The Rumour Of War

The archer in his hooded cloak of faded mottled green embraced his nephew after the funeral service for Robin's father. Don Alejandro had forsaken his crimson armour for a mourning suit of black and sombre grey.

I thought Sebastian might have marched on Castellayne with an army, said Matteo. I remember he wasn't too impressed when Rafael gave away half the dukedom to his squire.

Jarl Bearskinner and his raiders were supposed to do my father's dirty work for him, said Alejandro. But found themselves storm wrecked and stranded on the coast of Navarre instead.

Matteo looked at Aldhyrwoode. So I heard.

I stood with Robin, said Alejandro. I stand with Robin.

I heard that, too.

What else do you hear?

Matteo shrugged. Many things, he said. But mostly the wind through the trees.

Come to Kaldiz with me. Father would like to see you.

Would I be welcome? Asked Matteo. Would you?

His bark is worse than his bite. And I thought that...

Now that your mother has passed.

Yes.

Why open old wounds?

To drain the poison, said Alejandro. It's the only way they heal.

Why the blood red knight? Matteo asked Sebastian. That armour. You might as well have painted a target on his chest.

Isolde's stone coffin had been carved in her likeness. The two brothers stood beside it in a transept of the duke's private chapel.

It's a hard world, said Sebastian. You have to be hard to survive.

And there are none harder than you.

I make no apologies for that.

Does it irk you? Said Matteo. That there's a man inside the steel?

No. And do you know why? Because he's his own man. I was never prouder of my son than I was when he threw a kingdom back in my face.

It didn't stop you from trying to take Rhealmyrr anyway.

And why not? Asked Don Sebastian. Have you been chasing squirrels so long that you've forgotten who you are?

I haven't forgotten.

You serve King Robin.

I serve no one. Robin is a friend, as his father was before him.

Who is this boy? That both my son and my brother would choose him over Navarre?

That's a very good question, said Matteo. And one you should think on.

When do you return to Rhealmyrr?

Are you so eager to be rid of me?

Don Sebastian stroked his late wife's alabaster smooth arm.

Not at all. I thought I might ride with you.

A ram's horn sounded from the battlements of the tallest gate tower.

Navarre had come to Castellayne!

Don Sebastian rode at the head of the column, between Matteo and Alejandro. Behind the thorned crown streamed the banners of the most noble of the noble families. A wolf's head for the Montoyas. The sea-horse of the Di Campos. Santiago's golden hind. The inverted cross of Los Gabriel. Vicarrios. De Silvas. Montenerros. Capulettes. Rodrigos. Las Verdes. And there, too, the clenched gauntlet of the D'Arturians, who were Robin's father's family.

Each Don had brought no fewer than a score of knights and men at arms. The bright sun flashing off polished steel. Helm and breastplate. Sword pommel and spear point. Their horses were enormous. Head tossing. Eye rolling. Nostril flaring. Iron shod to cave in an enemy's skull and shatter bones.

Pride o' bleedin' peacocks. A castle guard told the man next to him. Only thing bigger 'n' a Navarre's horse is his ego!

Aye, grimaced the other. And the only thing quicker 'n' their tempers is their blades.

And their tongues, added a third.

The Dons favoured needle thin moustachios and chiselled beards. Puff sleeved shirts under tight laced vests. Striped pantaloons and boots that reached mid thigh. Twinned scabbards held slender but lethal rapiers, and stilettos that were weighted for throwing.

They flaunted precious stones the size of scarab beetles on their gloved fingers. And pierced their ears with shimmering pearls and rings of silver or gold.

Ostentatious and arrogant, biting sarcasm came as easily to their lips as venom to a viper's fangs. When they weren't snapping and snarling, they scowled and sneered and signalled their displeasure with the flick of an eyebrow. But upon being presented to Queen Saavi their glib tongues were as well oiled as their blades. They charmed and flattered and marvelled at her beauty.

They bowed to King Robin. Nodded curtly at Aldhyrwoode. Praised the height and thickness of the castle walls. The width and depth of the moat with it's narrow drawbridge and iron portcullis. But they did not, and would not, feign bend the knee.

For the tourney that followed the feast, the Dons selected a champion each to ride in the lists against Rhealmyrr's best and finest. Their smug conceit took a battering as, one by one, their favourites were unseated by King Robin or the Marshall of Navarre.

Don Emilio De Santiago was heard to wonder just whose side the blood red knight was on!

The highlight of the jousting saw King Robin splinter three lances on the Duke of Navarre's shield before Don Sebastian's fourth caught him flush between shield and helm to sit Robin flat on his arse in a tumbling of wood shavings and sawdust. Alejandro fared no better. Nor did Sir Roger. Or Sir Barrett, captain of the castle guard. And at the end of the day, only Don Sebastian was undefeated.

If you want something done right, he said to Matteo afterwards, you have to do it yourself.

The Wardens of the North were men and women who, for whatever reason, had chosen to live in the wild wood forests and windswept mountain glens, where the only company they kept was their own.

It had been Aldhyrwoode's idea to employ them in Robin's service as the eyes and ears of the kingdom's northern frontier.

Some, like Matteo, had run from their pasts. Others were hiding from the present. More than a few were outcasts.

Walt the Wall-eyed was a doom-sayer.

Mushroom Meg had ended her husband's drunken rages by pinning him to a barn door with a pitchfork.

Old Tom Treadwell was a crofter who'd grown tired of trying to scrape a living from the stony soil.

Alfryd All-thumbs was a failed cut-purse and picker of pockets.

No-thumbs Ned was an ex-soldier.

Holly Halfling had been a feral child, abandoned in the wilderness by her father because of the fits of palsy that left her foaming at the mouth.

A boy called Frog the Hop was a runaway.

Ben Twist was a hunchback.

Fenn Footsore was a wandering minstrel.

All of them had one thing in common; The Greenwoode.

It was Old Tom Treadwell who first caught sight of the Skraaal and their monstrous arachniim. He told Mushroom Meg, who told Frog the Hop, who told Matteo. He gave Frog his horse and bade him ride to Castellayne and fetch the wizard Aldhyrwoode.

Old Tom guided them over the mountains by way of a steep and narrow path that, Aldhyrwoode said, aspired to be a goat track.

As the fates would have it, Saaal Soool was searching for a way through the same snow capped peaks. The four of them found the Skraaal huddled, half frozen, in the hollowed out abdomen of his dead spider.

Matteo wrapped Saaal Soool in his woollen cloak of mottled green, and Aldhyrwoode magicked a fire from pine needles and a coarse black powder he poured from a small flask he rummaged out of his satchel.

They were able to communicate using hand signals and the language of the hill tribes. When Matteo asked Saaal Soool where the Skraaal had learned it, he held both hands to his temples with the first fingers extended.

From the horned men, Tom told Aldhyrwoode. I've never seen one. Only heard stories of them. The Petroans call them fauns.

Frog the Hop was sent hopping back the way they'd come.

Wait for us at Torstone. And not a word to anyone who doesn't need to know, Aldhyrwoode warned the boy.

As soon as Saaal Soool had recovered he led them to where the Skraaal were camped on the shores of Wolf Lake. Where Aldhyrwoode spoke with the Skruuuliim. Leaving Matteo to guide the spider people as far as Claw Crag, where Sir Roger would meet them, Aldhyrwoode and Old Tom returned to Torstone, and then on to Castellayne to inform King Robin.

Oak and elm, maple and yew, spruce, pine, and cypress, bracken, fern, and berry. All could be found in the forest. There were spotted deer and wild boar. Fish swam in the ice-melt streams that tumbled down from the mountains. A brace of pheasant or capon could be traded for the small, round loaves of oat-bread baked by the hill tribes, or the drinker's fill of ale at the few and far between roadside inns.

It was in The Drowned Duck that Matteo heard his brother Sebastian had died.

It was painless, Aldhyrwoode told him. His Grace's physician saw to that. Your brother rests in his private chapel, next to Isolde. I didn't know if you had ahhh... seen it.

Matteo shook his head. I hadn't, he said. Thank you for coming to find me.

The wizard gathered up his hat, staff, and satchel, and left Matteo to his grief. Saying only, Don't be a stranger.

Matteo might have returned to Castellayne, or journeyed as far as Kaldiz, if talk of the clans whetting their axes and rattling their spears hadn't kept him at Holder's Dyke. The Dyke was an earthen defensive wall built by the ancients, so legend said, stretching between The Greenwoode and the coast, and what was now Delthemyrr, south of the river Tor.

The clans had been fighting among themselves for centuries. Rival chieftains were always butting heads. And there were blood feuds going back ten generations or more. No one thought for a moment that the clans would moot, or that Balon O'Byrne would forge an army large enough to march into Rhealmyrr and threaten Castellayne itself.

Outnumbered a hundred to one, Matteo and the other wardens had vanished into The Greenwoode, to fight a guerrilla war that, at best, could only slow the advancing clansmen...

But it bought King Robin time enough to summon his own forces.

What the fates weave cannot be unravelled. No matter how desperately Matteo fought to reach Alejandro in the press of battle, before the fatal spear thrust that would take his nephew's life...

He was always going to be too late.