by Jo Walton
As soon as Urdo left me they came up and spoke to me with no need of introductions. They named themselves to me with their father’s names or their land names without even a thought. Some of them even that first night gave their own names, as family do, or those who fight together and may die together. Many of them thought that I must belong to another of the king’s alae. I rapidly learned from their talk that he had three already and soon the whole country would have them at every stronghold and the Jarns would be sent back across the Narrow Seas where they belonged. Their horses snorted at Apple, and he snorted back, making friends and finding his place among them.
In much the same way, the armigers asked me who I was and how I came to have a fine warhorse, and how I knew how to ride him. They thought me trained because I had fought, although at that time I knew nothing of true lancework beyond tilting at a target. I could not have taken my place in a charge. One of them, older than most, named himself to me the son of Cathvan and said he had known Apple before he was given to my father at the coronation. He was one of the king’s horse trainers. The five-year-old he was riding that day was now battle-hardened and ready to be gifted to a lord. He showed some regret at this thought. I knew how hard it was to train a warhorse, having done some of the work myself of saddle-breaking a colt. I had never really thought where all the horses the king had given to those who swore to him had come from. I had given it no thought beyond the old songs of the Emperor Emrys winning a thousand horses for a song in the land of giants, and the even older stories my nurse had told me about the white horses born of the wave that came thundering up the beach to stand whole in the breaking surf draped in seaweed to be caught by heroes.
I told them all my errand, and they dealt with the news exactly as I might have best wished, looking grave and saying that what was done was done, but we would be avenged. They were for the most part very young, no more than a few years older than I was, though they were battle-seasoned and seemed to me men and women grown. Few of them were women. Besides Marchel, there were only four other women in that ala of sixty. Lancework needs great strength in the shoulders. I looked at Marchel in time to see her mount by straddling her horse’s lowered neck and having him toss her back into the saddle. She did this with unself-conscious grace, but I saw many envious glances, and one or two attempts to copy her that left the riders lying in the mud or sprawled awkwardly across their horses’ rumps behind the saddle.
Marchel gave us a riding order—most of us were to ride on the road, four abreast, which was usual; scouts and outriders were given their positions clearly. The prisoners walked in front with four riders single file on each side of them. I took up a position with some of my new companions towards the middle of the ranks. Ap Cathvan the trainer stayed near me. As we began to ride I asked one of my companions about Marchel.
“Is she a Jarn?”
He laughed. He was a broad-shouldered man who had given his clan name, Angas. Even I knew that this was one of the great clans of the north. “Marchel? Not a bit of it. Her father is Thurrig, a Malmish admiral from Narlahena. He serves King Urdo now. He came to Tir Tanagiri thirty years ago with three ships, though they were lost in battle long since. He has fought all that time for one king or another, and Marchel, too. They say she was born in the saddle.”
“They say Thurrig got her on a mare, too, but they make sure to say it quietly,” put in ap Cathvan. Angas laughed again.
“When we all know her mother? But she’s a fine fighter and highly skilled as a rider. Her father’s a good fighter, too, though he’s always pining for ships.”
“Urdo has promised him some, and I’ll be glad to see him get them. That would give us the chance to catch the Jarnish bastards at sea before they do any damage.” The two men raised their chins at the thought, and I smiled, thinking of ships. Without knowing it I had caught the infectious hope that ran through the ala, the belief they had all caught from Urdo that we could make a difference, we could change things, we could turn the tide.
“I know very little of the Malms. Are they like the Jarns?”
Angas looked at me, considering. “I can’t say I know much about them either. But Marchel and her father are loyal, and she’s good to have beside you in a fight, none better. If Thurrig had some reason for leaving Narlahena in a hurry, as some say, then for my part I suppose he was justified in it. If I remember my history right then the Malms were the first of the barbarians to win a battle against the Vincans, years and years ago, away somewhere off in the east.” The direction he waved his arm was south rather than east, as we were riding northwest, but I said nothing. “They may well plague the civilized people in some parts of the Empire much as the Jarnish raiders plague us, I don’t know. But in the alae we don’t judge people by the color of their skins but by who they are and how they themselves behave. When Marchel was first put over us there was some dispute over that, but as the king himself says, we should judge people each by their deeds, by the color of their blood, by who they are willing to shed it for and by the strength of their arms.” He was looking at me very seriously.
I raised my chin. What he said was sense. “I hate the Jarns though,” I said.
“The raiders yes, and so do I. We all do. They will destroy everything we want to build. But there are Jarns living among us, in the east, who live in hamlets and have settled lives. Some of them took up arms beside us and fought their cousins who came raiding last spring, when I was at Caer Tanaga with the king. Not many of them it’s true, but some, and there will be more, Urdo says.”
Ap Cathvan spat aside. “Take them by the each, you say, Angas, and that’s fair enough, that’s the king’s wisdom, and the teaching of the White God. But when you see them ready to kill you that speaks pretty plain. Nothing against Marchel to be sure, but the Jarnish farmers who’ve sworn to the King’s Peace, well, say what you like, but I’d not sleep the night among them and be sure to wake up with my horse and my throat whole. They’re mostly thieves when all’s said and done. Sure there’s good people among them, same as there are bad ones among us. But we’re mostly to be trusted and they’re mostly not.” This, too, sounded like wisdom. I wanted to believe the Jarnsmen a different species from myself so I could hate them cleanly.
“Nonsense!” I was surprised how vehemently Angas spoke. “You must have extremely honest farmers at home, and I’m glad to hear it. But the Jarnsmen are no different from us in kind, once they leave off worshiping their blood-loving gods.” I looked from one to the other of them, uncertain. The older man laughed a harsh bark and looked over at me.
“Angas is talking like this because his father is giving him one of them to wife.”
“A Jarn?” I found the idea revolting.
“A Jarnish princess,” said Angas, looking at me and ignoring ap Cathvan. “And it was not my father’s idea but the king’s, and the girl is kin to the dowager Rowanna, the king’s own mother.”
“I say an Isarnagan alliance now and push them back to the sea,” said ap Cathvan.
“And what would you pay for that alliance?” asked Angas, suddenly leaning forward in his saddle. “What do you know about the Isarnagans? I fought against the Isarnagans at home in Demedia every year until I came down here. Believe me, a burned harvest smells the same whoever fired the corn. You should see what the Isarnagans have done in the north, and whether the people there welcome them as cousins.”
“And what will you pay for your Jarnish princess?” ap Cathvan sneered back. “The same as King Avren did for Rowanna? Land for her relatives to settle, a truce for a term of years, and then more of the maggots eating away at the island from the inside? And what gods will your children pray to? The Isarnagans are wild people, I agree, like we were before the Vincans came, but they know our gods, and when they give their word before an altar we can trust them, not like the oathbreaking Jarns.”
“If it were not for Rowanna and Avren’s Jarnish alliance, we would have no High King now!” retorted Angas passionately. “What happ
ened to his elder brothers when Avren died, Queen Branwen’s sons, the heirs everyone acknowledged?”
Ap Cathvan shook his head, and I raised my eyebrows. If I had heard any tales of them I had not paid attention.
“Young Emrys died in battle, yes,” Angas said, lowering his voice a little, “but some say it was a blow from behind. My mother told me it was not the Jarns nor a fever that killed Bran. Rather it was King Borthas at Caer Avroc, though he had given them all his protection. She herself was in fear for her own life if she tried to claim the crown, and very glad to be given to my father even though she was but thirteen years old. What sort of ally kills the king’s sons and uses the daughters to make alliances?”
“Treachery, yes. A shame that such a man still lives and bears the name of king. Yet nobody who was alive in those days can claim—”
Before ap Cathvan could continue Angas cut him off. “There’s been treachery enough on all sides in the last twenty years, true enough, but nobody can say there was treachery on Rowanna’s part. She took Urdo and fled to Thansethan in disguise, and nothing else would have served to keep him safe to grow up. Of them all it was the Jarn who kept faith in what she swore. And ‘what gods’ you say, ap Cathvan, making my blood boil, as if they all serve those bloody-handed gods of war? But you know as well as I do that she and all her kin have trusted in the White God. To be sure there was oathbreaking enough when people swore by gods not their own, but there is an end of that.”
“For those who will turn their backs on their own ways, but not all of us will, and I wager not all of them will either. Oathbreaking is in their blood, as honor is in ours.”
“Rowanna broke no oath, she remained steadfast to her vows when nobody else did, not even my own father behaved as well as she did in the years after Avren’s death.” Angas looked angry enough now to leap at ap Cathvan with any more provocation.
“Some say,” I ventured, “that she fled with a baby, three, four years old, and who is to say that the man who stood up in the monastery fifteen years later was that same baby.”
The two angry faces rounded on me, united now in their fury. Suddenly we were in the middle of a spreading circle of silence.
“Nobody loyal to the king says that!” spit ap Cathvan.
“Urdo is the best king we’ve ever had, and when he was crowned he asked if anyone disputed who he was or what he did, and if nobody would dare speak up then they should not mutter it behind his back!” said Angas.
“I am only saying what I have heard said, not that I believe in it.” I said, holding Apple steady. He was tense between my legs, sensing a fight. Sure enough Angas put his hand on his sword.
“If you hold to what you said, then I shall challenge you for the king’s honor.”
I did not want to fight this man I liked, and least of all for this cause, but I could see no way to back down now without appearing a coward. I drew breath, and before I could speak the king himself was between us on his greathorse. He had heard, and ridden back between the parting lines while we had been intent on each other. He drew to a halt now, and the rest of us halted around him; the whole ala was listening. He leapt from his horse and stood firm on the ground before her head. He was the broadest-chested and most solid man I ever saw—even Duncan or Angas was like a silver birch in comparison to an oak. I felt quite certain I should be put to death for treason. I drew another ragged breath, but he ignored me.
“Is this how you defend my honor?” he asked, looking from Angas to ap Cathvan. They hung their heads. “She spoke only out of ignorance, as many people speak. It is the natural way for people to think when a boy has grown up hidden not knowing who he is. I could hardly believe it myself when I first was told, that I was the trueborn High King of all Tir Tanagiri, like something from a story. Some of you know that the path from there to here was not as easy as the stories will have it.” There was a ripple of cheerful laughter, breaking the tension. Then he raised his hand, and there was silence again.
“If it was hard for me to accept it was true, how much harder for those who have never met me? Hard indeed for those to whom the names of my father and grandfather are tales, whose whole lives have been taken up with Jarnish wars and fraternal bickering? We will not bring the King’s Peace by killing them when they find it hard to believe! The way to drive out that story is not by spearing every farmer who repeats it, nor by slaying every armiger in mortal combat either.” He smiled at me then, and my heart leapt. “It is true I was raised in Thansethan. The way to drive out the rumor that I am not my father’s son is not with the sword, and not even with the word of the monks who were there when my lady mother brought me, and are there still. The way to drive out that rumor is by my own deeds. I shall be king, but no man can be king alone. Your deeds must keep my peace, or the people will say that there is not justice when you come to take them who break it, and that Urdo is a false king, whose armigers are false. It is no part of my peace to murder over rumors, so put down your swords and embrace, whether the daughter of Gwien finds me king enough or no.”
Angas and I dismounted, and embraced, making peace as the king bade us. In all this time since the king rode up I had said not one word. I wanted to say that I had not doubted him since I had seen him, and that he seemed the truest and most honorable king that there could be, and besides he had promised to help me. But no words would come that did not seem too foolish to pass my lips. As Angas mounted again I slipped to my knees in the mud before Urdo.
It was growing dark, and the gathered horsemen were but shapes in the gloom, moonlight glinting on their lance tips. Yet I saw Urdo’s solid shape clear as he stood against the western sky, his horse behind him.
“My lord, I would swear to you,” I said. He looked into my eyes for a long time, very gravely, and then took my hand. I had to ask him the right form of words and he told me and I repeated back to him the armiger’s oath, only where one would say the name of the lord I said, “My true king, Urdo ap Avren ap Emrys, High King of the Tanagans” and as he raised me up to give me back my sword he smiled.
5
The Three Most Generous People of Tir Tanagiri
Elin the Generous, daughter of Mardol the Crow
Gwien Open-Hand, son of Nuden ap Iarn
Cathvan Soup-Ladle, son of Senach Red-Eye
but Urdo himself was more generous than them all.
—“The Triads of Tir Tanagiri”
When I was a small child Darien and I shared a nurse, a local woman who had been nurse to my father Gwien long before. Under my mother’s eye she would tell us the stories of Vincan heroes and battles, famous victories and fortitude in the face of adversity. Last thing at night she would tell us old Tanagan tales of daunting quests, desperate last stands, and unexpected reversals of fortune. In those tales, heroes traveling the roads often found strange and inexplicably marvelous things at every turn—burning trees, giant fighting cats striped in black and gold, floating castles. Always these wonders had the likeness of some familiar thing but made strange by size or transformation. At my first sight of Caer Gloran I believed for a moment that I had fallen into such a tale.
The wall around the fortress was stone-built, like the wall of any house or farm, yet it stood twice as high as my head and stretched far out of sight. Caer Gloran was in origin a Vincan fortified camp, one of those built five hundred years before during the conquest. When things were peaceful the camp seemed to them a good place to station a legion. It stands on the highroad at the place where the Havren is first narrow enough to ford. When the province was properly peaceful Caer Gloran became the local center for tax collecting. A market town grew up around it as the country-folk rode in to trade with the troops and the administrators. The town had grown and prospered then shrunk when the bad times came. The wall was built in the time of my great-grandfathers, when the first barbarian invasions began to reach up the Havren. To anyone who had seen Vinca, or even Caer Tanaga, it was a paltry place. I had never then seen any city, never anywhere big
ger than Magor where perhaps eight hundred people lived. I knew none of this history as I stared at the bulk of the wall in the moonlight.
I was tired. I had been looking forward to the thought of stabling for Apple and a sheltered rest for myself. Now I felt chilled and uncertain. It was hard to imagine a welcome within those great walls. When we reached the gatehouse I gaped even more, for the wall’s width was fully in proportion. As the gates swung open and we rode inside I looked back behind me, as if to check that the hills and the river were still glimmering there. I was not entirely sure that a hundred years might pass in a night or if I might not wake up quite transformed.
The man who came to meet us did nothing to reassure me. He wore long brown robes and had a brown hood drawn up over his head. He pulled down the hood when he saw Urdo, revealing a thin dark face. Around his neck hung a white pebble, which caught the light from the lantern he held and seemed to gleam slightly. Had I known what he was and how much it would have angered him to have been compared to the Folk of the Hollow Hills, I would have leapt from my horse and proclaimed my thought at the top of my voice. As it was I stayed on Apple’s back and followed the others to the stables as Urdo got down and greeted the man.
The stables at Caer Gloran lie near the gates. In the original plan the fortress, like all Vincan fortresses, had housed foot soldiers, a Vincan legion marching in disciplined conquest carrying all they needed. They built the same fortress wherever they halted from the deserts to the snows. Much later when I went to Caer Avroc and Caer Lind I found much of them familiar from knowing the ways of Caer Gloran. Very little of the town had changed since it had been built, but the stables were new and spacious. Most of the horses were kept most of the time picketed in the fields inside the walls, but we rode now to the stable block where eager grooms started up as they heard the clatter of hooves.
