by Sarah Zettel
Habits of obedience, it seemed, ran deep here, even over such a strange request, or maybe it was that hope had not been completely driven from them. She had promised to feed them, and they wanted to believe. A square, mud-stained man with gnarled hands stumped to the pen. He reached unafraid among the noisy swine and with an expert twitch grabbed the tail of the white piglet as it nosed his hands to see if he’d brought food. The animal squealed and kicked comically in mid-air, but no one laughed. They only drew back as the man came hesitantly forward.
All this time, Geraint kept his seat, and his false calm. She could feel the tension pouring from him. He did not know what she planned and he did not like this place. His keen eyes watched the road, looking for danger from that way even as the folk around them watched it, leaving her free to work.
Elen took the squirming, kicking, piglet, holding it tight in her arms as she had so many others in spring. It was not pure white, having faint brown dapples on its skin, but it was near enough.
She knelt, gathering her concentration, reaching back to that place where her mother’s gifts lay. Her heart beat strong in Calonnau. Around her the air was heavy with portent and premonition. It reached into her blood and it made her strong. Weary in her fear and her loss, she accepted that strength and drew it into herself.
You will have three gifts, her mother’s ghost had told her. Well, this shall be the second.
“Mother Don, Mother Rhiannon, look with favor on this thing.” The prayer steadied her, and she felt the touch of the other world on her shoulder. Certain now that she would be heard, she whispered into the swine’s ear in the oldest tongue she knew. “Cousin mine, go you and tell your grandmother that Adara’s brood is taken hard by hunger in the far country.”
The little pig was still in her arms for a moment. Then, it wriggled free, and she let it go. But it did not run back to its pen. Instead, it trotted up to the table, calm as a dog in his master’s hall. It circled the table, once, twice, and once more, and touched its snout to the cloth.
What happened then happened between one eyeblink and the next. Where there had been a bare board, there was a bounty of food. Baskets of berries and apples. Rounds of nutty breads fresh and hot. Roasted quails and grouse steaming in their juices on wooden platters. Clay tureens full of stews of fish and vegetables. Pottages of pease and wheat, crocks of butter, honey and cream, pitchers of foaming beer. All the wealth of the land was spread on that board.
The piglet squealed high and sharp and bolted back to its sow. The strength left Elen’s knees at the same moment and she collapsed. Geraint caught her before she hit the ground.
“Stand me up,” she whispered. “Make no sign.”
He did not like this, but he did as she asked, lifting her and steadying her on her feet.
Two, said a woman’s voice in Elen’s mind.
Elen swallowed. So be it, she said in silent answer.
“Please,” she said, spreading cold hands to encompass the whole village. “Accept this gift.”
She found she could stand again. She squeezed Geraint’s hands as she took them from around her waist. She said nothing. She did not want any of those who crowded around to see that aught was wrong.
They did stare, in wonder and in trepidation. They looked to each other. They looked to Adev. Their chests heaved at the sight of the bounty loaded upon their spare board, and warm, heady scents that rose into the evening air. Mothers clamped their hands on childrens’ shoulders to keep them from scrambling forward.
“It is none of your lord’s,” said Geraint. “It is freely given to you.”
A spasm very like pain crossed Adev’s face, but gradually, his resistance melted away.
“Yes,” he whispered. “Yes, we do accept this gift.” He turned to his folk gathered there, reluctant to believe, fear delaying understanding. “We do accept this gift.”
One by one, parents holding back their children stepped forward. Older children edged ahead of younger ones. They came to the food with hesitant hands, plucking apart bread to dip into gravies or scoop into butter, picking up the fresh gooseberries one at a time to pop into mouths. But as the taste of the food, its scent, the reality of it spread, the fear ebbed, and they crowded round the table. Chairs, tables, benches and knives were fetched. Children sat under trees with split loaves heavy with butter and cream between them, their mouths now full, sticky and laughing. They all ate like they were starved, and for more than the food, but for the fellowship the feast provided. They smiled as if it were the first time in years. They came to laughter as they had come to the food, hesitant and fearful, but gradually accepting and grateful.
The day dimmed around them. Geraint and Elen sat in the chairs they were given ate their fill with the rest, setting by worry and questions both to satisfy the basic needs of self and soul. Elen fed Calonnau meats from the tip of her knife. The hawk snapped and tore at them, eating without relish.
Slowly, the feast was worn down to crumbs and bones. The pitchers were drained, and the folk around were eased with the repleatness that came with satisfying hunger nursed to long. They lolled on their benches in the dim light, holding each other, coming and going from houses, slowly, happily.
Hopefully.
Adev drained his noggin of beer a final time and wiped the foam from his tangled beard. Geraint, sensing opportunity, leaned forward. “Father Adev, I ask you as one who means only friendship to you and yours — what is it you fear in this place?”
Adev started, and the wariness leapt back to its place in his eyes. “You must know. You met … you fought one of them.”
“Even so,” agreed Geraint. “But all I know is that we met was a man in a grey cloak with a brand on his forehead.”
Adev’s eyes shifted left, then right. “Gwerin Llwyd,” he whispered.
Geraint cocked his head toward Elen. “Grey men,” she told him.
“What are they?”
But Adev turned his face and would not say.
Elen tried another route. She spread more butter on a last slice of bread, tore it in two and laid one half before her host. “Adev, you speak the tongue of the West Lands as we use it in Pont Cymryd.”
Adev’s mouth moved, repeating the cantrev name soundlessly, savoring it. “We belonged once to Llanthoney, in the Black Mountains.”
Llanthoney? Now it was Elen’s turn to stare. She’d heard … it was years ago. Her father had still been alive, and she’d been shooed out of the hall before she could hear the whole of the story from the solemn messenger, but she’d eavesdropped on plenty of gossip in the following days. Llanthoney had vanished. There’d been a battle. They must have been burned out by the men of Honddu, folk said, but there was no ash, no sign of fire … and no one had ever heard more tidings of them. The good neighbors were blamed, but Mother did not believe this. It remained a mystery, and became a ghost story for a time, and then faded away altogether.
Elen said none of this. “How came you to be here?” she asked instead, trying to keep her voice as mild as if she were asking of the conditions of the road ahead.
Adev shook his head. “I may not say. It will … some things are heard farther than others, Lady.”
Elen nodded. She did not press, but her anger deepened. These were her cousins chained and cowed here. Geraint’s face had gone hard. He felt it too. He was a king’s son and a king’s nephew. He knew the responsibilities of blood and birth at least as well as she did.
Adev looked from one of them to the other. He looked to his empty cup and the bread that lay before him untouched. Elen could not read all the emotions that flickered across his face, but she felt he reached deep within himself, past even the place that remembered courtesy. Trying, perhaps to remember friendship, or loyalty.
Or courage.
“We were at war with our neighbors,” he said. “They had killed Cadugan. He was the son of our chief, Cadog. Blood demanded we fight, but we were too few. We were going to be overrun. We were set to flee our homes.
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“Then a stranger came. He told us he could save us all, if we would but swear our fealty to him. Our chief was dead. We feared not death,” he said quickly, firmly and Geraint nodded his agreement and understanding. “Never clean death, but to be bound in service … the shame … we took counsel and we agreed we would swear fealty to the stranger, if he would save us.”
Elen shivered at this. She too could understand what had driven these people to make such a choice. Oh, yes, she could understand it well.
“We thought he would lead us in war,” Adev went on, his voice growing heavy with memory and regret. “But he did not. Instead, he rode seven times around our homes, crying out in some tongue none of us could understand. We all fell into a deep sleep. When we woke … we were here, and safe we were, from all things save our new king.” These last words were spoken with a bitterness that ran bone deep.
Geraint said nothing. Elen said nothing. Adev pushed the bread away from him. “He keeps …”
Before Adev could say more, a shout rang out from the fields.
“They’re coming! They’re coming!”
Chapter Fourteen
Adev shot to his feet, his face suddenly and deathly grey. A man was running in from the field. In the distance behind him, Elen could make out a group of riders on horseback. She counted five total, but at this distance could make out few details beyond shining armor, grey cloaks, and one black horse leading four greys.
The indolence and contentment of a moment before was gone. Everyone was on their feet now. Parents snatched up children and ran into their rude houses. Husbands and wives clutched each other. An old woman began to weep, an oddly birdlike noise. All stared at the board and the remains of the feast in horror, wondering what they had done.
Adev gripped the table edge as if hoping to draw strength from it. “Get you gone,” he whispered to Elen and Geraint. “I will meet them.”
Geraint did not waste his breath on refusals. He put the helmet back on his head and picked up his captured spear. Elen reclaimed her gauntlet, loosened Calonnau’s jesses and set the complaining hawk on her wrist. She also took the knife from where it lay on the table and returned it to the sheath at her side.
Adev saw all this and it seemed to move him beyond words. He swallowed hard and turned his face toward the riders, but even as he did, Elen thought she saw shame in his eyes
For a thing you have done, or a thing you will do? I wish I could ask, for it might mean our lives. She found a moment to wonder at her own calm as she thought this.
The riders came closer. Four of them were large and bullish men, dressed and armed as the others Elen and Geraint had met were, with shirts of scaled armor, silver guards on their wrists and boots of grey leather on their feet and grey cloaks over they shoulders. Two of them wore half-helms as the one they’d captured and lost had done. Two others wore full helms that covered their faces and had been decorated with horns and such lines as gave the wearers the appearance of demons approaching in the light of day. The steel was chased with silver, and Elen could see the design was of runes on the masks like tattoos on skin, but she could read none of them. Cold and fearsome, they came on steadily.
At their head rode a dwarf. This was not a little man, like Tor who lived at the edge of the village and worked as hard as any man twice his height, nor yet was he like the fools who sometimes came with the minstrels to play at the summer’s fair and were astounding in their mastery of music and jugglery. This was a mean and apeish creature. His head was topped with tangled black hair and a black beard covered his jutting jaw. He held a black whip in his hairy hand. His clothes too were black, except for the cap on his head which was a dull, rusty red.
At the sight of the dwarf, Adev’s nerve failed him. He fell to his knees as if he’d been struck. Geraint planted his feet firmly, at the width of his shoulders. His hand shifted on the shaft of his spear, readying for what might come, but making no openly threatening move.
The dwarf reined up his black horse. The soldiers, clearly Adev’s Grey Men, halted behind him. They and their horses stood absolutely still. The two with faces she could see had them set in hard and contemptuous lines. Of the others, she could make out nothing at all. They might have been twins for all the difference between them she could see. What their was of men was hidden behind the identical armor and the false demon’s faces.
The dwarf’s gaze swept from Adev to the villagers huddled like sheep behind him and came to rest on her and Geraint. His glittering black eyes looked more like a bird’s than a man’s. Calonnau screamed, high and sudden, and launched herself from Elen’s wrist. Elen lost control of the jesses, and the bird soared into the sky, coming to land in the branches of the chestnut tree, shrieking with anger, but even more with fear.
The dwarf chuckled.
“Welcome!” he said, leaning on the edge of his saddle. His voice boomed strangely loud and deep for so small a creature. Elen could not name him a man. She almost expected to see he cast no shadow on the ground. His shadow was there, however, black and solid in the waning evening sun, no different from hers. He was flesh, whatever else he might be. “Welcome my lord Geraint! Welcome my lady Elen!”
So much for hiding our names.
“My lord king has been waiting for you,” the dwarf went on. “Right glad he was to hear you had come safe to his lands and found hospitality already among his people!” He grinned at Adev and his fellows. The old man’s shoulders slumped in defeat.
It was Geraint who replied. “Adev thought us sent from his lord king. He treated us only as he should. When he learned we were strangers, he refused to give us what was his lord’s. All you see here,” he gestured toward the board, “is the working and gift of my lady and none of theirs.”
“But of course, my lord!” said the dwarf expansively. “Adev and all here,” he beamed with a sharp-edged benevolence on all assembled, “know their place well. They would have done nothing else.”
“Please …” Adev blurted out the word.
“Adev,” said the dwarf quietly. “It is not your time to speak.”
Adev fell silent at once, and bowed his head, but Elen saw something in his old eyes that had not been there before. Anger.
The dwarf tapped his whip restlessly against his thigh. “Now, Sir Geraint, Lady Elen. My king bids you come to his hall, where there is room and cheer fitting for guests of your rank.”
“We are anxious to accept that hospitality which is freely given.” Geraint’s voice was mild, but he watched that whip, and watched it carefully. “But I fear that darkness is coming on and we may not reach your king before nightfall.”
The dwarf grinned at them. “You may well fear, Sir Geraint, but our king does not. It pleases him for you to ride with us, and to know that you and your good lady will reach him before the night does.”
The sun was just at the horizon. In moments, it would begin its final descent. There was no hall on any hill that they could see.
“Who is your king?” asked Elen bluntly. This false courtesy wore on her. It reminded her too much of Urien standing before her mother, and of Morgaine in the goatherd’s cottage. It was another illusion and she’d had her stomach full of all such.
But the dwarf only grinned at her. “He is himself, as you will see.”
“Why will you not name him?”
“Because I do not choose to, my lady. You will come with us now.” This last was spoken sternly. It seemed this creature too had had enough. He made a small gesture with one finger. One of the Grey Men, the one on the dwarf’s left hand, nudged his horse so it walked forward, just a few steps, just so its shadow fell across the way before Elen.
Geraint also stepped forward, so he stood just in front of her. No challenge entered in his manner or voice, there was just that small change of place. “Perhaps it would be best if you rode ahead to announce our coming. My lady is mightily fatigued from the last day’s travel and needs rest.”
The dwarf’s hand curled more tightly a
round his whip. The tapping was loud, like an angry heartbeat, and as insistent. “She shall have rest when she reaches the hall of my king.”
Geraint held his place, and his courtesy. “We will follow in due course, you may be sure.”
“But I may not be.” The tapping whip stilled, and the dwarf leaned forward, his bird’s eyes narrowed to slits. “You will come with us, Sir Geraint. We will accept no other answer or action.”
Before Geraint could make his answer, Adev spoke. “Please, lord,” he said. The words were nothing more than a throaty whisper at first, but they gained in strength as he went on. “Please, lord, we have made them guests here. We have shared bread and board. Let us keep them this night. You know we will not fail the king …”
“Do I know that?” smiled the dwarf. He folded his arms on his knee. His oddly delicate fingers rolled the little whip back and forth. “So anxious are you for guests, Adev. So ready to feed the hungry …” He paused, and cocked his head, considering. “My horse is hungry.” The dwarf jumped down from his saddle, landing neat and square on both feet. The point of his red hood barely came up to Geraint’s shoulder. “Indeed, I believe we are all here hungry. Will you feed us?” A mocking querellousness overcame his voice, and behind him, two of the riders smiled.
Adev swayed on his knees, and Elen thought for a moment he would fall. “Lord please!” He stretched out his work-worn hands. “It is only …”
“You knew we were coming,” interrupted Geraint. Why did you not meet us alone on the road?”
“Because it was our master’s wish to know how Adev and these others would comport themselves when you came. He is not pleased at all,” the dwarf pursed his lips and shook his head, “that he would have fed you when his majesty’s true servants were going hungry. Very hungry, Adev,” the dwarf went on. “I believe I cannot restrain him in his hunger.” The dwarf touched the black horse’s side, and it whisked around, more kitten than horse, and trotted to the edge of the field of grain, the grain that would surely pay the tributes this king demanded, that would feed the village in the winter. Someone screamed, a sound muffled fast by hands. A child wailed high and afraid. Adev closed his eyes.