The Wizard (45 page)

face writhed. "Not nearly often enough." Setting the old helm on my head once more, I beheld such suffering as I hope never to see again. "She was four days in labor. She could not deliver. A forester had fetched his wife, and when she stopped breathing Amabel opened her and took out my son." I removed the helm. "You're torturing yourself. It's of the past, and not even Overcyns can change what's past." "They adopted Payn for my sake, the forester and his wife. Their names were Hrolfr and Amabel, rough people but goodhearted. Payn was thirteen when my father ascended, and after that I was able to see that he received an education. When His Majesty raised me to office, I made him one of my clerks. I could've given him a farm, but I wanted him by me. I wanted to see him and speak to him daily. To advise him." The old helm fascinated me. When I wore it, our fire was only a fire, but the stars! "My wife has born no child, Sir Able, and I've had no lover save Wiliga. You understand why, I feel sure. I've never told Payn I'm his father, but I believe he must have guessed long ago." Reaching Redhall we hid in the forest, weaving fruitless plans and hoping for some means of crossing the besiegers' lines and scaling the wall. While the Osterlings built catapults and a siege tower on wheels, Uns wove snares of vines and willow twigs. He caught conies and a hedgehog, and Galene found berries which were not poisonous, though sour. Without that food we would have starved. The Osterlings were their own provisions. When they had nothing left, they attacked; those killed or sorely wounded became food for the rest. They used scaling ladders, and it was by these that we hoped to mount the wall. "Darkness and rain would favor us," the Earl Marshal said, not for the first time. "It seldom rains at this season, but the moon is waning." "So's us," Uns remarked dolefully. "You can eat me when I die," Galene declared quite seriously, "but I won't die so you can eat me." That decided me. I had given my oath to the Valfather indeed; I would break it, only by a trifle, and take whatever punishment he imposed. I spoke to Skai when none of the rest could hear me. Clouds arrived to blind the moon at my order, and autumn's chill crept south from Jotunland in servitude to me. "Here you are!" Galene grasped my arm. "We've been looking everywhere. This's the time." Stealthily we left the forest, the Earl Marshal behind me, Galene behind him, and Uns behind her armed with a stout staff. Rain pierced the blind dark, delighting us. We were nearly close enough to steal a ladder when the gate of Redhall swung wide and its defenders rushed upon their foes. Tree-tall women overturned the tower on wheels, sending it crashing down on the huts the Osterlings had built. The ropes of catapults were cut and axes laid to their timbers. A great golden knight, a hero out of legend, led the attackers, fearless and swift as any lion. I shouted "Disiri!" as I fought, and saw the moment at which he heard my cry and understood what it portended, and his joy, and how he raged against the Osterlings then. His sword rivaled the lightning, and his shout of Idnn! its thunder. My blade rose and fell, slashed and thrust beside his, and as in Thortower, it seemed to seek, tasting the blood of each who fell, and springing away dissatisfied. I fought in our van at first, and afterward before our van, for that sword drew me forward, thirsty and seeking, slew contemptuously, and sprang away. There came new thunder, a black storm that raged across the field raining blood. I knew his voice and called Gylf to me, as tall at the shoulder as any black bull, with eyes that blazed like suns and fangs like knives. I would have said I was weak with hunger, and that the sea Garsecg had waked in me could lend me no strength. It was long coming, but came when a chieftan of the Osterlings barred my path. His armor was savage with spikes, and he wielded a mace of chains with three stars. They outreached my shield as a man reaches over a hedge and knocked me flat in the mud. I rose as the sea rises, saw him for the horror he was, and I drove the stolen sword into his throat as Old Toug might have dispatched a hog. How many fell after that I cannot say; but the rest fled, so that what had begun as a sally ended as a victory, the first of Celidon in that war. Dawn came, yet the storm still blew so dark we scarcely knew it. Every knight who reads this will say we ought to have mounted and ridden in pursuit of our foe. We did not. We had few horses, those we had were thin and weak, and we staggered with fatigue. I took off the old helm, for the sweat was pouring down my face, there in the rain and the cold; and by gray light I saw the field of battle for what it was not, mud and water before the gate of Redhall, littered everywhere with the leaves and sticks of the fallen huts, with chips and notched timbers and the pitiful bodies of the slain. And the rain beat upon their faces and the faces of the wounded alike, on men and women who screamed and moaned and tried to rise. Some went among the wounded Osterlings and slew them, but I did not. Instead I looked for the golden knight who had led us. He had dwindled to SvonSvon with half a shield still on his left arm, and half a swan on it, and a swan on his helm, a swan of gilt wood that had lost a wing in the fight. We embraced, something we had never done before, and he helped me get the Earl Marshal into the manor, with Gylf gamboling to cheer us by his joy, and wagging his tail. Twenty or thirty people came crowding into the room, drawn by the news that a nobleman of high station had joined them. They hoped, I am sure, that he had brought substantial reinforcements; but they were gracious enough not to grumble when they learned that Gylf, Uns, and I comprised the whole. (Some may even have been relieved, for they were on short rations.) We made them stand back and be quiet, and finding Payn among them let him attend his father. Other wounded were carried in. The many women cared for them, while Svon and I with others went out to search the field for more, and collect such loot as the dead might provide. Outdoors again, I asked Svon who commanded. "You do, Sir Able, now that you're here." I shook my head. "I saw Her Majesty among her guard." "My wife will defer to you, I'm sure. This is Redhall, and Redhall is yours. Your duke is not present, and you are no subject of ours." I congratulated him on his marriage, and he smiled, weary though he was. "It was my hope, my dream, to rise to the nobility. You remember, I'm sure." "To return to it. Your sire was noble." "I thank you. To return." The bitter smile I had come to detest in my squire twisted his lips. "I would have been overjoyed to die a baronet. Now I find I am a prince." I congratulated him again, saying Your Highness. "A fighting prince far from his wife's realm, who finds his experience as a knight invaluable. Do you want to hear our story?" I did, of course. Idnn, as I knew, had taken a hundred young Skjaldmeyjar with her when she came south. They had astonished Kingsdoom and had attended the nuptials of their queen, attestation to her royal statusa status Arnthor had readily recognized, seeing an ally who might restrain Schildstarr. When he had refused to free me, they had fought the Osterlings, the most feared troops in his host, in the hope that he would grant Idnn a boon. The first warm days had shown only too plainly that the dreaded Daughters of Angr could not continue to fight. Idnn had marched north with Svon, Mani, and a few others, but was stopped short of the mountains by the Caan's northern army which had already ravaged Irringsmouth and was scouring the countryside for food to send south. Driven back, they had joined others who fled or fought, taking refuge in manors and castles that the Osterlings had quickly overwhelmed, and so come to Redhall. Of the hundred Skjaldmeyjar, twenty-eight remained before our battle, and twenty-seven after it. The unseasonable cold had made it possible for them to fight, and Svon had ordered the sally; but it was certain they would be unable to fight again until the first frost. "Would you like to meet the leader of those who joined our retreat?" Svon asked. "He's over there." He gestured, the rain (warmer now) running from his mail-clad arm. I said, of course, that I would very much like to make his acquaintance. In my own defense, I add here that the day was still dark, and the man Svon had indicated was wearing a cloak with the hood up. "Sir Toug! Sir Able is eager to speak with you, and I'm surprised you're not at least as eager to speak with him." Toug managed to smile at that, and gave me his hand. I asked about his shoulder, and he said it had healed. That was not the case, as I soon discovered; but it was better., "I said I didn't want to be a knight, and you said I was one, that I couldn't help it," he told me, "and we were both right. The Osterlings came, and there was nobody to lead our village who knew fighting except me, so I had to do it. They didn't want me at first, so I led by being in front. We beat off a couple parties and a Free Company joined us. Our stock was gone and the barley stamped flat, so we went south. We got to where Etela was, but they'd only started fixing it back up. She's here, and her mother and father, too." I asked whether Vil were her father, and Toug nodded. "They didn't want to say it 'cause they weren't married, Sir Able. Only now they are. He won't let you say my lord, though. He's still Vil." "Quite right," Svon muttered. "But I'm Sir Toug and Sir Svon's Prince Svon now. He knighted meI was his squire up north. You did that." I nodded again. "So he did, and Etela and I are going to get married next year if we're still alive." Gylf leaped up, putting his forepaws on Toug's chest and licking his face. It amazed and amused me like nothing else. I cannot help laughing when I think of it, even now. "There's somebody else here I ought to tell you about," Toug said, "you always liked them. It's the old couple from Jotunland, the blind man that was a slave on some farm." A thousand things came rushing at me thenthe ruin of the land, Arnthor's eyes, the drunken smile of his sister, and the empty, lovely face of his queen. Sunless days in the dungeon, cold that was the breath of death, Bold Berthhold's hut, wind in the treetopsDisiri's kiss, her long legs and slender arms, the green fingers longer than my hand. Gerda young, as Berthold had remembered her, with flaxen hair and merry eyes. Mag in Thiazi's Room of Lost Love. The Lady's hall in the flowering meadows whose blossoms are the stars, and, oh, ten thousand more. And I, who had been laughing only a moment past, wept. Toug clasped me as he would a child, and spoke to me as his mother must have to him: "There, there . . . It don't matter. It don't matter at all." A rider came, the same Lamwell of Chaus who had played at halberts with me in the tournament, so worn that he could scarcely hold the saddle, on a horse so nearly dead it fell when he dismounted. The king livedwas in the south in need of every man. We held a council and I said I would go, that the rest might go or stay, but the king who had freed me had need of me and I would go to him. Pouk and Uns stood by me, and their wives by them; they must have shamed many. Idnn said she could not go, the Daughters of Angr could not fight in summer and could scarce march in itthey would have to march by night, and short marches, too. She and Svon would go north now that the enemy in this part of Celidon had been beaten, and hope for cooler days in the hills. They had lost three-quarters of their number in service to a foreign king, as she reminded us, and overturned the siege tower. We agreed, some of us reluctantly. Afterward I spoke with Idnn privately; it was then that she told me of her visit from Uri and her interview with the Valfather. When we had talked over both, I asked a boon. "You may have any in our power," Idnn said, "and we'll stay if you ask it. But aside from our husband we shall be of scant service to you." "You may be of greatest service to me, Your Majesty, at little cost to yourself. I gave Berthold and Gerda to serve you in the north. Will you return them?" She did most readily. And did more with it, creating Payn a baron of her realmthis sworn before witnesses. When it was done, the Earl Marshal declared that if he died, Lord Payn of Jotunhome was heir to his castle and lands, and all he had. I would have left next morning, but could not. There could be little provision in the south. Two days we spent in gathering all we could. There was another matter, too. I hoped Cloud would join me. If she had, I would have left the rest and ridden straight to the king; she did not, though I called every night. She had been the Valfather's last gift, and it seemed to me that she knew I had broken the oath I had given him and was executing his mild justice. After we left Redhall, I called to her no more.

CHAPTER THIRTYSEVEN FIVE FATES AND THREE WISHES

We had two horses fit for war. Lamwell and I took them, but they did us little good; we could travel no faster than those we led, and most were on foot, though we had a decent palfrey for Lynnet and a gray donkey colt, scarcely big enough for a child, for Etela. The badly wounded we left at Redhall with Payn, also the women who would consent to remain. I wanted Bold Berthold's counsel, which was why I had begged him from Idnn; Gerda would not leave him. It was the same with Ulfa and GalenePouk and Uns were going to war, and they would have followed us at a distance if we would not take them. No more would Lynnet stay. "I'm of a fighting family," she said; and when I looked into her eyes I felt I was her son and could deny her nothing. Where she went, Vil and Etela must go too; they did, Vil walking beside Lynnet with one hand on her stirrup and a staff in the other. We went to Irringsmouth, hoping to take ship; but the town was more ruinous still, and neither gold nor the sword could produce a ship. From there we marched down the coast by rugged roads or none. We were three knights with seven men-at-arms and four archers, mine from Redhall; we also had fifty-two armed churls, twenty of them outlaws and not to be relied upon. The rest were peasants who scarcely knew how to hold the weapons I had given them. In addition we had the two blind men and far too many women, some of whom would fight if led. Recalling Idnn and her maids, I had given bows to those who showed ability. The rest had staves or spears. Lynnet, still mad at times, wore a sword Etela said had been her grandfather's; and nobody in Mythgarthr brought a swifter blade to battle, or a wilder one. I had also Pouk and Uns; although neither was expert, both had some knowledge of arms and could be trusted to follow or to stand their ground. Lamwell was my lieutenant, with Toug second to him. Below them, Wistan (who had followed Idnn and was not much short of another knight), Pouk, and Uns. There was one more with us, one some scarcely counted at all, though others stood in awe of him. It was Gylf; and I, who had seen him killing men like rats, knew he was worth a hundred spears. With us too at times were Aelf. Sometimes they brought food (never enough), and at others told us where we might find it or find horses. For hungry though we were, we were hungrier for them. In Irringsmouth we had been able to buy two horses and a mule. We searched for more everywhere, paying for them when we could and fighting for them when we could not. In this we lost a few of our company, as was inevitable; but as we went we gained more: ruined peasants, hungry, but hungrier for leadership and starved for vengeance. I spoke with admiration of their strength and courage, swore we would free Celidon from the Osterlings, and set Uns to teaching them the quarterstaff, and Pouk the knife. Near Forcetti we met the first sizable body of the enemy, I would guess two hundred. Expecting us to run at the sight of the red rag, they were unprepared when we fell on themno more than a hundred, but fighting as if we had a thousand behind us. The air was clear, hot, and still, with scarcely a cloud in the wide blue sky, and our bows had grand shooting when they took to their heels. We lost arrows, and arrows were more than gold to us; but we picked up others, and got more bows, too, with swords crooked and straight, spears of two sorts, shields, and other plunder. Duns joined us there; Nukara had been killed by the Osterlings who had looted and burned their farm. With us, Duns quickly learned that he could no longer boss his younger brother. We fought foraging parties and heard from their wounded what had seemed clear alreadythe Caan was in the south, opposed by Arnthor. Some said the Mountain of Fire was still in Arnthor's hands, some that it had been taken, and one that Celidon had retaken it. I asked Uri; she went, and confirmed it. She also said that while they held it, the Osterlings had cast children and old people into the crater, theirs and ours, and for them three dragons of Muspel had joined their host. That was hard to credit, since it seemed Arnthor's army could not have stood against the Osterlings and three dragons. Vil suggested that the Caan had made dragons of wicker, which might be displayed on poles to frighten us; Uri insisted she could not have been deceived by such things. Kingsdoom was deserted. We entered Thortower, although we had to fill the moat before the Great Gate, the drawbridge having burned. In the Rooks' Tower, we found Osterlings, barricaded and devouring one of their own number. We smashed their barricade and Lamwell and I went for them, with Wistan, Pouk, Uns, and Qut behind. One said they had been put into Thortower by the Caan, a company of his guard, to hold it until he returned. When he had gone, they had been visited almost nightly by an invisible monster. It carried away one, sometimes two, on each visit. Although they had fought it, it had seized their spears and snapped the shafts. I sent the rest away, returned to the dungeon, and called Org. He had grown so huge I could not believe he had entered the Rooks' Tower at all; none of its doors had appeared large enough to admit him. By a few words and many gestures, he explained that he had climbed the tower and entered where a catapult had broken the wall. "You may hold this castle for King Arnthor," I told him. "If you do, the Osterlings we've slain are yours, with any others who come here. Or you may come with me. There'll be battles to feed you, and it seems likely you can help us." "Nort'?" "No, south. Into the desert." "Ru'ns? Leort say ru'ns." I had forgotten that. I said, "Yes, it's possible you may find more of your kind there, though I can't promise." I put Uns to his old duty again, and though he did not confide in Duns, he enlisted Galene to assist him. When we had gone some way south, I saw her floating as it seemed over the plain, borne up by a shambling monster more visible to my imagination than to my sight. A week passed, and another; if I were to write all that happened, this would never end. We fought twice. Beaten by day, we came back at night with a hundred Khimairae and forty Fire Aelf. Org took our foe in the rear. A few days later we sighted a column of black smoke on the horizon, and three more brought the snow-clad peak of the Mountain of Fire. We joined the king's host. He sent for me, and I found him wounded, with Beel attending him. "We freed you to fight for us," he said, "but you were too weak for it." I agreed. "But not too weak to vanish. To vanish, and to take Lord Escan with you. What did you do with him?" "I saw to it that his wounds were salved and bandaged," I said, "and that Lord Payn, his son, remained to attend him. They are at my manor of Redhall." "He has no son." "Then it cannot be of Lord Escan that I speak, Your Majesty, since the man of whom I speak has an unlawful son who's a baron of Jotunhome. Doubtless I've mistaken another for your Earl Marshal." Arnthor rolled his eyes toward Beel, who said, "These matters smack of gossip, interesting but unimportant. You brought reinforcements?" "Fewer than a hundred." "How many?" "Sixty-seven men able to fight, with twenty-two women to bend the bow." "And have they bows to bend?" I nodded, and added that we needed more arrows. "You bent a famous bow in the north. I have told His Majesty about that. Your shooting in the tourney, though good, disappointed him." "It disappointed me as well," I told them. "Why don't we hold another here? Perhaps I can do better." Arnthor said, "This is madness." "I agree, Your Majesty. But it wasn't me who began this talk of tournaments. If you want me to command your forces, I'll take charge and do what I can. If you want me to fight as one of many knights, I'll do what I can still." "We command Celidon. Do you think us unable to rise from this bed?" "I wish you stronger than that, Your Majesty." "We will be strong enough to stand when the time comesto stand, and to sit a charger. We would make you our deputy if we could, Sir Able." I bowed. "Your Majesty does me too much honor." His smile was bitter. "As you say. You're not to be trusted. We know it. You are of Aelfrice, however you may look, and whatever you may say. So are we, and know our own kind." I believe he would have laughed as the Aelf laugh, but his wound would not permit it. "I was born in Aelfrice. My royal sister, too. Do you know the story?" I nodded. "Your royal brother told me something of it, Your Majesty." "He is dead. We have tried to call on him for aid, but he is no more. Did you kill him, Sir Able?" "No, Your Majesty." "Would you tell us the truth, Sir Able, if you had?" "Yes, Your Majesty." The bitter smile came again. "Would he, My Lord Beel?" "I believe so, Your Majesty." Arnthor's eyes closed. "I pray to Skai that the man who killed him join us, and quickly. We may have need of him." I said, "The Overcyns have smiled on Your Majesty." His eyes opened. "He is with you?" Beel said, "The blind man? My son-in-law told me." I nodded. "Setr was our brother." Arnthor's voice was a whisper. "We used ... It does not matter now. Nor will we avenge our brother upon a man who cannot see." I knelt. "I speak for the Valfather and his sons, Your Majesty, having knowledge of both. It's well to triumph over foes, but it's better to deserve to triumph over them. No more than any other man can I predict whether you'll win the day, but today you've done more." "Thank you." The king shut his eyes as before, then opened them wider. "This man is blind, you say. We are not. Do we not know your helm?" I held it out. "It is Your Majesty's, if you want it." "We do not. We say only this: you are not to wear it in our presence." I swore I would not. "We must hoard our strength. Tell him, Beel." He cleared his throat. "I'll be brief. Duke Coth was second to His Majesty until two days past. With his death the position falls on your liege. I've counseled His Majesty to summon him and urge that he be guided by your advice. There would be no mention of you in the formal announcement, you understand. Would that be agreeable?" I said it would, and so it was done, Marder giving his sword to Arnthor (he sitting in a chair draped with crimson velvet and made to serve as a throne) and receiving it back from him, this witnessed by such peers as remained. When we were alone, I asked Marder the state of our troops, although I had seen something of it already, and little that had been good. He shrugged. "You drove the Osterlings from Burning Mountain." "We did, with great loss to ourselves. We fought on foot. It was like storming ten castles. If the king had taken my advice, we wouldn't have fought at all." I waited. "We are crushed between millstones, Sir Able. Our men have no food, so we must fight while they can still stand. That's one stone. The other is that we're beaten. If you'd seen us at Five Fates . . ." He shrugged again. He looked old and tired. His beard was always white, but his face was tired and drawn now. When I had waited for him to say more and he had not, I asked, "Is our hurry so great you can't tell me about it? I was in Jotunland." "Where I had sent you. I used all my influence with the king to extricate you from his dungeon. He was immovable." "The king himself extricated me. Why is the battle called Five Fates? Is it a place?" Marder shook his head. "It's a tale for children." "Well suited to me in that case." "As you wish. The old Caan, the present Caan's father, had no lawful issue. Bastard sons, in which he differed from our king. But no lawful sons or daughters, for his queen was barren. It became apparent to his advisors that when he died his bastards would rend his realm into twenty." I suppose I smiled. "Would it had been so! He summoned a famous sorcerer and gave him a chest of gold. Perhaps he threatened him as well, accounts differ. The sorcerer assured him the queen would bear him boys, and went his way. She conceived, grew big, and dying bore not one son, or two, or even three." "Five?" I suppose I looked incredulous. Marder shook his head. "Six. In all my life I've never heard of a woman bearing six children together, yet six there were, like as peas. There was no question of succession, because the midwives had marked them in order of birth, tying a red ribbon about the ankle of the first, a brown ribbon on the ankle of the second, a white ribbon on the third, a gilt ribbon on the fourth, a blue ribbon on the fifth, and a black ribbon on the sixth and last. Ribbons of the first three colors had been provided for the purpose by the Wazir. The rest they tore from their raiment." "And this is true?" I asked. "It is, indeed. Our king has many ways of learning what transpires in Osterland, and all reported it. Besides, the young tijanamirs were clothed in those colors so they might be known in their order, and so they would know their places. The eldest was called the Red Tijanamir, and so on." "And the five fates?" "Were the fates of five tijanamirs. As you may imagine, the appearance of six heirs in one birth occasioned comment. Seers were consulted, and one prophecy was repeated all over the realm, though the Caan forbade it. The seer had been askedperhaps by the Wazirwhich would reign, and if his reign would be long. He rent the veil and foretold that all would reign, and all would die young." I said, "That's very good news, if it can be credited." Marder lifted his shoulders and let them fall. "Do you wish to hear the rest?" "If it bears on the battle." "It doesupon the name we give it, if nothing else. This seer went on to foretell how each would die. The Red Tijanamir, he said, would be crushed by a stone. The Brown would be trodden into the mire. The White would die at the hands of his followers. The Golden was to perish in a gold fortress. The Blue was to drown. And the Black Tijanamir was to be run through and through with the sword the Caan wore the day the prophecy was made. What troubles you?" I waved my hand and begged him to proceed. "As you like. This prophecy came to be known as that of Six Fates, the seer having foreseen the fates of all six. The Red Tijanamir succeeded his father when we killed him. You were in the north, but I took part in that campaign, and Sir Woddet won great renown." "I want to see him. How did the tijanamirs die?" "As the soothsayer had foretold, in every case. The Red Caan, who had been the Red Tijanamir, had removed his helm to wipe his brow. A slingstone struck and killed him, the first fate. The new Caan, the Brown Tijanamir, was trampled under the hooves of our chargers. That was the second. The White Tijanamir became Caan upon his brother's death. Not an hour later, a lance pierced him through. Sure to die, he tried to end his life but found himself too weak. He begged his friends to kill him, which they did. Thus, the third fate." "I see." "The fourth was the Golden