After the battle, Urlenn let his men off at the first friendly town. The deserved a junket, and their captains would look out for them. He was going home this way. This long way home. With luck, he might make it last a week.
After all, Madzia would not like — or like too much — his open wounds. They ran across his forehead and he had been fortunate to keep his left eye. Doubtless the king would expect the tale of some valiant knightly one-to-one combat to account for this. But it had been a pair of glancing arrows.
Should I make something up to cheer the Dad?
No. And don’t call him “the Dad,” either. He’s king. He’d never forgive you.
Urlenn found he had broken into loud, quite musical song. The ditty was about living in the greenwood, the simple life. Even as he sang, he mocked himself. Being only the third son had advantages, allowing for odd lone journeys like this one. But there were limits.
Something truly odd happened then.
Another voice joined in with his, singing the same song, and in a very decent descant. A girl’s voice.
The horse tossed its head and snorted, and Urlenn reined it in.
They sang, he and she (invisible), until the end. Then, nothing. Urlenn thought, She’s not scared, or she would never have sung. So he called: “Hey, maiden! Where are you?”
And a laughing voice — you could tell it laughed — called back, “Where do you think?”
“Inside a tree,” called Urlenn. “You’re a wood-dryad.”
“A what? A dryad — oh, Gran told me about those. No I’m not.”
Urlenn dismounted. There was, he had come to see, something gray and tall and stone, up the slope, just showing through the ascending trees.
He did not shout again. Nor did she. Urlenn walked up the hill, and came out by a partly ruined tower. Sycamores and aspens had rooted in its sides, giving it a leafy, mellow look. A cottage had rooted there, too, a large one; also made of stones, which had definitely been filched from the tower.
Before the cottage and tower was an orchard of pear and apple trees just losing their white blossom. Chickens and a goat ambled about. The girl was hanging up washing from the trees.
She was straight and slim, with short yellow hair like a boy’s. And yes, still laughing.
“Not a dryad, as you see, sir.”
“Maybe unwise, though, calling out to strangers in the wood.”
“Oh, you sounded all right.”
“Did I?”
“All sorts come through here. You get to know.”
“Do you?”
“Sometimes I fetch the animals, and we hide in the tower. Last month two men broke into the cottage and stole all the food. I let them get on with it.” She added, careless, “I was only raped once. I’d been stupid. But he wished he hadn’t, after.”
“That’s you warning me.”
“No. You’re not the type, sir. You looked upset when I told you. Then curious.”
“I am. What did you do, kill him?”
“No, I told him I loved him and gave him a nice drink. He’d have had the trots for days.”
Urlenn himself laughed. “Didn’t he come back?”
“Not yet. And it was two years ago.”
She looked about seventeen, three years younger than he. She had been raped at fifteen. It did not seem to matter much to her. She had a lovely face. Not beautiful or pretty, but unexpected, interesting, like a landscape never seen before, though perhaps imagined.
“Well, maiden,” he said. “I’m thirsty myself. Do you have any drinks without medicine in them? I can pay, of course.”
“That’s all right. We mainly barter, when I go to town.” She turned and walked off to the cottage. Urlenn stood, looking at the goat and chickens and a pale cat that had come to supervise them.
The girl returned with a tankard of beer, clear as a river, and cold from some cool place, as he later learned, under the cottage floor.
He drank gratefully. She said, “You’re one of the king’s men, aren’t you, sent to fight off the other lot?”
The other lot. Yes.
He said, “That’s right.”
“That cut over your eye looks sore.”
“It is. I didn’t want it noticed much and wrapped it up in a rag — which was, I now think, dirty.”
“I can mix up something for that.”
“You’re a witch too.”
“Gran was. She taught me.”
Presently he tethered the horse to a tree and left it to crop the turf.
In the cottage he sat watching her sort and pound her herbs. It was neither a neat nor a trim room, but — pleasing. Flowering plants burst and spilled from pots on the windowsills, herbs and potions, vinegars and honeys stood glowing like jade and red amber in their jars. A patchwork curtain closed off the sleeping place. On the floor there were baskets full of colored yarns and pieces of material. Even some books lay on a chest. There was the sweet smell of growing things, the memory of recent baking — the bread stood by on a shelf — a hint of damp. And her. Young and healthy, fragrant. Feminine.
When she brought the tincture she had made, and applied it to the cuts, her scent came to him more strongly.
Urlenn thought of Madzia, her flesh heavily perfumed, and washed rather less often. He thought of Madzia’s sulky, red, biteable-looking mouth.
This girl said, “That will sting.” It does, he thought, and I don’t mean your ointment. “But it’ll clean the wound. Alas, I think there’ll be a scar. Two scars. Will that spoil your chances, handsome?”
He looked up and straight in her eyes. She was flirting with him, plainly. Oh yes, she knew what she was at. She had told him, she could tell the good from the bad by now.
I don’t look much like a king’s son, certainly. Not anymore. Just some minor noble able to afford a horse. So, it may be me she fancies.
Her eyes were more clear than any beer-brown river.
“If you don’t want money, let me give you something else in exchange for your care—”
“And what would you give me?”
“Well, what’s on the horse I need to keep. But — is there anything you see that you’d like?”
Was he flirting now?
To his intense surprise, Urlenn felt himself blush. And, surprising him even more, at his blush she, this canny, willful woods-witch, she did, too.
So then he drew the ring off his finger. It was small, but gold, with a square cut, rosy stone. He put it in her palm.
“Oh no,” she said, “I can’t take that for a cup of ale and some salve.”
“If you’d give me dinner, too, I think I’d count us quits,” he said.
She said, without boldness, gently, “There’s the bed, as well.”
Later, in the night, he told her he fell in love with her on sight, only did not realize he had until she touched him.