Plenilune

by Jennifer Freitag

  23 | Ampersand

  Rain was going to break. The rolling hill country and valley-land of Ampersand, which wedged itself between Hol-land and Thrasymene at the pinch-point of the fells and sea, was overshadowed by a furious tiger sky, brindled and heavy with fire and clouds. There was salt in the air, but the sea, which Margaret had not seen, lay beyond the next range of hills. What must it look like, she wondered, under the wings of this seraphic sky? Her mind wandered back to the summers of Aylesward when the sky at night was a long twilight, and the ocean a rolling expanse of living mercury-glass. How much more beautiful would it look here!

  She shivered with the cool breeze that was coming on with evening and comfortably folded her arms around herself, achy in body but glad to be off her horse at last and pitching a more permanent tent. That tomorrow the Honour-lords meant to wet their swords on Bloodburn’s first northern defence did not yet concern her. In the little wood on the western side of the valley a nightingale was tuning up, and the cooking-fires of the whole camp sent up a blue haze of warmth and thin tranquillity over the roaring sky.

  Without warning Dammerung tore past her in a flutter of massive black cloak and intent face, soundless on his bare feet but for the soft, muffled booming of thrown-about fabric. She watched him sprint across the grass for Rubico: in one fluid bound he was astride the horse, and the horse must have seen him coming for it was in motion almost before Dammerung left the ground. The effect was a confused, dark, water-smooth image of kinetic bodies that was both beautiful and oddly awful. Dammerung bolted from the makeshift green and disappeared among the pine-gloom and gold blaze of sunset. A moment or two longer the splutter of hoofbeats came back to Margaret, then the pine-wood hush fell in again as though it had never been disturbed.

  “Three riders there are in all Plenilune none other man born of woman can match…”

  Margaret turned and ducked into the tent, but paused in the entryway. Skander was there at the table, his broad frame fitted gingerly into a camp chair which was long past its prime. A lamp was burning at his elbow, but it was not quite dark enough for it.

  “Where has Dammerung gone?” she asked.

  “He has gone scouting.”

  She frowned. “Do you not have Scouting Masters for that kind of thing?”

  “Yes,” admitted Skander absentmindedly. He searched among the papers for something. “And Dammerung has colourful words for them.” He left off searching, somewhat exasperatedly, and met her eye. “He’s a man who likes to see things with his own eyes.”

  A dreadful moodiness settled over her, partly because she felt out of place without Dammerung and partly because—though she hated to admit it—she wished she had gone too. So, petulantly, she refrained from pointing out to Skander that Dammerung was a man who seemed able to see things without his eyes. She watched for some time in silence as he continued to paw among the littered table until, unable to bear it any longer, she strode across, snatched a wax-stick from the inside of a tumbler, and handed it to him.

  “Ah.” He took it from her. “Much obliged.”

  Dinner that evening was roast venison and roast potatoes and roast onions, and a sweet yellow wine—which Margaret liked and Skander did not—and Dammerung did not come back until after it. There was a soft splutter of hooves in the distance—which was nothing unusual, as horses and horsemen had been going about ever since they had set up camp—and silence. A moment later Dammerung came flying through the tent flap, shedding his muddied cloak as he came, and flung himself down in a chair. It rocked violently onto its hind legs before thumping back to ground again. Margaret was sharpening a knife, because it was something useful to do and because the si-i-ing si-i-ing of the blade gave her a fierce, blood-coloured feeling, but she looked up as Dammerung’s poor chair creaked to stillness. There was mud splattered on Dammerung’s cheek and a streak up the back of his head, and his feet were black with pine-muck. He looked as though he had ridden far and hard, but he seemed cheerful enough.

  “Have you eaten?” she asked.

  Sing! sing! sing! said the knife.

  “Eh?” He turned a languid, rampant brow her way.

  “I wondered if you had broke your fast.”

  “Shoo!” He heaved himself upright by his elbows and the arms of his chair. “No. Is there aught else to eat? I smell the ghost of supper gone but see no apparition of it.”

  She said “Hm!” and put aside the knife and whetstone. She had enjoined the blue-jay man to set aside some roast against Dammerung’s return and she fetched it from the board. He smiled beatifically at her and the plate as she set it down before him—but she saw in the eyes behind the smile that he was tired.

  “Do you want red wine or white?”

  “Red! Naturally.”

  As she fetched and poured the wine, she wondered what he would think of her for liking the sweet yellow vintage. She poured herself her own glass of red—it was an awkward business, she thought, sitting and watching someone eat without anything to eat for oneself—and joined him with the glasses. He raised his to her, then for a long time the only sounds in the tent were the tinselly crackle of the apple-wood fire—more for light and the comfort of the thing than for necessary warmth—and the clink of glass and silverware. A horse screamed angrily on the fellside: the sharp sound echoed in the hollow of the night. A horn sang out and Margaret jumped, but Dammerung said,

  “’Tis only the change of watch.”

  He finished his supper and they finished their wine. The dishes they left for the blue-jay man to see to, and while Dammerung retired to one side of the tent to wash the flying muck off his face, Margaret moved her chair to the tent opening and sat on the rim of the firelight, looking out on the night from the golden, feathery comfort of the enclosure.

  Night had fallen low over the land. It seemed to have heaped up so heavily in the sky, rolling in off the sea, that it was sinking under its own weight, groaning lower and lower over the fells. She sat wrapped in a fine surcoat of doeskin and ermine, for the summer night was growing chill and the hushing rush of wind in the rowan-wood bore portents of rain, and watched the dark moth-wing dusk gather about them and the firefly-lights spring out of the black. The nightingale was still calling across the camp, sweetly and bewilderedly, and in the southwest there was a lingering primrose-glow of earthlight which would soon burn away to black with the turn of the world.

  My world, thought Margaret, and she dug her toes in her boots as if to grip the grass under foot.

  There was a soft step beside her and Dammerung was there, clean, cast in gold and black, looking out, as she did, over the firelit dalescape. His hand dropped on her shoulder, heavy and still, sinking down through the ermine collar to rest against the soft warmth of her skin: his fingers felt cold. She looked up into his face once, but he was looking in a far-off way over all, far off enough to see into tomorrow—had she not meant to tell Skander such?—so she settled in under his hand and continued to watch the way the lights lay scattered like kicked embers down the valley. The sounds of shadows blew fitfully around them. The southwest was quenched: the mounting storm clouds lay black and close above them.

  “There is rain in the wind tonight,” said Margaret presently.

  “Yes.”

  She turned her head toward him but did not look up. From where she sat she could see down the Prime Horse picket-line, long faces and warm bodies all in a row, ruddy and alabaster in the torchlight. “Will there be rain in the morning?”

  He stirred, then, and sighed, as if wherever his thoughts had taken him had too little air. “No; we’ll have a storm-song tonight and a sword-song tomorrow. This should be fair blown over by dawn.”

  “It seems fair big to me,” Margaret replied with an involuntary shiver.

  His thumb and middle finger tightened their grip. “They are all monsters, our fell country storms, but this is only a mad cat which will yowl and spit and run away soon.” He was quiet for a moment and in the silence the wind swelled with sil
very noise.

  “Keep your chin up, leman. Not long now.”

  He did not say it condescendingly: he meant it, and somehow it was more comforting than even her soft doeskin surcoat. But she felt compelled to say, honestly, “I am not afraid, Dammerung.”

  “Have you come past that, then?”

  His voice was suddenly sharp with bitterness. She started at the sudden change of tone—but then he changed his tone faster than a woman changed her mind: it would be gone in a moment. “Are you afraid?” she countered.

  He turned to her, eyebrows flyaway as if with surprise. The bitterness was gone again and the firelight was turning his eyes silver-pale. “Afraid? Of pain?”

  “I suppose that is what I mean. What is death? It is pain, not death, that we have to live with.”

  His mouth quirked. “Nay, then, I am not afraid. It takes a braver man than I to fear pain. I am just a fool.”

  There was the bitterness again, the veil parting slightly to let past grievances peep through. How these men were defined by their glories and their insults! She looked away and sighed as a pigeon sighs at the start of a long wet evening. “Dammerung, sometimes you laugh and there is no laughter in it.”

  His hand upon her shoulder had been heavy and companionable, as it might lie on Skander’s, but unexpectedly it left and took hold of her chin, turning her to face him. The pale eyes, so pale as almost to be clear, gazed hard and laughingly, mockingly, into her own. She had learned to meet that gaze lightly and even tried to read what was in his face.

  “Yes,” he said at last, and gently let her go. “I see why he chose you.”

  He did not wait for her answer: he went back into the tent and she rose, puzzled, turning away from the flickering vision of the north where the lightning was beginning to break up in the clouds to see what Dammerung was about to do. One always knew when he was about to do something: he gathered a brooding aura about himself like a cloak—and in it there was always a bit of fierce laughter that was like mockery—and she felt that aura about him now.

  He got down on one knee before a trunk and flung back the lid of it. There was little light in that corner of the tent and he rummaged for some time seemingly by feel, until at last he unearthed what looked, in the light, to be a bodice made of moulded leather, quite hard and plain, which he held out to her. “Of your courtesy,” he said, “I would be obliged if you would wear this tomorrow.”

  “You do not expect me to fight,” she said, staring at the thing with a real thrill of horror that, for some bizarre reason, he did.

  “No; on my honour, I would not have you fight. ’Twould not be sporting fair not to give the foe an even chance.” He hefted the bodice closer toward her. “Yet I have some notion that you ought to wear it, and I have learned not to deny my intuitions.”

  She put her arm through both arm-holes and felt it drag, though not as much as she had expected it would. Meeting his eyes, she wondered what he saw, or whether it was the mere whim of feeling which prompted him to offer the armour to her. But something held her back from asking.

  “You will wear it?”

  She pulled it close. “Of course I will wear it. And thank you,” she added, hoping it did not sound so much like the afterthought that it was.

  He turned away, smiling as if to himself. “And sure you would have done the same for me. To bed with you, Lady Spitcat. Tomorrow brings many awful and new things for you.”

  “And for you?”

  He turned at her question, slowly, and there was not a trace of laughter or mockery in his eyes as they met hers. He knew what she was thinking: they were both thinking it. Tomorrow, more awfully than when they had faced off for their duel, Rupert and Dammerung would pit themselves against each other. It had been dreadful before, for it had been kin-blood and, in a sense, an inner quarrel with Plenilune looking on. Now it was war, with Plenilune blood laid on the line, Plenilune lives taking Plenilune lives. And all because of Dammerung. All because of Rupert.

  It must be awful, thought Margaret, to carry that weight.

  He reached out and gripped her upper arm, again as he might grip Skander, and shook it a little, hard. “Good hunting, Margaret.”

  She smiled wanly for him. “Good hunting.”

  He let her go and returned to his chair where he sat, broodingly, looking off goodness alone knew where. She watched him a moment longer before breaking away, and ducked between the heavy hangings into the rear part of the tent which was her chamber. She pulled the hangings to, propped the leather bodice against her trunk, and, disrobing, crawled into her bed. It was stuffy in the tiny room; the lamp-smoke made a fine blue haze on a blurred backdrop of gold and ruddy shadow, and though the storm-wind buffeted the sides of the tent, little draught leaked in to disturb the heavy atmosphere. Her heart began to quicken in spite of herself. Rolling over, settling into the pillows, she did her best not to think about tomorrow nor Dammerung’s awful, distant face.

  Three quarters of an hour later the storm had broken over the fellside. It roared and gusted and brought down hasty, light sprays of rain, and Margaret dozed to the sound of it. It was more sound than rain, and it was pleasant to be cosy and dry while, on the other side of thick canvas, the fell country cat howled dismally, unable to touch her. She did not know afterward if she dreamed it or not—she was so close to being asleep—but she fancied once that the hangings parted and a figure that she though was familiar, but had darkness where its face should have been, stood in the opening, looking down at her. It was only a confused image. She did not remember when it came or when it passed, or if it was real or not. When she woke in the morning the nightingale was singing and the sound of the storm had ceased.

  Aikaterine had been and gone. The chamber was arranged, her gown from yesterday folded and stowed, her gown for today draped over the trunk. As she sat up, rubbing absently at her eyes, Margaret saw her articles laid out in a perfect row on the little table that served as her vanity: cosmetics, brushes, hairpins, jewels, as if she were, not at camp, but at Lookinglass. She thought she was meant to be comforted, but the juxtaposition of the articles with their surroundings made the camp world only starker.

  What time was it? She had slept through any sound of watch change. The hangings were so dark that they let no light through; her lamp was so low that it cast only a thin light over the room. Deliberately she swung out of bed, flinging back the rugs that served as her blankets. The air was not of a nighttime cold, but there was still a chilliness lingering underfoot. It must be dawn, or past it. With swift strides Margaret crossed to the vanity and sat down, pulling the brush through her hair and, giving it a twist as Aikaterine had taught her, secured it in place with the heavy ornamental comb. The matched garnets of her earrings and heavy tiered necklace winked back in the glowering light at the red-moon curve of the comb.

  Still in her shift she rose and, with a feeling of dark foreboding, fitted herself into the leather bodice. Her shift kept it from sticking and chafing on her skin; it was a little too tight, but that was better, she thought, than it being too large and unwieldy. She ran a quick, appraising eye over it in the little mirror and thought it looked ghastly plain next to the lavish sparkle of her jewels. Hastily she flung overtop of it the silk gown of scarlet and gold stamp-work that gathered and flowed and purred in the lamplight, and with that the picture was perfect But oh! the silk was cold, and it was odd to feel the weight of leather—unlike whale-bone, to which she was accustomed—pressing her body in all over. With some delicate manoeuvring she managed to put on her boots; it did not help that she was hurrying, hoping that Dammerung would have woken her if things had begun already. Finally she got the last loop of cord through the last loop of metal, tied off the cords and, though she had told Dammerung last night that she was not afraid, she could not deny the horrid clenching of her chest—which had nothing to do with the bodice—as she thrust back the hangings and stepped into the fore part of the tent.

  There she stopped, hesitating with her ar
m still out to hold back the curtain, on the outskirts looking on.

  Skander was up and had joined them; he was bent over the scarred table looking at a topographic map, his brows furrowed, a piece of bacon sheeny with grease in one hand. He had not noticed her—or, at any rate, he had not yet acknowledged her—and she got a good impression of his likeness in that moment. He was dressed in the rich earthy colours of red and brown, rather simply, with a quilted leather jerkin and leather reinforcements over the most stressed part of his clothing. She marked that his current gear suited him better than his New Ivy finery: his frame was more at home and looked far more fetching in bullhide and broadcloth than in silks and silver thread. But though he was dressed simply, he was heavily armed. An ornately acid-etched battleaxe hung like a gibbous moon over one shoulder, gleaming milky and dark-iron in the dim morning light. A two-handed sword hung with it, and the long cavalry sword Gram swung at his hip. He had a crop and knife on his opposite side, and pouches and daggers and what looked like small cattle-trops hanging from his belt. Every way he turned light caught fire on hilt and buckle and worn silvered wolf-skin. She shivered with cold apprehension and turned away.

  Dammerung was nearly finished: he was just fastening the last toggle of his tunic at his shoulder. He did not wear white today. He wore a light tunic of silk with a complicated tea-green and tea-brown pattern over a quilted leather jerkin like Skander’s. His breeches, too, were backed with leather where a long day in the saddle was liable to chafe. He turned—bits of gold thread woven into the tunic sparked in the mirror—and picked up from a table a claymore like Skander’s, which he fitted over one shoulder and under the other arm at his back. To the claymore he added, not one, but two short swords; he settled Widowmaker in an honourable place at his left side and checked over a number of knives on his person.

  He examined the entirety in the mirror and seemed satisfied, then he caught sight of her watching him. He turned sharply round. For a moment he looked her over. His eyes dropped for a fraction of a second below what, had he been anyone else, Margaret would have considered couth: he marked that she wore the leather bodice. A smile jerked at his mouth and the bitter, half-laughing wing-lines flashed round his eyes as they jumped back to her face. “Good morrow.”