Firethorn (9 page)

Noggin rode behind us in the baggage train, on a mule already laden with sacks. Since we had risen that morning, the bagboy had been clouted by Spiller, Sire Rodela, and Sire Galan, one after the other, for mislaying things. When he loaded the pack mules, I marked how he clouted the beasts in turn.

The three foot soldiers, Cinder, Nift, and Digger, trudged along with the baggage. All of Sire Galan's varlets would fight, of course, ahorse or afoot, but the footmen had no special duties; they did everyone's bidding, even Noggin's.

My mare's name was Thole and she endured me well. Noggin had ridden her before I came, and I daresay I treated her more gently. Her hide was the color and gloss of a polished chestnut. My legs ached from straddling the barrel of her back, and the saddle grew harder by the hour. No doubt the mare had the worst of it, for the Crux set a stiff pace that day to make up for time lost the day before, and soon Thole's belly and flanks were dark with sweat. When we stopped at midday, I watered her upstream from the other horses and rubbed her down with swatches of coarse grass. I fed her oats from my hand and scratched her under the chin as if she were a cat. Flykiller had not yet given me a word, but when he saw that I'd tended to her well he gave me a nod.

Sire Galan and the other cataphracts and the priests sat with the Crux, feasting on cold dishes conjured up by his provisioner. The First's men had conjured up a table too, and spread it with a white cloth. Stools appeared, clever contraptions of leather and wood, unfolded from neat bundles in the luggage. The cataphracts ate while their armigers served. Then the armigers were served by the Crux's varlets, and at last the varlets got the leavings—but the cook made sure there was plenty to go around.

I'm certain it was better than what Spiller gave to Sire Galan's men and me: cold pottage scraped from the pot with a bit of leathery brown bread, without even the grace of salt. I saw I'd have to look out for myself, if that was Spiller's idea of a meal. There was better food all around us in the woods and beside the road. I found some tiny wild pears and put them in a sack I made by tying knots in Na's old dress. There were walnuts too, and enough chestnuts for a feast (I dote on a roasted chestnut), and mouse ears for greens, gone to seed but good enough for stewing with a bit of bacon. Best of all, I found a rare patch of sweetrod, long white roots that cook up sweet as honey.

When I'd said good-bye to Cook, she'd told me I'd be wise to seek out the Crux's provisioner (who also went by the name of Cook); he'd be a good man to befriend, she said. So I took him some sweetrod in my gather sack. He was gruff at first, thinking I'd come to beg, but more amiable when he saw what I carried. He gave me a slice of mutton, and I made a fine meal after all.

I looked for Iza among Sire Guasca's varlets, thinking I'd given her scant courtesy the day before, and it would do my eyes good to see another woman, even if she was an empty-headed prattler. The men were taking their midday rest, sprawled in the shade under the poplars, waving away flies with an occasional flap of the hand or snoring like bellows. But Iza was nowhere to be found, not among Sire Guasca's men, nor among Sire Pava's.

Later I heard she'd turned back for home early in the morning. The story went up and down the line with laughter in its wake. Sire Rodela dallied behind to tell it to Spiller and Flykiller. He said, with a rapid, hammering laugh, “Her buttocks were so bony the mule complained. Lich took pity on the beast and sent the baggage home afoot.” Some wag had said it first, and everyone after passed it off as his own.

Spiller said, “I heard she had meat enough, but she was stingy with it. Lich offered his friends a go at her—for a bit of coin, mind you—but she refused to take to the blanket. He says, ‘You're no use to me then,' and she says, ‘Oh, Lich, I beg you,' and he says, ‘You will or else,' and she wouldn't, so she left. So I heard.” Then Spiller, pleased with his own wit, repeated in a high squeak, “Oh, Lich, I beg you,” while they laughed and whooped until tears ran down their faces and they leaned helpless over their horses' necks. As if they were the finest of friends.

Sire Rodela caught his breath and said, “That Lich is a greater fool than I thought him. A priggish woman is like a fish with feathers—can't fly, can't swim, no use to anyone. If it were up to me, I'd have plucked her. I'm sure that underneath she's as slippery as any woman.” He turned in his saddle to look at me.

He was like a dog, grinning as he growled. I met his eyes for an instant and my hackles rose. I looked down. I thought I'd better find myself a dagger; my bone-handled knife was but a little stinger.

Then I thought of Iza, footsore and heartsore on the road home. All along, Lich had meant to make a whore of her, and be her pander. Under my breath I prayed for her to Ardor Hearthkeeper, that she might come home safe; to Wend Weaver, that she might find her place; to Crux, the Moon—that he might let her go. I prayed for myself as well, the only woman left in the troop now that Iza was gone. Yet I wondered if the gods mocked our prayers and us. I imagined them as giants, and we their toys, like straw dolls that come apart in the hands of a heedless child. Or maybe Iza was merely a fool, beneath the notice of any god, and I was a greater fool, still riding after my hotspur. A fool, a bitch in heat—hadn't the Crux called me that? Of course all the curs like Sire Rodela would come sniffing around. And Sire Pava.

It did not bear thinking on. I kept my eyes on the road, looking over the mare's ears as her head nodded and she picked her way among the ruts and stones.

By the next morning the story had changed again. Everyone liked this tale better, though it was untrue: they said Lich would take her only from behind, because she was so sour-faced she could pickle a man's prick just by looking at it. But he'd bruised himself on her bones, and so he'd sent her home, saying he preferred his hand or a boy's buttocks. By the afternoon there was a song about it.

When I went to mount Thole in the morning, the saddle was loose and I ended by sprawling on the road. Sire Rodela laughed and said to Flykiller, “You should take better care of Sire Galan's sheath.” With a frown so fierce his black brows nearly met over his nose, Flykiller said, “The girth was tight when I put on the saddle.”

In the afternoon Sire Rodela condescended to ride along and gossip with Spiller on the subject of Sire Galan's wife, with his voice pitched to carry back to me: how her skin was like cream, her eyes like a doe's, her lips two rose petals, her breasts round as apples and so on; how Sire Galan had married her last year, and with what ceremony; how the bride had worn a gold mask of the Sun and a robe of cloth-of-gold, and her unbound hair hung down to her knees.

Marriages of the Blood are consummated during the rites, before witnesses, so that the match will be beyond question. Shyness and constraint are to be expected, and the deed is quickly done. But sometimes a god blesses the bride and groom with holy abandon. Sire Rodela said there was no mistaking that Crux had seized Sire Galan, for he was tireless.

Spiller had been in the crowd outside the temple; he wanted to know all about it.

I turned Thole's head to the side of the road and slid off her back. I lifted her hoof as if I checked for a stone. But I was the one with the stone, a fl int lodged behind my temple, sharp as a memory: Sire Galan leading his naked bride to the marriage couch, her skin golden in the light of a thousand candles, her body everywhere soft, everywhere round and ripe. Her nipples gilded.

That was a year ago; they had a son already three months old.

Of course he was married, and she was fertile. The Blood do not send their sons to war before they've sired an offspring or two. Sire Pava hadn't waited for his wife to bear, but then he was known to be overhasty.

My curiosity had failed me when I needed it most. There were so many questions I'd neglected to ask, so much willful unknowing. But why should it matter to me? It didn't change where I stood one whit; I was ever at the bottom.

I leaned against the mare's shoulder, blinking. An old beech hedge lined the road, the leaves already turning copper. They would cling all winter, color against the smooth gray branches. Someone had planted the hedge before I was born, and it would outlast me too.

Sire Galan was such a wastrel with his charm that he had lavished it even on me. He'd turned in his saddle once or twice every league to search me out with his eyes, and smiled when I saw him looking. How easily he could roil me! I cursed him for it, and yet I waited for him to bestow his look and smile, which both promised and remembered. That very morning he'd ridden back to cull me from among his men and take me into the woods, and by the time we were done, the baggage train had passed us. We'd galloped to the front again, and the cataphracts had howled and jibed. They understood his attentions well enough.

And I must have misunderstood, thinking there was something more—for I felt as if a rope tied me to Sire Galan by the keels of our ribs, it must tug under his breastbone as it did under mine. But I'd been a fool to believe it. Surely it was folly to believe it.

Flykiller rode back and asked, “Is she lame?” It was the first he'd spoken to me.

“I thought perhaps she favored one leg, a little hitch is all. But it's nothing.” And I vowed nothing would show on my face.

He dismounted to see for himself, lifting each of the mare's feet in turn.

“She has a smooth gait,” I said.

Flykiller checked the girth to see that it was tight. “She does. She has heart too,” he said, and I could swear he nearly smiled at me. He bent his knee so that I could stand on it to mount and I put my hand on his shoulder. He was kinder now; still, I wished to ride anywhere but with Sire Galan's men.

A rumormonger overtook us one afternoon, riding at a smart trot on a dappled gray gelding, a very fine horse for a mudman. The horse soldiers called to him for a song when they saw his banner, the sign of his trade: a hollow red tongue that belled and flapped in the breeze. But he waved and rode on until he reached the warriors in front, where there was coin to be made. He had news of the court, of Ramus, of their keeps and kin; he brought messages for some and gossip for everyone.

That evening, after the cataphracts and armigers had supped and the Crux's fire had burned so low it barely crackled, the rumormonger brought out his fat-bellied dulcet and a drum he played by knocking his knees together. Spiller, Noggin, and I crept close and sat behind a bush to listen. The rumormonger plucked on the strings of the dulcet, and if I hadn't known better, I'd have thought two men were playing, for he played two tunes at once, braiding them together so well that they became one. He set such a sprightly pace that I couldn't see how his fingers could keep up. I'd not heard many rumormongers at the manor, and none to compare with him: a man of talents could do better than to travel the hard mountain roads from one poor village to the next.

Soon he began to sing, and his voice floated effortlessly above the melody, alighting on it only now and then. To please his hosts he sang a song of Crux, of the time the Moon had tricked the Sun into giving him some of her radiance, and the Sun had stolen it back, all but a tiny piece the Moon had hidden in his purse, which lights him still.

Next the rumormonger sang the ballad of Queenmother Caelum. It was a long tale, but he made it go by fast, for he sang it so well. I knew little about her, save that she was our king's sister, and it was her war on which we were embarked to fight against her son. I knew even less of Incus, her kingdom, which we call in the Low tongue Oversea. It was from Oversea the Blood came to settle in these lands, but that was long ago, so long ago it seems as if they've always been here.

The rumormonger played with a lilt at first, as he sang of Princess Caelum, slender and fair, and of how twenty years ago she'd crossed the Inward Sea to marry the warrior lord of Incus, King Voltur, bringing peace as her dowry. Within the year Queen Caelum was brought to bed and delivered up a prince, a boy with hair black as a raven's wing and eyes blue as twilight, and the king looked on him and was pleased, and named him Corvus. All Incus rejoiced, sang the rumormonger, and he turned the ballad into a jig that made my legs want to dance.

Then he struck his strings hard and made them jangle, and he added notes of discord. He sang that eight years of peace passed while the prince grew lithe and strong, but too much peace bred discontent in eager young men and greedy old ones. So King Voltur gathered his army to war on the kingdom to the south, to win a fertile valley with a lake of sapphire blue. He swore it should be his, for his mountains lay about it on three sides.

On the day of his victory, he was slain, not in battle but by treachery, for the Firsts of five clans had conspired against him, saying each to the other that the king had grown soft, and each to himself that he would rule in his stead, seeing he left a mere child behind.

The Firsts came back to the palace in the city of Malleus, and they laid the king's helm in Queenmother Caelum's lap, crying false tears and saying, “Woe to us all, for our good king is gone. We worthy men will take the burden of the kingdom from you until Prince Corvus comes of age, for it is too heavy for a woman to bear.” And all Incus mourned.

But the queenmother sniffed out their treachery. She had the Firsts of the five clans torn limb from limb, each by four black horses, and she left their sundered bodies to feed the ravens.