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

by Leslie Barringer

  "Yes."

  "How many of you are there?"

  Adelgar looked past Joris at the five-score outlaws below.

  "Twenty-seven, well-armed, and half of us veterans of the Franconian wars."

  Each man saw the other's mind. The black surcoats were outlawed as surely as Joris himself, and they must either join him or be straightway cut in pieces. The first course held various risks, but the second would prove expensive; Joris might well lose half his followers in pulling these trained war dogs down.

  "Seek you a new troop?" demanded Adelgar harshly.

  "Not I, Captain Adelgar," was the blithe answer of Joris, "but I am very willing to welcome twenty-seven hardy fighting men."

  Adelgar took the point with a grim nod. And appeared to consider it.

  "Your fame is enough for me," he said after a moment. "A live wolf's head is better than a pack of dead counts. I will engage your best swordsman for the honour of becoming your chief lieutenant."

  "I am my own best swordsman."

  "Your second-best, then, or any you appoint to try me."

  "That is well spoken. Summon your men, and I will summon mine. We will stand back to back, and when I give the word let each bid his crew sheathe bow or sword; our confidence shall quicken theirs."

  Strangely enough, on the windy hill slope, followed the drawing-together; presently uniformed rogues and motley gazed on each other with curiosity. One outlaw only seemed to resent the truce; he it was who had loosed the second upward arrow, and now he stepped to confront his chieftain, pointing aside at the slain man in the bracken.

  "Make what terms amuse you," he shouted, "but give me blood for my blood."

  Adelgar turned beside Joris, and necks were craned around them.

  "Your brother was a half-wit, and you are another, to shoot without my word," rasped Joris in reply. "Gain what quittance you can on the person of Adelgar here."

  Five minutes later Adelgar laid the complainant dead beside his brother, and Joris counted a clear gain of twenty-five stout blades.

  "Wear your sable surcoats till they fall to pieces," he bade the newcomers, "but pick the silver lions from off them before to-morrow morning. And the first of you who says in my hearing 'We did not this under Lorin or Jehan,' runs the guantlet down a ravine, with rocks for pebbles. I warrant you did not that either. The same shall befall any man of mine who flings old enmity at you; henceforth you are all my men, and our foes are around, not among us. Adelgar leads those I shall give him, and no more. Flar, have you understood?"

  For the little smith from Alanol stood scowling at the badges of Campscapel. And although at the time he jumped and blushed and grinned, Flar only of all the outlaw throng found courage to defy that union; for on a night soon afterward he slipped away and was no more seen by the Rock or among the hills.

  But Joris wished again for war, his band being now far stronger than ever before, and its immediate employment the easy task of rounding up strayed cattle or stealing them in scores of defenceless farms in sight of the dead Butcher's empty march towers, and even in sight of the ramparts of Alanol itself. Many hides and horns were stored in sandy caves under Dondunor before the outlaws scented autumn airs and turned their faces to southward; Joris moved his power in five parties, of which the middle three alone were plunder-laden. Madoc led the advance guard, and Joris himself the rear guard; between them the convoys of ponies and kine were in charge of Adelgar, Rufin, and Gandulf – each hating the others and jealous of his own success in slinking across Varne and past the borders of the vigilant castellan.

  CHAPTER V. DIANA IN THE FOREST

  So came a September day when Joris picked and ate the late wild strawberries in a derelict sandstone quarry, peering the while between thorns and ragwort at an approaching cavalcade.

  "Some reverend father has been getting in his rents," he muttered to old Osmund beside him; for four men-at-arms rode first, and behind them a fat church dignitary, followed by two monks, a banner bearer, and a dozen laden pack ponies piloted by armed servants, with four more mounted men-at-arms in rear.

  "What is the banner?" asked Joris; and the whispered query went down the line of sprawling men.

  "The good saint was a martyr," he reflected. "He holds his heat and liver, or maybe his kidneys, and regards them with no loving countenance. No doubt they savour too much of the world for his liking – eh?"

  "Saint-Eloy's-over-Hardonek," came the low-voiced reply, passed by the man on his other side.

  "A wealthy house, and famed for generosity," said Joris, plucking at the cord of his slung horn to bring the mouthpiece into place.

  At the single harsh note his score of outlaws bounded up and crashed through undergrowth upon the startled wayfarers. The fat cleric had courage; he reined in, snatched up his crucifix, and bayed a deep threat of damnation at the attackers, but an arrow aimed at himself sank into the neck of his rearing mare, and in a second he was groaning at the wayside. Behind was wild confusion; Osmund tore the banner from its wounded keeper and flung it across the pack of the first led animal; three men-at-arms were unhorsed, and half the servants had run yelling down the road, but the rest stood firm, and for two or three minutes the thieves got nearly as good as they gave. One of the monks was young, and bore a heavy staff heeled in a bucket at his stirrup; with this for a weapon he laid about him, shielding his superior and the older monks beside him, but Joris cut the staff in two and stayed his blade to laugh at the fury in the other's face.

  "Carry a mace next time, you man of God!" he jeered. "By the bones of Goliath of Gath you mistook you vocation!"

  "Slay me, you hound of hell," returned the young monk fiercely, "but spare the old sub-prior, for he never harmed living creature!"

  "Nay, I slay neither; I like a lad of spirit. Keep your mare to mount the old man; his girth proclaims him slow to sin. In Purgatory you both may thank me for relieving you of your worldly dross … no Latin, Brother!"

  The last words were barked at the older monk, who, dazed and white with fear, strove yet to bless his enemy before the latter could slay him; he raised a trembling hand toward Joris, understanding neither the outlaw's reassurance nor his own new peril.

  "God, Who hears me, forgive you your sins, and bring you at last to grace!" he piped, staring with dark fanatic eyes at the mocking face of Joris.

  "Praise Him if it please you for setting Neustrian language on your tongue," rasped the outlaw, "but for me, my skin is oiled with sin against such water benediction. Farewell, and a blithe journey … and tell your saint that Joris is beholden to him."

  Five minutes after their onslaught the outlaws were streaming away from the track – every pack pony with them, and three good horses besides – while behind them five of their number lay slain or abandoned among Saint Eloy's fallen. One rogue had the sub-prior's cloak that was trimmed with black lamb's wool; others bore new weapons torn from dying men-at-arms, and red-nosed Osmund pawed his captive banner with amusement while Joris eyed the heavy little chests that lurched to the scrambling mule pace over red earth and between red pine trunks of the Forest of Honoy.

  That night he sank his fingers deep in gold. Ten pieces went to each of the men who had helped him to win it, and sternly he forbade gambling until they reached the Rock, for gambling meant cheating, and cheating meant knives, and knives meant another corpse or two when eyes and muscles were needed. One little coffer he took for a twilight stroll beneath his cloak, and buried it secretly amid oak roots on a slope, marked the spot by hasty dagger-carvings on two trunks near by. Only old Osmund counted the coffers left, and winked and said nothing; for Osmund was of the loyal sort whose leaders rise to fame.

  But Joris lay long awake that night, his mind roused by his new fortune in matters of men and gear.

  "Six-score swords to sell now, and trouble brewing to southward," he mused. "Since the king exalts his bastard, the princeling must look to his chances…"

  For during that summer old Rene had married again, taki
ng to wife thee Countess of Burias who nineteen years before had borne him a son. And at their royal wedding the young Conrad stood with his parents under the crimson pall, in token of formal legitimization; care was taken to proclaim him outside the succession, but the same afternoon saw Conrad created Duke of Burias and richly endowed with lands to south and west of Hautarroy. And even Joris in the northern hills smiled to think of that proclamation.

  "Six-score swords for the highest bidder, be it Thorismund or Conrad or this strange little lord of Ger … though I doubt his humour would not march with mine for long. Still, I am ready. Good health to the sub-prior of Saint-Eloy-over-Hardonek. I would I might hear his tale to his prior up yonder. I warrant I gave him the wildest, strangest day of his saintly life. Alas, my reverend father in God, the peaceful souls gain goodlier savour from adventure than does he whose daily fare it is, such as that plaguy outlaw Joris of the Rock."

  Gold of his coffers stirred thought of gold of his runes; Joris opened his eyes and blinked at the stars.

  " 'And gold given – to red – new-shriven,'" he murmured. "That scared old shaveling on the road … by the chimes of hell, am I shriven at last?"

  And, as it happened, the following day was among the strangest, if not among the wildest, days of his own tempestuous life.

  * * *

  It was quiet beneath the spreading beech boughs, there on the bank of the gliding forest stream. Joris had sat for an hour in the sun-splashed gloom. Squirrel and trout and water ousel flashed and flitted about their business near him, and his trained eye marked their stir amid first yellows of the turning leaves or amber of sunken boulders; but his long limbs barely moved, and his eagle's face might have been carved from the sandstone bluffs across the whispering water.

  Dozing, he thought he dreamed, but started awake to know that he had caught a sudden unlikely sound – the elfin chirrup of a flute among the dense alders. A startled pheasant got up from bracken high above him; followed a stir of voices and a deliberate clop-clop of approaching hoofs.

  "Bold vagrants these," thought the outlaw. "Bold, or very innocent to stray so far from the road. Minstrels travelling northward to the autumn fairs. The sub-prior's gold inclines me to mercy; slugs shall creep in the wolf's path. Besides, I warrant they have nothing worth a second glance, save their pipes and tabor and maybe a florin between them, to keep them until Michaelmas."

  Then a green-clad youth appeared, leading a laden pack horse; and behind him, in short kirtles of green, came a slender girl and a tall woman. All three wore hooded capes, and stout boots to the knees; each carried a bow and quiver, and the lad a sword as well. The girl had a flute to her lips; her slim fingers were stilled on the stops as she saw Joris ahead.

  The flute slid into a sheath at her belt as she caught the bridle to halt the plodding nag. The youth plucked out his strung bow and whisked a shaft into place. Beyond him the woman stood at gaze, shading her eyes with a brown hand against the morning sunlight, her hood fell back, and the flame of her hair leaped out against gray writhen beech trunks and brown gloom of the forest glade.

  Joris sat still as the roots at his flank, but for a moment his head was dizzied as with the fumes of wine. Over moss and beech mast Red Anne trod catlike and alone toward him – a Red Anne thinner, browner, fiercer than he could remember her, with head a little bent and blue eyes steadily aware in the rose and sunburn of her face.

  Joris got grimly to his feet, churning heel in the ground to stay himself from stepping forward. If this be the hour for which he had waited, it should not startle him beyond self-mastery; he swung his bonnet off and stood with head erect and hand on hilt, while sunlight mailed the gray of his tunic with shivering disks of gold.

  "Greeting once more," he growled – and his heart leaped, for Anne's regard came up the length of him with a sombre appraisement. Yet her eyes held a sullen aloofness new to his senses; and something in him ached to find her tired, a little haggard, coarsened by what had befallen her since that last meeting at Capel Conan.

  "Greeting, Joris," she returned, with a sudden half-friendly grimace which shook his purpose. "In all my paths you only seem unchanged. I should perhaps have paid more heed to you and your runes."

  "Whither are you bound?" demanded Joris simply.

  "Nowhither, save we aim for the Singing Stones before November Eve."

  "Ah, you hold to that loyalty … and who are these behind you?"

  "Ivo and Lys," said Anne. "They served me in Lorin's hold. We have taken a leaf from your missal and peddled packs to Hautarroy and back again. My face is too well known in Varne, but we have friends here and there, and gear for the winter – unless you mean to rob us."

  "Friends there and here," amended Joris. "Stay or press on as you please; a party of my men lies yonder, and there is a fire and food and shelter without danger or compulsion."

  Red Anne considered him gravely, and raised her shoulders with ever so slight a shrug that somehow daunted him.

  "Gramercy, Joris," she whispered; and over her shoulder she called to her companions.

  "Lys, Ivo, come here. Give greeting to our night's host, Joris of the Rock."

  Lys was slender, with ivory pallor of health and light blue indifferent eyes; her hair was mouse-brown and abundant, her mouth clear-cut and fine above a delicate pointed chin. Ivo, too, was slim to wiriness, and little taller than the girl; his eyes were hostile, dark blue with long lashes, and there was pink on the nose and cheek bones of his thin freckled countenance. They answered with composure the bluff hail of Joris, and the latter sustained a second faint shock to find in both young faces a sullen depth of expression resembling Red Anne's own.

  For a moment he felt baffled, as though he were a dog and they three cats, observant and unafraid; then he looked again at Anne and gestured along the stream. "My men shall build another shelter for the night," he said.

  * * *

  "Joris, you drink no wine?"

  "Not now. Wine has been for when you were not here."

  Only Red Anne could hear the murmured words; Joris, sprawling beside her, saw her smile faintly in the twilight. She and the others had slept all afternoon – Anne and Lys in their own rough bower, and Ivo in the ramshackle tent of Joris – and supper round the fire had eased the harshness of their weathered faces. Lys was gravely mute, but Ivo talked with old Osmund; the rest of the men had a fire of their own a score of yards away. Joris and his party sat near the shelters on a grassy ledge above the darkling stream; across the water rose a short steep of heather, crowned by a group of firs that cut black ragged shapes out of the fading rose and yellow of a wide clear afterglow. Only the zenith was blue enough to show a first few stars; eastward was high still cloud, and the gold blur of the mounting moon. The air, although not yet chill, was sad with autumn; the heavy scent of heather warred with the fragrance of burning pine logs and the odours of roasted grouse and venison. A faint breeze stirred above the camp, for the smoke of the two fires rose straightly for a space and then was slanted away toward the east; and owls called to each other amid the nearer woods.

  Red Anne grew less severe as the wine went round; Joris sat her half-tranced, yet acutely aware of her body. The grasp and slide of her fingers on knife or cup or manchet, the turn of her warm rosy throat, the poise and slant of her round arms beneath tight-fitting sleeves, seemed spinning ghostly webs through all his flesh; the fire glow on the near rope of her marvellous air seared through old bitterness and welded to one sweet consuming need the promise of a thousand forest twilights.

  And from their noontide encounter until she noticed that his drinking horn held water, Red Anne had not spoken apart with Joris. Glancing past her shoulder, he saw young Ivo scowl across the fire, and leaned nearer to mutter an idle question.

  "What ails your page boy, now?"

  "Ivo? He is mortally jealous of anyone who speaks to me. But he is only a lad – faithful, and brave to folly if need be."

  "So I perceive; no man has thus regarded me fo
r a period. Can he sing?"

  "Ay – Ivo, where is the little harp? Find it and sing to us."

  Silently Ivo reached out for the canvas-covered gear on the pack saddle behind him; presently he was nursing the instrument, screwing the keys and plucking sad and dainty sound from tautening strings.

  "What will please you, my lady?" he asked, with eyes half sulky, half appealing.

  "A song," replied Red Anne, in a voice grown harder and deeper.

  Ivo lifted his chin, and stared at the blur of the moon, and sang a triolet in a clear untroubled tenor.

  "An elf I met in Santloy Wood

  Where rowans flame beside the river.

  When evening on the hilltops stood

  I met an elf in Santloy Wood.

  He looked too happy to be good,

  His eyes were red, his ears a-quiver,

  That elf I met in Santloy Wood

  Where rowans flame beside the river!"

  "Enough of that," said Anne when he would have sung a second verse; and Joris caught a gleam of amusement in the pale eyes of Lys that looked from Anne to Ivo and back again.

  "Sing one of Herluin's songs," commanded Anne; and Lys stared into the fire.

  "Who is Herluin?" asked Joris, resentful of standing outside the secrets that these queer creatures shared with his love.

  "He paged it with Ivo yonder," was the woman's moody reply. "Lys, too, remembers him," she added dryly.

  "I remember him well," declared Lys in her cool high tones. "He fled on the night when the Sieur Jehan slew my lord Count, his brother. Poor Herluin – he should have been a monk. By now I think he may be. Too sensitive a soul for this bleak world."

  "You did not always mock him," snapped Ivo; and Joris saw that boy and girl plagued each other with memories.

  "Who, I?" responded Lys, with an edge to her delicate voice. "Oh, no, He kissed me once – or rather thrice – in the name of his Holy Trinity. But it is true he made good songs."

  "This one among them," said Ivo, watching her grimly as he began to sing.

  "A score of spears he led that day,