Sing the Four Quarters (53 page)

Elica turned to Pjerin and studied the angry red lines radiating out from the torn scar tissue. "This is going to hurt," she began.

Pjerin's mouth twisted up into what might have been a weary smile. "I've been healed before. Let's get this over with."

"You're not going back to the barricades."

The smile showed more teeth. "You're not going to be able to stop me."

Some time later, Elica picked up the lamp and gently patted the hand of the sleeping due. "I'll see you in. the morning, Your Grace," she told him and quietly left the room.

"What can you see?"

Heart pounding, Pjerin jumped and spun around. "Annice! Are you supposed to be up here?"

"What do you mean?" She smiled at the sentry, then leaned against the battlements of the high watchtower and stared out into the pass. "Stasya and Tadeus want to see how far away I have to be in order for them to Sing. This is as far away as I can get and still be in the keep. If it comes to it," she added distastefully, "I may have to lock myself away in an interior room for the duration. Someplace with a heavy door and no windows."

"I meant, should you be up
here
in your condition?"

She wasn't going to tell him that she'd had to rest four times on the way up the narrow stairs or that she'd thought more than once she wasn't going to make it. "We walked across the country with me in this condition. How's your arm?"

"Better." He'd been furious to discover he'd fallen asleep and more furious still to have His Majesty tell him not to use it until he had to.

Annice smiled, correctly interpreting the undertones, then suddenly sobered. "I don't think you should have just let Nikulas go free. I mean, he tried to kill you."

"His brother was dead and he believed I was responsible. It was a perfectly natural response."

She couldn't believe him sometimes. "Of course it was. And suppose he tries it again?"

"He won't."

"Pjerin…"

"I know my people, Annice. One way or another, he'll be convinced."

"And Sarline?"

"Rozyte's not even speaking to her. She has enough personal problems right now without me adding to them."

Annice sighed. "Pjerin, it's all very well to be a compassionate lord, but don't you think…"

"I think we're about to have a war," he interrupted, his expression grim. "And I think I've had enough of death already."

Even she couldn't argue with that, so she carefully swung her bulk around and gestured toward Cemandia. "I don't see anything."

Pjerin turned to follow her hand. "Sun's been up on the other side of the mountains for a while. They're moving, count on it. We should be able to see them any… there!"

The sentry shook her head. "Just the sun flashing on a bit of shiny rock, Your Grace. Happens every morning there's enough light. We won't spot them until they're actually in the pass. Plenty of time to ready bows."

The battlements overlooking the pass would bristle with archers, many using crossbows and quarrels supplied from Albek's packs.

"
Nice of him to leave them
," Theron had said. "
Gives the whole situation a certain circular nature I'd like to consider
a good omen
."

Pjerin squinted into the east a while longer, then twisted to face Annice. "You're very quiet," he said. Noting her confused expression and the way she was staring down at her. legs, he asked, "Anything wrong?"

"I'm having a baby."

"I
know
that."

"You don't understand." She clutched his arm, conscious only of warm fluid dribbling down the inside of her thighs.

"I'm having a baby
now
."

"Now?"

"Your Grace! There! Did you see it?"

"Now?"

She shook him. "Yes, now."

"But you're not due until Second Quarter! That's…"

He tried to count, but numbers failed him. "… days away."

"You think I don't know that?"

"Riders in the pass!"

"Annice, this isn't a good time."

"What are you talking about!"

"We're about to be attacked by the Cemandian army!"

"Fine!" She glared up at him. "You can tell
them
to wait!"

CHAPTER NINETEEN

"… because you've probably been in labor for the last few hours."

"But I've had worse cramping during my flows," Annice protested as Elica sat her down on the end of the bed.

"Good." The healer turned to a bow! of warm water a curious server had just brought in and began washing her hands.

"You may breeze right through this. We'll get you cleaned up and into a smock and then we'll find the rhythm of the contractions." She shot a grin over her shoulder at Annice. "You can put it to music if you like."

Annice felt some of her apprehension fade and took a deep breath, unlacing tightly clasped fingers.

"What should I do?" Pjerin hadn't realized how small Annice actually was until he'd carried her down from the top of the tower—all the way from Elbasan, even before at the keep, she'd given the impression of being much larger. She'd convinced him to let her walk once they reached level ground, by the volume of her arguments if nothing else, but he'd kept her arm tucked in his while he sent the first person he saw running to find the healer. He paced to her side, then back to the door, then to her side again. "Should I boil water? Rip up sheets? Rub her back?"

"Ow! Pjerin!"

Elica sighed. "Don't you have a war to fight, Your Grace?"

"A war?" For a moment Pjerin's face went blank. "Center it!" Three long strides and he was almost out of the room, three more and he returned to gently hold her face cupped between his hands. "I can't stay, Annice. I'm sorry. But I've got to…"

"I understand." She pushed her hands up under his. "I'm fine."

He snorted. "You keep
saying
that."

"Then keep believing it."

Bending forward, he kissed her lightly, then, as the sound of someone shouting for him drifted in through the shuttered window, almost ran from the room.

"Did you want him with you?" Elica asked, helping Annice to her feet and pulling the damp shift up over her head.

Emerging from a fold of fabric, Annice winced at »a sudden contraction more powerful than the rest. "No." Her tone dressed the words in a multitude of meaning. "He got me here. I think he's done enough."

"Are they still holding back?"

Tadeus cocked his head into the breeze. "Yes, Majesty. Just out of bow shot."

Theron grunted and pulled on his gloves. "Stasya ready on the battlements?" The bards would not only use the kigh to carry orders beyond the range of his voice, but would see to it that everyone, regardless of what language they spoke would understand what was happening.

"She's there, but she's not happy. She'd much rather be with Annice."

"I know. I wish I could allow it, but we need her too badly out here. What about you?"

"Me, Majesty?" Tadeus grinned. "No, thank you. I've been with Annice when she's not having a good time, so all things being enclosed, I'd much rather stay here, be shot full of arrows, galloped over by heavy cavalry, have my throat slit by a camp follower, and my broken body left to rot under a merciless sun."

"Idiot," Theron muttered. "Are you sure my message got through to the captain in Elbasan?"

"Perfectly sure, Majesty."

"Then all we can do is wait." He squinted up at the sun. "Still, there's no question that waiting beats dying."

"How much longer is this going to go on?" Pjerin growled, stomping up from the barricades and yanking off his helm.

With his hair clubbed back tightly into a wire-bound braid, the angles of his face enhanced an irritated expression. A knee-length vest of scale added a certain barbaric splendor compared to the simple breast-and-back of the king's company. Although he wore greaves, they were boiled leather rather than metal and both arms were covered wrist to elbow in laced leather guards. Waving his huge mountain bow at the keep, he snarled, "I thought the healer was going to tell us when something happened!"

Theron covered a smile. "Then nothing has happened."

"But it's been hours!"

"Pjerin, I sat with Her Majesty through the birth of each of our three children and I've learned from the experience—

babies come in their own good time and there's nothing in the Circle you, as a father, can do to change that."

"Gerek was easier," Pjerin muttered, cramming his helm back on. "No one told me when it started, just when it was over. Handed me my son and that was that."

As the due stomped back to the barricade, Theron shook his head. "With any luck, the baby will get his looks, her voice, and someone else's temperament."

"Is he very beautiful?" Tadeus asked, sounding just a little wistful.

"I heard you sing '
Darkling Lover'
just outside Caciz," Theron reminded the bard. "It contains some pretty explicit description, don't you think?"

"Explicit, Majesty, is not always accurate."

"Well, allowing for the passage of time, it's accurate enough."

Tadeus sighed. "Lucky Annice."

"How long does this usually go on?" Annice panted, right hand gripping the crook of Elica's elbow and her left pressed flat against the wall to support her weight. She'd lost track of how many times they'd walked up and down the hall, bare feet shuffling against the smooth stone. Although the contractions were definitely coming closer together and with greater intensity, as far as she could tell, nothing much seemed to be happening.

Elica shifted position slightly so that they both fit through the doorway. "It isn't over until it's over, Annice. Every woman is different. Every baby is unique."

"That's
not
very reassuring."

The village midwife stood as they came back into the room. She was a plump, grandmotherly sort of woman with tiny hands and a perpetual smile Annice was beginning to find extremely annoying. "So, how are we doing?" she asked.

"We," Annice began, but a contraction cut her off. She hadn't been able to talk through them for some time, and when it finally ended, she'd forgotten what she meant to say.

"Fifty-six," the midwife said. They'd established early on that her pulse would be used for timing.

"Good." Elica lowered Annice onto the clean sheet that draped the end of the bed. "I need to have a look and see how far dilated you are."

"A look?" Annice's eyes widened. "Are you talking about what I think you're talking about?"

"Probably." They had a small fire going in the fireplace and a kettle sitting over it on a tripod. Elica poured some of the hot water into a basin and washed her hands.

Fingers twisting the sheet into two sweaty bundles, Annice reclined against the pile of pillows and tried to relax. "How come nobody warned me about all this?" she asked the top of the healer's head.

"Well, possibly because you decided to take a Walk to Ohrid before anyone got the chance." Elica's tone made it quite clear what she thought of that particular choice.

"You're the one who told me pregnancy wasn't a disease."

"I'm also the one who told you there'd have to be some changes in your lifestyle."

"There were. Rescuing beautiful, arrogant men from execution and then waddling across the country with them was not something I'd previously made a habit of."

Elica looked up and smiled. "If you still have enough energy to be witty, you're doing all right."

As compared to what
? Annice thought as another contraction hit.

The half-dozen horsemen, lances fixed, galloped wildly at the barricade under a rain of arrows. A horse screamed and stumbled as a feathered mountain-shaft penetrated a boiled leather crupper but managed to keep its feet.

"Hold your fire!" Lady Jura bellowed.

Tadeus Sang the command over the pass.

Behind one of the arrow slits built into the barricade, Pjerin stood, string at ear, triangular arrowhead centered unwaveringly on an approaching breastplate. He'd killed Otik with no time to think, no time to consider what he was doing. He'd tried to save Lukas; perhaps not as hard as he might have, but he'd tried. This was different. This was cold-blooded killing. Not a stag, not a boar, not a bear. A person. With a name and a family.

Who would destroy his name and his family if they could.

He'd told Annice he was tired of death. And he was. And it didn't matter.

Just before they reached the planted spikes, when the Cemandian pulled his horse's head around to wheel back the way he'd come, Pjerin loosed the string. At such close range, the arrow easily pierced the breastplate, the force of the impact lifting the Cemandian out of the saddle.

The body hit the ground, rolled, and lay still.

"Center it! I said hold your fire!" Lady Jura bellowed again. The guard had obeyed, but the people of Ohrid, following the example of their due and less than willing to take orders from a Shkoder noble, continued to fill the pass with little effect.

The riderless horse wheeled and raced away with its companions. One of the remaining Cemandians swayed in the saddle and another carried a crossbow quarrel spiked through stirrup and leg.

One final flight struck sparks, metal against the stone, before the enemy was obviously out of range.

Glaring at the waste, Jura stomped to Theron's side. "Sing this," she snarled at Tadeus. "The next person who shoots after I've told them to stop is in more danger from me than from the Cemandians! And that," she added, twisting around to face Pjerin as Tadeus began to Sing, dropping her voice so as not to be overheard "includes you, Your Grace."

Pjerin stiffened. "Lady Jura, this is
my
land."

"And
your
liege has given
me
battle command."

Under the edge of her helm, her pale eyes glittered dangerously. "If there're Cemandians in that pass and I tell Your Grace to hold your fire, it would be in your best interest if you listened." As he ground his teeth together, she caught his gaze and held it. "We haven't time to turn your people and my people into one unit, but if we want to save
your
land and
my
land, we all have to be very clear on who's in charge."