by Jeffrey Lord
"I do not know," he said sternly. "A phantom in a dream, no more, no less. Who can know of dreams? And who cares! How is the Princess? Not yet awakened?"
Sylvo shook his head. "Nothing changed, master. She sleeps like a babe, and yet no healthy babe ever slept so deep. We must wake her, master, or I fear she will never wake this side of Frigga's domain."
Blade went to where Taleen slept beneath the scarlet cloak that had been Horsa's. Her long auburn hair was all in knots and tangles, her face was pinched and wan, and there were crescent purple bruises beneath her eyes. Sweat glinted on her brow. Blade, kneeling used a corner of the cloak to wipe it away. He damned the Lady Alwyth and himself for his need for sleep. Had he only noted this earlier
Sylvo, testing the edge of his second best dirk with a thumb, said: "I could make her a posset, master." He gazed around him at the desolate fens. "There is no lack of noxious matter for the making of it. It will make her vomit, ar, how it will make her vomit, and so will she rid her belly of the sleeping poison. There is naught to lose, for I think she is dying now."
Blade glared at him. "You are a physician, then? How do I know you will not poison her further?"
Sylvo was already busy. He went to the horses and came back with a small bronze pot. Without looking at Blade he said, "When I was sure you were winning, master, I made a swift trip to Horsa's house to collect a few things. It was not thieving, as Thunor knows, because I knew it would soon belong to you. And as your man I had right to it."
"I know," Blade said dryly. "In the few minutes I spent in the house I could see it had been looted. More of that later. What of this posset?"
Sylvo dipped water into the pot and added a small quantity of mud. Into this he shredded some rotting leaves and sprinkled them with a brown powder that he produced from a fine new purse on his belt. Then he began to search the ground and rank foliage about them, dirk in hand. Blade watched with the faint beginnings of nausea.
"Aha," cried Sylvo. He jabbed with his dirk at the ground and came up with a toad wriggling on the point. He tossed it into the pot and cut it to shreds. To this he added a few worms, well slashed, and then stirred the whole vigorously.
Sylvo grinned at Blade. "I am famous for this posset, master. In all of Alb none can make worse. I swear it would make a horse empty itself."
"I have a good mind," Blade said, "to try it on you first."
He thought Sylvo paled beneath the grime that caked him. "Nay, master! Do not waste it. There is not much, and anyway I am not the one who lies dying of the swooning sickness. Come, master, hold the lady's mouth open while I pour it down her."
Blade wiped sweat from her again, then cradled her head in his lap as Sylvo tipped the pot. Taleen choked, strangled, swallowed and then choked again.
"A moment," Blade commanded. "Let her breathe."
Sylvo objected, frowning. "She must have it all, master, to make her sicker. Hold her up a bit, so it goes easier down her gullet."
They got the last drop of the horrible concoction down Taleen's throat. She had been pale before, now her complexion grew more livid and was tinged with green. She rolled over suddenly and began to retch.
Sylvo leaped back. "It works, master! I told you it would. In a moment now there will be such a puking as you have never seen."
It was true. Blade held her while she vomited, with great moans and many cries for death, her slim body twisting and writhing in his arms. When at last she opened her eyes it was to stare at him in wonderment and fear.
"You? Blade! How are you come here, and I? What is this "
He stood her upright and let her hang limp over his arm while he pressed her belly gently. "You have been sick, Taken. Now you are going to be well that's it! Throw it all up. Everything. Get it all out of you."
She dangled, her arms hanging, her hair about her face, in a great torture of gasping and retching. "I die, Blade! Let me do so, then. Frigga take me this minute! I am sick to my death! Frigga curse you, Blade, if you do not let me die this instant."
Sylvo, a little distance off, regarded his handiwork with something akin to awe. "Did I not tell you, master? She is the sickest lady I have ever had privilege to watch in all my years of sinning."
Taleen, regal even in her agony, raised her head to stare at the man. "Who is this ugly cheater of hangmen? How dare he speak so? Do you allow such insolence, Blade? Teach him manners, or I shall " And she went into another paroxysm of retching.
"Make the horses ready," Blade ordered. "We had best quit this place as soon as the lady can ride."
Sylvo looked uneasy. "Darkness would serve us best, master."
Blade frowned at him. "Do as I say! I think it safe. If there was pursuit it was short and half-hearted. Lycanto and his Albs still have Redbeard to worry over that will take precedence over us. You can take us northward through these marshes?"
"Ar, master, that I can. I know the fens as I know my own hand. Some twenty kils north of here we strike into the forest again."
Blade nodded, well pleased. "Good. Lycanto must march east, or south, to meet Redbeard. He can spare no men to seek us. It may be that the lady will see her father again after all."
He turned again to Taleen, who was clinging weakly to a stunted marsh tree and looking a trifle less pale.
"You heard? We are heading north toward Voth. Are you fit to ride?"
Her brown eyes snapped at him. She was fast recovering. "I heard, Blade. I was poisoned, not deafened! But how can I ride?" She gazed down at her short linen tunic, the same she had worn when they met. It was rumpled now, and not very clean, but that was not the problem. Blade, when he heard what the problem was, had trouble restraining a curse.
"My kirtle is too short," she complained. "If I stride a horse I will show everything to that low-born fellow of yours, I cannot ride, Blade."
He glared, but kept his voice low. "You will ride, Taleen! I vow that. And hear another thing, and mark it we both owe much to that low-born fellow. I will have no more of this talk his name is Sylvo and you will address him so. He knows his place and he will keep it. See that you do and keep a civil tongue in that pretty head. You are a princess, I know, but I rule here and now, and shall do so until I give you into your father's hands. This is well understood?"
Her chin was up and her brown eyes dangerous, yet he thought her on the verge of tears. She was, as the dead Horsa had said, only a maid after all.
Sylvo, whose ears were as long as his nose, had missed nothing of this. Now he called Blade aside and whispered to him. Blade grinned and clapped him on the back.
"I hope your Thunor forgives you for thieving, man. I do. Fetch the things at once and my thanks. I would not have thought of it."
Sylvo rolled his beady eyes. "I have had vast experience with women, master. Their brain does not work like a man's. Simple things go best with them."
Blade cuffed him toward the horses again. "Get the things and spare me the advice. We must get started."
Sylvo came back with a collection of oddments that brought reluctant thanks from Taleen. There was a wooden comb she set about her tangled locks at once and a polished bronze mirror and a sewing kit with bone needles and both wool and linen thread.
Blade pointed to her dress, where it limned the shapely thighs. "A few stitches and you will have breeches. Your modesty will be preserved and you can ride. Hurry. I have a great yearning to find this Voth of Voth, your father, and be rid of you."
She turned her back on him. "You are as insolent as ever, I see. I also hope we come soon to Voth, so I can have you properly whipped. And your mangy servant with you."
Blade grinned at her rigid back. She was no longer a sick girl. The genuine, the real Taleen, was back.
All that day they rode the misty fens with only an occasional glimpse of the sun. Sylvo rode point, for only he could take them safely through the treacherous bogs and quicksands, while Blade, the great bronze axe resting on the pommel, brought up the rear.
Taleen, wearing
the scarlet cloak against the chill, rode between them and for the most part in silence. Blade noticed that once she had taken the few stitches necessary to transform her tunic into breeches, she did not appear to mind disclosing her tanned legs nearly to the hip. Women were wayward creatures in any time, place or dimension!
Blade grew more uncomfortable as the day wore on. His buttocks had been well scorched and the chafing of the wooden saddle did not improve matters. During a halt to rest themselves and to blow the horses and let them drink the brackish water, Blade mentioned this discomfort to Sylvo.
The man laid a finger alongside his nose, blinked, then went to where his horse was drinking. Blade followed him, Taleen having discreetly withdrawn behind a tall screen of reeds for reasons of her own.
For the first time Blade paid close attention to the bulging saddlebags borne by Sylvo's horse. They were crude, of unworked hide, and so fully packed that they would not latch. Blade, who was wearing a new shirt and breeches, and a vest of light mail, all taken from Horsa's domicile, watched Sylvo as he rummaged in the saddle bags.
"You spent some time in Horsa's place, then? More than I. I had barely time to take what is on my back."
Sylvo kept digging into the saddle bags. "None so long, master. I am an experienced thief, you are not. Ar, that makes the difference. A man of my quality knows what to look for, and where to look for it. A gentleman would not know of such matters."
Blade stroked his chin, hiding a grin with a hand. "There was a dead man in the kitchen, with his throat well slit. As a gentleman I know nothing of it. Do you?"
Sylvo came up with a small parcel wrapped in oiled skin and tied with leather thongs. "I know of it, master. He was a kitchen knave, a servant, of no consequence. He disputed my right there."
"As well he might," Blade said dryly. "Considering that at the time I had not yet killed Horsa."
Sylvo avoided Blade's eye. He indicated the parcel. "Here is a wondrous soothing ointment, master. By your leave I will spread some on you. It has magic powers, or so I have heard, and was made by Ogarth the Dwarf, who also cast the great bronze axe for Horsa."
Blade was staring at the new purse on Sylvo's belt. It was bulging at the sides. He prodded the purse with a finger.
"You found other things as well? Smaller things, but of greater value, that fit easier into a purse?"
"Only some trinkets, master. Poor things they are, too. Horsa had the taste of a barbarian whore. Now, master, shall we apply this magic to your burns?"
Blade let it pass. Taken had reappeared and was standing by her horse, gazing disconsolately at the vast fens stretching northward. Blade and Sylvo vanished behind the reeds.
Blade, dropping his breeches, found a relatively dry spot and stretched on his belly. Sylvo rubbed a dark sweet-smelling ointment on the scorched flesh.
"Ar, master, you took a burning indeed. I could not have stood it I would have run, or begged for mercy."
"And found none."
"Ar, that is Thunor's truth."
"And if I am scorched," Blade said grimly, "it was not so bad as Horsa took." He thought of Horsa standing in the flames, burning alive and still fighting, and shook his head. "You did not see it, Sylvo, for you were too busy thieving, but that Horsa was a man!"
The servant did not answer and after a moment Blade glanced up at him. There was an odd, and thoughtful, expression on Sylvo's seamed and scapegrace face as he applied the ointment in even strokes.
Blade watched three ants dragging a dead fly toward a tiny mound.
Sylvo said: "Ar, master. Horsa was a man. Yet you slew him, so that you are a better man. And at times I wonder vastly at the nature of things "
Already Blade's pain was vanishing. He stifled a yawn, confessing himself still weary, yet knew there was no rest, safety or peace, until he had come to Voth and delivered the girl. There he might expect thanks, along with reward and rest, and a chance to puzzle out this new life of his.
So it was without much real interest that he said: "The nature of what things, man?"
Sylvo spread more ointment. "This thing, master. Putting ointment on your arse! It is a magnificent arse, I admit, and I admire it, but it's really only an arse after all. My own arse is skinny and ill favored, though prettier than my face, but it is as much an arse as yours in the end I do not pun, master.
"So why the difference, master, in our stations? In the nature of things, in true things that count, our arses are much similar. Then why are you master and I man? It is a matter I think on from time to time."
Blade smiled and cuffed him with a good-natured backhand. "Then think on your own time, man, when I have no use for you. Thunor forbid that I have found a philosopher instead of a man and companion at arms. If you voiced such thoughts around Sarum Vil I do not wonder they gave you a dog's name." He stood and pulled up his breeches. "Thank you, Sylvo. I will ride easier now."
"Master."
Blade turned back, slightly vexed. "What now? More philosophy?"
"No, master. This." Sylvo extended the bulging purse to Blade. "I am a liar, master."
Blade kept a straight face. "That I knew already. What else?"
"Look you in the purse, master. You will see. It was a great temptation. I have always been a poor man, and this time I thought to find my fortune. But you have been good to me and have treated me as a man and now I cannot lie to you. Take it all, master, and beat me afterward."
Blade tumbled out the contents of the purse. There were scores of coins, large and small, iron and bronze, and a small leather bag with a drawstring.
"More than twenty mancus," said Sylvo. He sounded pained. "Enough for three farms, and cattle and horses, and as many servants as I could beat. A wife also if I could find one to take me."
Blade emptied the contents of the leather bag into his broad palm. There were twenty matched black pearls, as shining dark as the Devil's heart. Blade extended his palm to let Sylvo see. Faint sunlight broke through just then and the pearls glowed in tenebrous splendor.
"What of these? How came Horsa by such wealth?"
But Sylvo was not impressed by the pearls. He shrugged.
"I know little of such things, though I have seen them before. They are found on the far shore of the Narrow Sea and it is said that the sea raiders value them over all other things. No doubt Horsa took them as loot from a dead enemy. Am I to be beaten, master?"
Blade tucked the little bag of pearls into the waistband of his breeches. The money he scooped back into the purse and tossed to Sylvo. "You will not be beaten. I do not beat honest men, though with you it is sometimes a near thing. The money is yours, the pearls mine. Now come I would reach the forest before the sun goes."
There was yet an hour of light when they left the fens and came into the forest once more. By that time Taleen's mood had changed, she being as mercurial as any weathercock, and during the last hour in the fens Blade rode at her side while they exchanged stories. Blade held back nothing, even to the bargain Lady Alwyth had sought to make with him.
Taleen's lustrous eyes sparked with anger, but her tone was grave. "So you have scorned her, Blade, and because of her face she will deem it worse than that as betrayal. She will not forgive. And she has long had a reputation for dark deeds. I pray Frigga that this Getorix routs Lycanto and puts all Albs to the sword, even though we be cousins. A sword in her heart is all that will quell the evil in Alwyth."
Her face flushed and she used words that might have made Sylvo blanch. "A fine fool she made of me! I admit it. I should have known not to match wiles with her, but I was weary and hungry and thirsty and off guard. She listened to all I said of you and I spoke well, Blade, and praised you too much, because of the danger. I made you out a great deal more than you are."
He nodded, unsmiling. "My thanks, princess. I know you meant it well."
She shot him a suspicious glance, then continued. "So when she did offer me a broth I took it without thought."
She made a face. "Fool! I re
member nothing until I came back to sickness in the fens."
Blade looked ahead. The fens were ending and the dark arching forest, with caverns of shadows and dusky twilight, lay just ahead. A path led plainly from the fens into tall oaks and beeches and thick trunked yew wearing garlands of vine.
"Forget the Lady Alwyth," advised Blade. "Her fate will overtake her without our help. Neither she nor Lycanto can harm us here, but there may be other dangers. Know you anything of this country, Taleen? How far to the north lies Voth?"
She frowned. "I know little enough, never having traveled this way. What of that low fellow of yours? He has gotten us through the fens without mishap cannot he do likewise in the forest?"
Blade shook his head. "No. I asked. Sylvo is a fensman and also knows something of the sea, but he will be as lost in the forest as ourselves. Which," he added cheerfully to hearten her, "will not be so lost if we have the sun. I am woodsman enough for that."
"The Drus know of such things," said Taleen. She shot him a sidelong glance and he knew her thinking. As for himself, he had not thought recently of the sacrifice in the glade. Rather had his mind, when he let it range, been full of the strange and compelling, the passionate, dream of the woman called Drusilla. Drusilla! Dru? Odd he had not marked it before. But what matter it was all fantasy, a phantom play conjured in his unconscious mind.
"The Drus," Taleen went on, "can tell direction by stars, and how lichen grows on a tree, or by the set of the moon."
"Forget the Drus also," Blade said harshly. "They cannot harm us any more than can Alwyth. I am more interested in what Sylvo can find to put in that pot of his I am starving again."
Taleen smiled again and laughed. "I too. It seems we are always hungry, Blade! If that rapscallion of yours can find us food I may begin to forgive him his looks."
When they reached a suitable clearing Blade called a halt. Sylvo, after cutting some vines for snares, went in search of a hare or two for their dinner. They had twice seen deer since entering the forest, but the axe was no weapon for deer and Sylvo had only his knife.
Taleen gathered faggots and Blade struck a fire with flints, using an iron striker Sylvo had given him. As twilight thickened around the merry little blaze, and Taleen warmed her hands, Blade thought he heard a sound in the forest. Seizing the bronze axe he strode to the edge of the clearing and stood listening. It could have been anything a deer or some other animal, or merely Sylvo falling over a root. But it did not come again and Blade did not like the silence. No birds sang and the rustling of small creatures had ceased.