That Way Lies Camelot

by Janny Wurts

  The birds quieted, and the crickets began their chorus. Above the small sounds of the night, Trionn heard the bell that summoned the field hands to supper. Past the bog he saw the glimmer of candles wastefully alight in the Lord's hall. The feast went on regardless, the gypsy's failure with the stallion no impediment to the pleasure of those highborn guests still in residence. Yet the thriftlessness of Silverdown's Lord was of little concern to Trionn. Now that he had firmed his course of action, the stillness as the stars brightened lent him a measure of peace. The Lord's riders were fanned out across the countryside in search of the vanished gypsy; patrols on the estate would be light, and widely spaced.

  The gloom deepened. The breeze carried snatches of Enith's laughter. The Lord's page could be heard shouting curses at the cook, while in the gatehouse, the captain berated a dozing sentry. The cobbled yard between lay empty, most of the household settled inside at their supper. Trionn chose his moment. Sweat chilled on his body as he rose and crept downhill through mown grass toward the stallion's pasture. From a pile of cut brush left by the laborers who cleared the fields, he selected a stout branch of oak. He stripped off the bark and twigs, then hastened on toward the gate, nailed shut ever since the forgotten proclamation that the stallion might live undisturbed.

  No one stopped him; no rider emerged to cry challenge. Trionn moved in fixed purpose, too numb to acknowledge his trepidation. The gate loomed ahead, a barred silhouette against a starlit expanse of open grass. He shot his branch home between the heavy planks and the post, snatched a quick breath, and threw his shoulder into prying.

  The nails were well rusted. The ones nearest the oak branch groaned and loosened, while the others stubbornly stuck fast. Dry, weathered wood resisted the strain with a crack. The stallion could not help but be drawn by the noise. Horses were curious by nature, Trionn knew; he desperately shoved all the harder, digging his toes into dew-drenched grass to keep his stance from slipping. At best he had a space of seconds before the stud cried challenge. His neigh would draw the Lord's riders. Did they catch the scullion at his meddling, they would kill him, cut him down without trial as a horse thief.

  Never mind that the stud was a rogue, and the only one wronged might be the kennelman. Luck might sour for him, since as a runaway, the dun was as likely to be slain on some other noble's demesne, with the carcass claimed as spoils in compensation. The kennelman would beat any scullion till he bled, when he learned who had cheated him of fare for his hounds.

  Trionn jammed his hip into the prybar until sweat stung his eyes like tears. 'Go,' he grunted to the groaning, giving nails. 'Go!'

  The rusted steel proved oblivious to pleading; heavy oak might split, but resisted breakage. Trionn thumped his fist on the gate in frustration, then set his branch to the base of the panel and hurled himself into fresh effort.

  He shoved, his sinews straining in agony. The lower boards gave way in a shower of jagged splinters. Trionn shifted his prybar, any moment anticipating the rapid-fire pounding of hooves, followed up by the bone-cracking punishment of an angry stallion's teeth. He was taking far too long. Every second his struggle lasted wound his nerves to the edge of snapping. Dizzy before he realized he was inadvertently holding his breath, Trionn jerked, dragging the next nails from the post with a force fueled by terror. He needed a rest but dared not pause as he confronted the final plank.

  Something bumped his shoulder. Startled, Trionn emitted a yelp that silenced the crickets. His pry branch dropped, thudding into the ground. The stud shied back on his haunches with a snort.

  Horse and boy regarded one another, each one poised to run.

  Trionn licked his lips. Panic held him rooted before the gapped boards of the gate. His thoughts raced with his heartbeat. Should he bend to retrieve his branch, the stud would strike and kill him; turn and flee, and he risked a ripping bite that would cripple him for life. Should he escape with the gate just half broken, his resolve would end in bleak failure.

  The dun stud stamped in the starlight. His ears flicked and he shook his neck, his mane spattered like ink down his crest. He snorted again and took a tentative, interested step forward.

  Trionn watched, paralyzed, as the horse shoved the loose boards with his head.

  'Dear God,' the scullion mouthed, astonished. Then his startlement faded as he noticed the horse's manner held no fury. A charged, unnatural shudder left him trembling to the soles of his feet.

  The stallion shouldered his neck between the gap and snuffled the sleeve of Trionn's shirt. He lipped the cloth, and snorted again, messily wet in his inquisitiveness.

  'Dear God,' Trionn repeated, this time in a choked off whisper. His every assumption had been wrong. After all, he had not bidden the stud to assert his own savage nature; not a bit. In his colossal, scullion's ignorance, he had done worse, in fact overturned the gypsy woman's spell with a binding entirely his own.

  The dun stallion that had been a killer now answered only to him.

  Blindly Trionn bent, groping through dew-drenched grass for the branch he had dropped in his terror. Shaken to cold sweats, he loosened the final boards of the gate, while the stallion lipped at his hair, and blew gusty breaths in his ear. The huge creature eyed him through tangled strands of forelock as the last few nails gave way. Trionn yanked down the battered boards. 'Go!' he urged, his face averted, that he need not be tormented by the absolute trust the powerful stallion placed in him. 'Get out of here!'

  The stud obliged by standing still.

  'They'll kill you!' He waved his hands. 'Run!'

  A bony head banged his elbow.

  'Oh, be off,' Trionn cried. He stumbled back in a flummoxed fit of frustration. Never in his ugliest nightmare had he thought to guard against an assault by the mad stallion's friendliness.

  Unfazed by human foibles, the horse followed, his nostrils widened in a companionable snaffle that stopped just short of a nicker. As briskly as the boy whose unwitting call had touched him could back away, the stallion strode after, unhurried, but unshakeable in equine determination. Trionn belatedly understood that short of outright shouting, or a blow to the nose with a stick, nothing would drive the stud from him. The noise of his outcry would certainly bring investigation from the riders; and any blow he might strike would now be an unthinkable betrayal. The horse was no longer wild, nor tamed to any touch but Trionn's own. His dilemma over the stallion was compounded.

  Bonded as he was to the horse, it was inconceivable to leave him loose to be hunted and butchered for dogmeat.

  Trionn sat in the meadowgrass, glaring morosely at his boots. They were worn at the toes, unsuited for the miles of wear he was now going to have to require of them. The already tired leather would rot off his feet by wintertime, and where could he steal or beg enough coin to pay for the stallion's upkeep? Such worries were moot if he failed to hide such a distinctive and costly animal from discovery by the Lord's patrols.

  The rising moon already glimmered through the trees. No time remained to restore the gate and formulate a reasonable escape. Shoved again by a warm nose, then tickled about the ears by the inquisitive stallion's lips, Trionn cursed. The horse raised his head as if puzzled.

  'Well, I don't know what to do,' Trionn said aloud, more words than he had used in one breath for the better part of a month.

  In the end, he settled for walking. The great dun paced at his heels with no more shame than a dog might show, adoring a master who had kicked him.

  'You were wild,' Trionn accused bitterly. 'You liked it that way, remember?'

  The horse only snorted, wetting the back of his neck.

  The path beyond Silverdown's back thickets stretched away through an expanse of tenant farmland. It was dusty, left rutted from the passage of the costermonger's carts that would rattle to the market before dawn. Now, when the field-hands were sleeping, and most nobles sipped wine in the comfort of candle lit halls, the way was empty, a silvered ribbon twisting away toward lands that Trionn had never dreamed of seeing. H
e was hungry, tired, and lost outside his corner in the kitchen where the pots and the washtub waited. He brooded as he walked, while the stallion grazed the verges, then trotted between mouthfuls of snatched grass to keep up.

  At intervals he would nudge Trionn, or playfully nip at the boy's sleeves. To turn around, even once, was to acknowledge the creature's magnificence. The full impact of what had gone wrong at the moment of the gypsy witch's call left an ache of inconsolable frustration.

  'I'm the last person you should trust to look after your fate,' Trionn cried, exasperated.

  He crossed a plank bridge, the boom of the stallion's hooves at his back a disturbance that shattered the stillness.

  A rustle from behind the span, and a half-seen, fitful movement, caused the stallion to shy back. He arched his neck, ears flattened, then feinted with bared teeth toward what he saw as a threat. Startled silly, Trionn gaped as what looked like a bundle of rags extricated itself from the undergrowth.

  The moonlight revealed a small woman, her manner decidedly vexed. 'By my mother's blood! It was you who turned my call!' The fury on her oval face was justified.

  'Why in hell's name did you do it, boy? My reputation's thoroughly ruined.'

  The stallion screamed and struck. Quicker than he by a hairsbreadth, the gypsy hopped the rails of the bridge, still carping. 'Call him off, idiot. Before we're noticed, and find ourselves cut down for stealing.'

  Mistrustful of words, Trionn gave a shrug, palms up.

  The woman snapped back an obscenity in the gypsy language of the hills. 'You've got uncommonly strong talent, for a boy who doesn't have the faintest idea what he's doing.' Her acid commentary cut off as she ducked beneath the bridge to avoid the enraged stallion's strike. As teeth lunged for her wrist, she dropped out of reach and landed mid-stream with a splash.

  'Lay your hand on him,' she instructed, annoyed as if she had just turned her ankle on a stone. 'The horse will feel your touch, and sense through you that I mean no harm.'

  Trionn feared to approach the whirling mass of equine nerve and muscle that could, and had, killed men outright. But the clatter as the horse rampaged across the bridge span demanded immediate reaction. He steeled his nerve, reached out, and was startled yet again as the stallion anticipated his movement, and seemed at one with his intent. The creature settled back on all fours, curved his neck, and lipped at Trionn's fingers.

  From the far side of the bridge, bedraggled and wringing wet, the gypsy woman shouldered out of the briars on the river bank. She regarded the mismatched tableau presented by the awkward, diffident boy and a stallion bred to carry princes. Her eyes turned absorbed and thoughtful, while the moonlight glinted off the water that dripped from her rags like a fall of thrown diamonds.

  'You're exceptionally gifted with animals,' she mused. 'I expect you also know how to ride?'

  Trionn cast her a look of mortified affront, and the stallion snorted warning in concert.

  The gypsy witch shook her head, and busied herself wringing muddy water from her skirts. She sighed at last and straightened. Trionn received a long look that chilled his flesh, and set his knees to trembling.

  A gypsy horse-caller's spells could be used on more than a beast; her voice when she finally spoke held a whetted edge of threat, if you never dreamed of owning this horse, of riding him, why in the name of the mysteries did you wrest him from my control?'

  Trionn swallowed. There would be no running away from her; he must force his throat to loosen, and his tongue to shape coherent speech. 'I didn't,' he blurted clumsily. 'I wanted the stallion to stay wild.' And unbidden, the tears started, born of shame, that he, and the last person living to crave dominion, had been the one to spoil the stallion's fiery independence.

  'My mother's blood!' the gypsy swore in a voice that cracked into laughter. 'You've a gift to outmatch mine, and you thought to stay a simple scullion? I suppose the cats jumped into your cradle since the moment of your birth, and nobody knew what that meant?'

  Trionn nodded. He swallowed again, painfully. 'I hate myself. For breaking the stallion's spirit.'

  The gypsy gave another breathless laugh. 'You didn't. Not at all.' Her brusqueness was intended to reassure, but caused Trionn a start of alarm. Dropping handfuls of wet hems, she sat down in the dust by the roadside, and rested her pointed chin in delicate, almost elfin hands. 'Boy, listen to me carefully. You did not harm that horse. What you did was bond with him. He is now your best friend, and more. He is twinned to your thoughts. I will teach you what that means, but for now you must understand. You called, and he answered entirely of his own will. His wildness was won over by your depth of compassion, and that was no mean feat. Believe me in this, for I know. I also touched that horse, and the distrust in his heart was buried deep. You bested my skills through no mistake. That stud was listening for your voice to command him from the moment he was first foaled.'

  'But I don't understand how that happened!' Trionn cried in rising unhappiness. 'And I felt your call! It was painful!'

  The gypsy shouted back, 'Hurtful to you, boy, because it was not pitched for your spirit!' Her manner suddenly gentled. 'I know you're confused. But what counts this minute, is that the Lord of Silverdown will not pardon either of us if we're caught. He will find his rogue stallion gone, and believe that I accomplished the task I was bidden to. The dun's attack upon me in the meadow will be taken for a witch's trick, arranged to cover my escape. You must understand what you've caused, boy. I'll be blamed for the stud you called, and be hunted and hanged as a horse thief.'

  She did not exaggerate. Too well Trionn recalled the horsebreaker's warning to Silverdown's Lord, that were he to summon a gypsy, the stallion he desired to break would be stolen the first night after gentling. Awkwardly the scullion locked his fingers in the warmth of the horse's mane. 'What's to be done? I know nothing at all beyond pot washing.'

  The gypsy caller sighed. 'I'll become accomplice to a horse thief, after all.' She shrugged, rose, and gave another of her silvery laughs. 'The hangman might as well find me guilty. Still, my skills should be enough to turn the Lord's riders awry. With luck, I can hide all three of us. But I have a condition to set.' She regarded the scullion and his unlikely companion, a horse so nobly proportioned, that men might try murder to possess him.

  Trionn looked warily back, never before conscious of how tiny she was, and how determined. Even clad in drenched rags, she had the poised tension of a wild thing, or an owl in the moment before flight. For the first time he could recall, words came easily in the presence of another human being. 'What do you ask?'

  'That you learn to ride, because we're going to need to travel faster and farther than either of us can go on foot.' At Trionn's scowl, she bore unmercifully on. 'And you must swear to stay with me until such time as you can marshal the talent you were born to.'

  'That's two things,' Trionn pointed out.

  At his shoulder the stallion stamped.

  The gypsy woman caught his eyes and compelled him to hold her gaze. 'Is it yes?'

  And the boy who was destined to be other than Silverdown's scullion bit his lip. Haltingly he gave his oath. When he finished, he added vehemently. 'I am not a horse thief!'

  To which the gypsy witch laughed as she hurried him on down the road. 'As you wish, boy, but face fact. That's what your gifts make you best at.'

  * * *

  The stallion's disappearance was years in the past, and forgotten by all but a few when the stranger arrived at Silverdown. He came to the gates just past dusk, clad in a dark dusty cloak. To the watchman who called him challenge, he gave no name. He insisted, quietly firm, that he had business with Silverdown's Lord.

  'Lady,' corrected the guardsman, his chin out-thrust over the pole of his halberd, 'Have you no news of the folk you've traveled to visit? The Lord's been dead these five years, and his wife and one son survive him.'

  The stranger bowed in apology. He did not appear to be a brigand. Nor could he be mistaken for a beggar out to
win a meal. He waited in the twilight with his head cocked, as if the palisade and stone gate keep were a surprise he had not expected. The buttons on his cloak were silver. He journeyed on foot by choice: at his shoulder stood a magnificent silver-dun stallion, bridleless, halterless, saddleless. Muscled and shining like high-gloss silver, the creature had the fire of a warhorse, but with significant difference. He followed the man without restraint, apparently of his own free will. Dark, equine eyes regarded the gatekeeper, who studied the horse-master in turn with searching distrust. Yet the man carried no war gear. He was, in point of fact, unarmed.

  'Let me speak with the Lady, then,' the stranger insisted. The timber of his voice was persuasive, if not impossible to deny. 'I will take but a minute of her time, and need not ask lodging for the night.'

  Much against his orders and inclination, the guard grudgingly opened the gate. The stranger strode inside. Without any visible signal, the horse flanked him stride for stride.

  The pair reached the courtyard, where a tabby cat leapt up from cleaning itself. One glance at the stranger, and it fled with flattened ears and streaming tail. The stable boy who came to tend the horse was waved back.

  'He will stand,' insisted the man in the same voice that had placated the gate guard.

  The stallion remained at liberty in the courtyard, obedient to the letter of command while his master pursued his business inside the keep. Beyond the occasional switch of his black tail, the creature might have been a statue. He raised no hoof, but laid back warning ears at the stable boys who ventured too close in admiration, and the old, half-blind master at arms whispered behind his scarred hand that despite the silver buttons on his cloak, the visitor must have a taint of gypsy blood. 'At least, that stallion shows a witch's touch for a surety.'