The Wise Woman's Daughter

Finally got my arse in gear to write again, and have come up with a story about Vale's parents. I tend to enjoy writing about Duskwood and the Caans (gee, I bet you're all shocked), so I thought it might be of interest to write some background and bring some of those Caans alive.

I'll be posting this in short sections to make it both neater and easier on the eyes. As always I am grateful if you have any comments or suggestions!

==

'The Wise Woman's Daughter'

Sylvia’s mother was the village’s wise-woman, brewer of the reeking poultices and black draughts that members of the clan occasionally sought when a fever drifted in from the south on the backs of a mule-train or when a child ventured too far into the woods and returned with an oozing spider-sting.

The Caans were all knowledgeable in rudimentary leechcraft, and there wasn’t a soul among them who hadn’t set one of their own broken bones or bound a gaping knife-slash, but even a people such as they had need, once in awhile, for something more. It was then that they visited Ossana.

They were not afraid of the wise-woman, for no Caan was afraid of anything, but a certain uneasiness settled into the stomachs of some who visited her hut and saw the entrails of small forest creatures spread over tables, and the open jars of foul-smelling powders and luminous fungi.

Ossana herself was unthreatening enough when she moved around the village in the open air, but there was always a hint of her work about her; a vague, clinging scent of moss and dried blood. It was a craft that everyone knew was needed, and one which everyone was secretly very glad did not belong to them.

Ossana had two daughters, who mixed and fetched and carried for her brewings. Hester, the elder, was a strong but ugly girl with thick brows and a perpetual frown. The younger, Sylvia, could throw a knife quick enough to pin a rabbit between the eyes.

**

‘Were a fox, tha’s as plain as chickenshi’.’ A girl stood with her arms folded, surveying the remains of a chicken coop. There was little left but a few feathers and some broken wood.

‘Cause ye really know everythin’.’ Two lads, somewhere around twenty by the look of them, were rooting through the debris.

‘If ye’re sa’ good a’ this, feck else goes fer chickens?’ She held her narrow chin higher than was necessary as she faced the pair across the empty fowl-yard.

‘Piss off, Syl.’

A board came hurtling through the air toward her and she jumped out of the way; but in a bitter jest of fortune, her ankle turned over another piece of what had formerly been the coop and she sprawled onto the ground with a screech.

The young men laughed.

**

‘Righ’ then,’ said Kalec, rubbing one of his muscular shoulders. ‘Let’s ‘unt a fox or whate’er we’re after, or we’re fecked.’

‘Yeh good luck. I got shi’ t’ do.’ Kaden stretched and turned on his heel. He was slightly larger than his younger brother, but they shared a similar build; a bulky torso with powerful arms.

‘Feck tha’! Yer ‘elpin’ me or we’re fecked. Y’think our dad’s gonna pat us on th’ back when ‘e comes ‘ome an’ we ain’ got any chickens?’

Kaden shrugged. ‘I gotta go on a job tonigh’. S’yer problem now.’

With a brief growl, Kalec watched his brother saunter off and then went to collect his blades. As he trotted off into the heavy cover of the trees that surrounded the village, the dry leaves whispered with throats like ghosts above him while he did his best to avoid cracking the fallen ones underfoot. He wasn’t even sure yet what he was tracking – it probably didn’t matter as long as he brought home some predator’s head – but the fact that it was autumn was still going to make it damnably harder.

And then something whistled toward him from one of the trees. He jerked his head upwards toward the branches, twisting aside by some hunter’s instinct, but it was not enough; a knife, its blade a mere two inches long, slashed his linen shirt and embedded itself into his upper arm. He shouted, drawing a knife from his sleeve–

A girl dropped from the branches, landing neatly on her feet, and the leaves beneath her crunched softly.

‘Th’ bloody feck, Sylvia?’ Kalec grunted as he yanked her little throwing knife out of his bicep and tossed it onto the ground, hacking up something to spit after it.

She put her hands on her hips, though it was obvious to him that she had another knife in her palm, and stared at him coldly. Sylvia had the sturdy frame of most of the Caans, though she was a little on the slighter side; it was her face that was unusual. It was surprisingly fine featured, and she had these eyes that could give one hell of a glare– for an idiotic moment Kalec wanted to smirk at her, but a twinge in his arm brought him swiftly back to reality.

‘Ye knocked me down earlier ‘n laughed. Don’ do tha’ again.’

Kalec snorted, replacing the knife in his sleeve and stepping toward her. ‘Yer wha’, sixteen or more? This ain’ no kid’s game.’

Sylvia watched him like a bird of prey, fingering the knife in her palm, quivering but not stepping backward– And then in a single movement, quicker than anything the girl had ever expected, Kalec lashed out and caught her a heavy blow on the jaw. As she shouted and swore at him, he grabbed her by the shoulder and then bent her arms behind her back.

She kicked him with a sharp heel and then gasped as he twisted harder.

‘Righ’, ye lil’ bitch’ he said, ignoring the twinges of pain in his arm. ‘Ye’ve gone an’ made me’ life ‘arder today, so yer gonna ‘elp me catch a fox. Tha’ or I’ll beat ye senseless right ‘ere. Wha’ d’ye fancy?’

**
An hour later, Kalec and Sylvia were deep in the clutches of the black forest: a hunter with two crude dirks in his belt and a swagger in his step, and close behind, his dark and scowling shadow.

In later years, after its darkening, the honest men of the land would rename the forest Duskwood, looking up to the ghostly mists that overshadowed it and covered it, blocking out the light of day and bringing with it things twisted and devourous. Yet every child of the Caan blood knew that the forest had always been dark, there in the wild and ancient stretches of wood where they made their home. The forest, with its tangled roots that stretched out to enmesh the unwary and its skittering and nameless creatures that were sometimes visible only as a luminous eyes in the undergrowth, was the single thing in creation for which the Caan clan had any respect. It was their forest, as cruel and wayward as they themselves, and they belonged in its haunts.

Kalec paused in the midst of a sparse patch of ground that could hardly be called a clearing, his leather-shod feet sinking into the soft cover of detritus. No brittle autumn falls to betray their presence here: the trees were too closely knit, and thin oaks and walnuts shivered in the embrace of heavier juniper and fir. The evergreens caught the sloughed leaves before they met the forest floor, and when they did slither to the ground at last, they were wet and half decayed.

He held up a hand, but Sylvia had already caught the scent: the sour reek of wolf, distant but unmistakably fresh...

'If ye lead us int' a wolf-run I will gut ye,' she hissed in his ear, the single crude knife that she wore at her hip already in her hand.

Kalec turned to catch the wrist holding the blade, twisting her arm as if it were dry wood and pressing his thumb hard against her vein. The knife fell from her fingers as she drew in an uneven breath, sixteen years of plain experience the only thing keeping her from crying out in pain.

He released her, the toe of his boot sending the knife skittering across the forest floor, and pulled one of the long blackbladed dirks from his belt. Sylvia leaped after her weapon, the muscles in her face taut as she glowered at him over her shoulder.

'Ye think ye're sa good, 'ead 'ouse boy! Jes ye wait till yer na lookin' an' yer fecked.' The last note of her voice rose to a banshee screech as she dropped to a knee, groping in the dim light to find her knife among the decaying leaves. 'Jes ye wait–'

The ragged ghost leaped from the trees, a streak of quicksilver against the black shadow of the forest.

Kalec shouted as the shape bounded toward Sylvia, and, caught by the sound, it turned and twisted its lean body toward him. For the briefest of moments they watched each other, the man in patched leather, a dirk in each hand now, and grey and infinitely agile beast, its ribs showing through its matted coat. The wolf lifted its head in a strange, unearthly baying, unlike any wolf that Kalec had ever heard – and then, as it sprung for him, he saw the fire-glint in its eyes and understood why, and why it was alone.

With the dark steel of his blades raised before him, Kalec flung himself into the onslaught. The stench of the animal hit him with the impact of its body; barely twisting away from the snarling jaws he drove upward with a dirk into the exposed flank, and together, they rolled across the damp ground.

He shouted again, and as Sylvia snatched up her knife and scrambled to her feet, all she could see for the space of a few heartbeats was a tangle of coarse hair and leather, and the snarls of both man and beast. And then the wolf seemed to pin the man beneath its greater weight, and a scream cut jaggedly through the air as the jaws closed around the shoulder...

'Oi, ye feckin' rat-faced cur!'

The wolf's head rose for the space of a moment, its attention snapping upward to judge the new threat. The space of a moment was all that Sylvia needed. The throwing knife left her hand like an arrow from a bow, piercing the thick fur of the beast's chest. She darted forward with her crude dagger in hand, the rage of survival upon her now as it had been on Kalec when he had leaped to meet the wolf, but Kalec had already managed to pry a short knife from his armour.

He thrust it into the hollow behind the foreleg, black blood spurting over him as he struggled underneath the wolf's weight, and then he stabbed again. And again.

Sylvia shouted as the animal stiffened and convulsed, its jaws snapping for Kalec, and she plunged her knife at last into its neck and, grabbing at the matted fur, pulled backward with all her strength, with the strength of muscles that even she, a Caan, had forgotten she had...

Some moments later it was all over, and Kalec and Sylvia stood side by side above the carcass, their chests heaving, covered in the stains of wolf-blood and some of Kalec's own.

'It ain' a fox,' said Sylvia, her knees feeling suddenly weak.

Kalec turned, looking at her with the grim smirk of someone who has narrowly avoided having his throat torn out. 'Na it ain', but it'll feckin' do.'

**

‘So,’ said Kalec, several minutes later, as he wiped the blood from his arm with a piece of his torn sleeve, doing a fairly good job of not wincing. His leather chestpiece, the slashes from the wolf's teeth evident, lay on the ground at his feet. ‘Me dad’s been sayin’ ‘e’s gonna sort lasses fer Kaden an’ me, that s’abou’ time an’ shi’.’

‘Lucky ye,’ said Sylvia, who had knelt beside the carcass and was trying to find her knife again in the mess of matted and bloodsoaked hair on the wolf’s chest.

‘Well, ‘ow ‘bout it?’

She turned her head, her thin eyebrows arching above her dirty face. ‘Ye... wha’? Me?’ A very slight smirk. ‘Head ‘ouse boy an’ th’ wise-woman’s brat?’

Kalec shrugged, making a show of tying the cloth around his arm and not looking at her. ‘Yeh why na? Ye got a better arse ‘n most o’th’ lasses round ‘ere.’

Pursing her lips, Sylvia paused there a moment and then turned back to her task, her fingers searching in the rough, stinking coat.

He peered at her. ‘Ain’ no joke, Syl. How ‘bout it?’

And then, as she located her slender little blade at last and worked it out of the wolf-flesh, she stood up and turned around, cleaning the knife on her shirt. She tilted her head as she looked at him and then shrugged.

'Ye can fight off a wolf an' ye ain' as ugly as yer feck of a brother, sa. Alrigh', why na?'