The Singer and the Sea

by Michael Scott Rohan

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

Synopsis

Gille Kilmarsson is a mastersmith and musician in a quiet northern town. But he yearns for something more. When he saves a Southern merchant ship from the savagery of the corsairs, he takes as his only reward an old musical instrument. And his life changes forever. For the instrument has an ancient, magical past and it soon leads Gille and his companion, Olvar, on an amazing voyage of adventure and discovery. A voyage in which they must confront not only the mysteries of the sea but also a ruthless, barbaric tribe intent on massacring an ancient people fleeing the encroachment of the restless Ice...

Release date: February 25, 2013

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 419

Sample

IT was the stirring of the warm body at his side that woke him, and the shifting of the furs that covered them. She had flung her arm over her eyes, leaving one breast bare above the covers, the nipple firm in the chill air. He reached out sleepily to caress it where the growing light suffused it, cupping the warm skin against the cold. She stretched and mumbled with drowsy pleasure. Then she sat bolt upright, the covers falling, her long brown hair flying. ‘You’ve got to get up!’ she gasped. ‘To go! My brothers will be up and about.’

Gille laughed, though softly. ‘Those slugabeds? And what would send them barging in here? They’ll be out counting the fowls and milking the bull – whilst you and I cuddle up snug and silent and loving …’

She squirmed lazily under his hands, then pushed him away. ‘Go on, I said! You don’t know what they might do!’

Gille did not; but he could guess, and let himself be pushed. His resistance had been mostly for form’s sake, and he suspected she knew it. ‘Till three nights hence, then! While they’re off to market. Or would you come to town some day sooner?’

She shivered. ‘No! That’d be too risky. Folk would see!’

He rubbed her naked back. ‘There’s the Ice-breath in this breeze. Let them see! We’re to be married one day, aren’t we?’

‘Yes!’ She gave in to the rubbing, with a little breathless laugh. ‘Yes, surely. But they’d still talk! Three days, dearest—’ She smiled, her plump cheeks dimpling wildly, and reached out to cup him in her turn. ‘It’ll give you time to revive.’

He landed a smacking kiss. ‘For you, Utte my honeycake, no need!’ he said ardently; but he was already hauling his shirt over his head, and wriggling it into his breeches. A cock crowed, and he reached hastily for his sword-belt and short tunic, laid across the chest that was all the room’s furnishings, save the carven bedstead and chair. Cautiously he opened the shutters, and, blowing the girl a kiss, hopped nimbly out on to the sill and caught hold of the eaves.

Gille was not an especially brave man, but swinging his way hand over hand along the ends of the beams caused him no concern. He was used to it by now. This was the kind of derring-do the bold lovers of the romances took in their stride, and he gave no thought to the drop of three times his height. The tall poles in the vegetable patch below became sentries’ spears, the pig sty beyond a deadly swamp. It pleased his humour, and added a spice to the affair that he felt it otherwise rather lacked.

So the Chronicles speak of him, a man of some thirty-two years, darkly handsome, bright-eyed, small in stature, still young by the reckoning of his time, younger still in looks, and, as so often follows, in his thoughts and actions. He reached the end of the wall, swung himself down, dropped lightly on to the stable roof and padded easily along the steep gable, freed of frost by the warmth that rose from the gathered beasts below. He jumped down on to the surrounding wall of coarse stone and ran across to the old steading where he had tethered his own mount, with the blankets, hay and water Utte had left. They were needed, even in this burgeoning spring; for in the North no night was warm, amid the unending Winter of the World.

He led the horse briskly some way along the wall before mounting, out of sight of the tall shutters. Outlying farms, beyond town walls, needed walls of their own, even in peaceful times, and this was the largest manor hereabouts, a rich estate with four or five tenant farms. Nothing to what he had seen in the South, of course; but Utte’s brothers were not lords, and their tenants were free men. He liked the place; he liked them, for that matter, in their stolid ways. He liked Utte – well, more than any woman else in a long while. There would always be other girls, was his usual thought; but now he was increasingly inclined to wonder about one other, one different from all the rest, a soulmate, an ideal. Not Utte, of course. Bouncy, bright little thing, altogether too ordinary. He felt at home with her, certainly. He could feel at home here; it was like his father’s steading, only here he would not be the middling and least valued of many sons. So why was he so eager to get away?

Perhaps he was just beginning to feel shut in. The memories of his prentice days drifted back to him, and his great journey, hauled the length of two lands by his former master, in and out of scrape and skirmish, of corsair lair and sothran citadel… He sighed. Half the time he had been scared and half starved, but this was not one of his more realistic moments. He thought back to the warm and wealthy Southlands, with their tall red-haired women – not at all like these little local butterballs, delightful though they were – and heady wines. His grand constant dream of going back there, of leading a trading trip and making his fortune, came flooding back to him; but so did the unlikeliness of its ever coming true.

He sent the horse cantering easily across the half-ploughed fields, keeping to the margins and the windbreak trees, still out of sight. A thought came to him as he reached the wide meadows fringing the Wold, and he unhitched the crossbow at his saddle. He feared no pursuit; but there might be rabbits out breakfasting, and he had a use for a free breakfast of his own. So it was that, once away from the house, he rode more slowly, and scouted the grey-green slopes for movement, watching carefully the line where they stood out against the slaty sea and sky beyond, so clear in the low pale light that every tuft and tussock showed, and every twitch of a leaf or grass blade. It was thus that the chase caught his eye.

A sail billowed there, a common sight so near the port of Saldenborg. Gille was no great seaman, but he had been aboard ships often enough to realise that this one was running fast with the rolling iron-grey waves, careless of their buffets, kicking up great fans of spray as it smashed their crests. Then, as the waves dipped a moment, the reason became obvious, a long, low dark streak lancing through the troughs astern, its single mast bare. A galley; and one that would not raise a sail in this brisk breeze. Therefore, most likely, a corsair galley. A desperate one, to pursue a prey so near a port; but they had been starved of late, with the Marchwarden Kunrad, Gille’s old master, harrying them in their marshland lairs. He shaded his eyes, trying to judge. They were not such fools, either, the sea-wolves; they would overhaul that wallowing great merchantman long before it came in hail of the town, and the watch was probably asleep. No boat could get out to the prey in time, not against the wind. But if it were coming from astern …

He looked down the coast, to the little fishing village that nestled in the crook of the cliff. He could be there in minutes, though the road was steep. He wasted no more time thinking. The village Headman would surely have a good boat, if nobody else. The horse skidded and slipped on the stony path, but Gille held him to his fast trot, grimacing at the drop that opened alongside. He had been aboard a ship taken by corsairs; he hated the memory. The wood-tiled rooftops rose below his feet like the backs of scaly sea-creatures beached in the cove, faint wisps of smoke curling up from night-damped fires. There was a wooden palisade at the narrow foot of the path, the watchman nodding on his perch above the gate; but when he heard the hooves, and Gille shouting about corsairs, he sprang up so fast he almost fell over it. The gate opened, and Gille cantered into the little square beyond. Without dismounting, his horse panting steam, he seized the bar from the heavy steel triangle that hung there and rattled it frantically.

The metal was old and rusty, but there was a virtue in it he could see, that commanded awakening and heeding. The jangle echoed between the cliff walls as if twenty alarms were sounding, and within a moment a tall grizzled man in a fur-trimmed robe came rushing out on to the gallery of the largest and most freshly painted house. ‘What’s this?’ he rasped. ‘Be you piss-headed, boy?’ Then, seeing Gille’s black tunic, and the gold trimmings at the neck, he ducked his head. ‘Sorry there, Mastersmith! We have problems now and again, y’see…’

‘I can guess!’ wheezed Gille, waving towards the sea. He kicked his leg over the pommel and slid down on to the stony earth. ‘But we’ve got another now!’

It took only a moment for the Headman to grasp the situation; and by then others could see it too. Within minutes there was a general rush down to the shore, with the Headman still hitching up his oilcloth trousers. ‘Can you do anything?’ coughed Gille, wishing he had shouted a little less.

‘Maybe! Good that you came to us, Master, and not to the town. That was in your mind, was’t? You’ll have some sea lore, then. We stand best chance of overhaulin ’em ere they reach the middle o’ the bay, in my little Sea Mare.’

Gille gaped as he saw the long, low craft lying alongside the rickety jetty. But for its cheerful green paint and lack of mast, it could have been a smaller cousin of the sleek predator out there. ‘Like her, do you?’ grinned the Headman, displaying a graveyard of stained teeth. ‘Bought her as a prize, after an encounter five summers back, damaged somewhat. We could set her aright without costly shipwrights, see?’

‘What in Hella’s name d’you fish for in that?’

‘Oh, you’d be surprised, Mastersmith. Mortal fast some fishies are – ever see a marlin, to be sure?’

Gille never had, and didn’t want to. The most likely use for such a craft was casual smuggling, probably to avoid road tolls and town tithes; the green paint would be concealment in a light summer sea. Not that it was any of his business, anyhow. The Headman swung aboard, and offered him a hand. Gille hesitated, as fishy-smelling bodies barged past him.

‘Nay, come, sir, and welcome, you all hot for the scrap with that bow o’ yours!’ Gille grimaced, but let himself be swung aboard. He had feared to leave the valuable bow on his saddle, that was all. But there was no way to back out of this without shaming himself.

‘I’ll take an oar!’ he said, lingering in the safer stern. ‘I’ve rowed in attack before!’ He winced at the memory.

‘Nay, nay, sir!’ beamed the Headman. ‘Making a master row, what’d folk say? Up you come to the bow with me! Hurry aboard there, lads, come on, and Sarre, there, do you give the master some bolts for his bow now. All aboard? Got the helm there, Erke? Then cast off, forrard!’ He seized a huge boathook and pushed off from the jetty. ‘Heave now! And heave!’

The narrow boat was well laden, with fisher-folk crouching between the rowers and on the cargo platforms, waving a fiendish array of weapons from bows like Gille’s to boarding pikes and steel-toothed rakes. The lean craft wallowed and flexed alarmingly in the swell, but the oars bit, the carved bow dipped and rose, and suddenly the waves were not smashing against it but lifting it and hurling it along at a drastic speed. The rowers broke into a hoarse chant, and almost at once they were passing the point and out into the bay. Gille, kneeling beside the Headman on boards glistening with dried scales, kept his grip firm on the gunwale and fought down his empty stomach. Spray slopped in and puddled, soaking his knees. The white sail seemed invisible at first, and he had a momentary twinge of alarm – had it already been taken and hauled down? Or capsized, in a wild manoeuvre? But then, as the Sea Mare climbed one high crest, he saw it again, taut and strained as the merchant ship sought for speed. Against it, very close now as it seemed, the thin black mast whipped and rocked.

‘If they could only get off on a tack,’ shouted the Headman over the noise of the rowers and the creaking of rowlock and timber, ‘they’d outrun the bastards for sure. But that’d be out to sea, and then the bastards could hoist sail too, and cut ’em off …’

‘Of course!’ agreed Gille, as confidently as he could. ‘How long—’

‘Not long,’ grinned the Headman tautly. ‘Maybe half an hour, less. And they won’t be expecting us, with no masthead to make out.’

‘And what then? What’s our best plan?’

‘Plan? Bless you, Master, we need no plan! We up and tear straight into ’em! We ram!’

Gulping, Gille looked down over the bow. There it was, breaching the black water on the end of the main keel timber, a shining steel staff tipped with a cluster of spikes like a chicken’s claw, flinging spray in all directions. Shining indeed to the eyes of a true smith, for the metal coursed and ran with the strange virtues one such could set within it, like rippling sheets of lightning ensnared, cold as the Northlights over the distant Ice. ‘Looks well made,’ he ventured.

‘Glad t’ have your word on that, Master, for what it cost! See there, they’re closing! Heave now! Heave!’

Gille could only cling on through that wild ride, jamming himself with knees and elbows to avoid being flung out as the bows plunged, desperately wishing himself snugly back in Utte’s bed. He clutched his bow close, though, and thrust the bolts firmly into his belt. Face this armed, if he had to, was all his thought. The longboat lanced across the waves, and time seemed to lose all meaning with the sea-roar in his ears.

Then, all too suddenly, the bulk of the merchantman was before him, with the sail no longer taut but billowing and flapping in panic; and alongside it the black shark shape, and figures swarming off it up the curving planks and boiling on to the deck. The Headman shouted something, and the rowers gave a single gasping grunt as they leant still heavier upon their oars. Gille remembered the crossbow, and struggled frantically to draw it as the Sea Mare sprang forward under the quickening pace. The Headman was roaring directions, and the wind carried the sound of their coming to the corsairs. Those still in the boat looked around in surprise and panic, and shouted to those attacking. Some went on climbing unheeded, others, looking back, dropped down into their craft in disorder. Oars were unshipped as they sought to escape the longboat bearing down on them, but it was too late. Gille struggled to aim, then gave up and threw himself down. The Sea Mare’s bow lanced into the corsair’s stern, and the ram sang like a striking arrow as it bit into the planking and carried away the rudder in a shower of splinters.

The corsair craft heeled wildly with the impact, flinging men into the sea, and there was screaming turmoil. A wild-looking figure sprang up on to their bow, aiming a spear. Gille, sprawling below, could hardly miss. The bolt vanished into the man’s body, and he was hurled sideways out of sight The fishermen cheered wildly, and sent a small shower of bolts past Gille as he sat up, some so ill-aimed that they thudded into the wood around him. He flung himself forward to get out of the line of shot, a wave surged up and slapped him icily in the face, and he found himself half sprawling over the gunwales of both boats as they bobbed together. Another wave, and he fell headlong into the stern of the corsair craft, in a tangle of smelly bodies. The villagers, assuming he was leading an attack, surged after him with uncouth cries, loosing off bolts and striking out at any head that showed itself. A snarling face rose over Gille, a blade flashed, then fell limply as somebody’s spear butt crashed into the back of the corsair’s neck. The other corsairs Gille had fallen among lay sprawled and twitching now. The fight had rolled on, and nobody was bothering him. He scrambled up, drew his bow again and shot at the most obvious corsair in sight, a tall copper-skinned Northerner shouting by the mast. Gille was a good shot; the man sagged, pinned to the timber.

There had been few corsairs left in the boat, after the impact fewer still; but now those on the merchantman’s deck saw the new danger, and came swarming back. Too late: the villagers’ rush had carried them to the side, and they were striking at the reivers even as they leaped, casting them into the water that churned between the hulls. Gille loosed, caught one, who fell like a sack, then missed two more as their landing made the boat heel again. The remaining corsairs tried to counterattack, but the Sea Mare’s rowers, having got their breath, were quitting their benches and charging aboard to join the fun, as they seemed to find it.

Gille could no longer get a clear shot, and his fingers were tired. He drew his short sword, nervously; he had not used one in anger for years, and had never been very adept. A corsair with an axe swung at him, Gille parried, they both missed and fell heavily into one another in stinking bilgewater. Gille hit him with the crossbow, the corsair howled and kicked Gille’s thigh, lashed out with the axe, missed again, and Gille punched him ineffectually in the nose, then bit his filthy ear. It tasted horrible. The corsair jumped up with a scream and fell backwards over the gunwale. Perhaps somebody had hit him with something; it made little difference, with the hulls grinding against one another as they were.

Spitting and shaking, Gille scrambled up and retrieved his sword and bow. There seemed to be no more corsairs about, and a lot of water around his ankles; the rammed boat was beginning to founder. A few fisherfolk were having wounds bound up, but there looked to be nothing too serious. The Headman was busy in the stern, organising makeshift repairs lest this new prize slip through his fingers. On the merchantman’s deck above, the row had died down to a few snarling voices, captured corsairs by the sound of it. Gille sat down unsteadily on the heaving gunwale, slightly faint with the sensation of having once again survived some horrible tangle. Sickness, relief, a little giddy; he tittered slightly, then caught hold of himself.

‘Ahoy below!’ boomed a voice. Gille jerked to his feet. A burly-looking man was leaning over the merchantman’s rail. A sothran, by the accent, and the dark red streaks in the dishevelled grey hair, caught back in a tail behind. He spoke the Northern tongue with a rolling burr. ‘You the skipper o’ that little beauty? My thanks!’

‘No, I!’ called the Headman cheerfully, then, because it was always a good idea to be fair to a smith, ‘Twas the Master there as raised the alarm, though. And led the boarding.’

Gille bowed. If that was how it looked, he was not one to argue.

‘Then I’m deeply obliged to the both of you, sirs. Tanle Athlannyn of Bryhannec, Master of the Mariners’ Guild, owner and skipper of the Ker Dorfyn, for to serve you.’

‘Gille Kilmarsson, Master of the Smiths’ Guild, desires your further acquaintance.’

He and Gille saluted one another, as was proper for masters even from different countries, while the Headman looked on wryly at the antics of educated men. ‘Best we make straight for harbour, I think,’ said Tanle. ‘I’ll be honoured to entertain you gentlemen aboard.’

‘I thank you, sir, but we need to make this shark seaworthy again,’ said the Headman. ‘And get our wounded home.’

‘Take your time,’ said Tanle. ‘There’s a few things we may attend to meantime. And you, Master?’

Gille, thinking of breakfast, scrambled for the rope ladder that was cast down to him. But something else fell with a rattling thud further along. It was a body, on a rope, and its boots scrabbled briefly against the hull. Gille swallowed. From the other side came more shouts and thuds, and bodies rose kicking to dangle from the mainyard in the morning sun. Tanle was clearly a man who wasted no time attending to things. Gille’s appetite vanished.

‘Best I reclaim my horse,’ said Gille. ‘We’ll ride over and see you docked.’

‘We’ll open a choice bottle or three,’ called Tanle. ‘Till then, sirs!’

Gille bowed and turned, to find the Headman cheerfully unsticking the body of the corsair he had shot from the mast. ‘A Northern man!’ he growled, waggling the lolling face at Gille. He deftly relieved the body of its jewellery and a purse. ‘Never like to see one of ours among these sea-scavengers, let alone leading ’em! Funny thing, though – these earrings and a necklace, not like I’ve ever seen anyone wear. And he’s all over scars – deliberate ones, like. Patterns.’

‘An offcomer, maybe,’ shuddered Gille. That was the not unkindly name Northerners gave to the copper-skinned refugees who sometimes appeared from a far land across the ocean, fugitives from the Ice and its murderous votaries. ‘Newly arrived from over sea, fell in with a bad crowd. I’ve heard there have been some new ones coming over of late – another conquest for the Ice, maybe.’

‘Well,’ said the Headman decisively, ‘this one could have saved himself the trip.’ He heaved the corpse over the side with a splash.

By the time they came to town the harbour was already bustling, and most of all around the new arrival. The fight and rescue had been seen from the shore, and an idling crowd had gathered around the wharf where the Ker Dorfyn was tied up, young men pointing at the ugly black shapes swinging from its yardarm, and children staring open-mouthed. Executions were rare in the close-knit Northern communities, and were never public. Gille and the Headman had to push their horses through.

Tanle was waiting for them by the gangplank, grinning widely all over his freckled face. ‘Our gallant rescuers!’ he boomed, and the idlers cheered. ‘Come, sirs, have you broken fast? Only a bite, surely.’ He led them to a table on the open deck, now clear and sunlit. ‘While we have fine sothran meats and pickles, and fresh bread hot from your market, and rare fruits of the deep South, and wines – by the hot Sun that Raven stole for us, such wines!’

He was a generous host, and Gille, who for some time past had been living on plain, affordable fare, managed to ignore the swinging shadows above, and take full advantage. ‘Fighting gives a man an appetite!’ he declaimed, feeling it sounded like the sort of thing he ought to say. He was feeling absurdly pleased with himself.

‘Well,’ laughed Tanle, drinking deep, ‘eat your fill and more, sir, for without you we’d have been feeding the sharks, surely. Whence came those bastards, anyhow? I’d heard this Marchwarden Conreid, or whatever his name is, had cleared the Norrard Way of them.’

Gille smiled easily, stroking the elegant wisp of beard on his chin. ‘Kunrad. He has indeed, as I can say, for I was once his prentice, and helped him to his high place.’ The others looked suitably impressed, and the onlookers, hanging on their every word, murmured. ‘There’s always a few vultures, though, lurking here or there. No threat, save to ships lone or lost, and never yet as bold as today. You were unlucky, that’s all.’

‘Lucky, rather, that we had you on hand. His prentice, you say? Then I can believe what’s said of your master! I knew he was a Northerner born, but a mastersmith, eh?’ He shook his head. ‘So, then. You’ve saved my ship, my stock, and all our lives, bar a couple. Tanle’s known throughout Ker Bryhaine as a man who pays his debts! You, Headman, you have that slick demon’s skiff of theirs, and well earned, but I give you some ballast to it!’ He fished out a purse that hung heavy, and put it into the delighted Headman’s hands. ‘But you, sir – how shall I reward you? I doubt that a mastersmith lacks for much here, if all they say is true.’

Gille shrugged modestly, but was careful to say nothing. ‘I must give you something, sir!’ pressed Tanle. ‘Why, the pick of my stock—’

‘That’s very generous of you, Captain Tanle!’ said Gille, loudly enough to be heard, and wrung his hand. ‘More than I deserve, I’m sure!’

Tanle’s genial expression stiffened ever so slightly, the look of a man who might just have made a very expensive mistake. Gille could almost read his thoughts. He was far from home, and had to deal with people here to make his profits. It would not do to let the word go round that he had failed to reward his rescuer. His foot traced the shadows as they swung. And there was honour. He did have much to be grateful for …

‘Then do you pick any piece as takes your fancy!’ he boomed, and could not help adding, ‘Any one piece …’

He clearly resolved to make the best of it, and added, ‘Sit you at your ease here, and we’ll parade the best of it for your pleasure.’ And, incidentally, for the watchers. Word would get around, and customers.

Gille bowed, and murmured something suitable, while Tanle gave his orders. The first items up were fabrics, stored well above the water line, bales of fine sothran linen that dazzled in the sun, strong hemp cloth, soft wools of Northern growth, but subtly spun and woven, dyed with richly glowing colours, silks and satins that seemed to flow like liquid, stiff embroidered brocades. Gille was politely loud in their praise, but he made no choice. Then came foodstuffs, spices and sugars in great quantities, long-lived cakes and sweetmeats made from them, sothran wines of the mellow vintages that were making his head spin, stronger burnt liquors, sweet and potent. ‘High prices they’ll command, too,’ murmured Tanle happily. ‘Some of your merchants’ and Guildsmen’s wives’ll pay a small fortune to put what’s hard to come by on their boards! Perhaps your good lady – no? Ah, well. Next, now, next we have glass – well packed, to be sure, well nigh a hundred cases—’

Goblets and pitchers winked in the sun, stained in deep shades, cut in facets like glittering gems. The Headman was dazzled by these bright gauds, so unlike the rough utensils of his village life, and Tanle gave him a tankard – an especially robust one, noted Gille, suitable for such uses. An honourable man, clearly, and his conscience plucked at him a little for taking advantage, but he guessed the most valuable stuff would be left till last. So it proved, for Tanle was carrying a load of furniture, new and antique. For woodwork, carving, inlays, rare woods and finishes, graceful mouldings and shapes that gratified the eye, sothran craftsmen were renowned; and this stuff was unusually fine. Gille caressed the chests they brought out on deck, fingered the fine chairs with their scrolled arms, traced the gold inlay on long dining tables polished to a glassy shine, and came close to breaking Tanle’s heart as he paused to admire a huge and ornate dresser. But it was only to peer at a wide box, a flattened triangle of rich red-hued wood, strapped inside the top, so as to protect it.

‘Captain, what’s this?’

‘That? Why, Master, let me show you—’ The merchant captain was trembling with so much relief he could hardly undo the knots. ‘Very old, so I’m told, and well crafted; but very fine still. Something you folk in the North call – what is it?’

‘A kantel,’ murmured Gille, cradling the lustrous wood in his arms, admiring the sheen of the thick lacquer and the silver inlays, the carven fingerboards and silvered steel endpieces, in which the ornate bridges were set. Built to last and to travel, evidently. He ran his fingers idly across the strings, and nodded. ‘A kind of dulcimer, in the South. Fine tone, as you say.’ He plucked a string or two, hastily tuned them by ear, tuned a couple more, then picked out a short measure or two with the abalone-shell plectrum dangling from a scrap of wire. The broad fingerboard at the left gave suddenly under his grip, and he panicked for an instant as the string tension changed and the sound with it, fearing the shell had broken. Then he laughed; the strings had changed their pitch, that was all. The fingerboard was some sort of ingenious device that shifted one bridge, and with it the tension of all the strings equally, so you could change key as you played. It had been stuck at first, that was all; probably not used for years, but it moved smoothly enough now. This was the sort of instrument he would have liked to make. He peered through the fretted hole into the wide soundbox. It was finished as beautifully within, with a liner of aged parchment. There seemed to be something written there, but he could not read it. These things were made in both Northland and South; but if he was not mistaken …

Light flashed on the metal endpieces, threads of light like caged lightning; but neither the Headman nor Tanle seemed to see it. Northern, then; and strong, strong and complex virtues. Strange to find such things in a mere musical instrument. He turned it over, looking for a maker’s mark. Then his own voice suddenly sounded unnatural in his ears, as if from a great distance. ‘Captain, whence came this?’

‘That? Oh well, that I had from a merchant who bought up an old house,’ began Tanle eagerly. ‘One that all the heirs of had died off, see? Last one of some mucky distemper on his country estate, see? Name of Keraldein. Hadn’t been to town for maybe thirty years, his house falling into decay, nobody to claim it save some connection by marriage who has a better one, and sells off all save a few bits and bobs to this merchant. And he knows I’m seeking out good solid stuff for the North, so sells me a job lot and throws that in with it. Fond of music, are you then, Master?’ he added tautly.

‘Oh yes,’ said Gille calmly. ‘Very… Well, Master Tanle?’

‘That? You want that? That’s all? I mean, it’s very fine,