15. Ramsford.


  

  Alaric had a plan. The clanless recruits would lead the caravan out in front of their wagon, pulled by the great four-horned aurochs. This made sense on two levels. First, it forced the clanless to defend the caravan from any head-on attacks; at the same time, it presented the most intimidating and hardest-to-stop wagon in the column.

  The brothers Arn and Donal flanked the aurochs with swords and shields. The women - Lyrianna spaced them out across the merchant wagons with bows at the ready. That left only Tomil’s wagon and Radek’s cart in the middle undefended, and this became the default position from which Lyrianna and Alaric flanked the column on horseback.

  Foxfell to rise again behind them, as the track took them into a deep valley that brought them back to the Dragon Horns at their most picturesque. Shallow babbling streams wound between high cliffs covered with fern and heather. Pines stood far enough from the track to allow meadows of wild flowers to sprout beside the waterside. And when they raised their eyes, glorious snow-capped peaks climbed all the way to the horizon.

  The caravan made camp beside a stone pathway through the running water. The natural choke point made it easier to defend, and the access to fresh water brought obvious benefits.

  The group of six clanless recruits and the six children they had brought with them set up a fire a little way away from the rest of the group. Lyrianna understood why. It put both them and the merchants at ease. In the long term, however, it was not a solution if they were to spend the next two hundred and forty miles eyeing each other with suspicion.

  The female recruits arranged themselves around the campfire, and Lyrianna approached.

  “What’s happening here?” she asked.

  “We’re making a fire,” Iona explained.

  “Oh? So after two days of training you are all experts now? Bring your bows and knives. We are not stopping until sunset.”

  The bow training was going better. The women had experience with that after months of being clanless, when there was no luxury of numbers to leave women at home during hunts.

  Their ability with their short scramasaxes - about half the size of Alaric’s - was less developed. Most people seemed to think no training was required for a close weapon; frantic plunging would suffice.

  That forgot the fact that the person being stabbed would do everything to stop it, including removing the weapon and using it on the former wielder. A fact Lyrianna demonstrated repeatedly, disarming them with ease, two at a time, and ending with the blades stopped at their throats.

  “It’s hard,” a woman called Hana complained. “What if we hurt you?”

  “Then you will have shown considerable improvement,” Lyrianna answered.

  There was a small laugh. “But you’re twice the size of us,” Hana continued. “Probably three or four times as strong. And you’re a dragon.”

  “It’s true,” Iona agreed. “Shouldn’t we train against each other, as we are not trying to fight dragons?”

  Lyrianna smiled. She had learned in their short time together that the clanless simply called the Order “dragons” because anywhere they were might as well have been marked “here be dragons”. It was good to know at least that the clanless were preserving the Order’s reputation.

  “I am training you to fight men. Not each other. And this way no one gets hurt. How would you feel if you accidentally stabbed each other?”

  The women looked at each other and then at the ground awkwardly.

  They kept going until orange crept into the sky behind the mountains. When they finished, Lyrianna decided to sit with them at their fire. The children had already made their own. Presumably this was a skill learned young when you lived in the wilds.

  She examined each of the women she had trained in turn. There was Iona, who was here with her brothers Arn and Donal; they had taken their two younger siblings under their protection. This was their whole surviving family; they needed this caravan to survive.

  Hana had become clanless when her husband stole a sheep from a neighbour during a particularly harsh winter. It was the only time he had stolen anything before. Now he was forced to steal everything to survive. He was still at Foxfell. She hoped they could meet again further south.

  There was Carys, all the way from the White Falcon Clan far away on the western shores of the northern realms. Her husband had been smuggling for his chief and was caught upriver in Red Bear territory. They claimed he was a spy. The chief declared him an outlaw and was only happy for the Red Bear Jarl to brand him clanless.

  Allowing Carys to join him before he was sent into exile was deemed an act of great kindness. Carys thought it was the least they were owed. The husband had died a few months ago alongside the husband of the fourth woman, Ulfa.

  “Why did you not go back after that?” Lyrianna asked. “You were not clanless yourselves. Indeed, as I understand it, women and children may join any clan. Why not return north?”

  Carys shook her head. “You don’t survive the borderlands twice. We barely survived together. As a woman alone it would be certain doom.”

  Lyrianna turned to Ulfa. She was by far the most able of the four women as a fighter. “You have had training before, have you not?”

  Ulfa let out a dry laugh. “Years ago. My family didn’t like the boy I was with, so they sent me to the Sisters of Freya. I thought I might become a shieldmaiden, but it was not so.”

  “Why not?”

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  A fond smile crossed Ulfa’s face. “My boy found me.” The smile faded. “And here death found him.”

  She talked to them for another hour and then insisted they all rest. As she was walking away from the crackling flames, Iona spoke to her alone.

  “I need you to know something,” Iona insisted.

  “What is that?”

  She nodded over to Arn and Donal packing away their shields after Alaric had finished with them.

  “The story Oswald told you wasn’t quite true. The Jarl’s nephew did attack me, but I fought back. My brothers didn’t rough him up; they knocked him out and dropped him back into the village. We hoped he wouldn’t remember.”

  “And then he claimed all the injuries were caused by your brothers because he didn’t want to admit what really happened?”

  “Yes. So you see, it’s my fault that we’re clanless, not theirs.”

  Lyrianna shook her head. “No. It is the fault of injustice. Why did you need to tell me this?”

  “I wanted you to know that I can fight back. I won’t let you down.”

  Lyrianna nodded at hearing her own words spoken back to her.

  “No you won’t.” She let a half-smile crease her cheek. “I won’t allow it. We are first to rise, always. Make sure that you rest.”

  They stayed in the valley beside the stream for the next day of travel. With each passing mile, the gentle shallow water was joined by small fingers of falling water until the combined weight carved into the bedrock and became something closer to a river with frothing white water.

  It angled across the mountain pass so that eventually they would be forced to cross it. The Order knew this well, which was why the next hold, Ramsford, was built overlooking the natural crossing point.

  They saw it from a turn in the path, sitting on the valley bed on the southern side of the stony pathway across the water. Alaric joined Lyrianna at the van of their column and spoke quietly.

  “Look up and to your right. What do you see?”

  Lyrianna followed his instructions. Behind Ramsford there was a cliff face covered in climbing plants. She raised her gaze all the way to the top and saw a campfire, or perhaps the afterglow of one.

  “Smoke. Someone is up there. Or was.”

  “What colour is that smoke?”

  “Oh.” Her heart dropped. “Pink?”

  “Which means it was red a few hours ago. Can you see if there is anyone in Ramsford?”

  Lyrianna peered. There were brown smudges that, at this distance, could be people moving about.

  “It looks like it. Perhaps they returned?”

  “Or perhaps it is not the Order?”

  Lyrianna breathed in. “What do we do? Should we stop the caravan?”

  “No. I want whoever is there to be looking at that and nothing else.” He pointed at a section of the river where high boulders broke through the surface. “We need to go ahead and cross there.”

  “All of us?”

  “No. You, me, and the brothers. Your women can stay on the caravan. We need whoever is there to see them and their bows and think that is the threat.”

  Thus the plan was set in motion. The women would stand upright and ready to shoot, as if they were simply being vigilant. The caravan would slow as it neared the crossing so that they would remain out of range for as long as possible, teasing any archers on the watchtowers to wait for their moment.

  Pines provided cover for the smaller party to divert on foot. The air here was sharp with the scent of pine needles and damp earth, a sudden cold contrast to the open fields they had just left.

  The roaring of the water increased in volume with every step they took towards the proposed crossing. When they reached the water’s edge, Lyrianna reconsidered the word “crossing”; it would imply there was an obvious path from one side to the other when in fact it relied on a series of leaps from one rock to the next through currents made to wash things rapidly downstream. The mist rising from the churning grey water stung their exposed skin.

  Alaric had to shout to be heard over the onrush. “One of us goes ahead with this rope.” He held a coil of rope in his hand. “Around the waist. The rest will hold on hard from this side. When our first person crosses they will secure the rope around that pine” - he pointed to a thick stump broken off about head height - “and the rest will follow.”

  Lyrianna looked at the stump and wondered what had become of the rest of the tree. It would have been helpful if it had fallen in their direction.

  “Who’s going to go across first?” Arn asked.

  “Whoever is strongest,” Alaric replied.

  Immediately they started looking at each other, judging thighs and biceps. Lyrianna had a sinking feeling. She was definitely the tallest. For the first time she was starting to regret her endless hours trying to out-compete her brothers at the Monastery weights room.

  “It’s her,” Donal suggested. The others nodded in agreement.

  “Oh come on, it can’t be me,” Lyrianna objected.

  “I think it is,” Alaric judged.

  Lyrianna rolled her eyes and shrugged off her cloak and jerkin. The two brothers went completely silent and still, seeing what she was wearing underneath. Lyrianna snorted. Larian had said it would be distracting.

  With the rope around her waist, the spray started hitting her face before she even set foot in the water. She readied herself and stilled her breath before stepping forward.

  “Rrrrrhhh. Fuck. That’s cold!”

  The water lapped around her greaves, drenching the fur lining and slipping down her shins. Shuddering and holding firm against the current, she pushed herself deeper, her thighs becoming buoyant for a moment before she was able to slap her hands on the cold hard rock ahead and haul herself forward.

  Vaguely she could hear sounds of encouragement from the others on the bank, the words muffled by the torrent. Easy for them to find enthusiasm. She forced herself to the next rock; froth lapped against her face and penetrated the gaps in the latticing of her chest piece. “Mmmmhrrr” was all the language she could mutter. Her thighs strained and her shoulders ached from pulling from rock to rock, and with every step her feet threatened to flip from under her. The roar of the water was now a deafening white noise.

  One final groan and she hurled herself at the far bank, crawling with such force that clumps of turf worked free around her fingers until she was on her knees on the moss and grass, collapsing in a shivering heap.

  From on her back she raised her hand to the other side, confirming that she was alive, in spite of how it felt. The rope went over the high stump. She fastened the knots. Moments later the rope went taut and the others followed, wrenching themselves onto the bank one by one. None of them complained about the crossing, no matter how much they might have wanted, carefully stopping their moans before they formed. Lyrianna nodded. Quite right. Only she was allowed to complain now.

  On the road, the caravan started the slow descent into the valley bed while they skipped through the pines and ferns, circling around the fort from the far side. The closer they came, the more they could see. There were four men on the walls, armed with shortbows. They did not wear midnight blue, nor did they wear grey. These were not men affiliated to the Order.