Tale of Elske (2 page)

“Wolfers know only fear and greed,” Tamara said. “They cannot taste the sweetness of honey.”

Tamara had instructed Elske: She must travel to the east until she came to a path made by merchants carrying goods northwards from the wealthy cities of the south. Years ago, Tamara had been seized from her home and husband, and then falsely bartered for gold by the Wolfer captain to merchants who spoke of that path, leading eventually to a great city in the north. The foolish merchants were stripped of life and goods by that same captain before the day's end, and Tamara was taken to her life among the Volkaric. “Well,” Tamara always ended the story, “and so I have you, my Elskeling.”

Two times earlier in her life, Tamara had escaped the Wolfers, but not the third. She instructed Elske: “Travel northwards. Listen to me, and haven't you always had goodness happen for you? Maybe you will reach some place to winter over, but if winter does come down before you reach safety, that will be a gentle death.”

Elske knew that Tamara's end in the Death House had not been gentle. She also knew, however, that in her death Tamara had taken revenge on those who had seized her from husband and children, from her birthright, too, and she had taken revenge for the two young men who once gave their lives for hers, in the first Wolfer raid she survived. So Tamara had a good death.

Night's darkness cloaked Elske, covering her as the winter snows cover mountains, from peak to foot. Elske moved with the weight of darkness on her shoulders, on her head; and she tasted it in her mouth like the flavorless rills that ran so fast in spring melts. Now there were trees around her, tall, thick, dark shapes, rooted, and the spaces between them—into which she moved—blocked sight with their dense blackness. She heard the rustling of leaves at her feet, and a sighing wind, and occasionally the owl's questioning cry. It was the harvest season. Wolves would not yet be on the hunt and bears would be fatted for winter, slow and sleepy. The darkness smelled empty, clean, safe. Elske felt herself part of the darkness, moving steadily through it, as invisible as the night air.

Because she could not tire, Elske did not tire. It would be a day, or maybe two, before any of the women went out to Mirkele's hut, so much did the Volkaric fear her. The women would draw close to the hut, and hear nothing. They would enter to find—if animals hadn't carried them all away—the bodies of the babes in Mirkele's care. “I
am
caring for them,” Tamara always said before she and Elske snapped the necks of those girl babies, giving the wolves bodies as flesh to be eaten, not living babes as prey. In this, too, Tamara defied the Volkking; had it been known that the babes had been killed before being fed to the wolves, it would have meant Tamara's death, and Elske's, too. But she always said, “I set these children free from life before they know any greater harm than hunger.” On that final night she sent Elske away before the slaughter. “You go off now, Elskeling, Elskele. I do not fear my death when it makes your life.” And Elske obeyed.

So the women, when they dared to approach the Birth House, would find the babes dead, the larder empty and the fire cold. They would think they saw Mirkele's revenge for the loss of her granddaughter.

In part, they would have seen truly. Tamara's hope, and Elske's, too, was that they would not see completely. Tamara's hope, and Elske's, too, was that the women of the Volkaric would think that such a girl as Elske would go gladly into the Death House. So foolish and fearless a girl would want no more for herself than to satisfy those around her. Tamara's hope, and Elske's, too, was that the two sharpened knives the old woman had strapped to her own feet, invisible in the night, would lie undisturbed in the ashes of the Death House, as unrecognizable as the grey hair Tamara had stained dark with the blood of the slain babes.

As to the captains, their hope lay in the nature of drunken men—drunk on their desires for the Kingship to come, drunk on the heavy mead and the pride of their importance to the King, drunk with rape. Even if they are warriors tried and trained, drunken men cannot defend themselves against a sharp knife, and well-honed hatred.

Tamara's and Elske's best hope was that the Wolfers would believe that these captains had chosen to follow the Volkking into deathlong service. “After that,” Tamara said, “the new Volkking will be busy enough, finding some harvest in his fields, sending out swift raiding parties to fill his storerooms and build his treasure troves, filling women's bellies with his sons. Why would he chase down an old woman, crazed with age and grief? With his people to keep under his hand and winter to survive.” And so they hoped Elske would be spared her life.

Day came greyling first, and then golden shafts of light greeted Elske from among trees, and she walked towards them. She stumbled, with the weight of sack and memories, and with the uneven ground underfoot where undergrowth tangled around her legs. But the warmth of sunlight tasted sweet on her tongue, and brought her fresh sweat.

Deep in forest now, she let the eastern hills pull her to them. She could see but a little distance ahead, into thickly grown trunks and fading leaves on low branches. She could hear birds, and a chuckling of water.

Elske followed that watery sound to a brook that tumbled across her way. Without dropping the sack, she knelt to drink. She had carried in her hand the small loaf that would make her day's dinner, and when her thirst was refreshed with icy water, she walked on—pulling off little bites of tough, nutty, dry bread, chewing them slowly. With food, more of her strength returned.

The sun moved across its arched sky path, as slowly as Elske moved up steep hillsides. When at last the sun lowered at her back, Elske halted at a stream. She dropped the sack from her back and put her face into the water. She finished her small loaf and took out a piece of meat to chew.

There need be no fire that night. The air was warm enough and she could do without the light. When darkness closed around her, she wrapped herself in the wolf cloak, even knowing that this sleep made the last ending of Tamara. For Elske, now, everything must be unknown and companionless.

W
AKING, ELSKE SATISFIED HER THIRST
and set off into the rising light. Damp air rode a lively breeze and she lifted her face to it, in welcome. All across the grey morning, Elske kept her own silence in order to hear the day's voices, the whispering wind, the hum of insects and, starting at midday, rain thrumming through the trees with a noise like the beating of tiny drums. No sunset troubled the end of the watery day. No stars troubled the sky as Elske lay down to sleep in the company of trees and stones, inhaling the dark, rich smell of wet earth.

During the night the sky emptied itself of rain and the sun rose up into a blue field across which clouds ran like wolves, hunting, or like a herd of deer, fleeing the wolf pack. By full sunlight, the earth and stones were warm against the soles of Elske's feet. This untraveled wildness was crowded with undergrowth and thick with trunks of trees, a place where boulders hunched up out of the ground. After that day's rough travel, Elske lay down under her cloak and her tiredness opened its arms in welcome as if sleep was a lost child come safely home at last.

The fourth morning's air hung quiet and moist over steep hills. There were pine trees here and their fallen needles made a soft carpet under Elske's feet. Instead of growing warmer as the day wore on, the air grew cooler. It was the afternoon of this day's travel when Elske came at last to the merchant's path of which her grandmother had spoken.

The path was broad enough for two men to walk abreast; it was worn down to dirt and scarred with the tracks of boots and what Elske guessed might be hooves. Tamara had told her about horses, four-legged and tireless, large enough to carry a grown man on their backs, strong enough to bear a barrowload of goods. Under Elske's eager questioning, as they sat alone with the babies in the Birth House, Tamara told her about the sea and the boats that rode on it, and about cities, cones of salt, beds that were feather mattresses set on boxes to raise them above the floor, pearls, like river-polished pebbles but white, and round, hung in strings around a woman's bare neck, and dolls, miniature lifeless people for little girls to play with. The more Tamara told, the more Elske asked, until Tamara's tales made that other world so real Elske could recognize the tracks the round hooves of horses made in the dirt path. Elske placed her feet carefully on the dirt and turned to the north, as Tamara had instructed.

That night Elske built a fire and sat by its warmth, chewing on bread and dried meat strips, feeling how the empty spaces around her guarded her solitude. She slept deep and awoke at first light.

The merchant's path made easy walking. Elske moved on into winter and the north, through air the sun could not warm. She walked, and listened, and when she heard thudding sounds behind her, she knew she was being overtaken.

But no human foot stepped so.

Then, straining to hear, she heard voices, so it was human; and more than one.

They were men's deep voices, and one lighter that might be a boy's or a woman's, and although many of the particular words were strange to Elske, it was the familiar language of the Volkaric they spoke. The voices drove away the forest silence as they argued about the speed of their travel and the sharpness of their hungers. The thudding steps accompanied the voices and Elske hoped that she might soon see a horse, and touch its long velvety nose with her own hand. She was listening so hard behind her that she stumbled.

Stumbling upright, she heard the voices see her.

First, the footsteps ceased, human and animal, then “Hunh?” she heard, and “Father?” and “Look!” “Who's—”

A conversation was held in lowered voices.

Elske did not turn around; she started walking again.

“Hoy!” a man's voice called. “Hoy, you! Stranger!”

Elske stopped. The forest kept close around her, trees hovering nearby.

“Friend?” the voice asked. “Or foe?”

Elske waited four heartbeats before she turned to begin what would be next in her life.

“It's a girl,” the lighter voice said. “What's she doing alone? What's she wearing?”

There were three of them, one a boy, and behind the three, two beasts which she guessed to be horses. The horses' gentle-eyed heads were level with the men's broad, bearded faces.

The men of the Volkaric had their women pluck out the hairs on their cheeks, to leave long, thin beards growing from their chins, but these men had such thick beards that only their mouths showed, as if they went bearded for warmth, as an animal wears its fur. All three wore short cloaks over trousers stained with travel. The two younger had yellow hair but the older had hair the color of dried grass, and grey streaked both his head and beard. Two sons with their father, Elske guessed. Merchants, from the packs on their own and their horses' backs.

“Friend or foe?” the father asked again.

How could Elske know? She only knew the word
foe
.

“Maybe she doesn't speak Norther,” the older son suggested.

“She's small and dark-haired, so she could be from the south,” the younger agreed.

Elske guessed now at the meaning of the father's question but before she could speak her answer, he asked, with his finger pointing at her, “You good me?” in Souther so awkward that it took Elske a moment to understand that this was the same question.

Before she could answer him, he stepped closer. Behind him, the horses stamped. He pointed to his own chest with a finger. “Tavyan,” he said. He pointed at the young man. “Taddus,” he said, and then named the boy, “Nido.”

The boy pointed to the older man's chest and said, “Father.” Then he bowed at Elske, grinning widely. “May we be well met,” he added in Norther.

“My name,” Elske said then in the Norther they had first used to her, “is Elske.” She might have added, like the boy,
May we be well met,
but she didn't know what this would mean.

“You speak our language?” Taddus asked, surprised.

Elske answered him carefully. “There are—different words.” Then she addressed herself to the man, the father. “I can hear you, almost, what you say. Not every word.”

The path on which they stood threaded through this deep forest like a well-hidden secret, so there were both time and safety for all the questions the men had.

By careful attention Elske understood that Tavyan, the father, wondered where she was going, and she answered that she was traveling to the north. He asked about her parents and she could say she had none, only a grandmother newly dead.

Tavyan asked her what country she came from, and that meaning she couldn't guess. He asked her again, and again she couldn't answer, until Nido interrupted impatiently to say, “What land, what people?” and Elske could tell the father, “The people of the Volkaric.”

They looked to one another, wary, and said nothing, all three ranged against Elske.

“The Volkaric are yellow-haired,” Tavyan said to her, “blue-eyed. Like us.”

“My grandmother was taken captive from the south. They say, I am like her.”

“But why have you left your people?” Tavyan asked.

Elske told him nothing false. “My grandmother sent me away.”

“Well,” Tavyan said. “Well, then. How far—?”

“Father.” This time it was Taddus interrupting impatiently and Tavyan gave way, making his decision, asking her, “Shall we four travel on together? We also go to the north.” He explained, “The city, Trastad, is our home.”

“Trastad.” This could be the northern city Tamara's merchants had hoped to reach, as if Elske might complete the journey Tamara had begun, as if their lives were still connected. She answered Tavyan with a smile, “Where else should I go, and who else travel with?”