“It’s an old story, Ayelbann’r. Very old.”
“Aren’t they all,” said Bayrd dryly. “Harder to disprove that way.”
“Come now, look at your horse.”
“Once more for that one, please?” Bayrd eyed the headman, then glanced accusingly at the cup of honeyfire as if the liquor had started to affect his hearing as well as his pleasantly sweet-seared throat. “What has a Ferhana mare to do with hauntings?”
“Nothing to do with the haunting, but plenty to do with the story. The best horses and the best dogs – and the best people too, I suppose – all have long pedigrees. Why not the best stories as well?”
Bayrd considered that; there was logic in it, of the skewed sort he had grown familiar with both in Kalitz and here in his dealings with Overlord Albanak. “Why not, I suppose,” he conceded, tasting the honeyfire and finding its flavour and slow, sweet burn even more insidiously appealing. “You were saying…?”
“That once, long, long ago, Lord Ared built himself a fine citadel on the hill overlooking the lake—”
“Now just wait. I’m not that drunk. You said it overlooked the woods.”
“It does,” said Youenn, giving him a gently reproving look. “Lake and forest both. You haven’t seen it yet, or you wouldn’t wonder so much. The one runs along the shoreline of the other. May I get on…?”
“Don’t let me stop you.”
Youenn Kloatr drew breath to say something on that very subject, but took time to study his words from all sides before he spoke and after that thought better of saying anything at all. There might be a guest in the headman’s house, and a guest who was reacting well to scholarly teasing, but that guest had brought in an excessive number of weapons and none of them looked as though they were meant just for show. Best not to push too hard.
“He built,” Youenn resumed, “a fortress overlooking the lake and the great Forest of Baylen. He built it well, and he built it strong, a great hold for his children to inherit – for he was a man newly married, and a man who married for love in the face of every opposition from his linefather and his family and his House. Thus he had determined to have many fine children, and raise them with obligation owed to none save himself alone, and thus put to censure all those who disparaged him and his name.”
“I sympathize with the man,” muttered Bayrd into his cup; then he raised it in silent salute, and emptied it with a single sharp flick of his wrist, and filled it to brimming again. Youenn paused and studied him thoughtfully, then without comment resumed his story.
“The old tales say that it was in Ared’s mind,” he said, “that if his family and his House did not accept his wife then he would discard them – as was the right of a lord in the ancient time – and with them their name and all the history of high deeds that went with that name, and make his own new name and line more famous still. Hence the splendour of his castle.”
“Fortress.”
“Fortress. Whatever. Horselord, if you want to travel in Elthan, then learn all our words and not just the old ones from the old books. The Lord Ared had gained much favour in the wars – no, the wars aren’t mentioned; they’re in a different story – and much wealth and support from all the other Houses who had grown angry to see one of such high renown disdained by his own line. He used this support, and almost all his own wealth, and regardless of the obstacles laid in his way by those who should have known better, Lord Ared built Dunarat. When it was built and the great banners of blue and white flowed from its towers…”
Bayrd’s head jerked up at that, though he managed to disguise the movement as a near-sneeze. Youenn Kloatr might be well enough disposed, but there were still some things that were none of his concern. This was one of them. Blue and white, with their thin piping of black, had been the ar’Talvlyn clan colours for almost half a thousand years, and to hear them mentioned here and now, in such a tale… Bayrd felt himself shiver slightly, and took another hasty swallow of honeyfire to kill whatever chill had caused it.
“There were feasts and banquets to celebrate its completion, great hunts in the forest both for sport and to bring more meat for the feast-fires, and races both of men and horses along the shore and men and boats across the waters of the lake—”
“Boats? And racing?”
“You have not seen Baylen’s lake, horselord.” Youenn’s lean left hand described a sinuous line across the rough-hewn tabletop. “A long lake, mostly straight between the knolls of the wooded hills, well shaped for racing – and for those who would gamble on the outcome of the races. The people of the ancient time were mighty gamblers, men and women who would wager on the flight of birds and the fall of snowflakes and—”
“And two flies walking up a wall. Yes. I know the sort.” Bayrd gave the headman a tight little smile, back on familiar territory again and glad of it. “If you keep the right wrong company, Youenn Kloatr, you’ll find that times have changed very little.”
“Just so. Then you can guess how fortunes were made and lost and made again, in races between men, or boats, or horses, or trained birds; in feats of strength or skill or simple bloody-minded daring.”
That hasn’t changed either, thought Bayrd. Sooner lose your life, among some people, than refuse an offered wager. He had seen it happen; not to the death, at least not quite, but certainly once to the barrack infirmary in Kalitzim, back when he was still just a Captain-of-Ten. That was the time one of his Ten, young Iskar ar’Joren, had bet that he could snatch a bag of twenty gold crowns from the stop-bar of a tripped catapult before its throwing-arm slammed up to squash them. On one of the big, ponderous siege-machines, he would have won – but this was a battlefield bombardment petrary, a small thing of iron-braced oak and cedar, as highly strung as a blood mare and with an action once the trigger was tripped that was as fast as a striking snake. Ar’Joren lost; he lost both the bet and his hand halfway to the elbow, even though he got to keep the coins. Even though the surgeon-commander had been able to pry all twenty of the flattened precious-metal discs from the mess of pulped meat and shattered bone, and even after they had been carefully scrubbed clean, nobody else seemed to want them any more…
“Do your lords still gamble?” he said, to take his mind off unpleasant memories.
“On the outcome of hunts and the outcome of wars,” said Youenn. “On the number of cattle seized in a raid and on the number of…” He faltered and stared at his drink, the image of a man whose mouth had run that little bit too fast for his mind to keep up.
On the number of kills, said a voice at the back of Bayrd’s mind, too tactful to say so aloud. “I understand,” he said, wishing that he didn’t. If war was a sport for the great lords, for Gelert and Yakez and Benart and the rest, then the easiest way that they could measure their success was in the number of corpses laid out at the end of a busy sporting day. Even if the Alban clan-lords and Heads of House made war savagely, in the manner of the harsh battles from across the sea, they did so to get it over with and finished, rather than to keep it going on and on for their own entertainment. War was not entertaining.
“Lord Ared’s time was long before that of the present lords, of course,” said Bayrd, shifting the subject away from what they both brooded on with the deliberate clumsiness of an awkward servant clearing a table.
“So the story goes.”
“And he gambled too?”
“You will find out just how much he gambled, and for what stakes.” Youenn pulled up a quick small smile from somewhere, one that suggested his spirit was less quenched than it might have been. “At least, you will if I am ever allowed to get that far into the story. Ayelbann’r horselord, there’s more beer in the keg. It’s a good brew; you said so yourself. So fill the jug and busy your mouth with that rather than questions. Just leave your ears free to listen.”
“That means no loud belching?” Bayrd glanced over his shoulder to return the smile as he went to the beer-barrel, considering that there was a story of his own to Youenn Kloatr.
>
The man spoke with far more authority than any other headman the Alban had encountered in his travels, and with a better command of language than most of them as well. But that story would be one for much later. Any further interruptions and Youenn might just give up in disgust and talk about unimportant things whose sense wouldn’t suffer by the constant butting in of an inquisitive stranger. And Bayrd wanted to hear about Dunarat-hold. He suspected he needed to hear about it. The best way to hear was to shut up and listen. So he shut up.
And listened…
* * * *
The feasting had gone on for most of the day; feasting and drinking and dancing and music, people falling into the lake and occasionally falling out of their clothes. That was appropriate enough, in its own way. Elyan, Ared’s lady wife, had told him only that morning that she was certain their first child was already on the way. It had been a last, wild string to their bow; that if all else failed, then they could marry with the grudging blessing of either side or both just so that the child would not be born without a family or line, and thus have to earn its own good name. Ironic, in its way, now that they were all without family or line or House.
Except for the house that reared above them on the hill.
That one had no history, not yet, save for the history of the land that dwelt dreaming in the worked stone of its grey bones; but it would make a history of its own. No fortress so magnificent would be just a home for the many generations of the lords who dwelt there. It would see years of peace, and it would see battles and sieges and triumphant victories, and always its great walls would be inviolate, unbreached by fire or foe or treachery.
The great blue and white banners rippled softly in the warm summer air, eighty feet and more of the finest imported silk hanging from the battlements, their fabric sifted with spices and sweet oils so that every time they moved leisurely in the passing breeze, it was scented by their heavy caress.
Lord Ared filled his cup, saluted his wife and the child within her that would surely be a son, raised the great stemmed bowl of gold and crystal high above his head and for the hundredth time that day bade all his friends be welcome. Some were of such rank that no-one could say what they might or might not do; but others had defied their own lords and Heads of House to be here, had lost respect and honour to prove by their presence under the Light of Heaven and in the eyes of the world that they thought him worthy of just such honour and respect.
“Ye have faced a challenge worse than battle to be here!” he cried in a voice that carried from the forest to the lake-shore and came slapping back from the silk-shrouded towers of his great hold. “Ye have given defiance to all those who have defied me! All of ye have laid your honour at my feet to show ye judge me worthy of it – and so do I judge all of ye! Take up thy honour again, take it up, I say. And ask me any task within my power, within my rank, within—” and he laughed at the thought, splashing wine from the cup so that it spattered in great garnet drops like blood across the ground at his feet, and soaked in too, as quickly and irrevocably as blood, “—within what little wealth remains to me after the building of Dunarat. Ask me what I may do to repay ye, one and all, and I will do it though it take me to the last generation of my line yet unbegun… Ask…!”
There was no reply save silence. The rashness of such a vow had taken all their breath away. To pledge himself: why, that was only fair, and what any man of honour had every right to do when his friends were deserving such a token of esteem. But to pledge the unborn, to set aside an obligation for them that might be as heavy and more long-lived than any shirt of mail, that was far from fair, and very far from honour.
Lord Ared looked at them, at the silent faces and the wide eyes, and perhaps a chill of premonition, a hint that he might have been just too rash after all, chilled the wine-heat in his blood enough for sense to take its place. He drank from the cup and looked quickly at what remained within, as though the dark red of the wine had become for that brief moment the dark red of another and more vital fluid.
“I am not drunk,” he said, half to himself. “I meant what I said. They gave their honour in trust to me, and what else could I do but…”
He turned the cup over in a single movement, so that the wine flowed out and drained away without a trace into the thirsty soil. After that the moment passed; but for the rest of the day Lord Ared drank white wine instead of red, and mixed that half and half with water so that it did no more than quench his thirst. He and the Lady Elyan his wife were glad of it, and his foolish words were forgotten.
There were more wagers that night in the great hall of Dunarat-hold, wagers that would have seemed foolish even to children had it not been for the large sums of money staked against their outcome. Warrior-lords whose dignity on other days would never have permitted such behaviour, thought nothing of laying a hundred marks of silver against their being able to hop on one leg right around a laden table, upsetting none of the dishes whilst all the time drinking a great beaker of wine without spilling any. Others balanced on their hands while their friends counted piled-up plates onto the soles of their feet. Others, younger and stronger, engaged each other in such feats of strength as trying to lift chairs with people sitting in them, or leaping across a table, or two tables, or leaping the length rather than the breadth of a table. The conclusion of all those wagers was invariably signalled by a crash and slithering of fragments, the whoops of merriment from those who had not landed in the fire or whose arms and legs had not been broken in the fall, and the yells from those who had. Winning or losing, it all sounded just the same.
They began calling to Lord Ared, asking him how he would wager and how much and on what, it being the custom and a sporting gesture for the lord who gave a feast to be for that one night as foolish as the most drunken of his guests. They called on him as much to show how they had forgotten his rash words of that afternoon, when he had pledged what had not been his to promise, and had offered to give up what was not yet his to have and hold.
Lord Ared chose not to wager, but instead to offer a prize in a contest. He was a great owner and breeder of horses, and the herds he possessed were his own, rather than the property of family or House. Thus they were his to dispose of as he saw fit – and one of his best Andarran mares was in foal to a fine blood stallion. He and his stable-master were the only ones who knew of it, and so he thought it would be a fine joke to offer nothing specific as the prize, only the newest thing that might be found in the fortress on this day next year…
* * * *
“I know this tale,” said Bayrd with a grim smile, “and you were right. It’s an old one.” When Youenn gave him an odd look, he flicked one hand in a dismissive gesture. “Oh, I haven’t heard this particular story before. But the way events are beginning to fall into place is familiar enough. Your Lord Ared has forgotten about his wife, hasn’t he? And the child she carries? Idiot.”
“As you say.” Youenn Kloatr wasn’t annoyed by the interruption; if anything he was amused by it. “The stories don’t change, any more than the stupidities of young men with too much to drink.”
If that was a jab aimed at him, Bayrd let it go by without comment and took another mouthful of the black beer. “What was the contest?” he wanted to know. “What did Ared want in exchange for the…the newest thing in the fortress?”
“He wanted a sword.”
“Just a sword?”
Youenn grinned at him. “No, horselord, not just a sword. This is a story, not a history. He wanted the finest sword in the world.”
“Oh, that,” said Bayrd. “And how would he know it when he found it? A written certificate from the finest swordsmith? Or would he be willing to settle for something a little less superlative?”
“Do your Ayelbann storytellers have all this trouble?”
“No. Usually they’d have left by now, or thrown something. But I have an inquiring mind. I like to know things.”
“Your problem, if it is a problem, is that you think too much.”
Bayrd raised his eyebrows at the old, old insult – if indeed it really was just an insult any more. Once is an insult, the saying went, twice is an opinion, three times might be the truth. And three hundred times, from as many different people – what was that? The thought hovered briefly, but led nowhere. “Maybe so,” he said. “Or as you like to put it, maybe not. But right now I’m thinking about the sword. What about it?”
Youenn studied him a moment, then shrugged dismissively. “The sword was brought, and given, and accepted by Lord Ared before he knew that the newest thing within his walls was no longer just a colt. His child, his first-born, his son, was the prize, and it was a prize that his honour and his own sworn word required that he give up, for all that he offered everything else that he possessed if only the infant was left with him. Those offers were refused. The prize was taken from the fortress, and Lord Ared and his wife both slew themselves for rage and grief. They say their spirits walk the ruins still.” The headman sat back in his chair and took a drink of honeyfire, then looked Bayrd up and down. “There, horselord,” he said. “Is that telling short enough for your impulsive ears?”
Bayrd grimaced slightly. That had been an unmistakable rap across the knuckles for his impatience. “Too short,” he said. “Too short by half.”
“Strange. I thought you were in a hurry to know what had happened. Now you do, and now you say I was too quick about it.”
“There’s hurry and there’s indecent haste. And this was haste indeed. But no matter; it tells me what I wanted to know, more or less.” He raised his mazer of beer in a sketchy half-salute, to the storyteller and the story he had told – and to the dead, if they had ever been alive and more than just characters in an old, grim tale from long ago. “So Lord Ared killed himself. And his wife too… Is suicide a custom of the Prytenek people?”
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