The Great Alta Saga Omnibus

by Jane Yolen

  “We could not even if we wanted to,” Petra said. “None of us knows where she is save, perhaps, that girl Sarana and she is away from here.”

  “Sir, should we not try and escape, too?” It was Tollum, the taller of the two soldiers. He addressed his question to Piet. “At least send the boys and the smaller women through the window. We could widen it tonight and …”

  “We will do it once the evening porridge bowls are collected,” said Corrie, even before Piet could answer. “After having converse with Jemmie and knowing him to be mad, it is the only sane thing left for us to do.”

  “It will put us all in danger,” Piet cautioned. “If they make noise; if they are seen; if one stumbles into the ocean and …”

  “We are all in danger already, old friend,” said Jareth. He began to cough again and the spasms this time were so bad, they had to break open another bottle of wine and get him to drink a good draught which served to soothe his throat enough that he was able to continue helping with the plans.

  The night meal did not come quick enough for any of them. Then they waited quite some time more, till there was little noise beyond the door except a low snoring.

  “I believe the guards are napping,” Corrie said when he tiptoed back from the front room.

  Having devised the unstacking of the bottles and the rack before, they worked with the ease of familiarity, though Petra found she had to caution the boys more and more often about being quiet. Everyone seemed to think the work a lark this time. They knew it was possible and therefore they lost what natural caution they had had the first time.

  Because of this, they were not prepared for the sudden rush of wind through the opened portal when most of the bottles at the top of the rack had been taken away. The gust was cold and brisk and shuddered the rack, which was no longer firmly attached to the wall. Several of the bottles on the lower shelves began to rattle and one fell to the ground, breaking with a tremendous crash.

  “Here!” came a shout from beyond the door. “What is going on in there?”

  Piet grabbed Manger by the collar. “Quick, man—into the next room and take up a bottle of the white wine. I shall take another. I want you to hit me as hard as ever you can.” He grabbed up the broken bottle of red and followed the soldier, shouting at him “You traitor. You gall-ridden cretinous boob!” He took a swing at Manger’s back, missing him by a great deal.

  Manger understood at once and raced into the room where the white wines were housed. He grabbed up two of the finer Garunian spring wines. One he dropped immediately on the floor, the other he held above his head, shouting back “You are no captain of mine. I say give him the bitch, and good riddance to her.”

  The door was opened and four guardsmen, swords drawn, came in.

  “Put those bottles down,” the leader of the guards said. “Now.”

  Manger put his bottle down at once, but Piet took his time, making a half-hearted lunge at Manger who shrugged back into the arms of the guards.

  “He will kill me,” Manger cried to them. “Take me with you.”

  “If he kills you, it is one less Dalite for us to worry about,” said the leader. “But if I hear more in here, I will run you both through and sleep well after. Now old man, drop that bottle.”

  Piet let the bottle drop and it exploded on the floor, drenching him and the guard near him.

  “You dog spittle!” the guard cried and raised his sword as if to strike Piet.

  “Leave them,” his leader warned. “He is probably the one who knows the most.”

  “And will tell the least,” said the drenched guard.

  “We do not know that for sure,” said his leader. “Remember how it goes: A hard head hides a soft tongue. Now go back to your other room, old man. Away from this door. Leave this one …” he nodded at Manger “alone or it will go hard with you.” Then he looked up and saw that the rest of the prisoners were crowded into the archway. “Go, all of you. This show is over.”

  Piet turned his back, shrugged extravagantly so that none of the guards could miss it, and winked at the prisoners in the doorway. Then he moved toward them and they made a small passageway to let him through.

  The guards backed through the open door and slammed it shut. The sound of the key in the lock was all that could be heard.

  Manger waited by the door, whimpering “Take me with you, please.…” until the guards all left. Then he walked back into the back room. “I am sorry for calling the queen such a name,” he said to Corrie.

  Corrie laughed. “I have called her worse for no such good cause,” he said. “That was quite a performance. I have never seen its like.”

  “We must be gentler,” said Petra.

  “And quieter,” Jareth said.

  “And quicker,” added Piet.

  They got the boys out, having to add Petra’s petticoat to the lowering line in place of the missing cape. One boy was to make his way back into the town roundabout, so as to let the loyal townsfolk know what was happening inside the castle. The other three were to go by the low road along the coast to the north.

  “Do not take chances,” Petra warned them.

  And Corrie added, “The queen would not have you be martyrs. Nor would I.”

  The four boys had all nodded seriously, except for one, a ten-year-old, who had spoken up gallantly. “My father was killed in the first war,” he said. “It is not wrong to die for what is right.”

  Corrie had put his hands on the boy’s shoulders. “They say up north: Both the hunter and the hunted pray to a god.”

  “But sir,” the boy answered, “we pray to Alta and they to Lord Cres.” At the Garunian god’s name he spit expertly to the side.

  “You cannot dispute that,” said Piet, smiling.

  “Nor shall I,” Corrie said. “Go, my good boys, may Alta speed the soles of your feet.” He stood at the window and helped lift the boys, one at a time through the window. The youngest went first.

  But after they had all gone, and Petra after them, one of the servers—a smallish man with large shoulders—got stuck in the opening. It took much hauling and muffled moans on his part before they could bring him back in.

  And by then it was too late.

  The door was flung open, and in came two guards, three of the boys marched between them.

  No one dared speak, to ask about the fourth boy, the ten-year-old who had spit at Lord Cres’ name. Or about Petra. And the guards did not leave, but were locked in with them.

  There were to be no more attempts at escape.

  THE HISTORY:

  Editor

  Nature and History

  Dear Sir:

  In my late father’s notes are some interesting musings on forms of execution as portrayed in the folk songs of the Dales, particularly the so-called Interregnum. I am very interested in putting together an article using his notes as my starting place. The emphasis of the article will be the difference between the ideals of the Interregnum (a beginning democracy, an emphasis on jail as a retraining ground for uneducated felons, the freeing of political prisoners, the opening of the first public hospitals, the restructuring of the army, cf Cowan’s seminal article “From Idea to Ideal: A First Look at the Time of Kings,” Journal of the Isles, History VII, 9) and the way prisoners were actually dispatched.

  My father’s notes begin with

  1. Defenestration, as alluded to in the ever-popular “Ballad of Corrine Lackland.”

  The notes then go on to detail nine more different methods of execution in total. They include:

  2. Hanging. (“Three times around/the noose was wound/till Old Pit felt the rope./Then up he’s strung/and there he’s hung/and gone was ev’ry hope.” From “Old Pit’s Gone.”)

  3. Disemboweling: The drinking song from Berick that goes back at least a thousand years, “So drink with the devil/A toast to the queen/Reach into his belly/Where guts are so green/And ups with the hamstrings/And off with his head/If you’re in the navy/you’re better off dead!/D
rink it round!”

  4. Decapitation: The humorous “Head Beneath Her Arm” from Lanard, with the chorus: “Her head well tucked/Beneath her arm/to keep herself/from further harm …”

  5. Garroting: The little known Carreltown Hymn refers obliquely to this method, and of course Carreltown is on the seacoast. When the great Garun fleet washed ashore there and the Garun sailors were left to the mercy of the locals, many eventually married into the peasantry and brought their songs with them. We believe the Carreltown hymn can be traced back to them—and the Garun custom of garroting prisoners who were of the upper classes. “The thin red line” referred to in the chorus is clearly a silken garotte.

  6. Suffocation: The only known reference to stoning, a rather obscure and gruesome method of execution, slow and painful, is found in the Lackland medley of songs. “Pile them on, lads/pile them on” is the chorus. Dr. Cat Eldridge argues rather forcefully (see his chapter “Sea Changes in Sea Chanties” in his book More Music of the Dales that this is rather an old capstan ballad badly and baldly borrowed, with a traveling chorus. But I rather agree with my father’s position here that it points to yet another form of torture/execution and feel I can easily justify its use in my article.

  The rest of the methods of execution include

  7. Drawing

  8. Savaged by Bears

  9. Pierced by Arrows

  10. Drowning.

  I know this is a very unusual article idea—and for some of your readers possibly quite unsettling. However I feel very strongly that it has a place in a magazine such as yours which has always been on the very cutting edge of Dalian research.

  THE STORY:

  It was the horse that decided Sarana, for it went lame. Not badly lame, but needing tending. She led it down the road till they came upon another farmhouse, this one a poor place with but a back garden and no farm stock except for a few scrawny chickens that ran from her as if she were a butcher’s knife.

  An old woman came out to stare at her when she entered the yard.

  “I have been many days on the road,” Sarana began.

  “Weeks, likely,” the woman said in the clipped speech of the far northern Dales.

  “Weeks likely,” Sarana agreed. “My horse is lamed.”

  “Strange horse for a queen’s guard,” the woman commented, taking in her filthy uniform.

  “Strange times for a queen’s guard,” Sarana answered.

  “Get in afore yer seen.”

  “And the horse?”

  “I’ll tend to her. I know horses, though you wouldn’t guess it from this patch.” She nodded her head at the farm. “Come down but not brought down.”

  Sarana said nothing.

  “Into the house then,” the old woman said. “There’s a tub.”

  Sarana did not wait to ask her if the tub was filled, but went in and gratefully took off her clothes, folded them by the metal tub and slipped in. There was water, though it was only lukewarm, but she didn’t care. She lay back and slipped entirely under, grateful for the wetness. She could feel layers of dirt and dust and dungeon peel away. When she sat up again, the old woman was in the house and bringing her over a scrub brush and dark yellow soap.

  “Got some of those mysel,” the woman said, gesturing to Sarana’s back where the scars glistered from the wetting like runes of a terrible tale. “Why I left.”

  “Left where?”

  “My man. My home. My land. But it’s an old tale. Done with.”

  Sarana nodded.

  “So girl, do you want a meal?”

  Sarana nodded again.

  “Will you work for it?”

  “I have little time. But I will come back and work double when the queen is on the throne again.”

  “A good answer.”

  “A good promise,” Sarana said. “I do not make them lightly.”

  The old woman laid the soap and brush on the tub’s edge. “Best scrub afore the water turns ice. I’ll tend that mare.”

  It took two days, not three, to get through the woods for Scillia hardly let the guards rest. Good shepherds must also be tough taskmasters, she told herself, when needs be. The soldier had been right about where they were. It took half a day to Bear’s Run after that.

  Scillia scarcely recognized the battlefield site till they were on it. The field looked smaller than she remembered. And the stand of trees larger. But then, thirteen years can make a vast difference in the life of trees. And the life of girl, she thought. The two mounds were unmistakable.

  “Make camp,” she said to the sergeant. “And let me be for now. There is something I must do.”

  As if he knew her mind, the sergeant nodded, and turned to the task of organizing the campsite. Scillia left them and went directly to Iluna’s grave.

  It was midday, but shadowed and cold between the mounds. She knelt beside the grave marked by the goddess sign. For a long moment she was still.

  Above her some bird wheeled in the bleached sky. By her toes, a line of dark insects moved quickly through the winter grass. She felt herself between times. She did not like that feeling.

  At last she rose. The truth was that she knew nothing of the woman in the grave beyond her name and the fact that she had been a warrior of M’dorah.

  M’dorah!

  “I am Jenna’s daughter,” she said to the grave. “But I will fly home to my throne from M’dorah.

  The grave did not answer.

  Sarana left the farmhouse before dawn, a pocket of journey-cake and a flask of wine tied to her waist. She had to leave the little horse behind. But the old woman had given her more than a gift of food and a long-needed bath. She actually had had an idea of where Queen Scillia and her followers might be heading.

  “Her mam was from M’dorah,” said the old woman.

  “Her mam was Queen Jenna.”

  “Second mam.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  “Everyone knows.”

  Sarana did not point out that she had not known.

  “Besides, there’s prophecy.”

  “What prophecy?”

  The old woman put her head back, closed her eyes, and in an eerie, quavering voice sang: “An eagle’s girl shall gain the throne, but she’ll not rule the land alone.”

  “How does that mean Queen Scillia’s from M’dorah?” Sarana was puzzled. “There’s nothing in the prophecy that says the name.”

  “M’dorah. High-towered. Where eagles dare not rest. Do ye not know history, girl?”

  The connection had seemed thin in the evening when they first spoke of it. But by morning the logic seemed in-escapable. Besides, Sarana had no other leads.

  “Where is M’dorah?” she asked.

  The old woman drew her a map in the yard, as scratchy as if one of her scrawny chickens had made it. But Sarana had read many such maps, drawn in mud and sand and snow.

  “Take good care of that mare,” Sarana had said in lieu of a parting.

  “Like she was my own,” the old woman said, smiling, because they both knew the mare was her own, now.

  STREET RHYMES:

  Eagle, eagle in the sky,

  Watch the queen as she rides by.

  How many soldiers has she now?

  One … two … three … four

  —Counting out rhyme, Mador Plains

  Shoe the horse, shoe the mare,

  Ride the long riding alone.

  One comes east and one comes west

  And one comes riding home.

  —Baby lap game, South Ridings

  Pick up stones and pile them on,

  One, two, three until they’re gone.

  —Circle game, Berike Harbor

  THE STORY:

  “They tried to escape!” Jemson cried, his voice rising in anger and breaking on the last syllable. “They tried to escape!” His hands gripped the arms of the throne so hard his knuckles turned white.

  “Well of course they tried to escape,” Lord Malfas said calmly. “Though b
eing Dalites they sent the women and children out first. Stupid, stupid! What good are women and children in a fight?”

  “But we have them,” Jemson said, his anger ebbing as he remembered the outcome. “The three boys, and old Petra.” He smiled. “Can’t you just see her skinning down that makeshift rope?” Then he laughed. “Her petticoat was part of it, so it was a make-shift indeed.” He waited for Malfas to applaud his joke and when no applause was forthcoming, he sat back in the throne pouting.

  “Your Majesty,” Malfas said, making another of his almost-an-insult bows, “the boys, being boys, know nothing except that they were to head north.”

  “Away from the center of the fighting of course.”

  “Toward your sister’s hold. Of course.”

  Jemson crossed his legs casually. “We don’t know that. They did not tell us that.”

  “We can make a good guess at it, though. Think, boy, think! What does the Book of Battles tell us?”

  Jemson’s face screwed up in concentration. He had never been good at memory games, and he had positively hated all the drills in battle lore he’d had to endure in the Garunian court. Much better had been the action games—dog-fighting, bear-baiting, watching the duels. What had the cursed Book of Battles said? Then he had it. “The spider sits in the center of its web and entices the fly to come to it.”

  “Good, good. That certainly comes from the Book and might even apply here. But I was thinking rather of the notion that, ‘The further north, the greater noise.’”