Tale of Gwyn (10 page)

“Adventure? Walking all day in this weather?”

“My Da says there's real snow coming soon.” Liss was easily distracted. She was Rose's age, two years younger than Gwyn. There had been girls born in the village the same year as Gwyn, but they hadn't survived childhood, so Gwyn was out of the habit of friendship.

Besides, she had no time to talk. They were busy finding a table and putting food down before the man and boy, bringing in firewood, seeing that the horses were stabled, and finally eating themselves, thick porridge with honey melted over its top and rich goat's milk poured over it.

Then, after all the chores were done, she was almost too tired to take pleasure from just sitting down in a warm room, with Burl's music in the background. Liss was openly disappointed in the lack of news. “The only think that's happened in the world is that Rose will marry Wes?” she teased. “Osh aye, Gwyn, I've been locked up away here since the autumn fair. Any littlest thing would be exciting to me. Have you had many visitors at the Inn?”

“Not since the snows. Just these two.”

Even Liss wouldn't ask questions about the doings of the Lords. “No other news at all?”

“Just bad news. There's hunger—”

“Aye, that we know,” the farmer said. “We can keep ourselves out here, but we've been luckier than many this year.”

“And these coins will help pay the tithes,” his wife added. “It was good luck you came here.”

“And hunger brings thieves, I'd wager,” one of the young men asked Gwyn.

She nodded, yawning.

“Osh aye,” Liss said. “I'll just have to marry a man from the villages, if I can find one to ask me.”

“There'll be plenty to ask you, never fear,” her father told her.

“Think you?” she wondered, pleased.

“As long as they don't ask us what you'd be like to live with,” her oldest brother answered her.

“Oh, you, you great lout, all you think about is the weather. What do you know about it?”

“I know what a man likes, little sister.”

“And what is that, may I ask?”

“A quiet temper and a peaceful tongue,” he began the list. They all burst out laughing. Gwyn watched, smiling, and yawned again, unable to stop herself. At this, the family withdrew to their own quarters, leaving the two guests to roll up in blankets on the floor by the fire. “It's a good house, this,” Gwyn thought to herself, falling asleep. She didn't realize she had spoken aloud until she heard Burl's voice answering from the darkness, “It is that.” His voice was as sure and soothing as her mother's hand on her forehead when she was a child. Gwyn fell asleep.

E
XCEPT THAT THE GROUND GREW
rougher underfoot, the second day was a duplicate of the first, as they made their way up and down steep hillsides. The forest grew thicker here, far from fields and pastures, and they saw few dwellings that day. They were coming up to the mountains, whose massive bulk rose up ahead of them like a wall. Gwyn could make out the variations on the mountains' faces now, long, high, smooth slopes, ravines cutting their way down, and the land jutting out around them. She could see the distant peaks, too high for any trees to grow; some of them rising up until they buried themselves in the clouds.

They came that evening to a hovel shared by three rough men, with a pen nearby where two scrawny goats were kept, and an open shed for the goats to shelter in. The men wore shapeless rags. Hair covered most of their faces. They stood before the hut and heard Gwyn's request, their eyes, when they thought she did not watch them, searching out one another's. Finally, one of them put out his hand for the coin Gwyn offered. An old scar ran like a ravine down his cheek, starting at the corner of his eyebrow and disappearing into his mustache. “Them'll sleep inside. We'll have the shed,” he said, and as they moved toward it, Gwyn saw that the youngest of them dragged his right foot as he walked.

Gwyn hid her thoughts, glad of the knife at her waist, glad she knew how to use it, glad of whatever protection traveling with Lords might offer her. She left Burl to tend to the horses while she opened the door.

Foul air swept out at her, sweat and urine, old food and smoke. It was the only shelter they had, so she stepped inside, her eyes sweeping the room: a small table, a fire within a circle of stones in the center of the dirt floor, most of its smoke going out through a hole in the thatched roof, the cracks in the windowless wooden walls stuffed with straw to keep the wind out, no shelves, no furnishings but two benches and the blankets tossed around.

The Lords had followed her inside. The Lordling huddled close to his father, who seemed to notice neither the filth nor the stench.

Well, Gwyn thought, the Lords would be safe enough for a night, and warm enough. These men wouldn't dare attack them here—not when it would be possible to track the two to this place. She herself didn't expect to sleep that night. These three were not men you closed your eyes on.

First, though, the Lords must be settled and fed. She tidied the room as best as she could and set bread and cheese on the table. While the Lords ate their silent meal, she brought in and stacked by the door the wood Burl chopped. She cleared away the food left remaining and nodded at Burl, the signal that they could now leave.

“Innkeeper's daughter,” the Lord spoke at her back. She turned, to hear what he wanted. “It would be better if we all slept inside tonight.” His voice was clear and cold, like a sharp wind overhead. For a minute Gwyn could not find words. She hadn't known how much she was dreading the night to come.

“For all of our safeties,” the Lord said, misunderstanding her hesitation. “Although I would almost welcome an open fight with an enemy I could see to put steel into.” He added this last distantly, not really speaking to her, his hand at the hilt of his sword.

“Yes, my Lord,” Gwyn said.

The long winter evening stretched out. She and Burl ate, hunkered down by the fire. She melted a bowl of snow to drink. The Lord sat at the table, his book open, making marks. The boy sat silent, watching his father, until he fell asleep. Gwyn moved him to the floor, covering him with one of the blankets from the Inn, which were clean. Then she went back to sit with Burl, their backs to the wall, both under the cover of cloaks. The fire burned steadfastly. At last Burl pulled out his pipe and played a few soft lines of melody. The Lord looked up and nodded to him, as a Lord would to the servant of a servant, giving permission.

The music played, the Lord worked at the table, and Gwyn closed her eyes, thinking that she was grateful to the Lord for saving her a sleepless night, thinking that she did not know where they were going, although he seemed genuinely to be a mapmaker, thinking that the boy was strangely still and silent for a boy.

At first light they left, making no farewell to their hosts. They traveled for a long time, well into the morning, high into the hills, keeping together. Finally, the Lord pulled up his horse and took the long book and his charcoal out of the saddlebag. He worked silently, turning page after page. At last he took the lead line and moved off, more quickly now, leaving Burl and Gwyn to follow.

When they caught up, the two horses were standing tethered before a great rock face. A trickle of water fell down it, to form a small pool, its surface sheeted with ice. From this pool a little stream moved away under its own coating of ice, heading south.

Gwyn put down her load and looked up from the stream, following the course of water backward to the pool, then up. Her eyes went up, and up, and still up, where the rock mounted above her, taller by four times than the walls of Earl Northgate's city. Water slid down over the rocks and great icicles hung from the stone outcroppings. Thick and heavy as a strong man's legs, the icicles pointed down. The only sound was the secret movement of the water.

Cold, it was entirely cold: the great gray rocks covered with ice, the icicles hanging down like giants' daggers, the snow fields rising above and the cold gray sky overhead. The air bit at Gwyn's lungs. The water moved with cold little musical sounds into the streambed. The water was black where it showed beneath the ice. Beautiful too, somehow, in the opposite way to the beauty of a field coming to crop under the farmer's hand.

“This is what we came to find.” The Lord spoke. His voice suited that frozen landscape, Gwyn thought; the high wind his voice carried was a wind that would blow here among these frozen rocks, down from the high peaks of the mountains.

He took out his book and made marks on a page. Gwyn turned away from the mountains to follow the stream down the narrow ravine it had made for itself. She couldn't see far, but she could see to where it disappeared between bare hills.

The horses stamped restlessly, but neither the Lord nor his son seemed troubled by that. High over the little plateau where they stood, a fierce wind blew up. But it blew far off overhead, beyond the clouds. The Lord turned his horse and they crossed the narrow stream to follow the rock face to the east, watching it gradually descend to become part of a craggy hill. Snow blanketed all this high land, blown up around the trunks of the few trees, weighing down the arms of evergreens. “There,” the Lord said, pointing with his arm, “is the eastern pass. When the snows melt, the pathway will be visible.” He pulled out his book, made some marks, put it away again. “We'll eat now,” he said to Gwyn. “We're going back to the Inn, and we'll want to travel quickly, I think. There's weather behind us and”—his eyes turned to Burl—“I wouldn't be surprised if we had been followed through the morning.”

“Nor I, my Lord,” Burl agreed calmly.

Gwyn looked at Burl in surprise, but he had no more to say. She should have thought of it. She looked around behind them. But nothing moved on the landscape. Although, she thought, her eyes searching out the distant shapes of hills, the clusters of trees, a man—or three men—could follow their tracks, unperceived.

They all rode that day, Gwyn and Burl up behind the two Lords. Gwyn rode behind the Lordling, his father holding the long lead line. The horses moved steadily. They did not halt for the Lord to take out his book until midday, and even then he worked hastily, making few new marks on the pages, hastily folding closed the big leather book, moving them on without even time to eat.

Even with their steady haste they were not near any habitation when the light began to fail. The wind at their backs had risen and cut sharply. The horses held their heads low. They had come back to the gentler rises and thicker woods, but they had not yet come within the inhabited lands. At nightfall they stopped beneath a tall bare oak and separated immediately for a few moments to answer their bodies' needs. Burl gathered sticks to make a small fire, around which they huddled, cloaks pulled close around them. They were four dark, faceless figures beneath the dark night and the wind. Gwyn took down the food bag and cut off chunks of cold cheese, which they ate standing up. The black sky hung heavy over them. A dark wind blew through the bare trunks of trees, lifting the broad arm of evergreens.

Without warning, without preamble, snow erupted around them. The little fire hissed, and the dark air was thick with flakes. Gwyn waited for the Lord to speak, but he remained a tall, silent, dark shape. The wind gusted down, swirling snow into her face. The fire went out. Finally Gwyn said, “I'm not sure, but we're no more than a day's journey from the Inn, think you?”

Burl didn't answer. The Lord didn't speak. She had probably overstepped her bounds, Gwyn thought; but she thought this snow was coming down after them like a blizzard, and they'd not survive many hours without shelter.

“The horses will be more tired after a night in the cold, without food,” she said. The wind caught her voice and carried it away, howling as if pleased with its treasure.

Nobody answered her.

“We'd be wise to travel on,” Gwyn went on, stubbornly. “My Lord?”

His hooded head turned toward her, as if he had forgotten he wasn't alone. She wondered, briefly, if it pleased him to lose his life, and theirs with it. “Two grown men is a heavy burden for any beast,” he said.

Gwyn swallowed, swallowing back as much anger as fear. “Burl and I can walk. The horses will know their way back to the stable.” She and Burl could walk, if they had to; if they were just given permission, they could start off. What they couldn't do was stand here doing nothing.

The voice did not alter expression. The Lord spoke in slow and stately measure: “The Innkeeper would not be pleased if I returned without his daughter.”

Anger took over. With a blizzard blowing thick around them, the chances were Gwyn would not be held responsible for her words. “The Lords do what they will. The Innkeeper knows that as well as any man.”

If they were to go on foot, with the storm around them at night, her sense of direction would be useless, and she would not be able to see a familiar landscape even if she stumbled upon it. She took the bags of food down from the mare. They would at least keep the food with them. But the longer they stayed talking, the slighter their chances of survival. “You'd do well to tie the boy onto his mare,” she advised the Lord, not bothering to disguise the scorn in her voice.

“Innkeeper's daughter,” he answered her in that distant tone, “whatever the people might think of their Lords, I would not be the man who left a girl to die while he took himself to safety.”

“I stay with Burl,” Gwyn told him.

“Then you'll be traveling with my son and me,” he answered, still distant, but she could have sworn she heard a smile in his voice—if the high peaks of mountains could ever be said to smile. “Leave the food bags here. We'll ride as before, and we need no extra weight. The mare will have to carry this one bag.” He moved to loop the bag holding the long book onto the mare's saddle. He put the Lordling up on the saddle and tied him to the horse with the lead rein. Burl gave Gwyn a foot up, and the Lord put the reins into her hands. “You need do nothing,” he told her.