by Sarah Zettel
The man sneered. “You do not have it.”
“But I will.”
He laughed, a sound bitter as poison. Around him, his black-eyed kindred smiled grimly. Elen saw the gleam of white teeth as their lips curled back.
“Why do you come here?” Her questioner flung out his arms. “This is not the place he made for you. This is our prison.” He touched the woman’s hand, and then the shoulder of a man who crouched before him.
Hold yourself straight. Remember who you are. You come as lady, as chief, as ally. “I came seeking help.”
He shook his head. “There is no help for any of us here.”
“Then we must help each other.”
A mouse ran across Elen’s foot. She felt the tiny claws and fingers scrabbling at her skin and she flinched. The mouse king smiled. “Must we?”
“If it is the only way to freedom, yes.” Listen to me. Elen’s fingers curled up at her sides. The mice chittered and scrabbled. Listen to me! There is a way out for us all.
“Freedom?” He frowned, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling and tapping his chin. “What a curious word. I think I heard it once years ago. What does it mean?”
Carefully, Elen set the brazier down on one of the few lidded ewers. Her hands had begun to perspire, the sweat prickling against her palms. An urgency that she could not fully name was building in the back of her mind. “I can bring him down.”
“No, you cannot. He is older than your nightmares and stronger than your Mother Don.”
“But he can be fought.” She pressed her hands against her sides. Hands, not claws, not talons. The air was harsh against her skin, like rough cloth. Its touch distracted her. “The Great King would not be if he could not.”
The mouse king laughed again, once, hard and sharp as flint. “You know nothing. You do not know the lives it cost to hide the child after its birth so the Little King would not learn its name. Villages died for it. The mother who bore him could not kill herself fast enough and was kept in her starvation for seven years before she was permitted to enter the grave, and her mouth was stopped with earth because she would not speak. You do not know how many paid to find him the secret that hid his hall from King Gwiffert’s eyes. Oh yes, he is a great warrior for all us imprisoned and cowed, and perhaps he would have triumphed, but for you and your man.”
Elen closed her eyes, cut deep by the justice of the words. She wanted to be still for a moment. She needed to be still. She needed not to be seen, to be only a shadow on a cloud. “Perhaps,” was all she could make herself say.
“Oh? Is there a plan little one? Come.” She heard movement and her eyes flew open. The mouse-king had crooked his finger and he beckoned her, “Whisper your plan to the king of mice, and let me take it to my master. He will be well pleased with us both then, and perhaps your suffering will be shorter for coming to your senses.”
“You’re … you …” Red haze blurred the edge of her vision. You are the spy. You are the one who told him what we said.
“What’s the matter little girl?” The mouse-king leaned forward, resting his hands on an ewer’s open mouth in mockery of her own stance. “Is something lost? Something gone from you that you could ill afford to leave behind?” The crouching people laughed. They shifted their weight on their feet. Were they armed? There were so many of them, did they need to be?
The mice scurried everywhere, climbing over their fellows. She could reach out and pluck up any of them, snatch them up as they ran for shelter. She could do it this instant, break their bones, tear their skin.
To her utter horror, Elen realized what the urgency within her was. It was hunger.
“You do not need to do this.” She felt her tongue pressing against her teeth. She felt the sharp nails at the ends of her fingers.
“Oh, but I do.” He drew the last word out, so that she felt it against her skin, as she felt the Little King when he spoke nearby, as she felt the brush of the fetid air and the sounds of the mice. “I have been so ordered by our king.”
She saw the mice, the sneaking, creeping, chittering vermin all around her. Anger and hunger mixed together in her, pressing the breath from her body and the reason from her mind.
“He is not my king,” said Elen through her clenched teeth. Hold fast. I must hold fast.
“He is king of us all.” Elen started. It was not the mouse-king who uttered those soft words, but his wife beside him, her milk jug clutched against her side.
“No.” This much I know. This much is sure.
“But you are not sure,” said the mouse king, as if she had spoken the thought aloud. “You are weak here. You know you are.”
“Stop.” Let me think. Let me find myself in this again. There’s too much stone and I need air. I need the sky. I need the warmth and the cool and to hunt. I am so hungry …
“Why?” He spread his hands again. “I am a liar, a thief and a spy. Why fear the words of such as me? Down here in the dark between the stones. What could you have to fear in this place save for the stones?”
He stalked toward her, moving with the lithe grace of a wild thing. Around her the brown people watched with their black eyes, staring, hungry, waiting. Behind her, she heard the squeals of the mice, sharp and piercing, creeping shadow-dwellers, waiting, always waiting for the thing that was left alone, waiting to snatch it up, to bite it through, to run away and bury it in the darkness between the stones, to never let in the light of day again, to gnaw and crack and nibble at it until there was nothing left at all.
“We are so many,” whispered one voice.
“Hush. There is enough for all.”
They would do this if she did not strike. Strike, break, tear, feed.
She lunged. She could not have stopped herself any more than she could have turned the tide. Arms outstretched, fingers curled into claws, she lunged for the mouse king, crashing through the ewers, heedless of anything but her prey before her.
He dissolved, melting away until there were only mice around her, filthy, skittering mice everywhere, moving too fast for her clumsy body, her useless hands. She screamed in frustration as they swarmed around her, quick as insects, never there no matter how fast she charged and lunged. They laughed, they laughed at their game, and they would turn soon and attack and she must strike. She was so hungry. She must strike.
Her hand came down on fur and living warmth and something squirmed and squealed against her palm. Elen screamed in her delight and snatched the creature up. The little brown mouse bulged about its hips and belly. It was great with child, and that had slowed it down, made it clumsy, made it prey.
Elen grinned, barely aware that the mouse-king was before her again. All her attention was on the thing in her hands.
“Please,” he said hoarsely. “Don’t hurt her.”
But she wanted the little thing dead. She wanted this squirming, unnatural creature with its monstrous young wrapped tight within it dead. Its heart beat faster than a bird’s in flight. Why did such a thing have heart and mind when she had none? Why did such a thing have life and love when she was lost in worlds within worlds within worlds so far away not even the gods and the dead could hear her?
“Whatever you want you will have. Please.”
The beat of its heart fluttered against her thumb, spurring the pain of her madness with desire for that beating to fill her. The other mice milled around, chittering frantically. They clawed at her skirt, they scrabbled at her feet. She didn’t care. She would tear the thing apart with her teeth. She would rip out that beating heart and swallow it whole for her hunger.
And she thought of the Grey Men and their horses devouring the green wheat.
And she thought of the first babe she ever delivered, warm and red and wriggling already struggling to reach its mother.
And she thought of Geraint’s eyes as he spoke of madness, and how it swallowed the good man who was his father whole.
And she thought of the Grey Man, the one they had ordered to lead them to this cursed,
cursed place and how the hills had echoed with his laughter. You are his. You are his.
No, said a voice hard and stern within her. She did not recognise it at first, and then, a long, slow moment later, she knew it to be her own. No. Any doom but that one. She bared her teeth. Gwiffert, I deny you. I refuse you.
But she could not make her hand open. It trembled independent of her will. Her hand and her body both starved, starved for food, starved for vengeance and her fingers were strong, strong enough to crush the little thing she held, to stop the vile, unfair beating of its tiny, tremulous heart.
“Take her,” whispered Elen. “Take her, quick.”
The man, the mouse-groom, snatched his wife from her hand. As soon as the heartbeat was gone from her touch, Elen collapsed to the floor, curling around the pain that filled her hollowness. It was eating her from inside out. The darkness was smothering her. She squeezed her eyes shut and she was alone in the blackness, cold, a corpse who had yet to lie still, already dead and buried down here. The stones of the floor cut and scraped her, and there was no rest, no respite. She was dying. She was already dead. She must die, and all the last sane thoughts were swallowed up by the pain and it hurt, it hurt, it hurt …
Hands caught her and their touch grated against her skin, and the heartbeats they brought smothered her. They prised at her jaws and she screamed. The hearts and the heat pounded at her with a force like cudgels falling.
And then, something cool poured down her throat. She choked and spat, and swallowed. It was rich, it was sweet, it went straight to the ravening pain inside her and stilled it. She swallowed gulp after gulp of it and never had anything tasted so good. This was the food of the gods. This was the first and last blessing. She drank and drank, blind as a newborn babe. For it was milk, she realized, full of cream and tangy from its meadow freshness of it.
She did not know how long she drank. She only knew that the pain eased and ebbed, and though the hearts beat too near and too strong, but the sensation of their pounding became bearable.
Gradually, she was able to put up one shaking hand and pull away from the vessel.
The mouse-groom towered over her, but in front of her knelt the woman. Her brown hair fell almost to her feet. Her belly beneath her brown dress was high and round. Not yet dropped, thought Elen’s midwife mind automatically. But will soon.
It was her jar Elen had been drinking from. She held it in both hands. Liquid white filmed its rim, and yet more foamed inside. Where did it all come from? Where were the cows that replenished that vessel? Elen did not riddle on that. Madness still nibbled at the back of her mind. It would come fast, like a summer flood if she provoked it.
Now that she could see again, she could see that the mouse-king was gaping at his bride. His people were around him, men and women once more, all of them hanging back as far as the room would allow. The ewers were tipped on their sides, some cracked in two like eggs, lakes of white milk puddled between the uneven stones, and the two, king and queen, god and goddess maybe, before Gwiffert imprisoned them here, stood in the middle of this domestic chaos and stared at each other.
“Why would you do this?” he demanded. “She is his thing.”
“No, she is not,” replied the woman. “If she were his, she would never have touched me. For if I am dead and our child is dead, what hold will he have over you?”
The mouse king stared at her and she met his gaze with her own cool stare in reply. “I know what I am, my husband. I have thought many times of taking my life to free you.” She turned on her heels to face Elen. “What do you need from us?”
“Your pitcher,” Elen whispered, panting. She had to breathe, breathe, breathe, just to remind herself that there was air enough, that she was not smothering under stones and madness. She was a mess of sweat and spittle and milk. Her dress was soaked. Her hair hung lank and sticky on either side of her face. None of that mattered. All that mattered was that she keep hold of her thoughts, that she keep breathing, despite the cold, despite everything.
“It is our last blessing,” said the mouse goddess. “It is what keeps him amused with us, that we fill his storehouses with the milk that once fed our children. It allows him to force us into the fields of those who have even less than we to steal their grain when they’ve displeased him. What will you do with it?
“I will call the smith.”
The mouse king laughed, high and sharp. “You may not be his, but you are a fool. You cannot call the smith. None can, save the king.”
“I can.” She climbed unsteadily to her feet. Her body felt wrong. It was too heavy, too huge. Her eyesight was too sharp. She could see everything around her, despite the fact that the brazier was long dead. “Blood may call to blood and blood must hear. And more than that,” she grinned at the mouse king — mouse god? — fierce and mad. “I know his name.”
The mouse wife required nothing more. Without another word, she passed the jar to Elen, who took it in equal silence. She turned and walked into the hall, her heavy skirt dragging across the puddled floor as if it meant to drag her down to drown. She clutched the rough clay jar for dear life, for precious thought, for her talisman and passport from all the eyes and hungry teeth at her back.
In the corridor there was no light to see by, no way to tell which direction she should turn. It didn’t matter. She had the lodestone she needed within her.
“Maius,” she said softly. “Maius the Smith. I call you. I am your daughter Elen, and I call you from the darkness.”
And Elen waited for the darkness to answer.
“So,” said King Gwiffert. “Fast as we were, we were not fast enough.”
Geraint and the King stood at the edge of a rough patch of bracken and spindling trees that provided them some little cover. With three nervous boys to attend them, they looked out across the valley floor. A shallow stream cut across the way in front of them, filling the air with its chatter. The birds had all gone silent, except for one wise crow croaking diligently above, letting its comrades know that here were men here dressed for slaughter.
The ragged column of the army was still arriving behind them, waiting in the deeper wood for orders.
Had Geraint been asked to describe a dangerous position to be in for the start of a battle, it would have been very close to the situation before them. The Great King’s army had arrayed themselves at the top of the hill that stood across the narrow valley. Scrubby woods stood sentry between their army and the other. Geraint shaded his eyes against the sun and tried to see. They were, at least, not more fully armed. It was hard to count the spears at this distance, but there did not seem to be more than Gwiffert had brought. He saw only a handful of men on horseback, and there was one in a chariot.
This was the Great King. The chariot put him head and shoulders above even the men on horseback. Geraint wished he was closer. He wished to look into the man’s eyes and see with what mind he faced the coming battle. What that unnerved Geraint more than knowing nothing of the men at his back was that he also knew nothing about the men he faced.
One thing he could see clearly. There were no grey horses or grey cloaks among Rhyddid’s company.
“Where are the Grey Men?” Geraint asked, to hear what Gwiffert would say.
“I don’t know,” frowned the Little King. “Could they be circling behind us?”
A good tale. Geraint nodded “We should send to the outriders and bid them be vigilant.” And hopefully keep that many more men out of this madness.
The Little King repeated the order to one of the boys who ran at once to see it done. Geraint wondered if the Grey Men might indeed be behind Gwiffert’s army, waiting for the word of their master, waiting to see, perhaps, if anyone tried to flee.
It did not matter immediately whether the Grey Men were there or not. They had a more formidable foe to deal with, and that was the land itself. The Great King had picked his place well. The top of the hill, the screen of trees — it was good ground, and it would be foolish to try to f
ight their way up to them. Worse still, the valley was small and rocky. Their armies would meet on rough and ragged ground without room enough for all their numbers. They would be forced to fight in and out of the trees and up and down the slopes.
Geraint’s warrior instincts grew grim and cold at all he saw about him. It occurred to him that the Great King might be hoping that they would become discouraged enough by the lay of the land to parley. A vain hope, given what he surely knew about Gwiffert’s nature, but better than trying to stand off a seige in his poor hall.
With an effort, Geraint reminded himself that however bad this was, it played well into his own hand.
Now is the time. Remembering form, Geraint climbed down from Donatus. One of the remaining boys took the horse’s bridle. Geraint knelt before the Little King.
“Sire, I would beg a boon.”
“What boon, Sir Geraint?” A hint of genuine surprise colored the question.
Geraint lifted his head. Gwiffert’s face was impassive, but his eyes had narrowed slightly. The hand holding the spear twisted it uneasily. The Little King did not know what was happening and he did not like it. Best to speak quickly. “There is a way to end this before it begins. Let me challenge the Great King to single combat.”
In an honest war, this was commonly done. It was a custom left from the most ancient times. The two champions would meet on the ground between the assembled armies and fight, one against the other, to the death. Once, when it was chief fighting chief, the grievance would be considered settled at the end of the matter. In more recent wars, the armies still clashed, but the side whose champion lost was disheartened, and that much could sometimes turn the tide.
Today, there were other things it might also accomplish.
Above him, the Little King was frowning. Good. He had not considered this possibility, but he was not dismissing it lightly. You trust your hold over me. “I do not like it, Sir Geraint. We know his fortifications to be far weaker than we thought, but I have seen him fight, as you have not. He is formidable in ways other than his size.” And you know you need me. This is good, but what if you will not risk me?