A Hero's Tale (17 page)

It was after midday when we reached the valley floor, and we were still an hour's walk from the village. I was impatient to reach our destination, but Finn insisted that we sit for a while by the stream, to rest and bathe our feet.

"It's what travelers do," he said.

Aside from the obvious reason that after such an arduous descent a little rest was welcome, the custom served another purpose. With our bare feet dangling in the water, we were unthreatening enough to be approachable. Several passers-by paused to look us over before a man of middle age, clad in warrior garb, stopped to speak to us. I let Finn do the talking, while I held my tongue and tried to look respectful, as a youngster should.

The warrior spoke Finn's language, though not well enough to convince me that it was his own. He asked Finn what our business was.

"I've come to see the armorer," said Finn.

The man's eyes narrowed with suspicion. "You have business with the armorer?"

"Just a visit," Finn replied. "He is my long-ago friend."

"I'm on my way to see the armorer myself," the warrior said. "Shall we keep each other company on the road?"

It was a polite way of saying that he intended to see us to our destination, in case we were not what we claimed to be. We had no choice but to accept his invitation.

The path was only wide enough for two, which allowed me to tag along behind. As we walked, Finn chatted with the warrior, keeping the man's attention on himself. He made casual mention of 'my son and I' without causing him to do more than glance at me over his shoulder once or twice. He spoke at length about the armorer, until he had convinced our escort that he knew the man.

As youngsters do, I gawked at everything, all the while fixing in my mind an image of the place. The valley couldn't have been more than a mile across at the widest point, and in several places it narrowed to a quarter of a mile. It would be so easy to defend that I was hardly surprised to see the condition of the palisade surrounding the village. Half-rotted palings barely held each other up, leaving gaps big enough for a child to wriggle through. We entered the village through a sagging gate that looked as if it hadn't been closed in years.

Just inside the palisade we turned into a narrow lane that led to the workshops of the craftsmen. The forge and the tanning shed stood side by side. Finn went to the doorway of the tanning shed and called to a man who was stirring something in a vat. When he saw Finn, he came outside, and the two men greeted each other like the friends they truly were. Our escort, who had no business there, continued on his way.

A few of the armorer's neighbors glanced at us with curiosity, and Finn suggested to his friend that we go indoors. The smell inside the tanning shed unsettled my stomach. The tanning of hides creates a number of unpleasant smells, among them the odor of a badly kept privy and the stench of rotting meat. I was relieved when the armorer led us out the back of the shed, across a courtyard, and into a tiny cottage.

The disorder in the house told me that no woman lived there, nor did the armorer take the trouble to perform the rituals of hospitality. I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast, but there was no stew, no soup, not even porridge warming over a fire that had all but gone out. The armorer cleared off a bench for Finn and me to sit on. Then he settled himself on the hearthstone and regarded me with frank curiosity.

"Who's this?" he asked.

"A friend," said Finn. "A friend who needs our help."

Finn explained my situation, and as I listened, I grew more and more convinced that he must be speaking of someone else. He told a tale I barely recognized. From the point of view of one of Elen's people, it could be said that my people had unknowingly taken in a murderer and for three years shielded her from justice. Now that she would be made to pay her debt, I had come to frustrate their revenge. I saw in the armorer's eyes his opinion of my quest.

"My friend did not do murder," I told the armorer, when Finn had done.

The armorer shrugged. "The innocent don't run away."

"She was a slave. Who would have believed her?"

"She was a slave?"

I nodded.

"No one mentions that," he said. "I wasn't here when the king was murdered in his bed. I knew nothing about it until they began to tell it all again, when a band of strangers brought her here."

My heart took its first full breath in days.

"When was that?" Finn asked him.

The armorer counted on his fingers. "Five days ago."

"Are we too late?" asked Finn.

I hadn't thought that far ahead. My heart waited for the answer before it dared to beat again.

"No blood has yet been spilled that I know of," the armorer replied. "I hear little of the doings of the mighty, but that much we would have heard."

"Where is she now?" I asked.

"She must be in Elen's house," he said. "I saw her taken in with my own eyes, and no one has seen her brought out again."

"Where is Elen's house? Will you take me there?"

The armorer pointed in the direction of the center of the village, where I had already seen for myself the imposing timber building that served as the seat of power.

"You can find it easily enough," he said, "but it's no simple thing for common folk to enter the king's great hall."

"The king's great hall? Is there a king?"

The armorer shook his head and spoke past me to Finn. "That woman still refuses."

"What woman?" I asked. "Refuses what?"

"The wife of the dead king."

"Who? Elen?"

The armorer spat into the dying fire. "She won't take another husband, claiming she still grieves the one who died. Some have begun to hope that revenge will assuage her grief, while others believe it isn't grief, but love of power, that keeps her from marrying again. In either case, once justice has been done, she'll have to put the past behind her. Then they can demand that she provide them with a king."

That the people here had good reason to insist on taking their revenge frightened me so badly that it took a few moments for me to see the implications of what the armorer was saying -- that Elen's power here might not be absolute.

"Why would she be made to marry?" I asked.

The armorer looked at me as if I had asked him why water flows downhill. "Because it's time we had a king," he said, and seeing that I still didn't understand, he added, "It is the king who rules."

"Where I come from, a woman rules."

The armorer frowned and scratched his chin. I don't think he believed me, though he was too polite to say so.

"It's true," said Finn. "I've been there."

Then Finn went on to tell the tale of his captivity in Merin's house. It was a tale the armorer had heard before, but he seemed to take pleasure in hearing it again. Afterwards he told me that several of his friends had been among our prisoners. For their sake he was disposed to think well of anyone who belonged to the house of kindness, and he began to regard me with more warmth and less suspicion.

"What do you intend to do?" he asked me. "Will you bargain for your friend's life?"

I shook my head. "I have nothing to bargain with."

"No, I thought not." He gave me a shrewd look. "Did you intend to beg?"

"Will begging do me any good?"

"None whatsoever."

"No, I thought not," I said.

The armorer and I stared at each other. I knew what he was thinking, just as he knew what I intended. For a long moment I waited, while he considered what to do. Then he said, "I've overstayed my time here anyway."

"I don't mean to draw either of you into danger," I told him.

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I saw how worthless were my good intentions. I knew what would happen to them both if I were caught trying to set Maara free.

"If you can tell me how to find a way into the great hall," I said, "that's all I'll ask of you."

"I ought to drag you into the great hall by force and tell them about your plans. That would get you inside at no risk to me."

Finn opened his mouth to object, but I made a sign to him to hold his tongue.

"If that's what you must do," I told the armorer, "I'll go with you willingly."

The armorer laughed. "Brave little thing," he said to Finn. Then he turned back to me. "I owe no one here my loyalty. They make use of my skill, and in exchange they provide me with what I need to live and little more. As you can see, I have no one to keep my house or cook for me, so the mighty allow me to beg for scraps at their kitchen door. At suppertime I'll take you there, and we'll see what can be done."

The three of us approached the kitchen by a narrow lane that ran along the back of Elen's house. Though the building was large enough to be seen from everywhere in the village, I never did get a good look at the front of it. Only those who enjoyed the freedom of the house approached its front door. It was they whom the armorer referred to as the mighty, the warriors of the household and those who commanded them -- Elen, of course, and her counselors.

In Elen's house the common folk were unwelcome among the mighty. They were given grudging admittance only at the back door, where they were allowed no farther than the yard behind the kitchens. Many of the common folk depended on Elen's generosity. At least half a hundred joined us at the kitchen door. The yard was filthy, and there were neither benches nor tables where we could sit and eat like persons of dignity. With our plates balanced on our knees, we had to sit cross-legged on the ground, which was strewn with kitchen garbage and animal droppings.

All around me the only tongue I heard was the language spoken by Finn's people. Knowing a little of the history of the place, I believed it to be the language of Elen's people too, until I heard someone say, "We need a dozen more. See that their hands are clean," spoken in something resembling my own tongue.

I had no time to ask my companions for an explanation. A woman wearing a cook's apron approached and rapped me on the shoulder with a wooden spoon.

"Get along inside, then," she said, and when I made no move to get up, she added, "Meat from the king's table for your friends. Hurry up."

"Go on, boy," said Finn. "Isn't this what you wanted?"

I stared at him, not knowing what he meant.

"Forgive the lad," Finn said to the cook. "He was just telling me how he longed to see the grandeur of the king's great hall." He elbowed me. "Go make yourself useful among your betters."

I set my half-eaten supper aside and, along with several others, followed the cook into the kitchen. Someone tossed me a basket filled with loaves of bread and gave me a shove in the direction of an inner doorway, where I joined a stream of servants carrying an assortment of baskets, platters, bowls, and tankards into the great hall.

Inside the hall the noise made my ears ache. Hands reached out and snatched the loaves from my basket as I passed. When it was empty, I started back to the kitchen for more. While I waited by the kitchen doorway as another group of servants brought in their trays and tankards, I took the opportunity to look around me.

Elen's great hall was large enough for Merin's to fit within it twice over, and if Merin's hall held a hundred warriors and their companions, Elen's must hold three times as many. The tables stood so close together that it was difficult to thread one's way between them, and the servants carrying tankards of ale were so jostled that as much ale ended on the floor as in the warriors' cups.

I stood there a little longer than I should have, until a serving boy took my wrist and pulled me with him back into the kitchen. I made several trips more before I discovered, in the midst of the commotion, the high table where Elen herself presided. While Merin's table stood at one end of her great hall and a little apart from the others, so that she could see and be seen by everyone, Elen's table was at the center of the hall surrounded by tables packed with warriors in full armor, as if even here she needed their protection.

I knew Elen by the chair in which she sat, elaborately carved as a queen's chair should be, and with a high back of solid wood, strong against both drafts and treachery. I knew her too by the empty chair beside it, the king's chair, larger and more grand. That it stood empty told me much. While Elen's power depended on the absence of the king, the presence of his chair betrayed its limits. If I had been Elen, I would have sat in the king's chair myself.

At first I couldn't see her face. She wore a heavy robe, deep red in color, with a hood that covered her hair, and she was speaking with someone at the far end of the table, so that her face was turned away from me. I was about to try to work my way over to a place where I could see her better, when a servant beside me dropped a platter that shattered on the stone floor. The noise made me jump, but no one else paid much attention. Perhaps dropped platters were a common occurrence here, or perhaps few had heard it over the din.

Elen had heard it. When I glanced back at the high table, her eyes met mine and lingered for a moment before they went on to search for the source of the disturbance. How can I describe her? It would not be enough to call her merely beautiful. Wide-open eyes of startling blue gazed at me from a face whose every feature was at the same time both delicate and strong. Under her dark hood lay a crown of golden hair, gleaming in the lamplight. No crown of gold could have become her more.

Two adversaries contended with each other in my heart -- admiration and despair. It was impossible not to admire her. Her delicate beauty and the strength it could not conceal, the intelligence in her bright eyes, her calm demeanor, the charm of her attention, would have appeased a demon bent on her destruction. Her brief gaze worked its charm on me. Her smile of forgiveness to the servant who dropped the platter made me long to have been the one who'd dropped it. The despair I didn't understand until I faced my growing fear that this woman was worth loving, so that love once given could not easily be taken back. Maara must love her still.

A sharp rap on the back of my head sent my thoughts flying.