Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback

He had joined the army of the king because he was starving.

Three days without eating had sent him there; little other work that winter. And the war-camp was bursting with food; you could see it from the road: oxen roasting over the big fire and loaves piled high and barrels of ale lined up, all a lush tapestry of red and brown and golden plenty, down in the trampled, white-snowed valley. He had fought his first battle with a full belly, and survived to fill it again and again.

Five years after that. And then another five. Roughly every sixth year, the urge came in him to do something else. But he had mislaid family, and even love. Had given up himself and found this other man that now he had become: Yannis the soldier.

And five years more. And nearly five . . .

The horse kicked and fell on him just as the nineteenth year was turning towards the twentieth. Poor creature, shot with an arrow it was dying, going down, the kick one last instinctive protest, maybe.

But the blow, and the collapsing weight smashed the lower bones in his right leg, and he lost it up to the knee. All but its spirit, which still ached him inside the wooden stump. Yet what more could he ? 61 ?

? Below the Sun Beneath ?

expect? He had put himself in the way of violences, and so finally received them.

The army paid him off.

The coins, red and brown, but not golden, lasted two months.

By the maturing of a new winter he was alone again, unemployed and wandering, and for three days he had not eaten anything but grass.

Yannis heard the strange rumour at the inn by the forest’s edge. The innwife had taken pity on him. “My brother lost a leg like you. Proper old cripple he is now,” she had cheerily announced. Yet she gave Yannis a meal and a tin cup of beer. There was a fire as well, and not much custom that evening. “Sleep on a bench, if you want. But best get off before sun-up. My husband’s back tomorrow and if he catches you, we’ll both get the side of his fist.”

As the cold moon rose and the frosts dropped from it like chains to bind the earth, Yannis heard wolves howling along the black avenues of the pine trees.

He dozed later, but then a group of men came in, travellers, he thought. He listened perforce to their talk, making out he could not hear, in case.

“It would seem he’s scared sick of them, afraid to ask. Even to pry.”

“That’s crazy talk. How can he be? He’s a king. And what are they?

A bunch of girls. No. There’s more to it than that.”

“Well, Clever Cap, it’s what they say in the town market. And not even that open with it either. He wants to know, but won’t take it on himself. Wants some daft clod to do it for him.”

Yannis, as they fell silent again, willed himself asleep. In the morning, he had to get off fast.

A track ran to the town. On foot and disabled, it took him until noon.

The place was as he had expected, huts and hovel-houses and the only stone buildings crowded round the square with the well, as if they had been herded there for safety. Even so, at his third attempt ? 62 ?

? Tanith Lee ?

he got a day’s work hauling stacks of kindling. He slept that night in a barn behind the priest’s house. At sunrise he heard the priest’s servants gossiping.

“It’s Women’s Magic. That’s why he’s afeared.”

“But he’s a king.”

“Won’t matter. Our Master’ll tell you. Some women still keep to the bad old ways. Worse in the city. They’re clever there. Too clever to be Godly.”

Beyond the town was another track. At last an ill-made and

raddled road.

He knew by then the city was many more miles of walking—