Scholars and Other Undesirables, Page 3

  Chapter 2

  They went back inside, and Jain fell into the deepest sleep of her life.

  The next day the family heard screams while they sat at breakfast. Daniel jumped up and grabbed his axe. “Boys, arm yourselves and protect your mother and the girls,” he said on his way to the door. Joan barred the door behind him after he left. Everyone cast about for a weapon. Jain took a log from the fireplace. The commotion outside continued. Men shouted and cursed and were drowned out by roars that made Eliza whimper.

  “What is that?” David, the oldest of the boys at sixteen, asked.

  “Quiet!” Joan hissed.

  Eliza began to bawl and Jain set down the log and started to whisper. “It’s alright, sissie. Father will protect us. He’ll protect the whole village. He’s strong. But, Sissie, you need to stay quiet.”

  Eliza nodded. She continued to cry but she did so more quietly. Something crashed into the door. They all jumped and Eliza screamed. Jain snatched up the log.

  “Daniel, is that you?” Joan called.

  The crash came again and the nails on the door hinges came loose. “That’s not father,” David said as he took a step back.

  The door fell off the hinges and a man stepped into the house. He had crescent shaped scars that started at the corners of his mouth and curved up to meet the corners of his eyes. Those eyes made Joan shriek. Those eyes held a depth of hatred none of them had ever seen. The scarred man howled his rage at . . . what? What had they ever done? He charged in, spear leading, at David. Jain struck the scarred man on the shoulder, throwing off his balance. She struck him across the face and he staggered back a few steps. Jain continued to strike. The log seemed to rise and fall of its own accord. When the scarred man fell, the log continued to strike. When he dropped his spear, when he ceased to move, when blood spattered onto the walls , the table, the uneaten food, the log continued to rise and fall, until a hand stronger than her own caught it and pulled it away.

  “It’s over,” Daniel whispered as he hugged her tight. “They’ve gone.”

  The boys dragged the body outside while Joan saw to a cut on Daniel’s thigh. The wound was not deep but it had been inflicted with a rusty blade and would fester if left untreated. Eliza went to the well for water to clean up the blood. Jain sat and trembled as she waited for the adrenalin to wear off.

  “Who were they?” Jain eventually asked.

  “They’re called ‘Rephaim’,” Daniel said. “They come from Genasi. That’s west of here. The city was destroyed; the people went mad.”

  Jain hugged herself. She had heard the stories of men gone raving mad, raiding, murdering, even eating people. “You beat them, father?”

  “They attacked Allen’s farm,” Daniel explained. “Took them by surprise. But it would take a battering ram to get into that cottage. The farm is burning. Airk and some of the lads are working a bucket brigade.” Daniel looked at the floor. “Airk’s parents died. They were taken by surprise. His sister saw it. That was the scream we heard. Eli and Airk fought. Eli died, too.”

  Jain shook her head. “His whole family?”

  “His sister is alive,” Daniel corrected. “But she’s not in her right mind. The augura said that she will take care of her.”

  “Is Airk okay?” Jain asked, almost sobbing.

  “He is alive and he is not hurt,” Daniel replied. “When I got there he was fighting with a hayfork. He was incredible. Eduard was there first and fought beside him. They made quite a pair.”

  “Are there many others dead?” Joan asked as she finished the bandage.

  Daniel shook his head. “It could have been worse. Ian rushed in and got himself killed. The rest of us stayed close together. The widow Liselle was killed when one of the Rephaim fled into the village. I reckon it was the same one who broke in here.”

  Jain rose and smoothed her blood spattered shirt and skirt into something like a dignified arrangement. “I must go and see to Airk. He must be heartbroken.”

  “There’s a good girl,” Daniel said.

  The bucket brigade had succeeded in saving both of Airk’s family’s cottages and the henhouse but the fields were lost. Airk sat on an old tree stump looking dazed. Eduard was next to him. A bottle sat between them and they took turns drinking from it. Eduard looked up at Jain’s approach. When he saw that her attention was on Airk, Eduard stood up and patted Airk amiably on the shoulder. Then the rogue walked off toward the inn.

  “Airk!” Jain cried. She wrapped him in a tight hug. For a moment he remained still but then he hugged her back and began to sob. They stayed that way for a long time. Some of the villagers would talk about such an inappropriate embrace between an unmarried couple but Jain did not care. After a while Airk stopped crying and let go. Jain sat down on the ground beside him. She tried to think of something to say, but what could she say to a someone who had lost so much?

  “Are you hurt?” Airk asked suddenly. “You’ve bled so.”

  Jain looked down at her clothing. “It’s not my own. One of them came into our house. I killed him. I . . .” She began to sob as the weight of what had happened sunk in.

  They buried the dead that afternoon. The augura, a wise old woman learned in the ways of the gods and goddesses, said prayers to speed the dead villagers and those who had attacked them to the afterlife. There had been four Rephaim in the group. It seemed unlikely that the Rephaim had not planned to take on the whole village. Instead they must have intended only to attack the one farm, not realizing how quickly the other villagers would rally.

  The women of the village left the cemetery first so that the men could observe their custom of urinating in the graves of their enemies. But the men came running quickly when they heard the sound of hoof beats approaching from the north, the direction of Airk’s family’s farm. A rider carrying the blue and yellow banner of Laird Tomkin approached.

  “Make way for your laird!” the rider called.

  The villagers all stepped off the road. A company of ten men wearing steel helmets and coated in chainmail approached on horseback. Tomkin rode at the front, his back straight, a sword on his hip, and a shield slung from the saddle. He was the very picture of a knight. He reigned in his horse in front of the augura.

  “My lord,” she said in her scratchy voice as she bowed.

  Tomkin nodded. “We have tracked a band of Rephaim across the plain. We engaged them two days ago with great slaughter on both sides. Four of them escaped. Was it they who burned the farm we passed? Speak quickly.” He did not look directly at the augura as he spoke but rather through her, as if she were too small a thing for his eyes to focus on.

  “My lord,” Airk interjected. “It was them. They killed all there save myself and my sister.” Airk gestured to the rest of the villagers. “These people came to our aid. We killed all of the Rephaim.”

  Tomkin looked at the augura. “Is this true?”

  “It is, my lord,” she rasped. “The courage of our men is great.”

  “I know every man who holds a farm in my lands,” Tomkin said, looking back at Airk. “But I do not know you.”

  “I am Airk,” Airk said. “My father was Allen. He was killed by the Rephaim.”

  Tomkin nodded. “That’s a fine piece of land your father had. Have you a family, Master Airk?”

  “No, my lord. I am to wed this coming Solstice.”

  Tomkin nodded. “Very well. We shall take food and rest at the inn. My men and horses are tired from the chase. Where is the innkeeper?”

  “Here, my lord,” Marcus said as he stepped forward. “I will prepare everything for you.” He bowed and scurried off.

  Laird Tomkin and his company rode into town and the villagers began to follow. Jain went with them, but Daniel caught her arm. “I want you to stay with Airk tonight.” He caught Eliza’s sleeve as she walked by. “Both of you.” He lowered his voice to a whisper
. “Our laird and his men have been known to deprive young girls of their maidenhood.” Jain looked around and saw that many fathers were talking to many daughters in hushed tones.

  Joan gathered up food to take and accompanied her daughters to Airk’s cottage. Daniel stayed behind with the boys in case the laird needed them for anything. It was a cool evening but not quite as clear as the night before had been. The women still found their way to the farm with ease. The smell of ash was as good as a beacon in the night.

  In a nook between two cottages something moved in the shadows. Jain stopped and looked. She saw Eduard there, crouched low with his cloak drawn about him. He saw her and put a hand to his lips. Then he pointed at one of the walls. There was nothing remarkable about that wall, but beyond it, across the lane from the cottage, was the inn. Eduard was hiding. None of the laird’s men were out, so he either enjoyed hiding for the sake of it or he had committed some crime for which he was still wanted. Jain was very glad then that she had not gone with him. She rushed to catch up with her mother and sister.

  Airk greeted them with a smile. He had not had any thought of food since the battle, and, once he started eating, found that he was famished. The women kept looking around the cottage as they ate. They had known that it was split up into more than one room. What they had not known was that each room was bigger than Daniel’s cottage, significantly bigger. The walls of Daniel’s cottage were made of logs notched to fit together. The walls of Airk’s cottage were made of logs that had been hewn to have four smooth sides. The family had carved pictures into the wood in some places and hung colorful blankets and other decorations in others.

  The four of them ate their meal in silence. After they had eaten, Airk banked the fire and bolted the door. He also closed and latched the shutters on all the windows and leaned his hayfork against the wall next to the bed. The house had actual beds in all the rooms instead of the palettes that Daniel’s family used.

  Jain had never worried much about her family’s station in life. They were peasants like everyone else in the village. Her impending marriage and the discussions around it had introduced her to the world of money. She had always known of money, known that some had it and her family did not. But she had always assumed that everyone else in the village was as poor as she.

  As she lay awake in the divinely comfortable bed, Jain realized that Daniel and Joan had worked very hard to keep their poverty a secret from their children. Even when the harvest was bad they always had clean clothes that fit and the children always had food. Thinking back to the last bad harvest, Jain remembered her father spooning more food onto her plate. He had insisted that she looked too thin and needed to eat more. What had he eaten that night? What had Joan?

  The more she thought about it, the more she realized that Daniel and Joan did not eat much and often skipped meals. And when was the last time Daniel had a new shirt or Joan a new dress? Jain remembered Daniel’s shirt being new, years and years ago. He had been very pleased with it. So pleased was he that he had almost thrown out the old, threadbare one. But Joan had told him to keep it so that he would not have to go bare chested every washing day. Starving, dressed in rags, and living in a hovel, Daniel and Joan raised their children to think that they were as rich and comfortable as anyone else. And, after so many years of deprivation, Daniel was offered money for the only asset he had. He had turned it down and arranged a marriage with Jain’s happiness in mind.

  Jain wept then. Eliza turned and grumbled in her sleep. Jain got out of bed, not wanting to keep her sister up.

  “Is everything alright?” Joan whispered.

  They walked into the main room where the fire burned low. Jain hugged her mother and sobbed. With the sense of a mother, Joan did not ask questions. She simply hugged and comforted her daughter. When Jain could speak she told Joan about it.

  “Don’t be sad,” Joan said. “And don’t feel guilty. Your father and I love you. We love our family. Food and money come and go.” She framed Jain’s face in her hands and kissed her daughter’s forehead. “You and Eliza and the boys are all we care about.”

  In the morning Jain insisted that her mother rest and relax while Jain made breakfast. Joan did not rest. She collected eggs from the henhouse and skimmed the cream off the milk that Daniel had gotten from the family cow the previous evening. Eliza tidied up the bedrooms and Airk went out to the fields to see if anything could be salvaged.

  Airk did not eat much. He mostly talked about his family. Eliza began to speak a few times, but Joan shushed her. They let Airk speak, telling stories about his parents and his sisters. He said that he would have to go into town later to see how the augura was doing with his one remaining sister. He speculated about when she could come home. But he mostly talked about his younger brother. Eli had always been the mischievous one and Airk had resented him bitterly for it. Now he spoke of Eli’s pranks with a hint of longing and a lot of affection.

  Jain wanted to cry as she listened, but she did not. If storytelling got Airk through his grief then she would let him do it all he wanted. Airk was in the middle of telling the story of the time Eli had somehow managed to replace ten egg yolks with water without their mother noticing until she tried to cook with them, when a knock at the door interrupted. “Open, in the name of Laird Tomkin!”

  Airk rose and opened the door. Tomkin stood on the threshold. He had taken off his armor and now wore a simple tunic and trousers. A red sash across his chest announced his rank, along with the matched sword and dagger at his belt that were too fine for any peasant to afford. Two of his soldiers flanked him.

  “My lord,” Airk said with a bow. “You are most welcome.”

  Tomkin and the two men entered the cottage without bothering to wipe their heavy boots. The laird surveyed the cottage with disgusted indifference while the two men poked about. “I have come about the matter of your taxes,” Tomkin said. “Sit, and we will talk.”

  Airk and Tomkin sat down at the table and the soldiers took up positions on either side of the laird. “How long has your family been on this land?” Tomkin asked.

  Airk explained that his family had been there since before the establishment of the shire some five generations earlier. Airk’s ancestor had served under Tomkin’s ancestor in the campaign that had taken the land from the strange, twisted creatures that had once lived there. Since then Airk’s family had been yeomen, farmers who owned their small holding. They paid taxes to the laird in the form of a set number of bushels of wheat every year. This made them much wealthier than most of the village families, who only rented their land and who, no matter how much they paid in coin or crop, seemed to go farther into debt to their laird every year.

  Tomkin and Airk discussed the arrangement at length, which seemed odd since Tomkin well knew the terms under which people in his shire lived. It did give Jain a better understanding of just how well her parents had done for her in arranging the marriage. Daniel had inherited his father’s debt and Daniel’s sons would inherit his. They could not leave the land without permission because the debt, grown with every bad harvest, bound them to the laird. This endless cycle of poverty meant that they were tied to whatever plots Tomkin gave them. The peasant plots were always big enough to barely support a family. Paying even part of the rent meant that the peasants had to scrape to get by and could never get ahead. Airk was free of that. His descendants would be, too.

  “You and you,” Tomkin said, pointing to Joan and then Eliza. “Go home and . . .” He gestured vaguely. “Farm or something. You.” He pointed to Jain. “Stay.”

  Joan gave Jain a worried look, but she and Eliza departed.

  Tomkin stood and paced around the room. “Tell me, Master Airk, how do you plan to pay your taxes this year?”

  Airk leaned back in his chair and blew out a long sigh. “I have no idea, my lord. The crops were ruined by the fire and it is too late in the season for an
other harvest. My parents did leave me some money.”

  Tomkin clucked his tongue. “The arrangement is for wheat by the bushel. I’ve no interest in your money.”

  “I understand, my lord.” Airk rubbed his forehead as he thought. “We do have some livestock.”

  “No. My castle’s pens are filled to bursting.” Tomkin stopped at the side of the table nearest to where Jain stood. The laird placed his hands on the table and leaned forward so that he was almost face to face with Airk. “It would appear that you are in default.”

  Airk opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out. The muscles of his face clenched as if he suffered some great pain. Jain would have not have faulted him for openly weeping then. But Airk composed himself. “Can there be no arrangement, my lord?”

  “Perhaps,” Tomkin said, pushing off the table. “You are the last of the yeoman in this shire. I suppose that might be worth preserving.” He turned to Jain and leered. “I could collect what is mine next year, if you give me something for my trouble.” He took a step toward Jain.

  “My lord,” Airk said as he stood up. Both of Tomkin’s men drew their swords and pointed them at Airk. “She is not mine to give,” Airk explained desperately. “Our wedding is not for some months.”

  Tomkin smirked. “Then you are not of much use to me, are you, peasant?” He reached out and fondled Jain’s breasts. Like all peasant women Jain had been taught not to resists the advances of a laird. He owned the land and everything on it and to resist his will was to be executed. Better to allow herself to be ravaged, even to risk birthing a bastard, than to risk her own torture and death. But Jain had killed a man the day before, killed him while her brothers stared in shock. Her nerves had not really recovered and she acted without thinking. She struck Tomkin. It was no slap, but a close-fisted blow that connected solidly with the laird’s nose. He took a step back as blood poured down the front of his shirt. “Hrnns!” he gurgled in a failed effort to say, “Guards!”

  Both guards turned and Airk took the opportunity to flip the table. It landed on the foot of one of the guards. The other guard looked back at his fellow. Jain took the opportunity to kick the laird in the crook between his legs. As he crumpled, she grabbed the sword in his belt.

  The guard who did not have his foot trapped under a table advanced on Jain and swung his sword. Jain tried to block, but Tomkin’s sword was heavy and it flew out of her hand when the guard’s blade hit it. Jain tried to back away and hit the wall.

  Airk grabbed a cooking pot from beside the fire and flung it. The clang of metal on metal filled the cottage as the pot dented the guard’s helmet. Jain stepped sidewise and picked up the laird’s fallen sword in a two handed grip. She swung with the intent of decapitating the guard. About halfway through the swing she stumbled and the blade went high and connected with the guard’s helmet. The flat of the blade and not the edge connected. The guard, still reeling from the first hit, fell into a seated position. His sword slipped from his grasp and he made no move to pick it up.

  The other guard managed to get his foot out from under the table. He took a step, howled in pain, and collapsed. Airk took his sword. “What do we do?”

  Jain stood, shaking. What could they do? She had assaulted a laird and Airk had helped her. If they were lucky they would hang. More likely they would be tortured to death by the augura or perhaps by Tomkin’s personal augur. “We have to get away,” she finally said. “Far away.”

  “Alright,” Airk said lamely. “Where do we go?”

  “Anywhere!” Jain shouted suddenly. She took a few deep breaths. “We need to tie them up. Give us time to get away.”

  “Right,” Airk said. He undid the sword belt of the guard with the broken foot and used it to bind the guard’s arms. Then he did the same with the other guard, who was too dazed to resist.

  Tomkin had somewhat recovered, but with only his dagger and confronted by two swords he could do nothing but let them do what they would. Jain untied his sword belt and fastened it to her own waist.

  “Never forget,” she told him as Airk trussed Tomkin up with a bit of rope. “Never forget that it was peasant girl who beat you.” She leaned in and whispered. “Shamed you.” And then she spat on him.

  “We can’t take that sword,” Airk said. “Someone would recognize it.”

  Jain looked at the sword. Its hilt was worked with jewels and the pommel shaped into a stylized lion’s head. She pushed the tip of the blade into a crack between the floorboards. Airk gave her a questioning look, but then helped her push it in further until the blade stood up on its own. Jain leaned on the hilt so that the blade bent.

  “No!” Tomkin cried. And the blade snapped.

  The dagger was of a similar, quite recognizable make. Jain tossed it into the fireplace and took the remaining guard’s sword. It was heavy in the scabbard and interfered with her balance, but she would get used to it. Airk quickly grabbed a change of clothes, some food, and his family’s money box, cleverly hidden behind one of the blankets on the wall.

  Jain at first thought to take some of Airk’s sister’s clothes but she thought better of it and took Eli’s clothes instead. If she was going to be an outlaw she would have to wear something more practical than skirts. They helped themselves to the guards’ horses; the laird’s was too distinctive, and they rode off toward the wilds.

  They agreed that they could not risk the main road. Airk knew of a deer track that would get them well away before Tomkin and his men could get themselves free. The track was a secret way used by peasants and outlaws trying to avoid the authorities. That was why they were both surprised when they overtook another rider.