by Tad Williams
“Yes, Niku’a, yes,” Ingen hissed quietly. “It is time to hunt once more.”
A moment later the Stile was empty. The leaves rattled ever so gently beside the ancient tiles, but no wind was blowing.
35
The Raven and the Cauldron
Maegwin winced as the clanging began again, the doleful clatter that signified so much—and none of it good. One of the other girls, a small, fair-skinned beauty that Maegwin had assessed at first glance as a quitter, let go of the bar they were all pushing to cover her ears. The heavy piece of fencing meant to hold the gate closed nearly tumbled free, but Maegwin and the two other girls clung on grimly.
“Bagba’s Herd, Cifgha,” she snarled at the one who had let loose, “are you mad?! If this had fallen, someone might have been crushed, or at least broken a foot!”
“I’m sorry, I am, my lady,” the girl said, cheeks flushed, “it’s just that loud noise…it frightens me!” She stepped back to take her place again, and they all pushed, trying to get the massive oak bar over the top and into the notch that would hold the paddock closed. Inside the restraining fence a close-packed congregation of red cattle grunted, as unsettled as the young women by the continual din.
With a scrape and thump the log fell down into place, and they all turned, panting, to slump with their backs against the gate.
“Merciful are the gods,” Maegwin groaned, “my spine is breaking!”
“It’s not right,” Cifgha opined, staring ruefully at the bleeding scratches on her palms. “It’s men’s work!”
The metallic clamor stopped, and for a moment the very silence seemed to sing. Lluth’s daughter sighed and took in a deep breath of frosty air.
“No, little Cifgha,” she said, “what the men are doing now is men’s work, and whatever is left to do is women’s work—unless you want to carry a sword and spear.”
“Cifgha?” one of the other girls said, laughing. “She won’t even kill a spider.”
“I always call Tuilleth to do it,” Cifgha said, proud of her fastidiousness, “and he always comes to me.”
Maegwin made a sour face. “Well, we had better get used to dealing with our own spiders. There will not be many menfolk around in the days to come, and those who remain will have much else to do.”
“It’s different for you. Princess,” Cifgha said. “You’re big and strong.”
Maegwin stared hard at her but did not answer.
“You don’t think the fighting will go on all summer, do you?” asked another girl, as if speaking of a particularly dreary chore. Maegwin turned to look at them all, at their sweat-dampened faces and their eyes already roaming, looking for something more interesting to talk about. For a moment she wanted to shout, to frighten them into realizing that this was not a tournament, not a game of some sort, but deadly serious.
But why nib their faces in the mud now? she thought, relenting. Soon enough we will all of us get more than we need of it.
“I don’t know if it will last that long, Gwelan,” she said, and shook her head. “I hope not. I truly hope not.”
As she made her way down from the paddocks toward the great hall, the two men again started to beat the huge bronze cauldron that hung upside down in its frame of oaken poles before the Taig’s front doors. As she trotted past, the noise of the men furiously ringing the cauldron with iron-tipped cudgels was so loud that she had to cover her ears with her hands. She wondered again how her father and his advisors could think, let alone plan life-and-death strategy with this awful ruckus just outside the hall. Still, if Rhynn’s Cauldron was not rung, it would take days to warn each of the outlying towns one by one, especially those that clung to the slopes of the Grianspog. This way those villages and manor halls within earshot of the cauldron would send riders to those beyond. The lord of the Taig had rung the cauldron in times of danger since long before the days when Hern the Hunter and Oinduth his mighty spear had made of their land a great kingdom. Children who had never heard it sounded still recognized it instantly, so many stories of Rhynn’s Cauldron were told.
The Taig’s high windows today were shuttered against the chill wind and mists. Maegwin found her father and his counselors in earnest discussion before the fireplace.
“My daughter,” Lluth said, standing. He expended visible effort to produce a smile for her.
“I took some women and got the last of the cattle into the big paddock,” Maegwin reported. “I don’t think it’s right to squeeze them all so tightly. The cows are miserable.”
Lluth waved a dismissive hand. “Better we lose some few now than have to try and round them up if we must fall back to the hills in a hurry.”
At the far end of the hall the door opened, and the sentries banged their swords against their shields once, as though to echo the piercing noise of the Summons of the Cauldron. “I do thank you, Maegwin,” the king said, turning from her to greet the new arrival.
“Eolair!” he called out as the count strode forward, still dressed in travel-stained clothes. “You are swift in returning from the healers. Good. How are your men?”
The Count of Nad Mullach approached, dropped briefly to one knee, then stood again at Lluth’s impatient gesture. “Five are able-bodied; the two wounded do not look well. The other four I shall call Skali to account for personally.” He saw Lluth’s daughter at last and smiled his broad smile, but his brow remained knitted in a weary, troubled study. “My Lady Maegwin,” he said, and bowed again, kissing her long-fingered hand, which, she was embarrassed to notice, was smudged with dirt from the paddock fence.
“I heard you were back, Count,” she said. “I only wish it were in happier circumstances.”
“It’s a terrible shame about your brave Mullachi, Eolair,” the king said, returning to sit with old Craobhan and his other trusted men. “But thanks be to Brynioch and Murhagh One-arm that you stumbled on to that scout party. If not, Skali and his bastard northerners would have been on us unawares. After the skirmish with your men gets back to him, he’ll make a much more cautious approach, I’m sure—he may even change his mind altogether.”
“I wish that were true, my king,” Eolair said, shaking his head sadly. Maegwin’s heart softened to see how bravely he bore his weariness; she silently cursed her childish emotions. “But,” he continued, “I fear it is not. For Skali to make such a treacherous attack so far from his home he must feel sure the odds are leaning his way.”
“Why, though, why?” Lluth protested. “We have been at peace with the Rimmersmen for years!”
“I think, sire, that has little to do with it.” Eolair was respectful but unafraid to correct his king. “If old Isgrimnur still rules in Elvritshalla, you would be right to wonder, but Skali is Elias’ creature entirely, I think. Rumor in Nabban said Elias will go into the field against Josua any day. He knows we have refused Guthwulf’s ultimatum, and he fears to have the Hernystiri unencumbered at his back when he moves against Naglimund.”
“But Gwythinn is still there!” said Maegwin, frightened.
“And with half a hundred of our best men, worse luck,” old Craobhan growled from beside the fireplace.
Eolair turned to give Maegwin a kind look, the condescending sort, she felt sure. “Your brother is doubtless safer behind the thick stone walls of Josua’s castle then he would be here in Hernysadharc. Also, if he hears of our plight and can ride out,his fifty men will be at Skali’s back, to our advantage.”
King Lluth rubbed his eyes as though to wring out the dismay and worry of the last day. “I do not know, Eolair, I do not know. I have a bad feeling about this all. It takes no soothsayer to see an ill-omened year, which this has been from its first instant.”
“I’m still here, father,” Maegwin said, and went forward to kneel beside him. “I will stay with you.” The king patted her hand.
Eolair smiled and nodded at the girl’s words to her father, but his mind was obviously on his two dying men, and on the vast force of Rimmersmen moving down the Frostma
rch into the Inniscrich, a great wave of sharp, sentient iron.
“Those who stay will perhaps not thank us,” he said beneath his breath.
Outside the brazen voice of the cauldron sang out across Hernysadharc, shouting ceaselessly to the hills beyond: Beware…Beware…Beware…
Baron Devasalles and his small Nabbanai contingent had somehow contrived to make their row of chambers in Naglimund’s drafty east wing into a little bit of their southern home. Although the freakish weather was too cold to allow the wide-open windows and doors so prevalent in balmy Nabban, they had covered the stone walls with bright green and sky-blue tapestries and filled every available surface with candles and guttering oil lamps so that the shuttered rooms bloomed with light.
It’s brighter in here at noon than it is outside, Isgrimnur decided. But it’s like old Jarnauga said—they won’t be able to make everything else go away so easy as they have the wintry dark, not by half.
The duke’s nostrils twitched like those of a frightened horse. Devasalles had set out pots of scented oils everywhere, some afloat with lighted wicks like white worms, filling the chamber with the thick smells of island spices.
I wonder if it’s the smell of everyone’s fear he doesn‘t like, or that of good honest iron? Isgrimnur grunted in distaste and slid his chair over by the hallway door.
Devasalles had been surprised to find the duke and Prince Josua at his door, unannounced and unexpected, but had quickly invited them in, throwing aside some of the multicolored robes that draped the hard chairs so his guests could seat themselves.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, Baron,” Josua said, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees, “but I wished to speak to you alone before we conclude the Raed tonight.”
“Of course, my prince, of course,” Devasalles nodded encouragingly. Isgrimnur, disdainfully observing the man’s shining hair and the glinting baubles he wore at neck and wrist, wondered how he could be the deadly swordsman his reputation declared him.
Looks like he might catch a hilt on his own necklaces and hang himself.
Josua hurriedly explained the events of the last two days, which were the real reason the Raed had not continued. Devasalles, who, like the rest of the assembled lords, had doubted but accepted the prince’s claim of illness, raised his eyebrow but said nothing.
“I could not talk openly; I still cannot,” Josua amplified. “In the mad crush, the muster of local forces, the comings and goings, it would be only too easy for someone of bad faith or one of Elias’ spies to take the news of our fears and plans to the High King.”
“But our fears are known to all,” Devasalles said, “and we have made no plans—yet.”
“By the time I am ready to speak of these things to all the lords, I will have made the gates secure—but you see. Baron, you do not yet know all the story.”
With that the prince proceeded to tell Devasalles all the latest discoveries, of the three swords and the prophetic poem in the mad priest’s book, and how these things matched with the dreams of many.
“But if you will tell all your liegemen this soon enough, why tell me now?” Devasalles asked. By the doorway Isgrimnur snorted; he, too, had wondered this same thing.
“Because I need your lord Leobardis, and I need him now!” Josua said. “I need Nabban!” He stood and began a circuit of the room, facing the walls as though he studied their hangings, but his gaze was focused on a point somewhere leagues beyond the stone and woven cloth.
“I have needed your duke’s pledge from the beginning, but I need him more now than ever I did. Elias has given Rimmersgard, for all practical purposes, to Skali and his Kaldskryke Raven-clan. Thus he has put a knife against King Lluth’s back; the Hernystiri will be able to send me many fewer men, forced as they will be to keep a quantity back to defend their lands. Already Gwythinn, who a week ago was chafing to be at Elias, is anxious to return and help his father defend Hernysadharc and its outlands.”
Josua whirled to stare Devasalles in the eyes. The prince’s face was a mask of cold pride, but his hand twisted at his short-front, something neither Isgrimnur or the baron failed to notice. “If Duke Leobardis ever hopes to be more than a lackey to Elias, he must throw in his lot with me now.”
“But why do you tell this to me?” Devasalles asked. He looked honestly puzzled. “I know all of this last, and the other things—the swords and the book and all—make no difference.”
“Damn it, man, they do!” Josua snapped back, his voice rising almost to a shout. “Without Leobardis, and with Hernystir under the northern threat, my brother will have us as snug as if we were nailed in a barrel, and also he is dealing with demons—and who can know what dread advantage that means?! We have made some small, feeble attempt to counter those forces, but what good will come of it—even if it succeeds, against all likelihood—if all the freeholds have been already thrown down?! Neither your duke nor anyone else will ever answer King Elias with anything but ‘yes, master,’ from now on!”
The baron shook his head again, and his necklaces chinked gently. “I am confused, my lord. Can it be that you do not know? I sent a message to the Sancellan Mahistrevis in Nabban by my fastest rider the night before yesterday, telling Leobardis I believed you would fight, and that he should move to put his men into the field in your support.”
“What?” Isgrimnur leaped up, his astonishment echoing the prince’s. They both stood swaying over Devasalles, their expressions those of men ambushed by night.
“Why have you not told me?” Josua demanded.
“But my prince, I did tell you,” Devasalles sputtered, “or at least, since I was advised you might not be disturbed, I sent a message to your chambers with my seal on it. Surely you read it?”
“Blessed Usires and his Mother!” Josua smacked his open left hand against his thigh. “I have only myself to blame, for it sits even now on my bedside table. Deornoth brought it to me, but I was waiting for a quieter moment. I suppose I forgot. Still it is no harm done, and your news is excellent.”
“You say Leobardis will ride?” Isgrimnur asked suspiciously. “How are you so sure? You seemed to have more than a few doubts yourself.”
“Duke Isgrimnur,” Devasalles’ tone was frosty, “surely you realize I was only fulfilling my duty. In truth, Duke Leobardis has long been in sympathy with Prince Josua. Likewise, he has feared Elias is becoming overbold. The troops have been on alert for weeks.”
“Then why send you?” Josua asked. “What did he think to discover that he did not have already from me, through my messengers?”
“He sought nothing new,” Devasalles said, “although there has been far more learned here than I think any of us bargained for. No, he sent my embassy more to make a show for certain others in Nabban.”
“There is resistance among his liegemen?” Josua asked, eyes bright.
“Of course, but that is not unusual…nor is it the source of my mission. It was to undermine resistance from a closer source.” Here, although the smallish chamber was obviously empty but for the three of them, Devasalles darted a look on all sides-“It is his wife and son who resist most strongly his making common cause with you,” Devasalles said at last.
“You mean the eldest, Benigaris?”
“Yes, else he or one of Leobardis’ younger sons should have been here in my stead.” The baron shrugged. “Benigaris sees much he likes in Elias’ rule, and the Duchess Nessalanta…” The Nabbanai emissary shrugged again.
“She, too, favors the High King’s chances,” Josua smiled bitterly. “Nessalanta is a clever woman. Too bad that now she will be forced, willy-nilly, to support her husband’s choice of allies. She might well be correct in her misgivings.”
“Josua!” Isgrimnur was shocked.
“I only jest, old friend,” the prince said, but his expression belied him. “So the duke will go into the field then, good Devasalles?”
“As soon as possible, Prince Josua. With the cream of Nabban’s knights in his train.”
“And a strong dollop of pikemen and archers as well, I hope. Well, Aedon’s grace on us all. Baron.”
He and Isgrimnur said their farewells and went out into the dark corridor, the bright colors of the baron’s chamber left behind them like a dream abandoned at the lip of awakening.
“One person I know will be very glad of this news, Isgrimnur.”
The duke raised a questioning eyebrow.
“My niece. Miriamele was very upset when she thought Leobardis might not come over. Nessalanta is her aunt, after all. She’ll be glad of this news, indeed.”
“Let us go tell her,” Isgrimnur proposed, taking Josua’s elbow and guiding him out toward the courtyard. “She may be with the other court ladies. I’m tired of looking at whiskery soldiers. I may be an old man, but I still like to look on a lady or two from time to time.”
“So be it.” Josua smiled, the first unforced example Isgrimnur had seen in several days. “Then we’ll go by and visit your wife, and you may tell her about your undiminished love of the ladies.”
“Prince Josua,” the old duke said carefully, “you’ll never be too damn old or exalted that I can’t knuckle your ears, just you see if I can’t.”
“Not today, Uncle,” Josua smirked. “I’ll need ’em to appreciate just what Gutrun has to say to you.”
The wind soughing in off the water carried the smell of cypress. Tiamak, wiping beads of sweat from his brow, gave silent thanks to He Who Always Steps on Sand for the unexpected breeze. Coming back from checking his trap line he had felt the storm-charged air descend on the Wran: hot, angry air that came and would not go away, like a marsh crocodile circling a leaking skiff.