XVI: Challenge

Another hearth; another rooftree lost in height and smoke. Another dais at the far end of the hall, upon which stood a cunning chair, swift-assembled, swifter taken down to chase its battle-ridden master. And another hearth-throne, set below the dais and to the right upon the rush-strewn earth, and the man who sat upon it sunk in drink and brooding. Above him on the war-throne, Deorgard slouched, hulking like a storm beyond the hills, while a young bard of his newest sword-point vassal stood forth to sing of yesterday’s contest that had delivered his clan into the Madroch’s power.

Maglad the Grim, first among the Dunmadroch warriors lined in honor against the right-hand wall, sighed gratefully over his own drink. A long day it had been, full of court: not all the rites of new fealty alone, but today, the nineteenth day of Folgad-orn, the harvest-month, called for all manner of business. Yes, the feast of First-fruits had been lavish, as Dun Padanring sought to impress their new overlord—Maglad belched softly, still stuffed—and so had the business, brought to the Madroch rather than to the Padanr: debt settlements, land trading, hiring contracts for the coming harvest season, even a couple of handfastings. The Dun Padanring Fair should have begun today also, but had been postponed until the morrow; something to look forward to, especially as the victors would be first choice for Fair-marriage, and no one said that had to last beyond Fair’s end.

He gazed over his mead-horn not at the singer, but at his great lord; or rather, at the constellation of Deorgard and his three satellites. On the stool at the king’s right, privileged to pour the war-lord’s mead this night, his face flushed brighter than the gold torque new-laid upon his neck—Maglad could not at once recall the man’s name, but the bard would be singing it soon enough, the strongest and boldest of the survivors of his side yesterday. What though he lost? All men fell, soon or late, to the Unvanquishable One, whom the imperials called the Silent, the Reaper of men; and venomous treason might deliver mere victory. Valor alone won the praise of Song, and the immortality of the deathless staves. This warrior, too, would be highly prized in the marriage-mart.

Behind Deorgard’s left shoulder, cloaked and hooded though the night was warm and the firelit hall hot, the Dunmadroch bard Bradgith stood, a moveless blue shade, inscrutably deep. Now, there was something: in a few days, the bards would all head off for Fordhafoc for their great competition. People would have to settle for simpler song for a month, but there would be a riot of news at the end of it; that, and there was no denying that, well, it was sometimes a relief not to have the poem-masters about. One could shed the feeling of being watched for something song-worthy—noble or satiric.

And most interesting, most compelling was the least of the four on the dais, least in stature and status alike, the witch-boy, the Wyrdling, Deorgard’s slave, coiled now at his master’s feet and watching, listening to the Dun Padanring singer not, it seemed to Maglad, in entertainment so much as in judgment.

Maglad took a quick, deep draught of his mead, embraced the heat of the liquor despite the heat of the evening. He had once considered the bard’s path for himself, being both tune-clever and word-witty, till he found that no foeman held such terror for him as a master bard’s rebuke, nor as the mockery or—Mother Night!—sheer attention of his own clansmen. He dropped his gaze back to the singer and shrugged off the slave-boy, the young hawk watching, it seemed, for a mouse of error.

He was not Runedaur, to follow the thought through: that a claim unchallenged was a claim granted. Few in the hall remarked the boy’s judgmental pose, but they felt it: as the cooling evening makes a man draw in upon himself long before he notices it to mention, even to himself.

Not even Raian noticed. He had other aims. They said in song that a man was honored by service to a great master, the honor mounting with the master’s greatness. For this, yesterday’s enemy stood today to pour his conqueror’s wine: Deorgard the Madroch must be very great indeed to have overcome such a hero as he. But Raian strove to best even this, and his implacable pride said that it was Deorgard who was honored, to be served by the likes of Raian na Drogh.

Men would have laughed—had they noticed it to mention. They did not. But what begins as a cooling evening may become a frosty midnight in time.

It was long past an all-too-warm midnight before Raian, dismissed at last, stumbled out to the Dun Padanring haystacks to fling himself into the lower slopes. He felt exhausted, too exhausted for sleep. Not that his chores were so heavy; rather, most days he used himself far less than he was once wont, clambering and hunting in the mountains of the Uissig. And though idleness, drumming his heels while waiting to be called, proved surprisingly tiring, this too was not the drain on his soul.

It was the pretense, hour after hour through the endless days: the mask of pride, the semblance of honor that he wore, doggedly, pretending that his servitude were somehow a badge of greatness. He hated, personally and savagely, every cup he carried, every garment he folded, every moment—and there were hours of them—waited in silence, pretending, always pretending, feigning a glory he loathed. Seven years: the Madroch could hold him no more than that. But seven years, of this? He felt he would die an old withered man before this Yule; he would be a dead-wight indeed long before his term was up. If only he could just sleep, sleep through it all. . . .

Wolf dropped beside him a few minutes later. For a while the two friends lay together without need of speech, and watched the slow-drifting stars.

“Your man asleep?” Wolf murmured presently.

Raian shrugged, a rustle in the hay. “Maybe. He’s got a girl.”

“Mine, too.” Wolf had been given to Maglad. After a moment he added, “He married?”

“The Madroch? Was. She died—took cold, or something; I forget. His sons, too.”

Wolf blinked. “They all took cold?”

“No—sorry—I mean, they’ve all died. Different things. ’S got a daughter, though.”

“No, thanks.”

“She’s married,” he grunted, missing the jest. Then he sighed. “I should have been in temple today.”

Wolf considered, then started. Today would be—about the eleventh of Ilmeres, the holy day they called at home the Arch of Autumn, and the middle of Teginau’s own harvest Fair; Wolf had been pleased that these Geillari celebrated it well enough. And so it was also Raian’s birthday. Raingold should have spent today making thanks for their lord’s son and his continued health, thanks not just to the gods but to their friends and neighbors all. Wolf whined softly, for a secret Raingold recipe, involving cheese melted with cream and crumbled sausage on the most wonderfully thin and crispy flatbreads, was to date his most avid weakness. Had Dunmadroch been able to cook it—no, it would not have reconciled him to his thralldom, but it would have made it a world more bearable. Wrenching his thoughts sadly from his lost indulgence, he replied with an effort at cheer, “So you’re fifteen—Hah!” And he laughed, wickedly. “Yah, boy, at least you missed your ma dressing you like a ham for the marriage market!” After his own fifteenth, Wolf regularly lost his way in the mountains when his birthday neared, to escape his mother’s matchmaking; as this occurred shortly after Yule, he had grown remarkably snowcrafty.

Raian made no reply. Wolf scowled at the stars. Some demon seemed to be sitting on his friend’s heart. Raian had been unusually—for him—sober since their enslavement, of course; but not like this.

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He tried a shot in the dark: “She’s probably all right—Rothric, I mean.” Raian only grunted. Wolf’s frown deepened. “You sweet on her, boy?”

Raian had only lately begun to consider girls. He was also cutting molars, and the question struck his uncertain psyche like a bit of carrot on a tender gum. “Who? Rothric?” he yelped. But it was a ridiculous question. Rothric was as likely an object of his sweet affection as the Wolfman himself—bleeeaugh, well, rather more likely. But still ridiculous. “Don’t be silly,” he grumbled, slumping into indifference again.

Wolf glared into the night. What, then? As he groped for another shot, his friend spoke suddenly.

“I’ve never lost before.”

Wolf’s eyes flew wide open, but he made no reply.

“I’ve never lost before,” Raian repeated, softly, wonderingly. Losing—losing was something that happened to other people, poor sods that they were. He had not thought of himself as above that, it had merely seemed self-evident: Raian na Drogh suffered the rare, occasional setback—but he never lost. Till now. Till now and, losing, lost everything: pride, freedom, power, his own and his friends’ as well, and only with the Death-knights was there hope that his arrogant folly had not lost Rothric her very life. “I’ve lost everything.”

In the straw beside him, Wolf lay unmoving, scarcely daring to breathe, waiting, like a man benighted waiting for some glimmer of a dawn he fears might suddenly have failed him for aye.

Raian began to talk, idly, musing over their many adventures, but he made light of them now.

“Hold on, boyo—that boar that opened your leg last fall, and there’s me portering you and him both down the mountain, that was no joy-party!”

“Oh, we’re strong enough!” Raian mocked them. “But this—” he waved his arm at the snoring village packed full with impromptu Fair housing, “this wants more than that! This—” Words failed him; what, indeed, was he lacking? What brought him triumph over every challenge of his boyhood, only to fail him at the first test of manhood? “How do we win at this?”

After a moment, Wolf shrugged. “You’ll think of something.”

“Oh, I will?” Raian leaped to hands and knees to glare down at Wolf. “It was my arrogance that brought us—both!—to this, and you think I’m just going to ‘think of something’ that will get us out?”

“You got old Dagn out.”

“Aaaargh!” He pounced, seizing Wolf’s shoulders. He wanted to shake him, to beat sense into his head against—but there was only the hay beneath him, crackling and prickling mildly. How, how could he be such a furry idiot? Raian flung himself back onto his back. “Oh, right, I’m just going to spin us a plan to cast down Deorgard and compel all the Golden Clans to bow and let us pass like kings over the land. No doubt the Runedaur, too, will bow and open Colderwild and let me take Rothric out—and they’ll hand me that Darian’s skull for a keepsake, as well! Oh, ho, ho.”

Wolf grinned at the starry sky. If not dawn, then some pale precursor to it glimmered on his horizon. “Sounds good to me,” he chuckled, and rolled over to go to sleep.

Raian stared openmouthed at Wolf’s bare, hairy back for a futile moment, then snarled and rolled the other way; hay and its sweet must tickled in his nose. Pounding a gap with his fist proved grimly satisfying, and soon he too slept.

Late in the night he dreamed. He thought he stood in a vast silent cavern, gazing up, eye locked to eye with the great dragon Marennin. Her glossy black scales rippled away into dark invisibility, and a fire burned in the depths of her one violet eye, burning into him, but he withstood it, refusing to be consumed. The eye shone, bright and reflective as water. And presently he realized that the fire was not within, but behind, a reflection of a great hearth-fire somewhere at his back.

He had no sense of turning, but now he stood before that fire, the Dragon gone, and instead of the cavern, a rude cave. Beyond the fire sat a woman, cloaked and hooded. She moved and the hood shifted, and terror bolted through him for fear that the hood should fall away, for he knew somehow that the woman within was too terrible for a man to behold and live, terrible and great. Hastily he dropped his gaze to the fire, and saw the pyramid of logs shift and a dull coal flared to new life, from red through yellow to white in an instant and it exploded—

Raian was blown backward out of the cave out under the stars, tumbling in a great roaring froth. He rolled among stars and comets and fish and ferns, flowers and bears and temples, a thousand things, ten thousand things, all the things. As he struggled for the surface, a hand gripped his arm and Rothric tugged him with her to crawl out upon a great pale rock. There they stood together, dripping and panting, and watched the torrent bursting from the black hillside.

She turned and beamed at him. “It’s time, you know,” she said cheerfully, and dived back into the flood. He grabbed after her, but could not move, could not budge: he was frozen, imprisoned inside a stone statue of himself. Furious, he wrenched mightily and broke free. He shot a glance of despite at the statue—a pompous, supercilious-looking thing, he thought, jowly and old, and he leaped in after Rothric. “Hey!” he shouted, or tried to, fighting a mouthful of foam and tiny houses. Summoning his utmost effort, he tried again: “Hey!”

“Hey, yourself,” the Wolfman hissed, shaking him harder, and ordinary night-stillness wrapped him round again. Raian sat up and stared about. The world seemed too empty and thin, too finely detailed, to be the real one. Wolf shook him again, but gently, companionably. “Just an old dream, then, boyo,” he murmured, curling back into the hay with a yawn. Raian blinked as the dream-mists faded, and lay down again, his back pressed close to Wolf’s. He dreamed again, this time about stealing the Madroch’s Fair cattle, and woke ravenous for beef.

He bit Wolf’s shoulder instead and they had a fine fight. Wolf bloodied Raian’s nose, but Raian pinned him at last, a few early-risen onlookers paid off small bets among themselves, and the sun rose. Another day of captivity: Raian, his blood still high from the sport, glared out upon it and spat.

After the Fair, for which he was wanted for any amount of judging, Deorgard took off hunting, day after day. The bards departed for Fordhafoc. The young bloods of Dun Padanring rode with the Dunmadroch forces, along with those of Duncardrogh and the others swept up in the conqueror’s wake. The village seemed glad enough to see them go forth and, while presumably grateful for the game brought in, rather gritted its collective teeth over the extra work of potting all that the ravenous hunters themselves could not devour.

Then a boar gored Deorgard’s spear-bearer; that evening, the king finally asked Raian about his scars. He answered briefly; once so proud of his exploits, he would now trade them all to have won only his first night in Deorgard’s court. The king glowered his brooding glare for so long after his last, cursory comment on the white half-moon at his throat—“Oh, that,” the one he usually forgot, being able to see it himself only in a mirror, “that was a wolf. I think I gave the teeth to my mother”—that he spluttered, “That’s all, lord! I’m only fou—fifteen!”

Deorgard said nothing, but next morning he took Raian with him on the hunt. Raian was still too proud to feel the honor, but he was so delighted with the change in duty that he let himself wholly enjoy the day. And though there was no opportunity for a display of notable bravery or cunning, he acquitted himself well, nor was the only one to forget, for the space of a cheerful exchange, that he was only a slave. Men at table that night acknowledged his presence with a brusque nod or a grunt as he served them, and next day Maglad, too, brought his Dragon-thrall.

The hunt roamed ever further from the Dun Padanring hall, then took to camping nights, rather than return within walls. Raian and Wolf had more work out here but they almost enjoyed it, being closer to what they loved. It had its hazards, though. Deorgard commanded from Raian tales and songs of the Tre-Uissig; while Wolf, caught once tossing a flaming stick for his own amusement, was pressed into juggling before the whole camp. Released at last, he collapsed beside his friend and all but shook from the strain.

“You were good,” Raian assured him.

“Yah, and I had to be or drop one in someone’s lap!”

Raian laughed. “You should have: they’d have thought it was hilarious!”

“Except whoever I’d scorched, and wouldn’t he get to beat me then!”

“True, that.” Raian passed him their ration of beer, and knelt behind him, trying once again to discover the secret of the collar lock. He would not even imagine running, not though they lay in the bosom of the trackless Wild, till he was certain that flight would succeed: more than mere death, he feared being put in chains. No need to acquire more obstacles than they faced already! ‘Haste goes hungry,’ as well the young hunter knew.