"Don't haul so on the girths, man!" laughed Bure. "It's no longboat you're loading there!"
"Would it were, that I'd 'ave somewhere to kick you off! Give me a solid beast of Bryhaine any day, these jades are 'alf rat and about as well broken."
"But they will bear even you," grinned Elof, "over ways where your solid Bryhaine beasts would stumble every second step, and leagues long enough to burst their hearts. Not even Kermorvan's great white warhorse can match them in endurance."
"True," acknowledged Kermorvan. "I would never think to lead her on this rough a journey."
"It's said there are wild horses east of the mountains," said Tenvar mischievously, "giant ones. Maybe they're tamable. They sound better suited to bear a man of your, hmm, presence, Sothran."
"Presence?" growled Ermahal, purpling and rounding on the young northerner. Tenvar stood his ground, smoothing his small moustache nonchalantly, and his fellows moved to join him. Kermorvan's genial voice cut into the silence.
"And of mine! My long shanks lose grace on these little beasts; I am close to walking. But we will miss them soon enough, I reckon. Once within the pathless Forest no horse can help us, and we must be our own beasts of burden then." It was a sobering thought, and turned each man to securing his baggage once more.
But Elof had some skill in reading Kermorvan's impassive face, and whispered, "That was a cut well parried!"
"Aye, but spare me any more such! Those Saldenborg lads are fools to jest so, though they meant no harm. Ermahal would hardly be a corsair captain if he were a safe man to mock. Elof, you are a northerner of much their age, and they are used to heeding smiths; do you take them in hand!"
"I'll have them as rearguard, then, with Roc, away from the corsairs."
"Do you so. As well to have sharp eyes and live minds there, in any event, on the dark paths we must tread." Kermorvan gazed about the gloomy courtyard. "Now the sun is all but down, the city's voices grow quiet. The time of our going is here. Home of my fathers, night and silence claims you once more. Shall I ever rest at ease in you again? Yet it must be, it must be… Elof my friend, it may be that all our trials and troubles so far have been no more than a prelude to this."
"I was thinking the same," acknowledged Elof. "But of my own quest in particular."
Kermorvan nodded. "May that prosper, whatever else betide. Well, all farewells are said save mine; I must not linger." Then Ferhas and Kermorvan's few other servants came and knelt before him, a thing done rarely in north or south, even before great lords. Yet there was no servility in the gesture, but more of love, for clearly they wept. And when Kermorvan handed over a great ring of keys to Ferhas, they shook and rattled in the old man's hand. Elof saw then something of Kermorvan's shaping, for it was these old servants who had brought him up, as the deaths of his parents and his family left him increasingly alone. He was a lord shaped by vassals, a king molded in the image his followers sought to believe in, all the more so in an age and a place where kingship was no longer welcome. Such an upbringing might have turned out many ways, but in him, to Elof's mind, it had tempered pride and strength with compassion and restraint, and the urgent need to command with reason and respect for those commanded.
"Aye, agreed," said Roc. "Couldn't have been easy, though, growing up a prince with no domain past these four walls. Small wonder he was wild as a lad. But like I told Marja, there's few men else I'd follow where we're bound."
Ferhas was fumbling with the keys now, and even as the gates creaked open Kermorvan, Gise and Eysdan began to lead out the line of ponies. As had been agreed, the travelers pulled cloaks and hoods about themselves, and slung weapons out of sight; leading rather than riding their mounts, they would look like many another party of weary fugitives.
Ferhas saluted Elof as he had the others, but plucked at his arm and whispered vehemently, "You'll have a care of him, won't you, sir?" The idea of himself guarding that fearsome fighting man seemed absurd, but Elof could not laugh at the old esquire. He nodded, clapped him on the shoulder, and passed on. The long caravan ahead was silhouetted against the pale stone of the mansion opposite like figures on a moving frieze, as if already they merged with the faded chronicles of times past. The young northerners were on his heels; he heard the gate creak to, and awaited the sound of the lock. It did not come, and although he would not turn his head he held clearly in his mind the image of old Ferhas standing there in the wall's black shadow, listening, straining his ears until the last faint hoofbeat had utterly died away.
The night was cool, the streets fast emptying. City folk hurried here and there with their smoking linklights, few sparing an eye for the drab procession that clopped and clattered across the cobblestones. The square of the citadel, where tall braziers burned, they skirted, and also the Merchant's Quarter, still busy and aglow with everything from crystal candelabra in high windows to rush dips and little charcoal ovens in the street stalls. He thought of Kathel, now on the northern borders ordering his new domain, and smiled; the merchant had not gone without giving Roc and himself strict orders to report on the wealth of any eastern lands, and their dearth and surplus of a long list of commodities. "You seem very confident we will find somewhere," Elof had said.
" 'Course you will, lads!" Kathel had puffed cheer-
fully, and then, remembering perhaps his claim to be the Honest, added, "But, well, it's a poor pedlar doesn't knock on even the rickety doors, eh?"
He would miss the man, thought Elof. And if he too was honest, he realized, he would miss this whole huge sprawling city as he had never dreamed he would. He rested a protective hand on the saddlebag that held his baggage, meager but heavy; a few garments, a change of boots, but chiefly the things he most valued, a certain gauntlet of mail, his precious tools, and with them a crook-tipped rod of worn bronze, the strange cattle goad that was his only inheritance from his first youth. He had brought that on impulse, not for any use it had. But now he knew why; to here also he might never return. Once a tiny village had been his world, then a lonely tower; the first small towns had seemed overpowering. But this, this teeming human hive, it could have swallowed them up a thousandfold. And for all its sins he had come to see that only out of such a community of men could arise the order and strength of will that was their best shield against the oncoming Ice. It made the wild lands beyond its bounds seem that much wilder, and himself more foolish to seek to venture into them once more.
Others seemed to be feeling the same. Bure, fond of his food, kept scuttling over to stalls they passed to buy last portions of local delicacies. Elof found it hard to blame him, for the northerners had eaten poorly enough before being chosen for the company. But then he saw Borhi the corsair slip across to a winestall, and Tenvar begin chatting to the market girls walking alongside, and he called them back into line. "That's well done," said Roc. "There's some as'll know us, and talk."
"For which I'll wager Lord Bryhon has ears listening!" agreed Arvhes, dropping back. "The happier I'll set out without flagstones flying round my ears."
"There's that," admitted Bure indistinctly, munching spicy chunks of fowl from a skewer. "Gate's not so far, though, now."
"A step is full far enough, with a mob in the way."
The shadow of the high gate tower might have concealed one easily enough. Now, though, there were few folk about in its shadow, and most of them sentinels of the City Guard. But the figure who stepped suddenly out of the shadows was clad in tunic and cloak of richly worked red velvets, and he was very tall. Elof exchanged horrified glances with Roc, and moved swiftly down the column to Kermorvan's side.
"A shame on you, my lord of Morvan," was the newcomer's jovial greeting, "that you sought to slip away thus! Did you think it could be kept from me?"
"I had my reasons, my lord of Bryheren," Kermorvan said coolly. "You, among others. What have you to gain by hindering me?"
Teeth flashed in Bryhon's beard. "I? Hinder you?" He sounded affably hurt. "I came only to wish you well!"
&nb
sp; Kermorvan sighed, and rested an arm across his pony's back. "My lord, I fail to understand you. That we are hereditary enemies is of little moment in these times, but if the law permitted I would cheerfully slaughter you for all the wrongs you yourself have done my family. You have ever sought to thwart any plan of mine simply because it was mine! You are no generous adversary. Am I expected to believe you now?"
Bryhon shrugged. "If you are right, you bring us some small benefit. If you are wrong, you cost us little. I hope you do find survival in the east, most sincerely I do. Is that to be a crime in your kingdom?"
"Hardly. I accept your good wishes to the extent you mean them, and return such thanks as they are worth. Though from one who sought to murder me in secret…"
Again Bryhon shrugged. "In the best interests of the city—as the troubles that followed have proved. But we are warriors of the same high order, you and I. I would not fear to face you if I could, Keryn Kermorvan."
"Nor I you, Bryhon Bryheren. Now may we pass?"
Bryhon's deep laugh was wholly genial. "Am I preventing you? But for all the world I would not! Go, succeed, or be damned to you!" And, still chuckling, he turned and strolled off into the dark.
Elof glared after him. "For a moment I thought that human mantis meant what he said!"
"In part, perhaps," mused Kermorvan. "We are of the same order, the same discipline, that one and I; we have endured the same trials, and may speak of them to each other as I may not even to you, a friend. That bond even hatred cannot wholly expunge." He smiled. "But you and I, we have shared our own ordeals, and others no doubt lie ahead. At least we need skulk no longer! Mount up, all, and follow! Guards, there! Open the gates!"
"Open! Stand aside for a lord of the city!" cried Roc in his powerful voice, and the other sothrans joined him at once. The northerners, who had known no authority stronger than town elders or guildmasters, smiled to see how the guards scurried to the immense windlasses and set the long weight-chains clanking down over the stone, the heavy gates grinding inward. As the first gap appeared it seemed to Elof that a deeper darkness came spilling in, like the shadow of some vast beast lurking, and a light but chilling breeze. He shivered, but when Kermorvan led the column forward beneath the deep arch he followed gladly enough; he thrilled to the clink of the smoothly metaled High Road beneath his pony's hooves, the grating rumble of the gates closing behind them. It was exciting, after all, to be a wanderer once more.
He looked up. The sky above was pearled with a full moon rising, but the city walls barred its light. The company plunged into shadow like deep water, dark and cold. Roc looked back at the Gate ramparts, and nudged Elof; a lone watcher stood there, outlined in silver. "You've good sight by half-light," he grunted. "Who'd that be? Ten for one it's that bugger Bryhon."
Elof looked, and smiled wryly. "A poor wager, Marja." Roc snorted violently. But he dropped back a little, and a moment later, when he thought Elof was not looking, he turned and waved, and for many minutes he would surreptitiously look back.
Across the plains of the city the caravan trotted, that Elof had first seen as a gaming board of fields, spacious and rich. But over them had passed the Ekwesh, plundering and destroying beyond all reason, and after them the refugees. They had made their pitiful camps of tent and shack there on land that should have grown food to help support the city. The camps cultivated only a few scant patches and at poor yield. But the blame was the city's. Much waste could have been avoided, if it had accepted the northerners and made use of their willing labor, instead of branding them beggars. The thought angered Elof. Kermorvan was right; why had he needed to fight to prove it? What made men so blind to their own best interests?
It was long before they passed the last of the little campfires, but longer yet before those fires faded from his thoughts.
Chapter Three - The Ocean of Trees
Little was said of their route, for little could be said. Those who had fled westward had not lingered to make maps, nor sought to perpetuate any memories of their ordeal. It seems that such maps as the Chronicles preserve were all made at a much later time, for it is certain that Kermorvan found none to guide him; the charts of Bryhaine ended at the Shielding Mountains. He had, however, conferred with Kasse and all other folk he could find who lived in the lands nearest the range, eager for any word of what lay beyond. But few could tell him much. All along the foothills lay the western arm of the Great Forest that they dreaded, and from their own experience Elof and Kermorvan could hardly blame them. Few save outlaws and wild, solitary men dared cross the margins of the trees: fewer still ever returned, and their tales were fantastic and contradictory, full of strange sights and visions.
In the end, though, Kermorvan found he had few choices. He had to pass the Shieldrange somewhere, and only in two places could he venture that without going through the Forest's arm. He could circle the mountains to the southward, by Orhy Lake on the Gorlafros, the great river Westflood, where the rich lands ended and the increasingly barren Wastes began. But those few who had stood atop the summits of the Shieldrange had all reported sight of other summits on the horizon across the river.
"And they make it a poor risk," Kermorvan had concluded, tracing with a finger the rough map he had compounded out of many accounts. "If those mountains can be seen from so far off they are at least as high. We cannot tell how passable they are, or how far southward they extend into the Wastes. But it seems they do not continue northward very far—not as far as the passes in the west of the Northmarch, level with Iylan and Armen, our northernmost towns. And between those passes and the West-flood, we know there lie the Open Lands, hilly and lightly wooded, easy enough going. So that way lies our road, I guess."
"But could we not turn further northward still?" wondered Elof. "Are there not wide gaps in the Shield there, where the rivers come down?"
"Aye, the Shieldbreach, but that is past our borders. Those are the Debatable Lands still, doubly debatable now the Ekwesh hold so much of Nordeney! And see what lies west of them! Those uncanny Marshlands of yours; through those gaps run the rivers that feed them, swelled by the meltwater of the Ice and all it brings with it. That is no safe way for us!"
Elof shrugged. "What is, since we seek the Forest? And once I felt almost at home in those strange fens. But I agree. Wastes to the south, war to the north; by all means let us seek a middle way!"
The trek north and east was long, for at first they had to take the coast way that skirted the Forest's westward arm, but on the High Road the going was quick and sure. Only shelter for sleep was wanting, for all the roadside inns and post houses had been devastated by Ekwesh foragers, and the dwellings in the lands around, from peasant cot to high mansion, had fared little better. These grim reminders along the wayside, like so many hollow teeth, sharpened their vigilance; some of those foragers, stranded by the sudden flight of their fellows, might still be lurking in the land. Such folk as had returned to work their fields dwelt behind hasty palisades, greeting all outcomers with anger and suspicion; and in truth, they had little enough to spare for hospitality. Outside some gates brown-skinned bodies dangled on gibbets, and whether Ekwesh or northerner none could tell. Travelers on the Roads were even less trusting and many fled precipitately at the very approach of the company, or at the sight of darker skins among it. Such troubles eased as they turned steadily further inland, where fewer reivers had reached; at the ford of the river Yrmelec, boundary of the Northmarch, they encountered a strong guard of the Marchwarden's garrison, posted there by Kathel to watch for strays.
It was in these inland regions that Kermorvan had thought the outlivers of Bryhaine should seek refuge in wartime, rather than in the overcrowded city, and Elof could see why; they were rich warm lands, untouched as yet by war. The company fared more comfortably awhile, but came at last to the ending of the Roads in the upper valleys of the Yrmelec. Sound tracks carried them a few leagues further along the steep grassy slopes, and after that, paths maintained by the little farms they
served. But one hot morning when they stopped to buy refreshment at one of these, on high ground above the Yrmelec's narrowing gorge, they found no onward path; dense woodland spread across the slopes ahead, growing thicker and darker the further the eye followed it. They had come once again to the margins of Aithennec, the Lesser Forest.
"That'ud be right, me lord," croaked the little old man who poured their ale. His speech was sprinkled with dialect words the northerners found hard to make out. "Further paths there were once, one or two even when I was a little lad, but they're long gone, long sunk back under grass, like the crofts they served. But 'twas not that way they led." He plucked at Kermorvan's sleeve, ushering them all across the cracked and weed-grown flagstones to the rear of the cottage. "Long gone, now, the crofters, their children off to the kahermhor, that High City of yours. The last I am now, all alone and naught at my back but fell and forest and barren ygeldhyrau."
"He means…" began Kermorvan, but his voice dwindled. Nothing indeed lay at the back of the cottage, save a high plain, a sea of whispering green grass, and beyond it a smudged line of darker green. But above that, towering craggy and gray-white against the hazy blue sky, rose the vast peaks of the Meneth Scahas, shield and boundary of the realm of Bryhaine and all the western lands. Out to the southern horizon they stretched, an immense jagged rampart against the wild lands beyond. Northward, though, the mountains seemed to tumble and fall sharply away. From the last of them a ridge plunged down, ending in high steep hills, gray and misty and generally treeless, save around the river gorge that plunged between them. But beyond it another ridge swept upward, and the mountains continued their northward line.
"Aye, me lord, that's all there is now, the Wild. Times are even now, on a dark night or in a wintry storm, it come a'creepin' and a'tappin' round my door. And when I'm gone, why, it'll stroll in an' make 'isself at home. Old Edhmi down the valley there, he'll be the last then, and it'll go call on him." He gave a wheezy laugh. "And when 'e goes, what then? Where d'you think it'll fetch up, one day? Eh? It's only got to wait! We go, my lord, one by one we go, and it takes another step."
The Forge in the Forest Page 7