Horn Crown (Witch World: High Hallack Series) (2 page)

Lord Rolfin shook his head, the firelight flashing from the three bits of red gem set in his helm just above his eyes.

“You do not know why those others withdrew,” he repeated. “Thus we may be facing an unknown, unseen enemy here.”

Again there was a stir and murmur among the lords. This time Ouse did stand, shrugging the hood of his cloak back so that his gray-haired head was fully bared and all could see his thin, lined face.

“The land,” he said quietly, “is empty. Since we have come into it we have sensed nothing which we may term enemy. This night before you came to council, my lords, Laudet and I sang the warn words and lit the torches of the Flame. It burned fair, there was no stir at our invocation. There are traces of old power—of a kind we do not know—but the Flame can burn nowhere when there is war rising and evil moving in.”

I heard a grunt from Lord Rolfin. He was ever apt, as all men knew, to go seeking menaces in each new place, though he could have no answer to Ouse's reassurance. It was true that the Undying and One Flame could not survive if evil ringed us round, and I am sure that I heard several sighs of relief at that reply.

Now Wavent pushed forward with his right foot a basin of bronze which Laudet had set out for him. The Captain stooped and picked this up, holding it with both hands.

“Here, Lords of Hallack,” his voice becoming more formal, as if speaking ritual words, “are your choices by lot. In the Light of the One Flame are all kin-chiefs equal. Thus it was in the past, so shall it be here. Let each of you now draw by chance, for at midmorning tomorrow we shall reach the first of the open dales and one of you may there withdraw from our journey to take up a new home.”

Holding the bowl just above the eye level of the circle of lords, he then passed from right to left, pausing before each man who reached up, scrabbling fingers among the strips of hide he could not see and bringing out the lot which fortune dealt him, though all knew that afterward there could be changes made if both parties agreed.

Ouse let Wavent come well along before he followed with a smaller bowl, this one being of silver somewhat tarnished, which he offered to a handful of lords who had refused the first choosing. This we knew represented the chances of the seacoast. As he had told us he would, Garn refrained from drawing from Wavent's bowl, a happening which appeared to make his near neighbors glance at him in surprise. When Ouse reached him his hand went up forthwith and there was something of eagerness in his action though no emotion showed on his impassive face.

None looked yet upon their luck but waited until all had drawn. There were some slips left in Wavent's bowl but Ouse, though he had few takers, turned his upside down before he was well around the circle and went back to his own place.

It was only when Wavent also returned to stand by the fire that each lord unrolled the scrap of hide his groping fingers had brought him and looked down at the runes marked there—for the Sword Brothers, together with the Bards, had made these for guidance even before we had come through the Gate, and each carried clear directions for travelers and settlers.

We were eager to know Garn's luck, though he did not turn to show his drawing to his kin as many of the lords were doing. The hum of talk arose and already there were those who bargained for exchange, some wanting more pasturage, others more land for crops. We waited with what patience we could summon until at last Garn did speak: “The Flame has favored us. We have the river land.”

It was a piece of fortune such as men seldom come across. That he should have drawn the very land he had marked down for his own seemed almost too well done, as if fortune (which is always undependable) had been this time reinforced by a more powerful ally.

I saw one of the Sword Brothers coming through the shadows beyond the inner circle to which the fire gave light. It was Quaine, he who had first told our lord of this possible holding. Now he joined Garn and asked: “What luck, my lord?”

Garn had arisen, the piece of hide stretched taut between his two hands. He favored Quaine with one of those piercing, near accusing glances by which he was able to reduce any man to instant acknowledgment of his orders. Yet Quaine was not of his meiny or kin, but stood easily as if he spoke but of pleasant weather.

Quaine was Wavent's age, and he had been Captain in the last Ten Time. He was, I thought, near Garn's own years, though there was no gray in his hair and his body was slim as any youth's. He walked with the grace of a fighting man who was well trained in the most skillful of swordplay.

“I have it,” Garn returned shortly in answer to the question. “It is yet a long journey.” He made no question of that, still he continued to look at Quaine as if he waited for some other and more important word from the Sword Brother.

Quaine made no comment and Garn glanced now from him into the flames beyond. He was a man whose thoughts one could never read, though at that moment I wondered if he were not as well pleased with the result of the drawing as he might have us believe. I held to a small shred of doubt that this fortune came to him by luck alone, although neither Wavent nor Ouse would have lent himself to any arrangement of favor for even the greatest lord among us, and Garn was one of the least of that company when it came to wealth or ranks of kin.

“It is best,” Quaine continued, “that those for the shore take trail together. There is another road leading east and then north, but it is much older and it may prove difficult passage. If you ride together then there is aid at hand should any accident occur.”

Garn nodded sharply, thrusting his drawing into his belt pouch. Then he only spoke four names, making a question of them: “Siwen, Uric, Farkon, and Dawuan?”

“Also Milos and Tugness,” Quaine added.

Now Garn did stare at him, while I let hand go to sword hilt without my realizing what I did until my fingers crooked hard about the metal. We might have had old memories erased as we passed the Gate, but there were some which lingered. Among the Lords, Tugness was no friend to any of Garn's household. It was an old feud which had meant bloodletting once, but now it was only that we did not friend-visit with them at any season nor come to a hosting in which they had a part.

Again Garn made his question curt: “Where?”

Quaine shrugged. “I have not asked. Yours lies farthest north—the last dale we rode across in our quartering. Doubtless he will settle south of that.”

“Well enough.”

“We turn from the road near sunset,” Quaine continued. “I will lead the Brothers for the sea party.”

Garn nodded, giving no farewell, as he turned on his heel and, with the rest of us, tramped back to our own camp which was some little distance from the council place, saying nothing to us.

Though I was well tired by the journeying of the day—the everlasting matching of our pace to the slow turn of wain wheels—yet as I drew my cloak about me and used my saddle pad as a pillow, I did not at once fall asleep. One could hear the small sounds of the camp. A child was crying in a weak, fretting way where the women sheltered—probably Stig's grandson who ailed. I could hear, too, the movements of our stock as they grazed the tough, thick grass already well above the earth's edge for spring, and now and then the snort of a sleeper or a snore. Garn had gone into the small tent which was his alone. From where I lay I could see the spark of a strike light and then the thin gleam of a lantern candle. Perhaps he was again studying the lot fortune had given him.

I had thought fortune too favoring and been wary, then I had heard of Tugncss's luck and believed that this was the ill part which I had sought to find. If our future holding marched with his we must learn to live in a state better than an uneasy truce. This was an unknown land from whence the former inhabitants had withdrawn—the why we did not know. Though the Bards and the Scouts had stressed that there were no enemies, still there was a loneliness, a kind of withdrawal, which I, for one, felt the farther I rode. We might well need to depend on neighbors even if such lived a day's journey away. This would be the time when all men of Hallack must stand together, old quarrels and enmities forgotten.

This was not Hallack—that lay behind, lost forever. Those of our company had come to call it High Hallack, since it was a country of many hills. This it would be named in bardic memory from the hour we crossed into it.

Still sleep did not come, though the lantern candle winked out. I turned my head to look up into the night, seeking stars I knew. Then there was a coldness which crept across me, roughened my skin, and brought a prickling beneath my hair. For none of those groupings of stars was what I had known all my life. Where was the Arrow, the Bull, the Hunter's Horn? There was no tracing of any such to be seen.

The rain had stopped hours ago, and the clouds cleared This sky was a background for many clusters and sweeps of sparkling light—but they were all new! Where had our journey through that Gate taken us? To the sight, this land about us was just such earth, grass, bush and tree as we had always known. Only the stars were different. We were in a land which would support us, but we were very far from where we had been born.

I lay shivering at the sight of the unknown stars which, more than just passing through the Gates (much as we had been warned that those would influence us), brought home to me that we were indeed exiles and that we had now only our own strengths to carry us on, our own weaknesses to fight. Which lay the more threatening before us? I thought of the sea, of Garn's choice, and part of me felt excitement and a wish to explore the new. Another part of me searched for a shield against that same new and the dangers it might hold—until I dropped at last from the chaos of my thoughts and fears into sleep.

2.

Behind us lay the wide valleys, which now held the people of Farkon, of Siwen, of Uric, Dawuan, and to our right still pounded the sea as our company grew smaller and smaller. We could take heart only that the land did remain empty, though there were in plenty the remains of those who had gone before us, even at times stretches of ancient road which we followed with greater ease. Quaine and three of the Sword Brothers scouted ahead, pointed out those places of the unknown; some they would counsel avoiding, mistrusting the emanations.

There were towers, stretches of pavement surrounded by pillars, piles of rough stones, even monoliths, about which we cautiously edged. I was ever curious as to the manner of folk which had labored to set such stones one upon the other, wondering at the purposes which had led them to such labors.

The largest and most fertile of those sea-fronting lowlands were now behind us. We had been twenty days on our northward crawl. Twice it had been necessary to strike inland for near a day's journeying to find a ford across rivers, which, to our thankfulness, were lazy enough of current—at least at that season—to allow us safe crossings.

On the twenty-fourth day Lord Milos's people left us, turning westward up the throat of a narrower valley, one of the scouts riding as guide. This held no river and we were forced out upon the sea's sandy shore in order to round two ranges of steep hills which guarded it. We called farewells, made promises of future meetings come festival time. Still I think that in all of us, whether we went forward or remained in a stretch of new clan land, a loneliness grew, the uneasy feeling that one more tie with the old was broken and that we might well rue this later on.

It was true that we had drawn closer together during that long march because of the very fact that we were alone in a strange land. There remained, on the surface, none of any ancient enmity with Tugness and his people. All of us labored together to lighten wains as they crossed on the fords, to carry sheep across our saddles there, whether they wore the ear brand of our House or not. Though at night we each made our own camps, still there was visiting back and forth.

Which is how I came first to see that slim withe of a girl who rode a shaggy, sure-footed pony which bore her and two fat hide bags without complaint, though her mount showed rolling eyes and yellowish teeth when anyone else approached it. For all her seeming fragility of body, she was as strong as any lad as she went about her tasks with a brisk independence which had none of the weary acceptance of a field woman, and certainly no hint of manner of one used to the high table in a lord's hall.

It was on the third day of our northern trek that I marked her as one different from the other women who rode and were there to lend a hand, to the extent of their strength. She traveled beside a smaller cart—hardly larger than the tilt carrier which a fieldman would use to take his over-yield to market. To this were hitched two more of the same rough-coated beasts as she rode, their gray coats the same dull shade as the cart itself. Though our people have long taken pride in painting their wains and carts, no such decoration had been given this, so among our company it was more visible for that very reason.

It had a canopy, well lashed to side staves, of finely tanned and stretched hide, and it was driven also by a woman, whose kirtle and cloak were of the same prevailing gray, and who I knew at first glance to be a Wise Woman.

The pair of travelers appeared to be by themselves, attached to no lord's company. I noted that Ouse came once to ride beside the cart for a space and exchange speech with the driver, while the girl dropped behind to give him room. That the bard chose so to single out this woman meant that she was of note among those who had the Inner Knowledge, even though she went so poorly and quietly.

I had thought that they would turn aside with one of the great lords where a larger company would give the Wise Woman full occupation tending ills and averting dangers of the spirit. However, at each lessening of our company, the two and their cart remained.

One asks no question concerning a Wise Woman. They do not call upon the Flame, yet men do not question or raise voice against them for that. Their skills are inner born and they are free to come and go, as they serve all without question. Many a fighting man, many a woman in child labor, has reason to bless their shadows and give thanks for what they have to offer.

However, if one wishes any matter enough one can learn. Thus I discovered that the girl was named Gathea and that she was a foundling whom the Wise Woman had taken for fostering and made her handmaid and pupil. Thus she was set apart and went her own way, not to be judged by the manner and customs of either the field people or those of the hall.

One could not call her comely. She was too narrow of body, her skin too brown, her features too sharp. But there was something about her, perhaps the freedom with which she walked and rode, her independence, which lingered in a man's mind. Or at least it lingered in mine and I found myself once or twice wondering how she might look with the long robe and tabard of a feast day over that slim body, in place of a shirt jerkin and breeches which were akin to my own, with that long braid of hair wound so tightly about her head shaken loose and interwoven with a silver chain of sweet tinkling bells such as Garn's daughter Iynne wore upon occasion. I could not imagine Iynne splashing through a river with a kicking sheep across her mount, one hand fast in its wool, the other beating the pony on its rump to urge it on.

When the Wise Woman did not turn inward at Milo's choice I was startled. For I had not thought that she was with Tugness's people. She and her handmaid did not camp near them at night, but rather kept their own fire a little apart. This was according to custom, for the Wise Women never lived completely in any community of a holding; they sought their own place, where they might grow their herbs and follow their ways, some of which were secret and not to be overlooked by those unlearned in their craft.

We found the beach difficult pulling for the wains and now we crawled even more slowly. That night we camped on the shore itself, with our backs to the cliff. To most of us the sea was strange and we eyed it uncertainly. Only the children went hunting shells along the edge of the waves and stood, their heads far back, watching the screaming, swooping birds who hunted their prey within the waters.

Once camp was set, curiosity brought me down to where wave pursued wave, to lap and die upon the sand. The air from over the water had a richness which made a man want to fill his lungs and breathe deep. I gazed out over the darkening waters and wondered a little at the courage of those who build shells of wood to venture out on that immensity, following an art of their own, which was shield and sword against any wrath of the waves.

I caught a glint of water between rocks and went on to discover that pools were cupped by the tall stones, fed by the washing sea. Those pools had inhabitants—strange forms I had never seen, but which surprised and interested me, and I squatted on my heels to watch them for a space as they darted here and there or half hid under stones. For they were hunters all and each followed their own way of seeking food.

A splashing roused me from my study of these wily hunters and their tricks and I turned to see Gathea, her boots shed, her breeches loose from their ankle thongs and rolled up above her knees, making her way from a small reef of rock, pulling, with the full strength of her hands, a length of red, vinelike stuff from which hung great leaves dripping water. The sea vine seemed to be securely anchored, for, though she strained, it yielded only a little to her pull.

Before I thought, I pulled off my own boots and, without stopping to roll up my breeches, I waded into the wash of the water and set my hands on the slimy cord a little behind hers, lending my strength to the battle. She looked over her shoulder, a shadow of a frown at first between her sun-bleached brows. Then she gave a nod, ackowledging my offer of help, and we jerked mightily together.

In spite of the force we used that stubborn length would not give. Thus, after two such pulls, I loosed my hold and drew my sword. She nodded again but held out her hand demandingly, so I found that, in spite of myself, I allowed her to take the weapon from me, splash farther out, and while I held the vine taut, she brought the steel down cutting the cord through in two swings. She returned to grasp the end of the vine with one hand, with the other, she preferred my sword, hilt toward me.

“My thanks, Elron of Garn's House.” Her voice was low, a little hoarse, as if she seldom used it. That she knew my name I found surprising, for none of our party had had speech with her mistress during the journey. Nor was I noteworthy among my Lord's meiny. Not that Garn could boast of such a battle force as a full war band.

“What will you do with this?” I waded back to the beach and, though she neither asked for nor refused my aid, I still held to the vine and helped drag it after us.

“The leaves dried and pounded,” she said as a man would discuss the setting of a plow into new ground, “can enrich the soil for planting. Also it has other properties which Zabina knows. This is a good find, taken at the best of its growing season.”

I surveyed the slimy length we pulled free of the water, sand now matting down its long tendril leaves, and thought that indeed strange things must be better than they appeared.

Then she was gone, without another word, towing the weed along behind her while I rubbed sand from my legs before drawing on my boots once again. The evening shadows were well advanced and I went back to our own camp to eat and wonder what the next day would bring and how much longer we would travel on before we found the land of Garn's choice.

As I held a bowl of crumbled journey bread, softened with several dollops of stew meat made from dried meat, and spooned up its contents, I stopped, with the spoon halfway to my mouth, staring as two newcomers came into the full light of our central fire. Quaine, who had been sitting cross-legged beside Garn, waved them on, though Garn himself did not raise a hand and only regarded them with a cold, level stare across the rim of his drinking horn.

Though I had seen Lord Tugness a number of times during these last days of journeying, this was the first time he had been so close that I might have put out a hand and flicked finger upon the end of his sword scabbard.

He was a short man, heavy shouldered, since his favorite weapon was the battle axe, and much practice with that had given him the muscular strength which, in another man, would have been in sword arm or thinned away by the need for agility. On horseback he was impressive; on foot he walked with a short stride which made him appear top-heavy.

Like the rest of us, he wore a mail shirt over travel jerkin, but tonight he carried his created helm, the wind blowing through his thick, ragged growth of red-brown hair. Unlike most of our race he also had a noticeable growth of facial hair, a matter in which he appeared, against custom, to take pride, and this he had trained into a fringe of beard about his wide mouth. Above that his nose was not much more than a blob of flesh so that his breath came constantly in snorts—the broken and flattened cartilage the result of a fight in his youth.

Beside Garn he slouched and looked far more like a rough blank-shield hired for some slightly unsavory task of secret rapine than a lord of lineage as long and as well songed by the bards as any House which had come through the Gate.

Taller than his father and much sparer of frame was his son-heir, who came into the full light a step behind. He was a spear-shaft of a youth who shambled as he walked, his arms hanging. Of course, those who knew him or had heard of him were well aware he was not the staring simpleton he looked. His skill with the crossbow was a matter of comment. But he was a silent shadow of his father, having little to do with those his own age. If one addressed him he was likely to stare round-eyed and answer slowly in as few words as possible.

Lord Tugness came straight to the point, just as he would ride with axe ready against any opponent. However, it was to Quaine that he spoke, ignoring Garn, even hunching a shoulder a little as if to shut out the sight of his old-time enemy.

“When do we get free of this devil's stew?” he demanded, kicking into the loose sand, sending bits of grit flying to make sure that the Sword Brother understood his meaning. “My fore team is already neck-galled from pulling and we have no spare beasts. You have promised us land, Sworder, where is it?”

Quaine showed no sign of affront. He had arisen and stood facing Tugness, his fingers locked in the fore of his belt as he met the clan lord's stare.

“If the Flame favors us, Lord Tugness, we shall be within arrow flight of your land before sundown tomorrow.”

Tugness gave one of his heavy snorts. I saw his fingers curl as if they held an axe. His eyes, under the brush of his heavy brows, demanded recognition from the Sword Brother.

“We would be on good land.” Again he stamped with his boot into the sand. “This stuff gets even between a man's teeth when he eats, down his throat when he drinks. We have had our fill of it! Be matters as you say, Sworder!” His last words might almost be a threat, as he swung his heavy body about, sending sand spurting on those nearby. Behind, Thorg, his son-heir, trod with a lightfootedness which might almost be that of a scout in enemy land. Also as he went Thorg suddenly lifted his head a little and I found him looking straight at me.

I was young and Garn recked me of little account, as I have well known since childhood. Still I am able to see promises which men's eyes may hold, even though the rest of their faces give no sign of feeling. I stopped in mid-bite when I caught that look from Thorg. My first reaction was surprise. Then I hoped with all my might a moment later, I had not shown it For why should the son-heir of Tugness, whom I had never had any reason to cross in any way, show me black and deadly hate? I told myself that I was not—that I could not have been—his enemy except that I was of my House and he of his, but I could not put aside the belief that there was more to his. feeling concerning me than any formal feud. His look, then, troubled me.