EXILED: Lord of Cragsclaw

by Bill Fawcett

  A third mrem advanced past Forun. Into the bulls he dashed, pointing with his sword to the one just behind the calves, the largest now remaining in the herd except the arbunda. Like the others he screamed the Sprint-cry, then raised his sword high over his head. With all the mrem looking on, the swordsmrem brought the sword down.

  It never reached the herd beast. A branch from a songomore thudded against his head, and he fell hard to the ground. No mrem stopped, because most had expected it. Talwe knew that the branch was simply one more gift from the arbunda, a follow-up to the throwing of the swordsmrem who led the attack. Beasts do these things, but mrem could not. For the mrem the use of magic was forbidden. During a Hunt, herd magic was at its most dangerous.

  The fourth mrem fell like the third, and the fifth one missed his prey. But the sixth made no mistake, and the second young bull staggered sideways. Only one more wounding would be allowed; three bundor out of thirty were enough. Any more would weaken the herd.

  Talwe and the spearmrem now finally joined the main band of hunters. Most of the spearmrem were winded, and many of the knifesmrem had fallen behind. Even the swordsmrem, who had covered less distance, were showing signs of wavering. The run had been long, and soon only the strongest mrem would remain in the Sprint.

  His heart beginning to pound in his ears, Talwe raced forward into the swordsmrem. Pushing his way through to the front, he saw Forun about to advance. Talwe lunged to stop him, but his arms stopped short. Two strong hands encircled his right arm.

  “Don’t do it, Talwe,” Ondra shouted into his ear. “You have to let him try.”

  Talwe strained to free himself. “I do not,” he shouted back. “He hasn’t started yet.” He tried to throw himself ahead, but Ondra braced and held him.

  “He has spoken for a kill,” Ondra pronounced. “He may not be denied. Not even by a hot-blooded swordsmrem who should have been here earlier.”

  Talwe burned at the words. “That wasn’t my fault,” he yelled. “The arbunda sent a branch—” But he was stopped by the sound of a Sprint-cry, and when he stopped his struggles Ondra released him. “The arbunda sent... .” His voice trailed into nothingness.

  “Maybe,” agreed Ondra, “But that doesn’t change the rules. Forun was here when you were not, and he has spoken for his kill. You know what that means as well as I do. We all must be saved from our own desires sometimes.” He sped forward, and Talwe followed him.

  “Besides,” Talwe’s friend shouted over his shoulder, “maybe he’ll miss.”

  “Forun doesn’t miss,” came the reply. Both gasped the words between ragged breaths.

  As he ran, Talwe watched. Forun ran hard, his sword already above his head. Talwe cursed. The third kill was the proudest, because by the time it happened the hunters were near exhaustion. The third kill was upon them, and Talwe wanted it to be his.

  As if in boast, Forun waved his sword over his head and cried the Sprint-cry once again. He was toying with the hunters now, Talwe knew, showing them how easy even the third kill was for him. This, too, was the tradition, something few Hunts had but which all of them wanted. Talwe guessed, though, that he himself was the real audience; between Forun and Talwe little love found its way.

  And now the swordsmrem was about to strike. High into the air he reached his right arm, and hard toward the bunda he drew it down. The rest of the mrem ran along in anticipation, waiting for the wounding. They all saw Forun’s sword slice through the air, and they all saw the bunda’s leg come up to meet it.

  But what they saw next was Forun turn and run, a scream of terror etched into his face. Straight away from the bundor he raced, north of the waiting mrem and in among the trees. There he flung himself to the ground, and even above the sound of the bundor the mrem could clearly hear his sobs. Partly in shock, mostly in disbelief, many of them stopped.

  But not Talwe. He had heard of this magic before. It was rare, but not uncommon among the bundor on the wide plains near Ar. Out of the crowd the dark-furred hunter leapt, carrying his sword at shoulder height. Toward Forun’s bull he ran as swiftly as he could, reaching it before the rest of the mrem had torn their eyes from their fallen comrade. He struck down hard against the bull’s left rear leg, quickly and without the ceremony that was Forun’s dance. The bull bawled and staggered, and Talwe cut through the front leg as well. Then he turned and rejoined the mrem.

  By this time the first two bulls had fallen, and within a hundred strides the third did as well. The mrem stopped running, and each of the wounders walked to the bull he had hamstrung. All three lifted their swords above the bull’s neck, then turned to the crowd to await their approval.

  As always, the first was first. The hunters looked to the sky, to the God of the Hunt, then shouted as one the Song of the Sprint. When they had finished, the wounder brought down his sword, cutting deeply through the bunda’s neck and holding his place while the deep red blood spattered and flowed.

  And then the second, and finally it came to the third. Talwe struck, again without ceremony, immediately after the mrem had shouted the Song. He held his sword in the cut, but unlike the others he did not shout.

  The hunt was over. He had seen the panic and longing in the young bull separated from its herd for the first time. The memory of the look in its eyes came back to him now.

  Over his kill, as in everything else, Talwe stood apart and alone.

  WITH HIS ARMS folded across his open green jacket in the moonlight, Jremm looked more like a merchant than a brickmaker. Beneath the jacket the stocky mrem wore a loose brown shirt fastened with a brass clip in the shape of a charging bunda. A smaller silver brooch in the shape of a bunda fastened crossed hide belts together and, incidentally, represented most of his worldly wealth. From the belt hung a purse so empty he had filled it partway with pebbles. Like a merchant, he carried only a short, sharply curved dagger sheathed just over his left shoulder. Like many of the mrem of Ar, his fur was a creamy tan, with only hints of a darker brown at the muzzle, ears, and tail. In other cities other coats prevailed, but in Ar a smoothly colored coat was valued above all others.

  It had long been a joke throughout the great city that merchants came to Ar not to sell their wares but rather to stand around and talk. The deep seriousness of their discussions was signified by a characteristic folding of the arms. Others speculated differently, that the merchants were making sure no other merchant had access to the fur on their chests, because anything accessible was fair game in the market. Accessibility, not ownership, was said to be the merchants’ rule, even if the laws King Andelemarian had introduced in Ar said otherwise.

  Like everyone else, Jremm knew that the law had little to do with merchants. Sure, it worked hard to protect the buyers against the sale of shoddy merchandise, especially the execrable spices brought along the Targra from the sea to the south. A few merchants had been flogged, then banished, for importing rotten softwood for the scratching walls in the royal palace, but normally the law was pretty well ineffective against the transgressions of the traveling merchants. These people had absolutely nothing to lose by selling a poor product, because by the time they returned they could come up with any number of legitimate reasons why they hadn’t known anything about the problem. Even if caught, they were wealthy enough to buy their way free. Ar was the most important city of the region, but it would often pay a merchant to cheat a host of customers and then miss the next of his twice-yearly visits. After the passage of a year, most of his crimes had been forgotten.

  Jremm also knew that he was standing in the merchant’s pose. He did so intentionally, mostly to see if any merchant would stop and talk to him, but also because it made him feel somewhat important. Errlo, the mrem he worked for as a brickmaker, certainly did nothing for his sense of importance. According to Errlo, Jremm could do no right: he mixed the brickmud poorly, he shaped the bricks crookedly, he baked them at too high a temperature (he never had been g
ood at controlling the fire), and lately he had even removed them from the oven improperly. Every day, just before the midday break, as Errlo’ s wife brought each of them a small bowl of fishmeal, Errlo would inevitably launch into a tirade against Jremm’s laziness that lasted through the entire meal. Jremm was getting used to it, but the haranguing did nothing for his appetite. Small wonder that Jremm ended every day of work with his stomach screaming for something to eat.

  Nor was Mithmid a much greater help. Jremm was tired of being asked to prowl around Ar at all hours of the night, tired of Mithmid never saying a simple “thank you.” At least Mithmid assured him that his work was of some use (“vital” was how he’d put it), but Jremm had no idea what Mithmid did with the information he sold him. He suspected the older mrem was a member of the H’satie, the quiet ones who guarded the king from the shadows. But he could never be sure. You simply did not ask if someone was a member of the secret police. All he knew was that Mithmid never wanted to be seen together with Jremm, which meant that they had practically no chance at conversation. And since Mithmid’s work consumed most of Jremm’s evenings, Jremm’s social life had dwindled to nothing. This wouldn’t be so bad, except that Mithmid had contacted Jremm just as the young mrem was making some progress with Rennilan, over whom he had been making a fool of himself for most of his seventeen years.

  Actually, Jremm told himself, he was feeling this way because on his way to the gate he had seen Rennilan disappearing into a shed with a mrem he couldn’t identify. What she saw in him, he couldn’t understand. But then Jremm was like that. He was the only mrem he knew who felt jealous about young females. For some reason, he couldn’t accept what the others seemed to take for granted—the natural promiscuity of young females.

  What puzzled him now was not Rennilan, but rather Mithmid’s rather strange orders. In fact, they weren’t orders at all. Usually Mithmid told him what information he wanted, where he could best find it, and whom he would get it from. Of course, Mithmid relied on Jremm’s keen knowledge and understanding of the city (that’s why he had the job in the first place), but he rarely wanted Jremm to think too much for himself. Today, Jremm wondered happily if maybe things were changing, if Mithmid was starting to recognize his true worth and give him a little leeway. The older mrem had told Jremm almost nothing at all, merely to wander near the gates as the merchants rolled in. As he leaned watching through the open gate as the light of two of the three moons reflected off the wide waters of the Mraal beyond, Jremm began to hope that maybe Mithmid was gaining some confidence in him.

  A nice thought, but what was he supposed to watch for? It had been nearly two hundred days since the Feast of Sunlight, the height of the summer when the day was longest. In only three more days the sunlight and darkness would equal each other and the priests of Bralittar would declare the harvest begun. With the Festival only a few days away the River Gate would be open all night. Another caravan entered as he watched, but since the Festival was approaching this was nothing unusual. If anything, there should have been more with the festivities this close. But the harvest in the south had been a good one, and rich harvests meant fewer caravans would bother to travel as far north as Ar. Three had gone through the gates, but these, too, were fairly routine, even the one that was heavily guarded. Oddest of all, perhaps, was the fact that nobody had even approached Jremm. He had thought himself looking rather sophisticated standing as he was, but either the merchants were too busy or they thought less of him than he thought of himself. Maybe, he thought, green was an un-merchantly color. Most of the real merchants were dressed in blues and browns. He’d ask Mithmid to buy him another jacket.

  Jremm relaxed and looked around. The walls of the city, their finely set baked bricks the product of years of labor by hundreds of brickmaking hands, rose tall above him. They made him proud to be a brickmaker. To any seeking war against Ar the wall must surely seem impenetrable, and once they realized that this wall was only the outer wall, that once through it another stood on guard, any thoughts of conquest would simply fade away. Not for many years, in fact, had such an attempt been made, not since the Na-mrem from the south had tried to rid themselves of the only obstacle that stood between them and the rich farmlands to the north. The Na-mrem were cruel, and the battle had been long and ugly, but in the end the mrem of Ar simply outlasted them. Peaceful as it was, Ar was always prepared for war.

  Jremm whirled at the sound of a throat being cleared. Looking down on him, standing a full head taller, was a strange mrem. The outlander’s multi-hued fur looked blotchy in the light of the two smaller moons. On his head was tied a white cloth, its ends hanging limply over his left ear, and over his right shoulder a long belt held three gleaming knives and a long leather scabbard encircled with green and blue gems. Taken aback by the elegance of the mrem’s dress, Jremm had to stop himself from bowing before him.

  When the brickmaker finally gathered the courage to speak, all he could think of was, “You wanted something?” Hardly a thing a merchant would say, he berated himself as the colorfully furred mrem smiled.

  “I want a great deal, my young friend,” he agreed too loudly for Jremm’s comfort. “But all that in good time. For now I am looking for someone, and I was told that you might be able to help.”

  Jremm frowned. “Told?” he blurted out. “Who told you that?”

  The older mrem laughed softly. “I hardly think that matters. But just to satisfy your curiosity, the mrem over there”—he pointed toward the gate—“the one standing beside the guard in the orange tunic”—he inclined his head and Jremm nodded—“that one. Evidently he knows you, even if you do not know him.”

  Not about to admit such ignorance, Jremm smiled as wryly as he could and muttered, “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I know him.” He couldn’t help but feel he was getting the worse of this exchange. And it had hardly begun. “But apart from that,” he continued, attempting to gain some control. “Who is it you’re looking for?”

  The colored mrem looked quizzically at him. “Strange. I would have thought, after what Doroman told me, that you’d have said ‘whom,’ not ‘who.’” He shook his head.

  Jremm ran his fingers along the fur on his left arm. “Not everyone appreciates it, the ‘whom,’” he responded. “Some of the merchants”—he whispered now—“those less sophisticated than yourself, sir”—the many-colored mrem smiled—“some of them take offense at being corrected. I apologize for misreading you.”

  Nodding, the other replied, “No harm, young friend, no harm. But, now,” and he stared intently into Jremm’s bright green eyes, “if you could direct me to a mrem named Reswen, I would be more than exceptionally grateful.”

  “Reswen?” Jremm’s heart skipped. He stopped himself from demanding, “Why?”

  “Yes, Reswen. I understand he is in the city, and I have business with him. Can you take me to him?” The mrem’s eyes were piercing.

  Jremm looked at the ground. Reswen! This was something he hadn’t expected. Nor, he suspected, had Mithmid.

  “I haven’t seen Reswen, sir,” he admitted at last.

  “Please, friend, I am Oziltor, not ‘sir.’ I prefer the name to the meaningless title.” Jremm felt suddenly inept.

  “I’m Jremm,” he managed.

  “I know.” The older mrem grinned a crooked grin. “That is what they told me at the gate.”

  So someone had noticed him. Jremm glanced quickly around, wondering which of the merchants, or maybe the guards, had seen him and recognized him but had not talked with him. In the moonlight several looked familiar, but he would swear that none should have known his name. Even if he hadn’t been trying to hide.

  Again Oziltor cleared his throat. “Forgive me, Jremm, but I am in something of a hurry. Could you help me find this Reswen? Or, if you cannot, can you direct me to someone who can?” After a short pause, he added, “I am willing to pay, if that is what you want.” The tone of his vo
ice was one of mild scorn.

  Jremm shook his head. “It’s not money,” he replied. “It’s not money at all.” He stopped and looked at Oziltor. “It’s just that—well, I don’t know where Reswen is. But I’d be more than willing to look for him, if you’re willing to wait where I can find you.” Another pause, then, “But it may take a while. Ar is large, and its nights are dark.”

  Oziltor laughed his gentle laugh. “You speak in two voices, Jremm of Ar. One is the voice of youth, its words halting and uncertain, its manner at once arrogant and ignorant. The other is the voice of the poet, a voice with control and of eloquence. I have heard a voice like yours before, but I do not remember where.” He smiled and asked, “Do you sing poetry?”

  Jremm felt himself blush. “No. At least, not yet. But I think someday I might. That is, if anyone wants to hear.” It was hardly unusual to want to “sing poetry,” as Oziltor had put it. A bard was always welcome, always in demand, always asked to prepare the audience for the dance. How much better than a brickmaker’s life would be a life such as that. For a long moment, Jremm was lost in dream.

  “Reswen?” the question came. Jremm inhaled to wake himself up. “Can you find him?” He was beginning to sound insistent.

  Jremm looked at him, then at the top of the wall. Of all the mrem he might be asked to find, Reswen was well down his list of favorites. Feared by most of the mrem of Ar because of his size and his skill in battle, Reswen was rumored to hire himself out to whatever army paid the highest price. For a state like Ar, which, unlike most other states, prided itself on its citizens’ loyalty, mrem like Reswen were not just distrusted but also despised.