The Great Alta Saga Omnibus

by Jane Yolen

  “Warblers,” Catrona whispered to her. “Can you tell them?”

  “I know the one that Alna called Salli’s, that one, there.” She raised her hand, finger extended, at a single, melodious call.

  “Good.” Catrona nodded. “And what about that one, with the little brrrrrrup at the end.”

  “Maybe a yellow-rump?” Jenna guessed.

  “Good twice. Three times and I will admit you are my equal in the woods,” Catrona said. “There—that one!” The call was thinner than the last two, and abrupt.

  “Yellow throat … no, wait, that is a …” Jenna shook her head. “I guess I am not yet as good as you are.”

  “That was a Marget’s warbler, after which Amalda named your best friend. It is good to know that I am still needed in the woods.” She smiled. “Wake Petra while I see what there is to offer for hungry travelers.” She disappeared behind a large oak.

  Petra, who had had the middle watch, was curled up in her blanket, the waterfall of her hair obscuring her face. Jenna shook her gently.

  “Up, mole, into the light. We have much traveling yet.”

  Petra stretched, bound up her hair quickly into two plaits, and stood. She looked around for Catrona.

  “Food,” Jenna said, motioning to her mouth.

  As if the word itself had summoned her, Catrona appeared, but so silently, even the horses did not notice. She carried three eggs.

  “One each, and there is a stream not far from here. We will water the horses and fill our flasks. If we ride quickly, we will make the Hame by midday.” She gave an egg to each girl, keeping the smallest for herself.

  Jenna took her throwing knife from her boot and poked a hole in the top of the egg, then handed the knife to Petra. As Petra worked the blade point into her egg, Jenna sucked out the contents of her own. It slid down easily and she was hungry enough not to mind the slippery taste.

  “I will lead the horses,” Catrona said. “You, Jenna, and you, Petra, pack up the rest of the gear. And do what you can to make it hard to read our signs. With horses that is difficult, I know.”

  She led the three horses away. Using branches as brooms, Jenna and Petra followed right after. There were no fire remains to disguise, but much evidence of the horses and their browsing which could not be totally erased. Still, the signs could be confused, and Jenna did what was possible. Perhaps an incompetent tracker might think a herd of deer had grazed through.

  At the stream they washed quickly, less for the cleanliness and more for morale. Jenna filled their leather flasks while Petra kept a watch on the horses. Catrona went ahead to scout to make sure their return to the road would not be noted.

  When Catrona came back, they pulled the reluctant horses from the water, mounted up with more facility than grace, and started off, Catrona in the lead once more.

  The sun was high overhead and they had passed no one on the road. The one small town they had ridden through had been strangely deserted. Even the mill by the river had been empty of people, though the water kept the wheel turning on its own.

  “How odd,” had been Catrona’s only comment.

  Jenna’s thoughts were darker than that, for the last time she had been where all motion and sound had seemed to stand still had been at Nill’s Hame when she returned to find death the only occupant. Yet there were no bodies lying about the town, no blood spilling along the millrace. She breathed slowly, deliberately.

  Petra’s face was unreadable and Jenna said nothing, worrying more about her friend’s silence than the silence in the town.

  They rode on, till they came to the ford after which Calla’s Ford was named. The pull-line ferry waited on the far side of the river but there was no ferryman in sight. Together Catrona and Jenna hauled on the thick line and the flat-bottomed ferry slowly moved across the water on its tether.

  When it grounded, they walked their horses onto the boat in silence. Even with the weight of three horses and three women, the boat rode high in the water.

  Built for more than that, Jenna thought. The silence was so oppressive, she kept the thought to herself. But she wondered, all the time that she and Catrona pulled on the water-slicked rope, whether the twenty-one horses of the king’s troop could cross on such a boat. Twenty men, and the Bear. Or the Cat. Or Lord Kalas himself.

  The little ark plowed across the river quickly, grounding itself with a grinding sound on the shore. The horses got off with more promptness and less urging than they had gotten on. This time both Petra and Jenna remounted with ease.

  Jenna urged Duty into the lead, and the horse began an easy gallop along the well-worn road. Behind, Catrona’s and Petra’s bays took up the white mare’s challenge. Jenna could hear their quickening hoofbeats and smiled wryly. For a moment nothing existed but the wind in her hair, the sound of the galloping horses, and the hot spring sun directly overhead.

  If I could capture this moment, she thought. If I could hold this time forever, we could all be safe.

  And then she saw what she had feared: a thin spiral of smoke scripting a warning against the sky.

  “The Hame!” she cried out, the first words any of them had spoken in an hour.

  The other two saw the smoke at the same time and read it with the same fear. They bent over their horses’ necks, and the mares, with no further urging, raced toward the unknown fires.

  As they rounded a final bend in the road, the road suddenly mounted upward. The horses labored under them, breathing heavily. Jenna could feel her own heart beating in rhythm with Duty’s heaving breaths. Then they crested the rise, and saw the Hame before them, its great wooden gates shattered and the stone walls broken.

  Petra reined up at the sight and gave a little cry, flinging her hand to her mouth. But Jenna, seeing movement beyond the walls, stood in the stirrups hoping to distinguish it. Perhaps it was fighting, perhaps they were not too late. Pulling her sword from its sheath and raising it overhead, she called to Petra, “Stay here. You have no weapon.”

  Catrona was already racing forward. Without giving further thought to the consequences, Jenna turned Duty toward the broken stones and, with a great kick, impelled the horse to leap the fallen wall.

  There were three men and a woman bending over. They scattered before Duty’s charge. One man, tall and ungainly, like a long-limbed water bird, turned and stared. Jenna screamed sounds at him, not words, and was about to strike when the woman ran between them and raised her hands.

  “Merci,” the woman cried, desperation lending force to her thin voice. “In Alta’s name, ich crie merci.”

  The words penetrated Jenna’s fury and slowly she lowered her sword, her sword arm shaking so hard, she had to reach over with the other hand to steady it. She noticed what she should have noticed before. The tall stork-man was not armed. Neither was the woman. “Hold, Catrona,” Jenna called out.

  Catrona’s voice came back strongly, “I hold.”

  “Please,” the woman said, “you must help, if you be Alta’s own.”

  “We are,” said Jenna. “But who are you? And what has happened here?” She looked around as she spoke, not directly at the woman. Expecting to see bodies, she saw none. Yet the gates and walls were thrown down, shattered as if by a great blast. There were weapons scattered throughout the courtyard: several bows, dozens of swords, a number of knives, three rakes, even pieces of wood that might have been makeshift cudgels.

  The woman clasped and unclasped her hands. “We be from Callatown. To south. If you rode that way.”

  “We did,” Catrona said. “And none there to greet us. Nor at the ford.”

  “My husband Harmon, here, be ferryman at’t ford. He and I and all our neighbors been here two day, burning dead.”

  The tall man, her husband, put his hands on her shoulders and spoke to Jenna from behind his wife. “Grete speaks true, girl. I went out to ferry when a troop of king’s horse came by. They tied me up and Grete, bless her, be down in root cellar getting it spring cleansed. She could hear their co
arse mouths and kept hid, waiting till they be gone.”

  Grete interrupted. “It wouldna done any good to come out and fight. I knew that much.”

  “She does, too.” Harmon had taken his hands from his wife’s shoulders and swept off his brown cap, kneading it between his long fingers. “She come up later, after they be gone over the water, and cut ropes. Look, the mark be still on my wrists.” He held one hand up but if there was a mark there, Jenna could not see it.

  “A hundred or more they be,” said a second man, coming over. “That’s what Harmon said. A hundred or more.”

  “This be Jerem the miller and his boy,” Grete said, gesturing at the two. “They was let be for they give the troop grain for horses.”

  “But the rest of the town, they be tied up or kilt,” said Jerem. “Exceptin’ the girls. Them they took. My boy sneaked out to see that night.”

  “Mai,” said Jerem’s boy. He said it quietly but his dark eyes were defiant under his thatch of yellow hair.

  “Mai be his sweetheart,” explained Grete, “and she be gone with the rest. And they be promised to one another.”

  “Why are you here?” It was Petra, who had dismounted upon hearing the voices. She led her horse through the maze of fallen stone. “You had your own sorrows, then. Did you come here for help?”

  “For help?” Grete repeated, shaking her head.

  “Bless you, girl,” Jerem said, “we came to help. They be our mothers and our sisters and our nieces and our aunts. They came among us to give us sons.”

  Harmon added, “Jerem, he ground their grain and they paid him well, in crops and in strong arms. And when I be took last year with the bloody flux, didn’t a pair of ’em work all day pulling ferry for me. And four of ’em at night. And another doctored me, and two nursed me in the even.”

  “And takin’ no payment for it. None. Not ever. It be their way, you know.” Grete’s thin voice rose and fell oddly.

  “So we come quick as we could. When we knew what went on in town.” Harmon’s hands still pummeled his hat.

  “But we be late,” Jerem said. “We be hours too late. And they be all dead or gone.”

  “But where …” Jenna began, her hands still trembling on sword and reins.

  Grete nodded toward the central building of the Hame. “We been cartin’ ’em to Hall. My sons in there be helpin’, though it be strange for men to work there. That be never allowed. Us women, yes, we came sometimes. To help bring in harvest, or our girls for training some. But the boys wanted to do for the sisters, settin’ ’em side by side. The old lady, that Mother A, she be not quite gone when we got here, the blood all bubbling out of her like kettle to boil. She told us what to do. ‘Side by side,’ she said.”

  Jenna nodded slowly. That explained why the women’s bodies were not scattered through the yard. “And … and the men?” she asked at last. “Surely there were some wounded, some dead.”

  Catrona added, “Surely they took some of them with them in such a fight.”

  “They drug their own wounded away. Or killed ’em on spot,” said Harmon. “The men be all dead, some thirty of ’em. We burned them there.” He pointed outside the broken wall, away from the road. “Foreign-looking, they be. Dark skin. Staring eyes.”

  “Young,” Grete said. “Too young for such deaths. Too young for such killings.”

  “But dead all the same,” said her husband, putting the hat back on his head. “And don’t they say: The swordsman dies by’t sword, the hangman by’t rope, and the king by’t crown.” He turned, looking over the ridge of his shoulder, and spoke to Jenna. “We be obliged for your help.”

  Jenna nodded, but it was Petra who spoke, her voice shaky. “We will help.”

  “We must be gone soon,” Catrona said in an undertone to Jenna. “The others must be warned.”

  Jenna nodded at that, too, thinking to herself that her head must be on a string, so easily did it bob up and down. Then she whispered back, “But one hour surely will not matter. Let us find Selinda and Alna and bid them farewell.”

  “An hour can spare a life,” Catrona said. “It is something we learned many times in the army.” But she gave in all the same. “For Alna and Selinda. An hour. That is all.”

  As Grete had promised, the sisters of Calla’s Ford lay side by side in the darkening Hall. Jenna wandered up and down the many lines, kneeling occasionally to tidy a lock of hair or to close staring eyes. There were so many women, she could not count them all, but she refused to cry.

  Petra, standing in the doorway, wept for them both.

  “This be the last of ’em,” Jerem said, pointing to an elderly woman in a long dress and apron, lying by the far door.

  “Be they right?” Grete asked Catrona. “Be they in’t form?”

  “We will see them all right,” Catrona said. “But best you leave us for now so that we may give them the proper rites.”

  Grete nodded, and turned to speak to the rest of the townsfolk who had gathered by the entryway, silently waiting. Her hands shooed them out like chickens toward the courtyard. She herself was the last one through the door, calling out in a whisper, “We will wait.”

  Jenna stared across the Hall. In the gray light the bodies of the women almost looked like carved stone. Though they had been cleansed of the blood on their hands and faces by the hard-working townsfolk, their shirts and aprons and skirts and trousers were stained with it. But the blood was black, not red, in the graying room. The bodies lay on rushes scented with verbena and dried roses, but the sharp, unmistakable smell of death overpowered the flowery bouquet.

  “Shall I light the torches now?” Petra asked, her voice so quiet, Jenna had to strain to hear it. “So that their dark sisters might accompany them?” Without waiting for an answer, she went by the back hallway into the kitchen, came out with a lit candle, and proceeded to light the candles and torches that were set in the walls.

  Slowly, in between the bodies, the corpses of the dark sisters took form and soon the room was crowded with them. It was as if a great carpet of death lay wall to wall.

  Strangers, thought Jenna, and yet not strangers to me at all. My sisters.

  “We must fire the Hame now,” said Catrona. “And then go.”

  “But Alna and Selinda are not here,” Jenna said. “Nor any of the younger girls. They may be bidden away like the children of Nill’s Hame. We do not dare set the flames until we find them.”

  “They were taken,” Catrona said bluntly, “you heard what Grete and her husband said. Taken. Like the girls of Callatown. Like the boy’s sweetheart.”

  “Mai.” Petra said suddenly, still lighting the torches.

  “No!” Jenna shook her head violently, her voice echoing loudly. “No! We cannot be sure. Why would they want the girls? Why would they need them? We have to look.”

  Catrona put her hand out toward Jenna just as Petra put the candle to a sconce near them in the Hall. Katri appeared by Catrona’s side and put her hand out as well.

  “They always want women,” said Katri. “Such men do.”

  “They have not enough of their own.” It was Skada’s voice right by Jenna’s ear. “That is what Geo Hosfetter said.”

  Jenna did not turn to welcome her. Instead she insisted, “We must search the Hame. We could never forgive ourselves if we did not.”

  It took an hour of searching to prove to Jenna that the girls were not to be found. They even overturned the mirror in the priestess’ room, ripped down tapestries, and knocked endlessly upon solid walls in the hope of finding a secret passage. But there was none.

  In the end even Jenna had to agree that the girls were gone. This time she did not ask why.

  “And what of the Book?” Petra asked, her hand atop the great leather volume in the priestess’ room. “We cannot leave it here for anyone to read.”

  “We do not have time to bury it,” said Jenna, “so it will have to be burned with the rest.”

  Petra cradled the Book in her arms, carryin
g it back down to the Hall where she placed it between the priestess and her dark sister. She set their stiffened hands on top of the volume, palms up so that the blue Alta sign showed, tying their wrists together with her hair ribbands. The in a voice eerily familiar, she began to recite:

  “In the name of Alta’s cave,

  The dark and lonely grave,

  Where we dwell twixt light and light …”

  “I will not cry,” Jenna promised herself. “Not for death. Not ever for death.” She shook her head violently to keep away the tears. Skada did the same.

  They did not cry.

  THE LEGEND:

  There were twelve sisters who dwelt in Callatown, by the ford, each one more beautiful than the last. But the loveliest of them all was the youngest, Fair Jennet.

  Jennet was tall, with hair the color of the Calla’s foam, and eyes the blue of a spring sky.

  One day the king’s own sons rode into the town, twelve handsome youths they were. But the handsomest was the youngest, Brave Colm. Colm was tall, with hair the color of dawn, and eyes as brown as bark.

  Twelve and twelve. They should have been fair matched. But a king’s son is like the cuckoo: he takes his pleasure where he will, then leaves to love again.

  When the king’s twelve sons had left, eleven sisters flung themselves into the Calla, above the ford. But the last, Fair Jennet, stayed to bury them, then she rode to the king’s hall. She sang her sorrow at his table, before climbing the stairs to the highest tower. There she cast herself into the wind. As she fell, her cry was the cry of the woodcock rising to its mate.

  Colm heard her and raced outside. He held her poor, broken body cradled in his arms, singing back to her the song she had caroled at his father’s feast:

  “Eleven sisters side by side,

  Each one a dishonored bride,

  Married to the ebbing tide,

  And I wed to the wind.”

  At the song’s end, Fair Jennet opened her eyes and called Colm’s name. He kissed her brow before she died.

  “I am the wind,” whispered Colm, drawing his sword from his sheath and plunging it into his breast. Then he lay himself down by Jennet’s side and died.