The Wanderer Read Free

his house’s army at this diminished strength. But those three hundred! A family with even one kern or kedran in the Lord of the Westmark’s service was lifted out of poverty.
    Gone for a kedran in Knaar’s service—it was a golden dream. More practically speaking, the Melniros were a martial race, and if a kedran was not accepted into Knaar’s army … well, there were many lordly households throughout Val’Nur and beyond where a battlemaid could find good service.
    A chance at training for one such as Gael was something to seize upon and not let go.
    II
    Now began the happiest time at Coombe that Gael Maddoc could ever remember. Before the Elmmoon came, and the fullness of summer, Maddoc taught his daughter to handle a bow and the Druda taught her to ride his tall old mare. On the croft they had not even a donkey, but as a child she had once or twice been “given a ride” on a horse. Now riding and horses were to
be her life. She was fond of Friya, the priest’s patient old mare, but she dreamed of other horses, more spirited. There would be a special horse, maybe, to understand and love.
    The training of potential Westling recruits was a great matter for all the towns and villages in the Chyrian lands of Mel’Nir. Recruits were drawn from Tuana, faded now but still almost a city, and from the thriving port at Banlo Strand and the villages around Coombe, on the edge of the High Ground. It was not always possible to raise “a full muster” of five hundred for Knaar to chose from—this was peacetime, the weather and the harvests were always uncertain. Coombe, one of the oldest villages on the coast, was very poor, but it kept up its proud tradition, remembering the Westmark’s great hero, General Yorath, who, while camped in Coombe, had summoned the first muster of the Westlings for Valko Firehammer, Lord Knaar’s famous father.
    The war had been a terrible thing for Mel’Nir: Ghanor, the so-called Great King, had been a power-mad monster, a warring king who thrust the borders of Mel’Nir outward until the sad day when his excesses collapsed the country inward on itself. Men like the Westmark’s war-leader, Valko Firehammer of Val’Nur, held loyal at first, then turned against their king when it became clear Ghanor was mad: he conspired against the families of his war-leaders; for fear of prophecy, he had his own grandchildren set to the sword. Infamously, at the field of Silverlode, he arranged for the treacherous murder of all those his heated mind had come to believe were set against him. The land had need of great heroes to turn the tide against such a tyrant—and Yorath, who had called the muster at Coombe, had been first among the men to stand against him.
    Mel’Nir was quiet now, but Val’Nur’s honor was still remembered in the little villages. Coombe always sent its full share of the muster, or near to it.
    Young men and women, ready to serve as kerns or kedran, came from round about to do their early training under Druda Strawn or under Sergeant Helm Rhodd, younger brother of Rhodd the Innkeeper. On a certain day at the beginning of summer Bress cried out from the yard and Gael, dressed already as
a kedran in a brown tunic and green trunkhose, was ready for the great adventure.
    Fast approaching from the village was a tall dark girl on a beautiful roan horse. She led another saddled horse, a brown mare with one white foot. This was Jehane Vey, daughter of a wealthy farmer, down toward the forest hamlet of Veyna. She was granddaughter of the old wise-woman, Fion Allrada. Gael had spoken to her at the house of Druda Strawn and was glad there was another kedran in training. And yes, a training horse would come from Veyna—and some other mounts, mainly ponies, would be found for the young men.
    In fact it seemed to Gael that Druda Strawn had some notion of propriety—perhaps he had known Jehane would stand forth and had had an eye out for another kedran wench to bear her company. There were ten