“It is God’s will.”
“Never had men better cause than we.”
The Heretic had not been idle while he played the Samaritan to Tristan in the ruin amid the woods. Even as in the wake of a great ship the waters seethe and foam, so the rude peasant folk of the Seven Streams had risen in the track of the Bishop’s host. Burnt hamlets and ruined towers, these were their witnesses, their solemn oracles. They had flocked to Samson, these homeless men whose kinsfolk had fallen to Jocelyn’s swords. Samson had preached to them more fiercely than of old. They were as tinder to a torch, these woodlanders; they were ready to burn for him in the quitting of revenge.
That evening Tristan and the Heretic watched the sun go down behind the hills, and spoke together of what might chance to them in the unknown. Far to the south towered the great mountains, like sable pyramids fringed with fire. The stream clamoured in the woods beneath, as though it voiced the turbulence of the age. They spoke together, these two men, of Rosamunde, of Joyous Vale, and the Bishop’s war.
Tristan, lifting his sword, pointed it to a star that shone solitary in the southern sky.
“Let us remember Ronan’s town,” he said.
There was a strange smile on Samson’s face as he laid his hand on Tristan’s shoulder.
“Whatever life may give,” he said, “some joy, much pain, travail, and discontent, I trow there is no better quest in life than such a one as hangs upon your sword.”
“You speak in riddles,” quoth the younger.
“This star, what a riddle lives therein.”