Tale of Elske (32 page)

When he wrapped his arms around her and lifted her up into his embrace, the soldiers around them looked away, mumbling to one another, shuffling their boots into the dirt, coughing and spitting, before they gave way and stared.

When Dugald set her apart, it was only to hold out both his hands to her and say, “I offer you my heart, Lady, my hand, my title and my lands. Give me your word that you will take them.”

“I promise you,” Elske said, almost unable to breathe for gladness, almost as if she were drowning, with his hands held in her own strong grasp.

T
HE ARMY UNDER LORD DUGALD
returned woundless the way they had come. At every village and inn they were greeted by welcoming crowds, for their story preceded them. Elske grew accustomed to hearing her name called out, perhaps by the children near a farmhouse, “Elske, Elskeling!” or by villagers gathered near a well, “Elskeling!” She rode at Dugald's side, once again dressed as a Lady must and riding sideways. Elske could wave, and smile, and be glad of the victory. She could be glad that through the victory, the shadows of fear had been lifted from this land, with its stony fields and the flocks of sheep and goats which grazed on its hills, with its dark-eyed sturdy people, who cheered for the soldiers as they marched past in file, and cheered for their Earl that would be, and called her by name, “Elske!”

Dugald chose not to disband his army until he knew the outcome of the royal contest, so he sent messengers out ahead, to find what news they could, and received them without delay when they returned, and questioned them closely. For these interviews Elske was with him, although, “Beriel does not concern me as she does you,” he remarked.

“Beriel is your lawful Queen.”

“And I will be her loyal vassal,” he said. “But if she dies in battle, she cannot be my Queen and I must be vassal to another, and that with a good heart—if my lands are to prosper. She rules you almost as a sister, bound in blood. Let us hope she will approve our marriage.”

“How could she not?” Elske asked.

“Beriel's is a Queen's royal will,” Dugald said. “But first, there is the question of the throne to be settled, for if Beriel is slain or taken—”

All along the King's Way, messengers met them with news, in Hildebrand's city, in inn yards and at the ford of the river. The reports of these messengers sometimes echoed and sometimes contradicted one another:

There was to be joined a great battle, with many soldiers risked on both sides.

There was to be a duel, because Beriel had challenged Guerric, offering a fight to the death. Her brother would not accept her challenge, claiming she mocked him, being a woman, claiming that a victory in such combat would be shame.

A later messenger told them the armies had taken up positions on opposite sides of a broad valley, where the sleepy little river meandered lazily through grassy meadows.

Dugald rode on towards the King's City, encountering the messengers who rode to tell him that a fierce battle raged, the green grass turned into mud by the booted feet of the soldiery while the little river turned red with men's blood. They told him, Guerric delayed the start of battle, and delayed again, while Beriel chafed at the postponement of the chance to prove her claims. They told him, Beriel was slain, taken captive, hanged as a traitor without her royal privilege of the ax.

No, it was Beriel's army that had won the victory. The number of dead exceeded the number of those left alive, including the wounded.

No, King Guerric had set an ambush for his ambitious sister, and trapped her and all of her royal guard, too. Thus the battle ended in victory for Guerric.

No, the Queen had found and slain her brother and enemy. She rode now at the head of those who had survived her victory. She carried the severed head of Guerric on a tall pole, that all might know her power and her right.

All the messengers agreed that many lives had been lost. Most reported victory for Beriel so Dugald and Elske moved forward with hope.

Their way led them now beside the river, and they set up their camps in the sweet spring evenings, the army around them. “You have not taught me to swim,” Dugald reminded Elske, who by then knew enough propriety to answer, “When we are alone, my Lord. When we are alone and by one of the lakes, for didn't you promise me that I would have a house at the lakeside to be my marriage gift?”

“I did, and you will.” They were watching night settle gentle as falling snow down over the silver river and the green land. “Let Beriel be Queen,” Dugald said, then, “and I will ask no more for my perfect contentment. And did you ever think you would be an Earl's wife, Elske?”

“No,” she said, for she had never thought of being any man's wife.

Dugald was in a robust pride that evening. “Has another man—any other man—asked to give you the honor of his name?”

“Yes,” she said.

This surprised him. “Who was he? One of the Wolfers?”

“The men of the Volkaric have no wives,” she explained, meaning to tease him. “Besides, I was the Death Maiden, and belonged to the Volkking.”

This reminder drove the pride from Dugald, who took her naked hand in his own bare fingers to say, “Then who was this other man? Must I be jealous? Or were there many men, and I must be jealous of them all?”

“Be jealous of none,” Elske reassured him.

The river nuzzled into the long grasses at its shallow banks, and Elske's skirts swished in echoing sound. From behind them came the voices of their soldiers. “In two days' journey,” Dugald told Elske, “we'll be at the King's City and know what fortune awaits the Kingdom.”

“I'll be glad when the cheering's done,” Elske admitted.

But when the two armies met together and joined into one on the jousting field outside the walls of the King's City, the cheers of the citizens for their soldiers and their Queen, and the cheers of the soldiers for their victories and their Queen, for Northgate's heir, and Elske, too, choked the air. Beriel stood on the King's pavilion, where all might see her, tall and high-shouldered, one arm bandaged close to her chest, this being one of the deep wounds she had taken in battle, and leaning on a carved wooden stick for the other. She turned and turned, showing her face to all in the crowd that surrounded her. Her eyes shone blue, and her bandages shone white as she stood before her people. She wore no crown, not yet having been anointed; but Beriel had never needed any crown to be the Queen.

The soldiers of Dugald's army, both those of his father's house and those of Sutherland's, lifted Elske up onto the platform, that she might stand with Beriel, but the two could not say any words to one another, for the roar of voices. They clasped hands, once, before the voices called them apart. “Beriel!” the people cheered, and the soldiers, too. “Long live the Queen! Long life to our Warrior Queen!” Voices of men and women and children, Lords and people, all mingled together. “Elske!” they cheered, “Elske of the deathless battle, Elskeling!”

At first, Beriel and Elske stood back-to-back, like Wolfguard. With Elske to balance against, Beriel could drop her stick and raise her good arm up into the air.

Louder cried the crowd, in its joy at the double victory and in honor of these two. The two were filled with the cries of the people as the sails of a ship fill with wind, and Elske, too, raised an arm in answer to the people's joy in Beriel, and honor to them both.

When they turned to face one another again, each with her own name and the other's ringing in her ears, Beriel stepped back. She held out her right hand to Elske, palm down. She wore on that hand the royal signet. Her eyes were like the blue sea when it reflected back the light of the midday sun.

This was Beriel in her full power. This was Beriel, Queen.

Elske took the hand in her own, and when the crowd saw that it cheered more loudly, and gladly, “Elskeling!”

Beriel's hand pressed hard down on Elske's. “Kneel,” she commanded. “Kneel to me.”

But why should Beriel need Elske kneeling before her? Still, Elske sank down to her knees before her Queen, and pressed her forehead to the hand which she held, to show loyalty, to give honor, in servitude, and all gladly.

Now the crowd cheered Beriel's name, over and over, tirelessly.

Before Elske could rise, Beriel signaled to five men who stood close by the pavilion's steps. They were richly dressed, and two were also bandaged; they came forward to surround her. This guard, with the Queen in their midst, descended the steps and stepped into the crowd, which parted to give the Queen passage.

Win was not one of this close guard. Left on her knees on the pavilion floor, Elske wondered what had befallen the young man, wondered if he lived. She had just stepped back onto the ground, when one of the guard returned to tell her, “The Queen requires your attendance, my Lady. With no more time lost, my Lady. That is the Queen's will.”

“I obey and follow,” Elske assured him, and he was away to rejoin the Queen.

WIDE WOODEN DOORWAYS OPENED TO
let Elske enter the reception chamber where Beriel was holding court. A tall-backed throne, with carved arms and legs, stood on a raised dais at the far end of the room, and there Beriel sat.

Beriel saw Elske enter, but made no sign; she was giving public thanks and praise to the captains and Lords of Northgate's army, who were called up one by one to receive her hand and swear their allegiances.

Elske looked around her, while she waited her time to be called forward. The wooden floors in this hall gleamed with polish, each plank fitted tight against its neighbors. The long windows were unshuttered, letting fresh, sun-warmed air fill the hall. But Elske did not see Win among the courtiers gathered in this room, nor among the soldiery.

Beriel called for Dugald, heir to Earl Northgate. He knelt before her and she thanked him for driving the Wolfers out of her lands, and she proclaimed him first among her loyal Lords. Then she rose up from the throne and asked him for his arm so that he might escort her through a doorway behind the dais, thus ending the ceremony of thanks.

At the opened door, Beriel sent one of her hovering Ladies-in-Waiting to Elske, to tell Elske that she, too, was required in this private conference with the Queen. Elske followed the woman's broad skirts and stepped through the door held open for her. Elske hoped to find Win waiting within. But Win was not there in the small paneled room. Dugald and Beriel sat across from one another at a table, and there was no one to occupy the fourth chair.

“Be seated,” Beriel told Elske. “Now, Dugald, give me your report. Tell me how we stand with the Wolfers.”

“We stand free of them,” Dugald told her. “They think they were met by the Death Maiden and her army of the deathless dead. That at least is our guess, my Queen, and if that is so, Elske tells me it will be many years before they dare the Kingdom again, and maybe forever.”

“I don't think you should promise us forever, Elske.”

Elske protested, “I have promised nothing, my Lady.”

“I can offer you no honors that would equal your worth,” Beriel said to Dugald.

Dugald answered her. “I seek no honors.”

“Sought or unsought, you have gathered honors about you,” Beriel answered. “Rumors unsaddled their horses in my courtyards before you dismounted your own, tales of a bloodless victory, of a naked maiden before whose brightness Wolfers flee. My own wars don't make such a pretty story.”

“Nor such an easy one,” Dugald agreed. “What of Guerric, what of the battle? For we, also, have dined on rumors.”

At the question, Beriel leaned towards Elske with a mischievous smile, as if they were back in Trastad and she the Fiendly Princess again. “Guerric put a price on my head—a fortune in gold coins and land rights, which he offered for my capture alive. If dead, then only coins. But many coins,” Beriel announced, as if that pleased her.

Her next thought did not please her. “He would have suborned his own soldiers into murderers. He hoped to corrupt those who had pledged their swords to me. He was a fool.”

“Ah, he
was
?” Lord Dugald asked, seizing on the clue, but Beriel would tell her own story in her own way.

“I had an army to defeat, trained and weaponed, led by experienced captains. I had my own men to use—and not to waste. Our battle plan was to attack at three points, in three equal parts, two at their flanks—where they were spread thin, not expecting attack there; and I led the third part of my soldiers into the waiting center of their line.”

“On horseback?”

“At first, but after the first clash I dismounted. Sideseated is a weak position from which to wield a sword. So I fought among my soldiers, beside my own men. Elske, I think I am more of a Wolfer than you.”

“I think you are,” Elske agreed.

“I have walked into battle,” Beriel told Elske proudly. “I have had soldiers ready to follow me to their deaths, and many did die in my cause. I have had a man's heart at the end of my blade, and watched the life leave his body, and pulled my sword free for the next enemy. And my courage did not fail me,” Beriel announced. “I have had my revenge,” she told Elske.