The Horse Lord (4 page)

“My lord, he will not come in.” Haranil raised his brows at that. “You must invite him across the threshold yourself, it seems. He says it is a custom of his country, and only polite that a host should see what guest enters his home.”

The lord groaned softly; he was very comfortable where he was, but in such circumstances a refusal was out of the question. Signalling those at his immediate table to remain seated, he rose, shrugged into an over-mantle and strode out. Returning alone some minutes later, he met a quizzical glance from Joren.

“He’s changing into more suitable clothing,” the
arluth
explained. “A very courteous gentleman—unlike some.” His gaze touched an empty chair; Baiart had refused to attend the feast.

When the guest eventually appeared, he proved arresting enough to mute conversation for several seconds. Not that he was impressive in himself, being stocky, round-headed and balding. What little hair he retained over his ears, and the small beard framing his thin lips, was brindled silvery grey like a wolfhound or a wolf. But his clothing was in stark contrast. Over unassuming grey trimmed with silver fur he wore an over-robe of royal quality, ankle-length and pure white lined with azure. Its stiffly embroidered surface rustled when he knelt to give Haranil Talvalin the respect proper to his rank.

“Gracious good my lord,” he said, somehow projecting murmur clearly from the door, “may the warmth of hospitality be always in the hearth of this house.” Haranil acknowledged the compliment with a nod and indicated Baiart’s empty seat. As the stranger moved to take it he limped, wincing and favouring his left leg before sitting down with an air of relief. Seeing the lord’s concern he patted the limb and smiled.

“My horse and I argued with a tree, lord—I lost.” Then his smile was replaced by a concerned expression. “But your pardon! Here I sit at your table, nameless.” Putting one hand over his heart, he spread the other wide. “Duergar Vathach, an indifferent scholar and historian, very much at your service.” His eyes glittered as he smiled again; they were the palest blue Haranil had ever seen, and seldom blinked.

The scholar’s slight accent and occasional difficulty with Alban didn’t prevent him from talking virtually all the time he was not eating. It would have been most unmannerly had his conversation been boring, but he spoke entertainingly about every subject raised at the lord’s high table. Except for one put forward by Aldric.

“Duergar-an, did you come south from Datherga?” The pale eyes stared at him, and Aldric noticed how the man’s face went cold and sinister when he forgot to smile. Actually, Duergar was trying to decide whether this young man merited a title.

“Sir, you are… ?” he ventured cautiously. Aldric inclined his head politely.

“
Kailin-eir
Aldric
un-cseir
Haranil-arluth Talvalin. Third son.” He rather enjoyed saying that—it was the first time he had chanced giving anyone his full rank and title and it sounded good. Duergar concealed slight surprise, then realised that he was after all seated at the lord’s high table.

“No, my lord—I came by Elmisford and Baelen Forest.” Aldric leaned forward eagerly.

“Did you see or hear any wolves—wounded, irritable wolves?” ,

“I confess I did not, my lord. Is it important?”

“I shot one over a month ago; it was never caught. Certain people”—he stared hard at Joren—”would say, and have said, that I missed. At that sort of range I don’t miss, so the brute’s wounded and dangerous. I want it found before someone gets hurt.” He caught an odd expression on the scholar’s face and stopped. “You disapprove?”

“Well, yes,” Duergar admitted. “You don’t know who the wolf might have been.” His grin was stillborn as an awkward silence fell on those who had overheard.

“That,” said old Lord Dacurre, “is not amusing.” Farther down the hall, rowdy normality continued with such gusto that the silence became painful. When Duergar stood up and bowed, very low, someone cleared his throat and began to talk again, the uneasy moment forgotten.

Two retainers set a carved stool on the gallery of the great stairway and the murmur of voices died to an expectant whispering. An old, white-bearded man was helped to his seat and a harp of black wood was put into his hands. He made obeisance towards the high table and spoke in a resonant voice, thick with a Her-tan burr.

“Gracious good my lords and ladies fair,” he said, “I would have your leave to sing.” With equal formality Haranil-arluth and Lord Santon’s wife granted him that leave, and he sat down with a smile. The old man did not begin at once; he ran one finger across his harp, stroking a rippling chord from the strings. The hall fell silent as he played a liquid melody, long fingers flickering delicately across the instrument. As the old bard plucked the harp’s strings, he also began to touch the hearts of his listeners.

He played of sunrise and spring, courage and love and laughter, the sheen of swords and maidens’ golden hair; he played of the wind in the trees, the waves on the sea, of luck and the joy of living. Then he began to sing at last, and though older than any in the hall, his voice still filled its every corner with cunning music and subtle words.

He sang the old stories of magic and adventure, when lean firedrakes flicked flaming across the sunlit sky and sorcerers worked their spells by starlight. He sang of battles lost and won and the love of kings’ daughters for brave strangers. Archaic names sprinkled his songs like rare jewels, and earlier ages flowed from his music in a golden haze of memories. Long-forgotten voices spoke again through the harper’s mouth, captains and kings and beautiful ladies who returned from the dust to five for a space, warmed by the suns of past summers.

The old Hertan struck three crystal notes which shimmered to silence in the vast hall, and bowed his head. There was a pause and then his audience erupted, most un-Alban, into waves of applause. Haranil had the old man brought before his chair, where he filled a guardsman’s high-crowned helm with golden deniers and placed it in the harper’s hands. Then he unclasped a ring of massy Pryteinek gold from his wrist and snapped it shut about the minstrel’s arm. This was something more personal than mere wages and the old man knew it. He I raced the deeply-incised crests on the wrist-band and bent his head deeply in gratitude. They were the Talvalin spread eagle, set within the double border of a Clan-Lord; such tokens would greatly increase his fame, for they were never presented lightly.

“
Arr’ eth-an
, a question for you,” Aldric said quietly, giving the old man his proper title. “Have you heard any tale about Baelen Forest—and a valley filled with dead men’s bones?” He was conscious of curious stares, for until now he had made no mention of what he had— or thought he had—seen after the hunt. There had been sparse mention of a battle in earlier Archive volumes, but no details either there or anywhere else in an exhaustively searched library. Although Aldric did not admit it even to himself, the experience had worried him. Thus his willingness to try any other source, and thus his mixed emotions when the harper replied.

“I know that legend, lord. It is called “‘The Fall of Kalarr cu Ruruc.’” He paused and studied Aldric with eyes blue as faded cornflowers. “It is not a tale for this occasion. Your pardon, lord, but I will not sing that song tonight.” His departure was marked by Haranil-arluth’s bow to honour him, an action which by custom the entire hall must copy. It served at least to mask the expression of slight horror which rested briefly on Aldric’s face.

Only Duergar noticed it. “An interesting story, lord, even though untrue,” he pointed out. Aldric’s mouth shaped a silent “Oh?” at him and the historian started to explain. By accident or design his lecture was complex, boring and obscure, so that before long Aldric had stopped paying any attention whatsoever and was regretting he had ever raised the subject.

Kalarr had been a sorcerer in the days before the Clan Wars, when Alba had been divided into petty kingdoms whose rulers paid only lip service to the dominion of their Overlord. It was a situation bubbling with intrigue, as the lesser lords plotted their own advancement. None could say from whence Kalarr cu Ruruc had come; he simply
was
. At first the sorcerer made pretence of aiding the conspirators until such time as he could get them all in one place under his eye. That day came at a feast in his citadel of Ut Ergan, where he slew his allies with fire from the air and seized their lands for his own.

The Overlord, undeceived by soft words, gathered his warriors and rode north to destroy the usurper. Cu Rur-uc’s army was broken utterly in Baelen Forest and the sorcerer himself was cut down. But the Overlord and many of his nobles were also slain, which by -the succession of their ambitious sons led directly to the Clan Wars and all that followed.

Aldric had read these bare bones before, but worse than learning nothing new was the way Duergar talked down to him as if he was a child. At length the rather haughty youngster yawned—a slow, exaggerated and supremely insolent yawn like a cat’s. Duergar stopped in mid-sentence. “Do I bore you, dear my lord?” he enquired silkily.

“In a word, yes. I’m twenty years old, man, yet you treat me like an infant. I
do
not like that.” Duergar’s smile was beginning to set his teeth on edge, and when the scholar made several benevolent noises as if to a squalling baby, Aldric’s temper flared.

“Duergar-an, I dislike your manner, your condescension and your smile,” he said, and though his voice remained soft and pleasant, thinned lips and narrowed eyes gave ample indication of his feelings. “In short, historian, I dislike you! Good evening.” Rising without a bow of courtesy, he stalked away.

Without even blinking Duergar watched him go, then smiled a slow smile to himself and drank more wine with satisfaction.

Aldric was seething inwardly, at himself this time. He had broken one of the many customs surrounding high-clan
kailinin
by showing both boredom and irritation to a guest. It made him look foolish. It made him lose face. It made him damned angry!

He was saved from further brooding by the retainer, who appeared before him with the information that everything was ready for his coming-of-age ceremony. Regaining control of himself, he followed the servant out of the hall to be prepared for the rituals.

Kneeling before his father, Aldric bowed until his forehead touched the ground between his hands. It was the only time in his life he would be expected to give First Obeisance to anyone other than royalty, and he took care to do it correctly. Then he sat back on his heels, took the Book of Ancestors from
yscop
Gyreth, bowed to the priest and pressed the ancient holy relic to his brow. From Lord Dacurre’s hands he received his father’s
taiken
, unsheathed a handspan of blade and touched that cold, keen metal lightly to his lips, careful not so much of the weapon’s age as of its edge.

Haranil Talvalin rose from his seat, laid both hands on his son’s head and swept up the hair at the back.

Uncut for six months except to keep it neat, it fell at once into the queue which Haranil secured with a crested clip. Though some clans required that the full head of hair be put in queue, this single tail had sufficed for more than twenty generations of Talvalin warriors.

After that the lord pulled free the long locks Aldric had kept anchored over and behind his ears, letting them fall one along each cheek to the jaw-hinge. Then he stepped back and bowed as one warrior to another. Aldric acknowledged with forehead against hands crossed on the floor, Second Obeisance, from a
kailin-eir
to his lord. Then he stood up, bowed as an equal and spoke the oath which would bind him from this moment onward.

“I am
kailin-eir
Aldric Talvalin,” he said in a clear voice. “Know me, and know I have a Word of Binding. On it I swear now to keep the laws of Heaven and the King, that my name and ancestors be not dishonoured.

“I do also swear to keep true the honour of my House and Clan, even to the ending of my life.

“I lastly swear to be the king’s liege man, to live and die as may best serve him. Under Heaven and upon my Word, I do truly swear.”

Everyone present bowed respectfully when he had finished speaking. When they straightened, Joren looped the shoulder-belt of a sword about his brother’s neck, taking care not to touch his hair, then fastened a silver crest-collar around his throat and made way for Lord Santon.

Aldric’s mouth went a little dry—not because of the warlord’s sinister appearance, his
elyudlas
of purple and dark blue contrasting with the pale skin of all the Santon clan, but because of the slender rod he bore so carefully in both hands. Lacquered a hard, intense black, it was capped at either end with silver. Santon moved his hands and the rod broke in two, revealing a five-inch triple-edged stiletto blade, toylike and glittering, sharp as a needle. An icicle of steel. A
tsepan
.

Now it was a badge of rank and a piece of masculine jewellery, its materials of the very finest for the sake of the wearer’s honour. But it remained an echo of the older, harsher codes which once laid down both the living and the dying of a warrior. The
tsepan
was for suicide; it had no other purpose.

There had been a time when the reasons for its use were petty: shame that a word could have erased; dishonour; the ultimate emphasis to a protest. And there were reasons still justified now: avoiding capture by an implacable, dishonourable enemy; self-execution as repentance and admission of guilt—an act which also kept forfeit lands from seizure by the crown.

But in war, where common sense prevailed over pride and bloody obsession with honour, the dirk took on another aspect: that of mercy. When a man lay in the dirt split asunder by a
taiken’s
sweeping stroke, it could never be anything but kindness to end his irreparable pain. Though it was never admitted, there was tacit acceptance that each
kailin’s
dirk was carried, at the last, for himself. A man was luckless indeed if in the hour of his hopeless agony there was neither blade nor compassionate hand to make his passage to the darkness quick and clean.