A Hero's Tale (20 page)

But pain followed me into sleep and haunted my dreams. Wolves in their many guises, some on two legs, some on four, danced with me along the edge of the abyss. And when I fell, they looked down at me and laughed. The fall woke me. It was dark.

Hunger made me forget my mortal wound. As Maara once said, the body keeps us living, even against our will. I sat up and saw all around me the sleeping forms of the household servants, lying on cots like mine or on pallets on the floor. I got up as quietly as I could and crept into the kitchen, where I made myself a meal of meat scraps and heels of bread that I found in a basket beside the door that led out into the yard. Then I retreated again to my out-of-the-way corner.

Once I had eaten, I felt a little better, but I didn't feel like myself at all. I no longer cared for anything or anyone. Where not long before a searing pain had been, now there was no feeling, none at all. Can a body go on living whose heart lies dead within? Perhaps it can, but to what purpose? Injury provokes a desire for revenge, but who had injured me? I could only turn my sword against myself.

Who else could I accuse? Not Elen. Hers was a prior claim. If I accused her of the theft of Maara's heart, I would make of myself a thief. A would-be thief, I reminded myself. And how could I blame Maara? Of what could I accuse her? Only that she had lied to me, not once, but many times. Why? To shield me from a painful truth or to keep me from keeping her from Elen? Either way, how could a lie have killed me?

Then I saw in my mind's eye, as if I were a witness, a battleground where the dead, the truly dead, would lie, and I remembered the northern army, at that very moment gathering its strength, intending to lay waste to Merin's land.

Because I had believed in Maara's love, I had left to their fate all those who truly loved me. I had betrayed them because Maara had betrayed me.

Where love had fled my heart, now hatred hastened to rush in. Never before did hatred find more than the briefest welcome there. Even my hatred for Vintel was a little tempered with pity and understanding. Now my hatred for one I had so loved raged like a storm within me, though my body still sat slumped against the kitchen wall between a table and a rubbish bin.

And I did indulge it. I used it, to push my love away from me, to reclaim myself a little. Hatred lit the spark, and anger fueled it, until it burst into a flame that revealed to me the darkest places in my heart, where I would fight for what I wanted, where I would murder any who opposed me. That fell knife that had betrayed me, I held to Elen's throat. I could not bring myself to imagine taking Maara's life, but to take love from her as she had taken love from me seemed only justice.

I'll never understand how love can turn so quickly into something else.

Merin's words. They echoed in my head as if her voice had spoken them aloud beside my ear. At last I understood. I set my heart in Merin's place and watched my mother, her beloved, turn her back and walk away. At last I understood.

Merin's voice spoke to me again. The rest of it. Her sorrow, her regret. And the very thing that had kept the two apart, whose hearts still yearned toward one another.

It was bad enough to call her love for me a lie. It was unforgivable that I denied my love for her, even to myself.

I refused to see her meaning. Her words did not apply to me. Maara's love was a lie, and Maara's lie released me. I could deny anything I liked. If I did not deny it, how could I bear the humiliation of giving her a love that was unwanted. She had made a fool of me.

How could loving someone ever be a foolish thing? This was a side of love I had never seen before. Isn't love always about the other person?

And that thought stopped me.

What I had just been calling love was something else. If my love for Maara depended on her love for me, it was not love, but a bargain. I thought of the night we spent together in a shelter in the wilderness, when I first told Maara that I loved her. I never asked her if she loved me back. I only asked her if she wanted what I had to give her. My heart. Myself. And she had accepted.

Maara hadn't taken love from me. I had it still.

But now Maara didn't want it. Of what use was my love if Maara didn't want it? What could love do for her? What could love offer her?

Once I asked the question, I knew the answer. I could let her have her heart's desire, even if it wasn't me. I could wish her well and let her go.

Still I resisted. It can't be done, I thought. Not by the human heart. Perhaps the hearts of gods can grow as great as that. Not mine.

Yet what choice was there? What else could I do?

I blew upon the embers of my anger, envisioned myself at the head of a great army, breaking down the walls of Elen's house, bludgeoning the tower door to splinters, finding Maara there and taking her by force, to carry her away with me. Yes, if I had the power, I could force her body. No power in the world could force her heart. Nor, if I imprisoned her, could I ever hope to win it.

The last little flame of anger flickered out. The ashes began to cool. I wish I could say I felt a little better. In fact I felt a good deal worse. Now there was nothing I could do but reconcile myself to the greatest loss of all. Greater than the loss of life itself, I thought it was, because death brings forgetfulness. While I lived, I would remember.

My mind reached the end of thinking, and I sat quietly for a little while without a thought left in my head. The ravaged place within my breast began to knit itself together. The raw pain had subsided, though it was still tender to the touch. Like all pain, it would someday fade to just an ache that I would grow accustomed to.

Then it occurred to me that I couldn't pass the rest of my life sitting under a table in Elen's kitchen. What should I do now? Wait for Elen's escort? Where would they take me? I had friends to meet. Finn and the armorer. Bru's band of warriors. I should release them from their obligation to me and send them home. And it might not be too late to take a warning back to Merin's house.

I stood up.

The first glimmer of dawn had begun to light the yard. The shuttered windows let in feeble rays that tangled in the smoke of the banked fires. On one of the kitchen hearths I saw a suckling pig still on its spit, well roasted and keeping warm beside the coals, ready for the warriors' breakfast. Loaves baked the night before filled the kitchen with their fragrance. I began to step back into the world. It was a world both familiar and strange.

I would need food for my journey, and I would have no time to hunt or set snares. I took the piglet from its spit and put it into an empty grain sack, along with several of the loaves.

I opened the kitchen door a crack and peered out, to see if the yard was empty. I didn't notice anyone. A moment more and I would have been gone.

"Stop! Thief!"

The two guards posted in the yard had been asleep. Once out the door I would have seen them and could have easily slipped past them, but the shout awakened them, and they sprang to their feet, confused, until they saw me. While I was trying to decide whether I should dodge between them or around them, and so make my escape, someone dragged me by the collar back into the kitchen and tore the sack from my hands.

"You! Thief!"

It was the stout servant who had accused me of stealing the knife.

"No," I said. "It's all right. The Lady let me go."

He didn't seem to understand a word I said. While he continued to berate me, he dumped the contents of the sack out onto a table.

The two guards had come into the kitchen and now stood one on either side of me. The man turned to them and repeated his accusations. I caught the word for pig.

"I have to go home," I said. "You can keep your pig."

When I turned to leave, the guards took hold me of me.

"You have no right to keep me," I said. "The Lady let me go."

The stout servant shook the empty grain sack in my face and called me names I didn't know the meaning of, though it was quite clear what he meant. I appealed to the two guards. They pretended not to understand me.

The woman who had cared for me the day before came into the kitchen in her nightshirt and demanded to know the cause of the commotion.

"Please," I said. "Tell them the Lady has granted me safe conduct."

She shook her head at me and shrugged.

I tried to recall the word she had used the day before. "An escort," I said. "The Lady promised me an escort. The Lady let me go."

The stout servant held up the sack and babbled something to the woman I couldn't understand at all, but I knew what he accused me of.

"Do you not practice hospitality here?" I asked her. "I took a little something. Food for my journey. I don't need an escort. I have no time to wait for another escort. I know the way. I must go home. I must leave now, today."

The woman regarded me with suspicion. "Time enough to wait," she said.

I think she meant that I would have to wait for an escort, whether I wanted one or not. This was beginning to be tiresome. Why could they not just let me go about my business? I had only one thing left to do that was of any importance. Lives hung in the balance.

"You don't understand," I said. "I have to go right away. It's a matter of life and death."

My weary voice did not convince them. Nor would it have convinced me. I tried to awaken in myself a sense of urgency. I brought before my mind's eye the images of those I cared for -- of Merin and my mother, of my sister Tamar, of Namet, and of Sparrow, whose love I counted on -- and it seemed as if their ghosts were standing there beside me, watching me, to see if I had the will to save them.

"My people are in danger," I said. "I must take back a warning. It may already be too late. Even now the northern tribes are gathering an army."

One of the guards who held me made a noise like, "Urr?"

"Army? Where?" said the other. He was not so ignorant of the language of the common folk after all, but only reluctant to be drawn into their altercations.

"To the east, in the hill country beyond the wilderness."

"How far?"

I had to count the days. It had taken me almost a fortnight to reach Elen's house from the northerners' encampment, but I had taken the long way round. When I realized how much time had passed, I grew more fearful that I would be too late. It takes time to gather up an army, and an army moves more slowly than a person traveling alone. Still, I would have to hurry.

"How far?" the guard asked again.

"Four days, maybe five."

Before I could say or do anything to stop them, my captors dragged me between them through the great hall and up a wide staircase, to the rooms where the warriors slept. The stout servant followed after us, hoping perhaps to see me punished for my crimes.

One of the guards held me, while the other awakened one of their war leaders. I knew him for a chieftain by the device upon his shield, which hung beside the doorway of his room. It was a black bear, standing up on its hind legs, drawn so that when the warrior held his shield in battle, the bear would face his sword arm, looking as fierce as he, all raking claws and gleaming teeth.

From the hallway I heard the conversation, the man's complaints on having been awakened, then his alarm when he was told of the presence of the northern army. I heard him get up and dress himself. I heard the creaking of the leather, the clicking of the buckles, as he fastened on his armor. I heard the clank of metal as he took up his sword.

The bear shield chieftain emerged from his room like a bear emerging from his den. He had to stoop and turn a little sideways to fit through the narrow doorway. His uncombed hair, as black as soot, stood up all over his head. A little grey had begun to lighten his beard. When he saw me, he knelt down on one knee, so that he could look me in the eye.

"Hey now, small little wee lad," he said, in the strangest version I had ever heard of the language of Finn's people. "What's this? Comes your army to lay siege to us?"

"Your men misunderstood me," I told him. "The army I saw threatens my people, not yours."

"You saw this?" he asked. "These eyes," and he held two fingers up to my face, as if to touch them, "these eyes saw this?"

I nodded.

"How long?"

I counted on my fingers up to ten. It was close enough.

"Army so far off, ten days?" he asked, then glanced at the guard who had awakened him. Perhaps he would be reassured and go back to bed.

"He said four or five," the guard replied.

"I got lost," I said.

"You got five days lost?"

"Yes," I told him. "I got lost in the forest."

"Ah," he said. "Army close. Four days. Five days."

"Yes."

Even so, the northern army was far from being encamped on Elen's doorstep.

"Speak everything you saw, those eyes," he said. "Speak where are they."

Though his speech sounded awkward to my ears, the man was fluent, not searching for a word here, a phrase there, not making me repeat myself. He could almost have been a native speaker of the language of the common folk.

"I saw them in the hills east of the wilderness," I said.

"Armsmen, they prepare a march?"

"No," I said. "They are encamped."

While he thought that over, I opened my mouth to tell him again that they were coming after my people, not his, but I changed my mind and held my tongue. I wanted to see what would happen.

"They are many?" he asked.

I nodded.

"How many?"

"Their campfires on the hills I took for the bonfires of springtime."

I didn't know his word for the spring festival, but he knew what I meant.

"They are encamped," he said.

"Yes."

"Better to speak, encamped they were, ten days past."

"That's true," I said.

"And if they have unencamped, which way their intention is?"

I kept my mouth shut. I was beginning to have an idea.

He took me by the arm and gave me a gentle shake. "Your people. Which way?"

I pointed to the south.