A Hero's Tale

  My mother had vanished. I looked around for her, but she was nowhere to be seen.

  "Where did she go?" I murmured.

  Though I spoke more to myself than to my sister, Tamar knew who I meant and answered me anyway.

  "Our mother won't have Vintel near her," she said. "Whenever Vintel speaks with the Lady, our mother keeps her distance."

  I was glad to hear it. I thought I understood why Merin had stayed under the same roof with Vintel. This was her house, after all. And I couldn't fault my mother for staying with her, but it reassured me that my mother and Vintel hadn't been on speaking terms.

  "She'll say the right thing," said Maara, who appeared at my side so suddenly that I gave a start.

  "Who?" I asked her. "The Lady or Vintel?"

  "The Lady," Maara replied. "She's very angry with Vintel, but she knows better than to squander an alliance."

  "Will someone explain to me what's going on?" said Tamar.

  Maara turned to her. "Your sister has given Vintel leave to go to any other house that will accept her. She intends to return to her sister's house, and it would be a shame if Merin were to lose that alliance."

  "My sister gave her leave?"

  Maara smiled.

  Vintel spoke to the Lady for quite a while. I couldn't tell whether she was making an excuse or an apology, but Vintel did all the talking, while Merin listened with distance in her eyes.

  Maara stayed with us and watched. Though she was often interrupted by people asking for instructions, in between her other conversations she told Tamar that I had defeated Vintel's army and that every warrior who would remain in Merin's house had sworn loyalty to me.

  Tamar, ordinarily so full of questions, was rendered speechless.

  At last Vintel had said all she had to say. She stood silent before the Lady and waited. Merin gazed at Vintel for so long that I knew something unexpected was about to happen. Then Merin placed her hands on Vintel's shoulders, leaned toward her, and kissed her cheek.

  "What in the world?" I whispered.

  "What indeed?" Maara replied. "Unless. . ."

  "Unless what?"

  "When Vintel claimed she would never betray her oath to Merin, I think she meant it."

  "But Vintel did betray her."

  "Let's think about it," Maara said. "Merin and Vintel have known each other almost all their lives. When Merin was a young woman, Vintel was a child here, a child who showed great promise. After her mother died, who would she have looked to for protection, even for love."

  I slipped back through time and saw Merin and Vintel as they must have been after the war with the northern tribes. Each had suffered an unbearable loss. Their shared experience explained so much -- their mistrust of strangers, their attitude toward Namet, the way they kept her at a distance, because she had suffered so little from what she had helped to bring about. Merin and Vintel had many things in common then, and each had needed someone. Merin's need was to be needed, but Vintel had needed so much more, and a mother most of all.

  Now I understood. When Merin chose me to be her heir, Vintel had been disinherited, but it was never Merin's power that she wanted.

  Vintel took Merin's hand and kissed it. Then she turned away and started back down the hill. On her face I saw the pain of that parting, and my heart ached with what she must be feeling -- the humiliation of defeat, the loneliness of exile, and the loss of everything she loved. So keenly did I feel it that I was tempted to offer her a place with me.

  Maara stepped between me and Vintel and took me firmly by the shoulders. "Don't let her see a look like that," she said.

  I nodded, but I couldn't speak. Maara stayed where she was until I no longer needed a shield between myself and Vintel's pain. Then she stood aside, and we watched as Vintel made her way down the hill alone.

  Vintel's warriors were impatient to continue their journey. Their companions had been taken into Merin's house, to gather up all their belongings, and Maara had offered a cart to carry them, along with supplies enough to last for several days. After that they would have to rely on the hospitality of others.

  Many of Merin's warriors went down to see them off, and Vintel spoke a few words with each of them before she took her place at the head of the column. The companions shouldered their packs, and the warriors took up their shields. Before Vintel took up her shield, she turned to take a last look back. At once her eyes found what she was looking for, a lone figure standing on a knoll halfway down the hill. Beside me Tamar made a soft sound, a catch of breath, as if she feared that Sparrow would answer the invitation in Vintel's eyes. But Sparrow stayed where she was, and at last Vintel turned away and led her warriors down the river road.

  Tamar would have run to Sparrow then, but Maara caught her arm.

  "Not yet," she said.

  Sparrow watched Vintel out of sight. When she turned to come up the hill, Maara let Tamar go.

  Their embrace told me what I already suspected. Nor did it surprise me to discover that Tamar had become Sparrow's apprentice.

  "She wouldn't take no for an answer," Sparrow told me.

  I wasn't sure which thing she meant until I saw Tamar blush. I remembered with some bitterness the little girl who would make off with one of my treasures, not because she wanted it, but because it amused her to deprive me of it. But Sparrow wasn't mine.

  Bru and his men, relieved of their responsibility for Vintel, came up the hill and set up their camp. I offered them more comfortable accommodation in the men's house, but they said they preferred to be out of doors. I think none of our former prisoners wished to return to the place of their captivity.

  Fodla took charge of settling the warriors of the northern tribes. With Fet at her side, she issued orders to folk who couldn't understand them while at the same time telling Fet all about her great adventure.

  After taking a meander through the crowd to say a few words of welcome, Merin went inside to rest a while, and my mother went with her. Sparrow and Tamar slipped off by themselves. Maara seemed to be everywhere at once, but whenever I arrived at the place where someone had last seen her, she had already left for someplace else.

  The first excitement of the army's arrival was over. Now everyone had work to do. No one paid any attention to me. That was nothing new. Before I left Merin's house, I was only an apprentice, beneath their notice. Now they ignored me for a different reason. Six months before, I would have been scurrying about with the others, bringing food and drink to our returning warriors and seeing to the comfort of our guests. Several times I tried to help, but whenever I took something up -- a breadbasket or a tankard of ale or a stick of firewood -- someone would stop me and gently take it from my hands. Though no one was unkind, they made me feel set apart.

  I went indoors, thinking I might lend a hand among people who had not yet heard the story of Vintel's defeat, but news traveled in that household more swiftly than the plague, and it seemed there was no one left in Merin's house who hadn't heard in some detail everything that had happened on the frontier.

  The battle already had a name. They called it the battle of the wilderness. At first I thought they meant the battle in which Elen destroyed the army of our enemies, the northern tribes, but it was Vintel's defeat they meant, and my victory.

  At last, feeling in the way, I went outside again and wandered down the hill. I intended to go sit by the river, to enjoy a little peace and quiet, to try to feel at home again. As I passed the footpath leading to the oak grove, my feet took me there.

  Alone in the circle of the ancient trees, I waited. Nothing happened. I don't know what I expected. In the oak grove I had always felt protected, sheltered, safe from harm within the strong embrace of love that needs no human heart, no human hand. Now I felt nothing. It was a stand of trees spared by the ax of a credulous folk who once worshipped there. It was a stand of ancient trees. That's all.

  I trudged back up the hill again. Maara was waiting for me.

  "Where have you been?" she said.
"Go make yourself presentable. Wash your face and change your clothes. You will sit at Merin's right hand tonight."

  She stopped when she saw a tear trickle down my cheek.

  "What's wrong?" she asked.

  I opened my mouth to answer her. No sound came out of it.

  Maara took me gently by the hand and led me inside the earthworks. The front door of Merin's house stood open, but we avoided it and instead made our way around the back and through the kitchen yard into the laundry room. A few servants were heating water there. A look from Maara was enough to clear the tiny room.

  "What's wrong?" she asked again.

  I shrugged. I couldn't put what I was feeling into words.

  "Are you tired?"

  I shook my head.

  "What is it then?"

  "Lonely," I whispered. And she put her arms around me.

  No time to talk about it. No time to do more than take refuge in the arms of love again.

  "I know it's not the homecoming you wanted," she said. "You have come home to a strange place."

  That wasn't it, I thought, but I had no words, and no time. I let her go.

  "As long as we're here," she said, "we might as well have a bath."

  She handed me a tub and took another for herself. Then we went outside. I would have gone back in to fetch the water, if I hadn't been immediately surrounded. Two of the servants undressed us, while others filled the tubs. By the time they had us well scrubbed, someone else arrived with an armload of clean clothes.

  Where they found my few scraps of clothing I could not imagine, but the trousers were certainly mine. I knew them by the mended places, the puckers and uneven stitches made by my clumsy needle. To my surprise they no longer fit me. Too big around the middle, too short to cover my ankles, they gave me the gawky look of a boy growing too quickly into manhood. Maara sent someone to borrow another pair that fit me better.

  We entered Merin's house by the back door and elbowed our way through the uproar in the kitchen. Even in the great hall we were in the way. Maara started up the stairs. I thought she might be taking me to our old room, assuming no one else had occupied it, but she stopped at Merin's room and knocked. My mother opened the door and beckoned us inside.

  Merin was sitting in a chair by the hearth, her dark hair lying loose over her shoulders. My mother resumed combing it while Maara and I sat down on the hearthstone. As if I had never been away, we talked of little things. I should say the others talked. I listened, while their voices and their laughter wove all around me, like the fabric of a warm cloak, a web of hearts. I snuggled into it and closed my eyes.

  98. A Time of Peace

  I awoke in Merin's bed. The room was dark. I was alone. A few coals glowed upon the hearth. I got up and blew them into a flame bright enough to see by. Someone had undressed me. My clean clothes hung unrumpled over the footboard of the bed. I put them on, ran my fingers through my hair, and peered out the door.

  "There you are!" said Sparrow. "Maara said not to wake you, but they're about to start."

  "Start what?"

  "Come on!" she said.

  The great hall was filled with tables and benches packed so tightly together that, once everyone was seated, I doubted the servants could squeeze between. More benches stood against the walls, to accommodate folk for whom there was no room at table.

  Around Merin's high table, at the far end of the hall, was a bit more open space. Two tables were set crossways at either end of it, so that altogether it would seat about two score. Merin and Fodla stood beside it, engaged in lively argument. Sparrow and I joined them.

  Merin smiled at me. "I'm glad you're here, as we are at an impasse. Perhaps you will advise us. Where shall we seat everyone?"

  "The northern chieftains are our honored guests," said Fodla. "They must have pride of place."

  "None of my plans would have succeeded without Bru," I told her. "Those who helped us win the victory should be honored over those who were made to yield."

  "That may be so," she replied. "Yet are we not assured of the friendship of Bru and his people? The goodwill of the northern tribes is still in doubt."

  "There are three hundred of them," I reminded her. "We could hardly fit all of them into the great hall even if we invited no one else."

  "Each of their chieftains has chosen a dozen of his followers. Room for two score is all we need."

  "And Bru will bring two dozen," I said.

  Fodla scratched her head. "Let's make the table bigger," she suggested.

  In the end everyone was satisfied. Two more tables were added to the ones set crossways, so there would be room enough for the northerners at one end and Bru's men at the other. Maara would sit with Bru, to serve as translator. Ru, who was both peace chieftain and go-between, would sit at the other end and translate for the northerners.

  Bru and his men were brought in first. That much I insisted on. I hoped the Lady's welcome would assuage any bad feelings that might still linger from their captivity in Merin's house. She did all I could have wished, speaking to each one, taking each one by the hand, and in her simple elegant way, called each one friend and thanked them for everything they'd done for me. So charmed were they that none but Bru could find his tongue. Bru spoke for all of them, assuring her that they had done no more than repay a debt long overdue.

  Next came the northern chieftains and their followers, and Merin spoke to each of them, took each one by the hand, until they were as charmed as Bru's men had been. Only the wolfskin chieftain failed to come forward to receive her welcome. He didn't see her gesture. He was staring at the wall over Merin's head. Too late I remembered the shield I had taken, the wolf shield, the spoils of war.

  "Ask him if he knew the man who bore that shield," I said to Ru.

  She didn't need to ask. She answered for him.

  "It is his brother's shield," she said.

  The wolfskin chieftain turned to me and asked a question.

  "He asks who took it," said Ru.

  "I did."

  He understood me. I watched his eyes, while he felt again his loss and weighed his grief against the good we were trying to accomplish.

  I made the only gesture I could think of. I went to take it down. I had some trouble reaching it, and Maara had to help me wrest it from the wall. Then I offered it to the wolfskin chieftain.

  He made no move to take it. He met my eyes. His eyes were fierce, and he was close enough to do me harm.

  "Let's not do this anymore," I said.

  I waited a long time for his answer. Then he took the shield from my hands.

  I don't know how anyone could have made themselves understood over the racket that echoed off the rafters of Merin's great hall. Everyone spoke at once, so perhaps no one felt the need to listen. I didn't even try to carry on a conversation. I smiled politely whenever anyone spoke in my direction while enjoying the best meal I'd had in ages -- beef roasted to a turn, bread warm from the ovens, salted cabbage baked with apples, the ale just strong enough.

  After the meal the people grew a bit more quiet. They must have been at last too full to talk. Some nodded over empty plates. When the fruit and honey had gone round, Merin stood up and waited for the silence that quickly fell.

  "Tonight we welcome friends," she said. "Old friends." She gestured in Bru's direction. "And new friends." She bowed in the direction of the northern chieftains.

  "And we have said good-bye to others, who have left us by mutual consent and with no ill will."

  She meant Vintel.

  "Tonight we stand in enmity to no one. Not even the oldest among us can remember stories of a time when that was so."

  She paused and looked around her, at the warriors of her household and then at the elders.

  "Perhaps there are some among you who fear this time of peace cannot last."

  She waited again. No one answered.

  "While it does last, let us enjoy it, and let us learn what it can teach us."

  She turned
to me and held out her hand, to raise me to my feet.

  "And let us learn what Tamras has to teach us, because she is the one who brought it about. Shall we all agree tonight that she has earned the place she was destined for?"

  A murmur of assent went round the hall. No one objected.

  "Good," she said, and she sat down.

  Our visitors stayed for the three days ordained by custom. To my great relief, everyone behaved themselves. No matter what their private thoughts may have been, Merin's people extended to the northern warriors every courtesy. No one questioned my authority as Merin's heir. No one treated Maara with disrespect, and even those who once had snubbed her now sought her good opinion. We heard a few complaints from some of the warriors old enough to remember the war, but Fodla managed to persuade them, if not to trust, at least to tolerance.

  The Lady tithed every farm for friendship gifts, and the country people didn't hesitate to offer our former enemies the fruits of their labor if it would guarantee a time of peace. Bru, as heir to the wealth of Elen's house, needed no more than provision for the journey home. To the northerners, I offered a little something over what they usually managed to make off with and told them we would welcome them again at harvest time.

  They proved to be a proud people, and as they could no longer exchange their blood for spoils, they offered us instead the few things of value they had with them and pledged to bring more on their return. Some of them wore golden trinkets, finely wrought. These they were pleased to offer to the Lady. Others gave well-crafted knives, belts of tooled leather, ornaments of bone and amber, until I began to think we might be on the better end of the bargain.

  One evening Finn persuaded Maara, with Ru's help, to translate for him some of the stories of the northern tribes. I listened, enraptured, to tales of creatures none of us had seen or heard of, to tales of heroes not unlike our own, to tales of adventure and discovery, each one more amazing than the last. I wished we had time to hear them all, and I determined to have Maara teach us what she knew of their language so that when they came to visit us again, we could learn more about them.