I lifted my hand, palm upward. “Would this be the angel?” I asked him, shaping the sunlight into the image of the young Megan.
“Yes, by God’s grace! Who is she?”
“A friend,” I told him. “Come inside, my lord, and we shall wait for the Morningstar together.”
Piercollo had rebuilt the fire and was setting a pot of broth above it. I introduced him to Raul, but the nobleman merely nodded his head in the giant’s direction and then ignored him.
“How goes it beyond the forest?” I asked Raul.
“Badly,” he answered, settling himself beside the fire. “We won one battle in the north, scattering the enemy. We felt the tide was turning and were jubilant. But then Edmund himself took the field, and three of our most senior nobles fled during the night with their men. We were crushed then, scattered. Men say that Edmund hanged every man he could catch. They herded the prisoners to a wood near Cousen, and there weren’t enough branches for the ropes. So Edmund had gallows built. Six thousand men were slain there.
“Now the forest is the last refuge for men whom Edmund terms rebels. You know he captured Delain, the Earl of Postney, and tried him for treason? He was hanged, partly boiled, and dismembered. How can you try a man for treason when you are not his king?”
I shrugged. “The conquerors make the laws, my lord. Should they judge it treason for a Highlander to breathe mountain air, then it is treason.”
“How great is the Morningstar’s army?”
“It has not yet lost,” I said carefully, “and therefore is in better order than the one you left.”
“But can it stand against Edmund?”
“Time will answer that, my lord.”
“You are being evasive. How many cavalry do you have? How many knights? Men-at-arms?”
“I am but a humble bard, Raul Raubert. These questions must wait until you meet the Morningstar. You have ridden far. Rest for a while.” I cast a spell of drowsiness; it is not one of my better enchantments, being a variation on the spells of contentment and warmth, but Raul was already weary, and he yawned and stretched out on his side, his head pillowed on a rolled blanket.
“Wake me … when he returns,” he said.
“Of course, my lord,” I told him, my voice low and soothing.
I rose and moved outside where the men-at-arms were sitting together on the grass. One of them stood and approached me. He was a burly fellow with short-cropped, wispy black hair balding at the crown.
“Where is my lord?” he asked.
“Sleeping. Have you come far?”
“Far enough, by God! We’ve had our asses kicked from the northern sea to the edge of the forest.”
“You took part in the battles?”
“Aye, for what it was worth. Is there any food here? We haven’t eaten for three days.”
“Of course. Wait here and I’ll bring you some broth.”
I ate with them, learning their names and their background. The man who had first spoken to me was called Scrymgeour. He had served the Arkney family for twenty-two of his thirty-seven years, first as a stable boy and then as senior herdsman for their vast herds of cattle. The other two were Cearus and Ciarhan, brothers who had been part of the Arkney contingent. Two hundred men had marched from the north—these three remained.
“How did you escape?” I asked Scrymgeour.
“Blind luck. Lord Raul is not the brightest of men, but he’s a bonny fighter. They hit us from both sides, having knights hidden in a wood on our flank. Lord Raul charged at them as they charged at us. We followed, and somehow we cut through them. Some of them swung their mounts to give chase, but as we entered the woods, a mist came up and they lost us. By the time it had cleared, the battle was over, if battle it could be called. God’s teeth, you should have seen the bodies. As far as the eye could see! So we headed southwest. God knows why! But he has this dream now that the Morningstar will free the land.”
“You don’t think that he will?”
“Ain’t likely. Look at the stories. He robs a tax column, rescues a witch. What else? I don’t doubt he’s a hero, but he’s not an army, is he?”
“Not yet,” I agreed.
He shook his head. “This Edmund is a great warlord, no question. His troops are well disciplined, his captains know their trade, and his tactics are brilliant: hit hard and fast. He’s never lost. I’ve seen three battles now, and believe me, there’s no stopping him.”
“Why, then, do you stay with the earl?”
“His father asked me to look after him. A great man, he was, and good to me and mine. Fair, you know? Two years ago I was gored by our sire bull—laid up three months. My wage was paid, food was brought to my wife, and the old earl’s own surgeon came to tend my wounds. You don’t forget that.”
“No, I imagine you wouldn’t,” I agreed. “He died, I take it?”
“He was hanged by Azrek. They had to carry the old man from his sickbed to do it.” His face darkened, his eyes narrowing. “Doubt he knew what was going on. Paralyzed, he was. Couldn’t speak.”
“Why did they hang him?” I asked softly.
“Said he was supporting rebellion, we were told. The news only reached us a fortnight past. That Azrek is the worst kind of scum. The old earl was his uncle, you know. Many’s the time he came north as a boy to play in the estates at Arkney. He virtually grew up with Raul. Twisted little swine he was then. I caught him once torturing a puppy. Said it bit him, lying little toad!” He cleared his throat and spit. “But he can fight, too. Good swordsman, best I ever saw. Gilbaud Azrek. I hope I live long enough to ram six inches of steel into his guts!”
It was coming on toward dusk when Mace and Wulf reappeared, their bows across their shoulders. The brothers, Cearus and Ciarhan, were asleep. Scrymgeour was sitting with whetstone in hand, his back to a tree, sharpening his sword with long sweeping strokes.
“What took you so long?” I asked Mace.
“Once we saw you were in no danger, we decided to backtrack them to see if they were alone.”
“And they were?”
“Of course. You don’t think we’d have come back if it was a trap.”
“Nice to know,” I told him.
Grinning, he walked past me and approached Scrymgeour. The man-at-arms stood and sheathed his knife.
“You know who I am?” Mace asked him.
“I’d guess you to be the man called Morningstar.”
“And that doesn’t impress you?”
“Should it?”
“No, it shouldn’t, my friend,” said Mace. “I don’t want dreamers around me, men with their heads full of legends and fables. I want men who know how to keep their swords sharp and their wits sharper.”
“Good enough,” said Scrymgeour. “They say Azrek has offered two thousand gold pieces for your head.”
“The price has some way to go, I think,” Mace told him.
“You’re not Angostin. You sound like one, but you’re not, are you?”
“I am the Morningstar,” said Mace. “I am the mountains and the forest. I am the voice and heart of the Highlands. With all of this, do I need to be Angostin?”
“I am not the man you have to convince,” said Scrymgeour at last. “My lord lies sleeping in the shelter. Convince him and you’ll have me.”
“I like loyalty in a man,” said Mace easily, though I could sense his annoyance. He had turned his full power and charm on Scrymgeour, but to no avail, it seemed. He swung away, and we walked toward the shelter. In the few brief strides before we reached it I told him of Raul and the vision Megan had sent him. He nodded and asked no questions.
Inside the ruined cabin I awoke the nobleman. Seeing Mace, he scrambled to his feet, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
“Welcome to my camp, Raul Raubert,” said Mace, his voice deepening, the accent sharpening and becoming more Angostin.
“You are …”
“I am the man the vision sent you to find.”
“To which of the
noble houses are you connected, sir?”
“All that is past, Raul. Dead. Burned to ashes. Here I make no distinction between Angostin and Highlander. You understand? Here we are all men, and we will be judged by our actions. Once you were the Earl of Arkney. Now you are a young man abroad in the forest with nothing more than your armor and your weapons. It matters nothing that you are Angostin. Out there you are less than nothing, for you cannot catch a rabbit for your supper, and if you could, I doubt you’d know how to prepare it. You would starve in the summer, freeze to death in the winter. How will being Angostin save you? From this moment you are a Highlander, nothing more and nothing less.”
The young man blinked and swung his gaze first to me, then to Wulf and Piercollo, and finally back to Mace.
“I … don’t know what to say. I am Angostin and proud of it. I don’t know if I can put that aside.”
“There is always more than one choice in life, Raul,” said Mace sternly. “You can, if you wish, ride from here and seek a ship to take you across the sea. You can sign on as a mercenary knight in foreign wars. Or you could put aside your armor and seek employment in the south under another name. Perhaps you could be a scribe or join a monastery. But I hope you will stay here and fight for your country and your people.”
“I want to fight,” said Raul. “Gilbaud Azrek murdered my father, and I must avenge him. My soul will not rest until I do.”
“Then what are you, Raul Raubert?”
“I am a warrior. A knight. What would you have me say?”
“What are you?” repeated Mace. I saw that Scrymgeour and the brothers had entered the shelter and were listening intently. Raul swallowed hard.
“I am a Highlander,” he said.
He made as if to kneel, but Mace stepped forward, taking him by the arms and pulling him upright. “I don’t want men on their knees,” he said. “I want men who will bow the knee to no one.”
It was a fine performance, and I could see that the newcomers were all impressed by it. Mace was the very picture of nobility. Astiana smiled softly and shook her head. I caught her eye, and we exchanged smiles.
Mace strode from the cabin, calling me to him. “Well?” he asked me as we moved out of earshot.
“You were very fine,” I told him.
“Yes, I surprised myself. How simple it all is. How people long to be led. I wish I’d discovered it years ago.”
“What do you plan?”
He turned to me, laying his hand on my shoulder. “You began it, Owen. Now I shall finish it. I will gather an army, and I will take Ziraccu. After that … who knows? There will be gold and plunder aplenty. I intend to be rich, Owen. Maybe I shall cross the sea to warmer climes, buy a palace. By God, why stop at a palace?”
“You are mightily pleased with yourself,” I snapped, “but may I remind you that we are still a small band of outlaws and there is no army as yet.”
“You don’t see it, do you?” he responded. “The Earl of Arkney was ready to bend his knee to me—an Angostin prince! Oh, I shall raise an army. No doubt of that. Azrek can have no more than five hundred men at Ziraccu. There are ten times that many warriors in the forest. We will sack the city, and then I shall disappear.”
“Why stop at Ziraccu?” I said, intending my voice to be mocking. But he did not notice the tone; instead he laughed aloud.
“One should not be too greedy, my friend. I can win that battle, but once I have, the rebellion will be over. Edmund will march his armies back to the north and crush any who stand in his way. But that will matter nothing, for the Morningstar will be long gone.”
“And leave behind all those who followed you? Yes, that sounds like you, Jarek Mace. You will not have to see the ropes hanging from every tree or the rotting corpses upon them.”
His smile faded. “I did not ask these people to make me their hero. I owe them nothing. I owe you nothing.”
“I agree. But what you said in there was wonderful. No more Angostin overlords, no more serfs and slaves. Merely Highlanders, men judged by their actions and not by their blood. That’s worth fighting for, Jarek. That’s worth dying for!”
“Nothing is worth dying for!” he stormed. “And I’ll tell you why: because nothing ever changes. There will always be kings, and there will always be serfs. Edmund has conquered the north, but he will die one day, and there will be other civil wars. And yes, the north will be free, because a Highland Edmund will arise. But nothing will change, Owen. Not for the likes of you and me. Not for Wulf or Ilka. The strongest conquer; the weak suffer. It is the world’s way.”
“It is the coward’s way!” I stormed. “What man has made, man can change. Yes, there have always been despots and tyrants, but equally there have been benevolent rulers, strong men who cared for their people. But if men followed your philosophy of despair, they would build nothing. What would be the point of fashioning a home from timber and stone? One day the timbers will rot and the roof fall in. Why learn which herbs will conquer which diseases? We are all going to die, anyway. Why teach our children to read? They’ll never be able to change anything!”
For a moment he seemed taken aback, but it was more as a response to the passion of my argument than a result of the argument itself. “By God,” he said, “if you could fight like you can talk, you’d be a formidable opponent.”
“Go ahead, Jarek Mace, mock if you will. It is something you are good at.”
“I am good at many things, Owen,” he replied. “Keeping myself alive during a bloody war is but one of my talents. Being a hard man to kill is another. Now I am playing this game of yours to the best of my ability. Do not ask for more, for there is no more to give. I care nothing for Angostins. And I am not even a Highlander, I am a lowborn Ikenas. They want to make me Rabain reborn, so be it! They want to follow me to the gates of hell, well, let them. All I want is to see Azrek dead and to have some gold to spend. Is that so bad?”
“You could be king,” I said softly. “Can’t you see that? The people will rise in their thousands.”
“And Edmund will crush them,” he said, hammering his fist into the palm of his left hand for emphasis.
The light was beginning to fail, and we walked back toward the shelter.
I thought I saw a shadow move at the edge of my vision, but when I swung around, there was nothing to see. And night flowed over the clearing, the sky thick with clouds that covered the moon and stars.
I have discovered in my long life that there are many words and phrases that have more power than any spell of magick. The most well-known of these is, of course, I love you. But by far the most deadly is if only.
For these two words can strip a man’s strength, his courage, and his confidence. They become the father of regret and anguish and pain. A man kneels by his dead children in a plague village and thinks, If only we had journeyed south in the summer. A farmer gazes at his rain-ruined crop and believes he would have been a rich man if only he had bred horses instead. Lives are ruled by if only.
I have my father to thank for being free of the spell cast by those two words.
“Foolish regret weighs more than iron,” he would say. “Every man alive makes mistakes; that’s how he learns. Only the weakling talks of life’s unfairness or claims he is jinxed by bad luck. The strong man shrugs his shoulders and walks on.”
I remember one winter evening, as we were gathered around the fire, when one of my brothers, Braife, was crying because his favorite hound had been killed in a fight with wolves. He was weeping not just because of the loss but because he had chosen to carry a spear that day and not a bow. With the bow, he said, he might have driven the wolves back.
“Most likely,” agreed Aubertain, “but you weren’t carrying the bow. It was not even a mistake, nor yet an error of judgment. You were hunting boar, and for that a man needs a long spear. Everything you did was correct, but the dog died. When I was a young knight in the Oversea War, I had a friend called Ranuld, a bright, witty, shining man. We were riding tog
ether through a forest, hunting deer, when he suggested trying to the east. I maintained the deer would be in the west, and it was to the west that we rode. We had traveled no more than a mile when a band of robbers leapt from hiding in the undergrowth. We drove them off, of course, killing three, but when they had gone, Ranuld fell from his horse. He had a deep dagger wound in his chest, and it had pierced the lung. He died in my arms then. I screamed my bitterness to the heavens, and I regret his death to this day, but not with guilt. I chose the west because the forest was more dense there and the ground was low, indicating water and good feed for deer. It was not my fault that he died. Nor was it your fault, Braife, that the hound was slain.”
Forgive me, my ghostly friend, for this departure from the trail, but it has relevance.
I thought I saw a darting shadow in the trees, and I did not mention it to Mace or to Wulf. I wish I had, but in my mind at the time I dismissed it as a trick of the fading light or a fox moving stealthily.
But it was Cataplas … and I should have guessed it and warned Mace. We could have hunted him down and prevented so many tragedies. Yet I did not think of it. Perhaps Cataplas protected himself with a spell; perhaps I was tired. I do not know. And despite the whispering memory of my father’s advice, I still regret that missed moment.
We moved into the shelter. Raul was talking to Astiana, while Piercollo and Ilka were preparing supper. The brothers and Scrymgeour were gambling, using bone dice, and Wulf was sitting by himself with the wrapped skull in his lap.
It was a warm evening with a gentle breeze blowing over the ruins, and I played my harp after supper, summoning sweet melodies of summer dances to entertain the company. Wulf did not join in with his flute, and Piercollo, despite my cajoling, declined to sing.
The hours flowed by. Wulf and Ilka were asleep, but Astiana was entertaining the others with tales of the Elder Days. At first I listened, for there were several I had not heard, but then she moved on to the stories of the Gabala knights, and I wandered away to sit facing the forest, staring out into the darkness.