Both of them wore travel-dirty clothes and mended sandals. The younger man walked empty-handed; the older man had a stick in his hand, a pouch slung over his shoulder. He was in his fifties, or older, and had a worn, worried look. When they came through the fold of the hills into a narrow valley he stopped as soon as he saw the standing stone. He turned his anxious face to his companion. The young man hurried on past him, going straight to the stone.
A field mouse skittered out of the bowl of meal, scared from its daily breakfast, and vanished into the weeds at the base of the stone.
The young man stopped a few feet from the stone and straightened up to face its pale grey, blunt bulk. It stood about his own height and maybe twice his girth, a little wider than it was deep. A cleft ran up the lower part, dividing it in two, and the top of it narrowed in enough to give a faint suggestion of a head.
“The Standing Man,” Hovy whispered.
The young man nodded impatiently. He moved a little closer, reached out his right hand, and touched the stone. He drew in his breath.
“What’s this?” he said, looking down at the bowl of meal and the withering branch of flowers.
“I don’t know,” the other man said.
“Somebody’s made an offering here, Hovy.”
In the flood of sunlight in the silent valley they stood silent, the three of them, the young man, the older man, the stone.
“It’s kind of you to let me rest here,” said the stranger to the innkeeper. “‘If you want dried fish, go on down to the port,’ I said to ’em, ‘but I’m not taking an extra step today.’” She stuck out her worn shoes with patched soles.
“On your way north, eh?”
“Our nephew that’s been living with us is going back to his folk there. Might be we’ll settle there too if there’s work. There’s none where we’re from.” She gestured vaguely to the south.
“And where would they live then?” the innkeeper asked, looking up from the beans she was shelling, ready to chat. “In Riro, would it be?”
“Oh, let me give you a hand with those. I can’t sit and see work done and not lend a hand. No, it’s not Riro. The name of the village has just gone out of my head, but it’s a great long way up the coast, I believe. I’ll find out how long it is with my own feet, won’t I? Paro, would that be the name of the place?”
The innkeeper shook her head, indifferent. Riro was the north end of her world.
“It’s a long road is all I know! Now, these are lovely beans. Fat and sweet as little quail.”
“They’ll be supper. With a bit of rabbit, or a hen if you’d rather.”
“Oh, rabbit by all means. I love a bit of stewed rabbit with raily beans. D’you call ’em railies?”
“I’ve heard it. Mostly we call ’em trailers.”
The guest nodded, thumbing the plump pink beans from their mottled shells into a bowl and tossing the shells into a wide basket in rhythmic alternation with her hostess.
“Now it seems I once was told a story about the great house here,” she said. “Or is it about Riro, the story I’m thinking of?”
“No,” the innkeeper said with perfect certainty. “It’s about Odren.” She screwed up her long face, suppressing satisfaction. “A terrible story,” she said.
“Is it? It was to do with a sorcerer, I think? An uncanny man? Eh, I don’t know if I want to hear it if it’s about uncanny things. I do lie awake nights fearing things! Though what there is to fear I don’t know. My man and I can hardly get poorer than we are, and what’s to fear worse than starving?” She laughed her cheerful laugh, but her eyes had an anxious look in them.
The innkeeper was not diverted from her course. “Terrible it is, the story,” she said. “Uncanny, and worse than that. It was when I first came here from Endway Farm. Fourteen, fifteen years ago. The lords of Odren, they’re the great folk here; they own land here and all north of here for a long way. The master of Odren, he’s the master of many among us. And so. That was the time when pirates had gathered in the isles, out there.”
Her voice had begun to take on the long rhythm of the storyteller. She waved a bean-pod to the east. She was not entirely pleased when the guest interjected, “They do say the new king’s done away with pirates, and they’re all gone.”
“Maybe so. But there was no king back then. And pirates there were. A great cloud of ships they had, a great flock of evil men they were, greedy as seagulls, raiding the fishermen’s boats and the trading ships and so bold they’d come to land and raid our villages and farms as well, thieving, murdering. We had watchfires and all to warn of their coming, but how could we stop them when they came? So all the towns and domains of this shore made a counsel that they’d build ships, or man the ships they had, and so make a fleet of our own and sail out to destroy the pirates.”
They both continued to shell beans, but more slowly, the dramatic pauses uninterrupted.
“So, the master of our domain here was Lord Garnet. A grand, fine man he was. A firm hand he had, but a liberal one for poor folk, as befits the rich. Well, he pledged himself and some of his people to join the fleet. But being a landlord, not a sea trader, he had no ship. He wanted his own ship, for a lordly man like him wouldn’t like serving under some other man. He got word of a sorcerer south down the coast with a great gift of shipbuilding. So he sent for this man. And he came.”
A pause. The guest breathed the listener’s soft, assenting “Ahh,” and softly dropped a handful of beans into the bowl.
“Ash was his name. A young man, tall, with long hair black and bright as fresh tar down his back. A handsome man. So they all said in the village. I could never look on a sorcerer as handsome, myself. They’re not men at all in my eyes.” There was a note of righteous disgust in her voice. The listener nodded, emptying another pod.
“So this Ash came to the great house, up the road there. And he set to work down on the beach under the headland, building a great ship. There was carpenter’s work to it, of course—they were rolling great trees to the sawpit here, and building a cradle on the beach to hold the nave of it, and all the boat-builders from Yaswe to Riro came to work on it. But the spells of the sorcerer hastened the work and made it easy, so that it went fast as fast, and the ship was floating on the sea before the month was out. And Odren had been gathering his men and what they needed for the ship and the journey. So now they were to set sail to join the fleet. The fleet had already gathered far out there near Eel’s Eye, and was waiting for the last few ships to join them. Many people from the villages and farms went down to Odren Cove to see ours set sail. I was there.
“The lord had named the ship for his wife, the Lady of Odren.
“It was a beautiful sight, that ship. I’ve seen the brave merchantmen go by, and the great galleys from O-tokne, but never one so fine as the Lady of Odren. She had high slender sides, and a high mast, and sails like hills of snow—spellsails, they said, that would catch any wind. We saw the sorcerer aboard her, making the last passes on her to keep her safe in the battles and storms to come. Then the lady came out onto the pier with her children to bid her husband farewell. They all embraced, and we all cheered as he went aboard. As the ship sailed out the lady wept, and her children wept, and so did many of us standing there. But the ship was so gallant sailing out across the sea with her sails like the white clouds, we could hardly fear harm would come to her. There was two men from this village aboard her, poor souls.
“That was the last of the ships, they say, to join the fleet. They all sailed on together eastward through the Near Isles to find the pirates and destroy them. I can’t tell you much of that tale, for I don’t know it, though I’ve heard men who sailed with the fleet telling it over a hundred times, but what are the names of isles and straits to me, and the names of the ships and all the lords and leaders? You can hear them sing all that down in the port, in the ‘Lay of the Isle-Pirates.’ All I can tell you is that the ships weren’t back by winter, when we looked for them. Nor in spring did they come back. Nor in summer, no, nor the next winter.”