A Hero's Tale (12 page)

In the morning two of the northerners unbound us and took us to relieve ourselves. Then they made us welcome to the remains of their breakfast. While we ate, the northerners broke camp. Some were forming into raiding parties. They had seen to their weapons the night before, and their packs held supplies for just a day or two. Others were preparing for a longer journey, their packs heavy with food and supplies. I recognized them as the warriors who followed the woman with red hair.

Maara seemed on edge. No doubt her wound bothered her, but I felt more at work in her than pain. I knew her moods so well. This one was new. Her restless eyes went from one thing to another, like the eyes of an animal brought to bay. They frightened me.

The red-haired woman appeared among her warriors and spoke impatiently to those who were still fumbling with their packs. When all were ready, she beckoned to an older man and gave an order. At once he turned and approached me, while she strode away, to speak to someone else.

The man said a few words to me and saw that I didn't understand them, so he gestured to me to follow him. When I stood up, Maara rose too. The man spoke to her, short and sharp. He must have expected her to sit back down, because when she didn't, he gave her a shove and repeated his order. Maara stumbled back a few steps, but she stayed on her feet. The man went after her.

Before he reached her, she spoke to him. Her voice betrayed her fear. It was not fear of what the man would do to her. It was fear of something that was about to happen, something she was helpless to prevent.

Then I realized that they were going to separate us. The red-haired woman's band intended to take me with them on their journey and leave Maara behind.

The man took hold of Maara and tried to force her to sit down. Her knees refused to bend. The man grew angry. He shouted at her, and she spoke again. They were respectful words. Nothing in her tone justified what he did then. He drew his sword and held the blade against her throat.

I cried out and took a step toward her. Before I could take another step, someone grabbed my arm and held me.

Two warriors took hold of Maara's arms and held her still, waiting to see what the man would do. I was terrified, but she had mastered her fear. She didn't struggle. She paid no attention to the sword. She raised her voice and called out several words in that strange tongue, and the red-haired woman came to see what the trouble was.

At first, when Maara tried to speak to her, she refused to listen. She gave an order, and three of her warriors forced Maara to her knees and prepared to bind her hands. The red-haired woman turned away, and Maara called to her again. The woman turned back, about to lose her patience.

Maara said something else, and the woman's face changed. She listened as Maara spoke a few words more. The woman weighed Maara's words, careful of being taken in, yet curious to hear what Maara had to say. Then she spoke to her warriors, who pulled Maara to her feet and stepped away.

The woman approached Maara and began to question her. Maara gave short answers, and the woman's curiosity grew. Maara drew her in. With a guile I never knew she had, she led the red-haired woman down the path she had prepared for her.

I heard every word without understanding what was being said. Maara stood a little turned away from me, so that I had to try to learn her meaning from her tone of voice and from the red-haired woman's face. For every question Maara had a ready answer, but something more was happening. This was a negotiation.

Though the red-haired woman held the power here, Maara had something to counter it. They soon reached an agreement. Maara made the woman swear an oath. Not with blood. That would have been too much to ask. A blood oath is sworn only between equals. Because we were her prisoners, it astonished me that the red-haired woman would consent to bind herself by any oath at all. Maara made her swear on her sword. The two of them swore together. The red-haired woman grasped the hilt, and Maara, in an act of trust, grasped the blade. Then it was done.

What Maara had to bargain with, what she had sworn to do, I could not imagine. Too confused even to frame a question, I waited for her to tell me what was going to happen.

"You're going home," she said.

Were they going to let us go?

"I'll follow you," she said.

There was nothing in her words to frighten me, nothing in her voice, soft as it was, or in the way she moved, slow and careful, as she took my hands in hers and gazed into my eyes.

"I'm going with them, just for a little while," she said. "I have something to offer them. In exchange they're going to let you go. Take one of their boats and go down the river. In a day or two you'll reach Merin's house. Do what I told you. Go to your mother, or to your friends."

At last I found my voice. "I won't go home without you."

"You mustn't follow me."

"I will. You can't prevent me."

"If you follow me, you will break my oath."

"I never swore an oath."

The northerners were all around us. The red-haired woman was impatient to be gone. They took hold of us and broke us apart.

"Don't leave me," I said.

They were pulling her away from me. When I tried to follow, others held me back. Relying on her oath, they didn't bind her hands. They took her by both arms, a warrior on either side, and led her away. She gave me a last look over her shoulder.

"Don't do something foolish," she said.

I wished I could have seen her face, but I was blinded by my tears.

"Make them take me too," I shouted after her.

"Go home," she said. "Don't let it all have been for nothing."

The red-haired woman's band went east, away from the river. The raiding parties went south and west, all but one. Half a dozen warriors stayed to guard me, to prevent me from following Maara. They made me sit still, but they didn't bind my hands or hobble my feet. I was not a hostage any longer. My ransom was agreed on, and Maara's oath was given. Now all I had to do was wait for my captors to release me.

I did what they wanted. I sat still. What else could I do?

Over my mind a cloud of doubt descended. This must be some dreadful dream, and soon I would awaken to the teasing laughter of the children, who had heard the murmurs of my nightmares.

But of course we had left the forest people. We were going home. How had it come about that I sat now in this pleasant place, in the midst of strangers and alone?

I didn't want to think. Once I began to think, I would know that this nightmare world was real.

How had it come about? A woman had struck Maara with her paddle. If she had not, Maara would still be with me. We might be home by now. That woman, by her act of cowardice, had changed the world.

For a time I entertained myself with visions of what I would do to her when next we met. I would strike off the hand that dealt the blow. I would do to her what she had done to me. I would take from her what she loved. I would reach into her breast and break her heart.

For a time my anger shielded me. Then I began to cry. They say revenge is sweet. Revenge is not as sweet as love.

An hour passed. I kept myself distracted by watching a patch of sunlight move across the ground. Another hour passed, and at last my courage found me. Maara would have used this time. She would have tried to understand her situation. She would have thought things through. When the time came for her to act, she would be ready.

I spent the rest of that day trying to make sense of what had happened. Maara said she would follow me, but how could that be so? What did she have to offer the northerners? What thing of value could she deliver that was enough to buy both my freedom and her own? When they discovered she had nothing, they would accuse her of swearing an empty oath and forego her price for the pleasure of taking a savage revenge for their disappointment.

Did she think she could escape? These people were not fools. They would guard her more closely now that she was worth two lives.

Maara could send her mind down many paths at once. That was more than I could do. I would have to take each path in turn, one path at a time. I started with the one I knew I would not take. What if I did what Maara wanted and went home? There I would find my family and my friends and they would join with me against Vintel. Vintel's power would be broken, and the Lady Merin would once again preside over her own house, a house that would in time belong to me.

It was the path that, should I choose it, fate would roll out before my feet. As I sent my mind down the path of my destiny, I saw all the good things the world would give me -- praise and power, peace and plenty, and all the souls I loved but one.

One thing my heart knew. If I went home, Maara's path and mine would never cross again. If she had bought my freedom with empty promises, she would pay the penalty. Even if they let her live, they would salvage what they could. She might live out a short and painful life mining salt or tin, or she might become again what she had been in Elen's house, a warrior slave, whose purpose is to take the blows meant for those whose lives have value. Warrior slaves do not live long.

The thought of Elen's house disturbed me. I made myself think of something else.

A new thought tempted me. What if I was wrong? Maara was wise and clever, no one more fit to find a way to live than she. The life she'd led had made her so, had taught her to use whatever strengths she had against the weaknesses of others, had given her a power greater than the force of arms. She said she would come back to me. Why didn't I believe her?

I heard once more the sound of her voice as she spoke to me that morning. She spoke to me the way one speaks to a child, to soften a blow or to conceal a bitter truth the child is not prepared to hear. I am not a child. What truth could be too bitter for me to bear?

I thought again of Elen's house, and then I knew. Maara owed the people there a debt of blood. They would pay the northerners well for the opportunity to take revenge. Having nothing else to offer, Maara had offered them herself. She had bought my life with hers.

In my mind, things that had puzzled me fell into place. I saw how Maara had prepared herself for this, as she had tried to prepare me to go home without her. Maara had indeed struck a bargain with her gods. She wasn't coming back. She wouldn't try. She hadn't sworn an empty oath, but it was not her word given to the red-haired woman that bound her. She had been bound already, by a promise made to gods I didn't know.

My captors brought me meat. Porridge had been good enough for us when we were prisoners. Now I was their guest. I wasn't hungry, but I knew better than to turn away their hospitality. I tried to remember that this was not their fault.

When I had eaten all I could, my eyes began to close. A warm fire, a full belly, and my sleeplessness the night before made me helpless to resist the dark. That was my excuse, though my desire to escape my own dark thoughts would have been enough.

I took the coward's way and closed my eyes. I had forgotten that nightmares pursue the cowardly. Cruel dreams came, in which Maara lay beside me, her breath warm against my cheek, her arms around me. I woke in the dark, alone.

Darker than the moonless night, an abyss of darkness opened in my heart, and into it fell all my hopes and dreams. The promise of a life lived with love beside me vanished, leaving in its place a wasteland. There I would live out a life that was not a living life, but a living death, in which I would simply pass the time until my final death released me. For a long time that path was the only path I saw, and the only power I had left was to choose to take that path or to take no path at all.

My anger rescued me. Silently I cursed the gods who had demanded Maara's life. It was at their feet that I laid the blame. As much as I hated the woman in the boat, she was just an instrument. Fear, not malice, caused her to strike out. Through her the gods had granted Maara's wish, and they would demand their payment.

What right had they to demand anything of Maara? Their power over her was without compassion, without love. They had no right to her compared with mine. My right was absolute, because I did love her, because I would have given her the world.

Yet who was I to challenge the power of the gods? What merely human power is a match for theirs? We were at their mercy, and merciful the gods are not. I remembered my own brave words to Maara, that I would always have the power of refusal. That seemed such a small thing now. What had I the power to refuse?

Then I remembered Maara's words to me, words spoken long ago.
She could have forced your body, but your spirit would never have submitted to her.
Maara had been speaking of Vintel, when she tried to take my brooch. As powerful as Vintel seemed to me then, there was a limit to her power. So too must there be a limit to the power of the gods. Though they might change the world around me, they had no power to change my heart. It was a sanctuary whose threshold they could not cross, and within it, love was safe. Not even the gods could take it from me.

And they couldn't make me stop. I would follow her. I would search the world for her, and if she were to leave this world for another, I would follow her there too. I would love my life for as long as Maara lived. More than that no one could demand of me, not even my own gods.

I began to make my plans. How long had it been since Maara left me? Little more than half a day? How long would it take them to reach Elen's house? It might take many days, more than a week perhaps. And once she reached it, what would happen then? They wouldn't kill her right away. They would send word to all those to whom she owed a debt of blood. It would be the ones she'd injured who would decide her fate.

Perhaps someone would speak for her. Perhaps Elen would speak for her. It was Elen who had helped her get away. If Elen had found compassion in her heart for Maara, in spite of her loss, might not others also feel compassion, whose injury was less than hers? Time had passed. Tempers had cooled. Grief may have faded. I began to hope.

Soon there would be moonlight. Around me I heard only the sounds of sleep. The fire was out. If the northerners had set a watch, the watchman too was sleeping.