Blood of the Red

Chapter 2 - Ingold

Chapter 2 – Ingold

Dead men hung in bunches by the city gates. Over-ripe gallows' fruit, picked by the priesthood and displayed as a promise to the unruly. Ingold galloped beneath them, turning through the gates of Thelim, clattering along the paved road. The stolen horse had good pace, sparks flew from her iron shoes. Ingold did not look back. He raced the mare between stubbled fields, passing hayrick and hovel in the wild night. All thoughts of melting away had... melted away... gone in the moment he revealed himself as being of the Red. His best bet lay in distance now – in putting as many leagues as possible between himself and Thelim's holy tower.

With the stormwinds cracking all around, Ingold gave the mare her head and galloped into a night broken on occasion by glimpses of a waxing moon. He slowed only when the rains eased at last and beneath a clearing sky moonlit paving gave way to mud.

"Good girl. Good girl" Ingold slapped the mare's lathered neck. In leaning forward he became aware of a tight pinching at his ribs.

"You can let go now, Dain."

The boy relaxed his grip. Ingold cast about for shelter. The farms lay far behind them, and rain still laced the wind tugging at his cloak. He left the road, angling east along a low ridge of hills. Slow now for fear of laming his steed.

They made camp in the midst of a copse, mainly ash and poplar, nestled in a valley in the lee of the hills and bathed in the light of an almost full moon. Ingold sat tented in his cloak. Beside him, Dain crouched, his face animated by the dancing flames of their fire. The focus of Ingold's attention, a bubbling pan, hung from a blackened tripod. He'd chosen a traveller's horse to steal and found the saddlebags to be packed with provisions, along with pans for cooking, rope, tinder and the like. With miser's care, he fed strips of dried salt beef into the churning barley. He felt bad about the theft. The loss of a horse and baggage might be more than some could recover from. And then there was the stablehand left groaning in the hay. The man would have bruises that outlasted a week. Ingold unclenched his jaw. None of it was good. It's hard to follow a path toward some distant thing without stepping away from who you want to be.

"Quit staring at me." Ingold kept his gaze fixed on the pot.

"Are you a Blood Lord?"

"If I was a Blood Lord would I be making my broth in the wilds?"

They sat in silence whilst the barley softened. Dain devoured his portion the moment Ingold sloshed it out, a burned mouth no match for hunger pains. Ingold gave the child the weather-blanket from the saddlebags and settled beneath his cloak, not too far from the glowing embers.

"'He's drunk the Blood of the Red'. That's what they were shouting," Dain said.

The boy was a bulge beneath the blanket, twisting to make a hollow in the damp leaf-mould. Something about the lad told Ingold he wouldn't let the matter slide. Not unless shown the sharp edge of Ingold's temper. He looked to have seen plenty of sharp edges already in his short life and the horsetheft had left Ingold with a low enough opinion of himself already, without the need to add to it.

"They did say that didn't they."

"Why?" Dain shifted position again. "If you're not a Blood Lord why would they say-"

"Listen then." Telling stories is my job after all. "Well, if I'm to tell you my tale I should begin at the beginning. Not that any story truly begins or ends." And with the crackle of the fire, the creaking of trees, the patter of rain down low, and the moan and rustle of the wind on high, Ingold added his own voice to the sounds of the night.