The deserion said nothing at all.
"No answer? He does not like our humor; let us take him at seriousness. Were you bound for Naaros city? And how many men in the castella at Crow's Tower?"
Not a word from the deserion, and the Carrhoene captain gazed at him intent for a moment before saying:
"Your life and freedom may hang on what you say; or be forefeit, you bastard, if you do not say."
The deserion shrugged to indicate life and death, freedom and unfreedom were all one to him.
"Us you may slay," he said, "but you shall not so murder all the Vulkings; nor have I yielded myself to you, so there is no duty on me to reply to your questions/'
Airar saw Pleiander brace himself to rise, and was before him with a question:
"I am your taker. Your name."
"Luronne the junior, of Anne in East Lacia; deserion of the 12th." The 12th was the new tercia, recently organized.
"You are a taken prisoner and may be sold for a serf like a Micton. Now you shall tell us the force of the castella at Crow's Tower."
The skin round the man's eyes crinkled in the effort of thought, the firelight throwing shadows there. Then: "I will not. It would be contrary to my military oath."
Now Airar was taken aback, unwilling to threaten or sneer like Pleiander. There was a chuckle from Evadne, but Meliboe the enchanter lifted his silver head.
"You have wrong," said he. "I know that oath; it was to serve loyally for the advancement of the realm of the Vulkings, and how can you render such service, being dead? Why, this is disloyalty; not to mention that it involves the lives of your three as well. Were I still in Briella, I could have you prosecute before the baron of court for as much."
"Not I. It is an order not to name the force of our armies nor their placing. The true treason would be to disobey, the more since the tale would be given to most * approved Dalecarle traitors."
Now angry words trembled behind Airar's lips, and Pleiander's dark brow was turned sneering on him, but Meliboe motioned silence, and as light as though the deserion had made a jest, said: "Traitors to whom, pray?"
"Why, to the Count Vulk, under the Emperor, ruler of this realm."
The enchanter squirmed in his cape against the rain. "Is the last duty, then to Vulk? Do not men also owe somewhat to God and His church? Or to their own inner souls, which are God's reflection? For it must surely be very clear to you that this fine body of yours, now so near dissolution, can have little commerce with the eternal and infinite except by means of the soul. Yet here you unfame these Dalecarles as traitors because they follow the leadings of their own inner souls, not orders from Briella; nor will yourself cross these orders, or what you conceive them to be, to hold soul and body together. Has a man no duty, then but to the county?"
Luronne the deserion raised a hand as though to scratch his head, then lowered it again quickly. "Why, sir," he said, somewhat slowly, "I do not know that I have a soul, except that the priest says so, therefore it must be true; but I have never seen it. Yet this I do know: that in soul or mind, I can never be secure till I have found what all others of the kindred are thinking and by thought or act brought myself closest to the general. For look you, sir sophist, man is an animal that lives in assembly, and cannot do by himself no more than a sheep, or else is an-outlaw for every man to slay."
"And therefore," said Alsander judgmatically, "must take orders like a sheep from the nearest dog. Is't so?"
"Nay, indeed," replied the deserion, earnestly. "What would you?—that one should say his soul told him to take my goods while I am abroad on a campaign? It is prevented only because the general voice in the realm will not have it so; that is, under the County Vulking, we live safe. All who wish otherwise are at bottom merely desirable to gain with the strong hand against all law."
To Airar it seemed that he had never heard anything so terrible as this man talking against death, yet nothing so soundly put forth that there was no flaw in it, and he must concede everything Luronne said was true as true. But Meliboe the enchanter only smiled in his beard with red lips. "You are palpably a very good reasoner and philosopher," said he, "as was only to be looked for from one who has had the instruction of the Lyceum of Anne. Yet I would ask a question: who is it determines what the general will of the Vulking kindred may be? Since yourself cannot go from one to another citizen and ask his desire on every topic where all must act together."
"Who else but the Count Vulk himself? Since he is elect by the common will of the people and must be the full expression of their will."
"Ha. True. And if he expresses his will down through his chosen deputies it is still the will of all, since he is chosen by all. But how if this be untrue? How if evil men in the state have made a combination to advance one of their number for mere power and glory?"
The face of the deserion looked merely unbelieving. "Why, sir, who would make such a combination? And if 'twere made, what then? The power and glory of the Count is the power and glory of all the Vulking kindred; since all association exists only at the will of the Count and for to do his desires, which are those of the realm in general. None will have it other but certain of these Dalecarles, who would see our strength fall away into mere worship of the Well and the Empire, while every day the Micton and heathen crowd in as we quarrel with one another. Fie! Realms have no pause; they gain or go down, and we gain because we Vulkings are one, giving to all who fall in with the kindred this sweet unity."
"And how for those of other bloods?" Meliboe glanced round. "The Carrhoenes—are they part also in the sweet unity you name?"
"Unity with them? With them? It would pollute. Whatever you find of low and filthy, there's one from the Twelve Cities at the bottom, like a maggot in a stinking corpse. Why, sir—"
Now Pleiander did leap up with a cry half-articulate. So sharply he could not be stopped, he flung himself on the deserion, and with one arm round his neck, stabbed him quick and deep, three times in the side. With a kind of gurgle Luronne the junior folded down in his blood; Airar caught the glint of an eye-white as he died, and Pleiander stood over him with the bloody dag in his hand, mouth working. "Diades! take this away. Where's young Visto?" Meliboe laughed, but none other had a word to say, and presently it was time for all to seek rest.
Yet rest was far from Alvar's son, to whom the after-battle weariness that made the others sleep so sound came in a form that flogged his senses full awake. Wind sighed among the branches above; big wet drops drifted down to plash on the wing of cloak he had flung over his head, and his mind trailed across and again the events of the day, seeking for a reason why he should feel a sense of crisis more intimate than that of war.
Why?—why? There was Evadne now, the Carrhoene, and her open speech of making him her future, barely heard in the haste of preparing to meet the deese, now risen to plague his midnight thought. She was older than he, aye; yet the dusky olive of her skin and swelling breast it would be sweet to press—or would it so? Something deep down recoiled with a crawl, as though an enchantment lay on her to counter desire, not that which Meliboe had placed to draw her to him. Or that itself; a pang of pain and the thought of another drawing enchantment he himself had raised (he resolutely kept his mind from forming the name), and how he drifted along the thought of these magics, magics, and how ill each had sped at the end—the shapechange that brought Rogai only into deadly danger at Mariupol; Meliboe's spell, with death for Britgalt and his sons in the snowstorm; the evil fate of the enchanting and disenchanting of the ships against sea-demons; the night of the tower in Salmonessa (a white flash before the eyes and one must not think of that) . . . was any of all the magics good? The night in the marsh when it saved them from the Vulkings—No; for that was a treachery by Meliboe on those who trusted him; and the divination of that night had held him from going to Salmonessa, where he might have saved her.
Now Airar, turning over uneasily, began to wonder whether there were not some element of spell in the debate of the death of th
e deserion. One would think it so—and a mean end to a man, black Vulking though he was, to perish because Pleiander could find no answer to his saying but a blade. He was my prisoner—and Airar began to know a bitter resentment toward the whole Carrhoene tail, about whom the unfortunate Luronne had not been too far wrong that they had a touch of rough and foul—Evadne's loose language and easy caress for Erb, how Evimenes had been all too willing to steal the horses after hospitable guesting, and most of all that
Airar did not like: Pleiander's cry for young Visto after he had done the murder and the way he fondled the lad. That Visto was less than he had at one time seemed (regret and resent mingled here below the level of Airar's thought)— oh, faithful and willing, but in a pinch a poodle-dog, who'd follow where finger snapped and make nothing of himself, nor offer that exchange (except as a woman might, an inferior) which might have brought him to the level of the friend Airar at another time thought he might have found in Rogai, about whom there was something not merely chill and distant, but hurried, as though he had no time for friendship. This, then, would be why there was no contest from Visto— the slight sarcastic tone with which he had referred, that night in the tower, to "My friend." Why he had held it so light a thing that she should go to the Duke; yet come to warn me. Oh, no true friendship in Visto; only this— this wish to be dominated. I have no friends. No friends, no true friends, they do not like, but wish to use, me. Must I be friendless forever? And again he twisted on the ground till the other thought came that here once more was the same self-sorrow that had cost him Gython's— Not that. Well, if Visto wished to live that way, 'twas sure his right. No; disgust. Luronne the deserion had right, men live with others and must match their doings to the general will, or here's untame Pleiander, with his man slaying and catamite-making. Or for that matter, Duke Roger, living beyond law by his single will. Yet no, not he—he was under a kind of law and it had caught him at last—law not written, but with boundaries nonetheless against the pride, injustice, and hardness of heart with which he enforced his bastardies and presumption, so that at the end his own people fell away, when these brought down on him first the arms of Briella and then Lady Malina's dagger. For a moment Airar played with the fascinating game of speculation—did the law run inexorably against a single fault? With either his war or his wooings the three-fingered duke might have succeeded but for the other-—or would some different conjunction have brought him down if this had failed?
But then, but then, the law's more than human, and our laws can but pattern forth this universal rule—this overlaw that will not let a human enactment be set up in opposition to it. The law of Duke Roger's house was to keep Salm alive by bastardy succeeding bastardy, and the house fell through this very law. Now young Airar found himself on the horn of his crisis, for sure, Luronne the deserion's desire for the voice of the general, and sweet unity in Dalarna of Dalecarle and Vulking, stood in violation of no law natural or divine. How's this? (he asked himself) do they have right, and we wrong to wish our freedom? Does that not make us one with those of the quarrelsome Dodekapolis? He could see no way through; the idea was so disturbing that he bounced himself upright (touching a branch and letting a curst trickle or water up his arm) to find Meliboe the philosopher and persuade him to unravel the problem.
Out in the clearing there was the faintest trace of false dawn beneath skies still weeping, but among the trees none. In the blackness Airar's first step brought his foot against someone that snarled "Who lives?" in the voice of Alsander of Carrhoene as he came afoot, and when Airar had identified himself, said angrily he did not know where the old man was, but better occupations might be found than stirring one from his sleep. Airar gave him right and apology; while the grumbling Carrhoene was about composing himself again, there was a speck of light not from the sky at the opposite flank of the vale, and here came the outer guard they had posted at the road, bearing a candle-lantern, with the scouts sent toward Crow's Tower, and another man besides.
The tale was they had spent the evening and part of the night wandering in that neighborhood without finding much trace of battle or any of Rogai, not too anxious to approach the Vulking castella, where there were watchfires and much activity. They had resolved to camp at the tower itself, an old ruinous structure once builded by the heathen, keeping watch and watch. To them came this other, a Dalesman of the Iron Ring and Rogai's messenger, he having guessed that if all went well in Airar's battle, a contact would be sought at the tower. His own attack had gone by plan except that the Allies accompanying the deese were more numerous than expectation and had swung round to take his little band from the southern flank, so that he could in no manner make down toward where Airar was, but had drawn his enemies off into the pass that leads through the High Hills of Froy. Since they were so deep on that road, he had decided to keep to it, sending back this messenger. They had but two men slain and very few hurt, the Allies of the deese proving mainly Salmonessans who lost heart utterly when their leaders fell.
Alsander heard most of this story from one arm, but toward the end he stood up again. "How many men in the garrison of the castella?"
"Not above a rank, which is less than half a deese. Master Rogai—there's a captain for you!—debated assaulting it, and if you have men-at-arms in full proof, as I understand, you could do it with ease."
"I did not ask your advice. What force have the Vulkings in the Dales altogether?"
The man's face was somewhat sullen in the lantern-glow. "We do not know for sure. A good part of the 8th tercia has been spread among the castellas and latterly some deese of the 12th have come down the highroad; this was the third such which you have fought, bound we think for Naaros city. It is said that most of the 4th is at Stavorna, but of that nothing sure. The wool-merchants have not come."
Alsander turned. "Master Airar, we had best rouse the people and move at once, before break of day, or we shall be in a trap."
"How so?"
"This matter of the castella all watchful the night, which I do not take to be their custom, and Rogai's retreat through the pass. Is't not clear that some of these Allies, cowardly bastards, have run and warned the place? Then the whole news has spread—I will not say how, but in all directions they'll gather forces to cut us off, this 8th tercia from its posts and the 4th down from Stavorna to bar our path."
21 The High Hills of Froy: They Ride
THE DALESMAN GUIDE rode before them, and it was as well, for though the dawn broke clearing, it was plain that the pass by Crow's Tower had no true road, only a track through a forest now very thick, no longer with the steep pents and cliffs as in the eastern Dales, but winding and winding among round mammaries of hill. Evimenes dropped back among the pack-animals to hurry these slowest of the march; Alsander and Meliboe were in the main guard. Pleiander rode at the head with Airar, cheerful as a lark and like a lark chanting the coming of day, but, not getting two words from the childe of Trangstad, soon fell to whistling one of his tuneless Carrhoene airs, himself clapping hands and giving little barks when he came to the refrain. They crossed a brook, with the horses stepping daintily; on the far side Evadne spurred up through the press to join and laughed as she brought her horse alongside Airar.
"You have a song—do you not?—of dolorosa Dalarna; and dolorous is this ice-bound land where you have wind instead of sun. When comes the spring?"
"Why, it is spring now," said Airar, weary enough with his sleepless night and hard thinking to fall into her bantering mood. "What would you? Two seasons only, of ice and hot sun? Here in the north we may grow slowly to love; but it is forever and does not burn out."
She clapped her hands. "Courtier, courtier. You could do no better if you sat in the high house of Permandos with Sthenophon and his ladies. Not so, Pleiander?"
But Pleiander, as in obedience to some unseen signal, had dropped aback and did not answer, so she went on: "Nay, truly it is a dolorous land, and you must leave it when you have your profit. Here's Alsander my brother, gossip an
d merry companion, and what does he do? Ride back there with this long-bearded doctor and babble-babble, gabblegabble, whether this business of war is more an art like a painter's, or a science, as astrology and mathematic, as though there had never been a bird on a bough."
"Now that is a very doubtful question—" began Airar, serious again, but she laughed out merrily, and said, "Master Airar, the frog, you will never in your life be a philosopher and resolve such questions no more than me. Give it up, be gay and live longer. I marked how you were ready to abandon all last night and turn to join that Vulking louse as he farted by the mouth, till Long-beard spoke. Perhaps it is so still."
"Ah, no," cried Airar, his mind splitting suddenly to note how much in word and phrase her address to him was like that he had used with Gython (no downing the name now), but she treated his sudden check only as evidence she had his whole attention, and rushed on:
"It's as I told you under the tree, where you and Erb slew the cat. You Dalecarles would live two ways at once, like the man-fish, or those demons of the seas round Gentebbi. You'll have no birth nor privilege nor leaders permanent— oh, no. What's then? Why, these beasts of Vulk will always do you down with their dumb obedient union, if only that they come always full strength to the trial while you have but half yours, there being some who do not choose to join you."
"Is it so indeed? I would not like to think it."
"Master frog, master frog, you will never be weaned till you can look a fact in the face, and here's one for you to gaze on: how all that call themselves Vulking come skilled and full armed to every battle and with certain of your own people as allies. They are clearly your betters there."
"I had not thought to hear you praise them."
"Praise—praise, who spoke of praise? I'll praise the great cat his claws. Any fool or frog can see what's amiss with these people and their ways; for ensample, no music or delight, and not even their barons secure in that dignity but must be made afresh by their Council each year. Why, it's no better than the regiment of the dog-smellers among our own cities! But when you've an enemy it's needful to know the length of his arm. I say these men are very good soldiers, brave and loyal. What makes them so masterful, answer me?"
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