“I remember you—”
His greeting was odd, but many times a person out of grave illness carries half dreams which are confused.
I brought a cup of herb drink and put my arm about his shoulders to raise him to drink of it.
“You should,” I told him as he sipped. “I brought you here.”
He said nothing more, though he still watched me with that faint frown. Then he asked:
“My lord Pell?”
I used the saying of the country people. “He has gone ahead.”
His eyes closed, but I saw his mouth tighten. What Pell had been to him, I did not know. But they were at least battle comrades, and I guessed that he had done much to try to save him.
But I did not know what to say then. For to some sorrow is a silent thing which they must battle alone, and I thought perhaps Jervon was such a one.
However, I surveyed him as he lay there. Though he was wasted and gaunt from fever, and perhaps from earlier hardship, he was a man of good presence, tall, if spare of body, but, like my father a swordsman born. He was a Dalesman in that his hair was golden-brown (lighter than the skin of his face and hands which were darkly browned by the weather) and his features well cut. I thought I could like what I saw, save there was no reason to believe that I would ever have any closer contact to continue or deepen such liking. He would heal and then ride away, as had my father and Elyn.
3
Tarnished Silver
Yet Jervon did not heal as speedily as we had thought, for the fever weakened him, mainly in his wounded arm. Although he worked grimly at exercises to restore full use, still he could not order fingers to tighten to grip as they should. Patiently, or outwardly so, he would toss a small stone from hand to hand, striving to grip it with full strength.
However he took part in our work in the dale, both in the ragged fields and as sentry in the hills. And in this much we were favored, none trailed him.
We gathered at night to listen to his accounts of the war, though he spoke of dales, and towns, fords, and roads of which we had never heard, since those of Wark had never traveled far overland until they had been uprooted. By his account the struggle was going ill for the Dales. All the southern coast holdings had long since been overrun, and only a ragged, desperate force had withdrawn to the north and the west. It had been during that last withdrawal that his own people had been overwhelmed.
“But the Lords have made a pact,” he told us, “with those who have powers greater—or so they say—than those of sword and bow. In the spring of this Year of the Gryphon they met with the Were-Riders of the wastes and those will fight hereafter with us.”
I heard a low whistle or two, for what he spoke of was indeed an unheard-of thing—that Dalesmen should treat with the Old Ones. For of those the Were-Riders were. Though the Dales had lain mainly empty at the coming of the settlers, yet there were still a few of those who had held this land eons before. And not all of them were such unseen presences as my mother had dealt with, but rather resembled men.
Such were the Were-Riders, men, in part, in other ways different. There were many tales about them and none which could be sworn to, since they were always reported third- or fourth-hand. But that they were a formidable force to enlist on our side no one could deny. And such was our hatred for the invaders—those Hounds of Alizon—that we would have welcomed monsters if they would march with our host.
The long summer became fall and still Jervon worked to restore skill to his hand. Now he took to combing the hills with his crossbow, bringing back game, yet not going as a hunter. He was a lone man, courteous and pleasant. Still as my father had been, one who erected a barrier between himself and the world.
He stayed with Aufrica until his hurt was healed as well as she could manage, then went to make a hut for himself a little apart. Never was he one with us. Nor did I see much of him, save at a distance. But since my skill with the bow was in much demand to lay up meat to be dried and salted (we had found a salt lick, a very precious thing), I was not often in our straggle of huts.
Then one day I slid down a steep bank to break my thirst at a bubbling spring. There he lay. He must have been staring up at the sky, but at my coming he started up, his hand to sword hilt. But what he said to me was no greeting:
“I remember where I saw you first—but that cannot be so!” He shook his head as if completely puzzled. “How can you ride with Franklyn of Edale and also be here? Yet I would have sworn—”
I turned to him eagerly. For if he had seen Elyn, then indeed he would be bewildered by our likeness.
“That was my brother, born at one birth with me! Tell me, when did you see him—and where?”
The puzzlement faded from Jervon’s face. He sat working his hand upon a stone as he always did. “It was at the last muster at Inisheer. Franklyn’s men have devised a new way of war. They hide out in the land and allow the enemy to push past them, then harry them from the rear. It is a very dangerous way.” Jervon paused, looked at me quickly, as if he wished he had not been so frank.
I answered his thought. “Being his father’s son Elyn would glory in such danger. I never believed he could be found far from action.”
“They have won great renown. And your brother is far from the least among them. For all his youth they name him Horn Leader. He did not speak at our council, but he stood at Franklyn’s shoulder—and they say by Franklyn’s will he is handfasted to the Lady Brunissende, who is Franklyn’s heiress.”
I could think of Elyn as a fighter and one of renown, but the news that he was hand-fasted made me blink. Seasons had passed, yet I saw him still in my mind the boy who had ridden out of Wark, untaught in the ways of war, yet eager to see sword bared against sword.
Moved by the thought of time, I wondered about myself. If Elyn was a man, then I was a woman. Yet of the ways of a woman I had little knowledge. In my father’s day I had learned to be a son, from Aufrica to be a Wise Woman. But I had never been myself—me. Now I was a hunter, a fighter if the need demanded.
But I was not a woman.
“Yes, you are very like,” Jervon’s voice broke through my straying thoughts. “This is a strange, hard life for a maid, Lady Elys.”
“In these days all is awry,” I made swift answer. For I was not minded to let him think I felt that there was aught strange in what I did, or was. It questioned my pride and that I would not allow.
“And it seems this must be so forever!” Now he looked at his hand, flexing his fingers.
My eyes followed his. “You do better!” It was true, he had more control.
“Slow, but it mends,” he agreed. “When I can use arms again I must ride.”
“Whither?”
At that he smiled with a touch of grimness. But, limited though it was, that change of expression made him for an instant like another person. And I suddenly wondered what Jervon would be if the darkness of war were lifted from him and he free to seek what he wanted of life.
“Whither is right, Lady Elys. For I know not where this dale of yours lies in relation to those I rode with. And when I set forth it will be a case of hunting to find—rather than be found—by the enemy.”
“The snows are early in this high country.” I drank from a palmful of water. It was very cold, already there might have been ice touched at its source. “We are shut in when the passes close.”
He looked to the peaks, from one to another.
“That I can believe. You have wintered here though.”
“Yes. It means tight-pulled belts toward spring, but each year we make better of what we have, lay in more supplies. There were two extra fields planted this year. The mills have ground twice as much barley this past month. Also we have salted down six wild cows, the which we were not lucky enough to have last year.”