Graynelore

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 (#ulink_0938e737-ed68-5e87-b2f1-efa5e1dd3a70)

The Killing Field (#ulink_0938e737-ed68-5e87-b2f1-efa5e1dd3a70)

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, andthis 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.