Slowly Denath’s guests settled into the monotonous schedule common to weddings. In the daytime the men rode or threw dice, while the women generally congregated about their needlework.
Arran enjoyed riding when he felt he had somewhere to ride to. Lirath, who loved riding, gave Arran a discourse about union of feeling between man and horse, but Arran did not respond as Lirath hoped.
“If you mean fall in love with the horse,” he said, “typically I don’t think it’s common practice to ride piggy-back on someone you are in love with. I’d walk beside the horse if I wanted to display my affection. And I don’t. We eat horses in the Northland.”
Lirath winced.
“Not thoroughbreds,” said Arran. “Just the wild ones. Myself, I’d prefer walking. Horses carry you too fast for you to see—to really see.”
Still, Arran and Lirath rode a good deal. Their interest in dice (not large, in any situation) was outweighed by their desire to avoid Denath and Kalon. Because of their youth, their absence was ignored. Lirath’s father, Perethor, was not so lucky. Social custom dictated that he should keep regular company with the other lords, which meant that he had to endure Denath’s overbearing presence for at least several hours every day.
In the evenings, there was always a gathering on the lawn, and music, and sometimes dancing in the smooth slow manner of the Axelarrain. But on the seventh evening, the atmosphere was different. The time had come for the cord to be cut, the ceremony of the first week.
Soldor stood with Linnerill beneath a white silken awning. They both wore the same deep shade of red. Denath made the expected long speech, which Arran ignored entirely, looking instead at the couple. Linnerill gazed up at Soldor as if waiting for something, although it was she who would cut the cord wound on his wrist.
At last Denath stepped aside, and Linnerill unsheathed the golden knife belted at her side. She took Soldor’s hand in hers and cut loose the cord of their betrothal. It fell to the grass beneath their feet. She returned the knife to its place, and Soldor reached for her hand, and took it in his. There were words to be said—of betrothal’s end and the beginning of marriage, of bonds stronger than cord and the union between man and woman. Denath stood by them, his head cocked as if he had just done something particularly clever. Arran shifted his weight and wished for the ceremony to end.
It ended to music. A group of traveling instrumentalists, thankfully better than their predecessors, launched into a tune on their viols after the last words were said. Soon many in the crowd were dancing on the lawn.
Arran had no one that he was interested in dancing with. Anlaida, though she looked bored, at least had a partner; and Mostaras needed none.
Lirath scanned the dancers and noticed a brunette standing to the side. “She’s from Palladrim,” he said. “And she doesn’t giggle. If you asked—”
Arran shook his head. “Ask her yourself. I need some air.”
“Well, air yourself out then. But if you decide you want a dance partner, come find me.”
“I will,” said Arran, and walked away. The front gates were open, and he went through them, white shell crunching beneath his boots. He reached the end and turned onto the road, with the twilit air blowing around him. Far away he saw fire.
It was the village. People called it Mithras and said it was the capital of Salenna, but it looked the same as any other cluster of common houses. In the field outside it, the people had set a bonfire. Its flames lunged high as an apple tree and cast a golden light on the villagers who stood about, laughing and talking and drinking.
A man thrummed a guitar of sorts, singing “Lona in the Dell.” He looked about thirty, and children, probably his, were grabbing at his knees. But his voice was strong, and Arran stopped beneath a beech tree to listen. He knew the people of the Northland and the Tablelands, and something of Iredail. He knew the nobility, the Axelarrain. But he had never been allowed out of the gates as a child, and so these people, common Midlanders, were a mystery. They did not remind him of their rulers at all.
A woman turned from the fire and began to look about the circle of trees, as if she had heard a noise. Arran stood still, unsure whether his presence would be welcome. But apparently it was, because the woman, her stained apron flapping about his ankles, waddled over to him. She was large, with a rosy and wrinkled face. “Come on, lad,” she said. “No need to stand under the trees. Are you traveling, then?”
“Yes,” Arran said, offering no more information.
“Where from?”
“North of here.”
“You have a place to stay the night?” she asked.
“Yes,” he answered. “I just saw the fire and was curious.”
“Big lord’s daughter is being married,” the woman said, nodding. “Reason enough to celebrate. And I guess she’ll be glad enough to have a different lord over her!” Then her red cheeks grew redder. “I didn’t mean it that way—or—we’re happy for them all, anyway.”
Arran smiled, hoping that neither Linnerill nor Soldor would have cause to regret their decision.
“Well, sit down and have yourself a drink, lad,” the woman said to him. “No sense in letting good merriment go to waste, is there?” She shepherded him toward the fire, found him a seat, and put a cup into his hand.
Arran sipped from it, watching the laughing people around him. The drink was a cider of some sort, sweet, although it bit the back of his throat as he swallowed.
A huge farmer heaved down next to him. “What’s your name, stranger?”
“Arran,” he said, setting the cup on his knee.
“Sounds like Iredail to me.” The man raised an eyebrow, a gesture which caused him to unknowingly raise the right corner of his mustache as well. “But Malaine says you came from north of here.”
“Only my mother was Iren,” he said. “She left her people.”
The farmer frowned. “That’s not like them,” he said. “Iren are trouble anyway. Best not to mix blood.”
The woman, Malaine, was passing by, and she frowned at him. “That the problem with you men, Udor. It’s not the lad’s father left, it was his mother. The poor soul was likely in love with him, and she couldn’t help it.”
“Couldn’t help it! Couldn’t help it!” Udor snorted. “That’s the problem with women. They can’t take blame. Now, men, on the other hand….”
Arran turned his attention back to the musician. The children, two small boys, were wrestling by his feet, but he continued to sing. His deep voice carried above the noise of both people and fire.
“O there once was a sparrow who lived up in Yarrow
And he fell in love with a cow.
She was lovely, they say, in her own sort of way,
But no one can figure out how.
“She was lovely, they say, in her own sort of way,
Which must have been hefty and brownish.
So he hopped to the cow, where she stood at the plow,
And said, “Love, could you bend downish?”
“But the lady she said, as she lowered her head,
‘Though I’d like to be paid court,
And the down on your breast is as brown as the best,
I fear that you’re rather too short.”
The singer went on to describe the courtship of the sparrow and the cow, as well as their wedding, but Arran turned his attention to a grubby ten-year-old who had plopped down by his feet. “Are you really from up north?” the boy asked. His hands and face were blackened from spending too much time near the fire’s edge.
“Yep,” Arran said. “Have you ever been up there?”
“No,” the boy said. “My da went to fish in the river once, though.”
Arran guessed that the boy meant the Noralis River, which was several days to the north on foot. “I was there, once,” he said. “But I come from farther north.”
“Where?” asked the boy.
“We call it the Northland,” said Arran, hoping that these Midlanders did not share the prejudices of the nobility.
The boy’s eyes widened. “Where the barbarians live?”
Arran nodded.
“Are you a barbarian?”
“Well—” Arran hesitated. “I’ve lived with them.”
“In underground tunnels, with dragons?”
Arran laughed. “They live in dugout houses, but there aren’t any passages connecting them. And they don’t live with dragons.”
“But are there dragons?” persisted the boy.
“I’ve heard stories of legless dragons—wyrms, we call them—that have found passages through the rocks,” Arran said. “People say that they lie in wait for anyone who nears a crevice. But the barbarians don’t live near the crevices. They are just to the south. I’ve never known anyone to be eaten by a wyrm, but wild dogs can be dangerous. Especially in winter. They roam in packs, looking for food. And if it’s a lean winter, and they can’t find a ranging mare to eat, they’ll come near the dugouts. During winters like that, it isn’t safe to venture out alone.”
The boy shivered with delight. “Don’t you eat horses?” he asked.
Arran smiled to himself. However wearisome it could be to explain to every stranger why Northlanders ate the wild horses, an evening spent telling tales to this peasant child was vastly preferable to one spent at Denath’s estate. He only wished that such an escape would be as easy for Anlaida.