The Tale of Oriel (49 page)

“The Inn, the Falcon's Wing, is in the Earl's particular gift. The Innkeepers at the Falcon's Wing—this was long ago, long, long ago—were chosen by the Earl himself, as the story is told. The same family has had the Inn ever since, from father to eldest son. The village, being attached to the Inn, lies also in the Earl's gift, not Yaegar's. The holding where I live was given by the Earl Sutherland in perpetuity to my father—or perhaps it was my mother, and we do not ask why. There is a paper in a leather tube and its seal is the Earl's seal, so the gift was made, as I must think. The village has some sixteen families in it, fishermen—for the Inn lies up against the river—and a blacksmith, herdsmen whose pigs root in the forest and grow fat, a few farmers who have cleared fields . . . a weaver, a butcher . . . it is the last village of the Kingdom, isolated. Unprotected.”

“How far off does the Inn lie? For mounted soldiers,” Griff asked.

“Perhaps a day? perhaps less, at a good pace,” the man said.

Griff had two questions, before he left the man to the business of caring for his people. “Do you think Tintage and his men are at the Inn?”

“I know they are. Once my people were safely away I went back, to find out what I could, to help if I could. The Innkeeper at the Falcon's Wing would not have given over his house without a fight, nor would his sons. Aye, and his women, too.” The man smiled at the thought. “The women of the Falcon's Wing have never been mollycoddles.” His smile faded and he asked, “Let me ride with you, my lord. I have no hope—for the Inn was filled with the sounds of men celebrating, and the Innyard may have been heaped with bodies that it was too dark for me to see—but should there be any man or woman living, a familiar face would ease—”

“No.” Griff forbade it and the man didn't question him. “Was the lady Merlis riding with Tintage?”

“I saw no lady. I heard of none. I think they had found the barrels of wine and ale, so I think they will be sodden with food and drink—unless the soldiers can keep some kind of order, which I think they cannot. I can't think, my lord,” the man said.

“Then rest,” Griff said. “We will do what can be done. I would have word with your niece, who has most recent knowledge of the disposition of things at the Inn.”

“I'll send her,” the man said. “What can I tell my people?”

“That we ride against Tintage,” Griff said. “Can you ask them to await the outcome here? We have Yaegar and his sons in custody, as you see, and the city will send out stores—”

“We can wait. Ours will be the easy part,” the man said.

“No part is easy,” Griff answered as he thought. It seemed to him that all the parts were necessary, so it didn't matter if they seemed easy or hard to the puppets who played them.

He called Verilan and Wardel to him, leaving Yaegar and his sons sitting bound on the ground within a guard of soldiers, near to a fire that burned against the approaching night, so that the prisoners could be easily seen from the city walls. The soldiers had been given orders to kill all four, first, at any sign of attack. But there was no sign of attempt to rescue; the city gate had been lowered and its walls were lined with citizens, who awaited the outcome of events before they might decide their loyalties.

Griff told his two captains what he had learned from the Major.

“We must move swiftly,” Verilan said. “If we are swift—”

“I'm of the same mind,” Wardel agreed.

“Can the horses travel by night?” Griff asked.

“If we have luck in the weather,” Wardel answered. “Verilan, what's your mind?”

“My mind's as yours. If Tintage holds this Inn, where can we gather for an attack? Does anyone know the way the land—?”

“For we need a plan,” Griff realized. “If we speed there with all possible haste and come upon them by surprise, it were well to know what we will do then. Beryl knows the Inn,” he said, for she approached them, then, wearing a brown cloak, with her hair neither loose like a lady nor wound around her ears like a woman of the people. Her hair was the color of leaves in autumn and was twisted into a long braid that hung down her back. “Beryl is of known loyalty,” Griff said, introducing her to the two men.

“Lady,” Verilan said, and bowed over her hand. “I give you greeting.”

Beryl's smile was mischievous, and temporarily drove the sorrow from her eyes. When Wardel greeted her in the same manner she didn't correct him, either, and Griff did no more than note their courtesy. For there was immediate business before the four. “Can you tell us about the Inn?” Griff asked.

“The Falcon's Wing? You need to know how it's situated, is that it? I can draw it on the ground, that will show you best.” Beryl didn't hesitate and didn't draw modestly back.

All four bent over her rough map.

“Attack from the forest,” Verilan advised. “They'll least expect that.”

“In two prongs?” Wardel asked. His fingers pointed, to the kitchen doorway, leading to the yard, and the main doorway into the Inn, facing the river.

Griff wondered, “Wouldn't a fight in the open be more in our favor, since we have such an advantage of numbers? since we have horses, and skilled soldiers? If we could lure them out—”

“Or drive them out,” Verilan said. “If a smaller force attacks from the barn side, and catches them unaware.”

“With the larger force waiting in the trees, hidden. So that, if the first attack succeeds and they flee out to the meadow, they can be surrounded.” Wardel's eyes lit up with the idea.

“And if the first attack fails, then we can fight our way in from two sides,” Verilan agreed.

“You'll try first for an open battle?” Beryl asked, “and that failing, to trap them within the Inn?”

“I think that is our plan,” Griff said, and the other two agreed. “Tintage must be taken.”

“Do we care if he is taken alive?” Verilan asked.

“We do whatever our best safety lies in,” Griff decided without hesitation. “He has broken the terms of banishment so the law permits us whatever necessity requires.”

“If we leave now, soon—and travel quickly, while the light holds, and then more slowly through darkness—we might even surprise them before dawn,” Verilan said.

“No battles are fought without light,” Wardel protested.

“No battles have ever before been broached without light,” Verilan argued, “and so I think that this battle might go quickly if we dare to begin by darkness.”

“But our honor—”

“Maugre honor, when you deal with a murderer,” Griff said.

“And traitors,” Verilan said.

“We travel this night,” Griff decided.

Wardel wasn't unhappy to be overruled. He and Verilan went off together to get the soldiers ready.

“Is it true,” Beryl asked Griff, as he gave her his hand to help her to her feet, overbalanced as she was with the weight of the babe, “that he was struck in the back by this Tintage?”

Her eyes were as dark and deep as the sea. “Aye, it is true. He named me heir.”

“Will you wed the lady?” she asked him.

“The lady is a traitor, twice over,” Griff said. At the sound of something in his voice, she reached her hand to him. Then she drew it back. “And she is unworthy,” Griff said.

“Not everyone must see in Oriel all that you saw,” Beryl chided him. “As I did,” she added, and then added again, “as did most of the world. Aye, Griff, she is unworthy.”

Wardel came up then to ask him to charge the soldiers who guarded Yaegar and his sons. “If you ask it of them yourself, Griff, they will not fail their word.”

“Why should that be so?” Griff wondered.

“In part for Oriel, for his honor, as all who saw him knew it. In part for you, for the soldiers have ridden with you these many days, and seen how you endure, and they will trust you. In part because they will want you to know that you can trust
them
.”

A longing for Oriel drove through Griff like a sword. He almost could not answer Wardel, and he turned away from Beryl. “I'll do as you advise,” he said, because there was no use to saying anything else. He watched Beryl return to her uncle's family, the long braid swinging down the back of her cloak, with a few curls escaping its restraint. But he couldn't dwell on loss, or longing, or waste, or even revenge. There was a battle to be ridden toward, and fought. He approached the guards, to give them instruction.

“We ride to meet Tintage,” and Griff repeated their orders for the keeping or killing of the prisoners.

One of the soldiers, a youth of perhaps fifteen summers, stepped forward. “Sir?”

His companions pulled at him, but he shook off their hands.

“Let me ride with you, my lord Earl. I am ready for battle, and who knows how long it will be until the next.”

Griff could have laughed.

“And there must be a man in your troop who doesn't wish to chance his life,” the youth continued boldly. “Someone who would choose to stay guard here if he could. Wouldn't I make the better soldier for you, that longs to bring a traitor to justice?”

Griff would have denied him, for his youth and his boldness, but he gave the lad the choice he wanted. “Your name?” he asked.

“Reid,” the lad answered. “Do you give permission, sir? If I can find someone to change places with me?”

“Against my advice,” Griff said.

Reid respected that, but was undeterred. “Thank you, sir. Thank you, I—”

“But hurry,” Griff interrupted him.

WHILE THE LIGHT LASTED, THEY
rode hard. This was an old forest, with thick-trunked trees and branches tangled overhead. Close to the city, the forest had been cleared of fallen trees and branches, the wood taken for fuel, so the horses could step safely. As darkness came over them, they spread out single file. Riding through the thick blackness of forest night, Griff followed his own breath, which rose like sea smoke, and thought his own thoughts. The sky was still black when Wardel, who rode vanguard, halted.

“The Inn's ahead. We will need some little light, for the men don't know the terrain. You can't ask men to fight when they can't see, especially men on horseback.”

“Yes,” Verilan agreed. “But at first light.”

“I want to parley first,” Griff told them, which was where his thoughts during the nightlong ride had tended.

Their three horses stood quietly, halted. Behind him, mixed in with the creaking and scraping of branches and the whispering of leaves, Griff could hear his soldiers waiting—the shifting legs of horses and the creaking of leather, the muffled jingle of metal and the low sounds of men questioning their neighbors.

“Parley why?” Verilan asked.

The two faces of his Captains were blurred in the darkness.

“To offer the chance of surrender, and the chance of amnesty.”

“But he's a traitor and has broken the terms of his banishment,” Verilan protested impatiently.

“Not amnesty for Tintage,” Griff said. “But for the men who ride with him, if they can be tempted to desert him.”

“If some surrendered, it would dispirit the others,” Wardel observed.

“Added to our greater numbers, and they trained soldiers,” Verilan agreed. “But, Griff, you will be in danger.”

Griff didn't argue that point. “I can prove my courage, in a dim light where I don't make an easy target, on an occasion where only one of the enemy has everything to lose. For the rest will consider the offer, to measure their own advantage,” he pointed out.

“That's true.”

“He wears armor.”

“So did Oriel. It's not safe.”

“Let me offer the parley, my lord,” Wardel volunteered.

“Or let me.”

“Do any doubt your courage, either one of you?” Griff inquired. “Are either of you unproved?”

Wardel saw his point. “Nor are you unproved,” he declared.

“I know that,” Griff said. “Oriel knew it, and you do because I have told you so and you take my word. But,” Griff explained, “the world needs to see it, just the once, and never again as I hope.”

“If you do that, if you trumpet your presence and call Tintage to parley, that will distract all in the house as we move the first attack into place,” Verilan realized.

“Yes,” Griff said. “For I think we must be quick and cruel.” This also he had been thinking of, through the night. “We are likely to win, be the battle long or short, and shorter will shed less blood. Let no man hold his hand when once the battle starts.”

“No prisoners?” Wardel asked.

Griff answered, “It troubles me, but it's our swiftest way. It troubles me, but we don't have the chance to try both ways. We can take only one way, and then let the events work themselves out. So that is my choice, unless you overrule me.”

“Not I,” Verilan said.