First and foremost: both are tales told with extreme reluctance. The armoring of the Vow cannot protect Tull from the agony of his tale, nor does the numbness of leprosy—or a vast historical distance—protect Covenant, who postpones telling his tale repeatedly until the quest reaches Coercri itself.
Tull’s tale is told at the beginning of its chapter; we readers are (in effect) among the listeners to it, learning its dire news for the first time. (It’s interesting that after SRD’s initial, wrenching depiction of his faltering efforts to start the tale, Tull fades into the background altogether; he’s referred to in the third person in the body of the narrative, but only once or twice even then. This is not only SRD’s device to focus us on the past action within the tale rather than the present scene surrounding its telling, but also serves to both contain and emphasize its pain. When referring obliquely to the same events, Bannor speaks “abstractedly” in TPTP: “Many things were lost in The Grieve that day.” Similarly, Tull dissociates from his tale because he has no other way of making it endurable: he may not weep and cannot burn.)
Covenant’s tale of Coercri is told toward the end of its chapter. The Giants of the Search (with Sunder and Hollian, who fade into the background, and Linden, who remains as a conspicuous, distressed witness) are the only de novo hearers of it; we readers, with Covenant and the Haruchai, already know the story. The suspense in “Tull’s Tale” derives from the inexorable approach to Coercri and our foreboding (unknowing dread), along with Hyrim, Korik, Tull, and company, of what we will find there. The suspense in “Coercri” derives from the inexorable approach to Coercri and our knowing dread, along with Covenant, Brinn, Hergrom, and company, of what has happened there too long ago for even our mourning to reach it. The contrast between our and Covenant’s knowledge vs. the lack of knowledge of the Giants of the Search—innocence Covenant is about to shatter—is what drives the chapter. It reminds me of the exclamation of the two Emmaus travelers to a stranger on the road in Luke 24:18: “Are you the only person in Jerusalem who hasn’t heard these things?!”
The global emotional direction of each chapter (though not its specific happenings) is foreshadowed by its early images of travel and of sickness/injury vs. healing.
Tull and comrades’ trip through the Sarangrave and adjacent swamp is much more impeded than that of the Search. Not only the lurker but everything in the environment seems to work actively against the mission. The Search and friends, in major contrast, are helped and guided by the sur-jheherrin, whose native ecology this is; and they share in the sur-jheherrin’s facility of movement. (The sur-jheherrin themselves are exemplars of redemption, and owe that redemption to an exemplar of redeemed Gianthood, the Pure One. Foreshadowing of yet more redemption to come.)
In “Tull’s Tale”, Lord Hyrim contracted a fever from contaminated water, became sicker during a malign rainstorm, and apparently had a heart attack or similar malady in Coercri before his final fight with the Raver. In “Coercri”, Sunder and Linden had both been badly hurt in an earlier chapter, but were on the mend. Linden speaks of how she can feel her ankle bones, nerves, and blood vessels healing under the influence of the diamondraught; she becomes ambulatory again mere days after the fracture and its setting.
Thus, though we know that Covenant’s tale is Tull’s tale, and dread hearing it, the stage is set in “Coercri” for a telling, a journey, that will ultimately end in healing. Tull’s original Tale, in contrast, progressed from one malignity to another without healing—and set the stage for a fractured Vow that could never be reset.
As both Korik’s mission and Covenant’s quest enter the region of Seareach, the land’s health and beauty register even amidst the foreboding of what they will find in the city.
"Tull’s Tale":
[A note in passing: there appears to be either a continuity glitch on SRD’s part, or, more likely, a cultural difference between the Unhomed of this era and the Giants of Home itself as seen in the Search. The Unhomed built wooden ships; Starfare’s Gem was of stone.]The land which the Old Lords had given to the Giants for a home was wide and fair. Enclosed by hills on the south, mountains on the west, and the Sunbirth Sea on the east, it was a green haven for the shipwrecked voyagers. But although they used the land—cultivated the rolling countryside with crops of all kinds, planted immense vineyards, grew whole forests of the special redwood and teak trees from which they crafted their huge ships—they did not people it.
"Coercri":
<digression>The crisp breeze chilled their faces; and in the taintless light, they saw that autumn had come to the fair land of Seareach. Below them, woods nestled within the curve of the hills: oak, maple, and sycamore anademed in fall-change; Gilden gloriously bedecked. And beyond the woods lay rolling grasslands as luxuriously green as the last glow of summer.
The autumn details here remind me somehow of Korik’s autumnal ride through Trothgard in "Gilden-Fire", which has a similar, if more overt, juxtaposition of outdoor well-being and remembered/anticipated woe, although it’s on the other end of the Land and in a completely different part of the mythos:
"Gilden-Fire":
</digression>In the fresh day, the countryside shone as if it were oblivious to the looming threat of blood. Ripe wheat rippled like sheets of gold in some of the fields; and in others cut hay was stacked in high fragrant mows. Over them, the air blew its autumn nip; the breeze carried the smells of the crops like a counterpoint to the morning enthusiasm of the birds. The farmland seemed to defy the spectre which haunted it. Korik knew better: he had seen land as fair as this helpless to withstand fire and trampling and the thick unhealthy drench of blood.
Closer to the city, both Korik’s mission and Covenant’s quest encounter Coercri’s vineyards.
"Tull’s Tale":
"Coercri":…The Giants who had been working this vineyard had left it together in haste. The matter was clear. Giantish hoes and rakes as tall as men lay scattered among the vines with their blades and teeth still in the marks of their work, and several of the leather sacks in which the Giants usually carried their food and belongings had been thrown to the ground and abandoned. Apparently, the Unhomed had received some kind of signal, and had dropped their work at once to answer it.
‘Nuff said.Beyond the hills, Seareach became a lush profusion of grapes, like a vineyard gone wild for centuries.
When Covenant and friends come within sight of the city, Pitchwife sings,
For all its sincerely meant affirmation, Pitchwife’s song just then and just there carries a load of unknowing irony and grief. For SRD places it as a bookend to Sparlimb Keelsetter’s single verse of the Unhomed lament in “Tull’s Tale.”We are the Giants,
born to sail,
and bold to go wherever dreaming goes.
This is sung by the last living uncorrupt citizen of Coercri—but I’m getting ahead of the tale.Now we are Unhomed,
bereft of root and kith and kin.
From other mysteries of delight,
we set our sails to resail our track;
but the winds of life blew not the way we chose,
and the land beyond the Sea was lost.
In “Tull’s Tale,” Hyrim, Korik, and company enter the city with a constantly changing mixture of stealth, grief, and haste. The first dead Giants they find demonstrate the malignity and power of the attacker, and the mission has no way of knowing whether it is still awaiting them. As they wend their way down the ramparts, Hyrim weeping aloud and the Bloodguard wishing they could, they encounter Giants ever more recently killed.
In “Coercri,” Covenant and company enter the city with grieving dignity and deliberation.Then an urgency came upon the Bloodguard and the Lords. They began to hasten. The Lord leaped down the high stairs, ran along the ramparts to inspect the apartments. In their black garb, the four flew downward like the ravens of midnight, taking the tale of shed blood and blasted skulls.
Korik et al. did not initially know what they were getting into as they entered the city, only that it was dreadful. Covenant and his Haruchai companions share the knowledge of what has happened here so long ago—and are painfully aware that they are alone in that knowledge. For a few more minutes.[Covenant] strode the tunnel as if he meant to hurl himself from the edge when he reached it. But Brinn and Hergrom flanked him, knowing what he knew. His companions followed him in silence, hushed as if he were leading them into a graveyard hallowed by old blood. Formally, they entered The Grieve.
In both chapters, sealed doors are broken open at the base of the city, nearest the Sea.
"Tull’s Tale":
This is Sparlimb Keelsetter. Korik and Hyrim administer the smallest caamora in the mythos and eventually manage to wake him from catatonia, so that he can tell them that his own son has slain his people and left him to the last.…One smaller door near the south end of the headrock was tightly closed. Lord Hyrim tried to open it, but it had no handle, and he could not grip the smooth stone.
Korik and Tull approached it together. Forcing their fingers into one crack of the door, they heaved at it. With a scraping noise like a gasp of pain, it swung outward, admitting shadow light to the chamber beyond.
The single room was bare; it contained nothing but a low bed against one side wall. It was lightless, and the air in it smelled stale.
On the floor against the back wall sat a Giant…He was alive.
Korik’s speech to Keelsetter, arguing against his resigned acceptance of death (an acceptance that cannot be translated Tan-Haruchail without blaspheming) always twists my guts.
[Do not swear by heaven, for it is God’s throne; do not swear by earth, for it is God’s footstool; do not swear by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. Do not swear by the Vow, for you do not know if you can keep it. Do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let your Yes be Yes and your No be No; anything more than that opens the door to Corruption.]Compelled by the ancient passion of the Bloodguard, Korik asked, “Why did you not fight?”
“We had become the thing we hate. We are better dead.”
“Nevertheless!” Korik said. “Is this the fealty of the Giants? Does all promised faithfulness come to this? By the Vow, Giant! You destroy yourselves, and let the evil live! Even Kevin Landwaster was not so weak.”
To a re-reader who has finished TPTP, Korik’s words are freighted with irony, for he will so shortly be the near occasion of a similar despair for the Bloodguard. Of course he doesn’t know that yet, and (such is the moral tunnel vision of the Vow) can by no means imagine it.
In “Coercri,” Covenant’s last act before telling his tale is to have another sealed door opened.
When Seadreamer investigates, the dead Giant’s hand becomes dust in his grip, and he rushes Covenant for the story as he will soon rush headlong into the fire.[Covenant] barked to Brinn, “Get this open. I want to see what’s inside.”
Brinn moved to obey; but the salt prevented him from obtaining a grip.
At once, Seadreamer joined him and began scraping the crust away like a man who could not stand closed doors, secrets. Soon, he and Brinn were able to gain a purchase for their fingers along the edge of the stone. With an abrupt wrench, they swung the door outward.
Air, which had been tombed for so long that it no longer held any taint of must or corruption, spilled through the opening.
Within was a private living chamber….… Mummified by dead air and time and subtle salt, a Giant.
Covenant’s tale, like Tull’s, is told in firelit darkness.
"Tull’s Tale":
"Coercri":Tull seated himself opposite [Lord Mhoram] acrpss the graveling pot…Tull faced the Lord, but his visage was shrouded in darkness. Troy could not see his eyes; he appeared to have no eyes, no mouth, no features. When he began his tale, his voice seemed to be the voice of the blind night.
In “Tull’s Tale”, Keelsetter’s song comes after his minimal (inadequate?) caamora and precedes his tale of his son’s genocide—and eventual patricide. In Coercri, Pitchwife’s song comes before Covenant’s tale, which is followed by the greatest caamora the world has yet seen ([Covenant] could barely discern the features of his companions. Linden, the Giants, Sunder and Hollian, the Haruchai, even Vain—they were night and judgment to him, a faceless jury assembled to witness the crisis of his struggle with the past, with memory and power, and to pronounce doom.
……
“Start a fire. A big one.”
Spoiler
until Covenant transfigures the Banefire into one greater still, which alone can transmute venom into alloy.
**rushes off to Dissecting to reread The Search**(wishes Bannor, Brinn and all Watchers who deeply ID with the Haruchai would read these same posts)
Yes Matrix I was bothered by that too but didn't have the energy to reread the entire Chrons to find out if the original Unhomed came to the Land and wrecked their stone ship--maybe the stone (?) in the Land was unusable for building ships and they had to resort to wood. No wonder they never came back, eh? (well if Durris is a proffesional I take back everything I said and fart in his general direction! 
)
); I think it's cool that you've chosen a Haruchai persona as something to aspire to, not necessarily as a reflection of your "real" self. Shame on us if we've compromised your anonymity against your wishes.