Graynelore

STEPHEN MOORE

HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street,

London SE1 9GF

www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2015

Copyright © Stephen Moore 2015

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015. Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com

Stephen Moore asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.

Ebook Edition © August 2015 ISBN: 978-0-00-810353-8

Version: 2016-10-31

For Carol

‘Whenever you think I’m lost, and you cannot find me, look here. I am always here.’

Epigraph

If every man’s life has the makings of a story, the comings and the goings and the things in-between, where does my story truly begin?

For want of a narrator, for want of a name and the soul it belongs to, I fear, it must begin here…

[From: A Beggar Bard’s Tale. Anon.]

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

Part One: The Beggar Bard’s Tale

Chapter One: Graynelore

Chapter Two: How the World was Made

Chapter Three: The Beggar Bard’s Burden

Part Two: The Bereaved

Chapter Four: At the Mark of the Wishards

Chapter Five: The Elfwych Riding

Chapter Six: The Killing Field

Chapter Seven: The Unspoken Voice

Chapter Eight: The Broken Tower

Chapter Nine: Aftermath

Chapter Ten: Against the Grayne

Part Three: The Wycken Mire

Chapter Eleven: Into the Mire

Chapter Twelve: Wycken-on-the-Mire

Chapter Thirteen: Faeries

Chapter Fourteen: Joining the Dance

Chapter Fifteen: The Secret Meet

Part Four: The Faerie Riding

Chapter Sixteen: The Changelings

Chapter Seventeen: A Brief and Intimate Respite

Chapter Eighteen: Upon the Threshold and a Dream

Chapter Nineteen: The Gateway

Chapter Twenty: The Faerie in the Tower

Chapter Twenty-One: An Unexpected Murder

Chapter Twenty-Two: The Eye Stone

Chapter Twenty-Three: The Pain of Norda Elfwych

Chapter Twenty-Four: As the Crow Flies

Chapter Twenty-Five: The Debateable Land

Chapter Twenty-Six: Night Sounds

Part Five: The Great Riding

Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Gibbet Tree

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Rogrig the Wishard

Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Gigant

Chapter Thirty: The Illicit Agreement

Chapter Thirty-One: The Quickening

Chapter Thirty-Two: The Battle of the Withering

Chapter Thirty-Three: A Cry Among the Mists

Part Six: The Faerie Ring

Chapter Thirty-Four: A Ring of Eight

Chapter Thirty-Five: When the Dust Finally Settled

Chapter Thirty-Six: The Eye of the World

Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Faerie Isle

Epilogue: Rogrig the Confessor

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

Prologue

I am Rogrig, Rogrig Wishard by grayne. Though, I was always Rogrig Stone Heart by desire. This is my memoir and my testimony. What can I tell you about myself that will be believed? Not much, I fear. I am a poor fell-stockman and a worse farmer (that much is true). I am a fighting-man. I am a killer, a soldier-thief, and a blood-soaked reiver. I am a sometime liar and a coward. I have a cruel tongue, a foul temper, not to be crossed. And, I am – reliably informed – a pitiful dagger’s arse when blathering drunk.

You can see, my friend, I am not well blessed.

For all that, I am just an ordinary man of Graynelore. No different to any other man of my breed. (Ah, now we come to the nub of it. I must temper my words.)

Rogrig is mostly an ordinary man. The emphasis is important. For if a tale really can hang, then it is from this single thread mine is suspended.

Even now I hesitate, and fear my words will forever run in rings around the truth. Why? Put simply, I would have preferred it otherwise.

Let me explain. I have told you that I am a Wishard. It is my family name…it is also something rather more. I say it again, Wish-ard, and not wizard. I do not craft spells. I do not brew potions or anything of the like. No. My talent, such as it is, is more obscure. You see, a Wishard’s skill is inherent, it belongs to the man. You either possess it or you do not. (Most men, most Wishards do not.) It cannot be taught. As best as can be described, I have a knack. Rather, I influence things. I make wishes, of a kind.

Aye, wishes…(There, at last, it is said.)

Forgive me, my friend. I will admit, I find it difficult, if not tortuous, to speak of such fanciful whimsy. Make what you will of my reticence; measure Rogrig by it, if you must. I will say only this much more (it is a caution): by necessity, my testimony must begin with my childhood. But be warned: if I tell you that this is a faerie tale – and it is a faerie tale – it is not a children’s story.

Please, humour me. Suffer Rogrig Wishard to lead you down the winding path and see where it takes you. There is purpose to it. Else I would not trouble you.

Part One

Chapter One
Graynelore

Children remember in childish ways. So, through a child’s eyes, I will look again upon Graynelore. I can see a frozen wasteland. Deep winter’s ice lying broken and sharp upon a horse-trodden path. The riders are long departed. My breath is a broken kiss upon the air. The land before me is a magical silence.

I can pass a child’s hand across the ruts and crevasses of a cold, wet stone wall. It is the wall of a house, and built so thickly this Rogrig can stand at his full height and yet hide safely within the depth of its wind-eyes.

I can find a child’s delight in the crackle and spark of burning logs, the heat of an open fire.

I can lift a child’s finger to my tongue and taste the iron of an abandoned broken war sword. I can feel the dead weight of it again, as I struggle to drag it across a stone floor for the lack of body strength to lift it.

I can sting my nose with the smell of the piss and the shit of fell beasts – animals sheltered indoors against the rumour of coming raiders – and yet still know the comfort of it.

I can raise the beat of my heart and laugh at a tangle of drunken men, falling through an open doorway, playing at the Old Game. And I can wince at the foul cry a young woman gives them in chastisement.

‘Ah! Be-having-you! Do you have to come kicking that fucking head about in here? You’re spilling blood across my freshly strewn floors!’

I can ache to my soul for the death of my father; only slaughtered, it seems, for his surname. I can hear words, murmured together in a single breath: murder, blood feud, Elfwych, and understand them, with a child’s innocence, only as the unbearable pain of my father’s absence…and a mother’s tears.

I can huddle with a grieving family, grimly gathered at our fireside, making the cursed talk of revenge.

Sick with fear, I can taste stomach bile at my throat on seeing the sudden stillness of my first human killing. He was a Bogart by grayne; though a Bogart out of an Elfwych. Upon a holyday, I once played childish sport with the lad. Yet I dropped a great stone upon his head – broke it apart – as he lay face down upon the ground. His body was already sliced open, that the work of another’s sword, but it was I who killed him. To possess all that is life, then, in a breath, in less than a breath, to take it all away…

Before the raider’s trail, I can sit piss-scared upon my own dead father’s hobby-horse. And I can heed the old wives’ warnings that came ringing to my ears.

‘Mind how you go there, child! Keep off the bloody bog-moss. It swallows grown men whole! It sucks down full-laden fell-horses, carts and all! It will leave us no sign to remember you by…’

And, of a bright summer’s day, without a care, I can run again through the long dry grasses with Old Emma’s Notyet, chasing after the cat’s tail. Mind, that is no man’s business but my own, and I will thank you for it and keep it to myself.

Do you follow me, my friend?

Old Emma, my elder-cousin, was a long time dead. Notyet, her daughter, was my playfellow. She was a weedling child, plain-faced, stoical, yet not displeasing. In age, there was less than a season between us. We came together because we lived together. We sat out upon the same summer fields and watched, lazily, over the same stock. We ran, a-feared, from the same raiders, raised the hue and cry. We ate from the same table, burned our faces at the same fireside. Bloodied our noses against the same hard ground and broke ice from the same stone water trough. And we each caught the other looking, without a blush, when we washed ourselves, naked, in the same stream.

Notyet would often hide herself away in some secret woodland dell, where she would play awkward tunes upon the crude wooden whistles she made. I would listen, and follow after her simple music. I liked to find her there, in hiding. Was she my heart’s meat? Was she? Ha! Upon Graynelore! If it were true, I would not have admitted it. She was my kissing kin, but…(And but is enough to condemn me, and us.)

Little more than babbies, we made a babbie together. She did not carry the infant well. It was dropped too early, born a feeble weedling; and un-cherished, it was soon dead. Birth is such a bloody struggle. Life is such a difficult trail to follow, while death – the sudden stop – so very easy.

My friend, I have given you these awkward childhood memories; these fleeting glimpses of Graynelore, not because of their individual worth, but because together they might give you a sense of the world into which I was born. For the most part, they might appear to be nothing better than the gathered pieces from a broken clay pot! A handful of shattered fragments, a few, no doubt, so cruelly sharp they can hurt still, but, at best, incomplete.

Indeed, there are pieces missing. There is another memory I must share with you. I must take us to another day, and to a meeting with a Beggar Bard.

Chapter Two
How the World was Made

I can still see him, standing before an open door on a winter’s evening. He appeared out of the darkening shadows, just as a cold sun fell out of a weathered sky. Just as the bars were about to be drawn and the wind-eyes battened against the night. The old man’s back was stooped, his yellowing skin so dry, so thin, I was certain he was something of a wych’s trick; a bag of old bones somehow kept whole. Though he remains forever nameless – he offered us none and history does not recall – I remember him cadging a supper and a fireside in return for his story. All my family, from the eldest crone to the youngest babbie, quickly gathered there, eager to receive him. (For there is no luck in turning a Beggar Bard from your door; ask any who have tried, any still living.)

When he began to tell his story, he began mine. For he told us the tale of how the world was first made.

How easily that frail old man stole a fireside. For as long as he talked he kept his bones warmed, and his audience believing every word. And such a performance! He never stood still. His fragile limbs jerked and twisted in time to his every phrase. His sallow eyes, alert and sharp, even in old age, fell upon each of us in turn and seemed to reach into our very souls. He scared the babbies witless. He had grown men and women cursing and bellowing like cloddish fools. At my side a boyish Notyet was caught sorely stiff afraid. In my excitement I let my fists fly, made her yowl, banged her on the ear to bring her back.

‘Hoy!’ she cried, returned her closed hand, and cuffed me back.

And I? What did I make of this Beggar Bard? When he spoke, it was as if time itself ran at a listless pace, against its nature. Rogrig was…spellbound, beguiled. The Beggar Bard drew us all into his dark tale.

‘Look sharp, my friends. Look sharp about us,’ he began. He spoke through rotten teeth and with a rasping, ailing breath. ‘We are at the beginning of all things. So come and watch with me, as a single scratch of light appears out of an eternal darkness.’ The old man’s withered hands enticed, beckoned to us, all the while drawing magical, fleeting pictures in the smoke-filled air around us. ‘Pass through this stagnant swirl of ageing yellow mist. And come upon a tall grey figure, standing motionless before a great stone tablet.’ The Beggar Bard’s open fingers and narrowed eyes signalled a caution. ‘Make no sound! Keep deathly still. This man before us is a Great Wizard, a Lord of Creation. He must not see us here.’

From somewhere among our gathering there came a gentle roll of knowing laughter. (This childish Rogrig mistook it for simple pleasure.) There were many there who already knew this tale by heart, and the manner of its telling. They were content to play their part and hear it told again, but they took the Beggar Bard’s performance for what it was: common trickery and simple amusement. Sleight of hand to baffle Tom Fool, not a faerie’s Glamour, worthy of the gibbet. The Beggar Bard continued his tale, unabashed.

‘Now, my friends, watch carefully. Do not blink! Or you will miss the first of it!’ He gave a waggle of his bony finger. ‘See? The stone tablet, its surface, quite plain and unadorned, in an instant is deeply cut: incised and embellished by its master’s hand. The form is a map. The image is a pair of islands – one great, the other small – set upon the broadest sea. Notice how its waters glisten, even upon the stone. And the smaller island: it is such a strange curiosity. What magic is this? See how it moves…marking out its course as it cuts a swathe across the surface of the tablet.’

Again and again the Beggar Bard’s fingers made magical pictures in the fire smoke. The stone tablet…The Great Wizard…The map…The islands…The sea…I was so convinced of what I saw there that night I can still see it all, vividly. Every detail, everything conceived.

‘And why was the stone map made?’ asked the Beggar Bard, rhetorically, expecting no answer but his own. ‘It was like a great eye that looked out upon the whole world and saw everything. An Eye Stone,’ said the Beggar Bard, ‘an Eye Stone, created, that all creatures everywhere should know their place in the world and marvel at its splendour. Nothing was missed. For a Great Wizard knows his task and his world quite well enough. And if his concerns were for design and skilful ornament, rather than for accuracy and scale, then he made up for its lack with an indubitable certainty.’ Now, the meaning of many of the Beggar Bard’s words was often lost to the ears of an ignorant child (aye, and the contradictions too) and yet this only added to their mystique and to my unwavering belief in their authority.

‘He made a mark for the Stronghold of The Graynelord; the Headman of all the graynes…And a mark too, for the bastle-houses of lesser men,’ added the Beggar Bard, shrewdly. At which, there came a great stamping of feet and a roaring of approval. ‘There were marks made for the mountains of the gigants, and for the dwarven holes. Marks for the elfin forest dells; for the lakes and for the mires, where the kelpies lie in wait for unsuspecting travellers; and for the broad grasslands of the unifauns. There were simple marks for the hills and the vales; for the roads; and another for the great River Winding that comes out of the mountains and finds its way into every part of this land. All manner of things were cut upon that stone face: the marvellous and the mundane.

‘And when, within the making, the Great Wizard found himself at a loss – after all, if he knew his own homelands best, and other, stranger parts at the world’s furthest corners hardly at all, can he be blamed for his enthusiasms and omissions? – he simply cut these words and wrote: The Great Unknown, or Here Be Monsters.’

‘And what of this curious moving isle, Lord Bard—?’ The interruption came from the Headman of our house: Wolfrid, my elder-cousin, eager to have the story told. He spilled wine from the mouth of his stone drinking jar as he spoke, left a spattered trail upon the earth floor at his feet.

‘You do well to ask, my friend,’ replied the Beggar Bard. His fingers continued to draw fleeting shapes upon the smoke-filled air. ‘It is, of course, the Faerie Isle. Never yet seen by any mortal man, I would swear; only ever believed in. For such, you will agree, is true faith?’

Again there came the knowing laughter from among our company, if slightly less certain now. The Beggar Bard continued.

‘Just as surely as he knew the Moon moves across our night sky, the Great Wizard knew the Faerie Isle moves across our sea (if, ever and always, just out of sight). He knew it was there, and so he marked it there upon the stone as best he could; adding waves and ripples in want of movement and effect. And he was well satisfied, for he also knew that it was from the Faerie Isle that all the creatures of the world first came.

‘Finally, and with flourish, all around the edges of the tablet inscriptions were made, numbering the natural laws of this land, though in a symbol and tongue known only to the Great Wizard himself; that no common creature might challenge their worth or seek to interpret their truth to its own advantage.’

Here the Beggar Bard was forced to pause and take a breath. His sallow eyes briefly passed over us again, as if he was looking for the measure of our understanding. He smiled – at us, not with us – before continuing.

‘With that, my friends, the Great Wizard’s work was all but finished. The Eye Stone, almost complete. The world unmade, was at once a world made. Cut upon cut, line upon line. Only, in that very last moment of its making, he marked it with a name, and called it – Graynelore.’

There were sudden, fervent cheers. Wolfrid hauled himself upright, applauding loudly (if his wine-sodden face carried something of a befuddled look). At my back, men and women in a jolly drunken fashion, clashed their drinking bowls together, slopped and splashed a rain of warm ale down upon our heads. Notyet yelped and jumped at the excitement of it, which only encouraged the Beggar Bard to more.

‘Now then…there came a solemn day, when The Eye Stone was at last revealed to the creatures of Graynelore. And, all at once, they believed in its truth and in its accuracy. They believed without question; because they believed in the Great Wizard without question. And, just as these things occur, just as the Great Wizard had set it in stone, so the world at large became…and still is.’

The Beggar Bard fell silent, and for the first time stood suddenly stock-still. Though, his eyes continued to sharpen themselves upon us.

As if it was a given signal, the elder-women of my house quickly stood up. They offered the Beggar Bard a bowl of the best wine and a board of fresh meats, which he quietly accepted and sat down upon the stone hearth by the fire to consume. Out of courtesy, he was also offered a young woman for his own close company, which he politely refused.

Our general gathering sat on, unmoved, waited in eager anticipation of his return. Fortunately, his was a meagre appetite, soon sated. It was not long before he set his bowl and board aside.

In his own time, and beckoning both my own mother and Notyet for their support, he carefully stood up, and prepared himself to continue. It was obvious his great age was getting the better of him. ‘That ancient stone tablet, The Eye Stone, stood out upon the exact spot where it had been created and weathered countless centuries. Until, at last, its guardian and creator, the Great Wizard died…(Aye, for even the greatest of wizards was not an immortal, whatever other men might tell you).

‘Across the ages many Great Wizards have come and gone. There were those who, when they came upon The Eye Stone, believed in its truth. Though there were just as many who came upon it and did not believe. In the fullness of time, The Eye Stone seemed lost to history. Perhaps it toppled, or crumbled to dust, or else was stolen away.

‘Copies were made from its memory, sometimes cut upon stone, sometimes scribed upon parchment, or woven into the threads of great tapestries. Though some believe the real Eye Stone was eventually found again…Lost, and found.’ The Beggar Bard drew out the last of these words, lightly rocked his cradled hands as if he was passing them between one and the other.

Then his tone grew more sombre.

‘Upon a day, there came a calamitous moment in our history when, all at once, several Great Wizards claimed to be the only true descendent of the first. And each solemnly declared that the image of The Eye Stone in their possession was the only one made after the true original. Be it marked upon stone, or upon cloth, or upon parchment.

‘Their eager debates turned to sour arguments, turned to open conflicts…and war! Aye, and with truth and right on all sides and many—!’ The Beggar Bard smiled ruefully at this last remark. Around him, the light of the open fire grew suddenly dim. Its smoke belched black and thickened about his crooked form, leaving only the image of a ghastly golem in his place.

Still, grown men laughed, babbies cried, and the eldest crone wailed her distress.

The Beggar Bard’s performance was coming to its dramatic height.

‘I beseech you all, my friends. Turn away! Look no more upon me! Or else, if look you must, see only darkness here. I did not intend slaughter for an entertainment. We do not need to witness the destruction of war, need only understand its outcome and recognize the utter loss at its last battle’s bitter end.’

Even as the Beggar Bard spoke these words, within the fire-smoke filled air a great turmoil erupted. The shadows of men and beasts came together and did gruesome battle. Dark elfin creatures with beating wings, goblins, gigants, and dwarves rose up together in great clashing swathes only to dissolve again into wisps of smoke. Thundering herds of unifauns bolted from the depths of the fire crying their distress. Spitting flames became the fiery breath of angry dragons. The sound of crackling wood became the clash of iron war swords, the death cries of men, the breaking of bones, and the voices of despair. And among it all, in their fury, the feuding wizards cast their bolts of magic and laid the world to waste.

To my childish eyes it was all very real. In all my short life – though I had witnessed much – I had never experienced such pitiful dread. Between us, Notyet and I grasped at each other’s stiffened limbs and held on tight. Still the men of my house laughed and stamped their feet, and spat their approval, and demanded more, and more, and worse, and worse. The women wept a dreadful sorrow; and yet were still filled with eager anticipation. The babbies pissed themselves.

The Beggar Bard gave us one final spectacle to behold. At the very last, as I gaped open-mouthed, with the battle of the wizards still at its height, all across the heavens a great shade, a tumult of raging black cloud, descended. A rolling blanket of darkness…Then the rain fell, the black rain. It was not water, but dust: Faerie Dust. Each drop as fine as a grain of sand, as sharp as a fragment of broken glass. And as it fell it smothered all before it – even as creatures and men battled on – covering great swathes of the earth, and finding its pinnacle upon the heights of Earthrise, a distant mountain…only, now and forever more, to be known as the black-headed mountain.

And then – suddenly, quickly – it was all over and done with.

With a simple shrug of his arm the Beggar Bard dispersed the smoke, as if he was tossing aside his winter cloak. It drifted upwards, a thing in itself, coming to rest against the wooden joists of the ceiling. And there, the skulking loathsome mass, seemed to hesitate, only to seep quietly away between the gaps in the wood and the broken stonework, until it was quite gone up through the house, to the very rafters, and out into the night. And the clash of battle, and the storm of war, and the black Faerie Dust, went with it.

Our gathering hushed then, though whether through dread, or understanding, or anticipation for what was to come next, Rogrig, the child, did not have the wit to tell.

The Beggar Bard waited there a long moment, as if to catch his breath; standing quietly, head solemnly bowed, until the silence was complete. Then, only then, he spoke again in hushed tones.

‘All the wizards are long dead now…and gone forever. There is little enough left of their true magic here. And if our world…if Graynelore survives still, the Faerie Isle, its ethereal partner, was utterly broken by it, grounded, never to move again. A landed wreck, left a mere earthly prominence: you need only look to the furthest point of our own eastern shores – to the forgotten March, the Wycken Mire.’ For the first time the Beggar Bard hesitated in his speech, almost at a loss for words.

‘Out of the chaos of that war came a chaotic peace…a new world order was made, but without magic or rule of law. A world without reason, in which only blood-ties and the strength of a man’s arm has any worth. The ways of faerie diminished and quite faded away…Much that was good and true, much that was light and fair, faded with them. The warm hearts of men turned to cold, cold stone.’

Was the Beggar Bard looking only at me when he spoke then? I was certain he was and shuddered for it. It was as if he had looked into my own stone heart and laid it bare; a thing to be despised. I tore my hand free of Notyet’s grasp, and roughly set myself aside from her. Upon Graynelore, the soft-hearted man is soon dead!

The Beggar Bard’s eyes moved on; and his mouth…

‘What few poor faerie creatures remained soon disappeared from sight. They hid themselves away among the beasts of the fields and the birds of the air; or else among common men. Until, as the ages passed, neither was distinguishable, not one from the other, and little remained of faerie other than their names. Names the great families of this world – the graynes – stole, and took to wearing as their own. Names…And the taint of black dust that still lies scattered upon distant fields and covers the head of Earthrise, the black-headed mountain.’

Sullen and forlorn, the Beggar Bard suddenly brightened. He stood up boldly before us, as a final twist to his tale came into his mind.

‘And what, you may well ask, became of the tablet that was the true Eye Stone of Graynelore? It has been told that it was destroyed. Already badly weathered through the ages, it was broken up and scattered to the ends of the earth. Symbolic of a broken land no doubt. But, see this—?’ The Beggar Bard thrust a withered hand inside his cloth and drew out a blackened shard of stone: a talisman, which was bound to his neck by a leather thong. (All Beggar Bards carried such a relic.) His was too distant, and the shadows too deep to see clearly. ‘This old-man’s Burden is, alas, only the smallest of broken fragments of the true stone. But do not despair for its safety; I am quite certain of its majority…You see, one day, a man they called Sylvane, who was the first Graynelord of the Wishards, built his Stronghold upon the very spot where it lay, forgotten. His stonemasons, not recognizing The Eye Stone for what it truly was, chose it for a foundation stone, built it into the very fabric of their walls. Which gave the building a great strength: greatest of all the Strongholds throughout Graynelore. An advantage the Wishards still make best use of. Though more lifetimes have passed since then than can be easily measured.’

Unable to control ourselves, and for one last time, his willing audience erupted into a furious display of abandoned approval. How very easily we took the sweetmeat he so generously offered.

Here, finally, the Beggar Bard’s tale came to its end. He quickly put away his stone talisman, tucked it out of sight within his cloth. And, suddenly exhausted by the telling of his epic tale, all at once lay down before the fire and slept.

Chapter Three
The Beggar Bard’s Burden

If there had been any truth in the Beggar Bard’s words (which there was) there had also been nonsense: honesty with lies, fact with theatre and make-believe. Though, which was which mattered less, when none of it could be either reliably proved or disproved.

Long into that night, there was much wild carousing and rough love-making among the men and women of my house. And there was enough warm ale and petty frolics to indulge its youth. Notyet and I took on too much drink between us, and were compelled – with a well-practised relish – to throw it up again, before we each found ourselves a piece of floor and a rag of cloth to call a cot and flounder upon.

We were not a learned people; the Beggar Bard’s tale was truth enough for us. It was as good an explanation of our history as any (when we were in want of any other), and worthy of celebration and repeating. The more his story was retold – and it was often retold thereafter – the more it was believed in, until in the retelling it became the certain truth. And if its ending had been a deliberate bribe, a passing gift to satisfy his audience – a gift the Beggar Bard no doubt bestowed upon all his customers of a cold winter’s eve – it was a contrived entertainment, gladly accepted and revelled in.

In the early hours, I was woken from my drunkard’s sleep by the sound of raised and worried voices. By the dim light of the night-fire I could see the outlines of men standing over the prone body of the Beggar Bard. He was still asleep, I thought. Someone was prodding at him, as if to wake him up. Only, the old man would not stir. There were a few more anxious, telling words; though the truth of the matter was becoming self-evident, even to a bleary-eyed child.

The Beggar Bard was dead.

Clearly, he had not been killed. He had not been murdered: upon Graynelore, a common enough method of dispatch. How fortunate the man…He had simply died, quietly, in his sleep.

For the first time, the only time in my memory, the night-fire was quickly dampened, and in the sudden darkness the body of the Beggar Bard was lifted and removed to some other place beyond my knowledge.

I was never to see any sign of him again; though the impression he had made upon me stays to this day. He had stirred something within me. A light was kindled. A curiosity uncovered. He exposed my own stone heart. But more than that; a truth was hinted at, if not fully revealed. I have heard the Beggar Bard’s tale retold many a time since, and with many an ending, yet it is with his voice and in his manner that I do best to recall it. I had seen it all so clearly: as real as the day. Or at least that was how I remembered it. And that was the same thing, was it not?

In the morning, with the first light of day creeping under the door and through the battened wind-eye, I searched the spot where the Beggar Bard had stood and performed, and the place next to the fire where he had slept. In my childish way, I was searching for his illusions: his sleight of hand, the source of the tricks he had played upon us. Evidence he had left behind, only for me. I even raked about among the clinker: the snuffed out embers of the night-fire.

What I found lay abandoned upon the ground. In among the rough, straw-strewn earth that made up the floor next to the hearth, something glistened. It was a roughly formed piece of stone, no bigger than the palm of my own hand. Much blackened, its jagged 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.

Part Two

Chapter Four
At the Mark of the Wishards

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 wildcat he wants he will need to be at his guard.’

‘Aye, well…he will be taking her by force if he must.’ There was a spurt of careless laughter among the men that did not quite convince. Then a clumsy silence fell again.

In truth, whatever the cause, among the Wishards it was generally considered healthier to turn up when the Old-man commanded. Only a fool ignored the call of The Graynelord, would openly go against his grayne; man or woman. At best it left you for an outcast, a broken man without kith or kin, though more than likely it left you for dead.

That this raid was also the perfect opportunity for many a Wishard to settle old arguments of their own – to steal from their distant neighbours, to plunder, to pillage, to do murder, to set blackmails and kidnaps – is a cold dry meat. Excuse your narrator’s common bluntness. I try to speak plainly of these things. A call to the Mark was a familiar event, and this foul business a day-to-day routine. Upon Graynelore, there was nothing unusual in our gathering.

This day it was to be a Wishard riding against an Elfwych. Tomorrow it might be a Bogart riding against a Troll. Each was a grayne ready to take advantage of its lesser guarded neighbour – when the opportunity arose, or when needs must. And the Headman of every house among them would fancy himself The Graynelord; and every Graynelord was The Graynelord of all Graynelore (self-professed). Excepting, let any of these conceited men stand before Old-man Wishard and deny him his rank this day. It was a simple calculation; a balance of numbers. Try it. Count the swords at his command.

However great or petty the cause, whatever the nature of the risk, the Old-man, by virtue of holding the balance of power between the graynes (real or imaginary), was ever required to make a show of his strength. If he himself did not carry the sword to his enemies then at least he must deliver the swords of his blood-tied kinsmen to ring out a resolution. For if he did not, among others, there were two younger brothers who would make a dreadful noise over it, who would each look to their own advantage and aim to take The Graynelord’s place. They were both stood upon Pennen Fields among our number. Unthank Wishard, who was called Cloggie-Unthank, and Fibra, the younger…both faithful to their grayne this day; but what of tomorrow? I fear neither would be beyond planting the assassin’s knife, leaving the Old-man the gift of the dagger’s arse. It was their blood that tied these men together, not their love. It was likely blood that would separate them, in the end.

Whichever way I looked at it, I could safely say, more than a few men would surely meet their deaths this day, and as many return to their houses with sorely broken bodies, new scars in the making. It was ever so.

We were all of us waiting upon the Old-man’s arrival.

I was already growing restless, not eager for the fight; but it is better to be about the business than to be standing in endless contemplation of it. I am not a thinking man. On a whim, I let my eyes carry up towards the heavens. The sky looked burdened and worried this day. A long way above the Heel Stone, a ragged, windswept horde of black birds, winged scavengers – crows most likely – wheeled silently between broken banks of steel grey cloud and patches of glaring sunlight. It seemed the birds were already well aware of our gathering, already expectant of things to come. I saw their presence as a good omen. They were welcome company. Whatever the outcome for men this day, theirs would be a feast and nothing left to waste. It was more than easy pickings; it was a gorging fit for the fortunes. And the fortunes liked a spectacle.

On the ground there was a sudden new commotion, new arrivals, and come at a measured trot.

Here, at last! I thought.

Bright, silvered armour caught in the sunlight. A sword unsheathed, glinted. There were a handful of hobby-horses in this Riding, but there were many more full-sized horses. And not warhorses; but white and grey prancing ponies, stretched out in a formal line. Upon these, men were sat, not dressed for war, but rather like…well, like women, in their fancy drapes and embroidered finery. Their multicoloured skirts tailored for the show.

At the head of this procession, with his war sword lifted from its scabbard, rode The Graynelord, Old-man Wishard, upon his immaculately groomed silver-grey hobb. Immediately behind him followed four men-at-arms, with brightly coloured banners waving from their spears, demanding attention. The remainder of the line, the greater number, was his Council. These were the men who sat at his dinner table, who took shelter in his Stronghold, and protection from his arm. These were his advisers, his cunning men. These were his politicians, scholars, and scribes. Not a true bodyguard then.

None of the Council was dressed for a battle. Rather, gentle men, in want of a frivolous day’s sport. They were never meant for a fight. This arrival was more of a pageant; a cocksure display. The Graynelord was showing off to us.

Around me, part of the general throng began to fall back, to make way, allowing The Graynelord’s entourage to advance and take up a position on the elevated ground just beyond the Heel Stone, where everyone could see them.

Only Cloggie-Unthank and Fibra, the Old-man’s younger brothers, stood up on their hobbs and held their ground at his approach. This was not meant as a threat. It was a statement of rank, rather than a signal of defiance. They were not about to confront him. An unspoken gesture of acknowledgement passed briefly between the three. There were no words of welcome.

I sat quietly upon my hobby-horse and waited for the address I knew would soon follow. (There is a strict order to these events.) There was another flash of sunlight against silvered armour as The Graynelord turned his hobb about to face the gathering. And then, in a strong voice, he began to bellow:

‘What is the Graynelore?’ he asked. ‘Let me tell you…I am the Graynelore.’ The Old-man paused there, looked about purposefully, perhaps to catch the eye of his two brothers, as if he expected an argument. When none came he repeated his statement more loudly: ‘I am the Graynelore.’ Then, another gap, not for a response this time, but for respectful silence…‘This sword I carry is the Graynelore!’ He lifted his war sword above his head and held it there, steady, for all to see. ‘The Graynelore is not a place, though the land bears its name. It is not a matter of lines drawn upon a map. The Graynelore is not a belief, nor is it an ideal…I am the Graynelore.’ Again he deliberately paused. ‘You are the Graynelore.’

This formal announcement was the signal for every man there to lift his own arm: his sword or his staff, his axe or his spear, and return The Graynelord’s cry.

‘I am the Graynelore!’ We all bellowed as one.

‘Upon Graynelore there is no king. You will find no queen, here. There is no law, but that which the strength of your own arm can impose upon another. It is the sword you carry. Upon Graynelore you answer only to the grayne…your surname, your family, your blood-tie. Make no idle friend here. Make no common ally. Make no enemy, unless he is a dead man. For either is as likely to stab you in the back.’

‘I am The Graynelore!’ cried our gathering to a man.

Emboldened, the Old-man swung his sword about his head and bellowed ever louder. ‘Upon Graynelore we take what we need or else leave well alone. We do not kill the poor wretch for the sake of the killing. Why would we? And if, all things considered, we do not live long, at least we all live well! Eh? At least, we all live well!’

Another silence. Who among us would have dared to argue with him?

Banners began to flap noisily, attacked by a sudden breeze. Above us, far above us, the black birds had turned about and turned again, swooping impatiently across the sky. They were eager for the Riding to begin.

If it was I who spoke then, it was a muttering under my breath meant only for myself. ‘We are not so much at constant war with everyone, my Graynelord…only there is never a day when we are quite at peace with ourselves. Where does that leave our tomorrow?’

‘I suppose things might look differently tomorrow.’ The retort came from my elder-cousin, my Headman, Wolfrid, who was sat upon his hobb close by. I might have answered him, only never got the chance. The Old-man’s ranting was not quite done with:

‘And on this day,’ he cried, ‘on this day, we are to go a-courting, you and I. There is a wild lady in want of a Graynelord’s close company, who must be taken well in hand. And there are Elfwych in need of a reminder of their faithfulness.’

Our jeering laughter in reply; our contempt for our enemy, was real enough. The Wishards hated the Elfwych. I hated the Elfwych. The Elfwych hated us. Why? Perhaps there was no reason good enough. None better than this: it is convenient to hate the men you are about to steal from, the men you are about to kill. Though in truth, it was an endless blood feud, come out of time, and without redemption. This was ever the Graynelore.

The Old-man’s address ended there without further explanation or demand. It was obvious he had enjoyed his own speech, its grandeur and its pomp. He also believed in it implicitly. At least, he had to be seen to believe in it implicitly. Without that he knew he could not command men. That was the real trick of his leadership.

Others might pretend that The Graynelord ruled by right of birth, or because he was bequeathed the symbol of power that made it so. The Eye Stone…the favourite of the Beggar Bard’s tales. The stone tablet that so many men here believed rested within the walls of the Old-man’s Stronghold at Carraw Peel (though not a single one – outside of his trusted Council – claimed to have seen it with his own eyes). In truth, symbols were just that: symbols. Made of stone, or cloth, or paper: symbols. Solid reality or simple belief: symbols. He was only one man. His rule was a mortal fact, and he knew it.

Old-man Wishard lowered his sword arm, but did not sheath his sword (another symbol). He took the reign of his hobby-horse and, turning the animal about, began to ride out slowly, off Pennen Fields. He made a display of checking the sky for the position of the sun before turning to face the West March: the homeland of the Elfwych.

At my back, to the rear of our gathering many of my kinsmen had not heard a word of the Old-man’s speech; only the sound of his voice carrying across the wind. The great bellowing noises he had made. The show he had put on. In truth, it did not matter to them what was said only that he had said it.

He led, they followed.

Chapter Five
The Elfwych Riding

The immediate reaction of our greater gathering to the Old-man’s departure was not what you might have expected of a faithful grayne. Certainly, his personal bodyguard spurred their hobby-horses and, banners waving, followed quickly after him. His brothers too, Cloggie-Unthank and Fibra, took their guard and, each very aware of the other, began their Riding. Not so the Old-man’s trusted Council. Casually, they turned their prancing ponies aside and, without a look behind them, began their long ride home unattended. Their parading was done with, and their usefulness was at an end here. And if there were a few solitary riders among us common men who started after The Graynelord’s party, the majority deliberately stood up their hobbs and stayed their ground.

There was one last ritual to be performed before we were ready to set out.

In almost revered silence, groups of women, youths, and young girls began to appear among us. They walked quietly between the massed ranks of mounted hobby-horses, giving each man there a small present as they went, or so it seemed. Old Emma’s Notyet came to me. She held a young babbie in her arms (not mine, I hasten, nor hers) and he offered me up an empty leather pouch. Another man took a single spur from his wife, while yet another was given a sharpened dagger, and so on…These things were not given as keepsakes. Rather, they were tokens of encouragement, demand, and expectation. Their meaning was simple and clear:

If we were to return home safely, we must none of us return home empty-handed.

The leather pouch was given to me that I might fill it with coins or seeds or trinkets, or some other treasure procured upon the Riding. I took it without a single word passing between us. Notyet and I had already made our goodbyes. And if, as she turned away, she threw me half a kiss, I did not catch it, or return the other half. Though I did watch her closely as she took her leave; and for far longer than I might. A fully grown woman, there was nothing special about her, no obvious or distinctive mark. She was a weedling still, and did not stand out in a crowd. Less than average of height, weak of pallor, not well bred. There was a trace of silver and blue in the shadows cast across her skin, especially evident in the folds of skin on her hands, between her fingers and her toes, and unevenly around her eyes and mouth, but these were common touches. I am neither describing great beauty nor a freak of nature. I, and all my kin from Beggar Bard to babbie, carry many of the same traits. Upon Graynelore, we are each of us the sum of our collected ancestry. Notyet might have been described as endearing, but never pretty. Her ears were long and slightly high, slightly elevated, but there was no elfin point. She wore her coarse hair plainly. She brushed it back off her face, letting it hang loosely at her shoulder and down her back, as was the custom. Her clothes were simple and functional with no hint of conceit. She wore a long dress, made of several loosely cut pieces of cloth sewn lightly together: it found its own bodyline and allowed for easy movement, let her skin breathe.

Do you think me self-indulgent? Or do I betray myself? Have my eyes lingered too long upon her? Would you have had me already in the frae? Have a care, my friend. Faced with death, who among men would not pause for a moment and risk a look back towards life?

When, finally, the greater body of the Riding set out to follow after the Old-man, it was a cold road we travelled. We needed no clues, no scented trail. We knew well enough where we were going: Staward Peel. The Elfwych Stronghold, stood at the centre of the West March, within a great meander of the River Winding, and at the foot of the hills they called The Rise. It was a well-placed tower-house, and easily defended at full strength.

Only, Staward Peel was not at full strength.

Its tower was already broken and badly maintained. Its walls, once as thick and strong as any in all Graynelore, had been breached many times in recent conflicts, and more poorly mended upon each event. The Elfwych could not depend upon it for their defence. They were a grayne in trouble; a surname in decline. Whatever gathering forces they could bring to their aid, we knew they would want to make their fight out in the open and on the run. In almost every way their misfortune was our advantage. And where it was not, our sheer weight in numbers would easily make the difference. For every fourth man Stain Elfwych could fetch up The Graynelord could fetch up ten. There would still be a hard fight, and killings, of course – no surname upon Graynelore would have it any other way – but the purpose of the Riding would be served. Old-man Wishard would get exactly what he was after.

I, Rogrig Wishard, had ridden the raider’s trail often enough. I knew what was expected of a Riding. Ours was not an army of rank and file. This raid was to be far less a considered attack than it was a free-for-all. We did not advance in the way of a single tutored cavalry. Rather, we straddled the fells and the moorlands: a series of loose rabbles. Close kin preferring to rely on close kin for their aid. The members of each house making their own way and in their own time. (And as often as not…with their own intentions and intended victims.) Sometimes long chains of men sprawled thinly across the fells, steadily making their way on their hobby-horses (only a very few a-foot). Sometimes a thick knot of fighting-men moved together as one body: finding their strength and their bravery in their tightly gathered number. This had ever been Cloggie-Unthank’s preference. Each house had its own particular fighting tactics and stuck to them rigidly. On the principle that, if something had worked once before, it was certain to work again. (Not always a sensible provision, I fear.)

For certain, there was to be no single great and glorious battle. What was expected here was a scourging. A series of melees and skirmishes taken up wherever they happened, rough-shod Ridings, and individual combats stretched out upon the day.

Without a doubt, there were men among us who liked this fighting business a little too much – aye, and on both sides – fighters who would give no quarter, killing to the last man or woman…or child. Then there were those who would openly buy or sell their lives with whatever means they could offer if their sword arm could not do it for them. Sometimes a handful of coin was enough, or the gift of a horse or…or else the shaming of a young girl.

It was in this way the Wishards were to answer the call of their Graynelord, and to make their mark upon the grayne of Stain Elfwych.

I rode among members of my own house, with my greater cousins, and the elder-men of Dingly Dell. Together we made our own fighting band. By choice we rode, not in a close formation, but strung out at a distance; each rider keeping a watch for himself, but in sight of his nearest kin. We preferred having open ground between us – enough to swing a sword arm freely. Fight and flee; hit and run; the quick skirmish was ever our ploy.

If I am to be truly honest, this Rogrig remembers very little of this particular Riding; the first of it that is: the setting out. (It was much like any other.) I can put scant detail to it.

I must have ridden many a fell. Crossed and recrossed the many roots and stems of the River Winding. I must have passed settlements; each almost identical, with their heavy-walled farmhouses; their bastles, ugly and squat. (The men of Graynelore are not builders, not creators by nature. They are all fighters and thieves. What was made was of necessity – if it could not be stolen.) Their wary, weary occupants shut up inside with their few rescued animals. Stone-cold faces, catching the sun, winking at their shutter-less wind-eyes, ever watchful; wanting, hoping, praying – no doubt – that our Riding would pass them by this day.

I must have trodden streams and skirted about the edges of the west marshlands. Or rather, let my hobby-horse lead me stubbornly across its secret paths. My tough little Dandy, who could carry not only her rider, but the whole world upon her back, it seemed. Pots and pans, wooden implements, swords and weaponry, sticks and stones, blanket rolls and stolen booty. She would carry it all, overloading the tiny workhorse; and yet she always stood her ground, made her way without protest.

I must, on occasion, have stopped to relieve myself, or to take a drink of fresh water from an upland stream. I must have done…only afterwards I did not remember it. Not any of it.

Not even the first fierce call of alarm.

Not the first ringing of iron upon iron as swords clattered and clashed. Stones thrown, hitting their target. Riders suddenly taken to the gallop in hot pursuit…The smell of fear – as acrid as a slewed piss pot – distinct, yet oddly indescribable.

Not the first brutal killings. Nor the unmistakable crying…The frantic calling…The pleas, the oaths, the terror…The escaping last breath of a man already dead…The blood…The torn flesh…The shattered bones.

I remember none of it.

How so?

I was a seasoned man. All my senses were taken up from the first. Not numbed, heightened by practice. I had allowed a red shroud to descend upon me, suffocating all else…Nothing was near at hand. Everything was distant…Not indistinct I say, distant. No natural colours. No life. The world was set apart, put aside. No pity. Humanity utterly abandoned. Even fear…Even a pounding heart – there could be no heart, except a stone heart.

What was I thinking? I did not think. There was no place for thinking here. Thinking men got themselves killed. There was instinct. There was violence. There was the bloody act of war. There was the doing of it. Only the doing.

Suddenly Dandy was moving at the gallop beneath me. I might have tried to rein her in, only to have her protest and give her back her head. When she slowed again, it was of her own account.

I must have dismounted.

From somewhere the world was trying to get in, to make contact again…to find me out. One moment, surely, I had been with my close kin, waiting at the Heel Stone. The very next I was standing here, in this strange place, upon this open scrubland, with nothing in between. My sword was in my hand and already notched and running with blood.

And then I became fully aware.

There was a slight movement close by…of all things, a butterfly alighting upon a grass stem.

There was a face in the grass. There was a human face.

And I understood what had passed.

Chapter Six
The Killing Field

Her eyes; they were a blue that startled, invited, demanded. They caught hold of me, drew me to her like a lover. Still wet, they glistened. Not with tears. Nor fear. There was no stain on her cheeks. Her white cheeks…White skin…She was a beauty yet. The wind was playing lightly across her face, moving a single frond of auburn hair. She had caught it upon her tongue at the edge of her mouth. Open mouth. Red mouth…Surely she was teasing me, smiling, whispering. No…yes.

I tried to put Notyet’s face in the way of hers, only I could not seem to find it. Vague, hidden as if veiled; its image would not come to me.

‘Rogrig,’ she said.

Again.

‘Rogrig…’

Did she really speak my name, then? No…yes. No. It was only the voice of the wind.

‘Rogrig…Rogrig…?’

But this last was not a woman’s voice, nor the wind.

‘Watch this, Rogrig!’ It was a clumsy youth who had spoken: Edbur, my elder-cousin Wolfrid’s whelp; his laughing cry was thin with a disguised fear.

Then there was violence: the sweet scent of fresh blood spilled; the kicking.

I was suddenly released from my stupor, and the woman’s spell was broken. Instinctively I gripped the hilt of my sword, but let it rest at my side. There was no threat here. I recognized the boy’s smell. Edbur, Edbur-the-Widdle – It was a fitting nickname. He was old enough and big enough to fight, but the whelp soiled himself at every skirmish. Still, there had been killings made here, and if wounded pride was the worst of his injuries he had served his surname, his grayne, better than many. The fortunes would soon forgive him for it. And if they did not, well, then I would forgive him in their stead.

The boy’s swinging kick sent the severed head of the dead woman tumbling. Edbur-the-Widdle laughed outrageously as it thumped and thudded between grass and gulley, as it broke heavily upon stone, spilling teeth, spitting blood.

Not a woman now.

Did I wince at the act?…Surely, not I.

The youth was only playing at the Old Game. I had made the same sport myself often enough. Why should it bother me now?

Only, upon this day, and without good reason, it did.

I feigned some trivial act of pillage. I wanted a moment to myself. I was still breathing heavily with the effort of the ride, and the early fight. There were several members of my grayne picking over the remnants on that killing field. Both surnames lay dead there: Elfwych and Wishard, though they were mostly Elfwych. This skirmish had been more a one-sided rout than an equal fight, but then, it was a family matter and you take the advantage where you can. After all, there was a Graynelord to serve. That was reason enough, if you were looking for a reason. It had always been enough.

And yet, upon this day Rogrig was troubled. I was feeling…what was I feeling? I could not place it.

What was this seed of doubt, this nagging intrusion? What had I seen in the face of a dead Elfwych? What had I heard in the calling out of my name? Something here had changed, and upon a moment; something within me, and I suddenly knew it could never be undone. There was no return. I did not like this revelation. Certainly I did not understand it. I felt as if my feet were standing in two different places at once, though neither was planted firmly upon the ground. A field of battle was the wrong place for confusion, and this the wrong time for doubts.

Close to, bodies lay rudely scattered. They had been bludgeoned…hacked…mistreated beyond mere acts of savage violent death. Some stripped naked, worse, to the raw bone. Torn apart; their meat left for the scavenging birds that wheeled patiently overhead, awaiting our departure.

At a distance, out on the open fells behind me, there was a ragtag; a broken string of figures still running away…for certain, more Elfwych. Well, I would let them run, for now. I was never a good man (who upon Graynelore was?) but neither was I so bad, and this was not annihilation. Rather, it was a warning, more a statement of intent. The Wishards are coming for you.

The Wishards are coming!

Some of those poor wretches might well have made good their escape and found their looked-for safety; either going to ground or else hiding within the walls of some near kinsman’s secure bastle-house. Others, I knew, we would catch up with later. There would be yet more killing, more death, more hurt before the end. But then, let the thought rest easy, my friend. I did not worry for either outcome. For certain, both life and death were welcome there. Do you not see it? If all our enemies were to die upon a single day, who would we steal from tomorrow? It is a reiver mantra, and a fitting sentiment you will, no doubt, hear again often repeated.

The image of the dead woman’s face came back to me then: her untouched beauty. Her dismembered head; how incongruous it had seemed lying among the bloody gore. Yet, why the sudden pity for an Elfwych? Why this nagging doubt, Rogrig Wishard, Rogrig Stone Heart? Perhaps I had been responsible for her death, in the heat of the fracas. But then, what of it? She was my natural, my hated enemy. And yet, still I hesitated, and would not shrug off the thought. I hated her even more for it.

‘A stone heart does not melt like a winter’s ice. Indeed it cannot be melted. But broken? Aye, maybe that…Only, what is this foolishness? How is it done?’ I thought my words were spoken only to myself.

‘How is more than obvious, cousin…’ This was Wolfrid, now standing at my side. On his approach he had mistaken the meaning of my question.

‘All right. Why, then?’ I said, turning the conversation. ‘Tell me why?’

‘Why?’ Wolfrid seemed amused. He pulled distractedly at his thin beard. ‘Upon Graynelore, a sword with a conscience will not live for long. Look around you, Rogrig…Put a weapon into any man’s hand, give them an easy opportunity to use it and an advantage in doing so, and see how few do not.’

‘That is not a reason,’ I said. ‘That is…bloody stupidity.’

‘Quite,’ he said.

We both laughed out loud (and meant it). Then, Wolfrid returned to the matter in hand. He grunted heavily as he turned the body of a man on the end of his sword, making certain he was dead before lifting both his purse and the small crust of bread concealed within his jack.

‘We kill or we are killed, it serves us all well enough. See?’ Wolfrid broke the bread crust in two and offered the greater half to me. ‘And this day is not yet done with, cousin. Nor the fighting.’

Wolfrid was right, on both accounts.

I was quick to remount Dandy, and began to follow the line of my kin across the rising hillside. Within a few moments, there was a thick knot of Elfwych breaking cover, coming down upon us. They were flailing their swords, trying to use the slope of the hill to increase the power of their swing. It was a good notion. Though they were come at us a-foot, if they struck us head on it would make for a bloody show; and us the victims.

I knew the ploy. Fortunately, I also knew the counter. I gave cry. Instinctively, my kin broke up our loose line and we scattered ourselves. We rode across the hillside; each of us deliberately moving in a different direction. And we went slowly – enticingly slowly – we wanted our enemies to follow after us.

That they did was their mistake. It split their number and broke their momentum. Once more on a reasonably even fell we could use our hobbs to drive our victims back, push them into gullies or up against outcrops of rock (as, on another day, we might have driven our shabby herds of fell beasts). First cornering them, then the slaughter: a man who has nowhere to run cannot hide.

Did I kill then, in the thick of it, in the heat? Yes, I killed, if I would bring it to mind…twice, at least, and in quick succession. My greater sword arm held the advantage, easily found its mark where panicked men, unwisely, left themselves open to it. Aye, and I quickly rifled the bloodied carcases, took what spoils I could to fill my empty leather purse.

Not yet done, I turned Dandy about. I saw there were three figures ahead of me, backs turned, running down through a deep gulley. They were a youth – a mere boy-at-arms – an ageing man and, judging from the gait not the attire, a young fighting-woman. Another girl…For pity’s sake; was the fighting strength of the Elfwych so very much depleted? I gave a quick look for Wolfrid or his whelp, or any other friend, but found myself riding alone. Confident still, I spurred Dandy on. The Elfwych appeared to deliberately move apart when they realized they were being pursued, and I was gaining on them. The rough grass among broken stones, the deep cut of a stream at the bottom of the fall, was making it difficult for them to keep to their feet. Aided by Dandelion’s greater pace and sure-footedness, I would soon overtake them. (There was no need for me to guide her. Dandy would only have protested at the pull on the rein.)

Ahead of me, the fleeing woman turned her ankle, she pitched and fell, though I gave her scant notice until she scrabbled awkwardly to her feet again and turned to face me.

Why did I stop at her? Why dismount then? All three were easy victims. I liked women, of course. But this was another Elfwych and I was a Wishard. I felt the first unwanted physical stirring of my body. But then, violation – was that really my intent? – was such an impotent weapon upon a killing field. I might have smiled at the paradox. Violate them with your sword. Cut off their heads. Rip out their bellies. Do not try to fuck them. They will only fuck you first.

Yet, there I stood.

And there was something else…something far more curious: a connection between us I was at a loss to explain. What was this? A fleeting shadow, like wild bird flight, crossed my mind. For the second time that day I felt as if I was standing in two places at once. I was become an unwilling partner in some waking dream. The real world was less solid than a drift of smoke. And this Elfwych woman was my accomplice. We were conjoined and could not easily step apart. From somewhere there were questions, words were spoken, but so softly, I could not make them out; or their source…if they were not hers.

It was enough to hold my sword arm.

‘Shit!’

Kill her. Kill her and be done with it, Rogrig Wishard.

She was yelling at me now, but still I could not make out what it was she said…only understand the anger, the fervent anger showing on her twisted face, the fierce warning in her voice.

Her kin – the youth and the old man – were already well beyond my reach; above me at the top of the gulley now, only legs moving against a still blue sky, scrambling out of sight. If they were meant for a bodyguard, they did not intend to stay and make a fight of it.

I must use my sword. I must not look her in the eye…before or afterwards. One quick, clean stroke would finish it, Rogrig Stone Heart. She had led herself into the frae she must take the consequences of it.

Only, I held off. Only, I did look her in the eye.

And I will swear this to you: it was her…the dead woman. Yes. Impossibly, it was the same dead girl I had killed already. Living again, breathing again. Her eyes, her hair, her skin…they were the very same. Of course, there was a simple answer to this riddle, if only I could truly believe in it. Surely these two were close kin. This was a sister, then, or a cousin at the least? Though, my obvious inaction began to reveal my doubt.

In truth, I did not yet understand or recognize just what it was I had been privy to here. What I had witnessed – no, something more than that – what I had unwittingly become a part of. I might have guessed, and called it wychcraft – wychcraft at the hands of an Elfwych. Or else, it was some other unearthly masquerade…a trick; a faerie’s Glamour, or the work of a fell-wisp. Though, none of it was likely in a world that believed only in the certainty of a cold sword. I, a grown man, was far beyond faerie tales!

‘I saw you dead…’ I said.

‘You mean you wanted me for dead, Wishard!’ she returned with a fury.

‘I saw you…your head was broken, taken from your shoulders, played with for a bloody football!’

We had begun to sidestep each other. I was already holding my sword between us. We were circling warily about it.

‘What think you? I was in hiding,’ she said. ‘What better place to conceal myself upon a killing field, than in among the dead?’

Only, there was an obvious deceit in her voice that betrayed her.

‘I think you are an unpractised liar,’ I said. ‘And this is impossible…’

I raised my sword to make my stroke. What did she have to lie about?

‘Oh please, not now!’ she cried. ‘Not him!’

‘Eh?’

Her outburst seemed nonsense. It was not a response to anything I had said. Yet she repeated herself, with even greater venom.

‘Please! Not now!’

Then I felt the heat of the blow. My hesitation had cost me. She had struck first. She had stuck me with a short knife. My loose leather jack, sewn with its paltry strips of hammered iron, was always a poor man’s armour.

‘Shit!’

It was experience moved me then. We were at close quarters. I turned the edge of my sword and instead of using the blade, drove the pommel down hard upon her head. The contact drew blood and tore a sliver of hair and skin from her scalp, knocked her sideways. But it was a poor, glancing blow; I had meant to break her head open.

I hit her again and she collapsed already senseless.

‘Shit, shit!’

I too was bleeding. And though I should have finished it then, still I held back. I did not kill her. I…could not do it?

Stupidly – there was the noise and the threat of fighting all about me on the fells – I lowered my arm, sheathed my sword, and knelt down beside her. How might I explain this? (How might I explain any of this?) I wanted to touch her. Not a touch that would hurt her, not like that. Hurting her again would have been easy. I wanted…well, if I could make any sense of what I wanted…I wanted to prove that she was real, ordinary, human. And not some deluded man’s fetch; some foul whimsy brought up out of a night-torment.

She was wearing the common breeches and reinforced jack of a fighting-man, and yet at her throat there was a gold amulet. It was a single piece and simply fashioned, but this was enough of a conceit (or perhaps a mistake) to mark her apart…only a damned fool or someone confident, in both her rank and her sword arm, would openly wear such an obvious badge of privilege in the frae. I was a soldier-thief. She was my worst enemy. I should have stolen it from her, taken it as my prize; added it to Notyet’s growing purse. I should have loosened her breeches and stolen more…gone on my way and thought no more of it.

Her arm had fallen into the stream. The closed hand still held the knife. I took it up, threw the knife aside. I lifted her arm and laid it down, clear of the stream. I cupped my hand and, taking water, gently bathed her brow. That was all. As I did I heard the babble of the stream. I would swear this to you; it was speaking to me. Though it whispered, I could plainly hear its call. And I suddenly knew that if I would only listen to its voice then I would understand its words.

This Elfwych and this Wishard…they are the very same…

‘What?’

When I looked again I saw the stream was turning red.

‘Fucking, shit!’

I was still bleeding. I ran my fingers across the cut. The wound was long, but it was not too deep. Yet it had been a deliberate thrust. What was this Elfwych about? Trying only to injure me, to distract me rather than kill? And why would she do that?

Then she was moving again, her hand grasping at a tuft of grass, trying to pull herself upright.

I watched as she slowly dragged herself to her feet.

There was a moment of indecision. She stood almost within reach of me. What was it? Was she going to come at me again? (Even without her knife.) I lifted my sword, only to stay my hand before it ran clear of the scabbard. She turned slowly, almost invitingly, towards me – but invitingly of what?

Afterwards, a long time afterwards, I remembered there was an instant then when our eyes briefly met. What did we each see there? What was there between us?

I could so easily have felled her.

I could so easily have let her go.

I did neither.

Upon the moment, the distant, random clatter of swords striking against swords, the cries and counter cries of men in the frae, was usurped, overlaid by the sudden toning of an iron bell. First there was one, and then came a second in reply, off at some great distance. And then there were many. Each of them, languid, almost soporific in tone; it was a deep and sonorous sound. Their beat was deliberately regular and no sooner heard than the gathered crows – our constant aerial spectators – seemed to scatter above our heads, spiralling ever upwards into the very heights of the sky.

All around us, near and far, men stayed their arms; the fighting was instantly done with.

I let go the hilt of my sword, without a care, let it run freely back upon its scabbard.

The toning of the iron bells was an obvious signal. There were to be no more killings made this day. For it bore all the notes of surrender, and a defeat accepted. Perhaps even the death of a Headman.

Chapter Seven
The Unspoken Voice

When the Elfwych woman turned her back on me and walked away, heading towards The Rise, and Staward Peel, I did nothing more than follow after her.

I walked a-foot. Dandelion came trailing behind me, her ears pricked but without complaint. If there was any danger remaining, it was far enough away now and of little enough concern to ignore.

The toning of the iron bells accompanied us.

‘You have another name, Elfwych?’ I called out to her, raising my voice to be heard.

For the briefest moment she faltered in her step, as if caught, surprised to find me still there. ‘Use your eyes and look about you, Wishard,’ she said. ‘Upon Graynelore people die for their names.’ There was a slow drawl to her speech that told me her head was still befuddled by the blows I had struck. Though it had not blunted her tongue; the way she spoke dared me to make an argument. It was a mute point.

‘Aye, well, listen to the bells…There has been enough of death,’ I said, honestly enough. ‘What do you say to an equal trade instead…a name for a name?’

‘Ha! Does that not depend upon the goods offered being of an equal value, and the trader not simply a common thief?’

‘Are you a thief then, Elfwych?’ I was goading her.

‘And is my name safe with you, Wishard?’

‘Rogrig…’ I corrected her. If I did not answer her question (I did not wish to lie). It seemed she did not want one.

‘I am called Norda,’ she said, without inference.

It was my turn to falter in my step. I turned my head aside, certain I could not easily conceal my reaction to her revelation. I knew the name, of course. Who upon the West or South March of Graynelore did not? This woman was Norda Elfwych, the elder daughter of Stain Elfwych, Headman of his grayne. It was she that Old-man Wishard had set his eye upon (aye, and his lust). She was the prize we were fighting for this day.

Suddenly 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.

Chapter Eight
The Broken Tower

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 way, staring avidly after her as she approached the breached doorway. His face and balding head stood out bright red with an unhealthy excitement. Suddenly, he stood up in his saddle: another deliberate show of his manhood. There was no disguise here. And if he made no movement to bar her way, content yet, it seemed, to stay his hand and wait upon the moment: he was making his intentions more than obvious.

When Norda walked across the threshold of the tower she was immediately faced by the remains of her own family…both the standing and the fallen. From the vantage of my perch, I could see by the way she pinched her nose and gagged at the throat – which she tried to disguise with her hand – it was the stench that first caught her attention. Though, I am certain, she was well used to the smell of the bloodied dead, forgive her reaction. After all, the sack of butchered meat presented to her was all that was left of her own father. I do not make the description frivolously. The tolling iron bells had not lied. If they had called for a truce, they had also warned of a Headman’s death. Stain Elfwych had been killed in battle. For the sport of it – and some small souvenirs – his enemies, my family, had crudely hacked his body into little pieces.

‘Ah, my dearest sister, thank the fortunes, she has returned safely to us.’ It was Iccara, Norda’s younger brother, who made the greeting. His face was tight with worry and thick with sweat, though there was no sign of a blood wound upon him. He had been in a heavy fight or else he had been running. With the killing of his father it seemed he was now the Headman of the Elfwych. A feeble weedling man, it was a title he did not want and was not best suited to. Let other men lead; let him alone. Of course, he had no choice in the matter. He may have been Norda’s younger sibling, his beard still a shadow of soft hair, but no woman was ever a Graynelord.

He pushed his lank hair away from his face and gave her a weak smile.

Norda appeared to sway, as if her legs were about to give way beneath her, and she might well have let them and swooned, but this was not the time to show a woman’s weakness. She feigned strength, and stood firm.

‘This day is lost, then?’ she said, desperately trying to keep emotion out of her voice.

‘Aye…lost my hen.’ There was a twitch about Iccara’s left eye. ‘Though not perhaps without a little hope; and even some advantage to it…’

‘Advantage, how so?’ she asked, confused. ‘And speak plainly brother, if you can, this day is already sorely long and ill-used. What are you saying?’

‘Old-man Wishard, The Graynelord himself, is…waiting outside for you. We have already spoken and come to terms. He has made us a proposition.’ Iccara broadened his weak smile, revealed his crooked teeth. It did not improve his look of obvious insincerity. ‘After the…unfortunate killing of our father, he wishes only for peace between our kin. He seeks but a simple Pledge from us this day.’

‘A Pledge?’ she returned.

‘Aye, well…All right…a Pledge and a union, then. He wants a union of our surnames: Wishard and Elfwych. A marriage would suit us both at this time, dear sister. Eh? What better symbol of our good faith.’

‘A marriage…between an Elfwych and a Wishard? Do you really think the man wants a marriage? Have you seen him out there? Have you? A strutting cock-bird! All he wants to do is fuck! And have a care my brother, his blood is up! I do not think he has a mind to where he buries his manhood!’

Iccara held his tongue still between his grinning teeth, as if in careful consideration of his answer. Across the years there had been so many Pledges, so many unions between the graynes. There was hardly a pair of fighting Headmen in all Graynelore who were not already cousins, of sorts. So much so, that that particular leash had become too long a measure to make effective political unions. And marriages, the strongest knots, close to incestuous. If a man took his enemy for his wife (though more likely for his whore) it was little more than expediency; a winner taking his spoils; a way for defeated foe to make up the balance of their loser’s reparation when other resources were scarce. What would a Headman prefer to forego: the little gold he possessed; the few stock animals that remained to see him through a winter, or would he rather give up a sister to a letch, a full grown mouth to feed?

‘Our own brother’s trampled body was brought home sorely broken apart. We needed four strong men and a blanket to carry the…the remains left of our father. There are at least two hundred men-at-arms waiting on an answer at our shattered door. You have seen all this for yourself, sister. Need I go on?’ Iccara was spitting as he spoke. There was neither sentiment nor any sense of personal loss. He took hold of Norda’s hair, pulled her head up, bringing their eyes level. (A better man than I might have drawn his sword and intervened. I only held on tighter to my perch and let the scene play out). ‘Believe me, sister, if all it was going to take to resolve this matter was a quick jack-up, I would hold you down myself and help him to it…Be assured. This is not a private affair. There is the well-being of our entire grayne to consider. Now, find me an alternative – preferably one that does not involve us all being butchered – or else make your Pledge and let us have done with this.’

‘Iccara, my beloved brother: ever the diplomat and defender of the grayne.’ Still held fast, Norda stiffened resolutely. ‘How he always looks out for the best interests of his family.’

‘Enough! There is no room for negotiation here.’ Iccara raised his arm. His sister’s sarcasm had not gone unnoticed. He lifted her off her feet by her hair. ‘I will not ask you again. Nor, I fear, will they…’

Norda fought back. She tore herself free of her brother’s grip, leaving a clump of red hair in his clenched fist. The pain drew tears. She blinked, pushed them away with the back of her hand. Her eyes were searching elsewhere.

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