“Tell me now,” she said.
Calmer, Thalgor sat opposite her.
“Why does it cause him so much agony?”
She uncovered the wound. “Think of it as a battle between the illness and his body. My magic can fight on his side, but the enemy has a strong foothold and is hard to ferret out from all its hiding places. Sometimes one side gains the advantage, sometimes the other. But his strength wanes through it all.”
“Erwyn.”
She looked at him. He seldom said her name.
His eyes were soft with tears again. “When you know for certain you cannot save him, give him an easy death.”
She didn’t tell him that moment had come and gone more than once already. Saving Rygar for Thalgor’s sake had become more important than saving him for his own sake. That was a sin against her magic and she would not make the same mistake again.
“He is my mother’s son,” Thalgor said.
Her first impulse was to ask why that did not make Rygar his brother. Then she remembered her mother’s daughter she did not call a sister. She remained silent and waited.
“His father captured us when I was a boy. He raped and beat my mother more times than I could count. He finally beat her to death when Rygar was a small child because he was ill and she could not make him stop crying. Before she died, I promised her I would keep him safe.” He stopped and stroked Rygar’s gaunt cheek. “Her murderer gave Rygar to his mother to raise.” He looked up at Erwyn, eyes damp. “Gee. He kept me around as a kind of whipping boy, but she protected me from him when she could. Better, perhaps, than my mother had.” His fists clenched and unclenched on his legs. “That brute was the first man I killed. When I grew to be as tall and was nearly as strong as he was, he ceased to hit me. One night, after a raid that went badly, he knocked Rygar, still a child, across the tent. Gee intervened, and he threw her to the ground and kicked her senseless. I picked up the sword he’d left by the door and ran it through his throat. He died slowly, drowning in his own blood, while Rygar and I watched.”
The silence vibrated with emotion, but neither spoke.
Most men would have bragged of such a feat, but Erwyn heard in Thalgor’s voice the echo of the boy still struck numb by the horror of what he had done. She wanted to cry for that boy, but the man would not welcome her tears.
Rygar’s eyes fluttered open. “Water.”
Erwyn handed him a cup of the cold tea. He drank it, then fell back with a sigh.
He was able to keep the tea in his stomach this time and soon closed his eyes.
His wound needed to be cleaned and repacked again, but she would wait until he was fully asleep.
“Why keep your closeness a secret?” she asked Thalgor.
“Long tradition makes us enemies. I killed his father and eventually took his place as leader of this band. People may not understand he is all I have left of my mother and our band. It is best they forget we are brothers.”
She nodded. Rygar slept peacefully. She uncovered his wound and began to clean it.
*
As the moon rose, Thalgor made his rounds of the camp to check on the sentries and talk briefly with Gurdek, who had the night command.
The whole camp seemed subdued by Rygar’s illness, even in the rush of final harvest. Everyone he spoke to asked about him. Many were eager to assure Thalgor his second would recover under the witch’s care. Perhaps people had not forgotten they were brothers after all.
He returned late to the dark tent, lit only by a shuttered lantern next to Rygar’s makeshift bed. Erwyn had fallen asleep, her inert body spread across Rygar’s chest. One of his arms had come up as if to hold her.
There was a time, perhaps only days ago, when such a sight would have filled Thalgor with jealous rage.
Tonight he felt only worry. He knelt and brushed Rygar’s cheek with his hand. The skin felt cool. Its color was almost normal, even in the dim light. The battle was won.
Thalgor wanted to shout in celebration. Instead he silently let the relief and joy run through him. And the gratitude.
Tenderly he moved his brother’s arm and picked Erwyn up.
She settled against his chest before her eyes flew open.
“Rygar?” she whispered.
Thalgor laid his forehead on hers. “His fever has broken.”
She smiled and closed her eyes.
Thalgor carried her to bed, then went to cover Rygar. Gee padded in from the chamber she shared with Felyn.
“He will soon be well,” Thalgor told her.
She gave him a fierce hug and sat by Rygar’s bed.
Weary, Thalgor went to his own bed and lay beside Erwyn. He would have awakened her to find comfort in her body, but it was too soon after losing their child. A life lost, a life won.
He remembered a chant he had learned from his witch grandmothers as a boy. A song of the dead and the cycles of life.
He intoned it softly to himself, grateful that he had been able to keep his promise to his mother and the cycle of Rygar’s life had not ended. He needed his brother’s stories and the memories he kept alive.
The chant done, he wrapped himself around his woman’s body and slept with a peace he hadn’t known in years.
*
As Rygar’s wound recovered, the days became ever more filled with the preparations for the wanderings of the dark time.
But the nights were filled with a new wonder for Erwyn. Thalgor, always an ardent and attentive lover, was now a tender one as well. The sense of floating in honey returned every evening and left only with each busy day’s dawn.
He never seemed to notice when the midwives woke her in the night to help with difficult births. Perhaps because Gee relied more and more on Tya, and on Rygar as he grew stronger, to do the work the old woman no longer could.
One day, as the camp got ready for the final feast before the wanderings, Thalgor called his council and laid the map out on the great table to choose a route south.
“There has been little rain,” Gurdek noted. “We must stay well away from the arid moors.”
“Less rain in the warm time means heavier rain in the dark time. We must not be too near the rivers,” Batte added.
“What do you see, Erwyn?” Rygar asked. He still limped, but was strong enough to return to battle as an archer and had returned to his place as Thalgor’s second on the council.
Erwyn had waited for this day to come with hope and dread.
“I cannot see. I cannot look.”
Six pairs of eyes turned to stare at her, but she saw only Thalgor’s, brown and hard as when he first captured her.
“A witch who cannot see?” Gurdek’s second asked in surprise.
“She is with child,” Thalgor explained.
His tone was so empty of emotion that Batte’s second asked, “Your child, Thalgor?”
Thalgor wrapped both hands around the man’s throat before Batte and Rygar could move between them.
“You think otherwise, fool?” Thalgor roared as the man struggled vainly to pull his leader’s hands away.
“She is a witch,” he gasped.
“She is my woman.”
Thalgor gave the man a little shake before he released him and calmly turned to Batte.
“Your second speaks his mind without fear. You chose well.”
Batte nodded, his face red with an anger he dared not express with Thalgor in such a mood. Rygar slipped away to bring the half-strangled man, who still choked and coughed, some water. Gurdek and his second pretended great interest in the map. None of them dared even cast a glance at Erwyn.
She willed her heart to beat more slowly. She could not look, but for just a moment she had seen her own neck in Thalgor’s huge fists. A neck so slender, she knew, that he could crush it in an instant if he chose. Instinctively her hands flew to protect the baby that grew in her womb, despite her certainty Thalgor would die rather than see either of them harmed.
Gurdek stabbed a finger randomly at the map. �
��If we go here,” he said too loudly in the stunned silence around him.
He, his second, and Batte began again to discuss the options. Batte’s second joined in more slowly, his voice raw. Rygar threw in an occasional comment, but he also kept looking back and forth from Erwyn to Thalgor, who stared silently over all of their heads at the blank wall of the tent.
Erwyn watched Thalgor from lowered eyes. She knew him well enough that she didn’t need magic to read most of what he felt. Surprise, anger, worry, maybe a little pride. She watched as worry slowly overcame anger and began to hope.
But there was no sign of the tenderness, joy and love she felt as soon as she discovered she was with child again. Perhaps that would come with time.
Or perhaps not, she reminded herself with fierce honesty.
It didn’t matter. This child had a mother who wanted it and already loved it with all her heart.
Erwyn sensed it was a girl. And with Thalgor’s blood, her daughter would be a witch.
A route south finally determined, Thalgor called for food. They ate in uneasy silence. When the meal was done, Gurdek, Batte, and their seconds quickly made their escape.
Rygar lingered to talk with Tya, as he did at every opportunity. Felyn had wandered in while they ate and now napped with her head on Erwyn’s lap, face against the spot where the child who might be her niece also slept.
Erwyn felt like taking a nap herself, something she now had to do most days. But Thalgor turned to her at last. He waited in silence while Gee and Tya cleared the food away.
When they were alone, he asked, “Why did you not tell me?”
Erwyn could not quite look him in the eye.
“You told me not to get with child again.”
“And you thought it would be easier for me to learn of it in front of my men?”
Her face went hot. “Perhaps I thought it would be safer.”
“Safer!” He looked at the child who slept in her lap and repeated more quietly, “Safer? You thought I might harm you?”
“You dare not.” She lifted her eyes to his. “I was afraid to hear what you might say, since you didn’t want my child.”
“And you want it so much you would defy me.”
His voice was rough, caught between anger and tenderness.
Erwyn felt her face grow more red as she looked away. “It was not exactly my choice, but you…we…” She cleared her throat. “The magic I use takes thought and attention, and when we…when it must be used so often…”
He laughed. The warmth of the sound melted the ice of worry in her heart.
“Never was a man so flattered by his woman’s failure to obey him, so charmed.” He frowned. “Do you charm me, witch?”
Felyn stirred in her lap and laid a hand on Erwyn’s belly. Then she smiled and went back to sleep. Strangely reassured by the innocent gesture, Erwyn looked back up at Thalgor.
“You are my man.”
He sighed and nodded in agreement.
*
The trip south was uneventful. A small skirmish with a badly outnumbered raiding party was the only battle.
The stress of travel, harder as a band grew larger, led to more conflict among their own people. Thalgor spent much of his time settling petty disputes and talking with his men. The former marauders were still distrusted by some, despite the victory they made possible. In times like this he had to listen even to minor complaints before they became major ones, and to reassure his people in myriad small ways of his leadership.
Some called the yearly move south the birthing time because of all the children born one birth cycle from the cold of the dark time. Each birth meant a halt in their progress. Two or three together meant a halt long enough to pitch tents. The warriors without birthing women grumbled and quarreled with those already stressed by new or impending fatherhood.
As always, some of the birthing mothers died and some of the babies. Now Erwyn could no longer use her magic to save any of them, the bereaved muttered against her. They were angry to lose their babies to protect hers, as they saw it, and easily forgot the lives her herbs saved, the births they eased, even without her magic.
Thalgor listened to the one or two grieved or angry enough to complain about her to him, and knew they spoke for many more less brave. This small core encouraged those who still saw the band endangered by the marauders to blame their presence in the camp on Erwyn as well. Her inability to heal the few wounded in the single skirmish created another pocket of resentment. Added to the usual distrust of witches and the rumors Dara and Batte still spread, Thalgor knew he had been right to wish she carried a child at another time of the year.
But he could not be sorry she carried his child now. Even after she told him, a little tremulously, it was a girl, every thought of that tiny life filled him with a joy and wonder he could never have imagined. He stroked her belly each night with a kind of awe, and was struck speechless the first time he felt a tiny foot tap against his palm as he cradled the mound of flesh in his hands.
Erwyn, for her part, glowed with a serenity and strength that stunned him. Not for the first time, and likely not for the last, he wondered what madness led him to take a witch for his woman.
Chapter Ten
Thalgor sat at council one day, preoccupied with his woman’s lush new body while his lieutenants argued over how to divide sentry duties for another prolonged halt for three births, when Erwyn appeared beside him, a dark frown on her face.
“A council?” she asked with raised eyebrows. “Why was I not told?”
“Do you care how we divide up the watch?”
“I was always told in the warm time camp. Even if the council only met about sentry duty.”
“But you didn’t carry a child then,” he explained patiently.
The others stopped their argument to listen. Erwyn tossed them a thoughtful look before she turned back to him.
“What does the child I carry have to do with whether I am called to council?”
Thalgor sighed. So far she had not shown the strange emotions other men complained of when their women were with child. She made up now for the delay, he supposed, by having this argument in front of his men. He exchanged a look of forbearance with them.
“You cannot use your magic when you carry a child.”
“I am well aware of that.”
She broadened the stance of her still slender body as a man might when a brawl beckoned.
“So what use are you at council?” he finished with a shrug.
The angry red that flooded her face quickly became a white mask of rage. He was glad she could not use her magic to exact the painful penalty he could almost see form itself in her mind. She opened and closed her mouth twice, like a fish, before she found the air to speak.
“I only sat at your council because of my magic?”
She asked the question with a calm air of wounded dignity that surprised him even more than the anger that had preceded it.
“When you cannot see, why would I call you to council?”
“Have I never advised you except about what I saw?”
Again, both her question and her tone surprised him.
Surprised him enough he stopped to think about what she had said in the council in the past. All of it wise, in one degree or another, despite her ignorance of battle. Some of it based on what she saw with her magic. But all of it? Possibly not, but he remembered nothing in particular. Just the confidence he felt about a decision when she agreed with it. And no major decision had been made since they chose a route south the day she told them she carried a child.
He glanced again at his men. Rygar and Gurdek looked as surprised and confused as he. Batte and the others merely looked impatient.
Clearly none of them wished to become involved in what they saw as a dispute between their leader and his woman. Best to cut the whole thing short.
“Women do not sit at council,” he told her. “Your magic has been helpful, but without it I see no reason to include yo
u in our deliberations. Please tell Gee we would like to eat now.”
Erwyn opened and closed her mouth one more time, then strode away in the opposite direction from Gee’s campfire.
Rygar quickly got up to ask for the food, and the argument among the others continued where it had left off.
That, Thalgor thought with relief, is the end of that.
That, of course, was not the end of that. Thalgor first realized his error when the dinner Gee served him that night consisted only of dry bread, water, and cold meat, while the others ate a hot, savory-smelling venison stew.
But the coldness of his meal was nothing compared to the coldness of the back Erwyn turned to him when he came to bed.
He was wise enough in the ways of women not to fondle her and see what followed, as he did most nights and very much wanted to do this night as well. He could see all too easily what would follow, and it would not be pleasant. But he also refused to deny himself the warmth of her body completely.
He curled himself carefully around that cold back and encircled her round belly with one arm. Erwyn ignored him.
But someone else did not. Tiny feet battered his hand and arm with a strange intensity, until he pulled away with the eerie sense that his child was as angry as her mother.
He rolled on his back and faced a hard truth he had managed to ignore until now.
His daughter would be a witch. She would belong to her mother, not only as every daughter did, but in a way he could never understand.
He remembered the envy that flooded him as a child when his grandmothers spoke together. Worse, he remembered the same envy on his parents’ faces as they watched the bond their mothers shared with each other and could not share with them, his father because he was a man, his mother because her father carried no witch blood.
The vision of a future shut out of the life Erwyn and their daughter would share compounded the pain of being shut out of his woman’s warmth, her body tonight.
Are you certain you want to give your child to a witch?
When Gee asked him that question he had only thought of the physical act that would give her his child. Now he understood what the old woman truly meant. His daughter, their daughter, would be stronger than he was, wiser than he was, in ways he could only imagine. As was Erwyn.
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