The beginning of semester always knocks me around a bit, but things are calming down enough for me to start posting the next instalment of Caewen’s little tale. This story is a bit of a departure, where we see things from another point of view. It is my attempt to write something much more in the Tolkien mode… not, I hasten to add in the sense of elves and dwarves (though I’ve inserted a couple takes on those things), but more in the sense of the structural approach that Tolkien liked: a humble sort of main character, a journey, perhaps a pursuit, meetings along the way, and a eucatastrophe that finally links together those disparate meetings. I can’t really talk to whether I’ve done a good job, but it is what it is.
I have done my best to riff a little on some of Tolkien’s tropes too… in some places more elaborately, in other places only a little, in a few places quite clumsily. So, without any further rambling, on with the story…
A CHARM FOR THE NAMELESS CHILD
CHAPTER ONE
The air of the village was nervous the day the slaver-takers came, though they arrived neither as a surprise raid, nor a sudden brooding appearance at the fringes of the settlement. Rather, the visit was expected; anticipated; variously dreaded, and eagerly awaited–depending on who was selling, and who was to be sold. They arrived, as they always did, in an orderly column, atop their thin, pale riding-deer, leering out of their thin, pale faces. A trail of men and women, boys and girls, shambled along behind in chains. For these were not plunderers. They had not come to seize, but merely to buy. For the tall, pallid men of Sorthe considered themselves to be civilised in their use of human wares.
Wurmgloath was the sort of small, out-of-the-way woodland village where most people did not own enough to keep an oxen, let alone slaves. But a person can still be sold, even if you don’t own them. All it takes is information. A neighbour can be sold, if you know how to do it. You might inform the slavers that Old Man Carfew who used to sit outside his door with a big woodaxe whenever the slave-buyers visited… well, he was taken by the summer fever, and his wife and daughter are alone now. You might tell them that the elderly Karle couple are raising their grandchildren alone since their daughter and son-in-law were murdered by robbers a month back. You might tell them that you’ve a good-for-nothing son, but you’d want to add that work can be beaten out of him. If you’ve a big enough stick.
That last, was what his father had said. The boy had been lurking watchfully around the slavers all morning. After all, it was only sensible to know what sorts of things such people were up to. So it happened that he was quietly eavesdropping, just away to the side, in shadow, when the his father limped by. Really, his father ought have seen him there–in the frail darkness cast by a row of cottages–but it was past noon, so the old great towering heap of gristle and fat was already drunk. He swayed a little as he spoke.
“Any skills?” said a slave-taker who was hollow-cheeked, even for a Sorthelander. His accent was full of drawn vowels and hard clipped noises.
“Useless,” said his father. “Worthless.” He shook his head. “A shame to me and all that is mine. I tried to teach him the trade but he’s too stupid.”
Because the boy had lost most of his hearing from one ear after a particularly bad beating, he needed to shift his position and tilt his head to catch the words. The slave-taker noticed him do this and glanced over, suspicious perhaps. But his father didn’t. He just continued to talk, drunk.
The boy smiled, trying to pretend that maybe he was standing around, wanting to sell information of his own, trying not to look like he was the very person they were talking about.
“Blacksmith,” said his father, muttering the words through teeth and spittle.
That raised a spark of interest. “That so?” The Sortheman looked up and down at the broken-down man. “That so? We’ve a need for smithing. That’s exactly what we’ve a need for. Even a half-trained boy is worth something.”
Ever on the look-out for a scheme, the boy’s father narrowed his eyes and said, “Why’s that then?”
“War,” answered the slave-taker. “Ain’t you heard? The Four Princes of Sorthe–hallowed are their crowns–have sworn an alliance to the Winter King. All the north readies for war. Smiths are in demand.” He laid a conspiratorial hand on a slumped shoulder. “Tell you what. I can see you’re a man of morals. Good, solid morals. If we can take this lad off your hands, I’ll give you a bit of payment now, and the rest when we get hands on him. Think of it like an apprenticeship, only we pay you. Sound fair?”
“Very fair,” said his father. His eyes swam with a hopeful, thirsty light.
“Where do you live?”
“Over by the burned-out sheds. Over there.” He waved a thick hand in the general direction of the crumbling cottage where the boy and father lived and tried their best to avoid each other.
The boy didn’t want to hear any more of the conversation. He was already slipping away, weaving in-between two of the larger stone-and-daub houses on the main road, then jumping over a rickety fence, through a stinking swine-yard–his old beat-up shoes made squelching noises in the deep muck–and out into the back-fields where a few people were nervously cutting cabbages for the night’s dinners.
He found a thick tussocky place under a hawthorn, and waited for the light to fade. What to do? What to do? He sat and he thought. Anxiety was rising in his throat like bile. More than once, the boy was startled by the movement of a magpie, or stray dog. His father had reached his hand out and taken the coins; he was serious this year. His father really meant to sell him. But the boy had always known this day would come, eventually. It was what had happened to his mother, after all, or leastways, the village gossips told him so–he had been too young to remember, rightly–but the story was that his mother had been sold for drinking money one winter’s night, the boy just barely out of toddling.
As the sun settled itself westward, as the sky changed from palest blue to a thicker congealed indigo, the boy caught a sound from his good ear, and looked cautiously out through the thickets. There was yelling and crying from somewhere along the wood’s edge. Through the tangle of foliage he could see three of the slave-takers man-handling someone back towards the village. Other folk must be hiding around the fringes of the fields then, and the slavers were searching.
It was dangerous to stay where he was.
He needed to make a decision. He needed to think. He had been preparing for this day for a couple years now. That was a thing in his favour. There was a big hollow oak up on the hill concealing a brindle-stick and sack full of stolen trail food, some clean straw for his shoes, a few dirty coins: all of it collected and secreted away, bit by hard-won bit. But there was one other thing in that he would never to leave behind, and that was still in the old cottage. He had to risk going back, just quickly, just once.
He thought it over and decided that the best place to hide until dark might be right under other folks’ noses. It’s foolhardy to hide immediately beside the person who’s looking for you, but it’s also true that folk don’t expect it either. A person doesn’t look under their own shoe for a mouse.
So, careful as he could, he crept out of the scrub, threaded his way among appletrees and cabbages and back into the lanes between the houses of the village. The light was fading but not yet gone: a rich afternoon grey and blue of shadows interplaying.
Noise and voices drew him on.
At one end of the village stood the drink-house, and even from a distance he could see that ill-gotten coin was being spent. More than a few of the slave-takers were milling about too. His father might be inside, or he might have already been and gone with an armful of pots.
The evening was getting to be shadowy enough that the boy could sneak around the back of the drink-house, and then creep up to the side, near the front porch. Atop the timber planking, a handful of men were sitting in the cool air. He recognised them at a glance: Buird the baker was down the other end talking in a low voice with Hoispehoy and Lirte. They all had big sheep-mulesing knives strapped to their belts. They kept looking over at the armed Sorthelanders who themselves were standing about, talking, not far out of the lantern light, just out on the road.
On the nearer side of the porch, Old Keezer was nursing a small clay mug of a hot drink that steamed. The air around him smelled of cider and honey. Keezer was one of the few people in the village who was nice to the boy. The old man had travelled and tinkered and laboured on far-flung farms his whole life, and never really settled down until old age put a flame into his knees. Maybe the lack of family made him lonely, or maybe Old Keezer had started life alone himself? Whatever the reason, the old fellow had a soft spot for the blacksmith’s child.
The boy took a risk and poked Keezer in the ankle. The old man started, looked down with a frown and hissed, “What’re you doing there? You ought be locked away tight someplace. Don’t you know there are slavers ’bout? And they’re taking mostly lads and men too. Not interested in no one much else, no much. Mostly, they want lads and men for hard labouring.”
“They say it’s cause of a war happening,” said the boy.
“That so? Hadn’t heard that, but it’d make sense.” Old Keezer mused on this, staring into the gathering gloom. “Wonder what that means for us then? Small villages don’t fare well when armies are marching.”
“Maybe they’ll just pass by?”
“Maybe.” Keezer sounded unconvinced. “So why are you not safely home behind a door then? You don’t want to let them lot catch you alone.”
“Father’s already told them he’ll sell me. I’m done with Wurmgloath, Mister Keezer. I’m leaving tonight. Just have to sneak home, fetch one thing, then I’m off. I can’t stay.”
“No,” said Keezer. “No, I suppose can’t. Sooner or later, that idiot of a Da’ of yours was going to sell you, or beat you half-to-death. Where’re you going then?”
The boy shrugged. “South? Away from the north, anyway. To Brae?”
“I been to Brae. It’s a lovely place. Huge. Full of people. Why there must be ten thousand people living in Brae, at the least.”
Unable to even imagine what ten thousand people looked like, the boy felt a twinge of fear, and second thoughts needled him. Old Keezer seemed to notice this and smiled. “Here,” you’ll be alright. He shrugged to himself. “If you’re really running off, then I’ve a going away present for you. Here.” He wriggled his fingers into a pocket and took out a small, unremarkable piece of rock crystal. “Not much to look at, but it’s a useful little charm for them that lives on the road. I never had a child of me own, and it’s about time it passed on to someone who’ll have more use for it. Though, I should warn you I’ve used it mostly up.” He scratched his nose. “Might not have more than one or two tricks-of-the-question left in it, I guess.”
“Is it magic?” said the boy, feeling its weight land lightly in his palm.
“A little bit. No magician would think much of it, but the tinker I bought it off swore by it, and I swear by it too. Hold it in your palm.”
The boy did. It felt faintly warm. He peered at it closely and noticed it was full of cracks. Nothing seemed to happen. “How does it work then?”
“It’s always working, but never flashy. But what it does is rightfully useful. If you hold it in your hands and say to it, Meesie stone, meesie stone, I’ve a dubeity for you, and then you ask it a straightforward yes or no sort of thing, it’ll answer. A little red light for yes, grey light for no. But before you say anything…!”
The boy had been about to ask something to test it.
“…like I said, I put a lot of questions to the meesie stone in my time, and every question puts a crack in it. The harder the question, the bigger the crack. It’ll fall to pieces, sooner or later, so ask questions sparingly, you understand me?”
The stone tingled very slightly. “Oh,” said the boy. “How many questions does it have left?”
“Don’t know.” He shrugged. “One or two,” said Old Keezer with a small sigh. “Sorry about that. I never was a restrained man myself. Impatient, in my day. But put it away in your pocket, and listen to me now: I’ve some other advice, if you’re serious about going vagabonding. You will meet people out on the roads. There are travelling Wastreling troupes, though they mostly stick to themselves, and you’ll meet tinkers, wandering farmhands, merchants and other stranger folks. Some of them will be good folks,–folks you can trust–and that’s what you need most if you’re on the road. A good friend or two who can watch your back, while you watch theirs. That’s the difference between happy times travelling, and a pointy dagger in the gut. Understand?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“The charm’ll make it easier to the tell fibbers and robbers from the honest folks, but like I said, it don’t have many uses left, so be careful with it.”
“Thank you.” The boy glanced around, craning to look over the floor of the porch. “Have you seen my Da’ anywhere about?”
“He came by looking for you earlier, but I told him I hadn’t seen you today. I’ll tell him that again if he comes by later. That said, I reckon he’s home now. He walked off with a pin-cask under his arm.”
The boy reflected on this. “Bit funny that they’d pay him before taking me away. I mean, that’s strange isn’t it?”
Old Keezer nodded. “I always said you were a clever one, young Nameless,” which is what Keezer called the boy. It was among the kinder of the names he wore. Keezer sniffed. “Merchants of any stripe are not known for their charity. Them that deal in human sorrow, the least so.”
The boy nodded. “I probably ought to try sneaking home then. If Da’s drunk himself to sleep, it’ll be easy. I can take my things. Get going. Be gone.”
Old Keezer rumbled in the back of his throat. “You know, it’d be safer if you just took yourself off now. What’re you going back for?”
The boy felt a touch of embarrassment. “It’s a bit foolish, really. But, well, all I have of Ma’ is a wool scarf she knitted. She made it for Da’, but he didn’t ever wear it, so I took it and hid it under my cot. I’d have taken it earlier, only I didn’t know today was going to be the day I’d be leaving.” He steeled himself. “But I’m not leaving without it. I’m not.”
“Fair enough,” said Keezer. “Fair enough. I’ve heard of worse reasons to risk one’s neck, truth be told.”
The boy stood and took a step into the darkness. “Goodbye, Mister Keezer. Thank you for being kind. I know I’m slow and stupid, and can’t even hear any good no more, but you’ve always been nice. Thank you.”
“Yes. Well. Nice is nice. And remember, you’re not as stupid as your father always tells you, young Mister Nameless. And on that: don’t let anyone out there call you the sort of names they call you here. Worthless, and Useless, Stupid… names like that… you can’t go around your whole life just being ‘the boy’, neither. Boy, do this. Boy, do that. A sour name is the sort of thing that eats away at pride, and makes a person into a slave without chains. Being called all manner of things, cause you don’t have a proper name… that’s just as bad. Find yourself a name, a good name. And if you don’t find one, make one up. A name is a name, no matter you you come to it.”
He didn’t really have anything to say to that. He nodded and tried to smile, and then he crept away into the murk of the night.