The Fatal Child Read Online Free PDF Page B

Dadda sent them away without making a trade. But the goods of the hill-men were often poor. There was no point giving away things that were needed if there was nothing to be had in return. Besides, Dadda said, the hill folk were heathen. They did not believe in the Angels.
    And one day in the summer of her thirteenth year, when she was gathering yet more firewood under the trees, she heard noises down in the clearing. She picked up her bundle and hurried down the slope to see who had come. As she rounded the back of the hut she heard Mother call to her anxiously. But she ran on.
    On the far bank of the stream were two men on horses.
    Two knights!
    They were not the King and his friend. Not even after all this time. They were two grown men, wearing red cloth over their armour. One of them had a big yellow beard.
    Dadda was standing on this side of the stream. He had been cutting hay. Now he was holding his long hayfork in both hands, pointed towards the newcomers. They were talking to him and he was answering. Melissa could not hear what was said. She thought the bearded knight was trying to sound friendly, but it was not the sort of friendliness she liked. Dadda, when he answered, did not sound friendly at all.
    One of the knights stirred his mount and rode it into the stream. Dadda shouted and pointed his fork at the animal. He looked as if he would stab it if it came within reach. The knight stopped, rested his arms on his horse’s neck and smiled. Dadda did not move. The points of his fork were sharp and bright. They wavered just slightly as he gripped the shaft, like twigs stirred in a light wind. The water frothed around the legs of the horse and whirled away downriver.
    The bearded knight said something. The other knight turned his horse to climb back out of the stream. Together they rode away. Dadda watched them go, all the way to the cover of the trees. At the very edge of the wood one of the knights looked round and waved cheerfully at him.
    ‘Be back.’
The words carried faintly to Melissa’s ears.
    Dadda was angry that night. He frowned and tore at his bread over supper, saying nothing. Mam, too, was tight-lipped. Melissa knew better than to ask who the knights had been or what they had wanted. Neither of her parents paid her any attention. At length Mam murmured something to Dadda. He snorted.
    ‘I don’t need ’em. I stand on my two feet.’
    ‘What if they do come back, then?’ Mam asked.
    ‘They won’t,’ he said. ‘I’ll have their hides if they do.’
    But they did.
    Two years after the fall of Velis, and on the most desperate mission of his life, Padry the chancellor returned at last to Develin.
    It was a strange feeling, rather terrible indeed, to ride up the river road and see the long white line of the outer wall and the buildings around the upper courtyard, as if nothing had changed in all that time. In the old days he had made many homecomings like this, returning from Jent or Pemini or Tuscolo with new books for the Widow’s library or new scholars for her school. Now he came with the sun banner of Gueronius over his head, six men-at-arms at his back and the seal of the lord chancellor in his pouch. And before him was Develin, just as it had been, just as if his fellow masters – Pantethon, Grismonde, Denke and the rest of them – would be there to greet him as he rode into the courtyard, and the old Widow herself still waiting for him on her throne.
    The red-and-white banners flew over the gates. The guards wore the same checked red-and-white tabards and they sounded the gate-horns in the same way. But the faces were different. Padry looked into the eyes of the gate-sergeants who asked him gruffly what his business was. They were strangers. The men he had known had perished in the sack seven years before. So had almost everyone else.
    The Widow they had killed in this very courtyard, he thought as he dismounted at last in the upper bailey. Grismonde, white-bearded Grismonde, they had