The Tale of Oriel

by Cynthia Voigt

  No sensible Captain would attack, once the seeds were sown, once the young were birthed and fattening. If he didn’t attack when his chosen victim was weakened by winter, all agreed, then a sensible Captain would wait until the harvest. Why should he starve his soldiers when, if he only waited until high summer, he could bring full-bellied men into the quarrel, and know that the countryside would feed them, and know how much damage he would do to the countryside by waiting and burning what the soldiers couldn’t eat or carry away. Men who watched their year’s labor destroyed and knew that winter would find them unready surrendered more quickly than men who knew they already had nothing.

  Every day that passed without alarm raised hope that the city was safe, at least until harvest. Every farm labored long and hard to plant its crops. The Saltweller’s house was no exception. After the day’s labors all slept deeply across the ever-shortening night. Oriel thought he had never been so tired, as day followed day and sometimes, if the fires under the pans burned too slowly, he stood alone into the night waiting the time when he could scoop up the clotted salt, hang it to dry, and go at last to his bed. On such nights, in early spring, it often happened that a messenger would arrive from the city. The dogs would bark and Vasil would be at a dark window. No man of sense opened his door at that hour, and the fire of the salt pans was hidden behind the house, in comparative safety. Oriel stood in firelight, straining his ears to hear in the darkness beyond, first the baying of the dogs and then whether Vasil would shout them down to silence or shout for assistance.

  The Saltweller’s house had its plan, just as the city had its plan in these uneasy times. The city planned to use the fisherboats to transport those who could not fight to an island, where they had food stored and shelter built. There was refuge for those who might need it, children and women and helpless old, or ill, and also those wounded in battle. The Saltweller planned, should need arise, to flee to their boat and go downriver to safety.

  Plans were made; and rumors poured in as fast as seeds poured into furrows. These were rumors of bands of Wolfers and sudden raids that left no survivors, that destroyed for no more reason than a love of destruction. The cruelty of the tales brought tears to Tamara’s eyes and robbed her cheeks of color. The Saltweller kept a bold front: “If there are no survivors, who spreads the stories?” he asked. “Aye, if there are such Wolfers, and as many of them as the tales say, even so they are no more than men. They can die, can they not? Especially when those who face them are trained in soldiery. As are the men of Selby,” he finished proudly. “I will not worry overmuch about the Wolfers. If they come so far to find us, they will find us ready.”

  Oriel couldn’t but admire the man’s courage. His own courage was equal, he knew, but still he admired the Saltweller’s.

  Spring grew into summer, and the land prospered under sunlight and warmth and rains. Selby, at the Innkeeper’s suggestion, named runners, who would carry warning from town to farmstead, so that the people might come quickly into safety. There were also runners named at the outlying farmsteads, who would bring to Selby early news of approaching danger.

  The wheat swayed golden in its fields, fields of rye ripened, and the men of Selby began to say that no sensible Captain would take his armies to battle now. He would wait until the harvests were in. Oriel thought that the men of Selby secretly hoped as he did that this might be a fourth year of peace. Whenever hope grew too strong, however, there would appear distant smoke, dark on the horizon, as if from a giant’s chimney, and people would look to it and wonder if Celindon was in flames.

  Oriel lived in a state of constant alarm. He kept his coins, and the glowing beryl, always with him, hidden in his trousers. Whenever the dogs barked he reached for his dagger. He slept uneasily and was always conscious of his unprotected back as he bent over the salt pans. He was glad of the house and the companionship of its inhabitants; without those, he doubted he would have slept at all, under the constant threat of danger, under the constant promise of excitements. But all four could work together and all trust the others. They were bound together, for the well-being of all. One summer night, as they sat together on a bench by the door to watch the final fading of light, the Saltweller remarked, “We know who you would choose for husband now, Tamara, don’t we?”

  “How do you know?” she demanded. Her cheeks were pink and pleased, her eyes sparkled, and a little smile like waves playing at the foot of a boulder played around the edges of her mouth. “You can’t know my mind. They say,” Tamara said, choosing Griff to smile teasingly up at, “that a maid’s mind has more twists and turns than a fish fleeing the net. Griff told me that, didn’t you, Griff?”

  Oriel noted the smile that passed between the two of them. The girl was causing him to doubt what he was sure of. Then Griff looked to Oriel over her head, and it was as clear as if Griff had spoken the words aloud. What girls get up to, how is a man to trust them? But you and I know one another, Griff’s look said.

  “I would not have you be a minx, Daughter,” the Saltweller rumbled.

  Tamara looked up, immediately solemn.

  “I would have you name your choice,” the Saltweller said.

  “Now?”

  “Not if you are not yet ready to make it,” he said. “But otherwise, yes, I’d have his name.”

  “I am ready, if this is the time. You are correct, Father, you do know, you all know it.”

  “Oriel,” the Saltweller said.

  “Him,” Tamara agreed.

  Oriel’s gaze was on the black sky, and the sight of the stars appearing; he felt the rightness of everything.

  “If he will have me,” Tamara said, practically whispering the words.

  Her voice recalled Oriel. “How could you doubt it?” he asked her. He had never doubted it. “Do you doubt me? You need never,” he promised her. “But I would ask as your father did in that earlier year,” he said, teasing her now, “why? Why would you choose me?”

  He thought her cheeks flamed red, but in the dim light he couldn’t be sure. He knew her eyes looked at him with a fire that struck him in the belly. “Oh—you know perfectly well,” she cried, and jumped up from the bench to run inside.

  The three men sat on, peacefully watching the approach of night. “Sooner is better than later for this wedding,” the Saltweller said, as he rose to go inside to his bed.

  “Aye,” Oriel answered.

  In a little while he asked Griff, “Who will you marry?”

  “Someone,” Griff said. “When you are wed and settled, then it will be time enough to look. When these dangers are past—”

  “They may not pass so quickly,” Oriel warned him.

  “Aye,” Griff agreed. “So I’ll wed when . . .” He could not say. “Whenever the time and woman are right,” he finally finished.

  Oriel thought that if he were to be wed, he would want Griff also to be a married man. “We must watch out for a wife for you,” he said. In his mind, he ran over the girls of the city, selecting the few among them he judged might suit Griff, and serve him well. Aye, and be faithful to him, as Oriel had no doubt Tamara would be faithful.

  Rumors rode in by sea and land, and the Saltweller was called in to another meeting of men swept by the fears those rumors fueled. Summer was full upon them, the salt pans were newly filled with brine, which had just begun to steam, so Oriel worked beside Griff to pull the weeds out from the young onions. Tamara brought them cheese and bread at midday, and all three sat under trees at the edge of the woods, overlooking the bending river. The sun beat down and they were in no hurry to return to their labors. Insects were buzzing and birds—

  The dogs at their feet growled.

  Stood up to bark, baying—

  Oriel was on his feet and had thrust Tamara behind him, had turned with Griff to face the woods before he saw that the dogs watched in the other direction, off across the field.

  Oriel turned again. The woods were at his back. The dogs clamored and he drew his dagger, as did Griff
beside him.

  “We’ll make for the boat,” he decided. The two dogs bounded off across the field, low and belling.

  Oriel had never seen a Wolfer and was not sure he even believed in them, any more than, say, any other fabled thing, any more than the Kingdom. But these were Wolfers. He knew it without question, as the three stepped out onto the field. They were tall, lean, sun-browned. Their long yellow hair was tied back, and thin yellow beards hung down from their chins. They held short swords ready and seemed to have their mouths wide open as the dogs attacked.

  Oriel was so busy watching the dogs attack, and listening to catch the sounds that came out of the Wolfers’ open mouths—like pigs at slaughter, like the cries of men in flames—as they without hesitation stepped up, and ran their swords into the dogs’ great bodies, as if the snarling teeth were nothing to fear—so mazed by surprise that it was almost too late when he heard Tamara’s whimpering cry and turned—Griff at his shoulder—and saw five more such men—shrieking, blunt swords raised in both hands to strike down into his heart. He barely had time for the thought: Someone must stand against these Wolfers, and delay them.

  “Tamara, run!” he said. “The boat!”

  Sounds rushed by his ears and the events swirled in front of his eyes. He had his dagger in his hand. Tamara protested, he didn’t remember her words. Faces with blue eyes, bright blue and cold as a winter sky— He thought they must pluck the hairs from all of their faces except eyebrows and chins, to have such beards.

  “You must—!” he cried, and she ran—he thought those were her stumbling tumbling steps he heard—down the hillside. To the river. To the boat.

  The open mouths made sounds like wolves with the prey in their sight. The sound rose up howling out of the dark throats.

  Griff was at his shoulder. “Back to back,” Oriel said, remembering the Captain’s teaching. The Wolfers moved in close, and there were the three now crossing the planted field. They had no hope, he and Griff.

  Oriel heard now, as if she were only now speaking it, what Tamara had said in protest. “I’m not worth it.”

  They didn’t rush into the fight, these Wolfers. They wore leather vests, like protection, and leather sleeves on their arms. They spoke briefly, but Oriel didn’t understand the words. They weren’t speaking to him, in any case.

  Cruel faces, they had, narrow and smiling with pleasure at the fight, with the odds eight to two.

  “She’s right,” Oriel said, over his shoulder to Griff. They were circling now, he and Griff, drawing towards the woods, where they might take flight. “She isn’t worth it,” Oriel said, and he laughed out loud. He had chosen this course of action, whether Tamara’s life and safety had equal value with his own or not. He alone chose his own course of action.

  “She has the boat untied, and oars in the water,” Griff reported.

  The Wolfers smelled of sweat and urine, filth, blood. Their leather, from boots to shoulders, was stained in dark patches. At some signal Oriel couldn’t see, or some word he couldn’t understand, they closed in.

  With that wailing sound they had broken from the trees with, the three Wolfers raced to join the fray.

  “But she is worth it,” Griff told him, the familiar voice at his ear.

  Oriel felt his feet moving delicately on the earth. He felt how the muscles of his thighs were braced against shocks. He felt Griff’s broad back at his back.

  Fear burned through him, like a flame. Fear coursed through him, like icy water. He threw his head back and raised his dagger, to strike—and cried out wordlessly, as if the great cry could gather all his fear together and set its swelling course behind him, to add it to his strength.

  He heard Tamara’s voice, rising up, thin, to call out his name. “Oriel!”

  Two cold-eyed Wolfers came closer to him, swords raised towards his throat. Their swords were longer than his dagger and he would have to move past their blades to set his own blade into at least one throat before theirs—in a rush of blood—his own blood—sank into him.

  The blow that felled him came from the side.

  Part III

  The Wolfguard

  Chapter 15

  THERE WAS ONLY PAIN.

  Oriel opened his eyes, but the brightness of the sky jabbed through them, into the swollen bloody mass behind. He lay in the darkness of his closed eyes, trying to move beyond the geography of pain to find his hands, or feet. He listened.

  He heard rushing in his ears, as if he were being dragged along behind a great wind. He heard nothing but the rushing, as if he were being swallowed in the sea.

  But the unyielding ground lay under him.

  Pain was black, and had spread—pooling out like spilt wine—and it beat against his brain bone. The way he was lying, on his back, the sun burned at his eyelids. Light burned the darkness away.

  Pain shrank like a puddle under sunlight—red and swollen now like a deep wound. He didn’t know—

  Griff. Where was Griff? Oriel opened his eyes and sat up. Pain sliced at his head and he couldn’t move his arms so he bent his neck, to ease pain. The rushing had gone but now it was a beating hollow sound he heard, and beyond it the musical silences of a spring day—birds and insects, breeze and the distant river. He opened his eyes again and lifted his head.

  Griff sat beside him. With a glance and an almost imperceptible motion of his bloody mouth, Griff warned Oriel to keep silent.

  They were under a tree at the edge of the woods, with the field they had been weeding in front of them. His hands were bound together at his back. A Wolfer watched him out of icy blue eyes.

  The Wolfer sat apart, his sword across his knees, one hand on the sword’s hilt. Oriel didn’t know what danger the Wolfer expected from him—every time he moved his head he became dizzy, and it looked for a while as if there were two armed Wolfers seated across from him, one slightly behind the other. Oriel’s wrists were jammed against one another in a way that twisted his hands and he wasn’t sure that his legs would hold him upright, if he tried to stand. Griff, too, had bound hands, and one of his eyes was swollen shut, his lip was split and bleeding, there was blood drying around a cut that had gone through the cloth of his trousers at the thigh, and into the skin.

  Oriel remembered that he must have been knocked unconscious. He almost asked if Tamara had made it safely away, until he remembered Griff’s voice telling him that she had untied the boat, and he remembered her voice calling his name, floating up over the river’s bank. He wondered if Selby had been warned in time to put up a fight. He wondered how that battle had gone.

  Under surprise attack it was the outlying farms that were in the most danger, although each householder had been advised to make a plan for escape, in case of surprise attack.

  The Saltweller’s house had had such a plan, and one of three had been saved.

  If Oriel turned his head slowly, the pain was less. He looked over the house and yard, fields and woods, into the distances, and saw dark smoke billowing up here and there. He looked southward along the river, and did not see smoke where Selby might lie burning.

  The sun had moved along the sky into full afternoon; he must have been unconscious for a long time, Oriel thought. Griff’s eyes were closed now, although he still sat up; Griff had folded himself down over his bent knees. The Wolfer did not move. His cold glance stayed locked onto them.

  Oriel didn’t know what would happen next. He met, and held, the Wolfer’s glance for a long time, thinking. Then he shrugged, smiling—and saw that he had surprised the man—and closed his eyes again. Whatever happened, it would be better to be rested.

  The sun was not much farther down in the sky when a wailing call awakened him heralding the approach of a ragged band of men. The Wolfers were easy to recognize, with their long yellow hair and long narrow beards. Longhaired longbeards, they were rightly called that. The ragged band came closer—five men, none unbloodied, and they carried two over their shoulders. The fall of arm and head suggested that those two were
lifeless.

  Oriel and Griff remained motionless on the ground, but their guard rose and spoke to the tallest and broadest of the Wolfers. This man answered the question, then spoke briefly to all of them, with gestures towards the two bodies, now lying on the ground.

  Oriel looked at Griff in alarm. He couldn’t hear their words, not clearly enough to distinguish what was being said. He could hear only a garbled mass of sounds as the Wolfer spoke. It was as if Oriel’s ears were full of thick blood that distorted sound, and made speech meaningless. He thought suddenly that he might be deaf.

  The big man came towards them. Oriel ignored his dizziness and the throbbing of his head to climb up onto his feet. Whatever was going to happen to him, he wanted to meet it standing up. With his hands behind him all movement was awkward, and every smallest gesture of his head almost blinded him. The worst was when he was almost up into a kneeling position, getting his feet under him and his face thrust down towards the ground, as if he were doing obeisance to this Wolfer. The thought of being understood to be kneeling before the man gave Oriel the strength to push himself up, until he stood.

  His legs shook. He leaned against Griff. Griff was steadier but leaned back against Oriel for balance.

  The Wolfer watched. His eyes were cold as knife blades. As soon as they were standing, the Wolfer spoke. He spoke to Oriel, who would not look down, look away. Oriel was afraid and he was in pain, but he knew he could conceal that from the Wolfer.

  He couldn’t understand the Wolfer’s words. Without moving his glance from the man’s face, where dirt and sweat and blood streaked together, Oriel asked, “Griff, do you understand him?” At the corner of his vision he saw Griff shake his head. Griff looked pale, wide-eyed.

  Oriel took a breath. “We don’t understand you,” he said, and was glad that his voice didn’t quiver, and didn’t rise high as a girl’s.