Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) (49 page)

    
So the month of Life had passed us by, as did Power and Desire.  I got to know this woman whom I called slave by my lips and wife in my head.  She called me her
White Wolf
, named by her brother by some strange coincidence.  For those who don’t know it, lupus means wolf in Latin.  The blond hair made me
white
,
wolf
for the fighting style, though I didn’t see how. 

    
The ownership of Shela, formerly
She Runs Swiftly,
made up a serious part of her existence.  There was no collar and no brand, nor a whip held menacingly, and I didn’t make her call me, “Master,” with every sentence.  She gave her opinion freely but she liked and needed to be told what to do.  She punched and kicked and even bit me like a Volkhydran’s wife (especially when I called her that) but at the same time a pat on the butt from me sent her running.  She felt dishonored if another served me or cleaned up after me or curried my horse.  An Andaran woman met her man’s needs and eased his mind, making him more focused on supporting her and the children she bore him.

    
If she saw something she wanted, she usually said nothing and left me to guess at it.  She expected very little in the way of material things and wanted nothing more than she could carry easily on her gelding.  Wealth to her meant horses and children, and she had more than enough of one and none of the other.

    
That one thing weighed on her and I knew it, a wound on her soul that she could not heal.  No man who could tame Blizzard could be infertile so
of course
the blame fell on her, and I know she wondered if it had to do with her gifts from Power.  Suddenly she could not remember ever seeing another Sorceress with a child.

    
If I looked at a pretty girl, she used to laugh.  Certainly my relationship with Genna didn’t bother her.  She had even offered to collect one for me if I found my lust so insatiable.  By the end of the month of Power and the advent of yet
another
period, she saw me admiring an Uman girl and asked me seriously if I was considering a second wife.

    
Prior to Shela I would have found this irritating and moved on.  I am not a jealous person and don’t understand jealousy.  It makes no sense – if I’m with someone who loves someone else more, then I’m simply with the wrong person.  Based on my miserable track record with women, I usually found it much less painful when they left me for someone else.  If I had a valid reason for the breakup, then I considered myself lucky.

    
Not so with Shela.  Shela loved me, and I admit that I actually did love her.  It made me vulnerable and sometimes it made me crazy, but I felt the pain she felt like my own, amplified because I had to feel her share and mine.  She listened to me and didn’t have to pretend that she considered me the most important part of her world.  She loved me with no ulterior motive.  She kissed me right down to my soul, because it was my soul where she kissed me.  You don’t walk away from that.  Quite frankly, I wouldn’t have believed that anything that good could exist.

    
Still, I had heard of couples who had sex until they couldn’t stand it in an effort to have babies and never believed in that, either, until I saw it starting to happen to me.

    
At the end of the year, before the beginning of the next, is a day called “All Gods’ Day,” which is spent much like our own Christmas with feasting, celebration and gift giving.  Shela and I were coming back from Andurin through a little town called Elephos or something when she reminded me of the tradition.  Fortunately, Elephos had a note-taker to the State bank where I could withdraw a few hundred gold coins.  Life had just started to be a cold month, Power more so and Desire had been chilling. The cold air now came washing in off of Tren Bay, freezing me in my armor and forcing Shela to bundle up in leather trousers and a bearskin cloak.  We pressed on to Port Eldador, the nation’s capital, for the celebration.

    
She had left her mares with Thorn and just brought the gelding.  We rode in silence where we usually chatted about horses or magic or War and Power.  We finally arrived late in the day at the gates of Eldador, on the eve of All Gods’ Day.

    
“Hurry up, you,” the captain of the guard shouted to us as we approached, the last to make it through.  “Good men are waiting for a hot meal.”

    
We nodded and rode through, Blizzard and my armor receiving the usual stares.  We entered a huge square or receiving area just inside of the gate.  Wind whipped like a knife through empty stalls in the dark and cold passersby skulked on both sides.  Black and gray cloaks pulled up to necks and hoods over faces covered people’s pinched and sidelong looks as guards mumbled over two last-minute newcomers to the city.  I stopped Blizzard inside the gate and waited for Shela, equally sullen, to rein up next to me.  Eldador’s main gates closed to reveal a huge map of the city on its inner side.  Another had been painted on a far wall on the other side of the square, but in the night it sat in shadow.   We could find an inn or a stable nearby with either.

    
The stable came first.  I picked one towards the Royal Palace, where a better section of town offered top inns and restaurants.  Shela looked at me but said nothing; we normally stayed somewhere cheap and conserved our gold unless we had some ulterior motive.  Once in the stable, we unsaddled and groomed the horses in a business-like manner.  I groomed Blizzard myself, even though he would allow groomsmen if they were careful, because Shela had taught me how to do it right, and I liked it.  Shela cared for her own mount for the same reasons.

    
I had clipped my helmet to my belt.  I put down the currying brush when she caught the corner of my eye.  Standing on tiptoes, removing a snarl from the gelding’s mane, I could see the line of her butt and how her thighs were about an inch apart.  For the life of me, I wanted to throw her down right there.  She reminded me again that I had never really loved anyone before – not this really, down deep, can’t possibly live without you kind of love.  Most of it had come from her, from a heart so pure I couldn’t deny it, even if that same heart had a vicious, dark side that could literally tear a man apart.

    
She caught me looking at her, her eyes cold and blank, and put down the brush.  She sighed a “not in the mood” sigh and turned toward me, looking up to see what I wanted.

    
“I am covered in horse hair,” I snarled at her.

    
She cocked an eyebrow.  “So am I.  That’s a horse you’re grooming, you know.”

    
“Sarcastic girl,” I said, my voice reflecting my irritation.  “I suppose your mother never taught you to care for your man’s horse?”

    
Her mouth opened, then closed.  She searched my eyes and, finding nothing, looked down at the straw.  She sniffed, then said, softly, “Yes, Master.  She did.”

    
I snorted.  “And now we’re a mess, you and I. Your man is a
mess
, Shela.  What sort of woman are you?  What would your father say?”

    
She stayed quiet for a moment, then said, “He would say you were a weak man, and that I am a lazy girl.  He would be ashamed of his daughter.”

    
I could see the stable boy approaching from behind us with a bucket of water in each hand.  At this late hour there were no other servants.  All of the stalls were full, the horses stomping and snorting in the cold. 

    
“Lad,” I called to him, though he was likely only a few years younger than me, “is that hot water?”

    
“Tepid, Sir,” he said.  “It was hot, ‘afore I brought it through the cold.  I was about to muck the stalls with it.”

    
“I will give you a silver for it,” I said.  Shela’s eyes widened, as did the boy’s.  He ran into the stall where we were and dropped the bucket, holding his hand out for the silver.  “I’ll need some privacy,” I added, looking at Shela.

    
“I think I can stand out for a bit, then,” he said.  He was a thin waif of a boy, an Uman.  He ran out of the stable and closed the door behind him.

    
I looked back at Shela.  “Strip, you,” I snarled at her.

    
“Here?” she asked.  “It’s
freezing
, White Wolf!  You can’t mean -“

    
I backhanded her.  I had seen men do this to women in her tribe, and frowned at it.  I had been schooled from the moment I could walk that it was wrong, and yet I did it anyway.  She stopped dead when she looked in my eyes as I scowled.  I raised the back of my hand again meaningfully, and she dropped the fur cloak without a sound.  Next came her boots, a cotton shirt, the leather breeches and her leather thong and bra.  She stood before me with lips already turning blue, shivering but trying to hide it.

    
The girl who right then could have made the barn explode in a fire that would have warmed the city; who could kill me with a thought.

    
In her heart, she never forgot that she had been traded to me.  To her people, she had been made a slave girl.  I kept her as my wife, my soul mate.  Sometimes knowing this served her well enough, but sometimes I could tell otherwise.  Being unable to get pregnant had become one of those times.

    
Loving her meant knowing her.  It meant knowing her needs and being there for her.  There were times to listen and times to act.

    
I picked up the water and dumped it over her head, then took a rag and rubbed her body clean, making her stand with her hands against the wall of the stall for some of it.  I rubbed her roughly and intimately, more like an animal than a woman.  She held still with her head down – the water dripping from her lustrous black hair hiding whether she was crying.  Finally I took some evergreen oil, which passed for the local shampoo and washed her hair as well, my fingers massaging her scalp and raking down its length, past her butt.  When it looked clean, I rinsed her with the second bucket.  Finally I rubbed her dry, hair and all, with a clean blanket that I kept in my pack.

    
This hurt and degraded her and I knew it.  No free woman should be treated so harshly, like an animal, but she was no free woman.  Her teeth were chattering enough to make me think of Morse code when I finished.  She stooped to pick up the cloak and I smacked it out of her hand.  She looked up at me with hurt eyes.

    
“It is covered in hair, foolish girl,” I told her.  “Do you want to do this again?”

    
“No, Master,” she said, her eyes cast back down.  “Of course not.”

    
“I suppose that I will have to march you back naked to the hotel room, then,” I sighed. “What a commotion that will cause.”

    
Her brown eyes widened.  “You wouldn’t,” she said, and then paused, lowered her eyes.  “Please, White Wolf, Master, I am so sorry!  But you can’t – I mean, please, that would be so – “

    
I sighed again and she quieted down.  “Maybe there is a clean feed sack or a bit or burlap you can wear.  Let me look around.”

    
I stomped out of the stall, and just in time. I couldn’t keep a straight face anymore.  The note holder in Elephos had informed me of this stable and given me the name of it.  He had also, for a price, put me in touch with an extremely reliable messenger, and a cartographer who had drawn Shela from memory.

    
For ten gold coins he’d raced here ahead of us, purchased an elegant red ball gown and given it to the stable boy, with orders that he have two buckets of hot water ready for when we got here. He’d been instructed to wait for our arrival and then find us with them.

    
Now he waited silently with a red gown wrapped in cheesecloth, a few stalls away.  We exchanged a grin and I pressed another gold coin into his hand.  He nodded and stepped silently away out the back.  I doubted that Shela could have heard him through all of the teeth chattering.