Joris of the Rock [The Neustrian Cycle, Book II] (Forgotten Fantasy Library)

by Leslie Barringer

  "Joris, I like you well," she crooned. "Guard your runes and your Rock, then; I shall maybe arrive at both when you least expect it."

  "Either is ready for you when you trust yourself to me. We might be happy together in the moors – and not always in the moors."

  "It will require grim turmoil to make your peace with Church and State."

  "Ay, turmoil I thrive on. But hearken to this, Red Anne – if you need me you shall find me, so be it I am alive. Do you know Imbert, the dealer in hides, who dwells across the square?"

  "Only by sight, but I know him."

  "He knows me, but not by my own name. Go to him any time, draw him apart, and ask him how many clubs are in the pack this morning. If he say thirteen, he will add the name of an approaching day; on that day one of my men will be with him. If he say fourteen, then a man is there at the time. Only my trustiest pass between me and Imbert; any of them will convey you safely and secretly with him to the Rock."

  "Phoo! What a cardinal's coil of precaution!"

  "I am not done yet. Do not seek to have your guide ambushed by Riders of Campscapel, for you will be sadly disappointed in the attempt."

  "What if I bewitched him?" the girl demanded softly.

  "That I am willing to risk," said Joris, with a bleak grin. "Make your cause one with mine, and I shall trust you utterly. Many a man must have knelt for a word of hope from your lips; I will stand upright instead, with faith in my good fortune."

  And he rose to his full height and fumbled in his wallet, cursing his heart that pounded to plead and his hands that tingled to plunder. He meant that he, not she, should end this queer encounter; and Anne's tilted regard was curious rather than friendly.

  There came a silver flash in her face; Joris half drew the mirror of steel from its velvet cover, holding it out to her through fire gleam and riddled moonlight.

  "Look you on your beauty in this," he growled, "and know it bought, not stolen."

  "Harsh words, and mystery, and a gift," murmured Red Anne as she took the mirror. "Is it art or nature in a wolf's head this to snare attention? Men say that in foray you strike and are gone like a hailstorm on the heather. But indeed you have more of the Montcarneax than their stature and golden hair ..;. Gramercy, Joris."

  "Harsh words for a foreman's lady, mystery for one well versed in mysteries, the gift for Red Anne whose bright company I covet as a pries should covet Paradise. Farewell, now that you know my mind. Love your Lorin while you may, romp with the Devil if you must, but remember I wait in the hills."

  "How long will you wait?"

  "As long as need be. How long was that old city in the taking?"

  "Do you mean Troy? Ten years."

  "I will wait ten years," said Joris.

  And wait ten years he did.

  CHAPTER IV. THE PATIENCE OF JORIS OF THE ROCK

  During the ten years of that second period of waiting Joris saw Anne four times. Boast to himself as he might of being one of the men for whom the world was made, the others held the castles, while he skulked in the hills; his band grew with his fame, and a price of five hundred golden nobels was set on his golden head, but as time went on and turned the edge of his exalted expectation there was often little enough to distinguish his own life from the ratlike lives of his men. The touch of imagination in him found outlet chiefly in generalship, although it also kept the lice from his beard and sometimes clouded with sadness the hours of his achievement. Wine that once had lost him his Anne now brought her image before him; other women he would not permit by the Rock, caring little for them himself and knowing what quarrels they would arouse among the rest. Apart from his raids he found content enough in hunting and crude sports, and no one knew from his face and bearing the moments when runes stirred in his mind their manifold snakelike gleam.

  * * * *

  The first time was at Alanol itself, in the sloping market place beneath the very sheer of the Butcher's barbican. Instead of shaving his beard, he had let it grow rough and dyed it, with the hair above it, a dark disguising brown; then, with Madoc for companion, he drove a score of stolen sheep to the pens that lined the pavement, and leaned on his iron-shod crook to chaffer with the best.

  Awhile he listened to a Hastain drover cursing old King Rene; it seemed a royal castle was rising to overlook Hastain ramparts.

  "He is within his rights, too," growled the drover reflectively. "It is royal forest up to the town moat, and a hunting lodge stood where the keep now stands. But we in Hastain have the Jacquerie to thank for that. Also the king has made his little nephew, Thorsimund, our duke; but that is so that he can set a seneschal to spy on the lords of Honoy, for the princeling Thorismund is only eight years old."

  "Ay," agreed Joris profoundly. "Well, there is gain and loss. Alanol has the Jacquerie to thank for this."

  He swept the market place with a shrewd eye; for the Butcher had granted his town a charter because it stood by him against the peasants, and one of the chartered privileges was right of free market.

  "Yes," growled the drover, "for all his reputation the Butcher deals as faithfully as our dear lord the king. But they say he was moved to it by the wonderful woman … hey, by the Mass, there she is!"

  Deliberately Joris wheeled. There was doffing of caps by the gateway; the crowd divided respectfully, yielding a narrow path that passed the mock-shepherd's pen; and down the path, with only an elderly waiting woman behind her, Red Anne moved leisurely toward the mercers' shops at the far corner of the square.

  Here was no player in a puppet boot, thought Joris amid his awareness of danger. Madoc plucked at his chief's sleeve, but Joris stood fast, his sunburned face a little lowering, his great red hands tight-locked on the crook handle. Come what might, he would see her again, and be seen if she looked his way; outlaw's caution fighter's craft, gave way before the overmastering impulse.

  To-day Red Anne wore a white steepled headdress with a frontlet of green velvet. Her sleeveless gown, of purple cloth, revealed bosom and sleeves of a green velvet cote-hardi; a tau cross of amethyst hung on her heavy golden necklet, a little cloisonne pomander of gold was chained to her wrist, and girdle and shoes and purse and dagger sheath were of leather dyed purple and stitched with yellow thread. Her auburn eyebrows, narrowed by artifice, were drawn in a sun-dazzled frown, but the blue eyes were tranquilly amused; men stared and lifted hats and sighed, and even muttering women looked not unkindly on Red Anne, knowing that she checked her lord's ferocity and spent his money in town and gave no wife deliberate cause for jealousy.

  "Eh, she is fair," said one, and another: "The king's own court has none to set beside her." But for the most part the onlookers were silent, and Joris heard the rare rich voice greet one or two of them. Madoc drew a deep breath and waited ; the eyes of Anne and of Joris met. The girl contracted her red mouth in a just perceptible moue, glanced at the huddled sheep behind the outlaw's motionless figure, and focussed gaze well past him as he bared his darkened head.

  "At least she remembers and does not betray me," he thought.

  The white steeple passed and was gone, the crowd closed in once more, and cheerful uproar reawoke around him; sudden rage stirred in the breast of Joris that he should slink disguised to peep at her. He glanced up and aside at the piled stone of the great hold beyond the bridged ravine, and there was that in his pale regard which, if it could, had laid the grim machiocolated towers as flat as walls of Jericho. But if he lacked the faith of Joshua in seven circles widdershins and rending blast of trumpets, he hugged the simple and peculiar faith of Joris of the Rock.

  Ten minutes later his body grew rigid again; someone other than Madoc plucked at his sleeve and spoke to him. Turning slowly, he stared down at the bearded humpbacked dwarf who had worked Guelf Reinager's puppets that other market day at Hastain thirty months before.

  "Follow me," croaked the manikin, and sidled away with speed.

  Pausing only to mutter a word in frowning Madoc's ear, Joris lounged discreetly in rear of h
is guide, presently finding himself at a fellmonger's dingy door. Pausing, he scratched his powerful chest, sliding a hand between soiled tunic and ragged shirt; then, having loosed the hilt of the broad dagger whose pommel fronted his armpit, he stepped into a gloom that smelled of sheepskins and greasy wool.

  "Pass through," said a voice from behind a piled counter; and Joris, with one glance behind to measure space and footing, passed through to the smoky kitchen behind the darkling shop.

  Red Anne stood waiting beside the brick hearth place; her level voice struck at him through the noise of a simmering stewpot. Only the dwarf and her woman were with her in the room.

  "Why are you in Alanol?" she demanded,, as Joris swung the door to and grounded his shepherd's staff.

  "To catch a glimpse or hear a word of you," he answered simply. "I had not hoped for speech with you. I am well paid."

  "Now, tell me your runes."

  "No."

  "You withstand me here?"

  "Ay. If you want me destroyed it is simple enough. Not that I should be taken, but you may see a pretty fray if you so please. There are worse weapons than a crook and a caldron of boiling stew. And if I am deceived in runes and you alike, this is for me a comely finish; for I will kiss you hard before I fall."

  Red Anne regarded him silently, sniffing the while at her pretty pomander; and Joris knew that his life hung on a hair. If she dismissed him, it meant that she still mocked his runes and any meaning they bore for him; and behind his headlong joy of encounter there spread a blackness of baffled fury, a desolate foretaste of futile doom.

  But Anne let the scented bauble drop the length of its fine gold chain, so that Joris inhaled a drift of myrrhine perfume amid the homely smell of the fellmonger's kitchen. Then he caught his breath, for the tall girl took a step forward, and another, and another, until she stood within a yard of him, looking up into his stony face.

  "Go in peace," she said sternly, "but go, and come to Alanol no more. You promise not to come?"

  "No. I will go now, but you grow too dear for such a promise."

  "Then take heed – this pays for Santloy. If I see you here again, be sure you are sped. You and your runes disturb me not, and I honour valour in my lord's foemen, but do not believe I am lightly thwarted."

  "That I have never believed," responded Joris thickly. "May I kiss your hand, Red Anne?"

  For a moment, as her strong smooth fingers lay on the bony knuckles raised to receive them, Joris felt his wolfishness fall from him. His kiss was shy as a boy's, and when he stood upright again his eyes were young and pleasant.

  "That pays for all," he said, "until – until–"

  "Unit ten years be past? Two of them are already spent – take heart, for you will need it – and now begone, you madman."

  Joris turned and went. Within an hour he and Madoc were away with their unsold mutton, while Red Anne maybe tuned her great lute in the keep of Campscapel.

  * * * *

  The second time was in the high moors westward from the mountain Domdonoy. Longering far behind a party of his men, Joris lounged amid bracken above a stream that threaded the forest's northern limit; far along the ravine a gap disclosed remoter skylines, fretted on one blue hump by the towers of Red Anne's home. Joris chewed a stalk of feather grass and eyed the trim shape calmly; autumn came kindlier than spring to his body, and even the Butcher's hold was not unsightly because of the yellowing oak leaves between. Joris had no self-pity; rather he saw himself as a fate stalking the fells. He went no more into Alanol, but events had turned his attention toward the Butcher's marches.

  Rene the king had lately lost his only lawful son, so that his little nephew Thorismund was now heir to the throne. Among the lands of the dead young prince was the county of Montenair, of which the central hold guarded the shortest road from Balsaunt to the northern sea; and Rene, suspicious of northern lords, had made Count Fulk of Olencourt his Castellan of Montenair. This touched Joris, for Fulk was no roystering pippin of a prince; Fulk's own domain marched with the royal county thus given into his keeping, and Fulk's extended power meant sad curtailment of outlaw's work in a wide angle of the Forest of Honoy.

  "Prosper the madness of Campscapel," said Joris to himself, "for now a civil Count of Alanol could drive me south for Varne for good and all. 'Gold shall sunder and black shall blunder…' I would I could embroil the Butcher with this damned castellan. But Lorin will blunder without my assistance. 'Red shall run ere all be done.' Patience, Joris, and … ha!"

  No longer drowsing where he lay, the outlaw lifted his head. Mellow and sweet in the distance rang out the notes of a bugle horn, starting valiant echoes amid the rocks of the glen. Up-valley and up-wind went the eagle gaze of Joris; then he rose to his feet, aware of a travelling speck on a distant heather slope.

  "Headed this way," said Joris, and laughed as he snatched up his bow.

  Bounding into the sunlit ravine, he gained the bank of the swelling beck and stood for a moment to listen. Muted by rushing of water, the voice of the horn rang faintly; but under it now was another note, a baying not to be mistaken.

  Joris held his bow aloft and leaped into the whirl of cream and amber. For several furious minutes he battled his way upstream, now whelmed to the waist, now clear from the knees, treading always on drowned stones and cursing when he stumbled. Then he caught at the branch of a lordly oak that all but spanned the flood, and heaved himself aloft with a grunt, swinging the strung bow from his arm before standing to climb.

  Presently he was twenty feet up, seated in a stout fork and well screened by foliage. Twigs and leaves dislodged in his scramble danced downstream and vanished; only the drip of his gear still moved, runnelling down gray bark or flashing to mossed brown earth amid the writhen oak roots.

  The next gust of wind was quick with approaching clamour, but Joris had time to settle his bow in the branches and hug himself to stillness. Then the stag hoofs crackled in hearing and drummed along the further bank; full dark eye and cream-gray antlers, black nose and ruddy satin flank, ripped through a gap in the groundward leaves and hurtled out of sight beneath him.

  Quiet now, save for a padding rush, and only a hundred yards behind, umber and black and brindled hounds flowed by; fire at his heart and ice in his spine gave Joris a second's kinship with the quarry straining ahead. Then he was Joris again, for a horn blast heralded horse hoofs; deeper drumming resounded, with curt shouts and hallooing. He grew rigid as his guardian tree, except that his fingers crisped on the friendly cord-bound grip of the six-foot bow beside him; and for his second and last time he saw the Butcher of Alanol…

  Stark upright in the saddle of a pounding chestnut stallion, with crimson bonnet blown awry and ravaged yellow features half concealed by coal-black masses of hair and beard, Lorin de Campscapel rode first of all his hunt. Blaze of dark eyes and pressure of pale mouth revealed the spirit coiling behind that ominous mask; the fame earned in Franconian wars and evilly upheld by tyranny at home seemed to the tranced watcher to smoke around his going.

  All the stranger, therefore, the woman who came after – that fury with the rosy face, with the uncovered plaits of flaming hair and the strong hand that once an outlaw kissed with reverence. Joris had heard of the Valkyries; in that glimpse Anne seemed one of them, whirling riot and death along the startled valley. That he had dared to love. Half blind the thundering household, he clung in his place and blasphemed.

  When the full din had passed he felt sweat on his forehead; humility curved near his spirit and shadowed its wonted haughtiness.

  Far away in the uplands swelled the tumult of the kill, and still he sat in his place. A hunt at such a speed might well have shed half its following; but those who rode with Lorin and Anne seemed cut to worthy pattern. No further hoof beats shattered the rearward stillness; birds began to twitter again, and the stream sang untroubled beneath the whispering oaks.

  Joris recovered his usual calm and lowered himself to the ground, loping away from danger straigh
tly as he was able.

  "Hounds travel well," he reflected, "but arrows travel better. When next I come this way, I will not come alone. 'Red shall run ere all be done' – it has an idle sound to-day, when gold runs tail between legs whilst Red rides like a whirlwind. But 'black and gold red shall hold' – shall hold, by the chimes of hell!"

  * * * *

  The third time he lay in a gorse thicket above a dark hill tarn, watching Red Anne and her party half a mile beneath him. Now there were no dogs, and two of the six riders wore hawk hoops round their bodies; there was a girl beside Anne – a slim young thing in gray, on a white mount large as the other horses.

  "That will be the wench called Lys," said Joris to himself. "A rank witch, they say, and very faithful to Anne. I would I knew the use of fern seed to make myself invisible – yet to follow my love through her day might destroy mw with frenzy."

  He thought of his voice, a shriek from nowhere, stilling the Butcher's hand upon Anne's body – countercraft that might reveal him, of snickering laughter and glowing irons in the keep of Campscapel. A dull rage burned his breast, that twenty of his men should lie at hand in line, each of them knowing his chieftain somehow thwarted by that distant shape with its blot of brilliant hair. Vainly he sought to drag to light the love root in his mind, that robbed its neighbour weeds of life and throve on no more than a sprinkling of runes; but the strange plant was earthed beyond his delving, and although he tore at its flowers in wrath, he knew they would blossom again in an hour or a day or a week, shedding perfume that made him glad and afraid.

  Nevertheless, for a space he trod them foully; this time the spell of Red Anne's face was lacking, and sullenly Joris swore to himself to ravish the first comely woman he met.

  "If I had my way with Anne, he raged, "I should find her the same as the rest from shoulder to knee. Fiend fly off with this madness … let her go free this time, but if I meet her again she shall not outface me. It has been Joris for Anne thus far; next time it is Anne for Joris, though Heaven and Hell unite to defend her."