Wizards’ Worlds (5 page)

Her first prayer would be answered. The coming child would be only of her, taking
naught from her ravisher. And the destiny for it was auspicious. But, though she waited,
there was no second answer. The great One—was gone! But Elfreda was still with her,
and Hertha turned to her quickly:

“What of my need for justice?”

“Vengeance is not of the Lady.” Elfreda shook her veiled head. “She is life, not death.
Since you have chosen to give life, she will aid you in that. For the rest—you must
walk another road. But—do not take it, my love—for out of darkness comes even greater
dark.”

Then Hertha lost Elfreda also and there was nothing, only the memory of what happened
in that place. So she fell into deeper slumber where no dreams walked.

She awoke, how much later she never knew. But she was renewed in mind and body, feeling
as if some leechcraft had been at work during her rest, banishing all ills. There
was no more smoke rising from the braziers, the scent of flowers was faint.

When she arose from the couch she knelt before the pillar, bowing her head, giving
thanks. Yet still in her worked her second desire, in nowise lessened by Elfreda’s
warning.

In the outer room there was again food and drink waiting. And she ate and drank before
she went forth from Gunnora’s house. There was no kin far or near she might take refuge
with. Kuno had made loud her shame when he sent her forth. She had a few bits of jewelry,
none of worth, sewn into her girdle, some pieces of trade money. Beyond that she had
only a housewife’s skills, and those not of the common sort, rather the distilling
of herbs, the making of ointments, the fine sewing of a lady’s teaching. She could
read, write, sing a stave—none of these arts conducive to the earning of one’s bread.

Yet her spirit refused to be darkened by hard facts. From her waking that sense of
things about to come right held. And she thought it best that she limit the future
to one day ahead at a time.

In the direction she now faced lay two holdings. Nordendale was the first. It was
small and perhaps in a state of disorder. The lord of the dale and his heir had both
fallen at the battle of Ruther’s Pass, two years gone. Who kept order there now, if
there was any who ruled, she did not know. Beyond that lay Grimmerdale.

Grimmerdale! Hertha set down the goblet from which she had drained the last drop.
Grimmerdale—

Just as the shrine of Gunnora was among the heights near the ancient road, so did
Grimmerdale have a place of mystery. But no kind and welcoming one if rumor spoke
true. Not of her race at all, but one as old as the ridge road. In fact perhaps that
road had first been cut to run there.

Hertha tried to recall all she had heard of Grimmerdale. Somewhere in the heights
there was the Circle of the Toads. Men had gone there, asked for certain things. By
ill report they had received all they asked for.
What had Elfreda warned—that Gunnora did not grant death, that one must follow another
path to find that. Grimmerdale might be the answer.

She looked about her, almost in challenge, half expecting to feel condemnation in
the air of the room. But there was nothing.

“For the feast, my thanks,” she spoke the guesting words, “for the roof, my blessing,
for the future all good, as I take my road again.”

She fastened the throat latch of her cloak, drew the hood over her head. Then with
bundle in one hand and spear in the other, she went out into the light of day, her
face to the ridges behind which lay Grimmerdale.

On the final slope above Nordendale she paused in the afternoon to study the small
settlement below. It was inhabited, there was a curl of smoke from more than one chimney,
the marks of sleds, foot prints in the snow. But the tower keep showed no such signs
of life.

How far ahead still lay Grimmerdale she did not know, and night came early in the
winter. One of those cottages below was larger than the rest. Nordendale had once
been a regular halt for herdsmen with wool from mountain sheep on their way to the
market at Komm High. That market was of the past, but the inn might still abide, at
least be willing to give her shelter.

She was breathing hard when she trudged into the slush of the road below. But she
had been right: over the door of the largest cottage hung a wind-battered board, its
painted device long weathered away but still proclaiming this an inn. She made for
that, passing a couple of men on the way. They stared at her as if she were a firedrake
or wyvern. Strangers must be few in Nordendale.

The smell of food, sour village ale, and too many people too long in an unaired space
was like a smothering fog as she came into the common room. At one end was a wide
hearth, large enough to take a good-sized log, and fire burned there, giving off a
goodly heat.

A trestle table with flanking benches, a smaller table stacked with tankards and settles
by the hearth were the only furnishing. As Hertha entered, a wench in a stained smock
and kirtle and two men on a hearth settle turned and started with the same astonishment
she had seen without.

She pushed back her hood and looked back at them with that belief in herself which
was her heritage.

“Good fortune to this house.”

For a moment they made no answer at all, seemingly too taken aback at seeing a stranger
to speak. Then the maidservant came forward, wiping her hands on her already well-besplattered
apron.

“Good fortune"—her eyes were busy taking in the fine material of Hertha’s cloak, her
air of ease—"lady. How may we serve you?”

“With food, a bed—if such you have.”

“Food—food we have, but it be plain, coarse feeding, lady,” the girl stammered. “Let
me but call mistress—”

She ran to an inner door, bolting through it as if Hertha was minded to pursue her.

But she rather laid aside her spear and bundle, threw back the edges of her cloak
and went to stand before the hearth, pulling with her teeth at mitten fastenings,
to bare her chilled hands. The men hunched away along the settle, mum-mouthed and
still staring.

Hertha had thought her clothing plain. She wore one of the divided riding skirts,
cut shorter for the scrambling up and down of hills, and it was now shabby and much
worn, yet very serviceable. There was an embroidered edge on her jerkin, but no wider
than some farm daughter might have. And her hair was tight braided, with no band of
ribbon or silver to hold it so. Yet she might be clad in some festival finery the
way they looked upon her. And she stood as impassive as she could under their stares.

A woman wearing the close coif of a matron, a loose shawl about her bent shoulders,
a kirtle but little cleaner
than the maid’s, looped up about her wide hips and thick thighs, bustled in.

“Welcome, my lady. Thrice welcome! Up you, Henkin, Sim, let the lady to the fire!”
The men pushed away in a hurry at her ordering. “Malka says you would bid the night.
This roof is honored.”

“I give thanks.”

“Your man—outside? We have stabling—”

Hertha shook her head. “I journey alone and on foot.” At the look on the woman’s face
she added, “In these days we take what fortune offers, we do not always please ourselves.”

“Alas, lady, that is true speaking if such ever came to ear! Sit you down!” She jerked
off her shawl and used it to dust along the settle.

Later, in a bed spread with coverings fire-warmed, in a room which manifestly had
been shut up for some time, Hertha lay in what comfort such a place could offer and
mused over what she had learned from her hostess.

As she had heard, Nordendale had fallen on dreary times. Along with their lord and
his heir, most of their able-bodied men had been slain. Those who survived and drifted
back lacked leadership and had done little to restore what had been a prosperous village.
There were very few travelers along the road, she had been the first since winter
closed in. Things were supposed to be somewhat better in the east and south, and her
tale of going to kinsmen there had seemed plausible to those below.

Better still she had news of Grimmerdale. There was another inn there, a larger place,
with more patronage, which the mistress here spoke of wistfully. An east-west road,
now seeing much travel with levies going home, ran there. But the innkeeper had a
wife who could not keep serving-maids, being of jealous nature.

Of the Toads she dared not ask, and no one had volunteered such information, save
that the mistress here had warned against the taking farther of the Old Road,
saying it was better to keep to the highway. Though she admitted that was also dangerous
and it was well to be ready to take to the brush at the sighting of some travelers.

As yet Hertha had no more than the faint stirrings of a plan. But she was content
to wait before she shaped it more firmly.

T
HE
inn room was long but low, the crossbeams of its ceiling not far above the crown
of a tall man’s head. Smoking oil lamps hung on chains from those beams. But the light
they gave was both murky and limited. Only at the far corner, where a carven screen
afforded some privacy, were there tallow candles set out on a table. And the odor
of their burning added to the general smell of the room.

The room was crowded enough to loosen the thin-lipped mouth of Uletka Rory, whose
small eyes darted hither and yon, missing no detail of service or lack of service
as her two laboring slaves limped and scuttled between benches and stools. She herself
waited upon the candlelit table, a mark of favor. She knew high blood when she saw
it.

Not that in this case she was altogether right, in spite of her years of dealing with
travelers. One of the men there, yes, was the younger son of a dale lord. But his
family holding had long since vanished in the red tide of war, and no one was left
in Corriedale to name him master. One had been Master of Archers for another lord,
promoted hurriedly after three better men had been killed. And the third, well, he
was not one who talked, and neither of his present companions knew his past.

Of the three he was the middle in age. Though that, too, could not be easily guessed,
since he was one of those lean, spare-framed men who once they begin to sprout
beard hair can be any age from youth to middle years. Not that he went bearded now—his
chin and jaw were as smooth as if he had scraped them within the hour, displaying
along the jaw line the seam of a scar that drew a little at one corner of his lip.

He wore his hair cropped closer than most also, perhaps because of the heavy helm
now planted on the table at his right hand. That was battered enough to have served
through the war. And the crest it had once mounted was splintered down to a meaningless
knob, though the protective bowl was unbreached.

His mail shirt, under a scuffed and worn tabbard, was whole. And the plain-hiked sword
in his belt sheath, the war bow now resting against the wall at his back were the
well-kept tools of a professional. But if he was a mercenary he had not been successful
lately. He wore none of those fine buckles or studs which could be easily snapped
off to pay for food or lodging. Only when he put out his hand to take up his tankard
did the candlelight glint on something which was not dull steel or leather. For the
bowguard on his wrist was true treasure, a wide band of cunningly wrought gold set
with small colored stones, though the pattern of that design was so complicated that
to make anything of it required close study.

He sat now sober-faced, as if he were deep in thought, his eyes half-veiled by heavy
lids. But he was in truth listening, not so much to the half-drunken mumblings of
his companions, but to words arising here and there in the common room.

Most of those gathered there were either workers on the land come in to nurse an earthen
mug of home-brewed barley beer and exchange grumbles with their fellows, or else drifting
men-at-arms seeking employment now that their lords were dead or so ruined that they
had to release the men of their levies. The war was over, these were the victors.
But the land they returned to was barren, largely
devastated, and it would take much time and energy to win back prosperity for High
Hallack.

What the invaders from overseas had not early raped, looted for shiploads sent back
to their own lands, they had destroyed in a frenzy when the tide of war began to wash
them away. He had been with the war bands in the smoking port, sent to mop up desperate
enemies who had fallen back too late to find that their companions had taken off in
the last ships, leaving them to be ground between the men of the dales and the sullen
sea itself.

The smoke of the port had risen from piles of supplies set burning, oil poured over
them and torches set to the spoilage. The stench of it had been near enough to kill
a man. Having stripped the country bare—and this being the midwinter—the enemy had
made a last defiant gesture with that great fire. It would be a long cold line of
days before the coming of summer, and even then men would go pinched of belly until
harvest time—harvest if, that is, they could find enough grain to plant, if enough
sheep still roamed the upper dales and enough cattle, wild now, found forage in the
edges of the Waste to make a beginning of new flocks and herds.

Many dales had been swept clean of people. The men were dead in battle; the women
were fled inland, if they were lucky, or slaving for the invaders overseas—or dead
also. Perhaps those were the luckiest of all. Yes, there had been a great shaking
and leveling, sorting and spilling.

He had put down the tankard. Now his other hand went to that bowguard, turning it
about, though he did not look down at it, but rather stared at the screen and listened.

In such a time a man with boldness, and a plan, could begin a new life. That was what
had brought him inland, kept him from taking service with Fritigen of Summersdale.
Who would be Master of Archers when he could be more, much more?