We were under full steam before they comprehended. They fell all over each other, trying to find their places and get set. They didn’t have a chance. We burst through them, killing a few, and swept into the headquarters they had failed to defend.
My recollection of the moment is a mosaic of horrified men, their mouths open, scrambling for weapons and running to intercept us. The few who did were unlucky. My own axe split one of them.
A single man among them was not confused. He had been standing by himself and, alone of us all, remained still. My eyes, keyed to take their last look at things, saw the whole and placed its parts. This man did not move, because he was the focal point. Without ever changing his course, Brodir was driving toward him. All the men who futilely flung themselves in our path did so with him in mind.
He was an old man, who knew what he had accomplished, why he had done it, and what it had cost him. He knew his position in the action of the moment, too. A slight smile wrinkled his crow feet as he awaited us. For a moment I looked upon greatness, then Brodir slew it. At the last instant a youngster lunged near enough to throw an arm in the way of the sword. One blow took off that arm and the old man’s head.
We had seen to it that they had a victory they wouldn’t celebrate. Now we began to pay. First there were enough men to slow us, then we could hardly move at all. We fought our way into a thicket, but men had been running to cut us off. We could go no farther and locked shields.
That patch of high brush was a fortress, as those who followed us in found out. We killed so many that they let us alone, contenting themselves with seeing that we didn’t escape. Shortly I heard the sound of wood being chopped, though it didn’t make as much noise as voices telling newcomers of the disaster.
“Brian’s dead!”
“My God! No!”
“But he couldn’t be! We won!”
“We did, eh? All right, you put his head back on.”
The man who had said they won expressed the feeling of all of them. Something had happened which was so unbelievable that it was unfair. Listening grimly, I wanted to rub salt into their wound, but I was too parched to yell.
I had known they weren’t simply waiting around for us to die, of course. My first knowledge of just what they were up to came when a tree fell. It crashed down among us, pinning men down and breaking our shield wall. Within a few minutes several others fell upon us, and we were done for. Those of us who weren’t killed or maimed were trapped in the snarl of branches, unable to flee or fight.
They came after us, pulling us out like flies out of a spider web. Crouched under a fallen trunk, I saw them get Brodir, not three feet away from me. He was the one they wanted. The lynch mob gathered. Interest in the rest of us was temporarily lost, and, leaving my axe where it was, I started crawling.
The next tree, a huge one, was hollow. The opening had not originally been big enough to admit a man, but the fall had enlarged it. It wasn’t much of a hiding place, but there was no other. I squeezed inside and worked my way up as far as I could go. For the first half-hour I took it for granted that I would be found. When nothing happened, I relaxed. Next, exhaustion put me to sleep.
There was no sound of men stirring about when I waked. After waiting long enough to feel sure that wasn’t a temporary condition, I slithered cautiously out. The sun had gone down. Nobody was to be seen in the grove, though I could now hear disturbing noises from the direction of the battlefield. As quietly as possible I stole to a point whence I could look forth. All corpses had been removed to the open, and for a reason. The noises which had alarmed me came from scavengers, much too well fed to bother to scratch around in the woods for food. There were buzzards and crows, croaking and screaming in their satisfaction, as they hopped from one cadaver to another. Wolves were snarling good-humoredly as they tore men apart, but that wasn’t the hardest thing to look at. Old women were ranging the field, beating the carrion birds off with sticks, so that they could frisk the dead.
It was clear that I could leave when I was ready. Withdrawing to the opposite side of the grove, I fumbled for my field rations. Before we went into battle we had each been given two heavy slices of rye bread with a hunk of cheese in between. In the pocket of my leather tunic this sandwich had suffered overheating and compression. The cheese had lost its identity in the pores of the bread, but, in spite of my thirst, I managed to down the crumbly mass.
Meanwhile I was deciding what to do when darkness offered me concealment. I knew the lay of the land in only one direction; but I certainly wasn’t going to recross that battlefield and risk seeing buzzards battening on Skeggi or Golias. Thinking of the latter caused me to remember the last conversation we had had. His instructions had called for heading south and east, which I could do without again seeing the scene of our defeat.
With the aid of the pole star I kept my course until I found a dirt road. To my right were the lights of a town, doubtless the one where my enemies were billeted. I turned left. It wasn’t exactly my chosen direction, but I decided to worry about that later. My object was to escape trouble by getting out of range of patrols on the lookout for foreigners who couldn’t explain their presence. I had kept my knife, but without my axe, shield, helmet, and byrnie I didn’t look any more militant than I now felt.
The road was unpeopled and soon entered the forest. After a while I felt secure enough about the present to think of the past and the future.
Gradually desolation came upon me. They were good, ready fellows that I had rowed and fought with. I had got on well with them; even Brodir I had come to like. Now they were dead, and I did not know that I was happy about outliving them. A man had to make the effort, or he couldn’t help making it, given the chance; but I wished I hadn’t found that hollow tree. In the shield wall I had felt an interchange of trust such as I had never known. Grieving, I felt I had deserted Skeggi and the rest where they had been faithful to me.
As for Golias, he had apparently been confident he would survive. I didn’t believe he had, yet as soon as I got reasonably clear of the district I would act as if I did. It is not enough for a man to leave one place; he must head for another. My tryst with Golias at Heorot, wherever and whatever that was, formed my only future. It was a dismal one. When and if I found Heorot, I would wait around for a man I didn’t expect to see. When he didn’t show up — well, what then? There was a vacuum on the other side which cowed my mind as well as my spirit.
A wayside spring had relieved my thirst, but I made no other stop until the weight of my thoughts confused my will. Once I had surrendered motion, despond fixed me. After a while I slid off the rock I was perched on, lay down, and rolled over on my face. In time feeling was so narrowed that even hopelessness was squeezed out. I all but was not.
A man is not dead until he ceases to be curious. Something happened that my mind took note of. A bird began to sing. With that change I changed, though sluggishly at first.
The song was no ordinary cheeping. The bird had technique. It used forty different kinds of notes and tied them together in logical order. The third time it went through its repertoire I raised my head to make sure it was still night. As it was, the next move was to make sure that what I was hearing was indeed a bird. At the fifth rendition I rose and stepped softly into the woods. When I had gone a few yards, a note was broken in two, and I heard the flutter of wings.
It might not have affected me so strongly at another time. Yet even when the mind stands plumb, it is stunned to find a new fact in a pigeon hole reserved for something marked “understood.” Here, contrary to all my experience, was a bird singing at night. It generated wonder, which can’t cohabit with despair.
From another perch the bird sang again, more sweetly for being a little farther off. There was just enough light under the trees so that, although things could be seen, nothing quite took form. Amidst the freshness welling from the ground there were the scents of wood flowers. An intermittent breeze wafted the heavier scents of a forest in midsummer. My thoughts were as touch
-me-not as the odors I couldn’t name, but I felt there was no partition between the heart and the joy for which it searches.
Twice more the bird sang before it flew out of hearing. It left me quiet in spirit till I made a disturbing discovery. Walking toward where I thought the road was, I covered the necessary distance, then twice that. I was no longer forlorn, but I was lost.
I was only briefly upset, for I hadn’t known where I was going while on the road either. Still, in a different mood I might have waited for daylight to help me find the highway. As things stood, a dreamy fatalism urged me to amble through Broceliande.
Dawn, I found, was not far off. Soon the trees had identity but not life. The leaves drooped like tired strap hangers. I kept on, but I could feel the quiet in the pit of my stomach. As soon as it grew warm enough to render it pleasant, I meant to lie down and sleep.
Though not given to nerves, I was so in the grip of the silence that I jumped when I heard a little shriek. A girl was running toward me through the half light. She had mistaken me for somebody else, for when almost to me she stopped.
“Oh!” she said in a tone expressing both embarrassment and disappointment. “I thought you were Aucando.”
Her hair was around her head like mist around moonlight; and her figure was a proper stalk for such a blossom. She was, in fact, just such a girl as the bird song of the night before had made it seem possible to meet. I gawked at her before I recovered myself.
“I’m not Aucando,” I admitted, “though it must be fun.” As I spoke, I smiled in a way to blunt the edge of my impudence. It was not only that some of my brashness toward women had been left behind on Aeaea. There was a quality to this girl which restrained me from looking wolfish.
She was frightened, though she needn’t have been. Even when lechery was in my mind I couldn’t be bothered with anyone disinclined to reciprocate. Yet I didn’t want her to go away before she had answered some questions.
“Don’t worry,” I reassured her. “I never make passes before breakfast. By the way, do you know where I could get any?”
Anything that her eyes could tell her she was learning about me. I waited while she made up her mind.
“Are you a pilgrim?” she finally asked.
“I’m not only a pilgrim but a lost one.” Naturally I meant to keep my mouth shut about my part in the thwarted invasion. “I strayed off the road in the dark last night, you see, and now I’m just drifting.”
“There’s no place anywhere near that I know of,” she said hesitantly, “but if you’re hungry — ”
“Very hungry,” I interrupted.
“Well, I can give you a little something to eat, if you’ll wait a minute. I want to borrow some honey from the bees before they wake up.”
The bee tree was not far away. The black hole which betrayed its hollowness looked ominous to me, but I held my ground while she thrust an arm inside. When she withdrew it, she held a sizeable section of honey-comb. There were drowsy bees on it which she lightly brushed off. Then she skipped away — a pace, I confess, behind me.
“That was a neat job,” I remarked.
She was pleased at the praise. “They work so hard for it,” she laughed, “but they have more than they need, and anyhow honey’s much too nice for bugs.” She placed the comb in a leaf-lined basket and licked her fingers. “I’m Rosalette.”
Everybody else in the Commonwealth seemed to get along with only one name. With relief I shucked the “A. Clarence” I had so long hated.
“Shandon,” I said, touching my hair. “Sometimes called Silverlock.”
She led me to a lean-to made of boughs and prettily woven with flowers. It stood, I noted, at the junction of seven little-used forest roads.
“Here we are,” she stated. “Wait till I milk the goat — which may not belong to me but does — and then I’ll be hospitable.”
Nobody joined us at our berries, milk, bread, and honey. I considered that fact, the bivouac, and the location.
“Doesn’t your husband like breakfast?”
She blushed, but as if I had said something that pleased her. “Do you mean Aucando? He’s not my husband yet.”
Several questions wanted to be asked, but I picked the most urgent. “You mean to say you actually live out here in the woods alone? But why?”
She took a drink of milk. “They were going to kill me, so I escaped and hid out here.”
I could only stare, but she went on of her own accord. “Aucando’s father doesn’t want me to marry him.”
She couldn’t have been twenty. Moreover, if I knew anything at all, she was as nice as she looked. The very notion of planned violence to her was preposterous. I was in a passion by the time I found my voice.
“Why that ba — that buzzard! He wants to — well, what’s your family doing about it? Or what’s little Aucando got to say?”
“He’s nearly as big as you are!” she cried. “And stronger — lots stronger.” Then she cooled off. “He can’t do anything, because his father’s the ruler hereabouts.”
I brightened. “Never mind how I know, but if his name is Brian, your troubles are over.”
“No, that’s not the one.”
“Is that right?” From the way she talked I was out of Brian’s territory — or rather the one his aggrieved subjects might be scouring for strays — which was a relief. “Where’s your fiancé now? Can’t he get away to join you?”
“Of course. He’s in the forest somewhere looking for me this minute.”
The whole business of her being there by herself worried me. It seemed to me that there was as good a chance of her being found by those who wanted to kill her as by her sweetheart.
“How many minutes has it been all told?” I persisted.
“Well — three days.” Not as confident of being found as she liked to think, she didn’t look at me when she said that.
“But suppose,” I suggested, “he doesn’t happen to pass by this particular spot?”
At that she raised her eyes, and I saw she had already faced that challenge from destiny. “If he doesn’t come today,” she said, “I’ll go looking for him.”
6
Random Faring
UNTIL I SAT DOWN TO EAT, I hadn’t realized how tired I was. Food started me blinking with drowsiness, and Rosalette was quick to notice.
“Why don’t you lie down for a while?” she asked, pointing inside to a balsam-sprig bunk. “You won’t be in the way.”
In spite of that assurance, I meant to stretch out for just a few minutes. She had treated me right, and I had no intention of usurping her tiny quarters. Looking up at the flowers dotting the roof of the lean-to, I thought of the girl who had put them there. There was the same sure blending of appearance with identity.
Outside I could hear her humming. Finally she put words to the tune.
Seven roads could bring you here;
Seven have betrayed me, dear.
Seven could, and none have done,
Rank imposters every one,
Liars caught in lies, my sweet —
There’s no road without your feet.
Where you’re not there is no land,
There’s no touch without your hand;
Here, I know, is not a place,
For it does not hold your face;
But there’s one that I must find
Where you wander, though I'm blind
Without your eyes.
The voice was sweet, like everything else about her. It soothed me, and I slept.
The forty winks I had intended to take stretched into hours of solid slumber. It was noon before I sat up. The first thing I observed was that the girl’s little bundle of belongings was gone. It took me a couple of minutes more to see that a piece of birch bark beside me had letters scratched on it.
“Aucando didn’t come, so I’m leaving,” the message ran. “The little hut is yours, if you want it. There’s bread and honey rolled in the other piece of bark.”
Th
e lean-to suddenly felt like a room where someone had died. As I got out of it, I noted that the flowers were already withered. Munching my saccharine sandwich, I looked around.
The seven roads which Rosalette had accused of letting her down still ran inscrutably to no place I could imagine. I kicked myself for not having asked if any of them went in the general direction of Heorot. It hadn’t occurred to me that I would sleep so late or that she would leave so early.
If the sun hadn’t been at zenith, I might have been able to set a course. As it was, the best I could decide was that three of the roads probably ran in a more or less southerly direction. I tried the feel of all three, without being able to work up a hunch. On my second round, however, I noticed a blurred footprint which I took to be Rosalette’s. The road might not lead me toward Heorot, but at least I had some reason for following it. Perhaps I could catch up with her and give her a hand, if the going got rough. Or — or just perhaps. Anyhow the road was better for knowing she was on it.
As I took stock of the wilderness by daylight, I was all the more impressed by what she had done. With no observable equipment she had come into the woods and made herself at home like a sourdough. Then she had deliberately set out to sift big timber for her man.
The road led uphill. The forest through which it wound was, I should judge, a virgin stand. Mostly it was hardwoods that threw branches towards each other at levels of never less than sixty or seventy feet. Except for birds, squirrels, and a few deer, I saw nothing but these trees and the trifling shrubbery in the cool spaces between them, until the road forked again.
Following Rosalette had been largely a whim whose strength had petered out. I wasn’t a good enough tracker to find footprints in the leaf-covered road; but it might have made no difference if I had seen any. One of the roads sloped downward, suggesting a descent into some valley — the natural locus for a town. That was for me. My objective was to find a place where I could somehow get housed, fed, and oriented.
I had gone possibly a quarter of a mile when a deer sprang across the road just in front of me. Simultaneously I heard an unmistakable buzzing, followed by the sound of a shot. The deer stumbled, and I whirled to vent my wrath on whoever had startled me.