The Tale of Oriel by Voigt Cynthia

Author:Voigt, Cynthia [Voigt, Cynthia]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

THE THICK LONG ARMS OF the onions waved in their rows in the garden before the Wolfers, and Griff, returned. Four had gone and four returned, one bent over with the weight of the sack he carried on his back, and the other three walking upright.

Rulgh made his proud greeting to Oriel. “We are stealers, and have gold. We have no men dead. Malke not complain of Rulgh, not with much gold. Now we eat.”

Griff twisted his shoulder to let the heavy bag roll off, and Oriel turned him around. Griff’s back was crisscrossed with scars. The crescent on his cheek Oriel had been ready for, but these puckered lines—as if he had been whipped until the skin began to peel away from the meat beneath. “What is this, Griff?” he asked.

Griff shook his head.

“No, tell me,” Oriel said.

Griff wouldn’t speak.

“If slave,” Rulgh explained, still smiling. “A slave is whipped.”

“The soldiers whipped you? Why?” Oriel asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” Griff said. Griff moved now like a man who knows his own strength and knows his own strength is enough. His eyes, as the woman said, were sad, a dark sad brown.

“Not soldiers. Wolfers. I,” Rulgh said. His eyes were bright with his own cleverness. “To make soldiers tewkemans. To believe Griff slave. Slave run away from master.”

Oriel was a man of ice, burning cold. “I warned you,” he said.

Rulgh ignored him. Rulgh didn’t even dismiss Oriel, he just ignored him. It was all Oriel could do to keep his heart and eyes icy cold because he couldn’t even make good his own word.

Rulgh had taken from Oriel even the power to keep his own word. He had whipped Griff hard enough to leave ruts in Griff’s back, and counted himself clever to do that. There was another reason why Rulgh had whipped Griff; he wanted Oriel to know that Oriel was powerless.

But Oriel would never accept that knowledge. It was false, and Rulgh was false, and Rulgh would come to understand that.

“It’s done now,” Griff said. “Finished.”

“We eat,” Rulgh said, and clapped Oriel on the shoulder in celebration of his victories. “We rest, one day, two, and then go home. Jorg?” Rulgh asked.

“Dead. We buried him,” Oriel said. “There,” he indicated the forested hillside. Rulgh looked at the trees, then back to the house, and decided to think of his dinner rather than the dead.

Oriel and Griff served the Wolfers stew made of small animals Oriel had trapped, and bowls of honey mead, mixed with herbs and water. Then he set out food for the woman and Griff and himself. But the woman breathed in gasps, and had no hunger. “It’s my time,” she said, and she left the room. All through the summer evening they could hear her. The children slept. The Wolfers slept. Oriel and Griff sat close together and the woman moaned rhythmically. “Can we ask them to leave us here?” Griff asked Oriel.

“If Rulgh takes us with him he has booty and captives and gold. My guess is, it’s shame to a Captain to lose so many men,” Oriel said, “so he has to take us with him.

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