A Hero's Tale (30 page)

"No mistakes," I murmured. I felt as if I had done nothing but make mistakes from first to last.

Bru frowned and looked down at his sword, which lay unsheathed across his lap. It seemed that he held it there more as a symbol of his authority than as a weapon. Its blade was clean.

"The easy road is to let the lad have her," he said. "After all, he has a right. He has this day witnessed the slaughter by her order of men he loved." Bru scratched his beard and looked at me. "I don't know why, but I am reluctant."

I think he expected me to persuade him to surrender Elen to her enemies. It was indeed the easy road. The young king had just cause against her, and her guilt was not in doubt. Let him ease his heart with her blood, while we kept our own hands unbloodied. Yet I shared Bru's reluctance.

Did I not wish her dead? Had I not that very day nearly plunged a knife into her heart? But I hadn't done it, and once the sting of my defeat had faded, I was glad. Although I had killed before, I had never in my life done murder, but that day I had come close to it. Blinded by my anger, I had almost done a thing I could not now justify. For all the suffering she'd caused, Elen deserved to suffer. Did she deserve to die? That was a question I couldn't answer.

I turned my thoughts to a more practical consideration.

"Elen won't surrender if she believes we're going to kill her anyway," I said. "She will force us to shed more blood before we can lay hands on her and put her to the sword."

"Yes," said Bru, "and that's why I've let her be. By some amazing bit of luck I have lost not one man in this endeavor. A few are hurt, but all are still living. The queen's men will fight to the death, and they will make our victory as costly as they can."

"Surely she is not worth the risk of even one life."

"Surely she is not," said Bru. "Yet there is another way." He glanced over at the young king. "That lad would not hesitate to lead his own men against her. He hasn't many left that are fit to fight, but he has enough." Then Bru gave me a look that had a hint of a challenge in it. "Did I not say there was an easy road?"

I saw it too. We need not risk the life of anyone we cared for. We could leave to the young king the task of bringing Elen to justice. By every law and custom, he had the right to take her life for the lives she had taken, and I knew what he did not, that Elen had killed his brother too, and by her own hand. Who had a greater right than he to deliver Elen to her fate? We had only to stand by and do nothing to prevent it.

Bru's words whispered themselves in my head.
What we do here will echo down the generations.
Of all the things that would echo down the generations, vengeance would echo loudest of all.

"Let us stop it here," I said. "The endless cycle of murder and revenge. Let us stop it here, today."

Bru's brow furrowed with doubt. "What then are we to do with her? Can we in conscience let her go and so loose her evil upon the world?"

"The world is already full of evil," I told him. "Though evil she may be, she has lost her power. She has no army. She has no home. If she has not the means to do us harm, we can safely let her go. The rest of the world will have to look after itself."

"And if someday she should regain her power and return to trouble us? Will we regret allowing her the opportunity, when we could have prevented it?"

"There is reason in your argument," I said, "but we might take a lesson from the stories of people who tried to prevent some future evil, and in the course of trying, caused the very evil they were trying to prevent."

Suddenly I felt Maara behind me. I felt her there even before she knelt down and touched my shoulder.

"Elen's guard will take the bear in to speak with her," said Maara. "What message shall I give him?"

She must mean the man I thought of as the bear shield chieftain.

"I have given Bru my opinion," I told her. "Whatever he decides, I will abide by it."

"And I will abide by Tamras's advice," said Bru. "Have him tell her she is free to go. She may take any of her men who wish to follow her, but she is to go now, today. That will give her a little time to outdistance a pursuit. In the morning I will give the king leave to gather the remnants of his army and go home, but he may take it into his head to follow her. As he is a free man who has done me no harm, I will do nothing to prevent it. She must take her chances with the world, as do we all."

Maara nodded and stood up. My eyes followed her until she had rejoined the bear shield chieftain.

"She wasn't surprised," said Bru.

"She knows me well," I said.

Bru chuckled. "She didn't see your eyes this morning. Still, I should have known what counsel you would give me."

Before Bru could explain himself, the young king's face captured my attention. His eyes were fixed on Maara, and a hatred burned in them that frightened me.

"May I speak with the king?" I asked Bru.

"Of course," said Bru. "I don't know how much of the common speech he understands. You might let him know what we have just decided."

I stared at the young man until he felt my eyes and met them.

"Do you understand the way I speak?" I asked him in the language of the mighty.

He nodded.

"How much blood will it take to ease your heart?" I asked him.

He gave me a sullen look and didn't answer.

"I have never understood how heart's ease can be bought with murder."

"Not murder," he replied. "Justice."

"Justice, do you call it? You came to Elen's house to see justice done. Have you seen it?" I gestured at the ruins of his encampment, at the bodies of the dead in full view of where we sat. "Is this the justice you expected?"

He frowned and looked away.

"And if you had received what you call justice, you would have conspired in a murder, because Maara is innocent."

His eyes came back to me. It was clear he didn't believe me, but he waited to hear what else I had to say on her behalf.

Although I knew it would only increase his determination to take revenge on Elen, I cared more about convincing him of Maara's innocence than about shielding Elen from his anger.

"On my word as on my life," I said, "this very day I heard the queen confess to murder. It was she who killed your brother and used her servant as a scapegoat."

A flicker of doubt came into his eyes.

"I have no other witness," I said. "If my sworn word does not convince you, then think it through yourself. Who stood to gain? Who stood to lose? Did Elen take a husband willingly, or did she do it to satisfy her own ambition? And once she had done it, was he not a hindrance to her?"

I watched him work it out in his own mind. I left it to him to take my argument to its conclusion, that if he had become her husband, he would have shared his brother's fate. If Elen had not betrayed him that very morning, he might not have given credit to my assertion of her guilt, but now he was disposed to think the worst of her.

The young king's face grew hard, so that he resembled the older man he would become. He started to stand up, but was prevented by a sword's tip set firmly upon on his shoulder. The men who guarded him were attentive to their duty.

"Her life belongs to me," he said. "Though somewhere among her clansmen you may find one willing to pay her ransom, I will pay you as much or more."

"We don't intend to hold her for ransom," I said. "We intend to let her go."

The young king sat quiet for a moment, while he tried to comprehend what I had told him. Then he looked at Bru. "What says your chieftain? What reason has he given?"

The young king had taken me for an underling, a go-between. For reasons of my own, for the first time I asserted my authority.

"Bru is not my lord," I said. "Though I may not look it, I am by right a chieftain in my own land. Bru is my friend, and my ally in this adventure, and we count among our friends these chieftains of the northern tribes. Today we are the mighty. Accept our terms, and we may begin to forge a friendship that in days to come will benefit us all."

"What are your terms?" he asked.

"Let vengeance go. Let Elen face the world alone, as she deserves no better. Let her discover the consequences of her failure."

He shook his head, but before he could refuse me, I said, "Accept this counsel from me as a gesture of my friendship."

"You take from me what is my right and call it friendship?" he replied. "Her deeds condemn her. You are her conqueror. What makes you now her champion?"

Had I become Elen's champion? I searched my own heart then for the anger I had felt toward her, for the desire to take revenge for the evil she had done. It was gone, not because I felt pity or compassion for her, but because Elen wasn't worth the trouble.

"For what she has done, I too condemn her," I said, "but I condemn her, not to the justice of humankind, which trails a host of new evils after it, but to the justice of the world."

"Then let the world beware," said the young king.

"Indeed," I said, "let us all beware. Let us take care not to yield to evil's power, because evil has no power but what we give it."

"I gave her nothing!"

"You believed her lie. How did I so easily convince you of her guilt? Was it not there to see by any who has eyes to see it? What blinded you? Was it not your anger, which too eagerly sought out a victim whose blood you hoped would ease your pain?"

"What do you know of my pain?" he asked me. "You would feel as I do, if she had taken someone dear to you."

"She very nearly did," I said, "and with your help and your consent. Do you believe I don't understand your heart? Let me assure you, that if my friends and I had not been able to save Maara's life, I would have taken Elen's life, and I would have hunted you and yours to death, heedless of the consequences." I stopped, to give him time to see in my eyes that if any harm should ever come to Maara, I would carry out my threat.

"If you have nothing else to live for," I said, "if you care nothing for this world or for any of the living, if you are willing to let a greater evil loose upon the earth, then take your revenge and waste your life and the lives of those you call upon to help you."

"You give me counsel you would not keep yourself," he said.

"That's true," I replied. "And I also give you your choice, and with your choice, the consequences. Elen will leave this camp today, as soon as we can be rid of her. You will have leave to go tomorrow morning. Follow her or not. It's up to you."

With nothing to lose but pride, Elen accepted our terms. When she emerged from her tent, I hoped to see a pathetic figure. Instead she was as defiant as ever. She saw me standing next to Bru and tossed a few insults at me, but I didn't feel the need to answer her, and they fell harmlessly away. Bru gave her a cart and oxen to draw it, so that she could travel in some comfort and seek refuge among her kinsmen as befits a queen.

Maara found other things to do until Elen and her guard, escorted by the bear shield chieftain, disappeared into the northern hills. Then she joined me at Bru's fire. I was glad to have her with me. Now that the decision had been made and carried out, I began to second-guess myself.

"What grief may come of this, I wonder," I whispered to her.

"What grief do you expect?" she asked.

"I don't know," I said. "I fear having done the wrong thing."

"Did it seem wrong to you when you did it?"

"No," I said. "It seemed the only road."

"Then trust yourself," she said.

Remembering that Maara too had cause against her, I said, "What would you have done with Elen?" Then, before she could remind me that neither life nor Bru nor I had asked her that question, I said, "What would you have felt if we had put her to the sword?"

"I would have been sorry," she replied.

"Why?"

"Because I remember her," she said. "I remember the young girl she once was. She had many faults, but she was not wicked then, or I would not have loved her."

Maara's words surprised me, but what surprised me more was that they aroused in me no jealousy. Not that I was cured of my besetting fault. I did not delude myself about that. I understood that Maara had loved the good in her, and loved it still, and that was as it should be.

The young king no longer sat with us by Bru's fire. Still guarded by Bru's men, he had been given leave to attend to his wounded and to the disposal of his dead. Bru gave him the use of several carts, to bear the corpses to the battlefield, where they would be sent to their gods on the funeral pyres.

Bru had his own men attend to Elen's dead, and they too were taken to be burned upon the pyres. Bru's men were also charged with gathering the bodies of the northern dead, while the northern chieftains had their warriors open up the earth, so that they could lay their friends within it, together in a common grave, as was the custom of the northern tribes.

Many of the mighty who belonged to Elen's house had chosen to go with her, but some, appalled by Elen's betrayal of the young king, asked to join his household. As they had not taken part in the slaughter, he accepted them.

Bru wanted me where he could find me, so I stayed by the council fire. Because Maara was fluent in both the language of the common folk and the language of the mighty, and able to make herself understood in the language of the northern tribes, Bru sent for her often. When her help was not required, I wanted her beside me, and when she moved about the camp, my eyes followed her.

"What's the matter?" she asked me once, when she returned to me. "Are you afraid I'll disappear?"

"Yes," I admitted. "I can hardly believe you're here at all."

She took my hand and squeezed it. "I know," she said. "I can hardly believe I'm here at all." She smiled. "Don't worry. We'll get used to it."

All around us the encampment rearranged itself. The young king moved his men from the ground where their blood had so recently been shed to the place left by Elen's warriors. Another section of the camp was given over to the northern army. Room had been made for them by the departure of many of the common folk, who had left earlier that day for the place once known as Elen's house, to secure it from attack. Bru considered it unlikely that Elen would try to return there, but he took prudent measures anyway, just in case. Finn had the foresight to send a storyteller with them, to prepare the people for their king's return.