or retrieval system without prior written permission of the author. Perkins, Larry Threads of Destiny ISBN 1441471723
Threads of Destiny
The Bloodstone Amulet Book I
2
by
Larry Perkins
Chapters Prelude 1. Midsummer
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2. Most Remarkable Encounters 3. Weighing Options 4. Camber 5. Urgent Dispatches 6. Hazardous Beginnings 7. Raising the Dales 8. Raiders! 9. Picking up the Pieces 10. Interrupted Journey 11. A Change in Status 12. Future Prospects 13. A Change in Plans
Prelude Long ago, before the stars began to shine, before old stories were told in front of hearth fires, before time itself began to churn, three old crones sat down to weave destiny: one to card, one to 4
spin, and one to weave. Nameless they were, but men named them for the power of their craft. The Norns, they were called, the weavers of fate and fortune, of luck and cursing. The oldest, the Carder, whose powerful hands pulled out of the past, present and future the stuff of destiny, bound wisp on wisp into gossamer rolls and handed them one after the other to the Spinner. Spinner’s dexterous fingers span new fibers into those already in her grasp, twisting, stretching and pinching them into yarn. The stuff of stars it was, colored by fire and shadow, earth and sky, water and stone. And when her spindle filled, she spooled it and stacked for her sister, the Weaver. Only Weaver had the knowing of her craft, ceaselessly knotting new threads onto old, and casting the shuttle across the loom, deftly catching and sending it back; she wove, she wove. Her warp threads were time and seasons, love and hate, compassion and cruelty, vanity and compassion, joy and sorrow, and a thousand others, the constants, the unchangeables, strung up and down from beam to beam. Her shuttle found its way in and out among them, weaving randomly at times and sensibly beyond. Lives were scribed there, tied on at birth and clipped by her pitiless knife when the end had come. She wove, she wove. Written, as it were, the destiny of men and nations and of the gods themselves. No one was exempt; no existence was there outside the warp and weft of her loom. She wove; she wove. No appeal could she hear, no birth cry, nor wailing at death for she was deaf to all sound. Blind she was as well, seeing without seeing by the feel of her hands. She sang as she plied her craft, the changeless, changing pattern that sang life into the cloth she made. The pattern song keened the time for harvest and hunger, youth and age, of life and death. Heroes and cowards she wove from hero threads, and cowards and heroes from common stuff. 5
The destinies of men and women, kings and slaves, nations and gods; she wove, she wove. That is the way of things. That is how the Saesen tell it.
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1
Midsummer
Light streamed through the open shutters, and sun dust swirled when the foredawn breeze pushed through the cracks in the shutters of Jon Ellis’ cottage. In the distance a dog barked as if testing its voice, and finches twittered in the branches across the dusty track from the house. Jon stretched and yawned, tensed himself to get up, but relaxed back into the too comfortable straw pallet and bedding. Eyes shut against the growing light; he waited, his body pleading to stay in bed just a little longer. His mind told him to get off the mattress; he’d slept long enough; there were things that needed to be done. Jon stretched again, took a deep breath, and sat up. He sniffed the long linen shirt he’d left on the floor beside his bed and decided that it didn’t smell that bad yet, the week was just ending. He’d have to wash it before long and pulled it over his head. He wandered outside to the summer kitchen a few yards from the back door of the house. The heat from a fire in the middle of summer would have made the house unbearable, so he made his way to the outbuilding. Jon dug into the nearly empty wood box to find some kindling 7
and reminded himself once again that he would need to start the onerous task of gathering firewood for the winter from the forest before the rains came in autumn. He knelt and arranged the pieces carefully in the mouth of the wide stone fireplace and blew gently raising a fine pillar of ash until he coaxed a flame from the banked coals, still warm from the previous evening’s dinner fire. He added enough wood to ensure enough heat to cook his breakfast of barley porridge. Waiting just long enough to see that the flames would take hold, Jon dipped the water bucket into the wooden barrel under the back corner of the house and hauled it into the kitchen and filled the covered iron pot he used to heat water. Jon Ellis was twenty years old and had been living on his own for the past three months, since Eastermonth to be exact. He and his mother lived in a solid two room cottage with thatched roof in need of repair that one of Jon’s grandfathers had built. Most unmarried young men of Jon’s age lived at home with their parents, but his mother had decided to leave home to care for her mother over in Camber, about fifteen leagues west of Redding and left Jon to fend, at last, for himself. Jon’s father had died in a quarry accident five years since, leaving Jon and his mother to get along as best they could. After Jon helped his uncles and cousins dig the burial pit on the long sloping hill west of Redding, they lay his father’s body in the grave with a few of his possessions. Then they built a pyre on top of his father’s body and over the grave. As oldest son, Jon set a torch to the kindling and his mother and her friends stood or sat on the ground grieving and keening. By the time the wood burned down to ash, the women had ceased to wail. Jon stepped forward and poured a jar of ale into the grave, which hissed and spat ash into the noonday sun. With the help of his kinsmen, Jon erected a stone ten hand spans high which Egan Holman had brought down 8
from the quarry as the other men and boys filled and tamped the earth of his father’s grave leaving a small barrow mound compared to the others around it. When Jon had turned sixteen a year later, he and his mother were hard pressed to scrape together eighty pennies to pay the death duty on his father’s narrow land holding just off the Camber Road. Their last cow had been led away by the bailiff in partial payment of the inheritance fee still owed to the Thane. They were so destitute that Ralph Warren, the local miller, had actually tried to buy Jon’s wardship from his mother, but she had refused. She had no interest in selling her son to the most detested man in Redding. Then, like an event from a children’s tale, someone placed a leather bag with one hundred silver pennies beside the front door. When Mistress Ellis opened it and saw the contents, she collapsed onto the pounded clay floor and wept until her over apron could absorb no more. But the money left after the duties were paid didn’t last long; John had been forced to go down to Ralph Warren’s gristmill and beg for work. In the beginning Warren had offered Jon occasional work at his mill, and Jon had satisfied Warren as to his ability to work. Jon had worked there ever since. In those five years Jon had grown from a gawking, spindly youth into a handsome, well proportioned young bachelor who was a regular topic of conversation among the young women his age when he made deliveries sitting atop one of Warrens’ wagons. Jon stood nearly six feet tall with straight dark hair in need of a trim, and clear green eyes in a rather angular face. The heavy lifting at the mill and his outings in the wilder parts of Saeland whenever he had any time to himself, had given him a strong back, sinewy arms, and powerful legs. Jon had a ready laugh and 9
regarded himself as a hard worker. His thoughtful, even disposition, much like his father some said, had gained him many friends his own age in town, and he was a favorite of children in the neighborhood. Steam bobbled the lid of the pot as the water came to a boil quietly but enough to remind him to push the iron hearth hook away from the fire. He threw a few peppermint leaves into an earthenware mug to steep and then added a couple of handfuls of barley meal to the boiling water to make porridge. While it cooked, he carefully toasted a slice of barley bread that he buttered and slathered with some of last year’s halfcrystallized honey. It was rather poor fare as breakfasts went even for a young bachelor. As soon as he’d thrown the crumbs outside for the land wight and rinsed the wooden breakfast dish, Jon poured the rest of the hot water into a bucket and went out into the sunlit work area behind the house with a drying cloth and scrub rag. He drew his shirt off and proceeded to scrub his face and neck, down his arms and his feet. Lastly he poured the rest of the bucket over his head and sputtering and spitting wiped the rest of himself down, a better bath than most. He pulled his shirt over his head, drew on a pair of short trews, and cinched a brown leather belt low around his hips to make a tunic, leaving the long tongue of the belt to hang down in front. In cooler weather he would have worn long woolen trews and a long sleeved overtunic, but in midsummer a belted shirt and trews was enough. Pulling his lightweight leather boots onto his feet, he glanced around to make sure everything was as it should be then latched the door behind him on his way to the mill. Ralph Warren’s mill with its great oaken wheel on the south bank of the Holbourne River was one of the landmarks of Redding. Each day when flour was to be ground or delivered, Jon 10
worked the mill. Warren may have been the owner, but he didn’t do work as most people might define it. He spent time at the mill at his cluttered accounts table, but when any real work was to be done, Jon did it under the miller’s alwayscritical eye and that of his shrewish wife. Ralph was fair enough to Jon; he always got his pay, but Ralph’s reputation as a miser ensured Jon never got more than the least the miller thought he could part with. Warren wasn’t above short changing his customers if he thought he could get away with it either, using the pretext of the Thane’s mill tax to explain away any discrepancies. Jon did what he could to make amends by adding to the orders when the Warren wasn’t looking, and Ralph seemed none the wiser, so far, a suitable arrangement as far as Jon was concerned. But it rankled Jon that he worked for the most disliked man in Redding. By tending the field and garden which stretched from the forest to the Camber Road with its vegetable garden, barley field, and orchard behind the house, Jon was able to raise most of the food that he and his mother ate or bartered with their neighbors through summer and winter, just as most families in Saeland did. His mother was an expert seamstress and between them they provided for themselves with a little to spare. But of late Jon had become dissatisfied working at the mill. He felt like he should be doing something more; mill work felt more often than not, like a dead end, endless lifting and shifting meal, flour, and grain. Ralph Warren was becoming more difficult to deal with all the time, and Jon didn’t see how he could work there much longer. But Jon had put off serious thought about a change, because the options available to him were severely limited. Jon lived in Redding, one of the large towns in Saeland, two hundred and fifty or so thatched houses that ran in rather untidy rows parallel to the south side of the Holbourne River. A shallow 11
ford made it possible for people to live on the north side at Overton, but for some reason Redding had remained firmly attached to the south bank and only a row of farms reached toward the forest just visible to the north across the river. The houses were built of an admixture of old honeycolored sandstone and half timbered houses, but most, like Jon’s, were wattle and daub, a useful mixture of chipped straw, clay, or cow dung plastered over the wattle laths. The baker, the smith, the chandler’s shops were strung along the main eastwest street through town which was called variously, Holbourne Street or Selby Road depending on which end of Redding one lived on; the true name often a lively topic of debate in the Swan after a couple of beakers of beer. The Hall was the largest building in town, square and very old, where on occasion, a hallmeet was ordered and decisions were made that affected the people of Redding under the watchful eye of the Thane. For a few young men, like Jon, the Hall was where he spent went a winter or two learning to read and write from a tutor. Jon’s father had insisted he be educated, and to Jon’s frustration but eventual benefit, he had learned to read and write and was able to figure in his head or on parchment much to the delight of his parents. Grudgingly, Jon too, had come to value, what he had learned. At the base of Quarry Hill was the Harrow, the sacred enclosure, one of the three largest in all of Saeland. It served as one of the places where people from leagues around came to feast and make offerings during Slaughtermonth in late autumn. The low enclosing wall kept grazing animals outside the holy precincts. Inside a marvelous spring issued forth from the ground, which at times roiled and bubbled, though cold as snowmelt. Nine stones had been set up in a wide circle around it to guard the spring long before, Jon’s people, the Saesen settled at Redding. 12
Woden’s Stone stood twice as high as the tallest Saesen and was covered from top to bottom in with interconnected spirals and whorls. At its base lay the Slaughter Stone, waist high, and polished smooth from end to end. Legend had it that the stones were heaved out of the ground by giants long before any man hunted the forest. The Harrow was a place of dread and awe and yet an integral part of the seasonal round of life in Saeland. Near the circle’s gateway stood the weatherbeaten timber house of Eofa. She was a frightful being, Jon had often thought of her as the perfect representation of a night hag, who made her living by foretelling the future for those who visited the Harrrow all through the year. People came to perform sacrifice and inquire about marriages, the outcome of an illness or injury, to be touched by her distaff for healing, or any of a hundred other day to day concerns of ordinary people. Jon, like his neighbors, gave the Harrow a wide berth; the fear and awe generated by the bloody sacrifices throughout the year and the eerie, highpitched keening of the seidwoman kept all but those determined to hear her mumbled foretellings away. The Harrow at times served as a sanctuary for hunted criminals or the target of a clan feud that none dared violate. The only way out of sanctuary was a trial, which tended to give the aggrieved parties time to come to their senses. The pull of the stone representations of Woden AllFather and Earth Mother, Frithe and Fregr, Tiw and Thunor were powerful for many in Saeland. Only the Harrow at Camber superseded it. In the three hundred and twenty three years since Jon’s ancestors wandered into the lands around Redding, most of the forest had been cleared from around the towns, and the landscape tamed to produce almost everything that anyone could want. His Ellis ancestors married into the powerful Gessing clan who first 13
occupied the lands around Redding long ago. Even in Jon’s day the chief of the Gessings held the office of Thane and governed Redding Hundred under the Earl of Saeland. The name of Ausbert, the first of the Ellises in Redding, was included in the long chants sung around winter hearths about the earliest Saesen. Jon’s mother, Gytha, was the daughter of one of the influential sub chiefs of the Stalling clan from the area around Camber. But the Ellis family had over time been much reduced in means and holdings until Jon was the only Ellis in the seat of his family’s ancestral home, although he could claim blood kinship and obligations from many of Redding’s inhabitants. He was like most Saesen, a poor cottar. Since his father’s death, he and his mother had lived in the house where Jon had grown up just off the Camber Road. Then, just a few days after New Years Day, early in First Plowingmonth, word came that Granny Stalling had become ill, unable to live any longer on her own. Jon’s mother decided to leave Jon in Redding and go care for her mother in Camber. She had not wanted to leave Jon alone, but the house and hythe strip was all she had left of her life with her husband, Dean Ellis, and it was Jon’s by right and custom. Granny Stalling could not be persuaded to budge from her house on Stockwell Road, and since Jon’s work at the mill was their only regular income, after some weeks of indecision, Jon’s mother tearfully packed most of her belongings into a neighbor’s borrowed wagon and went to live at Camber. The day before she left was a minor holiday called Gang Day. It was the custom for the entire populace of Redding to beat the bounds of the town. After the young boys were ducked in the Holbourne, the lively procession paraded to the west boundary marker stone. There the boy’s heads were bumped against the stone and told, “Remember, your home is here in Redding.” 14
Jon and his mother walked arm in arm in the procession down to South Pond where the boys were wetted again. The entire assemblage then marched through town to the east boundary stone where the young boys were once again bumped up against the ancient sandstone boundary pillar and reminded that inside the boundaries of Redding they were home. “Why are the girls never bumped against the stones?” Jon asked as they strolled among the chattering villagers eagerly anticipating a day off work and family gatherings. “I guess we listen better than the boys, but on Gang Day you have one more chance to knock some sense into them,” his mother chuckled. It was an old joke, not lost upon the young man considering living on his own for the first time. “Now you find yourself a nice Redding girl and settle here where you belong.” Jon started to protest, but his mother cut him off midsentence. “I know what you’re going to say. Meg this and Meg that. Aren’t there some pretty girls here? Someone we’d know the family and clan connections for? Jon grinned. “Yes, Mother. You’ve said the same thing at least a score of times. Once more won’t change my mind.” “Well, it never hurts to try does it?” Gytha laughed. “Looks like banging heads on stones doesn’t have the effect we think it does in your case.” The next morning after piling the neighbor’s wagon so high that Jon had to tie ropes together to reach around and over it, his mother kissed his cheek and bid goodbye. “Now mind you, I expect that you’ll take care of the place. You work hard down at the mill and come visit us when you get a chance,” Mistress Ellis lectured as she stepped up into the wagon seat next to the drover who’d agreed to take her to Camber. She 15
fixed Jon with a glare expecting him to follow orders. She wasn’t easy with Jon’s glowing descriptions of the young woman he saw every chance he visited Ribble. Nice, the girl might be, but Gytha had her heart set on Jon settling down with a young Redding woman, hoping that a match with one of the landed Gessings would improve their fortunes. Then with a shout at the ox, the wagon rumbled away down Camber Road. Jon was on his own. Jon had obediently visited his mother and grandmother once with a full report on how things stood at home. But he disappointed them on finding the right Redding girl to marry, he knew every girl his age in Redding. Many of the young women were too closely related to Jon and there were strict, if unwritten rules, forbidding marriage within certain degrees of kinship. Most of the other girls were Jon’s childhood friends, not in the running for romance as far as he was concerned. So Jon did what most young men did, he searched for a young woman of his age when he traveled outside Redding to pick up or deliver goods for Warren. Almost two years ago while delivering flour to Ribble, a small farming village about twelve leagues north and east of Redding, Jon had, on account of weather, spent the night in the barn at an inn there. That was where he met Meghan Turner, the daughter of the keeper of the Ribble Inn. After subtly establishing that they had no close clan ties, Jon stopped at the inn whenever he had a chance. He had grown to love Meg, and she him. Infrequent walks and talks chaperoned by Meg’s younger brother, Tristan, or Meg’s mother brought them close together each time he found an excuse to make the drive or walk to Ribble. Jon visited when he could, which was not as often as either of them would have liked. The initial excitement of living on his own had given way to a feeling Jon came to recognize as loneliness. He had been thinking he and 16
Meg might be able to set up a household sometime in the coming year, but he wasn’t sure Meg was thinking that way. The last time he’d brought it up, the argument had ended with Meg weeping at something he’d said to offend her, which to this day he was unable to explain. Jon’s second love was exploring the countryside. Maybe it was in his blood from his grandfather Stalling, but Jon had come to know Saeland for many leagues around Redding about as well as anyone who lived there. He was counting the days until his twentyfirst birthday next Yulemonth which would make him eligible to join the Guard. That was something he yearned for. His grandfather, Kell Stalling, had been in the Guard at Camber and had taken Jon to the Armory and several musterings and introduced him to Thane Senwith Giffard, who commanded the Guard on behalf of the Earl. Jon had never forgotten the stories of brave deeds done long ago, the smell of oiled leather, and the heft of a strong yew wood bow and a long, singlebladed knife, the traditional weapon of every freeborn Saesen male. Once or twice a year there was nothing he liked better than wandering through both settled and wild lands on his own or with a friend or cousin or two if he could persuade them to go. Most days away from the mill were usually work days on Jon’s small holding where he grew the food his family ate. The occasional days spent in the wild, he persuaded himself were good training for the day when he could officially join the Guard, as the militia was called by most residents of Saeland. Thane Giffard, head of the militia and as close to a tough, hard man as Jon knew, supervised the Guard from the Armory over in Camber. The Thane was responsible to the Earl himself for the safety of Saeland, the Marches, and the Dales. Jon made an attempt each time he visited his grandparents to 17
call in at the Armory, one of the oldest buildings in the country. Once used for meetings of the Saeland Council, it was built as a strong house, able to withstand an attack if necessary, and then as headquarters for the Guard. Jon loved the Armory better than any other building in Saeland. The smell of leather and oil, racks of ancient pikes, lances, and barrels packed with arrows, ancient maps of the country all filled him with a great desire to be part of the Guard, and the Thane knew it. Thane Giffard had known his Grandfather Stalling for years and would only smile his knowing smile whenever Jon mentioned that he would reach his majority next Yulemonth. Most of central Saeland, the areas around Redding, Holbourne, and Colby and down into South March gave little thought to the Guard. Generations had passed since anyone or anything had threatened the peace. Jon didn’t think there was even a single member of the Guard in Redding. Meg’s father, Durban Turner was a section Captain for the Guard at Ribble, and Jon admired him for that and for siring such a daughter as Meghan. Then in Full Summermonth of that year, a week before the great midsummer feast, Jon had a stroke of luck, at least that is how he thought of it, at the mill. Ralph Warren was acting even more strangely than usual that particular morning. Poking his head in as if to check up on Jon’s work, he started to say something for which Jon waited, but instead Master Warren shook his head and turned away. Just before it was time to go home for dinner, the main meal of the day, Warren stepped to the doorway of the mill room again as Jon carried another fiftyweight sack of grain over to the hopper. “Jon, my boy,” he shouted trying to make himself heard above the rolling, thundering noise the millstones made as they ground 18
against each other. Jon brushed off the accumulation of flour dust from the morning’s grind, and followed him out into the outer room where customers usually waited or talked to Master Warren while Jon worked in the back. “I am going to visit my brother all the way down at Wimbourne in South March. I’ve decided to close the mill after today until I get back next week just before Midsummer’s Day.” He handed Jon his week’s wages of five silver pennies. “I’m sure you can use the time to your advantage.” Now if most people were told they weren’t wanted at work, and it would cost them a week’s wages, they might be inclined to complain, but not Jon. He smiled trying to keep the excitement out of his voice. “Do you want to shut down now?” “Finish what you’ve set out and slip the gate in the millrace. I’ll lock up.” Sacking and stacking the flour against the rough plastered wall didn’t take long at all. Jon stepped out onto the weathered stone platform next to the river and stomped the millrace sluice gate into place to stop the flow of water to the mill wheel. The wheel slowly creaked and groaned itself to a stop, and the day’s work was done. Jon swept out the mill room and the outer office, and sent a cloud of dust off the stone porch into River Street in front of the mill. He stepped out onto the dusty street sloping down to the river’s edge and slapped as much flour dust from his tunic as he could and made a few token swipes of the broom across the rest of the porch. “All done then, Jon?” inquired Master Warren as Jon came back through the door. “Yes, sir,” Jon replied, untying his dusty blue apron and hanging it in its place near the door; the broom propped beside it. 19
“Good day, then Master Warren,” Jon called. “I’ll see you next week.” “Enjoy your time off and don’t go wandering into a bog or getting yourself lost!” Warren called after him, shaking his head. He could not for the life of him imagine what interest a young man could possibly have in traveling into uncivilized places. That particular conversation had occurred several times, and Warren had grudgingly come to realize it was just the way Jon was, and nothing he could do or say would change that. Warren stood at his desk, his eyes drawn back to the terse wording of the note he’d received still lying on the stacks of accounts. His guts twisted from the sheer stupidity of what he had committed himself to. He sat down, and put his head in his hands. He half expected that particular summons would never come, yet there it lay. Mowbray had written that he needed an urgent meeting with him just two days from now at Skipton, quiet, off the beaten path, little Skipton. He’d lied to his wife about where he was going, and again to Jon. A shadow passed the window and he glanced up to see, Thane Anson Gessing clutching a missive that was suspiciously similar to the one lying on top of the other accounts. “Did you get a note from Mowbray?” Gessing blurted as he poked his head through the mill door. Warren smacked his note with the back of his hand. “Right here. I’ve just sent Jon off for the week.” “I saw him on his way home. When will you leave?” “I’ll go tomorrow morning; I’ve told my wife I’m going south to see my brother. She’s not suspected anything. How about yourself?” “I’ll go tomorrow afternoon. What do you suppose Mowbray 20
wants?” Warren shook his head. “I don’t know what could have changed, certainly nothing around here. He says here he wants to purchase flour, as much of it as I can grind, fair enough price, too.” The Thane sat down heavily in the chair opposite the miller. Looking furtively about as if someone might be listening, he leaned toward Warren. “Are you sure about this, Ralph?” Warren paused for moment. “Wish I was, but I don’t dare back out now. There’s good money to be had out of it, for both of us.” “Ah, yes, the mill tax. I hadn’t thought about that.” Yes, of course, you’ll need to take the appropriate measure out of each and every sack. As long at the Earl doesn’t know how much grain is really being ground, he’ll be none the wiser,” added the Thane. Warren could see the avarice in Gessing’s eyes and the rank sweat of him. “But it’s the other that’s somewhat unsettling; that’s what it is,” responded the Thane, “and it frightens me. Do you think they can take control over at Camber like they say they can?” “If we stick together, it’ll work,” assured Warren. “Mowbray’s promised help from outside hasn’t he? Says Saeland is ripe for a new leader, and we’d be among those to gain the most advantage, if we choose sides early. That’s why I brought you in.” “I don’t like it,” complained Gessing. “We have a lot to lose if Mowbray’s wrong; you realize that don’t you?” “Of course, but nothing’s going to go wrong. Mowbray’s bunch is taking most of the risks; and we just have to take a few orders and sit back and wait to see which way the frog jumps.” “If you say so,” sighed Gessing. “If you say so.” 21
Jon was elated. The unexpected holiday finally gave him a chance to go up to Ribble and see Meg. Jon had repeatedly promised to visit the Mortons since Eastermonth, but either Meg was working away from home or Jon never had two days off work in a row. If Meg wasn’t home, he’d go on north of Ribble, he’d never been up that way, and it was his first opportunity to see the country north to the border. Jon practically ran home, something which the staid residents of Redding seldom did. Once inside he quickly threw together his usual trail food consisting of salt pork, dried peas, barley flour, and a vegetable or two from the garden, cooking implements, and a bedroll. He weighed the odds and ends he thought he might need for a day or two in the wild. Jon made a circuit of the house shuttering the windows and closing doors, enclosing the stifling heat inside the cottage. He grabbed his hiking stick from behind the door, and stepped out onto the street leading to the ford. Going by way of Holbourne it was twelve leagues to Ribble, but he could cut almost three leagues off the walk and make it before supper if he kept up a good pace into the long summer evening and took the shortcut through Overton. When making deliveries for the mill, Jon always drove to Holbourne and crossed the bridge there onto the Ribble Road. The river road north cut across country whenever the river wound a little too far out of the way, but still it usually took him most of a day to get there making deliveries or picking up grain to be ground from farmers and householders along the way. But to get to Ribble in time, that day, Jon took the street down to the ford and waded the river to Overton with his gear held on his shoulders before taking the lessused path on the north side of the river. The track shrank to a footpath as the rye and barley fields thinned and gave way to the common grazing area and then deep woodlands. Jon liked that route, because he imagined it was 22
how the land appeared when his ancestors had first arrived. The oaks were broad of girth and timeless; their massive branches like so many arms reaching for the sun. The forest floor beneath the trees was a leafdecked, mossy carpet which absorbed most sounds. Here and there ivy and woodbine twined about the trunks and saplings, clothing some in verdant skirts. The south breeze seldom reached the massive trunks of the giant oaks, making a cool, shady walk, compared to the heavy heat in the sun on the Holbourne Road. Jon’s path crossed several small streams rushing down from the forested hills to the Holbourne below. The best part of that trail was that it cut leagues off the journey to Ribble. Few travelers took that track because there wasn’t a single town or even a farmhouse once they left the Overton town lands behind. People from Redding were generally very cautious when it came to going into the ancient forested wild lands north and west of the town. Many of the deep glens and coombes had their resident huldrefolk, the forest keepers, who were no friends of human beings. No road crossed the Forest, and very few but an occasional hunter or woodsman ventured there. Hushed tales of mewlings, the spirits of lost children, waiting in the shadows for the unwary, kept all but the foolhardy out of the deep forest. Jon had hiked the cutoff on many occasions, and his inbred fears about such things had long since faded. In fact, his excitement grew as he passed the now familiar landmarks. The weather was warm, and Jon had worked up an appetite and a sweat in his haste to reach Ribble by nightfall. Full Summermonth and Haymonth were normally dry preceding Weedmonth rains. Despite the heat, Full Summermonth was a good time to go walking in the countryside. After Overton’s last few houses and small farms disappeared behind him, Jon settled into his usual walking pace. He felt good 23
and eagerly anticipated seeing Meg. Several months had passed since Jon had seen her, and from the tone of the single letter she’d had someone write, she missed him as much as he missed her. The bright green leaves of summer scattered the clear sunshine of the afternoon on the walking path as it wound through the forest that crept down from the hilltops. A slight breeze from the west caused the leafy shadows to dance endlessly on the path at his feet. Jon trekked for the most part in shade all afternoon, and that was good. He didn’t want to arrive at the Turner’s all in a sweat. Hours later the forest thinned as he approached the long farm strips which had been cleared from the forest on the west side of the valley down to the Ribble. The village itself lay nestled against the river at the edge of a wide valley. Without a mill the town’s people were forced to bring their grain all the way to Warren’s mill to have it ground. Warren’s family had bought or bribed the millage rights from the Thane and as a result owned the only legal grist mill in the area. When grain was to be picked up or flour delivered in Ribble, Jon always made a point of being the carter after he met Meg. Just at supper time, Jon stepped through the door of the sturdy, twostory stone building, shrugged off his pack and set his walking stick beside it against an oaken bench. “Hallo? Durban? Meg?” Durban Turner stuck his head around the corner of the kitchen door, and his face broadened into a wide smile. “Jon, how are you?” He strode across the room wiping his hands on a cloth he had tucked into the apron tied around his substantial waist, grabbed Jon’s forearms and shook him welcome. “Any chance of supper?” Jon asked with a knowing grin. “Couldn’t have timed it better,” replied Durban. “Edlyn has just taken a magnificent steak pie from the oven and we are about 24
to sit down to eat. Come on into the kitchen!” Jon followed Durban into the large kitchen with its broad stone hearth; pots and pans hung in a row along the timber frame wall. Edlyn Turner was setting shallow wooden bowls onto a hand crafted trestle table. A large oval pan topped with stillsteaming golden crust sat in front of Durban’s bowl and gave off the most delicious smell imaginable to a hungry hiker. Bowls of peas and beet greens fresh from the back garden sat side by side with a mound of butter and a loaf of barley bread waiting to be cut. Edlyn called out a welcome to Jon. She met him and rubbed his arm, “She’s missed you, Jon. We all have. I’m so glad you’ve come.” She went past him with a conspiratorial grin to the other end of the kitchen and shouted up the back stairs. “Meg! Tristan! Dinner’s ready! We’ve company down here! Wash your hands!” The hurrying of feet on the floorboards above showed a lively interest in supper. “I’d like to clean up a little too, if I may,” said Jon. “Right through to the back,” reminded Durban. “You know where it is.” He waved toward a washroom where clothes could be laundered even on rainy days. Jon stripped off and poured water from the wooden water bucket into a basin, scrubbing himself down after the day’s work at the mill and the afternoon walk. Feeling positively starved and anxious to see Meg, he dried himself and returned to the kitchen to find the family talking quietly, waiting patiently for him. “Sit down, Jon,” ordered Durban, indicating a chair next to Tristan, Meg’s twelve year old brother, directly across the table from Meg. Meg, of an age with Jon, smiled radiantly at Jon and up at her father as he explained, “Meg’s just off down Colby way tomorrow looking after Edlyn’s aunt who’s fallen ill.” 25
Jon thought Meg was prettier every time he saw her and found it hard to pay attention to what Durban was saying. “How long will you be gone?” Jon interrupted, trying not to show his disappointment at the news. “I’ve promised to go tomorrow, but I should only be two or three days at most. How long can you stay?” “I was afraid of something like that,” Jon confessed. “I’m not needed at the mill for a week or so. I came to spend some time with you, but it sounds like it isn’t meant to be this time. I think I’ll go on up north for a look around, and come back this way in a couple of days and see you then.” Jon couldn’t tell if Meg was disappointed about the timing of his visit, but he was. At least they would have a chance to talk after dinner. “Let’s eat!” Durban invited and everyone did just that. The food was delicious; Jon ate until he could not lift another spoonful. “That’s the best meal I’ve had since Mother moved to Camber,” said Jon. “I have to confess that I didn’t make it, Jon. Meg made the steak pie herself. She’s getting to be a very good cook.” Jon smiled across the table, but Meg, who didn’t like the attention, found a sudden interest in the wood grain of the table top. When she did glance up, it was directly into Jon’s eyes, and he smiled broadly and lifted his eyebrows to say he enjoyed it. Durban glanced over at his wife and gave her an approving nod. Mistress Turner shook her head and held Durban’s eye indicating he wasn’t to say anything. Durban missed the meaning of that glance and took a deep breath to speak. Edlyn kicked him under the table before he embarrassed either of the young people. Durban winced and glared. When it was clear everyone had all they wanted of the main 26
course, Meg cleared the table of plates and bowls. Jon handed his plate up to her and let his fingers brush Meg’s; she noticed. Mistress Turner set a bowl of scarlet strawberries, plump and ripe, and a pitcher of cream on the table. Jon groaned. He had eaten far too much, but to turn down fresh strawberries was not in his nature. “I knew you’d like these,” Mistress Turner said. “I remember you saying something about strawberries. Go on, take as many as you’d like. We’ll soon be tired of them; there are that many in the garden this year.” Jon helped himself and handed the bowl to Tristan. He felt something he couldn’t quite describe in words as he surveyed the faces around the table. He’d liked living on his own, but at the same time he felt he was missing something. It had been missing for a long time. His sister had died when she was only six summers old, then his father, and after that his mother had gone to Camber. Except for a few cousins in Redding, he was spent far too much time alone. These good people had taken him into their home and into their lives. He felt he belonged there and for that hour he was content. The conversation turned to Jon’s plans. “I’ve always wanted to travel north to the borderlands. Maybe I can catch a glimpse of the Northern Mountains, anyway I’d like to. Durban, you’ve been with the Guard up that way, haven’t you? What’s it like?” Durban launched into a lengthy description of the lands north of Ribble including the paths and roads Jon would find there. Tristan listened raptly to the conversation, but Mistress Turner fidgeted the whole time, finally leaving the table to clear up after supper. Jon glanced over at Meg and saw her gazing at him, and he became suddenly conscious that he and Durban had been 27
excluding everyone else from the conversation. Meg’s blue eyes drew his to hers as if under a spell. Tristan nudged Jon to hand over the strawberries again which he spooned out and half covered in cream. “That’s wild country up where you are going,” Durban continued. We hear there’s been some kind of trouble up north of the border. The Guard gets up that far, but not many others. A few of our boys are out this week, but you never know who’ll you meet up there.” As Durban continued, Jon’s attention wandered, he wanted to hear Durban out, he really did, but Meg was much more interesting. Durban let the subject drop when Mistress Turner gave him a ‘that’s enough, you’re rambling on’ look. At the lull in the conversation, Jon said, “I’d like a chance to talk to Meg before I go. Would you mind if we go outside for a walk after we clean up in here?” “You two go on. Tristan and I will help, won’t we, Tristan?” Durban volunteered. Tristan opened his mouth to protest but a glance from his father strangled the complaint before he could utter it. Jon patted Tristan sympathetically on the shoulder which Tristan shrugged off with a frown. “Go on, Meg,” smiled her mother, “we’ll clean up in here.” Meg escorted Jon out into the inn’s common room off the kitchen. Meg was about a span shorter than Jon with hair the color of good earth after a rain, tied back with a strip of embroidered cloth. Her gentle blue eyes and face radiated kindness and intelligence. Where Jon was hard, muscular, and angular, she was lithe and rounded, and used to hard work herself. “How long will you be up north?” she asked. “Just two or three days, if that’s how long you’ll be with your aunt. I’ll come back here and spend a day before I go home. Do 28
you think you’ll be back by then? If not, I could come down to Colby to see you.” “No, my aunt wouldn’t like that. She’s bad tempered anyway and that would make it unbearable,” she giggled. “I think she’s been feeling better, despite what she says. I’ll come home, if you are coming back this way. You’ll be careful up there, no doing anything foolish!” “You are beautiful,” he murmured and caressed her cheek with his callused fingers. Meg brushed the hair from the side of his face up over his ear devouring every detail, every angle of his face. He raised her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers. “What are you smiling about?” Meg asked him. “Looking at you makes me smile,” he replied, “I can’t help it. Let’s go for a walk.” Meg led the way out onto the wide porch of the inn. The heat of the day had yet to dissipate but the sinking sun was losing its strength. They ambled down the main road arm in arm to the river bridge and stood leaning against the ancient stone and kissed. They continued past the bridge and scrambled and slipped down the grassy bank to the edge of the river. Jon kicked off his boots, sat on the bank and put his hot, tired feet into the river. He lay back into the grass and groaned with pleasure, his eyes closed. “It’s a long ways up here from Redding,” he complained. “I’m sorry I haven’t been up sooner. I just can’t seem to get away from the mill. And if I did, you’d be down at Colby anyway.” Meg sat beside him and plucked a long stem of grass topped by a soft green seed head and twirled it in her fingers and looked from it to Jon and back. She opened her mouth as if to say something but then thought better of it. She tickled his ear with the seeded end of the grass which brought him upright and grabbing for her. She resisted briefly, giggling until Jon wrestled 29
her to his side and pulled her down over him, and they spent a pleasant half hour with the sounds of the river keeping them company. Meg snuggled into his shoulder waving off the occasional insect; Jon felt as happy at that moment as he ever had. “What are we going to do Meg? We’re stuck aren’t we? Me down there and you up here; I hate not seeing you. Say the word and I’ll quit Warren’s and move up here.” “What would you do up here? There’s no mill. I don’t see you hiring out as a field hand; we couldn’t live on that, Jon.” “Then come with me to Redding,” he pleaded. “I have the house and hythe, and we could be happy there. I’m lonely, Meg,” and left his plea unfinished, realizing it sounded like whining. She had cried the last time they had talked about that. Jon had felt so badly about how the discussion ended, he didn’t press the point then, and he was hesitant to press it now. It had been an old tension between them, and each time it ended with Meg saying something to the effect that she was still needed at home. Tonight she was silent. Jon waited, nearly holding his breath. “All right,” she surrendered, so quietly that Jon almost didn’t hear it. He rose up on his elbow and looked down at her dear face. Slow tears slid out of the corner of her eyes and edged their way into her hair. “Do you mean it?” “Yes, Jon, I’m lonely too,” she sighed. She gazed up into his face searching for understanding. “I go through the motions each day, but I don’t want to feel that way anymore. So, yes, Jon, I’ll come to Redding with you. Though I don’t know what my mother will say.” Jon’s eyes met hers, and they both understood a bridge had 30
been crossed, and everything changed. He wiped her slow tears with his finger tips and traced the outline of her ear and cheek. “I love you,” Jon whispered. He was so overcome, he wasn’t sure he had words to express his feelings. Meg smiled and pulled his head down and kissed him hard and searchingly. The twilight gradually enfolded them there lying side by side on the bank. “I thought you were going to head north tonight,” Meg teased. “Something important came up,” Jon teased. “I’ll leave tomorrow morning.” They returned to the inn hand in hand talking about the plan to set up a household in Redding sometime later that summer. They also agreed not to say anything just yet. Jon wanted a chance to talk with his mother and gather enough courage to ask Durban Turner for his daughter. Meg led Jon upstairs to one of the guest rooms. “Do you want a fire lit?” she asked “No thanks,” gasped Jon, “it’s too hot up here already. I’m going to leave the window and the door open.” “I’ll be gone early, so I won’t see you until you come back, Jon. You be careful up there,” she warned sternly. “Yes, ma’am,” Jon clowned. “I’ll be up early too.” She bent to kiss him again, and then she was gone, closing the door behind her. Jon was truly tired, but long he lay thinking on top of the bed covers in the heat, before the cool night air stole into the room and sent him off to sleep. Tristan’s voice at the door was the first thing Jon heard the next morning. “Jon! Jon!” called Tristan, “are you awake? Mam’s sent me to tell you breakfast is nearly on the table.” Jon yawned and smiled to himself. One of the important most unknowns of his life had 31
been revealed last evening. Meg was coming to Redding! Dressing quickly he hurried downstairs barefoot, feeling each of the roughhewn hardwood treads as he carried his gear out to the front porch and set it down, so he could leave directly after breakfast. Passing the kitchen he could smell bacon frying and oatmeal boiling. He pawed through his hair with his fingers and hoped he was presentable and returned to the kitchen. Master Turner waved Jon to his customary place beside Tristan. Mistress Turner greeted him cheerfully across a pan of scrambled eggs cooking over the coals in the hearth for the other guests who had yet to make their appearance downstairs. Tristan slipped into his seat and joined them, and together they managed to devour most of what Mistress Turner had made. “Has Meg left yet?” asked Jon, leaning back from the table. “Just going now,” explained Mistress Turner, “Gil Weaver is going down to Holbourne and offered take her that far, he’s behind time today. One of the cousins is driving over from Colby to collect Meg and take her to my sister’s place. If you’re finished, why don’t you go up and help her carry her things down?” Meg met him on the stairs carrying one large and one small bag. He kissed her and took the bags, and placed them next to the front door. She led him to one of the tables in the common room and sat holding each other by the hand and talked about the past three months. Meg’s father came out of the kitchen and wiped down the tables for the guests who’d soon be down for their breakfast “Well, you’re off then, Jon? “Yes, sir, Master Turner, thank you again.” “You call me Durban, my boy,” as he had requested a dozen times, and Jon had ignored. The two Turners escorted Jon through the door and onto the shaded porch. 32
“Goodbye, Jon,” Meg said more steadily than she felt, “I’ll see you in a few days?” He kissed her lightly, and said that he would. She turned back into the inn. Jon was ready to go, but it was obvious that Durban had something else he wanted to say. Master Turner cleared his throat. “I know you’ll be careful, Jon, but you ought to know the Normen have disappeared from the border,” he declared. “We aren’t saying much to anyone, but word does get round up here. There’s talk of raiders up in Norsk country. I’ve got four men out now, you keep your eyes and ears open. If you see or hear anything suspicious, or you meet up with one of them Norsk soldiers, hear ‘em out, and race back here quick as a lightning. Don’t want any nasty surprises.” Durban studied Jon thoughtfully. “I see you’ve got a good long knife, but aren’t carrying a bow. I’d feel better if you had one.” Jon had learned basic knife fighting and archery skills as almost every young man in Saeland did, but since there was little if any kind of game in the hills around Redding, most young men he knew never became skilled with a bow. John fit into that category. He knew it was important for Guardsmen to be sharp sighted and accurate, but he didn’t know anyone in Redding who could teach him anything he didn’t already know, and his archery skills left much to be desired. Jon’s father had taught Jon the use of the long knife in a fight, for every man, young or old, carried a knife on his belt and was expected to be able to use it. A man’s knife served as a deterrent, but twice in Jon’s life, his knife skills had saved him from being robbed by thugs. “I’ll give you one of my bows, if you’ll have it.” Durban offered. Jon had never taken a bow on his outings and felt a little uneasy about taking something of Durban’s, but he didn’t want 33
Master Turner to think him foolish for going unprepared into the wilds. “I would appreciate it,” answered Jon honestly. Durban disappeared and returned just as quickly with a yew wood bow in each hand and a leather cylinder bristling with irontipped arrows. The cylinder was exactly like the ones in the Armory in Camber. Something about Jon’s expression must have given his thoughts away, and Durban smiled. “Not all of us have been fat old innkeepers forever, you know,” and chuckled at his own joke. “Most of us in this valley are in the Guard.” He held out the bows. “Which one?” Jon took the shorter of the two and strung it easily; the wood smooth and strong. “This one pulls too easy to for me, I think,” observed Jon and took the other one Durban held out to him. When Jon pulled the long bow back almost as easily, Durban’s eyes widened. “You’ve got an arm on you, Jon.” Ignoring the compliment, Jon changed the subject. “This is a good bow. You’re sure you don’t mind my borrowing it?” “Use it well, my boy,” was all Turner commented as he held the sling of the quiver out to Jon. Jon unstrung the handcrafted bow and wrapped the string loosely about the bow and tied it onto the side of his pack. Pulling an arrow out, Jon sighted down the shaft and tested the tip that glinted in the sun. “They’ll fly straight and true, them arrows will,” Durban declared. “Thank you again; I …” words failed Jon. “I don’t know what to say.” “Say no more, Jon. You watch yourself out there, it isn’t a walk on the Holbourne Road once you get out past that line of hills,” and waved his hand toward the northern horizon. “Now you listen 34
to me, the Normen out there, if you meet any, they’ll see you long before you see them. If they are about, use your best manners. A few of them speak our language though with an accent I find hard to make out. You’ll come back this way, won’t you? You know you are always welcome in our home.” He patted Jon on the back, and Jon thanked him again and set off for the distant heatherclad hills. He followed the main road which ran west and a little north through the mixed forest of ash, maple, and sycamore toward the far northern towns of Gamble and Whitburn. That Guard work was dangerous had never really occurred to Jon, but if that was the case, so much the better. Jon wasn’t afraid of being alone in the wild, he relished it. The solitude, sounds of woodland birds and animals, wind in branches, the sun on his back, these things Jon enjoyed. He crossed the old stone bridge over the Ribble and turned up the river road without passing anyone. Farms and homes lined the stonybedded Ribble through the upper parts of the valley for four or five furlongs. By the time he passed beyond the last farmstead in the valley, the road had dwindled to a track and then shrank to a path such as an occasional fisherman or militiaman might use.
Vadim surveyed the Norsk village, alert for any sign of trouble.
Without shifting his glance, he handsignaled the rest of his men to move to the edge of the ember pine forest, so foreign to his people of the plain. Despite Vadim’s outward confidence, the Olani war chief was disappointed by the third poor farm village about to be pillaged by his men. He and the rest of the Olani had ridden alongside the highwheeled ox carts and their horse herds for over a month persuaded by promises of silver and easy plunder 35
in the towns and villages which lay on both sides of the Great River. This pitiful cluster of timber and mud hovels across the ripening barley fields was little better than the two villages they had already savaged. His men were eager for a fight and the havoc to follow, but there had been little silver and the land so smothered by the unnerving forest that the herders grumbled about its worthlessness for raising horses, an Olani’s true vocation. His captains grew less easy every day. Vadim glanced over at the foreigner, Ibsen, sitting nervously astride his horse behind the line of mounted men hidden beneath the covering branches of the forest. Sweat dampened the Norman’s forehead and upper lip and stained his shirt. “He’s ready to piss himself,” Vadim sneered to his brotherin law who rode at his side. The foreigner disgusted him. There was no word in Olani for the contempt he felt for a man who betrayed his own people to death and torture for silver, nor did he believe everything Ibsen had promised, and he spoke more Olani than he admitted. For now the foreigner was needed, but there would come a time when Vadim would take personal pleasure in watching Ibsen flayed alive and left staked out in the sun, a feast for ravens. But for now Vadim would wait; he had learned to be a very patient man. Vadim wrested his attention back to the unprotected hamlet. The two Normen his scouts had found working their field near the road, who might have sounded a warning, lay behind him, a feast for frenzied blue flies homing in for a meal. “These house dwellers will feel the bite of Olani steel,” he thought, and his hunger for the coming slaughter grew. Land, slaves, and silver had been promised, and that was what he intended to have, if not here then somewhere else. Vadim’s raiding party had left his main camp far out on the open plain two 36
days ago, moving cautiously on the heels of the scouts over the crest of a dividing ridge and down a wide valley which sloped toward the river, barely glimpsed far to the west. Vadim jammed on his leather helmet, topped by the white horse tail that set him apart from the rest of his men, and urged his horse out of the dense pine cover. The long arc of his sword glinted in the afternoon sun as it whispered out of its scabbard and began carving circles in the air. Vadim lifted his deep voice, calling upon his gods for aid in battle. The raiders burst into the cadent chanting that had urged countless generations of Olani into war, heedless of their lives, and on Vadim’s signal thundered out of the forest, trampling the fields as they howled toward the settlement. Terrified villagers, children and women among them, stood transfixed in utter amazement and turned in vain to flee the wave of horsemen that swept out of the grain fields. Vadim laughed at the terror in the eyes of the first man he cut down, the blood and screaming adding to his enjoyment of the kill. A handful of villagers clustered together amid the chaos and shielded each other as they attempted to resist with the farm implements they had grabbed when the first unearthly howling panicked the village. Jerking his horse’s head toward them, Vadim rode them down, and with a single down and backslashing stroke, cut down two of the men; his horse reared and slammed its hooves down through the skull and face of another. The rest broke and ran, and were cut down mercilessly by Vadim’s personal guards. Norsk women screamed and ran to the sides of dead and dying husbands and sons only to be hauled to their feet by their hair and herded together with every living man, woman, and child the Olani could find. “Find rope,” Vadim shouted, “bind anyone fit to work.” The bitter tang of smoke drifted from the first flames greedily 37
gobbling thatched eaves. The fighting had ended, bodies lay amid pooling gore, and the sound of the shrieks and groans of the dying and the wailing of women meant resistance had collapsed. Vadim knew the sound well. He looked about him critically and remembered his son. “Stefan,” he cried. “Where’s the boy?” Vadim bellowed into the smoke. His halfbrother and second in command, Ludovik, pointed to the boy keeping watch on the road with five others as he had been commanded. Vadim reared up in his stirrups and caught Stefan’s attention and beckoned him and his companions, bringing the young men at a gallop, through the dust, smoke and cries of the captives. “Stefan,” shouted Vadim when he was close enough. “You and your men escort the slaves back to the camp.” The Stefan’s sharp eyes took in the milling crowd of Olani raiders shoving and beating the men, women, and children into two groups with the flats of their swords, others binding the prisoner’s hands behind and then neck to neck in a lengthening coffle of terrified Normen. “What are you going to do with them?” the boy asked, pointing to a huddle of unarmed peasants who had been left unfettered, mostly old ones and small children. “We’ll use them to teach these dirt diggers what happens to those who resist.” “Slaughter the rest, and burn the village,” he roared. His men set about their grisly task seemingly deaf to the hysterical pleading voices of those about to be butchered. Knud Ibsen looked on the destruction of the village struggling not to show the horror he felt as the swords rose and fell in a red mist. He was canny enough to know that if he showed his revulsion, he could wind up like the corpses spewing lifeblood 38
into the ground. These maniacs he’d persuaded to follow him into Norheim were occupied for the moment, but he recognized the real possibility that they might turn and rend him as easily as they struck down defenseless old women with no hint of remorse, if they sensed his fear. Vadim and the other leaders were already having a hard time convincing their men that the farther away from the plains they rode, the better the plunder. Ibsen’s orders were to get the Olani across the river and spread as much panic as possible. He knew that time was not on his side. He was being well paid; perhaps too generous an offer he thought in retrospect. Even as the smell of burning stung his nose, he was calculating how to get the Olani down to the river. “What did it matter if a few people were killed down here? No one cared about the slaughter of a few peasants and thralls.” The massacre of the old and very young at the first village had shaken him, and he had simply turned away from the slaughter. The cries and shrieks cut short left nothing to his imagination. He kept telling himself it would be worth it when his share of the silver began to pile up. The thought pleased him, and his lips turned up in a grin. Vadim’s eyes gazed toward the river, and he, too, smiled, steeling himself for the whining that was sure to follow the sack of the village. A handful of silver coins and trinkets would do little to quiet the grousing around the campfires. What’s he smiling for? wondered Vadim, looking toward the Normen. Stupid, he thought, these Normen are fit only to be slaves. Without horses to carry their warriors, seizing the land from these filth eaters was going to be even easier than Ibsen had told him; there was enough land and slaves to make every man who had joined Vadim rich beyond counting. Nothing could stop them. The Olani had come to the West. 39
2
Most Remarkable Encounters
40
The wind had freshened, blowing steadily and warm from the south on his back, but Jon paid little attention. The Ribble veered off toward the east and disappeared into a steepsided coombe that it had carved for itself. Durban had suggested that Jon could make much better time on the rockier and more open ground of the tablelands above, so he followed a faint track that angled off in that direction. Upon reaching the rim of the steep bluff above the river, Jon paused to catch his breath and study the lay of the land, knowing he would be mapping it later in his notes. He enjoyed the fact that he would be measuring his stamina against a series of higher and higher ridges he would have to climb. Between where he stood and the first long crest lay a wide swale of coarse grass interspersed with patches of forest. The path he took continued in the general direction he wanted to travel, so he settled into his usual brisk pace. The sun and the uphill climb soon warmed him, and he knew that despite the breeze at his back, he would be hot and thirsty before the day was out. A couple of years earlier, after studying the maps that hung on the walls of the Armory at Camber, Jon tried his hand at sketching maps of the places he hiked, and became fairly good at it, or so his grandfather had complimented him on the sketches Jon had shown him. Since few Saesen did exploring of any sort, and no one he knew ever made maps, Jon named things on his map as he pleased. He never anticipated that they would be of any use to anyone but himself, but they had become an important reference for him, and he dutifully recorded any new features or made additions or corrections upon his return. His grandfather had died before Jon could show him how the drawings had improved. The morning passed uneventfully. A few woolly clouds drifted from the south, and the breeze at his back died away. The way the 41
heat shimmer touched the horizon indicated the day would be a scorcher. Twice Jon rested in the shelter of the great beech trees that provided islands of shade amid the kneehigh grass and heather that clothed the lower slopes of the ridge. About mid morning Jon climbed to the brow of the first ridge crowned by a copse of alders. While he caught his breath, he confirmed that the height on which he stood was but the lowest of many that he would be climbing for the rest of the day. As he paused to take in the scene before him, Jon noticed a rock outcrop just to the east that appeared too regular to be natural. He strolled toward it, surprised to find the stone outline of what might once have been a house. The walls were down, and the individual stones blotched with lichen circles, leafy white and orange. Heather sprouted from the joints and cracks but the room arrangement was clearly evident. Jon climbed up onto the highest point of the wall to get a better view and found that within a few dozen yards there were two other structures about half the size of the first. Jon remembered the ancestor stories about Saesen origins sung at every feast, and wondered if his people had built it and then moved on. “Why would anyone build up here in such an isolated place?” he asked himself. He jumped off the wall and quartered the ground thinking he might find something that would give a clue about the residents of that ruin, but except for two or three shards of black on white pottery lying against one wall, he saw little else. He stuck the largest shard in his belt purse and continued on his way. Beyond the ruin Jon’s path led downhill slightly until he crossed a small stream that wriggled its way through the grass and sedges always seeking the lowest point of the valley between the hills. Jon knelt and drank deeply from the clear clean water. 42
Behind him the valley stretched east and west where it gradually narrowed between the two ridges he had climbed. Saeland was beautiful anytime, but Full Summer month in his opinion was the best time of the year. Jon turned uphill once again and angled back to pick up the trail nearly obscured by the year’s growth of heather. The incline was steep enough to take his breath, but he would not be deterred, he just bent his back and doggedly kept plodding until he reached the summit of the second ridge. The bench land beyond was forested with ancient weathered alders and maples; a good place to get out of the sun for a while and find a bite to eat in his pack. Jon made his way toward the shade when his nose picked up the faint scent of smoke. Jon froze in his tracks; Durban’s dark comments earlier that morning flashed through his mind. With his heart pounding in his chest, Jon hastily untied his bow, strung it, and loosened his knife in its sheath at his side. Then his brain began functioning again, “Jon, you idiot, you’ve let all this talk of strangers and raiders get to you. Be sensible. Pipe smoke’s as Saesen a thing as could be.” “Hallo!” he called. “Hallo!” “Hallo yourself!” called a Saesen voice from the shadows. “Come into the shade, it’s much cooler here than out in that blazing sun.” Whoever was calling to him stood in the shade a few dozen yards away and waited for him to approach. Jon moved toward the sound of the voice, much relieved that a fellow Saesen was taking his ease in the shade and not some dark Norman or something worse lurking in the shadows. Once Jon stepped into the shade, he noticed an older gentleman watching from the shade him teeth clenched on the 43
long thin stem of a white clay pipe. “What a surprise you are,” the bemused man said. “Someone else out exploring the wilds. Jon Ellis, it’s good to see a familiar face.” Until he had come out of the sun Jon couldn’t tell who had been talking, but coming into the shade himself, his mouth dropped open in surprise. “Egan Holman!” he cried out in recognition. “Right as rhubarb. Well done, my boy, well done. I have just finished my dinner, and I’ll bet you have yet to eat yours. I have been watching you since you reached the ruins down below. I thought I would wait here in the shade to congratulate you.” “Congratulate me?” “Why yes, I wish more young men were as adventuresome as you are. Sit down and take off that heavy pack.” Egan turned and led the way back to where he had set his own gear against a fallen log. Jon slipped his pack first off one shoulder and then the other and propped it against the log and sat down beside it. “Now tell me what you are doing up here all the way from Redding, Jon. Your mother would keel over in a dead faint if you knew you had ventured so far on your own.” Jon had a ready answer for such conversations, to explain to nosy people why he was traipsing around the countryside. “I’m on holiday, Master Holman.” “Holiday!” laughed Egan. “My word! I’m not sure most people in Redding would think wandering around in the wilds is much of a holiday. But I am glad to see you. You’re still working for Ralph Warren at the mill?” “Yes, sir, Master Holman, at least until I can find something else.” 44
“What did you have in mind?” Holman asked with a twinkle in his eye. Jon thought for a moment, “Not sure, I guess that’s why I’m still at the mill,” he grinned. “I know I want to join the Guard.” “Don’t recall anyone in the Guard in Redding any more. But it’s as good an excuse as any to go for a long walk in the unsettled parts of Saeland as any.” He looked at Jon appraisingly. “Going on circuit on occasion may be work, but not enough to call it employment. Working at Warren’s mill isn’t agreeing with you much, then?” “The mill’s kept a roof over our heads since Dad died, but it’s not what I was cut out to be, at least that’s what I’ve been thinking lately,” Jon concluded. “I’m sure Dean would have agreed as well,” replied the older man. “You and he knew each other, didn’t you?” remembered Jon. “Enough to know he didn’t think much of Ralph Warren,” answered Holman. The unspoken criticism hung between them and Jon, unsure how to deal with the comment, changed the subject. “May I ask you, sir, what you are doing out here?” “I like nothing better than a fine walk on a summer’s day. Been doing this for forty years more or less. Seen most of Saeland, I have, and a good distance beyond.” He fell into his own thoughts. Jon hadn’t noticed before, but Holman had a hardto place accent. Jon took out two or three other things he had stuffed away in his pack to tide him over until dinner feeling a little ucomfortable in the silence. Egan gazed at Jon without comment as if he had something else on the tip of his tongue and then decided to hold back. He pulled the pipe out of his mouth by the white ceramic 45
bowl and pointed the stem at Jon. “Where are you going, if you don’t mind me asking? This is fairly remote country.” “To stand on the edge of Saeland, and see the mountains if I can. I have a few days off to get there and home again. Holman looked hard at Jon as though startled. “Several places worth seeing in those hills on the way up, if you ask me, but hard hiking for my money. If I may, I’d like to make a suggestion.” Jon nodded, his curiosity engaged in a single beat of his heart. “Come out into the open, and I think I can show you,” Egan declared. “I doubt you want the company of an old man, and in any case I am bound for home today.” They moved out of the shade into the midday sun and faced north. “When you reach the top of that high ridge there, you’ll come upon the remains of the East Road which used to run down to the river. Not much left of it up there, but in its day, as used as any road in this part of Saeland by people long ago. But now only the Guard utilizes it on their circuits. If you follow it, it will bring you by easy stages closer to the Border Hills. The lands gets rougher beyond that ridge and the East Road makes easy travel as opposed to going across country. Brooks and streams rush down and the road winds a bit. If you keep going you will come to one of the ruined towns from the days when the Saesen lived farther north.” “The men of the Guard have made camps in several places along the road, each near a clear stream or reliable spring. You are welcome to stay in them if they suit you. I use them whenever I come this way, sometimes camped right alongside men from Ribble or Holbourne. If you meet any of them, you’ll have trouble getting away from them. They’ll be glad of your company and be wanting to show you the whole country and pointing out things 46
you might otherwise miss, and talking your ear off until you go on your way. And if you tell them that you’ve an interest in joining the Guard, why you’ll probably be deputized on the spot!” Egan stuck his pipe into mouth and drew several more puffs, and his face grew serious. “Well, I’m off, but I want to tell you a couple of things you ought to know if you’re going any farther. And there’s no gentle way to say it, Jon. These wild lands have a kind of beauty we don’t find down home, but we mustn’t be taken in by it,” he lectured, waving his pipe toward the north. “There are waterfalls, and crags and treefilled valleys that will fill your heart with wonder, but with all of that, there are…” and he paused, now eye to eye with Jon. “Now listen my boy, this could save your life. North of us is mean country in foul weather. Rain and fog in summer; deep, deep snow in winter can trap you in lonely places where there is no aid. You must be watchful, Jon. Never ignore your eyes or your ears, or your heart when they send a warning. Fire is a friend, and so is silence. The Normen are there, stern men, and more watchful on their side than we are on ours. If you meet them, speak when spoken to. They have little time for fools.” “Beyond the North Hills lie the lands of the Normen. Great cities and fertile valleys peopled with our distant but kindred neighbors. Rising above the valleys, the Dragonsback Mountains cradle the lands around the shores of wondrous Long Fjord. The Norsk militia and the Guard keep an eye on the borderlands to fulfill their part of the ancient pledge that they and the Saesen would ever protect each other. The northerners who watch the border are interesting fellows.” “Can you tell me anything more about them?” asked Jon. “The Normen?” Egan stared at Jon thoughtfully. “Hmmmm,” he paused as he drew once again on his pipe. 47
“Norsk soldiers stay on their side of the North Hills unless need brings them farther south. Once in a while a militiaman or traveler may see them. If you meet them, they will speak to you, a little hard to understand until you get used to it, but our languages are brothers, not cousins. They are staid and hardy men, not given to much speech. I have been among them a time or two. Arnegil Juransen is their chief, and never in all my travels have I met anyone to match him.” “But also know this, Jon Ellis, if you see them in Saeland, then they track something that does not belong here. Many small groups of wanderers never settled after the great migrations brought our people to the lands against the sea. Most are harmless hunters or farmers who pause for a time and move on. But others there are who love nothing and care for little but themselves, and those the Normen hunt. They are alarmed now, a large band of raiders has come west, been raiding towns on the far side of the Selwyn, as I understand it. But enough of that, young Jon, do not fear, just keep your wits about you and enjoy your walk. I must get going, and so must you. It is a long march to a good bed from here.” He picked up his bag and staff from the shadows and led Jon back into the bright sunshine of midday. Holman turned back to Jon, “Why don’t you come to see me at Quarry Hill when you know you have two or three days, maybe we could go together and explore a little. What do you say to that?” “I’d like that, Master Holman.” “Then it will happen. Harvestmonth, that’s when we ought to go, it’s good time for setting out to see the world and saves me walking in the heat.” “Harvestmonth it is, Master Holman, thank you!” “Good bye, Jon, I’m pleased to have seen you again. You’ve 48
restored my faith in your generation.” He took a few steps then turned back a last time. “When you get tired of working at the mill or of Ralph Warren, come up and see me, I have an idea about what you might do if you are looking for work that would allow you to go ‘circuitin’, I believe they call it.” He waved his hat and set off down the hill. Jon shook his head in wonder. That was a meeting indeed. Egan Holman had a reputation for being odd, but he remembered his father had valued Holman’s calm wisdom on more than one occasion. After talking with Holman, Jon realized that he might have found a kindred spirit. As for the talk about the lands ahead of him, Egan had misread Jon’s reaction. The talk of Norsk fighters, and ancient cities, and wanderers had not dissuaded Jon; it had reaffirmed his desire to see the north country. He was so excited that he stuffed everything back into his pack and set off; it was all he could do to keep from running to the base of the next ridge. Once again he crossed a small watercourse and made his way upwards. Just as Egan had indicated, he found the old road running along the crest of the ridge that disappeared into the clefts between the hills to the west only to reappear higher farther on. The road was three or four paces across in most places and paved with fitted stones, a very wide road for Saeland. Tufts of grass and low brush grew to the sides of it, but the center was cleared between a matched set of spanwide grooves two paces apart running down each side of the road sometimes for hundreds of yards at a time. He realized that these were wagon tracks that had been ground into solid rock. Saesen roads were notoriously dusty in summer and became quagmires in wet weather. Jon could see in his mind’s eye long vanished wagons and carts bumping this direction for generations to create such ruts in the stones of the 49
road. No one in Redding had ever seen anything like it, he was sure of that, no one except Holman of course. Jon found himself singing and whistling, but after many hours of walking for the most part uphill in the afternoon heat, sweat poured out of his hair into his eyes, and his tunic was soaked under his arms, down his chest, and beneath his pack. Heat waves danced in the distance even as the sun drew down toward the northwest. Realizing he’d expended about as much energy as he could in a single day, Jon watched for signs of one of the Guard camps Meg’s father had described. He searched in vain for one at the top of the last ridge he intended to climb. But he managed to find his own campsite in the shade near a spring. He spread out his gear and made a supper fire. Once the chores were out of the way, he could settle back and stare up through the branches and look out across the valley to the ridge he would tackle the next morning. Just before dawn Jon woke with the first of the birds and boiled some gruel as he tried to work out the aches from a night on hard ground. He was determined to get as much ground covered as he could before the heat of the afternoon sapped all the energy out of him. Scattered patches of forest grew larger and closer together as he tramped over the next ridges tempting him to turn aside into the shade. The country grew rougher as if the backbones of the hills became more and more exposed the farther north he went. Between the ridges lay narrow glens, choked with waterloving trees and shrubs along brooks that splashed their way from the highlands and down across the road toward the Selwyn somewhere off in the sunhazy east. Ancient road builders had made provision for crossing the streams by placing long slabs of rock between carefully shaped buttress boulders. How many men, 50
he wondered, had it taken to place such colossal stones with such precision? It was more than he could guess. It was wild, beautiful country by any standard. All day long he tramped the broken road, stopping to eat and rest in the shade when he could. The sun hung halfway between its zenith and the horizon, boring down as hard as it would all that day. Jon was sweatsoaked from front to back, so when he topped the next long ridge, he gratefully shed his pack in the shade of an enormous stiplebarked sycamore that stood near the road. A breeze tried to get from one valley to the next without much success, and Jon felt like he was being roasted. Looking ahead down into the wooded valley he noticed that the tilted layers of stone had dammed a brook that rushed down from the rocky terraces above the road and created a pool in the shade of an enormous oak. In a flash Jon had shouldered his pack, grabbed his walking stick, and practically ran down the hill. He scrambled up several wide stony ledges above the road until he stood at the edge of the pool fed by a narrow cascade from above. Water like green crystal beckoned from the shallow pool that had been sculpted into a thick layer of polished smooth bluestone. The stream glided and swirled through channels sculpted into the living rock near the oak that shaded the bottom half of the pool. Jon shrugged off his pack, tugged off his boots, and tested the water with his toes. The pool appeared to be three or four feet deep with a mostly sandy bottom. For a heatfatigued young man there was no hesitation. Jon stripped off his belt and tunic and stepped gratefully into the deepest part of the pool. The contrast between his overheated condition and the blissful chill of the water was beyond price. Taking a great breath Jon submerged once again. Coming back to the surface, he lay back into the water and floated lazily across the pool and felt the heat and weariness 51
drawn out of him. When he was chilled at last, he pulled himself up out of the water on the far side and lay face down on the smooth warm stone. Despite his aching feet, he felt wonderful. After warming up in the sun, Jon slipped into the pool and waded over to the waterfall, stuck his head underneath the torrent, and spread his arms wide allowing the water to sluice away two days of grime and stink. The pool at its deepest only came up to his shoulders, but the water was so clear he watched tiny fish flash out of danger as he moved his feet across the gritty bottom. Jon recrossed the pool to where his clothes lay and snatched his long shirt and rinsed it in the water, wrung it out, and spread it on the stone at the edge of the pool to dry. When he began to shiver, Jon hauled himself out of the water and lay once again face down beside his pack to rest before moving on. The mist from the waterfall drifted down onto him from the beating of stream on the surface of the pool, just enough to cool his skin from the heat of the afternoon. Jon put his arms under his head and listened to the water’s soft speech. When the sun warmed his backside a little too much, he turned his clothing over in a new spot to finish drying and pulled his pack over to shade his head from the sun and lay down again. And in less time than it takes to tell it, he fell asleep. Sometime later, he was never sure how long, between dozing and waking; Jon became aware that something or someone was moving toward him. With that awareness Jon’s eyes popped open and he jerked upright scrambling for his knife. The first thing he saw was the face of a startled woman, whose dark eyes sparkled in gentle humor. “Arrrghh!” he screamed and threw himself backwards. He lost his balance tipped over backwards, arms and legs flailing for balance into the pool as he tried to distance himself from the woman. Jon came up 52
sputtering and coughing, wiping the water from his eyes. He scanned quickly to see if the woman was alone; she was not. Two men who appeared to be about her age, maybe fifty or so, carried eight foot, leafpointed spears. A girl about Jon’s own age, and another young man sat astride horses a few paces away caught in the instant between alarm and laughter. “Who are you?” he shouted and began casting about for some sort of weapon to defend himself, his heart thumping. The woman laughed, low and pleasant. Jon relaxed a fraction since none of the strangers seemed to present an immediate threat. Then one of the men called something and chuckled, and the laughter broke the tension. The woman addressed him in heavily accented Saesen. “Young man, I have not laughed like that in many days.” Jon was at a complete loss for words. The woman picked up his tunic and moved to the edge of the pool. “Do not be afraid. I will not harm you. I am sorry I startled you. I see you sleeping, and I wonder if you are hurt or ill. I should have known that you would not sleep long or deeply in the sun.” “Who are you?” Jon blurted. “Yes, excuse me, replied the woman. I introduce myself. I am called Ezmet. You are called?” Jon’s sense of dignity reasserted itself, and he was suddenly very conscious that he stood there without a stitch of clothes on, making polite conversation with a strange woman while her companions gazed on in openmouthed humor. “I am Jon Ellis,” he stammered. “I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage, Ezmet. I am not used to conversing with nothing on.” “I thought it strange that you not put this on, but you run across 53
the pool so fast,” she chuckled again. “I am at fault.” The woman held out his tunic again. “We will not harm you. Come, take the tunic, then we will talk.” Jon took a deep breath and moved back toward his gear, accepting his halfdamp shirt from the woman and in an instant pulled it over his head. He felt much more inclined to talk once his dignity was again intact. He put on his best manners while he tugged his boots on. “May I ask who the others are?” He lifted his eyes in the direction of the silent observers behind Ezmet who strained to hear the conversation. “This is my brother Tobai and my sister’s man, Buris. That is my daughter, Marta, and Guri, a kinsman from another steading. We are of the Sogon. This is our place. I ask you, what are you doing here?” “I am a Saesen traveler headed north through the Borderlands,” Jon offered. “I went for a swim.” Ezmet’s reply was filled with laughter as she regarded him. “Do not worry, Jon Ellis. We have seen a few of your people on this road before, and the Normen have passed this way over the years, but never one so polite.” Jon bowed again. “I am sorry to have troubled you, and I think I should be on my way.” He knew little of the Sogon, the wanderers. They sometimes came through the towns of Saeland. Their reputation as forest hunters was unsurpassed. But more importantly was the common understanding that some among the Sogon had the gift of second sight. They could tell the future, heal wounds, and bring luck, good or bad. Whenever the Sogon came through Redding, they were treated with courtesy and always the amulets and fetishes they sold were hidden away in secret places to bring health, wealth, and luck. So it was with 54
serious misgiving that Jon stood talking with the woman. He hoped he’d not offended them. Wouldn’t want to be struck blind or face any of a hundred curses attributed to the Sogon, he worried. “Oh, do not run away, Jon Ellis, you have nothing to fear from us. In fact, we turned out of our way to talk with you. Are you hungry?” “Yes,” he answered cautiously. “Our steading and my house lie not far from here in the forest. Many times the men of the south have stopped to eat with us.” Jon stared at the woman. Her hair was streaked with gray, tied loosely in the back; she wore a simple dress made of soft skins which fell below her knees held with bronze pins at the shoulders and a belt at her waist. She had the look of someone who was older than she appeared, a lifetime of experience behind those brown eyes. The men wore tanned deer hide leggings tied with a thong at the waist. Their bare torsos were tanned and muscled; their shoulderlength hair tied back by a leather strap. The older men had blueblack designs tattooed on their chins and arms, the younger man only on his arms. The girl’s raven black hair hung free, but two small braids framed her face. His natural caution vanished, replaced by intense curiosity, and he agreed to accompany the Sogon. Jon belted his tunic, gathered his pack and staff while Ezmet waited. The older man, Tobai, beckoned Jon toward his mount and offered a hand up onto the back of his horse. Jon, who had little experience around horses, took a deep breath and with Tobai’s help jumped onto the wool blanket saddle behind the Sogon’s broad back. “This way,” Ezmet gestured toward the forest above the waterfall, her other companions having already disappeared into the forest shadows. “Until you get used to sitting the horse, hold 55
onto Tobai’s belt.” Ezmet guided her horse next to Tobai’s. “May I ask you a few questions?” asked Jon as they rode. “Ask whatever you wish.” “How is it you speak Saesen?” She laughed. “Many times we visit the Southerners to trade and work. To get what we want we must learn your language. My father taught me. He spent three years working on a farm in the Great Glen when he was young. But he grew tired of living among strangers and joined my mother’s steading.” “How many other Sogon live up here?” “Not many, there are five steadings in all.” She turned to glance at him. “You know steadings?” Jon didn’t, but he guessed it was their word for village or settlement. “Most Sogon steadings lie on the other side of the river,” she continued, waving to the east. “Long, long ago, when I was a young Sogonal, my grandmother and grandfather and others crossed the river. The Normen do not come here, and Southerners seldom come so far. The game is plentiful here and the earth gives us grain. Once only our steading was here. Now five steadings lie this side of the river.” “Does this place have a name?” Ezmet thought for a moment. “We call it “Secret Steading, Hidden Steading”. You understand?” The little party of travelers continued to move steadily west passing in and out of forest as the path moved up a rocky ridge, becoming stonier and rougher as they ascended. Jon’s tentative grip on Tobai’s leather belt tightened as the horses clattered up the inclines. He noticed the young man looking back at him several times his expression unreadable. “Over that hill is our place.” The forest had deepened around 56
them; boles of great maple, elm, alder and chestnut trees, older than any living being, rose to immense heights casting cool dense shade on the Sogon and Jon as the horses climbed the path beneath them. The air smelled of deep earth and decaying wood. When they reached the ridge top, Jon gazed out over the leafy canopy and down into a wide valley. Perhaps fifteen circular wattle and daub houses with conical, thatched roofs bracketed the banks of a wide stream that bisected the valley. Whoever had roofed the houses had extended the thatch almost to the ground and piled it at least three feet thick reminding Jon of overlarge hats. Smoke from the outside cooking fires spiraled into the summer sky. Jon’s sense of unease grew as he approached the little hamlet, where twenty or thirty people waited for the approaching riders. “What have you gotten yourself into?” he muttered to himself. Hadn’t Durban warned him of being careful up here? But his curiosity and Ezmet’s gentle persuasion swept caution aside. “Welcome to my home,” Ezmet cried and waved to the gathering Sogon. Some of the children cheered and ran toward the riders calling out names and greetings in a language incomprehensible to Jon. When the two groups met, the younger children stood back silent and abashed when they discovered the presence of a young stranger jumping lightly down from the back of Tobai’s horse. “These are my nieces and nephew,” Ezmet declared. “They do not speak your language and are shy of outsiders; we do not see many others in this place between the two lands. Come, rest with us and eat. If you wish, you may stay the night and go on your way in the morning.” Jon hesitated, unsure whether he would stay. But a cooked meal sounded very appetizing after eating out of his pack for the 57
last two days. Fields of barley and oats ringed the settlement and gardens were scattered among the houses protected by willow fences. Farther from the town a small herd of horses grazed. The Sogon houses, upon closer inspection, were larger than Jon first thought, and he wondered at the reason for the three or four foot thick thatch piled high atop of the sturdy earthen walls. The villagers met Ezmet with eyes filled with unspoken questions. They remained guardedly cautious when introduced, and seemed hesitant to use Saesen. Once Jon was introduced to the group, Ezmet led him to what she called a guest house. “Here is a place for visitors,” explained Ezmet. “Put your things there and rest. You will join me for the evening meal?” He thanked her, and she hurried back to her house a hundred yards or so away. Jon bent to enter the house and stood erect once he passed under the low eave of the house. The house smelled of wood smoke and pounded earth and people, familiar smells, not unlike his own home. He tossed his gear down onto a raised earthen bench that hugged the perimeter of the single room. He sat for a time and then felt silly waiting there waiting to be fed, so he wandered outside to study the settlement before supper. He soon had a following of wideeyed children who shadowed him at a polite distance chattering among themselves. Jon passed several garden plots and noticed that they were better kept than his garden at home and yet the gardens were not planted in the neat even rows that were the pride of every Saesen gardener. The plants were intermingled without any order that Jon could detect and yet the produce was every bit as good as his own. Probably better, he thought. He knew back home his garden was being conquered by bindweed as surely as he stood there. The children tracked him on his amble around the village like little 58
hawks. He tried making faces at them to get them to laugh, at first they retreated a step or two, eyes large in alarm. A voice from the one of houses called out for the children, and their eyes lit up and turned to the young woman, Marta, that Jon had been introduced to at the pool. Jon felt his face color at the memory of standing in the pool dripping naked in front of her. He really had only seen her from behind as they rode to the Sogon village; she was strikingly beautiful. Jon smiled at her as she gathered the children to her and turned back to the village. She beckoned to Jon and asked in simple Saesen, “You come?” and motioned him back to the house where Ezmet cooked over an outdoor fire. The smell of the meat stew made Jon’s mouth water. Marta pointed the house, “Have you seen such a dwelling before?” He realized the doorway was purposefully built low so that visitors had to bend double to enter through the deer hide. The thick thatch he guessed was probably a result of the deep winter snows Egan Holman had alluded to. Ezmet waved him inside, “Go inside we will eat there.” When Jon straightened up inside, he found it much cooler than his own house at the end of a long summer day. Furs and hides had been thrown over the wide earthen bench to make a place to sit or sleep. The floor was covered by a layer of hardpounded clay, like his own floor at home, not the loose dirt at every step he had expected. The room was heated by a central hearth with the hazy blue eye of a smoke hole above it. Smoke from a hundred winter fires had blackened the beams and underside of the thatch over his head. Neatly arranged around the room were the hand mill, house tools, and belongings that a farm family might need. He half anticipated such an enclosed, occupied space might stink, but it did not. It smelled of wood smoke and hanging herbs, and 59
smoked meat. The only furniture were several threelegged hide stools. Wooden shelves had been secured to the wall where the bowls and platters were stored. A shadow darkened the doorway as Ezmet stooped to enter carrying a steaming pot and smiled up at Jon, followed by her daughter. “Sit down Jon,” directed Ezmet. “I’ll share out the food.” Marta knelt with her knees modestly to the side and indicated that Jon should sit down on the floor. She set out three wooden bowls and waited for her mother. Ezmet set the pot in the middle and handed several flat breads to Marta before she knelt as well. Ezmet dished a ladle of stew into his bowl, and Marta handed him a hot, thick barley bread easily as big as his bowl and made eating motions. She then set three smaller shallow bowls on the table and poured milk into them from a pitcher. Jon was unsure exactly how to proceed; he was accustomed to eating with spoons and knives. He watched Marta use the fingers of her right hand to scoop up the stew with a piece of oatcake and transfer it to her mouth without spilling a drop. She gestured for him to do the same. After he got the hang of it, Jon found it a very satisfactory way to eat. The last of the bread was used to sop up the last of the stew. “When we are finished, I will take you to my brother, he wishes to talk with you.” “What about?” wondered Jon aloud. “We hear news, bad news about Olani people coming over the river. Is this true?” Jon shrugged. “I do not know about that, but there are raiders across the river. We’ve heard stories about them all spring. But it is far to the north of us.” Ezmet smiled, “But that is not so far north for us. My brother 60
will talk more of this.” Jon bobbed his head as he scooped another mouthful from his bowl. He then picked up the shallow bowl to take a drink of milk. He lifted it to drink and wrinkled his nose, it smelled sour. Not wanting to offend, yet unwilling to drink sour milk, he hesitated, but the other two had already downed theirs. Jon gulped it down trying to avoid making a face, which was surely what he wanted to do. Ezmet held out the pitcher. “Drink all you want, we call it tumiss, mare’s milk.” “Thank you, no more,” Jon blurted. The last thing he wanted was another serving of milk piss or whatever Ezmet called it. The milky sourness left a tang in his mouth he hoped would go away soon. It reminded him all too well of the clabbered milk and old bread his mother used to insist that he spoon down for supper when he was a child. He quickly reached for another oatcake hoping the chewing of it would scrape away the taste of the sour milk. “Tell me about your family, Ezmet,” Jon invited, hoping to change the subject. “My man, he died two winters ago. He had the coughing sickness. I have a son who lives in another steading with his wife and three grandchildren. Marta is to be wed soon.” “Congratulations,” Jon said to Marta. She blushed, but did not smile and gave her mother a slight shake of her head. Ezmet chose to ignore it. “No young men live here,” Ezmet said candidly. “She must go to another steading soon. I will be alone, and I feel sad about that. But it is you we wish to learn about. Tell us about your life in the south.” Jon wasn’t sure what to say, so he told them about his family and his work at the mill. The look on the two faces before him 61
showed they tried to understand, but he could tell they did not. They had nothing to compare it to. An uncomfortable silence settled over the room, which Ezmet broke by suggesting he might want to go back to the guesthouse. “My brother, Tobai, the chief of our steading, asks that you come and speak with him. I will come to speak for you.” “Perhaps you will rest?” she suggested as they exited the house. “I will come to get you when the others are ready.” Jon thanked her for her hospitality and went back to the guesthouse. He lay down on the pile of furs which had appeared to cover the clay bench bed and found it reasonably comfortable. Jon stared at the ceiling while outside the muffled sounds from the village rose up all about him, but it was too warm, and he was too curious to lie there, so he ducked outside with one of the leather stools and surveyed the Sogon at the end of the day. An hour later Jon found himself seated across from Tobai, chief of the Sogon village. His house was built in the same pattern as Ezmet’s, but was at least twice its size, and filled to overflowing with every adult in the village with children jammed into any available space. Ezmet served as interpreter while Tobai made his introductory speech. “Welcome, Jon Ellis, to our steading. We have many questions.” “I’ll answer if I can,” Jon offered. As Ezmet’s voice repeated Jon’s words in Sogon, heads bobbed. “The Olani have crossed the Selwyn River?” Every eye riveted on Jon’s face. Jon shrugged. “If they have, I do not know it,” Jon answered. “We too have heard these rumors. Raiders from the east have come into Norsk lands,” he continued, “but if they have crossed 62
the river we haven’t heard it down our way.” The tension in the room relaxed visibly. Smiles broke out where none had been before. “When we saw you today, we were returning from a visit to our kinsmen nearer the river. They have heard the Normen say the Olani are camped on the wide plains east of the Norheim. Fighting there has frightened some of our people across the great river. We fear Olani people will cross the river and attack the Normen.” The conversation among the Sogon swelled until Tobai called for quiet. “This is bad news, Jon Ellis. Bad for Sogon, bad for Normen, bad for you Southerners.” “Why is that?” Jon asked. “In my grandfather’s father’s time, we Sogon once lived in the first light lands, far to the east. The Olani came to the Sogon steadings and demanded we pay grain and livestock for tribute. This the Sogon never have done. Olani people came and fought us, killed many Sogon. Sogon people must give up those lands or do what the Olani order. Many Sogon they stay, but our father’s fathers, they leave those lands and moved from place to place. Most places have not good land, rain is too little, or there is no room. My grandfather’s people, they came across the great river and find this place. Ours is good growing land, no people are here to say do this or do that. It is good here. Other Sogon come and now there are five steadings. Now we fear the Olani will come, and once again we shall lose our place. We are not so many to fight the Olani now. We wonder if these lands are safe. Perhaps it is time to move again.” “I cannot answer that,” Jon began. “We call this area the Borderlands. None of our people live here now, but we claim it; the Norheim border is farther north. The Saesen will not let the 63
Olani or anyone come and cause trouble for us. We will fight.” Tobai regarded Jon in wonder. “Southerners will fight the Olani? “The Southerners you see walking through this land, they are always watching. They will bring news to Earl Osric, and we will fight. Tobai and the others broke into broad smiles as Ezmet’s voice brought hope into the room. “Then we will help the Southerners and the Normen. We are few, and have no love for the Olani. We can track and hunt and watch the paths the Normen and the Southerners do not know.” Tobai gave an order to a woman Jon guessed was his wife, and she and several other women left the room briefly and returned carrying bowls and large container. Ezmet smiled, “This is kumiss; we make it from tumiss. You may find it strong.” “Drink with us,” cried Tobai holding out a large wooden bowl after taking a great gulp from the edge. Jon accepted the bowl with a bow and sipped from the edge, steeling himself for the sourness. His tongue let him know something was different about kumiss. Jon passed the bowl to the man to his right, who slurped the kumiss and smacked his lips loudly in appreciation as the others had done. The bowl passed from person to person, and Tobai’s wife refilled it until everyone had a drink. Jon hoped that would be the end of the foul stuff. Unfortunately, the custom was that as long as the talking continued the bowl of kumiss was passed again and again. After the fourth passing of the bowl, Jon decided it wasn’t really that bad, and by the sixth passing, he was thinking kumiss wasn’t bad at all, drinking deeply and slurping as loudly as any Sogon, well on his way to being intoxicated. Tobai asked about his family and town, and he told them an 64
abbreviated version, an audience in a tavern back home would never let him get away with so little detail, Ezmet all the while served as his patient translator. After a lull in the conversation, Ezmet launched into the telling of her own story once Jon had concluded his. The bottomless kumiss bowl passed from hearer to hearer and smiles and knowing glances revealed which story Ezmet was telling. By the end they all were howling in laughter at Jon’s expense, Jon belatedly realized that she was retelling their encounter from earlier in the day and nodded to assure her hearers that what she said was true. The kumiss had taken away his embarrassment, and he laughed as hard and as long as they did. Tobai laughed until tears ran down his cheeks. Several suggestive comments were made, which Ezmet tactfully chose not to translate. The meeting ended on very friendly terms after the drinking bowl had been refilled too many times. Jon was decidedly not inclined or capable of further travel than to the guesthouse. “Better you stay here in the guest house tonight,” Ezmet ordered. Then tomorrow you go on your way.” Tobai and the young man, whose name Jon couldn’t remember, formed a wobbly escort into the guesthouse. Jon didn’t remember undressing for bed, and thoroughly drunk, he barely heard the sounds of the village settling in for the night. The dream was so pleasant that he willed himself not to do anything that would wake him from it. Meg had come to his bed but something was not right, the dream was no dream at all. Meg’s form was replaced by Marta just settling beneath the cover beside him. With a start he sprang back, fully alarmed by the girl among the furs. Among the Saesen such an act led to sudden marriages, debt payments, or feuds. What are you doing here, Marta?” Jon whispered hoarsely. 65
“You must go, go quickly!” “No, stranger, I will give myself to you.” Jon’s voice carried his sense of panic. “No, Marta,” he hissed emphatically. “Go away. It is too dangerous.” Marta sat up, her face confused and incredulous. “I am not to your liking?” “No… no, I mean yes, you are to my liking. It’s just that… ” he growled to himself. The kumiss still made it difficult to think clearly. It’s just what? His mouth could not make an answer. “If you take me, I am your woman; that is our custom.” Marta whispered. “It’s our custom, too,” Jon replied, but not this, not you!” “Not?” Marta hissed and drew back, and before Jon could utter anything intelligible Marta disappeared as silently as she had come. Jon knelt there in the dark utterly confused and vaguely alarmed. The encounter created questions he could only answer in the light of morning. What did it mean? He could not clear his head enough of the kumiss to answer any of his own questions. Jon rolled onto the furs, completely confused, but still too drunk to do anything else. He rewoke to the morning sounds of the people moving about the village, opening one eye before he cried out at the stabbing headache which gouged the inside of his skull behind his eyes. Wishing it away and knowing that for the next few hours he would be miserable; he lay back on the furs and shut his eyes tight against the light. Worse than any night at the Swan, he thought to himself. Remembering enough about where he was, Jon sat up and waited for the world to stop whirling wildly around him. He felt nauseated and dragged his shirt over his head and bent to exit the door. He made it to the side of the house, before he lost the 66
contents of his stomach and heaved several times beyond that. He spat and spat again and again to clear his mouth, and wonder about his night visitor. Jon glanced over towards Ezmet’s house but couldn’t see her and walked down to the stream to bathe and clear his thinking. The cool water startled him awake, and he tried to sort out what had passed in the night. He kept looking back over his shoulder to Ezmet’s house, expecting Marta to appear, but she did not. Jon returned to the hut and packed his things. He set them down outside and went toward the cooking fire where Ezmet stirred a pot of oat porridge. She peered up at him and smiled. “You slept well?” “Very well,” he mumbled. “You are hungry?” she asked. “Not really,” Jon muttered, thinking that kumiss had probably ruined his appetite for days. Ezmet laughed which threatened the break Jon’s ear drums. “Kumiss,” she chuckled, “a little of it, is good, too much…” and she hit the side of her head and looked to see if Jon understood. He nodded, and winced as he did so. “Go in and sit you down.” Jon did as he was told and collapsed onto one of the stools. He put his head in his hands realizing that if anyone had seen Marta leaving the guesthouse he would be accused of an awful violation of the laws of hospitality. If Ezmet was a woman with otherworldly power, as he feared she was, then he knew he would be lucky to escape from the village with his life. He felt wretched and anxious, and his head was about to split open and that still kept him from thinking clearly or even focusing his eyes. Ezmet followed him inside and handed him a bowl. She lifted the steaming pot to and scooped up an enormous helping of 67
oatmeal and dropped the thick steaming goo into the bottom of the bowl with a splat and topped it with an enormous gob of butter. Jon recoiled in disbelief and his stomach roiled at the thought of eating the thick, glutinous mush. As a final insult to his tender stomach, Ezmet retrieved a pitcher of soured milk, poured a bowl of it for Jon and set it on the floor beside him. Ezmet retreated outside, and Jon taxed his brain trying to figure out how to avoid offending her, but he could hardly look at the oatmeal let alone eat it. He set it beside the milk went to lie on the bench. Ezmet found him there, when she came to see if he had finished. Seeing the food untouched she understood at once and took it away; she would give it to one of the children. Jon hardly noticed. When he lifted his head and saw it gone, he took a few deep breaths and stood up first to apologize to Ezmet, for his bad manners, and then to find Marta. With a pounding headache he bowed out into the morning and went over to Ezmet. He was afraid he’d face Ezmet, the Sogon sorceress, wondering if she could read his thoughts. “I’m sorry, Ezmet,” he apologized, “I just can’t eat anything this morning; that kumiss is still pounding away at my skull.” She chuckled, “Kumiss looks so harmless, what could a little mare’s milk do, eh? But it has the bite of the snake, we say.” Jon nodded ruefully, wishing someone had told him that before he’d drunk a whole bowl of it. Hearing voices approaching, Jon turned to see Tobai and Guri walking toward Ezmet’s house. Wondering if they had come to demand redress for an imagined trespass against Marta, Jon stood his ground, but his knees nearly gave out. “Good morning, Jon Ellis,” Tobai began, Ezmet again translating. “You remember Guri?” Jon hesitantly extended his hand to Guri who was himself a 68
little unsure about what to do with Jon’s proffered hand. He took Jon’s in a featherlight grip, releasing it instantly. “We will send Guri with you to the Normen and tell them the Sogon will help. He does not speak your language, but he knows a little of the Norsk tongue. He will go north until he meets the soldiers of the Norsk people.” Jon was so relieved that Tobai hadn’t mentioned Marta that he had a hard time focusing on the conversation. Then it dawned on him that Tobai knew nothing of what had transpired in the guest house just hours before. Jon’s mind shifted back to the discussion at hand. He wasn’t sure he liked the idea of going north with Guri, especially if he couldn’t understand him, but right at that moment all Jon wanted to do was get as far away from the Sogon village as possible, even if it meant taking a Sogon with him. “Fine with me,” Jon said without meaning it, and forced a smile as Guri anxiously looked from face to face trying to figure out if he was to go or stay. Once Ezmet explained, Guri relaxed. “We will leave you to your breakfast, and Guri will return when preparations have been made. Guri said something looking expectantly at Garret. “Guri offers you the loan of a horse until the two of you part company.” “What is your word for ‘thank you’,” Jon inquired. “Say, ‘umet’,” counseled Ezmet. Jon turned to Guri and repeated the Sogon word. Guri nodded as if it was of no consequence, but from his demeanor Jon knew that accepting the horse meant more to the young man than he was trying to show. “Thank you, Jon Ellis, may you find good shelter in winter,” Tobai said and turned to leave. Jon bowed, and Guri stuck out his 69
hand for Jon to shake and followed Tobai into the steading. “Guri has shown you a great courtesy, Jon. Our horses are our brothers and sisters. He is not a wealthy man. He takes his two horses to the Sogon across the river. When you go your own way, he will offer the horse to you.” “I don’t even know him, why would he do that?” Ezmet thought about it a moment. “It is our way,” she shrugged. “I have been to your country, I know that you do not ride horses like we do. If you have no use for the horse, then when he motions for you to take it, you must say ‘steset’, he will understand, but it creates a debt between you. We always pay our debts, Jon.” The seriousness of her statement jerked Jon back into his current predicament. “I was hoping to see Marta,” Jon finally blurted. “Is she awake?” “She is awake long ago; she has her work to do.” “Ah,” sighed Jon, disappointed, then concluded, “I guess I’ll get ready to go. I am sorry about breakfast. Thank you for your kindness.” He returned to the guesthouse to check over his gear before Guri returned. He heard movement inside the house and when he peered through the door, he saw Marta, who had been crying. She motioned for him to sit down. “I want to speak to you before you go away,” she began haltingly. He moved to touch her, but she backed away searching his face. “You will take me with you?” she implored. Jon was speechless. “Take you where?” “You sit,” demanded Marta, “I will tell you.” Jon sat. “My people are few, and there is no young man for me, only 70
old men. My uncle, Tobai, has offered me to an old man, Baba Janas, from one of the other steadings. I am to be his new wife. My uncle he says I must marry. I do not like it; I will not go there. You will help me?” she pleaded. Jon hesitated. What are you thinking? his brain shrieked. You are going to get yourself killed over this! Is this how you repay their kindness? Meg is waiting in Ribble!” Jon shook his head. “Marta, I cannot take you with me. I am already promised to another.” “You are promised to another woman?” she asked incredulously, “but….” Jon’s face burned. “So that is why you came to my bed?” Her eyes narrowed and her voice changed. “I will not marry the old one. I think if I give myself to you, you will take me with you.” She cried again softly. Jon thought a moment. “What about Guri? He seems young and strong enough to make a fine husband.” Marta glared at him, “Guri is of my own steading, we are forbidden to marry a close relative.” Jon paused, then brightened. “If there are no young men in the steadings this side of the river, there are bound to be young men on the far side of the river among the Sogon villages there.” Marta frowned, concentrating on what Jon was saying; a glimmer of hope brought a slight smile. “I do not know what my uncle will say to this. He has arranged the marriage, and he will lose face among the steadings.” Marta bowed her head. “I must go back.” Jon trailed behind. Ezmet glanced up from her fire and studied the two young people coming toward her with a growing sense of unease. She could tell that Marta had been crying. Ezmet ushered them into the house. “What has happened?” she demanded. 71
“Marta asked me to take her away,” Jon began lamely, trying to avoid what had nearly happened between them in the night. “I could not do that after your kindness to me. We have come to talk to you.” Ezmet sat down waiting for the young outlander to finish. “Marta tells me she will not marry the man from the other steading.” Ezmet turned to face her daughter. Marta hung her head, afraid to look her mother in the eye. Ezmet’s face paled. “You must marry him!” Ezmet gasped. “The bride price has been paid!” Marta wept, tears spilling down her doe skin dress. When she raised her eyes Jon was surprised at their fierceness. “I will not marry Baba Janas,” she wailed. Last night I went to the bed of this man. I will not marry the old one.” Ezmet’s eyes glinted as they rose to meet Jon’s. He sputtered an explanation “I could not do what she asked. I sent her away.” Ezmet sat down hard, tears starting to her eyes. The unhappiness in the room only added to the screaming headache Jon had from Tobai’s kumiss. Jon waited for the first of the curses to fall. Glaring at the stupidity of her daughter, Ezmet wondered even then how she could persuade her brother to try to talk the old man out of the betrothal. She knew the merest suggestion that the bride had been with another man would be reason enough to prevent the marriage, but if the bride price was rejected, it would mean being ostracized. Not only Marta, but Ezmet would lose her place in the steading, everything she and her husband had built over a lifetime. Marta’s whim came at high cost. Being a practical woman, she clucked her tongue as Marta in a flood of Sogon told her mother how she felt. Jon could only watch the interplay on the faces between mother and daughter and 72
wonder how soon he was to be cursed with what? A lifetime of bad luck, accidents, illness? Would she shrivel his manhood in revenge for what hadn’t happened with Marta in the dark? There were wise folk even in Saeland with reputations that would cause any sensible person to think twice before crossing them, Eofa, the seidwoman for a start. Ezmet turned to Jon. “This thing my daughter has done is foolish,” she said flatly. “Is it true you have a woman in the south?” Jon nodded, rising fear in his gut. The silence in the house was broken only by the sounds of dogs barking and children playing somewhere in the village. “I cannot take Marta. The kumiss…” faltered Jon. “Among my people,” Ezmet began, “there is a price paid to the family of the bride. On the day of the wedding the bride’s family provides her with a dowry. We are poor and the old one Marta is to marry has already paid for her in horses. If it is known my daughter visited the guest house last night, even if you didn’t finish what she started, it is reason enough for no marriage. But when it is known, Marta cannot remain here, the people, they will talk; they will be unkind, they will blame you, I fear. If Marta does not wed Baba Janas, the horses must be returned and no man will take Marta in the five steadings, we will be outcast.” “Mama, I cannot marry him,” Marta wept. “I want to cross the river.” Ezmet thought hard once again and sighed. “My mind tells me that you should stay and marry Baba Janas. But something else whispers that you must go. But you cannot go alone. I will ask Tobai to return the horses and explain that I have decided to leave the steading and cross the river to our people and the far side. We will gather what we can, and go to the Sogon villages there. Perhaps there is one who will make you happy, Marta.” 73
Marta had stopped crying and looked hopefully at her mother. “You would do this? You would leave the steading and come with me?” Ezmet took a deep breath. “I will go with you. Who knows, perhaps there will be a man there to comfort me when you are gone.” She turned back to Jon. “If, as you say, you have a woman in your country, she should count herself a lucky woman. You are an honorable young man, Jon Ellis. A man must be true to himself first and second to the ones he loves. Mischief has nearly been done here. The stars have woven our paths together, Saesen, and since I do not see all ends from where we stand now, I shall wait to see if this be good or bad. You are young and have much to learn. Go now,” she said. “Speak to no one of this,” she ordered. “I hear Guri coming; you go out to meet him.” Jon mumbled his thanks and cast a last glance at Marta before stooping to leave the house, mother and daughter speaking in low urgent tones. Jon called to Guri who was approaching the guesthouse leading two strong, fine horses, a sorrel and a bay. Jon hurried to reach the guesthouse before him, struggled into the straps his own pack, picked up his other gear and greeted Guri as he approached the guesthouse. Jon stepped into the stirrup easy enough, but instantly realized a pack slung over a shoulder or carried on one’s back didn’t exactly work on horseback. He’d have to rig another way to carry his gear, but not there, not in front of Guri. Jon motioned to Guri to take the lead on the narrow trail; Guri smiled and instantly assumed the role of scout. Jon glanced back a couple of times at the steading, feeling a little dazed about how he had left Marta and Ezmet. He found himself trying to piece together events of the previous evening again and again, and no matter how he tried, he came to the 74
conclusion that there was little he could do about Marta’s appearance in his bed, but even as he rode, he warmed at the thought of her. What did that mean? All the way down to the road Jon wrestled with the uncomfortable mix of emotions that swirled inside him. In the end he resolved that he would not wait any longer to ask Durban Turner for his daughter. When he got back to Ribble, he’d convince Meg that sooner was better than later. Somehow making that decision eased a burden he’d been wrestling with for months. Guri set a strong pace that Jon appreciated once the pain behind his eyes subsided. After they regained the old road, the forest thinned and by noon had receded from the road to the east and west. They traveled north wordlessly side by side. Crossing one more set of hills after noon; they gazed out over a wide valley that extended east and west for a great distance. Jon gained a new appreciation of travel by horseback. It was easier than walking; no burden to carry at all, but the pain of sitting astride the broad back of the horse for hour after hour became an endurance test. If he had read the maps at the Armory correctly, then he had at last reached the edge of Saeland. Halfway across the next valley, on the banks of a goodsized stream, they came to what appeared to be the ruins of a large village. Jon turned off the road and dropped gratefully off his mount to walk among the ruins which clustered on either side of the road, many not more than piles of stone overgrown with nettles and smothered in sunsethued woodbine or eaten by lichens. He kicked around the ruins to see if anything might give him a clue as to who had lived here. Guri rode clear of the rubble gazing with alarm at Jon’s examination of the ruins. Jon wondered if any of his own ancestors had lived or fought or died there. In the near distance he saw a large stone structure near the road, but when 75
they approached it, he saw that it wasn’t a ruin. Jon dismounted again and walked around the monument, which stood more than twice his height and was twenty paces across. On reaching the west side he realized it was some kind of burial chamber. Like an open mouth the enormous portal stones yawned open into the darkness beyond. From the interior a coldness whispered; dry and sunless it felt. He shuddered and hurried past; glad it was broad daylight. The barrow would be a lonely, mournful, ghostly place at night; perhaps a dangerous place as well. He walked the rest of the way around it. The mound rose in courses, largest stones on the bottom and smallest on the top. Once again Guri sat in the road keeping his distance from the mound, steadfastly refusing to come closer. In his forced grin Jon detected his desire to be well away from such a place before evening. The ancient road began a slow curve toward the east, heading for the Selwyn River. Jon watched for the track that Egan had described leading north to the border. He was hungry and decided to use his bow and see if he could find something for his supper. Jon pulled out his bow and motioned to Guri to do the same. When Guri understood they were to hunt, he smiled and eagerly strung his own. Jon had seen plenty of holes where rabbits might live, but there were none to be seen. Guri dismounted and moved off the road to the east and flitted from cover to cover as silent as a shadow. Jon hunted the other side of the road until he came upon a path heading due north. He paused until Guri reappeared, and signaled that he would follow the trail north. Guri waved his understanding and continued stalking. The afternoon was hot once again, but a breeze from the steep hills swept down past him and cooled him off. Jon saw little sign of anything big enough to make a meal out of. He looked for Guri 76
but couldn’t see him. The trail ahead was in full sun, and so he found a place in the shade to tie up his mount and waited to see if Guri’s movements drove any game his way. But he had no luck, and neither did Guri, for he came out of the timber across from Jon and shrugged indicating that he had found nothing. The horses plodded up the trail in the blazing afternoon heat toward the boundary ridges. Once again his shirt stuck his back, and the water in his bottle grew warm and stale. Looking ahead he saw that not too far from the base of the ridge, a copse of maples arched over the trail, and he determined to rest there in the shade for a time. Guri disappeared off to his right again, then reappeared empty handed leading his mount. He came and sat down across from Jon in the shade, grateful for the respite from the heat. As soon as Jon stood up, Guri went off again to hunt. That meant that Jon got farther and farther ahead as the overheated horse stumbled up the steep slope of the ridge. He came upon an east flowing brook deep enough so that he could douse his head and shoulders and then sat down to wait for Guri. He was listless and tired. Even the prospect of a meatless supper wasn’t enough to get him to move out into the sun again. When Guri rode up grinning, he carried a fat grouse. Jon smiled and pounded him on the back for his efforts, thinking already how good it would taste after roasting over the coals of the evening cook fire. The track they followed from that point forward meandered, but not enough that Jon felt like cutting across country. The land rose steadily to meet the hills, and the ground became rockier with every step. A rabbit that had frozen in place to avoid being seen, darted from his path and stopped when it felt safe enough to study the two. Jon slipped from his horse knocked an arrow, drew back, and released, but his shot flew wide. Guri released his arrow 77
before the rabbit could react; his arrow sped true, and Guri retrieved the rabbit with a victory shout. Guri slung the grouse by its feet and the rabbit by its ears over his horse’s neck as the sun inched its way down the sky onto the horizon. Jon’s thighs and buttocks were so sore he could hardly sit the horse any longer. The trail doubled back on itself to allow weary riders to go up through the forest, taking the steep incline a piece at a time. They finally reached the ridge crest to find the snowy tops of the great mountains in the hazy distance. “The Dragonsback,” he murmured. “I have actually seen beyond Saeland into foreign lands!” he exulted. “I have made it.” He had done what he set out to do. Except for the mountain peaks, the distant vista was cast in shadow as the sun moved closer to setting. Guri sat his horse impassively taking in the scene. The forest had crowded in on the path once again, and Jon spoke to Guri and by signs tried make known his desire to camp. Guri nodded his head vigorously, and they looked for a decent location. Jon wanted a place where he would be out of the wind and his fire not visible from a distance. Not more than a hundred yards down the trail he saw a path leading off through the evergreens to his left. He dismounted and followed it for perhaps a fifty paces or so leading his horse and found an established campsite at the foot of a high stone ledge. The natural wearing of the stone had created an overhang where several people could sit out of the rain. A ring of blackened stones had been constructed and firewood was stored carefully under the alcove. Dried bracken had been piled for a bed. “Perfect,” Jon said out loud, “exactly what I had in mind.” He shouted for Guri and untied his pack and tethered his horse to a tree branch. Guri seemed pleased with the campsite as soon as he saw it and lay out the bird and rabbit for gutting. He led the 78
horses to a small springwatered meadow a few score paces down the slope and used two short lengths of rope to hobble both horses. Jon walked out of camp a few paces and started to pluck the bird, while Guri skinned and butchered the rabbit. Jon took out the lidded pot he carried with him and went to the spring to fill it. By the time he returned, Guri had coaxed a small flame into the kindling and soon had a cook fire going. Into the pot with the two carrots and a small onion Jon had carried in his pack all the way from Redding went the rabbit and several fists full of barley. The rabbit stew simmered and the smell of food made hungry mouths water. He had been looking forward to a good meal all afternoon. Guri set up a skewer for the bird and after raking coals flat, began the slow process of roasting it. While the stew boiled, Jon pulled his bed roll apart and laid it out on half of the bracken and stretched out flat, legs crossed at the ankles. The aroma of the food made their stomachs growl long before the food was ready. When the rabbit was judged to be cooked, Jon set the pot to one side for the stew to cool. He turned his pack around and lay back on it, so he could gaze through a clearing to the purpleblue mountains in the distance still wearing last winter’s cap of snow. The sunset breeze blew through the tops of the firs and alders under which they lay, but did not so much as stir the ashes at the edges of their fire. He’d tried all day to say things to Guri, but they hadn’t really been able to do more than sign and gesture. It was apparent the mountains impressed him as well. Guri turned the bird patiently knowing from experience that the outside would be blackened before the inside was cooked beyond raw. Jon offered the rabbit stew to Guri who dipped a serving into the small wooden bowl he carried with him and ate with great satisfaction, slurping and blowing the hot pieces of meat and vegetable, as Jon did. The cooking was second rate by Redding standards, but given 79
the present circumstances, it was wonderful. Jon scooped the last few spoonfuls of stew from the pot and set it to one side. Sometime later the bird was roasted, and they ate it in silence except for the good food sounds that transcend language. Guri pulled a gourd flask from his pack and took a long swig. Wiping the lip of the bottle he handed it to Jon indicating he should drink. Jon lifted and caught the unmistakable odor of kumiss. He made a wry face and deprecating gestures to indicate he didn’t want any of the vile, soured brew. Guri laughed out loud and said something Jon was sure was insulting, but if it meant never drinking kumiss again, he’d suffer more than insults. Jon lay back full and content not paying attention to anything, almost on the verge of falling asleep, when he heard the horses whinny. Guri leaped to his feet grasping the handle of his knife. The hair on Jon’s arms and the back of his neck jerked erect and from one instant to the next his heart was exploding rhythmically in his chest as if it was trying to escape. Guri’s reaction more than anything else told him they were in danger. Someone or something had alarmed the horses in that wild place. Jon’s hand stole to his own knife hilt easing it from its sheath. “You need not those knives,” a disembodied voice called from the shadows. Jon’s hand froze. He motioned to Guri to hold. Their eyes tried to pierce the veil of foliage, but they could make out no image. On some invisible, silent signal the forms of four men emerged from the trees to their right, bows strung and arrows knocked, not aimed, but Jon knew they could be in an instant. Jon wasn’t afraid, at least he didn’t think he was, the voice was calm, definitely not someone from Saeland. Norman? Jon’s mind flashed to the conversation with Egan yesterday. Trying to sound bluff, Jon looked directly at the intruders. 80
“Come into camp, you are welcome!” Jon called. The tallest of the men nodded almost imperceptibly, studying the two young strangers. “Come over to the fire if you please. My name is Jon Ellis, from Saeland,” Jon invited much more easily than he felt. “My friend here is Guri of the Sogon.” The strangers approached cautiously. Jon stood up and removed his hand from his knife hilt. Guri was still tensed for fight, but Jon again signaled the danger had passed. The four men moved into the late afternoon light, and Jon could finally see their faces for the first time. They were approximately the same size as Jon, tall, compared to most Saesen anyway. Their broad, square frames, dressed in openthroated tunics and a belted blanket in different multicolored checked patterns thrown over their left shoulders. Their faces were angular, keen of eye, and darkhaired. The one who spoke was older by perhaps ten years. “You need not fear us,” the leader began in accented but passable Saesen. “I am Erlend Billund, keeper of the southern border. These are my companions: Torkil, Loni, and Einar. What is your name and your purpose here,” he demanded. “I am Jon Ellis, a traveler, from Redding in Saeland. And this is Guri of the Sogon. I was told he speaks a little Norsk, we haven’t been able to say much to each other.” Erlend spoke to Guri directly, and Guri’s face brightened when Erlend spoke to him in the flat, guttural sounds of Norsk. “Why have you come so far from settled lands, Jon Ellis?” Erlend asked as he turned back to Jon. “This is a wild and dangerous place. Those there are which love not Saesen or Norman for that matter, who trample our land not far from here. They would slay you if they found you.” Jon felt thoroughly chastised. He knew he deserved it, but he 81
had been telling himself he was practicing to be in the Guard for so long, he’d convinced himself it was reason enough. His own experiences of the past two days revealed his customary explanation as a tissue of selfdeception and overconfidence. He was walking blithely through places where he ought not to be, not yet anyway, and certainly not alone. “I have learned for myself, Erlend, the truth of what you say. I will camp here tonight and return south tomorrow. We would be glad of your company. Egan Holman told me I might encounter Normen near the border. He spoke darkly of what it is you and the Guard protect us from. I would hear more from you, since I intend to join the Guard this fall.” Erlend appeared to be considering his words. “We would be glad of your fire.” With a simple lifting of his chin, three of the men left. Jon blew out his breath after the three Normen disappeared. You are a nitwit, you muddlebrained fool, Jon berated himself. Coming out here as if it were a walk to Holbourne. Just as well you didn’t meet up with anything wild, you would have been of no use to anyone including yourself. Although Jon tried to convince himself otherwise, he’d been nearly unmanned by Ezmet. Home and the comfort of a good bed sounded infinitely better than hiking around the borderlands at that moment. Two of the Norsk soldiers returned with four packs and set them down across the fire from Jon. “I see that you have already eaten, but we have not,” explained Erlend. “If you don’t object, we’ll share your fire?” “Be our guest,” Jon offered, remembering to his manners. From a leather bag one of the men drew the carcasses of three fat grouse like the one Jon and Guri had eaten. Erlend carefully 82
built up the fire with the firewood the third man in Erlend’s company carried into camp, while the other two worked to spit the birds and used Guri’s stones and sticks to roast them. The silence among them was filled by the cracking and snapping of the fire. Jon knew he was under close scrutiny and tried to get the Normen to talk. “Erlend, Guri here has news that you will want to hear. The Sogon hate the Olani and want to help. I stayed in a Sogon village last night, some of them just returned from talking with their people near the river. The Olani are moving west toward Norheim on the far side of the river.” Erlend didn’t look surprised. He turned to Guri who affirmed what Ezmet had told Jon. The hitherto impassive faces of the men showed real concern. Perhaps Guri’s coming meant more important than he had thought. The questions flew back and forth several times, before Erlend had extracted everything he could from Guri and Jon. Then only the crackling of the fire in the night and whirring of cicadas broke the silence. “We’ve heard rumors of trouble up your way, and Egan Holman told me as much again yesterday,” Jon said. Erlend thought a moment considering how best to answer. “Like your Guard, I am under orders myself. Word has come that Olani raiders have crossed the great river and have attacked towns in Visberg not many leagues north of us. We were sent this way to be sure they did not come up the old road from the river. If they had come this way, perhaps we would have found you skewered like this bird, or your throat cut from ear to ear. They are merciless. Long ago we agreed to watch these lands that lie between our peoples. Towns were built and land cleared for farms and fields. The road you followed today was but one of many that crisscrossed the border lands in every direction. Villages sprang 83
up for a time under the lordship of my people, and there was peace and prosperity. But the soil is thin here, much richer to the south. Over time the Saesen moved out of the hills and the long separation of our two peoples began. Since then our only common venture, except for a few boats a season going up or down river, is to thwart those who would hurt or threaten the common peace. Our sworn duty is to defend Saeland as we protect and defend Norheim.” “How many of there are you?” “Of soldiers? Some hundreds all told,” Erlend declared. “Do you know a man by the name of Arnegil?” Erlend smiled. “Yes, Jon, I know him; he is our chief and my kinsman. You know Egan Holman then, do you?” Not really, my father knew him well. Holman lives in Redding where I live. I talked to him yesterday on the trail north, he was heading home, I think.” Erlend regarded Jon with interest. “He and I visited for a time not two days since,” Erlend admitted. The fire popped and snapped when Jon threw three or four sticks onto the fire ring. Erlend stretched and spoke to the other men who shook their heads seeming more interested in the roasting than any conversation with an outlander. Guri offered his milk poison to the Normen who had the same reaction to it Jon did. Guri insulted them cheerfully in Norsk, and it brought the first full laughter Jon had heard from any of the Normen. The talking went easier among them after that until Erlend strode to the edge of the little dell to listen to the night and its sounds. Whatever he was listening to, he appeared satisfied when he turned back to the little campfire. After dark, the smell of wood smoke hovered around the little 84
encampment, Jon felt increasingly comfortable around these strangers. The Normen unbelted their brychans, the patterned wool blanket each of them wore over their shoulder. They wrapped themselves in the cloaks and lay down. Jon rested against his head against the pack behind him gazing up into the night sky. The proximity of the strangers around the fire comforted him after all the talk of raiders. There was something about the leader of the Normen that he couldn’t quite put his finger on; it was as if there was some virtue or keenness about Erlend that set him apart from any other person Jon had ever met. Erlend turned his head in Jon’s direction. “And you, Jon, what is it that brings you to the border?” “I have always wanted to see the great mountains of the North. I have hiked far and wide in Saeland, and had a few days off work at the mill. So here I am.” “And what do you think of them, now that you have seen them?” “They are beautiful,” Jon said knowing that the word was insufficient. “Perhaps one day you will come farther north. They are indeed beautiful, more so if you see them close up.” Jon’s mind had spun to another topic, the Sogon. “Do you know anything of the Sogon?” “Very little, why do you ask?” Jon described his visit with Ezmet and her people and related the events of the previous afternoon and evening leaving aside Marta’s night time visit. “They treated you well. You seem none the worse for it. The Sogon are among those we call the wanderers,” Erlend explained. “Most of them come and go without much trouble, mostly small bands of farmers or herders who keep to themselves.” 85
“What of the others?” “I am not sure that the dark of a summer night in the wild is the place to name the dangers you and I face in such a place as this,” he began hesitantly, but seeing Jon’s expectant face, but he relented. “Wanderers there are a plenty in the world, Jon. As you saw, most are simple people who follow their horses or cattle or sheep from valley to valley pausing but long enough to wear away the grass and then they are gone. Others flee settled lands to escape punishment for crimes they commit in their greed or their rage. They bring their evil with them. Highway men and thieves at times lie in wait to catch the unwary traveler. Upon all of these we have kept watch. But I fear the days of easy watching are coming to a close.” “Because of the Sogon?” Jon asked. “Not because of them, but what they represent. The lands to the east are troubled, we’ve been told. The Olani have crowded the Sogon, or what is left of them, west out of their own lands, I think, because the Olani are under pressure from tribes east of them. No, Jon, I do not fear the Sogon, but they are the first of many who seek lands free from turmoil. Both our peoples will be forced to work more closely together or alone, I think, we will be overcome.” The Normen had been listening to Erlend’s voice and staring into the dying fire. Jon shivered, but not from being cold. It came to him like a sharp pain in his chest, just how close Ribble was to the Olani threat. And if Ribble, then… “But come,” said Erlend in a lighter tone, “enough of such talk in the gloom. “Tell me of your meeting with Egan Holman. “ “How is it you know him?” inquired Jon. “From meetings not much different than this encounter with you,” Erlend replied. “We have spoken many times.” 86
Jon recounted his talk with Holman and wondered why Erlend would be interested, but he was so tired that he yawned widely. The Normen who could not understand him had rolled themselves in their blankets and fallen asleep. Conversation lagged and after wishing the others good night, silence descended. Guri already snored softly on his half of the bracken bed. The guttering russet glow of the dying fire lit Erlend’s profile looking off into the distance, his eyes closed. Jon pulled his own blanket about him and rolled onto his side. Jon woke with the predawn chittering of chickadees in the boughs above the camp. The Norman’s blankets and packs were still in place but all of the others including Guri were missing. Jon wasn’t particularly alarmed and assumed that the others would return soon. He relieved himself away from the camp and moved out towards the path where he heard hushed voices. Through the branches he glimpsed Erlend and his companions standing in the middle of the path talking with what appeared to be another tall Norsk soldier wearing a long sword strapped to his back. Guri stood to one side listening to the rapidfire conversation looking anxious. When they noticed Jon approaching, the Normen acknowledged him and began walking toward camp, still speaking earnestly. Jon turned back to the camp ahead of them and knelt to see if he could revive the fire from the ashes of the previous night. The Normen continued talking until he finally coaxed a tiny flame from the embers and fed it until he had a cook fire going. “Jon Ellis, this is my kinsman, Arnegil, son of Juran Juransen,” Erlend began. The stranger grinned at Jon with a twinkle in his eye. “So, Jon Ellis,” the stranger said, “what brings you so far from home?” The voice was kind, and the tall man smiled. He was 87
about the same height as Erlend, and Jon sensed the same nobility about Arnegil’s presence, as he had with Erlend and yet they sat down on the ground and sorted out what they had to eat with Jon and Guri like old comrades. Guri had already fetched Jon’ pot full of water from the spring and put it on to boil. Jon threw several handfuls of barley into it. The Normen ate the same kind of porridge only made with oatmeal. While they ate their mush, Arnegil turned the conversation to Jon’s experiences since leaving Ribble. “You talked with Egan then?” Arnegil asked. “Yes, I met him three days ago, and we talked. He mentioned you, by the way.” “A good man, Egan Holman. Did he explain why he was up here?” “Not really, for the same reason I’m here, I guess.” A flash of emotion crossed Arnegil’s face, disappointment or was it disapproval, Jon couldn’t tell, but the chief changed the subject abruptly, his tone not revealing his thoughts. “Erlend tells me you are going home today. Is that still your plan?” “I’m heading home by way of Ribble as soon as I break camp,” Jon replied. “Yes, I think that is best. I bring word that we are all needed away to the north urgently, and I would that you were safely on your way. We will take Guri with us and see that he reaches his people across the river.” “Erlend tells me you hope to join the Guard soon. They will have need of many sturdy men and wood wise before long, I fear.” Jon felt something akin to pride kindle inside as he sat here with these Normen who talked with him as if he was an equal. In no time breakfast was cleared away; Jon and Guri packed their 88
gear and brought the horses up from the meadow. Arnegil fell into step with Jon as they walked out to the path with Erlend, Guri, and the others trailing behind. “Jon, I have an errand I wish you to undertake,” Arnegil began. He handed Jon a folded parchment addressed to the Earl of Saeland. “This message warns of a large band of armed raiders who have crossed into the southern part of our country some hundreds strong. My people have been drawn off to meet them, and my hope is that we will soon send them back where they came from. If we fail to stop them, they may turn west or south. The Saesen Guard will need to be called up. I have also suggested that you and others like you, be given guardsman status immediately upon your return. Carry my message to your Thane Giffard for me. Will you do that?” “Of course,” Jon responded, his eyes fixed on the sealed letter and the future Arnegil had placed in his hands. “You have much to learn, but if I am any judge of character, you will make a difference in our work, Jon. We are destined to meet again, you and I. Perhaps the long estrangement between our peoples is ending. Our vigil has kept both our lands safe until now, but the Guard must be redoubled. Warn the Guard in Ribble, they will send word west to put all the northern towns on alert. Three or four day’s march could bring these foes to Saeland. Tell them to be ready, Jon, be watchful. We will send word once we know if the raiders threaten Saeland. Fare you well.” “Goodbye,” called Jon. “I will not fail.” “And I look forward to our next meeting, Jon,” added Erlend and grinned at him as an older brother might at the sudden realization that a younger sibling has come of age. Jon turned to Guri and thanked him. As Ezmet had foreseen, Guri asked Erlend 89
to explain that the horse was a gift. Jon smiled and shook his head. “Tell him I am honored, but I have no use for a horse; my legs are good enough.” Guri nodded when Erlend explained. “Steset,” said Jon hoping he’d remembered it right. Guri smiled broadly and stuck out his hand for Jon to shake. With a wave the Normen turned and disappeared into the forest; Guri and his spare horse riding along behind them. Jon could hardly believe his luck. Guardsman Jon Ellis, that and the thought of his errand carried him swiftly homeward. The already overcast sky grew darker as low rain clouds marched south into the face of the steady southern breeze. Since much of the path was more down than up hill, Jon reached the pool where he had first met Ezmet by late afternoon. Jon hoped that Tobai and the men of Ezmet’s steading weren’t waiting for him. He hurried past the place where he had climbed up the rock ledges, chuckling to himself as he viewed in his mind again and again the embarrassing incident at the pool. But then his thoughts darkened. Jon knew that if Marta’s visit had become known or Tobai refused to give up the bride price horses, they would hunt him down and exact a promise of immediate marriage or beat him senseless or worse. But Jon passed the pool without seeing anyone; for that he was grateful. Clouds had spread above him all day and he knew that rain could not be too far off. Jon hiked the next ridge and valley before stopping for the night, going long past the point where his feet and shoulders burned. What a strange series of events had come of a seemingly trivial decision to spend a day or two exploring the borderlands. Jon, like all the Saesen, believed that one’s ultimate fate was a constantly unfolding series of events based on choice and 90
coincidence, circumstances and challenges overcome. The three goddess weavers were constantly at their loom connecting everything in life into a pattern of warp and weft that could only be discerned later. Jon felt like he had just been introduced into the web of events around him like a single new color thread appearing behind the shuttle for the first time. Evening came quickly under a dismal sky, the wind blustery. Jon’s thoughts were filled with Normen and raiders. His enjoyment of seeing the mountains faded in importance, and his thoughts turned homeward. Excitement about the prospects of joining the Guard was tempered by knowing he wouldn’t be able to spend any time at all with Meg. The gnarled arms of the oaks broke the force of the wind and little but the sound above him told of its passing. Jon had little food left in his pack but with the help of his little iron pot soon had a poor supper. He lay against a log listening to the fire crackle, the alder trunks standing stiffly on guard. Too late Jon realized he reclined against a log swarming with large black wood ants that had him dancing wildly around the clearing trying to brush them off. He was forced to relocate all his gear, bedroll and pack away from the fire and the ants, still plagued by the sensation that one or two of the insects had crawled beneath his tunic. The wind rushed through the tops of the trees like the sound of a waterfall. He finally settled down again, although he swore the ants had hunted him to his new location. Twice during the night he woke to the tapping of rain drops on leaves and gear. He pulled his hood over his head and willed the rain away. He started awake in a sweat fresh from being hunted by the faceless hulk he somehow knew was Baba Janas. The image was slow to fade. The first tentative birds rustled and peeped above him, 91
unwilling to leave the shelter of the wood, waking Jon to the cool moist breath from the north which foretold a long, muddy walk. After a hurried breakfast, Jon set off in a rush to get as far as he could towards Ribble before the heavy rain came. Jon’s feet were sore, and he found himself wishing he still had Guri’s horse. When he reached the alder grove where he had talked with Egan Holman, he dropped his pack to rest beneath the branches. From the ridge crests he had seen rainfall around him and occasionally heard the mutter of distant thunder. He hoped the weather would hold off, but it wouldn’t be the first time he hoped in vain. From the top of the ridge to his left he could already begin to trace the line of the coombe the Ribble had carved for itself over years beyond count. The wind was cold, and the sky lowering and gray. A few showers drifted overhead, spattering him with rain, enough for Jon to pull his hooded cloak over his head and pack. He pushed on, anxious to reach any kind of shelter before the rain became a steady downpour. In early afternoon, Jon lost the race. The rain, steady and cold, began in earnest; he was wet through and shivering. After hours in the downpour, Jon spied a path leading off to one side that looked like it might have been used by the Guard and found a stone outcrop which had been used as a shelter for generations. Several great limestone boulders created a cave large enough for several men to sit upright in and build a fire. He was grateful the last Guardsmen had taken time to replenish the stack of firewood. The rock shelter was enclosed enough to hold out the wind and rain, and he soon had a small fire going to warm him. He figured it would take most of another day to get to Ribble, if the rain stopped, but it continued to pour as if to spite him. Jon fell asleep to the steady, splashy beat of the rain and wind on stone. He awoke at dusk when a gust of wind swirled cold and damp 92
into the shelter. He poked his head turtlelike outside and found the rain had slackened, but he could tell from the pendant, blue black clouds the rain would return soon. Sure that the cave was the last shelter he would find before Ribble, he relieved himself and crawled back inside for the night. Jon woke several times during the night when thunder shook the very ground upon which he lay and the opening to the shelter was illuminated by the brilliant flash of lightning. He woke when gray day light brought him from a dreamless sleep. He was hungry and nothing left to eat. The sky promised rain for hours, but Jon decided it was then or never, a dry room at the Turner’s and a solid meal waited, and wasn’t getting any closer by sitting under a rock. So he set off at a fast pace, retracing his route of several days ago. The brooks and rivulets were rushing torrents each time he crossed, and the rain returned; only his steady pace kept his teeth from chattering. Upon reaching the track along the Ribble, he found the Ribble in full spate, running bank to bank and spilling over at the bends. It seemed to him that his already sodden clothing absorbed more moisture from the wet brush and grass crowding the path; breath wisps trailing behind. A steady drizzle fell quietly, the rushing of the river and the tap of the rain on every surface drowned out all other sound. Shivering and shaking he came at last to the farmsteads of Ribble Valley, just as the rain increased once again to a heavy downpour. Jon just hunched his shoulders and pulled his cloak down farther over his face against the driving rain and sloshed his way down the muddy track which had become a stream itself. In time the deeply muddy road brought him down to the bridge in Ribble covered in mud from his waist to his boots.
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