The King's Peace

by Jo Walton

  “He’s very quiet,” Emlin said, clearly choosing his words carefully, not looking at me. I wondered what he meant.

  Urdo looked at him sharply, but just then Raul came up, and close behind him Alfwin, who had a stunned look about him. “You can leave in the morning,” Urdo said. “Marchel’s ala will be going back to Caer Gloran; you can travel together that far.” Emlin went off to tell the news to the other armigers.

  Urdo took two long breaths. “Greetings, Alfwin Cellasson, King of Tevin!” he said. “Have you heard that Peace is made?” Alfwin looked as if he had taken a step off the edge of a cliff and found firm but invisible ground beneath him.

  “I missed the battle,” he said. “We have been hurrying since we got the message from the daughter of Thurrig, and we came too late.”

  “You have fought for me and beside me these seven years,” Urdo said, “And we all know that those on two feet move more slowly than those on four. I am not giving you Tevin wrapped like a bride gift—Sweyn is dead, and I have his older nephew, but the younger one, the heir, is missing, and there may still be some resistance. Still, that is your problem, you are the king here now, rightfully, in your father’s place.”

  “It is not quite that simple, among Jarnsmen,” said Alfwin, and his face unfolded from its stiffness, and he grinned. “Yet, I will be king by the time we meet next, I have little doubt.”

  “If you wish it, if you wish to be received into the church as your wife has, I could crown you here today in the name of the White God,” Raul murmured. I could hardly believe his audacity, even if someone had managed to convert Alfwin’s wife. That must have taken some doing considering that she had been in Bereich all the time. Ohtar’s fierce opposition to the White God was well-known. I wondered for a moment if Alfwin would accept. I knew, as Raul did, that he had spent time with Marchel, who could be very persuasive. Yet even if he had wanted to it would be hardly possible without consulting the land gods of Tevin. Urdo’s face went very blank as if he was deliberately keeping all expression away. I thought of the stone on the hilltop. Alfwin looked more stunned than ever.

  “This is not the condition on which you give me the land?” he asked Urdo.

  “No indeed,” Urdo said. “Nor have I made such a condition even to those who have been fighting against us.” Urdo looked impassive, but Raul was frowning.

  “A great chance is being let slip away,” he said.

  “We will speak of this later,” said Urdo, and his tone was final. “Any choice you make is your own entirely, Alfwin.”

  “Indeed,” said Raul, “I was only asking if it was what you wanted.”

  Alfwin laughed, with some anger clear behind the laughter. “I am not afraid to face the ordeal, monk,” he said. “Lord Tew who gave us this land will not find me wanting.” He turned to me then. “Ap Gwien, of your kindness, is my brother’s daughter well?”

  “She is well, and what’s more she did well, very well, in the battle,” I said, pleased to have something positive and helpful to say that changed the subject. “I am proud to have Haraldsdottar in my command, she is daring and valiant and skilled, indeed she led back troops today and probably saved my life, and the life of the High King.”

  Alfwin did not seem to be getting used to surprises. His pale skin flushed red, and he swallowed. I was tired and had quite forgotten that he would be embarrassed to hear a woman of his family praised for skill at fighting.

  “The Cellingas have served me well, even in your absence,” Urdo said. He was smiling now, but he still looked a little remote.

  “Good,” murmured Alfwin. “It is not our way, but it is the way of this land, and we are here now.” Alfwin was never a fool. He took a long breath, and spoke more firmly. “Good. I am glad we had our part in this victory, even if I came too late. But I will need her for the next few days, with your permission, of course?”

  “Of course,” I said. “She can come back to the ala when you come down to Caer Tanaga for the Peace feast.”

  “Ohtar Bearsson will be here soon,” Urdo said, before Alfwin replied. “It would be good if you talk to him today. Also we’re going to have to arrange quite quickly what we’re going to do to help Ayl with the defense of Aylsfa this winter. Aylsfa is not near as strong as it was this morning.”

  “I thought Luth and his ala would be a good choice,” put in Raul.

  “Yes, that would work,” said Urdo. He looked terribly tired, suddenly. I wondered if we had missed four nights’ sleep or only one. “We will have a full council in the morning, with the allied kings. Organize it please, Raul. And we must speak.” Raul scratched a note in the wax pad he wore at his waist. It was full of notes already. I left them to it.

  I washed, and slept a little, before the sun came near the horizon and it was time for the ceremony. I do not think Urdo can have had time for either. He was moving stiffly and seeing him I thought I could imagine how he would be when he was old.

  All those who were neither wounded nor exhausted had been working part of the day on raising the mounds. Glyn, Ayl, and Raul had organized Jarnsmen and armigers working together, and now the mounds made a line along the length of the hill. The mounds would rise higher yet and grow with grass, and the battlefield would become a quiet resting place. For now the dead had been laid within them by their friends and were covered by earth. I did not see them before they were covered. It was the only thing to do in the circumstances, and of course it is the usual thing now. Thirty years ago when I lit the fire for Veniva it was a matter for muttering, and now if my great-nephew heeds my wishes and burns me when my time comes, it will be a great scandal.

  One fire had been laid in front of the mounds, a single pyre, too small to burn even one of the dead. We gathered there before sunset, drawn up by ranks, each ala together. None of the Jarnsmen were there, not even Alfwin and his men—they had had their own ceremonies—but every living armiger who had been at the battle was there on the field. Every dead one, too, of course.

  Urdo came forward. Exhausted, he somehow looked more kingly than ever. He was still in his armor with his long hair streaming loose on his shoulders.

  Urdo lit the fire and poured on sweet herbs and incense as the sun buried itself in the glorious colors of the westerly clouds. I was standing near the front, but afterwards everyone said they had heard every word he said, however far back they were. The gathered troops kept very quiet; there was no noise but breathing and the little sounds of people in armor shifting their weight.

  “Who are you who are before me now?” Urdo began, as the fire caught. He did not speak loudly or seem to be raising his voice beyond a conversational tone. He sounded almost as if he were talking to himself. “My armigers, yes, living and dead, but what beyond that? Not Vincans fighting for a distant city, nor yet the desperate defending their doorway, we have come together, and learned, and made a new thing. Maybe never before on the wide earth has there been such a thing.”

  He took a breath and straightened up and looked out, his eye running over the armigers. “My friends, you came here to fight, and fought, and some of you fell, and some yet breathe, and all of us have won the way through war to Peace.”

  He turned to face the mound and raised his hands, his palms turned not upwards as if invoking the gods, but outwards, towards them. Then he turned back to us and did it again, and brought them down slowly as he spoke. “I thank you all, for this is to be honored, and all of us who came to this field this day, living and dead alike, shall always be honored for making this Peace.”

  He drew a breath, then another. It was so silent I could hear birds in the trees. “How much honor shall be done to the dead, and to those who go on from this day, shall be found in our choices from this day forward. Our honor lies in how well this Peace is kept. Those of us who live will mourn those of us who have fallen. We will not forget our comrades who do not go on, and not just those who fell today but all those who fell making this Peace, all these long years of war. This Peace will be their monu
ment. Peace will not be easy. We scarce know what it can be yet, for none of us have known it.”

  He looked now as if he were looking up over our heads, to something distant we could not see. “It does not mean we shall set down our spears; as we have won this Peace by strength of arm and will, so we will keep it. We will fight no longer for mastery over this our island but to prevent injustice or repel invasion. Those who were this morning our enemies have agreed to the Peace. What remains now is to bring all the will we had for making it to maintaining it, to go on as we have started, and to build the Peace in our actions, breath by breath, all our days.”

  I had heard him speak like this late at night in his tent, though before it had always been of hopes; it seemed strange to hear it spoken of as something begun. “We have chosen to be as we are, without reservation or withholding or fear. With that strength, we have made this Peace; within it, those who have not, who do not or shall not or will not, take up weapons, who have not had any choice open to them through the years of war but to avoid as they can the paths of armies, shall have this same choice, to be as they would be unto the uttermost borders of their skill, their capacity, and their desire.”

  He looked down again, and smiled. “None shall be bound by their birth; there shall be one law for all, where a wrong done with a king’s power shall receive the same redress as a wrong done unto a king’s power, that redress being founded on justice, and no single whim of woman or man.”

  The fire was burning well now. Urdo poured some more incense onto it, and a great plume of white smoke rose on the wind. “This is the Peace we have won, though we have it still to build and learn. We who are here today have won that Peace for all those who are not here, and for the land. What we have done this day could not have been, without those who died for it, today and on many days. We shall not forget them, in making this Peace we should not have won without them.”

  Then he named all those who had fallen that day at Foreth. Many around me were weeping, and I found tears on my own cheeks.

  Then we sang the Hymn of Returning as the smoke took their spirits onward even though their bodies were bound under the Earth.

  His words rang in my ears all down that long wet way to Magor. All I knew was war, it had been my whole life. Peace was only a word. I had to learn what it meant.

  We rode on through the rain, and every night when we camped we kept watch, and the pennons took turns keeping the death watch around poor Galba. I lay down tired and thought of the new walls at Derwen, thought of feasting and songs, thought of Darien growing up strong and safe to live—but there my thoughts grew blank. I could not think how we would live, without war. I tried not to take comfort in the thought that Urdo would need the alae for a long time yet.

  We reached Magor when the tenth day since we left Foreth was drawing to a close. The rain was falling more finely than it had been, and I had some hope it might stop before the whole island was flooded. Magor looked well. I saw that someone had been building walls and stables and barracks since I had last been there, when I first joined Urdo. It was not as large a place as Derwen had become—it looked like a lord’s house with room for an ala, not like a town. The hall was built Vincan fashion, with a covered colonnade along the front. I had sent a messenger ahead as we approached, so when we drew near the household came outside and stood a moment under that shelter. I drew up the ala neatly outside the hall as best we could in the miserable weather, our brave banners and bright cloaks sodden with the weight of the rain.

  Duke Galba was there and my lady mother Veniva, holding a baby about a year old, and beside them a small boy, about three years old, and behind the whole household of Magor. All of them had cut their hair off short. We dismounted in unison and I walked forward past the casket where we were bringing young Galba’s body.

  Then Veniva took a step forward out into the rain, towards the casket. As she moved she looked at me for one moment and as her dark eyes met mine I realized that I was seeing not my mother but my sister Aurien. She had grown to Veniva’s height, and what there was of her hair, which had been so dark and lustrous, was turned quite white. Her dark overdress was pinned with the gold-and-pearl brooch from the hoard. She looked old and deeply grieved. As our eyes met I knew that Urdo was wrong and I had no comfort to bring here. It might do the old Duke good to know how well his son died, the boys were too young to understand. Aurien, I knew then, would understand nothing from me except that in place of her strong young lord I was bringing a corpse.

  There was no time to waste unless we were to wait until the next day. They had set aside a great pile of dry wood for the pyre. It was laid well away from the house under a makeshift roof of boughs. As we walked to it we passed the line of carved stones that marked the places where the dukes of Magor had been burned. Each stone was doubled save the last. That was where Galba’s mother lay, and there was space beside her memorial for Duke Galba. He paused beside the damp ground where one day his own grave would be, and walked on.

  It is a sad thing to outlive your children.

  Even under the shelter I doubt the pyre would have burned in that rain except for all the hair we piled onto it. The armigers had even trimmed their horses’ manes and tails and there was so much hair that they said afterwards that Galba was so beloved he needed no wood but returned to ash on hair alone. Emlin and some of the armigers set the casket firmly in place. I set Sweyn’s weapons and the spear we had drawn out from Galba’s body under the place in the casket where his feet were. As I did so I remembered that in my saddlebag I now had Ulf’s swords ready to take to my brother Darien’s grave in the woods to fulfill my vow. The ala stood quietly in ranks, bareheaded, their short hair slicked dark in the rain. I could not tell rainwater from tears on their faces.

  The older boy, Galbian, his father’s heir, took the torch and set it into the wood, then stepped solemnly back. He must have been practicing because he did it very well. The firelight reflected off the wet leather of the armigers armor. Duke Galba spoke, and Emlin spoke. Then we sang, but Aurien was silent until we had finished. Then she let out a great howl, and squeezed the baby tightly so that he howled as well. I took a step to go to them and take the baby, but Duke Galba laid his hand on my arm and shook his head. He understood better than I did. Little Gwien was a good reminder for Aurien then. There are old songs where grieving widows fling themselves onto their husbands’ pyres.

  As Duke Galba put incense on the pyre there came a great trumpet blast from the hall. I spun round, as did more than half of the ala. It was a messenger’s signal, urgent and desperate news. I knew I should have stayed and watched until the pyre burned down. Even though peace had been declared, I could not ignore it. Everyone was at the pyre. I signaled to two of the decurios and walked back through the rain to the hall, trailed by the two pennons. Aurien gave me a look fit to freeze my blood as I left.

  The first thing I noticed about the red-cloak was how tired his mare was. She looked about ready to drop with exhaustion. I was horrified that anyone could treat a greathorse like that. Only then did I realize that the man on her back was Senach Red-Eye.

  “Sulien ap Gwien with troops, thanks be to the White God and all the hosts of heaven!” he said. He was swaying in his saddle.

  “What’s happened?” I asked, reaching up to help him down. He slid to the ground and lurched into my arms. He would have fallen if I had stepped back.

  “The Isarnagans have landed,” he said, his face uncomfortably close to mine.

  “What Isarnagans?” I asked. “Black Darag’s?”

  “They didn’t say,” said Senach, bitterly. “I didn’t stop to ask, but I expect so. We have an alliance with Allel after all.”

  “Get something for the red-cloak to sit on, someone,” I said. “Now, where are they?”

  “They landed away on the far western end of Derwen where not many people live and they’re coming inland, a great huge army of them, on foot. Thousands of them.” One of Galba’s armigers brought a great car
ved wooden chair from inside the hall, and Senach collapsed gratefully into it, his hands working on the eagles carved on the arms. I went down on one knee in the mud beside it so he would not need to waste breath speaking loudly.

  “I was taking the news of the Peace to Derwen when we heard a rumor of them, and I went to see. They’re not far from Derwen town, I’d say about a day’s march then. There’s only one pennon inside, under the lord your brother.”

  “I have Galba’s whole ala here,” I said, and I was calculating distances as I spoke. I turned to the decurio on my left. Somehow, even though it was a disaster it was a relief to be giving orders and doing something I understood. “Govien, get your fastest messenger to ride to Caer Gloran with this news straightaway. Send the next fastest to Derwen to tell Morien ap Gwien that we are coming. Get another ready to ride to Urdo at Caer Tanaga as soon as I have written a message. Get Emlin here right now Get the quartermaster. Get anyone else who is well trained in logistics, trained by Dalmer or Glyn. Get Duke Galba, tell him—give him my deepest apologies, but say it is an emergency and we’re going to have to ride tonight.”

  25

  At meat they sat, uneasy peace

  forced by their feasting in the king’s hall.

  Talk fell to fighting, the hard-fought war

  between the borders long disputed.

  Emer was boasting, keeping count

  seized heads slaughtered, the slain of Oriel.