Salt, Sand, and Blood

by MarQuese Liddle

  “Good to see you, too,” he replied, happily sarcastic, his voice still soft, though winter work had hollowed his features, hardened them but for the peach fuzz on his chin.

  Jael twisted to survey the room. Ricard was introducing Trey to her mother, and for once she was glad for the captain’s show of gallantry. Dahilla would eat that up and, in return, serve her own banter—in this, Leonhardt prayed that her mother hadn’t changed too much. She needed the time, knew it would fall to her to acquaint Zach and Trey yet was at a loss for what to say without giving away everything. She imagined choking on her guilt pangs, vomiting every memory: the promise she made beneath the weeping tree, oath breaking in the most shameful of ways—in the most disgusting of places. Her stomach turned at the realization—Gildmane’s father’s moth-eaten mattress in that dingy, abandoned chamber.

  “Jael?” Dahilla’s voice.

  Leonhardt bolted upright and whirled to face her mother but couldn’t quite muster the courage to meet her eyes, the image prior lingering in her mind as she turned from one demon to another. “Gluttonous slut!” her gut expected. Instead, Dahilla melted over her. Jael flinched, her body recalling the thousand small abuses, but it was only a hug, a kiss, and tears on her neck.

  “It’s wonderful you’re home. There’s so much I wanted to say.” She stepped back, looked her daughter full in the face and gasped. “My God, these marks! What happened?”

  “It’s nothing,” Jael answered, yet that only made her mother’s fussing worse till Ricard assured her they’d discuss it after supper—an innocent lie by the old Guard captain. He didn’t possess the patience. No later than space was made and plates placed for the unexpected guests, he began badgering Leonhardt for an explanation. She weighed recalling the painful memories against facing Zach’s frustration. It was obvious she was ignoring him; he’d never been introduced to the knight-paladin and elsewise had hardly been spoken to at all, though perhaps a distraction might make him forget, if just for the moment. That’s all that Jael wanted—a moment to forget her guilt and to carry onward.

  She started from the beginning, the pilgrimage south on the Valley Road, taking turns with Trey as their stories intersected. Every so often, Dahilla interjected a question or Ricard a comment, but otherwise they sat enchanted. An hour passed. The plates had long since been emptied both of meat pies then fried dough by the time Gildmane finished with their arrival at Herbstfield.

  The old Guard captain grinned through his grisly beard, put an arm around his wife, “She’s outdone her old man, hasn’t she, dear? I could die tomorrow, satisfied.”

  “Don’t make japes like that!” Dahilla answered, cupping her belly like she was trying to protect—a child…an unborn infant, it hit Jael unprepared.

  The words escaped her mouth, “You’re having a baby?”

  “There’s a lot to tell you, both good and bad,” her mother said. She caressed her womb, almost cooed, “Yes, you’re going to have a baby brother or sister.”

  Leonhardt forced a smile while inside felt as if being drawn and quartered. It disgusted her, the thought that he father would conceive with her abuser, subject another child to the horrors—yet this woman was not the mother she’d fled; she was the one who abandoned her, the one Jael prayed for years would return. And now that she had, it tore the scars open. The ever present message, “It’s all your fault he doesn’t love me anymore. I should have smothered you in your swaddling. We’d be happy but for you!”

  Was it true? she asked herself, vaguely aware of the surrounding congratulatory noise—the captain covering for her silence—as her mind relived those of the parts of her story she and Trey chose to omit. “Ugly slut!”. She recoiled, tried to take refuge in those parts she and Trey acknowledged openly and realized her acts of valor caused nothing more than unrest and death. “We’d be happy but for you!” Jael shivered.

  Ricard rose to feed more kindling to the hearth.

  “Jael, are you alright?” Leonhardt heard her name amongst the noise. It was Dahilla, reaching across the table to touch her daughter’s arm. “What’s wrong? You look so somber.”

  “It’s for the deacon,” Trey answered for her.

  “Heavens, then you’ve heard?”

  “We stopped at the chapel on the way here. The new vicar let us know that Gavin passed this autumn. Jael told me they were close.”

  Dahilla’s touch traced to her daughter’s hand, took it into her own. The callouses chafed her delicate skin. “Ox arms!,” thought Leonhardt on reflex as her mother spoke, “I’m so sorry you had to learn it that way. I was just about to tell you myself, but—oh it’s horrible, isn’t it? First it’s Gavin, and then it’s robbers.”

  Jael slipped free from her mother’s possession, directed attention toward her father, said, “That’s right, you promised you tell us what happened.”

  Ricard ambled from the hearth to his seat. “‘Twas nothing truly, just a few men come into town disguised as peddlers. Had an ox wagon and everything like they were wanting to buy some of my crop before winter set in. Weren’t even baron’s men; more like tan, skinny southerners from God’s Grasp. Whatever they were, they pulled out knives soon as I turned my back. If Zach here hadn’t been watching from the field, that would have been that.”

  “All I did was shout,” said Zach, looking like an overripe peach.

  Leonhardt interjected, “But that scar—”

  The old Guard captain laughed, “Just a nick one of them gave me. A lucky cut, caught me soon as I turned back around. I guess I’m not as quick as I used to be.”

  Jael smelled something rotten. It was obvious some portion of the story wasn’t being told. Obvious, guilt panged at the hypocrisy. If it was apparent to her, then certainly they knew that she too was withholding. And so her questions stayed lodged in her throat.

  Trey, however, suffered no such conflict of conscience. “Come now, you said they attacked you with knives and not a single stab wound?”

  “It’s true,” Zach asserted. “I saw the whole thing.”

  “How close were you?”

  The goatherd glowered, “Close enough.”

  “That’s what I thought,” replied Gildmane, rolling his eyes to Dahilla. “My lady?”

  She glanced at her husband who, smiling, shrugged and nodded. “I’m afraid I didn’t see it myself. I was busy with mending our winter garments.” She glanced again at Ricard. “Sir Trey, I don’t understand. Why all these questions?”

  “He thinks we’re liars,” said Zach, reddening. Jael felt her face flush hot as well.

  The captain scoffed, “Liars? Lady Leonhardt seems perfectly honest to me, and I know better than to assume malice when ignorance will suffice.”

  “Son of a—”

  “I’ll tell something else I don’t believe,” Gildmane cut him off, focused now on Ricard. “I don’t think for a moment that robbers would bother with this poor farmhouse, let alone that wound. What delivered it truly?”

  “An assassin’s sabre,” the old Guard confessed, glad to be discovered. “One of them long, heavy ones they like in the south. Slow. ‘Twere a messer or falchion, I’d have lost my head. But I wasn’t lying either. They had knives as well.”

  “Where are the bodies?”

  “Someplace else,” shrugged Ricard, but his face betrayed excitement. “I expect they’ll be coming back.”

  Trey’s mien turned to stone. “They escaped?….Thank you for your hospitality. My apologies for the sudden departure, but it’s time we get going.”

  “Now? Already? But—” Jael felt as though the world was inverting. Every fiber of being that had been screaming to leave now begged her to stay. Her father was in danger, her mother sane and carrying her first and only sibling, and Zach—she couldn’t stand the shame of abandoning him this way. Her tone turned petulant as an obstinate child’s. “But I want to stay. You said the day was mine to spend, and I want to spend it here.”

  “Sorry, but things have changed.”

&n
bsp; “But—”

  “This isn’t a negotiation.” He rose, bowed to Ricard and Dahilla.

  Zach shoved up from his stool, inflamed with rage like Jael had never seen him: pink and red tremoring flesh sweat-sheened and hued blue as an infant’s screaming asphyxiation. “If you want to leave, fine. Get on your own then, but she said she wants to stay.”

  “Please, don’t fight,” Jael pleaded for peace—

  “This doesn’t involve you, country boy,” the captain spat, his glare level with the goatherd’s. Without looking away, he commanded, “Come, Leonhardt, we’re leaving.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “I said she’s staying!”

  —Her words went ignored, “Zach, please!”

  Trey started for the door and stopped at the threshold, waited there till Leonhardt rose to follow.

  “Jael, wait! I won’t let him treat you this way, like, like…like he owns you or something!” Zach rounded the table, “You hear that, pretty boy? You’re going to stop talking like you own her! Take back what you said or I’ll lay you out flat!”

  God, please Trey, just ignore it, she wanted to beg. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, that it is incumbent upon a knight to never run from a challenge. Leonhardt darted to her father for a parting embrace. “I’ll come again to say goodbye tomorrow morning,” she said, then whispered, “And please, explain to Zach that this is just how it is. Help him understand.”

  Ricard held her firm and in return whispered, “We love you, Jael, but there’s nothing I can do.”

  She sighed, disappointed. “I understand.”

  No later than he let her go did she make for the door. The captain had already gone outside, Zach in blind, angry pursuit. Leonhardt caught him just as he crossed the threshold, rounded his huge frame and made herself a stone in the road. Again, she pleaded with him, but it was too late in the goatherd’s mind. He muttered that she didn’t belong to the captain, that he wouldn’t accept it, him being so disrespectful—he had pride, too—then he moved her out of the way and met Trey in the yard. The knight was waiting for him, unarmed save for a rondel which he promptly tossed to Jael—scabbard and all.

  †††

  Nearly nineteen years prior, before the foot of the castle in the northern Summerlands, Duke Gildmane held a tourney in honour of Saint Lucius come to visit Aestas on his heir’s name day. It was the grandest tournament in living memory. The green, rolling fields were trampled into mud by hundreds of knights, men-at-arms, and the thousands that followed. Never before had that much wealth flowed through the north—oceans of schills and florns—every day a dozen thieves were behanded by the sword. For they were fools, thought the young sell-sword Ricard, his eyes on the prize purse: seventy-seven florns to the winner of the tilt, seventy-seven for the duels, and seventy-seven for the melee.

  He’d arrive in Aestas by wagon from the west, hungry and pentless, and it would be another day until the tourney began. So through the camp grounds he wandered for some place to make a couple of coins, found one near a wine tap among a circle of baron-knights. She was a wisp of a girl, blonde and Summerland bred, with eyes meant for trouble to the baron-knights’ chagrin. They must have thought Ricard a poor sight in his hauberk and rust-stained aketon, a hand-me-down messer hanging from his belt. He thought the same of them and their queer, pointy half-helms and brigandine vests—said as much to one of the men—the one seated closest with the girl on his lap. The fool stood and growled and postured before his friends as cowards always did when they were afraid to initiate.

  So Ricard asked the girl for her name, told her that she’d be better off spending the day with him than these east-blooded mummers. “It’s Dahilla,” she answered with a faerie grin, bright as her garland and eager for violence. Tugging at the baron-knight’s silk sleeve, she said. “Come on, Sir Żuraw. Are you going to let him talk to you that way?”

  The man snarled at that, and his companions laughed till Dahilla drew the sword from Żuraw’s scabbard. At once, the baron-knight snatched it back—too late—Ricard had drawn his own blade by then. Clever, thought the sellsword. It was a matter of honour now. He glanced over at the girl. She wore a smile like a demon’s.

  Ricard wiped his messer on his aketon after the fight. Most of the Sir Żuraw’s silks were still clean and would fetch a good price if sold in consort with the helm and brigandine. By law, the sword was for the baron-knights’ to keep, and there was no horse to claim, so in its place, he stole the girl instead. She stayed with him that day and through the night, and come morning convinced him to pay so she could sit up front for the duels. “You better be there to cheer for me when I win.”

  “You? You’re going to win? You know Lucius’s men are competing, right? Do you think you’re going to beat the whole Temple Guard?”

  “What if I do?”

  She laughed at him, impish. “I’ll marry you, then.”

  “I bet you’ve said that to every man whose bed you shared.”

  “It’s not been that many!” she shot back at him, “and besides, they all died the day I did.”

  “So it’s not lying so long as they die, is that it? And you’re thinking the same will happen to me. You made a mistake, girl. I’m not going to die today. I’m going to win, and I’m going to hold you to that promise, whether you meant it or not.”

  And so he did. Sixteen rounds of tourney duels came and went, all of them to first blood, no accidental deaths—a boring event. Ricard had fought twice by then. Both opponents were careless, thought themselves invulnerable in their armour till he put them on their backs and tore open their helms. “Yield!” they screamed, but he cut them all the same. A slash across the cheek. He wanted them to walk away, scarred, carrying the shame of being beaten by a lowborn sellsword.

  Never had Ricard met a knight he did not hate nor one he could not defeat. They were everything he wasn’t: proud, rich, and weak. He deserved their success, their horses, their estates, their jewels, their women, their fame more than any of them—more than a hundred contracts under his belt and not a single a blunder. How many battles has any one knight fought? Two? Three at the most? And so Ricard thought to himself when he came to face his third opponent. He was Saint Lucius’s man, Temple Guard Captain Sir Fredrick Himmelriser.

  The cheers from the crowd pounded unbearably against the sellsword’s ears. His opponent had chosen to discard his helm and shield, “For the sake of justice. My opponent has not the arms nor armour to match. It would be dishonour to bear mine own against him!” Ricard seethed at the sanctimonious arrogance, could see only the object of his rage taunting him with this veneer of stoicism. Those clear-blue eyes and unruffled forehead sent the sellsword into a frenzy. His first cut was a lunge for Himmelriser’s head, no grace or technique, no consideration of what came after, just anger and aggression faster than the knight could slip. There was a flash of frosted steel. Within a hair’s width, Himmelriser’s sword bit into the thinner edge of the sellsword’s messer. A split second of pressure. Ricard wound his blade around to the gasps of the crowd, and he thought he heard Dahilla shout as the two weapons separated. There was no space for the broad-tipped Temple blade to accelerate. Harmlessly it slid against the sellsword’s maille and linen while his over-sized knife sliced Himmelriser’s throat.

  †††

  “Stop this! Both of you!” begged Leonhardt. The kitchen door clapped open and closed, and she felt her parents’ presence behind her. She dropped Trey’s rondel at her feet. “Father, say something to stop them, please.”

  “Can’t be done,” he shook his head, breathing steam from his nostrils.

  Jael glanced back to the scene with a stinging in her eyes as the men squared with one another, shadows wavering in the residual kitchen light. Then a softness touched her hand, and Leonhardt’s mother knelt beside her. Jael recoiled, but only slightly. Her body did not recognize the gentle touch as Dahilla’s, nor did her memory believe such remorse could be her mother’s. “God, how wrong I was wh
en I said all those horrible things. I could only see myself in you. But now—even after all that adventure, you’re still innocent—to not know the nature of men. I’m sorry, Jael. You’re father is right; you can’t stop them.”

  There was a grunt and a fleshy thud—the first punch. She turned and saw Zach reeling across the yard. “Please, stop! This is all my fault!”

  “I don’t get it,” the goatherd’s shadow spit onto the snow. “Why are you defending this jack ass?”

  Gildmane scoffed, “What I don’t understand is how a man could be so dense. Unless…” The captain’s shade looked her way, “That’s it, isn’t it? Another Ogdon Sylvertre.” Turning back to Zach, “Do I say it true? Has an angel flown away with your senses?”

  “We made a promise.”

  Jael’s heart sank into her stomach. How juvenile the words sounded coming out of his mouth—innocence to the point of embarrassment. “A promise,” as if oaths had not been broken, as if she had not manipulated him in fear and shame, pretending now to stand unstained before him.

  Trey’s voice pitched in genuine surprise, “You don’t know, do you? Has no one told you?”

  “Told me what?” asked Zach, baffled. She couldn’t see his face, but Jael knew he was staring at her, a shape in the dark, its features strange.

  “Tell him, Leonhardt.” Words like razors that flayed her sins exposed.

  She withdrew a step and bumped into her mother and the soft, new life growing within. It was a gentle collision, almost an embrace as Dahilla caught her daughter in her arms, driving the daggers of Love and Hate together with Shame deep into her entrails where her heart sank lower.

  She felt her body revolt, shoved away from this woman she couldn’t forgive, You are not my mother, then disappeared into the darkness. Trey called after her, then her father, and then Zach and Dahilla ran inside for lanterns as her feet fell faster on the hard-packed snow. She was in the stable and mounted on her courser when the kitchen door slammed open. On the road, she heard them calling for her, blinded by lantern light. They would find nothing but her footprints until sunrise.