Tale of Elske (25 page)

It seemed to Elske that she had barely rested a moment when Beriel was shaking her by the shoulder, dragging her up and away from the comfort of sleep. Win refilled the bucket with water from the river and they loosed the horses. “We'll eat as we go,” Beriel ordered. They were mounted and on their way before the first yellow beams of sunlight came tumbling down through the trees.

Once again Win rode behind Elske, his arms around her waist, and Beriel carried their pack behind her. Win rode silently, or sang softly to himself and Elske. There were more tales of Jackaroo, how Jackaroo dressed the bride, and how Jackaroo brought the three robbers to hanging. There was the song of a fisherman, calling to the fish as if he wooed them, and the song of an old woman after her man had died. There were children's songs in plenty. The Kingdom was a place where stories grew as plentifully as apples on a tree, Elske thought; Tamara would have been at home in the Kingdom.

On this sunlit day, far from Pericol, Beriel sometimes rode beside them and joined Win in his singing, her displeasure of the previous day forgotten. So the day's journey, although long, passed pleasantly.

That second evening, once again Beriel and Win talked about Guerric and his rule over the Kingdom, until Win said, hesitantly, “Also, my Queen. Also, there are tales from the northernmost holdings.”

Elske pictured the map Beriel had shown her, the northern borders of the Kingdom up against high mountains.

“Where at the northern borders? The royal lands? Hildebrand's?”

“In Northgate's lands, under Hildebrand, but—it's cruel, my Queen.”

Elske wondered what this news could be, if Win was more reluctant to speak it than he had been to tell of Guerric's plots.

“I have stomach for the cruelty of truth,” Beriel said.

“A band of—wild men, thieves, monsters—”

Then Elske knew the end of his tale.

“They came out of the forests at the end of summer. They fell upon isolated holdings, one village, too. One boy glimpsed them and he ran home to tell his father of the strangers, but he found his father's holding in flames and all his family slaughtered, except for the youngest child, a girl of seven winters, and she was gone. Lord Hildebrand sent out his soldiery, and they found a number of holdings so destroyed, but they could find no battle. The enemy slipped away. The soldiers brought back one old woman in jabbering madness, who said it was the northern wind, howling, taking human form. They burn their victims like logs on a fire, while they eat and drink in its warmth.”

“Do we know what they are?” Beriel asked.

“At the inn, merchants have told stories which we dismissed as the talk of men who enjoy frightening those they think simple, as fathers like to frighten their children. The merchants spoke of warrior bands, swooping down to take anything of value, gold, silver, food, clothing. They kill for the pleasure of killing and take prisoners—dark-haired women, a few men—only rarely. Although why they keep some men and slaughter others, nobody knows.”

“For Wolfguard,” Elske explained.

“Wolfers,” Beriel said. “I thought so. I hoped not.”

“These wild men speak gibberish,” Win said.

“They speak Norther,” Beriel told him, and said to him in Norther, “I thought the Kingdom was hidden away, safe from this danger. I hoped.”

“Lady?” Win asked, uncomprehending.

“She spoke in Norther,” Elske explained. “I'm Wolfer born,” she explained.

“No.” The firelight washed over his face like water, making shadows of his eyes, and then revealing his hidden thoughts. He stared closely at Elske, a sudden stranger. He asked Beriel, “How can that be? When you trust her.”

“With my life.”

Beriel gave this gift to Elske carelessly, as if to be trusted were the common fortune. But Elske opened her heart to take the gift into her care as if it were a babe.

Win made his decision. “If my Queen trusts you, then so will I,” he said, and held out his hands to her. “I give you greeting, Lady Elske.”

Elske took his hands in hers. This was another true servant to Beriel. “I give you greeting, Win,” she said, while Beriel protested, “Elske is my servant.”

Win's surprise spoke. “She can read. You trust her with your life. Her dress, hair—this is more than servant.”

“If you cannot be a servant, then who will you be?” Beriel asked Elske but answered herself, “I will think who you must be.”

Win knew who he was, for Beriel. “I am in your debt for my life,” he said, “so it is I who am your servant. And your soldier, too, if you need me, against your brother, against Wolfers. I am your man against any enemy who offers you harm.”

“At the moment, you are my eyes and my ears in the Kingdom,” Beriel said, and smiled at Elske, then asked, “But what is this Wolfguard you mentioned?”

Elske could tell her. “When the Volkking's warrior bands return in the fall, they must cross lands where wolves roam. So pairs of prisoners are bound together and set out, each night. These the wolves devour, leaving the warriors unharmed.”

“The prisoners don't escape?” Win wondered.

“They're hobbled,” Elske explained, and at the expression on both of their faces she added, “As we do with our horses.”

“But they are men, not animals,” Win protested.

“For the people of the Volkaric, they are human animals who cannot speak and have little courage,
Fruhckmen
. Would you never stake a goat to draw wolves away from your houses?”

Win said, “These Wolfers are fearless, the merchants say. They go into battle armed only with long knives, clad only in animal skins.”

“I do not call it battle to attack an undefended holding,” Beriel said.

“No human force can stop them,” Win said.

“They were stopped in Selby,” Elske told them. “My grandmother was a girl in Selby when they fought off the Wolfers, all the men of Selby standing together. The Wolfers can be turned back,” she assured Beriel. “At cost,” she added. “With courage.”

“The merchants say—” Win started, but then didn't finish the thought.

“What do they say?” Beriel demanded, so Win told her this, also. “When you hear their cry, your heart freezes within you. Men have gone mad with fear, from just the Wolfer cry.”

“And such enemies have come into my Kingdom?” Beriel cried out, as if she had taken a wound. “How will the crops be put into the fields so there will be food next winter?”

Win agreed. “Fear is plowed like salt into the farmlands of the north.”

“And Sutherland?”

“The south feels far from danger. Let the wild men feed off the north, they say, thinking that will guarantee their own safety, with the rivers running between them and danger.”

“Wolfers do fear water,” Elske told her companions.

“And so we have Northgate's people for a Wolfguard of our own,” Beriel observed bitterly, then said, “I will sleep now.”

THE LONG DAYS OF THE
journey passed slowly, in sunshine, clouds or rain. Evenings were spent with whatever news from the Kingdom Win could remember, or guess at. Days held the steady thump of the horses' hooves on the packed dirt pathway and more stories, more songs, more questions from Beriel.

Elske did not need to be told when they had crossed the borders into the Kingdom. Beriel shone with it, like a sun, the Queen in her Kingdom. It was as if each breath she drew increased her pleasure, breathing that air. It was as if each hoof the chestnut planted onto that earth increased her strength. Beriel looked about her, to the broad slow-flowing river and the thick-trunked trees. She looked to the sky, less blue than her eyes.

By midday they had come to an inn, the Falcon's Wing, sleepy grey stone soaking up the spring sunlight. Beriel rode up to the doorway, and dismounted.

“My Queen,” Win protested. “They will know you here.”

“As they should. I must send messengers to the Earl Sutherland, my uncle, and to the King in his palace, to say when they may expect me.”

“My Queen,” Win said. “Do you think how this forewarning places you in harm's way?”

“I do not fear the King,” Beriel said. “Rather, he should fear me.”

“My Queen,” Win said, “I think he does.”

Beriel smiled up at him then, and offered him a hand to aid in his dismounting. “So you are more than the country onion you pretend,” she said.

The three stood together, looking at the blank stone face of the building before them, and Beriel gave the order. “Announce me, Win. Tell the innkeeper of the Falcon's Wing that I have returned, and have need of messengers, and have need of fresh mounts. Tell him that we require also food for three, with his best ale. I will tell you, Win, since you concern yourself with my safety, that I will be safest riding openly to Sutherland's castle. If all know that I have set off, then all must seek out treachery should I not arrive.”

She looked around her then, at the grey stone inn backed up against the tree-clogged forest, at the green meadow stretched out before them and the blue curve of river beyond; all under a bowl of sky out of which a warm and generous sun poured its light. “Is it not beautiful, my Kingdom?” Beriel asked Elske.

T
HE MESSENGERS RODE
OFF AT
the gallop, but Beriel's party rested at the Falcon's Wing. Elske and Beriel walked across the meadow, down to the river's edge and out onto a dock, and when they returned, the innkeeper had set out a platter of baked fish for them, and bread, and onions, and tankards of his own ale. Win was fed in the inn kitchens.

At Beriel's command, Win brought their fresh mounts around. Elske, at Beriel's command, changed her garments, wearing now a dress so that she also must sit her palfrey sideways. Her hair, like Beriel's, hung loose, with only a broad ribbon to hold it back from her face. Win walked behind them until the inn was out of sight, and then once again Beriel took the pack while Win and Elske rode together at her side. As they traveled the King's Way east, Win reported what he had learned in the kitchen and the stables:

Beriel was rumored dead. Where the rumor had started, none could say, but all had heard it. A maidservant had declared that the soldiers would be bringing a dead body back for its burial, not a bride to her wedding day nor a Queen to her people. There was sadness in her telling, and in the hearing, too, for Beriel had been well-beloved.

There were rumors of a terrible army attacking the north, Wolfers, wild men; but Sutherland's domain was in no danger as long as Earl Northgate's farms and villages satisfied their blood lust. The Wolfers were a destruction from which none escaped. Lands they crossed lay barren—choked with blood, blackened with fires. People lay slaughtered, and worse. Lest they lay hands on him, and his Kingdom founder, the King had taken his court and his soldiers into Arborford, where two armies would give him twice the might, rumor said.

The King had fled for his own safety, the cook muttered over her pastry.

Another rumor reported that the King had a weapon that could spit out fire like a dragon, and when he turned this against the Wolfers they would be driven back. This new weapon burned hotter than fire, and had teeth that could rip a soldier into pieces of flesh that even his own mother wouldn't recognize. With this weapon, the King would preserve his Kingdom, and the people in it. Only King Guerric could save them, rumor said.

Thus, a groom reasoned, if this Lady of Win's was Beriel, Beriel alive, she would cause civil war. The Kingdom would be split over the question of King or Queen. Its men would be taken off into armies, and killed or crippled, the crops would suffer, all would go hungry—and the wonderful new weapon would be turned on its own people. Wolfers from without and the royal family from within: Destruction threatened at every turn of the wheel.

But if this Lady was not Beriel, then there was hope. And how could this be the Princess, and her dead in that far city where she had gone to seek her husband, since none in the Kingdom could satisfy her proud heart? No, this was not the Princess.

“What did you say to that?” Beriel asked Win.

“I said only that I rode with my Queen, who would separate rumor from fact, and deal with these Wolfers.”

“You promised much,” Beriel remarked, not displeased. She turned to Elske to ask, “Do you think Guerric has the black powder?” but it was Win who answered, “I think not. I think nobody in the Kingdom knows more of the black powder than— What is it? What? My Queen, what have I said to offend you?”

“What do you know of this weapon?” Beriel demanded.

He reminded her, “Merchants come to an inn. However quietly men may talk among themselves, he who serves them will overhear.”

“You serve the inn's tables? But you are a son of the house, not a servant,” Beriel protested.

“Among the people, as among the Lords, however different the labors, a son does the work of the house.”