Wolf's Head, Wolf's Heart (59 page)

Sir Jared, on whose face Elise now recognized a trace of the same shame and desperation, clapped him on the shoulder.

"You did what you could and it's all right in the end."

He, too, scanned the open area.

"The question is what do we do now? Move on or take shelter here for the night?"

Wendee Jay, who had been staring at the bloody field as if at a revelation of truth, spoke one word.

"Go."

Derian—more practical or perhaps more schooled in the realities of war—glanced up at the angle of the sun.

"There's nowhere to camp between here and well on the other side of the pass. I was counting on having time to inspect that pass and then make plans. We won't have that option. I'm afraid our best choice is to stay here."

"With all these bodies?" Wendee asked tremulously.

"We move them," Firekeeper said with the assurance of one to whom all dead bodies are nothing more than meat. "No bodies. Elation see a rock hole to drop into."

Sir Jared gave an ironic smile. "Doubtless that 'rock hole' is where many of the bandits' own victims were buried. I think that's an appropriate grave."

Derian nodded. "I'll join the burial detail as soon as I check the horses and mules. The bandits were rough on them and Blind Seer's howl didn't help."

"It did!" Firekeeper exclaimed indignantly.

"It didn't help the horses," Derian clarified with the seemingly infinite patience he kept for the wolf-woman. "It certainly helped us. Doc, Lord Edlin—could you help Firekeeper? Wendee and Elise can see what shape our supplies are in and maybe see if we can eke out our own supplies with the bandits.' "

Elise was glad to have a task to do, anything to keep the memory of her own fear away. That fear bothered her almost as much as the possibility of rape had done. She had always imagined she would do better in a time of crisis—in the war she had even managed to do the ugly work of a surgical assistant though she had thought she hated the sight of blood.

To have become a huddled, sobbing chit ashamed her, and as she flushed at the memory, she remembered something else.

"Wendee," she said softly as they hurried to where the bandits had dropped the goods stripped from their animals near the fire—doubtless for inspection after…

Elise hurried her thoughts away from that.

"Wendee," she repeated, "I didn't thank you, I want to thank you…"

"Think nothing more of it," the older woman said almost curtly. "I'm glad I didn't need to go through with it."

"But, what you did was so brave," Elise persisted.

"Was it?" Wendee asked. "Or was I just more afraid of the waiting?"

"I heard what you said to Derian," Elise said firmly. "You were brave. I'm going to tell Duchess Kestrel when we get back to the North Woods—and I'll reward you myself. I have…"

"Don't," Wendee said.

She knelt down next to one of the mule packs, fumbled to open the straps with hands that trembled despite the heat of the bonfire.

"I don't want to remember," Wendee continued, "and a fuss would make me remember. All those plays, all those poems, all those grand stories of heroism. I never realized that no matter what they did—all those people I admired so and tried to be—I never realized that inside they were likely near puking their guts out from fear."

Elise wrapped an arm around Wendee's shoulders. She felt the other relax slightly and only men realized how tense she herself had been.

"At least you stood on your feet," Elise said, not letting a trace of bitterness or self-pity touch her voice, "like one of those heroes. Not like me. I think you can still face them with pride."

Wendee stared blankly at her, then began laughing shakily.

"Well, if I ever go back to the theater," she said, unbuckling the strap, "I'll play those parts differently. Or maybe I'll stick to comedy."

"Oh, I don't know," Elise said, working on another pack, "I sometimes think that what happens in those stories is only funny to those of us watching from the outside. I'm not sure how funny it would be to live."

"True," Wendee agreed. She took a deep breath, then surged on, deliberately practical. "This pack looks in pretty good shape. I think we can trust that the bandits were being careful until they saw what goodies we had."

Elise nodded. "Let's take a look in their shelter. It's going to be a bit gruesome going through their things, but…"

"We won," Wendee asserted firmly. "Any law of the land would say that it's our right."

"I wonder if the law's the same in New Kelvin?" Elise said thoughtfully.

"Who cares?" Wendee replied with a shrug. "No one's around to ask. We'd better get going. Cleanup is moving along pretty fast."

Elise caught a glimpse of Firekeeper and Blind Seer dragging a rather large body across the rocky ground. Firekeeper had hold of the man's shirt; the wolf had his jaws clamped through a shoulder. They moved like a team in harness, the wolf trusting the woman to see behind him.

"I wonder if she knew," Elise whispered. "What they were going…"

She couldn't make herself finish the phrase, didn't need to. Wendee shook her head.

"I hope not. There's an innocence to her—bloody hands and all—an innocence worth preserving. Let's not explain."

Quickly, as if she needed a change of subject, Wendee said:

"I've been thinking over what you were saying about how a comedy would feel to those in it, living the events. It reminded me of something my first teacher told me, something from Lazarralo Denisci's writings…"

When the burial detail returned, the goods scavenged from the bodies wrapped in an old cloak, they found the two women seated by the fire. They were heating up bread and beans from the bandits' store and discussing drama theory with a concentrated intensity that defied interruption for any other matter.

Only Firekeeper was puzzled, but she was so often puzzled by human ways that she dismissed this last as just one more mystery.

T
heirs was a meeting of bullies—of strong men who used that strength unmercifully to control those weaker, but who also were willing, almost eager, to surrender to the control of one stronger than themselves. Such a desire to surrender is at the secret heart of most bullies—but does little to comfort those they pound to submission.

Longsight Scrounger was not the lord of the pirates. Indeed, it was a matter of debate whether that legendary personage existed. What Longsight was was a good sailor, a better pilot, a mean hand with a sword or club, and, finally, a man possessed of a talent—a singular skill for finding things. Longsight could find fresh water, a lost piece of jewelry, sometimes even something as vague as the best path or a safe cove.

Had Longsight not been a bully, he might have become a dowser, a wealthy man honored throughout the Isles and perhaps beyond, but Longsight craved power more than he did respectability. Among the pirates, his gift gave him a slight edge. Those stronger than him valued his talent as an intangible asset, worth cultivating even if they despised the man. Those weaker than him feared Longsight not only because of his own not inconsiderable strength, but because the looming shadow of those others who considered him a tool difficult to replace.

The arrangement was one that satisfied Longsight perfectly and he came to the room where Waln sat up in bed to meet him with the equanimity of one who knows he has the upper hand and will enjoy using it to deliver a beating.

Waln Endbrook had learned to hide the bully beneath a veneer of fine clothing, beneath his ownership of a merchant fleet, beneath the influence money can buy, but he had never ceased to be a bully at heart. His wife, Oralia, knew that—fearing and loving him as only a willful woman broken can love. His servants knew that and worked harder to avoid his wrath.

His children had yet to make the discovery, for Waln doted on them and punished his servants rather than his darlings. Someday they would learn, however, and a new battle would be joined. Waln might even end up the loser, but that day was long in the future.

For now, Waln hardly thought of his children, his wife, his money and influence. When he did he thought of them as things at his disposal, extra fists with which to batter his opponent. Although he knew enough of Longsight Scrounger to respect him, he also trusted in his own strength.

Longsight might have sensed this as he strolled into the sickroom, for the cocky greeting he'd intended—a clever bit about Waln having survived the fever maybe just to give their hangman a bit of practice—melted on his lips.

Instead he hitched up the chair, spun it around, and sat backward, with its ladder back between him and Waln. He asked much more neutrally:

"So, how are you feeling?"

"Weak as a kitten and sour as vinegar," Waln replied, which was neither completely true nor completely false.

Certainly he wasn't himself—no man could be who'd traveled the distance he had half-fed and poorly clad with winter freezing his bones by day and by night. Still, he'd lived hard enough as a youth to know that a couple of days' good feeding and rest and he'd be himself again.

There was no advantage to telling Longsight that, so Waln contented himself with a faint, self-deprecating smile.

Longsight, feeling more confident, grinned at him.

"So, how'd you end up like that? Last time I saw you, you were riding high and mighty with a noble lady at your side."

Lady Melina's name, unspoken, rested like a threat between them. There had been no way to keep her identity from the pirates, not with her daughter kept among them and her with that damned gemstone on her forehead.

Waln hadn't worried. There would have been no advantage to the pirates in spreading the information, not while Waln held the upper hand. Now, however, the knowledge was transforming into a threat.

Concisely, as he had rehearsed through the dark hours of the night with only the snoring crone for audience, Waln recited an edited version of events. He had to stay close enough to the truth for Longsight to know what he must to help him, but he didn't need to tell all.

For one, Waln didn't need to tell how he'd been panting after the woman like a dog after a bitch in heat. Instead, the way Waln told the story, Lady Melina had ensorcelled him and made him her slave. Only the threat to his own life had broken the spell, necessitating his mad dash, leaving some—unnamed—valuables in the evil woman's possession.

The odd thing was, this version of events made more sense to the baron than the reality he knew. Lady Melina
was
a nice-looking piece, but he'd seen better, had better—much better. His own wife was more attractive if it came down to that.

There was Lady Melina's high birth and the lure of that conquest, but would that have been enough to make him act like an idiot? Intellectually, Waln knew that had been the case. On some deeper level, he could almost feel the tendrils of enchantment that had wrapped around his soul and made him act as he otherwise would not have.

For a fleeting moment, Waln wondered if perhaps he should take his account—this version of it—before Queen Valora. However, now that his head was clear, prudence won out—that and the discovery that he had acquired an aversion to powerful women.

Waln had expected Longsight to sneer at him, to ridicule and mock him for his weakness. What he hadn't entertained was the possibility of being believed. Longsight, however, was nodding slowly, as solemn as judgment.

"We've seen something of her mother's power these long days since you left the girl, Citrine, with us."

The baron noted that Longsight's knuckles, where he grasped the back of the chair, grew white as he told the tale.

"One of my young bucks—looking, he says, to please me, but I think he meant to steal it for himself—backed the girl into a corner and was setting about cutting that jeweled diadem from her head.

"The girl set up such a screaming that we heard it from the light to the cellar. Even when my buck—Red Stripe, they're calling him now—put his hand over her mouth and near suffocated her the girl just kept screaming. Shrill as a seagull she was, but not near as melodious. Even after she shouldn't have had air to yell, she kept hollering and wailing.

"I came thumping up the stair in time to whack Cime—him that's Red Stripe now—on the head before he killed the girl out of fear. As soon as she calmed down, the girl herself told us what happened—and later I checked the story with Cime before sending him for a lashing, so I know it's true."

Longsight's voice dropped low and fearful.

"The girl ended with saying—prissy as a schoolmarm I had back when I was a lad, she was—'My mother bound that stone to me when I was just a baby. I've worn it since, though at times I've hated the thing. I'd give it to you if I could, but take it from me and I'll die.'

"I tell you, Waln, my blood ran cold to hear a child talk that way. There was truth in it. That's why I have no problem believing that the Lady Melina trapped you by sorcery. If she'd do such to her own child, she'd do it to a stranger."

Amazed by this bit of good luck, Waln considered that perhaps he
should
have expected this reaction. No profession he knew—except possibly the legendary market gamblers of Waterland—created such faith in superstitions as that of the sailor. It grew out of challenging wind and water, from all the little rituals one fell into almost unconsciously when trying to propitiate that which could drown you without thought or malice.

Warn adapted his tactics swiftly, unwilling to risk Longsight's awed terror transforming into angry resentment at his own fear.

"I'm going to get my own back from Lady Melina," Waln announced sternly, "whether she is a sorceress or not, but it's a foolish man who sticks his hand in a fire knowing he'll be burnt. Not until I've got her softened up will I go after her."

Longsight's eyes narrowed and he looked stern, but Waln noted the nervous way his tongue traveled around his teeth, pausing at the broken one, as if testing all were there.

"I can't send any men with you," Longsight said. "Winter is when the Light is most defenseless—the swamp firms some with the cold and the waters near the shore are yet navigable. My trust is holding this place and I will not weaken it for you—even if you go after that sorceress."