Yorath the Wolf

by Wilder, Cherry;

  For my sweet Owlwife had gone. I could have numbered the moons and days since I had last seen her. She had left me without a word; I did not know why she had gone. In the time that I had for reflection, I wondered if it was because of my many deeds of blood. I had done so many, had personally hacked to death so many mortal men, that the chroniclers had run out of words of praise. There was hardly a person that I knew, man or woman, who would not have excused these deeds and tried to turn me away from my morbid fancies.

  By Andine in Balbank I had ridden down a child; I could still see the small broken body lying in the mud and the soundless scream of agony upon the mother’s face. In the late summer of ’32, after the Second Battle of Balbank, the master stroke for the forces of Val’Nur, I killed an old man. I came round the side of a little hill, leading Reshdar in the narrow way, separated for a moment from my escort. A tall figure loomed up in my path: a party of fugitives were hastening away from the edges of the field. I saw this cloaked figure coming at me with a roar, and I struck out with the flat of my sword, tumbling the fellow down the rocks. His hood fell back, and I saw with disgust that it was an old man, his silver hair stained with blood . . . Was it for these things, I wondered, that Gundril Chawn had left me? Was it for my true parentage? For now I knew all, I knew the truth, and the Owlwife did not bide long with me after it was discovered.

  As I rode off to war again, in this same year ’32, with the ailing Valko, I stood in my room at the Hunters’ Yard and Ibrim helped me don my fine new armor. Gundril was there and Forbian, perched at his writing desk. As Ibrim tightened the neck piece of my strip mail I was chafed by a thong; I drew off the small pouch with Caco’s amulet and flung it to Forbian.

  “There!” I said. “Some work for you, my friend. Unfold my amulet so that it doesn’t fall to pieces!”

  I thought no more of it. I went into the field and did great things and returned in autumn at the summons of Nimoné. Valko had been brought home again, now he was dying; Knaar was already at his side. I made haste to the citadel, and Knaar met me in the courtyard. He had a queer triumphant look; I had come too late. He did not even bid me come in to give my condolence to Nimoné. As I rode back with Ibrim over the Moon Bridge, the palace guards had lit the death fire on the highest platform of the citadel, and the trumpets in the city were sounding a last wild call for Valko Firehammer. I came to the Hunters’ Yard and greeted the wives and children of the company, all solemn for the lord’s death.

  In my room I found Forbian and the Owlwife sitting oddly still, as if they had hardly stirred in the moon since I left them. The lamps were lit; they had been waiting for me. I saw at last that their grave expressions were not only to do with the death of Valko of Val’Nur. Forbian pushed two strips of parchment along the table into the circle of lamplight.

  “I made a transcription,” he said dryly. “The old script is destroyed in places.”

  My amulet had been unfolded and delicately pasted upon a second parchment. The treasure that Caco had worn was in fact an official document from the Palace Fortress of Mel’Nir and it was one year older than I was myself. It was a safe-conduct:

  “Let pass in all the lands of the Great King, Ghanor of Mel’Nir, Mistress Caco, widow of Yeoman Bray of Alldene in the Mark of Lien, waiting gentlewoman to Her Royal Highness the Lady Elvédegran of Lien, Princess of Mel’Nir, wife of His Royal Highness Prince Gol Duaring, Heir of Mel’Nir.”

  It bore traces of the royal seal and was countersigned by Pulk, a former captain of palace guard.

  We sat quite still for a long time exchanging a few words. Did I understand? Yes. And was it possible. No, no it was impossible, but it had been done. Hagnild, the healer and magician from the Great King’s court, had spirited away a marked child of the royal house, not to mention a waiting gentlewoman. I was no bastard. I was the true-born son of Prince Gol and of that young, golden-haired lady of Lien, the fair Princess Elvédegran. I drew off the silver swan that I wore and laid it on the table beside the safe conduct.

  “You could be heir to half the world,” said the Owlwife softly. “Kelen of Lien has no children . . .”

  I saw that, too. The Markgraf Kelen’s sisters, the three swans of Lien, had all married princes of other lands. The children of Hedris and Aravel, consorts of the Daindru, the Kings of the Chameln, were excluded from succession to Lien. Had any such provision been made for a male child of the youngest sister, Elvédegran? I shook my head as if to drive away a cloud of kinsfolk: Kelen of Lien, Aidris, the Witch-Queen of the Chameln and Sharn Am Zor, her co-ruler, who was called the Summer’s King, for his beauty and noble bearing.

  “Yorath, Yorath,” said Forbian Flink, with that contortion of his face that his friends knew for a smile, “I told you long ago to come to some kin . . . but I had not reckoned with all this!”

  “What will you do?” asked the Owlwife, pressing my hand. “Surely you can use this knowledge to good ends. This war that presses so hard upon the poor dark folk, upon mortal men . . .”

  “Valko is dead,” I said. “Knaar will rule in Val’Nur. I must go back to my army in the field.”

  “Yorath . . .” she said.

  I do not believe that I looked at her, but long afterwards I could recall how beautiful she looked, in the half light, in her green robe. At that moment there came a clash of arms and muted orders from below. I heard my name: “General Yorath . . .” and Ibrim looked in to tell me that the garrison oberst of the city and the city reeve waited below. I was the ranking officer in Krail, the victor of Balbank, and a great favorite with the citizens. I was required to light the mourning torches before the Meeting House. I went off and performed this sad duty and returned late to the yard after conferring with officers at the Plantation. The Owlwife came to my bed, but we spoke no more of my parentage or my soldiering. In the morning she was gone. I had neither seen nor heard of her again; I knew that she had returned to the Shee, her adopted folk. Once, as I rode on the High Plateau, I had gone out alone when the moon was high and cried out to her and to the Eilif lords to send me my love again, but I was given no answer.

  In the winter Knaar was betrothed, and he married with great splendor at the New Year, 333, the Year of Changes. One other change was imminent: in the spring the Great King did not take the field, and it was common talk that he lay dying in the Palace Fortress. In the meantime Knaar drove the army of the south from the field, and I recaptured the free zone for Val’Nur. The armies of Prince Gol and his generals . . . one was Strett of Andine who had used his half-brother of Cloudhill so badly . . . did well enough, but we did better.

  So between advance and foraging, between the hectic cry of the trumpets, the charging over bloody fields and the long exhausted silences of the aftermath of battle, the year went by. In the Maplemoon, as winter came down, Prince Gol sent messengers to Knaar of Val’Nur and proposed a truce. He would confirm this truce in the last moon of the year, in the Ashmoon. We were certain that this meant that the old king’s death was upon us at last; Ghanor would breath his last as the year of changes waned. We waited with our escorts all winter long at Selkray villa, and now the Ashmoon was in its last quarter.

  “He will call a truce for a year, half a year,” said Knaar, motioning to the servants to refill our glasses. “What will you do with yourself, Yorath?”

  “Take a long furlough,” I said. “Look over the manor at Demford.”

  I was not telling the truth. I planned to seek out Hagnild and to search for my lost love, the Owlwife. I planned to do great things; perhaps it was the wine or the death of the old king and the old year. The manor of Demford, west of Krail, was Valko’s gift to me in his will, along with the deeds to the Hunters’ Yard. The small Free Company of the Wolf had been disbanded; those not dead or retired from service formed my escort. Chandor, the standard-bearer, had gone home at last to the Eastmark. The Westlings, on the other hand, had added a five-span to Knaar’s army.

  “I always liked Demford,” said Knaar. “It was part of
poor old Duro’s inheritance.”

  “Here’s the night half gone and no messengers in sight,” I said. “We’re going stale here like two middle-aged generals.”

  “Speak for yourself!” said Knaar. “What we need is a fool. You have that fool, that deformed dwarf back in Krail . . .”

  “The trouble with Forbian is that he is no fool,” I said, yawning. “I’ll check the lookout before we take our walk.”

  “No hurry,” said Knaar.

  I stood up and stretched. The dancing sisters, who were crouched by the musicians awaiting further orders, cowered and fluttered their eyelashes. I looked around for Ibrim, but he was not there. I had sent him back to Krail two days before with my good Reshdar, who was ailing: the fodder at Selkray did not agree with him. I had ordered Ibrim to look in at the Hunters’ Yard; I still hoped for news of the Owlwife.

  I drank a round with the officers; it was a sign for them to dismiss if they had no duty. I went up alone to the low tower and found that besides the two watchmen, Brother Less, the scribe, was there before me. We leaned on the parapet and looked to the northeast, to the downs flecked with snow and the road the messengers must follow from the Palace Fortress.

  “The year is going, Brother,” I said. “Have you found your enlightenment?”

  “No, lord,” he said in his papery voice. “No, lord, it may never come in this world. The Lord of Light grant it to me in the next.”

  “Tell me, Brother Less,” I asked, “is this Lord of Light, whom you honor, the same as the Lightbringer, the Soldiers’ god?”

  “Yes, lord. He is Inokoi, the Lame God, and he is worshipped in the land of Lien.”

  “Well, I have had my enlightenment,” I said. “If there is a truce, I will do all in my power to extend it. I will try for peace.”

  He stared at me in the half darkness.

  “Lord,” he said, “General Yorath, that is enlightenment indeed!”

  I went down feeling less heavy in mind and body. Knaar was waiting in his cloak on the terrace of the pleasant garden room; a servant swung my own cloak about my shoulders. We wandered off on our nightly walk. It was Knaar’s own way of keeping his health in the languid routine of the winter quarters. We walked as we always did up to the clifftop and peered down at the seals who lived among the rocks. A pair of servants paced after us. The night was crisp; the grass under our feet was heavy with frost, and snow lay in the hollows about the villa. We stood on one headland and less than a mile away there was another with a good road linking them. We usually walked about halfway down this road to a certain standing stone and then turned back.

  This night we had hardly reached the stone when there came a sound of running footsteps.

  “What’s that?” said Knaar.

  The man pounding along from the next headland was a stranger in servant’s dress; the two men with us, both from Knaar’s escort, drew in closer.

  “Help!” panted the man. “The wagon will go over the cliff!”

  “A wagon?” I asked.

  “Slid on the frosty ground . . .” he gasped. “There is a lady in it . . . hanging by a thread . . . it will go down! In the name of the Goddess, lords or whoever you be, help me!”

  “Come on then,” I said, “we’ll help, man! What lady is this?”

  The man reached out and plucked Knaar by the sleeve.

  “Oh come,” he said. “She will not say her name . . .”

  We were already running with the man and climbing the slope to the clifftop. I saw the dark shape of the wagon canted over the edge of the cliff. Before I reached it other dark shapes rose up: ten, twenty men, wrapped in their cloaks.

  “A trap!” I said. “Here, Sergeant, give me your sword, I am unarmed.”

  “I am armed,” said Knaar of Val’Nur.

  He drew his hand from under his cloak and plunged a dagger into my side.

  I felt the blade strike a rib, drew back with a cry of pain. I seized Knaar by the wrist, flung him aside and kicked down the sergeant as he came at me. I snatched up his sword and prepared to sell my life dearly. I was full of fear and rage, thinking of the trap that had been so carefully set by my friend, my own liege lord. I shouted aloud for help and heard how my voice rang out in the frosty night. How could my escort in Selkray villa not hear it? Had they turned against me, too? Now I was in among the crowd of assassins. Hacking and thrusting like a madman, and I had no breath to cry out. I slipped in the frost and thought of Huarik the Boar. I was no longer the young champion of Silverlode. I was more experienced, more dangerous, but I was older, and I had learned to fear death.

  Knaar stood back from the fight, nursing a broken arm and taunting me through his own pain. A stream of unreasoning hatred poured from him, a resentment that had festered for years. I saw that he had raised up a horde of my own ghosts to fight me, for the smaller men who cut at me with long curved blades were Danasken assassins. I brought down two or three and now fought with my back towards the clifftop. The wagon had been hauled onto level ground. Yorath the Fool, the deformed fool, crowed Knaar, had been lured into the trap by a cry for help, by a lady in distress.

  Now as the swordsmen pressed me close and I bled from many wounds, a tall man stepped from behind the wagon and called a halt. He was a warrior of Mel’Nir, tall as myself, but somewhat younger: a champion indeed.

  “Know my name!” he cried. “Know my name, Yorath Nilson! I am the Lord Fibroll!”

  The name meant nothing to me. The newcomer attacked, and I knew him for a swordsman less skillful than myself. He called to the Danasken to draw themselves away so that he might come to me, and as they moved back one fell down at my feet, a little man. I snatched him up in my left hand, lifting him high in the air by his bunched clothes. At that moment I remembered.

  Whether from remorse or loss of blood, the world grew misty before my eyes and I set the man down again. I shoved him harmlessly back amongst his fellows instead of dashing him at the Lord Fibroll. I stepped back to the very edge of the cliff where they could not follow me. I thought of the rocks and the boiling surf that might lie below and saw again that old man I had slain in Balbank, his silver hair dabbled with blood. I lowered my sword.

  “Hem Fibroll,” I said, panting. “I remember your name.”

  “Let me come at you then!” he cried.

  “No,” I said. “I will not fight you. I will fight no more.”

  “Coward!” he cried. “Where is your honor?”

  “Where is yours?” I asked sadly. “You have been drawn into treachery by Knaar of Val’Nur.”

  “You murdered my brother!” cried Hem Fibroll.

  “I killed him,” I said. “I flung him down and killed him in a fit of god-rage when I was sixteen years old. He had ridden down and killed an old woman, my foster-mother. I have long been sorry that I killed Hem Fibroll and his fellow trooper. Make what you will of that. I will fight no more.”

  I cast aside the sword that I carried, and we heard it fall into the water. Then I turned my face to the stars overhead and I cried out to the powers of earth and sea and sky.

  “Hear me!” I cried. “See where I am! I am Yorath Duaring, true heir of the royal house of Mel’Nir. I am Yorath the Wolf, and I have cast away my sword!”

  Then with the last of my strength I flung myself over the cliff into the sea.

  The icy water took me, and I sank like a stone. I was so close to death from my wounds and from the freezing water that I seemed to be already in another world. Whirling dark shapes moved all around me, over and under me as I sank down, then raising me up again from the rocky floor of the sea. I saw the stars again and breathed and lost my senses.

  I came to myself in a dream of soft arms that kept me from the cold and a swift movement through the water. I turned my head and saw a face next to my own: dark eyes, flowing hair, a smiling mouth. It was almost a woman’s face, and the bodies that pressed against me, furry and soft, were like the bodies of women. I knew that I had fallen among the Selchin, the seal-w
ives, who live among the seals and share their nature. Now they bore me swiftly through the waters of the western sea. They did not speak, but their eyes were full of tenderness.

  Daylight woke me, pressing upon my eyelids, which were gummed together with blood and sea salt, I moaned with pain. The journey with the seal-wives had ended, and my wounds were no longer numb. I pried open my eyes and could not see the sky, but I felt a cold wind blowing and I lay on stone. The least movement caused me pain. As I tried to turn on my side and draw my sodden cloak about me, a wound on my back opened and I felt warm blood gush out. I tried with my good left hand—for my right hand ached from gripping a sword, and a Danasken blade had given me a cut on the forearm—to press the cloak to my back and close the wound. The salt water had a sharp sting.

  I saw that I was on the threshold of a very old stone tower, it was a ruin, tumbledown and deserted. White sand stretched out to meet the incoming tide, and I saw the marks in the sand where a whole troop of seal-wives had dragged a large, limp body up the beach to the doorway of the ruined tower. I saw grass growing beyond the tower and grey rocks; I guessed that I was upon some island in the midst of the western sea.

  I was all alone; no sea birds flew by; the sound of the sea was muted. Against the tower grew a small tree, stunted and black, with a few dried leaves still clinging to its branches. I stared into the ruin and saw a wonder: a spring of water in a broken stone basin. Slowly and in great pain I dragged myself across the stone floor to the spring and drank and tried to bathe my wounds. A pale wintery sunlight shone into the round cell where I lay; I saw that the stones of the tower were hacked with runes and with script. I saw a string of runes and made out the name Ross and again Ross Tramarn and when I painfully craned my neck to see further Ross Tramarn, Prince of Eildon. I laughed feebly and wondered aloud that so mighty a prince had inhabited this desolate place.

  I woke again and it was thick night. From being cold, now I burned with fever; I feared for my life, thinking of deadly wound fevers.