Count Scar - SA (19 page)

The Lady Arsendis positioned her palfrey next to mine. Today she wore a chaste white wimple over her hair, but a few dark curls had worked their way out by her cheek. "Let Father have the sport
of the cranes," she told me, "and you and I, Lord Count, shall have twice the birds he does at the end of the day. I know where thrush and woodcock may be found in abundance."

The spring air was warm and softly scented with mud and growing things as the hunting party spread out across fields and hills. Arsendis's rich scarlet cloak floated behind her in the breeze. The
ground was slightly damp under our horses' hooves, and trees and bushes on every hand were loud with birds' voices. "Not yet," said Arsendis when I lifted my fist. The high and low bells on my
goshawk's legs were tuned in harmony, as were the high and low bells on her sparrowhawk, but somehow their notes clashed with each other.

After a highly propitious start to the morning, everything quickly began to go wrong. As a commander I had always had to size up a situation rapidly, and the years had taught me to base my
conclusions on the least optimistic estimates. One would have had to be unusually optimistic to find this morning going well.

First Thierri appeared unexpectedly just when I thought we had eluded him, gracefully sitting a horse both swifter and more light-footed than mine, his red hair shining like burnished copper in
the morning sun. Arsendis insisted he ride with us for a mile or two, though telling him teasingly that he would have to leave again before she showed me the secret home of thrush and woodcock.

Then she retold a long, complicated story she had from her sister the countess, about some quarrel her sister had had with her neighbors back home. Thierri seemed politely interested and chuckled
appreciatively; I rode in stony silence.

After half an hour Thierri obediently rode off, laughing and saying, "I'll leave you alone with your galant, my lady." But by then an awkwardness seemed to have developed between us, so that
she, who had been chattering away like a blackbird a minute before, now spoke in monosyllables, which I had to force myself to answer. I glanced toward her from the corner of my eye and found
her staring at the side of my face. Though she immediately turned away, I knew all too well that she had been looking with revulsion at my scar.

"Your cloak is most attractive," I said, trying to be the flattering galant Thierri had mockingly called me. "The scarlet suits well your hair and eyes."

She gave a quick smile. "A gift from someone who said the same thing."

A suitor, then, I thought, doubtless someone she would have preferred to have accompany her rather than the scarred count to whom her father had said she had to be polite. "Lord Thierri has made
no further insulting comments toward me—or your father for bringing me south," I said as lightly as I could, wondering if she would have preferred to have been hawking with him. "Perhaps the
Paschal season has curbed his tongue."

"Or perhaps he has finally realized," she answered with a mischievous laugh, "that the reason my father sent all the way to the northern marches for a new Count of Peyrefixade was to make
absolutely sure that Thierri could not possibly raise a legal claim himself to the county against the late countess's own cousin."

So was that all I was to the duke, someone whose bloodline assured him that he need not accept Thierri as count?

"But do not imagine, Count, that he was quite so desperate to find an alternative to Thierri that he would choose even a direct blood descendant of the first Count of Peyrefixade without the most
careful inquiries as to the man."

I could not tell now whether she was mocking or complimenting me. Unable to find an appropriate answer, I lapsed into silence, even knowing that my silence itself must give Arsendis ennui.

"This meadow is always very productive of birds," she said at last in a small voice—regretting bitterly having no company but me, I thought. But she was right about the birds. As our horses
walked through the long grass a covey of woodcock abruptly shot out from under their hooves with a boom of wings. We each pulled off the hoods and cast our hawks after them.

Both hawks were on their prey immediately, swooping down from above with a bite of taloned claws. The birds struggled to free themselves, but Arsendis dismounted at once, seizing and
expeditiously dispatching the woodcocks with a knife while I held the hawks by their jesses. She cut each hawk a minuscule bite of flesh, then they were hooded again, and the dead woodcocks went
into her game bag.

"A good start!" Arsendis said with a laugh, waving away my assistance as she remounted gracefully.

I began to hope that perhaps she was not regretting my company after all. However, the meadow seemed temporarily denuded of birds. We waited, sitting on our horses as they cropped the new
grass, for the birds to return from wherever we had frightened them. After a minute in which the awkward silence started to reassert itself, I asked, "Are you acquainted with this Archbishop
Amalric?"

Arsendis flashed me a quick look from dark eyes and pursed her red lips. "You mean you did not know?"

"Know what?" I said in irritation. If someone would just explain to me who all these people were among whom I now lived, and what quarrels and alliances they had developed in years of
association with each other, life would become much easier.

"He is my uncle, my mothers brother."

"Dear God," I muttered. I stared at the ground, knowing I should have guessed something of the sort, or inquired more closely of my men at Peyrefixade. But without Bruno no one brought me
random bits of information unless I knew to ask—not even Melchior, who kept on (and quite rightly, I had to admit) putting his responsibilities as spiritual advisor ahead of those as worldly
informant. When I felt Arsendis's eyes on me, I added, not looking up, "I thought your father's reaction to my having defied the Inquisition was a little mild. Now I realize he was just waiting to
give his brother-in-law free rein with me."

When I heard her laughing I did look up, both mortified and discouraged. "You think that because the mighty Duke Argave and the great Bishop Amalric are brothers-in-law, they are then dear
friends and allies?" she asked with a teasing smile. "You should spend more time at our court, Lord Count, rather than hidden away at Peyrefixade."

She shook the reins on her palfrey, and we rode slowly through the meadow. No partridge or woodcock exploded from beneath our horses' hooves, but other birds seemed to be returning. "They have
to be courteous with each other, of course," she continued thoughtfully, "and I am sure Uncle Amalric, back when he was still a cathedral canon at Haulbe', considered it a great victory when his
sister married the young duke. But, as I'm sure you'll see, they don't agree on everything—he can scarcely have been happy when he realized that Father did not intend to give up his mistress."

I remembered the woman in the rooming house in the thoroughly disreputable part of town, the house where the search for whoever had wanted me assassinated had ended. "The archbishop could
hardly approve of that, I'm sure," I said, putting indignation into my voice. Arsendis, I thought, must detest the women who had held a greater place than her own mother in her fathers
affections.

But Arsendis gave her tinkling laugh again. "Of course he couldn't. But that didn't keep some of the rest of us from approving. I only met my father's mistress a few times—he gave her up at last
when I was still small—but I still liked her much better than my own mother. My brother, on the other hand—"

She went suddenly quiet. She had not meant, I was sure, to mention her brother, the one who had left home to follow the heretics. But I thought, looking at her profile, that even though she would
not speak of him she had not yet cast him out of her heart. As for the duke, he detested the heretics because they had taken his heir from him—but did that mean he thoroughly approved of the
Inquisition, or was he constantly in fear that they would find and burn his own son?

"Let's get some more birds!" Arsendis called in a bright voice that did not quite ring true. She jerked the hood from her hawk and cast him into the air, bells ringing, and I immediately followed
suit.

Her sparrowhawk mounted higher and higher above us, then shot down toward an unwary thrush. A second later it had the bird in its talons. Arsendis whirled the lure and called, and after only
a few seconds' reluctance the hawk returned to her fist, bringing the dead thrush with it.

"But where is your hawk?" she asked, slipping the bird into the game bag.

My goshawk was gone, whether pursuing some other prey or merely obeying the inherent perversity of all hawks. I swung the lure and shouted, the shout that always brought back my brother's
hawks.

Then I realized Arsendis was laughing again. "Do your hawks in the barbarous north indeed respond to such a repellent call as that?" She called herself as she had called to her own hawk, and hers
shifted on her gauntleted wrist, but my goshawk remained invisible. I whirled the lure harder, searching the wide sky desperately for the hawk's dark shape. I knew perfectly well that although we
could not see it, it could see us with its far sharper eyesight, and was probably having a good laugh at my expense.

"Let's listen for the bells," Arsendis suggested. We went silent for a moment, straining for the sound, hearing nothing. How was I going to explain to Duke Argave that I had lost his hawk?

After a moment Arsendis shrugged. "That goshawk was always a bit difficult. I blame my father," with a pout of her pretty lips, "for sending you out with it. But do not worry. It's bound to
become hungry and show up in someone's farmyard sooner or later. Everyone around here knows that a jessed hawk will bring a good reward from my father no matter whose it might be, so he
should have it back in a day or two."

I could not be so sanguine. She flew her own hawk several more times while I tried not to appear surly, but found it increasingly difficult to find anything to say to fill the long silences. At least,
I thought, the day could not go any worse than it already had.

Abruptly I heard a sound of bells from the far side of the meadow. I jerked upright and saw a goshawk perched in a tree, fluttering as though its jesses were tangled. "There it is!" I shouted,
swinging the lure.

"Oh, I'm so pleased!" she cried, belying everything she had said about how recovering it would be no problem.

In a minute, when the hawk did not come, I realized it must be too tangled in the twigs to break free. "I'll have to climb up and get it," I said cheerfully. A simple problem like this, one I could
solve with a little physical exertion, was welcome. "Wait for me."

I rode across the meadow and tethered my horse to the tree's lower branches, then cautiously started up. Arsendis rode after me but had the sense to stop a little distance back, silently watching.

The hawk looked at me with deep suspicion, ringing its bells loudly as it struggled unsuccessfully to move out of reach.

Slowly, so as not to further frighten it, testing each brittle branch before I put my weight on it, I climbed upward. Twigs bit into my skin and caught my hair. I tried all the soothing things the
master of my brother's mews said to his hawks, but the goshawk's yellow eye remained wild, and as I carefully reached up a gauntleted hand toward the trailing jesses it tried to strike at me.

"The Inquisition doesn't operate in my county without my permission," I told it firmly, "and no hawk evades me, either." It did not seem impressed.

I settled a shoulder against the tree trunk and reached up again, and this time was able to snatch the ends of the trailing jesses. But they were truly tangled, and though I tugged and the hawk
beat its wings to get away, it remained trapped among the branches. The only solution was to use my other hand to work the jesses free.

This hand did not have the heavy gauntlet. I tried to snap off the twigs that held the hawk imprisoned, not letting the hand get too close to the hawks beak, as I balanced uncertainly on a branch
fifteen feet above the ground. There, and there! Another sharp tug and the last imprisoning twig snapped free.

And the hawk dove at my unprotected hand.

I jerked it back out of reach just in time. But the sudden movement cost me my balance. The sole of one riding boot slipped on the hard bark of the branch. Trying to catch myself, I grabbed at the
tree trunk, the jesses slipping through my fingers. The hawk shot up and away, ringing its bells jeeringly, as I crashed downward through the branches.

I hit the ground hard. For a minute I lay without moving, waiting to recover my breath, trying to decide what parts might be broken. The initial sensation was the stinging where twigs had cut
at my face, but there was a throbbing pain building in one foot. Arsendis leaped from her palfrey and dropped to her knees beside me, which only made it worse. I had been going to show her my
abilities, not complete the demonstration that the scarred count from the north was an utter fool.

Her hair had all come loose, and her face was white. "Caloran!" she cried. "Are you yet alive? Can you hear me?"

I choked back several irritable comments and reached out my arms to the side, flexing them one at a time. "Arms not broken," I said with a desperate attempt at good humor. "Now for the legs."

The knees functioned, but my left ankle gave a warning shot of pain when I turned it. Broken or just strained? I pushed myself up to a sitting position, tugged off the boot, and carefully felt the
ankle, trying to rotate it. No bones poked through the skin, and I could turn the foot in all directions, even if I had to do so with my teeth set against the pain.