Chapter 32 #2
But that was not the only thing that mattered.
Ynyr knew well the tales of his great-great-grandfather’s time.
The last days of the gods. Mortalkind had been subject to them, little more than playthings with lives shaped by their whims. As kings became more efficient in the execution of their will, they would become more and more difficult to resist. Mortalkind would find itself once again subject to the distant whims of these new, would-be gods, empowered by crowns and coins and armies rather than divinity.
Not a world he wished to live in. One whose borders he would stop from enfolding his home, if he could.
A youngster appeared from the shadowed edge of the forest—thin, sharp-featured and dark-furred. Lynog, god-gifted and one of Glascoed’s better hunters. Ynyr had asked her to come and serve as a scout, for none moved through the forest with more skill.
‘Did you find them?’ Ynyr asked quietly as Lynog crossed to him.
The youngster nodded, a twitch at her eye betraying anger and fear. ‘Half a day further at your current pace, on the far side of the next hill. Ynyr, they are arrayed for war. Carrying spears and dressed in iron mail. Thousands of them.’
Ynyr scowled. He knew how Abal had taken the throne, the violence he had unleashed in Forgard.
Knew, also, how little hope his scant few hundred had against Abal’s army.
The conqueror had offered to parley rather than hunt Ynyr and his people in the forest, as the hounds hunt the foxes in their holes.
Ynyr suspected his demands would be extreme and unacceptable.
Suspected, too, that Abal meant to begin his war the moment negotiations broke down. Hence the spears and mail.
Yet this was the only chance the people of the Greenwood had for peace.
There was the possibility, however slight, that something might be arranged.
A payment of tribute, or a gift of land to seal a truce.
Ynyr did not well understand the minds of kings, but could little imagine someone going to the trouble of announcing his presence and arranging a parley without some good faith intent to reach agreement.
But if cause for violence could be found, he did not doubt that Abal would lower spears and charge.
(‘I was foolish,’ Ynyr’s ghostly voice whispered to Fola. ‘I had felt the sting of unkindness, and known the small greed of common folk, but though I feared it, I did not yet understand the cruel, all-consuming ambition of kings.’)
‘Keep eyes on young Barwon,’ Ynyr told Lynog. ‘See that he does not ride off.’
The fox-furred youngster nodded, then slunk back into the forest. Ynyr fell back, spreading word to gather the elders and representatives of the villages at the back of the column.
There, he made his proposal, and after some discussion—largely to debate who would remain with him, and who would be in charge of the second, larger contingent of their party—all agreed.
So it was that the bulk of their force left the road. Three hundred folk at arms, the best fighters in the Greenwood, most blooded either against fae or bandits.
‘We did not come here to fight,’ Ynyr reminded those who would lead them.
‘Only to show our willingness to do so. Don’t risk your lives for ours, but be ready at arms should the need arise.
If we can secure something like freedom for the Greenwood, we will.
Else, you will be needed in the days to come. ’
Sombre words, but how else ought one speak in the hours before the onset of violence?
The larger group marched into a wooded valley between two hills, near enough to charge the road in the case of Abal’s treachery, but far enough to flee, hidden, back to the Greenwood if that proved the more prudent course.
Ynyr selected only a dozen to remain. Large men, some with the strength of boars, or lithe and six-armed and each hand ready with a knife.
It was a balancing act—show enough strength to dissuade Abal from violence, but not enough to provoke him.
Barwon pleaded to be included in their number, but Ynyr insisted he remain with the larger group who would wait in the valley.
The youth was already under Abal’s sway, and knew their strength and their plans.
He reminded Lynog, and several others, to keep close eyes on the lad and not let him flee to Abal.
To hurt him, if necessary, to prevent that.
When this day was done, he would be free as anyone to associate with whom he willed, but there was too much danger in letting him roam until after the parley.
(‘You may think I should have had him killed,’ Ynyr’s ghost murmured. ‘Or left him behind in chains. That may be. But he was one of us, and I was too naive to see the thorns of ambition wrapped around his soul.’)
Thus the stage was set for Abal’s arrival, at the very heart of what would one day be the kingdom of Parwys.
The grassy hills and fertile plain between Bryngodre and Miggenbrot sprawled to the east, not yet swallowed by marshland.
The first peaks of the Windwall soared to the north.
To the west, Abal rode at the head of his two thousand men upon the First Folk Road—distant silhouettes drawing nearer by the hoof beat.
(‘Bloody Stones …’ Ifan’s voice echoed. ‘Look where we are … Look where they’ve gone!’)
At the base of the hill the army came to a halt, its banners limp in the humid air.
There they held for a time, figures milling about, some going into the forest. Taking stock, checking for themselves that Ynyr and the folk of the Greenwood had left no ambush, presumably.
Making their own plans in case the parley collapsed into sudden war.
At last Abal—marked by his banner of the crowned bear—broke off from the bulk of his forces, accompanied by a contingent of twenty fighters.
A rustling in the undergrowth startled Ynyr. Two of those with him went to investigate, and returned with a figure supported between them. Lynog, the dark-furred youngster, bleeding from a blow to the head.
‘What is this?’ Ynyr demanded of them. ‘What has happened?’
Lynog peered up at him, one eye swollen shut beneath her wound, the other blinking against a trickle of blood. ‘Barwon rounded on me … I’m sorry, Ynyr.’
Ice settled in Ynyr’s bones. He swept his gaze across Abal’s party, near now, so that their features might be discerned even by his tired, ageing eyes.
Warriors, all, with spears and bows in hand.
Abal himself carried a stranger weapon still—something like a hammer, its shaft formed from three braided strands of red crystal that twisted into a gnarled head.
Two thoughts settled at once.
They should signal the retreat, flee this farcical parley and Barwon’s treachery.
They must stay, to see this through, else Abal’s army would surely fall upon the Greenwood in a fury.
‘If the gods yet hear us,’ Ynyr whispered, daring still to hope that words might solve this without need for the sword, ‘may they touch the heart of the would-be king, and balance his ambition with compassion.’
A flimsy prayer, but there was no choice.
To flee now would invite pursuit. He cursed his own naive belief in the honesty of men, even his enemies.
He now only hoped that those who had hidden in the forest valley might escape, to prepare the Greenwood for the savagery to come.
Its people might, at the very least, fade into the shadows of the forest and preserve some echo of what they had tried to build in Glascoed.
‘Can you stand, lass?’ Ynyr asked Lynog. The hunter nodded. One of the other warriors handed her a bow, which she leaned on to keep her feet.
Abal and his twenty men-at-arms crested the hill, all on horseback. The clouds drifted from the path of the sun. Light glinted on the edges of spears, the rings of mail, the planes of helms and breastplates. The strange crystal hammer shone like a shard of fire.
One of the men-at-arms blew a trumpet. ‘His Majesty King Abal of Parwys, Forgard and Cilbran,’ the trumpeter announced. ‘Protector of the Westlands. Shield against the Rime. Master of the Tree and Chosen of the Old Stones. He who is armed with Thunder!’
From beneath a raised visor like a snarling bear, Abal studied Ynyr.
Ynyr’s heart fell. He had treated with many men, and knew this kind of face.
There was nothing open in it. No interest in the minds or thoughts of others.
No willingness to see the other side of a problem, to solve it by cooperation and compromise.
Only a hard certainty and brutal determination.
One could more likely carve a stone by blowing on it as convince such a man of an idea he did not already believe.
‘Which of you is Ynyr of Glascoed?’ the trumpeter demanded.
An emptiness had settled in Ynyr. Only the faintest candle of hope yet burned that his words might have any effect. His hands itched for Barwon’s neck, to squeeze the air from the traitorous fool.
‘I am Ynyr,’ he said, and nudged his rouncy forward a step. ‘We have come, at your invitation, to parley.’
Abal studied him, his eyes lingering on Ynyr’s antlers.
‘You seem every bit the warrior your reputation would mark you. From respect for what you have done against the fae of the Greenwood, I offer you this chance to surrender. Kneel to me, swear fealty, render your kingdom subordinate to mine, and I will grant you continued rule of it as Count of Glascoed on my behalf.’