Mid-year 625

Fall

Gleaning Moon

The chaos that shook the primacies of Brown in my tenth year foreshadowed a violent and tumultuous future for its inhabitants. Wadd and Hill had finally gone to war over the disputed canton of Ac-Pass, and this first repetition of the old conflicts since the reign of king Ab polarized the minds of nobles and peasants alike. In increasingly heated roundtable discussions, only a handful of primates still called for unity, including Bard the Young, Serven Daff from Cover-Pass, and lady Seress Fluren, of Ventsun. When they weren't openly taking sides, the other aristocrats had chosen to retreat to their own borders and their own problems, which already existed in sufficient numbers that they didn't need to burden themselves with those of others. In fact, Ac-Pass was only the visible part of a long and macabre carnival, made up of old grudges and disputes that were resurrected with the breakdown of the Unified Kingdom. Already, the tendency of the years to come was taking shape under a warlike banner.

In the land of Vaw, a new king of the Elms had risen, and during a hunt, leafy agents had succeeded in murdering the primate Vilan, putting the area into turmoil. Ovie Vilan was gathering the support of her father's liegemen, and no one doubted that the pacification of Spinel would in fact turn into a bloodbath, even if there were open doubts about who would slaughter who. Behind the throne of the king of Elms lay the mysterious shadow of the Ktoï, and there were enough horrifying tales of the first vine war to frighten even the most fanatical hotheads. To the west of the Brown, tensions were growing between Southy and Wolf-Bay and were crystallizing around the canton of Red-Volc, for which two deadly wars had already been fought in the past, and whose name alone was enough to evoke the bloody excesses of past border conflicts. Under the cover of neutrality, the diplomats of Franlake were patiently honing the daggers of this old discord, hoping to profit from a new Volc war.

As is often the case, it was the common people who paid the price first, and despite the machinations of Amuber's guild of master-grinders, the price of waddan grain soared. As the brownian economy teetered precariously on the brink of recession, new rebellious companionships flourished, and to avoid the threat of hunger, an increasing number of poor families' sons joined the ranks of the rebels. The ports of the Lower Brown and Pulo saw the arrival of foreign mercenaries, former knights of Lema, fierce archers from Akiij or wadis of Ak'Jale, and as many swordsmen in search of gold and glory as the Five-Cities and the privateers of the Broken-Lands could provide. As this sudden influx of swordsmen could not be entirely absorbed by the purses of the brownian lords, the spread of banditry was not long in coming, and it spread over the countryside like a plague.

However, while a few fortunate people still had the luxury of watching these events from afar, no one was unaware that Carm had denied the treaty of the Near-Islands. In fact, the shadow of a fourth invasion now hung over the primacies. Greyarm and Amuber had initiated a series of large-scale construction projects to strengthen their strongholds, but if war broke out, it would only last for a short time.

A handful of disorganized seigneuries had no hope of resisting Carm, if the Carmian households decided to mobilize the full power of their legions against them. From the outside, the primacies must have seemed ripe for the picking, and the Brownians, true to their reputation, stubbornly persisted in their self-centered traditions, preferring discord to alliances and small disagreements to great commonalities.

Despite my young age and my elusive understanding of all these issues, I remember that I would often stand back and wonder how the primacies had managed to survive for so long. When I shared my thoughts with him, Ulrick would grin and confirm that it was indeed something not far from a miracle.

The successive series of bad news that continued to spread over the primacies were the subject of recurrent discussions between the Val and me during our journey to Gorwill. As we pushed the horses a little more every day in the hope of catching up with the vaïdoerk and as, around us, autumn draped a colorful cloak over the forest of Vaw, Ulrick tried to make me aware of the fragility of the world I knew, and of how lucky I had been, in a way, to be born under the peaceful reign of king Ab. I was slowly figuring out, almost in bits and pieces, that I had grown up in a world of my own, a kind of quiet anomaly, and that, despite its troubles, Brown-Horn had been something different, a haven of peace. I remembered how Sesh had often spoken of this, but at the time, overwhelmed by the loss of Robin and Brindy, and then Narsilap, I had dismissed any words - his in particular - that might have put my grief into perspective. In the saddle, I had all the leisure to meditate on it and my thoughts sometimes wandered to the threshold of the Ronna orphanage, from where I had to tear myself away violently when I came to the perfumed memory of Brindy's hair.

We were riding with the first showers of the half-season, and the hours were all miserably similar. The occasional downpour that made our mounts curve their loins and soak their muddy coats cast an even more gloomy mood on the already difficult ride. These were exhausting days, both nervously and physically. Ulrick, in a hurry to get back to his family, imposed a rhythm as fast as he dared and, under the effort, the horses quickly lost their summer fat, which made them irritable and capricious. One morning, when things were at their worst, Pike even showed me his teeth, but their daily efforts were a necessary evi l: we were running out of time, and they had been without proper exercise for almost two years. Berda had not been in combat for too long, and Ulrick wanted to see her in better shape when we finally joined the protection of the other vaïdogans.

It had been more than a year since we learned that there was still a bounty on my head. It was a strange thought for me to know that I was still being hunted down, still subject to the hatred of the Lemis, when I was so far from home. Since we had left the relative safety of the plateau, my every action, and Ulrick's every action, had been conditioned above all else by this constant concern. We had already killed to maintain our anonymity the year before, and we feared that the issue might arise again. On one occasion, we had seriously considered turning back to slit the throat of a pig keeper who had stumbled upon us, and whose gaze we both found strangely insistent. In the end we had given the shepherd the benefit of the doubt, but this tension was always haunting us. While in theory our hermit life had just come to an end, I had never felt so isolated. It was one thing to be the object of constant despise from my peers, as I had been at Castle-Horn, it was quite another to accept that a single look, a single word, a single gossip could take away my freedom or cost Ulrick his life.

Since we had chosen to avoid the roads, the trip that could have been a matter of a few days took us almost two weeks. This did not help to improve the general mood: we knew we were already behind schedule, and as we took the slippery, winding detours of the game trails, our tardiness accumulated beyond our control. We were also constantly trying to avoid human contact, and this caution slowed us down more than anything else. If it was fairly easy at first, that changed when we left the highlands of Culon for the milder topography of the central part of the primacy, and then Gorwill. Isolated farms became more common, logging camps and manses too, and our task became more complex. I experienced this perpetual apprehension of the other as an additional exhaustion. Besides the risk of bounty hunters finding my trail through rumors, we could always run into bandits. Moreover, considering our general appearance and the political context, we were not quite sure that in case of an encounter with a patrol of the cantonal militia they would not shoot first, and ask questions later.

I no longer saw the end of those bumpy and arduous days, where forest succeeded to more forest. We moved forward anyway, little by little, in spite of the tenacious impression of going in circles under the trees. To join the vaïdoerk had become an obsession which never left us, the focal point of each step and of each jolt, a deliverance we were running after. On the twelfth evening, when the purple clouds above us had been pierced by a single ray of golden light and the dark branches of the chestnut trees rose up to the sky like the spears of a skeleton army, Ulrick told me that we had finally reached our goal. We had halted near a loamy stream that flowed from the heights further south, and, stiff with fatigue, I helped the Val wedge our tarpaulin between two beech branches. "Tomorrow," he said, without looking at me. "Tomorrow we will be at the ferry of Gorwill. Then we will travel on the road to Garnear. It shouldn't take us more than two days." I nodded weakly, my teeth clenched around a knot.

That night we allowed ourselves to light our first campfire since leaving Culon. We had been wearing wet clothes for days, and both of us reeked of wet leather and mold. Both the heat and the hot water were welcomed as two simple pleasures we had done without for too long : even the horses hurriedly crowded around the hesitant blaze. After we had savored a hot broth, the Val drew his whetstone and set to work on his small utility blade. Since hiding our identities would matter less than speed, once we crossed the Gor, Ulrick decided it was time to worry about our appearance. Two trappers could be held and questioned by the local guard, but there was a good chance a val-warrior and his yunling would be left alone. Thus, Ulrick's bushy beard largely disappeared in the flames. Berda recovered the short tail and brush cut of a war mare. I myself was relieved of a certain amount of hair. As the dagger's blade came and went, I watched impassively as my shaggiest braids twisted and sizzled on the logs. The smell of burnt hair floated in the air like a sickening mist.

When he was satisfied with the result, Ulrick showed me briefly what I looked like in the fragment of mirror he carried in his empty purse. His knife had freed my hair from black knots to give my tonsure more finesse, but I had not lost all my braids. The sides had been shaved short, in order to give me the look of a Val. With my spear in hand, my chain mail, the shield and the carmian dagger hanging from my belt, I didn't exactly look impressive, but there was something about me. Despite my height, there had been a change in my posture and in my gaze. I must have been smiling, because I managed to get a scolding from Ulrick.

"You may look like a puny warrior, yunling, but remember that this is a double-edged sword," he lectured me grimly. "It can protect you. It can also make you a target." We spent a few more hours chewing the dry sausage in silence, polishing our weapons and armor with what was left of the tallow we had brought from the cabin. We still smelled like rancid, but when we finally settled down to sleep, we looked martial and our equipment was neat. By the next day, no one would mistake us for the ordinary pair of tramps we had looked like earlier.

As I tried to find a comfortable position under my moth-eaten blanket, the floodgates of the sky opened again and, for the hundredth time that week, the tarpaulin began to crackle under the impact of the drops. Outside, Pike protested with an indignant neigh, while the rain hissed on the dying campfire. I tried to settle myself more comfortably against the leather of my saddle. The canvas had suffered from the years in the mountains and our constant use of it, and sometimes water managed to seep through the fiber to soak our blankets. "I hate this country," I ranted out loud as I fidgeted awkwardly. "I hate all these trees and all this water and I hate... and I hate these Vawans more than anything. They're stupid and superstitious... and cunning and..."

Ulrick swung his arm down and slapped me through the blanket. "Iss auffe," he growled dangerously. That's enough. But I was still fidgeting, exasperated by the weather, my eyes fixed on the dark canvas, waiting for the next drop that would splash my nose. "What, aren't you tired of it?" I finally asked. The answer was long in coming, the Val's voice was rocky in the darkness. "Yes," he said. "But that's no reason to pick on the people of Vaw. Spit on their forest if you like. But I don't like the contempt I hear in your voice." I gave a short, dry laugh. "Contempt? You're the one who wanted to slit the pig keeper's throat," I said venomously. "Perhaps," replied the Val, "but there was no contempt in that. I didn't consider that I could kill him, because he was deceitful or whatever, but only because I could. Our lives were no better than his."

I pondered these words in silence, while around me the rain crackled in the faded woods and the damp fire finished dying down. Then, at my side, Ulrick's deep voice cut the chaotic thread of my thoughts. "I have seen a man, a fellow val, a hetman at that, go down the path of contempt. It happens sometimes. He had come to think that the lives of strangers were worth less than those of Vals. He even said it out loud. It's a dangerous road. It's a road that leads to massacres." There was a pause, and I heard Ulrick moisten his lips. "We couldn't let the man he had become come home and we killed him, all Val that he was."

I spluttered morbidly and quietly, and my bad temper swelled. "Sometimes I don't understand your ways," I said to the darkness. "You spend your time calling strangers gedesleffe, but this is not contempt. You kill a fellow man because the lives of his people were more important than the lives of the people he was killing. You are moved by massacres while making a living out of war. And I get yelled at, because the morons that believe in fairies and ogres and the Hunter, they piss me off."

Next to me, Ulrick chuckled to himself, "It's not that you don't understand our ways, it's that you don't understand anything at all," he grumbled. "Foreigners are slaves to gold. Gold is the cornerstone of your societies. It is not contempt to state a truth. Gedesleffe you are, and so it is." Exasperated, I tried to intervene as I did every time Ulrick included me with the Brownians, but he continued his rant with emphasis, and I eventually kept my mouth shut. "The companion in question, it's not that the lives of his own people mattered more, it's that he killed the others, because he felt their lives were worth less. As for fairies and ogres, well, I've never seen a fairy, and I don't even know if they exist. But the Rigans sometimes barter with the ogres in the foothills of the Horned mountains. I went there once in my youth to see them and I saw three. So you see, yunling, morons and fools are not always who you think they are." Lying in the night, these few words captured my imagination, until it overflowed with a thousand monstrous forms, and the irritation I felt from the rain and the distrust and incomprehensible ways of the Vals suddenly vanished. I promptly dropped the philosophy for the benefit of the ogres and, in excitement, straightened up on one elbow.

"You saw three of them, no kidding? Did you talk to them? What were they like? You're not lying, is there really such a thing?" I blurted out in successive bursts. I heard Ulrick chuckle under his blanket, obviously amused by the speed with which he had managed to change the subject. "Vesukke, it exists," he replied. "But there aren't many of them now. They have been entrenched in the mountains for a long, long time. They are as big as two men, and even thicker, with very marked, very hollow faces. I found them... sad." The warrior paused for a moment, and I heard him thoughtfully scratch his beard, then he continued in a hesitant voice. "They had a certain look, with black eyes you see, and they spoke slowly, and... it's hard to explain it like that, but I found them so sad that just looking at them made me sad, too. It was like... like being in front of something very strong that was dying of grief. I never went back."

I closed my eyes, because I couldn't think of anything else to say after that. My head filled with dreams and a melancholy I only half understood, I let the silence engulf us both. Soon after, I fell into a wandering sleep. The next day, when I woke up, the Val was gone.