The Gold Falcon. Katharine Kerr

you like me to write?’

      ‘Oh, some simple thing. Our names, say.’

      Neb picked the script his father had always used for important documents, called Half-inch Royal because the scribes of the high king’s court had invented it. Although she couldn’t read in any true sense of the word, Galla did know her letters, and she could spell out her name and Tieryn Cadryc’s when he wrote them.

      ‘Quite lovely,’ she announced. ‘Very well, young Neb. As provision for you and your brother, you shall have a chamber of your own, meals in the great hall, and a set of new clothing each year. Will that be adequate?’

      Neb had to steel himself to bargain with the noble-born, but he reminded himself that without tools, he couldn’t practise his craft. ‘I’ll need coin as well, for the preparing of the inks and suchlike. I could just mix up soot and oak gall, but an important lord like your husband should have better. A silver penny a year should be enough. I hope I can find proper ink cakes and a mixing stone out here.’

      ‘The coin we have, thanks to the high king’s bounty’ Galla thought for a moment. ‘Now, I think you might find what you need in Cengarn. His grace my husband has been talking about riding to the gwerbret there, and so if he does, you can go with him.’

      ‘Splendid, my lady, and my thanks. But then there’s the matter of what I’m going to write upon. Fine parchments cost ever so much if you buy them, and I don’t know how to make my own. Even if I did, could you spare the hides? You can only get two good sheets from a calf skin, and then scraps like these.’

      ‘Oh.’ Galla paused, chewing on her lower lip. ‘Well, I’d not thought of that, but if you can find parchment for sale, I’m sure we can squeeze out the coin to buy some, at least for legal judgments and the like.’

      ‘We can use wax-covered tablets for ordinary messages, if you have candle wax to spare. I can write with a stylus as well as a pen.’

      ‘Now that I can give you, and a good knife, too, for cutting your pens.’ Much relieved, Galla smiled at him. ‘I’ve got a very important letter to write, you see. My brother has a daughter by his first wife, who died years and years ago. So he remarried, and now he and his second wife have sons and daughters of their own. The wife – well. Let’s just say that she’s never cared for her stepdaughter. There’s only so much coin at my brother’s disposal, and she wants to spend it on her own lasses. The wife wants to, I mean, not little Branna. That’s my brother’s daughter, you see, Lady Branna, my niece. So I’m offering to take the lass in, and if we can’t find her a husband, then she can live here as my serving woman.’ Lady Galla paused for a small frown. ‘She’s rather an odd lass, you see, so suitors might be a bit hard to find. But she does splendid needlework, so I’ll be glad to have her. It’s truly a marvel, the way she can take a bit of charcoal and sketch out patterns. You’d swear she was seeing them on the cloth and just following along the lines, they’re so smooth and even. And – oh here, listen to me! A lad like you won’t be caring about needlework. You run along now and make those tablets. I’ll have Coryn bring you wax and knives and suchlike.’

      ‘Very well, my lady, and my thanks. I’ll go hunt up some wood.’

      Neb took Clae with him when he went out to the ward, which, with the dun so newly built, lacked much of the clutter and confusion of most strongholds. Behind the main broch tower stood the round, thatched kitchen hut, the well and some storage sheds. Across an open space stood the smithy, some pigsties and chicken coops, and beyond them the dungheap. A third of the high outer wall supported the stables, built right into the stones, with the ground level for horses and an upper barracks for the warband and the servants.

      ‘Neb?’ Clae said. ‘We’ve found a good place, haven’t we?’

      ‘We have.’ Neb looked at him and found him smiling. ‘I think we’ll do well here.’

      ‘Good. I want to train for a rider.’

      ‘You what?’

      ‘I want to learn swordcraft and join the tieryn’s warband.’

      Neb stopped walking and put his hands on his hips. Clae looked up defiantly.

      ‘Whatever for?’ Neb said at last.

      ‘Because.’

      ‘Because what?’

      ‘You know.’ Clae shrugged and began scuffing at one of the cobbles with his bare toes. ‘Because they killed everyone.’

      ‘Ah. Because the raiders destroyed our village?’

      Clae nodded, staring at the ground. Ye gods! Neb thought. What would Mam say to this?

      ‘Well, I can understand that,’ Neb said. ‘I’ll think about it.’

      ‘I’m going to do it.’

      ‘Listen, I’m the head of our clan now, and you won’t do one wretched thing unless I say you may.’

      Clae’s eyes filled with tears.

      ‘Oh ye gods!’ Neb snapped. ‘Don’t cry! Here, it’s all up to the captain, anyway. The Falcon. What’s-his-name.’

      ‘Gerran.’ Clae wiped his eyes on his sleeve. ‘He’s too busy now. I’ll ask him when they get back.’

      ‘Very well, but if he says you nay, there’s naught I can do about it.’

      ‘I know. But he lost his mam and da, didn’t he? I bet he’ll understand.’

      ‘We’ll see about that. Now help me find the woodpile and an axe.’

      They found the woodshed behind the cook house and an axe as well, hanging inside the door. Neb took the axe down and gave it an experimental swing. In one corner lay some pieces of rough-hewn planks, all of them too wide and most too thick, but Neb couldn’t find a saw. He did find a short chunk of log, some ten inches in diameter, that had the beginnings of a split along the grain.

      ‘Here!’ A man’s voice called out. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

      Neb turned around and saw a skinny fellow, egg-bald, hurrying towards them. Above his bushy grey beard his pale blue eyes were narrowed and grim.

      ‘My apologies, sir,’ Neb said. ‘But I’m about Lady’s Galla’s business.’

      ‘If she wanted a fire,’ the fellow said, ‘she could have sent a servant to ask me. My name is Horza, by the by, woodcutter to this dun.’

      ‘And a good morrow to you, sir. I’m Neb, and this is my brother, Clae. I’m the new scribe, and I need wood for tablets. Writing tablets, I mean. They need to be about so long and –’

      ‘I know what writing tablets look like, my fine lad. Hand me my axe, and don’t you go touching it again, hear me?’

      ‘I do. My apologies.’

      Horza snorted and grabbed the axe from Neb’s lax grasp. For a moment he looked over the wood stacked in the shed, then picked up a short thin wedge of stout oak in one hand. He set the thin wedge against the crack in the log and began tapping it in with the blunt back of the axe head. His last tap split the dry pine lengthwise. He let one half fall, then flipped the axe over to the sharpened edge and went to work on the other half. A few cuts turned it into oblongs of the proper length and thickness.

      ‘I’ll make you two sets, lad.’ Horza picked up the remainder of the log. He treated it the same while Neb watched in honest awe at his skill.

      ‘These’ll have to be smoothed off and then scoured down with sand,’ Horza said. ‘That’s your doing.’

      ‘It is, and a thousand thanks!’ Neb took the panels with a little bow. ‘You’re a grand man with an axe.’

      ‘Imph.’ Horza tipped his head to one side and looked the boys over. ‘Scribe, are you? What sort of name is Neb, anyway? Never heard it before.’