Frostflower and Thorn

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  “Oh. Oh, I see.” The merchant grinned. “How about some good, strong brown dye for your hair, warrior?”

  “To run all over my shoulders the first damn rain I get into?”

  “Thorn!” She had stung him in the merchant’s honor again. “Every dye in my stock is guaranteed fast. At least, fast in cloth,” he confessed. “I’m guessing it’d be fast in hair, too. You’ll probably have to let the color grow out.”

  “Not till I’m about as far south as I can go.”

  “Too bad you warriors don’t have beards to grow, or cut off. But with brown hair and a new tunic… I have some nice crimson broadcloth tunics already sewn up…and maybe you’d better cover those jewels in your sword and dagger somehow…” Then he ruined it by adding, “You’ll be able to walk all the way to the southern edgelands without anyone guessing who you are.”

  “I’ll ride all the way to the southern edgelands with you, you bastard.” She had been planning on riding with him only as far south as he was going anyway, and probably she would still cut loose from him in Nedgebottom if not before; but stone the bugger if he thought he was going to get rid of her whenever he wanted!

  Helping herself to another small slice of beef, she sat back for a few minutes and enjoyed watching him try to find polite ways to explain how dangerous her company would be. At last she said, “If they wouldn’t recognize me as a brown-haired swordswoman, you can be damn sure they won’t take three looks at me as a brown-haired cooking-wench. You’ll sew up some kind of skirt I can tear off the same time I draw Slicer, and I’ll be your secret bodyguard and kill off all the robbers for you. Now hurry up and eat.” Grinning, she leaned over and squeezed his thigh. “Get some meat into you, and maybe you can get it up good for me tonight.”

  It was not his merchant’s honor that she stung this time. “Gods!” he said. “I’ll show you a few things, warrior. Tonight it’s going to be you who cries off first.”

  “Unh?” Gods and goddesses, he’d been cocky in Three Bridges, but not this cocky. Good. “Had a couple of lessons since the Golden Rye Inn?” she asked, leaning back and picking her teeth with Stabber’s point.

  “Since tumbling with you, Thorn, I have pricked a sorceress.”

  “Careful, merchant. The goddesses don’t have any use for a bloody braggart.” Not until she had said this did the suspicion creep in. How many sorceresses had she seen between Gammer’s Oak and Three Bridges?

  “I’m not boasting, Thorn. Two days ago I pricked a sorceress.”

  “Either you’re lying, or you got drunk and dreamed it. There isn’t a gray hair on your bloody head, you damn bastard.”

  “Ask Maldron if I’m lying.”

  “Pretty damn safe witness for you as far as I’m concerned.” But that silly smirk on the merchant’s face was too blasted cocksure; and if anyone ever did dare screw a sorceron, sixty to one it was at a farmer’s command.

  “They’re not all that deadly, swordswoman. You should pick yourself out a sorcerer and try it sometime. I wouldn’t mind doing it myself again some day, now I know the way in.”

  This time he was boasting. That was fake satisfaction in his voice, or she had never gambled. Maybe he had done it, but Thorn would have staked the sheen-amber in Slicer’s pommel he had not enjoyed it. “What was she like, Spendwell?”

  “Small. A lot smaller than you, Thorn. Almost the smallest woman I ever had…no, there was that seamstress in Five Roads Crossing…”

  He was talking too fast, getting too far off the subject. By the gods, he was not going to squirm off the barb. “Damn the seamstress in Five Roads Crossing. What else?”

  “Soft. White. If I had her in a decent bed, she’d be perfect.…” His voice seemed to break a little.

  “I’ll show you perfection,” said Thorn, thinking at that moment she would like to squeeze his neck until the windpipe cracked between her naked elbows. “I suppose she liked you as much as you liked her?”

  “She—oh, gods, Thorn, she shook—I never felt a woman shake like that under me, not like…like a wet, frightened chicken. Even before I touched her.”

  “You damn motherpricker.” Thorn got up and began to pace around the fire. “You can’t even decide if you liked it or didn’t.”

  “I—I did give her a good rhythm! As good as I gave you…but it took so…gods, if she hadn’t trembled so much, if I could have gotten a better start…if she hadn’t been clamped down—”

  “I guessed that. I suppose you kept your eyes screwed closed the whole bloody time? Or did you get a look at her face?”

  “Her eyes…weren’t…right. One blue eye, one brown eye. Maybe if they’d been right, she wouldn’t have looked… I could have—”

  “You wouldn’t have been so scared and you could have hurt her more. What else did they do to her?”

  “Questioned her, I think…and hung her. I—” He tried to swallow a bite of meat, choked, and spat it out.

  “Gods!” Thorn sat again, staring into the fire. “Poor little sorceress. Poor little bitch of a sorceress.”

  “She—deserved it, warrior.” Was he telling her, or reminding himself? Either way, she hated the damn motherpricker for it.

  “What do you know about what she deserved, merchant?”

  “She had stolen a child.”

  The swordswoman laughed. “She didn’t steal the damn grub. She took it off my hands for me.”

  The silver-plated bowl began to slide from Spendwell’s lap. He caught it just in time. “You? Thorn, not your…?”

  So he was just now remembering, eh? So that was all she had been to him, an evening’s tumble and not worth remembering she had had a problem about a brat in her belly. “Yes, it was my bloody grub and I gave it to her.”

  “It couldn’t have been! How—”

  “She sorcered it out of my stomach, that’s bloody how!” The warrior laughed again. Better than sniveling. “You should have seen me, merchant. Swelling up like a damn bullfrog’s throat, and just about as fast.” No, damn him, she was glad he had not been there. But, gods! It would have reduced him to snail-slime before he dared touch Frostflower.

  Yes, now it was sinking in. This time his bowl slid all the way and upset on the ground. “Then she could have…” He put his hands to his hair. Maybe he was trying to feel its color, make sure it was still brown.

  “I suppose she felt sorry for you, you pitiable slob.”

  He picked up his bowl, looked at the spilled meat, and got up to carry it away from camp and throw it out for the crows or something. If he had a dog, like Frostflower’s damn mongrel…or did sorceri’s dogs eat nothing but vegetables, too? Poor little bitch of a sorceress. If I had stuck with her…

  Spendwell came back, sat again, examined the grease splashes on his long green velvet tunic, and began to cut himself a few more slices of meat. “Maybe she did not age me through pity,” he said, “but it was because I was kind to her and because I had no more choice than she had.”

  “Kind to her! Next time I hear you bragging about how kind you are to sorceresses, I’ll lance your bloody balls. Oh, forget it,” she added wearily, as he began to make some hot answer. “Maybe I’ll let you do something rotten to me tonight. Why didn’t she tell Maldron it was my brat?”

  “She did tell him it was a warrior’s who didn’t want it. Wait, did she say it was you? Yes—because I wondered how she knew you. No, it was Maldron who mentioned your name. First he told her you were lost in the marshlands, and then asked if you were the mother—that was how it was. So that when she agreed, he could catch her lying, tell her he knew you were pulling your belt too tightly just a few hen’s-hatchings ago.”

  That damn cow Clopmule must have told him. “She should have explained about sorcering it out of me. He might have let her off easier.”

  “But he would have killed the baby.”

  Yes. Frost would have cared more about the damn grub than about herself.

  Spendwell cut off a bite of meat, but did not put it into h
is mouth. “Maldron himself spoke on the scaffold, just before… Told the crowd to spread the news. He’s sending messengers all through the Tanglelands, looking for the parents.”

  “He won’t find them.” Especially when he probably intended to keep the grub himself, damn sneaking priest. So my brat’s going to grow up a farmer, is he? I might as well have milked Eldrommer when he brought it up. Any other time, she would have been amused. “What about that mangy dog?”

  “Dog? Oh, yes, the sorceress’ dog. Maldron kept it, I think…yes, I know he did.”

  Not that it mattered. But, gods! Frostflower had loved the silly mutt. The grub, too. Any maybe me, thought the warrior. And what I did to her up there beneath the baker’s roofbeams…“You’re sure she never mentioned my name until the farmer told her I was dead?”

  Spendwell nodded. “I remember now. I thought she was grabbing the first name he offered her. That was it. I never thought you’d have taken up with a sorceress.”

  Quite a memory the bastard had. Seemed to work by suggestion and by figuring out what he must have thought at the time. Well, he had known Thorn only one night, Frostflower probably only long enough for a scared prick. And most of what he said made sense. Not justice, but sense. “When did they hang her?”

  “This afternoon.”

  “Gods!” Maybe still alive, then…with bloody rags stuffed in where her guts had been, or the stones grinding their way down through her insides. At least I can sneak up and—what? Send her from the gibbet to Hellbog quicker? Well, if there was any mild spot in Hellbog, Frostflower would get it. “What gibbet?”

  “The one just this side of the marshlands. They took Flutterblade down yesterday.”

  Flutterblade. So that was the name of the poor bugger Frost had put out of her misery on that same gibbet. Maybe the merchant could tell why Flutterblade had been hung, but thorn was no longer much interested. “About how far from here? From where we are now?” She had a general idea, but after three days in the woods a person could begin to lose her exact bearings.

  “Far enough. We don’t have to worry about the gibbet-jeerers seeing you.”

  “I don’t give a rotten damn about gibbet-jeerers.” The bastards never stuck around after dark of the first evening, anyway. “Can we get there by dusk?”

  “Thorn, you aren’t thinking…? It won’t work. Maldron has two warriors watching her until the end.”

  “What? Damn! Why?”

  “In case she confesses, names the parents.”

  “What was the scaffolding? Stones or gutting?”

  “Neither…ritual disembowelment.”

  “Ritual!” Thorn jumped up and drew her dagger—not to menace Spendwell, just to get a weapon into her hand to steady the shaking. Ritual gutting—the last time she had heard of that being done was at least ten or twelve years ago, when she was still learning swordwork from old Bloodrust in All Roads West. “Ritual disemboweling! Is that what I think it is?”

  “I don’t know what you think it is, warrior. But it isn’t all that pricktickling.”

  “Who the Hellbog cares about your bloody prick? All it is, is branding a couple of times on the belly, isn’t it?”

  “Twice. In a big cross. Hip to hip.” The merchant put down his bowl of meat as if there were roaches crawling in it. “I can watch a stone-swallowing with the best of them, but that… There was some fat landworker beside me who kept yelling and chewing a piece of stinking sausage the whole time.”

  “Then you’d better keep away from real guttings!” Thorn grabbed a piece of firewood and began whittling it in long, hard strokes, for sheer excitement. Ritual gutting! That was supposed to be the worst scaffolding of all—took a poor bugger almost as long to die on the gibbet afterwards as if there had been no scaffolding at all, and in extra pain meanwhile. But it left a chance—Warriors’ God! It left a chance for survival!

  If Frost is still alive, the swordswoman thought, if I can go in there and cut her down… Warriors’ God! Are you back on my side?

  “Ritual gutting?” she repeated. “You’re sure—a couple of brandings on the belly, that’s all? No skin sliced, no slitting, just a couple of burns?”

  “Maybe you’d like a hot sword laid flat on your bare skin?”

  “Hellbog, I’ve had it done! Didn’t I show you my thigh, where they had to burn out a crawling infection where somebody’s spear gashed me?” But the reproach in his question showed he was sympathizing with Frostflower, and for that she could forgive him a lot. “Why ritual gutting?”

  “There’s a rumor Maldron wants her for a pricking-slave, if she confesses in time.”

  “Smardon’s fingernails he does!”

  “Maybe he only wants to make her confess so that the warriors can kill her quickly. But I saw how he looked at her, Thorn. I think the rumor—”

  “Then we’ll give the motherpricker a little surprise!” Later on, she would allow herself the pleasure of thinking over all the sweet, bloody things she would do to Maldron if she could. Right now, the sorceress was more important. “We want to get her down as soon as we can. Damn, we’ll probably have to wait for dark. If we start now, how dark will it be when we get there?”

  She looked—really looked—at Spendwell for the first time in several minutes, and almost laughed at his gape-mouthed face. “Thorn—you’re not planning to—”

  “You’re damn right we’re planning to. What the Hellbog did you think?”

  “Oh, no, warrior! Not me—I’m not going back there with you!”

  Damn squirming bastard, just when she was beginning to warm to him! “Merchant,” she said, almost reflectively, looking at him as she picked her teeth with her dagger, “we should have another body to hang up so people won’t notice for a while that Frostflower is gone.”

  “I could make you a dummy,” he said.

  Thorn could not quite tell from his voice and manner, but she hoped that he was really eager to do what he could, that he had not yet caught the threat in her words. After all, she reminded herself, you could not expect a man to take the chances a warrior took. Men were not brought up with the idea that they could always be replaced—that their services were more important than their lives. A woman learned early that she had to take care of herself, that her work could be taken by someone else and even the few folk who had enjoyed her company would soon forget—a woman’s life, especially a warrior’s, was her own concern, to guard or risk as she chose. A man grew up with the idea that all decent people, including strangers, cared for him for his own sake, that no one else, not even another man, could ever take exactly his place in the world, and that therefore he had a duty to the whole futtering Tanglelands to keep his guts safe inside his body and his body safe inside his skin. So if Thorn wanted Spendwell’s help, she had better reassure him, not scare him.

  At least his bloody brains had been working. “But if you leave the guards dead, Thorn,” he went on, “even if their bodies disappear…”

  “I’m not going to kill the bitches unless they make me. Frostflower wouldn’t like it.” So what was she going to do about them? Hellbog and stink! She threw away the stick she had whittled down to nothing, got out her small whetstone, and began sharpening Stabber as she walked around the camp. “I can dye my hair while you’re making that dummy—no, maybe I’ll just wrap a damn kerchief around my head and pretend I’m a soft little workwoman. Just give me a length of cloth for a skirt and I’ll wrap it around loose. They’ll never know the difference in the dark, and I can shake it off any time I want.”

  “You’re going to walk there in a skirt?”

  “I’m going to ride there in your bloody wagon. How the Hell do you think we’re going to get the dummy there and bring Frostflower back?”

  “I don’t like—”

  “Look, merchant, you’ll get a chance to prick two warriors—they’re probably bored as snails, sitting out there on the edge of the marsh, and itchy enough to milk a demon.” Get the damn guards into a drunken stupor and let t
he merchant prick them silly, then get a little more wine into their slimy bellies and hold their mouths and nostrils for a minute if they still aren’t out.… Damn it, all that extra time, with the poor little sorceress dangling above them—but a scuffle, trying to pound them on the head until they conked out and maybe died—anything like that, and she might as well not bother with hanging Spendwell’s dummy; the hunt would be on as soon as the guards woke up or were found.

  But give them a chance to milk a good, strong, young merchant, throw a few games of dice, drink themselves to sleep on Spendwell’s wine; and there was a decent chance they would keep quiet about it afterwards.

  Even if the story did come out, who could say for sure that Spendwell, with his safe-passage token from Maldron himself, was the one who had cut the sorceress down, and not some sorceri-lover who came by when the guards were sleeping on duty?

  The swordswoman’s glance fell on a patch of purplish berries. Same rotten things she had eaten two days ago after convincing herself they were not dreamberries because they were not spotted. She snapped off a stem of the things, looked them over again, and grinned. If it had been these damn berries and not the toadstools that gave her the bloody nightmares, Maldron’s bitches were in for a bad night.

  * * * *

  It was almost dark when they came to the gibbet. The last of the rabble was gone—maybe well before dusk, maybe only a few moments ago, but long enough so that there was no sign of them. The two warriors were coughing, grumbling, and throwing dice in the light of a smoke-fire. Better put a few cakes of smudge-incense on the flames and cough, than get chewed up by the marsh bugs.

  Two blobs of orange glow, just bright enough to show the smoke rising from them, stood on barely visible tripods near the gibbet. Someone had set up smudge-incense pots to keep the bugs off the sorceress. Thorn squeezed Slicer’s pommel, feeling the sheen-amber beneath the cloth of her clumsy, improvised skirt. For the first time in maybe years, her jaw ached with emotion. Then she thought of Maldron having the smoke-pots set out because he hoped to cut Frost down to be his pricking-slave.