Authors: Nathan Lowell
Tanyth took her seat beside the fire as the three children crept closer to hear the adults talking about adult things, eyes shining bright in the failing light of evening. “Well, I suspect it’s common for people to claim they have no money. Villages along the Pike like this generally don’t have much in the way of cash income. Just like here, they barter and share. That makes it difficult for people like Birchwood to force them to pay for protection.”
Megan nodded. “Can’t give what you don’t have.”
“Exactly, my dear. So, I suspect that Mr. Birchwood has heard it before and he doesn’t believe it here in particular because he knows William’s father is rich.”
“Did he really think that the clay quarry is a silver mine?”
Tanyth shrugged. “Apparently. He just can’t imagine that a rich man’s son, like William, would be out here in the woods digging up clay.” She paused. “I’m not sure I do, and I’ve been here to see.”
“It’s clay.” Megan made the announcement very clearly. “It’s good clay, but it’s clay.”
“Do you know a lot about clay?”
Megan grinned and giggled a little. “Yes, mum. My da owns the Kleesport Brickworks and my uncle owns Kleesport Pottery. I was throwing pots before I was ten winters old.” She held up her mug. “This is pottery from Uncle Ezra’s factory.” She smiled. “He sells it to us cheap.”
Tanyth blinked in disbelief. “So this really is good clay?”
Megan nodded soberly. “It surely is, mum.” She looked down for a moment and then leaned in to speak quietly. “Pound for pound, it’s worth more than silver ore. At least the ore they get around here.” She grinned at the older woman. “It has trace minerals that give it a nice color and texture.”
Tanyth giggled a little in return. “It’s just clay, but it’s worth more than silver?”
Megan nodded. “Oh, yes, mum, but only to people who know what it is and what to do with it.”
Tanyth shook her head in disbelief. “No wonder William keeps all the money in town. You couldn’t afford a militia big enough to guard it out here.”
Megan smiled happily. “It’s why the whole village is set up the way it is. We don’t have any money here, but we’re slowly getting rich in town. And like William said. There’s no place to spend it out here.”
Tanyth grimaced. “But that still doesn’t answer the question of what to do about Birchwood and his bully boys.” She glanced at Megan. “I don’t suppose we can turn them in to the King’s Own?”
“If we could get their attention, maybe, mum.”
Tanyth sighed. “Yes. I can see where that might be a problem.”
Megan turned to the kids. “Ok, enough entertainment for one night, my wee cabbages. Shall we have some soup and go to bed?”
They lined up politely, got soup and bread and settled down to eat with a minimum of muss and fuss. Tanyth marveled at how well Megan was bearing up under the ordeal of being kidnapped, dragged through the forest, burned out of her home, and then moving her household–what parts of it survived the fire–all in the same day. With dinner over and the children tucked into snug beds beside the hearth, Megan sat by the fire with mending on her lap while the children nodded off in the warm, dimness of the snug cottage. As the last of the little ones drifted off, Tanyth realized that Megan was sitting very still and hadn’t moved needle or thread for several minutes. She glanced over and saw the tears glistening on the young woman’s face in the flickering light of the fire.
“Oh, my poor dear.”
Megan shook once in a muffled sob.
Tanyth crossed to her and cradled her in her arms. “There, there, my dear. There, there.” She held and rocked her as if she were a child herself, letting her sob silently against her and making sure the children didn’t see by keeping her body between mother and children. She held her and stroked her hair until the sobs passed, finally, leaving Megan weak, shaken, and limp in Tanyth’s lap. Tanyth helped the younger woman into her bed and tucked her in before banking the fire and settling on her own bedroll for the night.
Chapter 25
Last Straw
Tanyth sat on her bedroll, gazing into the golden depths of the banked coals and pondering. The day had been filled with terror. She knew they’d gotten off easily. Birchwood would not stop until he was forced to. Of that, she was certain. She’d seen enough of his type over the course of her life. By rights, it should be a matter of having the King’s Own deal with him, but petty banditry–particularly in the edges of the kingdom–was practically a way of life. By the time the King’s Own could deal with it, the village could be destroyed.
“Mother, what do we do?” The words were a whispered prayer but the only answer was the sound of night winds sighing across the top of the chimney. The sound drew a sigh from Tanyth as she settled into her blankets.
Her rest was fitful, each sound in the night, each shift in the wind half woke her. The dreams, as much as she could remember, were nonsensical–images of bears tearing open logs to eat the larvae within, one long disturbing passage of a tree falling in the forest and rotting away–eaten by bugs, filled with fungus–and others she would never remember at all until just before dawn she dreamed of a single drop of blood. It fell through a crystalline blue sky, a sphere of crimson shimmering in the light, falling, falling, falling, until it splattered into a darkened star burst on a hearthstone. The wet redness faded to black as the stone drank in the moisture, leaving only the star shaped stain on the rock.
A single sharp raven’s caw brought her awake–eyes searching the dimness as the images of her dreams faded in the gray light of morning. The soft sound of sleeping children blended with the sound of the wind in the chimney. Her belt knife dug into her side where her habit placed it in her bedroll each night. She dressed in her bulky trousers and strapped on the knife. It took but a few minutes to stoke up the fire and fill the kettle from the covered bucket. By the time she was done, Megan stirred in her bedroll and blinked slowly up from slumber.
Tanyth smiled and nodded to the younger woman who smiled and gave a small wave in return. Her eyes closed again, and Tanyth watched her drowse off again in the space of three breaths.
She huffed a quiet laugh and went to the door, opening it a crack to peep out. The sun still hid below the tree tops to the east, but lit the sky with a clear, pale light. The gravel path that served the village as road stood whitely against the dark, wet grasses. A skirl of cold, morning air sneaked in through the crack and washed over her face, drying the night’s moisture from her skin. She filled her lungs with the cool freshness of a new day.
She slipped out and walked to the main path, looking for the guard and spotting William and Karl walking between the houses. They saw her and waved. The cool morning air reminded her that she needed to use the privy and she walked quickly.
She dealt with the privy in short order and met William and Karl on the way back to the house. “Good morning, mum.” William looked haggard and even Karl looked a bit worse for wear.
“Good morning, William. Good morning, Karl. How are you doing this morning?”
Karl smiled wanly. “Morning, mum. I’m ready for my bed, truth be told.”
William shrugged. “I’m ok, mum. How are things in your house? Did the kids settle ok?”
She shrugged in return. “Kids are fine, I think. Megan may take a little longer to recover.”
William grimaced. “I was afraid of that. Any problems over night?”
Tanyth remembered the sobbing, shuddering woman that she’d rocked the night before. “No. No problems. She just needs time.”
Karl spat on the grass. “We need to deal with this guy. We can’t go on like this.”
“Now, Karl, we’ve been talking about this all night long.” William tried to put a halt on the conversation.
Karl shook his head. “Don’t you, ’Now, Karl,’ me, William Mapleton. You know as well as I do that we just are not set up for this. Towns have walls and guards to guard them. We’re a collection of huts, spread out and open.” He paused for breath before continuing. “You saw that last night. If he can grab Riley...”
William nodded, defeated. “It mighta been any of them. Riley was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and by himself.” William sighed and looked at Tanyth. “They were playing hide and seek before bed. He went to hide and before we knew he was gone. Birchwood brought him back.” He shuddered and closed his eyes. “Anything could have happened.”
“He’s right, you know.” Tanyth’s voice was soft and low and she nodded to Karl.
William nodded without looking up. “I know, but what can we do about it?” His voice sounded ragged and harsh in the quiet morning. He paused and took a deep breath. He looked up and indicated the village around him with a sweep of his head. “We can’t build a wall around this. It’s too spread out. We don’t have the manpower or the money to hire a full-time guard.”
Tanyth and Karl followed his gaze around the village.
Tanyth nodded slowly. “I was in the southlands a few winters ago. Land there is flat and open and mostly grassy. Hot as blazes in the summer. Winter blows through for a month or so, but it’s bitter cold.”
She thought back to her winter with Mother Ashborne. “The King’s Own was spread thin down that way, too, and it’s right on the border with Barramoor. Every so often the towns got raided.”
William looked incensed. “We have treaties with Barramoor. That’s not supposed to happen!”
“Indeed we do and it’s not supposed to but...” Tanyth shrugged.
Karl finished her thought. “The King’s Own is spread too thin.”
Tanyth nodded sadly. “The point is that they had to deal with it, and I think we’ll need to deal with it, too. Not just Birchwood, but the next band of buggers as well.”
William objected. “I thought that’s what the Inn was about.”
“It is.” Tanyth agreed and pointed to Karl with her thumb. “But he’s got the right of it, too. We need to deal with Birchwood and we’re too vulnerable to him because we’re all spread out.”
“How do they deal with that in the southlands, mum?” Karl’s eyes searched her face.
“They fort up.”
William nodded and shrugged all at once. “Sure, but we don’t have a fort!” The frustration was showing in his voice. “When we build the inn we can make it defensible but we don’t have the inn yet and we can’t build it so long as we have to keep looking over our shoulders for Birchwood and his bravos.”
“Yes, the Inn will help but you’ve got a fort now.” Tanyth’s voice carried conviction and cut through his objections. “The barn.”
Both men stopped and stared at her. “The barn?” William’s voice almost cracked from surprise but Karl’s face took on a thoughtful expression.
She pressed on. “The barn. It’s big enough. It’s where most of the village’s supplies are. It’s where the animals are–or at least most of them. The workroom even has a hearth for cooking.” She paused to consider. “The only thing it doesn’t have is a well.”
The two men looked at each other. Karl turned to her. “What good will being in the barn do us, mum? They can still burn us out, one house at a time.”
Tanyth shrugged. “Yes, they can, but houses can be rebuilt.” She looked pointedly at William. “Children can’t be. If we can keep Birchwood from killing anybody–or stealing the supplies we need for the winter–then there’s nothing he can really do except be a boil on our backsides. Sooner or later he’ll realize that and move on.”
William frowned in thought and pinched his lips together between thumb and forefinger. Karl looked around the village as if measuring it with his eyes.
After a few moments, both men were nodding.
Karl spoke first. “With everybody in one space, guarding would be a lot easier and we’d have a smaller perimeter to watch.”
William agreed. “We’d be packed in cheek by jowl for awhile but splitting the work of feeding everybody and watching the kids...” He shrugged. “More eyes mean less opportunities for Birchwood.”
William sighed and turned to look at the barn back in the trees. “Well, we stayed there the first winter.”
Karl looked shocked. “Why would we have to spend the winter there? Birchwood will be gone soon enough once he realizes he can’t get at us and we’re not going pay.”
William glanced at Tanyth who sighed before she spoke. “Because he’ll probably be so angry that he’ll torch the houses out of spite.”
Karl got very still and turned to look at the village with a slow sweep of his head before looking back at Tanyth and then at William. He sighed. “Well, if we muck out the stalls good and lay down fresh straw, we can put bedrolls there until Frank and the boys get back.”
William nodded his agreement. “And when they get back we’ll have more hands to help with rebuilding.”
The three stood and looked at each other for a few more moments and the sun tipped up over the trees across the Pike. William nodded to Karl. “Help me get Bester in harness and we’ll use the ox cart to move everybody up to the barn.”
Karl nodded.
William turned to Tanyth. “You just moved in, so I hate to have you move again, but...” His voice petered out.
“We’ve not had much time to get settled yet.” Tanyth finished for him.
He shrugged apologetically and she grinned. “I’ll go see if Megan and the kids are up.”
They watched to make sure she arrived safely before turning toward the barn. She slipped into the house and four pair of eyes turned to look at her. “Good morning, everybody. I’m glad to see you all up. We’re going to do something different today!”
Sandy perked up at that. “Really, mum? What’s that? Something fun?”
Tanyth shrugged. “Well, I don’t know if ’fun’ is the word I’d use, but we’ll all sleep better at night, I think.”
Megan caught something in her voice. “What are we going to do today, mum?”
“Move.”
Megan’s eyebrows shot up. “Move? We just moved in. We have to move out?”
Tanyth crossed to the hearth and helped herself to a cup of tea before settling in the circle of children, Megan watching from the hearth. “Yes, well. We have this problem with the bad men.” She addressed her comments to the kids but she was talking to Megan. Sandy sat enraptured by the older woman sitting on the hearthstone with her. “They might have hurt Riley yesterday and we were all trying to be so careful and everything.”