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

by Leslie Barringer

  Thorismund pondered, and next to speak was the Castellan of Montenair.

  "It is no bad plan, Your Grace. The hills will be full of broken and lawless men for months or years to come, unless you give your word to purge them now. The company of Joris will itself grow to an army; we must root him out in the end. Ger shall have half my swords: my brother will command them."

  "Gladly will I," said tall Rogier de Olencourt.

  Thorismund nodded and looked again at Raoul of Ger.

  "From any other man, for any other purpose, we should require more argument," he said. "But there is virtue in your imaginings; witness this bridge where now we stand. And Joris merits a peculiar attention. For six months we create you our Lieutenant of the North; choose men to help you, of rank beneath your own. Go now if you will; your commission shall follow this night. And this your Chevalier John shall rest by the old abbot in Saint Austreberte's of Belsaunt."

  Around Raoul of Ger crowded the lesser noblemen; besides Rogier de Olencourt he chose for his chief lieutenants Serlo de Saulte, the duke's youngest brother, and Enguerrand do Veranger, his old comrade-in-arms. Within the half hour men who had hoped for sleep were riding north and east to bear the news of battle and rouse the moorland and forest folk for the hunting of Joris of the Rock.

  CHAPTER XIII. THE BEATING OF THE HIGH HILLS

  "At least I am partly quit of my debt to little Ger," thought Joris with satisfaction when the clamour of instant pursuit was shaken off behind him. "If the ford be henceforth useless, I will steal boats and swim the ponies across. I give their host a week to disperse; meanwhile there are the fugitives. Some will come in, and some be easy prey. But I would I had the pretty gear of kinsman Montcarneau – yet Gandulf alive were worth a score such suits to me.

  By the light of his little campfire, far in the forest depth, he sat that night alone with Madoc, and with the silver-hilted dagger that once was Rufin's he made a new nick on the bone of his long sword. The nicks were tokens of eight killings that had given Joris peculiar satisfaction, whether or no the weapon itself had achieved them; the first was for the fast sub-prior of Medrincourt, the second and third for a blacksmith and a chevalier who had crossed him in the early days of his outlawry, the fourth for Ursin, the fifth for Rufin himself, the sixth for Guy de Saulte, the seventh for Yaan the mock fiend, and the eight for Captain John Doust.

  "Six of them very stout swordsmen," Joris reflected with grim relish. "I might have had Gaston de Volsberghe too – and girl-faced Thorismund – and wildcat Ger himself, at Gramberge or in Hautarroy. But I am here, my lords, not finished yet. Wait until you are parted again, and you shall hear of me."

  He stared into the leaping flames, recalling his runes and Ivo's vision, the double tangle of vague prophecy that had so long upborne him.

  "Anne's fate I cannot fathom," he mused, almost without anger. "But for myself there is yet the boy – the son of Joris of the Rock. Whose lad could that be? There was Marie and Jehane, and Jolette at Montcarneau – two of them pupped, but I cannot remember which. And at Medrincourt the innkeeper's wife – by the beard of Goliath of Gath, she was a fat rascal. And what was the wench named whose milk pail rolled in the quarry? Then there were two or three not so pleased – Tiphaine de Ath whom I saved from Gaston – but she and token of unwisdom perished in the Jacquerie. Nay, I give it up, unless Anne – no, that were unlikely."

  Joris rolled himself up in his cloak and presently fell asleep. Every triumph now was over his enemies; Anne's desertion had blasted him in a last emotional check on his lust for power, and it seemed to him as thought he injured Gaston, and even Anne herself, when he dealt a death wound to the English captain upon Pont-de-Foy.

  * * * *

  For three days the outlaw company lay hidden in the forest between Alanol and Olencourt. Their numbers were augmented by a score and more of lost and half-starved men who wore, or had already cast aside, the device of one or other of the fallen rebel lords. From such recruits Joris learned of the swift-riding conquerors who swept the main roads toward Hastain and Belsaunt; and not until he ventured a cattle raid did he begin to realize his own danger.

  Then, bandaged and cursing, he fled from a hamlet whose defenceless-looking huts had disgorged Saulte archers; and on that same night a neighbouring hilltop suddenly sprouted flame. Joris, already miles away, frowned then chuckled at that untoward apparition.

  "That is the first time I have been honoured with a beacon," he said.

  Also it was the first time in the year that his men had gone hungry for twenty-four hours at a stretch; and in early morning they trotted their ponies out of the thickets toward a larger village on the road between Alanol and Ververon.

  The village lay in a gorge; a horn brayed on the opposite slope, and scores of armed and mounted men broke shouting into view, taking line to await any attack. Joris swore and counted them; Madoc exclaimed and pointed to a height toward Alanol, where a puff of smoke appeared and grew and slanted gently away to the eastward.

  "Now, now," growled Joris, "I will have good measure for this interference. Whose are the colours yonder?"

  "Blue and white check are Le Veranger," affirmed one of his men, "but the tawny are townsmen of Alanol. On their way home, belike."

  "Maybe. But that damned Sieur du Veranger is far enough from his home, unless he be sent to hold the castle of Campscapel. And they were not in the village; they were waiting on the hillside. Well, they may wait, and we will go hunting."

  "They do not pursue," commented Madoc. "But see, there goes another cursed little bale fire, westward."

  "They think us stragglers," suggested another beside Joris.

  "Back into the forest," was the leader's curt bidding, and back they went, to chase red deer and boar and shoot at birds and rabbits.

  That evening Joris sent out spies to examine the southward and eastward roads; in two more days one party returned with news that the ford and all the angle of the forest above Pont-de-Foy were held by a group of soldiery, while the Belsaunt way was constantly patrolled by the green coats of Olencourt. As for the other party, no more was seen of it; and Madoc himself went eastward alone, leaving Joris amused yet thoughtful in the densely wooded highlands south of Alanol.

  "I could do with rain," thought Joris; but the weather was fine and frequently cloudless, and Madoc came again with a rueful grin on his hatchet face, and a tale of proclamation cried at every market place cross in the fringes of moor and forest.

  "First," he announced to his leader, "free pardon to all rebels beneath chevalier's rank who come in within two weeks. Then, a thousand gold nobles for your head, and the same free and unconditional pardon for any outlaw or rebel – or any party of either kind – which brings that head to chevalier or nobleman. Ger is Lieutenant of the North, commissioned to receive submission of all rebels and to break up the company or companies of outlaws in the hills of Honoy and Nordanay."

  "You heard this where?" demanded Joris.

  "At Montenair."

  Joris looked narrowly at his lieutenant, and his eyes twinkled.

  "You are slow to seize your advantage," he gibed. "What is amiss with a thousand gold pieces, and pardon to put in your pocket?"

  Madoc's hatchet face grew red beneath grime and sweat and sunburn; Madoc's quick brown eyes were veiled, and Madoc's hand went out to the horn of clear brook water beside him.

  "But if you are slow," went on Joris, "some others may not be. How many men has Ger to track us?"

  " 'Ten thousand men shall follow Joris' … as fugitive, it seems. Well, little pick-lock Ivo did not promise they should catch me. Now, Madoc. South of Angmer, near the road from Hautarroy, I buried once a little coffer of gold – good monastery gold – Saint-Eloy's-over-Hardonek, if truth were know. But until you and I come reasonably near that coffer, it wee perhaps wise to keep about us what swords we can. Then, with such spoil to claim and share, we two can slip through any net and swim Varne under cover of night. Once across, we may settle what co
mes next. The Rock awaits us if need be – hey?"

  Madoc nodded, but sat silent, staring away between the oaks of the Forest of Honoy.

  "You think the band is doomed in any case?" he ventured at length.

  "As a band, yes; I am sure of it. Only dissension among the lords has saved it thus far. Our chance as a free company was lost when Thorismund escaped us. A hundred thousand men might never find us, but they can find and drive the game, and guard all cattle and corn within our reach. And these who are now assembled against us are hunting, so to speak, for love; each man of the leaders has a private grudge, unless it be that Olencourt – and he is of a family damnably addicted to law and order. And since I once caused to be kicked the behind that now warms the throne, I think it time for private abjuration of the realm."

  "Eh, Joris," said Madoc, "I could not be so merry in your shoes."

  "Nor I so glum as you with fortune at my dagger's point."

  But even as Madoc laughed again there came, in hot haste one a pony, one of the scouts whom Joris now threw out on all sides of his camps. Olencourt men were five miles distant, driving straight through the forest as though from Montenair to Alanol.

  "Two hundred at the least," the fellow affirmed, "and with them many great dogs."

  "And the green of their coats is ever so bright," jeered Joris, "that even now its reflection abides on your countenance. What, man, have we no arrows? Be sure, if other meat fail, hound's flesh is non too sorry fare."

  Then he gave orders to mount and ride, and in a quarter of an hour was jogging southward toward Belsaunt at the head of his hundred and ten men.

  Once, as he rode, Joris handled his sword hilt, and smiled to feel the eight nicks in the smooth surface of bone.

  "A pound or two of steel is worth a ton of prophecy," he mused. "Yet I would hear more of my son who is to be in the hills. What thinks he of himself, that son of Joris of the Rock?"

  * * * *

  Juhel, sitting at that moment in the keep of the great hold of Ger, thought of himself again as accursed and damned. The lovely Lady Dionysia de Saint-Aunay had bidden him play chess with her, and valiantly he set his mind to the ivory warriors sharply white and red upon cream and crimson squares of the old ivory board; but more sharply to his senses shone the grave blue eyes, the fluffy golden hair, the pearly throat and dimpled rosy cheeks and fingers of the Lady Dionysia. The dark remembered impulse stirred in the boy's blood; it seemed that neither battle, nor fatigue, nor the death of dear companions, nor yet instinctive gentleness and proud habits of duty, could still its faint appalling voice that bade him violate and slay.

  No matter that the prompting was grotesque, that Juhel formed a willing link of the armed might of Ger that would have held the king himself from offering one harsh word to little Dionysia; he felt it there – the poisonous ferment of a wrong unknown to him – and sank into a dream of self-loathing.

  "Your move, Juhel."

  "My – my lady, I beg you will pardon me!" he muttered, blushing for his discourtesy.

  Dionysia smiled, but her smile was wan.

  "I thought you were not pondering a check," she said. "Yet you would growl if I should say – lie down on the window seat and go to sleep.

  Juhel looked at her with a somber gratitude, and slowly moved a white pawn. Nino Chiostra was closeted with the countess, having brought letters from her lord, and the young pages of Ger were shy of this silent page of Marckmont, so that Juhel had sat alone among the seniors of the household until Dionysia found him.

  "At times like these," went on the girl, almost as though she spoke to herself, "women who live on flattery find mighty thin fare. Men look through them as though they were ghosts. Maybe they are ghosts – the misty tallies of a man's pride in his own nobility. Maybe men have no true life but in warfare."

  Juhel summoned no pretty speeches. He knew she gibed at herself a little, and counted him as a man; but also he saw that her real thought was of Chavelier Nino.

  "No true life but in warfare?" he repeated, watching the dainty fingers nip away one of his bishops. "God forbid that, Lady Dionysia."

  He castled behind his screen of pawns, and glance up from the red attacking queen to make a little sound of shocked distress; for down the pink cheeks of the heiress of Saint-Aunay stole two enormous tears.

  "Oh, Juhel," came her shaken whisper, as she impatiently she brushed them away, "Oh, Juhel – Nino and his big Captain John – you and your dark clever Piers – such a mighty victory won, and all the king's foes slain or scattered, and you with nothing but pain in your faces and in your hearts."

  "Not only pain," murmured the boy. "We will have the head off that ravening wolf before my lord has done."

  "Small joy will be yours of that revenge," said Dionysia flatly. "Ay, if your own sword achieved it. What can women do that men should find in them at last the spirit they seek in comrades of war?"

  He was fifteen, and she a year older, but they looked at each other with fair if uneven understanding of the violent life of their day.

  "I do not know," mumbled Juhel, hanging his head; for he knew that he himself would never seek from a woman what he had sough and found in Folquin de Forne and Piers du Veranger and the Count Raoul of Ger.

  "But whatsoever it is, my lady there has done it," he added, boldly grinding heel into the corpse of a slain jealousy.

  Dionysia nodded, and eyed the door of the adjoining room.

  "Therefore it may be done by others," Juhel ventured just above his breath.

  A rose flush swept the girl's forehead, and Juhel was aware that grief had aroused what mirth left slumbering.

  Later, when it was time to leave, he saw through a half-open door the curly head of the Chevalier Nino bowed on the silken lap of the Lady Dionysia. It was plain the pair were loves declared, and utterly miserable; beyond them the dark girl countess Reine had turned away to a window, scorning to fashion comforting words that had no hope behind them.

  Nino had lost his best friend, and might not aspire to the maid of his choice; that was how true men were often rewarded. Whereas a villain such as Joris ran wild for twenty years. Piers, with all his delicate chivalry, lay buried by Pont-de-Foy; Juhel was spared to glance evilly sideways at women who honoured and trusted him. What had the Sieur God in mind when He made an eye to gladden at tender beauty, and then soured all its gladness with inward adulteries?

  Perhaps it needed some terrible effort to appease this God, who seemed to demand that every man should either crucify Christ anew, or be somehow crucified with Him.

  How would it be, thought Juhel, to pray each night and morning for a thing quite apart from himself? Say, for comfort of all whom Joris of the Rock had wronged, be they dead or alive. How would it be…

  * * * *

  At that moment Joris was losing many men, but not in the way he intended. Orderly beating of forest fastnesses he was more or less prepared for, but the straight march of compact forces took him by surprise. Destriers and nags made slow going compared with the hill ponies, but once he was face to face with Olencourt, the latter's arrows flew fast as his own. Avoiding one plodding troop, he stumbled across another; for ten minutes a heady fight raged in a sun-flecked beech glade.

  Three or four greencoats paid no heed to anything but their warhorns, spurring this way and that to wake a summoning clamour. Whether they were heard or not, that hint of near assistance broke the outlaws; and behind the fleeting ponies were launched a dozen hounds of chase, abler to pull down men than stags, and willing to pull down anything that breathed.

  By twilight Joris and seventy men had reached the edge of the true forest between Alanol and Capel Conan. Behind them the dozen hounds were slain, but still the distant horns resounded; before them humped and rolled the heather, rising in endless crests and ranges to the great central ridge, that lay in two provinces and linked the mountain Dondunor with the mountain Dondonoy.

  Pine woods and gorse and bracken awaited the coming of night. Joris and his
following ate oat cakes made with the flour that each man carried in a sack on his saddlebow. Joris found that the wound on his shoulder had broken with new bleeding, and Madoc bound it up anew when they slunk to moisten their oatmeal beside the Conan Beck. Nothing stirred in the silent hills; red-brown dusked into sable and the sky filled with stars; Joris lay breathing evenly, awake but unperturbed, when he heard the movements and muttering which told that some of his men were deserting him.

  "Let them rat," he whispered, when Madoc dug him in the ribs. "The fewer we are, the more easily we go and the risk of treachery grows less."

  In the morning his band numbered fifty-three, and once a faint clamour of horns to southward hinted misfortune for those who had bolted. Thousands of men in scores of companies might plunge about for a year and never find outlaws who kept their heads; hounds might be baffled or slain, if you knew the lie of the bogs that threaded the hills, but Joris thought of the proclamation and of the little desperate knots and groups of battle fugitives who would not hear of it until too late. Scattered behind him in the woods, they were a peril in themselves; winter, and wolves of the four legged kind, would finally clear them away. Joris lay from sun-up till noon, watching for movement that did not come, and then decided to leave the forest and take to open moor.

  "No soldierly concerted plan would hurtle columns of men through the glades and leave this glen unpicketed," he thought. "Or do they think the place too near to Alanol for me to venture in it? Maybe each leader uses his own device, and that, too may be awkward if I pass from one to another of their allotted districts. But this at least I know – the bulk of them are southward from here, and deer and grouse and pheasant abound in the empty hills ahead. If need be, I dodge until autumn, then break back toward Varne, and … farewell all old creditors in Honoy and Nordanay."

  Leisurely, in the afternoon, he led his men across the rough hill road, across the bracken-filled ravine, and into the wine red fastnesses where stood the broken march towers of Lorin de Campscapel. Alanol townsmen had battered them down lest Joris and his kind make use of them, but old precaution was observed, since watchers might lurk in the ruins. Joris, riding parallel with the rest, but on a higher slope, turned for a last glance at the Alanol way, and saw a horseman in a yellow surcoat trotting deliberately toward Capel Conan.