The Harp and the Blade (29 page)

“Now I know why a hawk dives down on a bunch of magpies,” I muttered to Conan. “It’s just to shut ‘em up for a minute.”

“Some of these magpies will shut up for a long time,” he prophesied.

A minute later Thomas stole out of a shadow. “He’s by the fire to the right,” he reported.

In relation to our position it was the furthest away, and we set patiently about the task of quietly reaching an attacking point. From then on our orders were to keep together and work as near to the outlaws as possible.

For a while I had hopes that we would be on them before they knew it, but one of the men tripped and fell headlong when we were still about fifty yards short. They hushed instantly, and my skin prickled with a hunter’s excitement as Piers himself called: “Hey! Who’s there?”

Conan was not the man to give him a chance to find out by easy degrees. “At ‘em!” he yelled, slamming through the underbrush. We obeyed as well as circumstances would permit, and after a few strides they weren’t so adverse. The firelight picked out obstacles for us, and I can recall stumbling only once.

Of course, what with dodging trees, we couldn’t go at top speed, but we were still able to reach them before they were sure what they were going to do. Or rather before Piers was sure what he was going to do. Most of them followed the animal instinct of their kind to duck for cover first and ascertain the exact extent of the danger later. There was much squawking and shrieking as women chivied their young into the dark, cursing betimes as men shoved past them.

Piers and a few fellows had tried to organize resistance, but when they found nobody was listening to them they also turned to escape. It was too late to avoid us then, though. We were already in their camp and in full career, while they were just getting in motion. Conan cut down one man from behind; and as the others whirled on us desperately, I leaped past him to get at Piers. I had promised myself that I would do that as soon as I knew we were on his trail.

His eyes told me that he recognized me, but for once he had no time for words. There was great strength in that frame of his, but he was not a skilled swordsman. The rest of the skirmish was over, but Conan knew that I wanted to handle this fellow myself. “But don’t kill him, brother,” he begged. “I have something for him.”

Acquiescing, I turned Piers and worked him toward the soaring fire. He still hacked manfully until the intense heat began to singe and blister him. Then he suddenly dropped his blade with a groan. “Get him!” Conan barked and four men sprang to drag him to a cooler spot.

Whistling to himself, my friend sauntered around the fire, his face turned up to the illuminated branches. “Bring him here,” he ordered; and Piers, wondering and sullen, was hustled before him.

“I’ve learned to tell you from a pig,” Conan said, smiling in a way that the outlaw couldn’t have enjoyed. “Isn’t that nice?”

He stretched out his hand, and Jean gave him a coiled leather rope. Piers howled and almost broke loose by his frantic squirming, but additional hands made sure of him and tied his arms behind his back. Conan meanwhile paid no attention but, still smiling, carefully fashioned a noose. “Up Thomas,” he said quietly, handing the coil to the woodsman. “Boost him, two of you.”

In a moment Piers interrupted his own ravings with a squeal as the noose dropped down from the branch to hang level with his eyes. Conan swept it roughly over the outlaw’s head. “Hoist!” he commanded.

If there were any there who felt compassion for him I wasn’t one of them. “He kicks a lot,” I said critically.

“He isn’t used to it yet,” Conan explained. “He’ll get over it pretty soon.”

He did, and we left him aloft for his fellows to see and think about.

T
HE
next two weeks were fine ones for me. I was in almost continuous, purposeful action, and the physical weariness I knew by nightfall but added to my sense of accomplishment. Through it all, indeed, I experienced a sensation that nothing but the writing of poetry had previously given me. I was achieving something at once spiritual and concrete, and had knowledge of what I was doing while I was doing it.

It was a new existence that I was isolating and fortifying for myself. In the little nation which Conan was consolidating I was recognized as his alter ego, second only to him in authority, and I drove myself mercilessly to make sure I earned my rating. What we had to do in the short time before hostilities would be forced was to visit friends and waverers, giving them final notice of the conflict and its significance. With the friends all we tried to do was to show how confident we felt. As for those as yet undecided we made capital of our new alliance with the abbey, how we had just killed Oliver before Chilbert’s eyes, and one more thing. In essence it was that when we were victorious we would remember who had helped us—and who hadn’t.

Sometimes Conan and I traveled together. More often I acted independently, leading my little troop of followers to outlying strongholds to palaver and take careful note. Word of the business at the Old Farms and the work at Gregory’s had got around attached to my name, and I was well received even by the hesitating. Never a diffident man, I yet entered all places with a new and surer confidence. All knew that I had power in the land and might well have a great deal more.

That was pleasant, and the fact that my followers liked me was better. But what really made the world gay with promise was the thought of Marie. She was never on my lip but always in my mind. And at night when my mission had been disposed of I had little to say over my wine in the brief interval before fatigue sent me to bed. When not addressed I would hold her in my thoughts, marveling that there could be a future which might house us together.

Once when Conan and I made a trip together night caught us in the forest. We were all tired men there by the fire, but I was happy with the friendship I bore them, especially one. And I was happy with the thought of having a home in a land where men looked to me, a home with a woman in it who’d bear me a son. Conan, son of Finnian, men would call that boy. But that was further away. The girl’s warm beauty was with me there. She was a darling to whom I would be good because no other course was conceivable. It was a great and strange thing to come to after my years of wandering as a lone hand.

Thinking of her so, I sang as I had not for years, if I had ever thus sung before. It was a song I had made for a chief’s wedding once, and the passion I had tried to put into the words was a moving actuality in my voice. The song was in Irish, but the men did not need to be told what it was about. They listened soberly, each staring at the fire and thinking of his own woman.

Midir’s finding of Etain after she had been lost to him for several mortal lifetimes was the subject.

“She was lost, she was gone,

His darling, his sweeting,

And time maundered on,

Yielding no other meeting.

No meeting of lips, no smiles, no embraces,

No charming his eyes with that face of all faces.

She was stolen by art,

Tricked from him by magic,

His winsome sweetheart;

And his godhead was tragic.

Yes, tragic to know that no kindly morrow

Could cut short his life to free him of sorrow.

I will find her again!’

His heart cried, but: ‘Never!’

His brain muttered then,

‘Once she’s lost, gone forever!’

Forever long gone, the voice that would bless him;

Gone the slim arms that would hold and caress him.

Night and day all alone

He wandered then, broken,

Each minute a stone

Crushing hope by its token.

A token of love’s final no—she had perished;

Dead, the small, lovely one whom his heart cherished.

But he looked for her still

For the cheat hope-giving

To lessen the chill

Of the need to keep living.

The living though lifeless while she was missing,

The sweet, the kind one no more for his kissing.

But it happened one day!

Fate softened; he found her,

Though still the spell lay

On her spirit and bound her.

It bound her, kept her from knowing her nearest,

Her lover, her friend, her heart’s ease, her dearest.

By his sleights, with his skill

He won her back, breaking

The charms a dire will

Had spun, banning her waking.

Awaking to old joy, heart and lips mated,

Giving the healing he’d hopelessly waited.”

When I had finished and Conan roused from his thoughts of Ann, I could tell by his face that he knew that I had not sung merely because I’d felt like singing. Whether or not he had guessed before, he knew then that something had happened to me, and he asked me a question that, I am sure, had long been on his mind. “You will stay with us, brother? There will be plenty of land if we win, and chiefs will be needed.”

I looked at the fire instead of at him. “I might throw up a hall of my own if I could find a woman to put in it. Not much use of one without the other.” Of course, he knew the woman I had in mind as well as I; but I wouldn’t name her, so he couldn’t.

He put his hand on my shoulder an instant in that warming way he had. “You might find one that wouldn’t know any better.”

“One took you,” I retorted, “so no man should give up hope.” We turned in shortly after that, but the dreams of good days to come followed me into sleep.

As for Marie herself, however, I scarcely saw her in all that time. I was only at the fort briefly, and then only to make a report or get a few hours of needed rest. Everybody was working furiously, the women as well as the men, to get ready for the expedition or siege, whichever it was to be. On the two occasions when I managed a few words alone with her she was unwontedly shy and hesitant, and I was sure that Ann and she had been talking things over. But I said nothing particular to her, for it was no time for courtship. There was too much to be done; and also there was little use in talking now until and if I should find myself a survivor of the onrushing war.

As it turned out I couldn’t even say farewell to her when hostilities were renewed. The news was sudden and desperate when we got it. Conan and I had met at a rendezvous to discuss our success with each other when a rider approached on a horse which had worked to get him there.

“A man came from the abbey this morning, Conan,” the fellow’s news ran. “Chilbert’s attacking him with all the men he can round up! His riders were over the border when the messenger left.”

We calculated. “Some of them could be at the abbey now,” Conan said, “but not the main body of his horsemen; and his foot troops will be another day and a half behind.”

“At that they’ll be there before ours,” I said.

“By some few hours,” he agreed thoughtfully, “and naturally they won’t want to wait around for us. The Abbot may need every man we can rush.” He chewed his lip a moment then rose, having made his decision. “We’ll send them to him anyhow. Finnian, you’d better take the men with us, pick up what mounted men you can without going too much out of the way, and ride to the abbey. The Abbot won’t waver, but the moral effect on the others will be bad if Chilbert arrives and there is no tangible evidence of our support.”

“Right,” I said, preparing to mount.

He was moving toward his own horse. “Rainault and Jean will have dispatched the muster call everywhere by now, so we ought to be under way by noon tomorrow. Send if you see there’s real need for hurry when we get there. Otherwise I’ll coddle the men and let them save their energy for fighting.”

“All right. Give my love to Ann and so on.”

“I will,” he smiled; “especially to so on. See you at the abbey, and don’t kill Chilbert before I get there.”

“Not if he behaves himself,” I promised as we saluted and turned to go separate ways.

So for the third time I approached St. Charles Abbey, thinking sadly and bitterly that this time no Father Clovis would stand above the gates to bandy words with me. One other thing that distinguished this visit was that I was not, indeed, halted and questioned at all. One of the monks who had been with us on the raid against Oliver was on guard. He hailed me excitedly from quite a distance, and the gates were wide and welcoming when we arrived.

It was just after sunup, but the court was noisily abustle, swarming with monks, the troops of chiefs who held their land from the abbey, and refugee villeins. Under other circumstances the presence of so many women and squalling brats in a monastery would have been a scandal of dimensions.

The Abbot and I greeted each other like the old friends we were coming to consider ourselves. “Good,” he said when I told him that Conan would follow with his full strength. “Come on up on the wall, and I’ll show you the smoke from their fires. They’re not cooking fires either,” he added grimly when we’d climbed aloft, “unless they’ve left men inside their homes for the fun of it. They do that sometimes.”

“So I’ve heard,” I grimaced. There was no doubt but that Chilbert would use every cruel trick in his reputedly extensive repertoire to frighten people either into flight or into volunteering abject submission to him.

“We had a brush with their vanguard yesterday evening,” he continued, “but they didn’t essay a serious attack. They were trying to lure us back toward their main army, whereas our strategy is to keep out of a major engagement until Conan joins us. But Chilbert, I take it for granted, has had us well scouted and will make at least one big effort before Conan arrives.”

From my observation of Chilbert at Oliver’s fort I judged him a man who knew his way all around the battlefield. “He’ll try,” I agreed, “although if his footmen don’t get here by dark they may wake up to find all our men here, too. Shall I chase a man back to tell Conan to rush his horseman?”