The Tale of Oriel (23 page)

Oriel was so busy watching the dogs attack, and listening to catch the sounds that came out of the Wolfers' open mouths—like pigs at slaughter, like the cries of men in flames—as they without hesitation stepped up, and ran their swords into the dogs' great bodies, as if the snarling teeth were nothing to fear—so mazed by surprise that it was almost too late when he heard Tamara's whimpering cry and turned—Griff at his shoulder—and saw five more such men—shrieking, blunt swords raised in both hands to strike down into his heart. He barely had time for the thought: Someone must stand against these Wolfers, and delay them.

“Tamara, run!” he said. “The boat!”

Sounds rushed by his ears and the events swirled in front of his eyes. He had his dagger in his hand. Tamara protested, he didn't remember her words. Faces with blue eyes, bright blue and cold as a winter sky— He thought they must pluck the hairs from all of their faces except eyebrows and chins, to have such beards.

“You must—!” he cried, and she ran—he thought those were her stumbling tumbling steps he heard—down the hillside. To the river. To the boat.

The open mouths made sounds like wolves with the prey in their sight. The sound rose up howling out of the dark throats.

Griff was at his shoulder. “Back to back,” Oriel said, remembering the Captain's teaching. The Wolfers moved in close, and there were the three now crossing the planted field. They had no hope, he and Griff.

Oriel heard now, as if she were only now speaking it, what Tamara had said in protest. “I'm not worth it.”

They didn't rush into the fight, these Wolfers. They wore leather vests, like protection, and leather sleeves on their arms. They spoke briefly, but Oriel didn't understand the words. They weren't speaking to him, in any case.

Cruel faces, they had, narrow and smiling with pleasure at the fight, with the odds eight to two.

“She's right,” Oriel said, over his shoulder to Griff. They were circling now, he and Griff, drawing towards the woods, where they might take flight. “She isn't worth it,” Oriel said, and he laughed out loud. He had chosen this course of action, whether Tamara's life and safety had equal value with his own or not. He alone chose his own course of action.

“She has the boat untied, and oars in the water,” Griff reported.

The Wolfers smelled of sweat and urine, filth, blood. Their leather, from boots to shoulders, was stained in dark patches. At some signal Oriel couldn't see, or some word he couldn't understand, they closed in.

With that wailing sound they had broken from the trees with, the three Wolfers raced to join the fray.

“But she
is
worth it,” Griff told him, the familiar voice at his ear.

Oriel felt his feet moving delicately on the earth. He felt how the muscles of his thighs were braced against shocks. He felt Griff's broad back at his back.

Fear burned through him, like a flame. Fear coursed through him, like icy water. He threw his head back and raised his dagger, to strike—and cried out wordlessly, as if the great cry could gather all his fear together and set its swelling course behind him, to add it to his strength.

He heard Tamara's voice, rising up, thin, to call out his name. “Oriel!”

Two cold-eyed Wolfers came closer to him, swords raised towards his throat. Their swords were longer than his dagger and he would have to move past their blades to set his own blade into at least one throat before theirs—in a rush of blood—his own blood—sank into him.

The blow that felled him came from the side.

T
HERE WAS ONLY PAIN.

Oriel opened his eyes, but the brightness of the sky jabbed through them, into the swollen bloody mass behind. He lay in the darkness of his closed eyes, trying to move beyond the geography of pain to find his hands, or feet. He listened.

He heard rushing in his ears, as if he were being dragged along behind a great wind. He heard nothing but the rushing, as if he were being swallowed in the sea.

But the unyielding ground lay under him.

Pain was black, and had spread—pooling out like spilt wine—and it beat against his brain bone. The way he was lying, on his back, the sun burned at his eyelids. Light burned the darkness away.

Pain shrank like a puddle under sunlight—red and swollen now like a deep wound. He didn't know—

Griff. Where was Griff? Oriel opened his eyes and sat up. Pain sliced at his head and he couldn't move his arms so he bent his neck, to ease pain. The rushing had gone but now it was a beating hollow sound he heard, and beyond it the musical silences of a spring day—birds and insects, breeze and the distant river. He opened his eyes again and lifted his head.

Griff sat beside him. With a glance and an almost imperceptible motion of his bloody mouth, Griff warned Oriel to keep silent.

They were under a tree at the edge of the woods, with the field they had been weeding in front of them. His hands were bound together at his back. A Wolfer watched him out of icy blue eyes.

The Wolfer sat apart, his sword across his knees, one hand on the sword's hilt. Oriel didn't know what danger the Wolfer expected from him—every time he moved his head he became dizzy, and it looked for a while as if there were two armed Wolfers seated across from him, one slightly behind the other. Oriel's wrists were jammed against one another in a way that twisted his hands and he wasn't sure that his legs would hold him upright, if he tried to stand. Griff, too, had bound hands, and one of his eyes was swollen shut, his lip was split and bleeding, there was blood drying around a cut that had gone through the cloth of his trousers at the thigh, and into the skin.

Oriel remembered that he must have been knocked unconscious. He almost asked if Tamara had made it safely away, until he remembered Griff's voice telling him that she had untied the boat, and he remembered her voice calling his name, floating up over the river's bank. He wondered if Selby had been warned in time to put up a fight. He wondered how that battle had gone.

Under surprise attack it was the outlying farms that were in the most danger, although each householder had been advised to make a plan for escape, in case of surprise attack.

The Saltweller's house had had such a plan, and one of three had been saved.

If Oriel turned his head slowly, the pain was less. He looked over the house and yard, fields and woods, into the distances, and saw dark smoke billowing up here and there. He looked southward along the river, and did not see smoke where Selby might lie burning.

The sun had moved along the sky into full afternoon; he must have been unconscious for a long time, Oriel thought. Griff's eyes were closed now, although he still sat up; Griff had folded himself down over his bent knees. The Wolfer did not move. His cold glance stayed locked onto them.

Oriel didn't know what would happen next. He met, and held, the Wolfer's glance for a long time, thinking. Then he shrugged, smiling—and saw that he had surprised the man—and closed his eyes again. Whatever happened, it would be better to be rested.

The sun was not much farther down in the sky when a wailing call awakened him heralding the approach of a ragged band of men. The Wolfers were easy to recognize, with their long yellow hair and long narrow beards. Longhaired longbeards, they were rightly called that. The ragged band came closer—five men, none unbloodied, and they carried two over their shoulders. The fall of arm and head suggested that those two were lifeless.

Oriel and Griff remained motionless on the ground, but their guard rose and spoke to the tallest and broadest of the Wolfers. This man answered the question, then spoke briefly to all of them, with gestures towards the two bodies, now lying on the ground.

Oriel looked at Griff in alarm. He couldn't hear their words, not clearly enough to distinguish what was being said. He could hear only a garbled mass of sounds as the Wolfer spoke. It was as if Oriel's ears were full of thick blood that distorted sound, and made speech meaningless. He thought suddenly that he might be deaf.

The big man came towards them. Oriel ignored his dizziness and the throbbing of his head to climb up onto his feet. Whatever was going to happen to him, he wanted to meet it standing up. With his hands behind him all movement was awkward, and every smallest gesture of his head almost blinded him. The worst was when he was almost up into a kneeling position, getting his feet under him and his face thrust down towards the ground, as if he were doing obeisance to this Wolfer. The thought of being understood to be kneeling before the man gave Oriel the strength to push himself up, until he stood.

His legs shook. He leaned against Griff. Griff was steadier but leaned back against Oriel for balance.

The Wolfer watched. His eyes were cold as knife blades. As soon as they were standing, the Wolfer spoke. He spoke to Oriel, who would not look down, look away. Oriel was afraid and he was in pain, but he knew he could conceal that from the Wolfer.

He couldn't understand the Wolfer's words. Without moving his glance from the man's face, where dirt and sweat and blood streaked together, Oriel asked, “Griff, do you understand him?” At the corner of his vision he saw Griff shake his head. Griff looked pale, wide-eyed.

Oriel took a breath. “We don't understand you,” he said, and was glad that his voice didn't quiver, and didn't rise high as a girl's.

The Wolfer studied him.

The man was an enemy. That fact was in his hard face and cold eyes, it was in the stance of his body on heavy legs. The man felt enmity for Oriel and would kill him without a qualm, unless Oriel was worth more to him alive. That was the simple truth of the situation.

Oriel could no more alter the Wolfer's enmity than he had earned it. He was just going to have to live with it. Unless, of course, the Wolfer killed him, which would be—in a way—the easiest way, and perhaps would even come to seem the best way. But if Oriel had to live with the Wolfer, as enemies, then he was going to have to be as cruel as ice. Sharp, cold, unfeeling—a memory of the way icicles hung off the Damall's eaves was in Oriel's mind, and a memory of the numbing killing coldness of the river in early spring, when great chunks of ice floated down it, and a memory of a boat left at the dock in Selby when the freezes came, its wooden ribs crushed by the swelling of the ice, its thin leather skin punctured by the sharp ice, destroyed entirely by the unconcerned ice.

“Speak,” the Wolfer said. “Little.” He pointed at his own chest. “Rulgh,” he identified himself. “King.”

Oriel kept his face expressionless, although he thought of laughing. His eyes must have given him away because the Wolfer narrowed his own cold eyes and looked dangerously close to anger. Oriel shook his head, hastily trying to repair the damage. “King rules over all men,” he said. “Wears crown, sits on throne, all kneel before King.” He tried to act out his words, not an easy task with hands bound behind him. The Wolfer looked puzzled. “Rulgh not King. Rulgh is—” Oriel thought of the most accurate word—“Captain. Captain fights—” he moved his shoulder as if an invisible arm held a sword before him. “Captain leads his men,” Oriel said, looking at the silent group of Wolfers behind Rulgh. “Captain takes prisoners.” He looked at Griff and turned to show his own bound hands.

Rulgh grunted, and seemed to understand.

“Oriel,” Oriel named himself. “Oriel prisoner. Oriel prisoner of Rulgh. This is so,” he said, for emphasis.

Rulgh smiled, and revealed many black teeth. “Is so.” He made a grunting inquiring sound, and pointed at Griff. Hoping he understood the man, Oriel said, “Griff.”

“Pri-so-ner,” Rulgh said.

“Is so,” Oriel said. “Say it,” he muttered to Griff.

“Is so,” Griff said, watching not Rulgh but Oriel.

Oriel saw Rulgh raise his foot and saw his intention, but he didn't warn Griff. The Wolfer hooked his boot behind Griff's knees, and took Griff down. Griff gave a surprised cry of pain, but made no further complaint. He had been trained on the Damall's island.

Oriel didn't flinch away from the foot when it was directed at him. He clenched his teeth against a roar of pain when his head hit the ground. He made no sound when Rulgh kicked at his rib cage, but he curled up to protect his head.

Rulgh said something and Wolfers came up. They pulled off his boots and then untied his hands to strip off his shirt, leaving him clothed only in trousers. The man who found the coins sewed into the ankle hems put one silver coin down into each of his own boots before calling Rulgh over to show the find, and exult over the coins.

Rulgh put his hands out and the man let all of the remaining coins fall into the cupped palms.

Rulgh looked down at them, smiling. His smile didn't change as he looked at the man. It stayed on his face as he stared down at Oriel, who stared back at him. “Him take?” Rulgh asked.