A Hero's Tale

  "Then you have nothing to reproach me for."

  "Reproach you? I don't reproach you. I reproach myself."

  "For what?"

  The memory of my time in Elen's house came back to me all at once. I had to clasp my hands together, to stop their trembling.

  "The abyss," I whispered. "Three days in the abyss, when I believed you had betrayed me. How did she do that? How did she kill me with a lie?"

  I was too tired to think clearly or I would have seen it then, that Elen had seized on one small fault, a fault I had in common with all of humankind, a fault I had never taken seriously. Jealousy.

  I wasn't thinking then. I knew only that some part of me remained lost in the abyss.

  "Help me," I whispered. "I don't know how to come back to you."

  Maara moved closer and took my hands between both of hers.

  "You're exhausted," she said. "Sleep a while. When you wake, the world will change."

  She slipped her arm around my shoulders and laid me down, so that my head rested in her lap. She caressed my back in a way she knew would calm me.

  "Forgive me," I whispered.

  "Hush," she said. "I understand."

  How could she understand when I didn't understand myself?

  As if she'd heard my thoughts she said, "Have you forgotten that I too was once in thrall?"

  "But not this time."

  "No," she said. "Not this time. This time I had a shield against her."

  "A shield? What shield?"

  "You."

  Had I not had the same shield?

  "Then I have no excuse for my defeat," I said.

  "When this day is over," she replied, "we shall see who is defeated."

  88. The King

  I woke in the afternoon with no memory of having fallen asleep. I was lying on the soft grass with Finn sitting beside me. Maara was gone. I sat up and looked around, fearing for a moment that her presence had been just a dream, until Finn said, "She'll be back soon."

  "Where did she go?"

  He nodded toward Elen's camp. What could await her there but danger? Had I found her only to lose her again?

  I started to get up, but Finn said, "Wait with me."

  "I need to find her."

  He shook his head. "She told me to keep you out of trouble." Then he saw my fear for her. "She hasn't gone down there to fight. They have need of an interpreter."

  I sat back down and tried to clear my mind of the confusion of sleep.

  "Tell me what's been happening," I said.

  "Well," he said, "you slept through the entire battle, though it didn't amount to much. Once they saw they would be overwhelmed, most of the warriors of the mighty threw down their swords. A few are holding out, it seems. Elen's personal guard, and some others. They have taken a stand behind the wagons that barricade the tents, where Elen and her captains ought to be preparing to negotiate the terms of their surrender."

  "Ought to be?"

  "She's in no hurry. She may believe she can still maneuver."

  Remembering Elen's power, I said, "She may well succeed."

  He shrugged. "We'll see."

  I got up and went to stand on the crest of the hill, to have a better look at Elen's camp. The fog had lifted. Men were sitting around their campfires, much as they had been the day before. The warriors of the common folk had returned to their places. This time they were not Elen's men, but Bru's. Behind the wagons, warriors in battle gear stood ready to fend off an attack, but no one threatened them. Bru had set out only a few pickets, to give the alarm if Elen's guard left their enclosure. He seemed prepared to wait them out.

  I saw below me too the evidence of murder, the corpses of the men who still lay as they had fallen within the king's encampment. This was an easy battlefield to read. Believing themselves safe among friends, few wore any armor. Many were unarmed. Most were bunched where the boggy ground had hindered their retreat, where they had been trapped and slaughtered.

  Behind me the warriors of the northern army commanded the hilltop, though they were no longer arrayed for battle. They sat in groups, talking quietly among themselves and sharing what rations they had, or lay in the grass asleep.

  I turned back to Finn. "I'm going down there," I told him. "Will you come with me?"

  "I suppose I can't persuade you to wait until you're sent for?"

  I shook my head.

  "Then let's take these folks down with us and give them something to eat. I imagine Bru has more to do right now than send someone up to fetch them."

  With difficulty we woke the sleepers, but they all came gladly enough, once we pointed toward the encampment and made the signs for eating. Trailing half the northern army along behind us, Finn and I made our way down the hill. When we reached the camp, Finn saw to it that the northern warriors were welcomed properly and given what hospitality was to be had, while I went to find Bru.

  Bru had established a meeting ground where the warriors of the mighty had been encamped. Around a central fire the northern chieftains sat, along with many of the men I had met the day before, Bru's kinsmen, and with them Bru himself, as well as several others I didn't know. They were engrossed in earnest conversation, and at first they didn't see me.

  I knelt down behind Bru and tugged at his sleeve.

  "Aha," he said. "I was about to send for you. We have a difficulty, and I don't know how to untangle it."

  "Where is Maara?" I asked him.

  He gestured at the wagons. I didn't see her there at first. I saw only three men who stood talking quietly together. One I recognized by his size and by his shield, which he had slung over his shoulder. On it was a black bear. Then I caught a glimpse of someone in their midst, and from her clothing I knew it must be Maara.

  Bru saw my alarm. "Don't worry," he said. "She's perfectly safe."

  "Safe? She's surrounded by the enemy!"

  "Not quite," he said. "That big fellow there won't let her come to harm."

  "But he's one of Elen's captains."

  "Yes," said Bru, "and he's also a distant cousin of mine." Bru frowned. "He's in a difficult position. He took an oath to serve the queen, so he won't take up arms against her, but he won't serve her by opposing me. He thinks he can induce her to surrender. I doubt it, but what have we to lose by allowing him to try?"

  The bear shield chieftain moved again between Maara and me, cutting off my sight of her. I turned back to Bru.

  "What will you do with Elen if she surrenders?" I asked.

  "Therein lies our difficulty," he said. "The king demands blood for blood."

  "The king?"

  Bru pointed at a small, light-haired man who sat not far from us staring into the fire. His left arm and shoulder were bandaged, but it was not the pain of his wounds I saw in his eyes. Although he appeared harmless enough, two of Bru's men sat behind him, charged with watching him. His beardless face looked very young.

  "He demanded also Maara's blood," said Bru, "but that is, of course, out of the question. As he is a defeated man, he must accept our terms. But what to do with the queen is a question that concerns all of us."

  I nodded.

  "You have a strong voice in this," he said. "Perhaps the strongest voice of all."

  "Me? Why?"

  Bru smiled. "When will you understand? The world has changed, and you are the pivot point. I wield only the power of my sword and of my friends. You wield the power of the unseen hand, the hand that moves the destinies of men."

  I laughed. "Finn must have been telling you his stories," I said.

  But Bru was not about to make a joke of it.

  "I have sense enough to understand a story that tells itself before my eyes," he said. "This day will change the course of many lives, and what we do here will echo down the generations. I must be as sure as I can be that I make no mistakes."

  "No mistakes," I murmured. I felt as if I had done nothing but make mistakes from first to last.

  Bru frowned and looked down at his sword, whi
ch lay unsheathed across his lap. It seemed that he held it there more as a symbol of his authority than as a weapon. Its blade was clean.

  "The easy road is to let the lad have her," he said. "After all, he has a right. He has this day witnessed the slaughter by her order of men he loved." Bru scratched his beard and looked at me. "I don't know why, but I am reluctant."

  I think he expected me to persuade him to surrender Elen to her enemies. It was indeed the easy road. The young king had just cause against her, and her guilt was not in doubt. Let him ease his heart with her blood, while we kept our own hands unbloodied. Yet I shared Bru's reluctance.

  Did I not wish her dead? Had I not that very day nearly plunged a knife into her heart? But I hadn't done it, and once the sting of my defeat had faded, I was glad. Although I had killed before, I had never in my life done murder, but that day I had come close to it. Blinded by my anger, I had almost done a thing I could not now justify. For all the suffering she'd caused, Elen deserved to suffer. Did she deserve to die? That was a question I couldn't answer.

  I turned my thoughts to a more practical consideration.

  "Elen won't surrender if she believes we're going to kill her anyway," I said. "She will force us to shed more blood before we can lay hands on her and put her to the sword."

  "Yes," said Bru, "and that's why I've let her be. By some amazing bit of luck I have lost not one man in this endeavor. A few are hurt, but all are still living. The queen's men will fight to the death, and they will make our victory as costly as they can."

  "Surely she is not worth the risk of even one life."

  "Surely she is not," said Bru. "Yet there is another way." He glanced over at the young king. "That lad would not hesitate to lead his own men against her. He hasn't many left that are fit to fight, but he has enough." Then Bru gave me a look that had a hint of a challenge in it. "Did I not say there was an easy road?"

  I saw it too. We need not risk the life of anyone we cared for. We could leave to the young king the task of bringing Elen to justice. By every law and custom, he had the right to take her life for the lives she had taken, and I knew what he did not, that Elen had killed his brother too, and by her own hand. Who had a greater right than he to deliver Elen to her fate? We had only to stand by and do nothing to prevent it.

  Bru's words whispered themselves in my head. What we do here will echo down the generations. Of all the things that would echo down the generations, vengeance would echo loudest of all.

  "Let us stop it here," I said. "The endless cycle of murder and revenge. Let us stop it here, today."

  Bru's brow furrowed with doubt. "What then are we to do with her? Can we in conscience let her go and so loose her evil upon the world?"

  "The world is already full of evil," I told him. "Though evil she may be, she has lost her power. She has no army. She has no home. If she has not the means to do us harm, we can safely let her go. The rest of the world will have to look after itself."

  "And if someday she should regain her power and return to trouble us? Will we regret allowing her the opportunity, when we could have prevented it?"

  "There is reason in your argument," I said, "but we might take a lesson from the stories of people who tried to prevent some future evil, and in the course of trying, caused the very evil they were trying to prevent."

  Suddenly I felt Maara behind me. I felt her there even before she knelt down and touched my shoulder.

  "Elen's guard will take the bear in to speak with her," said Maara. "What message shall I give him?"

  She must mean the man I thought of as the bear shield chieftain.

  "I have given Bru my opinion," I told her. "Whatever he decides, I will abide by it."

  "And I will abide by Tamras's advice," said Bru. "Have him tell her she is free to go. She may take any of her men who wish to follow her, but she is to go now, today. That will give her a little time to outdistance a pursuit. In the morning I will give the king leave to gather the remnants of his army and go home, but he may take it into his head to follow her. As he is a free man who has done me no harm, I will do nothing to prevent it. She must take her chances with the world, as do we all."

  Maara nodded and stood up. My eyes followed her until she had rejoined the bear shield chieftain.

  "She wasn't surprised," said Bru.

  "She knows me well," I said.

  Bru chuckled. "She didn't see your eyes this morning. Still, I should have known what counsel you would give me."

  Before Bru could explain himself, the young king's face captured my attention. His eyes were fixed on Maara, and a hatred burned in them that frightened me.

  "May I speak with the king?" I asked Bru.

  "Of course," said Bru. "I don't know how much of the common speech he understands. You might let him know what we have just decided."

  I stared at the young man until he felt my eyes and met them.

  "Do you understand the way I speak?" I asked him in the language of the mighty.

  He nodded.

  "How much blood will it take to ease your heart?" I asked him.

  He gave me a sullen look and didn't answer.

  "I have never understood how heart's ease can be bought with murder."

  "Not murder," he replied. "Justice."

  "Justice, do you call it? You came to Elen's house to see justice done. Have you seen it?" I gestured at the ruins of his encampment, at the bodies of the dead in full view of where we sat. "Is this the justice you expected?"

  He frowned and looked away.

  "And if you had received what you call justice, you would have conspired in a murder, because Maara is innocent."

  His eyes came back to me. It was clear he didn't believe me, but he waited to hear what else I had to say on her behalf.

  Although I knew it would only increase his determination to take revenge on Elen, I cared more about convincing him of Maara's innocence than about shielding Elen from his anger.

  "On my word as on my life," I said, "this very day I heard the queen confess to murder. It was she who killed your brother and used her servant as a scapegoat."

  A flicker of doubt came into his eyes.

  "I have no other witness," I said. "If my sworn word does not convince you, then think it through yourself. Who stood to gain? Who stood to lose? Did Elen take a husband willingly, or did she do it to satisfy her own ambition? And once she had done it, was he not a hindrance to her?"

  I watched him work it out in his own mind. I left it to him to take my argument to its conclusion, that if he had become her husband, he would have shared his brother's fate. If Elen had not betrayed him that very morning, he might not have given credit to my assertion of her guilt, but now he was disposed to think the worst of her.

  The young king's face grew hard, so that he resembled the older man he would become. He started to stand up, but was prevented by a sword's tip set firmly upon on his shoulder. The men who guarded him were attentive to their duty.

  "Her life belongs to me," he said. "Though somewhere among her clansmen you may find one willing to pay her ransom, I will pay you as much or more."

  "We don't intend to hold her for ransom," I said. "We intend to let her go."

  The young king sat quiet for a moment, while he tried to comprehend what I had told him. Then he looked at Bru. "What says your chieftain? What reason has he given?"

  The young king had taken me for an underling, a go-between. For reasons of my own, for the first time I asserted my authority.

  "Bru is not my lord," I said. "Though I may not look it, I am by right a chieftain in my own land. Bru is my friend, and my ally in this adventure, and we count among our friends these chieftains of the northern tribes. Today we are the mighty. Accept our terms, and we may begin to forge a friendship that in days to come will benefit us all."

  "What are your terms?" he asked.

  "Let vengeance go. Let Elen face the world alone, as she deserves no better. Let her discover the consequences of her failure." r />
  He shook his head, but before he could refuse me, I said, "Accept this counsel from me as a gesture of my friendship."

  "You take from me what is my right and call it friendship?" he replied. "Her deeds condemn her. You are her conqueror. What makes you now her champion?"

  Had I become Elen's champion? I searched my own heart then for the anger I had felt toward her, for the desire to take revenge for the evil she had done. It was gone, not because I felt pity or compassion for her, but because Elen wasn't worth the trouble.

  "For what she has done, I too condemn her," I said, "but I condemn her, not to the justice of humankind, which trails a host of new evils after it, but to the justice of the world."

  "Then let the world beware," said the young king.

  "Indeed," I said, "let us all beware. Let us take care not to yield to evil's power, because evil has no power but what we give it."

  "I gave her nothing!"

  "You believed her lie. How did I so easily convince you of her guilt? Was it not there to see by any who has eyes to see it? What blinded you? Was it not your anger, which too eagerly sought out a victim whose blood you hoped would ease your pain?"

  "What do you know of my pain?" he asked me. "You would feel as I do, if she had taken someone dear to you."

  "She very nearly did," I said, "and with your help and your consent. Do you believe I don't understand your heart? Let me assure you, that if my friends and I had not been able to save Maara's life, I would have taken Elen's life, and I would have hunted you and yours to death, heedless of the consequences." I stopped, to give him time to see in my eyes that if any harm should ever come to Maara, I would carry out my threat.

  "If you have nothing else to live for," I said, "if you care nothing for this world or for any of the living, if you are willing to let a greater evil loose upon the earth, then take your revenge and waste your life and the lives of those you call upon to help you."

  "You give me counsel you would not keep yourself," he said.

  "That's true," I replied. "And I also give you your choice, and with your choice, the consequences. Elen will leave this camp today, as soon as we can be rid of her. You will have leave to go tomorrow morning. Follow her or not. It's up to you."