powerful talent in his little son. A very profitable one, too.

In due course, it is recorded, Kunrad became one of his father’s prentices, and gave good proof of his promise. Erlik was a sound teacher, and by his teens the boy was already an able metalworker, adept at all the ordinary tools and utensils, charms and trinkets the townspeople demanded of a smith. It was not only his way with the metal, though, but the strength of the virtues with which he imbued his work. His steel hoes dug better, and the plants around them flourished; his silver flagons kept the wine fresher. He made everything well; he became a very good smith for all purposes. Erlik, feeling the onset of age, would have been happier if the boy had actually shown more enthusiasm for all these everyday wares, on which his own fortunes had been founded. But what really held Kunrad’s attention was the shaping of fine swords, and knives, and axes, and pikes, and arrowheads, and above all armour; and it was always on these that he chose to use the skills he learned.

Erlik, an unwarlike man, found it slightly unnerving as his smithy began to fill with beautiful, lethal objects, not least because they kept their edge all too well and found their mark with bitter accuracy. In part this was due to the cool perfection in Kunrad’s forging, but there was more to it. A quality in himself flowed out into them; and Erlik and his wife, who no longer dared sit down in the smithy without looking carefully, began to worry about where the boy had got it from, and how he was going to turn out.

They did not have to. As the years passed, and he grew from capable journeyman into burgeoning master, he began to study the arts of battle, and even fought in occasional friendly tourneys and trials. It showed in his craft; but on Kunrad himself it had little effect. His prentice piece had been a plain but beautiful knife, of undeniable skill, but too like a dagger for Erlik’s taste; and when at twenty-four he became the youngest candidate for mastery anyone could remember, it was with a hunting sword of conventional falchion shape, broad and heavy, but inlaid and entwined with traceries in many metals, a forest of swirling vines and creepers entangling the figures of foresters, hounds and game, great beasts whose images he had found only in books, all frozen in an instant of pursuit and flight. And beneath them, for the eyes of the masters who marvelled, there was another tracery deep within the metal, fleeting webs of light that spoke meaning to their minds and hearts directly, and to the craft they themselves held. These were the subtle virtues a smith could pass into the works of his hand, to make it more than the mere metal form, a living instrument of its purpose. The masters read them in the light of their own craft, and were borne up themselves into the unending quest the fine gold and silver inlays depicted, eager as the fine edge to cut at the quarry. They were silent awhile as they passed the blade from hand to hand; and then without a ballot, in standing acclaim, they welcomed the gangling young man into their company.

But though his home bristled with spike and blade he never showed any urge to use in earnest the creations that were beginning to make him a name, first in the region and then further afield. He remained the generally quiet, amiable character he had always been, hard-working and serious-minded, and if there were hidden fires they were unleashed chiefly on his work. When his parents died in one harsh winter he declined to follow Erlik as Town Smith, forfeiting riches and a fine house, but freeing himself to his own pleasures. He made the things he liked best, worked hard, lived simply, drifted in and out of several hopeful matches, and eventually, when he had a little money saved, brought in two prentices. The most hopeful candidates went to richer smiths, so he chose those less accomplished but most serviceable to him, Olvar for relentless strength and patience, and Gille for the finer decorations and the wordcraft that could weave and intensify the virtues of a work, the spells that were sung over it.

So it is the Chronicles return to him, a man in his prime who seems to mark time in all the common concerns of life, that he may still pursue the vision of his childhood. Small wonder he rarely dreamed, for his dreams were what he lived and thought about, and what he wove under his hands. Such folk are most often the happiest; but as he made ready for the fair, that dancing vision of imperfection tormented him still, a torment he had never learned how to bear.

As usual he took no booth at the fair, for its centre was just beyond the gates, and his door could be seen from there. He had chosen the house with that in mind. The prentices were busy hanging a banner from his eaves, and staking out a double line of swords and other weapons like a bizarre fence to lead in his buyers.

‘Get yer wares!’ chanted Gille, bedecking them with signs. ‘Get yer luverly pig-stickers! Gizzard-slicers and gut-grallochers! Gall-churners and codpiece-collopers! All hot, all hot! Get ’em while they’re fresh, afore they get you! Don’t drop ’em on yer toes whatever yer do! All hot, all hot!’

‘Shut up!’ grunted Olvar. ‘You sound too much like the pie-seller. Or that girl with the hot rolls.’ He scanned the gathering crowd hopefully. So did Gille.

‘Look, if she turns up, I’ll take her and you take the rolls, right?’

Olvar gave him a withering look. ‘In a pig’s ear, brother prentice. Food’s not all I think