II
One day in the following year, while Asfoa was washing her clothes in the river, she heard panicked voices in the woods above. She clambered up the waterfall to see what was afoot, and there she espied four people gathered in a small clearing. Gaylodho was easy to recognise, but not so the others. One was a young man, and the second a woman of similar age. The third was a baby, swaddled in the woman’s arms—it could not have been more than a year old. Asfoa supposed the man and woman were the baby’s parents. She sat in the bushes and listened into their conversation, and the man said they needed help.
‘And why should I help you?’ said Gaylodho.
‘There was an attack,’ said the man. ‘Up at Andenn.’
Andenn was a town in the east of Eylavol, the seat of the king’s reeve in the earldom. In the year after the earls submitted to the king, a company led by Throggalo, the last of the sons of Threlbega, brought forth their rage and set upon the town, hoping to oust the king’s followers who had made their homes there, or else slaughter them all. What followed was the last revolt of the north, at least for the time being, and it was nothing short of a massacre. Syave the Reeve was killed in the fighting, as were many of their friends, and so too was Throggalo, as were many of his. And so zealous were Throggalo’s lotsmen, and so indiscriminate their violence, that when the sun rose the next morning, or so it is said, the whole town glowed red for the blood yet caking the ground.
‘Dreadful business,’ continued the man. ‘We managed to flee, but to where, we cannot say.’
The woman said, ‘We need to find safety firstmost. If you can spare us nothing else, we would gladly take directions to the nearest place to rest.’
Asfoa could tell they were Mawks, though they tried to hide their accents.
‘What were you doing up at Andenn?’ said Gaylodho.
‘What does it matter? We have found ourselves in need, and with a child in our care. Where, man, is the harm in helping?’
‘The harm in helping,’ said Gaylodho, ‘is in who you help, so it matters very much what you were doing up at Andenn. I am inclined to think you may have been there with that loathsome king of yours. Yes, I am not so dull as to let your foul extraction escape me.’
It is fair to say the poor pair grew more afraid with every word Gaylodho spoke, swaggering about and eyeing them with contempt. The woman meant to reply, but Gaylodho did not care to hear her. He took up his spade and struck the man on the head with the edge of the blade. The blow killed him on the spot, and the woman’s words died with him. She stood still and silent, staring at the man on the floor beside her.
‘I know where you are from!’ said Gaylodho. ‘Do not think I will let you return!’
As soon as Asfoa realised what was happening, she leapt shouting from the bushes. The woman regained her senses, clutched the baby in her arms, and ran towards her. But, careless in her panic, she crashed into Asfoa, and they both fell to the floor, the baby mewling all the while. That was all the misfortune it took, for but a moment later, Gaylodho loomed above, teeth gritted, hands clenched. He struck the woman’s head with the spade, and she cried out.
‘Aiee!’
He struck her again. Asfoa leapt up to grapple with him, to wrest the spade from his grip and force him away from his quarry, but it was not until his temper lessened that she could finally overpower him. She shoved him backwards onto his bottom, and only then turned to the woman behind her. She was already dead. Asfoa tore the spade from Gaylodho’s hands—he was still rather dazed from his tumble—and put herself between him and the woman’s body.
‘Get out of here,’ she said.
Rising, Gaylodho said, ‘Asfoa, you witch! Hand me my spade!’
‘I will do no such thing. Go home.’
‘Idiot woman! These are the folk who pillage and plunder as they please. Raiders and reavers, the lot of them! They would kill us all!’ Gaylodho pointed at the baby, and stepping towards it, still wrapped in its mother’s lifeless arms, he said, ‘I cannot let it live!’
Asfoa presented the spade. ‘Take another step and I will do you in.’
‘They killed my friends! My kin! I will avenge that to the fullest extent!’
‘How hopeless they must have been to be killed by a baby.’
His face scrunched up with scorn, Gaylodho managed no further sounds beyond grunts and growls, until his anger overtook him. He lunged forwards, grasping for Asfoa’s neck, but caught only a sharp knock on the forehead. He staggered backwards again.
Asfoa took the baby from the woman’s arms. ‘Go home, Gaylodho. If you threaten this child again, you will not live to boast of it.’
Gaylodho huffed, searching for scathing words, but he found none. He went home.
Asfoa soon went home herself, the baby in one arm and the spade in the other, but not before burying the bodies. Gaylodho would have left them to be eaten by whatever hungry thing found them, but that would not do. She dug a grave as big as she could manage, and in it she laid the man and the woman together, sprinkled some river water over them, and filled the grave. Above it she placed a stone, and thus were they truly dead, to remain there until the earth itself reclaimed them.
Asfoa raised the orphaned boy as her own. She named him Thalo. He soon grew into a healthy young lad, and she taught him everything she could, just as that nameless vagabond had once taught her. Indeed, she proved to be such an excellent instructor, and so well versed in all matters of life, that by the time Thalo was pubescent, his skills surpassed those of many hapless folk twice his age, or older. The people of Klagenn deemed this right queer, the work of the witch and her wicked ways. Some shunned him for that. Some shunned him for other reasons. That was Gaylodho’s toil, for instance—to greet Thalo, on those rare occasions when he greeted him at all, only with disdain, and to sneer should he receive it in return (he sneered very often). Others pitied the poor boy, trapped in the woods with the malevolent hag. In any case, there were few friends to be found at Klagenn.
One of those few was an old woman named Regnaga, one of Gaylodho’s relatives. Thalo liked her company. She would sit by the beach with him and tell him all sorts of stories. Many were true, though many more were fanciful. Most of all, she told him stories about her father, Olvadho. He had been one of the companions of Gayvadho Enmononnan—Gaylodho’s grandfather—who won great renown as a dauntless man of unrivalled pluck. Regnaga told Thalo how Gayvadho and Olvadho fought the army of the southern king Folgono, just as Gaylodho had fought against the King of Mawon more recently.
‘We have a history, see,’ said Regnaga. ‘If a king wants to conquer, they conquer Norlonn first.’
She told Thalo of Gayvadho’s glorious triumphs and sorrowful defeats, of his stoic resolve and his cunning ploys, and how folk still honour him because he gave everything, even his life, to defend the homes of his friends and his family. Such stories had particular currency in those days. And as Regnaga told these tales, recounting generations of family history and recalling the great deeds of each, Thalo delighted in every word. The many names of people and places meant little to him, but their lives and their deaths moved him all the same. He listened to few things with more awe and attention than the feats of folk long dead.
So Thalo came to Asfoa one day with a question.
‘Who was my father?’ he asked.
‘Why are you asking about this?’
‘Old Regnaga has told me much about her parents, and theirs, and those of many others, and there is much to be said about them all. What about my own parents? You are my mother, but who was my father?’
Asfoa did not like this question, for an honest answer was an unhappy one, so she lied.
‘Come and sit down,’ she said. ‘Let me tell you about that.’
Then she told this tale: ‘One day, I went up to the waterfall to wash my clothes, but when I came to the pool, something quite extraordinary happened. The water bubbled and swelled, and forth sprang a man, tall and mighty, and much more so than any other fellow I have seen.
‘That man pointed at me, and they said, “Asfoa!” Their voice was as deep as the ocean, and it bounced here and there, between the trees and off the water.
‘“Asfoa!” they said. “Thou art good and true!” I remember it well, for I was terribly flattered to hear such a nice thing said of me.
‘“Thou art good and true, while I be old and failing!” They looked neither old nor failing, but I suppose they knew themself better than I could.
“‘I be old and failing! Thus, I have chosen thee for a worthiest task!” I was more than a touch surprised they chose little me for anything important, but I felt I could not even address them, let alone refuse them.
‘“I have chosen thee for a worthiest task! Take my son as thine and raise him well!”
‘That son was you, Thalo. They put you in my arms, and you were soaking wet—you had just come out of the water, after all—and you got me all wet too. Needless to say, I was quite unimpressed with that.
‘“Raise him well! Let all folk know the glory of Thalo Klagennan!”
‘You see, Thalo, it turned out they were Klage, the spirit of the river, after whom we call it Klagennas. Before I could get a word in edgeways, Klage washed themself back into the water, and I never saw them again.
‘And the rest has since unfolded. So yes, you might say you are the son Klage, born of the river itself. How is that for a father?’
Thalo was glad to hear this. He did not forget it.