Shadowheart

by Laura Kinsale

  The path widened to a cart track, pale marks between the windswept reeds. A meandering canal gleamed between low banks. Just ahead, the palfrey paced kindly along, following the road. The horse was a true ambler; a fine smooth-gaited mount that even the pirate ought to bestride with small discomfort, the sort of horse that Sir Guy would have been proud to offer to Lady Melanthe for traveling.

  Elayne did not intend to keep to an amble. Her heart beat harder as she realized she was gathering herself; the stallion responded immediately with a lifting of his back, coiling under her.

  She gave a little false shriek, digging her heels into the animal’s barrel at the same time that she dragged back on the reins. He danced in protest. She begged silent pardon of the confused beast, driving him again, and again, still holding him back on taut reins until he twisted and reared in frustration.

  Elayne made an effort to scream. It came out as a yelp, but she hauled the horse around, prodding him cruelly again as his forefeet hit the ground. He squealed in anger. She sat back as she felt him duck his head. His body rose under her, a buck and hard kick. She rode the jerking motion twice, then saw the track and the palfrey standing before her. She released the tight reins.

  The stallion sprang forward. She managed a resemblance of a frightened shriek. It bucked again, aimed a kick at the palfrey as the other horse shied hard away, and began to run.

  She leaned forward, letting the reins slip through her fingers. The horse moved powerfully under her. She could not see more than the faint double track between silhouettes of weeds, the black lumps of hedges that vanished from the corners of her eyes. The wind tugged at her hood as the stallion’s stride lengthened, his hooves pounding on solid ground now, his great body coursing forward in familiar rhythm.

  Night air rushed past. She let the horse have full rein as it stretched into a true gallop. She put her hands against its muscled neck and let its cadence and power bear her blindly into the night. She felt suddenly freed, as if she might ride forever, as if the stallion were a magic beast that could fly across mountain and water to carry her home.

  At the moment of that willful thought, the horse surged ahead. The gallop that had been free and wild suddenly transformed. The stallion began to drive in earnest, flinging its forelegs out into an enormous stride, ears pinned back, body flattened into the hammering stroke of a horse in full charge. She could hear the drum of hooves behind them—the palfrey bolting, too, and fast. Startlingly fast, for an ambler with a poor rider. In an instant of guilty exhilaration, she knew that the pirate must have fallen off as the stallion had plunged past them, freeing his horse to sprint at speed.

  The palfrey came on with incredible swiftness even as the stallion’s gallop hurled her through the night. She spared a glance over her shoulder, wind and mane beating at her cheek, thinking to see the horse riderless against the bright horizon. With a heart-deep spurt of alarm, she realized it was not.

  In the other cart track the palfrey pursued them like a horse out of Hell itself, the moonlight gleaming on its blaze as it drew even with the stallion’s hindquarters. Wind tore her hood from her head, sending her hair lashing around her face. The stallion increased its effort as the palfrey challenged it, pulling forward while the track curved and the bushes hurtled past, their branches whipping her leg. She could discern that someone rode it, but she could not believe it was a man who did not even know how to mount.

  He was a wizard. The idea seized her. Sorcery it seemed, as the palfrey’s breath blew hot on her knee, as the lighter horse overtook them in spite of the stallion’s exertion. With sudden terror she urged the stallion to greater speed in its wild race into blackness, but the palfrey gave no ground. It drew even with her shoulders as she bent over the stallion’s neck.

  Through blurry eyes she chanced a look aside and saw the pirate nearly abreast of her. In the darkness the palfrey’s reins flew free; its rider was a black shape, one hand gripped in the horse’s mane, half-standing and half-suspended from the saddle at a blood-chilling angle that seemed impossible to maintain as he reached toward her.

  "Do not do it!" she screamed, realizing that he meant to grab her rein. "Do not!" In an instant all thought of sorcery vanished. He had no concept of what would happen if he succeeded. He was riding on will and dexterity, barely holding to his seat.

  The horses hurtled together down the uneven road. There was no stopping the palfrey—it was one of those beasts that lived to race, to stay ahead, and the stallion flung itself into the contest. Both horses were beyond control now; a tiny stumble would send them down in a bone-breaking tangle. She hid her face in the stinging mane, praying that they could see their way at such speed. When the pirate reached again for her rein, she struck out at his arm.

  "Lunatic!" she cried. He grabbed her elbow, as if that could stop her. She felt him drag her down as he lost his balance. "Let go!" she screamed, jerking free by throwing her weight to the other side. The move sent the stallion into a wild collision with the palfrey; as she nearly lost her seat she felt the heavy jolt and rebound. The palfrey swerved out of the track and made a leap, clearing black reeds.

  For an instant he held on. In the moonlight she saw the arch of the horse’s neck, saw the pirate grab mane with both hands, and then the animal hit the ground, throwing him free. In a flash of half-seen motion in the dark, he went down between them.

  He was gone, left behind before she could even realize it. With no unwieldy weight on its back, the palfrey plunged full ahead, but in the universal manner of horses, it quickly seemed to realize that it only wanted to stay by the stallion instead of bolting past.

  She could feel her mount flag. Elayne let it slow at its own will, paced exactly by the palfrey. The horses dropped to a trot. All of them, including Elayne, were breathing with explosive huffs. The stallion’s ribs expanded and contracted between her legs as it fell into a walk.

  She took the palfrey’s reins. It halted willingly, a plain, gentle horse that reached over to nibble at a weed between pants, its mad race forgotten already. No trace of magic clung to it, no hint of the extraordinary speed that had overtaken the stallion’s lead. She could feel her mount’s exhaustion, but the palfrey seemed merely a little sweaty in the cool night air.

  Elayne turned the animals, looking back down the cart track. She could see nothing but the black marshland under the moonlight. A deep shivering possessed her. For a moment she could not seem to find her breath at all. She pressed her hands down on the saddle-bow and bent her head, trying to overcome the tardy wave of faintness.

  It was certain he would be injured, if not killed. He was a great fool, a murderer, and agile beyond measure, to have held on as long as he had. She had no sympathy for him. She wanted to escape him. Over her shoulder the steeple was clear now in the distance. She was free, with sanctuary within her grasp.

  She moaned, twisting the stallion’s mane around her fingers. She closed her eyes, willing herself to turn and leave him there.

  She opened them. "Damn you!" she whispered. "God curse you. What have you done to me?"

  She drew a trembling breath and began to walk the horses slowly back along the track.

  She found him at a clump of reeds, the sand around him gleaming with pale, deep scars from the horses’ hooves. He lay halfway on the cart track, his shoulder lifted as he supported himself on one elbow.

  Elayne dismounted. He rolled onto his hands and knees, then stood. He swayed, not seeming to see that she was there, and went down to his knees.

  She watched him as he lowered his head over the ground. She knew that sensation from many a hard fall—the wind knocked from her chest and a wave of sickness in her throat.

  "Don’t try to rise," she said.

  He lifted his head abruptly, saw her, and then leaned again over his hands splayed in the sand. His nose was bleeding. He gulped air. "You are not—hurt," he said, between gasps.

  "Not I. Are you?"

  He did not reply. She waited. After a few moments he
sat back on his heels, putting his hand to his temple. He was panting softly. "Not—skilled—with horses."

  "Verily!" she snapped. "You near slayed us both."

  He looked up at her then, his face a little angled, squinting, as if it were an effort to focus upon her. He tried to stand again, and failed. "Che cazzo," he said coarsely, and collapsed to one knee.

  "Lie down," she said. "I believe your head was struck."

  "Aye," he said, and tried to stand again.

  Elayne dropped the horses’ reins to the ground and went to him. "Lie down, you great fool." She pulled off her mantle and made a pillow of it, kneeling in the damp sand.

  He resisted her, taking a reeling step. He reached for the palfrey’s reins and leaned against the horse’s shoulder, his face in its mane. His hand groped for the stirrup. As Elayne watched, he sank slowly to the ground beside the palfrey’s leg.

  She made a sound of vexation and went to him, leading the horse a few steps aside, where it was happy to graze on the marsh grass. The pirate was dead to awareness as she pulled off her cloak, but he came awake again, wincing, while she arranged it beneath his head.

  Elayne pulled the laces of his cape open at the throat. "What did you think you were about?" she said angrily. "Did you think you could stop me?"

  He closed his eyes and opened them. A lock of his loosened hair lay across his forehead, trailing over his bloodied nose and down his cheek. "Save you," he murmured.

  "Save me!" she cried. "Depardeu. Save me!"

  "Bolt," he said between his white teeth. "Vile...beast."

  "He wasn’t bolting with me."

  "He wasn’t?" he mumbled, in the meekest tone she had ever heard from him.

  "No," she said fiercely.

  "Flaming hell," he said, and closed his eyes.

  * * *

  The pirate insisted upon traveling onward. Against her strong counsel, he had managed to mount, hauling himself onto the long-suffering palfrey by the power of will alone, for his body seemed to prefer the ground. She did not think another man would have been able to stand at all. In the early light there was blood smeared all across his perfect nose and lips. His cape was full of dirt and his eyes were turning blackened. He had lost his headgear, and his dark hair tumbled loose and tangled down his back. He looked like an escaped prisoner from the Abyss.

  As dawn came up behind them, a silvery haze obscured the horizon and the steeple tower. She led the palfrey at a slow pace along the bank of the canal, watching the light spread gray and green color to the reeds. He was too unsteady to do more than hold on, but the sluggish progress greatly displeased him, as he made known in the most crude language, muttering low words in French and Italian and tongues she had never heard before. Often enough he put his head down on the palfrey’s neck and lifted it again, looking about as if he did not fathom where he was. He asked her once why they were riding, and seemed to have forgotten that he had arranged for the horses himself.

  She knew he had money and bread and papers in the stallion’s saddlebags; she had searched them. She could have trotted away and left him now, with ease. The steeple had begun to resolve itself from the morning mist; she saw that it was not a church at all, but a small tower with a broken windmill at the peak. Salt ponds gleamed flat and white under the rising sun.

  She halted the horses, brushing back her loosened hair. Strain and lack of sleep dulled her mind. She had hoped for a religious house, or at least a village large enough to have a priest. Though when she envisioned her plea—that she had been abducted by a man who could hardly lift his head and speak sensibly—it now seemed a feeble claim.

  She ought to leave him. The saltworks appeared long deserted, the thatched roofs of a cluster of huts falling to ruin at the base of the windmill.

  "Let us rest here," she said, turning in the saddle.

  "No," the Raven said, his hand in the palfrey’s mane. "No. We press on."

  She looked at him. "You are in no case to ride."

  "I can ride," he said grimly.

  With a flick, she threw the palfrey’s reins over its head to him and dismounted. "Ride, then. I must rest."

  She led the stallion toward the windmill, guiding him between overgrown bushes. Little white castles of salt grew in the flats, like tiny fortresses scattered over the pale mud. The sluice carried only a trickle of water, its wooden gate crusted closed by glittering crystals of brine. She prodded with her toe at a lead salt pan lying overturned beside the sluice gate.

  "We cannot tarry," the pirate said. "We must make our rendezvous."

  She looked back. He was gazing toward the east, frowning vaguely at the distance. If he was to meet someone, she must leave him and find a refuge before it happened.

  "Rendezvous?" she asked. "When is it?"

  "Morosini did not tell you?" He looked around and blinked. "We are on the lagoon."

  "He told me nothing," she said.

  Under his slack reins, the palfrey took a step and reached down to lip at grass. "You brought us here," he said, with a faint insistence.

  "Nay," she said. "You brought us. When is this meeting to be? Where?"

  He wet his lips. He stared at her. Then he tilted back his head and laughed dizzily. "I cannot remember when." He shook his head in wonder. "I know not where!"

  He looked about as if the answer might lie in the reeds or the misty horizon. In the early light he was apparition enough to inspire nightmares with his bruised visage. "We took wine—he was to arrange for it..." He blew a sharp breath and groaned. "I recall nothing else."

  "It must be the fall," she said. "Your head is shaken."

  "My head is like to combust." He held his gloved palm over one eye and slid his fingers carefully down his bloodied face. "Christus. I fell?" He seemed uncertain even of that, making a grimacing frown at the palfrey. "From this animal?"

  "Indeed. And you will fall from it again, do you not give yourself a moment’s succor."

  "I don’t remember." He drew a deep breath. "But no matter. I can ride on."

  Elayne opened a saddlebag, drew out a loaf of bread and a flagon, and sat down on the overturned salt pan. She did not know why she even lingered with him, but that she was a besotted fool. Even with his eye blackened and swollen, he looked like an angel that had fallen down some rock-strewn cliff to earth.

  "Ride on to where?" she asked, breaking the loaf. There was enough provision in the bags that she could guess the intended destination was at least a day’s ride distant, but she made no mention of it.

  He leaned forward and dismounted, standing with his hand on the palfrey’s shoulder for a moment to steady himself. Then he pulled off his gloves and unlaced the bags behind the horse’s saddle. He searched through them, reading each paper one by one.

  He left the palfrey grazing with its reins about its ears and came to the stallion that waited stolidly beside Elayne. When he had finished examining the contents of the stallion’s saddlebags, he gave a curse and sat down heavily beside her, dusting and flicking at the mud-smeared hunter’s hat she had recovered from the ground.

  "Nothing useful," he said. "I would not have written down such a thing."

  Elayne stood up and retrieved the palfrey’s reins before the horse stepped on them. She untied its fetters from where they hung on the saddle-bow and bent to secure the animal’s forefeet.

  "Nay," he said as she released the grateful palfrey’s girth. "We cannot stay so long here."

  "If you know not where you mean to go, then let them rest and eat." Elayne pulled the saddle free and loosed the horse to graze. The pirate said no more as she released the stallion also to his hobbles. He watched her. She sat down again on the salt pan, the only accommodation available beyond the muddy ground.

  "You know something of horses," he said.

  She tore off a bite of bread, well aware of his dirty sleeve brushing her arm, his soft boots, his knee bent close to hers. "More than you, ’twould seem." She did not look at his face, uncertain if he would remem
ber or recognize her design to flee from him in the dark.

  "It appears docile enough," he said, watching the grazing horses. "Did it vault me off, the wretched animal?"

  She let her hood fall forward, shielding her. "Yes, I think so. I did not see."

  He tapped her leg with his knee. "You are a poor liar, beloved. What happened in truth?"

  Elayne bit her lip, glancing down at where his knee rested against the folds of her knotted skirt. She brushed down the hem of her green surcoat to cover several inches of bare stocking and her garter that showed above her boot. "The stallion ran away with me. You came after and tumbled from your mount when you reached to stop us."

  "Is that so?" he said vaguely.

  Elayne pushed back her mantle and ate a piece of dry bread. She offered him the rest of the loaf. Sitting so close beside him, he did not seem inhuman, not the devil’s spawn she had been certain he must be. He seemed a man, begrimed and bruised, hazy-eyed as he watched the horizon and broke plain bread with her. On his thigh there was a long streak of grass stain and mud. He touched his face again, running the pads of his fingers over his blackened eye and his swollen temple, frowning a little, as if to make certain of the pain.

  She felt her soul slipping back down into his net once more.

  "We must return to Venice, I think," he said, tearing bread for himself.

  "Nay, you are banished," she said, suddenly afraid he would do some stupid and bold and foolish thing.

  "Banished? From Venice?"

  "For thirty days," she said.

  "God rot!" he said with a hiss. "What did I do?"

  "Killed two men." She paused. "Or three."

  He made a grunt, and then nodded. "The Riata spawn, I expect." He ate a piece of bread, wincing slightly as he chewed it. "Only thirty days? I must have bespoken myself well."

  She gave him a hot look. "Oh, most ably!" she said in a bitter voice.

  He stopped chewing and squinted at her through his straggling hair and blackened eye. "You would have preferred otherwise?"

  She tilted her face to the sky. A breeze touched her cheek, carrying the tang of the salt marsh, the musky whiff of the horses. She noticed such things now, such subtle things as a trace of a man’s scent. "I know not what I prefer anymore," she said. "I hardly know who I am."