“To our love,” he repeated.
Lucinda smiled but she worried that the familiar tingle in her shoulder and breasts would come upon her now. That Berithas would speak, insistent and commanding as ever. She remembered the fate of her rapist the previous summer. The glorious horror as Berithas shrivelled him to a dry husk even as he penetrated her. That must not happen now. And how to explain the wound? She found herself stepping back a little, the cup hiding her mouth.
Ursino refilled his goblet as the walls around them billowed in and out with the breeze. “I am doubly blessed,” he said, placing the ewer back upon the table. “Blessed that your gifts have bestowed upon me weapons not seen in Valdur for an age long past, since even my forefathers walked the land. But also blessed that our hearts have found one another.” He took her goblet though she had taken but one sip and set it down. “Livorna will fall—the griffons will see to that—and the heretics will be destroyed. Maresto will sue for peace after that. They would not dare take to the field with the combined might of Torinia and Milvorna arrayed against them. To see Alonso’s face when he sees the royal beasts and the Hand of Ursula in our vanguard; he will know then the Lord is not with him but with us. More importantly, so will his army.”
She felt a tug at her conscience—the memory of her dead sister. The act of killing her, months gone by, seemed like it was a dream now. Sometimes she almost felt her presence in the stillness of her bedchamber, as if her Farsight was working still, from beyond the grave. But Lavinia had betrayed her faith, her gods, and Berithas had spoken His will. She had done what needed to be done. For the faith. Ursino would have to learn soon exactly who it was she followed, and who he followed too by default and by blood oath. “I will do all in my power to deliver you the throne,” she said, her voice becoming husky.
He set down his goblet and took both her hands in his. “And I will make you my queen. The queen of all Valdur.” He pulled her into him, one arm about her slim waist, the other gently folding back her gown from her shoulder, revealing her nakedness.
“You are truly the most beautiful woman I have laid eyes upon.”
She heard herself speak words she had not expected to utter. “And I desire you more than any man I have ever known.”
She was almost shaking as he led her to the bed: a humble wooden bedstead but piled high with three feather mattresses and finished with silk coverlets. Goose down pillows lay plumped for them at the headboard, a magnificent Torinian needlepoint tapestry rising above. He eased off her robe from the other shoulder and it fell to the carpet. His eyes took in all of her: pert breasts, belly, long milky thighs blue-white, and the blonde mound of her womanhood. He ran his hands from her shoulders down her lithe arms but then, in the glow of the candlelight, he saw the livid wound that ran under her collarbone.
His fingers lightly traced it. “What is this then, my love?”
She reached across and covered his hand with her own. “I was burned as a child. An uncle who bore me ill.”
Ursino nodded sympathetically. “If he lives still I will have him whipped before the cart, be he nobleman or not. Does he yet breathe?”
She shook her head. “He does not.”
“Good.” Ursino then threw off his own gown and pulled back the coverlet for them.
She slid in and he with her. He instantly sensed her tenseness and unease even as she wrapped her arms about him and placed her forehead against the notch of his jawline and neck. “Lucinda, I have never taken a woman against her will. You know this?”
Her reply was quiet. “I do.”
“Then this choice to lie with me is yours, yours alone.”
She wanted him more than ever now. What he took to be a maiden’s modesty he could never guess was her fear of something far different and far more dangerous. He pulled back and found her mouth, his hand resting against the back of her neck as he kissed her. She could feel his manhood against her as her heart began to beat faster. She then tensed involuntarily as she thought she felt her wound tingle slightly.
Not now, please, Lord Berithas. Not now.
Even as his kisses grew more inflamed, her mind fought to keep away—to wish away—the unwanted arrival of the Redeemer. She did not know if she could prevent Him from possessing her for she had never thought to try. But it was different now, and she knew that Berithas sought more than anything to come back into the world in a new form, a new guise to usher in a new age. She knew there would be a price for the gifts He had bestowed upon her. The sensation in her shoulder ceased.
“Are you cold, my love?” Ursino had paused, genuine concern in his eyes. She smiled and shook her head, stroked his neatly bearded cheek, and leaned in to kiss him again.
She relaxed; the Redeemer had not come upon her as before. Perhaps He knew when she willingly lay with a man and when she was under attack. Or perhaps He knew nothing until she let Him into her mind. She inhaled sharply as she felt Ursino’s mouth move across her breast. And she was grateful, joyously grateful, that the Old Ones had granted her the pleasures of the flesh unimpeded by the demands of Berithas the Redeemer.
For the first time it struck her that the price to be paid for her gifts, her powers, might be far higher than she had first imagined it to be. For now she was in love.
JULIANUS STRYKAR CURSED under his breath and slowly raised his arms skyward. He heard a second bow creak as its owner pulled it taut. He had not thought he would be that easy to track so quickly but—as in most things of late—he was wrong. But the expected twang of the strings had not come and slowly he turned to face his pursuers. It was not the mercenary band he had expected. Rather, he found himself facing a dozen venatori—huntsmen—clad in moss green cloaks and long-tailed hoods, tall boots strapped tight to their legs.
“You have found a poor lost traveller,” he said, lowering his head. “Pray give me shelter.”
The closest huntsman kept his bow aimed at Strykar’s chest. “A deserter more-like, from that army below which we smelled afore we even saw it. Unbuckle that swordbelt or you’ll soon be a hedge-pig for the number of quills in you.”
Strykar did as he was bid even as he scanned the band before him, robbers or huntsmen he could not now tell. The sword and belt fell to the ground with a muffled clang and the others drew closer to him. One was taller than the rest. “Take his sword and bind his hands.” It was unmistakably the voice of a woman.
Strykar struggled to see her face, obscured as it was by a black scarf within the voluminous liripipe hood. He winced as once again his wrists were lashed tight with a strip of leather.
“So much for the goodness of strangers,” he mumbled as he was pushed forward. The band, but one, lowered their bows; the remaining huntsman kept his arrow nocked, bow resting on his thigh.
“It’s more than clear you’re a soldier so cut the prattle about poor travellers.” The woman stood toe to toe with Strykar, no more than an inch shorter than he. She glanced at his sword and smiled. “And you are either a thief or a nobleman in trouble by the looks of that blade.”
Strykar shrugged. “Sadly, today, my lady, I’m both. And who is it that has made me prisoner? Those who wear masks are usually hiding from someone themselves, no?” Strykar felt the smack of an open hand on the back of his head.
“Settle down, Bero,” commanded the woman as she raised the strung bow over her head and seated it over her back and shoulder. “He’s entitled to know who we are and we will damn well find out who he is soon enough.” She pulled back the green woollen hood to show a silken coif that covered all her head and the right half of her face. It looked like an executioner’s mask that had been cut away to reveal only a hazel eye, proud nose, and left side of cheek and mouth, a diagonal slash of shining black. An oval cut-out gave her sight in her right eye. “I am Demerise, Forester of the Duchy of Maresto, and this...” She reached into her satchel and pulled out a wide blue silk ribbon and suspended wax seal the size of a fist, “is my warrant. Now... your turn.”
Strykar surveyed the faces
of the men arrayed around him. They were shadowed in their hoods, unreadable. He knew of the royal hunters, an ancient guild and the only one to hold the right to take game in the forests of the land, for which privilege they provided meat to the tables of the king and his dukes. Each band held closely to their own forest respecting the territory of other venatori. They not only held the right to hunt stag and boar, they had royal warrant to hunt men: those that were caught poaching. Given his state of disarray and the fact that he was armed with but a sword, Strykar knew he was unlikely to be considered out to steal the king’s venison. He held up his tied hands in a gesture of futility. “I am Julianus Strykar, a company commander in service to his grace the Duke of Maresto. Of late a prisoner of the Company of the Blue Boar and, it would seem, a prisoner once again. Thanks to you.” He finished with a sheepish grin.
“The Blue Boar?” said Demerise, more than a hint of interest in her voice.
“Aye. That army your noses have already sniffed out. As always, they fight for Torinia. Which—you may not yet know—has just invaded the duchy. They’re bound for Livorna now.”
Demerise gave a long look to Bero. She then motioned to two other bowmen. “Take him,” she said.
Strykar eyed her warily as her men came to him, one firmly seizing his upper arm and urging him forward. “So I’m coming with you, then?” he called back as he started up the slow incline of the forest floor.
“For the time being,” she replied. “Unless I tire of you. But I would rather put more space between us and those mercenaries than remain here to interrogate you, my lord Strykar.”
They headed north, to higher ground, the rooted forest floor giving way to outcrops of granite and white boulders covered in fine moss. The wood became thicker and darker as they walked, oak, beech and a few sombre stands of fir all rising up high. Strykar, more than dead-tired now, seemed to stumble every few yards while his companions negotiated branch, root and stone effortlessly, footfalls all but silent. Inwardly, he was relieved. There was little chance now they would sell him back to the Blue Boar and, indeed, Demerise’s tone told him that the venatori had probably had dealings with them before that had gone bad. It was enough for now that at least they were headed in the opposite direction. His mind suddenly flew back to the tent he had escaped and to Lazaro’s purpled and bulging face, the life squeezed out of the popinjay knight. He then remembered Coronel Aretini’s cutting words, finally settling upon the sickening remembrance of the calamitous battle.
I brought it upon the Black Rose. By my own pride. My own recklessness.
After an hour they came to a small clearing, wisps of grey smoke from a small fire curling up through the canopy. A man stood as they approached, hefting the stick he had been using to prod the flames.
“So you’ve caught another one then?”
“Not quite,” called back Demerise. “This hare had sprung his trap before we found him!”
The fire-tender bent and tossed a log onto the flames while the huntsmen fanned out. Strykar saw an enormous stag hanging from a tree on the edge of the encampment, bleeding out.
“Put him over there near the fire,” said Demerise to Bero. “And you can free his hands. I think he knows we’re his best gamble if he is to live.”
Demerise shrugged off her bow and quiver and sat on a stump near the fire. She leaned forward and placed her forearms on her thighs. Big lass, thought Strykar as he watched her. She dressed exactly as her men: woodsman’s tunic and hose, long boots strapped tight from ankle to mid-thigh.
“So, now you can tell me how you came to be captured by the Blue Boar. Even better, how you managed to escape.”
Strykar rubbed his chafed wrists. “Mind if I take off this gambeson? I’ve had it on for three days.”
She shrugged. “Just as well that we’re outside. Do as you wish.”
Strykar grunted as the sweat-soaked, stinking garment peeled away from his arms leaving him in an equally grim-looking and reeking linen shirt. “I am a Coronel of the Company of the Black Rose. We were defeated two days ago by a combined Torinian and Milvornan army led by Ursino. He has declared himself the rightful heir to the throne of Valdur.” Strykar grunted in pain as he pulled his shirt off over his head.
Demerise sat back and swore. “We have been out here three days, and you say war has begun?”
Strykar nodded. “Livorna is next and I fear my army—what’s left of it—has retreated south.”
Demerise saw the welts and black bruises along his right shoulder and bicep. “But you survived it seems, Messere Strykar.”
“Milvornan lancers ran me down but my armour saved me. Almost wish it had not. They took me to the commander of the Blue Boar. He ransomed me to a Torinian. Ten soldi.”
Demerise smiled. “So hardly worth my while getting anything for you then. Livorna you say?” She pointed to the hanging stag. “That is expressly destined for Count Marsilius’s table. I mean to get it back there, war or no war.”
“You’ll have to cross siege lines to do it. Unless you’re faster than they are.”
A huntsman proffered a wooden cup to him. Strykar took it, nodded thanks and drank. The watered wine was reviving.
“When I had heard that Sempronius was dead I knew no good would come of it,” said Demerise. “How many towns have been burned so far? How many villages? What is your tally?”
Strykar set down his cup and looked into her eyes, intelligent and spiteful. “The Black Rose has no tally. As for the Blue Boar, Persarola is taken and now Istriana is undefended. And they are in league with a sorceress though they may not know it. She guides Ursino. Gives him rare monsters to wage war with. It was these that defeated us.”
She was silent.
“Huntress, I need to make it to Livorna to warn them. If there’s even still time.”
“A sorceress who conjures monsters you say. But you didn’t tell me how you managed to escape the Blue Boar,” she said. “I would hear that story first.”
Strykar held her gaze. “I learned they were going to execute me before the gates of Livorna. Last night someone freed me, out of pity. Or out of guilt for past misdeeds. Who knows, maybe both. I ran from the camp into the forest and escaped them.”
“With a noble’s blade in hand.”
Strykar swallowed and looked into his cup. “There was a slight detour first. A short visit to my tormentor.”
She nodded. “Understandable. I did not escape the Blue Boar quite as unscathed as you.” She lowered her chin and slowly pulled off the black coif and mask. Her mouse brown hair was cropped short like a man’s. As the coif fell from her face, Strykar came to see her meaning. From right temple downwards across cheek, jaw, chin, and neck her skin was flayed scarlet, rippled and furrowed like a farmer’s field. Her upper lip sagged on the right such that her face was two halves: the left fair, the right a seared ruin. Strykar tried not to wince as he beheld her.
“Caglia,” she said. “I was twelve years old.”
Strykar lowered his head. “Caglia,” he repeated. “Sweet Elded’s mercy. I am heartily sorry for you. It was there I lost my wife and daughter.”
Her eyes widened. “At Caglia?”
“I was far away when the Blue Boar attacked. I never found them when I returned.” Strykar seemed to look past her for a moment as the images came to his mind’s eye. “I was told they had all perished.”
Demerise pulled on her silk mask, adjusting her eye-hole. Strykar studied her face as she did so. Did all women with hair of brown and hazel eyes remind him of Cara or was there something more with this one? The shape of the eyes and the nose, features still unblemished. Twelve years old. He put the idea out of his head. Foolishness. “Will you take me to Livorna?”
She looked at him as she pulled up her liripipe hood once more but she did not answer.
“Or at least point me in the right direction and give me a flask of wine.”
She shot a glance to Bero who stood close by, leaning against a tree. The man raised his
eyebrows as if to say ‘your choice’ and shrugged. Demerise looked back to Strykar as she adjusted the scarf around her mouth. “You have an army between you and the gates of Livorna. You’d never make it there before them.”
Strykar grinned. “So how do you and your band plan to get there? You don’t seem too worried by the prospect.”
“There’s a small path up in the cliffs above the city where the walls and rocks border the forest. About half a day’s march from here. There’s a pass there—only wide enough for single file. An army would never get through, even if they knew of it.”
Strykar nodded, enthusiasm building in him. “That’s it, then. We could make it back to the city before the Torinians arrive and begin the siege. We need to warn them, I have a man there.”
She stood and brushed bits of bark from her tunic. “And what makes you think the High Steward will defend the city? Have you seen him? A scallop has more backbone. And that castellan of his—slimy little toad—don’t put much stock in him either.”
It had not crossed his mind, at all. That rather than risk a massacre Marsilius would surrender, recognize Ursino’s claim to the throne. Surely Acquel and Kodoris would never agree to that? “Livorna will defend itself. Whether Marsilius wishes it or not. The Temple monks won’t surrender.”
She laughed lightly. “I wouldn’t either if I were them. Not with what the Torinians are doing to Decimali when they catch them.” She took out her knife and squatted down to saw off a chunk of meat from the rabbit that lay skewered over the fire. “Seven commandments. Ten commandments. Just another excuse to fight one another. Again.”
“Take me. I will carry your stag.”
Demerise popped the morsel into her mouth. “I was still thinking about ransoming you, Messere.”
Bero spoke up from behind them as he retrieved his satchel from a makeshift lean-to. “Take him back, Demerise. We might even get a reward from his friends for saving his hide. And I don’t fancy carrying that stag on a pole the whole of the way through the cliffs.”
The Witch of Torinia Page 23