The Heirs of Hammerfell (25 page)

And Floria replied slowly, putting it into words for the first time, "I'd rather have Conn than be Duchess of Hammerfell."

And now Conn had ridden out into the storm; she wished she could have ridden beside him, but it was expected of women that they should stay behind and wait for their men. .

. . She wondered if the waiting and worrying weren't even more tiring than the doing itself.

She knew it would do no good for her to fret for Conn; it was his work to go where his people needed him. She smiled at Gavin and said, "Give us a song, my friend, before we seek pur beds. We are certainly safe enough here, and I can see that the lady Erminie is weary." Conn, after all, had left his mother in her care; knowing him, she had no doubt that he thought it a post of honor.

The rain had stopped; the sky was clear with stars overhead, and it was bitterly cold.

Conn rode with his men around him, knowing he was racing to prevent a wrong he

hardly understood. King Aidan took it for granted that the lord of all these people had a right to determine their destiny.

Perhaps Lord Storn should not hold all this property, perhaps it was the system that was at fault; maybe all this land should be owned by the smallholders who farmed it; then they could decide how best to use it. But as long as this system was in fact the law of the land, who was he to keep the conscience of Lord Storn and say how he should deal with his own?

4 He had never questioned this before; he had always accepted that what Markos called wrong was actually wrong; now he was questioning everything. He did not know what was right, but he was beginning to feel more strongly that the land should be turned over to the farmers.

And he knew-―and hardly knew how he knew, only that it must be through his

mysterious bond with his brother's mind―that Alastair did not share his convictions, but took it for granted as something divinely ordained that he should have power over all these people who had been born his subjects. On this, he suspected, he and Alastair might never agree; but until this very night he had taken it for granted that he should submit to Alastair because of the foolish accident that Alastair had been born twenty minutes his elder.

In fact what difference did that make? If he was more fit to rule than Alastair. . . .

At this he shut off this line of thinking, quite honestly appalled by the treasonous twist his thoughts were taking. Since he had turned his eyes unlawfully on Alastair's promised wife, he was questioning everything―law, decency, the very foundations of the ordered universe he relied on.

He forced himself to think of nothing except the hoofbeats of their horses on the frozen stone of the roadway. A cry from Markos broke into his reverie.

"We're too late! See, they've burned them out― Storn's bullies. The place is afire."

"Steady on," Conn said, "some of them may still be

there. And if they've been turned out on a night like this, they'll need our help more than ever."

Even before he saw them, then, they could hear the sounds from the side of the road; soldiers in Storn's household livery, pushing and shoving a mixed group of men, women and children, half-dressed, a young woman in a nightrobe with two babies in her arms, other barefoot children clinging to the women; an old man striding up and down fuming and raging.

"I swear I deserved better o' my lord than this, after forty years!" An elderly woman with gray hair, obviously his wife, was trying to calm him.

"There, there, it'll all be settled when daylight comes an" you can talk―"

"But his lordship promised me―"

And Conn's eyes were drawn to another little man in a patched nightshirt, boots drawn on over bare feet, pounding his fists and yelling incoherently. Conn , listened; one of the men was trying to get a coherent account of what had happened from the old man.

"They came while we were asleep an' turned us out in the rain an' fired the house. I told them―I demanded they stop and let it be, I told them―I ordered them to stop, told them who I was but they wouldn'a listen―"

The little old man's face was red as an apple; Conn wondered if he were about to have a stroke.

"And who are you, old grandfather?" one of Markos's men asked respectfully.

"Ardrin of Storn!" he shouted, red-faced.

One of Storn's soldiers failed to conceal a grin. "Oh, aye, an' I'm the Keeper o' the Arilinn Tower, but we have to dispense with protocol tonight; ye' can just call me 'yer grace.' "

"Damn it," the old man shouted. "I tell you I'm Ardrin, Lord Storn. I took shelter here―"

«. "Oh, shut yer flap, old man, you try my patience! D'ye think I wouldn't know me own lord?" the soldier demanded.

Conn watched the old man's face. It would otherwise never have occurred to Conn to believe what he said―but a telepath can tell when he hears the truth, and Conn was hearing it now. The old man really was Lord Storn―and what perfect irony, that Storn himself should be turned out in the rain by his own soldiers, and the very house where he sheltered burned over his head by his own orders. Conn did not blame the soldier at all―who would believe this ragged old man in a faded flannel nightshirt to be the most powerful man between here and Aldaran?

Conn went to him, bowed slightly, and said quietly, "Lord Storn, I see you finally feel the burden of your own proclamations!" He added to the soldier, "One old man's like another, without his fine clothes and wig."

The soldier looked closer. "Zandru's hells!" he swore. "Sir, I didn't know; I was only following your own orders―Geredd's family out―"

Storn snorted and seemed about to explode. "My orders?" he said tightly. "And did my orders say to put Geredd's family out in the middle of the night―in this storm?"

"Well," the soldier said uneasily, "I thought this might save us having to evict the rest of them this way. Make an example, like―"

"You thought?" Storn said. He looked pointedly at the shivering, crying children. "I must say that this gives me grave doubts about your ability to think."

Conn said, "Never mind that now. The important thing is to get these children to shelter." Storn seemed about to speak, but Conn turned his back and walked away, toward the woman with the swaddled children in her arms.

Lord Storn said roughly to the soldier, "Another time, listen when someone tells you something, man! Get back to barracks; you've caused enough trouble for one night."

The soldier opened his mouth to speak, looked at Lord Storn's angry face, and silently saluted, gave a sharp command to his men and they went away. Meanwhile Conn spoke to the woman.

"Twins," he said. "My own mother had just such an experience as this―and also by the courtesy of Lord Storn if I mistake it not―when my brother and I were not much more than a year old. Have you a place to go?"

She said shyly, "My sister married a man who works at the woolen mills in Neskaya; she an' her husband can take us in for a time at least."

"Good; then you shall go there. Markos―" he beckoned to the old man, "put this woman and the babies on my horse, and get one of your men―or two―to carry the smaller

children. Take them to Hammerfell and give them shelter with one of our tenants; when it's daylight, get a farm cart and take them to Neskaya or wherever they wish; one of our men can drive them there and bring back the cart and donkey."

"But your horse, sir?"

"Never mind; do as I say, I'll make shift to get back somehow; I've got two good legs,"

Conn said, then asked the woman, "and when you get there?"

"My husband's a sheep-shearer, sir; he's always in work, but we were turned out a few weeks ago with the babies coming―"

A rough-looking young man with sandy-red hair all awry in the wind, and dark eyes, came up beside the woman, and said to Conn, "I've always worked, all me life; but with four―no―six little mouths to feed, you can't tramp the roads. I kep' my house all my working days―and to be turned out―I never done nothin' to deserve it, sir, indeed I didn't. An' I'd stand up before the old lord himself and ask him what I done to deserve it."

Conn jerked his head sidewise and said, "There he stands. Ask him."

The young man scowled and lowered his eyes, but finally turned to Lord Storn and said,

"Sir, why? What did we ever do to you that you'd have us put out by the roads this way?

Twice now."

Storn stood very straight; Conn, watching, thought that he was trying hard to be

dignified. It was hard indeed to be dignified by the road in a patched nightshirt that hardly covered his skinny old buttocks, though from somewhere he had found a horse blanket and was clutching it about his shoulders and shivering.

"Why, man―what's your name? Geredd didn't tell me, just that you were married to his older daughter."

The man touched his rough forelock.

"Ewen, m'lord." &

"Well, Ewen, all that land's played out; no use for farming, an' it won't keep dairy animals; all it's good for is sheep. But sheep need space to run―acres an' acres. Why, you're a shearer, there'll be work in plenty for you, but we've got to get rid of all these small-holdings and run the land together, can't you .see? It's good sense―only a fool 'ud try to run thirty small farms on that played-out land up in the side hills. Tin truly sorry for all you people, but what can I do? If I starve because none of you can make a living, then none of us is any better off."

"But I'm not starving an' I've always paid my rents proper an' right up to the day,"

insisted Ewen. "I don't live by farming; why turn me out?"

Storn flushed red again and looked angry. "Yes, it may seem unfair to you. But my manager tells me I can't make any exceptions. If I let one small-holder stay, no matter how worthy―and no doubt you're one o' the worthy ones―then every one of them all

will talk as if he had a special right to stay; and some of 'em have gotten so far behind I've had no rent for ten years, and some fifteen or twenty―before the big droughts began. I'm no tyrant―I've forgiven everybody here rent in at least one bad year. But enough's enough; there's got to be an end somewhere. My lands are no good for farming and I won't keep farmers on them any more. No profit in it―and it does you folk no good if I go bankrupt."

Conn was struck by the inescapable logic and clarity of this. The Hammerfell estates were under the same crunch; would it really help if every smallholder were left alone to survive or go under on his own? Was Storn perhaps simply yielding to unpleasant

necessity? He should talk at length with Alastair― and perhaps to Lord Storn himself.

Storn, after all, had managed an estate in these hills for decades before he was born.

But there should be some way to allow for special cases, and if the land was no good for farming, and

one man was holding all this land, should he not perhaps sit down with his estate manager and the tenants and decide fairly what was the best use of it, rather than one deciding for all, as Storn felt so ready to do?

Enough. He was not, in spite of having been trained for it, Duke of Hammerfell; he must consult with Alastair, and custom meant it must be for Alastair to decide. Yes, even if he decides wrong, said the voice which meant honor and law in his mind. Then the side of him which Markos had trained to tell himself: I am responsible for all these men

reminded him that if Alastair cared nothing for them, he must still try to convince his brother to do what was right.

Storn was staring at him. The old man said truculently, "I suppose you are Hammerfell's brother, then; the other twin. Then you'll be the man who's been harrying my soldiers all summer and interfering with my orders."

Conn said, "Tonight, sir, we had no chance to interfere with your orders. Is it criminal to take a woman and six little children to shelter out of the rain?"

The old man had the grace to blush at that; but he continued, "Your men have been giving aid and comfort to anarchy―inciting my tenants to riot and rebel against me."

"No such thing," Conn said. ""I have been in Thendara all this summer―nor have I ever incited anyone to rebellion or riot, in all my born days."

"And I suppose you didn't kill my nephew, either?" the old man demanded testily.

Conn was startled; in the heat of honest dispute he had all but forgotten the feud itself.

He said, "We did indeed kill Dom Rupert in the battle; but he was armed and attacking me and my men on grounds which had belonged for ages past to Hammerfell. I feel no guilt for that. I am not to blame for a feud which began before either you or I was born; I inherited this enmity―thanks to you it was my only inheritance, sir."

Storn scowled at him. He said, "There's truth to that, I suppose. Yet for years I thought the feud had been settled by the only settlement there usually is in such things―nobody left alive to carry it on."

"Well, that's not true," Conn said. "I'm here to say if you still want trouble, Lord Storn, my brother and I―" and then he stopped, remembering that Alastair was actually under Storn's roof.

In the abrupt silence, Storn remembered, too, and said quickly, "Have no fear for your brother; he's my guest, under fire-truce; he has saved the life of the only kin left living to me; my grandniece. He seems a reasonable person, and certainly I'd offer him no evil in return for that." After a moment more he said, musing, "Perhaps after all, young Hammerfell, this feud has gone on long enough―there are few enough of us left―"

"I'm asking no mercy from you," Conn said fiercely.

Storn's eyebrows met; he said, "No one will accuse you of cowardice, young man; yet there's enough trouble beyond our borders, perhaps we should not have enemies inside our very gates. The Aldarans and the Hasturs stand always ready to gobble up our

domains while we quarrel―"

This made Conn think of King Aidan, whom he had so incomprehensibly come to love; yet Storn spoke of him as if he were the greater enemy of

them both. He said stiffly, "Mine is not the authority over Hammerfell these days, Lord Storn. It is not for me to say whether this enmity between our houses shall be honorably carried on, or honorably ended. Only the Duke of Hammerfell can answer to that, my lord. If you seek an end to this feud―"