Stillbright

by Daniel M Ford

“I banished myself, really. I knew what lines I was crossing. Shamed him in front of his entire court, called him an idiot, a pretender, and a boy playing at war. Told him he would have to play at it without me. He called that treason, and I dared him to make good on it. While he sputtered, I took what I could carry and rode straight out of the barony.”

  “You probably did the right thing. He was an idiot. Proved it when’er he got his own command. I’ve got friends in the ground ‘cause of him.”

  “Aye,” Allystaire agreed. “The only thing that made me hold on for the two years I did was the promise the Old Baron asked of me. He knew his natural son was no fit ruler, no leader of men. Asked me to help him, teach him. And I tried. The gods know I tried.” He stood suddenly, waving a hand in the air and making a scornful noise. “Bah. Noise and nonsense. We need to look at who we are now, where we are.”

  “Aye,” Keegan agreed. “If we could have just a few supplies, bowstrings, as I said, maybe some store of roots or tubers.”

  “There will be common stores here in the village, free for any who need it. You need but come and take it.”

  “What d’ya want of me in exchange? I can’t promise fer all o’us.”

  “What I want is a good man watching the woods. I can guard the roads, but it leaves us vulnerable in the north east.”

  “Watchin’ for what exactly?”

  “An attack. Brigands. Bandits. Men of any description, really, who do not seem to have a reason—”

  Keegan frowned. “There are men out there now.”

  Allystaire felt hair rise on the back of his neck. “What?”

  “A dozen or so. They’re armed, it’s true, but they seem t’just be campin’—”

  “Keegan, how long have they been there?”

  “First I noticed ‘em was two days ago.”

  “There have been armed men close upon us for two days, and you have said nothing of it?”

  Keegan lowered his head, sighed. “I told you, the world was crowded and rushed and loud. We don’t…it’s hard t’remember what matters to men. All I want to do is run and hide—or kill them, rend their flesh and crack their bones, if I can. D’ya understand? Can I make ya?”

  “I suppose you cannot,” Allystaire admitted. “From now on, if you can, I want to know it when armed men in groups of more than three pass nearby. Can you watch this group, without risking yourself unduly?”

  “Yer askin’ an Oyrwyn scout if he can watch a band o’thugs without bein’ noticed?” A new note crept into Keegan’s voice then: pride.

  Allystaire smiled, was startled as the expression suddenly became a wide yawn. “It is late, Keegan, and I must sleep. You can stay within the village tonight, or—”

  “I’ve no need for much sleep,” the man replied. “I’ll bring ya a report tomorrow.”

  “Good.” Allystaire extended a hand, felt Keegan clasp his forearm, and they shook. “Be well, Keegan. The world of men—or at least the village of Thornhurst—is here when you are ready to return. So is the Mother.”

  “I’ve maybe had enough of gods,” Keegan answered. “But I’ll think on it.”

  The tall and lean man slipped out of the tent. Allystaire placed the lamp back on its hook, blew the light out, and collapsed gratefully onto his cot.

  * * *

  He didn’t know how long it was till he woke again, unexpectedly, but it was pitch dark in his tent when he heard the footsteps outside and the tug at the flap. Allystaire came awake all at once then, reaching for the hammer where it lay beside the cot and pulling it up next to him.

  He sat up, saw the tentflap twitch aside and a hooded figure enter, with a shuttered lantern swaying at its side.

  “Lord Allystaire?” Cerisia’s voice was instantly recognizable: warm, honeyed, soft.

  Freeze. Allystaire swung his legs out of his cot and stood up. “What are you doing here, Archioness?”

  “I found sleep a challenge, and I saw lights in your tent, heard voices. I couldn’t decide if I should see if all was well.” She lifted the lantern that hung in her hand, asked, “May I?” Before he could answer she pulled back the shutters, bathing the tent in soft light again.

  Allystaire blinked at the sudden relative brightness, but his eyes instantly fixed—as he knew they were meant to—on Cerisia herself. She wore a loose, fur-lined robe over a too-thin silk nightgown that was only just the decent side of opaque. She pulled down her hood, loosing her hair in a dark cascade down her back and shoulders, drawing his eye again towards the pale expanse of neck and the swell of her breasts beneath the silk.

  She took a step further into the tent, lifted her lantern, and then her breath caught as, he realized, her eyes took in his bare chest, and the network of white, puckered scars upon it.

  “Fortune, but, your chest, it’s…”

  “I have been a fighting man for more than a score of years now, Archioness. If this surprises you, it is because you have not known many men who were.”

  “My father was an Archipelago sword-at-hire who made weight enough to send me to the Temple on Keersvast’s central island, Lord Coldbourne—I know more of fighting men than you think, and I understand that to bear so many wounds and to still be counted among the quick is unusual, at the least.” She took a couple of small steps deeper into the tent, fully unshielding her lantern and setting it down on the table.

  Nowhere to retreat, Allystaire thought. Got to stand firm. He cleared his throat and turned his head, casting his eyes about the dimly lit space for a shirt. None came to hand. He turned back to the priestess, and said with a small shrug, “The Baron employed a fine surgeon. A dwarf. Saved my life more than once, I should think.”

  “What was the noise earlier?” She switched subjects quite suddenly, in an attempt to catch him off guard, he suspected.

  “Just someone come seeking counsel with me.”

  “Why do you not meet my gaze, Allystaire?” Another two steps, a third, and she was arm’s length from him. An expensive floral scent reached his nose as she approached.

  He lifted his eyes to meet her challenge, pressing his lips into a thin line and smoothing the skin of his cheeks with the tension of his tightly shut jaw. “I will make it a point to do so from now on, Archioness.”

  “Please, do call me Cerisia. Why does my presence discomfit you so?”

  “I know not how much you know of me, yet I am sure it is more than I know of you. I am, forgive me, not entirely certain of your motives, or whether what you told us this evening is the entire truth. I do not know the lengths you would go to in order to see the Mother subsumed or destroyed.”

  “I am as true a servant to my Goddess as you believe yourself to be to yours.”

  “I do not doubt that. I just have no clear idea what it means.”

  “I spoke no lies at our dinner tonight, if that is what you mean. I did argue to be allowed this opportunity to prevent you all from simply being called anathema, and hunted as heretics.” With a slightly theatrical gesture, she held out her hand. “The rumors say that you can draw the truth from anyone who speaks to you. Take my hand and ask. Prove it to yourself if you must.”

  Allystaire took her wrist between his fingers carefully. He could not help but notice the warmth of her skin, its softness, the alluring perfume that grew stronger—not unpleasantly so—with every moment.

  He caught her eyes with his, noted how they widened slightly, how her lips parted. “Have you spoken the truth to us since you arrived in this village?”

  Without hesitation, she said, “I have.”

  “You argued that you should be permitted to travel here in an attempt to convince us to subordinate ourselves to your Church?”

  “I did.”

  “Why?”

  “To avoid the bloodshed and the horror of rooting out a heresy,” Cerisia replied. “I have no love for that kind of
thing. No desire to see it done.”

  “And would you risk yourself, your status, or your wealth, to see it avoided?”

  “I have already risked my position by coming here.” She bristled at the question as she answered it.

  “That was a truth, but also an evasion,” he noted. “How much more are you prepared to do in order to curtail bloodshed?” Anger began to rise in Allystaire, and he felt his free hand curling into a fist, though he was careful to keep the touch of his other hand around her wrist light.

  “If I cannot convince you to see reason—”

  “It is not reason,” Allystaire half-shouted, dropping her hand. “It is madness. It is an absurdity. You have felt, however lightly, the touch of the Mother’s Gift to me. Is it anything like what Fortune grants to you? I have seen Her, spoken with Her, ki…” Allystaire broke off before finishing the thought. He felt his cheeks flush, and no doubt Cerisia saw it as well, for her lips curled boldly.

  “Kissed Her? Come now, Allystaire—when was the last time you kissed a woman of flesh and blood?”

  And then she was pressed against him, the silk of her nightgown cool against his bare skin, the promise of flesh behind it warm and soft. Her hand snaked around his neck and drew his mouth to her painted lips.

  They were warm, soft, inviting. The scent that she wore filled his mouth as well as his nose as their lips met, opened. His heart pounded in his chest like a marching drum, and he felt hers, a pipe, distant and fast, answer through their chests. The kiss ended, whether too soon or too late, Allystaire could not have said.

  “Why am I drawn to you, Allystaire of Thornhurst?” Cerisia murmured, slipping both arms around his neck. “You are not the kind of man who attracts me.”

  Instinctively, Allystaire had placed one hand against her back. The other, he now rested on her arm as he asked, “And do I? Or would seducing me be politically expedient?”

  “Both,” she replied huskily. “I would not find myself enjoying the prospect half so much were it only the latter. Or even mostly,” she added. She pressed her body more firmly to his, slid fingertips into his hair. “You are, to be frank, older and rather more worn than most of the lovers I take. The stories I followed paint you a knight out of a story, where they are always young, fair-faced, clear of eye. That is the man I expected to find. That, or a charlatan; the first, easily seduced, and the second, easy to expose.”

  She gently but insistently tugged his head down closer to hers, meeting him eye to eye as she rose onto her tiptoes. “And yet here you are: broken nosed, with eyes that fear where your next step leads. Yet you are going to take it anyway, once you have decided where to set it down. And woe to those who would stand in your way. You are forceful in a way I find,” she wriggled slowly against him, pressing her hips to his, her breasts rubbing against his chest through the thin silk, “exhilarating.”

  She moved to kiss him again, and he allowed her to take the lead. It was a longer and slower kiss than the first. Allystaire felt her nudge him towards the cot only a few steps behind him.

  Her touch, her body, her kiss and scent—they were nearly overwhelming. Yet not so much as the Mother’s kiss, the memory of which, only a week hence, could make him weak in the knees in a stray moment.

  He moved his hands to her wrists and gently but firmly removed them from around his neck, and stepped away from the circle of her arms. “No, Cerisia,” he whispered hoarsely. “No.”

  She stepped back, confused, anger sending ripples along her jaw, though it was quickly hidden, her lips curling in a predator’s smile. “Are you going to prove a challenge?”

  Allystaire thought of the ageless beauty of the Goddess, the radiance that followed Her, the overwhelming power of Her kiss. “More than you realize.”

  She stepped forward, leaving him no space to move, and laid a hand upon his chest, soft fingertips moving warmly against his skin. “This need not be about whom we serve,” she murmured, before leaning forward to try to kiss the base of his neck.

  Allystaire let out an impatient groan and put his hands upon her shoulders, and carefully but inexorably pushed her away. “Cerisia, you do not understand who or what I am. Everything is about whom I serve.”

  “Have you saddled yourself with some foolish vow to be celibate, so as not to drain your strength or weaken your resolve?” Less able to conceal her hurt at being rebuffed this time, Cerisia began to curl her lips in scorn.

  “Nothing so foolish or petty,” Allystaire shook his head, grimacing. “You show how little you understand. What would it look like to the people of this village if I am known to bed with the Priestess of Fortune who came here bearing a message that threatened their very lives?”

  “How would they know?”

  Allystaire couldn’t help but laugh. “The gossip in a village this size? Some of them are probably already whispering the possibility. I will not prove them right.”

  She smiled again. “If you’re going to be accused of a thing, you might as well…”

  She has a point. The thought was dismissed as soon as it occurred to him. “Till I know that I will not face an army raised by your church, this will not happen.” Allystaire shook his head. “It cannot.”

  “You are an odd man, Allystaire,” Cerisia said, biting lightly at her bottom lip. “I do not know what to make of you. But,” her chewed-upon lip assumed the curve of a smile once more, “I note that there was a condition in your declaration.”

  “There was,” Allystaire admitted.

  She chuckled faintly and drew her robe closed, which action granted Allystaire the gift of slightly easier breathing. “Then you do—”

  “Archioness, at the risk of being crude, had we encountered one another in my old life, we would not be having this conversation,” Allystaire admitted.

  She responded with her own light, throaty laughter. Then her face grew serious, perhaps even tinged with regret in the set of her mouth and eyes. “I do not know what, if anything, I can do to prevent bloodshed.”

  “And that,” Allystaire said, “is the problem. No one does know, because no one cares to know. Fear of the cost of doing the right thing is enough for most to abide in ignorance.”

  Her jaw set as she briefly clenched her teeth. “I will do what I can.”

  “You will do what you must, I think.”

  She walked to the tent flap, paused, and turned back to him. “Your words are uncharitable, Allystaire. I am not as callous nor as cowardly as you would have it.”

  “I am not averse to being proven wrong. Goodnight, Cerisia.”

  Allystaire sat heavily on his cot as she collected her lantern and then exited, casting a backward glance. She opened her mouth to speak, but closed it again, and then was gone. The scent she wore stirred in the tent as the flap closed.

  “Goddess, I do not ask for petty things in prayer to you,” Allystaire murmured, as he pulled the blankets over his slightly sweaty chest. “But tonight, I humbly beg that I am allowed to sleep the next several turns in peace.” He drifted quickly off, despite a voice that berated him for letting the Archioness walk away.

  * * *

  Allystaire’s next semi-conscious thought was, If that is Cerisia trying to wake me up, I am going to lie here and sleep while she has her way.

  But then, as he realized that the voice hissing his name was considerably rougher, and that the presence in his tent didn’t smell nearly so fair as the priestess had, he sat up, blinking his eyes into wide awareness. The quality of the darkness in the tent had changed; dawn had not broken, but it approached. Well, a turn or three at any rate, he thought, as he finally focused on the interloper.

  It was Ivar. She reeked of horse and sweat-soaked leather, and her voice, as it called Allystaire’s name, was somewhat plaintive.

  “What is it, Ivar?” Allystaire asked, cracking a yawn.

  “One of m’boys is gone mi
ssin’,” the warband captain replied. “Told me he was off followin’ one o the priestess’s guardsmen out o’the village. Regardless o’what he found, he was t’report in within three turns. Been four and a half.”

  “Is it possible he has gotten lost?”

  “It’s Evert, m’lord—knows how t’reckon better’n any man I know and has as good an eye for country t’boot. Never known the man to get lost any more than I’ve known rain t’be dry or shit t’smell like wine.”

  Allystaire paused a moment, steeled himself with a deep breath, and then swung his legs out of his cot. He sat up on the edge of the bed, feeling weights and worries settle on his shoulders. “Does that mean no?”

  “He’s no more like t’get lost than the freezin’ stars are,” Ivar said with a note of finality that had Allystaire reaching for his boots and tugging them onto sore feet.

  “Where are the rest of the guards?” Allystaire stood and began dressing, pulling on the heavy iron bracers over his arming coat and the studded gloves over his hands. He slung his shield on his back, pulled his belt tight around a thick leather vest, and slid his hammer into place.

  “Two watchin’ the pavilion. Three sleepin’.”

  “Yet one left camp and you did not think to tell me?”

  “I wanted a full report. He coulda been leavin’ to piss or to have a bit of a knee-knocker with a lass…”

  Allystaire frowned. “You used your judgment, and I have never known a reason to fault it. Did your man say which way he was headed?”

  “North and east,” Ivar said. “Into the woods.”

  “Freeze,” Allystaire spat. “I learned just this night that there are men out there. Armed men, brigands. What, Ivar, do you think are the chances that this is a coincidence?”

  Ivar held open the tent flap for Allystaire and then followed him out into the pre-dawn chill. “Lower than the chances of a Delondeur man bein’ pox-free, I expect.”

  “Where do you find these lovely turns of phrase, Ivar?”

  The captain grinned, leaving Allystaire glad of the darkness that hid her ruined teeth. “Bit o’natural talent, bit o’hard work.” The grin faded. “What’s our play?”