by Jo Walton
“Oh, I told him who my father was, and he backed off at a very fast gallop.” Bran giggled, not pausing in his conversation as we rode off. “He’d be at war with my father now if the High King would let him. See those hills way off to the west? There’s been almost as many battles between Borthas and my father among them as there have been between us and the raiders. What did you tell him?”
“I said I was suited well enough as I was, thank you kindly, sir,” said Geiran. “I heard that Borthas’s sister, old cow-eyes, promised Osvran her favors if he’d join them.”
“What did the captain say?” They were both giggling, and I should have told them to pay attention, but I wanted to know, too.
“He said to try asking Glyn, as such an offer might be more to his tastes.”
“Ah but Glyn—” Bran dropped his voice and muttered something.
“Have they asked you, Sulien?” Masarn asked from my other side.
“Flavien ap Borthas offered me the dubious honor of commanding his little band of half-trained horse.” I grinned. “It was easy enough to refuse, if less easy to remain entirely polite.” He had approached me when I was sitting with Galba, and he had leaned heavily on the supposed indignity of those of our high birth-rank serving under Osvran. Galba told me later that Urdo had told him before he left that when we went back he would be ready for the command he’s long been promised over the ala at Magor and Derwen. We’d spent the rest of the evening designing a suitable motif for them. He’d asked me if there was anything Aurien liked that would work. He had been writing to her, and knew more about her present likes and dislikes than I did. They were due to marry at midwinter.
Masarn laughed. “I’ll be glad when we’ve beaten these wretched Jarns and we can leave this horrible place and go home.”
“I must say I’m not the least bit worried about losing anyone to the seductions of Caer Avroc.”
Glyn met us as arranged. We ate and moved on. There was no sign of the Jarns that afternoon. At evening we made up a camp on a hilltop with a good view all around. When we led the horses up to it we found a large stone on the very top, of the sort that the people say belong to the Folk of the Hollow Hills. “That explains why it’s marked as Foreth on the map,” said Rhodren. “That means Table Hill.” Some of the armigers were making an interesting assortment of aversion signs. Osvran called for silence.
“See this table?” he called. Everyone was either looking at it or carefully not looking at it. It was grey rock that came up to just above Osvran’s waist as he stood by it, and stretched perhaps twice his length. “It was put here by our ancestors, maybe when they were fighting the Vincans. It means this is a good hill to defend if we have to, and we chose right.” The mutters died out after that, and we settled down to spend the night. “If we don’t find anyone by noon tomorrow we’ll head back,” Enid relayed to me, and me to my armigers. The rain had stopped. We were glad of the chance to rest, and most of us barely complained at all.
13
Take up your sword and go,
take up these fair-won horse,
go afloat in your cockle-boat
that drew us from our course.
Heed, heed these words I speak
heed them and depart
for I swear if we stay for breaking day
this land will break your heart.
You’ve won five games on the shining strand
won them with your song
and the stallion wave falls loud and brave
to say we’ve stayed too long.
Home, home, my lord, I say,
that green familiar shore
we must now leave or, lord, I grieve
we’ll see it nevermore.
—“The Ballad of Emrys”
It is always chilly in the deep night, even in the heart of summer. The next full moon would mark the Autumn Feast and the start of the apple harvest, so I was glad of my wool cloak. I would have been even more glad of the full moon. The half-moon that showed now and then through the scudding clouds cast odd shadows on the ground. All the trees seemed to have eyes and arms. When the clouds covered the moon it was very dark.
I walked about a little, to keep myself warm and wakeful and to check on the others. Too many cold camps Osvran or Angas had come checking and found me almost asleep. Fourth Pennon would do sentry as well as we could. If the Jarnsmen came we were all ready to mount and be off the hilltop almost before they knew for sure we were there. It is foolish to fight good infantry at night when they know the ground and you have the advantage of mobility. None of my sentries were asleep. Nothing was moving except a few wakeful horses, who shifted and snuffled now and then. Another hour by the moon, and I could wake Bran ap Penda to take my place and set out the other half of the pennon on sentry duty. First and Fifth Pennons had armigers out there, too, in the outer ring. There would be enough time for sleep. The Jarns wouldn’t either surprise us or wear us out.
I walked the circle of the camp, the whole hilltop. There were ruins of earth and stone that showed where people had lived, once. I stood and leaned on the old stone that gave the place its name—Foreth, the Table Hill. However reassured the others may have been by what Osvran said, I knew different. My mother had told me that such stones meant that people had worshiped here once. I reached out to feel for the old connection. There was hardly a trace to take comfort in. I could not even tell if it had been the Mother or the Smith whose forgotten names had once been called on this hill. It was very long ago, and there were none of those people left. The gods barely took account of this hilltop any longer. It would take some terrible act to wake them here. Those people were all dead, and forgotten, with no heritage. My Tanagan ancestors had killed them or married them, but there were none left to come up to the Foreth and make sacrifices. The hill took little notice of people anymore. I shivered. I don’t think I had really understood, before that, what Urdo had meant about the name and the country. The stone still sat in the darkness, only itself, while the Tanagans had been driven out of Tevin, too.
I heard movement and spun round, my sword half-drawn, but it was only Osvran. The golden oak leaves on his white praefecto’s cloak glimmered silver in the moonlight.
“I was awake,” he said, in the low tones people use when people are sleeping close by. “Anything?”
“Nothing. Rabbits, twitchy horses, clouds across the moon. I don’t think anyone knows we’re here,” I said. Osvran leaned on the stone beside me.
“They could. I don’t see how they can’t. You can’t take two hundred horses across country without leaving clear signs for anyone to spot.” The half-moon came out between the rags of cloud, silvering the winding river. I could see half of Osvran’s face, level with mine as he stared out at the empty fields. “I wish I knew what they were doing. I had a message from Borthas—he’s back in Caer Avroc and no sign of them there either.”
“This is going to make a very odd report,” I agreed. “And then they vanished …” Osvran snorted.
“Went inside a hollow hill. Maybe even this one.” He was still staring out. I felt a cold unease pass through me.
“There’s a lot of this country. They could be anywhere,” I said. “Maybe we won’t find them.”
“I hoped if we camped here we might tempt them to attack. Then we could break out and catch them in the open early tomorrow.”
“No sign so far.” I straightened and walked all the way round the rock, looking out. My job might have been to keep the sentries alert, but I couldn’t feel comfortable facing one direction for long. I settled back beside Osvran as the clouds covered the moon again.
“I just want to get this over with and go home,” he said.
“It may be chilly, but everyone’s happier on this hilltop than in Caer Avroc.”
He laughed a little. “Me most certainly included.”
“Did Borthas’s sister really try to seduce you?” I felt a kind of horrified curiosity.
“Well …” Osvran was smilin
g, but without much amusement. He spoke very precisely. “Her name is Rheneth ap Borthas, Borthas’s father having the same name, and his elder son, too, it’s a tradition in their family. Stupidity and lack of imagination running in the blood if you ask me, along with their Tinala arrogance. She’s been married twice already, both times to useful men who died rather too conveniently for Borthas. She has a half-Jarnish son about twelve years old who has some claim on Bereich that his uncle may push for him at a good time. Gah. She’s been offered or offered herself to every king in Tir Tanagiri. She has the manners of a young girl who is pretty enough to be excused. She’s getting a bit long in the tooth for it. You may have noticed.”
“I have met her,” I admitted.
“She also has the intuition of a sow. No, that’s unfair to sows. They can be quite intuitive. It’s the shape of her nose that made me say that, not her intuition.” I giggled, and hastily muffled it. “But she’s really not used to hearing no.”
“She’s just spoilt. Did you tell her to send a kinsman?”
Osvran snorted quietly. “No. No mortal insults to their House. Besides, young Flavien ap Borthas might have tried it. Is that what people are saying?”
“No. Don’t worry. The gossip says you told her to ask poor Glyn.” My eyes went back to the horizon. “I just thought it might have done her manners good if you had said that. Are there no men in the north who prefer each other?”
“I’m from the north,” said Osvran, drily, then laughed. “But then why do you think I left?”
“You’re not from Tinala, though, are you?” I asked.
“No, thank the White God, from Demedia. In fact where I was born is part of what’s now Bereich. My parents fled the Jarns and now farm land that belongs to the Clan Angas, near Dun Idyn. I was brought up with our Angas as a companion, being much of his age, and got a noble war training out of it,” Osvran hesitated, then continued, “There are some who say that the Lord of Angas paid my mother some attentions in the year before my birth. I have to fight everyone who says so, of course.” His tone was cool and even.
“Why are you telling me this?” I’d heard this whispered, of course. But that he should repeat the slander himself seemed beyond belief.
“I always thought I’d never marry. I prefer men to lie with, always have. And I am not heir to land. But Urdo has promised me an estate, a name, something to leave to heirs. Not now, but when the Jarnish wars are over and we have peace. If the gods are kind and all this comes to pass and we both live to see it, I was wondering if you might like to consider a marriage. I know you turned down honorable marriage from Galba and Glyn, and you’ve turned down half the ala for something or other. But we wouldn’t need to bother each other too much to what we don’t have a taste to, though I think I could bring myself to conceive a child, or if not you might want to bear another to someone else, or at the least we could bring your boy back from Thansethan. We could do that anyway, I know you miss—”
“Osvran.” He clearly had a whole life planned out as he might a foray. I had let him say so much because he had startled me. It was so strange to hear his calm tones setting out this logical series of suggestions in the darkness where I couldn’t see his face. He went quiet at once at my tone of voice. I drew a breath, stood, and walked around the rock again to get calm enough to speak. I doubt I’d have noticed if a whole army of Jarns had been heading uphill along with an infantry legion painted for war, but it did me good. He was standing absolutely still. “No. I’m sorry. I have no taste whatsoever for that sort of love with anyone, man, woman, or beast.” I shuddered a little remembering it. “We’d both be forcing ourselves, and I don’t want a child that much. I like being an armiger. I don’t want to be a key-keeper and run an estate.”
“You could carry on riding, it needn’t change anything.”
“Yes it would, and you know it. Look at Enid and Larig.”
Osvran shrugged. “She got him to take her on the Jarnholme expedition. She’s here with the ala. What’s changed?”
“That she has to beg him for permission to do what was her right? The awkwardness of all the men who used to share blankets with her after a fight and don’t know quite how to talk to her anymore?” I suggested.
“Well, true, but she’s dealt with that well enough, and being made decurio helped. That wouldn’t apply to you anyway.”
“What about the fact that when she can’t keep hiding the fact she’s going to have a baby you’ll send her off away somewhere and she’ll waste a year? Or more if she’s fair to it. Fine for people who want to, but not for me. I lost one year already, I don’t want to lose more. No. I like riding. This life suits me. And when it comes to it if I have ambition, I’d like to be a praefecto one day, and I’d hate to be a lord.”
“I suppose it’s because your parents would have a fit at my birth.”
“What?” I blinked at his face, suddenly silvered as the moon came out again. I’d seen the expression once before, the time he vaulted over his horse’s head unexpectedly while striking at a Jarn with an unusually soft skull. “Don’t be ridiculous. You know I don’t think like that. I truly don’t want to marry anyone, ever. Not you, not Galba, not Urdo himself if he were mad enough to think it, not Elhanen the Conqueror if he were still alive. You’re my friend, and I value you. If I wanted to marry anyone you’d do better than most.”
“Oh well.” He sighed. “Never mind.”
“Thanks for the offer all the same. You’ll think of something,” I said, comfortingly.
“‘The good commander always thinks of something,’” he quoted Urdo quoting Dalitus. “Is Enid really having a baby?”
“I didn’t tell you! She’ll kill me. She didn’t tell me, I noticed the signs, but she knows I know.” I had been afraid she hadn’t recognized the signs, but she had laughed at me. “She’s not far on enough for it to stop her being able to fight yet, or she’d not have come however much she wants to. She has sense. She’ll tell you at the right time, and you can send her off to Caer Tanaga or wherever Larig is now.”
“I think he’s at Caer Segant with the dowager Rowanna,” said Osvran, abstractedly. Then he went on briskly: “I haven’t noticed anything different about Enid. I won’t take notice until I need to. I’ll do a round of all the sentries and then get some more sleep. Let me know if you change your mind.”
I paced to and fro. His was far from the first proposal I’d had in the ala, but it was one of the strangest. I wondered how long he’d been working it out as a sensible strategy. I pulled my cloak closer round me. It was almost time to wake Bran. I needed to catch any sleep I could if we were going to fight in the morning.
The morning was overcast, and brought us no sight of the Jarnsmen. Between Foreth and Caer Lind we found two Jarnish hamlets, both empty. Both showed signs of recent but orderly evacuation.
Just outside the second, a cow startled us by running across the track in front of us.
“She wants milking,” said Glyn.
“They turned the herd loose,” said Osvran. “What do they think they’re doing?”
“Shall I have her milked?” asked Glyn. “A couple of gallons of fresh milk wouldn’t hurt, and ap Gavan can milk anything.”
Osvran looked around. There were scouts out ahead, of course. Where we were happened to be fairly clear ground.
“We’ll stop here and eat. Make a fire. Make porridge. Milk the cow if you can manage it. If they care, then they know where we are already. Eat by numbers.” This meant that no more than half the pennon would be dismounted and eating at any time. “Get water from the river, not from the well in the hamlet.”
“Why?” asked ap Erbin, and then, “You mean they might have poisoned the wells?”
“It would be a logical thing for them to do,” said Osvran.
“What color was the cow?” Bran asked Garah, as she came up to eat with us.
“Brown,” said Garah, in the firm tone of one who has already answered the question too many times. “
And if you don’t like the idea of drinking the milk, then don’t eat the porridge, that’s where it went, two whole buckets, near enough forty cups. She wasn’t milked last night either.”
“I’ll have yours,” said Masarn, hopefully, as Bran stopped eating.
“Milk in porridge is good for you, that’s the way they make it at Thansethan. It’s good for people who’re going to fight, gives you strength,” I said authoritatively. Bran started eating again.
“If the People of the Hills had taken the farmers, they’d have taken the cow too,” said Garah, holding out her bowl to Talog for her share. “She wasn’t a happy cow, either. She won’t have to put up with it long because of Cadwas is going to make her into dinner.” Masarn cheered up at that.
“Will there be enough for everyone?” he asked. Just then Osvran blew the trumpet for the decurios to assemble. I gulped down my porridge and went off to join him.
“The first scouts are back from Caer Lind,” he said, as soon as we were all there. “The report is that the place is deserted. It may have been deserted for years. My plan is that we ride on it as quickly as we can, secure it, send messages back to Caer Avroc for Borthas to bring up troops and supplies. We can use it as a base and send pennons out from Caer Lind to look for the Jarns.”
Ap Erbin looked uneasy. “People are worrying about sorcery,” he said. “Nothing seems to make sense.”
