Yorath the Wolf Read online

  Sympathy for the king and for his beaten armies ran high throughout the lands of Mel’Nir. Ghanor was more popular than he had been since the early years of his reign, when as a young warrior he subdued the war lords. Yet without a large army, he felt naked. When his rage subsided, he set about rebuilding his forces by every means and with a mad disregard for his people and his honor. He quickly forfeited the goodwill he had gained and raised up champions against his throne.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I had earned my steed, Reshdar, a better suit of strip mail, a new helmet and a shield with the crest of Lord Strett of Cloudhill. The warrior that I now saw reflected in the water trough and in the eyes of certain beholders was a daunting sight. I heard Paunce, a neighbor lord of the rift, cry out to Strett, my master, riding ahead, “Godlight, Strett, that young bear you have counts as two men!”

  Knaar, who rode with me and was more finely accoutered and had his own followers, was instantly jealous. His handsome high-colored face became set and still. He growled at Trenk, the big patient soldier who was his servant and standard bearer, and led his whole array to the head of our line. We were riding to Silverlode, to the meeting called The Field of the Silver Crown. Ghanor, the Great King, had made peace with Huarik, the Boar of Barkdon, war lord of the east; now he had summoned the lesser lords of the rift, who had suffered under the Boar, to a peace table and a field for martial games. Silverlode, chosen as neutral ground, was forty miles from the rift in the center of the High Plateau.

  Silverlode was a ghost town, a mining town abandoned when its store of silver and gems ran out. It stood on a broad, empty plain at the base of a tumbled hill, and the roads that led into its quiet streets were overgrown and stony. As the party from the rift rode in on the appointed day, at midday, the appointed hour, after a camp of one night on the road, we saw the royal standard of the Duarings with its prancing steed flying high above the town’s roundhouse. I saw that the lists and the tilt yard behind the roundhouse were not yet ready; men in the king’s livery of green and gold were working at them. I felt a painful anxiety and tried to fight it down. Strett longed for me to win the silver crown against the rift lords’ followers and against the men of the Boar.

  “There now,” he murmured at my side. “The Boar comes well upon his hour . . .”

  A trumpet sounded; a blue banner rode ahead of a dust cloud. I saw Huarik at last, a big man on a bay charger, his unpainted harness flashing in the sun and his ten followers all in the same bright armor without surcoats. The entry into the town had been carefully arranged to avoid the least suspicion of treachery. Yet the thing that had reassured the rift lords was the royal presence: Ghanor had not come, nor Prince Gol, but the Princess Fadola and her husband Baudril Sholt were our hosts in Silverlode.

  Two of the rift lords, Paunce and Keddar, had brought their ladies; the fourth rift landowner was a woman, Arlies of Nordlin, a tall old woman in a white cloak, mounted upon a white horse. Now she led off, dipping her standard with the device of white birds to Huarik and to her neighbors and rode into Silverlode. We followed when our turn came. Knaar went ahead of the other rift lords, soon after Huarik himself. The presence of Valko Firehammer’s second son was a further proof of the security and peaceful intentions of all concerned. As we rode in and went to our quarters in the empty stone buildings, houses or storehouses, grouped around the little square, I felt the bleakness and sadness of a ghost town, which all the trappings of the meeting could not hide.

  We stabled our horses. The Cloudhill sergeant was pleased, saying that the horses were better housed here than men or their lords. Trumpets called us into the square; the princess and her consort, the vizier, stood before the massive doors of the impressive stone roundhouse, the largest building in Silverlode. Fadola, the king’s youngest child, was five and thirty, a blonde, stately woman, tall enough to be a “sword lily”; she was finely dressed, her golden robe flowed down over the steps of the roundhouse, her jewels blazed in the sunlight. She swayed a little and smiled, reaching out her hands to the rift lords and their followers. Baudril Sholt, in green from head to foot, tried to take his wife’s hand, missed, came down a step, stumbling. I thought, smiling, of Hagnild’s nickname, “Sholt the Dolt,” then wondered if the man simply could not see very well. He had a bland face with a fine moustache. Fadola had uttered a few words of welcome, a wish for a speedy peace, further good wishes for the pursuit of the silver crown. The handsome pair stood nodding at our cheers like two huge dolls.

  I had no pressing duties. Strett and the other lords, including Knaar, were making themselves fine for the ceremonial banquet. I strolled with Ibrim to look at the tilt yard. There was too much work still to be done; the royal servants, hammering dutifully, would have to stay at it all night by torchlight. Men of all the rift lords came up to me in a bluff, half-fierce way that was part of the ritual approach to feats of arms. We grinned, showing our teeth; patted arms and shoulders. I noticed that none of Huarik’s men had come out of their quarters . . . perhaps they felt themselves outnumbered. Two pages or esquires stood by the Boar’s baggage wagon; they wore blue tabards, one had black hair in a long snood of silver netting. I strode on, then stopped dead so that Ibrim trod on my heels.

  The dark-haired page saw how I stared, put a bundle back into the wagon and looked away with a weary smile, as if to say: “Oh yes, I am a woman . . . I make no secret of it . . .” Then as I stared longer, she took a step in my direction; I moved too, feeling my heart pound, and my breath caught in my chest. I managed to sketch a bow and croak out my name.

  “Yorath!”

  She came right up to me with an expression of wonder; again her beauty almost stifled me.

  “Eight years!” said the Owlwife. “How you have grown!”

  “We meet again,” I said. “The Goddess has granted my dearest wish.”

  For me the town of Silverlode, the whole world had vanished away. I felt that I stood alone with Gundril Chawn.

  “I thank you for saving my life,” she said.

  “What became of your companion?” I asked. “The rider on the black horse who went towards Lort?”

  “He was not so lucky,” she said. “Thilon had him thrashed and imprisoned. He was a servant and pleaded bewitchment.”

  She reached out and touched my ensign’s sash.

  “You serve Strett of Cloudhill,” she said. “I think you are that ‘young bear’ they talk of at the tiltyard.”

  “If you wish me well, I know I cannot fail to win the silver crown!”

  She would not raise her head to look me in the face. I thought she must have a loyalty to Huarik or his house.

  “I will repay my debt,” she said slowly.

  Still without raising her eyes, she took my right hand and looked into the palm for a long moment. Then she stepped back and gazed at me with a kind of terror. At that moment the trumpets sounded for the entry to the banquet; Gundril turned and ran off. I went with Ibrim to watch the lords and ladies go into dinner. He grinned at me warily and said, “Do you know that lady is a witch?”

  “I do indeed,” I said. “How can you tell? Have you heard her name?”

  “The air burns around her head,” he replied. “She is a witch.”

  “I am bewitched then,” I said, “for I find her very beautiful . . .”

  The trumpeters beside the steps of the roundhouse blew the call of every lord who went in to the banquet. They were stripped of their armor and wore fine robes; it was a time of peace. Each lord or noble pair was permitted one servant, a cup-bearer perhaps or a waiting woman. Strett was preceded by a page, the young curly-headed son of Keddar, another rift lord; and I saw Keddar’s lady smiling proudly upon her son. Knaar went in first with a kedran, one of his escort from Krail. Last of all came Huarik, I saw him up close for the first time. He was much younger than I expected, a powerful man in his early thirties with a scarred face and a head of thick brown hair that grew back from his broad forehead in a peak. His cupbearer was Gundril Chaw
n. So they walked into the roundhouse, and the doors were shut. I saw, hardly noticing, the other page of Huarik edging through the crowd; he stopped by Ibrim, then went on his way.

  Ibrim, smiling, pressed an object into my hand. I thought it was a folded paper, but as I quietly and privately unfolded it I saw that it was a papery leaf, five-fingered, of a clear golden yellow. I looked down into my palm and read the message on the leaf and at once the leaf curled in my hand, turning brown. But its message burned in my brain. Treachery. Do not drink. Save yourself.

  I crushed the leaf in my hand and looked over the heads of the crowd, stretching my neck a little. The armed followers of the rift lords were walking slowly to their quarters; still no followers of Huarik were among them. The royal herald, standing with two guard officers of Fadola’s escort before the doors of the roundhouse, spoke up.

  “Come then, lads . . . back to your alloted quarters, remember the orders of the day. Time to take your ease while the princess and the lords and dames are feasting. Look at our cookhouse yonder, filled with bakemeats and ale for your pleasure . . . but it must be served in your quarters . . .”

  I bent down to Ibrim.

  “Go at once, spy out the quarters of the Boar’s men. Bring me word!”

  He was slipping like a shadow through the crowd. I looked about in the press of soldiers for one I could trust. I saw the roundhouse as if for the first time, a place with no second entry, a prison. I saw the cookhouse, a smaller roundhouse directly across from the larger one, and the stone houses that were our quarters; I saw the pitiful numbers . . . forty soldiers. I seized the arm of a man going by.

  “Trenk,” I said, “walk with me. Do not cry out. Listen to me.”

  We went towards our quarters which both lay on the west side of the square.

  “Ransom!” said Trenk in a hoarse whisper. “Lord Knaar will be ransomed, by the Goddess, and maybe the princess too. This must all be the bloody Boar’s doing.”

  “Do you know of any second entry to the roundhouse?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  “They have their own kitchens inside . . . it is built like a keep,” he said.

  “Remember . . . do not drink,” I said. “Hold the drink carriers. Start no outcry.”

  So I stepped into the small stone house that served as our quarters and looked at the nine men of Cloudhill, old Sergeant Wayl and his eight companions, men picked for looks and strength. They sat there thirstily at an old round board. I told them, and they stared at me fearfully as if I had lost my wits.

  The sergeant sprang to a narrow window and said, “Carriers coming. Two to a mess.”

  We waited and presently two men in the livery of the king came in with two small barrels of ale already tapped, carried upon a trestle. They were very cheerful, doling out pottery jugs, and when the first creamy draught of ale had been drawn I seized one man, the larger, about the body, and the sergeant took the other.

  “Good cheer indeed,” I said. “So drink, friend!”

  The man I held was dark-skinned, fat; he turned pale. His younger companion began to whimper.

  “Drink!”

  I held the jug of ale to the fat man’s lips, and he writhed and spat.

  “No . . . have mercy . . . I am sick . . .”

  “What is it? Tell me or you’ll drink indeed. Would it kill?”

  “No, no, sweet gods, no,” he whispered. “Sleeping draught, I swear it. I saw it done. Sleep.”

  I nodded to a soldier called Slyke.

  “Warn the others. Try to keep them still.” Slyke went out; the sergeant let his wretched servant fall, and two of the men seized him at once and poured a jug of ale into him. He sat on the floor gasping, and they watched him.

  Ibrim came in and said, “Empty except for a couple of servants. Huarik’s men have gone from their quarters.”

  “We have not done,” I said to the fat man, tightening my grip. “Where have the Boar’s men gone? How shall we come into the roundhouse?”

  “Underground,” he said quickly. “Passages lead from their quarters . . . from our cookhouse in the square. Let me loose, lord, my ribs are gone. Underground, a nest of caverns, cellars . . .”

  “How many men has the Boar down there?”

  He shook his head, and I squeezed him.

  “Fifty, sixty, didn’t count. Spare my life, lord!”

  “Lead us in secretly, friend . . .”

  “Joost,” he said. “I am Joost, journeyman cook. I can lead you in. I can take you round the Boar’s men!”

  “Joost, if we are discovered, you will be the first to die!”

  “I can do it,” he said. “I swear it . . .”

  With a sigh the other servant keeled over on his side; his sleep looked as ugly as it was sudden. I wondered if some might not wake after this sleeping draught.

  There was a sudden commotion in the yard, and Slyke came running back in.

  “Too late, Ensign Yorath,” he said. “The Old Lady’s folk from Nordlin, half down. The rest have run mad, trying to get the door to the citadel open!”

  We went out and saw twenty men and servants from the rift lords battering at the door. They held the royal herald fast and the guards. I met Trenk and the ensign of Knaar’s men, furious and afraid.

  “Keep this up,” I said to the ensign. “Batter at the doors. I will go in with my company and get the door open from within.”

  “The king,” panted the ensign. “These are the king’s men. If Lord Knaar is harmed, by the gods, Valko will have the king, once and for all!”

  “The Boar has conspired with the king,” I said. “We know too little. I will go in!”

  I pushed Joost, my fat guide, and ran with Ibrim and the nine men of Cloudhill to the second roundhouse. There was a little food and a few servants all in the livery of the king. We snatched some food up and some wine the servants were drinking. There was no protest but some heads were broken; I snatched back one young lad who had run to a big open trapdoor behind a stack of barrels.

  Joost led the way down a comfortable flight of stone steps and into a roomy, well-made brick underpass. He pointed to a torch on the wall and the sergeant took it. We turned off at once into a narrow, dark tunnel; I pushed the fat man along in frantic haste and squeezed through after him. We came to a crossroads and heard the murmur of voices. The hidden soldiers of the Boar, armed and tense, were packed into a round chamber doing nothing, waiting for the word. I saw that they were nothing like the soldiers of his escort in their polished armor. These fellows were shabby veterans in worn boots; I wondered where Huarik had such creatures.

  The fat man still knew where to go and felt my dagger in his ribs. We took a short tunnel then a flight of steps that wound up and up.

  “Where . . .?” I whispered in his ear.

  “We come out on a gallery over the hall, lord,” he said. “No guards . . . just the musicians. You’ll see, you’ll see . . . I did all you asked . . .”

  So we went on, panting up the little winding stair and came to a small door that I sometimes see even now, in my dreams. I stretched an arm over the guide’s shoulder and pushed out the door a crack. I saw the yellow, dusty daylight inside the roundhouse and part of a wooden balcony. I heard a scream, a single wailing cry, so wild and terrible that it told me we had come too late. I pushed Joost ahead of me through the door, and we fell out onto the wooden gallery above the hall. We were in shadow, unseen except by a few cowering musicians, who could not know or care whose men we were.

  We looked down; the high table faced us and on the left was a long serving table. The scene was laid out for us, without disorder or riot, like a painted picture or a tapestry. On either side of the two thronelike chairs set for Princess Fadola and Hem Sholt three rift lords sprawled in their death agony. Keddar had fallen forwards on the white cloth, blood pouring from his throat wound; I saw Strett, my loved master, lying in the same attitude in a pool of dark blood, and Paunce, canted back in his chair, the blood still pulsing
from several wounds. The old woman, Arlies of Nordlin, was nowhere to be seen; Knaar was still living, held fast by two of Huarik’s escort. The Boar himself had stripped off his robe of silver grey with its scarlet lining and stood in his tunic of linked mail between Strett and Keddar. His dagger was in his hand, his arm red to the elbow, even his face bespattered with blood.

  I could not tell who had screamed. The women had been dragged or driven back behind the high table in a heap against the wall of the roundhouse, tapestried for the meeting. Now the young wife of Paunce ran mad, flung herself past the men of the Boar, scratching and tearing at them, and came to the side of her lord and clasped him about the body. Huarik wiped his dagger on the long sleeve of Strett’s robe and strode round to the front of the high table. He gave an order and the servants from the banquet and two of his officers began to wrap and carry the bodies. The serving dishes were twitched to the ground with a clatter and the rift lords laid out upon the trestle. In the midst of this scene of carnage the princess and Baudril Sholt still sat in their high chairs. They clung to each other and Fadola had pulled up the long train of her golden robe to cover her face.

  I saw where wooden stairs ran down right and left from the gallery.

  “Get down to the main doors,” I said aloud to Sergeant Wayl. “Have them open. Where will the Boar’s men come up from the cellar?”