“Ah. I see. Ah…do you have, perhaps…oh, Ursa’s tits.” She folded her arms and faced him directly. “I’ve got no luggage and I own nothing. Have you got any clean rags?”
Istvhan burst out laughing. “Oh, is that all? I may not be married, Domina, but I have many, many sisters. I’ll ask Marli and Thorn. One of them’s bound to have something.”
“That would be a great kindness,” said Clara.
Istvhan’s smile faded as he let the tent flap drop behind him. He tried to trace the source of the heaviness in his chest, and realized that it was, indeed, disappointment.
Saint help him, he’d actually wanted to think that she was propositioning him. Which meant that he was attracted to a nun.
Bloody hell.
It made no sense. He was not desperate in any sense. His last relationship had ended less than a month ago. Given that Bishop Beartongue, highest ranked of the priests of the Temple of the White Rat in Archenhold, had nearly run him into the ground, he’d been looking forward to a few months of celibacy to recuperate. The bishop was a marvelous woman, but she had a great many aggressions to work out and limited free time to do it in.
He had no regrets about the relationship, nor its end. Istvhan had been a port in a storm and knew it. The bishop understood human hearts too well to play with his. “Much more of this and either you will fall in love out of self-defense or you will begin to think of this as a service to the Temple, like bodyguard duty,” she’d said. “And I have no desire to be an object of unrequited love or patient service. Better to call it a pleasant interlude for both of us.”
Istvhan had made a token protest, but she was right. Not that he was in any danger of falling in love these days, but all paladins ran on guilt and duty in equal measure. He had taken the assignment to the north with a sense of relief, and not just because he was having a hard time keeping up with her.
Which was why it was so odd that he immediately had such thoughts about a woman he had only just met. Particularly a nun.
The lure of the unobtainable. Which is all your foolishness and none of hers. Istvhan had never yet blamed a woman because he was attracted to her, and he certainly wasn’t about to start now.
Truth was, he’d been glad to go for more reasons than love or lack thereof. His people were nomads, and while they often stayed in one place for months at a time, sooner or later, they did move on. He had stayed in Archenhold longer than he had ever stayed in one place, and wanderlust had been nagging at him.
So of course you go haring off to the frozen north and a group of thanes who think outsiders make good sword practice. Excellent plan. He gazed up at the clear sky with its promise of cold and the serrated ranks of pine trees and filled his lungs with the scent.
Marli looked up from where she was scrubbing her mess kit down with a handful of sand. “Captain?”
“Our new arrival has no supplies, and I fear that the phase of the moon has caught her out. Do you or Thorn perhaps…?” He made a vague hand gesture, hoping that she would read whatever she needed to into it.
Marli snorted. “Not a concern of mine,” she said, “but Thorn will. Half a moment.” She ambled off to a tent and a minute later the other female member of the troop appeared from it and went off in the direction of the command tent. Istvhan decided to leave them to it. He had enough sisters to know what was going on, and he’d also known enough women to know that they didn’t all enjoy discussing bodily functions in the presence of strange men. Or her culture may have something against it. I don’t know a damn thing about where she’s from. Hopefully she’s traveled enough not to hold it against me if I do something egregious on accident.
Then again, she was enlisting his help to chase down her fellow nuns, so she was likely to put up with a great deal from him in return for that help. Which means that I must be doubly careful that she is not tolerating things because she feels she must… He rubbed his forehead. The larger part of power was understanding the power you had over others, even if you would rather not have had that much power in the first place.
He had power over the people under his command as well, so he spent the next few hours on a slow circuit of the camp, checking in with each of his people, trying to identify anything that needed fixing before it became a problem. Most of the problems were very small and could be fixed easily—reactions to the altitude, bits of kit gone missing and needing replaced. The majority could be fixed with a trip to the market, a trip to the medicine kit, or simply with more frequent stops. Brindle delivered a lengthy diatribe about mules, the problem of mules, the attitude of mules, the equipment sent out with the mules, and why oxen were superior to mules in every possible way. Istvhan had listened to this particular diatribe four times already since leaving Archenhold and was resigned to it by now. At the end, Brindle grudgingly confirmed that a gnole had no outstanding issues that a human could fix and Istvhan went away again, feeling as if he had survived a battle.
Galen was last. “Doing well?”
“Well enough.”
“Nightmares?”
Galen shrugged. “Nothing bad. Nothing dangerous.” He raked a hand through his dark red hair. “I hate to say it, brother, but I think that it’s easier out here. Not at the Temple.”
Istvhan nodded. There were seven surviving paladins of the Saint of Steel. They lived at the Temple of the White Rat in Archon’s Glory, serving as best they could. The Temple had set aside a place for them, a place of calm and quiet, of order and structure. It had been a great kindness and it had helped many of them heal.
The only problem was that when you were in a place of healing, it was hard to forget that you were damaged.
He said as much to Galen, who nodded. “We’re all broken,” the redhead said. “I don’t think any of us are going to forget it. But here…” He stretched his arms out. “I don’t know if it’s just that the Temple is a reminder of what we’ve lost or if it’s just that I can’t be as broken out here, so I’m not. Maybe I’ll collapse the first time we get in a real fight. Maybe the battle tide will come on me and I won’t get loose and you’ll have to take me out.”
Istvhan shrugged. “These things happen.”
“But the upshot is that I’m having fewer nightmares here. Whether because I don’t feel safe having them or I don’t need to have them…eh, the Saint only knows.” Galen grinned abruptly. “Either way, I’ll take it. How’s your new friend?”
“The nun? Well enough. Not telling us everything.”
“We’re not telling her everything, either.”
“Yes, which is why I’m not holding it against her.” Istvhan shrugged. “It’s been, what, a day? We’ll get there, or not.”
Later that night, when they finally turned in, he thought that it had been a very long day for everyone. Clara had clearly bathed and was combing her hair out. Her teeth were chattering. “Saint’s blood,” Istvhan said. “Did you wash in a stream? That’s pure snow melt. Cold as a nun’s ars—”
He heard the words coming out of his mouth too late to stop them and so snapped his teeth shut and nearly choked.
Clara bit her lower lip and made a tiny squeak, utterly incongruous from such a large woman, and began to laugh helplessly. “Well,” she managed to say, “mine’s certainly that cold now, yes.”
Istvhan buried his face in his hands. “Domina,” he said weakly. “I am so very sorry. I am a thoughtless boor not fit for polite company.”
She snickered. “You’ve very kindly agreed to take me through the mountains. We’ll call it even.”
“You’re bound to be better company than the barrels, anyway.”
She chuckled. “And this is much more comfortable than sleeping in ditches.” The last chuckle came out partly as a sigh. “You must think it odd that I am laughing so much when…well…” Her gesture toward the tent flap encompassed the world outside, presumably including the raiders.
“Not in the slightest.” Istvhan leaned forward, wanting to touch her arm and offer comfort, but
not sure that she’d appreciate it. “I am a warrior, Domina. Those of us who make jokes usually fare better after the battle than those of us who don’t.” He thought of Galen, who was never at a loss for a joke and who sometimes screamed in the night until he was hoarse. But he is alive to do it. Most of the Saint of Steel’s chosen did not fare so well.
“When we were in the wagon,” said Clara, sounding entirely too calm, “when the raiders were driving us toward Arral country, we sang. And we prayed. And Sister Sigrid told us terrible jokes, and I laughed harder than I have in years.”
“Sometimes it’s the only way.” He didn’t like the calm in her voice. Calm like that was usually brittle. But there was nothing brittle about Clara, and he did not know her well enough to say anything more. He stretched himself out on his bedroll, turned on his side, carefully facing away from her side of the tent in case she had to disrobe. The comb is standard in the kit, but presumably she has no extra clothing either. Damnation, I’m the only one who’s got anything that will fit her, and I don’t exactly carry a nun’s robes as part of my travel gear. “I’ve got a spare cloak that should fit you,” he said aloud. “It’s cold in the mountains this time of year.”
“That would be a kindness. Thank you, Captain.”
“Did the Arral not clothe you?”
He heard the rustle of fabric and the sounds of movement. “Bastian’s mother nursed me back to health when I was half-dead of fever. That took weeks of time and food, and she had little else to spare.” More sounds of movement. He gazed at the small travel lamp, watching the flame. “It was complicated, and though I wish Bastian had not died, I am glad that you came along before the issue of my captivity became too pressing. It would have become…awkward.”
He snorted. “That’s one way to put it. Settled, Domina?”
“I am, thank you.”
Istvhan snuffed the light and let the darkness take them.
Five
The mercenaries approached the market the next day with their hands on their weapons and their mouths watering. The smell of cooked meat and spices filled the air. Galen made a sound like a man in the throes of exquisite pain.
Lacking money, clad in Istvhan’s cloak, Clara ambled around the market until she discovered a knot of women sitting together behind one of the buildings. Several were smoking pipes, and most of them had drop spindles whirling in one hand while they talked. They looked up at her with interest, but no hostility.
“May I join you?” she asked.
“Sit, sit,” said the oldest, a tiny woman with a wrinkle-lined face. “You are the one who Keela took in, yes?”
Keela. Bastian’s mother. “I am,” said Clara. “Though I was given as blood price to the mercenaries.” She jerked her chin in the general direction of the men.
“Ah,” said one of the others. “Their leader’s a fine big one, isn’t he?”
Two of the women cackled. Another gave Clara a worried look. “They have not mistreated you, have they, youngest sister?”
“No, no,” said Clara. “Their leader has been very courteous. Though he is worried.”
Having dropped that bait, she sat back. The oldest woman raised an eyebrow and gave her an incisive look, but went along. “And what worries him is…?”
“Rumors,” she said. “The lands he traveled through before were plagued with a killer who cut off people’s heads. He does not know if he has left the killer behind or not.”
Looks were exchanged between the Arral women. Several spoke to each other, but their accents were thick and they spoke too quickly for Clara’s limited skill to follow. The oldest woman sucked on her pipe stem and then blew a cloud of smoke into the air over her head.
Finally, one of the women turned back to Clara. “We know of what you speak, perhaps.” She was middle-aged, with gray hair and a silver-gray shawl with glints of metallic embroidery. She glanced to the oldest as if for approval.
Clara kept her eyes and her voice low. “I would be glad to have something to tell him. It would perhaps gain his favor.”
The oldest studied her for a moment, then nodded to the woman in the silver shawl.
“My thane holds the south,” said the woman with the shawl. “A month ago, my sister’s cousin went missing. Two days later, hunters found his head. Cut off. And a body. But.” She leaned forward and tapped Clara’s knee, her face intent. “It was not his body.”
Clara inhaled sharply. “Whose was it?”
The woman shook her head. “A woman. Not a woman of the Arral. But her head was gone as well.”
This was much stranger and much more alarming than Clara had expected. No wonder Istvhan had been asking questions. “How terrible!”
“Devil work,” said the oldest, blowing another cloud of smoke.
“Any others?” asked Clara.
Murmured denials. The woman in the shawl spread her hands. “The river is running high now,” she said. “If there were more, they would float away. No one I know has been lost, but there are thanes we do not speak to.”
More nods. “I thank you, older sister,” Clara said. “This is not good news, but he will be glad of it.”
The Arral women nodded. They understood the importance of proving one’s value to the men.
Clara spent a few more minutes with them. She accepted a puff on a pipe from one woman and duly admired another’s toothless grandchild. The conversation drifted to other things. Nothing else attracted her attention, mostly complaints about the weather and the harvest, a well that was inexplicably not filling with the recent rains, a child down with spots. It reminded Clara of being back in the convent, surrounded by the small sounds of practical things, the motions of drop spindles, the sound of women’s voices.
She was not prone to homesickness by nature. She had chosen the life of a trader for the convent because she could leave for weeks and not feel the weight of time passing. But suddenly the weight of what she had lost—what might be lost forever—rose up and took her by the throat.
Not now. This is not the time. She pinched the bridge of her nose to keep back tears. She had not cried behind the iron bars of the raider’s wagons. She had not cried in Bastian’s house. She would not cry now. It was not safe, no matter how much the Arral women reminded her of home.
Blessed St. Ursa, give me your peace a little longer. She pushed the tears down. The sisters of St. Ursa learned to let strong emotions pass through them, to remain calm even when their hearts were roiling. The beast inside her must not wake. She waited for the burning behind her eyelids to fade.
When she opened her eyes again, the oldest woman had taken her pipe from her mouth and was looking at her intently. Though the blue of her eyes had faded, her stare was no less fierce. Clara was reminded of a wolf’s eyes.
“You say he does not mistreat you,” said the Arral elder.
“He does not,” said Clara. It was much easier to think of Istvhan than the convent. From what she had seen so far, it was hard to imagine him mistreating anyone. Courtesy could (and often did) hide cruelty, but he was too comfortable with his power. Only the weak needed to lord it over others in that fashion.
“And yet…?”
Clara wiped at her eyes, not bothering to hide it. “I think of what I have lost,” she said. “You remind me, all of you.” Which was true, so far as it went.
“Ah.” Heads nodded around the circle. Yes. This was also understood. Arral women left their families and went to their husbands, sometimes in separate thanedoms, and did not return.
“We all lose much,” said the oldest, tapping the ashes from her pipe. “But you are our forever youngest sister. Do not forget.”
“I won’t,” said Clara. They had nursed her back to health, even if she had ultimately been somewhere between a prisoner and a slave. By their reckoning, to be even the lowest rank of Arral was a gift, compared to being thaneless.
She rose to her feet. “I must return,” she said. “Thank you all.”
The oldest woman went w
ith her, somewhat to Clara’s surprise. She ambled up to Istvhan and planted herself in his path, hands folded on her cane.
Istvhan’s eyebrows went up, but he bowed very deeply to her. “Honored elder,” he said.
She snorted, looking him up and down with her ancient blue eyes, and then spoke, slowly and carefully. “Do you understand my words?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Hmm.” She looked him up and down again. “You are big, outsider.”
Istvhan’s lips twitched, but he said, very gravely, “Yes, ma’am.”
She lifted her cane and poked him in the midsection. “You have our forever youngest sister with you.”
“I…ah…” Istvhan glanced at Clara. Clara pointed to herself and nodded vigorously. “Oh. Yes, ma’am,” he said.
“You will treat her well.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You will not beat her.”
“No! Certainly not!”
“You will not make her carry things that are too heavy.”
“Ah…no, ma’am.”
Another poke with the cane. “You will let her sleep afterward!”
“Ma’am, I…ah…” Istvhan looked helplessly over at Clara. They were attracting quite a crowd. Apparently the prohibition against outsider men approaching women did not apply to tiny elderly ladies scolding men three times their size. “I…that is…”
“You will!” A determined poke with the cane.
“Yes, ma’am,” whispered Istvhan, looking, for all his size, like a very small boy caught with his hand in the sweet jar.
The muffled gasps of laughter behind her were definitely Galen. Clara wasn’t sure whether to laugh with him or turn scarlet and sink into the ground with mortification.
“Hmmph.” The old Arral woman’s scowl lightened. She poked him one last time with her cane, then nodded to Clara. “You will tell us if you have anything to complain of, youngest sister.”
Clara bowed very deeply, not trusting herself to speak. Galen was losing his battle with hilarity behind her.
Paladin's Strength Page 4
