Yorath the Wolf Read online

  I waited until that hour of the night when we talked best; Caco had left mulled wine for us upon the hearth and gone to her room in the back of the house. The fire burned blue and green by Hagnild’s art. There was an autumn chill falling upon the forest and the marsh. He drew out from his sleeve one of the scrying stones in which we had seen so many wonders. It was a certain yellow stone called Little Eye, which he used for scenes of the present, near at hand.

  This time as the mists cleared I saw a lofty chamber with green hangings painted with hunting scenes; I knew it for a certain bower in the Palace Fortress. A girl child about ten years old was alone in the chamber playing with a puppy. I knew her, too, it was the unmarked child, Princess Gleya; and now her mother, the Princess Merse, came in and sent her to bed. Merse had a strong dark face. I could not tell why, but the scene warmed my heart; Princess Merse’s face was moving, familiar. I thought of my mother, that “lady of Lien,” although Caco had told me often enough that she had died young and she had had hair like spun gold.

  “It is the child’s birthday,” said Hagnild. “The puppy is her birthday gift.”

  “It is hard to believe that they are the child and grandchild of Ghanor,” I said.

  I had often seen the awful lineaments of the Great King in the scrying stones.

  “Wheesht,” said Hagnild. “I remember a time when Ghanor was a warrior in the prime of life. The time when the Princess Merse was beautiful as springtime . . .”

  I knew that he had made this princess his liege lady. His love for her had determined the course of his life. The restlessness that had grown upon me this last summer could not be stilled.

  “Sir,” I said, “what is my parentage?”

  Hagnild controlled himself; his fine, high brow wrinkled, he had a pinched look about the nostrils. He had, perhaps, been expecting the question.

  “Your mother was a lady of Lien, as Caco has told you,” he said, “and your father was also wellborn. But more I dare not say at this hour, Yorath.”

  “Dare not?” I asked.

  I was angry and frustrated at the way he put me off.

  “Master,” I said, “is it some question of bastardy . . . or . . . or incest? Am I a ‘child of the bower’? For the Goddess’s sake, dear Master, give me something to lay hold of! Am I to spend the rest of my life in Nightwood for the sake of something my parents did?”

  “Why do you ask this now?” he demanded. “Has something been said . . . by my nephews?”

  “No, but Raff has behaved strangely to me, as if he were half-afraid. And it is since he saw my silver amulet, the one Caco gave me to wear upon my birthday, last Thornmoon.”

  “Lien is full of silver swans.” Hagnild smiled. “Just as Mel’Nir is full of animal crests and the Chameln lands are full of oak leaves made into amulets.”

  I was silent, knowing he would not tell me. Hagnild said again, “Next year in the autumn we will travel to Nesbath together. I will have the old house put to rights and find you a tutor and a master-at-arms. Perhaps Pinga and Raff could join you there . . .”

  It was a tempting offer and one that satisfied a boy because it did not look too far ahead. But before the next autumn came there was a violent end to our peaceful life in the wood, and I took up arms for the first time.

  After eighteen years the King’s Peace had worn thin; Ghanor was seized with a burst of his former energy. He swept his court and his armies off on a long rambling progress to Balbank, the border with Lien. The Red Hundreds of the Great King poured forth from the Palace Fortress, from the longhouse and from the manors of the local lords and made a series of violent and exhausting manoeuvers in the royal domains, penetrating as far as the forest border with Cayl. His territories were wide, he seemed to be saying, but not wide enough to contain him. He menaced the land of Lien and the land of Val’Nur. He was about to cross the inland sea into the Chameln lands but his health failed, and it was Hagnild who persuaded him to forgo this journey.

  Yet suppose the king had crossed the water? Would he have felt the lure of the plains where his countrymen gathered estates and so loved the land that some forswore their King and Mel’Nir? Would he have brought the Chameln so firmly under his yoke that they would never have broken free? Would he have given respite to that most troubled of his true servants, Hem Werris, the Protector in Achamar, battling a surly half-conquered folk and a tyrannous bunch of Mel’Nir landlords? Would Ghanor have died, far from his Palace Fortress, and plunged Mel’Nir into anarchy? This last was what Hagnild feared most and with good reason.

  The moment the Great King’s back was turned, so to speak, the war lords of the east of Mel’Nir, especially Huarik of Barkdon, the Wild Boar himself, began to ravage the land. Raids in old style left a trail of burning villages all down the fertile strip of the East Mark, between the High Plateau and the White Mountains. Sharpening his tusks the Boar scoured the eastern edges of the plateau, drove into the horse farms, reaching into the preserves of Valko Firehammer. He dared to spread his bane even in Nightwood and the marsh, in the domain of the Great King, on the shores of the Dannermere.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I

  The autumn woods were dark and wild, and as I came up to the smithy I heard shouting and the clash of arms. It was not the first time; the men of the Boar and parties of brigands and outlaws had made inroads into our peaceful domain. I ran to the smith’s yard. Four swordsmen, lightly armed but quick and fierce, had attacked a tall shieldman in full armor who was assisted by his bearer. I looked about for Finn and saw him where he had been caught and held by the open doorway of the forge. A fifth warrior, dark and nimble as the rest, held a crossbow against the smith’s mighty chest. His huge arms hung powerless, the fingers clenching and unclenching with strain. He had been preparing to shoe one of the shieldman’s horses; the big animals stood back, fretting and stamping in their rich coverings. The smith’s house was silent, but I knew from the twitch of the window coverings that Erda and the family were within, dreading the outcome of this unequal battle.

  But now not so unequal. I circled the smaller loose boxes and came up on the blind side of the man who held Finn; he was not even middle-sized, he was a little man. I came from between the buildings swiftly and stealthily, and my arms were around the crossbowman, crushing. He screamed with pain and fright, the crossbow jammed his fingers and I flung him across the yard into the door of an empty loose box. Finn gave a shout of relief, picked up his hammer, which lay at his feet, and slid me the first weapon he could find. It was a swingletree from a wagon, a metal-bound crescent of wood, trailing chains. We plunged into battle with these quick, slippery fellows, all lithe and brown, all with cropped heads and long, thin, curved swords; they had cloaks thickly wrapped around their arms in place of shields.

  The shieldman, a lord by his looks, was fighting well, but his strip mail hampered him when he was on foot and his broadsword had not found its mark. He bled from a sword cut on the face, for he had removed his helm. His bearer, a tall boy with a long dagger, held his master’s shield, still in its cloth cover, and moved it forward, striking from its shelter.

  Finn rushed forward and poised, drawing the attention of one warrior, who side-stepped and danced towards the brawny smith, making quick, twinkling passes with his sword. Finn threw his hammer waist high with the force of a kicking stallion; it caught the swordsman under his ribs, he went down into the dirt of the yard, and Finn picked him up again and shook him like a rat.

  I circled behind the three swordsmen and let out a roar and went in waving the horrible swingletree. One turned, the chains clipped at his ears and he struck at me, fought me high and low with his thin, bright blade, but his reach was not long enough. It was a bad day for skill and craft. He slipped, I poked him in the wind, a chain wrapped round his sword arm, and I pulled until his sword dropped.

  The lord, no longer so hard-pressed, cut at a swordsman with a rust-colored cloak, the leader, and sliced him badly in the leg so that he fell down. By this t
ime the shutters of Finn’s house had flown open and two of his daughters were shouting encouragement to us. The fourth swordsman suddenly broke and ran . . . into the house. We were all dumbstruck by this move, then Finn gave a roar. I threw down the swingletree, snatched up a fallen dagger and ran into the house, which was ringing with shrieks.

  I do not know what I expected to find. In fact there was Erda, a woman of similar shape to her goodman, beating with a stone pestle at a shrouded bundle by the hearth. The swordsman had been sent down by a washing basket hurled from the narrow stair by Vona, the fourth daughter; the two youngest boys, Till and Ofin, held a wrist that came from the bundle and were prizing the sword from the man’s fingers with the aid of a lump of coal from the hearth. I felt a pang of compassion for the poor brute.

  “Holy light!” cried Erda, “what a come-up! You’re bleeding, Yorath. What, will you have this beggar?”

  “I will take him out,” I said. “He is no match for this family!”

  Then Vona and her sister Fern dabbed at me here and there with a clout from the washing basket. I dragged the half senseless warrior out of the bundle and frog-marched him back into the yard, followed by a cheering tide of Finn’s sons and daughters.

  The place was a battlefield. Finn’s man lay where he had fallen; the injured leader had cast aside his sword and was binding up his leg wound. He looked afraid, and I saw that he feared his own red blood, which might be taking his life with it. There was a clatter of hoofs on the causeway . . . two of the swordsmen had run off and taken flight on their wirey horses. The lord sat on the mounting block and his bearer tended his wounds. Finn washed at the pump. I pushed my prisoner up to the shieldman.

  “Bind him,” said a woman’s voice. “We will question him when my lord recovers.”

  The bearer had spoken; it was a tall woman in riding trousers. I was mildly surprised, but what was one more surprise on that day? I took the prisoner to a stall and bound him with old bridle reins and left him on the ground.

  “Young sir,” called the woman, “come to us, we must thank you. Are you a friend of the smith? How are you called?”

  I thought her politeness a shade more than I deserved. I looked more like a wild man of the woods than a “young sir.” I went and bowed to the lord and his lady.

  “My name is Yorath,” I said. “Yorath Nilson.”

  “I am Strett of Cloudhill,” said the shieldman, “and this lady is my wife, Thilka. We are indebted to you and to all who helped us here.”

  He had a long, handsome face, rutted with age and hard outdoor work; his fair hair was streaked with grey. I knew his story. He was the natural son of the old Lord Strett of Andine, a landowner of Balbank. He had long been the lord’s only child, but when he was past sixty the old Bear married for a third time and his wife bore him a son, a legitimate heir. Old Lord Strett consoled his bastard son with the family horse farm up on the plateau, and Strett of Cloudhill made its name famous for the quality of its horses even beyond the boundaries of Mel’Nir. Then at last the old Lord died, at ninety, and his heir, the new Strett of Andine meanly desired the horse farm back from his elder half-brother. Strett of Cloudhill took the matter to the Great King, and in a wise decision . . . not uninfluenced by the fact that the Bastard of Andine was an ally of Valko Val’Nur . . . Ghanor let the horse farm, the Cloudhill Stud, remain in his possession.

  Now Thilka of Cloudhill took the stained cover from her lord’s shield and showed his crest, a Bear’s head upon a cloud.

  “My lord,” I asked, “were these men brigands or are you pursued by some enemy?”

  “Both!” Strett laughed. “These are hired blades and I think the Boar sent them, Huarik of Barkdon himself.”

  “We have seen his work, even in Nightwood,” I said.

  Then Erda came up and bade the lady and her lord step in by the fire and drew me in after them to have my scratches attended to. I was shy but I went along and drank a cup of Finn’s best wine. The smith added to my shyness.

  “Well, you see, Hem Strett,” he said, grinning in my direction, “we breed ’em big hereabouts, and not unhandy.”

  “No indeed,” said Strett. “Stand up for me, young man . . .”

  So, blushing, but urged on by the smith’s family, I moved into the center of the chamber where I could stand upright. The Bastard of Andine rose up and walked around me as if he appraised a piece of horseflesh.

  “That shoulder twist is from birth?” he asked softly.

  “Yes,” I said. “It has almost grown out. I have spoken with one who is a good judge of bones, and he claimed it would not quite go, but would be no hindrance in battle.”

  Strett had me take off my skin vest and stand in my tunic, sleeves rolled up.

  “Remarkable,” he said. “A true godpillar. I would be proud to have you train on my farm, Master Yorath, if you have no better offer. What d’ye say, my lady?”

  “Truly, we would be honored,” said Thilka.

  Her smile was sweet; I thought of the Princess Merse.

  I thanked them, and the lord, to prove his serious intention, gave me a silver ring marked with a rune for Cloudhill. I took my leave, explaining that I had only come to the smithy that day for my lesson in arms . . . which raised a laugh, for I had had a sharp lesson indeed.

  Out in the yard I found Gradja, Finn’s third child and eldest daughter, tidying up.

  “One man is dead,” she said, “and one bound, and the leader is very weak. Speak to the poor devil, Yorath.”

  I found the man lying on a pile of straw.

  “I cannot stop the bleeding,” he said in a hoarse voice. “I will die unless the wound is stitched. Mercy. Have mercy . . .”

  He was a dark-skinned man, one of the Danasken from the distant southland, of Chyrian stock, mixed in old time with a dark race who had come from the Burnt Lands. I could not bear to have him die.

  “If I help you,” I said, “you must tell all to Strett of Cloudhill and beg his mercy.”

  “I swear it,” he said, “by Ara, the Great Mother.”

  I bound up his eyes with his bloody neckerchief and picked him up in my arms. I said to Gradja, “I will take him to the healer. He’ll talk to the lord when he is treated.”

  She looked doubtful, but I could not wait to explain. I ran into the wood and brought the man quickly through the dark trees to our house, where I knew Hagnild was at home. I burst in, and Caco shrieked and Hagnild started up from his favorite chair.

  “Leg wound!” I panted. “I think he will die . . .”

  Hagnild, who had seen many emergencies of this kind, did not wait to ask questions. He snapped out instructions to Caco; we had the man laid on the big settle. Hagnild washed his hands, and Caco held the needles into the flames and quenched them and threaded them and brought them to Hagnild who stitched and tied, as I had seen him do on others and on myself. Finally, lips compressed, he laid a plaster of herbs and bone gel on the wound and bade Caco bind it up. I had taken the binder from the man’s eyes; he lay still and made no sound while he was doctored.

  Caco fed him a cup of broth, and at the fireside I explained what had happened in a low voice. I had helped to save a lord and at the same time brought home a brigand, a hired swordsman, in the pay, very probably, of the Boar himself. Hagnild sighed. I wondered if I should run back with the man and deliver him to Strett to tell his story.

  Hagnild sighed again and walked off into his study, so called, his secret chamber, which lay towards the back of the house. I knew that he had gone to consult a scrying stone; he returned with his brow lightly creased.

  “Gone away,” he said. “Strett and his wife have left the smithy in great haste. I think they questioned the other survivor. Did they have no servants with them?”

  “Their people had ridden on ahead along the high road to the plateau,” I explained. “They did not want to bring their packhorses into this region. Strett and his lady brought the horses to be shod.”

  “Then they have ridden off
to catch up with their folk,” said Hagnild.

  The Danasken assassin lay where he was for five days; we fed and cared for him and asked no questions. I believe Hagnild wished him simply to run off, once he was well, as the other survivor had done from the smithy. Our man was remarkably silent, like a man cast ashore in a strange country. His hair and beard began to grow swiftly and gave him a less haggard and dangerous appearance. On the sixth morning he was gone; Caco looked about but nothing had been stolen, though the man had eaten a piece of bread. I could see that both Hagnild and Caco were relieved to see the last of their patient. I felt foolish about the whole episode.

  Hagnild was gone until late in the night attending to the Great King himself, who had an attack of gout so agonising that he half-killed two servants who attempted to move him. The healer was forced to desperate measures: he used sleep magic and drugged wine on the old tyrant, then changed his bandages and fed him medicine. At last he returned, although he might have spent the night in the Palace Fortress as he often did. He asked if anything out of the way had happened; plainly he labored under one of his forebodings.

  The fire burned blue and green; it was late. Caco had just set a jug of wine to warm upon the hearth when there came a light scratching upon our door. Caco straightened up, afraid, and Hagnild motioned her aside.

  “Someone has slipped through our barrier,” he said.

  He gestured, and the door swung open. The man of the Danasken stood in the doorway wrapped in his rust-colored cloak. He had a proud and solemn look, and he stepped in without being bidden.

  “Peace to this house!” he said.

  No one bade him welcome. He stood where he was and said, “I have been to the Dannermere and bathed and I have been all day meditating in this fearful wood. I owe my life to those in this house . . . to you, Master Healer, to you, good mother, and above all to this young man, Yorath.”

  “We need no thanks . . .” murmured Hagnild.

  “I offer more than thanks,” said the man, smiling for the first time. “I am a man of the Danasken, and my foremothers and forefathers came from the Burnt Lands, and we retain some of their ancient customs. I have looked into my heart, and the Great Mother, Ara, has told me what I must do in this case.”