Mercedes Lackey - Anthology (2 page)

 
          
She
bore him a son whom they called Bui, but they had no other child.

 
          
About
this time Harek also took a wife, named Hild. They all lived together in this
way for some years, until Bui was fourteen years old. It happened then that an
old shipmate asked Arnor to go on a trading voyage to
Norway
. At the end of the summer, when they looked
for his return, he did not come. It was not until the next spring that they
heard that the ship had gone down with all hands off the Sudhreyar Isles.

 
          
When
that news came, Harek sat down in his brother's high seat and Hild said that as
there were no witnesses to Groa's marriage, she was now their thrall.

 
          
When
Bui tried to defend his mother, Harek told his men to beat the boy with staves
and drive him off the farm. They dragged him to the brook that comes down from
Hrafn-fjall, and there they left him.

 
          
But
Bui did not die.

 
          
"Quo-oork!"

 
          
Bui
opened one eye. Something black moved across his field of vision, paused,
quorked again. He raised his head, and it disappeared. In the next moment pain
speared through his skull, and he lost consciousness once more.

 
          
When
he woke again, the light had dimmed.
This time the pain was
instantly present, a dull, pounding ache localized above his left eye.
That eye was swollen shut, but the other was focus-ing now and he could hear
the trickle of water from somewhere nearby. Grass waved gently in the forefront
of his vision. Beyond it, he saw the sleek shape of a raven. For a moment its
glittering black gaze met
his own
.

 
          
"Kru-uk?
Ru-uk-uk?"

 
          
The
inquiry was answered from above. With a groan, Bui rolled over, and the first
raven flapped upward to join its mate in the stunted birch tree. For a moment
of distorted vision he saw them as valkyries, waiting to choose the doom-fated
men they would carry to Odin's hall.

 
          
"I'm
not dead, curse you!" he whispered. "You'll have to wait for your
meal!"

 
          
He
closed his eye again in a vain attempt to shut out the images flickering in
memory— Harek and Hild in his father's high seat—the malice in the face of the
thralls as they closed in. Did the nithings believe they had left him for dead,
or did they account a beardless boy of so little worth they did not care?

 
          
The
movement had awakened the rest of Bui's body to a host of new agonies. He had
the woozy, sick feeling that comes from blood loss, but no wet warmth to warn
of reopening wounds. He had been hurt badly, but he had spoken truth to the
ravens; he was not going to die for a while yet. For a moment, he found himself
as disappointed as they.

 
          
Beyond
the birch tree the fells rose stark against the dimming sky. He set his teeth against
the pain and set about the business of learning to live again.

 
          
Before
Bui lost consciousness he had managed to stagger a fair way up the brook toward
the fell. The upper part of the vale was a good refuge, far enough from the
farm to keep him from a chance discovery, but sheltered from the winds. For
some days he had just enough strength to crawl from the bank to the waterside
where the vivid purple fireweed grew. There he quenched his thirst and bathed
his wounds.

 
          
It
was high summer, and the weather held mild, with only a few showers of rain.
Once Bui began to move about, the ravens lost interest in him, though he often
saw them cruising over-head in search of food. They were clearly a mated pair;
he took to calling them Harek and Hild, and threw stones to drive them away.

 
          
Three
days of nothing but water and the tender inner bark of the birch left him as
hungry as the birds. Weak as he was, Bui managed to trap a fish in a circle of
stones, which he then filled with more rocks until the water ran out and the
fish flopped helplessly. As he tore at the sweet flesh, he could feel strength
pouring back into his body.

 
          
That
night, as he lay curled in a nest of soft grass beneath the trees, he dreamed.

 
          
An
old man came walking over the fells, wrapped in a dark cloak with a broad hat
drawn down over his eyes. As he trudged forward, leaning on his staff, a wind
came up, bending the grass and lifting the edges of his mantle so that it
billowed like dark wings. And then suddenly it was wings, as the cloak
separated into a host of ravens that swirled across the sky.

 
          
The
old man turned, and his figure grew until he towered into the heavens. But now
he wore mail and a helmet, and he had only one eye. His staff had become a
spear, pointing back toward the farm.

 
          
"Look
to the ravens. They will be your guides. . . ."

 
          
From that time, Bui recovered rapidly, being young and hardened by
work on the farm.
He followed the vale upstream to the edge of the earth
had formed a small cave which could be unproved with stones and turves until it
kept out the rain. He twisted twigs of dwarf willow into a weir to trap fish,
and fashioned a sling with which he could bring down birds that came to the
lake on the fell. With a fire drill and a great deal of patience he was able to
make a fee which he kept smoldering in the cave.

 
          
For
the moment, Bui was surviving. The reasonable thing would be to make his way to
some other farm and take service there before winter came. But he dreamed
sometimes that he heard his mother weeping, and could not bring himself to
leave Hrafnfjall.

 
          
When
he had been on the fell for a moon, he had the fortune to find a strayed ewe
caught among the stones. Swiftly he slit its throat with his belt knife and
began to butcher it, saving every part of the animal he might be able to use.
It was a messy job, and as he finished, it occurred to him that anyone who came
searching for the animal would find the remains and him, as well.

 
          
A
familiar "whoosh" of wings overhead brought his head up. Swearing, he
looked for a stone,
then
paused, frowning, for this
raven was a stranger, smaller and scruffier than the territorial pair, with a
distinctive white spot upon its tail. It hopped forward and then back again,
avid and wary at the same time.

 
          
Ravens,
thought Bui, could pick the sheep's carcass so clean no one would be able to
tell how it had died. He sawed off a hunk of fat and tossed it toward the bird.

 
          
The
raven exploded into the air in a flurry of black wings, circled once, then flew
away westward over the fell, emitting a peculiar cry rather like a yell.

 
          
Bui
watched it go in disappointment, then finished bundling the meat into the
sheepskin, shouldered it, and made his way back to the cave. He fashioned a rack
in the back of the cavern to smoke the meat, and that night-he ate cooked
mutton for the first time in over a moon.

 
          
The
next day Bui went back to the carcass, dropping to hands and knees as he
approached and taking care to remain unseen. It had occurred to him that the
raven he had seen might be a young one, without the insolent confidence of the
territorial pair, and he did not want to frighten it away.

 
          
He
need not have bothered. There were no birds to be seen. Then he looked again
and grinned. Raven tracks showed everywhere, and the carcass had been picked
clean. On the ground before him lay a black feather. Bui picked it up and stood
for a long time, stroking the smooth vane.

 
          
Bui
realized that he had decided to stay on the fell the day he found the body of
the man. It had been there a long time, and there was little to be scavenged
from the clothes. The shaft of the spear had rotted away, but the point, though
rusted, was still whole, as was the head of the ax that had been thrust through
the man's belt. A disintegrating leather sheath had pro-ted the sword. The
metal framework for a leather-covered helmet still shielded the skull. Bui
might tell himself that the spear was for the seals that winter would bring to
the shore, but the only use for the sword and helm was when went to kill men.

 
          
The
Althing had not judged him outlaw, but Bui had heard stories enough to know how
to live like one. He turned from the fell, with the pale menace of the glacier
on its horizon, to the long dun slopes that stretched toward the sea. The air
was so clear he could glimpse the green of the vale. Inner vision supplied the
long, turf-roofed shape of the farm, his farm, where his mother labored, a
thrall once more.

 
          
"Odin,
hear me! Show me how to take back my land!" He raised the sword to the
sky.

 
          
As
if the action had invoked them, black specks appeared in the sky. One, two,
three— Heart pounding, Bui counted as nine ravens plummeted earthward, rolling
in the air and pulling up in a long swoop, only to spiral downward, wings half
folded once more. Breathless, he watched the aerial display until on some
silent signal they all circled above him, and then flapped away across the
fell.

 
          
"Hrafna-guth,
Raven-god," Bui whispered, remembering his dream, "Let your birds
show me the way, and they shall never lack for an offering."

 
          
As
the nights grew longer, the air became clamorous with the cries of migrating
waterfowl. Bui spent most of the daylight hours beside the lake, using nets and
his sling to bring down ducks of all kinds and geese as well: He built a second
structure of turf to smoke the meat, and cured the skins of the eider-duck with
the feathers on to serve as bedding.

 
          
His
activities very quickly attracted the ravens, and he and they began to learn
each other's ways. Now, when he set out for a day's hunting a black speck would
soon appear, checking at regular intervals until he made a kill. Usually it was
one of the pair that "owned" Hrafnfjall that came first.

 
          
When
there was a carcass, one bird would summon the other. Necks stretched upward,
feathers fluffed aggressively and standing up like two ears on either side of
the head, they strutted around the meat, and any younger birds that might be
present would back away, bowing and bobbing, and waiting patiently to pick over
whatever "Harek" and "Hild" might leave.

 
          
"Why
don't you stick up for yourselves, you stupid birds?" Bui swore at the
others. "They don't deserve to get it all."

 
          
But
it was only when a young raven arrived before its elders, and even then, only
if
its
yelling succeeded in summoning an overwhelming
number of its fellows, that it would feed. At such times, Bui would watch in
satisfaction as the older pair, coming late to the feast, were forced to take
their turn with the rest. He took to hiding carcasses under piles of stones
until he saw one of the wanderers, and soon he found that although the mated
pair made their patrols no more often than before, wherever he went, one of the
young birds always seemed to be near. With time, he was able to distinguish
some from among them—one had a bent foot, another was large, with a rough head,
and then there was his friend, the bold bird with the white spot on its tail.

 
          
The
weather grew cooler, and sometimes sleet came mixed with the frequent rains.
The migra-tory flocks departed, and Bui decided that he would have to risk a
journey to the shore. He had fashioned a net of sinew for fishing, and with a
great deal of luck, he might even get a seal.

 
          
He
traveled cautiously, moving mostly in the early mornings and hiding during the
brightest hours of the day. When he lived on the farm, they had always gone
eastward up the coast for fishing, so he made his way to the west. Moving along
the edge of the cliffs one morning, he heard a distant barking, and looking
down, he saw a scattering of brown-furred bodies basking upon the sands of a
small cove.