by Tad Williams
“I will do my best to look like a nice person to marry,” Josua said, arching an eyebrow. Hyara stared back at him, anxious as a startled fawn.
Vorzheva insisted that they be married beneath the open sky and before the eyes of her clanfolk. The wedding party made its way out from beneath the roof of blankets, Father Strangyeard mumbling fretfully as he tried to remember the important sections of the marriage ceremony—he had not, of course, been able to bring a Book of the Aedon from Naglimund, and had never performed a marriage before. Of the principals, he was clearly the most nervous. Young Hyara, sensing a kindred spirit, walked so close to him that she was almost between his feet, adding to the priest’s discomfiture.
It was not surprising to see a cheerful and curious crowd of Thrithings-folk assembled along the edges of the bull run—a crowd not greatly different in mood, Deornoth reflected, than that which had come to watch Josua be cut into slivers. It was a little disconcerting to see among them the mother and sisters of he who had failed to slice Josua up, the late Utvart. This group of women, dressed identically in dresses and scarves of dark mourning blue, stared balefully at the emerging stone-dwellers, their mouths pulled tight in uniform expressions of ill-regard.
If the attendance of Utvart’s family was surprising, the appearance of Fikolmij on the scene was even more so. The March-thane, who had taken his foul temper and virtually gone into hiding after Josua’s victory, now came swaggering through the camp to the bull run, trailed by a handful of scarred randwarders. Although the gray dawn was not an hour passed, Fikolmij’s red-eyed stare had the look of drunkenness.
“By the Grass-Thunderer!” he bellowed, “surely you did not think I would let my daughter and her horse-rich husband be wedded without coming to share their happiness!?” He slapped his broad belly and guffawed. “Go on! Go on! We are waiting to see how marriages are done in the mazes of the stone-dwellers!”
At the sound of her father’s roar, little Hyara took a step backward and looked wildly around, preparing to flee. Deornoth reached out and gently took her elbow, holding it loosely until she gathered courage to move forward and stand at Vorzheva’s side once more. Hopelessly rattled, Father Strangyeard started the Mansa Connoyis—the Prayer of Joining—several times without success, each time losing his way after a few lines and stuttering to a halt like a millwheel whose ox was balking in the traces. Each failed attempt drew more laughter from Fikolmij and his randwarders. The archive-master’s already pink face grew redder and redder. At last, Josua leaned forward and whispered in his ear.
“You are a Scrollbearer now, Father, as was your friend Jarnauga.” He spoke so quietly that none but Strangyeard could hear. “Surely a simple mansa is child’s play for you, whatever the distractions.”
“One-eye speaks the marriage for One-hand!” Fikolmij shouted.
Strangyeard tugged self-consciously at his patch, then grimly nodded his head. “You ... you are right, Prince Josua. Forgive me. Let us continue. ”
Speaking each word carefully, Strangyeard worked his way through the long ritual as though wading in high and treacherous waters. The March-thane and his jibing cronies shouted louder and louder, but the priest would no longer be deterred. At last, the crowd of watching Thrithings-folk became restive, tiring of Fikolmij’s rudeness. Every time another graceless jest echoed across the bull run, the murmur grew louder.
As Strangyeard neared the end of the prayer, Hotvig appeared on horseback out of the west. He was windblown and disheveled, as though he had ridden fast in his return to the wagon-city.
The rider sat dazedly surveying the scene for a moment, then swung down from the saddle and trotted to his thane’s side. He spoke rapidly, then pointed back in the direction from which he had come. Fikolmij nodded, grinning hugely, then turned and said something to the other randwarders which set them rocking with laughter. A look of confusion came over Hotvig’s face—confusion which soon turned to anger. As Fikolmij and the others continued to chortle over the news he had brought, the young Thrithings-man strode to the fence around the bull run and waved for Isorn’s attention. Hotvig spoke into Isorn’s ear; the Rimmerman’s eyes widened. When Father Strangyeard paused in his recital a few moments and bent to look for the bowl of water he had filled earlier and put by for this moment in the prayer, Isgrimnur’s son pushed away from the fence and marched directly to Prince Josua’s side.
“Forgive me, Josua,” Isorn hissed, “but Hotvig says there are three score armored riders coming down on the wagon camp. They are less than a league away and riding hard. The leader’s coat is a falcon in scarlet and silver.”
Startled, Josua looked up. “Fengbald! What is that whoreson doing here?!”
“Fengbald?” Deornoth echoed, astounded. It seemed a name from another age. “Fengbald?”
A rustle of wonder went through the crowd at this odd turn to the ceremony.
“Josua,” Vorzheva said tightly, “how can you talk of these things now?”
“I am truly sorry, my lady, but we have little choice.” He turned to Strangyeard, who stood staring, his increasingly confident rhythms again disrupted. “Go on to the final part,” Josua directed him.
“Wha ... what?”
“The final part, man. Come, then, hurry to it! I won’t have it said I left my lady unmarried against my promise, but if we stand much longer she will be a widow before the mansa is over.” He gave the priest a gentle shove. “The end, Strangyeard!”
The archivist’s one eye bulged. “May the love of the Ransomer, His mother Elysia, and His Father the All-Highest bless this joining. May ... may your lives be long and your love be longer still. You are married.” He waved his hands anxiously. “That’s ... that’s it. You are married, just as it says.”
Josua leaned and kissed the astonished Vorzheva, then grabbed her wrist and pulled her toward the paddock gate while Isorn hurried the rest of their party after them.
“Are you so anxious for your wedding night, Josua?” Fikolmij smirked. He and his randwarders pushed toward the gate as the crowd shouted questions at their thane. “You seem to be in a hurry to leave.”
“And you know why,” Deornoth shouted at him, his palm itching on the hilt of his sword. “You knew they were coming, didn’t you? You treacherous dog!”
“Watch your tongue, little man,” Fikolmij growled. “I only said I would not hinder your going. I sent word to the king’s men long ago—in the hour when you first crossed over into my Thrithings.” He laughed heartily. “So I broke no promises. But if you wish to fight my men and me before the Erkynlanders get here, come ahead. Otherwise, you had better get on your new ponies and ride away.”
Vorzheva pulled away from Josua as they passed through the gate and into the crush of Thrithings-folk. She reached her father in a few steps and slapped him stingingly across the face.
“You killed my mother,” she shouted, “but someday I will kill you!” Before he could grab her, she sprang back to Josua’s side. Naidel whisked out of the prince’s sheath and swayed menacingly, a flickering tongue of light beneath the dim sky. Fikolmij stared at Josua, eyes bulging, face crimson with rage. With a visible effort, the March-thane subdued his anger and contemptuously turned his back.
“Go, ride for your lives,” he growled. “I do not break my word over a woman’s feeble blows.”
Hotvig followed as they hustled toward the paddock where the horses were waiting. “The thane was right about one thing, Josua, Vorzheva,” he called. “You must indeed ride for your lives. You have an hour’s start and your horses are rested, so all is not lost. Some of the others will help me slow them down.”
Deornoth stared. “You’ll... ? But Fikolmij wants us caught.”
Hotvig shook his head roughly. “Not all favor the March-thane. Where do you go?”
Josua thought for a moment. “Please do not let our enemies hear of this, Hotvig.” He lowered his voice a little. “We go north of where the rivers meet, to a place called the Stone of Farewell.”
The Thrithings-man looked at him strangely. “I have heard something of it,” he said. “Go swiftly, then. It is possible we will see each other again.” Hotvig turned and gave Vorzheva a long look, then bowed his head briefly. “Make these people know that not all Thrithings-folk are like your father.” Hotvig turned and walked away.
“No more time to talk!” Josua cried. “To horse!”
The outermost grazing lands of the wagon-camp were disappearing behind them. Despite the injured and inexperienced riders, the long strides of Vinyafod and his fellows ate up the ground. The grass flew away beneath their hooves.
“This is becoming sickeningly familiar,” Josua shouted across to Deornoth and Isorn.
“What?”
“Running! Pursued by superior forces!” Josua waved his arm. “I am tired of showing my backside, whether to my brother or the Storm King’s minions!”
Deornoth looked up at the clotted sky, then over his shoulder. Only a few lone cows dotted the rearward horizon: there was no sign of pursuing riders. “We must find a place to make our stronghold, Prince Josua!” he called.
“That’s right!” Isorn shouted. “People will come flocking to your banner then, you’ll see!”
“And how will they find us?” Josua called back with a mocking smile. “These people, how will they find us?”
“They will, somehow,” Isorn shouted, “—everybody else does!” He whooped with laughter. The prince and Deornoth joined in. Vorzheva and the others stared at them as if they were mad.
“Ride on!” Josua cried. “I am married and an outlaw!”
The sun made no clear appearance all day. When the dim light at last began to wane and the pall of approaching evening spread across the stormy sky, the prince’s party chose a spot and made camp.
They had ridden due north from the wagon-city until they reached the Ymstrecca in early afternoon, crossing the river at a muddy ford whose banks were pockmarked with hoofprints. Josua had decided that traveling eastward would be safer on the far side of the Ymstrecca, where they would be within an hour’s swift ride to the forest. If Fengbald continued to pursue them, they would at least have a chance to spur toward the dark trees and perhaps evade the superior force in Aldheorte’s tangled depths.
Despite this caution, there had been no sign of the High King’s horsemen all afternoon. The night’s watches also passed uneventfully. After breaking their fast at sunrise on dried meat and bread, they were mounted and on their way. They kept their pace swift, but fear of pursuit was lessening by the hour: if Hotvig and others had done something to slow Fengbald, they seemed to have made a good job of it. The only real misfortune was the suffering of those who were unaccustomed to riding on horseback. The cold, gray morning was full of regretful noises as they rode on into the east.
On the second day’s journey across the green but comfortless land, the travelers began to see large roofed wagons and blowsy cottages of mud and sticks dotted along the Ymstrecca’s banks. In two or three places a few huts had even grown together in a tiny settlement, like slow-moving beasts seeking each other’s company upon the dark plain. The chill grasslands were thick with mist and the travelers could not see far or clearly, but the inhabitants of these huddling-spots did not seem to be Thrithings-folk.
“Hotvig spoke aright,” Josua mused as they passed by one such settlement. A handful of dim figures bobbed in the gray ribbon of the Ymstrecca that wound beside the huts—settlers casting their fish nets. “I think they are Erkynlanders. See, that cottage has a holy Tree painted on its side! But why are they here? Our folk have never lived in this land.”
“Upheaval, crops ruined,” Strangyeard said. “Goodness, how people must be suffering in Erchester! Terrible!”
“They are more likely God-fearing folk who know Elias deals with devils,” Gutrun said. She clasped Leleth tighter against her considerable bosom, as though to protect the child from the High King’s communicants.
“Should we not tell them who you are, sire?” Deornoth asked. “There is safety in numbers, and we have been few for very long. Besides, if they are Erkynlanders, you are their rightful prince.”
Josua gazed at the distant camp, then shook his head. “They may have come out here to escape all princes, rightful or otherwise. Also, if we are followed, why put innocents in danger by giving them knowledge of our names and destination? No, as you said, when we have a stronghold we will make ourselves known. They can then come to us if they wish, and not because we have swept down on them with swords and horses.”
Deornoth kept his expression carefully neutral, but inside he was disappointed. They were in dire need of allies. Why did Josua insist on being so damnably careful and correct? Some things about his prince, it was obvious, would never change.
As the riders continued across the brooding steppe, the weather grew steadily worse, as though they were abroad at the turning of winter instead of the earliest days of Anitul-month in what should be high summer. Flurries of snow came riding on the back of the north wind, and the impossibly broad sky had gone a perpetual gray, dreary as fireplace ash.
Even as the landscape on either side grew more dismal and uninviting, the travelers began to encounter larger settlements along the Ymstrecca’s banks, settlements that seemed not to have grown so much as accumulated. As the river carried brambles and sticks and silt before sloughing them off at convenient sandbars, so the very substance of these settlements, both people and materials, seemed to have arrived in this strange and only slightly hospitable place by chance, lodging as in some narrow spot while the force that had carried them so far swept on without them.
Josua’s people rode silently past these tiny, ramshackle hamlets, embryonic towns almost as forbidding as the land itself, each made up of perhaps a dozen crude shelters. Few living things could be seen outside the flimsy walls, but wisps of smoke from their cooking fires twined on the wind.
A second, third, and fourth night beneath the cloud-hidden stars took the prince’s exiles to the edge of the Stefflod river-valley. The evening of the fifth day brought more snow and bitter cold, but the darkness also gleamed with lights: torches and campfires, hundreds of fires that filled the neck of the valley like a bowl of gems. The travelers had found the largest settlement yet, a near-city of flimsy shelters nestled in the trough of the shallow valley where the Ymstrecca and the Stefflod came together. After a long journey across the empty plain, it was a heartening sight.
“Still we go like thieves, Prince Josua,” Deornoth whispered crossly. “You are the son of Prester John, my lord. Why must we skulk into this crofter’s clutter acting-and looking-like footpads?”
Josua smiled. He had not changed his travel-stained Thrithings clothes, although one of the things he had bartered for had been extra garments. “You are no longer begging my pardon for your forwardness as once as you once did, Deornoth. No, do not apologize. We have been through too much together for me to disapprove. You are right, we are not coming down into this place as a prince and his court-we make a sorry court, in any case. We shall instead find out what we can and not put our women and young Leleth and the rest in any unnecessary danger.” He turned to Isorn, who was the third and to this point quietest member of the trio. “If anything, we will want to allay suspicion that we are anything but ordinary travelers. You, Isorn, look especially well-fed: your size alone might make some of these poor folk afraid.” He chuckled and poked the brawny young Rimmersman in the side. Isorn, taken unawares by the prince’s sudden lightheartedness, stumbled and almost fell.
“I cannot make myself small, Josua,” he grunted. “Be thankful I am not as big as my father, or your poor folk might run screaming into the night at the sight of me.”
“Ah, how I miss Isgrimnur,” Josua said. “May the Aedon indeed look after your father, that good man, and bring him back to us safely.”
“My mother misses him very much and fears for him,” Isorn said quietly, “but she does not say so.” His good-natured face was solemn.
“All the same,” Deornoth suddenly said, “the duke can certainly make a ruckus when he is displeased! I remember when he first found out that Skali was coming to King John’s funeral. He threw a chair through Bishop Domitis’ screen and broke it to bits! Ouch! Damn me!” Laughing, Deornoth tripped on a hummock in the darkness. Tonight’s misted moon was stinting with her light. “Hold the torch closer, Isorn. Why are we walking and leading our horses, in any case?”
“Because if you break a leg, you can ride,” the prince said dryly. “If your new mount Vildalix breaks his, will you carry him?”
Deornoth granted the point grudgingly.
Talking quietly of Isorn’s father and his legendary temper—the expression of which was almost always followed, as soon as the duke calmed down, by horrified apologies—they made their way down the grassy slope and toward the lights of the nearest fires. The rest of their party had built camp at the valley’s edge; the fire Duchess Gutrun tended was a shrinking beacon on the high ground behind them.
A gang of shivering, starveling dogs barked and scattered as the three-some approached the settlement. A few shadowy figures looked up from their fires or stood cross-armed in the door-flaps of shabby huts, watching the strangers pass, but if there was any sense that Josua and his comrades did not belong, no one challenged them. From the snippets of speech they picked up as they passed, it was clear that these settlers were indeed mostly Erkynlanders, speaking both the old country speech and Westerling. Here and there a Hernystiri burr could be heard as well.
A woman stood in the open space between two houses, talking to her neighbor about the rabbit her son had brought home and how they had steamed it with sourgrass for Hlafmansa. It was odd, Deornoth thought, to hear people speaking of such mundane things here in the mist of the empty grassland, as if there might be a church hidden behind a rock where they would go for the morning prayer, or an ostler’s shop under a leaf where they could buy beer to drink with their rabbit stew.