Firethorn (18 page)

I admit it made me smile at first to see Sire Galan scolded. I crossed my legs and tucked my skirts more tightly against the chill and had a sobering thought: he would never learn caution, not from his uncle nor anyone else. His quickness was all of a piece with his rashness. As long as he relied on one to get him out of scrapes brought on by the other, he might not live to be a more deliberate man.

Now the Crux stood and leaned on the table, jutting his chin forward. The table tilted under his weight and trenchers and cups and all slid toward him. He raised his voice again. “Am I the only man who saw beyond the point of his sword yesterday? We could ill afford to lose three men. Don't count this as a victory. I measured you against the Lynx and they were weak enough that you stood against them. Against a stronger clan you would not have prevailed. And against our enemy? I fear not one of you would live to cover your wife again if we went into battle today.”

He had them in his fist. I couldn't hear so much as a drawn breath. He straightened up and crossed his arms.

“Well, we don't go to battle today, nor tomorrow, nor yet for a while, for Summons Day is a tennight away and after that we must wait upon the signs and the winds—the gods know how long—to take ship and cross the sea. We'll use the time. Now you're blooded, you have the scent. Now I'll teach you. A blade can't be honed without a stone. I'll be hard on you, hard as stone, and the harder I am, the more you'll thank me when you've taken the sharpest edge I can give you.”

Then he showed his teeth in his beard and rapped his knuckles on the table. “Eat, if you have appetite. For we've a little skirmish this afternoon with Delve's clan, and I plan to mine some gold from them and a few mares. If you disgrace me less than you did yesterday, I'll be content.”

Another tourney. A bruise over a bruise. They'd endure it gladly; I saw their eagerness. They laughed and stretched when he opened his fist and let them go. He was a clever man, to offer them reproof and just enough praise: oil for the whetstone. It was a game to them. They thought war would be much the same, a few more bruises and scars and better trophies.

I would not endure it gladly. It would be easier to be on the field with a reed for a sword than to sit on the hillside day upon day and watch—unless I could teach my tripes not to knot and my blood not to surge through my veins, unless I could watch Sire Galan as if he were any man.

I wouldn't go. I'd stay in the tent.

Staying in the tent was no better, staying and keeping count. Two nights had passed since he'd made his wager. The first night had been peaceful, because I'd been ignorant. The second had been sleepless, and there were two yet to come.

Suppose the maid, if she was still a maid, pleased him so much he decided to take her in keeping, pay her father the fee. If he thought he could bring another woman to the tent and still keep me as his trinket, his lucky talisman …

Well, if he did, was he so far wrong?

The maiden is Ardor's kin, carries Ardor's blood, and surely has Ardor's favor. I must have been mistaken, thinking the god took me in hand when I ate the firethorn berries in the Kingswood and didn't die, and then later when Sire Galan and I joined paths. I'd taken too much on myself. Always the same stiff-necked baseless pride. Why would Ardor trouble with me, a drudge of no family, no Blood?

Or if I had not been mistaken, then had the god abandoned me?

Between the pavilions of Sire Guasca and the Auspices was a little dark place, hidden from sight by a tent flap in front and, at the back, an oxcart turned on its side because of a broken axle. I crouched in this little hollow, which stank because men went behind the cart to piss, and I opened the bag of finger bones. I pulled out a few tufts of grass and smoothed the dirt with my palm, and drew the circle and the lines that divided the realms of the gods just as Az had shown me.

The last of the three readings Az had made for me was to determine which gods governed the arc of my life. Three casts and every time the bones had landed in one of Ardor's aspects. I kissed the Dame's blue-dyed finger bone and Na's red one and sat back on my haunches. I heard a man in Sire Guasca's tent say, “Where have you put the hauberk? You've mislaid it!“ and the sound of a blow.

I was daring the god. This was arrogance. Still, I would ask only once, cast only once, and if the two little bones did not land in Ardor's domain, I would know I was not under the god's hand—perhaps had never been. I closed my eyes and threw, and when I opened them I saw that Na's bone had landed in Ardor's avatar of the Smith and the Dame's in Wildfire. Whatever other gods were dicing with us, Ardor still claimed me.

Only a fool expects gladness from a god, or gifts without price, or reasons. And this turned out to be the worst thing of all, worse than being mistaken, worse than being abandoned: I was still of some small use to the god, though I could see no purpose in any of it.

I went to the tourney, of course. There was a long wait once we got to the field, for two other clans were skirmishing there already. The Crux had ordered a canopy put up for the clan, and I sat nearby with the foot soldiers and drudges. But the shelter was empty; all the Blood, cataphracts and armigers, were milling down by the field on horseback.

I grew bored and looked at the sky: more low clouds dragging fat bellies from over the sea, like the day before and the day before. At least it wasn't raining. Gray and white seabirds wheeled overhead, joined by a few crows. The sea was to my left, out of sight. Since we'd come here my sense of direction had been rearranged. The sea was a presence, a great gulf of air and wind and water, and I could feel it even when it wasn't visible beyond the hills or the tents of the Marchfield.

I looked at the combat again and realized it was the clan of Prey on the field, the king's own clan, and that the men they fought bore the crimson and white colors of the queenmother. There were twice as many men fighting as in the tourney yesterday.

I looked at the crowd: it was like a festival day. A good many farmers had come with kith and kin, all of them idling on the hills, having found something better to do than the chores that waited at their crofts; they mingled with soldiers and drudges of the Marchfield and the peddlers and whores come to sell them something. The drabs who worked the tourneys were called two-copper whores, after their price. They didn't even have a blanket to call their own, for they didn't lie down, only bent over. It was the cheapest jounce a man could get, unless he got it for free.

I told Fleetfoot I wished to walk all around the field to see the sights and asked if he'd come, but he was spellbound by the tourney. I took Noggin with me, thinking it was for the best. I meant to look for a certain maiden of Ardor, who'd troubled my thoughts day and night of late, and Fleetfoot was no simpleton like Noggin, he'd guess what I was about.

Along the way it seemed that every foot soldier, jack, bagboy, horseboy, or drudge-of-all-work that I passed yapped or clucked at me, jeered or whistled, called me skinsheath or whore, honeypot or little fish, or some other lewd byname. One varlet followed for a while, saying he'd tan the leather of my sheath for me, and suggesting various ways he could do it, some of which were surely impossible, and others bringing Sire Galan too much to mind, so that I blushed even as I pretended indifference. I heard such nonsense whenever I walked with Spiller or Noggin as an escort, or even with both of them at once, but I couldn't get used to it. Men kept quiet only when I was by Sire Galan's side. At first I thought they were mocking me, for I was no beauty to win praises, foul, or otherwise. Soon I saw it was the dish they ladled out to any mudwoman, whether she wore a striped skirt or not, unless she had white hairs enough to prove a grandmother. But Mai had told me, and it was true, that as long as I had a man on my arm they'd keep their hands off. So I took Noggin's arm, I looked straight ahead or at my feet, never meeting a man's eye, for that was dangerous. And I told myself I had armor enough to keep words from wounding.

I walked with Noggin around the field, down one hill, across a rain-sodden bog, up the next hill toward a certain awning hung with the rose pennants of Ardor. Noggin said, “Why do you walk so fast?” and then, catching sight of a man selling fried bread, “I'm hungry.” I told Noggin it was no use whining, and he had best bid his hunger go to sleep or find his master and beg from him. I had no coin for buying bread.

“Buy it with a kiss,” the peddler said.

“Very well,” I said, shoving Noggin toward him. “Kiss him then, if you like his looks so much.”

It raised a laugh. We marched on around the field.

“I'm thirsty,” Noggin said, and said it again until I heard him.

My mood was fouler than the weather. I couldn't abide having him there with me but dared not go on alone. “Muttonhead!” I said. “Next time carry the waterskin as Spiller bid you. Will you remember?” But what was the use of being angry with such a lackwit? I wondered why Sire Galan had brought him, for he made a poor bagboy. Perhaps it was enough that he knew how to goad a mule with sticks and kicks and curses.

We found rainwater pooled in a hollow on the top of a long stone ridge that cut through the sod. We found food, the bland, crunchy roots of bogbeauty, down by one of the seeps between the hills.

And we found Mai. There she was, no mistaking her. Even sitting on the ground, she was a mountain of a woman. One of her swollen, mole-speckled, blue-veined breasts was bare. A boy of about two years of age with a shock of black hair sucked at the nipple while his hands teased at the fringe of her headcloth and his toes waggled. He was clad in a linen shift too short to cover his dangle.

Though Mai was a mudwoman, a sheath like me, she'd contrived to put a roof over her head, a little lean-to pitched right next to the painted leather awning of Delve. I hadn't marked her clan that night behind the tents, when she'd saved me from the pack of unmannerly curs. Now I saw by the banners it was the very clan the Crux had challenged to a tourney that afternoon. She shared her shelter with a girl of ten or eleven years and a wheezing piebald hound. Three men sat cross-legged beside it, watching the tourney; two of them I recognized. I could not forget those faces. But Mai was there, and therefore nothing to fear.

I stopped in front of her, admiring her audacity. Just to see her raised my spirits.

She looked up and grinned. “If it isn't the country cousin!” she said. “And arrayed in a fine new headcloth and slippers, I see—and a beautiful bruise too.”

I put my hand over my cheek. I'd forgotten the bruise Sire Galan had given me until she mentioned it; it must be yellow by now. I said, “The one paid for the others.”

“Then you were cheated, girl,” she said. “The slippers will wear out sooner than the bruise, over stony ground like this.”

I flushed and looked down, sorry I'd tried to make a jest of it. She must think poorly of me already, after the way we'd met. Now I'd made matters worse.

Mai laughed and pushed the dog away. He got up sullenly and left the lean-to, turned round three times, and lay down with his head on her feet. “No harm meant,” she said, patting the ground next to her. “Sit here and we'll have a gossip. Who is this handsome fellow with you? Is he the one so generous with gifts?”

I knew from the mockery in her voice that she didn't believe it; still, I was indignant. “Oh, never! This is Sire Galan's bagboy, Noggin.”

Noggin smiled at her in his daft way. Mai said, “Well, bagboy, go and see if Cram over there will give you a sip of his ale.” To me she said, “I see you've found an escort.”

I squeezed in beside her and whispered, “He's a simpleton, you know.”

She laughed. “So much the better! Put a ring in his nose and even an ox looks enough of a bull to keep trouble away.”

The girl sitting on the other side of Mai leaned forward to get a look at me, peeping through the stringy locks of her hair. When I smiled at her, she ventured a little smile of her own. She was as slim as Mai was stout, thin enough to slip between two gap teeth.

“That's third-daughter, that's Sunup,” Mai said, “and this is my littlest, Tobe.” She jiggled the boy on her knee until his mouth slipped off the nipple and he began to cry. She bared the other breast and he was content again. “I need to wean him soon, but he makes such a fuss.”

“How many altogether?” I asked.

“Nine alive, but just the one boy,” she said. “I only brought two with me, Tobe because he's my baby and Sunup to look after him. The rest are home with first-daughter.”

“Blessings on them,” I murmured.

Mai was the sheath of a cataphract, Sire Torosus. He'd been born landless and luckless, fifth son of a wastrel; now he had a stone keep, rich fields, and six villages in the eastern river valley that had seen as many battles as harvests. What he had was hard-won in bloody service to his clan and the king in every war that had come along for the past twenty years. He'd married well, within the clan, but his wife was of the opinion that she had married poorly. No matter how he pleased his lords, he never could please his dame.

When he wasn't campaigning he lived with his wife and their four sons in the keep, while Mai lived below in the village with her children. Mai had followed him to war for fifteen years, but always before in summertime. This was the first winter campaign, and Sire Torosus didn't approve of it, nor of Queenmother Caelum, who had somehow talked her brother, our king, into this unseasonable venture.