Firethorn

by Sarah Micklem

  The cliffs were crowded with those who came to honor the dead and those who came for the spectacle. Last night we’d gone there to burn Consort Vulpeja. Galan had avenged her; he’d washed his face of the mark of her ash. I wondered if her shade was content with so many deaths laid against hers, if it made amends for all he’d denied her in life.

  Galan stood before the pyres clothed in a borrowed surcoat and firelight, sparks darting about his head. Not long ago his fellows had kept a certain distance lest his bad fortune tarnish them. Now they crowded close, they touched him as if he were a talisman.

  I’d been as close to him as his own shadow, closer maybe. Hadn’t I? Already I mistrusted my memory. It was as if I’d awakened from a dream, sweating and crying in its grip, and the dream had faded in the light of day. It was made of fragile stuff that could not withstand remembering, and tore to pieces as I tried to gather it up.

  One thing was certain: I’d nearly lost myself in shadow, nearly given myself up to Galan. It had been as mortal a danger as the trampling mob and the riders who struck us down. I was still paying the cost, for I’d come back to myself somehow smaller than I was before, ill fitting. I rattled inside my skin like a dried bean in a pod.

  And there was grief at the distance between us, the ordinary distance that now seemed so vast, each of us alone in our separate bodies. The binding I’d tied between us was a paltry thread, badly spun.

  The taste of the firethorn berries was still sour on my tongue, but it might have been someone else who’d stood on that hill, swallowed them down. I could no longer recall what I’d been thinking, why I’d hazarded so much. I should not have done it.

  I turned my back on the crowd and the fires and sat on a rock with my legs over the cliff edge. The wind came from the land and pushed like a palm against my back. I gripped the stone to keep from falling into the vastness of sky and water; I was worn thin and the wind had more substance than I did. Whether I closed my eyes or kept them open, I saw the same sights.

  That afternoon, when the tourney was done, the Sun had glared as she climbed down toward the sea, and under her glare the bodies littering the field had looked like sea wrack, like drab empty garments tumbled by the wind. I heard the discordant moans and cries of the wounded calling for their mothers or cursing the gods or praying, and under those sounds the smothering silence of the dead. I’d gone back to look for Fleetfoot where the mob had met the horsemen, where the dead lay in heaps. I hoped I wouldn’t find him there. I was one of many searchers: some looked for kin or friends, others scavenged for coins the dead hid in their purses, about their clothing, in their mouths.

  How could I have kept Fleetfoot safe? Impossible—and yet I hadn’t even thought to try, and the promise I’d made to Az was the more burdensome because I’d borne it too lightly. So I ran and ran in haste, calling his name. Every lanky boy I saw, I thought was him—and there were many boys. I turned them over, wiped blood from their faces. All of them had a blind stare, the living and the dead.

  And I too was blind, blind and deaf to any other need; I held to my small purpose, as if it could serve to hold back the vastness of that desolation. But then I came upon the sheath Suripanta, entrails spilling from her belly, and stayed by her until she died. I gripped her hand as she traveled slowly inward to meet her death, and I wept, not for grief, but for weariness and despair. She never knew I was there.

  I could not weep all day. After a time I got up again and wandered over the field, and it was then, after I stopped searching, that I began to find. I found Uly, Galan’s horseboy, and he was dead; I found others of my acquaintance, foot soldiers and whores and peddlers from the market, and yet it was hard to say for sure I knew them, for death steals resemblance.

  I found a woman—a laundress, by the look of her chapped hands—lying with her skirts about her hips and one leg broken below the knee, twisted and torn. Her face was clammy and her rough sunburnt skin had gone gray, and she cried out when I touched her and screamed at me to stop. Nevertheless, I straightened her broken leg and bandaged it, and bound it to her sound one, having no better splint, and she went from screaming to cursing to sobbing. I tied her skirt about her ankles so she wouldn’t be molested and gave her water from a dead man’s flask. She’d lost her little boy, who was of an age to crawl, and I found him wailing nearby and tied him to her wrist. She asked me to look for her husband, and I said I would. But how could I?

  I left her lying there and set off to find some stanchmoss, and on the way I found a man calling for water and a woman bleeding, and that was how it went. I’d start a task only to find, sometime later, that I’d forgotten what I came for and even what I’d done. I’d never seen so much of what was inside us; those rents in the flesh bared what should have been hidden. And I’d never known how much a person could endure and live.

  There were other healers on the field. I saw the stancher, the boneset, and even the midwife tending to the women. Two women I helped took heart from it, and aided me. The men had their carnifices, a few horse-gelders and such. One had a blazing hot brazier on a barrow and a handful of irons that he applied to the stumps of the maimed men. I could tell where he was by the screaming.

  The injured women were cold, and I was fevered. I bound their wounds with rags stolen from the dead, I took them water, and I laid my hands on them and gave them warmth to stop their shivering. I no longer tarried to see the dying on their way, not when there were those who might yet live.

  No matter how much heat I gave away, I burned, the fires fed with wrath. There is prayer in healing, so I suppose I prayed, after a fashion. But I didn’t plead for any god’s favor.

  Whatever whim of the gods had spared me that day, had spared Galan, I knew them for what they were: carrion eaters. I saw Rift Dread descending on the dead mudfolk, manifest in the swarms of gulls and ravens and kites, dogs and thieves. And other gods came to feed as well, stooping to suckle on the last breath of the dying. Even under the bright stare of the Sun, the killing ground seemed overshadowed by great wings.

  They feasted on what was left of the mob while their descendants, the slain cataphracts and armigers of the Blood, were gathered up and laid before the king in decorous rows, and every last and least of their belongings accounted for.

  The Blood came down from their perches on the hills to gaze upon those killed in the tourney and reckon, with some awe, by how many the dead of Ardor outnumbered those of Crux. I didn’t see or hear the tallies read, for by then—though the Sun was still high—I toiled in a darkness lit by one face at a time; by then the wide tourney field had grown as small as one wounded person and the next. But I heard about it afterward: how a priestess of Rift read from a long list, giving each dead man’s name and the name of his killer, as attested by witnesses; how she paused so that anyone who wished to dispute the disposition of the prizes could do so; how eight times Sire Galan’s name was called and there was only one objection, and that from Galan himself, who refused to claim the kill, saying it was Hazard’s doing and therefore Hazard’s prize. How King Thyrse had spoken, saying the feud was honorably ended, and those lost in the battle had died as men should, and their shades would be content; saying further that we’d disembark within the next hand of days, for the wind and tides and omens were all favorable, and commending us to the gods, who had drunk deep of our libation that day.

  So the dead of the Blood were tallied with rites and speeches. No one counted the dead mudfolk. They were heaved into carts and taken to the charnel ground on the cliffs, stacked for burning.

  It was not until the Sun went down behind the sea and I walked back to camp behind a cartload of wounded men that I found Fleetfoot. He was in the dog pen. Though he was a good runner, he hadn’t outrun danger. He’d lost half of his left hand, severed through the palm, and part of two fingers from his right. It was plain he’d held up both hands to ward off a blade. I’d seen many such injuries that day. As if flesh could be a shield. The man-hounds had licked his wounds and Ev had band
aged him.

  I was glad to find him alive; I dared hope that the little clay man with an acorn heart Az had given him would see him home safe, that he’d live long enough to father children and tell them the tale of how he was maimed. But he said he’d not go back to the village, to Az, even if Sire Pava released him. He’d not go home poorer than he set out and useless besides. He sat with his arm resting on a dog as we spoke over the thorn and stone wall of the pen, and soon he hung his head and said no more.

  I turned toward the pyres and the flickering light slid over my eyes. I couldn’t banish the visions I saw, but neither could they fill me, for I was a dull husk emptied of the long day; it had brimmed over, spilled away.

  CHAPTER 17

  Leave-taking

  hat night I lay long awake, waiting for Galan on the pallet in the corner of the Crux’s tent. He sat on a footstool and leaned back against his uncle’s chair, and his uncle’s forearm rested on the arm of the chair close to Galan’s head, and though they didn’t touch, there was such ease in their proximity, such affection, as I’d not seen since the Crux had learned of Galan’s wager. Galan was forgiven and all was well with him, not a care in the wide world. No matter that his uncle still forbade him to ride: the Crux was a man of his word, and no one, least of all Galan, expected him to bend or break it.

  Galan turned his head and smiled at something Sire Alcoba said, and the Crux spoke to both of them and Galan laughed. Then he stood and drained the last wine from his cup and wended his way through the press of his kin, his companions. He took up a clay lamp on the way, and came to me carrying that little glow. He crouched and set the lamp on the ground. The lamplight tickled Galan’s chin, sent shadows up the hollows of his face. Some of those shadows were bruises he’d taken in the tourney. His cheek was cut where a rivet had scraped him and his lower lip was swollen and split. He smiled.

  I was wrong about the bond between us. It was neither as thin nor as weak as a thread. It was a wick. Somehow it burned and was not consumed.

  Deep in the night Sire Rodela stole my hard-won sleep. He startled us all awake with a great roar, followed by ceaseless shouts. He wouldn’t be quieted. I could hear him too well, because he was in the priests’tent under the care of the carnifex, and there were only two canvas walls between us. I wanted to stop up my ears or run away, but I feared what he might say and so must listen. He cried out stinking vixen and uppish insolent honeypot and slippery stinking mudhole. He swore I had a serpent’s eye and I’d put that eye on him and Galan to ruin their peace. He ranted that he’d whittle me down, he’d skin me and make my hide into a prickguard, a sheath for his sword. Yet he never said my name, never said I’d given him aught to drink.

  I lay beside Galan with my head on his arm and felt his limbs stiffen and his pulse begin to race. Between his silence and Rodela’s din, I was between anvil and hammer.

  Sire Rodela shrieked that the priests were trying to poison him and he’d feed them their own tongues if they didn’t leave him be; in the next breath he entreated them to untie his ankles and let him go. He cursed Sire Galan and the Crux, begging the gods to drag them under the sea and choke them with mud for the wrong they’d done to him. But before long he was wailing that the gods despised him, and then his lamentations turned to rage and he vowed to spite the gods for abandoning him. With the names of so many others on his tongue, I hoped no one took note of what he said against me.

  The shouts drove Galan out of bed. Before the glimmer of first light, he rousted Spiller and Rowney, for there was much to be done. I huddled under the blanket while his warmth leached away.

  At dawn I was driven outside by my own stink. The smoke and ash of the fire clung to my dress, and there was the reek of my own fear sweat and the foul discharges of the wounded I had tended. I’d scrubbed off the worst of it the night before and hung the dress to dry while I slept, but the stench remained and now my skirts were damp and cold. I sat by the wall of the Crux’s tent in the Sun, for the warmth she gave, shielding my eyes against her. The pains I’d forgotten the day before, in the press of greater miseries, came back importunate and would not be denied.

  I had my needle and a bit of thread Boot had given me, and I sewed the torn sleeve of my dress onto the bodice. The sleeve had come off in Fly-killer ’ s hand when we ran down the hill, and he’d saved it for me. It’s bad luck to mend a garment while you’re wearing it, but I had no other clothes. I stitched the pieces of my headcloth back together too, with crooked stitches I was ashamed to make. Such a simple task, and it was almost more than I could do. Before long Spiller came by and dropped Galan’s red linen underarmor into my lap and told me to fix it. It was a jack’s duty, but I didn’t refuse. He and Rowney had many repairs to make to Galan’s harness and weapons, straps and laces and buckles and rivets to replace and metal scales to sew on tight, and cleaning besides.

  The padded shirt and leggings were stiff and brown with dried blood, and full of holes that must be mended before washing to keep the stuffing from oozing out. Each hole matched one in Galan’s skin. I took up his shirt and bent my head to the work and was glad no one marked how my fingers trembled, without strength or sureness—while Sire Rodela screamed.

  A hand of days, more or less, before we embarked for war, and the fire had left Sire Galan ill prepared. Before the tourney the Crux and his fellows had given him garments and supplies to replace what he’d lost, generous gifts, but still he summoned clothier and tentmaker, jeweler and armorer to commission what was lacking.

  When the clothier came, Galan called for me to help him choose the best of his stuffs, for I knew a good weave and a fast dye. Sire Rodela bellowed, and Galan would not show that he heard, would not raise his voice, and the clothier leaned closer, flinching and nodding. Galan ordered a quantity of garments for himself, tunics and hose for his varlets, and three overdresses and four underdresses for me.

  I asked, “Why so many dresses? Why these bright colors?” for he refused to buy the dark wool I urged on him, a green so drab it was nearly brown, like turf in winter. He said if he left it to me, I’d go about in rags, and he wouldn’t have it said he was a skin flint.

  Galan gave the man twice what the garments were worth, and never minded that he was cheated; the extra coins would buy lamp oil for stitching all night, for he wanted them delivered in two days.

  He was a rich man again, with gold enough to waste, purses and purses of gold: ransom for the arms and armor of the seven men he’d killed.

  All morning the Auspices of Ardor and Crux met at the king’s hall to dicker over these ransoms. It was a solemn business, and delicate, to satisfy the dead and the living and their kin too. By inches they arrived at a price, redeeming each equipage for about half what it cost when it was new—at which price both sides had aimed from the beginning. This swelled the pride and purses of the living; as for the dead, a shade cares nothing for money, but will tarry and be troublesome if the armor he lived in, sweated in, bled in, died in, hangs for show in his enemy’s hall, or worse, is worn by his killer.

  The weapons and armor were collected by grim drudges, overseen by the Auspices to ensure that not one buckle went astray. They required a cart to take away all that Galan had won. But there was one man who wouldn’t accept a ransom, and that was Sire Rodela. The Auspices offered him gold and he roared that the armor was his and he meant to use the helmet for a pisspot and no one could gainsay him—and he laughed and taunted the man he’d killed by name as if his shade stood before him.

  Divine Xyster made excuses to Ardor’s priests, saying a broken skull had made Sire Rodela unreasonable. I knew better. The way he veered from fury to terror, the way he laughed and lamented, put me in mind of Consort Vulpeja after she breathed the smoke. He howled about the same torments that had troubled her, which I’d thought were mere dreams: shades and black dogs and crawling insects. Why should they both rave of such visitors, unless the dwale had sent them?

  The jacks had wagers on if and when Sire Rodela woul
d die and whether Sire Mordaz, armiger to Sire Lebrel, would perish first (he had been stabbed through the bellows); Spiller said Rodela would go soon, he’d heard he was vomiting black blood, but Rowney put five copperheads on him, saying the carnifex must have favorable signs, and besides, the sowpricker was too mean to die. Galan had given his jacks heavy purses and they were in a hurry to lighten them.

  Rodela did not seem to lose strength, though he spent it freely. I saw a ragged god-bothered revelator crouching behind the priest’s tent, listening to him. Sire Rodela’s words tumbled out in a mob, a hundred of nonsense for every one of sense, but they say the words of a dying man are potent; the more obscure they are, the more profit can be made of them. I feared what the revelator might divine, and chased him away.

  Sometimes, for a blessed while, Rodela was silent. Never for long.

  Sire Galan went to watch Flykiller try his new warhorses up and down the hills outside the Marchfield (with half the men in our camp looking on), to judge which to keep and which to sell. He’d won nine horses. There would have been more if he’d not killed so many from under their masters; most of these mounts had been kept in reserve and never entered the battle. There was jesting among his fellows, some good-natured, some envious, about how it was that a man forbidden to ride had won a stableful of stallions.

  So Galan was not there when Divine Xyster called the other priests into their tent, and all their servants and the Crux’s varlets as well, and Sire Rodela commenced to scream worse than ever. He screamed and screamed and sobbed, and Divine Xyster shouted, “Hold him steady!” and I couldn’t guess what they were doing except they made Rodela suffer. I thought of the peephole I’d cut in the wall of their tent to spy on Galan and wondered if they’d discovered it. But I couldn’t bring myself to look.