The Tale of Oriel

by Cynthia Voigt

  After those first days, however, the land seemed sparsely inhabited. The villages that they rode through were empty, and if they happened to pass a herdsman out with his flocks, that man would pretend not to see them as he drove his goats or sheep in an opposite direction. Midafternoon of the third day they passed a ruined holding, the house no more than charred posts and black beams, the field black stubble. No animal or person remained, except for a solitary cat who stalked birds and mice, as if the holding still needed protection from such thieves. It worried Griff to see the holding in ruins, here in the Kingdom.

  By the time they arrived at the village near which they would camp that evening, they had passed two more scorched holdings, and Griff had moved from worry to anger.

  The Major of the village came forward to greet them, and the people gradually came out of their houses, to stare at the soldiers without expression. They were not glad to see soldiers, nor afraid to see soldiers, nor sorry to see soldiers. The Major was a wiry white-haired man, bald-pated, whose eyes doubted all they looked upon, whose hands he kept clasped behind him as if they might lead him into trouble. He greeted Griff and the lords with minimum courtesy, although he offered them refreshment. “We have some ale yet left, and bread. But we cannot feed another army of soldiers.”

  “Another?” Griff asked. He stood at his horse’s head.

  “Aye, and you don’t think yours is the only army about, do you?”

  “Is this the way you speak to the Earl Sutherland?” Wardel warned the man.

  The Major was not afraid. “How do I know he’s the man?”

  “Who else would wear the ring?” Wardel asked.

  “Aye, and I heard the tale, of a foreigner who without even fighting for it laid his hands on the title, and then he gave it over to his creature. And so the lady could not have her own inheritance from her own father, and his father before him who was the Great Gladaegal. The lady, as I heard, stood helpless until there came a man willing to put his army at her disposal, for the justice of her cause.”

  Griff silenced Wardel to ask, “What is the justice of the lady’s cause?”

  “Why, her inheritance, from her father the Earl, and his father the Earl before him.”

  “Was she named the heir?” Griff asked. If there were an error in justice, he would give the lady her rights, without delay.

  “Only the people name their heirs,” the Major told him. “Among the lords, as you should know, it is the oldest son who takes the lands and title. The lady, maugre she was the only child of the old blood, could never be the oldest son.”

  Griff ignored the discourtesies of word and tone, and now he could ignore the lady’s claim. Now he had more pressing concerns. “We passed three burned farmsteads as we rode into your village.”

  The circle of listening villagers fell silent. Griff looked around at them all. They were only eight in number, three women and five men, plus a few children standing hand in hand, or clutching a woman’s skirts. One child seemed alone, and pale—he stood behind a woman’s skirts but as if he was attached to no one.

  “Why were the holdings burned?” Griff asked. He heard but did not look to see his own men, impatient, with stamping of hooves and jingle of spur and sword.

  The Major shrugged his shoulders, a helpless gesture.

  “Did all the people of those holdings come safely away?” Griff asked. He sensed something wrong here, of which no one spoke.

  “Not my father,” the solitary boy cried. He was perhaps seven summers, perhaps eight or nine, and he was angry. But his anger was directed at Griff.

  About boys at least Griff felt he knew something.

  “Lord Tintage told us it was necessary, for the lady Merlis to have a victory. For when the hordes came down to take our lands from the lady, and from us. There is a great army coming out of Sutherland’s city.” The Major reported this warily, and bitterly.

  Griff forced back his own fury. He looked at the boy, and at the Major. “You see the great army. I am the Earl Sutherland,” he said. “I am Earl through being named heir by Oriel.” He clamped his teeth together to keep from saying here and now what had happened to Oriel. He must claim the Earldom only by himself, for himself; he must not take it away from Merlis or Tintage. “I have sworn the Earl’s fealty to the King. I wear the ring and carry the sword. I have the commission to rule over you.”

  The Major studied him. The woman before whom the boy stood held the boy by his shoulders, holding him back.

  “You aren’t a lord,” the Major said.

  “No,” Griff agreed. “Neither am I born a man of the Kingdom. But I ask you to recognize me as your Earl.”

  The Major studied him for a long time before saying, “Aye, and I will. And if I will, so also will the people of the village, and the people of the holdings. When we tell them. For holdings should not be burned out, and crops should not be burned over, as if winter will never come. A man who has no need to die ought not to lose his life to save his holding. When they rode through this summer, I saw that man. Oriel. If you are his chosen heir, I serve you.”

  “I thank you,” Griff said. He summoned the boy forward.

  “I promise you,” he said to the boy, “that who breaks the law will answer to the law. Moreover, that holding will be yours. I give it to you, if it is in my power to give. I promise to get it for you, if it is in another lord’s gift. So that however wastefully your father’s life may have been taken from him, you will not lose what he died to keep for you.”

  “Can you do that?” the boy asked, not afraid of Griff in his height and splendor—more afraid, perhaps, to hope.

  “What else is the good of being Earl?” Griff asked.

  A smile broke over the boy’s face. Then he remembered to whom he spoke and his face became serious, and he knelt solemnly to Griff. And Griff remembered briefly the Damall’s island and the smell of salty air.

  “Have you men enough?” the Major asked now.

  Wardel leaned forward. “You have seen their army, can you say how many they are? and how well weaponed? Can you tell where they were going, and if they intended battle?”

  “Yaegar’s city,” a woman spoke from out of the crowd. “My husband went with them—but he hoped for booty, not battle. It was booty they promised, holdings and coins, rich cloths. Lord Tintage said his father would bring his own troops in on the lady’s cause. He said, forgive me his words, sir, that the Earl would never dare battle. Sir,” she said, “my lord, if they burn their way to Yaegar’s city there will be famine this winter, and how shall I feed my children?”

  “The doling rooms will be no less full than my own storerooms,” Griff promised her. “It may be that we shall all go hungry, but,” and he could speak as one who understood hardship, “we can survive hunger, I think.”

  “If we move fast,” Verilan said now, addressing Griff but, Griff thought, with the intention that all the village should hear and carry the tale, “then there will be little time for them to burn and destroy crops, or holdings, or herds.”

  “Then we must ride on tonight,” Griff said, and lifted his foot into the stirrup, to mount his horse.

  “May good fortune ride with you, my lord,” the Major called behind them.

  They rode out, rode on. They followed the broad River Way, the path that Tintage and Merlis had taken. They saw more burned holdings and scorched fields than Griff liked, but fewer than he had feared. They rested seldom and ate on horseback. Each man carried a fortnight’s rations of oatcakes in his pack; the river gave water to both horse and man; the lords ate and drank and rode just as the soldiers did.

  At night, before they slept, Griff and Wardel and Verilan discussed the upcoming battle, what it might be, and where. By the time they reached the stone walls of Yaegar’s city, Griff knew almost as much about mounting a battle as did Verilan, who had studied the subject with his father’s Captain, and spent his youth righting mock battles with stones for soldiers against his brothers. By the time they drew the
ir horses up before Yaegar’s walls, on the fifth day after they had left the castle, Griff was willing to accept the necessity of battle. His two Captains had persuaded him. The armed men who stood in the crenellations of the stone walls persuaded him. A sharp wind blew off the river as they looked up at the sealed city. Wardel turned in his saddle to order his troops back, out of the range of arrows.

  “Is this the place we’ll have our battle, do you think?” Verilan asked. “We need to consider the disposition of the men.”

  “Although I’ve witnessed many more attacks, I’ve only actually drawn my blade once,” Griff said then. “Therefore, I appoint you two to ride at the head of the troops. If I knew I could count on my own courage, I’d do it, but since I don’t know—I prefer not to put my soldiers in any danger or disadvantage. I’ll ride with the soldiers,” he said. “I’ll fight behind you.”

  “No,” they both said at once, and without hesitation.

  Griff thought they didn’t understand.

  “Sir,” Verilan said, before Griff could explain again. “You are the Earl Sutherland. You are the Earl I would myself name if I were naming now, for you talk with the people as if you wished them well, and you honor each one of us, lord as well as people.”

  “My lord,” Wardel said, “the Earl must ride at the head of his army. His Captains ride behind him, and all who see know each man’s courage. Your soldiers trust you, my lord, and your people trust you, and so do I. We were Oriel’s men, and now we are yours.”

  Griff was silenced. The wind was at his back and stone walls rose in front of him. He was afraid of battle—not for losing it—he didn’t think that with Verilan and Wardel for Captains they would be defeated, not with this number of soldiers—but for the pain of it, and the sounds of fear and rage that he could still hear in memory, and for the dangers of it from which no man could be certain to escape. Griff didn’t know what would be required of him. He didn’t know if he could act well in the events that awaited him. He had no one to stand beside and show him how to act, with Oriel dead. He had only himself.

  “What do we do first?” he asked.

  “Sound the trumpet for parley,” Verilan answered. “It is too late in the day for any battle to start—unless we have somehow ridden into a trap.”

  Wardel thought they hadn’t. “This open field would be a fool’s choice of ambush to trap an army,” he said. “I’d guess that Yaegar won’t risk so much, not right away.”

  “Shall I sound the trumpet, my lord?” Verilan asked. He seemed impatient. Griff trusted his sense of things and gave the permission. The trumpeter raised the horn to his lips and the gatekeeper answered the summons. Verilan announced that the Earl Sutherland was present and sought to speak to Lord Yaegar. “For there are rumors of unrest,” Verilan called up. “Rumors of an army in the land. Rumors of a rebellion in Yaegar’s lands. The Earl has come to hear how Lord Yaegar answers the rumors.”

  The gatekeeper heard them out, then disappeared from view. Griff waited for the word he would bring. Verilan and Wardel had gone over all the possible ways Yaegar might answer and debated the most likely one, but Griff merely waited.

  There would be a response, whatever it might be. There would be a battle, whenever, wherever. He awaited the particulars.

  After a while, the iron gate was raised and a man rode out, bearing Yaegar’s guidon, sky-blue, emblazoned with a wide-winged falcon. “My master demands—”

  Griff cut him off. “I am the Earl Sutherland,” he said. Pride was in his mouth like wine.

  “Yes, I know, and I’m sorry, my lord, but my master—”

  Griff cut him off again. “I am the Earl Sutherland and I would speak with my vassal. On his allegiance, I summon him to me.”

  It took longer, and the sun was sinking beyond the river when at last four men rode out through the gate, and the heavy man in armor at the lead was likely Yaegar. Oriel had described this lord to Griff, in telling of the taking of Rafella. Yaegar was, to look at, as much unlike Tintage as any man might be. The three who rode behind him were enough like him that Griff took them for Yaegar’s sons, of whom Oriel had spoken more gently.

  Yaegar and his three sons rode up to where Griff waited alone.

  When their eyes met, as the horses moved nervously at being brought so close together, Griff nearly turned to flee. Oriel hadn’t prepared Griff for the shock of recognition. Perhaps Oriel hadn’t seen what Griff saw.

  What Griff saw was the sixth Damall. He sensed the similarity immediately, as of a remembered odor. Yaegar watched for Griff’s weaknesses, and got ready to take hold of them. Yaegar waited for Griff to reveal the ill that was in his heart, so that Yaegar could turn that ill to his own advantage. Yaegar saw Griff’s instinctive fear and he laughed.

  Perhaps that laughter saved Griff. Or perhaps he had grown beyond where the Damall, or any man like him, could frighten him with anything more than pain. For whatever reason, Griff overmastered his own faint heart. He couldn’t rid himself of fear but he needn’t let fear drive him.

  Yaegar made token obeisance. “You’re too late,” he said, not unhappy at the news he told.

  Griff sat on his uneasy mount. “Too late for what?”

  “Too late to do anything,” Yaegar told him. “My soldiers are armed, and ready. The city is guarded at every gate, and at the walls. We are provisioned for the winter. We are resolute.”

  “Resolute for what?” Griff inquired. Yaegar would have some price he’d want paid in exchange for submission to the Earl.

  “You have caused my son to be banished,” Yaegar said.

  So Tintage was the price of peace.

  “The King has banished a man who traitorously and cowardly slew the Earl to whom he had just sworn obedience,” Griff answered.

  “Tintage is my son,” Yaegar said. “What is mine, I rule.”

  “Tintage has made warlike raids upon my villages and people,” Griff answered. “I am here to hang a traitor and a murderer.”

  “Now you sentence him to hanging?” Yaegar demanded.

  Griff feared him, but Griff had his own troops behind him, and he had seen Oriel answer Rulgh. “As a traitor, yes. As a murderer, yes. Under terms of the King’s banishment, thrice yes.”

  “I’ll fight this.” Yaegar spoke as if hands were at his throat.

  “If you fight you’ll lose, and you’ll lose all—”

  “I’ll fight,” Yaegar promised.

  Griff continued, as if he hadn’t heard. “You’ll lose all to men who keep their oaths.”

  “You can’t threaten me, as if I were a weakling, as if my son were no man’s son. You didn’t win the Earldom. It was that other one, the pretty-faced boy. You have no right to rule me. By what right do you attempt to rule me?”

  Griff gave him one more chance. “By your rebellious words, you give away the inheritance that should go to your sons,” he said. “If you fight, you act the traitor with Tintage.”

  “Father?” one of the sons inquired, uneasily.

  Yaegar jerked back on the reins of his horse, so sharply that the animal rose up onto its hind legs and nearly fell over backwards. “Quiet! Do you hear me? All of you, follow!”

  Griff raised his hand, and ten of his own soldiers charged forward to encircle Yaegar and his sons, to take their weapons and tie their hands at the wrists, and take control of their mounts. This was Verilan’s stratagem, to which Griff had agreed, thinking that with Yaegar in the Earl’s hands, the city would prove less resolute. It was easy to overcome a man like the sixth Damall when you could both outscheme and outnumber him.

  Griff left the questioning of Yaegar and his sons—who seemed now at last to perceive the trap their father had led them into—with Verilan and Wardel. He thought Tintage was no longer within the city, although Merlis might be. Griff thought that Tintage would have fled into the deep forests, to hide within his father’s protection. Griff thought that Yaegar would have let Tintage take armed men into the deep forests, to have the use of the
m—if he chose to, if fortune gave him the opportunity—for Yaegar’s own increase, should the Earl be unable to rule the lands that had been given to him.

  Griff looked to the forest, where it crowded up behind the city walls, wondering how he could flush Tintage out and into battle, and thus he was the first to see a line of people emerge from the trees. They were dirty and many were blooded and some could walk only with the help of others. There were men of all ages, and women of all ages, and children, and one woman swollen with child, who was Beryl.

  Chapter 29

  GRIFF, HIS EYES SO FULL of Beryl that he couldn’t see anything else, dismounted and walked toward her. At the movement, her eyes looked up from where they watched the rough ground. She was unsurprised to see him so caparisoned, by which he knew that word of Oriel’s death had reached her. There was a stillness of sorrow to her face, and her dark blue eyes especially, and she shook her head at him. Griff turned his attention to the man who led the group out of the trees.

  The man was of full years. The group he led straggled behind, his clothes were stained, and his face showed the strain of exhaustion, but he held himself straight and then went down on one knee before Griff. Griff urged him to stand even while pride—that Beryl should see him so honored—fluttered in his chest like some new-hatched bird. “My lord Earl,” the man said. “You have anticipated my need.” His voice carried, without loudness.

  Griff guessed. “I think you are the puppeteer.”

  He had amazed the man. “Aye, and I was, sir. Now I farm a small holding, half a day’s journey beyond the Inn, and serve as Major for the village. These are my people and they have no homes. As for the people of the Inn—I have no hope for the people of the Inn, I have no—” His voice failed him.

  Griff called for food and water, and his soldiers answered him. The Major had regained his voice, but without its showman’s qualities now; he spoke in a voice like any man at the end of his strength and his hope. “We fled in the night and have only rested briefly, and some of us are weak, and my niece is with child. They came out of the night at us.”