Earth Magic (5 page)

Chapter 5

H
ALDANE WAS EXUBERANT IN THE MORNING.
Far out of sight of Morca’s dun and Morca’s tower, far beyond the huddled Nestorian village and the edge of the wood, Haldane galloped the cool forest avenue alone. He was loosed from all the limits and responsibility he had suffered in Morca’s absence, and he recked for nothing. He felt like a true Get again.

The mist that had held the dun when he left that morning had been blown away. As he rode the natural lane, the wind nipped the boy’s back and harried him onward. His horse drummed the mold and his heart raced to the drumbeat. He could not be slowed. He could not be stayed. He ducked the reaching branches that lined the forest gallery as though they were enemy broadswords slicing over his saddlebow and laughed though he lost his head fully five times to the cold wet kiss of steel.

Hemming Paleface, his guard and companion, sent by Morca to heel after Haldane, lay lost somewhere on the turning Pellardy Road behind him, unable to stand the pace. He had called to halt, to slack a little, but Haldane had not heeded. Why should he? Let Hemming explain to Morca why he could not keep up to a proper Gettish pace. If Morca would listen. Haldane could keep up.

Once again, Haldane saw himself riding beside Morca, leading the Gets into the West. Being Gets as Gets should be, bleeding and being bled, trading blow for blow, squeezing the throat of the world in a hand. No, not at Morca’s elbow. Morca at the head of one army, he at the head of another—Morca’s reserve. Vaulting the Trenoth River into Palsance, overspreading the West.

But this beautiful vision was spoiled by a thought. Suddenly looming in front of the progress of his armies was a plain. The boy had never seen the plain, but he knew it instantly. It was Stone Heath. Stone Heath lay in Palsance on the other side of the Trenoth River. Out of the stories of his childhood, he had conjured a picture of the place in his mind. It was an open landscape, a series of plains and cliffs, carelessly bestrewn with great rocks shaped like eggs and lit by wild and dangerous lightnings under black clouds. It was a deserted place of death and danger. And in Haldane’s mind the two armies, Morca’s and his, galloped headlong down onto the plain and disappeared into a sudden crevasse.

Haldane’s gelding swerved at a bridle tug, but it served no purpose to dodge destiny. The army in his mind was gone and the plain stood empty under deathly skies. Haldane was abruptly sobered and drew rein. He looked to see if he were watched. If he had seen outlaws he would have killed them then. He would have cut them down for seeing him.

He felt it was unmanly of his mind to return to the witch’s words and to dwell on them. Either he was a silly old man like Svein and Oliver, haunted by thoughts of woe and doom, or he was a Get, Morca’s son, Morca’s own man. To harry the West was not to meet a bloody end on Stone Heath. It need not be. Stone Heath could be ridden by. Cast the thought out, Haldane, and revel in your fortune.

But in the moment before he dismissed his fear, Haldane had a premonition, a vision that he knew not whether to heed. He saw himself returning home to find Morca ready to lead the Gets again to Stone Heath. Haldane closed the thought determined that should the vision prove true—which he would doubt—he would warn Morca no, whatever Morca said.

He halted his horse on the hill above the New Bridge, back on the Pellardy Road once more. At the ford just upstream from the pilings of the fallen bridge there were two Nestorians in gray smocks kneedeep in the chilly water. They bent and searched slowly in the water with their hands, but he thought they watched him, as he would have watched himself if he had been they. He sat taller in the saddle and looked back down the road for Hemming Paleface. Ear served better than eye on the tree-closed road, but there was no more sound than sight of the carl. So much for him.

Haldane set his horse down the road slope and trotted past the bridge pilings standing bare-kneed. He remembered New Bridge on Rock Run when the bridge still existed. He and his mother had passed over it as they traveled the Pellardy Road on their visit to his grandfather in his dun on Little Nail. Of that journey he remembered two things—the bridge and his steel grandfather, Arngrim. When they had left Little Nail, Arngrim gave him the horn that he still carried, though it was years before he could blow it.

He had wondered that a bridge so old could be called new and had been told not to fret about things Nestorian. But that was all very long ago. It was before Oliver had appeared from the West, before his mother’s fall, and even before Morca’s hall was built with its second story and its balcony. It was long ago when Haldane was a child and nothing had yet happened.

He reined his horse at the bank of the stream close by the wading men. He waited for respect. Haldane was armed and the Nestorians were not. He sat tall and dry on a handsome gelding while they paddled with the river bottom. He was a Get and they were cattle. For all these reasons he expected to be given attention.

The peasants straightened and touched their foreheads with dripping muddy fingers. It was funny to Haldane. Their fingers left smears. One peasant was old. The other was younger and larger and stood in need of a shave come market day. Like many Nestorians, he had a dull and stupid face.

Haldane was curious to know for what purpose they waded. “What are you doing?” he asked in Nestorian.

“Gathering clams for our dinner, lord,” the old man said. He pointed to shells looking like damp shale on the riverbank.

Would they really eat shells? These peasants ate many things like roots and mushrooms that a Get would know enough to kick aside as he walked.

“Mussels, too,” the younger one said, grinning foolishly.

Haldane shook his head. “How do you eat such stuff?”

“In a broth with fish and vegetables,” the old man said. “It is a very good meal.”

Haldane waved the answer away because it was not to the question he had asked. The
plain folk
misunderstood much that was said to them. Odo the Steward was a rare man. Most of his fellow natives understood only the plainest of Nestorian country speech, spoken slowly and clearly, often repeated, often rephrased.

The foolish one said, “We will give you some to take home, lord.” And he proffered a shell smeared with mud.

Not to be misunderstood, Haldane said, “Your food is unclean. It is not fit to eat. Now, what late signs or portents have you seen or heard tell of?”

“Nothing, lord,” the older one said.

“Nothing?”

“Yes, lord,” said the old man. He danced a little shuffling dance in the water as he spoke, shifting from one foot to the other as though he found it cold to stand. Then he balanced on one foot, drawing the other from the water and setting it adrip against his knee.

“What?”

“Nothing, lord.” And he shook his head.

“No signs at all?” said Haldane. “Have you heard aught of a wurox being seen in the forest?”

“Oh, that. Yes, lord. The woodcutters do speak of a wurox they have seen. I have not seen it myself.”

Haldane gestured with a questioning hand. “Is that not a portent? Bud Month is the month when the sun is in the sign of the Wurox.”

“No,” the old man said. “No, lord. There used to be many wuroxen in the forest. Many, many. They have been away. Now they return.”

“Ah, but if that is not a portent, then what is?”

The old man shook his head again. He was almost as slow a head as the other.

“I don’t know, lord. I have seen no portents.”

“Is that a portent, lord?” the great lout asked. He pointed past Haldane.

Haldane turned in the saddle. It was Hemming Paleface caught up to him at last. Hemming Paleface, a portent? Hemming was too familiar and small to be anything more than himself.

“I know him,” said Haldane, “and he is not important.”

Hemming reined his chestnut mare in on the slope above the bridge pilings. He waved and called to Haldane.

“Hey, ho, Haldane. Come.”

Haldane waved back. “Come here yourself,” he called in return.

But Hemming did not come. He sat his horse and waved again to Haldane.

Haldane was angered. Who was Hemming that he should refuse him before these peasants?

The wind blew overhead, scudding heavy clouds across the sky, and the light altered frequently. A sudden shaft of light picked Hemming out as he sat his horse on the slope. And they below were in a cloud shadow. In that moment, Hemming looked very like a portent. Or meat for an arrow.

Haldane brought his horse around. His jaw was set tight.

“When will you be putting our bridge back up, lord?” the simple peasant said.

Haldane looked back at him. Fords were made before bridges as any fool knows, and a Get had no need for more. The Gets were careless of bridges. Bridges that fell in Nestor under Gettish rule would stay fallen.

“Continue to wade as you are used to do,” Haldane said shortly, clapped heels to his horse, and rode up the hill.

Hemming Paleface was two years Haldane’s elder, but no bigger or stronger. He was not yet finally grown and his paleness was marred by the red remains of pimples nipped young. He was always pinching at himself. He was a dogged unquestioning would-be-good and only half a Get. Haldane meant to have him left behind in the tail when he and Morca raided into Chastain. He had thought on it overnight.

Haldane rode up the slope determined to throw Hemming Paleface from his saddle before the eyes of the shell gatherers. He meant they should know Hemming for a Nestorian. Haldane guided his gelding with one hand and uncumbered his bow with the other, and when he reached Hemming he slipped the bow behind his leg and tumbled him. It was an unfair trick fairly played. Haldane laughed at Hemming sitting surprised on his rump on the damp Bud Month roadway. By his hand a solitary daffodil waved with the wind.

“Pick a bugleflower,” Haldane said and rode beyond the hill.

But he checked there and waited until Hemming came riding to join him. In his hand Hemming held the lonely bugleflower. It was not what Haldane would have done, or perhaps it was.

The carl said, “Haldane, you shouldn’t have thrown me. I wouldn’t throw you.”

“Couldn’t,” said Haldane. “Why would you not ride closer when I called for you to come?”

“I don’t like me here so far from the dun. Morca said we two should ride together on account of outlaws venturing out with the springtime. I didn’t know those peasants. Where were they from?”

“I never ask those things,” Haldane said.

“As ready as peasants, they might have been some outlaws,” Hemming said. He was called Hemming Paleface in the same manner that Haldane was Haldane Hardhead, but he heard his earburner more often. “If they were outlaws, it wasn’t meet to dump me on the road. Here is the flower you asked me to pick.”

Haldane took the flower, pale yellow trumpet-mouth, white star, green stalk, belated harbinger of spring. He held it gently.

“They were but peasants gathering shells for dinner,” he said, believing that he made his point.

“Outlaws must eat too.”

Haldane knew what outlaws would do because he knew what he would do if he were an outlaw. He had only two standards, himself and Black Morca, and Morca was only to be compared to Morca. He knew outlaws as he knew Hemming, and both of them were much like himself.

“But not shells,” he said. “Outlaws would have too much pride. And those two sad cattle were no outlaws. They wouldn’t be allowed.”

Hemming bowed to Haldane’s authority and agreed to judge as Haldane judged. That was because his standards, too, were Black Morca and Haldane.

“Nay, Haldane,” he said. “Don’t ride away from me. My mare will not keep pace with your gelding.”

“Why should I stay for you?”

“I’m your man now. It wouldn’t look right to the others if I were not to ride into the dun with you. They would think it strange. And if you were killed on the road before me, I could not tell Morca. You are my clan, Haldane.”

Hemming laid a hand on Haldane’s arm, their horses standing nose-to-tail, wind gusts whipping. He spoke earnestly.

The old clans of the Gets, the Eight, were blurred in the long passage west and broken on Stone Heath. Morca enlisted men without regard to their grandsire’s clan, which other barons might also do, and dealt outside justice, for which he was resented by some. Haldane was a Deldring. Hemming’s father had been a Maring. The gravings on Haldane’s amulet, his boar’s tooth, which he would sometimes study, were Deldring marks. Hemming knew less of Maring.

Haldane tapped Hemming’s nose with the bell of the flower. “You are not my man. I am not responsible for you or anything that happens to you.”

Hemming spread his hands. “I am your man. I will hold your horse. I will fight for you. I will follow where you lead me. Keep me close.”

“Why would you follow me, Hemming Paleface?” Haldane’s mind trembled. He wanted to be followed, but by the right men and for the right reasons. He was not yet like Morca, who only wanted to be followed.

Hemming said, “Morca has ordered me to.”

“He ordered you to follow me this morning.”

“Nay, Haldane. He ordered me to be your man. But I like it. I will do better with you than with Morca.”

Haldane was angered. There was none of the rightness he wished in having his men tossed to him by Morca as Lothor of Chastain tossed scraps to his dancing lapdog. Not one at a time. Not Hemming. And then Haldane suddenly realized that there would never be a time when he could choose those who would follow him. He could only choose among them. That was more the way Morca would see it.

As though he were taller and stronger, more powerful and more certain than he was, Haldane asked, “How loyal would you be to me, Hemming? What trust could I place in you?”

“I will be your man, Haldane, in all things. I will do what you tell me. Then, as your fortune increases, so will mine.”

“Win my love. If Morca says for you to stay and I say for you to go, what will you do?”

“What do you ask of me? Morca would wring my neck. And yours too.”

Haldane leaned to fix his bow in place beneath his leg, still holding the spring flower in his right hand. When he straightened, he looked at Hemming and said, “I wanted to know if you would follow me. Well, if you will not act on my word before my father’s, then return to Morca and tell him you would prefer to follow him.”