Chapter Eighteen
Weariness, grief, and pain from his wounds weighed on True like the stones he had been forced to pull during his trial. Ever since the attack he’d been moving in a fog, devoid of words to express what he felt. Too much loss, too much hurt. Too much confusion.
His mother, dead.
He relived again carrying her from the burning hut, her fur still warm beneath his hands—beneath his lips when he pressed them against her neck. How her great paws seemed to drag and cling to the useless legs of the man she’d lived so long to defend.
Radoc had been dead, yet his fingers, too, had been curled into her fur. They let go reluctantly when True lifted her away.
Now he turned his face up to the sky and tried to figure how much time had passed since that moment. Time, a strange thing to him, seemed to move quickly or slowly depending on what occurred. It moved quickly when he had Barta in his arms, very slowly indeed when he awaited her presence.
He sorted through the events in his mind. They had cared for their dead—so very many dead, including a number of valiant hounds, mostly of Loyal’s blood. After that there had begun a loud argument between Wick and Brude, who had shouted at one another while standing above the wounded. Wick insisted they must vacate the ruined settlement, while Brude accused him of cowardice.
“You are weak!” Brude sneered. “The leadership of this tribe has been weak for a long time. Look what has come of it!”
Wick stepped up to him, nose to nose. “Have a care what you say of my father. He spent his life in the service of this tribe and had the most valiant heart I’ve ever known!”
The surviving members of the tribe—bruised, burned, and bereaved—stood staring, many of the women sobbing. In the end it had been Gede who intervened, moving between the two men like a small mountain. By then most of the huts had burned; supplies had been lost, along with so much more.
“There is no reason left to stay here,” Gede declared. “And it’s dangerous. I agree with Wick. Let us gather what we can and go.”
The surrounding tribe’s members murmured in agreement, and Brude backed down. But True did not deceive himself the matter was closed between the two men. Nothing had been settled. Wick, like so many of the others, wanted away from that terrible place. Brude wanted to prove that his—and the tribe’s—courage had not gone down to defeat.
They had moved eastward with children wailing, women crying, and many of the men limping, those able to hold weapons making up a rear guard as they went deep into the trees, the wild places. For most, endurance had translated to blind movement, until the light began to fade and exhaustion overcame them. Now, here beneath the trees, many collapsed where they stood.
Barta suddenly appeared at True’s side and interrupted his churning thoughts. “Here,” she said, and he blinked at the basin and cloths in her hands. “Allow me to tend those wounds of yours.”
She looked as bone weary as he; deep in her eyes lay shock, banked at the moment by necessity. She’d spent a long time, when first they paused, bent over her young brother. Tally bore few wounds, but a lump on the back of his head argued he must have hit one of the hearth stones when he fell. So far he had not awakened.
True vaguely remembered Barta coming to him soon after she left Tally, with a similar request. As he had then, he now shook his head.
“There are others hurt far worse than me.”
“All have been tended, save you.”
She sank down beside the place where he rested, the basin wobbling wildly before she set it on the ground. Kneeling, she moved forward into his arms.
He clutched her tightly, her forehead against his heart. Her arms stole up to twine around his back and clench him just as fiercely.
“Oh, what are we to do?” she entreated.
True knew the answer to that—they would go on, one always went on—one paw or foot in front of the other until life ended. One did the best possible, held to bright loyalties.
Loyalty meant all.
But he began to understand Barta did not need to hear that now. She needed him to hold her while she wept hot scalding tears that broke from her throat in wracking sobs. She needed a refuge and the comfort of touch.
As did he.
All around them, other survivors moved like ghosts. Many women and children remained alive, not as many men. A large number of the surviving men had spread out in a ring around their new position. Dark so swiftly fell; they would need to stay here for the night.
Barta wept herself into exhausted silence while True held her, offering no words. Were there any words? If so, he didn’t possess them.
He had no strength in words anyway. But his hands cradled her, and when she stilled he turned his face into hers and tasted the tears on her cheek.
Comfort, deep and steady. The shining cord between them held strong. So long as it did, he could endure any other loss.
He licked her cheek again, slow and careful. She turned her head, and her lips met his.
Ah, she must want him to lick the inside of her mouth again. He certainly did not mind. The bond between them flared still brighter and strengthened, but she broke the contact far too soon and snuggled in beside him.
“Let me tend your wounds,” she bade again, “lest they poison. I could not bear—absolutely could not bear—anything happening to you.”
That he understood. He sat quietly while she washed his hurts with water from the basin and tied up the worst of them.
“All my mother’s cures have been lost,” she murmured as she worked. “Gone in the fire. I was able to gather some comfrey growing here. I hope it will serve. So many injured…”
When she had finished, she once more cuddled up to him. Passing folk stepped over and around them.
At last he stirred reluctantly. “I need to go join the guard. You rest.”
“I will never be able to sleep without you here. Besides, whenever I close my eyes I see—”
So did True: his mother’s brindle form, her paws clinging to Radoc as True pulled her away. Ought he to have left her there with her master? Now she lay buried beside Essa, and he needed to put her from his thoughts, focus on looking after Barta.
She whispered, “Do you think Wick and Brude will be able to settle things between them? Will Brude continue to make a challenge?”
“I do not know, Mistress.”
“ ‘Barta.’ ” She snuggled her face into his neck. “Do not call me ‘Mistress.’ Surely all such courtesies are swept away.”
At that moment Wick came by, his spear on his shoulder. He paused, and they both looked up at him.
“Do you need me on guard?” True asked and began to rise.
“No, stay where you are for now. You can take a later post.” Wick’s dark eyes studied True closely. “You fought well today. You have my gratitude.”
True wondered if that meant Wick now trusted him.
“He’s the one who found Tally, as well,” Barta told her brother.
Wick nodded. The look in his eyes matched that in Barta’s, empty and bleak.
“What will happen now?” Barta asked him. “We have no food and few other supplies, and so many injured.”
“And we are low on weapons. If you would be useful, True, I bid you go about among the folk and gather all you can. If the Gaels pursue us and it comes to another fight—well, we need to be prepared.”
True once more began to rise, but Wick laid a hand on his shoulder. “Comfort my sister first. She has lost much this day. We have all lost much.”
Wick moved off and Barta pressed her hands to her mouth. “I have never seen him like that. In truth, he has been leading this tribe a long while, and doing a fine job of it—whatever Brude says. But I do not know how he will hold up now.”
“He will because he must. He has your father’s strength as well as your mother’s, inside him.”
“And me, True?” She gazed into his eyes. “Have I the strength I will need?”
“You always have,” he told her.
“And you always will.”
****
It began to rain before daybreak, a cold autumn rain that added to the survivors’ misery. They dared not light fires that might draw the Gaels to them. Barta, who had dozed beside Tally’s pallet while True searched out the weapons, awoke to the wet chill and the sounds of another argument.
Many of the guards had come in from their assigned places and stood grouped roughly together in the gray dawn. Barta, sitting up, felt shock at how few they were in number—surely no more than a score of warriors remained from a tribe that had once thrived.
She got to her feet, first checking that Tally still slept and pulling his cover higher against the chill. True stood at the edge of the group, and she went to join him.
Wick and Brude once more faced off against each other. It struck Barta how exhausted and discouraged everyone looked; Wick sagged where he stood, and new lines had appeared in Brude’s face. Both wore dirty bandages.
“I say only,” Brude declared as Barta came up, “decisions must be made. We need a leader. I call for the tribe—what’s left of us—to declare a new chief.”
“Not now.” Wick turned his head away and tried to dismiss the matter. “Not yet. We have only just buried our dead.”
“If not now, then when? Will you let the Gaels surround us here before you deem it a fitting time? Will you act before the rest of us are dead as well?”
A few women drifted up as Barta had, to listen, Avinda among them. Wick flicked them a look before he spoke.
“Could you have prevented that attack back in the settlement?” he challenged Brude.
Brude lifted his head. “I believe I could—at least we would not have been so ill prepared. A stronger guard—”
“You persist in denigrating our strength and thus calling my father weak. But were you not on watch during the attack?”
Anger flicked in Brude’s eyes. “I was on the far boundary from where the Gaels broke in.”
“And you heard nothing? Tell me what my father should have done differently—Radoc of the valiant heart who gave so much for this tribe, including his life.”
“He should have chosen a warrior to lead us, someone who could have kept us strong.”
For an instant, Barta thought her brother would launch himself at Brude, his anger burned so bright. Instead a sneer contorted his face. He eyed Brude up and down.
“You want the place of chief so very badly? Take it!”
Exclamations bloomed all around, some of protest and a few of approval.
Brude’s voice joined the chorus. “Eh?”
Wick leaned closer to him and spoke into his face. “This has already cost me too much and may yet cost the life of young Tally. I abdicate. And so, mighty Chief Brude, why do you not stand there and tell us how you mean to save us all?”
Chapter Nineteen
“What’s done is done.” Wick delivered the words flatly, his eyes dull. “Now let us drop the matter.”
“No, I will not,” Barta told him. “I cannot.”
The two of them huddled beside the place where Tally lay, using their bodies to block the cold rain from his pallet. Following his abdication, Wick had gone to see how his young brother fared, and Barta trailed him with True in tow. True, however, had stepped away as if to afford them at least an illusion of privacy.
Barta, having argued long and vigorously for Wick to reconsider his decision, now became desperate to move him.
“What would Father say?” she asked at last. “Him barely cold, and already you throw away all he worked so hard for.”
Wick turned his head and looked into her eyes. She shied from the great pain she saw there. “Are you saying the valiant Radoc would be ashamed of me?”
“Not that, no.”
“No matter, Barta, for I am ashamed of myself! I set the guard last night. Why did they not hear the attackers? Did I choose the wrong men? Too few? Did I send men who were careless? They have paid for it now, right enough, their throats slit in the dark. Never to draw another breath, sing a song, or love a woman. I have buried Father, Mother, Bright, and so many others my heart has burst. Brude is right: I am not fit to lead.”
“Nor is he! Wick, he talks much, but what can he do to save us?”
“What can anyone do?”
“We need a good and sensible head in the lead. He is rash and hasty, and cruel.”
“Leave me be, Barta. I just want to mourn my dead.”
“So you abandon us in our need? You cannot just hand off the place of chief, Wick. That is not how it is done.”
“How is it done, Barta? Do we continue to beat our heads against the stone and watch those we love bleed? If Brude wants the ill-begotten place, I say let him take it.”
“What of my sons, who should be chief after you and Tally?”
He looked at her dully. “You have no son and may never do, if the Gaels have their way. We must let the future look after itself.”
“Father would be appalled.”
“I am not the man Father was. Can you not see that, Barta? I have always known it for truth. Now, with everything at risk, it’s time for me to admit it.”
“So you mean to take orders from Brude? Follow him like a meek hound pup?”
“We have already lost all Father tried so hard to hold. What matter my opinion of myself as compared to that?”
“Carrying on in his place matters, as does the welfare of the tribe.”
Slowly, Wick shook his head. “As soon as I am sure Tally will survive, I mean to light out from here.”
The breath seized in Barta’s lungs. “So you truly will abandon us?”
“What ‘us,’ Sister? Can you not see this tribe is in ruins?”
“The folk left are still our responsibility.”
“The heart of the tribe is gone. It died with Father, with Mother. Let Brude try to salvage what is left.”
Barta scrambled to her feet and stood looking down at her brother in disbelief. How could her world come apart so swiftly, and so completely?
“What about me?” she cried like the young child she knew, in her heart, she could no longer afford to be. “And Tally? Would you leave us here, subject to Brude’s whim, without you?”
Wick laid a hand on Tally’s brow. “Barta, you have long sought to make your own way. This will be your chance.”
“Not much of a chance, is it? Where will you go?”
“As far as my legs will carry me. North, perhaps.”
“And do what?”
Again his eyes met hers. “Lose myself.”
“Go to die, you mean? To waste away like an afterthought of the man you were? That is the worst betrayal of all.”
“Stand and shout at me all you wish, Sister. You will not move me.”
Barta hadn’t realized she’d been shouting. She closed her lips and glanced at True, who stood not far off, his shoulders hunched against the rain. Again she sought for some words that might turn her brother’s mind.
“Do not make this decision now,” she begged quietly. “Wait for the pain to ease. Wait till Tally wakes.”
“The pain will not ease. But, Sister, if it satisfies you, I will wait until morning.”
“Thank you, Wick. But nothing about this satisfies me.”
****
“Come and lie in my arms.” True drew Barta closer beneath the boughs of the tree under which they sheltered. Night had fallen like a thick blanket and the rain had eased, though the damp chill persisted. They still dared not light a fire, and Barta had wrapped Tally—who hadn’t yet awakened—close against the wet.
A poor encampment at best, but Brude had set guards all around, making a point of skipping over True for the duty, demonstrating his distrust.
True supposed he should mind the slight, but he felt too grateful for being at Barta’s side with leave to watch over Tally, who lay so still.
In truth, the whole encampment seemed uncannily still. Say what Barta would about Brude, he’d impressed the import
ance of silence on the remaining tribesfolk. Even the guard made no sound.
Barta planted the flat of her hand on True’s chest and whispered into his ear, “Do you think there’s any chance of persuading Wick to stay? I sent Gant to speak with him—to no avail.”
At least Master Gant had survived the battle, though Barta’s friend had been found severely wounded and badly burned after being trapped beneath a collapsed roof. Like most of the others, he wore a look of shock and did not appear fit to persuade anyone of much.
“True, I have been thinking—perhaps Tally and I should go with Wick, wherever he goes.”
True stiffened. “Without me, do you mean?”
“No, of course not. Wherever I go, you go also. Tell me that’s so.”
“Wherever you go, I go.”
She pressed her forehead to his and held on to him tight, like a drowning woman. “What would I do without you, True? You are the one comfort left to me. And such a comfort! Tell me how it is I feel better—as if I can breathe—just because I’m near you.”
He could explain it; he dared not. “Does it matter? We are together; that means more than anything.”
She nodded brokenly. “And, True, will you provide me any sort of comfort I need this night? If I ask you to love me, will you?”
“I do love you. You know that. Not just this night: always.”
She made a sound, half gasp and half sob. “And forever?”
“There is only forever for us, Mistress.”
“Barta.”
“Barta.”
She pressed her open mouth to his and the taste of her flooded upon him. He growled deep in his throat and gathered her into his arms, onto his knees. In the wet darkness, her mouth became a single point of comfort so strong it lifted him from his misery. He needed no more than this.
She sighed and tasted the inside of his mouth with her tongue. Her hand burrowed beneath his tunic and pressed against his bare skin. Bliss streamed to his head and even memory faded away.
But she broke the kiss almost at once and said raggedly, “I want to touch you, but it seems wrong…so much loss, so much death. How should we take our pleasure amidst that?”
“How should we not? Life is of the moment—only that. Here, and then gone so swiftly. We must take what we need.”
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