The Wife of Dark-Blue, chapter two

The House of Dark-Blue

He had two bolg Gazat! With huge beards! One always whittling and tanning and curing and carving and cutting wood, the other only to sing.

But it was a house like many houses, or at least it was not a house in the air or a house of cloud as tales might tell.

We rode mad. The sky span, clouds made shapes from dark dreams. We rode though days and nights, or we rode through my madness and black sleep I know not which, or both. I was sat behind Dark-Blue with my face to his pigeon-feather cloak, his long black hair bounced over my head like a veil and my hands were tied with cords around his waist. I could have broken them. But what then?

In time we were deep, deep in the forest, so deep that neither horse nor hound could pass, but Dark-Blue did. Great stones stood, the ground was moss and we went silently but at terrible speed, as a man would ride to cripple his horse or die himself. Trees whipped.

"Ah ha!" said Dark Blue.

His back flexed and his bow sung, (that had not even been in his hand), he reached out and took something falling from the air.

"Look!" he said! "Beautiful! Good.. good.."

He held it behind his head; a bird, very small, most wonderous, pierced through, the arrow still in it, the blow so fast it did not know that it was dead and seemed stunned even as blood dripped, its eye turning, the last tremors, only small jewels of blood quivering in the smooth stride of Paladur, the horse of Dark-Blue, slipped from the birds beak and stained my face, a single spot of red rain, its feathers shining like lightning on water.

And then we came to the House of Dark Blue. Dark wood piles, with roof struts of bone, huge ribs turned yellow and polished by the black fur of weasels which ran along them; sinuous, and lived in the turf roof. The walls of logs, set raw but now long polished and carved, burnished like old bronze, as if by a thousand years of hands. Gaps packed with heather, rooted and sprouted, making little fragrant gardens of its own, blooming in long lines between the dark-bronze wood.

Not one part was uncarved and all the carvings were of beasts; squirrel, oxen, birds, bugs, horses, fish, fowl, sheep, eagles, dragons, sea-fish I did not know, many-handed beasts I could not imagine.

The wood, the great ivory bones, the ebony interior, all carved and scampering. Owls looked out past the shoulders of apes, everything was living, it was maddening, beautiful, a temple, a hovel, a dream one cold not awaken from, it was too much. Filthy white-capped eagles roosted on the rooftop and slunk about, voles scampered in the roots of the house, centipedes in the gaps, there were wasps nests in the eves, beehives somewhere, the house thrummed like a tight cord with a silence which was not silence, but a hum, an exhaling, it nearly purred like a cat.

Pale smoke rose from a teetering drystone chimney set like a puzzle and fumed through the gaps in the stone. Horses ran in a corral amongst the trees made of woven branches looped from trunk to trunk; it was part of the forest.

Goats hung around suspiciously, somewhere a pig, (a boar?), squealed and snuffed from a lair. There were always dogs, I never knew how many. Woodshed, fur-shed, meat-shed. Bears never bothered him, I am not sure he truly slept. He killed his beasts on a stone-floored stream, only a few inches deep, that wove invisible not far from the house, the water carried off the blood and much of the smell. He did it with an old flint knife, though he would submit to metal for his arrow points; "they are not so bad, not so bad for all that"

"HO!" he hung his horse to a crashing halt. Paladur turned side on, spurts of earth and moss flew from his hooves.

A red dwarf with black eyes burst from the whale-carved ebony door and shouted;

"HA!"

A dirty eagle squawked and leapt dithering and downward onto the shining red hair of the dwarves head, as if it were a bright salmon in the stream, and screamed!

"Get off me!" cried the Dwarf and reached for a blackthorn stick carved with many cats which stood against the door and which, I saw at once, had no use but to beat away the stupid mugging birds which must do this every day. But the bird beat its wings, clung on and drew blood and this turned the dwarf around and around.

"Ho!" shouted Dark-Blue and hurled something at the bird, I do  not know what, a nut? which killed it stone dead.

It fell to the ground and the dogs set upon it. Dark Blue snapped the cords which bound me, leapt down and raced at the dwarf.

"Ho! Hirmo!"

Dark-Blue leapt on the red dwarf and hurled him high into the air. Without his back to lean on and worn beyond mind, I slipped and slithered from the saddle. Yet the tireless pale horse Paladur moved under me like milk held steady in a cupcup and I felt I could not fall but was balanced like a father with a child. Sill I lay facewise for I could not sit up. I turned my face to see what went on.

"Hirmo!" cried Dark-Blue and the Dwarf shouted "Curse You!" and "No!" as Dark-Blue hurled him again and again into the air while the dogs savaged the dead eagle with terrible force and scattered its red blood on the green moss, which drank it down all.

"Hirmo." said Dark Blue, and let the Dwarf slide through his arms, before he bowed, sweeping his blue-black bone-ringed beard to one side.

"What of Ormo?"

"YOU do not bow!" cried the Dwarf "I bow! Thusly!" And he did bow in the manner of dwarfs, sweeping his red beard to one side before it touched the earth.

"Ormo does nothing! Nothing! I see you have a woman with you."

"A wife! My wife!" said Dark Blue.

"A wife!" the Dwarf said "A mistress for the house! My mistress! My mistress! You are worn from your ride!"

And he ran towards me leaping up, bouncing to try to take me from the horses back.

"And to suffer on a horse." He glared at Dark-Blue and went back to his bouncing, I saw him bobbing before me up and down like an apple in a bowl of water

"My mistress! Oh you are ill-used! My.. my dear.. HEY!" He shouted over his shoulder. "Who is she? How named?"

"Hmm. A name.. That I am not sure of."

"You!" The Dwarf, Hirmo, snatched a handful of moss from the forest floor and flung it at Dark Blue, it broke into a cloud of green and fluttered to the earth barely a foot from the red Dwarfs throw.

"No name! A wife with no name! A!"

"I think her father was called Pararhunavas, son of Graukukaumn son of Kulkodaruklave son of Malgatgoth who I remember once came here hunting bees and great men were they all of the plains, and of a great tribe, (though somewhat orcish), but I do not know her name."

"A man knows his wifes name!" Said Hirmo, bouncing, "oh my mistress, such a husband!"

"Who are you then?" said Dark-Blue, "I would know your eyes in the dark and will remember your scent all my life, but a name can be useful at times.. like 'Dark-Blue' ha!"

"I am Nikhavukfal," I said, and finally slept and, I assume, slid from the grey-white horse into the arms of Hirmo the bolg gazat, who did all.