Harald (9 page)

He ended in the kitchen, drawn by the smell of baking bread. One of the castle guardsmen, there getting in the way of the cook, was chased out, a roll steaming in his hand. Harald found a convenient corner, enjoyed the warmth of the small room.

"New face good to see—you last night's arrival?"

Harald nodded.

"Young men steal half the bread I bake. Only fair we old men get our share." The cook tossed Harald a roll; Harald caught it, bit into it while looking around the kitchen.

"Lend you a hand? Meat to be cut up, I've handled a blade."

The cook looked him up and down, nodded. Harald spent the next hour reducing a deer, brought in by two of the guardsmen the previous day, to pieces suitable for the pot.

At dinner Harald met Rorik, the guard captain; his wife and two younger women brought food up from the kitchen. Asked about news from outside, Harald confessed that he had spent the past months visiting with friends up in the hills, apologized, and offered a story instead. By the time the fire had burned to ash the little hall held every man, woman, and child in the place, save for the two guardsmen on sentry duty, including a six-month-old baby asleep in her mother's arms. Harald tied up the last thread of a feud that had occupied the folk of Greenvale for two generations, off and on, and fell silent. Hen was lying at his feet, eyes closed, a smile on his face, looking absurdly young. Yosef bent down, picked up his son, carried him off up the stairs.

The next morning, after breakfast, Yosef told Harald that, if he had no urgent need to be elsewhere, he was welcome to guest with them until spring brought better weather for traveling.

Three weeks later Harald was coming into the stable with a sleeve full of apples when an arrow whipped past his nose, thudded into the wall, stuck there quivering. He stepped back, slammed shut the door with his right hand, reached left-handed for his dagger.

"I'm sorry; are you all right?" It was Hen's voice. Harald carefully put the dagger away. He was gathering spilled apples when the door opened. Hen stood there, bow in one hand, arrow in the other, a worried expression on his face.

"I was just practicing; I didn't hurt you did I?"

"No. Better luck next time."

"They took down the butts by the postern when it got cold, and Father won't let me go out and shoot at snow banks. If I don't shoot all winter I'll be hopeless by spring. I finished my target last night."

Walking cautiously back into the stable, Harald saw that what the arrow had stuck in was not the stone wall of the stable but a thick mat of carefully braided straw almost two feet across, hung from a peg jammed between the stones.

"Perhaps you should shoot at the end that doesn't have a door in it?"

"I never thought of that."

Harald took down the target, handed it to Hen, pulled out the peg, walked to the other end of the building, hammered it into a crack with a convenient stone. Hen handed him the target; he hung it on the peg. The two of them dragged a bundle of straw to the end by the door for Hen to use as a ground quiver. Harald watched for a while, then went out, closing the door behind him.

The next day he went back to the stable with more apples, ended up sitting on a stool watching Hen shoot. The best that could be said for his aim was that all of the arrows ended up somewhere in the target. When finally one failed even to do that, the boy stopped, glared at his bow, muttered something under his breath.

"Your bow didn't aim that arrow; you did."

The boy glared at him.

"Unjust to the bow. Bad for the liver. Makes for bad shooting, too."

Hen looked as if he couldn't decide whether to laugh, cry, or throw something. He settled for a question. "Why do the arrows wobble through the air?"

"You're plucking the string. Here."

Harald took the bow in his left hand, drew back the string a few inches with his right, released to a loud twang.

"See how I plucked sideways as I let go?"

The boy nodded.

"Makes the arrow wobble sideways. Bad aim, less range. Don't pluck, just open, let the string go." This time the release was almost soundless. He handed Hen back the bow.

Over the next few weeks, Harald got in the habit of ending his visits to the mare by sitting for a while watching Hen shoot. The boy politely offered to give Harald a turn with his bow, Harald politely declined, restricting himself to advice when asked. Hen, without asking, explained that the reason he had to learn to shoot was not for hunting, although hunting was all very well, but because he was still too small to use a sword.

"Last summer, at Lord Stephen's, they let me practice with a wooden blunt. He said I was pretty good—the lord did. I beat one boy two years older. But Father won't give me a real sword. He says I'd get killed."

"In a real fight you probably would. If a strong man—Rorik, say—swung at you as hard as he could, what would you do?"

"Block with my shield."

"Ever have someone that big hit your shield hard?"

"No. I could duck."

"Ducking a sword's easier to say than to do. Did you manage it with the blunts?"

"No. But if I had to . . ."

"Had to's a bad time to do your learning."

"He can't hit me with a sword if I'm up on the castle wall with a bow and he's down below trying to batter the door down."

Harald nodded approvingly.

"Killing safe as you can. Much to be said for it. Ever shot out of an arrow slit?"

The boy shook his head.

"Tomorrow."

The next day, Harald and one of the guards carried a bundle of hay out the main gate, left it on the ground five feet from the wall. Hen watched.

"Enemy with a battering ram. Where do you shoot him from?"

The boy ran up the stairway to the top of the wall, leaned far over trying to find a way of shooting down. The guard caught the back of his tunic, hauled him back in.

"I could have done it."

Harald answered, "Could be; some day show you how. Way you were doing it, only question is if you fall out and break your neck before or after someone on the other side puts an arrow through you. They can shoot too. Think, boy. Don't want them breaking down the door, killing us all."

Hen thought; Harald and the guard watched. The boy got up, ran along the wall to the door into the tower of the old keep. Harald gave the guard a satisfied look, followed. Inside, he heard the voice of one of the women asking Hen what he was doing in their room. Hen said he was stopping someone from breaking down the front gate and killing them all.

While Harald explained, Hen carefully examined the arrow slits, ending up in one cut into the wall partway up the spiral stair to the chamber above. Harald looked through a lower slit; there was nobody near the hay. When Hen had shot his arrows, the two went back down together. Two were in the hay bundle. The boy collected all eight, went back to his arrow slit; Harald remained behind to be sure nobody went out the gate at the wrong time. After the fourth round, he heard a step behind him, turned.

It was Yosef. Harald held up a finger to his lips, pointed at the hay, waited. An arrow sprouted out of it. Another. Another. When the last went home there was a yell from the tower, Hen out the ground floor door and running for the gate. He stopped when he saw his father.

"Might be some use yet, boy, ever comes to it."

They went out together.

Harald's strength came back slowly, but it came. Alone at night he uncased his bow, warmed it by the fire, strung it, drew, held at full draw for long seconds before his arm began to shake. By the flickering light he checked over the lacing of his lamellar war coat, replaced frayed thongs more by touch than sight. He oiled the ring shirt, patched the padding under it. Spring was a month away, perhaps longer. It too would come.

"The trumpet blew, the King's men in the middle started rolling boulders over and down. Imperials weren't happy when they saw them coming."

"The rocks wiped out the legions?"

"No such luck. The rocks tore holes in the shield wall. The rest was up to us."

"You charged them? Didn't you tell me that was stupid?"

"Would have been. We poured in arrows from just outside javelin range. Cats on the left, Order on the right. They tried to reform, but it was too late, and the rocks kept coming. Legionaries are good, but they die just like other people."

"What about—"

They heard voices in the courtyard below. Hen was on his feet first. Harald paused to pull his cloak around him.

Yosef was there already, Rorik beside him. One of the guards was opening the gate. Two riders came into the courtyard through the falling snow. The smaller spoke:

"Elaina ni Leonor, my sister Kara ni Lain. We come in peace."

Yosef stepped forward.

"I am Yosef, castellan of Forest Keep for Stephen of North Province. In peace be welcome."

Harald saw her swaying in the saddle, stepped forward. The Lady swung one foot over, slid down; he caught her as she fell.

Yosef spoke. "The hall is warmest; can you manage her?"

Harald nodded. "Hardly weighs anything." It was true. Despite the mail hauberk, he had carried boys who weighed more.

The other Lady was off her horse but on her feet. At a glance from his father, Hen took both horses. Harald carried Elaina up the stairs, through the door Yosef opened. Kara followed.

Yosef pulled one of the straw pallets in front of the fire; Harald kneeled, put her down gently. In the fire light, the stump of an arrow stood out from her side. He heard a gasp behind him.

"She didn't tell me."

Footsteps. Hen answered his father's unspoken question.

"Old Jon has them, is rubbing them down."

Harald spoke. "In my room, the open saddlebag. A bundle, so long, tied with a red cord."

While he waited for the boy to come back with his kit, Harald looked over the wounded Lady, peeling back the wet cloak, careful not to disturb the arrow. Besides the rent in the hauberk where the arrow had gone through, there were three more, sword slashes by the look of them, two oozing blood. He looked at her pale face in the firelight. His breath caught in his throat.

When it was all over, Elaina was unconscious but bandaged and alive, wrapped in blankets in front of the fire, Kara sitting beside her. Harald washed the needle, the small knife, dried them, threaded another strand of sinew, assembled the kit, tied it, his mind elsewhere. Someone put a warm mug in his hand.

He looked up at Yosef.

"You'll want to leave them here tonight; it's too soon to move her. I'll get my things down from the guest room tomorrow morning; with luck it'll be safe to carry her up by then."

"I'm not leaving my sister."

"Of course. You'll want a pallet on the floor next to her; she might wake in the night."

Someone came in with a tray of food up from the kitchen. Harald's eyes met Yosef's. Yosef broke a piece of bread, sprinkled it with salt from the bowl, handed it to Kara. She took it, eyes still on the huddled body by the fire, tasted it, looked up startled.

"Thank you."

Yosef looked at her a moment, spoke.

"Are you wounded too?"

"I don't think so. Something here?"

She felt by her neck; her hand came away sticky with blood. The wound was shallow, a glancing arrow between cap and mail. While Harald was washing and bandaging it, Kara started to talk in a low voice.

"After the ambush, when they were chasing us. She said to let her do it, hold back with the bow. I usually do what she says. She didn't tell me she was wounded. Besides, she's better than I am at hand-to-hand. Better than anyone. Was."

"Will be." Harald spoke softly. "She's young, strong."

The Lady's face softened a little. She put her head down in her hands.

The next morning Harald separated his bedding and the saddlebag with his clothes, shoved everything else in a corner of the guest room, went downstairs to claim a space by the wall. Elaina was still sleeping, Kara watching her. Hen, silent for once, watched both while two of the guards ate quietly.

"You'll be going up to the guestroom on the next floor, soon as it's safe to move your sister. Want us to fetch your things up?"

Kara thought a moment, nodded.

Hen jumped up. "I'll go."

Harald took an absent-minded bite from a chunk of bread, leaned over the sleeping girl, put the back of his hand to her forehead. It was hot.

"Has she eaten, drunk anything?"

Kara shook her head. He put a little wine in a goblet, laid it near Elaina's head.

"Wakes while I'm gone, see if she'll take that. I'll try for broth up from the kitchen." He went out.

Elaina woke, slept, woke again; her sister spooned warm broth into her when she could. While she slept Harald checked over Kara's wound. He made her take some of the broth too, bread dipped in it. Before dinner he carried the sleeping girl carefully up the stairs in his arms, laid her on the bed. Hen brought the bowl of broth; Harald put it on the hearth, almost into the fireplace, spoke to Kara.

"She needs to stay warm too; that's why I moved the bed so close to the fire."

"I'll lie with her."

"Of course. Lie still if you can; she needs the sleep."

Kara got up to put another log on the fire, wincing a little, noticed Hen staring at the two longbows leaning up against the wall. She kneeled, warming her hands.

"Have you killed people?"

"Tried. Didn't stay around to see."

"I'll be in the next room, with Father. Anything you need, just call; I sleep light."

Kara nodded her thanks; they went out. Harald closed the door.

Two days later, Harald brought in a platter of food, Hen a pitcher of beer, both to the small table that someone had found and placed by the bed. Elaina spoke. "Harl, stay a minute please."

Hen hesitated, went out. Harald sat down on the hearth near the head of the bed, warming his hands at the coals.

"You've been very kind. Everyone has. I, we, hoped you could tell us things."