Chapter 1
Caldecauthe
Cantredd
Exile year 6
Blodwen stepped back as the Highlander clansman collapsed before her. She took a firmer grasp of the clan dagger he had just entrusted to her, a blade that he had used to save her honor and, quite probably, her life. She looked to Gwdion, the leading perfect of the Blues society who had arrived with his triad just in time to see the clansman finish off the third triad who had assaulted her. She opened her mouth, to have nothing emerge, so she nodded to him forcefully.
Gwdion took charge.
“We need a door, a pallet, a hurdle, something.”
“Here,” Ossian the smith said as he reached underneath his counter to undo fastenings. “This is just setting on trestles.”
Gwdion waved at the triad coming up the lane from the other direction. “You four,” he said to the four sicuroi hands as he pointed to the clansman, “get him up on that and get him to the Moesen Baths. You,” he said to the other perfect, “run to the inner manteidd, and tell the physician and surgeon there that they are to run to the Moesen Baths to tend him.” He pointed to Duncan being raised to the counter. “They had best beat him there. Go.”
The perfect went, not even waiting for people to make a way. He ran through the crowd so fast and so skillfully that most of them were only aware of a blur or a breeze.
The clansman was on the counter, and Ossian had thrown a couple of loops of cord around his chest and his legs to help keep him in place. The hands lifted the counter and moved it out into the lane.
“Make way, there,” Gwdion shouted to the crowd. “Go,” he said to the hands, and they trundled off with their awkward burden.
“All of you,” Gwdion said to those around the final fight scene, “watch over that until we can arrange for the cleanup.”
Assurances arose all around them. Gwdion nodded, then offered a hand to Blodwen. “This way, Mistress.”
They made their way back down the lane.
Gwdion whistled when they arrived at the ambush scene. People had been peering at the bodies, but they pushed back in a hurry when they saw who was coming. Gwdion looked around. From the placement of the bodies, it was fairly easy to map out what had happened.
“So, they had two triads to your one. Did they strike all at the same time?”
“Yes.” There was a bit of a tremor in Blodwen’s voice, now that it was clear that she was going to survive this after all. “They came with daggers, rather than the dual blades . . .”
“Probably so they could get closer in the lane. Loose robes, too. Harder to see.”
“Well, yes,” Blodwen continued. “They took down Paride first,” she pointed to the guard who’d been to her left, “and that gave Dwywei a moment’s warning.” This time she pointed to the guard who’d been on her right.
“I didn’t see or hear them take Padrig,” she pointed to the guard who had been trailing, “but the clansman came from behind, so he must have seen it and dealt with the assassin himself.”
Gwdion pulled the knife from the assassin’s back. “I’d say you’re right,” he said, laying the blade down on the back of the dead assassin. “That’s not a Cantreddi knife. Has a Darcian look to it.”
The sicuroi master looked around. “So our triad, taken by surprise, managed to account for one triad. Yet three triads are dead. Either these men were very poor examples of what the Raeadd have been training up, or Duncan corNial is . . . good.”
Blodwen said nothing, letting him reach his own conclusions.
“Weeping and wailing in the family compounds tonight. Doubly so for Paride and Padrig, since they were close cousins.”
Blodwen did not respond to that, either. Gwdion moved to the dead Blue triad one by one and disentangled their bodies from the other dead, laying them out straight with their weapons beside them. The dead assassins he left sprawled on the dirt, although he did toe their daggers into a pile in the center of the ambush ground.
By the time he was done with that, they could see the other perfect and the four hands approaching at a run from the direction of the baths. They were moving as a group and not attempting stealth, so people moved out of their way with some alacrity. They brought Master Ossian’s counter with them.
“I ordered carts while I was at the manteidd,” the perfect said, breathing deeply. “They should be here soon. The physician and surgeon received the clansman in the bath’s healing chamber and began to work on him as soon as he arrived. Barrys was there, and immediately put the full bath staff at their disposal.”
“Good,” Gwdion said. “Remain here with your hands until the carts show up, and make sure that all bodies, weapons, and any other things of interest are taken up and removed to the manteidd. We will escort Mistress Blodwen back to the manteidd.”
“That would be good,” the perfect replied. “Master Pwyll was . . . concerned.”
“I can imagine,” Gwdion said dryly.
He turned to Blodwen. “We should leave now, Mistress.”
She raised a hand. “Not yet.” She turned and moved back down the lane to where Ossian stood in the remains of his booth, humming a sprightly song and cleaning the master blade the clansman had used to such good effect.
“Master Ossian,” Blodwen called out as Gwdion’s hands restored the counter to its place atop the trestles.
He ceased his humming and laid the blade down on top of its chest before he came to stand before her.
“Yes, Mistress Blodwen?”
“Did I hear the clansman correctly? Did you present to him your grandfather’s sword—yes, I’ve heard the accounts—earlier today?”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“What is the price of the blade?”
“For you, Mistress, twenty-five gold crowns.”
“What is the price of the blade for the clansman?”
Ossian fell silent, and looked back at the sword where it lay bared on top of the chest. He took a deep breath.
“For him, Mistress, the price is nothing. I would give it to him, for the joy of seeing him use it and for the work that he did with it today. And for the pieces of his broken sword.”
“What was the price you quoted him earlier today, Master Ossian?”
The answer was slow in coming. “Fifty gold crowns, Mistress.”
Blodwen nodded in a satisfied way.
“Tend to your blade, Master Ossian, and when it is clean, and oiled, and as perfect as it should be, bring it to the manteidd, where you will receive your fifty golds. You are right that the clansman deserves it, especially since his own blade was broken in the fight. Yet we will not let it be said that your grandfather’s blade was not properly valued. And for your generosity in the lending of it to the clansman, you may take up the pieces of that broken sword.”
At that, Master Ossian bowed. “As you direct, Mistress Blodwen. It shall arrive tomorrow or the next day.”
She nodded in response, then turned to the triad standing behind her. “Now we can leave, Gwdion.”
✽✽✽
Ossian walked out into the lane and moved to pick up the broken blade of the clansman’s sword. As he straightened, he felt a touch on his arm. He looked down to see the hilt with its stub of remaining blade in the hand of the woman with the birthmark from across the lane.
“Thanks, Seren,” he told the woman as he took it.
She waved off his thanks, and stood with her hands on her hips to watch the retreating triad for a moment.
“He wasn’t anything special to look at,” Seren said finally. “That clansman, I mean. Who would have thought?” She walked back to her own booth and hopped up on its counter.
Ossian laid the pieces of the broken sword on his own counter, but didn’t lean on it because he hadn’t reattached it to the trestles yet.
“Clansmen are . . . clansmen,” he finally replied. “Only a few ever come down off of the Highland plateau and come this far away, but those that do usually have some kind of impact on anywhere they go. And they all, every one of them that I’ve heard about, have been better than average with a sword. This Duncan was apparently one of the best.”
Seren whistled. “I’ll say. He took down an entire triad.”
“More than that,” Ossian replied. “Some of that,” he waved at where the carts had finally arrived at the first ambush site, “was his doing as well.”
They both looked that direction, and watched as body after body was lifted to the carts; the Blue’s guards to one cart, and the assassins to another, including the triad that lay in the bloody mud right before their booths. All the weapons were placed in the Blue’s cart, though. Twelve dead men, from less than a quarter of an hour’s events.
Ossian shook his head and turned back to his booth. He fastened the counter back to its trestles, then picked up the master blade and resumed cleaning it.
“That fight chased away all the business,” he heard Seren complain.
“They’ll be back in a while,” he returned. “It will be really busy tomorrow, because everyone will want to see where it happened. That’s the biggest fight between the societies in several years, and having the clansman involved will just make it seem exotic or supernatural. Make sure you have a lot of your work here tomorrow, including your best.”
“So what are you going to do with these?”
He looked up to see Seren standing in front of his counter, holding the blade portion of the broken sword.
“Study it first, to see if I can figure out why it broke.” He held the master blade up and angled it in the light. Ah, there it is. He rubbed at a stubborn streak of blood. “If it was a problem in the forging, maybe I can make sure I don’t do that in my own work.”
“What are you going to do after that?”
Seren had put the blade down and was studying the hilt now.
“Probably melt it down to an ingot and remake a sword from that.”
“Makes sense,” the young woman said. “No way to repair something like that.”
“I should have made my own master blade before now,” Ossian said. He picked up a whetstone to touch up a burr on the blade. “I never felt I could as long as I had my grandfather’s in the shop. After I deliver this to the manteidd, though, I think I’ll be ready.”
“Wish I could watch that,” Seren said with a touch of longing in her voice.
“Sorry, that’s not possible,” Ossian said. He waited for a few heartbeats. “But I would allow you to help.”
Seren’s face flashed to stunned, then a very slow grin blossomed on it, to be matched by the one that Ossian felt growing on his own face.