I got to my feet, keeping my hands up, palms out before me, well away from my weapons belt. Then I began to walk down. They caught sight of me in seconds.
“Keep on, bold hero!” The voice behind me was sharp. “We like well to see open hands on those who come without verge horn warning.”
I did not turn my head as I answered. “You have them in your sight now, sentry. There has been no war glove flung between us—”
“That is as it may be, warrior. Yet friend does not belly-creep upon friend after the manner of one come to collect a head and so enslave the ghost of the slain.”
Head-collecting! Refugee holding right enough—not only that, but at least this sentry was one of the fanatics who had made a name for themselves, even in the tough Borderer companies, for the utter ferocity of their fighting. There were those come out of Karsten who had suffered so grievously that they had retreated into barbarian customs to allay, if anything ever could, their well-deep hatred.
I made no haste down that slope and to the holding. The man or men who had chosen to plant it here had an eye for the country. And, once the stockade was complete, they would be very snug against attack. They waited for me in the now gateless opening of that stockade, armed, helmed, though they had not yet drawn sword or gun.
The centermost wore insignia on the fore of his helm, set there in small yellow gem stones. He was a man of middle years, I believed, though with all of us of the Old Race the matter of age is hard to determine, for our life spans are long unless put to an end by violence, and the marks of age do not show until close to the end of that tale of years.
I halted some paces from him. My helm veil was thrown well back, giving him clear view of my features.
“To the House greeting, to those of the House good fortune, to the day a good dawn and sunset, to the endeavor good fortune without break.” I gave the old formal greeting, then waited upon his answer, on which depended whether I could reckon myself tolerated, if not a guest, or find myself a prisoner.
There was something of the same searching measurement as Ethutur had used on me back in the Green Valley. A sword scar had left a white seam long his jaw line, and his mail, though well kept, had been mended on the shoulder with a patch of slightly larger links.
The silence lengthened. I heard a small scuffing behind me and guessed that the guard who had accompanied me was ready to spring at the Manor Lord’s order. It was hard not to stand ready to my own defense, to hold my hands high and wait upon another’s whim.
“The House of Dhulmat opens its gates to whom?”
I heard a choked sound, a bitten off protest from my guard. Again I was presented with a dilemma. To answer with my true name and family clan might condemn me if I had been outlawed, and I had no reason to believe that that had not been done. Yet if this holding already had its gate-crier in place, that protection device would detect a false name instantly as I passed it. I could retreat only to a very old custom, one which had been in abeyance in time of war. Whether it would have any force in the here and now I did not know.
“The House of Dhulmat, on which be the sun, the wind, and the good of wide harvest, opens gates to a geas-ordered man.” It was the truth and in the far past it meant that I was under certain bounds of speech which none might question without bringing me into peril. I waited once more for the Lord to accept or deny me.
“Gates open to one swearing no threat against Dhulmat, man or clan, roof-tree, field, flock, herd, mount—” He intoned the words slowly as if he pulled them one by one from long buried memory.
I relaxed. That oath could I give without any reservations. He held out his sword blade point to me, a sign I accepted the death it promised were I foresworn. I went to one knee and laid my lips to the cold metal.
“No threat from me to man or clan, roof-tree, field, flock, herd or mount of the House of Dhulmat!”
He must have given some signal I did not detect, for the woman in saffron approached, bearing with both hands a goblet filled with a mixture of water, wine, milk, the true guesting cup. So I knew that here they clung to the old ways, perhaps the more because they had been rift from all which had once been home to them.
My host touched his lips to the edge of the goblet and handed it to me. I swallowed a mouthful and then dribbled a few drops to right and left, to the house and the land, before I passed it back, to go from hand to hand in that company, finally to the guard who now stepped up to my side, shooting me a still suspicious glance. He was a lean mountain wolf right enough, tough and hard as the steel he wore. I knew his like well.
Thus I came into the Manor of Dhulmat—or what was the germ of that manor-to-be. My host was the Lord Hervon, and, though he never said it, I could guess that he must once have been lord of a far larger land than this. The Lady Chriswitha who now headed his household was his second wife—for his first family had vanished during the horning in Karsten. But she had given him two daughters and a son, and both daughters had married landless men who had chosen to join the clan. These, with such shield men as had attached themselves to Hervon during the twenty years or more of border warfare, and the wives of such, had come here to found a new life.
“We marked this valley during patrol,” Hervon told me as they put food before me, “and camped here many times during the years, raising part of this hall. You may not understand at your age, but a man needs a place to return to, and this was ours. So when the sealing of the mountains was done and we needed no longer bear swords south, then we were minded to set our hearthstone here.”
How much dared I ask him concerning what had happened in Estcarp during the time I had been east of the mountains? Yet I had to know.
“Karsten is truly sealed?” I risked that much.
There was a grunt from the other man at the board—Godgar, who had played sentinel in the heights.
Hervon smiled thinly. “So it would seem. We have not yet any real news, but if any of Pagar’s force survived that sealing, then he is not a human man. With their army gone and all passes closed, it will be long before they can move again. The Falconers still ride the mountains—where they may find passage, that is—and the eyes of their scout-hawks are ready to report any movement from that filth.”
“But Alizon is not sealed,” I ventured again.
This time Godgar gave a grating laugh. “Alizon? Those hounds have slunk back to their kennels in a hurry. They do not want to sniff the same kind of storm in their noses! For once the Power has been a—”
I saw Hervon shoot him a warning look and he was suddenly silent, flushing a little.
“Yes, the Power has wrought well,” I interposed. “Thanks to the Wise Ones we have now a breathing spell.”
“The Wise Ones.” The Lady Chriswitha seated herself on the bench beside her lord. “But in such action they served themselves ill. The tidings are that they wrung the forces out of them, to their great hurt—many died and others are spent. If Alizon knew of this, surely they would not be so wary of us.”
Hervon nodded. “Yes, so you do well, young man, to call this peace a breathing spell.” His gaze dropped to the board before him. “Perhaps we waste our strength and our hopes in what we strive to do here now. It is very hard to lose all—”
His lady’s hand fell over his in a warming clasp. Then her eyes went to the daughters at the other end of the hall, and those with them. And I was shaken, for, if by some miracle I could rouse such men as these to follow me to the east, what could I offer them save danger once more? Perhaps worse danger than these had fled when they came out of Karsten. Leave them be in their small, hard won time of peace. My memory of the golden land when it was free faded. Though nothing would lift from me the geas in this matter.