Firethorn (57 page)

The weather had turned a few nights ago and the north wind had driven away the clouds and sea mists, and after it came the east wind bringing the smell of the mountains and a cold fiercer than the damp chills of autumn. There had been a time in the Kingswood when I'd learned to endure winter's bite, going barefoot in the snow, going without fire, without comfort, like any animal. I'd lost the knack of it.

Now the wind harried me back into the Crux's tent. My fever had broken at last and I couldn't stop shaking. I lit a meager fire in the brazier by our pallets and huddled beside it. The Crux's servants went about their many chores.

Rodela screamed that maggots were eating him. He began to weep, and over his sobs I heard music coming from the king's hall, but couldn't make out the words. No doubt there were songs about the tourney; the king never traveled without his rhapsodists, for how else are great deeds to be remembered?

The men returned late, flushed with too much drink and self-importance, and crowded into the Crux's tent. Even over their hubbub, Sire Rodela could be heard.

Since the victory, whores and rumors had overrun our tents, more plentiful than rats. I couldn't walk for stumbling over whores, and as for the rumors, truth did not deter them. On the contrary, it needed but a dollop of truth for lies to spawn and flourish.

So when I heard from Spiller after the feast that there was a secret plan afoot (but drudges are everywhere, and nothing is secret) to begin the war by stealth—and to begin it on the day after the morrow—I doubted him. Rowney said it was true and still I doubted. We sat around the brazier in our dim corner of the Crux's tent, eking out the fuel by feeding one leathery strand of sea hay at a time to the fire. The air bladders popped and sizzled and the salt made the flames run blue.

Spiller said King Thyrse had used the occasion of the feast to offer the clan of Crux one last prize for winning the tourney: an honor, a dangerous honor. He had asked them to help take the city of Lanx, south-of-west across the Inward Sea, which commanded a fine harbor. It was the key to unlock a kingdom. If they could capture and hold the port, the army would stay well supplied for the long march inland to the capital of Incus.

The king said they would go hidden in the bellies of fishing boats, and so steal past the walls and water gates of Lanx to gain by treachery what would otherwise cost him a long, cold siege. The port was well defended everywhere except from within, being divided by an old feud between clans so evenly matched that neither side could win a victory. It needed but a little weight added to one side to tip the scale.

In a few days, so the king said, he'd follow with the rest of the army, but an army is ponderous and slow, and for this purpose he had need of a dagger rather than a bludgeon. And would they be that dagger? And they had all cheered.

“I don't believe you,” I said. “There are only thirteen cataphracts left, and Sire Rodela and Sire Mordaz are likely to die of their wounds, and if they do there will be just ten armigers. What use are so few?”

Spiller said, “Ask the clansmen of Ardor what use! They can tell you right enough. They lost half their strength against us. The king needs men who can fight as well on foot as on horseback—and one of you, he said, has the mastery of it, and if the rest do half as well as Sire Galan, you'll be worth three times your number.” He was as pleased by this remark as if he'd thought of it himself.

Sire Rodela was barking, howling—with a sort of laughter, I supposed, for it didn't sound like crying. He was as tormented by gaiety as, moments before, he'd been afflicted by terror. The men ignored him so well that I wondered if I was the only one who listened, the only one who heard. I was glad there were no words in his laughter.

I looked at Rowney and he shrugged, saying, “No fear, we go with a good company of kingsmen and the queenmother's best Wolves—and some priests of Rift, I heard. And besides, the queenmother has followers in the city, clans loyal to her and not Prince Corvus.”

Prince Corvus, the queenmother's son. Rumormongers belittled him in songs, calling him Prince Cuckold, and the quip had gone round the Marchfield that he was half the man his mother was (which wasn't meant to flatter her either, to be sure). The betting favored a quick victory, with odds that we'd be home before Longest Night. But songs can be purchased and rumors can be sown, and maybe it suited the queenmother that we should think her son a weak, beardless boy, soon to bow to her chastisement. Now I wondered: in his own country, did they call Corvus king?

I said, “I still don't see—”

Spiller said, “We'll steal in at night and catch them in their beds,” and he scraped his thumb across his throat.

“I daresay they won't all be sleeping,” Rowney said, and he lay back on his pallet and stared at the ceiling.

“Then we'll catch them coupling, and skewer two at once, eh?” Spiller said. “Anyway, I don't wish for more help. The fewer we are, the better the loot. Didn't you hear the king say they were rich over there?”

“Huh,” said Rowney.

Spiller couldn't keep still. One of his legs jigged up and down and he fidgeted with the fire on the brazier, poking and prodding it to death. All bravado and no bravery, was Spiller; I knew he'd spent the tourney hiding in the jacks'enclosure and hadn't ventured out once. But if he was afraid now, he hid it under a smirk. “Harien said their women go about in dresses so thin you can see right through. All the goods showing and no need to peek under skirts to find out who's plump and who's scrawny. And no need to share, either. There will be two or three apiece, he says.”

“Your tongue is loose on both ends, Spiller,” I said. “Better watch it doesn't flap away.”

Spiller grew cross with me and would say nothing further, useful or otherwise. He left and came back shortly with a whore. I sat with my back to them while he went at her noisily, bidding her turn this way and that. Rowney was next, and he was quieter but not so quick. When he was done she went off with a rustle of skirts and clink of coins. Soon after, Spiller began to wheeze in his sleep.

The day after tomorrow. After all these tennights dallying in the Marchfield, time for trouble to breed more trouble, now we found out what the king had been awaiting: messages sent and received, good omens, fair winds—and a fleet of fishing boats. I'd known the war would come and yet when the time came I was taken by surprise.

I hugged my knees and rocked. When I'd decided to go with Galan, I'd been ignorant of war. It had been no more to me than tales told about the king's doings, songs about battles so ancient that those who survived them had long since died of old age, tapestries with woven blood spurting from woven wounds. But my ignorance proved to be willful, for surely it was all there in the tales, the songs, the tapestries, if I'd chosen to look: the cruelty under all that splendor. But the songs and stories lied when they gave war shape and purpose. Would I have believed the wanton waste of battle, the squandering of life and suffering, if I'd not seen it myself? And the waste of meaning, for Hazard stalked the field, choosing one to be killed and another maimed and another to go unscathed, and not for anything a man had done or failed to do. Fate gives us what we've earned, but it was Chance who held sway, careless and sightless Chance.

I'd seen and still I couldn't take it in. When I thought of the bodies we'd stacked on carts to be taken to the cliffs for burning, I was benumbed. I had to call the dead before me one by one—Uly and Suripanta, Snare the foot soldier and Cowslip the whore, Sire Choteo and his armiger, so many others—to make of grief a blade so I could feel it cut.

I'd seen battle and riot and it was but a shadow of the war to come. We'd bring down Rift's wrath on strangers and they'd visit it in turn on us. And what would become of me in a strange country in wartime, if—when—Galan died? He'd sent the Queen of the Dead many new subjects yesterday and cheated her of his own death. She'd claim it yet.

If not for the mortal tourney, I wouldn't have known Galan as I knew him now. All the Blood were bred to war and raised to it. But not all were granted the ruthless, reckless, headlong bent for destruction that Galan had discovered in himself yesterday, that I'd tasted in him when I was his shadow.

I'd taken him for a pleasure lover, I'd thought the Crux was not far wrong when he called him an idle dillydallier; I'd gone with him for the pleasure he gave me and because there was a certain want in his eyes when he looked at me, something I took to be more than lust. As if there were some lack in him only I could remedy, some craving for my particulars. And I didn't wonder at the time whether he desired what I truly was or what he fancied me to be.

Then I found out that look was one of his talents, and how he used it. Still I flattered myself it was for me alone—and somehow I was not wrong.

Now I knew his power and speed, the havoc under his skin. He was a living blade, and how could I, his sheath, contain him? When I bound him to me, I bound myself to all that he was and all he might become. And if mortal tourney had wrought such a change, what would war make of him?

I'd stared at the brazier without seeing it, and the fire was nearly out. I leaned over and blew on it gently, fed it some more sea hay. Sparks scurried away.
Ardor Hearthkeeper, grant me your blessing
, I prayed, as I always pray. It is well to remember that the gods are not all wrathful. But even in the Hearthkeeper's domestic flame, I saw Wildfire and war.

And Sire Rodela shrieked that Sire Bizco was coming for him out of the sea, his flesh in rags, torn by crabs.

I heard the Crux raise his voice and say, “This is more of your foolishness.”

“I turned and saw he was speaking to Galan. The other cataphracts had gone back to their tents while I sat musing. Sire Rassis, the Crux's armiger, leaned away from the lamplight, drinking and watching. He was a dour man always, but since yesterday he'd been morose; his boy Ob had died, trampled on the hill.

Galan said, “Uncle, have you never clapped eyes on a woman and said, 'That one is mine'?

“Perhaps I did. But I found a night or two would cure me. You're the same way; I recall you were infatuated above once a week with one skirt or another. Why then should you squander any jot of your patrimony on a clod picked up in a field on Carnal Night?”

“I'm within my rights,” Galan said.

“Within your rights and out of your right mind. That's a good holding, and should go to a good man. Your horsemaster, your falconer—a steward would not be ashamed to have it.”

“She shall have it, Uncle,” Galan said. “Call the priests to list it in the Landsbook.”

I stood up, and the motion caught the Crux's eye. He glanced my way and I crouched back behind the wall of wine barrels, which had been breached by one feast after another. Galan's back was to me, I could see only the edge of his cheek and the stubborn set of his shoulders.

When the Crux spoke next, his voice was heavy. “Just when I think you are a man, you play the boy again. What will your father say, your wife? Your honor is bright now, and I don't wish to carry it back to your father, when this war is over, spattered with mud.” I heard his weariness, his disappointment—a heavy burden; I wouldn't have wanted to bear it. There was a long pause, and Galan didn't speak.

The Crux said, “I wish I'd sent you walking home, but I've condemned you instead. It is for love of you that I counsel you not to do what you'll regret, maybe in days, maybe in tennights—when your shade has time for reflection and she is long left behind.”

Galan turned his head and I saw his profile, lit by a many-branched standard hung with oil lamps. “Have the Auspices told you I'm bound to die?”

“All of us are bound to die. But it doesn't take a priest to foretell
your
future. Common sense will do it.”

Galan turned back and I lost sight of his face. “Well, Uncle, a dying man must make his bequests, and this is mine.”

When the Crux spoke next, patience was stretched thin over his ire. “If you must make provision for her, give her a room in your keep for as long as you live, and if you don't come home, your kin will not be obliged to waste good land on her.”

Galan said to Sire Rassis, “If it please you, would you ask Divine Hamus to come and bring the Landsbook?”

Sire Rassis scowled and didn't move until the Crux gave him leave with a jerk of his head. The Crux leaned toward Galan and lowered his voice. “She's befuddled you, boy. From the first she tied a leash to your dangle and made you parade after her like a dog. It isn't natural—she's a canny, and you'd see it for yourself if she hadn't thrown mud in your eyes.”

“No doubt I earned the reputation of always following my prick's lead,” Galan said. “But no more. And you're wrong—she's a greenwoman, indeed, but no cannywoman. She wouldn't stoop to charms or curses—she's too tenderhearted for her own good. Just today I caught her weeping over Sire Rodela, though he's done her nothing but harm. And don't you remember how she cured my concubine? She was nearly a skeleton and Firethorn put flesh on her again. She advised me to offer for her—is that a canny at work?—so that I might end the feud. And so I would have, if not for Rodela.”