by Ann Marston
She gestured to the doorway. “Out there.”
Something akin to fear clutched at my belly. “You haven’t buried him already, have you?”
She shook her head. “No. I thought to wait until you were out of danger.”
I let out a quick breath of relief. “I have to go to him,” I muttered. I tried to take a step. To my dismay, my knees buckled and I would have fallen if Kerri had not clasped her arm around my waist and propped her shoulder beneath my arm.
“Kian—”
“Please,” I said, steadying myself against her. “I have to go to him.”
I could hear the raw, intense need that filled my spirit rasping in my voice. Kerri sighed, then acquiesced. “Very well,” she said, taking most of my weight on her shoulder as she helped me to the door. “You should be dead, too,” she muttered. “The wound is a bad one. I’m not much of a healer—”
“I’m all right,” I insisted.
“Can’t you heal yourself first?” she asked. “You’re in too much pain now—”
“I’ll sleep too long afterward if I do,” I muttered “And I won’t have enough strength. I have to do this now. Before it’s too late.”
Cullin lay under the open sky in the broken shell of the upper room, cushioned by the cloak of one of the dead mercenaries. Kerri had laid him out with his arms crossed, and covered him with his plaid. I stumbled to my knees beside him and reached out to touch the forehead that had the colour and chill of pale marble. I took the plaid, folded it carefully and laid it to one side.
I had seen this ritual performed only once, years ago. Cullin himself had done it for a clansman killed by a bandit. Now I had to do it for him. “You’ll see me home, then,” he had said as I cradled his head against me, and I promised him.
Every clansman carries a square of oiled parchment in his wallet just for this purpose. Cullin’s was carefully rolled and tied with three cords, two silver and one black. I took it from the wallet and unrolled it before I set it atop the folded plaid. The two daggers, hilts inlaid with silver and gold wire, were still sheathed at his belt. I took one of them and placed it to the left of the parchment. The second one I drew and touched the hilt first to my own forehead, then to his.
I gripped his braid carefully, then slid the dagger between my hand and his temple and sliced it cleanly from his head. I placed it meticulously at the top of the parchment, then turned back to remove the earring and laid it at the bottom edge. I clenched my hands for a moment to steady their trembling, then gently unfastened his shirt to expose his breast. My breath caught in my throat and I tried not to look at the terrible wound in his belly.
The next part was the hardest. I had no stomach for this. But I had promised him, and there was no one else to do it.
“I’ll see you home, ti’vati,” I whispered, then took a deep breath, placed the point of the dagger under his breastbone and opened him. Behind me, Kerri made a soft, horrified sound, but she said nothing, and she made no attempt to interfere.
There was very little blood, of course, but my stomach contracted sharply and I had to fight the nausea that threatened to choke me. I found his heart and freed it from the large vessels holding it in his chest. I was shivering uncontrollably as I drew it out and placed it gently in the centre of the square of parchment. I wrapped the braid around the heart, placed the emerald earring on top, then carefully folded the parchment into an envelope and tied it with the black cord.
Tears blurred my vision and I could hardly see what I was doing as I rolled the parchment packet in the plaid. I placed his sword on top of the roll, then cleaned the dagger on my own kilt and crossed both daggers on the blade of the sword. I tied the bundle in the middle with his belt and each end with the silver cords, then sat back on my heels, still trembling.
“I’ll see you home, Cullin dav Medroch dav Kian of Clan Broche Rhuidh,” I said distinctly. “In this task I am both your son and your liegeman. I will see you safely home.” I had to sit there for a long time before I could turn and look up at Kerri, who stood behind me. She hadn’t moved.
“We can bury the body now,” I said. “I’ll see him home tomorrow.”
“Perhaps not tomorrow,” she said gently. “But as soon as you’re well enough to travel. We’ll see him home together, Kian.”
***
Drakon was dead. Dead by my own hand, as was Dergus. Mendor was dead, felled by Kerri’s sword. Cullin was avenged. But it wasn’t enough. By all the seven gods and goddesses, it wasn’t enough. Nothing would ever be enough, because nothing could bring him back. Grief and loss were tangible presences in my restless sleep. Troubled dreams I could not remember kept me tossing fretfully on the thin pallet, shivering with the cold, hollow ache in my heart.
Then suddenly, in the dream, another’s grief merged with mine. Along the faintly throbbing tendrils that bound me to the sword—and to Kerri—came the awareness of a deep and infinite sadness.
The shared need to comfort and take comfort pulsated quietly between us in the night. I turned and found solace and understanding in the form of a slim, warm body next to mine, and gentle hands brushing my hair back from my forehead. Smooth, silken skin felt gloriously alive under my stroking hands. I found her mouth in the darkness, and it was sweet as spring water, soft as rose petals, beneath mine. My readiness was a sudden hard urgency, and hers a welcoming openness.
The bond between us merged us into one entity, a wondrous we far more than merely the sum of she and I. She filled all the hollow, empty spaces within me, completing all my patterns perfectly. Sensation crackled back and forth between us along the threads of the bond until I could not tell where I left off and she began. Slowly, we moved through all the stylized rituals until all the gifts that were there to be given and taken were presented and received, and we subsided together into the sweetness of shared sleep.
In the morning, I awoke to see Kerri wrapped in her cloak, fully dressed and fast asleep, curled on a pile of furs near the wall by the door, and I wasn’t sure if I had dreamed our coming together, or if it had been real.
XXVII
We made ready to start north shortly after dawn two days later. I strapped the heart bundle securely behind my saddle. My hand lingered on it for a moment before I mounted. For the first time in eight years, Cullin would not be riding beside me. He would not be there to help and guide me. From now on, for the rest of my life, I had only myself to rely on.
Kerri’s mare stood saddled and ready. Kerri knelt in front of the two cairns, hands resting on her knees, head bowed. She had fashioned a hoop of ivy to place on Cullin’s grave, decorating it with a narrow braid cut from her own hair. She didn’t bother explaining it to me, but I recognized the gesture as one of respect and honour and was grateful for it. Cullin had deserved her regard and had more than earned it. I had already paid my final respects to Jeriad, and taken my leave of him. I would say my farewells to Cullin at Broche Rhuidh.
I mounted and caught up the lead rope of the stallion. Kerri looked up, then got to her feet and mounted her mare. She glanced at the heart bundle behind my saddle, then at me, but said nothing. We rode out of the river valley in silence.
Patrols of Isgardian soldiers watched the roadways, questioning travellers moving both eastward to Maeduni and west toward the coast. We were accosted several times in the first day and questioned closely. Since I was obviously a Tyr and we were moving north rather than east or west, we were not detained long.
We saw unmistakable signs of a country preparing for war. Many of the small villages we passed through were bereft of all men of fighting age. The fortified landholdings bulged with soldiers who spilled out into clusters of tents pitched around guarded walls. Everywhere, the banner of the Ephir fluttered above the standard of the local landholder. Strangers, once welcomed in the small inns and taverns, now met hostility and suspicion.
“They’re frightened,” Kerri said quietly as we left the tavern where we had stopped for the midday meal.
“Aye, but they’ve
reason,” I replied. The sword on my back shivered as we turned north again. It had been troubling me all morning. It wanted to go east, not north. A sensation much like an aching tooth shot through my spine. I reached behind me to put a hand on the heart bundle and ignored the sword. The ache subsided.
For the rest of the day, the sword kicked up a minor fuss, but I managed to ignore it. Dark found us well into the foothills, a long way from any villages or towns. We found a sheltered space by a small stream and made camp for the night. While Kerri saw to the horses, I prepared a sketchy evening meal.
I watched her as she sat by the fire, still unsure whether I had dreamed about her other night, or if it had really happened. We spoke very little, each of us immersed in our own thoughts.
I awoke in the night with the note of the sword singing loudly in my head. I sat up and groped around until I found the scabbard and picked it up. Even shrouded by the stiff leather, the blade gleamed brightly.
“I can see you and I are going to have to have this out,” I said grimly. Kerri slept curled down into her cloak on the other side of the fire. I got up carefully so I wouldn’t waken her, and took the sword deeper into the trees.
I took it out of the scabbard and held it up before me. The blade vibrated rapidly and glowed incandescent white, its strident harmonics screeching all around me, painful to the ears as the rasp of a file on metal. I gritted my teeth and shook the sword.
“Listen, you misbegotten lump of tin,” I snarled. “If you can’t understand duty when you see it, you’re no use to me.” I stabbed the point of the blade down into the ground and pried my fingers off the hilt, one by one. It didn’t want to let me go. It was like peeling the skin off my palms to wrest my hands from the hilt.
The sword quivered and howled, the light emanating from it surging back and forth between angry red and incandescent white. Hellas-birthing. All I needed was a sword that threw a towering temper tantrum when it didn’t get its own way. I stood before it until it finally settled to a churning orange brilliance.
“I have a duty to perform,” I told it calmly. “If you can’t understand that, you can bloody well stand there until you rust. I can do without your magic, my friend. But you can’t do without me right now.”
The sword seethed and fizzed, its light bright enough to sear my eyes. The pitch of the harmonic rose furiously. I folded my arms across my chest and watched it, trying not to think about how ridiculous this really was. No man should have to argue with his sword.
“Rust,” I repeated. “Right there.”
Finally the sword subsided. I sensed acquiescence in the tone of the harp and bell tone. I let it stand there for a moment before I put my hand to the plain leather-bound hilt.
“Once I’ve seen him home,” I said. “When I’ve seen him home, we’ll follow.”
The hilt settled into my hand, comfortable and familiar, fitting into my palm as if it had been crafted for it. I sheathed it and made my way back to the glowing embers of the fire.
Kerri sat up as I wrapped myself in my plaid again. Her tousled hair fell forward over her forehead and she raised a hand to brush it back. “Quite a performance,” she murmured. I thought she might be smiling.
I just looked at her for a moment in exasperation. “I hate magic,” I said with heartfelt fervency, and placed the sword on the ground by my head. “I really hate it.”
***
Late afternoon the next day gave us a glimpse of towering, snow-capped peaks as we rode side by side in silence on the narrow track. The day had been hot, the smell of dust hanging thickly in the air, but as the sun sank toward the mountains, a welcome cool descended. It was the first real summer day of the season. Midsummer could not be far off now. It startled me to realize I had completely lost track of time. Always before, seasons were counted by places. Midsummer usually found us descending the eastern slopes of the Laringorn Alps.
It came crashing down on me again that Cullin was dead. There were to be no more companionable evenings by a campfire with a merchant-train nearby. No more joyous brawling in taverns. No more testing each other’s skill with the sword. No more laughing together. That was gone with Cullin. Gone forever.
Kerri turned in her saddle to look at me, her eyes wide and sad. “I keep forgetting he’s gone,” she said, something akin to surprise and wonder in her voice. “It’s silly, but I keep expecting to see him come riding back down the road any instant.”
It was so close to my own musings, it startled me, and for one wild moment, I wondered if this bond between us allowed us to share each other’s thoughts. I met her eyes, then looked away toward the mountains. “I know,” I said. “So do I.”
We lapsed back into silence. After a while, I said, “I had a very strange dream two nights before we left Jeriad’s tower.”
For a long time, there was no sound but the slow clopping of the horses’ hooves against the hard-packed surface of the track. Finally, she said, “A dream?”
“About you, sheyala.” I glanced at her. She appeared absorbed in the small task of picking a burr from the mare’s glossy black mane. The heightened colour in her face might have been from the blaze of the sun all day. But it might not.
Again, there was a long pause before she replied. The burr was well tangled in the mare’s mane and required some time to remove properly. She looked up at me at last. “A pleasant dream?”
“Aye. Verra pleasant.”
“Oh?”
I smiled. “Not one I’m likely to dream again, I expect.”
“You wouldn’t want to?”
Rhuidh shied as a pheasant broke cover and flapped madly into the air nearly beneath his feet. When I had him settled down again, I looked at Kerri. She had recovered her composure and met my eyes coolly.
“It’s not that I wouldn’t want to, ye ken,” I said. “I wouldn’t refuse it if it was offered. But I learned a long time ago it’s not something one can expect or demand just because it came one’s way once. Dreams are peculiar that way.”
“I see.” She put her heels to the mare and cantered ahead. I lost sight of her as the mare rounded a bend in the track.
But Kerri was waiting as I came around the bend leading the stallion, still at a sedate walk. She glared at me. “That was certainly a lot of bush-beating, Kian dav Leydon,” she said severely. “Let me just say this, then the subject is closed. It wasn’t a dream, and I seldom make the same mistake twice.” She paused, marshalling her thoughts. “And one more thing. Stop calling me sheyala. I’m not a barbarian.” She paused again, then sighed. “No more than you are.”
***
As we approached the mountains, the road wound west of north, skirting the southern ranges of the Tyran Crags. The high passes, still choked deep in snow, would not be open until more than a fortnight past Midsummer. The track we followed intercepted the road north from Honandun that wound through the low, wide valley of the River Lauchruch, making an easily travelled road.
The days were hot now, almost uncomfortably so. But the gradually thickening forest as we left behind the Isgardian plain provided welcome shade, and the nights were still cool.
We rode through the gold dappled shade provided by oak and silverleaf maple. Here and there among the hardwood trees, tall, straight pines and firs made patches of darker green. To our right, rocky outcroppings thrust up through the loamy soil, reflecting the heat of the sun back down onto the track. Ahead, a thin, white thread of water cascaded off one of the small bluffs in its hurry to join the stream paralleling the track, a veil of spume making rainbows around the rock.
Just as we reached the ford, my stomach suddenly knotted in a spasm of nausea and the hair on the nape of my neck and my arms rose as I shuddered. I recognized the now familiar stench. Only the black general exuded that particular reek. I reined Rhuidh to a quick stop, holding up my left hand to Kerri. She drew the mare up beside Rhuidh and looked around quickly.
“What is it?” she asked, barely loud enough to be heard above the song o
f the waterfall.
“Magic,” I said. “Blood magic. Very close.”
“Maeduni?” She reached up to make sure of the sword on her back.
I nodded. “Aye, Maeduni. I think it’s the General. It has his signature.”
“Hellas-birthing,” she muttered. “An ambush ahead then.”
“Aye. Just around the bend on the other side of that small crag.”
She glanced around, standing in the stirrups. To our right, the cliff rose sheerly. To the left, the stream tumbled and churned across its rocky bed, making impossible footing for horses, doubtful and dangerous for people. There was nowhere to go but forward, or back the way we came.
“He picked his spot well,” Kerri said bitterly. “How many of them are there?”
I shook my head. “I can’t tell. I can just smell the magic. I recognize the stink of that accursed general.”
She relaxed back into her saddle, wrists crossed on the pommel, and looked at me. “What now?”
I hesitated. I couldn’t help thinking that Cullin would know exactly what to do. He always did. There might be half an army of Maeduni around that bend, or as few as half a dozen. This far into Isgard, the latter possibility seemed more likely. Either way, Kerri and I were outnumbered, even if the presence of the General were discounted. I wondered exactly how seriously Cullin and I had weakened him.
I scrubbed my hand across my cheek and jaw. “We have two choices,” I said. “We can go back….”
“Or?”
I grinned suddenly, knowing what Cullin would do. “Or we can go charging around that bend at full gallop and hope to startle them right out of their boots.”
She stared at me. “That’s the craziest idea I’ve ever heard,” she said. Then she grinned. “It’s so crazy, it might just work. They certainly won’t expect us to do anything that insane.”
I gestured toward the waterfall. “They wanted the falls to mask any noise they might make so it wouldn’t warn us,” I said. “We can play the same game. They probably won’t hear us coming until we’re nearly on top of them.”
