The Wanderer (11 page)
Authors: Cherry Wilder,Katya Reimann
Bretlow took a sup of applewine and sat there, shaking a little. Vigo went on with the tale. Yes, there had been casualties on both sides. One of the land pirates was badly hurt by Bretlow’s
blow to the head and one of the Westlings, another big fellow from the Tuana region, had his leg broken when he was hurled down. Three or four were in a deep sleep, Bretlow and three others, including Darrah, the leader. Then, lo and behold, the proud dogs of the senior company, Valko’s Own, turned up at last and laid blame upon the men of Elmtree. The entire company was sent off, wounded and all alike, on the long way back to the Plantation Barracks. Valko’s Own hung about at Little Bay and there was no further activity. Old Scaith and his fishers sailed out and searched for the stolen galley and had word that it had gone south down the coast. There was a spell of bad weather, which can surely happen in any summer, and the search was hindered.
blow to the head and one of the Westlings, another big fellow from the Tuana region, had his leg broken when he was hurled down. Three or four were in a deep sleep, Bretlow and three others, including Darrah, the leader. Then, lo and behold, the proud dogs of the senior company, Valko’s Own, turned up at last and laid blame upon the men of Elmtree. The entire company was sent off, wounded and all alike, on the long way back to the Plantation Barracks. Valko’s Own hung about at Little Bay and there was no further activity. Old Scaith and his fishers sailed out and searched for the stolen galley and had word that it had gone south down the coast. There was a spell of bad weather, which can surely happen in any summer, and the search was hindered.
“Bretlow,” said Gael, “I can hazard a guess at these rogues. What happened to Elmtree back at the Plantation?”
“We were doctored and healed,” he said. “I slept longer and heavier than all the rest. When I woke, at last, from this magical sleep, my right arm still slept, as it does to this day. I was a living example of the power of magic, or so the Healers and the Officers would have it, though there was one healer, Captain Merrick, out of Lien, who believed it might be a brainsickness which took away the power of a healthy limb. Whatever the case, I continue stricken. I was sent home all the way up river to the port nearest Hackestell, then freighted here from the garrison in a covered cart. I am on
Extended Leave,
as they call it—a kind of leave used for those who prove unequal to the soldier’s life. Madmen, those who develop flat feet—there was a lad from the infantry who could not keep his food down. Kedran who get pregnant are scolded, of course, but treated well enough, at a lying-in house in the city of Krail …”
Extended Leave,
as they call it—a kind of leave used for those who prove unequal to the soldier’s life. Madmen, those who develop flat feet—there was a lad from the infantry who could not keep his food down. Kedran who get pregnant are scolded, of course, but treated well enough, at a lying-in house in the city of Krail …”
Gael understood his bitterness, but she thought of the other accommodations of the soldier’s life, particularly in Krail: although there were houses of assignation, many respectable women married soldiers and came to live in the great city. She thought again of Bretlow among the Summer Riders and recalled that his name had been coupled with that of Ronna Oghal, the reeve’s daughter. How could he court her now?
Meanwhile, Bretlow was shaking his head from side to side;
Vigo put a hand on his son’s shoulder and gave Gael an anguished look.
Vigo put a hand on his son’s shoulder and gave Gael an anguished look.
“Be of good cheer, Bretlow!” said Gael. “We must try to get your name back again!”
“How will that be?” he whispered.
“I know these rogues, these Land Pirates,” she said, “and I think you do, too. You had a scrap of proof once—in your tale—do you have it still?”
“There!” cried Vigo in his booming voice. “I knew Gael Maddoc would remember!”
He reached across and felt in the pocket of Bretlow’s tunic and flung the “scrap of proof” onto the table. It was crumpled and stained; Gael snatched it up and smoothed it out: a torn hood, a hood knitted from thick wool of a curious brown-black color, the wool of a black sheep.
“Was the name of this wild band of Erians, the refugees of the Brown Brotherhood in Lien, never spoken?” asked Gael. “At Krail or on the coast?”
“No, not once!” said Bretlow. “Not a word of these Black Sheep. They are scarcely known, even in Krail and at Barracks on the Plantation. It is bad luck to speak of the attempt on the life of Lord Knaar, for magic was involved. Egon had hopes of coming to that City Magistrate who took you and Jehane Vey to be questioned or even to Hem Duro. But there was no chance, and I lay there still entranced …”
“Well, it can be done now,” said Gael. “Pray put your trust in our good Druda Strawn, for he must help me write a letter to Hem Duro, telling the tale. As for your arm, we will try one method which even Lord Knaar could not forbid us. You must come down and bathe your arm in the Holy Well—the sacred spring in the precinct of the Goddess.”
“This can’t do any harm, lad,” said Vigo, seemingly encouraged. “We can ride down in the nighttime.”
“Coombe is not Krail,” said Gael Maddoc, “and our ways are different. Silence and shame have no part in your brave fight, Bretlow! Whether you try magic or the simple healing of the old wives or that of some learned healer from Lien—make no secret of your adventure!”
Bretlow lifted his great head, and the lights from the forge caught his dark brown hair.
“Well, perhaps I will speak out!” he said.
“By the Minstrels of Old Tuana!” cried Vigo Smith. “We can do better than that, by the fireside. There should be a Ballad!”
“Excellent!” said Gael Maddoc. “Come to the Holy Well at twilight tomorrow, Ensign Bretlow … We must not forget there is a great storm brewing up the coast. If we do not act quickly, the weather will force us to a longer wait.”
THE GREAT STORM
The simple plan for reinstating Bretlow Smith went ahead with
amazing alacrity in the few days before the storm came down. In the twilight Vigo Smith drove his wife and son down to the Holywell in a covered cart drawn by matched white ponies. Gael and her mother met them at the sacred cavern; torches were already lit and there was warm water to be used after the healing water of the spring. There was a familiar procedure for aches and pains that the goodwives of Coombe often performed. Shivorn Maddoc had helped many folk in this way and was regarded as something of a healer. It was only the second time Gael had been in the sacred cavern since her return: there was the spring bubbling softly in its stone basin and a hint of starlight through the fretted roof. She thought of Blayn of Pfolben lying upon his bracken bed.
amazing alacrity in the few days before the storm came down. In the twilight Vigo Smith drove his wife and son down to the Holywell in a covered cart drawn by matched white ponies. Gael and her mother met them at the sacred cavern; torches were already lit and there was warm water to be used after the healing water of the spring. There was a familiar procedure for aches and pains that the goodwives of Coombe often performed. Shivorn Maddoc had helped many folk in this way and was regarded as something of a healer. It was only the second time Gael had been in the sacred cavern since her return: there was the spring bubbling softly in its stone basin and a hint of starlight through the fretted roof. She thought of Blayn of Pfolben lying upon his bracken bed.
After the rites of healing, Bretlow’s great arm remained pale and limp, hanging by his side when it was not supported by the sling, yet when his Mam flexed it, he swore he felt tingling near the shoulder joint and in his fingers. So this pleased them all, and the arm was bound up again. The whole party drove up in style to the Maddocs’ cottage, where they sat before the fire and
spoke of soldiering. Vigo brought out a bottle of brandywine for the men, and the wives brewed herb tea. Bress sat admiring Bretlow Smith and getting from him the first public version of his skirmish at Little Bay.
spoke of soldiering. Vigo brought out a bottle of brandywine for the men, and the wives brewed herb tea. Bress sat admiring Bretlow Smith and getting from him the first public version of his skirmish at Little Bay.
“Why, it sounds for all the world like the old song of Aidan, ‘The Warlock of Ryall.’ It will make a Ballad!” declared Bress.
“What, will you put words to that old air?” asked Rab Maddoc, with a wink at Vigo.
“Well, if you do not think
I
can do it, Da,” grinned Bress, “I’ll have Shim Rhodd to help me!”
I
can do it, Da,” grinned Bress, “I’ll have Shim Rhodd to help me!”
The men chuckled approvingly, for they knew the innkeeper’s son to be a bright spark.
Now the preparations for the storm were in full swing; everything was made fast, the livestock were brought into shelter. Bress was working on Rhodd the innkeeper’s land, so Gael turned to with her father to secure the roof and hew firewood. She helped to bring the six sheep down from the top of the hill to the pen behind the house that they shared with the milch goats.
She rode out one day on Bretlow’s behalf. After packing the priest’s cupboard with the food that she and her mother had been baking, she told Druda Strawn the full story.
“I think you must write this letter you have spoken of to Hem Duro of Val’Nur,” said Druda Strawn. “Not that he will be so very happy to be hearing from us! But we cannot have poor Bretlow set aside like this. These pirates must indeed be the same Black Sheep who threatened Lord Knaar’s life when one of their brethren’s farms was taken by a dam.”
“Well, I have set down a few beginnings,” Gael said shyly, for her writing would never please her. She drew out her sheet of paper. The priest accepted several of her sentences and together they worked them into a letter, not too long, that the Druda promised to write out fair on a parchment. Then, storm or no storm, it could be brought to Hackestell under his name and sent on from there to the lord’s son, in the palace at Krail.
“Once again,” the Druda told Gael seriously, “we must consider ourselves lucky that these folk have resorted to magic in their own defense.” His gaze was fixed far in the distance. Gael
knew he was thinking of more than Bretlow’s future. “Lienish refugees—we may speak out against those, but not against Lienish men. Indeed, open talk against those of Lien is no more welcome these days than it was four summers past when you rode out with me as a Green Rider. Our Lord Knaar desires to keep the peace—and maintaining our relations with Lien outward friendly and smooth is a part of that.”
knew he was thinking of more than Bretlow’s future. “Lienish refugees—we may speak out against those, but not against Lienish men. Indeed, open talk against those of Lien is no more welcome these days than it was four summers past when you rode out with me as a Green Rider. Our Lord Knaar desires to keep the peace—and maintaining our relations with Lien outward friendly and smooth is a part of that.”
Gael had heard a whisper of this since her return to Coombe. There was unrest in Lien—it was rumored that Lien’s queen had taken on a coterie of evangelical counselors, men who desired to push the worship of Inokoi the Lame God and the preaching of his prophet across Lien’s borders.
Still, Lien seemed little closer today than it had before her journey into the Southland. The Melniros were a vigorous, active people, a people who worked hard to wrest a living from their broad open land. Inokoi’s Prophet, Matten Seyl of Hodd, had been a nobleman, and it had been a noble’s dissipations he had renounced. It seemed unlikely to Gael that the severe preachings of the Brown Brotherhood—men who ranted against the “pleasures” of the world, by which they seemed to mean everything from the love between a man and a woman through to heedless spending, could ever take hold here.
Nevertheless she went home from the Druda in a thoughtful mood, glad that she had been able to aid Bretlow, but unsettled once again in the particulars of her own return.
The first night of the storm uprooted trees and hurled the well bucket a hundred yards out onto the road. Gael and her brother ran around the hillside at dawn and found that the big whitethorn tree outside the sacred cavern had fallen. They dragged it aside and set about clearing leaves and twigs that had been driven into the grotto’s passage, even into the sacred chamber. Gael was sweeping the uneven stone of the floor clear of the last of the torn silver-green leaves when Bress came in, filling the doorway, and went to take a drink of spring water.
“I will ride to Banlo Strand,” he said. “Let me take that black demon of yours.”
“No,” she replied, her hands full of broken whitethorn shards, tree of magic and of sacrifice. Her mother had cut rods
from this tree every spring for the font’s altar; Shivorn would certainly mourn its passing. “Ebony will hurl you down. What’s at Banlo?”
from this tree every spring for the font’s altar; Shivorn would certainly mourn its passing. “Ebony will hurl you down. What’s at Banlo?”
“Pickings,” he said. “Bits of wreckage. Maybe a haul of kelp.”
“Run to Banlo!” she said. “You are the best runner in ten crofts, I am told.”
“Maybe I will,” he said, brightening. “Sister …”
“What?”
“Is it true you will not have Culain Raillie?”
“By the Goddess, now I know I am in Coombe!” she said. “He has not spoken for me and I have said no more than two words to the man, but even in this the gossips have found their food.”
“It was mother’s plan for you to wed Culain,” said Bress. “She has kept a part of your own silver for the dowry.”
“I know it,” said Gael ruefully. “And the widow is her friend and we’re in their debt. But the gossips are right … I will not have him.”
“The Raillies are incomers. They’re rich.” He stared around at the worn ceremonial cups, the broken edge of the ancient altar. “What can they want with poor folk like us?”
He flung out of the cavern and turned back to say:
“Shim Rhodd says that they are witches!”
The storm came down again in the afternoon and by midnight the yard was a sea. Shivorn Maddoc could stand it no longer, she and Maddoc brought the six sheep one by one into the house, and also the two goats. The chimney was half blocked by a board so that the torrents of rain would not put out the fire. Gael made a hot mash and took it to Ebony and Grey Lass, the donkey mare, in the lean-to.
The family were all in good spirits; Gael remembered the excitement of stormy nights as a child. She and her mother cooked a second supper of griddlecakes, then they snatched a few more hours of sleep in the woolly, smoky darkness of the small house. Another yellow morning showed that the road was
flooded, almost to the boundary wall. Their croft was like a hilly island. Maddoc said to Gael:
flooded, almost to the boundary wall. Their croft was like a hilly island. Maddoc said to Gael:
“Can you ride round the hill? I fear the Cresset Burn has come up by Ardven ruin.”
Mother Maddoc loaded up the saddlebags with hot oatcakes, a crock of porridge with honey, a bottle of applejack. Bress helped his sister mount up in the flooded yard.
“I’ll be running to Banlo Strand,” he said. “I’ll look for a piece of sailcloth for a new horse cover.”
Gael rode behind the house and urged Ebony onto a dryish track that spiraled round the hillside. She came to a spot where she could look down on the Cresset Burn and the ruined manor on its banks. Ardven had been a fine house, taller than the Long Burn farmhouse, and it had stood a good distance from the stream. Now part of it was unroofed, with grass and nettles growing through the floor, and the stream had changed its course. She knew that the few rooms still in use were farthest from the bank of the river, but there was water ankle deep inside the streamside rooms.
Overhead, one mighty stone chimney that climbed the house’s western wall had a thread of smoke arising from one of its fine brown chimney pots. There was a fire alight somewhere on the upper floor—Old Murrin must have taken shelter there.
She saw a way to ride through to the ruin. She came carefully downhill, skirting the water, Ebony found his way, snorting, over a flooded causeway. At last she called:
“Ahoy, Ardven House! Are you there, Captain Murrin?”
She called again, and a white head came up at one of the staring dark windows of the upper floor. The old woman answered the call in a strong cracked voice and directed her through the ruins. There were some bedraggled fowls, one goat and a scatter of smaller wild creatures, rats, voles, conies, all taking shelter from the flood in the ruined house. Gael let Ebony stand in a good dry place and climbed up a ladder.
“Now then,” said Old Murrin. “Kedran Maddoc is it? Ensign?”
“Captain …” she grinned.
“Blessed Huntress!”
Old Murrin showed a few strong yellow teeth in her wrinkled leathery countenance. She was short, straight backed. She was two-and-seventy years old; she lived alone.
“Sit ye down,” she said. “Bless your mother for this warm food. Water’s as high as ever I’ve seen it.”
There was a small fire on the hearth and an iron trivet for heating food. An alcove was filled with cut wood, pinecones, and kindling—Gael remembered hearing that Bress and Shim Rhodd had hauled fuel for Ardven in the summer. The room was not warm: Gael kept her cloak, and the old woman was wrapped in a blanket. The large neat room contained piles of Murrin’s goods. She had carried up food baskets, garden tools, pot and pans. A grey cat lay curled on the narrow bed. On the wall behind the bed hung Murrin’s riches: a magnificent banner in colored silks, green and blue, enriched with silver thread and writing in a strange language. There was a bronze shield, two banners with Chyrian words, one from Eriu, and a newer pennant from the Westlings, with a brown hill surmounted by a bolt of lightning for the house of Val’Nur.
Murrin questioned Gael about her service in the Southland, workaday stuff that only a kedran would know about or care. Was it a soft duty at Lowestell and in Pfolben city? How were the horses and the stabling?
“Whence comes your beautiful silken banner?” asked Gael.
“It is from the far-off land of Palmur,” said Murrin softly. “It was made by craftsmen from the lands of Kusch.”
“That is much farther than I have been,” said Gael. “I have been only to the Burnt Lands.”
“I am the only one left of our company of adventurers,” said Murrin. “It is fifty years past. Tell me about the Burnt Lands. Were you in Aghiras?”
So they sat in the dark, ruined house in the flood and told marvelous tales. Long after Gael Maddoc had told all about her journey to the Burnt Lands, Emeris Murrin went on. She had been as far as any traveler; she had served with the fighting women of Palmur, she had seen the mountains that pierced the clouds. She had sailed southward to the Lands Below the World and fought battles in Eildon and in the Western Isles. She took a gulp of applejack, laughed and said:
“What will you do, girl?”
“Ride out again,” said Gael. “My mother would have me stay”
“Stay and marry, I’ll be bound,” said Murrin. “I was wed in Athron, five years long. He was a handsome man, a drummer from Varda. I had a child, a sweet girl child, but she was taken.”
“So you went back to soldiering?”
“I rode off. It was a cruel thing, I’m not proud of it. My old love returned, the tall Eildon girl I told of, the companion of all my wild journeys. I left the poor man and his cottage and the grave of our little maid and went with my kedran lover. We were together then for nearly twenty years.
“We sailed for Eildon and served in a long campaign against the last Kings of Eriu. I was wounded again, and we took more peaceful duties in Athron and in the Chameln lands. Ylla died far north of Achamar, fording a river, in peacetime. It was before the Great King, old Ghanor, made his bid for the Chameln. I left the service and came home, all the way home here to Coombe, and settled in the ruins of this house, home to the Murrins of Ardven.”
Gael hardly liked to ask: “How fared your brother—your sister, in Rift Kyrie? You must have nieces and nephews …”
“I have had a few words with all my kin, over the years,” said Murrin dryly. “They did well. Avaurn, in Rift Kyrie, went to the Goddess six years past. The children are grown men and women. My brother’s son has the name Oweyn and still lives in Balbank, though it is King’s Bank now, part of Lien. This house belongs to him, of course. One day—before I am gone perhaps—the house will be restored …”
Gael felt keenly the old woman’s loneliness and tried to cheer her.
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