Rain Walker Read online

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  Bundled against the mist and spitting rain, Kondrat emerged from his South Tower quarters, hurried along the eastern wall to the Great Keep where he climbed a broad, spiral stair to the solar.

  “My Lord,” he said to the open doorway.

  “Come, Kondrat,” said a voice still dulcet despite years and hardships. Horea rose from where he had been breaking his fast on dark crusts and pungent cheese, hands out, face twisted in pity. “I have heard and grieve with you.”

  Taking hold of his lord’s hands, Kondrat said, “Thank you.”

  “He was a good boy, and brave.”

  “Indeed, he was. A father’s joy.” An image crossed his mind: Hame lying in the mud, a narrow slit between his brows. No time for that. “That is not why I came, Lord. There is a ... thing I can not name in the town.”

  “Sit, eat, there is enough, and watered wine in the pitcher. Good. Now this thing of yours. If you can not name it, describe it.”

  “Would that I could, Lord, but how does one describe what is not? How does one describe what should not be? It appeared long enough to kill, not long enough to be struck, or even seen. A score of good men surrounded it, and we might as well have been children with willow wands. A thousand might have done no more good.” Words would not come, and the bitterness of them soured his mouth. Tears that he stifled when they threatened in grief now leaked from his eyes, and he rose to stand before the window so they might be mistaken for rain.

  His lord’s familiar voice asked, “Where did you get that scar on your leg?”

  In spite of himself Kondrat chuckled. “Which one?” He turned back toward Horea.

  “The one that starts behind your right knee and winds down your leg and across your foot. The one that cost you two toes.” There was no humour in Horea’s face, no tolerance in the name of old friendship. Kondrat spoke not to his war companion and drinking partner but to the lord of the castle, the man with harvests and kine and peasant’s lives in his hands, the man with politics ever on his mind.

  “In the caverns beneath the Spired Mountain, my lord. From that beast that struck us in the dark.”

  “Ah. What was that beast?”

  “Know you as well as I.”

  “How did we kill it, and who told us we could?”

  Kondrat shrugged. “Know you as well as I. With cold steel we killed it, with your spear and mine. Truth, I that told you that whatsoever could kill could die.”

  “Then I tell you that whatsoever can kill can die. If you do not know how, then go to the Dwarves. They say they are the Wise of the Earth, now let them earn their keep.”

  “As you say, my lord.”

  Kondrat climbed back down to the level of the wall, hand braced against the keep’s shell to favour his knees, and looked across the castle to the cluster of sunken buildings between the kennels and the well that housed fourteen Dwarves. They had come in seeking refuge as so many had, but they came not as soldiers or labourers to lend their arms and backs to the defence, nor as beggars pleading for mercy. Instead they came as if they were kings, proud, looking down their noses at men half their height again; they came as saviours of the castle, ordering the armsmen and preaching to the priests and treating the physician. Healing the physician, Kondrat had to admit.

  The quickest route would be south to the Traitor’s Tower, then across the common before the stable. Kondrat turned north.

  Soon he wished he hadn’t. Gentle words of sympathy from a friend was were thing. But a pained word, a tearful hug, a gruff-voiced grunt and pat on the shoulder from every other long-term inhabitant of the castle was too much for a man trying to quietly compost his grief to feed his vengeance.

  Hidden by the clouds, the sun must have been high by the time he saw the misshapen backs of two Dwarf women. The first one who turned might have been pretty if not for a nose the size and colour of an overripe plum. The second was ugly by any and all consideration.

  Kondrat cleared his throat.

  The almost-pretty one mocked him. “Ch chm.”

  “I have a question to ask ...”

  The ugly one laughed as if she had seen a dozen fools at once. “You have a hundred questions, Kondrat, captain of the guard. And we have ten hundred answers, and some may even match your questions.”

  “Look you to your manners, woman!”

  No laughter now. “I can not look to what I do ... not ... have.”

  The almost-pretty one laughed harder than the first had.

  Dwarves. Kondrat shook his head. “Take you me to see all the Dwarves at once.”

  “What did you call us?”

  “Forgive me gracious lady.” At that they both fell to the mud laughing. “I meant to say ‘the Wise of the Earth.’ I do most humbly beg your pardon.”

  “Better,” he ugly one said. Meanwhile the almost-pretty one screeched out something unintelligible and Dwarves emerged from hovels and the kennel door. One climbed out of the well and another rose from the mud itself.

  One Dwarf - a male with one moustache trimmed short and the other - nearly white - trailing to his chest stood before the rest, bare feet planted in the muck. “What do you want, fool of a fool?”

  “I want to know what killed my son last night.”

  “War. What else?”

  “It was not a soldier, but something grey that moved and fought in the night and yet was not there when we tried to kill it.”

  “Faugh!” the Dwarf said.

  “He fought the rain,” another said.

  “He lost to the rain. A breeze could have killed him and a dozen like him,” said a third. “How many would lightning have killed?”

  Kondrat shook his head. That was a thought he had not had and did not want. “What was it?”

  “You know,” the ugly one said again. “You were told.”

  “War is it then? The spirit of war come to kill my son?”

  “Not war.” This one sat by the well picking mud from his toes. “Not mayhem manifest, not a revenant of man or maid killed, nor of all men and maids killed.”

  Some of the Dwarves snorted at this. The one with the half-trimmed moustache waved them all to silence with an imperious gesture. A leader of some sort, Kondrat thought. This leader looked firmly into the captain’s eyes and asked, “Did it remain in the dark as you said? Truly?”

  “It feared not to come into the torchlight.”

  “Where did you see it, then?”

  “It was in the street, and in buildings.”

  A chortle started with the Dwarves in the rear and spread out amongst the rest.

  “I’m sure it was, but that is not what I asked. No more! Ask another question or leave.”

  There remained only one question to ask. “How do I kill it?”

  “Steel. Cold steel or hot, bronze or iron, oak or stone, it does not matter. But, it can only be killed when it’s there.”

  “What mean you by that?”

  “What I mean is what I say. Ask another question.”

  Kondrat looked this way and that tying to think of any question other than the one he should ask. “What is it called?”

  “It is a rain walker as the ancient books tell. Does that knowledge do you good?”

  “Not that I can tell.”

  “Go now. We are done with you.”

  Kondrat turned to go, took a step, then turned back. Not one Dwarf had moved. “Is there among you a ... Wise of the Earth given at Csilla’s Fountain a score years past and two?”

  One rose from the mud to lean in the kennel door. He had wild black hair and deep-set eyes. “I was.”

  How should one acknowledge a son abandoned for his size and deformity? Kondrat could not think. “With your permission, I would like to meet you to talk for a while.” The Dwarf shrugged.

  Turning to the rest Kondrat said, “My thanks to you all.” He nodded as he said it, but his mind had already gone from there to another, more telling place.