by P. J. Fox
And all good.
Finishing, he took a moment to collect himself.
Rowena shouldn’t be here.
What was she doing here?
It was almost as if….
But no, that couldn’t be right.
He heard a twig snap behind him. “Fuck you.”
“You offering?”
Hart turned. He shrugged. Sometimes he wondered. “Stop being so pleasant to Rowena or you’ll end up fucking her.”
Callas shook his head. “Your father wouldn’t care for that much.”
Gods, his father? “My father wouldn’t notice.”
“Rudolph, then.”
He’d met the man, hadn’t he? Rudolph hadn’t come searching for Rowena—at least, not that anyone knew—and that, to Hart’s mind, was telling. He tried to tell himself that Rudolph was simply weak; that weak men loved as other men. But Hart’s father had loved his mother, too. If life had taught him anything, it was that love was a blood sport.
“They claim to have gotten turned around.”
Hart took a pull from his flask. Clear, sweet water. He liked being outside of the city, where fear of contagion didn’t demand the sour aftertaste of wine in everything.
“It’s possible,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “A night or two with Rowena would be more than most men could stand. Or women,” he added, as an afterthought. How Isla had ever stood Rowena, he didn’t know. Stood her? Loved her, even.
Rowena wanted her fairy tale but she’d had it. She’d had it all along. Hart knew why he’d thrown away what he had but Rowena? Which brought him back to wondering why she was here and what it was about his sister that he didn’t know.
And when he’d find out.
He stood there, staring at nothing, for a very long time.
When he returned to the clearing, camp had been made and his erstwhile family were all huddled around the fire. Hart thought about disappearing into his tent but in the end forced himself to join them. Callas was there. A second fire, further off, kept the enlisted men warm. Hart had been hoping they wouldn’t catch up until later; that he’d made better time than he had. He settled onto an overturned log, between Callas and Apple. Even out here in the middle of nowhere, with danger all around, the demarcation between a leader and his men had to be preserved.
That fear, that sense of other was everything.
He wondered if they’d fear him if they knew he’d once had a pet pig.
He added more wood to the fire from a small pile that had been collected.
“It’s cold.” Rowena sniffed.
“It’s winter.”
Dinner was distributed.
“What’s this?” Apple stared at hers suspiciously. As though she’d been dining on the finest of everything all winter, and had just now seen a strip of dried meat for the first time.
“Dinner.”
“Well I won’t eat it.”
“Then don’t.” Hart wasn’t upset. He didn’t care.
Dusk was upon them. Night would come soon. Perhaps Rowena would be savaged by a dire wolf. He enjoyed his own dinner, more of the same leather tough venison accompanied by an oat cake and some well watered wine. He planned to take the first watch, and didn’t need too much warmth in his veins making him drowsy.
A log popped. A shadow flickered near to the fire and was gone. A bat. Rowena jumped.
“You left,” Callas remarked, “shortly after the wedding.”
“Ah.” The earl shifted position slightly. “About that.”
He looked old. As Hart studied him across the fire in the fading light, it occurred to him that he was old. He’d fallen in on himself, somehow. The furrows in his brow and around his mouth were deeper. He was, indeed, one of those in the party who looked distinctly ill. His skin had taken on a pale, almost translucent cast that couldn’t be explained away by mere alcoholism.
This was the wretch, of whom he’d been so afraid?
“We did indeed depart the morning after,” the earl said. “But then a storm came and trapped us in a small hamlet of some sort. A fair enough place. Torup.”
Hart knew the place by reputation. A farming community. Loyal to the duke and without excitement. Fifty or so families whose crofts disturbed a well-watered countryside. Barley, he thought he remembered hearing. That’s what they grew.
“They were good to take you in,” he observed.
“Of course they took us in.” Apple sounded indignant.
Hart spared her the lecture on how things were different in the North. Even if she believed him, the information wouldn’t matter to her. Wouldn’t change her viewpoint. She was one of those for whom right merely served as shorthand for familiar. To the extent that the North—or anywhere—was different from what she’d known as a babe in arms in her father’s home, it was wrong. There was, therefore, no need to take it seriously.
Apple was the sort who broke through rotted ice and drowned, all the while proclaiming that the river was safe.
“We spent the winter there,” the earl continued, “in the headman’s cottage. And then when we saw that spring was coming, we decided to leave. Rowena’s wedding, you know. Mustn’t be late.” He paused, pondering. “We must…must have gotten turned around somehow, on the road, and then….” He let out a wheezing gasp.
Callas’ eyes narrowed slightly. Probably thinking the same thing Hart was. The old man’s gasping turned into a fit of coughing.
“Are you well?” he asked.
Rowena placed her hand on her father’s back. “You should lie down,” she said, suddenly all solicitous. “All this travel is too much for you.”
Which was rich, considering that Rowena had almost certainly pushed for them to leave Torup.
The earl waved her off. “No, I’m…fine.” He half-wheezed, half-coughed, and wiped at his lips with a handkerchief. “Never better.” He smiled at Hart across the campfire. More for his own benefit, Hart suspected, than for Hart’s. “Hale as a horse.”
“He’s only sick,” Rowena said defensively, “because he had to spend the winter in a hell hole.” She sniffed. “Because no one came to rescue us.”
“No one knew you needed rescuing.” Hart’s tone was calm. He’d gotten over his earlier shock.
“Torup was a hell hole,” Apple volunteered.
It certainly wasn’t. Torup was a clean and well-maintained town with fresh air and a good water supply. Like most towns, it wasn’t filled with the powerful and wealthy. All its residents did was the most important job there was: feeding the rest of the duchy.
“My room.” Apple made a face. “I had to sleep on a straw mattress. And the food! Bread. And then bread. And then more bread. Nothing but bread! And some horrible sort of stew made with radishes. I loathe radishes.”
Apple had apparently forgotten that her own home was hardly famed for its table. This time last year, she’d been complaining about the overabundance of fish. Her husband being, of course, too poor to purchase food from outside the manor. They’d grown what they ate, or caught it, just like the people of Torup. Which perhaps lay, Hart mused, at the root of his stepmother’s grievance with her erstwhile hosts.
“They made us work.” Rowena sniffed again.
“Oh?” Callas sounded amused.
“Carding wool and kneading dough and—oh! Everything horrible.”
“Indeed, the veritable tortures of the pit.”
Rowena’s eyes narrowed as she tried to decide whether Callas was serious.
“Rowena had a suitor.” The earl smiled. Someone had found him wine and he was drinking it.
Even the worst soldier’s swill up north was better than anything the earl had ever served at his table.
Hart was interested, despite himself. Although not surprised. Wherever his sister went, she had suitors. Isla, too, had always garnered her own fair share of admiration. Although unlike Rowena, she hadn’t courted it. And, Hart suspected now, hadn’t even noticed.
He decid
ed to spare his family the ultimately pointless lecture that of course they’d had to work and what had they expected. They weren’t people of importance except in their own minds and even if his father had been the king himself, whatever house the burghermeister of Torup possessed and however grand it was by provincial standards it wasn’t a castle and no farmer or whatever relative wealth was equipped to have guests. So instead he asked, “who was he?”
“The headman’s son.” The earl beamed.
“He proposed!”
Which was more than Rudolph had ever done.
Rowena made a face. “He was—is—a peasant.”
Callas’ brow furrowed, as he considered this objection. The Southron prohibition against what the church called class mixing didn’t exist in the North. A man married who was suitable. And many a man born to simple farmers, such as Callas, had risen to great heights.
“Well at least he did something all day.” The earl was now well and truly into his cups. “Instead of prancing around in a codpiece. What does Rudolph expect us all to believe, that he has the cock of a gryphon?”
Callas burst out laughing.
Rowena glowered.
“He was quite handsome,” Apple allowed.
“Did you bed him?” Hart was genuinely curious.
Apple feigned disgust. “I’d never. I’d never—allow myself to be courted by—just anyone. A man with no title, and no prospect of one, who smelled of pig. And,” she continued archly, “lest you forget, I’m married.”
Hart considered this. “You bedded me.”
And with that, dinner was over.
TWENTY-ONE
“Of course, no one could believe such a thing.”
Hart hadn’t been listening. He’d been doing his best, in fact, to pretend that Rowena wasn’t there. “What?”
He didn’t look at her when he spoke. His eyes were all for the trees, lined like silent, forbidding sentinels on either side of the rutted road. There were dire wolves and mountain lions lurking within, but by far the worst threat was his fellow man. Outlaws cut off from the support of their former towns and made desperate by the harsh winter. Men who slunk down from the mountains like jackals, looking for unwilling brides to abduct. Tales of such women, forced to live in caves for years until they escaped or were rescued, abounded.
And then there were the ones for whom escape, or rescue, never came.
There were men as well who roved in packs like a different breed of jackal, men who simply sought pain.
And, finally, there were Southrons. Hart would never admit this, because the dreaded Viper didn’t feel fear, but he was terrified. Of another ambush. Of another error in judgment, which would lead to the loss of more lives. Although strangely, when he pictured this, it wasn’t his family’s faces he saw. Or even those of his brothers in arms.
He suddenly felt irritable.
“You aren’t listening.” Rowena’s tone was accusing. Then, apparently deciding that it didn’t matter, she continued. Or repeated herself. Perhaps for the tenth time. He didn’t know and didn’t care. “There are rumors. Rumors of human sacrifice.” She made a face.
“Rumors that you are involved in human sacrifice.”
“Oh?” Hart did his best to sound disinterested.
Rowena laughed. “Of course, that’s ridiculous.”
“Ah.” And then, “I see.”
“Elias—that’s the burghermeister’s son—told me stories. Trying to frighten me so I’d seek comfort, I think.” She smirked. My, she had grown up. Hart’s gaze returned to the trees.
“About the duke and his men, and some secret guild within them. Of course,” she continued, “even if such a group does exist, I doubt you’d know anything about it.” She paused, and for a few blessed moments there was silence. “You’ve never been much of a, well, don’t take offense to this Hart but you’ve never been much of a leader.”
“Indeed.”
“What are you to the duke, anyway? His pig keeper?” Her laugh was the bright, hard shattering of crystal. Her eyes, when she smiled, were as cold as the icicles that hung down from the low-slung branches.
Hart said nothing, and for another quarter league there was only the crunching of hooves in the snow.
“Elias was quite stupid, though. He told me these stories, particularly about some captain—or something—in the duke’s guard whom everyone called the Viper. About how he arrested a man on suspicion of, oh, I don’t know, something to do with children and then skinned that man alive to obtain a confession. Kept him conscious for days, somehow, while he did it.” There was a certain tone of relish in Rowena’s voice. “How he sacrificed…something to the Dark Lord to obtain powers and how he can kill you just by looking at you.”
“Sounds impressive.”
“He drinks his victims’ blood.”
“Blood has numerous magical properties.” Hart glanced at his sister. “It helps to retain youth.”
“Oh.” Rowena considered this new information. “But even so,” she continued after a moment, “the point is that all of this is pretend. Elias is just a simple peasant who would clearly believe anything.” Never mind that, by Northern standards, Rowena was just a simple peasant herself. “Demons and curses and magical beings who live forever. What will it be next? Bog sprites? Rudolph would never buy into such foolery.”
“Ah.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“And even if any of it were true, which it isn’t, it wouldn’t have anything to do with you.”
Hart accepted this verdict serenely.
“So you never told me.”
“What?”
“What is your position with the duke?”
He turned to look at her, his eyes meeting hers. “Captain.”
He rather enjoyed the look of shock on her face.
She wasn’t pretty anymore, all slack-jawed like that. In fact she looked rather plain. More like a fishwife than a would-be princess. She rather took after their father, Hart decided. If Hart took after anyone, he didn’t know about it. There was a freedom to that.
He felt suddenly, unaccountably irritable. Rowena, after a few minutes’ blessed silence, was chattering on again about the stupidity of anyone confusing him for this Viper. The dreaded man at arms who apparently also didn’t exist. But that wasn’t what vexed him. He couldn’t care less what Rowena thought of him and part of him was even pleased, he supposed, that he could still pass. For something approximating a normal human being. No…whatever was stewing inside of him came from elsewhere.
Snow dropped from the trees, shaken loose by the vibrations of the passing horses.
Somewhere, a lone wolf howled.
Unusual to hear a wolf at noontime. Wolves hunted mostly at night. Lying in his tent, alone with his thoughts, Hart could hear them calling to one another.
It was during the hunt that the wolf’s intelligence was most apparent. Like men, what they lacked in size and power they made up for with intelligence. And collaboration. Where one would be easily annihilated, by enemies or simple adverse conditions, a pack dominated. Again, like men.
Wolves might trail their chosen prey, whether it be reindeer or elk, for days before making their attack. They looked for the most suitable target within a pack: one that displayed signs of weakness or injury. But that was only the beginning. Then came the challenge of readying themselves for battle. Of choosing their ground.
On a flat plain, a reindeer could outrun the fastest wolf. Reindeer were built for the plains. But the lichens that reindeer ate grew on trees, and the streams from which they drank coursed down from the mountains. Eventually, to survive, the reindeer had to enter the trees.
The hard, crusted drifts in the forest favored the wolf, whose round paws served him like snowshoes while his hoofed quarry broke through and became mired.
Sometimes wolves panicked their quarry on purpose, driving them into the trees. Hart appreciated this; one’s enemy was always at his weakest when
his wits had left him. Hence the importance of reputation. The mere mention of the Viper was enough to turn most men’s bowels to water. Let alone an interview with him.
The wolves used this same tactic in summer, driving the reindeer before them into any one of the thousand streams that carved through the mountains where they slipped and fell on the rounded pebbles.
And of course, they worked together. Speedier, lightly built females herded the target toward its doom while their heavier, more powerfully built mates lay in wait to make the kill. A man…needed a woman, Hart supposed, even in the wild.
Or perhaps especially then.
He wondered idly if Rudolph had ever killed a wolf.
Or even a spider.
And he wondered, less idly, what Lissa was doing at that moment. She would be a good wolf, fast and strong. And uninhibited. He still remembered the feel of her in his arms, how she’d molded her body to his and he’d felt her heart quicken.
Almost as if she’d wanted him.
He scowled.
TWENTY-TWO
His expression hadn’t changed when Callas reappeared from between the trees.
He’d ridden on ahead to scout and as he’d given no distress call, Hart assumed that all was well. Which indeed it was. After conferring briefly, they decided to call a halt for lunch. Hart would have preferred not to but understood that with their current baggage in tow a certain degree of consideration was required. Although Hart wouldn’t necessarily mind if his family showed up dead at Caer Addanc, Tristan might. He might want to question them. Hart knew he did.
Something about their story just seemed…odd.
“I set a snare for later.”
“And you want my approval?” Hart swung down from his saddle and knelt in the snow to hobble Cedric.
“Someone’s cheery.”
“I’m not your fucking nursemaid.” Hart ran his fingers through his hair. Which was greasy with accumulated sweat and dirt. He needed a bath. “Catch as many hares as you want.”