Beyond the Burning Lands

EIGHT

THE BUILDING RATS

I DO NOT KNOW WHAT was in the salve that the apothecaries put on my burns, but it was powerful stuff. The marks disappeared rapidly in the days that followed and a week after the hunt my skin showed no more than a slight redness and roughness.

Wherever I went in the city people stared at me. When I could once more sit a horse without discomfort I persuaded Edmund to ride out. We did not take either road but went north where an old track led up into the hills. The city came to an end in a huddle of workmen’s cottages with neither towers nor domes, and we rode alone. The year was ripening. Trees were heavy with leaf and flowers grew out of the grass. From the thickets songbirds hurled defiance at one another in syllables of cool beauty.

There had been rain that morning and from the look of the clouds there might be more, but the air was fresh and the sky had some blue in it. I breathed it deeply and said:

“This is good. And good to be free of eyes and tongues.”

“Is praise so hard to bear?”

“Maybe not when it is merited.”

“You slew the Bayemot,” Edmund said. “A thing unparalleled.”

“And if instead the Bayemot had eaten me, what would the Wilsh have said?”

“At least that you had courage.”

“Not courage—foolhardiness. And they would have been right in it. I did not save the man. I did not even attack the Bayemot to do so. I rode at it, in an ungovernable temper, because I thought the King mocked me, and jumped because my pride would not let me turn back.”

We rode in silence for a while. Edmund said at last:

“They say it was small for a Bayemot. Usually they are twice that size, or bigger.”

“Had it been even three inches higher from the ground I could not have reached its brain or heart or whatever it was I stabbed. As I say, folly.”

“I saw you ride down at it,” Edmund said. “I called but I do not think you heard me. When I saw you pinned to its side, striking at it with a dagger, I thought that I should go to help you.”

“You could have done no good.”

“So I told myself, and very likely it was true. I think before I act—and then think again. I am not entirely a coward, but I do not lose myself in action as you do.”

I shook my head. “It was stupidity. By rights I should be dead, and it would have been my own fault. Dead and derided by these same people who make up songs about me. The southern fool who tried to fight a dagger duel with the Bayemot. Luck made the difference between life and death, triumph and disgrace.”

“And was it luck that won the Contest for you, those years ago?”

I remembered that spring day, like this one warm after early rain, and how in the last round, Edmund having three men against my two, I had ridden away unguarded and had seen him and his lieutenant come after me. And how, as they closed in from either side, I had thrown myself from my saddle and pulled him from his horse.

“When you leaped at me,” Edmund said, “then, too, I paused to think. But there was no time for thinking. And when we remounted and rode at each other, just the two of us with no helpers, it was knowing I had failed before that made me fail again.”

So many things stemmed from that: within days his father’s death and the plunge from palace into poverty. I said:

“I planned the first part of the Contest. But in the end it was luck.”

“No, I do not think you can call it luck. I know nothing of the Spirits and am not concerned with them, but I think you have a demon who serves you well. I hope he will always do so.”

There was a hill with a crumbling ruin on top. It was too steep for the horses so we tied them to a thorn tree and climbed on foot. Sheep cropped the grass, bells tinkling as they moved. Many were polybeast, either in shape or color—I saw several that were not white but black. I noted this idly, not shocked as I would once have been nor horrified by the thought that they might any day be served as mutton at the King’s table. “They will learn,” the peddler had said, and I was learning.

The ruin was very old, in places no more than a groundwork of stone tracing a plan. There was nothing in it worth seeing. We sat on the remains of a low wall and looked down into the valley. The city was small and peaceful, no faint echo of its tumult reaching us here. Passing sunlight caught it and struck new and sharper colors from its painted spires and domes.

“A fine sight,” Edmund said.

“Yes.”

“When do we leave for home?”

“In a week, Greene says.”

“You still allow him to think he decides such matters?”

“He was named commander by my brother.”

“Tell Cymru that.” He paused and repeated: “A fine sight. Do you think our Winchester would look dull and drab to someone used to this?”

He meant Blodwen, I guessed. We had not talked of the betrothal. I had been waiting for him to say something, and perhaps he had been waiting for me. This was an opportunity but the moment passed.

I got to my feet. “We had better go down again.”

• • •

In all sorts of ways I was becoming accustomed to the Wilsh and this dazzling city of theirs. Their scents faded in my nostrils into a familiarity that was not unpleasant, their bright clothes and ornaments, their ways of talking and laughing and embracing each other in public—all these lost their power to shock. I grew used to the sight of Snake’s misshapen hands and his weird sinuous walk, and to the other polymufs about the court. I counted ten rings on the fingers of one fat noble and the same day learned why the mouth of the Perfumer Royal was so red: he painted his lips like a woman. Both things amused me: no more than that.

The morning of the day before our departure Hans was to take our horses to be shod. I knew that whatever the qualities of the farrier I could rely on Hans himself to see it well done, but I went down there all the same. The farriery was behind the royal stables—a big place with five smiths at work. Hans was holding my horse, which had been finished. We examined her feet together and I said:

“Good enough.”

Hans said: “He makes a fair job of it, for one who is not a dwarf.”

The man was at work on a rear hoof of Hans’s own horse. I heard the hiss of hot iron being pressed home and smelled the familiar stench of burning. It was only as the farrier straightened up that I realized that he too was polymuf, having a twisted back. He was quite young, in his thirties I judged. It had been surprising that a man should shoe horses but this was more extraordinary. As Hans had said, it was dwarfs work in our city, and jealously guarded as such.

I said: “At any rate, they should see us home.”

Hans said, in a low voice that would not carry to the farrier:

“Do we return tomorrow, then, Captain?”

I looked at him. “As you know.”

“There is a story in the city.”

“A hundred, more likely. Which is this?”

He stared at me with heavy, dark eyes. “They say that the embassy might go back without you—that you might stay here among the Wilsh where you have won fame and the King’s daughter.”

I laughed. “They spin fine yarns!”

“Then it is not true, Captain?”

“No, Hans. Not true.”

The last hoof was done and I offered silver to the polymuf but he refused it; all was paid by the King. I went to the stables with Hans and saw the horses put to grooming. Later we walked together up to the palace. He was never one to chatter but I thought his silence had a brooding in it. I said:

“This tale of my staying when the embassy goes back—you believed it true?”

“I did not know, Captain.”

“But if it had been true—if I had chosen to stay and keep you with me, would you have been glad of it?”

He looked at me. “Very glad.”

“But why?”

“Because I am a man here.”

“You are still my servant, as you were in Winchester.”

“And would be anywhere. It is not what I am to you but what I am to others. In this city there is no talk of dwarf and polymuf and true men. All are men.”

“I doubt they would make you a warrior. There is a height mark which Cymru’s soldiers must reach.”

“Perhaps here I would not be plagued by idle dreams. I do not think I would.”

“And your home, family—you would he willing not to see them again?”

Family ties and the love of home were deep and strong in dwarfs. They lived close with one another and were devoted to their kin. Hans did not answer at once and I said:

“Your father would miss you.”

“In a way,” Hans said, “and in a way be glad. My dreams remind him, I think, of dreams he had in his younger days, and put away. Of course I would miss him, too, and my brothers and sisters; above all my mother. There is always something to lose. But maybe more to gain.”

He spoke with passion. I had had no idea that he felt like this. I said:

“Listen, if you would stay that can be arranged. The King will find a place for you.”

“And you, Captain?”

“By the Great, Dwarf, I can do without a servant!”

I stopped, realizing what I had said. It was no insult, or I had not thought it such, and in Winchester neither of us would have noticed the term I had used. But we were not in Winchester. I said:

“I am sorry, Hans.”

He smiled. “There is no need for it, Captain.”

“But it is true that I can manage by myself. I am used to doing so. Stay, if it is your wish.”

“It is not my wish if you are going.”

“I must.”

“Why, Captain?”

We had come to the gardens at the rear of the palace. There were lawns, so smooth and so finely clipped that from a distance they looked like squares and circles and crescents of green cloth. Gardeners trundled cutting devices up and down. They were on wheels, and a bladed cylinder turned with the wheels and sheared the grass. In Winchester they would have been called machines. Between ran walks of finely sifted red gravel, leading to continually splashing fountains. Wooden casks, brightly painted, contained flowering shrubs brought from the glass house across the river. Above us loomed the palace, with all its domes and towers.

I said: “To give news of the embassy to the Prince, my brother.”

“Captain Greene can do that.”

There were swans on the river and one of them flew low across the gardens with a heavy flap of wings. Before I could speak again, Hans went on, more rapidly.

“There would be advantages in staying, Captain. The King favors you.”

“So does the Prince of Winchester.”

“In Winchester there are intrigues.”

I looked at him in surprise. He was dwarf to me still and the remark improper. I said with some sharpness:

“There are intrigues in every city. Here, too.”

“Of a different kind. No plotting for thrones, no daggers in the night. The King is safe, and the King’s friends. They intrigue for amusement. In Winchester the business is in deadly earnest.”

I thought of the Blaines and the Hardings. I said:

“If you have heard of anything that threatens my brother . . .”

He shook his head. “No, Captain. But the possibilities are always there. As you know.”

It might be that he referred to that intrigue which had deposed Prince Stephen and raised up my father. I looked at him closely, ready to be angry, and saw nothing in his face but concern for me. I said:

“Enough, Hans. If there is to be trouble at home, the more reason for me to return. But my offer to you stands. Stay if you wish and I will obtain the King’s favor for you.”

“No,” Hans said. “Thank you, Captain, but I will not stay.”

• • •

That which Hans had told as gossip of the city took on hard substance within minutes of my leaving him. A messenger from the King told me Cymru desired my presence. I was taken to one of the smaller state rooms and found him in talk with Snake on a matter of taxes. He did not dismiss his Chancellor but bade me sit with them.

He did not indulge in the long preliminaries which were common among the Wilsh but put the matter to me at once and plainly. There was no need for me to go south with Greene. His people did not wish to lose me. Nor did he. Nor, he added with a smile, did his daughter, the Princess.

I hesitated before replying. He must have taken this for encouragement, because he went on to say that I need not worry as to wealth or position. At the banquet, it was true, he had conferred only one thing on me, though that his most precious possession; but it carried benefits beyond itself. I would be made a Count—house and servants would be put at my disposal, and the means to maintain them as befitted a person of rank and nearness to the throne.

I shook my head and said that I had not been concerned with such things. Cymru said:

“But you hesitate?”

“If it is the King’s wish that I stay, then of course I must.”

“No, Luke. It is for you to decide, freely.”

“Then with permission, sire, I will return with the embassy.”

“You are homesick for your own land? Our ways must be strange to you, but I thought you had grown more used to them.”

Snake scratched his neck with his two-pronged hand and I felt scarcely a twinge of nausea. I said:

“It is not that.”

“Then?”

“My brother may have need of me.”

“It is a good answer,” Cymru said. “The best you could give. But you will come back to us, will you not, Bayemot Slayer?”

“Without doubt.”

“Good!” He clapped my shoulder. “And we will trust our lands stay free of Bayemots till your return.”

I smiled. “And after also, sire, I hope.”

• • •

Blodwen said: “Luke, there is no need for you to come back here.”

I looked at her, unsure and uneasy and said, knowing the words stupid as I spoke them:

“I have promised, Cousin.”

Her expression was troubled, her fair brows frowning. I had seen little of her since the banquet. I thought she had been avoiding me and my feelings concerning this were mixed. There was disappointment, resentment, some relief, but much uncertainty in my mind. Now, walking down the stairs that led to the throne room, I had heard her call and stopped for her to catch up to me. We stood together halfway down, with no one in sight but three lads stripping the wall that faced the throne, and those too far away to hear our talk.

“The promise does not matter,” she said.

“To me it does.”

“Listen,” she said. “You did a great thing, and my father likes you. He offered you something, and how could you refuse? Or not promise to return and claim the gift? But no one has to accept a thing he may not want, even though a king gives it. And no one is required to keep a promise that stems from such as this.”

“I accepted the honor gladly, and promised freely. So I will keep my promise.”

She gave a small sigh that had exasperation in it.

“Luke, you do not help me! What I am trying to say . . . In your country, I know, things are different. Edmund has told me that your women commonly do as they are bid, and are married as their fathers command. We of the Wilsh have more freedom. The women share in men’s lives, and choose him they would take as husband. I am the King’s daughter, and bound by that, but I believe, as do all girls here, that people are people, not puppets to be dangled and twitched by those who hold the strings.”

I was uneasy still and puzzled. It was not the first time I had failed to follow the shifting quickness of her mind, but this was more important because she was more earnest.

I said: “Who is calling you a puppet?”

She put her beautiful head on one side and stared at me.

“I see I must speak more plainly. You said you gladly accepted an honor. But I am not an honor: I am Blodwen! And you will keep your promise to return? But I do not want you to return to claim your prize, because I am not a prize but a girl, with my own thoughts, my own feelings. I am not to be given away as a trophy even by my father. If I am not sought for myself I will not be sought at all.”

I said: “Anyone who sees you must seek you for himself. It has nothing to do with Bayemots or prizes.”

I spoke from the heart. She looked at me and, after a moment, nodded and slightly smiled.

“That is something, Cousin! I am not sure yet how much but it makes a start.”

She had lost me again, but I felt a softening and was grateful for it. I said:

“You were going to show me your pavilion across the river. Will you let me row you there?”

She smiled more fully. “Of course, Luke.”

We went down the stairs together. As we reached the bottom a thought struck me.

“We have talked of what I might seek, but what of you?” She raised her brows in question. “You also had no voice in what was said that night at the banquet. And you have said you would not be a puppet. Would you prefer it if I did not come back to Klan Gothlen?”

She stopped and stood before me, her blue eyes an inch or two below the level of my own.

“I have been wondering when you would come to that! It is better late than never.”

“But the answer?”

There was a space before she smiled, and said:

“What girl would not want you to come back—Luke of Winchester, Conqueror of the Bayemot?” She pointed to the three who were working. “Do you see what they are doing?”

“Stripping the wall.”

“In preparation for the great painting that is to cover it. Half a dozen of our finest artists, under the guidance of the great Gwulum himself, will work on it. It is to be called ‘Luke and the Bayemot,’ and even with six of them it will take a full two years to complete.”

She laughed and slipped her arm in mine, and I thought myself answered. As we went through the antechamber, she said:

“But I will be my own woman. Always. Remember that, Luke of Winchester.”

• • •

Cymru had wanted to load us with magnificent gifts, far surpassing those we had brought him in my brother’s name. We had resisted this, pointing out that we were no trading caravan but a troop of warriors, and could not travel heavily burdened. So the things he gave us were small but costly. A dagger, pretty to look at and heavily jeweled but of no practical value; a chess set with elaborately decorated pieces in gold and silver; a book telling the story of the line of Cymru, its cover pearl and ivory and its pages full of finely detailed paintings in brilliant colors—these and many more.

The royal guard which had received us provided escort for the first part of our journey. I noticed that the men wore ordinary boots, not the pointed ones with silver tips, and left their plumed helmets behind. They rode well, moreover, and with discipline. At a place where two roads crossed they halted, forming lines for us to ride between. As we did they cheered us, uttering a wild cry in the ancient language of theirs which they still kept in part. We cheered them in return, and rode on. It was wooded country and they were soon lost to view.

I was sorry to be going away from Blodwen but I traveled with a light heart. I had learned to like the Wilsh better than I had thought I would, and been amazed by the beauty of their city, but Winchester was my home. Each mile brought nearer the moment when I would see the high walls with the pennants fluttering above them, and hear my horse’s hoofs clatter on the stones of the High Street as we rode up the hill toward the palace—not so splendid as King Cymru’s but more dear.

During our stay in Klan Gothlen I had not seen much of Greene and his attitude toward me at first was strained and distant. I won him round by at once making it clear that, whatever the situation had been there, here I accepted him as commander of the troop with myself as his very junior lieutenant. He was amiable at heart and if there had been rancor it did not last.

We rode and bivouacked and slept, and rode again. Four days passed with little of note. Once a party of blue-painted savages, like those we had encountered on the journey north, hurled insults at us from a distant ridge; but made no attempt to come to closer quarters. From villages we bought food to supplement our rations. In one there was a breed of polyhens bigger than turkeys, some so gross that they could not walk and had to have grain brought to them to peck. Their eggs were more than four inches in length. I was amused that Greene showed no scruple about buying them, and the fowls also, for roasting that night for supper.

In the middle of the fourth day we made a halt at a village which had been deserted. There was no way of telling why because there was no sign of life or death, only rotting huts that steamed in sun following rain.

A man called Deevers, who was known as a scavenger, wandered among the huts. From behind one he called: “Captain!” and Greene and I went to see what he had found. He pointed to something which at first sight looked like a part of the back of the hut. Then I thought it was the crude construction of a child. All sorts of things had been used in the building: twigs and small branches fallen from trees but also pieces of wood and metal culled from the ruins of the village. The structure they formed was weird and seemingly without plan, though I noticed at the front a ramp leading up from the ground to a hole that gave access to the interior: a narrow ramp and a hole only a few inches across.

Deevers said: “Rats ran out, Captain.” His voice held loathing. “Big ones. More than a dozen.” He pointed again. “They ran into the grass there.”

“The building rats,” Greene said. “I have heard of them. So this is what they build.”

He wasted little time in looking. His boot crashed in savagely, shattering it and scattering the bits of which it had been made. I spoke involuntarily:

“Why do that?”

“Polybeasts,” Greene said. “And rats, which is worse. Even your Wilsh friends would kill them, I think.”

I did not know what to say, or what I truly felt. My own horror of rats was deep, from a time when I was a child of three and a cat brought a dead rat to me as a gift and left it on my pillow while I slept. But along with this detestation was something else: a hatred of seeing any built thing, even one built by rats so wantonly destroyed.

In the end I said nothing. Not all the rats had fled at Deevers’ approach. There was one that emerged now from the rubble of its home and launched itself at this enemy giant, trying to claw and scrabble its way up Greene’s boot. He knocked it aside easily and broke its back; and then ground under his heel the helpless hairless young which their mother had stayed to defend.

• • •

That night we camped near another village, this time inhabited. It clustered round a knoll that overlooked a few patchily cultivated fields and the river whose valley we were following, and we stayed on a similar small hill half a mile to the south. It had a thatch of trees on top, like our own St. Catherine’s, which afforded some shelter.

I was restless and could not sleep. Maybe the incident with the building rats had disturbed me more than I had thought. Perhaps it brought to the surface of my mind the confusions which had grown during my stay in the land of the Wilsh, and the deeper confusion between my life as it was and as the Seers planned it. Things which had looked simple in the clear context of our life in the south now showed themselves to be difficult and complex. The Seers had taught me that there was more to the world than the clash of warriors and cities. But I had not realized how much more it could be.

The restlessness increased and I got up. The others around me were sleeping. A three-quarter moon sailed clear in a space between clouds. One of the two guards saw me; I spoke quietly to him and walked on. My horse whinnied, and I patted her neck.

The mounts had been tethered to outlying trees under the guard’s surveillance. In the moonlight I felt his eyes on my back also and, wanting to be alone, went down the hill and out of his range of vision. Elsewhere it was a sleeping world. From the village on the other hill came neither light nor sound, not even a dog’s barking.

I came to the track along which we had traveled. To the north lay Klan Gothlen; to the south, beyond the Burning Lands, my native city. Both seemed very far away, and not in distance only. In this thin, silent realm of black and silver it was hard to think of them as real.

Trees overhung the track. I heard a sound above me, very small, perhaps no more than a bird shifting on its perch. All the same I looked up. But the dark shape was already dropping onto my shoulders, and before I could cry out strong fingers clutched my throat. They pressed a point in my neck; and thought and memory ended.