The Tale of Oriel (25 page)

THEY WERE BESIDE ANOTHER BODY
of water when he awoke. But perhaps, he thought, lying still, feigning sleep, he had dreamed the time between. His hunger was real enough, and he wondered if the Wolfers knew how to catch fish. It was a grey day, with rain near enough to smell. He woke Griff and they stood up together.

“Weak,” Griff said, and sounded it.

“Don't let it show,” Oriel advised.

Rulgh rose from the fire and came towards them. Oriel's head was clear, despite hunger, and he could see that Rulgh was a man with the marks of years on him. Not that he was so old a man, just that the years had treated him harshly.

Oriel lifted his bound hands to his mouth and mimed chewing. Rulgh shrugged, shook his head, and held out empty hands. Oriel said, “Fish. In water?” and indicated the water, which was not the sea and not a river.

“Lackh,”
Rulgh said.

“Fish in
lackh?”
Oriel asked, his hands together miming the swimming motion of a fish, the sounds of the Wolfers' language clumsy in his throat.

Rulgh let him know how difficult fish were to catch.

Oriel let Rulgh know that he and Griff could catch fish, with just their hands, but better with spears. He didn't think the idea of a net would be familiar to the Wolfers.

Hungry men would always fight more desperately, Oriel realized. Perhaps there was some wisdom to the Wolfers' way. For men who wandered the countryside, destroying and looting, what need was there of the skills of fishing, hunting, gathering? Oriel wondered where the Wolfers wintered, and if they had wives, children. He wondered if there was a chief over all the Wolfer bands. He determined, if he lived, to learn enough of the language so that Rulgh could tell him these things.

It was little enough to desire, just the knowledge of a language.

If he lived, he repeated the thought.

“Griff and Oriel catch fish?” he asked Rulgh. He mimed eating, as if he were tearing the flesh off the springy bones of fish. Rulgh gave permission, “Is so.”

Oriel held up his hands. Rulgh cut the leather thongs, first Oriel's, then Griff's.

Without boats, without a net, with only their bare hands and sticks scraped to points with sharp stones, it took a long time to catch enough to feed the seven Wolfers. The band waited until there was enough to feed all of them before any one man cooked himself a fish. The strength a bellyful of water had given Oriel and Griff was gone, and they were sitting back from the fire and the eating men to gain whatever good the rest would give them, when one of the Wolfers came towards them. Rulgh, it was, and Oriel climbed painfully to his feet, and Griff got up more slowly beside him. Rulgh handed Oriel a fish—still warm from the fire, its skin crisped. Oriel inhaled the aroma of cooked fish, and handed it to Griff.

Rulgh took it away from Griff—who was too wise and weak to protest—and returned it to Oriel.

Oriel gave it to Griff. He held out his hands to ask for another. Rulgh shook his head, and held out empty hands.

“That's the last,” Oriel interpreted.

Griff peeled some flesh off one side and passed the fish to Oriel, who peeled off some meat and jammed it into his mouth. He almost spat it out, it was so strongly flavored. He almost couldn't swallow, he was so hungry.

Rulgh watched them.

“Small bites,” Oriel advised Griff, who nodded.

Rulgh stayed watching until they had picked the bones clean. It didn't take long. He said something that Oriel didn't understand and walked back to join his men. Oriel and Griff went to the edge of the
lackh
to drink again, and sat beside the still water, away from the Wolfers. “We can talk,” Oriel said. “I think it's permitted, for now. Has it been days?”

“I don't know. I have a beard started. How long—?”

“Until we die,” Oriel said.

Neither spoke for a long time.

“Unless we escape,” Oriel said.

Behind them the Wolfers were getting up, gathering together their packs.

“Do you see any way to escape?” Griff asked.

Oriel shook his head. “We should have all three run together,” he said, bitterness on his tongue.

“Then Tamara wouldn't have gotten away,” Griff pointed out.

“You still would say she was worth it?” Oriel asked, surprised.

“Of course.”

There was no point in arguing since there was no way Oriel could undo the choice he had made. He wondered if, knowing what he now knew, he would make the choice differently. If he hadn't ordered Tamara to run, if he and Griff had also run and she the slowest— Capturing Tamara would have slowed the Wolfers down enough so that he and Griff could have escaped, at least to swim to the deep, safe center of the river. It surprised him that Griff saw the event so differently from the way he saw it. He had never thought that Griff might see things differently.

“You chose right,” Griff said.

Oriel shrugged. “If I had chosen to run away, you would have come with me?” he asked.

“Of course,” Griff said. “But it wouldn't have been the better choice. She couldn't fight them as we did, to delay them as long as we did. So Tamara carried the alarm to Selby and Selby is safe, and only a few people—we two among them—are taken. A better choice,” Griff said again.

Oriel didn't disagree, partly because he discovered that he desired Griff's good opinion, and hoped to keep it. The other reason was that they were called to the day's march at that time. Before he was lost to all sense except for the pounding of his heart and jerking his bare back away from the pronging sword behind him, Oriel thought about Griff.

Griff was like his own hand—and when Griff disagreed with him, Oriel felt as if his own hand, even while it obeyed his wishes, had desires of its own, or ideas of its own. It was like watching his own hand walk away free, on its five fingers, and knowing that he had kept it bound to his wrist to serve his own convenience.

That was no way to treat his own hand, he thought. He thought also, That was no way to get the best service out of his hand.

He had used Griff ill.

But he had saved Griff, too.

MIDDAY BROUGHT THEM TO A
farmhouse high on a rocky hillside. More hills rose ahead of them, some entirely bare, others raggedly overgrown. The Wolfers left Oriel and Griff in a gully, bound now with thongs at the ankles as well as wrists, and gagged. Oriel was so exhausted and thirsty that the cries of the human and animal inhabitants of the farm barely entered his ears. He could think of nothing beyond his own belly and sleep-seduced brain. As he slept, the sounds of the Wolfers' attack disturbed him no more than a bad dream.

The sight of the bodies disturbed him, however, and he had to draw ice like a blanket up and around his own body, pull it down over his eyes. Griff gasped for air, and gulped, moaned as if the pain had been his own, and asked, “Oriel?”

Their guard watched, enjoying their fear. Oriel saw his wolfish face as if through thick ice.

Inside the farmhouse the seven Wolfers had spread out around the main room. The smell of ale was in the air, and the smell of meat roasting over the fire. A boy of about ten summers was tied up beside the doorway and two women served the men—the housewife and her serving woman, their dark hair hanging loose, as if the head kerchiefs had been ripped off, their dark eyes wide with fear, tears staining their cheeks. The housewife, her skirt of a finer fabric, her apron not so stained with labors, moaned and mumbled to herself as she turned the meat on the spit. The first glints of madness shone out of her eyes. The serving woman was made of sterner material and had had, Oriel guessed, no children. He thought he knew what the women's fate would be, and he became a man of ice.

The gags were removed, and Rulgh brought Oriel a chunk of bread, a chunk of meat. Oriel took a bite of the meat—roasted goat, rich and pungent in flavor, it filled his body with strength—and passed it over to Griff's bound hands.

Rulgh snorted, amused. He stood over them, to watch the comedy.

Oriel took a bite out of the bread, and passed it to Griff. Griff had taken a bite of the meat and was chewing it. He passed the meat back to Oriel. One bite at a time, each in his turn, they ate, and Rulgh watched them, amused.
“Tewkeman,”
he said. Oriel thought he knew what the word meant. He was beginning to understand these Wolfers, and their language. They were cruel and strong, fearless as animals. They took women and food wherever they found them, but carried no supplies and left—as Oriel guessed—no creature living where they passed. Somewhere in the night the door burst open and a man stood there just long enough to hear his son cry out “Father!” in relief and hope and terror, before the Wolfer sword gutted him. Oriel and Griff were given the job of taking the father's body out to the pile, which with their bound hands was a hard task.

The housewife had kept hidden among her linens a golden brooch, which Rulgh held in his hand when he spoke to Oriel in the morning. The farmhouse burned behind him. “Gold,” Oriel told the man.

Rulgh took from the purse at his waist the coins he'd taken from Oriel and asked, “Gold?”

While Rulgh kept Oriel, Griff dragged the bodies into the burning house. Oriel concentrated on Rulgh's lined face, and concentrated on keeping his own face icy smooth, icy cold. Rulgh asked, with words and gestures, where the gold came from. Oriel answered, drawing with a stick in the dirt, what he knew: There were gold mines, in the hills behind Celindon.

“Celindon?” Rulgh repeated.

Oriel drew a city on a peninsula, and put in the two rings of walls. Rulgh recognized that. He made signs that Oriel understood to mean soldiers, and battles. Rulgh raised his right hand, with his forefinger and the little finger both extended, while his thumb held his two middle fingers in against his palm. In that gesture, Rulgh's hand resembled the head of a horned animal. Oriel understood—this was the sign to mark, and to ward off, dangers.

“Gold mines,” he said, copying at the same time—as best he could with bound hands—Rulgh's gesture of danger.

“Is not so,” Rulgh said.

“Aye, is so,” Oriel said. “Soldiers,” he pointed at Rulgh's scratchings, “guard mines. Slaves,” he indicated his neck, where the band that marked a slave was worn, “work mines, carry,” he mimed hands full, “gold out. Brand,” he said, and sketched a long curved line, like a crescent moon, on his own cheek, the mark with which the slaves of the mines were identified.

“Brand,” Rulgh said, and pushed up his shirt to show a white and puckered patch of flesh on his arm.

“Yes,” Oriel agreed, “fire makes brand.” Behind them Griff heaved something heavy through the farmhouse door.

Rulgh went away and Oriel turned to help Griff, but later in the day—when the Wolfers were exhausted with drinking and eating—the Captain returned. Oriel sat with Griff, who hadn't spoken a word all day. Griff kept silent and as if mindless. The boy was with them, weeping and complaining and mourning. Oriel was not concerned about the boy—except to silence him when possible. He was concerned about Griff. Griff would not know how to turn himself to ice.

Rulgh returned to say—if Oriel understood him—that the Wolfers wanted to attack the mines and take gold.

Oriel advised against the attack. He made the sign for danger. “Many soldiers. Few Wolfers. Steal,” he said, “be thieves.” He mimed stealing a purse from his own waist, while he looked the other way.

“Wolfers not stealers,” Rulgh said. “Wolfers fight.”

“Wolfers fools,” Oriel said, impatient, and too worried about Griff to guard his words.

“Fools?” Rulgh asked.

Having risked the remark, Oriel risked the answer. He didn't have any hope, and he didn't care all that much anymore. He thought he understood more of the Wolfer tongue with every day that passed, but he wasn't sure of the words. “Fool,” he said,
“tewkeman.”