The Hammer Part 7

"You can go and look for it when you're better," she said. "Or you could get a new one."

He closed his eyes again, mostly so he wouldn't have to look at her.

When he woke up, she'd gone, and Furio was there, with his uncle sitting next to him. "h.e.l.lo," Furio said. "How are you?"

"I've got to go back," he said.

The uncle (name? He knew it, but couldn't call it to mind) frowned at him. "Don't mention it," he said. "You're welcome."

"I left something behind," Gignomai said. "I need..."

Furio and his uncle glanced at each other. "Teucer did say something about a sword," Uncle said. "But I a.s.sumed you were off your head and talking rubbish."

"The sword." Gignomai nodded. "It's worth twelve thousand thalers."

Uncle's eyes swelled until Gignomai was afraid they'd burst. But Furio said, "Well, your brother'll have found it by now. They'll notice it's gone, won't they?"

"I hope not," Gignomai said. "I want to sell it."

Furio was about to say something, but Uncle grabbed his hand and crushed it. He was clearly a strong man, though not in the same cla.s.s as Luso or Stheno. "Sell it?" he said.

"That's right. It's my start in life, you could say."

"What makes you think it's worth that kind of money?" Uncle asked. He'd carefully lowered and straightened out his voice, but he'd tightened his grip on Furio's hand.

"Your brother told me," Gignomai said. "He saw it."

"He offered you that much for it?"

"I wasn't selling," Gignomai replied. "Not then."

"Uncle," Furio said, but Uncle wasn't listening to him.

"But you are now?"

"They won't let him have it," Furio said loudly. "It's not yours to sell, is it? That's what you told me."

Gignomai shrugged. "I've left," he said, "and I'm not going back. That's why I need it."

There was a long, deep silence. Then Uncle said, "Where exactly...?"

Gignomai explained what had happened. When he'd finished, Furio was staring at him, but Uncle was leaning towards him with a starving look on his face. "You think there's a chance it could still be there?"

"It's a big wood," Gignomai said. "And they wouldn't know about the way down. I'm guessing it's some flaw in the chalk, and water's been trickling down there for G.o.d knows how long, and it ate away the hole I fell down. So they'd have no particular reason to look in that place, and you'd have to search hard to find it."

"Dogs," Furio put in. "You said Luso set the dogs on you. Won't they have led him there?"

Gignomai shook his head. "There was the boar, remember? It killed one of the dogs at least. Luso's probably a.s.sumed that what led the dogs there was the boar. That's what they were bred to hunt for."

"So it could still-"

"Or it might not be," Furio said firmly. "And in any case, you're in no fit state." He hesitated for a fraction of a second, then said, "I'll go."

Gignomai shook his head. "You'll never find it," he said.

Uncle nodded vigorously. "You could draw him a map or something."

Gignomai laughed. "I'll have a h.e.l.l of a job finding the place again, and I know those woods better than anybody except Luso. Furio wouldn't have a hope. Also," he added, because Uncle should have, and hadn't, "can you imagine what my family would do to him if they caught him wandering about up there? Particularly if he did manage to find the b.l.o.o.d.y thing."

The door opened, and a man Gignomai only knew by sight came in. "Salio Gullermo's downstairs," he said. "Needs to talk to you about a hundred yards of twenty-gauge wire."

Uncle swore, then stood up. "I'll get rid of him," he said, and hurried out. For a while, neither of them spoke. Then Gignomai said, "Who's that obnoxious girl?"

"What?"

"That girl," Gignomai said. "Hovering over me earlier like a buzzard. Or was I imagining things?"

"That was my cousin Teucer," Furio replied. "You didn't like her."

"No."

Furio shrugged. "What the h.e.l.l are you doing here, Gig?"

"I told you." Gignomai lay back and shut his eyes. "I've had it with my family. Father's decided I'm going to train to be a lawyer, leading to a career in politics. So I left."

"What do you mean, left?"

"Left. I have taken my leave and do not intend to return. Ever."

"But you can't-" Furio started to say, then paused. "Well, yes, you can, I guess," he said. "Won't they come after you? Say we kidnapped you or something?"

"I considered that," Gignomai said, "but I don't think it's likely. Father will decide that by doing what I've done I've proved myself unworthy of my name. Round about now, I imagine, I'll never have existed." A small scowl crossed his face and he added, "There are precedents. It's how our family deals with things."

"Your brothers..."

Gignomai shook his head. "Stheno has other things on his mind," he said. "Luso does what Father tells him, broadly speaking."

"What about your mother?"

"What about her?"

Furio seemed lost for words for a while. Then he said, "You can do that, can you? Just get up and walk away from everything like that."

"Yes. I hope so."

"Fair enough." Furio sat still and quiet for a while, then said, "What are you planning on doing?"

Gignomai opened his eyes. "Now that," he said, "is a good question. A lot depends on whether I can get that f.u.c.king sword."

"Is it really worth...?"

"Your dad thought so."

"In that case, it's worth a lot more."

"So you told me. You've forgotten." Gignomai smiled, then pulled a face. "My nose hurts," he said.

"Teucer says it's not a bad break," Furio a.s.sured him. "It should grow back straight."

"How the h.e.l.l would she know?"

"Her dad was a surgeon."

"Ah." Gignomai frowned. "So she might just possibly know what she's talking about?"

"Yes. What did she do do to you, by the way?" to you, by the way?"

Gignomai rolled his eyes. "Call it a clash of personalities."

"She's got one, you mean."

"Unlike the met'Oc women?" Gignomai smiled, and winced again. "You may have a point." He looked at Furio a little more closely. "Don't tell me you're-"

"No."

"You're lying."

"No."

"For crying out loud, Furio," Gignomai said, grinning. "You've already got all the girls in the colony sniffing round after you. Are you after the complete set or something?"

"It's not me they're after, it's the store," Furio replied. It came out so fast that Gignomai wondered if he'd meant to say it. "And my cousin's only just got here. I've barely spoken two words to her. I didn't even know she was a girl till she walked through the door." He pulled a ferocious face, which just made Gignomai smile. "Anyway," Furio went on, "you didn't answer my question. What are you planning on doing now you've made your grand gesture?"

Two days after Gignomai left the Tabletop, Lusomai met'Oc launched a raid.

Instead of heading east after he'd crossed the river, Lusomai turned south-west following the line of the logging road. Ignoring the two small farmsteads on the plain, he led his party of sixteen hors.e.m.e.n over the Sow's Back and down into the long shallow Headwater valley beyond. It was the furthest he'd ever raided, and people felt safe there.

The first farm to be attacked was the Vari home, worked by a widow and her two sons. The family were in the kitchen eating their dinner when Lusomai's men kicked down the door. They beat up all three, stole three flitches of bacon and threw a sack of rye seed on the fire. They also tried to steal the geese, but only succeeded in catching one. Lusomai shot another at close range, leaving it inedible.

He then rode a mile down the valley and attacked the Pasenna farm, killing eight sheep before trying to force his way into the house. Calo Pasenna, who had helped carry Gignomai into town after finding him by the river, had been outside splitting logs when the met'Oc arrived. He ran inside and wedged the door with a bench. Finding himself unable to break the door down, Lusomai fired a shot through it, which grazed Pasenna's wife's arm. Pasenna claimed that he heard Lusomai ordering his men to set fire to the thatch. However, no such attempt was made, and Pasenna himself referred to the met'Oc raiding party "suddenly appearing out of the darkness" when he first noticed them, implying that they weren't carrying torches or lanterns. The met'Oc left the dead sheep behind when they withdrew. They'd been cut open, so that the guts tainted the meat.

After leaving the Pasenna farm, Lusomai led his party east across the valley to attack the mill and forge at Headwater Top. Senza Ferrara, the smith, claimed to have heard the shot fired at the Pasenna house; an improbable claim, since the mill was a good two miles away, but possible if the wind happened to be from the south. He left the house with his family, the maidservant and the two hired men, climbed the hill and hid in a small copse overlooking the mill tower. Lusomai broke into the smithy, stole a considerable number of tools and cut open the bellows sack. His men then used the anvil as a battering ram to smash four blades off the mill wheel before dumping the anvil in the sump pool. They cut open and scattered six full sacks of newly ground barley flour before leaving.

While the met'Oc were engaged at Headwater Top, Calo Pasenna sent his eldest son running up the valley to warn the neighbouring farms. He reached the Spetti home first, and they evacuated. In the event, however, the met'Oc bypa.s.sed the Spetti farm and attacked the Nadi house, reaching it not long after young Pasenna arrived. Lusomai's men caught Ora Nadi, his wife, mother and three daughters and the Pasenna boy on the point of leaving. They drove them back inside. One of the met'Oc raiders recognised young Pasenna and realised what he was doing there. Lusomai had the boy beaten and hung by his feet from the rafters. He stole a side of bacon and several hams, and broke up the kitchen table with an axe. When Ora Nadi tried to stop him stealing the hams, Lusomai hit him with his sword, cutting a slice off his left ear. Before leaving, the met'Oc lit a torch from the hearth and set fire to a haystack.

This nearly proved their undoing. The trapper Filio Maza, coming home from checking his snares at the top of the valley, saw the fire and hurried down to the Nadi house to warn the family that their hay was burning and to see if he could help. He saw the met'Oc ride away, guessed that a raid was in progress, and ran back up the hill, where he had the good fortune to come across the Nadi family's horse, which had bolted when the met'Oc arrived. An accomplished horseman, Maza caught the horse and rode it bareback along the crest of the ridge (the met'Oc had followed the bottom of the valley), and made straight for Blackwater, home of the Dravi family. He told Azo Dravi what he had seen. Dravi, his four sons and their three hired men armed themselves as best they could with pitchforks and billhooks, and set off in the hay cart to intercept the met'Oc at Lower Barton, a.s.suming-correctly, as it turned out-that Lusomai intended to raid the Sanni farm and then fall back onto the Shavecross road before leaving the valley. On the way they stopped at the Razo farm, where they were joined by the four Razo sons and their two hired men.

Lusomai stole four ducks from the Sanni family, killed a pig and threw it down the well. Then, as Nadi and the Dravis had antic.i.p.ated, he headed back towards Shavecross by way of Lower Barton, where Maza and his allies were waiting for them.

What happened at Lower Barton is by no means clear. All accounts agree that the ambush was initially successful. Maza's party took the met'Oc by surprise, at least two of Lusomai's men took flight immediately, and one of the met'Oc's horses was killed, either deliberately or by impaling itself on a pitchfork in the confusion. At this point, the sequence of events is disputed. The Dravi family a.s.serted that Lusomai was the first to draw blood. Some time after the event, however, Filio Maza stated that Azo Dravi was determined to get hold of one of Lusomai's snapping-hen pistols, as a trophy or because of its monetary value. According to Maza, it was Azo Dravi who attacked Lusomai, rather than the other way about. What is not disputed is that Dravi and Lusomai fought some form of single combat, in the course of which Lusomai was stabbed in the back (giving some credence to Maza's version, though the point is not conclusive) and Lusomai cut off Dravi's right hand with his sword.

That effectively ended the encounter. The ambushers were only concerned to get Azo Dravi to the nearest house before he bled to death. The met'Oc, apparently sobered by the escalation of violence, took one of the Razos' horses and rode straight home. It's unknown whether they had intended to make any further attacks or whether they had already done everything they had planned to do. The ambushers put Azo Dravi in the cart and took him to the Sanni house, but he was found to be dead on arrival from loss of blood.

Two days later, Dravi's severed hand was found nailed to the door of the bonded warehouse in town. A gold ring worth two thalers had been removed from the middle finger.

"Your brother must be horrible," Teucer said.

Outside, the sun was bright. A stiff breeze was nagging at the awning over the shop porch, like a bad boy pulling his baby sister's hair. Gignomai shifted in his chair. It was bad enough fighting the urge to scratch the scab on his shoulder, which was itching him to death, without Teucer as well. But Furio liked her, so he made the effort.

"We've never got on well," he said. "But he's not that bad."

"He killed that man."

Yes, Gignomai thought, he did. "I very much doubt he meant to."

"He cut off his hand."

There were rules. He was allowed to say bad things about his brother, but that privilege didn't extend to strangers. "Exactly," he said. "Look, if Luso had meant to kill him, he'd have stabbed him in the eye or heart, no messing. My guess is that he was trying to knock a weapon out of his hand, and he overdid it a bit."

"A bit."

"He believes in killing cleanly." As he said the words, he realised what they made him sound like. "He wouldn't leave an animal to bleed to death, far less a human being. Those men shouldn't have tried to fight him."

"So it's their fault."

Well, yes, he thought, like someone going swimming off a beach known to be dangerous-you can't blame the sea. "They should have had more sense than pick a fight with armed men. It wasn't even as though they were defending their homes. Luso was on his way back."

Teucer gave him what he'd come to think of as her magistrate's look. Father had one quite like it, only better, of course. "Furio says you're not like the rest of them. I'm not so sure."

"Really?" Gignomai shrugged. "You can think what you like."

She let him have a second or two more of her undiluted attention, then went back to her sewing. Gignomai picked up his book, but he'd lost interest in it long ago. He'd stolen it for Furio last year, because Furio liked books with knights and tournaments and castles and dragons. But most of the characters in it were just like his family, though the author didn't seem to have realised that, or he wouldn't have made them out to be heroes.

"So why did you leave home, then?" she asked.

He felt under no obligation to reply. Good manners were all very well, but she'd set the rules by saying nasty things about his brother. On the other hand he was a guest here. "There wasn't anything for me to do there. So I left."

"But you people don't do do anything anyway," she said. "Unless you count hunting and hawking and fencing and all that. And they're hobbies, not a trade." anything anyway," she said. "Unless you count hunting and hawking and fencing and all that. And they're hobbies, not a trade."

He thought of Stheno, lifting houses on his shoulders. "Whereas you're sitting there embroidering a sampler," he said. "I consider myself duly chastened."

"I do housework," she said, "and I mend clothes. I'd do a proper job if I could. I'd have been a surgeon, like my father, except it's not allowed."

He frowned. "It isn't?"

"Of course not. Women can't be surgeons or clerks or lawyers or lecturers at Temple or merchants. There's not actually a law, but there doesn't have to be. People wouldn't stand for it."