Kushiel's Dart (101 page)

Picking my torturous way among them, I could see where the divisions lay, tribal and deeply ingrained. I had seen it at the Allthing; I knew. Here and there, among the slumbering camps, lay lines of division. Manni and Marsi, Gambrivü, Suevi and Vandalü... I picked my way among them, following the invisible faultlines, avoiding an outstretched hand here, an iron-thewed leg there.

It is not to say that there were none awake and watching, and none who saw me. Some Skaldi were, and did, much as I sought to avoid it. But they saw—what? A lone D'Angeline woman, young and disheveled, shivering with fear. I kept my head bowed, and angled toward the direction from which they'd brought the prisoners, praying it would suffice.

Elua was merciful; it did.

So many Skaldi! It was unreal to me, the numbers of them. And they looked so harmless, sleeping, fierce mustaches and braided beards like adornments on their sleep-softened faces, shields and weapons set aside like children's toys. Would that they were no more than they seemed in slumber.

It grew more difficult the closer I got to Troyes-le-Mont. I held my line toward the prisoners' camp as long as I dared, but at last I must cut inward, heading for the fortress, toward where the burned skeleton of a siege tower reared up above the moon-glimmering water of the moat. Selig had patrols posted here, roaming along the perimeter, keeping an eye on the defenders.

All my wiles I used to avoid their detection; even so, it scarce sufficed. I ducked back hard to evade an approaching patrol, huddling in the shadow of a firm-planted shield.

The corner of my cloak caught the edge of a stack of spears, sending them clattering to earth.

The nearest Skaldi, his arm thrown carelessly over a young D'Angeline woman, stirred and lifted his head. He blinked at me, bleary-eyed, then smiled slowly.

"Where do you run to, little dove?" he asked in Skaldi, raising himself on one arm. "Come, I'll show you your new home!"

One looks for aid where one can, in times of fear; my terrified gaze slid to the woman beside him. Her eyes were wide and clear. She had been awake. We stared at each other in the moonlight, D'Angelines alike, and I realized that she wore the rent and dirt-stained robes of a priestess of Naamah.

Of course; we were in Namarre, Naamah's country.

But I had not thought the Skaldi would raid her temples.

"Where are you going, messire?" she asked in D'Angeline, catching his arm and drawing him back to her. "Would you leave me to the cold?"

If he did not understand her words, he understood her intent, laughing and nuzzling her neck. Crouched in the shadows, I held her gaze as it watched me over the warrior's shoulder, bleak and resolute. I mouthed the words silently—thank you—and fled into the darkness, offering a blessing to Naamah, who had protected her Servant.

So I gained the ruined siege tower.

How often had I cursed Anafiel Delaunay for forcing me to endure the endless drill of our tumbling-master? I have repented of it since; I repented of it now, grasping the scorched timbers and hauling myself upward.

Up, up into the night I climbed, facing the grey stone walls of Troyes-le-Mont, from which I was separated only by the width of the narrow moat. The tower had gotten close; if they'd bridged the moat, it was high enough to clear the battlements.

But they hadn't, and the distance of their failure was the distance of my fate. I climbed as high as I dared, charcoal from the burned framework smudging my torn hands and rent clothing. Still, a kind of exhilaration overcame me, as it had on the rafters of Selig's Great Hall.

On the sloping underside of the nearest tower was a
muertriere
, an opening from which the defenders could shoot at the attackers below. Surely, I thought, it must be manned in such times. I broke off bits of burned timber from the framework of the siege tower, tossing them at the narrow window.

Lights moved within, torches bobbing. I saw the blur of a D'Angeline face, removed quickly and replaced with the point of a crossbow's quarrel, aimed in my direction.

My blood beat in my ears.

"Hold!" I cried aloud, letting my voice ring clear in the night. "In the name of Ysandre de la Courcel, hold!"

The archer held; and shouts arose from the Skaldi patrol. Figures raced in the darkness below me, swarming the base of the tower. The crossbow withdrew, replaced by the same face, perplexed eyes meeting my own.

I clung to the framework, leaning out as far as I dared, letting the faint torchlight from the battlements above illumine my face. "Tell the Queen," I shouted, "that Delaunay's other pupil has done her bidding!"

That much, and no more, I got out, before hands grasped me from below, dragging at me. My fingers lost their grip, splinters wedged beneath my nails; then I was loose and falling, my head striking hard against a timber before I was caught ungently by Skaldi arms.

They forced me down the burned tower, pushing me harshly, but not letting me fall when my trembling arms gave way or my feet slipped from the supports. I could hear the uproar arising in the camp, watchfires fanned to a blaze as I was brought to earth.

One of the Skaldi shoved me as my feet touched ground and I stumbled, falling to my knees before the captain of the watch on patrol. He cuffed me once, then glowered.

"What were you doing, eh?" he asked in Skaldic, cursing me. "Did you think to gain the castle? Your place lies that way, slave!" He pointed toward the prison camp. "Do you know the punishment for flight?"

"She can't understand you, Egil," one of my captors laughed, twisting a hand in my hair. I would have laughed too, if I hadn't feared hysteria. They thought I was a runaway slave. Steel and flame and Skaldi faces streaked across my vision, and the rank smell of a battlefield filled my senses. Somewhere, a rider approached.

"Oh, I think she understands." It was a different voice, deep and commanding, and rich with irony. I knew it. I knew it well, better than I cared to remember. My Skaldi captor wrenched at my hair, tilting my head back, forcing me to meet the speaker's eyes. He was tall, taller even than I recalled, the breadth of his shoulders looming against the fortress behind him. His hazel eyes, meeting mine, narrowed, and his lips curved in a smile. "Don't you, Faydra?" Waldemar Selig asked softly.

EIGHTY-SEVEN

"Yes my lord Selig." I forced the words out.

Dismounting and handing his reins to a waiting thane, Waldemar Selig stepped forward and struck me twice across the face. My head reeled. "That," he said calmly, "I owed you." Grabbing my forelock in his fist, he yanked my head up and stared at me. "What were you doing on the tower?"

I stared back at him and kept silent.

Twice more he struck me, hard and fast. "What were you doing?"

Touching my tongue to my lower lip, I tasted blood.

"She shouted somewhat," one of my captors said helpfully.

"What was it?" Selig asked, not relinquishing his grip.

They argued over it, puzzling out the words in phonetic D'Angeline. Swaying on my knees, I watched Selig's lips move silently as he tried to put the words together. He spoke passable D'Angeline. I knew. I'd helped teach him. "Tell the ... tell the Queen that Delaunay's other .. . other . . . something... has done her. . ." The words were too badly mangled for his ear. Frustration seized him, and he shook my head like a rattle. "Send for one of the prisoners," he ordered.

It was the priestess of Naamah; she was closest. Summoning a measure of dignity, she wrapped her stained red robes around her as they herded her across the plain. Her gaze slid across my face as if without recognition as she stood listening to the garbled phrase the patrol captain repeated.

"Tell the Queen that Delaunay's other pupil has done her bidding," she said coolly in D'Angeline.

I do not think she reckoned on Selig's comprehension; it unnerved her, a little, when he smiled. I watched his smile fade, though, and knew bitter triumph. The words meant nothing to him. "Thank you," he said to Naamah's priestess in curt D'Angeline, adding in Skaldic. "Take her back among the prisoners." She glanced back once over her shoulder, then I saw her no more. Selig considered me, still holding my head up-tilted. "It will go better for you if you tell me," he said, almost gently. "I don't owe you a quick death, but I'm willing to give it you, if you'll speak."

He was handsome, for a Skaldi; I have said as much. The torchlight born by warriors pressing round glinted from the gold fillet that bound his hair, the gold wire that twisted his beard into twin forks. My face ached, and tears stood in my eyes. I did laugh, then. I'd nothing left to lose. "No, my lord," I said simply. "I will take the other choice."

Cursing, he released his grip on my hair, thrusting me away. He turned to look thoughtfully at the fortress. "You claim to find pleasure in pain," he said. "Then let Ysandre de la Courcel see how well Waldemar Selig pleases her spies."

I have said, too, that Selig was a clever man. He knew well the merits of controlling the minds of one's enemies. He had a vast space cleared in front of the fortress, just beyond the range of the archers, and had it ringed round with torch-bearers. The barbican over the gate of Troyes-le-Mont was full-lit by then, and no doubt the defenders were watching: I knew it; Selig knew it too. Two of his thanes walked me out into the middle of the space, forcing me to my knees. White Brethren, their pelts tied loosely around their necks in the warmth of summer, woolens exchanged for steel and leather.

Selig wore white wolf-hide too, snowy by moonlight, trimming the tunic beneath his armor. He stepped into the circle of torchlight and wrenched at the neck of my gown, tearing it open. I felt the night air moving upon the bare skin of my back.

"Ysandre de la Courcel!" he shouted, his voice carrying. "See what becomes of spies and traitors!"

I heard the sound of his belt-dagger rasping clear of its sheath, felt the point of it placed against the skin of my left shoulder blade. The White Brethren held my arms as he began to cut.

Waldemar Selig was known to be a mighty hunter. Unlike D'Angeline nobles, Skaldic lords do not have servants to perform distasteful chores. They skin and gut their own kills. When Selig scored a strip of flesh from my back and began slowly to pull it down, I knew what he intended.

He was going to skin me alive.

I have known pain; Elua knows, I have known it. But nothing had ever prepared me for this. I gasped aloud as he cut, and when he took the strip of flesh, slippery with blood, in a pincerlike grip and began to draw it down, I screamed.

And it would go on for a long time.

Pain burst red across my vision, staggering me. I knew where I was, and did not. Kushiel, I thought, and my blood roared in my ears, beating like wings. I have done all I could. It was a relief, to surrender at last, at long last. I could hear my voice still, whimpering, ragged with pain, and Selig's whisper in my ear, tell me, tell me. These things happened, I know. And yet it all seemed distant and far beyond me, minor tempests on the outskirts of the maelstrom of agony I inhabited. The world lurched sideways through a bloodred haze, and hands dragged me upright. Pain blossomed all through me, finding a home at the base of my spine, radiating outward. Pain obliterates everything else. In pain, there is only the eternal present. I fell into it as if into a dark, bottomless well, seeing the bronze mask of Kushiel hanging before me, stern and compassionate, bronze lips moving, speaking words I felt in my bones. Pain redeems all. It is the awareness of life, a reminder of death. I saw faces, other faces, mortal and beloved: Delaunay, Alcuin, Cecilie, Thelesis, Hyacinthe, Joscelin . . . and more, flickering too fast to number, Ysandre, Quintilius Rousse, Drustan, the Twins, Phedre's Boys, Master Tielhard, Guy . . . some I didn't expect, Hedwig, Knud, Childric d'Essoms, the old Dowayne, Lodur One-Eye . . . even, at the end, my mother and father, dimly remembered, and the Skaldi mercenary who had tossed me in the air and laughed through his mustaches . . .

Melisande.

Ah, Elua! I did love her once . . .

It was the cessation of pain that brought me back. Selig's knife had halted in the course of parting my skin from my flesh, paused in an incredulous moment. A voice was speaking, one I knew, clear words ringing on the night air in heavily accented Skaldic.

"Waldemar Selig, I challenge you to the holmgang!"

They let me go, then, and I fell over, my cheek cradled on the dusty, trampled field. I bled into the dirt and blinked unbelieving at the figure that had parted the Skaldi ranks.

Stolen armor and a stolen horse for disguise—he had done it before—and Cassiline arms, summer-blue eyes behind the wild, desperate dare.

"Elua, no," I murmured against D'Angeline soil.

Waldemar Selig stood staring, then laughed; laughed and laughed. "It would have been too much to ask!" he declared joyfully, spreading his arms. "Ah, All-Father Odhinn, you are generous! Yes, Josslin Verai, let us dance upon the hides, and then . . ." He turned, roaring his words toward Troyes-le-Mont. "Then let Terre d'Ange see how Waldemar Selig deals with her champions!"

These are the things the Skaldi love, the stuff of legend. Twenty spears pointed at Joscelin as he dismounted and his stolen mount was seized. They stripped away his stolen armor, too, while a ripple ran through camp as they searched for a suitable hide to stake out for the holmgang. Hauled to my knees and held in place by the two White Brethren, I saw it all. Selig's hazel eyes gleamed keen and bright as he tested the heft of his shield.