Plenilune (78 page)

Rupert struggled mightily—it could not be seen, but she could feel it—and overwon his worse sense; after a moment, he lifted his helm off his knee in a kind of salutary gesture, the black horse-tail plume of it spraying in the wind. “Perhaps I speak out of place in the presence of two who know me so well.”

There was an embittered truthfulness in his tone, but there was an acid regret in his eye and a hardness, a fierceness like fangs, that shaped his lips. Margaret took the green branch of his honesty and tossed it aside. “What do we know of each other, save that, for good or ill, by heaven and hell, we will always, the three of us, be set at odds with each other? That is enough to know. That is enough to judge by.”

“I would give but this one piece of advice,” he retorted.

She arched her brow. “Advice? For us? Why?”

His haggard face darkened like a sun eclipsed. “Because I am honest, and it can do me no harm.”

The soft breeze purled and thumped in Dammerung’s cloak; out of the movement of it Margaret heard the many times it had been said the War-wolf had died, innocently, on a boar-hunt, and felt the gall of the lie in her belly. But aloud she said only, “Honesty is the greatest of our misfortunes, and caring second greatest. Think a moment longer: you may regret your advice.”

They had gone beyond swords now. The flare of search-light had been the true measure of the soul at war, and Margaret watched the dark heart of the war-lord clench and harden, muscles rolling with power, sick with bitterness, hungry for revenge. In another moment he would decide against it and hold his tongue.
Hold it,
she willed him furiously.
Hold it! I want neither praise nor censure from you, only silence. Only silence.

But the moment did not come. Before it could be too late he said, quickly and angrily, “This is my advice to you: to know that I have the one advantage that I know the human heart, for I am a master of it. It is full of power and cruelty, and will dominate, for that is the destiny of man. You speak of goodness and of heaven, but in that you only cheat yourselves. There is a heaven—surely I know! for it ever lives to make life hard for me and mine—but who are you to think there is not a chink in your pretty armour, a chink of human will and self and blind ambition for power that I will not find, that I will not use to get a hold of you and bend you or break you? You are born of the stuff of my lords, like clay in their hands, and I will always—I will
always
rule you, for you are of the same spirit and flesh and blood, and when the time comes for the last reckoning and war you will roll your dice with me and lie buried under my fields.”

“Rupert?” Dammerung called softly, questioningly. Rupert turned his head, an apocalyptic shining in his eye. “Is Plenilune a hollow cup for you, with which to hold your wine?”

“Which vine shall we plant here, you and I,” Rupert flashed back, “and whose vintage shall we drink?”

“As the Lord lives, not yours!” said Dammerung. “An’ sure it tastes of vinegar and blood.”

“You would know that.”

Margaret was afraid the fight would break out afresh, and she was not sure what she would do to overset the balance of the chessboard in their favour again—was it ever in their favour, or did God’s little soldiers go singing in the dark to their deaths, she wondered?—when Dammerung did a sudden, awful thing. He flicked his hand through the air, turned a swift little gust of wind that sang with light on its razor-sharp edges, and said in a low voice that rumbled in the stones at their feet—

“
Go
.”

It could have been Plenilune herself which spoke—it could have been the Dragon. It was so small a word, so simply spoken, but even Margaret felt the weight of it—
A word of power
—and Rupert, with his head uplifted, though she knew his spirit bowed, gave his jewelled spurs a jink against his horse’s flanks and shouldered on, wordless, the dark light of murder flashing sidelong in the corner of his eye.

When at last he was gone, and the bend in the road had hidden the last horse-tail in his train, she shuddered as if someone had trod on her grave.

He actually did love me
.

Staring after them, Gro said, “I feel in my bones that great history is made between you in our midst.”

But Dammerung’s lips curled in a foxy, feral snarl. “Aye, and with great history comes always great losses. Step up, Rubico!”

They rode into a hectic camp in the midst of a thick scarlet dusk. They had left Rupert somewhere along the road and had never seen him, save for his tracks, until a parting of the ways; then they had climbed northeast into the hill country until the ruddy, shadowed bulk of empty Aloisse-gang was the only thing etched against the golden twilight and the haze of the campfires hung low in the sudden drops and glens of the land.

“It seems we have come in the wake of a battle,” remarked Dammerung, sniffing at the blood in the air. Margaret smelled only wood-smoke and horse-sweat—most of the latter came from Mausoleum and drenched her gown. But despite whatever had gone forward that afternoon among the steep runs of the glens and the rolling scrub-and-turf around the ancient castle, a weary cheer went up on all sides as they rode in. Men stood up, leaning on their swords, to salute them; war-hounds bayed and signed greetings in the air with their forepaws as they reared up against the strain of their leads. Jewelled fires winked out of the dusk; the scent of roasting meat brought the warm sweet water to Margaret’s mouth and she realized that all day she had lost her appetite and was only just now getting it back with a ravenous ferocity.

“Heigh-o, here we are—”

Rubico swung to the right, cutting Mausoleum off, and trotted the last uneven bit of turf to the bald patch before the conspicuous blue tent of Capys. Skander was out front, limned with blood and tattered, a weariness about his shoulders; he was just taking a letter from a post-rider when the shadow of Dammerung’s horse loomed over him. With a little sickened start Margaret watched him look up: his face was haggard and grey and his upper and lower lip, in a perfect diagonal, had been slashed and then stitched together again.

“Whoa!” cried Dammerung, to his horse and his cousin at once. “That’s a pretty piece of work. Rum luck for Woodbird.”

“Joo you know,” said Skander through ground teeth, “I shot the very shame t’ing when Lock’ear gave it to ’e.”

“I hope you gave him back as good as he gave you.” Dammerung swung his leg over Rubico’s neck and jumped to the ground; he passed the horse off and Margaret twisted as he reached for her, his hands closing about her waist to lift her off. “I’ll have a look at it before supper. It is all sort of unfun trying to eat with two busted lips.” His eyes fell on the letter. “News?”

Skander broke the seal, opened it, and ran a hasty eye over the contents. His hand wavered inconsequentially. “Shurvance. Jus’ an update: all’sh well at home.” The
h
seemed to have given him pain, for his cheek convulsed and he folded the letter away. “You?”

Margaret looked over her shoulder to find Lord Gro and Mark Roy’s sons had drifted silently away, falling in among the other lords and land-owners. The cousins and she herself—whatever she was—were left alone.

We walk alone.

“Among other things,” murmured Dammerung, slipping her arm in his and turning to the back-flung tent-flap of the blue booth, “we met with Rupert on the road today.”

Skander’s head turned a fraction, too quickly, and he stopped it before he could meet Dammerung’s eye. He said nothing. At the entryway to the tent Dammerung pushed Margaret forward and she went in ahead of them, ducking into the familiar lamp-washed interior of the war-lord’s war-room. Gold pricked out from every surface and where the gold was not growling, the deep purr of dark-stained wood was thrumming. On an impulse she smiled; the heart-thing in her chest unwound and relaxed.

Dammerung put his cousin in a chair, turned him into the light, and stood with his knees bent a little before him, thumbs and forefingers playing with the gashes and stitching on Skander’s lips. Skander took it gamely; he watched out of the corners of his eyes as Margaret helped them all to glasses of wine; she did not feel quite up to watching Dammerung at his work.

While he worked, Dammerung sketched a brief overview of the past twenty-four hours. She thought he played up his annoyance over the intrusion at Gemeren rather much, and downplayed his encounter with Rupert significantly. Leaving a chalice of wine in Skander’s hand, Margaret’s eyes met his and they shared a little understanding between them while Dammerung went on, soothing angry red skin and slipping loose cat-gut.
You and I
, thought Margaret,
know him too well to miss when he is hurt and nettled
.

“You can talk now,” said Dammerung, giving Skander’s rough, unshaven cheek a smart clap with the flat of his hand. “Now is your turn. Thank you—” He took his own glass from Margaret.

“We saw Rupert too—the man gets about.” Skander tested his lips. They still sported angry red lines, which would turn later into silver scars, but the skin had closed. Cutting her eyes aside to Dammerung’s lean, lithe figure thrown casually against a battered table, the sparking red-speaking wine-glass clasped lightly in the long fingers, Margaret wondered how much of the War-wolf was good flesh and how much was, like Plenilune’s own scars, silvered tissue from past wounds.

The foxy head twisted at Skander’s words; a brow arched.

“We had the better part of Locklear’s forces against us—quite the flower of Rupert’s army, I reckon from experience. I swear no sooner did I get here, coming up from Helming Side, then I was entrenched in a glen-war. Locklear better knows glens than I. I think, providence aside, that it was sheer determination on our part that saw us through. I did give the man back as good as he gave me, and more, I imagine.” He gestured out toward the limned night where the Tarnjewel sky was lighting the tapers in honour of the dying day. “Five glens down, between a nasty burl, a few rocks, and a drop into a stream, he cut me across the face—a masterful stroke, too, though it wasn’t enough to kill me, which is what he wanted—and of a sudden I saw red. I gave him a neat, clean clip across the waist-band, enough to sever his leather and trousers and even felt a bit of bone come too. I nearly wenched him, and the blow sent him into the water. I was too busy to go after him. I don’t know what became of him, but I doubt he met his end there.”

“You said you saw Rupert,” Margaret reminded him.

He shifted in his chair toward her. “Only at the end. He came up by way of the post-road and went west along the outskirts of us. The battle was over thirty minutes after that. That was all I saw of him.”

Dammerung, too, looked toward the twilight glory of the west, and though he did not speak, Margaret could hear his thoughts move in the narrow seaway of his eyes:

You are out there, watching me
.

Aloud he said, presently, “I wish this were over.”

And Skander murmured, “Not for awhile yet, coz.”

Margaret put down the little silver tureen full, not of soup, but of meat pasties. What fickle things appetites were: she had lost hers again. “Not to sound callous and cold-hearted,” she broke in: “is there a place where I might bathe?”

Dammerung came off the table. Skander leaned forward and took a pasty and eased it into his mouth. “There is a secluded bit of glen with a fall and pool just down the slope back of the house—tent,” he amended. Grimly, stiffly, he shouldered out of his chair and moved toward the tent opening. “I am going on the rounds. I lost my lieutenant Scilay a week ago and until I can replace him the rounds are mine to do alone. Do you come?” he asked hopefully, turning back to his cousin.

But Dammerung smiled wearily, foxily. “God rest his soul. No, sorry. A lonely, introspective walk it is for you.”

The man murmured something under his breath about Woodbird, something which Margaret could not quite catch, and then he was gone.

Dammerung leaned back against the table, one foot crossed beside the other.

“He called it a house,” she remarked, looking over the tent.

There was a mirror on the far side of the interior; in it, she could see Dammerung nod once. “Months of campaign will do that to you. But tell me you did not feel a little stirring as of feathers in a nest when you came in here.”

She nodded her admittance, found her pack, and dug in it for a clean shift. Beside her, upreared in shadow at odd angles with everything, Dammerung looked down and watched her. A pent-up feeling simmered under the form of him; when she had found her comb and had gone looking further into her bag for her second pair of earrings—which always fell to the bottom corner and seemed to get lost—she said,

“Whatever it is, you had better say it or your hair will catch fire.”

He laughed gustily and small sparks crackled around his dog-teeth. “I wanted to ask if you would be bull-set against me accompanying you.”

Sitting back on her heels, she frowned up at him. His head was bent into shadow, but his eyes were oddly illumined.
What a truly callous, thoughtless creature I have become!
she half-laughed to herself. “Truth to tell,” she admitted aloud, “I had always counted on you coming. It isn’t safe, anyway, for me to go alone.”

“Had you?” He put out his hand and shoved it through the crest of her hair, hard, as one might rough the head of a favourite hound. She unbalanced and landed on her buttocks. “My main thought was that you had assumed—but God help a man who assumes upon a lady’s favour!”

“Tush!” she said, and grasped after his hand to haul her to her feet. “
You
could use a rinse too.”

He went to a trunk and rummaged for some clothing. “I know,” his muffled voice came back. “The grit and grime and shadow of Rupert is loathsome even to me. I come.
Après vous
…”

There was still a little light on the horizon when they went out but not enough to light the way. Dammerung, canny in the dark, stepped up beside her and together they wound their way down the little half-worn path to the sound of running water. Presently Margaret found herself on the sloping drop of a rocky bank looking down into a rocky pool with a fall a little more than a man high. With care she crouched, steadied herself with her hands, and extended her legs onto the narrow shore below. Dammerung stepped down beside her.