the iron bells stopped their toning. One by one, they were quickly stilled. Their message was delivered.
The silence they left behind them lay thick and heavy upon the air. No natural sound was willing to intrude upon it. It seemed the world had taken a deep breath, and now held it, waiting upon an outcome.
We continued to walk on together, if always at a safe distance from each other; still wary enemies and adversaries, and neither of us quite willing to take our hands away from our concealed weapons. (No fighting man – or woman – wears but one.) Though I carried my sword sheathed.
‘I did not ask you for an escort home, Rogrig Wishard,’ she said, at last, determined to break the uneasy silence between us.
‘I did not offer you one, Norda Elfwych,’ I returned.
‘Am I to be your prisoner then…is that it? Or perhaps you are to be mine?’ She tried to laugh, only to falter as she stumbled again.
This time I did not move to help her – though she was not expecting me to – I was being deliberately cautious of her now. She shook her head as if to clear her befuddlement, put a finger to her ear as if to stop the ringing. There was blood. Her pain was more than obvious. Certainly, she must have endured more serious injury – she was a fighter, and by reputation more than equal to many a man – only the last strike of my sword had knocked her cold. That had, obviously, annoyed her. I could read it in her face each time she glanced my way. She was, after all, the daughter of a Headman, and a privileged member of her grayne. (A grayne that, no doubt, felt it had a rightful claim to the title of Graynelord.) In her eyes, she had been brought to ground by a clumsy, common fell-man, a poor soldier-thief without distinction. She had managed to stick me with her knife and could well have finished it. Only, I sensed there was still something more to this than her common annoyance alone.
You are not even aware of your own true nature.
Did I say it, did I even think it? Or did she? She was looking my way, but her mouth was not moving. There were no words spoken. I will swear to it. I am a plain man, but I am not an idiot.
It might have been the voice of the babbling stream (all this time we had continued to follow its course), or else it was the movement of the leaves on a tree, or the scuffling of a breeze as it ran off through the long grass.
For certain I had felt a connection between us, but I had not understood it for anything more than, what? At best a weak man’s physical desire for a woman. She had roared at me. Why? Was it for my ignorance? (I did not know.) I had mistaken that too. So she had wounded me and I, in my turn, had struck her down. We both might thank the fortunes I had not the wit to take my advantage of her while I might.
Again I heard the whispers of an unspoken voice:
How long have I waited upon another…
‘What?’ I said.
Look to Wycken…You must look there…
‘Wycken? What did you say, there? What is this trickery?’
But that was the last of it.
Before me, Norda Elfwych looked suddenly ashen. Her face had drained white. She fell to her knees and let go the contents of her stomach.
I chose then to stay silent. I chose to remain Rogrig Stone Heart yet awhile. I waited with her until she was done and had cleaned herself up, then we walked on. We remained always just out of arm’s reach of each other. I deliberately followed a few steps behind her and let Dandy make her own way, free of her reigns.
We were not travelling alone, nor had we been for some time now. There were many others coming off the killing fields, instinctively covering the same ground. Some were riding, but as many men went a-foot now, driving their over-laden hobby-horses before them: the hobbs made to carry more than their full weight of dead men slung across their backs. Elfwych and Wishard moving in the same direction…
The fighting was done with. The day was won and it was lost. We were nearing The Rise, and close to the tower of Staward Peel, where we would wait upon the pronouncement of the manner of our truce, that we might all take ourselves safely to our homes again.
All settlements throughout Graynelore, though loosely planned, were broadly similar, often built upon lonely and inhospitable ground. They grew up higgledy-piggledy, sometimes upon exposed hilltops, sometimes hidden away within closed valleys, or kept a secret within dense woodland, as the country allowed. The best houses, though small and squat, were always made of stone, with walls so thick that, from within, you could not hold an ear to the world outside. Lesser dwellings were huddled together, with perhaps a patch of land for pasture, or for grain fields, or for root fields; the staples of our diet. All the graynes – great or small – set their houses as close to the Stronghold of their Headman as familiarity would allow. They maintained them in this manner, not out of any real desire for close community, but rather for mutual safety: common defence against the raider. In a moment of crisis, close kin were in eye sight and earshot of close kin, and might more easily raise the alarm, go to their neighbour’s aid, or make good their escape.
The Elfwych bastle-houses of The Rise were great in number. Only, as we began to pass them by, it became obvious that many of them were already long abandoned, and others, if still inhabited, were sorely ill-repaired. Strings of fell beasts were being led off nearby pasture, and Norda’s own close kin stood by and watched as Wishards brazenly took them. These were the first spoils of the Elfwych Riding then.
The weight of men about us steadily grew in number. There might have been as many as two hundred men waiting upon the breach in Stain Elfwych’s broken peel tower. Both sides still held their arms, as was the way of things, but it was more than obvious where the surrender lay.
At least no man there tried to hinder Norda’s progress. Perhaps aware of her rank, riders shied their hobby-horses aside and gave her way as she approached the door of the broken tower.
She looked back towards me only once more. I will admit it; I had already deserted her. I had deliberately slipped away into the growing crowds, was already lost to her eyes among the throng; Dandy too. I caught a glimpse of the question on her face. Had I been making certain she was safe…or safely delivered? I dared not disclose myself and attempt an answer. The job was done, either way. Beyond the Riding I, a common fell-man, had no further part to play here. Neither Graynelord nor Headmen sought my opinion of the terms of any truce. Certainly, it was not my place to interfere with the Old-man’s…conquests. Save for this: I was more than curious of that strange connection between us two; that ethereal bond that even now left an Elfwych and a Wishard somehow hopelessly conjoined. I made a vow then. I would play the spy and keep an eye out for Norda Elfwych. Within that broken ruin of a tower there were many vantage points a nimble man could choose to make his perch.
I used Dandy’s back for my first platform, climbed the broken stonework with ease from then on, and soon found myself sitting pretty within a, largely collapsed, arched wind-eye. The perfect spy hole! The spot gave me the advantage of overlooking both the inner Great Hall and the outer courtyard. The truth of the Elfwych decline had not been overstated. Staward Peel was in a ruinous decay. Its weakened face lay open to the sky in several places it should not have been.
I carefully watched Norda’s progress through the crowded courtyard. Among the throng I recognized my own close kin, my elder-cousin Wolfrid, and caught sight of Edbur-the-Widdle some way behind the Old-man himself.
The Graynelord was still mounted upon his beautiful silver-grey hobb, still dressed for show in his best finery and polished body armour. I had last seen him at the head of his grayne leading us into the frae, though I could see no mark of battle upon him. He was looking Norda’s