Graynelore

Only Cloggie-Unthank and Fibra, the Old-man’s younger brothers, stood up on their hobbs and held their ground at his approach. This was not meant as a threat. It was a statement of rank, rather than a signal of defiance. They were not about to confront him. An unspoken gesture of acknowledgement passed briefly between the three. There were no words of welcome.

I sat quietly upon my hobby-horse and waited for the address I knew would soon follow. (There is a strict order to these events.) There was another flash of sunlight against silvered armour as The Graynelord turned his hobb about to face the gathering. And then, in a strong voice, he began to bellow:

‘What is the Graynelore?’ he asked. ‘Let me tell you…I am the Graynelore.’ The Old-man paused there, looked about purposefully, perhaps to catch the eye of his two brothers, as if he expected an argument. When none came he repeated his statement more loudly: ‘I am the Graynelore.’ Then, another gap, not for a response this time, but for respectful silence…‘This sword I carry is the Graynelore!’ He lifted his war sword above his head and held it there, steady, for all to see. ‘The Graynelore is not a place, though the land bears its name. It is not a matter of lines drawn upon a map. The Graynelore is not a belief, nor is it an ideal…I am the Graynelore.’ Again he deliberately paused. ‘You are the Graynelore.’

This formal announcement was the signal for every man there to lift his own arm: his sword or his staff, his axe or his spear, and return The Graynelord’s cry.

‘I am the Graynelore!’ We all bellowed as one.

‘Upon Graynelore there is no king. You will find no queen, here. There is no law, but that which the strength of your own arm can impose upon another. It is the sword you carry. Upon Graynelore you answer only to the grayne…your surname, your family, your blood-tie. Make no idle friend here. Make no common ally. Make no enemy, unless he is a dead man. For either is as likely to stab you in the back.’

‘I am The Graynelore!’ cried our gathering to a man.

Emboldened, the Old-man swung his sword about his head and bellowed ever louder. ‘Upon Graynelore we take what we need or else leave well alone. We do not kill the poor wretch for the sake of the killing. Why would we? And if, all things considered, we do not live long, at least we all live well! Eh? At least, we all live well!’

Another silence. Who among us would have dared to argue with him?

Banners began to flap noisily, attacked by a sudden breeze. Above us, far above us, the black birds had turned about and turned again, swooping impatiently across the sky. They were eager for the Riding to begin.

If it was I who spoke then, it was a muttering under my breath meant only for myself. ‘We are not so much at constant war with everyone, my Graynelord…only there is never a day when we are quite at peace with ourselves. Where does that leave our tomorrow?’

‘I suppose things might look differently tomorrow.’ The retort came from my elder-cousin, my Headman, Wolfrid, who was sat upon his hobb close by. I might have answered him, only never got the chance. The Old-man’s ranting was not quite done with:

‘And on this day,’ he cried, ‘on this day, we are to go a-courting, you and I. There is a wild lady in want of a Graynelord’s close company, who must be taken well in hand. And there are Elfwych in need of a reminder of their faithfulness.’

Our jeering laughter in reply; our contempt for our enemy, was real enough. The Wishards hated the Elfwych. I hated the Elfwych. The Elfwych hated us. Why? Perhaps there was no reason good enough. None better than this: it is convenient to hate the men you are about to steal from, the men you are about to kill. Though in truth, it was an endless blood feud, come out of time, and without redemption. This was ever the Graynelore.

The Old-man’s address ended there without further explanation or demand. It was obvious he had enjoyed his own speech, its grandeur and its pomp. He also believed in it implicitly. At least, he had to be seen to believe in it implicitly. Without that he knew he could not command men. That was the real trick of his leadership.

Others might pretend that The Graynelord ruled by right of birth, or because he was bequeathed the symbol of power that made it so. The Eye Stone…the favourite of the Beggar Bard’s tales. The stone tablet that so many men here believed rested within the walls of the Old-man’s Stronghold at Carraw Peel (though not a single one – outside of his trusted Council – claimed to have seen it with his own eyes). In truth, symbols were just that: symbols. Made of stone, or cloth, or paper: symbols. Solid reality or simple belief: symbols. He was only one man. His rule was a mortal fact, and he knew it.

Old-man Wishard lowered his sword arm, but did not sheath his sword (another symbol). He took the reign of his hobby-horse and, turning the animal about, began to ride out slowly, off Pennen Fields. He made a display of checking the sky for the position of the sun before turning to face the West March: the homeland of the Elfwych.

At my back, to the rear of our gathering many of my kinsmen had not heard a word of the Old-man’s speech; only the sound of his voice carrying across the wind. The great bellowing noises he had made. The show he had put on. In truth, it did not matter to them what was said only that he had said it.

He led, they followed.

Chapter Five

The Elfwych Riding

The immediate reaction of our greater gathering to the Old-man’s departure was not what you might have expected of a faithful grayne. Certainly, his personal bodyguard spurred their hobby-horses and, banners waving, followed quickly after him. His brothers too, Cloggie-Unthank and Fibra, took their guard and, each very aware of the other, began their Riding. Not so the Old-man’s trusted Council. Casually, they turned their prancing ponies aside and, without a look behind them, began their long ride home unattended. Their parading was done with, and their usefulness was at an end here. And if there were a few solitary riders among us common men who started after The Graynelord’s party, the majority deliberately stood up their hobbs and stayed their ground.

There was one last ritual to be performed before we were ready to set out.

In almost revered silence, groups of women, youths, and young girls began to appear among us. They walked quietly between the massed ranks of mounted hobby-horses, giving each man there a small present as they went, or so it seemed. Old Emma’s Notyet came to me. She held a young babbie in her arms (not mine, I hasten, nor hers) and he offered me up an empty leather pouch. Another man took a single spur from his wife, while yet another was given a sharpened dagger, and so on…These things were not given as keepsakes. Rather, they were tokens of encouragement, demand, and expectation. Their meaning was simple and clear:

If we were to return home safely, we must none of us return home empty-handed.

The leather pouch was given to me that I might fill it with coins or seeds or trinkets, or some other treasure procured upon the Riding. I took it without a single word passing between us. Notyet and I had already made our goodbyes. And if, as she turned away, she threw me half a kiss, I did not catch it, or return the other half. Though I did watch her closely as she took her leave; and for far longer than I might. A fully grown woman, there was nothing special about her, no obvious or distinctive mark. She was a weedling still, and did not stand out in a crowd. Less than average of height, weak of pallor, not well bred. There was a trace of silver and blue in the shadows cast across her skin, especially evident in the folds of skin on her hands, between her fingers and her toes, and unevenly around her eyes and mouth, but these were common touches. I am neither describing great beauty nor a freak of nature. I, and all my kin from Beggar Bard to babbie, carry many of the same traits. Upon Graynelore, we are each of us the sum of our collected ancestry. Notyet might have been described as endearing, but never pretty. Her ears were long and slightly high, slightly elevated, but there was no elfin point. She wore her coarse hair plainly. She brushed it back off her face, letting it hang loosely at her shoulder and down her back, as was the custom. Her clothes were simple and functional with no hint of conceit. She wore a long dress, made of several loosely cut pieces of cloth sewn lightly together: it found its own bodyline and allowed for easy movement, let her skin breathe.

Do you think me self-indulgent? Or do I betray myself? Have my eyes lingered too long upon her? Would you have had me already in the frae? Have a care, my friend. Faced with death, who among men would not pause for a moment and risk a look back towards life?

When, finally, the greater body of the Riding set out to follow after the Old-man, it was a cold road we travelled. We needed no clues, no scented trail. We knew well enough where we were going: Staward Peel. The Elfwych Stronghold, stood at the centre of the West March, within a great meander of the River Winding, and at the foot of the hills they called The Rise. It was a well-placed tower-house, and easily defended at full strength.

Only, Staward Peel was not at full strength.

Its tower was already broken and badly maintained. Its walls, once as thick and strong as any in all Graynelore, had been breached many times in recent conflicts, and more poorly mended upon each event. The Elfwych could not depend upon it for their defence. They were a grayne in trouble; a surname in decline. Whatever gathering forces they could bring to their aid, we knew they would want to make their fight out in the open and on the run. In almost every way their misfortune was our advantage. And where it was not, our sheer weight in numbers would easily make the difference. For every fourth man Stain Elfwych could fetch up The Graynelord could fetch up ten. There would still be a hard fight, and killings, of course – no surname upon Graynelore would have it any other way – but the purpose of the Riding would be served. Old-man Wishard would get exactly what he was after.

I, Rogrig Wishard, had ridden the raider’s trail often enough. I knew what was expected of a Riding. Ours was not an army of rank and file. This raid was to be far less a considered attack than it was a free-for-all. We did not advance in the way of a single tutored cavalry. Rather, we straddled the fells and the moorlands: a series of loose rabbles. Close kin preferring to rely on close kin for their aid. The members of each house making their own way and in their own time. (And as often as not…with their own intentions and intended victims.) Sometimes long chains of men sprawled thinly across the fells, steadily making their way on their hobby-horses (only a very few a-foot). Sometimes a thick knot of fighting-men moved together as one body: finding their strength and their bravery in their tightly gathered number. This had ever been Cloggie-Unthank’s preference. Each house had its own particular fighting tactics and stuck to them rigidly. On the principle that, if something had worked once before, it was certain to work again. (Not always a sensible provision, I fear.)

For certain, there was to be no single great and glorious battle. What was expected here was a scourging. A series of melees and skirmishes taken up wherever they happened, rough-shod Ridings, and individual combats stretched out upon the day.

Without a doubt, there were men among us who liked this fighting business a little too much – aye, and on both sides – fighters who would give no quarter, killing to the last man or woman…or child. Then there were those who would openly buy or sell their lives with whatever means they could offer if their sword arm could not do it for them. Sometimes a handful of coin was enough, or the gift of a horse or…or else the shaming of a young girl.

It was in this way the Wishards were to answer the call of their Graynelord, and to make their mark upon the grayne of Stain Elfwych.

I rode among members of my own house, with my greater cousins, and the elder-men of Dingly Dell. Together we made our own fighting band. By choice we rode, not in a close formation, but strung out at a distance; each rider keeping a watch for himself, but in sight of his nearest kin. We preferred having open ground between us – enough to swing a sword arm freely. Fight and flee; hit and run; the quick skirmish was ever our ploy.

If I am to be truly honest, this Rogrig remembers very little of this particular Riding; the first of it that is: the setting out. (It was much like any other.) I can put scant detail to it.

I must have ridden many a fell. Crossed and recrossed the many roots and stems of the River Winding. I must have passed settlements; each almost identical, with their heavy-walled farmhouses; their bastles, ugly and squat. (The men of Graynelore are not builders, not creators by nature. They are all fighters and thieves. What was made was of necessity – if it could not be stolen.) Their wary, weary occupants shut up inside with their few rescued animals. Stone-cold faces, catching the sun, winking at their shutter-less wind-eyes, ever watchful; wanting, hoping, praying – no doubt – that our Riding would pass them by this day.

I must have trodden streams and skirted about the edges of the west marshlands. Or rather, let my hobby-horse lead me stubbornly across its secret paths. My tough little Dandy, who could carry not only her rider, but the whole world upon her back, it seemed. Pots and pans, wooden implements, swords and weaponry, sticks and stones, blanket rolls and stolen booty. She would carry it all, overloading the tiny workhorse; and yet she always stood her ground, made her way without protest.

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

The Killing Field

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, and this 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.

I was quick to remount Dandy, and began to follow the line of my kin across the rising hillside. Within a few moments, there was a thick knot of Elfwych breaking cover, coming down upon us. They were flailing their swords, trying to use the slope of the hill to increase the power of their swing. It was a good notion. Though they were come at us a-foot, if they struck us head on it would make for a bloody show; and us the victims.

I knew the ploy. Fortunately, I also knew the counter. I gave cry. Instinctively, my kin broke up our loose line and we scattered ourselves. We rode across the hillside; each of us deliberately moving in a different direction. And we went slowly – enticingly slowly – we wanted our enemies to follow after us.

That they did was their mistake. It split their number and broke their momentum. Once more on a reasonably even fell we could use our hobbs to drive our victims back, push them into gullies or up against outcrops of rock (as, on another day, we might have driven our shabby herds of fell beasts). First cornering them, then the slaughter: a man who has nowhere to run cannot hide.

Did I kill then, in the thick of it, in the heat? Yes, I killed, if I would bring it to mind…twice, at least, and in quick succession. My greater sword arm held the advantage, easily found its mark where panicked men, unwisely, left themselves open to it. Aye, and I quickly rifled the bloodied carcases, took what spoils I could to fill my empty leather purse.