Taran Wanderer

Chapter 18 The Free Commots

FROM SMALL AVREN THEY WENDED eastward at an easy pace, halting as it pleased them, sleeping on the turf or sheltering at one of the many farmsteads among the rich green vales. This was the land of the Free Commots, of cottages clustering in loose circles, rimmed by cultivated fields and pastures. Taran found the Commot folk courteous and hospitable. Though he named himself only as Taran Wanderer, the dwellers in these hamlets and villages respected his privacy and asked nothing of his birthplace, rank, or destination.

Taran and Gurgi had ridden into the outskirts of Commot Cenarth when Taran reined up Melynlas at a long, low-roofed shed from which rang the sound of hammer on anvil. Within, he found the smith, a barrel-chested, leather-aproned man with a stubbly black beard and a great shock of black hair bristly as a brush. His eyelashes were scorched, grime and soot smudged his face; sparks rained on his bare shoulders but he seemed to count them no more than fireflies. In a voice like stones rattling on a bronze shield he roared out a song in time with his hammer strokes so loudly that Taran judged the man's lungs as leathery as his bellows. While Gurgi cautiously drew back from the shower of sparks, Taran called a greeting, scarcely able to make himself heard above the din.

"Master Smith," he said, bowing deeply as the man at last caught sight of him and put down the hammer, "I am called Taran Wanderer and journey seeking a craft to help me earn my bread. I know a little of your art and ask you to teach me more. I have no gold or silver to pay you, but name any task and I will do it gladly."

"Away with you!" shouted the smith. "Tasks I have aplenty, but no time for teaching others to do them."

"Is time what lacks?" Taran said, glancing shrewdly at the smith. "I've heard it said that a man must be a true master of his craft if he would teach it.

"Hold!" roared the smith as Taran was about to turn away, and he snatched up the hammer as if he meant to throw it at Taran's head. "You doubt my skill? I've flattened men on my anvil for less! Skill? In all the Free Comrnots none has greater than Hevydd Son of Hirwas!"

With that he seized the tongs, drew a bar of red-hot iron from the roaring furnace, flung it on the anvil, and set to hammering with such quick strokes that Taran could hardly follow the movement of Hevydd's muscular arm; and suddenly there formed at the end of the bar a hawthorn blossom perfect in every turn of leaf and petal.

Taran looked at it in astonishment and admiration. "Never have I seen work so deftly done."

"Nor will you see it elsewhere," Hevydd answered, at pains to hide a proud grin. "But what tale do you tell me? You know the shaping of metal? The secrets are not given to many. Even I have not gained them all." Angrily he shook his bristly head. "The deepest? They lie hidden in Annuvin, stolen by Arawn Death-Lord. Lost they are. Lost forever to Prydain.

"But here, take these," ordered the smith, pressing the tongs and hammer into Taran's hands. "Beat the bar smooth as it was, and quickly, before it cools. Show me what strength you have in those chicken wings of yours."

Taran strode to the anvil and; as Coll had taught him long ago, did his best to straighten the rapidly cooling iron. The smith, folding his huge arms, eyed him critically for a time, then burst into loud laughter.

"Enough, enough!" cried Hevydd. "You speak truth. Of the art, indeed, you know little. And yet," he added, rubbing his chin with a battered thumb nearly as thick as a fist, "and yet, you have the sense of it." He looked closely at Taran. "But have you courage to stand up to fire? To fight hot iron with only hammer and tongs?"

"Teach me the craft," Taran replied. "You'll have no need to teach me courage."

"Boldly said!" cried Hevydd, clapping Taran on the shoulder. "I'll temper you well in my forge! Prove yourself to me and I'll vow to make a smith of you. Now, to begin…" His eye fell on Taran's empty scabbard. "Once, it would seem, you bore a blade."

"Once I did," Taran answered. "But it is long gone, and now I journey weaponless."

"Then you shall make a sword," commanded Hevydd. "And when you've done, you'll― tell me which is harder labor: smiting or smithing!"

To this Taran learned the answer soon enough. The next several days were the most toilsome he had ever spent. He thought, at first, the smith would set him to work shaping one of the many bars already in the forge. But Hevydd had no such intention.

"What, start when half the work is done?" Hevydd snorted. "No, no, my lad. You'll forge a sword from beginning to end."

Thus, the first task Hevydd gave Taran was gathering fuel for the furnace, and from dawn to dusk Taran stoked the fire until he saw the forge as a roaring, flame-tongued monster that could never eat its fill. Even then the work had only begun, for Hevydd soon put him to shoveling in a very mountain of stones, then smelting out the metal they bore. By the time the bar itself was cast, Taran's face and arms were scorched and blackened, and his hands were covered with more blisters than skin. His back ached; his ears rang with all the clank and clatter and with Hevydd's voice shouting orders and instructions. Gurgi, who had offered to pump the bellows, never faltered even when a cloud of sparks burst and flew into his shaggy hair, singeing it away in patches until he looked as if a flock of birds had plucked him to make their nests.

"Life's a forge!" cried the smith, as Taran, his brow streaming, beat at the strip of metal. "Yes, and hammer and anvil, too! You'll be roasted, smelted, and pounded, and you'll scarce know what's happening to you. But stand boldly to it! Metal's worthless till it's shaped and tempered!"

Despite the weariness that made him drop gratefully at day's end to the straw pallet in the shed, Taran's heart quickened and his spirits rose as the blade little by little took shape on the anvil. The heavy hammer seemed to weigh more each time he lifted it; but at last, with a joyous cry, he flung it down and raised the finished sword, well-wrought and balanced, gleaming brightly in the light of the forge.

"A handsome weapon, master smith!" he cried. "As fair as the one I bore!"

"What, then?" Hevydd exclaimed. "Have you done your work so well? Would you trust your life to a blade untried?" He flung out a burly arm toward a wooden block in a corner of the forge. "Strike hard," he commanded. "The flat, the edge, and the point."

Proudly Taran raised the sword high and swung it down to the block. The weapon shuddered with the force of the blow, a sharp crack and clang smote his ears as the blade shattered and the shards went flying in all directions.

Taran shouted in dismay and could have wept as he stared, disbelieving, at the broken hilt still clutched in his hand. He turned and gave Hevydd a despairing glance.

"So ho!" cried the smith, not at all distressed by Taran's wretched and rueful expression. "Did you think to gain a worthy blade at first go?" He laughed loudly and shook his head.

"Then what must I do?" Taran cried, appalled at Hevydd's words.

"Do?" the smith retorted. "What else but start anew?"

And so they did, but this time for Taran there remained little of his joyous hopes. He labored grimly and doggedly, all the more dejected when Hevydd ordered him to cast aside two new blades even before they were tempered, judging them already flawed. The reek of hot metal clung in his nostrils and flavored even the food he hastily swallowed; the billows of steam from the great quenching tub choked him as if he were breathing clouds of scalding fog; the ceaseless din almost addled his wits until indeed he felt it was himself, not the blade, being hammered.

The next blade he shaped seemed to him ugly, dinted, and scarred, without the fair proportions of the first, and this too he would have cast aside had not the smith ordered him to finish it.

"This may well serve," Hevydd told him confidently, despite the doubtful look Taran gave him.

Again Taran strode to the block and raised the sword. Doing his best to shatter the ungraceful weapon, he brought it down with all his strength. The blade rang like a bell. This time it was the block that split in two.

"Now," said Hevydd quietly. "That's a blade worth bearing."

Then he clapped his hands and seized Taran's arm. "You've strength in those chicken wings after all! You've proved yourself as well as you proved the blade. Stay, lad, and I'll teach you all I know."

Taran said nothing for a time, but looked, not without pride, at the new-forged blade. "You have already taught me much," he said at last to Hevydd, "though I lost what I had hoped to gain. For I had hoped I was indeed a swordsmith. I have learned that I am not."

"How then!" cried Hevydd. "You've the makings of an honest swordsmith, as good as any in Prydain."

"It cheers me to think that may be true," Taran answered. "But I know in my heart your craft is not mine. A spur drove me from Small Avren, and it drives me now. And so must I journey, even if I wished to stay."

The smith nodded. "You are well-named, Wanderer. So be it. I ask no man to go against his heart. Keep the blade in token of friendship. Yours it is, more so than any other, for you forged it with your own hands."

"It's not a noble weapon, and thus it suits me all the more," Taran laughed, glancing at the ungainly sword. "Lucky it was that I didn't have to make a dozen before it."

"Luck?" snorted Hevydd, as Taran and Gurgi took leave of him. "Not so! More labor than luck.

Life's a forge, say I! Face the pounding; don't fear the proving; and you'll stand well against any hammer and anvil!"

WITH HEVYDD THE SMITH waving a sooty hand in farewell, the companions traveled on, bearing northward along the rich valley of Great Avren. A few days of easy riding through pleasant countryside brought them to the edge of Commot Gwenith. Here, a shower suddenly began pelting down on them, and the wayfarers galloped for the first shelter they could find.

It was a cluster of sheds, stables, chicken roosts, and storehouses seeming to ramble in all directions, but as Taran dismounted and hastened to the cottage amid the maze of buildings, he realized all were linked by covered walkways or flagstoned paths, and whichever he followed would sooner or later have brought him to the doorway that opened almost before he knocked on it.

"Come in, and a good greeting to you!" called a voice crackling like twigs in a fire.

As Gurgi scuttled inside to escape the teeming rain, Taran saw a bent old woman cloaked in gray beckoning him to the hearth. Her long hair was white as the wool on the distaff hanging from her belt of plaited cords. Below her short-girt robe, her bony shins looked thin and hard as spindles. A web of wrinkles covered her face; her cheeks were withered; but for all her years she gave no sign of frailty, as though time had only toughened and seasoned her; and her gray eyes were sharp and bright as a pair of new needles.

"I am Dwyvach Weaver-Woman," she replied, as Taran bowed courteously and told her his name. "Taran Wanderer?" she repeated with a tart smile. "From the look of you, I'd say you've indeed been wandering. More than you've been washing. And that's clear as the warp and weft on my loom."

"Yes, yes!" cried Gurgi. "See loom of weavings! See windings and bindings! So many it makes Gurgi's poor tender head swim with twirlings and whirlings!"

Taran for the first time noticed a high loom standing like a giant harp of a thousand strings in a corner of the cottage. Around it were stacked bobbins of thread of all colors; from the rafters dangled skeins of yarn, hanks of wool and flax; on the walls hung lengths of finished fabrics, some of bright hue and simple design, others of subtler craftsmanship and patterns more difficult to follow. Taran gazed astonished at the endless variety, then turned to the weaver-woman of Gwenith.

"This calls for skill beyond anything I know," he said admiringly. "How is such work done?"

"How done?" The weaver-woman chuckled. "It would take me more breath to tell than you have ears to listen. But if you look, you shall see."

So saying, she hobbled to the loom, climbed to the bench in front of it, and with surprising vigor began plying the shuttle back and forth, all the while working her feet on the treadles below, hardly pausing to glance at her handiwork. At last she stopped, cocked her head at Taran, fixed him with her sharp gray eyes, and said, "Thus is it done, Wanderer, as all things are, each in its own way, thread by thread."

Taran's amazement had grown all the more. "This would I gladly learn," he said eagerly. "The craft of the swordsmith was not mine. Perhaps the craft of the weaver may be. I pray you, will you teach it to me?"

"That I will, since you ask," replied Dwyvach. "But mind you: It is one thing to admire a well-woven bit of cloth and another to sit yourself before the loom."

"My thanks to you," Taran exclaimed. "I'll not fear to labor at your loom. With Hevydd the Smith, I didn't shrink from hot iron or the flames of his forge, and a weaver's shuttle is a lighter burden than a smith's hammer."

"Think you so?" Dwyvach asked, with a dry chuckle that sounded like knitting needles clicking together. "Then what shall you weave to begin with?" she went on, eyeing him sharply. "Taran Wanderer you call yourself? Taran Threadbare would be more like it! Would you weave yourself a new cloak? Thus you'll gain something to put on your back, and I'll see what skill you have in your fingers."

Taran willingly agreed; but next day, instead of teaching him weaving, Dwyvach led the companions to one of her many chambers, which Taran saw full nearly to bursting with piles of wool.

"Tease out the thorns, pick out the cockleburs," the weaver-woman ordered. "Comb it, card it― carefully, Wanderer, or when your cloak is done you'll feel it's made of thistles instead of wool!"

The size of the task ahead of him made Taran despair of ever finishing, but he and Gurgi started the painstaking work, with Dwyvach herself lending a hand. The aged weaver-woman, Taran soon learned, had not only a tart tongue but a keen eye. Nothing escaped her; she spied the smallest knot, speck, or flaw, and brought Taran's attention to it with a sharp rap from her distaff to his knuckles. But what smarted Taran more than the distaff was to learn that Dwyvach, despite her years, could work faster, longer, and harder than he himself. At the end of each day Taran's eyes were bleary, his fingers raw, and his head nodded wearily; yet the old weaver-woman was bright and spry as if the day had scarce begun.

Nevertheless, the work at last was finished. But now Dwyvach set him in front of a huge spinning wheel. "The finest wool is useless until it's spun to thread," the weaver woman told him. "So you'd best begin learning that, as well."

"But spinnings are woman's toilings!" Gurgi protested. "No, no, spinnings are not fitting for bold and clever weaver-men!"

"Indeed!" snorted Dwyvach. "Then sit you down and learn otherwise. I've heard men complain of doing woman's work, and women complain of doing man's work," she added, fastening her bony thumb and forefinger on Gurgi's ear and marching him to a stool beside Taran, "but I've never heard the work complain of who did it, so long as it got done!"

And so, under Dwyvach's watchful eye, Taran and Gurgi spun thread and filled bobbins during the next few days. Chastened by Dwyvach's words, Gurgi did his best to help, though all too often the hapless creature managed only to tangle himself in the long strands. Next, Dwyvach took the companions to a shed where pots of dye bubbled over a fire. Here, Taran fared no better than Gurgi, for when the yarn was at last dyed, he was bespattered from head to toe with colors, and Gurgi himself looked like a rainbow suddenly sprouting hair.

Not until all these other tasks were done to Dwyvach's satisfaction did she take Taran to a weaving room; and there his heart sank, for the loom stood bare and stark as a leafless tree.

"How then?" clucked the weaver-woman as Taran gave her a rueful glance. "The loom must be threaded. Did I not tell you: All things are done step by step and strand by strand?"

"Hevydd the Smith told me life was a forge," Taran sighed, as he laboriously tried to reckon the countless threads needed, "and I think I'll be well-tempered before my cloak is finished."

"Life a forge?" said the weaver-woman. "A loom, rather, where lives and days intertwine; and wise he is who can learn to see the pattern. But if you mean to have a new cloak, you'd do better to work more and chatter less. Or did you hope for a host of spiders to come and labor for you?"

Even after deciding on the pattern, and threading the loom, Taran still saw only a hopeless, confusing tangle of threads. The cloth was painfully slow in forming and at the end of a long day he had little more than a hand's breadth of fabric to show for all his toil.

"Did I ever think a weaver's shuttle a light burden?" Taran sighed. "It feels heavier than hammer, tongs, and anvil all together!"

"It's not the shuttle that burdens you," answered Dwyvach, "but lack of skill, a heavy burden, Wanderer, that only one thing can lift."

"What secret is that?" Taran cried. "Teach it to me now or my cloak will never be done."

But Dwyvach only smiled. "It is patience, Wanderer. As for teaching it, that I cannot do. It is both the first thing and the last thing you must learn for yourself."

Taran gloomily went back to work, sure he would be as ancient as Dwyvach before finishing the garment. Nevertheless, as his hands became used to the task the shuttle darted back and forth like a fish among reeds, and the cloth grew steadily on the loom; though Dwyvach was satisfied with his progress; Taran, to his own surprise, was not.

"The pattern," he murmured, frowning. "It― I don't know, somehow it doesn't please me."

"Now then, Wanderer," replied Dwyvach, "no man put a sword to your throat; the choice of pattern was your own."

"That it was," Taran admitted. "But now I see it closely, I would rather have chosen another."

"Ah , ah," said Dwyvach, with her dry chuckle, "in that case you have but one of two things to do. Either finish a cloak you'll be ill-content to wear, or unravel it and start anew. For the loom weaves only the pattern set upon it."

Taran stared a long while at his handiwork. At last he took a deep breath, sighed, and shook his head. "So be it. I'll start anew."

Over the next few days he ruefully unthreaded and rethreaded the loom. But after it was ready and he began weaving once again, he was delighted to find the cloth grow faster than ever it had done before, and his spirits rose with his new-found skill. When the cloak at last was done, he held it up proudly.

"This is far better than what I had," he cried. "But I doubt I'll ever be able to wear a cloak again without thinking of every thread!"

Gurgi shouted triumphantly and Dwyvach bobbed her head in approval.

"Well-woven," she said. Her expression had lost much of its tartness and she looked fondly at Taran, seeming to smile within herself. "You have skill in your fingers, Wanderer," she said, with unaccustomed gentleness. "Enough to make you one of the finest weavers in Prydain. And if my distaff and your knuckles met more often than you liked, it was because I deemed you worth reproving. Dwell in my house, if you choose, work at my loom, and what I know I will teach you."

Taran did not answer immediately, and as he hesitated, the weaver-woman smiled and spoke again.

"I know what is in your heart, Wanderer," she said. "A young man's way is restless; yes, and a young girl's too― I'm not so gone in years that I've forgotten. Your face tells me it is not your wish to stay in Commot Gwenith."

Taran nodded. "As much as I hoped to be a swordsmith, so I hoped to be a weaver. But you speak truth. This is not the way I would follow."

"Then must we say farewell," answered the weaver woman. "But mind you," she added, in her usual sharp tone, "if life is a loom, the pattern you weave is not so easily unraveled."

TARAN AND GURGI SET OFF again, still journeying northward, and soon Commot Gwenith was far behind them. Though Taran wore his new cloak on his shoulders and his new blade at his side, his pleasure in them shortly gave way to disquiet. The words of Dwyvach lingered in his mind, and his thoughts turned to another loom in the distant Marshes of Morva.

"And what of Orddu?" he said. "Does she weave with more than threads? The robin has truly been scratching for his worms. But have I indeed chosen my own pattern, or am I no more than a thread on her loom? If that be so, then I fear it's a thread serving little purpose. At any rate," he added, with a rueful laugh, "it's a long and tangled one."

But these gloomy thoughts flew from his mind when, some days later, Melynlas bore him to the top of a rise and he looked down on the fairest Commot he had ever seen. A tall stand of firs and hemlocks circled broad, well-tended fields, green and abundant. White, thatch-roofed cottages sparkled in shafts of sunlight. The air itself seemed different to him, cool and touched with the sharp scent of evergreens. His heart quickened as he watched, and a strange excitement filled him.

Gurgi had ridden up beside him. "Kindly master, can we not stop here?"

"Yes," Taran murmured, his eyes never leaving the fields and cottages. "Yes. Here shall we rest."

He urged Melynlas down the slope, with Gurgi cantering eagerly behind him. Crossing a shallow stream, Taran reined up at the sight of a hale old man digging busily near the water's edge. Beside him stood a pair of wooden buckets on a yoke, and into these he carefully poured spadefuls of pale brown earth. His iron-gray hair and beard were cropped short; despite his age, his arms seemed as brawny as those of Hevydd the Smith.

"A good greeting to you, master delver," Taran called. "What place is this?"

The man turned, wiped his deeply lined brow with a forearm, and looked at Taran with keen blue eyes. "The water your horse is standing in― and churning to mud, by the way― is Fernbrake Stream. The Commot? This is Commot Merin."