“Don't assume the women won't, or can't, fight,” I said, remembering my own expectations about the Marai women earlier. Turlo chuckled.
“You would think we would remember that, given our strategy against Leste,” he said. “Good to remind us all, though.”
But a horrifying thought had followed. “Turlo,” I said, “there will be children.”
“Yes,” he said slowly. “Yes, there will be children.”
No one spoke. Sorley looked shocked. Cillian's face was remote. “It would make us little better than Fritjof,” I said.
“Find us an alternative,” Turlo said simply.
“Bribe them?” Cillian said. “Offer tribute, whatever we can gather now, with promises of more when we return?”
“It is a huge risk,” Turlo argued.
“What if we capture their horses,” I asked, “and demand safe passage in return? If they value them as highly as you suggest they might, would that work?”
“Maybe,” Turlo said thoughtfully. He glanced at the sun, dipping westward. “I need to sleep a little. Wake me at dusk, if you will.” He had, I knew, the soldier's knack of sleeping anywhere, at any time. He'd be snoring in five minutes.
Sorley stood. “I need to clear my mind,” he said. “I'll be at the stern.”
Neither Cillian nor I spoke for some moments. “I cannot kill children,” I said finally.
“Nor can I,” he answered. “I have learned to kill animals, but I am still not sure I can kill a man.” He held out his hand. I took it, entwining my fingers in his. I had something I needed to say.
“Earlier,” I said, “I'm sorry. Forla, kärestan.”
A smile flickered. “Your pronunciation is appalling,” he murmured. “Who told you?”
“Turlo. Not intentionally. I don't know why I thought it mattered so much.”
“For all the reasons it matters to me that you have just used my cradle tongue. Thank you, my love.”
I put my arms around him, needing his touch, his solidity, against the horror of what we were confronting. He wrapped his arms around me, resting his head on my hair. I turned my cheek into his chest, closing my eyes, gathering strength. When I opened them again, I saw Sorley, at the stern, looking at us. Even over the twenty or so paces I could see that it was Cillian he held in his gaze, and I could see, too, the longing on his face.
Chapter Nine
I closed my eyes again, turning my head away. But I must have tensed. “What is it?” Cillian murmured. I felt him move his head. “Sorley,” he said after a moment. “I had hoped that was done with.”
“He was the boy you spoke of, who wrote music for you?”
“Yes. This is not the place to talk of it, Lena. Wait until we have some privacy.”
“Lena!” Irmgard, calling me. She was pointing downriver. “Something moving.” I went to look. The bushes at the far riverbank, some distance ahead, were indeed moving. I held up a hand to Geiri, who snapped a command at the oarsmen. The ship slowed. I watched, intent. A large head pushed out of the bushes, bent to drink. Deer. I relaxed.
I spent the next hours on watch. After the first hour we began to move again, slowly. I gave Sorley and Cillian the same brief lesson on attention, and told the women to rest. I knew from the Wall it was difficult to concentrate for too long: our shifts there had been four hours, for trained and experienced Guards.
Turlo woke in the late afternoon. Movement in the sky behind us, the way we had come, had just caught my eye; when I saw he was awake I called him over.
“What is it, lassie?” he asked, immediately alert.
“Carrion-birds.” I pointed. “Where we killed the horses.” And the men.
He swore under his breath. “If their fellows have missed them, those birds will arouse suspicion.”
“Or perhaps they will think the birds are attracted by the remains of butchered deer?”
“Aye, maybe. But that too will make them wonder why the hunters don't return, maybe not tonight, but tomorrow. We will have to act tonight if possible.”
He gave quick commands as dusk fell. No fires. No music or singing, nothing that could be heard across the plain. Weapons to hand. No one to go further than ten paces from the ship. “Lena,” he said. “You are next in rank to me; you are in command here until I return. Lady Irmgard, your men will follow Lena's commands.” It wasn't a question.
“Certainly,” she said, and after a quick exchange with Geiri, he too nodded.
“Ja,” he said. “Ja.”
A few slices of cold meat, a swallow or two of water, and Turlo was ready to go. “Listen for the wood-owl,” he said, and then as the ship came close to the left-hand bank he slipped over the side and was gone.
It is hard to wait, in silence, in the dark, and remain alert. We had no idea how far Turlo had to go, or when to expect him. The moon—only three days past new—would not rise until dawn. I sat, and then I paced, and sat again, away from Cillian. I couldn't let him distract me. Some of the men played a betting game with their fingers, in complex patterns I couldn't understand, and in complete silence. I thanked whatever gods there might be for trained men.
When it was very late, I went to stand against the side, trying to see out onto the dark plain. A slight breeze blew from the west. Cillian came to stand beside me, and then Sorley.
“Z-wit!” I sagged in relief. Turlo came out of the dark and the men reached for him. He landed easily on the deck. “Water?”
He drank deeply. “Now,” he said, wiping his mouth. “Good news. There is no village, or none that I can find. There is another party of hunters, about two hours east of here. We will need to deal with them before dawn. The carrion-birds Lena saw earlier will be back in the morning and attract attention.”
“How many should go, and who?” Sorley asked.
“Six should do it. There are five men again. Sorley, can you butcher an animal?”
“Yes,” he said. “Pigs and sheep, many times.”
“Horses?”
“If I must.”
“Good. Will you come?”
“I will,” he answered.
“Ask Geiri for his best four men,” Turlo directed.
It took less than ten minutes for them to be ready, and gone into the night.
“We should sleep,” Cillian said, a few minutes later. I shook my head.
“I can't, not yet. Maybe in a while. Can we talk?”
“About?”
“Sorley, first?”
He looked troubled. “There is no reason we cannot leave the ship now?” he confirmed. “Then let's walk,” he said. “This will take some time, and Irmgard—although I believe she is asleep—can understand us.” We climbed over to the riverbank. The night was very dark.
“It began some years ago,” Cillian said, when we were far enough away. He pitched his voice low, regardless. “Sorley came to the Ti'ach as a young man of eighteen, as many of the landholder's sons do, to learn from Dagney and for some exposure to wider thought before returning to take up their duties to their people. I was at the Ti'ach that year, after a time away, and Perras asked me to oversee some of his work.
“Had I wished to be something more than simply his teacher, Sorley would have welcomed it. I did nothing to encourage him; in fact, after a discussion with Perras, I was suddenly needed at a different Ti'ach.”
“Poor Sorley.” A night bird called, twice, and was silent.
“I thought it was an infatuation, nothing more.”
“And if you had realized it wasn't?”
“No.” He shook his head. “Not,” he said, at my questioning look, “because he is a man. I will admit to an attraction. But I had nothing to give him, and by that time I knew myself well enough to understand that.” He paused. “I had, just that year, decided that celibacy was preferable. I was determined to keep to that.”
“Maybe he had something to give you.”
“Lena, he was a boy of eighteen from remote Sorham, wholly incapable of dealing with me. I would have torn his
heart out.”
“And I am from a fishing village, and only three years older,” I pointed out.
“You are much older than he was, in so many ways, Lena. You understand that the world is not always kind, and you have loved before. Nor am I the same man, quite, that I was then.”
“I think his heart may be torn, regardless,” I murmured.
“It may be,” he agreed, “but I have done my best to not be culpable, except by just existing. You seem perhaps overly sympathetic to Sorley.”
“I am.”
“Why?”
I turned the thought around. “How would you feel, if I did not love you?”
“As if I had been exiled from life itself again,” he said without hesitation.
Oh, Cillian. Had I truly thought you cold and distant, once? It took me a second to respond. “Sorley might say the same.”
“I cannot believe he can feel that way, without encouragement, without anything between us except proximity.” I heard frustration in his voice.
“But he does,” I said gently. “To still show it after six years and much separation? He must. And now you and he are together again, on a small boat, and he knows something he didn't before.”
“Which is?” The river flowed on beside us, glittering under the stars.
“He sees us together. Don't you see how much worse that makes it for him?”
He exhaled. “Yes,” he said after some time. “But, Lena, what can I do?”
“I don't know,” I said honestly. “But Turlo needs to be apprised.”
“Why?”
The question surprised me. “For the same reason he asked me what was between the two of us. Because it affects how we react when the other is in danger.”
“Of course. A foolish question.”
“Cillian,” I said sharply. “This is not your fault, nor mine, but neither is it Sorley's. I think we only have two obvious choices: to ignore the situation, or to confront it. In either case Turlo needs to be told. I am guessing that this is not the first time he'll have had to deal with something like this.”
“No,” Cillian said tiredly. “I will talk to Sorley. A conversation that I expect to be as difficult as any I have had as a man.”
“You have survived them all,” I said, lightly.
“Yes,” he replied. “But a friendship—or what I thought was a friendship—that I have so recently come to value may not.” He turned, looking back at the ship. “But I will need to do this alone.”
“Of course,” I said. “Tell him what you just told me, Cillian. But be kind. Don't mock, either Sorley or yourself.”
“Myself? You would deny me even that protection?” The reflexive response. A revealing choice of words, I thought.
“I would, on this,” I said slowly. “Cillian, if you had not got past that defence with me, I might not be here with you now. You know that. Doesn't Sorley deserve the same honesty?”
“I will try, Lena. That's all I can promise.” There was a trace of impatience in his voice. We kept walking. “Whatever else is on your mind, Lena, it will have to wait,” Cillian said after a few paces. “I am beyond tired, and there are things weighing heavily on me.”
“You should have told me that.”
“Well, Sorley was one of them, and you have helped me see what I must do there.” I could hear the fatigue now. I searched for words.
“If I can help with the others, you will ask?”
“Of course, käresta. He stopped. “Do we have to sleep on the ship? I would like some space.”
“We don't have to,” I said. “The night is warm enough.”
Cillian, I think, was asleep in five minutes. I lay beside him, watching his steady breathing. As if I had been exiled from life itself again, he had said. But none of us could see our fates, and I was a sworn soldier, with a bloody, desperate war awaiting me.
Why did anyone choose to love, to accept this terrible, heart-breaking responsibility to another?
Later, before dawn, his voice, whispering my name, woke me. I lay still for a moment, letting my first startled reaction calm. “Yes?” I said sleepily. His hand roved down my body, his touch and his clear need quickly evoking a response from me. I rolled over. His hands and lips were more insistent than I had ever known, and underneath my undeniable arousal was a tiny quiver of fear. I buried my face in his shoulder, breathing in his scent, focusing on the sensations his hands were creating. He swung himself over me. “Keep your weight off me,” I whispered.
“I will,” he said, and then his mouth came down on mine and we lost ourselves in the rhythm and demands of love. Release, for both of us, came quickly, and he collapsed over me, breathing hard. But the feel of his body on mine did not overwhelm me. It just felt—natural.
Except, as I realized after a minute, he was falling asleep again. “Cillian,” I said, “you're heavy.”
“Mmm?” he murmured, and then, “oh, gods.” He pushed himself off me. “Käresta, forla, forla. Are you all right?”
“I am,” I said, unable to keep from smiling. “I am more than all right. Go back to sleep, my love.”
He rolled on his side. I curled beside him. Wounds do heal, I thought, as sleep claimed me.
But a wound healed on the surface may still be open, underneath. In the dream that came soon after, it was Ivor's weight on me that I struggled against, fear coursing through me. I woke wet with sweat, my heart pounding. I lay still, trying to calm myself. Tears puddled in my eyes and overflowed. Would I ever be free of the memory, or would it always be there, insinuating itself between Cillian and me, blighting what we shared? If his touch began to elicit this reaction, how could I cope? I made myself turn, move closer to him. I lay breathing in his scent, a tang of sweat overlaying the essential smell of his skin, comforting, safe.
I was still awake at first light when I heard sounds from the plain. My thoughts had gone down another path, perhaps even bleaker. I scrambled up. Cillian stirred. “Turlo?” he asked, sleepily.
I knelt to kiss him. “Hello, my love. Yes.”
Relief lightened my mood. As they came closer I could see Sorley, leading a horse laden with something. The oarsmen walked slowly, but other than one with a rough bandage around his arm, they appeared unharmed. Turlo brought up the rear, visibly tired.
It had all gone smoothly, he reported, revived by a tankard of the sour beer. There had been, as he had judged, five more men. The horsemen had hunted successfully earlier in the day and several gutted and bled carcasses lay in the camp. “My only misjudgment,” Turlo admitted, “was the number of horses. I should have realized they would have pack ponies. But Sorley handled that.”
“I did what I had to. Some I killed, and some I let run from the smell of blood, and this one I kept in case it was needed to ride back to the ship for help,” Sorley said quietly. “I'll let it loose now.”
Oarsmen gathered wood to roast the two butchered deer brought back from the camp. The other plunder from the raid was bows, larger, stronger bows, and the long arrows to go with them.
The fires burned down enough to begin to roast the meat. Rind cleaned the injured oarsman's arm and bound it again: he had taken an arrow, shallowly. Still, it meant one of us—or Geiri—would have to take his place rowing, for a few days.
“We'll eat, and then sleep, and move on again in five or six hours,” Turlo directed, as the smell began to remind me we had eaten only scant, cold food last night. I swore under my breath, remembering: no fires had meant no hot water. I had forgotten the anash. It shouldn't matter—but neither should I take the chance.
I went back to the ship to find my pack and my supply of dried leaves. As I dug for the small bag, my fingers found the parchment of my pardon. I wondered, suddenly, if Cillian had read his, and if Callan had sent him a private note too. Was that one of things on his mind? So many things crowding us, now.
I made the tea at the edge of one of the fires. Turlo sat on a log, alone: I took my tea over to sit with him.
&nb
sp; “Lena,” Turlo greeted me. “I did not ask; were there any problems yesterday?”
“None,” I answered. “The Marai women did well on watch, and the men are more than competent, as I'm sure you know.”
“Aye,” he said. “I am glad it was a hunting camp we raided, not a village, Lena, for your sake.”
“No children,” I said. “Yes, so am I.”
“No children,” he mused. “But one boy, perhaps thirteen.”
Almost the same age as Darel. “Oh,” I breathed.
“I made sure he died cleanly and quickly,” Turlo said. “It was all I could do. He would have been a man by their measure, or he would not have been there.”
“Like Darel,” I said. “Turlo, I—”
“Callan gave me your note,” he said roughly. “It was kind, lassie. I kept it.”
“Turlo,” I asked suddenly, “what happens to soldiers who cannot kill?”
He turned a questioning look on me. His eyes, as blue as the sea, had lost some of their brightness this past year. “It depends,” he replied. “In peace, we find them another role, for a while or forever. There is always a need for men to work with the horses, or cook, or teach cadets. Even in war, if the killing has brought them to a state where they are dangerous to their comrades, we will relieve them if we can. But there are times when they must honour their oaths, when every man is needed.” He cocked his head. “Are you asking for yourself, lassie? I saw that killing takes you hard, yesterday.”
“I have killed five times,” I said, “and it gets harder, I think, not easier.”
“That is not a bad thing.” He paused. “Five, Lena? I know of four: the two at Tirvan, the fisherman, and yesterday.”
How like Turlo to remember. “The fifth was a Kurzemë man.”
“You killed one of the people who took you in? Why?”
I hadn't even said the words to Cillian, not fully. I shook my head.
“Oh, lassie,” he said. “I think I can guess. But you killed him, after?”
“Yes.”
He put his hand over mine. “I am so sorry.” We sat silent for some time, his fingers stroking my hand gently. “Cillian must know?” he asked finally.
Empire's Legacy- The Complete Trilogy Page 80
