Well of the Unicorn

by Fletcher Pratt

  Sir Ludomir, well-pleased that his ministrations had been successful, said: Now I must go, for there is much to do, with the colloquy of the bride to be held, since I as regent stand for her father."

  Said Earl Mikalegon: "What, lad, will you outlive your ancestors?" and handed him a dram of fire-wine. The hunchback tailor came in with garments, and a priest to instruct him in the ritual, while outside there were shouts and Skogalang whistles blowing beneath the chiming bells, as the town's mood of gayety grew, with wine-cups poured and one encouraging another to joy. Since Aurareus was an heir Imperial, his marriage must of course precede the other. There was a long wait. Airar could eat nothing; time dragged, the priest's words seemed senseless, and a whit of irritation came to the good man's eyes as again and again Airar forgot the responses.

  At last a youth, all radiant, with a new cat-head badge to his sleeve, came dancing up the stairs to cry that all was prepared, and Airar roused himself enough to inquire where was Meliboe?—to which the answer was that none had seen him the day, he'd kept close to his coop since receiving the philosophical devices ordered to him from the resource of the town. Trumpets began to blow in the street; though feeling still as though the skin were stretched to a drumhead across his face, Airar found that the air, the musics, the excitement of the occasion conspired to rouse him. Mikalegon helped him up the wedding-car with a clap on shoulder, and: "Bravely done as at Bear Fjord, young master; I knew then you were one that would not down."

  At the cathedral there was no bishop, only a common priest, for the lord spiritual of Naaros was a Vulking and had been let go as he desired. From his one side-glance at Argyra as they knelt, Airar saw she was ware of somewhat amiss in him; but after all, he missed only one of the responses, that where he was to say he'd take his bride with no dower but the blood of King Argimenes, and this was not from the usual service in any case, but for the Empire's daughter. "I have grief for you," she whispered (the first words as his wife!) as the pipes, strings, and shouts of the leaping marriage-dancers led them from altar down the aisle to the cathedral door.

  As the Prince's dignity was the greater, the house of the city had of course been taken for his marriage dinner with Evadne, so that for Airar's bridal it was the hall of the leather-guild, not unsplendid, but with a drift of tanning odors in the air, through the high, embrasured windows. People came and went from one feast to the other, who must be greeted and told farewell; Mikalegon drank like a whirlpool, jested like a rude buffoon, and it was past torchlight when they rose, with the singing of the marriage song.

  "—so now we leave you," its last words rang on the stairs beyond the door as Duke Airar, in a passion of weariness and desire turned to take in his arms the bride he had vowed to win. But she returned his embrace with one gentle, then let her arms hang loose, and to his seeking lips turned a cheek as cold as Gython's or as the ultimate mountains of the pole. He released and stood back, his voice barely whispering:

  "No love, then? Oh, Argyra, my love—" In the street someone blew a horn discordantly; there was a choir of banging on metal and free-fisher voices crying the obscene wedding greetings of that folk. Argyra the princess faced him steadily:

  "Lord Airar, I am given to you as your wedded wife. You may unbind my girdle, do with me as you will.

  But love? I told you once, between us stand the Seven Powers. I am a daughter of the Well, yet you come to me this night that a woman must hold most dear, all smelling of dirty, deadly magic. I cannot give but what is in me."

  For so brief a time there passed through his thought the plan of seizing her masterfully. His eye ran to the ready bed, but the whip of Meliboe's spells and his own had left tears standing behind his eyes and his whole frame as impotent as that of an old gelding. The raucous shout rose from the street again, and out of a pit of despair, he cried:

  "An end! I'll have an end!" and snatching up his sword ran down the stair.

  38 The Whiteriverdales: Wedding Night

  "YOUNG MASTER," said Meliboe, "there are many would say instead that I had rid you of your worst enemy. I do not know why it is that the accident of birth so sets its bonds on men that they'll not choose for themselves what friends to hold by. Your future lies in this; aye, and not yours alone, but of many more. No hope of bringing the old man to our side. On this point we were concurred, myself and the old knight-councillor, who in other matters is somewhat a scoundrel."

  Startled from the line of his speech, Alvar said: "Scoundrel? Sir Ludomir?"

  "Aye, Sir Ludomir Ludomirson. Oh, all filled with golden phrases and high purpose, I will give that, having seen many of the same sort before. Vulk the Unreasonable's another; purpose of uniting the two peoples, so high he holds that the means are meaningless, like a man who would not sorrow his children drowned if he taught them to swim."

  It fell away. Airar said: "I do not know for that, though it would seem to me that you yourself have just now looked on end rather than means, besides which you are playing in the game of choosing other people's destiny, which once you told me no man should ever do. But this I know, that you have cost me my father and my love at a blow; and now it can be no more countenanced that you stay in free Dalarna than if you were some biting monster."

  Meliboe: "You have lost nothing you had not lost before, and on the points philosophical you are of course wrong; for I have no high purpose beyond that of watching how the world passes, and there's no need to me to do as I advise others. But as you will; I'm no stranger to banishments, have heard that the land of Dzik is fair and its people none so squeamish. Will your lordship be pleased to allow me a ship for the going?"

  So ended that meeting, too, in a tale of breaking, and in the morning came the first clear tidings from the north, by a messenger who had ridden fast. Vulk was moving slowly southward with much enginery, intent on breaking Naaros, but with three tercias only, his trouble being to find food for more, only his vanguard at Stavorna. Of the gentour people, he had few with him, and these chiefly employed far in the north along the roads from the Lacias, which the Korosh miners and the Korsor mountaineers were raiding so fiercely that even along the main highways it was hard to bring down provision from Briella—yet brought it must be, for Norby was all eaten bare by the winter's war, and nothing came from oversea.

  "Who told Korsor to rise?" No matter; with Vulk at Stavorna, Airar the duke of war was now concerned to get forward to grip this nettle of Briella among the Whiteriverdales as firmly as he might. That very night he rode forth fiercely with the horsemen of Hestinga and the Carrhoene lancers around him. Rogai and the light-armed foot to follow fast; Mikalegon as fast as might be. Pleiander and Evimenes remained at Naaros to forward what aids came from the Twelve Cities with the remainder of the levy. Runners went to warn the rest of Hestinga to join across the Dragon's Spine by the pass of the Count's Pillow, making no secret of their march. If they came early, well; if they came late, Count Vulk must at least wear down his force to throw out guards to eastward, and have more loose enemies to vex his convoys. Argyra kissed him farewell as he was horsed; he had not told her of the enchanter's banishment (scorning to take such means of winning), and her lips were unmoving as they touched his.

  The spring trees were out in full leaf as Airar rode north along that road where he had once walked southward by the side of the decent Vulking archer—what was his name? he could not recall—but trees were blackened along the track that led to the magician's cot, which brought him sharper memories than passing Trangsted itself. For Meliboe's cot was clean destroyed, had the bitter air of ruin; but at Trangsted, which they passed early the second day of march, all remained, but nothing destroyed or familiar. Only the honest fences that had been kept with the sons of Viclid on the south, Sumarbo on the north, were broke down to make one single wide slave-worked latifundia, the house painted different, no sign of life.

  They camped that night on the slopes of Vastmanstad toward the Whiteriverdales. A house had been found for Airar to sleep in as leader, but h
e refused it, though there were spatters of rain. The next night when they lay at the hamlet of Robbing and all slept on floors or at worst in barns, there was a Salmonessan wench brought in for him, with her laces cut, but he'd have none of that either, and let Alsander have her, who was not so nice. Beyond Kobbing one is in plain dales, even if the country be still called Vastmanstad. The Hogsback eastward has broken, then risen sharply into the craggy reaches of the lower Dragon's Spine, while to the west, gentler but nearly as lofty slopes go up to the Shield Boss Hill that shut off Skogalang and Shalland.

  The north road winds somewhat in this region, though the Vulkings that built it love no windings; on each turn they had set a castella, but all these were now vacant, some merely abandoned, but a few burned with fire, which Whiteriverdalesmen had done when the war-word went round. The Dalesmen in ones and twos kept falling in on their band, but few of these go a-horse-back to war; therefore Airar gave word for them to assemble at the nearest castellas and wait Mikalegon's coming, since himself must travel fast. It would be Airar also who thought to tell the womenfolk of the Dales to take refuge, since there might be fighting in this region; but Carrhoene Alsander who had advised, before they went, that all possible provision should be brought to the same castellas for the host that followed. The Hestingerna pushed out ahead, to east, to west, in little groups, searching for tidings. Those they brought back were of moderate good omen—namely, Count Vulk still clearly detained in Stavorna, collecting waggons and victual. It was said that Vanette-Millepigue, the bloody red baron of Naaros, was named his marshal.

  On a spring morning of mist and drizzle they came to Torgsted, the town that is the heart of the Dales and so called; nothing great, but with some forty houses of sturdy stone, the rest being wooden, lately built. The Vulkings had planted one of their Salmonessan colonies nearby, but these shiftless ones lacked even the wit to flee when the growl of coming war rose round them. Airar had only to order that they be taken from the houses where Dalecarles had been dispossessed, and kept under close survey, for it was needful to his plan that the sons of Briella have no clear warning of how he was to meet them.

  The great road splits Torgsted midway; the Naar swings in so close that the outermost houses of the town peer over its bank, and there is a stone bridge across, with a road not much better than a track running away through the Shield Boss to Skogalang. The river, unfordable, Airar designed to use as a ditch before the left flank of his battle-line; its western bank had at this time strong tree-cover with thickets. Along the other side the Vulkings had, as usual, cut back all growth to give their road free lawns, but there had been since the date of the cutting some pushing forth of boccage, which formed a screen close by the east bank of the stream. Where it was thickest Airar put all the artizans that could be found to building four bridges, not of great strength, but only for this battle.

  Among the more northerly houses of the town there ran down to the Naar a ditch, now dried and near filled with rubbish, which had been the front of a stockade in the old days of the heathen wars. The Salmonessans were set to clear this ditch, with promise of reward, and when Rogai came with the Skogalang men, who are of all Dalecarles the most adroit in woodwork, they went to rebuild the old furniture as strongly as they possibly could; for here Airar designed to place Earl Mikalegon and the heavy-armed to hold the onrush of the enemy, and he was troubled lest they be too few in number for all those terciary soldiers. The road itself he bade the Skogalang men bar, but with a barricade movable on rollers, for he was decided that, if the defense held, this would be the way of egress for the sergeants of Carrhoene to counterstroke. A tall stone building overlooked the ditch just where the road crossed it. This should be a fortress; where the upper story overhung, Airar had the floor bored through, with a quantity of weapons and kettles of pitch to be heated at the fire sent aloft there.

  The eastern flank was more troublesome. Here the lawns are not made, but natural, sweeping up in a long, slow slope for some hundreds of paces before they meet trees at the base of a cliff-like climb. The fathers that founded Torgsted in the old days had clean avoided their problem on that side by bringing back ditch and stockade, and carrying them south round the town. This would never do for Airar, since the Vulkings would be sure to come down round the place there, crowd past and throw his force back into the unfordable Naar, then push right on. He doubted that time would stay long enough to make a new ditch there, and Alsander agreed; but they did what they could by carrying from the angle of the old ditch forward a maze of trees cut down with their branches interwoven, sharpened, and pointing outward, ending only where the trees and bushes below the steep began.

  Behind this screen all the spear-armed Dalecarles should take their place, whether those like the fishers, who cast, or the Whiteriverdalesmen and Mariolans with long spears that thrust. All the archery should lie behind the Naar on the opposite wing, where it would not be easy for the foemen to come at them, shooting at the right side of the advancing enemies, where they have no shields. Thus matters were ordered so the Vulkings must come down the center through a double alley of weapon-fire, toward where Mikalegon waited them with his axemen behind the stockade. Behind him, among the houses, the tagoi of Carrhoene, armored horsemen (if only more of them came in time!), would stand, ready to jact forth when the Vulkings showed any sign of waver, or, if it were needed, to cover a retreat. In front of all, concealing all, the light riders of Hestinga, who might escape from the main attack through the town and by the new bridges across the Naar.

  Aslander said it was planned as well as could be; all little Torgsted town filled with the eager hope of coming battle as men came in by the dozen and score. Airar's days brimmed with joyous activity, as naming an under-captain here for a band newly made up, or seeing to the manufacture of more arrows; but his nights miserable, his heart burning and aching for Argyra, of whom no word this fortnight. He began to wonder how long he might hold this host together, for food was running down in spite of that Evimenes kept up a flow of carts from Naaros; thought also how everything would be confounded if Vulk took the route south by Shalland and the Skogalang coast. Alsander said as to the last there'd be no trouble, which proved to be no less than true, for on a day of sunshine from a blue sky a man of Norby came in, who had been picked up by the Hestinga horsemen.

  He had been with the Vulking Allies and was equipped as one of them, but showed by proofs indubitable that the Iron Ring of his own province had sent him into their ranks for a spy. Vulk was provisioned at last, he said, and moving down the great north road, with all three tercias and some force of gentours. The gossip of his camp was that south Dalarna had risen generally and mustered in the dales; the Count meant to crush this revolt in a battle before it should spread. His siege engines and the clumsy waggons that drew them, he had left behind; could take Naaros at his leisure when the fight was done. So many of the gentours as could be were drawn in from their road-guarding to gain more force for combat; a half-tercia had gone down into Shalland to hold that province secure, and another would move, as soon as forage could be found, through Korsor and the northern turn of the Dragon's Spine to burn out all the steads of Hestinga. There was talk also of the standard of the Empire up against the Vulkings, and great anger on that account among them. The Count had sent out proclaimers in every direction to say it was not true, he stood still the Emperor's deputy; but it was notable that two barons with a very gilded suite had set out from Stavorna toward the cities Lectis, which would mean they were sailing for Stassia.

  Battle early, then. Sure enough, it would not be another three days before a band of Hestingerne came riding in with three of their number bound on led horses and pale with loss of blood. They had been in a clash with gentours not long up the road. Always ingenious Alsander had them taken through the camp to seek leechery, so that all might look on the hurt men and be encouraged to fury of battle thereby; but Airar was now troubled till he wished he were no leader. Evimenes and the aids from Carrhoene were not
yet come, and his whole hope of a high victory rested on breaking this heart of the Vulking rule utterly; if merely beaten back before his barricade, they'd rally and come again.

  He might have spared the pain. Another day, and there was a tale of battle from the light horse, who had driven in a wing of gentours, but then been held by a tercia, not two days' march distant. But as the war-leader of Dalarna sat sleepless that evening, there were shouts along the street and torches waved, and here was faithful Evimenes, with three full tagoi of Carrhoene, fifteen hundred lances, thundering and dusty, crowding all the houses and alleys of the little town. A Carrhoene fleet stood in Naaros harbor, said they; more of these same lancers followed in another. Of Argyra, she had some tort with Sir Ludomir Ludomirson; the old knight had suddenly taken ship for Stassia after a public farewell at which she would barely address him. Aurareus was holding court in great state in the city; but most people preferred to take judgments from Gallil or even his wife. Airar in turn explained his battleplan; Evimenes thought it prime; half-drew and slammed back his sword in its scabbard at the thought of leading the chiefest charge, eyes winking. "The bastards! We'll ram our toothpickers up their arses!"

  Again a day and scouts said the Vulkings had come down to pitch camp soon after noon, which was against their custom, but they had surrounded it with a rapid stockade as usual. They clearly knew where Dalarna's forces lay and meant to fight right through. A force of gentours had with much difficulty been ferried westward across to the left bank of the Naar, and through the twilight began to filter among trees there, down toward Dalarna's archer-flank. Airar turned the Hestinga horsemen thither to hold them, though it meant losing part of his surprise at the center and uncovering the Skogalang men to attack by the bridges. He had not thought the Vulkings meant to find a way round, but Alsander made light of it all. "In war the captain against is always sure to find something one's forgot. Why, down in Uravedu—"