Chance (2 page)

“That's what you said to my Lord Riol when you were seven years old, and he thrashed me until I bled.”

For Chance, of an age with Roddarc, had been reared at his side as the whipping boy, the one who took punishment so that the noble buttocks need not be scarred. It was an honor, an opportunity for a child of low degree.

Roddarc's smile darkened into a scowl. “The old bully is gone, praise be,” he retorted, “and I am not a child any longer.”

“You act like one!”

But Chance's ardor merely made Roddarc smile anew. Amused, he was. Chance raised clenched fists in despair and gave it up, slumping onto the other bench. He fed thornwood to the fire. The two men watched the leaping flames companionably.

“Nothing out of the ordinary in Wirral,” Roddarc remarked after a while, for Chance would have told him if there were.

“I have seen nothing, no.”

Halimeda's dalliance—should he reveal that? He felt a hot flush at the thought, and realized he would not. She was Roddarc's younger sister, ten years younger, and the lord treated her much as a father might. He would be upset, angry with her, perhaps even furious enough to punish her in some way, though he was not a punishing lord. Chance did not care to gift her with wrath. Nor could Halimeda's affairs have any connection with his lord's difficulties. Or so he deemed.

“Wirral is vast,” he added, “and I am but one man. What might be moving in the deeps of Wirral I cannot say.”

“I know it.” Roddarc studied the flames, their hearts shadowed with blue and green, and when he spoke there was unhappiness in his voice that he would not have revealed to anyone else but Chance. “If only I knew who was behind this unrest.… Old friend, I have not been a bad lord, have I?”

“Hardly! You are among the best; you know that.” Roddarc was for the most part just, and in many ways not unkind.

“Then why …”

“Because men are fools, that is why!” Chance spoke with vehemence. “They would prefer a lord who rules by the sword and torture, it would seem. For when a gentle lord rules, they can think of nothing but overthrowing him.”

“Well.” The lord looked up, his jaw firmed. “If they should succeed, Chance—”

“Say no such thing! They will not.”

“It is devoutly to be hoped you are correct. But if they should succeed, I want a promise from you.”

“Rod, you know you have it.”

“Not so reckless, my friend. It is hard.” The lord was faintly smiling, his look wry. “It is this: that you should protect my sister. For if I am killed, this demesne by right goes to Halimeda, should she ever be able to claim it.”

Chance took a deep breath and nodded. Roddarc was right; the task was hard. For likely he would see Halimeda wed to some lord powerful enough to champion her, and he could never make any claim on her except that of a loyal servant, for all of his heart's clamoring.

Chance prowled through the Wirrel the next day in a panic barely concealed. He had never known Roddarc to speak of his own mortality. And when he had walked his friend back to the fortress, parted from him at the gate, Roddarc had reached out for a moment and clasped his hand, the grip of a comrade facing battle.

Plain battle was a matter ill enough, but this hidden one yet worse. He and Roddarc knew not even the names of their enemies. Who were the conspirators? Where might they be mustering? Six men had been missing from the fortress guard that morning, deserters.… If there were rebels gathering in Wirral, they ought to be somewhere in the skirts of it near the Mark. But Chance had stalked all those ways, every moment expecting attack, and found nothing.

A movement—he froze, crouching, bow raised and arrow nocked. But it was nothing. A flicker of brown, a shadowy face peering for a moment from the hollow of a lightning-torn oak, then gone before he could draw breath.

Chance straightened and aimed his arrow at the ground. A daring thought had taken hold of him, and he seized the moment.

“Little one there in the tree,” he said softly, “come out, please, and speak with me.”

There was a scrabbling sound as of a squirrel inside the trunk, and then the face appeared again, eyes bright. Quite by accident Chance had hit upon a lure well-nigh irresistible to the Denizens of the forest—the lure of words at coupled sport, of rhyme.

Chance stood still, not utterly afraid but very wary. In a moment the small man of a nameless race stepped boldly out of his refuge and stood on a branch at the level of Chance's eyes, entirely revealed.

Chance knew that he had been reckless beyond belief.

The creature was far less human than he had thought. Twig-thin limbs and a torso very narrow, covered with skin like the bark of a young cherry tree, by the looks of him as hard and tough as an ash switch. No clothing. Chance had to force his eyes away from brown genitals that lumped grotesquely large in proportion to the skinny body, scarcely a foot tall. He had heard that the nameless woodfolk were lustful; now he believed it. No wonder Wirral grew so thick.… The small man's hands and feet also seemed overlarge, and his nose. Even so, Chance perceived his face as eerily beautiful. A narrow face, fine of jutting bone, subtle of mouth, taut of russet skin, with eyes so large and bright they seemed almost luminous.

“Chance Love-Child,” said the oak-dweller in a strong, dark voice, “what do you want?”

Chance could not speak. The Denizen laughed, a sound like the song of a wren, and strutted on the branch where he stood, his massy cock thrust forward.

“Nearly ten years you have trod this way,” he cried, “and never showed lack of sense till today. What ails you, Chance?”

From trees all around came the sound of bubbling laughter. Chance felt his small hairs prickle.

“Is it the maiden who is maiden no more?” the Denizen mocked. “The lady Halimeda who is maiden no more? She lay with Blake in the violet glade, no more a maid, and when Chance saw—”

Anger such as he had not felt in years rushed over him, jarred him out of his frozen fear. He raised his bow. But that scion of Otherness faced him, bright-eyed, fearless and laughing, and he could not take aim. He lowered his bolt again. A saddened ease stole over him, the calm of utter defeat, and he found that he could speak.

“It is for my lord Roddarc's sake that I make bold,” he said.

Birdlike chirps of delight rose all around; a subtle rhyme! The brown woodsman strutted again.

“Why?” he demanded. “He has said, the lady is yours, should he die.”

Chance nearly lost his voice again. If they had heard Roddarc's bidding, then even in his lodge one of them had been listening. “You go everywhere,” he whispered. “You see everything.”

“It is our nature so to go, so to see. What do you want to know?”

“Where the rebels muster,” Chance said with a dry mouth. “Who is their leader. When they will strike.”

The Denizen stopped his posturing and stood still in what might have been genuine perplexity.

“Surely you know,” Chance urged.

“I know full well. But why would I tell?”

Chance stood with his mouth agape. “Why not?” he burst out at last, and the small woodsman warbled with laughter.

“Why not?” The little man turned to the listening forest. “What say ye? Should I tell?”

There arose a piping clamor. A few strong voices shrilled above the others. “Tell! Tell!” cried one. “We love to meddle!” one sang out gaily. “And we meddle full well!” called another.

But before the visible Denizen could speak, another appeared, from where Chance did not see, and stood on the branch beside the first. He was gray, like beech, and mossily bearded, and as massy of cock as his russet comrade, for all that he seemed older.

“Chance,” he said in a taut voice, “ten years you have averted your eyes. Now you grow unwise. Think again.”

“There will be a price to pay,” said the brown one, singsong, “a price to pay, some day, some way.”

Their gaze met his as if from out of depths of another time, another order of being, and he knew that he was facing a power he could in no way control, relentless as fate, capricious as the turning of fortune's wheel. Perhaps as cruel as old Lord Riol, and not likely to go away, like Riol, and die. The Denizens would live forever in the forest, and what they might do to him.…

Still, he had to know. For Roddarc's sake.

“Tell me,” he whispered. “I will pay when I must.”
Whipping boy that I am
, he thought.

The forest fell to silence. The brown Denizen sat down on the bough; the gray one remained standing and spoke formally, with no attempt at rhyme.

“The rebels are gathering at Gallowstree Lea. Blake is their leader. Their numbers are small, fifty and a few, but they are clever. They will not need to penetrate the fortress. Roddarc will come to them, for they have with them a hostage.”

“Who?” Chance demanded, though already he knew.

“Lady Halimeda.”

All the miles to the fortress he ran. The day was more than half spent, but, powers be willing, there might yet be time—if the forest folk had told truth. He had heard tales, and he knew they might be making a jackass of him, burbling their uncanny laughter. Or betraying him, luring him off on a fool's errand, perhaps setting him to lure Roddarc off on a fool's errand while Blake took the fortress. The thought burned in him.

But instinct told him that there was truth in them this one first time. Truth to make him always hope thereafter.

Roddarc was at the gate, at horseback, with a troop of mounted followers, just setting out when Chance ran up to him, stumbling and streaming sweat and grasping at the steed's mane for support.

“Halimeda is missing,” Roddarc told him tersely.

Chance nodded. Gasping for breath, he could not yet speak.

“What is it, man! You have news of her?”

“Gallowstree Lea,” Chance panted, finding voice. “Blake, their leader. Fifty men. They will be expecting you.”

Halimeda had gone on horseback and left a plain trail. Roddarc rode grimly along it, with Chance on a warhorse beside him but not armed for war. When they neared the lea, they dismounted and left their steeds and men, stalking ahead to scout the enemy's preparations. It was not fitting that the Lord of Wirralmark should do this; Chance should have done it for him. But Roddarc had insisted that they go together.

“I trust no one but you these days,” he murmured as they made their way softly forward.

The lea was a meadow in the midst of Wirral, a place where lightning had seeded fire a few seasons before, now lush with grass and shrubs. Off to one side stood a surviving tree, an elm where outlaws had once hung a renegade. Cocky of Blake, to choose this place; did he not fear the same fate?

Roddarc did not tread as silently as Chance would have liked. But it did not matter. Blake was indeed overweening. He and his followers stood chatting in boyish excitement, and his sentries heard nothing but that babble. Of course, they were not expecting spies, but a troop of men on horseback, blundering along a plain trail.

Halimeda stood tied to the gallows tree.

“How did they lure her here?” Roddarc wondered, whispering, very softly, directly into Chance's ear.

Chance knew well enough how it had been done. A message of love from Blake, an elopement planned, perhaps. Hoping Roddarc need not know, he did not answer. But suppose Halimeda stood bound merely for appearance's sake, actually there of her own will, to watch her brother be killed … could infatuation have made her so false? Chance felt sick.

“Go around,” Roddarc whispered, “and when you are behind her, signal me with a bolt in the air. Then I will sound the horn, and do you free her and take her to safety.”

If Roddarc's troop charged at the blast of the horn, all would be well. But if they tarried, Roddarc would face fifty men alone. Chance shook his head in protest.

“Do as I tell you!” Roddarc commanded, the words soft between clenched teeth.

The bolt, Chance decided, would be in Blake's back rather than into the air. He made his way with all stealth around the lea to the place where Halimeda stood captive.

And when he had stalked to a place where he could see her hands, his heart warmed with relief. She was tied, truly and firmly tied; her wrists ran red with blood from her attempts to free herself. She stood with her head bowed, her dark hair hanging so that he could only glimpse her face.

He could not shoot Blake. Halimeda and the tree stood in the way. By no maneuvering could he manage it.

At last he gritted his teeth, sent a bolt into the air, and heard the mighty blast of the horn. Halimeda's head came up as if jerked by a hangman's rope.

Then Chance reached her side, cutting her bonds.

And on the far fringe of the lea, Roddarc was striding forward, sword at the ready, roaring for Blake to meet him in combat.

If the rebels had any honor at all, he would not yet be killed.… Chance reached for Halimeda's arm, to lead her to safety. But the look on her lovely face, the blaze of hatred, stunned him, and in his astonishment he let her snatch the long knife from his grasp. Dumbfounded, he stood with the hand that had reached for her arm still reaching, in air.

She turned and ran straight toward Blake, the knife raised.

There was small honor in the renegades. They were closing in on Roddarc on all sides; he held them off with mighty arcs of his sword. Running to his aid and her own revenge, Halimeda hurled herself at Blake with a harpy's shriek, clawing at her erstwhile lover's neck, stabbing at his back. The knife hit the shoulder blade, doing little more than startling him. He flung her off, sent her staggering with a blow.

Chance got hold of her around her waist before she fell. Enemies were everywhere; he flailed about him with his bow, using it like a club. Halimeda raised the knife again, but not, he saw, against him; she was frightened now, and with reason. “Roddarc,” she pleaded.