The Tale of Oriel

by Cynthia Voigt

  “It’s Tintage, and an army,” Griff guessed.

  The man gulped down water and took enough refreshment from it to speak with scorn. “It is no army. There are four or five soldiers I saw among them, and those try to keep order but with little success. Thieves, those who would rather take than earn, adventurers, opportunists—that’s his army.”

  “How many?”

  “Perhaps thirty? They came out of the forest and it wasn’t possible to see how many. Many, but not a horde, and my impression—I had to warn the village, you see, and my niece had just returned from the Inn that evening, there was no time for—we were lucky to escape with our lives.”

  “Were you coming to Yaegar for protection?” Griff asked.

  “No, sir, to you. You are my overlord.”

  “How can that be?” Griff asked.

  “The Inn, the Falcon’s Wing, is in the Earl’s particular gift. The Innkeepers at the Falcon’s Wing—this was long ago, long, long ago—were chosen by the Earl himself, as the story is told. The same family has had the Inn ever since, from father to eldest son. The village, being attached to the Inn, lies also in the Earl’s gift, not Yaegar’s. The holding where I live was given by the Earl Sutherland in perpetuity to my father—or perhaps it was my mother, and we do not ask why. There is a paper in a leather tube and its seal is the Earl’s seal, so the gift was made, as I must think. The village has some sixteen families in it, fishermen—for the Inn lies up against the river—and a blacksmith, herdsmen whose pigs root in the forest and grow fat, a few farmers who have cleared fields . . . a weaver, a butcher . . . it is the last village of the Kingdom, isolated. Unprotected.”

  “How far off does the Inn lie? For mounted soldiers,” Griff asked.

  “Perhaps a day? perhaps less, at a good pace,” the man said.

  Griff had two questions, before he left the man to the business of caring for his people. “Do you think Tintage and his men are at the Inn?”

  “I know they are. Once my people were safely away I went back, to find out what I could, to help if I could. The Innkeeper at the Falcon’s Wing would not have given over his house without a fight, nor would his sons. Aye, and his women, too.” The man smiled at the thought. “The women of the Falcon’s Wing have never been mollycoddles.” His smile faded and he asked, “Let me ride with you, my lord. I have no hope—for the Inn was filled with the sounds of men celebrating, and the Innyard may have been heaped with bodies that it was too dark for me to see—but should there be any man or woman living, a familiar face would ease—”

  “No.” Griff forbade it and the man didn’t question him. “Was the lady Merlis riding with Tintage?”

  “I saw no lady. I heard of none. I think they had found the barrels of wine and ale, so I think they will be sodden with food and drink—unless the soldiers can keep some kind of order, which I think they cannot. I can’t think, my lord,” the man said.

  “Then rest,” Griff said. “We will do what can be done. I would have word with your niece, who has most recent knowledge of the disposition of things at the Inn.”

  “I’ll send her,” the man said. “What can I tell my people?”

  “That we ride against Tintage,” Griff said. “Can you ask them to await the outcome here? We have Yaegar and his sons in custody, as you see, and the city will send out stores—”

  “We can wait. Ours will be the easy part,” the man said.

  “No part is easy,” Griff answered as he thought. It seemed to him that all the parts were necessary, so it didn’t matter if they seemed easy or hard to the puppets who played them.

  He called Verilan and Wardel to him, leaving Yaegar and his sons sitting bound on the ground within a guard of soldiers, near to a fire that burned against the approaching night, so that the prisoners could be easily seen from the city walls. The soldiers had been given orders to kill all four, first, at any sign of attack. But there was no sign of attempt to rescue; the city gate had been lowered and its walls were lined with citizens, who awaited the outcome of events before they might decide their loyalties.

  Griff told his two captains what he had learned from the Major.

  “We must move swiftly,” Verilan said. “If we are swift—”

  “I’m of the same mind,” Wardel agreed.

  “Can the horses travel by night?” Griff asked.

  “If we have luck in the weather,” Wardel answered. “Verilan, what’s your mind?”

  “My mind’s as yours. If Tintage holds this Inn, where can we gather for an attack? Does anyone know the way the land—?”

  “For we need a plan,” Griff realized. “If we speed there with all possible haste and come upon them by surprise, it were well to know what we will do then. Beryl knows the Inn,” he said, for she approached them, then, wearing a brown cloak, with her hair neither loose like a lady nor wound around her ears like a woman of the people. Her hair was the color of leaves in autumn and was twisted into a long braid that hung down her back. “Beryl is of known loyalty,” Griff said, introducing her to the two men.

  “Lady,” Verilan said, and bowed over her hand. “I give you greeting.”

  Beryl’s smile was mischievous, and temporarily drove the sorrow from her eyes. When Wardel greeted her in the same manner she didn’t correct him, either, and Griff did no more than note their courtesy. For there was immediate business before the four. “Can you tell us about the Inn?” Griff asked.

  “The Falcon’s Wing? You need to know how it’s situated, is that it? I can draw it on the ground, that will show you best.” Beryl didn’t hesitate and didn’t draw modestly back.

  All four bent over her rough map.

  “Attack from the forest,” Verilan advised. “They’ll least expect that.”

  “In two prongs?” Wardel asked. His fingers pointed, to the kitchen doorway, leading to the yard, and the main doorway into the Inn, facing the river.

  Griff wondered, “Wouldn’t a fight in the open be more in our favor, since we have such an advantage of numbers? since we have horses, and skilled soldiers? If we could lure them out—”

  “Or drive them out,” Verilan said. “If a smaller force attacks from the barn side, and catches them unaware.”

  “With the larger force waiting in the trees, hidden. So that, if the first attack succeeds and they flee out to the meadow, they can be surrounded.” Wardel’s eyes lit up with the idea.

  “And if the first attack fails, then we can fight our way in from two sides,” Verilan agreed.

  “You’ll try first for an open battle?” Beryl asked, “and that failing, to trap them within the Inn?”

  “I think that is our plan,” Griff said, and the other two agreed. “Tintage must be taken.”

  “Do we care if he is taken alive?” Verilan asked.

  “We do whatever our best safety lies in,” Griff decided without hesitation. “He has broken the terms of banishment so the law permits us whatever necessity requires.”

  “If we leave now, soon—and travel quickly, while the light holds, and then more slowly through darkness—we might even surprise them before dawn,” Verilan said.

  “No battles are fought without light,” Wardel protested.

  “No battles have ever before been broached without light,” Verilan argued, “and so I think that this battle might go quickly if we dare to begin by darkness.”

  “But our honor—”

  “Maugre honor, when you deal with a murderer,” Griff said.

  “And traitors,” Verilan said.

  “We travel this night,” Griff decided.

  Wardel wasn’t unhappy to be overruled. He and Verilan went off together to get the soldiers ready.

  “Is it true,” Beryl asked Griff, as he gave her his hand to help her to her feet, overbalanced as she was with the weight of the babe, “that he was struck in the back by this Tintage?”

  Her eyes were as dark and deep as the sea. “Aye, it is true. He named me heir.”

  “Will you wed the l
ady?” she asked him.

  “The lady is a traitor, twice over,” Griff said. At the sound of something in his voice, she reached her hand to him. Then she drew it back. “And she is unworthy,” Griff said.

  “Not everyone must see in Oriel all that you saw,” Beryl chided him. “As I did,” she added, and then added again, “as did most of the world. Aye, Griff, she is unworthy.”

  Wardel came up then to ask him to charge the soldiers who guarded Yaegar and his sons. “If you ask it of them yourself, Griff, they will not fail their word.”

  “Why should that be so?” Griff wondered.

  “In part for Oriel, for his honor, as all who saw him knew it. In part for you, for the soldiers have ridden with you these many days, and seen how you endure, and they will trust you. In part because they will want you to know that you can trust them.”

  A longing for Oriel drove through Griff like a sword. He almost could not answer Wardel, and he turned away from Beryl. “I’ll do as you advise,” he said, because there was no use to saying anything else. He watched Beryl return to her uncle’s family, the long braid swinging down the back of her cloak, with a few curls escaping its restraint. But he couldn’t dwell on loss, or longing, or waste, or even revenge. There was a battle to be ridden toward, and fought. He approached the guards, to give them instruction.

  “We ride to meet Tintage,” and Griff repeated their orders for the keeping or killing of the prisoners.

  One of the soldiers, a youth of perhaps fifteen summers, stepped forward. “Sir?”

  His companions pulled at him, but he shook off their hands.

  “Let me ride with you, my lord Earl. I am ready for battle, and who knows how long it will be until the next.”

  Griff could have laughed.

  “And there must be a man in your troop who doesn’t wish to chance his life,” the youth continued boldly. “Someone who would choose to stay guard here if he could. Wouldn’t I make the better soldier for you, that longs to bring a traitor to justice?”

  Griff would have denied him, for his youth and his boldness, but he gave the lad the choice he wanted. “Your name?” he asked.

  “Reid,” the lad answered. “Do you give permission, sir? If I can find someone to change places with me?”

  “Against my advice,” Griff said.

  Reid respected that, but was undeterred. “Thank you, sir. Thank you, I—”

  “But hurry,” Griff interrupted him.

  WHILE THE LIGHT LASTED, THEY rode hard. This was an old forest, with thick-trunked trees and branches tangled overhead. Close to the city, the forest had been cleared of fallen trees and branches, the wood taken for fuel, so the horses could step safely. As darkness came over them, they spread out single file. Riding through the thick blackness of forest night, Griff followed his own breath, which rose like sea smoke, and thought his own thoughts. The sky was still black when Wardel, who rode vanguard, halted.

  “The Inn’s ahead. We will need some little light, for the men don’t know the terrain. You can’t ask men to fight when they can’t see, especially men on horseback.”

  “Yes,” Verilan agreed. “But at first light.”

  “I want to parley first,” Griff told them, which was where his thoughts during the nightlong ride had tended.

  Their three horses stood quietly, halted. Behind him, mixed in with the creaking and scraping of branches and the whispering of leaves, Griff could hear his soldiers waiting—the shifting legs of horses and the creaking of leather, the muffled jingle of metal and the low sounds of men questioning their neighbors.

  “Parley why?” Verilan asked.

  The two faces of his Captains were blurred in the darkness.

  “To offer the chance of surrender, and the chance of amnesty.”

  “But he’s a traitor and has broken the terms of his banishment,” Verilan protested impatiently.

  “Not amnesty for Tintage,” Griff said. “But for the men who ride with him, if they can be tempted to desert him.”

  “If some surrendered, it would dispirit the others,” Wardel observed.

  “Added to our greater numbers, and they trained soldiers,” Verilan agreed. “But, Griff, you will be in danger.”

  Griff didn’t argue that point. “I can prove my courage, in a dim light where I don’t make an easy target, on an occasion where only one of the enemy has everything to lose. For the rest will consider the offer, to measure their own advantage,” he pointed out.

  “That’s true.”

  “He wears armor.”

  “So did Oriel. It’s not safe.”

  “Let me offer the parley, my lord,” Wardel volunteered.

  “Or let me.”

  “Do any doubt your courage, either one of you?” Griff inquired. “Are either of you unproved?”

  Wardel saw his point. “Nor are you unproved,” he declared.

  “I know that,” Griff said. “Oriel knew it, and you do because I have told you so and you take my word. But,” Griff explained, “the world needs to see it, just the once, and never again as I hope.”

  “If you do that, if you trumpet your presence and call Tintage to parley, that will distract all in the house as we move the first attack into place,” Verilan realized.

  “Yes,” Griff said. “For I think we must be quick and cruel.” This also he had been thinking of, through the night. “We are likely to win, be the battle long or short, and shorter will shed less blood. Let no man hold his hand when once the battle starts.”

  “No prisoners?” Wardel asked.

  Griff answered, “It troubles me, but it’s our swiftest way. It troubles me, but we don’t have the chance to try both ways. We can take only one way, and then let the events work themselves out. So that is my choice, unless you overrule me.”

  “Not I,” Verilan said.

  “Nor I,” Wardel agreed.

  Darkness was all around them. Griff couldn’t see the sky, to know where they stood in relation to daylight, or if it would be a clear or cloudy day, if there was rain coming. Whatever the weather was, it couldn’t stop them; it could only hinder what they were going to do. Hindrance was the worst of the harm the weather could do them; and the most of the good was not to do harm.

  At the first paling of the sky, Wardel took a band of twelve soldiers around the Inn, to cut off escape by water or into the trees. Verilan had fifteen hand-picked men to follow him on foot in an attack from the rear of the Inn. With him went the young soldier, Reid, who waved his excited gratitude to Griff.

  Griff led the remaining soldiers, still mounted, to the edge of the woods, with orders to wait until the horn called attack. He chose the first ten men his eye fell on and ordered them to be ready to ride out of the trees with him at the first light, and then to stay back behind him as if prepared to attack. Let Tintage underestimate their numbers if he determined to settle it in blood.

  The air silvered. Over the washing river, watery birdcalls rose. It was Griff’s time.

  He rode out onto the meadow, the guidonier beside him and the ten soldiers behind. Only the horses’ breathing and the clank of swords announced their arrival. Griff and the guidonier left the soldiers in a line and rode up to the Inn.

  Behind its closed shutters and closed door the two-story stone building slept, as grey as the dawn.

  At Griff’s signal, the guidonier raised the horn to his lips, and blew. The single note cut through the air.

  The whole dim world grew still, like ice. The forest was silent, and Griff could almost hear the wary stillness that now filled the Inn. A sign hung over the doorway, the same bird that had been carved on the back of Oriel’s beryl, with its wings outspread. Were the wings spread for flight? or attack? or to offer protection? Perhaps all three, Griff thought, and gave the guidonier the signal.

  The horn sounded again, three short sharp notes, calling.

  The shutter of a ground floor window was pulled back. A face looked out, and then the shutter was pulled closed.

&n
bsp; Griff sat his mount stiffly. In his motionlessness, he knew he looked at ease, but his heart was racing and his brain was racing. No outcome was certain, he knew that. No man, not even the best of men, could be sure of his life, he knew that, too.

  Griff knew what he planned to say, but was not sure his mouth would utter those words, when the time came. He was remembering how he led the Wolfers down into the mines and then stood in a stony black recess, listening to the killing, waiting to know his own fortune—slave to Wolfers or slave in the mines.

  It was better to fight than wait, Griff thought. The one time when they had stood to fight, which he could barely remember for the speed of the events, he remembered a breathlessness and a kind of wild panicked joy—Tamara’s passage down the banks to the boat, and the victory of her voice rising up from the safety of the river.

  Only, no victory was promised, ever. Only, there could be victory the victor didn’t live to enjoy. A cry rose in his throat, displacing the words that waited there. Griff swallowed to keep it down. It rose again.

  The door opened. Tintage, armed, stood on the lintel stone.

  Griff no longer had time for memory, or fear.

  “I come no farther,” Tintage said. “Speak what you would say.”

  Behind Tintage figures moved through the shadows.

  “I sue for surrender,” Griff said. “Any man here who lays down his arms will be taken quietly.”

  “Quietly to the dungeons,” Tintage said, laughing. Then, not laughing, “Quietly to his death.”

  “Only one man here stands under the sentence of death.”

  Griff knew that Verilan and his men were even now creeping towards the Innyard, crossing it as silently as armed men were able. Griff had need to keep the attention of all on himself, and Tintage, at the front of the Inn.

  “To all but that one man I offer amnesty. Yours is a cause that can’t succeed,” he pointed out.

  “That’s what you say,” Tintage was quick to answer. “Oriel wouldn’t say the same, now, would he?” He didn’t miss the quick fury on Griff’s face, or the hand as it moved to the hilt of the sword. “You’d like nothing better than to slay me, I think. I’ve forgotten your name. You, Oriel’s creature, what is your name?”