Yorath the Wolf

by Wilder, Cherry;

  He ran after me in the sunlit covered way of a country villa and begged me to sit down with him and explain parts of my life. What had I done at such and such a time? Was this rumor true? What was my favorite food? Had I killed this man or that? Could I fill in a very important gap in my valiant career, my course of glory. After I left Nightwood . . . Yes, I said, I worked on the Cloudhill Horse Farm for four years. Morning, noon and sometimes at night. I mucked out the stable yard, I mucked out the loose boxes. I learned to groom a horse, I groomed horses. I exercised horses, the largest horses in the world, the chargers of Cloud-hill. Between times I helped to plough and bring in the harvest. I trained four days in every ten in swordsmanship, drill, hurling and wrestling. I went on watch; I rode out to the boundaries of the farm to guard it against raiders. I led, in the end, a troop of Lord Strett’s men-at-arms.

  Brother Less found this intolerably dull. I had not found it all quite so dreary as it sounded in the telling. I cast about for something that would liven up my time at Cloudhill for the scrolls.

  “There were noble youths there,” I said. “The sons of great lords.”

  Less was pleased with noble blood; a small smile creased his lips.

  “Who, my lord?”

  So I named my companions. Times were hard at Cloudhill and dangerous through the Boar’s depredations, so lords were less keen to send their sons for training to the Bastard of Andine. Still in my time there were four young lords. At first I met Marris Allerdon, son of the king’s general, and Benro Hursth of Hurhelm in Balbank; then came Rieth of Pfolben in the Southland and Knaar of Val’Nur, second son of Valko Firehammer. Discipline was good . . . they all worked in the stable, just as I did, and we did not shirk our training.

  These were my peers, the young men I might have been raised with if my body had been unmarked, if my estate had been acknowledged. As it was our upbringing had been very different. There were strange quirks in the fortunes of all these four, before our meeting and afterwards. Rieth, whose father was immensely rich and managed his peaceful southern domain with an iron hand, was a simpleton. He was tall and well-made with a golden head and a vacant blue eye. He could not read, he could barely sign his name. Between us we taught him to ride without falling off and to draw his sword without injuring himself. Benro Hursth was five feet eight inches tall and we called him the dwarf, the pygmy, the Kelshin. He was quick, dark, cruel and clever; he could ride light horses and fight as swiftly and dangerously as the kedran women. Marris Allerdon was the finest flower of a country without a knightly order. Even to our jaundiced eyes he was handsome, fair-minded, cool-headed and wonderfully skillful in all that he did. Knaar of Val’Nur was our bane, a proud and vengeful fellow, a troublemaker, jealous of his estate, filled with a gnawing hatred of his elder brother in Krail. How would Yorath Nilson have fitted into this list and been judged by his peers? He was good enough with weapons and with horses; he was shy and stuffed with weird book-learning. Someone’s bastard. One shoulder twisted.

  After a few months no one would wrestle with him. In the tilt yard sweet-tempered Marris shouted, purple-faced, as I released his head from a lock, “Godlight smite you, Yorath! You are just too damned big!”

  I thought, then, as I answered Brother Less, the chronicler, of the days we passed together and the years and knew them for a golden time, the days of his youth that a man remembers. Brother Less moistened his lips and put in slyly, “And were there no sweet vessels . . . no early loves . . . on the High Plateau?”

  “No,” I lied. “We took cold baths, Brother Less. We practiced whipping . . .”

  His eyes popped.

  “Fascinating!”

  “Less,” I said, “you are a worm, you are a cockroach. There were young women in the villages of the rift. We kept our lust within bounds. If you make a bawdy tale of the lives of my companions and of my life I will have it burnt and you with it!”

  I stood up; he cowered. I was never alone in those days, and some of the officers and pages gave a look of enquiry as if they might have the pleasure of carrying out my threat. I was forced to smile upon the wretched chronicler to save his skin; we spoke again, several times.

  Ah, but to think of Cloudhill. The cold, thin air of the plateau and the rime of frost upon the grass as we rode out in autumn. The wild beauty of the Great Rift spreading out before us as we took the road to Ochma village and to the manors of the rift lords, strung out to the west along the banks of the river Keddar. The walls of the valley are five hundred feet high and striated in a rainbow of dark and light earths. Strange flowers bloom in the rift and seashells lie in the river bed and scattered in clumps upon the plateau as if the whole wide plain had once lain at the bottom of the sea. I have seen the bones of a dragon, turned to stone, found in the valley wall. From an old grave pit came the bones of a man large as myself, a warrior who lay with a spear of dragon bone clasped across his breast.

  As we rode out, on a day of leave, in autumn, my companions would turn off each to his own place, with his squire or body servant. Rieth, with his sorely tried squire, to a certain tavern in Ochma; then Benro, little devil, darting off into the territory of Lord Keddar, to a farm where he fathered two children. I rode on with Marris, keeping the peace, and Knaar, intent upon breaking it. When we passed another village, Cann or Cannford, Marris, mounted upon his splendid grey, Stormbird, turned to the right and crossed a bridge. An ancient building lay in a grove, a house of grey stone, brought from a different part of the plateau. There lived the dowager of a noble lord, Lady Cannen, mother of Thilka, Strett’s wife; Strett’s three daughters lived with their grandmother. It was not unusual for girls to be schooled away from home, but perhaps Strett was protecting his children from the young lords. He had a fine appreciation of legitimacy. Marris, the eldest of us, had sown his wild oats; now he paid court to Annhad, the eldest of Strett’s daughters. We saw them walking about under the trees or riding sedately, palfrey and charger side by side, in the river fields. They were beautiful, Marris and Annhad, a pair of lovers from a Lienish idyll.

  Then Knaar and I, the two youngest, rode on to a fair or a market in the lands of Paunce and of Nordlin, further down the valley. For years I had no friend, no leman, and felt myself unloved, a monster indeed, when the others boasted; but even I found a sweet friend at last. She was the widow of a man-at-arms, long since remarried, I would say. I remember her very clearly, but I will not put her in my story.

  When Knaar and I were alone, he was better behaved, less quarrelsome. He spoke of Krail and of his family, and it was easier for me to see, under his fire and bluster, a shrewd intelligence that fought against the difficulties of his life. Valko Firehammer, a fierce and brilliant father, had a reputation that weighed heavily on both of his sons. The Heir of Val’Nur, Duro, had inherited Valko’s looks, but his drive and energy had gone to Knaar. He was forced to over-excel, to be stormy when his brother was calm, to be devious when Duro was straightforward. He was a little devious in our years of riding together at Cloudhill; I was part of his plan for success, and he was cultivating me.

  I found a question to ask Knaar concerning his family: “Do you not have an uncle, Hem Thilon of Val’Nur?”

  “I had an uncle,” said Knaar shortly. “The poor devil has been dead these five years. The elder brother of my father if you see what that means . . .”

  “He was the Heir of Val’Nur?”

  “Stricken as a young man with a chest weakness . . . the sweating sickness, some call it. He stepped down in favor of my father.”

  “When I was in Krail as a boy, I heard some tale that he was troubled by a witch . . .”

  “News to me,” said Knaar. “Yet he was always seeking some cure or another. I would say he wanted a charm to prolong his life and some hag took advantage of him.”

  So I learned no more of the Owlwife.

  Knaar said, after a pause, “Magic is no work for a shieldman or a soldier. Wizards and their ilk can be bought for gold.”

  I did n
ot contradict him. Magic was much more familiar to me than it was to my companions, but I kept quiet about the identity of my guardian. He was simply a healer from the village of Beck; his name, if it must be given, was Nils Raiz. I saw little evidence of magic or of the Shee, the ancient fairy folk, while I was at Cloudhill—the beauty of the rift and the plateau were magic enough for me. I came no closer to any kin, but from the end of my seventeenth year I began to experience a strange recurring dream.

  In the midst of the colorful life and movement of my ordinary dreams I was suddenly called . . . a voice called from a long way off: “Yorath!” Then the calling became a dream in itself. I walked in a dream wood or stood in a dim hall and heard the voice calling me. It was a woman’s voice, but I knew in my dream that it was not the Owlwife. I answered sometimes in my dream and even asked who was calling my name. Sometimes the veil was lifted a little further . . . I saw through a doorway or among the forest trees a hooded figure who spoke my name in the same voice, reassuring and tender.

  Just as the young riders went their ways, turning off the road through the long valley, so they left Cloudhill one by one as the years passed; and at last after four years; only Knaar and I were left. Where had they gone? To be soldiers, to serve their fathers, to serve, in turn, Ghanor the Great King. Even Rieth, from distant Pfolben, went away with a magnificent escort of his father’s troops, to be received at the Palace Fortress.

  There was no question of Knaar fighting for the Great King, and I was personally outlawed from Ghanor’s domain. The tale of maurauding brigands had not been believed by the king’s troopers around Nightwood. I was described in a “wall warrant” from the garrison in Beck village, which Hagnild had acquired, as “Hunter Nilson, a lordless man, without rank or shield, about eighteen years old, seven feet high, red-haired, with light eyes and very strong. Wanted for the stealing of a prize horse, black, eighteen hands high, with grey streaked mane and hoof plumes, war-booty of Captain Rohl of the Second Home Muster in Beck, and for the cutting down of Ensign Hem Fibroll and a trooper.”

  I showed this parchment to my companions when it arrived more than a year after I did, and they reacted accordingly. Knaar laughed and so did Benro, and Knaar said, “That’s our lad!” Marris was uneasy and wondered how I might ever “get my name back.” Rieth, like the idiot boy who works out sums, put his finger on an inaccuracy.

  “You dint cut ’em,” he said. “You said you just heave ’em around, like you do with us in the wrestling.”

  True. The military admitted no death but a soldier’s death. I was sad now for the two men I had killed, though I would have wished for justice for their feckless killing of an old woman. Yet in the cohorts of the king they were reckoned less important than the captain’s prize horse even if the ensign had been a lord or a lord’s son.

  Communication was bad; I had letters from Hagnild about twice a year and knew of the unrest in the Chameln lands, of the False King and the False Queen who held Dechar . . . though I did not know the true name of the False King. The Chameln campaign seemed to be dragging out, but it was not much more serious than the rumors of fighting that was always going on within reach of the blades of Mel’Nir.

  Winter came early on the High Plateau. Snow lay on the ground in the first days of the Aldermoon; I went out alone with Knaar; even our servants Ibrim and Trenk were not with us. We were driving one of the heavy farm carts with a span of three veteran chargers. Knaar swore and complained because it was beneath a shieldman’s dignity to ride in such an equipage; he felt like a baggage-handler. We took the road to Ochma village, by the cold river. It was so early in the morning that the risen sun was just sending its light through the mountains at our back. The leafless trees on the river bank were all traced with hoarfrost.

  As we came closer to the village, the lead horse checked. I reined in the team and looked ahead; I heard Knaar give a long gasp. On the far bank of the river beside one of the bridges there was Marris Allerdon upon Stormbird. Horse and rider stood as if in a patch of sunlight; Marris wore no helm, but was clad in painted strip mail; Stormbird was caparisoned in red and blue. Marris slowly raised a hand in some gesture between a wave and a salute, then turned and rode into the grey shadow of the frozen trees.

  “What are you waiting for?” said Knaar, in a low voice. “Drive to the bridge!”

  “No one is there,” I said.

  “What did you see?”

  “The same as you saw. Marris on Stormbird. It was a sending, a fetch.”

  “I am afraid,” said Knaar. “Some evil has come to Marris.”

  I knew that Marris Allerdon was dead, dead in battle, and I was oppressed with fear and wonder.

  “What if he has been seen by . . . others?” asked Knaar.

  I knew that he meant Annhad of Andine, who waited at Cannford Old House for news of her beloved.

  “We will say nothing . . .” I said.

  So we rode on our errand to the village—collecting sacks of winter fodder—and went about our training. We were the last young men to be trained at Cloudhill. New recruits had often been expected but never came. They were expected again in the spring, but again they did not come. Before that time a dark cloud of sorrow had rolled over the land of Mel’Nir.

  On the twentieth day of the Aldermoon, messengers of the king came to the rift, seeking men and horses from Strett and the neighbor lords. The disaster of the Adderneck Pass was known. The Red Hundreds of the king had been overwhelmed by the hordes of the Chameln in a narrow defile. Even in the long valley where not all were kings’ men, the news was harrowing. Omens were seen throughout the land of Mel’Nir: flights of black birds, fiery emblems upon the clouds, spectral women who tore their hair and keened for the dead.

  One of the strangest charges levelled against the people of Mel’Nir by their neighbors in the lands of Hylor is the charge that we have no gods. In fact we have many, and we pay honor to the dead. The people of the Eastern Rift hold to the gods and the death customs of the Farfarers—the men and women of Mel’Nir who crossed the cursed lands of the Svari and the Dettaren and came through the mountain passes to a new land. At Cloudhill we lit a fire in the courtyard after sundown; men and horses came out and stood around the fire in the evening light. Lady Thilka cast salt on the fire so that it burned blue, and a child was given a long spear to stir up the fire and make the sparks rise. Knaar and I stood watching the sparks fly upward: Marris, Benro, Rieth . . . all three had ridden with the Red Hundreds.

  A messenger brought letters from Hagnild, written in his fine straight hand, almost a cypher. Despair and madness ruled at the Palace Fortress. The old king’s rage was not to be contained. He fell upon the first messengers of the disaster and hacked them to death. Later messengers simply deserted, news did not come, records were not kept. The escape of the general, Kirris the Lynx, the king’s son-in-law, was not known for days; then, when it was known, the survivors of Adderneck were all proscribed as traitors. The Princess Merse trusted her father so little that she took her daughter, the unmarked Princess Gleya, and with Hagnild’s help she fled to the Hanran keep on the borders of Cayl.

  The vizier, Lord Sholt, husband of the king’s second daughter, Princess Fadola, made himself busy in the palace and at last approached the king, in spite of warnings. The old man, brooding in a corner of the throne room, seemed to listen to the whisperings of Baudril Sholt. He bade him come closer, then with a roar seized the fellow by the edge of his sleeve, dragged him to his knees and tried to strangle him. Only the intervention of Hagnild and the palace guard saved the life of Hem Sholt. So the Palace Fortress and the realm waited, halls and courtyards empty, the vast kitchens idle, the dogs whimpering unfed, the servants boozing in the cellarage, the women and courtiers fled or hiding in their bedchambers. The palace guard stood close about the throne room, where their master raged, protecting the king or protecting those who might get in his way.

  After more than ten days of this, Prince Gol himself came home from the wars; he h
ad crossed the Dannermere and served with his personal followers in the army of the south, fighting against Sharn Am Zor, the young King of the Chameln. During the years since the death of his first fair young wife, the Prince had fared badly. His second wife, Artetha, was barren and shrewish, but now he mourned her death and would not make the decision to marry another young Lienish princess. His exercise of arms was better than it had ever been, but he had no luck. His plans, his pursuit of order and independence, were all fruitless. He lacked the wit for intrigue and was a poor judge of men, giving his trust to unworthy creatures. He bore all these misfortunes with a dumb fortitude that suprised Hagnild; almost, admitted the Healer, one could say that Gol had learned some sense.

  He had the sense at least to get the palace machinery working again, and he had plans for the forces of the king who remained in the Chameln lands. Those that were able should withdraw at once before the winter came down too heavily, and so cut their losses. The army of the south should come over the Dannermere, and the army of Hem Allerdon, father of Marris, the cleverest of the Generals of Mel’Nir, should retreat through the border forest to the rich mining district of the Adz, plunder it, and cross the realm of Lien. For Hem Werris in the distant capital of Achamar he saw no alternative but flight and surrender for his troops. He reckoned that the young King of the Zor and the Queen of the Firn would allow the defenders of the city to go home without reprisals.

  These plans came to nothing; the king and Hem Sholt hung in a quandary of rage on the one hand and fear on the other. The winter came down, and Allerdon was forced into a long death march on the plain, then he holed up with the other forces of Mel’Nir in the central highlands. In the spring they came home depleted and dishonored, looking like the ghost horde of the Red Hundreds, risen from their graves. The stain of treachery was never removed from the poor devils; even Allerdon was accused of giving information to the Chameln that resulted in the death of his own son. Just how the ambush at Adderneck had been planned was never known. Magic was given as the answer: the Queen of the Firn, a deformed and ugly witch, had been warned and guided by spirits. The tall warriors of Mel’Nir did not raise their heads and glance up into the tops of the forest trees. There dwelt the despised folk of the Kelshin, whom the palace hunting parties sometimes shot down for sport, and they had brought word to Aidris, the Queen.