The Tale of Oriel (50 page)

“Nor I,” Wardel agreed.

Darkness was all around them. Griff couldn't see the sky, to know where they stood in relation to daylight, or if it would be a clear or cloudy day, if there was rain coming. Whatever the weather was, it couldn't stop them; it could only hinder what they were going to do. Hindrance was the worst of the harm the weather could do them; and the most of the good was not to do harm.

At the first paling of the sky, Wardel took a band of twelve soldiers around the Inn, to cut off escape by water or into the trees. Verilan had fifteen hand-picked men to follow him on foot in an attack from the rear of the Inn. With him went the young soldier, Reid, who waved his excited gratitude to Griff.

Griff led the remaining soldiers, still mounted, to the edge of the woods, with orders to wait until the horn called attack. He chose the first ten men his eye fell on and ordered them to be ready to ride out of the trees with him at the first light, and then to stay back behind him as if prepared to attack. Let Tintage underestimate their numbers if he determined to settle it in blood.

The air silvered. Over the washing river, watery birdcalls rose. It was Griff's time.

He rode out onto the meadow, the guidonier beside him and the ten soldiers behind. Only the horses' breathing and the clank of swords announced their arrival. Griff and the guidonier left the soldiers in a line and rode up to the Inn.

Behind its closed shutters and closed door the two-story stone building slept, as grey as the dawn.

At Griff's signal, the guidonier raised the horn to his lips, and blew. The single note cut through the air.

The whole dim world grew still, like ice. The forest was silent, and Griff could almost hear the wary stillness that now filled the Inn. A sign hung over the doorway, the same bird that had been carved on the back of Oriel's beryl, with its wings outspread. Were the wings spread for flight? or attack? or to offer protection? Perhaps all three, Griff thought, and gave the guidonier the signal.

The horn sounded again, three short sharp notes, calling.

The shutter of a ground floor window was pulled back. A face looked out, and then the shutter was pulled closed.

Griff sat his mount stiffly. In his motionlessness, he knew he looked at ease, but his heart was racing and his brain was racing. No outcome was certain, he knew that. No man, not even the best of men, could be sure of his life, he knew that, too.

Griff knew what he planned to say, but was not sure his mouth would utter those words, when the time came. He was remembering how he led the Wolfers down into the mines and then stood in a stony black recess, listening to the killing, waiting to know his own fortune—slave to Wolfers or slave in the mines.

It was better to fight than wait, Griff thought. The one time when they had stood to fight, which he could barely remember for the speed of the events, he remembered a breathlessness and a kind of wild panicked joy—Tamara's passage down the banks to the boat, and the victory of her voice rising up from the safety of the river.

Only, no victory was promised, ever. Only, there could be victory the victor didn't live to enjoy. A cry rose in his throat, displacing the words that waited there. Griff swallowed to keep it down. It rose again.

The door opened. Tintage, armed, stood on the lintel stone.

Griff no longer had time for memory, or fear.

“I come no farther,” Tintage said. “Speak what you would say.”

Behind Tintage figures moved through the shadows.

“I sue for surrender,” Griff said. “Any man here who lays down his arms will be taken quietly.”

“Quietly to the dungeons,” Tintage said, laughing. Then, not laughing, “Quietly to his death.”

“Only one man here stands under the sentence of death.”

Griff knew that Verilan and his men were even now creeping towards the Innyard, crossing it as silently as armed men were able. Griff had need to keep the attention of all on himself, and Tintage, at the front of the Inn.

“To all but that one man I offer amnesty. Yours is a cause that can't succeed,” he pointed out.

“That's what you say,” Tintage was quick to answer. “Oriel wouldn't say the same, now, would he?” He didn't miss the quick fury on Griff's face, or the hand as it moved to the hilt of the sword. “You'd like nothing better than to slay me, I think. I've forgotten your name. You, Oriel's creature, what is your name?”

What his purpose could be for the goading mockery, Griff didn't know, and had no care for. “Griff, Earl Sutherland,” he named himself.

Tintage laughed aloud. His laugh rang untroubled, as merry as a lad at the dance with no thought of livelihood or marriage, with thought only for the circling dance, and the notes of the fiddle that lifted his feet, and all watching him with admiration and envy. “Yet you trust me not to have you slain, here? now?”

“I don't trust you for anything,” Griff answered quietly.

In the silence that followed his answer, two men pushed out of the Inn door, crowding by Tintage. They dropped swords and knives on the stone. He was blind to their passage across the meadow to where the line of mounted soldiers waited.

“You don't come well armied, for all the riches of Sutherland, which are now yours,” Tintage said.

Three more men pushed by him, and two behind them.

Two scurried along, bent over for protection, around the far corner of the building.

Others moved inside, girding on swords, strapping on breastplates.

“Traitor,” Griff called out, “I sue for your surrender.” He knew, had known from the first word, that Tintage wished battle.

“I scorn your suit,” Tintage called in answer from the doorway. “As I scorn your claim to the Earldom. And this,” he unsheathed his sword and raised it high, “is my answer to you, and to all who would bend me to their wills. Scorn is my answer.”

Even as he declared his defiance, cries arose from the Inn. Tintage knew what they were. “You have played me false!” he cried, and then he laughed, “I thought too little of you.” Before Griff could answer, Tintage had run back inside, his sword out and ready.

Griff gave the signal, the guidonier blew attack, and his soldiers rode out of the wood. The thunder of hooves mixed now with cries from within, and the shouting of the men who came out of the Inn to wage their battle in the meadow.

Griff was down from his horse and heading for the Inn door, to meet the first wave of those driven out by Verilan's soldiers.

When Tintage was taken, that would be the end of fighting.

The cry in his throat rose up again, and he opened his mouth wide. There was noise all around him, and his own Wolfer cry filled the air in front of him. At the same time, there was a deep silence through which he moved.

“Guard, there,” came his own voice in that silence, as he drove his sword into an attacker, “parry—turn—quick, danger!” The noise, and some of it was cursing and screaming, seemed to come to him from far away, although the bodies were close all around him, some fighting, some fallen. The noise was deafening.

He moved through the deafening noise, in his silence.

“Tintage,” he reminded himself, as he fended off a sword, with a ringing of metal, and felt something sharp along his upper arm as he swept his own sword back, and his sword grew thick as it cut through flesh, and the smell of blood—

The man screamed into his face, but he didn't see Griff, for death had already blinded him. His scream might well have been soundless, for Griff didn't hear it.

“My lord.” It was Wardel standing in the main room of the Inn. Most of the soldiers in the room wore green shirts, and were his own men. Griff took a moment to assess, and then headed off.

“Sir,” Wardel was at his side, a bloody bruise on his cheek, “keep safe—”

Griff didn't dare to stop to think, and choose. He pushed on, pushing around his own soldiers, once barely escaping a blow from the fist of one of his own officers—who saw at the last chance who it was he threatened, and flushed red, and then laughed, and then bent his shamed head, until Griff's laughter excused him and both men went on about their tasks.

Griff didn't know how long it had been. His chest heaved. He didn't see Tintage, but he thought there were fewer of the traitor's band who offered combat now. He heard groaning, and moans, now, more than steel on steel. He heard voices calling support to one another. “I'm behind you.” “At your right.” “Any of the bastards left in that room?” Then he stepped out of the back door to the Inn and into the flagged yard.

“Tintage!” he roared.

Tintage and four or five men were running across the stones. Tintage halted, and turned, to hear his name called. The men with Tintage stopped at the sight of the soldiers, Verilan among them, who blocked their way. They crouched with drawn swords and held daggers in their other hands, awaiting attack.

As soon as he saw flight was useless, Tintage strode back towards Griff.

He frightened Griff.

“So we will duel for the Earldom,” Tintage said.

“Don't be a fool,” Griff said.

Tintage had fought his way out of the Inn, and his shirt showed that. He had lost, and his eyes showed it; for which reason he was determined to match swords with Griff. Griff could almost hear Tintage's thought: The glory of it, if you cannot be Earl, to be the man who slew two Earls. A man who took two Earls into death with him could not be said to have made the journey ill attended.

“We will, whether you choose it or not,” Tintage said, approaching with outstretched sword. “Oriel would have fought with me thus.”

“Oriel was the better swordsman,” Griff said. His pride was for Oriel, not himself. “If you will have a duel, take Verilan,” Griff said, stepping aside to let Verilan—who was at his side now, and eager—come into place.

But Tintage didn't care for the risk of dueling Verilan. He tried to run, and was met by soldiers. He tried to fight his way through them, and he was unweaponed, caught, and bound.

It was finished.

Tintage's men threw down their weapons.

Griff leaned against the stone wall of the Inn. He smelled smoke, and saw green-shirted soldiers in a line, passing buckets of water to put out a fire in the barns. He heard voices again, from within the Inn. Soldiers cursed and reported to officers, and asked if it was over. “Quick,” they said, and “Short.” “Not a proper battle.” “Aye, and that's the best kind.” “Aye, and that's what the Earl devised.” “It's what we all wanted, isn't it—a victory.” “A good victory.” “Where is our Earl, he isn't killed, is he?”

Griff stood straight, and walked into the Inn kitchens, and across and through the main room, and out onto the meadow.

It had taken no time at all, as the sun measured time. The first daylight was just staining the eastern sky and gilding the river.

It had taken all the time they had, for the three green-shirted soldiers who lay dead.

THE PRISONERS WERE SET TO
building two pyres, one for their own dead, one for the dead of the Earl Sutherland's soldiery. The wounded were tended by their friends. While the business of cleaning up was being taken care of, Griff looked around for Reid, to see how the youth had fared.

He found him crouched in a corner of the barn, weeping silently, holding his right hand tight against his chest. When Griff approached he stood up, wiping his face dry, wiping his nose, making his face brave. Griff reached out to look at the wound.

A wide slash across the forearm had been bound, to stop the bleeding, but the cruelty was that the fingers of Reid's hand had seized up, and were curled into a claw. Griff couldn't force them open. The sinews that worked his hand had been severed.

“Aye, and it's a hazard of the game,” Reid said as bravely as he could manage.

Griff couldn't deny that. “The lady who came among the villagers, she is a healer. The lady with child. I'll send her to you,” Griff said. “When we return, and ask her help. The wound could fester, grow gangrenous—she will know.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

The boy wished to be left alone. Griff would oblige him, soon.

“Afterwards, will you come back to my castle?”

The boy shrugged.

“There will always be work for soldiers who have fought in battle for the Earl Sutherland,” Griff said.

“Aye, and what work can I do like this?” the boy cried.

“What task you can do, that you will be set to,” Griff answered, and then he turned abruptly away, that the boy might have his privacy before he came out into the day and had to act the man.