'Yes,' I told him. 'And you?'
'Indeed — it was as Atara said: there were four of them, spread out. Their attention was on the house, and they didn't notice me coming out of the trees.'
He patted the hilt of his dagger; I hated the smile that broke upon his savage face.After that, Tarmond walked down the hill toward us as the doors of the longhouse opened and the villagers of Gladwater began pouring out.
Chapter 12
Tarmond, I saw, clutched at his bloody shoulder, from which the broken shaft of an arrow protruded. He said to me, 'The fourth archer shot me just as I shot at him.'
His deeds, no less ours, were the wonder of the villagers, who gathered around us. There were twenty-five of them: mothers and grandmothers, children dressed in poor woolens and a few bent old men. For a while, we traded stories with them. The only man of fighting age was a broad-shouldered woodsman, who had a thick beard and shaggy dark hair. From between a gap in his reddened teeth, he spat a stream of an evil-looking liquid. He was dressed all in green. Tarmond presented him as Berkuar. As this rough, rude-looking man took in Tarmond's wound, he said to him, 'That was some fine arrow-work I saw today, old friend.'
He turned toward me and my companions and added, 'You used the sword and the lance well, I suppose; I am mostly unfamiliar with those weapons. We of the forest rely on these.'
So saying, he held up his longbow, and he touched the sheath of his long knife.
'The Crucifiers, too, bear swords,' he said, staring at me. He stepped forward and poked a dirt-stained finger into the opening of my cloak where my mail showed through. 'And armor, as well though nothing so fine as this steel. You say you are knights bound for the Red Desert?'
We told him the same story that we had prepared for Tarmond, and he told us his. Berkuar, it turned out, was one of the Keepers of the Forest, or the Greens, as they were called. He had come to Gladwater to test a young man named Taddeum for recruitment into his society. But one of Taddeum's rivals, Grimshaw, had betrayed them, calling Harwell and the mercenaries down upon Gladwater. In the battle that had ensued, Harwell's mercenaries had slain nearly every fighting man in Gladwater — and many others — and threatened to burn down the entire village as punishment for sheltering Berkuar. We had come along just in time to witness the survivors' last stand inside the longhouse.
'It's a terrible choice we had,' a middling-old woman named Rayna told us. 'Fire or the cross. Of course, sometimes the Crucifiers put you on the wood and then set it on fire anyway. I was ready to slit my daughter's and grandson's throats, and my own as well.'
Here she wrapped her arm around the shoulders of a young woman giving suck to a newborn as she showed us the dagger strapped to her belt.
And then she told us, 'We owe you our lives, and we would make a feast for you, if we could. But there is no time. What happened here will be reported, and then the Crucifiers will come here by the score — perhaps even the Red Priest called Vogard or Arch Yatin himself. We have time to bury our dead, perhaps, but then we'll all have to take to the forest.'
It pained me to think of these poor people hiding among the trees, and living wild and hunted. But it seemed that there was no help for it. Rayna, for one, however, had no pity for herself — only an immense gratitude to be still alive. As she put it, she was an Acadian, one of a tough and resourceful people who had thrived off the bounty of the forest for thousands of years and who would survive for many thousands more.
One of those who hadn't survived, though, was the riverman, Gorson. He had died, it seemed, defending his boats from the Crucifiers. It turned out that the flatboat he used in secret to ferry his countrymen across the Tir was unharmed. Tarmond told us that we should take it as our reward, if we could manage to work it ourselves.
'I would come with you, if I could,' he told us. Then he gripped his wounded arm. 'But an arrow-shot old man is no companion for a band of pilgrims such as yourselves. And my place is with my people.'
As he spoke, Liljana and Master Juwain. with Estrella and Daj came down the hill trailing their mounts and our packhorses. Master Juwain was of a mind to help the five villagers wounded in the battle, and Tarmond most especially. But these hard people of Gladwater preferred to tend to their own,
'I could heal them quickly,' Master Juwain said to me in a low voice as he took me aside. 'If I could use my gelstei. If I can't, I suppose they'll have to draw arrows and stitch themselves. I'm afraid they've had too much practice at this for a long time.'
As we made ready to go down through the ravaged village to the river, Tarmond spoke a few low words to Berkuar. Then he told us, 'The woods beyond the Tir are thick, with only a few paths through them. And thirty miles from here, you'll come to another river, the Iskand. Berkuar is willing to show you the way through the woods and a ford across the Iskand. if you're willing to let him.'
The rest of us were more than willing to accept this woodsman as our guide, but Kane scowled at Berkuar, and took me by the arm as he pulled me away from the others. And he snarled at me: 'Trust this dirty stranger to lead us true? No, I say! What if Berkuar was in league with the Crucifiers? These Acadians are quick to betray their own, eh? What if their attack was staged solely to lure us to the rescue?'
I looked at Kane as if he might have been maddened by bad drink. 'Does that seem likely, or even possible? That Berkuar tricked the Crucifiers, as well as us? And why should Berkuar have thought that we would help the villagers?'
I looked over at Berkuar, standing like a bear next to Tarmond. He seemed almost as suspicious of us as Kane was of him.
'I don't know!' Kane snarled. 'So, he is willing to guide us through Acadu. But guide us where, eh? Maybe into a trap, where his confederates will capture us and torture out of us all that we know.'
I told him that if Berkuar was our enemy and had wanted to trap us, he had only to lead Harwell and the mercenaries against us in the wild land across the river. And then I clapped him on the shoulder and added, 'You've grown too suspicious, my friend. I think you've let the evil of these woods get to you.'
Then I walked back over to the others and said to Berkuar, 'We've taken counsel and would be honored if you would guide us.'
I bowed to him, but he seemed to have no knowledge of this gesture — or indeed, of manners of any sort. He spat again on the ground and said, 'Let's be off then. There's no time to lose.'
We said goodbye to Tarmond and the other villagers, then turned to follow Berkuar around the longhouse. We passed through the band of trees, where four archers lay with their throats slit open like gaping red mouths. The short walk through Gladwater's streets revealed other grisly sights. The dead were everywhere, in front of neat, wooden houses and blocking our way down the streets. We could not step carefully enough to avoid them. My boots, I saw were soon stained a reddish-brown from tramping through the bloodied mud.
We found Gorson's boats tied to a dock jutting out into the river. The flatboat he had used for ferrying was a huge construction, more like a raft with low rails than a true boat. It was hard getting the horses aboard it, especially Altaru, for he had experience at being floated on top of water, and he hated being so shipped. As I pulled him on board, he drove his hoof into the boat's deck with such force that it seemed he might stave it to splinters. But the boat was sturdy enough to bear up even in a raging river. After we urged on the other horses and ourselves as well, we cast off and let the current take us out into the Tir. Kane and I, with Maram and Berkuar, pushed the boat cross-current with the aid of long poles that we stuck down into the river. It seemed a clumsy means of navigation, but it sufficed to take us across to the other bank.
As promised, the forest here was thicker than in the part of Acadu that we had so far crossed. Few people, it seemed, lived nearby to burn out the undergrowth, which grew in low walls of bracken, buttonbush and other shrubs. It would have been difficult to force our way through such a tangle. We were fortunate, I thought, to have a guide who led us onto a path through the woods
running almost due west.
We did not travel very far that day, for it was growing late, and we were all weary. We set to making camp in a clearing where there was a stream and good grass for the horses. Berkuar seemed amused at Kane's insistence that we fortify our camp with the usual fence of deadwood and logs. He did not say why. He was not a talkative man or a particularly friendly one. But he joined in the work at day's end willingly enough, gathering wood for our fire and then helping Liljana prepare our dinner. This was an enormous ham that one of the villagers had given us. As Liljana turned it on a spit, fat dripped down into the fire and popped and crackled. The sweet-salt smell of roasting meat made my mouth water.
After dinner, when Kane was apportioning hours for the night's watches, Berkuar brought out a bag of reddish-brown nuts and offered one to Maram, who would stand the first watch. When Maram asked what they were, Berkuar replied, 'We call them barbark nuts. You hold them in your mouth, beneath the tongue, and they give you wakefulness as well as strength.'
So saying, Berkuar loosed a stream of red spittle at the fire where it caused the flames to smoke and writhe as it hissed away into vapor.
Maram looked doubtfully at the hard, shiny nut in Berkuar's dirt-stained hand. 'Does it, ah, gladden the spirit as well? Like brandy?'
'It does — but without the stupor. And it makes a man as strong in the loins as a bull.'
'Give me one, then!' Maram said, snatching the nut from Berkuar's hand. He opened his mouth and made ready to pop it inside.
'Hold!' Master Juwain said. He sat across the fire between Liljana and Estrella. 'Remember your vow!'
'My vow was to forsake brandy and beer.'
'In spirit, it was to forsake all intoxicants. And what do we know about these barbark nuts, anyway? I've never heard of such before.'
Berkuar's teeth shone red as he grimaced at Master Juwain. Another man might have patiently described the classification of the barbark nut with other botanicals, and its harvesting and preparation — or explained that its use among the Acadians had a long and honored history. But that was not Berkuar's way. He reached into his leather bag and cast a handful of nuts down into the dirt. He said, 'Chew them or not, as you wish.'
Then he picked up a waterskin and stalked off down to the stream.
'A strange man,' Master Juwain said, coming over to examine the nuts. 'I hope this barbark, whatever it is, hasn't addled his wits.'
At dawn, however, Berkuar greeted the morning with a mighty stretch and clear blue eyes. He helped us break camp with a rude good cheer. He moved with a sort of animal grace and power that reminded me of Kane. He seemed to have little liking or care for Maram or me, or indeed, any other human being. His passion, I sensed, was for flower and leaf, for the rabbits that darted across our path and the deer browsing on bracken — and even the squirrels scurrying along the branches above us. His wide nostrils quivered in the breeze as if he were breathing in all the scents of the forest and much else as well. He padded along almost soundlessly in his soft leather boots. He was a quiet man, as far as conversation with others was concerned, but often as noisy as a chittering bird. Indeed, he liked to talk to his winged friends, as he called them, trilling out notes with his thick tongue or imitating their calls. His whistles, as songlike as those of any songbird, were a marvel to hear. While passing through some oaks, he let loose a succession of shureet-shuroos indistinguishable from the voices of the scarlet tanagers that sang back to him. I had a strange sense that he was communicating to them secrets that neither I nor my companions were meant to hear.
While we were resting in another clearing later in the morning, Maram tried to make conversation with him. He moved over to me and rested his hand on my shoulder as he said to Berkuar, 'Mirustral, too, can talk to animals. He's always had a way with them.'
This indeed piqued Berkuar's curiosity. He wiped his greasy fingers in his beard, then pointed toward a robin that was standing nearby on the forest floor. 'What does yon bird say to you, then?'
I let the morning breeze wash over me. I saw a dragonfly near some goldthread and a fritillary fluttering all orange and glorious in a patch of dandelions. From somewhere deeper in the trees, a bobcat screeched out in anger. Once, I remembered, when I was a boy running free in the forests of Mesh, I had loved the wild so much that it seemed I had a covenant with these animals, indeed, with all life. Why, I had wondered, did it seem that man was too often evil and nature good? Who could look out into the woods on a perfect spring day and fail to be astonished at the beauty of the world and the way that all things seemed to beat with one heart and share a secret fire?
I finally I told Berkuar, 'The robin is hungry, as robins always are. Especially in the spring. She is listening for a worm to take back to her hatchlings.'
'Listening?' Berkuar said as we watched the robin cocking her head, this way and that. 'But how could you know that?'
'Mirustral knows things,' Maram said as he squeezed my shoulder. 'And the animals know that he knows. It's the way that he calls to them.'
I looked up at Maram and shook my head in warning. It wouldn't do to tell Berkuar, or any other stranger, too much about my gift of valarda.
Now Berkuar seemed suddenly very interested in me. He pointed up past the crowns of the trees at the blue sky. There, a hawk soared above us and called out its harsh, screaming kee yarr. And Berkuar said to me, 'Let's hear you call to that hawk, then. Not many can do well the cry of a red-shouldered hawk.'
'Neither can I,' I said.'I've never been able to mimic animals.'
'Then how is it that you can call to them?'
In answer, I stood and turned my face to the sky. I looked up at the hawk even as he looked down at me. In the meeting of our eyes was a shock of recognition, like the flash of a lightning bolt. It seemed as if the hawk and I had known each other for a million years and would be as brothers for a million more.
'Come!' I whispered in the silence of my heart. 'Ashvarii. come to me!'
It was said that if you called out an animal's true name, he would do as you asked.
Again, the hawk gave voice to its screaming hunting cry; I felt this sound deep within my own throat. Suddenly, without warning.. the hawk pulled back his wings and dived straight down toward me. I held my arm straight out. At the last moment, it seemed, the hawk's wings beat the air in a feathered fury as he settled down onto my forearm and wrapped his talons around my cloak and the steel mail buried beneath it.
Daj and Estrella came running to witness this little miracle, and Maram's eyes widened in surprise.
The hawk turned his bright black eye toward me. Ashvarii, my grandfather used to call this kind of hawk. He was a beautiful bird; true to his name, his feathers were rufous around the shoulder, and his wings were barred black and white. Five thin white bands marked his black tail. Nature had designed this sleek bird to hunt along the wind, flying as straight and true as an arrow. He looked at me for a long moment, as if to ask me why I remained so heavy and earthbound? Then he cried out again, and in a burst of muscles and feathers, pushed off my arm into the air. He flew up and up, toward the crowns of the trees.
'Strange,' Berkuar said, looking at me in a new light. 'Very strange.'
It occurred to me that I had not called animals in this way for a long time. It gave me hope that the lies and killings of the previous year hadn't completely sullied me. Would Ashvarii have come to me if I were forever tainted with hate? How was it possible, I wondered, to hate at all in sight of such a great being?
And then a shadow fell over my eyes as it came to me that Morjin would hate this bird solely because it claimed a realm that could not be his and flew so wild and free.
'Strange,' Berkuar murmured again. 'We of Acadu do not summon these hunting birds as you have done, but it is said that in-other lands they practice such arts. Is that your bird then, trained from a hatchling?'
'I've never seen him before,' I told him. 'And that bird belongs to no one and nothing except the sky.'
After that we resumed our journey to the west. We did not come across the hawk again. But the woods were full of other birds: warblers and ravens, sparrows, shrikes and starlings. We saw many four-legged animals as well, and many of these were deer. What evening we feasted on a young buck killed by Berkuar. He spent most of an hour washing its still form in fresh water and chanting over its spirit before he would allow us to dress and cook it. Maram, it seemed, had developed a liking for this strange man and his ways. He was overeager to take the first watch; he even offered to stand Master Juwain's and my watches, as well. The night passed peacefully, with Daj and Estrella curled up in each other's arms between Atara and Liljana in front of the fire. Toward midnight, the wakeful Berkuar called out to a great horned owl somewhere in the woods. The owl's deep, hooing answer seemed as natural as the wind, but it disturbed me even so.
Just before dawn, I came awake to the urgent press of Kane's hand. He knelt over me, gripping his strung bow as waves of anger poured out of him. When my eyes finally cleared, he bent his head low and whispered to me, 'There are men, all around us, in the woods.'
As I roused myself up and grabbed for my sword, Kane whipped about and drew an arrow. He fit it to his bowstring, which he pulled back, aiming the arrow straight at Berkuar standing guard by the wooden fence that protected our encampment. I quickly woke the others, even Daj and Estrella. Atara and Maram armed themselves, too, then joined Kane and me as we stood facing Berkuar.
'So, you've led us into a trap!' Kane snarled at him.
The day's first light barely sufficed to show the gray trunks of trees all around us and the bracken low and grayish green along the forest floor. The morning mist filled the silent woods. Between the trees, I saw, through the swirls of mist stood men in a great circle around us. There must have been more than thirty of them. They wore long, hooded cloaks and bore bows and arrows, which they pulled back on almost invisible strings. They seemed to be waiting for a signal or call.
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