A Princess of the Chameln (16 page)

Aidris was ashamed to have fought in this childish way, even for Telavel's sore place. Any way she looked at it, behind bars for instance, with a loose tooth and swelling eye, it was a tactical error. She was the shortest and lightest of all the kedran. She was also Aidris Am Firn, and she had not endured attack and pursuit to break her arm or her head in the stableyard at Kerrick Hall. Ortwen made her give it out that she would not fight or take part in “single combat” because of a vow made to her family. It was a notion the kedran understood; they were full of promises, vows, magical compacts.

Towards the end of breakfast, as was usual on a feast day, Megan Brock, the captain, came in attended by her two lieutenants, to give the order of the escort. She was a tall, grizzled woman of fifty with a long, livid scar on her left cheek. Aidris remembered the first time she stood in the stableyard, unsaddling Telavel.

A man-at-arms had shouted out some jeering words on the order of “What d'ye call that . . . a pony or a wee grey dog?” A voice, resonant as brass, rang through the yard.

“What's with you all, bloody clodhoppers? Have you never seen a Chameln grey?”

Then the captain had looked Aidris herself up and down. Her blue eyes were bright and cold. They pierced every disguise, they saw into the lazy good-for-nothing soul of every kern and kedran on the Goddess's good earth. Aidris felt that she was known at once.

“Venn?
Kedran
Venn?”

“I have called myself kedran on the way into Athron,” said Aidris, “but I have done no more than a few months training.”

“Weapons?”

“The bow. A little sword play.”

“Drill?”

“Mounted drill. A little.”

“What news of my old comrade Jana Am Wetzerik?”

“She is the general now.”

“Where did you do this bit of training, Venn?”

“With the palace guard . . .”

It was a slip. Megan Brock did not ask, “Which palace?”

“Let me guess.” She smiled. “The palace of the Firn.”

“Yes, Captain.”

She felt the captain's eye upon her ever afterwards. When drill and dressage and the management of her gear became difficult, she heard the brazen shout of “
Venn
!” in her dreams. She was accused of being a favorite, one of Brock's pet lambs. For more than half a year she felt driven, put upon, singled out unpleasantly.

There were differences between herself and the other kedran that she could not hide and had never thought about. She was put in with ensigns, the cadet-officers, for “benchwork,” because she could read, write and cypher. She was put on the lists for scribe duty with the two overworked scribe sergeants when it transpired that she could write straight-letter. She managed to hide the fact that she knew runes. She learned quickly not to answer more than once or twice when Megan Brock held a class on soldiering, on warriors of old time.

The kedran of Kerrick Hall were mostly farmers' daughters working for their dowries; they signed on for a four-year term, then went home. A few stayed for eight or even ten years and became ensigns or sergeants. There were no more than a dozen “true kedran” in ten companies, and they were veterans, mercenaries, from Cayl or Eildon or the Chyrian coast in the west of Mel'Nir. The five companies of men-at-arms were more equally divided: half of them were veterans, half farm boys or the sons of smaller landholders. There was no fighting to be done; this was not Mel'Nir, where turbulent warlords challenged the power of the Great King. It was not even the Chameln lands, where tribal disputes sometimes flared, where brigands lurked in the mountains, and where, of late, the rulers had needed protection.

The captain read off the escort order; the kedran and men-at-arms sighed a little; Aidris listened to the din of spoons and platters. She was in Athron, in the muster hall, in her company; she was safe, she was invisible. She was lost and far from her native land. So it would go forever: the round of the seasons and their festivals, turning slowly as the earth turned. Erran Eve, with dancing; bonfires at Midsummer; singing for Carachmoon; torchlights at harvest. She would grow grey as Megan Brock here in the service of Lord Huw Kerrick. She would die here, and they might find her sword at the bottom of her clothes press and wonder what talisman she had been hiding.

“Doan look so glum,” murmured Ortwen. “We're leading off. You'll ride with your precious house folk all day long. It's a soft duty. We'll eat well and have a chance to tread the dance floor.”

Riding to the dancing floor, Grey Company,—three dappled, one flea-bitten and one Chameln grey—crossed a wide meadow to the banks of the Flume. At a word from Lady Aumerl, ranks were quickly broken, and the ladies and gentlemen mingled with the kedran. Aidris, at the head of the troop, on lovely Telavel, two to three hands smaller than the other greys, found herself riding between two tall horses. A wind ruffled the grasses of the river meadow, and she was shaken by memory. She looked to her left and saw Lord Huw Kerrick, that still, dark-eyed man who had brought the Carach tree back to Athron.

“Will you go questing, Kedran Venn?” He smiled. “Your grey steps out so boldly!”

“Not I, my lord,” she answered. “I am not one to look for adventure!”

There was a laugh from Lady Aumerl, on her right, riding astride in a high-backed saddle, as was the custom for Athron women. She was full-figured now, but handsome, with dark brows and firm red cheeks. It was not hard to think of these two as young lovers, riding on the many quests they were supposed to have undertaken.

“I think you hold questing for mere foolishness, Kedran Venn,” she said.

“Ah, my lady,” said Aidris, “I am not so churlish. I have much reason to be grateful that Sir Gerr went questing into the Chameln lands.”

“I rode this way on a quest once,” said Lord Huw, “and the one who rode at my side raced off, from about this old alder stump, just ahead, clear to the bridge, yonder.”

“Race again!” said Lady Aumerl, “but let the kedran take my place. I will set ten florins and a firkin of wine for Grey Company on this sweet Chameln greyhound.”

“What, against my Fireberry?” cried Lord Huw.

So the wager was made, because Gerr of Kerrick, riding behind with Sabeth, heard it all and Sergeant Lawlor winked at Aidris. Fireberry, full sister to Firedrake, was fast enough; Telavel was unproven to all but a few. Aidris felt herself more or less in the spirit of the thing; bets were laid, and the sergeant acted as starter.

Then Aidris whispered to Telavel, feeling a sudden desire to win the race, as Fireberry drew away. The grey set back her dark ears, and they were gone, over the soft, magical turf of Athron. She thought of the silver grass of the plain, endless, and the locks of hair, high on the spirit trees. Then she was at the bridge; she heard a cheer from Grey Company as Fireberry came up behind her.

“A greyhound?” cried Lord Huw. “That little mare is the wind itself! Is she only a sprinter? How does she go over distances?”

“The Chameln greys are meant to be stayers,” said Aidris. “They are bred for the plains.”

They got down and walked their horses to the dance floor as the rest of the party came up. She was hailed as the winner and given ten florins for a race well run; she thought of her birthday. Then with Grey Company, she went to where their horses were tethered and stood watching the dance with Ortwen. Now that the party from Kerrick Hall had arrived, more and more country folk streamed across the bridge over the Flume to stand by the dancing floor.

It was a maze marked out on the ground with fences of dried grass and fresh wildflowers, knee-high to the dancers. In the center was a high mound of earth covered with white blossom; it put Aidris in mind of a grave. She shuddered when five village men in green, with bells on their ankles, threaded the maze to the sound of tabor and bagpipe, then circled the mound until a pretty girl, decked with red ribbons, rose up from out of the flowers.

“What villages are those across the river?” she asked Ortwen.

“Lower down is Greenbank,” said Ortwen, “what used to be Lower Stayn. Stayn is just across the bridge. Right there, looking over the fence . . . that's the Fair Maid.”

Aidris laughed aloud. A black and white cow crowned with flowers stared moodily across the river.

“Now see . . .” said Ortwen. “Here's another dance for the day.”

A young man threaded the maze in a white cloak, and when he came to the center, he turned his cloak and showed that it was all streaked with bright red. He lay down upon the mound of flowers; the dancer was Gerr of Kerrick.

Aidris gave a shocked whisper, “Is he meant to be dead?”

“Not for long,” said Ortwen cheerfully. “See—the ladies will try to wake him.”

Three waiting women from the Hall and three village maidens threaded the maze from different directions. They came to the center and bent down in turn to kiss the sleeper.

“No prizes for guessing his favorite,” said Ortwen. “My troth, what a harvest that sir knight made when he found you and her both in the mountain passes.”

Sure enough, when Sabeth kissed the sleeping lord of the dance, he woke straightaway. The music of pipe, tabor, dulcimer and flute rang out bravely as they threaded the maze together.

“That will be a match!” said Ortwen. “Depend upon it.”

“I hope so,” said Aidris.

But the ceremony was unsettling. She remembered how the northern tribes forbade the wearing of certain mourning bands, even in play. A pretended death would have shocked them unutterably. And she knew that the risen lord of the dance was a figure from the dark past of the Goddess's reign, in many ages since the making of the world. The young king or his chosen slave was murdered; blood was spilled indeed, for a sacrifice. In Athron they even played at magic.

So she came into Lindenmoon—in the Chameln land it was Elmmoon—in her eighteenth year and let the round of the seasons take her. It was as if part of her mind was sleeping, as if one Aidris pined and waited in some secret place while the other went about as a kedran. She found herself asking, as the other kedran did, “What year was that?” When did we ride to Benna with the wheat, to Parnin as the lord's escort? When did Hanni become ensign? When did poor Bertilde get herself into trouble with Sergeant Sterk and marry out of the troop? When did little Venn come down with measles, cow-pox and mumps, things every Athron child had before its tenth year?

During the days of the winter feast the barracks were emptied of all but a few kedran veterans. The younger kedran and men-at-arms went to their home towns and villages; the older men were married and did not live in quarters but in cottages on the estate. Lord Huw freely invited those remaining to live in the Hall until after New Year, but the older women went up only for a couple of nights' feasting, then stayed in the barracks, celebrating in their own way.

“Go along, lass,” said Sergeant Lawlor to Aidris. “You have a sweet friend up in the house. You doan want to stay here boozing with the old companions.”

The sergeant was one of the ugliest women she had ever seen, Aidris decided upon first view, with long arms, a thick neck, eyes like black beads set in a face of crumpled brown leather . . . a walking reminder of that piece of homely wisdom that said a kedran was one that none would take to wife. Yet in a year or two or three she found herself astonished when a new recruit whispered, “My Goddess, yon Lawlor's face would turn the milk sour . . .”

“What would you have,” snapped Aidris Venn, the kedran, “a kind and patient officer or a pretty one?”

Every year then she looked forward to her days in the Hall; Nenad Am Charn sent a big New Year's gift box of delicacies and presents from the Chameln lands for herself and Sabeth. One winter's night she met the young messenger from Varda lurking about in the passageway by the Hall kitchen, having delivered the box. He gave her a packet of letters.

She ran shivering up a little winding “secret” stair and took a candle into a window bay near the bright south bower where the fire was lit and the musicians played songs for the season. She sat hunched against the cold, mullioned windowpanes, broke the seal and saw Nazran's handwriting. He wrote without signature or superscription; it was a long dispatch rather than a letter:

Werris makes no pretence of holding the north, he has not the forces to do it, his envoys and commissioners are mocked and harried and put to flight by the loyal tribes. It is a matter of Achamar and the south and the west. If the so-called Great King is hard-pressed by his own unruly subject lords, and if the garrisons and the households of the southern landholders are reduced in the Chameln lands, then there is real hope for our enterprise of arms. The spark will fall upon dry grass and the countryside will be ablaze from end to end, calling for the return of its true rulers and an end to the domination of Mel'Nir.

There was more in a similar vein, every line burning with hope. Aidris could almost hear the rattle of preparation, the storing of arms, the work of blacksmiths in the night. Then the screed continued:

Yet I must tell you of what is painfully rumored hereabout, of Werris's plan and of those others who are rumored to support this most treacherous shift. The Daindru shall be broken and Sharn Am Zor will rule alone. Kelen of Lien and his advisors will stand by this foul act in exchange for bounties, especially the gift of a slice of rich mining land in or near the Adz. I cannot learn with certainty what Danu Aravel feels in this matter, whether her judgement and wits are clouded or whether she bends to her brother's will. The prince himself was ever of good understanding, most forward and, as I have heard, tenacious of his rights. Do you, therefore, write to him most plainly, and our faithful envoy will see that it comes directly into his hand. Give some proof that Dan Sharn will recognise so that he will know who it is that writes to him, for it is often said that the Heir of the Firn is dead and will not come again. Do not be so bold, however, as to reveal any hint of your present refuge, lest the letter miscarry.