Edith Pattou - Hero's Song

The Wyll

What think you of revenge?" Collun asked the soldier Kled, though his eyes were on Brie. She smiled to herself.

"Revenge? Why there's nothing I like better than a good tale of revenge, dripping with blood and avenged honor and all." Kled handed Collun his cup of chicory for refilling. "Have you one to tell?" he asked.

Collun shook his head, impatient. "No, I am speaking of true revenge, outside of books and stories."

Kled looked puzzled. "Well, I have had no experience with it myself, but certainly if one has been sorely wronged, then revenge is a just and honorable—"

Brie let out a laugh. "Wrong answer, Kled."

"Why wrong?"

"Collun wanted you to say that revenge is a contemptible thing, fit only for cowards and scalawags."

"Why?"

"Because of me."

"You?" Kled's face was a study in bewilderment.

Brie's smile died. "Because I am sworn to revenge myself on the men who killed my father."

"In truth? How many men?" Kled asked, his eyes kindling with interest.

"There were twenty or more, all Scathians, but I would be content with the lives of three."

Collun let out a sound of disgust and threw the dregs of the chicory on the fire, making it hiss.

Brie ignored him. "Two who delivered the deathblows. And a third, whose orders they followed. When the killing was done it was he who came down off his horse to ensure they had done it well." Brie's voice was steady.

"By Amergin," Collun interrupted, "can neither of you see the folly? Ending the lives of these men will change nothing. The only one changed will be you, Brie. Remember the tale of Casiope, the archer? Revenge is as an arrow; it will surely return one day and pierce the one who shoots it."

Brie glared at Collun. She started to say something but bit it back. There was an awkward silence.

Kled cleared his throat. "Perhaps I should brew another pan of chicory, or have we all had enough?" But neither Collun nor Brie responded.

Abruptly Brie's mouth curved into a smile. "An ar row. That was clever."

Kled looked at Brie, then at Collun, uncomprehending.

"I thought you'd like it," Collun replied with an answering smile.

"Very clever."

"Does that mean you agree with him now, Brie?" asked Kled.

"No, not exactly."

Kled gave a shrug and drank the last of his chicory.

Brie gazed into her own cup, preoccupied. A moment ago, as Collun spoke of Casiope, the archer, Brie had caught something in his eyes; it was beneath the anger, a look of such deep-reaching kindness it had made her heart skid in her chest. No one before had shown her such a look, no one—not her father nor Masha, the nurse who cared for Brie after her mother died. She could not meet Collun's gaze again, and soon after made an excuse and left them.

***

The next morning Brie rose early, leaving Collun asleep by the campfire. Ever since they had come to the dim of Collun's father they had chosen to make camp outside. The dun had lain empty for almost two years, ever since Collun's father, the hero Cuillean, had disappeared, and the rooms were musty and ill-kept. On the few occasions it had rained heavily, they had sought shelter in the stables.

Brie found the Ellyl horse Ciaran grazing in the forecourt of the dun. The horse ambled over, searching her hand for a sweet. Though they had been companions for many months, Brie was still in awe of Ciaran. The horse came from the land of Tir a Ceol, where the folk called Ellylon lived, out of sight of human eyes. Ellyl horses were smaller than Eirrenian horses, as well as leaner, but they were more graceful. Ciaran was the color of foam capping a sea wave, with gray stockings, a patch of gray at her forehead and another on her cheek. She was a beauty and knew it, but had a gentleness of spirit that made her vanity easier to bear. It was astounding to Brie that Ciaran continued to stay with her. She had expected the horse to disappear back to Tir a Ceol long ago.

Brie swung herself onto Ciaran's bare back, and they made their way west, to the sea and a sandy bay they had discovered a fortnight ago. It was the perfect place for a gallop.

Dismounting, Brie let Ciaran frisk at the edge of the water. Brie dug her toes into the sand and squinted at the horizon of sea and air.

There was an old Eirrenian story—part of the coulin that explained the beginnings of Eirren and included tales of all its great heroes and gods—about the god Nuadha, who had wielded a magic arrow, or teka. He had stood at the rim of the new world and, to chart a course through the wilderness, had repeatedly shot his teka from a bow and then run to catch up to it. Along the route he followed did appear the first ash tree, the first goshawk, the first flint, and the first hyacinth plant. The ash tree was to make the shaft of an arrow, the goshawk for its fletching, the flint for the arrowhead, and hyacinth for glue to bind the feathers to the shaft. Of course, unlike Brie, Nuadha was a god and had no trouble traveling over the sea with a magic arrow that would not sink beneath the waves. Certainly it was not a journey one could undertake in real life, but...

Impulsively Brie pulled her bow off her back and nocked an imaginary arrow to the string. Ciaran cocked an ear in Brie's direction.

With a grin Brie pulled back and let the imagined arrow fly. With her eyes she traced its invented arc over the waves and pictured it cleaving silently into the water, startling a passing school of fish as it sank slowly to the bottom.

Perhaps if she were an Ellyl, with the Ellyl's fishlike swimming ability, she could chart such a journey. Brie laughed softly to herself and lowered her bow to her knees. It was absurd of course. Such journeys were only for gods and heroes.

As Brie watched the Ellyl horse gallop along the sickle curve of the shoreline and thought back over her time at Cuillean's dun, she felt unaccountably peaceful. It was a new feeling. Indeed, it was the first time within her memory that the hard knot within her—of loneliness and the need to be best in all she did—had loosened. She had never had a brother or sister, but she imagined that this bond between herself and Collun was similar to what a brother and sister might share, and she savored the closeness.

There were moments, however, when she looked at him and a breathless, foreign feeling came over her, unexpected and fierce. Like yesterday when her heart had felt like it was flipping about in her chest. The feeling made her uncomfortable and somehow did not seem quite sisterly. The few times she had felt it, she had fled, going off with Ciaran to gallop in the countryside or on the beach of the Bay of Corran. Collun never asked where she went or why.

Brie gave a long whistle, and Ciaran wheeled around, sending sprays of seawater up around her gray stockings. Soon Brie was astride the Ellyl horse, and they were pounding along the sand.

***

The night of Midsummer, Collun and Brie climbed the highest tower of Cuillean's dun to view the bonfires that blanketed the hills.

As they gazed out at the blazing fires, Brie was reminded of a night from her childhood when her father had carried her up to the ramparts of their dun and showed her the Midsummer bonfires for the first time. His strong arms held her as she stood barefoot on the cold stone of the parapet. She had been awed by the sight of all those glowing, leaping flowers of flame, stretching as far as her eye could see. The brightest one blazed at the foot of the hill that bore the White Stag of Herge, illuminating the enormous figure. The Stag had been etched into the hillside long ago by people who cut away turf to expose the white chalk of the cliff.

Brie had told her father she wanted to dance around the bonfire and feel the fire's heat on her face and arms. He had said she was too young. But even when she grew older, Brie didn't dance. She would gaze enviously at the abandoned twirling forms of the dancers, but her body felt hemmed in, awkward. And there was the unspoken word that it was somehow unseemly for the daugher of the hero Conall to join the bonfire dances.