Toads of Grimmerdale

5

It would seem that the enemy was spent, at least the snakes did not strike outward again. Watching them warily, Trystan retreated, dared to stop and rest with the woman. He leaned above her to touch her cheek. To his fingers the flesh was cold, faintly clammy. Dead? Had the air been choked from her?

He burrowed beneath the edges of her hood, sought the pulse in her throat. He could find none, so he tried to lay his hand directly above her heart. In doing so he had to break her grip on what lay between her breasts. When he touched a small bag there a throbbing, a warmth spread up his hand, and he jerked hastily away before he realized this was not a danger but a source of energy and life.

Her heart still beat. Best get her well away while those things in the hexagon were quiescent. For he feared their defeat was only momentary.

Trystan dared to sheath his sword, leaving both arms free to carry the woman. For all the bulk of her cloak and clothing she was slender, less than the weight he expected.

Now his retreat was that of a coastal sea crab, keeping part attention on the stew pot of blue light at his back, part on the footing ahead. And he drew a full breath again only when he had put two rings of the standing stones between him and the evil they guarded.

Nor was he unaware that there was still something dragging on him, trying to force him to face about. That he battled with will and his sense of self-preservation, his teeth set, a grimace of effort stiffening mouth and jaw.

One by one he pushed past the standing stones. As he went the way grew darker, the weird light fading. And he was beginning to fear that he could no longer trust his own sight. Twice he found himself off the road, making a detour around a pillar which seemed to sprout before him—and thereby heading back the way he had come.

Thus he fought both the compulsion to return and the tricks of vision, learning to fasten his attention on some point only a few steps ahead and wait until he had passed that before he set another goal.

He came at last, the woman resting over his shoulder, into the clean night, the last of the stones behind him. Now he was weak, so weary that he might have made a twenty-four-hour march and fought a brisk skirmish at the end of it. He slipped to his knees, lowered his burden to the surface of the Old Road where, in the open, the wind had scoured the snow away.

There was no moon, the cloud cover was heavy. The woman was now only a dark bulk. Trystan squatted on his heels, his hands dangling loose between his knees, and tried to think coherently.

Of how he had come up here he had no memory at all. He had gone to bed in the normal manner at the inn, first waking to danger when he faced the crawling light in the hexagon. That he had also there fought a danger of the old time he had no doubt at all. But what had drawn him there?

He remembered forcing open the inn window to look upslope. Had that simple curiosity of his been the trigger for this adventure? But that the people of the inn could live unconcerned so close to such a peril—he could hardly believe that. Or because they had lived here so long, were the descendants of men rooted in Grimmerdale, had they developed an immunity to dark forces?

But what had the thing or things in the hexagon said? That she who lay here had delivered him to them. If so—why? Trystan hunched forward on his knees, twitched aside the edge of the hood, stooping very close to look at her. But it was hard to distinguish more than just the general outline of her features in this limited light.

Suddenly her body arched away from him. She screamed with such terror as startled him and pushed against the road under her, her whole attitude one of such agony of fear as held him motionless. Somehow she got to her feet. She had only screamed that once, now he saw her arms move under the hindering folds of her cloak. The moon broke in a thin sliver from under the curtain of the cloud, glinted on what she held in her hand.

Steel swung in an arc for him. Trystan grappled with her before that blade bit into his flesh. She was like a wild thing, twisting, thrusting, kicking, even biting as she fought him. At length he handled her as harshly as he would a man, striking his fist against the side of her chin so her body went limply once more to the road.

There was nothing to do but take her back to the inn. Had her experience in that nest of standing stones affected her brain, turning all about her into enemies? Resigned, he ripped a strip from the hem of her cloak, tied her hands together. Then he got her up so she lay on his back, breathing shallowly, inert. So carrying her he slipped and slid, pushed with difficulty through the scrub to the valley below and the inn.

What the hour might be he did not know, but there was a night lantern burning above the door, which swung open at his push. He staggered over to the fireplace, dropped his burden by the hearth, and reached for wood to build up the blaze, wanting nothing now so much as to be warm again.

Hertha’s head hurt. The pain seemed to be in the side of her face. She opened her eyes. There was a dim light, but not that wan blue. No, this was flame glow. Someone hunched at the hearth setting wood lengths with expert skill to rebuild the fire. Already there was warmth her body welcomed. She tried to sit up. Only to discover that her wrists were clumsily bound together. Then she tensed, chilled by fear, watching intently him who nursed the fire.

His head was turned from her, she could not see his face, but she had no doubts that it was Trystan. And her last memory—him looming above her, hands outstretched—To take her again as he had that other time! Revulsion sickened her so that she swallowed hurriedly lest she spew openly on the floor. Cautiously she looked around. This was the large room of the inn, he must have carried her back. That he might take his pleasure in a better place than the icy cold of the Old Road? But if he tried that she could scream, fight—surely someone would come—

He looked to her now, watching her so intently that she felt he read easily every one of her confused thoughts.

“I shall kill you,” she said distinctly.

“As you tried to do?” He asked that not as if it greatly mattered, but as if he merely wondered.

“Next time I shall not turn aside!”

He laughed. And with that laughter for an instant he seemed another man, one younger, less hardened by time and deeds. “You did not turn aside this time, mistress, I had a hand in the matter.” Then that half smile which had come with the laughter faded, and he regarded her with narrowed eyes, his mouth tight set lip to lip.

Hertha refused to allow him to daunt her and glared back. Then he said:

“Or are you speaking of something else, mistress? Something which happened before you drew steel on me? Was that—that thing right? Did I march to its lair by your doing?”

Somehow she must have given away the truth by some fraction of change he read in her face. He leaned forward and gripped her by the shoulders, dragging her closer to him in spite of her struggles, holding her so they were squarely eye to eye.

“Why? By the Sword Hand of Karther the Fair, why? What did I ever do to you, girl, to make you want to push me into that maw? Or would any man have sufficed to feed those pets? Are they your pets or your masters? Above all, how comes humankind to deal with them? And if you so deal, why did you break their spell to aid me? Why, and why, and why!”

He shook her, first gently, and then, with each question, more harshly, so that her head bobbed on her shoulders and she was weak in his hands. Then he seemed to realize that she could not answer him, so he held her tight as if he must read the truth in her eyes as well as hear it from her lips.

“I have no kinsman willing to call you to a sword reckoning,” she told him wearily. “Therefore I must deal as best I can. I sought those who might have justice—”

“Justice! Then I was not just a random choice for some purpose of theirs! Yet I swear by the Nine Words of Min, I have never looked upon your face before. Did I in some battle slay close kin—father, brother, lover? But how may that be? Those I fought were the invaders. They had no women save those they rift from the dales. And would any daleswoman extract vengeance for one who was her master-by-force? Or is it that, girl? Did they take you and then you found a lord to your liking among them, forgetting your own blood?”

If she could have she would have spat full in his face for that insult. And he must have read her anger quickly.

“So that is not it. Then why? I am no ruffler who goes about picking quarrels with comrades. Nor have I ever taken any woman who came not to me willingly—”

“No?” She found speech at last, in a hot rush of words. “So you take no woman unwillingly, brave hero? What of three months since on the road to Lethendale? Is it such a usual course of action with you that it can be so lightly put out of mind?”

Angry and fearful though she was, she could see in his expression genuine surprise.

“Lethendale?” he repeated. “Three months since? Girl, I have never been that far north. As to three months ago—I was Marshal of Forces for Lord Ingrim before he fell at the siege of the port.”

He spoke so earnestly that she could almost have believed him, had not that bowguard on his wrist proved him false.

“You lie! Yes, you may not know my face. It was in darkness you took me, having overrun the invaders who had taken me captive. My brother’s men were all slain. For me they had other plans. But when aid came, then still I was for the taking—as you proved, Marshal!” She made of that a name to be hissed.

“I tell you, I was at the port!” He had released her and she backed against the settle, leaving a good space between them.

“You would swear before a Truth Stone it was me? You know my face, then?”

“I would swear, yes. As for your face—I do not need that. It was in the dark you had your will of me. But there is one proof I carry ever in my mind since that time.”

He raised his hand, rubbing fingers along the old scar on his chin, the fire gleamed on the bowguard. That did not match the plainness of his clothing, how could anyone forget seeing it?

“That proof being?”

“You wear it on your wrist, in plain sight. Just as I saw it then, ravisher—your bowguard!”

He held his wrist out, studying the band. “Bowguard! So that is your proof, that made you somehow send me to the Toads.” He was half smiling again, but this time cruelly and with no amusement. “You did send me there, did you not?” He reached forward and before she could dodge pulled the hood fully from her head, stared at her.

“What have you done with the toad-face, girl? Was that some trick of paint, or some magicking you laid on yourself? Much you must have wanted me to so despoil your own seeming to carry through your plan.”

She raised her bound hands, touched her cheeks with cold fingers. This time there was no mirror, but if he said the loathsome spotting was gone, then it must be so.

“They did it—” she said, only half comprehending. She had pictured this meeting many times, imagined him saying this or that. He must be very hardened in such matters to hold to this pose of half-amused interest.

“They? You mean the Toads? But now tell me why, having so neatly put me in their power, you were willing to risk your life in my behalf? That I cannot understand. For it seems to me that to traffic with such as abide up that hill is a fearsome thing and one which only the desperate would do. Such desperation is not lightly turned aside—so—why did you save me, girl?”

She answered with the truth. “I do not know. Perhaps because the hurt being mine, the payment should also be mine—that, a little, I think. But even more—” She paused so long he prodded her.

“But even more, girl?”

“I could not in the end leave even such a man as you to them!”

“Very well, that I can accept. Hate and fear and despair can drive us all to bargains we repent of later. You made one and then found you were too human to carry it through. Then later on the road you chose to try with honest steel and your own hand—”

“You—you would have taken me—again!” Hertha forced out the words. But the heat in her cheeks came not from the fire but from the old shame eating her.

“So that’s what you thought? Perhaps, given the memories you carry, it was natural enough.” Trystan nodded. “But now it is your turn to listen to me, girl. Item first: I have never been to Lethendale, three months ago, three years ago—never! Second: this which you have come to judge me on,” he held the wrist closer, using the fingers of his other hand to tap upon it, “I did not have three months ago. When the invaders were close pent in the port during the last siege, we had many levies from the outlands come to join us. They had mopped up such raiding bands as had been caught out of there when we moved in to besiege.

“A siege is mainly a time of idleness, and idle men amuse themselves in various ways. We had only to see that the enemy did not break out along the shores while we waited for the coasting ships from Handelsburg and Vennesport to arrive to harry them from the sea. There were many games of chance played during that waiting. And, though I am supposed by most to be a cautious man, little given to such amusements, I was willing to risk a throw now and then.

“This I so won. He who staked it was like Urre, son to some dead lord, with naught but ruins and a lost home to return to if and when the war ended. Two days later he was killed in one of the sorties the invaders now and then made. He had begged me to hold this so that when luck ran again in his way he might buy it back, for it was one of the treasures of his family. In the fighting I discovered it was not only decorative but useful. Since he could not redeem it, being dead, I kept it—to my disfavor it would seem. As for the boy, I do not even know his name—for they called him by some nickname. He was befuddled with drink half the time, being one of the walking dead—”

“ ‘Walking dead’?” His story carried conviction, not only his words but his tone, and the straight way he told it.

“That is what I call them. High Hallack has them in many—some are youngsters, such as Urre, the owner of this,” again he smoothed the guard. “Others are old enough to be their fathers. The dales have been swept with fire and sword. Those which were not invaded have been bled of their men, of their crops—to feed both armies. This is a land which can now go two ways. It can sink into nothingness from exhaustion, or there can rise new leaders to restore and with will and courage build again.”

It seemed to Hertha that he no longer spoke to her, but rather voiced his own thoughts. As for her, there was a kind of emptiness within, as if something she carried had been rift from her. That thought sent her bound hands protectively to her belly.

The child within her—who had been its father? One of the lost ones, some boy who had had all taken from him and so became a dead man with no hope in the future, one without any curb upon his appetites. Doubtless he had lived for the day only, taken ruthlessly all offered during that short day. Thinking so, she again sensed that queer light feeling. She had not lost the child, this child which Gunnora promised would be hers alone. What she had lost was the driving need for justice which had brought her to Grimmerdale—to traffic with the Toads.

Hertha shuddered, cold to her bones in spite of her cloak and the fire. What had she done in her blindness, her hate and horror? Almost she had delivered an innocent man to that she dared not now think upon. What had saved her from that at the very last, made her throw that stone rubbed with Gunnora’s talisman? Some part of her that refused to allow such a foul crime?

And what could she ever say to this man who had now turned his head from her, was looking into the flames as if therein he could read message runes? She half raised her bound hands; he looked again with a real smile, from which she shrank as she might from a blow, remembering how it might have been with him at this moment.

“There is no need for you to go bound. Or do you still thirst for my blood?” He caught her hands, pulled at the cloth tying them.

“No,” Hertha answered in a low voice. “I believe you. He whom I sought is now dead.”

“Do you regret that death came not at your hand?”

She stared down at her fingers resting again against her middle, wondering dully what would become of her now. Would she remain a tavern wench, should she crawl back to Kuno? No! At that her head went up again, pride returned.

“I asked, are you sorry you did not take your knife to my gamester?”

“No.”

“But still there are dark thoughts troubling you—”

“Those are none of your concern.” She would have risen, but he put out a hand to hold her where she was.

“There is an old custom. If a man draw a maid from dire danger, he has certain rights—”

For a moment she did not understand; when she did her bruised pride strengthened her to meet his eyes.

“You speak of maids—I am not such.”

His indrawn breath made a small sound, but one loud in the silence between them. “So that was the why! You are no farm or tavern wench, are you? So you could not accept what he had done to you? But have you no kinsman to trade for your honor?”

She laughed raggedly. “Marshal, my kinsman had but one wish: that I submit to ancient practices among women so that he would not be shamed before his kind. Having done so I would have been allowed to dwell by sufferance in my own home, being reminded not more than perhaps thrice daily of his great goodness.”

“And this you would not do. But with your great hate against him who fathered what you carry—”

“No!” Her hands went to that talisman of Gunnora’s. “I have been to the shrine of Gunnora. She has promised me my desire—the child I bear will be mine wholly, taking nothing from him!”

“And did she also send you to the Toads?”

Hertha shook her head. “Gunnora guards life. I knew of the Toads from old tales. I went to them in my blindness and they gave me that which I placed in your bed to draw you to them. Also they changed my face in some manner. But—that is no longer so?”

“No. Had I not known your cloak, I should not have known you. But this thing in my bed—Stay you here and wait. But promise me this, should I return as one under orders, bar the door in my face and keep me here at all costs!”

“I promise.”

He went with the light-footed tread of one who had learned to walk softly in strange places because life might well depend upon it. Now that she was alone her mind returned to the matter of what could come to her with the morn. Who would give her refuge—save perhaps the Wise Women of Lethendale. It might be that this marshal would escort her there. Though what did he owe her except such danger as she did not want to think on. But although her thoughts twisted and turned she saw no answer except Lethendale. Perhaps Kuno would some day—no! She would have no plan leading in that path!

Trystan was back holding two sticks such as were used to kindle brazier flames. Gripped between their ends was the pebble she had brought from the Toads’ hold. As he reached the fire he hurled that bit of rock into the heart of the blaze.

He might have poured oil upon the flames so fierce was the answer as the pebble fell among the logs. Both shrank back.

“That trap is now set at naught,” he observed. “I would not have any other fall into it.”

She stiffened, guessing what he thought of her for the setting of that same trap.

“To say I am sorry is only mouthing words, but—”

“To one with such a burden, lady, I can return that I understand. When one is driven by a lash one takes any way to free oneself. And in the end you did not suffer that I be taken.”

“Having first thrust you well into the trap! Also—you should have let them take me then as they wished. It would only have been fitting.”

“Have done!” He brought his fist down on the seat of the settle beside which he knelt. “Let us make an end to what is past. It is gone. To cling to this wrong or that, keep it festering in mind and heart, is to cripple one. Now, lady,” she detected a new formality in his voice, “where do you go, if not to your brother’s house? It is not in your mind to return there, I gather.”

She fumbled with the talisman. “In that you are right. There is but one place left—the Wise Women of Lethendale. I can beg shelter from them.” She wondered if he would offer the escort she had no right to ask, but his next question surprised her.

“Lady, when you came hither, you came by the Old Road over ridge, did you not?”

“That is so. To me it seemed less dangerous than the open highway. It has, by legend, those who sometimes use it, but I deemed those less dangerous than my own kind.”

“If you came from that direction you must have passed through Nordendale—what manner of holding is it?”

She had no idea why he wished such knowledge, but she told him what she had seen of that leaderless dale, the handful of people there deep sunk in a lethargy in which they clung to the ruins of what had once been thriving life. He listened eagerly to what she told him.

“You have a seeing eye, lady, and have marked more than most given such a short time to observe. Now listen to me, for this may be a matter of concern to both of us in the future. It is in my mind that Nordendale needs a lord, one to give the people heart, rebuild what man and time have wasted. I have come north seeking a chance to be not just my own man, but to have a holding. I am not like Urre, who was born to a hall and drinks and wenches now to forget what ill tricks fortune plays.

“Who my father was"—he shrugged—"I never heard my mother say. That he was of no common blood, that I knew, though in later years she drudged in a merchant’s house before the coming of the invaders for bread to our mouths and clothing for our backs. When I was yet a boy I knew that the only way I might rise was through this"—he touched the hilt of his sword. “The merchant guild welcomed no nameless man, but for a sword and a bow there is always a ready market. So I set about learning the skills of war as thoroughly as any man might. Then came the invasion, and I went from Lord to Lord, becoming at last Marshal of Forces. Yet always before me hung the thought that in such a time of upheaval, with the old families being killed out, this was my chance.

“Now there are masterless men in plenty, too restless after years of killing to settle back behind any plow. Some will turn outlaw readily, but with a half dozen of such at my back I can take a dale which lies vacant of rule, such as this Nordendale. The people there need a leader, I am depriving none of lawful inheritance, but will keep the peace and defend it against outlaws—for there will be many such now. There are men here, passing through Grimmerdale, willing to be hired for such a purpose. Enough so I can pick and choose at will.”

He paused and she read in his face that this indeed was the great moving wish of his life. When he did not continue she asked a question:

“I can see how a determined man can do this thing. But how will it concern me in any way?”

He looked to her straightly. She did not understand the full meaning of what she saw in his eyes.

“I think we are greatly alike, lady. So much so that we could walk the same road, to profit of both. No, I do not ask an answer now. Tomorrow"—he got to his feet stretching—"no, today, I shall speak to those men I have marked. If they are willing to take liege oath to me, we shall ride to Lethendale, where you may shelter as you wish for a space. It is not far—”

“By horse,” she answered in relief, “perhaps two days west.”

“Good enough. Then, having left you there, I shall go to Nordendale—and straightway that shall cease to be masterless. Give me, say, threescore days, and I shall come riding again to Lethendale. Then you shall give me your answer as to whether our roads join or no.”

“You forget,” her hands pressed upon her belly, “I am no maid, nor widow, and yet I carry—”

“Have you not Gunnora’s promise upon the subject? The child will be wholly yours. One welcome holds for you both.”

She studied his face, determined to make sure if he meant that. What she read there—she caught her breath, her hands rising to her breast, pressing hard upon the talisman.

“Come as you promise to Lethendale,” she said in a low voice. “You shall be welcome and have your answer in good seeming.”