They rode down the gentle slope into the dale. The wind was chill and searching. The sun bathed them with enough warmth to take the edge off, but it was good to be moving again. They reached the apple grove and saw it laden with ripe rosy pippins, apparently cultivated, perhaps by the men who had inhabited the tower. Elle and Elyssa rode abreast, Sacrissa and Sigird likewise behind them. Elyssa marked a plain little stone, like a boundary marker, set to the side of the road. As she passed, she saw that there were carvings, the trefoil by which Men signify the Powers, facing down into the dale.
They all seemed subdued and thoughtful. Sacrissa felt exhausted. Moreover, she was discontented. The thrill she had often felt in her adventures, of danger courted and averted, was distinctly absent. In her world she decided her actions and calculated their outcomes, sometimes relishing the delicious weighing of the risk. Here things were out of control, and she was lucky to be alive. She felt trapped amid unlooked for companions in an unfriendly land. She wanted to get away from these people for a time. She turned her horse out of line and made to trot forward to find the freedom of space for herself on the road ahead. As she passed, Sacrissa felt a hand grip her wrist and so turned sharply in her saddle.
“Keep to the order of match” ordered Elle flatly, evidently as tired and shocked as any of them.
Sacrissa flamed angrily at this and did not deign to answer. She attempted to shrug off the grip, but was jerked back.
“I said to keep in line.”
“And I’d rather take my chances out there,” Sacrissa indicated the dale ahead with a toss of her head.
Elle really did not need this from this tiresome woman, and she felt her colour rising, “Our safety lies in discipline and in maintaining the order of our force.”
“Safety, is that what you offer now? Really? Do you not see? We survived the fight of our lives in that forest, only by the narrowest of margins and only with unlooked for help. Had it been left to chance and to you, Huntress, we’d all be dead or captive by now. And now we are late in the crossing of a land where, apparently, it is death to remain after dusk.”
Elle looked stunned at the rebuke and her cheeks were crimson now. Sacrissa did not care. She had no idea what lay ahead, but her every witchy sense warned her they were riding from danger into greater danger. This haughty woman, no older than herself and certainly, Sacrissa considered, no wiser, was likely to lead them into fresh disaster. Her arrogance, in Sacrissa’s estimation, was not justified by her abilities.
“Have a care lady….!” began Elle.
Sacrissa did not care but now succeeded in slipping Elle’s grip and rode off, ignoring the rebuke. Elle was trembling and fixed the retreating form of Sacrissa with a look of hatred. She seemed about to ride after the wayward Trenisslian.
“Lady,” said Elyssa, “do not.
Elle was not happy and evidently keeping her composure with difficulty yet maintained her place beside the Elf.
“It takes us all in different ways. Death and violence. You commanded us well this morning.”
“Whether I did or not is not a matter for comment.”
Elyssa nodded, “Your people need time.”
“We have none to spare.”
“Well then, perhaps at least our care,” and Elle followed Elyssa’s gaze to where Sigird rode behind them, detached and downcast, tear tracks down her expressionless face.
“I ….” Elle did not know what to say.
“Everything we do comes at a cost, but we pay it, and go on.”
They lapsed into silence, then Elyssa spoke once more, “Lady, by your leave…”
“Of course.”
When Elyssa was gone, Elle slowed until Sigird was beside her.
“Lady”, said Elle softly, gently placing a hand on Sigird’s arm. Sigird looked up and after a moment seemed to perceive the other for the first time. Elle gave what se hoped was an encouraging smile, “you helped save many lives today, Sigird of Tuttadale …”
“We took many, too,” sniffled Sigird.
“We courted no enemies and sought no fight…”
“And will that satisfy the Powers? Killing is ill, and I know, for my father’s demesne is won and warded with strife, and I have killed for him. Every ill deed we do, they say, feeds the evil that waits behind the world.”
“My father, once told me that if a man’s heart is honest, and he kills at need in a just cause…”
“But had he experience, or merely wisdom? Had he known much strife in his life?”
“Well, he’s married to my mother, so yes, I would say so!” This attempt at levity falling rather flat, Elle continued with, “he was a commander of men in battle in his youth, I believe, so he knew of what he spoke,” though Elle chose not to add that she recalled how he did not like to speak of it, for it seemed in his later years to trouble his mind with doubts.
Sacrissa heard a horse behind her but would not look back. Elyssa reached her side and was met with raised eyebrows, an ironic expression.
“I come not to judge or to chide,” offered the Elf, “yet I would seize this chance to talk a while.”
“So talk.”
“So, you saw where I had shot that unfortunate?”
“Yes,” Sacrissa replied.
“You were with us, not near him, I think.”
“I … went to him.”
“You examined him perchance?”
“Yes,” said Sacrissa, carefully.
“And did you … find anything out?” asked the Elf.
“Only that you are an exceptional shot, my Lady. You drilled him straight through his heart.”
“Not really,” said Elyssa, lightly, “I was aiming for his head.”
And Sacrissa chuckled at that, then said, “he had some information to impart ere he died. Nothing coherent, but … the impression I had was of implacable hate and the certainty his cause would triumph. There was a sense that these men of wrath had … help. I do not think the man himself appreciated the nature of that help, but the savour of it in his mind … it felt unnatural.”
“I believe you speak more truth than you know.” Elyssa looked thoughtful and would say no more until a short while later she added, “perhaps we should return to the column.”
Sacrissa said nothing yet followed Elyssa when the Elf turned back.
Low words of greeting were spoken, Elyssa to Elle and Sacrissa to Sigird. Then they rode on in silence. Some kind of truce, it seemed.
The land remained quiet and still. Ebban and his scouts were somewhere ahead. The chill wind abated somewhat as the road descended into a dip. A clear fresh rill trickled downhill from their right, carving its slender way between mossy banks and disappearing under the road to reappear to their left. Some yards off it ended its journey in a bog of standing water in which innumerable islands of little round tufts of tall tawny grass were crowded. As the road led upward once more, icy gusts of wind greeted them, and the greener grass of the dale’s prized pastureland opened up to either side. With a nod to Trum, Lead Man Fram spurred off from the column and, at some distance, took to pick his way through the pasture. At length, he dismounted and moved about, head down, occasionally squatted to the ground. Sacrissa was following his activities somewhat absently, though when she turned to Sigird, the girl was staring fixedly ahead. Sigrid looked rather absorbed, she thought. Sacrissa turned and rode off down the column, feeling that she might prove her own best company for a while and that this time no one would care to stop her.
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Elyssa, scanning around with her keen Elf-sight, spotted a small, rude stone structure high up on the skirts of the moors to their left, the south side of Dimlicdale. It looked to contain but a single room or cell, and was rectangular, its length pointing down to the dale. It had a simple pitched roof of stone slates.
“What is that place, my Lady, do you know?” Elyssa asked the Huntress.
“A shrine, I deem,” Elle replied, “there to guard the borders of the land from evil spirits.”
“To keep them from coming into this land, or to keep them from getting out?”
But Elle did not answer.
Fram trotted up to them, “My Ladies, Captain,” he began, “It is strange. There have been some sheep pastured here briefly, and a quantity of cattle, but not for some three or four days.”
“Why strange?” asked Trum, who was no agriculturalist.
“Because cattle were brought to this pasture for the first time only recently, but only for a day, after which they were not brought back. The grass here was but half-grazed.”
They continued, through a land of grassland and little woods, for another hour or so. The dale was noticeably broader now. The Dimlicwater had swelled with many other becks and rills and was now a river. It lay in an ever-meandering wooded haze, now far to their right. High moors frowned down from beyond it in the pale distance. More sharply seen was the face of the nearer highlands to their left.
Ebban returned to the column to report that no sign of life, hostile or otherwise, had been seen for some miles ahead. It was now an hour or so past noon, and they reckoned they had travelled a good league along the dale, so, they judged, a third of the way.
Amora reported from further down the column, “My Lady,” she addressed Elle, “the people are weary and crave a moment to rest and take sustenance.”
A frown of impatience darkened Elle’s face momentarily, but she caught sight of Elyssa regarding her with that inscrutable Elf-expression.
“What say you Captain?” she turned to Trum.
“Dusk will be four to five hours away, but not full dark for a further two hours after that. At this pace we should clear the dale with an hour to spare before dusk, and the real danger, I deem, comes only with the dark. If we are to keep this pace, there must be stops for the people to rest, so, perhaps no more than two or three stops, each for some quarter of an hour.”
“Make it so.”
Trum bowed, motioned to Fram and they cantered off down the column. Elle led on to a little dell, below the road to the left, situated above a little beck. Clothed in mossy grass, soft and dry, the dell was comfortable seeming, between rocks. There, in that shallow valley, warmed by the sun, but out of the bite of the wind, they found places for all their people. They took bites of bread and cheese, and apples for those who had taken them from the grove. They drank and then recharged their flasks from the clear stream. Many lay back on the mossy banks, closed their eyes, let the sun warm them, and dozed for a precious few minutes before the soldiers roused them and they reassembled on the road.
Sacrissa had used her time away from Sigird and the others to chat easily with members of the column whom she sought to cultivate, but now she was back, presenting her aimable side to the Huntress, who seemed always open to respectful attentions, and to Elyssa, who wore a pre-occupied air and who was, thus, rather harder work.
As they resumed their march, the windings of the road bore them right, to the north, more to the centre of the dale and closer to the tree-lined river. In places the river looped towards them, the trees blocking off their view that way. Little bays of land opened where the river receded before looping back towards the road. Mist still hung in these tree-sheltered pockets of land. They were now low down in the broader part of the dale. The wind from the north was muted and its cold fingers no longer reached them. A vast bank of thick cloud hung above them here, miring them in gloomy shade. Looking left, far off to the south, caught in a bright patch of sunlight that reflected off its stone roof, another little shrine clung to the top of the moorland ridge. Elyssa noted that these windowless little buildings had maintained their blind watch over the dale at regular intervals. So that they were never out of sight of one.
They passed through a little copse that straddled the road and out into the sun. The river had swung away from them, and the road turned towards it, rising slightly. The cloud shadow now hung over the northern slopes of the dale, and, so, it was sometime before Elyssa realised that there was a figure up there, mounted, perfectly still, and looking down at them. It was an Elf. Gently she touched Elle’s arm and pointed out the distant rider.
“Of my kin,” she said, “and I deem set there waiting for us, and that we are intended to follow.”
“Us?” replied Elle.
“Yes,” Elyssa replied, “the four of us.”
And, strangely, that did not seem strange to Elle. It did not seem strange that Elyssa had divined the rider’s intent, or that she, the Huntress, understood that the four of them meant herself and the three young women she had met only yesterday evening. Yet there was an edge to this. Elyssa’s voice was stonily inexpressive, yet her eyes spoke despite themselves of wrenching pain. Red fire in their grey depths writhed in turmoil.
Elle turned to Trum, “Captain, we would speak with yonder rider. Keep the column moving while we are gone.” With that, she spurred her horse toward the rider, beckoning the others to follow. Sigird dutifully followed. Sacrissa, with a look of resignation, did likewise.
The Rider had expected them, Elle decided, standing sentinel at a spot that overlooked a ford in the fast, chattering stream of the cold clear Dimlicwater. The four women picked their way carefully across the stream to avoid a wetting; they none of them wanted to endure the cold autumn wind of the dale in wet clothing.
The Elf rider sat, motionless and imperturbable, as the women slowly made their way up the slope. The Elf’s pale horse made no movement save the occasional swish of its tail, but its ears were alert. There were few safe paths down from the moors by which a horse could pick its way through the ankle-breaking holes and tussocks, or negotiate sudden sheer declivities. The ford connected to one such path, but their fine warhorses took a weary wary time nervously feeling their twisting course. At last, they arrived within speaking distance. Tall and straight-backed they now saw that the rider was. The Elf’s dark-haired head was bare. The handsome face was elven pale, high cheek bones and forehead were evident. The Elf wore a simple style of clothing, but perfectly made to such a slim figure. This garb was in muted tones; the colours of the hills. The slender grey horse looked as elegant and Elfin as its rider. The only decoration the rider had allowed were silver bells about the horse’s bridle. These were silent now. Elle raised a hand in greeting, and the silent sentinel simply turned up the slope with a soft quiet jingle of bells and rode off. They assumed they should follow, so they did.
At length they crested the summit of the dale. Soon after the moorland stopped climbing so steeply and contented itself with gentler slopes, rolling up and down but, overall, still climbing north. Here and there the folds in the ground were found to contain a narrow, steep re-entrant, generally carrying some tinkling rill or beck down from the watershed. Here the wind was fierce and noisy and tugged at their clothes.
“Where is the creature going?” posed Sacrissa.
“I know not,” said Elyssa, “but we are now in the lands of my people where Men trespass not.”
This exchange was made with effort, as they now must shout above the wind that roared in the ears and stung their eyes. ‘Just great,’ thought Sacrissa.
Presently the strange Elf turned off what passed for a track in these parts and descended into a dell. As they followed, the women saw that this was a deep, wide dell, roughly circular in shape and, perhaps, half a furlong across. As they gained the bottom of it, they were sheltered from the wind, whose roar was transformed to a distant, if persistent, whisper. The tussocks and rocks of the moor petered out around the edge of the dell and the grass was short and smoother here; it had evidently been grazed so by sheep. The ground here was also almost flat and level. A shallow rill lazily wound its way across the dell. What gained the attention of the four companions were the stones set in the centre of the dell. The Elf rode to the centre and dismounted. The others did likewise and walked together toward the stones. They saw two long, wide, and slightly curved stones, that looked intended as benches, with room, perhaps, for three or four to sit side by side. They faced each other across the very centre of the dell where stood an upright stone. This stone, perhaps some five feet high, had three sides until some two hands’ distance from the top. Here the three-sided pillar was carved to form a sloping point that, before it reached an apex, gave way to a stone sphere. Now stained and grown with lichen, it was clear that carving was rich upon the stone. The carving remained crisp. On the three sides of the pillar was a carven frieze, each side with some sigildry after the fashion of Men, but the sphere was carved in the Elven style with a swirling confusion of gracefulness, the precise pattern of which eluded all but Elyssa. There was, however, a plain circular area carved on the surface of the sphere, facing them. Upon it was a spreading tree. On seeing it, Elyssa gasped aloud, “This,” she began, amazed, “this is the symbol of my house!” She then added in a more subdued tone, “Well, my Mother’s House.” The tang of the wind had given her cheeks a high colour, so her blush went unregarded.
The others, meanwhile, looked to see what family the carvings on the pillar might denote, and if the sigildry was known to them. They were. It was their turn to stand amazed.
When each had seen all round the pillar, they stood back and regarded one another.
“The Phoenix,” began Sacrissa, “well, the Phoenix, flanked by quills, that’s my House, the House Elding.”
“The Raven,” said Sigird in wonder, “that is me, that is Duna. But how?”
“That leaves the Lion,” said Elyssa, “but I feel, though I do not understand how, you, Huntress, could speak to that.”
“It was the symbol of my father’s house in a time now past,” said Elle eventually, as if the words had been dragged from her. She said no more but continued to stare at the carved lion. It was rearing, its head in profile with a full mane in evidence. She looked as confused as the rest of them.
All four stood steeped in thought for a time.
“It is no accident that we four have been called here together,” Elyssa was the first to break the silence.
Then, after a further pause, Sacrissa turned to Elle, “I recall, Lady that only yestereve you told the King that you had no House?”
It was framed as a question, but Elle ignored it. Sigird and Elyssa, meanwhile, stood lost in their own thoughts.
“Lady,” tried Sacrissa again, “you are clearly of noble birth. What House are you?”
But whether Elle had not heard, or had merely affected inattention, she did not answer the question. When she next spoke, it was quietly, thoughtfully, as if to herself, as if reciting some lesson learned from a tutor long ago.
“The sigil of your house is the Lion. In the sigildry of the Kingdoms, the Lion is always shown with a mane. If it does not have a mane, it may be intended to show some other like beast, or, oftentimes, the female lion, yet, in our sigildry, it is always in that case known as a Leopard.”