"Who were these men to you?" I asked him.
"My father's brother," he replied, "the man who fostered me."
There were scores to settle here, I thought to myself, and more to Bru than a man who saw his kinsmen in peril.
We had been on the hilltop for so long that the rest of the men came up to join us. We let them satisfy their curiosity. Then we went back down the hill, to take counsel together.
"When will the northern chieftains come to parley?" I asked Bru.
"Elen will have already sent an envoy," he replied. "They should return tonight, and the enemy come in the morning."
"So Elen's army will remain encamped another night?"
He nodded.
"Now that they've had their victory, will the sentries be less watchful?"
"Do you mean to try to slip into her camp unseen?"
"How else can I discover where they're keeping Maara?"
"Well," he said, "we could just join the army."
"How can we do that?"
"You forget. We are latecomers. The men we traveled with will be there by now. They will know us, and greet us as comrades in arms. And I think we may find other friends of ours among them."
So we determined that we would hide ourselves until after dark. Then we would join Elen's camp as if that had been our intention all along.
We put a few hills between ourselves and the battlefield before we settled down to wait. Bru handed out all that remained of our rations, and we ate a good meal that filled our stomachs and cheered our hearts. He made certain that each of us slept for several hours. We had a long night before us.
I did sleep for an hour or two, but for most of that day I lay awake, pondering what might happen. If we were accepted as part of Elen's army, we would have the freedom of the camp, but getting Maara out of it would not be easy. Elen would keep Maara close to her. That meant I would have to deal with Elen's guard, men chosen for their loyalty. And once I had succeeded in freeing her from Elen, how would I take her from the camp?
I could not think past the difficulty of the task that I had set myself. To find Maara and bring her out of Elen's camp to safety was as far as I allowed my mind to go. I made no other plans and gave no thought to the time when we would find ourselves together. What I would say to her, what she would say to me, did not concern me then. I kept my attention in that day alone. That was my shield.
We waited through the twilight, until we could bear to wait no longer. I thought we might have trouble finding the encampment, but Bru knew exactly where it was. He knew this land so well that he hardly had to guess where an army the size of Elen's would choose to stop.
By the time we got there it was almost dark. I could just make out how the camp lay within the landscape, as we looked down upon it from the crest of a hill. In a large open space, sheltered on all sides by low hills and hidden from the battlefield, we saw the campfires. I lost count after reaching four score, and I had counted less than half. At least a dozen men gathered around each one. I could not begin to think how many men there might be.
Behind the army on a hillside I saw a few tents, pitched close together. A little below them were the baggage wagons, set in a line, as if to guard the approach to the tents, or to form a barrier between the tents and the army. The oxen had been taken from their yokes, hobbled, and set out to graze. Red cattle were scattered in among them, meat on the hoof for Elen's warriors.
The camp even had a source of water. On the far side a change in the color of the vegetation told me the land was wet there. Perhaps there was a spring, or perhaps a stream drained into it. In addition to providing water, the boggy ground would prevent an enemy from approaching Elen's army on that side.
"How many are there, do you think?" I asked Bru.
"Many hundreds," he replied. He took a few minutes more to make a better guess. "At least a score of hundreds."
We stayed where we were, hidden in a patch of gorse, until the darkness was complete. The smells of cooking drifted up to us, along with the murmur of many conversations.
At last Bru said, "I'll go first. Keep me in sight. If I'm not well received, you must each do as you think best, but if you see me set my shield down, come and join me."
We watched him stumble over the rough ground beyond the reach of firelight. Then a sentry challenged him, and we heard him even at a distance complaining loudly that a man had come all that way to fight and no one so much as offered him a crust of bread. The sentry escorted him into camp. Bru was looking all around, as if for his long-lost companions. He must have found them, because he waved at a group of men around a distant fire and held his shield up, so that they would recognize him. Its device was so faded that I had never been able to discover what it was, but these men knew it. They stood up to greet him, and the sentry let him go. When Bru reached their campfire, he set his shield down.
The rest of us now straggled into camp, trying to look as if we had come to the end of a long and exhausting march. No one challenged us. Bru must have told the sentry to expect us.
The men who had welcomed Bru were not the men we had traveled with. Before long I understood that these men were his kinsmen. Finn knew many of them too, as did some of the other men. For half an hour each man recited his lineage to the others, until they had worked out who was whose second cousin twice removed. Then the clansmen all sat down and had their dinner.
I sat close to Bru and a little bit behind him, shielded from the firelight. I wanted to hear the conversation without drawing attention to myself.
We heard first about the battle. The two armies were fairly matched, but Elen took the northerners by surprise. They had begun their march, and when their scouts alerted them, they had to hurry back. They took the field with no time to rest, no time to choose their ground or agree upon a strategy. It was Elen who chose the battlefield and by clever tricks and feints lured the northern army to its doom.
Bru's band of warriors delighted in the tale. They took satisfaction in hearing of the northerners' demise, as if they had some complaint against them and this victory was their revenge. Then I remembered. Our faithless friends, they called them. The northerners had once used these man and then abandoned them. I wondered if Bru might not disapprove of the way that Elen planned to deal with them. I set aside a passing thought, that someone should take them a warning.
"Ask them where the northern army came from," I whispered to Bru.
"They approached us from the south," came back the answer.
I thought it not the best time to point out that if the northern army had intended to march on Elen's house, they had been traveling in the wrong direction.
Finn excused himself to use the privy. He made his way through the camp in the direction of the tents. The privy would be located for the convenience of the mighty. I watched his progress, until the conversation distracted me. Bru's kinsmen were speaking of the king's brother.
"He is here with his men-at-arms," said one. "Not as many as he promised, though he insists that more were sent for." The man gestured toward the far side of the camp. "His banner is the eagle."
Not that we could have made it out. It was too dark. Then I noticed the other banners fluttering from their standards in the night breeze. No one had to explain to me their purpose. In an army of this size, how else could a warrior find his fellows? And in battle they would serve to keep the clans together.
Now that we had entered Elen's camp, I should have been more hopeful, but I could not imagine how we would achieve our ends. The half dozen tents where Elen and her captains sheltered lay within a double ring of campfires. The ground around them bristled with spears, set into the earth to form a palisade. The men who would wield them were the same men who had surrounded Elen in her great hall. Even if we might against all odds succeed in getting in, getting out would be something else again.
When Finn returned from the privy, he tugged at my sleeve and drew me away from the others. Then he sat down beside me and said in a low voi
ce, "They hold the prisoners in a hollow in the hills, not far from the tents."
I looked, but the hillside was in darkness.
"They have no fires," said Finn. "No supper either."
"How many are there?"
"Many," he replied. "More than the dead they left lying on the battlefield. There may be twice as many." Before I could ask my next question, he answered it. "Your friend is not among them."
Though I had hoped, I did not expect that Maara would be with the other prisoners. "She will be close to Elen," I said.
"I fear so."
"Are the prisoners well guarded?"
"Well enough. Why?"
"If I can hide myself among them, perhaps I can approach the tents from behind."
"What good would that do? Are we invisible?"
"One way or another, I must get into Elen's tent."
"Then let's be a little clever," he replied, "and consider how we may make ourselves invisible."
How would I be able to walk into Elen's tent unchallenged? Who would be granted entrance there? Only her captains and her scouts, no one unknown to her. But in the morning the northerners would arrive.
"I will go in with the northern chieftains," I said, "when they come to bargain for their comrades' lives."
"How will you manage that?"
I'd had no time to think it through. I grasped for an excuse. "I will go out to meet them and warn them of Elen's treachery."
Bru had sidled away from the campfire to eavesdrop on our conversation. Now he turned and joined us. "They won't believe you," he said. "And if they do, they will turn back, and that would not serve your purposes at all."
Bru gave me a few minutes to wrestle with this new dilemma. Then he said, "You can't do this alone. I think we will all go with you. We will say nothing of Elen's treachery, but will present ourselves to the chieftains as their escort. We will disarm them and take them to Elen's tent at swordpoint."
It was a bold idea. In my mind's eye I saw the whole two dozen of us, an armed escort for the northern chieftains, bringing them to Elen's tent in plain view of the entire camp. Then I saw the flaw in Bru's plan.
"Elen's guard will stop us," I said. "They don't know us. They won't allow us to go armed before the queen."
For a time all three of us sat with deeply furrowed brows, trying to think of a way around this difficulty. Then I had the first glimmer of an inspiration.
"The king's brother," I whispered. "Do Elen's guard know all his men-at-arms?"
Bru shook his head. "How can they? Some have only just arrived."
"Then we will carry the eagle banner and insist on being granted entry in his name."
"It might work," Bru conceded, willing to leave aside for the moment the problem of obtaining the eagle banner.
"And once inside," I said, "we will refuse to surrender the northern chieftains until Elen gives up her hostage, so that the king's brother can at last have his revenge."
Bru leaned forward and his fingers brushed my brow. "A subtle mind," he said. "And once Elen gives her up, will we hand the chieftains over and depart?"
"No," I said. "We must tell the northern chieftains of our plans."
"Why would we do that?"
"Because their lives are not ours to use."
Bru scowled at me. "These armies were not yours to use, and yet you used them."
He meant to touch a point of weakness. I refused to let him find it.
"At the time I had no other weapon," I said. "It was a crude weapon and bought us little more than time. The next sword that comes into my hand I would hone a little sharper."
"Ah," said Bru. "You have a plan for them. You are too subtle for me. I cannot see it."
"I have no plan for them, but to allow them to make their own plans, and to do that they must know the truth, or at least as much of it as we do."
Bru put on his stubborn face.
"If we prepare them for the possibility that Elen will not deal with them honorably, they may be willing to give us their help in return for ours."
Still Bru did not relent.
"I know you have no reason to show them any kindness," I said. "They used you shamefully, and they deceived you, but alone how can we accomplish what we mean to do? Once out of Elen's tent, how will we get away, with Elen's army on our heels? If we can somehow help the chieftains to escape, along with all the prisoners, we will be lost among the multitudes."
Bru saw right away the advantage of loosing chaos on the army of the mighty, but still he was cautious.
"We can offer them our help without giving away our own designs," he said. "How much would you tell them?"
"Everything."
"Why?"
"Because they will suspect a trick, and honesty will earn their trust. And because I am a dismal liar. It is my greatest strength."
But Bru was not convinced. "Wiser men than I taught me never to reveal my plans, not even to my friends, much less my enemies. They lied to us. Why would we treat them as men of honor."
"Because we are men of honor," whispered Finn. "Tamras is right. They lied to us, and they will expect no better in return. A lie will always out, and they will be relentless in trying to uncover it, but it is said that all tongues witness to the truth."
When Finn spoke of tongues, I remembered something that might defeat our plans.
"How can we talk to them?" I asked Finn. "I've heard their language, and I can't make head or tail of it."
"They will bring a go-between," said Bru. "Someone who speaks the language of the mighty, for all the good that does us. None of us speaks it well enough for what you have in mind."
"I do," I said. "It is my mother tongue."
Then Bru had to accept defeat. If I was the only one who could make herself understood, it was my plan that would prevail.
83. Best Laid Plans
While I had been arguing with Bru, my plan was taking shape.
"We will have to arm the prisoners," I said, "but not too soon, not until we've found Maara." I turned to Bru. "We watched Elen's warriors plunder the dead. Their weapons must be somewhere within the camp."
"Taken by her men as booty, I've no doubt," he said.
"But Elen will have had her share. Where would they put such a great quantity of arms?"
"The baggage wagons," said Finn, "and there's nothing between the prisoners and the wagons but a little hill and a few guards."
"Would the mighty be so careless?" I asked him.
"No," said Bru, "but they would be so arrogant."
"Is it possible to see the tents from where the prisoners are?" I asked Finn.
"I believe so," he replied.
"We'll devise a signal, then. When they see it, they must rush the wagons all at once and arm themselves. What shall our signal be?"
"Well," said Bru, "we will all leave Elen's tent one way or the other. If we leave it with our swords drawn, let them come to us quickly, armed with whatever they can lay their hands on."
"And then we must all run for our lives," said Finn. "Shall we decide now which way to go?"
"South," I said. "To the north is boggy ground, as well as the king's brother's men-at-arms. To the west is Elen's house and the possibility that we may encounter stragglers making their way to the battlefield."
"And to the east is the whole of Elen's army," said Bru, "so south is where we'll go."
Bru sounded almost cheerful. Once he had accepted the idea of an alliance with the northerners, I think he found some enthusiasm for this new adventure.
"Is there anyone among us who can speak to the prisoners?" I asked.
"My son has a clever tongue," Bru replied. "He will make them understand."
I worried about Bru's son. He was so young.
"Then let him stay behind, close by the prisoners," I said. "He can watch for our signal, and they will need someone to lead them, until they join their chieftains."
Bru frowned. "He'll be sorry to miss all the fun," he said.
&nb
sp; "There will be fun enough for all of us," I told him. "Ask your son if he will help me steal the eagle banner."
I left Bru to talk our plan over with his men, while Matha and I conspired together. The evening's rations had been taken around in great baskets by boys who looked very much like us, so we each found ourselves a basket and thus disguised ourselves as servants.
As we made our way to the other side of the camp, where the king's brother had established his own separate encampment, I made a quick study of Elen's army. The men I saw around me appeared to be all of the common folk. From their dress and from their language, I guessed that these men were like Bru's kinsmen, keeping their self-respect while making something of a living by their service. Matha confirmed my guess.
"My father's clan has kept away from Elen's house," he told me. "Other clans have not been so fortunate. Some have lost their lands. Others have lost so many of their people that they can't survive unless they join a greater house. Elen's house is where the wealth is, so there they go."
"What of Elen's people?" I asked him. "Where are the warriors of the mighty?"
Matha pointed to the campfires closest to the tents. I adjusted our meandering path so that we would pass close by them. When I got a better look at the men there, I could easily see the difference. They were better armed and better dressed, and they moved and spoke with confidence and with a swagger, as men do who are aware of their own importance.
The king's brother's warriors were much the same. Matha and I were so far beneath their notice that we moved among them as freely as we could have wished. Our plan was to locate the eagle banner and come back for it when everyone was asleep, but Matha tripped and fell against the pole that held it, sending it fluttering down into a fire pit. He snatched it out, unburnt but covered with ash. One of the men-at-arms took hold of him and boxed his ears. Matha yelped and begged his pardon.