by Jo Walton
“It would not be to Gangrader’s benefit to have Ayl and his people slaughtered and civil wars come again,” I said, quietly. “Even the harvest of the battle crows must grow to ripeness. And despite your dedication and whatever you think, I have always served Urdo and the Peace of the High Kingdom.”
“Oh well I know that,” said Ulf, and there was a catch that was almost a sob in his voice. “Yours is always the way of honor. But beware of Gangrader’s promises, he will twist them. If that certainty that was burning through you in the grove was his certainty, then distrust it.”
“If I was in the hand of any god to see clearly the trap laid for me then I do not think it was your Raven Lord,” I said, as calmly as I could, wondering if Ulf was drunk. “I will bear what you say in mind, but Gangrader has never made me any promises, and so he cannot twist them.”
“Shall I tell you what he promised me?” Ulf asked, leaning closer and whispering. “He promised me a son of my blood would sit on the throne of Tir Tanagiri. My father was king in Jarnholme, and Sweyn was my uncle, it did not seem so unlikely. So I came here with Sweyn, thinking we had been promised victory right up until we lost. And since that I—well, never mind, but Gangrader twists his promises, and I have a son already, don’t I? They say you and Urdo are lovers. They say this boy is Urdo’s son. I may be an idiot Jarn, but they say he is thirteen years old and I can count. I remember what Urdo said on Foreth. This is exactly the sort of joke Gangrader loves, and why aren’t we laughing?”
“Because the boy is very likely dead?” I forced myself to say. The words came out sounding harsh and cold. “Which rather spoils any joke. I will say nothing of his father. It is nothing to do with you, you have no claim on him. He was born at Thansethan nine months after I took service with the High King.”
“It would spoil the joke entirely, and so I expect he is alive, preserved by some strange chance. I expect I will die tomorrow,” Ulf said, entirely calmly. “That usually happens when Gangrader has arranged for someone to see the point of one of his jokes.”
“Ulf,” I said, wearily, “if we have a battle tomorrow and we get the chance to charge, I’ll happily put you in the front, and if you truly feel like dying you can charge naked and painted blue like the Isarnagans. I don’t care. It will make my life easier. But I don’t think this is the sort of fight where we’ll be so lucky as to have the enemies clearly marked out to be hacked to pieces. If my son is alive, I ask you to say nothing to him or to anyone else of any question of his parentage. We settled our quarrel at Foreth.”
“I will not say anything.” He trailed off as if he wanted to say something else but could not find the words.
“While you’re here,” I said, “tell me who might have read your dreams? All the women and half the men in your pennon from what I hear, but who else?”
“Half my pennon if you like to say so, but why would any in the ala wish us harm?” he asked. Put like that it sounded reasonable. “Before I came to the ala?” He paused. “Comrades, who are dead or in Jarnholme with my aunt and my brother, or now in Alfwin’s service. Servants. It’s hard to think that anyone who chose to share blankets with me would do such a thing.”
I could see that it might be. “But any of those people might have a grudge against us now, against you, and have no reason to love Ayl.”
“Maybe. And maybe enough to have reason to hate you for killing their friends. Who does hate you?”
“I don’t know.” It was a horrible question. I couldn’t think of anyone who hated me personally. I had killed Jarnsmen enough, but never outside the usage of war. I wouldn’t be surprised if they came at me with a knife, but this sort of thing meant real malice. And Darien—I bit my lip. I thought again of Morwen, who had hated me and was dead. “How close to you did Morwen of Angas come?”
He shuddered, I could see it clearly though it had grown too dark to see his face. “She could never have come close to me while I slept,” he said. “Anyway she has been dead for years.”
“It felt to me like her doing. Like Caer Lind,” I said. “I know very well she’s dead. I had a part in it. How about her son?”
“Morthu?” Ulf hesitated. “Yes, we shared blankets once or twice, when he first came to the ala. But when he first came from Thansethan Morthu acted like a filly with the spring air in her face; he wasn’t always careful about hurting people’s feelings. He sought me out, then mocked me afterwards. I don’t like him, now that I know him. But why would he hate you?”
“I’m probably being unfair to Morthu,” I said, “but I did kill his mother.” He was here, he was in ap Selevan’s pennon. I had been aware of him watching me pacing several times.
“He’s never said anything against you that I’ve heard,” Ulf said, slowly. “Not for his mother’s rebellion, nor against the High King. He does speak well of his brother and of Demedia, and he has mentioned that he is a grandson of Avren often enough that nobody’s likely to forget it. But what could he want? What could he gain?”
“The grandson of Avren might want the crown of Tir Tanagiri?” I suggested.
“Starting up the War again wouldn’t get him that,” Ulf said. “Even if he could kill Urdo it would not. He is very young and has less right than his brother. Very few would support such a claim. He would do better to befriend Urdo and be made his heir.”
“Then I don’t know!” I said, too loudly. The horses shifted uneasily, and I was aware of the camp beyond them, the ditch, the river. I would have liked to mount up and gallop flat out as fast and as far as I could. “I hate waiting!” I said, with sudden impatience. “I wish there was something to do.”
36
The Law shall be no one person’s tool, to work the will of kings or to thwart it; it shall be the shield of many against one, and the shield of one against many, and the wall between strife of kin. To do these things it must be made so that the law is composed of the best will, the best judgment, and the best wisdom that can be found among many people, and made each time it is made with a clear heart and a choice of what best serves those living and those yet to be born.
—The Law Code of Urdo ap Avren
There were two more days of waiting and pacing and fretting before Urdo came and everything happened at once. I had kept a wide sentry ring out all the time and had news whenever anyone was moving, which was rare enough. There was still no news from Cinon or Ayl or Luth. I had begun to disbelieve the hunting story. It wasn’t the weather to linger outside for pleasure. A messenger got in from Alfwin saying that he was on his way. Even though he would not reach me for days I was relieved to know that not every king in the island was lost out hunting. I was very aware how unprepared we were for a civil war. In the afternoon Father Geneth had the nerve to ask me for ap Selevan’s pennon back to escort them home to Thansethan. He caught the sharp end of my fraying patience and retreated angrily back to his brothers.
The day Urdo arrived dawned with a thick and persistent mist off the river. The sun could just be made out as a glow in the whiteness. Urdo arrived out of the fogs late in the afternoon, escorted by the scouts who had been out along the road. He had the other half of my ala with him.
“We almost turned back to Thansethan,” Gormant told me while Urdo was greeting Father Gerthmol with careful politeness. “We could barely make out the highroad. It’s lighter here than it was a way down the road. We’re not going to find anything today. What’s going on anyway?”
Then Urdo came up to me, and I tried to get my explanations in order. “Where’s—” he began, but before he could say any more a huge silvery white dog ran between us. I blinked at it with a strange feeling of recognition. It had come so close I had felt the wind of its passage, but I had no idea where it had come from. It was the biggest dog I had ever seen, bigger even than Elenn’s Isarnagan hound. It was almost the size of a small pony. I drew breath to speak, but then the air was full of wild yapping and howling, and people shouting.
There was a tremendous disturbance in the mid
dle of the camp. The ground was shaking. There was a huge shape, black, thrice the breadth of a horse. There was a great rank smell with it that made my stomach turn over. There were white dogs circling it and there were other dogs, too, ordinary hunting dogs. There were people charging in through the tents and lines, mounted, with boar spears. My eyes suddenly made sense of what I was seeing, and I understood that this monster was a boar the size of the boar in the song that Kilok hunted to make the bristles into a comb for his giant father-in-law. Urdo and Gormant and I ran frantically towards the horse lines; nobody on foot has much chance against even an ordinary boar. Other armigers were doing the same thing, and people were yelling and getting in each other’s way. I saw Father Gerthmol running away as fast as he could with his robe hitched up around his waist, looking very undignified.
All the horses were very nervous, and many people around me were having trouble getting control. Once I was mounted I could see better, despite the fog. Ap Padarn threw me a spear and I snatched it out of the air. We were behind the boar. The great creature was too tall for me to see over, even mounted, but I could see around him. He had his head lowered and was ignoring the dogs that were running in to nip at him. There was a picket rope tangled around one of his back feet. Even from behind I could see that his tusks were longer than spears and wickedly curved. Several of the hounds had already perished on their points. One of them lay crushed like an old barrel.
To the left of the boar was Ayl, riding a piebald half horse. His brother Sidrok was next to him bearing Ayl’s hideous standard, the pink streamers flying back all around it. There was a party of other Jarnsmen from Aylsfa with them: all had their boar spears ready. Ayl looked much as he always did hunting.
In the center, directly ahead of the boar, was Cinon of Nene, on foot. He had only an ordinary spear and a sword. He looked confused and hurt as if someone had just said something that might have been an insult and he wasn’t sure how to take it. There were a dozen or so armsmen of his household with him, all men. Right next to him stood my son Darien. His hands were tied together behind him. I was vastly relieved to see him, weaponless and on foot but alive. He had his teeth bared at the boar and seemed poised to spring at it, as if daring it to come on.
To the right of the boar was Luth, on a dappled mare, in his famous blue breastplate, holding a boar spear. He had his pennon with him, similarly armed. He looked as if he couldn’t quite believe the size of the boar, but he was signaling to his armigers and clearly selecting his best angle and lowering his spear to go in before the boar decided to move. They looked almost capable of dealing with it.
The boar, strangely, was acting as if it had been cornered in a thicket, despite being in the open in the center of the camp.
This takes time to describe, which it did not take to see. I was already moving in from behind. It seemed to me that if I set my spear straight and moved in from the side with all Glimmer’s weight and mine I might just make a heart hit, or at worst turn it from Darien towards me, or towards Luth and his people, who were ready for it. Glimmer wanted to shy away when the breeze brought us a clear scent of it, and I had to urge him on with my knees.
Boars are often fast, though usually the smaller ones are faster than the big ones. Still I was surprised when it charged. It went straight forward towards Cinon and Darien. I could not stop, so I held my spear tightly and rode on, fast. We hit, but the tip of the spear just skittered off the skin. I don’t know what happened next. Glimmer tripped, I think, in one of the creature’s deep footprints, and threw me off up over his head. I let go of the spear, it would have broken my arm. I pulled my feet from the stirrups and leapt, almost by reflex.
For an instant as I was in the air I saw it clearly. The world was a black boar below me with white dogs circling around it and beyond that people on horses circling and beyond them distant trees. Glimmer had gone on straight after I had left him and was making for the river. It was only then when I saw it whole from above that I knew this was no monstrous beast but a creature of the gods. It was mighty and beautiful and terrible. It had a dignity that was like the dignity of an animal who lives wild and has nothing to do with people, but stronger than that any individual animal can have, even one that had lived to be old. I don’t know why I didn’t see this when I was down on the ground, but I had not. In that moment in the air I knew other things, too, my own place in the pattern of the world, and Darien’s, and Urdo’s. It slipped away from me almost as soon as I had seen it; that is not a sight any mortal mind can hold on to and stay sane.
Then I landed on top of the boar. It was not a good landing. It was like hitting the side of a moving mountain or being thumped by an enormous fist. All the breath was knocked out of me, and I felt bruised all over. Even breathing was effortful, and the powerful stink of the boar did not help. It was a moment before I could see, and even then it was hard to raise my head. Darien was there, somehow, beside me, lying completely winded across the harsh thick bristles of the boar’s shoulder. I drew another difficult and deliberate breath and then I grabbed him. I heard Urdo shout and saw that he was cantering beside the boar. He looked a long way down. I took hold of Darien and heaved him off, half-sliding and half-throwing him to Urdo.
Then I jumped backwards and was amazed to be caught halfway through the sickening plunge towards the ground. Once again all the breath was driven out of my body. I heard Luth laughing close to me, and after a moment I realized I was lying facedown across his mare’s withers. We kept speed with the boar and the three great white dogs that chased it for just an instant, then Luth let his horse fall back and turned her so that we faced back to Urdo and Darien. I noticed to my surprise as they came into sight that Ayl was with them.
Every gasp of breath felt like a victory. Even though the whole fight only seemed to have taken a moment or two we had come so far outside the camp and up onto the hillside that the uproar there seemed quite distant. Luth was still laughing as we drew to a halt. I didn’t have breath to move, and I couldn’t have sat up from that position, draped in front of him like a sack of turnips. I slid down to the ground, and promptly fell over. My legs wouldn’t hold me. I felt ridiculous and terribly undignified, partly because Ayl joined Luth in laughing. Then Urdo dismounted and set Darien down gently on the ground. He was better able to stand than I was; he’d had a gentler landing the second time. From the look of it Urdo had caught him in his arms rather than across his horse.
“Well done!” Luth said to Ayl, slapping him on the back. “We both took it the same moment from different sides. You were right there. If it had been even a little smaller I think we’d have brought it down.”
“We would,” Ayl said, beaming. “I’d like to hunt with you again, something more our size.”
Urdo cut the cord around Darien wrists with his knife. Darien rubbed one and then the other. “Where are you hurt?” Urdo asked me.
“I’m fine,” I said, then lost what breath I had to coughing. Luth started laughing again.
“One of these days you’ll die from wounds you never noticed you’d taken,” Urdo said, looking down at me. He was smiling. But I wasn’t wounded, only bruised all over from landing so hard both times. The only blood was where my face was scraped from the boar’s bristles.
“What was it?” Darien asked, gazing off into the fog where the boar had vanished. His robe was torn in several places, and his face and arms were scratched, but his voice sounded stronger than mine did.
“A huge boar,” Luth said. “I’ve been tracking it for days and I’ve got quite lost. I’ve no idea where we are.”
“I’ve been trying to get hold of you for days,” I panted. “What if there’d been an invasion?”
“There hasn’t, has there?” Luth asked, looking so startled that I laughed, almost choking with it.
“I’ve been tracking it for days, too,” Ayl said, frowning a little. “I never saw prints that size before. But where were you coming from, Luth, that I didn’t see you on the trail? And where ar
e we anyway?”
“I came from Caer Rangor,” Luth said, carelessly. It must be wonderful to have a head solid bone all through like that with no room for ideas.
Urdo looked at Darien. “It was not just a huge boar that folk can track from the southeast and the northwest at the same time. It was the Black Boar, Turth,” he said. “He’s one of the protectors of Tir Tanagiri.”
When I heard the name it was as if I’d had confirmed something I knew already. I looked off up the hill after him, but there was already nothing to be seen but the huge prints leading away. Turth was done with us and gone on his own affairs. I wondered why he had come to us out of the mists. To save Darien? To punish Cinon? I took another painful breath.
“A demon?” Darien asked, his voice rising. Ayl looked shocked.
“A spirit, certainly,” Urdo said, evenly.
“He didn’t hurt me,” Darien said, shakily.
“You’re as bad as your mother,” Urdo said, smiling and shaking his head.
“If I’d known, I should have tried to tell him about the White God and then he—” Darien stopped, and laughed. “Well it’s hard to imagine something like that eternally praising,” he explained. Ayl and Luth laughed, too. Ayl sat down beside me on the heather the better to have his laugh out.
I did not laugh. Facing that wild dignity to try to make Turth change direction with words would be as futile as doing it with spears. “Father Gerthmol was there, and he didn’t try and convert him either,” I said. “In fact, he ran away pretty rapidly. So I don’t think you need to blame yourself for not trying.”
Darien looked at Urdo. “I didn’t know there were things like that?”
“All part of the world,” Urdo said, gently.
“Chanerig fought things like that?” Darien asked. I hated the thought of that even more than when Thurrig had first told me.
