by Robin Hobb
“Oh, little fish, oh, my Kossi! Elliania, look, look, our Kossi has come back to us. She is herself!” The old warrior turned to his niece, and then as if joy had drained his strength from him, he fell to his knees, holding the child to his chest and murmuring over her.
Elliania looked over at us, her heart in her eyes, and then looked down at the woman who sprawled in the snow at her feet. She dropped to her knees by her mother and her tears came as she said, “We saved one of them. At least we saved one of them. Mother, I did my best. We tried so hard. ”
Dutiful looked over at her from where he knelt on the other side of the woman. Gentle as a nurse, he pushed the filthy hair back from her emaciated face. “No. You saved both of them. She's unconscious, Elliania, but she's back, too. I can feel her with my Wit-sense. Your mother has come back to you, too. ”
“But . . . how can you know this?” She stared down at the woman's face, not daring yet to hope.
Dutiful smiled at her. “I promise you, I know this is so. It's an old Farseer magic, a gift of my father's lineage. ” He stooped again to take up the lax woman. “Let's get her to warmth and shelter. And food. The battle seems to be over, for now. ”
They all just stopped fighting when the dragon died, Chade confirmed for me as I stood and peered out over the battlefield below us. It was as if they all just suddenly lost heart.
No. They regained it. It's hard to explain, Chade, but I feel it with the Wit. Her servants were partially Forged, but with the dragon's death, all that was taken and put into him came back to them. The same thing happened to the Narcheska's mother and sister. They're no longer Forged. Have the Outislanders speak to those we fought. Offer them food and welcome. And comfort them. They may be very confused.
I allowed my eyes to wander over the battlefield below me, and saw the truth of my own thought. The Pale Woman's soldiers, to a man, had dropped their weapons. One man stood, his hands clapped over his ears, weeping. Another had seized one of his fellows by the shoulder and was laughing wildly as he spoke to him. A small group of men stood clustered around the stone dragon. Lifeless, it had settled unevenly into the glacier, an ugly statue set awry.
But strangest of all was that Tintaglia had come to her feet. She walked stiff-legged as a stalking cat toward the stone dragon. Cautiously, she extended her head on her gracile neck. She sniffed the monster, nosed it cautiously, and then without warning, struck it a ringing blow with her clawed forepaw. The stone dragon rocked stiffly in the snow but did not fall over. Nonetheless, Tintaglia lifted her head high on her long neck and trumpeted her triumph over her foe. Blood might still ooze from the bites and scratches he had dealt her, but she claimed victory as hers. And around her, men raised their voices to join their cries of triumph to hers. If ever there had been a stranger sight than this dragon celebrating amidst human cheering, then no minstrel has ever told it.
From high above, a trumpeting call echoed hers. Battered and tattered, Icefyre circled in a wide spiral above us. He banked his wings and slid down the sky, swooping over us in a lower circuit. On the ground, Tintaglia threw back her head and bugled again. Around her throat, panels of her scales suddenly stood up like a mane and a crest on her head, scarcely noticeable before, stood erect and silver like a crown. A wash of color went over her, from deepest blue to brightest silver. The men who had gathered around her drew back. When she leaped from the ground to the air it was effortless in the manner of a cat floating from the floor up to a tabletop. Her wings opened as she sprang, and with three beats of them she was climbing.
Icefyre immediately tipped his wings and stroked them frantically, but the female easily outdistanced him as they climbed. He trumpeted after her lustily, but she did not bother to reply. Her wings carried her up and up, until to my straining eyes she might have been a silver gull winging overhead. Icefyre, almost twice her size, starved and tattered, battered his way through the sky in pursuit of her. I blinked as they passed before the sun.
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Then they were spiraling together. His deep cries were a challenge to all the world, but her higher calls were a defiance and mockery of him alone. He was above her for a moment, and then she tipped her wings and slid away from him. So I thought. Instead he clapped his wings to his body and fell upon her, his wide-open jaws so scarlet that even at that distance I perceived it before his teeth clamped onto her outstretched neck. Then his larger wings overshadowed hers, and suddenly their beating synchronized. He pulled her tight against him, his longer tail wrapping hers as he arched around her.
I knew what I witnessed. By that mating flight, there would be dragons in our skies again. I stared up at that wonder, at their casual flaunting of their return to life, and wondered what we had restored to the world.
“I do not understand!” the Narcheska exclaimed in horror. “She came all this way to save him and now he attacks her. Look at them fight!”
Dutiful cleared his throat. “I don't think they're fighting. ”
“Then . . . Yes they are! Look how he bites her! Why does he seize her like that, if not to hurt her?” Elliania shaded her eyes with one hand as she looked up in wonder at them. Her dark hair fell tangled down her shoulders and back and her uplifted chin bared the long straight column of her neck. Her tunic strained over her breasts. Dutiful made a small sound in his throat. He lifted his eyes from looking at her and his gaze went from me to Peottre. Her uncle had one arm around his sister's shoulders and held Kossi in his other. I think the Prince decided that our opinion of the matter no longer concerned him. He stepped closer to Elliania and took her in his arms. “I'll show you,” he said to her astonishment. He clasped her firm and close, and lowered his mouth to hers.
Despite all that had befallen me that day, despite every loss I had sustained, I found myself smiling. That which surged between the dragons above must affect any man sensitive to the Skill. The Narcheska broke the kiss at last. Lowering her brow to his shoulder, she laughed softly. “Oh,” she said. Then she lifted her face again to be kissed. I looked aside.
Oerttre did not. She was scandalized. Despite her rags and filth, her reaction was regal. “Peottre! You allow a farmer to kiss our narcheska?”
He laughed aloud. I was shocked to realize it was the first time I'd ever heard the man laugh. “No, my sister. But she does, and she allots to him what he has earned. There is much explaining to do yet. But I promise you, what happens there is not against her will. ” He smiled. “And what is a man that he should oppose the will of a woman?”
“It is not proper,” Oerttre replied primly, and despite her stained dress and caked hair, her words were that of a narcheska of the Out Islands. It struck me how completely she had come back to herself.
Abruptly it came to me that if the Fool still lived, then with the dragon's death, whatever Forging had been done to him would have come undone as well. Wild hope leaped in me and the world lurched around me. “The Fool!” I exclaimed, and then when Peottre looked at me in disapproval, to see if I mocked the Prince, I clarified, “The tawny man. Lord Golden. He might yet live!”
I turned and ran over the crusted snow. I reached the edge of what had been our pit and tried to find a safe way down into it. The upheaval of the dragons had made it a treacherous place. The opening that Peottre and the Narcheska had emerged from was gone. Rawbread's final landing in the side of the pit and his struggles to get out of it had obscured that gap into the Pale Woman's palace. But I knew where it had been and surely, surely, it could not be buried that deeply. I set out down the unstable slope, trying to hurry and yet keep my footing as the broken ice crunched and then cascaded past me. I halted and forced myself to walk more carefully. I picked my way down the sliding slope, hating the delay. Every chunk of ice I dislodged now was yet another I must move. The opening had been at the deepest end of the pit. I was nearly to it when I heard someone call my name. I halted and looked over my shoulder. Peottre stood at the edge of the excava
tion, looking down on me. He shook his head, his eyes full of pity. He spoke bluntly.
“Give it up, Badgerlock. He's dead. Your comrade is dead. I'm sorry. We saw him when we were searching the cells for our people. I had promised myself that if he were still alive, we would try to steal him, too. But he wasn't. We were too late. I'm sorry. ”
I stood staring up at him. Suddenly I couldn't see him. The contrast between the brightness of the day and his dark silhouette seemed to blind me. Cold crept up me, followed by a wave of numbness. I thought I would faint. I sat down very slowly in the ice. I hated the stupid words that came from my mouth. “Are you sure?”
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Peottre nodded, and then said reluctantly, “Very sure. They had—” He stopped speaking suddenly. When he resumed, he said flatly, “He was dead. He could not have lived through that. He was dead. ” He took a breath and then sighed it out slowly. “They are calling for you, down at the camp. The boy, Swift, he is with the dying man. They want you there. ”
The dying man. Burrich. He jolted back into my thoughts like one of Chade's explosions. Yes. I would lose him, too. It was too much, far too much. I put my face down in my hands and curled up, rocking back and forth in the snow. Too much. Too much.
“I think you should hurry. ” Blackwater's voice reached me from some distant place. Then I heard someone else say quietly, “You go tend to your own people. I'll see to mine. ”
I heard someone working his way down the slope of ice to me, but I didn't care. I just sat there, trying to die, trying to let go of a life where I failed everyone I cared about. Then a hand fell heavily on my shoulder and Web said, “Get up, FitzChivalry. Swift needs you. ”
I shook my head childishly. I would never, never, let anyone depend on me again.
“Get up!” he said more sternly. “We've lost enough people today. We're not going to lose you, too. ”
I lifted my head and looked up at him. I felt Forged. “I was lost a long time ago,” I told him. Then I took a deep breath, stood up, and followed him.
Chapter 26
HEALINGS
The Chalcedean practice of tattooing one's slaves with a special mark of ownership began as a fashion among the nobility. In the early days of it, only the most valuable slaves, slaves one expected to own for a lifetime, were so marked. The custom seems to have escalated when Lord Grart and Lord Porte, both powerful nobles in the Chalcedean court, entered a rivalry to display their wealth. Jewelry, horses, and slaves were the measure of wealth at that time, and Lord Grart chose to have all of his horses prominently branded and all of his slaves tattooed. Ranks of both accompanied him everywhere he went. It is said that Lord Porte, in imitation of his rival, actually bought hundreds of cheap slaves of little or no standing as craftsmen or academics, simply for the purpose of tattooing them as his and displaying them.
At that time in Chalced, some slave craftsmen and artisans and courtesans were allowed by their masters to accept outside commissions. Occasionally one of these privileged slaves would earn enough to purchase his freedom. Many masters were understandably reluctant to let such valuable slaves go. As tattoos of ownership could not be removed from the slave's face without substantial scarring, and freedom papers were widely falsified, it was difficult for former slaves to prove they had earned their freedom. Slave owners took advantage of this by creating expensive “freedom rings,” earrings of gold or silver, often with jewels, the design unique to each noble family, that indicated a particular slave had earned his freedom. Often it took a slave years of service, after he had bought his freedom, to purchase the expensive earring that showed he was truly free to move about Chalced as he pleased, on his own recognizance.
— FEDWREN'S “HISTORY OF CHALCED'S SLAVE CUSTOMS”
I am no stranger to the aftermath of battle. I've walked across bloody earth and stepped over hacked bodies. Yet never before had I been in a place where the futility of war was so clearly illustrated. Warriors bound up the wounds they had dealt to one another, and Outislanders who had fought us now anxiously asked the Hetgurd men for news of relatives and clan lands left years ago. Like men waked from a legendary sleep they were, groping after lost lives, trying to cross a rift of years. It was too clear that they well remembered all that they had done as servants of the Pale Woman. I recognized one of the guards who had dragged me before her. He looked hastily aside from my gaze, and I did not confront him. Peottre had already told me the only thing I needed to know.
I made my way through our camp. With an almost unseemly haste, it was being struck. Two badly injured men, both from the Pale Woman's force, were already loaded on the sleds, and the tents were coming down. A hasty ice cairn was being assembled over three dead men. All of them had belonged to her. Icefyre had eaten Eagle, the Hetgurd man who had fallen to the dragon. There would be no entombment for him. The other two men we had lost, Fox and Deft, had already been buried in the collapse of the pit. No sense digging them up only to bury them again, I suppose. It seemed a hasty and irreverent way to leave our fallen, but I sensed the emotion that drove it. There was an aura of haste to this departure, as if the sooner we could leave this place, the faster the Pale Woman would become a creature of the past. I hoped that she too was entombed beneath the immense fall of ice.
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Web walked beside me and Chade came hurrying to meet me. Someone had bandaged his arm. “This way,” he told me, and led me to where Burrich lay in the snow. Swift knelt beside him. They had not tried to move him. There was a wrenching wrongness to how his body lay. The spine is not meant to twist like that. I dropped to my knees beside him, surprised to find his eyes open. His hand spidered feebly against the snow. I slipped mine underneath it. He was breathing shallowly, as if hiding from the pain lurking in the lower half of his body. He managed a single word. “Alone. ”
I looked at Web and Chade. Without a word, they withdrew. Burrich's eyes met Swift's. The boy looked stubborn. Burrich took a slightly deeper breath. There was a color in his skin around his mouth and eyes, a strange darkening. “Just a moment,” he said huskily to his son. Swift bowed his head slightly and walked away from us.
“Burrich,” I said, but an almost sharp movement of his hand against mine bade me stop.
I saw him gather the remnants of his strength. He paced himself, taking a breath for each phrase he uttered. “Go home,” he said. And then, commanding me, “Take care of them. Molly. The lads. ” I started to shake my head as he asked the impossible of me, and for a moment his hand tightened on mine, a shadow of his old grip. “Yes. You will. You must. For me. ” Another breath. He furrowed his brow, as if making an important choice. “Malta and Ruddy. When she comes in season. Not Brusque. Ruddy. ” He wagged one finger at me, as if I had thought to argue that decision. He took a deeper breath. “Wish I would see that foal. ” He blinked his eyes slowly, then, “Swift,” he said, painfully.
“Swift!” I shouted and saw the loitering boy lift his head and start to run back to us.
Just before he reached us, Burrich spoke again. He almost smiled as he said, “I was the better man for her. ” A breath. In a whisper, “She still would have chosen you. If you'd come back. ”
Then Swift flung himself to his knees in the snow beside Burrich and I gave my place over to him. Chade and Web had come back with a heavy blanket. Web spoke. “We're going to try to scoop out the snow under you and sling you in the blanket to put you on the sled. The Prince has already released the bird that will summon the ships to fetch us back to Zylig. ”
“Doesn't matter,” Burrich said. His hand closed on Swift's as he shut his eyes. A few moments later, I saw his hand go lax.
“Move him now,” I suggested. “While he's unconscious. ”
I helped them, digging in the snow under Burrich's body and sliding the blanket beneath him. Despite our efforts to be gentle, he moaned as we moved him, and my Wit-sense of him faded a notch. I
said nothing of that but I am sure that Swift was as aware of it as I was. The situation didn't need words. We loaded him onto the sled with the other two injured men. Just before we left that place, I looked up into the clear sky, searching. But there was no sign of either dragon.
“Not even a thank-you,” I commented to Web.
He shrugged wordlessly and we set out.
For the rest of that day, I either walked beside Burrich or took turns pulling the sled. Swift walked always where he could see his father, but I do not think Burrich's eyes opened again that day. Thick rode on the tail of the sled, huddled in a blanket and staring. Kossi and Oerttre rode on the other sled, well bundled against the cold. Peottre pulled it, humming a tune as he trudged along, while the Narcheska and Dutiful walked alongside it. They were in front of us. I could not hear what the Narcheska was telling her mother, but I could guess. Her eye, when it fell on Dutiful, was slightly less disapproving, but mostly her gaze lingered on her daughter, with pride. The remaining Hetgurd men led us, probing the snow for cracks as we went. Web and then Chade came to walk alongside me for a time. There was nothing to say and that was what we said.
I counted it up to myself, mostly because I could not stop my mind from doing so. My prince had led here one dozen men plus Swift and Thick. Six Hetgurd men had come to oversee us. Twenty in all. Plus the Fool and Burrich. Twenty-two. The Pale Woman had killed Hest and Riddle and the Fool. Burrich was dying from the injury her dragon had dealt him. Eagle had died in the rain of ice from Chade's explosion. Fox and Deft were likewise lost. Sixteen of us would return to Zylig. Assuming that Churry and Drub had survived on the beach alone. I drew a deep breath. We were bringing the Narcheska's mother and sister home. Surely that counted for something. And eight Outislanders would be going back to their homes, men their families had long believed dead. I tried to feel some sort of satisfaction, but could not find it. This last and briefest battle of the Red Ship War had been the most costly to me.
