The Tale of Oriel (29 page)

It would be foolhardy to make a move now.

It might well be, Oriel thought, that looking backwards he would see this as his last chance, the last time when they might have attempted escape. But he could only follow his own judgment.

Rulgh was called forward. When the Captain and his two men stood before Malke's great chair, the King made a mockery of peering at the band, peering around behind Rulgh as if looking for something he couldn't see. Rulgh called Oriel and Griff forward, to set down their booty. The lumps of gold and the handful of coins were the best of it. The rest was weapons—among which Oriel saw his own dagger, and Griff's—and some cloths woven in rich colors. The gold lumps were abundant, and Oriel used them as a shelf over which to display the rest. Rulgh started to tell his tale.

A woman came up to Malke's left hand, and Oriel thought this must be Rulgh's wife, because of the way she flashed her eyes at the speaking Captain. For his part, Rulgh addressed the tale of his exploits to her as much as to his King. She listened, and cast the glance of her eyes like a spear from under the fall of ashen hair, most often at Rulgh but sometimes at Malke, who turned his face away as if to conceal that he had been watching her as she watched Rulgh.

Rulgh came to Selby. Oriel heard the name, hissed like something hated, “Selby, Selby,” by some of the other bands. He stood with Griff at his shoulder and wondered how this day would turn out.

Malke was pleased by the gold chunks. His greedy eyes measured their number. But when Rulgh had told of the battle at the mines, and the band's return there as stealers, Malke's expression shifted abruptly to displeasure. He called out a name, and Rulgh beat once with his fist on his chest. Malke called out another name, and another. Each time Rulgh made the gesture to say, This is a dead man. As the list went on, Rulgh grew stiffer and stiffer in his pride and shame. At the last, Malke stood up, crossed his arms before his chest, then opened them wide, in a gesture of refusal.

Oriel watched Rulgh. The Captain would have spoken, in the heat of his anger, but he dared not. Rulgh stared at the woman. She looked only at the ground. Malke pointed, at various men around the fires, at Rulgh, at the mountains, and Oriel understood the order: Rulgh was to lead a band of men into the mountains, and over the mountains; if he returned with sufficient wealth, then he could kneel again before his King.

Rulgh swallowed his anger and attempted to persuade the King. The season was unfavorable, no man had ever returned from beyond the mountains, Rulgh was a Captain proven by many successful seasons who had had the misfortune to have one poor year. Malke demanded to know where were the riches of Selby. Rulgh gestured at the mound of gold. Malke would not be persuaded, he would not sit down, he would not give over the woman who now stood at his side. He ordered his servants to come forward and take up all of the booty Rulgh had laid before him. “Bring,” Oriel heard the order given, and then the Wolfer word for “captives.”

This was a danger he hadn't thought of.

Rulgh moved to stand before Oriel and Griff. “No,” Rulgh growled, deep in his throat. “These are mine.”

The crowd fell silent, and Oriel could see Malke measuring the situation. The King didn't know if his power would hold in this quarrel. He didn't know whether the other Captains might stand with Rulgh, against their King, when their right to booty was the issue. Malke was unsure of his own power, and Rulgh knew it. Oriel could sense the pull back and forth between Rulgh and Malke, to be the victor in this contest of wills.

Oriel had no part in the decision. He could do nothing to affect the outcome of the contest.

But he could almost see the understanding rise up in Malke's eyes: If he gave way to Rulgh in this, then Rulgh must obey whatever Malke's will was in the other thing. By winning the captives, Rulgh had handed over all else, and must obey Malke's orders.

Malke smiled and waved his hand in a gesture, brushing Rulgh away from before the great chair just as a man brushes a fly out of his hair. He looked at the woman in triumph; and she was watching his face, to catch his eyes when they fell on her. She knelt before him and her long hair fell down, hiding her smile, and Malke's hand dropped onto her neck.

Rulgh turned on his heels and paced to the back of the crowd. He pulled Oriel and Griff behind him.

B
Y MOONRISE, A SMALL BAND
of men had gathered around Rulgh, where he stood at the rear of the throng. The white moon sailed up into the sky. Oriel waited in the shadows. Rulgh would be Captain of this Wolfer band, but the band was made up of men Malke had found wanting in service. Malke's judgments were made swiftly, without hesitation.

In the white, warmless light of the moon, his people's fear rose up like a tide towards Malke, and it seemed to Oriel that the King drank in that fear, as if it were wine to give him strength and rejoicing.

It seemed to Oriel also that Malke was a fool, not to know that fear was a thing that could turn, like a snake; and what a frightened man might do, in his fear, no man could know. It seemed to Oriel that if he were King over the Wolfers, he would rather have their hearts filled with courage than fear.

Sitting in the shadows, with Griff at his side, it seemed to Oriel that he could be King over the Wolfers, and that he would be able to command obedience from these wild and war-loving men.

At last Malke rose to lead his party back within the gates. The booty followed, including Rulgh's mounds of gold nuggets, and all the crowd followed. Last to leave were the archers, who pulled the gates closed after them. The sounds of celebration began, within.

Rulgh walked away from the bonfires. Without a word, he turned his face to the hills, where they lay white as bones under moonlight. The band fell in behind him, ten men. Six captives trailed the Wolfers, tied together into pairs and each pair led by a member of the band. Rulgh set a quick pace.

When they were three nights from Malke's city, the Wolfers settled around a fire they had built in the forest but forbade the captives to lie down. Rulgh, in the first words he had spoken since Malke had announced judgment on him, pulled Oriel and Griff out among the leafless trees, and tied them back to back to one of the narrow straight trunks. “Wolfguard,” he said.

Oriel was too tired to ask, too stubborn to speak. When they were alone he asked Griff, over his shoulder, “Are we sentries?”

“I can't stay awake, Oriel,” Griff answered, in the voice of a man at the end of hope.

“Then sleep, as you can. I'll watch. Later, I'll wake you and you can watch while I sleep. As we have done before, Griff.”

Thus they passed the night, sleeping and watching over one another. Sometime in the night, Oriel heard a distant howling sound, and understood that they were watching against dangers out of the darkness, and that there was especial danger of wolves.

Thus they passed also the next days and nights. They moved always northward, and fed off what the Wolfers stole from the farmsteads they passed. They ate on the run, and lit only small fires against the bitter cold of night. Each night, the captives were staked out around the Wolfer camp, to give warning.

Oriel and Griff were fed enough to keep them alive. They wore furs over their shoulders and furs around their feet and legs. They had been toughened by their summer of captivity. The other four were not so fortunate, although each huddled within his own fur. The others wore leather boots and often stumbled, and fell, and had to be dragged back up onto their feet.

The first pair of Wolfguards was lost because of exhaustion, and the inability to understand that two bodies huddled together under two furs would be warmer than two men, each in his own fur. This was after snows had fallen, and one of the men's hands had turned black with frostbite, and had been cut off by Rulgh's sword, so the smell of blood called the wolves down on them. When it happened, it was Griff's turn to sleep; Oriel heard cries from across the circle of Wolfers. Oriel would have thought the cries would waken Griff, who leaned against him for warmth and support; but Griff slept through. Oriel listened—as the Wolfers awoke and considered what they needed to do for their own safety, as the cries became more desperate, beating like the wings of birds against the barren hillsides, as silence fell again.

The mountains came nearer and the hillsides grew steeper, and the little streams had frozen where they ran. There came a grey, low-clouded day, when the band came upon a farmstead nestled in a hollow, with snow pulled up around it like bedclothes.

The four captives were left where they had fallen in the snow, while the Wolfers attacked. Griff dozed off, but Oriel could not. The sounds of what little resistance the householders offered seemed to come from far away, and he looked about himself. There were few trees and the mountains took up much of the sky here. The clouds pressed down upon him and the air was thin in his mouth. The wind came howling down from the mountains. He wondered how much longer he would live, and if he would bring Rulgh down before he died. He wondered what kind of farm this barren land could support.

They were dragged to their feet and driven into a gated yard, under a rising wind. Rulgh and his band were the only occupants now. The farm was provisioned against winter, and so the blizzard that came down over them found them safely housed.

The Wolfers' way of getting through was to eat and drink themselves into a stupor, and then to sleep until the stupor wore off so that they could eat and drink again. The four captives served them, and cleaned up after them. Outside, the wind howled.

Rulgh acknowledged to the band, there, that they were going to the Kingdom, as Malke had ordered. When he named it, the Wolfers stirred unhappily where they sat. They demanded more ale, and wouldn't look at Rulgh. Oriel listened attentively, and found his understanding much increased, as if his ears had suddenly been cleared and he could now hear the Wolfers' language.

Rulgh spoke to the men of golden streets, and of rich stews, and of breads baked with nuts and fruits. In the Kingdom, Rulgh said, all men drank ale as freely as if it were water, and they drank wine as if it were no more costly than ale. And the women, Rulgh said, were dark-haired, and warm, not like the yellow-haired ice-women the Wolfers had known.

One man answered him: They were being sent to their deaths, and were fools to obey. No man had ever crossed the mountains and returned to tell the way. “It's not,” the man said, “that I mind dying. But I would like to face death equally, and know his name.”

The others merely called for more drink.

WHEN THE STORM HAD BLOWN
out, and the snow had settled, the band moved on. Now they wore wooden boards strapped to their feet, narrow boards they had carved to rounded tips. The boards were as long as their arms, and rubbed smooth, so they could move as much on top of the snow as through it. Oriel and Griff were clumsy with these extended feet for a day or two, until they learned how to imitate the Wolfers' gliding movements. Without the boards, they would have sunk down into snow as high as their waists and been unable to move. They would have been trapped in the snow.

The captives were laden, now, with stores. They trailed behind the Wolfers up long sloping hillsides. Wolves followed the band by day and encircled them by night. When Oriel stood Wolfguard, with Griff leaning sleeping against him, he could see the eyes of the wolves, glowing red. He heard the quarrels of the other pair of captives as they pinched and poked one another to be sure both were awake and on guard. The captives lay down to sleep only at the turnings of the day, from light to dark, dark to light.

The trek was long, and it was many successive nights that Oriel and Griff stood Wolfguard, each trusting the other to wake while he slept. They were too exhausted by the endless uphill trudges, by the search for shelter as the brief day slid into the long night, by unpacking fuel and building tiny fires, too exhausted to speak to one another more than the waking words, “It's my turn to sleep.” They needed no talk to perform their tasks, and if they had, Oriel could not have offered it. The air was thin and icy on his skin and lips. His breath feathered out before him, as did Griff's.

The Wolfers, who carried nothing but their weapons, because Wolfers weren't beasts of burden, and who were familiar with the use of the boards, moved more easily, but still the long trek wore them down. The stores were almost entirely gone and the second pair of captives had been dragged off, their screams mingling with the wolves' snarling, before the band came to another fenced farmyard, high up against a hillside that rose into the shoulder of a mountain. No smoke rose from the chimney.

“Blizzard,” Rulgh announced confidently. In the time they had been traveling, Rulgh's beard had grown in roughly all over his cheeks, and his voice had grown rough-edged, and his long hair hung down ragged and filled with ice-droppings. Griff, too, looked rough, by which Oriel knew that he himself looked as much bear as man.