The Bloody North (The Fallen Crown) (3 page)

* * *

Cabril burns, even in the rain.

"A good day's work," Muriel sa
ys as she surveys the carnage that has been left in the campaign's wake. More often than not, they were sought out for smaller jobs. Collecting bounties, that kind of thing. But every now and then something like a siege – commanding an entire army against a stronghold or city – fell in their laps. Such a job can be worth an unthinkable amount.

Rowan watche
s the roof of a hospital burn, the former patients gathered outside of it as they peer up at the tower of smoke filling the darkening sky.

"If you say so."

She reaches out, turnes his face so she can see the cut better. Rowan's trophy for defeating the infamous Butcher of Clement. "Doesn't seem too bad."

"Yeah? Say
that if you're on the receiving end."

"I'm just telling you. It's not
that bad. It actually turns me on," Muriel says with a cheeky wink. "Makes you look more rugged."

"
You giving me a complement?"

"Be whatever you want to believe it is," she sa
ys, studying the rest of his face. "Better than saying you look like something a dog threw up."

"Thanks."

* * *

Hours later, he woke to find Ceeli
at the foot of his bed. "Not managed it yet, then," she said.

Ro
wan sat up, cleared his throat. "No."

"I know it's hard, I know you just want to lay there and forget about
everything, but it'll all be easier on you if you don't. If you get up, start walking."

"You're right," he said. "Of course. I will do."

"Good," she said with one curt nod of her head.

Rowan slowly lean
ed forward for the clothes at the end of the bed, back crying out in agony as he did so. Ceeli watched him struggle, didn't attempt to help. But she did smile when his fingers grasped the neatly folded clothing. "Any word on the bastards who did this? Any news?" he asked, his voice weak with exertion.

Ceeli shook her head. "None.
Only that they were Regiment men, like you said. They didn't do any more damage, not here at least. Don't know if they hit the other villages down the road. Far as I know, they just finished up at yours and rode off. Who knows the reason behind it, eh? By the time the men got themselves together, they were gone on their way. It's all this upset, is what it is. Whole country's lost its mind."

The civil war,
Rowan thought.
Government against Monarchy. Upset's an understatement.

There'd been rumblings of it for months,
though he'd not paid it much attention. Now he wished he had. Maybe he could've read the signs and got his wife and children out of harm's way. As it was, Starkgard had gone to war with itself, and the death of his loved ones was but a small consequence.

"Folk say those
Breakers are causing strife all over," Ceeli said. "And all sorts of mad ones riding with them, too."

He knew the b
are bones of what was happening throughout Starkgard. In truth, there'd always been unrest, in one form or the other. But never all-out war. The Prime Minister –
a man called Levine Wagstaff
– had called for the powers of the monarchy to be reviewed and revised by vote. King Francis the Second had attempted to dissolve Parliament but had not counted on an open rebellion from his own Parliament. Francis fled the capital city and sought refuge with allies. Meanwhile Wagstaff gathered his own accomplices.

Rowan didn't know who
'd sided with whom, or if there'd been any major battles anywhere. He knew only that Starkgard grappled with itself for power, and his life had been torn away from him in the ensuing scuffle.

Not bad for a man working his land, minding his own business.

"War attracts all the wrong kinds," Rowan said.

"Never a truer word said. Anyway, I'll let you get dressed. I saw enough of your bits when I had to bathe ya."

She went to walk past and Rowan caught her fat, puffy hand. "Ceeli. Thanks. For everything."

"Don't mention it.
Your Sara was a lovely woman. The best. Told me once you had a shady past you were trying hard to put behind you. I get it. We've all got something we're trying to forget."

"She was the love of my life," Rowan
said, and meant it. "I don't know what I'll do without her. She made me . . .
better
, I suppose."

"You'll do what has to be done. You'll remember their faces, their names, the way you felt for them and the way they felt for you, and you'll fight. You can start now. G
et your arse out of bed. Go outside and breathe the air. You've got unfinished business," she said regretfully. "The dearly departed don't bury themselves."

The
remains of the house smouldered, a pile of blackened timbers wet with rain. No sign of his children, his beautiful son and daughter.

Nothing but damp
ash.

Sara's tortured body
had been cleaned, wrapped in a shroud back at the village. Tarl had offered to transfer her to the farm to be buried, carrying her body carefully in the back of his wagon. Villagers lowered their heads as they passed, by way of respect, and it was all Rowan could do to stare dead ahead, face slack.

I
t was only when he saw Sara's tidy form he realised how little she had been. How petite. Standing at the back of the wagon, with her small body wrapped up in front of him, he remembered her small hands with nimble fingers, small feet with delicate toes. Her soft touch when she'd held his face as they made love. Tarl climbed up in the wagon, lifted her top end while Rowan took her feet, and they slowly lowered her to the ground.

Tarl
's hand rested on his shoulder. "If you want some time, you know . . . I'll come back later. If you need to be alone."

Rowan looked about at the ruin of his life. The burn
ed-out house. His wife at his feet. He shook his head slowly. "No. Help me find the shovels. Help me to dig."

* * *

The sharp edges of the shovels bit into the hard earth, their boots pushing them in before levering them up. They'd been digging the hole for more than an hour before Tarl cleared his throat to speak. "Rowan."

"Huh?"

He pointed at his shirt. "You're bleeding."

Rowan reached behind him, put a hand there. Blood on his fingertips, right where the wound was. "It'
s the stitches stretching a bit is all," he said through gritted teeth.

"D'you want to stop? Me and some of the men
from the village can finish–"

"No."

Tarl went to say something, thought better of it and just nodded.

"If it rips my back wide open,
I swear I'm digging this fucking hole," Rowan growled. "I couldn't save her life. I failed her then. I'm not failing her now."

* * *

Hot and sweaty despite the chill air, Rowan stood to the side of the grave, looked down at Sara's body and wondered what there was to say. What could he possibly put into words that would have any true meaning, let alone make sense? How did you express pain? Tarl stood silently next to him, hands clasped behind his back, head down, eyes shut.

Rowan looked up at the sky. He remembered
the shaft of light in the barn coming down strong from a gap in the roof above. As if it were a sign of some kind. There was no such light now. Just a grey blanket of rain clouds smothering the drab heavens and not so much as a bird to disturb it.

Why them?
Rowan asked whoever or whatever up there has a say in how such events unfold.
My wife. My son. My daughter. Why'd you take them and not me? After all I've done in the past, after all the blood I've had run over these hands . . .

He closed his eyes. Breathed deep of the cool air. Damp, ready for more rain.

No amount of water can wash away the blood on these hands. This has proved it. A man tries to make a change, make amends for what he's done in the past, and this is all he gets in return. Good life in return for the bad. No life in return for the good. There's poetic justice for you.

Rowan opened his eyes. Looked down at his hands where he'd clenched them tight into fists. His nails had cut deep into his palms.

Tarl handed Rowan a shovel. "Are you ready?"

"Aye," Rowan said, chucking in a shovelful of wet dirt.
It thudded against her shrouded corpse down there in the hole and for a crazy moment he felt the urge to get her back out. The thought of the cold, wet mud taking her from him was almost too much to bear. But he carried on anyway.

His back was on fire after all the digging
. The wound Ceeli had stitched threatened to rip apart, but it held. He was sure his shirt would be soaked red all the way up the back by now if he cared to look. Rowan got on his knees, took a handful of the dirt, ground it between his fingers, felt the cold grit of it.

"You okay?" Tarl asked him.

"Aye," he said, standing again. "Let's finish up."

* * *

"I don't want to put on you like this," Rowan said back at the tavern. He lay on his front, Ceeli tending to his wound despite his objections.

"Stop saying
that or I'll change my mind," she said tersely. "The good news is the stitches haven't come out. I'll do another poultice for tonight. It should take the swelling out, stop it getting infected."

"Thanks."

"You could have had people there, you know. At the burial I mean. Tarl says it was a pretty quiet affair," Ceeli said.

"Didn't know what to say," Rowan admitted. "I just wanted to put her to rest. It was all I could think of."

"It's all any of us can do, when it comes. At some point, everyone has to bury someone else who means something to them. It's the way of things I guess," Ceeli said. "I don't quite know what you say at times like that."

"Me neither."

Ceeli walked to the door, stopped before opening it. "What will you do now? Continue with the farm?"

"I don't think so."

"Then what?" she asked him. Outside, it had started to rain.

Rowan
sighed. "Wake up tomorrow, I suppose."

* * *

A fine mist of rain had swept through overnight. It made the heavy stones of the church glisten, masonry polished smooth by years of weather beating upon it. Rowan had come alone. No need for Tarl's help with this chore.

He shoved the creaking doors open and walked in, the air thick and musty. A few candles flickered here and there offering scant illumination. Father Tasker emerged from a s
ide door, hastily tying his robe.

"Late is the hour for confession, my son," the old man said with a smile. "Though for you I would make an exception
. That would be a tale worth the telling."

"
As I've always said, Father. It'd take too long," Rowan told him.

"
That you have. Many times," Tasker said. "But I'll keep trying. Listen, I heard what went on at your place. I'm sorry. A tragedy. Sure as day. I've been praying for them since I heard. And for you."

"Me?"

"God welcomes them into his warm embrace, my son. As he will all of us, when the time comes." Tasker regarded him with glassy eyes. "Including you. So what is it that brings you to the house of our maker so late in the day, Rowan?"

"I left something here once. Something I need back. Got any recollection of
that?"

Tasker sighed. He sat on the edge of one of the pews. "I was afraid this might happen.
You plan on finding these people, correct? Enacting vengeance? Listen to reason. Violence is not the answer, Rowan. Prayer and forgiveness are key . . ."

"Well, Father, I'm afraid violence is the
only answer I've got left. I buried my wife yesterday. I couldn't do the same for my kids 'cause there was nothing left to bury. So are you gonna try and talk me out of it? You gonna try and make a man see sense, when sense don't come into it no more? Blood lets blood."

"Rowan
 . . ." Father Tasker said, getting back on his feet. "This is not the path of redemption. You must see this!"

"I don’t care about redemption," he said. Rowan
led the Father by the elbow to the door he'd come from. "Go get it, Tasker. I'll wait."

T
he priest opened the door.

"And Father?"

He turned back to face him, hope there in his eyes. A hope Rowan took no great pleasure in stamping on. "Yes my son?"

"Redemption and retribution ain't the same thing. Even I know
that. Seems to me sometimes a man's gotta stop running from the man he used to be. Accept it. Embrace it for what it is. There's nothing for me here anymore. Only what you got out the back. What you've been hiding for me all this time. It's all I've got left. It's the only way I know, now everything else is gone."

The holy
man nodded. "You'd walk that path again, my son? The way of sin? The way of blood?"

"Choice is made."

Tasker returned with the item wrapped in cloth, just as Rowan had given it to him. The sack of money, too. Rowan knew he'd need it. "The choice is only ever what we decide it to be," Tasker said softly, his eyes lit with sadness as Rowan walked outside, removed the cloth, held the weapon out in his hands. Father Tasker would never have allowed him to unsheathe it within the church itself.

"Heavy as I remember it," Rowan said. The weight of it felt good, reassuring.

If I'd had it then, my children wouldn't be consigned to the past, Sara gone into the ground.

He pulled the sword free from
its simple scabbard and the bright blade dazzled in the light. A personal gift to him from the notorious Ivan Gont himself, many years before. One each for him and Muriel Bonnet. It had been an entire lifetime ago, it seemed to him. He regarded the weapon in his hands, moved it back and forth, all of it flooding back as if the sword were a key to the past.

"A mighty sword," Father Tasker said.

"A gift, long ago. The blade is from the far Eastern Empire. Made by Gont. The toughest steel known to man," Rowan said flatly. "Nothing can break it. They say Gont uses metal fallen from the stars, if you believe that kind of thing."

"Now I understand why you had me hide it here. I often wondered why you did not simply sell it," Tasker said. "Though I wonder if, perhaps, you thought this day might come
 . . ."

Rowan did not answer him. Weak sunlight glinted off the edge of the metal. He held it high
and gazed up at it.

"Whichever road you travel, my son, may God go with you."

Rowan slid the sword back into the scabbard and looped the belt around his waist. It rested there on his hip, just as it had before, those years ago. Before Sara and the children. Before everything he'd grown to love and cherish had been ripped away from him. Before he'd been left to die in the mud.

E
verything falls into its rightful place.

"I'm not sure I've got God on my side, Father."

Tasker smiled. "I will pray for your soul in either case, Rowan. I believe you need it."