Macsen Against the Jugger (NewCon Press Novellas Set 5 Book 4) by Simon Morden

Author:Simon Morden
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
Publisher: NewCon Press
Published: 2019-03-12T04:00:00+00:00

Five

Early in the morning, while the sky was still dark and Craig Low wreathed in mist, Macsen came to find Laylaw in the single men’s lodge. He shook him awake, not roughly, but not gently either, and waited outside while his cousin picked his way through the sleeping bodies to the entrance. He emerged, face slack and skin pale, and walked loose-limbed and stumbling away from Macsen and towards the lake.

Macsen followed in Laylaw’s footsteps until they both stood on the wet shingle shore, neither one looking at the other. Above them, the stars were winking out as dawn encroached, but they made no sound and even the wind was still. It was cool, perhaps the last day of the year when it wasn’t actually cold at that hour, and Laylaw was apparently in no hurry for Macsen to explain himself.

“We need to go out again,” said Macsen. His voice seemed unnaturally loud in the silence. “We need to go out again and find the book.” He ground the toe of his boot into the grit, listening to it rasp and cover the soft sound of Laylaw’s breathing. “You’ll come with me, won’t you?”

Laylaw snorted, and a few moments later, Macsen could see him shake his head slowly. “Why would I want to do that? The truth is I gave you the book, and you lost it. But because you can’t admit to that, everyone now thinks I’m a liar or a thief. Then you hit me. In front of them all. So why don’t you tell me why I should go with you?”

“We always go out together. Always. Whatever happened to the book, we need to find it, and we need to find it together. That’s how it works, Laylaw. It’ll be somewhere between here and the clearing – probably it’s still in the clearing – so it won’t be difficult. Just ride out, pick it up, come back. That’s all. Say you’ll come.” Macsen tried not to show he was rattled by Laylaw’s initial refusal, which had never happened before.

“If it’s going to be that simple, go on your own and find it. You don’t want me there, making a mess of things, do you? According to you, I can’t even put a book in a bag, or worse, that I deliberately don’t put a book in a bag to spite you.” Laylaw looked over the lake, with its low, lazy ripples, and he ducked down to fetch a small shard of spalled slate.

“I never said you lost the book deliberately. I never said that.” But they both knew that no one blamed Macsen, and everyone blamed Laylaw. “I don’t know how the book came to be lost. I gave it to you, and you say you put it in my saddlebags. If that’s what you say you did, then that’s what you did.”

“And it wouldn’t have killed you to tell everyone that, would it? They think I’ve ruined the quest, sabotaged it for one reason or other. They wanted their story, Macsen, and now they hate me.

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