The nineteen knights under Sir Hring of Krystila formed up before the gate alongside the bold Upani and such men trained in arms as they had in their households, and together they shoved open the doors, heavy and thick. The yard inside, long deserted by men who had care for it, offered its guests weeds and brambles. There were treasures there too, but not ones men and women like. For piles of straw were heaped high and deep, and in them was fruit gone to rot and skulls with white bones, most of animals small in size but not all.
Bats flew through windows in the keep and the turrets or rested in close rows under eaves like warlike men at their ease before the foe appears. Yet no bat was ever so big as they, or displeasing in its hide, which was mottled, or its smell, unless it were diseased. At the arrival through the gate of the owners of the castle, the bats which held the place without title left off from all else but watching the men to learn their purpose there.
The Upani moved in, slings ready in every hand to loose pest-troubling bullets should the bats not scatter at their coming alone, which was likely. Yet the beasts did not flee then, nor when stones flew to no good end, for the bats flew above them and dodged so deftly as to rob the effort of its harvest. The knights entered as well and raised their bows, those who had them, or picked up javelins and light darts. Sir Thurbert of Trilling, a man who knew birds, both the training and the hunting of them, pierced two or three bats with iron-tipped shafts, and no more. The others did worse against that enemy which flew cloudwards, groundwards, and refused to be hit or to leave the castle to the family that hoped to regain it. For the bats resumed their posts the moment the missiles ceased, unworried at what else land-walking men might do.
“We must withdraw,” Juliano said, and all agreed as far as their wit though their hearts were against it. All the households of that proud and ancient family and all those twenty knights retired, beaten.
Then Juliano desired to hear counsel. “As many days as there have been, there will be more yet, and no one will see all that is in them. We thought of brigands and robber knights, but not what now prevents us. Who knows something of those uncommon bats?”
None among the Upani made answer, but Sir Micah of Luros rose from his seat, which was his shield that had on it a deer of gold ringed by flames, and said this. “Camasotes are what they are called. They thrive where sorceries have been worked, for they feed on it along with their other prey, which is all under the sun that is smaller than they, or what is bigger if they are hungry and sure of triumphing. Simasoon, a name you may have heard for the fame that he has from his wisdom, told me of the vile camasot. He said also it were best that I avoid them and wait that they starve from lack of sorcery, and I am very sorry now that I did not ask more and have better advice for you.”
“Thank you, sir knight, and worry not. There is a story told of camasotes I know, but I never knew what they were before your words, and I am grateful for them. Father Eusebio knows the tale best, if I am not wrong.”
Juliano then asked for the priest of the family, Eusebio by name, who said this. “That story is told of King Gaspar, who ruled all this country that then was called Gaspriga and had much trouble for all the spirits and unearthly beasts in it. His queen was a spirit too, they say, till she learned religion and was saved thereby. In this part of his lands there were rocs, harpies, and camasotes that did such ill that none might live well here but only in a meager way, grabbing the fruits and riches of the earth that can be had without doing the long and hard work of seasons passed from father to son as a legacy of knowledge and skill. Gaspar the king traveled hither on a royal survey with a mind to learn whether some means there was to make these lands better for his people, as was ever his foremost purpose. He found a great winged beast, a peerless roamer of the fields above, but on the ground, wounded. The king stopped its bleeding and bade that Gabrielle his queen feed it by her own hand, and in that way soon the bird known as the saena revived in all its vigor and might, as much greater than its cousins as humility is more than pride. Then the rocs had their defeat, the harpies were quelled, and the camasotes fled the saena's talons and sharp beak so that the sky no longer had to bear the ugly weight of those beasts.
“Many and noble families claim King Gaspar as their ancestor, the Upani among them. Their line began with the son of the king, who put him over this domain and, more than that, entrusted to him the friendship of the saena. And it fell out that the lordly bird would take its food from the daughters of the Upani and no other person. From that time, this land fared as well as any until Viljami came and bested the saena, deeming it something he might use in his sorcery just as a sculptor sees his finished work in good marble not yet worked. He found in the end the goodness of the bird to hinder him, so that the wickedness of his sorcery was lessened by it. He left off from that and chained it where no man may reach to free it, and surely the saena lives no longer.”
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Publio the son of Denis said this, not daunted at all but cheered when he heard the deeds of his forebears and his noble heritage. “That would be true of a man or a woman. But of a king among birds such as that, the saena, what can we say without seeing ourselves?” And those were words the Upani liked to hear, and the knights even more, who never yielded to a foe without drawing their swords or gave up on a horse but that they rode it first.
All in the camp marched then, a village on the move, eastward whither the foul king boasted he had chained the saena in the years before Cuculna was built. There was neglect that way, for no straight path was cleared as to rocks and fallen trees whose rotted trunks fed mushrooms, and neither were crops of worth given favor over those less good. The land was of a fair seeming for all that, and the Upani, eager to own it, planned already its betterment.
There was that which none foresaw though, which was a ravine ahead, and not a small one, but deeper than any man could hope to fall and survive it, and too sheer in its sides to climb. Nor did it run a short way to the left or a little length to the right, but instead made a circle, and inside was a plateau. There in the center they saw menhirs and heard the sad cries of an animal enfeebled by an unkind fate.
Sir Hring of Krystila and Juliano from Aequinium at once began to plan how they might bridge the gap, and Sir Micah of Luros, never slow to show courtesy, had this to say. “The custom when men talk is for the oldest to speak first. Guided by that, I ask your advice.” He bowed to the rabrab that had wrapped itself up as a burden to his mule and waited. At this the men and women fell all to quiet and watched what might happen as they would at a madman's words, though they no longer deemed Sir Micah mad or a fool, as when a river changes its banks yet sends no less water to the salt-heavy sea.
The rabrab heeded him. It picked itself up and ran to the edge of the ravine where it fixed itself to the ground by its firm claws that pierced even stone and cast its wondrous long tail to the other side, where it wrapped about the trunk of a thick and long-rooted tree. The tail came back, not exhausted in its length, and circled a boulder sunk deep in the much-suffering earth. Nor did it end there but passed over the gap again to make another tree an anchor. After all that, the ancient beast tied its uncanny tail around a tree on the side where Sir Micah was and, content, resumed its sleep.
The knights looked on that, two ribbons straight and even and two that crossed, judged it a bridge only skillful feet were able to conquer, and begged forthwith to be allowed the feat. Sir Mikkel, Sir Cassian, Sir Hroar and Sir Taskay, and other knights too, and Publio Upanus, a bold youth, argued the matter to no agreement, and so asked Sir Hring to choose among them, for he was their leader.
“This task is for one of you if Sir Micah refuses it. Bide till he has his chance.” That was his judgment, a just one as all agreed. Sir Micah, for his part, had done off his mail already and spoke pleading words.
“I must do what at other times might make me blush, but not now, for all of us have the one aim together, and further have among ourselves friendship and esteem. That is, I must borrow a hammer for fear that wicked king used fetters or some cage of iron or bronze to bind the saena, deeming his own sorcery better put to some other avail. An iron spike as well, if any has one.” He had the pick of many hammers, strong and made for mail and helms, and other tools the Upani brought. Tying what thought the best to himself, he said to Juliano, “Give me also one of your women.”
There were gasps, whispers, and not a few laughs among the people then, but Juliano understood the guileless knight's meaning. “As you say, the saena takes no food but from an Upana's hands, and it must take food. To free it were a wasted deed otherwise. Yet I will issue no command to anyone that she suffer so great a risk, but only hope there are those who will answer to duty without being asked. Further, I forbid that any wife with young children should go, Emery my niece for one.”
All there had dread at the peril save Sir Micah, who waited for his companion to be chosen with as much calm as has a chamberlain when his master departs without leaving orders on any pressing matter so that the servants must do their usual tasks and no more. Seeing that, how still from alarm they were, a daughter of the Upani put one hesitating foot forward, only to be pulled back by her brothers and warned by her sisters with words full of fear.
Elsewhere, all throughout that noble family, need and honor made war against terror and caution, and an ancient duty pressed its claim against the pressing virtues of motherhood and care for the old. Well-meant pleas sent the thoughts of those who heard them toward the hills or horizon in turn, or toward lands colder or hotter. The woman who had taken a step listened and, like the first flake of snow that falls in the winter, unwilling to wait for some other flake to fall first and cover the earth desirous of rest and comfort over the work of growing what the living need, stepped forward again, and she shook off the worried hands of her brothers.
“Sir knight, I am Bethania, daughter of Catullo and Leticia, an Upana born. I will go with you if cousin Juliano allows it.” She spoke thus, and many were ashamed. The women there blamed themselves for two reasons, that they had left a duty it seemed right that the oldest meet to Bethania, least in years among them that was not a child, and also, worse, that they felt relief at it, though they knew it was wrong of them. The men meanwhile thought on what training with bows they might have done during all the years earlier they then deemed wasted and how many camasotes they ought to have brought down by manly skill.