by Airs
Rys threw up his hand. In silence, his men withdrew, keeping low behind the jumble of boulders, and retreated toward the beach. There was nothing Francis could do but go with them.
SEVENTEEN
PHILIPPAheard the name of the leader of the Aesks, the one who had scratched her with his knife, as Urg, or perhaps Hurg. He led the way down a steep crevice, where Philippa stumbled over rocks and ice, barely keeping her feet. She had lost her coat on the plateau, and she saw that one of the barbarians
had it over his shoulders. She was shivering and wet by the time they descended into the valley, and miserable at not being able to respond to Sunny’s anxious calls.
The longhouses of the compound were made of sod, braced on footings of stone, thatched with some kind of grass or straw. The fire pit was enormous, circled with more stone, a great spit across it. The longhouses looked old, with their sharply slanted roofs and crooked doorways. Two huts on either end of the compound seemed to be empty, their thatched roofs crumbling, but smoke rose from holes in the roofs of the other buildings, mingling with the falling snow. Everything smelled of smoke and salt and fish, and the whole place had an air of hardship and meanness. They must have lived in these sod dwellings, oppressed by harsh weather and scant resources, for centuries, all the while Oc built its beautiful cities and cultivated its rich fields.
The snow kept coming in thick wet flakes. Philippa eyed the Aesk who had her coat, but he showed no sign of being willing to give it back. People came out of the longhouses to stare. They stood on the rough stone steps or peered around corners. The women wore long cloth dresses with greasy furs thrown over them. Dirty children peeked from behind their mothers’ skirts. Old men, one or two of them maimed, hobbled forward on crutches or in one case, on hands and knees, pointing at the winged horse and exclaiming in their harsh tongue.
Philippa kept her eyes forward, and willed Sunny to follow quietly. She was exhausted, sweaty and chilled at the same time, and she knew Sunny must be the same.
The spears worried her. Sunny’s wings were her most vulnerable part, and Philippa feared she might open them, flutter them in her anxiety to be close to her bondmate.
The procession wound past the fire pit and on past the last of the longhouses, stopping before one of the empty huts. It had no door, but a leather flap, stained and cracked, hanging over its opening. Hurg gestured at the men behind Sunny and shouted some command.
They babbled something back at him and waved their spears at Sunny’s hindquarters.
Philippa cried, “No! Don’t touch her, I beg you!” and tried to push past the guards.
One of them held his spear sideways, barring her path. As she thrust at it with her hands, he laughed.
She forgot the cold, and her fear, in a rush of fury. “That’s awinged horse , you cretin!” she shouted at the man. She lifted her fist and shook it in his face. His mouth opened in amazement, and he stared at her as if no woman had ever done such a thing to him.
Before he could collect himself, Philippa heard more laughter, first from Hurg, a great guffaw, and then from some of the other Aesks. The dark face of her tormentor grew even darker. He snarled something and shoved at her with the horizontal spear, the shaft catching her hard at the waist. She stumbled backward, lost her footing, and sprawled her length in the snow.
The wardog erupted in fury at this, barking and snarling. For one long, awful moment, Philippa thought his handler might lose control of him, that he would be on her, those terrible teeth ripping her flesh. More dogs, from somewhere Philippa couldn’t see, began to howl and bark in response. She heard the thump and slide of Sunny’s hooves beating a frantic rhythm on the frozen ground, trying to get to Philippa while at the same time staying away from the hated scent of men.
Philippa struggled to her knees, then to her feet. Hurg was watching Winter Sunset, his laughter gone.
He stood with his hands on his hips. The dog settled a bit, though it still growled a steady monotone. The howling, which seemed to come from behind one of the longhouses, subsided.
Philippa spoke to Hurg, in as level a voice as she could manage. “You have to stay back,” she said. She pointed to Sunny, and then to the men, and made a gesture with both palms apart, trying to explain.
“Keep a distance.”
The Aesk chieftain’s skin was like old leather. His lips were so dark they were almost purple. He squinted at her, brows drawn together as if in hard thought. Philippa felt a little spurt of relief that perhaps he had understood her. He gave commands, and the men between her and Sunny stepped aside. Sunny, with an eager whicker, trotted to Philippa, splashing through the thin snow cover, and pressed as close to her as she could. Philippa seized her rein with one hand, and circled the mare’s neck with the other.
Sunny’s body was blessedly warm against her cold one. She raised her face to Hurg then and waited for what would happen next.
He pointed to the hut and said something. A woman hurried forward to lift the leather panel and held it aside. She turned to face Philippa, to gesture to her to go in, and Philippa saw with a pang that one side of her face was ruined by a horrible scar, a burn perhaps, or a wound that had never healed. She averted her eyes, involuntarily, and hurried to lead Winter Sunset into the dark, noisome hut.
She stood just inside the door, assessing it. There was no fire pit in this one, and no chimney hole in the thatched roof. It was cramped, with a dirt floor. Parts of the thatch were drooping, as if the whole roof could fall apart at any moment. There was no water for Sunny, no bed for Philippa, no amenities at all.
She turned to Sunny, thinking that she should get her flying saddle off, rub her down, even if she had to use her own tabard. Then perhaps she could persuade someone—
Her thought was broken off when the scarred woman seized her arm and pulled her toward the door.
Philippa cried out, trying to get her arm free, and the woman produced an ugly knife from beneath her furs. She brandished it in Philippa’s face, all the while holding her arm with a grip like iron.
“What do you want?” Philippa exclaimed.
The woman only pulled on her arm again, waving the knife threateningly near Philippa’s cheek. She outweighed Philippa by half, and her fingers were thick and hard. Philippa knew her arm would be bruised, and she didn’t want that rusty knife to touch her. She let the woman draw her a step toward the door, then another. She cast one look back at Sunny, but before she could even speak to her, one of the warriors had grabbed her other arm, and between the two Aesks, Philippa found herself hauled bodily back out into the falling snow.
She cried frantically, “No! No! I need to be with Sunny!” But neither of them faltered.
She twisted her head to look over her shoulder and saw Hurg, the leader, approaching the doorway to Sunny’s hut. She screamed some imprecation, she hardly knew what, but she had no power. Her two captors dragged her the length of the compound and thrust her in through the door of a hut no larger than the one that now held Sunny, and the Aesk woman pulled the leather flap over it and tied it down from the outside.
Philippa stood helplessly in the windowless sod hut, staring at the leather panel, the door to her prison that had shut her off from the fresh air, freedom, and Winter Sunset.
FRANCIShad been in favor of rushing into the Aesk compound, but Rys demurred. “They’re capable of anything,” he said. We need to have a plan first.”
Francis sagged back against the rock he was leaning on. Unspent nervous energy made his head ache, and the smallsword at his belt seemed to have grown heavy.
The Klee captains had been conferring, and one of them came up now to murmur something in Rys’s ear. As they talked, Francis lifted his face and let the drifting snowflakes cool his burning cheeks. He had hoped it would all be over by now. That they might have rescued the children, if they lived, and that he would have proved himself. William would never let him forget this if they failed, especially if a winged horse were harmed.
“Fra
ncis,” Rys said.
Francis turned to see Rys and the captain standing beside him. Self-consciously, he brushed the snow from his face and adjusted the smallsword at his belt. Rys’s grim expression gave Francis no comfort.
“Yes,” he said.
“My captains feel we should return to the ship and get out of the bay before the Aesks spot us.”
“Is there no other choice?” Francis asked. He looked back toward the narrow, boulder-strewn passage that led to the encampment. He yearned to dash in among the Aesks, blade swinging, shouting his fury.
He could see it in his mind, the Klee soldiers appearing like dark demons out of the snow, matchlocks blazing, the barbarians fleeing in disarray before them.
The captain spoke with deference, but with authority, too. “No, my lord,” he said firmly. “I’ve fought the Aesks before, and I’ve seen what they can do to hostages. The risk to the winged horse is too great.”
“And to her rider,” Rys said.
“Yes, of course,” the captain said. “I think we must hope the horsemistress can find a way to escape on her own.”
“How is she going to do that?”
“I don’t know, Francis,” Rys said. “Not yet, in any case. We will withdraw and try to devise a scheme.”
Francis’s heart rebelled at the delay, and at leaving Philippa and Sunny in Aesk hands, but he could think of no argument. His own burning desire to try his courage would hardly serve. He bowed his head and gave in though it grieved him.
As quickly and silently as they had come to shore, the soldiers and the two noblemen made their way back to the ship under cover of swiftly falling darkness. Francis climbed aboard, his fingers and his feet chilled to the bone, but even then he didn’t go below, where dinner was being laid out in Rys’s cabin. He stood in the prow of the ship and stared inland. The snow had stopped though the clouds remained. The high plateau and the twisted coastal vegetation gleamed with fresh snowfall. A sharp breeze snapped the edges of the furled sails, and the empty masts groaned. The ship had pulled back behind the sea stack so that the Aesks could not see it.
Francis hoped Philippa would have something to eat tonight. What about Winter Sunset? How long could she manage without the grain and hay she was accustomed to?
“My lord,” came a voice behind him. Francis turned to see Rys standing in a lighted doorway. “Come and eat,” the Baron said. “You will be no good to them if you’re exhausted. Or frozen,” he added.
“I know,” Francis said heavily. He turned away from the vista of land and dark sea and joined Rys in the doorway. “It’s just so damned hard to do nothing.”
“That’s war, Francis,” Rys answered. He stood back to let Francis precede him down the short stair.
“War is long stretches of idleness interrupted by episodes of rather shocking violence. I know no other way to conduct it.”
PHILIPPApaced her prison, back and forth, back and forth. She shuddered with cold and fatigue and worry, and every sound from outside made her body quiver with anxiety for Sunny. Daylight faded with staggering swiftness, and she had neither light nor fire to brighten the dank hut. It smelled of dirt and fish and animal droppings. At one end was a stack of empty barrels she supposed had held foodstuffs of some kind, but which now offered only the tang of long-gone roots and dried fish and other substances she couldn’t identify. The hut had never, she felt certain, been intended for human habitation.
More than once she pulled at the edge of the leather door panel, trying to see what was happening.
Every time, a guard brandished a spear at her. One of the wardogs lay at his feet, and each time she put her eye to the opening, the dog leaped up, bristling and growling. She could see just enough to know that a fire had been set in the fire pit. Flames leaped into the darkness, sparks fading into the sky. The snow had stopped, but it seemed the sky was still cloudy. No starlight penetrated that Philippa could see, and soon she could see almost nothing inside her hut.
She tried to examine the walls with her fingers, to find any weakness, any hole. She was rewarded with splinters and handfuls of crumbling mud, but no door or window or other opening. There was certainly nothing like a chamber pot, which she would need soon. She thrust that concern aside, and continued her examination, wiping her dirty hands on her skirt.
It seemed to her that the rear wall, behind the barrels, slanted inward, possibly on the verge of collapse.
She might be able to break that down. She didn’t dare try it now, though. She couldn’t leave Sunny in their hands. She would—and she faced the thought without flinching—rather die.
The Aesks, it seemed, gathered for a communal meal around the central fire pit. She heard the babble of conversation grow and could detect the smell of cooking. She heard voices as people walked past her jail, and the wardog snapped and growled as if it hated everything and everyone.
When Philippa had begun to think she would be left utterly alone all night long, the flap over the door was pulled back, and the scarred woman reappeared. She tied back the flap, allowing some of the light from the fire pit to penetrate the darkness of the hut.
She had a broad, low forehead over a thick nose and eyes so small it seemed inconceivable she had full use of her vision. Her mouth pulled hard to one side, and as she came closer, Philippa saw that the scar that so distorted her face had a thick center of corded flesh, as if she had been slashed with a knife, the edges of the wound inexpertly sewn together. It must have been unbearably painful, Philippa thought,
with a rush of pity.
The woman stepped through the door and held the panel aside for someone else.
Behind her, carrying a wooden bowl and spoon, her head hanging so low Philippa hardly recognized her, was a young girl with sandy hair and a pale, freckled face.
“Lissie!” Philippa exclaimed.
The child did not so much as lift her eyes at the sound of her name.
EIGHTEEN
“YOU’REsupposed to do your own chores, Goat-girl.” Petra leaned back against the gate of her horse’s stall, propping herself on her elbows, her riding boots crossed at the ankle. Sweet Reason put his nose over the gate, nodding above her shoulder at Lark, until Petra hissed at him, and he stepped back.
Petra fixed Lark with a stony gaze. “The Head wouldn’t be pleased with you giving your jobs to a baron’s daughter.”
Lark had been trundling a wheelbarrow down the aisle, full of soiled straw to be put into the refuse heap.
Amelia Rys carried a shovel in one hand and a pitchfork in the other. Her tabard and skirt were littered with bits of hay and other dirt. She stopped midstride and looked at Petra for a long moment, until the older girl began to redden.
“Naturally I felt it was proper to offer to help my sponsor with her work, since I have little else to do until my foal arrives,” Amelia said in her uninflected voice. Lark, who had been about to protest Petra’s accusation, put down the handles of the wheelbarrow. She would not want to miss this exchange. The past day had given her reason to believe Amelia Rys could deal with anyone or anything that came her way.
Petra’s forced accent intensified. “I hardly think you should be shoveling muck from that little crossbred’s stall, Miss Rys. You’ll have enough of that to do for your own foal.”
“I wonder,” Amelia said, almost casually, “why you concern yourself with the way I spend my time? I’ve observed how busy all you third-level flyers are.”
Petra’s blush darkened, and she dropped her elbows from the gate and attempted a casual shrug. “You will do as you please, of course,” she said, with a dismissive wave of her hand. “It’s unfortunate there was no more suitable person assigned as your sponsor.”
Lark laughed at that. “As you were suitable for me, Sweet? Calling me names and predicting my failure every other day?”
Petra’s lip curled. “It’s hardly an accident that the Duke himself is keeping an eye on you, Black. I merely share his concerns.”
Lark drew a
n outraged breath, but Amelia spoke. “How nice for you,” she said in that modulated voice,
“to be in His Grace’s confidence.”
Petra’s eyes narrowed, and one hand strayed uneasily to her throat. Lark guessed she was not certain whether Amelia had insulted her or not. “Well,” she said, after a pause, “if you insist on doing Black’s
work for her, you’d better get on with it.”
“Yes,” Amelia said. “Do excuse us.”
She nodded to Petra and turned away. Lark, biting her lip to suppress a giggle, picked up the handles of the wheelbarrow again and trundled it down the aisle.
Once the muck had been dumped in the refuse heap and mixed with the rest of the compost, she and Amelia stowed the tools in the tack room and walked back to Tup’s stall. The first emotion Lark had seen on Amelia’s face had been when she had introduced the Klee girl to Tup. Amelia’s eyes softened, and her lips parted as she watched Tup drop his nose into Lark’s hand, as he rustled his gleaming wings, as Lark fed him, brushed him, polished his hooves. Her voice softened, too, when she spoke to him.
They went into the stall now, and Amelia stood back, allowing Lark to touch Tup first. Lark smiled over her shoulder. “He likes you, Amelia. You can stroke him if you like.”
Amelia’s smile brought something like beauty to her narrow face. She stepped forward, without fear but without hurrying and laid her palm on Tup’s gleaming neck. “You beautiful creature,” she said softly.
“I’ve never seen anything more beautiful than you are.” His ears flicked in her direction, and he blew air through his nostrils.
Lark chuckled. “Tup’s a one for compliments.”
Amelia drew her hand down Tup’s muscled neck, over the jointure of his wings, up to ruffle his silky mane. “It’s a miracle,” she said, her voice a little throaty.
