The Tale of Oriel

by Cynthia Voigt

  The Wolfers were doomed. Oriel turned around, to flee with Griff and if their strength held, and they had any luck, they might make it back to Selby—

  Once again the sound of a horn cut through the noisy air. This horn sounded from a distance, and distracted the guards. There was the sound of marching feet, there was a distant calling of voices, there was a cry come up among the soldiers at the mines, “Form up. It’s Phillipe’s army. Never mind these—” There were the cries of the wounded, and moans, and the sound of the wind. “Get the wagon inside. You, man, pile the bodies here—you heard me, let the dead take the blows for us.”

  Rulgh and two of the Wolfers came away on their own feet, and they supported another man whose blood poured down over his face. The soldiers didn’t even watch their flight.

  Horsemen in armor, two carrying red guidons, rode up onto a hill facing the Wolfers, and stopped there. Behind them the tips of spears carried by marching men became visible.

  “Surrender, we would be fools not to surrender!” some of the soldiers at the mines cried loudly, making the argument. “We’ll be slaughtered where we stand. There are a hundred of them for sure.”

  “But where is Karle’s army? Sound the horn again!” another soldier answered. “He swore to protect us. He swore—”

  Oriel advised Rulgh: “Go now, if you would live.” He made the sign for danger, then pointed to the mine entrance. He pointed urgently in the opposite direction.

  Rulgh reached down and hauled Griff to his feet, then hauled the cringing boy up. The boy struggled, and pulled back, and cried out shrilly. Rulgh roared at him, then ran him through with a sword, then shrugged him off the blade as if he were a loaf of bread. Oriel took the warning and pushed at Griff’s back. “Go, Griff, where he leads.”

  Griff’s blank face showed no response.

  Oriel shoved at Griff’s shoulders, as hard as he could. “Go now. Follow me. You must.”

  Griff obeyed him.

  ORIEL COULDN’T REMEMBER—WHEN—IN what direction Rulgh led them. He couldn’t—

  The Wolfers ran steadily, even burdened as they were by the injured man. The injured man had received no attention to his wound, but still he forced his feet to rise, and fall, in the slow unvarying pace Rulgh set, and maintained.

  Griff stumbled, and when he did Oriel punched him hard between the shoulder blades. Griff’s bare back was swollen with red cuts and scratches, and if he had had the strength Oriel would have been sorry to have hit him so roughly on his back.

  The line of men moved up hillsides and tumbled clumsily down them. It snaked among trees and around boulders. It splashed across streams without ever bending to refresh its mouth with water.

  It was hard to run like that with hands bound in front of him, Oriel noted. It would be hard, also, to run like that supporting a man who could not count on his own strength. But the Wolfers made no complaint.

  Sometime in the darkness Rulgh stopped. With groans of relief they all collapsed where they were. The night air was mild. A pale golden glowing in the sky showed where the moon hid behind clouds. They were among trees.

  If he had had to run, even walk, for another day, without any rest, Oriel knew—

  The Wolfers could have done it. They were not weak as other men were weak. They needed little to eat and drink, needed little rest, less than others. That was their secret strength; and Oriel thought that somehow, in the northern lands where they came from, their fathers must long ago have taken wolf-women as wives, to breed such sons.

  Oriel, his legs collapsed beneath him, slept suddenly.

  Rulgh’s cold eyes looked into Oriel’s face, and Rulgh’s hand slapped Oriel. Once, across the side of the head, and Oriel’s ears rang like bells. Again, on the other side.

  Oriel would show no feeling. His head cleared.

  “Go,” Rulgh said. “Bring,” he pointed down at Griff, who still slept, where he had fallen in the night.

  Oriel could never remember much of the first day, anything of the second night, the second morning—morning and afternoon and night all blended together—he thought he must have been asleep, but he knew he had been awake, and moving.

  When the sun was high in an empty sky the band rounded a hill and looked down onto a solitary farmstead. A wooden-sided house, a lean-to beside it, garden behind and fenced yard, and human figures in the garden bent over, working at the soil. Behind, a forested line of hills rose. Beyond that, at the distant edge of the world, a jagged line of white clouds lay along the horizon.

  Rulgh approached Oriel, where he leaned against a tree trunk. “Oriel. Come. After.”

  Oriel nodded, to show he understood.

  “Bring Jorg.”

  By the time Oriel realized that Jorg was the wounded man’s name, the three Wolfers were bounding down the hillside, their voices raised in a howl, or shout, in a sound that made the hair on Oriel’s neck stand up. Their swords were out for the attack. Oriel could have attacked with them. He could have found the strength.

  It wasn’t long at all before a Wolfer called up, and waved. Oriel and Griff, with Jorg between them, took a slanted easy path down the hill to the garden. The woman was on her knees, weeping, with two little children hiding in her skirts. Her belly was swollen out with a third child. Her hair, and that of the two children, was black as a moonless night, softly black like night clouds. The woman’s hair, neither bound nor combed, flowed over her bent shoulders like a nighttime river.

  Rulgh reached down to lift a lock of her hair from her shoulder, and to rub it gently in his fingers, as if it were a cloth of wonderful weaving.

  The woman looked up at Oriel, and at Griff. Her mouth was slack with fear and trickled blood. “Help us,” she asked. “Help me. These children, my children—”

  Oriel had seen too many women, heard too many women’s cries, to feel anything. Still, a sickness gripped his belly.

  Watching his face, the woman ceased her weeping. “How can I save their lives?” she asked, almost in a whisper.

  “There is no way,” Oriel answered her. “Nor your own,” he said, although she hadn’t asked that.

  She nodded, and rose up, gathering her children under her arms. “Then tell me this: How can I ask him to kill us quickly, and at once?”

  Oriel had thought he was beyond where pain could touch him. “There is no way,” he said again, and in anger. He turned to Rulgh, speaking in the simple language they had developed between the two of them. “Fruhckman, to kill children. Fruhckman, a woman—aye, and so great with child—”

  Rulgh’s face grew red. “Not so. Is not so.”

  Oriel looked into his captor’s eyes briefly, then turned his head to spit onto the ground. Rulgh would know his meaning. Oriel hoped only that, in the slaughter that would follow, he would be the first on Rulgh’s sword.

  “Aye,” Griff’s ragged voice came from Oriel’s shoulder. Griff hadn’t spoken in days. “Is so,” he said now.

  Rulgh raised his sword over his head and howled, like a wolf. At the sound, the children whimpered into their mother’s skirt, and one of the Wolfers moved to pull a child loose, but Griff let Jorg fall to the ground so that he could stand between the man and his prey.

  “Not so. Rulgh not so, not fruhckman,” Rulgh cried aloud, telling the news to the empty sky. “Feed us,” he said to the woman.

  She was afraid again. She looked to Oriel. “Tell him, can you tell him? The armies have destroyed the good of this farm.”

  “Are you alone?” Oriel asked her.

  “My husband went to battle—for the silver piece they give to every man who joins an army.”

  “Which army?”

  She shook her head. It made no difference to her, which banner he fought under. “He gave me the coin, but I buried it. Should—?”

  Oriel shook his head quickly. “Don’t—”

  She understood him without explanation. “My man will be dead by now, I think. And I will be glad to join him. But for the children, here, I’d—”<
br />
  “Can you feed us?”

  “Poorly.”

  “Do so. Can you wash this man’s wound?”

  She shrugged. “Why should I?”

  “For your children’s lives, as may be,” Oriel said.

  “You said there was no way.”

  Oriel shrugged, and wondered at her stubbornness to have no hope. “Perhaps even among the Wolfers there is.”

  Rulgh had hovered impatiently over the talk. “What?” he demanded now. “What?”

  “Woman will feed you,” Oriel answered him.

  Rulgh glared at him but did not ask why it took so many words to say so little.

  The Wolfers gave Jorg the straw mattress and then dropped to the floor. Even the Wolfers were tired out. They talked among themselves in low voices.

  The farmwife made a pot of watery turnip and parsnip soup, and brought out half a round of bread. Oriel kept close, should she need an extra hand as she served the Wolfers. Griff stayed outside with the children, who seemed to recognize him as one who would not push them away.

  From what Oriel could understand, there were two things bothering the Wolfers. First, their dead. He couldn’t tell if it was the loss of the men or if it was that they had been abandoned at the site of the battle. Then, second, something about gold troubled them. Malke, that was a word they kept using next to the word for gold. It was Malke that really worried them.

  The next day found the Wolfers rested and ready to go on. Jorg, however, couldn’t leave his bed. The farmwife fed him water from the stream, and cooled his face with damp cloths. They would stay, Rulgh said, until they knew Jorg’s fate. Meanwhile, their eyes often went to the wife, and Rulgh’s hands often went to her mass of black hair, but he forbade any man to take her for his desire.

  On the second day, while Jorg sweated and mumbled on the bed, Rulgh sent his two men off to the west, to search for game or food, and himself took Oriel into the hills east of the farmstead. They soon found, and ran down, a goat that had either been turned loose to wander in the woods, or had escaped into the woods. But the point of the hunt was for Rulgh to take Oriel’s opinion of how the Wolfers might get the gold they had failed to win in battle.

  Oriel tried to explain to Rulgh how he might have fought the battle at the mines. Rulgh asked Oriel what the chances of a second attack might be and wasn’t angered when Oriel said it would undoubtedly fail. “Go like a thief,” Oriel advised again.

  Rulgh was reluctant. Wolfers were bold. Wolfers weren’t like foxes, to steal in and steal out in the secret parts of night. Wolfers were warriors.

  Oriel shrugged, and turned away from his captor.

  Rulgh asked if one of his Wolfers, or he himself, could disguise himself as a slave, and betray the mines from within.

  Oriel asked if the man was ready to be branded with fire, and—should the plan fail—live out his life as a slave in the mines.

  Rulgh shook his head. He would not use a Wolfer so.

  Oriel shrugged, and turned away.

  Rulgh said, they would take Oriel, sell him to the soldiers, let him then betray from within.

  Oriel knew who he would betray.

  Rulgh watched his face and said, No, they would take Griff, sell Griff.

  Oriel hid his feelings.

  Rulgh watched Oriel’s face and said that Oriel would stay with the woman and Jorg and children. When Rulgh returned with the gold, then they would deliver the year’s booty to Malke.

  “Malke?” Oriel asked.

  “King,” Rulgh answered. He waved his hand in the direction of the white-clouded horizon. “Days away. In city, Malke waits. Wolfers give King,” Rulgh held up his two hands, then gathered the fingers of one hand into the opposite hand, “from two, one hand.”

  Oriel understood now. “Take me to the mines. Not Griff.”

  “No.” Rulgh turned away.

  “I am stronger.”

  Rulgh turned back. “Yes, stronger. Strong to keep here, or Griff—” He made a chopping motion with his hand.

  Anger burned at Oriel’s belly. “If you harm Griff—if anything—I will have revenge,” he told Rulgh.

  Rulgh didn’t know the word. “Revenge?”

  “Aye, revenge.” Oriel raised his bound hands to his own throat and drew them across, like a blade. “I am dangerous,” he said, and made the sign.

  Rulgh laughed out loud.

  THE THREE WOLFERS, AND GRIFF, left the next morning. After that, Oriel awaited their return day after empty day. He worked the garden and snared rabbits when they had picked clean the goat carcass. Rulgh had untied his hands, knowing that as long as there was a question of Griff’s safety Oriel would do Rulgh’s will.

  When Jorg died, Oriel and the woman carried him to the hillside, and buried him. They left Jorg his clothing, and his boots, too, lest Rulgh should accuse them of robbing the dead Wolfer. The woman thought Oriel should at least trade his trousers for Jorg’s heavier pair, but Oriel—mindful of the beryl he wore hidden at his back—refused. Day followed long day, and still the Wolfers, with Griff, did not return.

  The woman knew better than to try to escape, or send her children away; for Oriel must stop her. But he promised her, “If they return and all is well, if you can stay behind when we go north, then take your silver coin and go south. Go to Selby, on the coast,” he told her. “Find the Saltweller. Ask for help from his daughter, Tamara. Tell Tamara, it is Oriel who sends you, and Griff.”

  “Griff with his sad eyes,” the woman said. “You, Oriel, who seem kind but you are cruel. Which of you was this girl’s sweetheart?”

  Oriel had no time for such questions. “Can you find your way to the sea?” he asked the woman.

  “I can try. For the children.” She turned away, to return to the garden, where the weeds grew abundantly. Her great belly went before her like a sail filled with wind.

  “He has spared you,” Oriel reminded her.

  “I understand,” she said, her back to him. “I would be a fool not to be grateful. Or to you, also.”

  “It would be dangerous to be grateful to me,” Oriel said. He looked away to the south, where long days ago the Wolfers, and Griff, had disappeared into the trees. He looked away to the north, where those clouds lay—as always—along the horizon. “Those clouds, do they never move closer? Do they never bring rain?”

  “Those are the mountains, not clouds. Farther away than even the Wolfers’ realm, they say, and impassable. The mountains are covered in snow all the year round, so high are they, if you can believe the stories. If you can believe the stories, a man who crosses the mountains, and lives, will find himself in a land where the soil is rich and the law is strong, under one King, and the people prosper, for they work year after year in peace.”

  “I’ve heard of a Kingdom,” Oriel said.

  “Aye, there are always tales,” she said.

  THE THICK LONG ARMS OF the onions waved in their rows in the garden before the Wolfers, and Griff, returned. Four had gone and four returned, one bent over with the weight of the sack he carried on his back, and the other three walking upright.

  Rulgh made his proud greeting to Oriel. “We are stealers, and have gold. We have no men dead. Malke not complain of Rulgh, not with much gold. Now we eat.”

  Griff twisted his shoulder to let the heavy bag roll off, and Oriel turned him around. Griff’s back was crisscrossed with scars. The crescent on his cheek Oriel had been ready for, but these puckered lines—as if he had been whipped until the skin began to peel away from the meat beneath. “What is this, Griff?” he asked.

  Griff shook his head.

  “No, tell me,” Oriel said.

  Griff wouldn’t speak.

  “If slave,” Rulgh explained, still smiling. “A slave is whipped.”

  “The soldiers whipped you? Why?” Oriel asked.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Griff said. Griff moved now like a man who knows his own strength and knows his own strength is enough. His eyes, as the woman said, were sad, a
dark sad brown.

  “Not soldiers. Wolfers. I,” Rulgh said. His eyes were bright with his own cleverness. “To make soldiers tewkemans. To believe Griff slave. Slave run away from master.”

  Oriel was a man of ice, burning cold. “I warned you,” he said.

  Rulgh ignored him. Rulgh didn’t even dismiss Oriel, he just ignored him. It was all Oriel could do to keep his heart and eyes icy cold because he couldn’t even make good his own word.

  Rulgh had taken from Oriel even the power to keep his own word. He had whipped Griff hard enough to leave ruts in Griff’s back, and counted himself clever to do that. There was another reason why Rulgh had whipped Griff; he wanted Oriel to know that Oriel was powerless.

  But Oriel would never accept that knowledge. It was false, and Rulgh was false, and Rulgh would come to understand that.

  “It’s done now,” Griff said. “Finished.”

  “We eat,” Rulgh said, and clapped Oriel on the shoulder in celebration of his victories. “We rest, one day, two, and then go home. Jorg?” Rulgh asked.

  “Dead. We buried him,” Oriel said. “There,” he indicated the forested hillside. Rulgh looked at the trees, then back to the house, and decided to think of his dinner rather than the dead.

  Oriel and Griff served the Wolfers stew made of small animals Oriel had trapped, and bowls of honey mead, mixed with herbs and water. Then he set out food for the woman and Griff and himself. But the woman breathed in gasps, and had no hunger. “It’s my time,” she said, and she left the room. All through the summer evening they could hear her. The children slept. The Wolfers slept. Oriel and Griff sat close together and the woman moaned rhythmically. “Can we ask them to leave us here?” Griff asked Oriel.

  “If Rulgh takes us with him he has booty and captives and gold. My guess is, it’s shame to a Captain to lose so many men,” Oriel said, “so he has to take us with him.”

  The woman cried out, from the grassy hillside beyond the garden.

  Oriel knew that his face, under the faint moon, must look as pale to Griff as Griff’s face did to him. “I know nothing of childbirth,” Oriel said, “and she has had two children already.”