A Hero's Tale (28 page)

"I'm surprised," he said.

"Why? Isn't that what we expected?"

"I'm surprised she's still living. When I left you, I believed you were going to kill her."

"I was," I said.

"Not that I would blame you, but I'm glad you didn't. She will soon discover her prisoners are gone. Whether she comes after them or turns her fury on the king's brother is anybody's guess, but I know where I'll lay my wager down."

"She will send her men-at-arms against the king's brother," I said. "She believes I was his spy. She doesn't care about the prisoners. She is confident they will all run for home."

Bru was pleased. "Just as we hoped."

"Has the northern army come?"

"Yes, most of them. The prisoners are with them now, telling them how we saved their lives. I think their hatred for Elen, together with their sense of obligation, will keep them with us for a while."

"Is Maara there? Is she all right?"

"She's fine," he said. "We found her unguarded and unbound. All that kept her there was her fear for you -- that you were still in Elen's power. We almost had to take her away by force, until I had the presence of mind to tell her that at that moment you were in the next tent over, holding a knife to Elen's throat."

I let my friends lead me through the gentle hills. Then we started up a steeper slope. The farther up the hill we went, the thinner the fog became, until we emerged at last into bright sunlight. Not a hundred paces from us was the northern army in battle array, covering the broad hilltop.

I heard Maara's voice call out my name. She came running down the hill to meet me. My first glimpse of her caught her in mid-air, an image I have kept vivid in my mind. When she reached me, she held me at arm's length and looked at me. Then she pulled me into her embrace.

Bru and his men left us alone.

We held each other for a long time. I hadn't thought about what it would be like, to touch her again, to feel her arms around me. It was an awakening and a return, an awakening from a nightmare world, a return to the world I had thought I understood, the world I lived in before we were parted.

Her touch took me back in time, to our embrace outside the tumbled cottage in the wilderness. As she had then, love turned again and showed me her bright face. The other face of love I would not forget so easily. Not this time.

My legs began to tremble. "I have to sit down," I whispered.

Maara let go of me and took my arm, settling me gently down on the grass. She sat down beside me and took my hand.

"What have you done?" she asked me.

"What do you mean?"

She gestured at the northern army, at Bru and his men, then out over Elen's camp, still lost in fog. "According to your friends, this is all your doing, but they didn't tell me how you accomplished it."

"That would take many days," I said. "I hardly know myself."

"Better tell me, then, how it happens that you have an army at your command, because I believe they're preparing to do battle."

"They are at Bru's command, not mine, though I have pledged him my help, if there's anything I can do."

"Who is Bru?"

"The man who came for you." I smiled. "Did you not know him?"

Puzzled, Maara shook her head.

"I wouldn't have known him either," I told her, "but he knew me. He and his men were once Merin's prisoners, until she set them free. They found me, lost in the forest, trying to find Elen's house. When they learned where I came from, they offered me their help, to make some return for Merin's kindness."

I gave Maara time to take it all in.

"They think Merin set them free?" she said at last. "You set them free."

"Hush," I said. "They don't know that. They have already repaid me many times over. I don't want them to feel they are still in my debt."

Maara nodded, but I don't think she agreed with me.

"With whom is this army preparing to do battle?" she asked.

"With the warriors of the mighty."

"I thought the warriors of the mighty had defeated them."

"They did," I said, "and took many of them prisoner. Their chieftains came this morning to negotiate for their release. We convinced them to help us. We made a plan, which went wrong almost from the beginning, but everything worked out all right in the end. We got you back, and the prisoners escaped."

Maara frowned. "Do they think fortune will favor them today when she deserted them before? They must now be greatly outnumbered."

"Not if Elen's army is divided," I said. "It soon will be. Elen is at this very moment preparing to take the field against the king's brother."

"Why?"

"When we went to Elen's tent, we went in under his banner, demanding your release in the king's name. Then, as if that weren't enough, Bru provoked her anger against him."

"How did he do that?"

"He convinced her that the king's brother had learned the truth about his brother's death."

"What truth is that?"

I hesitated. I wanted to take care how I answered her. I wanted to relieve her of her guilt, but at the same time I feared causing yet more harm. How would it feel to her to know that someone she once loved had used her with such cruelty?

"What truth?" she asked again.

"It wasn't you," I said.

"It wasn't."

"No," I said. "You didn't kill him. She did."

"Bru said that?"

"Yes."

"How would he know?"

"He didn't," I said. "He threw it at her as an insult, but once he said it, I knew what must have happened." I saw the doubt in Maara's eyes. "You don't believe me."

"Do you think I never thought of that myself? I can believe it's possible, but how can I be sure it's true?"

"Because I heard her confess it."

Maara closed her eyes. I understood what she was doing. She was watching the world rearrange itself. When she opened her eyes again, her gaze slipped past me, into the distance. She looked a little sad.

A cry floated up out of the fog, a distant cry, not quite human. Then a long silence. Another cry. Not a cry of pain. A long howl of grief, a keening. Then cries of alarm. Shouted orders. Battle cries.

The cries came from far away and muffled by the fog, but understandable, their meaning clear. Elen didn't challenge the king's men to take the field, nor did she surround them and demand their surrender. She sent her warriors into their camp, hidden by the fog, to murder them.

Maara stood up and drew me to my feet. Soon we heard the sounds of battle. The king's men were beginning to fight back. All of us, the northern army and their chieftains, Bru and his men, Maara and I, stood on the hill and watched, though we could see nothing but the fog. I reminded myself that the men who were dying there below us had come to Elen's house to watch Maara die.

I was so intent on the sounds coming from Elen's camp that I didn't notice a man emerge from the fog on the hillside below me. Maara did. She took my arm and started to draw me up the path toward Bru and his men.

"Wait," I said. "It's Finn."

Behind him others came. Some I recognized as Bru's kinsmen. All were of the common folk. All were armed and ready to do battle. When they saw the northern army, they stopped, fearing a trick. Bru's men went down to meet them, to quiet their fears and explain the situation.

Finn saw me and came to greet me. He extended his arm to me, but his eyes were on Maara. "So," he said, "this is the one."

"This is the one," I replied. "Maara, this is Finn, whose brother left me his bow."

Maara took his arm. "I am in your debt," she said.

"Not at all," he said. "Rain falls where water flows."

I didn't know what he meant by that.

Bru came and joined us. "What news?" he asked Finn.

"Whispers have gone round the camp," said Finn. "Watch for something unexpected." He grinned. "Late into the night they were telling stories of the king's return, not the false king they had been expecting, but the king lost to them of old. I heard songs sung last night I haven't heard since I was a boy.

"They awoke this morning and remembered. Then they watched the queen behave as if she had lost her wits. They expected signs, and they saw them everywhere. They woke to the sounds of murder, the killing of the king's men. The fog hid the horrors from the eye but not from the ear. They wanted no part of it. Half of them have already left the camp. Some will go home, but many more will join us."

Men were still coming out of the fog. Bru's men took charge of them, assembling them around their leaders, keeping them away, as much as possible, from the warriors of the northern tribes.

"We must soon make our move," said Bru. "When the fog lifts, I want everyone in place."

"What can I do?" I asked him.

"Stay here," he said. "Stay safe. I will have need of that subtle mind of yours when the fighting is over with."

Bru had already spoken with the chieftains of the northern tribes and the war leaders of the common folk. He had made his battle plan. He explained it to Finn and me, while his men made certain everyone was ready. Bru meant to leave half the northern army on the hilltop, spread out as much as possible, to look as threatening as possible. When the fog lifted, they would be clearly visible from the camp. Their main purpose was to intimidate, but if Bru needed them, they would be fresh, ready to join the battle where they were needed or, if things went badly, to cover a retreat.

The other half of the northern army would approach Elen's camp from behind the tents, while Bru would take his men by way of the battlefield, to approach the camp from the east. He meant to pass through the camp, through what men of the common folk remained. He doubted they would oppose him. He believed many would join him. The northerners were to wait for Bru to engage the warriors of the mighty. Then they would crush the enemy between them.

Bru left me with Finn and Maara. Finn remarked on how tired I looked. I reminded him that he had been awake as long as I had. In the end I gave in to his insistence that I sit down and rest, since nothing would happen until the fog lifted. Maara found a protected spot for us to sit, on grass so soft it was all I could do not to lie down upon it. Finn had brought food from Elen's camp, enough to share with us a modest breakfast.

"I'm not sure I understand," said Maara. "Who is fighting here, and what are they fighting for? I know the northerners would like to seek revenge for their defeat, but what of those who have deserted Elen's camp? What do they hope for, if Elen is defeated?"

"They hope for the king to take her place," said Finn.

Maara looked puzzled. "Haven't we just heard Elen's warriors murdering the king's men, and perhaps also the king himself?"

"Not that king," I said. "In the years you spent in Elen's house, did you never hear anyone speak of Totha?"

Maara shook her head, then frowned. "I've heard the name whispered," she said. "No one dared speak it openly. I never knew why."

"Let Finn tell it," I said. "It's his tale to tell."

"Totha was once the king in Elen's house," said Finn. "That was a long time ago. Our people are descended from him and from those who remained loyal to him. We have never forgotten that we are in exile, nor have we lost our lineage. We can name each firstborn son of Totha's line, from Totha all the way down to Bru."

Finn told Maara a short version of the story he had told me. "There are as many tales of Totha the king as there are winter nights," he said. "They tell of his journeys to strange and distant lands. They tell of the hardships he endured. They tell of the hardships his descendants have endured, hardships that made us strong and clever.

"The stories tell also of the evil that befell those who betrayed him. His treacherous kinsmen quarreled among themselves. The story of their descendants is an endless cycle of betrayal and revenge. What they visited upon Totha they visited upon themselves down through the generations, until at last their power failed, and the mighty came and conquered them."

"So the common folk of Elen's house are descended from Totha's people too?" I asked Finn.

He nodded. "They would have lost hope, but in their darkest hour, when they had been humiliated by the mighty, Totha's heirs came back to them. The mighty didn't know the difference between us. They made us welcome. They found us useful. They employed our craftsmen. They traded with our travelers. They let our stories in. We taught them to the common folk, until they too learned to long for the king's return."

"I hope you will soon be telling new stories in Elen's great hall," said Maara.

"I hope so too," said Finn. "And she will be in all of them."

"Who? Elen?" I asked.

I had been watching Maara. I thought I had been listening too, but perhaps I had missed something.

"Not Elen," he said. "You."

"Me?"

"If not for you, would any of this have come about?"

"Oh," I said.

"How did this come about?" Maara asked. "That's a story I would like to hear."

Finn settled himself like the storyteller he was. "In the heart of the forest," he began, "a hunter came upon a wolf, lying curled up asleep on the forest floor. He drew his bow, but before he let the arrow fly, the wolf sprang up and changed into a girl. She was just a little scrap of a thing. Could she be a forest sprite? A fairy child? Whatever else she was, she was an archer too, and her bow had a familiar look about it."

So Finn told his tale, while Maara listened and I remembered. He told how the hunter came to him, bringing his brother's bow. From the hunter's description of the girl, Finn knew who it must be. Since Maara too was from the house of kindness, he dwelt upon his sojourn there, where he knew me as a healer. Then Finn spoke of his brother, a man betrayed first by a northern chieftain, a man who wore a wolfskin, then by Vintel.

As a storyteller myself, I saw what he was doing. Two threads, bright and dark, knit his tale together -- the light thread of the merciful, the dark thread of the avenger. Signs and symbols, picked out by the clarity of hindsight, revealed the hidden meaning of the tale. The wolfskin, first a symbol of betrayal, then a sign of reconciliation. The bow, brought to Merin's land and left there for me to find and carry back to them. In Finn's story, his brother was a messenger, the bow the message. It was by the bow they knew me.