Heir of Scars I: Parts 1-8 (50 page)

“...And who else? Our father is… mad or… possessed, and I am only now approaching majority. You’ve helped… how? You went wild, and... now you care?”

“Hafgrim, I…” But it was too late to interrupt.

“What did you expect, an elevation of some Earl?” He laughed. “Her Matron has done more in the past years than any would have thought possible. The church has grown, our economy has grown, our numbers have grown. Heiland is a united kingdom, as father always dreamed for it to be, as he fought for...”

Adria controlled her own temper as he finished. Counted her heartbeats as his fists tightened and loosened, his eyes looked everywhere but hers.
He is not wrong,
she admitted to herself, though she could not yet say it to him.
But he is also not wholly right. He believes absolutely in his nobility, in our dynasty. And he has full faith in Taber.

And she nodded as she realized, 
Taber needed no spies to be aware of my coming. She only had to know of the promise I gave to Hafgrim, and to know that I would keep it. She has always known that I would return, and so she has planned some use for me — some use for Hafgrim’s faith, and some use for my lack of it.

“Hafgrim,” she said gently, as his temper flared out in the wake of his words and he took up his beer again. “I did what I thought was right, that’s all. I wanted desperately to serve Father, but did not know how. I had to learn what we fought, to learn who we are… and I know for certain that not all we fight are truly enemies.”

Hafgrim laughed. “Has it ever occurred to you that they might be using you? That they allowed you and our uncle sanctuary, because they can use you against the kingdom?”

“I was not… not a… hostage,” Adria stammered.
He has been thinking of me almost as I am thinking of him.
She hastened to explain, “And it was not merely sanctuary. Look at me…”

She shook her braids, pulled at her fur jerkin. “I understand them…. I’ve become one of them. I have learned their ways, and have learned more of ours than we were ever meant to see. And... might they not have held a similar concern? Who better to act as a spy and a traitor than a member of the royal family itself? Taber would send you to Kelmantium, might not she have sent me to...”

And they both blinked in silence for a moment then, for she had said something neither of them had fully considered before.

“Did she?” he asked.

Still, Adria tried to maintain her momentum, though images surfaced of a dragon of fire, of holding Náme as she ran, of a great wheel turning into smoke and flame.

“Maybe… yes? Does it matter? I was sent…” She shook her head. “And Hafgrim, I was welcomed by them, but never denied my return, even though they knew very well I might bring intimate knowledge of them back to their enemy.”

He waved his hand dismissively again, but she continued.

“Remember that we made these people our enemy, no matter what you might think of them. They are only defending themselves. When they might have held me hostage, they did not. They allowed... they encouraged my return, when they might have had the power even to demand a ransom.”

Hafgrim shrugged, his voice suddenly calm, cold. “There is more than one way to make someone a hostage.”

Adria lowered her voice. “True, but... You fight an enemy you have never known, have never even seen. How could you possibly know what motivates them, what motivates you to despise them?”

“I have seen what they have done to our Knights, and yes, I know what happened to the village of Palmill...” Hafgrim nodded. “I know it was Uncle. I know it was
you
, and I can see what they have made of those I once knew and loved.”

This is what he has been wanting to say…
It took a moment for Adria to speak, but she was able, at least, to hold his gaze, to keep her own voice from rising. “What is it, then, that I have become?”

He held his tongue.

“Say it,” she shrugged. “I know you’ve been waiting to for three long years.”

“Traitor,” he said simply. Oddly, the anger in him now seemed far gone. He was resigned, even accepting somehow.

Adria counted her heartbeats again in the silence. She half expected footsteps beyond the door, Knights bursting in to throw shackles around her wrists and ankles. But then she realized.

Not a traitor to Heiland, to our House and our Sisterhood…
she closed her eyes to hold back tears.
I am a traitor to him.

“I asked you to go…” she whispered, her eyes still closed. “I knew you would never, but I asked. And we would have lived very different lives. And… if you had asked me, Hafgrim, I think maybe I would have stayed.”

She opened her eyes. And it seemed he knew she spoke the truth, and he sighed away some of his anger, and his voice lost its cold, if not its sadness.

“You are just... so strange to me, now.” He spoke familiarly again — guarded, still, but without the shroud of pride or the obvious shadow of Taber.

Let the others accept my command, as Twyla suggested, but this is my brother, and we must know each other again.
 She rose, and stepped around the table to where he stood.

“It is true, Hafgrim.” Slowly, carefully, she took his hand, and he did not pull it away. His hands dwarfed hers, now. “I have made myself a stranger, and yes… perhaps even a traitor.”

He said nothing.

“But... I made a promise,” she nodded, slowly. She knew there were tears now, and they shared them. “Now, again, I am your sister, and I am Princess of Heiland. I have returned to keep my word, and to regain your faith and your love.”

Hafgrim sighed, and turned his head away in thought, though he still held her hand. Adria waited.

“Taber said you would return,” he nodded. “She said you would return alone.”

“And she knew that I would leave,” Adria answered. “And in time, I learned that she knew where I had gone. I will not say that I trust her, Hafgrim. But I trust that whatever I have done, it has all led me here, and at every step the Matriarch has disallowed nothing. Put your faith in that, if not in me.”

Hafgrim took his hand from hers, but not ungently. He leaned back with another sigh, and he smiled a little up at her. He beckoned her to sit again.

Hafgrim watched her thoughtfully as she returned to her seat, resting her elbows on the cluttered little table. He filled their cups once more with beer and raised his between them. “Well, then… let us toast to the... uncertainty of a first true adventure.”

Adria smiled and joined in the gesture. “And may we find the faith to balance our uncertainties.”

Even as the princes toasted, cheers rose from the deck above. Hafgrim and Adria exchanged surprised looks, before Hafgrim smiled.

“Ah… Bet you a Crown the ship has cleared the bay and reached the open sea.”

Adria laughed. “Well, still… let’s pretend it was all for us.”

What Does Not Bend

P
atience and action each have their own season,
 Adria would remember from these first lessons in what makes a Meniste, a
Hunter
. 
The drawing of the bow and the flight of the arrow are only the last lesson which begins with the making of both, which begins with the birth of a tree, which begins with a seed on the wind, which begins with the breath from the First Great Mountain.

Unlike Shísha, Preinon Watelomoksho set her upon the path alone, almost out-of-hand, and she was glad of what small knowledge she had to help her on her way.

“Do you know the tree the Aeman call the White Ash?” her uncle asked, without even his customary morning greeting, as Adria rubbed the sleep from her eyes and stretched after what felt like far too short a sleep.

“Yes, I know most of the trees of Heiland,” Adria smiled, pleased with herself, and then hesitated before humbling a little. “Well, I know them from description, mainly, and from the engravings in books.”

He nodded. “It should serve you enough for this. We call it Atutíshte Chonanikshoku, Grandfather White Leaf. The Yew is truly the best tree for making a bow, S’ámnahakutishte, but Atutíshte is far more common, and will be easier for you to work this first time.”

He seemed to have finished speaking, and Adria half-turned, then hesitated. “Am... I just to find one, or...”

Preinon, already having turned away to the morning’s other tasks, looked only halfway back to her, and at first frowned, then sighed and allowed himself a smile. “You wish to be a Hunter, Lózha? Hunt.”

A good deal later, Adria found herself frowning up at one Grandfather White Leaf. She examined its limbs, looking for one long and straight enough for her own purpose, imagining the shape of a bow outlined upon its surface.

She looked down at the knife in her hand. It was sharp, no doubt, but hardly strong enough to cut the limb from the great ash before her.

“Well,” she reasoned. “I have hunted my tree, but for each prey its proper tool. And besides, it’s never been said a hunter must hunt unaided and alone.”

Preinon had apparently taken absence by the time Adria returned, and Shísha, so with a poor mixture of broken words and hand signs of her own desperate invention, Adria managed to ask one of the camp Hunters for an ax.

He seemed to question her, and so she re-enacted the finding of a great tree, its cutting down, and finally the making of a bow. Gradually her intentions dawned upon him, and he laughed, nodding, then shook his head and waved his hand.

“Be… be…” He continued with what seemed a detailed instruction, but when he saw she did not understand, he likewise imitated the actions intended, his hand raised to the height of her nose.

“Oh…” Adria nodded as she understood. “I must hunt a baby tree… a sapling.”

He nodded and continued, his hands a few inches apart, pointing solidly down, then up near her nose again, then back at her feet.

“Ah…” she smiled and again nodded her understanding. “Straight, not bent like a bow. That makes sense.”

Finally he found her an ax appropriate for the task.

Adria thanked the Hunter for the ax, asking and receiving his name, and continued her hunt.

At least I am learning more words, 
she told herself, wondering if Preinon was somehow timing her in her task.

She stalked trees haphazardly for an hour before she realized that her book knowledge only applied to adult trees. She found many saplings which might have been her quarry, but whose leaves and bark were too young for her to be certain. Her hands and feet grew numb with the cold that still clung to the deep forest at morning.

As she turned back to return to camp, again frustrated, she finally thought of what should have seemed obvious — a young tree was far more likely to grow beside an elder tree of the same kind.

Isn’t there an Aeman saying about that? 
Adria smiled.
I was looking only for adults before, and then only for children. But it is the relationship between them that gives them away.

She returned to where she had found the first Grandfather, and watched how his limbs stretched against the clouds. She watched the clouds move with the wind, hoping it was a typical wind, and imagined their winged seeds spiraling, following them down with her eyes to where they might have landed, nodding at the upstarts she found thereabouts.

She whispered, hopefully, “This was all really very amusing, but please make this one the right one, an... Atutíshte Chonanikshoku,” and she took a low swipe with the small ax at the nearest sapling.

When her uncle nodded at her choice, she was pleased, but admitted her confusion, and explained her solution.

“Yes,” he smiled. “Each time a Hunter hunts, she must use what she has learned before, but also must learn to hunt anew. Each stream you have crossed before carries new water, each branch new wind. Until your arrow finds its wolf or its elk, you and your quarry learn all you can from one another. Otherwise, what use is life? What purpose death?”

Adria absorbed this as she turned the wood in her hand. “Still… isn’t it going to be too small?” she frowned, “Or is it just meant for practice?”

Preinon shook his head. “There’s no such thing as practice for our Hunters. Even a child, with his first bow, can bring home a rabbit.”

“I was hoping for an elk my first trip out,” she grinned and wrinkled her nose. “Are rabbits all I will hunt?”

“Perhaps, for now,” he smiled. “But you have become more than a child, and I think you will find that this bow will bring down larger beasts, given the right circumstances.”

She nodded, and he continued, motioning around the camp. “Look at the others. See what they carry. You still think of your Heiland bow, and not a hunting bow. The Heiland bow is made for war, for soldiers in coats of steel with stout painted shields. But ours are smaller, so that they may be carried lightly, and drawn quickly, even on the run — a Hunter must often chase her prey, especially a new Hunter. It will not turn and face you, and draw its sword and spear.”

She laughed at his joke. “I understand, Uncle. Now...” and she adopted her serious voice of concentration. “...how do I shape it?”

He blinked and shook his head. “Not so quickly, for one. You have more trips to make.”

And she sighed, but resigned herself with a smile and a nod. “Tell me what more I need.”

He described a small list of tools and materials for her to gather, quests which occupied her for many more hours and taught her several more Aesidhe phrases and signs. There wasn’t much light left when she returned with the large leaves, the knives of several sizes, lengths of sinew from the leg of an elk, and a cupful of sap from a rare tree — most fortunately acquirable within the camp.

After the evening meal, while others joined in song or dance, and the children took to these or to games among themselves, Preinon helped her to strip the bark and limbs from the young tree, to carve out an arc from one side to make the belly of the bow, and then to cover both ends with the sap and leaves, and finally to tie them off with the cord.

“Now, while it seasons, the ends will not split.”

Adria blinked. “How long must it season?”

“A full turn of the moon,” he nodded. “To be certain.”

With more of the sinew, they tied the rough bow to a long timber in the Hunters’ lodge of the camp, where Adria could see that others were already tied, on several of the posts which held up the wide tenting. He turned it so it was belly out, and put chips of wood under either end, so it began to take its eventual shape.

She looked up at her would-be bow among all the others, wondering why she hadn’t noticed these before — she’d visited the lodge more than once. “It seems a long time to wait.”

He shook his head and looked up at the tied shaft, appraising. “A Hunter’s life is mostly waiting. If you do not leave it long enough, the wood will be too soft, and will bend too far with the string. It will not last long, and not send its arrow well.”

Adria nodded.

Preinon tested the hold of the knot in the cord with his hand. “Check it every day, and make sure it stays tight. If you need help tightening it, find someone strong to help you. There is no shame.”

The cycle of the moon passed with four faces, with Adria’s anticipation for the hunt, and with growing readiness and uneasiness for the Shema Ihaloa Táya and for the Runners.

Preinon’s new sense of command remained, and he seemed more driven by purpose than Adria had seen before. When it was clear the Knights intended to move early in the season, Preinon sent the Runners out in small groups to deliver messages to all the main tribes, warning them of the treachery that had happened, and asking them to renew their trust in each other.

Though Mateko was among those sent afar, Shísha remained to help in the coordination of Preinon’s plan — and to aid Adria in her education when possible. She proved to be an excellent teacher of the language, and Adria was able to learn the rules of its grammar as well as what she gained in absorption. She also learned more of her uncle’s plans from the Lichushegi than from Watelomoksho himself.

“What is the message my uncle sends to the tribes?” Adria asked Shísha when they had a quiet moment alone.

The Holy Woman told her the message in Aesidhe, then translated in Aeman, more closely to the Aesidhe than she often had before, “We forget love. We fear each other, and so we fail. We fear our brothers, and so the Others destroy us. They believe we forget one another, and so they believe we trust them instead. Understand they will break this trust. They will break us when they break this trust. And we will never trust again, for none of us will remain to once more find love for our brothers, our People.”

Soon, it proved both a message of peace and a harbinger of war. While most of the Runners were wandering across the wilds of Heiland, Preinon gathered the Hunters of the nearest Aesidhe camps for his own new counsel.

It did not appear intentional, certainly not at first, as men with red feathers in their hair and beads to match crossed the river and asked for Watelomoksho by name.

Wars with His Brother, they speak,
Adria remembered.
His name and his words are no accident.

They shared a meal with him, and more who followed, and Preinon gave greater and longer speeches as his following grew, a camp beside the Runners own, at further remove from the tribe below.

“It is said that a terrible season is coming, a season of the Others.” Shísha translated for Adria when a score of them now sat about the fire after the later meal. “It is said that a season is coming when the People cannot retreat. A season is coming when there will be no forest, but only walls of stone and plains of wheat in rows.

“A season is coming when there will be men in steel clothing on great horses. A season is coming when they will trample or camps and our children, when they will murder our mothers and our wives with their swords, and slaughter all our prey with their spears. It is said that a season is coming of disease and starvation, of war and death as we have never known before.”

Some took his message with murmurs of dissent or disbelief, others with motions of anxious desperation and righteous anger. But all listened closely.

“But I see another season,” Preinon nodded, meeting several pairs of eyes in turn as he paused. “I see a season coming when the Others must be met upon the plain, when their horses must be hobbled and their walls broken and their steel clothing pierced by the spear and arrow and blade and will of the People.

“I see a season coming when the winds of generations of retreat must turn, when the People must make our stand, fields must be sown again into trees. And I say the season is coming when our wives and our mothers will eat their fill, when our children will grow and play beneath the leaves and swim within all the waters without fear.”

The Hunters grew more divided with his words, as his tone strengthened, his limbs motioned with great strength, his feet stamped the earth as he paced among them.

“A season is coming when hunting will no longer be enough to drive the Others away. A season is coming when we must stand together as warriors, as if we are each one star in the body of a greater Hunter. A season is coming when we must learn to fight the Others in the only way the Others can be defeated, by a rain of spears and arrows, by rows of Hunters with swords raised in union against the common foe.

“I remember their ways, Hunters. I remember how they fall. I will join the bravest among the People into one and we will drive the Others from the lands all our ancestors walked in ancient days.”

The reaction was much as it had been when he had delivered the speech after the attack half a moon cycle before. There was little of the customary discussion. Most of the elder Hunters simply thanked him for his words, but returned at once to their own camps. Still, many of the younger Hunters remained to learn what Watelomoksho would teach them.

“Lichushegi,” Adria asked Shísha as the young men and a few women gathered around her uncle. “I thought that Hunters of the People are also the warriors, but he uses a different word for Aeman soldiers, for Knights. Doesn’t he?”