It promised to be a very long meal.
*
The filth of the two strangers’ minds choked Erwyn so that it became hard to breathe. The one imagined Thalgor’s dead body and the wealth they could then so easily take. The other raped her in his mind.
She erased the images with a powerful blue cloud. Her magic met no resistance in the minds of the two men, only a sort of wordless surprise. She served their food and drinks with an air of calm subservience, then escaped to the scullery where she could cleanse her mind of their evil and watch them without being seen.
The three men ate their meal in silence. The visitors greedily pushed the meat and fresh bread into their mouths while Thalgor pretended to eat but only moved food around his plate.
When they were done, she cleared the plates and brought tea.
Forced close to the strangers, she felt their rotting fear of Thalgor, smelled and tasted their vile greed, the one for gold, the other for her body. Worse, she saw the blackness of their souls.
“You eat meat every night?” the stranger who cared only for wealth asked as he sipped the blood-tainted tea Erwyn had given them.
“You are guests.” Thalgor cast her a quizzical look when he noticed his cup held only water.
“Your witch cooks well.” The would-be rapist reached out for Erwyn, who danced around his grasping hand. “I wonder what else she does well,” he added with a leer.
Thalgor’s rage sizzled in the air, shackled by his pledge.
“Why do you cover up the woman, when you allow all to see the jewels and gold on your chair?” the first one asked.
The second one laughed. “You display what can be stolen and hide what can be used by many with no loss to yourself.”
Erwyn used his distraction to read deeper into his mind and met a dark shape that frightened her, but she couldn’t see it clearly enough to know why.
She found the same shape in his brother’s mind. Her fear multiplied by ten.
She fled back to the scullery, so weak with the effort of keeping her mind free of their visitors’ evil she needed to pull a stool near the door into the main chamber to sit on while she peeked through the curtain and listened to what they said.
When they finished their tea, the first stranger said solemnly, “We ask you to surrender to us what is ours and the one who stole her. If you do, we will leave your camp in peace.”
She knew even Thalgor could see the vile black smoke the lie left in the air. The man waved his arm, as if to brush it away.
“Why not just attack us and take them?” Thalgor spoke as if it were of no consequence.
“We might fail,” the second man answered with a tremor of fear. “Or she might be killed, or kill herself.”
“Walls,” the first man added. “We’ve never fought a walled camp. Victory is…was not certain.”
“I cannot do as you ask,” said Thalgor.
“Why would you risk battle over a woman who is not even yours?” the second man objected.
“My lieutenant has taken her for his.”
“He stole her. He has no right to her,” the first man responded fiercely.
“She came willingly.”
“The slut will go with any man,” the second man replied. “One night when our leader chose another, she went with me.”
The man fingered a scar across his throat, but spoke with such relish Erwyn knew he had raped Lana. Thalgor’s scowl told her he knew it, too.
Chapter Eighteen
“That was why our leader marked her, so all men would know she was his and his alone,” the first man explained.
“I promised her shelter here,” Thalgor told them.
“A promise to a woman means nothing,” the second man spat.
The two men exchanged a look, as if they read each other’s mind. Witch blood to witch blood, Erwyn thought with a shudder.
“If you give us the woman, we will let the man live,” the first one declared with the air of someone doing a great favor.
“No.”
“Why did you bring us here, if not for such a compromise?” the second one asked.
“You offered more proof the woman was yours. I hear none.”
“Summon her. Her fear can be proof,” the first man said.
“Any woman in this camp would be afraid of you. Even my woman hides in the scullery rather than eat with us.”
Both men grimaced. “Eat with a woman?” the second said.
“So, do you have any other proof?”
“The mark on her breast,” the first man answered.
“Which proves only that, if she is yours, she was not cared for as a woman, as any person should be.”
“She belongs to our leader,” the second man reminded him. “How he cares for his women is no concern of ours.”
“But bringing this one back is your concern?”
“It is what we have been sent to do,” the first answered.
“Then you will have to tell your leader you have failed, because I will not give her to you.”
“Failure,” the second man hissed, “has too high a price.”
“Then an attack is your only choice.” Thalgor stood up to his full height. “I have no more to say to you.”
“You will find our men ruthless on the field of battle,” the first man said as they, too, rose unsteadily to their feet.
“And our revenge swift and sure,” the second added.
“Revenge assumes a victory you have already admitted is uncertain. Perhaps it would be wiser to let the woman go.”
Both men blanched and swayed on their feet.
“You know nothing of what is wise,” the first told him.
“You will regret your choice a hundred times over,” the second one said. “Why risk so much over a trifle?”
“My word is not a trifle, nor is any woman.”
The two men traded another look and left.
Thalgor gestured for his guards to follow them as they made their way through the camp to where their men waited.
Erwyn picked up a bowl of herbs she had already prepared, lit them, and took it into the main chamber to clear it of evil.
“They will attack at dawn.” Thalgor’s voice, heavy with contempt, cut through the fog in her mind.
“Not after they drank that tea,” she corrected. “They will sleep until noon, then pretend to leave peacefully. The second day they will split their men and attack with half from the south. When our men are engaged there, the other half will attack through what they think will be a poorly defended, open north gate. They intend to kill us all except the woman and Sett.”
“But they will rape as many of our women as they can first.”
“In front of our wounded and dying men,” she agreed solemnly.
“I scarcely needed a witch to see through them.” He sat on one of the benches against the wall. “What do you suggest?”
Still exhausted from wandering in those evil minds, she settled on the bench next to him.
“That we use the day the tea has bought us to build a north gate. That will be one surprise. And we should have the old men and older boys take the livestock as far as they can before dark, so we will not have them in the camp during the battle.”
Thalgor nodded. “What if we also divided our men? We could send Gurdek’s into the woods for the night, so while their men at the north gate are confused because it is closed, Gurdek can come around their men at the south gate and catch them by surprise.”
“With Gurdek’s men on patrol today, they may underestimate the size of our forces,” she agreed. “They surely underestimate the power of men who fight to protect what they love.”
“They would not know what it meant.”
They sat in grim silence until Rygar and the others came to learn the outcome of the unsettling meal with the strangers.
That night Thalgor stayed in the tent, quiet and restless.
Erwyn was too tired to be bothered by his strange mood. Perhaps he saw
the dark shape deep inside the strangers, too. When he sat beside her, she leaned her head on his shoulder, but he turned to face her in the dim light.
“Tell me, witch,” he murmured as he put both hands on her neck in a gesture that was half caress, half threat. “Did you bewitch me as you did those men?”
She was used to his lingering distrust, and understood it as part of the balance of their life together, but still she rallied her strength to meet his eyes and combat it.
“I have no power but the power to see and the power of fire.” She paused and put her hand over the broad, misshapen scar on his belly. “And the power to heal.”
They both saw the moment when she had saved his life.
“And the power to kill,” he added solemnly.
“When it is a kind of healing.”
“Come to bed.”
“Their minds were ugly and evil.”
“I know. But I want you near me in the night.”
The day of the battle broke calm and damp. Inside the walls it was strangely silent with the older boys, always restless and noisy before a battle, gone. The clay on the new north gate was not yet dry, but the gate was solid, built with the last of the ox carts. The band would wander no more.
A sentry on the south wall reported Gurdek’s men could not be seen where they hid in the woods. Then he leapt quickly to the ground as an arrow whizzed past his head. The attack was on.
The women and children were gathered in a few tents in the center of the camp, a cordon of warriors around them. Erwyn sat just outside the cordon with the surgeon, the bone-setter, and the herbalist. They listened to the battle until arrows felled the first warriors, then set about their grisly work.
As she eased the death of a dying man, Erwyn heard the warriors whisper that the enemy shot arrows of fire at the south gate. She soon saw the clouds of smoke created as they burned out against the clay that protected the wooden gate.
One of the flaming arrows flew over the wall, followed by another. A third hit one of the tents and set it ablaze.
Quickly the warriors nearby went for water from the cistern and doused the flame, but it drew them from the battle.
Erwyn exchanged a few quick words with Tynor, who led those stationed around the women and children. Between them they organized the women into a line to pass buckets of water from hand to hand as other tents burst into flames around the camp.
Erwyn was surprised to see Sett’s woman among those who fought the fire.
“Sett’s children are with Tynor’s woman,” she explained, breathless from the effort of passing the heavy buckets. “Your people lose their tents for me. And perhaps if some of the women must die, I will be able to be one of them.”
As if to confirm her fear, an arrow flew past them and landed with a thud to quiver in the ground at their feet.
A cry went up from the north gate. Erwyn could not tell if it was their warriors’ alarm at the second wave of attack or the sound of the enemy’s dismay when they found the way blocked.
Soon arrows flew from both directions, but those from the north were not lit, so the fires were no worse. Still, the number of wounded doubled with the number of arrows.
Erwyn worked steadily, pausing only now and then to drink some water. When she did, she looked around for Thalgor’s head above the others.
He stood now with his own men at the north gate, now with Sett’s at the south, now with those guarding the gates to the east and west. He praised his men and urged them on, and shot his own arrows with what she knew was unfailing accuracy, aided by his advantage in height.
The smoke of the fires took the place of dust, so the camp was no different from any other battlefield, despite its wall. Perhaps worse.
The smoke meant the attackers didn’t fight for the goods of the camp, except perhaps Thalgor’s jewels and bits of gold. They wanted revenge.
Erwyn’s eyes burned as she went from wound to wound, and the stench of burning tents twisted her stomach even more when mixed with the smells of battle.
But eeriest of all was the strange quiet everywhere.
The cries of their wounded were dampened by the smoke, those of the enemy by the wall. No swords clanged on breastplates or helmets. The whirr of arrows, the crackle of fire, the cries of the wounded, and the hushed voices of those who fought to save their camp were all she heard. It was so quiet she could hear a baby or young child cry now and then from inside the cordon of warriors.
Gurdek’s orders were to wait with his men until the battle at the north gate was well under way and the enemy at the south gate began to flag. The cisterns were perilously low when Erwyn heard the roar that told her his men had finally made their attack. The burning arrows stopped as the strangely welcome sound of sword on sword came over the south wall.
She continued to heal, but knew at once when first the battle to the south, then the one to the north fell silent. Gurdek’s second came to take her out the now open south gate to the wounded among their men there.
As she moved about the battlefield, she came across the body of the would-be rapist she had once fed. No arrow or sword had killed him. He had been stabbed in the back by a knife. She looked at the enemy who stood passively around their fallen leader’s body, but saw no remorse or guilt in any of them.
Once their wounded were all tended to, she turned to the enemy wounded. A surprising number fell to sword wounds, given the relatively short time between Gurdek’s attack and the end of the battle. Had they turned on each other?
Then she saw a wound that was clearly self-inflicted. And another. They did not turn on each other, she realized with a wave of revulsion. They turned on themselves.
But why? Even if Thalgor chose to kill the defeated men, it would be a quick, clean death. It was the way of all bands.
A sudden darkness filled her mind.
But perhaps that was not the way of their band, their leader.
She moved to the north gate and immediately picked out the body of the other brother who had led the attackers there. He lay face down in the dirt, his head pointing away from the camp, an arrow in his back. A coward in addition to all his other evil.
As she healed, Thalgor’s men gathered the captured enemy, and Sett’s men found and returned with the oxen, carts, and women they had brought. Of over a dozen women, all young and lovely, only a few clung to a captured warrior or searched among the bodies and threw themselves weeping on one of them. The rest stood in a forlorn clump, faces frozen with fear.
By the time all were healed who could be, Erwyn was almost too weary to stand. Not only from healing, but from the reluctance of so many of the enemy to be healed. She leaned on Rygar as they went to where Thalgor faced the piteous captives.
Before he could speak, one of the older men stepped away from the woman who clung to him and fell at Thalgor’s feet.
“Kill us quickly,” he pleaded. “Before you take our women.”
Tynor pulled the man to his feet. “We do not kill captives.”
“But if you sell us as slaves, he may find us,” the man objected with horror.
“We do not deal in slaves,” Thalgor said with distaste.
The prisoners looked at him in astonishment as Thalgor made his usual speech about accepting the captives into the camp.
“You mean this?” the enemy spokesman asked.
Thalgor nodded, but still the prisoners stood rooted to the spot, as if they waited for the killing blow to fall.
Finally, when it did not, a woman pulled one of the men forward. “You will let us share a tent of our own?”
Thalgor nodded again. The woman looked at the man by her side. He looked down at her and even in her weary state Erwyn felt the love and the good heart in both of them.
“We will join you.” The man’s voice was thick with emotion.
Thalgor looked at Erwyn, who still leaned on Rygar’s arm. When she nodded, he said, “Done.”
The others quickly followed, first the men with women, then
the others. Only one or two of the men chose to become renegades, and they were the only ones Erwyn would have refused.
She wondered that none of them chose to return to their own camp to reunite with their women and children. But the same blackness that filled her every time she thought of that camp told her men there had no women they could truly call their own.
She remembered the badly maimed man who identified Sett as the one who had taken Lana. And she finally understood that to return to that camp after a defeat meant a slow, painful death.
As the men stood one by one in front of Thalgor, Gurdek’s woman had gone to the knot of women without men and those grieving the dead to speak with them in her soft, calming voice.
When all made their choice, Thalgor spoke to the older man who served as their leader.
“We have lost many tents to the fire your arrows brought, and our camp is in disarray. Until it is set to rights, your men will camp outside our wall. We have lean-to’s for the men with women, and the other women can share a tent in the camp. But for now you will all eat with us.”
“We celebrate the death of those who led us, as you celebrate your victory,” the man said, and the others murmured their agreement.
“Why would they follow men whose deaths they celebrate?” Thalgor asked Erwyn as he led her, leaning heavily on him, back to their tent.
“Because the one they once served has such power,” she explained, the dark cloud so thick around her she stumbled.
Thalgor nodded and, without a word, picked her up to carry her to their bed. She was asleep before he reached the tent.
*
The damage to the camp, and the dazed reaction of those who had been captured to their freedom from the tyranny of their former leader, made the next days hard for all. The women of the camp began to make new tents out of the remnants of those too burned to repair, and weave cloth for more, while Thalgor and his men salvaged what they could of the household goods and taught the new warriors their ways. Unused tents, like Gee’s, were hauled out and set up by the older boys.
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