Or maybe the problem that made her stomach churn was the thought of what could have happened if she'd actually gone to the cloisters. While not mages, the Sisters had a reputation for being able to uncover things people would rather have been left secret. What if Kero had gone, and the reputation was more than just kitchen gossip? What if the Sisters had found her out?
Father has had plenty to say about Grandmother. "The old witch" was the most civil thing he's ever called her. What if he'd found out he had a young witch of his own?
He'd have birthed a litter of kittens, that's what he'd have done. Then disowned me. It's bad enough that I ride better than Lordan and train my own beasts; it's worse that I hunt stag and boar with the men. It's worse when I wear Lordan's castoffs to ride. But if he ever found out about my apparently being witch-born, I think he'd throw me out of the Keep.
The mingled cooking odors still weren't making her in the least hungry; she helped Cook decorate the next course with sprigs of watercress and other herbs, chewed a sprig of mint to cool her mouth and told her upset stomach to settle itself.
"What if" never changes anything, she reminded herself. He never did more than play with the idea, and he didn't want to take the chance that Wendar couldn't handle things. After all, the only thing Wendar has ever done was keep track of the books and manage the estate. There's more to managing a Keep than doing the accounts. She set sprigs of cress with exaggerated care. Come to think of it, Wendar may have discouraged Father in the first place from sending me away. I suppose I can't blame him, he has more than enough to do without having to run the Keep, too. That may be why Father kept saying that it wasn't "convenient" for me to go.
Why did Mother have to die, anyway? she thought in sudden anger. Why should I have been left with all this on my hands?
For a moment, she was actually angry at Lenore—then guilt for thinking that way made her flush, and she hid her confused blushes by getting a drink from the bucket of clean drinking water in the corner of the kitchen farthest from the ovens.
She stared down into the bucket for a moment, unhappy and disturbed. Why am I thinking things like that? It's wrong; Mother didn't mean to die like that. It wasn't her fault, and she did the best she could to get me ready when she knew she wasn't going to get better. She couldn't have known Father wouldn't hire anyone to help me.
And I guess it's just as well I didn't end up with the Sisters, and for more reasons than having witch-blood. They probably wouldn't have approved of me either, hunting and hawking like a boy, out riding all the time. At least at home I've had chances to get away and enjoy myself; at the cloister I'd never have gotten out.
Agnetha's Sheaves—how can anybody stand this without going mad? Kitchen to bower, bower to stillroom, stillroom back to kitchen. Potting, preserving, and drying; then spinning and weaving and sewing. Running after the servants like a tell-tale, making sure everybody does his job. Scrubbing and dusting and laundry; polishing and mending. Cooking and cooking and cooking. Brewing and baking. At least at home I can run outside and take a ride whenever it gets to be too much—
There was a sudden stillness beyond the kitchen door, and something about the silence made Kero raise her head and glance sharply at the open doorway.
Then the screaming began.
For one moment, she assumed that the disturbance was just something they'd all anticipated, but hoped to avoid. This could be an old feud erupting into new violence. Rathgar had, after all, invited many of his neighbors, including men who had long-standing disagreements with each other, though not with Rathgar himself. That was why all weapons were forbidden in the Hall, and not especially welcome within the Keep walls. Except for Rathgar's men, of course. No one would have felt safe guarded by men armed only with flower garlands and headless pikes. Rathgar had anticipated that too much drink might awaken old grievances or create new ones, and rouse tempers to blows.
But after that fleeting thought, Kero somehow knew that this was something far more serious than a simple quarrel between two hot-tempered men, new grievance or old. Rathgar could handle either of those, and the noise was increasing, not abating.
And that same nebulous instinct told her that she'd better not go see what was wrong in person.
She braced herself against the wall with one hand, a hand of cold fear between her shoulder blades, and she realized that it was time to try something she had seldom dared attempt inside the Keep.
She closed her eyes, and opened her mind to the thoughts of those around her.
The walls she had forged about her mind had been wrought painfully over the years, and she didn't drop them lightly, especially with so many people about. At first she had thought she was going mad with grief over her mother's death, but chance reading had shown her otherwise. Her grandmother, the sorceress Kethry, had left several books with Lenore, and after her mother's death, these had been given to Kero along with Lenore's other personal possessions. Kero had never known what had prompted her to pick out that particular book, but she had blessed the choice as goddess-sent. The book had proved to her that the "voices" she had been hearing were really the strongest thoughts of those around her. More importantly to a confused young girl, the book had taught her how to block those voices out.
But now she was going to have to remove those comforting barriers, for at least a moment.
The clamor that flooded into her skull wasn't precisely painful, but it was disorienting and exactly like being in a tiny room filled with twice the number of screaming, shouting people it was intended to hold.
Steady on—it's just like being in the kitchen—
Her stomach lurched, and she clutched the wall behind her, as dizzy as if she'd been spun around like one of Lordan's old toy tops.
Pain and fear made those thoughts pouring into her mind incoherent; she got brief glimpses of armed men, strangers in no lord's colors—men who were filthy, ragged, and yet well-armed and armored. She was half-aware of the servants, babbling with terror, streaming through the door opposite her, but most of her mind was caught up in the tangled mental panic outside that door. And now she was "seeing" things, too, and she nearly threw up. The strangers were making a slaughterhouse of the Great Hall, cutting down not only those who resisted, but those who were simply in their way.
Their minds seized on hers and held it. She struggled to free herself from the confusion, wrenching her mind out of the desperate, unconscious clutching of theirs—and suddenly her thoughts brushed against something.
Something horrible.
There were no words for what she felt at that moment, as time stood frozen for her and she knew how a hunted rabbit must view a great, slavering hound. Whatever this was, it was cold, if a thought could be cold, cold as the slimy leeches living in the swampy fen below the cattle pastures. There was something sly about it, and filthy—not a physical filth, but a feeling that the mind behind these thoughts would never be contented with pleasures most folk considered normal. Kero couldn't quite decipher them either; what she experienced was similar to what she had "heard" as her ability first appeared—as if she were listening to someone speaking too quietly for the exact words to be made out. There was only a sense of speech, not the meaning.
But worst of all, that brief brush created a change in those not-quite-readable thoughts, as if she had alerted the owner of the thoughts that he—or she—or it—was being observed.
The back of her neck crawled, and gooseflesh rose on her arms, as the thoughts took on a new, sharp-edged urgency. Propelled by fear, she managed to tear her mind away, and slammed the doors in the walls of her protections closed.
She opened her eyes, sick and sweating with fear, to discover that far less time had passed than she imagined. The servants were still clogging the doorway, and the screaming from beyond had only increased.
For an instant, all she wanted to do was to scream and cower with the rest of them—or even faint as some of the kitchen girls had already done, sprawling unnoticed beneath the tabl
e. At that moment, something as hard and impassive as the walls around her mind rose up to cut off her emotions. Suddenly she could think, calmly.
The door to the back court—if they come in behind us, we'll be trapped—
Freed from the paralysis of fear, she ran to the back door of the kitchen, slammed it shut, and dropped the iron bar of the night-lock into place across it. The noise behind her was so overwhelming that the sound of the heavy bar dropping into the supports was completely swallowed up in the general chaos.
She whirled, stood on her tiptoes to see over the mob crowding between her and the door, and looked frantically for two people—Wendar, and the cook. Wendar's balding head appeared in a clear spot for a moment next to the table, and she spotted the cook, burly arm upraised and brandishing a poker, beside him. Cook was shouting something, but she couldn't even hear his voice above the others.
Wendar served with Father, and Cook takes no nonsense from anyone—in fact, Cook looks like he's ready to lead a charge back in there!
She dove into the press of bodies and struggled across the kitchen, elbowing and punching her way past hysterical servants who seemed to have no more sense left in them than frightened sheep. As she dragged a last wailing girl out of her way by the back of her rough leather bodice, Kero got Wendar's attention by the simple expedient of grabbing his collar and dragging herself to him. Or more specifically, to the vicinity of his ear.
"We've got to stop them at the door," she screamed, hardly able to hear herself. "We can hold them there, but if they get in here, they'll kill us all!"
Most likely Wendar didn't have any better idea of who "they" were than Kero did, but at least he saw the sense of her words immediately. He turned and reached across the table for Cook's shirt; satisfied that he would handle the rest, Kero looked for weapons, snatched up a heavy, round pot lid and the longest meat knife within reach, and ran for the door.
She reached it not a moment top soon.
There was no warning that the invaders had found the half-hidden stair to the kitchen. He was just there; a squat, broad shadow in the doorway, sword negligently stuck through his belt, plainly expecting no resistance. He paused for a moment and squinted into the brightly-lit kitchen, then he saw her, and grinned, reaching for her.
Kero had no time to think. Training took over as wit failed.
"This's no dance lesson, girl!" She could hear the armsmaster's bellow in the back of her mind even as she slashed for the man's unprotected eyes. "This's fightin' o' th' dirtiest—y' hit yer man now an' hit 'im so's 'e knows 'e's friggin'-well been hit!"
Armsmaster Dent could have been dismissed for teaching Kero anything besides archery, and well he knew it. He'd done his best to discourage her when she presented herself beside Lordan for training. It was only when he caught her clumsily trying blows against the pells with a practice blade too long and heavy for her, and realized that Rathgar would assume he'd been training Kero anyway if her father ever found her out there himself, that he made a bargain with her.
In return for a reluctant promise never to touch a longer weapon, he promised to teach her knife-fighting. He hadn't been happy about it, but Kero had made it very clear that it was the only way to keep her out of the armory and the practice ground.
Knife-work was, as Dent put it, the dirtiest, lowest form of combat, and figuring that if she ever really needed that training, it would be a case of desperation, he had taught her every trick he'd learned in a lifetime of street scuffling.
By some miracle, knife-work was also the only form of combat suited for the close confines of the kitchen doorway; the only kind of situation where a knife-fighter would be at an advantage against a swordsman. In the back of her mind, Kero thanked whatever deity had inspired that bargain with Dent, and slashed again at the man's face when he evaded the wicked edge of her blade with a startled oath.
He reached for his own weapon, hampered by the wall at his side and the stairs at his back, further hampered when the quillons caught on his ill-kept armor.
Then she was no longer alone; Cook and Wendar were beside her, Cook armed with a spit as long as her arm in one hand and a cleaver in the other, and Wendar (with a pot over his bald head like an oddly-shaped helm) with the even longer spit used when they roasted whole pigs and calves. Cook stabbed at him with the wicked point of the spit and the man dodged away, moving into Wendar's reach. Wendar brought the heavy, cast-iron rod down on the man's head, and caved his helm in completely. The brigand fell backward, but another took his place.
Now there were more men piling down the staircase; how many, Kero couldn't tell. One of them dragged the first out of the way, and the man on the stairs pulled him into darkness.
But the three defenders had the doorway blocked against all comers, with Kero going low, Wendar, high, and the Cook holding the middle and protecting them both with Kero's pot lid. Then one of the young squires began lobbing ladles of hot turnips over their heads and into the faces of their opponents, using the ladle like a catapult. The stairs were already slippery; that made them worse, and no one fights well with scalding vegetables being flung in his eyes.
The invaders slashed and stabbed, but with caution. More of the servants took heart; at least Kero assumed they did, because suddenly the doorway was abristle with knives and pokers to either side of her.
At that, the bandits pulled back, retreating up the staircase, slipping and sliding on the stones. It looked to Kero as if more than one of them was marked and burned or bleeding.
It was as if she stood outside of herself, a casual observer. Her heart was pounding in her ears, yet she felt strangely calm. A cluster of three of the raiders stood just out of turnip-reach halfway down the staircase, staring down at the defenders of the kitchen. It was rather hard to see them; the press of bodies in the doorway blocked the light coming from the kitchen, and they themselves blotted out most of the light from above. Kero wished she could see their faces, and shifted uneasily from her right foot to her left.
If they get a log from upstairs and rush us with it, they could break through us, she realized. Agnira, please, don't let them think of that—
The men seemed to be arguing among themselves. Kero squinted against the darkness and strained her ears, but could hear nothing but the screaming from the hall beyond. One of them gestured angrily in Kero's direction, but the other two shook their heads, then pulled at his arm.
The argumentative one shook the other man's hand off and started down the staircase. He was big, and very well armored, with a heavy wooden shield. Kero shuddered as she realized that he could rush them behind that shield, and give his comrades the chance to get by the bottleneck of the doorway. It looked as if he had figured that out, too.
But someone behind Wendar threw a carving knife at him. It was a lucky shot—it thunked point-first into the man's buckler, buried itself in the wood, and remained there, quivering.
The brigand started, stumbling backward up one step, and swore an unintelligible oath. And he gave in to the urgings of his companions, following them back up the staircase, leaving the kitchen to its defenders.
Now it was Wendar's turn to curse and attempt to follow. Panic seized her throat as she realized what he was trying to do.
Dear Goddess— Kero grabbed his right arm as he charged past her, and hung on, hampering him long enough for Cook to seize his left and prevent him from charging up the staircase after their attackers.
"Stop it!" she shrieked, more than a touch of hysteria in her voice. "Stop it, Wendar! You can't possibly do any good up there! You aren't even armed!"
That stopped him, and he stared down at the sooty, greasy spit in his hands, and swore oaths that made her ears burn. But at least he didn't try to charge after the enemy again.
"The table—" Cook said, which was all the direction they needed. As one they turned back into the kitchen and with the help of the rest of the besieged, hauled the massive table into place across the doorway, turning it on its side, making it int
o a sturdy barricade that would protect them even if the bandits charged them with a makeshift battering ram. Then, having done all they could do, they waited.
Two
Kero crouched in the lee of the overturned table and tried to keep from thinking about her folk in the hall above, tried to keep her heart from pounding through her chest.
Tried to keep fear at bay, for now that she was no longer fighting, it came back fourfold.
Tried not to cry.
There are trained fighters up there. Nothing you can do will make any difference for them. They can take care of themselves, armed or not.
The servants were watching her; her, Cook, and Wendar. She could read it in their faces, in their wide eyes and trembling hands. If any of the three leaders broke, if any of them showed any signs of the terror Kero was doing her best to keep bottled inside, the rest of the besieged would panic.
She clutched her improvised weapons, her hands somehow remaining steady, but she wished she dared hide her head in her arms, to block out the horrible sounds from above.
She wanted to scream, or weep, or both. Her throat ached; her stomach was in knots. Why did I ever think those tales of fighting were exciting? Blessed Trine, what's going on up there? Are we winning, or losing?
How could we be winning? No one up there is armed....
Wendar didn't even twitch. All of his concentration was focused on the staircase—he stared up at the flickering light at the top of the stairs, going alternately white and red with rage. Kero wished she knew what he was listening for.
If this wasn't hell, it was close enough.
* * *
It seemed like an eternity later that the sounds of fighting stopped—there was a moment of terrible silence, then the wailing began.
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