edges had been rubbed almost smooth with countless years of eager handling. It may well have been a broken shard from a much larger piece. The Beggar Bard’s Eye Stone? There were the faintest of lines marked upon its surface, and highlighted with real gold as if they were important, but if they had any literal meaning they were meaningless to a child. I could not make them out. Whatever the object was, it was obviously cherished. A sturdy metal clasp had been fashioned at its narrower end so that it could be hung safely from a chain or leather thong about the neck or wrist. I had seen nothing like it. The Wishards – Graynelord and his house apart – wore only base jewellery, cut from animal bone, or else we made do with staining our skin for decoration. Certainly, the object had belonged to the Beggar Bard; it had fallen from his body, been dropped unseen by the men who had roughly carried him away, in their eagerness to remove his remains. And if this treasure was the Beggar Bard’s to lose (even in death) then it was mine to find, and to keep to myself. I picked it up and quickly put it away out of sight.
Soon after, I dug a hole and I buried the thing. It was too great a treasure for a common child to hold about his person. A thief and a liar, among a house of thieves and liars is soon found out, cannot keep a secret well. I marked the spot and let it rest there, hidden and untouched.
Enough of this now, my friend! You have indulged Rogrig Wishard quite long enough for a fancy. Here my childhood stories end. After all, this is forever Graynelore. Its children must grow up quickly (if they are to grow up at all). And with this certain knowledge: there is no magic in the world; there is no faerie, real or imaginary, neither lost nor later to be found again.
Remember this: Graynelore was a land continually – habitually – defiled. It was not a good land gone bad it was a poor land made ever poorer (and kept so). Men preyed upon men; family upon family; grayne upon grayne. It was a sore continually picked at; so much so its wounds could never quite heal properly. It was a scarred landscape; a broken scab, ever enflamed and sore.
The fabled beasts of faerie – if ever they had lived – were far beyond the memory of any common men; long since dead and gone. There remained only the bereaved.
Graynelore has but two true seasons and a year equally divided by twelve months. Yet it has four Marches. How so? It is a simple babbie’s riddle, my friend. Look to the north of the country and to the south, look to the east and to the west. Mind, the naming of the Marches was not a strict territorial division. Rather, it was more the geographical convenience of a label. Every hill, every valley, every woodland dell had its recognized families: its graynes, both major and minor. And there were numerous surnames, if there were only four principle graynes. The Wishards kept themselves mostly to the South March; the Elfwych mostly to the West March; the Bogarts to the East March; and the Trolls to the foothills below the black-headed mountains in the North March. That said; this was not a settled land with hard and fast rules. There were no permanently fixed boundaries – except perhaps in the minds of a few covetous Headmen. Most men would have been hard-pressed to explain precisely where one March ended and the next began. Nor would they have greatly cared. Reivers did not draw lines upon the ground. They needed only the memory of what they believed had once been inscribed upon The Eye Stone. And if they were, more or less, always in bloody dispute because of it? So be it. It was a way of life.
In the long dry summers, the Marches of Graynelore were noisy; for it was then men preferred to fight. In the cold wet winters, the Marches were largely silent; for then, most men preferred to stay at home and rest at their firesides.
It was a morning in late summer. Winter was only a short step away. A great crowd of fighting-men had already gathered at the Heel Stone by first light that day. Many more would follow on. There was a handful of blood-tied Wises, Hogspurs, Bogarts, and other lesser kinsmen among the throng, though they were mostly Wishards by name, answering to their grayne. There were Wishards of the Three Dells: Tyne Dell, Fixlie Dell, and Dingly Dell (who were my own closest kin). There were Wishards from as far away as Carr Law. Wishards from Flat Top, and Wishards from Arch. They had come from all parts of the South March, and further. Many had travelled a long way already that morning and yet the real journey – whether it was to be a Long Riding or a Short Riding – had not yet begun.
The Heel Stone, the meeting point, was a giant solitary rock that lay toppled at the corner of Pennen Fields: a sweep of open moorland above Dragoncliffe, almost at the southern edge of the Great Sea. It was the Mark of the Wishards: a historic place of gathering.
Old-man Wishard, Headman of the Wishards of Carraw Peel, and more importantly, Graynelord of all Graynelore, had called his surname to the Mark.
Almost to a man, they sat upon their sturdy hobby-horses: the small, stolid and sure-footed fell-horses, native to the land. Creatures so lacking in height they left their rider’s feet and the tips of their rider’s iron war swords – that hung from their waists – dangling close to the ground as they rode, in what appeared an almost foolish manner for full grown men. Each man wore a reinforced handmade jack of leather or of rough cloth, as they could afford, inlaid with irregular scraps of metal to serve as make shift armour (more for show than an effective defence). In their saddle-packs they carried griddles with flour enough to make their daily bread. Some, skilled in the art, also carried a hunting wire to snare fresh meat. Only the poorest of men, or the unluckiest, those who had recently lost their mounts upon a frae, stood a-foot; and they gathered together in small packs, ready to fight at each other’s back.
Each fighting-man there was virtually the same then. Yet each man was different. These were homemade soldiers. This was a homemade army of reivers…
Among them you must look hard and find me out again; Rogrig Wishard, now fully grown to manhood. There was as yet nothing obvious about me to distinguish me from my close companions. I was still quite the ordinary man. Unexceptional, except perhaps for this: I, alone among the gathering, sat not upon a simple hobby-horse but upon a unicorn. I fear, I must explain. Do not be impressed. I…exaggerate (as is my want). My unicorn was not of flesh and blood. Rather, for a fancy, I had fashioned my mount a stout leather mask – a head-guard – struck through with a single metal spike that stood a full sword’s length proud of her nose. My hobb seemed an awesome sight to look upon. If only she might learn to use her weapon upon the frae. Still, she was a good man’s pack animal, and more than capable of carrying a full day’s toil.
I named her for another foolish whim and called her Dandelion (Dandy for short) with no better reason in mind than I liked the title.
I was sat upon Dandy then, a little away from a closed huddle of my nearest kin; nearly, though not quite, out on my own; I was keeping the wary eye. There was mostly silence here, expectant if thoughtful silence; only the rough breath of the hobbs, the odd clump of shifting hooves…hacking coughs, the breaking of wind. It was too early of a day for beer-fuddled heads (and there were enough). Where a few serious words were passed about, it was done in tight whispers. Otherwise it was an idle banter between scared men trying to talk themselves up to the fight ahead of them.
‘Mind, this Riding is to be no deadly feud…’ said one.
‘No…How so?’ answered another.
‘We must not blunt the sword, cousins – it is a simple, common lust!’ returned a third.
Now, though all of these men were well known to me, and spoke openly within my earshot, I chose only to listen…
‘They are saying the Old-man means to find himself a new wife this day.’
‘Aye, and it is rumoured he is after taking the daughter of Stain Elfwych.’
‘What, are you serious? Norda Elfwych? If it is a fighting