In his previous nights with the family, Sorchone had not been consigned to the barn with the other thralls, for fear of his running away. Instead he had slept in the private room, on the floor by the mistress of the house, a chain clipped to his collar and the other end wrapped in her hand; each night at least once, he had gently looped it back into her slackened grasp. Tonight he was packed again into the same room, far more crowded now. The thrall Raian assembled for him a pallet of straw like his own. Sorchone sat upon it, arms wrapped around his drawn-up knees trying to presume on as little space as possible, when the king stomped in.
Deorgard glared down at Raian as if all the world were his fault. Raian stared back, impudently for any Sferan servant, stared as one accepting not so much blame for the world as credit. That the king tolerated this interested the young Runedaur keenly. Possibly this Deorgard, too, liked spirit.
Slowly the king announced, making the last word as heavy as his fist, “I want to be home.” For a moment more he glared, then stretched hugely, yawned, and sighed, “But Toryarl’s a good man.”
This argument mystified Sorchone, the more so as it appeared to make perfect sense to Raian. Fortunately, Deorgard abruptly thought better of something, and lumbered back out into the hall. “What does he say?” Sorchone whispered to Raian.
The boy paused in straightening the king’s bedding. Sorchone expected a literal translation, which would force him to ask for more; Raian appeared to go off on some random tangent instead.
“The Galring give gifts. For everything. A guest gifts his host. The host heaps gifts on his guests. They gift new fathers and new fathers gift everybody. They close contracts with gifts. A king,” he nodded towards the wall through which Deorgard’s bass rumble alternated with Jav’s light tenor, “sheds gifts like dogs shed hair. Especially! for brave work, battle-triumphs, and such. Only, after all we did, he’s got nothing right now. Nothing, nor enough people to appreciate it if he did. He had a sword, of steel, that he got from Hlafarr of Bordegund, and he had to drop that in the lake or go down with it. He’s got his rings and bracelets, and he’ll probably give them to the household in the morning, but he’s not giving them to Maglad and the rest because it’d be like—” he paused to think of some example that the Sferath might share. “Like giving someone a nod when you ought to hold a feast in their honor? At home, he could do the thing right. But Toryarl—that’s the local king—he’s Deorgard’s. Sworn to him. So anything that’s his, is his king’s, and he’ll have enough for the Madroch to do justice with—and he’ll be glad, proud to give it, too. He could do the same with Jav’s family’s stuff, here, but what he wants to do’d put a bigger hole in their wealth than in Toryarl’s. They’d be honored, of course, if he beggared them. But I think he gets a lot of his respect, and honor, from—well, he’s got a sense for how much is ‘royal’ and how much is—”
“—cruel,” Wolf interjected, when Raian hesitated for a word.
Raian nodded, a bit distantly. On reflection, he doubted that Deorgard thought this out, any more than a cat thought out how to wend its way among breakables without disturbance; cat and king alike acted of their nature alone.
Sorchone listened raptly, both to the meaning and the words. The boy seemed to lose track sometimes of the border between the Sferan tongue and the curious blend he shared with Wolf; many words, Sorchone had to say over in his own mind, several times, to get the meaning. Surely the Order knew it existed, this blent tongue, and maybe some Runedaur spoke it, though, come to think of it, he rather thought they seldom bothered with mountain-wrapped Kinnaith. Many Geillan nobles affected the Sferan speech, Odhru the Brean among them, but Deorgard evidently did not trouble with it. Sorchone wondered how this new language would fare, and determined to learn it himself.
Presently Deorgard stomped back in, followed by Maglad. Raian and Wolf tended to discarded boots, cloaks and belts, but no one seemed to have work for Sorchone. Deorgard stared at him, while he tried to work out if he should play bold, like Raian, or frightened as he thought a slave would seem. He was spared an immediate choice, as Deorgard ordered the lamps snuffed, and the hall slept at last.
A league to the next freehold. Two more from there to Brandhad-town. Two of Jav’s brothers had run ahead yesterday, after the song, and the party were expected. Toryarl’s people from many freeholds overflowed his little town, and a feasting grander than any Raian or Wolf had yet seen awaited them. “Hai! The Seven Heroes! Hai!” men cried, and the high, eerie war-hoots of the women shook the air.
Jav sang again, circling the bonfire-hearth of Brandhad. “He’s been practicing since yesterday,” Wolf observed in Raian’s ear. Then after a deeply respectful pause, Bradgith rose, to charge the gods with rewarding such heroes, as Jav’s father had done before; and to inflame the people by demanding to know what manner of folk must deserve such men, and such a king, among them?
The town exploded. Dance, riot, mock-battle and some few brawls in earnest proclaimed the high heart of the people. All seven, even the thralls, were seized, hoisted onto shoulders, and paraded all about the town, outside round the palisade, inside through both streets; pelted with bread, and flowers from the women, doused with ale before they were set down at last at the hearth-circle. Raian and Wolf laughed and pounded one another, except that girls pulled them apart to salute them heartily. Raian noticed that he was celebrating with his captors, but just now he could not bring himself to mind. They had done a great thing, a wonderful thing, and they had survived, and he must rejoice or die.
Deorgard strode to the hearth-side. The crowd fell silent. With a little prompting from Bradgith, he gave himself to them as king, and was received by more wild cheering. Then he set about the giving of gifts to his companions, and host, while the people listened, and sighed their approval.
Sorchone, still following Raian and Wolf as well as he could in the uproar, sensed an anxiousness in Raian. He expected the thralls to be set free; disappointing, at least to him, as they would leave and he forever wonder about them. Deorgard did give both youths heavy torques of braided silver and copper, and wide bracelets, and even a paired short sword and dagger set. But no mention was made of thralldom or freedom till he awarded one of Toryarl’s kin-thralls to Wolf, and Sorchone to Raian.
Raian had been wondering what he should do if Deorgard did free them. He had hardly begun his study of the man, had framed no plan for his high-kingship, but neither could he imagine any reason for staying on; rather, he would be as glad to get away as a drowning man to draw a free breath. Except that he needed more time.
Later, heedless of the laughing dance filling the night at the center of the town, he kicked moodily at the log palisade. Slave still. He could continue his work—ho, ho, his fancy of work. Damn. By all the gods, damn and damn! Maybe I should have killed him, that first night.
Wolf careened against the wall nearby. “One of these days, boyo, I’ll just kill him.”
Sorchone, crouched beside them, listened intently as only Runedaur can, and eventually heard in these Kinnathen word-children their Sferan and Geillan parents’ features. Kill him—understandably; but this Raian was almost as much relieved as affronted. For himself: well, he might not be Deorgard’s, at least not yet, but he was close enough.
Suddenly, standing alone in the dark, Raian laughed. “What the hell’s so funny?” growled Wolf, and Raian laughed again, louder and freer.
“Us! Great world-shapers we are, heroes of the land, and collared like dogs!”
“Yah. I noticed. I noticed, boyo. What’s so damned funny about that?”
Raian only laughed harder, leaned against the wall to hold himself up against his own mirth. Wolf felt himself start to grin, for no better reason than the contagion of amusement understood or not, and launched himself into Raian’s belly. He soon had his friend pinned, as Raian could make no defense in the weakness of his laughter, and then his own unexpected success seemed so terribly funny that he could only roll on the grass beside Raian and howl. Sorchone watched them by the dim light of the distant fire, and wracked himself to understand.
When at last his breath sobbed its way back to something like composure, Raian wiped his tear-streaked face, rolled to his feet and thrust a hand back down to Wolf. “Come, man. We can’t be kingmakers rolling in the dirt.” They both snorted, and almost lost themselves again, but Wolf took the hand and pulled himself up.
“What the devil do I do with him?” he demanded of Night, with a wave towards the elderly, nearly-toothless man sitting cross-legged a short way off, his new possession.
“What do I do with you?” said Raian, looking at Sorchone though he spoke to himself. Then he grinned. “Oh, that’s right: I’ll think of something,” he said airily. He was braced for Wolf’s tackle, however, and this time the fight went as it usually did.
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Sorchone, cleaning the king’s boots that night at Raian’s command, revisited in his thought all that curious merry exchange. Most of the words were lost to him, but their mirth shone like a moon, a light in a dark night, and he grinned.
One last exchange that night puzzled both Raian and Sorchone. Bradgith entered the room given over to Deorgard—and Deorgard alone, the lieutenant, Maglad, being given another room for himself and Wolf—and the king drew something out of his belt-pouch, something that clinked softly as if it were two or more, and dropped it into the bard’s gnarled hand. “That mean it worked?” said the king.
Bradgith rolled whatever-they-were in his palm. “Of course.”
Deorgard snorted, and the bard bowed and retired.
“Has the old man magic?” Sorchone whispered to Raian.
“That’s Bradgith, the king’s chief bard,” Raian replied as warning. “Yes, he does. Why?”
“May I guess that he made a protection-charm for the king, for his king? A powerful challenge to it would break it.”
Raian stared. Presently he asked slowly, “But if a, a powerful challenge broke it—wouldn’t that mean that it failed?”
Sorchone shrugged. “It had done its best, but—yes, I would say that his majesty’s greater magic were your faithfulness.”
Raian’s eyes narrowed, and he lay long awake.
Deorgard hurried home. From town to holding to hamlet, he passed as swiftly as Toryarl’s horses would bear them—and as Bradgith, keen to the duties of a sovereign, would permit. Jav accompanied him, to sing the tale of the Myrinine mastery at every hearth and hall. Their entourage grew, as younger brothers and elder sons of those who had been lost to the Demonwood now begged to be numbered among the great king’s housecarls. Raian scratched his head.
“What troubles you?” Sorchone asked, one night as they were deep in young King Harka’s land, circumambulating the Tarasforoth hills warded by the silent, deadly hunters of House Felindras.
Raian struggled to know himself. “He started with two hundreds. He lost almost all of them. That—well, does that not trouble them?” He did not wait for Sorchone’s opinion, but, fighting down pride, begged Maglad’s attention, and asked him.
Maglad’s lip curled. “Is the king a nursemaid? We who went, went of our own will, like men.”
Shilka, too, heard the question, and he nodded. “We only wanted him for to lead us there, aye? Not for him, is it, to see us safe out again, like so many children!”
Raian bowed his thanks, and came away very thoughtful.
Wolf agreed with Shilka’s sentiment; then he frowned. “Who was it, that first night, cried out, ‘Yooou brought us here!’” He mimicked the complaint in a high, whiny voice. “Wasn’t any of us Heroes, at least. Shouldn’t ever have gone, if he was thinking he had some kind of a right to come back!”
“No,” Raian agreed slowly. “But maybe a leader has some responsibility to lead, er, well. Not into folly.”
Wolf laughed. “Maybe a man’s got a responsibility to say Bugger that, to folly!”
Raian grinned. “Well, there’s that.”
Sorchone, his grasp of their speech growing swiftly, understood enough of this. Here again, it seemed, was one more clue to the strength of the Geillari as against the Sferiari, who did expect to be led out as they were led in; that, or, fatalistically, to be spent like so many coins. Maybe it was no surprise after all, that the newest Master of Runedaur was born of so hardy a race.
And the homecoming of Deorgard the Madroch saw a riot to make Fenustad’s feasting a mild little picnic. For a week all the clan poured through Tilderuld, the seat of Angowin, in one long fair celebrating all their king’s conquests, human and otherwise. Dunheorbrann came in from eastern Angowin, piled gifts in their king’s hall and reveled in the shared glory. The people ate, drank, gamed and sported, and the king ate, drank and played more than any two other men. Raian had a new task: not to revel so much himself that he could not drag the Madroch from mead-hall to bed some time between midnight and cock-crow.
He learned, personally, what a hangover was. He learned also that, given a choice, getting one from beer was preferable, far preferable, to one from mead. With this wisdom, then, he tiptoed about his morning chores not only to spare his own head but with just a bit more sympathy for his loath-to-wake majesty; till one night Sorchone pressed on him a steaming cup of some sort of tea. Next day he felt, as he explained to a groaning Wolf, like a wrung-out dishrag, but neither sick nor in pain. Wolf threatened to break his arm if he did not share this great secret. And thereafter, only Sorchone noticed, to his huge amusement, that the two of them acquired a magical aura in the eyes of Dunmadroch, that they could drink anything and yet seem none the worse for it next day.
Sorchone’s own bind had been eased by time. Fear and confusion were appropriate for his first days in apparent captivity. Now he should seem no worse than resigned, and even venture a bit of humor as he grew accustomed to this new life. Moreover, Geillan scorn for their thralls turned directly on their thralls’ own spine, or lack of it. True, insolence begged for a beating, and even a spark of spirit would be thrashed—at first. It was the bolder, tougher thralls, who endured the chastisement and stood up straight again, whose burdens, of chores and punishments both, lessened. Their masters simply liked them better. Sorchone grinned as he eased and straightened himself; yet he kept up his private practices of thought and mood.
On the seventh day, the bards of Dunmadroch held a great storytelling, by way of marking the end of festivities. Around the bonfire-hearth of Tilderuld, they sang beneath the frosty stars tales of Deorgard’s forefathers down seven generations to the present. Bradgith had the last place, and from sunset sang for two hours the tale of all the summer’s conquests. Then in the pause that honored his song, a star fell blazing, a searing white streak down the northern sky to plunge into the northeast.
Men leaped up, pointing. The hairs on the back of Raian’s neck rose: there where its path ended, to the best of his reckoning lay the Tre-Uissig, and home. A minute later, another star, not so bright, shot down a similar track, though it seemed to vanish while still high above the earth. For another hour stars fell, one or two every few minutes, and then became rarer and rarer, till people wearied of watching for them, and left the black, glittering night to withdraw into their warm, golden, smoky halls.
The small crowd gasped in one breath of awe.
“Was that, er, did you, I mean your spell cause, er, shake it, um, down?” the baron Doreith stammered, in part from the cold at the top of the tower.
Treskiel did not reply. It was what he intended, and his spell had unquestionably done—something. And yet his soul still reeled from an impression of vast, unguessable distance. How high rode the spheres of the stars? He had reached for them, and felt such an abyss of emptiness that he almost dropped to the flagstones to clutch the breast of the familiar earth; only pride kept him afoot. And this, too, he knew: whatever was that flash of light in the north, it was almost companionably close by comparison; not even so far as, say, Sparca.
“Them,” Doreith amended, at another streak.
“Did you do that, Radiance?” murmured someone in the small throng at Treskiel’s back; Reisson, Doreith’s poet-friend. The young astronomer Varaan, kneeling at the tower’s edge and vigorously sketching the night sky, glanced back. Treskiel shrugged.
“That was our objective, was it not?”
“Ooo, two more together!” That was the Lady Perelle, Varaan’s sister and a fair sorceress herself, when she could be pried away from flirting with Reisson, under whose cloak she now sheltered from the chilly night.
“Watch,” said Treskiel. “Watch, and record. I,” he pressed his fingertips wearily to his forehead, “I will retire for now.” He cast a quick, unfriendly glare at the stars and hurried to hide from their uncanny remoteness beneath a solid roof.
From Castle a Geste, the bright star seemed to fall far to the southeast. Though the rest streaked into anywhere out of the high west, Asilay noted that first one with particular interest. Peria, where the brat was; what did this mean? She turned back to her still-sobbing sister.
“Nay, come, dearest! Shake off these foreign mores! Time was, when our great House answered only to our mother Moon and not these heavy-footed Perian louts, a woman bore what child she pleased, and when she pleased. We suffered no man’s scorn; we granted to no man the right to an opinion at all!”
Sonaay looked up, her pretty face blotched, her eyes filled with tears and doubt. Asilay daubed her face with a square of pale silk.
“No, my love,” she went on warmly. “It’s Rumil who should quake. With his child in Eirenseld’s power, he should quake indeed. Ah, you have some House-pride yet!” she said lightly, seeing a glitter of political sense in Sonaay’s young face. “And you shall live here in a Geste with me. Never fear; Aunt Arrowy never comes, never cares. And when you are delivered of the babe, just see how many fine young men will court you as never before!”
“Really?” Sonaay sniffed hopefully.
“Trust me, my love.”