Tigana by Guy Kay (novel24 txt) 📕

They rode through the next weeks, through the flowering of spring, at an almost reckless pace, barely simulating their role as merchants. Making bad, hasty transactions where they stopped, unwilling to linger to bargain for better ones. Pausing only long enough to find the man or woman who was the key in that village or this cluster of farms, the one who knew the others and would carry the word.

They were losing money, but they had astins to spare from Alienor. Catriana, being honest with herself, realized that she was still reluctant to acknowledge the role that woman had played in Alessan’s doings for so many years. Years in which she herself had been growing up in ignorance, a child in a fishing village in Astibar.

Once, Baerd let her make the contact in a town. The woman was a weaver, widely known for her skill. Catriana had found her house at the edge of the village. Two dogs had barked at her approach and had been stilled by a mild voice from within. Inside, Catriana had found a woman only a little younger than her mother. She had made certain they were alone, and then, as Baerd had instructed, had shown her dolphin ring and given Alessan’s name and had spoken the message. The same message of readiness as everywhere else. Then she carefully named two men and spoke Baerd’s second message: Senzio. Midsummer. Tell them to be armed if they can.

The woman had gone pale, standing up abruptly as Catriana began to speak. She was very tall, even more so than Catriana herself. When the second message was done she had remained motionless a moment and then stepped forward to kiss Catriana on the mouth.

‘Triad bless you and keep you and the both of them,’ she had said. ‘I did not think I would live to see this day.’ She was crying; Catriana tasted salt on her lips.

She had walked out into the sunshine and back to Baerd and Sandre. They had just finished a purchase of a dozen barrels of Certandan ale. A wretched transaction.

‘We’re going north, you fools,’ she had exclaimed, exasperated, her trade instincts taking over. ‘They don’t like ale in Ferraut! You know that.’

‘Then we’ll have to drink it ourselves,’ Sandre said, swinging up on his horse and laughing. Baerd, who so rarely used to laugh, but who had changed since the Ember Days, began to chuckle suddenly. And then, sitting beside him on the cart as they rode out of town, so did she, listening to the two of them, feeling the clean freshness of the breeze blowing through her hair, and, as it seemed, through her heart.

It was that same day, early in the afternoon, that they came to the dell she loved and Baerd, remembering, pulled the cart off the road to let her go down to the pool and bathe. When she climbed back up neither man was laughing or amused any more, watching the Barbadians go by.

It was the way the two of them were standing that caused the trouble, she was sure of it. But by the time she came up beside them it was already too late. It would have been mostly Baerd whose look drew their attention. Sandre in his Khardhu guise was a matter of almost complete indifference to the Barbadians.

But a merchant, a minor trader with a single cart and a second scrawny horse, who stood gazing at an army passing in the way that this one did, coldly, his head arrogantly high, not even remotely submissive or chastened let alone showing any of the fear proper to such a situation . . .

The language of the body, Catriana thought, could be heard far too clearly sometimes. She looked at Baerd beside her, his dark eyes fixed in stony appraisal of the company passing by. It wasn’t arrogance, she decided, not just a male pride. It was something else, something older. A primitive response to this display of the Tyrant’s power that he could no more hide than he could the dozen barrels of ale they carried on the cart.

‘Stop it!’ she whispered fiercely. But even as she did she heard one of the Barbadians bark a terse command and half a dozen of them detached from the moving column of men and horses and galloped over towards them. Catriana’s mouth went dry. She saw Baerd glance over to where his bow lay in the grass. He shifted his stance slightly, to balance himself better. Sandre did the same.

‘What are you doing?’ she hissed. ‘Remember where we are!’

She had time for no more. The Barbadians came up to them, huge men on their horses, looking down on a man and a woman of the Palm and this gaunt, grey-haired relic from Khardhun.

‘I don’t like the look of your face,’ the leader said, staring at Baerd. The man’s hair was darker than that of most of the others, but his eyes were pale and hard.

Catriana swallowed. This was the first time in a year they’d had a confrontation so direct with the Barbadians. She lowered her eyes, willing Baerd to be calm, to say the right things.

What she did not know, for no one who had not been there could know, was what Baerd was seeing in that moment.

Not six Barbadians on horses by a road in Certando, but as many Ygrathen soldiers in the square before his father’s house long ago. So many years, and the memory still sharp as a wound from only yesterday. All the normal measures of time seemed to fall apart and blow away in moments such as this.

Baerd forced himself to avert his gaze before the Barbadian’s glare. He knew he had made a mistake, knew this was a mistake he would always make if he wasn’t careful. He had been too euphoric though, rushing too fast on a floodtide of emotion, seeing this marching column as dancing to the tune he and