by Lori Martin
“Yes.” He raised his deep hazel eyes to hers. “I know you don’t love me. But we get on well together. You liked my company, didn’t you? And the way I feel about you”–his voice grew lower – “is very strong. I can protect you. We’ll take Baili, of course – I know you’d never be separated from him.” He raised her hand to his lips and kissed her fingertips. His words ran into her palm like a soothing oil. “I’m too old for you. I know it, and I’m a Mendale, in the army that’s destroyed your people. But the war is over. The Assembly will have to release me from my post. My estate is quiet, and no one will bother us. We could have a small area of peace –”
It was as if he were a minstrel, painting a picture with words. In her mind’s eye she could see it, vague and soft. A large house, and Baili there, and yes, he was right: peace. She had lost them all, all of the people who had ever loved her, in the wreck of her life and her country. She was too young and too unhappy to be alone. Here was someone who cared, really cared for her. She remembered the way she had admired him; with sudden clarity she felt again the confusing rush of emotions he had roused in her. Was that the beginning of love? It would mean living in the country of their enemies. If she refused she could stay in Lindahne – but Lindahne no longer existed. Here or there, she would be on Mendale soil. She tried desperately to follow what he was saying.
“... that you must have loved him, and I won’t try to come between you and your memories. I’ll raise the baby as my own, but he’ll always know about his real father. If you think you can live with me ...”
What was he talking about?
She leaned over his bowed head and kissed his hair. He was silent. “Nichos?”
He raised his head.
“I’d be very happy to marry you. If you’re sure you want me.”
He didn’t seem to believe her. He stared, wordless. Happiness came slowly into his face. With his easy, quiet dignity he said, “We’ll be happy. I promise you.”
She was crying, smiling. Very slowly, with tenderness, he kissed her, tasting salt.
“And remember,” he said, “I’ll treat the baby just as my own and love him. You don’t have to worry. You don’t have to –”
For the first time in more long days than she knew, she laughed heartily. It bubbled out, unstoppable. He watched, smiling a little, puzzled. Eventually she came to herself. She drew a deep breath.
“Nichos,” she said with firmness.
“My dear?”
“I have to explain something to you.”
An hour later the guard outside the door was startled by the ranking, who thrust his head out suddenly.
“You!” he barked.
“Sir?” it was Quienos, still under the command of Teleus, and his manner toward Nichos had improved. He had come in with them the evening before.
“Have they found them yet?”
“The ones in the woods? No sir, not yet.”
“I want them, do you understand? And absolutely unharmed. It’s two women and an infant. Anyone pursuing them is to be captured if possible, or killed if necessary. Take a company and get moving.”
“There’s already a patrol looking –”
“Take a company!”
“Yes, sir!” Quienos whistled for his companions. The ranking’s door slammed.
Another soldier appeared. “What is it?”
“Another trek through the frozen woods, and no supper, I suppose. Call the others, will you? The ranking’s determined that we get whoever else was out there last night.”
“By the harvest land,” the other swore. “I wanted to see my wife tonight!”
“At least you do see her,” Quienos snapped. The other man’s wife was an archer in a nearby band. “I haven’t seen mine since we left home.”
“I know.” The man had accidently hit a sensitive subject. “I’ll go and get them.”
Quienos stood and waited, not bothering to accompany him. He was a small, sour man, inclined to brood over little things, larger ones being beyond his comprehension. He had never done anything important, never said or thought anything original, in all of his life, and seemed ever unlikely to.
And yet his very smallness of mind changed everything for them, for Dalleena, and Pillyn, and for their country. It is a true saying in Lindahne that the goddess may fashion delicate crystal using a stone chisel, because the rough tool obeys her hand. Quienos knew little of the people he had helped to conquer, and still less of their immortal guardians. But he was held, and grasped.
He stood and waited, fretting. Worry over his wife had been with him too long. They had lost their firstborn only two moons old, to a fever, and she was inconsolable: the more so because they had been told they could never have another. Worse, he had had to leave home almost immediately after, called to the war. In his opinion she would have been better to do the same, but her recent confinement and bereavement had exempted her from service. She had stayed behind, alone and with little to do beyond writing him long messages filled with anger and complaints and genuine grief. Quienos’s temper was very short.
“Come on, Quienos!” he heard one of them shout. “Let’s get it over with!”
When night came on they were still lost, and half frozen As they worked, trying to build a fire on the edge of a snow bank, the irony of it angered her. After their panicked flight, when they had had time to think again, she had realized after all that it would have to be to these soldiers that they surrendered. If they could not get past – and the attempt had been a disaster – then they were trapped in the woods with their would-be murderers. The Mendales might put them to death. Sillus certainly would. But once having made up their minds, they had discovered that they were lost. They had run this way, that way, in the dark, and had spent the day floundering about trying to find their way back – no doubt in circles. Snow had fallen again, confusing things even further. It was infuriating. “And the soldiers must be looking for us, too,” she said for the third or fourth time. “You’d think one of us could manage it! We should have let ourselves be captured.”
Lilli did not answer. She had been too frightened and confused, wanting only to escape; she still did. The tiny fire caught, and they huddled over it. Dalleena shifted the baby in her cloak, to let her nurse, keeping the wool protectively over her head. The makeshift rags of a diaper had not worked very well. Her clothes were soiled. “She can’t take much more of this.”
“At least she’s got something to eat. It’s more than we’ve got. Will the Mendales feed us, do you think, before they kill us?”
The darkness deepened. There would be no sleep. The sustaining fire needed constant attention.
“We’ll have to find them in the morning,” Dalleena said. “We can’t go through another day like this one.”
“If we’re lost, at least so is Sillus.”
This assumption was wrong, but she did not correct it. She felt him as close as if his very breath were on her neck. The morning seemed impossibly far away.
Lilli leaned her head on Dalleena’s arm, seeking comfort. She was barely in control of herself. Terror had grown to such monstrous proportions inside of her that it seemed to claw at her ribs and throat, preventing her from breathing. She complained again of her hunger and the cold, to distract herself. Tears slid once every few moments down her cheeks; she had to suck in air to keep from sobbing.
They sat. The little Ennilyn moaned and whimpered; too weak, probably, to cry. To Lilli the small sounds crashed and echoed off the bare trees. Every breath she took was harsh and shuddering. She glanced at Dalleena, but she was staring into the flames, far inside herself. Lilli’s sense of isolation deepened.
A fine queen I would have made, Dalleena denounced herself. I’ve done everything wrong. I should have kept Paither with me.
She did not have it within her to think too much of Pillyn and Baili, or what had happened to them. She was even less concerned now with Lilli and herself. All hope and all love had gone from her, except the one love for h
er children, the one hope for their lives. Everything else had been snatched away, every other loss had wounded and scorched and beaten at her. This she clung to.
How do I save her? There must be a way.
Sinner or no, she looked into the fire, and prayed. If ever you wanted their birth, if ever you had a purpose for them, then they must be saved. How? Tell me. Mother, tell me.
But as the hours dragged on there was no answer, not even a sudden thought or knowledge given. She sat motionless, pain shooting up and down her spine, fear chasing it. She was given nothing, and it was Lilli who heard it, with her mortal senses.
“What is it?” Dalleena gasped.
“Don’t you hear it?” Her fingers were digging into Dalleena’s arm.
The sounds grew louder, and unmistakable. Rough male voices barked at each other, only a short distance away. As their hands clutched together the voices came closer, slurred with the sounds of drink. One came clearly, with the weight of command. “Shut your mouth and do as you’re told!”
“Sillus,” Lilli whispered.
Dalleena flung snow on the fire. Her movement jostled the baby; too late, she tried to soothe her. Ennilyn broke into a loud wail, the first in many days. Sudden shouts told them the men had heard. There was an exultant laugh.
Lilli did not move. Dalleena actually kicked at her, yanking her up, shoving her forward.She stumbled and half fell; when she came up she was running. In an evil repetition of the previous night they ran, without chance of escape or clear destination.
Glancing behind, Dalleena saw the brightness of just-lit torches. The men whistled to each other. They had found the tracks. Impossibly, she thought she could hear the whisper of swords being drawn. Her thoughts ran more furiously than her feet as she searched in desperation for an escape. As she turned forward again, Lilli crashed into her. They fell together. The baby screamed and kicked. Lilli was crying.
They’ll kill her, they’ll kill her, what do I do? In a moment she saw the baby murdered a dozen, a hundred, a thousand times.
“Go!’ she hissed to Lilli. “Run, go, to the left! To the left!”
Blindly Lilli obeyed her, scrambling forward. Dalleena froze.
Mortal time is not the time of the gods. The exiled relas of Lindahne did not sit in a mound of snow longer than a man might take in four or five breaths, but in that time the goddess came to her, and showed her the ages.
The voices came, high-pitched and chanting; for the first time she heard their words. You have done well, my daughter. Thy sin is forgiven thee. Come now, and rest in my halls.
She saw the pattern, whole and flowing, as it came from the loom; she saw the threads linked and sewn together; one picture, one ending. There could be no other.
Her eyes cleared, and focused on trees and snow, and torches in the dark. The fear was gone from her. For one more breath she thought of the dying priestess, held in joy, for the gift had been the same.
She ripped at the bunting, tearing the baby free from her body. Her hands flew at the ragged edges of her dress and she gagged her daughter, for the second time in her short life. The baby was purple in the face and furious. She wrapped her cloak around her, layer upon layer, exposing her own arms and legs to the snow. The men were very close now. She could hear Sillus shouting, laughing, as he drove them on, in a terrible parody of the powerful council member she had once known so well. She could hear the madness in his voice.
Getting to her feet, she moved to the right, in the direction opposite the one Lilli had taken. Searching, she felt in the dark among the branches and found it, as if she had known it would be there: a hollowed-out place in a dead tree trunk. She slid the baby into it, and hesitated. Her head bent swiftly and softly down as she kissed the tiny head. Then she turned and ran back, her feet sinking into the high snow, following Lilli. Behind her she could still hear the baby’s whimpered protests.
The men had paused at the place where she and Lilli had fallen. Although there was no fear, it was not hard to raise her voice. She screamed, full throat. Screaming, she fled to the left, and they came on, following her with death, and away from the child.
Quienos felt sick. He was disgusted at the messiness of it, the unprofessional butchery. The two women had been unarmed; it hadn’t been necessary. Even so, neither of them had wounds in the back. One seemed to have found courage and had tried to fight, and lay sprawled in a circle of darkly stained snow. The other, the one with the strange hair, had apparently made no resistance, but whatever expression had been on her face could not now be read, beneath the murderers’ work. Thaemer, who always had the answers, said that hair was an uncommon thing, and one of those royals had it. Quienos didn’t know. He made no study of these primitives. Still, there was no need for even Lindahnes to die like this. And the worst was that the ranking – that Nichos – would be furious.
At least they could bring back the ones responsible, slaughtered in their turn, though more neatly. They had been easy to catch, unorganized and made foolish by bloodlust. Too stupid to surrender and too cowardly to fight well.
He helped the others as they loaded the bodies into a cart, flinging them. Thaemer nodded again. “This one’s got royal in him, too. See this on his neck? It’s a chain of office.”
Quienos glanced down in disinterest. “We didn’t kill enough of them, I suppose, so they decided to kill each other.” They heaved in their burdens.
No one had yet touched the women. Although he would not admit it, Quienos had no stomach for it. When Thaemer called to him he pretended not to hear. He turned away, and slipped behind the trees. Let someone else do it. He’d had enough, and done his share.
Now that the daylight had come up it was easier to see the tracks, confused and wild as they were. He could see where the women had first fallen, not far from the remains of the fire. What was it all about? He wondered. That was the worst of it, following orders without explanation or a chance to know anything. He felt sorry for the women, whoever they had been. The ranking had seemed to think there would be a baby, too, but they hadn’t found it. Dead, no doubt, probably hacked to pieces.
As he was thinking it he noticed a line of footprints that ran out from the main set, to the side. The women hadn’t gone there, or their murderers, or his company. Frowning, he followed along them, to a cluster of older and decaying trees, and paused.
Something was stirring in the hollow. He peered in cautiously, uncertain what kind of animals there might be in Lindahne woods. To his shock he saw a bundle of clothes. Underneath the material something moved and thrashed.
“I’ve found it,” he said in surprise, and reached in. It really was the baby, wet and cold of course, and no doubt hungry. He removed the gag, but it did not cry. Its little eyes blinked at the light, and it hiccupped in a small sob.
“Good for you,” Quienos said aloud in admiration to the spirit of whichever woman had done it. He wasn’t a good judge, but it seemed to be the same age his own had been, more or less. Without thinking, he tried to warm it in his hands. Stronger than ours, it has to be, he thought. Gone all through this and still living. This one wouldn’t die of a little fever, give no grief on that account. Maybe this primitive Lindahne stock was strong. And royal, too, supposedly, if it belonged to that dark-haired woman. He looked inside the bundle, trying not to expose any more of its skin to the cold air.
A girl, too. Like ours.
That was what decided him, though he stood and thought it out a little longer, almost as a formality. He’d have to get back to camp and find an archer, maybe, someone going back to Mendale. A few from near his village would be getting leave soon. He would pay someone to take it to his wife. He couldn’t hang on to it himself, of course – that Nichos would hear about it.
For a moment his soldier’s heart quailed at the disobedience. But what use was a Lindahne infant to a Mendale ranking, a man without family at that? Whatever it was all about, the baby’s mother was dead, whichever she had been. And the child would be given up
for dead too. If he hadn’t happened along it would have died of the cold in a few more hours’ time in any case. He had given it life, in a way. Like a father. And maybe his wife would be better if she could be like a mother again.
His mind made up, Quienos thrust the small body into his cloak and set off for camp.
EPILOGUE
Pillyn had finally stopped crying, three weeks after the burial rites. She had even been able to take an interest in their preparations to leave, helping Nichos select what to pack. She felt that there was nothing left for her in her own country except grief, and worry for the only one who might still be living.
“I gave strict orders,” Nichos told her. “If Temhas is among the prisoners, we’ll find him. But you’ll have to be patient, little one. Conquering is a disorganized business at best. It will be quite some time before we can track down one defeated solder.”
In the meantime she would leave for her new home among strangers, and marry a man with strange-colored skin, who cursed by nature and not by the gods. But he loved her. It was enough. More, indeed, than any of the others had been permitted.
Nichos had received his new orders with joy, finally free to remove war clothes and return to civilian life, and his old flamboyant dress. Although he grieved for her losses, and shouted in rage at the botched rescue attempt of his men, his happiness with her and the prospect of marrying her was obvious to all. Pillyn knew it did not sit very well with most of the Mendales, though Teleus had clapped her on the back and kissed her forcefully. Her identity as one of the spring’s embassy party had become known. Nichos encouraged the quick assumption: that the baby was the ranking’s, conceived during the ambassador’s visit. It enraged some of the Mendales and amused others. Pillyn knew only that it was a protection. The passion-child of a rather traitorous herald and a young foreign girl counted for nothing.
They were on the Second Hill now, the place, she tried not to remember, that they had been aiming for the night she was captured. The carts were packed in only a few days.