Greenwode

by J Tullos Hennig

  Gamelyn’s eyes widened and he started to protest. Eluned shook her head.

  “Never you mind, lad; I should know better than to tease you about such things. Of course you’re disappointed. But come in, at least have something to eat.” Her eyes glinted with amusement. “Rob’s gone for several days, but Marion should be back anytime.”

  Gamelyn’s broad smile coaxed a chuckle from Eluned, and he didn’t care. Suddenly prospects were not so bleak.

  “CONCENTRATE.”

  Marion’s voice was soft, full of a confidence that Gamelyn did not himself feel.

  “Check your wind. It’s chancy, about now.”

  Gamelyn gave her a frown; Marion didn’t answer it, merely crossed her arms, waited. He bent, plucked a tuft of summer-dry grass tops and let them flutter from his fingers. Frowned again.

  “Aye.” Marion nodded. “I told you.”

  Eluned had shooed Gamelyn and Marion out of her cottage sometime back. It was no hardship, despite the steady patter of rain; Eluned was boiling some concoction that smelled just this side of disgusting. Marion had already expressed thanks—more than once—for rescue from a sweaty, smelly afternoon with a kerchief over her face. The forest smells, redolent with rainfall and summer blooms, were a welcome relief.

  “Breathe in. Scent the wind. Then let it out, and let fly.”

  Gamelyn did it all, in painstaking order. The moment his fingers loosed the string, a gust of wind tickled the arrow and sent it to the right. He still hit the clout, but his huffed-out breath was exasperated.

  “Not a bad shot,” Marion sympathized. “See, you always focus more on your bow than the arrow. Holding your bow’s sovereign, no doubt, but you canna forget the arrow is what comes of it. Not like a sword. More like the breath from your lungs.”

  He let the bow slide through his hands and to the damp earth. “I really don’t have an archer’s heart, do I?”

  “You shoot better when Rob’s haranguing you, ’tis true,” Marion admitted, a hint of amusement tucking one corner of her mouth. “If I give you a good whack with my staff here when you miss, will you shoot better for me?”

  Gamelyn had to laugh. It was true; the one time he’d brought down anything that Rob or Marion hadn’t had to finish off for him was when Rob had hauled off and whacked him one. Granted, they’d been hunting that wily red old-timer for hours, and Rob’s string had split when they finally did reach him—Rob would never have let him shoot first otherwise—but surely a smack across the pate with Rob’s bow had been uncalled for.

  Yet Gamelyn had sprinted after the wounded deer and finished him with a shot to the heart. He’d been that angry. Not to mention the spectacular row after that, which left Rob with a black eye and Gamelyn with a split lip.

  And the dressing-down that Gamelyn wasn’t meant to hear, with Rob sullen and Adam resolute upon the consequences of a peasant visibly marking a nobleman’s son.

  Gamelyn had also heard the wily tone in Rob’s voice when he’d asked about marks that didn’t show.

  “He hasn’t forgiven me yet, has he?” Gamelyn asked, and though he tried, he couldn’t help the wistful tone to his voice. “That’s why he’s gone.”

  “’Tisn’t that at all.” Leaning on her staff, Marion raised a leathern skin to her mouth—cool water, from the stream several ells beyond. She drank and offered him the same. “It’s nowt to do with you. He and Da do have other duties than just waiting for you to come visit us.”

  There was a chide in it; Gamelyn shrugged and accepted the skin, tipped it gratefully. “I’m just sorry to miss him, is all.”

  “Next time.” Any chide was gone from Marion’s gaze, but the tiny grin had returned. “You’ll just have to make do with me.”

  Making do with Marion, Gamelyn had long ago decided, was no hardship. It seemed a forester’s son had more duties than a lord’s late-gotten lad whose beard was barely scruffing at his chin. Still, he was not exactly free… and it seemed to him, more and more, that these friends of his, children of two conquered races, somehow were.

  With stark embarrassment, Gamelyn realized his cheeks were warming. He covered it with a long stretch, then bent over and took up an arrow from Marion’s quiver.

  She made a snatch at it; surprised, he held to it when she would have taken it from him. Eyes dropping to their hands, his gaze lingered on the arrow, blinked. It seemed normal. The straight, pale shaft was new-made, the feathers split and glued with a precision he had come to take for granted with the arrows of Adam’s household—but there was an addition. Several tufts of cerulean and emerald, set snug against gray.

  “You know,” Marion chided softly, “it’s almost as bad a manners to go through someone’s quiver as it is their purse.”

  Cheeks stinging and—he was sure—red, Gamelyn released his grip on the arrow. Marion twirled it in her hands, seemed to reconsider… something. “I’m sorry. It’s nowt, truly. I shouldn’t have snapped at you so.”

  The sincerity of her apology allowed curiosity to peek from beneath the fear—unwarranted, surely—that he’d offended her past reason. “It’s just so… different. Is that a peacock’s tail placed amongst the goose feathers?”

  Marion was silent, seeming to consider him, but before he could start to worry again, she smiled. “Aye. A luck charm for our people, more than anything, but also something special.” She shrugged. “You know how it is. Fletchers are always looking for the best ways to tout their own making.”

  “Surely such a thing wouldn’t easily fly.”

  “In the right hands, it will.” Another smile, quick and reckless as Rob could display. “Watch.”

  Marion put the arrow to string; its fletching set off tiny glimmers that were rather pretty.

  Pretty—but still deadly accurate. The arrow loosed like a thousand angry bees and hit the clout’s black center, quivering.

  Gamelyn shook his head. “I will never,” he said, rueful, “shoot as well as you.”

  “And why should you?” Marion was as practical about shortcomings as Rob was challenging. “I’ve been doing this since I could hold a bow. No doubt you’d have a bit to teach me about that bloody great sword you carry, eh?”

  He grinned. “I’d love to teach you.”

  “Get away!” Marion grinned back. “I’d like to see you sneaking two swords from that armory of yours.”

  “Is that a challenge?”

  A snort. “Boys. Always on with the ‘mine’s biggest’, all of you.” Slinging her quiver over one arm, Marion strode over to the clout and began pulling arrows.

  Gamelyn decided, then and there, he would find some kind of sword. It would be worth it to see Marion wielding a sword like some fierce, crimson-haired Boudicca.

  It would also be worth it to see Rob clumsy at something. Gamelyn smirked. Aye, more than worth it.

  But he had other things, for now. “I brought you something, you must know.”

  “Did you, then?” Marion slid gray eyes to him. “Did you bring me another book?”

  He grinned and tossed her his bow. “It’s in Diamant’s pack. Let’s go fetch it. You’ve endured enough torture from me for one day.”

  IF MARION didn’t know better, she’d swear they were being followed.

  Not into the forest. But before, when they’d escaped the cottage. And now, oddly enough. She saw nothing, but the sense remained, as if eyes were steady upon her. Not overt danger, not anything that would make her worry her companion. But a… curiosity. Several times she thought she’d seen someone—a hooded figure watching, marking time. Waiting.

  Maybe Rob’s dreams were straying, catching her up. Maybe she was just concerned about him. Marion herself had endured time in the dreaming—Seeking, as their people called it—and they could be dangerous. The drug itself was chancy and then there was the reaction to the drug, or the dosage, and amidst all of it was the possibility of the magic taking you from your body and never letting you return, did any of the former go awry….

  Ach,
and she didn’t need to be thinking on that, not now. The day was turning out promising. The rain had let up as they’d returned, but Eluned’s herb preparations were still ongoing, from the thick and pungent mist drifting out the opened cottage. She and Gamelyn had taken the animals for grazing on the hillock a furlong away, a field planted last year but fallow with grass this season. The cow was lying down, having a second go at her forage. Willow’s latest foal, a filly who was shedding her dark foal coat into gray about her muzzle and eyes, ran circuitous riot around Diamant and her dam. The latter two had, after an exchange equally comprised of flirtation and irritation, settled in to the real business of life, which was grazing.

  It seemed that Gamelyn and Diamant had also come to some accord. The gangly boy who’d barely fit the saddle of his brother’s warhorse now rode in his own well-accoutered saddle, had also grown to fit the temperamental stallion. It seemed that Diamant had, all along, been meant to be Gamelyn’s, a gift from his father, Sir Ian. Who sounded a nice fellow, true enough. For a lord. It was easy, most times, to forget Gamelyn was a lord’s son. Not that Rob ever let him forget it.

  Marion smirked, remembering one time she’d had it shoved in her own face. Gamelyn had been amazed that she could read—loved to read, unlike Rob—and not only Welsh, but Latin, and some Anglic as well. Only he called it Norman-Anglic—langue d’oc—and had gotten a funny look on his face when she’d objected. He’d been even further set on his heels when she’d explained her reasons: that she’d always honored the oral traditions of her ancestors, but more and more it seemed to her the only history that was being remembered was what the conquerors were writing, with their pens and parchments.

  Aye, Gamelyn had left quite chastened, that time. But he’d returned bearing gifts. It seemed Blyth had a well-stocked library, and the household priest, Brother Dolfin, was so glad to find a like-minded scholar that he willingly lent Gamelyn whatever he asked. Gifts? Treasure, more like, and a more welcome apology she’d never seen. Apology had become habit, habit had become another small and tight-spun thread drawing them together… and here they were.

  The ground was sopping, threatening to wick through the oilcloth they’d spread, and Marion’s copper head was bent over the old tome—a rather barbarous thing, in her eyes, full of “medicine” that had more to do with hocus-pocus and sharp instruments of torture than a wortwife’s herb lore and common sense.

  Aye, and Gamelyn brought all kinds: scientific texts, puffed-up treatises, even once a romance so blue and torrid it had put a heat in Marion’s loins, a blush on Gamelyn’s fair cheek, and a rather-horrified light in Rob’s dark eyes.

  Marion smirked, sliding a look at Gamelyn, who was trying to coax the filly, Jewel, to let him scratch her neck. Both Gamelyn and Rob were nigh grown in length, mayhap, but still altogether young. Particularly Rob, who didn’t seem the least bit interested in lifting a kirtle if one was twitched in front of him. Even Calla—as fair a hussy as Willow over there, and not so choosy—couldn’t budge him. Calla had even once teased Marion into a quick go against the back of Loxley’s alehouse, and while Marion preferred lads, there had been no doubt that Calla had known precisely what she was about….

  And neither did her thoughts have any business taking that turn, not now. She turned the page, found her stomach lurching for an entirely different reason as she read a graphic description of tooth extraction.

  “Are you all right?”

  She looked up to see Gamelyn had left off coaxing the filly. He came over, a frown on his face, and knelt behind her, leaning over her shoulder. “Whatever is… hoy. Never mind.” He reached out and snapped the book closed. “I should be a bit more careful about the subject of what books I set before you.”

  Irritation rose, despite that his attitude was no doubt stemming from that other too descriptive book she’d just been remembering. With a warning frown his way, she reopened the book. “No doubt I’ll learn a bit from this one, I will. It’s a good lesson in why Mam’s so popular, if this is all a leech has to offer.”

  Gamelyn gave her a glance that also seemed to mix irritation and humor. “Otho’s wife says the same thing. Johan says she’s full of shit.”

  “And what does Sir Gamelyn say?”

  A tiny smile at the appellation, then his green eyes flickered away. Gamelyn was too fond of taking everyone’s thoughts at face value… except, unfortunately and far too often, his own. “I like Otho’s wife,” he answered, almost musing.

  “And how is your da doing?” The moment she voiced it, she wished it back. Gamelyn’s expression tightened.

  “He is well.” It was careful, neutral. Bloodless.

  “You know you only have to ask me mam and she’d no doubt—”

  He stood. “I have to go, anon.”

  Marion peered up at him; instead of saying anything more, she smiled and nodded. “I know. But you’ve still a while, aye?”

  Every time he would think to pull away, some mysterious something would pull him back, as sure and oddly natural as the filly to her dam’s side, seeking sustenance she could get nowhere else. Not for the first time, Marion found herself wondering why he kept coming back. One of the more appealing—and frustrating—aspects of his visits.

  His smile was grave, but warm. “As long as I dare.”

  LATER, AFTER he’d ridden away on Diamant, Marion had spoken to her mother.

  Perhaps Eluned was worried after Rob as well, or irritable from being in the heat and stink for much of the day, but she was curt. And final.

  “Marion, you must have a care in what you say to that lad. Don’t make any promises you canna keep, don’t offer what might put you in harm’s way.”

  “But his da’s ill, Mam. I only thought—”

  “Gamelyn’s father is a Frankish knight. A Christian. They’ve gotten quite specialized in killing our kind.”

  “Mam, surely, though, Gamelyn—”

  “I know the lad is dear to you. He’s dear to me as well. But you must never forget what he comes from.”

  “Da says that was exactly why we should keep him close. Because of what he comes from.”

  Eluned peered at Marion from the wide wooden table, hands damp and stained, holding a deep pottery bowl filled with limp plant matter. Both table and those telltale stains upon the fine, square hands had been a part of her mother for as long as Marion could remember. But the expression on Eluned’s face was unfamiliar. Strange. Wary, even.

  “Marion,” Eluned finally said. “I’m sure Gamelyn’s father has the finest of physicians looking after him.”

  “I’ve seen their handiwork,” Marion protested, “and it surely ent a good thing.”

  “Nay,” Eluned agreed. “But they’re his kind, see if they’re not, and….” She trailed off, set herself to her task for a few more moments, hesitated. “Can it be possible you care for that lad more than you should?”

  It startled Marion; both that her mother would think it and that she knew the answer without so much as a qualm of indecision. “Nay, Mam. Not like that. I care for him, but he’s… well. He’s like Rob.”

  At Rob’s name, Eluned’s lips tightened. Coming forward, Marion took the bowl from her mother’s hands and said, softly, “I’m sorry I left all this to you. I should have helped, not gone off larking with Gamelyn.”

  Eluned peered at her, then leaned forward and kissed Marion’s cheek. “I know. I’m worried after Rob, too.”

  THE EARTH had her own pulse point, he had been told; one deep, one only those children who truly opened themselves to the listening would hear.

  He was listening, every sense attuned, yet he heard only the echo of his own heartbeat.

  Rob lay, naked against rock and earth. Arms spread like a hawk a-wing, fingers spread like pinions flared, he seemed to seek air, yet… still, grounded. Down. Flesh made small, flattened face down from cheek to breast to thigh to toes, a thousand-weight of stone overhead, looming. The caverns were dark, chill despite the summering’s presence. The fire
’s light, crackling and setting the drawings against limestone walls to dancing, was vanquished mere cloth yards away by the pervasive, heavy presence of burial. Even the runes and art describing graceful lines against the chalk-pale walls—some faded with time, some vibrant—were no more than mere scratches in a vast expanse of Existence.

  Rob’s hair had been washed and flung up over his face, ringlets of ink that lifted with his breath and spilled over the stone. An old man hunched over him, his only garb a red deer hide over his shoulders, a crown of horn and holly, a belt of woven ivy. As he moved, acorns and dried berries rustled. Every gesture laid thick, liquid tracks across Rob’s skin. Runes and sigils, formed with a steady hand and a mix of woad, indigo, and walnut.

  It smelled… brown. Like mud and meal, with a hint of sap and greenstick bruising. The brush tickled, cool and wet, and this time when it left him it did not return.

  Instead, a bony knee pressed against his left shoulder, pinning it, and fingers stroked his nape. “What do you hear?” It was a bare whisper against his ear, swallowed beneath the caverns.

  Rob didn’t want to say, but there was no escape, either from the looming rock and earth, or the old man’s demand. “I hear… nowt. Only my own heart.”

  A grunt, then pressure lifted. “Rise.”

  Rob obeyed, slowly, as the blood tingled in starved limbs, as the thick markings on his backside pulled taut, drying. He left faint outlines of his body upon the stone, flakes of what had already been traced on his front, and raised his face to a held-out bowl.

  “Drink,” Cernun bade, when he would hesitate.

  Rob took the bowl and drank. Sour and sweet and strong, sending fumes into every orifice from the neck up. Rob swallowed, loud into the silence, and thought to hand the bowl back.

  Cernun pushed it to his mouth, said again, “Drink.”

  This time the fumes spread through his entire body, drawing up every follicle, every other orifice, every limb. As if in defense, or rejection.