The Great Alta Saga Omnibus

by Jane Yolen

  One man became sick from a purple berry, and seven of the remaining New Steading boys deserted one night. Two of the M’dorans developed horrible sores on their inner thighs from riding. The man recovered, though for a day he wished he might die. The boys were gone for good, but no others joined them. The two women could ride no longer and were left at a lonely farmhouse in the care of an old woman who welcomed them rather stiffly but nevertheless promised to treat them well.

  That left barely one hundred riders, though they were well supplied with swords and knives, bows and shields.

  Jenna had never been so far north and was amazed at the change in the woods. Used to the fellowship of larch, elm, and oak, she recognized fewer and fewer trees but the hardy pine which left scattered beds of sweet-smelling ground cover. When they camped the first time, Jenna remarked to Petra, “If there were not such need to go on, I could almost enjoy this.”

  “You do enjoy this,” Petra said, leaning on one elbow. “You enjoy it for all that you know blood waits at the trail’s end.”

  Jenna thought about Petra’s words as they rode the next day. She wondered if Petra was right, and if so, what that meant about her own nature. How could she enjoy a journey whose ending would undoubtedly be blood-soaked? How could she admire a countryside that was the burial ground for so many good women and men? How could she let the scented pine needles rain through her fingers when the man she loved above all others lay in a foul-smelling dungeon? How could she even notice the difference in meadow and wood when they were potential battlefields? Her mind boiled like a soup pot with the questions. But the road held no answers for her and Duty’s steady rolling stride only brought her closer to the bloody ending of which Petra warned.

  The journey would take seven days.

  “Four,” Piet explained, “if care were not needed.”

  “Three,” Jenna added, “if you and I went alone. And did not sleep.”

  “It would be good, girl, to cut that time. But then we’d be cutting our chances as well. Kalas’ castle is nigh impregnable. All rock and stone with but one big gate and three portcullises, inner iron gates. Well guarded, too. They built it right into the cliffside so the back cannot be attacked. Then they made another cliff for the front.”

  “There is one thing good,” Jenna said.

  “And that be?”

  “The M’dorans are rock climbers.”

  “I am thinking that, too.” There was approval in his voice for the first time.

  “They could be the other mice pulled along behind me …” Jenna mused aloud.

  “For the cat to snatch up first.” Piet chuckled. When Jenna looked surprised, he said, “That is an old family tale of mine. My mam told it to my little sister and me and she told it to her sons.”

  “Her sons …” He had thrown in the revelation so casually, Jenna could scarcely credit it. Finally she blurted out, “Are you … the king’s uncle?”

  He laughed. “The king’s uncle? What be … oh, no, girl. They be Garuns and I be wholly of the Dales. No mixed blood in me at all. But my little sister and Carum’s Mam, were childhood friends.” He rubbed his finger roughly against his beard. “Met those boys when Carum was five years old. Prettiest little child ye ever did see. The darling of the court. And smart as a …”

  “Not Carum’s uncle then.” She felt, somehow, disappointed.

  “I was just back from the Continent. Horrid place. Full of foreigners,” Piet said, throwing his head back in a laugh.

  “So you knew them all?” Jenna asked. “Even saintly Jorum?”

  “Jor—saintly? Who gave ye that idea? He was as sly as they come. Always in trouble. Always running up stairs to put the blame on someone else. And Carum always willing to take it. If there be a saint in that family … but not their uncle, no. For all they were good kings, they dinna think much of the folk of the Dales. Garuns first—and the Dales to make the sacrifice. That were the way. Though they were good to me and mine. And Carum, being half Dale, he was good altogether.”

  “Would …” Jenna suddenly interrupted. “Would it be wrong to pull the others along behind, to sacrifice them that I might get to the castle and get Carum out?”

  “That is no sacrifice, girl. That is a ruse.” He stroked his beard again and looked at her strangely. “Young Carum is king now. We must all do our part to set him free and some will likely die. That is the bloody way of war.”

  They rode on.

  The days were as warm as ever, but as they rode north the evenings turned chilly, and the nights were positively cold. Northern weather made no obeisance to spring. The men were forced to share blankets with other men, the women with women.

  The first time Jenna and Petra lay side by side, Jenna’s blanket on the ground beneath them, Petra’s on top, Jenna could not sleep. She stared at the sky for a long time counting the stars and Petra’s smooth, even breaths. She got to a thousand before making up her mind.

  At last she peeled back her side of the blanket and slipped out, careful not to disturb Petra. Signaling the men on watch, she walked to the edge of the woods, some fifty feet from the sleepers. Someone was there before her; she recognized one of the M’dorans, a young woman whose name she had never actually heard or, if heard, did not recall.

  “You could not sleep either?”

  The young woman grunted her response, then, as if the questions released something, began to talk in a whispery voice, alternately braiding and unbraiding one of a dozen thin plaits in her hair.

  “Sleep? How could I sleep? I grieve. Iluna was my friend. My closest friend, closer even than my dark sister. And now she is gone. Gone. Gone where I cannot follow.”

  Jenna nodded, having neither an answer nor an easy sentiment to offer. She knew that sometimes simply talking out a grief made it easier to bear.

  “I do not understand,” the girl continued. “One minute we were all so … so …” She hesitated, looking for the right word, her hands still busy with yet another braid. “Happy—unhappy. Those words had no meaning on our rock. We were …” She gave a sharp tug on the braid as she found the word she was looking for. “Continent. We were content. And then ye came, a prophecy most of us had never heard of and some of us could not believe in. Word become flesh.” She turned slightly, her face all in shadow. It was as if a mask spoke.

  “I thought …” Jenna began. “I thought you all recited the prophecy together and that was what convinced you.”

  “Words!” the girl said, voice shaking. “That is all it was: words. But Iluna was real. She was flesh and blood. Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood. We swore to love one another always. We even cut our ringers and mixed our lives in blood when we were children. See.” She turned and held out her hand to Jenna.

  Jenna took her hand and held it up, as if she could read the girl’s history there, but it was only a hand. Like her own. Nothing more.

  “Words are for the old women. Iluna and I, we planned to leave M’dorah together. To see what else the world held. And when we were satisfied it held nothing, then we planned to return. But together. Together. And now she is … she is …” She began to snuffle, running the hand she had held up to Jenna across her mouth and nose, as if to stifle the sound.

  Jenna nodded. “I understand. You will want the child after.”

  “The child?”

  “Scillia.”

  “Oh no. I had told Iluna the child was not to come. It was our one argument, the only one we had ever had. No, White One, ye can keep the babe. I only want”—the snuffling began again—“Iluna.” The name was a sob in her mouth.

  Jenna put her arms around the girl, letting her cry. But she could not still her own thoughts. What if Carum said the same thing when she told him of the child. Would he cry out, “I want only you”? Would she still take the little one-armed babe if he denied it? She bit her lip hard to remind herself that her entire rehearsal of that conversation depended upon finding Carum alive. Taking the girl by the shoulders, she shook her.

/>   “Enough! Iluna would not have you cry for her. She would have you remember with courage.”

  Pulling away from Jenna’s grip, the girl nodded. She scrunged her shirttail over her face, drying her eyes and blowing her nose loudly. Then she walked away as if embarrassed that Jenna had comforted her at all.

  For a moment Jenna considered following her. Then she shrugged and turned back to the encampment. Jareth, who happened to be on watch, stared at her, his hand covering his throat.

  “Just battle jitters I expect,” Jenna said, brushing a stray hair back from her face. She sighed. “Oh, Jareth, I am so tired of this. I want to be home. I want …” She looked at him. “I want to be able to talk to you. You were such a comfort before.”

  He stared at her for another moment, then took his hand from his neck. It was bare.

  “Jareth—the collar—where?”

  He mimed a sword cut, an upward blow. She suddenly remembered the sound of a gasp behind her when she had buried the knife between the Bear’s eyes.

  “Then you can talk now? You have been able to talk these past days?”

  He shook his head vigorously, pointing strangely at his mouth.

  “Gone?” she whispered. “The collar off and your voice still gone? Was it all a lie, then? Like the cradle and the hall? Is Catrona dead, Carum captured, and all those buried back there in the field for a lie?” She reached out to touch his arm, heard a noise behind her, and turned. Marek and Sandor stood close together.

  “He can talk but he will not, Anna,” Sandor said carefully, using her own dialect. “He dare not talk else he shatter the fellowship.”

  “What fellowship,” Jenna asked, her voice heavy with sarcasm. “Women who will not speak to men and men who laugh at women. A Dale warrior who rightly blames me for the death of his beloved, and three boys who believe a scared, incompetent girl is some sort of goddess?”

  “You be leaving out Petra,” Sandor said softly, slipping back into his own speech.

  “A rhyming priestess,” Jenna said, “who surely could not kill without getting sick on it.”

  “We be all that,” admitted Marek. “Do you be feeling better saying it?”

  “No,” Jenna said miserably.

  “Well, we be a fellowship nonetheless,” Sandor said.

  “That we be,” Marek added, smiling.

  “But what if it is lies,” Jenna whispered. “If it is all lies?”

  “He still be not talking, Anna, because he believes,” Marek said.

  “And I,” added Sandor. “Not until the king be crowned and the king’s right hand be winning the war.”

  “You be his right hand,” Marek said.

  “And Carum king. I be glad of that,” Sandor finished.

  “Oh, you brave, loyal boys,” Jenna whispered, suddenly remembering Alta’s fire that went ever before. “So much braver and so much more loyal than I.”

  They put their arms about her then, all four thinking about what had already been and what must surely come. Jenna, Sandor, and Marek whispered memories back and forth as if telling themselves a wonderful tale, but they did it quietly, so as not to disturb the sleepers around them. And when at last they pulled away from one another, their faces hot and tight with unshed tears, they were each silhouetted against the night sky. To Jenna the three boys looked as though they had been crowned with stars.

  She went back to the blanket which Petra had now firmly wrapped around herself. Unwilling to wake her for a share, Jenna lay down on the cold ground beside her and willed herself into a dreamless sleep.

  THE SONG:

  Well Before the Battle, Sister

  Well before the battle, sister,

  When the sky is crowned with stars,

  And the world is clean of wounded,

  And the ground is free of scars.

  Well before the battle, sister,

  When content with what we know,

  We will sing the lovely ballads

  From the long and long ago.

  THE STORY:

  By the time they reached the outskirts of Kalas’ Northern Holdings, on a path which Piet insisted was marked by blood, though there was nothing to show it—not bones nor broken armor nor mounds of buried dead—the moon was coming into full again. That doubled the number of women at night, making even Piet uncomfortable. The men came up with both feeble and outrageous suggestions as to where the women had come from.

  “Out of the woods,” Gileas said to the New Steading boys. “They be trailing us all along.”

  “Mayhap they live here around,” one boy said.

  The others thought that a foolish idea, and told him so loudly.

  “Nay,” Piet said. “They be friends of our girls. Cousins, most like. See how much they resemble one another.” It was the explanation they settled on in the end.

  But it meant that at night, at least, the enlarged band was hard to disguise. Since Piet knew the land well, having served one year in the North, he kept them in the forest as deep as could be managed with horses. Under the heavy cover of trees, their numbers were once again halved. If the men wondered about it, they did so silently.

  They left the horses crowded together in a small dell and went by foot the last mile toward Kalas’ castle, single file and without talking. At the woods’ edge, Piet signaled them to halt and they fanned out along the edge, being careful to each stay behind a tree.

  Under the eye of a leperous moon, Kalas’ castle was a great black vulture throwing a vast predatory shadow over the plain. It had two stone wings, the crenellated walls like feathers of rock. A single tower stretched up, the bird’s naked neck. And in the single window, like a staring eye, a light gleamed. It was the only visible light in the place.

  “There,” Piet said, pointing. “The girls will climb straight up that rock face while I take the men to the gate there.” His hand moved slightly. “We will make a great clamour and a rattling of swords. If they lower the gate to get at us, some will go through it. If it stays up, we will climb up it ourselves.”

  Jenna nodded.

  “Two lines of mice are better than one against this great cat,” Piet added.

  “And the dungeon?”

  “There is no way but from inside. That is why you go up the tower.” His pointing finger shifted two palms worth to the left, where the rock seemed to grow right out of the ground forming an impenetrable wall.

  “Kalas’ tower!” Jenna whispered.

  “How will you get up that, Jenna?” Petra asked.

  Where the rock ended, the tall brick cylinder rose straight up into the air. Not a vulture’s neck, Jenna thought, but a spear jabbing at the sky.

  “Slowly,” Jenna said. “And with a great deal of difficulty. But I will get up it all the same.”

  “If anyone can, you can,” Petra said in her ear. “The prophecy knows it. Alta will see to it.”

  Jenna looked steadily at the tower. It was at least a hundred feet high. Privately, she prayed that Alta had a very long arm. “When I get to Kalas’ room,” she said steadily, “I will put my knife to his throat and make him take me personally to the dungeon to set the king free. If there is blood this night, it will be Kalas’.” She spoke with the firm enunciation she had learned from listening to Gorum, but her heart beat erratically as she spoke. She was not nearly as certain as she appeared.

  “We will have the surprise this time,” Piet said grimly. “They think us all dead.”

  “We be having the right on our side as well,” Marek added.

  “Ah, lad, on the Continent they say: The mice may have the right but the cat has the claws. Whenever did right guarantee a victory but in a tale?” He stared ahead at the castle. “Do not be counting on the right. King Gorum did, and we buried him. I dinna want to bury you, too.”

  “Nor we you, Piet,” said Jenna.

  They waited until a shred of cloud covered the moon, then the women raced forward to the near wall, the men veering off toward the only gate.

  Jenna
set off on her own, avoiding Petra’s attempt to catch her eye. If she thought about Petra or about all those who might be killed in the attempt on Kalas’ castle, she knew she would become paralyzed, unable to climb. She forced herself to think only of the rocks ahead.

  When she got to the precipitous stone, its sheer size overwhelmed her. At its base, she could see nothing above and nothing to either side but more and more stone, an endless wall of it. In the dark she could discern no handholds at all. Then suddenly the moon came out of its covering of cloud, and Skada was beside her pointing out the route.

  “There!” she said. “And there.”

  “An odd sort of greeting,” Jenna complained, tucking her braid down the back of her shirt.

  “We have no time for pleasantries,” Skada said, fixing her own hair. “And you are already breathing hard even before the climb.”

  “If I could appear and disappear under the light as you do,” Jenna said testily, “I would not need to breathe at all.” But nonetheless it was a good reminder that she had forgotten the first rule Mother Alta had taught her so long ago, that of proper breathing. She forced herself to think about the careful spider breaths for climbing. As she did so, she heard Skada’s breathing synchronizing with her own.

  Slow hand by slow hand, feet slotted into the shallow ridges, they began to climb. Every few moments they waited together, breathed together, gathered strength, then moved on up. The soft leather of their boots was scraped, their skin leggings had a hole in the right knee. Still they climbed.

  The moon suddenly disappeared behind another cloud and Skada was gone, but Jenna, so intent on the rock under her hand, foot, and face, never noticed.

  A minute later the moon came out again and Skada reappeared, clinging as Jenna did to the stone.

  “You breathe hard, sister,” Skada said.

  “In my ear, sister,” Jenna replied. “You are doing this to annoy. I wish to Alta you would stop.” But she slowed her breathing down again and found the climbing easier.