trained. I heard somebody shouting, behind me and to the left, but I was riding to my father. I slid off Greylag and ran to him. He lay near his horse on the boggy grass, a crossbow bolt between his shoulder blades.
Ternoc was there, and others of his men, and one of our people, all coming around us, shouting and talking. Some of them ran off into the woods. Ternoc knelt beside me. He lifted up my fathers head a little and said, “Oh, Canoc, Canoc man, oh no you won’t do that, no.”
I said, “Is Ogge dead?”
“I don’t know,” Ternoc said, “I don’t know.” He looked around. “Get somebody to help us here,” he said.
The men were still shouting. “It’s him, it’s him,” one of them yelled, running to us. Branty neighed and reared, protesting all this confusion. “The adder, the fat adder, he’s burst open, dead, unmade! And his bastard cattle-thief son beside him!”
I got up and went over to Greylag. He stood lame, his weight off the left foreleg. I walked him over to Branty so that I could hold both horses.
“Can we put him on the colt?” I said.
Ternoc looked up at me, still bewildered.
“I want to carry him home,” I said. “Can we put him on the colt?”
There was more shouting, and more men coming and going and running, before at last a plank was-brought that had served as a footbridge over a brook. They laid Canoc on that, and so carried him up the long hills to Roddmant. They could lay him on his back, for the bolt had gone right through his breast and stood out a foot in front. I walked beside him. His face was calm and steady, and I did not want to close his eyes.
¦ 18 ¦
The graveyard of Caspromant is on a hillside south of the Stone House, looking towards the brown slopes of Mount Airn. We buried Canoc there close beside Melle. I put her brown shawl around him before we laid him down. It was not Parn but Gry who led the lament for him.
Mismanaged, like the boar hunt, Ogge’s foray had split into two groups; one went astray in Geremant and came out on our borders, where they did nothing but set a barn afire; our farmers drove them off. Ogge and Harba had stayed on the forest path, ten men with them, five of them bowmen. Canoc destroyed Ogge and his son and one of the bowmen. The rest escaped. A farmer’s son of Roddmant pursued them too far into the woods, where they turned on him; he wounded one with his boar lance before they brought him down. So the foray ended with five deaths.
After a time word came from Drummant that Denno and her son Sebb wanted an end to the feud, asking Caspromant to send them a white bull calf, as Canoc had promised, in sign of agreement. They sent with their messenger a fine roan colt. I rode with the group that took the white calf to Drummant.
It was strange to see the rooms I had been in but never seen, the faces I had known only as voices. But nothing moved me much at that time. I did our business there and returned.
I gave the roan colt to Alloc. I rode Branty now, for in that rush down the hill Greylag had strained his leg past repair, and he was out to grass now in the home paddock with Roanie. I went out to them every day or so with a panful of oats. They were glad to be together, and I often found them standing as horses do, close side by side, nose to flank, their tails twitching the May flies away. I liked to see them so.
Coaly ran with me whether I was afoot or on horseback, set free of her leash.
After a death it is the custom in the Uplands for there to be no selling or division of property, no marriages, no great undertakings or changes made, for a half year. Things go on as they were, as nearly as can be, throughout that time, and after that whatever settlements must be made are made. It is not a bad custom. In the matter of making peace with Drummant I had to act; otherwise I did not.
Alloc took my father’s place in overseeing the domain, and I took Allocs place as his assistant. He did not see it so; he thought he was assisting the brantor’s son. But he was the one who knew what had to be done and how to do it. I had done nothing for three years, and had been a child before that. Alloc knew the people, the land, the animals. I did not.
Gry did not ride to Caspromant now. I rode to Roddmant two or three times a halfmonth and sat with her and Ternoc, and Parn if she was there. Ternoc would greet me each time with a close, hard embrace, calling me son. He had loved and admired Canoc and grieved for him sorely and tried to put me in his place. Parn was restless and sparing with words as ever. Gry and I seldom spoke to each other alone; she was gentle and taciturn. Now and then we rode out, she on Star and I on Branty, and let our young horses have a run on the hills.
It was a fine summer and a good harvest. Come mid-October the crops were in. I rode to Roddmant and asked if Gry would ride with me. She came out and saddled up her pretty, dancing mare, and we rode up the glen in the golden sunlight.
At the waterfall pool, we let the horses graze on the banks where the grass was still lush and green. We sat on the rocks by the water in the sunlight. The branches of black willows nodded and nodded in the wind of the falling water. The three-note bird was silent.
“It’s soon to marry, Gry,” I said. “But I don’t see what else we can do.”
“No,” said she, agreeing.
“Do you want to stay here?”
“At Roddmant?”
“Or Caspromant.”
After a time she said, “Where else?”
“Well, what I thought is this. There is no brantor of Caspromant. Alloc is the man to manage the domain. He might join it to Roddmant and come under your father’s protection. I think that would suit them both. Allocs to marry Rab next month. They should have the Stone House at Caspromant. Maybe they’ll have a son with the gift…”
“If the domains were joined, you could live here with us,” Gry said.
“I could.”
“Do you want to?”
“Do you want me to?”
She was silent.
“What would we do here?”
“What we do now,” she said, after a while.
“Would you be willing to go away?”
It was harder to say aloud than I had expected. It sounded stranger, spoken, than it did thought.
“Away?”
“Into the Lowlands.”
She said nothing. She looked out over the dappled, shining water of the pool, looking far past it.
“Emmon took the spoons, but maybe he spoke the truth. What we can do is useless here, but down there, maybe…”
“What we can do,” she repeated.
“We each have a gift, Gry.”
She glanced at me. She nodded, a deep, slow nod.
“It may be that I also have a grandfather or grandmother in the city of Derris Water.”
She stared at me with wide eyes then. That had never entered her head. She laughed with surprise. “Why, you do! And you’d walk in, out of the blue, and say, ‘Here I am, your grandson the witch!’ Oh, Orrec. How strange that is!”
“They might find it so.” I took out the little opal that I wore on its chain round my neck and showed it to her. “I have this, though. And all she told me… I’d like to go there.”
“Would you?” Her eyes had begun to shine. She thought for a while and said, “You think we could make a living? The way Emmon said? We’d have to.”
“Well, we could try.”
“If we couldn’t, we’d be among strangers, strange people.”
