* * *
When he woke Gaelen found a fresh-baked honey malt loaf, a jug of goat’s milk, and a bowl containing oats, dried apple, and ground hazelnuts awaiting him at the table. There was no sign of Oracle.
Gaelen’s side was sore and fresh blood had seeped through the linen bandages around his waist, but he pushed the pain from his mind and ate. The oats were bland and unappealing, but he found that if he crushed the honey cake and sprinkled it over the mixture the effect was more appetizing.
His stomach full, he made his way outside the cave and knelt by a slender stream that trickled over white rocks on its journey to the valley below. Scooping water to his face, he washed, careful to avoid dampening the bandage over his injured eye. He had thought to take a short walk, but even the stroll to the stream had tired him and he sat back against a smooth rock and gazed down into the valley.
It was so calm here. Set against the tranquillity of these mountain valleys the events at Ateris seemed even more horrifying. Gaelen saw again the crows settling on fat Leon, squabbling and fighting over a strip of red flesh.
The boy was not surprised by the Aenir savagery. It seemed a culmination of all that life had taught him about people. In the main, they were cruel, callous, and uncaring, filled with greed and petty malice. The boy knew all about suffering. It was life. It was being frozen in winter, parched in summer, cold-soaked and trembling when it rained. It was being thrashed for the sin of hunger, abused for the curse of loneliness, tormented for being a bastard, and despised for being an orphan.
Life was not a gift to be enjoyed, it was an enemy to be battled, grimly, unremittingly.
The old man had been kind to him, but he has his reasons, thought Gaelen sourly. This Caswallon is probably paying him for his time.
Gaelen sighed. When he was strong enough he would run away to the north and find a city the Aenir had not sacked, and he would pick up his life again—stealing food and scraping a living until he was big enough, or strong enough, to take life by the throat and force it to do his bidding.
Still dreaming of the future, he fell asleep in the sunshine. Oracle found him there at noon and gently carried him inside, laying him upon the broad bed and covering him with the bearskin cloak. The fur was still thick and luxuriant, yet it was thirty years since Oracle had killed the bear. An epic battle fought on a spring day such as this . . . The old man chuckled at the memory. In those days he had been Caracis, Hunt Lord of the Farlain, and a force to be considered. He had killed the bear with a short sword and dagger, suffering terrible wounds from the beast’s claws. He never knew why it had attacked him; the large bears of the mountains usually avoided man, but perhaps he had strayed too close to its den, or maybe it was sick and hurting.
Whatever the cause it had reared up from the bushes, towering above him. In one flowing motion he had hurled his hunting knife into its breast, drawn sword and dagger, and leaped forward, plunging both blades through the matted fur and into the flesh beyond. The battle had been brief and bloody. The beast’s great arms encircled him, its claws ripping into his back. He had released the sword and twisted at the dagger with both hands, seeking the mighty heart within the rib cage.
And he had found it.
Now the bear, the lord of the high lonely forest, was a child’s blanket, and the greatest of the Farlain warriors was a dry-boned ancient, known only as Oracle.
“Time makes fools of us all,” he whispered.
He looked down at the boy’s face. He was a handsome lad, with good bones and a strong chin, and his flame-red hair contained a glint of gold, matching the tawny flecks in his dark eyes.
“You will break hearts in years to come, Gaelen, my lad.”
“Hearts . . . ?” said Gaelen, yawning and sitting up. “I’m sorry. Were you talking to me?”
“No. Old men talk to themselves. How are you feeling?”
“Good.”
“Sleep is the remedy for many of life’s ills. Especially loss of blood.”
“It’s peaceful here,” said Gaelen. “I don’t normally sleep so much, even when I’ve been hurt. Is there anything I can do to help you? I don’t want to be a burden.”
“Young man, you are not a burden. You are a guest. Do you know what that means?”
“No.”
“It means you are a friend who has come to stay for a while,” the old man told him, laying his hand on the boy’s arm. “It means you owe me nothing.”
“Caswallon pays you to look after me,” said Gaelen, pulling his arm away from Oracle’s touch.
“No, he does not. Nor will he. Though he may bring a joint of venison, or a sack of vegetables the next time he comes.” Oracle left the bedside to add several chunks of wood to the fire. “It’s so wasteful,” he called back, “keeping a fire here in spring. But the cave gets cold and my blood is running thin.”
“It’s nice,” said Gaelen. “I like to see a fire burning.”
“Chopping wood keeps my body from seizing up,” said the old man, returning to the bedside. “Now, what would you like to know?”
Gaelen shrugged. “About what?”
“About anything.”
“You could tell me about the clans. Where did they come from?”
“A wise choice,” said Oracle, sitting at the bedside. “There are more than thirty clans, but originally there was one: the Farlain. Under their leader, Farla the First, they journeyed to Druin more than six hundred years ago, escaping some war in their homeland. The Farlain settled in the valley below here, and two neighboring valleys to the east. They prospered and multiplied. But, as the years passed, there was discord and several families broke from the clan. There was a little trouble and some fighting, but the new clan formed their own settlements and began calling themselves Pallides, which in the old tongue meant Seekers of New Trails. In the decades that followed other splits developed, giving birth to the Haesten, the Loda, the Dunilds, and many more. There have been several wars between the clans. In the last, more than one hundred years ago, six thousand men lost their lives. Then the mighty king Ironhand put an end to it. He gave us wisdom—and the Games.”
“What are the Games?” asked Gaelen.
“Tests of skill in a score of disciplines. Archery, swordsmanship, racing, jumping, wrestling . . . many, many events. All the clans take part. It lasts two weeks from Midsummer’s Night, and concludes with the Whorl Feast. You will see it this year—and you will never forget it.”
“What are the prizes?”
“Pride is the prize—and always has been.” The old man’s blue eyes twinkled. “Well, pride and a small sack of gold. Caswallon took gold in the archery last year. A better bowman has never been seen in these mountains.”
“Tell me of him.”
The old man chuckled and shook his head. “Caswallon. Always the children seek stories of Caswallon. If Caswallon were a swallow he would stay north for the winter, just to see how cold it gets. What can any man tell you of Caswallon?”
“Is he a warrior?”
“He is certainly that, but then most clansmen are. He is good with sword and knife, though others are better. He is an expert hunter and a good provider.”
“You like him?” asked Gaelen.
“Like him? He infuriates me. But I love him. I don’t know how his wife puts up with him. But then Maeg’s a spirited lass.” Oracle rose from the bedside and moved to the table, filling two clay goblets with water. Passing one to Gaelen, he sat down once more. “Aye, that’s the story to give you a taste of young Caswallon.
“Three years ago at the Games, he saw and fell in love with a maid of the Pallides, the daughter of their Hunt Lord Maggrig. Now, Maggrig is a formidable warrior and a man of hasty and uncertain temper. Above all things on this earth he hates and despises the Farlain. Mention the clan name and his blood boils and his face darkens.
“So imagine his fury when Caswallon approaches him and asks for his daughter’s hand. Men close by swore his veins almost burst at the temples.
And Maeg herself took one look at him and dismissed him for an arrogant fool. Caswallon took the insults they heaped on him, bowed, and departed to the archery tourney, which he won an hour later. Most of us thought that would be the last of the affair.” Oracle rose and stretched his back, then moved to the fire and added two thick logs. He sighed and refilled his goblet.
“Well, what happened?” urged Gaelen.
“Happened? Oh, yes. I’m sorry, my boy, but the mind wanders sometimes. Where was I? Caswallon’s courting of Maeg.” Returning to the bedside, he sat down again. “Many of the Farlain enjoyed the jest for such it had to be. Maeg was almost twenty and unmarried and it was considered she was a frosty maiden with little interest in men.
“Two months later, in dead of night, Caswallon slipped into the Pallides lands, past their scouts and into the heart of Maggrig’s own village. He scaled the stone wall of the old man’s house and entered Maeg’s room unseen. Just before dawn he awoke Maeg, stifled her scream with a kiss, climbed from the window, and was gone into the timberline. Oh, they chased him all right. Fifty of the fleetest Pallides runners, but Caswallon was the racer to beat them all, and he made it home without a scratch.
“Now, back at Maggrig’s house there was rare fury, for the young Farlain hunter had left a pair of torn breeches, a worn shirt, and the hide cut out in the shape of a new pair of shoes. Soon the entire Highlands chuckled at the tale and Maggrig was beside himself with fury. You have to understand the symbolism, Gaelen. The trousers, shirt, and hide were what you’d leave a wife to mend and make. And the fact that he’d spent the night alone in her bedroom made sure no other man would marry her.
“Maggrig swore he’d have his head. Pallides hunters spent their days hoping Caswallon of the Farlain would darken their territory with his shadow. Finally, some three months later, as winter took its hold making the mountains impassable, the Pallides withdrew to their homes. On this night in the long hall, where the clan chiefs were celebrating the Longest Night, the doors opened and there, covered in snow and with ice in his beard, stood Caswallon.
“He walked slowly down the center of the hall, between the tables, until he stood before Maggrig and his daughter. Then he smiled and said, ‘Have you finished my breeches and shirt, woman?’
“ ‘I have,’ she told him. ‘And where have you been these last months?’
“ ‘Where else should I be?’ he answered her. ‘I’ve been building our house.’
“I tell you, Gaelen, I would have given much to see Maggrig’s face that night. The wedding took place the following morning and the two of them stayed most of the winter with the Pallides. Caswallon would not hear of taking Maeg back the way he had come, for he had scaled the east flank of High Druin—no easy task in summer, but in winter fraught with peril.
“Now, does that help you understand Caswallon of the Farlain?”
“No,” answered Gaelen.
The old man laughed aloud. “No more should it, I suppose. But keep it in your mind and the passing years may explain it to you. Now strip off that shirt and let me check that wound.”
Oracle carefully cut away the bandages and knelt before the bed, his long fingers prizing away the linen from the blood-encrusted stitches. Gaelen gritted his teeth, making no sound. As the last piece of linen pulled clear Gaelen looked down. A huge blue and yellow bruise had spread from his hip to his ribs and around to the small of his back. The wound itself had closed well, but was seeping at the edges with yellow pus.
“Don’t worry about that, boy,” said Oracle. “That’s just the body expelling the rubbish. The wound’s clean and healing well. By midsummer you’ll be running with the other lads at the Games.”
“The wound seems wider than I remember,” said Gaelen. “I thought it was just a round hole.”
“Aye it was—on both sides,” Oracle told him. “But round wounds take an age to heal, Gaelen. They close up in a circle until there is just a bright tender spot at the center which never seems to close. I cut a wider gash across it. Trust me; I know wounds, boy. I have seen enough of them, and suffered enough of them. You are healing well.”
“What about my eye?” asked Gaelen, tenderly fingering the bandage.
“We’ll know soon, lad.”
Maeg placed the babe in his crib and covered him with a white woolen blanket. She ran her fingers over the soft, dark down on his head and whispered a blessing to protect him as he slept. He was a beautiful child, with his father’s sea-green eyes and his mother’s dimpled chin. Tomorrow his grandfather would arrive, and Maeg was secretly delighted that the child had Maggrig’s wide cheekbones and round head. She knew it would please the fiery Hunt Lord of the Pallides. For all that he was a warrior and a man to be respected, Maeg knew that within the crusty shell was a soft-hearted man who had always doted on children.
Men walked warily around the old bull, but children clambered over him, shrieking with mock terror at his bloodcurdling threats and tugging at his rust-red beard. He was a man who had always wanted sons, and yet had never made his daughter feel guilty, nor blamed his wife for becoming barren thereafter.
And Maeg loved him.
The sound of the axe thudding into logs drew her to the thin north-facing window. In the yard beyond, stripped to the waist, Caswallon was preparing the winter fuel. An hour a day through spring and summer and the logs would be stacked against the side of the house three paces deep, thirty paces long, and the height of a tall man. In this way the wood performed a double service, keeping the fire fed and the north wind away from the wall, insulating their home against the ferocity of the winter.
Caswallon’s long hair was swept back from his face and tied at the nape of the neck in a short ponytail. The muscles of his arms and shoulders stretched and swelled with each smooth stroke of the axe. Maeg grinned as she watched him, and rested her elbows on the sill. Caswallon was a natural showman, imbuing even such a simple task as chopping wood with a sense of living poetry. His movements were smooth and yet, every now and then, as he swung the axe, he twisted the handle flashing the blade in a complete turn before allowing it to hammer home in the log set on an oak round. It was almost theatrical and well worth the watching. It was the same with everything he did, Maeg knew; it wasn’t that he needed to impress an audience, he was merely creative and easily bored, and amused himself by adding intricacy and often beauty to the most mundane of chores.
“You will win no prizes at the Games with such pretty strokes,” she called as the last log split.
He grinned at her. “So this is why my breakfast’s late, is it? You’re too busy gawking and admiring my fine style? It was a sad day, woman, when you bewitched me away from the fine Farlain ladies.”
“The truth of it is, Caswallon, my lad, that only a foreign woman would take you—one who hadn’t heard the terrible tales of your youth.”
“You’ve a sharp tongue in your head, but then I could expect no more from Maggrig’s daughter. Do you think he’ll find the house?”
“And why shouldn’t he?”
“It’s a well-known fact the Pallides need a map to get from bed to table.”
“You tell that to Maggrig when he gets here and he’ll pin both your ears to the bedposts,” she said.
“Maybe I will, at that,” he told her, stooping to lift his doeskin shirt from the fence.
“You will not!” she shouted. “You promised you’d not aggravate the man. Did you not?”
“Hush, woman. I always keep my promises.”
“That’s nonsense. You promised you’d seal the draft from this very window.”
“You’ve a tongue like a willow switch and the memory of an injured hound. I’ll do it after breakfast—that is, if the food ever sees the inside of a platter.”
“Do the two of you never stop arguing?” asked Oracle, leaning on his quarterstaff at the corner of the house. “It’s just as well you built your house so far from the rest.”
“Why is it,” asked Maeg, smiling, “that you always
arrive as the food is ready?”
“The natural timing of an old hunter,” he told her.
Maeg dished up hot oats in wooden platters, cut half a dozen slices of thick black bread, and broke some salt onto a small side dish, placing it before the two men. From the larder she took a dish of fresh-made butter and a jar of thick berry preserve. Then she sat in her own chair by the fire, taking up the tiny tunic she was knitting for the babe.
The men ate in silence until at last Caswallon pushed away his plate and asked, “How is the boy?”
Maeg stopped her knitting and looked up, her grey eyes fixed on the old man’s face. The story of Caswallon’s rescue of the lad had spread among the Farlain. It hadn’t surprised them, they knew Caswallon. Similarly it hadn’t surprised Maeg, but it worried her. Donal was Caswallon’s son and he was barely four months old. Now the impulsive clansman had acquired another son, many years older, and this disturbed her.
“He is a strong boy, and he improves daily,” said Oracle. “But life has not been good to him and he is suspicious.”
“Of what?” Caswallon asked.
“Of everything. He was a thief in Ateris, an orphan, unloved and unwanted. A hard thing for a child, Caswallon.”
“A hard thing for anyone,” said the clansman. “You know he crawled for almost two hours with those wounds. He’s tough. He deserves a second chance at life.”
“He is still frightened of the Aenir,” said Oracle.
“So should he be,” answered Caswallon gravely. “I am frightened of them. They are a bloodthirsty people and once they have conquered the Lowlands they will look to the clans.”
“I know,” said the old man, meeting Caswallon’s eye. “They will outnumber us greatly. And they’re fighters. Killers all.”
“Mountain war is a different thing altogether,” said Caswallon. “The Aenir are fine warriors but they are still Lowlanders. Their horses will be useless in the bracken, or on the scree slopes. Their long swords and axes will hamper them.”