"Nay, take your meat undisturbed. Not for nothing have you an enchanter of your company. I had marked these for Vulking allies from the first moment, so that when this one passed I but touched him with ash and a small spell your young captain knows of. In this weather he will wander at fault; they will find his body or if the wolves come his bones, in the spring."
At this the man Britgalt's eyes seemed like to start from his head; he got breath to yell a slobbering curse and struggled so hard it took all Erb's force with another to hold him. The tall man said:
"Undisturbed we take meal, but sauce we just must have, and the sauce is that these two false Dalecarles be hanged to the ridge-pole of their own byre before we sit at meat."
There was so loud a shout of approval that Airar, young enough to be tenderheart, gave over before bringing to speech his thought of protest. Meliboe the enchanter looked at him as the pair were led struggling out.
"I have heard of those so gentle they will not squash beetles," said he; "mainly they turn religious and live by cozening women."
But that night he thought of Gython and lay awake long among the snoring men, wondering if it were possible to die of heartbreak alone; and of Rudr's people under the iron rod of Briella.
15 Hestinga: It Is Another Day
THE STARS were one BY one twinkling into light and the moon not yet risen when young Airar came forth to look on the west's last paleness. They had that day burned ofd grass from fallow land for the easier planting of grain; the smoke still clung along windless levels and mingled its scent with that of things suddenly green. Out toward the ricks a colt capered beside its dam.
He drew a long breath and looked round; north and west the steeps of the Dragon's Spine climbed brokenly to snow, their peaks still catching the last faint dayshine and seeming so near they might be reached in an hour by a man not of the most brisk afoot. Said Erb the Lank:
"What think you? Who be they riders that come past elm clump there? You have the eyes of me, Master Sharpsight; but I make it too many for Holmund and a's band."
Airar turned long and lazily, stretching his arms. "Belike the men of that Hrappsted twenty leagues away south," he said. "When they guested here they would join us for the journey over the mountains at the break of spring, and lo! it has come." He looked under a hand; "Nay, Erb, you have right; these are far too many and not of the right fashioning; I see a gleam of steel. Cry sword and ware."
Erb turned; even as he did so there came a shout from the man who stands always in the spy-post on the roof-tree of those Hestinga steads. Now there was hurry and barring of doors, with even the cook who was a Micton serf called out from scouring pots. In truth as they drew near it could be seen this was not a little company, though maybe their numbers were made more in the dying light; fully armed all. Bows were ready at the overhang windows as they approached and spearmen in the watch-booths along the stockade, but the leader of those who came rode in with one arm uplifted, crying; "Ho within, is this the stead of Sedu?" and when he had a somewhat surly answer, instead of answering again, sang out in a high voice:
"Geme, plange, moesto mori—and have you one here called Airar the Farsighted of Vastmanstad?"
"Dolorosa Dalarna!" shouted Airar down in return and ran below to be embracing Rogai the hunter in a moment, with "What tidings?" and "You come escorted for sure," and "I thought you dead or sieged with the Duke Roger."
"Aye, there was the worst man in the world, but dead and gone now and can make no defense or himself, so no more on that, but let us in and we'll fall to a change of budgets."
Now Airar must vouch for Rogai and his train to the overseer of the stead of Sedu, Holmund the horse-master being absent. They crowded through the gate to the number of some thirty and there was a busy confusion with torches brought and serfs running about to care for horses, while fresh meat was set out in the long hall. The first that came in beside Rogai were four like as peas to peas, with black hair bearing a wisp of white above the brow and long, thin visages. Airar went shy at once on seeing face to face those famous Carrhoene captains. With Rogai it was all ease; he named them—Alsander, Pleiander, Evimenes, Evander, the last with no hint of hair on face, who must be the concealed girl.
"Great joy," they murmured at the naming and would at once have taken the places flanking the high-seat, but Meliboe already had one seat there and Erb stood behind another, so with slight frowns and Evander making a mouth at him they must follow Rogai around the table to the seats facing, while Airar last of all slid into his accustomed chair to the right of Holmund's high seat. As soon as they were down and the servants busy, Rogai said:
"Now, Master Airar, you shall tell the tale of how you broke half a wing of gentours with so few men, then vanished like a worm in bark; since it must be a story marvellous to make so much said of it in Vulking camps this winter and the last."
"No marvel whatever beside that of how came you in Vulking camps to hear say."
"Nay, that's but a small tale. Evimenes has a better—" "Mmgrowrr-ufF," said the Star-Captain named, with his mouth full, then clearing it with a gulp; "I boiled a Vulking vicount, ha-ha. Legs like those of a lobster."
"As we have heard," said Rogai with a sidelong glance, but the Carrhoene captain banged his mug on the table as though for attention and rushed on: Countess Dalmonea's gard, up near the Deidei border, with my skin all stained with nut-juice and hair clipped short to be a bastardly Micton slave. After the fall of Salmonessa this vicount came up to clutch the estate for Vulk; her husband, d'ye see, had fallen in the city. It took him no more than two eyes to see that she would be a bouncing bed-companion, as indeed I found her. She played at melting, but told him he must have a bath first, and I as serf made it. When the stupid bastard was in the bath-house what did I do but bar the door from the outside and then drop hot stones more than he wished in the reservoir at the back. Squealed lika hog in heat before the steam finsihed him, ha-ha-ha-ha-Aw/"
"Aye," said Rogai with another of those side-glances, and Airar might have conceived that all was not harmony in this new band; "aye, and you left her to bear the pains when they came inquiring, if I mistake not."
"Glmff," said Evimenes, chewing again. "What would you? A citybred dame, no person for a flight with gentours riding behind. Women's security lies in their legs, but not by being used for running."
"Oh, aye, the gentours; that is precisely what we wished to hear on," Rogai cut in. "The tale, Airar—" The one named Alsander had moved not a muscle of his face but Airar could not think how small any doing of his own must look to these experienced swaggering captains with their cold, hard faces masking cold" hard minds, and moreover wanted to cry at Rogai: You have been in Salmonessa; where is Gython? He looked into his drink and said only, "It was that Doctor Meliboe knew they would come, sirs, therefore we set an ambush in a defile."
At this the enchanter lifted his head. "Gentles, I ask you not to believe too closely the account of this young captain, as much a paragon in modesty as he is in deeds. I am only a poor doctor of the philosophies, who lack understanding in intricate matters of war, but to me it would seem more honorable to slay five and twenty enemies in battle than one in a bath."
"To you, old man—" began Pleiander, but Evander-Dvadne, the girl beside him, laid a hand on his wrist and said: "Oh, peace, brother. I'd hear the tale of this pretty young captain." Airar looked up; her voice was in her throat, almost like a man's: "Say on, sir doctor, with the tale, since he will not give it himself."
"Why, then, it was so," said Meliboe. "As we journeyed north through the Merillian hills toward Hestinga, I became aware through certain of my arts that these gentour people were on our slot. We were mounted, but the worst of us not so well as the best of them, so that soon or late they must overtake some in a race. We of the philosophies are never for strife where smoothness will serve, and I was for giving them a false shape or seeming to follow, but not this young war-leader here. He recalls that we have come through a defile shaped crook
edly like the hind leg of a dog, I do not know its name."
"Stone Pass," said Tholkeil the Mariolan from down the table.
"And well named, being set with boulders, much hidden under snow. The young lord here turns the whole company back and sets some down at the upper end of the pass on foot among the boulders, some more at the lower end before the crook where it is narrowest, and more along the sides. When those gentours have all entered in, moving fast as they may along a clear trail, he let stone and spear come down from their flanks nor could they up-slope at the end against the spearmen among the boulders, nor down at the gut where Master Airar slew a couple of horses with his bow to block them, nor up the sides neither, all slippery with snow and steep. When some five and twenty were slain the rest cried quarter."
"It was Erb—" began Airar, but "Poh!" said Pleiander bringing his fist down. (When one saw them together his face was a trifle more heavy-jawed than the rest, though with the same nose and curious chin—round seen in profile, but pointed triangle in face.) "Well enough if you like, but a common little toad-catching ambush. Why, in the Wax of Poliolis our brother Alcides—"
"Nay," cried Erb across, his Adam's apple working as he lifted an arm for attention. "It's in what un did after ambush that our Master Airar comes captain. You lords of Carrhoene must know I'm just a free-fisher; have traded to your Twelve Cities and was even at Poliolis dock when Captain Alcides led that great ambush beyond walls on which you speak. But that was for battle; after the trap sprung all was over, no more to be done. At Stone Pass having won we had all to do—make across great Hestinga with prisoners almost to our own number or feed them to the sword. Been me, I would ha' sworded a; mainly heathen from Dzik in they gentour bands, nohow. Not our Captain Airar. He just played on a for all's safety, keeping a by for two-three days, pretending to debate death and by arrangement talking on the best way to reach the highroad for Deidei. Then he lets a slip one fine night to carry news. A carried it, ha. Three days from the time we turned off in other direction we had a Hestinga man of the fellowship of the Iron Ring leading us here to lie in cover, tidings spreading as Master Airar thought. Did news come to Salmonessa through the siege even?"
Rogai: "Oh, aye, just before the turn of the year and after the Duke was stabbed across his own dinner table by the Lady Malina of Deidei when he shook her off to take a new mistress—that same white-headed damsel, good-looking and dressed as a lad, to whom you sang roundelays, friend Airar. I saw the downfall coming then and slipped out; with the set of Vulking badges I stole at Mariupol, passed myself as one of them till free. They do say Marshal Bordvin nigh bit himself with fury over the tale not so much at the loss of the gent ours at Stone Pass as letting Doctor Meliboe slip through his fingers, whom he holds for his worst enemy the now. He's no small wizard himself, Bordvin Wildfang, and has made his protection against all sorceries; conceives you must have found a new magic he does not know."
"No magic at all, only adroitness on the part of this young captain," said Meliboe; "though I will not say but it would have been better had magic been employed. For now they know themselves gulled; but if it were a doing beyond human power, they'd have no choice but submit."
But Airar, who had gripped the table edge till his fingers seemed to sink into the wood, asked as soon as he could gather breath:
"Where did she go?"
"Malina?" said Rogai, at whom he looked. "They stoned—oh, the girl. I do not know; they say she was asking a let-pass that she might go to Stassia and drink at the Well. They hanged that man of yours, though— Uffa— Ov£. He was held to have brought on the evil luck of Salm through fetching the girl to His Highness and so driving Deidei to the side of the Vulkings."
"My lords," said Airar, pushing back his chair to fall, and even to himself his voice rang so strange that he did not wonder all dropped out of conversation to look; "my lords, I have done much today and would retire. Do not stint your nutriment, I pray, and on the morrow we'll talk of what's toward."
Eyes followed him as he reached the door, almost running. It was all over; the world was shaken with sobs which he told himself unmanly but could not hold till he felt a hand on his shoulder and roused from his bed to find Meliboe the enchanter gazing at him not unkindly.
The old man said nothing. After a moment:
"Have you a spell for broken hearts?" asked Airar.
"Hearts do not break; or knit again quickly under the poultice of new springs. I would have said the warrior-lass looked kindly on you, and did mark how her voice touched some string in that heart you call broken."
Airar reached out one hand and let it slowly fall. "If I had followed mine own will and not your divination and gone to Salmonessa, I might have saved her."
"From what? She goes to the Well and will find peace. Your love is of self only if you do not wish her the best. Touching the divination, it does not lie; and said clear that for you, all your hopes and projects were in deadly danger in Salmonessa."
"Rogai won free."
"Aye, not being mixed in this coil of loves and hates and stabbings of crowned dukes. You have no vengeance but on two men now dead—to wit, this Ove and the Duke's self. All tasks are done there for you; it is time to be a full man instead of one half-made, and think on greater things than a comfortable bedfellow."
An impulse to strike him chased through Airar's mind, was driven past by the thought—Why? and his face distorted as he cried wildly: "You are unfair, you do not— Nay, I'll never do it, I'll follow her to Stassia—"
The magician sat down. "As you will . . . and if you can reach one of the ports, as Naaros or the lesser Lectis . . . Young sir, you are reasonable acute; will some day learn that to run the race of this world in pairs is to go halt-foot both. . . . Oh, aye, pain of loss. But what loss? . . . How much did you ever really have of her or she of you? Ask of yourself. . . . The loss that cuts to marrow is that of a companion through years, with whom are no new discoveries. ... I could conjure you up a shape would give you as much brief pleasure or pain, but brief only, long loves are not so made. . . . What you have lost is a pleasure of possession, as of a horse or red jewel, no more. . . . Look now:"
He drew from his pouch something that flickered bright in the single low wall torch the room held, snapped his fingers, and murmuring, moved both hands as a weaver might at a loom. Before him Airar saw a shimmering faint shadow against the wall, growing more solid till it was verily Gython, Gython. But her face was fixed and distant as on the morning she flung out at him so in the lock-bed of Rudr's house at Vagai; and it came to his mind that she would always be thus for him, the very he without aids from beyond the world; and for no other reason had she come with the band of fifty under his command than to avoid being wedded to him by authority of her father—"If it were only Visto!"
The vision failed and he realized he himself had cried aloud the words or others like them. A smile that made him look like a devil played half an instant at the corners of Meliboe's mouth.
"Good-night, fair young sir. Tomorrow is another day and there are wars among the hills."
16 A Judgment in Hestinga
HOLMUND the horse-master came home the next day. One might have said he was none too well pleased at being so stormed with guests of such quality; but it was a tall, reasonable man, with a face lined and impassive, who sat down to discuss measures and war-movements as calm as though it were points of a mare. Rogai was in that council and Airar of course, as leader of a numerous band; Meliboe for his divinations, and the Star-Captains with their sister; but not Erb, though Airar asked for him, feeling much in need of his experience.
But: "Here we are in a circle of foes," said Rogai, "and I've no mind to show them our projects, as did Duke Roger. Oh, your Erb's a true man, yet like others, ourselves not less, needs a tongue-guard, and the fewer tongues to guard, the better purpose is kept." It seemed to Airar a hard rule to hold a man ignorant that must do much, but he could not protest when Holmund turned as self-denying with his own son: "N
ay, when you're elect horse-master, you shall sit in my room; till then you're but another of the stead."
As to the purpose itself the Star-Captains were not less puzzled than Rogai. They had lain over the twain winters at various parts of wild Hestinga (except Evimenes), being led up to the Stead of Sedu by men of the Iron Ring who knew Airar was there with Meliboe and the most considerable band that had escaped the rout at the causeway. But that could be no more, as Holmund said; Marshal Bordvin could be counted to send great strength through the horse lands when the ways were clear to hunt down just such as themselves. As for wandering peregrine:
"You are too many or too few," said the horse-master. "Too many to live like the outlaws who nest among gaps of the Dragon's Spine and raid our herds; too few to rouse Hestinga round any standard for a war against the tercias that have broke down Salmonessa."
"All might make submission and appeal to the Empire," said Rogai, and looked at the men of Carrhoene to see how they would take it.
"Not we, who are under its ban," said Pleiander shortly, and Alsander:
"Count Vulk's the deputy. 'Twould fall on his hands for judgment and he'd twist our guts out round a tree. You talk as though he were gentle or yourself wantwit, Sir Rogai."
"Nay, brother," said Evadne the girl in her whispering voice. "Do you not see this was said to try you, whether or no these half-castrato Dalecarles may trust on us? Hark!" She swung to Rogai. "Now no secrets; our case is too evil to be served by less than the full trust of all. We brethren fight for honor, and beyond that, pay; yet of either, there is little prospect in your lost war here. Nor is it to be denied that we made an effort at a composition with Count Vulk on the term that we'd withdraw forever from his lands in exchange for the release of our brother Evides. But these Vulkings are not of the polite peoples; they said nay, nothing but full surrender. So now we are yours without fee, since there's no place in the Empire where we may go, and will not go to heathen lands. . . . But I have no thought on what's to do."
Well of the Unicorn Page 13
