I could not bring myself to say I was going to follow blindly after a murder of common crows. There was a more obvious answer. The shadow-tongues, the unspoken voices, had left me with a name…
‘I am leaving the South March. I am travelling to Wycken,’ I said. ‘I am going to Wycken-in-the-Mire, for the Winter Festival…for the Faerie Riding.’
‘And this is it, then – the Wycken Mire! This is your answer?’ Wolfrid looked at me coldly, still wanting a better truth, something he could believe in.
I nodded, brusquely. ‘I will travel the trade roads…to the town.’
‘Towns…! What does any Wishard of the South March know of such places? Rogrig, you know as well as I, Wycken is a tinker’s town built of wooden sticks upon a shift of mud.’ He spoke as if I was already lost and he could see only the broken man. ‘And there is not a certain path across the mire that surrounds it, except for those born to it; those petty traders with stinking bog-moss in their blood. The town could not be better protected nor defended if it had its own standing army.’
I turned my back on him. I made to mount Dandelion, took up the reigns. Wolfrid put his hand gently upon my shoulder as if to stop me. I did not recoil, though perhaps I had expected a blade.
‘You will not be turned from this foolishness, cousin?’ He asked. ‘Not for your kin, your blood? Not even for your true heart’s meat…?’
I knew well enough what he was saying. I shrugged his hand away, before he could say any more. I took to my hobby-horse. Used the spur to move her on.
‘I fear I will not,’ I called back to him. ‘Forgive me for it. Tell Notyet…Tell her…’ Only my mouth stood empty. There were no words left to say.
‘Forgiveness will not save you, Rogrig,’ said Wolfrid, ‘if you ride out alone this day…’
I gave him no answer.
Part Three
The Wycken Mire
Chapter Eleven
Into the Mire
I heard again the voices of the old-wives calling to me out of my own past. ‘Mind how you go there, child! Keep off the bloody bog-moss. It swallows grown men whole! It sucks down full-laden fell-horses, carts and all! It will leave us no sign to remember you by…’
Would I have listened? Would I indeed!
How do you find the mire? Let me tell you, my friend. In truth, you do not. The mire finds you. My travels took me north and east. But the mire has no constant geography. No certain edge about it. Rather, it comes, and it goes. It insinuates itself upon the land. It creeps upon you, lurks patiently in wait. It conceals itself behind an ever-changing mask; of pelting rain; of meadow mist; of winter fog or blinding snow. It eats up the very path upon which you tread. It steals upon you and hides the weathered trail. In the darkest night it beckons you in, lures, with the light of the jack-o’-lantern.
Indeed, this was already a fool’s journey, and I, Rogrig, the greater fool, no doubt, for seeking it out.
As the fortunes would have it, I did not travel quite alone, though I had to look again to the sky for the first of my companions. Aye, to the birds, to that same crowd of black birds – the crows – who, it seems, had taken it upon themselves to be my shadow on this foolhardy adventure. They flew so high they appeared to wheel among the clouds. Pointing the way with the direction of their flight, their vigil keeping my path constant; though it was Dandy’s sure footing that held me to the trail.
Fair praise where it is due; without both of my guides I would have quickly been lost. I could neither lead the way through the mire, nor follow the shifting signs.
My third companion was less expected. It appeared I was being deliberately followed. There was a lone rider at my back, clumsily copying my steps, keeping his distance, yet making no secret of his intentions. When the wind brought his scent to me I recognized it at once as belonging to Edbur-the-Widdle, Wolfrid’s son. (I told you Wolfrid was a shrewd man.) Was the youth sent to keep an eye out for me? Was he to be a second right arm, or perhaps his father’s spy? Time would tell.
I might have called out to the gangly youth, bid him join my party openly. I liked the lad well enough. Only, upon Graynelore, it is best to leave well alone, to keep to your own business once it is settled upon: he to his and I to mine. There is ever a cunning knife eager to make its mark, an owner looking to his own advantage. And there are just as many mistakes made; intentions misconstrued, not worth dying for.
Oh, for the freedom of the open fells of the South March! For clear skies and green pastures! How I hated to be closed about with sopping mists and murk. The bog-moss trails (if they were trails at all) were but a trick to the eye. They led nowhere. Each tempting curve of the path, each broken sod, was nothing but a lure and a dead end. Or else a dizzying circle; a devil of a dance that left this traveller disorientated, with no sense of here or there. And the trodden path was hardly as broad as a single hoof; each sure-footed step poor Dandy took was hard found before it was placed. It was a slow and wearisome trial.
I should have stayed constantly alert, not given up my guard to a flight of birds. I should have held off my breathy cusses, fought the drowsy man.
I should have turned an ear and listened out for the real threat of approaching strangers.
That they came upon me at all was a lucky meet. Then again, upon Graynelore, a man rides his luck when it presents itself. They: a gang of scavenging horse-thieves, or the like, and come hot-blooded. I: a seasoned fighting-man but caught unwary and alone. (Edbur, by chance or design, was too far distant or unawares to be taken into account.) Poor Dandelion broke their path, and to their surprise took the full weight of the leading horse almost head on. The iron spike upon her headdress – meant for a unicorn’s horn – was driven hard through the animal’s neck. It seems it pierced both the horse and the rider equally. Flesh was split apart. Bones broke. Hot blood spurted. As the horse fell – still skewered – we were brought down with it, rolled under its thrashing hooves. Instinct alone held me to the saddle. It took Dandy’s quick wit and stolid presence to save us, as the second and third horses ploughed into the melee. Men cursed, lifted their swords and swung in search of a target. But they were swinging blindly and at an adversary they were not yet certain of.
‘Is this bastard truly a man upon a horse…?’
‘Aye, aye…or some foul beast…some crude monster?’
Their reticence, their wary attack, was my good fortune; for it was not the time to stand and make a fight. Dandelion tore herself free of the dying animal. She shied, turned herself about, found her footing and, with my eager encouragement, bolted, took off at the gallop. Edbur was his own man; the circumstance dictates the action; I left him behind to make his own fate, as he left me to make mine. (And if I am – among all else – a coward when there is no need of a hero. Truly, who is not?)
If it had been an easier trail and firmer ground my escape would have been certain. But flight is not a game to play upon the bog-moss, nor is pursuit for that matter. The remaining riders – perhaps as many as three or four together – judged they had found themselves an easy prey after all, and came after me. More fool them; their larger, heavier horses, were less suited to the uncertain ground even than poor Dandy. The chase was soon done with.
I did not have to make a fight of it. The bog-moss caught us all out. It found my pursuers first; and I, soon after. It held us apart. I heard the anguished cries of both the men and – more cruelly – their horses, as it took hold of them. They thrashed their limbs about, beating at the sodden earth in a vain hope of gaining a firm purchase and winning their freedom; only hastening their imprisonment. The men’s pitiful wails, their horses’ desperate whinnies, broke the silence of that failing day, and afterwards, long into the night, coming weaker with every report until, almost at the break of dawn, they were finally extinguished.
In truth, I fared no better than my enemy, and was as quickly stuck fast. Only I stayed quite still, and calmed poor Dandy’s fright with gentle words, when instinctively she would have str
uck out in want of her freedom. My subtle actions greatly slowed our descent into the mire; though I feared there was nothing else to be done.
Once the bog-moss has you it will not easily let you go again. It grasps at your feet. It claws at the legs of your fell-horse until it finds its hold, and then it binds itself there, in a grip that is unrelenting. It envelops, devours, ingests; it holds your still living body in a tomb of stinking mud until the last breath is drawn out. Then, forever more, it sucks at your slowly decaying corpse until nothing remains…and the captive and the mire are one and the same.
So it was, and I would surely have met my own death there, without a rescue.
I might have expected Edbur to come to me, only it was not him who found me out. In fact, I was so close to an endless sleep, I did not see the arms that lifted me from the mire. I only knew their immense strength as they bore my weight and pulled me free, as they led poor Dandy by the reign and guided her to the safety of a sure path. I might have wondered how my rescuer kept their footing. Why they did not succumb to the deadly grip of the bog-moss. Inside my head I heard their soothing whispers, in a shadow-tongue, anxious to calm my fears, if outwardly my ears caught no natural sounds. What I saw, fleetingly, was this: a tall figure, draped in meadow mist…she was dark skinned…she was lithe…for a moment silhouetted against the coming dawn sky. Then, suddenly broken apart, a dozen fragments or more, like birds in flight…
No. Not like…but certainly, birds in flight.
Chapter Twelve
Wycken-on-the-Mire
I had not found my own way onto the mire. I did not find my own way off it. Rather, I would say, the bog-moss released me. It allowed me free passage, kept Dandelion steady upon the certain path without her protest or my direction. When we needed respite – to regain our strength after our night’s ordeal – the mire gave way to a sweet, grassy knoll, where there was some firmness to the ground; and we could both stretch out our lengths and rest a while. And later, where the way forward forced us through a meandering thread of the River Winding, well, the mire let me get my feet wet. How might I explain it? I cannot. Perhaps the mire was well satisfied with the victims it had already claimed? (Poor souls…) Or perhaps it was something else, something more, like a (dare I say it?) like a faerie pact. Ha! I might still laugh at the thought! Only, for certain, that dark figure among the meadow mist, that shadow-tongue whispering inside my head, that scattering of black birds had been no common thing.
Notwithstanding, the remainder of the trail I followed was long, and it was tedious, and it was grim, the going always difficult. When at last the mire relented, and I saw beyond a rising mist the town of Wycken before me, and felt good, solid earth resisting the movement of my feet, in all the world there could have been no more joyous a man than I. If, in truth, I had never before seen the town, nor did I have any real understanding of why I had come upon it now.
Norda Elfwych had beseeched me to find the place out, was that not it? (I was still having difficulty believing that the unspoken voices I had heard upon the killing fields belonged to any other than to her.) The murder of crows – circling in flight, high above me, even now – had helped signpost the way. More intriguingly, I had felt myself, inexplicably, drawn there. I had become a seeker, and here in Wycken I might find answers…if only I knew the questions to ask, and of whom. Or else I was a simple lost fool, who long before now should have been at his home, sitting at his own table, resting by his own fireside.
I will tell you this: I was not a man made for towns (nor was poor Dandy). Give us open fells and the bliss of solitude. I let her run loose beyond the first houses. She would come to no harm and find her own grazing. She had earned it. When I needed her she would surely find me out again. There was a good head and sharp eyes upon those old shoulders. And I had no fear of horse thieves. A Wishard has a private trick that keeps only his own arse upon his hobb’s saddle. If any man was tempted by the mount he would soon know himself delivered of a forceful rebuke.
I walked into the town alone.
In Wycken I was a stranger, an outlander, and aware of it. And any outlander who lingered in the town – with or without intent – would be revealed soon enough. I would be looked upon with suspicion. No man could expect to travel completely unchallenged. With that in mind I kept my hands openly filled. Not with the hilt of a blade, but with a bulging leather bag, a poke, lifted from Dandy’s back. Before setting out I had filled it with trinkets, and rag-cloth, and who knows what else (mostly, the latter), topped it off with a few loose coins, for this very purpose. I understood Wycken for a place where men traded. Everyone there was sure to be a merchant of a kind, and it might easily be assumed I was out to do some honest trading of my own. And if there was any argument I could claim to be there to see the spectacle of the Winter Festival; reveal my loaded purse. Money to spend was enough of a reason to let a man be. Mind, it would not do to remain too long. This was ever Graynelore! There were sure to be tempted men, who might happily dispatch an outlander for little more than the price of the clothes upon his back and his copper coin…
In Wycken there were more buildings standing together in one confined space than I could possibly count – certainly, I had never seen its like – and not a single one was built of good stone or visibly defended. Rather, they were all loosely made wooden shacks, each one leaning heavily upon its neighbour for support; the wood blackened with an oil or a tar, it seems, against the creeping bog-moss, and always lifted up on short stilts to keep them clear of the ground. From every rooftop, fire-smoke drifted. At every wind-eye, light blazed. The taverns were full. There was the sound of raucous laughter and excited banter. And there were people out in the streets…there were crowds of people everywhere.
By simple fortune (good or bad) my arrival had coincided with the first day of winter. In Wycken-on-the-Mire this day was traditionally marked by the festival they called the Faerie Riding. All across the town, though it was morning still, people were on the move. Their celebrations had already begun. Every door stood open in welcome. Trailing processions, of men and women, of youths, old crones and babbies, were snaking their way steadily through the streets. This was a day of joy then, a time to frolic and make merry. There would be no serious work done: fields would go untended; animals would go unwatched. For some it was a holyday, for all it was a day of truce. It was a moment, an opportunity for the local graynes to play the fool together; bad blood and deadly feud temporarily forgotten.
Though, a caution, my friend…Remember it. This was not a real Faerie Riding. This was only the people of Wycken pretending…
I stood by and watched it all.
And if for the first time in a day my belly protested for the lack of vitals, I took a small coin from my poke and offered it to a street vender in return for his warm bread and hot meats. Aye, and was forced to share it too; with the greedy mouth of some prancing urchin who cheekily tore off a piece, openly laughed at the affront and, with a full mouth, skipped merrily on his way. I, a man who had used his sword for less, only laughed in my turn at the thief in the making. This was a strange day indeed.
Small bands of young boys chased after young girls who were dressed in faerie frocks. There were tall-ish men pretending to be gigants. There were short-ish men, carrying decorated wooden axes, pretending to be dwarves. Handsome women, dressed in flowing white garments, their hair braided with fake gold and silver thread, rode upon fell-horses dusted with white chalk – that they might appear like graceful white ponies – and they threw small coins to the frolicking crowds who followed at their horses’ tails.
Already jovial drunkards lay by the wayside, lost in a stupor.
It was a day for false ears, fake wings, and faces stained bright blue or green or red.
Young women stood purposefully at street corners, singing sweet melancholic ballads that told of old histories. Ancient battles lost and won. Love and hate. And there were sad, tearful laments for wasted youth.
Young men drank
beer, swaggered, and bragged to each other of their conquests; real or make-believe.
Here and there, in the light of open doorways, Beggar Bards held eager crowds in raptures of delight as they told their mythical tales: of the making of the world, of the death of wizards, and the grounding of the Faerie Isle.
The babbies laughed and skipped, and scattered handfuls of black soot – scraped from the insides of chimneys – upon the unwary throng, in the pretence that it was Faerie Dust.
Handmade rag flags, dyed bright blue and red with the juice of berries, hung from roof tops and from the branches of trees along the way. While long rag ribbons decorated the hair of both young men and women alike. Often trailing the ground in the way of a tail, or a lure, encouraging the boldest among them (depending on who it was they were trying to attract) to make a chase of it.
Every now and then, small bands of revellers would break away from the main processions and, dancing hand in hand, form a human chain: winding in and out among the trees and the bushes, the standing boulders and the tethered animals, the horses and carts; cheekily coaxing friends and foes alike to join in with them as they went.
‘Oh, won’t you come, dance? Oh, won’t you come, dance and sing?’
‘Oh, won’t you lift your feet in time and join our Faerie Ring?’ sang the prancing fools to the pretty young girls.
I stood and watched it all…and did not believe a moment of it.
‘What is all this, eh? What is it?’ I called out, trying to take a hold of a dancing pair as they passed me by. ‘And where are you all going?’
What did these revellers reply?
‘We are on a Faerie Riding! And we are making Faerie Rings, of course. Then we’re off to raise the Faerie Isle!’
‘Oh, of course!’ I returned, with a shake of my head.
For a fancy, the young man I had hooked released himself and gave me an extravagant bow. The young girl with him took his lead and curtsied, lifting her skirts…too high. They laughed together, without shame, danced their ring around me and fled on.
Graynelore Page 7