Plenilune

by Jennifer Freitag

  “Summerlin is a good man and true,” Aikin vouched.

  “But perhaps,” the Sheriff added, “the War-wolf should be the judge of that.”

  A brief, genuine smile thrust up from Margaret’s heart-place onto her face; she turned her head to hide it, for as soundly as she was liking the Sheriff, she saw the man was in earnest.

  “I am usually my own judge, but what I hear and smell of you rings fair about the metal Aikin Ironside has staked for you. A clean toss. Now for the news, for I am a cat for news: can you give me FitzDraco’s and Capys’ whereabouts?”

  The Sheriff had been pleased at first with Dammerung’s obvious approval—Margaret knew that feeling, of being swept up into a rich warm inside place that was at once still as a wood and crackling with latent energy—but upon Dammerung’s prying the rough tawny smile stiffened and Margaret saw the fair eyes flash, for an instant, for a way out. Her heart leapt forward in her chest like a tomcat on the defence.

  “Well—” He began by turning up the hem of his official tunic and digging his hands into the pockets of his corduroys. “Last I knew for certain, which was three nights ago, Capys engaged in a full-out battle with Locklear on Helming Side.”

  “That’s good down country,” Aikin interjected.

  Dammerung noted it with a twitch of his brow.

  “I think Capys had the better of it and put the flower of de la Mare’s army to by. I heard he chased the remnants clear to Oaksgate and they fought in the streets from house to house until they cornered the stiffest of the foe in the forum. Nigh burnt the place down, too, I hear, and it dates back some hundred years, but I am told Capys managed to stamp out the fire and the foe at once.”

  “The Capys come of big-footed stock,” said the famous All Hallows’ smile.

  Summerlin laughed shortly, awkwardly, as if he felt a jest in Dammerung’s words but could not be privy to it. “That was the upshot of it, but as is a matter of course handfuls of men got shaved off the dark on the way to Oaksgate and are making nuisances of themselves in the countryside. I have many of my men out on Long Patrol sweeping for errant soldiers and my Lord Gro—” he hesitated again. “My Lord Gro has gone back to Gemeren where he is in state now, overseeing his domestic affairs.”

  He got the last out in a dead-level voice, looking Dammerung squarely in the eye, but Margaret felt him bracing for impact. But whatever it was he expected Dammerung to give him, Dammerung did not play into his hand. The War-wolf seemed to think a moment, pinning up thoughts between Summerlin’s eyebrows, looking at them, taking them back down and exchanging them for others. He took hardly a minute before he said,

  “I expect Capys would be in Aloisse-gang, then, or very near it: perhaps south of it in that rather bonny bit of glen.”

  “Oh, you have been to Aloisse-gang?” Aikin turned to Dammerung, pleasantly surprised.

  “Once, about four years ago.”

  Aikin smiled regretfully. “Then you had only ravens, I think, for company. I have been meaning to overhaul the place and make it habitable again as soon as I find a skirt-train that strikes my abiding fancy.”

  A knock at the door called them up short. Instinctively Margaret took a step toward the door before she remembered it was not her house. In an attempt to recover her dignity she stepped in behind Dammerung as if that had always been her intent.

  Her movement caught Summerlin’s eye. “Excuse my lack of manners!” he exclaimed, making a few strides at the same time for the door. “My lady, we have not been introduced. I do not have the pleasure of knowing whose fair presence I am in.”

  She cursed pleasantly inside as she coloured under the buttering of his compliments. Saving her, Dammerung said, as if it were an idle thing, “This is the Lady Margaret—I see you have heard of her—and that must be your lamb-shank. From dust we came and to dust we shall return, but the sweet aroma of lamb-shank shall endure forever. We had better leave you to your supper and get on to ours.”

  They took a warm leave of Summerlin—very mocking on Dammerung’s part, Margaret thought, and very respectful and perplexed on the Sheriff’s—jostled with the grocery boy—who gawked at Aikin Ironside and gawked still more at Dammerung, and seemed to wholly forget himself when Margaret, sucking in her breath, squeezed past him in the narrow doorway—and finally plunged back out into the swimming golden light of the evening street.

  “Why,” asked Margaret when the door was safely shut behind them and the crash of the street damped any threat of being overheard, “was the Sheriff so worried about Lord Gro? For a moment I was really quite worried myself that something bad had become of him, or that he had done something bad himself.”

  Aikin’s face was closed; he looked very studiously for his stirrup and jammed his foot into it. But Dammerung turned at Mausoleum’s side, fingers linked to give Margaret a boost, and admitted roundly, “He had a right to be worried! A man doesn’t pack up and trot home in the middle of a war. They have a fine and bitter word for that.”

  Desertion. The word moved like a little cold worm in her stomach. But not Lord Gro, surely—!

  “Only, as much as Bloodburn likes to knock it—hoo-oof! up you get! put on some weight, woman?—I take a draft of mercy with my tonic of justice. We fight for Plenilune’s right to live: what Gro does today is fighting for her life itself.” Dammerung fetched up her reins. “He knows as well as I that the ploughing and crops must be seen to or we’ll have naught to go back to when once we’ve laid down our swords.”

  When once we have laid down our swords. That seemed a long, dark time off to Margaret. With the heavy sense of a realist she jabbed at her stirrups and put her feet in.

  “Aikin,” said Dammerung, “I think you and Brand and Margaret and I ought to trot down to Gemeren and collect Gro while the rest go on ahead. I would be remiss to be in the neighbourhood and not pay my respects to Herluin.”

  Hannibal lay close under the Westphell overlooks and as it was growing late in the swimming, gold-shot evening, much of the street was plunged in shadow, topped by the timber houses and the metallic clang of electrum sky. Everything was a moving confusion of deep brown shadow, blue steam, and a high brilliant light. On horseback, high above the press, the three of them occasionally passed through shards of sunlight which were still streaming over the felltop and down the lanes between the buildings. When they passed into the light it was like being caught up in some other world entirely, a world in which the air was gold and every drifting speck of dirt or feather was made of glass and silver and the manes of the horses were made of thin-pulled copper. Margaret felt tired and sore and not at all beautiful, but looking at her companions in the light her heart lifted, for the light made them very fair and terrible, as if they wore all normal lights and shadows as cloaks over their splendour, and the late witching light of evening, level and strong, cut through their disguises and showed them up proud and powerful, their brown hair cast copper like the horses’ manes, their angular faces sharpened and yet strangely distant. Their eyes were hard to see, for they narrowed them against the glare; it was only that, Margaret thought, which kept them from being overwhelming in appearance.

  The red length of cloth at the dyers’ shop called out to them over the milling crowd. They were almost under the sign of the way-house before Margaret could pick it out from the urban backdrop. With a duck and a twist in the saddle Dammerung turned in to the way-house yard, under the low stockade lintel of the yard doors, and gave Rubico his head. Margaret felt her horse pick up its feet a little as the scent of hay and oats sang out with a kind of candle-colour in the gloom. Margaret had hope of a little supper before pushing on; earnest as he could be in order and battle among his men, Dammerung was very particular about food—though she did not know if that was wholly for the sake of his men or if two years starvation in the wine-cellar had given him an involuntary flinch at the thought of going forcibly without a meal.

  He helped her down onto the way-house porch and untangled Mausoleum’s reins from her
fingers. “I’ll mind him,” he said, the shadow of the building on his face and the sharp-cut slice of gold that was the side of Westphell shimmering like a kind of moon behind his head. “Tell the others, if they haven’t already, to order a bowl to go round.”

  “Stew or punch?” she mocked.

  Dammerung hauled Mausoleum away. “Both, if we could spare the money, which we can’t.”

  “I’ll rout out their cook for a bite, then,” she called, and, turning, pushed open the heavy-lidded old door of the establishment. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, then she saw the familiar figure of Brand rising from the settle by the fire, tall and barley-crested with the fire at his back casting his face in shadow as he came toward her. Several of the others looked round as he passed and saw her in the doorway. How familiar they all were! she thought with a sudden, inexplicable pain. How blunt and unlovely and covered in flying muck and stubble—and familiar! The image of the room seemed so close and tangible that she felt she could reach out and hold its warm red roundness in her hands, as Dammerung held them all like fine golden balls. Was that what he felt? she wondered. Was everything to him small and round and fragile, cupped in one hand to be broken like an egg or treasured as he willed?

  Brand the Hammer loomed over her. “Have we our marching orders?”

  She blinked and came back to him. “Yes. You and Aikin and Dammerung and I are pushing on for Gemeren where we are to collect Lord Gro. The rest go on to Eastphell to rejoin Capys.”

  Brand’s face opened with a boyish pleasure. “I had hoped that might be the way of it…Come have a drink with us before we leave. Are you hungry? Capys’ maid Aikaterine took the liberty of ordering some supper.”

  She went, and they set her down between Aikaterine and Huw on the settle—it was a narrow seat, and she had to ram her feet against the floorboards to keep from slipping off—and handed her a horn cup of perry that was light and chilled but made the blood run hummingly warm in her veins afterward. They relaxed back into their meal and went on talking quietly among themselves while she sat in warm silence with her own bowl of chicken and dumplings steaming and smelling and slowly filling her stomach with a luxurious sense of delight. It was moments like these, she reflected, which made the war seem less ominous, though without it she knew they would not be where they were nor have fallen in together, and Huw ruined the fragile, happy feeling by singing softly to himself—

  Pipe clean away the azure blood,

  Pipe away the fame;

  Pipe away the laddie’s youth

  And the beauty of the dame.

  Pipe to the old macabre dance—

  It’s all a-one to me.

  Birth is had with a hefty price

  But death we have for free.

  Dammerung and Aikin Ironside stamped in, throwing a greeting to the innkeeper, and came over, pulling up chairs to join the circle. Huw began to get up to relinquish his place on the settle to Dammerung, but Dammerung waved him down.

  “Lady Margaret told us the way of it,” said Brand. “The four of us bound for Gemeren, and the rest to rejoin Capys at Eastphell.”

  “That is the way of it.” Dammerung leaned across the low table and pulled a cup of stout into his grasp. He slung his right ankle over his left knee and leaned back comfortably into the embraces of the rough arrow-backed chair. “We’ll stay the night and take Gro with us in the morning.” He took a stray fork, speared several hunks of chicken and dumplings from Margaret’s bowl with a single thrust, and put them away in his middle. “Are we nearly finished here?”

  Everyone murmured assent and hastily drained his cup to prove it. Margaret gamely put away the perry and, lowering the cup, saw Dammerung flash her a laugh over his stout. Huw went away to pay the innkeeper for the meal—which, Margaret could not help thinking, was a test of faith on all their accounts—and the rest of them plunged back out into the warm summer evening to collect their horses from their own brief supper.

  They all parted at the gate, Aikin, Brand, Dammerung and herself swinging right and Sparling with the rest swinging left; no other words passed between them. Riding in the rear, she looked back apprehensively over her shoulder to watch them go. Huw Daggerman, however, all roguish and at once courteous, bouncing to his rock-legged horse’s gait, twisted, too, in the saddle, and caught her eye. He lifted his knuckle to his forehead in salute, then a bend in the road cut them off from view of each other. Dammerung set his teeth on edge and began a skirling tune.

  ...Birth is had with a hefty price,

  But death we have for free...

  Achy in her limbs, with the beginnings of a headache where the sun was slicing level into her eyes, Margaret urged Mausolem alongside the lean warhorse with the consolation of a full stomach and a warm wash at the end of the road. As reconciled as she could be to plunges in mountain springs and the awkward communal washrooms of way-houses, the manor of a land-owner with its promise of wealth and decent, quiet, domestic familiarities continued to have an almost alarmingly powerful sway over her. But as they went out through the west gate, over the little low thunder-humming bridge onto the road, her interest was tempered by the sudden clear signs of war in the landscape.

  The low eastern parts of Tarnjewel had had only a few telltale signs that she could ignore if she looked away. Here in the west she saw whole farms burnt down, woodcutters’ lodges around damp coppices broken down and empty—in a field by the way the turf was pocked and discoloured and she could make out a number of grotesque, twisted figures in the middle ground, heaped into a pile and attended by only the ravens. She looked at them stone-facedly, but her stomach still spasmed with nausea and her heart still ached with a formless, awful pain.

  …Birth is had at a hefty price,

  But death we have for free…

  The sun had gone down and the land was blackened, the sky a swirling disc of pearl-gold and old pearl-grey, when the four of them, riding abreast on the lonely road, passed the stone wayside statue of what might have once been a fox but looked to Margaret more like a badger and entered the outlying meads of Gemeren. As the fireflies began to seep out of some other world into the intense gloom they took the road through the spacious park, down into a little watery dell and out again onto a swell of ground with the house, a shuttered lantern full of lit coals, standing high above them. Brand made some contented sound that Margaret could not quite hear but could sympathize with.

  It was Rubico who announced their arrival. They shuffled into the cobbled yard, hooves ringing on the stones; catching the scent of another horse that annoyed him, the warhorse tucked up his chin and squealed angrily.

  “A picky, womanish, high-maintenance kind of fellow,” observed Dammerung as he swung out of the saddle, his feet saying “pa-pat!” on the ground as he landed. He reached to help Margaret down.

  The door from the house banged open. Her hands on Dammerung’s shoulders, ready to slip off of the saddle, Margaret turned to see a familiar bulk of silhouette in the doorway, the body of a huge dog pressed against its thigh. The figure carried a sword in one hand.

  “Good evening, uncle!” said Aikin pacifically. “We’ve come to crash the night with you.” And he strode forward, breaking the tension, to give Lord Gro a kiss on each cheek.

  “A pleasant surprise,” Gro said. “Is that you, Brand? I thought you might have stayed in Hol-land a little longer.”

  Murmuring something to a stable-boy who had materialized from the shadows, Dammerung took Margaret’s arm and pulled her into the light spilling from the doorway. “No, sir, we left the conflict there in the capable hands of Darkling. Word was that we were needed more sorely here, and so we came.”

  “And so you came, as you are always wont to come, when you are most needed.”

  Dammerung smiled.

  Gro turned to Aikin, who had mounted the step beside him. “Do you have luggage?”

  “Only a little. We came lightly—but it rained this morning and we rode through the thick of it, and we are in nee
d of warm baths.”

  “Of course,” said Gro, as if all this went without saying and, had anyone save Aikin mentioned it, he might have been offended at the inference that he would not have offered those services without prompting. Much as she liked him, Margaret found herself beginning to be a little afraid of him again, for here he was on his own turf and his own man, and not the drifting, mercurial grey figure he had been at Lookinglass. But then Dammerung was handing her up the step and pushing her on down the little passage ahead of him, and, as she fell under Gro’s eye—and met it inexorably—she saw the cool, unhurried pleasure shift in his eye like the idle shifting of the sea.

  “Good evening, Lady Margaret,” he bade her.

  “Good evening,” she murmured back, flattered and abashed and flushing angrily at herself for being so unnerved. She slipped past him and followed after Aikin.

  “Mind the rise,” Aikin said, gesturing to an old threshold of brick in the floor.

  Dammerung’s voice came drifting from behind her. “You have a pleasant place here, sir. I am sorry I could not come before.”

  “She gets better with age,” Gro replied. “Better you see her now than two years ago, or better yet two years hence.”

  And Dammerung, with a fresh ache in his words, added musingly, “To have this business done, and to see to my own meads again…!”

  Margaret passed out of earshot and did not see Dammerung until after her bath. Aikin led her into the kitchen and passed her off on the nearest manservant—a man called Tunner, she gathered—who happily led her to a spare chamber in the guest wing by way of the servants’ stair—she said the shortest way was better and she did not mind which stair she took. Tunner lit a handful of candles, rummaged in the linen chest for fresh towels, and ran the water until she was afraid it would boil her.

  “There you are, madam,” he said, standing in the doorway and looking over the tidy, spartan little room. The water in the pipes roared from the narrow washroom. His head nodded like a cat’s when it is taking the calculation of a leap, and he seemed satisfied. His unhandsome face bloomed with a smile in the candlelight. “If you have need of assistance but ring the bell. One of the maids will run up from below.”