by Stuart Hill
Thirrin raised her hand, and her escort saluted and marched away. Oskan, in the comfort of his bed, remembered how much larger the room had suddenly seemed after the ten heavily armed soldiers had gone. Grimswald had then cleared his throat with deliberate dignity and asked precisely what they wanted.
“I have urgent news for my father,” Thirrin had replied, with a slight but powerful emphasis on the word my.
“Well, since you’ve woken him up, you might as well tell him what you very well want!” a huge voice had boomed into the room and was soon followed by an enormous white nightshirt that made its way irritably through a door from an inner chamber. Oskan’s jaw had literally dropped open before the massive figure of the King. His billowing nightshirt and swirling red hair and beard made him look like a snow-covered volcano in mid-eruption, and the rumbling that could be heard deep in the barrel chest suggested that further fireworks were likely.
“Father, we heard a wolfwoman in the forest….”
“Is that all? Well, hunt her tomorrow! Is that the only reason you woke me?” The King had been outraged, and his face had gone almost as red as his flaming hair.
“No,” Thirrin had said hurriedly. “Oskan understands their language, and it seems she was part of a relay of messages back to The-Land-of-the-Ghosts.”
By this time the King had marched over to the chair he used during the day and was pummeling the cushions to his liking. He stopped and looked up, his eyes narrowing with interest.
“What did she say?” he’d asked.
“She was calling a gathering! A gathering of the Wolffolk …”
“Odin!” Redrought had boomed in amazement. “What else?”
Thirrin had paused, unconsciously raising the tension. “She said that she didn’t think they’d be in time to fulfill their oath to the Princess.”
The King had leaped to his feet and turned to Oskan. “Do you know which direction this message came from?”
For a moment Oskan had quailed under Redrought’s fierce gaze, but then he’d answered. “She was calling to others in a relay to the north, so it must have come from the south.”
“The Polypontus, then,” the King said, and then astonished Oskan by smiling. “It looks like we’re going to meet General Scipio Bellorum at last, eh, Thirrin?”
“Yes, Dad. At last.” And she’d smiled, too.
In the warmth of his bed afterward, it all seemed unreal to Oskan. With an amazing speed, the King had sent out messages to all points of the compass calling out the fyrd and ordering the regiments of royal housecarls to march south immediately. Redrought, though, seemed to be planning to follow the day after Yule with the cavalry. Obviously he didn’t think the invasion was imminent and was coolly determined to enjoy the Yuletide Feast before going anywhere.
“Do you think the Lady Theowin will know what’s going on?” Thirrin had then asked.
“Certain to,” Redrought had answered. “Her scouts keep a close eye on the border every day of the year. She and her housecarls will keep any invading force busy until we get there. But judging by what your new allies the Wolffolk were saying, the invasion hasn’t happened yet; they were just worried they wouldn’t be ready in time to help.”
Thirrin had glowed with pleasure. Her insistence on an alliance with at least some of the creatures from The-Land-of the-Ghosts was already paying off. But then Redrought had begun to doubt the reports of the emergency.
“You are fluent in wolf speech, aren’t you?” he’d boomed at Oskan.
“Oh yes, sir,” Oskan had answered confidently. “My mother taught me before I could even read or write.”
“You can read!” Redrought had bellowed in surprise. Picking up his precious Book of the Ancestors that still lay next to his chair, he opened it at random and told Oskan to read where his finger pointed. Oskan had done so, and when Redrought had looked inquiringly at Grimswald and the old chamberlain had nodded, he’d grunted in satisfaction and smiled.
“You have a learned adviser, Daughter! Use him well.” Both Oskan and Thirrin had blushed at that, and the King laughed hugely.
“Now, Grimswald, bring my cloak and boots! We’re going to the lookout tower to see if Thirrin’s allies are saying anything else about General Scipio Bellorum.”
Oskan shivered in his bed as he remembered the icy cold of the winds blowing about the high tower that reared above the battlements of Frostmarris. The city lay below them, tiny and hard-looking under the moonlight, like an exquisite toy carved out of crystal. He’d stared in fascination at the tangled pattern of streets and alleyways that tied a knot of connections between the four main gates of the city, but then he’d tensed as the thin wailing of the Wolffolk slipped through the cold night air like a blade.
The voice was torn to tatters by the wind, and Oskan had to wait for the cycle of howling to begin again before he had it all.
“Well?” the King had boomed through a storm cloud of steaming breath. “What are they saying?”
“It’s a reply from the north,” Oskan had answered. “The muster has begun, but they expect it to take months to gather all their warriors together. They say the invasion will happen before that, perhaps in less than a week, but they’ll be ready to help the Princess … if she still lives.”
“Hmm, optimistic bunch,” Redrought had said in a tone that was quiet for him.
“There’s something else,” Oskan had then said. “The Wolffolk say they could have warned the Princess directly, but they didn’t think they could have reached Frostmarris without being killed by the city guards before they’d even seen her.”
“Good point,” the King admitted. “Still, we know now, thanks to you, Oskan. The fyrd has been called out over the whole country. My professional housecarls will set off within the hour and begin a forced march south, and I’ll lead out the cavalry the day after Yule. We should overtake the housecarls by the following day and arrive together in the Southern Riding the day after that.”
“Five days,” Thirrin had said quietly. “And the Wolffolk expect the invasion within a week.”
“Well, I don’t expect it before the week’s up,” Redrought had said confidently. “I’ve heard nothing from Lady Theowin yet, and her scouts will certainly have noticed any buildup of troops below the southern border. So it can only just have started to happen. It’s no easy matter maneuvering an army the size of old Scipio Bellorum’s, you know. I don’t expect anything to happen for a good eight or nine days yet.”
“But you yourself have said that Bellorum has won most of his wars by the sheer size of his armies, iron discipline, and by doing the unexpected,” Thirrin had pointed out.
“That’s right. But he doesn’t know we’re ready for him, does he?”
Oskan snuggled down under the blankets and continued to mull over the meeting with Thirrin and her father. There was no denying that both were deeply worried by the threat of invasion, but there was something that overrode even that: They were both looking forward to it! Oskan was sure that neither could wait to get out onto the field of battle and test themselves against the mighty army of the Polypontus and most of all against the legendary skill and daring of the great General Scipio Bellorum. Oskan was appalled. The threat of war filled him with an honest terror. When he’d told Thirrin about the omen of the late snows, it had all seemed somehow remote and unconnected with his own reality. But now that the Wolffolk were mustering and the King had called out the fyrd, it all seemed horribly real. In his imagination’s terrified ear, he could almost hear the heavy tread of the Empire’s army as it advanced on the little land. But nobody else in the royal household seemed particularly worried; Oskan knew that everyone from the loftiest baron to the lowliest scullion would know every detail by now. And yet he could clearly hear the first stirrings of the castle as the household prepared for Yule Day, as though war and its threat of death and chaos weren’t hanging over them all.
But perhaps they were just hiding their true feelings and getting on with life as be
st they could. After all, when he went over the facts himself, he had to admit there was nothing he could actually do about it. The housecarls had set out and the fyrd had been raised, and no amount of his worrying would alter a thing. Perhaps this relaxed attitude to horrific situations was infectious, he thought, as at last he settled down and drifted off to sleep.
Outside, the Wolffolk continued to howl, their messages taking on a note of urgency that anyone could have recognized if they’d been listening, but Oskan slept on warm and, for the moment, safe in his bed. The moon set in a glory of silver, and slowly the solstice dawn lightened the eastern sky. The castle bustled with Yuletide preparations that filled every corridor and hall with delicious smells and an excited hum of activity. But still Oskan slept on, until at last he was awoken several hours later by a hammering on his door and a heavily armored palace guard bursting into the room.
“Princess Thirrin commands your presence in the Great Hall! She says if you look too sleepy I’m to tip you out of bed and drag you along as you are!” The soldier looked at him sharply, and Oskan sat up, his eyes wide open.
“I’m awake! It’ll only take me a moment to dress!”
The guard nodded curtly and disappeared. Oskan clambered out of bed and started to throw on his clothes. It was while he was struggling to pull his shirt over his head that the sweet sound of singing slowly reached him through the cloth and filled him with an excited sense of the day. It was Yule! The death of the old year and the birth of the new.
It was a day he’d always loved, and he sat on the bed for a moment as he remembered decorating the cave with his mother. She’d always known exactly where to find the glossiest holly with the brightest berries. And she’d always taken him with her when she’d set off into the forest in search of mistletoe. Once, they’d found a grove of twisted old crab apple trees that were bent almost double under the weight of the strange pale-leafed plant growing on them. But even so, she’d still bowed gravely to the trees and asked permission before cutting a bunch of the mistletoe with a strangely marked sickle.
He could still remember the cave, spicy with the scent of evergreen foliage and the smell of delicious roasting and baking. In fact, Yule was one of the few occasions when his mother would hint at who his father might have been. He knew better than to pester her about it, but he’d stored away the nuggets of information to think about later.
“It was this time of year when I first saw him,” she’d said one day while gathering holly. “Tall, he was, and as slender and pale as a silver birch.”
“But who was he, Mother? What was his name?”
She’d smiled mysteriously then and said, “His sort never tell their names. Whoever knows their names has power over them, so only the closest of their own kind have such knowledge.”
“Then can’t you at least tell me who his kind were?”
“Oh, they’re the oldest ones. The Elders of all thinking beings. Can’t you guess? Haven’t I given you enough clues?”
Oskan thought perhaps she had. “Was he powerful? Was he good?”
“All of that sort have Power. And as for good, well, who knows? They choose between light and dark, that sort — it’s a choice they all have to make. A choice you’ll have to make one day, too.”
So vivid were his memories that he could almost feel the breeze that had been blowing through the forest that day stroking his skin again, and with it came the smell of the pies and pastries that his mother had baked for Yule. But then he came to and realized the aroma was coming from the palace kitchens, and that reminded him he was expected by Thirrin for Yule breakfast.
He finished dressing and hurried out into the corridor, which seemed almost as busy as a road on market day. Servants hurried to and fro carrying trays and baskets of food, and richly dressed guests walked with as much speed as dignity would allow. Oskan had been shown to his room by a guard in the dead of night when almost on the point of collapsing with exhaustion, so exactly where he was in the palace was a mystery. But he noticed all of the guests were heading in the same direction and, guessing the corridor led to the Great Hall, he hastened to follow them.
When he reached the end of the passageway, he almost fell into the massive space that old men still called the Mead Hall. The noise, color, and scents were overpowering as musicians played and choristers sang; brightly dressed courtiers and servants rushed about, and excited wolfhounds barked and chased one another around the tables that were already filling up with guests. At the head of the hall, Redrought sat on his huge throne dressed in a rich deep green robe that exactly matched the boughs of holly that hung from the rafters and lined the walls. He wore the ancient iron crown of the House of Lindenshield, and as King he was the only one allowed to wear a sword under that massive roof. Even the palace guards carried only spears and clubs.
Redrought sat in dignified silence as the servants bustled around. But after watching them for a moment he threw dignity aside and started a bellowed conversation with one of the merchants who sat at the top end of one of the long rows of tables. Judging from the way the King kept stroking his robe and holding his sleeve up to the light so that he could admire the color, Oskan guessed that the merchant was a member of the Cloth and Weavers Guild and that Redrought was more than pleased with his Yuletide robe.
The High Table was set at right angles to row upon row of long trestle tables that completely filled the Great Hall. And as Oskan stood and watched, they were filling up quickly as guests arrived and found a good place as close to the dais and the King as possible. There was a definite order of precedence, with the richer merchants near the top end, the less wealthy in the center, and the peasantry who’d been lucky enough to be invited crammed down at the lower end near the great doors. The nobility sat with the King at the top table and noting this, Oskan scanned it, looking for Thirrin. She wasn’t there, but he noticed a smaller throne standing next to Redrought’s that not even the most important of the barons or baronesses had tried to sit in.
She hadn’t arrived yet, then. So much for threatening to have him dragged out of bed if he didn’t hurry, Oskan thought. And he was just turning to make his way down to the bottom end of one of the tables when a huge brassy fanfare blew and the hall fell silent. Into the sudden quiet strode the slender figure of Thirrin Freer Strong-in-the-Arm Lindenshield. She was wearing a simple dress of sky blue and on her head a circlet of silver set with a huge sapphire. Oskan stared; he’d never seen her in anything other than battle dress before. Even her hair, usually braided and tucked up under a helmet, now hung loose in a glorious blaze of red-gold, and her eyes shone with excitement as she looked out over the hall. As it was her fourteenth birthday, she was, in effect, the guest of honor and so had precedence over even the King.
Thirrin would have been surprised if she’d known what Oskan and many other people were thinking. Beautiful was a word used for grown women, for her mother and one or two of the young noblewomen who sometimes came to court. She was just Thirrin, fourteen years old today and tired after a bad night’s sleep. She thought she’d been restless because of the coming war but didn’t really believe it. Far more likely was that it had been Yuletide Eve and the night before her birthday, when she’d be officially presented to the court and proclaimed heir.
She’d eventually fallen asleep only to be troubled by strange dreams. In one, she’d been riding her stallion in full war armor and beside her ran a truly enormous cat, a leopard, she thought. But it was unlike any leopard she’d ever seen in the books of her tutor, Maggiore Totus. Its coat was mainly a brilliant white with spots that ranged from silver-gray to the deepest black. But the strangest of all was the fact that she wasn’t hunting it or it hunting her. In the dream she felt an enormous affection for the animal, and she felt proud to be with it and almost humble — a feeling, Thirrin reminded herself, that she didn’t often feel! Maggiore Totus would tell her that it was a classic anxiety dream, but she hadn’t felt in the least bit anxious, only proud and happy.
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nbsp; She looked now to see if Maggiore was at the top end of one of the tables, skillfully denying to herself that she was actually looking for Oskan. The Yuletide bustle and noise had reasserted itself, and people began milling around again as they jockeyed for space as close to the High Table as they could get. So when Thirrin eventually spotted the witch’s son, she was surprised to see him standing directly in front of her, his mouth hanging open in a slightly imbecilic way.
The sight of him annoyed her, and not only because of his sagging mouth. In the chaos that had followed the news of war, she’d forgotten to send the new robes she’d bought him for Yule, and he was still wearing the threadbare tunic and leggings he always wore.
Not deigning to call directly down to him, she beckoned to a chamberlain and spoke quietly into his ear. Oskan watched as the man then walked from her side, stepped down off the dais where Thirrin sat at the High Table, and hurried over to him.
“Her Royal Highness suggests you close your mouth before one of the wolfhounds does something unspeakable in it.” Oskan’s jaw snapped shut with a loud click. “She also wishes you to take a place at the head of the central table.”
Oskan had been heading for the section reserved for the peasantry near the great doors, but now he shyly made for the table the head of which was directly opposite Thirrin’s throne. The fat merchant who already sat there looked at Oskan’s worn tunic and was about to loudly tell him exactly where he should go, when the chamberlain whispered something in his ear and nodded at the High Table. Thirrin’s coldest gaze was already leveled at the merchant, and he quickly shuffled farther down the bench without another word.
Opposite Oskan sat a small dark man who wore small pieces of glass set in a frame in front of each eye. Oskan was fascinated by this contraption and stared in amazement. The small man returned his gaze, and Oskan noticed that his eyes looked enormous behind the glass.