XXXVIII
Awldano returned to Pearmol with a tremendous melancholy hanging upon his heart. Amfredha was the first to spot him coming up the path. She had the gate opened and raced down to meet him, then took off her helmet and said, ‘Tell me, Awldano, what has become of my son?’
Awldano said, ‘You may not be able to see him, but he is behind me.’
Amfredha closed her eyes, bowed her head, and without another word, she put her helmet back on and returned to the gate. She remained there for the rest of the day, and long after it was time for her to come down.
Many folk came out to see the wains come into the yard. Each had been covered with a cloth to protect the bodies and the treasure alike, so everyone was eager to know who lay beneath them, and how many they were. One by one, the cloths were removed, and a chorus of grief arose each time as the dead were revealed, put on boards, and taken inside.
Karvalo had Trewgeo dragged into the hall to be held under armed guard, and then he came back outside to ask Awldano how he had fared.
‘That is for you to decide,’ said Awldano. ‘Trewgeo is yours, and Samnew, too. I hope only that they are worth the cost.’
‘Say nothing about that,’ said Karvalo, his eye upon the wealth-laden wains. ‘This has surely been a worthwhile endeavour.’
Then he clapped Awldano on the back and went to oversee the unloading of the cargo. Awldano went inside.
Thalo stayed in the yard for a short while, where he caught sight of Ormana clutching Kolmago’s lifeless hand as he was raised onto a board. He climbed down from Ondayo’s back, stood behind him, and watched from a distance as Ormana followed her brother inside. He could not hear her weeping above the others, but he did not need to.
‘And nor do I want to,’ he said, kissing Ondayo’s muzzle. ‘Not yet, boy. We have been here before, but it is no less miserable now.’
Then Thalo went inside, but when he came to his bedroom to take off his armour, he found Awldano standing alone in the middle of the room, still in his mail, but staring at his helmet on the bed.
‘What wretched days,’ said Awldano. ‘When I was sailing in my younger years, I did it all very well. I fought and I looted, and I thought nothing of it. That was my lot in life, and it troubled me none. But as time passes by, the weight grows ever heavier, the weight of the lives ended by my hand. When we rode to Syarglad last year, I was glad it did not come to battle. I thought it cowardice, that I was unworthy of my stock, so I rode to Samnew this morning eager to prove otherwise, to prove myself a man of honour and renown. Yet I stand here now, the weight bearing down on me all the heavier. It should not be so—I am a son of Kawo!—but here we are, nonetheless.’
Thalo’s thoughts flitted back and forth, desperate to grasp at some pithy truth, some words of comfort, until they settled rather uncomfortably upon the sight of Ormana weeping in the yard. Perhaps, he thought, he would feel much the same, if only he dared to think twice.
‘You are the most courageous man I know,’ he said. ‘I trust there is no such weight you could not bear, but if ever there were, know that I will be beside you to share the burden.’
Then Thalo took Awldano in his arms, and Awldano took him in his, and neither said anything more.
A while later, Thalo visited Ormana while she was preparing Kolmago’s body. She rose from her seat, welcomed him, and brought him to the bed where Kolmago lay.
‘It feels as if it were only yesterday,’ she said, ‘that I sat beside my father, that I washed away his blood. I thought my days of grief were behind me, yet here I am again, as if they had never ended at all. Whenever will they?’
Then her tears overtook her, and she lowered her head to weep upon Thalo’s shoulder. As he held her, he looked to Kolmago, lying still on the bed beneath a cloth of red and green. About each arm he wore a golden ring, and a third adorned his neck, covering the mortal wound. Ornamented so, he was the very image of his father.
Ormana pulled her head away and said, ‘Thalo, let me thank you for coming here. Mine is no enviable task, and even less so when I must do it alone.’
‘What of your mother?’
‘She will not come to him—she would not before, nor will she now. Not even as her own son lies dead will she stir to see him. She says he abandoned her, just as his father did. But what can be done? Life marches on. We must keep pace, lest the horns sound our halt while we stand yet apart from one another. She is falling behind, Thalo. The distance between us is widening, and I fear there is no way to shorten it.’
Then Ormana let loose her tears once more, and Thalo held her.
Karvalo had the funeral pyres built overnight and through the next morning. In the afternoon, a great procession gathered in the yard and brought the dead across the river to the cemetery. There the bodies were laid upon their pyres, whereafter Seyglena performed the appropriate rites for each of them. When she was done, she raised her arms aloft.
‘Hear me!’ she said. ‘Hear me and heed me! All things in this world are fleeting! As day will ever pass to night, so too will night ever pass to day!’
Then she knelt and sang a sorrowsome song as the pyres were lit, and all watched on as their once lifely friends succumbed to the fire.
Once the flames had diminished and much of the procession had returned to Pearmol, Amfredha came to Ormana as she stood arm in arm with Thalo. She pried them apart and offered her the warmest embrace she could find in her grief-cold breast. Thereafter, she said it would be fitting to bury Kolmago and Fenneo in the same urn.
‘Let them lie together in death,’ she said, ‘as they did in life.’
Ormana agreed with that. They gathered their bones and their finery into a single urn, and that was buried next to Yorlayvo’s. Atop this they placed two stones, one for each of them, and thus were they truly dead.
That evening, Karvalo hosted a funeral feast in honour of the fallen. Near the end of the meal, he rose from his seat and lifted his cup.
‘Oy-oy!’ he said, and the room returned his cheer. A flock of attendants left the room at once, and as the high table was cleared, Karvalo thanked the dead for their courageous service. ‘For that I repay them with this feast, that we shall hold them evermore in the highest esteem. But let us also give our thanks to those who stood so stoutly beside them.’
His attendants returned with a selection of boxes, each laden with a portion of the booty won at Samnew. They laid them on the table behind Karvalo, and Thorreda handed him a list of names and allotments.
‘I repay them with nothing less than the wealth they won me.’
Awldano was called up first, but when he refused his share, the largest by every measure, Karvalo said it would be rather manfuller for him to accept it with pride and dignity.
‘Awldano,’ he said, ‘do not dishonour your comrades by letting their deaths be fruitless. If there is to be no profit for you, whatever did they fight for?’
‘Whatever indeed?’ said Awldano. ‘Only one among us can answer that.’
He sat back down.
Scowling, Karvalo said, ‘Come, you have served your father well. Let him serve you likewise.’
Without standing up again, Awldano took a sip of his drink. ‘He has served me much already. He need not put himself out any longer.’
Then Karvalo presided over the dealing of the rest of the booty, although many said the prizes he gave back to his thanes seemed rather stingy next to the total takings. Last of all, he called up Thalo. Though Thalo was very eager to claim whatever wealth Karvalo might offer, he thought Awldano might have something to say about it. He took his hand, but received his answer before he had asked.
‘We two are one,’ said Awldano, ‘but not the same. If you wish to claim your share, I will not begrudge you that.’
Thalo kissed him, and then he went before Karvalo. He received Awldano’s share.
After a moment of panic, Thalo said, ‘This is significant.’
Karvalo said nothing. Thalo looked to Awldano, but he only smiled with resignation and looked away, so he accepted the prize and took it out of the hall. He did not return that evening.
Though Karvalo and Awldano thought much about this in the following days, neither saw fit to address it.
* * *
Dragged away from his home, Trewgeo spent two nights sore and alone at Pearmol—unfed but for an offering of water twice daily—before Karvalo came to treat with him. He burst into the room alongside two big fellows who pushed Trewgeo to the floor and bound his hands. He tried to get up again, but Karvalo pinned him down with his foot.
‘Long have I awaited this day,’ he said. He bade his companions leave the room, then hoisted Trewgeo off the floor and threw him down onto a nearby table. As he thudded into it, Karvalo loomed above him, his beltknife in hand. ‘Your fate, Trewgeo, was sealed long ago.’
‘Please,’ said Trewgeo, ‘have mercy. Let us make amends.’
‘Time and again I have offered you that opportunity, and every time you have squandered it. There can be no peace between us, not after what you have taken from me.’
‘And I can pay you back for that, if you would only let me live.’
Karvalo leant over Trewgeo, glowering above him. ‘No, Trewgeo. I have more honour than to let you live. There is no price I would accept from you, but one. You stole my Yorlayvo from me. You spilt his blood, and I will not be satisfied until yours is spilt alike!’
Then Karvalo held his knife aloft and brought it down hard, stabbing into Trewgeo’s stomach. Trewgeo cried out, pleading for his life—if it could yet be spared—but that was not enough. Karvalo stabbed him again and again, in the stomach, the chest, the neck, so swept up in that long-delayed delight that he kept up his frenzy until Trewgeo was well past dead. When finally his passion subsided, Trewgeo had been dealt thirty-three wounds, but he had only lived long enough to suffer the first eleven.
Karvalo stepped away, gathered himself, and left the room. Thorreda was there, ready to meet him, and he asked her to see Trewgeo’s body dumped on the moors.
‘Let the wolf and the raven have their fun,’ he said.
Thorreda said it would be done, and so it was.
That evening, Karvalo went alone to the cemetery. He prostrated himself before Yorlayvo’s grave, kissed the grass, and then rose to his knees, the sun setting behind him.
‘My friend,’ he said, ‘it is done. You are avenged, and never has the weight on my heart been lighter.’ He took out the knife with which he had slain Trewgeo and lay it upon the grave. ‘Your spirit may at last be yielded back to the earth. I ask only that you wait for me.’
Then he arose and went home.