Unlike Stefan, who had an innate modesty, even shyness, Niall delighted in displaying his talents, yet with such natural informality that no one could accuse him of exhibitionism. His voice was lovely, a strong baritone, rich and vibrant. At Dominic’s request—never on his own initiative—he had entertained the household many nights in the old-fashioned style of the great hall at Aranyi, singing traditional ballads or reading aloud from narratives of Eclipsian history. The Iliad would make a fitting gift for my husband and his new companion, I decided, whether they were married or not.
One morning, when Dominic was involved in a weeklong session of the Upper Assembly, I called Niall into my room. “Lady Amalie,” he said from the corridor,“if Dominic were to come home early, you could start a double blood feud.”
Niall, like the rest of the household, courteously ignored the fact that I have not a single relative on all of Eclipsis, no one to engage in family vengeance on my behalf. As ‘Gravina Aranyi I could never entertain a man in my room. Even in the great hall of Aranyi Fortress, or here in the rooms of our spacious apartment in ‘Graven Fortress in the heart of the old Eclipsia City, I was allowed to receive male visitors only if Dominic could not, and then only properly chaperoned. Theoretically, Dominic would be well within his rights—expected, more likely—to kill Niall and me both should he find us in so compromising a position. In our family, however, the rule was understood not to apply to Dominic’s lover, but Niall liked mischief.
At my repeated invitation Niall made an elaborate show of peering furtively in all directions before sidling sinuously through the door. The idea of wife and lover betraying their lord with each other struck him as hilarious. Sometimes I think he was tempted, aware, as he could not help but be, of my feelings for him. The thrill of committing so flagrant an outrage would almost compensate for the tedium of sex with a woman, but Niall would not hurt Dominic or me for the sake of a joke. His roguishness was always tempered by compassion.
Niall whistled at the danger—better even than double infidelity—as I explained about the translated work. “Do you have a death wish,” he asked. “Or do you think I have?” He was only too happy to take a look. He sang the opening phrases softly under his breath; he was always a quick study. He flipped ahead, scanning the story, and asked to borrow it. I never had to spell things out. Niall knew Dominic by then almost as well as I did.
When Dominic came home the evening of the last day of the Assembly session, Niall greeted him with a kiss, saying he had a gift he would like to present after supper. “Keep your breeches buttoned through the soup course at least,” Dominic said. Politics always put Dominic in a foul mood.
There were no lewd jokes once Niall stood up and began to sing. His voice rang out clear and true, steadied by peril, where many would have faltered. He was unaccompanied that first night; I had not wanted to involve others in what might turn out to be a fiasco. But all went smoothly. The opening line, invoking the muse to tell of the hero’s great anger, could not help but pique Dominic’s sympathetic interest. By the time Dominic registered the fact of the story’s alien origin he was captivated. Dominic had a stunned look on his face when Niall finished the first chapter. I suspect they both had their breeches unbuttoned before they reached the bedroom.
The next night Dominic expressed his appreciation to me, the giver of so great a gift. He stopped my attempt at self-justification with a mental caress. Such themes are universal—honor, love, fate, he said as our minds converged, our bodies soon to follow. Without interesting variations on the familiar, we would all be bored to death. During the night Dominic called me Briseis, the name of Achilles’ captive woman, whose seizure by Agamemnon sets the plot in motion. “If anyone tried to rob me of such a prize,” Dominic said, his face buried in my neck, “he would rather face Achilles’ wrath than mine.”
Dominic wept unashamedly after supper many nights as we went through the whole poem, a chapter at a time. Once I overheard Dominic singing a phrase or two that pleased him. His deep voice, musical even when speaking, is extraordinary in song. I nearly swooned with rapture, entering the room silently and using my crypta to request a private recital some night. But Dominic was evasive, coldly furious—not with me exactly, but at being found out. Since his voice broke, he said, he never sang.
There was nothing I could do but acquiesce, and the storm passed. The Iliad remained a bond of pleasure among the three of us. We had gone through the whole work twice in the past six months, although it had been some time since we had heard of Apollo, Lord of the Silver Bow.
We worship Apollo on Eclipsis, one of many manifestations of the sun god, but I had not thought of these exalted gods and goddesses very often since leaving the seminary. Women have our minor household deities; men no doubt have theirs. Apart from viewing the eclipse there is little that one would call formal worship in our daily lives.
But in the style of the poem, each character is identified with an epithet: Achilles the swift runner; Patroclus, rider of horses. Apollo is the supreme, deadly archer, a role he does not play in his Eclipsian form, and there are a great many bows and arrows in the Iliad. I could only hope that Dominic would make the association. Like all Eclipsians schooled in their oral tradition, Dominic has an excellent memory for such things. I had staked my life, and all my family’s, on the belief that Dominic would understand, and that Reynaldo would not.
CHAPTER 14
When morning was but a promise barely readable in the night sky, Reynaldo rose from his sleepless vigil and woke the other bandits. The leader was calm at the beginning of this new day, purposeful and optimistic. If there had been unanticipated developments, unnecessary revelations and complications last night, in the end everything seemed to point toward the spectacular success he had worked so hard for.
As I also “woke” from my memories to my death-like trance, I found it easy to read and even share some of Reynaldo’s mind. What had horrified and disgusted me when I was fully alive became merely another mental pattern to the minuscule spark of crypta that animated me now. Like a mite living on the surface of an eyelid, I inhabited the vast foreign territory of my host as if it were the entire universe, and individual bumps of what I had once seen as disfiguring warts or growths were now magnified to the point of becoming only so many landmarks to help in navigation.
Through Reynaldo I became aware of a distant sound, hard to identify, from a location that was impossible to pinpoint. It was irregular and faint, sometimes a frenetic multiple tap tap tap, other times more of a slow individual thud…thud. Reynaldo wasn’t sure it really was a sound. Perhaps it was the feeling a person’s heartbeat creates inside his head when he is excited, on the verge of the triumph of a lifetime. He wanted to ask the others if they heard anything, but decided better of it. What if they didn’t, or said they didn’t? What would he do if his crypta told him they really didn’t hear it?
The sound seemed almost to be coming from underground, from inside the mountain the castle was built against. Maybe the mountain was trembling in preparation for an avalanche, or a volcanic eruption, or a rockslide. Just as well they would all be moving south soon, once the Aranyi men were killed and the way was open. Reynaldo put the strange tap tap tap, thud thud out of his thoughts and studied his “daughter.”
Jana had also awakened early. She was quiet and thoughtful this morning, no longer the defiant spitfire of last night, but observant and cautious. She ate her rancid breakfast quickly, squatting beside her adoptive “father,” while Reynaldo smiled at her and praised her obedience.
The girl was an unexpected bonus to this whole operation. Reynaldo had known there were Aranyi children, but not that there was anything like this, this young female Dominic Aranyi that he could possess eventually, not just as property, but as a man can possess a woman, can produce children, amalgams of father and mother. In a few years—how old was she? She must be about eight, he guessed, judging from her height and her strength and the way she had spoken last night. She would matu
re early. Four, five years at the most until she was a woman. That was not long to wait for such a bride. He dared to let genuine hope flower in him at last.
While the light still retained the grayness of predawn, Reynaldo ordered his men to their battle positions. Despite all the rumblings of mutiny last night, there was no hesitation, no reluctance, as the bandits hurried to retrieve their bows and quivers from the castle’s armaments room and took up their posts. Reynaldo’s rule was enforced by crypta; and whatever their feelings, the men knew they could not expect mercy from Dominic and his forces. They had no choice but to follow the plan, strike first and hope the Aranyi men had brought some treasure, if only for show, recompense for the trouble they would bring on themselves by killing ‘Graven.
“Now, lass,” Reynaldo said to Jana, “now you’ll see your new papa win a great victory.” He reached a hand to stroke her hair, but Jana drew back, like a dog from an abusive master, and Reynaldo dropped his arm. Time enough, with Aranyi safely his and the battles won, to school his intended consort to accept his touch. In the meantime he would treat her as he would a frolicsome untrained pup fresh from its mother’s teat. He found a length of sturdy rope, fashioned a harness around Jana’s shoulders and tied the loose end around his own waist. Once the battle was under way he’d have no leisure to think about her wild tricks. Jana accepted the rope in sullen silence, without struggling. She had her own thoughts, and would await the outcome of events, like me.
It was a slow, tedious wait. Dawn broke with a stunning display of summer lavenders and roses, the red sun burst through low clouds, rays of pale flame pierced the dense treetops; but from the woods beyond the ruined castle’s clearing, where Dominic and Niall and their forces must be camped, there was no sign of impending attack. Only Reynaldo’s crypta gave proof that they were out there at all.
“Come on, you motherfuckers,” Reynaldo muttered as the hours passed, as he stalked from ruined battlement to jagged wall, as his men grew weary, their arms trembling from holding their bows constantly at the ready, their eyes straining to see the smallest movement at the fringes of the trees, their ears pricked for any rustling. “Get your dicks out of each other’s assholes,” Reynaldo said, enjoying a pun, “and we’ll give you a real shafting.”
There was some sound: a flurry of ax blows, the occasional crash of a tree falling. It had been going on for as long as the bandits had stood in position, since there had been enough light to see where the blade bit the wood, but there was no hint of the purpose, or whether the Aranyi men would show themselves and the results of their labor anytime soon.
Reynaldo shook his head in pity. They must be building their siege ladders at the last minute. He had expected better preparation from the renowned Aranyi troops. “Come on, you bastards,” he said, louder now with greater confidence, “forget your ladders. You’re fucked. Come and get it.”
Not until midmorning, with the sun halfway to noon, did the Aranyi troops make an appearance. From the edge of the trees a small force, maybe twenty men, Niall clearly visible in the front, stepped a pace or two out of cover. The distance accentuated the vulnerability of the neat little figures, the sun picking out the occasional steel helmet or wristband clearly, fresh faces gleaming against gray uniforms edged with black. Like an atheist’s offering to the gods, their delicate beauty would go to the sacrifice unappreciated by all but the priest with the knife.
Reynaldo took a deep breath. “Let them come,” he said, although it was almost unnecessary. The men knew the plan as well as he did. “Wait until they’re within close range, then cut them down like kindling.” It would be stupid to reveal their secret weapons too soon, when the enemy was far enough away that not all the arrows would hit their target with killing force or in a vital area.
Jana saw her chance. She ran to the wall, clambered onto a ledge. “Niall!” she yelled. “Niall, go back! They have ar—”
Reynaldo only laughed. He yanked hard on the leash, catching Jana adroitly as she tumbled off the wall. He put a gloved hand over her mouth. “You don’t know when you’re beat, do you lass?” he said, undisguised admiration in his voice. What a daughter! What a wife she would make, worthy of a great man like Reynaldo.
Jana’s shouts, brave as they were, had done no damage. Although her voice could carry in the stillness of the morning, it was too great a distance for any words to be heard clearly. And since Reynaldo’s crypta didn’t travel far enough to read Niall’s thoughts, he doubted that Niall could have picked up Jana’s. At any rate, the Aranyi troops had not reacted to her cries, but continued to stand exposed, making tantalizing targets, just out of reach.
Of Margrave Aranyi there was still no sign. All the better. Let him show himself after his meager little force had been destroyed. They could hunt him down like an antlered buck through the forest. The chase would be exhilarating.
Reynaldo kept Jana’s mouth covered while he made sure of her. “If you don’t behave,” he said, “I’ll take you down to your dead mother and baby brother, and lock you in. Do you understand?” Jana nodded and Reynaldo removed his hand from her face. “I want you to watch this. You must see it for yourself when your old papa is killed. Then you will learn to love your new papa.”
While Reynaldo had spoken to Jana the Aranyi forces had advanced rapidly. As soon as he let go of her, he gave the order to fire. But as he did, and as the archers rose as one and let forth their deadly volley, the Aranyi forces, not spread out in a line or semi-circle as expected, but huddled together in a kind of long narrow column, raised large rectangular pieces of wood and formed a protective covering over themselves.
The pieces were formed of stout planks lashed together crosswise in a double thickness. The men in the front of the column carried their wooden pieces in front like shields that covered them from the top of their heads to the ground. The men at the sides held pieces on each exposed flank, and men in the middle raised their pieces over the heads of all like a roof. The strange little column, completely encased in thick wood, trudged slowly forward like a turtle inside its heavy shell. The arrows, expertly aimed, embedded themselves harmlessly in the planking. The column continued to advance as it absorbed a second and third volley.
A famous Terran army, conquerors of a vast empire millennia ago, its foot soldiers, like ours, armed only with swords and knives, had used just such a device to overcome enemies armed with arrows. They too had seen its resemblance to a turtle’s shell. Only Dominic, who, like me, reads history, could have thought of such a thing. He had understood me last night and, as I had hoped, had found a way for his men to do more than simply retreat in the face of superior and illegal weapons.
When the column was bristling from so many arrows that it resembled a porcupine, a muffled order sounded from inside and the men backed up until they were out of range. Making sure they were in plain sight the whole time, and with many obscene words and appropriate gestures, they withdrew all the arrows from the wooden shields, broke each shaft and tossed the pieces aside. After a brief rest, they lifted their shields, reformed the column, and marched again toward the castle wall.
Reynaldo swore and raged. Jana, breathless and watchful the first time, laughed as the same scene was reenacted once and then again. “Niall heard me,” she said. “He heard me. You’re all going to be killed.”
Reynaldo was tempted to smack her gloating smug face, but he was too busy and worried, and he knew she was wrong. Niall and the Aranyi forces had made their shields before the attack. That’s what all the ax-blows had been about. Jana’s shouts were irrelevant. The Aranyi men had already known about the arrows. Reynaldo was sure Niall had not learned anything last night from Jana. It must be what the ‘Gravina witch had said before she died. There was nothing Reynaldo could do about it now.
The bandits had become nervous and undisciplined. The little wooden turtle was coming closer to the wall on each foray. The bandits were shooting arrow after arrow, trying to aim at the cracks, the spaces where the pieces of wood me
t unevenly. Surely some arrows would find an opening and at least wound someone, forcing a man to drop his shield and expose himself and his fellows. So far they had been unsuccessful. One Aranyi man appeared to have sustained an injury to his exposed foot, another to his arm. Both had merely withdrawn to the rear while others moved forward to take their places, and the column had reformed.
Reynaldo’s men could see the inevitable coming. They didn’t need crypta to guess how things would end. The Aranyi forces would keep up the slow dance. The bandits would run out of arrows. They had made a large number, to be on the safe side, but the Aranyi forces could continue the teasing forward and backward motion until all the arrows were gone. Then it would become a conventional siege and storm. With such a ruin to defend, the outcome was a foregone conclusion.
“Save your arrows for the defense,” Reynaldo said. The men had already made the same decision. They gave up the offensive and watched as the little armored column crept heavily up to the inner walls and stood in front of the weather-beaten wooden door barred from inside and hung on rusting iron hinges.
The Aranyi men waited a few minutes, apparently watching for more arrows and getting their breath. Then the siege began. A small battering ram, towed at the end of the column, was passed up front, and its pounding echoed loud in the still air of a warm summer day. Everyone could almost feel the quivering of the door’s ancient timbers, the shaking of the castle’s crumbling foundation. It would not be long.
The bandits tried one last time to shoot at the column while the batterers worked. Perhaps they would have to uncover themselves in the press near the door. But it is hard to shoot accurately while aiming straight down, and the parts of the castle wall that were still accessible to the bandits were all in a broad continuous front. The jutting towers, essential design features of any respectable castle, which form corners and provide perfect defensive angles for shooting at batterers and climbers, had collapsed long ago, the wood of the floors and roofs decayed. Once again the precious arrows lodged in hard thick wood and the ram continued its work uninterrupted.
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