The Book of Battles: Chapter 38

Life is a story where the longer we live it, the less we can see any discernable plot or moral, and if it is a game, the longer we live, the harder it is to tell who has won and who has lost.

-Cauda Wulfstan

When he was seven years old, a tall handsome man on a horse rode up the hill through the autumn leaves and called, “Boy, can you lead me to the man called Ash?”

“My name is Osric!” he shouted out.

“A sober name for such a little thing,” the knight said. He was dragon eyed and wide nostriled with cinnamon colored hair and golden brown skin.

“Ash calls me Wolf. He is my foster father.”

“Less talking, young Wolf. More leading.”

Wolf eyed him cautiously and said, “But who are you?”

“Protective of your master,” the knight said, rubbing his jaw and grinning. “And yet, do you not think he could protect himself?”

“Ash is a mighty wizard!” Wolf declared. “He doesn’t have to worry about anything! Still,” the boy said again, “who are you?”

The knight smiled indulgently, nodding his head and said, “You are his foster son more than you know. My name is Ralph.”

“Well, then come on,” the red headed boy said, and led Ralph up the hills through the crunch of autumn leaves. When they came to the house, Ash was outside in an open tunic, whittling a staff, and he looked up from his stump and said, “Took you long enough.”

“Glad to see you too.”

Ralph leapt off his horse. A red headed woman came out of the house and she said, “Is it company?”

“It is, Clauda,” Ash said. “My old friend. He will be staying a few nights. Wolf, could you care for his horse while we talk?”

Wolf nodded curtly, and he heard Ash saying, “But did you bring them?”

“Well, you asked me to, right?” Ralph said.

This was how Wolf came to know Ralph, and the knight from the West, who lived in the court of King Idris, but traveled through all the lands of the Ayl told Wolf of how, once, Ash had raised a storm to destroy an entire fleet of Dayne ships.

“It turned out that a wizard of the White Tower was in league with them,” Ralph said. “This is how Ash first came to the White Tower, not as a student, but as an investigator. There was no love for him in those days—”

“Or now,” Ash added.

“But his grandfather is Lord of the White Tower, Manwy, and his power was undeniable. After he had taken care of Koruko, for that was the mage in league with the Dayne. His Grandfather and the Council convinced him to learn on the island for some years.”

“I knew you were something,” Wolf said to Ash.

“Of course he’s something!” Cauda looked on her son with irritation. “He is the greatest mage in the Old Kingdoms or the Young.”

“Pass the bread, would you,” Ash said, as was his way, and though Cauda did, Ralph kept talking.

“We all went to Dayne, for Ash’s grandfather—his other grandfather—was still King of Rheged, and he loved Ash. Ash was the apple of that old man’s eye. Even though he was sixteen, almost seventeen, but not quite, when he told King Math that they had to go to Dayne before Dayne came to them, he obeyed. That was in the days before Edmund, when the Dayne still controlled Hale. Ash showed up on those shores with the armies of Elmet and Rheged at his back and… goddamn! S’cuse me for swearing, m’lady.”

“I’ve heard a goddamn or two in my day,” Cauda said.

Yes, that’s right. Before Edmund’s reign, Sweyn and Svig had ruled the three kingdoms, taken them from the weakened Wulfstans, set themselves up all over the coast to continue at close range the raiding they had done. Only later would Wolf learn they’d had magical help from members of the White Tower, members Ohean had quickly put down. Edmund had been on his throne thirty years. It was easy to forget there was a time when he was across the sea in Daumanear ny, wishing for his throne, and it had been in those days that a very young Ohean had stood beside his grandfather and confronted the aging King Sweyn.

“It is no use speaking of it now,” Ash had said. He turned to Wolf and said, “It is time for young wolves to be in bed.”

The next morning his mother had woken him and said, “The Master says you are to go with him and Sir Ralph. It is chilly this morning. Bundle up.”

They had ridden through the hills half the morning, under the high red and gold trees of northeastern Rheged. They rode for days until it was Ralph who said, “We are now in the land of Hale.”

“Isn’t that ruled by the Edmund?” Wolf said. “My mother said we fled from it. That Edmund killed my father.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Ash said. “But we will be here only for a little while.”

“Mother never speaks of Father,” Wolf said.

“I’m sure she has her reasons.”

“I wonder what he did.”

“Boy,” Ralph said, “your father was the—”

“Was the best of men,” Ash said, his eyes flashing at Ralph who immediately stopped talking.

“He should know is all,” Wolf heard Ralph whispering that night and Ash hissed, “He will know when he should.”

“But—”

“If you think you know how to raise a child,” Ash returned, “by all means take him with you when you go.”

The last day, they descended to rockier country, past roaring waterfalls. They fell into narrow places under high hills, and Wolf fancied he heard knocking against the rock walls, but surely this was the roaring of the water. Now they passed under a waterfall and while the rushing torrent roared in Wolf’s ears and Ralph’s arm protected him from falling, Ash, black cloak gathered about him, knocked on a crack on the wall in a strange pattern.

“Do not be afraid,” Ash said.

“Why?” Wolf began, but even as he spoke, the crack opened and the boy’s eyes widened as a dull fire could be seen through it. The crack in the wall opened to a door and now he heard the hammering. Ohean came down the stairs first and when he entered the chamber at the end of the stair, a little man with broad shoulders stopped beating the glowing metal at his anvil long enough to say, “Akkrebeth? And who are these you have brought?”

“Sindri,” Ash said as Wolf blinked, looking about to see what were, plainly, dwarves working in a great smithy, “this is the boy Osric, Eoga’s son, and this is Sir Ralph Curakin, my old friend.”

“Then I’m sure I’m pleased,” the dwarf called Sindri said in a voice that said he had no time to take his eye from his work.

Ralph handed Ash the bag and Ash said, “I have brought these to you that they might be restored and… enchanted.”

Sindri lifted up a glowing sword and then plunged into water that bubbled and hissed, and he came forward on his squat legs to open the bag. Wolf gasped the same time as the dwarf.

“Are these the Wulfstan crowns?”

“What’s left of them,” Ash said.

Sindri lifted a dinted half circle and said, “This was the work of Svig?”

“Yes, his word about the reign of the King and Queen of the Three Kingdoms.”

“It will be easy enough to reforge. But surely not for that bastard Edmund.”

“What do the Dwarves know of Edmund?” Ralph began.

Sindri looked up at the tall knight, his eyes glinting.

“Enough, warrior,” Sindri said.

“It is not for him,” Ash said. “It is for the grandson of Edward Ironside who will in time be King, who is born of a half Royan woman.”

“Ah,” Sindri nodded.

“The ancient crowns of Locrys were bound in enchantment, but never those in the north. You want crowns that bound the lord and the lady to the land.”

“Aye.”

“And the land to the lord and lady.”

Ash nodded.

“Why not you for the enchantment?” he said to Ash.

“I am no smith,” Ash said, “and Hale is not my land.”

Spread across the top of a flat hill were the long rose colored walls of Herreboro, the great city and its castle. The rose walls and wide white stone gates of the castle were ancient, the remain of a long gone Royan palace, but the pinker towers and higher walls of the Great Keep were Sendic, going back six hundred years to the first lords of Herreboro. On the other side of the valley from Herreboro was the white walled monastery of Saint Aidell and over it, out of a translucent sky, the sun shone. Colorful crowds came through the great doors of the abbey while the monks sang.

Karaniya mattha kusalena,
Yan tam santam padam abhi-samecca;
Sakko uju ca suhuju ca,
Suvaco cassa mudu anatimani.

Santussako ca subharo ca,
Appakicco ca sallahukavutti;
Santindriyo ca nipako ca,
Appagabbho kulesu ananu giddho.

The monks and the monastery had been here long before much of the city or the ancestors of most of the inhabitants. They had been the White Monks, from the south, who had come in the days of Saint Dewy and Saint Davydd and established themselves from Sussail, all through what had been the Royan kingdoms, and they had watched, almost impassive, as in the north, the Royan population of the north kingdoms gave way to the Hale. They gave the thrice honor, Honor to the Ard, Honor to the Teaching of the Way and Honor to the Communion, the body of monks and nuns and all those who attached themselves to them. They revered all and converted none and so, in the end, converted many. The Hale who came to settle in the North were weary of their old gods and even their old priests of power, and so the White Order, and in time the Grey Order had flourished.

Na ca khuddam samacare kinci,
Yena vinnu pare upavadeyyum;
Sukhino va khemino hontu,
Sabbe satta bhavantu sukhitatta:
Ye keci panabhut'atthi,
Tasa va thavara va anavasesa;
Digha va ye mahanta va,
Majjima rassaka anukathula
Dittha va ye ca adittha,

For hundreds of years there was no other Communion, but when Queen Ossa of Inglad had died without issue, her cousin, Ceowulf had come to the throne, holding Hale in one hand, and his new kingdom of Inglad in the other. Centuries older, Inglad was the more refined land, and he had moved his capital to Ambridge and married his sons to southern women. The moment Inglad came into Wulfstan hands was the moment that Hale fell under Inglad influence, and the mighty lords of Inglad had sent their younger sons up north to claim the vast tracts of wild land and land that was not so wild, and so the barons had been established, men Halish in name only, and with them had come the priests.

In Inglad the Communion was dominated by the priests and there was the eternal struggle between the monks and nuns who considered the Communion to be all the faithful praying, and the priests who considered the Communion to be their vast network of clerics supported by the funds of the faithful. In the 1550’s, when the Kings of Hale had become Kings of Inglad, the priests established themselves here as well, and when Edmund had come to the throne he had reestablished them and made them his eyes and ears so that, at the first council Myrne and Wolf had held, it was Lady Ashley Herreboro who had told her daughter and her son by marriage, “The first thing you must do is exile the priests.”

Ashley Imlay had been born in Inglad, like Michael Flynn who sat at table with them.

“After you exile the priests, you must exile the barons who will not side with you.”

“She is right,” Michael said.

“But exile is a harsh thing,” Wolf murmured, “and something we all know. And one day we shall come to Inglad anyway.”

“The people of Inglad who have always been in Inglad are one thing,” Michael Flynn said, and Lady Ashley nodded. “But these barons are a hybrid. Halishmen who do not mingle with other Hale, and Ingladi who have never been to Inglad or at least do not remain there. They are completely in Edmund’s pocket, and if you do not attend to them and the priests…”

“If you do not attend to them,” Lord Toman Herreboro said, “this war could last for decades.”

And so it was that the monastery that had sat on the hill and witnessed the arrival of the priests two hundred years earlier had seen them depart, and Abbot Cuthbert, this day, sat legs folded under him in the midst of his monks, chanting blessings over the couple in white who sat, also cross legged, side by side.

Ye ca dure vasanti avidure;
Bhuta va sambhavesi va,
Sabbe satta bhavantu sukitatta.
Na paro pararam nikubbetha,
Natimannetha katthaci nam kinci;
Byarosana patighasanna,
Nannamannassa dukkhamiccheyya.

They had sat like this in this abbey a year earlier, the dark haired girl scarcely twenty years old beside, all in armor, but carrying no sword, the tall, orange haired slender, green eyed man with ivory skin. Together they bowed their head.

Mata yatha niyam puttam
Ayusa ekaputtamanurakkhe;
Evampi sabbabhutesu
Manasambhavaye aparimanam.
Mettanca sabbalokasmim
Mansambhavaye aparimanam;

The nave of the abbey continued to fill with lords and ladies, some dark brown and golden skinned Royans, some white skinned Hale and Daynes, all legs folded beneath them, hands folded as the monks chanted before the young King and his young Queen.

The night before they’d left, near two years ago, Ohean said to Cauda, “We will be gone some time. I cannot say how long. In the hills she’d heard no news of what had happened to them, but her nights were filled with dreams of the past, her days with the dread that, perhaps, Ohean was leading her son to his destiny. He had been twelve the first time Ohean told him plainly the truth of his father and of the crowns, and when Wolf had asked where those crowns were now, Ohean said, “Never you mind.”

Then one day long after, she saw the troops riding through the hills, riding for her cabin, and she thought, “Well it has happened. I am not sure what it is, but something has happened.”

And she didn’t give a damn about her own safety. She’d been hiding here for twenty years to protect her son, and here were the banners of Hale, and so when she came out, she saw a handsome, but slightly rabbity faced warrior in a blue cloak over silver armor.

“An Ambridge man,” she thought, and she came out to him, folding her arms over her chest.

“Lady Cauda?”

“I am,”

“The wife of the late Eoga?” the man dismounted, and all around soldiers were dismounting.

“I am the widow of that great man,” she said.

And then, to her surprise, the rabbit faced man genuflected, and all around her, men went to one knee.

“We are come to lead you to your son, the King, who will meet you in Kester.”

And so she learned this man was Eryk Waverly, Ingladi enough, for his aunt was the Lady Ashley Imlay. He was from a baronial family. The Waverlys had been Inglad men who, when Hale first inherited the wealthier southern kingdom, had gone north to establish themselves and their courtly ways. They called themselves Halish but, as could easily be seen by this Lord Waverly, there was little of Hale about them. Like most barons they married not Halish women, but southern ones, and so Lord Waverly, half Dauman, had wed the Lady Margaret Imlay and this Eryk was their offspring. He explained all of this in a drawling southern voice and introduced Cauda to the wheat haired Cynric.

“Now my cousin, here, he is a true born Hale.”

Cynric ignored this, but explained to Lady Cauda that even now her son and his new bride were marching into North Hale to take back the land of the hated Baldwins. Cynric was the son of the last of the Imlay sisters, Mallory, a wild girl who had followed her sisters north and fallen for a wheat haired, half Dayne called Sturllson Hessenfelt and, looking at Cynric, Cauda thought could see the Dayne.

Cynric was easy to talk to, did not feel very royal and eased her transition into Kester and later to Castle Herreboro where she became instantly aware of her split ends and the callouses on her hands.

Today, as they sat in the great monastery of Saint Aidell, Cauda whispered to Ashley Herreboro:

“I was never raised to live the life of a great lady.”

“And yet,” the highborn woman said, wrapping an arm about Cauda’s waist, “a king chose you for his queen, to bear his son. And look toward that altar where he stands beside my daughter. Your son is King.”

When Eryk Waverly had entered the abbey, checking his sword at the nave by the porter monk, he saw Hyla, holding the Prince Blake to her chest and said, “Are you staying out here in the vestibule?”

“I will come in when the crowd applauds so that Blake can see his mother and father crowned.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Eryk said. “You should be in the front!”

“With the royal family?” Hyla smiled from the corner of her mouth. “Right where the scullery maids belong.”

“You are much more than a scullery maid.”

Hyla looked surprised, but she said, “Eryk Waverly, you are right. I am also a chambermaid and a nanny.”

He opened his mouth to protest, but Hyla said, “I feel no shame for what I am, and a crying baby should not be in the front of an abbey. Here is fine. Now go see Abbot Cuthbert crown our King and Queen.”

This is what should be done
By one who is skilled in goodness,
And who knows the path of peace:
Let them be able and upright,
Straightforward and gentle in speech.
Humble and not conceited,
Contented and easily satisfied.
Unburdened with duties and frugal in their ways.
Peaceful and calm, and wise and skilful,
Not proud and demanding in nature.
Let them not do the slightest thing
That the wise would later reprove.
Wishing: In gladness and in safety,
May all beings be at ease.

Whatever living beings there may be;
Whether they are weak or strong, omitting none,
The great or the mighty, medium, short or small,
The seen and the unseen,
Those living near and far away,
Those born and to-be-born
May all beings be at ease.

Let none deceive another,
Or despise any being in any state.
Let none through anger or ill-will
Wish harm upon another.
Even as a mother protects with her life
Her child, her only child,
So with a boundless heart
Should one cherish all living beings;
Radiating kindness over the entire world:
Spreading upwards to the skies,
And downwards to the depths;
Outwards and unbounded,
Freed from hatred and ill-will.

When Cuthbert rose, Wolf rose and Myrne rose. Now, all the assembly began to rise as the choir, the one thing the priests had brought that remained, sang:

Whether standing or walking,
seated or lying down
Free from drowsiness,
One should sustain this recollection.
This is said to be the sublime abiding.
By not holding to fixed views,
The pure-hearted one, having clarity of vision,
Being freed from all sense desires,
Is not born again into this world.

And then, without the aid of a book, as would have been used in the Great Cathedral in Ambridge, the Abbot Cuthbert began to speak to the young man and to the young woman before him.

“Will you solemnly promise and swear to govern the peoples of the Kingdom of Hale according to their respective laws and customs?”

Wolf looked down at Myrne, who smiled up at him, and then turning to face Cuthbert, they replied: “I solemnly promise so to do.”

“Will you to your power cause Law and Justice, in Mercy, to be executed in all your judgments?”

“We will.”

“Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the Laws of the Hale and the Royan, respecting the gods and customs of all?”

Wolf recalled that in Westrial, at Cedd’s coronation, this bit had been much longer and about the Communion and preferecing it above all religions. He assumed that, had he been crowned in Ambridge, the rite would have been much the same, but here there was no mention or religion at all. He imagined that Myrne would have noticed this as well. But she has begun speaking but for him, and now he joined her.

“All this,” they said, “We promise to do.”

Myrne cleared her throat, for there was more, and she led Wolf in saying: “The things which we have here before promised, we will perform, and keep. So help us, O Lord.”

And so Cuthbert anointed their heads, their chests and palms, and now Ralph came forward and Cuthbert removed the veil from the pillow he bore and on it, identical, were two golden tiaras, glinting in the low afternoon light. As they were placed on the altar, Ralph raised them and sang out:

“Behold, in the east, Osric, your undoubted King. Behold in the west, Myrne, your undoubted Queen. Behold in the north, Osric, your undoubted King. Behold in the south,” he called holding the golden crowns aloft, “Myrne, your undoubted Queen. Behold, Hale, Myrne and Osric, your undoubted Queen and undisputed King.”

“My people, I here present unto you Osric and Myrne, your undoubted rulers. Wherefore all you who are come this day to do your homage and service, are you willing to do the same?”

And all in that great abbey cried aloud: “Aye!” as Ralph handed one crown to Cuthbert, and he placed it on King Osric’s head, and the next to Myrne, and crowned her his Queen and he was her King.

“Amen,” Cuthbert murmured, clasping his hands. “Amen.”