Chance (22 page)

Ward shivered in a winterbound cottage darkened by early dusk, snow blowing in through the cracks death-white and a fiercer storm coming on. They were all sick, lying abed, mother and the boys and the small sister, everyone except himself and the useless old man his father. Not much to eat, nothing to burn except the innards of the cottage itself. They would destroy their home from within, feed it to the fire as the fever fed at their vitals; they would die. The youth rose, gave to the small blaze the threelegged stool he had been sitting on—and then came the knock at the door.

“Open it, Ward,” said his father numbly from his place by the hearth.

“Who could it be except lordsmen?” the young man flared in reply. “Let them knock.”

The father rose stiffly and went to the door himself, undid the string latch. The door swung open with a bang, blown aside by the wind. No lordsmen stood there. Instead, there in the white whirl of snow stood two youths, hoods back in defiance of the cold, their cloaks whipping about them. Ward stared. They looked no older than himself, and yet far older. Behind them loomed dark, leggy shapes—their horses. Horses! He resented them already.

“Your hospitality, Goodman, or we are likely to perish in this smother.” It was the grave-faced one who spoke, as much in command as in request. Ward noticed his gray eyes, curiously intense. Noticed them from all the way across the room.

“To be sure, you are welcome,” replied his father courteously, “though we've little enough to offer you.”

Hot anger flamed up in Ward, warming him as the fire could not. What would these strangers care if they ate everything and left his family destitute? He stepped forward, fists clenched, but no one looked at him.

“Did I see a cowshed yonder?” the second youth asked. He was blond and held his mouth in a faintly humorous half smile.

“Ay. Naught in it.”

“I'll put the horses there, then.” The two of them swung into motion in the manner of men who have long been accustomed to each other's ways of doing things, wordlessly. In a moment a knobby pile of bundles and gear had grown on the doorstep, the blond youth had led the horses into the gathering darkness and the other had stepped inside, swinging his pack.

“I am Hal,” he said quietly, “and my brother's name is Alan.”

“Worth, they call me,” the goodman introduced himself, “and yon is my eldest, Ward, and the wife Embla, and the younger ones.…” His tired voice faltered away.

“And all sick with fever,” Hal muttered. He dropped his pack and strode straight across the room, kneeling and feeling at the woman's forehead with a delicate fingertip touch.

“Let her alone!” Ward shouted, startled. Most folk would have shied away.

Hal did not move. “Put on some water to boil,” he said absently. “We'll make her a broth, some tea—”

“There's nothing except potatoes and old turnips!”

“Ward!” his father reproved him.

Hal got up and crossed to his pack, loosened the fastening. He drew out a sack of oats and one of maslin flour and a chunk of meat wrapped in the raw deerhide. Alan blundered in at the door, shouldering an enormous bundle of firewood. He grinned at the goodman, who was staring at him openmouthed.

“We try not to come visiting emptyhanded,” he said, easing his load to the earthen floor. Hal had shoved the foodstuffs aside and was rooting impatiently in the recesses of his pack.

“Alan, see if you can't get some water started. I can't find my agrimony—oh, there it is.”

Alan stood still. “Sickness,” he murmured, looking across the room to where a sufferer stirred and trembled.

“Ay. Where's a pot? By the mothers, must I do everything myself?”

“I will take care of it,” Worth said unexpectedly. He dipped the water from a covered bucket. A half-fearful hope enlivened his face, made it look years younger. Ward stirred from his stance in the middle of the floor and sullenly sat on it, idle. He felt hateful, and guilty at his own anger. These two had brought help, but he could not like them any the better for it, not when they made him feel foolish. He almost wished they had been brigands after all.

His ill humor kept him from enjoying the food much, though it was the best he had eaten in months. Real meat, venison! Hal made a rich, good soup with a sort of bread in it for strength. He spooned off the broth and fed it to the invalids. He and Alan did not eat much. By the time everyone was done it was late, very dark, and the fire was dying to a flicker. Alan rose, yawning, and set about fastening a blanket over the worst portion of the wall. It blew and billowed as if there were no wall at all.

“What a wind,” he grumbled. “Listen to it, would you!”

Moans and howls sounded overhead. Something sobbed just above the rafters. Worth gasped and dropped with a clatter the pan he was washing.

“That's no wind,” he stammered. “Black Nick is on the wild hunt tonight, him and his red-eared hounds, come to take souls as lords take deer, the mothers help us!” The words caught in his throat.

“He shall not have them,” Hal said flatly. He took a seat by the little girl who lay and whimpered on her cot by the wall. “Get that fire going.”

Worth numbly obeyed, his face twitching. Ward could not move; he felt frozen. Something was mewling and wailing around the eaves. “It sounds like babies,” he whispered.

“The souls that run before,” Hal said sternly. “Pay no attention. I tell you, he shall not have these.”

“How do you propose to prevent him?” Alan asked, almost as if it were possible.

“It is fear that draws him here like a scent, the fear and despair—feel them in the room, here, almost as solid as the night? I have felt them since I entered. Fire and warm food weren't enough.”

A high-pitched distant yelping sound, overhead, where it had no right to be—wild geese, Ward thought. But it was not the season for wild geese.

“We have no elfin balm,” said Alan.

“I know. You think I haven't longed—well. Let me try it with the plinset.”

Alan handed over the instrument in its leather case. Hal took it out carefully, warm gleaming of well-loved wood.… Music was a rare occurrence. A chant or a few sung words flung to the wind might be all a person heard from one year to the next. When Hal struck a soft chord, it was as much a sound of wonder and delight as the hunt was a sound of terror.

“Lint in the bell,” Hal murmured. He sang the song of the blue flax flowers and the summer sun. Alan joined in on the choruses, tuning his voice a triad away, lending resonance. The sound of music shut out for the listeners the weird noises without; the room filled with the glow of imagined sunlight. Hal went on at once to another song, this one about heartsease and the flower of that name.

He defied the powers of winter and death—but only as an embrace defies hatred. Some of his songs were full of valor and glorious folly, some witty, some of them sad, but all were very much alive, all warm. The bedridden folk stopped their shivering and moaning. Even the fire seemed to glow more steadily and brightly.

The children settled one by one into peaceful slumber, and then the mother, and then Ward, leaning his head against the wall where he sat by himself in the farthest corner. He was aware for a while of Hal's playing, and then he swam like a trout to a deeper place, so he thought.… Then he had a strange and vivid dream.

It seemed to him that the door burst open with a freezing blast of air. And there in the black entry of night stood a specter, eight feet tall, a skull for head and branching from the skull two great forked horns. Hal rose to face it, his plinset in his hands.

“You shall not have them, Arawn,” he said.

Arawn was the black rider's name in the western tongue. His shadow loomed huge upon the wall. At his shoulder nodded the gaunt head of his pale, luminous horse, and around his heels crowded the red-eared hounds, uneasily whining.

“How can you defy me?” Though the giant spoke hollowly through his naked, clacking teeth, he seemed amused.

“I defy you with mortal defiance,” said Hal. “The spirit that has always defied you. Take your leave.”

“Why, you poor fool,” Black Nick boomed, “don't you know it is no use? Poor silly hero—give way, now, before I take you as well. I suppose next you will be offering yourself in their stead.”

“Nay. You are to have none of us this night.” Hal stood taut but firm.

“And who are you, that you think you can deny me my rightful game?” All amusement had vanished from the spectral hunter's voice.

“I am Hal, son of Gwynllian, heir to Torre and Taran and the Blessed Kings of Welas, Star Son, Son of the Mothers, Very King.”

“No court has hailed you,” Black Nick mocked.

“The time is not yet. The gypsies hail me, and the elves, and the spirits of the dead.”

“Yours is a mighty magic,” the prince of darkness said, “but not mighty enough to halt me. Give way.” Towering, he took a step forward. Hal trembled, struggling within himself, forcing himself to say yet one more thing.

“I am Mireldeyn,” he whispered, “and I bid you begone.”

Black Nick stopped where he stood.

“Well,” he said, in a voice impersonal and oddly gentle. “Well. You know then that there is a price to pay.”

“I pay with every breath.”

The specter gave a nod, perhaps a sort of bow, his spreading antlers scraping against the rafters. Then he turned and vanished in a single stride. The door banged behind him, and it seemed to Ward that Hal went limp and nearly fell, that Alan appeared from somewhere, caught hold of him to support him. What happened after that he could not tell, for he was asleep. Was he not asleep?

When he got up in the morning Hal was lying near the fire in a sleep that was almost a swoon. Alan was quietly cooking oatmeal, and Ward's mother was sitting up in her bed, staring at the strangers. The children lay sleeping peacefully, and so did Worth. Ward stumbled over to his mother's bedside.

“Are—are you all right?” he stammered, unbelieving.

“I seem to be much better.” Embla turned her puzzled eyes on her son. “What has happened, Ward? I remember music, the sweetest of music—”

“Nothing. Nothing has happened.” Ward shook his head vehemently, shaking off memory, shaking off shreds of dream.

Snow still fell heavily, but the wind calmed. The snow ceased to seem an enemy, became an insulating downy comforter that sealed them, cocoonlike, from all harm. Alan trudged outside and returned with firewood and more meat from the haunch he had hung behind the cowshed. The snow was his veil; no lordsmen would threaten. Alan made stew, and the children sat up and ate it, all three of them, while Worth moved from one to the other to his wife in restless joy. Hal still lay in a stupor. Alan hauled and heaved him into a bed and he hardly stirred.

“Will he be all right?” Worth asked anxiously.

“Ay, he is just—tired. He was up all night—nursing them,” Alan said awkwardly. “Herbs—”

“And something more,” Worth stated with a keen glance.

Ward thought of his father as a coward because he quietly met the demands of the lordsmen who kept him constantly poor. Surely the old man did not mean—no. It was too frightening. It was just a dream. Even though Alan seemed more strained and anxious than he had any reason to be.

In midafternoon Alan made an abrupt gesture and went over to wake Hal, took him in his arms, pulled him up against his powerful chest. “Hal!” he called him, but Hal's head hung limp; there was no response. Alan spoke very softly in his ear: “Mireldeyn.” Ward stood near enough to hear the word. Hal's eyes fluttered open and he made a dry sobbing sound.

“All right,” Alan murmured. “It's all right. Wake up. Please.” He helped Hal to sit up on his own. And to Ward's astonishment and chagrin, his father went and knelt by the bed.

“Lord,” said Worth huskily, “they are better, they will be well. A thousand thanks—” Hal gave him the ghost of a smile.

“Never mind that,” he said. “You have turnips. Would you get me one? I ought to eat.”

“A turnip!” Worth protested. “Lord, there is meat.”

“I get meat all the time. You take the meat. I'll take a turnip.”

They spent the evening gathered around the hearth, all of them, even the little ones, talking and talking in a sort of celebration. It was family talk, tales of good times or funny times, touching only lightly on the hardships, the grinding difficulty of life under greedy lord and evil king. Ward sat scowling in their midst, full of rebellion. How could they prattle so? Saved, for what? Brutish slavery, he thought. Hal did not sing. He sat quietly, looking pale, and when the rest of them went to sleep he paced about, the hollows of his cheeks and eyes looking huge in the dim light. Ward, half-wakeful, was aware of his pacing, aware that Alan kept him company and whispered with him from time to time. He chose not to be aware that they spoke of the specter, and Mireldeyn, and the price that must be paid, the loneliness.

The next day Embla was up and about for a while. The snow stopped. Toward evening Hal and Alan packed their things, planning to be off in the morning. They sat by the fire for an hour and went early to bed. That night everyone slept.

Everyone except Ward. When the fire had died down from embers to ashes he slipped from his bed and crept softly to the piles of gear near the door, opened a pack. In the shaft of moonlight that wavered through the single window he examined the contents—

“Ward!” It was his father, whispering. “What are you doing?”

“Digging carrots!” he whispered back hotly. He rummaged in the pack, muttering to himself. “Here we are to sit, starving, and likely they have gold, booty, who knows what.”

“Are you mad?” his father gasped. “Are you my son? You would thieve from those who befriended us?”

Ward made no reply. He drew from the pack a burnished helm and stared at it in the moonlight. There were old songs about a sunset king who would rid Isle of the oppressors; Ward discounted them. But he admired the helm. It shone with the subtle glow of rare silver.