Boulderbash lowered her jaws. Her teeth were grazing Clovermead’s neck. You sacrificed me so as to save him, changeling? You left me in darkness for his sake? He’s nothing but a killer. She laughed through her tears. Look, he doesn’t even care about you. He’ll let you die, just so he gets the pleasure of his kill.
Clovermead turned back to Boulderbash. Half the world was the old bear’s great jaws. I didn’t expect anything back from him when I rescued him, Clovermead said fiercely. I don’t love him any less. He isn’t so nice now, but he’s not in his right mind. He will be kind Sorrel again, and brave Sorrel again, and everything that’s worth loving.
You’re wrong, said Boulderbash. Her teeth tightened on Clovermead’s neck. You look at him and you feel sure the cub you knew will return, but he never does. He kills once, he kills twice, and he acquires a taste for it. All that’s good in him leaches out, day by day. And all the sacrifices you’ve made for his sake turn to ashes. You let other bears be slaves for his sake, you let him abandon you without complaint, but there’s never any reward. It doesn’t turn out right in the end. He wallows in darkness, darkens all the world, and all that’s left is the shell of my little Ursus. Tears fell from her eyes onto Clovermead’s fur, blood stained Clovermead’s golden fur red. Better to kill you now, changeling, before you learn how your love has been wasted.
“No!” Clovermead heard, and the words seemed to ring through the battlefield. She heard running footsteps. Boulderbash’s jaws snapped, as if to break Clovermead’s neck then and there, but somehow she didn’t. She turned to see who it was, and Clovermead turned too.
It was Sorrel, running toward her. In his haste, he had left Snuff behind, left him alive. The bear-priest still breathed, with the Tansyard’s knife lying by his side. “Don’t kill her,” he said. He stood in front of Boulderbash and Clovermead. He showed his open hands to Boulderbash. Boulderbash raised her head, and listened to the sound of his voice. “Please,” said Sorrel. “Not her, too. I have lost nearly everyone I loved. Don’t kill her.” Boulderbash snarled at him, and made a half leap at him, to scare him away. Sorrel stood firm. “Kill me if you want,” he said tremblingly. “Spare her.”
You came back, said Boulderbash. She swung her head from Sorrel to Clovermead, from Clovermead back to Sorrel. Why for her? She doesn’t deserve it.
“You see, she makes me a better person,” said Sorrel. It was as if he understood Boulderbash. “Sometimes I have been a coward, and she has given me courage. Sometimes I have been melancholy, and she reminded me that the world still contains joy. I have been a childish fool of late, and she endured my spleen with the patience of a nun. She does good so easily, and I have learned from her how I should behave. She is sometimes thoughtless and foolish, too, and only a few weeks ago she almost broke my heart, yet I find that what I cherish in her far outweighs the parts of her that have pained me. You will tear out my heart if you kill her.” He lifted his neck to Boulderbash’s jaws. “If you will not let her live, kill me first. I could not endure to see her dead.”
Boulderbash lifted her paw to strike at Sorrel—and Clovermead helplessly whimpered. The white bear turned back toward Clovermead—and Sorrel tried to dart between them. Boulderbash looked at Clovermead with hatred, with envy. You are blessed to have each other, she said. You are blessed to deserve each other’s love. She lowered her paw. Her eyes were dry now. I cannot kill either one of you. Snuff groaned in the grass, and Boulderbash looked around her. The silver-bears had all fallen by now. The bear-priests still fought stiffly, but the allied soldiers had surrounded them and driven them into tiny pockets. The bear-priests asked for no quarter and were granted none.
I will take Snuff back to my son, said Boulderbash. She went over to him and picked him up carefully in her jaws, like a newborn cub. I will beg for his life too, to balance the one I have given you. Otherwise Ursus might take it: He does not care for servants who fail him. Boulderbash laughed. I will let him ride me still—he knows how to ride bear-back now, and I would hate to train a new rider. Then she roared so the echoes bounced off the mountainsides. Lady, I cannot stop loving my Ursus, and so I must serve him forever. He loved me once. Give me back my son who loved me. Please, Lady, I beg you. And she was bounding toward the warriors and the slaves ahead, Snuff dangling from her mouth. The Tansyards scattered, so did the slaves, and then she was riding through their lines and toward the Farry Heights beyond.
Clovermead shrank back to human. She was bleeding from a dozen wounds. Sorrel knelt by her side, and dabbed at her broken skin with his shirtsleeves. He smiled at her, but with great worry in his eyes. “How badly are you hurt?”
“I’ll live,” Clovermead whispered. She smiled tremulously. “Thank you.”
“And I must thank you. Turnabout is fair play, and so we save each other’s lives. Ah, Clovermead, what would we do without each other?”
“You’ll never find out, if I have anything to say about the matter,” said Clovermead. She frowned a little. “I hope I won’t be hearing too much of that thoughtless-and-foolish line from you, though. That could get annoying.”
“I will say it no more than you deserve, and I trust that will be very rarely indeed,” said Sorrel. With all the strength Clovermead could muster, she punched him in the shoulder. Sorrel laughed. “I suppose I deserve that,” he said. “But this is not the time to talk of such things. Now we should rest. When the battle is done we will talk.”
“When the battle is done,” Clovermead agreed. Then Sorrel helped Clovermead stand up, and whistled for Auroche and Brown Barley. The battle had wandered far away from them. Far-off dolls slew one another. Sorrel helped Clovermead up onto Auroche, swung up onto Brown Barley, and then he was leading her toward the rear of the battle, toward the doctors who would bandage her wounds, as the men of Linstock and the Steppes finished their terrible, bloody victory over the bear-priests.
Chapter Twenty
The Red Fox
Half of the allied armies had died. The surviving soldiers spent days gathering the bodies of the dead and burying them. The Low Brandingmen and the Chandleforters scoured the slopes of the hills, and gathered wood, carved markers with the names of each of the dead, and put them each by the proper grave. Lady Cindertallow had her officers make copies of the names. “I’ll have a stone monument carved in Chandlefort with the date of the battle, the nature and number of our enemies, and all our fallen soldiers’ names,” she said. “We’ll bring it here when it’s done, so no one will ever forget the fallen. I’ll have the stonemasons carve the letters so deep that their names will be read a thousand years from now.” She turned to Fetterlock. “Give me the names of your warriors, and I’ll have them written down with ours.”
“That is not our way,” said Fetterlock. His face had been a mask of grief ever since the battle. “We remember our dead in our songs. If ever they are so forgotten that their names must be read to be known, then they may sink into oblivion on this earth. Our Lady will remember them forever.” He paused a moment. “Write only that the victory could not have been won without the Tansy Hordes, and that we lost the flower of our youth in this terrible spot.” He glanced at Lady Cindertallow. “Tell me truly, Milady, do you think this victory was worth the sacrifice of our dead?”
“What can I tell you, Horde Chief? If Ursus had conquered us, we would all have been slaves forever. All our victory does is buy us time. If we use it wisely, we may yet find a way to defeat the Bear once and for all.” Lady Cindertallow shrugged wearily. “Our dead have bought us hope.” Then Lady Cindertallow gazed at the dug-up valley floor, filled with the bodies of the dead, and she was crying. “My poor Yellowjackets. Oh, Lady, let some of my soldiers survive these wars.”
“And bring us an end to these wars quickly, Lady,” said Fetterlock. “One way or the other, let it be soon.”
That evening the Tansyards gathered their dead in a mass in the center of Yarrow’s Bowl. Then they pulled up a circle of grass all around the bodies, and set a fire on
the inside of the circle. The flames swept in to consume the dead bodies in a great pyre while the surviving warriors, all around, chanted a song of grief and farewell.
The freed slaves had recovered enough strength to sing too, to shout in harsh dissonance, to mourn. The remnants of Cyan Cross sang of their vanished nation. The other freed slaves, Tansyards and stray captives from the Thirty Towns and Linstock, sang in harsh argot of the years stolen away from their families, amid the torture of the mines. They had been given new clothes from the Yellowjackets’ commissary, and each slave solemnly cast their Barleymill rags into the fire. But they were scarred still. They all had calluses on their wrists where their shackles had lain. Each of them bore on his or her skin etched with mercury the ineradicable tattoo of bondage.
Mullein sat in the center of the freed slaves, and Clovermead, Sorrel, and Roan sat around her, to hold her up. She glowed bright silver through the blankets around her, her flesh nearly as bright as the silver crisscross on her cheeks. She sat and shivered in the heat of a midsummer night, with a blazing bonfire only a dozen feet away. She had not spoken since the battle. She trembled and burned in silence. She barely seemed to notice the singing.
Fetterlock sat down next to them. “How are you, Shaman-Mother?” he asked.
Mullein only sighed.
“She is no better,” said Sorrel.
“I got her to take a drink of water this afternoon,” said Clovermead. “She won’t eat. Roan and Sorrel have begged her, but she won’t open her mouth. She—” Clovermead gestured at Mullein’s wasted body, to let Fetterlock know the obvious. Mullein was dying. “There isn’t anything we can do.”
“I am sorry,” said Fetterlock. He smiled sadly at Mullein. “I wish you had stayed with us, Mullein. Calkin loved playing with you. Arman and Bardelle—I think they loved you as much as I do.”
Mullein turned her head toward Fetterlock. Her neck moved slowly, as if she were an aged woman. She pointed at Fetterlock’s tattoos. “White Star,” she whispered. Roan gasped to hear her daughter speak. Then she pointed at her own cheeks. “Cyan Cross.” Her voice was faint and rasping. “No love. Never.”
Fetterlock sighed. “Not in the past. And I have been as unloving as any.” He touched the white stars on his cheeks, scratched at them with his fingers as if to claw them off. He let his fingers drop. “I cannot remove my tattoos, Mullein. Nor can any of my Horde. But I swear to you that you will always be welcome in the White Star Horde. So will all of Cyan Cross Horde. There will be no more enmity between us.”
“Words,” said Mullein. Silver tears leaked from her eyes. “We gone now. No more hatred?” She shuddered. “Too late. Nothing left, but pain.” She turned away from Fetterlock to look back at the fire.
“Then let me share it with you,” said Fetterlock. He held out his great arm to Mullein, and he trembled with fear. “I was silent once, and I let terrible things happen to you, to all of Cyan Cross. The pain should be mine, too. There are parts of me that should be burned clean.” Mullein turned toward him again. Silver fire flickered around her flesh, and Fetterlock gulped. Still his hand remained extended. “You should not bear it all.”
“You cannot,” said Mullein. “You are not strong enough.”
“Nor can you,” said Fetterlock. “Nor can anyone.” He made the crescent sign with his left hand. “I will pray to Our Lady to help me to bear it. If we share the pain, perhaps we both may live.”
For a moment, hope lit Mullein’s eyes. Then Clovermead saw it fade in recrudescent suspicion, saw the little girl’s mouth clamp shut. Fetterlock had run out of words, and no one else spoke. Mullein was dying in the silence.
“Mullein,” said Clovermead, and the Tansyard turned to look at her. “Do you remember what I said to the Elders of the White Star Horde?” Mullein shook her head. “We can all make the right choice the second time. But we have to be given a chance.” She glanced at Sorrel, and she had to blink away sudden tears. “I think I have an idea of how hard it is to forgive someone who’s hurt you. I know how wonderful it is to be forgiven. When you don’t deserve it at all, it’s the most amazing gift in the world. Please, Mullein. Give Fetterlock a chance.”
“All dead,” said Mullein, and tears were streaming down her cheeks. “Because of him. I saw them. Unforgivable.” A ragged sob broke out of her lungs. “If I forgive him, I break faith with dead. Who forgive me? No one.”
“I would,” said Roan. They were the first words in common tongue Clovermead had heard her speak. Roan reached out her still-scarred hands to Fetterlock, and gripped his hand for a moment. Startled, he almost jumped away from her, then stayed with his huge fingers trembling in her grip. The firelight shown on her healing wounds. “Enough death already,” said Roan. She brought Fetterlock’s hand toward Mullein’s. “Please, Mullein. Live with me.”
“Dead scream at me,” said Mullein. “I know it.” She sobbed again, a great racking howl that twisted her tiny frame. But when it had escaped her, it was as if a shadow had flown away. Hesitantly, she let herself look at Fetterlock with wistful hope. “I can play with Calkin?” For a moment the weary age had lifted from her, and she was only a little girl. “We can be friends? You promise?”
“I promise,” said Fetterlock. “In Our Lady’s name I swear it, now and forever.” And as Roan let her own hand fall away from Fetterlock’s, Mullein lifted her hand to touch his.
Silver fire flared through the night. It lit up Fetterlock, joined him and Mullein in one blaze. Quicksilver surged from Mullein’s veins, across the bridge of flesh, and into his. Fetterlock jerked as fire and liquid burned into him—but he did not scream. He kept his mouth clenched shut and his fingers tight around Mullein’s. His skin was turning pink where it touched Mullein, but he would not let go. The fire crackled, and a wisp of white flame touched Sorrel, touched Roan, touched Clovermead—
Clovermead hacked at ore with a pickax, silver grit struck her eyes and slipped into her lungs. Her arms ached, her throat was dry, and her stomach yammered for food. She burned, she withered, she was dying. Fifty women dug by her side, and each of them was dying too. She passed from one to another, touched them and took their pain from them, into her. She was on fire—
The stray flame passed and Clovermead was weeping. How can either of them stand it? she asked. It’s unbearable. Oh, Lady, take the pain from them. She could see Sorrel and Roan weeping and praying too. She gulped and reached out her own hand. I’ll take some too, Lady. Just keep them from hurting so.
No need, Clovermead heard, deep in her mind, up in the heavens, far underground. The silver fire suddenly rose from Fetterlock and Mullein, and arced high into the sky. It raced as an arrow toward the moon, and when it struck it, Clovermead heard Our Lady cry in anguish. Oh, Mullein, Clovermead heard her cry, in pain and pity. Oh, Fetterlock. And there were other names—all the dead of Cyan Cross Horde, Boulderbash with her helpless love for her unworthy son, Snuff weeping in darkness, every slave in Barleymill, everyone in the world. Our Lady knew them all and she took pain from each of them, and her scream echoed through the night as Fetterlock and Mullein fell apart, crumpling to the ground. A silver crisscross tattoo had etched itself into Fetterlock’s cheeks, overlaying his white star. The tattoo was twice as long and twice as deep as Mullein’s.
Mullein’s silver and gray complexion was gone. She was terribly thin, but her face was pink with health. She struggled out of her blankets and smiled. “I not hurt now,” she said. She took Fetterlock’s hands in hers. He winced a little, his hands still pink, but the silver had gone from him, save the crisscross on his cheeks. “Thank you,” she said.
“It was the least I could do,” said Fetterlock. Then, gravely, he folded Mullein in his arms. She hugged him back. It took Fetterlock a long minute to let her go. He smiled at her. “Are we friends, little Shaman-Mother?”
“We are,” said Mullein. Her stomach growled. “I eat? I very hungry.”
“Of course,” said Sorrel. And, laughing, he hoisted Mullein ont
o his shoulders and took her jogging toward where a sheep lay roasting. Roan, Clovermead, and Fetterlock came after him.
Sergeant Algere’s leg was healing, Habick had lost a finger, and both Quinch and Corporal Naquaire had survived unscathed. Clovermead came to say good-bye to them, but then she didn’t know what to say. “Golion, Dunnock, Lewth, and Bergander,” she said at last. “They weren’t all at Yarrow’s Bowl, but I asked Mother to make sure all their names will be on the monument she’s putting up. They won’t be forgotten.”
“That’s good,” said Algere.
“Very good,” said Habick, with cheery indifference. Naquaire scowled and shrugged.
Clovermead counted the men in front of her in her head. Four living, four dead, but there had been a ninth Yellowjacket who had come with them to the Tansy Steppes. “Where’s Sark?” she asked. He was almost as young as Habick, with piercing blue eyes. “Is his arm all right?”
“He died yesterday,” said Algere. “We thought he’d be riding with us today, but the slash on his arm swelled up all of a sudden, and a sweating fever burned him up. The doctor couldn’t do anything but ease the pain.”
“Golion, Dunnock, Lewth, Bergander, and Sark,” said Clovermead. Five dragged along with me to Barleymill and back, and dead now. For a good cause. Oh, Lady, have pity on Mother. There’s no way she can remember the names of everyone who died at Yarrow’s Bowl. She shivered. One day I’ll be Lady Cindertallow.
“His name will be on the monument too,” said Algere. “I told it to Milady’s clerks.” He hesitated a moment. “I’m glad you remember our names,” he said at last. He stood to attention and saluted Clovermead, and the other Yellowjackets did too. “It’s been an honor serving with you, Demoiselle.”
“And for me,” said Clovermead, and she returned his salute. She looked at each of their faces, and tried to memorize them. “Good-bye,” she said. Algere, Habick, Naquaire, and Quinch murmured their farewells, and then the Yellowjackets were gone.
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