by P. J. Fox
“First, among us women fight their own battles. Then again,” she added, “your men seem to prefer that you remain weak and infantile. So perhaps this accounts for your whining.” She paused. “Moreover, I do not understand why suggesting that you may have found pleasure with a man is an insult. I haven’t”—Eir searched for the appropriate term—”spent much time among your kind. I prefer the mountains and I prefer to be alone.”
“It’s—different among gnomes?” Isla asked.
“Your culture is exceedingly backward,” Eir hissed. “Among us, it is women who lead families. And our lineage is traced through the…mother, your word is. No woman ever looked down at the child between her legs and wondered if it was hers.” She smiled unpleasantly. “Human men seem…unclear on where babies come from.”
Isla laughed.
“When we first encountered the Northmen, we thought this.”
“That they didn’t know?”
“Surely, if they were so ignorant as to trace the line through the male.”
“I’ve…never thought about it like that,” Isla confessed. What Eir said did make a great deal of sense. Were her own people to adopt such a system, there would be no need to keep women locked up in towers. The previous king, upon finding out that one of his daughters had engaged in a dalliance with a courtier, had disemboweled the man. And then packed the offending child off to a convent. Where, months later, she mysteriously fell down the stairs.
No, Isla concluded, her culture would never change.
Men sought power over women because they wanted it, not because they were unaware of any other alternatives. She said as much to Eir, who nodded. If Isla and her protector had one thing in common, it was that they both took a dim view of life in Morven.
“Eir,” she asked slowly, “do you miss the mountains?” She’d wondered, in the past, why a creature so obviously at odds with the human world had chosen to take service with a human master. Or, at least, a master who aped the part. Morning, noon and night, Eir was surrounded by a people not her own. She seemed to have a strong bond with Tristan, obviously felt that she owed him a duty of loyalty—although for what, she chose not to disclose—but was that enough?
Eir considered the question. And then, simply, “yes.”
“I’ve never seen a mountain.”
“They are wild…beautiful.” A different note crept into Eir’s voice. “Free.”
She wanted to ask Eir why she’d left, but was afraid of bringing up a sore subject. She suspected, although she had no concrete reason to, that the tale was a painful one. Hart had told her, almost in passing, that Tristan’s weapons master had come to train at the castle after his entire family was slaughtered by an enemy tribe. Brom’s great—or maybe great-great—grandmother had been a tribeswoman, and although southern blood ran in his veins he’d spent his entire life in the mountains.
Until, suddenly, he had no one to care for him and nowhere else to go except Tristan’s doorstep. Only it had been Tristan’s father’s doorstep, then. Or the man that Tristan claimed was his father. The man who had sired Piers, thirty-something winters ago.
Isla realized that she was woolgathering. “It sounds lovely,” she said.
“On that score,” Eir concluded, “you can decide for yourself soon enough.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Isla, as fastidious as she was, found bathing harder and harder each morning.
First, on many mornings, there was simply no opportunity. They either hadn’t camped near a river, or even a brook of any size or come sunrise the water was so polluted from all the pissing and shitting and washing and cooking that Isla felt cleaner avoiding it.
But, these practical considerations aside, the wind blew colder every morning. Standing barefoot on the broad, sandy bank, Isla surveyed the river before her. It was wide and shallow and sluggish, but the water ran clean. Occasional eddies swirled, stirring up silt from the bottom. Minute flecks of garnet winked in the pre-dawn light.
Cold sand squelched between Isla’s toes as she took a step forward. She hadn’t realized how long she’d been standing there; she’d sunk in almost past her ankles. She glanced up at the sun, just now separating itself from the horizon. In the rising ground mist it looked malleable. Like an egg yolk. Pulling. Stretching.
She couldn’t feel her ankles.
She wasn’t naked, either; she couldn’t face the idea in this weather, even knowing that the protection her shift provided was largely in her mind. She took another step forward and another, knowing she didn’t have all day and willing herself to just hurry up and get the procedure over with. The water hit her knees, and then her waist, the thin linen plastered to her like a second skin. And then, taking a deep breath, she shut her eyes and dove forward. She did it without giving herself time to think, plunging into water so frigid it stole her breath.
And then, rising to the surface, she discovered that she wasn’t so cold after all. Or at least, that she could bear it. The air, in comparison to the water, felt as soft and warm as being wrapped in eiderdown. Her feet found the bottom. More sand, although it felt strangely slimy. Something tickled against her calf. She looked down. A fish.
She began to wash.
Fingers numb with cold massaged her scalp, making the skin there tingle, and she found herself once again thinking. About nothing, and everything. She wasn’t in the true North yet, she knew. This was merely the beaten down no man’s land between West and North; they were still days from the mountain passes, an idea she found obscurely terrifying. Both Tristan and Eir seemed to think that this weather was warm. Under other circumstances, she’d think they were having her on. But neither her future lord nor her current protector were the kind of creature who, ah…had people on. How, she wondered uneasily, would she survive her future home?
Eir, for her part, seemed to think that Isla should toughen up. And from what Isla had learned of gnomish culture, Eir herself might need some toughening up to survive among her own people. The word gnome, first of all, was a Morva word. The gnomes called themselves alberich. With a heavy emphasis on the ch sound. They’d taken the name from a northern tongue, having no name for themselves until they encountered another species capable of asking them. Alberich referred to a specter of some disrepute in northern legend. Who, like the gnomes themselves, believed his ancestors capable of transforming into fish. And who, in his quest to gain mastery over all other living things, had renounced love and killed his consort.
Isla mastered the sounds of the northern tongues well enough, but gnomish speech was nigh on impossible. A series of what sounded like yips and whistles, it sounded like the ear-splitting screech of a knife on a glass bottle. She couldn’t help but recoil.
Isla hadn’t known that gnomes were matrilineal. Unlike in her own culture, within each gnomish tribe women mingled freely—with men and with each other. When a woman wished to marry a man, she first built him a shelter and then presented him with a wreath. Most shelters were adapted from caves; gnomes disliked light and felt most at home surrounded by the damp, lichen-perfumed confines of rock. If the man accepted her proposal, he moved in with her into this new shelter.
And when she decided she no longer wanted him, she put his things outside of the cave. This act served as signal that the couple were now separated. There were, evidently, various elaborate rules describing the feats a man might undergo should he wish to reverse her decision. Most, from Eir’s descriptions, seemed to involve pain.
She looked down at her ring, the red stone glinting in the wan morning light. It was outsized for her hand, not a woman’s ring. She disliked looking at it, too closely or for too long, because the ouroboros seemed almost to look back at her. But she’d never taken it off, even to bathe, just like Tristan had asked.
Sometimes, she missed him so badly that the pain was almost physical. An ache in a part of her that she couldn’t name, like a giant hand squeezing her heart but everywhere. She caught herself staring into the distance, as if willing him
to appear. As he had that night, when he’d given her the ring.
She kept waiting for him to come back, but he never had.
She’d thought of him so intently, and for so long, that once or twice she’d almost convinced herself that he was there. She’d look up, expecting to see him, and he’d be gone. There’d be nothing but the trees in the glade, or the dried-out grass. Nothing but dead leaves, drifting down slowly from the trees.
To distract herself from Tristan, she’d spent a lot of time reviewing what she knew of the North. She had nothing but time, whether spent in the saddle or spent being glared at by Rowena. What was referred to merely as the North was actually a group of geographically linked but semi-autonomous states. Darkling Reach, a duchy of Morven and the largest principality, as well as several smaller holdings and, of course, the lands beyond Morvish control. Those were occupied, and administrated, by different tribes. And while, over the years, quite a few Morva had gone to join them, they did so without the blessing of the king. A brave man might try his luck in a land without taxes, or oversight, but no law meant no protection.
By crossing over he had, effectively, renounced his citizenship. And the various tribes, for their part, hated the Morva; their treaty was with Tristan, not the kingdom. If Darkling Reach should lose the tribes’ favor, Morven would be overrun. A fact of life that hung, like the proverbial sword, over everyone’s heads. Stories of the North were used to terrify small children, and with good reason.
Isla had been one of those small children, and now she was going to live there.
Caer Addanc controlled the capital of the North, a massive city called Barghast. But where southern cities were unkempt and sprawling, Barghast had famously been built into the side of a mountain. Every street, every building was planned. Barghast, commercial center though it might be, had been built for defense. And was still, primarily, a stronghold.
Despite the inhospitable climate, danger posed by the locals, and the fact that Barghast was designed to repel tourists, merchants flocked to its gates at all seasons. It, along with its sister city, Bearn, formed not just the commercial capital of the North but one of the great commercial capitals of the world. Which meant that, as difficult as it was to reach, Barghast was anything but isolated and its culture, at least according to the reports Isla had heard, anything but insular. Even before Tristan’s time, too, the North had ever been a refuge for the non-conforming. People of all kinds could be found on Barghast’s streets, living together in relative harmony and all bound by fear of the duke.
She stepped from the water and, still shivering, began to change.
A few minutes later, she emerged into the clearing where her father’s entourage was preparing to leave. Or would be, if Apple and the mercenary captain weren’t fighting. The earl had hired the man and his band to help protect them on the road; fearing, rightly, that his own men were all either too fat or too old. And Hart, however able his sword arm, was just one man. His friends, whom he’d hunted bandits with back in Ewesdale, had all remained behind.
Which left the hard-bitten, battle-hardened man facing her stepmother.
His own men watched him, and Apple, with some interest. This was, to them, better entertainment than the free minstrels at the county fair. Apple, for her part, stood her ground. Eyes blazing, she glared daggers at the other man as though his sword meant nothing. And perhaps, to her, it didn’t. Apple was wearing a blue riding habit with a matching cape, all heavily embroidered. The stays pulled; somehow, on this journey, she’d managed to gain weight. Her refusal to back down only added to the impression of her solidity.
“I demand,” she shouted, “that you wear armor!”
Around them, life more or less went on as usual. Carters re-packed carts and the earl, discouraged by the conflict, took vapors. Isla and her immediate family were making this journey with upward of five score people. Had she been a wealthier woman, or one with more social standing, that number would have been three times as high. A frightening thought, considering how unwieldy the party was now. No one seemed to agree with anyone on anything and, watching them, Isla could think of nothing so much as the phrase herding cats. Except herding cats would be, she determined, a great deal more successful.
The worst part, too, was that even in the chill of morning the place stank. They were like a herd of locusts, unreasoning, bringing destruction wherever they went by sheer operation of their existence. Every square inch of underbrush within an acre had been either eaten by horses, peed on, or trampled into oblivion under countless sets of boots.
Isla glanced up at the sun. They should have left a half-hour ago, and most of the tents hadn’t even been folded. Two of the grooms who’d been deputized to that task were playing dice. Looking up and seeing her watching, they smiled. She didn’t smile back.
Eir appeared at her side. “This…woman,” she hissed, referring to Apple, “is an idiot.”
Isla supposed that she was. For years, she’d justified Apple’s behavior with various arguments. All to the effect of, she couldn’t do any better. How hard for a woman, who possessed a keen mind and no means to use it. Apple had never been taught to read more than the psalms, and those haltingly. She couldn’t figure. She could sew well, and embroider, but who knew if those were her true passions. Isla doubted that Apple knew; she’d never had a chance to find out. Married at a young age to the earl by a man who was, ironically, just like him, she’d grown up in his shadow.
Master Darlington-Hall was younger than his stepson but, like the earl, acted from a keen awareness of his own best interests. Or, at least, what he perceived them to be. And as much as Apple talked a good game about having found and wooed the earl on her own, Isla had often wondered if this was strictly true. And if the earl’s waning interest in his bride hadn’t been because her father hadn’t bailed them out as much or as often as he’d have liked. As he’d perhaps expected, when he’d agreed to marry his young bride.
Apple might resemble a grown woman, but she was still a child in most ways. Pampered and indulged her entire life, she’d never done anything even remotely approaching work. Never challenged herself in any way; and now the suggestion, as alien as it was, brought only resentment.
Studying her stepmother now, it occurred to Isla that she’d seen the same shrewd, calculating look in the eyes of captive animals. The confines of their lives…did something to them.
Apple repeated her demand.
“No,” the mercenary captain said again.
“But I—you—you must obey me!”
“No,” he grated, “I must not. I obey the man—or woman—with the purse and in this case that’s not you. And if it were,” he added, “no amount of gold is worth the risk to my men and especially not a purse this small. If and when I discover that I’m taking orders from a fool, as has happened before, I return the purse and leave. If I’d wanted to die for another man’s delusions, I’d still be soldiering for the Duke of Cleff.”
Who, Isla knew, lay moldering on the banks of Ullswater Ford.
“Your job is to protect us!” Apple shrilled.
“Which I do.” The mercenary captain studied Apple, who continued to glare.
He seemed a reasonable enough sort, Isla thought. He spoke like an educated man, too, which made Isla curious. She hadn’t spoken with him, and didn’t know his name. She wondered if Hart did; she’d seen them talking once or twice. But even if she’d had the opportunity, which she hadn’t—maidens on their way to be married, even dubious maidens like Isla, were rarely left alone with strange men—she wouldn’t have acted on it.
The ballads imagined mercenaries to be secret knights with hearts of gold. And many of them were knights, dismissed or fled from their previous posts. A man didn’t walk this path, because his life had been desirable. Some were merely down on their luck; some, like the guard captain, had grown disillusioned with politics. Some were merely out for gold, caring little where it came from or who they had to kill to get it.
Mercenaries, like all soldiers, were a motley mix of ambitious men, second sons, veterans, and some who simply couldn’t abide peace. Some had left their homes; some, after fighting for too long in wars they didn’t understand, found that they no longer wanted to go home. Or wanted any permanent home at all. Some were murderers and some were rapists. Some preferred the company of other men to that of women.
In any case, Isla didn’t want to get too close.
“But I can’t,” the mercenary captain continued, “if I’m half-dead before these bandits you’re so afraid of even strike. Bandits who, I might add, are more interested in your food and water than your virtue.” He regarded her squarely, his tone dispassionate. He spoke with none of a peasant’s deferential mien, and Isla wondered again who he used to be.
The war had changed a great many fortunes, something that Isla had known in the academic sense but was only truly beginning to understand now, as she traversed Morven.
Seeing the storm brewing on Apple’s face, he changed tack and tried again. “The average man weighs fourteen stone,” he said reasonably. “Now, a mail hauberk weighs three stone, or as much as a small child. A full suit of armor weighs near eight stone, or as much as the average full grown woman. Now, Lady, what you’re proposing is that I and my men should strap ourselves, to no good purpose, with sufficient weight to give ourselves heatstroke even in this weather and then—”
“To protect us!” Apple insisted.
“But that’s just what I’m explaining. Within the hour, we’d be in no condition to do so.”
“Moreover,” Eir added in that sibilant hiss, “you should listen to the man if you want to arrive at Caer Addanc…before Solstice. A horse laden down with such weight can hardly advance faster than…a trot. We’d make better time on foot, leaving them behind.”