Graynelore by Stephen Moore Page A

Graynelord.) In her eyes, she had been brought to ground by a clumsy, common fell-man, a poor soldier-thief without distinction. She had managed to stick me with her knife and could well have finished it. Only, I sensed there was still something more to this than her common annoyance alone.
    You are not even aware of your own true nature.
    Did I say it, did I even think it? Or did she? She was looking my way, but her mouth was not moving. There were no words spoken. I will swear to it. I am a plain man, but I am not an idiot.
    It might have been the voice of the babbling stream (all this time we had continued to follow its course), or else it was the movement of the leaves on a tree, or the scuffling of a breeze as it ran off through the long grass.
    For certain I had felt a connection between us, but I had not understood it for anything more than, what? At best a weak man’s physical desire for a woman. She had roared at me. Why? Was it for my ignorance? (I did not know.) I had mistaken that too. So she had wounded me and I, in my turn, had struck her down. We both might thank the fortunes I had not the wit to take my advantage of her while I might.
    Again I heard the whispers of an unspoken voice:
    How long have I waited upon another…
    ‘What?’ I said.
    Look to Wycken…You must look there…
    ‘Wycken? What did you say, there? What is this trickery?’
    But that was the last of it.
    Before me, Norda Elfwych looked suddenly ashen. Her face had drained white. She fell to her knees and let go the contents of her stomach.
    I chose then to stay silent. I chose to remain Rogrig Stone Heart yet awhile. I waited with her until she was done and had cleaned herself up, then we walked on. We remained always just out of arm’s reach of each other. I deliberately followed a few steps behind her and let Dandy make her own way, free of her reigns.
    We were not travelling alone, nor had we been for some time now. There were many others coming off the killing fields, instinctively covering the same ground. Some were riding, but as many men went a-foot now, driving their over-laden hobby-horses before them: the hobbs made to carry more than their full weight of dead men slung across their backs. Elfwych and Wishard moving in the same direction…
    The fighting was done with. The day was won and it was lost. We were nearing The Rise, and close to the tower of Staward Peel, where we would wait upon the pronouncement of the manner of our truce, that we might all take ourselves safely to our homes again.

Chapter Eight
The Broken Tower
    All settlements throughout Graynelore, though loosely planned, were broadly similar, often built upon lonely and inhospitable ground. They grew up higgledy-piggledy, sometimes upon exposed hilltops, sometimes hidden away within closed valleys, or kept a secret within dense woodland, as the country allowed. The best houses, though small and squat, were always made of stone, with walls so thick that, from within, you could not hold an ear to the world outside. Lesser dwellings were huddled together, with perhaps a patch of land for pasture, or for grain fields, or for root fields; the staples of our diet. All the graynes – great or small – set their houses as close to the Stronghold of their Headman as familiarity would allow. They maintained them in this manner, not out of any real desire for close community, but rather for mutual safety: common defence against the raider. In a moment of crisis, close kin were in eye sight and earshot of close kin, and might more easily raise the alarm, go to their neighbour’s aid, or make good their escape.
    The Elfwych bastle-houses of The Rise were great in number. Only, as we began to pass them by, it became obvious that many of them were already long abandoned, and others, if still inhabited, were sorely ill-repaired. Strings of fell beasts were being led off nearby pasture, and Norda’s own close kin stood by and watched as Wishards brazenly took them. These