Graynelore by Stephen Moore Read Free Book Online Page B

had struck first. She had stuck me with a short knife. My loose leather jack, sewn with its paltry strips of hammered iron, was always a poor man’s armour.
    ‘Shit!’
    It was experience moved me then. We were at close quarters. I turned the edge of my sword and instead of using the blade, drove the pommel down hard upon her head. The contact drew blood and tore a sliver of hair and skin from her scalp, knocked her sideways. But it was a poor, glancing blow; I had meant to break her head open.
    I hit her again and she collapsed already senseless.
    ‘Shit, shit!’
    I too was bleeding. And though I should have finished it then, still I held back. I did not kill her. I…could not do it?
    Stupidly – there was the noise and the threat of fighting all about me on the fells – I lowered my arm, sheathed my sword, and knelt down beside her. How might I explain this? (How might I explain
any
of this?) I wanted to touch her. Not a touch that would hurt her, not like that. Hurting her again would have been easy. I wanted…well, if I could make any sense of what I wanted…I wanted to prove that she was real, ordinary, human. And not some deluded man’s fetch; some foul whimsy brought up out of a night-torment.
    She was wearing the common breeches and reinforced jack of a fighting-man, and yet at her throat there was a gold amulet. It was a single piece and simply fashioned, but this was enough of a conceit (or perhaps a mistake) to mark her apart…only a damned fool or someone confident, in both her rank and her sword arm, would openly wear such an obvious badge of privilege in the frae. I was a soldier-thief. She was my worst enemy. I should have stolen it from her, taken it as my prize; added it to Notyet’s growing purse. I should have loosened her breeches and stolen more…gone on my way and thought no more of it.
    Her arm had fallen into the stream. The closed hand still held the knife. I took it up, threw the knife aside. I lifted her arm and laid it down, clear of the stream. I cupped my hand and, taking water, gently bathed her brow. That was all. As I did I heard the babble of the stream. I would swear this to you; it was speaking to me. Though it whispered, I could plainly hear its call. And I suddenly knew that if I would only listen to its voice then I would understand its words.
    This Elfwych and this Wishard…they are the very same…
    ‘What?’
    When I looked again I saw the stream was turning red.
    ‘Fucking, shit!’
    I was still bleeding. I ran my fingers across the cut. The wound was long, but it was not too deep. Yet it had been a deliberate thrust. What was this Elfwych about? Trying only to injure me, to distract me rather than kill? And why would she do that?
    Then she was moving again, her hand grasping at a tuft of grass, trying to pull herself upright.
    I watched as she slowly dragged herself to her feet.
    There was a moment of indecision. She stood almost within reach of me. What was it? Was she going to come at me again? (Even without her knife.) I lifted my sword, only to stay my hand before it ran clear of the scabbard. She turned slowly, almost invitingly, towards me – but invitingly of what?
    Afterwards, a long time afterwards, I remembered there was an instant then when our eyes briefly met. What
did
we each see there? What was there between us?
    I could so easily have felled her.
    I could so easily have let her go.
    I did neither.
    Upon the moment, the distant, random clatter of swords striking against swords, the cries and counter cries of men in the frae, was usurped, overlaid by the sudden toning of an iron bell. First there was one, and then came a second in reply, off at some great distance. And then there were many. Each of them, languid, almost soporific in tone; it was a deep and sonorous sound. Their beat was deliberately regular and no sooner heard than the gathered crows – our constant aerial spectators – seemed to scatter above our heads, spiralling ever upwards into