by Kate Elliott
“Look at the size of those dogs,” muttered the first. “Where’s my damned sword?” He had to grope a little—overcompensating for drink—but he found the hilt and drew the blade.
The second flexed his knuckles and then clenched his hands, grinning at the prospect of a fight. He cast around and found a stick, beat it twice on the ground to test its heft.
Yet with the hounds at his side, Alain felt no fear. It might even be possible that these young lordlings could beat him, scar him and best him, even pitted against the hounds, but that would be a minor crime compared to their assault on her.
“What manner of men are you, who would assault a holy woman sworn to the church—”
“And found consorting with the whores!” cried the man who’d been on the ground. He finished hitching up his belt, drew his knife, and fingered it menacingly. “Get out of our way, Lion. You’ve no right to be interfering with us. And I want no trouble with those hounds. If she’s your paramour, I’ll pay you for damages, but there is no whore-woman who’ll say nay to me in that fashion and get away with it. By God, I’d be shamed before my comrades!”
“You’ll be shamed before God!” said Alain, low and furious. “What manner of parent raised you to think that your pride matters more than this innocent woman’s fear? That your lust matters more than her charity? She has cast aside every luxury and every privilege to minister to the poor, who are God’s creatures as much as we are. What have you cast aside? You cannot even walk one step without dragging your own vainglory with you, as if God made this world solely for you to take your pleasure in it. You cannot even take in one breath of air without filling your heart with wrath because you have forgotten that compassion should rule in our hearts, not self-love. You are an empty shell, pumping and groaning in the night, and long before you take the last step off into the Abyss you will find that you wander on this earth no better than a rotting corpse because all that is good in you will have fled and all that is thoughtless and bestial will have eaten you alive.”
For some reason, the three men had fallen back, and as he took a step toward them, they fell to their knees.
“The blessed Daisan taught us that good is natural to humankind, but that evil is the work of the Enemy. In whose camp do you intend to muster? Choose your place now.”
He was actually shaking, he was so angry. And he did not know, nor did he care, how they meant to respond. When they began to weep and beg his forgiveness, he was surprised enough that he could not think of one word to say to them, and in the end they staggered up and stumbled off back to their camp, still hanging on each other, trembling and moaning.
“My lord.”
In his fury, he had forgotten her. Now he turned. She was kneeling, shawl torn from her head, hair half tumbling down her shoulders. Her robe was stained with dirt and vegetation, and she had gotten leaner in the face, but she still had the habit of blinking at him, marmotlike, a helpless animal needing shelter.
“Lady Hathumod.” He extended a hand to help her up, but she shrank away from him, or from the hounds, who had come up on either side of her. Standing, their heads came level to hers where she knelt. “Pray tell me you haven’t been injured.”
“Nothing more than scratches, my lord.”
“You shouldn’t be here. How are you keeping yourself? Surely not—”
“Nay, my lord,” she said, gaze dropping, suddenly embarrassed. She had lost her slippers or worn them out: her bare feet, untangled from the robe, were blistered and bloody.
“I pray you, forgive me. Of course you were not. But then how are you living? I saw you a few days ago, and then again tonight, bringing water to the beggars. Who is keeping you?” He knew she could not be keeping herself. How could a noblewoman’s daughter survive outside the hall or the cloister unless like some young noble ladies she chose to ride to war with her brothers?
“The whores keep me, my lord. There’s no churchwoman who preaches the word to them, or sings mass for them, or blesses them. They are as eager as any soul to hear the good news. Isn’t it good news to them that the blessed Daisan took upon his own body our pains and our sins, and in this way brought Life to all humankind? Isn’t it a comfort to them, who know no other way of life but sinning? Shouldn’t we minister to the sick and the afflicted before we give our substance to those who live in comfort, my lord?”
“I beg you,” he said, because the words were as painful as a knife cut, “do not call me by a title I can no longer claim.”
She pressed hands to her forehead but did not answer.
“You can’t travel with the army, Lady Hathumod. It isn’t right. We’ll come to a convent, and I’m sure they’ll take in a young woman of your birth and education and good sense.”
“God have mercy, my lord.” She swayed forward, clung to his hand. “Do not make me leave you.”
Was it possible that she loved him in the same hopeless way that he loved Tallia? Or was she merely clinging to someone familiar in a world that must seem strange to her, severed from the noble way of life she had become accustomed to? Either way, he owed her gentleness.
He helped her rise and walked with her back into camp. She showed him the tent where she slept. They had to wait there a few moments until a blowsy woman emerged and, behind her, a Lion from the third cohort who was straightening his tunic, a man Alain vaguely recognized but didn’t know. He greeted Alain without embarrassment and walked away, whistling. The whore took a swig of cider and looked Alain over.
She wasn’t a pretty woman, but she had the knack of letting the neck of her shift hang low over her breasts, and she knew how to set hand to hip and jut out her leg just so, to suggest goods for sale in the market.
Was this how his mother had looked? Or had she still retained some flower of innocence blooming somehow in the mire of her life? Henri had always said she was beautiful. How would his mother have looked had she lived on, with all the beauty hardened out of her like sap squeezed from a young tree? Was beauty doomed to wither where its goodness was not nurtured? Could beauty only arise out of innocence and purity? Or was it a quality entirely unrelated to anything but the accident of its presence in the world?
“I pray you,” he said to the whore. “I just saved Sister Hathumod from being raped. They’d dragged her into the bushes—”
“That would be Lord Dietrich,” said the whore, looking Hathumod over with a resigned sigh, probing at her ribs and abdomen while Hathumod stood with head bowed. The young novice was ashamed, or humiliated, or uncaring; he couldn’t tell which. “He’s gone through every woman in the train, and he’s looking for fresher prey.”
“Is there anything that can be done to protect her?”
She had a smile no more scornful than that of those hard-eyed noblewomen who oversaw extensive estates and flogged their servants when they were angry. “From the lords?” She laughed. “You Lions are more honest than them. We’re lucky if they give us food after they’ve taken what they want.” With a practiced touch, she hooked fingers up between Hathumod’s thighs and felt at her groin. Alain looked away quickly, ashamed on Hathumod’s behalf, but Hathumod only gasped, shuddering, hands hiding her face. She didn’t even protest. The whore sniffed her fingers, then shook her head as she addressed Alain. “No harm done, this time. But there’s not much we can do for her, friend. She’s a bit touched in the head, thinks she’s a noble lady’s get, and while I grant you she’s well spoken, I don’t see any retinue following at her heels. She hasn’t a clue how to take care of herself. She brings us nothing to eat for she’s no way of getting food and no possessions to trade. We’ve been feeding her in exchange for her preaching, for truly she’s got no other skills. She can’t even mend a tear in a skirt.”
He knew a bargainer when he saw one. He had watched Aunt Bel haggle on market day many times. “I’ll see what extra food I can bring. But I’ve no coin. I’m new to the Lions, and we’re only paid in coin twice a year.”
“Umm,” she said, looking him over again in a consideri
ng way. “New to the Lions, indeed. You’ve got nice shoulders, my friend. But nice shoulders don’t make dinner.”
In that instant, he hated Geoffrey for impoverishing him. It had been within his power, before, to aid the poor and the helpless. Now he had little enough himself, and he felt helpless. “On the nights when I haven’t duties in camp I’ll do what I can to help you, bring in firewood, hunt a little. Gather berries when they’re ripe.”
Someone had bitten the whore’s lower lip, and the wound hadn’t yet healed. She played at the wound with her tongue as she eyed him with professional interest. “You’re a good-looking lad, and well spoken. I’ve a young cousin at my old village of Felsinhame. She’s looking for a husband. She’d not mind one who was away for months at a time, if he was a good lad otherwise.” Seeing something in his expression, she hurried on. “She’s not like me, a horrible sinner, an old slut.” She said the word harshly, and for an instant he glimpsed an angry memory deep within her, rooted in her face. “She’s not like me. She’s a good girl.”
“I’m not looking for a wife,” he said softly as, behind him, Hathumod whimpered and finally began to cry.
“Did you find her?” Folquin asked when, at midnight, Alain arrived at his sentry post somewhat farther downstream on the same brook that he had splashed over to rescue Lady Hathumod.
“Ai, God, so I did,” said Alain, feeling so weary that he wanted to lie down and let the grass grow over him so that he wouldn’t have to care what happened to poor Hathumod and all the other suffering, lost souls. Yet someone had to care. “She’s—” But Hathumod’s secrets weren’t his to divulge. “She shouldn’t be here.”
“Nor should any of them be here,” said Folquin. “I knew a boy once, my mother’s cousin’s cousin’s son. He was just too pretty, that boy, and he found out that there were those men who would give him anything they had if he’d act the girl for them. So maybe he liked getting it or maybe he liked getting the trinkets or maybe he just liked jerking them on that rope. I’ll never know. He got killed in a knife fight, poor stupid boy.” He went off then, to get his rest.
Alain stroked Sorrow’s ears absently. They’d been on the march for ten days and had camped this night somewhere in Fesse or Saony, he wasn’t sure. He didn’t know the lay of the land here. Captain Thiadbold, Ingo, and the older Lions in first cohort had marched this way before; they recognized the landmarks and the estates, the names of villages and the courses of rivers. They’d crossed one ford that had once been a ferry crossing, and been forced to detour around a second ford that was now a high-cut, eroded bank too steep to pull the wagons up. Summer woodland made their march pleasant, delightfully uneventful except for the usual injuries: a foot run over by a wheel, a man kicked in the thigh by a horse, two fistfights, and one knifing over a village woman. Here in central Wendar, King Henry’s reign was marked by tranquillity and enough to eat.
But he was not tranquil as he stood watch on the verge of the silent woodland, a tangle of young trees at the edge and older ones farther in, massive and brooding with only stars to light them, an ancient forest not yet fallen before the axes of humankind. They had passed a village earlier in the day, but now only the straight track led before them, striking straight as an arrow’s flight into the forest. Here and there on the track stones showed through, scoured with lichen, dark with moss, an old line of march built by another people. Had Dariyan generals once marched their armies through this forest?
He stood on that track now, stones felt as an unyielding surface under the soles of his sandals. A few steps in front of him the half-concealed track crossed the stream at an old ford. He heard it more than saw it in the darkness where the water sang over the stones. Such a crossing point made a good sentry post, so Ingo had theorized.
Frogs chorused and fell silent. A single splash spread ripples of sound into the night, then stilled. Off to his right he saw the figure of another sentry pacing nervously at the edge of a particularly aggressive stand of oak that thrust out into the meadow in which they’d set up camp. He recognized the stout shoulders of Leo, Folquin’s tent-mate. A twig snapped. An owl hooted. The stars blazed, a multitude of glorious lights. He sensed nothing unusual in the night, although a wind was coming up from the southeast. This past day they had marched through open woodland and meadows. Now dense forest lay ahead, a good long day of it, so Ingo said, before they came to the Veser River Valley and its string of forts and fortified towns and villages. East past the Veser there would be more forts and more fortifications, built in the reign of King Arnulf the Elder as protection against the depredations of the Rederii and Helvitii tribesmen who, until twenty years ago, had raided every winter. Now they were Daisanites and quiet plowmen, working in peace side by side with their Wendish overlords. But in recent years, according to the nightly gossip at the campfires, Quman tribesmen had raided far into the interior of Saony, lightning bolts that struck, sizzled, and vanished. Farther east, past the Oder River, their group would enter the marchlands and from that point on they would always have to be on their guard.
War. Was this war different in kind than the terrible duel between Henry and Sabella, brother against sister? Would it be easier to fight an enemy who was so unlike and so savage? Yet even against the inhuman Eika, he had learned that he could not kill.
He had been too stunned to remember that fact the day he had lost Lavas County and taken service in the king’s Lions.
What would the Lions do when they found out he couldn’t fight?
What would he do if the Lady of Battles had forsaken him?
Rage whined, nosing his fingers, and he chuckled a little under his breath. What did it matter? He would march into battle at the side of the others, because that was the loyalty they owed each to the other and to the king. If he died, then at least he would be at peace, and if he lived, he would be no worse off than he was now.
No worse off, as long as he didn’t think about Lavastine and Tallia. As long as he just kept walking each day, talking each day, working and eating and sleeping as though another Alain who had never known any life but this one inhabited his body, that empty shell, scoured and scalded by the lie that had ruined Lavastine’s hopes. For he had no doubt that God was punishing him for the lie. And yet, given the choice again with Lavastine at his last breath, he would do it again, over and over again, every time, just to hear that beloved voice say: Done well.
Sorrow nipped at him, and he began to weep, but he struggled against it. He rubbed his face hard with the back of a hand, obliterating the tears. He knew where weeping would lead. He had to keep walking without looking back.
Ai, God. The innocent boy dreaming in Osna village would have given anything to march among the Lions, bent eastward toward adventure and the glory of righteous war.
Ai, God. That innocent boy had given everything: the only home and family he knew, the only woman he loved, the father who had loved him and died at peace because he had given everything he had into the hands of the heir he trusted.
All in ruins.
He sank to his knees, had to support himself on the ground with his spear fallen to the track beside him as he fought against the sobs that welled up in his chest. He could not weep. He must not weep. But he was drowning, swimming in grief, lost as the waves swamped him. Bodies jostled against him as though to lift him out of the tide
as he looks over the shoulder of Namms Dale’s new chieftain. There were few sons of the old chief left to choose from, after the conflagration visited upon Namms Dale by Nokvi, but Stronghand has been patient in gathering up a stray ship here and a pack of warriors there. Now one of Namms Dale’s surviving children has risen to take the staff of leadership. He has given himself the name Grimstroke and, like Bloodheart, he has chosen to observe the death magic ceremony.
Like Bloodheart, he has called his underlings together to witness his ceremony, to give notice that he does not fear death and treachery because treachery will rebound with greater force upon any person who dares to
assassinate him.
But in truth, only one who fears death and doubts his own strength resorts to the death magic spell. Bloodheart revenged himself in this way upon the man who brought about his death. But the curse is a sign of weakness, not of strength. Bloodheart, after all, is still dead.
Stronghand watches as Grimstroke extrudes a claw and unhooks a tiny jar carved out of granite. Only stone can contain the venom of the ice-wyrms. The delicate granite lid falls back, and at once Hakonin’s hall is permeated with the scent of the only death a RockChild fears. Only a single grain of silvery venom lies in the jar, but it alone is enough poison.
The Namms Dale priest shakes a rattle and tosses a handful of herbs into the air. The herbs drift down onto the altar where corpse and jar lie side by side. The dead hatchling is no bigger than a man’s hand, and as white as roe. One pinch of a claw would slice it in half. It reeks of salt and seawater.
Only through killing does a hatchling become a RockChild instead of remaining forever a dog. In each nest, some of the blind hatchlings turn upon the others while most merely escape to live their short lives in the dog pack, the unthinking brothers of those who walk and plan. It is mind that separates a son from a dog, thinking that makes one a person and another simply a beast. In the nests of the Mothers, it is that first blind, groping kill that makes a mind flower.
And when the nests burst open and the hatchlings stumble out, corpses remain behind, caught in the ragged membrane. They soak there in brine, untended, unobserved, undecayed—
—unless a new chieftain fears death enough to risk the trek to the lair of the ice-wyrms, so that he can weave the death magic: the dead hand that will stalk the one who killed him and bring about the murderer’s death as recompense, a death for a death.
The priest lights incense, and the scent of it is so sweet that it stings, but it does not vanquish the smell of the grain of venom. With pincers forged of iron, Grimstroke lifts the grain from the jar and gently deposits it into the gaping, unformed mouth of the tiny corpse.