Plenilune (70 page)

“
You
,” Bloodburn told Margaret, “I should not like to beat. Damaged goods fetch lower prices.”

“No? Not because you lack the skill of it?” she retorted recklessly.

Daggerman rolled over and pulled himself up by clenching his stomach muscles. Hearing her, he shook his head warningly, eyes alight with worry.
A little late for you to come into an inheritance of caution!
she thought angrily. She opened her mouth at Bloodburn, her teeth bared like a vixen, but whatever she meant to say—she could never remember afterward—she never had the chance. She was interrupted by a boom and a shock like a cannon shot that made the floor tiles ripple and flow like water. She was thrown around, her hand wildly reaching for the doorframe for support—somehow she snagged it and managed to hold on while the floor ran in two directions at once under her feet.

“Oh!” she cried as Bloodburn, recovering himself before her, pushed past her through the door. She reeled after him, but a second thunderclap nearly reeled her back into the room. She staggered, fought the treacherous floor, and ran after him toward the great reception hall.

Kra-KOW!
The door to the hall wrenched like a broken picture frame to one side as she stood in it, sending the world askew. But her heart, suddenly uncaged, sang like a canary as she stood behind Bloodburn and watched the thunder get its fingers into the huge front doors of the house. They splintered, letting in shards of light, and finally blasted away altogether into a fine shower of wood. A grey, wind-whirling figure mounted resolutely over the debris and came striding in, followed by several others at a hesitant distance.

25 | The Cedars of Lebanon

Dammerung emerged from the dust rather more furious than Margaret had been expecting. “
On your knees!”
he roared, sweeping his arm through the air as if to cut them in all two. The startled servants and retainers seemed to have their feet knocked from under them, and they crashed to the ground on their hands and knees. Bloodburn he left standing, but even Bloodburn looked apprehensive for the brief moment it took Margaret to break her gaze from Dammerung and look at the lord’s face.

The look there left her satisfied.

“By heaven and thunder—” Dammerung was still roaring as he came “—by flood and fire, by all the improbable stars, by the shoe my horse cast to get me here, you have meddled with the wrong man!” And he stopped dead in front of Bloodburn, his finger thrust under Bloodburn’s nose.

There was a soft tinselly sound of falling dust and the heavy breathing of the War-wolf; all else was silence. On the background outskirts of the scene Margaret looked on, oddly quiet now in her heart, and oddly aflame beneath the quiet. None of the servants had dared to rise yet. Beyond Dammerung Margaret was aware of a bright knot of fellows, bare-headed and on the alert: Brand the Hammer and Sparling were among them; and Aikaterine too, she noticed with faint surprise, clad in light armour that would have shone gold had it not been so covered in dust. The high light fell softly on her and made her look gentle and terrible at once.

“Lady Spitcat got your tongue?” asked Dammerung quietly.

“For a woman,” Bloodburn replied, “she has been most unusually candid.”

An angry doggish smile slashed the War-wolf’s face. “A unique quality in a woman—I prize it most highly.” He was silent again for a moment, then thrust like the thrust of a dagger: “Why?”

Bloodburn must have felt the game was up, for he shrugged philosophically and said, “It is an old chess move, to take and to hold the queen. I meant to get a costly ransom out of you for the lady.”

Dammerung’s eyebrows flickered playfully. “Is that so…? But in your heart is Rupert de la Mare not rightful heir of Marenové, and would your ransoming not be robbing him?”

“What do you know of where de la Mare lies in my heart?” It was Bloodburn’s turn for the deadly lightness to lie upon his voice. “I might have given the money to de la Mare…then again, I might not. Only I know that I despise you—and it please you—and would lief see you ruined to right and left.”

“Then better you had broken the lady, which would have been a death-blow to my soul,” said Dammerung softly, seriously. Margaret’s skin crawled cold.

Caesar merely shrugged; his face was impassive.

Dammerung took in a deep breath and drew back, as though he needed space to think. “I might fain kill you now, you know—and it please you—though killing in cold blood has never set well in my mind.”

Bloodburn’s voice turned scornful. “With all due respect, that tendency to mercy is what cost you your freedom, and will cost you more yet.”

The War-wolf’s eyes flashed sidewise at Hol’s face, angry and stabbing. “I would not curse mercy just yet, blackguard, for your life yet hangs upon it—heaven so help you.”

At that moment someone touched Margaret from behind and she jumped mutely, heart in her throat, to find Aikin Ironside smiling down at her from the shadows of the corridor. She got a confused idea that there were several others in the corridor behind him.

“If you would permit me—” he said in an undertone, simultaneously pushing her gently aside.

Dammerung caught sight of him stepping out into the hall and his face lightened briefly. “Have you got them?”

“Aye.” Aikin Ironside held up a ring of keys with a heavy chunk. “The old brute gave fight and tongue, but he quieted quick enough with friend Huw’s fist in his mouth.”

The thief stood free beside and behind him, looking, quietly and casually, for a way out.

“You have not killed my steward?” asked Bloodburn hastily.

But the question, which made Bloodburn a touch human for a moment, only enraged Dammerung. “What wonder is it to you? What of your wife and cub? You do not ask after them. Nay, we have not killed the grizzled brute, for we are not swift to kill.” He turned to Brand. “Rout out the dame and dog-pup. Bring them to us.”

Brand took a detail of men and crashed away, their nailed boots echoing on the stone flags.

Dammerung turned back to Bloodburn. “I like it when the punishment fits the crime. It gives one a pleasant, assured feeling that God is in his heaven and all is right with the world, and all that. So since you, you dog of an Amalekite, took
her
face from me—” he beckoned up Margaret, though she did not move “—which is a wandering home to me, I will, rather than pay you ransom, take her back and burn the roof-tree of your hall.”

“I did not burn your…wandering home,” Bloodburn argued rhetorically. “It does not seem to my mind that the crime deserves such punishment.”

“Hy my!” cried Dammerung, flinging himself back and walking round Bloodburn, looking him up and down. “What, thee of little faith! I said burn the roof-tree of your hall and I meant the roof-tree of your hall, no more, no less.”

Caesar’s colourless eyes swept the gathering; Margaret could see his head move ever so slightly as he counted them off. “Even with thirteen of you—an unlucky number too, I think—you would be hard-pressed to keep a blaze particular to this hall.”

The War-wolf smiled scornfully. “How sceptical hell breeds its men,” he remarked. Bloodburn frowned but did not contradict him. “I know the high arts and the Golden Tongue which men of old spoke to shape the world, but I use them but rarely since men now are often low and mealy, and it is not sporting fair to come among them as a god come among worms. So I content myself with blowing to smithers your thrust-jawed door and teaching your servants a little respect—and lighting a blaze under your thatch. Come out,” he added imperiously, as if calling the souls up from the grave. “Come out and see the handiwork of your own folly.”

Aikin Ironside and an Orzelon-gang man who was often not far from the prince’s side stepped forward, flanking the Lord of Hol. Dammerung swung aside, his head up, his gaze a little detached as if he were seeing into Bloodburn, not roving over his face. Bloodburn went, silently, regally, passing down through the mute ranks of his servants and retainers; one dared to move as if to draw a sword, but Aikin Ironside turned and fixed the man with a flash of a look like a falcon, full of blood-lust and the mockery of a man taunting, and the little movement died before it came to anything.

Dammerung watched them to the pile of rubble before he turned to Margaret. For the first time a smile began on his face, then he saw her gown. The smile crumpled into a look of startlement. “What—”

“I know. It is a terrible colour. But my other dress was done to rags. Have you brought my things?”

“Hello to you too,” he said, recovering. His eyes peeled away from the bright rouge fabric. “I have brought them. I will toss the dress on the pyre too, if you like.”

She took his arm. “’Tisn’t mine, ’tis Kinloss’. I promised to give it back.”

He passed his hand over his lips thoughtfully, leaving behind a smudge. “I could make it look like an accident. I
am
here to rid the world of evil and suchlike. Are—all well?” he added softly.

She smiled. “My head is still unwell. I think I must have been out in the elements too long. And I took a blow to the face. But they fed me and clothed me, after a fashion.” Her eyes travelled ahead to the back of Bloodburn’s doublet. “I wonder if he was not kinder to me than he was to his wife.”

“He was,” said Dammerung coldly. “He was, but I will soon put those things to rights.”

“O-oh..!” she protested as they stepped out into the stark afternoon light. She was momentarily blinded. He set his hand in the small of her back to steady her; between the high swimming light and the loud crunch of gravel underfoot, she noticed the dull jangle of pain in her back had gone. A blast of warm air hit them in the face; looking round, shoving her hair out of her face, Margaret saw Dammerung watching Bloodburn out of the corner of one bright, narrowed eye, like a cat watching a dog which has not yet got its scent. But aloud he said, “Why, friend Huw—” and turned, flinging a look over his shoulder.

Huw Daggerman stopped in the act of slipping away down the line of ornamental hedges that made up the front garden. The brand on his forehead, a ghastly reddish colour in the full light, showed up in plain view of them all, but Dammerung, Margaret was sure, could have seen the brand in the dark.

“Where do you go?”

Daggerman put his foot down. “Just—over the next hill to see whatever is on the other side. My lord,” he added, watching the way the wind was blowing Dammerung’s cloak about like death’s wings. Was it the heat or the harsh bruise forming on his face, or Dammerung’s heel on his tail, that made him look so white?
Poor chap.
Margaret’s hand tightened on Dammerung’s supporting arm.

The War-wolf jerked his head northward. “Why not that hill, if any hill will do?”

Daggerman’s eyes slid past the War-wolf to the north, hung there a moment warily, then returned to Dammerung’s face. “What lies beyond
that
hill, sir?”

“A war.” The war-lord’s lips curled.

Still the thief hesitated. Margaret could see him staring at some place on the ground between them; the thumb and forefinger of his left hand were rubbing methodically together. “Do I have a choice, sir?”

“Yes.”

Huw Daggerman nodded, first as if to himself, and then as if to Dammerung. “Then I would as lief go over that hill than any other. Best earn a little decent bread—as decent a bread as war can buy.”

“You have a sir’s way about your speech. Art handy with a weapon?”

Daggerman smiled. “Oh, fair to middling, my lord, but I can take a blow.”

Dammerung laughed shortly. “I can see that. It takes training to learn to give a blow, but gut to take one, and I put a higher price on gut.”

“I had heard you were just and I thought I would find you so, for your reputation precedes you.” Bloodburn spoke up from where he stood not far off, Aikin Ironside’s fist clamped round his arm. “I wonder if they are all wrong.”

Dammerung swung round on him. “Reputation is like quicksilver in the hand and, like a rumour, a wind in the grass. Rumour had it I was dead. Rumour has it I am just. How true is one or the other, do you think, and by what solid measurement can you weigh me, not having known me?”

“I know that you have a reputation for being a brutal captain,” replied Bloodburn—fixing, Margaret thought, on the one attribute he could understand. “You are a hard taskmaster, implacable if somewhat inscrutable, and I have heard that you are ruthless with disobedient soldiers: I hear you flog them sometimes, and hang them often.”

“It’s a hobby of mine,” smiled Dammerung wolfishly. “But I have always found it hard to flog a man after I have hanged him…And you!” he added, coming back out of his own morbid humour. “Who are you to talk—and to talk to me! for I hold you in the hollow of my hand. Out of one side of your mouth you knock me for being merciful, out of the other you besmirch my justice. If I were to let you place your heel on my neck you would blaspheme God for giving man a humble heart.”

“Do it and have done,” Hol replied, jerking his head toward his hall.

But Dammerung said awfully, “You are in no position now to give an order to the meanest man, much less his prince. Come, Lady—” he beckoned to the golden-haired woman who had appeared with Brand the Hammer on the steps of the house. “Come! I am about to tear the universe in twain.”

Lady Kinloss, with her sleeping man-cub in her arms, came down the front steps and walked with practiced tread toward them as if she were always walking on glass and had learned long ago not to cut herself. Her eyes jumped from Dammerung’s face to her husband’s, warring with hope, warring against despair.

Margaret held out her free hand. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I told you he would come. It is better now.”

Dammerung slipped her arm from his and stood apart. “The hurt and the heartache has gone on long enough. There will be an end to it. My Lady Kinloss,” there was no mockery in his voice—he spoke very gently— “Bloodburn of Hol has long since broken his pact with you and the bond between you is dissolved. I strip you of him. Of his house and his honour others will strip him: I can leave that work undone for now. For now I bid you: of all this, be free.”