The Tale of Oriel

by Cynthia Voigt

  It was little enough to desire, just the knowledge of a language.

  If he lived, he repeated the thought.

  “Griff and Oriel catch fish?” he asked Rulgh. He mimed eating, as if he were tearing the flesh off the springy bones of fish. Rulgh gave permission, “Is so.”

  Oriel held up his hands. Rulgh cut the leather thongs, first Oriel’s, then Griff’s.

  Without boats, without a net, with only their bare hands and sticks scraped to points with sharp stones, it took a long time to catch enough to feed the seven Wolfers. The band waited until there was enough to feed all of them before any one man cooked himself a fish. The strength a bellyful of water had given Oriel and Griff was gone, and they were sitting back from the fire and the eating men to gain whatever good the rest would give them, when one of the Wolfers came towards them. Rulgh, it was, and Oriel climbed painfully to his feet, and Griff got up more slowly beside him. Rulgh handed Oriel a fish—still warm from the fire, its skin crisped. Oriel inhaled the aroma of cooked fish, and handed it to Griff.

  Rulgh took it away from Griff—who was too wise and weak to protest—and returned it to Oriel.

  Oriel gave it to Griff. He held out his hands to ask for another. Rulgh shook his head, and held out empty hands.

  “That’s the last,” Oriel interpreted.

  Griff peeled some flesh off one side and passed the fish to Oriel, who peeled off some meat and jammed it into his mouth. He almost spat it out, it was so strongly flavored. He almost couldn’t swallow, he was so hungry.

  Rulgh watched them.

  “Small bites,” Oriel advised Griff, who nodded.

  Rulgh stayed watching until they had picked the bones clean. It didn’t take long. He said something that Oriel didn’t understand and walked back to join his men. Oriel and Griff went to the edge of the lackh to drink again, and sat beside the still water, away from the Wolfers. “We can talk,” Oriel said. “I think it’s permitted, for now. Has it been days?”

  “I don’t know. I have a beard started. How long—?”

  “Until we die,” Oriel said.

  Neither spoke for a long time.

  “Unless we escape,” Oriel said.

  Behind them the Wolfers were getting up, gathering together their packs.

  “Do you see any way to escape?” Griff asked.

  Oriel shook his head. “We should have all three run together,” he said, bitterness on his tongue.

  “Then Tamara wouldn’t have gotten away,” Griff pointed out.

  “You still would say she was worth it?” Oriel asked, surprised.

  “Of course.”

  There was no point in arguing since there was no way Oriel could undo the choice he had made. He wondered if, knowing what he now knew, he would make the choice differently. If he hadn’t ordered Tamara to run, if he and Griff had also run and she the slowest— Capturing Tamara would have slowed the Wolfers down enough so that he and Griff could have escaped, at least to swim to the deep, safe center of the river. It surprised him that Griff saw the event so differently from the way he saw it. He had never thought that Griff might see things differently.

  “You chose right,” Griff said.

  Oriel shrugged. “If I had chosen to run away, you would have come with me?” he asked.

  “Of course,” Griff said. “But it wouldn’t have been the better choice. She couldn’t fight them as we did, to delay them as long as we did. So Tamara carried the alarm to Selby and Selby is safe, and only a few people—we two among them—are taken. A better choice,” Griff said again.

  Oriel didn’t disagree, partly because he discovered that he desired Griff’s good opinion, and hoped to keep it. The other reason was that they were called to the day’s march at that time. Before he was lost to all sense except for the pounding of his heart and jerking his bare back away from the pronging sword behind him, Oriel thought about Griff.

  Griff was like his own hand—and when Griff disagreed with him, Oriel felt as if his own hand, even while it obeyed his wishes, had desires of its own, or ideas of its own. It was like watching his own hand walk away free, on its five fingers, and knowing that he had kept it bound to his wrist to serve his own convenience.

  That was no way to treat his own hand, he thought. He thought also, That was no way to get the best service out of his hand.

  He had used Griff ill.

  But he had saved Griff, too.

  MIDDAY BROUGHT THEM TO A farmhouse high on a rocky hillside. More hills rose ahead of them, some entirely bare, others raggedly overgrown. The Wolfers left Oriel and Griff in a gully, bound now with thongs at the ankles as well as wrists, and gagged. Oriel was so exhausted and thirsty that the cries of the human and animal inhabitants of the farm barely entered his ears. He could think of nothing beyond his own belly and sleep-seduced brain. As he slept, the sounds of the Wolfers’ attack disturbed him no more than a bad dream.

  The sight of the bodies disturbed him, however, and he had to draw ice like a blanket up and around his own body, pull it down over his eyes. Griff gasped for air, and gulped, moaned as if the pain had been his own, and asked, “Oriel?”

  Their guard watched, enjoying their fear. Oriel saw his wolfish face as if through thick ice.

  Inside the farmhouse the seven Wolfers had spread out around the main room. The smell of ale was in the air, and the smell of meat roasting over the fire. A boy of about ten summers was tied up beside the doorway and two women served the men—the housewife and her serving woman, their dark hair hanging loose, as if the head kerchiefs had been ripped off, their dark eyes wide with fear, tears staining their cheeks. The housewife, her skirt of a finer fabric, her apron not so stained with labors, moaned and mumbled to herself as she turned the meat on the spit. The first glints of madness shone out of her eyes. The serving woman was made of sterner material and had had, Oriel guessed, no children. He thought he knew what the women’s fate would be, and he became a man of ice.

  The gags were removed, and Rulgh brought Oriel a chunk of bread, a chunk of meat. Oriel took a bite of the meat—roasted goat, rich and pungent in flavor, it filled his body with strength—and passed it over to Griff’s bound hands.

  Rulgh snorted, amused. He stood over them, to watch the comedy.

  Oriel took a bite out of the bread, and passed it to Griff. Griff had taken a bite of the meat and was chewing it. He passed the meat back to Oriel. One bite at a time, each in his turn, they ate, and Rulgh watched them, amused. “Tewkeman,” he said. Oriel thought he knew what the word meant. He was beginning to understand these Wolfers, and their language. They were cruel and strong, fearless as animals. They took women and food wherever they found them, but carried no supplies and left—as Oriel guessed—no creature living where they passed. Somewhere in the night the door burst open and a man stood there just long enough to hear his son cry out “Father!” in relief and hope and terror, before the Wolfer sword gutted him. Oriel and Griff were given the job of taking the father’s body out to the pile, which with their bound hands was a hard task.

  The housewife had kept hidden among her linens a golden brooch, which Rulgh held in his hand when he spoke to Oriel in the morning. The farmhouse burned behind him. “Gold,” Oriel told the man.

  Rulgh took from the purse at his waist the coins he’d taken from Oriel and asked, “Gold?”

  While Rulgh kept Oriel, Griff dragged the bodies into the burning house. Oriel concentrated on Rulgh’s lined face, and concentrated on keeping his own face icy smooth, icy cold. Rulgh asked, with words and gestures, where the gold came from. Oriel answered, drawing with a stick in the dirt, what he knew: There were gold mines, in the hills behind Celindon.

  “Celindon?” Rulgh repeated.

  Oriel drew a city on a peninsula, and put in the two rings of walls. Rulgh recognized that. He made signs that Oriel understood to mean soldiers, and battles. Rulgh raised his right hand, with his forefinger and the little finger both extended, while his thumb held his two middle fingers
in against his palm. In that gesture, Rulgh’s hand resembled the head of a horned animal. Oriel understood—this was the sign to mark, and to ward off, dangers.

  “Gold mines,” he said, copying at the same time—as best he could with bound hands—Rulgh’s gesture of danger.

  “Is not so,” Rulgh said.

  “Aye, is so,” Oriel said. “Soldiers,” he pointed at Rulgh’s scratchings, “guard mines. Slaves,” he indicated his neck, where the band that marked a slave was worn, “work mines, carry,” he mimed hands full, “gold out. Brand,” he said, and sketched a long curved line, like a crescent moon, on his own cheek, the mark with which the slaves of the mines were identified.

  “Brand,” Rulgh said, and pushed up his shirt to show a white and puckered patch of flesh on his arm.

  “Yes,” Oriel agreed, “fire makes brand.” Behind them Griff heaved something heavy through the farmhouse door.

  Rulgh went away and Oriel turned to help Griff, but later in the day—when the Wolfers were exhausted with drinking and eating—the Captain returned. Oriel sat with Griff, who hadn’t spoken a word all day. Griff kept silent and as if mindless. The boy was with them, weeping and complaining and mourning. Oriel was not concerned about the boy—except to silence him when possible. He was concerned about Griff. Griff would not know how to turn himself to ice.

  Rulgh returned to say—if Oriel understood him—that the Wolfers wanted to attack the mines and take gold.

  Oriel advised against the attack. He made the sign for danger. “Many soldiers. Few Wolfers. Steal,” he said, “be thieves.” He mimed stealing a purse from his own waist, while he looked the other way.

  “Wolfers not stealers,” Rulgh said. “Wolfers fight.”

  “Wolfers fools,” Oriel said, impatient, and too worried about Griff to guard his words.

  “Fools?” Rulgh asked.

  Having risked the remark, Oriel risked the answer. He didn’t have any hope, and he didn’t care all that much anymore. He thought he understood more of the Wolfer tongue with every day that passed, but he wasn’t sure of the words. “Fool,” he said, “tewkeman.”

  Rulgh’s light blue eyes glared at him, like sun off ice, briefly, before Rulgh showed his teeth in a smile. “Is not so, Oriel,” he said, and then got up to fetch Oriel more meat and bread, and a bowl of ale. “That man fool,” Rulgh said, pointing at the boy.

  “What about me? Why don’t you give me any food?” the boy asked Rulgh. “I’m hungry, Oriel, will you give me—why doesn’t he give me any?”

  “You man fool,” Rulgh said when Oriel pulled at Griff’s naked arm, trying to rouse Griff from his stupor to eat. “Tewkeman.” Oriel ignored Rulgh.

  “Mines?” Rulgh asked the boy.

  The boy turned to Oriel. “What is he saying? What does he want? What’s he going to do?”

  “Do you know where the gold mines are? near Celindon?”

  “Not really,” the boy said. “I’ve heard stories, but like the Kingdom, it’s only stories. I’ve never been—”

  “King-dom?” Rulgh asked.

  “Stories,” Oriel said. Rulgh didn’t understand. Rather than give the Wolfer occasion to be angry, Oriel said, “Away north,” with a wide gesture of his arm. “Over mountains.”

  “Ah,” and comprehension shone out of Rulgh’s eyes. He said a word Oriel didn’t know, but assumed meant Kingdom, and then repeated “Kingdom. You see?” he asked, pointing to his eyes, a mocking smile now on his mouth.

  “No,” Oriel said. “Stories,” he said, and waggled his fingers in front of his mouth, to show words, only words. This Rulgh understood. “Brautel,” he said, waggling his fingers by his mouth. “Not so.”

  Then he turned back to the boy. “Mines?” asked again. The boy shrank back, and only stopped himself from weeping because he was more afraid than miserable. “Gold? Mines?” Rulgh demanded.

  “Say yes,” Oriel advised the boy.

  “But—”

  “Say yes and try to lead him there. He’ll kill you if you get it wrong, but I think he’ll kill you anyway so you might as well give yourself a chance.”

  “Yes!” the boy cried. “But I have to eat first.”

  Oriel put that into what he thought was Wolfer words, and Rulgh understood. One of the other Wolfers brought the boy food. After they had eaten, the seven Wolfers and their three captives rose, and walked away up the stony hill. They left behind them the smoking ruins of a farmhouse, inhabited after them only by the dead.

  Chapter 17

  THE HEAT OF FIRES, THE heat of blood, the heat of fear and fighting—Oriel never remembered how many farms they had taken on their way to the gold mines. He was a man of ice, against the heat.

  Griff moved beside him like an animal sickening to its death. Half of the time when his glance fell on Oriel, bound nearby, it was as if he had never seen Oriel before.

  The boy clung close to Oriel, when Rulgh did not have him at the head of the band of Wolfers, leading them back southward and seaward. Oriel never asked the boy’s name.

  Warm sunlight, warm rain—it was not always easy to be cold as ice, cruel as ice, in every thought and desire. Always before, Oriel realized, there had been a prize for the winning. The Damall’s island, the Saltweller’s lands: Those were what he had desired and won, before. Now the prize was life. To live through the day was his highest hope.

  What Rulgh must not know was how closely Oriel’s strength was bound to Griff’s needs. For that reason, Oriel shared what food he was given equally between the nameless boy and Griff. All three shared equally the little they were given, except that Griff ate less than either of the others.

  When Rulgh searched Oriel’s face, as if to know what was in his mind and heart, Oriel thought if it weren’t for Griff he might become a Wolfer. Only Griff held Oriel to the life he had known, and Oriel was not always glad of that. He could become, he thought, a Captain of a Wolfer band, aye, and even one of the foremost Captains, were it not for Griff.

  The morning they arrived at the mines, sounds gave them warning that the mining camp lay ahead. The Wolfer band, and its three captives, crept up unobserved, sheltering behind boulders.

  There were twenty or more soldiers visible, but only six of the slaves, with iron collars around their necks and red crescents on their cheeks. There were hobbled donkeys and a wagon piled with chunky stones. A yellow flag flying over the doorway into the hillside told Oriel these were Karle’s men, and the path that disappeared into the darkness within the hill led to Karle’s gold.

  Some of the soldiers were gathered into groups, gambling for coins on the fall of the bones, while awaiting their meal, a spitted animal that rotated over the flames as a slave turned the handle of the spit. All the soldiers were armed, but none were wary.

  Why should they be armed? Oriel wondered, and then he wondered if—if he were to betray the Wolfers’ presence by a warning shout, and were the Wolfers to fail to kill him, and were he to survive the battle that would follow—he wondered if he would thereby gain for himself any fate other than to become one of these slaves. Their beards were ragged, around the scarred cheeks. They moved slowly, as if weak and stupid, like men accustomed to slavery.

  Oriel thought that such slavery must be his lot, should he betray his captors.

  Because Griff, Oriel thought, would not last a day in the mines. He himself, Oriel thought, would last for several seasons. Whose would be the worse fate he couldn’t have said.

  The sky overhead was cloudy, under a growing wind. The wind picked up dry earth and blew it in gusts, in circling whirlpools. Even the sound of wind favored the Wolfers. Oriel waited to hear what plan of attack Rulgh would devise. The opening to the mine shaft was a little ways up the hill; if the guards could gain it, like a small doorway it would be an impregnable position. If it were his battle, Oriel would lure the soldiers away from the mine, down into the gully. The armor plates the guards wore would be heavy to carry, so Oriel would tell his men to attack, then seem to retreat in d
isorder into the hills and then, when the enemy had carried his heavy armor up and down a few hillsides, turn to fight. The difference in numbers—more than three soldiers to each Wolfer—put the Wolfers at great risk.

  The risk was so great that Oriel would choose to arm his captives, if he were a Wolfer.

  All of these thoughts passed through Oriel’s mind in the time it took Rulgh to gather his men around him, and talk urgently to them. At the end of Rulgh’s speech, the Wolfers unsheathed their swords and raised them up into the air.

  “No,” Oriel said, keeping his voice as quiet as the looming danger permitted. “Rulgh, don’t—”

  The Wolfers shouted out a great shout, and then another.

  Rulgh looked at Oriel.

  “Fool,” Oriel said.

  “Fruhckman,” Rulgh said, cold-eyed.

  Oriel, as cold-eyed as his captor, drew himself up tall. “Not so,” he said, and turned his back.

  The Wolfers shouted again and again, as if each shout made them braver, stronger, more ready for battle.

  Above the Wolfers’ shouts, a horn sounded.

  The Wolfers, in a line of seven, scrambled up the hillside to meet the enemy. At the top of the hill they ranged themselves in a line of seven, howling now. Oriel left Griff behind a boulder with the boy and crept up to watch.

  The soldiers had drawn back to the mine door and stood ready, behind a barrier of slaves. The slaves knelt, making a wall three kneeling bodies deep in front of their masters. Their hands were manacled, their necks circled with iron; they had no weapons, no defenses.

  It was only a brief battle—the Wolfers bloodied their swords on the slaves, giving the soldiers time to reach across the human wall with their spears and longswords. Oriel could see immediately that it was hopeless—

  But he admired the blind courage of the Wolfers. He watched one man, his sword hand sliced off, held by the beard while an armored soldier drove a sword into his belly and pulled it up towards his heart: The Wolfer showed no fear, not before pain, not before death, not before his enemy.