The huts and houses of Harn were well cared for but shabby. Life was hard this far north. All trade in Harn was brought through Woodedge on floating rafts from Harn-Larger and as there was little money in Harn few chose to make the journey. With the Forestals being seen in Woodedge then even fewer were coming now, still, the market was busier than Cahan liked.
As he entered he saw a young woman sat in the cold mud by an earth-house, her felt clothes not thick enough for the northern weather and her hair fashioned into huge spikes with white mud and wooden rings. The same mud had been used to draw whirls and lines on her face. She was very thin.
“Spare a coin for a monk of a forgotten god?” she said, holding out a thin hand streaked with dirt. He had little time for others’ gods, forgotten or not, but did not like to see someone go hungry and knew how Harn treated outsiders.
“Avoid the bread,” he told her and threw her a splinter, “and do not let Tussnig see you. He does not like competition, forgotten god or not.”
Something that always struck him about towns was the smell. He was used to open spaces and the rich, green smells of the forest. Harn smelled of towns, of latrine pits dug too near the walls and a myriad other unpleasant smells trapped between the houses, along with the smoke from wood fires. Then there were the people. He had always found the press and smell of people crowded together overpowering. In his youth, in the monastery of Zorir, he had washed every day. Wetvines were run in to make pools and even fountains. But the monastery had been in Mantus, where it was warmer and life was easier. There was even rainfall from the great geysers of Tilt. Here in the north they got only occasional snows that lay on the ground for an age during Harsh and left slowly and resentfully in Least.
People did not wash as much in the far north.
That was not to say they did not look after themselves, for they did. The people of Harn were a colourful lot. Their closeness to the forest provided plenty of plants with which to dye their clothes and, though they exported the majority of the skins and wool from the crownheads, there was still enough left over to be pressed into thick felt for warm clothes. They painted their faces, as was the tradition, in white with black lines and clan patterns. Despite all this, they always looked tired. To survive here was to struggle.
If he had known the market was on he would have waited until it was quieter, but he had not known and now had not only the people of the village to contend with, but also the people from the outlying farms. Those milling around the few stalls were a rainbow of colour: brown and yellow jerkins of thick felt with pressed-in stripes and whirls of bright colour. They wore conical hats in bright blues or reds or purples dyed from berries and mushrooms. For their trousers and kilts they tended towards more sombre dark blues and blacks. Between the adults ran children in simple one-piece gowns, screeching and laughing. In them was the only merriment to be found in Harn.
He passed stalls: butchers, weavers, felt pressers, a pot seller and a woodcarver. Stalls set up by those who hunted or gathered in the relative safety of Woodedge. On the other side of the village he could see Tussnig, the monk of Tarl-an-Gig, who stood before the shrine of his god; a figure made of sticks. Like all representations of Tarl-an-Gig it was standing on one leg, the other leg held out, foot on the knee, creating a triangle, arms clasped in front of the head. It was not a great representation, but then the monk was no great artist. Behind the statue of the god was the eight-branched Star of Iftal. Before it was the village taffistone where sacrifices were made. In Tilt the taffistones were as big as a person and they glowed with a strange light. Harn’s stone was badly chipped and barely reached the monk’s hip. Once it had been marked for Chyi, but that had been erased with a chisel, like the names of many gods before. Now it was marked for Tarl-an-Gig in flaking paint. Usually the sacrifice was a simple laying on of hands and promise of service or strength to the god. Today the stone was streaked with blood and the head of a crownhead, staring up blindly, lay before it. It was an expensive sacrifice.
Tussnig dressed exactly the same way he always did, with an eye headdress and a long felt robe of undyed wool. He had painted his face a bright blue for his god. The monk watched the people of the market as they milled about, buying and selling goods. Cahan tried to keep out of the monk’s line of sight but was not quick enough.
“Forester!” shouted Tussnig. Like most weak men he liked nothing more than an easy target. “Forester!” he shouted again and the bustle of the market was stilled. Faces, shaded by wide-brimmed hats, stared at Cahan in the weak light of the cold day. “We do not welcome the clanless here! And do you bring a sacrifice? Do you bring a gift for Tarl-an-Gig as is befitting? Will you give of yourself to your betters?” He let that hang in the air, which, despite the smell of Harn, felt crystal clear and sparkling, the better to let every eye in the village see Cahan.
“A gift for you, more like, monk,” he said. He heard more than one indrawn breath at his rudeness. “I follow no gods, no one rules over me.”
“Did you hear?” shouted Tussnig. In his hand he held a wooden forked wand and he pointed it at the forester. “Did you hear that, good people of Harn? He follows none! Tarl-an-Gig comes, casts out the false gods, shows their power through the victories of our Cowl-Rai! And this man scorns them! Does he wish Chyi back? Does he worship old forest gods, go on bended knee to the forest nobles? I say he does!” The monk was working himself up into a fury, jumping up and down on the spot and whirling his wand around. “Tarl-an-Gig will gift his power to the Cowl-Rai and tilt us back to warmth! This man would bring back old darkness! He will bring the boughry from the forest to prey upon us! Swarden will mass at our borders! Rootlings stand under our walls!” The monk was punctuating his words with his wand, thrusting it towards Cahan. “You will pay the price, Forester. Iftal of the burning star, the broken god before whom all others bow will judge you! The Cowl-Rai will bring his judgement. Tarl-an-Gig will drag you in chains before Iftal, you will be cast down to the Osere!” Cahan began to back away, too many eyes were on him that could be easily turned to violence. “Look at him! Ignorant and indolent. A clanless man who thinks himself above us, when he is lower even than the Osere under us! I say let you burn! Let the Rai burn you slowly to feed their cowls. Let them flay your skin from you for the glory of Tarl-an-Gig! They will thank us if we do it for them!” The man was frothing at the mouth and Cahan could feel danger growing as his words gained ground with the crowd. “Take up your—” A clod of dung hit him in the face, cutting short his rant. The shouting and dancing and frothing stopped. “Who did that?” he shouted.
“Call yourself a monk,” came the reply, and Cahan saw the young woman with the spiked hair he had given a coin to. “I have had better monks fall out of my arse!” She turned and flipped up her gown to bare her rump at him. The tension fled, the market erupted into laughter and Tussnig, seeing himself thwarted, screamed at the woman.
“Osere take you!” He ran from his shrine after her, and she vanished between the houses pursued by the irate monk and the laughter of the people. Cahan turned away. If he saw the young monk again he would give her another coin.
Even with Tussnig gone Cahan was still a figure of suspicion among those of Harn; they moved out of his way as he walked, not to ease his passage but because he was clanless and they considered it unlucky to be near him. Still, it made passing through the crowd with his floating bundle of fleeces easier and he had to put up with the smell of them a little less.
Gart, the wool merchant of Harn was older even than Cahan, white-haired and bearded, and he had always paid a fair price for goods, despite Cahan being clanless. He suspected he gave others a fairer price, but such was life.
“Iftal’s blessing on you, Forester,” he said, eyeing up the floating bundle, “six fleeces is it? Less than your usual.”
“Lost three of my flock,” said Cahan, and pushed the bundle over. Gart cut the fleeces loose, letting the floatvine go and it spiralled up into the cold air. A good sign, if he were not in a buying mood he would have tethered the weed to his stall to reuse it. Others often let the floatvine go to inconvenience him, but Gart was not a petty man. He watched as the wool merchant began to lay the fleeces out, one on top of another, with hands gnarled by his great age.
“You should have given the monk a gift, Forester,” he said, as he smoothed a fleece down with the ease of long practice, “it would have shut him up.”
“I doubt it.”
“Aye,” he looked up, “you are probably right. He is weak, the Rai send us the scraps from their table and call it a feast.” Cahan said nothing. Gart could pass judgement on their monk if he wished, but it was not safe for him to do so. “Not of your usual quality,” said Gart.
“I had some trouble. I need to make enough for a new male.”
“Not with these,” said Gart. Cahan had expected as much.
“These, and the promise of all my skins and fleeces in Least.” It was a fair offer.
“Would if I could, Forester,” he said, “you are good for your word. But you know the Leoric’s rules on you. No favours.” Cahan nodded, he had also expected to hear that but it was worth a try.
“I’ll take coin for them then,” he said. Gart reached into his pouch and took out an amount of coin that, even knowing the fleeces were not great and that he was clanless and therefore ripe to be exploited, Cahan found disappointing.
“I will make sure a male is set aside for you in Least,” Gart said, “a good one.” Then he looked away, like a man caught stealing and Cahan wondered if the monk Tussnig had returned.
Instead he found Furin, the Leoric of Harn, standing behind him, a guard on either side, and her second, Dyon, a tall, thin man, behind her. Despite they were often at odds Cahan had always thought her a handsome woman, the Leoric, of a similar age to him, her dark hair beginning to silver, creases at the corners of her dark eyes. She thought him nothing but a problem. Furin wore the same felted clothes as everyone else but in the deep blue beloved of Tarl-an-Gig. Her face was caked in white make-up and she wore elaborate swirls across her forehead. Dyon wore the same paint but his stripes were much thinner; as if to make up for it he wore the paint of his lineage larger than most.
“I would speak with you, Forester,” she said.
“My business here is done,” he replied, “and my farm is in need of attention.” He made to leave but one of her guards, as ill-kempt and crack armoured as the gate guards, stepped in front of him.
“I heard your request of a loan from Gart,” she said. “Come speak with me and maybe I can help, despite that your fleeces are of poor quality.”
“That they are poor quality has more to do with you than me, Leoric.”
“Speak with respect to her,” said Dyon. The Leoric held up her hand to silence him, then gave Cahan a small nod, accepting what he said as truth.
“I have warm drink in my longhouse. Come share it with me,” she said. “I will not take up much of your time.”
The Leoric’s longhouse was the largest building in Harn, larger even than Cahan’s farm. He leant his staff by the door as he entered. A fire burned in a pit within and saplamps threw out a dim glow. A small boy played before the fire with dolls made of dry grass.
“Issofur,” said the Leoric, “I would speak with this man, play in the back.” The boy stood and ran to the rear, vanishing behind the screens of woven reeds. The gloom hid much of the building, but there was the sense of a large space beyond the stools around the small fire. It was warmer in the longhouse than without, but Cahan’s breath clouded in the air. Not even the Leoric of Harn was rich enough to warm her rooms well. She ladled out a warm drink from the smaller of two clay pots suspended over the fire and passed the cup across. Then she poured a drink for herself. Cahan waited until she drank before he did, such things having been drilled into him as a very young child; clanless wait.
The Leoric did not notice.
The drink, a broth of bones and herbs, was good.
Furin, the Leoric of Harn, did not talk straightaway. For all she disapproved of Cahan and made his life difficult, he thought she was an honourable woman, in her own way. She cared about the village. Not that it made him trust her any more, or want to stay with her, handsome woman or not. When she still did not speak, he did.
“Do you intend to help me buy a male crownhead in recompense for sending those poor fools up to take my farm?”
“No,” she said, and stared at him over her cup. “You are clanless,” she said, “you found a building that was derelict and made a place for yourself. I respect that. But you live within the lands of Harn, and should either be part of us or leave. Times are hard in Harn, we all need to contribute.”
“Times are hard for all of us, Leoric,” he said, sipping from his cup. “Even harder for those with no idea how to work the land if you give them a farm.”
“He said he was a farmer, and that he would make sacrifice.” She took another sip of broth. “Can you wonder I gave him permission to take your farm?”
“Well, he was not a farmer, and that has cost both of us. Me in coin, and you in the amount of goods you have to trade.” She said nothing to that as she had nothing to say, instead changing the subject.
“The monk, Forester, does not want clanless running a farm.” She sat straighter on her stool. “He thinks it an affront to Tarl-an-Gig and the ways of the new Cowl-Rai.” She looked away. “That you can travel through the forest means little now. The old gods are gone, along with the old ways.” She looked back. “It would be easier for you if you had some friends here.”
“And you offer your hand in friendship?” She shook her head. “What then?”
“You have heard that the Forestals have been coming out of Wyrdwood and preying on our trade?” Cahan nodded, and knew what was coming. “We send our fleeces to Harn-Larger in three days. If you go along to protect Gart I will pay the remaining cost of your new crownhead as recompense.”
“You cost me that crownhead.” He was surprised by the sudden vehemence in his voice, the anger, the way the thing beneath his skin moved in response to it. He took a deep breath, every hair on his body standing on end as if a freezing breeze had crept beneath his clothes and passed across his skin. He thought he had better control over himself. To the Leoric’s credit, she did not shrink from him or his anger.
“Well, as we have said, times are hard. Not only will it get you the animal, Forester, but it will get you some much-needed goodwill that the monk will find it hard to go against. I sent a farmer, he would send a mob with fire.”
“Did he send the soldiers?” he asked. She shook her head once more. “Did you?” At that she laughed.
“Osere under us, Forester,” she smiled to herself, “we have barely enough to live on here as it is. The last thing I want is the eyes of the High Leoric and her Rai turning on Harn and taking what little is left.” She leaned forward. “You come across as a man who has travelled; you know what the Rai are like.” He did not answer. His past lay in a shadow he wanted none to cast light upon.
“I am no soldier, to protect caravans of trade,” he said, wondering if she could see the lie in him. If somehow she sensed his past or if it hung around him in a cloud, a poisonous one.
“Maybe not, Forester, but you are big, bigger than most here, and that may be enough in itself to scare away the Forestals.” She looked him up and down, and graced him with a smile, a small one. “They want easy pickings. This may end up being little more than a walk to Harn-Larger and back for you, and a well-paid one.” A sensible man would have said yes there and then. Would have agreed with her and seen the logic and, in some ways, the kindness of her offer.
But Cahan had found that to be proud and headstrong was the best armour against the pain of the world, and it was a hard armour to take off. He stood.
“I think you send me for someone to blame if it goes wrong.”
“No, I do…” Cahan walked away, took up his staff from where it leaned against the wall. “You have your own guards, Leoric. Use them,” he said and left, stomping out of the village. No one bothered to try and stop him as his anger was apparent in each stride and maybe, even if he did not know it himself, it was not only the Leoric, Harn, or even the monk he was angry with.