Darkover: First Contact

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “When I saw him last, at midwinter, he was well,” Bard said, “although, I suppose, you know that he was lamed at the battle near Moray’s mill, with a stroke from a Dry-towner’s poisoned dagger; and he was still walking with the aid of a stick.”

  “He sent me a letter,” she said. “Melora wrote it; and she spoke well of your bravery—” and suddenly she dropped her eyes and blushed.

  He said with calm courtesy, “I am glad Melora thinks well of me,” but inwardly he was raging with conflict. Melora, who had refused him, despite all of her fine words of friendship!

  He said, “If your kinsmen think well of me, damisela, I am glad; for it had entered my mind to ride to El Haleine and take service with The MacAran.”

  She said, “But The MacAran has no need of mercenary soldiers, sir; he has signed a truce with the Hasturs and with Neskaya, and they have pledged to keep peace only within their borders and wage no war outside them. You can save yourself the trouble of traveling there, sir, for they will hire no mercenaries from outside their borders.”

  Bard raised his eyebrows. So the Hasturs of Thendara and Hali were extending their influence, then, to El Haleine? “I thank you for the warning, damisela,” he said. “Peace may be welcome to the farmers, but it is always unwelcome news to a soldier.”

  “But,” said Melisendra, with her ingenuous smile, “if there is peace long enough, a day may come when men may do more with their lives than soldiering, and men such as my father may do more with their talents than risk their lives, unweaponed, in battle!”

  Dom Rafael broke in, and somehow he looked a little displeased. “Go to your lady, my girl, and make my son’s wants known to her; and tell her he will be riding out at sunset.”

  “Why, Father, are you so eager to be rid of me?” Bard asked. “I intend to lie this night in my father’s house; I shall not see it again, nor you, for seven long years!”

  “Eager to be rid of you? God forbid,” said Dom Rafael, “but you have only three days to leave Asturias.”

  “It will take me only a day’s ride to reach the border, if I ride north to the Kadarin,” Bard said, “for if El Haleine is in Hastur hands, that is closed to me; I shall away into the Hellers, then, and see if the Lord Ardais has need for a hired sword who is also a leader of men. Or do you think your worthy kinsmen will send assassins to waylay me on my way out of the kingdom, sir?”

  Dom Rafael stopped and considered it. He said, “I sincerely hope not. Still, if you have a blood-quarrel with Geremy, and with the prince—one of them might seek to assure that you do not seek to return and make peace with Ardrin after your seven years. I would go with great care, my son, and I would not delay until the last moment.”

  “I shall be careful, Father,” Bard said, “but I shall not sneak forth into exile like a whipped dog, tail between my legs, either! And I shall lie this last night in my father’s house.” His eyes met Melisendra’s in a long glance. The girl colored and tried to turn her glance away but Bard held her eyes, holding her in that close compulsion. Master Gareth had warned him away from Mirella as if he were an unruly schoolboy, and Melora had teased him, tormented him, finally refused him. He held Melisendra’s eyes until she squirmed, her face flooding crimson, and finally managed to break eye contact and hurry out of the room, her head bent.

  Then Bard laughed and bent to Alaric. He said, “Come, you shall take choice of all my bows and arrows and all my playthings. I am a man and will not need them, and who should have them, when I am gone, if not my own brother? Stay and look through these things and I will tell you what you will do in the king’s house as his fosterling.”

  Later, when the child had gone away, his hands full of balls and shuttlecocks and hunting bows and such gear, Bard stood by the window, smiling in pleasant anticipation. The girl Melisendra would come. She would not be able to resist the compulsion he had put on her. Damn all women, who thought they could tease him and refuse him and make him less than a man with their whims! And so he smiled, not with surprise, but with a kind of fulfilled greed, when he heard the light step on the stairs.

  She came slowly, with lagging step, into the room.

  “Why, mistress Melisendra,” he said, with a grin that showed his white teeth, “what are you doing here?”

  She looked up at him, the big gray eyes wide and vague and somehow frightened. “Why—I don’t know,” she said shakily, “I thought—it seemed to me that I had to come—”

  He reached for her, with a lazy smile, dragged her close and kissed her, pressing her roughly. Under his hand he felt her heart beating, and knew that she was terrified and confused.

  He should have tried this with Carlina, then there would have been no trouble; he wouldn’t have hurt her, she wouldn’t have protested. He had been a fool. Somehow he had believed Carlina must somehow share the torment that raged in him, would want him as he wanted her. He still wanted her, like a ravenous itch in his blood, a thirst no other woman could slake; she was his, his wife, the king’s daughter, sign and symbol of all he had done, of his honor, his achievement, and King Ardrin had dared to come between them!

  His hands went to the laces of her undertunic, thrusting inside, and she let him do what he would, in terrified silence, like a rabbithorn in the grip of a banshee. She whimpered, a little, as his hand closed over her nipple. Her breasts were full, not like Carlina’s meager bosom; this was a sow, a fat pig like Melora, like Melora who had teased him and played with his emotions! Well, this one would not do so! He dragged her toward the bed, keeping the relentless pressure on her mind and body. She did not struggle, even when he thrust her down on the bed, hauling at her skirts. She kept up the mindless whimpering, but he did not listen, flinging himself down on top of her. Once, she screamed. Then she lay silent, shaking, not even crying. Well, she knew better than that. Her very terror excited him, as Carlina’s had done. This woman would not resist him, this one knew better!

  He rolled away from her and lay spent, exhausted and triumphant. What was she sniveling about? She had wanted it as much as he did; and he had given her what all women wanted, once you got through the silly nonsense of pretty speeches and flattery. He supposed he would have owed some of that to a wedded wife. He remembered, with a sudden throb of pain, how he and Melora had sat beside the campfire, talking. He had not wanted to put compulsion on her; and so she had made a fool of him. Well, this woman would have no such opportunity to do that! Women were all whores anyway; he had had enough of them. They didn’t make any fuss; why should a high-born girl be any different? They all had the same thing under their skirts, didn’t they? It was only that their price was different, the whores demanding money, the noblewomen demanding pretty talk and flattery and a sacrifice of his very manhood!

  And then, suddenly, he was deathly sick and exhausted. Going into exile, leaving his home for years, and he was forced to waste time and thought on women, damn them all! Melisendra still lay with her back to him, shaking with sobs again. Damn her! It wouldn’t have been like this with Carlina. She loved him, she would have learned to love him, they had been friends since childhood, all he should have done was to show her that he wouldn’t hurt her . . . . It should have been Carlina. What was he doing with this damnable little whore in his bed? Had it been some confused notion of revenge on Melora? The red hair, limp on the pillow, somehow filled him with dismay. Master Gareth would have been angry, Master Gareth would know that Bard mac Fianna was no boy to be warned away from a woman he wanted. But her soft sobbing filled him with disquiet.

  He put out a hesitant hand to her. “Melora,” he said, don’t cry.

  She turned over and faced him. Her eyes, lashes damp and tangled, looked enormous in her white face. “I am not Melora.” She said, “If you had served Melora so, she would have killed you with her laran.”

  No, he thought. Melora had wanted him, but for her own quixotic reasons had chosen to frustrate them both. This one—what was her name again—Mirella—Melisendra, that was it. She had been a virgi
n. He had not foreseen that; he knew that most leroni took the privilege of choosing lovers as they would. He wished it had been Melora. Melora would have responded to his own hunger. Melisendra had been only a limp, unwilling body in his arms. And yet—and yet, that was exciting too, knowing that he forced his will upon her and she could not make a fool of him as Melora had done.

  “Never mind,” he said. “It’s done. Damn it, stop crying!”

  She struggled to control her sobs. “Why are you angry with me, now that you have had your will?”

  Why did she talk as if she had been so unwilling? He had seen her looking at him; he had simply given her the chance to do what she wanted to do, without need of silly scruples like those that had kept Melora from his arms!

  “My lady will be angry,” she said. “And what will I do, cousin, if you have gotten me with child?”

  He thrust her clothing at her. “It’s nothing to do with me,” he said. “I am going into exile; unless you have grown so maddened with love for me that you wish to ride with me in male disguise, like a maiden in some old ballad, following her lover as a page, in men’s dress—no? Well, then damisela, you will be neither the first nor the last to bear a bastard to di Asturien; do you think yourself better than my own mother? If it should be so, I am sure that my father would not let you or the babe starve in the fields.”

  She stared at him, her eyes wide, wiping away the tears that still flooded down her face.

  “Why,” she whispered, “you are not a man, but a fiend!”

  “No,” he said, with a bitter laugh. “Have you not heard? I am an outlaw, and wolf. The king has said so. Do you truly expect me to behave like a man?”

  She caught up her clothes and fled, and he heard her sobbing fade away as her light footfall died out on the stairs.

  He flung himself down on his bed. The sheets smelled of the scent of her hair. Damn it, he thought miserably, it should have been Carlina. . . .

  Without Carlina I am an outlaw, a bastard . . . a wolf . . . and his rage and pride and longing overcame him.

  It would have been so different with you . . . Carlina, Carlina!

  He rode away at midmorning, taking leave of his father and Alaric with embraces and regrets; but he was young, and he knew that he was bound outward into the world to seek adventure. He could not remain cast down for long. They could call it exile, but for a young man with experience in war, there was adventure and the hope of gain, and he could return in seven years.

  As he rode the mists cleared and the weather became fine. Perhaps he would ride into the Dry towns, and see if the Lord of Ardcarran had need of a hired sword, a bodyguard who spoke the languages of Asturias and the western country, to instruct his guardsmen in swordplay and defend him against his enemies. He must certainly have many. Somehow that made him think of his soldiers’ rowdy song:Four-and-twenty leroni went to Ardcarran,

  When they came back, they couldn’t use their laran

  They must, he thought, have been like Mirella, leroni kept virgin for the Sight. Why, he wondered, should it be so, that only a maiden could exercise that particular form of laran? He knew so little about laran, except to fear it, and yet it could have been different, he could have been chosen, like Geremy, to become a laranzu, to carry a starstone rather than a sword in battle.... He whistled a few more verses of the improper ballad, but his voice died away alone in the vast spaces. He wished that he had some friend or kinsman, even a serving man, riding with him. Or a woman; Melora, riding at his side, on her little ambling donkey, to talk with him about war and ethics and ambitions as he had never talked with any living woman, or even a man . . . no. He wouldn’t think of Melora. When he thought of Melora he thought of her shining red hair, and that made him think of Melisendra, limp, struggling in his arms....

  Carlina. If Carlina had agreed, as a wife should, to follow him into exile. She would have ridden at his side, laughing and talking as they had when they were children. And when they dismounted to make camp at night, he would hold her gently in his arms and fold his blankets around her, so tenderly . . . it made him faint to think of it. And then it made him dizzy with rage, to think that King Ardrin would lose no time in giving her to some other man, perhaps to Geremy Hastur. Savagely he wished Carlina joy of Geremy, crippled, with his withered leg . . . but the thought tormented him. Carlina, giving herself to Geremy as she would not to him! Damn them all, what did he want with women, anyway?

  He stopped at midday to breathe his horse, tethering him to a featherpod tree, taking hard-baked journey-bread and meat paste from his saddlebags, and munching while the horse cropped the new spring grass. He had food for several days—Domna Jerana had been generous with her stores—and he would not risk trying to buy food, or grain for his horse, until he was across the borders of Asturias. And he would fill his water bottles from springs, rather than at the wells in the towns; he was under a writ of outlawry, and they would have every right to refuse it to him. He was not really afraid he would be killed; King Ardrin had put no price on his head, and as long as he kept out of reach of Geremy’s kindred, who might well declare blood-feud, he had little to fear.

  But he felt very much alone, and he was not used to it. He would have enjoyed the company of someone, even a serving man. He remembered that once he and Beltran had ridden out this way, on a hunting trip. They had been thirteen or so, not yet declared men, and some trouble at home had made them talk of running away, of riding into the Dry towns together to seek employment as hired mercenaries. Even while they knew it was half a game, it had been very real to them. They had been good friends then. A sudden snowstorm had made them seek shelter in one of the ruined barns, and they had shared blankets and talked very late, and before they slept they had turned to each other and given one another the pledge of bredin, as young boys do . . . why, in the name of all the gods, had he quarreled with Beltran about something like that? It had been that damned girl Melora, he had been raw-edged about her refusal, and it had caused him to fall out with his foster brother. Why should any woman come between the bonds between men? None of them was worth it! And because Melora had refused him, he had quarreled with Beltran, and spoken the unforgivable, and that had led to this . . . even if he had outgrown such boyish games, he should have remembered the long years of friendship with Beltran, his brother and his prince. Bard put his hands over his face, and for the first and the last time since his childhood, he wept, remembering the years of closeness among them, and that Beltran had become his enemy and that Geremy was lamed for life. The fire burned down, but he lay exhausted, his head in his arms, sick with grief, despairing. What had come over him, to fling away ambition, friendship, the life he had made for himself, for the sake of a woman? And now he had lost Carlina too. The sun set, but he could not make himself rise, wash his face, get on his horse again. He wished he had died at the battle at Moray’s mill, that Geremy’s dagger had found him instead.

  I am alone. I will always be alone. I am the wolf my foster father named me. Every man’s hand is against me and my hand is against every man. Never before had he been fully aware of the meaning of the word outlaw, even when he stood before the king and heard his doom declared.

  At last, exhausted, he slept.

  When he woke, coming up out of sleep all at once like a wild animal, feeling his face stiff with the salt of the tears that had dried on his face, the tears of his last childhood, he knew suddenly that he had slept too long; someone was near him. He caught up his sword before his eyes were even fully open, and leaped to his feet.

  It was gray with dawn; and Beltran, wrapped in a blue cape and hood, his hand on a naked sword, stood before him.

  “So,” Bard said, “you are not content with having me exiled; you felt that even seven years would not make you safe, Beltran?” He was sick with hate and weakness; had he wept himself to sleep last night over the quarrel with his foster brother who would have killed him in his sleep?

  “How brave you are, my Prince,” he said, “to kil
l a sleeping man! Did you feel that even seven years could not make you safe from me?”

  “I won’t chop words with you, Wolf,” Beltran said. “You chose to idle your way out of this kingdom instead of making all speed; now the doom is on you that any man may slay you unpunished. My father chose to show you mercy; but I do not want you in my kingdom. Your life is mine.”

  Bard snarled, “Come and take it,” and ran at Beltran with his sword.

  They were evenly matched. They had had lessons together, from the best arms masters in the kingdom, and they had always practiced together; they knew one another’s weaknesses too well. Bard was taller, and his reach longer; yet never, before this, had they fought with real weapons, but only with blunted practice swords. And always before his eyes was the memory of that accursed midwinter night when he had fought Geremy, and maimed him for life. . . . He did not want to kill Beltran; he found it impossible that Beltran, despite their quarrel, would try to kill him. Why, in Zandru’s name, why?

  Only that he might give Carlina lawfully to Geremy, that Carlina would be widow before she was ever a wife? The thought enraged him; he beat down Beltran’s defense, and, fighting like a berserker, managed to knock the sword from his hand. It fell some distance away.

  He said, “I don’t want to kill you, foster brother. Let me go peacefully out of this kingdom. If after seven years you are still ready to kill me, 1 will call challenge and fight you fair at that time.”

  “Dare to cut me down unarmed,” Beltran said, “and your life will be worth nothing anywhere in the Hundred Kingdoms!”

  Bard snarled, “Go, then, and pick up your sword, and I’ll show you again that you are no match for me! Do you think, little boy, that you’ll make yourself my equal by killing me?”

  Beltran went slowly to pick up the sword. As he stooped to pick it up, there was a noise of racing hooves, and a horse dashed toward them at full gallop. As it jerked to a halt between them, Bard saw, stepping back in amazement, that the rider was Geremy Hastur, white as death. He flung himself from his saddle and stood, clinging to the saddle straps, unable to stand alone without support.