To the High Redoubt (7 page)

“Fire?” Surata asked when Arkady returned.

“In a moment.” He took flint and steel from his wallet, unwrapped them and struck a spark. As she blew on the kindling, he shook his head. “I don't know how you do that.”

“Warm. Hands warm,” she explained. Then, with the first blaze going, she turned to him. “Surata hungry. Grain-food and fruit-food and cheese.”

“Sounds good to me,” Arkady agreed.

“Good.” She clapped her hands. “Fast. Arkady-immai make fast.”

“Just as soon as I kill a rabbit or a bird.” he promised her. “I'll get the grain out and you can start making gruel. Or we can toast bread if you'd like that better. I'll put some cheese on the bread and we can have it that way.” He did not want to admit that he was getting very tired of gruel.

“Good food,” she said. “Make good food, bread and cheese.”

“All right,” he said. “Shortly.” He took his bow and strung it, choosing three arrows. He hoped that the next time they found a market town, there would be a fletcher who would sell him more arrows.

When he returned to the fire, the sun was down and Surata was contentedly eating a few dates. “Arkady-immai,” she called out through the dates. “Here!”

“I'm coming,” he answered. He had already gutted and skinned the rabbit he had shot, and it needed only the spit for cooking. “I've got food.”

“Food here,” she said, a bit puzzled.

“This is other food, meat-food.” He came to the fire and found a long, thin stick that would serve for a spit. While the rabbit broiled, he cut cheese and put it on the hard bread, then set these on small rocks near the fire so that the cheese could melt.

“Good food,” Surata declared as she had the first of the toasted bread-and-cheese. “More.”

Laughing, Arkady gave her another but warned her, “Leave some room for the rabbit.”

To his surprise, she shook her head. “Meat-food not good. Surata make cheese- and fruit-food.”

Arkady looked at her. “Meat-food is fine, Surata. It's rabbit.”

“Not good,” she told him more firmly. “Arkady-immai make meat-food, good. Not good Surata make meat-food.” She held out her hand for some more toasted cheese.

“Don't you eat meat?” he asked, recalling some of the monks he had met who had given up meat for the sake of their souls and to honor God's creatures.

“Not good meat-food,” she said, taking another bite of the bread-and-cheese. “Here good, Arkady-immai.”

Arkady shook his head slowly. “You can have more bread-and-cheese if that's what you want, but I'm going to have the meat, if it's all the same to you.” He touched the spit and gave the rabbit another turn.

“Good Arkady-immai, not good Surata,” she insisted and accepted more dates from him.

It puzzled Arkady to find her so determined, but he shrugged it off and helped himself to the rabbit, eating it off the point of his cinquedea. He wanted to ask her why she would not eat it, but she did not have enough words yet, either to explain or to understand his question. When he had eaten about half of the rabbit, he took one of the wineskins and drank some of the raw vintage. “Wine,” he said to Surata, holding it out to her. “Try it.”

“Wine?” She tasted it, made a face and handed it back. “Arkady-immai make wine, not Surata.”

This was more surprising than her refusal to eat meat. “Try it again, Surata,” he urged her, putting the wineskin in her free hand.

She pushed it away. “Not Surata.”

He shrugged. “There's another skin, if you change your mind,” he said and poured more of the wine down his throat. It eased his thirst and the ache in his body; he wanted to get drunk but could not bring himself to go that far. “I'll save the rest of this for later,” he told Surata when he had half emptied the wineskin.

“Good,” she declared, choosing the last of her dates to munch. “Arkady-immai…not hungry.”

“No, not anymore,” he said, taking a little more of the rabbit. The animal had been small, and he had to admit to himself that he was glad she did not want much—any—of it, though it still troubled him that she was not willing to eat meat. What would happen, he wondered, if that was all they had?

He put most of the food into sacks and slung them in the spindly trees. As he worked, he said to Surata, “I want to get the food out of reach. There may be wild animals who want our food as much as we do. This way, there's a pretty good chance they won't get it.”

“Ah,” she nodded.

“How much of that made sense to you?” Arkady wondered aloud.

“More,” she answered, turning her face toward him, and once again giving him the eerie feeling that she could see him and was watching him.

“That's certain,” he said quietly, adding more branches to the fire. “We'll have to sleep close tonight, Surata.”

Again she nodded, and Arkady was more troubled than before. “Good ground.”

He was puzzled by this announcement but did not argue with her. “Yes, I suppose it is.” He got up and started to unroll his blanket. “It's dark now. I…” he faltered. “I'm sleepy, my arm hurts and I'm stiff from riding. You must be too.”

“Dark,” she said.

“Dark. Not sun. Night.” He cleared his throat as he stared at her eyes.

“Night. Dark.” She looked pleased.

“The blanket's almost ready,” he went on in a determined way. “You can lie down when you like.” He wished they had enough water to wash with, or a means to shave. His whole body felt grimy, and he was faintly embarrassed to be too near Surata. It was one thing to go without bathing or washing when surrounded by soldiers; but in church or with a woman of quality, then it was proper for a captain, even a disgraced captain, to present himself in a manner worthy of Court.

“Arkady-immai,” she said as she finished licking her fingers. “Arkady-immai, blanket, down.”

“Yes, it's down.” he said, patting it, then reaching for her hand so that she could touch it.

“Not. Arkady-immai down.” She shoved his shoulder, not roughly but with great determination. “Clothes down.”

Arkady blinked. “What…?”

She paid no attention to his question, but began to unwrap his arm. She touched the skin around the cut and sniffed at it. “Not good,” she announced.

“I know that,” he responded. He had known the wound would become infected. That was the way with wounds.

“Down down down,” she insisted, pressing him back against the blanket and starting to unfasten his leather doublet.

“Surata, for the Saints in Heaven—” He tried to get her to stop, for he was now really distressed. It was bad enough that she knew he was hurt, but to discover the rest would shame him. He started to push her away, swearing to himself, when her hands touched his forehead.

“Arkady-immai,” she said in a still voice. “Down.”

Slowly he lay back with the languor of a dreamer. “Right,” he murmured as his resistance faded and his body surrendered to the drag of fatigue. He was vaguely aware that he was not acting at all properly, but he did not care. The way her hands moved on his face and neck was more soothing than victory and wine. Even when she began to remove his clothes, he did little to stop her. There was too much—what? he asked himself: sweetness? pleasure? lassitude?—in him to stop her. Under her ministrations, he drifted, his mind roving back through his memories.

He had been so little that he could not see over the top of the table. He remembered peering at the rushes beneath, seeing the vermin there. At first they had fascinated him, but when he tried to get closer, a mouse had turned on him and sunk tiny teeth into his thumb. He had gone wailing to his mother who had bandaged the thumb but laughed at him. The humiliation of her derision still stung him, though she had been dead for seven years
.

“Arkady-immai,” Surata whispered as she pressed her palms to the place where his ribs joined, “do not hold back what is there. Release it to me.”

There had been that big brute of a sorrel in his father's stable, and he had made a wager he could ride the horse, although most of the men avoided the beast. He had been able to stay on for a while, but he had been terrified the whole time, and when he was finally thrown, he had gone behind the stables to be sick
.

He writhed at what these recollections did to him, afraid that he would be beneath reproach to anyone who learned such dreadful things about him.

“Arkady-immai,” Surata urged him softly, “you must not be so distressed. There is no reason for it.”

“Don't,” he whimpered and was aghast at the sound of his own voice.

“No, no Arkady-immai, you have nothing to fear. I promise you, there is nothing to fear.” Her hands were sure and so comforting that he did not force them away again. She continued to touch him, her hands strong and certain, never hard, never hurting, offering a kind of solace he had not known before.

A Turkish warrior, mouth open and foaming, eyes protruding, rushed toward him, scimitar up and ready to strike off his head. Arkady blocked the blow with his sword, but the sword had shattered. One of his soldiers, a boy of no more than fourteen who spent his evenings singing hymns, had got between them and had been killed
.

Arkady's eyes were wet and his hands could not stop shaking.

A woman with a brash sort of beauty strolled through the camp, offering to take on the soldiers for a price and a challenge. The Margrave Fadey had been horrified, afraid of pox and Turkish spies, and had ordered Arkady to drive her from the camp. She had taunted him in front of his men, and once outside the camp had tried to attack him with a knife. He had fought with her—the scar on his eyebrow was a token of that encounter—and had left her unconscious. The next day she was found hanging, gutted, from the Turkish fortifications
.

“Do not hide these things, Arkady-immai. I will not hate you or rebuke you or turn away from you, my vow on it.”

He saw Mira's face the day she told him that she was pregnant. He had listened to her in silence, then tried to make her believe that it did not matter to him, that he did not care, he would raise her child as his own if she would marry him. Her face had been tragic, for she had told him that the father had forbidden her to marry anyone, and would not or could not marry her himself. In vain Arkady had pleaded with her to change her mind, insisting that if the man treated her thus, he had no rights in the matter. Mira had heard him out, refused him then and later said he was not to visit her anymore. Three days after, they had found her body in the river, and the priest had excoriated her memory in church
.

Surata's hands continued to work.

There was a boy in Sól who had been bitten by a mad dog and had taken the madness himself. Several other children had been terrified and had followed the miserable boy with stones. Arkady had been with them, but his thrill of overcoming his dread ended when he saw the boy lying on the ground, jerked and wracked by convulsions, bleeding from the stoning. The largest of his tormentors started to hurl a rock at the rabid child's head, but Arkady had tried to stop him, and a bitter, useless fight had ensued
.

When he started to double over with shame and grief, Surata gently stretched out upon him, holding him and warming him.

Arkady saw his father, still young and vigorous, riding off to do the bidding of his Margrave. He had made Arkady promise he would not waste his time, and had specifically warned him that his boy was not to spend more time playing the
lira da braccio
than practicing with his sword. He had patted Arkady on the shoulder, embraced him and had not come home for more than two years. And when he did return, he was a ruined, surly fellow, given to sudden outbursts of violence and long days of drunken recriminations
.

His sister, so young and so pale, with strength that was easily sapped, every day growing weaker, sat in the door of the cooking house, weeping over a starved puppy
.

The first time he had been wounded it was a pleasant spring day. He had fallen a little way out of the line of battle, an arrow in his thigh. He had lain, stunned, in the new grasses, with three tiny, blue-veined flowers, like stars, not far from his eyes. He had watched the flowers, and the life in the grass, and had wept for the beauty of it
.

It was his turn to serve the priest, and he had come to the church to prepare for the Nativity celebration. In his zeal, he had decided to come early, to show that although he was only eight, he was devout. He had caught the priest with the wife of one of his father's officers, and for that he had been whipped and told he would never be permitted to serve in his parish church again
.

“Oh, God, Saint Michael, what have I done?” he moaned, thrusting at Surata's shoulder to move her away. “I can't…I truly do not—”

Surata did not move. She appeared to use no might, but she kept him still, and when she spoke, her voice was low and untroubled. “You need not blame yourself, Arkady-immai. You have been alive, that is your only error. See that. Be awake to it.”

“No. Please, no, no.”

“Yes,” she told him.

Deep snows had slowed the hunters, but they kept on, hunting boar. The Margrave was coming the day after tomorrow, and he and his retinue would expect a proper feast and reception. Arkady, the youngest member of the hunt, kept near his father, worried that he might attempt something dangerous, for he had been sipping wine since before dawn. Arkady knew his father was in an angry and capricious mood, reckless and impatient. He was concentrating so much on his father that he did not see the boar until it broke cover, already racing. Arkady's father had swung his spear around, but not quite quickly enough; he caught the animal, but the point entered the shoulder, not the chest, and by the time Arkady could cover the little distance between them, the hooves and tusks of the boar had done their work, and Arkady's father was cursing as he died
.